Thursday, August 15, 2013

Welcome to World Problems and Advocacy Section One (4pm to 7pm EST)

Hello everyone. Here is where we will be doing our Current events blog. A central component of this course is to learn about current global social problems.

Each student will develop expertise on a particular global social problem by following current events on that particular problem throughout the trimester. Each week you will write an entry (about 300 words) on a newsworthy topic in your problem area. This story should be GLOBAL in nature, not the U.S.A. Your goal is to become an expert on the problem. Each week you will find at least one event in the news from that week and write a summary and a brief analysis of the significance of the event(s) and tie it to something or things that we have been talking about in class or from your readings. You will provide a citation (web link) to your source(s) for that week. Please include your name, the date and time of the post, and the topic of the title of the blog. List the source as a web link (URL) at the end of your blog.

You will need regular access to a serious news source. Many online news sources, including online news databases (such as LexisNexis) and major national newspapers can be found through http://news.google.com . Watch that your source is reputable. Your current events log will be posted each Tuesday by 9 p.m. EST. You will also be expected to comment on at least one other person’s blog each week.

3 comments:

  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23126814

    Where are the missing 90-year-olds?

    In this article by Ruth Alexander; she points out the 2010 Census in the United Kingdom estimated a higher percentage of people living in their 90’s. When the census was published in 2011 it gave an alarming surprise that thousands of people were missing. Alexander states the data revealed 30,000 people unaccounted. The question was asked, where were these people?

    The article states the life expectancy age has increased in developed countries over the last 200 hundred years by 2.5 years each decade. This increase has been due to improvements of children and maternal mortality, low mortality rates among children and adults, and smoking has dropped. Alexander points out the “average global life expectancy has increased by 6 years from birth”. Now in the UK the life expectancy of a man aged 65 has increased by 14 years since the early 1980s and stands currently plus 21 years.

    So where are these 90 year old people? Alexander researched and found out that these individuals have died. When statisticians estimated the projected ages of living persons in the UK; they had simply over estimated. Individuals living in the UK did not live as long as they predicted. The article goes on to talk about how life expectancy has increased in other areas of the world such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

    This article ties in with our readings about global inequalities. In our book, Global problems, on page 18 in table 1.1 it shows life expectancy at birth from high to low income countries. Our readings suggest even with technology, medical and economic improvements in parts of the world, poor countries continue to fall behind. There has been a slight increase in countries like India and China due to improvement of life conditions. However, some parts of Africa the life expectancy has decreased. This decrease is caused by the epidemic of HIV/AIDS.

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  2. Dr. Hansford, I'm having difficulties blogging, I posted my blog but it does not appear here, I must have done it somewhere else, sorry, it's the first time, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, could you give some instructions? Thanks, Michaela

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