ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Substance misuse is one of the most significant problems in American society. Thousands of people have various health issues associated with drugs, which negatively affects the well-being of the nation. Young people are especially sensitive to this matter due to the nature of psychological development. Their values are easily manipulated by mass culture, making movies and music a powerful tool of promoting a certain type of behavior. Moreover, socio-economic factors are also very significant regarding decisions of adolescents to engage in substance misuse. The combination of a surrounding and personal values creates an individual background that may predict the likeness of engagement in drug abuse, yet it is subject to changes, which can be used for developing solutions for the issue. The paper analyzes studies regarding some of the most widespread types of substances, as well as discusses the role of the rap culture in the growing number of young addicts in the U.S. Background Drug abuse is a global issue, and the United States is one of the countries that seek to resolve it. Recent data reporting suggests that there are about 22 million people in the U.S. older than twelve years who are engaged in illicit drugs use (Yur’yev & Akerele, 2016). Currently, these substances are controlled by the government and fall under different classification systems. For instance, some drugs may be characterized as either medical or recreational according to the purpose of use. Thus, twenty-one states allow by law the trade of marijuana for people who have certain health conditions (Hasin et al., 2015). However, there is a high risk of people buying it for recreational purposes. Prescription opioids form another group of substances that are officially allowed, yet non-medical use is one of the consistent issues in this field. Reports suggest that the misuse of this type of drugs is associated with an increasing rate of deaths in the U.S. over the past several decades and has now taken a form of an epidemic (Han, Compton, Jones, & Cai, 2015). There are debates on whether making certain substances legal or partially accessible encourages more people to try them. However, decisions regarding drugs misuse are mainly guided by free will, and it is important to identify the driving factors that lead people to such behavior. For example, it is claimed that individuals learn from their life experience as well as follow model traits provided by popular culture (Acosta, 2017). Nowadays, substance misuse is often mentioned in movies and music, the latter especially associated with the hip-hop culture. While it b
Introduction Meditation is a set of religious practices, which involve the process of inducing psychological consciousness for the mind to be more conscious about the reality and become in touch with the spiritual world. Many religions in the world practice meditation as a way of praying but the styles of meditation differ from one religion to another. Meditation is a common religious practice in many religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Baha’i Faith, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and New Age Movement among others. Buddhists believe that meditation gives wisdom, while Christians believe that meditation is a form of prayer, which gives revelation of God and His will. Baha’i Faith fundamentally teaches that meditation is the spiritual key, which opens spiritual mysteries for the mind to comprehend. Other religions and traditions believe that meditation have psychological, physiological or spiritual benefits. The diversity of believes surrounding meditation and its benefits have led to its application in non-religious systems of the world. This essay explores psychological and personality importance of meditation in an educational system. Cognitive and Academic Performance Since meditation is a psychological process that enhances the conscious state of the mind, it has substantial benefits on the cognitive and academic performance of students. Due to immense flow of information in the world and tendency of the students to multitask, their minds lose specific attention on important issues thus affecting their performance. The divided attention of a student’s mind has detrimental effects on his/her academic performance even though ability to multitask is a virtue that is encouraged in learning institutions. According to Shapiro, Brown, and Astin, “…meditative practices enhance specific aspects or subsystems of attention in educational settings where attentional skills are central to successful learning” (10). Concentrative meditation enhances ability to resist numerous environmental distractions when one is doing a given task, while mindfulness meditation enhances the ability to maintain attention during multitasking. Therefore, the practice of meditation improves the attentive ability of the students, hence their academic performance. Ability to process information depends on cognitive capacity to receive an informational stimulus, process and store information in a meaningful manner. Research findings indicate that, students who have undergo meditative training prior to attentional blink test are able to detect two consecutive stimuli while those who have meditative experience are able to detect the first stimulus only (Shapiro, Brown & Astin 12). These findings show that meditation is important in boosting sensitivity of the mind to stimulus and subsequent processing of information. Meditation expands the cognitive ability of the students to analyze their environment critically and objectively. “Concentrative and mindfulness meditations let the students perceive the world, classroom and other people more openly, with more compassion” (Zinger 26). Compassion emanates from the
From 1824-1865, America was ruled by various presidents whose achievements in leadership are highly praised. This paper will discuss three presidents who I believe did the best job in that period. The presidents will include Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and John Tyler. Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. He was a revered politician and an army general who was instrumental in winning the Battle of New Orleans against the British in 1815. As a president, he successfully relocated the native Indian tribes living in the Southeast of the Mississippi river to the Southwest (Clark & Remini, 2009).He was elected as president in 1828. During his tenure as president, the country was faced by various adversities. Although one of the greatest achievements in his rule was paying off the entire national debt in 1835, the accomplishment was short lived. In 1837 to 1844, the country experienced a severe depression that caused the country to be in debt ten times. Following Jefferson’s vision of an agricultural republic, Andrew Jackson worked hard to destroy the Bank of America, which he viewed as a concentrating on enriching the industrialists and commercial entrepreneurs and disregarding the farmers. The elites heavily criticized Jackson, but he successfully withdrew money from the Bank and invested it in smaller banks. This helped in stimulating economic growth in different sectors including manufacturing and agriculture. However, in 1837, there was a panic after Jackson issued the Specie Circular that saw many banks collapse (Clark & Remini, 2009). Another crisis that rocked his administration was the nullification crisis also known as the secession crisis. In 1828-1832, there were disagreements in the government over tariffs. The Southerners criticized the tariffs because they believed the tariffs were making goods to be more expensive in the south than in the north of the country. At this point, the country was facing the risk of secession of South Carolina and Jackson vowed to send forces to the region. In his address, he said, “the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, is inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded ” (Story, 2005 p.547). He continued and out rightly objected to any state seceding from the union, “The Constitution… forms a government not a league… To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a nation” (Story, 2005 p.552). This led to the Southerners agreeing to a reduced compromised rate and war was averted. John Tyler was the 10 th head of state in the United States of America. His persistent confidence and activism accounts for his accomplishme
Introduction The Manifest Destiny signifies the times and popular expansion ideology of the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. John Gast (Greenberg 1) best exemplifies the Manifest Destiny. In 1872, he came up with a painting that signified the victory that the U.S. had achieved about two and a half decades earlier (Greenberg 1). The painting was known as “American Progress”, which went on to become a popular literature and a historical piece for not only explaining how the U.S. came to be, but also showing key linkages in industrialization and the present American ways of life. This paper begins by reviewing the details of the painting. The paper argues that the growth of the physical territory of the United States and its influence on social, political, and economic life were realized because of the industrial revolution of the 19 th century. In the “American Progress” painting, the captivating features are a briefly dressed woman and the symbol of flying. The image forms the center of the painting, with other details being minute in proportion to the woman’s image. The use of a woman instead of a man is also captivating, given that many of the expansionist, industrialist, and prominent figures of the nineteenth century America were male. It also appears that the woman’s clothing is almost falling off. Nevertheless, the use of a woman plays an important part in the painting. It shows that the expansion of America brought civilization to many places that were primitive. The woman’s figure also brings out a clear fact that the Manifest Destiny was gendered; it was not a universally applied concept. Instead, it had particular notions and implications for male participation and female participation. Both genders played critical supplementary roles to each other’s duties, which ended up influencing the subsequent American way of life (Greenberg 3). The woman’s figure brings out the idea of domestication, which formed the understanding of the Manifest Destiny. In the mid-nineteenth century period, Americans understood their domestic way of life as the only sustainable and appropriate form of civilization. It was, therefore, moral to go with expanding the territory not only for selfish interests, but to share the fruits of domestication too. Many saw the growing of the country’s size as peaceful. Expanding from the Atlantic sea to the Pacific would signify a natural eventuality of a destiny achieved in a domesticated and restrained way. This was not to say that the only witnessed forms of expansion were smooth, peaceful, and early. On the contrary, there were struggles and forceful conquests championed by the aggressive expansionists, who did not hold the same ideology as depicted by the American Progress painting. Features of American Progress and Manifest Destiny As depicted in the painting, the progress of America westward was driven by leading pioneers, farmers, miners, wagons, and railroads. In all, or part of it, the depiction narrates the early features of the Industrial Revolution by highlighting its key influences and indicators (Mountjoy 19). The remak
There exists a common belief that the phenomenon of research in health care is only applicable in settings that require no immediate interaction between patients and practitioners. Thus, the processes of medical interaction and research exist separately due to the practitioners’ inability to apply extensive analysis in an immediate treatment environment. A primary issue with such an assumption deals with the fact that apart from the research proper, there exists a notion of quality improvement. The fundamental difference between these concepts concerns the fact that quality improvement is a process of constant evidence-based professional development that may be introduced immediately in terms of treatment, whereas scholarly research does not account for on-the-spot decisions and solutions (Berman et al., 2018). Thus, while research is aimed at analyzing the data with no specific intention and time constraints, quality improvement emphasized the demand for immediate quality outcomes. When speaking of the application of research within the workplace context, it is of paramount importance to note that both qualitative and quantitative research methods are used by practitioners daily. For example, the system of electronic health records (EHR) present in a public hospital setting contribute to the collection of relevant statistical data concerning the patients’ health and socio-cultural background. Moreover, the patients are welcome to participate in a quality assessment survey, during which they have the opportunity to share their concerns and experiences of a hospital stay and interact with the medical staff. An example of qualitative research application concerns practically every intervention planning, as prior to submitting a treatment plan, practitioners are to thoroughly analyze one’s background in terms of the general health tendencies of a given population. Thus, analyzing secondary data in order to secure the most suitable patient outcome is a prime example of conducting qualitative analysis in a public hospital setting. This aspect especially concerns nurse case managers who specialize in developing long-term treatment interventions and, thus, have to consider all the existing options in the context of individuals’ health records. Reference Berman, L., Raval, M. V., & Goldin, A. (2018). Process improvement strategies: Designing and implementing quality improvement research. Seminars in Pediatric Surgery , 27 (6), 379-385.
Parenting can be simply defined as the act of rearing a child. It is a complex activity that involves many specific aspects of behaviors that works independently and together influence the child’s growth. It plays an important role in the growth and development of a child. Parenting encompasses the growth ecology of a growing up child, and hence it is very important in shaping up the behavior of the child and in their physical survival, social growth, cognitive development, and emotional growth. It has been shown that parents determine or influence their children’s growth by what they do, what they believe, what they communicate to the children, and through their interventions. Parenting does not only involve the genetic contribution that a parent makes to the child’s life but it covers how the parent influences the experience of the children by what they believe and how they act towards children or other people in the growth ecology. According to Bornstein (2006), parenting knowledge is vital in the evaluation of the child’s growth which determines guidance in shaping and correcting their behaviors. A parent who understands his/her child well is in a good position to influence the behavior of the child. According to Mizuta, Zahn-Waxler, and Hiruma (1996), parenting style is determined by the level of communication between parents and children. Interpersonal communication is very important because it is the core value in any parenting style that is to be adopted by the parents. Communication determines the relationship between the parent and the child. Proper interpersonal communicating is important in passing to the children what is expected of them and informing them why they have to conform to what is expected. Poor communication leads to a poor relationship between the parents and their children. Interpersonal communication creates a personal feeling between parents and their children and effective communication breaks barriers to behavior change and conformity. According to recent research on parenting by Michelle L. Kelley, Thomas Power, and Winata Hiroko (1992), parents in the united states put on more rules and expect their children to follow them than in Japan. It also reported that parents in the United States give children more input in their socialization process than in Japan. Instead of using punitive measures, parents in the United States responded to a child’s misbehavior with material or social consequences. At an age of 3-5 years old, mothers in Japan showed fewer demands, were less nurturing, and were more likely to reprimand the child’s misbehavior with scolds. Japanese mothers were more likely to use physical punitive measures in cases where the child showed disrespectfulness to adult authority. The study revealed that in the United States, most mothers used aut
Main elements of Costco’s strategy Costco stco Corporation is the biggest wholesale club in the United States. Part of its success lies with early entry into the industry, but more still is the company’s ability to provide a wide variety of products to its members at the lowest cost possible. Costco’s operating model involves buying products in bulk, which in turn minimizes costs, and the company is subsequently able to pass on the discounts to its members. Members, in turn, buy these products in bulk to experience these benefits and are also required to pay membership fees, which constitute another revenue stream for the company. As the company increases in worth, the membership fees increase to reflect value to customers, hence raising the company’s revenues (Berman, Knight & Case 2008). Costco has a policy of not marking up the products by more than 14 percent. This portrays consistency, which goes on well with its members. Costco also differentiates its customers by it targeting small business owners and the middle class. This strategy is quite advantageous since these customers have more income at their disposal and hence can buy Costco’s products regularly. Even though selling products in mass allows for several operating efficiencies, Costco ensures that it offers the lowest possible cost per unit through bulk packaging. The low cost per unit for the items translates into value to the customer. Item package sizes are limited in size so as to encourage repeat sales. Costco is a powerful purchaser, which puts it in a better position to negotiate prices from its suppliers. Suppliers are able to save on production processes since Costco only purchases a handful of SKUs (stock-keeping units). Cost savings incurred by the producers are negotiated for by Costco so that they can be passed on to the end-user. Furthermore, Costco increases the value to members by providing a wider range of brand-name products and product augmentation. Costco’s house brand, Kirkland, aims at providing quality products at discounted prices. Due to the company’s low gross margin, Costco has had to focus on operating efficiency so as to minimize costs. Cost-cutting programs are meant to reduce capital expenditure, whereby the company strives to reduce transportation, storage and utility costs. Costco’s comparison with its competitors Costco’s differentiation strategy is much more profitable than Wal-Mart’s SAM’S club, as the latter targets lower-income earners. Low-income earners don’t offer as much volume sales as Costco’s middle class and small businesses, explaining Costco’s higher revenue and operating income per store. SAM’S club experienced more top management turnover in the 1990s while Costco’s had been in control since the inception of the company. Frequent top management changes imply that the company lacks a clear consensus on the way forward, which in turn decreases effectiveness (Bernstein
Introduction When it comes to drug and alcohol abuse, Florida is far higher than the national average, with this pattern being present in Miami Gardens as well. It has turned into a major economic issue. However, the financial impact of alcohol misuse in Florida is not the only one. Alcohol treatment facilities in Florida point out that the whole cost has an impact on society. Alcoholism has been on the rise in Florida over the past two decades, according to recent data. While Miami Gardens is waging its own drug wars with opioids and cocaine, alcohol use continues to climb throughout all age categories, especially among women. The new data also matches tendencies from the summer of 2020, when the coronavirus struck, when many Floridians resorted to alcohol and other narcotics in the face of unpredictable circumstances. This method was the only alternative for people at a time when almost all public places were closed. Main body As with most multilayered social phenomena, it is difficult to distinctly identify the precise causes behind the alcohol issue in Miami Gardens. According to research published in 2019, 18 percent of individuals in Florida participate in excessive or binge drinking, up from 16.2 percent in 2002 (Wang et al., 2020). The most common substance found in decedents, according to the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, is alcohol. Between 2012 and 2019, the number of deaths caused by alcohol increased across the state (Wang et al., 2020). In the same period of time, the number of decedents for whom alcohol was a contributing factor in death grew by 72 percent (Wang et al., 2020). The overall number of alcohol-related occurrences statewide increased from 4,029 to 5,385 occurrences, indicating that a substance did not play a direct role in the death but was present or detectable in the deceased (Wang et al., 2020). Medical intervention might be an appropriate state to take since alcohol-related deaths have been on the rise in the United States since the end of the 1990-s. From 2011 to 2015, it is predicted that 95,000 people died each year as a result of excessive alcohol use (De Leon et al., 2020). Researchers used cross-sectional U.S. death data from 2000 to 2016 to discover that alcohol-related fatalities increased by 77 percent over that time (De Leon et al., 220). Between 2013 and 2016, the number of fatalities among women increased the most (De Leon et al., 220). Among all racial groups, American Indians and Alaskan