1000 Words on Proper Uniform

The Importance of obeying orders and being on time for duty. There are many reasons why a soldier, (doesn't matter the rank) should obey orders from anyone above him or her in the chain of command. Sometimes its good to listen to people soldiers below you too because they maybe smarter at the task then you are. One reason is that the military is revolved around higher ranking soldiers leading the lower ranking soldiers, they’re more experienced in the military then I am and been deployed more than i have.If everyone in the military just did their own thing then we wouldn't be a successful army and then our country wouldn't be as strong as it is. Every higher up gives an order for a reason, we may not like the reason but in the end most of the orders and decisions will be smart ones i guarantee. We were taught as children to obey our higher-ups. Starting from our parents, teachers, managers, police officers and etc†¦ So how does this relate to the military?Well, when a per son enlists in the United States Military, active duty or reserve, they take the following oath, â€Å"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Right there you are making a promise to the United States Military. Before you or I even put on the uniform, you promise you’ll obey the orders of the President and the orders of the officers appointed over you. Military discipline and effectiveness is built on the foundation of obedience to orders. Brand new privates are taught to obey, immediately and without question, orders from their superiors, right from day one of boot camp. Almost every soldier can tell you that obedience was drilled into their heads at one point in Basic Training.For example, no talking in the chow line, don’t talk with your hands, head and eyes forward, no smiling, stand a parade rest, and of course the famous â€Å"Yes Drill Sergeant / No Drill Sergeant†. Those are just the simple orders you are made to obey in the military. Greater orders mean bigger consequences. Military members who fail to obey the lawful orders of their superiors risk serious consequences. Military discipline and effectiveness is built on obedience to orders.Recruits are taught to obey, immediately and without question, orders from their superiors, right from day-one of boot camp. Which is why we work so well by following orders from the more experienced leaders who have been doing this for years? We have plenty of obedience in Bravo Company and I feel it is one of the best companies in the unit. It has made me want to pursue a career in the military and I know rules and regulations is what am going to make me move up the ranks and make me an all around better soldier.I know I need to work on discipline sometimes and I am doing corrective training right now to make me become a better soldier. So in my essay I have listed many characteristics which in the history and present day made what the army is today. I feel the army values have a big role in rules and regulations because if you follow the values you will not stray off in being disobedient. It's very important to follow directions, or else the world would be in chaos.When some tells you that you must follow directions so that everything can go in an orderly fashion, it's important do because they know what's going to happen if you don't. It's important to follow directions because if you don't something can go wrong, its important follow directions because if you don't you will get in trouble, and it is also important to follow directions because if you don't you'll be writing this essay too. It is important to follow directions beca use if you don't something can go wrong.If you decide to cross the street and someone tells you not to, their telling you for a reason, maybe so that you won't get hit by a car or get shot at in a drive by shooting. It's important follow directions because if you don't you'll get in trouble, if you decide to cross the street after they told you not to, you'll suffer. The importance of reporting on time to the soldiers appointed place of duty is not a task to be taken lightly.Every soldiers has important tasks set out for them no matter what the individual soldier may think about why they are doing that particular job it must be done for a reason that may not be told to that soldier until the task is complete. Reporting to the task on time and in the correct uniform is not to be taken lightly because if that soldier is late to their assigned task then that would mean that a different soldier would have to take the late soldiers place until they rrive which might not seem like a lot t o some people but what if that soldier who was not late had and in most cases would have their own tasks to complete. Now were talking about not just one soldier but a whole organization not functioning the way that it should be or taking more time than it should have to accomplish those few simple tasks. The same thing applies when a soldier is at his appointed place of duty on time but not in the correct uniform then your talking about taking more time to go home get into the correct uniform and hurry back which would be the same thing as showing up late.

Economics Effects of Monopoly.Docx Uploaded Successfully

Economics effects of monopoly. In pure monopoly, a monopolist will charge a higher price compared to the firms in purely competitive industry. They also sell a smaller level of output than the firms that involve in pure competition. Compared to pure competition, monopoly is inefficient in both productive and allocative efficiency. In purely competitive industry, the entry and exit of the firms will ensure that the P = MC + min. ATC. However, for pure monopoly industry there is no entry and exit of firms as it is conquer by only one party.The marginal revenue (MR) curve lies below the demand and the produces output where MR = MC, so, the price exceeds the marginal costs (MC) and also exceeds the lowest average total cost (ATC). Pure Competition Pure Monopoly Price Price Quantity Quantity Pc D D Qc S = MC Pc MC Qc MR Qm Pm P = MC = min. ATC MR = MC Figure [ 1 ]: Comparison of pure competition and pure monopoly. Looking at the chosen firm which is TNB, as In pure monopoly, there is an e fficiency loss which is called dead weight loss (also known as excess burden and allocative efficiency).This situation occurs because the sum of consumer surplus + producer surplus is less than the maximum. In other words, this situation occurs either because of the people who have more marginal benefit than marginal cost are not buying the product, or those who have more marginal cost than marginal benefit are buying the product. Income transfer Monopoly wills increases income inequality because the profits are not equally distributed. Monopoly will cause the transfer of income from consumers to the stockholders who own monopoly.This can be seen through levy of â€Å"private tax† on consumers. The owners will gain benefit at the expense of consumers. Cost complications In pure monopoly, the costs may vary because of four factors: 1. Economies of scale According to www. bized. co. uk , economies of scale is the advantages of large scale production that result in lower unit (a verage) costs (cost per unit). Some firms reach large economies of scale because of specialized input, the spreading of product developing costs, simultaneous consumption and network effects.Simultaneous consumption is the ability of product to satisfy a big numbers of consumers at the same time and network effects are increase of value of product to each consumer. 2. X-Inefficiency X-Ineffiency is when the firms produce level of output that is higher than the lowest ATC. X-Inefficiency occurs due to poor management decisions, principal agent problem, poor worker motivation or ineffective supervision as the results of reliance on â€Å"rules of thumb† instead of real costs or revenue decision. Figure [ 2 ]: X-Inefficiency 3. Rent seeking expenditures

Equilibrium and competition in the banking sector Literature review

Equilibrium and competition in the banking sector - Literature review Example Literature speaks of limited equilibrium modelling. General equilibrium, according to researchers depends on various market conditions. Further, level of equilibrium in banking industry depends on competition and financial stability, which depends further on banks’ risk-taking initiatives. Literature review discusses the opinions of various authors on the banking products as trade off between competition and financial stability on different risk choices. Various risk-transferring models are discussed. Role played by bank supervising technologies forms part of various models. New models of bank risk-taking, named partial equilibrium models are analysed. The UK banking sector is statistically reviewed through the Panzar and Rosse model. Literature review attempts various views on banking competition and financial weaknesses through various models to know if any relationship between equilibrium and competition can be established or not. Past Research As stated by Allen and Gale (2004a), the relationship between banking competition and financial health has been majorly discussed in the discourse of limited equilibrium modelling. There are not many general equilibrium models in literature. ... Banking sector can be stated in partial equilibrium if the exchange between competition and financial stability is generally achieved via a standard risk transferring statement practiced on a bank that arranges funds from insured customers and selects the risk of its investment. In such a scenario where market indicates limited liability, sudden risk alternatives, risk-free deposit demand, and stable return to scale in checking, a high in deposit market competition heightens the deposit rate, decreases banks’ anticipated margins and inspires banks to take advances in risk-taking. This conclusion has been derived by Allen and Gale (2000) in both fixed and ordinarily changing scenarios. A number of scholars in literature have supported this predictability in their works, including Keeley (1990), Matutes and Vives (1996), Hellmann, Murdock and Stiglitz (2000), Cordella and Levi-Yeyati (2002), Repullo (2004) among many others. Nevertheless, in the case of competition among banks i n loan and deposit markets, it is loan rate that governs the degree of risk-transfer initiated by companies, as stated by Stiglitz and Weiss (1981). Boyd and De Nicolo (2005) discussed the evaporating trade-off between competition and financial stability when various risk alternatives are analysed by firms. A rise in loan market competition cuts down bank loan rates, strengthening firms’ anticipated profits and prompting them to select secure investments, which gets written into securer bank loan portfolios. Amidst this increasingly conflicted environment, the risk-transferring statement is used on two market units, firms and banks, in stead of a single entity. Latest versions of this kind of model, including bank heterogeneity (De Nicolo and Loukoianova, 2007),

The major operating system and network you are using on a daily basis Essay

The major operating system and network you are using on a daily basis - Essay Example First a cable based on CAT6a ( Able Infrastructure Solutions, n.d.) 1 Gbps switched network. The Second is an 802.11n wireless (Wi-Fi) network. Both networks are configured with Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP) (TCP/IP), Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPV4). (Brookshear, et al., 2011) The operating system and network are adequately designed and developed to perform their tasks in our environment. †¢ Windows OS allows for quick develop of wide and varied multithread applications. Ability to support a wide variety of hardware devices through device drivers is important in a hospital setting as is an interactive user experience through use of a GUI interface. †¢ Combining a star and bus network topology creates a scalable network, with the ability to maintain a requirement for low amounts of down time encase of failure of devices. (Brookshear, et al., 2011) The advantages outweigh and disadvantages the Windows OS bring can be summarised as: †¢ The advantages are outweigh such as quicker support for newer hardware, vendors availability of readymade applications and varied devices available that work with Windows vs. other OS’s (MNS Group, 2012) †¢ Ability to be adapted and access to a wide support knowledge base to fix problems or issues A few highlighted disadvantages to the Windows OS are: †¢ Vulnerability to frequent virus or security attacks. Microsoft does offer regular security updates to protect against vulnerabilities. †¢ Closed source single source for procuring creates high acquisition cost for this OS. †¢ Variable hardware implementation compatibilities can create high support workload (RJ Systems, 2010) (Stallings, 2005)

The Fine Art of Complaining Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The Fine Art of Complaining - Assignment Example The reader feels that the author cares about the issues which confront the reader and is genuinely interested in providing solutions. Many of the tips given by Rego are so simple that one cannot help but wonder why one did not think of it earlier. This is the major strength of the essay. Rego gives practical pointers to solve everyday problems. These are difficulties almost every individual would have encountered. The ‘you’ could be anyone of us. The essay is very educative. Rego’s point that â€Å"Readers always notice a P.S.† is very insightful. The details about the Better Business Bureau and the existence of small-claims courts are particularly informative. Rego’s essay changes the reader’s perception about complaining. Complaining is not just about raising one’s voice. One becomes aware that it is a process which requires thought and will yield successful results if done in the correct way. What is the next step to be taken if Rego’s suggestions do not succeed in getting the compliant

The state removing children from their parents and taking them into Essay

The state removing children from their parents and taking them into protective custody - Essay Example For some parents, drugs are more important than their kids. Such people may make their children use these drugs (compelling children to use drugs). Children are nuisances for another group of parents. All these results in severe child abuse issues. There were cases when children had to undergo heavy physical tortures also. When parents get divorced, children have to stay with one of the parents or with relatives or other caretakers. They may have to undergo physical and mental abuse and even big assaults also. Such children will be deprived of parent’s love and care and will lose a good family environment. Relatives and caretakers will be least bothered about their welfare and will torture them to maximum. These abused and neglected children will suffer from various mental and physical problems that can lead them to wrong paths. Some children are exposed to drugs in their childhood itself since they their parents use drugs. Children, who are brought up in families where there are frequent fights, will naturally have fighting mood or other bad characteristics. Also if parents are having criminal background and other unlawful practices, children who are brought up in that environment also will have criminal characters and behaviors. Children are abused in different ways and are made deprived of all their childhood happiness and privileges. They are troubled and exploited and are subjected to mental and physical exploitations. There were incidents in which children were beaten, burnt and killed even. In a particular case, a petition was filed in Waukesha County Juvenile Court in order to keep 3 girl children in protective custody as their drug-addicted father troubled them making them accompany him during a crack cocaine binge. In another incident in 2004, a 9-month-old boy died accidentally and later doctor’s testified that the child’s injuries were

Answer movie question and summary article Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Answer movie question and summary article - Essay Example Q5: I do believe that working in mutual trust is possible, however I do feel that some amount of fear is required to keep the Government working on its toes. This is imperative so that none of the participants in the democracy cross their moral boundary line. Q6: The ordinary people did absolutely the right thing by marching along the explosion, which took place courtesy V. This was something, which was required to be done as the people needed to be woken against the tyranny of the Government, and they did the right thing by waking up. Q7: I agree with the analogy of V that ideas are always bulletproof. Ideas are alive. A man can die but his idea lives on, and any one can reignite an idea and make it work according to the current level of situation in the place. Q8: This was a beautiful movie and the scene where V surfaces on public television giving his sermon of revolution to the people is the best scene for me. This was not a crazy comic flick as it made absolute total sense with respect to the situation prevailing in the society as of today. Q9: V’s quest for justice is absolutely justified by the means he adopted. I agree with the way he decided to blast the Parliament to tell the people that there is something very wrong with the way the tyrannical Government is functioning and something about it had to be done. The article written by the writer compares the Movie V for Vendetta with the philosophical ideology of Hobbs and looks at it from the perspective of psychological fear. The writer starts by saying that the movie defies in the way that Hobbs has been trying to portray his thinking of philosophy of morality, the idea of right and wrong and the means adopted to fulfill the quest for the people and to do the right thing. In the essay, the writer has posed certain questions and challenges on the theory adopted by Hobbs. Hobbs has said that morality should be the ultimate truth in everyone’s life, and one

UAE Culture and Society Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 2

UAE Culture and Society - Research Paper Example trong implications on the culture and social life of people living in a country, during the pre-oil days the culture and economy of United Arab Emirates can be classified as a desert economy marked by Bedouin lifestyle and culture. Farming was very scarce due to unavailability of water and was only done near oasis. Pearling and sea trading were the most important sources of income of the people living in this area of the world in the middle of the 20th century. The various aspects of Arab culture were very prominent in the culture of the United Arab Emirates because of strong bondage with the other countries of the Arab world. In order to analyze the culture of a country, we have to know the location and geography of the country because these things have strong implications on the culture and lifestyle of the people of a country. United Arab Emirates is located on the Persian Gulf and shares borders with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman. The area of the country is distributed among the seven emirates in a very non-uniform way. 85% of the total area of United Arab Emirates falls in Abu Dhabi and Ajman has a size of equal to a small city. Oases are randomly scattered throughout the desert area of United Arab Emirates and mountains of Hajar which run throughout the country also have a barren topography. The overall climate of UAE can be classified as hot and dry in winter and very hot and humid in summer. United Arab Emirates has a very small population and thus the income and resources per capita are very high. The health care conditions, nutrition levels and living conditions were very poor during the pre-oil times, therefore a marked increase in population was observed after the discovery of oil. Better facilities not only resulted in an increase in the population growth rate of the native population, the development of infra structure created a lot of job opportunities and labor class from various countries of Asia moved to United Arab Emirates, resulting in a mild

Netflix case study Essay Example for Free

Netflix case study Essay Netflix offers online video streaming and DVD rental services for a flat fee to all subscribers. After Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix had announced the companys new strategy of separating its online service and DVD rental services into two accounts for its subscribers, the company’s stock fell to $63 per share from $300 per share and lost 805,000 subscribers in three month. Although facing so many challenges, Reed Hastings choose to continue his new strategies, but with a sincerely apologize for the change and a detailed explanation of why they made this decision and what’s in it for current subscribers. Stock price of Netflix close on yesterday was 312.40. Problems and challenges Although it seems that Netflix has recovered from the separation strategy, but there still are some problems and challenges are waiting for the company. First of all, Netflix online streaming branch is facing fierce competition from companies like Amazon instant video, YouTube, iTunes store, and Hulu. Second, On-demand TV offering are now hot area, many big-pay TV operator such as Verizon and Comcast Corp are trying to bring on-demand TV to cable users which will offer fresher content than online streaming companies like Netflix. Third of all, The DVD rental branch called Qwikster are now competing with companies like Amazon and Redbox DVD rental. From what we can see in the future, DVD service may finally run out of business and how to minimize the damage to Netflix is a big problem waiting for a solution. SWOT Strength Netflix is offering a flat fee policy, which is cheaper than Amazon and iTunes users and is easier to retain current users. A very distinctive strength Netflix have is that Netflix is also a producer. In this year’s Emmy Awards, Netflix Incs groundbreaking political thriller House of Cards took home an award for directing. As its name shows in Emmy, Netflix may win not only an award, but many potential users. Many people may position Netflix as a company provides high quality shows than other video distributors. Weakness Although the stock price has gone up this year and everyone now thinks Reed Hastings is the one sees the future, the remaining problem is how to survive with a $7.99 monthly flat fee for subscribers and at the same time spending more than $5 billion for the next five years to purchase TV shows and Movie License. Customers always wants more and pay less. Huge amount of spending force Netflix to attract new users in a rapid speed, but attract new users itself will be another big spending. Although the original drama â€Å"house of cards† generated a big buzz for Netflix, but the cost is considerable. Opportunities New technologies bring opportunities to online streaming video companies. Netflix has mobile app for both Android and ios system and it works well. People want to access to on-demand videos more convenient by using mobile phone and tablets. The trend of globalization gives Netflix the opportunity to grow itself. The fourth quarter of 2012, Netflix gained 3 million new global subscribers. Threat Competition from Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Google TV, and cable networks may pose threat to the company. BRAD BEALE, Director of digital video content acquisition of Amazon is known for its ability of picking up successful shows and get the license earlier than other companies. Hulu also spend a lot on bringing new contents in. Although Netflix is cheaper, Amazon offers free instant vedio to prime membership and two-day free shipping for its customers. Also, Amazon, Apple and Google now all offer their own devices for video streaming, such as Apple TV, Kindle Fire. Questions Q.1. A strong consumer backlash emerged in response to major changes in Netflix’s business model. What are some of the arguments in favor of Hasting’ decision to split the company? What decisions and options are available to Hastings? Were they good decisions? 2- 3 paragraphs Many believe DVD rental business is fading because of new technologies. People no longer want to wait for the DVD to arrive. Instead they want on-demand video services. Slip the company bring price lower for stream only customers and it is fair for them to pay for cheaper price. Put in account information is easier and benefit is longer. Hastings can choose to change the company back to the old model by listening to customers and close the DVD service a couple years later when the DVD rental industry lost all the business. I think its good decisions because the financial information shows that Reed Hastings made the good decision and wins the game. The revenue grow almost half and subscribers grow even more this year. Works Cited Laporte, N. (2013, July 1). A TALE OF TWO NETFLIX. Fast Comapny , 177, pp. 31-32. Mint. (2013, September 23). Breaking Bad, Modern Family win top Emmy Awards. (H. M. Ltd., Producer) Retrieved Septemner 29, 2013, from Mint: http://search.proquest.com.rlib.pace.edu/docview/1434860801?accountid=13044 Peterson, T. (2013, September 23). 2013 MEDIA MAVENS: BRAD BEALE. Advertising Age , 84 (33), p. 1. Ramachadran, S. (2013, September 20). Cable Fights to Feed Binge TV Viewers; Comcast, Verizon FiOS Vie With Netflix, Amazon for Rights to Show Complete Series. (Dow Jones Company Inc) Retrieved September 30, 2013, from Wall Street Journal: http://search.proquest.com.rlib.pace.edu/docview/1434160601?accountid=13044 View as multi-pages

Jorge Eduardo Urrutia Schnyder Essay Example for Free

Jorge Eduardo Urrutia Schnyder Essay John Cinque was a son to a headman from Sierra Leone’s Mani Village known as Mende who was a renowned trader and rice. Available records show that Cinque was born in (c1813- 1879). Cinque is also known as Sengbe Pieh. and is popular for staging a mutiny against slavery in Cuba in 1839 in a Cuban Amistad Ship. Originally he was called Sengbe Pieh. but Spaniards renamed him as John Cinque. His move was a milestone to the slaves who were escaping from slavery as it was ruled that slaves freeing from shackles of slavery be treated as free men. Cinque like other blacks found his way into slavery due to rice debts he had not cleared and for that reason he was captured and sold to the slave masters who were looking for slaves to work in their plantations in the New World. This paper is going to conduct an in depth research on the life of Joseph Cinque as an enslaved man, his trials and achievements in his life. Joseph Cinque was originally known as Sengbe Pieh and the later name was given to him by the Spanish (Dalzell, Fred). He was a married and had three children when he was illegally captured and sold to slave masters who put him in their ship, Portuguese slave ship Tecors. Contrary to the international law prohibiting slavery, Cinque was captured in Sierra Leone and sold to a notorious Spanish slave dealer at Lomboko Island that is located at river Gallilas’ mouth. Later in 1839 he was resold by the Spanish to another slave dealer at Havana together with other 51 Mendians where they were destined to be taken to Cuban sugar plantations at Guanaja, Puerto Principe. According to 1814’s treaty that was signed between Spain and Great Britain, slavery was to become an illegal activity after 1820 and thus what the Spaniards were doing was a violation of the treaty. â€Å"The ship was bound for Cuba in contravention of laws agreed to by Spain that had outlawed the importation of salves into the New world† (Miller 158) In Havana, the captured persons were sold at night on auction and that was how Joseph Cinque among other fifty three Africans found themselves in the hands of Pedro Monte and his colleague Jose Ruiz. They bought one African man at four hundred and fifty dollars and were destined to be slaves for ever as they were now their property. The two slave dealers decided to relocate them to Puerto principle using their boat, the Amistad but fortunately or unfortunately this boat as it approached the Cuban Coast on 30th June, Cinque incited the other slaves to attack their captors, a mission they accomplished without much difficulties (Horton 258) What exactly happened was that enslaved persons led by Cinque freed themselves and broke the ships’ arsenal and armed themselves with weapons that were stored there and attacked the Spaniards. This incident was not very different from other slave rebellions that were occurring in the Americas such as the Southampton uprising of 1831 that was spearheaded by Nat Turner. In this case, Cinque killed the ship’s captain and the cook and then they took the two masters hostage commanding them to steer the ship back to Sierra Leone. Monte had no other option but to do as he was ordered but he was cunning enough to ride the boat slowly towards African coast during the daytime but at night he would reverse the direction and ride the boat fast heading northwest, a direction that landed him to the coast of the Long Island sometimes back in August, 1839 (Horton 259). The journey was long as it was not anticipated to last that long and to make the matter worse, they had already killed the cook. For this reason, ten of the captured slaves did not make it and were found dead by the American officers who were on patrol in the sea and the stable one were taken to the Port of New London on 27th August where slavery was not yet illegal. Later, they were taken to a court where Andrew T. Judson, the judge ordered an inquiry into the incident and ruled that the Africans be temporarily taken to New Haven before they would be taken to Hartford where they would meet the United States Circuit Court jury (Muller 158). According to Niemi (23), the judge was particularly very concerned with this case and wanted the African captives to be set free in fact, contrary to the expectations of many, he referred to these men as heroes for resisting slavery likening them to the African leaders who sold them off to the Spaniards. He tried to liaise with other influential people like Theodore Sedgwick and the son of one his best friends. The case was a complex one and had some serious issues that had to be deliberated for example the ‘Evening Post’ posed the question whether it was the jurisdiction of the American Circuit Court to deal with Spanish criminal affairs but the weight of the first question was added by the reference that was made by the same paper which termed Spanish acts as a threat to the family unit and a despicable barbarous action. As Bryant was very determined to see that the enslaved Africans were freed, using his technical expertise, he build a case against the Spaniards arguing that the Africans were taken to the Cuban island in contravention to the law and thus were neither to be returned to the hands of the executers of rebellious people or be doomed to be enslaved for the rest of their lives but the Spaniards were determined to have them returned to Cuba where they would be charged with murder of the cook and the captain. Anti slavery like James Pennington and Lewis Tappan came to add their voices to that of Bryant and others who were openly opposed to slavery claiming that though slavery was allowed in Cuba, the importation of Africans to Cuba was illegal (National Portrait Gallery Home). Cinque’s courage to stage an attack against his enslavers was deemed to be a heroic deed by abolitionists who maintained that it was in order to kill the captors who had illegally held them captive as it was the only way through which they could have preserved their freedom. In 1841, the federal government was charged by the then American president John Quincy Adams who went to visit the enslaved Africans of interfering with the court cases and obstructing justice by being partial in dealing with the issue of slavery and condemning Blacks who were fighting for their freedom. As a result of his strong advocacy for the release of the captives, the Supreme Court judge ruled in their favor in March 1841 by ordering the remaining thirty five Africans, Joseph Cinque among them to be taken back to their countries and in 1842 they were returned (National Portrait Gallery Home). When Cinque returned home, he found his wife was killed and thus had to start his life from the scratch again perhaps this is one of the reason why he lost hope in the abolitionist campaign and ended up turning into a slave trader just like his captors. The abolitionists using Joseph Clique’s case as an example, they embarked on an African mission and formed a Clique’s party which was to be used as a platform for fighting slavery but this did not materialize as they had anticipated as some so called independent African thinkers opposed their moves led by Cinque who is said to have deserted the party and turned to be a slave trader till his death (Niemi 25). In short it was not the wish of Joseph Cinque to be enslaved by the Spaniards but he just found himself captured and sold to the slave dealers for failing to clear somebody’s debt. To him this was dream that he was not ready to wait for it become a reality and that was why he did all that he could to ensure that he returned back to his country even if it meant staging a rebellion. Luckily enough, he managed to do this and headed back home but his journey was not as successful as he thought it would but at long last he ended up returning home after the Supreme Court of USA ruled that the enslaved persons be deported back to their countries and that was how Cinque found himself back in Sierra Leone. Works Cited: Dalzell, Fred. Cinque (Sengbe Pieh) Mende, captive, leader. Mystic Seaport Museum. 1997. Accessed at http://amistad. mysticseaport. org/discovery/people/bio. cinque. html Horton, Lois E. Slavery and the making of America. Oxford University Press US, 2004. National Portrait Gallery Home. The Amistad Case. Available at http://www. npg. si. edu/col/amistad/index. htm Niemi, Robert. History in the media: film and television. ABC-CLIO, 2006 Muller, Gilbert H. William Cullen Bryant: author of America. SUNY Press, 2008

Evolution of Smart Homes

Evolution of Smart Homes I. Introduction Smart homes, the next gigantic leap in the field of home automation, have become an emerging research field in last few decades. Research on smart homes has been gradually moving towards application of ubiquitous computing, tackling issues on device heterogeneity and interoperability. A smart home adjusts its function to the inhabitants need according to the information it collects from inhabitants, the computation system and the context [1]. By 2050, approximately 20% of the world population will be at least 60 years old [2]. This age group is more likely to suffer from long-term chronic diseases and will face difficulties in living independently. According to World Health Organization (WHO), 650 million people live with disabilities around the world [3].The most common causes of disability include chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer; injuries due to road traffic crashes, conflicts, falls, landmines, mental impairments, birth defects, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases. It is not possible and logical to support all these patients in the medical center or nursing homes for an uncertain period of time. The solution is to accommodate health care services and assistive technologies in their home environment which is the main objective of smart homes. Sensors, multimedia devices and physiological equipments are core components to perceive information from home environment Infrared (IR) sensors, pressure sensors, magnetic contacts, passive and active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are used to track inhabitant location detection. Electrocardiogram (ECG), photoplethysmograph(PPG), ,temperature, spirometry, galvanic skin response, colorimetry and pulse measurement equipments are used to get physiological information from the patient. Camera and microphones provide audiovisual response from home user. Inhabitant can access the system through display panel. Power line communication protocols are widely used for the connectivity of home appliances. Public telecommunication network with voice and text messaging service is involved to provide telecare facility from remote location. Videoconferencing is used as an interactive communication media between caregiver and the client. TCP/IP protocols of Ethernet network provide data connectivity for local and remote sites and locations. Ethernet protocols are also used to connect health-monitoring equipments and to provide data repository service. Algorithms from machine learning, data compression, statistics and artificial intelligent are employed to predict user behavior, detect activities of daily life (ADL) and location. C4.5 algorithm from machine learning is utilized to build spatiotemporal context of user. C4.5 algorithm is developed by Quinlan in 1993 which classify the data to construct a decision tree according to data attributes [47].Active LeZi from data compression algorithms is used to predict inhabitants next behavior. Active LeZi by Gopalratnam et al..in 2007 builds a decision tree utilizing similar methodology of LZ78 data compression algorithm and predict next event using Prediction by Partial Matching (PPM) algorithm[22].Statistical predictive algorithms like Bayesian filtering, dynamic Bayesian network algorithms classify the information and recognize ADL of home client[34][41][44]. Different flavors of AI algorithms extended for smart home data processing. Markov model, Hidden Markov model, Artificial Neur al Network can detect the living pattern of user and can also predict the user [7][13][14][38]. Fuzzy Logic is used for home appliance control [36]. Smart home is mainly dedicated to provide health care, safety, security and monitoring service for patient and elderly. The house is equipped with sensors, cameras to track people and can trigger an alarm to a remote heath care service provider in the case of emergency. Sophisticated physiological devices monitor heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, ECG record and the patient is being observed from a distance location. Telecommunication service is used for communicating with service provider, relatives or neighbor and as a redundant acknowledgement method from the patient. For home comfort system, lighting, heating, doors, windows and home appliances are automatically controlled by ambient intelligence of smart home. Smart home also has significant contribution towards energy conservation by integration of energy meter with smart home [4]. Home automation is the initial state of smart home where electronic technologies are used to provide an easy access to household devices. Rapid development of sensor technology accelerated the growth of smart home that involved more data processing. Improvement of information and communication technology make possible to develop easy and cost effective methods for data repository and exchange. Smart home is a growing concept, efficient and lower cost solutions for general people are the main idea to promote it. II. Smart Home defination Smart home is an extension of modern electronic, information and communication technologies. The main objective of smart home research is to provide smartness to a dwelling facility for comfort, healthcare, security and energy conservation. Remote monitoring system is a common component of health smart home where telecommunication and web technologies are used to provide quick and proper medication to the patient from specialized assistance centre. The first formal definition of smart home was published by Intertek in 2003, which was involved to Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) smart-homes project in UK [5]. According to Intertek a smart home is a dwelling incorporating a communications network that connects the key electrical appliances and services, and allows them to be remotely controlled, monitored or accessed. A home needs three things to make it smart: Internal network wire, cable, wireless Intelligent control gateway to manage the systems Home automation products within the homes and links to services and systems outside the home III. Review of Smart Homes Smart homes projects are being conducted for last several decades and they convey different ideas, functions and utilities. It is growing to different brunches of specialization focusing the interest of the researchers and user requirements and expectations. This article is a study of the evolution of smart home according to time. Adaptive Control of Home Environment (ACHE) system is developed by Mozer in 1998 in USA. ACHE monitors user device usage pattern utilizing different types of sensors and builds an adaptive inferential engine for neural network to control temperature, heating and lighting. ACHE can control three main components of a home while trying to maximize user comfort and conserve energy [7].ACHE is one of the early smart home projects which is able to partially automate home environment via controlling lighting, temperature and heating components. CarerNet is an architectural model of integrated and intelligent telecare system proposed by Williams et al. in 1998. Its core components are sensor set, a sensor bus, intelligent monitoring system and a control unit. ECG, photoplethysmograph, spirometry, temperature, galvanic skin response, colorimetry, and pulse measurement tools used to collect physiological data. The communication network within the clients local environment is an integration of HomeLAN and Body Area Network (BAN) which is responsible to carry real-time data, event data, command and control data. It has a distributed intelligence system in the form of smart sensors, smart therapy units, body-hub, Local Intelligence Unit (LIU) and Clients Healthcare Record (CHR). Home emergency alarm system, community health information and ambulatory monitoring service can be provided by the system. [8]. CarerNet is an abstract model of health smart home and interconnecting components. No prototype of the model has been developed . Only a hypothetical case study is of an individual who had undergone brain surgery after suffering from a subarachnoid is discussed. Barnes et al. in 1998 have evaluated life style monitoring data of elderly using infrastructure of British Telecom and Anchor Trust in England. The system detects inhabitants movement using IR sensors and magnetic contacts on the entrance of the doors. To measure temperature it uses a temperature sensor in the main living area. An alarm activation system is developed which detects abnormal behavior and communicates to remote telecare control center, the clients and their carers[9]. The researchers presented a lower cost solution for smart telecare. The limitation of the system is it can identify only abnormal sleeping duration, unexpected inactivity, uncomfortable home temperature and fridge usage disorder. Moreover, it uses a special new telecom protocol named No Ring Calling which demands modifying existing telecom protocols. TERVA is a health monitoring system developed in Finland by Korhonen et al.(1998). TERVA processes physiological information like blood pressure, heart beat rate, body temperature, body weight to draw graphical representation of wellness condition of the subject[10].Research goal of the TERVA system is to develop a real time visual monitoring system but it is unable to provide long-term trend of certain physiological information. It cannot detect physiological problems and no assistive service is deployed to provide health care. The intelligent home (IHome) project at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has developed an intelligent environment (Lesser et al.1999) IHome is a simulated environment designed with Multi Agent Survivability Simulator (MASS) and a Java Agent Framework (JAF) as tools to evaluate agent behavior and their coordination. The focus of the project is to model agent interactions and task interactions so that the agent can evaluate the tradeoff between robustness and efficiency [11].IHome is a simulation only solution, the project never build a practical smart home to evaluate their model. The Aware Home Research at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed a smart home, which equipped with monitoring facilities to study human behavior (Kidd et al. 1999). To build a model of user behavior pattern, it uses smart floor to sense footsteps. Hidden Markov models, simple feature-vector averaging and neural network algorithms are applied on these data to create and evaluate behavioral model [12]. The aim of the project is to study user behavior, which is the primary stage of smart home research. The project never developed home intelligence which is a big shortfall of the research. The EasyLiving project at Microsoft Research based on intelligent environment to track multiple residents using distributed image-processing system (Krumm et al. 2000). The system can identify residents through active badge system. Measurements are used to define geometric relationship between the people, devices, places and things [13][14].The system is workable in single room only and can track upto three peoples simultaneously. SELF (Sensorized Environment for LiFe), is an intelligent environment, which enables a person to maintain his or her health through self-communication (Nishida et al. 2000). SELF observes the persons behavior with distributed sensors invisibly embedded in the daily environment, extracts physiological parameters from it, analyzes the parameters, and accumulates the results. The accumulated results are used for reporting useful information to maintain the persons health. The researchers constructed a model room for SELF consisted of a bed with pressure sensor array, a ceiling lighting dome with a microphone and a washstand with display[15].SELF describes a self-assessment system of human health but measuring only respiratory system and sleeping disorder, which is not sufficient to monitor health condition. The ENABLE project was set up in 2001 to measure the impact of assistive technology on the patient suffering from mild or moderate dementia (Adlam et al. 2004). The researcher installed two devices (cooker and night light) in the apartment of several patients in different locations to evaluate the efficiency of the system [16]. The research scope is limited to only two household devices but to assist this type of patient the whole house must possess some kind of intelligence. Health Integrated Smart Home Information System (HIS) is an experimental platform for home based monitoring (Virone.et al. 2002). IR sensors are used to track inhabitant activities and the information is transmitted via Controller Area Network (CAN) to a local computer. The system generates alerts according to some predefine zones [17]. The research is only limited to single inhabitant monitoring. In 2002, GuillÃÆ' ©n et al. developed a system composed of two parts: home station (HS) and caregiver medical center (CMC) connected via integrated service digital network (ISDN) backbone. The home station is equipped with vital signs recording module to monitor physiological data like blood pressure, temperature, ECG, pulse oximetry. Caregiver medical center is like a call center designed specially with patient monitoring software. An interactive communication system between home and caregiver center is developed using videoconferencing technology [18]. Figure 1 shows functional modules of multimedia smart home. The system requires high Internet bandwidth for videoconferencing, which needs expensive equipments and high maintenance cost. Functional module of multimedia platform [18] At University of Tokyo, Noguchi et al (2002) designed an intelligent room to support daily life of the inhabitant. The system has three main components: data collection, data processing and integration of processed data. The system learns current state of environment from sensors attached to bed, floor, table and switches. A summarization algorithm is used to track any changes in the system. The algorithm segments the collected sensory data at the points where sensor outputs changes drastically (i.e. pressure data appears suddenly or switch sensors are changed). It labels the segment with the room state. It joins a state of each segment to quantize the accumulated data and ties up the changed situation. The algorithm also tries to eliminate and reduces situations that changes slightly [19].The proposed summarization algorithm can detect user activities which is tested for single room only. No home automation method discussed utilizing the algorithm. MavHome (Managing an Adaptive Versatile Home) first introduced by Das et al. in 2002 at the University of Texas, Arlington [20]. Figure 2 describes MavHome architecture in brief. MavHome use multi disciplinary technologies: artificial intelligent, multimedia technology, mobile computing and robotics. It is divided into four abstract layers: physical, communication, information and decision. X10 protocol is used to control and monitor more than sixty X10 devices plugged into the home electric wiring system [21]. Active LeZi algorithm is developed that makes a decision tree based on kth order Markov model and predict next action calculating probability of all actions applying prediction by partial matching method [22]. Although MovHome utilize algorithms to make accurate prediction and decision, it only predicts the behavior of single inhabitant [23]. concrete architecture of MavHome[21] The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology for Successful aging (RERC-Tech-Aging) at the University of Florida introduced House of Matilda (Helel et al. 2003, 2005)[24].The home is inhabited by a dummy called Mutilda. The main aim of this research is to perceive user location using ultrasound technology. After two years, in 2005 they designed the second generation of this home named GatorTech'[25]. GatorTech is actually integration of smart device with sensors and actuators to optimize the comfort and safety of older peoples. The system is not user friendly because it requires wearable device for user tracking. In 2004, Mihailidis et al. developed a computer vision system in pervasive healthcare systems. The vision system consists of three agents: sensing, planning and prompting. Statistics and physics based methods of segmenting skin color in digital images are used for face and hand tracing [26]. Only hand and face tracing is not sufficient to make an efficient smart home system, the system should include body tracking and hand gesture reorganization. Multimedia Laboratories, NTT DoCoMo Inc. in Japan, has developed a system for modeling and recognizing personal behavior utilizing sensors and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag (Isoda et al. 2004)[27]. C4.5 algorithm is used to construct decision tree from the data obtained from the sensors and RFID tags. The users behavioral context at any given moment is obtained by matching the most recently detected states with previously defined task models. The system is an effective way for acquiring users spatiotemporal context but no intelligent system is developed for home appliances control. Andoh et al. in 2004 developed a networked non-invasive health monitoring system analyzing breath rate, heart rate, snoring and body movement. Researchers adopted Ethernet network for breath monitoring system implementation. The system can estimate sleep stages analyzing data using the algorithm developed for the purpose [28]. The system cannot summarize long term observation of patients sleeping disorder. In 2005, Masuda et al. have developed a health monitoring arrangement using existing telecommunication system for home visit rehabilitation therapists. Researchers used an air filled mat to measure heartbeat and respiratory condition. When the patient lies on the air mat, his heartbeat and respiratory movement cause significant change in air pressure inside the mat, which is measured by pressure sensor and analyzed by appropriate filtering process [29]. The interesting part of the project is the usage of an air bag as monitoring equipment but its limitation is, it can only measure heart rate and respiratory condition. In 2005, Ma et al emphasized on context awareness to provide automatic services in smart home. They used case-based reasoning (CBR) to provide more appropriate services. CBR technique relies on previous interactions and experiences to find solutions for current problems. The system can adopt any manual adjustment done by modifying case data [30].This is the initial state of the project where few scenarios like AC, TV, lamp interaction is evaluated. Their future plan is to add more contexts and enrich the features of case tables. The House_n group at MIT designed PlaceLab a new living laboratory for the study of ubiquitous technologies in home environment (Intille et al. 2005). PlaceLab deployed with numerous wire, light, pressure, temperature water, gas, current sensors with video and audio devices to create vast amount of real life data from single volunteers as well as couples [31].The goal of the project is to study human behavior, influence of technology on the people and how technology can be used to simplify user interaction with home appliances. Their main contribution is an open online database of smart home sensor events and a well featured analyzing software [48].Researchers never implemented the study to build an autonomous intelligent home. Yamazaki (2006) constructed Ubiquitous Home, a real-life test bed, for home context-aware service. It is a housing test facility for the creation of useful new home services by linking devices, sensors, and appliances across data networks. Active and passive RFID tags located above the ceiling and at the entrance of the door are used to detect and recognize inhabitants. Pressure sensors are used to track user movement and furniture. The system is occupied with plasma panels, liquid crystal display and microphone for better interaction with the users. A network robot is employed to perform certain home services. Researchers concluded that the goal of smart home is not to design an automated home but to develop an environment using interface technologies between human and the system [32].Although, the researchers installed enough sensors and interfacing devices , the system is only sensible to few task automations like TV program selection, cooking recipe display and forgotten property service. Ha et al. (2006) presents a sensor-based indoor location-aware system that can identify residents location. Researchers used an array of Pyroelectric Infrared (PIR) sensor and proposed a framework of smart home location aware system. An algorithm is developed to process the information collected from PIR sensors for inhabitant location detection. Their next step is to design an algorithm to determine location and trajectory of multiple residents simultaneously [33]. The project in dedicated to user location detection system which is an essential part of smart home. No system is developed to provide intelligence to the house employing user location. In 2007, Rahal et al. at DOMUS laboratory, Universit ´e de Sherbrooke, Canada, utilized Bayesian Filtering methods to determine location of the inhabitants. Bayes filters are efficiently used to estimate a persons location using a set of fixed sensors. In this method, the last known position and the last sensor event are both used to estimate a new location. The algorithm based on Bayesian filtering shows a mean localization accuracy of 85% [34].This project also deals with user location detection algorithm, no home automation is developed using the processed information. De Silva et al. (2007) have implemented an audiovisual retrieval and summarization system utilizing multimedia technology for human behavior tracking. Using a large number of cameras a hierarchical clustering of audio and video handover used to create personalized video clips. An adaptive algorithm is used for complete and compact summary of the video retrieved. Basic audio analysis methods are applied for accurate audio segmentation and source localization. An interface allowed users to incorporate their knowledge into the search process and obtain more accurate results for their queries [35].The system can track people, extract key frame, localize sound source, detect lighting change but cannot distinguished different people. At Tampere University of Technology, Vainio et al.(2008) developed a proactive fuzzy home-control system. An adaptive algorithm applied to evaluate the test on obtained results. The goal of the research is to help elderly people live independently at home. Developed system can recognize routines and also recognize deviations from routines. The system can provide information to caregivers about living rhythm, sleeping disorders, and medicine taking of inhabitant [36]. But the system works sensibly only for lighting control. In 2008, Swaminathan et al. proposed an object reorganization system using visual image localization and registration. Appliances are first registered in the image processing system. According to the voice command of the user, appropriate object is selected using an environmental map [27].It is actually a home automaton project using speech reorganization to receive user command and commands are executed to the objects which already known to the system. Growing Self-Organizing Maps (GSOM) used a self-adaptive neural network to detect and recognize activities of daily life addressed by Zheng et al in 2008 [38] [39]. The GSOM follows the basic principle of the Kohonen self-organizing map with a special focus on adaptive architecture. The learning process of the GSOM is started by generating an initial network composed by four neurons on a 2-dimensional grid, followed by iteratively presenting training data samples. The system is tested in single room apartment for about two weeks where it can recognized user pattern of 22 distinct activities. Like other Self Adaptive Neural Networks (SANN), the system is depends on several learning parameters to be determined in advance such as initial learning rate and the size of the initial neighborhood. Other machine learning method must be utilized in parallel to determine optimum parameter for best performance. In 2008, Perumal et al. from Institute of Advanced Technology of University Putra Malaysia (UPM) have presented a design and implemented Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) based residential engagement for smart home systems appliances control [40]. An appliance control module based on SOAP and web services developed to solve the interoperation of various home appliances in smart home systems. Fifteen feedback based control channels implemented with residential management system through Web Services. If the residential management system experiences server downtime, the home appliances can still be controlled using alternate control mechanism with GSM network via SMS Module locally and remotely. This system offers a complete, bi-directional real-time control and monitoring of smart home systems. No security mechanism is used to protect the web server from unauthorized access. Virone et al. present a dozens of statistical behavioral patterns obtained from an activity monitoring pilot study. The pilot study examined home activity rhythms of 22 residents in an assisted living environment with four case studies. Established behavioral patterns have been captured using custom software based on a statistical predictive algorithm that models circadian activity rhythms (CARs) and their deviations (Virone et al. 2008). The system cannot differentiate multiple inhabitants [41]. Yoo et al. examined web-based implementation possibility of a central repository to integrate the biosignal data arrives from various types of devices in a remote smart home. Medical waveform description Format Encoding Rule (MFER) standard is followed for communicating and storing the biosignal data in ubiquitous home health monitoring system. The web-based technology allowed ubiquitous access to the data from remote location. The paper presents a common data format for all types of sensor (Yoo et al. 2008)[42].Figure 3 describes functional architecture of web based data retrieval system. Information security, which is a burning issue for any web based system is not considered in this research. A web-based architecture for transferring the measured biosignal data from the u-House to the remote central repository. A snow-flake data model is designed by Zhang et al. in 2008 to represent the activities data in smart homes [43]. Sensor data are stored in the homeML structure. A new algorithm is proposed on the prediction of class labels for variable person and activities of daily life (ADL) indicating who is doing what, given the observed episode and time information. Accuracy is calculated as the proportion of the number of correctly predicted class over the total number of episodes in the evaluation dataset. The learning output in the form of a joint probability distribution is also assessed by the distance to the true underlying probability distribution, using the Euclidean metric. The smaller the distance is, the closer the learned model to the true situation. The algorithm is based on probabilistic distribution and able to predict ADL of more than one inhabitant. The result given is based on simulated data and the example shows only one task identification (à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"making drink activi ties). In 2008, Park et al. proposed a method for recognizing ADL at multiple levels of details by combining multi-view computer vision and RFID based direct sensor [44]. A hierarchical recognition scheme is proposed by building a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) that encompasses both coarse-level and fine-level ADL recognition. Their methodology combines the two tracking technology. The system requires wearable RFID tag which is not comfortable for users. Rashidi et al. developed CASAS at Washington State University in 2008. CASAS is an adaptive smart home that utilizes machine-learning techniques to discover patterns in user behaviour and to automatically mimic these patterns. The goal is to keep the resident in control of the automation. Users can provide feedback on proposed automation activities, modify the automation policies, and introduce new requests. In addition, CASAS can discover changes in residents behaviour patterns automatically. Frequent and Periodic Activity Miner (FPAM) algorithm mines this data to discover frequent and periodic activity patterns. These activity patterns are modelled by their Hierarchal Activity Model (HAM), which utilizes the underlying temporal and structural regularities of activities to achieve a satisfactory automation policy. User can provide feedback on proposed automation activities, modify the automation policies, and introduce new requests [45].To make a system more interactive smart home s hould be equipped with voice reorganization facilities which is absent in this system. Raad et al. developed a cost-effective user-friendly telemedicine system to serve the elderly and disabled people. An architecture of telemedicine support in smart home that consists of web and telecom interface is considered in their research (Raad et al. 2008)[46]. This system also suffers from information security issues. PRIMA (Perception, recognition and integration for interactive environments) research group of the LIG laboratory at the INRIA Grenoble research center in France has defined a model for contextual learning in smart homes (2009). The authors developed a 3D smart environment consisting cameras, a microphone array and headset microphones for situation modeling. It relies on 3D video tracking and role detection process regarding activities of the person. Roles are learned by support vector machines (SVM). It is also capable to learn speed of the inhabitant and distance to the interacting object. Proposed system can identify situations like introduction, presentation, aperitif, game and siesta. Its error rate is very high [49]. Kim et al. developed a pyroelectric infrared (PIR) sensor based indoor location aware system (PILAS) in 2009.The system uses an array of PIR sensors attached with the ceiling and detects inhabitants location by combining overlapped detected areas. PIR sensors construct a virtual map of resident location transition. To improved accuracy, they applied Bayesian classifier using a multivariate Gaussian probability density function to determine the location of an inhabitant. PILAS is unable to detect multiple residents [50]. Wang et al. have developed a smart home monitoring and controlling system(2009). The system can be controlled from remote locations through an embedded controller. They have developed different GUI for mobile devices and PCs. Each device has a unique address. A new command format to control the devices is introduced. It is a complex system and not compatible to previous smart homes architectures [51]. Yongping et al. have developed an embedded web server to control equipments using Zigbee protocol (2009). For this purpose they used S3C2410 microprocessor which was programmed with Linux 2.6 kernel. To provider online access a small web server (only 60 Kbytes) named Boa is installed. An interface had also been designed to communicate with Zigbee module (MC13192).The system do possess any type of intelligence [52]. Hussain el al. have developed inhabitant identification system using wireless sensor network (WSN) and RFID sensors (2009). The system can identify user location by the intensity of the Radio Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) of WSN. A person is recognized by attached a RFID tag. The combined reading of RSSI signal and RFID receiver can successfully identify specific location of a resident in the home. The system is limited to single person tracking [53]. At Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan, Chen et al.

Neuroscience and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences Essays -- Biolog

Connections Between Neuroscience and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences: Implications for Education The old paradigm of students as empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge has given way to the constructivist belief that students continuously build understandings based on their prior experiences and information. The idea of a fixed intelligence has given way to a more flexible perception of gradual intellectual development dependent on external stimulation (6) Our intelligence, therefore, is our singular, collective ability to act and react in an everchanging world (1) In my first two web papers I researched two defined disorders, ADHD and Autism, following a train of thought which began with a question: given that the apparent bottom line concerning the human nervous system is that each of us is unique in our neural patterns, where do we draw the line between defining something as a disorder versus simply a difference? This has led me to think more generally about the notion of human variability, particularly with regards to learning abilities and intellectual achievement. I believe that our society has too narrowly defined these phrases, with the negative result that people who do not learn or achieve within these proscribed boundaries are considered lacking. This is true even with regards to the earliest days of schooling, and is reflected in traditional methods used to teach children. The ultimate, destructive result is that children who fall outside our educational protocols are at risk for feeling useless, worthless and unappreciated. Recent decades have seen a dramatic rise in our understanding of the neurobiology behind the way the brain works. The common denominator in brain research is variability... ...m the 21st Century Learning Initiative http://www.newhorizons.org/ofc_21clicaine.html 13)Principles of Multiple Intelligence Theory by J. Keith Rogers http://www.harding.edu/USER/cbr/WWW/midemo/prin.html 14)The Theory of Multiple Intelligences http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/zahraar/mil.htm 15)Matters of Style by Richard M. Felder http://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/LS-Pri%20sm.htm 16)An Interview with Howard Gardner by Ronnie Durie http://www.newhorizons.org/trm_duriemi.html Other Sources: Armstrong, Thomas. Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom. Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1994. Delcomyn, Fred. Foundations of Neurobiology. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1998. Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983.

F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby :: essays research papers fc

A big house, nice cars, 2.5 kids, a dog, a beautiful devoted spouse, power and a ridiculous amount of money. That is the classical American Dream, at least for some. One could say, an outsider perhaps, that Americans strive for the insurmountable goal of perfection, live, die and do unimaginable things for it, then call the product their own personal American Dream. Is having the American Dream possible? What is the American Dream? There is one answer for these two questions: The American Dream is tangible perfection. In reality, even in nature, perfection does not exist. Life is a series of imperfections that can make living really great or very unpleasant. Living the American Dream is living in perfection, and that by definition is not possible, thus deflating our precious American Dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald proves this fact in The Great Gatsby, through his scintillating characters and unique style. Characters in books often mirror the author's feelings towards the world around them. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald suggested the moral decline of the period in American history through the interpersonal relationships among his characters. The situations in the lives of the characters show the worthlessness of materialism, the futile quest of Myrtle and Gatsby, and how America 's moral values had diminished- through the actions of Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and Gatsby's party guests. Despite his newly acquired fortune, Gatsby still cannot afford his one true wish, therefore he cannot buy everything which is important to Daisy. "..Their love is founded upon feelings from the past, these give it, notwithstanding Gatsby's insistence on being able to repeat the past , an inviolability. It exists in the world of money and corruption but is not of it." (Lewis 48 ) In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the uses of literary technique of symbolism to reflect what life in the 1920's was like, through Fitzgerald's eyes. The image of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg's eyes is used to signify an ever watchful godlike figure. "Just as Wilson comes half—consciously to identify the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg with God, so the reader gradually becomes aware of them as representing some kind of detached intellect, brooding gloomily over life in the bleak waste land surrounding it, and presiding fatalistically over the little tragedy enacted as if in sacrifice before it." (Miller 36) The eyes not only symbolize a god—like being but also Fitzgerald himself and his negative views of 1920's society. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby :: essays research papers fc A big house, nice cars, 2.5 kids, a dog, a beautiful devoted spouse, power and a ridiculous amount of money. That is the classical American Dream, at least for some. One could say, an outsider perhaps, that Americans strive for the insurmountable goal of perfection, live, die and do unimaginable things for it, then call the product their own personal American Dream. Is having the American Dream possible? What is the American Dream? There is one answer for these two questions: The American Dream is tangible perfection. In reality, even in nature, perfection does not exist. Life is a series of imperfections that can make living really great or very unpleasant. Living the American Dream is living in perfection, and that by definition is not possible, thus deflating our precious American Dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald proves this fact in The Great Gatsby, through his scintillating characters and unique style. Characters in books often mirror the author's feelings towards the world around them. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald suggested the moral decline of the period in American history through the interpersonal relationships among his characters. The situations in the lives of the characters show the worthlessness of materialism, the futile quest of Myrtle and Gatsby, and how America 's moral values had diminished- through the actions of Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and Gatsby's party guests. Despite his newly acquired fortune, Gatsby still cannot afford his one true wish, therefore he cannot buy everything which is important to Daisy. "..Their love is founded upon feelings from the past, these give it, notwithstanding Gatsby's insistence on being able to repeat the past , an inviolability. It exists in the world of money and corruption but is not of it." (Lewis 48 ) In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the uses of literary technique of symbolism to reflect what life in the 1920's was like, through Fitzgerald's eyes. The image of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg's eyes is used to signify an ever watchful godlike figure. "Just as Wilson comes half—consciously to identify the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg with God, so the reader gradually becomes aware of them as representing some kind of detached intellect, brooding gloomily over life in the bleak waste land surrounding it, and presiding fatalistically over the little tragedy enacted as if in sacrifice before it." (Miller 36) The eyes not only symbolize a god—like being but also Fitzgerald himself and his negative views of 1920's society.

Abigail’s Party Essay

My group and I are working on a play called the â€Å"Birthday Party† By Harold Pinter. The work is set in 1960’s. The scene we doing is about a man, names Petey returning home from some sort of morning to job to a boarding house where his wife, who’s called Meg and is the owner, fusses around him. We start to see that this routine is very basic and a sense of this what they do every day. As the scene goes on Stanley comes in and plays quite a grumpy teenager. I play the part of Petey. At the time of this plays setting, men had more of a dominant role in society and the women didn’t work much and did more of the housework. This could mean that the male characters in plays around this time were more dominate and women did more housework and just like Meg, fussed around their husband as he was the only source of income, this could influence Meg as being fussy and concerning over Petey. The war would have been less than two decades ago so that may influence the characters in plays. Meg maybe fussing around he husband because he was a war-hero influencing her to very proud and caring of husband, or maybe Petey only has a morning job because he is slightly injured, this could influence his physical expression. This is different from the text that we have studied called Abigail’s Party because was set in the 1970’s where women had a more dominant role than in the 1950’s. The women were more out-spoken and more free to work have more social activities. In Abigail’s Party there was a lot more conflict and more fiery action between characters unlike in the Birthday Party it was Meg said a comment, which Petey may of thought was stupid, Petey just answered simply in a slow pace and showed no motivation to want to speak. In Abigail’s Party when a comment was made that one of the partners didn’t like to hear they either fought about it or gave a sarcastic comment to show their annoyance whereas in the Birthday Party I, Petey, just gave short simple unmotivated answers to a persistent and fussing Meg. The two plays showed different ways of coping with situations as throughout the scene we performed Petey showed boredom and Meg carried on being quirky, fussy and questionable, in comparison to that in Abigail’s Party they handled situations in a more sarcastic, and argumentative. The two plays are humorous on different levels. The Birthday Party is funny because of we can see Peteys clear boredom of having this conversation and routine, which we can tell is a daily thing he goes through. Megs stupid comments just to speak and engage with Petey and in cases, to know out side life, is funny to us because the questions are stupid like when he’s just got the corn flakes and she asks if they are nice and he hasn’t even tasted them. However, the two plays have similarities. Pinter and Leigh are both known for naturalism. The scene on Birthday Party I performed was very natural and realistic nothing out of the ordinary happened it was very simple and plain but it was easy to relate to which made it effective and the birthday party as too naturalistic and perhaps more modern and in the effect of couple arguing and women playing more dominate roles. However, the â€Å"Birthday Party† as it goes on turns out to be more absurd and super-natural. Both plays also have fussy and inquisitive women. Meg is very questionable to Petey and wanting to know things, Bev. Tries to keep the gathering she’s got alive and wanting people to pay attention to her likewise to Meg wanting Peteys attention. The historical and social setting is fairly similar as the man in Birthday Party does seem to have the dominant role as Meg does everything for him cooking, washing etc. Contrastingly to when Angie say’s something against Tony, like he is argumentative or won’t do something, he takes action by shouting or grabbing her hand. Angie stops and doesn’t protest showing men still had some dominant role in the 70’s. We are presenting our play as the audience in a semi-circle in one end of the studio and us performing in the other half of the circle. This allows the audience to be the third wall, which is very in the style of Pinter and Leigh. This can give the audience more of a role and part, its very soap like, which is naturalistic, just as the plays studied, are intended to be. We are using different techniques and styles of performing such as giving each character more or less just one characteristic and not changing the pace much. For example when I play Petey I kept the same tone and tired motivation to tell the audience that I’ve been doing this for a very long time. For Meg she kept her fussing and questionable ways and when Stanley comes down he was more mellow and got the attitude of I’ve got my wrapped round my little finger. We used symbolism in our play, for example my paper. When I played Petey, the paper was my only bit of something new for that day, everything else was the same predictable self but my paper, which I’m though out the scene reading or holding, gives me salivation from Meg and the predictable ways. We are keeping the style very naturalistic. This is different from the other play as the characters pace changed very much through the play. At one time they would be talking and the next minute there would be an argument to change the pace and the mood in which all the characters felt. You never felt the characters would stay for long at one place whereas Petey stayed in the chair all the time and kept his pace the same except it did change sometimes. The other text (Abigail’s party) influenced our performance by making Meg a little more dominate and persistent for Peteys attention.

Evacuation, Second World War Coursework Essay

Source B shows the negative sides and is more personal that the first source. Extracted from an interview with a teacher in 1988, the teacher remembers being evacuated with the school children. The interview was made in 1988 many years after the war so the lady would be of old age. Her memories may be woolly and not of great accuracy, and as it will have been written up by the interviewer it is secondary information. She may be influenced on her views of evacuation after the war; and so be biased against it, even though it saved so many lives at the time. She describes the children as being ‘too afraid to talk’, which I feel may have been true. Children were being taken away from their families and boarding a train where neither themselves or the teachers knew where they were going, as the teacher quotes ‘we hadn’t the slightest idea where we were going and we put the children on the train and the gates closed behind us’. The worry and anxiety affected the parents above all, and from this source it suggests that the mothers ‘pressed against the iron gates calling ‘good-bye darling’. Even though they were told not to come they trailed behind desperate to spend the last moments with their children. Mothers were persuaded into letting their children go by the government and the propaganda around at the time and were even considered selfish if they did not allow their children We do not know who the source is written by, just that it is from an interview. There does not seem to be a real purpose to this interview, but just to perhaps contribute the information gathered to a history book or other merely informative purposes, as the interview took place so long after the war was over. There would be no need therefore for the lady to lie or twist the truth purposefully. And no purpose of the interviewer to convert her information into propaganda or such, so I thin the interview is fairly trustworthy to that extent Source C was written in 1973 and was published a long time after the end of the war. This makes it a secondary source, as it has not come directly from the mouths of the children or the foster parent. Written by a lady presumably for the purpose of educating children on evacuation, language and content is dulled slightly to be more appropriate for children. If it had been a book for adults it would have been described differently. The children would not have ‘giggled’ but would have been offended by the automatic presumption of poverty. They may have even explained that their slippers would not fit in the case. Written for children, no bad points would have been inserted and simple language will have been used. The source may lose reliability due to being edited for children as children are not to be exposed to the negative side of evacuation. This is not a source, which shows the failure or success or evacuation, but if it was to highlight one over the other I would say it shows the successes mostly. I know from other information that one of the main products of evacuation was the sudden realisation from the middle class of the poverty and poor education of children and adults living in the slums. Shown here in the source the woman does presume they are too poor to have slippers, and is embarrassed that she presumed they would own some. Even though the children giggle about it, it is very serious that some children evacuated were too poor to have slippers and some too poor to form the necessary kit of items required. The kindness of the foster parent towards the children and the understanding of her taking them both acknowledging they were siblings show other successes of evacuation. However this was not always the case. Another foster parent may have been negative towards the child or children, and some foster -parents only had room for one.

Family Health Assessment Essay

The Smiths have been married for twenty years and have an eighteen year old son and sixteen year old daughter. I formatted open minded focused questions based on Gordon’s eleven functional health pattern assessments to interview the family. These questions are included with this paper for review. This paper will discuss each of these eleven functional health pattern assessments and how it relates to my chosen family. Health perception relates to what health means to this family. Are they having any health issues, how do they maintain their health and where do they receive most of their health education? This family has few active health problems at this time and none of the family members currently take any medications, except OTC meds for headaches etc. Mom is overweight and is aware of this and has an action plan. Dad is a heavy smoker, smoking two packs per day for the last forty years! He does not recognize this as a health problem and does not want to quit. Everyone is up to date with vaccinations and sees their physician as needed. They have good health and dental insurance coverage. Both parents drink alcohol on occasion but not to excess. Eighteen year old son has drunk alcohol on occasion but has abstained since receiving a DUI last year at the age of seventeen. Mom is a Registered Nurse who oversees family’s general health care and health promotion. Family consider themselves Christian but does not attend church regularly. Nutrition assessment is focused on the patterns of food and fluid consumption relative to metabolic needs (Kriegler&Harton, 1992). Dads diet lacks fruits and vegetables which he refuses to eat, so diet consists of meat and carbohydrates. Mom on the other hand is Vegetarian who does eat fish occasionally. Mom is overweight, has a ‘diet’ plan but fails due to lack of willpower and working night shift. Family does not usually eat breakfast except occasionally on weekends. The children eat lunch at school, mom is asleep and dad will fix himself a snack. All family members take a daily multivitamin. Mom tries to prepare meals in the crock-pot when she gets home in morning for evening meal. If she is too tired or doesn’t do Dad will usually order fast food like pizza. Sleep and rest assessment focus is on the individuals sleep, rest and relaxation practices (Kriegler&Harton,1992). Mom works twelve hour night shifts 5-6 days per week and has 1hour commute each way to work. She is obligated to attend meetings at least one day per week for about 1 hour at end of her shift. She tries to prepare the evening meal each morning before she goes to bed. On a good day she gets 6 hours sleep, on days off she sometimes uses Benadryl to assist sleep. Dad is unemployed but is an early riser, usually awake by 0530 so likes to be in bed by 2100. Both children like to stay up late and must be encouraged to sleep as they have school. Elimination is focused on excretory patterns (Kriegler&Harton, 1992). Dad has no problems and has daily bowel movements. Mom tends to either be constipated or have diarrhea, she also reports moderate bladder leakage. Both children report no issues with elimination. Activity and exercise assessment is focused on the activities of daily living, exercise and leisure activities (Kriegler&Harton, 1992). Dad is unemployed so keeps up with the yard work and some housekeeping, but has no formal exercise regimen. Mom works long hours on night shift so feels she has no time for an exercise program as this would eat into her sleep hours. Both children are active with school sports such as football, cheerleading, volleyball and track. On weekends sometimes the family will go camping or kayaking. The family has a pool which Mom uses daily when the weather permits. Cognitive and sensory perception is the assessment that focuses on the ability to comprehend and use information and on sensory function (Kriegler&Harton, 1992). Dad has a GED but no higher education, he is a USMC veteran of the Vietnam War, and he is a well read individual with above average intelligence. Mom obtained her nurse education overseas and is currently studying for her BSN. Neither have any memory problems buts Dad’s mom had Alzheimer’s so this worries him. Both children are average students with no aspirations to go to college at present. Mom wears contact lenses, Dad wears glasses, and both children have no sensory deficits. Dad is also slightly hard of hearing related to his military career. Self perception assessment is focused on an individual’s attitude towards self such as body image, self esteem and self worth (Kriegler&Harton, 1992). Dad has some self worth issues related to being laid off from work several months ago, he has applied for many jobs but feels he is considered ‘too old’ at 56 years old. Mom is overweight and is extremely conscious of her size. She tends to wear loose clothes and does not like to be photographed. She has tried unsuccessfully to lose weight many times. Children are confident teenagers who are popular at school. Role relationship assessment is focused on the individual’s roles in the world and relationships with others (Kriegler&Harton, 1992). The Smiths appear to have a very tight knit family. Mom loves being a nurse and has worked at the same hospital for over 20 years. The family has a wide circle of friends; he has no living family and her family still live overseas. The whole family is very social and love to entertain when at all possible. Sexuality assessment is focused on the individual’s satisfaction with sexuality patterns (Kriegler&Harton, 1992). Mom and Dad have been happily married for 20 years. They have an active and satisfying sex life. Mom still menstruates and has been considering a hysterectomy on doctor’s advice for fibroid tumors. Mom strongly does not believe in elective surgeries so struggles with heavy menses monthly and severe pain. Dad supports her decision at this time but her pain distresses him. Mom has not had a PAP in years but has an appointment for a PAP and mammogram pending. Son recently split from long term girlfriend, daughter is not sexually active yet but just had her first PAP. Coping assessment is focused on the individual’s perception of stress and coping strategies, also individual support systems should be evaluated (Kriegler&Harton, 1992). Mom is an emergency room nurse who uses her husband to decompress. Each morning when she gets home they discuss her shift. Dad feels under stress at the moment while trying to find employment. Mom is supportive and is working extra to provide extra income. Children have usual high school drama but appear well rounded. This family regularly has a ‘family meeting’ where there is open and non judgmental discussion of any issues. All major decisions are discussed with the entire family. Mom is from overseas but speaks with her family every Sunday. Overall this family is well educated and well adjusted. This health assessment notes some areas that this family can work on.

The Price of Happiness

People all around the world work their hardest to ensure that they have a happy life for them and their families. Happiness as we know cannot be bought with money, but Ben L. Ashcraft states that everything in life comes with a price tag, including happiness, and through our choices we select the price we are willing to pay. Ashcraft refers to a quote by James E. Fraust who stated â€Å"If you're not willing to pay the price of success, you will pay the price of failure.†Ashcraft says that being successful will lead to a happy life, although success has an up-front fee where not all beings are willing to pay, as opposed to failure where you are allowed a grace period before you are required to begin paying. He suggests developing a â€Å"long-term vision† in which people may see the result of their actions down the road. So does happiness have a price? it does, the price is the choices we make in our lives, the choice to travel the road of success of failure.Happiness c annot be bought with money, as cliche as it sounds it is absolutely true. The price of happiness can be paid by the choices we make in life. People always state that we pay the price of our mistakes , but we also pay the price of happiness. Ashcraft writes that being responsible, admitting to mistakes, apologizing, getting an education, telling the truth, making changes, repairing relationships, etc†¦ are the cost of success. As simple and easy as they sound they might be truly difficult in some situations.For example, an employee in a company makes an unintentional error at his job that leads to a chain of mistakes throughout the place of work which causes major commotion and confusion. That employee, although being terrified of his mistake, admits the fault he has done, takes responsibility and becomes determined in fixing his blunder. By that difficult choice, he has shown that he can be a responsible and dependable being, which can be a major positive feature to his future in that company.However, most people will not own up to their mistakes which may begin their travel on the road of failure. Suppose that employee does not take responsibility of his error but instead be dishonest about the situation and inflict the damage he has done upon another worker where he aims to be clear out of any trouble, which at the time may have been an easier choice. Ashcraft calls that a grace period before you are required to begin paying, in this case paying for his mistakes.It is known that no mistake goes unpunished, when the company figures out that the employee responsible was deceitful and corrupt, they take severe actions toward him. Not only did he lose his job, but he lost his credibility and trust between his colleagues and other companies who have heard of his name and his procedures, thus making it tougher for him to find another job in his area of expertise. Ben L. Ashcraft suggests that â€Å"long-term vision† can be of magnificent help to avoid failure, which in my opinion can be a great benefit in our lives.He compares it to driving on a windy dark road with poor headlights. You could miss a curve or crash. Long-Term is like turning on the bright light and seeing what the results of your actions might be â€Å"down the road†. Although the price of success may be rather difficult in the beginning, or a certain amount or pressure may come with it, but in the long-term it will decrease tremendously and become easier to pay.Not so the price of failure, for it may stack up to enormous amounts, that will cause grief and despair in your life and those around you. There is no way to escape paying the price of your actions. Take that young man who took responsibility for his slip-up, he was clearly looking forward towards the future for he knew if he was untruthful that would be a vast hit to his career which may cause a great amount of unrest and instability in his life. Indeed there is a price to happiness, every choice w e make whether good or bad will affect it.As hard as paying up-front for success may be, we must always accomplish it or try our best to, for in the long-term we will reap the goodness out of that choice. On the other hand, we may have the option of taking a different path that may lead to failure. That path may be trouble-free and uncomplicated at first, but the problems will catch up to us, those we thought we were liberated from, and they will ruin our lives. We have the ability to decide what the price of our happiness is, how abundantly present it may be in our lives or the opposite. Choose wisely.

Challenges of Youths in Our Contemporary World

Youth does not want to give up in the face of difficulties†¦ Youth believes in a better world and is determined to do something to help bring it about†. ROLE OF THE YOUTH IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD The youth has great strength, vigour, good health etc. These features should be channeled towards the propagation of the gospel. Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for such belongs the kingdom of God (Lk. 18:16). In the church, the youths have the responsibility of evangelizing. It is their duty to witness Christ to their peers and to the remotest areas where Christ has not been preached. Anthony Aja, quoting the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II wrote: â€Å"The Church needs your energies, your enthusiasm; your youthful ideas in order to make the Gospel of life penetrate the fabric of the society†. â€Å"Besides, the Pope re-emphasized the part that youth can play in the call to evangelize the world as he addressed them in these words. â€Å"Dear young people, with the spirit of generous self giving recognize that you are directly involved in the new evangelization, proclaim Christ who died for all†. Where are our Youths today? Out there in search of worldly pleasure or working for the Lord. (Ref. to the past). To be good evangelizer, witnessing must be accompanied by good example, being like Christ in all ramification. The bible recorded many dynamic youths worthy of emulation. Two of such youths will be considered in this text. They are Joseph and David. Joseph had an encounter with God. He reverenced God. The fear of God was in his heart. Portipher’s household prospered because of the presence of Joseph. How about you? He hated sin. He successfully resisted the temptation from his master’s wife. To the sin-laden wife of his master Portipha, he asked, â€Å"how can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God†? (Gen. 39:9). To escape the wrath that might befall him as a result of this great sin, he ran and fled from this great evil, sin of fornication. Godless youth would take advantage of this immoral opportunity and yield to the temptation. It takes a heart that has been washed by the Blood of The Lamb, a youth who has experienced the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, a sanctified person and Holy Ghost filled to overcome such temptation. For the bible says â€Å"for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world†. Titus 2:11-12. David the son of Jesse, the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse, rose and worked marvels for god right from his youth. He killed a lion, a bear and conquered the veteran warrior Goliath. He overcame the evil spirits that tormented Saul by his anointed fingers on the musical instruments. He was able to do all these exploits for God because of his personal knowledge of God and the power of the Holy Ghost that was upon him. Through the youngest of Jesse’ sons, his fear of the lord and his close relationship with God, made him to do the chosen one of God. †Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and the spirit of the Lord came mighty upon David from that day forward (1Samuel 16:13). Above all learn from Jesus Christ, who from childhood went about doing the father’ business, â€Å"I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other citizens also, for I was sent for this purpose? Make yourself available for noble use. Challenges Facing the Youth Today The general state of youth reveals spirituals, social and psychological crises and confusion. They are being affected by the effects and influence of the society, peer groups, parental neglect and the evil one. Many of our youths blindly follow the dictates of the secularization of Western culture. The effects of secularism on most people have even made them argue that churches should accepts the society’s new directions. To them, if the society accept the society’s new directions. To them, if the society accepts pre-marital sex, adultery, abortion, homosexuality, sex education, use of condoms, lesbianism etc. hey cannot see why the church has to keep calling them sins. The youth sees the youth state as a period of fun and freedom. However, they forget to recognize that this stage is important and transitory – a stage between childhood and adulthood. Mistakes youth make at his stage in life could be detrimental bearing with it a lifetime consequences. For example, Youths who take to armed robbery, prostitution, drug trafficking, political thruggery, and a ll manner of violent practices carry over such nefarious activities from their youthful stage into adulthood. At adulthood they become a problem to themselves, the society and invariably their children who may take after them. What a wasted life! In fact, they are unable to build a worthwhile foundation on which to rest their future. Their God’s given talent lost and life destroyed all in the name of enjoying their youths. In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he admonished Timothy in these words: Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue Righteous, faith, love and peace, Along with those who call on the Lord Out of a pure heart† 2Tim:22 The youthful stage when properly managed can lead to disaster. All youths should heed to Paul’s admonition to timothy. Flee from all evil desires and run after righteous. Many of our youths are compromising with worldly ideals. Compromise with the world brings corruption. It destroys the child of God’s testimony and makes his light grow dim. Learn from David and Joseph, the way to upright living. The youth is being influenced and challenged today in the following areas: 1. INFLUENCE OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY Modern technology had led to the invention of personal computer, the satellite, Digital television, the internet, mobile phone (GSM). These devices had in no small measure made the world a global village. However, the challenges facing our youths (Christian youth) is how to use them without abusing them. The truth is that these devices rather then being used for the advancement of knowledge which is capable of making the world a better place have become powerful tools in the hands of Satan for the perversion of morals. For example, the computer has both simplified and speeded up the operation in many fields of human endeavor – data storage, medicine, architecture, music and broadcasting industry. These are interactive computer software for learning of virtually any subject. The mobile telephone has made communication easy. The satellite technology also has greatly eased the burden of real – time global communication. The internet is a great source of information, Books; encyclopedias on any subject, theses, revise, online news, libraries are now available on the internet. Various school activities which were manually carried out in the past, such as purchasing of admission forms, payment of school fees, access to course outlines, result etc are now done online. Sources of information and different educational operations are now available on the internet. However, one must not lose sight of the evil associated with these devices (internet, GSM and computer). Many (including children, youth and even older people) are introduced to do world of deceit, indecency, immorality crime, sexual perversions, violence and many other vices through the use of these inventions of modern technology. The computer and the internet have more damaging influence on the youth. Youths spend long hours watching digital videos (DVD) or playing violent, even bloody and demonic computer games. Some youths spend hours or the whole night browsing forbidden site on the internet thereby getting exposed to inappropriate materials, such as pornographic and erotica because some youth get initiated into Satanism, Spiritism and other esoteric region. The TV and internet have taking over the place of the bible and prayers in a good number of homes. Youth treasure their wide exploration of the internet in place of reading their books and other intellectual activities. This a leading to a dramatic decline in the academic performance of the youth and a high rate of unproductively of the youth in all spheres of life. Wise parents should rise up to this challenge, and set up corrective measures to arrest this trend of self – destruction of the youth. 2. THE FILM INDUSTRY Many youths spend long hours watching the television denying themselves of meaningful activities that will promote heathy living and advancement in life. The danger of the film industry today is that it present a distorted African culture which negages godly virtues. For example, pre-marital sex is against God an abominable thing in African culture, but the film industry today presents it as the norm and what must follow or be part of a relationship. Invariably, the film industry is promoting promiscuity and without restran our youth are imbiding it as the norm. Similarly, traditional idol worship and allegiance to the devil which have been overtaken by Christainity is gradually being brought to light and encourage by the film producers. What about movies dominated with violent operations?. This negates God peaceful co-existence among men. Parents must therefore rise up to control what their children watch on the television. 3. NEGLECING OF HARD WORK Many youths want to go the easy way of life. No work but wants to be rich. They wish for success in life without paying the price of diligence. You need to see the coutless number of youths at the cyber cafe, browsing the internet looking for innocent preys to devour of thir hard earn money. Some Pentecostal pastors are not left out in the craze for prosperity through miracle galore at the expense of diligent labour. 4. SEARCH FOR GREENER PASTURE Many youths run the risk of searching for illegal means to go out of this country for better life. Experiences of those who attempted leaving this country reveal the agony many had to go though traveling through waste land to cross over to their â€Å"promised land†. In the process many had lost their lives and their sense of value of life. Those who made it to their dreamed land are out their doing menial jobs and worst still are out into crimes of various degrees. 5. Domestic Problems Many youth are confronted with Domestic problems ranging from hostility from parents, strife between their fathers and mothers, parents inability to provide the basic necessities of life. Youths from such homes run away from home, get involved in all forms of crimes such as 419, armed robbery, thuggery, prostitution or hired assassions. Parents should wake up to their responsibilities and make sustainable plans for their children. 6. INDECENT DRESSING AMONG YOUTHS We have been wonderfully made by God. Praise the Lord! Let us trace our dressing to the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they realized that they are naked. They sewed fig leaves together to make themselves aprons (Gen3:7). This covered only a part of their bodies. This is fact was not proper clothing and so the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them. This implies that the lord God covered their nakedness. Therefore, any clothing that does not cover the body fully is an indecent cloth. Let us also consider the demoniac in St. Luke’s gospel Chapter 8 ;26-35). The demon possessed man was naked. The bible described him as â€Å"a man from the city who had demon; for a long time he had worn no clothes, and lived not in a house but among tombs’. With encounter with Christ Jesus, he was delivered from the legion of evil spirit, he was clothed and he was in his right mind† (Luke 8:35). This implies that only people who are not in their right mind would go about without clothes not big enough to cover their nakedness. The modern day christains especially youths are without estrain imbiding and embracing worldly principles, values, culture and customs without making refence to the word of God. The bible says: â€Å"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is inworld, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father, but is of the world†. I John2:15. Unholy attitudes or worldliness has become the culture of the church. Some church members tell you what you wear does not matte, after all religion is in the heart. However, they forget that there is a link between the state of man’s heart and the outward appearance. In fact, one’s outlook is greatly influenced by the condition of the heart. It is not uncommon today to find different kinds of immodest and indecent dressed worn by the majority of young people and some older people in the society, even in the church of God. These ladies wear transparent and body hugged clothes under the guise of fashion and civilization. In fact, you see girls of cheap and easy virtue wearing provocative or seductive apparels that partially expose sensitive reas of their bodies such as breast, navels, abdomen and thighs, such youth are not left out in their heavy make-ups. Their make-ups are so excessive and outrageous that the girls are not less than masquerades and cannot but be mistaken for prostitutes. Why would a Christain woman or lady imitate Jezbel? â€Å"When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it and she painted her eyes, and adorned he r head and looked out of the window† 2King9:30. Some ladies dress in such way that they stimulate lustful desires in men. The harlot dresses shamefully only to advertise, comete and seduce the opposite sex. They wear revealing clothes which create in men some immoral desires. Mini-skirts are symbolic of those ladies who want to seduce men. Every mini-skirt is a fuel that sets the mind of a man to imagine the most debased thoughts. On the other hand, ladies who are seductively dressed are more likely to be harassed by men. In the actual sense, a lady who is immodestly dressed is simply adverstising herself, telling the male folk that she is available. No wonder, today that the rate at which women are raped is exceedingly alarming. The men folk are not left out of this craze for fashion. They fry their hair (jerry curls or perm0, weave their hair, wear earring, leave their shirits unbuttoned, exposing their beareded chest, have funny styles of hair cut, apply make up just to prove themselves as â€Å"senior guys†. 7. Sexual Immorality/ Fornication Many youths do not see sextual immorality/formation as sin. They see it as a way of expressing their love to a person of the opposite sex. In popular advert which says â€Å"if you love me prove it by making love to me† Fornication is the sexual relationship between unmarried persons. God condemns fornication; Do you not know that your body is a temple of he Holy spirit, who is in you whom you have received from god? You are not your own, you were received with a price. Therefore, honour god with your body (1cor 6:19-20) Anyone who destroy the temple of the Holy spirit which you are will face wrath of God. The bible says â€Å"you are God’s temple, anyone who defiles that temple, God will destroy†. Some youth who engage in fornication (pre-marital sex) tell you they are in search of happiness, pre-marital sex has brought shame, disgrace and to many, unfulfilled destiny and untimely death. According to Ibid: Pre-marital sex has many adverse effects surrounding it. By so doing expose themselves to many risks such as: pregnancy, abortion, death, death, veneral disease, fear, shame, disrespect, sterility, uncompleted career are grievous sins against God, your creator. These are what we risk ourselves for, Just a mere pleasure which does not last. Similarly, punch Newspaper had on one of its publication pointed out that †Pregnancy is just one of the ways one can reap on unpleasant harvest from fornication†¦ It is better to avoid pre-marital sex†. 8. Wild Ambition Youths, no doubt are very ambitious. Being ambitious itself should be commended. But when the ambition becomes obnoxious, wrong signals are elayed. It is not uncommon today to find youhs engage in all manner of nefarious activities that are opposed to Christain virtues in a bid to acquire great wealth, fame and success. They are usually recruited as political thugs, fake drug peddlers, armed robbers, hostage takers, murderers, assassins while others become cultists, prostitutes and so on. Some become involved in dubious and undefiled business. The bible tells us to flee from all appearance of evil. Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any paise, think on these thing (1 Cor10:31. Phil 4:8) Do not get involved in any activity that is contrary to the tenents of God. Anything contrary leads to hellfire. 9. Peer Group Influence Many Youth have been led astray by those they regard as friends. The influences of peers can bring about a positive or a negative change in one’s life. But today, such influences have been found to destroy the lives of those who keep had company. Thomas Martin as reported by Stan Ilo had this to say â€Å"What can be more dangerous to youth than bad company; what more fatal to all moral rectitude and feeling than influence of bad example. Bad company ruins good moral. It will be highly recommended youths can be involved in authentic friendship. John Chidi once classified friendship into 3: 1. Friendship based on unity 2. Friendship based on Sexual pleasure 3. Good griendship Youth should be encouraged to get involved in good friendship I =n which a man and a woman can be close friends without any sexual intercourse whatsoever. 0 Foul Language, noisy Music, Obscene Dance, pornography Music is an ancient means with which God’s people adored, exalted His Holy name and praised his majesty. This is still God’s expectation from us today. However, Christain music of today has assumed a new dimension from what obtains in the bible. Most Christain music today are emotional, sensual and noisy. The musical instrument soun d than the wordings as obtained in worldly music. Such songs do not give any inspiration, and it lacks modesty and moderation. So also is the obscene dance that accompanies the music. Flee from such music and from every apprearance of evil. 11. UNEMPLOYMENT There is a high rate of employment in this country. Many youths who had managed to go through thick and thin to obtain a university degree or other degrees are out there on the streets roaming about in search of anything to do for living. His has been the concern of both youths and their parents. Many parents have lost inetrest in investing into education of their children. This has increased the number of youths without any formal education or vovational training. One sees them in high dense areas/cities milling around motor parks, marj=ket places, in hide outs, practically doing nothing meaningful. Their daily existence depend on how much they can steal, extort from people or just waste away. Some engage in menial jobs that can hardly take care of them, while others become preys in the hand of evil men who take advantage of them by providing debase jpbs such as drug trafficking, prostitution. The self employed are faced with problems of generating power for tjose whose jobs require electricity. The question is, for how long then can we watch the leaders of tomorrow waste away. We all must rise up to this challenge and fight corruption, injustice that have premeated into the whims and caprices of this nation. 12. Marriage Many youths today are faced with the problem of getting a wife or a husband. This could be attributed to a number of factors such as parental influence or control, self, sin and the devil. Youths becomes so obsessed with their inability to be married that they now abadom God. To every man there is a wife and to every woman there is a man. Therefore wait on the Lord, and He will provide. THE WAY FORWARD In handling the problem of our youth and the difficulties confronting them in this perverse generation, parents, churches, society and the youth themselves have specific roles they must perform to bring sanity to our world. Let us reflet on the role of the youth themselves. The youth who desires life and the fruits of happy life must desire God and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Seek first the kingdom of God and all its righteous and all other things will be added unto you (Matt. 6:33). To the youth who had turn away from the Lord, I say â€Å"come back with a repentant heart and the Lord will receive and have you back as his own. Repentance involves: a) Admitting your weakness, being sorry for your weakness b) Renouncing your weakness The Lord tell us in Issaiah, â€Å"come now let us reason together, says the Lord through your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become loke wool† (Is. 1:18) Go for sacramental reconciliation. Having regained your relationship with God, He wants you to live a spotless life even in this era of godlessness. You are to stay unpolluted and unperturbed in the constantly changing world where you dwell. The unchanging God will substain you, for he has said. :For I am the Lord, I change not† (Malachi 3:6). This implies that God’s children have no excuse to allow themselves to be swayed by the rapidly changing world around them. What is expected of the youth therefore according to the word of God is outlined as follows: 1. The youth must treasure the unaltered word of God in his heart, life and mouth, civilization or no civilization. 2. He must constantly and diligently with prayer guard his soul so that he is not overtaken bythe whirlwind of globalization and modernization. . Must be resolved to live a holy life. This involves daring to be different with a resolution not to look back. 4. Depend on the grace of God. Paul tells the Ephesians, â€Å"for it is by Grace you have been saved through Faith and this is not from your selves, it is a gift of God (Eph 2:8) In the sane vein, Jesus tells us in Jn15:16 not to rely on our own strength but yo abide on the Vine 5. Invite the Holy spirit, the sanctifying power of God into your life. It is the spirit that gives life. In all thid fullness, live in the spirit. So I say, live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires swhich is contrary to the spirit and the spirit which is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that do not do what you want† (Gal5:16-17) 6. Associate with thos who love and fear God. Meditate on the passage â€Å"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and Idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: I will live with them and walk amongthem, and I will be their God, and they will be my people† 7. Plunge into unlimited opportunities: The Lord urges us to plunge ourselves into unlimited opportunities that he has set us. Like Joshua, He was to be strong, courageous and to observe the word of God. Joshua did as God commanded and he prospered. Today God is saying to us that he has given us great opportunities to succeed in life and have all our needs met. However, many go through life dejected, defeated, defrauded, dominated and at the end doomed. you are a child of God. For success to come your way, start now. Do not be idle. You can still go back to school and get education; you can re-write your papers and improve on them. Are you unemployed, apply to place no matter how little, or you can create a job yourself. You need not suffer, the sky is the limit. Finally, do not stay away from sacraments (Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation). Heaven is real. What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffer the loss of soul. Challenges of Youths in Our Contemporary World Youth does not want to give up in the face of difficulties†¦ Youth believes in a better world and is determined to do something to help bring it about†. ROLE OF THE YOUTH IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD The youth has great strength, vigour, good health etc. These features should be channeled towards the propagation of the gospel. Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for such belongs the kingdom of God (Lk. 18:16). In the church, the youths have the responsibility of evangelizing. It is their duty to witness Christ to their peers and to the remotest areas where Christ has not been preached. Anthony Aja, quoting the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II wrote: â€Å"The Church needs your energies, your enthusiasm; your youthful ideas in order to make the Gospel of life penetrate the fabric of the society†. â€Å"Besides, the Pope re-emphasized the part that youth can play in the call to evangelize the world as he addressed them in these words. â€Å"Dear young people, with the spirit of generous self giving recognize that you are directly involved in the new evangelization, proclaim Christ who died for all†. Where are our Youths today? Out there in search of worldly pleasure or working for the Lord. (Ref. to the past). To be good evangelizer, witnessing must be accompanied by good example, being like Christ in all ramification. The bible recorded many dynamic youths worthy of emulation. Two of such youths will be considered in this text. They are Joseph and David. Joseph had an encounter with God. He reverenced God. The fear of God was in his heart. Portipher’s household prospered because of the presence of Joseph. How about you? He hated sin. He successfully resisted the temptation from his master’s wife. To the sin-laden wife of his master Portipha, he asked, â€Å"how can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God†? (Gen. 39:9). To escape the wrath that might befall him as a result of this great sin, he ran and fled from this great evil, sin of fornication. Godless youth would take advantage of this immoral opportunity and yield to the temptation. It takes a heart that has been washed by the Blood of The Lamb, a youth who has experienced the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, a sanctified person and Holy Ghost filled to overcome such temptation. For the bible says â€Å"for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world†. Titus 2:11-12. David the son of Jesse, the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse, rose and worked marvels for god right from his youth. He killed a lion, a bear and conquered the veteran warrior Goliath. He overcame the evil spirits that tormented Saul by his anointed fingers on the musical instruments. He was able to do all these exploits for God because of his personal knowledge of God and the power of the Holy Ghost that was upon him. Through the youngest of Jesse’ sons, his fear of the lord and his close relationship with God, made him to do the chosen one of God. †Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and the spirit of the Lord came mighty upon David from that day forward (1Samuel 16:13). Above all learn from Jesus Christ, who from childhood went about doing the father’ business, â€Å"I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other citizens also, for I was sent for this purpose? Make yourself available for noble use. Challenges Facing the Youth Today The general state of youth reveals spirituals, social and psychological crises and confusion. They are being affected by the effects and influence of the society, peer groups, parental neglect and the evil one. Many of our youths blindly follow the dictates of the secularization of Western culture. The effects of secularism on most people have even made them argue that churches should accepts the society’s new directions. To them, if the society accept the society’s new directions. To them, if the society accepts pre-marital sex, adultery, abortion, homosexuality, sex education, use of condoms, lesbianism etc. hey cannot see why the church has to keep calling them sins. The youth sees the youth state as a period of fun and freedom. However, they forget to recognize that this stage is important and transitory – a stage between childhood and adulthood. Mistakes youth make at his stage in life could be detrimental bearing with it a lifetime consequences. For example, Youths who take to armed robbery, prostitution, drug trafficking, political thruggery, and a ll manner of violent practices carry over such nefarious activities from their youthful stage into adulthood. At adulthood they become a problem to themselves, the society and invariably their children who may take after them. What a wasted life! In fact, they are unable to build a worthwhile foundation on which to rest their future. Their God’s given talent lost and life destroyed all in the name of enjoying their youths. In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he admonished Timothy in these words: Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue Righteous, faith, love and peace, Along with those who call on the Lord Out of a pure heart† 2Tim:22 The youthful stage when properly managed can lead to disaster. All youths should heed to Paul’s admonition to timothy. Flee from all evil desires and run after righteous. Many of our youths are compromising with worldly ideals. Compromise with the world brings corruption. It destroys the child of God’s testimony and makes his light grow dim. Learn from David and Joseph, the way to upright living. The youth is being influenced and challenged today in the following areas: 1. INFLUENCE OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY Modern technology had led to the invention of personal computer, the satellite, Digital television, the internet, mobile phone (GSM). These devices had in no small measure made the world a global village. However, the challenges facing our youths (Christian youth) is how to use them without abusing them. The truth is that these devices rather then being used for the advancement of knowledge which is capable of making the world a better place have become powerful tools in the hands of Satan for the perversion of morals. For example, the computer has both simplified and speeded up the operation in many fields of human endeavor – data storage, medicine, architecture, music and broadcasting industry. These are interactive computer software for learning of virtually any subject. The mobile telephone has made communication easy. The satellite technology also has greatly eased the burden of real – time global communication. The internet is a great source of information, Books; encyclopedias on any subject, theses, revise, online news, libraries are now available on the internet. Various school activities which were manually carried out in the past, such as purchasing of admission forms, payment of school fees, access to course outlines, result etc are now done online. Sources of information and different educational operations are now available on the internet. However, one must not lose sight of the evil associated with these devices (internet, GSM and computer). Many (including children, youth and even older people) are introduced to do world of deceit, indecency, immorality crime, sexual perversions, violence and many other vices through the use of these inventions of modern technology. The computer and the internet have more damaging influence on the youth. Youths spend long hours watching digital videos (DVD) or playing violent, even bloody and demonic computer games. Some youths spend hours or the whole night browsing forbidden site on the internet thereby getting exposed to inappropriate materials, such as pornographic and erotica because some youth get initiated into Satanism, Spiritism and other esoteric region. The TV and internet have taking over the place of the bible and prayers in a good number of homes. Youth treasure their wide exploration of the internet in place of reading their books and other intellectual activities. This a leading to a dramatic decline in the academic performance of the youth and a high rate of unproductively of the youth in all spheres of life. Wise parents should rise up to this challenge, and set up corrective measures to arrest this trend of self – destruction of the youth. 2. THE FILM INDUSTRY Many youths spend long hours watching the television denying themselves of meaningful activities that will promote heathy living and advancement in life. The danger of the film industry today is that it present a distorted African culture which negages godly virtues. For example, pre-marital sex is against God an abominable thing in African culture, but the film industry today presents it as the norm and what must follow or be part of a relationship. Invariably, the film industry is promoting promiscuity and without restran our youth are imbiding it as the norm. Similarly, traditional idol worship and allegiance to the devil which have been overtaken by Christainity is gradually being brought to light and encourage by the film producers. What about movies dominated with violent operations?. This negates God peaceful co-existence among men. Parents must therefore rise up to control what their children watch on the television. 3. NEGLECING OF HARD WORK Many youths want to go the easy way of life. No work but wants to be rich. They wish for success in life without paying the price of diligence. You need to see the coutless number of youths at the cyber cafe, browsing the internet looking for innocent preys to devour of thir hard earn money. Some Pentecostal pastors are not left out in the craze for prosperity through miracle galore at the expense of diligent labour. 4. SEARCH FOR GREENER PASTURE Many youths run the risk of searching for illegal means to go out of this country for better life. Experiences of those who attempted leaving this country reveal the agony many had to go though traveling through waste land to cross over to their â€Å"promised land†. In the process many had lost their lives and their sense of value of life. Those who made it to their dreamed land are out their doing menial jobs and worst still are out into crimes of various degrees. 5. Domestic Problems Many youth are confronted with Domestic problems ranging from hostility from parents, strife between their fathers and mothers, parents inability to provide the basic necessities of life. Youths from such homes run away from home, get involved in all forms of crimes such as 419, armed robbery, thuggery, prostitution or hired assassions. Parents should wake up to their responsibilities and make sustainable plans for their children. 6. INDECENT DRESSING AMONG YOUTHS We have been wonderfully made by God. Praise the Lord! Let us trace our dressing to the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they realized that they are naked. They sewed fig leaves together to make themselves aprons (Gen3:7). This covered only a part of their bodies. This is fact was not proper clothing and so the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them. This implies that the lord God covered their nakedness. Therefore, any clothing that does not cover the body fully is an indecent cloth. Let us also consider the demoniac in St. Luke’s gospel Chapter 8 ;26-35). The demon possessed man was naked. The bible described him as â€Å"a man from the city who had demon; for a long time he had worn no clothes, and lived not in a house but among tombs’. With encounter with Christ Jesus, he was delivered from the legion of evil spirit, he was clothed and he was in his right mind† (Luke 8:35). This implies that only people who are not in their right mind would go about without clothes not big enough to cover their nakedness. The modern day christains especially youths are without estrain imbiding and embracing worldly principles, values, culture and customs without making refence to the word of God. The bible says: â€Å"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is inworld, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father, but is of the world†. I John2:15. Unholy attitudes or worldliness has become the culture of the church. Some church members tell you what you wear does not matte, after all religion is in the heart. However, they forget that there is a link between the state of man’s heart and the outward appearance. In fact, one’s outlook is greatly influenced by the condition of the heart. It is not uncommon today to find different kinds of immodest and indecent dressed worn by the majority of young people and some older people in the society, even in the church of God. These ladies wear transparent and body hugged clothes under the guise of fashion and civilization. In fact, you see girls of cheap and easy virtue wearing provocative or seductive apparels that partially expose sensitive reas of their bodies such as breast, navels, abdomen and thighs, such youth are not left out in their heavy make-ups. Their make-ups are so excessive and outrageous that the girls are not less than masquerades and cannot but be mistaken for prostitutes. Why would a Christain woman or lady imitate Jezbel? â€Å"When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it and she painted her eyes, and adorned he r head and looked out of the window† 2King9:30. Some ladies dress in such way that they stimulate lustful desires in men. The harlot dresses shamefully only to advertise, comete and seduce the opposite sex. They wear revealing clothes which create in men some immoral desires. Mini-skirts are symbolic of those ladies who want to seduce men. Every mini-skirt is a fuel that sets the mind of a man to imagine the most debased thoughts. On the other hand, ladies who are seductively dressed are more likely to be harassed by men. In the actual sense, a lady who is immodestly dressed is simply adverstising herself, telling the male folk that she is available. No wonder, today that the rate at which women are raped is exceedingly alarming. The men folk are not left out of this craze for fashion. They fry their hair (jerry curls or perm0, weave their hair, wear earring, leave their shirits unbuttoned, exposing their beareded chest, have funny styles of hair cut, apply make up just to prove themselves as â€Å"senior guys†. 7. Sexual Immorality/ Fornication Many youths do not see sextual immorality/formation as sin. They see it as a way of expressing their love to a person of the opposite sex. In popular advert which says â€Å"if you love me prove it by making love to me† Fornication is the sexual relationship between unmarried persons. God condemns fornication; Do you not know that your body is a temple of he Holy spirit, who is in you whom you have received from god? You are not your own, you were received with a price. Therefore, honour god with your body (1cor 6:19-20) Anyone who destroy the temple of the Holy spirit which you are will face wrath of God. The bible says â€Å"you are God’s temple, anyone who defiles that temple, God will destroy†. Some youth who engage in fornication (pre-marital sex) tell you they are in search of happiness, pre-marital sex has brought shame, disgrace and to many, unfulfilled destiny and untimely death. According to Ibid: Pre-marital sex has many adverse effects surrounding it. By so doing expose themselves to many risks such as: pregnancy, abortion, death, death, veneral disease, fear, shame, disrespect, sterility, uncompleted career are grievous sins against God, your creator. These are what we risk ourselves for, Just a mere pleasure which does not last. Similarly, punch Newspaper had on one of its publication pointed out that †Pregnancy is just one of the ways one can reap on unpleasant harvest from fornication†¦ It is better to avoid pre-marital sex†. 8. Wild Ambition Youths, no doubt are very ambitious. Being ambitious itself should be commended. But when the ambition becomes obnoxious, wrong signals are elayed. It is not uncommon today to find youhs engage in all manner of nefarious activities that are opposed to Christain virtues in a bid to acquire great wealth, fame and success. They are usually recruited as political thugs, fake drug peddlers, armed robbers, hostage takers, murderers, assassins while others become cultists, prostitutes and so on. Some become involved in dubious and undefiled business. The bible tells us to flee from all appearance of evil. Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any paise, think on these thing (1 Cor10:31. Phil 4:8) Do not get involved in any activity that is contrary to the tenents of God. Anything contrary leads to hellfire. 9. Peer Group Influence Many Youth have been led astray by those they regard as friends. The influences of peers can bring about a positive or a negative change in one’s life. But today, such influences have been found to destroy the lives of those who keep had company. Thomas Martin as reported by Stan Ilo had this to say â€Å"What can be more dangerous to youth than bad company; what more fatal to all moral rectitude and feeling than influence of bad example. Bad company ruins good moral. It will be highly recommended youths can be involved in authentic friendship. John Chidi once classified friendship into 3: 1. Friendship based on unity 2. Friendship based on Sexual pleasure 3. Good griendship Youth should be encouraged to get involved in good friendship I =n which a man and a woman can be close friends without any sexual intercourse whatsoever. 0 Foul Language, noisy Music, Obscene Dance, pornography Music is an ancient means with which God’s people adored, exalted His Holy name and praised his majesty. This is still God’s expectation from us today. However, Christain music of today has assumed a new dimension from what obtains in the bible. Most Christain music today are emotional, sensual and noisy. The musical instrument soun d than the wordings as obtained in worldly music. Such songs do not give any inspiration, and it lacks modesty and moderation. So also is the obscene dance that accompanies the music. Flee from such music and from every apprearance of evil. 11. UNEMPLOYMENT There is a high rate of employment in this country. Many youths who had managed to go through thick and thin to obtain a university degree or other degrees are out there on the streets roaming about in search of anything to do for living. His has been the concern of both youths and their parents. Many parents have lost inetrest in investing into education of their children. This has increased the number of youths without any formal education or vovational training. One sees them in high dense areas/cities milling around motor parks, marj=ket places, in hide outs, practically doing nothing meaningful. Their daily existence depend on how much they can steal, extort from people or just waste away. Some engage in menial jobs that can hardly take care of them, while others become preys in the hand of evil men who take advantage of them by providing debase jpbs such as drug trafficking, prostitution. The self employed are faced with problems of generating power for tjose whose jobs require electricity. The question is, for how long then can we watch the leaders of tomorrow waste away. We all must rise up to this challenge and fight corruption, injustice that have premeated into the whims and caprices of this nation. 12. Marriage Many youths today are faced with the problem of getting a wife or a husband. This could be attributed to a number of factors such as parental influence or control, self, sin and the devil. Youths becomes so obsessed with their inability to be married that they now abadom God. To every man there is a wife and to every woman there is a man. Therefore wait on the Lord, and He will provide. THE WAY FORWARD In handling the problem of our youth and the difficulties confronting them in this perverse generation, parents, churches, society and the youth themselves have specific roles they must perform to bring sanity to our world. Let us reflet on the role of the youth themselves. The youth who desires life and the fruits of happy life must desire God and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Seek first the kingdom of God and all its righteous and all other things will be added unto you (Matt. 6:33). To the youth who had turn away from the Lord, I say â€Å"come back with a repentant heart and the Lord will receive and have you back as his own. Repentance involves: a) Admitting your weakness, being sorry for your weakness b) Renouncing your weakness The Lord tell us in Issaiah, â€Å"come now let us reason together, says the Lord through your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become loke wool† (Is. 1:18) Go for sacramental reconciliation. Having regained your relationship with God, He wants you to live a spotless life even in this era of godlessness. You are to stay unpolluted and unperturbed in the constantly changing world where you dwell. The unchanging God will substain you, for he has said. :For I am the Lord, I change not† (Malachi 3:6). This implies that God’s children have no excuse to allow themselves to be swayed by the rapidly changing world around them. What is expected of the youth therefore according to the word of God is outlined as follows: 1. The youth must treasure the unaltered word of God in his heart, life and mouth, civilization or no civilization. 2. He must constantly and diligently with prayer guard his soul so that he is not overtaken bythe whirlwind of globalization and modernization. . Must be resolved to live a holy life. This involves daring to be different with a resolution not to look back. 4. Depend on the grace of God. Paul tells the Ephesians, â€Å"for it is by Grace you have been saved through Faith and this is not from your selves, it is a gift of God (Eph 2:8) In the sane vein, Jesus tells us in Jn15:16 not to rely on our own strength but yo abide on the Vine 5. Invite the Holy spirit, the sanctifying power of God into your life. It is the spirit that gives life. In all thid fullness, live in the spirit. So I say, live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires swhich is contrary to the spirit and the spirit which is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that do not do what you want† (Gal5:16-17) 6. Associate with thos who love and fear God. Meditate on the passage â€Å"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and Idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: I will live with them and walk amongthem, and I will be their God, and they will be my people† 7. Plunge into unlimited opportunities: The Lord urges us to plunge ourselves into unlimited opportunities that he has set us. Like Joshua, He was to be strong, courageous and to observe the word of God. Joshua did as God commanded and he prospered. Today God is saying to us that he has given us great opportunities to succeed in life and have all our needs met. However, many go through life dejected, defeated, defrauded, dominated and at the end doomed. you are a child of God. For success to come your way, start now. Do not be idle. You can still go back to school and get education; you can re-write your papers and improve on them. Are you unemployed, apply to place no matter how little, or you can create a job yourself. You need not suffer, the sky is the limit. Finally, do not stay away from sacraments (Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation). Heaven is real. What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffer the loss of soul.