Performance Evaluation of Banking Industry in Bangladesh Essay Example for Free

Performance Evaluation of Banking Industry in Bangladesh Essay Banking is an essential industry that affects the welfare of all other industry and the economy as a whole. In fact, growth and development of a country significantly depend on the level of growth and development attempted by the banking sector. There is a consensus regarding the positive role played by the financial sector in promoting economic development (Gerschenkron, 1962; Patrick, 1966; Galbis, 1977). In Bangladesh, banking sector has flourished a lot compared to other sectors of the economy. But the role of this key sector in national development is not satisfactory. There is not only an extremely strong capital stock but the rate of capital formation is also very meager. The current rates of domestic savings and investments as a % of GDP are 20.2 and 24.4% respectively (Bangladesh Bank Annual Report 2004-05). In the past, the rate of savings and investment were much lower than the present rate. Therefore, development plans of Bangladesh have been largely aid development. Between 1972-73 and 1981-82, aid has financed on an average of 75% of fixed investments and the lions share of the development budget (ERD). Under these Circumstances, internal resource mobilization is an urgent necessity for a self-reliant Bangladesh. Towards this end, banking Industry may play a crucial role in mobilizing community’s savings and channeling the same into the socially desirable sectors of the economy. As financial intermediaries, banks can play a crucial role in of most economies. In the absence of effective functional securities market, the banking sector in Bangladesh takes the lead in mobilizing resources and allocating funds to profitable ends. The effectiveness of financial intermediation can affect economic growth. The financial intermediation affects the net return to savings and gross return to investment. The prominence of financial institutions for rapid economic growth is unanimous. The bank based view of financial system highlights the positive role of bank in mobilizing resource, identifying good projects, monitoring managers and managing risks. The role of banking institutions as intermediary between the investor and entrepreneur is of vital importance in a developing country like Bangladesh. The evaluation of Banks performance is a complex process involving interactions between the environments, internal operations, and external activities. In performing this evaluation concerned authorities in the banking sector prior to independence felt for resource mobilization and using the same in the desired sectors. For this reason all the commercial banks were nationalized immediately after independence (Bhattacharjee, 1989). Development of private sector is essential to cope with the challenges of globalization. But considering the socio-economic condition of Bangladesh, extreme privatization, particularly in the banking sector, may not be desired. Because, even though, the number of private banks (local foreign) are increasing and the number of nationalized banks are decreasing, still the NCBs occupy a dominant place in the banking sector of the country and play a pioneering role in capital formation, stimulating the level of industrialization, poverty alleviation and human development and in the overall economic development. NCBs provide loans to productive and priority sectors both public and private covering agriculture, industry, trade and commerce. On the contrary, private banks mainly operate in towns and metropolitan cities and do business with noted entrepreneurs and with the affluent sections of the society; while foreign banks operate only in the cities and do business with the elite section of the society. Hence, this paper focused on the performance of the banking sector in general with a wider lance. As financial intermediaries, banks can play a crucial role in the most economies. In the absence of effective functional securities market, the banking sector in Bangladesh takes the lead in mobilizing resources and allocating funds to profitable ends. The effectiveness of financial intermediation can affect economic growth. The financial intermediation affects the net return to savings and gross return to investment. The prominence of financial institutions for rapid economic growth is unanimous. The bank based view of financial system highlights the positive role of bank in mobilizing resource, identifying good projects, monitoring managers and managing risks. The role of banking institutions as intermediary between the investor and entrepreneur is of vital importance for a developing country like Bangladesh. So the study is a demand of the time for better progress towards a developed future. 2.0 Conceptual Background of the Study Performance indicates the degree of management’s success in allocating the sources of the firm’s capital to productive use and is focused in the in the market value of the firm’s capital. Performance may be defined as the accomplishment of the goals which are taken into consideration. The word performance may be the synonym of efficiency in the context of business phenomenon. Many scholars opined that performance of a firm may be considered as the term managerial performance. An evaluation of performance indicates to what extent an enterprise achieves its target. Evaluation is a judgment worth of something and like all judicial matters, it calls for justice, equity and good conscious on the part of the person making the evaluation. It is to be considered an integral part of the management control on a continuous and systematic basis. Performance evaluation is an essential tool of management. It is relevant both in seeking answer to various questions to be asked about area of activities in which performance might be improved. The main purpose of performance evaluation is to assist in decision on two levels i.e. at a lower level. It can be used to inform the day to day decision making of the management indicating how to maintain the efficiency and effectiveness of the banks in short term. At a higher level it can be used to inform the annual planning and budgeting process in which decisions are taken about the long term deployment of resources and target for achievement. Thus it can be said that performance evaluation means a method under which the performance of an organization is evaluated differently. In Bangladesh performance of banking sector was considered with a very high note from the very beginning. It was felt that new born liberated country will need the performance of banking sector to keep the economy live. In doing so, after the war of liberation, the banks operating Bangladesh(except those incorporated abroad) were nationalized. These banks were merged and grouped for achieving the goal of government and people. With the passage of time the number and types of bank expanded and the area of banking support is also enlarged vividly. For this, study becomes a necessity to find out loop holes as well as areas so that service can be expanded towards all necessary ends. For doing so banking industry plays a pivotal role in capital formation and stimulate the level of industrialization, poverty alleviation and human development. In a sense, healthy banks and healthy economies seem to go together. Therefore, performance of such organizations particularly; operational efficiency, management soundness, productivity, profitability and social profitability are of great concern. An in-depth study to analyze the performances of the banking industry of Bangladesh by applying the most widely used indicators of bank performance could be worth while. The banking industry of Bangladesh is composed of five types of banks viz. Nationalized Commercial Banks(NCBs), Specialized banks(SBs), private Commercial Banks(PCBs), Foreign Commercial Banks(FCBs) and Islamic Banks(IBs) differ in their motives. Different types of banks give priority to different stakeholders. So, performance analysis as a whole can make the industry more creative and more supportive to achieve their organizational goal as well as can help the nation to avoid poverty and learn to lead prospective lives. Because , performance analysis as a whole will bring out all loop holes for back benchers in this sector and allow them with information to go ahead with prospective mentality. 3. Objectives of the Study The broad objective of this proposal is to make a comprehensive analysis of growth, productivity, profitability and performance of the banking industry in Bangladesh and to suggest measures for improving their performance. The specific objectives of the proposal are as follows: †¢ To analyze and compare the growth trends of banking facilities/services and output of banking sector as an industry. †¢ To measure and compare the productivity trends of banking sector. †¢ To compare overall performance of the cross section of banks from various angles. †¢ To conduct an in-depth analysis of the causes of lower or higher levels of productivity and performance (if any) among all banks. †¢ To evaluate existing remittance disbursement system and direct its profitable utilization through proper planning and action. †¢ To suggest the possible lines of actions to improve the performance of various categories of banks. 4. Justification of The Study 1. Literature Review From a detail literature review it is found that a good number of researches were conducted in the field of performance evaluation in banking sector. But unfortunately, Performance Analysis of Banking Industry in Bangladesh as a whole was not conducted. As such the literature review of the following articles, journals and research work compelled me to have a distinct idea that a research of having a complete picture of Banking industry is a demand of the time. As such my literature review found following ideas: Abedin, Roy and Mustafi(1989) in a study titled, â€Å"A Preliminary Note on Measurement of Productivity in the Commercial Banks of Bangladesh,† mentioned that there was a steady growth of bank output during 1975-1988. The output was measured as the volume of working fund handled per employees. There were variations in the levels of productivity of different types of banks. They also mentioned about a falling trend of productivity index of private banks with little variations during 1985-88. In case of Foreign banks they reported a sharp fall of productivity index from 100 in 1985 to 37 in 1986, then a rising trend. The limitations of his study were that he did not considered the social aspects of the Banks. The data on working fund were not comparable with any published data of Bangladesh Bank (BB) due to using the end June and end december figures of every year. The study neither attempts to analyze the causes of lower or higher productivity of banks nor strongly suggests the measures for increasing the levels of the banks productivity. Cookson(1989) in his article titled, â€Å"Productivity in the Banking Industry in Bangladesh† stated that productivity in the banking industry is very difficult to estimate by using available data. He also said that the conceptual difficulties limit comparisons among the banks in Bangladesh. In this paper the author tried to give a proper definition of labor productivity in commercial banking. He pointed out that the productivity of the total commercial banking system was stagnant. However, he took a partial approach for measuring productivity of the banks. In no way it reflected the total productivity scenario of the banking sector. Shakoor(1989) ’s paper on â€Å"Measurement of Profitability in Commercial Banks in Bangladesh† investigated the nature of productivity of four nationalized commercial banks(NCBs) during 1972-86 and that of five private commercial banks (PCBs) during 1983-86. The paper focused on some selected indicators of general productivity and profitability, such as deposits, advances, income, spread, expenditure etc. per employee and per branch. He used some statistical measures such as averages, standard deviation and coefficient of variations both NCBs and PCBs. The other statistical measures like, trend, correlation, regression analysis etc. were not used by the author. He observed that the productivity of the NCBs in Bangladesh had an increasing trend during 1972-86 and the productivity of the selected private banks showed better situation when compared with that of NCBs during the period under study. But, his study had limitations and in no way that reflected the total productivity trend of the commercial banking sector as a whole. Bhattacharjee and Saha(1989) in their joint eff0rt titled, â€Å"An Evaluation of Performance of NCBs In Bangladesh† tried to measure the performance of NCBs for th1973-1987. They analyzed the performance of NCBs on the basis of five sets of indicators. They are: (a) General business measures in terms of total business, deposit, advances, gross income and net profit; (b) Social profitability measures in terms of deposit mobilization (time deposit), branch expansion. (number of branches) and employment generation; (c) Branch Performance Measures in terms of profit per branch, deposit per branch, business per branch and gross income per branch; (d) Employee performance measures in terms of profit per employee, income per employee and business per employee; (e) Profitability measures in terms of rate of profit on equity, profit per unit of deposit and profit per unit of advances. The authors found upwards trends in almost all the performance measures. Besides, inter bank and intra bank variations in performance measures were also observed by them. Observing ‘means’ and ‘standard deviations’ of selected measures in NCBs , the authors reported that the NCBs could maintain the rising trends. They mentioned that in spite of disinvestment of two NCBs and growing importance attached to the development of private banking, the NCBs still played a dominant role in the banking sector. They hoped that achievement of the NCB sector may further be enhanced if due care is taken to improve the existing planning and monitoring system of relative operational performance aspects of thee banks. Abedin(1990) in his book titled â€Å"Commercial Banking in Bangladesh: A Role of commercial Study of Disparities of Regional and Sectoral Growth Trends(1846-1986),† examined the role of commercial banks under the private ownership(1846-1970) in increasing regional and sectoral disparities in rendering the banking services in Bangladesh. He also investigated the part played by the commercial banks under the public ownership(1971-1986) in mitigating any such disparities. In this perspective the author tried to critically examine the growth trends of banking facilities in Bangladesh for the period from 1846 to 1986. This study analysed the impacts of nationalization of commercial banks on different regions and sectors of Bangladesh economy after the independence of the country. The author identified some factors influencing credit deployment such as legal requirements of cash reserve, political pressure on the bank executive etc. There are some other important factors, which should not be overlooked. Such as, motivation factor of the bank executives, job security, honesty etc. The study rightly identified that, regional economic disparities led to the growth of regional imbalances in the distribution of banking facilities. The political economy of the monetary policy and banking was also responsible for this(page 260). To discuss about limitations it can be said that, within the scope of a single thesis, to deal with a large number of issues is neither possible nor desirable. The author admitted that many current issues of banking operations could not be analyzed in this dissertation. It would be more worthy and specific if some of the key issues were mentioned. Chowdhury(1990) in his dissertation titled â€Å"An Evaluation of the Performance of Commercial Banks in Bangladesh† assessed the overall contribution of the commercial banks in the financial development of Bangladesh. He analyzed the trend of commercial bank’s branch expansion, deposit mobilization and deployment of credit for the period 1972-86. The productivity and profitability aspects of the Nationalised Commercial Banks (NCBs) and Private Commercial Banks(PCBs) for the period 1983-1986(covering a period of four years) were also examined in the dissertation. The study covered all commercial banks excluding foreign and Islamic banks and used secondary data. The study stated that the growth pattern of the financial development and the contribution of commercial banks towards financial development in Bangladesh was not only uneven but also very slow. The study observed that the growth and development of commercial banking in Bangladesh during 1972-86 was not satisfactory. The author observed that the trends of profits, profitability and productivity of the commercial banks, over the entire reference period, were characterized by uneven variations indicating unsystematic and unplanned business expansion of the commercial banks. The study identified that the frequent variations in the ‘burden’ of the commercial banks was mainly responsible for the uneven trends in profits and profitability. Like any other study , the study had also some shortcomings. The post denationalization and privatization period 1983-86 (four years) was too short in comparison to the pre denationalization or nationalized period 1972-1982 (11 years). The period considered (1983-1986 i.e. four years)for the comparative analysis between the performance of NCBs and PCBs was very early to mature. Since the study measured the productivity and profitability performance using single measures such as ratio of net profit volume of working fund, ratio of total income to total expenditure and ratio of total income to manpower expenses, those measures had limits to justify the results. If some additional measures had been used, then the results might be more realistic. So this study has some limitations and inadequacies which are expected to be minimized in the present study. Moniruzzaman and Rahman(1991) made a comparative study of pre and post denationalization periods in the article titled, â€Å"Profitability Performance of Denationalized Banks- A Comparative Study of the Pre and Post Denationalization Periods.† They Observed that the profitability performance of Uttora Bank Limited and Rupali Bank Limited became unsatisfactory after denationalization. But in the case of Pubali Bank Limited, they observed a Decreasing trend before denationalization and increasing trend after denationalization. The limitations of the paper are that, they had taken into consideration a very short period of three years before and three years after denationalization of the two banks. They did not try to find out why profits of those denationalized banks (Uttora, and Rupali Bank limted) were falling. They used the variables like total expenses , total income, net income and total assets only. They ignored other important variables, such as deposits, advances, number of Bank branches, number if employees etc. So the study was very limited and incomplete.

Cloud Computing with Machine Learning for Cancer Diagnosis

Cloud Computing with Machine Learning for Cancer Diagnosis Cloud computing with Machine Learning could help us in the early diagnosis of breast cancer Junaid Ahmad Bhat, Prof. Vinai George and Dr. Bilal Malik Abstract— The purpose of this study is to develop tools which could help the clinicians in the primary care hospitals with the early diagnosis of breast cancer diagnosis. Breast cancer is one of the leading forms of cancer in developing countries and often gets detected at the lateral stages. The detection of cancer at later stages results not only in pain and agony to the patients but also puts lot of financial burden on the caregivers. In this work, we are presenting the preliminary results of the project code named BCDM (Breast Cancer Diagnosis using Machine Learning) developed using Matlab. The algorithm developed in this work is based on adaptive resonance theory. (Explain the results of this work here ..). The aim of the project is to eventually run the algorithm on a cloud computer and a clinician at a primary healthcare can use the system for the early diagnosis of the patients using web based interface from anywhere in the world. Keywords— Adaptive Resonance theory, Breast Cancer Diagnosis, FNA I. Introduction The breast cancer is one of the common cancers and ranked second in the world after the lung cancer. (1)This type of cancer also ranked second in northern India. (1)Breast cancer is one of the leading cancers found in Kashmir (1) .Classifying the cells into the malignant and benign is the main goal in the diagnoses of breast cancer and misclassification could cost pain to the patients and extra burden to health care providers. Due to noise in the data, the problem to classify becomes non-trivial and has thus attracted researchers from machine learning to improve the classification.(2) Researchers have used different machine learning algorithms to improve the diagnosis of breast cancer. (3) And Neural Networks is one of the machine learning algorithms, which has been widely used for diagnosis of breast cancer. In order to achieve the exactness Adaptive Resonance theory that is one of the variants of Neural Network been used for prediction purposes. Neural Network gained importance in 505 till late 60s due to its accuracy and learning capabilities but got diminished in 80s due to its computational cost. With the advancement in technology (4) Neural Networks are becoming popular due to their ability to achieve non-linear hypotheses even when input feature scale is large (4). This work proposes to use a variant of neural networks based on adaptive resonance theory to improve the breast cancer diagnosis. This algorithm has been developed and tested in Matlab 2012.has been tested on lot of real life problems that include automated automobile control, for classification purposes and for the detection of intruders in the battlefield. II. Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) The Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) is a neural network architecture that generates suitable weights (parameter) by clustering the pattern space. . The motive for adapting ART instead of a conventional neural network is to solve the stability and plasticity problem. (5) ART networks and algorithms keep the plasticity to learn new patterns and prevent the amendment of patterns that it learned earlier. The stable network will not return the previous cluster. The operation of ART works as it accepts an input vector and classifies it into one of the clusters depending on to which cluster it resembles. If it will not match with any of the category then a new category is created by storing that pattern. When a store pattern is, bring into being that matches the input vector within a specified tolerance that made it to look like the input vector. The pattern will not be modified if it doesnt match the current input pattern within the vigilance parameter. With the help of it the problems associated with stability and plasticity can be resolved. (5) Figure 4 Art 1Neural Network Architecture A. Types of Adaptive Resonance Theory 1) Adaptive Resonance Theory 1 It is the first neural network of Adaptive Resonance theory. It consists of two layers that cluster the pattern from the input binary vector. It accepts the input in the form of binary values (6). 2) Adaptive Resonance Theory 2 It is the second type of neural Network of Adaptive Resonance theory .It is complex than that of ART1 network and accepts the values in the form of continuous valued vector. The reason of complexity for ART 2 is that it possesses the normalization combination and noise inhibition alongside it compares the weights needed for the reset mechanism. (6) B. Working of ART 1 Neural Network The art Neural Networks works in the following fashion, which comprises of three layers and each layer has its own role to play. 1) Input layer 2) Interface layer 3) Cluster layer The parameters used in algorithm are as: Num = Number of Symptoms M = Clusters as {benign ,Malignant} bwij =Bottom up weights Twij = Top down weights P =Vigilance parameter S = Binary forms of the input symptoms X = Activation vector for interface ||x|| =norm of x or sum of the components of x Step 1: Initialize Parameters L > 1 and 0 Initialize weights 0 ij (0) ij (0)=1 Step 2: While stop condition is false, perform step 3 to 14 Step 3: For each training input do step 4 to 13 Step 4: Set Activation of all F2 units to 0 Set Activation of F1(a) units to binary forms of Symptoms vector Step 5: Compute the sum of the symptoms ||s|| = ∑ i Si Step 6: Send the symptom vector from input layer to interface layer xi = si Step7: The cluster node that is not inhibited If yj != -1 then yj = ∑ bij *xi Step8: While reset is true, perform step 9-12 Step 9: Find J such that yi >= yj for all nodes j If yj = -1 then All then odds are inhibited thus cannot be clustered Step 10: Recomputed activation vector x of interface unit Xi= si *tji Step 11: Compute the sum of the components of vector x ||x||= ∑I Xi Step 12: Test for reset condition if ||x|| / ||s|| Yj = -1 (inhibited node j) Move to step step 8 again if ||x|| / ||s|| >= p then move to next step Step 13: Update the bottom up weights and top up weights as: bij (new)=L*xi / L 1 +| |x|| and Tji (new)=xi Step 14: Test for the stopping condition if((bij(new_val)==bij(previous_vreeal)))(tij(new_val)==tij(previous_val))) III. Classifying Breast Cell The data set for this research was taken from Mangasarian and Wolberg. This data set was obtained by taking Fine Needle Aspirates (FNA) approach. (7) This data set is available for public in UCI repository. (7) It contains 699 samples of patients consists of two classes 458 as benign cases and 451 malignant cases. The following are the attributes of the database: Sample Code Number Clump Thickness Uniformity of Cell Size Uniformity of Cell Shape Marginal Adhesion Single Epithelial Cell Size Bare Nuclei Bland Chromatin Normal Nucleoli Mitosis Class We have taken this data in its original form. This dataset is available in UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository (7) IV. Experiment Our Experiment consists of four different modules which is further divided and does work in the following sequence as given in the figure 5 below. Figure 5: Modules of the Algorithm A. Modules of the Experiment 1) Pre processing In our dataset, not all the features are taking part in the classification process thus; we remove patients id feature. Then we left with ten attributes so we separate the feature set from the class values as Xij and Yi. a) Data Normalization After preprocessing stage Normalization of Xij (nine feature vectors) need to perform by using this equation: New_val = (current _val min value) / (Max value min value) Where, New_val = New value after scaling current_val = Current value of the feature vector Max_val = Maximum value of each feature vector Minvalue = Minimum value of each feature vector b) Data Conversion The new values (New_val) after getting from the previous step are truncated and converted into binary format. Then grouping was done on the base of range; the values falling in the range of 0 to 5 assigned as 0. Whereas, values in the range from 5 to 10 are assigned as 1.Then each sample as an input is given to ART1 network for training and testing purpose. 2) Recognition Stage Initially all components of the input vector were assigned to zero because no sample was applied to the input layer. This sets the other two layers to zero there by disabling all the neurons and results in zero output. Since all neurons are at the same stage, thus every neuron has an equal chance to win. The input vector then applied in the recognition layer, at each neuron performs a dot product between the input vector and its weight vector. A neuron that comes with the greatest dot product possesses the weights that most excellent matches input vector. It inhibits all the other outputs from that neuron from that layer. This indicates the recognition layer stores the patterns in the form of weights associated with neurons one for each class. 3) Comparison Stage In the recognition layer the network fired passes one back to the comparison layer when it passes the output signal. The comparison neurons that will fire are the one those receive simultaneously from the input feature vector and the comparison layer excitation vector. If there is a mismatch between these two, few neurons in the comparison layer will fire to the next layer until X got over. This means that the pattern P being feedback is not the one sought and neuron firing in the recognition layer should be inhibited. Then comparison of the symptoms vector and the inner layer vector and if the value is less then vigilance parameter, the network causes reset which causes the firing neuron in the recognition layer to zero and disable it for the current classification. 4) Search Stage The classification process finishes if the reset signal is not generated. Otherwise other patterns were researched to find the correct match. This method continues until either all the stored pattern has been tried or all recognition neurons are inhibited. V. Results The performance of the Algorithm studied is as under: The Training percentage and testing percentage total time taken and the relative efficiency when vigilance parameter is 0.5 is given by the chart. Figure 6 : The classification performance on Vigilance parameter 0.5 The efficiency of the Network with vigilance parameter 0.7 on different percentage of training and testing sets given in figure 7. And on taking the vigilance parameter as 0.7 but on different percentage of training and testing dataset we got better efficiency than that of in figure 7 as shown in figure 8. Figure 7: The Classification performance on Epoch 0.7 Figure 8: Calculation of Efficiency on different proportion of data The efficiency of the Network with vigilance parameter 0.9 on different percentage of training and testing sets given as under: Figure 9 : The Efficiency of the Network on Vigilance Parameter 0.9 The Maximum and Minimum time for training the Network on different tolerance factors is in the table as: Table 1: Calculation of Training time VI. Conclusion In this paper, we evaluated the adaptive resonance theory for the diagnosis of breast cancer using Wisconsin as data set. Several tests has been taken on different proportion of training and testing dataset and we concluded that by taking the vigilance parameter as 0.5 and taking the ratio of data as 90% for training and 10 % for testing we could achieve the better results. Although we have taken into account all the parameters in the further scope of research, we use the feature selection process so that we can reduce the time and improve the accuracy. In addition to that, we take the dataset from the local hospital so that we use that for the benefit of the society. References Journal of Cancer Research and Therapeutics. Afroz, Fir, et al. 2012, Vol. 8. Heart Disease Diagnosis using Support Vector. Shashikant Ghumbre, Chetan Patil,Ashok Ghatol. Pattaya: International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology, Dec. 2011. Stefan Conrady, Dr. Lionel Jouffe. Breast Cancer Diagnostics with Bayesian Networks. s.l.: Bayesia, 2013. DONG, Yiping. A Study on Hardware Design for High Performance Artificial Neural Network by using FPGA and NoC . s.l.: Waseda University Doctoral Dissertation, July -2011. S N Sivanandan, S Sumathi , S N Deepa. Introduction to Neural Network and Matlab 6.0. s.l.: Tata Mc-Graw -Hill, 2006. Evaluation of Three Neural Network Models using Wisconsin Breast Cancer. K. Mumtaz, S. A. Sheriff,K. Duraiswamy. UCL Wisconsin data set. [Online] [Cited: 30 10 2014.] http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Breast+Cancer+Wisconsin+(.

Working With Survivors of Trauma Essay -- Post-traumatic stress disord

Bio-psychosocial Assessment Presenting Issue Spartacus came to seek the help of a mental health specialist since he was experiencing a number of difficulties in his life after his service at the U.S. Army. He â€Å"felt different† on his return to home and found it exceedingly tough to blend in into the family life as he did before going to serve in the army. The emotional attachment he had with his family members such as the wife and the son had disappeared. Spartacus not attend to the son accordingly as a father should. Though he knew that this was not right, he could not bring himself to a solution and that is the reason why he sought specialized help. The problem had persisted for a while and Spartacus knew that the situation was getting worse. It was interfering with his day-to-day functioning. He wanted help so that he could revert back to his normal function just like in the period before living for the military. He could not sleep, he was constantly nervous, he felt less motivated and showed a general loss of ap petite. Demographic Information Spartacus is an African American male aged 25 years. He has served in the U.S. military for with multiple deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. He had returned to his home in U.S having suffered many physical injuries during one of the combats. He was (and is still) married to Tamika and they have a son who is three years old. Current Living Situation Spartacus spent most of his time in solitude, away from the wife and son. He easily got irritated and found comfort in smoking cigarette. In his loneliness, Spartacus could spend many hours replaying the scenes from his combat experience. He always felt jumpy. Birth and Developmental History Having been born 25 years ago... ... useful evidence that helped in coming up with the right treatment for Spartacus. Bibliography Chang, Y., & Hsiao, S. (2006). Quality of Life: Scaling with Maslow‘s Need Hierarchy. Gerontology, 52(6), 376-376. Hofmann, S. G. (2007). Enhancing exposure-based therapy from a translational research perspective. Behavior Research and Therapy, 45(9), 1987-2001. Kennedy, J. E. (2007). Posttraumatic stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder-like symptoms and mild traumatic brain injury. The Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 44(7), 895-920. Resick, P. A., & Miller, M. W. (2009). Posttraumatic stress disorder: Anxiety or traumatic stress disorder?. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 22(5), 384-390. Taylor, S. (2004). Understanding and treating health anxiety: A cognitive-behavioral approach. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 11(1), 112-123.

Similarities And Differences Of Buddha And Christ

Religion is somewhat important to a lot of people around the world. It helps us guide in our everyday life. To follow the beliefs and traditions brings faith to whatever religion we are into. In our era today, we come up with a lot of religions and two of the major religions are Buddhism and Christianity. Buddha specifically said not to believe to the things that is passed on and that we’re just written down etc. on face value. He did not urge us to put faith just in texts, or enough faith in their value to trawl through them-quite the opposite.What we’ve known is that, all Buddhist school agrees that one’s salvations from suffering are in one’s own hands. Siddharta Gautama was born into a royal family in the sixth century B. C. His experiences when he was a young adult with the outside world sent him to look out a greater understanding of life and spiritual understanding. Siddhartha achieved the powerful enlightenment through seeking guidance. He was know n as the Buddha from that point which means â€Å"the Enlightened One†.From then on and for the rest of his life, Buddha traveled from great distances to teach people about the one path of salvation. His pupils continued to extend his teachings after Buddha’s death. Hinduism, the most widespread religion in India, had become tightly controlled when Buddhism developed. And today, Buddha’s teachings still followed by a lot of people throughout the world. â€Å"Christ† as the identification, Jesus is not accepted within Judaism.Christians are called â€Å"Nazarenes† in Talmudic Hebrew because in the New Testament, Jesus is described in as being from the city of Nazareth. Being a â€Å"Christian,† one has to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, some believe that an individual must attend a mass and go to church and participate in baptism. Death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is necessary to others, instead of a belief and acceptance in their life. â€Å"Nicene Creed† is the ancient text, which some theologians consider a Christian who accepts this.This is accepted by the Orthodox, Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans and the rest of the mainline Protestant Churches. In spite of important differences of interpretation and opinion, Christians share a set of beliefs that they hold as essential to their faith. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is considered and said to be the cornerstone of their faith among all Christians and the most important event in human history. Within the body of Christian beliefs, the death and resurrection of Jesus are the two most core events on which much of Christian doctrine and theology depend.Christians commemorated these essential doctrines of the Christian faith during Good Friday and Easter Sunday, particularly during liturgical time of Holy Week. One wrote, â€Å"If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in god is useless. † Christians believe th at one can be saved from sin and have eternal death through faith in Jesus. The Gospel of John said that He â€Å"takes away the sins of the world†. One’s reception of salvation is related to justification. Generally, Christian churches accept and teach the New Testament account of the resurrection of Jesus.A lot of people believe that Christ may have been inspired by Buddhism, and that the texts of the Nag Hammadi and Gospel of Thomas influence this. Apparently, It has also been asserted that the story of the birth of the Buddha was well known in the West, and it was influenced the story of the birth of Jesus. The two major religions which are Buddhism and Christianity are compared and emphasized their differences by a lot of scholars, perceived similarities in the teachings in the spiritual intent and practices.It is said to be that it may be the result of a direct or indirect influence of Buddhism on early Christianity, or arising from separate but similar developme nts, or remain divided whether the religious parallels are coincidental. Jesus is not mentioned in any Buddhist text and so, Buddhist views of Jesus differ. â€Å"That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity that cannot be denied, and it must likewise be admitted that Buddhism existed at least 400 years before Christianity.I go even further, and should extremely grateful if anybody would point out to me those historical channels through which Buddhism had influenced early Christianity. † Buddha the new born prince is adored and predicted by seer Asita and is celebrated his birth. Jesus the new born prince is adored and predicted by seers â€Å"from the east† who celebrated his birth. Buddhist Trinity (Tiratna) and Baptism: â€Å"I take refuge, Lord, in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. † â€Å"Enough, I say, with this external bath. I am satisfied with this internal bath: confidence in the Blessed One. â€Å"Jesus Trinity and B aptism is written as follows: â€Å"baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit†. Lastly, if there are any similarities and differences on people, the faith and respect to each other’s religions is still one of the most important things that should always be present to anyone whether in a Catholic teaching, in Buddhism, or any form of religion. R E F E R E N C E S Woodhead, L. An Introduction to Christianity. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Lopez, D. S. Jr. (2001) The Story of Buddhism: A Concise Guide to its History & Teachings. New york: Hyper Collins Publishers Inc

Pride and Prejudice: Book Review Essay

Pride and Prejudice, a classic novel by Jane Austen, tells the story of a complicated love that develops between what was thought to be two very different personalities. The protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, misjudges a man upon rumor and appearance, but finds out she is extraordinarily wrong. The novel explains how difficult it is to fully understand someone after settling upon assumptions and being under the influence of the authorities around them. However this is the trial one must pass in order to find true love or friendship. Social class was a major influence throughout the 1800s, when this story takes place. Unfortunately, the Bennet family was fairly poor compared to Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy’s. This is where some of the conflict originates from. The Bennet girls fall in love with upper class men despite their social order which prevents them from being a desirable pair. On the other hand, the poor end of the relationship would benefit from a marriage to a rich family. Characters such as Elizabeth and Jane are torn apart as they struggle against the pressure from their mother and other aristocrats that frown upon their relationships with Darcy and Bingley. The novel primarily focuses on the personalities and actions of female characters as they strive to gain happiness. However, the women in this novel can be divided into two groups. The first includes characters such as Mrs. Bennet, Miss Bingley, Lydia, and Lady Catherine. These women have the tendency to manipulate the world around them in their favor. They display all the faults in women; greed, over confidence, and stupidity to name a few. The other half of women consists of Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, and Georgiana Darcy. These characters can be thought of as the good-hearted women. Although they have some realistic faults, their overall personality reflects the honest side of women. Jane and Elizabeth, regardless if they come from the same family as Lydia and Mrs. Bennet, appear to be more intelligent judging from actions they take and the way they respond to things. The two  Bennet girls are not as heavily concerned with money as the other women. Also, Georgiana is a shy girl that does not have the arrogant personality that is often obtained by women of high rank and or wealth. Austen is able to create a miniature representation of women in English society just by a few characters in this story. She criticizes ignorant women with similar mindsets as the first group of women (including Lydia, etc.) that she encountered from her experience. Readers are able to conclude from this novel that most women in the 1800s desired only marriage that would lead to wealth, gaining social rank, and saw it as their sole responsibility to become wives. The author restores some dignity in women by adding characters such as Elizabeth who have the sensibility and modesty that allows them to reflect upon their mistakes, while others never admit to theirs. Austen suggests ideal women should be like Elizabeth and not what the characters of the book consider accomplished. In addition, male characters in Pride and Prejudice also have a variety of personalities. Characters such as Mr. Darcy have their faults towards the beginning but are able to fix them as the story progresses. For instance, Mr. Darcy’s pride and shyness contradicts itself, however both play an active role in giving Elizabeth the wrong impression. His secret love comes to believe the man as arrogant and unpleasant. In fictional reality, Mr. Darcy is actually a very gracious man, but is unable to express his thoughts in a polite manner especially to people he has never been acquainted with. Elizabeth also goes through the same process as she gains more information about Darcy from others, himself, and through personal experience. The prejudice that develops on Elizabeth’s side creates the drama that drives this story to be exciting. In reality, the traits these characters have are quite common. By nature, human beings have the urge to create assumptions towards other people. They may be wrong, but it is only natural to have them. It is the goodness of the person that prevents them from presenting these assumptions without evidence. Some characters fail to do this, and whenever they approach an idea in their favor, they must share it. Whether we realize it or not, we  have many faults. The morals of the story encourage the initiative that should be taken to fix the mistakes we make. This novel teaches us not to misjudge a person without completely understanding them, which formulates the title, Pride and Prejudice. The story not only gives a happy ending, but a resolution to overcoming influences that have nothing to do with the actual relationship between people. An appropriate judgment can only be made by individuals themselves. I would recommend this story to people who have been troubled with similar situations when it comes to judging or leaving a positive impression on others. The morals in Pride and Prejudice are put into relatable context to the real world. I am sure it will affect the reader’s viewpoint in one way or another, as it did for me. Not only is this story for those troubled in relationships, but the fact that it is a beautiful love story should not be disregarded. I would definitely be interested in reading similar books like this or other novels by Jane Austen because I fell in love with the characters and the author’s writing. The style of writing that colored each picture and thought that went into every sentence was very well done. I praise the author’s ability to word this love story so perfectly.

Relations between Indians and English settlers essays

Relations between Indians and English settlers essays Ever since the development of the Roanoke colony in 1585, the relationship between the English settlers and the Native Americans has always been unstable and dangerous. Native Americans would originally consider becoming allies with the new intruders, yet as time went on; a war would emerge between Native Americans and the English settlers as to control the land. This course of action -initially trying to be friends, and eventually ending up being archenemies- gives the impression of being the basic prototype that existed in the New World. One of the best examples to demonstrate the tensions that existed among the English settlers and the Indians is the settlers clash with the Powhatan tribe. When the English landed in Jamestown in 1607, the dominant tribe of the area was the Powhatan, which was named so after the tribes leader, Chief Powhatan. At first, the Powhatan thought that these new intruders might be able to aid them in their struggle for land and power over the other tribes in the area. However, such optimism in hopes of becoming allies vanished as English settlers ran out of food and started to steal and take food from the Native Americans. In 1610, any notion of alliance between the Powhatan and the Virginia settlers was instantaneously revoked when Lord De La Warr arrived with a declaration of war against all Indians in the Jamestown area. Lord De La Warr used his "Irish Tactics" of burning houses and crops and taking prisoners to destroy the Native Americans in what was known as the First Anglo-Powhatan war. A peace treaty was signed, but it only lasted eight years. The Powhatan killed 347 settlers, which lead to the Virginia Company giving orders for "a perpetual war without peace or truce." Although the Powhatan made one more attempt at destroying the Virginians, they were defeated again in the Second Anglo-Powhatan war. The peace treaty of 1646 eliminated all chance of the Powha...

Passive Smoking Essays - Smoking, Passive Smoking, Tar, Cigarette

Passive Smoking Essays - Smoking, Passive Smoking, Tar, Cigarette Passive Smoking What is secondhand smoke? Secondhand smoke is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. This mixture contains more than 4,000 substances, more than 40 of which are known to cause cancer in humans or animals and many of which are strong irritants. Secondhand smoke is also called environmental tobacco smoke (ETS); exposure to secondhand smoke is called involuntary smoking, or passive smoking. Passive smoking artery damage partially heals Damage to the lining of arteries of young adults caused by passive smoking partially heals 2 years after the exposure to smoke, but the artery lining is still not as healthy as the arteries of people who had never beenexposed to smoke. 60 young adults, all nonsmokers, between the ages of 15 and 39 were used as essential data for further analysis. Twenty had never been exposed to tobacco smoke at home or in the workplace for any amount of time. Another group of 20 had been passively exposed for at least 1 hour per day for 2 or more years. A third group of 20 had been exposed to smoke at home, work, or both for at least 1 hour per day for 2 years. The researchers found that dilation of the blood vessels was much better in former passive smokers than in current passive smokers, although both groups were impaired compared with nonsmoking controls. Not surprisingly, former passive smokers who had been away from smoky environments longer had better arterial function than those who had been exposed to passive smoking as recently as 2 years prior to the study. Passive smoking has been consistently linked to an increased risk for coronary heart disease and may be responsible for more than 30 cardiovascular deaths annually in the US alone, the researchers note. Secosndhand smoke is a serious health risk to children. The developing lungs of young children are also affected by exposure to secondhand smoke. Infants and young children whose parents smoke are among the most seriously affected by exposure to secondhand smoke, being at increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and bronchitis. EPA estimates that passive smoking is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age annually, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year. Children exposed to secondhand smoke are also more likely to have reduced lung function and symptoms of respiratory irritation like cough, excess phlegm, and wheeze. Passive smoking can lead to buildup of fluid in the middle ear, the most common cause of hospitalization of children for an operation. Asthmatic children are especially at risk. EPA estimates that exposure to secondhand smoke increases the number of episodes and severity of symptoms in hundreds of thousands of asthmatic children. EPA estimates that between 200,000 and 1,000,000 asthmatic children have their condition made worse by exposure to secondhand smoke. Passive smoking may also cause thousands of non-asthmatic children to develop the condition each year. Pregnant women should be strongly encouraged to avoid spending time in places where people smoke, as u denoted from all the reasearch I've gone through. There was a survey made to see weather women have been exposed to passive smoking at home or at work. Women completed a questionnaire about exposure to passive smoking, then researches analyzed the data, they saw hat out of one thousand women which have given birth before and at the same time were exposed to second hand smoking, 70 women had babies with physical and/or mental disabilities. Cigarette smoke can damage your heart even if youu aren't a smoker. Research shows that the second-hand smoke that many people are exposed to is enough to produce damage to their cardiovasscular system. Researchers identsified carbon monoxide and nicotine in environmental tobacco smoke that increases the risk of heart disease. Here are a couple of examples. First, the carbon monoxide competes with oxygen in the red blood cells. It not only reduces the amount of oxygen in the heart, it also makes the heart use oxygen less efficiently. Researchers say exposure to second-hand smoke causes between 30,000 and 60,000 fatal heart attacks each year and between 90,000 and 180,000 non-fatal heart attacks. Researchers claim exposure to second-hand