ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
John Milton Cage is among the most mysterious figures, who managed to reach the Bohemian Olympus, moreover, to maintain their status, as his professional development occurred throughout his whole life span. Cage seems to have exceeded his own time, that’s why he is often declared as a scandalous figure as well: Zen Buddhist, vanguard philosopher, writer and composer, who interpreted his own music as “purposeless play”, which, however, is “an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out the way and lets it act of its own accord” (Cage, 1991, p. 158). The present paper is designed to discuss both biography and creative heritage of John Cage. Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912 and originated from a Scottish family. His father was a creative personality, a famous inventor, who used to teach his son in the following statement: “of someone says ‘can’t’, that shows you what to do” (Cage, 1991, p. 158). His mother, on the contrary, was a strict woman with strong common sense, who, in addition, was Episcopalian (Dyson, 1992) and therefore hated violin as a devil’s instrument and tried to prevent his son from studying music. As the composer writes (Cage, 1991; Nyman, 1974), his aspiration to create became consciousness at Pomona College, when he was shocked to see all his classmates reading the same book in the library. In order to manifest his protest, he took a book, whose author’s name began with Z and received the highest grade in the class on the next day (Nyman, 1974). In his opinion, Cage made a right conclusion and alleged that the institution didn’t work appropriately; consequently, he dropped out in the second year and moved to Europe, where he began to write his first pieces of audio art (Dyson, 1992). Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with his work as architect’s apprentice and thus returned to America in 1931. His interest in his motherland was completely renovated after he read Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”, so he decided to make famous both himself and his native state and dived into the art of composition, comprehending and learning it with such celebrities as Richard Buhlig, Adolph Weiss, Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg (Dyson, 1992). Schoenberg agreed to teach Cage for free, but put forth an important condition – the young prodigy was supposed to devote his life to music – Cage agreed without any redundant reflections. Cage remembers Schoenberg’s tutorship as a contradictory experience: “After I have been studying with his for two years, Schoenberg said: ‘In order to write, you must have a feeling for harmony.’ I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He
Introduction and SMART Goals A 32-year-old male patient, Peter Dawson, is admitted to the hospital. A background check reveals that he works from home as a software developer and enjoys playing online games with friends and staying up late at night. Peter’s height is 177cm, and he weighs 57kg; therefore, his calculated BMI is 18.1. Peter was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in his early 20s and since then has lived healthy while managing the acute symptoms on his own. Peter lives alone, while his closest relative lives in Queensland. Currently, a new colostomy bag has been fixed due to the acute and severe symptoms of the disease that emerged. Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel illness that causes the gastrointestinal system to be persistently inflamed. The disease causes several health concerns which need prompt intervention. First, the disease causes chronic pain, especially in the abdomen, due to the inflammatory process (Bakshi et al., 2021). Chronic pain can cause a disruption in one’s daily activities. Therefore, it is essential to design a plan to help these patients manage their pain even when at home. Another vital aspect that should be included in the self-management plan is the control of diarrhea, evidenced by hyperactive bowel sounds and gases (Torres et al., 2017). The disease exposes one to a risk of losing a lot of fluids, resulting in dehydration. Another significant health concern that comes in handy with Crohn’s disease is weight loss due to excessive fluid loss. Even with proper calorie intake, weight loss may still ensue due to inflammation. Inflammation may result in increased use of the energy stored by the body and disintegration of bodily tissues- both can contribute to weight loss (Elburki et al., 2017). Hence, in preparing a self-management action plan for Peter, it is of essence to outline ways of ensuring that he has a significant weight gain for the next month. An essential goal in managing Crohn’s disease is the alleviation of chronic pain. For that reason, the first goal is that pain will be managed at a scale of 3-4/ 10 for the next month. To guarantee pain management is effective, the client will go home with a prescription for pain relievers such as paracetamol and Endone. Another goal is that after a month of intervention, the patient will report reduced stool frequency and restored stool consistency to normal levels. In order to ensure that this is achieved, the patient will be discharged and given
Introduction According to the World Food Programme (WFP), approximately 925 million people in the world are undernourished today. That means that one out of seven people is not able to get sufficient food to lead a healthy and active life. This makes hunger be on the top of the list of risks to good health globally. Effects of hunger as risks to health are much higher than those of “AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis all combined” (World Food Programme p. 1). Hunger refers to unavailability of food (World Hunger Education Service p. 1), but it is also taken to mean vulnerability to disease due to micronutrient deficiencies. Effects of hunger are adverse, crippling not only the individual but also becoming a burden to a developing world. Food security is not a concern for the developing and the underdeveloped countries alone but it for the developed states, such as the United States. Statistics released in September 2011 indicate that in the year 2010, 14.5% of all households were food-insecure (that is one out of every seven households) with 5.4% of all the United States households having very low food security (World Hunger Education Service p. 1). There are arguments that the United States shoulders the blame for world hunger as regards to its spending so much on defense purposes and military operations. For example, in Afghanistan and Iraq, such tactics caused extreme poverty in these countries. America should not be blamed alone for world hunger, but it is logical to argue that it takes some of the blame; many factors contribute to hunger. Poverty being the principal cause calls for measures to be taken to address its eradication as an initiative to reduce world hunger. America being a superpower has a major role to play in world hunger level reduction as it has an edge on global economic matters and in how financial aid is allocated by financial bodies like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to poor countries. This paper considers America’s role in world hunger, how the country has increased it through poverty caused by its military operations, sanctions due to political interests and its influence in allocation of funds to political allies and “friendly states” rather than to poverty stricken countries. World hunger is a result of many interrelated factors. America does play a major role in, but there are also a lot of factors th
This term is used to refer to a type of companionship relationship that one person may have towards another individual one living thing towards another. This is a relationship of care, devotion and honesty. In friendship, the parties involved show utmost concern for one another despite the circumstances. Ideally it is not because of the position that their counterparts are in that determines whether they would be friends or not. This explains why we witness sons of two enemies being very close friends! The main reason that persons get into a relationship of friendship is not so that they would exploit one another; neither is it for any gains as it were. This is not the primary motivation of a friendship. Rather a friendship is primarily established so that persons would be in a position to share their lives and exchange ideas. Friends are meant to bear with one another, concern themselves with the issues of their counterparts and actively participate in solution provision. Equally, friendship usually involves a relationship of support and cooperation between the parties. In a friendship, mutual knowledge and respect is essential. Persons get into friendships for esteem reasons mostly. This is so that people may feel appreciated. Loyalty is a core value that establishes a friendship. In this, one would not be willing to sell out their friend no matter what. Other traits that establish friendships include empathy and the tendency to always desire the best for the companion. Friendship differs from an association since the former is considered to be more intimate and candidly close. An association on the other hand is a shallow interaction of persons for a specific reason which may easily end upon completion of roles involved. A friendship is not a marriage. This does not rule out the fact that married people may be friends but marriage has other motivations like sexual fulfillment that may not necessarily be in a friendship. Friendships may exist in marriages and it is important that they do exist there yet it is not the friendship itself that constitutes the marriage. Friendships do not necessarily mean sexual relationships as is the common notion. When a man says, “She is my girl friend;” the notion is different from a situation where a lady says the same statement. Friendships are established in a complex way. They sometimes are formed out of necessity, which is a wrong way to form one, or from shared interests. The latter is the most common one where people who have the same
Of all the things that surround us, landscape seems by far the most stable of all; when looking beyond the horizon, one might think that years will pass, people will come and leave, but the mountains in the distance will always remain in their places. However, this stability is only an illusion; according to the research results, the process known as disturbance shapes the landscape greatly. Because of the disturbance process, the landscape, especially its forest elements, maintain relative stability and display amazing diversity. As Turner, Gardner and O’Neill explain, “A disturbance is defined as a relatively discrete event that disrupts the structure of an ecosystem, community, or population and changes resource availability or the physical environment” (Turner, Gardner & O’Neill, 2001, 159). Therefore, any event within the specific ecosystem that leads to the gradual change of the latter can be classified as a disturbance. There have also been attempts to define an ecosystem disturbance as tectonic movement, which actually matches the key idea of a disturbance. However, it is essential to mention that a disturbance can be triggered not only by the movement of the tectonic blocks, but also by the factors that have much faster, though just as drastic effects, e.g., hurricanes, tsunami and storms. All in all, “the definition of disturbance is scale dependent,” as Turner, Gardner & O’Neill (2001, 159) put it. While the above-mentioned disturbance processes doubtlessly have huge effect on the lives of a number of organisms, as well as on the shape of the landscape, it is still important to figure out why these phenomena are considered of great significance for the landscape ecology. Since disturbances do not happen often, their impact can be viewed as accidental and not quite long-lasting. Therefore, disturbances definitely deserve a better look. The existing evidence shows that disturbances play a great role in shaping landscape: “Natural disturbances and those caused by human actions can promote plant and animal diversity by influencing the composition, age, size, edge characteristics, and distribution of stands across the landscape” (Voller & Harrison, 2011, 23). Judging by the given statement, the effects of disturbances are not necessarily grandeur or induced by a cataclysm. At the same time, the patterns and scale of disturbance depends on the type of the landscape greatly, which makes disturbance and landscape mutually dependent. One of the major positive aspects of disturbance, by the way, is its selectiveness; according to the research data, disturbances do not capture an entire area – instead, they seize a certain part of it, depending on their scale. Thus, the positive effect of a disturbance is provided; once a disturbance could be observed in all corners of a specific area, the species within the given area would have been extinct, and the balance between certain elements of the landscape, e.g., the young and old segments of the chosen area would have been broken. It is also noteworthy that distur
Introduction The ritual of the Eucharist plays an important part in a life of just about every Christian believer. Nevertheless, while participating in it, many Christians remain rather arrogant of this ritual’s discursive implications. In my paper, I will explore the validity of this suggestion at length, while promoting the idea that the ritual in question is the integral part of humanity’s ‘archetypal’ memory. Body of the paper The Eucharist (a.k.a. The Holy Communion/ The Last Supper), is a sacramental ritual, performed annually by the members of all three major Christian denominations (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant), which essentially reenacts The Last Supper’s ceremony of Jesus having offered the Apostles some wine and bread, as such that were meant to symbolize his body and blood. The account of this ceremony is contained in the Synoptic Gospels (by Matthew, Mark, and Luke), as well as in the Gospel of John . However, it is specifically the First Epistle to the Corinthians by Apostle Paul, which provides us with the most detailed description, as to what the mentioned ritual was all about, in the technical sense of this word: “And when he (Jesus) had given thanks, he brake it (bread) and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup (with wine), when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:23-25). The Gospel of John contains clues, as to the ritual’s actual significance: “I (Jesus) am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever” (John 6:51). This, of course, implies that one could not possibly qualify to be referred to as a Christian, unless he or she is willing to participate in the annually held ritualistic acts of ‘consuming Jesus’: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (John 6:54). Thus, it is indeed fully appropriate to refer to the Eucharist, as the ‘heart of Christianity’. As of today, the Eucharist is often being referred to as the first Christian ritual, which helped early Christians to remain well-organized for the duration of a few centuries, after the presumed resurrection of Jesus. Moreover, the ceremony in question is also being usually defined as one of the main Christian ‘mysteries’ (such as the ‘self-ignition’ of the so-called ‘Holy Fire’, which many people believe takes place in Jerusalem during Orthodox Easter). The ritual’s religious interpretation can be defined as follows: By eating bread and drinking wine, which represent Jesus’ body and blood, believers express their gratitude for being ‘saved’ by the ‘Son of God’. In its turn, this helps them to grow closer to the very spirit of divinity, which made the mentioned salvation possible, in the first place. Nevertheless, there are many notable differences to how the actual significance of the ritual of the Eucharist is being interpreted by every of the mentioned denominations. In essence, the theological approaches t
Night by Elie Wiesel is one of the most remarkable books of the twentieth century. The novel describes one of the most horrible periods in the history of humanity. Downing calls the novel “a story of shame” that “forces one to see oneself in a “fallen” state, the fall of humanity and all of civilization” (128). Wiesel describes his ‘life’ in Auschwitz. This blunt description enables people to see the way Nazis confused, demoralized and killed innocent people. More so, the novel shows the way people were dehumanized. Deception was one of the major tools used by Nazis to demoralize the prisoners. Thus, the very first words seen by the prisoners coming to Auschwitz (the inscription on the gates of the concentration camp) can be regarded as a kind of embodiment of Nazi’s strategies used to dehumanize the prisoners. The prisoners of the Nazis little knew about their future and they were likely to deceive themselves. The prisoners never knew where they were taken or what was going to happen next. However, it is important to note that Wiesel states that people tended to deceive themselves as when the first groups of Jews were taken away “it was rumoured that they were in Galicia, working, and even that they were content with their fate” (6). Even when the teenager told the truth about the people who were taken away, no one believed him. Perhaps, it was easier to believe there was still hope. Nazi also resorted to deceit which was, in fact, one of their most potent tools of demoralization and dehumanization. Thus, the very first words the prisoners saw when they moved through the gates of Auschwitz could be regarded as the embodiment of Nazi’s strategy, i.e. deception. These words were: “Work makes you free” (Wiesel 40). Therefore, the prisoners were given a hope that they were coming to a working camp. They still had slight hope that they could be free after they completed some amount of work. Nazis claimed that there was a choice as they told the prisoners: “If you don’t [work] you will go straight to the chimney” (Wiesel 39). However, work had nothing to do with the prisoners who were doomed irrespective of their hard work. Notably, the work itself was nothing more but a way of demoralization and dehumanization. The prisoners had to dig trenches or move heavy stones. This work was quite meaningless as the prisoners did not build anything. The work at Nazi camps had another aim. The only meaning of the work fulfilled was to exhaust the prisoners, to destroy human beings and to create mere “famished stomachs” (Wiesel 52). Of course, these creatures could not rise, they could not free themselves, they could not even escape. This was the major aim of
Introduction/ Literature Review Informed consent is a serious ethical issue in the medical field, and a good understanding of prescribed procedures and their effects are associated with better patient outcomes, satisfaction, and lower readmission rates. As for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients, effective interventions to tackle the language discordance remain unclear. With their study, Lee et al. (2017) aimed at answering the following research question: “What would be the outcomes for LEP patients as compared to patients fluent in English if a hospital introduced a bedside interpreter phone system?” Lee et al. put forward the hypothesis that translation aid would benefit both health practitioners and patients struggling with the language. The study does not pertain to the radiological field directly since the subjects were hospitalized patients on cardiovascular, orthopedic surgery, and general surgery floors. Yet, it is safe to assume that since the authors embarked on a quite broad topic – language disparity in medicine – the findings might be of use for radiology professionals as well. The literature review clarified the rationale behind conducting the study. The sources that Lee et al. used highlighted the language issues and their prevalence in the medical field. The researchers succeeded in communicating the gravity of the problem by naming common consequences of poor communication, for instance, higher error and readmission rates. Lastly, Lee et al. concluded that while the theory of language discordance had been receiving attention from researchers, practical ways to solve the issue are yet to be outlined. Methods/ Research Design Since the objective of the study was to evaluate the benefits of a certain intervention technique, the authors implemented the pre-post intervention study design in which the outcomes before and after an intervention are measured in the same subject group. The choice might be justified by the fact that conducting a randomized controlled trial would not be precisely feasible in the given setting. The sample size for the study was rather small: 84 participants at the pre-implementation phase and 68 post-implementation. However, the subject group was relatively diverse with two native languages (Spanish and Chinese), different educational backgrounds, and varying levels of English proficiency. At both stages, Lee et al. conducted surveys and followed through with propensity data analysis later. The main variable was the positive outcome which was operationalized as contrasting results in four categories: adequately informed consent, understanding of reasons, risk awareness, and information availability. Results/ Findings Lee et al. answered the research question, and their findings confirmed the main hyp