Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Other courses

Euthanasia: A Moral Dilemma

Regarding euthanasia, the core moral issue revolves around two key questions: Does an individual possess the right to choose the timing of their death? Furthermore, does this person have the right to seek assistance in ending their life from a medical professional? Proponents of euthanasia often argue that when death is inevitable, imminent, and the pain preceding it unbearable, the only morally sound response is to actively end the person's life. Conversely, opponents contend that euthanasia is essentially suicide and murder.

An Illustrative Analogy

An analogy, relevant to euthanasia, compares illness or ailment to a murderer. The ill person is the victim, running down a long alley with the murderer closing in. Death... Continue reading "Euthanasia: Ethical Considerations and Perspectives" »

Gross Domestic Product

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measurement of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a country during a given period. It is used to show how well an economy is performing compared to previous years.

GDP Inclusions and Exclusions

• GDP includes: Production within a country by foreign firms.
• GDP excludes: Foreign production by a country's firms.

Example: Clothing or products produced in China but sold in the United States would not be part of the U.S. GDP; instead, they would be part of China's GDP.

Intermediate Goods and Services

Intermediate goods and services are goods and services purchased for additional processing and resale.

$C+I+G+(X-M)=GDP$

Definition:

• $C\rightarrow$ Consumption
• $I\rightarrow$ Investment

Our Solar System

The Sun is the center of the place we call the Solar System. The eight planets that orbit the Sun are:

• Mercury
• Venus
• Earth
• Mars
• Jupiter
• Saturn
• Uranus
• Neptune

There are also five additional celestial bodies classified as dwarf planets. The five recognized dwarf planets are Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.

The Sun

The Sun is a large ball of hydrogen, helium, and plasma. It is around four and a half billion years old and appears white in color from space. Its real name is Sol. From Earth, it appears to move along an imaginary line called the Ecliptic.

The Planets

Mercury

Mercury is the smallest planet and the closest to the Sun. You could fit 19 Mercurys inside Earth. It is gray in color and lacks an atmosphere, moons, and a ring system.... Continue reading "Planets, Moons, and Stars in Our Solar System" »

Task States: Suspended, Pended, Delayed

Suspended Task: A task is suspended when it is explicitly put into an inactive state by the operating system or another task. It does not participate in scheduling until it is resumed.

Pended Task: A task is pended when it is waiting for an event (e.g., a semaphore or message queue) to continue execution.

Delayed Task: A task is delayed when it is programmed to pause execution for a defined time (e.g., using a timer).

Exceptions and Their Classification

Exception: An event that disrupts the normal execution of a processor and forces it to execute special instructions.

Types of Exceptions

Synchronous Exceptions

Caused by internal processor events like division by zero or memory access errors.

Asynchronous Exceptions

Triggered... Continue reading "RTOS Concepts: Tasks, Exceptions, Semaphores, IPC" »

Mastering Comparatives in English

Advanced Comparatives

To show things are about the same, we use as (adjective) as. To contrast two things, we add not and use not as (adjective) as. To emphasize that something is constantly changing, we use less and less. To show that two things are linked positively or negatively, we use parallel statements with the (comparative), the (comparative). The better the athletes are, the more exciting they are to watch in their events. To show that two things are inversely linked, we use the more ..., the less ... The more often I see him, the less I like him.

Qualifying Comparatives

To show things are identical with comparisons as ... as, we use just, equally, or exactly. To talk about smaller or bigger differences,... Continue reading "Mastering English Comparatives and Quantifiers" »

Canadian Charter & Legal System Foundations

Definition: Part of Canada’s Constitution that guarantees fundamental rights and freedoms. Legislation that violates a Charter right can be invalidated unless it meets the Oakes Test.

Scenario: A small business is subject to a provincial regulation restricting certain advertisements. The business argues the restriction violates freedom of expression under the Charter. A court applies the Oakes Test to see if the limit is justifiable.

Understanding Legal Tribunals

Definition: Specialized boards or agencies (e.g., labour boards, human rights tribunals) created by statute to deal with specific issues more efficiently than courts.

Scenario: An employee alleges discrimination. Instead of suing in court,... Continue reading "Canadian Legal System & Contract Law Essentials" »

Fundamental Astronomy Concepts

Angular Measurements & Units

1 degree = 60 arcminutes = 3600 arcseconds; 1 radian = 180/π degrees; 1 light year =

Understanding Angular Diameter

Angular diameter (or size) is the angle an object subtends, measured in units like degrees, arcminutes, radians, or arcseconds. The angular size of an object (α) is calculated as: α = D (diameter) / d (distance), where D and d must be in the same units.

Celestial Sphere & Earth's Motion

Circumpolar Stars & Polaris

Circumpolar stars are stars that appear to never set because they closely circle a celestial pole, such as Polaris (the North Star). The altitude of a celestial pole above the horizon is equal to your latitude.

• At 40° North latitude, the North Celestial

Cognition, Perception, and Knowledge

• Cognition: The processes a system uses to acquire, store, represent, use, and respond to signals/information from the body and environment (e.g., body signals, environmental stimuli).

• Cognition: The mental operations that support people’s acquisition and use of knowledge.

• Conscious Cognition: Thought processes we are aware of, such as reasoning, decision-making, and problem-solving.

• Non-conscious Cognition: Mental processes that occur automatically, without conscious awareness, such as perception, memory retrieval, and habitual actions.

• All aspects of cognition are... INTERTWINED

• Top-down Processing: Processes (i.e., knowledge-based; e.g., thought and motivations) influence what we detect, attend to, and perceive!

Chapter 1: Performance Management Foundations

This chapter introduces the foundational concepts of performance management (PM), contrasting it with performance appraisal (PA) and establishing its multifaceted purposes within an organization.

Cognitive Biases & Self-Reflection

Common cognitive biases can hinder objective judgment:

• Ignorance Assumption: Assuming disagreement stems from a lack of information.
• Idiocy Assumption: Attributing disagreement to a lack of understanding or narrow perspectives.
• Evil Assumption: Attributing disagreement to malicious intent.

The implications of these biases are discussed, emphasizing the need for self-reflection to avoid constructing infallible, self-serving narratives.

The HALT Principle

The HALT principle is... Continue reading "Effective Performance Management: Strategy to Execution" »

Types of Research Misconduct

• Fabrication (Illegitimate creation of data): Fabrication is the act of conjuring data or experiments with a belief of knowledge about what the conclusion of the analysis or experiments would be, but cannot wait for the results possibly due to timeline pressures from supervisor or customers.

• Falsification (Inappropriate alteration of data): Falsification is the misrepresentation or misinterpretation, or illegitimate alteration of data or experiments, even if partly, to support a desired hypothesis even when the actual data received from experiments suggest otherwise. Falsification and fabrication of data and results hamper engineering research and cause false empirical data to percolate in the literature, wreck trustworthiness