Abstract: In modern digital communication, analyzing signals and reducing noise is essential in producing precise and audible sound files, accurately rendering images, or any process in which continuous analog input data needs to be digitized and mathematically manipulated. A prime example is a speech, in which even slight amounts of noise can lead from anywhere to slightly distorted to completely unintelligible sounds. Because human ears are relatively more sensitive to higher-frequency sounds than lower-frequency sounds, we are vulnerable to these unwanted noises, mainly consisting of high-frequency sounds compared to main sound sources such as voice. Thus, to emphasize and enhance the original signal, numerous systems have been designed to diminish noise and amplify the intended signal using filters (which serve to suppress certain characteristics of a signal. These noise-removing systems can be further improved by implementing proper algorithms and mathematical windowing functions to increase effectiveness. In this paper, we employ combinations of a Low Pass Filter (LPF) and various windows to find the best-fit LPF window combination to achieve the highest noise reduction efficiency. We implicated various filter designs at simple trigonometric functions and varying samples to substantiate and illustrate the noise-removing efficiency of nine unique selected filter designs. To collect data, we used MATLAB to analyze the audio files and execute the Fast Fourier Transform onto the original continuous analog voice.

Keywords: Noise reduction, Acoustics, Algorithm, MatLab, Fast Fourier Transform), Low Pass Filter

References
[1] Bhagat, R. and Kaur, R. (2013) Improved Audio Filtering Using Extended High Pass Filters.

[2] Singla, Er.M. and Singh, Mr.H. (2015) Frequency Based Audio Noise Reduction Using Butter Worth, Chebyshev & Elliptical Filters. International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication.

http://www.ijritcc.org/download/browse/Volume_3_Issues/October_15
_Volume_3_Issue_10/1446450414_02-11-2015.pdf

[3] Singh, M. and Garg, Er.N.K. (2014) Audio Noise Reduction Using Butter Worth Filter.
http://www.ijcotjournal.org/volume-6/number-1/IJCOT-V6P305.pdf

[4] Gavel, A., LalSahu, H., Sharma, G. and Rahi, P.K. (2015) Design of Lowpass Fir Filter Using Rectangular and Hamming Window Techniques.
http://ijiset.com/vol3/v3s8/IJISET_V3_I8_33.pdf

[5] Shenoi, B.A. (2006) Introduction to Digital Signal Processing and Filter Design. 1st Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Canada.

Abstract: The study of epigenetics is an essential area of cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and addiction research. Epigenetic disorder involves various mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone modification, and RNA regulation, which activate or repress gene expression. The exposure of a cell to Benzo(a)pyrene BaP is significantly associated with methylation levels at CpGs. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) result in altered methylation status and deregulation of the biotin homeostasis pathway, which causes carcinogenesis. Presented research has focused on the stereochemical and thermodynamical aspects of BaP and its derivatives, which are the developmental and reproductive carcinogens that are epigenetic modifiers. BPDE was shown to bind to DNA, which resulted in the methylated DNA formation and alteration of DNA methyltransferase (DNMT). In this paper, open-source molecular editing programs such as Avogadro and Gaussian with an auto-optimization feature that can calculate the theoretical values of a molecule’s physicochemical properties are used to model the compounds. The program enables us to build virtually any biochemical compounds and will find the thermodynamic stability or safety of the nanoparticles can be assessed by optimal Enthalpy(kJ/mol), and the activity of the compounds is determined by the values of Dipole Moment(DM, Debye) and Electrostatic potential maps(EPMs). Density-functional theory (DFT), which is one of the most popular computational methods, is used in computational quantum mechanical modeling to study electronic structure.

Keywords – Methylated DNA, epigene, DNA methyltransferase(DNMT), molecular editing programs,  physicochemical properties

References

1. La, DK; Swenberg, JA (1996). "DNA adducts: biological markers of exposure and potential applications to risk assessment". Mutation Research/Reviews in Genetic Toxicology. 365 (1–3): 129–146. doi:10.1016/s0165-1110(96)90017-2. PMID 8898994.

2. Farmer, P. "Biomarkers of exposure and effect for environmental carcinogens, and their applicability to human molecular epidemiological studies". Public Health Applications of Human Biomonitoring. U.S. EPA. Retrieved 22 June 2011.

3. Marnett LJ (March 1999). "Lipid peroxidation-DNA damage by malondialdehyde". Mutat. Res. 424 (1–2): 83–95. doi:10.1016/s0027-5107(99)00010-x. PMID 10064852.

4. Aykan NF (2015). "Red Meat and Colorectal Cancer". Oncol Rev. 9 (1): 288. doi:10.4081/oncol.2015.288. PMC 4698595. PMID 26779313.

5. Wolk A (2017). "Potential health hazards of eating red meat". J. Intern. Med. 281 (2): 106–122. doi:10.1111/joim.12543. PMID 27597529.

6. Hemeryck LY, Van Hecke T, Vossen E, De Smet S, Vanhaecke L (2017). "DNA adductomics to study the genotoxic effects of red meat consumption with and without added animal fat in rats". Food Chem. 230: 378–387. doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.129. PMID 28407925.

7. Kastan MB (April 2008). "DNA damage responses: mechanisms and roles in human disease: 2007 G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award Lecture". Molecular Cancer Research. 6 (4): 517–24. doi:10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-08-0020. PMID 18403632.

Abstract: 

A Novel Approach Using Designed Algorithms for Long-term Injuries Caused by Fall

1                                                          

Abstract –According to the CDC, 3 million people are treated yearly for fall related  injuries. Fall has become a major public health problem and the second leading cause of unintentional deaths. Epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, visual impairment, and neuropathy are just a few of the illnesses that can increase the risk of falling. The purpose of this experiment was to use a fall detection algorithm to create a protective mechanism. An algorithm was developed with the use of Arduino and tri-axial accelerometers and gyro sensors. After calibrating the sensors accurately and coding in the Arduino IDE, the accelerometers were placed on a CPR manikin to model the fall of a person. After recording the slant height of the manikin during its fall, the data illustrated that the tilt of 67.01 degrees and the coordinates of (7.78, -4.08, and 8.79) is when the gear must be triggered. Through the aggregation of data,  the ideal location to place the sensors was identified. Using this data, an appropriate airbag mechanism was designed. This is particularly helpful in cases where the elderly have a fall.  The expansion of this project to a global scale can save millions of lives and prevent injuries from other accidental falls. 

Keywords: Epilepsy, Algorithm, Seizures, Fall, Tonic-Clonic

References

1. Verma, Santosh K, et al. “Falls and Fall-Related Injuries among Community-Dwelling Adults in the United States.” PloS One, Public Library of Science, 15 Mar. 2016, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4792421

2.   “Bone Fractures.” Bone Fractures - Better Health Channel, https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/bone-fractures. 

3.  NHS Choices, NHS, https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/epilepsy/symptoms/#:~:text=A%20tonic%2Dclonic%20seizure%2C%20previously,may%20fall%20to%20the%20floor. 

4. “Tonic-Clonic (Grand Mal) Seizures.” Johns Hopkins Medicine, https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/epilepsy/tonic-clonic-grand-mal-seizures. 

5. “Preventing Epilepsy.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 Sept. 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/epilepsy/preventing-epilepsy.htm#:~:text=Use%20safety%20belts%2C%20child%20passenger,of%20brain%20injuries%20from%20falls.

Abstract: Pharmaceuticals are very important due to their role in helping humans in many ways. People tend to flush these pharmaceuticals once they expire. Once flushed, it ends up in water ecosystems, which affects both the water and the different organisms that inhabit those environments. One organism that pharmaceuticals can affect is Chlorophyta, or better known as Green algae. Cetirizine and Loratadine, or more commonly referred to as Zyrtec and Claritin, are medicines used for allergy purposes that will be used for this study. 

In this research study, numerous items were used. These items consisted of the Chlorophyta plant, the two pharmaceuticals (in serum form), a hood fume, pipettes, graduated cylinders, a beaker, test tubes, 1 1000mL wheaton bottle, 5 125mL wheaton bottles, water, and 5 250mL erlenmeyer flasks.

Concentrations (10%, 1%, .1%, .01%, 0%) of the pharmaceuticals were made by measuring 90mL of water and 10mL of each pharmaceutical. The Zyrtec concentrations were poured into 125mL wheaton bottles, while the Claritin concentrations were poured into 250 ml erlenmeyer flasks. 5mL of Chlorophyta was then pipetted into 45 test tubes to later have the concentration percents pipetted into them. Data was collected by using a spectrophotometer daily.

As a result, it is unclear whether the hypothesis was supported or not. For future research, it is recommended to use different pharmaceuticals, try a different type of algae, see what specific ingredients cause the medicine to affect the algae, etc.

Keywords: Chlorophyta, Cetirizine, Loratadine, Pharmaceuticals, Concentrations

References

1. Algae in Aquatic Ecosystems Office of Water Quality. In.gov. Retrieved 15 January 2022, from https://www.in.gov/idem/files/factsheet_owq_sw_algae_aquatic.pdf. 
2. Buser, H., Poiger, T., & Müller, M. (1999). Occurrence and Environmental Behavior of the Chiral Pharmaceutical Drug Ibuprofen in Surface Waters and in Wastewater. Environmental Science & Technology, 33(15), 2529-2535. https://doi.org/10.1021/es981014w       
3. Clissold, S., Sorkin, E., & Goa, K. (1989). Loratadine. Drugs, 37(1), 42-57. https://doi.org/10.2165/00003495-198937010-00003 
4. Corsico, A., Leonardi, S., Licari, A., Marseglia, G., Miraglia del Giudice, M., & Peroni, D. et al. (2019). Focus on the cetirizine use in clinical practice: a reappraisal 30 years later. Multidisciplinary Respiratory Medicine, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40248-019-0203-6 
5. Xing, R., Ma, W., Shao, Y., Cao, X., Chen, L., & Jiang, A. (2019). Factors that affect the growth and photosynthesis of the filamentous green algae, Chaetomorpha valida, in static sea cucumber aquaculture ponds with high salinity and high pH. Peerj, 7, e6468. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6468 
6. Xin, X., Huang, G., & Zhang, B. (2021). Review of aquatic toxicity of pharmaceuticals and personal care products to algae. Journal Of Hazardous Materials, 410, 124619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.124619 

Abstract: With the COVID-19 pandemic and other global conflicts taking over the media, the rapid dissemination of misinformation online has drawn attention to the problem of fake news. Fake news can have detrimental effects, as demonstrated by the impact of the online anti-masking advocacy in exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic. Various solutions have been proposed regarding the detection of fake news, with one of the most promising being deep learning. This study aims to advance current deep learning solutions in the field of fake news detection with the development of a CNN-RNN (convolutional neural network-recurrent neural network) with a complementary URL classifier. In constructing the fake news classifier, datasets were run through pre-processing techniques before being used for training. The model was subsequently tested on three datasets, spanning different areas of news: ISOT (general news), ReCOVery (COVID-19 news), and FA-KES (Syrian war news). A user interface additionally facilitated public access to the fake news classifier. After training the model on the ISOT and ReCOVery datasets, the model was able to achieve overall testing accuracies of 0.9898 (ISOT), 0.8466 (ReCOVery), and 0.5441 (FA-KES). Overall, this study broadens the options with which fake news can be identified. 

Keywords – CNN-RNN (convolutional neural network-recurrent neural network), deep learning, fake news, ISOT, FA-KES, ReCOVery, UI (user interface) 

References

1. Ahmed H, Traore I, Saad S. “Detecting opinion spams and fake news using text classification”, Journal of Security and Privacy, Volume 1, Issue 1, Wiley, January/February 2018.

2. Ahmed H, Traore I, Saad S. (2017) “Detection of Online Fake News Using N-Gram Analysis and Machine Learning Techniques. In: Traore I., Woungang I., Awad A. (eds) Intelligent, Secure, and Dependable Systems in Distributed and Cloud Environments. ISDDC 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 10618. Springer, Cham (pp. 127- 138).

3. BBC. (2020, May 24). Coronavirus: Which health claims are circulating online? BBC News.

4. Buchanan, T., & Benson, V. (2019). Spreading disinformation on Facebook: do trust in message source, risk propensity, or personality affect the organic reach of “fake news”?. Social media+ society, 5(4), 2056305119888654.

5. Desai, S., Mooney, H., & Oehrli, J. A. (2020). Research guides:“fake news,” lies and propaganda: how to sort fact from fiction: what is “fake news”. Michigan University.

6. Elhadad, M. K., Li, K. F., & Gebali, F. (2019, November). A novel approach for selecting hybrid features from online news textual metadata for fake news detection. In International Conference on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing (pp. 914-925). Springer, Cham.

7. Gottfried, J. (2020). Around three-in-ten Americans are very confident they could fact-check news about COVID-19. Pew Research Center.

8. Jain, A. K., & Gupta, B. B. (2018). PHISH-SAFE: URL features-based phishing detection system using machine learning. In Cyber Security (pp. 467-474). Springer, Singapore.

9. Mazzeo, V., Rapisarda, A., & Giuffrida, G. (2021). Detection of Fake News on COVID-19 on Web Search Engines. Frontiers in Physics, 9.

10. Nasir, J. A., Khan, O. S., & Varlamis, I. (2021). Fake news detection: A hybrid CNN-RNN based deep learning approach. International Journal of Information Management Data Insights, 1(1), 100007. 

11. Newberry, C. (2022, February 28). How the Facebook algorithm works in 2022. Hootsuite. 

12. Saleh, H., Alharbi, A., & Alsamhi, S. H. (2021). OPCNN-FAKE: Optimized convolutional neural network for fake news detection. IEEE Access, 9, 129471-129489. 

13. Salem, F. K. A., Al Feel, R., Elbassuoni, S., Jaber, M., & Farah, M. (2019, July). Fa-kes: A fake news dataset around the syrian war. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (Vol. 13, pp. 573-582). 

14. Sample, C., Jensen, M. J., Scott, K., McAlaney, J., Fitchpatrick, S., Brockinton, A., ... & Ormrod, A. (2020). Interdisciplinary lessons learned while researching fake news. Frontiers in Psychology, 2947. 

15. Snopes media bias rating. AllSides. (2021, August 18).

Abstract: African Americans are often viewed as a monolithic group in the United States because Black people generally have been subjected to the same racism and prejudice throughout American society. While African Americans have had many similar experiences in the United States, their opinions on the current political, social, and economic worldview may differ based on ethnic groups. The author chose to closely examine the extent to which family history and decade of one's arrival (or one's family's arrival) to the United States, and the region from which one (or one's family) originated, might influence the current political, social and economic worldview of adolescent and adult Americans who self-identify as Black. In order to study the effects of these variables, I administered surveys to 146 African American adults in suburban New York City. The online survey consisted of four parts. These parts included views on economic success, law enforcement, current events, specifically the Black Lives Matter Movement, and Black representation in American society. Ultimately the study found statistically significant differences between region/decade of arrival and societal world views. There were also gender gaps.

Keywords: African-American, representation, BLM, Afro-Caribbean, African, economic success

References

1. Bunyasi, T. L. (2019, February 6). Do All Black Lives Matter Equally to Black People? Respectability Politics and the Limitations of Linked Fate | Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Cambridge Core. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-race-ethnicity-and-politics/article/do-all-black-lives-matter-equally-to-black-people-respectability-politics-and-the-limitations-of-linked-fate/CBC842CABC6F8FAA6C892B08327B09DA
2. Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Jones, M. R., & Porter, S. R. (2019, December 26). Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: an Intergenerational Perspective*. OUP Academic. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353?login=true
3. Davis, R., & Hendricks, N. (2007, January 1). Immigrants and Law Enforcement: A Comparison of Native-Born and Foreign-Born Americans’ Opinions of the Police. International Review of Victimology. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026975800701400105
4. Fan, Y. (2019, February 13). Gender and cultural bias in student evaluations: Why representation matters. Plos One.

Abstract: Pneumonia, a fatal lung disease, is caused by infection of Streptococcus pneumoniae; it is detected by chest x-rays that reveal inflammation of the alveoli. However, the efficiency by which it is diagnosed can be improved through the use of artificial intelligence. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a form of artificial intelligence, have recently demonstrated enhanced accuracy when classifying images. This study used CNNs to analyze chest x-rays and predict the probability the patient has pneumonia. Furthermore, a comprehensive investigation was conducted, examining the function of various components of the CNN, in the context of pneumonia x-rays. This study was able to achieve significantly high performance, making it viable for clinical implementation. Furthermore, the architecture of the proposed model is applicable to various other diseases, and can thus be used to optimize the disease diagnosis industry.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, disease diagnosis, pneumonia, convolutional neural networks, machine learning

References

1. Albawi,  S.,  Mohammed,  T.  A.,  &  Al-Zawi,  S.   (2017).   Understanding  of  a  convolutionalneural network.  In 2017 international conference on engineering and technology (icet) (p. 1-6).  doi:  10.1109/ICEngTechnol.2017.8308186
2. Bebis,  G., & Georgiopoulos,  M.  (1994).  Feed-forward neural networks. IEEE Potentials, 13(4), 27-31.  doi:  10.1109/45.329294
3. Bjorck,  J.,  Gomes,  C.,  Selman,  B.,  &  Weinberger,  K.  Q.   (2018).   Understanding  batch normalization. arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.02375.
4. Eckle, K., & Schmidt-Hieber, J. (2019). A comparison of deep networks with relu activation function and linear spline-type methods. Neural Networks,110, 232–242.
5. Himavathi,  S.,  Anitha,  D., & Muthuramalingam,  A.  (2007).  Feedforward neural network implementation in fpga using layer multiplexing for effective resource utilization. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks,18(3), 880-888.  doi:  10.1109/TNN.2007.891626
6. Ho, Y., & Wookey, S.  (2019).  The real-world-weight cross-entropy loss function:  Modeling the costs of mislabeling. IEEE Access,8, 4806–4813.
7. Huss-Lederman, S., Jacobson, E. M., Johnson, J. R., Tsao, A., & Turnbull, T.  (1996).  Implementation of strassen’s algorithm for matrix multiplication.  In Supercomputing’96:Proceedings of the 1996 acm/ieee conference on supercomputing(pp. 32–32).
8. Kermany, D., Zhang, K., Goldbaum, M., et al. (2018). Labeled optical coherence tomography (oct) and chest x-ray images for classification. Mendeley data,2(2).
9. LeCun, Y., Haffner, P., Bottou, L., & Bengio, Y.  (1999).  Object recognition with gradient-based  learning. In Shape, contour and grouping in computer vision (pp.  319–345). Springer.
10. Liu, K., Kang, G., Zhang, N., & Hou, B. (2018). Breast cancer classification based on fully-connected layer first convolutional neural networks. IEEE Access,6, 23722-23732. doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2817593
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Abstract: The focus of this project is the study of catalysts for the conversion of methane to methanol as a new energy source. The methanol economy may prove to solve the problems that other energy sources create. Transition metals are treasured for their ability to assist with catalyzing reactions, including those which are used in new energy sources such as methanol based. In the past, transition metals have been used for the conversion of methane to methanol. Their catalytic efficiencies of Titanium oxides are modeled and explained based on the compound’s electron structure and how the catalytic efficiency could be improved even more by forcing the catalyst to react with methane in different ways (which are much easier to study computationally than experimentally, due to economic reasons). Catalytic oxidation reactions are crucial for chemical synthesis in pharmaceutical and petrochemicals industries. Prior research results have been controversial regarding the efficiencies of each catalyst. However, the contradictory results are due to inconsistencies of the theoretical and computational models which I reconcile in my model.

References

[1]Wes, Hickman. "Peak Oil and Public Health: Political Common Ground?" ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 08 Aug. 2011. Web. 13 June 2013.

[2] Olah, George A., Alain Goeppert, and G. K. Surya. Prakash.Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy. Weinheim [an Der Bergstrasse, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2006. Print. 

[3] Kulik, Heather J., and Nicola Marzari. "Electronic Structure and Reactivity of Transition Metal Complexes."Standford.edu. Department of Education, 2010. Web. <http://www.stanford.edu/~hkulik/www/Publications_files/05c14.pdf>. 

[4] Božović, Andrea, Stefan Feil, Gregory K. Koyanagi, Albert A. Viggiano, Xinhao Zhang, Maria Schlangen, Helmut Schwarz, and Diethard K. Bohme. "Conversion of Methane to Methanol: Nickel, Palladium, and Platinum (d9) Cations as Catalysts for the Oxidation of Methane by Ozone at Room Temperature."Chemistry - A European Journal16.38 (2010): 11605-1610. Print. 

[5] Periana, R. A., D. J. Taube, S. Gamble, H. Taube, T. Satoh, and H. Fujii. "ChemInform Abstract: Platinum Catalysts for the High-Yield Oxidation of Methane to a Methanol Derivative."ChemInform29.29 (1998): No. Print. 

[6] Zhang, Rui, and Martin Newcomb. "Laser Flash Photolysis Generation of High-Valent Transition Metal−Oxo Species: Insights from Kinetic Studies in Real Time."Accounts of Chemical Research41.3 (2008): 468-77. Print. 

[7] Betley, Theodore A., Qin Wu, Troy Van Voorhis, and Daniel G. Nocera. "Electronic Design Criteria for O−O Bond Formation via Metal−Oxo Complexes."Inorganic Chemistry47.6 (2008): 1849-861. Print. 

[8] Metz, Ricardo B. "Methane-to-Methanol Conversion by Gas-Phase Transition Metal Oxide Cations: Experiment and Theory." (n.d.): n. pag. Print. 

[9] E. R. Davidson, Adv. Quantum Chem. 6, 235 (1972).

[10] Young, David C.  Computational Chemistry: A Practical Guide for Applying Techniques to Real World Problems. New York: Wiley, 2001. Print.

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World Scienti®c, Singapore (1995).

[12] "Advances in electronic structure theory: GAMESS a decade later" M.S.Gordon, M.W.Schmidt pp. 1167-1189, in "Theory and Applications of Computational Chemistry: the first forty years" C.E.Dykstra, G.Frenking, K.S.Kim, G.E.Scuseria (editors), Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2005.

Abstract: This paper attempts to answer the conundrum of whether the meaning of life is subjective by analyzing Søren Kierkegaard’s arguments in his work Stages of Life’s Way, and discusses various interpretations of life’s meaningfulness by analyzing the different viewpoints of philosophers— Daan Evers, Richard Taylor, and Susan Wolf. The first part of the paper analyzes Søren Kierkegaard’s three stages of life: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. The paper then analyzes the notion that the meaning of life is personal and there may be endless subjective ways in which one can live a meaningful life via Richard Taylor’s evaluation of Sisyphus’s life in both standard form analysis and its analysis diagrams and Susan Wolf’s remarks on subjectivity and objectivity. We also explore Daan Evers’s claim that the meaning of life requires the existence of objective values. In addition to the Standard Form Analysis, Diagrams for the Logics are also introduced and shown. When considering that the meaning of life is subjective (that meaningfulness comes from within), one must observe the opposite view: that meaningfulness comes from objective values existing outside of the individual. Therefore, we examine two hypothetical versions of Sisyphus, one where he rolls the stone up a hill and builds a beautiful temple, and the other where he rolls the stone for no apparent reason but enjoys doing it. While some philosophers use the second hypothetical claim to discredit subjectivism, arguing that a positive attitude is not enough to project meaning onto one’s existence, subjectivists perceive life from their own individuality—that each belief is unique. The paper concludes that everyone views life subjectively, even if they hold objective values. 

References

1. Evers, D. 2017. “Meaning in Life and the Metaphysics of Value,” De Ethica. A Journal of Philosophical, Theological and Applied Ethics, Vol. 4:3, 27-44.

2. Taylor, R. 2000. “The Meaning of Life,” in Ethics: History, Theory, and Contemporary Issues, Cahn, Markie, (Eds.). New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 948-953.

3. “Chapter 2: An Expression of Gratitude to Lessing.” Kierkegaard&#39;s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, by Søren Kierkegaard et al., Princeton University Press, 1974, pp.63–86.

4. “Chapter 2: Selections from &#39;Either/Or&#39; and &#39;Fear and Trembling&#39;.” Kierkegaard&#39;s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, by Søren Kierkegaard et al., Princeton University Press, 1974, pp. 30–63.

5. Hudecki, Dennis. “Kierkegaard&#39;s Concept of Self.” Philosophy 2553F: Forerunners of Existentialism. Hudecki, Dennis. “Kierkegaard&#39;s Concluding Unscientific Postscript.” Philosophy 2553F: Forerunners of Existentialism.

6. Hudecki, Dennis. “Some Key Concepts in Fear and Trembling.” Philosophy 2553F: Forerunners of Existentialism.

Abstract: The responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have varied significantly across different political systems. Numerous factors may be attributable to the differing rates of infection rates across various countries such as availability of universal healthcare and reliance on public transportation. In fact, the political system of a particular country may determine how that country has addressed the pandemic and thereby affect that country’s infection rates. This paper will compare the political systems, pandemic responses and infection rates of countries. First, each country’s political systems will be briefly described. Next, the two countries’ respective infection rates and pandemic responses will be compared. 
As part of my analysis, I will examine how the US political system may have resulted in more effective or less effective pandemic strategies. Finally, drawing from the strategies used by other countries, two specific suggestions for improving the U.S.’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic will be considered. In a vast country like the US, the best way to mitigate the crisis is to handle it region-by-region due to the vast disparity in economy and population state-by-state rather than governmental intervention. Compared to other countries, the United States is more decentralized and naturally, states have gotten more power regarding laws and quarantines during this crisis (Dziobek, 2010). That being said, although the countries of the world have indeed done much to quarantine the crisis, states must keep control of individual laws (Dziobek, 2010). Specifically, states like California, Florida, Texas, New York and Georgia have the worst second wave of cases in the country. Since the virus is affecting states in different ways than ever imagined, state governments should be moderating the virus based on their situation rather than national lockdowns like in other countries. With five states accounting for more than 40% of all COVID-19 cases, this solution shows much promise for specifically this country.

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020). Geographic Differences in COVID-19 Cases, Deaths, and Incidence — United States, February 12–April 7, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e4.htm#:~:text=Community%20transmission%20of%20COVID%2D,of%20COVID%2D19.
   Cirillo, P., Taleb, N.N. Tail risk of contagious diseases. Nat. Phys. 16, 606–613 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0921-x.

2. Ding, Lei, and Alvaro Sanchez. “COVID-19 and the Philadelphia Fed.” Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Apr. 2020, philadelphiafed.org/covid-19/covid-19-equity-in-recovery/what-small-businesses-will-be-impacted. 

3. Dziobek, Claudia, et al. “Measuring Fiscal Decentralization – Exploring the IMF’s Databases.” International Monetary Fund, International Monetary Fund, www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2011/wp11126.pdf.

4. Eckfeldt, Bruce. “Key Questions to Guide Your Post-Pandemic Plan.” Inc.com, Mansueto Ventures, 25 Apr. 2020, www.inc.com/bruce-eckfeldt/key-questions-to-guide-your-post-pandemic-plan.html. 

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6. Jiang, I. (2020). Here's the difference between an 'essential' business and a 'nonessential' business as more than 30 states have imposed restrictions. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-a-nonessential-business-essential-business-coronavirus-2020-3

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