Monday, September 30, 2019

Historical Investigation – The Great Depression & German

Section A: Plan of the InvestigationThe investigation will explore the question: How did the Great Depression begin in Germany and what are its impacts on the economy? The scope of my research will mainly focus on the rise of the Great Depression in Germany, and its effects on the country’s economy. The breath of the research will cover between the periods of 1924 to 1933. The method used will be to gather mainly from secondary sources, such as books and websites, as well some primary sources, like pictures or autobiography written by the people in that time.Also, I’ll compared and contrast this evidence, and evaluate the origin and purpose of my source for their limitation and reliability. Two sources – an autobiography ‘Children of the Unemployed’ written by Margot. L and textbook ‘Germany 1918-45’ by Josh Brooman – will be evaluated in depth as they provide major evidences. Finally, a conclusion will be settled based upon the e vidences and source evaluation.Section B: Summary of Evidences1. Before the Great Depression A. Weimar Republic Germany’s Weimer Republic was formed in 1919.1 Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to pay reparations to other countries like France.2B. Dawes Plan After the inflation in 1923, Germany’s recovery had been brought largely by American investment, this became a direct result of Dawes Plan in 1924.3 Dawes Plan was formulated to help the Weimar Republic out of hyperinflation and to stabilize its economy.4 The United State gave Germany a loan of 800 million marks to get the Dawes Plan started.5 Under Dawes Plan, Germany agreed to pay as much reparations as it could afford each year, starting with 1000 million marks.C. American Loans After Germany no longer suffered from inflation, in 1924 to 1929 foreign banks were willing to lend money approximately 25000 million gold mark to German borrowers.72. Economy Impacts on Germany A. US respond to the Great Depres sionIn October 1929, the New York stock exchange on Wall Street crashed. They pull out their investment from Germany and demand immediate repayment.8 America gave Germany 90 days to re-pay money loaned to them.9 Most countries slid into depression as overseas markets suddenly declined.10 German business that had managed without loan was badly affected.11 In 1930, the United States started the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which stopped Germany and other foreign companies from selling their products in U.S. markets.  German industrialists lost access to US markets and can’t obtain credit. Many industrial companies and factories either closed or shrank.13 In the summer of 1931, the Austrian Kreditanstalt Bank fell and soon the German Norddeutsche Wollkammerei and Darmstadterbank collapsed. 14B. Fall in Economy The value of German exports fell by 55%, from  £630 million in 1929 to  £280 million in 1931.15 In 1932, Germany’s industrial output fell to 40% of the 1929 level .16 Large mass of peasantry was affected by the fall in agricultural prices.17C. UnemploymentThe number of unemployment rose to more than six million by the early 1932.18. 60% of each new university graduating class was out of work.19 Millions of German workers had to put up with low wages, short-time working and worse conditions of work.20 German workers were paid unemployment benefit by the government for 26 weeks.21 An unemployed German looking for work in 1930.Her placard says, â€Å"I am a trained shorthand typist, out of work, looking for any kind of work.†22 A 13 years old girl explains the system of crisis payment from the government, â€Å"First my father went to sign for the dole. Later, when the time during which he could sign on ran out, he got ‘crisis benefit’. He had to collect the money from the welfare. This was not enough to manage on. I often saw how my mother brooded over the question of clothing and feeding our family of six.†23Section C: An Evaluation of SourcesPrimary SourceL, Margot. Die Kinder der Arbeitslosen (Children of the unemployed). Ruth Weiland: 1993. The origin of the source is valuable because it’s a primary source. The author is a 13 years old girl, who lived in Ruth Weiland, Germany, during the period of the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933. Through her personal experiences, we have direct understanding of the economic and social situation in Germany at that time. She explained the system of crisis benefit her father has to collect in able to run the family  life.The purpose of her autobiography was to write down what she saw and experience while Germany suffered from massive rise of unemployed. However, there are limitations to this source because the reader only can understand the situation from her perspective, but not in general. As well, she was just 13 years old when she wrote her autobiography. Therefore she might not yet fully understand the system of crisis benefit and economy d ownfall of that time.Secondary SourceBrooman, Josh. Germany 1918-45. London: Pearson Education, 2005. (accessed May 5, 2013). The origin of the source is valuable because the publishing company Pearson, is one of the largest and well known publisher in the world.24 The author they will pick and the book they will publish, must be in excellent quality and content, providing with authentic facts of history. Therefore they can able to sell the product, and attract people to buy and study about it. Moreover in this book, they provided many primary sources and understandable but detailed descriptions.The purpose of this textbook is to educated students and people who are interest in German’s history during the period of Weimar and Nazi. The limitations of the book is that this was publish in England and written in English, therefore the content might not be as accurate as the one producing and written in Germany. As well, the book only tell us about the factual stuff, but they are possibility that it’s not the truth. Moreover, we can’t get any primary perspective of the people at that time.Section D: AnalysisBefore the Great Depression, Germany has a new Republic called Weimer that was formed in 1919.25 The new republic had serious weaknesses from the start. People blamed the government because of the country’s defeat and post war humiliation caused by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to pay reparations to other countries like France and England in able to let those countries to build up their industry again.26 Germany soon faces many economic problems and drastic inflation.After the inflation in 1923, Germany’s recovery had been carried largely by  American investment, and this became a direct result of Dawes Plan in 1924.27 Dawes Plan was formulated to help the Weimar Republic out of hyperinflation and to a form of stability in its economy.28 The United State gave Germany a loan of 800 mill ion marks to get the Dawes Plan started.29 Under Dawes Plan, Germany agreed to pay as much reparations as it could afford each year, starting with 1000 million marks.30 After Germany has no longer suffered from inflation. In between 1924 to 1929, foreign banks mostly American were willing to lend money approximately 25000 million gold mark to German borrowers.However, Germany debts from the United State, later became the main reason that lead to the economic downfall in Germany during the Great Depression. In October 1929, a serious disaster struck the New York stock exchange on Wall Street. The stock value dropped severely, various economic problems began to emerge in the United States.32 The Americans had no option but to pull out their investment from Germany and demand immediate repayment. America gave Germany 90 days to re-pay the money that was loaned to them.33 In this period of time, most countries in the world slid into a depression as overseas markets for their goods sudde nly declined.Thus, German’s business which had managed without loaning money from the US were badly affected, too. In 1930, the United States started the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which is a new law that restricted Germany and other foreign companies from selling their products in U.S. markets,35 in able to secure their domestic demanded market, and it could efficiently decrease the unemployment rate and suppress the inflation. However, the sudden appearance of the tariff, German industrialists lost access to US markets and found that they couldn’t obtain the credit anymore.36 In result of this, many industrial companies and factories either closed or shrank.Hence, the sudden decrease of German business led to the fall in German exports and the rise of unemployment rate. The value of German exports fell by 55%, from  £630 million in 1929 to  £280 million in 1931.37 Also, large mass of peasantry was affected by the sharp fall in agricultural prices. 38Furthermore, in the summer of 1931, under the pressure from the Great Depression, the Austrian Kreditanstalt Bank fell and followed by the German Norddeutsche Wollkammerei and Darmstadter bank also collapsed.Millions of German workers had to start put up with low wages, short-time working and worse conditions of work.40 The placard of an unemployed German looking for  work in 1930 says, â€Å"I am a trained shorthand typist, out of work, looking for any kind of work.†41 Her situation told that even the trained worker or professionals were also having high chance of not getting a job. Statistic stated that 60% of each new university graduating class at that time was out of work.The Great Depression has significantly changed impact on the employment opportunities. The number of registered unemployed rose to more than six million by early 1932.43 Also, there were between one and three million jobless people who could not or did not register as unemployed. In total, there were between seven t o nine million Germans that were out of work by 1932.44 This significant numbers really strike Germany’s economy into downfall, approximately 23 million people were directly affected by this.People became poorer with not enough money to survive. Hence, the government were force to subsidize and aid those German workers by paying unemployment benefit for 26 weeks.46 Around that time, a 13 years old German girl who live during the period of the Great Depression explained the system of crisis payment in a part of her autobiography, she wrote, â€Å"First my father went to sign for the dole. Later, when the time during which he could sign on ran out, he got ‘crisis benefit’. He had to collect the money from the welfare. This was not enough to manage on. I often saw how my mother brooded over the question of clothing and feeding our family of six.†47 Through her personal experiences, we know that the Weimar government could only afford specific amount of money to each German workers, the money each person got was hardly enough from maintain and survive their family.Section E: ConclusionIt is clear that Germany’s debts from the United States played a major part to the rise of the Great Depression in Germany, and it’s clear that the Great Depression impact deeply on the economy. When the Great Depression started, US demanded the immediate repayment, Germany straight away get effected, and couldn’t afford the debts which led to many economic problems. The major effects are, the fell in exports product, large shrank in German’s industrialist and companies, and that lead to the most significant influence, the large mass of unemployed in Germany, 1932.

Failures of Reconstruction Essay

General William T. Sherman’s meeting with the black leaders who would go successful and outstanding leaders of black people in the United States of America on January 12. 1865 somehow foreshadowed the coming of Reconstruction in this epoch. The meeting which united both white and black Americans who wished for the abolishment of bondage was besides the start of the partnership between these progressives and the inkinesss. In a decennary. several incidents happened which marked the greatest times in the black American history. Four yearss after the meeting. a land was given to the black Americans and mules that were non being used by the ground forces were besides given to them. This land will be the abode of more than 40. 000 freed slaves. Because of this. they hoped that their emancipation will non merely free them from bondage but besides give them the freedom to be economically independent and have genuine freedom. However. it seems that the battle for freedom can be forgotten and Reconstruction. that thing which should be unifying the tattered state will neglect and go one of the greatest failures in the American history. Why did Reconstruction neglect? Who was the one to fault? While there are these black Americans who extremely anticipated their freedom and progressives worked in redefining freedom for the remainder of both the black and white Americans. there will be a job that will neglect the Reconstruction epoch. After a decennary. people got tired of contending for freedom and shortly. there are jobs in line with the new disposal. After the black Americans were so successful to set up their ain lives and edifice churches. schools for black kids and establishments. a decennary subsequently. the battle for their freedom and rights all of a sudden met silence. Andrew Johnson confiscated all lands that were given to black Americans therefore get downing the failure in land reform which was given in 1865. At the same clip. he is non in favour of the rights being pushed by the Republicans for the interest of the Black Americans. His positions sing the freedom of the African-Americans were non in line with what these former slaves ought to hold. Hence. his thoughts of Reconstruction were the same ground why it failed. The politicians from the South can non accept emancipation and the autonomy that slaves must hold while the president is non in favour of the Reconstruction being pushed by the slaves and the Republicans. The failure of Reconstruction was brought by the fact that there are people who can non accept the world of emancipation and pushed what they wanted best for themselves than what is right for the remainder of the United States of America. Plants Cited Eric Foner. Give Me Liberty! An American History. 2e Volume II eBook from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. wwnorton. com/college/history/foner2v2_ebook/welcome. asp

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Edmunds Corrugated Parts Essay

The issues that Edmunds Corrugated Parts and Services have been faced with all lead the company to be in position that they are in. This company issues could be sum up as employment and competitor advantage. The employee issues started from the beginning of the company. According to the case Larry, the owner and operator, was not only given a loan but also a barn to start his business. Which was a great start for Larry because he was able to employee about 100 people which many of them were his neighbors. Just as in any company Edmunds Corrugated Parts and Services was face with the fact of replacing employees because they were nearing retirement. As time change the younger generation sought to move away and not stay local so Larry was face with a potential unemployment issue in his company. The other issue that Edmunds was faced with was the fact that they were losing several industries in the United States. According to the case consolidation in the paper industry had wiped out hundreds of the U. S plants that Edmunds once served, with many of the survivors either opening overseas facilities or entering into joint ventures abroad. This was causing the loss of business for this company. Especially when the manufactures were investing in higher quality machines that broke down less frequently. This was the beginning of companies not utilize Edmunds parts because the parts were not needed. This issue was halting the growth and the even the potential to keep the company at the standing they were in for the past years. Create and describe a strategy for addressing the situation at hand. There are various ways of address the two situations at hand. As for the employee issues that they would be facing it is as simple of being proactive. Since the younger generation is leaving the area than there must be incentives for them. The New York Times reported that a Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, known as Midwest I. S. O was faced with a similar problem. It was even reported that the jobs are so complex that summer interns and college graduates can’t step right into them. Just as the problem of the younger generation moving away and not wanting to stay both companies had similar issues. One of the first things we did was to enhance our employee referral program. Employees now have several opportunities to make money by referring candidates. First, we give any employee who refers a candidate a scratch-off card with a discount for coffee, food or a movie, and we enter their names into a monthly drawing. The monthly winner gets $300, even if we don’t hire the person who was recommended (Begley 2008). When employees refer new employees that general means that the current employee is vested and want to see the company succeed. When the new employee performs below standards than that reflects the current employee and they generally will police themselves. This would allow the current employee to essential hire their replacement and the company could continue with its business. As far as the other issue of growth and losing clients there are many ways that Edmunds could fix it. Edmunds could look into a joint venture. A joint venture or strategic alliance is a form of partnership where businesses come together to share knowledge, markets, and profits. Joint ventures can take on various forms. Small companies can band together to take on the goliaths of their industry. Big companies can form alliances with quicker and nimbler small businesses. And small companies have the opportunity to forge strategic alliances with big name companies for expanded geographic reach (Zarhorsky 2012). This strategy could help them serve the companies that they had lost. If they are in a partnership with the company that services the newer machines they could reach all of the clients that both companies have. In essence it would they could be one company for all machine and equipment needs. Assess which element in the strategy you just described would be the hardest to implement and explain why. Within any business a partnership the difficult part is the implementation of it. The problem that Edmunds would have is the fact of trying to join with a competitor. The companies that are servicing the newer machines are his competition because they have the same clients he uses to. The advantage that Edmunds has is they still have a market share and both companies would benefit from this. According to Business Link a joint venture can also be very flexible. For example, a joint venture can have a limited life span and only cover part of what you do, thus limiting the commitment for both parties and the business’ exposure. This does not have to be a longer term but just to make one stop show to server all of the machines whether they are new or older model. A joint venture can help your business grow faster, increase productivity and generate greater profits. A successful joint venture can offer access to new markets and distribution networks, increased capacity, sharing of risks and costs with a partner, access to greater resources, including specialized staff, technology and finance (Business Link 2012). With all of these factors this would cause the company to grown and be able to stay in business. The difficult part would be to implement the changes that come with a partnership. The companies would have to adopt each other policies and produces to assure they are serving the customer on the same level. Describe what strategies Edmunds could use in the future to reduce potential crises before they happen. One of the main issues that Edmunds was having was centered around employees. Edmunds employees were soon to retire and there were no plans to back fill them. Today, many companies recruit and hire to fill holes â€Å"in the moment† and don’t always consider their long-term business goals or the future needs of the organization. This can potentially lead to bad hires or ultimately, lost opportunities (Hess 2011). There was no recruitment strategy in place to assure that there were back fills for the employees. The only mention was that of the younger generation leaving and not wanting to stay local. As the war for talent continues to escalate, it’s essential that key business leaders are involved with the development of your recruitment strategy to ensure that every hire you make is a good one – for today and tomorrow. Hiring to your business strategy is paramount to ensuring that you’re not only hiring the best available talent – but you’re hiring the best available talent with the desired experience and competencies, to meet both current and future needs of the organization. The future success of your company depends on it (Hess 2011). If the company would hired based on their business model this would help attach the right qualified people. They were only concern with going after the younger generation but the experience was with a older generation. Older generation still has at least 10 years or more and would be significantly younger than that of the retiring work. This strategy with help fix one of their major issues. With a new set of employees brings on a new set of ideas and ways of conducting business. Another area that could help prevent or reduce a potential crisis is developing a Research and Development program. According to Business Exchange research and development (R&D) taken on a more prominent role in businesses, as consumer are looking for quality and innovation at a reasonable price range. This is why Edmunds began to lose clients because the machines changed and there was not a need for their parts on the newer machines. More and more companies are looking to their R&D teams for the â€Å"next great things† as they navigate through the current recession. When revenue is low companies will begin to look for new innovative ways of doing business. Edmunds was not prepared for this shift in the market. If a R&D program was in place this would help prepare for them what lies ahead.

On the Problem of Induction

A Critique of Nelson Goodman’s Concept of the New Riddle of InductionThe development of the method of induction has been privy to the presentation and solution of riddles. At the initial level of its development, it has been privy to the old riddle of induction discovered by Hume. After the solution of the former riddle, however, a new riddle of induction was discovered by Nelson Goodman. In lieu of this, this paper opts to consider the development of the method of induction as a methodology defined by Hume and Goodman’s conception of the Inductive method.Induction refers to â€Å"a method of reasoning by which a general law or principle is inferred from observed particular instances† (Flew 171). The method of inductive inference may be considered as the primary means through which justifications are formulated to show the relationship of evidence towards particular assumptions (Norton 2). The process of induction, in this sense, may be seen to arise whenever we note that evidence lends support to a hypothesis while in the process failing to establish its deductive certainty. It was such a formulation of the method of induction that enabled the conception of the first riddle. What follows is a presentation of the main arguments of the aforementioned riddle as formulated by David Hume.Hume argued that since no necessary connections exists between empirical phenomena, it is always possible that a future observation will prove our inferences wrong no matter how appealing it may have been or how richly supported by past observations. This problem, in the more recent formulations of the problem has been referred to as the uniformity principle [in this sense the lack of such uniformity]. According to the argument, nature has no uniformity. If such is the case it thereby follows that there is no voucher that which ensure the consistency of man’s most refined predictions. It might be argued that such an assumption has never been denied in th e formulation of predictions however there has been agreement regarding the results of such an agreement [or lack thereof] within the province of induction.To some, it means that induction is never valid or justified, while to others, it means that induction simply calls for different standards of validity (Landesman 164). The latter view strips the aforementioned riddle [Humean riddle] of its problematic context. This is evident if one considers that since the rules of deductive validity are inapplicable to induction, it cannot be a problem that inductive inference is unavoidably attended by the possibility that a future observation may prove it wrong (Goodman 4). The old riddle is then dismissed because it cannot possibly be the genuine problem of induction.Fact, Fiction, and Forecast present Goodman’s construal of what he refers to as the new riddle of induction. After refuting the old riddle of induction [the refutation of which is evident in the former paragraph], Goodma n proceeds to outline what he takes to be the genuine problem of induction and its tentative solution. The problem of induction, he writes, is a problem of demonstrating the difference between valid and invalid predictions (Goodman 4). According to Goodman, a prediction is valid if it conforms to a valid rule of induction, and a rule is valid if it yields valid predictions.He acknowledges that such an assumption is characterized by circularity however he notes that it is important to perceive such a conception of the problem in terms of the conceptions of justifications for arguments.   Goodman notes that inductive predictions based on past regularities work better than those based on any other alternative. If such is the case, the rules for formulating predictions must be constructed in such a way that they will coincide with common practices of inductive reasoning.This, on the other hand, is further developed by the quality of predictions, which it produces. This is clearly expl icated by Rubenstein as he notes, â€Å"the centerpiece of a valid inductive logic [according to Goodman] is its reliance on past regularities, and the prescriptive mandate of inductive validity is inseparable from a descriptive account of how inductive judgments are commonly made† (39). This has been the result of Goodman’s dissolution of the old riddle of induction. What follows this is Goodman’s explication that the most promising solution of the aforementioned riddle is untenable. It is through the introduction of such untenability that Goodman presents what he perceives to be the new riddle of induction.Goodman presents two hypotheses that are to be addressed through the use of the inductive method. One says that all emeralds are green and the other says that all emeralds are grue, where grue is said to apply to all things examined before t just in case they are green but to other things just in case they are blue (Goodman 10). Both hypotheses seem to be eq ually well supported by the evidence: all emeralds examined prior to t have been found to be green and grue. However, the two hypotheses are mutually exclusive. If emeralds are grue, they will be blue at t and thereafter, but if the alternative hypothesis is correct, they will be green. Thus, we are left with the paradox that Goodman christened the ‘new riddle of induction'.We cannot, after all, justify induction by appealing to past regularities. However, the reason, according to Goodman, is not the lack of the elusive uniformity principle, but the previously unrecognized ubiquity of regularities.   According to Goodman, regularities exist where one finds them. In relation to this Goodman states that one, however, finds them everywhere (12). If such is the case, it therefore follows that it is useless to base inductive validity on past regularities since it is not possible to predict and hence distinguish which regularities are valid and invalid.At this point, I would like to present a summary of the aforementioned discussion. In the aforementioned discussion, Goodman believes that the old riddle [the Humean riddle/the uniformity principle] has been dissolved and that induction is justified by past regularities. The only remaining difficulty he sees, however, lies in finding a rule for distinguishing between regularities that do and do not yield valid inductive predictions. As was noted in the above discussion, the possibility of such is not possible. This is evident if one considers that regularity necessitates the occurrence of acts of inductive inference. Therefore, the genuine problem of induction cannot be the distinction between the distinction of regularities that do or do not yield valid inductive predictions since the specification of such necessitates the formulation of inductive inferences.As I reckon, Goodman aforementioned conception fails to account for the process of induction. It is important to note that Goodman contends that inductio n begins with regularity. Rubenstein notes, â€Å"induction does not begin with regularity – it ends with it† (44). The failure to consider this leads Goodman to misconstrue the problem of induction. It is important to note that experience of reality does not necessarily start with regularities but rather with individual observations. The role of induction, in this sense lies in providing us with justified methods that allows us to posit the observations that we will account for as regularities. Goodman, however, failed to account for this.In addition to this, it is important to note that such a failure can also be traced to Goodman’s assumptions regarding the process in which individuals formulate inferences. Goodman's error is compounded when he makes a distinction between identifying regularity and projecting it. Once we have decided that our observations represent regularity, it is automatically projected in both temporal directions. This is, in fact, what w e mean by applying the term regularity to our data.Furthermore, Stich and Nisbett contend that the â€Å"equilibrium with inductive practices† that Goodman posited as a necessary aspect in formulating a valid inductive methodology is â€Å"neither necessary nor sufficient for a rule of inductive inference to be justified† (194). They argue that such an assumption fails to consider that â€Å"human subjects regularly and systematically make invalid inferences† and that there an instance wherein human reasoning enables an individual to â€Å"accept invalid rules and reject valid one’s that ought to govern the inference at hand† (Stitch and Nisbett 194).In summary, the aforementioned paper presented Goodman’s arguments in relation to his conception of the new riddle in induction. Such a riddle, however, under scrutiny may be seen as based upon a mistaken assumption of the justification process of beliefs that necessitates the introduction of in formation garnered through the method of induction. This is evident, for example, if one considers the manner in which observations enable the formulation of regularities and not the other way around. An analysis of Goodman’s supposed riddle of induction thereby leaves the reader wondering if such a riddle may be considered as a valid concern for the adherents of the inductive methodology.Works CitedFlew, Anthony.   A Dictionary of Philosophy.   London: Pan Books, 1983.Goodman, Nelson.   Fact, Fiction, and Forecast.   Massachussets: Harvard University Press, 1983.Landesman, Charles.  Ã‚   Skepticism: The Central Issues.   London: Blackwell Publishing, 2002.Rubenstein, Arthur.   â€Å"Induction, Grue Emeralds and Lady Macbeth’s Fallacy.†Ã‚   The Philosophical Quarterly 48.190 (Jan. 1998): 37-49.Stitch, Stephen and Richard Nisbett.   â€Å"Justification and the Psychology of Human Reasoning.’   Philosophy of Science 47.2 (Jun. 1980): 188- 202.

Saturday, September 28, 2019

The Philosophy of Supply Chain Management in the New Economy

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN THE NEW ECONOMY: NET READINESS IN THE NET SUPPLY CHAIN The use of Internet in business can bring change in business sector that can lead the traditional enterprise to collapse. Globalization processes, massive implementation of Information Technology and the establishment of virtual enterprises are the basic elements in the era of the Digital Revolution. Net readiness is the ability of the enterprise to adapt to the new technologies.With the vast development of internet technology, there is a tremendous development in the supply chain management and traditional SCM has been transformed into e-SCM. So the new economic system is largely based on the information technology. Based on a huge implementation of Information Technology foundations for the New Economy are laid. D. Tapscott gave 12 principles of the New Economy. A continuous process of adaptation is required to these processes to meet evolving consumers’ needs.New principles o f operation are applied by new economy enterprises. Within the Time Based Management an ever-increasing effectiveness is guaranteed in the implementation of the Internet. Physical, informational and financial flows are present on the logistics pipeline. Virtual organizations are treated as production systems used to create products and satisfy customers’ needs. These virtual organizations utilize a concrete supply that is input and output to satisfy the needs and ensure expected profit.Users, telecommunications businesses and suppliers are the three groups of enterprises that utilize Internet infrastructure. They offer a wide variety of services to both traditional and virtual enterprises, which is based on the ‘5C’. Based on the flow of goods and services the created virtual chain is connected with traditional supply chain. The synergy effect of traditional business solutions and Internet technology applications are the two specific characteristics of the supply chain functioning.The utilizations of the resources and advantages of e-SCM can be directly related to the term called â€Å"Net Readiness† (NR) described by the employees of Cisco which means that the ability of the existing enterprise to adapt to new technologies and conduct their activities using the web. NR evaluation chart is the main NR research tool, which describes the level of involvement of an enterprise in e-business solutions. In relation to the best representative in its group it enables the position of the enterprise to be determined.Enterprises are divided into five groups: Internet visionary, Internet expert, Internet savvy, Internet aware, Internet agnostic. Modern supply chains have many advantages, but they have threats resulting from characteristics of e-economy. Due to a world-wide economic stratification and a clear division into digital civilization and outsiders limits in new opportunities can be noticed. Due to the e-businesses in the new economy, th e society is evolving into information society and a lot of innovative techniques which saves time are being implemented which adds value to the production and customer service.

La Vita E Bella: a Look Into Nazi Concentration Camps

La Vita e Bella: A Look into Nazi Concentration Camps Movie: Life is beautiful. Hitler had a different vision of beautiful, which he shared with others of the Nazi party. They believed their race to be â€Å"pure† and wanted only the so-called â€Å"pure† to remain. Hitler and the Nazis took advantage of their power and tried to execute all people who they didn’t believe to be of their â€Å"pure† race. â€Å"As for the Jews, they are incapable of being enlightened by German culture. Instead, they are destroyers of culture, defilers of Aryan blood, the enemies of all that is noble and pure.Throughout the pages of Mein Kampf, Hitler heaps abuse on the Jews, calling them â€Å"maggots,† â€Å"blood-suckers,† â€Å"vampires,† â€Å"a pestilence,† and â€Å"personifications of the Devil. † The goal of the Jews, he writes, is to defile the German race, dilute the pure Aryan blood, and take control of the world. † (Lace 40, 41) The Nazis’ viewed other cultures as being below their own. Children were taught from the beginning to despise Jews, even in school. Children were enlisted in the Hitler Youth, where they would be taught and trained in Nazi policies.Millions of people were separated from their homes and families, forced to do strenuous labor, tortured, and killed. In the Nazi concentration camps, many people did not make it out with their lives; they were placed in the Nazi’s hands of fate and unfortunately had to endure trials no person should ever be put through. The Italian movie La Vita e Bella is based in the 1930s. The small family of Guido, Dora, and their son Giosue are taken from their home by German forces and put into a concentration camp.Giosue and his father stay together, while his mother is taken to a separate camp for women. To get Giosue to cooperate with the Germans’ demands, his father tells him they are playing a game, and he has to do exactly as they say to win the prize, which he believes to be a tank. Guido tells his son that he has to be quite and follow directions so they can gain more â€Å"points† in the game that they’re playing against the others in the camp, or other â€Å"teams†. When Giosue wants to go home, Guido tells him that they can’t leave now, because they are in the lead.Guido tells his son to hide in a sweatbox until everyone leaves, pretending they are playing a game of hide and seek. While Giosue is hiding, Guido tries to find his wife by dressing up and sneaking into the women’s camp. He is found by a Nazi, shot and killed. An American tank shows up to free the camp when the war is over and Giosue comes out from his hiding spot. He is excited because, after being skeptical of his father’s stories about the game they have been playing, he believes the tank is the prize and he has won. An American soldier takes him into the tank until he is later reunited with his mo ther.He exclaims that they won the game and is overjoyed about the tank, while his mother is simply happy he is alive. Giosue is very young at the time and doesn’t quite realize the sacrifice his father made for him, to spare his innocence and his life. Research: Hitler believed what he was doing, not only to Jews, but other groups as well, was right and acceptable. He tried to justify himself using nature as an example: â€Å"To Hitler, the plan seemed no more immoral than the process of evolution, the survival of the fittest. â€Å"Nature is cruel,† he said in 1940. â€Å"therefore, we, too, may be cruel.If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret for the shedding of valuable German blood, then I have naturally the right to destroy millions of men of inferior races who increase like vermin. † (Steward 94) What he was doing was unethical and immoral. Between 1942 and 1945, approximately 6 million Jews were m urdered in the Holocaust. More than half of them were exterminated through the gas chamber system. Many times, exhaust fumes from truck or tank engines were pumped into sealed gassing vans, sealed railroad cars or chambers made especially for the task.Others were shot, hanged or beat to death. Between 1933 and 1945, there were about 20,000 Nazi camps established, used for forced-labor and extermination. As the war progressed, the camp system expanded rapidly. However, there was no solid evidence that the prisoners were being murdered in the camps. (http://www. ushmm. org/wlc/article. php? lang=en&ModuleId=10005144) As of January 20, 1942, camps were constructed for the singular purpose of mass extermination of Jews and other groups which were not acceptable for the Aryan race such as Communists, Democrats, Socialists, political criminals, gypsies, and homosexuals.Originally, they were only intended for criminals, security risks, and enemies of the regime. After Germany took over Cze choslovakia, Poland, Austria, Holland, and France, there were hundreds of camps built throughout their land. Soon, the death rates became so high, disposal of corpses became a problem. Conditions in the camps were very bad; many people died from malnutrition, exhaustion, exposure to the elements, and disease. In addition to the gas chambers, there were also gallows and crematoria used for extermination and disposal of the dead.Mentally and physically defective individuals, as defined by the Nazi government, were considered â€Å"undesirable† and â€Å"life unworthy of life†. Operating from the Berlin Chancellery at Tiergartenstrasse 4, they organized government-sponsored killing. Anyone considered to have defective genetic material were euthanized because they were believed to be endangering the Aryan purity. Some could not believe how doctors, who were supposed to be committed to the healing of patients, would even begin to get involved in something such as the euthan ization of mtentally or physically disabled people.It took a gradual course which began with â€Å"mercy killing† and eventually led up to the genocide of millions of Jews and other undesirable racial groups. There was a â€Å"Protective Custody† law passed on February 28, 1933. It allowed police to make arrests on suspicion of criminal activity. People were incarcerated without a trial. (http://frank. mtsu. edu/~baustin/holocamp. html) Auschwitz, the largest concentration and execution camp, located in Poland, was the most efficient camp in carrying out the â€Å"Final Solution†.During the Holocaust, it was the killing centre where the largest number of European Jews were killed. The number of dead from this particular camp will never be known; most of the prisoners were not registered. It is estimated somewhere between one and two and half million were murdered there. A total of about 985,000 Jews were killed in Auschwitz, and approximately 890,000 were gassed on arrival. Women would cut themselves and rub blood on their cheeks to give the appearance of being healthy. If they looked too pale, they were considered unhealthy and killed.Most of the time, children in the camp were killed upon arrival, and children born in the camp were usually killed on the spot. Camp doctors would often times torture children in the camp. They would inflict suffering upon them in many forms, such as being put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, or frozen to death. They also did a lot of testing on twins. A camp doctor by the name of Josef Mengele did many studies on twins and how they were affected by things such and drugs and surgeries. Not many survived.He performed his experimental operations without anesthesia. He would experiment with their bodies, dissecting them and comparing. Mengele would transfer blood from one twin to the other, see how they reacted to injections of lethal germs, and remove organs and limbs. He also tried injecting chemica ls into children’s eyes, attempting to change their eye color. For the completely absurd and inhumane experiments Mengele conducted on his patients, he was nicknamed the Angel of Death. (http://www. auschwitz. dk/Auschwitz. tm) Between 1933 and 1945 approximately 9 million Jews lived across the 21 countries of Europe which were occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. By the end of the war, two of every three European Jews had been killed. About 1. 5 million children were murdered, 1. 2 million of them being Jewish. (http://www. deathcamps. info/) Historical Analysis: For the most part, the movie La Vita e Bella is historically accurate. It shows how the people taken captive were taken from their homes and sent to camps where they were treated crudely.It was shown how Guido, representing men in the camps, was forced to do backbreaking manual labor while Dora, representing women in the camps, worked within the camp by doing things such as sorting clothes, sewing, and cook ing. Most children were killed upon arriving in concentration camps. In the movie, all the children were called to take a shower, where they would actually be put into a gas chamber. Giosue refused to take a shower, which in turn saved his life, leaving him as the only child left in the camp. Toward the end of the movie, Guido snuck into the women’s camp in search of his wife.He was going to try to sneak her out of the camp before they could take her to be executed. He was stealthy in hiding from the Nazis keeping watch over the camp, but he was unfortunately caught which lead to his death. Many people in the camps tied to escape and surreptitiously gain back their freedom. However, in the movie they did not portray any of the torturous events that went on in death camps. Many people died, but they were either put into gas chambers or shot. Overall, I saw the movie La Vita e Bella to be a historically accurate and very touching film.In the Nazi concentration camps, many peopl e did not make it out with their lives; they were placed in the Nazi’s hands of fate and unfortunately had to endure trials no person should ever be put through. The Jews and other groups the Nazis targeted were treated carelessly and brutally during the time Hitler was at power. The Nazis’ goal was to create the perfect race, so they thought to simply eliminate all who stood in their way. Did they not see mass-murder as a problem? Once the war was over, and those few still alive in the camps were once again free, they still had all the terrible memories of what they saw, heard, and went through.It is unfortunate that millions of people had to die in concentration camps alone, while a world war was going on where even more lives were taken. During the genocide of the Holocaust at the hands of Hitler and the Nazi party, many gruesome events occurred and people were put under horrid circumstances. We study what happened in the past, and learn of what was inflicted upon t he Jews and other targeted groups so that we can see what grim times they went through and the horrible things a respected leader, such as Adolf Hitler, would turn to when given enough power.

Friday, September 27, 2019

Rubrics and Student Learning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Rubrics and Student Learning - Essay Example Tables 1, 2 and 3 present quantitative data on the results of a paired sample t-test applied three pairs of art projects. Two-tailed paired samples t-tests were carried out using a significance level (ï  ¡) of 0.05. In a two tailed test, it is hypothesized that two variables being considered have equal means. This hypothesis is rejected when the computed p-value, also known as the observed significance level is less than the hypothesized level of significance, which in this study is 0.05, signifying that the means are not equal and the difference between the two means are significant. The variable with the higher mean is said to have a significantly higher mean than the other variable. Table 1 presents the results of the scores of Line Project 1 and Line Project 2. Line Project 1 was undertaken with no rubrics presented to the class prior to the project, while Line Project 2 was assigned to the students after clear and explicit expectations were clarified by a scoring rubrics. In this part of the analysis, even if a statistical software was used, the scores of Student No. 17 and Student No. 23 were manually excluded from the computations, since their scores on both projects were 0. 1Simple mean was computed without the scores of Student No. 17 and Student No. 23, since both students were not able to submit both projects. When the 0 scores of both students were included, the means were lower at 75.92 and 85.69 for Line Projects 1 and 2, respectively. 2Standard deviation was also computed without the scores of Student No. 17 and Student No. 23.When the 0 scores of both students were included, the standard deviations were higher at 27.405 and 25.901 for Line Projects 1 and 2, respectively. As shown in Table 1, statistical analysis of the students’ score in Line Projects 1 and 2 revealed that the mean of the scores in Line Project 2 (92.83) is significantly higher than the mean of the

My Final Report for my internship in ExxonMobil Qatar Essay

My Final Report for my internship in ExxonMobil Qatar - Essay Example The company had interest in oil and gas companies including Qatargas Liquefied Gas Company limited and Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited. In addition, it is committed to the government’s Qatarization policy, which means that majority of the employees of the company are locals. In partnership with the Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil works to promote maximum utilization of the gas resources in Qatar while ensuring that Qatar remains a reputable LNG exporter. The company upholds working business ethics that is a key pillar in the attainment of results. ExxonMobil has a total of ---employees, which includes both low cadre staff as well as senior management. The general manager who is also the president of ExxonMobil Qatar is Mr. Barton Cahir. Exxon Mobil Corporation’s shares as at 4th of August were trading at $ 99.23. In the current state of affairs, ExxonMobil Qatar is among the largest company in Qatar dealing with petroleum and petrochemicals. The mission of the company is to find long-term and sustainable solutions to the energy needs in the world. The company is committed to being the world’s premier petrochemical and Petroleum Company. In addition, the company is committed to promoting technologies that are energy efficient, and maximizing the use of energy. It further develops collaborations that facilitate the LNG projects in Qatar. Further, they have adopted the diversification of gas use while they have engaged in research that is geared towards the realization of solutions to the energy needs in the world. The company has developed partnerships with the state of Qatar as well as the Qatar Petroleum in providing solutions to energy needs. Additionally, the company endeavors to achieve financial success continuously and operating results while ensuring that business conduct is adhered to. With the company’s â€Å"Qatarization† approach to human resource, the company is able to employ a diverse w ork force mainly

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Common assessment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Common assessment - Essay Example This report aims at discussing the accounting principles related to cost, revenue recognition and matching principles which are presented under GAAP (Epstein, Nach, & Bragg, 2009). Apart from this, the report also includes how Dell Incorporation, a public company in the US, applies these accounting principles in the preparation and presentation of its financial statements and how recent changes in the accounting principles have affected company’s financial reporting. Moreover, a brief review of assertions related to internal controls of Dell Incorporation has also been provided in the report. Under U.S. GAAP, accounting principles related to cost, or more specifically â€Å"historical cost†, include requirements for business entities for accounting for and reporting their assets on the basis of costs for acquiring them. In other words, cost recognition and reporting on fair market value is not allowed for majority of assets and liabilities under US GAAP. In this way, the information provided by such accounting treatment is more reliable due to its objective nature. This condition for reporting assets in the balance sheet on historical costs is also applicable even if there are major changes in the value of an asset with the passage of time. However, making use of historical cost is not appropriate in every case and therefore use of fair value is permitted in certain cases. As for instance, corporate entities are allowed to use fair values of marketable securities while reporting their values in their respective balance sheets (Epstein, Nach, & Bragg, 2009). Revenue recognition is an accounting principle, which determines the requirements which are to be fulfilled before any amount in lieu of revenue can be recognized by a business concern (Epstein, Nach, & Bragg, 2009). As far as revenue recognition under U.S. GAAP is concerned, corporate entities are required to recognize revenues

Research Project Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Project - Research Paper Example Many aspects in life eventually influence one’s career choice, including personality characteristics which was dutifully categorised by Holland (1985). Holland (1985) describes six main orientations of individuals that can be predictive of their career choices. While it is not the aim of this paper to present data on the relationships between categorical personality types and career choices, Holland’s (1985) contribution in building the rationale for this paper is his notion that there exists a freedom of choice. This is not true, however, for all individuals and we are familiar of stories from young adolescents who express their lack of control over their career path. This feeling is best defined through the psychological concept, â€Å"learned helplessness,† discovered by Peterson et al. (1993). Research studies have identified the reported strong influence of parents over teachers in the student’s choice of career (Teru 2000; Kniveton 2004). These studies noted the strong implications of these findings for career guidance counselors to facilitate the decision making process of parents and pupils. As discovered by Kniveton (2004, pp.56-57), â€Å"there was little evidence of consideration of the appropriateness of further/ higher education for career choice.† Thus, here rests the gap where guidance or career counselors can fill in to ensure that a substantial number of pupils leave secondary schools with a better perspective of their career choices. The challenge of providing comprehensive information to pupils may be daunting for guidance counselors. In most cases, schools employ psychological testing and career talks for graduating pupils. â€Å"Career education is increasingly present in the curriculum at the lower secondary school level, either as a separate subject or included in another subject† (OECD, 2004, p.12). The inclusion of this policy by the European Commission emphasises the important role of

What is Globalisation How does it affect the multinational enterprises Essay

What is Globalisation How does it affect the multinational enterprises Explain taking an example of any one multinational enterprise of your choice - Essay Example lity of capital across countries that enables firms to relocate and invest overseas and repatriate their profits, while the development of derivatives and other complex financial products have enabled the rapid growth of global credit markets. Moreover, as trade increasingly becomes freer with economic liberalization after the fall of Communism, which has increased the rate of imports and exports between industrialized and emerging economies. Finally, the growth of multinational companies and brands like Apple has also driven the process of globalization (Dunning, 2012: p14). This paper will discuss globalization and its effects on multinationals with Apple being a case study in the latter discussion. Globalization refers to the process through which the world is increasingly becoming interconnected due to a massive increase in cultural and trade exchange (Dunning, 2012: p33). In turn, this process has increased services and goods production with the largest companies today being multinationals, rather than national firms. Although this process has been occurring for centuries, its pace has increased dramatically over the last fifty years. This has been as a result of reduced differences between different economies, leading to increased trade between and within different countries. One important aspect of globalization is that of integration where, while economies in the past were mostly ‘self-contained’ and export and imports occurred almost co-incidentally, economies today are more closely dependent on one another for markets and raw material (Dunning, 2012: p34). Today, when one economy, like Japan, is in recession, many other economies also suffer the effects of recession. The process of globalization has been greatly influenced by improved transportation with transportation costs for MNCs like Apple decreasing, specifically as larger cargo ships and planes can transport more products (Rugman, 2014: p28). Moreover, economies of scale have led to a

Fieldnotes Write-up Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Fieldnotes Write-up - Assignment Example Initially, there were about three or four young people from the nearby community who guided our tour and I recall how eager they exchanged delightful phrases on introducing the garden with its history. It was quite amazing how one of them entertained me in my query of the freeway which interestingly runs alongside and beneath the garden. They pointed out that to some thirty nine gardeners, the Solano Canyon Garden has become an oasis, feeding and slaking thirst of a newly-found diverse mother nature gone concrete yet surprisingly organic. Surrounding the garden’s entrance, I noticed the inlays of tiles in certain portions, including the steps, which had seemingly been scientifically structured on purpose to allow proper growth of plants throughout their place. Back then, without a tour guide, I could imagine how little would be known of each plant type in view which, in reality, serves more than a single sense – aesthetic to sight and healthy taste to palate of urban living. It hardly occurred to us that the scenic fields are a lush vegetation of organic produce as we generally felt that Solano Canyon Garden is more of a park, lovely in its own way, exhibiting colorful flowers and herbs of peculiar species chiefly rendered as they are for tourist attraction. We were three-fourths way through with our journey when we met with the interactive Al Renner, the Master Gardener, who had humbly and cheerfully walked the class through paths leading to farm culture of dominant greens making us grin with awe upon seeing exotic plants of various unique appearances and whose green color sometimes comes beyond typical shades. As if to be one with real nature, I could sense that the majority of us had been drawn to its beauty featured in the well-tended beds of flowers and vegetables that are further enhanced by the refreshing swish of the river’s noise from the background and

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

The Concept of Self-regulation Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

The Concept of Self-regulation - Assignment Example Talking Points: 1. Students bring information to their class that was formed by their experience. This information stuck with me because some professors ask about your experience and others do not. I think that ones experience is very important to overall learning because it lays a foundation so that the learner can relate new learning to something they already know. 2. Ausubel’s information was interesting. I was interested in his ideas on anchoring because I become overwhelmed easily. If a teacher starts with a lot of information immediately and then goes to specific information, I sometimes get lost. I think Ausubel’s idea of anchoring works better for me (specific information to general). 3. Making instructional materials meaningful is important because as a student, I need the information I am reading to be relevant to me. When I am in a class that does not make sense to me, I have a harder time understanding what I am supposed to do. 4. I also thought it was inter esting when the author said that most students already know something about any new topic, or they can make connections between what they already know and what they are learning. I do not think that learners always make the connections though. I think that there are things that are taught in high school that would be helpful in college, but we do not always remember what we learned. 5. I also found this chapter explained why I do well in some subjects and not so well in others. The text says that if a student is having trouble learning something, the materials should be changed to materials that explain the concept more thoroughly. I do think that in some situations, even the materials break concepts down, the student may still have problems if the subject is one they have problems in like science, math or English. 1. The quote that I liked in this chapter was â€Å"This means that the social interactions they encounter could lead to developmental delays or abnormal development as well as to normal or accelerated development†.

The Prediction Of Company Failure Using Financial And Non-Financial Essay

The Prediction Of Company Failure Using Financial And Non-Financial Information - Essay Example Studies have shown that financial difficulty arise mainly due to as a result of series of errors and misjudgment on the part of management. Moreover, interrelated weakness can also be attributed to management. Ratio analysis can be used to predict whether a firm will go bankrupt or not, because the sign of potential financial distress are generally evident in a ratio analysis long before the firm actually fails. How often businesses fail in United States? A good number of businesses fail each year. One thing is very important to note here that the failure rate per 1,000 businesses fluctuates depending upon the economy, but the average liability tended to increase over time. Though business failure is more common among smaller firms, large firms are not immune to it. But, some firms are too important or too big to be allowed to fail. So governmental intervention or mergers are often used as methods to avoid failure. For example, the US government gave aid to Chrysler in the 1980s to avoid its failure. Another example is that of merger of Goodbody company with Merril Lynch to avoid the former’s bankruptcy which would have frozen the accounts of 2, 25,000 customers while bankruptcy settlement was being worked out. WorldCom, Enron, Kmart, Global Crossing, Arthur Andersen, Polaroid, Qwest and Xerox are a few of the reputed companies which failed. Some of the above mentioned companies are fortune 500 companies that were not supposed to collapse. The question to be answered is â€Å"why companies fail?† Market turbulence, bad economy, a weak dollar, competitive subterfuge forces etc are some of the readymade answers which a CEO of the failed company would generally offer. A company can fail due to both financial and non financial reasons. Some of the financial reasons for company failure are low liquidity, low profitability, lower value of shares, inability to meet current debts, high ratio of loan capital compared to equity

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Coca Cola Buy, Sell or Hold Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Coca Cola Buy, Sell or Hold - Essay Example the year 1886, but even though John had great pharmaceutical capabilities, he lacked marketing skills due to which he was not able to create the kind of hype of this non – alcoholic drink as we know today, thus realising Coca Cola as a remarkable and an extraordinary product Asa Candler purchased the formula and the Coca Cola brand from John realising this as the perfect business opportunity. Candler was born in Georgia and had great motivational capabilities, prior to purchasing Coca Cola he was a pharmacist and had purchased this soon to be the most renowned brand - name for just $2,300. And not long after that he became a millionaire and became to be known as one of the top most business tycoons in the United States. He was also elected as the Mayor of Atlanta in 1916 just when he retired from Coca Cola. The most amazing performance of his management skills were displayed when he successfully launched his marketing campaign and distribution channel for the Coca Cola brand name. He decided that it was best to only create the raw soft drink and instead of appointing the company’s executives to market the product the company would appoint various bottling plants as their ‘C & F’ or Carrying and Forwarding agents. The strategy was a success since the early launch and this marketing strategy boosted the sales of Coca – Cola not only in America but throughout the whole wide world. Even today the Coca Cola Company administers its marketing operations in the same way, although with minor adjustments, such as they purchase most of the stake in most of the bottling plants to remain in power. Coca – Cola is the most renowned brand name through out the whole world with an established market base in over 200 countries and in possibly every corner of this world. But recognition has its shortcomings, and one of the negative sides of recognition is that it brings controversies along with it. This is especially true in case of the Coca – Cola Company; it is a

Three-river-source ecological environment protection strategy Essay

Three-river-source ecological environment protection strategy - Essay Example To achieve ecological and environmental protection in this region, an innovative environmental protection strategy is required. New developments in environmental policy, coupled with a new global awareness are sure to help the environmental cause. The establishment of a permanent ecological conservation zone will serve as a model for the region. The establishment of the Three-River source region’s ecological protection foundation is crucial, and so is building a long-term ecological environment compensation policy. The compensation policy serves for relocating people, who depend on the region, to towns and cities, in order to restore its rivers’ ecological environment. The establishment of an ecological conservation zone has become an important protection activity in natural areas around the world. The establishment of an ecological conservation zone is not only beneficial for conserving the flora and fauna, but it also generates economic benefits for communities living in rural and remote areas. Generally speaking, conservation strives to practice the sensible use of natural resources and maintains the biological diversity. It limits the adverse effects of human activities by establishing an ecological conservation zone. It serves to restore timber, improve water quality and provide an area to graze livestock. Conservation practice concerns all kinds of disciplines. It is relevant for subjects- such as philosophy, economics, and sociology - that are concerned with the social environment.

Monday, September 23, 2019

Juan Francisco Manzano, Autobiography of a Slave Assignment

Juan Francisco Manzano, Autobiography of a Slave - Assignment Example The inhumane punishments and oppressive events narrated in the biography and the orthography and unorthodox syntax in the original manuscript and the mysterious â€Å"disappearance† of his work during his lifetime all bear the scars of slavery. He started documenting his life events at the request of his mistress. This was possible since she had already taught him how to read and write. His original work never surfaced since. Juan Francisco Manzano lived in isolation as he was never allowed to play with other black children, but he led a relatively comfortable life and enjoyed some â€Å"freedom† as he was treated as a white child. Sometime later, Manzano worked as a slave where he almost lost his life. â€Å"I was putting the sugarloaf comes in one of the sheds toward †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. It was a huge piece of the roof with several beams that fell behind me, hitting the black Creole, Andres.† From the shock I fell through to the filter house below us,† (Manzano, pg. 99). The filter house was a large low building with a dark and an almost airless interior. Andres, unfortunately, did not survive as his skull was crushed, and the eyes almost popped out. Later on, rumors would reach Manzano’s second prompting him to urge young master Pancho to speak to his mother on Manzano’s behalf and get him from Dionisio where he worked in the sugar farm. This happened without much ado and he went to have  a  great life worth  enough food to eat. He was also bought a hat and some shoes something that was very new to him (Manzano, pg. 101). Although he was still a young buy, he would not go out to play with the other children even after such comfort. â€Å"I sank into such depression that I did not emerge from my sorrowful despondency, even after I saw all the children engrossed in games or when they called,† (Manzano, pg. 101) At the age of nineteen, Manzano took a certain pride of everything he did. His

Research Paper Tax Questions Problems Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Tax Questions Problems - Research Paper Example Partnership X reports in response to question 3b that B owns, directly or indirectly, 75 percent of the profit, loss, or capital of partnership X. B owns 50 percent indirectly through entity T and 25 percent indirectly through family attribution from A. (IRS 2010) By allowing Thetribe to contribute 100% of the investment amount to IBS, and IBS was required to distribute 50% of the investment amount to Edwardian within 60 days of the contribution the income of both IBS and Edwardian could mitigate the income earned. b. What would be the tax consequences if Edwardian choose option one? Edwardian would receive 20% as income to report during the 2010 tax year. Despite the 40% IBS received, Edwardian would not have to report that income. IBS would have to report that as income. f. Partnership X reports in response to question 3b that A owns, directly or indirectly, 75 percent of the profit, loss, or capital of partnership X. A owns 25 percent indirectly through entities W and Y and owns 50 percent indirectly through family attribution from B. Partnership X reports in response to question 3b that B owns, directly or indirectly, 75 percent of the profit, loss, or capital of partnership X. B owns 50 percent indirectly through entity T and 25 percent indirectly through family attribution from A. (IRS 2010) g. What would be the tax consequences if Edwardian choose option three? There would be no tax consequences for Edwardian, but no profit either if the shares were bought from Lupus, Vampir and Sapiens directly. Edwardian would still have interest in IBS, but the income would not come from the direct sale. k. Partnership X reports in response to question 3b that A owns, directly or indirectly, 75 percent of the profit, loss, or capital of partnership X. A owns 25 percent indirectly through entities W and Y and owns 50 percent indirectly through family attribution from B. Partnership X reports in response

Sunday, September 22, 2019

I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing Essay Example for Free

I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing Essay 1. In the memoir the passage reveals Ritie’s self image. She characterizes herself as unappealing she does not see beauty within who she is. Ritie’s childhood led to her insecurities. When she was younger her parents took her to move with her grandparents. She believed her parents dishonored her. Ritie did not find her skin beautiful. She believed white was beauty. She was an uncomfortable in her own skin. She tried to become someone she is not because she knew how everyone view and felt about her. Since her childhood she received her appearance. Ritie kept her identity intact by not letting peoples judging and views influence her. 2. After years of separation Ritie’s relationship with her mother is respected. She respects her mother for who she is. Ritie sees her mother as a strong women, she knows her mother will also love her for who she is. Ritie admires her mother she looks up to her. Her love for her grandmother is more of mother daughter bond. Ritie’s role model is her grandmother and she is proud to say it. She sees her momma as a strong powerful person. She is tough but loving. Ritie’s wants to become like her grandmother, she loves her. 3. Maya knew she was different. She knew she did not fit in with the other girls in school. She did not feel that she was equal with everyone else she felt as she did not belong with the other children. She did not associate with anyone. She would isolate herself in a store. She barely socialized with any children. She stayed away from children her age even others. A comparison to race was when she was younger her tooth ached. The dentist was not willing to work with her. He was very racial and only worked with white patients. Ritie’s family copes with racism by not letting it affect them. They ignored, they maintained their dignity. 4. At the end of the memoir Ritie learns what might seem right to you will not always be viewed the same with others. For one to hare greatness they must go through obstacles. She learns everyone has the own definition on what is wrong and right. Ritie applies this when she had her baby she grew up and it gave her confidence in her baby. She always did what was best for her baby. 5. Why the Cage Bird sings shows that there is always a light at the end of a tunnel. When there’s darkness and disadvantages there is always hope to find your path. It shows they had to deal with negativity and racism but they took that and turned it into positive. The title relates they went through many struggles but in the end they can be free. 6. Adversity in the story delt with abandonment, racism, childhood trapped, unacceptance, also religion. In Mayas case she and her brother were sent to live with their momma in Stamps, Arkansas. She always had it in her mind that her parents were not alive. When she found out they were she had the feeling of abandonment she felt that they did not want her. When Mayas dad comes to get them she does not want to leave. She got use to Stamps. She overcomes her adversity by realizing her parents were going through a difficult situation. 7. Lessons can be learned about the South. Situations are never easy but you have to make the best of it. In life we are always going to struggle but we must stay strong and not let it get the best of us. There are always going to be people who judge you or don’t accept you. But if you know who you are and where you come from that’s all that matters. Another lesson is when should not try to be. Someone we are not we must appear ourselves because no one is perfect. We all have insecurities about ourselves but we should love who we are. Natasha De La Cruz Grade: 10 Title: â€Å"Bless Me, Ultima† Author: Rudolph Anaya 1. During the World War 2 actions occurred in this novel. In the novel a women lost her sons due to the war. Gabriel had both of her sons fighting in the war which was also significant hat occurred was a veteran shoot Chavez because he was affected by the war. 2. The characters adapt to the landscape because of the family’s different life livings. Antonio had to live two different life styles. His mother’s families were simple farming people. It was easier for them to farm everything was more nourishing. His father’s family was rougher around the edges. They were more independent and the land was harder to work with. Both families had their own values. 3. A movie that relates to this novel is Ruby Bridges. Both Ruby and Antonio go through struggles in their life to make something out of them. The film is about a young six year old African American girl who had enough potential to get into a better school for a better education which was in an all Caucasian school. Around that time racism was still around. Ruby was the only African American girl in her class, which then led problems to the parents of the children in her class. No one accepted her in the new school except her teacher. Throughout the beginning she had faced crowds of white citizens against her physically and emotionally. One day she was encouraged by her teacher and her mother who gave her strength and she made it through. She became significantly important in the civil rights movement.

African American and American Society Essay Example for Free

African American and American Society Essay African Americans No matter where or when a person lives, skin color, beliefs, class, or history he/she will see a difference in the way every ethnic group is treated. This world has never been fair for anyone. Life can treat a person with the greatest of care or it will treat a person as if he/she is lower than dirt. African Americans are no different. They have faced great hardships and triumphs throughout the years. Since they had been forced from their homeland they have been treated as if they had no rights or thoughts of their own. They were placed in the status of slaves even though they were human beings too. No matter if they were placed in the minority group by the dominate majority group of white Americans they remind structurally pluralism by keeping to their beliefs and traditions. Before and after slavery African Americans did not receive equal treatment. â€Å"Even when slavery ended, Jim Crow laws went into effect meaning that the very best of everything was reserved for white’s only-school, jobs, neighborhoods, hospitals, etc. † (Moore, 2008). In other words, the African Americans took the subordinate status to the dominant white Americans. Their race was used to dictate what rights they would be allowed to have in America. At one point, they did not have the right to be free and over the years they were given that right back. Even though they regained their right to be free, they still were not very free. They were only allowed to eat in certain places, drink from certain fountains, and ride in the back of the bus. This is not what would be called very free. They were not even given the opportunities to receive a quality education or to vote. â€Å"With the 1896 Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the separate by equal doctrine was upheld, and the system of segregation in the South was securely in place† (Merger, 2012, pg. 169). When it came to getting a quality education, they were placed at the bottom of the totem pole. The whites receive the best opportunities for receiving a quality education while the African Americans were not. It was not until the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case that African Americans were allowed a better education. â€Å"Separate schools were inherently unequal and imposed an inferior status on black children, causing irreparable psychological change† (Merger, 2012, pg. 173). The rights as citizens were also being denied by not allowing them to vote and make a proper living to take care of theirfamilies. Years ago, African Americans were not allowed to vote, so they had no say in the laws that were made that would deny them their rights as American citizens or human beings. This kept them from changing the laws that kept them from achieving economically and politically. The Civil Right Movement began a new era for African American. It was their gain of the right to vote and be elected to office that gave the some power over their rights as human beings and citizen in the economic and political environment. Even after everything that the African Americans have gone through, they still face prejudice and discrimination in all areas of their lives. It is no wonder that for some it feels as if it is never over. No matter what a person looks like, how he/she talks, their beliefs, where he/she lives, how much money he/she has, or what race he/she may come from we all bleed red and where cut from the same cloth. We all deserve to have the opportunities and resources that are out there to help better ourselves. African Americans are human beings too and they have the same rights as everyone else.

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Traditional Structured Systems Analysis and Design

Traditional Structured Systems Analysis and Design ABSTRACT: After surveying many articles as well as the current and popular textbooks on Systems Analysis and Design which include but are not limited to those mentioned in the references, tI have observed much discussion on the use of object-oriented analysis and design over the traditional structured systems analysis and design. While the use of OOAD methodology is justified in many cases, in some cases it may be inappropriate and we should consider the use of the traditional structured analysis methodology in the design and development of information systems. This essay attempts to clarify the use of these methodologies, to compare the advantages and disadvantages of each and to make recommendations. 1. INTRODUCTION The existing methodology used primarily in industry today in building computer-based applications is known as structured analysis and design. This methodology came into existence as a result of the structured programming techniques introduced in the 1970s. This structured systems development methodology (SDM) has been fine-tuned and used for many years in the real world. However, during the last several years object-oriented languages have become increasingly more popular and more widely used in industrial organizations as well as university institutions. As this trend continued a methodology was developed to assist the programmer with the development of applications using object-oriented languages. This methodology has become known as object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD).The OOAD strategy approaches the problem from an object perspective as opposed to a functional perspective, which is the primary focus of the traditional structured development methodology. During the last few years the increasing use of OOAD over the traditional structured development methodology has spread significantly. As newer and more sophisticated object-oriented languages are created, there appears to be an even greater need for an object-oriented approach to develop business applications. However, does this need warrant greater use of this new methodology over the traditional one? We will compare the two methodologies and their advantages and disadvantages in order to address this problem. 2. TRADITIONAL SYSTEMS ANALYSIS DESIGN The systems development life cycle (SDLC) or the structured systems analysis design methodology (SSAD) is a framework of activities and tasks that need to be accomplished to develop an information system. This methodology as mentioned previously is called the waterfall model as each major phase of the methodology flows downward into the next phase (Wu and Wu, 1994). Consequently, this methodology is a strategy consisting of various techniques, tools, documentation and tasks that need to be integrated in order to develop the system. The SSAD is based on the concept of functional decomposition where the analyst breaks down the system into the basic processes that make it up and then breaks these down into smaller ones and so on until the analyst understands all the essential components of the system being investigated (Senn, 1989). The basic principles of the SSAD methodology can be summarized as follows: (1)The first principle of SSAD is top down functional decomposition. Here the system is considered in its entirety where the analyst first tries to understand the key features of the system, ignoring the smaller details until later. (2)Next the scope of system is defined where the physical details of the existing system are analyzed. The analyst focuses on two objectives: what the new system should do and how it should do it. (3)This methodology requires that the user be involved from the beginning to the end of project development. The analyst will meet with the user regularly to resolve problems and validate the users needs. This also requires that the analyst possess highly developed communication skills. (4)The two primary concerns in developing an information system are processes and data which are modeled independently with this methodology. The processes are modeled by the data flow diagrams which illustrate the flow of data between processes and data stores and how it is altered as it moves through the system from source to destination. Data models are defined by entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs) which describe the data (entities) and the various associations among them. (5)This principle of independently modeling the data and processes continues throughout the design phase. The schema for the conceptual database model is defined and the database is developed, normalized and populated with data during implementation. At the same time the process model is transformed into modules to be developed, and this phase also includes developing the detailed program logic. From the structure charts and program logic the program modules are then developed. Finally, to validate that the system meets the users requirements, goals and objectives, we subject the system to various levels of testing. 3. OBJECT ORIENTED ANALYSIS DESIGN Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) is a software engineering approach that models a system as a group of interacting objects. Each object represents some entity of interest in the system being modeled, and is characterized by its class, its state (data elements), and its behavior. Various models can be created to show the static structure, dynamic behavior, and run-time deployment of these collaborating objects. There are a number of different notations for representing these models, such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The object-oriented approach to system development views an information system as a collection of interacting objects that work together to accomplish tasks. Conceptually there are no separate processes or programs; there are no separate data entities or files. The system in operation consists of objects. An object is a thing in the computer system that is capable of responding to messages. Consequently, the OOAD methodology can be broken up into two major areas: (1) Object-oriented analysis. This is concerned with developing an object-oriented model of the problem (application) domain. These identified objects represent entities, and possess relationships and methods that are necessary for the problem to be resolved. Object-oriented analysis (OOA) applies object-modeling techniques to analyze the functional requirements for a system. Object-oriented design (OOD) elaborates the analysis models to produce implementation specifications. OOA focuses on what the system does, OOD on how the system does it. Object-oriented analysis (OOA) looks at the problem domain, with the aim of producing a conceptual model of the information that exists in the area being analyzed. Analysis models do not consider any implementation constraints that might exist, such as concurrency, distribution, persistence, or how the system is to be built. Implementation constraints are dealt during object-oriented design (OOD). Analysis is done before the Design.The sources f or the analysis can be a written requirements statement, a formal vision document, interviews with stakeholders or other interested parties. A system may be divided into multiple domains, representing different business, technological, or other areas of interest, each of which are analyzed separately. The result of object-oriented analysis is a description of what the system is functionally required to do, in the form of a conceptual model. That will typically be presented as a set of use cases, one or more UML class diagrams, and a number of interaction diagrams. It may also include some kind of user interface mock-up. The purpose of object oriented analysis is to develop a model that describes computer software as it works to satisfy a set of customer defined requirements. (2) Object-oriented design. This is concerned with developing an object-oriented model of the system necessary to implement the specified requirements. The analysts and programmers must think in terms of things (objects) rather than processes or functions. Object-oriented design (OOD) transforms the conceptual model produced in object-oriented analysis to take account of the constraints imposed by the chosen architecture and any non-functional technological or environmental constraints, such as transaction throughput, response time, run-time platform, development environment, or programming language. The concepts in the analysis model are mapped onto implementation classes and interfaces. The result is a model of the solution domain, a detailed description of how the system is to be built. Although object-oriented technologies have existed for quite some time, the phrase object-oriented has gained much popularity (along with buzzword status) in recent years. Indeed, the phrase is often bandied about with reckless abandon, which serves to obscure its real meaning. To further confuse matters, it is used to describe everything from development environments to programming languages to databases. So what does the term object-oriented really mean? The term seems to be thrown about indiscriminately; anything from programming languages to drawing tools might be labeled as object-oriented. There are primarily three uses of object-oriented methodology: object-oriented analysis (OOA), which deals with the design requirements and overall architecture of a system; object-oriented design (OOD), which translates a system architecture into programming constructs (such as interfaces, classes, and method descriptions); and object-oriented programming (OOP), which implements these programming constructs. So, object-oriented can be taken to mean the various methodologies, described briefly herein, used to design and implement software. 4. CONCLUSION For a specific application the first task is to decide which methodology is most appropriate for its development. Sometimes we may have to adapt different methodologies. Some guidelines might be that simple tasks may be better achieved by structured programming methods while the use of object-oriented methods might be better suited for higher levels of abstraction. This may also help with module design and problem decomposition. For situations in which the data is more likely to change than its functionality, objects would be more appropriate. In order for companies to transition from the SSAD methodology to the OOAD methodology, they need to understand the substance of the change and the barriers that must be overcome; otherwise moving to this new methodology may end in failure. Consequently, for analysts and programmers to embrace this new methodology, they need to reorient their thinking from the functional perspective to the object perspective. More specifically for analysts and programmers with experience in the traditional methodology, training should be given to emphasize the modeling aspects of the methodology as opposed to learning the syntax and features of an object-oriented language. The transition from SSAD to OOAD can be made easier by supervised training and the use of object-oriented tools. Although the OOAD methodology provides many benefits, it does not resolve all the issues associated with the traditional SSAD methodology. There are still some shortcomings and weaknesses that need to be addressed which include: the amount of training needed, the time necessary to learn the new methodology, and the amount of money to invest in it. According to Glass (Glass, 2002) there is no guarantee that the adoption of a new technology will result in it being used effectively and efficiently. In addition, if the organization completely submerges itself in the new OOAD methodology, there can be costly and destructive results. Consequently, to take advantage of all the positive benefits that the new methodology offers, the organization needs to develop a carefully planned and gradual introduction of the methodology to all the system developers. Before any effort is made to use the OOAD methodology as mentioned previously, it is imperative that the necessary education be provided in order to assure its success. The skills, knowledge and experience of the systems analyst and programmers who are indoctrinated in the traditional SSAD methodology can be enhanced by the new methods. Since changes to the basic structure of the OOAD methodology are stressful to manage, first attempts to use this methodology should be applied only to small scale and non critical applications. This will enable the company to receive immediate feedback and to have time to make any necessary modifications in the application of the OOAD methodology. Consequently, the benefits and advantages gained from using the new OOAD methodology can be much greater and more rewarding for the organization in the long term than using the traditional SSAD methodology.

Construction Technology Design processes and Procedures

Construction Technology Design processes and Procedures The design process of a project can be very complex, there are multiple factors in which designers must take into consideration during the early stages of a project. Each factor plays an important role not only during the design process but they can also affect the life cycle of the project, therefore the RIBA plan of work is usually used which allows clear guidance on the roles of those involved and is easy to understand. Below is a brief description of the factors surrounding the Nottingham Jubilee Campus: Advanced Manufacturing Building Redevelopment project. Financial Finances are usually the first thing to consider on a new project as it can massively influence if the project is feasible or not. A budget is set in place and each stage of the design and production process is allocated an amount of money to keep within the budget. Running over budget can mean that the design may have to be adapted to keep the extra costs as low as possible which can affect the overall outcome of the project in terms of aesthetics and performance. Some projects can be funded by organisations that are involved or will benefit from the project, i.e. Local Authorities/Government, Stakeholders, Companies/Partnerships, residents and Students. Social A consideration must be made of the potential social impact of a proposed project, this can include: Impacts on residents The project should be designed so that minimal disruption is made both during the construction process and the operation of the project. Disruptive factors such as excessive noise and visual obtrusiveness will negatively impact the view of residents who will be affected by the project in their day to day lives. Environmental impacts The design should consider the local environment in which the building is to be placed. This can include higher pollution levels from increased traffic to and from the University Campus during the life cycle of the building and the impacts on local wildlife. Care should be taken to ensure that habitats that are removed are restored elsewhere so that the wildlife are not exposed to danger. It could also possible to design certain habitats into the project itself, through green roofs/walls and planted platforms. Economy Having an extension to a University Campus will provide a boost to the local economy. This can in turn lead to businesses expanding and providing more jobs to residents and potentially to the University Students. Client needs The Clients needs are incredibly important on a project, after all they are paying for everything. For a project, such as an extension to a University Campus, the clients needs will include: Fit for purpose classrooms The University has a duty to provide education to a high standard, providing classrooms that can achieve the high standards is essential. Security The safety of the students is the Universitys responsibility whilst on Campus, therefore having effective security measures in place is important. These security measures can include photo ID cards that allow access to the building through a card reader, security staff that patrol the premises and CCTV cameras. Energy efficiency There is a big focus on new buildings to be as environmentally friendly and sustainable through energy use due to the increased awareness of climate change. By providing ways in which energy efficiency can be increased, the running costs of the building will be lowered substantially throughout the lifecycle of the building. Legal Constraints The design of a building must comply with very strict Standards, Regulations and Laws. These practices are in place to ensure that any project is designed and built safely whilst providing construction guidelines. There may also be a contract in place which indicates what the client is receiving for their money.   Some of the legislations in place are: Building regulations Construction Design Management (CDM) Regulations British Safety Standards EN European Norm ISO International Standards Organisation Environmental There must be consideration for the environment during the design process of a project, the designers should not only consider environmental impacts during construction but also throughout the life cycle of the structure and eventually the demolition. Some aspects that should be considered are: Plant and machinery that is used on site to minimise pollution Materials: how they are manufactured, where they are sourced and the recycling possibilities Heat and power sources on site Water waste These factors should be considered to ensure that minimal impact is made on the local wildlife habitats and residents. There are multiple roles for numerous professions within the design team with each having a vital role. The roles and responsibilities for those involved are: Architect The architect is the person who initially designs the structure based on the clients needs/requests. There can be a group of Architects working together who are given a specific section/area to design if it is a large-scale project. Architects must ensure that the designs they create comply with the relevant regulations in terms of environmental, safety and the construction of the structure. An Architect will have a University Degree with relevant experience studying art.

Friday, September 20, 2019

Difficulties Listeners Face Processing a Foreign Language

Difficulties Listeners Face Processing a Foreign Language INTRODUCTION Recently, listening has gained more and more attention in foreign language learning. In learning a foreign language, it is suggested that the most important step should begin with an effort to listen. (Rubin Thompson, 1994) Listening provides input for learners to make learning occur and listening exercises draw learners attention to new forms in language, such as new vocabulary items. (Rost, 1994) Listening can be regarded as a necessary skill in the diagnosing and preparation of foreign language students and can even be served as a good predictor of language achievement. In consequence, listening comprehension acts as a pivotal role in foreign language learning. (Oxford, 1993) In this essay, three issues are discussed. Issue 1 states listening difficulties in second language acquisition. Underwood (1994), Chiang and Dunkel (1992) and Rubin and Thompson (1994)‘s viewpoint are discussed. Issue 2 proposes taxonomies of the factors affecting listening difficulties. Boyle (1984), Yagang (1993) and Rubin (1994) ‘s point of view of the factors affecting listening comprehension are referred to. Issue 3 mentions studies in listening difficulties of L2 listeners in foreign countries. Tauroza and Allisons (Rubin, 1994) study is about speech rate. Boyle (1984)s study is factors most frequently mentioned in listening comprehension. Lynch (1997)s study is a case study of a intermediate-level learners progress in listening comprehension. Goh (2000)s study discusses listening comprehension problems. Chapter 1 Listening difficulties in second language acquisition Underwoods (1994) point of view Underwood (1994) identified seven potential difficulties in listening comprehension as: (1) lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak, (2) not being able to get things repeated, (3) the listeners limited vocabulary, (4) failure to recognize the signals, (5) problems of interpretation, (6) inability to concentrate, (7) established learning habits. Many language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks. (p7) They are so busy working out the meaning of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part. Another difficulty is that listener is not always in a position to get the speaker to repeat an utterance. This is particularly likely to be the case when students are ‘on the edge of conversation outside the classroom. For people listening to a foreign language, an unknown word can be like a suddenly dropped barrier causing them to stop and think about the meaning of the word and thus making them miss the next part of the speech (p 17). And students need to learn to listen for the ‘signals in order to be able to connect the various utterances in the way the speaker intended them to be connected. (p18) Students who are unfamiliar with the context may have considerable difficulty in interpreting the words they hear even if they can understand their ‘surface meaning. (p19). Inability to concentrate can be caused by a number of things, but in listening work it is a majo r problem, because even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension. (p19) Outside factors may well make concentration difficult, too. An inferior machine or poor recording can make it very hard for the students. As for establishing leaning habits, when the learner can more readily accept the frustrations involved, he will be more prepared to strive for a partial and incomplete understanding of what is being said. (pp16-19) Rubin and Thompsons (1994) point of view Rubin and Thompson list three common problems in learning to listen to a foreign language. The first problem is that the speaker talks too fast. If the listener can not follow the speaker, the listener can let the speaker know that he is not following. He can ask for repetition and slowing down the speed, seeks clarification, rephrase, and repeat. The listener can pay attention to intonation and tone of voice, focus on question words such as who, what and when and assume that the ‘here and ‘now are relevant. That is, the sentence is directly related to the subject they have just been discussing. Assume that what a person says is directly related to something he or she is experiencing at that very minute. The second problem is that the listener is not getting anything out of foreign language TV and movies. If the listener could not understand the foreign language TV and movies, they should try to take control of his listening by predicting what he was likely to hear. For e xample, use visual clues and use his background knowledge. Anticipate information in a segment by relying on your knowledge of what such a segment is likely to contain. Listeners could also use information from the segment itself and determine the genre of the segment. Knowing the genre of a segment will help you determine how best to approach it. For instance, if it is an interview, then concentrate on the questions. If it is a news report, a who, when, where strategy will work best. If it is a drama, look for the story line. Listeners could listen to familiar elements, listen to familiar-sounding words, listen to and jot down repeated words, learn to recognize numbers and learn to recognize proper names. The third problem is that the listener tends to stop listening when he hears an unfamiliar word or phrase. Many learners, particularly in the early stages of language learning, panic and lose their concentration when they hear an unfamiliar segment. As a result, they miss portions of the passage that might have helped clarify the unfamiliar word or segment. The listener should concentrate on familiar elements and keep listening. Understanding something is better than getting nothing at all. If you continue listening, chances are that you will comprehend at least some parts of the massage. It is possible that the portions you missed were not very important after all. Chiang and Dunkels (1992) point of view Chiang and Dunkel (1992) pointed out that listeners comprehension in English may be thwarted by a number of cognitive and linguistic factors as well as academic and cultural issues, including: (a) inability or lack of opportunity to engage in communicative interaction with the second/foreign language teacher or lecture; (b) inability to detect the main points of the lecture or to â€Å" grasp the usual goals of particular genres of discourse situation of which the discourse is a part; (c) unfamiliarity with the structure and type of the discourse ; (d) inability to apprehend discourse markers and logical relationships in the English lecture; (e) inability to comprehend lecture speech delivered at faster rates of speed; (f) limited short-term memory for English input; (g) failure to use appropriate cognitive or learning strategies; (h) poor inference abilities in English; (i) limited proficiency in English; (j) lack of prior knowledge about the content of the spoken or written text; and (k) inability to process L2 input devoid of speech modification such as elaborations or redundancies. Of these difficulties confronting L2 learners, Chiang and Dunkel explored the effect of three of them. The first situation was when the listeners had limited listening proficiency in English, the second situation was when they lacked prior knowledge about the topic of the L2 lecture, and the third situation was when they were not supplied with modified speech. The results revealed a significant interaction between prior knowledge and text type. Chapter 2 Taxonomy of the factors affecting L2 listening difficulties Boyles (1984) three categories of factors Boyle (1984) began with a survey of the factors most frequently mentioned in the literature on listening comprehension, including three categories of factors. The first category referred to the listener factors, including experience in listening to the target language, general background knowledge of the world, educational background and type of school, knowledge of the target language in its various aspects, memory, powers of analysis and selection and motivation and attitude of the listener to the speaker and to the message. The second categories, the speaker factors, contain language ability of the speaker: native speaker—beginning level non-native speaker. Speakers production: pronunciation, accent, variation, voice affect, too. Speed of delivery and prestige and personality of the speaker count. The third category, factors in the material and medium, comprise difficulty of content and concept, especially if the material is abstract, abstruse, highly specialized or technic al, lengthy or poorly organized. Acoustic environment such as noise and interference and amount of support provided by gestures, visuals also have influence on listening comprehension. Yagangs (1993) four aspects of factors Instead of three categories, Yagang (1993) proposed that the sources of listening difficulties came mainly from the four aspects: the message, the speaker, the listener, and the physical setting. The message factors comprised content and linguistic features. In content which is not well organized, listeners cannot predict what speakers are going to say. And if listening materials are made up of everyday conversation, they may contain a lot of colloquial expressions, such as guy for man. Students who have been exposed mainly to formal or bookish English may not be familiar with these expressions. The speaker factors consists of redundant utterances, such as repetitions, false starts, re-phrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, apparently meaningless addition such as â€Å" I mean† or â€Å" you know† and speakers personal factors such as their accents. Learners tend to be used to their teaching accent or to the standard variety of British or American Engli sh. They find it hard to understand speakers with other accents. The listener factors played a more important role in EFL students listening. For example, foreign language students might be not familiar enough with clichà © and collocations in English to predict a missing word or phrase. For example, they can not be expected to know that rosy often collocates with cheeks. EFL students might be lack of sociocultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language. (Anderson and Lynch 1988).It can present an obstacle to comprehension because language is used to express its culture. Factors in physical setting included noise, both background noises on the recording and environmental noises, could carry the listeners mind of the content of the listening passage. Listening material on tape or radio lacks visual and aural environmental clues. Not seeing the speakers body language and facial expressions makes it more difficult for the listener to understand the speakers meaning. Unclear sounds resulting from poor quality equipment can interfere with the listeners comprehension. Rubins (1994) five categories of factors Rubin (1994) classified these listening factors into five categories: text, interlocutor, task, listener and process characteristics. Text characteristics referred to acoustic-temporal variables, acoustic-other variables and morphological and syntactic modifications (including restatements). Acoustic-temporal variables are speech rate, pause phenomena, and hesitation. Acoustic-other variables are level of perception, stress and rhythmic patterning perception and L1 and L2 differences. Variables of morphological and syntactic modifications are redundancy, morphological complexity, word order and discourse markers. Text characteristics referred to text type. Visual support for texts is also an important variable. Interlocutor characteristics referred to variations in the speakers personal characteristics, such as gender, pronunciation, accent, expertness and so on. Listener characteristics are listeners language proficiency level, memory, attention, affect, age, gender, learning disabi lities in L1, and background knowledge as well as aptitude, processing skills, background biases, motivation, and confidence level. Process characteristics referred to how listeners interpret input in terms of what they know or identify what they dont know. Top-down, bottom-up and parallel processing is being examined in L2 contexts. Current views of listening comprehension propose that listeners actively process language input. Two types of processing have been discerned: cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies. Research on listening strategies includes: work on several languages; work contrasting strategy use at several proficiency levels; work with interactive or transactional listening; work with cognitive and metacognitive strategies; work considering the relation of strategy use to text, task, and setting. Chapter 3 Studies in listening difficulties of L2 listeners in foreign countries Tauroza and Allisons ( )studyspeech rate Griffiths suggests that different language have different â€Å"normal† rates and the rates defined in studies using English can not be applied exactly to studies of other languages. Most research quotes a normal speech rate of 165 to 180 words per minutes for native speakers of English. On the other hand, while Foulke reports a threshold (the rate at which comprehension begins to decrease rapidly) level between 250-275 w.p.m., others states that comprehension decreases as a function of mental aptitude and difficulty level. Tauroza and Allison compare normal speed of British speakers for four types of speech. They found that while the mean for radio and interview speech events lies within the range of 160 to 190 w.p.m., the means for conversation and lecture categories are outside this range. The mean rate for conversation in words per minute was 210, while for lectures, 140. They note further that thirty-three percent of their lecture data was slower than 130 w.p.m. and twent y-three percent of the conversation data was faster than 220 w.p.m. The issue of normal speech rate is one that still needs a great deal more research that takes into account all of the variables mentioned above. (Rubin, 1994) Boyles (1984) study—factors most frequently mentioned in listening In Boyles (1984) study, 30 teachers and 60 students in Hong Kong were asked to list the six factors which they considered the most important in aiding or hampering the effectiveness of listening comprehension. It was interesting to know that the students gave much more importance to vocabulary than teachers did. It was surprising that the students mentioned two factors, memory and concentration, barely mentioned by the teachers. In addition, the students considered that there was a possible relationship between their reading habits and their listening comprehension, which was not mentioned by the teachers. On the other hand, the teacher seemed to specify the linguistic factors more sophisticatedly. The teacher would specify the factors as ability to pick up clues, complex syntactical structures, stress and intonation and interference from Chinese. On the contrary, the students just indicated that the lack of general language ability or the difficulties in English listening comprehens ion. Lynchs (1997) study—a case study of an intermediate-level learners progress Lynch (1997) conducted an ethnographic study of a Japanese student who attended English language courses at the Institute for Applied Language Studies, the only one taking an undergraduate course in economics at the University of Edinburgh. His scores on the listening tests were relatively low in comparison with his reading and grammar scores with the other students in class. A number of possible reasons were found to explain his difficulties in listening comprehension. First, he was the youngest member in his class so that he was unwilling to engage in negotiation with his seniors. Second, he was the only undergraduate student with an economic background in his English class so that he viewed himself as insufficient in some general background knowledge. Third, he joined Course 3 in the EAP program, skipping the basic class, Course 1 and 2. Therefore, he thought he needed more time to get used to negotiate with others in English. Fourth, his lowest listening score disappointed him gr eatly. The perceptions of the subject had made a substantial influence on his English learning. Gohs (2000) study—listening comprehension problems Goh (2000) investigated the comprehension problems of second language listeners in a cognitive perspective. She identified real-time listening difficulties faced by 40 Chinese undergraduates and examined their difficulties within the three-phase model of language comprehension proposed by Anderson. (1995). The data were collected from learners self-reports in their diaries, semi-structure interviews and immediate retrospective verbalizations. The data revealed 10 problems that occurred during the cognitive process phases of perception, parsing, and utilization. She also, made a comprehension between two groups, high ability listeners and low ability listeners. Each group consisted of eight students selected according to their grades in a post-instruction standardized proficiency test, the SLEP test of Educational Testing Service 1991. She found that listeners with highly ability and low ability both had a perception problem with recognizing words they knew. Another problem they both shared was parsing problem that they quickly forgot what they thought they had understood. In addition to these two problems, high ability listeners reported a utilization problem that they were often unable to extract the meaning out of the message even if they had understood all the words. On the other hand, low ability listeners reported another perception problem that they often did not hear the next part of a text because they spent too much time thinking about what they had just heard. REFERENCES Boyle, J.P. (1984). Factors affecting listening comprehension. ELT Journal, 38 (1), 34-38 Chiang, C.S. Dunkel, P. (1992). The effect of speech modification, prior knowledge, and listening proficiency in EFL lecture learning. TESOL Quarterly, 26(2), 345-374 Goh, C.C.M. (2000). A cognitive perspective on language learners listening comprehension problem. System, 28(1), 55-75. Lynch. (1997). Life in the slow lane: Observations of a limited L2 listener. System, 25 (3), 385-398 Oxford, R. (1993). Research update in L2 listening. System, 21(2), 205-211. Rost, M. (1994). Introducing listening. London: Penguin. Rubin, J. (1994). A review of second language listening comprehension research. Modern language Journal, 78(2), 199-217 Rubin, J. Thompson, I. (1994) How to be a more successful language learner: Toward learning autonomy. MA: Heinle Heinle Publishers. Underwood, M. (1994). Teaching listening. Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers. Yagang, F. (1993).Listening: problems and solutions. English Teaching Forum, 31 (2), 16-19