Skoda Automobile Company Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Skoda Automobile Company - Essay Example Skoda automobile company started its operations in 1925 after a lengthened period of producing customized bicycles for the founders, Laurin and Klement who were cyclists. The company based in the Czech Republic advanced gradually in producing bicycles and cars for the Czech market. The profits accumulated during the initial stages of stages served as propellants since the management adapted them for capital in its advent to globalization. Skoda automobile engaged in the production of cars for the European market despite the presence of competitive rivalry between the German and British manufacturer. After the initial staging of globalization, the company’s management evaluated the importance of diversification of the business portfolio by the inclusion of other product categories. Therefore, the company started to manufacture farm machinery and airplanes as additional products to the main product. Chronological accounts ascertain that the company’s production and sales competence enabled the company to survive through the difficult environmental forces prevailing in the mid 20th century. Scholars derive that Skoda car manufacturing company faced the threat of the great depression, a situation that halted most industrial signs of progress in Europe (Kreitner, & Cassidy, 2011). This period coincided with the Second World War whereby bombers from rival sides targeted industries. Further, Skoda managed to survive the eventual period of economic restructuring during the postwar period despite the presence of the German and British car models in the target markets (Roberts, 2013). Eventually, Skoda observed that by sourcing for stable car investors, the business would propel immediately as the investors would provide capital equity for the company thus they chose Volkswagen AG due to its wide brand network. The SWOT analysis Strengths of Skoda Automobile car industry Skoda produces its machinery in view of presenting the best machinery to the global mar kets. Mainly, the company boasts over dominance of a profitable market share in the European market despite the presence of stronger competitors. The company’s diversification of investment plan engages the acquisition of mergers and taming other market leaders to invest in the plans. The company’s research and development team engage in an evaluation of alternatives in order to reach the desired market segments. Therefore, the management stipulates its long-range plans in the market and order for a survey of 20,000 clients in the global market. Arguably, many companies lag behind Skoda in undertaking customer surveys in order to bear the ability to produce the automobile in reflection to the present needs in the consumer markets. Skoda’s strengths further emanate from the extent of independence in undertaking direct and unbiased surveys. In this case, the management ensures that potential customers reveal the needs and wants and stipulate their perceptions conc erning Skoda car models in order to undertake the fast improvement of the products with the inclusion of customer’s stipulated variables. The company rests assured that achieving the desired competence through its research body, the JD surveys to be partial since customers would not hold back their feelings about the company given that the researcher is independent.

Culture and Religion - Shrine Pilgrimage in Turkmenistan Essay - 1

Culture and Religion - Shrine Pilgrimage in Turkmenistan - Essay Example These groups find their linkage with four caliphs of Islam. Owlat people are given special respect by tribes of Turkmenistan and their property is inviolable in Turkmenistan. This status of inviolable property has strengthened the Owlat people by ensuring economic stability. Pilgrimage of shrines is the activity that kept people of Turkmenistan on the path of Islam. Despite all the banes of soviet rule on pilgrimage activities, people kept visiting the holy sites because of their emotional and spiritual attachments. After getting the independence from soviet rule, the pilgrimage activities once again flourished in Turkmenistan. Importance of holy activities and their impact on human life and on culture is discussed in detail in paragraphs to follow: Pilgrimage culture prevailed by early tribal settlement in Turkmenistan and this culture and trends were brought by â€Å"Oghuz Khan†. Turkmen follow â€Å"holy groups† known as â€Å"Owlat†. Six Owlet groups are respected according to level of their spiritual powers. These groups find their linkage with four caliphs of Islam and ultimately with Prophet (peace be upon him). Turk people started considering Owlat people for different festivals of life like, marriage, life cycle, cultivation of crops and religious guidance etc. Every important work of human life used to get started with the hands of an Owlat, for the reasons of good end. â€Å"Gonambashi† is the term used for head of a cemetery in Turkmenistan. Gonambashi is the first man buried and around him, other people of community are buried. Gonambashi was respected for its spiritual powers to help people coming to his grave. â€Å"Keramatlier† is another word used during shrine activity that means â€Å"place of miracles†. According to soviet specialists, Muslims of 20th century called themselves â€Å"half Muslims†, because of not following real teachings of Islam. Soviet rule aimed at anti religious

ICT - The Way I do Things at Home and at School Essay Example for Free

ICT The Way I do Things at Home and at School Essay I use ICT a lot at home and at school and in this report I will show how, where, when and why I use these appliances. At home there are many appliances which use ICT, for example; Microwaves, Mobile Phones etc. But there are also some appliances which I also use at school for example; PCs. And I will also show how I use these things in different ways. I use my mobile phone a lot at home, it is just one of the few ways I keep in touch with people who I dont often see and live quite a way away. There are only two ways people can contact me on my mobile phone The phone I own is a Samsung A300e which also has WAP. WAP is Wireless Application Protocol which is a standard way to connect to the internet using wireless devices; it also allows you to access information like text and images. I can use my mobile phone anywhere in the home except where I cant get a signal; the only place in the home is usually the basement. With different networks you can different signals for example I am on Virgin which does not have many satellites in space and therefore does not have as much coverage as Vodafone who have many more satellites and can cover a larger amount of land. The good things about having a mobile phone is that if there is no other way to contact friends in an emergency then it is very easy to contact them using a mobile, although there are some downsides to having a mobile phone and there are that people may contact you and you may not want them to, or you could be somewhere important like a meeting and someone could contact you either by ringing you or sending a SMS, I use digital television quite often and it is transmitted through a satellite dish which is placed on the side of the house and transmits in signals which allow more channels to be viewed than normal, the channels range from 101 to 999 but obviously there are not channels on every number some channels are skipped e.g. 666 there is just a message that says channel unavailable. With digital TV you can shop and even play games. There is also lots of information that can be found out like, cinema listings or even the latest live shows. There is always a TV guide available sorted into sections like, comedy, music or sport which is easier if you are looking for something in particular. I use a microwave at home to heat food or defrost something frozen. I use it to heat things because it is a lot more efficient than the stove. It also knocks down the time of defrosting because I can just set it to defrost and put it on for several minutes rather than leaving it out over night. I play a lot of the time on computer consoles because it is a form of entertainment for me. I play many games like football manager games and platform games such as CROC which are more like adventure games. I have a playstation 2 which can also play playstation 1 games and use the same joypads. I have many other games like Mind hunters which take hours to complete and when I usually finish them I have usually being playing for about 100 hours all together. I also use an X-BOX which is one of the best consoles of all time in my opinion, although it is slightly expensive therefore I have few games, the pads can range from small to large which I think are a bit big for my liking. I use a PC a lot at school because I do Applied ICT and I also use them to type up course work in many of my lessons e.g. English. I also use them for entertainment I go on the internet quite a lot, after I finished my work. I use sites like, mousebreaker.com and uwizone.com which is my email. When Im on email I come into contact with people from all around the world like India and the USA. This is an advantage because if there were no PCs I would be required to do all work by hand and probably wouldnt be doing ICT GCSE. When using the computer I have to abide by several laws like the computer misuse act and the copyright act. The software I use is: Word- to word process Excel- to create spreadsheets Access- to create databases Power Point- to create presentations

Machine Learning in Malware Detection

Machine Learning in Malware Detection 1.0 Background Research Malware was first created in 1949 by John von Neumann. Ever since then, more and more malwares are created. Antivirus company are constantly looking for a method that is the most effective in detecting malware. One of the most famous method used by antivirus company in detecting malware is the signature based detection. But over the years, the growth of malware is increasing uncontrollably. Until recent year, the signature based detection have been proven ineffective against the growth of malware. In this research, I have chosen another method for malware detection which is implementing machine learning method on to malware detection. Using the dataset that I get from Microsoft Malware Classification Challenge (BIG 2015), I will find an algorithm that will be able to detect malware effectively with low false positive error. 1.1 Problem Statement With the growth of technology, the number of malware are also increasing day by day. Malware now are designed with mutation characteristic which causes an enormous growth in number of the variation of malware (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). Not only that, with the help of automated malware generated tools, novice malware author is now able to easily generate a new variation of malware (Lanzi, A. et al., 2010). With these growths in new malware, traditional signature based malware detection are proven to be ineffective against the vast variation of malware (Feng, Z. et al., 2015). On the other hand, machine learning methods for malware detection are proved effective against new malwares. At the same time, machine learning methods for malware detection have a high false positive rate for detecting malware (Feng, Z. et al., 2015). 1.2 Objective To investigate on how to implement machine learning to malware detection in order to detection unknown malware. To develop a malware detection software that implement machine learning to detect unknown malware. To validate that malware detection that implement machine learning will be able to achieve a high accuracy rate with low false positive rate. 1.3 Theoretical / Conceptual Framework 1.4 Significance With Machine Learning in Malware detection that have a high accuracy and low false positive rate, it will help end user to be free from fear malware damaging their computer. As for organization, they will have their system and file to be more secure. 2.0 Literature Review 2.1 Overview Traditional security product uses virus scanner to detect malicious code, these scanner uses signature which created by reverse engineering a malware. But with malware that became polymorphic or metamorphic the traditional signature based detection method used by anti-virus is no long effective against the current issue of malware (Willems, G., Holz, T. Freiling, F., 2007). In current anti-malware products, there are two main task to be carried out from the malware analysis process, which are malware detection and malware classification. In this paper, I am focusing on malware detection. The main objective of malware detection is to be able to detect malware in the system. There are two type of analysis for malware detection which are dynamic analysis and static analysis. For effective and efficient detection, the uses of feature extraction are recommended for malware detection (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). There are various type of detection method, the method that we are using will b e detecting through hex and assembly file of the malware. Feature will be extracted from both hex view and assembly view of malware files. After extracting feature to its category, all category is to be combine into one feature vector for the classifier to run on them (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). For feature selection, separating binary file into blocks to be compare the similarities of malware binaries. This will reduce the analysis overhead which cause the process to be faster (Kim, T.G., Kang, B. Im, E.G., 2013). To build a learning algorithm, feature that are extracted with the label will be undergo classification with using any classification method for example Random Forest, Neural Network, N-gram, KNN and many others, but Support Vector Machine (VCM) is recommended for the presence of noise in the extracted feature and the label (Stewin, P. Bystrov, I., 2016). As to generate result, the learning model is to test with dataset with label to generate a graph which indicate detec tion rate and false positive rate. To find the best result, repeat the process using many other classification and create learning model to test on the same dataset. The best result will the one graph that has the highest detection rate and lowest false positive rates (Lanzi, A. et al., 2010). 2.2 Dynamic and Static Analysis Dynamic Analysis runs the malware in a simulated environment which usually will be a sandbox, then within the sandbox the malware is executed and being observe its behavior. Two approaches for dynamic analysis that is comparing image of the system before and after the malware execution, and monitors the malware action during the execution with the help of a debugger. The first approach usually give a report which will be able to obtain similar report via binary observation while the other approach is more difficult to implement but it gives a more detailed report about the behavior of the malware (Willems, G., Holz, T. Freiling, F., 2007). Static Analysis will be studying the malware without executing it which causing this method to be more safe comparing to dynamic analysis. With this method, we will dissemble the malware executable into binary file and hex file. Then study the opcode within both file to compare with a pre-generated opcode profile in order to search for malicious code that exist within the malware executable (Santos, I. et al., 2013). All malware detection will be needed either Static Analysis or Dynamic Analysis. In this paper, we will be focusing on Static Analysis (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). This is because, Dynamic analysis has a drawback, it can only run analysis on 1 malware at a time, making the whole analysis process to take a long time, as we have many malware that needed to be analysis (Willems, G., Holz, T. Freiling, F., 2007). As for Static Analysis, it mainly uses to analyze hex code file and assembly code file, and compare to Dynamic Analysis, Static Analysis take much short time and it is more convenient to analyze malware file as it can schedule to scan all the file at once even in offline (Tabish, S.M., Shafiq, M.Z. Farooq, M., 2009). 2.3 Features Extraction For an effective and efficient classification, it will be wise to extract feature from both hex view file and assembly view file in order to retrieve a complementary date from both hex and assembly view file (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). Few types of feature that are extracted from the hex view file and assembly view file, which is N-gram, Entropy, Image Representative, String Length, Symbol, Operation Code, Register, Application Programming Interface, Section, Data Define, Miscellaneous (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). For N-gram feature, it usually used to classify a sequence of action in different areas. The sequence of malware execution could be capture by N-gram during feature extraction (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016).   For Entropy feature, it extracts the probability of uncertainty in a series of byte in the malware executable file, these probability of uncertainty is depending on the amount of information on the executable file (Lyda, R.,Hamrock, J,. 2007). For Image Representative feature, the malware binary file is being read into 8-bit vector file, then organize into a 2D array file. The 2D array file can be visualize as a black and gray image whereas grey are the bit and byte of the file, this feature look fo r common in bit arrangement in the malware binary file (Nataraj, L. et al., 2011). For String Length feature, we open each malware executable file and view it in hex view file and extract out all ASCII string from the malware executable, but because it is difficult to only extract the actual string without extract other non-useful element, it is required to choose important string among the extracted (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). For Operation Code features, Operation code also known as Opcode are a type of instruction syllable in the machine language. In malware detection, different Opcode and their frequency is extracted and to compare with non-malicious software, different set of Opcodes are identifiable for either malware or non-malware (Bilar, D., n.d.). For Register feature, the number of register usage are able to assist in malware classification as register renaming are used to make malware analysis more difficult to detect it (Christodorescu, M., Song, D. Bryant, R.E., 2005). For Application Programming Interface feature, API calling are code that call the function of other software in our case it will be Windows API. There are large number of type of API calls in malicious and non-malicious software, is hard to differentiate them, because of this we will be focusing on top frequent used API calls in malware binaries in order to bring the result closer (Top maliciously used apis, 2017). For Data Define feature, because not all of malware contains API calls, and these malware that does not have any API calls they are mainly contain of operation code which usually are db, dw, dd, there are sets of features (DP) that are able to define malware (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). For Miscellaneous feature, we choose a few word that most malware have in common from the malware dissemble file (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). Among so many feature, the most appropriate feature for our research will be N-gram, and Opcode. This is because it is proven that there two feature have the highest accuracy with low logloss. This two feature appears frequently in malware file and it already have sets of well-known features for malware. But the drawback using N-gram and Opcode are they require a lot of resource to process and take a lot of time (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). We will also try other feature to compare with N-gram and Opcode to verified the result. 2.4 Classification In this section, we will not review about the algorithm or mathematical formula of a classifier but rather their nature to able to have advantage over certain condition in classifying malware feature. The type of classifier that we will review will be Nearest Neighbor, NaÃÆ' ¯ve Bayes, Decision tree, Support Vector Machine and XGBOOST [21] (Kotsiantis, S.B., 2007) (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). As we need a classifier to train our data with the malware feature, we will need to review the classifier to choose the most appropriate classifier that are able to have the best result. The Nearest Neighbor classifier are one of the simplest method for classifying and it is normally implement in case-based reasoning [21]. As for NaÃÆ' ¯ve Bayes, it usually generates simply and constraint model and not suitable for irregular data input, which make it not suitable for malware classification because that the data in malware classification are not regular (Kotsiantis, S.B., 2007). For Decision Tree, it classify feature by sorting them into tree node base on their feature values and each branch represent the node value. Decision Tree will determine either try or false based on node value, which make it difficult to dealt with unknown feature that are not stored in tree node (Kotsiantis, S.B., 2007). For Support Vector Machine, it has a complexity model which enable it to deal with lar ge amount of feature and still be able to obtain good result from it, which make it suitable for malware classification as malware contains large number of feature (Kotsiantis, S.B., 2007). For XGBOOST, it is a scalable tree boosting system which win many machine learning competition by achieving state of art result. The advantage for XGBOOST, it is suitable for most of any scenario and it run faster than most of other classification technique (Chen, T., n.d.). To choose a Classification for our malware analysis, we will be choosing XGBOOST, as it is suitable for malware classification, it also recommended by winner from Microsoft Malware Classification Challenge (Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016). But we will also use Support Vector Machine, as it too is suitable for malware classification and we will use it to compare the result with XGBOOST to get a more accurate result. References   Ahmadi, M. et al., 2016. Novel Feature Extraction, Selection and Fusion for Effective Malware Family Classification. ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy, pp.183-194. Available at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2857705.2857713. Amin, M. Maitri, 2016. A Survey of Financial Losses Due to Malware. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Competitive Strategies ICTCS 16, pp.1-4. Available at: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2905055.2905362. Berlin, K., Slater, D. Saxe, J., 2015. Malicious Behavior Detection Using Windows Audit Logs. Proceedings of the 8th ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security, pp.35-44. Available at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2808769.2808773. Feng, Z. et al., 2015. HRSà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¯: A Hybrid Framework for Malware Detection. , (10), pp.19-26. Han, K., Lim, J.H. Im, E.G., 2013. Malware analysis method using visualization of binary files. Proceedings of the 2013 Research in Adaptive and Convergent Systems, pp.317-321. Kim, T.G., Kang, B. Im, E.G., 2013. Malware classification method via binary content comparison. Information (Japan), 16(8 A), pp.5773-5788. Kà ¼Ãƒ §Ãƒ ¼ksille, E.U., Yalà §Ãƒâ€žÃ‚ ±nkaya, M.A. Uà §ar, O., 2014. Physical Dangers in the Cyber Security and Precautions to be Taken. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Security of Information and Networks SIN 14, pp.310-317. Available at: http://dl.acm.org.proxy1.athensams.net/citation.cfm?id=2659651.2659731. Lanzi, A. et al., 2010. AccessMiner: Using System-Centric Models for Malware Protection. Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security CCS10, pp.399-412. Available at: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1866353%5Cnhttp://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1866307.1866353. Nicholas, C. Brandon, R., 2015. Document Engineering Issues in Document Analysis. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Symposium on Document Engineering, pp.229-230. Available at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2682571.2801033. Patanaik, C.K., Barbhuiya, F.A. Nandi, S., 2012. Obfuscated malware detection using API call dependency. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Security of Internet of Things SecurIT 12, pp.185-193. Available at: http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84879830981partnerID=tZOtx3y1. Pluskal, O., 2015. Behavioural Malware Detection Using Efficient SVM Implementation. RACS Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on research in adaptive and convergent systems, pp.296-301. Santos, I. et al., 2013. Opcode sequences as representation of executables for data-mining-based unknown malware detection. Information Sciences, 231, pp.64-82. Stewin, P. Bystrov, I., 2016. Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment, Available at: http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/dimva/dimva2012.html#StewinB12. Willems, G., Holz, T. Freiling, F., 2007. Toward automated dynamic malware analysis using CWSandbox. IEEE Security and Privacy, 5(2), pp.32-39. Tabish, S.M., Shafiq, M.Z. Farooq, M., 2009. Malware detection using statistical analysis of byte-level file content. Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD Workshop on CyberSecurity and Intelligence Informatics CSI-KDD 09, pp.23-31. Available at: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1599272.1599278. Lyda, R.,Hamrock, J,. 2007.Using Entropy Analysis to Find Encrypted and Packed Malware. Nataraj, L. et al., 2011. Malware Imagesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¯: Visualization and Automatic Classification. Bilar, D., Statistical Structuresà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¯: Fingerprinting Malware for Classification and Analysis Why Structural Fingerprintingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¯? Christodorescu, M., Song, D. Bryant, R.E., 2005. Semantics-Aware Malware Detection. Top maliciously used apis. https: //www.bnxnet.com/top-maliciously-used-apis/, 2017. Weiss, S.M. Kapouleas, I., 1989. An Empirical Comparison of Pattern Recognition , Neural Nets , and Machine Learning Classification Methods. , pp.781-787. Kotsiantis, S.B., 2007. Supervised Machine Learningà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¯: A Review of Classification Techniques. , 31, pp.249-268. Chen, T., XGBoostà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¯: A Scalable Tree Boosting System.

Juvenile Justice :: essays research papers fc

Juvenile Justice Though crime, in general, is on the decline there are specific crimes and group offenders that are actually increasing. Specific crimes such as hate crimes, those crimes motivated by hostility to the victim as a member of a group, based on color, creed, gender, or sexual orientation, and juvenile crimes have become escalating debates. Lionel Tate, a 12-year-old boy at the time of his actions, is a suitable case to investigate. Using his case, I will address the increase in juvenile delinquency, the contributions to the malice acts, the severity of the crimes being committed by youth, and possible, yet reasonable repercussions. Lionel Tate, now 14, was charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole on March 9, 2001. This harsh conviction was founded on the basis of the beating and death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. Tate defense lied in the hands of his television heroes, professional wrestlers, whom he claimed he was simply imitating. This argument was not enough to convince the jurors that his actions were an accident. If a defense team was not able to convince a select group of individual that violence on television is becoming more of an issue with youth violence, then how is a nation of parents going to be convinced that television, video games and other public violence is affecting their children. Is every parent going to have to experience what Lionel Tate or Tiffany Eunick's parents experienced to see the effects of a violent society in which children are being raised? Understand that there are more than one cause to juvenile violence. Media and television related violence is only one of the factors. Addressing and trying to correct one issue at a time is going to be the most productive. Take television for example. Lionel Tate was obviously influenced by actions he saw from people, adults, on television. Though not all blame can be put in the hands of the entertainment industry. Other factors including parent control and limitation, and previous behavioral patterns could have prevented Tiffany's death. In the book, Children in a Violent Society, Joy Osofsky makes a strong case about kids and the negative effects of witnessing violence. "Children learn what they see†¦and they do not learn that violence is bad. Too often, they learn that violence is an acceptable way to resolve conflict†¦"(Osofsky, 4). Take a hypothetical situation about Johnny.

The Link Between Down Syndrome and Alzheimers Disease Essay example --

The Link Between Down Syndrome and Alzheimer's Disease The individuals with Disabilities Education Act states that "all children with disabilities, including mental retardation, be educated to the maximum extent appropriate with students who are not disabled" (2). In an ideal world, society would have no problem following this decree, but the world is less than perfect and, therefore, stigmas are unfortunately attached to those suffering from mental disabilities, especially the mentally retarded. One has to question whether this group of people deserves these stigmas. Having grown up with two severely retarded cousins and, for that matter, a great uncle suffering from Alzheimer's Disease, I often wondered as to what was happening within their brains. It was evident that they were unable to respond to me in a normal fashion, but I challenged whether this was just a veneer. Being a spiritual person and believing the mind to be akin to 'the soul', I always felt it must be separate from the brain. A part of me hoped that their minds were sti ll cognizant even though their brain appeared to have a different physiology and they seemed to be unable to respond to me in a normal fashion. However, upon researching the link present between Down Syndrome and Alzheimer's Disease, I began to question whether my previous beliefs were indeed true. I think the questioning of this raises ethical issues about how we treat the mentally disabled and gives quite an argument for the brain = behavior debate. As more and more adults live longer, age-associated mental disease is becoming more and more of a concern. Present estimations state that soon nearly 10 million Americans will suffer from the disabling disease called Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's s... ... Risk of Down Syndome with Increasing Maternal and Paternal Age, Good Detailed Site http://www.lifesciences.napier.ac.uk/bws/courses/projects/downsynd/home.htm 9)Alzheimer's Disease and People with Mental Retardation, Good Detailed Site http://www.thearc.org/faqs/almr.html 10)Developmental Disabilities and Alzheimer's Disease, Good Detailed Site by The Arc http://www.thearc.org/misc/alzbk.html 11)Epidemiology of Alzheimer Disease in Mental Retardation, Periodicals Index http://www.aamr.org/index.shtml 12)Fact Sheet: Alzheimer's Disease, Family Caregiver Alliance http://www.caregiver.org/factsheets/diagnoses/alzheimers.html 13)Harvard Researchers Link Alzheimer's to Problem With Chromosome Segregation Presenilin Proteins are Found in Cell Structures Involved in Mitosis, Recent Press Release http://www.hms.harvard.edu/news/releases/897alzheimer.html

Mary the mother of Jesus and the Catholic Church tradition

Mary otherwise called ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary’ or ‘The Virgin Mary’ or ‘Blessed Virgin’; terms commonly used within the Roman Catholic Church to describe Mary the mother of Jesus whose teaching and beliefs form the basis of Christianity. The Catholic Church holds the position held by Mary in high regard and this has occasioned many teachings as well as doctrines on this subject. (Newsweek, 6)  During the Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church on November 21 1964, Mary was also given other titles of Mediatrix, Adjutrix and Advocate (http://www.whidbey.net/~dcloud/fbns/marycoredeemer.htm)The term Virgin Mary is not used virtually as a belief in her virginity but as a sign of a role of life continuity for the Catholic Church and for the Christians’ life. In Catholicism Mary is viewed as alive, and living in heaven where she is able to hear prayers offered by human beings on earth then intercedes on their behalf to Jesus her son. (Newsweek, 6)  Mary as opposed to Eve (the first woman) is considered as absolutely obedient; in fact she was called the Second Eve by St. Irenaeus; this was because it was through Mary that the first damage was undone, the damage that had been caused by Eve eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, where human beings were condemned by God to a life of sin.In 431AD, Mary was given the title ‘Theotokos’ a Greek name that translates as the â€Å"God- bearer† or ‘Divine Mother of God’. This description is purported to be supported by the Holy Scriptures in Luke 1:43 when Elizabeth saluted Mary thus â€Å"But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?† (Luke 1:43)Officially in the Roman Catholicism there are 4 dogmas or beliefs about Blessed Virgin Mary. They include– Mother of God (Theotokos )– Perpetual virginity– Immaculate conception– Assumption in to heaveni) Mother of God (Theotokos)In Mariology or the Christian theology concerned with Mary the mother of Jesus, this is the main and principle dogma. The Ecumenical Council of Ephesus declared it in 431AD. It is also considered to be the oldest of all the dogmas.The dogma in Mariology is very important especially in the Theology of Christ because as it is argued, if Mary was not the mother of God then it did not hold true that Jesus was God. As pointed before, this dogma was based on book of Luke 1:43 through Elizabeth’s salutation.Mary as the mother of God is regularly addressed as Theotokos in most Hymns in Catholicism and other Eastern Orthodox churches. One of the common hymns that is used in most services is Axion Estin which means ‘It is truly meet’. Other hymns in this regard include the famous Hail Mary, Beneath thy Compassion among others. (Newsweek, 7)The Immaculate ConceptionIn this Catholic Dogma Mary is considered as a very unique person among the humanity. She was uniqu e because she was born without sin and was free from the original sin. It was also held that she was sinless in her entire life.This dogma was promulgated by Pope Pius 1X on 8th December 1854.According to the Catholic Church teachings Mary was granted grace since conception yet she needed a savior through Jesus Christ. Also by way of God, the Catholic Church teachings hold that she shared in the gifts of the crucifixion of Jesus. Scriptural support for this is to be found in Luke 1:28 which is used to support the immaculate conception of Mary. Other scriptures in support of the immaculate conception is the instance in the scripture when she was greeted by Angel Gabriel as â€Å"full of grace† or â€Å"highly favored†Also according to this dogma, Mary was highly regarded as being the ‘Ark of the Covenant in the New Testament’ and just like Moses who used â€Å"incorruptible† wood for the tablets, it was seen befitting for her to be made â€Å"immacu late† and â€Å"incorruptible† as well.The Dogma of Immaculate Conception was significantly given more prominence from the vision of Our Lady of Lourdes in 1858. A 14-year-old girl by the name Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes made claims to the effect that a beautiful lady had made an appearance to her; the beautiful lady’s name as she put it, was â€Å"The Immaculate Conception†, the Catholic faithful believed this was indeed the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Newsweek, 8)To show how solemn the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is in the Roman Catholic Church, there is a Holy Day of Obligation in 1st of January every year for this purpose and it is almost celebrated as a holy day in some countries. (Newsweek, 8)Mary is usually highly considered in Catholicism unlike the rest of the humanity, she is considered to be free of the original sin. The Catholics argue that Jesus could not have been born in a vessel that was sinful. Thus to be able to car ry Jesus in her womb she had to be free of the original sin. (Newsweek, 8)  The perpetual virginity In this dogma, the Roman Catholic Church further affirms Mary’s â€Å"real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man†. (Catechism of the catholic church 499) what this meant was that Mary remained a virgin in her entire life and Jesus was her only biological son who was not only miraculously conceived, but born as well. http://www.cin.org/v2church.html:It is further believed that in fact, Christ’s birth sanctified Mary’s virginity. Scriptural support for this belief is stated thus â€Å"The LORD said to me, â€Å"This gate is to remain shut. It must not be opened; no one may enter through it. It is to remain shut because the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered through it.† (Ezekiel 44:2) this, according to this dogma there was no form of sexual intercourse between Mary and Joseph which would have â€Å"de filed† her. The Catholics therefore hold that Mary remained pure and undefiled in her entire life. (Newsweek, 6)Some important statements to support this belief would include the Lateran Synod of 649, where in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas ‘Summa Theologiae III.28.2’, Mary is said to have given birth miraculously without pain, without opening her womb and without injuring or rupturing the hymen. http://www.cin.org/v2church.htmlThe Assumption of MaryThis dogma is the last among the four and is the most recent having been dogmatically defined as infallible on 1 November 1950 by Pope Pius XII in his Apostolic Constitution.The Theology of the Roman Catholic Church holds that The Blessed Virgin Mary â€Å"having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory† (Pope Pius XII, 1950). What this meant is that Mary unlike other humanity was taken to heaven, united body and soul, thus she never died the natural death experien ced by all living beings.The Roman Catholics celebrate the accession to heaven of Mary in the feast day as The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In John 14:3 Jesus in his Last Supper said thus † And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.† Mary is assumed to be the person to fulfill this promise. This is the scripture that is used to support the assumption of Mary into heaven.REFERENCESCatechism of the catholic church 499Pope Pius XII: â€Å"Munificentissimus Deus – Defining the Dogma of the Assumption†, par.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   44. Vatican, November 1, 1950John 14:3, Ezekiel 44:2, Luke 1:28, Luke 1:43. Scriptures lifted from NIV BibleNewsweek cover story, 1997-AUG-25.†The meaning of Mary: A struggle over her role grows within the church,†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Rome says Mary is Co-redeemer, mediator, advocate,† Way of Life, athttp://www .cin.org/v2church.html: Vatican II, â€Å"Lumen Gentium: Dogmatic Constitution of the Church,† Chapter 8, â€Å"The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of god in the mystery of Christ and the Church,† III, 62. See