Readers response to The Last Library Essay Example for Free

Readers response to The Last Library Essay The narrative ‘The Last Library’, by A. K. Benedict is a collision between real life and fantasy where meaningful past treasures can often be forgotten and disregarded in a fast paced world. In a way it invokes thought about a current issue in North American society today, the progression of new technologies and how we have become dependent on these new technologies as a source of entertainment. Modern day culture has been immersed in a craze of technology allowing immediate access to information and entertainment. Smart phones, tablets, social media sites, and all the vast  information of the internet that is only clicks of a mouse away has caused people to forget the wonders that a library can hold. Much of Society has forgotten how to entertain itself through imagination by reading stories. The text is slightly ambiguous I feel, as though the author wants us to create our own meaningful interpretation of the story. ‘The Last Library’ is a narrative that critiques the idea of how modern day North American culture has seemed to have forgotten about the many wonders of past treasures. The story does this by focusing on the exaggerated view of a young girl, using fiction entwined with real life problems to help us as readers to reflect on the magic places your imagination can take you when reading a book. Interpretation of the written word is shaped by the reader’s own experiences and steers each reader, ambiguously at times, towards a meaning which will differ for each reader as his or her mind interprets specific moments. The author puts forth clues in helping the reader to determine the implied reader of this text; I would consider myself to be closer to the implied reader. The implied reader can be defined as the reader imagined by the text (Grinnell 21). I have lived in a time where libraries were the primary and often times the sole source for knowledge and entertainment, as am I part of modern society entrenched in our current time of modern technology. The Guide’s (Maggie) comment referring to the last library being â€Å"Old exhibit. It’s not interactive† (Benedict 217) makes me reflect on how libraries have become obsolete in our current technological age because they are not interactive in the way  smart phones and tablets allow a person to be. This quote demonstrates a specific feeling I can sympathize with where technology, because it is so interactive, has become the dominant source of information and entertainment. A reader’s own experiences shape the interpretation of the written word. In the story the young girl thinks to herself, â€Å"Her mind is always full of stories, and now there are more outside her† (Benedict 220). This makes me ponder my own childhood and all the wonderful books such as Harry Potter or  old favorite The Saggy Baggy Elephant and all the magical stories from childhood that are treasures I will always hold inside and have helped shape who I became. The meaning of this story can seem vague at moments as the story is more fable than real life, but it does incorporate real life issues. We live in a fast paced world where progress dominates. Simple treasures are often passed over or forgotten for the sake of progress and money, and libraries are an endangered treasure. The Guide’s comment â€Å"It’s a rare event for the museum but they have to  make way for other last things. That’s progress† (Benedict 221) when the books are to be destroyed enforces this thought of â€Å"Out with the old in with the new†, which is the meaning I would take from this story. This narrative â€Å"The Last Library† creates as sense of how North American culture tends to forget the past when seeking new and exciting things. The story focused on the library but also made mention of other past things such as the Dodo or Cuckoo clock; both things we now only see in a  museum or archival instances as their time and place in history have passed. â€Å"The last museum in itself† mentioned in this short story grips the imagination and conjures up wonder if one day â€Å"will anyone care about the past? † Works Cited Benedict, A. K. The Last Library. Paraxis 2011. Rpt. in Custom Course Materials: ENGL 153. Ed. George C. Grinnell. Kelowna: U of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, 2014. 217-224. Print. Grinnell, George C. Critical Practice: Critical Approaches to Narratives English 153.

EC Law :: essays research papers fc

EC LAW ASSIGNMENT Gary Slapper states  ¡Ã‚ °that ever since the UK joined the European Community it has progressively, but effectively passed the the power to create laws which have effect in this country to the wider European institutions such ¡Ã‚ ±(Slapper`99 P.33) So in all practical terms the UK`s legislative, executive and judiciary ¡Ã‚ ¯s powers are in the main controlled by and operated within the framework of the European community laws. The increasing importance of Uk judges to consider the issues and principles of EC Law is clearly evident now as regards such issues as human rights and employment rights. National Judges must consider the practical realities that they must abide by EC rules regarding four areas of 1. Direct Applicability,2.Direct Effect and that3.EC Law following the case of Costa v Enel (1964) prevails over the national laws of each member state. Lastly 4. that in coming to a decision the National judge has the option to request a preliminary hearing under Art.177 from the European judiciary on a national legal dispute. It is these four areas that must be looked at in by the national judge when they are considering a case. With the fact that regulations are directly applicable under Art.189EC to all member states and that the UK has adopted the Monist stance (i.e. Community Law automatically becomes UK law) then judges have little option in some areas of law, but to follow Ec laws/Treaties. This comes via the European Communities Act 1972(S.2) and is affirmed in Ec case law 34/73 Variola 1973.National judges must also consider that Ec directives are part of domestic law and thus have legal existence even before their confirmation into national law. National judges must also consider that Ec Law regarding matters that come before the domestic courts is also Directly Effective (involving treaties) and it enforces rights and duties for Ec nationals, which can be enforced in domestic courts. This was established in the landmark case of Van Gend en Loos 1963.The National judge  ¡Ã‚ °has to apply community law in the absence or in place of national law then a provision of such community law must to all intents and purposes be unconditional, clear and precise to form part of Uk law ¡Ã‚ ±. Kaczorowaska`98 P275 .The National judge has the ability to use discretion in the form and implementation procedure. Indeed with the concept of indirect horizontal direct then domestic judges are required to interpret their law in line with that of the community which basically emphasises the supremacy of Ec law as seen in Von Colson and Kaman 1984.

Abnormal Psychology- Schizophrenia

Abnormal Psychology – Schizophrenia Introduction There are a number of problems with defining psychological abnormality. They include problems with cultural relativity and social norms, what is normal within one culture or society may be considered abnormal within another. There are also problems with statistics as some abnormalities have too few or too many statistics to compare and the statistics may not always be reliable. Under the medical model all psychological disorders are considered illnesses. There are two classification systems to diagnose different disorders.These are the International Classification of Diseases & Health Related Problems (ICD) and Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The most up to date editions currently in use are ICD-10 and DSM-IV although DSM-V is due to be released in May 2013. (Jabr, F (2013)) Schizophrenia According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) schizophrenia is a severe form of mental illness. It is a treatabl e psychological condition that affects 24 million people worldwide. It mainly affects 15-35 year olds and is more likely to occur in males but anyone of any age or gender, can develop the condition.It affects thinking, perceptions and language and causes the patient to hear voices and to have hallucinations and delusions. Symptoms ICD-10 diagnostic criteria †¢ At least one of: o Thought echo, thought insertion/withdrawal/broadcast o Passivity, delusional perception o   Third person auditory hallucination, running commentary o Persistent bizarre delusions †¢ or two or more of: o Persistent hallucinations o Thought disorder o Catatonic behaviour o Negative symptoms o Significant behaviour change †¢ Duration o    More than 1 month †¢ Exclusion criteria o Mood disorders, schizoaffective disorder Overt brain disease o Drug intoxication or withdrawal (Wing, J. K. & Agrawal, N. (2009)) Behavioural Explanations and Therapies The behavioural approach suggests that sch izophrenia is simply learned behaviour learned through operant conditioning. Sammons (2008) suggests that the reason schizophrenia tends to run in families is due to children learning the behaviour from their parents. Social learning theory also suggests that although there may be some symptoms present once a patient is around others with schizophrenia they learn symptoms by seeing others demonstrate them.It is difficult to explain how the hallucinations and delusions suffered by a schizophrenic can be explained as learned behaviour; true behaviourists think this is irrelevant as they are only concerned with the physical behaviours not what is happening in the mind. Paul and Lentz (1977) carried out a study into operant conditioning as a treatment for schizophrenia. They set up a token economy on a hospital ward where they rewarded patients for appropriate behaviour by giving them tokens that they could exchange for luxury items.It was found that only 11% of the patients in the test group continued to require drugs for their symptoms compared to 100% of the control group. (AQA, (2010)) This demonstrates that operant conditioning as a treatment is very effective; however behaviourists do not care whether the patient is still hearing voices as long as they behave like they are not. In the Paul and Lentz study the patients may still hear voices but have simply learned that if they behave as though they are not they will be rewarded. This means that the schizophrenia has not actually been cured. Biological Explanations and TherapiesThere have been a number of studies conducted that suggest there is a biological cause for schizophrenia. Through family resemblance studies it has been discovered that a normal person with no family history of schizophrenia has around a 0. 2-2% chance of developing the condition, whereas a person with one schizophrenic parent has a 13% chance of developing it. The chances increase to 46% if both parents have the condition. (Head, P (20 12)) This information may not be reliable as it was based on information from records and memories and memories can easily be distorted or misinterpreted.The Copenhagen High –risk study looked at children aged 10-18 and classified them into low risk, of developing schizophrenia, and high risk groups. They removed the risk of environmental factors that could distort the results by grouping the children by age, gender, residence and economic status. This made the study highly reliable as it meant the only factor that should affect results was genetics. The study found that only 1. 9% of children in the low risk group developed schizophrenia whereas 16. 2% of the high risk children did.This shows support for the genetic explanation for schizophrenia. Iverson (1979) carried out post-mortem studies. He found that there are high levels of dopamine in brains of schizophrenics. It is suggested that schizophrenia is caused by high levels of dopamine in the brain or more dopamine recep tors in their brains. This is supported by the success of chlorpromazine drugs as a treatment for the condition. There are however problems with this explanation. One problem is that there is no evidence that excess dopamine causes schizophrenia.It could be that schizophrenia causes excess dopamine. (AQA, 2010) Biological treatments for schizophrenia are anti psychotic drugs and chlorpromazine which blocks dopamine receptors in the brain. These drugs have been proven to work as they reduce the number of patients spending a long time in hospital; however drugs are not a cure. They only control the symptoms if a patient stops taking these drugs the symptoms will soon return. This is known as the ‘revolving door syndrome. ’ There can be a number of reasons for this to happen; firstly a patient may ave a fear of getting well. The patient may find it difficult to imagine life without schizophrenia or enjoy some part of it. Another reason is that the patient may stop taking t he drugs they are prescribed due to side effects. (Fritscher, L (2012)) The side effects of these drugs can include drowsiness, dizziness, disturbed vision, weight gain, blood clots and tremors. (Net doctor (2012)) Patients may feel that the side effects are worse than the original illness and stop taking the prescribed medication which then starts the cycle again. Psychodynamic Explanations and TherapiesThe psychodynamic explanation for schizophrenia is that the Ego is being over taken by either the Id or Superego. Freudians would suggest that there has been a problem in childhood, most likely a problem with the mother, the ego doesn’t develop as well as it should which means the id can easily take control. (Sammons (2008)) The Ego looses control and the patient will enter a child like state, known as ‘primary narcissism’, which causes fantasy to be confused with reality and delusions of self importance which cause the patient to be highly demanding similar to a baby.Hallucinations and delusions are caused by the Ego trying to regain control and reality. There are problems with the psychodynamic approach; firstly there is no scientific evidence to support the explanations. Secondly it has generally been regarded that since anti psychotic drugs work to treat the symptoms that the biological explanation is more reliable. (Sammons (2008)) Freud did not see any point in treating schizophrenics as he believed that it had been caused by the broken ego which is the part of the psyche that he would engage with, as this was so badly damaged he believed there was no way to cure schizophrenia.More recently the main psychodynamic treatment for schizophrenia has been psychotherapy. Rosen (1946) brought patients into a child like state to be able to then nurture them to redevelop a strong ego and ultimately rebalance the psyche. There have been problems with this form of treatment as it is out of date and the results that were found by Rosen are less li kely to be effective today as the definition of schizophrenia has changed and the cases Rosen treated would not be considered to be schizophrenic today. Also Drake & Sederer (1986) actually found that his form of therapy could worsen symptoms and prolong the patients stay in hospital. Cognitive Explanations and Therapies The cognitive approach agrees with the biological evidence that there is a high genetic contribution to schizophrenia but realises that there must also be other causes and it is important to take these into account. The cognitive model suggests that although genes can create a disposition to develop schizophrenia it only actually develops as a response to stresses such as trauma or infections.Cognitive psychologists fail to take environmental factors such as family and lifestyle into account. Cognitive psychologists believe that the faulty thought patterns are what cause schizophrenia and not a result of the condition. It is suggested that there is a fault with the way in which schizophrenics process information and that it is difficult for them to filter out irrelevant information. Hemsley (1993) suggested that schizophrenics have problems processing information in their memories and new information coming in. It is also suggested that there is a problem with the functioning of the in built schemas.Hemsley explains that the reason schizophrenics hear voices is because they do not realise that their thoughts come from memories and therefore believe them to be voices. There is however very little evidence to support Hemsley’s ideas except for some research on animals which cannot be directly compared with human behaviour. Frith (1992) suggested that people with schizophrenia find it difficult to distinguish whether the information is coming from an internal or external source. He believed that most of the symptoms of schizophrenia can be explained by problems in three different cognitive processes.The first is the inability to generate w illed action. The second is the inability to monitor willed action, and the third is the inability to monitor the beliefs and intentions of others. Frith suggests that these problems come from faulty wiring in the brain. There is evidence to support this from his study where he gave specific tasks to schizophrenics and monitored the cerebral blood flow. He found that this was different to what he would expect to see in a person without schizophrenia. The cognitive explanation of schizophrenia is very popular in terms of helping ordinary eople understand the condition. It is also made more reliable by the fact that they take into account other factors such as genetics as well as psychological factors. The cognitive approach also has limitations as although it does well to explain the symptoms of schizophrenia it cannot explain the causes alone without looking at the biological model. PAGE 13-14 Conclusions In conclusion there are a wide range of explanations for schizophrenia includi ng genetics, environment and traumatic experiences. There are also a wide range of treatments including drugs, psycho therapy and behavioural therapy.All of these explanations and therapies have credit on their own but also have limitations. The best way to treat schizophrenia is through a combination of treatments such as drugs used with cognitive-behavioural therapy. Most people with schizophrenia are managed through treatments however many people will relapse. This would then trigger a new round of treatments. Continued support even after recovery helps to reduce the chances of relapse. (NHS choices (2012)) References o AQA, (2010) schizophrenia: Explanations and treatments [online] available from: www. aqabpsychology. co. k/2010/07/schizophrenia-explanations-and-treatments [accessed 5. 2. 2013] o Fritscher, L (2012) Revolving Door Syndrome [online] available from http://phobias. about. com/od/glossary/g/Revolving-Door-Syndrome. htm [accessed 11. 2. 2013] o Head, P (2012) Biologi cal Explanations of Schizophrenia [online] available from: http://www. springwood. norfolk. sch. uk/Downloads/Psychology/BIOLOGICAL%20EXPLANATIONS%20OF%20SCHIZOPHRENIA. pdf [Accessed 6. 2. 2013] o Jabr, F (2013) The Newest Edition of Psychiatry’s â€Å"Bible,† the DSM-5, Is Complete [Online] available from: http://www. scientificamerican. om/article. cfm? id=dsm-5-update [Accessed on 11. 2. 2013] o Net Doctor (2012) Chlorpromazine – Side Effects [online] available from: http://www. netdoctor. co. uk/brain-and-nervous-system/medicines/chlorpromazine. html. [Accessed 11. 2. 2013] o NHS Choices (2012) Schizophrenia – Living with [online] available from: http://www. nhs. uk/Conditions/Schizophrenia/Pages/living-with. aspx [accessed 6. 2. 2013] o Sammons (2008) Schizophrenia [online] available from: http://www. psychlotron. org. uk/resources/abnormal/A2_AQB_abnormal_schizophreniaPsyBehActivity. pdf [accessed 5. 2. 2013] Wing, J. K & Agrawal, N. (2009) Concepts of Schizophrenia [online] Available from: (http://www. health. am/psy/more/icd-10-and-dsm-iv-concepts-of-schizophrenia/ [accessed: 2. 2. 2013] Bibliography o Mcleod, S. (2008) Abnormal Psychology [online] available from; www. simplypsychology. org/abnormal-psychology. html [accessed 5. 2. 2013] o WHO (2012) Mental Health – Schizophrenia [online] available from: www. who. int/mental_health/management/schizophrenia/en/ [accessed 5. 2. 2013] http://alevelpsychologynotes. blogspot. co. uk/2007/10/schizophrenia. html by TAZMANIAN_DEVIL a 2007

Analysis of The Diabetes Prevention Program Free Essay Example, 5250 words

The purpose of this report is to examine the many problems that are associated with diabetes as well as how this can be prevented. Specifically, there will be a basis for optimizing the health and well being of those with diabetes. The prevention will be combined with methodologies which can be implied to improve the health of those that have already been diagnosed with diabetes. By doing this, there is the ability to increase the conditions of those who are suffering from the disease while continuing to alter and slow down the process of diabetes that affects those with the problem. This develops a different approach to the problem while allowing those with the disease to begin to change their lifestyle alternatives and approaches to the disease. It is expected that this will create and change the problem of strategic suffering. This is based on the options for diabetes which leads to more discomfort and a lack of comfort and well being. The ongoing psychological distress and phy sical discomfort can be changed and reversed with the right approaches while allowing individuals to begin to develop a different lifestyle in relation to the disease (Mendenhall, Seligman, 2010). We will write a custom essay sample on Analysis of The Diabetes Prevention Program or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page The health-related quality of life of those that have diabetes is one which is noted to continue to deteriorate from the time of diagnosis and into the complex stages of diabetes. According to a recent study (Lindsay et al, 2011), there are specific problem areas with health and well being with those who have diabetes.