How to Make English Become More Interesting Essay Example for Free

How to Make English Become More Interesting Essay English is the main language in world. It is the most often used language to communicate. You won’t be able to communicate with someone from America by using Indonesia language (as if you are Indonesian) or to communicate with someone in London ; the only language that usually spoken in communicating with everyone else from around the world is English. So, it is such an important thing to learn English. But the problem is it is a little bit hard to make English it self be interest for students to learn. They think it is bored and confusing. This time I would like to tell you about some ways that english teachers can do to make English become interest to students. Try to add some english songs and ask students to sing it together. Everyone love music, love to listening either singing a song. To make english more interesting, the first-best way is to ask students to sing an english song with you. You can tell them the lyrics so they would know some new english words and tell them how to spell all the words in the lyrics. Then ask them to sing the song. Besides they would enjoy the music, it will be also easier to make them understand how to speak english with a good pronounciation and they will be faster to memorize some english words in the lyrics. So it can increase their vocabulary. When students are getting bored but we still have lessons that hasn’t explained, don’t be worry. Students will not be last long paying attention to the teacher when the teacher is explaining the lesson, therefore we have to do something to take their attention back. They need something spontaneous. In the middle of our explanation, we can play games. This kind of way will attract their attention. We can adapt Hangman or Jeopardy. Another great idea is to have the students themselves create a game that fits the text you are studying. They probably having fun and enjoy the class. The third thing that we can do is to tell more jokes in class. .

Language and Music

Language and Music â€Å"Understanding music requires no recuperation[SKS1] of a fictional world, and no response to imaginary objects†¦.the meaning of music lies within it; it can be recovered only through an act of musical understanding, and not by an â€Å"assignment of values† of the kind provided by a semantic theory[SKS2]† (Roger Scruton) Music is an important aspect of everyday life: We can take it with us wherever we go and use it to set the scene or create a â€Å"soundtrack† to our lives. It has the power to influence our moods and emotions and can stir up feelings and old memories within the first few notes. Music is intertwined in all cultures and has been for as long as humans have had the ability to make it. It has been said that musical instruments and the production of music (in any form) predates the earliest evidence of writing. Music is everywhere. In order to understand music it is important to define what it is that makes something music. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of music is; â€Å"The art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds to produce beauty of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, expressive content, etc.; musical composition, performance, analysis, etc., as a subject of study; the occupation or profession of musicians.† (Oxford University Press 2014) According to this definition, the basis of music is sound. Sound is defined as a sensation caused by a vibration of air particles. It cannot be seen by the naked eye and, at some frequencies, cannot be heard by the human ear. Music does not exist without sound as it is a product of various combinations of â€Å"vocal or instrumental sounds†. Everything that is considered â€Å"musical† is made from sound but not every sound is musical. Sounds exist whether we are listening to them or not. Many sounds are unintentional in that they are a necessary result of an action. They are not being created purposefully and are often just in the background of everyday life. Although we hear them, we do not have to listen or focus on them if we choose not to. Music, on the other hand, is an intentional object. It is purposefully created to be heard, we must focus on music and actively listen to it. Music is acousmatic. When we hear it we tend to detach the sound from its production an d focus on the sounds. This differs to the non-musical sounds we encounter everywhere. Music is a temporal occurrence but can only be discussed in spatial terms. Although there are specific terminologies related to music, there is no need to be an expert in order to enjoy a piece or discuss it with others. In order to properly consider the meaning of music and define it, we apply semantic terminology and compare music to language. It is easy for us to break both language and music down into their smallest forms and compare the similarities between both although we may have an issue with the starting point of music as we would have to determine the smallest form, which could be a sound, a note or even a beat, depending on how a person views the creation of music and their knowledge of how music is formed. If we were to break language down to its smallest form and work our way up, so to speak, we could say that the smallest part of language is a phoneme. From there we can conclude that a phoneme then becomes a morpheme, a morpheme then becomes a phrase, which then becomes a clause, which then becomes a sentence, and so on and so forth. As a native speaker, we are able to create numerous combinations of words that can be understood by others who share our language. In order for things to be understood, it is said that there needs to be some form of common knowledge or common ground. It is also important that there is some context to what is being expressed so we can deduce meaning from what we are hearing/reading. If we break down music into its simplest form, we begin with sounds that are combined to make different pitches. These become phrases and sequences that are combined to create whole pieces of music. If we compare language and music on this level, we can see that the two share similarities in structure. When discussing the meaning of music itself, there are a few things to consider. Firstly, we must distinguish what we mean by music and the form it is in. If we are talking about written music, one must have at least a basic knowledge of musical notation in order to understand what they are reading. Music is the universal language.† Aphoristic as this phrase may be, it does relate something many people think about music: music is expressive. But if music is expressive, what, exactly, does music express? For that matter, how does music express? Is the content or manner of expression of music the same as the content or manner of expression of language? In answering questions such as these, we promote previously empty cultural aphorisms about music like the one presented earlier to the status of meaningful claims. David Lewis highlights two important features of language – language as an object and language as a practice. I will present a view of the nature of music held by Peter Kivy, comparing it to Lewis’ conception of language. I will then argue that by Kivy’s view of music, music is not a language, though it has more language-like properties than Kivy admits. To briefly take stock, we might highlight four general properties of language we should look for in the determination of whether or not something is a language: Syntax – Lewis’ grammar operations. Determine legitimate strings. Semantics – Lewis’ meaning. The meaning of a well-formed string is the situation it describes in a set of possible worlds. Truth Values – Derived from comparing the meaning of a sentence with our world. Conventional Activity – a population arbitrarily determines a language used by conventionally using the language to express truth. Peter Kivy endorses a formalist view of music. The formalist doctrine is that music is a type of sound structure. Generally, we think of a structure as something we can appreciate visually; the word usually evokes mental images of certain spatial relations of objects to other objects. But according to the formalist, sound structures are â€Å"temporal patterns of sound† (emphasis added). To put this in a vocabulary familiar to musicians, sound structures are just combination of types of sounds (such as pitches, percussion, etc.) that occur in some timeframe. Music has formal properties and sensuous properties: a piece of music’s formal properties differentiate it from other pieces of music; i.e. certain notes are played in a certain order, the piece is a certain speed, and there are certain rhythms. And music’s ‘sensuous properties’ boil down to the fact that – shocker – music is a heard medium: we hear and notice different aspects of s ound events when we experience music. Kivy’s view of music directly supports the inclusion of one of the important features of language in music’s nature. He says that music has a â€Å"special kind of order: the order of syntactical structure.† He says that this order is governed by rules (of a sort); these rules concern how different sounds should be combined in the production of a musical work. For example, it is a staple of the syntax of certain schools in western music that there should be a return to the tonic at the end of a musical phrase. This syntax differs for different genres of music, much like it does for different languages. Certain chords can be used in certain genres, and not in others – for example, you will see flat V chords used in chord progressions in jazz, but not most pre-modern forms of classical music. But I think we have reason to believe that the nature of musical syntax is very similar to the nature of linguistic syntax. First of all, I question the assertion that the rules of linguistic syntax are stricter than the rules of musical syntax. For example, take the English grammar rule that the first letter of the first word in a written sentence is capitalized. I think this easily qualifies as a syntactic rule of written English; however, prominent writers have violated it throughout history (E. E. Cummings is one obvious example), and people today often violate it when talking to one another through electronic media such as texting on the phone and messaging online. I think we still want to say that these people are using English – they are just temporarily disregarding a grammar rule of English, which is more of a regularity than a law. However, though some rules of linguistic syntax are not absolutely strict, I do think that there are rules which are inviolable. Lewisâ⠂¬â„¢ rule that there is a finite set of elementary constituents paired with meanings that we can use in the construction of sentences is of paramount importance when using a language. I can’t type out a random assortment of characters and expect that configuration to be an English sentence. Similarly, certain combinatorial grammar rules are absolute. And it seems to me that musical syntax has very similar characteristics to this conception of the characteristics of linguistic syntax. There are certain rules which can be bent; a piece of music can preserve its status as a piece of music in a certain genre regardless of whether it follows a specific syntactic ‘regularity’ of this kind. This is similar to syntactic rules like capitalization mentioned in the previous paragraph. Then there are certain rules which must be followed for a piece to be classified as a member of a certain genre – relate this to how a string must follow a certain instantiation of the grammar rules Lewis established to be characterized as a member of one language rather than another. Then there are certain rules any genre of music must follow to be music rather than mere noise. This is similar to syntactic rules any language must have; a language must follow the general rules Lewis gives us, in one form or another. We can also see that the activity of music is analogous to the activity of ‘language’ that Lewis describes. Music is not just an entity, but also a social activity concerning musicians and listeners, wherein musicians make certain noises and they expect their listeners to respond a certain way. And I see no reason why we wouldn’t say that this activity is in some way arbitrary, however limited that arbitrariness is by the hard-wiring of our brains to enjoy certain sounds. The parallels between music as ‘language’ do not stop there. Music shares the ability to infer something about the state of mind of a composer or musician with language (substituting ‘speaker’ for ‘composer or musician’). Playing a guitar solo in a minor pentatonic scale allows us to infer one (admittedly broad) set of things about the mind of the guitarist, while playing in the blues scale allows us to infer something else. And we often make the same inferences as many other listeners. These inferences might also be wrong – as they might be in the case of ‘language’. And Kivy’s view that these inferences are not ‘in the music’ doesn’t stop us from saying that we make these inferences; we can say that we respond ‘by convention’ to a certain sound structure in a certain way without saying that there is anything about the sound structure that makes us respond this way. So far, so good, for the view that music is a language. Nothing that I have said thus far about Kivy’s view of music has conflicted with the definition of language Lewis gave us. And although I haven’t gone into the nuts and bolts of correlating Lewis’ grammar rules with musical syntax, it’s not hard to see how a story could be told relating them – in every way but one: what could we say corresponds with the meanings described in rule one and two? Kivy qualifies his formalist definition of music: â€Å"absolute music is a sound structure without semantic or representational content†. This is a big problem for a proponent of the view that music is a language. One of the essential characteristics of language is its status as something which can communicate meaning; some might call this property the most important property of language. And on initial reflection, Kivy’s claim seems to hold a lot of weight. How could music talk about situations in the external world? A song might represent ‘victory’ or ‘striving’ or what-have-you in some obscure, abstract sort of way; but it certainly does not have the power to describe in the incredibly detailed, content-rich way a language can. Music could never have the power to express the meaning of such sentences as â€Å"My flight to Los Angeles was delayed because of poor conditions on the runway.† This is a crippling observation in particular for anyone who thinks that my method of deciding whether music is a language is valid – without sematic content, two of the four properties of language Lewis defined go down the tubes. The absence of semantic content in music obviously bars us from saying that music has semantics; and, because music is free of semantic content, truth values are gone as well, as truth values are products of comparing the meanings of sentences with the world. The avid supporter of the music-as-language project has two avenues open to them at this point. They might object to Kivy’s view the music is free of semantic content; or, they might object to the view of language – specifically, the view of semantics – that Lewis gives us. I’ll start with the objection to Kivy. An obvious route someone objecting to Kivy’s determination that music is free of semantic content might take is saying that it does have semantic content – and this content is emotion. Music represents emotions the same way language represents the situations its sentences describe. Maybe the ability of music to describe things in the world is much more limited than language, but its ability to describe emotions is even better than natural languages’ ability. Thus music should be described as ‘a language of the emotions’. Kivy has a response to this claim, but I find it to be unsatisfying. He says this assertion gets you â€Å"from enhanced formalism in letter and spirit to a musical semantics in letter, not spirit, and enhanced formalism, still, in spirit.† He thinks that music can say nothing interesting or significant about emotion, and somehow this yields the result that music does not have emotional semantics. But the ability to say something interesting about what it denotes is not what defines the semantics of language – it is the ability to say what it says that defines language. In other words, it is the ability of sentences to denote at all which makes them linguistic. If music can do this, then it has semantic content. The problem is, we are wrong to say that music denotes emotion in the first place. I think Kivy is right when he says that emotion is a â€Å"heard property of the music† . Music does not ‘represent’ sadness; it just is sad, the same way that an apple just is red. And the reason we perceive these emotions in music is due to the fact that music can formally resemble how humans look and act when they feel certain emotions. Unfortunately, I can offer no positive reasons to accept this conception of emotion in music other than emotions are certainly a part of music in some capacity, and this formulation of their relation to music is the least problematic one I know of. And perhaps I can pose some problems with representative views of music that serve my intuitions well: for one, many people think that to be a real language, every sentence in that language that denotes a state in the world can be translated to a sentence in another language. How might one go about translating something music ‘says’ to English? Attempts usually produce a clumsy, single-word emotional descriptor, which varies from person to person. Another thing people think stems from a representative medium is the presence of truth values. We can say of a linguistic proposition that it represents our world, or it represents a situation not in our world; propositions of the first type are true, and propositions of the second type are false. But what would we say about music corresponds with a state in the world? It seems a very odd practice to listen to a phrase in Beethoven’s Fifth and say of it that it is ‘true’ or ‘false’. On the other hand, the supporter of a music-as-language view might challenge the definition that Lewis provides of semantics. He might use music to help define language, as Andrew Bowie does in his book Music, Philosophy, and Modernity. He says â€Å"if people understand a piece of articulation – which is apparent in terms of its effects in social contexts on behavior, reactions, feelings, and so on – it must mean something.† Bowie equates language with Lewis’ ‘language’, the social activity, and discards the properties of ‘a language’. Because music is a social activity by which people effect specific changes on others’ behavior or feelings, music has meaning, and therefore is a language. But Bowie betrays his own cause when he tells us what follows from this new definition of language in a quote by Bjà ¸rn Ramberg: â€Å"’We can, if we like, interpret all types of things as speaking’†. This definition of language allows us to call all types of things language that push against our intuitions on the subject. Arriving late to a meeting is now language, because others’ thoughts are influenced to think worse of me for being tardy. Playing a sport with other people is now language, because their behavior is altered when they respond to my sporting actions. Maybe you want to call these things language, but I suspect the majority of people do not. It is important that a practice we choose to call language should have aspects of ‘a language’ and is used by the practice of ‘language’. This successfully delineates language from non-language. The presence of truly semantic content is one of the principle factors in deciding whether something is a language. Even though music seems to have every property of the practice Lewis identifies as ‘language’, it cannot be a language. Edit: took out a sentence that doesnt make sense without the rest of the paper. 1 [SKS1]the recovery or regaining of something. the recuperation of the avant-garde for art [SKS2]a theory which assigns semantic contents to expressions of a language. Approaches to semantics may be divided according to whether they assign propositions as the meanings of sentences and, if they do, what view they take of the nature of these propositions.

AIDS Problem Essay -- Health, Diseases, AIDS, HIV

1. Introduction Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, also known as AIDS, is caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).HIV damages body’s immune system by destroying white blood cells which help us to destroy invaded pathogens. When HIV enters a white blood cell, it may remain dormant. However, once it is activated, it infects another cell to produce many new HIVS. After a certain period of time, the white blood cells are destroyed and leading to a loss of function of the immune system (Y.K. Ho,2004). People infected by HIV will turn out to have AIDS. Infected people are very weak to fight off other infectious disease and soon they will die. According to the data and statistics of WHO, global summary of the AIDS epidemic, 2009, the number of people living with HIV is around 33.3 million and AIDS death in 2009 is around 1.8 million. How about China situation? We couldn’t find much data about China situation. Therefore, we have to explore the situation from other sources. 2. Current Situation of AIDS in China According to the ministry of health of the people’s republic of China, the number of people living with AIDS is about 370 thousand and AIDS death is about 60 thousand. The figure is much different from the prediction of United Nations (UN), UN predicted that there will be 10 million people living with AIDS at the end of 2010. So, which figure is more reliable? I would suggest the UN one and the following is my reason. In the early 1990s, the Chinese leadership launched a blood drive and paid donors for their plasma (Alice Park,2004), this is so called the â€Å"plasma economy†. Especially in Henan province, many blood stations appeared in a short period of time. Farmers believed that they could earn a lot of money by d... ...n provide AIDS patients with counseling service which can help them to accept themselves and dispel prejudices. 6. Conclusion To conclude, the central pillars of public health can explain the AIDS problem in China. Public health is composed of multidisciplinary knowledge, prevention and social justice. We could not interpret AIDS problem by only exploring the scientific perspective. Economic and social perspective also play am important role. Moreover, prevention can be divided to 3 levels, primary prevention is crucial to the issue, which is also most effective way to get rid of the problem. Tertiary prevention is the last line of defense, reminding the Chinese government should do something before it is too late. Lastly, social justice should be upholding in Chinese, this is the most critical aspect to see whether the AIDS problem can alleviate or not.

Abortion Essay -- Increase Abortion Availability

Should abortion be allowed in the United States? If so, then under what circumstances? Abortion has been one of the most heatedly debated topics in the U.S. for more than a century. This paper explores the history and international use of abortion, as well as the empirical and moral claims made by both sides of the issue. We will also examine the key positions taken on abortion and look at those affected by it. Based on extensive research and analysis, this paper will recommend that the government increase abortion funding and availability. Abortion History: Abortion has been around since the earliest times. The first recorded abortion recipe dates back to 2600 B.C. (â€Å"History of Abortion†). Ancient societies supported abortion as a means of controlling the population (â€Å"Abortion in Law, History, and Religion†). The first known abortion regulation was outlined in 4th century A.D. when St. Augustine declared Catholic law to allow abortion up to 80 days for the female fetus and 40 days for the male fetus (â€Å"History of Abortion†). However, in 1588 Pope Sixtus publicly forbade all abortions (â€Å"History of Abortion†). One of the first countries to outlaw abortion by law, Great Britain, declared abortion a misdemeanor in 1803 (â€Å"History of Abortion†). In the United States, abortion laws began to appear in the nineteenth century (â€Å"Abortion in Law, History, and Religion†). Public and legal attitudes toward abortion have significantly changed in America since 1800. Women in the early 1800’s rarely sought abortion, even though legal restriction to obtain an abortion was almost non-existent (Sauer). Until the mid-nineteenth century, first trimester abortions were legal under common law (Abortion in Law, History, and Religio... ...quest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=36&did=000000010987507&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=4&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1080408602&clientId=60765>. {scholarly primary; print via the internet; authoritative} Yishai, Yael. â€Å"Public Ideas and Public Policy: Abortion Politics in Four Democracies.† Comparative Politics, Vol. 25, No. 2. (Jan., 2013), pp. 207-228. Web. 1 May 2015. . {primary scholarly; print via internet; authoritative} Zhou, W., et al. â€Å"Risk of Spontaneous Abortion Following Induce Abortion.† Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Jan. 2010. Web. 1 May 2015. . {scholarly primary; print via the internet; authoritative}

The Controversy Around Banning Books Essay -- essays research papers

The subject of censorship is a very controversial one, especially the banning of books. Many people believe they must protect themselves and others from the "evils" of many classic books and works of art because they can be deemed "indecent" in one way or another. Many believe that this is absurd and censorship in its current form is a violation of our First Amendment right to free speech. Personally, I align myself with the latter, however I do feel there are occasions where censorship is justifiable. The censorship of books is a division of censorship that, apart from Internet censorship, receives the most publicity. Banning books is the most popular form of such censorship. Many banned books are literary classics, such as The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, which was listed as the number 6 most challenged or banned book in a list compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1997. This book has been banned from school libraries all over the country because of the main character's teenage angst, which many feel is too graphic for teenagers, and its profanity. Profanity, whether it be frequent or a rare occurrence, is a characteristic of many literary classics, as is the use of racial epithets.In the book Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (ranking number 2 on the list), an epithet is use many times over to describe the people of color in the book. Now since the book was published in 1885 and such language was common at the time, I do not belie...

Gang violence Essay

â€Å"Once found principally in large cities, violent street gangs now affect public safety, community image, and quality of life in communities of all sizes in urban, suburban, and rural areas. No region of the United States is untouched by gangs. Gangs affect society at all levels, causing heightened fears for safety, violence, and economic costs† (In The Spotlight) As the quote above shows, gangs and everything that goes with them has spread all over the United States and is now one of the major issues the U.S. faces. There are estimated to be about twenty-nine thousand, four hundred gangs and seven hundred fifty six thousand gang members all throughout the U.S. Also, there are thousands of other gang members illegally crossing the U.S. borders, mostly from Central America. Each gang differs in some way but however, â€Å"A common definition for a gang is a group of three or more individuals who engage in criminal activity and identify themselves with a common sign or name † (Barbour 9). The main problem in the U.S. is not the actual gangs, but it is the drugs that they involve themselves with. The drugs only bring violence and problems. The main purpose of many gangs today is not to rule turf or power but to get money by smuggling drugs over the borders and then selling them. Gang activity and violence is occurring all over the U.S. every day, mainly caused by the involvement of illegal narcotics, if this country wants to stop the gangs, it needs to completely cut off the smuggling and trafficking of drugs from Central America into the U.S. by combining different government agencies of different levels to prevent the gangs from entering the U.S. and growing and also to create prevention programs and groups to control it at a more localized level where the issues are the most pressing. Gangs are smuggling over the U.S. borders and it is causing more problems than the government can handle. The main source of drugs is coming from Central America, where the most predominant number of gangs is located. Many gangs are focused only on smuggling different types of drugs into the U.S. and it is the one way to sustain a constant source of income. This is very appealing to any youth who wants money and that is why the number of gang members is growing so rapidly. â€Å"The transnational gangs are located in over 300 cities and 40 states across the country and are becoming a serious  threat to the national security of the United States† (Farah). Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is the most dangerous gang in the U.S. today and is not even native to the U.S. The homeland of MS-13 is in El Salvador. El Salvador is the most highly gang populated country in Central America. Some other gang-infested countries are Guatemala and Honduras. There are about ten thousand MS-13 members in the U.S. alone and about forty thousand members in Central America. Unfortunately, these numbers are still on the rise. MS-13 recruits members at a very young age, which keeps a steady growth in members. The idea of a better family and brotherhood, but also money, is very appealing to any kid who is struggling at home. MS-13 accounts for the majority of drug distribution from Central America and is the focal point that needs to be attended to if this problem is going to be solved. Another main problem with the drugs is how large of an impact they have on the people because they only add to the already existing problems for society. Also, violence and drugs go hand in hand, which is why they are so involved within the gangs. Violence is always involved with gangs, but with the addition of drugs, the violence can intensify to a level where nothing can be done. This causes the gangs to be much harder to deal with. One main problem is that the American society hates the gangs but loves the drugs and will continue to buy drugs no matter where they are coming from. This makes it even more difficult to deal with. The drugs find a way to enter the lives of people from all of American society. For instance, they have been involved in different businesses and been the cause of murders, including celebrities. â€Å"Gangs have a large involvement in the rap industry and are related to the murders of Tupac Shakkur and Biggie Smalls† (Smith, â€Å"Gangs†). Tup ac Shakkur and Biggie Smalls were two iconic rappers of their time but sadly, gangs found a way into their lives and ended up causing both of their deaths. The drugs and violence become so intertwined into society, that now they are very hard to remove and a resolution to this problem needs to be found. There are many different processes that are being implemented now to stop this problem. An example is that groups and programs are being formed to fight back against the gangs. The Arizona Corridor has proven to be one of  the busiest places for gang smuggling and trafficking. There was a group formed to prevent it called IIMPACT Arizona. â€Å"IIMPACT Arizona! is a multi-agency project that is managed by the Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission (GIITEM) and designed to address rising crime associated with illegal immigration.† (Gang and Immigration Enforcement) IIMPACT is acronym that stands for â€Å"Illegal Immigration Prevention and Apprehension Co-op Teams† (Gang and Immigration Enforcement). IIMPACT is a program where local, state and federal police forces team up to fight against smuggling organized by crime groups. The main goals of the group are to deter, disrupt and dismantle gangs from illegally immigrated people and drugs into the U.S . If they are able to succeed with what they want to do, then they would be shutting down one of the hotspots for gang smuggling. This group is in action today and could eventually make a large impact on preventing gangs from smuggling over the U.S. borders, which would greatly decrease the amount of drugs that would be entering the U.S. The U.S. government has tried to pass different acts and laws against gangs but there has been many legal issues revolving around the civil liberties of the individuals being persecuted. â€Å"Responding to the rise in gang violence in the early 1980s, Los Angeles judges began to issue gang injunctions. This occurs when the city attorney’s office issues a restraining order against specific gang members. This is done only after gathering evidence from police officials and the public. However, in 1987, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the injunctions, indicating that they presented a violation of an individual’s civil rights† (Smith, Gangs: Outlook). Whenever the government gets close to cracking down on the gangs, an issue involving civil liberties arises and prevents the laws to be passed. The way some of the laws enabled police officers to treat gang members and the hostile level violated some of their rights. In 1994, the Violent Crime Contr ol and Enforcement Act of 1994 was passed and it tightened the choke hold on gangs. It stiffened the penalties for crimes committed by gangs, so that the members would be less prone to break the law. The penalties for a gang member were much more severe than one for just an average person, even if the same crime was committed by both of them. Many lawmakers and law enforcers believe the answer is to make laws to  combat the actions gangs. If the penalties are stiffened, then they will be less prone to smuggle drugs and the drugs levels will go down. If drug trafficking can not be stopped, then there is no chance of slowing down gangs and the violence they create. The solution to this problem will take time and effort but will work. More groups and programs have to be made in order to stop the drug smuggling and gang violence. Also, younger kids have to be reached out to early on so they don’t even have the option to join some sort of gang. If more localized programs can be formed, then smuggling can be cut down from area to area and over time, will disappear. Even though there was extensive research, only one program that was focusing on gang involvement in their area was found and it had been working efficiently so far (IIMPACT). This group is so successful because it requires the usage of town police, state police and federal police all working together. The information that can be shared from each level is key to success. A joint effort is always more successful than a singular effort. If different levels of government enforcement could join up and work together in states all along the border, the smuggling of drugs could be cut dow n immediately. â€Å"The combination of different agencies has brought up results that show that gang violence and just gangs in general are able to be controlled if not reduced a significant amount† (â€Å"In The Spotlight†). This combination occurring much more frequently can be the resolution to the problem that has needed to be solved for so long. The main problem can be seen lying within the gangs but the actual problem revolves around the American educational institutions and the environments that kids are provided with. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) believes that laws will not help and that providing the right environment for kids is what is needed. The main problem with setting a lot of laws and enforcing them is that even if a kid is stopped from being fully involved in a street gang by sending him to prison, he will be more likely to join a gang in prison than out in the world because of how frequent prison gangs are. By trying to prevent one problem, the laws would only cause another. â€Å"If younger kids were provided with better opportunities to enact in a community and have a better environment to conduct their actions, they will  be less prone to join gangs† (Smith â€Å"Gangs: Outlooks†). Groups like the ACLU are trying to stop the problem before it arises and that really is the best po ssible thing that can be done in this situation. If the number of gang members goes down, then gangs will lose their power and influence over the surrounding communities. This would cause there to be less drug smuggling occurring and the problem would gradually decline to a non-existing issue. Gang activity and violence is occurring all over the U.S. every day, mainly caused by the involvement of illegal narcotics. If this country wants to stop the gangs, it needs to completely cut off the smuggling and trafficking of drugs from Central America into the U.S. by combining different government agencies of different levels to prevent the gangs from entering the U.S. and growing and also to create programs and groups to prevent it at a more localized level where the issues are the most urgent. The information that was presented shows how much damage that the gangs are causing to the U.S. and how drugs being smuggled over the borders from Central America are the main cause. This is very important because some of what is being done now and what can be done could be the solution to this enormous problem. Possible trends in the future will definitely be that more laws and acts will be proposed and whether or not they go into action, they will make a positive affect on trying to st op gangs in the U.S. Gangs were first formed in the U.S. in New York in the early 20th century, particularly 1928, so it could be the first time in one hundred years where gangs are not relevant in the U.S. Also, it could make a large global impact because it would encourage other nations to crack down on gangs too. If the necessary steps are taken, the problem of gangs in the U.S. could be completely ended and we could experience a gang-free and drug-free time period in the U.S. for the first time in years. Work Cited Barbour, Scott, ed. Gangs. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2002. Print. Farah, Douglas, and Pamela Phillips Lum. â€Å"Central American Gangs and Transnational Criminal Organizations.† Strategycenter. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2013. â€Å"Gang and Immigration Enforcement.† AZDPS. Arizona Department of Public Safety, 2013. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. â€Å"In the Spotlight: Gangs.† National Criminal Justice Reference Service. U.S. Department of Justice, 7 Sept. 2012. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. Smith, Pamela K. â€Å"Gangs.† Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2013. Smith, Pamela K. â€Å"Gangs: Outlook.† Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.

Layman View of Osi Reference Model

Layman View of OSI Reference Model (By Diganta Deka, Former Student, Proprietor-Trainer East India Technologies, Guwahati. ), diganta. [email  protected] com When we talk about computer networks and how computers operate in networks, things do not remain as simple as it seems to be. Here numerous protocols work in tandem for the sake of data integrity during the course of data transfer. To make things worse there are a lot of vendors in the market who provide and produce great number of network hardware and push us to use them.Therefore to provide a solution and to make all these devices communicate in 1984, The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) developed the Open Systems Interconnections (OSI) reference model. Basically it described how information is transferred from one networking component to another, from the point when a user enters information using a mouse or a keyboard to when that information is converted to electrical or light signals transferred along a piece of wire or radio waves through the air and vice versa.So we can say, OSI reference model provides a foundation to use when you are considering what happens between the network components when they talk with each other. ISO developed a seven layer model which allowed vendors and network administrators to understand a stable data transfer and also provided guidelines for implementing new networking standards. Table-1 below briefly describes these layers, their associated services and protocols supported. Layer| Function| Service Description| | Application| The Application layer provides an interface between the communication software and any other application that needs to communicate outside the computer on which the application resides. This layer represents the services that directly support applications such as software for file transfers, database access, and electronic mail. | 6| Presentation| The Presentation layer translates data from the Application layer into an int ermediary format, such as ASCII text, EBCDIC text, binary, BCD, JPEG etc.This layer also provides services such as data encryption, and data compression. | 5| Session| The Session layer allows two applications on different computers to establish, use, and end a session. This includes the control and management of multiple bidirectional messages so that the application can be notified if only some of a series of messages are completed. This allows Presentation layer to have a seamless view of an incoming stream of data. | 4| Transport| The Transport layer defines the end-to-end transmission of data between nodes (e. . PCs), including flow control and error recognition and recovery. It also repackages long messages when necessary into smaller packets for transmission and, at the receiving end, rebuilds packets into the original message. | 3| Network| The Network layer provides routing, logical network addressing, path determination, media/framing translation, frame fragmentation, and congestion signaling/control. The routing concepts define how devices route or forward packets to their final destination.Logical addressing defines how each device can have an address that can be used by the routing process. Path determination refers to the work done by which all possible routes are learned, but the best route is chosen for use. | 2| Data Link| The Data Link layer packages raw bits from the Physical layer into frames (logical, structured packets). This layer specifies the device addressing, topology and media access, bit/byte synchronization, flow control, and error detection/recovery services associated with sending frames of data over a physical link. 1| Physical| The Physical layer specifies how bit streams are to be transmitted over a physical link in the network. This includes physical characteristics of transmission medium, including pins, use of pins, electrical, current, encoding, light modulation and the rules for how to activate and deactivate the use of the physical medium. | Table-1 Within the network, data traverses a network stack using a process called encapsulation. When an application requires communications resources, the message is handed over to the network stack’s application layer.There, the message is processed into a Protocol Data Unit (PDU). Application specific header information is wrapped around the data. The resultant PDU is then passed to the stack’s presentation layer, where additional header information is added. Each subsequent layer in the source system’s network stack adds service-specific header information to the PDU, until a fully formatted data frame is presented to the physical layer for transmission onto the communications medium.This encapsulation process is illustrated in Figure 1. Encapsulation Process Fig-1 The real data transfer process starts from the Transport Layer, where the data is segmented and hence the data is termed as segment in transport layer. When the segments rea ch the network layer each segment is broken into packets. As these packets are transferred to Data Link Layer each packet is again broken into frames and in Physical Layer the frames converts into Bits. When the bit stream reaches the destination system, the reverse occurs.Each layer in the destination system’s network stack analyzes and then strips its associated header information from the message. The resultant PDU is then passed to the next higher layer, until the original message is presented to the destination application. Typically, a communication layer does not process, or alter the PDU’s content as generated by an adjacent layer. Information exchange only occurs between peer OSI layers. The peer relationship between OSI layers is illustrated in Figure 2.Illustrated Peer Relationship between OSI Layers Bit Stream Frame Packet Segment Data Stream Data Stream Data Stream Bit Stream Frame Packet Segment Data Stream Data Stream Data Stream Figure-2 Till now we hav e been talking about the concept behind the OSI reference model, but if we do not discuss about the protocols (protocol is an agreed set of rules by which devices in a network or number of networks can successfully communicate with each other) and devices that work in each layer of the model then the discussion would remain incomplete.Table-2 and Table-3 respectively represent the devices and the protocols used in various layers in the OSI Reference Model. Devices and the Layers at Which They Function Layer| Name of the layer| Devices| 3| Network| Router, Layer3 Switch| 2| Data Link| Switch, Bridge and NIC| 1| Physical| Hub, Repeater| Table-2 Protocols and the Layers at Which They Function Name of the Layers| Protocols| Application| FTP, Telnet, NFS, HTTP, TFTP, DHCP, DNS, VoIP, SNMP, POP3, SMTP| Presentation| ASCII, HTML, JPEG| Session| SQL, RPC|Transport| TCP, UDP, SPX| Network| IP, X. 25, IPX, Q. 931| Data Link| HDLC, Ethernet, LLC, Frame Relay, ATM, Q. 921, FDDI| Physical| RS-23 2, V. 35, 10bT, RJ45, G. 703/G. 704| Table-3 In the field of networking there very few people who is not aware of OSI reference model and it is impossible to imagine the world of Information Technology without this model. Over the years we have come across so many network hardware, software or operating systems but everything is manufactured keeping OSI reference model as a benchmark.