Breast Cancer Cancer And Cancer - 1115 Words

One out of eight women around the world develops the most common disease called Breast Cancer. In the United States, about 200,000 women suffer from this disease and it causes more than 40,000 death each year. Breast cancer is a cancer cell (malignant tumor) that forms in the breast. The cancerous cells grow in the breast and then invade the healthy cells and the surrounding tissues of the breast and it can also spread into other parts of the body. Breast cancer is more common in women but men can also get it too. One of the reasons that males are less likely to develop breast cancer because males have less estrogen and progesterone hormones which is a higher risk of breast cancer cell to grow. There are many risks factors that can cause†¦show more content†¦According to Stephanie R. Land (2014), Cigarette smoking, physical activity, and alcohol consumption have been implicated in previous studies as risk or protective factors for cancer at a number of organ sites. Cigarette smoking, long known to increase the risk of lung cancer, is also associated with increased risk of many other cancers, including those of the colon and breast (1-10). There is an inverse effect of cigarette smoking for endometrial cancer, especially among postmenopausal overweight or obese women (due possibly to an antiestrogenic effect of smoking; refs. (11-16). Physical activity seems to be a protective factor for many cancers (17-21). Alcohol consumption has been associated with increased risks of breast, lung, and colon cancer, among others (22-24). The evidence is stronger for some of these associations than others, and the generalizability across populations varies as well. Every women is different so they develop different types of breast cancer. Breast cancer occurs under two categories: invasive and noninvasive. Invasive breast cancer is cancerous cells that can break through breast tissues and spread into different parts of the body through bloodstreams and lymph nodes. Noninvasive breast cancer is cancerous cells that stay in only one area of the breast and it cannot extend in other surrounding tissue. Other types of breast cancer are; Paget s disease of the nipple, phyllodes tumor, mucinous carcinoma, sarcoma of the

Holy War Inc Book Review Free Essays

string(70) " foreign troops and what they see as ungodly secular rulers† \(7\)\." In Peter Bergen’s Holy War, Inc, the reader is ushered through a head-spinning trip around the globe that serves to highlight the far-reaching effects of Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization that Bergen likens to a Multi-national holding company. While Bergen makes reference to similarities between the management of a Multi-national Corporation and that of al-Qaeda, it is seemingly not the primary focus of the book nor does it serve as a particularly suitable metaphor, especially in light of the events that have transpired since the book was released. Despite the title of the book, Bergen does a fine job setting a backdrop to the organization and illustrating how it operates in an increasingly technologically intertwined world system, as well as outlining factors contributed by the West. We will write a custom essay sample on Holy War Inc Book Review or any similar topic only for you Order Now It seems there are few people on the planet who are as qualified as Peter Bergen to tackle as complex a task as explaining al-Qaeda to the masses. It is a feat he has clearly accomplished though, evidenced by the fact that the book became a New York Times best seller, was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2001 by The Washington Post, and has been translated into eighteen different languages. Bergen has traveled extensively through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to report on bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. In 1997 Bergen brought the Western world bin Laden’s first television interview as a producer for CNN. It was in this interview that Western audiences first heard bin Laden’s declaration of war against the United States (1). Due to his extensive travel and research, Bergen displays an understanding and empathy, if not flat out admiration and sympathy for the Muslim struggle. He spends virtually no effort in further vilifying the terrorists, but concentrates rather on explaining the history and motivation behind the attacks with vocabulary that is, at times, nearly poetic. This ranges from the description of the â€Å"hopelessly brave warriors who†¦suffered so much for their faith† during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, to the moving experience of watching Muslim men at prayer. He reflects on how â€Å"the act of collective worship woven into the fabric of daily life is something we have almost entirely lost in the West (2). My personal favorite however, is his description of Pakistan during Ramadan where the â€Å"mornings were chilly, but by midday the sun had warmed the velvet breezes that blew the turning leaves off the trees† (3). Apart from the eloquence employed in his writing, it is still most surprising the great lengths Bergen went through to assemble a case of innocence for Khaled al-Fawwaz, the man who had first arranged CNN’s meeting with bin Laden and who was incidentally arrested by British authorities while Bergen was in London. Khaled is still being held in Britain fighting extradition to the U. S. for his involvement in the bombings of the two U. S. embassies in East Africa despite Bergen’s construct of innocence (4). Bergen does not excuse the terrorist acts performed by al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but certainly works to explain to the Western world the factors and policies that have contributed to their justification for violence. He is critical of the U. S. Government from the outset of the book where he examines U. S. ulpability for placing extremists in power and for providing an arsenal of weapons still employed by Afghan extremists today. During the brutal Afghan war, the U. S. provided political and financial support as well as stinger missiles (via the Pakistani government) to the Hizb party headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamic extremist who â€Å"consistently placed the long-term goal of Islamic revolution over resistance to the Soviets†(5). Bergen identifies Ahmed Shah Massoud, a moderate Islamic general as having been a better choice of leaders, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20. More importantly, Bergen seeks to establish the ignorance on which the United States’ policies have been formed. An Army Supervisor told Bergen that in his eight years in the Middle East that he had heard daily of how U. S. policy was â€Å"dead wrong†. Though these are not Bergen’s own words, it seems this is the overriding message he seeks to convey. He makes it abundantly clear that the Muslim world has not made war on our culture, but rather on our politics, particularly pertaining to the occupation of Saudi Arabia. He explains the fundamental difference between U. S. and Islamic thought: the concept of the ability to separate the sacred and secular. In a land where the â€Å"separation of church and state† is held as a value, it is difficult to conceive a system where politics and religion are one in the same. As difficult as it is for us to imagine policy being dictated by religion, it is equally as difficult for them to perceive an occupation as anything less than an attack directly on Islam itself. In fact, our policies are rarely grounded on moral principal, much less religion, unless there are first grounded in national interest. In the eyes of al-Qaeda, U. S. occupation of Saudi Arabia, a most holy place in the Islamic faith, is akin to â€Å"sending Jihad to the Vatican† (6). Every military move the West has made in light of the Saudi occupation only furthers the belief that the U. S. seeks to dominate the Muslim world. This includes military activity in Somalia and other predominantly Muslim countries in Africa, to the support of Israel, to the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. A little more than a year after this book was released, the U. S. and Saudi Arabia agreed that it was in both nations’ best interest for U. S. forces to leave the area. It does not seem, however, that this is having the effect on bin Laden that Bergen and U. S. policy makers had hoped for. According to the BBC’s Arab affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi, bin Laden will not be satisfied until all Muslim societies are â€Å"liberated from foreign troops and what they see as ungodly secular rulers† (7). You read "Holy War Inc Book Review" in category "Papers" Bergen further discourages American occupation by making note of Afghan history, marked by numerous foreign invasions that have consistently, and brutally been averted by Afghan warriors to the demise of their attackers. Bergen states that the â€Å"British came to realize that to occupy Afghanistan was to invite disaster (8)†, a sentiment echoed last year by Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal in his assessment of the Obama Administration’s goal to extract U. S. troops from Afghanistan. He states, â€Å"Nobody, throughout history, has ever succeeded in [conquering Afghanistan]. Go back to Alexandrian times and more recently to Soviet times. Afghanistan has always been the deathbed of invading armies. â€Å"(9). Support is given to these ideas rather than to the title, which I imagine was cooked up by Bergen’s publisher as a means to sell books to its target market, the capitalist West. There is no doubt that bin Laden and his family have been extraordinarily successful in their business ventures, funneling a great amount of the resulting wealth into terrorist organizations. To say, however, that al-Qaeda acts as a â€Å"multi-national holding company† is a stretch, at best. Bergen himself defines the structure of a holding company as â€Å"controlling partial or complete interests in other companies†(10). Even this limited definition does not seem to apply to al-Qaeda’s methods, but when the definition is extended out further, it seems to become even less applicable. A holding company provides a means of concentrating control of several companies with a minimum of investment and risk to the holding company. This would suggest that the product, which in this case would be varying brands of Jihad, are simply managed and controlled by al-Qaeda, when in fact they are the organization doing the exporting of a particular brand of Jihad. Bergen contradicts his own thesis in his discussion about the nature of the organization in regards to intelligence gathering. He states, â€Å"The bin Laden network is by contrast a loosely affiliated transnational group with a more diffuse organizational structure that makes it hard to penetrate†(11). Bin Laden knows business and has surely employed many of his organizational management skills to al-Quaeda, but that does not a business make. It is true that al-Quaeda is â€Å"as globally minded as any other national company† (12) and has attracted a â€Å"polyglot† of followers (a word Bergen employs multiple times) but what this really speaks to his observation that â€Å"bin Laden’s organization†¦is as much a creation of globalization as a response to it† (13). Bergen acknowledges that umma the world community of Muslims, is a value long held by the Islamic faith. Globalization has simply shored up that value. If al-Quaeda were the top-down corporation that Bergen suggests, it would be a machine whose components could be easily disabled. In 2009, Bergen gave testimony before the U. S. house of representatives that â€Å"Al Qaeda has sustained and can continue to sustain enormous blows that would put other organizations out of business because the members of the group firmly believe that they are doing God’s work and tactical setbacks do not matter in the short run. 14)† Perhaps the organization is approaching the point that Bergen predicted in the closing of the book, where our victory in the war on terror is defined by a reversion of terrorist threats similar to the â€Å"status-quo of pre-9/11, where terrorism was an irritant for American Policy Makers, but not the major national security concern†(15). Or perhaps as he suggests it is â€Å"devolving into local franchises† (16), though it seems this metaphor would have been more fitting from the beginning. In fact, in Bergen’s Senate testimony he says of the organization: Indeed, it is my assessment that the al Qaeda organization today no longer poses a direct national security threat to the United States itself, but rather poses a second-order threat in which the worst case scenario would be an al Qaeda- trained or -inspired terrorist managing to pull off an attack on the scale of something in between the 1993 Trade Center attack, which killed six, and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, which killed 168. While this, of course, would be tragic, it would not constitute a mass casualty attack sufficiently large in scale to reorient American national security policy completely as the 9/11 attacks did (17). This suggests al-Quaeda as something less of a franchise but rather more of an inspiring business model. While there are still terrorists who have been directly trained by al-Qaeda, or employees if you will, the preeminent threat stems from those who are inspired by the group’s successes. To carry the corporate metaphor out further, these are the people who decide to open their own shoe store after learning about the successes of Nordstrom. I would most certainly suggest this book to others, particularly Americans who tend to be apathetic toward foreign policy. A move toward understanding the collective psychology of the group is infinitely more productive that blind defiance. It is a superbly written book especially in light of the intertwined cast of characters who were often difficult to keep track of, given their travel in and out of regions and with lengthy names consisting of strings of consonants unfamiliar to the English-speaking world. It would be difficult to put these globe-trotting, name-dropping narratives could together in any less complicated manner though, unless one were to rename individuals such as â€Å"Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman† as â€Å"Abe† for instance, but I suppose that would wholly undermine the book’s authenticity. When certain individuals reemerge in the plot, Bergen is often kind enough to remind the reader that of where they had first appeared, such as the case of Ramzi Yousef who was mentioned briefly in two chapters. Bergen reminds that reader that he was the fellow who had an early mishap with some explosives he was experimenting with, resulting in smoke pouring from his Manila apartment (18). Given all the Arab names in the book, the Oh-I-remember-that-guy-now tactic proves rather helpful. Bergen leaves the reader with quite a lot to chew on and digest in regards to foreign policy and trade by expressing a liberally optimistic worldview. Any hope seems to lie in closing the gap of ignorance in the West toward Islam as well as the Islamic world’s blissful denial of the damage done to the West by Islamic radicalism. For instance, the results of the poll of Muslim countries cited by Bergen found that the U. S. attacks on Afghanistan were perceived as unjustified. It was a bit more revealing that the same poll showed that the terror attacks on the U. S. were perceived as equally unjustified and that 61 percent did not even believe that Arab terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks (19). Bergen seems confident though that the Democratic Islamic Movement holds potential stating that, â€Å"any number of political models are possible in an Islamic environment† (20) and that as long as governments are stabilized, extremism will hold less appeal. I don’t know that Bergen would have written this book has he thought the West could not have a positive role in creating that stabilization. He admonishes the U. S. government and Middle Eastern countries for working in cooperation against al-Quaeda and for establishing trade policies that benefit unstable regions. This type of cooperation is paramount in his view. Bergen closes along the real thesis of the book, which has nothing to do with terrorism as a multinational corporation, and everything to do with explaining Muslim sensibilities and how deeply the U. S. continues to offend them. His exhortation is for the U. S. to behave in a manner that looks toward peace rather than ignorantly and haughtily labeling the entire region as an â€Å"axis of evil†. Readers of this book will hopefully walk away with an understanding of the motivation behind al-Quaeda as well as our own national propensity toward the pride that has motivated unthinkable offenses toward the Muslim people. Bibliography (1) â€Å"Biography. † PeterBergen. com. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. . (2) Bergen, Peter. Holy War, Inc. . New York, NY: Simon Schuster, 2002. p. 153. (3) Holy War, Inc. p. 150. (4) â€Å"US Most Wanted Terrorist Suspect in New Extradition Fight in Britain – Telegraph. † Telegraph. co. uk: News, Business, Sport, the Daily Telegraph Newspaper, Sunday Telegraph – Telegraph. Web. 17 Mar. 2010. . (5) Holy War, Inc. p. 72. (6) Holy War, Inc. p. 101. (7) â€Å"BBC NEWS | Middle East | US Pulls out of Saudi Arabia. † BBC NEWS | News Front Page. Web. 17 Mar. 2010. . (8) Holy War, Inc. p. 53. Bibliography (Cont. ) (9) â€Å"Cornell Chronicle: Saudi Prince on U. S. -Saudi Relations. † Cornell Chronicle Online. Web. 17 Mar. 2010. http://www. news. cornell. edu/stories/April09/PrinceTurkiCover. gl. html (10) Holy War, Inc. p. 32. (11) Holy War, Inc. p. 120. (12) Holy War, Inc. p. 83. (13) Holy War, Inc. p. 200. (14) â€Å"Articles – Congressional Testimony: Reassessing the Evolving Al Qaeda Threat to the Homeland. † PeterBergen. com. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. . (15) Holy War, Inc. p. 245. 16) Holy War, Inc. p. 238. Bibliography (Cont. ) (17) â€Å"Articles – Congressional Testimony: Reassessing the Evolving Al Qaeda Threat to the Homeland. † PeterBergen. com. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. . (18) Holy War, Inc. p. 222. (19) Holy War, Inc. p. 227. (20) Holy War, Inc. p. 238. http://www. peterbergen. com/articles/details. aspx? id=411 Cornell University, Chronicle Online. April 24, 2009. Saudi Prince Hopes Obama Wi ll End Region’s conflicts. George Lowery http://www. news. cornell. edu/stories/April09/PrinceTurkiCover. gl. html 2 How to cite Holy War Inc Book Review, Essays

International Economic Development Growth and Productivity

Question: Discuss about theInternational Economic Development forGrowth and Productivity. Answer: Introduction: This assignment is basically a literature review of the article The Impact of Research and Development on Economic growth and Productivity in the U.S. States. The research and development (R and D) has a significant impact on both the output and the total factor productivity (TFP) in the long run. According to this article, the average R and D elasticity for the private sector in U.S. states from the year 1963 to 2007 is 0.056-0.143. The question addressed here is why the states with higher human capital have more R and D elasticity than other countries and what the R and D spillover effects are across the states (Blanco 2016). Theoretical Background: Research and development (R and D) means the process that the corporate companies use to develop their existing goods and procedures or the expansion of new commodities and procedures. The R and D activities may vary between the companies but the main model of these activities remains same. Moreover, the R and D activity has a positive spillover effects on the innovation and the total factor productivity (TFP). In this article, the empirical methods have been used to determine the long term effects of R and D across the states of U.S. Along with the R and D performance, the TFP of the U.S. was also considered. This article provides an analytical description of the effect of R and D and TFP on economic growth. To determine the effects, different types of econometric models have been used in the analysis part. The main research question is to identify the effects of R and D on the economic growth and productivity (Francombe and Hoffman 2013). Methodologies Used in this Paper: The paper is basically a literature review based on a peer reviewed academic article. The article has used secondary data on output, R and D, physical and human capital, labor. To estimate a production function, a regression model has been taken. Moreover, an autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) has been used to estimate the short run dynamics of the variables. Moreover, the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator is used to determine the parameters of the long run relationship between the SGDP and TFP. The PMG estimator is good for two reasons. It provides an appropriate common ground between conventional fixed effects estimates for using the panel data and the Mean Group (MG) estimator. These are the methods used in this article. Relevancy/ Contribution: This part of the article summarizes the whole thing. The first part of the article introduces the topic of the article and it provides a summary of it. The main focus of the article is on the impact of R and D development on economic growth. The next part of the article provides the theoretical background of this issue. There are some variations in the R and D elasticity across the states. The human capital also plays a vital role in this context. The state with higher human capital will have higher R and D elasticity. When the TFP is lower, then there would be no effect on R and D activities (Mori, Kanda and Notomi 2013). Key Findings: This part of the assignment describes the main findings of this article. The relationship between the investment in R and D capital and productivity leads to the following results. The first conclusion derived from the article is that all estimated specifications reflect that the R and D of a state has an important impact on the State Gross Domestic Product (SGDP) through the TFP in future. Secondly, it was found that the R and D does not have major short run effects on the productivity. It does not matter that whether the R and D is introduced within the states or in other states. It focuses on the long run linkage between the R and D investment and growth of the economy. Another conclusion is that the strong indication of positive R and D spillovers among U.S. states reveals the fact that every dollar spent on R and D has a marginal effect of around 11% on average (Kurihara and Hanakawa 2013). Critical Review: This part of the assignment provides the critical review of the article. In recent years, there has been significant progress towards R and D activities. The measures of R and D are kept as an asset by the firms. The R and D should be allotted in such a way that the overall rate of return is very high (Wang et al. 2013). Moreover, the technological change is a significant determinant of the long-term productivity and it also improves the standard of living over time. One of the main criticisms of the endogenous growth theory is that it failed to explain the conditional convergence (Harper, Jones and Marcus 2013). Paul krugman also criticized the endogenous growth theory. One paper argued some significant issues about the rate of return to R and D. The technological opportunities and R and D, both are interrelated. The firms which have high R and D are likely to have strong technological opportunities. Similarly, firms with low R and D have weaker technological prospects. The firms of pure competitive market generally do not spend money for R and D since they dont receive normal profits. There are some industries like software, computer and robotics which spend a significant amount of money for R and D purpose. Due to the changing technologies worldwide, they have to do the R and D activities (Noyes et al. 2013). There are some challenges associated with this R D technology. Firstly, it requires a high cost. Moreover, it takes a long period to manufacture a new product. Also the outcomes are uncertain. Sometimes it cannot be predicted that whether the customers requirements will change during the lengthy R D method. The R and D model developed by Paul Romer provides the theory of endogenous growth. According to this theory, this endogenous growth model is also Pareto inefficient (Gil 2014). Reference List: Blanco, L.R., Gu, J. and Prieger, J.E., 2016. The Impact of Research and Development on Economic Growth and Productivity in the US States.Southern Economic Journal,82(3), pp.914-934. Francombe, M.H. and Hoffman, R.W. eds., 2013.Physics of Thin Films: Advances in Research and Development. Elsevier. Gil, H., 2014. Competitive Regional Development as a Synthesis of Endogenous Growth and Economic Geography. 27(2), pp.339-362. Harper, C., Jones, N. and Marcus, R., 2013.Research for development: A practical guide. Sage. Kurihara, M. and Hanakawa, M., 2013. Mega-ton Water System: Japanese national research and development project on seawater desalination and wastewater reclamation.Desalination,308, pp.131-137. Mori, Y., Kanda, H. and Notomi, T., 2013. Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP): recent progress in research and development.Journal of Infection and Chemotherapy,19(3), pp.404-411. Noyes, J., Gough, D., Lewin, S., Mayhew, A., Michie, S., Pantoja, T., Petticrew, M., Pottie, K., Rehfuess, E., Shemilt, I. and Shepperd, S., 2013. A research and development agenda for systematic reviews that ask complex questions about complex interventions.Journal of clinical epidemiology,66(11), pp.1262-1270. Wang, W., Luo, Q., Li, B., Wei, X., Li, L. and Yang, Z., 2013. Recent progress in redox flow battery research and development.Advanced Functional Materials,23(8), pp.970-986.