Blood Clotting Essay Example for Free

Blood Clotting Essay Blood clotting is an adaptive/defensive mechanism of the human body. Its primary purpose is to prevent the loss of blood from the cardiovascular system from damaged blood vessels in order to avoid shock and possible death. This accomplished by a process called coagulation wherein blood solidify at the site of injury through a complex process involving platelet aggregation and fibrin formation coupled with thrombin and a dozen other clotting factors. Though the mechanism is designed to prevent deleterious harm, clotting can also be harmful especially when inappropriately triggered such as in the case of strokes and infarctions. In the article by Cathleen Genova, she discusses the findings of a report made in the April 17th 2009 issue of Cell, a journal from Cell Press Publication, where researchers found a possible way of preventing life-threatening clots. The discovery might offer a new way to fight clot formation before it can even begin, according to the researchers. According to the findings, thrombin isn’t the only player in the clotting process, in fact â€Å"enzymes known as matrix metalloproteases have recently emerged as important players in platelet function and the biology of blood vessels. Two of those enzymes, MMP-1 and MMP-2 can actually encourage platelet activation† early in the clotting process. If treatments were aimed at blocking the MMP1-PAR1 pathway, a new way of treating patients with acute coronary syndromes may be developed. The advantages of such treatments, the researchers predict, would be that an MMP-1 inhibitor might be better tolerated especially since careful balance between the risk of dangerous blood clots and the risk of bleeding must be kept in mind. Works Cited Genova, Cathleen. â€Å"How Life-Threatening Blood Clots Take Hold. † Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intrnational Ltd. Accessed 23 April 2009 http://www. medicalnewsto-day. com/articles/146508. php ARTICLE http://www. medicalnewstoday. com/articles/146508. php How Life-Threatening Blood Clots Take Hold Article Date: 18 Apr 2009 0:00 PDT When plaques coating blood vessel walls rupture and expose collagen, platelets spring into action to form a blood clot at the damaged site. Now, a new report in the April 17th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, reveals how those life-threatening clots a leading cause of death in the United States, Europe and other industrialized countries get an early grip. The discovery might offer a new way to fight clot formation before it can even begin, according to the researchers. Compared to other diseases, blood clotting has been very well understood, said Athan Kuliopulos of Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine. Nevertheless, he continued, many people still suffer from heart attacks, ischemic stroke and death as a result of clot formation. Drugs designed to inhibit clots through known pathways are widely used by millions. They work well, but not perfectly. There is still an unmet need. Those drugs include aspirin and the so-called thienopyridines, including Clopidogrel (trade name Plavix). Scientists have known that a protein called thrombin plays an important role in clot formation as a potent activator of platelets. It also cuts fibrinogen into fibrin, a fibrous protein that works together with platelets to form a clot. But thrombin isnt the whole story. Enzymes known as matrix metalloproteases have recently emerged as important players in platelet function and the biology of blood vessels. Two of those enzymes, MMP-1 and MMP-2 can actually encourage platelet activation, according to earlier studies, although the means were unknown. In cancer cells too, MMP-1 activates a receptor known as PAR1 the same receptor that is also responsible for receiving the thrombin signal on human platelets. There is abundant proMMP-1 coating platelets, Kuliopulos said. We thought maybe it was on the outside waiting to be activated by something. Maybe it could be involved in an early event in blood clotting, before thrombin is around. Indeed, Kuliopulos team has now connected those dots. They show that exposure of platelets to collagen activates MMP-1, which in turn directly cut PAR1 on the surface of platelets. Collagen is the first thing a platelet sees when a blood vessel ruptures or is cut. The MMP-1-PAR1 pathway activates another set of molecular players known to be involved in early clot formation, he said. Those activated platelets change their shape, sending out spikes and membrane sheets. Within seconds, they become more sticky, adhering to the vessel surface and then other platelets. Moreover, they show that treatments that block the MMP1-PAR1 pathway prevent blood clots from forming in the presence of collagen, suggesting that drugs targeting this metalloprotease-receptor system could offer a new way to treat patients with acute coronary syndromes. According to the new results, PAR1 inhibitors already being tested in clinical trials might have an added benefit, Kuliopulos said. Its also possible they might work a little too well, since there is a careful balance between the risk of dangerous blood clots and the risk of bleeding. An MMP-1 inhibitor might be better tolerated, he said. The researchers include Vishal Trivedi, Adrienne Boire, Boris Tchernychev, Nicole C. Kaneider, Andrew J. Leger, Katie OCallaghan, Lidija Covic, and Athan Kuliopulos, of Tufts University School of Medicine, Molecular Oncology Research Institute, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA. Source: Cathleen Genova Cell Press

Social Stratification and Class

Social Stratification and Class Discuss what is meant by social stratification and evaluate the different ways that social class has been defined and measured. The term social stratification refers to the grouping of social classes within a society. This is a specific form of inequality, and the effect of this is that certain groups in society are seen as having a higher status or rank than others based on power and wealth. Social stratification works by society ranking which is based in four sections. Social stratification can be passed from one generation to the next, i.e. royalty, it is universal but varies over time and place, it is a trait of society not individual differences and lastly social stratification also goes on beliefs and not just inequality (Wikipedia, 2014). Sociologists argue that some form of social stratification occurs in every society in the world despite that everyone claims to want an equal society (Burton, 2013). Sociologists consider there to be three main systems of stratification in today’s societies. These are slavery, the caste system and the class system. Slavery has legally been abolished in many countries but there is still evidence of at least 400 million people living under conditions that amount to slavery. For those living in Sudan, Ghana, India, Pakistan, and many other countries with similar ideals, slavery is a common thing to happen and in certain parts of Asia sex slavery is also common. A caste system is a social system built on ascribed status. This is a status based on characteristics a person is born with, such as race, gender, religion, age etc. In a caste system there is no chance to change from one caste to another and marriage outside of a person’s caste is not generally permitted. Often in a caste system the marriages are pre-arranged between parents rather than a choice of the individual. A class system is a social system built on achieved status. This is status that a person either earns or chooses so is not dependent on where a person was born or a person’s parentage. Those born in a class system c an choose their education, career and partner. A person in a class system may also start off in one class but can move between classes (Spark Notes, n.d). For many sociologists the focus is on the caste and class systems of stratification and the amount of social mobility within that system. This social mobility is the ease of which a person can move up or down the class system and will be based on a person’s wealth or power. In modern western societies, stratification is organised by class and divided into three main layers, upper class, middle class and lower class. Each of these classes can then be broken down into further categories determined by things such as housing locations (Wikipedia, 2014). A person’s social class will depend on where they are from, what they do for a living, where they achieved their education, who they are connected to and how powerful them people may be, how much wealth they have and their position in society. When a person’s social class is being considered their education will not generally be considered, unless of course they attended a high ranking education facility. This person will also need to have some high connections to be considered for upper class status. If a person is lacking any of these factors they will be considered as middle or even lower class, depending on their postcode or bank balance, within a western society. In modern western societie s there are different categories for social stratification such as age, race, gender, class, race or disability and in some places there will be even more categories (Wikipedia, 2014). Social classification has taken place long before the modern form of classifying people began. Social stratification has been measured in different forms; from asking people which class they feel they belong in to using a person’s postcode. The two most used measures are both based on occupation. The Registrar General’s Standard Occupation Classification (SC) and the Socio-Economic Groups (SEG). The SC began in has been in the census since 1901 and is based on a person’s occupation which will fall into one of six categories: Professional, Intermediate, Skilled (Non-Manual/Manual), Partly Skilled and Unskilled. This is an ordinal measure that ranks occupation, by skill and social standing. The SEG is made up of 17 different categories and would in fact cover all eventualities of employment, house worker, student etc. This is a nominal measure that ranks occupation by employment status (Anon, n.d). The SC has strengths as well as weaknesses with its use. It is a simple system with easily generalizable categories. This system is also useful when wanting to compare the changes in occupations held over a period of time. However, this system does not appear to group people it focuses more on the occupation. Another problem with this system is that the categories do not consider the differences in income between certain occupations. The SEC also has some strengths and weaknesses to its reliability in measuring class. Its main strength is that it does have a wider range of categories for people to consider, however its biggest weakness is that is still fails to acknowledge certain people, such as women, students and the unemployed (Sociology Org, 2013). Having more than one way of measuring social class has caused many problems. As occupations have changed dramatically over the years there are many problems with the way the SC and the SEG measures class. The biggest of the problems is that they are not designed to measure the occupations of women, housewives, students or even the unemployed adequately. Although this will generally be the most reliable as people will accept what is told to them by a government body such as the Registrar General. In 1994 a government review of social classifications took place with the aim to review the reliability of using occupation to measure social class, to review the social class categories and to assess the effectiveness of the changes made. These changes took place in 1998 and a new classification system, NS-SEC, was introduced beginning in the 2001 census (Anon, n.d). This change made to the way occupation is measured comes in eight categories to include the differences in set locations. The categories of the NS-SEC are: higher managerial and professionals, lower managerial and professionals, intermediate occupations (clerical, sales and services), small employers and own account workers, lower supervisory and technical occupations, semi-routine occupations, routine occupations and never worked or long term unemployed (Wikipedia, 2013). References Anon. (n.d) Definition and Measurement of Social Class [online]. Available from: http://www.uwic.ac.uk/shss/dom/newweb/classdefinition/Difficulties.htm [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Anon. (n.d) Social stratification [online]. Available from: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=trct=jq=esrc=ssource=webcd=1sqi=2ved=0CDAQkA4oADAAurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwordnetweb.princeton.edu%2Fperl%2Fwebwn%3Fs%3Dsocial%2520stratificationei=TIw5U6OlM6viywP42IIIusg=AFQjCNFPiQoB3wnfTRpv0MM_X4Pr_XWEMwsig2=f2pVumGz7bpiGO8bUQIBnQ [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Burton, J. (2013) Class and Stratification [class hand-out]. Access to Social Science: Class and Stratification, Northampton College. Nov 2013. Sociology Org. (2013) Measuring Social Class [online]. Available from: http://www.sociology.org.uk/s3a.pdf [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Spark Notes. (n.d) Social Stratification and Inequality [online]. Available from: http://www.sparknotes.com/sociology/social-stratification-and-inequality/section3.rhtml [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Wikipedia. (2013) National Statistics Socio-economic Classification [online]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Statistics_Socio-economic_Classification [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Wikipedia. (2014) Social Stratification [online]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_stratification [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Bibliography Anon. (2010) What does â€Å"Social Stratification† mean? [Online]. Available from: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100529054226AAF1wY9 [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Boundless. (n.d) Social Stratification [online]. Available from: https://www.boundless.com/sociology/definition/social-stratification/ [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Iiser (n.d) NSSEC [online]. Available from: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/archives/nssec [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Rose, D. Pevalin, D. (2010) Re-basing the NS-SEC on SOC2010 [online]. Available from: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=trct=jq=esrc=ssource=webcd=1ved=0CC8QFjAAurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ons.gov.uk%2Fons%2Fguide-method%2Fclassifications%2Fcurrent-standard-classifications%2Fsoc2010%2Frebasing-the-ns-sec-on-soc2010.pdfei=MNI5U7nYCujOygO0-4Jousg=AFQjCNGQRPlUIA8sgVVcnseWNnreDM-o-Asig2=gpMzKE9XFYtaHKlPa4trYgcad=rja [Last Accessed Jan 2014]. Sociology Guide. (n.d) Questions on Social Stratification [online]. Available from: http://www.sociologyguide.com/questions/social-stratification.php [Last Accessed Jan 2014].

Limitations of Access Control Lists in Network Security

Limitations of Access Control Lists in Network Security On the Limitations of Access Control Lists (ACL’s) in Network Security In basic security parlance, the Access Control List (ACL) directly determines which parties can access certain sensitive areas of the network. Usually, there are several. One enables general access to the network, which includes non-sensitive information about company policy and operations (Verma 2004). Access is granted to a general audience and all personnel within the organisation. Confidential files and sensitive data, however, would only be available to a limited number of people, which would be specified. Such delicate information is often only available when accessing a certain terminal. For example, our hypothetical travel agency will allow only the network manager on a particular terminal to PING the proxy servers from the internal LAN as well as deny connections from the Internet to those hosts with private source IP addresses. As with any company, the travel agency wishes to protect its sensitive information from hackers and fellow competitors. The network administrator cr eated ACL’s congruent with the company’s security policy. However, additional protocols will need to be implemented in order to offer the agency the full protection it needs. The purpose of this essay is to highlight the vulnerabilities and limitations of the ACL and suggest supplementary protocols to ensure tighter security. Peter Davis (2002) identified six vulnerabilities of the ACL in the context of testing Cisco’s routers. First, because the ACL will not block the non-initial fragments of a packet, then the router will fail to block all unauthorized traffic. ‘By sending an offending traffic in packet fragments, it is possible to circumvent the protection offered by the ACL’ (Davis 2002). Secondly, if one were to send packet fragment traffic to the router, it is likely that there would be a denial-of-service on the router itself. This is because the router fails to acknowledge the keyword fragment when a user sends a packet specifically to the router (Davis 2002). Third, there is the odd phenomenon of the unresponsive router. ‘The router ignores the implicit deny ip any any rule at the end of an ACL when you apply an ACL of exactly 448 entries to an interface as an outgoing ACL’ (Davis 2002). The result of this would compromise the integrity of network security, as the ACL will not drop the packets. Fourth, modern routers allow support for the fragment keyword on an outbound ACL. In previous models, only the inbound ACL provided support for this keyword while ignoring the outbound ACL (Davis 2002). Fifth, the outbound ACL may fail to prevent unauthorized traffic on a router when the administrator configures an input ACL on some interfaces of the multi-port Engine 2 line card. ‘Any ACL you apply at the ingress point will work as expected and block the desired traffic. This vulnerability can cause unwanted traffic in and out of the protected network’ (Davis 2002). Last of all, even the fragment keyword is not sufficient to get the ACL to filter packet fragments, which would enable an individual or corporation to exploit this weakness—attacking systems that are supposed to be shielded by the ACL on the router (Davis 2002). To avoid many of these pitfalls, Davis recommends that administrators routinely filter packet fragments. Although filtering may be useful, it is insufficient in preventing security breaches according to Kasacavage and Yan (2002). Without supplementary processes, packet filtering will fail to identify the originator of the data, and it would fail to prevent a user from gaining access to a network behind the router. Thus, the creation of extended ACL’s along with the standard is very important. ‘Standard ACL’s can only filter based on the source address and are numbered 0 through 99’(Prosise Mandia, p. 429). Extended ACL’s, in contrast, can filter a greater variety of packet characteristics and are numbered 100-199. In other words, each object is supposed to enforce its unique access control policy (Sloot 1999). For instance, the ACL commands are applied in order of precedence and the second rule will not allow the packets denied by the first rule, even if the second rule does permit that (Prosise Mandia). Filling in the Gaps One recommendation for securing a private network is to use a firewall such as a DMZ LAN. Essentially, it does not have any connections save the router and firewall connections (Kasacavage Yan 2002). This would force all packets of all networks (public and private) to flow through the firewall. This greatly diminishes the breaches common in security systems employing mainly ACL’s as direct unprotected connection with the Internet is judiciously avoided. The problem with the router mentioned by Davis in the previous section was its failure to filter packets going in one direction, or outbound ACL’s with specific identifiers. Installing a firewall at each locus connected to the Internet is highly recommended (Kasacavage Yan 2002). Like most aspects of technology, the ACL must be updated quite frequently. However, this gives the individual employed in this task a high degree of latitude, which is why access to this function must be strictly controlled (Liu Albitz 2006). ‘In order to use dynamic updates, you add an allow-update or update-policy substatement to the zone statement of the zone that you’d like to make updates to†¦it’s prudent to make this access control list as restrictive as possible’ (Liu Albitz 2006, p. 232). As wireless communications technology continues to revolutionize the way people do business, another issue that will concern security administrators is the increase of wireless LAN attacks that result in the loss of proprietary information and a loss of reputation as customers become leery of a company that can easily lose personal data (Rittinghouse Ransome 2004). Most wireless networks identify individual users via the Service Set Identifier (SSID) in such a way that would repel wireless LAN attacks that greatly compromise network security by using the ACL that comes standard with WLAN equipment. Because all devices have a Media Access Control (MAC) address, ‘the ACL can deny access to any device not authorized to access the network’ (Rittinghouse Ransome 2004, p. 126). However, other host-based intrusion detection software such as Back Orifice, NukeNabber, and Tripwire are also instrumental in preventing these attacks. In sum, although it would be impossible to create an impregnable security system, it is necessary to ensure that the system one employs is extremely difficult to breach, with very little profit for their troubles. By identifying the six most significant issues ACL’s face and exploring other ways that network administrators can close the gaps, more sophisticated security protocols can be put into operation. However, while security systems are correcting their weaknesses, computing experts on either side of the law are still finding ways to circumvent them. Controlling access to sensitive data is a necessity in any network, even in an informal file-sharing network. With the enclosed ACL’s, the agency shall be able to successfully diminish its odds of a security breach. Bibliography Davis, P.T. (2002), Securing and controlling Cisco routers, London: CRC Press. [Online at books.google.com] Kasacavage, V. Yan, W. (2002), Complete Book of Remote Access: Connectivity and Security, London: CRC Press Liu, C. Albitz, P. (2006), DNS and BIND: Fifth Edition, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media Inc. Prosise, C. Mandia, K. (2003), Incident Response Computer Forensics, New York: McGraw Hill Professional Rittinghouse, J.W. Ransome, J.F. (2004), Wireless Operational Security, Oxford: Digital Press Sloot, P., Bubak, M., Hoekstra, A. Hertzberger, R. (1999), High-Performance Computing and Networking, New York: Springer Verma, D.C. (2004), Legitimate Applications of Peer-to-Peer Networks, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley Sons

Savant Syndrome Essay -- Health, Diseases, Splinter Skills,

Savant Syndrome is an extremely rare condition in which a person with a severe mental handicap has extraordinary abilities in a certain area, such as memorization, mathematics, or the playing of instruments. The first known case of savant syndrome was documented in a German scientific journal, Gnothi Sauton, in 1783. This article described the case of a man named Jedediah Buxton, who was talented in memorization and mathematics (Treffert 2009). Ever since this first account of Savant Syndrome was recorded, scientists and physicians alike have tried to understand this unusual disorder. The most well known case of Savant Syndrome is the fictional character; however, Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman in the 1988 movie Rain Man, was inspired by a real person. The now fifty-seven year old has memorized over six-thousand books and has an encyclopedic knowledge of over fourteen subjects, including geography, history, literature, and sports. He can name all the US area codes and the zip codes of major US cities, has memorized the maps in the front of the telephone books and can tell you exactly how to get from one city to another has calendar-calculating abilities and is a rather advanced musician (Treffert 2009). This man, however, cannot comprehend simple tasks and cannot even dress himself. One of the earliest reports of Savant Syndrome is that of the amazing calculating ability of Thomas Fuller. Thomas â€Å"who could comprehend scarcely anything, either theoretical or practical, more complex than counting† was asked how many seconds a man who wa s seventy years, seventeen days, and twelve hours old and replied the correct number of 2210500800 in less than ninety seconds. He even accounted for the seventeen leap year... ...hat causes autism by labeling autism a â€Å"signal-processing† disorder with information reduction through compression (Fabricius 2010). Basically, compression is where the brain takes an image and remembers the basics of the image but not the fine details. Fabricius explained Savant Syndrome using the compression theory: that normal people work with a compressed image while Savants retain one hundred percent of the original details. This is known as the â€Å"Savant Hypothesis (Fabricius 2010).† For cognitively normal individuals, fine details are often lost in a process known as â€Å"prototyping.† When a cognitively normal individual sees an image, unimportant details-like, in Fabricius’ example, an embedded triangle- are lost. To the autistic Savant, those details stand out, and the Savant has trouble seeing the big picture. Below is the example from Fabricius’ work:

Parents + Teachers = Conflicts :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   As we are introduced to the four key beliefs that form the framework for the MIT program here at City University, (Preparation, Practice, People, and Professionalism) I have chosen to focus first on People, since people are at the core of what we are seeking to become. Obviously there are areas of overlap in the four; like professionalism is going to include preparation, but people are at the heart of it; teachers, parents, children, and administrators working together for the common goal of education.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Unfortunately even though the goal is the same, what route to take in order to achieve that goal is sometime a contentious one. Laws are passed. Curriculums are made with the general population in mind, but not the individual. Teachers have to work with their entire class at the same time. The parent however is often focused on only one thing, the education of their child and that can lead to problems   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In â€Å"Parents Behaving Badly† by Nancy Gibb (Time, 2005,135,40-49), the author examines how well meaning parents can hinder the educational process by doing things that perhaps are well intentioned, but are quite possibly not for the greater good.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  She sites from a 2004 MetLife survey, (Gibb, 2005, p.44) that 90% of new teachers agree that involving parents in their children’s education is a priority, however only 25% described their experience working with parents as â€Å"very satisfying†. In fact 31% of the teachers cited involving and communicating with parents as the biggest challenge they face. The vast majority of teachers in the survey felt too many parents treat schools and teachers as adversaries.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Parental induced problems included, but were certainly not limited to: parents doing their children’s homework, blaming teachers for their child’s mistakes, demanding that grades be changed, demanding daily updates on their child’s progress, restricting teacher’s speech (in the context of Parents + Teachers = Conflicts  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  3 what can be said to their child), lawsuits, verbally abusing teachers, and at the other end of the spectrum parents that are completely uninvolved. â€Å"While it’s the nature of parents to want to smooth out the bumps in the road, it’s the nature of teachers to toss in a few more: sometimes kids have to fail in order to learn.† (Gibbs, 2005, p.44)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Research show that students benefit modestly from having parents involved at school†¦but what happens at home matters much more.†, (Gibbs, 2005, p.44). She calls on studies that demonstrate a partnership is required to achieve the best results.

Life Experience Growing Up Essay

It is hard to explain to most people the reason why even though I was born in the United States of America and had a complete set of parents at the time of my birth, I was still sent to Haiti to be raised by a surrogate family. Not everyone understands the crazy things that parents do when their marriage is failing and the family is falling apart, as my parents chose to do. I do not remember much about my childhood in the USA because I left when I was seven years old. All that I could remember about that time was that my mother came home one day really sad and she asked my two sisters and I to pack up our things because we were going on an airplane ride. When I asked her where we were headed, thinking that we were probably going to Disneyland or something, she told me that we were going to take a vacation at her sister’s house in Haiti. This did not strike me as strange at the time because I had never met my mother’s sister at that point in time so I was excited to meet her. Mom told us that we had cousins in Haiti and we would get to meet them for the very first time during this trip. When I asked my mom if Dad would be joining us on this trip, she said that he was too busy at work to come along but that he loved us and wished us a safe trip. So it happened that I left my country of birth in 1973 to embark on a life that was thrust upon me without a choice nor a reason why I had to live it. Our mother spent a whole month with us in Haiti. I have some vague recollection of my mother sitting at the dining table at night with her sister, crying and in need of consolation. At the end of the month, I remember seeing my mother packing her suitcase. I thought it was time to go home and that she had simply forgotten to tell my sisters and I to pack up our things. So I began doing so without being instructed to. When mom saw what I was doing, she asked me to stop and come out to the backyard to have a talk. We sat on the swing in the small backyard of my aunt’s house as my mother explained what our new family situation was. She asked me if I remembered how she and dad had been fighting a lot lately and sometimes he would not come home for days because of the arguments. I recall that at the time I had vague recollections of my parents voices breaking through the bedroom walls at night when they thought we were already asleep. Slowly, mom explained to me that the marriage was in trouble and that the family was falling apart. She assured me that they both still loved us more than life itself but that they felt it would be best if we stayed n Haiti while they finalized the divorce and they both tried to get back on their feet after. It hurt me a lot to be indirectly told that my sisters and I had no place in our parents lives anymore. I felt abandoned and betrayed by both my parents. I was angry that even though I was just a little girl, I would have to find a way to explain what was going on to my sisters and make sure that they would be able to adjust to a life without our real mom and dad. We were all born in New York City and were accustomed to its lifestyle and culture. O when we were forcibly left in Haiti by our mom, we had to overcome the culture shock and social difficulty of having to live in a different environment from what we were used to. My sisters and I also had to lowly began to adjust to life with our surrogate parents. That is, our aunt and her husband. We had surrogate siblings as well because they eventually had their own children. We were a large, convoluted, extended family. As time passed, we became less American and more Haitian. French became our mother tongue and English was a stranger to us. We were happy and well adjusted kids who saw no difference in the way we were treated by our guardians who loved and treated us as if we were their own flesh and blood. Our parents? We spoke to them separately over the phone 4 times a month. We were strangers who did not really know anything about each other and did not have much to talk about over the phone. Those times were more like mandatory duties that our aunt and uncle made sure we accomplished without fail.

Mothers Who Work and Attend College

There has been a debate on the previous years on whether sociology must be regarded as a science or not. Experts had presented their stand and study why sociology is a science and why not. Many of them started by defining what science, what comprises a science, and what can be called and claimed scientific. Even in our early school days, science by definition is the logical activity of observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Science is a big scope of study and therefore must be divided into categories. So, the branches of science appeared. Early sociologists fought to establish sociology as a science. Their main argument is on the methodology used in sociology that is for them, is a science. According to Comte, like what is observable methodologies in science, are what sociology has. Scientific methodologies such as observation, experiment, comparison and historical research are all present and used in sociology. For him, if sociology uses these four methodologies which are common to scientific methodologies then, a strong claim for sociology as a science must be recognized. But because Comte did not execute an experimental research about this, then his claim was not valid. The argument of Comte approached Durkheim. Durkheim made the claim that sociology is a study of social facts, that is â€Å"a thing that is externalto, and coercive of, the actor† (http://www.human.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~iseda/works/soc-sci.html) Durkheim introduced a thing that he called externalto in his claim to make sociology as a science. He deepened what Comte cannot explain. His argument is that, social facts cannot be explained by the detailed mental examination of your own feelings, thoughts, and motives because social facts are external. Durkheim did an experimental research on suicide to support his claim. Suicide has been a global social problem. Suicide happens for a total of 90 countries around the world. Wasserman (2005) cited that, â€Å"Lithuania has the highest suicide rates per 100, 00 young person aged 15-19 in 90 countries with 23.9 in 2002.† Durkheim included statistical analysis on suicide rate. By that, the goal is a have a support for the claim that suicide is a social phenomenon. The predictions did not agree with statistical data. Durkheim rejected the alternative hypotheses. The attempt of Durkheim to present an empirical result was admired though it faced several problems. The falsification criteria did not work because Durkheim resulted to very strict criteria. Consequently, precise predictions are hard to achieve and/or gain based on sociological theory. Others argued to the work of Durkheim that conflicted on his definition of suicide and his removal of introspection in the methodology. Suicide for him is any cause of death that the executor knows that death is the result. Many questioned that if introspection is not present, how can the executor knows that the result of his/her action which is suicide, is death? Weber also attempted to provide explanation and support in making sociology as a science. Unlike Durkheim, Weber used introspection. According to him, the understanding on other people’s motivation is needed for it necessary for sociology. This understanding can be attained through introspection. But this was never easy to be presented as a science. A strong falsification was given to interpreted facts. Philosophers of science explained that interpreted facts cannot be run to the theory because anyone can give his/her interpretation. There is a way for sociology to be known as science. It is when the provided criteria are not too strict, and when minimal possibility of falsification is presented. Works Cited â€Å"Science† American Heritage Dictionaries. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from (http://www.answers.com/topic/science) â€Å"The Case for Sociology as a Science† Retrieved November 5, 2007, from (http://www.human.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~iseda/works/soc-sci.html) Max Weber. â€Å"Sociological Writings.† (1994) Retrieved November 5, 2007, from (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/weber.htm) Wasserman, D., Qi Cheng, Guo-Xin Jiang. â€Å"Global suicide rates among young people aged 15-19† World Psychiatry (2005) 4(2): 114–120. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1414751)