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The Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower
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The world’s most important man made structure stands to be the Eiffel Tower. The tower which is forms a pattern of iron puddle lies in Champ de Marsin Paris, France. The Eiffel Tower has attained the status of both the nation’s and global cultural image. The tower which was built in 1889 is now among the most renowned structures globally. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower stands as the tallest building. Furthermore, it is the only monument globally which records the highest number of paying visitors. The Eiffel Tower hosts millions of visitors annually (Jonnes, 2009).
The Eiffel Tower was named after its designer engineer Gustave Eiffel. The World’s Fair in 1889 witnessed the unveiling of the magnificent structure. The tower served as the doorway arch of the World Fair in 1889 (Courland, 2011). The stature of the tower is 324 meters which is equivalent to an 81 storey building. During that era the Washington Monument held the title of being the tallest structure globally but the Eiffel Tower knocked the former off its perch. The Eiffel Tower held this title for a stunning period of 41 years. The year 1930 witnessed the construction of the Chrysler Building which overhauled the Eiffel Tower as the tallest building in the world. Conversely, further renovations on the Eiffel Tower in such as inclusion of an antenna at the summit of the Eiffel Tower made it taller in stature than the Chrysler Building. Currently, the Eiffel Tower is the second tallest building in France, the Millau Viaduct being the tallest.
The Eiffel Tower is made of three levels for the paying visitors. The visitors have to purchase tickets to ascend the tower to its first or second levels. Visitors can ascend the tower by either climbing the stairs or using the elevator. The stair case from the first level to the ground level is made up of 300 steps so is the ascendance from first to second level. The aforementioned levels have restaurants for the visitors. The hectic process of the structure’s construction commenced in 1887 and was completed in ‘89. The tower was unveiled to mark the French Revolution Centennial. Its construction witnessed almost three hundred workers working collectively to merge about 18,038 bits of puddle iron with the use of two million rivets. The structural design being implemented was created by Maurice Koechlin (Jonnes, 2009).
The tower was not as a result of Eiffel’s solo effort. He received assistance from two designers Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier and an architect Stephen Sauvestre. During its construction Eiffel expressed little enthusiasm although he still sanctioned the construction project further. This prompted the two other designers to compel architect Stephen Sauvestre to contribute to the decorative designs of the tower. Eiffel was in support of this enhanced version of construction thus he patented the design that the other designers and architect had come up with. The patented design was exhibited under Eiffel’s company name at a trade fair of Decorative Arts on 1884. Throughout its construction Eiffel had imposed rigorous safety rules. This led to the loss of only one life out of the three hundred workers who worked on site. Eiffel has ensured that workers used impermanent screens, guard rails and staging. The Eiffel Tower was permitted to stand for two decades before its ownership reverted back to the city. Initially the City’s plan was to demolish the tower after expiry of the permit but this never materialized since the tower proved to be precious. The tower served to hold potent radio transmitters during the First World War. The radio transmitters were used to jam the German communication frequency thus hindering the enemy’s advance to Paris (Courland, 2011).
The Eiffel Tower is part of France’s history and proves time and again to remind the French nationalists of the French Revolution. Additionally, the designers and architects involved in the construction of this magnificent structure adopted construction designs which future generations shall forever admire.
References
Courland, R. (2011). Concrete planet: The strange and fascinating story of the world’s mostcommon man-made material. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books.
Jonnes, J. (2009). Eiffel’s tower: And the World’s Fair where Buffalo Bill beguiled Paris, theartists quarreled, and Thomas Edison became a count. New York, N.Y: Viking.
The Egypt Revolution
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The Egypt Revolution
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The Arab world’s most populous and influential nations including Egypt and Tunisia experienced serious revolution that saw long serving leaders such as Mubarak being hoisted. Egyptians were tired of oppressive political order, which had smothered their country prompting them to force President Mubarak after ruling for nearly 30 years (“World Socialist Web Site” Web). The revolution was marred with popular, spontaneous and unarmed rebellions that punctured the aura of the all-powerful, authoritarian Egypt leader. Youthful activists collaborated with labour unions and workers to fight the ubiquitous and brutal security forces and further utilized revolutionary tools such as social media: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to make the revolution successful.
According to “World Socialist Web Site” Egyptian youths had demonstrated the usefulness of social media as a platform for organizing mass street actions after distributing news that the state controlled press avoided the harsh tactics of Mubarak’s security personnel (Web). They succeeded in several cases including the one for a 28-year-old Khaled Mohamed Said killed after thorough beatings by the police and the photos of his disfigured corpse online on Facebook. These events were very successful in initiating the Egyptian uprising, which brought a remarkable transformation in the region’s political dynamics and ended 30 years of martial law ended and a democratic free election was held after decades. Attempts of stopping the demonstrations such as killings and blocking social media did not succeed in crushing the uprising instead they increased attention, as people were tired of poverty, unemployment level, government corruption and autocracy (Kanalley Web).
Resignation of President Mubarak on February 11, 2011 which was less than 24 hours after he refused to give in the public’s demand of resigning. For the past 18 days, Egyptian protestors were echoing “Go Mubarak Go!” the euphoria that swept the crowd that was gathering in Tahrir Square (Vargas Web). It is undeniable that the Tunisian inspired event’s reverberations are felt everywhere in the Arab regions including Algeria and Yemen. The Tunisian uprising greatly catalysed and inspired Egyptians to take to the streets because Tunisians had a more repressive and brutally dictatorial leader compared to Egypt yet they succeeded in ousting him.
As much as the Tunisia’s case lit the fuse there were numerous past transformations in the Egypt’s social and political arenas that largely led to the revolution. Since 2004, Egypt increasingly experienced demonstrations, street politics, strikes and stage-ins by different workers including health providers, textile workers, lawyers, judges, transportation and postal workers. According to Rizk workers demanded better wages and better working conditions as tough economic conditions that involved wide gap between the have and have-nots as well as closure of many institutions that in turn caused unemployment was eminent (Web). Interestingly, the government did not pay much attention to the escalating strikes and at times, the administration brutally broke and supressed the strikes particularly between 2009 and 2010. However, the sporadic and thin victories dependent on the sheer tenacity of the protestors that prompt the government to raise the minimum wage to 400 Egyptian pounds. There was also success achieved in forming two independent trade unions as well as an independent trade federation and this showed an unparalleled break from the throttling hold that the government encouraged over labour activism since 1957 (Kanalley Web).
The little success experienced in strikes triggered a few individuals by creating an instantaneous sense of desolation and leeway. Amongst them was Hossam Hamalawy who is a prominent Egyptian blogger and consummate ethnographer of Egyptian street who posted on October 31, 2010:
There is something in the air in Egypt. It could be Mubarak’s Autumn of Fury, as I and increasingly many people around me sense. Not a day passes without reading or hearing about a strike. No one knows when the explosion is going to happen, but it seems everyone I meet or bump into today feel it’s inevitable. (Mahmood Web)
Apparently, the fact that the Egyptian youths were the worst suffering lot in Mubarak’s leadership was acknowledged by almost every one of all ages. Hamalawy wrote on his blog about an old man talking to two young females:
I think your time now is worse than the time of the war [referring to the 1967 war with Israel]…. And who said the war is over? The real war only started. Look at the poverty, corruption and hunger. It is an internal war. It is worse than the war with Israelis. May God bless you and give you strength. Your generation is at war. It is a disaster, a bigger disaster than our generation faced. (Mahmood Web)
Additionally, there were legendary police brutality of the security police that marred the country for a long time yet the victims of the torture were just ordinary citizens that were humiliated for crimes they did not commit.”Amn ad-dawla” was a deeply hated institution compared to the underpaid police force, which disappeared into thin air in the initial 24-hours of the protest.
The inhuman and public brutal beating of Khalid Saeed, a blogger and internet café operator turned out as the sign of the pro-democracy movement linked with the renowned wildness of the security police. Mubarak sustained the decades of his leadership by keeping authoritarian and enhancing brutal control over power and granted limited freedom to the Egyptians. Vargas explains Mubarak refused unending calls by the White House for democracy in Egypt despite the fact that Egypt had a pride of place as America’s chief ally in Arab Middle East (Web). These events created an opportunity though limited for Egyptians to engage in civil and political rights activism through demonstrations, NGOs and other legal aid organizations.
Blogosphere’s role in the uprising cannot be denied and the Egyptian’s rebellion has been dubbed the Facebook Revolution since social networking largely mobilized the sit-ins and demonstrations. Bloggers successfully put a face and a voice to the ubiquitous police brutality that included phone cameras of innocent citizens inhumanly tortured (“World Socialist Web Site” Web). The blogs cut across Egyptian political spectrum and their main aim was to end Mubarak’s rule, rejection of Mubarak’s son succession, expansion of political freedom and democratization of institutions and end to state violence and prosecution of perpetrators. People wrote hot political issues that cut across religions and were equally disillusioned with the aged leadership, which alleged to represent them. Interestingly, the Islamic and the secular groups that came together to join in the demonstrations did not have a central and singular political authority organizing it instead it had perceptive and experienced organizers who were able to order themselves (Rizk Web).
According to Hirsi several other prominent people supported the demonstrations including Nobel Laureate and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei who is a strong opposition force (Web). Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood who were strong opposition of the Mubarak administration provided a very heavy support to the many protestors (“World Socialist Web Site” Web). The most lethal protest was took place when the government blocked all internet services as well as text messaging in the country forcing journalists to find an alternative way of distributing information. Military was called in to take over security; the protestors welcomed this move since they believed in armed services than the police.
It is worth noting that there is not-so restrained shared thread running straight through nearly all revolution in the past where the average, the poor and the working class feel supressed. It was apparent that everyone in Egypt felt that their economic welfare and social lives were put into a relatively unacceptable level of negativism and degradation (Hirsi Web). The depressed groups in Egypt organized themselves after realizing that they had an alternative to struggle as moral agents and assume the power to impose moral standards on their powerful institution. The 18 days event in Tahrir was a collective experience in shattered urban Utopia and their main purpose was for Mubarak to fall. Egyptians realized that they could not move forward with a leadership that promoted vast inequality and repression of workers. For the last 25 years, minimum wage had not risen, the power of labour was weakened, and the country was beholden to private power.
Works Cited
“World Socialist Web Site. “The Egyptian Revolution, 1 Feb. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/02/pers-f01.html>.
Hirsi, Ayaan. Why the Arab Spring hasn’t failed in Egypt and Middle East. The Christian Science Monitor, 20 Aug. 2013. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Global-Viewpoint/2013/0820/Why-the-Arab-Spring-hasn-t-failed-in-Egypt-and-Middle-East>.
Kanalley, Craig. Egypt Revolution 2011: A Complete Guide to The Unrest. The Huffington Post, 30 Jan. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/egypt-revolution-2011_n_816026.html>.
Mahmood, Saba. The Architects of the Egyptian Revolution. The Nation, 14 Feb. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.thenation.com/article/158581/architects-egyptian-revolution#>.
Rizk, Sherif. The Egyptian Revolution: Beyond False Choices. Open Democracy, 25 Sep. 2013. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.opendemocracy.net/civilresistance/sherif-joseph-rizk/egyptian-revolution-beyond-false-choices>.
Vargas, Jose. Spring Awakening: How an Egyptian Revolution Began on Facebook. The New York Times, 17 Feb. 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/books/review/how-an-egyptian-revolution-began-on-facebook.html?pagewanted=1>.
Preparedness and Response to Bioterrorism
Preparedness and Response to Bioterrorism
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Categories of weapons of mass destruction causing bioterrorism
The healthcare industry is most prepared to deal with different categories of weapons of mass effect. These categories are biological agents, chemicals agents, and nuclear agents. The following categories contain dangerous materials capable of causing great losses of life if introduced to human body system. Biological agents cause greater risks to public health. The first step in developing national preparedness and response to bioterrorism is identifying agents that pose greater threats to national security and public health. The main categories under of concern consists those that are highly transmittable from one person to another, those that cause high mortality, and those requiring special action from the nation and healthcare industry. These agents include Plague, Botulism, Anthrax, Tularemia, and Viral Hemorrhagic fever. On the other hand, weapons of mass destruction falling under chemical category produce primary chemical agents that are used as weapons. Moreover, chemical agents causes major mortality and morbidity, and require special action from the nation and public healthcare sector (McCoy and Sebring, 2001).
Nuclear devices also cause greater harms to lives and have faces more attention from the healthcare industry. Nuclear weapons create damage due to explosive power of the weapon and cause contamination to humans and other living things. Radiations produced by nuclear weapons contribute to many negative health effects calling upon the healthcare industry to properly prepare for such disasters. On the other hand, radioactive materials have the potential of causing dangerous health harms to people and their surroundings. Radioactive materials enter human tissues when exposed to the human body and cause major health problems such as chronic diseases.
The healthcare sector however puts less effort when it comes to disaster preparedness for some categories of weapons of mass destruction like pathogens and toxins, and non-conventional high-yield explosives. The health harms caused by these weapons of mass destruction are minimal and limited to small populations that come into contact with causative materials. In addition, harms caused by materials from these categories are easily mitigated by individuals without any professional assistance.
Major focus areas for preparedness and response to bioterrorism
Preparedness and response to bioterrorism and other outbreaks takes place using six main focus areas. The six focus areas are:
Preparedness and prevention
Detection and surveillance
Laboratory diagnosis and characterization
Response
Communication, and
Training
The above focus areas remain relevant today and play an essential role in disaster preparedness and response to bioterrorism. Firstly, the institutions United States has introduced disaster preparedness, and response causes to offer students the necessary knowledge on bioterrorism and other forms of terrorism. In addition, most healthcare facilities have disaster response units where people suspected to contain biological agents are tested and observed before allowed to interact with other people.
Preparedness and prevention: The government and the healthcare industry take actions to bioterrorism by developing activities such as response plans, implementation, and evaluating response programs. In addition, preparedness involves coordination of partners in disaster management and assessing current applied research and capacity (McCoy and Sebring, 2001).
Detection and surveillance: This focus area involves designing methodologies, procedures and tools that can easily identify and investigate unusual happenings such as disease outbreak, injuries, or syndromes that might be agents of bioterrorism (McCoy and Sebring, 2001).
Laboratory diagnosis and characterization: In this focus area a network of public health and clinical laboratories at local, state, and federal levels coordinate in testing different agents of bioterrorism. The main aim of this focus area is to promote rapid, accurate diagnosis and identification of potential chemical and biological threat agents (McCoy and Sebring, 2001).
Response: Center for Disease Control together with Public Health Laboratories established the National Laboratory Response Network that offer all laboratories access to all form of materials needed for diagnosis of chemical and biological agents. The response focus area aims at developing treatment and prophylaxis procedures for infected people. In addition, the process focuses on starting environmental determination measures for detecting primary agents of mass destruction (McCoy and Sebring, 2001).
Communication: Communication assists in relying information about any outbreak of presence of biological agents in various locations worldwide to the relevant authority. CDC aims at upgrading information technology in all regions of the country. The process promotes quick exchange of emergency information and data between public health, law enforcement, public safety personnel, and emergency response units across the country (McCoy and Sebring, 2001).
Training: Training ensures each department involved in disaster preparedness and control possesses the necessary skills when a disaster strikes. CDC came up with an initiative and developed National Bioterrorism Training Plan aimed at training medical personnel’s on how well to prepare for disasters (McCoy and Sebring, 2001).
Detection and surveillance forms the most important focus area among these six. This area requires a lot of expertise and application of modern technologies in detecting and determining possible sources of bioterrorism causative agents. Effective methodologies and tactics must be employed by healthcare experts and other government officials in order to ensure biological and chemical agents never find their way in the country. The least important focus area is on training. The government and department of health will be doing nothing training its staff to deal with bioterrorism if people lack awareness and detection facilities.
Impact of communication in disaster preparedness and response
Effective communication of any disaster helps in calming fears and suppressing rumors. Availability of effective communication models allows easier transfer of information and data from one location to another and helps promote disaster preparedness and control. When an outbreak of a certain deadly disease like Ebola occurs, people live with fear of contracting the disease. Communication between the emergency response units and disaster response and preparedness unit helps in identifying main areas where there is an outbreak reducing concerns of people in unaffected regions. In addition, upon the outbreak of a deadly disease people talk many rumors, and the only way to suppress them is through communication.
Training exercises helps in determining the level of preparedness for bioterrorism and chemical attacks whenever a disaster occurs. After the September 11 attack, the United States government engaged in numerous training exercises across the country. Leaders across the nation engaged in promoting training exercises that spanned for 13 days. Training exercises investigates many issues on disaster preparedness and response including the readiness of the nation to confront bioterrorist attacks, availability of planning and disaster response facilities.
Real-time training scenarios help in promoting nationwide disaster preparedness and prevention of bioterrorism. Lack of preparedness acted as the most common problem facing the U.S. government and its citizens upon conducting several training exercise programs. Proper preparation for disasters with the availability of all resources, tools, and equipments plays a major role in improving national security and healthcare outcomes. In addition, real-life training scenarios involving multiple agents improves public awareness by encouraging individuals to take care and teach others on various techniques to use in case a disaster strikes.
Application of Amtrak’s “Operation Rail Safe” program to healthcare industry
The Amtrak’s “Operation Rail Safe” program was established to ensure the U.S. railway security. The program occurs through the training exercise aimed at addressing the issue of security in U.S. railway sector. Law enforcement agencies conducted massive, multi-jurisdictional law enforcement practices to ensure people adhere to rule and regulation of U.S. railway. Additionally, the exercise promotes information sharing between different governments sectors on any issue affecting the national security especially in public transport. Implementing such a program in hospitals and medical centers would help minimize the number of deaths and injuries caused by lack of awareness and information on disaster preparedness and prevention. Bioterrorism has become a big concern to both the government and the healthcare industry because of many reported deaths caused by outbreak of biological agents or body contact with chemical agents. Operational Rail Safe integrates many stakeholders from the government including local, state, and federal agents who support the program (Wyllie, 2012). Likewise, the healthcare industry would implement the “Operational Health Safe” program that trains people on disaster preparedness and prevention in order to get rid of bioterrorism. Many stakeholders also should be involved in this program, for example, the government, institutions of higher learning, the public and healthcare officials.
The triage process
The triage process aims at identifying people who need immediate medical attention depending on the nature of illness or injury. Sarin agent is a deadly chemical that causes severe health problems to individuals once exposed to them. The best criteria to use to triage patients with potential exposure to nerve agent sarin are by observing physical signs. The most common signs of a person exposed to nerve agent sarin include watery eyes, running nose, eye pain, blurred vision, cough, chest tightness, excessive sweating, rapid breathing, diarrhea, headache, body weakness, slow or fast heart rate, confusion, and high blood pressure (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). Any patient in the emergency department showing a couple of these signs should receive immediate medical attention because they stand higher chances of losing life because of exposure to sarin agents. In order to identify patients with potential of nerve agent sarin exposure, the most recommended process is identifying the nature of an emergency. Those with body injuries caused by accidents should be taken to different departments dealing with accidents. On the other hand, patients with signs of convulsions, paralyzis, respiratory failure and loss of consciousness should be taken for a checkup and test for nerve agent sarin.
Use of an ICS in the hospital
Hospital Incidence Command System (ICS) plays a critical role in dealing with a bioterrorism attack. ICS facilitates training of hospital staff in order to provide them with knowledge on how to prepare and respond to disasters. Bioterrorism is the most dangerous form of disaster capable of sweeping the entire community of country, availability of medical providers with ICS training helps in mitigating bioterrorism disasters and responding to future healthcare disaster. Hospitals face various challenges while using an ICS. Firstly, the program requires experienced and professionals to undertake and most hospital, especially those found in local areas and villages, lack such professionals making it hard to implement the program. Additionally, using an ICS is costly as the hospital has to cater for expenses of trainers, training equipments and other costs incurred during the implementation process.
Allocating money for various programs within the health care facility is the most challenging issue faced by the organization administrator. The allocation process would be done depending on the need. The biggest percentage of money would be allocated to training the staff on disaster preparedness and response in order to ensure the hospital is ready for any bioterrorism threat. Secondly, some money will be allocated to developing isolation area within the hospital. The area wil be and equipped with all facilities in order to allow effective and timely conducting of any test on people with potential signs of biological or chemical agents capable of causing a threat. Finally, the rest of the money will be used in promoting public health and educating the public on disaster preparedness and response through campaigns, rood-shows, and advertisements in the media.
The healthcare industry lacks full preparation in handling bioterrorist attacks. Healthcare providers and nurse practitioners lack information on how to suspect and isolate people with potential signs of bioterrorism attacks. Additionally, the high rate of corruption experienced in the healthcare sector prevents hospitals from offering necessary training programs to their staff on disaster preparedness and response. On the other hand, most institutions offering courses in medicine and nursing produce half-baked professionals who lack ideas on how to identify and respond to different biological and chemical agents that cause bioterrorism. Finally, most healthcare facilities lack essential facilities to deal with a bioterrorism attack. In most cases, hospitals refer patients suspected of a bioterrorism attack to other well-equipped facilities because they lack necessary equipments and professionals to handle such cases.
References
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (May 20, 2013). Facts about Sarin. Retrieved
November 19, 2014 from http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/sarin/basics/facts.asp
McCoy, K. and Sebring, A. (2001). Public Health preparedness for Bioterrorism. Retrieved
November 19, 2014 from
http://www.udel.edu/DRC/emforum/recordings/20010214.html
Wyllie, D. (May 9, 2012). Operation RAIL SAFE: Ensuring US railway security. Retrieved
November 19, 2014 from
http://www.policeone.com/federal-law-enforcement/articles/5503847-Operation-RAIL-SAFE-Ensuring-US-railway-security/