Commentary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 2

Commentary - Essay Example He has argued that the modern day media has been inspired from radio serials of the past, which were under influence of sixteenth century play serials whose authors faced great criticism regarding the morality of their products. This way, media is continuing to affect the moral standards of its viewers. Professionals today must study history, and historians must understand the importance of modern day studies regarding media and communication. Dumas has concentrated upon the technicalities of how content is generated over the internet and is received by the access points. His net neutrality debate lucidly clarifies how net neutrality has become a public debate over the years. He has numbered a myriad of net neutrality drawbacks of modern times, which gives the reader an insight of how the whole process has prospered over the years. Both the texts are lucid in their own style, giving the readers an insight into how technology progresses over time and what are the pros and cons of mani fold technological and media

The Korean War Essay Example for Free

The Korean War Essay Two of the immediate effects of The Korean War are that it was one of the most destructive of the 20th century, and The Korean War also brought social damage to Korea, especially in the North. North Korea remained a communist nation and South Korea became a free republic. This social difference still brings conflict even today. . However, the Korean War was able to boost the economy of both Japan and the US. The Korean War also legitimized the United Nations and led to further expansion of military power. The war had a lasting consequence beyond Korea. Much of the material used in the war was bought from nearby Japan. This gave Japanese economy such an dynamic boot after the ravages of WWII that some have called the Korean War, also it had similar effects on the American economy, as defense spending nearly quadrupled in the last six months of 1950. Truman wanted to go to war with North Korea by himself but decided that he cannot act alone without UN support. Truman saw this as a test for containment and he later went to the UN and he asked for help. The UN approve sending troops to help defend South Korea from North Korea. After that, Britain, Australia, Canada, Columbia, Turkey, New Zealand, and other nations were among the UN to help out the US and South Korea against the North Korea aggression. The war went on for 3 years and UN successfully defend South Korea from North Korea aggression. The U.S sent troops to south korea and the united nations backed them up and they went against north korea and fought them.across the 38th parallel and pushed them up to the yalu river on the boarder of china and the UN captured pyongyang north korean capital and china was pissed because the u.s and UN went to china border so china pushed them back to south korea over the 38th parallel and to prevent ww3 everything went back to where it started and nations north and south went back to where they started and left it at that. The presidents Truman Doctrine committed the United States to a policy of supporting foes of Communism everywhere in the world. Trumans  failure to lead the United States to victory in the Korean War led to a severe decline in support for the presidents policies among the American people.

The Coup de Grace :: essays papers

The Coup de Grace The short film, The Coup de Grace is a realistic war movie that illustrates the casualties of war. This film does not glorifies war, instead it gives a very realistic view of its aftermath. One of the many artistic techniques use in this movie is the illusion of action which is achieved by the quick movement of the camera. For example, the Captain at the beginning of his search is stationary and facing forward for a long time. As he is facing forward, the background is in motion giving a sense of action. This means that the world around him is moving on and time does not stop for no one. Finally he moves aimlessly for a long time. This shows that to try to find someone in such a situation is not an easy task to do. He choose to do it alone even though he could have gather some soldiers to help him make the task faster if not easier. Perhaps he was afraid of the outcome and how he would handle it emotionally thus losing his bearing in front of his men. As he is searching, he is ver y gentle and careful went he turns the death bodies around to make a positive identification of his friend. He is giving the bodies the outmost respect even thought they are dead. The captain finally finds his wounded best friend. He reacted in an angry and confused way. The wounded sergeant had regressed to an earlier stage of development to deal with the immense pain of his wound. Seen his friend like this made the captain remember an earlier happy time went the sergeant was free of pain and injuries. The flashback is another artistic technique use in the film. The two friends are conversating and reminiscing their childhood. It is important to notice how yellow green the grass is in this scene compared to lather. The sergeant’s older bother, the major disturbs their happy conversation. The artistic technique use to do this is shown with an immediate sun spot. The sergeant gets up and renders a salute, but the captain does not salutes showing disrespect toward the major. The major expresses his jealously and gives him his assignment adding that if the captain wished, he could give it to someone else of lesser rank.

Brock

This gets the reader or viewer engaged, being left make predictions. This sense Is achieved with techniques employed by the author or director of a text. Such is the case in Into Thin Air written by Jon Krause and in The Hunger Games directed by Gary Ross Jon Krause constructs the text Into Thin Air to establish a sense of inevitability that a disaster will occur on Mat. Everest. He achieves this with the use of foreshadowing.An example from the text Is when Squeaker's teammates are spending time taking hoots and he says, â€Å"nobody suspected that by the end of the day, every minute would matter†. This informs us that something bad is going to happen in the near future where time is valuable. This importance of time suggests their lives will be put at risk and survival will become a main focus. Foreshadowing leaves the reader to make predictions while giving them the sense that something will definitely happen, be Inevitable. The application of statistics and descriptive lan guage In Into Thin Alarm contributes to the sense of inevitability that a disaster will occur.He informs us of the deaths on Everest â€Å"Everest killed more than 130 people since the British first visited the mountain in 1921† and the dangerous terrain â€Å"towering more than 12,000 feet†¦ Looms as a three-sided pyramid of gleaming ice and dark, striated rock† Texts can be constructed to establish a sense of inevitability of something happening. This gets the reader or viewer engaged, being left make predictions. This sense Is achieved with techniques employed by the author or director of a text. Such Is the case In IntoThin Air written by Jon Krause and in The Hunger Games directed by Gary Ross be inevitable. With techniques employed by the author or director of a text. Such is the case in Into An example from the text is when Squeaker's teammates are spending time taking The application of statistics and descriptive language in Into Thin Air contributes to th e reader or viewer engaged, being left make predictions. This sense is achieved looms as a three-sided pyramid of gleaming ice and dark, striated rock† sense is achieved with techniques employed by the author or director of a text. Such

Decision Support for Best Practices Lessons Learned

Decision support for best practices: Lessons learned on bridging the gap between research and applied pratice. Today, everyone is looking at best practices for developing a system or making the right choice in acquiring system components. If the right best practices are applied, they help to avoid common problems and improve quality, cost, or both. However, finding and selecting an appropriate best practice is not always an easy endeavor. In most cases guidance, based on sound experience, is missing; often the best practice is too new, still under study, or the existing experiences do not fit the user's context.This article reports on a program that tries to bridge the gap between rigorous  empirical research  and practical needs for guiding practitioners in selecting appropriate best practices. ********** Many program managers would agree that using time-tested â€Å"Best Practices† can help to avoid common problems and increase the quality of a system, reduce development cost, or both. For instance, in a short survey at the 2004 Conference on the Acquisition of Software-Intensive Systems, 48 senior systems and software managers supported the use of Best Practices.However, the same survey indicated that it is hard to find such Best Practices. The survey identified the following reasons for this problem: * Best practices often do not exist (i. e. , they have not been publicly documented), * People do not know of a certain best practice, or * Best practices are not easily accessible (i. e. , there is no central place to look for best practices). The last point matches a more general study by the Delphi Group in which more than 65 percent of the interviewees agreed that finding the right nformation to do their job is difficult (Delphi, 2002). Further research conducted by the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) concluded that barriers for the adoption of best practices included: * the lack of selection criteria among practices within cost-constrained pro grams, * the lack of confidence in the value of such practices by the program offices, and * the inability to relate practices to the risks and issues programs were facing. In summary, recognizing good practices and  disseminating  them to the workforce seems to be a key issue.To address these issues the DoD Acquisition Best Practices Clearinghouse (BPCh) program, sponsored by several offices of the DoD (DS,  ARA, National Information Infrastructure [NII], and Defense Procurement ; Acquisition Policy [DPAP]), was initiated in 2003 (Dangle, Dwinnell, Hickok ; Turner, 2005). The Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering, Maryland (FC-MD) was chosen to develop the initial â€Å"proof of concept† for a system to document, evaluate, and  disseminate  Best Practices.In collaboration with other organizations within the DoD and industry (including  Northrop Grumman  IT, the Computer Sciences Corporation [CSC], and the Systems and Software Consortium [SSCI] ), a prototype system has been built and piloted. It is currently operated and hosted by the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). THE VISION FOR APPLYING BEST PRACTICES The DoD vision for the BPCh initiative is to provide more than just a list of Best Practices. It is to provide an integrated set of processes, tools, and resources which will enable information seekers to identify emerging or ell-proven practices that have been implemented and proven effective. Practices in the BPCh serve as an information resource to individuals  looking for  ideas on how to improve quality and become more effective in their job. Clearly, the vision of the BPCh is not to create another â€Å"data cemetery,† but to develop an information-sharing network around the BPCh repository which will foster relationships between individuals within DoD and also partnerships between DoD and industry leaders.The following types of questions illustrate usage examples: * â€Å"I just heard about accele rated life testing. Where can I find out if it's useful or just hype? † * â€Å"They've just shortened my testing schedule by 30 percent. Are there any practices that can help me better handle that kind of schedule compression? † * â€Å"I want to add inspections to my quality process. Is it worth the cost and if so, what's a good first step? Is there someone I can contact in case of any difficulties? * â€Å"I've taken over an acquisition program just before Critical Design Review (CDR). What practices should I look for in my contractors? † * â€Å"I'm in charge of defining a training course as part of the  continuing education  program for quality improvements. What are state-of-the-art or emerging practices that should be addressed? † The BPCh has been designed with the understanding that a single practice can never be a â€Å"silver bullet† for each and every project/program.This is because some practices may only be useful or beneficial in certain contexts while failing to produce the desired results in others. For example, practices that are absolutely necessary for large, mission critical projects may be too heavyweight for  rapid prototyping  or Web application development. Practices that work well when the development team is located in the same room may not always scale well when the team is distributed across the country. Clearly, there exists no one â€Å"best† answer. Practices that are best for one user might not be best for the next.Therefore, the BPCh tool responds to user queries with a list of practices rated by how well they fit the project characteristics of the user making the query. The presented selection is compiled using the experience other users have had implementing the practice in a similar context. High-quality evidence about a practice is collected and reported with any necessary caveats, so that information seekers have a sound basis for making up their own minds given their need s. APPLYING TECHNOLOGY TO DELIVER BEST PRACTICESTo develop the BPCh tool, we applied FC-MD's EMPEROR approach (Experience Management Portal using Empirical Results as Organizational Resources). This approach makes use of all kinds of available  evidential  data from research and industry, analyzes and packages it, and disseminates it through a Web-based Experience Base. The EMPEROR is based on the experience factory approach, developed by Basili, Caldiera, and Rombach (1994), which has been successfully employed to facilitate  organizational learning  at  NASA  (Basili, et al. 1995), DaimlerChrysler (Schneider & Schwinn, 2001), and elsewhere in  North America, Europe, and Australia (Koennecker, Jeffery, & Low, 2000; Mendonca,  Seaman, Basili, & Kim, 2001). An experience factory provides a way to analyze results based on practical experience, and package what is learned into an Experience Base for new users of the organization to find and apply. Since the users of the BPCh come from a wide variety of organizations and programs, any Experience Base will have difficulties in addressing all user needs.To mitigate this problem, EMPEROR is required to: (a) provide transparency to users, so that they can understand the analysis process and the sources of experience and make up their own minds; (b) rate the â€Å"trustability† of each of the used sources, so that users can judge the degree of confidence they have in the information provided; and (c) provide a completeness and maturity indicator of the practice information taken as a whole, that is, to perform a self-rating based on how much and what quality evidence can be offered. DATA STRUCTURE OF A BPCH PRACTICEThese sections describe how these requirements are implemented in the case of the BPCh. In the BPCh, each practice has one associated Practice Record, containing information about the practice and what is available in the Clearinghouse, and zero to many Evidence Profiles, each of which contains a summary of a single organization's experience using the practice. A Practice Record consists of: 1. A Practice Detail block, which contains information such as the practice name, a short description, and the completeness and maturity indicator for the experience package. . A Practice Summary block, which synthesizes all available evidence data and describes possible application contexts for the practice based on a set of characterizing attributes. This part of the practice record thereby allows different users (i. e. , organizations) to make use of the practice. An Evidence Profile contains an example or report of some type of program that has used this practice, how they applied it, and what results were obtained.Each Evidence Profile contains the same set of context and result fields as the Practice Summary block, except that the information recorded in each field will describe only what has been observed in the given context of the particular piece of evidence. In add ition, the data structure of an Evidence Profile contains a field for documenting its classification of the trustability. TRUSTABILITY OF A SINGLE SOURCE OF EVIDENCE A 20-point scale rates the trustability of each Evidence Profile.A rating of l indicates an  anecdotal  or informal experience; a rating of 20 indicates that the results of applying the practice are rigorously measured and substantiated. Points are based on the following four dimensions: * how the practice was applied, ranging from a single pilot study to use on multiple real projects; * how the results were measured, ranging from an educated guess to a rigorous measurement program; * how the evidence was reported, ranging from an informal  anecdote  to a peerreviewed publication; and who reported the evidence, ranging from a second-hand report to someone directly involved on the team. More information on the rating scale can be found on the BPCh page of the Acquisition Community Connection of DAU (https://acc. dau. mil/bpch). MATURITY OF A PRACTICE RECORD A 4-point scale is used to rate each Practice Record to quickly inform the user of how much, and what type of, information is known about the practice. As required by EMPEROR, this scale focuses on the quality of the overall accumulated information that is available for a practice (i. e. the  synthesized  and packaged information in the Practice Record). Based on the available information we describe the practice maturity as: * No status assigned/Initial entry: A new Practice Record is initially entered into the BPCh when it is nominated by our experts and/or user communities. Typically at this time, only some of the fields in the Practice Detail block are filled in and no Evidence Profiles are available. * Bronze status/Awareness raised: As soon as any evidence becomes available (i. e. , an Evidence Profile has been linked to the Practice Record), the status is set to Bronze Level.For users, the Bronze Level status indicates that th e practice has been nominated by our experts and user communities, and received a preliminary check for applicability. * Silver status/Evaluation performed: When a sufficient set of Evidence Profiles is available, the BPCh experts will fill in the Practice Summary block and the status is set to Silver Level. For users, the Silver Level status indicates that the practice has been selected as promising enough to commission experts in the area to summarize key information.Users can see at a glance what they should know. * Gold status/Continuously maintained: When the summary has been further evaluated (i. e. , vetted) by experts from industry, academia, and government, the status is set to Gold Level. For users, the Gold Level status indicates that the practice has been through a rigorous analysis by a committee of experts in the practice itself as well as by user representatives. Information on Gold Level practices contains the best and widest-ranging experiences we can find. CONTENT STATUS OF THE BPCHWe have been piloting BPCh processes and tools by seeding initial content. At this point the BPCh contains 51 practices at all levels of maturity. Practices that have progressed to Gold Level are those, like inspection/technical review, which have a long history of published industrial experience. Many practices of interest in the area of systems and software acquisition have few documented sources of evidence or experience. Therefore, we are testing different processes for eliciting information from the workforce.Based on the recommendations of our User Advisory Group, the following types of practices are currently our top-priority areas for additional content: *  Earned Value Management, * Risk Management, * Information Assurance, and * Spiral Development Process. We hope that visitors to the BPCh tool will try out the offered features for providing short stories about their own experience with practices in these (or any other) areas. We encourage you to provid e feedback as to whether you agree or  disagree with  the existing experiences that have been entered, or thoughts on our BPCh tool in general.LESSONS LEARNED Based on our experience with the BPCh program and other knowledgemanagement projects, we can formulate some observations which make useful rules of thumb for good practices to build such systems. The BPCh program has been organized along three parallel (but interconnected) tracks, which reflects our first lesson learned. LESSON 1: PROCEED IN MULTIPLE DIRECTIONS SIMULTANEOUSLY Progress in building a knowledge repository needs to proceed in multiple dimensions simultaneously: content collection, tool development, and outreach.Although there is often a temptation to view these as tasks that can be done sequentially (e. g. , first the tool will be built, then  populated, and then it will be advertised to users), we have found this to be an overly  simplistic  view that diminishes the chance of project success. Constructi ng the tool prior to collecting actual content and getting users' feedback almost ensures that important user needs will be discovered late and will require much more effort to implement. Populating the content without getting user feedback leads to a high likelihood that the content will not really address user needs.More importantly, content needs to come from the user community, if the repository is to have a long-term life. We have found that for the research team to generate substantial amounts of content is a time-consuming way of recreating what many users already have at their  finger tips. Finally, engaging in outreach and building excitement in the community of potential users runs the risk of all prototyping efforts: When told how anything is possible in the final system, users often come up with many wish list features that are not really linked to their everyday needs.Moreover, users often get  frustrated  with the slow pace of progress when the system actually ha s to be implemented, and lose interest before the system is fielded. To avoid these problems, we have adopted an  incremental  approach, with content and tool development going on simultaneously and outreach activities to the user community (such as booths at major conferences, or specific User Advisory Group meetings) planned at major milestones.Although this sometimes stretches resources a bit thin, we feel this approach has enabled us to engage periodically with the user community, show them progress since the last  iteration, and get feedback on ever more mature versions of the system, with an initial body of content. LESSON 2: MAINTAIN A CONTINUOUS STREAM OF FUNDING Because of the interconnected nature of all the tasks listed above, having a stable funding stream is crucial.Requiring the team to take a  hiatus  from the project after a release is delivered leads to lost opportunities for user involvement (users find it hard to match their schedule to the development t eam's), leads to new content ideas that miss getting followed up on, may result in the loss of expertise if experienced personnel resources are in transition to other projects during the hiatus, increases the personnel learning curve encountered at restarts, and may result in flagging interest in the user community since momentum generated during outreach is lost.LESSON 3: RECOGNIZE THE RELATIVE MERITS OF CONTENT Our most important lesson learned is a direct implication of the BPCh vision: There is no such thing as a â€Å"Best Practice. † Or, to say it more diplomatically: No practice will be â€Å"best† for every project. Practices that are absolutely necessary for large, mission-critical projects may be too heavyweight for rapid prototyping or Web application development. The implications of this lesson are many.Perhaps the most important is related to the tone of the recommendations that users find: Rather than arguing as an expert that readers should be following a given practice, or else they are doing something wrong, practices should be recommended to readers on the basis that projects of certain type(s) have found it useful. That is, rather than presenting a  foregone conclusion  to users, the system should aim at respecting users' intelligence enough to enable them to draw their own conclusion, providing sufficient evidence as necessary for those decisions to be sound ones.LESSON 4: UNDERSTAND THE LIFE CYCLE OF BEST PRACTICES Practices (and practice information) are not static and have a real life cycle. Major  paradigm shifts  in the software development world can have an impact on which practices are recommended. The practices that seemed to be good fits for most projects, when a  waterfall  life cycle was the most common approach to software development, are not all equally applicable at the current time, when  iterative, spiral, and even agile approaches are probably more representative of the state-of-the-art practice .Our recommendations regarding a structured life cycle for practice information are: 1. A knowledge repository needs to be continually evolving by accepting information on topics of interest and making it available to users as soon as possible. While some quality checking is necessary to make sure that incorrect, misleading, or incomplete information is disseminated outward, it is better to get information to users as it comes in, than to wait and try to create something perfect.Users should be able to see a timestamp on all information so that they can see if the experiences related are fresh and up to date or come from years ago. 2. However, the desire to get information out quickly should not interfere with the need for validation activities that provide higher confidence in the information. These additional levels of maturity should be noted, to give users more confidence in the information they find, but should not be used as aprecondition  for displaying content. 3.Content n eeds to be retired when appropriate. Practices may have a natural lifespan, since the acquisition and development worlds continue to evolve and change on their own. Practices that were good 10 years ago may not be appropriate given today's constraints or technologies. To avoid users finding obsolete information in the repository, reports need to be generated periodically of which practices have received no updates or new experiences in the longest time. LESSON 5: APPLY AGILE STRATEGIES AND PROTOTYPINGTo create the front end of the BPCh tool, which helps users find candidate practices, explore possibilities, and get more information on practices of real interest, we have found that prototyping and agile strategies are extremely valuable for developing knowledge-management systems. Precisely because of the need for parallel activities in different tracks, and the number of  stakeholders  involved (tool developers, content gathering team, end user representatives, sponsor represent atives), an agile approach is extremely valuable.The implementation of the prototype BPCh tool was carried on in two-week increments, at the end of which a releasable version was always available. At the end of each two-week period, a demonstration and planning meeting was held with as many of the stakeholders as could be present. This approach was necessary to help us coordinate and  prioritize  the evolving expectations of the users as well as the necessary changes that were suggested by the content development team, based on what they were finding. As part of this meeting we learned the following lesson: LESSON 6: USE APPROPRIATE LANGUAGESpeak to the users in their language. Do not expect them to learn yours. We realized early on that having the greatest possible content in the BPCh repository would not be of much help if the users cannot find it. To address this we needed to provide multiple paths to the information, so that users could select the path that made the most sen se to them. Some specific lessons learned here included: 1. Organize around common tasks. The best way to reach users is to organize the contents of the repository  according to  everyday activities that the user performs.This helps users see the repository less as an additional activity that they need to make time for, and more as a value-added to the activities that already consume their time. In the case of BPCh, we added several such perspectives (i. e. , indexes to the content) based around activities of importance to different segments of the user community (e. g. , addressing  CMMI  practice areas, constructing a systems engineering strategy, and referencing back to common guidebooks). 2. Push as well as pull information.Rather than always expecting users to take time to come to browse the BPCh tool, information can be â€Å"pushed† outward to the user on a periodic basis. For example, the user could select some practices of special interest, and when new exper iences come in related to these practices a notification is sent via e-mail. 3. Match users to practices based on context similarity. Since no practice will be â€Å"best† for every project, it is important to match users to practices using context characteristics. This provides the users with a pick list of practices that may be useful in their particular situation, in ddition, it may alert the user to practices that they might not have known about previously. For example, if the user selects a few context variables that describe his/her context, then practices can be prioritized and displayed according to whether they have associated evidence provided by users with similar context information. This is a way of indicating that, even if the practice does not answer a specific search query, users like the current one have found this practice useful and it may be something the user should know. LESSON 7: DEMONSTRATE PRACTICAL EXAMPLES TO INTENDED USERTo engage in effective outr each activities, aimed at building up an interested and active community of users of the BPCh, we find the following lesson of relevance: You can not show initial users an empty  depository. In line with the idea that building a tool like the BPCh needs to proceed on three tracks in parallel (front-end, content, and outreach) is the lesson that populating the content cannot come after the repository is built. Showing users a fancy front-end without an initial set of real content may get their interest for a short time period, but is not an effective way of building an active user community.Users need to see a small but representative set of content which they can respond to and start generating ideas for the next content or tool release. LESSON 8: UPDATE CONTENT AND FUNCTIONALITY CONTINUOUSLY To keep interest engaged, when users do check back to the site they need to see that updates have been made since last time. Content needs to be continuously updated and  refreshed  to st ay abreast of trends. If users ever become convinced that the repository does not get updated on a regular basis, this often spells the end of their involvement.Rather, they need to be motivated to come back often enough to find new things and hopefully, as they progress, be motivated to submit responses and ideas of their own showing emerging trends and keeping the content relevant. Thus, user involvement tends to build more user involvement. As users become interested enough to post comments or send  new ideas  to the repository, other users will continue to be interested to show up to see which comments have been added since the last time and possibly find something of interest to their current situation–and more likely to find something applicable.One way we have experimented with–to reinforce this concept–is to list on the front page of the BPCh tool the most recently added practices and highlight ones that have been promoted to various maturity levels (Bronze, Silver, or Gold). Thus, one of the  first things  users see is an indicator of how much progress has occurred since their last visit. CONCLUSIONS This article has presented some of the lessons learned with the BPCh program, which aims to document practices and quickly disseminate them to the users. The BPCh, which is based on the EMPEROR approach, makes use of a two-dimensional rating scale.These scales provide users with a quick overview of the trustability and maturity of the stored practice records. The scales allow users to understand and to draw their own conclusions based on a set of evidence from different contexts, from research studies as well as industrial experiences, and using measures at different levels of  rigor. Practitioners can rely on this information without reading in detail through the different evidence sources, unless they are interested in the very detailed level of information.In addition, ways to collect user feedback and trigger discussions are offered to allow a vivid and growing user community. While initial feedback regarding the BPCh tool has been positive (Turner & Shull, 2005), we are continuing to improve the BPCh program and its associated tool through ongoing research, advisory groups, and user community feedback. We are interested in addressing such questions as: â€Å"How much extra effort to  certify  evidence sets and summaries as correct is worthwhile to users? † or â€Å"Are there subsets or types of evidence that users will find especially worthwhile? We invite you to take a look at our BPCh tool, available at http://bpch. dau. mil. We appreciate all feedback, whether it be submitted through the tool or directly to the authors' e-mail. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported with funding from the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD), the  Office of the Secretary of Defense  (OSD), and the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). We wish to thank the members of the BPCh team, from DAU, FC- MD, CSC, and SSCI, for the many productive discussions that have improved this work. REFERENCES Basili, V.R, Caldiera, G. , & Rombach, H. D. (1994). Experience factory. In J. J. Marciniak (Ed. ),  Encyclopedia  of Software Engineering (Vol. 1, pp. 469-476). New York:  John Wiley  & Sons, Inc. Basili, V. , Zelkowitz, M. , McGarry, E, Page, J. , Waligora, S. , & Pajerski, R. (1995). SEL's software process improvement program. IEEE Software, 12(6), 83-87. Dangle, K. , Dwinnell, L. , Hickok, J. , ; Turner, R. (2005, May). Introducing the Department of Defense acquisition best practices clearinghouse. CrossTalk, 18(5), 4-5. Defense Acquisition University.Retrieved from http://bpch. dau. mil Delphi White Paper. (2002). Taxonomy  ; Content Classification–Market Milestone Report. Boston, MA: Delphi Group. Koennecker, A. , Jeffery, R. , & Low, G. (2000, April). Implementing an experience factory based on existing organizational knowledge. In Proceedings of the 2000  Austra lian Software Engineering Conference  (pp. 28-29), Canberra, ACT, Australia. Mendonca, M. , Seaman, C. , Basili, V. R. , & Kim, Y. M. (2001, June). A prototype experience management system for a software consulting organization.In Proceedings of the 13th  International Conference on Software Engineering  and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE). Ottawa, Canada. Schneider, K. , ; Schwinn, T. (2001, June). Maturing experience base concepts at DaimlerChrysler. Software Process-Improvement and Practice, 6(2), 85-96. Turner, R. , ; Shull, F. (2005, November). An empirical approach to best practice identification and selection: The U. S. Department of Defense acquisition best practices clearinghouse. In Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering (ISESE  2005)(pp. 33-140), Noosa Heads, Australia. Mr. Raimund L. Feldmann is the technical lead for Knowledge and Experience Management at the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering, MD (FC-M D). Before he joined FC-MD in 2004, Raimund participated in several technology transfer projects in Germany and was also involved in the development of the Virtual Software Engineering Competence Center (VSEK) portal, funded by the Department of Education and Research (bmb+f) of the German Federal Government, to offer up-to-date Software Engineering knowledge to subject matter experts. E-mail address: [email  protected] umd. edu) Mrs. Michele A. Shaw is a Scientist at the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering. Michele supports clients implementing process improvement, measurement, and experience factory concepts. She has over 25 years of experience in Information Technology including software and service development, project management, quality assurance, client care and  subcontractor  management Ms Shaw holds a BS in Business from  University of Baltimore  and a masters in applied  behavioral science  from  Johns HopkinsUniversity. (E-mail address : [email  protected] edu) Dr. Forrest Shull is a senior scientist at the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering, MD (FC-MD). He is project manager and member of technical staff for projects with clients that have included Fujitsu, Motorola, NASA, and the U. S. Department of Defense. He has also been lead researcher on grants from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Air Force Research Labs, and NASA's Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. (E-mail address: [email  protected] umd. edu)

Depression Research Paper

Depression Research Paper Throughout the nation and our world people are suffering from this disease. Depression effects people of both genders, all ages, and any background. People once believed that teens never went through any form of severe depression. Some still believe this to be true, but if it were why are teens homicidal and suicidal? This report should give support for the fact that a teens depression deserves attention, not the shrug of the shoulders or the turn of a back. Depression is defined as the point or points is ones lifetime when they are mentally unstable and the emotional state marked by sadness, discouragement, and loss that can occur during the teenage years. Depression causes changes in behavior, thinking and especially changes in ones everyday life. Depression amongst teens generally starts when a child hits puberty, but could possibly begin the day they were born if chemically inbalanced (heredity). Dr. David Kalkstein, psychiatrist at Penn Foundation. Depression can effect anyone, anytime, and anywhere. Teens, children, and adults are all effected, some even have the same problems in common, the causes too. Depression is experienced mostly by teens even though it is mistakenly classified as an adult illness. Twenty percent of high school students are deeply unhappy or have some kind of psychiatric problem. The causes for depression in teens are sometimes more harsh than the causes in adults. In a teens lifetime they have to face many p roblems and sometimes they have to face these problems more than once. Teens have to deal with peer pressure problems at school, problems at home, the deaths of loved ones, and if they are already using drugs this could also be a cause. Many teens also have to deal with the point in their life when they wonder if they are attractive to other people, of the opposite sex. If they do believe that they are unattractive they will most likely feel as though they have failed at something. Then they will act as if they do not care anymore, then the uncaring attitude increases until they no longer care about much at all. Depression also comes after a teenager is trying to learn about himself or herself and understand their body, and their emotions towards others. Sometimes these emotions have to deal with homosexuality and finding out whether or not they like people of the same gender. To many people the idea of homosexuality is disgusting and most people know how others feel about it, so when someone who thinks that he or she is gay, they feel out of place, especially if their family, friends, and loved ones are homophobic. Another cause of depression may be the Acne drug, Accutane. There was a study on this drug. Researchers have tested Accutane on one person and this person used it for a few months, then after a while signs of depression began to appear. When the drug had stopped being used by the person, the signs of the depression cleared. Another cause of depression is said to be smoking, and that most depressed teenagers who are in fact depressed have been smoking. Teens who smoked were at an increases risk of depression at a 73% higher rate than other teens. Sometimes teens may be depressed and it will be easy for people to notice, th is is not always the case. In every teens life, at some point, they are on a roller coaster ride, for this reason it is hard for anyone, even the parents, to distinguish depression from just a plain bad day. This is why it is important for parents to know what to look for, otherwise something bad may happen. One sign to watch for is their grades in school, if you have to, go around and meet with the teachers to see how they are doing in classes and how they are acting when you are not around. As some teens get depressed they sometimes begin not to care for their grades and may not try too hard to keep up in classes. Teens also may begin to isolate themselves from friends and family and only hang around in their room by themselves or try and try to get moments for themselves. If someones depressed their sleeping patterns may change, either theyll sleep all the time, or not at all. They may also act out more, either for the attention, hoping someone will notice their needs or just to irritate others. If youre depressed youre often more irritable yourself, you may start to feel guilty but may have no reason to, you may make rash decisions and go through with things without thinking of the outcome. Lastly, you may make the most devastating decision of threatening suicide, or even worse, going through with it. Most children suffering from depression dont say theyre sad. They dont even appear gloomy, says child psychiatrist Paramjit Kaur Joshi, M.D. of Johns Hopkins. Instead, theyre often extremely irritable. Depression has an effect on a lot of people, most of all the people who care. Depression causes stress on everyone, who is involved with the depressed person, they may try to help but usually the person who is depressed believes that no one cares for them in them and will basically tell everyone and anyone to take a hike. Depression in a teens life may make the parents feel as if its entirely their fault but its not. Sometimes which is basically most of the time the effects of depression will take a very drastic turn for the worse. In saying this, I am speaking of suicide. In some cases teens are able to deal with what they are going through and get the help they need, while others feel theres not use. Some teens also feel as if they are the cause for everything that has been going wrong all around them, and think that by killing themselves the world would be a better place for everyone. In most cases some parents know, or have an idea, that their child may be suicidal, but usually the topic doesnt arise. This is because parents believe that if they do talk to their teens about suicide they will get ideas and attempt it to escape any problems. The parents are wrong in doing this because if the teen knows that someone cares they may feel better about everything that has been happening. This way if they are talked to they will be able to express their feelings and maybe get the help that they need and deserve. Suicide occurs when someone has unclear thoughts and they mix with their depression resulting in a deadly outcome. Suicide is the leading killer i n the United States among people ages 10-24 and it is the second largest killer for teens ages 15-19, with accidents being the first. Teen suicides are attempted by both male and female. Teen boys are five times more likely to commit suicide over girls, but the girls are more likely to attempt suicide. This is because boys tend to find more violent and successful ways. Firearms are also used in 50% of all the suicide cases, and the numbers are also increasing. In 1990 alone 12,000 deaths due to suicide were caused by the use of guns. In these 12,000 deaths 2,000 of them were teens. If you are able to steer away from suicide, treatment is key. There are three ways that I know of to help survive depression. The better ways include family members and close loved ones because you know that they really care. Antidepressants are drugs that alter the chemicals in your body to a neutral state, which helps with depression, but sometimes this is not the way to go since people have been known to get a little too addicted. Psychotherapy is one on one sessions with a psychiatrist who may be able to see why you were depressed and help to make you understand yourself and why you feel the ways that you do. The best way to go is Help Groups because this way you are around people that you know have gone through the same kind of thing and will understand you better. But also the reason that this is so good is because you are allowed to bring family and friends so that you will be able to go through it with people who care for you and whom you care about. Everywhere you go, you hear people saying that the children are the future. If these children and teens are depressed now, how will it be in 20 years when they have high ranking jobs which influence everyone so much? They may still be depressed if no one reached out for them and their needs. Dont forget that they will be paying your social security. Somehow you will have to repay them for that, listening and helping them with their problems now will do just that. As you always hear people say, Itll make the world a better place. The sooner that these teens and children are helped the better. In this century each generation has experienced major depressions at earlier ages, and the next generations have even higher risks.

Free Essays on Nerver Ending Story Vs Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams is centered on a dream of escape, much like the song, Never Ending Story by New Found Glory. The song most relates to Tom in the play. Tom is, by far, the biggest dreamer. The song is all about dreaming, with lyrics like â€Å"Reach the stars and fly a fantasy.† Tom dreams of leaving and ‘flying his fantasy.’ In the play, Tom says, as he is dreaming, of leaving the â€Å"†¦over crowded urban centers of lower class population.† Tom really dreams of leaving someday much like his father had. Tom expresses this when he tells Amanda, â€Å"†¦Mother, I’d be where [the father] is!† Tom dreams of leaving so desperately that he â€Å"†¦paid his [Merchant Marine] dues, this month instead of the light bill.† Tom wants to get away so desperately that he is willing to hurt the rest of his family, by taking money that they had earned, not done with it what he was supposed to, and using it just to fulfill his dreams of escaping. Tom is ready to get out, be his own person, hence the fact that he took the money to pay the bills and paid for himself to go to the merchant Marines. Also the fact that he â€Å"goes to the movies,† and is gone for almost the whole day shows he is not happy at home. In the play Tom says he is â€Å"†¦tired of the movies,† meaning that he is ready for his own adventures. Tom is sick and tired of living with his mother and sister and having to deal with all of there stuff and confrontations. In the song it says â€Å"hidden in the lines, written on the pages is the answer†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Tom has looked at everything in his life trying to escape and find the answer, even in his poetry he tries to find the escape. For example in the play he â€Å"†¦retires to a cabinet of the wash room to work on poems when business is slack in the warehouse.† Tom also loathes his mother in some way. This is most evident when Tom calls Amanda an â€Å"ugly-babbling old-witch†¦Ã¢â‚¬  When Tom d... Free Essays on Nerver Ending Story Vs Glass Menagerie Free Essays on Nerver Ending Story Vs Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams is centered on a dream of escape, much like the song, Never Ending Story by New Found Glory. The song most relates to Tom in the play. Tom is, by far, the biggest dreamer. The song is all about dreaming, with lyrics like â€Å"Reach the stars and fly a fantasy.† Tom dreams of leaving and ‘flying his fantasy.’ In the play, Tom says, as he is dreaming, of leaving the â€Å"†¦over crowded urban centers of lower class population.† Tom really dreams of leaving someday much like his father had. Tom expresses this when he tells Amanda, â€Å"†¦Mother, I’d be where [the father] is!† Tom dreams of leaving so desperately that he â€Å"†¦paid his [Merchant Marine] dues, this month instead of the light bill.† Tom wants to get away so desperately that he is willing to hurt the rest of his family, by taking money that they had earned, not done with it what he was supposed to, and using it just to fulfill his dreams of escaping. Tom is ready to get out, be his own person, hence the fact that he took the money to pay the bills and paid for himself to go to the merchant Marines. Also the fact that he â€Å"goes to the movies,† and is gone for almost the whole day shows he is not happy at home. In the play Tom says he is â€Å"†¦tired of the movies,† meaning that he is ready for his own adventures. Tom is sick and tired of living with his mother and sister and having to deal with all of there stuff and confrontations. In the song it says â€Å"hidden in the lines, written on the pages is the answer†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Tom has looked at everything in his life trying to escape and find the answer, even in his poetry he tries to find the escape. For example in the play he â€Å"†¦retires to a cabinet of the wash room to work on poems when business is slack in the warehouse.† Tom also loathes his mother in some way. This is most evident when Tom calls Amanda an â€Å"ugly-babbling old-witch†¦Ã¢â‚¬  When Tom d...