Piaget & Vygotsky Essays (1985 words) - Constructivism,

Piaget & Vygotsky Piaget and Vygotsky Theories of Cognitive Development Everyday life is characterized by conscious purpose. From reaching for food to designing an experiment, our actions are directed at goals. This purpose reveals itself partly in our conscious awareness and partly in the organization of our thoughts and actions. Cognition is the process involved in thinking and mental activity, such as attention, memory and problem solving. Much past and present theory has emphasized the parallels between the articulated prepositional structure of language and the structure of an internal code or ?language of thought'. In this paper I will discuss language and cognition and two famous theorist who were both influential in forming a more scientific approach to analyzing the process of cognitive development. Jean Piaget There are those that say that Jean Piaget was the first to take children's thinking seriously. Although Piaget never thought of himself as a child psychologist his real interest was epistemology, the theory of knowledge, which, like physics, was considered a branch of philosophy until Piaget came along and made it a science (2000). Children and their reasoning process fascinated Piaget. He began to suspect that observing how the child's mind develops might discover the key to human knowledge. Piaget's insight opened a new window into the inner workings of the mind. Jean Piaget has made major theoretical and practical contributions to our understanding of the origins and evolution of knowledge. Stages of Childhood Development In his work Piaget identified stages of mental growth. He theorized that all children progressed through stages of cognitive development. He discovered that children think and reason differently at different periods in their lives. Piaget believed that everyone passed through a sequence of four qualitatively distinct stages. They are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. In the sensorimotor stage, occurring from birth to age 2, the child is concerned with gaining motor control and learning about physical objects. This stage promotes that thought is based primarily on action. Every time an infant does any action such as holding a bottle or learning to turn over, they are learning more about their bodies and how it relates to them and their environment. Piaget maintains that there are six sub-stages in the sensorimotor stage although children pass through three major achievements. In the preoperational stage, from ages 2 to 7, the child is preoccupied with verbal skills. At this point the child can name objects and reason intuitively. Piaget has divided this stage into the preoperational phase and the intuitive phase. In the preoperational phase children use language and try to make sense of the world but have a much less sophisticated mode of thought than adults. They need to test thoughts with reality on a daily basis and do not appear to be able to learn from generalizations made by adults. In the intuitive phase the child slowly moves away from drawing conclusions based solely on concrete experiences with objects. However, the conclusions drawn are based on rather vague impressions and perceptual judgments. It becomes possible to carry on a conversation with a child. Children develop the ability to classify objects on the basis of different criteria. At this stage children learn to count and use the concept of numbers. In the concrete operational stage, from ages 7 to 12, the child begins to deal with abstract concepts such as numbers and relationships. It is here that children learn mastery of classes, relations, numbers and how to reason. In this stage a person can do mental operations but only with real concrete objects, events or situations. Logical reasons are understood. For example, a concrete operational person can understand the need to go to bed early when it is necessary to rise early the next morning. A pre-operational child, on the other hand, does not understand this logic and substitutes the psychological reason, I want to stay up?. Finally, in the formal operational stage, age 12 to 15, the child begins to reason logically and systematically. The last stage deals with the mastery of thought (Evans, 1973). A formal operational thinker can do abstract thinking and starts to enjoy abstract thought. The formal operational thinker is able to think ahead to plan the solution path. Finally,

Objects Commonly Left Inside the Body After Surgery

Objects Commonly Left Inside the Body After Surgery When undergoing surgery, most patients dont consider that they could leave the hospital with foreign objects in their bodies. Research studies indicate that thousands of incidents (4,500 to 6,000) of this type happen each year in the United States alone. Retained surgical instruments after surgery can cause a number of serious health issues and may even lead to death. Leaving foreign objects in a patients body is a mistake that could be avoided with the implementation of extra safety precautions. 15 Objects Commonly Left Inside the Body After Surgery Depending on the type of surgery, surgeons are estimated to use over 250 types of surgical instruments and tools during a single procedure. These objects are difficult to keep track of during surgery and are sometimes left behind. The types of surgical objects commonly left inside a patient after surgery include: spongesscalpelsscissorstowelsdrain tipsneedlesguide wiresclampstweezersforcepsscopessurgical masksmeasuring devicessurgical glovestubes The most common objects left inside a patient are needles and sponges. Sponges, in particular, are difficult to keep track of as they are used to soak up blood during surgery and tend to blend in with the patients organs and tissues. These incidences happen most often during abdominal surgery. The most common areas in which surgical objects are left inside a patient are the abdomen, vagina, and the chest cavity. Why Objects Get Left Behind Surgical objects are unintentionally left inside a patient for a number of reasons. Hospitals typically rely on nurses or technicians to keep track of the number of sponges and other surgical tools used during surgery. Human error comes into play as incorrect counts can be made due to fatigue or chaos as a result of a surgical emergency. Several factors can increase the risk that an object may be left behind after surgery. These factors include unexpected changes that occur during surgery, the patients body mass index is high, multiple procedures are needed, procedures involving more than one surgical team, and procedures involving greater blood loss. Consequences of Leaving Objects Behind The consequences of having surgical tools left inside a patients body vary from harmless to fatal. Patients may go for months or years not realizing that they have foreign surgical objects within their bodies. Sponges and other surgical implements can lead to infection, severe pain, digestive system problems, fever, swelling, internal bleeding, damage to internal organs, obstructions, loss of part of an internal organ, prolonged hospital stays, additional surgery to remove the object or even death. Cases of Objects Left Inside Patients Examples of surgical objects being left inside patients include: A patient in a Wisconsin hospital was undergoing cancer surgery and a 13-inch surgical retractor was left inside his abdomen.A six-inch metal surgical clamp was left in a mans abdomen (behind his liver) following intestinal surgery in California. Even more astonishing is that this was the second time that a clamp was left inside this same patient after surgery.Surgical scissors were left inside a woman who had undergone uterine cancer surgery.A surgical glove was left inside a woman who had undergone a hysterectomy.A two-inch scalpel was left inside the abdomen of a man who was having heart bypass surgery. Prevention Methods Large surgical instruments are not commonly left inside patients. Retained surgical sponges make up the vast majority of objects left behind after surgery. Some hospitals are using sponge-tracking technology to ensure that these items are detected and not left inside a patient. The sponges are bar-coded and scanned when they are used to reduce the risk of an inaccurate count. They are scanned again after surgery to ensure that there are no discrepancies. Another type of sponge-tracking technology involves radio-frequency tagged sponges and towels. These items can be detected by an x-ray while the patient is still in the operating room. Hospitals that use these types of surgical object tracking methods have reported a drastic reduction in the rate of reported retained surgical objects. Adopting sponge-tracking technology has also proven to be more cost-effective for hospitals than having to perform additional surgeries on patients to remove retained surgical objects. Sources Eisler, Peter. â€Å"What Surgeons Leave behind Costs Some Patients Dearly.† USA Today. Gannett, 08 Mar. 2013. Web. 6 July 2016. usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/08/surgery-sponges-lost-supplies-patients-fatal-risk/1969603/.Williams, T. Tung, D. et al. Retained Surgical Sponges: Findings from Incident Reports and a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Radiofrequency Technology. J Am Coll Surg. 2014 Sep;219(3):354-64. doi: 10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2014.03.052. Epub 2014 May 10.

Analysis of film Clear and Present Danger in relation to the 1980-90's Essay

Analysis of film Clear and Present Danger in relation to the 1980-90's War on Drugs era and Colombian instability - Essay Example The film starred Harrison Ford, Willem Defoe, Anne Archer, Joachim de Almeida, and Henry Czerny, with important appearances by James Earl Jones and Donald Moffat. Hope Lange and Dean Jones, stars from another era, both made appearances as officials in the government. The film was directed by Philip Noyce with the adaptation written by Donald Stewart .1 The film revolves around the temporary appointment of Ryan as Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA when Admiral James Greer becomes ill with cancer. Quickly the action ratchets up as one of the President’s friends is murdered along with the friend’s family. As Ryan is called in to investigate he is embroiled in an intrigue of subterfuge and secrecy. He is used to present false facts to Congress in order to cover up an operation that is considered unethical. An action against the men who were involved in the murder ends badly, leaving the covert troups hanging in the wind and Ryan furious for the inappropriate and i llegal action for which he has now been set up to take responsibility. In the end, Jack Ryan steps up and goes in after the troops with the agent who believed that Ryan was responsible for the cut-off in communications, rescuing the troops and making a political statement about the nature of right and wrong. The film is reflective of many of the unclear and shadowed legacies of the events of President Ronald Reagan’s term in office. In one scene, Robert Ritter and Jack Ryan have a showdown about the events that Ritter approved but burdened Ryan with the responsibility. Ritter repeats twice that Ryan will have to say â€Å"I have no recollection† when he will supposedly have to face congress about the illegal events.2 At the end of the scene, Ritter shouts after Jack â€Å"The world is grey, Jack†, a theme of the time period when drugs were part of the foreign relations events.3 During the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the Iran-Contra affair was rife with declarations of a lack of memory or knowledge of the events by the President and others presumed involved. Former Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North might be a real life figure who is represented by Jack Ryan. Regardless of knowledge of the events, he was the central figure indicted on charges from the fall-out of the exposure of the Iran-Contra deal, but was able to portray for the cameras a patriot with a wholesome appearance.4 While this comparison to North is not strictly representative of the truth of North’s involvement (a truth that may never be fully revealed to history), the potential threat against Ryan through Ritter parallels the feeling of the event. The period of President Reagan’s term and the events of covert and illegal deals is the universe and period of time in which the film takes place. The events of the film are a parallel to the concept of backroom deals and covert operations of a nefarious and illegal nature that were the topic of literary an d film plots of the 1980s and 1990s. The legacy of the Vietnam War, as President Nixon’s administration covertly moved troops into Cambodia is reflected through the illegal movement of troops within the film.5 The intrigue and conspirator themes about a government that cannot be trusted is the underlying context on which the story of the film is constructed. The specific theme of the film is built upon the relationship that the United States had with Columbia and the Columbia drug cartels. The unfortunate state of affairs in Columbia was based upon a system that supported the sale of drugs into the United States. Columbia had shifted its economy from one based on tobacco and coffee to

Business Simulation in Motor Industry Research Paper

Business Simulation in Motor Industry - Research Paper Example The first model caters to the market segment - City Size and Under 25 age group. The car is 3/5 Door Hatch Type with a 4 Cylinder Engine. It has an option of Superior Sound System/iPod. Buyers under 25 yrs of age are mostly single individuals with low to average income. They normally use the car as basic transportation for everyday activities. The second model caters to the market segment - Medium Size and 25 to 40 age group. The car is a 2/4 Door Saloon/Estate Type with a Large 6-8 Cylinder Engine. It has several options such as Multi Location Airbags, Dual Fuel Operation, 6-Speed Gearbox, Speed Limiter, Electronic Stability Control, and Safety Package. Buyers in this age group are mostly average income individuals who have high preference in comfort, speed, style and safety. As a new entrant to the motor industry, the corporate strategy of the company is cost leadership. The car models will be positioned in the market as low priced in order to effectively penetrate the customer base. The goal of the pricing strategy is to create a company's share in the total market. The first model will be priced at 11,007.08 while the second model will be priced at 18,216.85. However, even at a low price, the company forecasts an 18% gross profit margin. At the first year of production, the company will be manufacturing in one factory. It will be producing 50,000 units of each model. The factory will be employing at full capacity of 4,000 workers. The average wage offered to each employee would be 400, which is higher than the minimum wage per week in the industry. In order to increase productivity, the company will initially invest in 20 units of automation. Forecast Production and Sales Model 1 Model 2 Total Model cost per car [Mm] 7,200.00 9,385.00 Design cost per car [Md] 888.00 1,553.50 Options cost per car(1) [Mo] 450.00 3,486.50 Material cost per car [M=Mm+Md+Mo] 8,538.00 14,425.00 Productivity (cars/worker/year) [Pr] 41 39 Workers per car [Wk = 1 / Pr] 0.024 0,026 Weekly wage [W] 400.00 400.00 Labour cost per car [L = Wk*W*50] 487.80 512.82 Total cost per car [C = L + M] 9,025.80 14,937.80 Selling price [P] 11,007.08 18.216.85 Gross Margin % [= 100*(P - C)/P] 18% 18% Forecast Sales (units) [S] 50,000 50,000 100,000 Total Sales Income m [= S*P] 550.35 910.84 1,461.19 Forecast production (units) [N] 50,000 50,000 100,000 Total Material Cost m [= M*N] 426.90 721.25 1,148.15 Total Labour Cost m [= L*N] 24.39 25.64 50.03 Profit Forecast ( million) Income Costs Total Sales Income 1,461.19 Total Material Cost 1,148.15 Total Labour Cost 50.03 Gross Profit 263.01 Fixed Overhead(2) 124.11 Promotion 40.00 Depreciation(2) 66.00 Operating Profit 32.90 Net Interest Payment 14.00 Pre-tax profit 18.90 Tax (30%) 5.67 Post-tax profit 13.23 Cash Flow Forecast ( million) Cash In Cash Out Opening Bank Balance 500.00 Total Sales Income 1,461.19 Total Material Cost 1,148.15 Total Labour Cost 50.03 Fixed Overhead(2) 124.11 Promotion Cost 40.00 Factory Cost 650.00 Automation Expenditure 10.00 Tax Payment 5.67 Balance before Loan (66.77) New Loan 200.00 Closing Bank Balance 133.23 NX0441 Business Game Decision Form Semester 1 2009/10 Seminar Group . Team Number .

Teaching assistant diplom Essay Example for Free

Teaching assistant diplom Essay Introduction In this essay I will be analysing what influence the recession has had on consumer behaviour and the cause behind those changes in performance. A recession is defined as two straight quarters of depressing economic growth, as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country. Consumer behaviour can be defined as ‘The study of when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy products. The recent recession began in December 2007 and produce from the USA‘s advance market, mortgages were being proposed to people who simply could not afford to include one. As a result the property market collapsed and the economic down turn rapidly spread to the rest of the world’s financial system, therefore there is now a worldwide recession. With the banking world in turmoil there have been effects for other industries. For example, the car industry is one of the most terrible hit industries because banks are now being particularly alert about lending capital. This means that whilst a customer may wish a new car they are unable to fulfil those needs because there is no way of them generating the resources which would allow them to make the purchase. This can be demonstrated by the fact Toyota has suffered a loss of $4.4 billion4. It is Toyotas first loss in 59 years which added highlights how bad the recent recession is. Furthermore, the fall down of the property market has not just changed the behaviour of consumers in this industry although, it has also had knock on affects. For example, because less people are being contributed mortgages, due to the fact a 20-30% deposit is needed, there is usually less demand for new houses to be built because they basically would not be bought in the current climate. The sale of fewer houses then affects furnishing stores as there are hardly any consumers who need new furniture. Therefore, it is important to realise that consumer behaviour is related between industries. Impact of recession on consumer Consumer behaviour will also change during a recession depending on  demographics which include age, gender and occupation. Research conducted by Price Water House Coopers put forwards the most influenced age group is the 60-65+ year olds who are retired or come up to retirement, followed by 18-24 year olds, then 45-60 year olds and ultimately 25-44 year olds be likely to be the least affected by the downturn. The worst affected are the 60-65+ year olds because the UK government implements an economic policy. This means the government regulates the money supply and interest rates to direct the economy. As OAPs rely on their savings to supplement their pension it means in the current incidents they are earning significantly less money than they were in prior years because interest rates are currently at 0.5% contrasted with 4.5% in 2005. This clearly has huge affects on their buying behaviour because they are forced to create cuts which they may not want to make but have to go throu gh requirement due to major reduced disposable profits. With idleness soaring during a recession this affects consumer behaviour as individuals become more alert about their spending due to the fear of unemployment or unemployment. During the current recession it is the 18-24 year olds who are bearing the most with unemployment. However, with unemployment rates presently at 7.8% the increase in cautiousness, and the alarm of unemployment is not isolated to purely this age group as individuals who have seen friends, family or colleagues lose their jobs share the same sentiments and fears that they could be next. This has a huge impact on consumer confidence and therefore consumers will look to reign in their spending. Consumers adjust their frame of mind to being more adjusted towards saving money rather than spending money because of the uncertainty which surrounds their future. This involves the consumer’s behaviour towards products. Luxury products such as top of the range food, cars, clothes and perfumes etc are similarly to see sales drop spectacularly as consumers look for methods of decreasing their spending whilst maximising how far their budget goes. For example, an average family may choose to t he drop brand level of food for their weekly shop. So rather than buying the Tescos finest variety they would buy the Tesco Value range. Research proposes that on average you can save 33% for each product for a one level drop. For a family hit by the recession this would be a major saving and this emphasizes how when times are hard value is the most vital factor for the consumer and their behaviour will return this. During a recession many consumers are  forced to down grade their preferences in order to make living monetary viable. By staring at the performance of Dominos pizza it is evident to spot that consumers are changing their activities. Dominos pizza recorded a 20% rise in returns for the first half of 2009. This is an outcome of cash strapped families opting to stay in and order takeaways as a form of a treat rather than eating out at restaurants and pubs. This means the restaurants and pubs are experiencing the brunt of the change in the recession as equal to 75% of British family’s say they will avoid equally eating and drinking out of the house. This does not however mean that households are cutting alcohol out of their life. Instead British households are choosing to drink at home wi th the average spend per household thought to be  £35 per week. So the consumers behaviour is changing in the form of where they purchase their products rather than what they are purchasing in this case. Conclusion On the whole, it is enormously vital to recognise that consumer behaviour is affected by the recession. However it must be noted that the changes in consumer behaviour are very much charge on the industry and products concerned. This is underlined by the aforementioned points, so for example the car industry, construction and property market were the most unhelpfully affected even as industries which allow diversion benefit from the recession i.e. the entertainment sector and the cinema. Finally, consumer behaviour will evermore face affected. It will be affected depending what stage of the life cycle the country is at, therefore the only way to reduce the adverse affects and take benefit of the positive affects is for businesses to be flexible. These way businesses have the best opportunity of helping consumers to get equilibrium in the homeostasis see-saw which is more and more difficult to achieve in a recession as consumers face more limitations. Referencing UKessays.co.uk [online]. (2003 2014). Available from: . [Accessed 30 march 2014]. Wikipedia [online]. (28 March 2014). Available from: . [Accessed 30 march 2014].

Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets Essay -- sensibility, nature, emotion

In Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets, Smith uses nature as a vehicle to express her complex emotions and yearning for a renewal of her spirit. Utilizing the immortal characteristics of spring and the tempestuous nature of the ocean, Smith creates a poetic world that is both a comfort and a hindrance to her tortured soul. Even while spring can provide her with temporary solace and the ocean is a friend in her sorrow, both parts of nature constantly remind her of something that she will never be able to accomplish: the renewal of her anguished spirit and complete happiness in life once more. Through three of her sonnets in this collection, Smith connects with the different parts of nature and displays her sensible temperament with her envy over nature’s ability to easily renew its beauty and vitality. In â€Å"Written at the close of Spring,† Smith’s second sonnet, she focuses on the wonderful ability nature has in rejuvenating itself each year. Smith personifies Spring in the way it â€Å"nurs’d in dew† its flowers as though it was nursing its own children (â€Å"Close of Spring† 2). While it creates life, Spring is not human, because it has this ability to come back after its season has passed. Human beings grow old and die; we lose our â€Å"fairy colours† through the abrasive nature of life (â€Å"Close of Spring† 12). Smith is mournful that humans cannot be like the flowers of Spring and regain the colors of our lives after each year. Normally in comparing the age of sensibility with nature, we see this great appreciation of nature as a whole. In Smith’s poems, we do see this, but mostly in this sonnet we see a jealousy of nature. Smith is able to connect with the beauty of Spring on some level; it is something that brings her a small amount of... ... but she always realizes at the end that her happiness is forever gone and she only has despair to look forward to her future. While nature is a typical outlet for people with a sensible nature, like Smith, it can also just as easily create a desire in man that can never be attained. Works Cited Smith, Charlotte. "To Spring." Poem Hunter. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2011. . Smith, Charlotte. â€Å"Written at the close of spring .† Elegiac Sonnets. Ed. Stuart Curran. New York: Oxford, 1993. 13-14. Print. Smith, Charlotte. â€Å"Written in a tempestuous night, on the coast of Sussex.† Elegiac Sonnets. Ed. Stuart Curran. New York: Oxford, 1993. 58. Print. Smith, Charlotte. â€Å"Written on the seashore- October, 1784.† Elegiac Sonnets. Ed. Stuart Curran. New York: Oxford, 1993. 20. Print.

Brave New World and Anthem Essay

In both Brave New World and Anthem the underlying themes are very similar. The government controls every aspect of people’s lives, everyone is supposed to be perfectly happy with what role they are given, and the main character do not fit into what the government was deemed normal. While both books have these very similar traits, there are many differences as well; the way the government controls the people, as well as the form of government, the way people of both societies treat each other, and the situation in which the main characters are placed. In both Brave New World and Anthem the government controls everything about a person. In Brave New World the government has taken the ultimate step in controlling the people. The government has taken people’s right to have children away, and instead grow children in labs, dictating what the child’s life will be like from the time the sperm is introduced to the egg. The government adds enhancers if they want the child to come out smart, or things like alcohol to the embryo if they want it to come out stupid. Then the child is put through a series of conditioning treatments that make the child behave exactly how the government wants the child to (Huxley). In Anthem the government has also taken control of every aspect of te people’s lives. They are not as drastic as the government in Brave New World, but they put a child through a conditioning school, they choose the job that the person will do, and they choose when babies will be made. In Anthem the government is a council of leaders that have been chosen by the previous leaders to lead the people, and make them conform to the way that the council wants the people to think. There are councils in every city in Anthem as well as sub-council that control other aspects of life, for example the council of scholars rules over the new inventions, and studies conducted (Rand). Brave New World’s government is a series of people called controllers that rule over a continent, each controller is in charge of everything that happens in the continent be it new discoveries, or what kind of felly to show the people. The controllers have absolute power within their continents, but there is also a world council. Each controller is part of the world council and they make decisions that involve more than one controller’s continent. In the books the government has taken measures to see that everyone is perfectly happy, no matter what the cost of happiness is. In Anthem the children are taught from infancy that they would be perfectly happy if they loved their brothers and did their best to serve them. The children were punished if they tried to do something that their brothers would not like, or would not benefit the rest of the population. This method did not always work because some people where resistant to the ideas, and would always think in a different way that would make them unhappy. Also in Anthem the men are taught to stay happy they must serve their brothers fully and not interact with women at all. It is a crime to interact with women outside of the time of breeding. While in Brave New World the government took the children from birth and used conditioning as well as things like electric shocks to make the children think a certain way. This method is used until the children reach adulthood, and then to keep the population happy they are given a drug called soma. Soma is a mind altering drug ha makes the people happy an forget all their worries. The government convinced everyone that Soma was solution to the unhappiness in the world. Yet, this happiness is one reduced to sheer consumerism, just as politics in the brave new world is degraded to conformism. ( Diken Bulent). More tellingly yet, the only alternative set in the book against this sterile, suffocating civilization is religious fundamentalism (Diken Bulent). Another way that the government in Brave New World fools everyone into thinking that they are happy is by teaching the population that everyone belongs to everyone, and that having sex with as many people as possible as often as possible is a good thing, and is highly encouraged. The main characters in both Brave New World and Anthem do not fit into what the governments see as the perfect world. In Anthem Equality 7-2521 who was born into his society wanted to be a scholar, and help his brothers with his ideas, and inventions, but he was assigned to be a street sweeper. When Equality tried to change his life, and took the light bulb to the scholars hoping that they would accept him into their ranks and let him study with them. Equality was then punished and sentenced to death for trying to help his brothers better themselves, but escaped with his beloved and founded a new colony in which the mind would not be oppressed by the government. In Brave New World John is a boy from a reservation brought into society as an experiment, he does not understand the logic of the people, or the way they are until he meets the controller of the continent. While everyone that was raised in society is very promiscuous, and open with everything, John who was raised on the reservation only wants to be with one person, and keep his relationship private. This goes against everything that the people of civilization believe in. the differences eventually lead to John leaving the city to go live in a lighthouse far from the city. He eventually killed himself because he could no longer handle what was going on in his head, and the things going on around him. Brave New World and Anthem where very similar in the fact that they both had governments that dictated everything, things that where suppose to eliminate unhappiness, and had main characters that did not fit into the world in which they found themselves living. There where also pretty outstanding differences between the books as well though, the way the two societies viewed interactions with the opposite sex, the ways the governments where structured, and most of all the ending of the books. One character goes on to live his life with the one he loves, while the other commits suicide.