Madness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Madness - Essay Example Finally after years of hospital visits, therapy, and lots of different types of medicine, Mayra found a routine that has worked for her so far. Like Mayra has proven and other people with Bipolar disorder know, this illness has no cure. It is a lifelong process of taking medicines to alleviate the symptoms of the disorder. Over the years the more doctors have learned about being Bipolar. When Mayra was first diagnosed, she got a generic Bipolar diagnosis. Now there is two different types of Bipolar; Bipolar I and Bipolar II. It was once thought that a person had long manic phases and long depressed phases, but as Mayra has shown her moods changed daily. Today doctors know more, but more research and study is needed. Like many people with Bipolar disorder, Mayra self medicated since her adolescence. Alcohol to come down or take the edge off her manic phases, pills to chase away the blues. After being hospitalized for her eating disorder, Mayra stopped taking pills. However her alcohol intake increased for years. She was also a cutter. After an almost near death experience after slitting her veins, she stopped regular cutting. Mayra did not receive help sooner than her thirties, even though diagnosed with Bipolar ten years earlier, because she did not take the disease seriously. Finally Mayra had to face the fact that she was never going to be normal, but with medicine could live with the disease. Once she stopped drinking, she still did not take the disease seriously. Only after addressing her illness, did Mayra find a tenuous balance with medicine and therapy. wards, medicine, detox, AA, and therapy. At first diagnosed with anorexia/bulimia, Mayra was hospitalized for that. The goal for treating anorexia/bulimia is to get a patient to eat. The weight Mayra gained or lost was more important than her mental state. They grouped her with other anorexia/bulimia patients that were depressed. The medicine Prozac might have helped Mayra with

RETAIL STRATEGY Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

RETAIL STRATEGY - Essay Example In the face of economic growth and radical economic volatility at home, the most attractive retailing options may lie in Asia. Although few domestic retailers are positioned to capitalize on international opportunities, virtually all retailers will be affected by the emergence of the one-world marketplace. As the international borders and barriers come down and the free flow of products goes up, even the smallest mom-and-pop store will be swept up in change. The main trends in the retail industry include fragmentation, specialization and differentiation. Increasing cultural diversity and ethnic insulation lead to market fragmentation. Certainly a number of established retailers are poised to capitalize on the one common denominator that cuts across racial and ethnic diversity--the persistent emphasis on bang-for-the- buck, or value. However, currently most retailers are ill equipped to capitalize on the new opportunities promised by market fragmentation because they do not have access to the expertise required to understand the behavioral manifestations of cultural heritage and ethnic identification (Levy and Weitz 2004). The leading retailers of the 1990s will be those that shore up the knowledge gap by recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting people or by employing outside consultants from cultural and ethnic backgrounds corresponding to those market fragments that promise the greatest profit potential (The Committee for the Histor y of Retailing and Distribution 2009). Although the UK market has grown in absolute terms, the 1990s promise smaller targets of opportunity, both in sheer size and in duration. The factors fueling population growth are conspiring to produce what some have termed "the death of the mass market--and mass marketing" (Levy and Weitz 2004). Although birthrates continue their downward trend,

Techniques for Understanding Human Walking Motion

Techniques for Understanding Human Walking Motion Introduction Multimedia is a term that collectively describes a variety of media content available in various forms of text, speech, audio, still images, video, animation, graphics, 3D models and combinations of them used to capture real time moments. Over the recent years the technological advances have enabled wide availability and easy access of multimedia content and much research was dedicated to perform automated computational tasks for a wide spectrum of applications such as surveillance, crime investigation, fashion and designing, traditional aerospace, publishing and advertising, medical applications, virtual reality applications to name a few. The volume of multimedia information is so huge now that the improvement in various tasks of representation, analyzing, searching and retrieving process has become the need of the hour. Among all the available types of media, video is one of the prominent forms, widely used for analyzing multimedia content. Several types of videos can be captured by various recording devices but then even the most suitable types of devices used for acquiring videos have to deal with two important problems- sensory gap and semantic gap. The sensory gap being- the difference between the real world and its representation. â€Å"The sensory gap is the gap between the object in the world and the information in a (computational) description derived from a recording of that scene† [Smeulders, A. W. M., Worring, M., Santini, S., Gupta, A., and Jain, R. (2000). Content-based image retrieval at the end of the early years. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 22(12):1349–1380.]. The semantic gap being- the difference between the behavior description by human vision and the computational model used by the human activity/behavior analysis systems. â€Å"The semantic gap is the lack of coincidence between the information that one can extract from the visual data and the inter pretation that the same data have for a user in a given situation† [Smeulders, A. W. M., Worring, M., Santini, S., Gupta, A., and Jain, R. (2000). Content-based image retrieval at the end of the early years. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 22(12):1349–1380.]. Many researchers have proposed to build computational models of the human visual system to represent as close as possible to the reality. A major development was the framework proposed by David Marr at MIT, who used a bottom-up approach to represent scene understanding [D. Marr,† Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information†, Freeman, san Francisco (1982)]. Later, various state-of the-art methods evolved but, the technology that helps people to integrate the content of multimedia, for meaningful expression is still lagging behind. Within the realm of multimedia content analysis, computer vision methods and algorithms have been used as foundation and the coupled relation between multimedia analysis and computer vision is a well-known challenge. Currently, the most popular research performed by various researchers is the human movement analysis. Several types of activities that are performed by humans can be captured by various recording devices and the human motion analysis systems were built with respect to context of applications. The aim of human movement analysis systems is to automatically analyze and transform the input video sequences into semantic interpretation of them. The recognition of human activities has been studied by computer vision for quite some time but is far behind the capabilities of human vision. In human visual system- when a person moving is observed, human’s brain recognizes that person’s action by analyzing the transition of postures adopted or interprets behavior by tr acking the person’s transition of postures and noting the intent of action. This analysis is complex for computer vision systems. Since the human body is non-rigid, deformable, articulated, a person can have a variety of postures over time. The works on human activity analysis have not provided satisfactory results yet. To solve problems relating human movement analysis using videos, the paradigm of data fusion is recommended. Multimedia data fusion is a way to integrate multiple media, their associated features or integrate intermediate decisions to perform an analysis task. According to B.V Dasarathy, â€Å"Combining Multimedia data fusion is a formal framework in which are expressed means and tools for alliance of data originating from different sources for the exploitation of their synergy in order to obtain information whose quality cannot be achieved otherwise.† [Dasarathy, B.V. (2001) information fusion- what, where, why, when, and how? Information fusion, 2, 75-76]. In the existing literature several contributions are made to research on data fusion techniques used in multisensory environments and multimodal fusion with the aim of fusing and aggregating data obtained from multiple sources. Video data has a significant characteristic of multimodal content. Combining the information gat hered from multiple modalities is valid approach to increase accuracy. [ P.K Atrey, M. a Hossain, A.E Saddik and M.S Kankahalli. â€Å"Multimodal fusion for multimedia analysis: A Survey. Multimedia systems 16(6): 345-379, 2010] Multimedia fusion is useful for several tasks such as detection, recognition, identification, tracking and a wide range of applications. This research work presents multimedia analysis in combination with computer vision and data fusion perspectives to understand human walking motion in video sequences. This kind of research is challenging. Motivation From the view point of data fusion this research work is motivated by the observation that all living organisms have the capability to use multiple senses to learn about the environment and then the brain fuses all the information to perform a decision task. Human observer can easily and instantly recognize action. But, the main limitations with the visual sensory of humans are, limited range of visual perception, limitations and compromises of human brain. Whereas, automatic systems can work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week allowing accurate event detection and their cost is lower to maintain. On the other hand, from the view point of computer vision, algorithms and techniques are yet to improve performance for analyzing humans walking found in videos. Computer vision systems are far behind the capabilities of human vision and have to deal with two important problems- sensory gap and semantic gap. The sensory gap being- the difference between the real world and its representation and the semantic gap being- the difference between the behavior description by human vision and the computational model used by the human activity/behavior analysis systems. A promising strategy consists in integrating different techniques of data fusion and computer vision in a unified framework to enhance the performance of the tasks associated with analyzing human walking motion and overcoming the drawbacks. 1.3 The Goal The aim of this research work is to conduct a detailed investigation of currently available tools and techniques for understanding human walking motion and develop a generic framework where data fusion and computer vision perspectives are used to analyze human walking actions in context to real life applications. During the process of fusing, correlation of activities and patterns of activities can be detected to predict intent. Finally, performance will be evaluated for true positives, false positives and misclassifications. Summary of contributions Our work in the thesis is focused on the following significant contributions: Design of a unified framework, for combining data fusion and computer vision methodology to improve the performance of automatic analysis of human movements in videos. Tasks of detecting moving humans and related sub-problems in video frames using unsupervised techniques. Efficient technique to handle occlusion in the task of tracking walking humans. New strategy for accomplishing the task of correlation and predictions during detection and tracking of humans. Noticing and Interpreting stances change in walking movements. 1.5 Outline The thesis is organized as follows Chapter 2 –presents background and related literature review on various existing strategies and approaches of data fusion and computer vision while providing motivation for the proposed approaches used for the work in this thesis. Chapter 3 Provides detailed explanation on the unified framework. Show how the frame work helps in accomplishing the tasks of analysis in multimedia content for correlation and prediction along with a comparison of proposed frame work to JDL, Dasarthy data fusion model. Chapter 4 Presents an overview of state-of-the art methods for detection of humans in videos, the proposed novel work, experiments and the evaluations. Chapter 5 Presents an overview of state-of-the art methods for tracking of humans in videos, the proposed novel work, experiments and the evaluations. Chapter 6 Automatic interpretation of changes in stance changes in human walking. Chapter 7 Conclusions, future directions and related open issues are discussed. References: Smeulders, A. W. M., Worring, M., Santini, S., Gupta, A., and Jain, R. (2000).Content-based image retrieval at the end of the early years. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 22(12):1349–1380 D. Marr,† Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information†, Freeman, san Francisco (1982) Dasarathy, B.V. (2001) information fusion- what, where, why, when, and how? Information fusion, 2, 75-76 P.K Atrey, M. a Hossain, A.E Saddik and M.S Kankahalli. â€Å"Multimodal fusion for multimedia analysis: A Survey. Multimedia systems 16(6): 345-379, 2010

Finding clarity in Buddhism, Christianity, and Philosophy Essay

Finding clarity in Buddhism, Christianity, and Philosophy There are many things in life that work to guide us to ultimate transcendence. Philosophy and Theology (specifically Buddhism and Christianity) each employ different concepts for allowing people passage to some harmonious place. Although each following is, in part, correct in their assumption of how to sustain a meaningful life, I find that the only religion that is relevant in dictating my personal transcendence is a particular way of life found in Christianity. While other followings have formed throughout the ages, making their own conjectures, and employing their own laws and paths to transcendence, Christianity is the only path I see as navigable. From the beginning of man’s existence, logic has been the only ingredient separating mankind from other species. While simpler animals roamed the earth searching for what was instinctually necessary, man developed into thinkers who analyzed life and made conjectures as to its real meaning. In a sense, when man began thinking life was born. However, there is no divinity in thought, rather its application and transition into forming logical ideas has made thought something worth pursuing. As time advanced so did thought, and slowly more and more complex ideas regarding the purpose of life emerged. All of the earliest civilizations had great thinkers who tried to unravel the mysteries of life. Like most religions, philosophy became something composed of multiple interpretations. Philosophers pondered the most important life questions, each taking their own stance, and providing numerous significant realizations. One of these new ideas was that life’s sole purpose was to think. Plato is considered a... ... the Bible every night, or pray once in the morning and again at night, both times at the foot of the bed. The only thing that matters is that one acknowledges Christ’s existence, lets him into their life, and fully embraces him in all endeavors. There lies in each following numerous ambiguities and many contorted fallacies. Each has very distinct thoughts about how to lead life and which way best allows a person to achieve transcendence. For me, the refined version of Christianity that is not about physical completions, instead employing a more Buddhist approach of spiritual accomplishments, seem to most aptly provide a stable working relationship with Christ. My relationship with Christ will provide transcendence within my life and eternal glory thereafter. Works Cited Burtt, E.A. The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha. New York: New York, 2000.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses Study Questions Essay

1. The author’s main thesis in setting up this book is that many drinks have built and brought together human history in to what we know about it. 2. The fluids that are mentioned in the book are vital because each one played a role in many areas of history and they are a crucial part of creating a certain period of history. â€Å"Beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt† 1. The discovery of beer is linked to the growth of the first civilizations because in both cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt, beer was the main drink. It was consumed by everyone and was known as the defining drink of both of the first great civilizations. 2. The history of beer tells us that those people were intelligent enough to understand that they needed another beverage to consume rather than water. They most likely knew that some of the water that was available to them wasn’t all that safe and good enough to drink. 3. The author uses history records, writings and pictures as sources used to gather information about the use of beer. 4. Beer was used as a form of payment or trade for some of the workers who built the pyramids; they were paid in loaves of bread along with beer. It was also used in religious forms such as prayers. 5. According to Standage beer â€Å"civilized† man because it was an important beverage that helped them become modern. Beer is linked to farming since cereal grains are required to make beer which started a certain lifestyle. â€Å"Wine in Greece and Rome† 1. The use of wine is different than that of beer because the ancient civilizations drank beer as just a social drink while the Greek culture drank wine in a religious manner. 2. Wine was used as a way to show their social status by the Greeks. 3. Wine developed into a form of a status symbol when they found out supposedly how wine was made, through the gods. After that they suggested only people worthy of the gods should be able to drink wine. 4. Wine was consumed in an elegant manner through a bowl made out of gold, this tells us that the ancient Greek culture was into the lifestyle of their people and liked to show their wealth. 5. In Rome wine was seen as a necessity by the people and they felt like they needed to drink it while in Greece it was just seen as a leisure drink. 6. Wine is a part of a Catholic ritual where wine symbolizes the blood of Jesus Christ and Christianity began in the Roman Empire and became an important force in Europe after the change between Emperor Constantine. Wine was also uses for medical purposes as a pain killer. â€Å"Spirits in the Colonial Period† 1. The origin of distilled spirits came from the Arabs. 2. The connection between spirits and colonization is that, spirits became an economic good of great importance that with their taxation and control became matters of high political importance and helped determine the course of history. 3. The production of spirits is connected to slavery because the African slavers who supplied the Europeans with slaves, most valued spirits as a trade offer. The African slavers accepted a wide range of products in exchange but it was known that the spirits played as a main role in the trade for slaves. 4. Spirits were used as rewards to the slaves on the ship for being more helpful and cleaning. It was also used as a type of medicine used for diseases throughout the seas. 5. Spirits was an important fundamental in Colonial America because it was used for almost everything. To rural people it was used as currency and to others it was used to survive. The drink was known to be the best of its kind, which is why most people preferred it during trades. 6. Once the Molasses Act was passed in 1733, Rum began to play a role in the American Revolution. Since the Molasses Act wasn’t strongly enforced in the beginning, causing the colonist to smuggle it, British Government decided to strengthen the Act. Americans were not in favor of the new law and rebelled with the cry of â€Å"no taxation without representation.† â€Å"Coffee in the Age of Reason† 1. Coffee originated in the Arab world. Although there are many legends to how it was discovered, no one is so certain to how much of it is true. The popularity of coffee-drinking was first seen in Yemen during the mid-fifteenth century. 2. Coffeehouses became an important part of the history of the drink. Even though now in the modern world coffeehouses are seen everywhere you go, back in the days coffeehouses went through a lot of judgment. They became prohibited by Muhammad and went through legal matters in Mecca. Coffee didn’t stop there and began to move west conquering Europe. 3. Coffee influenced a new age of scientific learning and rational thought because it was a sober drink. People that drank wine, beer or spirits were less likely to do anything while sober people were able to think clearly and the coffeehouses provided education and self improvement within society. 4. Coffee was used to start the day off alert and awake so they can get work done while the previous drinks such as wine and beer were consumed to be relaxed and intoxicate the person. 5. The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment was a sharp break from the past because during that period of time people would drink coffee instead of an alcoholic beverage. It was a sober drink so it would let people be able to think more clearly rather than be intoxicated. It was a big change from the way people were living before it. â€Å"Tea and the British Empire† 1. Tea first became a mainstream drink in Asia by the fourth century CE and during the late eighteenth century in Europe. 2. In Europe only people that were able to afford tea drank it because it was known as an expensive beverage to have while in China and Japan everyone and anyone drank tea and used it for medical purposes. 3. Tea didn’t have as much success as coffee did because people weren’t aware of the uses of tea during the time and it wasn’t a regular part of their diet since they weren’t so familiar with the taste. 4. 5. Tea is an integral part of the Industrial Revolution because it was one of the main items being traded. 6. The connection between tea and politics is that Americans began to rebel against the British because they were taxing the tea without them knowing so that’s when the Boston Tea Party came into effect and the form of rebelling became a symbol of their freedom. 7. Tea was connected to the opium trade because it was an imbalance trade between China and British which caused the Opium war. 8. â€Å"Coca-Cola and the Rise of America† 1. The very beginning of Coca-Cola’s origin begins with a brewery in Leeds by a scientist, Joseph Priestly in 1767. Joseph Priestly was amused by the gas known as â€Å"fixed air† which was proven to be carbon dioxide and discovered the soda water. Then in 1886 it was said that a pharmacist named John Pemberton created the drink by accident while trying to make a cure for headaches. 2. Coca-Cola was used medically to cure all nervous affections such as headaches, Neuralgia and Hysteria. The Coca plant and the Kola nut were both alike in effects and was said to act as caffeine and suppress the appetite. 3. Coca-Cola had a relationship with World War II because the war made the drink be known globally. During the War the company would send out Coca-Cola to the soldiers to refresh them with a non intoxicating beverage. 4. Communist viewed Coca-Cola as a symbol that stood everything for America; freedom, democracy, and free-market capitalism. They had the idea that the drink stands for everything that was seen wrong with capitalism. 5. â€Å"Globalization in a Bottle† is summed up to be Coca-Cola representing a trend towards a single global market place because of how much it is known around the world. Epilogue- â€Å"Back to the Source† 1. I do agree with Standage’s argument because water whether its in a bottle or just regular tap water is the same thing. People will still need it to be able to survive. 2. I think water will be the most influential beverage in shaping the global situation for the years to come because almost every beverage created contains some type of water in it. Water, while it can become contaminated, is still the healthiest drink.

Critical Thinking Sc Essay

The video I decided to watch was â€Å"blood money†. This is my Critical thinking scenario on the situation that was discussed in the video. When it comes to describing the relationship between critical thinking and ethics, there is quite a bit to think about. The â€Å"participants† don’t really have a moral responsibility as they aren’t even alive to know what exactly is going on, and this can be deemed unethical. There really are not any stakeholders involved with the black market trade of organs of executed criminals other than the people doing the dealings. In terms of ideals and obligations that come into conflict from critical thinking and ethics side of things. The ideals of the people that are involved are that they are helping people, at least they think so, and that they are obligated to make sure money is made and organs are delivered as needed. From an ethical standpoint this isn’t ethical at all. Now the best outcome given the consequences is that even though this is black market organs, someone is possibly having their life saved. CONCLUSION In conclusion, there are a lot of ethical and unethical things that happen and are involved in the black market trade of organs from executed criminals in Japan. Right off the bat, people think this is extremely unethical; however, if you critically think about it, there are some ethical CRITICAL THINKING SCENARIO 3 sides to this. One example is that even though no matter how unethical, these people believe, and potentially are, helping to save someone’s life. CRITICAL THINKING SCENARIO 4 REFERENCES https://media. pearsoncmg. com/pls/us/phoenix/1269738887/ANN_11-20- 06_BloodMoney. html.