Education in America Essay

Education is a hot topic in the news and for most American citizens. They are preoccupied with the level of education their loved one are receiving. With the deficit being the cornerstone of much of government funding, agencies are feeling the cutbacks, and education is no exception. States have made steep cuts to education funding since the start of the recession. In many states, those cuts deepened over the last year. Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding in the 2012-13 school year than they did last year in 26 states, and in 35 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels-often far below (Oliff, Mai, & Leachman, 2012). Lack of government funding for education can lead to other issues such as well qualified teachers leaving the profession due to lack of good pay, and benefits. Other issues includes lack of school material that is needed to teach successfully in the classrooms, and teacher’s assistants to help. In other classrooms teachers are feeling overwhelmed and leaving students to take responsibility for their learning experience. Still other issues derive from a lack of funding such as a lack of finances to assist special needs students. The lack of government funding could deter learning for students that are already struggling Analysis of Education in Georgia Georgia like many other states are negatively affected by the budget cuts for education. Georgia will lose approximately $28. 6 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 390 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition about 54,000 fewer students would be served and approximately 80 fewer schools would receive funding. In addition, Georgia will lose approximately $17. 5 million in funds for about 210 teachers, aides, and staff who help children with disabilities (Burns, 2013). These persistent budget cuts are an injustice because all students deserve a well-rounded education. Educators are leaving In addition, teachers are leaving the classroom in massive groves to find employment in other careers because of the lack of government funding. Sadly, many teachers are leaving their beloved classrooms to pursue other ventures because of budget cuts, or because they are put in a situation of distress due to budget cuts, so either way our children are losing the battle of education, and good teachers are optioning for other career choices. Nationally, the average turnover for all teachers is 17 percent, and in urban school districts specifically, the number jumps to 20 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future proffers starker numbers, estimating that one-third of all new teachers leave after three years, and 46 percent are gone within five years (Kopkowski, 2013). Stakeholders The stakeholders in education includes the students, parents, teachers, principals, student advisors, the PTA, etc. , any person or organization that has a vested interest in the students and their education. When the education systems fails, we all fail as a country. The future of education is a looming reminder of the importance of financial funding from the federal government. When budget cuts interfere with the future of students, it is time to make some tough choices. Although there are other programs that need federal funding to keep their agencies successful, education should still be given top priority. The stakeholders invest in the future of the young by teaching, advising, mentoring, and in some cases funding. Their valuable input is mandatory in the fight for survival for educational funding. The stakeholders have much to lose when the educational system fails. When this happens, dropout rates and unemployment rises which adversely affects the economy. Summary Children are truly our future, and illiterate children have nothing positive to offer. The demise of education in the America is taking a heavy toll on each of us, the parents, the student, and the teachers, we all suffer. Frustration often leads to failure when it is not dealt with in a professional and timely manner. Not only are the students feeling the pressure of ill equipped schools, but the teachers are also feeling the pressure. Many teachers buy supplies for their classroom from their already shrinking checks because they do not have proper funding to supply their classroom needs. Tough decisions need to be made in allocating funds to agencies that are in dire need of funding. Education is vital for the future of America, and the government is wise to realize that this is one budget cut that is not beneficial to anyone involved.

Clyne’s Revision of Grice’s Maxims Essay

Grice’s Maxims have been criticised for being too Anglo-centric. Michael Clyne proposes revisions to the four maxims in his 1994 book Intercultural Communication at Work. Do Clyne’s revisions of this model go far enough in universally accounting for intercultural conversation? Why or why not? Grice’s General Cooperative Principle has been under continuous debate for the past three decades. It is mainly through the maxims that Grice’s paradigm has been challenged as highly ethnocentric, however such readings may tend to take the maxims too literally rather than as â€Å"reference points for language interchange† (Allan as cited in Clyne, 1994, p. 11). There is some agreement in this, but as suggested by Mey (1994, p. 74), the principle and maxims are â€Å"always defined relative to a particular culture†. It is this idea of cultural values underlying communication that has caused the contention of Grice’s cooperative principle and its subordinate maxims. Many linguists (Keenan, 1976; Wierzbicka, 1985; Clyne, 1994; Bowe & Martin, 2007) have criticised Grice’s Maxims for being too ethnocentric – claiming that its assumptions are based on Anglo-Saxon norms and culture. This Anglo-centric nature is problematic for intercultural communication as the maxims are inapplicable to many cultural values systems; namely European and Southeast Asian cultures where harmony, respect and restraint play a key role (Clyne, 1994, p. 192). In an attempt to better reflect intercultural conversation, Clyne (1994) has proposed a set of revised ‘maxims’ to make Grice’s principles more universal. His revision of Grice’s model certainly accounts for a wider variety of contexts and cultures, however it cannot be said to universally account for intercultural conversation. As conversation is unique to its context and participants, in reality no single theory could universally embody real life language use. Although people of all backgrounds generally do attempt to facilitate successful communication (if it doesn’t conflict with their purpose or cultural values), factors unique to each participant can affect any given conversation. Thus, it c an be said that while individuals are conditioned by their culture and environment, discourse patterns will always be influenced by personality factors (Watts, 1991) and pragmatic and intercultural competence. On the surface, Grice’s cooperative principle seems to provide little  difficulty for intercultural analysis; its degree of uncertainty is certainly appropriate for discussions of cultural diversity. Making a contribution â€Å"such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged† (Grice, 1975, p. 45) seems to allow for the acceptance of different purposes and requirements in different contexts, and does not exclude the influence of norms associated with a variety of different speech communities. Although intercultural analysis was not Grice’s main concern, he has defined the discourse of his cooperative principle as â€Å"concerted enterprises† that allow â€Å"a high degree of diversity in the motivations underlying quite meagre common objectives† (1989: 369). Grice himself makes no explicit claims of universality, using characteristically modest language to refe r to a â€Å"first approximation of a general principle† (1989: 26). He is extremely careful not to overstate the case for ‘cooperation’; suggesting that â€Å"each participant recognizes in them (talk exchanges), to some extent, a common purpose, or at least a mutually accepted direction† (1989, p. 26). It should be pointed out however, that Grice’s maxims depict an idealised and simplified language use, whereas reality is much more complex and multi-dimensional. In everyday conversations, telling the entire truth might be seen as impolite or inappropriate in certain cultures. There also tend to be intercultural differences that do not always follow a universal principle. Some cultures and languages (i.e. Chinese) often dictate that their speakers use indirect speech in conversation, which means they are unable to follow Grice’s maxims of quantity and manner. In such cases, there is a clash between Grice’s maxims and the pragmatic rules of conversation, which are culturally sensitive. For example, when being offered a drink, a typical Chinese person would automatically say no the first time, while expecting the offer to be made at least two or three times more. This resembles a kind of phatic language communication; saying no, but not really meaning no. In this sort of situation, if someone doesn’t adhere to the cultural norm – choosing to follow Grice’s maxims instead, then they would sound odd and out of place. The above example demonstrates that Grice’s maxims aren’t relevant in all contexts as they clash with certain cultural values systems. Many linguists  (Clyne, 1994; Hymes, 1986; Loveday, 1983; Walsh, 2009) have picked up on this discrepancy between theory and data, claiming that the maxims are only relevant to the English speaking Western world. In particular, Clyne (1994) has pointed out that they have limited relevance to cultures where content and knowledge are core values. For example, speakers of Malagasy, â€Å"whose form of co-operation seems to consist in making their contributions as opaque, convoluted and non-perspicuous as possible† (Keenan as cited in Mey, 1994, p. 74) could be seen as flouting the Maxim of Quantity. This is because information, especially ‘new’ information gives the holder a certain amount of prestige, thus Malagasy people tend to use indirect, evasive language. It is obvious then, that environmental factors, social interaction and cultural norms need to be considered when interpreting conversational implicature. This is reinforced by Hymes (1986), who notes that Grice was correct in assuming that any culture will have some sort of orientation towards telling the truth (quality), being informative (quantity), staying on topic (relation), and being clear (manner), but that this orientation and how it is articulated cannot be assumed to be the same in all cultures. It is necessary then to recognize that each language and/or culture will have its own settings for each of the maxims (Bowe & Martin, 2007). In an attempt to reduce the cultural bias of Grice’s maxims, Clyne (1994) has proposed revisions to the four maxims (quantity, quality, relation, manner) by considering different cultural norms and expectations. An example of this is the modification of the maxim of quality so that it reads ‘do not say what you believe to be in opposition to your cultural norms of truth, harmony, charity, and/or respect.’ This revision accounts for situations in which the hearer may not want to respond truthfully in order to preserve face or harmony (Lakoff, 1973). This cultural value of harmony is especially prevalent in Chinese and Vietnamese cultures. Nguyen (1991) claims that communalism and collectivism has enforced harmony as a central cultural value in the Vietnamese people. Because of this emphasis on harmonious relations, Vietnamese frequently utilise ambiguous communication behaviours in order to avoid conflict. Although this language use could flout one or more of Grice ’s maxims, by introducing cultural parameters such as truth, harmony and face, Clyne’s (1994) revisions can better account for  intercultural conversation. Clyne’s (1994) revised maxims for intercultural analysis certainly have more regard for the communicative patterns of non-English cultures; however, they don’t altogether meet the needs of intercultural communication. In intercultural communication a high level of pragmatic competence is central to an interlocutors performance. As Thomas (1984) points out, it is commonly the differences in pragmatic competence that are problematic in intercultural conversation. Furthermore, it is possible to have achieved a very high level of linguistic proficiency, while having a relatively low level of socio-pragmatic proficiency. This can result in speakers using a language, which for some reason is deemed inappropriate, incomprehensible or even offensive (Thomas, 1984). This will be demonstrated by the following example: An Australian manager has been reassigned to the Athens office of his organization and is assigned a Greek secretary. On a daily basis, he assigns work to her by using conventional indirect requests such as ‘Could you type this letter?’ One day, she complains to a colleague, ‘I wish he would just tell me what to do instead of asking me. After all, he’s the boss and I’m here to do what he wants.’ In the above example, we have a mixture of assumptions about the rights and obligations of two parties in a relationship characterized by asymmetrical distribution of power, and the way this power will be exercised and acknowledged. The Australian boss attends to the face wants of his secretary by attempting to minimize the power distance between the two. This is done by the use of politeness strategies that seemingly give the subordinate the option not to perform a requested act – ‘Could you type this letter?’ Thomas (1995, p. 161) observes that ‘allowing options (or giving the appearance of allowing options) is absolutely central to Western notions of politeness’. An Australian secretary would presumably know that a direct, on-record refusal of this request would be face threatening to her boss – as well as threatening to her own job. She could potentially employ indirect refusal strategies (i.e. hints), which would avoid on record refusal and  sustain the appearance of harmony. As Green (cited in Thomas, 1995, p. 147) points out â€Å"the speaker is really only going through the motions of offering options or showing respect for the addressee’s feelings. The offer may be a facade, the options nonviable, and the respect a sham. It is the fact that an effort was made to go through the motions at all that makes the act an act of politeness.† It is clear that in this example the two parties have not yet negotiated a shared set of norms. The secretary acknowledges and accepts the power difference between herself and her boss. She is dependent on him for work, and she accepts that he has the right to tell her to carry out various secretarial duties. To her, the Australian boss seems insincere when he requests her to do something for him, because as far as she is concerned, the power relationship admits no options. That is; she does not interpret the deference that her boss displays towards her as an act of politeness. There are obviously socio-pragmatic differences between the two parties. The Australian boss has carried his socio-pragmatic norms into the Greek setting, where they violate the expectations of his Greek subordinate. Each party is defining and acting within the situation differently. Despite this, their encounters are not entirely unsuccessful: the boss makes requests for work that the secretary completes. However, the Greek secretary feels dissatisfied with her boss’s politeness strategies. It can be said that neither party is completely interculturally competent. That is; communicating in a culturally competent way requires interlocutors to learn about the ways culture influences communicative utterances of individuals concerned. After all, if the secretary constantly doubts the sincerity of her boss, the relationship is threatened. And if the boss is unaware of the effects of this, he may experience a rude awakening in the near future. Based on what has been discussed, it can be concluded that Grice’s maxims cannot be taken as absolute rules; this would be neither right nor practicable. Language is not as clear-cut as mathematical formulas; it frequently integrates with culture and society. Thus cultural and pragmatic considerations are vital to successful intercultural communication. Moreover, linguistic competency may not always cause a breakdown in  communication; very often when language form and cultural norm clash, culture supersedes language form. Clyne’s (1994) revisions of the conversational maxims better reflect cultural variation, however they do not universally account for intercultural communication. The examples aforementioned demonstrate that factors such as pragmatic and intercultural competence also play a key role. Intercultural communication then becomes something that is negotiated at local level by participants, involving mutual adaptation. Difficulties may arise, of course, in the process of negotiation through limitations in the socio-pragmatic and strategic competence of some or all participants. After all, there are individual differences in these competencies, and as Agar (1994) points out, we have to remember that in any intercultural conversation, ‘it’s persons not cultures that are in contact’. References: Agar, M. (1994). The intercultural frame. In International Journal of Intercultural Relations 18/2:221-237. Bowe, H. J. & Martin, K. (2007). Communication across cultures: Mutual understanding in a global world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clyne, M. (1994). Inter-cultural Communication at Work: Cultural Values in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. London: Harvard University Press. Hymes, D. H. (1986). Discourse: Scope without depth. In International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 57, 49-89. Keenan, E. O. (1976). On the universality of conversational implicatures. Language in Society 5.67-80. Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness, or minding your p’s and q’s. In Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. 292-305. Loveday, L. (1983). Rhetoric patterns in conflict: The sociocultural relativity of discourse organizing processes. In Journal of Pragmatics, 7, 169-90. Mey, J. (1994). Pragmatics. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Thomas, J. (1984) Cross-cultural discourse as â€Å"unequal encounter†: Toward a pragmatic analysis. In Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 226-235. Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in Interaction. An Introduction to Pragmatics. Harlow /Munich: Longman. Walsh, M. (2009). Some neo-Gricean maxims for aboriginal Australia. Retrieved from http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/research/docs/alw/Walsh09.pdf (accessed 22/10/2013) Watts, R. J. (1991). Power in family discourse. Berlin: Mouton. Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts. In Journal of Pragmatics 9.145-78.

College writing and casual writing Essay

A. I think there is a big difference in college writing and casual writing. I fell like college writing has is more structured. You have to capitalize the words that need to be capitalized, Indent at the beginning of each paragraph, and write paragraphs in the write structure. College level writing is more in-depth and detailed than casual writing. B. My favorite hobby is listening and creating music. Music is very strong, meaningful, and a way to express feelings. C. I love listening and creating music. Listening and creating music is very fun to me, it’s also very relaxing. Music can be very useful in many ways. You can give a positive message in music and also get people to enjoy it by expressing on a rhythmic beat and words. Listening and creating music gives an outlet to express many different emotions, sad, mad, and happy. Creating music is fun from recording lyrics to mixing and creating the whole sound. Music is what I do in my free time, it’s my favorite hobby. Part2: A. I have to basic step that I think is going to be the most difficult for me is â€Å"Drafting†. The reason I chose drafting is because I never utilized that step unless it was required by the teacher, and counted as part of the assignment. I’m going to start utilizing all of the steps that where listed. When I write my text paper I’m going to sit down and plan my paper, Also planning and taking the proper steps actually make the paper easier to write.

Tacit Knowledge - The Mortar of the Design Process Research Paper

Tacit Knowledge - The Mortar of the Design Process - Research Paper Example Body Tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge which has been considered relevant in shaping actions relating to real-world goals. This kind of knowledge covers three basic qualities. First, it is procedural; second, it is significant in the achievement of goals which individuals value; and third, it is gained with limited assistance from others (Hedlund and Sternberg, 2000). Knowledge including these elements is considered tacit as it must often be interpreted from actions or statements. The inference must be gained from the individuals who want to establish tacit knowledge in work and school and from the researchers wanting to evaluate these individuals (Hedlund and Sternberg, 2000). In effect, tacit knowledge is usually implied, not explicit. Since tacit knowledge can more or less be measured and because such measured knowledge has been known to shape job performance in various domains and in numerous performance standards, the tacit-knowledge approach must have practical applicati on in the evaluation, selection, and training of leaders (Taylor, 2007). Research implies that tacit knowledge is gained with experience, however individuals may also differ in how they improve from their experiences. Much interest in the handling of knowledge in organizations has directed attention on the management of tacit knowledge, and on how such knowledge can be kept within the firm as a basis for possible competitive gain (Coff, et.al., 2006). The idea of tacit knowledge is generally appealing and is likely something that would be understood as the information which individuals would have in their heads, not information which would be recorded (Koenig, 2003). In most instances, tacit knowledge seems to be the term which encompasses any knowledge which has not been formally written down (Styhre, 2004). However, as noted by other theorists, such simplistic notion of tacit knowledge triggers the expectation that tacit knowledge can easily be transmitted with the sender of the i nformation reflecting and expressing the knowledge. In fact, the primary understanding of tacit knowledge is ambiguous as researchers use the term for various meanings and characterizations. In effect, much confusion and debate is seen over the actual nature of tacit knowledge and whether it can actually be articulated (Tsoukas, 2003). Tacit knowledge for military leaders seems to be a better predictor of leadership effectiveness as compared to verbal prowess or experience (Horvath and Williams, 1994). Experience as evaluated by months on a specific job, manifested no relationship with leadership efficacy. Tacit knowledge for military leaders did not show any relationship to effectiveness, except for Battalion commanders who had better tacit knowledge and who were more efficient in managing subordinates (Hedlund and Sternberg, 2000). Finally, verbal ability had a moderate relationship with leadership effectiveness within platoon and company levels. However, when an evaluation of ver bal ability was assessed based on hierarchical regression, tacit knowledge consistently manifested efficacy beyond verbal ability (Hedlund and Sternberg, 2000). Tacit knowledge therefore supports the fact that it assists in ensuring leadership efficacy and seems to do so beyond the old predictors. Studies on tacit knowledge and leadership sought to understand what leaders knew which was

The Use of Alcohol Rub in Preventing Infection Essay

The Use of Alcohol Rub in Preventing Infection - Essay Example According to Bloom, Fischer & Orme(2009) the ideology is derived from the ethical principle that is required by the clients for the most effective and possible interventions. For evidence based practice, typically, they use reviews of research on intervention effectiveness and then critically assess the reviews on the bases of validity and utility of practice. According to Children’s Workforce Development Council (2011), evidence based practice is a combination of the best external research and practitioner expertise and evaluation that is based on the evidence. I have found that evidence based practice is a way to update knowledge; essentially it can be used in different scenarios. As pointed out by McEwen and Wills (2002), evidence based nursing will fill the gap of research, theory and practice. According to him, it de-emphasizes isolated, rituals and unsystematic clinical experiences and traditions as the basis of practice. Therefore, once a nurse starts opting for evidenc e based practice, they come to know different ways through which they can use the experience of other practitioners (Cluett 2006). This is one of the basic reasons why, as an adult nurse, I prefer evidence based practice. Evidence Based Practice in Nursing: Evidence based practice, help the nurses tend to stay updated on the new discoveries (Beyea & Slattery, 2006).In my experience, I have noticed that as the nurses are sure that their decisions are based on valid information, the confidence in their practice increases, and their decisions power is increased. As cited in Barker J (2010), Pearson et al. (2008) identifies that a nurse is expected to understand the quality of evidence that is... The essay discusses three types of evidences: Systematic review is different from traditional literature review. Systematic review is a way to collect the evidence. In this method, the findings of all methodologically sound studies are summarized. The process reviews can help the practitioners to keep abreast of the medical literature. It involves the application of scientific strategies. In the nutshell, Cochrane Collaboration summaries that a systematic review is a high level overview of primary research on a particular research question that tries to identify, select, synthesize and appraise all high quality research evidence relevant to that question in order to answer it. I believe, when such a form of research is used in nursing, the decision making regarding health and the ratio to get benefits increases. In order to find that alcohol rub helps in preventing the spread of infection, different studies in this area can be reviewed. Through this, particular circumstances can be k nown in which alcoholic hand rubs must be used, and instances where it must not be made use of. Randomised controlled trails help to determine whether a cause-effect relationship exists between treatment and outcome, and to assess the cost effectiveness of a treatment. It is used to examine the effect of interventions on particular outcomes such as death or the recurrence of disease. Some consider randomizing controlled trials as the best research design. Therefore it is considered to be the most powerful type of experimental research.

VISUAL CULTURE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

VISUAL CULTURE - Essay Example The author strongly argues the value of the paintings, sold in millions is created by auction houses and dealers rather than the critics and curios. Is Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette a brand painting which has acquired created value by the dealers or is it truly a masterpiece on canvas? To know this we should explore and analyze every minute visual aspect of the painting through our brain and heart. This essay aims conducting a thorough analysis on the visual structure and the meaning Dance at Le Moulin de La Galette tries to communicate. Richard Howells (2012) suggests examining a painting contains five key features. We have to analyze what kind of painting it is, what does it show, the location of the painting, the time or era it was drawn, what is shown and what is left out in it for us to make out. In technical terms we have to concentrate on the usage of key elements like the usage of line, brush strokes, light usage, the forms present in the painting, the color and texture to conduct a good analysis. Any person can do this analysis devoid of their art or historical background. But, determining a painting’s true value requires viewing it through the heart and mixing a bit of philosophy with the technicality to note the ‘absence’. We can interpret it in simple terms as reading between the lines or rather as reading between the brushstrokes (Kenny n.d.). Each painting has something absent, which we do not realize until we view the painting. Then we start to reflect about the absence and its loss (Berger 2009). Again as Howells (2009) mentioned, just reading the content of the painting alone is not important. Understanding its form and the interpreting the inner meaning identifying the absence is the key point of good visual analysis. Drawn by Renoir at 1876 in Paris, this painting has achieved its iconic status owing to its masterful brushstrokes (a major reason for

The Relationship Between Institutions and Economic Development Essay

The Relationship Between Institutions and Economic Development - Essay Example Neoclassical growth theory limits to identify the prerequisites of economic performance, such as capital accumulation and technical progress. To explain why people save, invest, learn and seek knowledge, different institutional systems and values that success or failures are based on must be paid special attention. The relationship between institutions and economic growth has been a central debate of the economic arena for a long time. A century ago, the free society realized that the institutional system plays a fundamental role in economic development-no longer seen as an inevitable gradual transition from local autarky to specialization and division of labor. The establishment and the functioning of institutions reflect the transition from chaos to order by the creation and enforcement of rules or procedures guiding economic and social life. Thus, the institutional system ensures the normal course of real and nominal economy. However, only efficient institutions are growth-promoti ng (Milo, 2007, p.23). There is a vast empirical literature that studies the impact of institutions on economic performance, particularly on growth (Easterly and Levine (2003), Acemoglu et al. (2001), Fukuyama (2006)). From the reverse connection perspective, the first hypothesis stating that economic growth enhances the good functioning of institutions is associated with the name of Martin Lipset, who argued that increased income and human capital accumulation are the best ways to have effective institutions. The second hypothesis states that limited central authorities and therefore, good institutions, lead to superior economic performance. This point of view is also included in the works of Montesquieu and Adam Smith and, later, in those of the ambassadors of neo-institutionalism (Buchanan, Coase, North, and Williamson). In short, the basic idea of institutionalism is that institutions create the rules of economic game; the latter provide economic incentives and thus influence th e behavior of economic agents. Competition, productivity, innovation and private firms develop in an institutional environment that fosters efficient behaviors and penalizes inefficiency. If economic performance is unsatisfactory, ultimately, institutions will be changed. Reformulated, economic and social changes are institutional changes. One of the most important issues that influence the analyses of linkages between institutions and economic development is that there is no general consensus on the definition of institutions. Chang (2005) highlights three key functions of institution in fostering economic performance: Coordination and administration; Learning and innovation; Income redistribution and social cohesion. In some Asian economies in transition from socialism to capitalism, the rapid progress of free market institutions has reduced the transaction costs. In other situations, they have remained high as a result of insufficient knowledge of market mechanisms, of ambiguous rules and bureaucracy, weak legal system and corruption. Stable political structures, well-defined and recognized property rights and legal enforcement of contracts have reduced transaction costs, explaining the success of the world’s most powerful economies. Transaction cost theory was used in the analysis of general interest issues such as the role and governance practices, definition of market institutions or in explaining the differences between economic performances of nations. Related to the last element mentioned, the theory developed in close connection with the role of institutions in fostering economic efficiency by reducing trading costs. North concluded that capitalist and democratic institutions (free market, state, justice) are the result of efforts to minimize transaction costs (North 1991,

Position analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Position analysis - Essay Example Theologically, we learn Jane’s socialization since she was full of social life after living alone for long period. Before Timothy meeting Smith, she had undergone brain injury after sustaining an injury. Unfortunately, she developed a cancer at a very tender age. The fate of midwife through the dying process is one of its kinds and needs patience and perseverance. On the other hand, the articulation goes further to analyze on how the author goes further to create a social relationship with Jane. By then Timothy was practicing his own medical practice and he was happy to learn that Jane indeed decided to change her insurance plans and remain Timothy patient. Through professional level, Timothy gave all the support and provided necessary help to Jane and through this caring perception, timothy generated a strong bond with Jane. One of the reasons for Jane decided to leave insurance perception was because she was suffering asthma and with time while under Timothy medication, she sustained and developed emphysema too. It was a tough time to Jane, since in that process she developed complex rheumatoid arthritis since her serology tests on her blood was confirmed positively. Nevertheless, this does not cut the strong bond timothy had created with Jane. As a medical practitioner, Timothy continued to attend to Jane despite of her being out of her medical clinic and it is evident from the writings that this two met on several occasions (Quill, 17-21). As far as the issue of midwife through the dying process is concerned, Medical risk becomes a reality that any medical practitioner comes across. From the articulation, we find that Jane in her status experienced a tough breast cancer status that needed total care and support from both the doctors and midwife. It is administered from her behavior that she hates being in hospital and depends a lot on others for her care. The complications that get rid many patients’ acts as a challenge to midwife career pathw ays. When midwife interacts with their patients, as administered from the Jane case, commitment perception is acquired. In line to the history of Jane and what Timothy learned from her is perseverance and hope to live. This is articulate d further from the history given by Jane about her friend known as Bill. From her story towards Bill is that, the man was a physically and energetic in his mid-seventies. At this time he was still able to work even during part time even he never participated in any athlete’s activities. But with time, no one would anticipate that Bill would one day feel sick and be hospitalized. Bill out of nowhere was hit by macular degeneration disease, one of the causes that made Bill become legally blind hence was unable to read, drive as well as enjoy sports that required fine hand eye coordination. From the Story of Bill as articulated by Jane, patients are in need of midwife care, it is at this particular moment that perseverance, and commitment comes on top of the agenda. Many patients suffering from cancer totally undergoes tuff times and full concentration towards them is of high consideration. Timothy is his career has encountered various challenges that he terms as a possibility to one who have a heart to help while working as a doctor as well as a midwife. Timothy unveils that Jane was a retired nurse and former hospice

Database implementation and querying Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Database implementation and querying - Essay Example SQL> create table a1_language ( language varchar2(15) constraint language primar y key); Table created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Romanian'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('English'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('French'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('German'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Afrikaans'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Spanish'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Catalan'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Portuguese'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Italian'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Turkish'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Lithuanian'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Russian'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Japanese'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Slovenian'); 1 r ow created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Norwegian'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Chinese'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Serbian'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Slovak'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Czech'); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_language values ('Polish'); 1 row created. ... l ( issn varchar2(9) constraint issn primary key, tit le varchar2(100), url varchar2(110), publisher_id number(3), keyword varchar2(18 0), start_year number(4), end_year number(4) ); Table created. SQL> commit; Commit complete. SQL> insert into a1_journal values ('1222-569X','Annals of the University of Ora dea : Economic Science','http://steconomice.uoradea.ro/anale/en_index.html',114, 'financial accounting, banking, management, marketing, statistics',2005,NULL); i nsert into a1_journal values ('1311-0160','Balkan Journal of Medical Genetics',' http://versita.metapress.com/content/120841/',118,'genetics, genetic engineering ',2007,NULL); insert into a1_journal values ('1222-569X','Annals of the University of Oradea : Economic Science','http://steconomice.uoradea.ro/anale/en_index.html',114,'fina ncial accounting, banking, management, marketing, statistics',2005,NULL); insert into a1_journal values ('1311-0160','Balkan Journal of Medical Genetics','http: //versita.metapress.com/conte nt/120841/',118,'genetics, genetic engineering',200 7,NULL) * ERROR at line 1: ORA-00911: invalid character SQL> insert into a1_journal values ('1222-569X','Annals of the University of Ora dea : Economic Science','http://steconomice.uoradea.ro/anale/en_index.html',114, 'financial accounting, banking, management, marketing, statistics',2005,NULL); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_journal values ('1311-0160','Balkan Journal of Medical Genet ics','http://versita.metapress.com/content/120841/',118,'genetics, genetic engin eering',2007,NULL); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_journal values ('0259-9422','Hervormde Teologiese Studies',' http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php',115,' theological disciplines, bible study' ,2008,NULL); 1 row created. SQL> insert into a1_journal values

Superstitions of the Elizabethan Era Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Superstitions of the Elizabethan Era - Essay Example Fear of the supernatural and man's anxiety about the nature of God during this period promoted the belief in superstition. A central figure in the superstitions of the Elizabethan era was the witch. The belief that witches were largely responsible for bringing bad events to a community brought out the superstition that they were able to fly and had magical powers. Though superstition was officially discounted by the royalty as a belief of the commoners, in 1562 Queen Elizabeth I passed a severe law against witches that led to widespread witch hunts and the persecution of anyone believed to be involved with witchcraft (Elizabethan Superstitions). These harsh actions may have been the result of the severe weather beginning in 1562 in Europe (Behringer). The public was looking for someone to blame for the hailstorms and frigid weather and during this period, weather making was "the most important charge against suspected witches" (Behringer). This superstition is carried over today with the fear of anyone who has 'a dark cloud hanging over them'. Superstition was often thought to be the property of the more ignorant classes, and most of the fear was directed at that class. However, Holliday notes that, "[...] even though the upper class discount the stories of the commoners, they themselves were taught the same stories. Most upper class families hired lower class nurses for the early rearing of their children". The stories were the primary method of education and were rich with superstition and witchcraft. Often passed along by the old wives to the children, this became the origin of the often-used phrase 'old wives tale' that is still in use today. Though the subject of superstition may be viewed as rather innocuous, during the time of Elizabeth it was a serious subject. During that period almost 250 witches were executed, mostly poor single women who lived alone (Elizabethan Superstition). Many superstitions that are harbored today have been carried over from the Elizabethan period and many were founded in some realm of truth. Spilling salt was considered bad luck during the Elizabethan period and this attitude was passed on to children. This belief had a practical use as the cost of salt was high and the desire for it was great (Elizabethan Superstitions). It was also believed that witches could brew magic potions. In fact, many elixirs, potions, and cures were brewed from herbs then and still are today. Usually herbs would have a particular lore that went with their possession. Mandrake, often used in rituals, was known to grow under gallows and was said to have, "shrieked so horribly that uprooted anyone hearing it would go mad" (Simpson and Roud, 224). The present day superstition that makes walking under a ladder unlucky is also traced to the Elizabethan era. Ladders were associated with hangings and executions and were naturally seen as a bad omen (Elizabethan Su perstitions). Often times, superstition would involve objects found in nature. According to Simpson and Roud, "The cuckoo's habit of laying eggs in the nests of other birds explains why its cry was regarded, in medieval and Elizabethan times, as mocking cuckold

The story Killings by Andre Dubus Essay Example for Free

The story Killings by Andre Dubus Essay The story Killings by Andre Dubus is about a man named Matt and his love for his son Frank. He is upset because his son has been killed by a man called Richard. Matts wife, older son, and his friends think that Richard should be killed too. His son wishes to kill the murderer of his younger brother, but Matt is even scared of the thought because doing so means that he would lose his second son, too. His wife also does not want to see Richard alive. In Killings, Matt is very angry at himself for the reason of not being able to protect his son and is forced to kill his sons murderer; however, at the end he is not very enthusiastic about it instead he is very upset and depressed. One of the reasons that Matt kills Richard is his own wife. She is very hurt by her sons death. She is always crying because she sees her sons murderer walking around in the stores all the time which kills her. Once Matt tells his friend Willis Ruth sees him too much. She was at sunny Hurst today getting cigarettes and aspirins and there he was. She cant even go out anymore. It is killing her (90). This explains how much of pressure he is under to avenge his sons death. This leads him to kill Richard even though he does not really want to kill him Another one of the reasons for Matts action is that Matts older son Steve wants to kill Richard. For example, when they leave after burying Frank to his graveyard, Steve turns to his family and states, I should kill him (89). This point out that Steve is also very hurt by his younger brothers death, who was only twenty one years old. He feels so helpless and wishes to kill Richard. Matt is very alarmed by this because he does want his son to kill anyone. If he commits murder, Matt would lose his second son, too. Matts friend Willis also suggests that he should kill Richard because Richard has always been cruel and violent. Once he shot a womans husband for her and dropped him off the bridge in the Merrimack River with a hundred pound sack of cement. He even covered his crime by saying that nobody helped the woman. This declares what kind of a man Richard is and what he has done to others. Now he has killed Frank which was very cruel of him, and Matts family believes that he has no right to live. Willis is also forcing Matt to believe that whatever his family thinks of doing to Richard is right. Willis urges Matt to kill Richard himself before someone in his family commits the act and he loses another family member. Just so everyone would be relieved and think that justice has been done.

Tok on the Limits of Knowledge Essay Example for Free

Tok on the Limits of Knowledge Essay â€Å"the vocabulary we have does more than communicate our knowledge; it shapes what we can know’. Evaluate this claim with reference to different areas of knowledge. † At first glance this title seems to be ridiculous. Our vocabulary can have complete control over what we can know’. It seems unlikely that there is knowledge that cannot be obtained due to the limits of our vocabulary. However when you look at this in depth it seems to be true. What is vocabulary? Vocabulary are the words we use. Vocabulary has a connection to the word itself and what’s behind it. Say the word cow. The word â€Å"cow† is merely just a noise. But we automatically connect this word to the animal. Every word has this â€Å"magical touch† to it. Thinking about vocabulary this way we can begin to see that knowledge is shaped by vocabulary because the words we have have individual meanings behind them. Without any vocabulary to represent unfound knowledge is there no way for it to be discovered? Different areas of knowledge argue against this idea. Human sciences allow us to perceive and have different observations of vocabulary. If vocabulary can hold different meanings and perceptions to different people and cultures this could potentially allow knowledge to break past the barrier of language. Language also holds its own set of rules. These rules (Context, comprehension, grammar ) can alter the meanings of words to once again allow for different meanings. Language seems to be solid and rule bound. But this is not the case, Language is creative and open-ended. One problem it is faced with is that what one person means when they say something may not be what another person understands when they hear it. This allows for millions of different interpretations. interpretation is very important to the understanding of knowledge. Knowledge runs hand in hand with language, If we fail to interpret On the basis, a general understood meaning allows us to maintain knowledge whereas these new meaning can help us discover knowledge. Language surrounds us wherever we go yet we fail to realize it, yet again it plays one of the biggest roles in human life. We use language in almost everything we do. Language is so important because it allows us to break out of our own self knowledge and enter into the minds and understandings of thers through communication. Communication is the foundation of knowledge. But communication has its flaws that allow knowledge to become hazy and hard to acquire. One example is what one person says might not be what another person understands. This is a huge barrier in communication, which correlates to a huge barrier in knowledge. Think of trying to learn something and h aving no background or understanding of the vocabulary used. You are not able to understand this knowledge because you don’t understand meaning. Meaning is the basis to understanding vocabulary. So to not understand meaning of vocabulary, we cannot learn knowledge. This is one way vocabulary begins to limit what we can know. You might think an easy solution to this problem would be to just consult a dictionary or ask for a further explanation of the unfamiliar vocabulary. Although this seems promising and easy, we do not always get the result we look for. Communication has its way of being interpreted. Different people and different cultures have their own understandings of words. Words have fuzzy undefined edges to them. Try explaining the word love. Without much thought you can understand that what it means to you could be completely different to someone else. Looking at vocabulary this way you can see that it creates a viscous cycle that cannot be conquered. Another problem similar to this one is that vocabulary has words that have something to show for them and some that don’t (denotation theory). An example I used earlier is cow, You can look at a cow. Words like these help communication which makes knowledge seem to have fewer limits, But its words like wisdom, pride, or freedom that bring up issues in understanding knowledge. Look at the word pride. You can look at examples of pride, but it does not represent one singular thing that is understood by everyone everywhere. Once again this creates the viscous cycle I mentioned earlier, Until we learn to have a fundamentally sound definition for these words like these will vocabulary no longer limit our knowledge. Now that we have looked at some problems of vocabulary itself we can begin to apply the problems found in communication that limit what we can know. The poet Robert frost observed that rarely do humans ever say exactly what they mean. What he means is that humans during communication will include five problematic meanings. These five are vagueness, Ambiguity, secondary meanings, metaphor, and irony. These five problematic are a huge limitation on communication, if they are not immediately picked up on during communication our knowledge is greatly impacted. First is vagueness. Consider the word tall. While taken out of context this word has infinite possibilities. Tall means completely different things while talking about how tall you are or talking about how big buildings are in major cities.

Efficiency of Window Systems

Efficiency of Window Systems Review of Window Shopping: A Study of Desktop Window Switching. ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Warr, A., Chi, Ed H. , Harris, H., Kuscher, A., Chen, J., Flack, R. and Jitkoff. N. (2016) Window Shopping: A Study of Desktop Window Switching. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 16). ACM, New York, NY, USA. pp 3335-3338. ABSTRACT This is a review of a research article by Warr et al (2016), of Google Inc, Window shopping: A Study of Desktop Window Switching, which is an investigation into the efficiency of window systems. Having multiple windows open is commonplace but users often have problems switching between windows. This report presents an experiment used to evaluate window switching interfaces that are being considered for a new operating system. Its focus is an understanding of the effects of switching on user performances in terms of time to switch and errors in selection. The experiment compares three different styles of window switching interfaces and their effects on user performances. The interfaces chosen were the Cards interface, the Exposà © interface and the Mosaic interface. The results from the experiment suggest that the Mosaic interface allows faster selection than the Cards interface and is less erroneous than the Exposà © interface. SUMMARY OF ARTICLE The report outlines some windows research since the 1980s to the present time. Early research (Bly el al. 1986) showed that even though tiled window systems were faster than overlapping windows, users still preferred overlapping windows. Their conclusion being that it is imperative to create window systems that are both efficient and meet their user preferences. Research by Card and Henderson (1987) argued for designs that reduce the time and cognitive load of switching tasks. Hutchings et als (2004) study showed that users often have 8 or more windows open at any time with a median activation time of 3.8 seconds. Other research looked at arranging and grouping windows. These research works inspired Warr et al to investigate three window switching interfaces. The chosen interfaces were The Cards Interface: These resemble playing cards with small conceptual representation of the window and small amounts of information. They are spread like a stack of cards with the most recent window showing at the front. The Exposà © interface: This arranges the windows in a map, based on their size and original position. The Mosaic Interface: In this interface the windows are paced in order of most recent left to right in a grid form with the windows scaled to size of grid cell. The report details the design and procedures used in the experiment. They used a 3X3 mixed factorial design for the experiment.   This being the three user interface types by three different number of windows open at a time namely 3, 6 and 9 windows. The experiment was carried out to prove two hypothesises about window switching. Hypothesis 1: That the Mosaic interface allows windows to be selected faster than the Cards and Exposà © interfaces Hypothesis 2: The Mosaic interface would have less errors in selection than the Cards and Exposà © interfaces. The experiment was carried out in a lab using 42 participants (27 female and 15 male) ranging in age from 18-60. The participants were volunteers and were selected on the basis that they used laptops as their main computing device, hadnt used any of the selected interfaces previously and on average had more than one window open at any one time. They developed an application which prototyped the interfaces and allowed them to control and gather the data. Trials were carried out using each of the interfaces and selected number of windows. The participant were instructed to switch to predefined windows and the time taken to select the correct window and any errors in selections were recorded. The details of the conditions used are defined. The article displays the results for selection time and errors and shows them in table and graphical format for each interface and number of windows. Using a number of statistical tests the results allowed for partial acceptance of both hypothesis. They suggested that the Mosaic interface allows quicker window selection than the Cards interface that the Mosaic interface has fewer selection errors than the Exposà © interface. In the discussion they imply that the Mosaic interface was faster because the need to scroll in the card selection made it inefficient especially as the number of windows increases. Also in the Exposà © interface as the number of open windows increases the size of the thumbnails in the Exposà © interface decreases making them more difficult to distinguish. There wasnt much difference in number of erroneous selections between the interfaces except the Exposà © interface at the greater number of open windows. They surmise that was due to the fact the thumbnails were small and hard to distinguish. The limitations applied in conducting the experiment makes this a worst case scenario. They conclude that the Mosaic interface enables fast, less error prone window selection. DISCUSSION The article is well laid out. It summarises some similar research previously carried out in window switching although they say that this is the first comparative study of these specific window overview schemes (p 3336). Their reference material is fairly old. The most recent being a study of their own presented at the CHI conference in 2011. The aim of the experiment, investigating the efficiency of three window interfaces, and the reason for it are well defined. It presents the experiment in distinct sections outlining the design of the experiment, how the participants were chosen, the materials used, the procedures, their interpretation of the results and conclusion. They conclude that the Mosaic interface is the faster and the least error prone of the three chosen interfaces. This is internally valid as it was in a controlled environment however how transferable this is in the real world where prior knowledge and familiarity may affect the results is not measured. It also ignores user preferences that Bly et al considered important. There is no measure of the user experience in this experiment. Purposive sampling of participants appears to have been used. They did not include a group with prior knowledge of the interfaces and were careful throughout the experiment to alleviate any learning effects. This may have been for quick and economic reasons even though participants received a gift card. The sample size may be small because of the criteria used to select the participants and there is no explanation as to why there are almost twice as many women. The data collected from this group cant really be used to generalise about the interfaces. The results may be biased towards non experienced users. They could however be used as a control reference for any future research to externally validate these interfaces with other users. The authors of the article are affiliated to Google inc and Warr, Chi and Harris have published many articles in areas relating to computer interface design. Their previous works has been cited many times. This paper was presented to the CHI 16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. This is a top conference for HCI where the future of how people interact with technology is discussed. It is a conference for top researchers, designers and corporations. This was an ideal place to present this research paper and may prompt further research in this area. A good knowledge of statistics is required to understand the results as presented in the article. The researchers appear to be confident in their methods and choice of statistical tests but without a knowledge of statistics it is difficult to know whether their choice of statistical tests are biased. In their discussion they explore the reasons why the Mosaic interface may have been faster than the Cards interface. The put forward three credible explanations for this. These factors could be explored in any future studies. They acknowledge the fact that the experiment may not reflect real life scenarios. CONCLUSION Warr, Chi, Harris, Kuscher, Chen, Flack, and Jitkoff presented a detailed experiment in window switching interfaces that were being considered for a new operating system. They suggest that the Mosaic interface allows faster selection than the Cards interface and less erroneous than the Exposà © interface from the results they obtained. The results may not transfer to the general population and does not study the ergonomics of the interfaces and ignores user preferences. However they may inspire further research in the area of window switching. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bly, S. A. and Rosenberg, J. K. 1986. A comparison of tiled and overlapping windows. Proc. CHI86, ACM Press, 101-106. Card S. K. and Henderson, A. 1987. A Multiple, Virtual-Workspace Interface to Support User Task Switching. Proc CHI87, ACM Press, 53-59. Hutchings, D. R., Smith, G., Meyers, B., Czerwinski, M., Robertson, G. 2004. Display space usage and window management operation comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users. Proc. AVI04, ACM Press, 32-39.

Diversification of the American Workforce: Impact on Interaction betwee

Diversification of the American Workforce: Impact on Interaction between Managers and Employees Abstract The diversification of the American Workforce has changed the way managers interact with employees. This diversification is due to tighter labor markets, increased immigration, and women entering the workforce. Cultural factors, not present before, have caused managers to develop new methods of tasking, motivating, and educating these diverse employees. Essentially these new methods have been a change in interpersonal behavior, the way a manager acts and re-acts to employees. This change in behavior was necessary to increase productivity and maintain a competitive edge in the market place. I. Introduction In my Cultural Anthropology course, I had to learn and memorize the definition of culture; â€Å"Culture is an organized system of learned behavior patterns, always made manifest in a group, making that group distinctive from other groups†¦Ã¢â‚¬  This definition was the basis for my understanding and ability to learn about other people, different than myself and from different backgrounds, during my studies in Anthropology and Psychology. This definition has the key element of what culture is, a system of behavior distinctive to a particular group of people. These behaviors range from cultural norms to religious beliefs. In business, the effectiveness of an organization rests on the ability of the management to interact with its employees and to motivate the workforce to accomplish the goals of the company. This ability of interaction between the manager and the employees depends on the managers understanding of the cultural differences between himself and his employees. The masculine form is only being used as example for the purpose of this paper. It is understood that the managers will most likely be male or female. An organization is affected by cultural factors on many levels. The top management forms the basic foundation of an organization when they set the primary goals for that organization, the reason the organization is in business. An example would be that a car company in the United States of America would have the ultimate goal of making large amounts of profit for it’s stakeholders. This goal is derived in the root cultural tenant of capitalism. The United States was founded with capitalist ideas and so American managers will have capitalist ide... ...behavior towards diverse employees and learn to understand the cultural differences between them will undoubtedly increase productivity and gain a competitive edge in the market place.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   VI. References Bernstein, A. and Rozen, S. (1992). Neanderthals at work. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Bowman-Kruhm, M. and Wirths, C. (1998). Discrimination and prejudice. New York: Rosen Publishing. Burns, J. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper and Row. Chaleff, I. (1995). The courageous follower. San Francisco: Berlett-Koehler Publishers. Creating a diverse workforce. (n.d.) Retrieved March 1, 2003, from http://www.businessweek. com/adsections/diversity/diversework.htm Daft, R. (1988). Management. New York: The Dryden Press. Devoe, D. (1999). Managing a diverse workforce. Retrieved March 1, 2003, from http://archive.infoworld.com/articles Kotkin, J. (1993). Tribes: how race, religion, and identity determine success in the new global economy. New York: Random House. Kowalenko, K. (2000). Increasing diversity in America’s science, engineering, and technology fields. Retrieved March 1, 2003, from http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/inst/dec2000

The West Nile Virus :: West Nile Viruses Health Essays

The West Nile Virus **Let it be known that I am writing this account in the hope that it may someday benefit future generations, although I hope for their sake that the world has by then tamed the West Nile Virus. First and foremost, mosquitoes are the human beings' enemy in the battle against West Nile Virus. This is not to say that we as humans should declare an all out war on the creatures, but rather that people need to be especially aware during the months of August and September of avoiding those areas (such as those near standing water) which attract mosquitoes. Those who spend a great deal of time outside are obviously more susceptible to mosquito bites, and as such I highly recommend that such persons wear long sleeved shirts and long pants at all times. So far, this method has kept me and a great many of my acquaintances safe from the dreaded bite. Currently, our leading scientists also believe that using insect repellent which contains the chemical DEET will also severely cut down one's chances of being bitten. Yet, we must always keep in mind that relatively few of these creatures are actual carriers of the virus, and that most humans who are bitten by a mosquito will never contract any form of West Nile Virus. If one should be unlucky enough to be bitten by an infected mosquito (who most likely contracted the virus from an infected bird), there are certain symptoms which have been observed in West Nile epidemics which one should watch for. My curious readers, I must emphasize the fact that per my own observations, up to 80% of those persons bitten by an infected mosquito will be asymptomatic and thus will have nothing to worry about. Yet those who develop what we are currently calling the "mild symptoms" of the virus, may exhibit any combination of the following symptoms: fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, skin rash, and swollen lymph glands. One will exhibit any or all of these wretched symptoms, which I myself have observed to last no more than a few days. Yet with this form of the virus, death and permanent neurological damage have yet to occur as a direct result. The mild symptoms make up what we are referring to as "West Nile Fever," as opposed to the much more severe cases of the virus which are being classified in three groups at this point in time: West Nile encephalitis, West Nile meningitis, and West Nile poliomyelitis.

Are We Now Becoming the Terrorists? Essay -- September 11 Terrorism Es

Are We Now Becoming the Terrorists?    Terrorism is a weapon of the weak. Shut out of the great conversations that shape our histories and unable to control the grand forces that shape our destinies, terrorists strike out in angry desperation to force those they have identified as their oppressors to pay attention to the plight of the alienated and to hear the terrorists' demands. The events of September 11 were just such a gesture. The horror we felt watching a jet flown deliberately into a tall building and watching people leap to their deaths to escape the flames and collapse of the ruined skyscrapers filled us with a strange awe and a feeling of helplessness. We felt forced to pay attention.   The first question on everyone's lips was: what can we do? What can we do to prevent this from happening again? What can we do to punish those responsible? How we answer these questions will decide whether we live in a civilization worth defending, or if we, too, are weak.       This unprecedented attack on American soil brings into focus the connections between our freedoms, our security, and the international system. Our choices over what to do are constrained by the ways these parts of our lives are connected. Our leaders and representatives, responding to the theories and analyses of their advisors and of the think tanks that dedicate themselves to studying such questions, have already begun to speak of September 11 as this generation's Pearl Harbor and the need to prepare for war, and of the trade-offs we will have to make for our security. Their first responses - and those of many of us - are to lash out at those who have wronged us.       However, to lash out now is a path fraught with n... ...saster relief and peacekeepers, but we are the single largest supplier of arms to the already intensely violent Middle East. And because Israel is our strategic ally in the region, we won't even allow discussion of whether its policies towards Palestinians are racist.       If we are to do anything, we must be ready to take a path more difficult than anyone has suggested so far. We must be ready to be thoughtful and sober, and to look for political solutions to the problems in the world that are now producing the threats to our security. Today, we feel like now is the time to act. Our pain, our helplessness, our frustration at discovering we are vulnerable makes us want to take control over our lives again. We are ready to retaliate against acts of angry desperation with anger and despair. But now is not the time to become terrorists ourselves.   

Hunting and mindset Essay

I believe if you have a fixed mindset it’s never too late to change and adapt to a growth mindset. The growth mindset will lead you to try new things but a fixed mindset will stop you in your tracks causing you only to fail. The type of mindset you have is very important because it will influence your life in many ways. What is the difference between a growth and fixed mindset? Well a growth or positive mindset leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as the path to mastery, and learn from criticism, and find lessons in the success of others. As a result you will reach even higher levels of achievement. A fixed or negative mindset leads to a tendency to look smart at any cost. Therefore a tendency to avoid challenges, give up easily, see effort as fruitless or worse, ignore useful negative feedback, and feel threatened by the success of others. As a result you will plateau early and achieve less than your full potential. Some of the ways a positive mind set affected my life happened early in my life. For example when I was ten years old I went to camp seven hills and took on archery. It was really hard but I learned it very quickly and never gave up. When I got home from camp I asked my dad if I could go hunting with him once I was old enough and he told me girls cant hunt we are too weak. Because I had a growth mindset I never gave up I practiced without my father every day for three years. I got my hunting license when I was thirteen and went with my friend mike and his parents to their cabin in Olean NY. It was really cold out that day I remember shaking while perched up in my tree I wanted to give up so bad but I wanted to prove my dad wrong and show him that girls can hunt. Finally a 8 point buck walks in my range I got my bow ready and breathing slowly I pull back the arrow aim for the kill spot let go WAMM right threw his lungs. I was so excited knowing I just proved to my father that I can do anything I put my mind to. After I turned fifteen I started to develop more of a fixed mindset towards school which affected my life in many ways. It all started with failing one test and my life spiraled downhill from there. It was 2003 and I thought I was on top of the world I could pass any test without studying and I thought I knew everything, but what I didn’t know is how this stuck up attitude was going to change my life in a huge way. I walked into my class head in the clouds sad down and looked at my test â€Å"spelling ha this is going to be easy† I muttered. I flew through the test handed it in and walked out. The next day I got to class and my teacher handed me my test my jaw dropped â€Å"this has to be a mistake I couldn’t of got only a 63% on my test you had to grade it wrong† I yelled to the teacher. She gave me detention for yelling at her in class but I didn’t bother going I was so mad. I started skipping school and going to parties because at this point I started not to care anymore. When I got home one day my dad grounded me because the school called him and mentioned my behavior to him. I was so mad I ran away from home and started drinking and doing drugs. This caused me to get put in a detention center when I was sixteen and when I got out I moved in with my mother because she didn’t care what I did. Now twenty-three I have started to work at getting back into a positive mindset so I can be a good role model for my daughter. In order for someone to adopt a growth mindset, they would have to care about what their mindset is, understand why they act the way they do, and understand that they can change, and the reason for change, which would be to become a better person, which they would also have to care about. Our mindset will affect us in many ways and it can also affect the people around us which are why we should try to keep a growth mindset.

Market Growth and Trends

Growth Rate of the Aircraft Manufacturing IndustryAccording of FAA Aerospace Forecasts, the number of commercial aircrafts is expected to grow from 7,626 in the year 2006 to 11,203 in the year 2020 with an average annual growth rate or 2.8% or 256 aircrafts (FAA Aero space, 2007, p. 14)Trends in the Aircraft manufacturing Industry & Its effects on the industryOf these the number of passenger jets in the mainline carrier fleet, in this period, would on an average increase by an average of 163 aircrafts per year to reach a total of 6,041 in 2020.   The number regional jets has been forecasted to increase on an average by 3.4 %   from 1,687 in 2006 to 2,689 in 2020. The turbo-piston aircraft is however expected to decline from 1056 in 2006 to 1,005 in 2020. The cargo jet aircrafts are projected to increase by 23 aircrafts per year, the narrow-body aircrafts are projected to decline by 4 aircrafts a year, and the wide-body jet fleet i.e. the Airbus A-380 segment is projected to incre ase by more than 37 aircrafts a year. (FAA Aero space, 2007, p. 15)The demand for the business jets have been seen to increase over the past couple of years and this trend is expected to continue in the coming decade. Hence a demand for micro-jets is expected to rise in this period. The year 2005 saw a new type of aircraft â€Å"light sport aircraft†. Looking at the number of aircrafts being registered, the number of this type of aircrafts is projected to rise rapidly. (FAA Aero space, 2007, p. 16)Boeing Company: Key CompetitorsFollowing are they Key Competitors of Boeing:1.Lockheed Martin Corporation – The Company’s aeronautic division manufactures military aircrafts and related technologies. Some of the products of the company are: â€Å"F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F-22 air dominance attack and multi-mission combat aircraft, the F-16 multi-role fighter, the C-130J tactical transport aircraft, and the C-5 strategic airlift aircraft† (Yahoo Finance, 20 07, para 1)2.European Aeronautics Defense and Space Company EADS N.V. – EADS has been formed by combing the following companies: The Daimler Chrysler Aerospace or DASA and Aerospace Matra from France, and Construcciones Aeronicas SA or CASA from Spain (Yahoo Finance, 2007, para 1)3.Airbus S.A.S. – This is the world’s #1 commercial aircraft manufacturer. Some of the aircraft manufactured by the company are the A318, A319, A320, A321 of the single aisle type and A300, A310, A330, A340 of the wide body type. (Yahoo Finance, 2007, para 1)4.Northrop Grumman Corp.- The company manufactures various types of aerospace systems for the US Government (Yahoo Finance, 2007, para 1)5.General Dynamic Corp.- The airline division of this company manufactures business-jet aircraft for various clients like private individual, government agencies and corporations (Yahoo Finance, 2007, para 1)6.GE Aviation – The company is world’s largest engine manufacturer for milita ry and commercial airplanes (Yahoo Finance, 2007, para 1)Marketing MixProductThis paper focuses on the Boeing Corporation’s aircraft products. The aircrafts produced by this company are the commercial jet aircrafts for the airline industry. The company manufactures aircrafts for 100-500 passengers. The products of the company include the following aircraft types: 737, 747, 767, 777, and 787 Dreamliner.PriceThe pricing strategy that Boeing, when it enters is new market is to use the penetration pricing strategy i.e. use low cost combined with better quality of products. This strategy was immensely successful in making the 737 family a well known name outside the US market. (Cavallone, Cassia, & Zappella, 2007, p. 5)   A strategy that proved to be a failure however was that reduction of prices for the entire fleet at a time, and terming it as a sale. The repercussion of this was. Northrop and EADS captured strong market shares which were previously held by BoeingPlacementAs m entioned above, Boeing has different families of products for different market segment. Each of the family is placed in a different category. For instance 737 is aimed towards smaller and low cost airlines, 747 has a presence with almost every major airline, 767 and 777 are aimed towards airlines flying international and long distance etc.PromotionAircraft manufacturing industry is a B2B business segment. The cost of products is huge while the numbers of products sold are less. The company regularly participates in fairs where its products are displayed. In addition to this the company also participates in indirect marketing by publishing its technical achievements in various technical fests via news and print media.Works CitedOnline ArticlesCavallone M, Cassia F, Zappella C, 2007, International g Mix, 8th October 2007,http://www.unibg.it/dati/corsi/6489/21318-4.%20The%20International%20M-Mix%20-%20Product%20and%20Pricing%20Strategies.pdfWebsitesâ€Å"Commercial Airplanes†, 2 007, Boeing, 8th October 2007,â€Å"FAA Aerospace Forecast Fiscal years 2007-2020†, 16th March 2007. FAA-USDepartment of Transportation,. 8th October 2007,Pages taken from Yahoo FinanceYahoo Finance. 2007. Yahoo Inc. 8th October 2007, â€Å"Airbus S.A.S Company Profile†. Yahoo Finance. 2007. Yahoo Inc. 8th October 2007,â€Å"European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company EADS N.V. Company Profile†,Yahoo Finance. 2007. Yahoo Inc. 8th October 2007,   Ã¢â‚¬Å"GE Aviation Company Profile â€Å".Yahoo Finance. 2007. Yahoo Inc. 8th October 2007,â€Å"General Dynamics Corp.†, Yahoo Finance. 2007. Yahoo Inc. 8th October 2007,â€Å"Lockheed Martin Corporation†. Yahoo Finance. 2007. Yahoo Inc. 8th October 2007,â€Å"Northrop Grumman Corp.†. Yahoo Finance. 2007. Yahoo Inc. 8th October 2007,

Nucor – Porter’s 5 Forces

NUCOR AT A CROSSROADS CASE ANALYSIS NUCOR’S SUSTAINED PERFORMANCE RECORD PORTER’S 5 FORCES ANALYSIS †¢ Supplier Power: With the eventual exit of integrated steel companies from buying scrap, the options available with suppliers to sell, reduced. Nucor started several small plants that were close to suppliers ; customers, thereby reducing transportation costs. Also, the sites chosen had inexpensive electricity. Their employee-centric policies resulted in them having lowest attrition levels ; a steady supply of new employees. Thus the supplier power was moderate-low. Buyer Power: Although Nucor employed the latest technology ; competitive prices, with imported steel available, the buyers had more options to choose from. However, Nucor’s customer service was a differentiator that buyers were willing to pay for. Hence, the Buyer power was mildly unattractive. †¢Barriers to Entry: Minimill business was a capital-intensive business for a new player. Also, for existing integrated steel makers, their reluctance to adapt to newer technology ; smaller scale discouraged them to get into the market of the minimills. Thus it was mildly attractive from Nucor’s point of view. Threat of Substitutes: With wide availability of substitutes such as aluminum, plastics ; advanced composites, the demand for steel had stagnated. Hence, the threat of substitutes in the future was highly unattractive. †¢ Degree of rivalry: The integrated steel makers didn’t threaten Nucor’s business. Nucor always had the cost advantage ; efficiency coupled with superior technology ; innovation. However, this was challenged by the global steel makers which resulted in lowering of prices ; lower margins. The only differentiation for Nucor was its highly sought-after customer service.Thus the degree of rivalry was high. Thus overall, Nucor had sustained performance so far, due to its technology innovation, lean operations, high efficiency, strong emp loyee relations ; superior customer service. However, going ahead, with availability of substitutes ; growing threat of equally good foreign steel makers, the sustainability is in question unless Nucor innovates ; strategically aligns itself to the changing demands of its customers. FUNCTIONAL FIT †¢ Low Cost Focus Strategy: Nucor adoption of organic growth helped in bridging the gap between the company and its customers.Mills were set up near the Vulcraft operations and Vulcraft in turn ensured speedy delivery of the products to its customers. The company was also able to bring down the fixed order processing costs by using computerized order entry and billing systems. With the help of competent distribution and other measures, the company was successful in raising the willingness of the customers to pay even if the price was increased. Also, the company focused on the low end segment. †¢ Organizational systems / Procedures: Nucor had a flat organizational structure. They decentralized the plant-level decision making to the respective plant managers.This led to a lot of autonomy ; faster decision making thus providing them an advantage over the competitors. The performance measurement was more quantitative in nature for the plant managers, where they had to meet specific revenue targets. The Nucor management supported creativity ; risk taking as they firmly believed in innovation ; improvisation. There was a relatively high degree of inter-plant communication vis-a-vis consolidation of orders, sharing of deliverables, etc. Thus the plants didn’t entirely work in isolation, although the structure was decentralized.At the plant level, there were conscious efforts to treat all levels of employees at par ; make all of them feel equally important ; relevant to the organization. †¢ Performance Measurement: The performance of the plant manager was more quantitative in nature. However for those of the other employees, it was a mix of qualitative as well as quantitative. This is because of their emphasis on productivity ; quality. The reward / compensation were more group based rather than individual based, encouraging teamwork. †¢ Values / Culture Review: Employee focus was the hallmark of Nucor.They encouraged risk taking, creativity ; innovation. Their policies didn’t allow for much differentiation between different cadres. Their flat structure had decentralized decision making, they provided employees a sense of belonging / ownership with the organization. The all-cash incentives were regularly doled out ; were directly performance linked – quality ; quantity-wise. Their strong employee-bonding started right from the time the plant was constructed, till retirement. They didn’t believe in firing ; during lean times, would rather cut back on working hours, than fire people.The end result was that they not only had a highly productive, motivated, experienced ; non-unionized work force, but their e mployee turnover was much below the industry average ; they had many people willing to work for them. Their high human capital was a clear differentiator ; advantage over the competition in the steel industry. Thus, Nucor’s approach of controlled growth, focus on technology ; innovation, high employee productivity coupled with a dedicated workforce, decentralized ; quick decision making, have resulted in a sustained growth ; success of Nucor.For sustainability in the future, Nucor will have to continue to focus on technology ; innovation as it has been its point of differentiation among its competitors. TETRA-THREAT FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSIS: Threat of Imitation: †¢ The advantage it derived from a flatter decentralized structure ; a motivated workforce, was hard to imitate, as it would mean reorganizing the organization ; it would take much longer to be effective. †¢ Nucor constantly innovated ; used latest technology. Hence, even though a competitor cop ied its technology, it would take time for it to implement it ; in that while, Nucor would have moved n to a newer technology. †¢ Costs of imitation in this case are the capital investments that would have to be made ; the economies of scale that will have to be achieved. Threat of Substitution: †¢ The internal threat of substitution by means of resource substitution is very little, as the employee attrition rate is very low compared to industry level ; the services offered to customers is of high value for the customers. †¢ External threat of substitution is high due to emergence of aluminum, plastics, etc as cheaper substitutes for steel.But as Nucor is focused on innovation, it can counter this by itself moving towards these substitutes or coming up with further innovative ways to make steel which can compete with the substitutes. However this would mean further investments in technology ; infrastructure ; training of employees. Threat of Holdup: †¢ Nucor has a strong vertical integration ; the market for the suppliers is limited as the integrated steel makers are no longer in its market. So threat of holdup from suppliers is low. †¢ It also adds value with superior customer service, which the buyers are willing to pay for.But the buyers do have option to opt for imported steel. Thus, Nucor will have to sustain the additional value it generates for its buyers. Threat of Slack: †¢ Nucor has optimized the technology that is available for manufacture. It also has a dedicated skilled workforce. However it has not fully exploited these to venture into newer steel markets or into a Joint Venture with foreign steel makers who could provide newer technology. However its organizational structure ; policies are suited for sustained growth. UNCERTAINITIES AND RISKS ASSOCIATED 1.Technological threat: CSP would become obsolete in 10-12 years time, as new technology of casting even thinner slab was already under way. This posed risk and unce rtainty to Nucor’s heavy investment in CSP, but adoption of this technology could give it the first mover advantage also. 2. Quality: SMS’s pilot plant ran only 7 minutes and produced 12 tons per charge due to space constraints. It wasn’t clear if it could take the load from continuous operations and sustain the wear and tear. The components had to operate with more than 96% reliability for it to be cost-effective. 3.Raw Material: Nucor used scrap as its raw material, and the uncertainty of the scrap prices could make the project not viable. If scrap prices rose above $ 140 per ton, Nucor might have to shift to Direct Reduced Iron as raw material which would require major changes in facility and operations. 4. Competition: Other minimills will also adopt CSP in a few years and hence Nucor may not be able to bask in the glory of first mover advantage. It wasn’t even clear if first mover advantage would offset the huge costs this project entails. 5. Company : They didn’t have the expertise in flat rolled products which had to be acquired.Integrated mills adopting CSP were a major threat as they already had the expertise in flat rolled production. 6. Operations: CSP plant was very large and more complex. It couldn’t have been located in rural areas, where Nucor have till now established their plants, hence would require new strategy to cater to these plants. 7. Growth: Nucor was concerned that it would have to enter the high end market if it plans to build more plants with CSP technology and that would require products with superior quality ; reliability of delivery, which CSP did not guarantee for such products.Moreover the high end market demanded relationship based marketing which involved the customers at early level of development of product, which would be difficult. 8. Resources: If Nucor pursued both the projects i. e. CSP and joint venture with Yamato Kogyo, then it would have to stretch its financial resources an d raise equity or debt for huge capital expenditures for the initial years. But, according to its policies, Nucor restricted its debt/equity ratio to less than 30 % and did not issue new stock. So the problem of raising funds for the two projects is a matter of concern.PROJECT FEASABILITY ? Financial Decisions Assumptions: †¢ The new project technology will become obsolete in 10 to 12 years of time, so assuming that this project will last for 12 years of time including 2 and half years of startup time and two years for full capacity utilization. Assumed that 50 % of capacity will be utilized in 3rd yr, 80% in 4th yr and full from 5th yr onwards. †¢ The capital expenditure of $280mn takes place in phase wise manner with $70mn today, $170mn in first year and $40mn in second year with additional $30mn in second year for startup cost.Working capital of $30mn will also be divided in 3 years based on their capacity utilization. †¢ The revenues and costs are adjusted with an inflation of 3. 5% each year. †¢ The rising scrap prices are also taken into consideration. †¢ Assuming that reduction in labor costs and savings in energy will be absorbed by inflation. †¢ Depreciation taken around 13% w. r. t. given data (Done by WDV method). †¢ Tax rate taken around 44%. †¢ Assume salvage value equal to the book value at the end of the project life. †¢ As the industry is stable, so taken beta value (=0. 95) around market beta (=1). Keeping the Debt/Equity ratio to be around 15%, according to existing capital structure policies. The Capital budgeting of the project leads to the following analysis: IRR=11. 8%, NPV =$18mn and ROC=26. 5% The Expected rate of return of the project is more than the WACC (10. 19%) and NPV;gt;0, though it is not very high. The project is therefore financially viable and can be adopted. ? Industry Opportunities: †¢ As the market for low end products was beginning to reach saturation, CSP was a great opp ortunity for Nucor to enter into flat rolled products.It could easily enter into the low end of the flat sheet market, consisting mostly of construction applications, where low price was key differentiator. †¢ Its internal sales (Vulcraft division) could be 100,000 tons of flat sheets each year to produce steel deck. †¢ Moreover, it could enter into the high end market after some years by expanding its capacity, which will make it possible for Nucor to compete with US integrated mills and capture their market share. †¢ The threat of ocean freight imports could be mitigated by the reduced costs. Construction industry offers good opportunity as it takes high priced products from the integrated steel mills and CSP will give Nucor the cost advantage to charge lesser price and hence be able to sell its products. ? Operations: †¢ CSP would lead to savings in casting operations, labor costs and energy costs. †¢ Nucor would be able to achieve economies of scale at a reduced output as compared to the US integrated mills. The yields will be higher and the operating costs will reduce. ? Technology: †¢ Nucor had the drive to embody technological advances.It invested heavily in upgrading its capacity. Its investment levels were 2. 9 times its depreciation charges, wherein the three largest integrated firms had a ratio around 1. 6. Through CSP, Nucor will gain the first mover advantage for atleast a few years. †¢ Hazelett Caster wasn’t as effective as CSP. Also, there were some operational constraints with Hazelett approach like expensive conveyor belts, reduced product quality and increased maintenance costs. Conclusion: Taking all the business and financial aspects into consideration, Nucor should go ahead with this technology.

Chance & Story Essay

In third grade through sixth, I had a friend named Chance. We were best friends and often spent long days and nights over at each other’s house. Whenever I stayed at Chance’s, the house was filled with noise from the two of us and his six brothers and sisters. Chance’s family was Mormon, a religion that my family knew nothing about except the name. He once explained why his family was so large, but it made little sense to me at that time. During the summer between sixth and seventh grade Chance’s family moved away to Utah. I’ve learned a bit more about Mormons since but this assignment offered me an opportunity to learn more about the religion of my friend and how Mormons feel about how they are perceived in the United States, especially concerning the law and discrimination. Chance’s family was only one of many Mormons in my town and surrounding areas. Patty is a good friend of mine who attends the Mormon church in town since she was a baby, so through her I was able to find three people to interview. Her parents were not available, but she introduced me to a Mormon missionary Brian, a neighbor Barbara, and Chris, her mother’s home- teacher. Brian is twenty years old and is originally from Nova Scotia, Canada. He is currently nearing the end of his Mormon mission, which is a semi-required two year work for Mormon young men to an area chosen by the head church in Salt Lake City, Utah. He had just graduated high school when he began the training for the mission. His mission is to go door to door in the neighborhoods to share his beliefs and teach anyone interested about the basics of the church. Barbara is also not originally from this area. She was born and raised in Provo, Utah, which is where the Mormon university Brigham Young is located. She moved here ten years ago when her husband’s job transferred. She is forty-three years old, has five children between six and fifteen, has a college degree from BYU in marketing but doesn’t currently work outside her home, and has been married for twenty-three years. Chris is from this area and has lived here all of his fifty-six years. He is an elder at the church, has four children and sixteen grandchildren so far, works as a machine repairer, and volunteers for the church as a home-teacher in which he regularly visits church members for further teaching about the church. Having such different subjects to interview proved very interesting. Each shared that they have dealt with some sort of discrimination in their lifetimes as Mormons. They all indicated that the problems are rarely very serious and never violent, but are more subtle. Barbara notices the negative attitude towards Mormons most of the three because she lived for so long in Utah, which is heavily populated with Mormons, especially where she lived in Provo. She said that when the family moved, she was surprised to find that there are people who still believe Mormons are the many-wives religion. One woman at her children’s school even asked once if Barbara was one of several wives of her husband. Neither Brian nor Chris said that they have had this problem. Brian said his problem is more centered on his mission work. He has often heard people say ‘there go the two-by-twos. ’ The missionaries work in pairs, so he said the term stuck. For the most part, he says people are friendly towards him and often comment that Mormons are the nicest people they know, but very few choose to actually discuss the church’s teachings. Instead Brian and Chris both said that most people are interested in if Mormons are a cult that traps unsuspecting victims. Barbara also said this is something people have asked in round-about ways such as through her kids. All three said that it is often frustrating the poor view that they feel the majority of Americans have toward the Mormon Church. Barbara and Chris’s children mostly have other Mormon friends, and those that are not Mormon are seldom allowed to attend activities organized for the Mormon youth such as dances, outings, or sport activities if they are to be held at the church. They say that no one has said directly why the kids can’t attend, but all three believe that it is related to the negative view of the church. They all also indicated that any issues that arise are always social in nature, that they have never had a problem with employers or the law regarding discrimination. Interestingly, as I interviewed each person, I found myself also curious about the ‘oddities’ of the Mormon church. When Barbara mentioned the many-wives idea, I wanted to know more about it. So I was doing exactly what the three had said most people do: expressing curiosity about the strangeness instead of the good qualities of the church or its teachings. However, I did learn quite a bit about the basic structure of the church, why it is based in Utah, and how Mormons view the world and the after-life. Since the problems that Mormons experience are almost always social, it is a matter of slowly changing the public’s view of the church. Chris believes that the commercials the church has put on television have gone a long way in changing perceptions about the church. Brian said that attitudes are better in Canada towards the church most likely because it started in the USA, where it experienced a lot of discrimination in its beginnings. So it is a matter of time and continued sharing for the Mormon Church to be recognized as a legitimate religion and not as a cult.

Analysis of Optimal Conditional Heteroskedasticity Model

Analysis of Optimal Conditional Heteroskedasticity Model Abstract: Recently cryptocurrency markets have seen an immense growth. Bitcoin is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies accounting for the highest share of all cryptocurrency markets, even though it still remains rather unclear whether it resembles more to a currency, a commodity or an asset. Previous research has shown that Bitcoin is often used for investment purposes, a fact that suggests the importance of analysing its volatility. In this article, we examine the optimal conditional heteroskedasticity model, not only in terms of goodness-of-fit, but also in terms of forecasting performance, an area which has been underexplored in the case of Bitcoin. According to the results, the optimal conditional heteroskedasticity model that can fit the series is not the same as the one that can forecast it better. As modelling GARCH effects in Bitcoin market effectively is crucial for appropriate portfolio management, our results can help investors and other decision makers make more informed decisions. Keywords: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, GARCH, Volatility, Forecasting JEL classification: C22, C5, G1 1. Introduction Over the last few years, the analysis of Bitcoin has drawn a lot of both public and academic attention. Bitcoin is the first implementation of a concept called â€Å"cryptocurrency†, which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority, but the first Bitcoin specification was published in 2009 in a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto ( Bitcoin.org 2017 ). The market of cryptocurrencies has grown remarkably with Bitcoin being considered the most famous cryptocurrency, with an estimated market capitalisation of $ 19.6 billion (coinmarketcap.com accessed on 8th March 2017), which currently accounts for around 84.4% of the total estimated cryptocurrency cap italisation. An overview of Bitcoin can be found in, e.g., Becker et al. (2013), Dwyer (2015), Frisby (2014), Bà ¶hme et al. (2015) and Selgin (2015). Hence, Bitcoin is only briefly introduced here. It has been previously argued that Bitcoin shares some elements of currencies. However, recent fluctuations in Bitcoin prices (see Figure 1) have resulted in unpredictable volatility undermining the role Bitcoin plays as a unit of account (Cheah and Fry 2015), while users have adopted Bitcoin not only as a currency but also for investment purposes. In fact, new users tend to trade Bitcoin on a speculative investment intention basis and have low intention to rely on the underlying network as means for paying goods or services (Glaser et al. 2014). The Bitcoin market is thus highly speculative at present, and therefore Bitcoin may be mostly used as an asset rather than a currency (Baek and Elbeck 2015; Dyhrberg 2016a). Moreover, recent studies have examined the hedging capabilitie s of the Bitcoin (see, e.g., Dyhrberg (2016a, b), justifying the view of it as an asset, as well as the role of different exchanges in the price discovery process of Bitcoin (Brandvold et al. 2015), while it has also been previously shown that cryptocurrency markets share some stylised empirical facts with other markets, e.g., a vulnerability to speculative bubbles (Cheah and Fry 2015). Consequently, Bitcoin has a place in the financial markets and in portfolio management (Dyhrberg 2016a). Bitcoin has posed great challenges and opportunities for policy makers, economists, entrepreneurs, and consumers since its introduction (Dyhrberg 2016b), while Bitcoin price volatility seems to be a major concern for most of the general public at this time (Bouoiyour and Selmi 2016). As a result, studying Bitcoin price volatility is of high importance. Following the extensive literature on modelling financial asset prices using the family of Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskeda sticity (GARCH) models, recently there has also been an increased interest in modelling Bitcoin price volatility using similar methods. Previous studies have used different types of GARCH models when examining the Bitcoin price volatility.For example, the simple GARCH model has been employed by Glaser et al. (2014), Gronwald (2014) and Dyhrberg (2016a). On the other hand, other studies have considered extensions to the GARCH model in order to study asymmetries in Bitcoin price volatility. For instance, the Exponential GARCH (EGARCH) model has been used by Dyhrberg (2016a) and Bouoiyour and Selmi (2015, 2016), the Threshold GARCH (TGARCH) ( GJR-GARCH ) model has been employed by Dyhrberg (2016b), Bouoiyour and Selmi (2015, 2016) and Bouri et al. (2017), while the Asymmetric Power ARCH (APARCH) and Component with Multiple Threshold-GARCH (CMT-GARCH) models have been used by Bouoiyour and Selmi (2015, 2016). Nevertheless, it is rather unclear which conditional heteroskedasticity mo del should be used when studying the Bitcoin price volatility. Previous studies of the Bitcoin price volatility have focused mainly on the use of a single conditional heteroskedasticity model, without comparing different GARCH-type models , though , with the only exceptions being the studies of Bouoiyour and Selmi (2015, 2016), which have split [PK1] the sample into different sub-periods, though , and the study of Katsiampa (2017/forthcomng?), which has not considered the risk-return relationships, though [PK2] . In addition, little attention has been paid to forecasting the volatility of the Bitcoin prices. To the best of the author’s knowledge only the study of Bouoiyour and Selmi (2016) has examined the forecasting performance of the CMT-GARCH and APARCH models, but no study has compared the predictive ability of different GARCH models with regards to Bitcoin. Consequently, we aim to contribute to the literature by investigating which conditional heteroskedasticity mode l can describe and forecast the Bitcoin prices better. The remainder of the article is organised as follows: The next section presents the models employed in this study. The data and methodology used in the study are discussed in the third section, while the fourth section details our empirical results. Finally, the conclusions drawn and the implications are presented in section five. 2. Models In this section, the models used in this research are introduced. The models consist of an Autoregressive model for the conditional mean and a first-order GARCH-type or a GARCH-in-Mean-type model for the conditional variance [1] , as follows , , , where is the Bitcoin price return on day , is the error term, is a white noise process, is the conditional standard deviation, and hence is the conditional variance. When is equal to zero, the resulting model is the autoregressive model with a GARCH-type specification for the conditional variance, while when is different from zero a GARCH-in-Mean-type specification for the conditional variance is obtained. Adding the standard deviation to the mean equation measures the risk and helps with the identification and measurement of any risk-return relationship. The conventional GARCH(1,1) model is represented by , with , and . The GARCH model (Bollerslev 1986) is undoubtedly one of the most popular models for describing the conditional variance of financial returns. Nevertheless, since its introduction, there have been proposed many extensions of the GARCH model and there have been a lot of advances in modelling the conditional variance. Hence in this study, we also consider five extensions to the linear GARCH model, namely the EGARCH model of Nelson (1991), the TGARCH model introduced by Glosten et al. (1993), the APARCH model proposed by Ding et al. (1993), the Component GARCH (CGARCH) model of Engle and Lee (1999) and the Asymmetric CGARCH (ACGARCH) model. All these models constitute example s of extensions of the simple GARCH model and have attempted to describe the conditional variance more accurately. Moreover, compared with the simple GARCH model, the EGARCH, TGARCH and APARCH models allow for different volatility responses to opposite signs of the previous shocks. More specifically, the EGARCH model is defined as , and considers the asymmetric volatility responses to negative news, that is , and positive news, , as given by the sign of , if is different from zero. The TGARCH model is given by , where is the indicator function, with if and 0 otherwise, suggesting that positive shocks and negative shocks have again different effects on the volatility, if is different from 0. On the other hand, the APARCH model is defined as , where , , , and . This model imposes a Box-Cox power transformation of the conditional standard deviation process and the asymmetric absolute residuals (Ding et al. 1993). Furthermore, in contrast with the G ARCH model, the conditional variance of which shows mean reversion to , which is a constant for all time, the CGARCH model allows for both a long-run component of conditional variance, , which is time varying and slowly mean-reverting, and a short-run component, , and is defined as . Christoffersen et al. (2008) demonstrated that by including both a short-run and a long-run component allows the CGARCH model to outperform the GARCH model. Finally, the Asymmetric Component GARCH (ACGARCH) model combines the CGARCH model with the TGARCH model, introducing asymmetric effects in the transitory equation, and takes the following form , where is a dummy variable which indicates negative shocks, while positive values of suggest the presence of transitory leverage effects in the conditional variance. 3. Data and methodology The data consists of daily closing prices for the Bitcoin Coindesk Index from 19 th July 2010 to 10 th January 2017. The estimation sample cover s the period between 19 th July 2017 and 31 st December 2017 leading to a total number of 2357 observations, while the remaining ten observations are used in the forecasting sample. The Bitcoin CoinDesk Index is listed in USD and the data are publicly available online at http://www.coindesk.com/price. The data are converted to natural logarithms, and then the returns are defined as , where is the logarithmic Bitcoin price index change and is the daily Bitcoin price index on day . Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the Bitcoin prices and price returns, respectively, in the estimation period. We start the empirical analysis by producing descriptive statistics for the Bitcoin price returns, while the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) unit-root tests are also performed to examine the stationarity of the returns. As will be seen in the next section, the results show that the series is stationary. In order to choose the best model in terms of fitting to d ata, three information criteria, namely Akaike (AIC), Bayesian (BIC) and Hannan-Quinn (HQ), are employed. For given data sets, all of these information criteria consider both how good the fitting of the model is and how many parameters there are in the model, rewarding a better fitting and penalising an increased number of parameters. The preferred model is the one with the respective minimum criterion value. However, since model selection is often not only based on a model’s goodness-of-fit to data, but also on forecasting performance, it is important to also check the models’ predictive ability, as a better fitting model does not always lead to better forecasts. Hence, the best model specification in terms of forecasting is selected according to the Root Mean Squared Forecasting Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Forecasting Error (MAE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Forecasting Error (MAPE), all of which are used as measures of forecasting performance. Although the RMSE is one of the most commonly used measures of predictive ability, the additional measures have been used in order to verify the results. [2] The models’ forecasting performance is evaluated based on out-of-sample forecasts, and model selection is examined in terms of both multi-step-ahead and multiple 1-step-ahead forecasting. The preferred model is the one with the lowest values of the measures of predictive ability. Fig. 1 . Daily closing prices of the Coindesk Bitcoin Index (US Dollars). Fig. 2 . Daily Bitcoin price returns. 4. Results Table 1 reports the descriptive statistics for the daily returns of the Bitcoin price index. The daily average closing return is positive and equal to 0.5805% with a standard deviation of 0.0606. Moreover, the returns are positively skewed, indicating that it is more likely to observe large positive returns, and leptokurtic as a result of significant excess kurtosis. The Jarque-Bera (JB) test confirms the departure from normality, while the results of the ARCH(5) test for conditional heteroskedasticity show evidence of ARCH effects in the returns of the Bitcoin price index. Therefore the Autoregressive model for the conditional mean needs to be combined with an Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity process to model the conditional variance. It can be noticed that the ARCH effects can also be observed from Figure 2 where large (small) price changes tend to be followed by large (small) price changes over time. Furthermore, the results from both the Augmented Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Perron unit root tests indicate that stationarity is ensured. Table 1. Descriptive statistics and unit roots tests. Panel A: Descriptive statistics Observations 2357 Mean 0.005805 Median 0.000741 Maximum 0.528947 Minimum -0.388309 Std. Dev. 0.060607 Skewness 0.873024 Kurtosis 15.64823 JB 16010.55*** ARCH(5) 56.56059*** Panel B: Unit root test statistics ADF -46.90888*** PP -47.56848*** Note: *** indicates the rejection of the null hypotheses at the 1% level. Next, the estimation results of the GARCH-type models are discussed. The conditional mean equation includes a constant and an autoregressive term, while the conditional variance is modelled by various competing GARCH models. The model parameters are estimated by using the maximum likelihood approach under the Gaussian distribution. Table 2 presents the estimation results of each model. These include the model parameter estimates, the log-likelihood values and the three information criteria values. In addition, the ARCH(5) test to check whether the conditional heteroskedasticity is eliminated and the Ljung-Box test for autocorrelation with 10 lags applied to squared residuals, as well as the Jarque-Bera (JB) test of norm ality of the residuals have been used as diagnostic tests, the results of which are also reported in Table 2. According to the results, both the AIC and HQ information criteria select the AR(1)-ACGARCH(1,1) model as the preferred model in terms of fitting to data, followed by the AR(1)-CGARCH(1,1)-M and AR(1)-CGARCH(1,1) models, suggesting the important role of having both long-run and short-run components of conditional variance. The log-likelihood is also maximised under the AR(1)-ACGARCH(1,1) model. On the other hand, the preferred model according to the BIC is the AR(1)-CGARCH(1,1), followed by the AR(1)-ACGARCH(1,1) model. The latter result could be explained, though, by the fact that the BIC penalises more a higher number of model parameters, and hence the selection of the AR(1)-ACGARCH(1,1) model seems appropriate. It can also be noticed that for the AR(1)-ACGARCH(1,1) model all the parameter estimates are statistically significant. Moreover, the results of the ARCH(5) an d tests applied to the squared residuals of the AR(1)-ACGARCH(1,1) model indicate that the selected AR(1)-ACGARCH(1,1) model with Gaussian distribution is correctly specified because the hypotheses of no remaining ARCH effects and no autocorrelation cannot be rejected. Furthermore, despite the fact that the residuals still depart from normality, the value of the Jarque-Bera statistic associated with the residuals of the AR(1)-ACGARCH(1,1) model is much lower than the corresponding value for the raw returns. Consequently, the AR-ACGARCH model seems to be useful to describe the volatility of the returns of the Bitcoin price index. This result seems to be consistent with the study of Bouoiyour and Selmi (2016) [PK3] who found that the best model for the period from December 2010 to December 2014 is the CMT-GARCH model, which also includes both transitory and permanent components as well as thresholds related to positive and negative shocks. With regards to the out-of-sample for ecasting performance, the five- and ten-day-ahead forecasts as well as the five and ten 1-day-ahead forecasts of the twelve competing GARCH-type models were generated. We then compared the models’ forecasting performance based on the three mean loss functions (RMSE, MAE and MAPE). Table 3 reports the obtained results, while the bold numbers indicate the best model in terms of forecast accuracy. An interesting finding is that overall the information criteria for model selection in terms of goodness-of-fit do not agree with the measures of predictive ability. Even though the minimum RMSE values of the 10-step-ahead and ten 1-step-ahead forecasts were both given for the AR-CGARCH model, a result which is consistent with the Bayesian Information Criterion, the results of the other two measures of predictive ability (MAE and MAPE) showed that there are other models that perform better than the AR-ACGARCH and AR-CGARCH models when it comes to forecasting. More specifically, the minimum RMSE values of the 5-step-ahead and five 1-step-ahead forecasts were both given for the AR-EGARCH-M model. On the other hand, the lowest MAE and MAPE values of the 5- and 10-step-ahead forecasting as well as those of the five 1-step-ahead forecasting were all given for the AR-EGARCH model. The lowest MAE value of the ten 1-step-ahead forecasting was also given for the AR-EGARCH model, while the lowest MAPE value of the ten 1-step-ahead forecasting was given for the AR-APARCH-M model. In summary, according to our estimation results the AR-ACGARCH model is preferred to the other competing models in terms of volatility estimates for the returns. However, the preferred model in terms of forecasting is overall the AR-EGARCH. This result is crucial for portfolio management and decision making in general by individuals who use Bitcoin for speculative purposes. Finally, it should be noted that the model parameters were estimated under the Student- t and GED distributions as well, but as there was no improvement in either the goodness-of-fit or forecasting performance, the results are not reported here. [3] This is in contrast with the results of the study of Bouri et al. (2017) who found that the TGARCH(1,1) model under the GED density is the best fit. 5. Conclusions Over the last few years cryptocurrency markets have grown to a great extent, with Bitcoin having attracted a lot of attention from both the public and researchers. This article aimed to offer a discussion into Bitcoin price volatility by selecting an optimal GARCH-type model in terms of both goodness-of-fit to data and forecasting performance chosen among several extensions. It was found that even though the best model in terms of goodness-of-fit is the AR-ACGARCH, a result which is consistent with previous studies [PK4] , with regards to forecasting performance the best model seems to be overall the AR-EGARCH. Consequently, if the objective is to find the best model in terms of pr edictive ability, model selection based on information criteria only might not be adequate. As Bitcoin can combine some of the advantages of both commodities and currencies in the financial markets (Dyhrberg 2016a), it can be a useful tool for portfolio analysis and risk management. Hence, individuals in portfolio and risk management need to get a more detailed view of the Bitcoin price volatility. Our results may thus have important implications mainly for investors but also for other decision makers, such as policymakers, as they can enable them to make more informed decisions.