Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Effective Speech Presentation in Business Communication

Question: Discuss about theEffective Speech Presentation in Business Communication. Answer: Introduction: An oral presentation is a communication mode that in most cases have helped the listeners to get what they were not able to get had they read the text on their own. This is due to the fact that they get it one on one from an individual and through the use of various means of delivery; motive and meaning as statements come out if listeners receive it from one with good mastery and is specialized in an area. However, the speaker has the ability to influence the response of the listeners either negatively or positively depending on the tactics that he or she uses (Marathe 2007, pp. 43-45). This piece of work thus seeks to examine various reasons why an audience in an oral presentation may get bored in the course of the delivery of the talk. First, there might have been the use of computer jargons that were not being understood by the audience in the hall. In the event that David used too much of tough vocabulary that cannot be easily comprehended by the audience, they might turn to sleep instead of listening. They get bored by the whole thing since they understand very little out of it and this alone switches them off from the presentation (Davis et al. 2012, pp. 67-71). Boredom is also caused by the speech being too long. This setback can be overcome through David simplifying the speech after realizing that the audience is bored. At the same time, he can shorten the speech by highlighting only the key points to the audience so that the flesh remains for them to put in place. Secondly, there is the likelihood of David talking to himself and not involving the audience in the whole process of the speech delivery. This will make his audience switch off since David does the talking and involves only himself (Lumsden et al. 2010, pp. 57-59). They feel not part of the whole thing and are thus tempted to draw away their attention from David the speaker. This should be overcome by David upon realizing that the audience is already bored by the whole process involving them much. The involvement can be in the form of asking them rhetorical questions in the process, pausing a little in the process to let the point to sink into the audience just to mention but a few (Marathe 2007, pp. 78-82). Alternatively, tonal variations used by David in the process of delivery of the computer speech can work to attract the attention of the students hence maintaining them to him. Lastly, the simplicity of the speech is what will drive the audience to be active and show interest so that they benefit from the talk (Davis et al. 2012, pp. 63-66). This removes the assumption that all those who are at the talk understand the topic under discussion. The use of complicated vocabularies and words that are specific to the computer without proper elaboration puts the students off the mark. At the same time, the reaction for the David should be swift so that the attention can be drawn back to him immediately hence will help him avoid further time wastage in the delivery. In summary, in order for David to deliver a speech to the intended students, he should ensure that proper tips to the effective oral presentation that has been presented above are adhered to. It is only this that will make the students rank him high and at the same time add value to his work so that next time the school could also consider him for the same task. Bibliography Davis,M., Davis,K.J., Dunagan,M.M. 2012. Scientific papers and presentations. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Academic Press. Lumsden,G., Lumsden,D.L., Wiethoff,C. 2010. Communicating in groups and teams: Sharing leadership. Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Marathe,M. 2007. The successful speaker: 273 tips for powerful presentations. Rotherham, U.K: Ashwood House.

Sunday, April 5, 2020

art history terms Essay

art history terms Essay art history terms Essay Dark Age to Archaic Greece Iron Age: the period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. Geometric Style; a phase of Greek art, characterised largely by geometric motifs in vase painting, that flourished towards the end of the Greek Dark Ages, circa 900 BC to 700 BC. Its centre was in Athens, and it was diffused amongst the trading cities of the Aegean Orientalizing Style; The period is characterized by a shift from the prevailing Geometric style to a style with different sensibilities, which were inspired by the East. Archaic Style:The termini of the Archaic period are defined as the "structural revolution", meaning a sudden upsurge of population and material goods that occurred c. 750 BC, and the "intellectual revolution" of classical Greece.[1] The end of archaism is conventionally marked by Xerxes' invasion of Greece in 480 BC. Zeus; rules the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father rules the family according to theancient Greek religion. He is the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. Athena; goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. Herakles; Steal the apples of the Hesperides (He had the help of Atlas to pick them after Hercules had slain Ladon). Hermes; Hermes is a god of transitions and boundaries. He is quick and cunning, and moved freely between the worlds of the mortal and divine, as emissary and messenger of the gods,[1] intercessor between mortals and the divine, and conductor of souls into the afterlife. Dionysus; the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness andecstasy in Greek mythology. Apollo; The ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more. Medusa; a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as having the face of a hideous human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Gazing directly upon her would turn onlookers to stone. Perseus; founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty of Danaans, was the first of the heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits in defeating various archaic monsters provided the founding myths of the Twelve Olympians. Perseus beheaded the Gorgon Medusa, and saved Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. Nike;a goddess who personified victory, also known as the Winged Goddess of Victory. kouros; meaning (male) youth, was first proposed for what were previously thought to be depictions of Apollo by V. I. Leonardos in 1895 in relation to the youth from Keratea,[2] and adopted by Lechat as a generic term for the standing male figure in 1904.[3] kore; equivalent to a male kouros. They both show the restrained "archaic smile", but - unlike the nude kouroi - korai are depicted in thick drapery, ornate and (in painted examples) very colorful and often have elaborate braided hairstyles. Parthenon in 1886 and called "the Korai of Acropolis". peplos; a body-length garment established as typical attire for women in ancient Greece by 500 BC (the Classical period). polis (mean: city-state); a political entity ruled by its body of citizens. archaic smile: their subject was alive, and infused with a sense of well-being. â€Å"Catastrophy† in the Aegean: Theories Evidence Effects Us vs. Them: Manufacturing Communities on Mainland Greece Darwinian/Evolutionary Theory; Johannes Winkelmann Archaic to Classical Greece Persian War; Cyrus; the founder of the Achaemenid Empire.[9] Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East,[9] expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much of Central Asia Xerxes; the fourth king of the kings of Achaemenid Empire. Ionian Revolt; The cities of Ionia had been conquered by Persia, the ionians then revolted Marathon; Greeks win Thermopylae; Xerces

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Sin essays

Sin essays A sin can be defined as the act of breaking a Religious law or purpose. Morals and how someone is raised can factor into their views on a sin. Everyone has a conscience, which is the ability to recognize right and wrong. A sin severity varies by intent, and results of the commented act. Some sins are taken more seriously than others are. For example if you choose to lie to your parents you may get grounded, but if you were to murder someone you would be condemned to prison. Usually after a person commits an iniquity it causes them to feel guilt and remorse because they know their action was wrong. In The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth is the worst sinner. Chillingworth is the greatest sinner because his sin is intentional, selfish, and continual. Chillingworth consciously commits two sins. His first sin is against nature by marrying Hester, knowing she does not love him. His selfish desire to have a lovely, young wife. He is aware of this by telling Hester Mine was the first wrong. When I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. (Hawthorne, 153) But his worst offense is when he let the sin take over. Chillingworth sacrifices Dimmesdale to satisfy his own selfish need for vengeance. He focuses constantly to destroy Dimmesdales sanity. Being Dimmesdales doctor he knows he is causing Dimmesdale to be ill and he intentionally does not stop. Not only is Chillingworth aware of his sin, but he sins selfishly. When Chillingworth arrives in Boston and sees his wife on the scaffold he plans to break vengeance on the man who seduces his wife and fathers her child. Unlike Dimmesdales and Hester crime of passion, his is cold and plotted to only benefit himself. His constant poking at Dimmesdale wound with diabolical determination to increase his suffering and pain brings self-enjoyment. He enjoys tormenting him so much that he arranges to keep him in his selfish clutch...

Friday, February 21, 2020

What Happened to the Mayan Civilization The Mistery of A Great Essay

What Happened to the Mayan Civilization The Mistery of A Great Civilization - Essay Example The most famous theories of the collapse of the Mayan civilization are as under however there is no consensus of opinion among the researchers: 1. The Disaster Theory: The researchers of Maya civilization believed that there was surely a catastrophic event which doomed the Mayans. The event may be an earthquake, an epidemic disease, flood or the volcanic eruption. Such a disastrous event can be the only explanation behind the immediate downfall of civilizations. It is reasonable that a large number of people can be killed or displaced only if a sudden hazard takes place. It can at once kill people and destroy cities. The theory is widely celebrated for the reason of the fall of the Mayan civilization (Thompson, p96). The theory matches with religious explanations of the causes of the falls of the nations. This theory as regards the Mayan civilization was however rejected because the history shows that Mayan civilization took about 200 years for its downfall; it was not sudden. Some o f the cities declined while many flourished for quite a reasonable part of the time. Had there been an earthquake, flood, disease or volcanic eruption, each and everything would have simultaneously been removed of the surface of the earth. As this was not the situation, the theory was rejected by a large faction of researchers. 2. The Warfare Theory: The Mayans were a peaceful civilization. But their later history reveals that they were a warring people always busy in wars among in between and against others. Their historical record tells of the fact that they always discovered newer methods of warfare. The stone-carvings deciphered recently openly tell that Mayans fought frequently among themselves. Cities went to battles quite often worth mentioning of which are Tikal, Copan and Dos Pilas. In 760 A.D, Dos Piloas was destroyed after ruthless invasion. The theory is quite an interesting and reasonable explanation of the causes of the downfall of the Mayan civilization. History has a lways told that mutual war-fares and misunderstandings have caused the nations to drown in the seas of obscurity. The researchers have only one query here; whether they fought enough to bring their downfall? This is quite reasonable that war brings with it human sufferings, financial crisis and collateral damage. They warred with each other and the cities of the Mayan civilization caught the fire of distrust and discontent sufficient enough to disbelieve them their culture (Miller, p18). 3. The Famine Theory: In the periods of history between 1000 B.C. and 300 A.D, the basic occupation of the Mayans remained the Agriculture. They practiced in it and earned their livelihood. Agriculture was so largely practiced that even small family-plots were not left uncultivated. Corns, beans and squash were their main plantations. On seas and riversides as well as in lakes, they carried out fishing for their food needs. With their advancement in many fields, the cities grew and their population increased. Their progress attracted people from other civilizations as well. They came and penetrated them. A moment came when their population grew to the extent their resources could not bear any more. The local production was far less than their required limits. They were however an advanced civilization and learnt to upgrade their resources. They improved their agricultural procedures and equipments. They improved their trade. However the penetration of the outsiders and the increase in local population were the issues which

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

MPH522 - Public Health Law and Policy, Mod 3 Case Assignment Essay

MPH522 - Public Health Law and Policy, Mod 3 Case Assignment - Essay Example The Association of Dietary supplement manufacturers brought suit against the Food and Drug Administration stating that it did not have the right to require single dose packaging of iron supplements and nutritional supplements with iron in them. According to the Dietary Association this is not a case of possible adulteration and therefore does not fall into that jurisdiction for the FDA. The FDA, however, there were risks and one of those was poisoning as well as the possibility of adulteration and had required all of these drugs be packaged in single dose (Westlaw) The Association of Dietary supplement manufacturers felt that the FDA had overstepped its bounds in requiring this kind of packaging for dietary supplements and iron. It was much more expensive to do this and though the FDA had been given quite a lot of authority, this was not included. The courts eventually agreed with the Association of Dietary supplement manufacturers even though there had been many deaths related to the overdose of children with iron compounds from these supplements. This is an example of public health law that is outdated does not help but a policy might possibly have (Hall, 2003). Public health officials are tasked with protecting the public, taking whatever actions are necessary to protect health (Hall, 2003). It would seem then that the FDA was still in the right as they were protecting the health due to many deaths related to the use of these drugs by children and overdosage on iron which could be prevented with single dose packaging. The FDA felt it was their duty to protect under these circumstances and this writer believes that review of the literature would support that perspective. When we view public health law we should see the use of duty, power, and restraint (Gosten, 2001). One likes to believe that the restraint is common sense. Yet often, it appears, public health officials use the duty and power and forget to use common

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Proactive and Reactive Cyber Forensics Investigation Process

Proactive and Reactive Cyber Forensics Investigation Process PROACTIVE CYBER FORENSIC ANALYSIS Proactive And reactive cyber forensics investigation processes: A Systematic Literature Review(SLR) A multi-component framework of cyber forensics investigation Abstract—Digital Forensics can be defined as the ensemble of methods, tools and techniques used to collect, preserve and analyze digital data originating from any type of digital media involved in an incident with the purpose of extracting valid evidence for a court of law. In it investigations are usually performed as a response to a digital crime and, as such, they are termed Reactive Digital Forensic (RDF). This involves identifying, preserving, collecting, analyzing, and generating the final report. Although RDF investigations are effective, they are faced with many challenges, especially when dealing with anti-forensic incidents, volatile data and event reconstruction. To tackle these challenges, Proactive Digital Forensic (PDF) is required. By being proactive, DF is prepared for incidents. In fact, the PDF investigation has the ability to proactively collect data, preserve it, detect suspicious events, analyze evidence and report an incident as it occurs. Index Terms—Digital forensics, Digital Proactive Forensics, Digital reactive forensics, Digital device storage, digital crime, Anti forensics, multi component framework Introduction Computer crimes have increased tremendously and their degree of sophistication has also advanced, the volatility and dynamicity of the information that flows between devices require some proactive investigation. The reactive investigation is now becoming less practical since the increased sizes of the data that is being investigated and underlying technology of the devices that change tremendously make the tools made for digital reactive forensics useless In order to investigate anti-forensic attacks and to promote automation of the live investigation, a proactive and reactive functional process has been proposed.. The phases of the proposed proactive and reactive digital forensics investigation process have been mapped to existing investigation processes. The proactive component in the proposed process has been compared to the active component in the multi- component framework. All phases in the proactive component of the new process are meant to be automated. To this end, a theory for the proactive digital forensics is necessary to lay down a strong foundation for the implementation of a reliable proactive system. I. Anti-Forensics The term anti-forensics refers to methods that prevent forensic tools, investigations, and investigators from achieve- ing their goals. Two examples of anti-forensic methods are data overwriting and data hiding. From a digital investigation perspective, anti-forensics can do the following: Prevent evidence collection. Increase the investigation time. Provide misleading evidence that can jeopardize the whole investigation. Prevent detection of digital crime. To investigate crimes that rely on anti-forensic methods, more digital forensic investigation techniques and tools need to be developed, tested, and automated. Such techniques and tools are called proactive forensic processes. Proactive forensics has been suggested in. To date, however, the definition and the process of proactive forensics have not been explicated. II. Proactive digital forensics Proactive Digital Forensic Component has the ability to proactively collect data, preserve it, detect suspicious events, gather evidence, carry out the analysis and build a case against any questionable activities. In addition, an automated report is generated for later use in the reactive component. The evidence gathered in this component is the proactive evidence that relates to a specific event or incident as it occurs. As opposed to the reactive component, the collection phase in this component comes before preservation since no incident has been identified yet. Phases under the proactive component are defined as follows: Proactive Collection: automated live collection of predefined data in the order of volatility and priority, and related to a specific requirement of an organization or incident. Proactive Preservation: automated preservation, via hashing, of the evidence and the proactively collected data related to the suspicious event. Proactive Event Detection: detection of suspicious event via an intrusion detection system or a crime-prevention alert. Proactive Analysis: automated live analysis of the evidence, which might use forensics techniques such as data mining and outlier detection to sup- port and construct the initial hypothesis of the incident. Report: automated report generated from the proactive component analysis. This report is also important for the reactive component and can serve as the starting point of the reactive investigation.[1] III Reactive Digital Forensics It the traditional or post-mortem approach of investigating a digital crime after an incident has occurred. This involves identifying, preserving, collecting, analyzing, and generating the final report. Two types of evidence are gathered under this component: Active: Active evidence refers to collecting all live (dynamic) evidence that exists after an incident. An example of such evidence is processes running in memory. Reactive : refers to collecting all the static evidence remaining, such as an image of a hard drive. Previous Work Proactive Vs Reactive Forensics Investigation framework Complexity of Digital Forensics investigation Digital attacks are so complex that it is hard to investigate them forensically. The elements involved in a digital crime are located in a large multidimensional space and cannot be easily identified. With the increase of storage size and memory sizes, and the use of parallelism, virtualization and cloud, the parameters to take into account during an investigation can even become unmanageable. Five fundamental principles The five fundamental principles are stated below: Principle 1 Consider the entire system. This includes the user space as well as the entire kernel space, file system, network stack, and other related subsystems. Principle 2 Assumptions about expected failures, attacks, and attackers should not control what is logged. Trust no user and trust no policy, as we may not know what we want in advance. Principle 3 Consider the effects of events, not just the actions that caused them, and how those effects may be altered by context and environment. Principle 4 Context assists in interpreting and understanding the meaning of an event. Principle 5 Every action and every result must be processed and presented in a way that can be analyzed and understood by a human forensic analyst. These five are for reactive analysis , for proactive there must be some new principles. Soltan Abed Albari proposed the following two : Principle 6 Preserve the entire history of the system. Principle 7 Perform the analysis and report the results in real time. By preserving the entire history of the system, we can go back in time and reconstruct what has happened and answer reliably all the necessary questions about an event or incident. The reconstructed timeline is based on the actual states of the system before and after the event or incident. In addition and due to the large amount of data, events and actions involved, performing a proactive analysis and reporting require real time techniques that use high-performance computing. The analysis phase should be automated and have the necessary intelligence to investigate the suspicious events in real time and across multiple platforms. Figure 1 Relation between action ,target events[1] In addition to the actions and events that the seven principles listed above emphasize, we introduce the notion of targets. A target is any resource or object related to the system under investigation e.g., a file, memory, register, etc. We will use an element of DF investigation to refer to a target, an action or an event. At a time t and as shown in Figure 3.1, the system is in the process of executing an action that reacts to some targets and events, and produces new targets and events or modifies the existing ones. A model for Proactive digital forensics The model below has two major parts Forward system Feedback system Forward system is the one upon which investigation is performed. Both systems the forward and the feedback can be modelled as a tuple (T,E,A), where T is a set of targets, E is a set of events, and A is a set of possible actions each of which is viewed as a transfer function of targets and events. To clarify this, each target f ∈ T is associated with a set S(f) representing the possible states in which it can be. The Cartesian product of S(f) for all targets f defines the state space of the system’s targets and we denote it by T . We do the same for every event e but we consider S(e) to contain two and only two elements, namely ↑ (triggered event) and ↓ (not triggered event). The Cartesian product of all the system’s events (S(e) for every event e) is denoted by E (status space). An action a is therefore a function from Γ Ãâ€" T Ãâ€" E to T Ãâ€" E, where Γ represents the time dimension. The evolution function ψ is defined from Γ Æ" (T Ãâ€" E) Ãâ€" A to T Ãâ€" E by ψ(t,(~r,~e),a) = a(t,~r,~e)3. At a time t ∈ Γ, an event e is triggered if its status at time t is ↑, and not triggered ↓ otherwise. The notation ↑t e will be used to denote that the event e is triggered at time t Figure 2 proactive model[1] The forward system has three things that are linked. Target, event and action A. Target A target is any resource or object related to the system under investigation (e.g., a file, memory, register, etc.. We will use an element of DF investigation to refer to a target, an action or an event. At a time t system is in the process of executing an action that reacts to some targets and events, and produces new targets and events or modifies the existing ones. Therefore to describe the dynamics of the system at a single instant t, one needs to know at least the states of the targets, the events generated and the actions executed at t. For a full description of the dynamics, these elements of investigation need to be specified at every instant of time; and the complete analysis of the dynamics of the system requires a large multidimensional space Equations B. Events and Actions Keeping track of all events and targets is expensive. To reduce them, a few classifications using preorder and equivalence relations. To illustrate the idea behind these classifications, imagine a botnet writing into a file. This event will trigger other events including checking the permission on the file, updating the access time of the file, and writing the data to the actual disk. The idea behind our formalization is to be able to know which events are important (maximal) and which ones can be ignored. The same thing holds for the targets .This will optimize the cost and time . Short Theory on Events Let e1 and e2 be two events in E. We defined the relation ≠¤E on E as follows: e1 ≠¤E e2 if and only if ( ⇠Ã¢â€¡â€™ ) whenever the event e1 happens at a time t, the event e2 must also happen at a time t0 greater than or equal to t. Formally, this can be expressed as: e1 ≠¤E e2 ⇠Ã¢â€¡â€™ (∀t ↑t e1 ⇒ âˆÆ't0 ≠¥ t ↑t0 e2) Subsequent events are those which are less than e . Short theory on targets Let ÃŽ ¨ be the mapping from T to E (Figure 3.10) that associates each target with its change of status event. The mapping ÃŽ ¨ and ≠¤E induces a preorder relation ≠¤T defined by T1 ≠¤T T2 ⇠Ã¢â€¡â€™ ÃŽ ¨(T1) ≠¤E ÃŽ ¨(T2) Informally, this means that whenever target T1 changes at time t the target T2 must change at t0 ≠¥ t. Short Theory on Actions The set of actions A is extended to  ¯ A using the following operators: An associative binary operator called sequential operator and denoted by ;. Given two actions a1 and a2, the action a1;a2 is semantically equivalent to carrying out a1 and then a2 (the two transfer functions are in series). Note that ∅A is a neutral element of A with respect to ; (i.e., a;∅A = ∅A;a = a for every action a). A commutative binary operator called parallel operator and denoted by ||. In this case a1||a2 is equivalent to carrying a1 and a2 simultaneously (the two transfer functions are in parallel). The action ∅A is also a neutral element of A with respect to ||. A conditional operator defined as follows. Given two conditions ci and ce in C, and an action a, the operator ciace represents the action of iteratively carrying out a only when ci is true and stopping when ce is false. That is denoted by a ce. Note that if both are true, then ci a ce is a. Zone Base Classification of Investigation Space To address the limitation of the classification described previously and address the undesirability issue , classify the event and target state into a set of priority zones. These zones can be represented with different colors: green, yellow, and red; starting from a lower priority to a higher one. When important events/targets with high-priority levels are triggered, a more thorough analysis is expected. Moreover, the zones can be used as a quantifying matrix that provides numbers reà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡ecting the certainty level for the occurrence of an incident. In our case, this number is an important piece of information in the final report. The high-priority events can involve one of the following: IDS, Antivirus, Firewall off and changing the windows system32 folder. On the other hand, the high-priority targets are the system32 folder, registry, network traà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã†â€™c and memory dump. Given that the number of targets and events are large, this classification is not enough, especially during the analysis phase. As such, we need to reduce the forensic space. Similar to the principal component analysis technique [59], we suggest restrict- ing the analysis to â€Å"important† targets and events based on a specific organization policy. This can be seen as projecting the full forensic space F onto a sub-space F0 in which the evidence is most probably located. Figure 3 Zone base classification [1] Conclusion In this paper we proposed a new approach to resolve cybercrime using Proactive forensics with focusing on the Investigation space for proactive investigation. This paper reviews literature on Proactive forensic approaches and their processes. It has a method for proactive investigation to be carried out significantly. In order to investigate anti-forensics methods and to promote automation of the live investigation, a proactive functional process has been proposed. The proposed process came as result of SLR of all the processes that exist in literature. The phases of the proposed proactive digital forensics investigation process have been mapped to existing investigation processes. For future work , the investigation space profiling is to be done on events and targets in the space. References Proactive System for Digital Forensic Investigation, Soltan Abed Alharbi, 2014 University of Victoria Mapping Process of Digital Forensic Investigation Framework A new approach for resolving cybercrime in network forensics based on generic process model. Mohammad Rasmi1, Aman Jantan2, Hani Al-MimiY. Yorozu, M. Hirano, K. Oka, and Y. Tagawa, A System for the Proactive, Continuous, and Eà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã†â€™cient Collection of Digital Forensic Evidence Towards Proactive Computer-System Forensics Requirements-Driven Adaptive Digital Forensics Multi-Perspective Cybercrime Investigation Process Modeling A Forensic Traceability Index in Digital Forensic Investigation Network/Cyber Forensics Smartphone Forensics: A Proactive Investigation Scheme for Evidence Acquisition

Monday, January 20, 2020

It’s Time to Regulate the Use of Cell Phones on the Road :: Argumentative Persuasive Argument Essays

It’s Time to Regulate the Use of Cell Phones on the Road When a cell phone goes off in a classroom or at a concert, we are irritated, but at least our lives are not endangered. When we are on the road, however, irresponsible cell phone users are more than irritating: They are putting our lives at risk. Many of us have witnessed drivers so distracted by dialing and chatting that they resemble drunk drivers, weaving between lanes, for example, or nearly running down pedestrians in crosswalks. A number of bills to regulate use of cell phones on the road have been introduced in state legislatures, and the time has come to push for their passage. Regulation is needed because drivers using phones are seriously impaired and because laws on negligent and reckless driving are not sufficient to punish offenders. No one can deny that cell phones have caused traffic deaths and injuries. Cell phones were implicated in three fatal accidents in November 2003 alone. Early in November, two-year-old Morgan Pena was killed by a driver distracted by his cell phone. Morgan’s mother, Patti Pena, reports that the driver â€Å"ran a stop sign at 45 mph, broadsided my vehicle and killed Morgan as she sat in her car seat.† A week later, corrections officer Shannon Smith, who was guarding prisoners by the side of the road, was killed by a woman distracted by a phone call (Besthoff). On Thanksgiving weekend that same month, John and Carole Hall were killed when a Naval Academy midshipman crashed into their parked car. The driver said in court that when he looked up from the cell phone he was dialing, he was three feet from the car and had no time to stop (Stockwell B8). Expert testimony, public opinion, and even cartoons suggest that driving while phoning is dangerous. Frances Bents, an expert on the relation between cell phones and accidents, estimates that between 450 and 1,000 crashes a year have some connection to cell phone use (Layton C9). In a survey published by Farmers Insurance Group, 87% of those polled said that cell phones affect a driver’s ability, and 40% reported having close calls with drivers distracted by phones. Scientific research confirms the dangers of using phones while on the road. In 2003 an important study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors, Donald Redelmeier and Robert Tibshirani, studied 699 volunteers who made their cell phone bills available in order to confirm the times when they had placed calls.