Methodology in action research Essay

Appropriate methods should be employed in the various stages of implementing a successful action research strategy. I have selected the methods discussed below based on their reliability and cost among other important criteria. This research in a qualitative survey and aims at gathering enough data from the selected sample. The data collected will then be subjected to qualitative analysis using the appropriate tools. This paper therefore seeks to gather relevant data from people who are led and those who practice leadership in the selected organizations. The selection of the sample was based random sampling technique so as to avoid bias selection. This is also significant in obtaining composite data that will touch on a variety of organizations that practice leadership. For the participants in this research I have chosen managers of various organizations for instance the sales managers are normally the team leaders in the sales team therefore they can provide the relevant data concerning leadership in their organization. I have also targeted to interview members of such team who are also capable of giving out information regarding to how they relate with their leaders and what they feel about their current leadership . In an organization like a bank I will target the sales representatives of customer relations officers who are part of teams in that particular firm. Data collection The first technique I will use will be the available information. This will be found in books, magazines, journals, reports and the internet. I will go for this technique because I will not spend much besides the information being readily available. But I fear that issues regarding to confidentiality may arise and I may also get incomplete information. The methods should also consider the appropriate demographic that is targeted in the research. Structured interviews in the form of questionnaires can best work for collecting pieces of information form that targeted group. This method is objective and its validity is high. Written questionnaires permitted anonymity and made me get more honest responses from the respondents. The following are examples of questions to be included in the questionnaire; What can you say about leadership in your organization? Are there teams in your organization? Does your team leader understand the needs of the other members? Have you ever been a leader? Do you trust your leaders and are they open to their subjects? What do you think a good leader should have? Do the leaders in your organization understand men and women who work for the organization? Are you contended with the leadership in your organization in terms of human relations? Do you think good human relations affects leadership in your organization? Oral interviews will also utilize because they provide direct contact with the sources of information hence increasing validity. I also preferred this method because of its flexibility besides seeking clarification where doubts exist. If a respondent does not understand well a given question I can give him an example or explain further before getting his/her response. There was a higher response in this method as compared to the written questionnaires where some respondents were asking for more time and some even delayed with their responses. The only problem I expect while using written questionnaires is that some respondents will delay and some will not be honest enough. This is because as they delay with the questionnaires some of them will go consulting and therefore compromise some of the ethical values associated with the information they are supposed to supply. Data analysis This part is vital so as to establish the relevance of what has been gathered Appropriate tools have to be used in this stage because the product will be used for interpretation I would prefer to use bar graphs in the analysis because they are straightforward and can easily convey the expected message. They are also very easy to construct using Ms Excel tools. Ms excel is able to choose different types of bar graphs that will bring out clear comparisons between the variables. I will format the graph in such a way that it will have different colors representing the views of the respondents on some of the questions concerning leadership in their organization for instance I can use Red, Blue and Green to represent Good, Fair and Bad leadership. This can be interpreted by whoever will be reading the report and reveal to him/her that the team members have a specific perception of how social intelligence affects leadership in the society. The bar graphs would be very useful especially when comparing between two or more variables. However one challenge with the bar graphs is that they will require some additional verbal or written explanation to accompany them. This will be a challenge because it will mean additional time will have to be created so as to provide the additional materials in terms of explanations. This will also result in more expenses because more effort will have to be put in.

Principles of Management: Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management (TQM) has been around for several years. The concept is being applied to business and industry processes for the purpose of quality improvement. Many businesses feel that TQM is only for large manufacturing type businesses or major industries. (Lee p1) TQM can be used for everyone with managers and employees. Certainly everyone involved with customer service. It is important to recognize the TQM and assessment are made up of identifiable, measurable components. Proper orientation to and understanding of the TQM philosophy, team development, problem solving techniques, and statistical process control must be the mission of everyone in any organization. (Lee p1) The wall street journal has twice reported on the struggling efforts of companies trying to improve overall quality and customer satisfaction. (Chaudron p2) Management must realize that to fully implement TQM, satisfy customers, and promote teamwork in the entire organization, often wrenching systemic changes must be made: profit sharing may be introduced; individual performance appraisals may be radically changed or eliminated; organizational structure may be realigned away from functions to a customer process or geographic – based structure, information may be given to employees formerly reserved for senior management; and significantly more authority may be given to line employees. (Chaudron p2) If management does not align these systems, the effect will result in much struggle and confusion. Organizations need to spend time on the design of their efforts. If they do not, they risk pouring time and dollars into and effort that will eventually collapse. Among the decisions that should be made up – front, before implementing a quality effort are: measures of success, the degree of employee involvement, the depth and breadth of immpleementation, and the techniques to be used. (Chaudron p2) As someone once said, â€Å"If you don†t like where are are going, you may not like getting there.† A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. They need to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management. (Deming p1) A leader of transformation, and managers involved, need to learn the psychology of individuals, the psychology of a group, they psychology of society, and the psychology of change. (Deming p1) Changing behaviors is probably the most critical area in the process of change. People do not necessarily resist change. They resist being changed. It is important to give people time to understand the true needs and the process of change. Leaders promote open communication and clear visionss of the organizations future. The stronger culture values towards the market place, the less need for policy, instructions, organizational charts etc. Leaders empower and involve people to achieve the organization†s objectives. (Deming) TQM has been proven to work in many types of businesses such as Health Care facilities, Universities, multi million dollar corporations and small businesses. Can the concepts of TQM be applied to Hotel management operations? The Hotel industry is a very competitive business, based almost solely on customer satisfaction. Hotels have been feeling much more pressure in the past decade; they have been feeling a sense of crisis. Crisis that is caused due to th increasing number of new hotels being built up and down the interstates. An old hotel must use the concepts of TQM to keep themselves in the forefront of customer minds. To make the TQM philosophy work in the hotel industry, you must have continuos commitment from all levels of employees. Corporate owner, general managers, department managers, shift supervisors and hourly employees. The commitment must be to embrace and implement the philosophy of Deming and the principles of TQM on a daily basis. The focus must be on the processes of the organization and on providing leadership. Above all this commitment must be consistent. Owners and management must decide together and implement methods that can bring about change in the processes that produce product (room style and cleanliness) and service (customer satisfaction ) for the hotel. Management must review its mission and challenge suppervisors and employees to identify their respective departments philosophies, goals, objectives, and expected outcomes. If they don†t know the results they desire, assessment is meaningless. Once this is accomplished, techniques can be identified to measure quality improvement and to reduce the variation of outcomes. Commitment to quality is essential if companies are to succeed in a commercial environment. If you look at a 30 year old hotel and compare it to several new hotels, the older one better offer something of good quality and with excellent customer service. Competing with brand new is tough in this day and age. Customers want the best, they expect the best. TQM style will help bring out the best in any company. Comparing management styles of two hotels, brings about some interesting discoveries. One that used the TQM philosophy and the other that did not. The most obvious difference was the attitudes of the employees. The TQM hotel has employees that feel like they are the hotel. The same projection was received from the housekeeping staff as for the guest service agents. The general manager does not call them employees he calls them team members. They have team meetings, they all realize the importance of each job and each of them cross train for the other positions. The general manger has empowered the employees to make decisions on behalf of the business. They all have support from corporate managers and district managers. With this franchised hotel they all support each other. They try to keep their workplace fun with contest and monetary winnings. These employees enjoy coming to work and try to make each day better than the last. When the hotel succeeds so do the employees. The hotel without TQM present does not run the same at all. Employees come to work to fill their shifts. They make the same amount of money whether the hotel is full or empty. Empowerment is not a work that is recognized. All departments are separate and do not necessarily work together. The manager does much more managing and works harder because everything that happens is brought to them. When shown the difference between the hotels we are also forced to look at which one fares better in the community. With out a doubt the TQM hotel surpassed the other hotel. Suggestions to make TQM work for everyone.  · Make a personal self-examination regarding your willingness and discipline to alter day-to-day management behaviors in such a way that the organization is ever mindful of the strategic importance of TQM.  · Establish agreed upon quality measurements, followed by widespread search for the best performers to measure against.  · See out customer feedback and objectively measure their concerns.  · Work with employees to help them understand the strategic importance of new TQM activities and to buy into the process.  · Don†t go overboard. Focus on a few processes and their characteristics.  · Create an organization that is capable of learning from itself in the quest for continuos quality improvement in the strategic process Quality management principles are a comprehensive and fundamental rule of belief, for leading the operation and organization, aimed at continually improving performance over the long term by focusing on customers while addressing the needs of all stake holders. (Quality Management) These principles used in hotel management could take you to the competitive edge. Principle 1 – Customer Focused Organization: organizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, meet customer requirements, and strive to exceed customer expections. Principle 2 – Leadership: Leaders establish unity of purpose, direction, and the internal environment of organization. They create that environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization†s objectives. Principle 3 – Involvement of People: People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization†s benefit. Principle 4 – Process Approach: A desired result is achieved more efficiently when related resources and activities are managed as a process. Principle 5 – System Approach to Management: Identifying, understanding, and managing a system of interrelated processes for a given objective contributes to the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization. Principle 6 – Continual improvement: Continual improvement is a permanent objective of the organization. Principle 7 – Factual Approach to Decision Making: Effective decisions and actions are based on the logical and intuitive analysis of data and information. Principle 8 – Mutually Beneficial supplier Relationships: Mutually beneficial relationship between organizations and its supplier enhance the ability of both organizations to create value. (Quality Management) If all principles are applied with effective management, they will most certainly do a whole lot of good to create a better atmosphere for more effective people. Changing behaviors is probably the most critical area in the process of change. Leaders should empower and involve employees to achieve the organization†s objectives. Continuous improvement is a mindset, a way of doing business. We are never good enough; we can always be better. This is an ethic and an aspiration. (CIDR) On the other side of the coin, not everyone agrees with the whole TQM concept. In an article by Robert A Zawacki, Carol A. Norman, Paul A. Zawacki and Paul D Applegate, they say that total quality programs are a bust because TQM programs try to implement 9,000 new practices simultaneously. Their conclusions were (1) Involve everyone in the process, and (2) be willing to change everything, but concentrate on one thing at a time. They believe that most continuos improvement and partnering programs are failing because individual contributors are overworked, lack alignment and feel devalued by their leaders. In their opinion the error that many leaders made in the 1990†³s , in their rush to embrace the total quality movement, was that although they recognized the importance of quality they put more efforts into planning than they did into implementation and follow-up. (Zawacki p1) TQM can work with efforts of everyone. From the highest paid to the lowest paid. Everyone in the company is important. Jobs will be better, people will be happier and customers more satisfied. That spells better business and more business. Everyone wins. All it takes is commitment.

Keynesian Model and Macroeconomic policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Keynesian Model and Macroeconomic policy - Essay Example This essay outlines main foundations of the theory of John Maynand Keynes, one of the most renowned economic thinker of all time. According to his theory, aggregate demand is subject to periodic changes caused by changes in the determinants of aggregate demand.Aggregate demand is unstable because prices and wages are downwardly inflexible. This decline has no effect on price level but real output falls and can remain at its equilibrium indefinitely. It is necessary for governments to intervene and manage the level of demand in the economy in order to obtain and retain full employment. In other words, unless careful measures are taken to offset increase in aggregate demand, real output may remain below full employment. At times of recession, high unemployment levels, and low investments in new equipments and machinery together with low levels of technology characterize the economy. When in a recession, Aggregate demand is low in that the sales are low, high unemployment that the jobs suffer meaning that the population has no money ad therefore low spending. To recover from a recession, private business investments and governments hold the key because the consumers have limited amounts of money in their hands and therefore they are not the cause of ups and downs of the business cycle. To remedy a recession, the Keynesians can enlarge the levels of investments in the economy or the governments can create public substitutes for the shortages in private investments because the government provides some utility goods for free. Also if the economy contractions are mild, the interest rates can be reduced to induce more borrowing and provide easy credit/loan. This will help to stimulate private investment and restore aggregate demand to a level rhyming with full employment. For severe contractions, the Sterner remedy of deliberate budget deficits can be employed either in the form of spending on public works e.g. free education, health, transport or subsidizing the consumer. A fiscal policy is a government activity that concerns taxation and public spending. These are the government's tools in their hands in economic policies like maintaining economic growth. A fiscal policy can be expansionary or contractionary. Expansionary fiscal policy In this case GDP expands. Usually the government reduces/cut the taxation level.

For or against a charge of crimes against humanitarian law Essay

For or against a charge of crimes against humanitarian law - Essay Example However, the Rape of Nanking surpasses this contradiction as one of the most atrocious in the history of humankind. This long forgotten atrocity of the Second World War is a crime against humanity, both in the legal and human point of view. War crimes are defiance of the rules of war or, generally, of international humanitarian law, that sustain individual criminal liability (Chang 1998). Even though constraints on waging war date back roughly in the 6th century BC in China, by the time of the First World War, nations had recognized that particular infringements of the rules of war, a great deal of which had been written in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, were crimes (Yamamoto 2000). The history of every nation narrates some disreputable and detestable episodes that peoples of other nations still denounce and the people of that offending nation would want to disregard, forget, or even, in some cases, rationalize. Among these controversial events in human history is the Rape of N anking which is incomparable due to the extraordinary level of attention given to it for an unusually duration of time. In spite of the effort and time of large numbers of people who have tackled this issue, nevertheless, there seems to be no agreement over such important issues as to the manner of and reason for the occurrence of Rape of Nanking and the extent of the slaughter. The manner American scholars have viewed and treated the topic of the Rape of Nanking are critically blemished, leading to a faulty scrutiny and assumption (Yamamoto 2000). As a result, large numbers of American people embrace the assumption of such a defective analysis and knowledge and build their own perspectives, several of them anomalous, about the occurrence and about the Japanese perpetrators generally. The most severe case of how the absolute recognition of the traditionalist perspective spreads out is as illustrated below (Yamamoto 2000: 4): Consider that the United States, on all fronts, lost 323,0 00 in the four years of World War II. Or that at Auschwitz the Nazis killed on average 350,000 every two months. The Japanese killed roughly the same number in a few months without the benefit of the technology of mass murder available to the Nazis and without the advantage of concentration camps†¦ What’s more, the Japanese troops weren’t ‘specialized’: nothing comparable to the Einsatzgruppen [task forces] existed in their military. These were the boys next door†¦ the Rape of Nanking reminds us how recently Japan emerged from its medieval age; a scant 140 years ago, less than 100 at the time of the Rape. A reader of this passage may claim that this is a judgment of a fanatic and that most people do not agree with it. However, I must argue that this description, though disgusting and unbelievable it may seem, is rationally made. The author of this passage is nevertheless more rational or realistic than other writers who claim that the number of f atalities is at 300,000 and insists that the government of Japan should acknowledge its legal accountability for the acts of violence and pay damages to the victims (Yamamoto 2000). Given that the number of lost human lives in Nanking had actually been that sizeable as to challenge all time-honored knowledge, one may embrace the assumption contained in the above excerpt: the Japanese people were, and perhaps remain, innately bizarre. If the Japanese peop

Gestalt Family Therapy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Gestalt Family Therapy - Essay Example In this therapy the experiences of the patient are not interpreted by the therapist instead the patient is encouraged to become aware of their needs and to accept them, come to an understanding of how to fulfill them and then let go of them. In this therapy the experiences of the patient are not interpreted by the therapist, but the therapist works along with the patient to enable them to understand themselves. This therapy helps a patient to become a well adjusted individual who understands that in life there is a constant flow of needs and one has to accept them, understand them, fulfill them if possible or let go of them without regrets. Gestalts Family Therapy is an extension of these goals, in that, the therapy is not for an individual but extends to the family. Walter Kempler, who initially worked with Perls, brought about this form of Family Therapy. His immediate goal is to engage the entire family in therapy, such that the members who seek to come together and at the same time separate can resolve their issues using Gestalts Therapy and thus resolve their problems. The final goal is accepting reality as it is, and thus accepting one’s own and the other’s movement to and away from togetherness. This could mean freedom and relief for one and loss and grief for another. Gestalt Family Therapy allows one to realize this loss, grieve for it and then move on. (Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Kempler) The basic aim of this therapy is to bring about self awareness. The goal of Gestalts therapy is to help patients in discovering their ability to regulate and have successful relationships with others who share their space (i.e. with family, at work, with friends etc) and to connect with their inner selves and accept themselves as they truly are. The therapist helps the patient to uncover the unresolved issues which fade into the subconscious and then helps the patient to understand

Oil spill Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Oil spill - Essay Example The author proceeds to state that oil contamination is extremely harmful to the environment and numerous numbers of sea birds, mammals and other sea creatures fall prey to oil spill. However, there is no one to one correspondent between the volume of the spill and sea life lost. Often the nature of the pollution is long term and affects sea life even after many years of the spill. Unless addressed with due importance it would surely trigger environmental catastrophe. However, the author has not mentioned that not the immediate direct action but the indirect action in terms of habitat loss (Center for Biological Diversity, 2014; National Wildlife Federation, 2012) would also affect the sea life and environment. Again sea and ocean water floats from one nation to another nation and from one continent to another continent; hence it is an environmental problem that is locally initiated but with global impact. Furthermore this local problem might risk the global economy; as an example the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It might also affect tourism and fishing and thereby pose economic and cultural threat (The Levin Institute, 2014). Considering these facts and the potential danger associated with the same; the author calls for more prompt research and development geared towards finding a technologically advanced, efficient and meaningful method to clear the ocean and sea water in case there is any oil spill. Center for Biological Diversity (2014), End Offshore oil drilling now, retrieved on August 1 2014 from: National Wildlife Federation, (2012), How Does the BP Oil Spill Impact Wildlife and Habitat?, retrieved on August 1, 2014 from:

Intensive Lifestyle Modification for CAD Reversal Successfully Reduces Research Paper

Intensive Lifestyle Modification for CAD Reversal Successfully Reduces Circulating Levels of Metabolic Hormones Insulin and Leptin - Research Paper Example of the deaths reported from United States due to Coronary vascular disease is also 30 and this is reported maximum for the age groups above 65 (United States, 2006) Among various pathogenic factors, insulin resistance and visceral obesity are considered most significant. (Duvnjak and Duvnjak, 19- 24) . The observed metabolic abnormalities are due to insulin resistance in muscles and surrounding adipose tissue along with the adverse impact on tissue by compensatory hyperinsulinaemia, which is insulin sensitive (Duvnjak and Duvnjak, 19- 24). In addition, abdominal adiposity is also considered a high risk for cardio vascular diseases (CVD). Also, the increasing obesity is found to decrease adiponectin that has important cardiometabolic actions (Bray et al, 30-40). Significant breakthroughs have also been achieved in understanding the key initiators for coronary artery disease. The initiation and progression of atherosclerosis has been found to be associated with leptin. Studies have also shown that plasma leptin concentration has direct relation to the incidence of coronory artery disease and thus could be used as a risk indicator for the developm ent of the disease (Dubey et al, 124 - 128). . It is clear that the role played by obesity in the cardiometabolic risk is very vital for the development of treatment strategies for the patients with a high risk for cardio vascular diseases (CVD).A critical role played by adipocytokines between insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease has been established. It is also anticipated that effective interventions to improve the functions of endothelial or adipose tissues could significantly reduce the occurrence of cardiovascular events in the obese individuals with metabolic syndrome (Hamdy, 231 - 241). One of the effective ways to treat the people with high cardiovascular risk is through the various lifestyle modifications like restricted calorie intake and increased physical activity (Hamdy, 231-241). The impact of

The Evolutional View of the Types of Identity Thefts Research Paper

The Evolutional View of the Types of Identity Thefts - Research Paper Example The study concluded with brief statements on the implications of the correlations between identity theft and the fast-growing Internet. Suggestions were given to improve the means of protection from online fraud and identity theft. Operational Definitions In general, Wang and Huang (2011) stated that fraud refers to the act of taking advantage of others, largely motivated by economic reasons, via varied deceptive means. Intuitively, online fraud is said to refer to those conducted and/or facilitated using the Internet. Although identity theft is the inception of many fraudulent and criminal activities, it does not necessarily mean that it is the start of all online frauds. Online fraudulent acts committed by methods of stolen identification, phishing, advanced-fee schemes, or other electronic transactions fall largely within the arena of computer-assisted crimes (McQuade (2006) and Wall (2007), as cited by Wang and Huang, 2011). Wang and Huang (2011) wrote that the term identity refe rs to the unique and stable characteristics associated with an individual, and the aspect of self is based upon the interior state of awareness. However, it is argued that the culture shaped by the modern information media alleviates the term from consciousness and associates with the body (Poster (2006) as cited by Wang and Huang, 2011). furthermore, it has been assumed that a shift in the perspective of identifying individuals may discard the psychological portion of identity, thereby reflecting an emerging culture in the digital era. There are three general principles of identity verification to protect users‘ access to their personal belongings in the virtual space (Crume (2000) and Foster (2005), as cited by Wang and Huang, 2011). The first principle requires that a specific user knows some information to access the system. A pair of username and password is the most visible example of such information. The second principle of identity verification is to have something in physical form. These objects may include such material things as a key, a document, or a smart card. The third principle depends on what users must be biologically. Biological characteristics, such as the individual's fingerprints, voiceprint, iris, odor, and hand geometry may be used to verify one's identity. Identity theft is said to occur when an individual obtains a piece of personal identifying information which belongs to another individual, and uses that information without the owner‘s knowledge or approval; "Identity fraud" occurs when that stolen information is used to benefit the thief in some way (Wang and Huang, 2011; Identity Hawk, 2012). The legal definitions of identity theft are usually more precise, but this varies from state to state. A well-recognized legal definition is the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act (TADA) of October 30, 1998, making identity theft a federal crime. Under TADA, anyone who knowingly transfers or uses, without lawful author ity, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable state or local law commits a federal offense.  

Ethical Responsibilities of Corporations Enron’s Downfall Essay Example for Free

Ethical Responsibilities of Corporations Enron’s Downfall Essay Ethical Responsibilities of Corporations; Enron’s Downfall Introduction            Enron, in the 1990’s was a premium company that had the much-coveted global stature that most company heads desire. It is considered the most innovative company in the United States of America. It was a change from the old industrial trend that other old and rusty enterprises and industries were used to; hard assets, in the favor of the much softer e-commerce business world. The company was a premium employer in the USA and the world, employing over 20,000 staff by the time of winding into bankruptcy, in 2001 (NPR). The company dealt in natural gas, electricity, pulp and paper and communication. A year before closure, the company was valued at $111 billion and had held the title-for six years running-of the most innovative company in America.            However, this valuation respect was based on falsehood. The company was discovered to have been operating a scandalous accounting fraud, orchestrated by systematic, institutionalized and creativity. Ironically, as it was named the most innovative company, which might have been true, but not in the upright way that it was perceived to be. This was but in underhand deals that its employees and management had mastered. What culminated into the ‘Enron Scandal’ has since become a frequently referred to a case of willful corruption and corporate fraud.            Companies and corporations, under the federal law, have a duty to their employees, consumers, the government and the environment in which they operate. To the government, corporations are supposed to ensure tax compliance and safety of production to citizens and environment. The firms and companies have a duty to protect their employees and provide safe work environment conditions for them so that all employees are always treated equitably and satisfactorily. Consumers have a right to accurate information regarding the products they purchase. The information is to provide at free will and is to guarantee consumer safety.            In Line with that responsibility as stated in the paragraph above, Enron management failed to safeguard their employees’ future and livelihoods in case their bubble burst. At the time Enron went bankrupt, Thousands of employees it had in its baskets were plunged into joblessness suddenly. This scandal involved even top government officials who were then shareholders. In the light of them knowing that Enron engaged in malpractices-they still were happy to take home the hefty dividends they got from the stock market gains.The Times Magazine talks about the top executives who enjoyed lots of privileges that even top CEOs envied. For example, Kenneth Lay, the Former Enron Chairman is said to have received a golden parachute worth $25 million and about $200 million in salaries since 1999 to its point of fall. Despite all that, he also enjoyed the access to about $7.5 million revolving credit line from Enron (Roston, 2002). Others who enjoyed such benefits include Jeffrey Skilling (former C.E.O), Duncan David (Former Anderson Partner), Nancy Temple (Anderson Lawyer), Thomas White (Secretary of the Army), and Sherron Watkins ( Former Enron Vice President).The government through the law has set up different commissions to ensure that these obligations are duly followed (example of one is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)). FTC is charged with taking complaints about false business promises that turn out fraudulent, or cause harmful side effects to the consumers and forwarding them to investigation agencies for further action (Federal Trade Commission, 2014).            In the past, the things that brought down companies were far from cleverly crafted schemes such as what took place at Enron. The operation on the stock exchange while on a negative financial record and receiving probably more than their fair share of investments. Among other key ethical issues that had arisen in the past included racial profiling, product safety concerns, employee rights infringement and even environmental degradation. There have been lists each year of companies that should be shunned for disregard of ethics. For the past few years, companies such as ExxonMobil, Apple, Toyota, Trafigura, and recently Wal-Mart and Nestle had made headlines for breaking the crucial ethical rules.            The Federal Employees Compensation Act (FECA), establishes mechanisms for compensation of employees who are injured, or get any damages in the line of duty (Office of the Secretary, 2014). In the case where an employee was hit by a truck and laid off without compensation, is very inhumane act of the company’s executives.            The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is set to be the benchmark for equitable pay distribution to all American employees. It provides guidelines for employment and wages to be paid to employees who are not exempted from work. Conditions have been set for certain jobs and age restrictions. These labor laws, for example, require that particular groups of people not work at certain times, and in particular professions, citing dangerous operations (Office of the Secretary, 2014). If the labor laws are followed to the letter, no employee will complain about unsatisfactory pay, as the minimum wage is set with all employees in mind and ensures a comfortable life away from welfare.            Kirk O. Hanson, a university professor at the University of Santa Clara, explains the ethical responsibilities of a corporate board. He lists five important points that are to be keenly upheld by any board of directors in order to ensure satisfaction from all quarters. Among other key assignments on a board, one of them is to understand the company’s ethical culture. Most board members are less involved with the day to day activities of their businesses, and to get feedback from employees, they rely on pro forma reports and complaint letters. It is their responsibility to investigate the validity of the reports and come up with disciplinary measures if need be (Hanson, 2014).            Business fair play is an important aspect of ensuring healthy and profitable competition among business people.            Such a supposition that they respect individual rights of association and expression and yet reject the idea of unionization is ridiculous. Under sections 7 and 8 of the National Labor Relations Act of the Federal constitution, employees are granted rights to make a join and take part in labor union activities. This is without any intimidation from employers, or punishments of any kind. All employees have a right to read, distribute and discuss matters of union membership during hours away from work. They are free to share the information with whomsoever they please. Once they decide on a group plan for whatever union, they have a right to ask their employer to recognize the specific union, bargain and complete any relevant requirements by the terms and condition. The employees have a right to display Union messages in whatsoever manner they please; be it caps, pins, T-shirts or whatever else available on the job or away from work.Company executives are not suppose d to profile any employees by forcible transfer, denial of benefits, pay rise or desirable assignments in effort to thwart employees’ quest to join or form a union. They are not to be harassed, threatened or dismissed from work if they support any union (Lisa Guerin, 2014). All in all, we do need quick solutions to problems such as these. It is not just an issue for the employees alone because it affects all American citizens, and per the house committee on education report.            General Electric, a company that was founded by Thomas Edison, has on many occasions received accused on several occasions of trying to monopolize the inventions by him. It is the current military contractor for war machinery. However, they have once been reported for facilitating the development of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have long since been banned and are regulated by the international bodies. The purpose of such an undertaking should be investigated, and due punishment administered.            The American public should check indicators of unethical codes of conduct and shun such businesses. It will be a significant boost in fighting such a vice as it will prevent oppression of fellow citizens. If people followed such a trend, companies such as this would lack a ready market and might be forced to change the practices or close shop.            All firms that are established in corporate agreements uphold certain fundamental duties. In order to solve this massive crisis of ethics, law should be passed forcing private sectors to publish their financial reports in detail in the public dailies. The public should be trained to watch for companies that uphold employee rights and safety. These statements should be audited by government agencies for any lies. If the reports are found to be untrue, government should snatch such operators their licenses.            Companies and corporations that evade taxation of any kind should be imposed with huge fines. In order to shun such practices, and in extension, be barred from operating for a particular period of time and board members is investigated. If any allegations of misconduct are proven right, all board members should be forced to resign and take responsibility for their ineptness. Enron was a culprit in this category, avoiding any financial obligation it would have to offset to the government or anyone, provided that it was able to cover its tracks well.            On an opinion proposed from the Financial Times magazine, the graph of performance shows that the downfall was carefully planned. It seemed that most of the top echelons had long planned the exit, but it did not happen in the most expected way. The stock price came crashing in a year, from a cost of about $80 in January, the year 2001 to a tumbling zero by January in the year 2002.            In the Film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Gibney, 2005), as based on the same name written by Bethany McLean, the Enron Disaster is the greatest disaster any company has witnessed in the whole of history. A crash in a year with more than seven corporate walking away from the mess with over 1 Billion US dollars. Investors and employees went down flat without any landing gear. This kind of corporate ethics gap left more Americans depending on the public for necessary handouts and relying on other meager means to survive. The Drama resembles a Greek tragedy and a show of the domino effect that could shape the face of the American ethical code and ultimately the economy for a long time into the future.Kenneth Lay, the company’s chief who had saved ib once before in the ‘80s and later taken over as C.E.O wielded so much influence In both the business and political circles. Probably out of the campaigns he had funded for the presidency among other le gislative dockets. In the Business circles, he was an enviable C.E.O, who was practically â€Å"untouchable†. But in the wake of the ethical backlash, all these attributes could not save his company from sinking to the bottom of the sea that is failed companies.            Ethics is more than just producing good products, supporting community initiatives and giving good salaries. Companies with a sound ethical background will go to extents to ensure consumer safety, business fair play and ensuring that employees who served diligently go home safe to retirement. Even after retiring, they will be entitled to the same happiness they had while working for the same company, and health.            All corporations that breach conduct on ethics should be nationalized in order to safeguard the interests of the public. Its owners should then be duly compensated and never allowed to start any other business within the country. Such a law will instill fear and caution among those who have a penchant for breaking the law.            Consumers and the government need to be careful about safeguarding the economic environments. Since any turmoil could lead to financial turmoil like it did with the instability of some few big companies in the early 2000s that lead to the 2007-2009 global financial crunch. The government can help by sealing off all loopholes that could allow any forms of corruption while the consumers could channel their money to the right businesses.            If we all stopped buying brands that do not have its people at heart, all companies and many other manufacturers would forcefully comply duly with laws of labor, taxation, and biosafety. We will have a better world where many Americans and people around the world can eat by their sweat, as opposed to having jobs but still relying on welfare for upkeep. References Federal Trade Commission. (2014). Bureau of Consumer Protection. Retrieved December 06, 2014, from Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-consumer-protectionGibney, A. (Director). (2005). Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room [Motion Picture]. Hanson, K. O. (2014, August 14). Business Ethics in the News. Retrieved Dec 06, 2014, from Santa Clara University: http://www.scu.edu/ethics-center/ethicsblog/business-ethics-news.cfmLisa Guerin, J. (2014). The Right to Unionize. Retrieved December 06, 2014, from NOLO For all: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-rights-book/chapter15-7.htmlNPR. (n.d.). The Fall of Enron. Retrieved Feb 4, 2015, from http://www.npr.org/news/specials/enron/Office of the Secretary. (2014). Summary of the Major Laws of the Department of Labor. Retrieved December 06, 2014, from United States Department of Labor: http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/lawsprog.htmRoston, E. (2002, Jan 22). The Enron Players. Time . Source document

Welfare Myths and Realities Essay Example for Free

Welfare Myths and Realities Essay Society has continued to undergo evolution and change throughout the history of civilization. These are the factors that spell out the dividing line between social classes and castes that are redrawn on an almost daily basis by mankind. This is why there will always be a mixture of fact and fiction surrounding the way present day society views those people who were unlucky enough to end up at the bottom of the societal class chain. These are the people who are forced to survive using welfare to keep food on the table, money in their pockets, and clothes on their backs. It is highly unfortunate that the word Welfare has come to mean a person who does not want to work unless he is forced to work. But this is not always what defines a person on welfare. In todays world, the workplace is a highly competitive environment where people no longer have security of tenure in their jobs. People want to work. The problem is, there are not enough jobs to go around. The reality is that when a person loses his job these days, it is highly unlikely that he will be able to get new regular employment anytime in the short-term future. So, he is forced to take what odd jobs he can while trying his luck at landing regular employment. Realistically speaking, temp jobs wont pay the rent nor keep food on the table. In order to stay afloat, the person must take welfare assistance. This is a not a permanent set up for most, it is just financial aid until the person can get back on his feet. Hey, he paid his taxes and his Social Security dues. Therefore, it is only proper that the system helps him get back on his feet. Nobody in his right mind would want to make welfare his way of life. Welfare tends to affect a person both psychologically and emotionally as he struggles to try to go back to the way of life that he has become accustomed to. Even though they try to get off welfare at the soonest possible time, sometimes, he is forced to go back on welfare for one reason or another. The last thing he wants to become is a welfare cyclist but he is left with no other choice. Psychologically, a man unable to support himself is thrown into despair and self-pity. He thinks less of himself and wishes to feel better by being able to support himself without the aid of welfare. The last thing he wants for himself is to get involved in welfare cycling. This is the act of going on welfare for short periods of time during which a person has lost his job. It is totally unfair to say, the federal welfare program encourages people to stay poor. (Margaret L. Andersen Howard F. Taylor, 2003, p. 200) Man is an ambition driven entity. He pursues lofty goals and ambitions in life and does not deem himself a success or a complete individual unless he has something to show for his existence. It can be in the form of finances, or something solid like real estate. Whatever it may be, there is nothing that can drive a man to have a desire to stay poor. The government does not give enough financial support to the welfare organizations for one to believe that those on welfare would be getting enough welfare checks or food coupons to sustain any kind of lifestyle. These benefits are available only to a limited number of families who must pass a stringent interview and verification process. Neither is it true that only Blacks or Hispanic families benefit from welfare. There are also White families who are down on their luck and also move from place to place or even state to state in search of the elusive jobs. The welfare myth about women is proves to be even most unfair. Women are the light that guides a family. While husbands work and bring home what pay then can in the lower middle class society, the women are left at home to tend to the children. Most of them cannot afford child-care and therefore help their husband earn income in order to improve their basic lifestyle. This is why most women collect welfare for their families. If there were proper child-care assistance provided to these families, both parents would have a chance to work instead of having to line up collecting unemployment checks just to make ends meet. Of the 100% of the total federal budget, only 60% of this it spent on assisting poor families. This provides subsidies for the lowest income families basic living and medical assistance. There is absolutely no truth to the belief that certain welfare recipients are paid benefits that they no longer qualify for. Though the system is not foolproof, as some payments errors are done due to human error, there are still safety measures in place to make sure that overpayments are limited and that any fraudulent transactions are weeded out in the process. Going on welfare was never meant to make any man rich. It is not a status symbol that will make you the envy of others either. Often times, the amount of the checks given to the people involved are below the poverty level. It is really meant only to be a stop gap measure for those who have had a stroke of financial bad luck. It was not meant to sustain any person throughout life. The myths that were created by the fear of going on welfare gave the deserving welfare beneficiaries a bad name. It has branded them in such a way that society tends to be judge and jury of the way they conduct their lives and personal businesses. Welfare was meant to be a helping hand when one needs it the most. Welfare was envisioned, developed and meant to help a person get back on his feet after a devastating financial setback. To believe all these myths that have been handed down from generation to generation would be a disservice to such a humane undertaking that is done for and on behalf of your fellowman. Works Cited Andersen, Margaret L. Taylor, Howard R. (2003). Sociology The Essentials (2nd Ed. ) Welfare Myths: Fact or Fiction? Exploring the Truth about Welfare. 1996. December 22, 2006, Retrieved from http://hcom. csumb. edu/welfare/resources/myths_facts. html Irons, Meghan Erica. Dispelling Myths About Welfare. December 21, 2006, Retrieved from http://www. voice. neu. edu/960215/welfare. html

Low-Power Folded Tree Architecture for DSP Applications

Low-Power Folded Tree Architecture for DSP Applications Low-Power Folded Tree Architecture for DSP applications Abstract— Wireless communication exhibits the highest energy consumption in wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes. Due to their limited energy supply from batteries, the low power design have become inevitable part of today’s wireless devices. Power has become a burning issue in VLSI design. In modern integrated circuits, the power consumed by clocking gradually takes a dominant part. Reducing the power consumption not only enhance battery life but also avoid overheating problem. By employing a more appropriate Processing Element (PE), the power consumption is significantly reduced. In this paper the novel method for low power design is achieved by using Folded Tree Architecture (FTA) and high speed adder design for on-the-node data processing in wireless sensor networks using Parallel Prefix Operations (PPO) and data locality in hardware. Besides power reduction the objective of minimizing area and delay is also considered. Index Terms— Folded Tree Architecture (FTA), Parallel Prefix Operation (PPO), Processing Element (PE), Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). INTRODUCTION Power optimization is always one of the most important design objectives in modern nanometer integrated circuit design. Especially for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), power optimization have become inevitable part in today VLSI design. Power optimization not only can enhance battery life but also reduce the overheating problem. Self-configuring wireless sensor networks can be invaluable in many civil and military applications for collecting, processing, and disseminating wide ranges of complex environmental data. Because of this, they have attracted considerable research attention in last years. Sensor nodes are battery driven and hence operate on an extremely frugal energy budget. Further, they must have a lifetime on the order of months to years. Since battery replacement is not an option for networks with thousands of physically embedded nodes. In some cases, these networks may be required to operate solely on energy scavenged from the environment through seismic, photovoltaic or thermal conversion. This transforms energy consumption into the most important factor that determines sensor node lifetime. The another important application in wireless sensor networks is event tracking, which has widespread use in applications such as security surveillance and wildlife habitat monitoring. Tracking involves a significant amount of collaboration between individual sensors to perform complex signal processing algorithms such as kalman filtering, Bayesian data fusion and coherent beamforming. This applications will require more energy for their processing. In general Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can operate in four distinct mode of operation: Transmit, Receive, Idle and Sleep. An important observation in the case of most radios is that operating in Idle mode results in significantly high power consumption, almost equal to the power consumed in the Receive mode. The data-driven nature of WSN applications requires a specific low power data processing approach. By employing more appropriate Processing Element (PE), the power consumption in all the four mode of operation will be reduced significantly. In present VLSI technology, reducing power consumption is an important issue. Especially for WSN, due to their limited battery lifetime the low power VLSI design is become inevitable for wireless commmunication. The goal of this paper is to design an low-energy Folded Tree and Multi-Bit Flip-Flop Merging technique for WSN nodes. II. RELATED WORKS In paper [2], the author proposed low-energy data processing architecture for WSN nodes using folded tree method. This paper identifies that many WSN applications employ algorithms which can be solved by using parallel prefix-sums. Therefore, an alternative architecture is proposed to calculated them energy-efficiently. It consists of several parallel Processing Elements (PEs) structured as a folded tree. The folded tree method with parallel prefix operations reduces the number of processing element and memory bottleneck. Due to clock distribution for more flip-flops, it consumes more clock power and also parallel prefix operations has high delay. In paper [3], a novel method is proposed for low clock power consumption in WSN nodes. A previously derived clock energy model is briefly reviewed while a comprehensive framework for the estimation of system wide (chip level) and clock sub-system power as function of technology scaling is presented. This framework is used to study and quantify the impact that various intensifying concerns associated with scaling will have on clock energy and their relative impact on the overall system energy. This technology scaling method reduces power clock power consumption (both static and dynamic), but due to large number of processing element- area, inverter chain, Power-Delay Product is increased. III. PROPOSED SCHEME Folded Tree Architecture with Parallel Prefix Operation is used to reduce the total number of Processing Elements (PEs) in the VLSI design. By reducing the number of processing elements, the total area is reduced. Area is proportional to power, so power consumption is also reduced. During processing and transmission of signals, the WSN nodes will consume more power. Especially for clock distribution nearly 70% power will be consumed. In order to optimize the power during clock distribution, multi-bit flip-flop merging technique is used. A. Folded Tree Architecture A straightforward binary tree implementation of Blelloch’s approach costs a significant amount of area as n inputs require p = n − 1 PEs. To reduce area and power, pipelining can be traded for throughput. With a classic binary tree, as soon as a layer of PEs finishes processing, the results are passed on and new calculations can already recommence independently [8]. Fig 1. Binary tree equivalent to folded tree The idea presented here is to fold the tree back onto itself to maximally reuse the PEs. In doing so, p becomes proportional to n/2 and the area is cut in half. Area is proportional to power, so power is also cut in half. Note that also the interconnect is reduced. This folded tree topology is depicted in Fig. 1, which is functionally equivalent to the binary tree on the left. By using the Folded Tree architecture power consumption, area and wirelength is reduced considerably. Folded Tree Architecture (FTA) for on-the-node data processing in wireless sensor networks, using parallel preà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ x operations and data locality in hardware reduces both area and power consumption. TABLE I LEAKAGE POWER AND DYNAMIC ENERGY FOR ONE PE UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS FTA is designed to reuse the PE nodes to reduces half of the total area. It limiting the data set by preprocessing with parallel preà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ x operations. The combination of data à ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡ow and control à ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡ow elements to introduce a local distributed memory, which removes the memory bottleneck while retaining sufà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ cient à ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡exibility. Several processing element consumes more power, so by using FTA the PE can be reused and power is reduced. Fig 2. Folding Architecture In folding architecture, we can reuse the PEs with the help of counter and FSM. Iteration count in the counter contains the total number of times the specified PE going to be reused. The FSM enables and reset the iteration count based on the instructions. B. Parallel prefix adder. Adders are also very important component in digital systems because of their extensive use in other basic digital operations such as subtraction, multiplication and division. Hence, improving performance of the digital adder would greatly advance the execution of binary operations inside a circuit compromised of such blocks. The performance of a digital circuit block is gauged by analyzing its power dissipation, layout area and its operating speed. The main idea behind parallel prefix addition is an attempt to generate all incoming carries in parallel and avoid waiting until the correct carry propagates from the stage of the adder where it has been generated.Parallel prefix adders are constructed out of fundamental carry operators denoted by  ¢ as follows (G, P)  ¢ (G, P) = (G+G ·P, P ·P) where P and P indicate the propagations, G and G indicate the generations. The fundamental carry operator is represented as Figure Fig 3. Carry operator   Ã‚   A parallel prefix adder can be represented as a parallel prefix graph consisting of carry operator nodes. The parallel prefix Ladner Fischer adder structure has minimum logic depth, but has large fan-out requirement up to n/2. Ladner Fischer adder has less number of delay compared to other parallel prefix adders. Power Delay Product should be less inorder to achieve high throughput and speed. Fig 4. Ladner Fischer Parallel Prefix Adder The Ladner Fischer adder construct a circuit that computes the prefix sums in the circuit, each node performs an addition of two numbers. With their construction, one can choose a tradeoff between the circuit depth and the number of nodes. V CONCLUSION This paper presented the Folded Tree Architecture and Multi-Bit Flip-Flop Merging technique for WSN applications. The design describes many data processing algorithms for WSN applications along with parallel prefix operations and clock distribution networks. Power is saved using flip flop merging technique by providing single clock signal to mergeable flip flops with the help of combinational lookup table. Thus this technique can be effectively used for clock distribution in integrated circuits requiring low power consumption in clock distribution network and low skew clocks. Area is reduced using folded tree architecture by reusing processing element. Ladner Fischer parallel prefix adder reduces the delay constraints and achieve high throughput. The proposed architecture significantly reduces both power and area in WSN nodes, can save up to half of the power in total sensor node. REFERENCES V. Raghunathan, C. Schurgers, S. Park, and M. B. Srivastava, â€Å"Energy-aware wireless microsensor networks,† IEEE Signal Process.Mag., vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 40–50, Mar. 2002. C. Walravens and W. Dehaene, â€Å"Design of a low-energy data processing architecture for wsn nodes,† in Proc. Design, Automat. Test Eur. Conf. Exhibit., Mar. 2012, pp. 570–573. D. Duarte, V. Narayanan, and M. J. Irwin, â€Å"Impact of technology scaling in the clock power,† in Proc. IEEE VLSI Comput. Soc. Annu. Symp.,Pittsburgh, PA, Apr. 2002, pp. 52–57. H. Kawagachi and T. Sakurai, â€Å"A reduced clock-swing flip-flop (RCSFF)for 63% clock power reduction,† in VLSI Circuits Dig. Tech. Papers Symp., Jun. 1997, pp. 97–98. Y. Cheon, P.-H. Ho, A. B. Kahng, S. Reda, and Q. Wang, â€Å"Power- aware placement,† in Proc. Design Autom. Conf., Jun. 2005, pp. 795–800. Y.-T. Chang, C.-C. Hsu, P.-H. Lin, Y.-W. Tsai, and S.-F. Chen, â€Å"Post-placement power optimization with multi-bit flip-flops,† in Proc.IEEE/ACM Comput.-Aided Design Int. Conf., San Jose, CA, Nov. 2010,pp. 218–223. P. Sanders and J. Traff, â€Å"Parallel prefix (scan) algorithms for MPI,† in proc, Recent ADV. Parallel Virtual Mach Message Pass, Interf., 2006, pp.49-57. G. Blelloch, â€Å"Scans as primitive parallel operations,† IEEE Trans. Comput.,Vol.38, no 11, pp. 1526-1538, Nov. 1989. D. B. Hoang, N. Kamyabpour â€Å"An Energy Driven Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks† International Conference on parallel and Distributed computing Applications and technologies., Dec 2012. Nazhandali, M. Minuth, and T. Austin, â€Å"SensBench:Toward an accurate evaluation of sensor network processors,†in Proc. IEEE Workload Characterizat. Symp., Oct. 2005. M. Hempstead, D. Brooks, and G. Wei,† An accelerator-based wireless sensor network processor in 130 nm cmos,† J, Emerg. Select. Topics Circuits Syst., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 193-202, 2011. B. A. Warneke and K. S. J. Pister, â€Å"An ultra-low energy micro- controller for smart dust wireless sensor networks,† in Proc. IEEE Int.Solid-state circuits conf. Dig. Tech. Papers. Feb. 2004, pp. 316-317. M. Hempstead, M. Welsh, and D.Brooks,†Tinybench: The case for a standardized benchmark suite for TinyOS based wireless sensor network devices,† in Proc. IEEE 29th Local comout. Netw, conf., Nov.2004, pp. 585-586. O. Girard. (2010). â€Å"OpenMSP430 processor core, available at opencores.org,† [online]. Available: http://opencores.org/project, openmsp430. H. Stone, â€Å"Parallel processing with the perfect shuffle,† IEEE Trans. Comput., vol. 100, no.2, pp. 153-161, Feb. 1971. M. Hempstead, J. M. Lyons, D. Brooks, and G-Y. Wei,† Survey of hardware systems for wireless sensor networks,† J. Low Power Electron., vol.4, no. 1, pp. 11-29, 2008. C.C. Yu. Design of low-power double edge-triggered flip-flop circuit. In IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, pp. 2054-2057, 2007. M. Donno, A. Ivaldi, L. Benini, and E. Macii. Clock tree power optimization based on RTL clock-gating. In Design Automation Conference, pp. 622-627, 2003.

Strategic Management at Honda Essay -- Business Management Studies

Strategic Management at Honda 1. Firstly what is strategic management? It is the process of specifying an organization’s objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve these objectives, and allocating resources so as to implement the plans. Strategic management is usually performed by the highest level of managers in the company. A company’s strategy must be realistic enough for it to achieve it; hence it must make sure it has the right resources to be able to cope with the strategy. An example of an overall business strategy may be to put the organization in a position where it can carry out its mission. Now to see how the definition of strategic management conforms to what’s been written about how Honda grew and developed its markets in the US. Firstly in the BCG account of how Honda grew into the US markets it quotes â€Å"the success of the Japanese manufactures originated with the growth of their domestic market during the 1950s.† To think strategically there are three big questions that need to be answered that are, where are we now? Where do we want to go? How will we get there? I believe the first question of thinking strategically is now answered, â€Å"where are we now† Honda must of seen that they have been successful in their own domestic market and are ready to go into other markets so at this point they must have been thinking where do they want to go next hence the second strategic question. Another quote from the BCG report, â€Å"†¦.the basic philosophy of the Japanese manufactures is the high volumes per model provide the potential for high productivity as a result of using capital intensive and highly automated techniques.† This now I believe has answered the third question of thinking strategically, â€Å"how will we get there.† Honda knew from the success of their own domestic market the key to their success was gaining economies of scale as the cost of producing motorbikes declined with the level of output. So this would be their way of entering the US markets as they also knew their competitors would have a scale economy disadvantage in technology and manufacturing. If we look at the second account of how Honda grew and developed its markets in the US we can see other ways of how its conforms with strategic management. Pascal’s version is based on interviews with the Japanese executives. They say they had no ... ...aving a formalised approach to strategy and implementations there are some disadvantages. Having a formalised strategy can mean a lot of time and thought need to be put into forming a good strategy which might mean a huge drawback in cost savings whereas this time and thought could be implemented elsewhere in the business. A formalised approach to strategy development can also mean a slow response when there is a change in the market. Developing a strategy and implementing as said before takes a long time and a lot of thought which in business means money so when there is a change in the market the strategy may not be relevant to the new situation which could consequently mean further cost occurring such as forming new strategies and responding to the new market situation. A situation like this can be learnt from Honda when they thought their larger bikes would sell as Americans liked bigger things and also they thought the Buddha like handlebar would assist in sales of these larger bikes, but when this was not the case and they learnt it was the smaller bikes (50cc) the consumers wanted they had to quickly change their main strategy and follow on with a new one.

Mutations in the Alpha 1,2-Mannosidase Gene Essay -- Scientific Resear

Introduction Intellectual disability (ID) is defined by the American Association of Intellectual Developmental Disabilities as having â€Å"significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior†. [1] Earlier it was believed that behavioral abnormalities, such as Intellectual Disability, were caused by the social or environmental environment in which the individual lived in.[2] However, with the breakthrough of the genetic analysis, it has been shown that more and more of our behavior is influenced, if not controlled, by our genes. [3]This advancement is important for our understanding of ID to expand. ID can occur when there is a mutation on one or more of the genes in the individual’s chromosome set. [3]There are different types of mutations; autosomal mutations (mutations occurring in one or more of the 44 autosomal chromosomes [in humans]), mutations in the sex chromosomes (the two chromosomes that amongst other things determine the individual’s sex), and there are also chromosomal disorders such as nondisjunction in where one of the two homologous chromosomes fails to separate from its sister chromatid during cell division, resulting in an extra chromosome in one daughter cell and one less chromosome in the other. [3] For parents that are carriers (heterozygous) of an allele that codes for an autosomal recessive trait (e.g. ID), each child they have will inherit one of the two alleles (dominant or recessive) from each parent. Following the Mendelian laws of inheritance, such parents can get offspring that are homozygous dominant (25% chance, will not result in ID), heterozygous like themselves (50% chance, will not result in ID, but will be carriers of the defective gene), or homozygous r... ...tations in the alpha 1,2-mannosidase gene, MAN1B1, cause autosomal-recessive intellectual disability. Am J Hum Genet. 2011 Jul 15;89(1):176-82. [6] Exome Sequencing [Internet]. Mountain View CA: Centrillion, 2011 [cited 2012 Feb 18]. Available from: http://www.centrillionbio.com/exome.php [7] Sanger F, Nicklen S, Coulson AR. DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1977 December; 74(12): 5463–5467. [8] MeSH Browser [Internet]. Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet Universitetsbiblioteket; 2008 [updated 2011; cited 2012 Feb 20]. Available from: http://mesh.kib.ki.se/swemesh/swemesh_se.cfm. Leonard H, Wen X. The epidemiology of mental retardation: Challenges and opportunities in the new millenium. Ment. Retard. Dev. Disabil. Res. Rev., 8 (2002), pp. 117–134. Corresponding author: Helen Leonard (hleonard@cyllene.uwa.edu Mutations in the Alpha 1,2-Mannosidase Gene Essay -- Scientific Resear Introduction Intellectual disability (ID) is defined by the American Association of Intellectual Developmental Disabilities as having â€Å"significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior†. [1] Earlier it was believed that behavioral abnormalities, such as Intellectual Disability, were caused by the social or environmental environment in which the individual lived in.[2] However, with the breakthrough of the genetic analysis, it has been shown that more and more of our behavior is influenced, if not controlled, by our genes. [3]This advancement is important for our understanding of ID to expand. ID can occur when there is a mutation on one or more of the genes in the individual’s chromosome set. [3]There are different types of mutations; autosomal mutations (mutations occurring in one or more of the 44 autosomal chromosomes [in humans]), mutations in the sex chromosomes (the two chromosomes that amongst other things determine the individual’s sex), and there are also chromosomal disorders such as nondisjunction in where one of the two homologous chromosomes fails to separate from its sister chromatid during cell division, resulting in an extra chromosome in one daughter cell and one less chromosome in the other. [3] For parents that are carriers (heterozygous) of an allele that codes for an autosomal recessive trait (e.g. ID), each child they have will inherit one of the two alleles (dominant or recessive) from each parent. Following the Mendelian laws of inheritance, such parents can get offspring that are homozygous dominant (25% chance, will not result in ID), heterozygous like themselves (50% chance, will not result in ID, but will be carriers of the defective gene), or homozygous r... ...tations in the alpha 1,2-mannosidase gene, MAN1B1, cause autosomal-recessive intellectual disability. Am J Hum Genet. 2011 Jul 15;89(1):176-82. [6] Exome Sequencing [Internet]. Mountain View CA: Centrillion, 2011 [cited 2012 Feb 18]. Available from: http://www.centrillionbio.com/exome.php [7] Sanger F, Nicklen S, Coulson AR. DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1977 December; 74(12): 5463–5467. [8] MeSH Browser [Internet]. Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet Universitetsbiblioteket; 2008 [updated 2011; cited 2012 Feb 20]. Available from: http://mesh.kib.ki.se/swemesh/swemesh_se.cfm. Leonard H, Wen X. The epidemiology of mental retardation: Challenges and opportunities in the new millenium. Ment. Retard. Dev. Disabil. Res. Rev., 8 (2002), pp. 117–134. Corresponding author: Helen Leonard (hleonard@cyllene.uwa.edu

Animal Farm: Depicts the Views of Communist Society

Animal Farm The views of communism are not very common today simply because of how impractical they are. The human nature to create hierarchy is a direct contradiction to the views of communist society. Animal Farm is George Orwell’s comment on communism in the form of a satire where the animals on a farm rebel against the farmer and seize control. From the first stirring of rebellion, there are resolutions to keep all animals equal.However, the farm soon went from a utopia to something far from perfect as the pigs slowly take reigned over the other animals. The pigs completely corrupt Old Major’s vision of Animalism by taking special privileges, changing the commandments, and exploiting the animals. At the start of Manor Farm’s transition to animal farm, the pigs rewrite Old Major’s idea of Animalism and Squealer is forced to change the Commandments to fit new circumstances. The first alteration to the Commandments comes after the pigs move into the Mr.Jo nes’ farmhouse. A few animals remember something in the commandment specifically on beds, but cannot muster much because of their inferior intelligence. The ban on sleeping in beds is changed in Napoleon's favor by the addition of the words â€Å"with sheets† to the fourth commandment (â€Å"No animal shall sleep in a bed†. These suspicions are further forgotten as Squealer assures the other animals that the pigs sleep in beds with blankets, and have gotten rid of the sheets.In addition, the pigs start to drink alcohol. When Napoleon gets drunk, many animals are alarmed and shocked, but all that ultimately happens is that the words â€Å"to excess† are added to the fifth commandment (No animal shall drink alcohol). It is evident that Old Major’s speech was in vain as the pigs ignore the old pig’s warnings and start to attain human traits. There is no subtle change to the third or first Commandments about wearing clothes and walking on two le gs.This is because by the time the pigs start to put on clothes and walk on two legs, they are so powerful that it is unnecessary. Instead, all of the â€Å"unalterable laws† are abandoned and Old Major’s inspiring commandments are replaced by the slogan- â€Å"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. † The pigs’ changes to the original views of Animalism causes them to take control and essentially put the farm back into its previous condition before the rebellion.The sole difference was the control of Farmer Jones, and that of â€Å"our Leader, Comrade Napoleon†. George Orwell uses Anima Farm to portray the pitfall of a totalitarian society. Orwell shows his opposition by creating a novel with animals representing different people in the world. The author’s message is a warning of what comes with communistic governments and dictatorships. The pigs and animals on the farm are simply an allusion to the communist societies i n the world today.

An Insight Look of Critical Employability Skills Essay

Introduction With a faster pace of everyday life, employability skills are becoming essential in modern society. The employability essential concepts and skill sets represent universal content. They contribute to outcomes that are valued for individuals and for society; bring benefits in a wide variety of contexts and apply to multiple areas of life; and are of use to all individuals, deemphasizing competencies of use only in a specific trade, occupation or walk of life. In this report, we look deeply into six critical employability skills including communicating skills, management skills, problem solving skills, personal knowledge, work experience and teamwork skills. Each of these skills was studied and analysed to show its importance. All of these employability skills are held to make a focus on an individual’s ability to gain initial employment, maintain employment, move between roles within the same organisation, obtain new employment if required and ideally secure suitable and sufficiently fulfilling work, in other words- their employability, more important than the simple state of being employed. (Hillage and Pollard, 1998) 1.1 Methodology Six critical employability skills were identified from sources of newspaper advertisings, TV advertisings and Internet advertisings. Each of these skills was studied according to their content and importance. Resources from Internet sites and books were used to study these skills. JCU’s graduate attributes were also introduced to compare with the employability skills to discuss the matter. Critical Employability Skills Six critical employability skills has been identified from a variety of sources, these include communicating skills, management skills, problem solving skills, personal knowledge, work experience and teamwork skills. In real world, different job roles require different employability skills. A table consist different job roles and skills were drawn according to job advertisement from variety of sources. (See Appendices) 2.1 Communication skills The definition of communication skills is â€Å"the ability to use language and express information.†(â€Å"Definition of Communication Skills,† n.d.) It is a way that uses the own language and body language to exchange information with others and understand others easily. It includes speaking, listening and writing. Hence, communication skill is a tool to run throughout business areas and it has significant impact on business. Communication skills may represent in many ways, for example, talking face to face with customers and colleagues, answering a phone call, reply E-mails and writing a report. These actions are required to be done in business workplace all day especially for Manager. As a result for Manager with good communication skills, it will not only increase the efficiency of staff, but also will create a harmonious workplace that makes everyone enjoys working. Communication skills are also critical when dealing with the customers. Good communication skills will lead to successful business, whereas poor communication will be meaningless even there is a good idea in mind. As Lee Iacocca, former president of Chrysler, once said, â€Å"You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, they won’t get you anywhere† (Rzadkiewicz, 2009) 2.2 Management skills â€Å"Management is about taking the right decisions at the right time and getting them implemented by the right people.† (Oak, 2011) Three key factors identified in management skills are making the right decision, at the right time and to the right people. It is the ability of a manager to run a business or a team. For instance, a good manager requires excellent analytical and organizational skills in order to make a right decision to acquire the best returns. It is highly associated with problem solving skills. These decisions also need to be made at the right time. A doctor or a pilot needs to make life saving decisions quickly and at the right time when emergences are encountered. Time management skills are essential for good managers. With good management over stuffs, it can be sure that the decision can be delivered to the right person to process. Successful business consists of good organizational management and correct decision making. Hence, a manager position requires good management skills to help company obtain profit from business. In fact, communication and management are the two essential factors that would determine the success of a business. 2.3 Problem solving skills Problem solving skill is widely required in today’s employment market. In a business analyst job advertisement(Genesis IT&T, Seek.com.au), the employer requires â€Å"a genius at problem solving†. It is highly integrated with decision making in management skills. In commercial and industrial operations, we can easily meet tons of problems. It is very hard to predict every single movement in modern business market. Therefore it is an important skill to obtain while engage problems in work process. We shall always be prepared to encounter problems, so we can find solutions to solve these problems. Problem solving skills can be either solving problems for clients or for superiors. For example, as a legal advisor you shall solve problems for your clients. This is an example of how problem solving skill directly affects the outcome of work. Good problem solving skills simply means good work. A financial adviser could solve problems for the â€Å"superior† which is the boss. His problem solving skills will affect the decision made by his superior, which influence the prefermence of the whole firm. Problem solving skills is not only about solving the problem, but also doing it efficiently. It does require not only a good knowledge over relevant matter but also good time management skills. 2.4 Personal knowledge Problem solving often requires very broad knowledge. Personal knowledge is another major skills in work place. The definition of knowledge in professional field is â€Å"familiarity or conversance, as with a particular subject or branch of learning†(Dictionary.reference.com). Knowledge is like the foundation of employability, the major resource of knowledge is from school and college study. Knowledge is the ability to understand the truth of a certain object. With knowledge, people can get a clear vision of what their roles are in the team, and the way to do their own job and cooperate with their colleagues. Like the job advertisement for architect(Bespoke, Seek.com.au), the employer need someone with landscape knowledge to take this job. Knowledge can be variables of forms and almost every occupation requires certain knowledge, engineer, pilot, truck driver or carpenter. The way to gain knowledge is through study, no matter from school studying or self-studying. From â€Å"The ability to understand and follow instructions as well as learn, maintain and apply skills and knowledge are all very important aspects of work†(Australian Govt, 2010), we can conclude that applying knowledge is the core of doing a job. And the knowledge you own determines your employability. Without knowledge, no one can even get a single job done because you will not understand the job goal and do not know the procedures to do the job. Such as a miner, who will need to have the knowledge of different kinds of ores, also he will need to own the knowledge to operate mining machines to gain efficiency. 2.5 Work experience Work experience can be seen as a form of knowledge, it is also an important employability skill required by both employers and employees in business organizations. The definition of work experience is a period of time working in business and has some knowledge or skills of the world of work. (What is work experience, n.d.) It is important because employers are looking for some candidates who have the knowledge over the working environment. Work experience also covers other different kinds of skills like team working, communication skills and problem-solving skills. A candidate who has work experience may find it easier than the other candidates to get a dream job because they had faced some of the events in job in other workplace before. More work experience will show more calm and confidence in handing things. Moreover, candidates with full knowledge and skills is choosing the dream work by own rather than being chose by employers. 2.6 Teamwork Skills Teamwork is a term that means a group of people, but each one do the individual part to perform a joint action and in order to achieve the same goal. (Teamwork in classroom, n.d.) Teamwork is one of the most important relationships in workplace. The best team number of a determine goal team is 6 ~ 10 people. The working steps are one team leader dividing the big job into different part of small work, each member choose one interested and suitable part to finish. After that, collect all the information from every member and compose to a final work to achieve the goal. Working in a team is more effective than working individually because different people possess different ideas and opinions, the information collected and researched will be more diversified. Teamwork is often required in large business organizations, it could express the character of team members and how they cooperate to produce the work instead of working individually. Modern corporations require job to be done more efficiently and effectively, this makes teams a great role to attempt big assignments, which makes teamwork skills essential. 2.7 Compare with JCU attributes By comparing the employability skills with the JCU attributes, we could possibly find a certain level of similarity between them. The definitions of two of the main characteristics of graduate skills such as literacy, self-reliance and interpersonal understand are equivalent to the meanings of employability skills. The definition of teamwork is not only similar to self-reliance and interpersonal understanding, but also connects with it. They are same as leading, managing and contributing effectively to team and working with another people in a group. However, the employability skill of work experience seems different with the JCU’s graduate attribute. Actually, work experience covers a large number of skills, such as information literacy, interpersonal understanding, critical thinking and problem solving. Work experience will display all knowledge and skills what a candidate has had before. Conclusion In this report, we have discussed six critical employability skills. We can see that these skills are highly integrated and associated with each other. One skill may often require other skills to achieve better result. These skills determine how good a person can perform not only at work but also in everyday life. In order to achieve a good job or even a good career, one shall try to gain these skills. By comparing these skills to JCU graduate attributes, we can easily see many similarities between these two. These skills are more comprehensive and necessary for student facing the real world. It can be seen as a general criterion for job candidates. References Australian Government, 8 September, 2010, Learning and Applying Knowledge, viewed in 18 May 2012, from http://jobaccess.gov.au/ADVICE/JOBREQUIREMENT/Pages/Learning_and_applying_kno.aspx Bespoke, 21 May 2012, All rounder Project Architect with Landscape knowledge, viewd 21 May2012 from http://www.seek.com.au/Job/great-opportunity-for-architect-with-landscape-knowledge/in/sydney-cbd-inner-west-eastern-suburbs/22340206 Definition Of Communication Skills. (n.d.). COMMUNICATION SKILLS, Retrieved 28 April, 2012 from http://www.communicationskills.co.in/definition-of-communication-skills.html Dictionary.reference.com, the Definition of Knowledge, viewed in 19 May 2012, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/knowledge Genesis IT&T P/L, 18 May 2012, Business Analyst-Problem solving expert, Seek.com.au.What is work experience (n.d.) Business Link, Retrieved 22 May 2012, form http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1096811532&type=RESOURCES Hillage, J. and Pollard, E., 1998, Employability: Developing a framework for policy analysis, Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) Research report. no RR85 (London, DfEE), Accessed May 22, 2012 from http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/pubs/summary.php?id=emplblty Oak, M. (2011). Basic Business Management Skills, Retrieved 30 April 2012 from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/basic-business-management-skills.html Rzadkiewicz, C. (2009). Business Communication Skills, Retrieved 28 April 2012 from http://carol-rzadkiewicz.suite101.com/business-communication-skills-a158048 Teamwork in classroom (n.d.) NDT Resource Centre, Retrieved May 22, 2012, from http://www.ndt-ed.org/TeachingResources/ClassroomTips/Teamwork.html

Startres

At starting, when the motor is stationary, there is no back e. m. f. in the armature. Consequently, if the motor is directly switched on to the mains, the armature will draw a heavy current (la = WRa) because of small armature resistance. As an example, 5 H. P. , 220 V shunt motor has a full-load current of 20 A and an armature resistance of about 0. 5 0. If this motor is directly switched on to supply, it would take an armature current of 220/0. 5 = 440 A which is 22 times the full-load current.This high starting current may result in: (i) burning of armature due to excessive heating ffect, damaging the commutator and brushes due to heavy sparking, (iii) excessive voltage drop in the line to which the motor is connected. The result is that the operation of other appliances connected to the line may be impaired and in particular cases, they may refuse to work. In order to avoid excessive current at starting, a variable resistance (known as starting resistance) is inserted in series w ith the armature circuit.This resistance is gradually reduced as the motor gains speed (and hence Eb increases) and eventually it is cut out completely when the motor has ttained full speed. The value of starting resistance is generally such that starting current is limited to 1. 25 to 2 times the full-load current. 5. 8 Types of D. C. Motor Starters The stalling operation of a d. c. motor consists in the insertion of external resistance into the armature circuit to limit the starting current taken by the motor and the removal of this resistance in steps as the motor accelerates.When the motor attains the normal speed, this resistance is totally cut out of the armature circuit. It is very important and desirable to provide the starter with protective evices to enable the starter arm to return to OFF position (i) when the supply fails, thus preventing the armature being directly across the mains when this voltage is restored. For this purpose, we use no-volt release coil. (it) when t he motor becomes overloaded or develops a fault causing the motor to take an excessive current. For this purpose, we use overload release coil.There are two principal types of d. c. motor starters viz. , three-point starter and four- point starter. As we shall see, the two types of starters differ only in the manner in which the no-volt release coil is connected. 5. 9 Three-Point Starter This type of starter is widely used for starting shunt and compound motors. Schematic diagram Fig. (5. 16) shows the schematic diagram of a three-point starter for a shunt motor with protective devices. It is so called because it has three terminals L, Z and A.The starter consists of starting resistance divided into several sections and connected in out to a number of studs. The three terminals L, Z and A of the starter are connected respectively to the positive line terminal, shunt field terminal and armature terminal. The other terminals of the armature and shunt field windings are connected to th e negative terminal of the supply. The no-volt release coil is connected in the shunt field circuit. One end of the handle is connected to the terminal L through the over- load release coil.The other end of the handle moves against a spiral spring and makes contact with each stud during starting operation, cutting out more and more starting resistance as it passes over each stud in clockwise direction. Operation (i) To start with, the d. c. supply is switched on with handle in the OFF position. (ii) The handle is now moved clockwise to the first stud. As soon as it comes in contact with the first stud, the shunt field winding is directly connected across the supply, hile the whole starting resistance is inserted in series with the armature circuit. iii) As the handle is gradually moved over to the final stud, the starting resistance is cut out of the armature circuit in steps. The handle is now held magnetically by the no-volt release coil which is energized by shunt field current. (‘v) If the supply voltage is suddenly interrupted or if the field excitation is accidentally cut, the no-volt release coil is demagnetized and the handle goes back to the OFF position under the pull of the spring. If no-volt release coil were not used, hen in case of failure of supply, the handle would remain on the final stud.If then supply is restored, the motor will be directly connected across the supply, resulting in an excessive armature current. (v) If the motor is over-loaded (or a fault occurs), it will draw excessive current from the supply. This current will increase the ampere-turns of the over-load release coil and pull the armature C, thus short-circuiting the novolt release coil. The no-volt coil is demagnetized and the handle is pulled to the OFF position by the spring. Thus, the motor is automatically disconnected from the supply. Fig. (5. 17) DrawbackIn a three-point starter, the no-volt release coil is connected in series with the shunt field circuit so tha t it carries the shunt field current. While exercising speed control through field regulator, the field current may be weakened to such an extent that the no-volt release coil may not be able to keep the starter arm in the ON position. This may disconnect the motor from the supply when it is not desired. This drawback is overcome in the four point starter. 5. 10 Four-Point Starter In a four-point starter, the no-volt release coil is connected directly across the supply line through a protective resistance R. Fig. (5. ) shows the schematic diagram of a 4- point starter for a shunt motor (over-load release coil omitted for clarity of the figure). Now the no-volt release coil circuit is independent of the shunt field circuit. Therefore, proper speed control can be exercised without affecting the operation of novolt release coil. between a three-point starter and a four-point starter is the manner in which no-volt release coil is connected. However, the working of the two starters is th e same. It may be noted that the threepoint starter also provides protection against an openfield circuit. This protection is not provided by the four-point starte

Amerindians of the Caribbean

Content Topic†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 2 Introduction †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 2 History†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 3 Appearance †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦3-4 Entertainment †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦5 Housing †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦5-6 Survival (farming and hunting)†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦6-8 Religion†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. References†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦9 Topic: The Arawak of Guyana, their cultures, land use patterns and their effect on the landscape and biota. Introduction The Arawaks are thought to have settled at Hosororo creek on the Aruka River around 3,500 years ago. They planted manioc (manihot esculenta) which they baked into bread on ceramic griddles on the hilltops. Arawaks occupied the Corentyne River also around 2,000 years ago leaving a unique type of rock engraving, called Timehri Petroglyphs.Due to the amount of rich protein supply found along the coastal swamps, the Arawaks moved hundreds of tons of earth with wooden shovels , in order to build habitation mounds and raised fields for farming. According to Denis Williams this settlement strategy has sustained human population on coastal swamps during the European era and into the present. During the rainy season the Arawaks hunted a lot, when animals were said to migrate from lowlands in search of high ground. Animals commonly hunted were the deer, tapir, labba, wild hog, agouti, birds, parrots and turtles.They were known as food producers, also they are also known for their pottery making skills as they were the first people to bring pottery to Guyana. The Arawaks have made great contributions to Guyana culture, today many places are named by the Arawaks, most of our rivers and creeks are named by the Arawaks. The Arawak nation is deemed the most intelligent of the Amerindian nations. Fig. 1 Map of Guyana showing the location of the Arawaks History The Amerindians is said to be the first inhabitants to Guyana who entered the territory about 11,000 years ago.Amerindians initially lived on low, swampy coastland regions. The coastal plain was built up by alluvial deposits from the rising Atlantic Ocean ranging from 17,000 to 6000 years ago. The Arawak nation is said to be the second nation to arrive in Guyana after the Warraus who came before approximately 84000 years ago. It is said that a number of Arawak tribes have been extinct for several hundreds of years. What could have happened that would bring a population that once numbered 2 to 3 million down to just a few thousand by the early part of the 16th century?Throughout history the Arawak were subject to many hostile take-overs, diseases, enslavement, damage to food supplies and much more. Inevitably, by the end of the 16th century the Island Arawak had become extinct. Sadly, the Arawak Indians have been eliminated or greatly reduced in number in many areas, some of which include the Caribbean, Guadeloupe, West Indies, Barbados, and the Virgin Islands. Their numbers have been sl owly rising, so that today upwards of 30, 000 Arawak currently reside in Guyana, with a very small number existing in Suriname and French Guiana. AppearanceBecause of the broad distribution of the Arawaks, little uniformity can be found in their culture or racial type. It has been found though that the language they speak distinguish them from the rest of the world. The Arawaks were well shaped, slightly built and medium height. It appeared that they were physically weak in comparison with the Africans and Europeans. Their skin was â€Å"olive† which mean smooth and brown. The Arawaks were considered naturally good- looking but distorted their features by artificial means. As babies their heads were flattened at the forehead, this elongated head was considered a mark of beauty.This is thought to have been done to thicken the skull thus it could withstand heavy blows. The Arawaks had broad nose and their nostrils probably flared wide. Their hair was straight and black but coar se and was usually worn long. Figure 2: showing an Arawak family The Arawak men painted their bodies with bright colored dyes with clay and fat mixed all over smearing patterns all over their bodies: â€Å"some of them †¦ with black, others white and others red, most of them on their bodies and some on their faces, and eyes or only the nose†.The favorite paint was Roucou a red dye, besides being colorful, the clay and grease kept insects and rain off. The Arawaks also had body piercings and wore ornaments made from clay, shell and cotton. A plate of gold and copper alloy called the guanin was worn by chiefs who also dressed in gold crowns and feather headdresses. Sometimes the Arawaks had gold in their noses as plugs or hanging ornaments. The Arawaks saw gold as nothing more than a form of decoration. The women wore simple bead aprons and necklaces. A number of small amulets (Fig. ) or charms were carried in sacks around the neck, foot and wrist. Others made from cotton; shell and clay were woven into hair. Figure 3: showing amulets worn or carried by the Arawaks Entertainment The Arawaks had ample leisure time and many festivals marked by the Arawak year, some religious and some not so. For example the naming of a baby was time to rejoicing of the Arawaks that a child without a name will meet with great misfortune. The wedding of a cacique and the inauguration of a new cacique were times of festivity.Arawaks are fond of sports, although not competitive like us. The favorite sport called batos was a ball game with the cross between volleyball and football. The game was played with a hard rubber ball. The main aim of the game was to keep the ball in the air using only the thighs and never touching the hands or feet. The most well-known of the Arawaks' pleasure was that of smoking. The Arawaks called the tobacco plant cohiba and the pipe for smoking the leaves, tabaco. The Arawaks liked tobacco for peace and contentment, and for helping them to medit ate.They made cigars and smoked it in a pipe which they enjoyed very much. Fig. 4: showing Arawak harvesting and smoking tobacco Housing All the Arawaks needed were a shelter to keep off rain. Arawak houses were rectangular with steep thatched roofs. The larger ones had a covered porch before the door. The construction of these houses is rather simple. Wooden posts were put into the ground in a circle and canes were woven between them and tied with creepers. The roof was thatched in a conical shape and a hole was left at the top to allow smoke to escape.There were no windows and only an opening was left for a door and the houses were thoroughly built and could withstand hurricanes. The tasks of building houses were done by the men. Fig. 5: showing the house of an Arawak Survival (farming and hunting) The Arawaks were subsistence farmers, growing food mainly for their own needs and with a little left over for trade. Some crops are shown in fig. . They cut down trees to make room for planting and used the â€Å"slash-and-burn† method of farming. This is a simple method where the land was burnt to clear it of weeds and bush.The ash produced was mixed with fish and urine to produce fertilizer to help prolong the productiveness of the land. Crops were then planted in the ashes among the blackened tree stumps. These primitive farmers did not practice crop rotation, after about five to ten years, the soil would become exhausted, and the village would proceed to clear fresh land, however, slash and burn is no longer used. Instead, shifting cultivation is their new form of farming. Women did the planting and were responsible for the preparation of food.The crop cassava (also known manioc), slips were cut from the stem and planted in mounds on the level earth. Cassava was planted twice a year when the soil was damp. The Arawaks ate a variety of other fruits and vegetables including pineapples, star apples, guavas and cashews. The Arawaks did not touch mammy apple s as they believed that it was food for the dead. Arawaks did not rely on field crops for all their food. Due to living on the coast oceans and rivers were rich in foods which needed little effort to gather: shellfish, turtle eggs, snails and gull.Huge piles of shells have been found among the remains of camp sites. Arawaks trapped many small animals including bots, lizards, snakes, iguanas and agouties. The only domestic animal known to Arawaks was a small dog. Fig. 6: Showing some crops grown by Arawak As mentioned, the women were also responsible for all food preparations. The main food of the Arawaks was cassava, which required special preparation since it was poisonous in its natural state. First, the root was grated on a board covered small pebbles or rough coral until it formed a paste. Fig. 4 is an indication of this tool.This was put into a wicker tube, one end of which was hung from a branch, while a weight was attached to the other end. This caused the tube to contract, a nd forced the poisonous liquid out through the wicker. The remaining paste was left to dry and then pounded into flour using a stone mortar and pestle. The flour was formed into flat cakes and baked on a clay griddle until they were hard and dry. In this way, the cassava flour could keep from an extended period of time. Fig. 7: showing an Arawak grind stone Seasoning played a big part in food preparation. Salt and especially pepper were the common seasonings used.In addition, a sauce called cassareep, which was made of cassava juice, salt and pepper was frequently used, especially when serving the Arawaks' simplest dish, ‘pepperpot’. Note that both cassareep and pepperpot are widely used throughout Guyana today. Pepperpot was prepared in a large clay pot. Cassava juice, with the poison extracted of course, beans, peanuts, potato and some meat were all allowed to simmer. This pot of soup was used to feed a family about three times a day and as the pot is emptied, more in gredients are added so that one can have pepperpot at any time of the day or night.The Arawaks could also make intoxicating drinks out of cassava and maize such as piwari and cassiri, but drunkenness was uncommon except on some ceremonial occasions. However, smoking tobacco was a big part of the Arawak culture. Religion The Arawaks’ religious believe was called animism and was based on a spirit world, this practice aimed at honoring the spirit god. However Hillhouse claimed that the Arawaks worshipped the universal creator, a supreme being who they called Aluberi. They also believed that the sky was the source of all things powerful and good.Certain men in society were single out to explain the mysterious and control the spirit world. They were called shamans or piaimen and were said to have supernatural powers. Arawaks believe that disease was nothing but the presence of evil spirit. These medicine men had the power possessed to drive out disease. The piaimen were versed in the knowledge of herbs to treat disease. Connected with the belief in evil spirits also was the Kanaima. The Kanaima would track down its victims for years for the sake of revenge.He was thought to be an evil spirit in the form of a man. References Some notes on the Amerindians of Guyana Then and Now. Compiled by Shebana Daniel Uncle Basil: An Arawak Biography. By Justin Greene- Roesel The Prehistoric Arawak of Guyana. By Jennifer Wishart, Walter Roth Museum The Amerindians and the Europeans. By M. N. Menezes http://www. google. ca/imgres? q=Arawaks+of+Guyana//html accessed December 10, 2012 http://www. google. gy/imgres? q=arawak+smoking+tobaccocigarettes. org/history. html accessed December 10, 2012