Life :: essays research papers

THE STORY OF LIFE Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they Were meant to be there, to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a Lesson, or to help you figure out who you are or who you want to become. You never know who these people may be (possibly your roommate, neighbor, worker, long-lost friend, lover, or even a complete stranger), but when you lock eyes with them, you know at that very moment they will affect your life in some profound way. And sometimes things happen to you that may seem horrible, painful, and unfair at first, but in reflection you find that without overcoming those obstacles you would have never realized your potential, strength, willpower, or heart. Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by chance or by means of good luck. Illness, injury, love, lost moments of true greatness, and sheer stupidity all occur to test the limits of your soul. Without these small tests, whatever they may be, life would be like a smoothly paved, straight, flat road to nowhere. It would be safe and comfortable, but dull and utterly pointless. The people you meet who affect your life, and the success and downfalls you experience, help to create who you are and who you become. Even the bad experiences can be learned from. In fact, they are probably the most poignant and important ones. If someone hurts you, betrays you, or breaks your heart, forgive them, for they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious when you open your heart. If someone loves you, love them back unconditionally, not only because they love you, but because in a way, they are teaching you to love and how to open your heart and eyes to things. Make every day count. Appreciate every moment and take from those moments everything that you possibly can for you may never be able to experience it again. Talk to people that you have never talked to before, and actually listen. Let yourself fall in love, break free, and set your sights high. Hold your head up because you have every right to. Tell yourself you are a great individual and believe in yourself, for

Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever :: essays research papers

Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a rare, severe type of hemorrhagic fever that affects both humans and non-human primates. Marburg is the first member of the family Filoviridae (or "thread" viruses), which also includes the Ebola virus. Like Ebola, Marburg is an enveloped, single-stranded, unsegmented, negative-sense RNA virus. It has the same characteristic filamentous (thread-like) structure, can appear shaped like a U, a 6, or spiraled like a snail; and can sometimes be branched. The Marburg virus is identical to Ebola in form and structure; however, it is genically distinct from Ebola (meaning that it stimulates the production of different antibodies). Marburg virions are 80 nm (nanometers) in diameter and average approximately 800 nm in length, although length can vary up to 14,000 nm. The four species of Ebola virus are the only other known members of the filoviridae family. As with Ebola, the exact procedure of Marburg is unknown. However, virion surface spikes are made solely of large glycoprotein (compound consisting of carbohydrates and protein). It is assumed that, as with other negative-strand RNA viruses, these surface spikes bind to receptors on the host cell and act as a â€Å"go-between† entry into susceptible cells. Viral replication takes place in the cytoplasm, and envelopment is the result of budding preformed by nucleocapsids (viral protein coat and nucleic acid). Ultimately, the virus involves the liver, lymphoid organs, and kidneys. Marburg virus was first recognized in 1967, when outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia). A total of 37 people became ill; they included laboratory workers as well as several medical personnel and family members who had cared for them. The first people infected had been exposed to African green monkeys or their tissues. In Marburg, the monkeys had been imported for research and to prepare polio vaccine. Recorded cases of the disease are rare, and have appeared in only a few locations. While the 1967 outbreak occurred in Europe, the disease agent had arrived with imported monkeys from Uganda. No other case was recorded until 1975, when an Australian traveler most likely exposed in Zimbabwe became ill in Johannesburg, South Africa and passed the virus to his traveling companion and a nurse. The year 1980 saw two other cases, one in Western Kenya not far from the Ugandan source of the monkeys implicated in the 1967 outbreak.

Ancient Egyptian Culture :: Egypt Ancient World Culture

Somewhere around 1375 years before the birth of Christ, an Egyptian pharaoh publicly changed his name. That change signalled a return to long-standing tradition, a hallmark of Egyptian culture that flourished for more than three thousand years peacefully in the rich Nile River valley. The king had been called Tutankhaton. The last portion of his name, aton, was the name for the sun-god, which, in the years before the king's reign, had achieved preeminence among the competing deities in Egyptian religious tradition. The king changed his name to the one by which he is known today -- TUTANKHAMEN or, more popularly, King Tut -- and ended the brief experiment in monotheism in favor of the older religion with its promise of an afterlife. And what an afterlife the pharaoh would have! Embalmed in order to endure the elements of disintegration, richly attired to attest to his fabulous earthly wealth, magnificently housed to remind all on-lookers of the towering greatness of the entombed human -- the pharaoh lived on in perpetual association with the stone structures that rose portentously out of the hot, barren sands of the desert so close to the life-giving, greening Nile. And the solemn bearing of these great structures reminds people today of the human hope for immortality and the way an entire culture fashioned a collective immortality in astonishing stone. Here was a culture that would persist, just as its pharaohs would live on in their silent palaces. More interesting, perhaps, is the collective underwriting of the PYRAMIDS. No fewer than 70,000 workers would have been needed to lug limestone blocks from desert miles away to the building sites. Yet there is little evidence that the pharaohs had to coerce their subjects to leave their fields and families in order to build a monument whose completion any single worker would certainly never see.

Sartre’s Criticisms on Human Essence in the Light of Aristotle’s Philosophy

Our ability to engage in abstraction is, indubitably, a unique gift endowed to our human cognition. And the reason for such a telling contention is near to being self-evident: i. e. , only human persons have the ability to see through otherwise distinct and separate entities, a unifying concept that reveals these things’ common nature, if not their defining essence. To this end, it is necessary to point that our human intellect’s preponderance to abstracting the essences is another facet of human cognition. This is because knowing, akin to seeing, affords us an immediate grasp of reality’s nature and purpose; for by the mere experience of something, say a table, we almost instantly furnish ourselves with a working concept about the thing’s essence – i. e. , we ‘know’ what a table is, what is it for. Thus, it makes sense to say that abstracting essences form part and parcel of both the intuitive and inductive process of a person’s ability to know reality. Our understanding of the concept of essence draws chiefly from the scheme provided by the Greek metaphysics. And herein it would insightful to take cue from Aristotle’s ‘hylemorphic’ framework. According to Aristotle, anything that exists – say, a tree or a dog – is constituted of both an existence and an essence; i. e. , all things both have material and formal constitutions. On the one hand, existence pertains to the act of being, or the facticity of a thing. For example, that table is being actual right when one sees it. On the other hand, essence pertains to the nature of a certain thing. It is that which makes a thing to be what it is; an abstracted concept which makes us see the connection between the entities that we are perceiving (say, a table) and the other things (say, a classroom filled with tables) belonging to the same genre or species (Lavine 71). Essence thus defines the nature of a certain thing or describes the aspect proper to the same. If we proceed with this line of argumentation, we can go on to claim that one can apply the concept of essence to pertain to reality of human persons. From here, we can move to identify conspicuous aspects which may be deemed ‘proper to human persons’, so as to glean what we may call â€Å"human essence† – i. e. , that a person is an existing being, that he shows characteristic elements proper to animals, but that he possess a faculty of intellect and freewill proper to him and him alone. In the ultimate analysis, one can say that the essence defining a human person lies in framing him as a living creature that shares certain characteristic traits of animals, but is endowed nevertheless with the unique faculty of intellect and freewill. Key to this process, it must be argued, is describing the determinate aspects of his very existence. To be sure, we may still identify a good number of characteristic elements that could equally describe what it means to be human person. And surely, we cannot stop at construing fundamental animality and rationality as aspects that sufficiently capture the â€Å"whatness† of humanity; for the reasoned construction of human essences does not entail that we have completely circumscribed the total reality of human persons. That having said, Jean Paul Sartre believes that humanity has no fixed essence. In other words, he believes that humanity cannot be framed within the parameters of determinateness or the limits we impose by construing human essences. At the very least, Sartre contends that we cannot define the contours of what it means to be a person because our freedom determines the unique manner of our very existence. J. Sartre’s contention fundamentally draws from his concept of absolute human freedom. A thinker who belongs to the erstwhile group of philosophers known as Existentialists, Sartre’s philosophy puts higher premium than most on appreciating human existence as a concrete and perpetual striving for one’s own becoming (Marias 436). This means that, for Sartre, we as human persons must constantly appreciate the fact we exist, more than the fact that we have an essence to frame our subsequent courses of actions. Sartre believes that â€Å"we are necessarily free†, and that the burden of â€Å"making† our own human essence lies in the choices that we make (Marias 440). Put in layman’s terms, Sartre believes that our freedom is absolute, and that, even more importantly, the choices we make determine the kind of person that we are. In a way, Sartre reverses the logic of human essence – i. e. , human actions does not flow from one’s own essence; instead, human essence is molded by the actions that we as persons commit to doing. For such reason, and as mentioned earlier, Sartre believes that humanity has no fixed essence. And insofar as the concrete form of our human essence takes cue only from the activities which human persons do, Sartre rests his case on the plain assumption that one’s life cannot be placed within any restricting concepts of essence, for any reason whatsoever (Marias 440-441). There are reasons to think, however, that Sartre may have framed human freedom quite radically and that his wholesale denial of an identifiable human essence may have been taken quite drastically. To this end, strains of Aristotle’s philosophy may be helpful in shedding light into some of the oversights Sartre may have committed in denying the tenability of human essence on account of absolute freedom. Firstly, it may be insightful to be reminded of the fact that Aristotle understands human essence as an aspect of life that does not effectively restrict human capacity to determine one’s path according to the sets of actions a person may willingly opt for. Human essence merely speaks of the kind or quality of existence which is construable from and identifiable in a certain thing (Lavine 71). It merely serves to help man appreciate what kind of creature he is by way of categories and definitions. Conversely, the concept of human essence does not, in any whatsoever, imply an absolute determination of human reality according to these set of classification or categorization. An example may help further situate the conundrum: when someone thinks of man as essentially a spiritual being – i. e. , the capacity for spiritual relations with God belongs properly to the characteristic trait of humanity – one does not rule out the possibility of not believing in God all together. Instead, one merely makes a statement about the humanity’s general preponderance to worshipping a deity, notwithstanding personal choice to dissent. The same goes true for human essence. Sartre thinks that humanity has not a fixed essence on account of a human freedom that determines a resulting human nature. Unfortunately for Sartre, human essence and human freedom are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a person’s freedom is only affirmed, if not accentuated by the fact that the human essence is defined by a tacit acknowledgement of man’s of basic rationality and capacity for freewill. Secondly, Sartre’s contention that human persons have no fixed essence is certainly difficult to argue precisely because human freedom is really not absolute and that humanity’s basic essence does not depend on human choice but on what nature has fundamentally given. Two aspects come into play with in this particular rebuttal. In the first place, Sartre may have taken human freedom quite radically in arguing that it our capacity to determine ourselves must be taken in absolute terms – i. e. , we can do whatever we wish; besides, we are the ones determining our resulting essence in the process. This, unfortunately, is untenable. For instance, if I, born as a human person, were to choose living like a dog, I would probably find certain dog-like activities incongruent with my natural bodily processes. I would find it difficult to bark, let alone walk in a four-legged manner; as these are not consistent with how was I born and raised. The point in contention here lies in arguing that human freedom, contrary to Sartre’s arguments, cannot be taken as an absolute determinant of human nature. On the contrary one may find it difficult to deliberately deviate from the demands of our basic human essence. Such difficulty should bring us more into an appreciation of our human nature not really as an aspect dependent on human choice, but an aspect that is made perfect by the choices that we make. Herein Aristotle’s teleological philosophy appears to take shape. According to Aristotle, essence precedes actions, or essence precedes existence; and that the perfection of all actions comes when they fulfill the essence in question (Marias 74). For instance, when a person uses critical thinking before making a judgment, such an act can be considered as a perfection of the man’s nature as a rational entity. The point in contention here lies in arguing that we cannot really do away with human nature. On the contrary, our actions must run consistent with it; for only when we act according to our nature can our actions be perfected according to our essence. By way of conclusion, I wish to end with a thought that dismisses Sartre’s contention – i. . , that humanity cannot find a common essence proper to himself and himself alone – on account of its patent inability to take into account the true state of human affairs. In the discussions that were developed, it was learned that Sartre’s refutation of human essence stems from his belief that human freedom is absolute, and that human persons are the ones molding their respective essences. However, there are surely good reasons to think that this p hilosophical stances does not hold water. First, it has been argued that the concept of human essence does not in any way defeat the reality of human freedom. Human nature and human freedom, it was argued, are not mutually exclusive. Second, Sartre appears to have neglected the fact that human freedom cannot be equated with the capacity to do what one wishes, regardless of what nature has already given. There is no such thing as an absolute freedom. And in the final analysis, we have to admit that we are bound by a certain essence, no matter how hard try to deviate from it.

Ethics in Animal Research

In terms of ethics, the main issue in animal testing is simply that many experimental animals suffer in ways which are unnatural to them. Through the use of genetic manipulation, obese mice , diabetic mice, and mice with Huntington’s disease can be created. Surgical experiments can be performed on larger animals – such as pigs, sheep, and dogs, as â€Å"practice† for human surgery. Normally, such things would not happen to these animals. Any suffering they might experience during such experiments is entirely the making of the researcher – and often these animals are purpose-bred and would not even exist if it were not for the research. These animals have been bred by us, for our use, and suffer on our behalf. As humans—the dominant species on the planet—we can treat animals in any way we choose, and do with them what we please. The question is, is it moral, or ethical, to treat them in ways which cause suffering – even if it is to our benefit? To some opponents of animal experimentation there are no benefits which justify the use of animals; others believe that animal experimentation is acceptable providing that suffering to the animals is minimized. Still others oppose animal testing selectively on the basis of the purpose of the tests, believing that animal experimentation for the advancement of medical science is acceptable, but cosmetic testing is not, for example. Are Animal Tests Reliable? Opponents of animal experimentation point to the obvious differences between humans and other animals as proof that animal research is not reliable. However, while it’s true that humans respond differently to certain substances than do other animal species (arsenic is not toxic to sheep, for example, and chocolate is toxic to dogs), there are many more similarities than there are differences – and toxicology differences don’t negate the validity of genetic studies, for example. Another pressing issue is one which was first voiced in 1655 by Edmund O’Meara, a physiologist, who said, â€Å"the miserable torture of vivisection places the body in an unnatural state. If an experimental animal is in pain, or suffers in any way, during an experiment, might that not call into question the accuracy of any results gained in the research? And if this is the case, doesn’t this further question the ethics of animal research? After all, using animals in this way is even more abhorrent if the accuracy of the results is in any doubt at all. The ability to achieve reliable, reproducible results is a cornerstone of the scientific method, and it is crucial that animal testing is able achieve those results A Matter of Practicality The majority of the most important advances in medical history in the twentieth century were made using animals as test subjects. It is doubtful whether many of these would have been achieved if animals were not available for use by medical researchers. There are alternatives to animal research (these will be examined in the next article in this series), but in many cases they are simply not acceptable substitutes for a living, breathing organism. The Institute for Laboratory Animal Research of the U. S.  National Academy of Sciences agrees that even the most sophisticated computer modeling is currently unable to successfully model the molecular and cellular interactions that occur in even the least complex of live organisms, particularly in an environmental context. Medical science is in agreement, for the most part, that the use of animals in medical research is a practical necessity. Both the United States and the British governments , among many others, support the use of animals in research, provided that suffering of experimental animals is minimized.

Gun Control Persuasive Essay

I. It’s late at night and you’re in bed. You hear a loud crashing noise coming from another room and it jolts you awake. You hear things being rustled and quiet whispers. You begin to panic and look around for something to protect yourself with. Nothing. Because you live in Ferguson and tried to purchase a gun to protect you from the coming storm of the Grand Jury decision that was to be released but found that the government banned the sale of guns a couple days before. II. [Ferguson Gun Shop video] III. OpinionGun Control is stripping away your right to protect yourself via the 2nd Amendment which states â€Å"a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.† I believe todays gun control laws are preventing us from doing so in a fashion that adequately protects us from today’s threats. There is a huge need for the public voice in this issue instead of it being left to our ineffective, corporation bought politicians. Read more: How does federalism protect against tyranny essay Body I. To better understand why the language of the 2nd amendment was used in such a way at to regarding arming individuals and maintaining militias, it’s necessary to understand the history of the people who wrote it. A foundation of political thought during the Revolutionary period was the well justified concern about political corruption and governmental tyranny. The right to bear arms was a potential check against tyranny. According to Sandra Alters in her book Gun Control: Restricting Rights or Protecting People, â€Å"without guns in the hands of the early patriots, the fledgling republic might have quickly turned tyrannical, disarmed the people at will.† II. [Ron Paul video] III. The argument made that gun control prevents violence is not a strong one. Guns don’t kill people: people kill people. Regulations controlling the sale of guns to a person do little to stop a criminal whose intent is to commit a crime. A gun doesn’t make a person kill someone committing a  robbery, their intent does. They could easily substitute the gun for a knife and have the same outcome. Mark Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School, is quoted in Sanford Levinson’s article noting, â€Å"that event like the recent mass murder at Virginia Tech would have immediately generated responses that 1. Effective gun control laws would have prevented the tragedy and 2. That if students or administrators been armed, instead of afflicted with a ‘gun free’ campus (save, of course, criminals), they could have effectively limited the carnage.† (Truth is whether gun control laws were effective here or not, a violent criminal act here was committed. Seems like gun control laws did not prevent it but rather impeded the possibility of the violence being stopped sooner. IV. We are given the right to bear arms so we should be able to adequately arm ourselves in a fashion that best protects us from today’s modern-day threats. There has already been an attack on U.S. soil lest we forget 9/11. The Boston Marathon bombing, the terrorists running through neighborhoods hiding in perhaps your backyard. The government officials who do not listen to the public voice, militarizing the police force, decides what we can or cannot own. We have seen a lot lately of police brutality, Ferguson MO, and here at home in Cleveland OH, L.A. riots over Rodney King. These examples of civil unrest and governmental backlash are unnerving to me and should be to you. With Uncle Sam flexing its political muscle in Ferguson to disarm the people, is that not a sign of governmental tyranny? De Facto Martial law? How do you protect yourself if in fact one day, and perhaps sooner than you think, there is a new Revolution we face. The government is failing to listen to the people, America is not popular in the world, and there is an underground movement already started against the government. Gun Control is the government’s way to hide the dissarment of the American people and cloak it in the name of violence prevention. Don’t believe that your government would ever turn on you? Neither did Japanese Americans the night after Pearl Harbor when they were rounded up and forced into governmental camps. Conclusion. I. I implore you to exercise your 2nd Amendment right and to support organizations like the NRA. Research the politicians you elect and see where they stand on this very important issue. Don’t be blinded by the rhetoric propaganda the government and media spews to the public sheep. One day your  life, liberties and freedom may very well rely on it, just like it did 300+ years ago. II. [Gun Control shortvid] Works Cited Alters, Sandra M. Gun Control: Restricting Rights or Protecting People? Detroit: Gale, 2007. Kentlink. Web. 15.Oct.2014. Wright, Stephen E. â€Å"Gun Control Laws Will Not Save Lives† Guns and Crime. Ed. Chrisitine Watkins. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2012. At Issue .Rpt. â€Å"Anti-Gun Group Common Sense Gun Laws and Real Common Sense.† StephenEWright.com. 2010. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 31.Oct.2014. Levinson, Sanford.†Guns and the Constitution: A Complex Relationship.†Reviews in American History. Volume 36.1(2008) Electronic Journal Center.Web.15.Oct.2014 Doeden, Matt. Gun Control: Preventing Violence or Crushing Constitutional Rights? Minneapolis, MN.: Twenty-First Century Books, 2012. OhioLinks. 15.Oct.2014

Information Literacy †What does it mean?

The 21st century has been defined as the â€Å"Information Age† due to the fact that there has been an overwhelming amount of â€Å"information output and information sources.†Ã‚   (ACRL, 2006, p. 1)   In a report released in 1989 by the American Library Association’s Presidential Committee on Information Literacy stated that, â€Å"No other change in American society has offered greater challenges than the emergence of the Information Age.† (Association of College & Research Libraries, 1989, n.a).   In order to combat the growing need for students to adapt to this age of information, professionals began working towards providing an educational environment that focuses on information literacy. To define Information literacy and narrow it down to one specific interpretation would be impossible, as it has been defined in a variety of ways since 1970.   To offer a broad definition, the American College of Research Libraries defines it as, â€Å"the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze and use information.   (ACRL, 2006, p. 1) Christina Bruce, has also defined information literacy as â€Å"the overarching literacy essential for 21st century living.†Ã‚   (Bruce, 2004, p. 2) A number of professionals continue to develop strategies and policies that will enhance the area of information literacy and enable educators to assist students as they take advantage of the information and communication avenues available to them.   (Bruce, 2004, p. 2) Christina Doyle was the first to introduce the Delphi technique into the realm of information literacy, in her 1992 study where a national panel of experts from the National Forum of Information Literacy conducted a study that took a deeper look into the National Education Goals.   (Doyle, 1994, p. 21) This technique was used to reach an agreement among professionals that â€Å"information Literacy is the ability to access, evaluate and use information from a variety of sources.†Ã‚   (Doyle 1992).   The outcome of this study defined the framework to show the critical nature of information literacy and the importance of working to create an information society. (Doyle, 1994, p. 21) The goals established by this committee lead to â€Å"successful education and employment for all Americans.†Ã‚   (Doyle, 1994, p. 21) Since 1980, a variety of information literacy skill models have been developed by educators, national and state organizations and national associations dedicated to information literacy.   These models are designed to support student educators as they attempt to integrate information into their classrooms, assist school librarians as they attempt to provide leadership in the school system, and to assist professionals as they attempt to stay in tune with technology advancements.   (Stripling, 1999, p. 54)   These models provide educators the means to teach students a series of processes and steps to follow as they evaluate and process information.   (Bruce, 2004, p. 3) Perhaps one of the most popular models is the Eisenberg and Berkowitz Big6 model.   Eisenberg and Berkowitz define their approach as, â€Å"a systematic approach to information and problem solving.†Ã‚   (Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1990, p. 1)   They also believe that through the model’s evolution that it has developed two additional definitions – â€Å"2) six broad skill areas are necessary for successful information problem solving. Students need to develop a range of competencies within each skill area. 3) a complete library and information skills curriculum are necessary.   Often referred to as a scope and sequence the Big Six Skills offers a systematic alternative to traditional K-12 frameworks that focus on location and access skills.†Ã‚   (Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1990, p. 1)     Ã‚  Ã‚  This approach has been widely accepted and implemented by many schools. Another model used to shape the way that students obtain and evaluate information is the Stripling and Potts Research Process Model.   It was originally developed in 1988 and was widely accepted â€Å"because it provided a guide through each state of creating a research paper.†Ã‚   (Reidling & Eisenberg, 2002, p. 7)   Stripling and Pitts suggest that students follow a 10 step research process within a outline that shows the student how information literacy skills build upon each other.  Ã‚   (Reidling & Eisenberg, 2002, p. 7) Research continues to progress in the area of information literacy, as information and technology continue to advance.   Education requires a learning model that is based upon the foundation of the real world – a model that is active and incorporated with reality, rather than separated.   (Association of College & Research Libraries, 1989, n.a).   For this reason, information literacy is a means of personal empowerment. It allows people to verify or refute expert opinion, and to become independent seekers of truth. (Association of College & Research Libraries, 1989). But how much information is too much? In business, Herbert E. Meyer, who has served as an editor for Fortune magazine and as vice-chairman of the National Intelligence Council, describes in his 1988 book, Real World Intelligence (2), the astonishment and growing distress of executives who `are discovering that the only thing as difficult and dangerous as managing a large enterprise with too little information is managing one with too much` (Meyer, 1987 p.29).   Meyer does, however, go on to stress that companies should focus and rely on public sources that are available to them for a great deal of their information.   (Meyer, 1987 p.36). It is important that a focus is placed upon differentiating between information literacy and information technology.   Information technology skills â€Å"enable an individual to use computers, software applications, databases, and other technologies to achieve a wide variety of academic, work-related, and personal goals.†Ã‚   (American Library Association, 2000, p. 3) Information literacy is, â€Å"a set of abilities requiring people to ‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively the needed information.†Ã‚   (American Library Association, 2000, p. 2)   Information literacy consists of more than searching through library reference materials – it’s a goal for learners and does not consist of just one technique or method.   (Gilton, 1994) The traditional way of library research is being abandoned as our society turns to the Internet for electronic resources.   Ã¢â‚¬Å"Increased access to technology has altered the way that students study, while the variety of electronic information resources has widened the potential resource base for all students.† (Orr, Appleton, & Wallin, 2001, p. 457) Approximately 75% of schools today have internet access and it is quickly becoming an important teaching tool in the educational classroom. (German & Bartolo, 2001, p. 1)   Multiple studies have been done showing the impact that the Internet is having on students.   It has been shown that 20 % of the college students do not make any judgment about the quality or reliability of the information that they obtain from the Internet or other sources. (Zabel, 2004, p. na) With the onset of the Internet and the challenge it has posed on the information literacy curriculum, professional organizations are partnering with educators to work with students in educational systems of all levels.   Austin Peay State University’s Woodward Library was one of 23 universities that created a program to assist students to â€Å"evaluate information available on the World Wide Web.†Ã‚   (Austin Peay State University Quick News, 2001, p. na) This venture supporting the tactics of Information Literacy was supported by the Association of College and Research Libraries and funded through the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant.   (Austin Peay State University Quick News, 2001, p. na) In an effort to support the importance of Information Literacy, efforts are being made to create evaluation tools for both students and educators to enable both to use the internet as an effective resource.  Ã‚   Project 2061, a project sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has been created to reinforce the methods of information literacy in the area of science and mathematics.   (German & Bartolo, 2001, p. 1) Information literacy is challenged by the constantly changing environment of the Information Age.   The challenge of education is to continue to develop â€Å"creative and rational thinkers who can solve problems and who can be reflective.†Ã‚   (Doyle, 1994, p. 44)   The Big6 approach to information problem solving is still the most widely used model to reinforce and teach information literacy, as approximately 84,000 teachers have been trained in the program. (Serim, 2002, p. na) Both national and international organizations are reacting to the digital age and the implications on education by designing effective intervention programs and methods.   (Serim, 2002, p. na) Though there is a great deal of work yet to be done, the foundation and practices of information literacy provide an environment where students can strive to meet the challenge. References Acrl. (2006, August 28). Association of College and Research Libraries. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/acrlinfolit/infolitoverview/introtoinfolit/introinfolit.htm#what Ala. (2000). Information Literacy Competency Standards (Publication). Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries. American Library Association. (2000). Information Literacy Competency Standards (Publication). Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries. Austin Peay State University Quick News. (2001, July 30). APSU works on information literacy. Austin Peay State University Quick News. Retrieved from http://www.apsu.edu/quicknews/2001/0730/literacy.htm Bruce, C. S. (2004). Information Literacy as a Catalyst for Educational Change (Rep.). Yeppoon, Queensland: Queensland University of Technology. Chisholm, M. (1989). Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report (Rep.). Washington, D.C.: Association of College and Research Libraries American Library Association. Doyle, C. S. (1994). Information Literacy in an Information Society: A Concept for the Information Age. Syracuse, New York: ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology. Eisenberg, M. B., & Berkowitz, R. E. (1990). Information problem-solving: the big six skills approach to library & information skills instruction. Norwood, New Jersey: Alex Publishing Corporation. German, L., & Bartolo, L. M. (2001). Science and Information Literacy on the Internet: Using the Standards Created by the Association of College and Research Libraries and Project 2061 to Create a Science Web Page Evaluation Tool (Rep.). Denver, Colorado: Association of College and Research Libraries. Gilton, D. L. (1994). A World of Difference: Preparing for Information Literacy Instruction for Diverse Groups. MultiCultural Review, 3, 54-62. Orr, D., Appleton, M.,   & Wallin, M. (2001). Information literacy and flexible delivery: Creating a conceptual framework and model. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 27, 457-463. Reidling, A. M., & Eisenberg, M. (2002). Learning to Learn: A Guide to Becoming Information Literate (Teens the Library Series). New York, New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. Serim, F. (2002, May/June 10). The Importance of Contemporary Literacy in the Digital Age: A Response to Digital Transformation: A Framework for Information Communication Technologies (ICT) Literacy. The Big6: Information Skills for Student Achievement. Retrieved from http://www.big6.com/showarticle.php?id=157 Stripling, B. K. (1999). Learning and Libraries in an Information Age: principles and practice. Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited. Zabel, D. (2004). A Reaction to †Information Literacy and Higher Education. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30, 17-21.