Is It Really Treatment

The city of Vancouver is a beautiful city, but it is also a port for drugs. The main drug being sold is heroin. For years now, Vancouver has been trying to treat and fix the heroin problem. They’ve set up a project called Insite, where addicts can go and shoot up heroin with clean syringes and medical supervision. While at the clinic police aren’t allowed to arrest the addicts while using. The city has since added to the project. Addicts are not only given medical supervision and clean instruments, but are also being given free heroin. The city claims that if the addicts are given a clean/safe environment and free heroin, then they won’t have to go out and commit crimes to obtain the drug in the streets.

The National Insitiute on Drug Abuse states that drug addiction treatment is the intent to help addicted individuals stop compulsive drug seeking and use. Vancouver claims that Insite is a treatment program, but the definition of drug addiction treatment clearly states that in order to be treatment it has to help addicts stop using. If you go by definition then the program isn’t drug treatment. The addicts that partake in this program can’t get over their addiction if they are being given heroin to shoot up. Instead Insite is sustaining their addiction.

“Merriam-Webster defines sustain as to provide what is needed for (something or someone) to exist, continue, etc” (Webster). Insite is sustaining their addiction with free/clean instruments, medical supervision/care, no legal punishment and actual drugs. There was a patient that is apart of the program that was asked on video if she would ever stop using. She answered saying that she will continue to use for the rest of her life. She says that the drug has become apart of her every day life. Insite just now makes it easier for her and other patients to continue using.

Also in the video is a man who is also apart of the program. It is stated that he and all the other patients now need heroin to function normally in society. After interviewing the man, the reporter goes on to say that even though he seems to function normally it is still obvious that the man is high on drugs. A definition of a drug is a medicine or other substance that has a physiological effect when ingested or introduced to the body. Someone couldn’t possibly act normal and be a regular contributor to society if they are physiologically impaired.

Vancouver isn’t treating the users addiction. They are just sustaining there addiction. In order to truly be treated the users would have to stop using and seeking heroin. The program is just sustaining the addiction.

Work Cited

“Vancouver Combats Heroin by Giving Its Addicts the Best Smack in the World.” Public Radio International. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2015. <http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-02-04/vancouver-combats-heroin-giving-its-addicts-best-smack-world&gt;.

“Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research-Based Guide (Third Edition).” What Is Drug Addiction Treatment? N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/principles-drug-addiction-treatment-research-based-guide-third-edition/frequently-asked-questions/what-drug-addiction-treatment&gt;.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2015. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sustain&gt;.

How The Memory Affects Eyewitness Testimony

As our understanding of memory improves, new techniques to enhance their accuracy are making it possible for prosecutors to get reliable accounts of crimes from eyewitnesses.

Memory operates in stages and is affected by both system and estimator variables. “System variables” are those factors that the criminal justice system can influence, typically involving the actions of police (e.g., feedback and methods of eliciting the initial identification). “Estimator variables” are those factors that inherent in the event, such as the environmental conditions at the time and the characteristics of the witness and the perpetrator over which the criminal justice system has no control but that may have a substantial effect on the reliability of the identification.  

The scientific research on memory and eyewitness identification has both grown and matured over the past thirty years; there is now general scientific consensus on many areas affecting eyewitness identification, consensus that requires a change in the way courts, counsel, and police deal with the evidence. Scientists generally agree that “memory does not operate like a videotape” but rather is a “constructive, dynamic, and selective process.”

If memory errors  only affected our personal past, that would be bad enough. But the problems created by our lack in memory recollections affect all of society.  More than 75,000 prosecutions every year are based entirely on the recollections of others. While perjury is a felony, the overwhelming majority of eyewitness errors are not intentional mistakes.   However, they are the inevitable side effects of the remembering process.

In recent years, neuroscientists have documented how these mistakes happen. It turns out that the act of brining the past to the surface actually changes the memory itself. Although we have long imagined our memories as a stable form of information, a data file directly into the circuits of the brain, that persistence is an illusion. In reality, our recollections are always being altered, the details of the past warped by our present feelings and knowledge. The more you remember an event, the less reliable that memory becomes. This takes us back to the problem of eyewitness testimony. Eyewitnesses are repeatedly asked to recall what they saw, but their answers are inevitably influenced by the questions being asked.

Such errors often have tragic or irreversible consequences. According to the Innocence Project, a legal advocacy group, about 75% of false convictions that are later overturned are based on faulty eyewitness testimony.  Can anything be done to improve the situation? In a new paper by Neil Brewer, a psychologist at Flinders University in Australia, the answer is a resounding yes. Dr. Brewer focused on the police lineup, in which witnesses are asked to pick out a suspect from a collection of similar looking individuals.

Generally, witnesses are encouraged to take their time and carefully consider each possible suspect. But Dr. Brewer states, “that strong memory traces are easier to access than weak and mistaken ones, which is why he only gave his witnesses two seconds to make up their minds.” During his study he asked each witness to estimate how confident they were about the suspects they identified, rather than insisting on a simple yes-no answer.

To test this procedure, Dr. Brewer and his colleagues asked 905 volunteers to watch a series of short films showing such crimes as shoplifting and car theft. The subjects then looked at 12 portraits, only one of which was the actual suspect. According to Dr. Brewer’s data, his version of the lineup led to a large boost in accuracy, with improvements in eyewitness performance ranging from 21% to 66%. Even when subjects were quizzed a week later, those who were forced to choose quickly remained far more trustworthy.

The issue is that, when it comes to human memory, more deliberation is often dangerous. Instead of simply assessing our familiarity with a suspect’s face, we begin searching for clues and guidance. Sometimes this involves picking the person who looks the most suspicious, even if we’ve never seen him before, or being swayed by the subtle hints of police officers and lawyers. As a result, we talk ourselves into having a memory that doesn’t actually exist.

Fact, we can send a man to the moon, right?  So, prosecutors can work closer with memory experts and nail down the most accurate way to extract a point in time memory recall from an eyewitness.  Prosecutors can make simple enhancements to the criminal judicial system for a more reliable outcome from eyewitness testimony.   Unless we are ruthlessly skeptical of the past, we will continue to confuse fact and fiction, and innocent will be sent to jail.

    Work Cited

“Eyewitness Misidentification.” – The Innocence Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2015. “Eyewitness Misidentification”

Dorf, Michael C. “FindLaw Legal Commentary.” FindLaw’s Writ. N.p., Wed May 2001. Web. 28 Feb. 2015. “Find Legal Law Commentary”

Hartnett, Kevin. “How to Make Eyewitness Evidence More Reliable – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. N.p., 27 Feb. 2015. Web. 28 Feb. 2015. “How To Make Eyewitness Testimony More Reliable”

“Memory.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. “Memory”

“How To Improve Eyewitness Testimony | WIRED.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. “How To Improve Eyewitness Testimony”

It can be said that any amount of multivitamins is an excess because they are not conducive to a person’s health.  This can apply to my topic of the true usefulness of multivitamins because it is becoming more believed that the supplements are useless. If this is true, then perhaps we can also say that not only are they useless but can be detrimental to one’s health. Researchers are saying that any amount of multivitamins is an excess because we get all the vitamins and minerals from the foods we eat. When trying to figure out how much of these multivitamins we should take if any, we encounter words such as useful, health, and deficiency.

Now let’s say, contrary to growing belief, multivitamins do have some use. It can be disputed how much a person needs. Of course it will differ with age, gender, and other health characteristics.  What is deemed to be an excess to one person may be just right or not enough for another. In the case of multivitamins however, the only way we can compare what is too much for certain people is through multiple tests on their health. With that said, it is not a conscious decision on what may be too much for our bodies or what may not be enough. It would in-fact be easier to define a deficiency. With a deficiency in something, it is likely will see negative effects before an excess.

Nevertheless, one can evaluate how they feel after taking a certain supplement or eating a certain food. For example, taking a supplement for 30 days and recording how it makes you feel, followed by cutting the multivitamin cold turkey and recording how you feel. It is more likely for an adult to try this method than a child. The reason for this can be either because children are less likely to be health conscious; an adult is more likely to have some kind of disorder that prohibits them from eating too much unhealthy products. Regardless of the reason the point is that what is too much for one person can be regular or perfectly normal for another and vice versa.

With that said, an excess can be something tangible or otherwise, that is more than enough for a person. Whether or not this person realizes something is an excess such as in this case with supplements is irrelevant.

In order for us to evaluate the meaning of one word, there may be others that have to be clarified. When we look at what an excess is, we also should look at words such as proper, useful and health. These tie into an excess because in a way, a person’s point of view on the word can be related to how useful they believe something to be. We can also define usefulness as being of service or helpful. In the case of multivitamins however, the argument is that they are useless so any amount is an excess. The definition of proper easily varies from culture to culture, household to household, city to city etc. The important thing when arguing a definition is to remember the different point of views.

Works Cited

Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2015. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/excess?s=t&gt;.

Goodman, Brenda From. “Experts: Don’t Waste Your Money on Multivitamins – WebMD.” WebMD. WebMD, 13 Dec. 2013. Web. 26 Feb. 2015. <http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/news/20131216/experts-dont-waste-your-money-on-multivitamins&gt;.

Gavura, Scott. “More Evidence That Routine Multivitamin Use Should Be Avoided « Science-Based Medicine.” More Evidence That Routine Multivitamin Use Should Be Avoided « Science-Based Medicine. N.p., 19 Dec. 2013. Web. 28 Feb. 2015. <http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-evidence-that-routine-multivitamin-use-should-be-avoided/&gt;.

Leading Apple With Steve Jobs: Management Lessons from a Controversial Genius

Content Description

• Apple compared to other brands
• Consumers relation with the technology: Steve’s mission is to make technology friendly and appealing to humans
• Apple foundation:
• What statement is apple based on: The two statements Apple premises were based on are: Achieve our goals is important to us; We are equally concerned the way we reach these goals.
• Steve Jobs view in design: Design is not only how it looks but also how it works. Steve loved well designed cars. He even talked to Giorgetto Giugiaro (designer of Maseratti) about designs for Apple
• Steve jobs organized his team as pirates: Steve’s magic was to work with people of Apple to create more artful products. Great product design would be key to get Apple selling again

1. Working Hypothesis 1

If Apple didn’t have that elegance to the design of their products, it would’ve had the same attention that every other major tech companies have.

1. Working Hypothesis 2

Despite the mass Apple loyal consumers, its products quality has a small impact on its success. Apple products are not technologically superior to every technology brand in the market right now.

1. Topics For Smaller Paper

What does this mean for Apple in the future

This means that in the future, Apple inc. will have a big challenge in keeping their position on top. Technologically, big names like Samsung and Microsoft are already catching up on Apple in the market and Samsung is an even bigger company than Apple. Apple inc. only beats those companies because of their understanding of the modern adopted design. But if there’s anything that time taught us is that fashion is an art that changes momentarily. It’s an art that keeps evolving from the most daring abstracts, it’s not fashion if nobody tells you the piece is not ordinary. But with this generation growing, it won’t be very hard for other companies to find those kids that think totally out of the box, Apple called them “Pirates”

Is It Possible for Apple inc. to Dominate the Future Market?

Yes it could be a big possibility although it won’t be easy. As of now Apple being the company with user friendliest devices, might have a big competition with Google Glasses. Whom by name is obviously in direct skin contact with its users, so Apple had to come up with a wearable device too, and its called Apple Watch. Apple inc have been keeping up with the consumers trends, this is the reason of their strong consumer loyalty. With such consumer loyalty, A product development or market penetration won’t be difficult.

1. Current State Of Research Paper

I’m still developing the research paper, but at this point I have some ideas that could work great with the paper and others I need to work in order to make them flow with the hypothesis.

CONTENT DESCRIPTIONS

• Bitcoins: What Are They?
• Benefits and Advantages
• Risks and Weaknesses
• The Crash of 2013
• Lack of ‘Federal Reserve’ or FDIC
• Uses of BitCoin
  • Legal
  • Illegal
• Universally Transferable
• Should It Be Acceptable?

1a. WORKING HYPOTHESIS 1

We can try to predict the movement of BitCoin for our own benefit, and we may have success from time to time. But that’s merely a coincidence. At the end of the day, none of us really know whether the price per coin is going to rise or fall. It is for this reason, that investing our money in BitCoin seems foolish and overly optimistic at best.

1b. WORKING HYPOTHESIS 2

Because bitcoins are completely virtual and only exist online, they are very difficult to trace. This gives bitcoin owners the freedom to spend their coins however and wherever they want. It wouldn’t pose much of a problem if everyone spent their bitcoins legally. But the astounding lack of security presents a golden opportunity to criminals. Drug dealers can now distribute large quantities of the product online with virtually no risk. These new opportunities obviously present big problems and bring up the question of whether or not bitcoins should be legal.

2. TOPICS FOR SMALLER PAPERS

I’m not really sure I understand this section of the White Paper.

3. CURRENT STATE OF THE RESEARCH PAPER

I’m still not 100% sure that I can accurately  and knowledgeably discuss my topic. Partly because there is just a ton of information about the subject, but mostly because I haven’t decided on a specific thesis yet. I don’t want to commit to one specific idea just yet because I don’t to realize in 6 weeks that I made a wrong decision. I think that if I find a way to balance several different concepts and opinions, I’ll be able to write a successful paper.