Definition and Examples of the Series in Grammar

Definition and Examples of the Series in Grammar Definition In English grammar, a  series is a  list of three or more items (words,  phrases, or  clauses),  usually arranged in parallel form. Also known as a list or catalog. The items in a series are usually separated by commas (or semicolons if the items themselves contain commas). See Serial Commas. In rhetoric, a series of three parallel items is called a tricolon. A series of four parallel items is a tetracolon (climax). See Examples and Observations below. Also see: Writing With Descriptive ListsAsyndeton and PolysyndetonAuxesisBill Brysons ListsClimactic OrderCoordinate Adjectives  and  Cumulative AdjectivesDiazeugmaHypozeuxisEdward Abbeys List of ExamplesEnd-Focus and End-WeightEnumeratioListicleNikki Giovannis ListsParallelismSystrophe EtymologyFrom the Latin, to join   Examples and Observations With their repetitions, their strong rhythmic qualities- lists are often the most musical section of a piece of prose, as though the writer suddenly broke into song.(Susan Neville, Stuff: Some Random Thoughts on Lists. AWP Feb. 1998)Twitter has become a playground for imbeciles, skeevy marketers, D-list celebrity half-wits, and pathetic attention seekers: Shaquille ONeal, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest.(Daniel Lyons, Dont Tweet on Me. Newsweek, Sep. 28, 2009)Tea is the steady companion of the Scottish day, and each hotel, no matter how humble, stocks its rooms with supplies for brew-ups: electric pot for boiling water, ceramic pot for brewing, china cups and small tea creamers, a raft of teas, honey, fresh milk, and lemons.(Emily Hiestand, Afternoon Tea,  The Georgia Review, Summer 1992)Donkey: I dont get it, Shrek. Why didnt you just pull some of that ogre stuff on him? You know, throttle him, lay siege to his fortress, grind his bones to make your bread? You know, the whole ogre t rip.Shrek: Oh, I know. Maybe I could have decapitated an entire village, put their heads on a pike, gotten a knife, cut open their spleens and drunk their fluids. Does that sound good to you?Donkey: Uh, no, not really, no.(Shrek, 2001) Daisy said some cruel and heartless things about me, my personality, my looks, my clothes, my parents, my friends, the way I eat, sleep, drink, walk, laugh, snore, tap my teeth, crack my fingers, belch, fart, wipe my glasses, dance, wear my jeans up around my armpits, put HP sauce on my toast, refuse to watch The X Factor and Big Brother, drive . . . The litany went on and on and was interspersed with tears and sobs.(Sue Townsend,  Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years. Penguin, 2010)Go on vacation with your siblings; you will be back in the treehouse of code words and competitions and all the rough rivalries of those we love but do not choose as family. I am more likely to read trashy books, eat sloppy food, go barefoot, listen to the Allman Brothers, nap and generally act like Im 16 than Id ever be in the dark days of February. Return to a childhood haunt, the campground, the carnival, and let the season serve as a measuring stick, like notches on the kitchen doorway: the last time yo u walked this path, swam this lake, you were in love for the first time or picking a major or looking for work and wondering what comes next.(Nancy Gibbs, To the Time Machine! Time, July 11, 2011) The fictional model for the country gentry is the hard-riding, heavy-drinking, red-faced, Hanoverian-damning, Pox!-exclaiming, no-nonsense Squire Western in Fieldings Tom Jones.(Jeremy Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a People. Overlook, 2000)Throughout [the movie] Sinister, the rooms remain darker than crypts, whether at breakfast or dinnertime, and the sound design causes everything in the house to moan and groan in consort with the heros worrisome quest. I still cant decide what creaks the most: the floors, the doors, the walls, the dialogue, the acting, or the fatal boughs outside.(Anthony Lane, Film Within a Film. The New Yorker, October 15, 2012)Knowing already of the towns carefully nurtured reputation for gentility, I moved [to Bournemouth] in 1977 with the idea that this was going to be a kind of English answer to Bad Ems or Baden-Baden- manicured parks, palm courts with orchestras, swank hotels where men in white gloves kept the brass gleaming, bosomy elderly ladies in mi nk coats walking those little dogs you ache to kick (not out of cruelty, you understand, but from a simple, honest desire to see how far you can make them fly).(Bill Bryson, Notes From a Small Island. Doubleday, 1995) Most of the public lands in the West, and especially in the Southwest, are what you might call cowburnt. Almost anywhere and everywhere you go in the American West you find hordes of these ugly, clumsy, stupid, bawling, stinking, fly-covered, shit-smeared, disease-spreading brutes. They are a pest and a plague. They pollute our springs and streams and rivers. They infest our canyons, valleys, meadows, and forests. They graze off the native bluestem and grama and bunchgrasses, leaving behind jungles of prickly pear. They trample down the native forbs and shrubs and cacti. They spread the exotic cheatgrass, the Russian thistle, and the crested wheat grass.(Edward Abbey, Even the Bad Guys Wear White Hats. Harpers Magazine, January 1986)I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or a sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the northstar, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a Jan uary thaw, or the first spider in a new house.(Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854) Oh, look, she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provenà §al filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit.(P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, 1934)Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, mee t any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.(President John Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961) The sandwiches were stuffed with alfalfa sprouts and grated cheese, impaled with toothpicks with red, blue, and green cellophane ribbons on them, and there were two large, perfect, crunchy garlic pickles on the side. And a couple of cartons of strawberry Yoplait, two tubs of fruit salad with fresh whipped cream and little wooden spoons, and two large cardboard cups of aromatic, steaming, fresh black coffee.(Thom Jones, Cold Snap, 1995)While politely discussing with him my fathers sudden journey to town, I registered simultaneously and with equal clarity not only his wilting flowers, his flowing tie and the blackheads on the fleshy volutes of his nostrils, but also the dull little voice of a cuckoo coming from afar, and the flash of a Queen of Spain settling on the road, and the remembered impression of the pictures (enlarged agricultural pests and bearded Russian writers) in the well-aerated classrooms of the village school which I had once or twice visited; andto continue a tabulati on that hardly does justice to the ethereal simplicity of the whole process- the throb of some utterly irrelevant recollection (a pedometer I had lost) was released from a neighboring brain cell, and the savor of the grass stalk I was chewing mingled with the cuckoos note and the fritillarys takeoff, and all the while I was richly, serenely aware of my own manifold awareness.(Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. Random House, 1966) The one with the assortment of smiles, the oneJailed in himself like a forest, the one who comesBack at evening drunk with despair and turnsInto the wrong night as though he owned it- oh smallDeaf disappearance in the dusk, in which of their shoesWill I find myself tomorrow?(W.S. Merwin, Sire. The Second Four Books of Poems. Copper Canyon Press, 1993)The Length of a SeriesAlthough the four-part series is indicative of a human, emotional, subjective, involved attitude, each additional lengthening of the series increases and magnifies this attitude, and begins to add an element of humor, even absurdity. [William] Hazlitt, writing about human beings, the Public, his own kind, [above] uses the long series to indicate great involvement, great feeling, and a certain sense of humor about it all. The Public is mean, but so ornery that we almost have to laugh.(Winston Weathers and Otis Winchester, The New Strategy of Style. McGraw-Hill, 1978)Usage Tips: Arranging and Concluding a Series- In a n unenumerated series, place the longest element last.(James Kilpatrick)- Do not use etc. at the end of a list or series introduced by the phrase such as or for examplethose phrases already indicate items of the same category that are not named.(G. J. Alred et al., The Business Writers Handbook. Macmillan, 2003) Pronunciation: SEER-eez

How to Estimate Standard Deviations (SD)

How to Estimate Standard Deviations (SD) The standard deviation and range are both measures of the spread of a data set. Each number tells us in its own way how spaced out the data are, as they are both a measure of variation.  Although there is not an explicit relationship between the range and standard deviation, there is a rule of thumb that can be useful to relate these two statistics.  This relationship is sometimes referred to as the range rule for standard deviation. The range rule tells us that the standard deviation of a sample is approximately equal to one-fourth of the range of the data. In other words s (Maximum – Minimum)/4. This is a very straightforward formula to use, and should only be used as a very rough estimate of the standard deviation. An Example To see an example of how the range rule works, we will look at the following example. Suppose we start with the data values of 12, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 18, 20, 20, 25. These values have a mean of 17 and a standard deviation of about 4.1. If instead we first calculate the range of our data as 25 – 12 13 and then divide this number by four we have our estimate of the standard deviation as 13/4 3.25. This number is relatively close to the true standard deviation and good for a rough estimate. Why Does It Work? It may seem like the range rule is a bit strange. Why does it work? Doesn’t it seem completely arbitrary to just divide the range by four? Why wouldn’t we divide by a different number? There is actually some mathematical justification going on behind the scenes. Recall the properties of the bell curve and the probabilities from a standard normal distribution. One feature has to do with the amount of data that falls within a certain number of standard deviations: Approximately 68% of the data is within one standard deviation (higher or lower) from the mean.Approximately 95% of the data is within two standard deviations (higher or lower) from the mean.Approximately 99% is within three standard deviations (higher or lower) from the mean. The number that we will use has to do with 95%. We can say that 95% from two standard deviations below the mean to two standard deviations above the mean, we have 95% of our data. Thus nearly all of our normal distribution would stretch out over a line segment that is a total of four standard deviations long. Not all data is normally distributed and bell curve shaped. But most data is well-behaved enough that going two standard deviations away from the mean captures nearly all of the data. We estimate and say that four standard deviations are approximately the size of the range, and so the range divided by four is a rough approximation of the standard deviation. Uses for the Range Rule The range rule is helpful in a number of settings. First, it is a very quick estimate of the standard deviation. The standard deviation requires us to first find the mean, then subtract this mean from each data point, square the differences, add these, divide by one less than the number of data points, then (finally) take the square root. On the other hand, the range rule only requires one subtraction and one division. Other places where the range rule is helpful is when we have incomplete information. Formulas such as that to determine sample size require three pieces of information: the desired margin of error, the level of confidence and the standard deviation of the population we are investigating. Many times it is impossible to know what the population standard deviation is. With the range rule, we can estimate this statistic, and then know how large we should make our sample.

John Leonard Vs. Pepsi Co Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

John Leonard Vs. Pepsi Co - Case Study Example Based on this information, it is easy to conclude that there was no written agreement between the two parties. Furthermore, on legal grounds, the advertisement cannot substantiate the plaintiff’s claim that an offer was made. On these grounds, PepsiCo is liable for nothing. The next question is whether Pepsi actually made an offer. When you take such postulates into consideration, it creates a lot of ambiguity about the commercial being an actual offer. In the catalog that PepsiCo issued, the jet was not included as one of the gifts which could be collected. Thus the ad was not an offer, largely because it was not included in the Pepsi Stuff Catalogue that provides further information about the Pepsi Points program. Furthermore, the law on such issues is that if an offer is made that is clearly meant to be a joke and interpreted as such by an objective standard; it does not constitute a binding offer. Thus, PepsiCo again is safe on these grounds. However, John Leonard interpreted the ad as an actual offer and tried to capitalize on it. Based on our conclusion, the plaintiff’s understanding of the commercial as an offer should be rejected because the courts would find that no objective person could reasonably have concluded that the commercial act ually offered consumers a reward of a Harrier Jet. Moving on to the infamous call made by Leonard regarding the details of the offer, he was informed about the procedure of amassing Pepsi points, and at no time was he corroborated that he would receive a Harrier Jet. PepsiCo had already put this in writing in its catalog, both on how to gather points and what would be up for grabs. Hence, Leonard’s call seems to have no legal significance except for that fact that they imply a favor in Pepsi’s camp. But let’s adopt a new vantage point, one that reflects the views of the plaintiff.

Economics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 6

Economics - Essay Example This is the biggest quarterly raise in the series since the period of March 2007 to May 2007. Part-time employment raised by 3,000 during the quarter to arrive at 7.93 million. During the period of December 2010 - February 2011, â€Å"there were 929.4 million hours worked, up 11.0 million over the quarter and up 15.8 million on the year. Average hours worked per week were 31.8, up 0.2 over the quarter and up 0.1 over the year† (UK Statistics, pp. 1-21). This raise in standard hours worked took place completely with permanent employees. Government has failed to bridge the gap that existed between the poorest and wealthiest within society during the 1980s. During the most recent decade, income inequality has lessened a little and has stabilised on a number of measures, but the huge inequality growth of the 1980s has not been rectified (Sen, p.101). The UK has the eighth most terrible level of income inequality of the 27 members of European Union. The number of individuals living unaccompanied or in single-parent family units raised in the UK more quickly than in all other nations; standard size of family unit in the UK decreased from 2.6 percent to 2.3 percent between 1995 and 2010. Income shortage - that is, a family unit with less than half the nation's average earning - declined from 13 percent 11 percent in the UK during the same time frame. Trends in UK Labour Market Labour market is not a homogeneous phenomenon across the UK. Various parts of the UK have labour markets that differ across a range of aspects, not least the sort of professional openings that they present in addition to the percentage of employments in different sectors and on different income levels that they support. There is a little proof that good, highly paid, high skilled jobs and low paid, low skilled employment are both becoming more intense in some particular regions, leading to a polarisation of the service opportunities facing various societies. This has two inferences for ed ucational provision. First, the extent and excellence of prospects accessible to young individuals through the job-based route in regions with a concentration of meagre professions may be satisfied, and that related issues might focus on the provision of a sufficient number and quality of job placements for individuals pursuing education-based professional offerings. Second, in some particulars regions the inducements on offer to youngsters, from many of the opportunities within the local labour market will be weak (Hills, p.194). Income inequality in the UK grew speedily during 1977 and 1990, reaching a highest point since the war. The rate at which inequality arose in the UK was quicker than in any other nation with the exemption of New Zealand. During 1999 and 2010, the poorest 20 percent to 30 percent of the population failed to gain from financial growth, contrary to the rest of the post-war phase. Reasons for Income Inequality in UK Income inequality has a lot of reasons, a fe w of which are quite apparent, others which remain unidentified and yet others which stay uncertain. On a structural level, the central reason of income inequality is variations in â€Å"hours worked per family unit per year† (Jenkins & Micklewright, p.39). Besides overall hours worked, income inequality is because of dissimilar rates of earnings per hour, as well as unearned income, and the reasons of these

The 3M Company Case Study Essay Example for Free

The 3M Company Case Study Essay Introduction The 3M Company is a $18 billion diversified technology company with leading positions in health care, safety, electronics, telecommunications, industrial, consumer and office, and other markets. Headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, 3M has operations in more than 60 countries, serving customers worldwide. 3M is one of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and has been one of Fortune magazines ten most admired corporationsfor the last ten years. Since its founding in 1902, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company has become one of the worlds most innovative and productive companies. 3Ms primary growth strategy is to sell more existing products into new markets and to introduce new products into new or existing markets.3M mission is to be the most innovative enterprise and the preferred supplier to customers. 3M vision is to sastisfy customers with superior quality, value, and service. A division of the 3M Company, 3M Health Information Systems, the largest and one of the fastest-growing of 3Ms seven major businesses, serves medical, dental, pharmaceutical, and personal care markets. 3M Health Information Systems is a leading provider of advanced software tools and services that help health care organizations capture, classify, and manage accurate health care data. With more than 20 years of industry experience, 3M Health Information Systems solutions help ensure the quality of data and the processes that drive an organizations ability to manage revenue, comply with regulations, improve the quality of patient care, and manage resources effectively. Read more: 3MÂ  Organizational Structure Through this paper, 4 main points will be discussed in order to identify the position of 3M strategy regarding its innovation management,especially in the health care division . First of all, lets identify the main issues of 3M affecting its innovation management. The second point will be to discuss the national system of innovation in health care.As a third point , three academical framework will be applied to 3M innovation management. Lastly , based on the findings get on analysis of the theories , some recommendations will be suggested to improve 3M innovation management. Section 1: select an organisation and outline the main problems which impact on the effective innovation management.In answering this part of the question you may, if appropriate, provide examples of recent innovation in product, services or process. In the field of innovation management , 3M is the leader. 3Ms corporate strategy shows anyway some internal and external concerns which impact the effective innovation management put in place at 3M. The first concern which come up is that 3M has established a corporate goal of generating 30% of sales from products introduced within the previous four years. In striving to attain this goal, the company spends 7 cents of every sales dollar on R D more than twice the average of U.S. manufacturing companies.It could be seen as too much concentration of innovations even if they are not necessary in the market. According to William Coyne, 2001 at 3M, in recognition that product life cycle are becoming shorter, the company has recently set up a new goal of 10 per cent of sales coming from product less than a year old. But as most business leader would acknowledge that developing genuianely new products is a high risk activity : industrial product have only a 50:50 chance of being succesfull, while consumer goods fare even worse , with a one ten chance of succeeding . In attempt to meet the 30% or 10% rule, the employees strive to introduce new innovations on the products, even if those innovations do not add any value to the customers whilst the company is heavily spending on RD. The second concern which was noted related to 3M innovation management. Gundling, E. (2000) argues that 3M declared victory too early .In fact 3M has a high publicity and reputation for innovation and this lead to over confidence resulting that every employee believe that they are all innovators .So there is noone to set the standards for innovation, against which innovation performance can be assessed. The troubles that afflicted 3M is the environment that encourages people to work around and defy their superiors and a determination to let the company follow where its scientists and customers lead.However , it is important for 3M employee not to fall into the trap of happy self deception or to be content with just incremental products.In fact , according to William Coyne (2001), the company top managers were very concerned that too much of the companys growth was coming from incremental improvement to existing products. The third drawbacks that 3M has is the fact that they produce overwhelming too many products than what overseas subsidiaries can manage to market . Ernest Gundling (2000) argues that subsidiaries employees are trying to serve the needs of numerous 3m divisions simultaneously , some employees are kept so busy dealing with US or regional headquaters that they lack the time to focus on their customers. As a result 3M is very big but acts small. Each of 3Ms 45 product divisions constitute a business in itself with its specific customer base, with its own general manager, marketing director, technical director, human resources director, manufacturing director, and national sales manager (Coyne, 1997). 3M is a highly decentralized company, but care is taken to decentralize to units that are large enough to be self-standing and, therefore, capable of funding their own RD. On the other hand, 3M attempts to prevent divisions from getting so large that individual innovations do not count. 3Ms strong belief in divisional autonomy is countervailed by the corporate requirements of a high level of innovativeness and interdivisional knowledge-sharing (Goold et al.,1994, p.203). Fourthly , according to Gundling, E. (2000),3M still unofficially practices lifetime employment. It is possible to get fired, but normally only for a serious ethical breach, gross imcompetence , lack of motivation, or negligence. When the company decided to reduce their workforce , the only concern they face is how to preserve the experience and sense of dedication that will ensure continued innovation in the company.In fact people laid off because of their performance or early retirement are well attracted by others firms to work and share the knowledge they acquire through 3M experience. Finally 3M face not only internal concerns as seen before but external environnement affect as well its innovation management. In fact according to Gundling, E. (2000), when a product has been approved for marketing, 3m still have to wait the review from the regulatory agencies in other countries.This could slow down the innovation process of the company for instance for the launch of the Aldara cream. Section B : Briefly indicate how the National System of Innovation influences the company s ability to manage innovation. According to Tidd, J. et al (2001), the national system of innovation in which a firm is embedded, strongly influences both the direction and the vigour of its own innovation activities. He identifies three national factors that influence the rate and direction of innovation, National market incentives and pressures; competencies in production and research; and institutions for corporate governance. The innovation policy whereby 3M scientists hold regular meetings with customers allows the company to utilise knowledge available on the market, for its innovation management. In relation to health care products, 3M is forced to keep innovating due to intense competition and regulation in the US. Competition does also promote innovation by providing opportunity for formation of alliances to share costs and risks in risky and costly projects. 3M enjoys national competencies in production and research through the availability of universities with which it has research links. US, as a nation also ranks high among nations with good innovation environment indicators. The nation has steadily increased its RD expenditure (as a percentage of GNP) from 0.99% to 1.60% between 1967 and 1998. Tidd, J. et al (2001) estimated that US per capita and per researcher RD expenditure was US $ 650 and US $ 169,650 respectively. RD Personnel ratio was estimated at 3,700 per million population. Tidd, J. et al (2001) posit that increased share of RD expenditure as a percentage of GDP for USA (as well as Germany and Japan) has been responsible for the growth of major firms in pharmaceuticals and telecommunication. USA has also good institutions that promote RD. These include, the National Institute of Health, which is a government funded body active in biotechnology RD . Section C: Select three analytical frameworks from the course as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of the organization s approach to innovation management. There is 3 theoritical framework that could applied to 3M innovation management concept . The first model that could be applied to 3M innovation management is the Knowledge creation Model . According to Professor Nonaka and Takeuchi, (1995), there is two types of knowledge :Tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge .Through this dynamic interaction between the two types of knowledge, personal knowledge becomes organizational knowledge. And the organizational knowledge or intellectual infrastructure of an organization encourages its individual members to develop new knowledge through new experiences. This dynamic process is the key to organizational knowledge creation. This interaction between the two types of knowledge brings about what we call four modes of knowledge conversion that is, socialization (from individual tacit knowledge to group tacit knowledge), externalization (from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge), combination (from separate explicit knowledge to systemic explicit knowledge), and internalization (from explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge). Socialization is a process of creating common tacit knowledge through shared experiences. For socialization, we need to build a field of interaction, where individuals share experiences and space at the same time, thereby creating common unarticulated beliefs or embodied skills. In the case of 3M , personal tacit knowledge which 3M requires through their recruitment process to only take knowledgeable employees and that tacit knowledge will be transferred through team working , for instance the division managers nust know each staffers first name(Mitchell,1991). Externalization is a process among individuals within a group. During such face-to-face communication people share beliefs and learn how to better articulate their thinking, though instantaneous feedback and the simultaneous exchange of ideas. This mode is triggered by a dialog. In fact when an employee come up with a product idea, he or she recruits an action team to develop it(Mitchell,1991). Combination is a process of assembling new and existing explicit knowledge into a systemic knowledge, such as a set of specifications for a prototype of a new product. Often, a newly created concept should be combined with existing knowledge to materialize it into something tangible. For instance according to Gundling, E. (2000), 3Ms Technical Forum is a means for all technical people share technologies, practices, policies, and procedures. Exchange of technical personnel knowledge to different divisions, or other countries where 3M has operations, is common. Internalization is a process of embodying explicit knowledge into tacit, operational knowledge such as know-how. This mode is triggered by learning by doing or using. Explicit knowledge documented into text, sound, or video formats facilitates the internalization process. Therefore, manuals, a quintessential example of explicit knowledge, are widely used for internalization. That has been done in 2002 when 3M published the book which is a compilation of 3M voices, memories, facts and experiences from the companys first years : The innovation century , the 3M story. The second model that could be applied to 3m innovation management is the culture-innovation model The innovative culture of 3M has been the driving force for the companys continuous innovation and growth into a major world-wide, large-scale manufacturer. Applying the theory developed by Teece, we assessed that 3M has developed complementary assets, in terms of research ability residing in individual knowledge and technical expertise held by 3M scientists. Furthermore, this culture has helped the company develop dynamic capabilities by analysing and anticipating future customer needs (opportunities) and translating these opportunities into product novelty, by combining various complementary assets in a competitive, hardly inimitable way. 3M is a company whose culture has led to thousands of new products every year for decades, probably the premiere company in bringing new products to market. 3Ms development process is dramatically different from most, yet it is highly successful at new product development. Innovative new products from 3M because of a well-thought-out set of mechanisms which support emergent activity. 3Ms corporate strategies explicitly promote an innovative spirit. These strategies include: 30% if sales must result from products less than 4 years old; technical people can spend 15% of their time on projects of their own choosing; every division has access to technologies developed anywhere in the company and has the responsibility to share the technological needs of its customers throughout the company. 3Ms corporate culture is very supportive of risk taking, teamwork, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Failure is viewed as a learning experience; employee relations are informal and on a first-name basis; the technological base is diversified and technological exchange is encouraged throughout the company; and 3M maintains a strong commitment to develop customer-driven products. These principles have all been followed at 3M for decades. The specific human resource (HR) strategy helps 3M foster innovation, retain research talent and reduce the employee turnover by giving scientists personal research time, rewarding innovation and adopting a constructive approach towards product failures. As shown in the case, the specific HR policy along with the innovative culture has been the milestones in the development and the success of the company over several decades of operation. By providing the framework for innovation, 3M allows the innovation process to be controlled almost entirely by the individual scientists, who are encouraged to think outside the square and develop new products within the specifications required by the market. The third framework that will apply 3M innovation management will be the organic structure. The organic structure is more flexible, more adaptable to a participative form of management, and less concerned with a clearly defined structure. The organic organization is open to the environment in order to capitalize upon new opportunities. Organic organizations have a flat structure with only one or two levels of management. Flat organizations emphasize a decentralized approach to management that encourage high employee involvement in decisions. In 3M, this translates into a structure where most employees network into at least five levels: department, division, group, sector and company. For purposes of innovation, the key level is the division. Each of the companys 40-some divisions develops, manufactures and sells its own products, and each has a structure appropriate to its market. Most divisions include functional departments division labs, manufacturing, marketing, sales, logistics and so forth as well as cross-functional teams. 3Ms resulting formal structure may look like a bureaucracys analytical hierarchy on an organization chart. But, in fact, the structure acts less like a bureaucratic prison than a platform, from which employees are expected to learn and serve customers. For instance, like the units in a living thing, the departments in any division have semi-permeable boundaries. Sales people arent trained only in sales. They learn about their divisions technology so they can describe products to customers. Moreover, theyre expected to work with people in the marketing and research departments of their divisions and to network across the company. Similarly, technical and manufacturing people regularly visit customers manufacturing facilities to learn about their operations. As a result, they sometimes see possible uses of 3M products those customers havent thought of. As an example, about 15 years ago, technical people were visiting an auto manufacturers factory and learned that the rivets they used to hold side molding to doors were rusting. So the technical people went back to the lab and developed an acrylic foam tape that replaced the rivets and solved the problem. Additionally, 3M has a flexible organisational structure, with a dual ladder approach, allowing employees with technical background to advance in their career without having to switch to management. Furthermore, we assessed that the dual ladder reveals a matrix internal corporate organisational structure allowing the firm to react promptly to market opportunities and assemble quickly multi-disciplinary teams of employees. This internal organisational structure is not visible from the outside and it is not easy to be copied by competitors, due to the high complexity of the relationships that establish within this matrix (span of command and delegation of authority). Section D: Based on your analysis in section C explain how the organization could improve the management of innovation: Based on the findings in the third question 3M has managed to innovate continuously and create a large pool of products (over 30,000 products), achieving continuous profitable growth over time. So suggesting new recommendations for the improvement of 3M innovation management is a difficult approach but any company even 3M has some limitation so few suggestions will be recommendable : As explained in the third question, the lack of a system to guide product developers who are seeking to create breakthroughs is a problem even for a company like 3M, long known for its success with innovation. The innovation culture the company has nurtured and the continuous investments in research and development (RD) over several decades has helped 3M get deep roots in several competencies for instance in applied technology for health care. But willing to create although very new products and services may be essential to future growth and profit, companies must first survive to get to the future. That necessity tends to focus companies strongly on making incremental improvements in order to keep sales up and current customers and Wall Street analysts happy. Second, developers simply dont know how to achieve breakthroughs, because there is usually no effective system in place to guide and support their efforts. Employees knows only that 30% of sales must come from products that had not existed four years earlier. So even if the product could have a life cycle more than four years , 3M reduce it in order to comply to the rule. For the Medical-Surgical Markets Division to secure future growth it would be advisable that the division maintain a balance between incremental and revolutionary innovation. As well as promoting more the activities like marketing or branding for the product created in the health care division because the cost of investment put in place for the creation of thoses products will be only recovered if the product stays in the market longer than 3M would. By shortering the product life cycle , it increases the RD expenditure. Even the most effective innovating firms such as 3M may create organizational bureaucracy that slows down innovation. The most successful innovators know that just spending more on RD is not enough; neither is anticipating customer needs. 3M employs a strategy of high decentralization and autonomy for its divisions, or units. In reality 3M also does not follow the traditional approach to organizational design. 3M consistently achieves its goal of having 15 percent of its revenue come from new products by providing managers with the latitude to move from one business unit or laboratory to another without bureaucratic obstruction. It is during the knowledge creation process that Project groups, operating with few constraints from the formal organization, come together to accomplish a task and disband when their work is completed. One of my recommendation regarding the 3M structure is to merge RD with Sales and Marketing, subsequently creating a number of small cross-departmental innovation teams. Realignment of goals and business planning would be crucial during this phase and reappointment according to respective areas of expertise must be communicated positively, offering alternative thoughtfully designed posts, linking salary to performance. Linkage between these teams must be fabricated carefully. By creating this as an independant workforce they will be delegating responsibility , flexibility.They will be able to access fast, good communication will be involve to share the available information. This approach will enable the company to retain all the insight and move on quickly to the next step on a real time basis. . By allowing RD , Sales and Marketing to mix and to participate in decision-making, their suggestions could have changed the outcome by allowing them to respond in a timely manner and adjust their strategies to fit their consumers. It is also recommended to start with small grouping of activities because it is reducing risk and remain tight control and maintain that organic structure put in place within 3M. Finally creating independent small units that can rapidly respond to customers needs or changes in the business environment. The supervisor tends to have a more personal relationship with his or her employees in order to motivate them to succed in their object ives. Summary : 3M, which obtains 30% of sales from new products within four years, offers an example of how a culture of innovation can take root and become integral to the continuing success of a company after nearly a century. Even if 3M is the model of innovation management for other companies, it has some limitations in its proper culture, structure and HRM policy which lead 3M to make some improvements that enable them to excell in their competitive advantage.The national system of innovation is the foundation of their actual direction. After analysing the three theoritical frameworks , there is no doubt that 3M innovation management provide the effectiveness at all level. Total Word Count: 3108 Section A: 569 Section B: 283 Section C: 1321 Section D: 935 Reference: 3M Company, 2002, A Century Of Innovation, 3M Company, USA 3M Company Annual Report, 2003 3M Company, USA Achtmeyer, W.F. (2002), 3M Corporation, Centre for Global Leadership, available on http://mba.tuch.dartmouth.edu Boxal, P. and Purcel, J., (2003), Strategy and Human Resource Management, PalgraveMacMillan, New York. Cobbenhagen, J. (2000), Successful Innovation: Towards a new theory for the management of small and medium-sized entreprises, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, UK Cohen, W., Nelson, R. and Walsh, J. (2002), Links and Impacts: The influence of public research on industrial RD, Management Science, Vol. 48, pp 1-23 Frohman (1980) in Cobbenhagen, J. (2000), Successful Innovation: Towards a new theory for management of small and medium sized entrprises, Edward Edgar Publishing Ltd, UK). Goold, Campbell and Alexander (1994), Corporate Level Strategy: Creating value in the multi-business company, John Wiley and Sons, New York Gundling, E. (2000), The 3M-way to innovation: Balancing people and profit, Kodansha, London Larkins, R.J., (2000), Government research program briefing, available on http://www.fas.org/man/congress/2000/000510-larkins_may_10.htm Lorentzen, A. (2003), Knowledge and knowledge bases in the learning process of Polish companies, Aalborg University, available on http://www.druid.dk/conferences/summer 2003 Minnesota Statutes, 2003, Ch 116J. 885, available on http://www.state.mn.us/stats/116J/ Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), The knowledge-Creating Company, Oxford Press, New York. Porter, M.E. 1998, Competitive Advantage: Creating and sustenance of superior performance, Free Press, New York Mitchell Russel,(1991), Masters of innovation : How 3M keeps its new product coming Terziovski, M. Samson, D and Glassop, L. (2001), Creating Corporate Competence through management of organisational innovation, Research paper, available on http://www.fsed.org/research/projects , 2001. Thomas Swan, Top twenty innovators: The mothers of inventions, available on http://www.thomas_swan.co.uk (2004) Thomhe, S. and Von Hippel, E. (2002),Harvard Business Review, April,pp74-81 Tidd, J., Bessant, J. and Pavitt, K. (2002), Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organisational Change (2nd edn), John Wiley Sons Inc, USA Von Hippel, E., Thomhe, S. and Sonnach, M. (1999), Breakthroughs to order at 3M, Sloan School of Management, available on http://web.mit.edu/evhippel

Ancient Greek Doctors Essay -- essays research papers

Hippocrates and Galen Comparative study between the best Greek Medical doctors of ancient Times. Introduction As The Greek empire declined, Rome inherited its medical traditions and knowledge. During the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D health standards dropped considerably and outbreaks occurred of life threatening diseases. Galen of Pergamon, a follower of Hippocrates, gathered much of the medical knowledge of the time and added to it his studies of anatomy and physiology (mostly of animals). In Spite of his errors in describing certain anatomical and physiology phenomena, his writing created the foundation for medicine over 1500 years later in Europe. Though Galen created a historical event, he indeed followed and admired one of the greatest doctors of ancient Greece ‘Hippocrates’. A physician and a surgeon he became a leader of a medical school on the ‘Aegean island of Cos’ his works are contained in the ‘Hippocrates corpus’, over 70 volumes of case histories and thoughts on the practice of medicine, role of environmental health and sa cred diseases. Although other non-Hippocrates doctors made diagnosis, the Cos physicians would try and predict the outcome of their patients. Hippocrates adopted a view that Breath is the most necessary component of our bodies and if it flowed freely produces heath if impeded produces disease. Hippocrates says that diseases are caused by the differences in the elemental components of the human organism. Before Hippocrates and Galen Medical practice in Greece centered around religion (Cult), the cult of Askelepios, the Greek god of medicine and the son of Apollo. Mythology tells us that Askelepios was saving so many lives that Pluto, the god of the underworld, asked Zeus to slay him which Zeus did with a thunderbolt. Whether Askelepios was a real man or not ,many temples around Greece have been placed up in his honor. Patients go to theses temples where they spend the night and patients have said that Askelepios has appeared in their dreams. In an age where disease was looked upon as a punishment from the gods, sacrifice was a way of pleasing the gods to prevent them from punishing. This was not the only medicine practice in Greece, there where also men who where more truly doctors they practice the unknown medicine and where still well regarded. Hippocrates What... ... his work nearly all medical thought and shaped not only the theory but practice as well. Galen’s training was not only in biology and medicine, but known as a philosopher and philologist. Philosophy in Galens word is " an essential part of training a doctor". Galens first professional job was a surgeon to the gladiators in Pergamon, here he gained much experience and practical knowledge from the wounds he had to treat. After four years he immigrated to Rome where he attained a brilliant reputation as a practitioner and a public demonstrated of anatomy. Galen for all his mistakes, remained the unchallenged authority for over a thousand years. Main mistakes consisted of the internal organs e.g.: he incorrectly assumed that the rete mirablile, a plexus of blood vessels as the base of the brain of ungulate animals, was also present in humans. He had 20 scribes to write down all his words and dictums, he was not Christian yet his writings reflected only one God an d declared the body to be an instrument of the soul. Galen experimented on animals for physiological purposes. The work On the use of the parts of the human body consisted of seventeen books of this topic.

Gambling Addiction’s Effect on Family Essay

Gambling is a distraction for most people, something to look forward to on a vacation or the occasional trip to the racetrack. However, there are others who can’t control their interest in gambling. Instead of doing it on an occasional basis, it becomes an everyday activity and a cruel addiction. Individuals who become addicted to gambling often get overwhelmed by the activity and allow it to become the dominant thing in their lives at the expense of themselves and their family. Addiction Addicted gamblers get into trouble when they start chasing their losses. A gambler may go to the casino or go online to gamble with a fixed amount of money. According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, the increased access to gambling throughout the United States the problem of pathlological gambling is likely to increase in the future. Sponsored Links Pedialyte ® For Children When it Comes to Rehydration, Other Household Beverages Can’t Compare. www.Pedialyte.com Function The gambler doesn’t want to lose, but when those losses occur, he doesn’t want others to know about it. He wants to hide his losses because he doesn’t want to disappoint others and he doesn’t want to face the consequences of what is happening. So when an addicted gambler is losing, he is hurting his family by losing money that cannot afford to be lost and he is hurting is family even more by lying to them. According to a report by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, there are 2.5 million pathological gamblers in the United States and another 3 million problem gamblers. Impact In many cases, the addicted gambler’s family doesn’t find out about the problem until many months or years have gone by. The gambler may manipulate the family’s money for a while to make it look like all the funds are in tact. However, after a given period, that won’t be possible because the money will be gone. The gambler’s spouse or significant other may discover the shortfall in a routine examination of the accounts or the gambler may admit the problem when the guilt becomes overwhelming. Either way, trust has been destroyed in the relationship. Treatment Preventing a gambler from gambling is difficult, but if family members know about the problem and really want to help, they can practice tough love in order to prevent the gambler from doing more damage to himself and to the family. A support group like Gamblers Anonymous can also help. GA, modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, uses 12 steps to increase self-awareness and identify character defects that can help the individual arrest his gambling problem. However, the compulsive gambler cannot be â€Å"cured.† Identification The American Academy of Family Physicians has identified some of the behaviors associated with pathological gambling, which can help family members identify if a family member has a gambling problem. These behaviors include preoccupation with gambling; repeated failed efforts to control gambling; gambles to escape problems; lies to family members, therapists and others to conceal gambling losses and relies on others to provide money to relieve desperate financial situations.

Not All Criminals Are Bad (Great Expectations)

In the novel Great Expectations written by Charles Dickens he tackles various social problems that plagued London in the Victorian era, some of which were Poverty, Hunger, Child Labour and Crime, which Dickens himself endured. Crime as a main source of London’s social problems ran rampant, streets became unsafe as criminal activity spiked and new criminals were being imprisoned every day. In these times criminals were considered to be the lowest people in terms of social class and so were often deemed as dangerous, Disgraceful and generally bad in every sense. Charles Dickens believed that there are exceptions to all criminals being bad, in the sense that you cannot determine a person’s character just because he commits a crime but rather by his motives for doing it. Dickens expresses his theory in Great Expectations through Characters such as Abel Magwitch who is a criminal who seeks redemption and Compeyson who is a criminal who wishes to do nothing more than to swindle people. A criminal by definition is someone who breaks the laws set by society (government), therefore although these characters are not stated or known as criminals in the novel Pip, Herbert, and Wemmick by definition can also be considered as criminals for helping Magwitch, this proves that Dickens also believed that anyone can be a criminal not just people of low social class even the innocent but, Dickens did not fail to expose that criminals can be bad and that even though some criminals do not chose to live the life they do there are those who like the life of crime , which he shows through Compeyson. You can read also King v Cogdon The character Compeyson represents Charles Dickens ideal image of a criminal and in fact Compeyson is the stereotypical criminal with the exception thathe is not a lowly criminal but that of a gentleman: â€Å"He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d been to a public boarding school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good looking too† (Pg. 343). Although Compeyson is a gentleman he chooses a life of crime, his motives for committing crimes is simply for the fun of swindling people he is portrayed as a cold hearted and disloyal man in which Dickens wished to fully convey as his view of a bad person. Compeyson is much smarter than the average criminal for example Magwitch and uses his wit to manipulate his partners. In the novel it was said that Compeyson had a former partner by the name of Arthur who helped Compeyson form an elaborate plan to steal money from his own sister in law namely Miss Havisham and leave her at the alter on the day of their wedding day. After which his partner Arthur unable to bear the guilt of what he had done killed himself and Compeyson shows no remorse even saying that it’s a good riddance (Pg. 345). This shows how low Compeyson is in terms of him as a person, not caring for his own partner and shows no guilt for using him as nothing more than a tool for committing the crime. It is also revealed that Compeyson had a wife that he kicked mostly, here Charles Dickens further develops Compeyson’s bad image by adding minor details that he abuses his wife giving readers a foul image of him and a general dislike for his character. Compeyson also has history with the more redeemable criminal Abel Magwitch and it becomes evident that Magwitch was used by Compeyson just like Arthur was. In the novel Magwitch tells Pip of how he met Compeyson, Magwitch meets him a couple years back before ever meeting Pip and they quickly become accomplices, after getting committed for felony on the charge of putting stolen notes in circulation and other charges, Magwitch and Compeyson were both sent to trial, Compeyson deserted Magwitch and made it seem like Magwitch did all the dirty work and he was helpless under him. The fact that unlike Magwitch, Compeyson is a gentleman and younger works in his favour and he is given a lighter sentence, exactly 7 years to Magwitch’s 14 year sentence: â€Å"when we was put in the dock†¦ain’t it me as the judge perceives to bea old offender of wiolent passion, likely to come to worse? † (Pg. 346-347). Charles Dickens again gives more information on Compeyson’s past involving Magwitch to show what a dark and sinister person he really is , he sold out yet another accomplice proving that he is indeed bad person because instead of him to try to help Magwitch he looks out for himself and ensures his verdict is lighter, Here Dickens uses bad characteristics as his evidence that he is bad . Later in the novel when Pip is aware of him, Compeyson becomes the main antagonist as he tries to foil Pip’s plans of helping Magwitch; the antagonist is usually a bad person in any play, novel or film so Dickens supports his view of Compeyson being a bad person by subjecting him into this role and not only does Dickens support that Compeyson is a bad criminal by him being dangerous, cold and untrustworthy he also shows the difference in character between him and Magwitch because Compeyson was afforded a great opportunity in life him being a gentleman and yet he wasted his life being a criminal when he could have become so much more in life unlike Magwitch who was not granted the same opportunities. The character Abel Magwitch in the novel represents Charles Dickens exception to the belief that all criminals are bad people. Magwitch is first introduced in the novel through the eyes of Pip the main character: â€Å"A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin† (Pg. ). Here Dickens uses powerful adjectives to describe Magwitch as most people would view a criminal to suggest that his appearance was just as he was which is low. The impression of Magwitch at this point would be a bad person purely base on dickens description of him, I believe that Dickens does this purposely not only to relate how Pip felt but to later prove that not everything is what it appears to be. Magwitch at this point of the novel has just escaped from prison and threatens Pip into retrieving food and file to remove his shackles, here Magwitch is given a negative image by corrupting Pip, an innocent child to steal for him contrasting Dickens belief but readers are also given a hint of compassion through Pip who instantly sees redeeming qualities within the criminal Magwitch who although he sees as terrifying but also as a starving, shaken man who is in need of help. Already Dickens has established that Magwitch is not all bad and that there is more to his story which must be revealed before making any final judgements which is proven when he meets Pip again who is no longer a poor boy living in the Marshes but a Gentleman through acquired expectations from a secret benefactor. Later on in the novel Magwitch seeks out Pip, who now lives in London and the shocking truth is exposed as Magwitch tells pip that he in fact is his secret benefactor (310-315). Magwitch then explains himself saying that he was so moved by what Pip had done for him when he was a child that he felt that he had to repay him by doing everything in his power to make him a gentleman which was Pip’s lifelong dream. Magwitch also tells pip how he went to Australia where he worked in sheep ranching and earned a huge fortune in which he gave to him. Dickens completely turns Magwitch’s image around by showing that he is very loyal and generous, that he is not cold hearted like how a criminal would normally be viewed as. His devotion to Pip’s success proves that Magwitch is not a bad person, it shows that he somewhat cares for Pip and the fact that he had a chance to become rich elevating his own status but instead chose to give all his fortune to Pip shows that he is very selfless. Charles Dickens gives Magwitch redeeming qualities to prove that the man behind the criminal is not bad but indeed good at heart. If the fact that Magwitch was a criminal was removed Magwitch can be seen as a loyal, honest and hardworking Person whose heart is filled with admiration towards a young man namely Pip and wishes to do nothing more but to see him become a gentleman all characteristics of a good person but, one question arises which has not been answered, since Magwitch can become so virtuous why is he even a criminal in the first place, this explanation of why Magwitch is a criminal further explains what dickens meant that there is an exception to the statement all criminals are bad people. Magwitch explains to Pip the reason behind his hatred for his former accomplice Compeyson and basically how he became a criminal. In this he tells Pip the story of how he met Compeyson and the story of Arthur and Compeyson. Magwitch’s background story is that of poverty, he was an orphan just as Pip was and he had to steal as a means of surviving. Magwitch’s story gives readers and understanding of why he got into the life of crime and although stealing cannot be excused as a crime, Dickens represents Magwitch’s case as a justifiable reason for being who he is in terms of being a criminal. Magwitch was not given the same opportunities as his partner Compeyson and so basically grew up into a life of crime, with him being an orphan he had no other means of living, he had to fend for himself, but although he was already at this great disadvantage he also tells Pip that he tried to work sometimes but it wasn’t enough which unfortunately turned him into a criminal when he met Compeyson: â€Å"I’ve no notion where I was born†¦tramping, begging, thieving†¦gone last night† (Pg. 342-343). This suggests that maybe if Magwitch was given a better chance to be successful in life like Compeyson was that he would not be a criminal ultimately supporting that it was out of his hands and that he had no other choice, His motives unlike Compeyson, was purely to survive. It is evident in the novel that Charles Dickens has a soft spot for Magwitch through his history with Compeyson in which he got a heavier sentence just because he looked more of a criminal than Compeyson. Dickens does this to show sympathy for Magwitch but also a satire towards the justice system. Magwitch’s relationship with Pip grows towards the end of the novel as Pip realises that Magwitch sincerely cares for him and that he has not been very accepting of him. Dickens uses Pip’s realization to bring across the point that Magwitch is indeed a good person and that him being a criminal does not define who he is, even a person such as Pip who looked down on Magwitch as being low and nothing more than a criminal even being ashamed when he found out that he was his secret benefactor has been enlightened and now accepts him. Charles Dickens contrast of both characters was his major evidence in proving what he believed, both characters were similar in the sense that they were both criminals but their personalities were completely different, showing that being a criminal has nothing to do with him being good or bad but rather his reason for committing crimes is what actually determines whether he can be judged as a bad person or not. Charles Dickens in proving this also suggested that anyone can become a criminal from Magwitch’s life story and to further prove this the man Character in the novel Pip is surrounded by a life of crime. As a small boy Pip has his first encounter with crime through Magwitch and it is evidently seen that the Marshes has some tainted atmosphere filled with crime through Convicts always breaking out, the hulks (prisoner ship) sailing by and cannons firing to alert residence of a breakout, so it can therefore be said that Pip’s life even before meeting Magwitch had some element of crime in it. When Pip receives his great expectations and moves to London to meet Jaggers (criminal lawyer), he finds out that Jaggers office is beside New gate prison and realises that crime has always been present in his life. Dickens incorporates this element of crime in this new setting not only to relate his experience with the Debtors prison in his own life and foreshadow future encounters with crime but I believe it can be connected to Magwitch in the sense that Magwitch lived in poverty something that he could not control meaning he did not choose to be poor which drove him to become a criminal and Pip now is surrounded by all this crime, he could be easily be influenced in the future to become a riminal also and although one might say that you decide your own future and if you turn out to become a criminal it is your own fault but Dickens gives evidence through Magwitch’s story that sometimes our future can be influenced by factors surrounding us that we have no power over. Pip’s involvement in crime worsens when Magwitch told him that he was his benefactor, he is torn apart with guilt and shame but is further concerned by the fact that Magwitch has yet again escaped from prison and ne eds Pip’s help to prevent him from being caught. By law anyone who assists a criminal is also considered a criminal by association, Pip knows this but feels guilty that Magwitch who although at this point he was still ashamed of had done so much for him and so he felt obliged to returned the favour. Here it is proven that Pip has been influenced to become a criminal and has no power over this situation, Pip eventually decides to help Magwitch knowing that he could also be sent to jail. Dickens shows that even though Pip wants commit a crime it is for a justifiable reason just as Magwitch did stealing turnips to eat as a child. Pip receives help from Wemmick (Jagger’s clerk) and Herbert (Matthew Pocket’s son) with hiding Magwitch from the police and planning to smuggle him out of London. They also could be considered as criminals by helping Pip but their motives for helping Pip is purely good, Pip is their friend who they care for and so they would do anything to help him by doing this Dickens has proven that anyone can become a criminal under the circumstance meaning even good people can become criminals for good reasons. In the world today there are many different types of people, when we say that all criminals are bad it is not true which dickens himself believed, an example of what he meant by an exception is in the case of an 80 year old woman who has nothing left, no one to take care of her, if she has no other means of surviving but to steal does that make her a bad person? What about the man whose father is dying of an illness and he needs money for the operation but he lives in poverty so he robs a bank to pay for the operation, is he also bad for wanting to save his father’s life? Although there is no excuse for committing a crime just as Magwitch realized that the life he lived was inexcusable (), it does not mean that he should be labelled as being a bad person. Therefore with all the evidence that has been given it can be concluded that if people who commit crimes based on good intentions are considered criminals not all criminals are bad, but the question now becomes , who decides which intentions are good?.

Account for the decline in prestige and authority of the pap essays

Account for the decline in prestige and authority of the pap essays Account for the decline in prestige and authority of the papacy during the During the fourteenth century, the papacy suffered a huge decline in prestige and authority due to many factors. These include, the open conflict between Pope Boniface VIII and King Phillip IV of France, the advancement of some city-states of Italy with Rome being left behind, the removal of the Apostolic See from Rome to Avignon, the Great Schism and the papacies focus on administrative and juristic issues rather than spiritual purity. Since the investiture contest (1075-1122) there have been ongoing struggles between the secular and spiritual powers. Most notable is the open conflict between King Phillip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII over the ability to tax the church and the ability to bring the clergy under the justice of the king. Secular taxing of the church was not what the papacy wanted as it gave them less money to tax for themselves. The papal bull Clericis Laicos forbade such taxes. King Phillip defied the bull and continued to tax the clergy. This is understandable as if he were to obey the bull; a vast amount of taxable land would be lost to him. The nature of Criminous clergy was also a big issue as the people saw preists mildly rebuked for serious crimes. This led to a general fealing that the church was coddling its own. Phillip claimed that anyone who breaks secular law should be tried in a secular court. Pope Boniface disagreed fealing that the Church could not be independandt if its persone l could be arrested at any time. Unam Sanctum was isued to assert the superiority of the Church over secular poweres. ...Behold, here are two swords... both are in the power of the Church, the spiritual sword and the material, but the latter is to be used for the church and the former by her... This illustrates the papal view of the world and effectivaly removes the secular ability to charge members...

The Feng Shui of Your Kitchens Architecture

The Feng Shui of Your Kitchen's Architecture Modern-day architects and believers in the ancient Eastern art, feng shui, agree: When it comes to home design, the kitchen is king. After all, its human nature to associate food and cooking with nurturing and sustenance.   Feng shui practitioners suggest that how you design and decorate the kitchen can influence your prosperity and health. Architects from the Western world may not talk about the ancient art of feng shui, but theyll intuitively figure out the energies of space. Chi, or Universal Energy in feng shui, is compatible with universal design and accessibility in architectural practice. Both share many of the same core beliefs, so lets look at some basic feng shui ideas and see how they apply to modern kitchen design. You Gotta Believe: The Disclaimer The first thing to bear in mind when considering any feng shui advice is that ultimately, feng shui is a complex practice with several different schools. Recommendations will vary from school to school and from one practitioner to another. So too, advice will differ depending upon the particular home - and the unique people living in it. Yet, despite their diverse views, feng shui practitioners will agree on basic principles for kitchen design. Placement: Wheres the Kitchen? When you first plan to build a new home, where should you put the kitchen? We can’t always decide where each room in a house or apartment will be in relation to the others, but if you’re working with new construction or doing extensive renovations, ideally the kitchen will be in the back of the house, at least behind the center line of the house. In any case, it’s better if you don’t see the kitchen immediately upon entering the house, as this can portend digestive, nutritional, and eating problems. Having the kitchen at the entry point can also mean that guests will come over and eat and then leave immediately. Such a placement can also encourage the inhabitants to eat all the time. But if your kitchen is in the front of the house, don’t panic.  Use this as an opportunity to get creative. One easy solution is to hang sheer or beaded curtains over the kitchen door. A more elegant way to redirect space ot to install louvered doors or a sheer sliding panel like an installed Japanese silk screen. The point is to command the direction of energy within the homes space. Provide something delightfully eye-catching across a hall or in a vestibule near the kitchen. That way, attention is diverted from the busy kitchen. Sliding Panel Doors Can Hide Kitchen Spaces. Ben Rahn/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images (cropped) Kitchen Layout Its important for the cook to be in a commanding position when at the stove. The cook should be able to clearly see the doorway without turning away from the stove. This is also good accessibility practice, especially for the deaf. Renovating a kitchen to this configuration can be particularly challenging. Many modern kitchens place the range facing the wall. To resolve the problem, some feng shui consultants recommend hanging something reflective, such as a mirror or a shiny sheet of decorative aluminum, over the stove. The reflective surface can be any size, but the bigger it is, the more powerful the correction will be. For a more dramatic solution, consider installing a cooking island. Placing the stove in a central island allows the cook to see the entire room, including the doorway. Beyond the feng shui benefits, a cooking island is practical. The wider your view, the more you’ll be able to comfortably talk with dinner guests or keep an eye on the kids as you - or they - prepare the meal. Natural Lighting Enhanced by Task Lighting Flow Into Open Spaces. Mel Curtis/Getty Images (cropped) About Cooking Islands Cooking islands have become a popular trend in kitchen design. According to Guita Behbin, owner of Duramaid Industries (a kitchen and bath design and renovation company) many customers want their kitchens to flow into an open space, or Great Room, that includes a living and dining area. Designing a kitchen around a cooking island will help keep the cook involved in whatever is happening in that Great Room, whether it’s before-dinner conversation or hearing about a childs homework. Feng shui-inspired kitchen design dovetails with the contemporary trend toward group cooking. Instead of isolating the cook, families and guests often gather in the kitchen and participate in the meal preparation. Busy working couples use dinner preparation as an important time to unwind together. Cooking with kids becomes a way to teach responsibility and build self-esteem. The Triangle According to Sheffield feng shui course instructor Marelan Toole, good kitchen design is based on a traditional triangle model, with the sink, refrigerator and range making up each point of the triangle (view example). There should be a six-to-eight-foot distance between each appliance. This distance allows for maximum convenience and a minimum of repeated moves. Providing space between each of the major appliances will help you follow a core feng shui principle. Separate the fire elements - such as the stove and microwave - from water elements - such as the refrigerator, dishwasher, and sink. You may use wood to separate these elements, or you can use a plant or a painting of a plant to suggest a wooden divider. The feng shui element of fire is expressed with the triangular shape. In the kitchen, controlling fire is a good thing, whether youre an architect or a feng shui consultant. Sink, Refrigerator, and Range At Points of a Triangle. Adrianna Williams, Bill Diodato/Getty Images (cropped) Kitchen Lighting In any room, fluorescent lights do not promote good health. They constantly flicker, affecting the eyes and nervous system. Fluorescent lights can cause hypertension, eyestrain and headaches. However, they do serve a purpose, as they provide bright light at low cost. Light energy will influence your kitchens energy. If you decide that you do need fluorescent lights in your kitchen, use full-spectrum bulbs. Energy-efficient lighting and appliances are characteristics of both feng shui practices and green architecture. The Kitchen Stove Because the stove represents health and wealth, you want to use the burners on the stove top equally, rotating their use rather than habitually using a particular burner. Changing burners  represents getting money from multiple sources. Of course, the practice can also be seen as a practical step, similar to rotating the tires on a car. The old-fashioned stove, as opposed to a microwave, is often preferred because it is more in keeping with the feng shui belief that we should slow down, become more conscious of each activity, and do activities with intention. Heating a quick meal in the microwave is certainly convenient, but doing this may not lead to the most serene state of mind. Many feng shui practitioners are concerned with excess radiation and electromagnetic fields and would therefore prefer to avoid the microwave altogether. Obviously, each home and family will have to find their own balance between modern conveniences and optimal feng shui practice. Position the Stove To Enable Interactions. John Slater/Getty Images Clutter As with all rooms in the house, the kitchen should be kept neat and uncluttered. Clear your counters of everything. Store appliances in cabinets. Any broken appliances should be tossed out. Even if it means living without a toaster for a while, it’s better to have no toaster than one that doesn’t work very well. Also, remember to keep kitchen areas clean. Good Energy A Practical Design In some cases, building code regulations actually reflect good feng shui principles. Some codes make it illegal to place a window over the stove. Feng shui teaches us that windows should not be placed over stoves because heat represents prosperity, and you don’t want your prosperity flooding out the window. Luckily, feng sShui isn’t only about having a room with good chi, or energy. Feng shui is also a practical guide for design. For this reason, feng shui can be used with any style of room. The most popular styles often repeat as trends, according to kitchen design specialist Guita Behbin: the simple Shaker style seems to always be trending; a very contemporary look, with solid colors and wood grains is often popular; in some situations, a very opulent look makes a statement, with carvings, corbels, and cabinets on legs. Any of these styles can be successfully combined with the principles of feng shui to make for a kitchen that’s functional, up-to-date, and easy on the chi. It is truly amazing how much the ancient feng shui beliefs have to tell us about the design of modern kitchens. What type of lights should you install in your new kitchen? Where should you place the appliances? Architects and believers of this ancient Eastern art offer solutions, and their ideas are surprisingly similar. East or West, good design rules the day. Source Content adapted from an article by Nurit Schwarzbaum and Sarah Van Arsdale, courtesy of the online Sheffield School of Interior Design at www.sheffield.edu, now the New York Institute of Art and Design (NYIAD) at https://www.nyiad.edu/.

Investment Basics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Investment Basics - Essay Example Creating portfolio involved asset allocation, asset selection decision, and asset execution. In asset allocation, the investors will decide on what marketable securities will he be investing, either in equities, fixed-income securities, and real assets (physical or identifiable assets). After the allocation, investors need to select on what are his asset preferences between stocks, bonds, and many more. The selection will be followed by the execution of investment portfolio and investment strategy. The final part of the process is performance evaluation wherein investment is constantly monitored by the investors themselves or through a portfolio manager. The Four Investments for Consideration in any Investment Portfolio Bonds (Municipal & Corporate). It is a debt instrument with specific return, interest and principal, and maturity date (Brigham & Ehrhardt, 2008, p. 157). Municipal bonds are debt securities issued by the government level whose maturity date is in a long-term basis. T hese bonds are considered to be secured and these are issued in order to support government operations and projects for the common good. Municipal bonds are known to be tax-exempt but it depends upon the purpose and jurisdiction. Corporate bonds are debt securities issued by corporations or business firms to finance variety of private purposes. These bonds are subject to a much higher interest rate for it is a risky investment (Brigham & Houston, 2009, p. 196). Stocks (Common and Preferred). These are issued securities that represent ownership. Ownership through the purchased of stocks are called stockholders which these are represented by stock certificates. Usually, stock prices of companies who are financially stable are high compared to those who are poor in performance because the higher is the value of the stocks the greater is the return of investment. There are two types of stocks, the common and the preferred stocks. In terms of the declaration of dividend and bankruptcy, p referred stockholders are satisfied first before the common shareholders (Investors Business Daily, 1996, p. 36). Both stocks running after income, the only difference is the risk involved. Preferred stocks are less risky but the growth income is fairly dependable while common stocks assumed higher risk but unlimited growth in income and capital gain (Rini, 2003, p. 33). Mutual Funds. It is an investment that used money â€Å"from a group of people with common investment goals to buy securities such as stocks, bond, money market instruments, a combination of these investments, or other funds† (Mobius, 2007, p. 3). These groups of investment securities are put together in a portfolio and it is appropriately managed by a portfolio manager. More often, investors prefer to invest in mutual funds because of access to a diversified portfolio, liquidity, and expertise by professional fund managers; however, mutual funds shared almost the same risk with investment in individual stock s, and drawbacks are always present. Derivatives. It is a financial instruments based on financial measurement of other assets that usually comes in contracts (Bragg, 2002, p. 156). Some of derivative instruments are forward, future, options, and swaps. The value of derivatives is based on the prices of some underlying assets or instruments. It also involved contracts between a seller and a buyer wherein the value is based on bargaining power (Rezaee, 20001, p. 390). Risk

Stop the Bullying Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Stop the Bullying - Essay Example Although there is no universal definition of bullying it is widely thought to be a negative behavior which reflects aggressiveness through which the person intends to harm and hurt the victim. Farrington (1993), an English criminologist, defined bullying as: â€Å"Repeated oppression, psychological or physical, of a less powerful person by a more powerful person.† This, however, is the definition of when the bully is an individual although it is very often seen that bullying is also done in groups. Thus, for that purpose a more fitted and revised definition could be: Bullying is repeated oppression, psychological or physical, of a less powerful person by a more powerful or group of persons (Rigby, 2007, p. 15). The bully keeps on acting that way and the victim is helpless in that that he cannot defend himself from the bully (Olweus, 1999). Concisely, bullying can be referred to as the â€Å"systematic abuse of power†. And here power does not necessarily refer to physica l strength, but it could also be emotional or mental. For instance, a bully may have a more powerful personality, might be mentally tougher, have ambition and be insensitive. Bullying may happen in several contexts, such as childhood as well as adulthood. Nevertheless, bullying has been, and still is, most associated with schools. Bullying could be conducted by a group or by one person alone. Normally it is supposed that bullying occurs between students; however, it is possible for there to be a teacher-pupil and pupil-teacher bullying too. The general idea of bullying is also that it involves beating and physical violence – the larger and older child hurting the weaker one – but again, there also exists verbal bullying, wherein the bully teases and hurls verbal abuses at his victim; indirect bullying in which the bully socially manipulates the victim and uses him for attacks within the class; and relational bullying which refers to disrupting peace between peers and h arming their relationship. This could be done by talking bad about others, spreading rumors, and socially excluding people. A more recent form has been cyberbullying – bullying others over the internet (Smith, 2013). It is about time that bullying is addressed and reduced. It is an intolerable behavior due to the way the powerless victim is physically, verbally or psychologically oppressed by the bully and for no rhyme or reason. Bullying among adults is not tolerated – we also raise voice against domestic abuse between a husband and his wife, and between the parents and their children. However, school bullying has not been addressed to the same extent (Rigby, 2007). How children become bullies â€Å"When you really take a close look at bullying, it's happening with kids who feel the need to be aggressive after being treated in an aggressive manner themselves†¦ They're the kids who may be suffering from abuse or from just not having their needs met at school or a t home† - Paul Quinlan (Hopson, 2002). According to Quinlan 2-16% of the below-18 age group bullies each other. Here a very important factor to probe into is how a child becomes a bully. That is the root cause of the problem and therefore it needs to be understood in order to solve the issue. More often than not, children dealing with difficult situations at home end up bullying others to regain the lost self-esteem and feel important and worthy. Such situations could be fights between their parents, financial problems, a drunkard parent who abuses them, and so on. Many times the bully