Assess Kant's ethics of duty and freedom as a response to all previous Essay

Assess Kant's ethics of duty and freedom as a response to all previous ethical theories - Essay Example In his "Critique on Pure Reason" Kant portrays a view of rationalists such as Descartes as being overly concerned with divinity and divine intervention. He felt that the preoccupation with the role of God in the control of human thoughts, feelings and actions posed a very clear contradiction to the inherent will of man. He adamantly opposed the philosophy of Descartes in that he feels that Descartes reaffirmed his existence of God by alluding to the notion that conceptualizing something in one's mind actually makes it real. Essentially his fundamental problem was with the notion of "I think therefore I am" as proposed by Descartes. He argued that making a presumption that something exists and using that presumption as proof of the same bears no merit in arriving at the truth. Moreover, Kant objected to the passivity attributed to the human mind by the rationalists. His objection to the empiricist school of thought can be found in the fact that empiricists such as Locke portrayed an incomplete view of the mind and human motivation. He felt that the empiricist viewpoint was somewhat esoteric in nature in that it was effective in arriving at the notion that the mind was a "blank table" but it failed to expand on its implications. His main criticism could be found in the notion that empiricism often underestimated the role of reasoning in the construction of a knowledge base. He felt that empiricists viewed the mind as a passive entity while in Kant's view the mind was an active entity in which the individual plays a pivotal role in the way in which knowledge is produced. In so doing, perceptions are subject to the assessment of the individual knower and not the reverse as proposed by the empiricists. Kant was very ingenious in his use of the theories of his predecessors for arriving at a distinct theory of his own. He was able to utilize the notion of passivity of the mind in the formation of his clear and concise contradictory theory. According to Kant humans are autonomous beings and as such are capable of real self-governance. He feels that there ought not to be boundaries or limitations placed on the goodness of the human will and the real human freedom to choose. The human propensity to heteronymous influences from emotions and external norms makes them slaves to outside influences which will lead them to act immorally. Heteronomy in Kant's philosophy is the subjection to the imposition of moral choices that are exterior to the autonomy of the human will, for example in response to desires for some benefit, out of fear of unwanted repercussions to an action, or through the influence of others. A heteronymous will is constrained to act from subjective calculations or from rul es that have been set from outside and consequently lacks real freedom. An autonomous will chooses freely from pure principle on its own assessment of the objective goodness of an action that can be judged to qualify as a maxim for universal application. In his duty theory, Kant expresses the notion that there is an underlying moral law that all should adhere to and theorizes that the singular motivation for human actions should be duty and respect for the independent moral good. He maintains that the fundamental principle at the basis of all moral duties is a categorical imperative. He feels that this categorical imperative commands us to exercise our will in a particular way and can be formulated on three aspects. The

Biology Research Paper on Brain Tumors Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Biology on Brain Tumors - Research Paper Example All types of brain tumors can be life threatening mainly because of their invasive nature in the minimal space of the intracranial cavity. Since the skull protects the brain well, early detection of brain tumor is not often possible. Therefore, detection of brain tumors generally happens only in advanced stages when its causes unrecovered damages in the brain; and this problem increases the severity of this disease. Brain tumors can damage brain in a number of ways. Usually, brain tumors shift the brain or press it against the skull and damage healthy brain tissues and nerves. Type of symptoms of brain tumors may be greatly influenced by the affected location as different parts of the brain have entirely different functions. It is less likely that brain tumors will spread to other organs outside the central nervous system. Head ache and nausea are some of the most common symptoms of brain tumors and the symptoms will be very severe in the morning. Seizures, difficulty in thinking or speaking, loss of balances, personality changes, paralysis in side of the body, troubles in vision, confusion, and memory loss constitute other major symptoms of brain tumors. As many of these symptoms may indicate other common medical problems, people would not consult doctor at initial stages and this situation adds to the fatality of brain tumors. Brain tumors are of two types including primary brain tumor and secondary (metastatic) brain tumor. The major difference between these two is that the primary brain tumor is developed in the brain itself whereas the metastatic brain tumor is initiated as a cancer in another body part. In common cases, primary brain tumor will not spread to other parts of the body. According to pathologists (qtd in National Brain Tumor Society, 2011), primary brain tumor can be grouped into two categories such as glial tumors and nonglial tumors. Glial tumors are composed of glial cells, which contain astrocytes, Schwann cells, microglia, oligodendrocyte s, and ependymal cells. The nonglial tumors originate in brain structures including glands, nerves, and blood vessels. In contrast, in case of secondary brain tumors, some of the cancer cells reach the brain through blood or from the adjacent tissue. Clinical practitioners note that secondary brain tumors are the most common type of brain tumors (National Brain Tumor Society, 2011). How it affects the body? To a great extent, impacts of brain tumor on the body depend on a number of factors such as its type, location, and involved area of brain. Once the human brain develops brain tumor, the tumor cells may mutate and grow and thereby damage other parts of the brain. Clinical practitioners claim that brain tumors will cause troubles to hearing or speech gradually. In advanced stages, victims’ arms and legs may lose sensation and their other body functions may be seriously affected. Sometimes, brain tumors will cause additional damages to the brain because skull is solid and it cannot stretch as the tumor grows. Tumors developed in the area of basal ganglia cause issues like abnormal movements and abnormal body positioning. Patients’ attitude towards the disease is a major factor determining the effects of brain tumor

Testing Webservices Using Soapui And Jmeter

Testing Webservices Using Soapui And Jmeter Web servers are an integral part of a web application. Choosing the right web server that meets the applicationà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s requirements and the expected load is a key decision in providing a real-time response. This paper studies and compares the performance of different open source web servers like Apache Tomcat and Jetty under different loads. The objective is to carry out load testing using Jmeter, which is an open source tool, written in java. In the process, web service used in load testing is functional tested using an open source tool-soapUI. The paper also explores the capabilities of these two tools. The webservice used for load testing the web servers is a wrapper method around an open source project called Lucene, provided by the Apache foundation. Lucene provides full text indexing and searching capabilities in different libraries. The paper will use the experimental results to calculate the peak TPS of the webservers and determine the capabilities/limitations of the ab ove webservers. à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½Discovering the unexpected is more important than confirming the knownà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½-(George Box). Software testing is an essential and integral part of the software development cycle. This can be done either manually or by using automated testing tools. The later method is more preferred in recent times as it saves a lot of time and helps catch the software bugs missed by manual testing. There are different types of software testing techniques that include- functional testing, integration testing, load testing, regression testing etc. Functional testing involves testing the features and operational behavior of a software to ensure they correspond to its specifications. Load testing involves modeling the expected usage of a software program by simulating multiple users accessing the program in parallel. The purpose of the paper is to serve as a case study for evaluating the performance of web servers. Testing can be aided significantly by several testing tools. This paper performs functional testing of web service using soapUI tool. SoapUI is an open source testing tool which mainly performs functional testing of Web services (SOAP, REST etc). SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a simple mechanism for exchanging structured and typed information between peers in a decentralized distributed environment using XML [1]. In this paper, wrapper webservice methods are written on top of APIs provided by Lucene. Apache Lucene is a high performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java with powerful, accurate and efficient search algorithms [3]. It is open source software suitable for most of the applications that require full-text search, especially cross-platform. Applications based on Lucene include: Eclipse, JIRA, Roller, OpenGrok, Nutch, Solr etc [2]. Lucene exposes methods that provide the functionality for indexing text documents and also provides APIs to search indexed documents based on a certain set of predefined fields. These methods exposed by the libraries are used by the webservice to provide indexing and search functionality. This webservice is functional tested using soapUI. There are different open source web servers available in the market. Jakarta Tomcat, Miniature Java Web server and Jetty are a few examples of open source web servers. Web servers are containers that host web applications/webservices. The lucene webservice is then hosted on two different webservers (Tomcat and Jetty) and these web servers are load tested using JMeter. Apache Jmeter, is another open source testing tool that is used to load test web applications. The webserverà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s performance is analyzed under different loads generated using Jmeter. Jmeter is used to simulate heavy load on a server and test the webserverà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s capabilitylimitation. Section 2 of this paper describes the environment setup needed for this project. presents current work and industry acceptance of some of the functional and load testing tools. Section 4 describes Rigi and highlights its limitation. Section 4 describes Understand 2.5 as a reverse engineering tool. Section 5 demonstrates reverse engineering of SimpleDB, an open source code. Section 6 concludes reverse engineering. 2. Environment Since soapUI and Jmeter are java based tools, it runs on most operating systems including Windows, Mac and Linux. The study will be done on Windows 7. SoapUI and Jmeter require 1.6+ JRE (Java Runtime Environment). It requires at least 1 GB of memory, and about 100 MB of disk space. Tools: soapUI and Jmeter Web servers: Apache Tomcat and Jetty Web service: To avoid the Web service being the bottleneck, a simple Web service that calculates the area of different shapes will be used as the Web service. This Web service can be extended later to perform other functions. 3. Current Practices This section presents current work and industry acceptance of some of the functional and load testing tools. soapUI and JMeter are two free tools used by the open source community. Section 3.1 talks about different commercial and open source functional testing tools. Section 3.2 concentrates on load testing tools. 3.1. Functional testing tools Some of the functional testing tools for testing internet applications currently being used by industries are listed below A) soapUI soapUI is a tool used for functional testing web services. Many industries are currently using soapUI for testing. It is being used to implement test suits for Alfresco Web services. soapUI is being used in a handful of public sector projects lately. As part of the Czech eGovernment project Datovà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ Schrà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½nky soapUI is used for session-based login scenario with Datovà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ Schrà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½nky [16]. It is also used in testing ASP.NET Web services. It is a big success in market as it comes with plug-ins for many IDEà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s/tools like NetBeans, Maven, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA 6+ etc [16]. B) WebLOAD Professional WebLOAD Professional is RadViewà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s commercial tool for performance testing of Internet applications [3]. It has built-in support for AJAX technologies, JSON data types and different types of SOAP and XML Web services [3]. C) Quicktest Professional QTP is widely used commercial test automation tool mainly for functional testing. It allows the users to fill out a Web page and to submit it. It then follows the request from the client workstation through the network. The message is traced to the Web service that processes it [4]. D) TestMaker TestMaker is a Web service testing application from PushToTest. TestMakers tests are embodied in scripts called à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½test agents. It can also be used to test Web applications [15]. Bundled with TestMaker is a network monitoring tool that can watch HTTP traffic between your browser and a target Web application, and generate test cases from the interaction [15]. 3.2. Load testing tools With applications like twitter and facebook becoming popular day by day, the amount of traffic that web servers handle has increased tremendously. The importance of tuning the performance of web servers has become crucial. Web server performance largely depends of components such as server hardware platform, Web server software, server operating system, network bandwidth, file sizes, caching, etc [5]. The performance of the web servers can be increased tremendously by proper tuning of the components of the server [5]. Most of the web applications run smoothly with minimal traffic. But when thousands of users access a web site in parallel, it tends to run slowly. Hence it is always a good practice to thoroughly load test web site/Web services before it goes live. Industries, when choosing the right web server for the web site being developed, usually take the expected load into account. They will also stress test Web servers by running 20-40 simultaneous requests on one URL [5]. The a verage time for the responses is then recorded. This will help them make the right decision. Listed are a few of the load testing tools used in the market (particularly open source market). A) JMeter JMeter is an open source Apache Jakarta project that can be used as a load testing tool for analyzing and measuring the performance of a variety of services, with a focus on web applications. This will be discussed in detail in section 4. JMeter is used worldwide by many companies for testing. AOL use JMeter for performance testing, QA, and adhoc production requests [14]. PrepMe is another company that uses JMeter. They wrap JMeter with a few scripts to dynamically generate configuration files based on the type of tests to be run [14]. This is integrated with their internal Symfony framework installation. Sapient and orbitz also use JMeter [14]. Advantages of Jmeter are it is open source and it provides the ability to load and performance test different kinds of Web server types like web, SOAP and database via JDBC. It also provides support for displaying the results using different Graphs and will support regression testing in the future. B) Grinder The Grinder is an open source load testing tool designed to load test functional behavior and measure performance. Grinder scripts are written in Jython programming language. It adopts a generic approach that allows load testing of anything that has a Java API. For example, HTTP web servers, SOAP and REST Web services [3]. C) NeoLoad NeoLoad is a commercial load and stress testing tool to measure the performance of the web application and provide pragmatic solutions facilitating design and development of the optimized website. Benefit of NeoLoad is easy creation of tests, which can be performed by non specialists. [3]. Although commercial tools offer richer set of features and are in general easier to use, available open source tools are sufficient to successfully perform given tasks. Their usage requires higher level of technical expertise but they are a lot more flexible and extendable 4. Details 4.1. Functional Testing The Web servers will host the Web service (CalculateArea) that returns the area of different shapes. Using soapUI, the functionality of the Web service will be tested with different test cases. The following are the methods exposed by the CalculateArea Web service 1) Double AreaOfRectangle (double length, double breadth) 2) Double AreaOfCircle (double radius) 3) Double AreaOfCylinder (double radius, double height) 4) Double AreaOfTriangle (double length, double height) This service can be extended later to include methods to calculate the area of other shapes. Figure 1. Functional testing of Web servers using soapUI tool Testing of Web services has to target three aspects: the discovery of Web services , the data format exchanged (i.e.,Web Services Description Language, WSDL), and request/response mechanisms (i.e., SOAP). The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is an XML-based language that provides a model for describing Web services [1][5] . The data format and request/response mechanisms can be tested by invoking requests and observing responses with test data representing valid and invalid data formats[1]. The above three scenarios will be tested using soapUI. soapUI will validate and import Web services from SOAP based WSDL documents. Fig 1 explains the functional testing that will be carried out in details. Each method invocation will be a request to invoke that particular method (ex:AreaOfCircle) on the Web service. The Web server will receive the request and determine which application will handle the request and pass on the request to the particular application. The application (CalculateArea Web service) will receive the request and proc ess the request. The application will throw an exception if there are any issues (missing/invalid parameter value or invalid parameter type) with the request. Otherwise, it will perform the necessary service and return the result in the response which is forwarded to the component that invoked the service (soapUI in this case). The request and the response will be examined to make sure the response is the expected response for each scenario. If the Web service throws an exception, soapUI throws the same exception so that the user will know what the exception was for. We will use Jakarta Tomcat and Jetty to host the Web service to be tested. 4.2. Load testing of the application and stress testing the web server Figure 2: Load/stress testing of Web servers using JMeter tool As mentioned in the previous section, the Web service will be hosted on both Jakarta tomcat and Jetty. Jmeter, an open source load testing tool, will be used to perform the load testing/stress testing on both the web servers. As shown in Figure 2, the load on the Web server will be gradually increased by increasing the number of requests every time. The response time will be noted for each of the response from the web server. This result will help in calculating the time taken by the web server to process these requests. This will be used to calculate the TPS (transactions per second) that each Web server handles under each load. These results should be a good indicator on how the above web server scales for increasing loads. The number of requests per second will be increased by increasing the requests per second from Jmeter and also by using multiple running instances of Jmeter (thereby simulating multiple concurrent users). The above test will be performed for the following number of transaction on each server and the results will be noted. Table 1. Load metrics Requests per second Time taken to handle the requests % Passed transaction % Failed Transaction Transaction Per Second Handled by the Web server 5. Future Directions When trying to choose Open Source test tools, several factors may be considered, such as how active the development is, the support for the tool, the quality of the documentation, etc. JMeter is free and extensible tool with a substantial community support. One of the JMeter strong points is the distributed testing feature. The master system (controller) carries the user interface or XML test scripts and makes RMI calls to each of the nodes (load generators). Each node receives a mirror of the test plan and performs identical actions on a target Web application [3]. As developers take advantage of JMeterà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s pluggable architecture, JMeters capabilities will rapidly expand in future. The primary goal of further development is to make JMeter the most useful regression testing tool as possible, without compromising JMeters load-testing capabilities. Additional goals are to improve the graphical user interface. Since there is no support for scripting and advance reporting in soapUI currently, there is scope to add scripting libraries and enhance reporting features in future. 6. Limitations Open source testing tools are inexpensive (free), and work well for easy to moderately-difficult jobs but theyre somewhat less user-friendly than commercial tools and complex jobs must be built manually. Some limitations of soapUI include- no maintenance as it is a freely available tool. Scripting libraries are not available. No support for advance reporting. These limitations can be overcome by using soapUI pro, a commercial tool used for testing. Also, soapUI test cases cannot be used as examples illustrating the use of the service. Junit test cases can be used to overcome these limitations. soapUI also requires significant coding for building/maintaining test cases and suites. Also, in the place of actual input data for generated test cases, soapUI leaves question marks (or alternatively some pregenerated Latin words or numbers) [7]. In addition, it does not manage the choice and all elements and the occurrence attributes, but introduces comments explaining to the human tester how to handle them. JMeter has certain drawbacks. Thereà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s no guarantee of support or further development as it is an open source tool. It has limited reporting capabilities. Graphic representation is quite confusing and has no support for scripting. One of the most distinguished disadvantages is insufficient support for test case recording. JMeter uses proxy which can only record HTTP while HTTPS is supported only in so called, spoofing mode. However, there are other tools which can be used in conjunction with JMeter and provide HTTPS test case recording. One such tool is Badboy tool which may be defined as a Web application functional testing tool [3]. 7. Discussion and Summary One of the chief concerns while choosing a testing tool is the cost of the tool. Since software testing usually attracts the least budget in an organization, many people look to the Open Source community for good solutions. This paper is an attempt in showing that there are good open source tools like soapUI and JMeter in the market that accomplishes most of the functionality supported by commercial tools. This paper also studies the performance of different open source web servers for different loads.

College Students and Alcohol Essay -- essays research papers

College Students and Alcohol College student drunkenness is far from new and neither are college and university efforts to control it. What is new, however, is the potential to make real progress on this age-old problem based on scientific research results. New research-based information about the consequences of high-risk college drinking and how to reduce it can empower colleges and universities, communities, and other interested organizations to take effective action. Hazardous drinking among college students is a widespread problem that occurs on campuses of all sizes and geographic locations. A recent survey of college students conducted by the Harvard University School of Public Health reported that 44 percent of respondents had drunk more than five drinks (four for women) consecutively in the previous two weeks. About 23 percent had had three or more such episodes during that time. The causes of this problem are the fact that students are living by themselves no longer with parents or guardians; they earn their own money; students need to be a part of a group, be accepted; and they have the wrong idea that to feel drunk is â€Å"cool.† Although high-risk drinkers are a minority in all ethnic groups, their behavior is far from a harmless â€Å"rite of passage.† In fact, drinking has pervasive consequences that compel our attention. The most serious consequence of high-risk college drinking is death. The U.S. Department of Education has evidence that at least 84 college students have died since 1996 because of alcohol poisoning or related injury—and they believe the actual total is higher because of incomplete reporting. When alcohol-related traffic crashes and off-campus injuries are taken into consideration, it is estimated that over 1,400 college students die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries. Additionally, over 500,000 full-time students sustain nonfatal unintentional injuries, and 600,000 are hit or assaulted by another student who has been drinking. Administrators are well aware of the burden alcohol presents to the campus environment. In addition, the 1997, 1999, and 2001 Harv ard surveys found that the majority of students living in dorms and Greek residences, who do not drink excessively, still experience day-to-day problems as a result of other students’ misuse of alcohol. The prevalence of these â€Å"secondhand effects† varies across ... ... associated harm as a sole programmatic response to student drinking. They have proven to be ineffective. And finally, colleges and universities have to be inclusive of varied student subpopulations. They need to determine and address the special needs of groups such as racial/ethnic minorities, women, athletes, Greeks, students of different ages, and gay and lesbian students. Initial results from programs adopting an intensive social norms approach are promising. Several institutions that persistently communicated accurate norms have experienced reductions of up to 20 percent in high-risk drinking over a relatively short time. Together these findings provide strong support for the potential impact of the social norms approach. Although any case report in this text could be challenged methodologically, the results of each study are remarkably consistent. Nobody can control what students do, but colleges and universities can make them conscious about what is right and wrong or good and bad. This information allows students to act based on their opinions, not just drink because it is prohibited. To make students became responsible adults is the best way to combat binge drinking

Goldelocks Planet

Could ‘Goldilocks' planet be just right for life? [->0][->1] AP Photo/Zina Deretsky, National Science FoundationAn artist rendering by Lynette Cook, National Science Foundation, shows the new planet on the right.  ·Top of Form 1 Buzz up! 865 votes Bottom of Form 1  ·HYPERLINK â€Å"http://www. facebook. com/sharer. php? u=http://news. yahoo. com/s/ap/20100929/ap_on_sc/us_sci_new_earths&t=Could+%27Goldilocks%27+planet+be+just+right+for+life%3F+-+Yahoo%21+News†Share  ·HYPERLINK â€Å"http://twitter. com/home? status=http://news. yahoo. com/s/ap/20100929/ap_on_sc/us_sci_new_earths†retweet  ·HYPERLINK â€Å"http://mtf. ews. yahoo. com/mailto/? prop=news&locale=us&url=http://news. yahoo. com/s/ap/20100929/ap_on_sc/us_sci_new_earths&title=Could+%27Goldilocks%27+planet+be+just+right+for+life%3F+-+Yahoo%21+News&h1=ap/20100929/ap_on_sc/us_sci_new_earths&h2=T&h3=624†³Email  ·HYPERLINK â€Å"http://news. yahoo. com/s/ap/20100929/ap_on_sc/us_sci_new_earths/pr int†Print  ·HYPERLINK â€Å"/nphotos/undated-handout-artist-rendering-provided-Lynette-Cook-National-Science-Foundation/photo//100929/480/urn_publicid_ap_org7e4574a9e56348109f878f3f99936813//s:/ap/20100929/ap_on_sc/us_sci_new_earths†?FPRIVATE â€Å"TYPE=PICT;ALT=This undated handout artist rendering provided by Lynette Cook, National Science Foundation, shows a new planet, right. Astronomers have found a plane†AP – This undated handout artist rendering provided by Lynette Cook, National Science Foundation, shows a †¦  ·HYPERLINK â€Å"/nphotos/Goldilocks-planet/ss/events/sc/093010goldilocplanet†? FPRIVATE â€Å"TYPE=PICT;ALT='Goldilocks' planet†HYPERLINK â€Å"/nphotos/Goldilocks-planet/ss/events/sc/093010goldilocplanet†Slideshow:'Goldilocks' planet  ·HYPERLINK â€Å"http://us. rd. yahoo. om/dailynews/external/hearst_orlando_wesh/av_hearst_orlan_wesh/884e0bfd9b244f9bb69f244f471dd239/37795187;_ylt=AkmdpzkzfGvlRd_Ow96TXr5xieA A;_ylu=X3oDMTFiMThoYm9oBHBvcwM0BHNlYwN5bl9yXzNzbG90X3ZpZGVvBHNsawN2aWQtZXYtdGh1bWI-/*http://news. yahoo. com/video/politics-15749652/22211228†? FP RIVATE â€Å"TYPE=PICT;ALT=Titusville Teen Campaigns To Save NASA†Play Video HYPERLINK â€Å"http://us. rd. yahoo. com/dailynews/external/hearst_orlando_wesh/av_hearst_orlan_wesh/884e0bfd9b244f9bb69f244f471dd239/37795187;_ylt=AhwlUOUqG. XJT7dMF4fIKZRxieAA;_ylu=X3oDMTFhaWFjbWFmBHBvcwM1BHNlYwN5bl9yXzNzbG90X3ZpZGVvBHNsawN2aWQtZXYtbGluaw–/*http://news. ahoo. com/video/politics-15749652/22211228†³Space Video:Titusville Teen Campaigns To Save NASA HYPERLINK â€Å"/video/local/orlando;_ylt=AvXELmZkdK7w8FyZhXrJ2stxieAA;_ylu=X3oDMTFiMTJlb3JuBHBvcwM2BHNlYwN5bl9yXzNzbG90X3ZpZGVvBHNsawN2aWQtZXYtcHJvdmk-â€Å"WESH Orlando  ·HYPERLINK â€Å"http://us. rd. yahoo. com/dailynews/external/reutersav/av_reuters_all/398f239b7ca1ff117e11bfc2a7471a54/37792448;_ylt=AglH. ImWxulddgvz7mWJZWJxieAA;_ylu=X3oDMTFiOWVlczFoBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN5 bl9yXzNzbG90X3ZpZGVvBHNsawN2aWQtZXYtdGh1bWI-/*http://news. yahoo. com/video/science-15749654/22207740†?F? FPRIVATE â€Å"TYPE=PICT;ALT=New planet could support life†Play Video HYPERLINK â€Å"http://us. rd. yahoo. com/dailynews/external/reutersav/av_reuters_all/398f239b7ca1ff117e11bfc2a7471a54/37792448;_ylt=Ah1mE3gU9F_SRM8nCpSKJElxieAA;_ylu=X3oDMTFhcDNlYmRyBHBvcwM4BHNlYwN5bl9yXzNzbG90X3ZpZGVvBHNsawN2aWQtZXYtbGluaw–/*http://news. yahoo. com/video/science-15749654/22207740†³Space Video:New planet could support lifeMore photos  »HYPERLINK â€Å"http://us. rd. yahoo. com/dailynews/ap/brand/SIG=11f589428/**http%3A%2F%2Fwww. ap. org%2Ftermsandconditions†?FPRIVATE â€Å"TYPE=PICT;ALT=AP†[->2] Reuters By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Wed Sep 29, 7:19 pm ET WASHINGTON – Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone fo r life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right. Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere. It's just right. Just like Earth. This really is the first Goldilocks planet,† said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. [Related: Seven best places to sleep under the stars[->3]] The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighborhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars. Finding a planet that could potentially support life is a major step toward answering the timeless question: Are we alone?Scientists have jumped the gun before on proclaiming that planets outside our solar system were habitable only to have them turn out to be n ot quite so conducive to life. But this one is so clearly in the right zone that five outside astronomers told The Associated Press it seems to be the real thing. â€Å"This is the first one I'm truly excited about,† said Penn State University's Jim Kasting. He said this planet is a â€Å"pretty prime candidate† for harboring life. Life on other planets doesn't mean E. T. Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the equivalent of shower mold would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life on Earth.But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star — 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark. Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between — in the land of constant sunrise — it would be â€Å"shirt-sleeve weather,† said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes â€Å"that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. † The astronomers' findings are being published in Astrophysical Journal and were announced by the National Science Foundation on Wednesday. The planet circles a star called Gliese 581.It's about 120 trillion miles away, so it would take several generations for a spaceship to get there. It may seem like a long distance, but in the scheme of the vast universe, this planet is â€Å"like right in our face, right next door to us,† Vogt said in an interview. That close proximity and the way it was found so early in astronomers' search for habitable planets hints to scientists that planets like Earth are probably not that rare. Vogt and Butler ran some calculations, with giant

Similarities In Cognitive Development Education Essay

Cognitive development is defined as the countries of neuroscience and psychological science surveies, concentrating on stripling development with particular concentrating on information processing, linguistic communication acquisition, conceptual resources, perceptual accomplishment, and encephalon development. Jean Piaget and Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky were two innovators in the field of cognitive development. With this essay I will compare and contrast each theoretician ‘s positions on the nature or development of intelligence. I shall besides compare their positions on the phases of development from birth through adolescence. And eventually I will integrate possible schoolroom applications of each theoretician ‘s positions. Piaget believed that all kids are born with a inclination to interact with and do sense of their environment and that they need small instructor intercession. He referred to the basic ways of forming and treating information as cognitive constructions. He defined the mental forms that guide behavior as strategies, and he theorized that we use strategies to happen out approximately and interact with the universe around us. Piaget ‘s theory consisted of stairss in the development of new strategies of cognitive development referred to as version of seting strategies in response to a new object being introduced in our environment. The first measure in version if called assimilation, or seeking to understand the new object or event in our environment from known strategy, and if the new object does non suit into an bing strategy, the person will travel into adjustment where they modify an bing strategy to suit the new state of affairs. Finally the individual will make an apprehension of the new object, this procedure of reconstructing a balance between current strategies and the integrating of the new strategies is known as equilibration. Piaget theory of rational development is a constructivism position, where persons build systems of understanding through their experiences and interaction with in their environment, proposing that development came before acquisition, that specific cognitive constructions need to be developed before certain types of acquisition can take topographic point. Like Piaget, Lev Vygotsky believed that cognitive development takes topographic point in stairss that are the same for all persons. Vygotsky theorized the first measure in rational development is larning that action and sounds have intending. Second, that measure in cognitive development was practising the new action or sound. And eventually, utilizing the actions and sounds to believe and work out jobs without the aid of others, referred to by Vygotsky as self-regulation.Differences in Cognitive DevelopmentWhile Piaget believed that rational development was extremely personal, and that persons learned from experiences instead than the instruction of constructs and idea procedures, Vygotsky believed that larning development was a societal procedure straight linked to the instruction of information, and that larning proceeded development. Vygotsky theorized that linguistic communication was the key to cognitive development, and acquisition was influenced by the civilization of the per son. He believed that a kid foremost incorporated the address on others into their personal cognition and patterns it, known as private address, and subsequently they used this â€Å" private address † in attempts to work out undertakings. Vygotsky redefined this theory into what we now know as The Zone of Proximal Development. ( ZDP ) defines rational development as the ability to utilize thought to command our ain actions, but first we must get the hang cultural communicating systems, and so utilize these to systems to modulate our idea processes. Children larning with in the ( ZPD ) work on undertakings that they could non finish entirely, but were able to complete with the aid of and competent teacher. These docile minutes demonstrate Vygotsky theory that larning proceeded development, and that concerted acquisition promotes advance larning. His theory defined linguistic communication as a manner to go through on cultural values and that learning linguistic communication was the medium needed to develop cognitive idea procedures.Similarities of the Stages of DevelopmentBoth Piaget and Vygotsky were stage theoretician, intending they both believe that development takes topographic point in discernible phases. Piaget ‘s theory was that development took topographic point in four phases. -The first phase for Piaget ‘s theory was the sensorimotor phase ( from birth – age 2 ) where the kid explores the universe utilizing their 5 senses and motor accomplishments. Children are born with what is described as automatic motor accomplishments, suction, appreciation, ECT. During early development, the kid uses these accomplishments to pull strings the universe and develops strategies from these experiences in a patterned advance toward purposive behaviour approaching the terminal of this phase of development. -Piaget ‘s 2nd phase is Preoperational phase ( 2yrs-7yrs ) He believed that kids in this phase of development would n't hold mastered the ability of more complex mental operations ; kids do non hold the ability to ground through their actions. They are considered egoistic, and presume others agree with their points of position. During this phase kids lack preservation accomplishments ; they do non understand that the sum of something remains the same when the visual aspect has been rearranged. And they have non developed reversible thought or taking a job back to its get downing point. -Developmental phase three is the Concrete Operational Stage ( 7-11 ) In this phase the kid is get downing to accomplish comprehension of abstract constructs. The kid is get downing to understand preservation, position and contrary thought. The kid is capable of systematic ordination and able to group objects consequently. The kid is get downing to multitask in their idea procedures. -And Finally, The Formal Operational phase Age ( 11 to early-adult ) By this phase the individual has accomplished abstract think procedures. They have developed conjectural and deductive logical thinking. They have the ability to conceive of state of affairss and ground best solution rules. They are now capable of meta-cognition or able to believe about thought. Vygotsky ‘s phase theory of development was known as Scaffolding. In Scaffolding, First a wise man starts with supplying the kid with a high degree of support, such as one-on-one direction, leting the kid clip to develop an apprehension of the constructs being presented. Next the wise man starts to scale back the support leting the kid to take on more of the duty of the undertaking. And eventually, when the kid understands the aim of the undertaking the wise man stairss aside leting the kid to execute the undertaking on their ain, showing the comprehension of the cognition set gained.Differences in Stages of DevelopmentPiaget ‘s theory of the phases of development, focal point on development is necessary before larning can take topographic point, and that interaction with one ‘s environment is more of import to development than mentored direction. This position is really age oriented and ridged in its lineation and expatiations of kid development. Where Vygotsky vie ws acquisition as the processor to development. That linguistic communication, civilization and mentoring are all of import facets of the acquisition procedure that will assist the single develop successfully.Similarities in Classroom ApplicationPiaget ‘s and Vygotsky theories have similar applications for the schoolroom scene ; first Piaget wants the teacher must concentrate on the procedure of kid believing seeking to understand how the kid can up with the reply, and non merely the merchandise or solution to the job, deemphasize patterns aimed at doing kids make grownup like determinations, and have the teacher acknowledge the differences in single developmental advancement. Vygotsky ‘s theory in a similar manner, topographic points accent on the kid ‘s thought procedure, with the teacher understanding the kids ‘s single developmental advancement. As a instructor I can utilize these theories to develop category room techniques that focus on the pupils as pe rsons, and I ‘ll seek to understand their degree of development so that I do non coerce the pupil to run into criterions that are non sensible given their province of apprehension and cognitive development.Differences In schoolroom ApplicationPiaget ‘s theory wants the teacher to promote the pupil ‘s into self-initiation and active acquisition activities which take the accent away structured cognition and encourages the pupil to research and construct on current degrees on cognitive cognition. This differs from Vygotsky theory, which advises the instructor to supply planned activities, and promote pupils to take part in planned group activities, which encourage them to larn in construction environments which encourage high degrees of mentored direction. With an option of the two theories, I think I ‘ll lodge to a more Vygotsky signifier of lesson planning. I believe that pupils can make good with manus on actives, yet I believe that if the Instructor does non supply the pupil with construction the pupils do non develop at a rate that allow them to command themselves in a schoolroom scene, and that construction gives the pupil counsel and sets outlooks for the pupils, that give the pupils ends to endeavor for.