ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Introduction Lead is a non-biodegradable metal and has a remarkable persistence in the environment. Concomitant with its use, lead can have debilitating effects on human health, including delayed development, altered behavior, and diminished intelligence (Debnath et al., 2019). Given its impacts, healthcare professionals must advocate for better policies to protect the public. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of a healthcare policy issue, identifies its implications, and provides recommendations on addressing the issue. Mandatory annual school drinking water testing, reporting, and mitigation will reduce the risk of lead exposure. Description of Health Policy Issue The Environmental Protection Act created the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) to control water pipes corrosion. The LCR required all service providers to treat water systems with chemicals that coated water pipes and prevented erosion. Over time, the law demanded that water service providers periodically test samples of their taps and establish their lead levels. This law governs about 10% of schools and child care facilities in the United States (The Health Impact Project, 2017, p. 5). First, it mandates all schools and childcare facilities maintain their water supplies. Secondly, the law requires public health officials to test only 10% of the community water systems, including school water (The Health Impact Project, 2017, p. 5). These provisions highlight the lack of accountability or oversight in ensuring that school drinking water is free from lead contamination. Without a law that mandates water testing in all schools, some schools will never know the health risk posed by their drinking water. For example, a recent study on 3,100 taps in 63 schools found lead levels ranging from 1 ppb to 1,600 ppb in their drinking water (The Health Impact Project, 2017, p 5). If the LCR mandated annual water testing in all schools, these schools would have discovered the health risk and taken appropriate measures to counter the effects. According to a survey conducted by the Center for Disease Control, less than 46% of schools in the U.S test their drinking water (The Health Impact Project, 2017). LCR affects all school-going children, teachers, and staff working in school environments. Since it is a federal rule; it affects all schools and childcare facilities in the United States. Approximately 50 million children in the U.S are school-going: loosely translated, at the bare minimum, this policy affects about 50 million children. It is clear that the lack of an overarching law expose
How did the Environmental Justice movement redefine the environment? It is essentially everywhere in the physical and natural world. It also includes every place where humans exist and live their life. This is different from the conventional perception of the environment as only referring to nature. How are some communities more equal than others? There is a distinct division of communities based on socio-economic and possibly racial status. Therefore, communities of color and low-income become victims to unfair enforcement of environmental regulations and a lack of delegated public resources. What is locally unwanted land use (LULU)? It is defined as locally unwanted land use, which is essentially urban planning which creates or causes detrimental effects for people living nearby. This may range from health hazards to economic depression and lack of public sector infrastructure. What is Environmental Justice? The principle that all people and communities, regardless of background, lifestyle or beliefs, deserve equal protection in their respective environment. This includes having access to basic feasible social institutions and being protected by law on a non-discriminatory basis, the enforcement of fundamental human rights. Are you an environmentalist? Why or why not? Yes, because based on the framework of the environmental justice movement, every person who is living is. Since humans require natural resources such as air and water to survive, it becomes an automatic concern when this concept is endangered. Why does place matter? The place of habitat impacts one’s health and quality of life. The place is often correlated with politics, geography, race, and other factors which affect the distribution of pollution levels and access to necessary infrastructure. There is an inherent link between racial communities and hazardous waste, resulting in environmental racism. What was the summit in 1991? What did they discuss? It was the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, a meeting to discuss the issues affecting the minority communities. It included talking about history, cultural heritage, and cooperation. The summit developed 17 principles of environmental justice, resulting in the birth of the movement. What did the Toxic Waste and Race report find? In 2007, 57% of people living in proximity to commercial waste hazardous facilities were people of color. When the facilities are clustered, the number is around 70%. Despite being only 1/3 rd of the national population, these communities are evidently overrepresented in the areas concentrated around hazardous sites. What’s the case in Dixon, TN? A neighborhood of racial minorities within a country with only 4% black population had practically all hazardous facilities and landfills concentrated in the small area. This resulted in detrimental health effects and the poisoning of water. However, the city blatantly provided white families with clean water while black families were assured that the toxic water was not dangerous for consumption. What is a toxic hotspot? The concentration of toxic emissions from a pollutant emitter begins to impact the health risk of an exp
The philosophical concept of being as being is concerned with the notion of existence, more specifically, that of the thing in and of itself. Regarding a person, for example, this would mean that they are not placed in a context of relationships or within the society, but their inherent person-ness. It is a crucial notion that lies at the root of metaphysics. This paper is concerned with the perspectives of St. Thomas of Aquinas and the Greek philosopher Aristotle on the concept mentioned above. Essence and Existence according to Aquinas In Thomistic philosophy, essence and existence are the two principles that explain the being of everything. Essence is a formal principle, an abstract concept that denotes the extent of our knowledge about a thing. For example, humanity is the essence of a human being. However, knowing what a thing is, is not enough to fully comprehend that it exists; the philosopher’s knowledge of the features and attributes of the mythical bird phoenix does not necessarily mean that it exists in reality. For Aquinas, “it is evident that the act of existing is other than essence or quiddity” (Magee 2013, par. 2). The word quiddity comes from the Latin “quid,” meaning the question “what?” Esse and God The activity of being, thus, is called existence, or esse, from the Latin verb “to be.” Things that exist in reality exercise their act of existence, actualizing potency just as the form actualizes the matter. Therefore, esse actualizes the potency of a thing’s essence. These two principles are distinct yet inseparable in real beings. Both of them are needed for all existing individual things, except God, to exercise their being. According to Aquinas, “intelligence is form and an act of existing, and… it has its act of existing from the First Being which is (simply) existence only; and this is the First Cause, God” (Magee 2013, par. 5). However, humans cannot know what God is, but only what God is not, and how God is not, meaning the qualities God does not possess. For example, God is not limited, not composite and does not lack anything in any way. Therefore, Aquinas sees God as the ultimate Being, the Cause of all things, and sees humans as created in his image, and “the question of proving the existence of God is always bound up with the question of how, and to what extent, we can know God at all” (Magee 2015, par. 2). The Greek philosopher Aristotle, a student of Plato, holds reasonably different views as corresponding to his era. He proposes the existence of a single, imperishable, eternal substance, the prime mover. He argues that this is not a supreme being, but a universal intellect. Substance and Accidents Substance and accidents are other intrinsic principles of being as being; the concept of the primacy of substance is crucial to the study of metaphysics. Accidents, thus, can be defined as what exists in and is said of another thing, for example, a particular notion of quality, such as a color or shape. Substance, then, is w
Pressure Drop Models Juda and Chrosciel’s Model Juda and Chrosciel (1970) applied the established association to determine the pressure drop that occurs in a virgin filter using the following equation. Δ P = 4 μ Ʋ f z (Equation 2.1) Where ΔP represents a change in pressure and C 1 represents a constant (3/4) (Fuchs & Stechkina 1963; Greenspan 1977). The above equation assumes the distribution of particles is uniform in the filter as shown in figure 2.1. Figure 2.1 The view of the surface of a filter using a scanning electron microscope at varied times (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 33 minutes) during filtration. The setup had a filtration velocity of 18 cms-1 and uranine particles with 0.18 μm diameter (Juda & Chrosciel 1970; Yu et al. 2003). Juda and Chrosciel (1970) used a model of a filtration fiber to elucidate the deposition of particles. Figure 2.2 The model of deposition on a fiber (Juda & Chrosciel 1970). According to the model, two parameters describe the occurrence of deposition on the fiber.  1. –r ’ is the hydrodynamic radius encapsulated by deposit of particles.  2. –r is the geometric radius of the fiber. Juda and Chrosciel 1970) formulated the following equation to describe pressure drop across the filter. Extension of Davies’ Model Davies (1973) formulated a general expression that applies to a virgin filter. The expression considered that the particles trapped in the filter media have two effects, namely, increase the diameter of the fibers, and amplify the packing density of the filter (Yu, Bridgwater & Burbidge 1997; Wise et al. 2008). Therefore, the sum of packing density of particles captured in the fibrous media (???? p ) and the packing density of the virgin filter (???? f ) constitute a new packing density of the filter (Walsh 1996; Sakano et al. 2000). The expression [(1+α p /α f ) 1/2 d f ] describes the new mean of the fiber diameter that associates with the capture of particles. Therefore, the following is the final expression that summarizes the calculation of pressure drop. ΔP =64μD f (Equation 2.3) The model assumes that the particle sizes are the same and their distribution in the filter is homogenous. Bergman’s Model According to Berman et al. (1978), clogged filter as a media that comprises of two collectors, namely, the first fibers of the filter and the captured particles in the form of dendrites. This model involves the determination of the pressure drop of a filter made from dendrites (ΔP p ) and the addition of pressure drop of a virgin filter (ΔP 0 ) (Kirsch 1998; Hettkamp, Kasper & Meyer 2012). The following expression illustrates the sum of pressure drop across a virgin filter and a hypothetical filter with dendrites. ΔP = ΔP 0 + ΔP p (Equation 2.4) This model assumes that pressure drops of a virgin filter and a hypothetical filter are independent. Nevertheless, the influence of the fibers and the dendrites on the flow of particles is not negligible in an empirical sense. To consider the i
Research shows that Americas are not yet living in a post-racial America. This is even after president Obama being elected five years ago. Most people and even researchers thought that this would facilitate elimination of racial prejudice in the United States but, it has not been the case. In fact, Obama’s administration is still finding it difficult to deal with issues that are based on race, color and ethnicity. The whites feel that the minority groups are being given more attention than the natives. Moreover, the minority feel that little is being done about issues that affect them. Therefore, there are conflicts regarding issues that affect the minority groups. This write up highlights details that depict that the citizens of the United States practice racism. Recently, the federal government made tremendous efforts to ensure that there is job equity in the United States. For instance, the government is fighting the tradition that some jobs are not meant for the African Americans. In fact, there are jobs that cannot be taken by the blacks because of racism and prejudice associated with the minority (Miller & Garran, 2008). While the blacks embrace efforts of the government in ensuring job security, most of the whites have not been supportive of the government’s interventions. In fact, the white majority claim that the government is giving too much support to the minority groups. Furthermore, mos
Some things that we considered obvious were issues of controversy in the past. This could have been born from the first philosophers’ efforts to explain our complex universe on their own. To do this, they needed to think beyond our limited perceptions of the world based on our senses. They therefore formulated traditions and superstitions to explain things. Basing all his arguments on experience, David Hume developed an empirical kind of philosophy. This philosophy gives us room to understand things confidently and in our capacity. (Burnham) Empiricism is one among many views on how we know things. According to this theory of knowledge, knowledge comes from the experiences that we perceive through our senses. It emphasizes the role of experience and evidence in the formulation of ideas. Innate ideas are thus discarded by this theory except in instances where these ideas can be deducted from empirical reasoning. Science is one area that has greatly embraced empirical evidence. It relies on evidence from experiments to draw conclusions and come up with laws and hypotheses. Besides basing all his arguments on empiricism, David Hume extends empirical reasoning by insisting that our knowledge of things we consider facts in the world are ultimately based on our experience. (Grose) Earlier thinkers including Aristotle, who came up with a second-generation philosophy widely known as metaphysics did not base their arguments entirely on Empiricism. Metaphysics tried to explain the origin of things on something that is beyond our scope of reasoning when measured against our capacity to understand things with respect to our senses. Hume rejects Metaphysics as a part of science since it involves speculation of things beyond our sensual capacity. According to him, Metaphysics includes theories that cover superstitions and speculations that are hard to prove. Therefore, the only way to fight and reject metaphysics is for one to ask critical questions about how humans understand the world hence show that human capacity to understand is not fitted for metaphysics. (Burnham) Considering Hume’s arguments and conclusions, one will see that they are empirical. Having laid a foundation for knowledge that is entirely based on experience, Hume went ahead to differentiate statements of definition and knowledge. This was necessary to invalidate some statements that were considered true although they could not be verified. Hume argued that statements built from relations of ideas that identify characteristics implicit in a meaning of a subject e.g. matter occupies space are called analytic statements. These are simply matters of definition and do not, therefore, provide real knowledge apart from what they mean. (Mesick) What about statements of knowledge that may appear to be entirely derived from our thinking? Hume suggests that when these statements ar
Introduction The ancient Greeks had communal tales called myths. Myths focused on the life of deities, exceptional humans, adventures, and natural occurrences. These fascinating tales gave details about natural occurrences and events that could not be elucidated by science. The tales have been passed down from regeneration to generation for almost thousands of years. In these myths, several Greek gods, goddesses, and their roles have been described. All Greek deities are portrayed as perfect beings with the ability to perform miraculous acts. Notably, these gods and goddesses had unique behaviors and traits that human beings desire. For instance, Artemis the daughter of Zeus and Leto is one of the Greek goddesses that possessed amazing traits, personality, and behaviors (Lefkowitz, 2003). In the myths, she is described as the goddess of virginity, the moon, the hunter, childbirth, and caretaker of the natural environment. His brother Apollo became renowned for his exceptional traits. He was obsessed with arts and music as depicted in most paintings and sculptures. This article focuses on two people whose traits remind me of Artemis and Apollo. Apollo Apollo is a renowned Greek god who is portrayed in many sculptures with a muscular body and long hair. In myths, he is described as the deity of the sun, music, prophecies, and a healer. His parents were Zeus and Leto (Lefkowitz, 2003). Like the other gods, Apollo possessed supernat
The case of Katy Adams is extremely complex as it entails a range of life complications that do not only include health issues. As a single mother who has to provide for her children and ensure their well-being, the first non-medical issue is linked to her inability to do that due to her illness. The three problems identified in the case of Katy Adams include her inability to provide care for her children, the financial struggle of affording expensive care and not being able to work, as well as the absence of emotional support for the patient to ensure the smooth processing of the treatment. Ms. Adams’s children may be eligible for foster care in the future because she does not have the health or resources to provide for them. In addition, the assistance of parents and friends can only be a short-term solution as they inevitably have to be returned to their mother. The past relationship with Katy’s ex-husband can also come into play when it comes to the issue with children as he may be given custody due to their mother’s health condition. The issue with keeping Katy’s family together after the complex divorce is especially relevant in the current situation as there is a history of unstable relationships. The children’s father, John, was reported to have explosive behavior, to which they were subjected. Being with their mother is the only way for children to maintain their emotional well-being and develop a positive outlook on life. To help Katy with this problem, it is recommended to consider kinship care as one of the methods of ensuring that Katy’s children are in the care of someone they know and whom they can trust. As the number of children entering the care industry is rising, the value of kinship care is increasing, with the percentage of children in foster care with kin reaching 29% in 2014 (Epstein, 2017). Child welfare prioritizes placing children with “grandparents, relatives, or close family members” in cases when they meet the established demands (Epstein, 2017, para. 3). While such a system does not address all challenges of placing children into the care of their parents’ relatives or friends, this solution may be the most helpful in Katy’s situation. The financial aspect of Ms. Adams’s situation is especially relevant to the current discussion. Since Katy is without work at the current moment, she cannot afford to sustain her treatment while also ensuring that other responsibilities, such as the utility bill, are covered. The problem of patients being unable to afford their medications or treatment is greatly widespread. When people are diagnosed with a serious illness or a chronic condition, most of their financial resources go toward covering treatment expenses. Also, health issues prevent patients from working, while not many employers are willing to pay salaries to struggle employees. Katy’s case is especially complicated because she was refused disability coverage because of a doctor’s mistake and now has to deal with this problem despite it not being her fault. In addition, the shut-off notice from LIPA regarding the due payments on electricity contributes to the large list
Jazz musicians were not only talented people who presented humanity with a rich cultural heritage. For musicians, the blues has become an opportunity for self-expression, a way to convey their problems and thoughts through music. For some, it also helped to express their identity, their real inner world. Moreover, like many in those days, jazz musicians faced difficulties related to gender and race issues. In some cases, the musical life was accompanied by global life changes: a person lived a life that was not one’s own, being a different personality. The purpose of this work is to reflect on the topic of another identity, namely, what would be one’s own another persona. In times of the development of the blues, there was a problem related to the sexual issue. A talented woman who wanted to connect her life with a musical career could not do it as a woman. In those times, only a man had the possibility to build a professional jazz career. Thus, there were cases when women lived the life of a man for these purposes, and this secret was revealed only after death. Thus, Joss Moody, the main character of Jackie Kay’s Trumpet, anatomically born female, lives his entire life as a man (Amideo, 2018). The book is interesting in the context of reflections on identity, gender, and race. Moreover, the writer expressed these questions against the backdrop of musical art, using an unusual narrative. In this regard, it would be interesting to reflect on the topic of another identity in the context of one’s own life. However, the book is not as straightforward as it might seem at first glance. In fact, this is a reflection on many things in life, such as family and loved persons, private and public life, fame, and its consequences. Every public person has two worlds, one that is visible to everyone, for the press and fans, and the other is a private personal one. Sometimes these two worlds differ dramatically: a person can seem happy and careless, but in fact, be desolate. For creative people, especially jazz musicians, the differences can be even more dramatic since music usually contributes to better self-expression. Talking about what one’s other personality could be, it will be based on the life experiences. Now, I am a student, and I spend a lot of time studying. However, I used to play sports and could probably