The Distinction Between Man and Machine Essay Example for Free

The Distinction Between Man and Machine Essay The comparison between man and machine has always been controversial, whether in area of work or entertainment. A common question, How different are they from us? We would used to say looks, movements and thoughts are what would differentiate us from them. As technology advances, such differences are less likely to exist, further blurring the distinction between them and man. However, no matter how machines become exact replica of man, it always lack that human touch that we possess. Overall, I would agree that the distinction between man and machine is being blurred. Some would argue that man naturally would have the creativity and innovation, which machines would not have. It is indeed true that man do possess such creativity, but creativity needs to be expressed to be visible, and not all are able to do so. In fact, most would follow orders from their bosses and finish their work in a systematic manner, which is similar to the way machines function. In addition, some would add on that machines lack the human touch that humans have, which include feelings like love, compassion and empathy. Although it is true that machines do not have such feelings, it is not necessarily true that we humans possess such feelings. In the past, no doubt we are more compassionate and sympathetic. However, with the increase in pace of society and the advent of smart gadgets, man not only work longer hours, but also become cold and unfeeling to others. Their breaks during working hours become maintenance and repair for machines. Their faces that used be cheery and happy has become emotionless, making them no different from machines. Moreover, shootings and killings at Sandy Hook would not have occurred if man had feelings for others. Thus, not fully embracing the use of creativity and being indifferent to others has blurred the distinction between man and machine. I would agree that the distinction between man and machine is being blurred because it is indeed true that machines can pass off as a human as long as it is able to project a human image. With such ability to do so, people would tend to forget the distinction between them. Hatsune Miku, a famous holographic pop star in Japan is an example. Her image or hologram is generated by a machine. Although she may be fake, she has managed to gain many fans. Fans who would literally fill up her music concerts, and fans who would craze wildly after her as she sings, as though she is real. Another example would be chatbots. Chatbots are machines that have been programmed to communicate with new members of their websites to make them feel more welcomed. They can literally pass off as real humans with a human-like profile picture because the way they are programmed to communicate with the other party is exactly like a human. Hence, the distinction between man and machine has not been as clear as before. I would agree that the distinction between man and machine is not clear because machines start to play a part in mans life and at times, remain unnoticeable. In the medical industry, artificial limbs have been implanted into people who have lost their legs during war or in an accident to help them walk again. Pacemakers are also a form of machinery that is commonly used in the medical industry to control abnormal heart rhythms and enable him to resume an active lifestyle. In addition, a team from Harvard University has also created what it calls cyborg tissue, which is half-man, half-machine. All these blur the distinction between man and machine because a man with mechanic body parts can be considered either a man because of his feelings, or a machine because of its mechanic body parts.

MEMS Accelerometer Based Hand Gesture Recognition

MEMS Accelerometer Based Hand Gesture Recognition MEMS ACCELEROMETER BASED HAND GESTURE RECOGNITION Meenaakumari.M1, M.Muthulakshmi2 1Dept.of ECE, Sri Lakshmi Aammal Engineering College, Chennai, 2Asst.Prof, Dept.of ECE, Sri Lakshmi Aammal Engineering College, Chennai, Abstract This paper presents an MEMS accelerometer mostly based on gesture recognition algorithm and its applications. The hardware module consists of a triaxial mems accelerometer, microcontroller, and zigbee wireless transmission module for sensing and collecting accelerations of handwriting and hand gesture trajectories. Users will use this hardware module to write down digits, alphabets in digital kind by making four hand gestures. The accelerations of hand motions measured by the accelerometer are transmitted wirelessly to a personal computer for trajectory recognition. The trajectory algorithm composed of information assortment collection, signal preprocessing for reconstructing the trajectories to attenuate the cumulative errors caused by drift of sensors. So, by changing the position of MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems) we can able to show the alphabetical characters and numerical within the PC. Keywords MEMS accelerometer, gesture, handwritten recognition, trajectory algorithm. INTRODUCTION NOW A DAYS, the expansion of human machine interaction technologies in electronic circuits has been greatly reduced the dimension and weight of consumer electronics products such as smart phones and handheld computers, and therefore will increases our day to day convenience. Recently, an attractive alternative, a conveyable embedded device with inertial sensors, has been projected to sense the activities of human and to capture their motion trajectory information from accelerations for handwriting and recognizing gestures. The foremost necessary advantage of inertial sensors for general motion sensing is that they can be operated without any external reference and limitation in operating conditions. However, motion trajectory recognition is comparatively tough for different users since they have different speeds and styles to generate various motion trajectories. Thus, several researchers have tried to avoid the problem domain for increasing the  accuracy of handwriting recognition systems. During this work a miniature MEMS accelerometer based recognition systems which acknowledge four hand gestures in 3-D is constructed by using this four gestures, numerical and alphabets will be recognized in the digital format. MEMS are termed as micro electro mechanical system where mechanical parts like cantilevers or membranes have been manufactured at microelectronics circuits. It uses the technology known as micro-fabrication technology. It has holes, cavity, channels, cantilevers, membranes and additionally imitates mechanical parts. The emphasis on MEMS is based on silicon. The explanation that prompt that prompt the utilization of MEMS technology are for example miniaturization of existing devices, development of new devices based on principal that do not work at large scale and to interact with micro world. Miniaturization reduces cost by decreasing material consumption. It also increases applicability by reducing mass and size allowing placing the, MEMS in places where a traditional system. Instead of having a series of external components connected by wire or soldered to printed circuit board the MEMS on silicon can be integrated directly with the electronics. These are called smart integrated ME MS already include data acquisition, filtering, data storage, communication interfacing and networking. MEMS technology not only makes the things smaller but often makes them better. A typical example is brought by the accelerometer development. An accelerometer is a device that measures the physical acceleration. The physical parameters are temperature, pressure, force, light etc. it measures the weight per unit mass. By contrast, accelerometers in free fall or at rest in outer space will measure zero. Another term for the type of acceleration that accelerometers can measure is g-force. It works on the principle of displacement of a small proof mass etched into the silicon surface of the integrated circuit and suspended by small beams. RELATED WORK There are mainly two existing types of gesture recognition methods, i.e., vision-based and accelerometer and/or gyroscope based. Due to some limitations like ambient optical noise, slower dynamic response, and relatively large data collections/processing of vision-based method [1], our recognition system is implemented based on an inertial measurement unit based on MEMS acceleration sensors. If gyroscopes are used for inertial measurement [2] it causes heavy computational burden, thus our system is based on MEMS accelerometers only and gyroscopes are not implemented. Many researchers have focused on developing effective algorithms for error compensation of inertial sensors to improve the recognition accuracy. For few examples, Yang et al. [3] proposed a pen-type input device to track trajectories in 3-D space by using accelerometers and gyroscopes. An efficient acceleration error compensation algorithm based on zero velocity compensation was developed to decrease the acceleration err ors for acquiring accurate reconstructed trajectory. An extended Kalman filter with magnetometers (micro inertial measurement unit (ÃŽÂ ¼IMU) with magnetometers), proposed by Luo et al. [10], was employed to compensate the orientation of the proposed digital writing instrument. If the orientation of the instrument was estimated precisely, the motion trajectories of the instrument were reconstructed accurately. Dong et al. [4] proposed an optical tracking calibration method based on optical tracking system (OTS) to calibrate 3-D accelerations, angular velocities, and space attitude of handwriting motions. The OTS was developed for the following two goals: 1) to obtain accelerations of the proposed ubiquitous digital writing instrument (UDWI) by calibrating 2-D trajectories and 2) to obtain the accurate attitude angles by using the multiple camera calibration. However, in order to recognize or reconstruct motion trajectories accurately, the aforementioned approaches introduce other sensors such as gyroscopes or magnetometers to obtain precise orientation. This increases additional cost for motion trajectory recognition systems as well as computational burden of their algorithms. In this paper, a portable device has been developed with a trajectory recognition algorithm. The portable device consists of a triaxial accelerometer, a microprocessor, and an zigbee wireless transmission module. The acceleration signals measured from the triaxial accelerometer are transmitted to a computer via the zigbee wireless module. Users can utilize this portal device to write digits and make hand gestures at normal speed. The measured acceleration signals of these motions can be recognized by the trajectory recognition algorithm. The recognition procedure is composed of acceleration acquisition, signal preprocessing, feature generation, feature selection, and feature extraction. The acceleration signals of hand motions are measured by the portable device. The signal preprocessing procedure consists of calibration, a moving average filter, a high-pass filter, and normalization. First, the accelerations are calibrated to remove drift errors and offsets from the raw signals. The se two filters are applied to remove high frequency noise and gravitational acceleration from the raw data, respectively. The features of the preprocessed acceleration signals of each axis include mean, correlation among axes, interquartile range (IQR), mean absolute deviation (MAD), root mean square (rms), VAR, standard deviation (STD), and energy. Before classifying the hand motion trajectories, we perform the procedures of feature selection and extraction methods. In general, feature selection aims at selecting a subset of size m from an original set of d features (d > m). Therefore, the criterion of kernel-based class separability (KBCS) with best individual N (BIN) is to select significant features from the original features (i.e., to pick up some important features from d) and that of linear discriminate analysis (LDA) is to reduce the dimension of the feature space with a better recognition performance (i.e., to reduce the size of m). The objective of the feature selection an d featureextraction methods is not only to eradicate the burden of computational load but also to increase the accuracy of classification. The reduced features are used as the inputs of classifiers. The contributions of this paper include the following: 1) the development of a portable device with a trajectory recognition algorithm, i.e., with the hardware module , can give desired commands by hand motions to control electronics devices anywhere without space limitations, and 2) an effective trajectory recognition algorithm, i.e., the proposed algorithm can efficiently select significant features from the time and frequency domains of acceleration signals and project the feature space into a smaller feature dimension for motion recognition with high recognition accuracy. III.HARDWARE DESIGN OF  PORTABLE DEVICE The portable device consists of a triaxial accelerometer (MMA2240), a microcontroller (C8051F206 with a 12-b A/D converter), and a wireless transceiver (nRF2401, Nordic). The triaxial accelerometer measures the acceleration signals generated by a users hand motions. The microcontroller collects the analog acceleration signals and converts the signals to digital ones via the A/D converter. The wireless transceiver transmits the acceleration signals wirelessly to a personal computer (PC).The MMA2240 is a low-cost capacitive micro machined accelerometer with a temperature compensation function and a g-select function for a full-scale selection of +_}2 g to +_}6 gand is able to measure accelerations over the bandwidth of 0.5 kHz for all axes. The accelerometers sensitivity is set from à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬â„¢2 g to +2 g. The C8051F206 integrates a high-performance 12-b A/D converter and an optimized signal cycle 25-MHz 8-b microcontroller unit (MCU) (8051 instruction set compatible) on a signal chip. The output signals of the accelerometer are sampled at 100 Hz by the 12-b A/D converter. Then, all the data sensed by the accelerometer are transmitted wirelessly to a PC by an zigbee transceiver at 2.4-GHz transmission band with 1-Mb/s transmission rate. The overall power consumption of the digital pen circuit is 30 mA at 3.7 V. The block diagram of the portable device is shown in Fig. 1. MEMS PIC ACCELEROMTER MICROCON ZIGBEE TX TROLLER PC RS 232 ZIGBEE RX Fig.1. Block diagram of the portable device. IV. TRAJECTORY RECOGNITION ALGORITHM The proposed trajectory recognition algorithm consisting of acceleration acquisition, signal preprocessing, feature generation, feature selection, and feature extraction. In this paper, the motions for recognition include Arabic numerals alphabets. The acceleration signals of the hand motions are measured by a triaxial accelerometer and then preprocessed by filtering and normalization. Consequently, the features are extracted from the preprocessed data to represent the characteristics of different motion signals, and the feature selection process based on KBCS picks p features out of the original extracted features. To reduce the computational load and increase the recognition accuracy of the classifier, LDA is utilized to decrease the dimension of the selected features. The reduced feature vectors are then fed into a PNN classifier to recognize the motion to which the feature vector it belongs. A. Signal Preprocessing The microcontroller collects the acceleration signals of hand motions which are generated by the accelerometer. Due to slight tremble movement of hand certain amount of noise is generated. The signal preprocessing consists of calibration, a moving average filter, a high-pass filter, and normalization. First, the accelerations are calibrated to remove drift errors and offsets from the raw signals. The second step of the signal preprocessing is to use a moving average filter to reduce the high-frequency noise of the calibrated accelerations, and the filter is expressed as where x[t] is the input signal, y[t] is the output signal, and N is the number of points in the average filter. In this paper, we set N = 8. The decision of using an eight-point moving average filter is based on our empirical tests. Then, a high-pass filter is used to remove the gravitational acceleration from the filtered acceleration to obtain accelerations caused by hand movement. In general, the size of samples of each movement between fast and slow writers is different. Therefore, after filtering the data, we first segment each movement signal properly to extract the exact motion interval. Then, we normalize each segmented motion interval into equal sizes via interpolation. B. Feature Generation The characteristics of different hand movement signals can be obtained by extracting features from the preprocessed x-, Fig 2 Block diagram of the trajectory recognition algorithm. 5) Correlation among axes: The correlation among axes is computed as the ratio of the covariance to the product of the STD for each pair of axes. For example, the correlation (corrxy) between two variables x on x-axis and y on y-axis is defined as where E represents the expected value, à Ã†â€™x and à Ã†â€™x are STDs, and mx and my are the expected values of x and y, respectively. 6)MAD 7)rms Y-, and z-axis signals, and we extract eight features where xi is the acceleration instance and m is from the triaxial acceleration signals, including mean, the mean value of xi in (6) to (7). STD, VAR, IQR [6], correlation between axes [7], MAD, rms, and energy [8] . They are explicated as follows. 8) Energy: Energy is calculated as the sum of 1) Mean: The mean value of the acceleration the magnitudes of squared discrete fast signals of each hand motion is the dc Fourier transform (FFT) components of the component of the signal signal in a window. The equation is defined as where W is the length of each hand motion. 2) STD: STD is the square root of VAR where Fi is the ith FFT component of the window and |Fi| is the magnitude of Fi. C. Feature Selection Feature selection comprises a selection criterion. The KBCS can be computed as follows: Let (x, y) (Rd ÃÆ'- 3) VAR Y) represents a sample, where Rd denotes a d dimensional feature space, Y symbolizes the set of class labels, and the size of Y is the number of class c. This method projects the samples onto a kernel space, where xi is the acceleration instance and m is and m i is defined as the mean vector for the I th class in the kernel space, ni denotes the number of the mean value of xi in (3) and (4). samples in the ith class, m denotes the mean vector 4) IQR: When different classes have similar for all classes in the kernel space, S B denotes the between-class scatter matrix in the kernel space, and mean values, the interquartile range S/ Wdenotes the within-class scatter matrix in the represents the dispersion of the data and kernel space. Let (à £Ã†â€™Ã‚ ») be a possible nonlinear eliminates the influence of outliers in the mapping from the feature space Rd to a kernel space data. ÃŽÂ º and tr(A) represents the trace of a square matrixA. 1889 www.ijarcet.org ISSN: 2278 1323 International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering Technology (IJARCET) Volume 2, No 5, May 2013 The following two equations are used in the class separability measure: 1 2 3 4 The class separability in the kernel space can be measured as To maintain the numerical stability in the maximization of J à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ , the denominator tr(Sà ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ W ) has to be prevented from approaching zero. IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS In this section, the effectiveness of trajectory recognition algorithm is validated. A.Handwritten Digit Recognition The acceleration signals after the signal preprocessing procedure of the proposed trajectory recognition algorithm for the digit 0. The calibrated acceleration signals acquired from the accelerometer module are shown. With the preprocessed accelerations, alphabets and numerical features are generated by the feature generation procedure. Subsequently, the KBCS is adopted to choose characteristic features from the generated features. We choose digits 0 and 6 to illustrate the effectiveness of the KBCS, since their accelerations and handwritten trajectories are pretty similar and difficult to classify. The IQR features of these two digits are closely overlapped. Thus, the features are not effective for 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Fig. 4. Trajectories of four hand gestures. corrxy, meanz, energyx, energyy, and energyz selected by the KBCS. Finally, the dimension of the selected features was further reduced by the LDA not only to ease the burden of computational load but also to increase the accuracy of classification. Fig. 5.a Trajectories of alphabets Fig. 5.b. Trajectories of alphabets. Fig. 6. IQR features of (red star) digit 0 and (blue diamond) digit 6. Fig. 3. Generation of numerical 1890 www.ijarcet.org ISSN: 2278 1323 International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering Technology (IJARCET) Volume 2, No 5, May 2013 Fig. 6.a. Mean feature of (red star) digit 0 and digit (blue diamond) 6. Therefore, the total testing samples were 100 (10 ÃÆ'- 10 ÃÆ'- 1) for the testing procedure, and the total training samples were 900 (10 ÃÆ'- 10 ÃÆ'- 9) for the raining procedure. Because there are ten digits needed to be classified, the maximum of the dimension of the feature extraction by the LDA was nine. To see the performance variation caused by feature dimensions, we varied the dimensions of the LDA from one to nine. In Fig. 10, the best average recognition rate of Fig. 7. Average recognition rates versus the feature dimensions of the PNN classifier by using the LDA. Fig. 8. Average recognition rates versus the feature dimensions of the PNN classifier by using the KBCS. V. CONCLUSION The development of a portable device, is used to generate desired commands by hand motions to control electronic devices without space limitations. The time and frequency domains of acceleration signals of motion recognition, which has high recognition accuracy. The acceleration made by the hand gesture is measured by accelerometer are wirelessly transmitted to computer. In the experiments, we used 2-D handwriting digits, alphabets by using four hand gestures to validate the effectiveness of the proposed device and algorithm. The overall handwritten digit recognition rate was 98%, and the gesture recognition rate was also 98.75%. This result encourages us to further investigate the possibility of using our digital pen as an effective tool for HCI applications. In this project, an additional button can be used to allow users to indicate the starting point and ending point of motion. That is, the limitation of the proposed trajectory recognition algorithm is that it can only recognize a letter or a number finished with a single stroke. VI. FUTURE ENHANCEMENT The algorithms can be developed for letters or words with multistrokes which involve more challenging problems. REFERENCES S. Zhou, Q. Shan, F. Fei, W. J. Li, C. P. Kwong, and C. K. Wu et al.,Gesture recognition for interactive controllers using MEMS motion sensors, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Nano/Micro Engineered and MolecularSystems, Jan. 2009,pp. 935-940. S. Zhang, C. Yuan, and V. Zhang, Handwritten character recognition using orientation quantization based on 3-D accelerometer, presented at the 5th Annu. Int. Conf. Ubiquitous Systems, Jul. 25th, 2008. J. Yang, W. Chang, W. C. Bang, E. S. Choi, K. H.Kang, S. J. Cho, and D. Y. Kim, Analysis and compensation of errors in the input device based on inertial sensors, in Proc. IEEE Int. L. Wang, Feature selection with kernel class separability, IEEE Trans.Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., vol. 30, no. 9, pp. 1534-1546, Sep. 2008. Z. Dong, U. C. Wejinya, and W. J. Li, An optical-tracking calibration method for MEMS-based digital writing instrument, IEEE Sens. J.,vol. 10, no. 10, pp. 1543-1551, Oct. 2010. J. S.Wang, Y. L. Hsu, and J. N. Liu, An inertial-measurement-unit-based pen with a trajectory reconstruction algorithm and its applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 57, no. 10, pp. 3508-3521, Oct. 2010. S. Zhou, Z. Dong, W. J. Li, and C. P. Kwong, Hand-written character recognition using   MEMSmotionsensingtechnology,in Proc.IEEE/ASME Int. Conf. Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, 2008, pp.1418-1423. J. K. Oh, S. J. Cho, and W. C. Bang et al., Inertial sensor based recognition of 3-D character gestures with an ensemble of classifiers, presented at the 9th Int. Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, 2004. Conf. Inf.Technol.-Coding and Computing,2004, pp. 790-796. Y. Luo, C. C. Tsang, G. Zhang, Z. Dong, G. Shi, Y. Kwok, W. J. Li, P. H. W. Leong, and M. Y. Wong, An attitude compensation technique for a MEMS motion sensor based digital writing instrument, in Proc.IEEE Int. Conf. Nano/Micro Eng. Mol. Syst., 2006, pp. 909-914. Z. Dong, G. Zhang, Y. Luo, C. C. Tsang, G. Shi, Y. Kwok, W. J. Li,P. H. W. Leong, and M. Y. Wong, A calibration method for MEMS inertial sensors based on optical tracking, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf.Nano/Micro Eng. Mol. Syst., 2007, pp.542-547. S. J. Preece, J. Y. Goulermas, L. P. J. Kenney, and D. Howard, A comparison of feature extraction methods for the classification of dynamic activities from accelerometer data, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. 56,no. 3, pp.871-879, Mar. 2009. L. Bao and S. S. Intille, Activity recognition from user-annotated acceleration data, Pervasive, Lecture Notes in Computer Science,no. 3001,pp. 1-17, 2004. Y. P. Chen, J. Y. Yang, S. N. Liou, G. Y. Lee, and J. S. Wang, Online classifier construction algorithm for human activity detection using a triaxial accelerometer, Appl. Math. Comput., pp. 849-860, Nov. 2008. L. Wang, Feature selection with kernel class separability, IEEE Trans.Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., vol. 30, no. 9, pp. 1534-1546, Sep. 2008. Z. Dong, U. C. Wejinya, and W. J. Li, An optical-tracking calibration method for MEMS-based digital writing instrument, IEEE Sens. ,vol. 10, no. 10, pp. 1543-1551, Oct. 2010. J. S.Wang, Y. L. Hsu, and J. N. Liu, An inertial-measurement-unit-based pen with a trajectory reconstruction algorithm and its applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 57, no. 10, pp. 3508-3521, Oct. 2010. S. Zhou, Z. Dong, W. J. Li, and C. P. Kwong, Hand-written character recognition using MEMS motion sensing technology, in Proc.IEEE/ASME Int. Conf. Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, 2008, pp.1418-1423. J. K. Oh, S. J. Cho, and W. C. Bang et al., Inertial sensor based recognition of 3-D character gestures with an ensemble of classifiers, presented at the 9th Int. Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, 2004. A. H. F. Lam, W. J. Li, Y. Liu, and N. Xi, MIDS: Micro input devices system using MEMS sensors, presented at the IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf.Intelligent Robots an

British Legal Framework For Construction Health and Safety

British Legal Framework For Construction Health and Safety In 1974 in Great Britain, the parliament adopted the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (HSWA) which became the major piece of legislation at work for health and safety matters in the country. This Act was adopted for all industries including construction. Its aims were to provide the main principles and duties to employers, employees and all the participant of the work activity in general (St John Holt, 2005). Then, the European Union (EU) imposed new directives to its members on health and safety issues. The legal framework in Great Britain changed and new acts and directive had been adopted by the parliament setting up a hierarchy of component in the legal system (Howarth Watson, 2009): European Union regulations and directives: all the members of EU are subject to European legislation UK statutory law: acts of parliament HSWA 1974 is the principal act in the UK Statutory instrument: regulations to develop and detail specific duties and requirement concerning health and safety law in the UK Approved Codes of Practice: practical guidance for compliance with health and safety regulations Since 1974, the HSWA had been supported and supplemented by several statutory instruments and regulations (Joyston-Bechal Grice, 2004). Following the framework directives of the EU aiming to improve health and safety for workers at work, the Management of the Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992 and then 1999 (MHSW) came to provide additional elements to the HSWA. Other daughter regulations had been adopted to implement this act on specific construction related areas (Fewings, 2005). Some examples of these new regulations (St John Holt, 2005; Fewings, 2005): MHSW Management of the Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992/1999 CHSW Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1996/2000 PUWER Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 LOLER Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 CSHHR Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1999 MHOR Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 CDM Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994/2007 The HSWA first objectives were to impose duties on the stakeholders involved in the work activity related to the safeguarding of health and safety standards. The key duties were places on employers toward employees, on employers towards people other than employees, on people in control of premises, on designer, manufacturers, suppliers and plant installer for the safety of their products, on every employees and more generally on everybody concerned by work activity (Howarth Watson, 2009). The responsibility for enforcing these act and regulations is taken by the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) which is appointed by the government to develop policies on its behalf. Its executive arm, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is in charge of the enforcement. It controls and advise the companies in the applications of the regulations (St John Holt, 2005). The HSC and HSE are also responsible of recording and monitoring construction industry health and safety statistics in Great Britain. Injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences are then considered with numbers and corrective actions can be made (Howarth Watson, 2009). Construction design and management (CDM) On 6 April 2007 came into force in Great Britain the new Construction Design and Management Regulations 2007 written by the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) and approved by the Secretary of State and the Parliament. These regulations update, combine and replace the former Construction Design and Management Regulations 1994 (CDM94) and the Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1996 (CHSW) which both needed to be reviewed and updated accordingly with the recent evolutions of the considerations towards health and safety issues in construction and after consultations of the main stakeholders of the construction industry (HSC, 2007). The CDM2007 Regulations aim to reduce construction accidents and ill health in Great Britain by encouraging the various stakeholders of the construction industry to improve in planning and managing their projects taking into consideration matters of safety and health early on in the project definition. By starting focusing on these essential points at the beginning of a project, risks can be identified and managers are able to make good decisions ahead of difficulties (Howarth Watson, 2009). In this new version of the regulations, the HSC focuses on communication and co-ordination between all the parties involved in the construction project and set up several duties for each of the different stakeholders. It also highlights that the amount of paperwork and all the bureaucracy caused by the previous version of the regulations should be reduced and the focus put on the planning and management. (HSE Website) The CDM set up obligations for clients and designers. The main obligation imposed to the client is to appoint the main stakeholders for the planning and the realisation of construction work (St John Holt, 2005). By construction work, the CDM broadly refers to the carrying out of building, civil engineering or engineering construction word (HSC, 2007). The regulations also impose duties to the central figures then appointed which are related to health, safety and occupational safety on construction project and which will be summarised later in this paper. Among the dutyholders which participate to the carrying out of the project are the Client, the Designer, the CDM-Coordinator, the Principal Contractor and the Contractors (St John Holt, 2005). The Client The Client is defined as any person for whom construction work is being carried out, whether done by external labour or in-house (Joyston-Bechal Grice, 2004). It can be an individual as well as a company. By this definition of the investigator of the work, the Client is the one who provides adequate funds to design and realise the work in respect of safety and health regulations imposed by the CDM and thus has a certain influence on what happens on site (St John Holt, 2005). The CDM Regulations 2007 submit the Client to several duties (Howarth Watson, 2009) (Joyston-Bechal Grice, 2004) (HSE, 2006): Appoint a CDM-Coordinator and a Principal Contractor Make sure that these two stakeholders and all the other the client could directly appoint are competent and have the adequate resources to mange health and safety problem associated with the project Ensure that the construction does not start until suitable welfare facilities have been provided as well as an agreeable health and safety plan Provide the CDM-Coordinator and the Designers with all the relevant information about health and safety matters related to the project Retain and make the health and safety file available to anyone who asks for it The CDM-Coordinator should be appointed as soon as possible so the Client can receive advice from him in order to appoint the other stakeholders (St John Holt, 2005). One of the important duty of the Client is to make sure that all the main figures he (it?) has to appoint are competent and have the adequate resources to deal with health and safety issues. That means the Client has to ensure that these stakeholders understand well the project, are familiar with construction techniques, are well aware of health and safety matters their risks and consequences but also that they allocate enough money and persons to do the job (Joyston-Bechal Grice, 2004). Maybe what they are not required ? Fraser The CDM-Coordinator The CDM-Coordinator is a person or a company appointed as early as possible by the Client in the preparation of the project. He is a key element for the prevention of risks related to health and safety as he is the main advisor of the Client and he is the guarantor of coordination and co-operation between the main figures involved in the construction process (HSC, 2007). The duties of the CDM-Coordinator imposed by the Regulations 2007 are (HSC, 2007) (Semple Fraser, 2007) (Howarth Watson, 2009): Advise the Client and other stakeholders on appointments: competence and resource availability Notify HSE about the project Coordinate planning and design work on health and safety matters Cooperate with the Principal Contractor and facilitate good communication between the stakeholders involved in the project Collect pre-construction information and prepare a pre-tender health and safety plan Prepare and update the health and safety file Supervise designers and ensure the design is prepared adequately The CDM-Coordinator is appointed only in the case of notifiable projects. That covers all the construction works which are scheduled to last more than 30 days or involve more than 500 person-days of work. A person-day is defined as one individual carrying out construction work during one normal working day (St John Holt, 2005). An important part of the CDM-Coordinators duties is to work close to designers in order to ensure they get the right information are the good moment and to supervise their work in order to figure out if they consider hazard, risks and control (WS Atkins Consultants, rev A. Gilbertson, 2004). The Designer Designers have a key role in managing health and safety on site. They are the persons or companies who can prevent risks at the source (Semple Fraser, 2007). The designer is the one who analyse site information and prepare drawings and specifications for the project. He can be an architect, a land surveyor or an engineer (HSE, 2006). For complex projects, several designers can be appointed to split the design and ensure to identify and examine all the health and safety factors that need to be addressed (WS Atkins Consultants, rev A. Gilbertson, 2004). The main duties of a designers are Eliminate hazards and reduce health and safety risks Provide all the stakeholders with information about the remaining risks that could be eliminated Ensure the client is aware of duties and that he (it?) appointed a CDM-Coordinator Update the health and safety file with all the new information concerning health and safety matters Cooperate with the CDM-Coordinator and the other designers and supply the relevant information Designers have the duty of indentifying and eliminating hazards and reduce the risks of those which cannot be eliminated (HSC, 2007) by using risk assessment methods to detect foreseeable risk and ensure the safety of workers by tackling the problem at the source. For this purpose they have to reduce de likelihood of harmful occurrences and the potential severity of harm resultant from it, limit the number of people exposed the these occurrences on site as well as and the duration and frequency of exposition (Howarth Watson, 2009). The Principal Contractor The Principal Contractor is an individual or a company appointed early in the construction process by the Client and is responsible for planning, managing and controlling health and safety on site during the construction phase of the project (HSE, 2006). The Principal Contractor is usually the main Contractor of the project. He (it?) has to ensure a good cooperation and coordination of work between the Contractors involved in the construction because of the fact they may work on the same site at the same time and then interaction between then can create unexpected hazards (HSC, 2007). The duties imposed to the Principal Contractor are (Howarth Watson, 2009) (Joyston-Bechal Grice, 2004) (HSE, 2006): Plan, manage and control construction phases and provide a good communication with Contractors Create and implement the health and safety plan on the base of the pre-construction plan Set up site rules Provide Contractors with all the information available concerning health and safety matters to ensure safety of their workers Ensure the availability of suitable welfare facilities at the beginning of the work and maintain it during the duration of the construction phase Check the resource availability and the competence of its (his?) appointed stakeholders Provide the workers with an induction when they arrive on site and further training and information for specific work Make the site a safe place and restrict access to people involved in the construction Consult with the workers and liaise with the CDM-Coordinator The Principal Contractor has a significant health implication when designs change or decisions are modified. The consultation process with the workers and the CDM-Coordinator permits to make everyone aware of the new updates in the construction phase plan and of the changing in managing health and safety (Semple Fraser, 2007). The Contractor The Contractor is any person or company who is in charge of the carrying out or the management of the construction work. The Contractor can also organise the work of other stakeholders who carry out the work on his (it ?) behalf (Joyston-Bechal Grice, 2004). The duties of the Contractor are (Howarth Watson, 2009) (HSC, 2007): Plan, manage and control own work and that of workers Check competence of workers and sub-contractors Specific training for workers Provide health and safety information to workers Make sure workers beneficiate of suitable welfare facilities Check the project is notified before starting the work Cooperate with other Contractors and with the Principal Contractor Provide any information to update the health and safety file Report any accidents, diseases and dangerous occurrences to the Principal Contractor as well as problems with the health and safety plan. Most of the time on large projects, several contractors work at the same time on the same site. In this case it is essential they cooperate with each other and follow the instructions of the Principal Contractor not to interact and create new hazards on site. The contractors should ask for the health and safety construction phase plan produced by the Principal Contractor to get all the information they need to ensure safety of their employees (HSE, 2006).

Career Summary Of A Dietician Essay -- essays research papers

RESEARCH & FACTS The career I researched was that of a dietician. Someone who wishes to become a dietician must first obtain a bachelor’s degree, which would be considered a minimal requirement. Most dieticians will tell you that it would be within the best interests of a student wishing to become a dietician to get a master’s degree. Dieticians must have a love for science (chemistry in particular) and algebra as these skills are practiced routinely in the profession. It would also be a good idea for someone wishing to become a dietician to take some kind of accounting or book-keeping class, as dieticians must work on and file multiple records for each of their patients.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To become a dietician you must be willing to research every day. New scientific breakthroughs are made on a regular basis that are constantly changing the shape of the practice. Dieticians must also be willing to regularly meet with patients and physicians to accurately determine if their current dietary plan is working or not and what steps they should take to reach their final goal. Hospital dieticians correspond with the kitchen staff to make sure healthy diets are supplied for each patient in the hospital, as well as on an individual level.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In a hospital environment there are typically a group of dieticians to handle all of the inpatient diets. These dieticians in turn answer to their department manager, who works under a chairman. In the dietary department there are also several filing and appointment clerks who help the dieticians to manage their work and keep them on track. These clerks are required because of the high-volume of work a hospital dietician is responsible for. Even though dieticians must regularly meet with patients and physicians, schedules for dieticians are very loose, and they can usually pick their own hours as long as they are at work for a certain amount of time each week.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Dieticians are typically very friendly and social people. In the mornings, a dietary department will usually spend an hour or so casually talking about their current cases or new dietary breakthroughs. In these sessions, dieticians will discuss important new knowledge about their field and about their patients while they drink a cup of coffee.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Dieticians will usually ge... ...of us want to help other people, and both of us are concerned with our own health and nutrition.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are many positive reasons for me to become a dietician. As a dietician I would make a good amount of money, and could find work almost anywhere in the country. I would also be able to feed my love for science and researching skills. The only problem I could find with becoming a dietician is that I am a very mechanical person. This has been proven by the tests, but it is also backed by my own beliefs. Unfortunately, there is little hands-on physical work to be done by dietitians. Perhaps I could volunteer to rearrange the furniture once a week.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Educationally I am on the right path. In several weeks I will graduate high school with almost thirty college credit hours. I will need to take more chemistry, biology, and math classes. I plan on earning a masters degree in nutrition.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Overall, this is a very fitting choice for me. A dietitian has been something I have always wanted to become. After researching the job more and interviewing an actual dietitian, I have decided that it a sure bet for me. Career Summary Of A Dietician Essay -- essays research papers RESEARCH & FACTS The career I researched was that of a dietician. Someone who wishes to become a dietician must first obtain a bachelor’s degree, which would be considered a minimal requirement. Most dieticians will tell you that it would be within the best interests of a student wishing to become a dietician to get a master’s degree. Dieticians must have a love for science (chemistry in particular) and algebra as these skills are practiced routinely in the profession. It would also be a good idea for someone wishing to become a dietician to take some kind of accounting or book-keeping class, as dieticians must work on and file multiple records for each of their patients.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To become a dietician you must be willing to research every day. New scientific breakthroughs are made on a regular basis that are constantly changing the shape of the practice. Dieticians must also be willing to regularly meet with patients and physicians to accurately determine if their current dietary plan is working or not and what steps they should take to reach their final goal. Hospital dieticians correspond with the kitchen staff to make sure healthy diets are supplied for each patient in the hospital, as well as on an individual level.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In a hospital environment there are typically a group of dieticians to handle all of the inpatient diets. These dieticians in turn answer to their department manager, who works under a chairman. In the dietary department there are also several filing and appointment clerks who help the dieticians to manage their work and keep them on track. These clerks are required because of the high-volume of work a hospital dietician is responsible for. Even though dieticians must regularly meet with patients and physicians, schedules for dieticians are very loose, and they can usually pick their own hours as long as they are at work for a certain amount of time each week.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Dieticians are typically very friendly and social people. In the mornings, a dietary department will usually spend an hour or so casually talking about their current cases or new dietary breakthroughs. In these sessions, dieticians will discuss important new knowledge about their field and about their patients while they drink a cup of coffee.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Dieticians will usually ge... ...of us want to help other people, and both of us are concerned with our own health and nutrition.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are many positive reasons for me to become a dietician. As a dietician I would make a good amount of money, and could find work almost anywhere in the country. I would also be able to feed my love for science and researching skills. The only problem I could find with becoming a dietician is that I am a very mechanical person. This has been proven by the tests, but it is also backed by my own beliefs. Unfortunately, there is little hands-on physical work to be done by dietitians. Perhaps I could volunteer to rearrange the furniture once a week.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Educationally I am on the right path. In several weeks I will graduate high school with almost thirty college credit hours. I will need to take more chemistry, biology, and math classes. I plan on earning a masters degree in nutrition.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Overall, this is a very fitting choice for me. A dietitian has been something I have always wanted to become. After researching the job more and interviewing an actual dietitian, I have decided that it a sure bet for me.

Behavior Essay -- essays research papers

Behavior- Behave, it its root form, means to contain or to have. In the reflective sense, it means ‘to have bear oneself’. To use the word behave in common conversation, it is understood as to ‘behave well’. As for the phrase ‘to behave badly’, it is understood immediately. Behavior is looked at in society as the way a person presents him or herself in a given situation. It is also related to the specialized sense of manners. Use of the noun to refer to public conduct or, in a moral sense, to a general range of activities is still quite common. But the term is also used in relation to plants, lower organisms and animals to describe the apparent activity of the whole organism. One particular meaning followed from the extension of the methodology of the physical and biological sciences to an influential school of psychology which described itself as behaviorism. Psychology was seen as a purely objective experimental branch of natural science and data of a mental or experimental kind were ruled out as unscientific. This had the effect of limiting the nature of human activity to interactions determined by an environment, other conceptions of intention or purpose being rejected. Many socially applied fields such as communications and advertising, the relatively neutral physical senses of response have been developed into a reductive system of controlled behavior as a summary of all significant human activity. The most important effect is the description of certain intentional human practices and systems as if they were natural stimuli, to which responses can be graded as normal, abnormal or deviant. The sense of independent response is weakened, with important effects in politics and sociology. Bourgeois- Originating in the French language, bourgeois indicates an inhabitant of a borough. Under the feudal regime in France, bourgeois was a judicial category in society, sometimes defined as a trustworthy citizen whose being in life is stable and content. Bourgeois was a word mostly used by the aristocrats because of their contempt for the middle-class. It was also used by the underclass in a sense of respect. The steady growth in size and importance of this bourgeois class in the centries of expanding trade had major consequences in political thought, which in turn had complicating effects on the word. A new concept of society was expressed and transl... ...t controlling intermediary between producers, an employee of labor, or as the owner of the means of production. Career- Definition- The word career is so regularly used to describe a person’s progress in life that the original meanings of the word have been long forgotten. The word career originally meant any rapid or uninterrupted activity. It was used when referring to a carriage road or a racecourse. Career began to evolve when it was used with reference to diplomats and statesmen. The word soon began to indicate progress in a vocation and then the vocation itself. Today, career is inseparable from the terms work, labor, or job. It has been applied to jobs with explicit internal development and has been extended to any favorable or desired occupation. Career is still used in the abstract sense of politicians and entertainers, with some conscious and unconscious class distinction, to work or a job which contains some implicit promise of progress. Career now usually implies continuity if not necessarily promotion, yet the distinction between career and job only partly depends on this and is often associated also with class distinctions between different kinds of work.

Life Is a Gift

Life†¦ a four-letter word yet given with a pile of various meanings and values. It is an abstract idea that has brought into reality with every living thing. If we are to pause and sit back, thinking those days as we dwell on this earth, had it also occur to us how we live our life with? Have we ever realized how blessed we have been to get up each morning alive to face another day? Today, before we complain about what has life brought us, we should think first of those things which we may find less of value.As frequently said, â€Å"Every great thing starts from the little ones,† so why not appreciate every little thing we got? Life is precious. People are priceless. We have got life likewise; we have got people whom we can cherish our life with. Perhaps, there were times when we felt like giving up; when we were so depressed about everything that was happening, and when we thought life has been cruel to us. But, what we did not think so is the reason behind of all the m isfortunes we encounter. Challenges make us wiser, our sufferings make us tougher, and our yearnings make us stronger.So, we should try not to worry if things did not turn out well the way we expect them to be. Each passing day is a treasure, a great sign that we are given another chance to live and eventually, to turn into a new leaf so we could be a better person with brighter future. These reasons are enough to make us realize the significance of life. So, when depressing thoughts seem to get us down, we should always be reminded with those beautiful things that will lift us up and be grateful with the gift of life.

A Modern Day Liberal Arts Program

If there is one major lesson that we can learn living in this world, it is the fact of impermanence of everything. The world is constantly in a flux, forever fluid, as well as the reality that humanity must face in his day to day battle to live a decent, comfortable life. Everything is changing. If we would borrow a cliche to describe it, the appropriate one is time is achanging. And during this time when a lot of changes are taking place, there is the importance and need that the programs in our colleges to keep abreast with these changes.Failure to do so will only lead to another failure which is a shortcoming in educating our students to prepare then to face the realities of the outside world. In the case of Liberal Arts Programs, the issue stated above is more than appropriate. Lest we forget, Liberal Arts was founded by scholars whose aim is to maximize and develop the intellectual capacity of its students. The word Liberal in latin means libera which means free. The goal of lib eral arts then is to free its student from the bondage of ignorance.This is the reason why in the basic curriculum in any liberal arts program subjects like language, literature, philosophy and mathematics are included. The reason for this is to enhance the higher faculty of its students and nurture their ability to be well-verse with the outside world and at the same time of the possibilities of what role they will play in society. The role of Liberal Arts program in general under a setting of a democratic system is the fulfillment of every man’s intellectual potential for growth and development.Understanding that the democratic system bestows on man his rights for equality, liberty and freedom, the part played by Liberal Arts colleges towards these goals is to empower the individual to exercise these innate rights given to him by the form of this political setup. Through the programs offered by Liberal Arts, an individual is given the right tools to have the capacity to thi nk and express his ideas that is beneficial in his pursuit of personal development and progress.The result of the process then is that it uplifts the spirit of the person as an individual and simultaneously shapes him to be a productive participant in the society that he will be a part of. At the same time the effect of this on the society at large is the encouragement on the whole organization to advance in its ability to think. Advancement in the way the society think will bring an outcome where the society can find resolution to the challenges it faces in the fast changing world.Nevertheless, the question that lingers in the face of an ever-changing world is: Is the curriculum offered by Liberal Arts programs enough to keep students prepared to realize their potential once they leave the confine of campus life? The answer to this is very obvious. Though the basic curriculum that is included in the program gives the student the basic skills in cerebral endeavor and basic knowledge to participate effectively in society, there is still the need for it to be flexible and open to other disciplines to make it relevant to the changing world.In today’s changing terrain of realities, there are two points that students of this Liberal Arts Program will have to deal with in order to grow and be equipped with the right tools for them to function and participate in the outside world. One is communication and the other one is technology. Why communication and technology. On a cursory look the two seems wide apart. The first one is almost intangible while the latter is concrete and definite. One may even conclude that technology is far from the aim and mission of any liberal arts curriculum.Yet, on a closer look the two complement with each other. There is a need to master the basics of communication thorough which technology will be used as the tool to convey it. What then are the benefits of program for the student and to the society at large? One, the vision whi ch the program has set for each student is for him to be an all-around person who can participate in the outside world with right tools to keep at pace with the changing world, especially in this age of Information Revolution.As for the society at large, the benefit it can derive from this program is the actualization of everything that was taught in liberal arts classroom to be performed by its student in the outside world. Society can sow the fruits of labor of every student of the program. In a gist, this Liberal Arts Program will aim on what Knoblauch says about the uses of literacy, that it never stands alone, that it is always used for something – â€Å"for professional competence in the technological world, for civic responsibility and the preservation of heritage, for personal growth and self fulfillment, for social and political change† (220).Communication The main goal as to the focus of the program towards communication is obviously the intent of propagating literacy among young people. If we follow what Hirsch said in his study, the literacy rate in United States is only around 66% (2). It is therefore right to conclude that that there are basically one third of the population of the country who are illiterate. The program then will aim at equipping the students with skills that can make them speak well, write well and understand how to convey and relay their thoughts and ideas to others and to the society they are part of. How can these ends be met through the program?In the program under the light of communication, a curriculum which will include subjects on right speech and writing will be designed. These issues can be addressed by the inclusion of speech subjects with the objective of training the students in the right manner of being an effective communicator. Speech. There are already in some Liberal Arts programs that include this subject of speech in their curriculum. In this program the same will be applied but with a new phi losophy in treating the subject so that the maximum potential of the student can be reached as soon as possible in the course of the program.The approach would be the utilization of 95% of the class hours in the honing and speech practices to be given to the students. The pattern of teaching then would be breathing exercises during the start of the class. After this and throughout the long duration of the semester, the students will be called to present a prepared speech in front of the class, a speech with the duration of five minutes. This will happen throughout the course. Applying this method of teaching how to speak properly in front of an audience will develop at the same time the confidence of the student to fight stage fright.Meanwhile, the final examination for the course will be an extemporaneous speech by which each student, gaining already the confidence to stand in front of an audience, will be taught the experience of speaking their minds out in a comprehensible and st ructured format. The grading for this course will be unlike in any other speech subject. Since the usual gauge of the instructor in this case is lumping the whole class into one and giving the highest grade to the one who stand out among the rest, this will not be the system for this subject.Since the instructor is observing and sitting at the back of the classroom most of the time, he will grade each student according to his progress in the curriculum. Since a semester is long enough for a student to take several times to stand in front of the class to speak, the basis whether the student passes the subject is whether he has improved in his speaking skills. Writing. It is well known that in every Liberal Arts program there entails an intensive training for writing.It is even said that without focus on this aspect of such a program is a sure doom for the whole curriculum altogether. Writing is the most difficult form of communication since it takes a lot of practice and discipline i n order to put what one has in mind into written words. Many have tried to design different approaches on how to address this and how to imbue it as a college experience for students. There are a hundred methods applied to teach writing in school and so far there are only a handful or a small percentage of those who are taught who came out as good writer.In this program concerning writing, there will only be two types of writing skills that will be given priority and importance. One is essay writing and the second one is creative writing. Essay Writing. As I have said there are many approaches tried on this subject to attain the goal that the students gain the skill of writing well. There are many colleges which tried to start-up the writing development of student by applying the formula of instructing their students to put their ideas into writing. But in this program, the approach will be different.Part of the syllabus will be for each student to write different kinds of essays. T hese are assignments that will be scheduled for the students to submit to the professor during the course of the semester. This scheme is only the tip of the iceberg in teaching the students how to write. First, to let the student feel the words and see how his ideas are transformed into written texts, part of the daily activity of the students in this subject is the creation of what you called a â€Å"morning page† paper.This paper will be written continuously for half an hour with the instruction to the student to write everything he thinks or sees or smells or anything that comes to his mind during that session. Grammar, systax, punctuation and sentences structure in this activity are not considered. There are no right tenses here or correct English. The point of the exercise is to make the student flex his writing muscles. Another part of the activity that will be included in this course is the creation of a journal by every student.It must be clear to the student that to learn how to write one must practice it as regular as possible. And there is no regular activity that will force to the student to write by keeping a journal. Creative Writing. As part of the growth of the student a creative writing class will be designed to encourage him to use his creativity in expressing himself. They say the most difficult kind of writing is the creative one. So why then torture these students of the program to undergo a rigorous writing training that would make their nose bleed?The answer to this question is the simple learning process that the brain adjusts to the difficulty of the task and keeps at par with it. The analogy that I will use for this case is the simple game of playing chess against a computer. If the player would start at the most difficult and professional level of the chess game, it is of course expected that the a notice player will lose hundreds of times. Yet, at the same time this failure to beat the computer in a chess game will give the player hints and samples of how to play the game decisively.Sooner or later the player will adapt to the playing style of the computer and will experience his first win. Used to playing with the highest level the computer can offer, the player then will find it easy to play the lower level skill of the computer. Applied in the case of writing and considering that creative writing is the most difficult style of writing, if the student learns to use his language to write a creative piece, it is conclusive to say that any form of writing then will be easy on his part since he has already mastered the most difficult one.It is like sparring out with a heavyweight then fighting a featherweight will then be easy. This course will take two semesters to complete, during the Fall and Spring semester. Part of the activities here will be on the sport story writing exercises, several sessions of rewriting a previous written assignment. And for the final examination of the students, a short story that runs in 15 pages will be submitted to the professor for evaluation on the progress of the student. Also, as part of the curriculum, the students will be given reading list for the two semesters.This reading list will be novels of classic and contemporary writers of fiction. The genre for the novels does not matter. It may be a pulp fiction, speculative fiction, modernist novels or any other types. From this list the students will choose which they wanted to read for their development in writing a short story. There are three objectives by which this course is chosen and included in the curriculum. First is for the student to learn how to handle his language, second is for him to express himself creatively and the third is for him to write better.Technology Since one of the changes that are fast shaping the terrain of reality and the human society at large is the advent of the Information Revolution, it is appropriate that the curriculum being offered by Liberal Arts includes c ourses that will enhance the ability of the students to keep abreast with this innovation in technology. Right now, the role played by information technology has encroached on almost every aspect of everyday lives of the modern man.Since the core objective of any Liberal Arts program is to free the students from the bondage of ignorance and prepare him with the realities of the outside world, inclusion of technology in the curriculum is not at all unexpected. Instead, it is totally anticipated to be the course of action of every program. One of the subjects that will fall under this category of technology in the curriculum of this specific Liberal Arts Program is the basic introduction on computer technology. Most colleges have incorporated in their curriculum the use of computer to their students, like how to use word processor, spreadsheets and slide presentation.But this approach under the light of the fast integration of information technology in the lives of the modern man is a lready passe if not outdated altogether. Teaching a student how to use the computer right now is like teaching him how to operate his television set. It is already given that young people who are going into colleges are well adept with the use of computer. The role that the Liberal Arts Program will take is to push the knowledge of the student beyond from what is already known about information technology.The program then will include in its curriculum basic knowledge on computer hardware like repair and troubleshooting. Included also in the curriculum is the study of how to use the most popular software as of the present time. I said present time since this subject in computer software should be flexible to change at any given time to adjust to the fast pace innovations in information technology. Applying the popular Moore’s Law that the rate of progress of technology is rapid (ebrary Inc, 28) in this equation is appropriate.Computers are expected to perform calculations tha t doubles every two years, it must be anticipated that what is useful now will be passe and outdate in a couple of years. Grading System There have been many debates regarding the best grading system that ought to be applied in gauging the intellectual progress of every student. In this program, the grading system that will be followed by the instructors and the professors will sit on the foundation that the best gauge of intellectual capacity and development of the student is the progress he shows in the class and in the array of activities designed in the curriculum.It must be understood that the maturity of learning capacity of each student varies from each other considering students are different in their intellectual levels. The role that instructors and professors in the program then will be demanding and laborious since the process and discernment of what grade should get will be on their total evaluation of the student’s progress in their subjects. This grading system will be applied principally in the two major concerns of this program: communication and technology. This kind of grading system is specifically appropriate to be applied in the speech and writing classes.Since these skills take time to be developed, it will be proper if the grading system is according to the progress that the student is making in the course. Take as an example the subject of writing essays. Though everybody in the class is taking the subject for the first time, some may have already an experience in writing that can give them an edge in earning a higher grade. To give each student the chance to get a good grade on the subject, each will be graded according to the development and how fast the student has instilled in himself the craft of writing.Moreover, grading each student according to his progress will put the focus of on imbuing the skill rather than merely getting a high mark for the course. The advantage of this grading scheme is the fact that the priority o f the student is how to improve his skills in the art of writing. When the goal of the course is focused on the improvement of the student in learning the craft rather than merely getting a good grade, the effect or result of this is the continuance of learning experience even if the course is already over.Since the student is oriented towards the goal of improving his skills and not just on the temporary and limited goal of earning a good mark, the writing experience is expected to continue until the student is already out of the campus. Knowing for a fact that writing better and effectively per se cannot be taught in a single or couple of semester, one of the main goal then of the course is for the student to continue putting effort to hone his skills in the endeavor of writing until his older and professional years.Though this scheme somewhat will be applied sparingly in the course of subjects concerning technology. Since the subjects are more concrete and mechanic in nature, the progress alone of the student in the curriculum will not suffice to gauge his effort in trying to learn the course. Conclusion The objective of any Liberal Arts program is to bring to freedom from ignorance each student that will take the course. At the same time, the program is designed with the primary goal of giving the student tools with which to face and participate in the outside world of the campus.These tools take the forms of skills like effective speech and deftness in writing craft and knowledge in the new technology abundant in the present age of ours. These skills will help the student be a better player and participant in the society once he is already outside the campus. The good about the program is that it complements the setup in a democratic society where each individual is given his right to pursue equality, liberty and freedom from ignorance. The curriculum that this program will focus on will be communication and technology since these two disciplines also com plement each other.Skills in speech and writing will be given the great emphasis while technology through the instruction of how computer works will also be given an importance. The grading system also by which the student will be evaluated will sit on the foundation of looking on the progress of the student rather than meeting the expectation of the instructor or professor. The advantage of this grading scheme is the re-alignment of priority for the student to look at the curriculum as a means to enhance his skills rather than merely getting high marks.Another point of this is the fact that the skills and discipline that the student may imbue on the whole program will be continued to be practiced even if he is already outside the boundary of the campus. Work Cited ebrary, Inc. Computer Science: Reflections on the Field, Reflections from the Field. Washington, DC, National Academies Press, 2004 Knoblauch, C. H. â€Å"Literacy and the Politics of Education†. Composing Knowledg e. Ed:Rolf Norgaard. Boston, New York. Bedford/St. Martin, 2007. pp. (198-209). Hirsch, E. D. â€Å"Cultural Literacy†. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987 Annotated Bibliographyebrary, Inc. Computer Science: Reflections on the Field, Reflections from the Field. Washington, DC, National Academies Press, 2004 This book basically tackled the progress in information technology. In the paper, there is a need for it to be cited since the discussion is the fast pace development in this modern technology. The importance of the idea is to present that the reasoning of the writer in saying that there should be flexibility in the creation of curriculum concerning computer literacy. Knoblauch, C. H. â€Å"Literacy and the Politics of Education†. Composing Knowledge. Ed:Rolf Norgaard.Boston, New York. Bedford/St. Martin, 2007. pp. (198-209). The underlying argument for the reason of the use of what Knoblauch said is to present the fact that literacy has its used in society. Sin ce literacy is one of the objectives of Liberal Arts, it is important to cite his text to show what will be the function of being a literate in society. Hirsch, E. D. â€Å"Cultural Literacy†. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987 The function of the information given by Hirsh in his book is to present the problem that is besetting the American population. There is a need for what the author said