Understanding Education: Theories, Experiences And Arguments

Equality in organisations

Introduction

In the United Kingdom, every organization is committed to promote equality, value diversity and create an all-inclusive environment for both their clients as well as their employees in their policy. They are increasingly embracing diverse environments at local and also international level. This can be noticed in their clients, customers, workforce, suppliers, suppliers, partners and communities. The business environment is very competitive and for an organization to be successful, performances and employees engagement is a key factor. Therefore, this paper attempts to evaluate the key features of the equality and diversity of an organization. The organization to be examined critically is UK Oxford shire. The paper would examine the challenges in which the organization experience in operationalizing its policy and approaches which could be taken to ensure effective implementation.

Main Body

Age UK Oxford shire is an organization that is promoting the well-being of old persons and is working to make later life most enjoyable and fulfilling experiences. They understand that all people are individual with diverse preferences, abilities and needs. The organization is aiming to reflect diversity and equality in everything it undertakes. They make their services accessible and inclusive to old persons from all sections of the community, retaining and attracting diverse workforce. Age UK Oxford shire believes that discrimination denies human dignity and should be actively opposed. Diversity means variety, difference and multiplicity. It implies an approach to tackle an inequality that stems from forms of discrimination based on disability, age, disability, domestic circumstances, ethnic or national origin, gender. In addition, they want equality regardless of nationality, race, religion or belief, political affiliation, sexual orientation and trade union membership.

Age UK Oxford shire is aiming at treating people in a fair manner, dignity and with respect. The organization cannot give room any form of victimization, harassment and discrimination. Their aim is to value differences in a positive manner. Age UK Oxford shire believes that in order to be more effective and a better place to work they require to harness attributes, experiences and contributions. The organization prioritizes equality as their mainstream part of work. They make sure that their policies, practices and plans embrace equality targets and objectives appropriately. Age UK Oxford shire organization is committed to publicly do something visible and practical about Diversity and Equality.

Age

Ageism can be defined as ‘application of assumed age-based group characteristics to an individual, regardless of that individual’s actual personal characteristics’3. Age discrimination can be experienced by anyone, at any age, young and old. As an example, in an interview the panel may assume that ‘older’ candidates are less able to learn new skills or ‘younger’ candidates are less likely to be committed to the organization. Such assumptions may mean that the panel members fail to consider the individual’s skills, experience and personal characteristics.

Disability

The ‘social model’ of disability, which MMU supports, locates the disability within the physical barriers and negative attitudes in society rather than a person’s impairment. In the medical model, disabled people are seen as the problem. They need to change and adapt to circumstances (if they can), and there is no suggestion that society needs to change. It is important to avoid characterizing disabled people as a victimized group. Avoid expressions that turn adjectives into nouns e.g. ‘the disabled’ which depersonalize, or which define people in terms of their disability, such as ‘epileptics’. It is helpful to use positive images of disabled people in case studies etc. in order to illustrate that disability is incidental to the activity being undertaken. Bear in mind the needs of disabled people in the design of written material. In producing typed text consider the size and shape of the typeface to ensure that the maximum number of readers can see it clearly without assistance.

This will help those with visual loss or dyslexia to read the text, as smaller and more elaborate fonts are more difficult to read. High contrast text/images with uncluttered backgrounds are best. Try to avoid text superimposed on images. Glossy paper and coloured print also make reading more difficult for everyone. Written materials, where requested should be available in alternative formats e.g. on disk for those unable to read print and in advance of the meeting or lecture. All web based material should be accessible to the technologies used by some disabled people and conform to the good practice guidelines on accessibility to disabled people.

Gender

The English language has traditionally tended to assume the world to be male unless specified otherwise and therefore it is important to be sensitive to ways in which the use of sex neutral words can actively promote equality. Using ‘he’ to refer to an unspecified person is now generally considered unacceptable and it is preferable to use ‘(s) he’, ‘she/he’ or’s/he’ or ‘he or she’ and vice versa. Use gender-neutral language; women are also often referred to in terms of the title conferred by their marital status ‘ ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’. As you will often not know a woman’s marital status, it is safer to use the title ‘Ms’, which may not always be their preferred title, but will not be inaccurate. Approximately half of the people in paid work in Britain are women and a minority of households now takes the form of a traditional nuclear family. It is important to reflect this in case studies and teaching materials and you should consider showing women in jobs, hobbies and roles traditionally ascribed to men and vice versa. Use ‘partner’ instead of spouse routinely, to avoid assuming that everyone is a heterosexual couple or part of a ‘traditional’ family. Sex has traditionally been associated with the words for particular roles for example ‘foreman’, ‘housewife’ and ‘chairman’. The test is always to ask yourself whether you would describe someone of the other sex in the same way and so using the word ‘chairman or ‘chairwoman’ to advertise a post on a committee or board would not be advisable.

Race and Ethnicity

When it comes to cultural classification or ethnicity both of these factors are always self-defined and one individual’s opinion may differ from another. The term ‘ethnicity’ is used to refer to the sense of identity which derives from shared cultural characteristics such as language, religion, history or geographical location. Everyone has a race and belongs to an ethnic group, whether they are in the majority or minority. The term ‘ethnic’ to describe someone’s racial origin is therefore meaningless. BME stands for black and minority ethnic. ‘Minority ethnic’ refers to those people/groups other than the white British majority. The term ‘black people’ refers to Black British, African-Caribbean, African, or African American people. Opinion is divided amongst British Asians about whether they consider themselves as ‘black’ and for this group the term should be considered a matter of self-definition. ‘Asian’ and ‘South Asian’ in the UK is used to refer to people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and their British Asian descendants. ‘South East Asian’ includes people and their descendants from the Far East.

Religion and Belief

You should be respectful of people’s religious beliefs and be aware that some terminology may offend. The most commonly used inappropriate terms in the UK tend to refer to Christianity. You should be respectful of, and sensitive to, the way in which we refer to the religious beliefs and customs of all faiths.

Sexual Orientation

The dominant societal bias towards heterosexual lifestyles fosters assumptions that attraction to people of the opposite sex is the ‘norm’ and a different orientation towards people of the same sex is therefore unacceptable. As equal members of society lesbians and gay men should be described in terms that do not demean them, sensationalize their lives or imply deviance. The term ‘homosexual’ is generally not used now, as it has medical and derogatory connotations and is often considered only to refer to men. To avoid any misunderstanding people should stick to using the words lesbian, gay or bisexual – even though they may hear LGB people choosing to speak about themselves differently. Care is needed however. Some women, for instance, may refer to themselves as gay women rather than as lesbians.

Transgender

‘Trans’ is an inclusive term for those who identify themselves as transgender, transsexual or transvestite. The word ‘trans’ can be used without offence to cover people undergoing gender transition; people who identify as someone with a different gender from that in which they were born, but who may have decided not to undergo medical treatment; and people who choose to dress in the clothing typically worn by the other sex.

Challenges in Operationalization of the Policy

Furthermore, the legal and social structures put in place not only enable this to happen, but are deliberately utilized to create inequality. Jewson and Mason (1986) argued that at times those responsible for equality of opportunity at the ground level deliberately conflate policy models to confuse opponents; we believe that the problem is much greater than this.

The 1998 guidelines for EU member states refers to ”main streaming” of gender

equality issues into all four of the pillars for action of increased employment,

entrepreneurship, adaptability and equal opportunity (Booth and Bennett, 2002). The

concept of main streaming is not unproblematic. For example, gender specific issues

around violence, poverty, abuse and prostitution are impossible to ad dress with

main streaming. The focus on equal treatment further denies the oppression of certain

groups (Young, 2000).

At the organizational level main streaming has meant something else. Part of this organizational mainstreaming agenda has been caught up in the development of a parallel project which is often labelled as ”diversity ”. On one level it is a free-standing policy objective, where greater diversity is something to be pursued and celebrated, on another it forms the co re of a policy agenda known as ”man aging diversity” (Kandola et al. 1995). While managing diversity has made an impact on some organisations, as we will argue below (see also Johns, 2006), in practical terms it has yet to displace equal opportunities thinking, language and practice. Diversity, as a principle is conceptually at odds with the policy of mainstreaming, despite its inclusive language (Dickens, 1994).

The problems of the European Union: essay help site:edu

Introduction

Ever since the beginning of European culture and the European way of life began its journey in ancient Greece throughout the Roman times, the medieval ages or in the modern times, it has never been this integrated and peaceful as now. The continent has been one of the most diverse of all continents, if accounted for size. Europe was a strong continent, with countries that have ruled half of the planet at some points, but in the modern age the continent have became divided and weak, especially compared to the continent sized superpowers of the USA and the Soviet Union. This reason have brought forth the idea of a single, united Europe, which is able to held its own in both military and economic terms. After this enlightment, the leaders of the continent have gradually made changes in their policies and facilitated change so a supranational organization can be founded to unite the old continent. Even though the cooperation is much more developed as it was used to, but the fiscal and monetary cooperation is far from perfect. Only the fiscal policy is a common policy, but the monetary policy is at national level. The current debt crisis showed the dangers of this half integration.

Europe and the problems of unity

First of all, the European Union is using a same currency, with same interest rates for very differently developed countries. The needs of Germany are completely different and on a whole different level as of a smaller county such as Malta or even Belgium. The problem is that the common monetary policy is set for the whole Euro zone.

This means that the interest rates are similar for countries with different growth prospects. There is no “one size fits all” in economics what is acceptable for Germany or other countries, with relative high growth rate and developed financial markets, is not acceptable for other countries, which are dealing with recession. This has become clear when the Greek government have launched a campaign to change the mind of the policymakers and the leaders of the main countries of the EU, first and foremost, Germany (Bird, 2015). This continuous battle shows that the one size fits all economic policy is simply not fitted for such a diverse union. The ECB set higher interest rates to favor the German economy and help to boost the European economy through that, but these higher interest rates were not appropriate for some other countries such as Portugal and Italy (Pettinger, 2013).

Europe is really diverse and this makes it harder for workers to deal with unemployment, than it does in a country with less diversity in language and culture. Because of this, if someone got unemployed in Hungary, he would have a much harder time finding a new job in another country. The language and the culture are quite different in Europe, unlike the US.

The US is often thought to be the Optimal Currency Area. The main criteria are the labor and capital mobility. The second one is the price and wage flexibility across regions and the third is the ability to transfer government funds and adjust the taxation across region.

How do the countries of the EU compare to the states of the US in terms of the OCA criteria?

Labor mobility US > EMU

Capital mobility US = EMU

Price flexibility US = EMU

Wage flexibility US > EMU

Union level fiscal transfers US > EMU

(CES, 2009, Optimal Currency Area)

It is evident, that the US outperforms the European Monetary Union in 3 areas out of the 5, and even in the remaining field, the two unions are equals. The EU is not able to beat the US in any relevant fields, which leads to structural level problems, and smaller competitiveness compared to the US and the rest of the world economy.

To balance out these problems and to become similar to the US, the EU needs to remove language and cultural barriers throughout the Union. It also need to make the wages much more responsive to price and inflation fluctuations. This limits the labor movement severely. The last main issue is that the EMU cannot transfer funds or adjust taxes from one region to another. In the US these issues are resolved and it is a one of the main source of their general efficiency.

A similar, federal-local system similar to the US could solve funding issues in EU projects; as regions would be able to use their funding for the smaller issues, while the higher level could concentrate on European cohesion. This of course would also require that the EU would get more funding from the members, and this is unlikely in the foreseeable future (Knipton, 2013).

The fiscal policy is limited. It is important to have similar levels of national debts, because otherwise the counties which have a higher national debt will have a hard time finding buyers for their national debt. This caused a huge problem in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), who have huge national debt, which is getting harder and harder to finance.

One of the main problems is that there is no Europe-wide fiscal authority. Each individual country in the EU controls its own budget and thus fiscal policy. It is a problem because the EMU cannot deal with the economic fluctuations on a regional level and it cannot eliminate the ups and downs. Because of the nationally lead fiscal policy, it is harder for the European Central Bank to cooperate with the national level authorities. Another setback is that these national authorities can and already have acted without regards to the common hazards and they already collected high national deficits (Pettinger, 2013).

The specialists argue that countries which are member of the Euro Zone, tend to fall into a sense of security and they think that they are safe from the currency crisis. This sense that for security can be a quite dangerous one, because countries and the local governments are delaying the structural changes and fiscal responsibility. This is weakening the Euro Zone, because the Economic and Monetary Union cannot affect the local fiscal policies.

Germany has a sense of recovery, as the investors are flocking to the largest and safest economy of the Euro zone. This made the Germans sure that their mix of fiscal and monetary strictness and discipline is the only working way; this perception have blocked the talks between Germany and Greece, as Germany is unwilling to accept alternative solutions or any kind of extra support (Smith and Rankin, 2015).

In the case of Greece, they benefitted from the low bond yields, because the Euro zone was backing up the Greek debt. Because of this, they delayed the structural reforms and this lead to a dangerous situation, where even the complete bankruptcy of Greece was imaginable (El-Elrian, 2012).

There is no lender of last resort yet, because the European Central Bank will not buy bonds from countries which have short term liquidity problems. Because of this, those member states that need the ECB the most – are excluded.

Also, there divergence in bank rates. The Euro zone is supposed to create a common interest rate, however we see something else. We see that the interest rates for the private sector in the peripheral countries are significantly higher than the ones at the central countries. Even though the ECB tried to counter it by cutting the official interest rate, but it was not effective, since the banks did not cut a meaningful amount from the interest rates charged after debt. So this move failed to solve the issues of the companies in the peripheral countries, such as Italy or Spain (Pettinger, 2013)

Social Issues

“Europe is facing its worst humanitarian crisis in six decades,” according to the general secretary of the International Federation of Red Cross (IFCR), Bekele Geleta. Even years after the financial crisis, there are millions of people falling under the poverty and staying there for indefinable time (Machaus, 2013).

The crisis made the poor poorer, and it also started to destroy the middle class as well. The middle class of Serbia for example had already been shirked.

The crisis also affected the hospitals and the social sector, because the countries cut from the funding of these as a reaction to the crisis. So now when the people need it most, there is less help than it used to be. The level of service in these sectors keeps declining, which is completely in contrary with the EU’s objectives.

The unemployment is also one of the largest concerns of European Union. The newcomers to the job market are affected even more severely. This means that the young people are not able to find jobs in their own country and they start migrating to other countries. In Spain the unemployment rate under 25 years is more that 50%. This leads to the overburdening of the receiver’s social sector and it also increases xenophobia and rising social turmoil, such as anti migration protests. The migrated workers are already causing problems, and it would only deteriorate; with a mass of peripheral Europeans migrating to the centre (Pipes, 2014).

These people are not only in the peripheral countries, with weaker economy. The number of people dependent on welfare is growing in the most powerful economies of EU as well. In Germany and France there are more and more people who are unable to afford food and rent at the same time. If it was not for the food aids, these people would either starve or would be homeless. According to the Red Cross, there are around 600 000 German citizens, who are in this situation and the number is still growing (Machaus, 2013)

Conclusion

The problems of the European Union can come from several reasons. The first is the Great Recession, which hit the Euro zone and crippled the economy.

However there are other factors as well, which can be equally if not more dangerous. The countries of the EU are not pushing the structural, fiscal and monetary reforms which are needed to secure the future of the European Union.

The rising problem of unemployment is also linked to both reasons. To stop this, the European Union needs to deal with structural reforms, because this problem cannot be solved by just policy changes, it needs real changes and real solutions for the problems of the European Union.

Challenges of caregivers

Caregivers were found to endure mental stress due to their relatives’ injury and care-related issues. They were worried about the impact of the trauma on their clients’ health, outcome of treatment and longevity of care giving. The findings of this study were consisted with those of Dickson et al., (2011) that reported spousal caregivers of persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) experience worries as a result of uncertainty of the outcome of their partners’ health conditions, sudden change of role and chronicity of their roles. This study found that some caregivers were despaired by the poor outcome of their clients’ treatment when the care recipients could not walk during discharged. This concurs with the findings of a study reported caregivers were devastated and worried upon realizing the clients’ spinal injury was permanent (Lucke et al., 2013). The situation worsened their mental health by increasing their risk of developing depression (Rodakowski et al., 2013).

Thoughts of how to get money for treatment of clients culminated in obsessive thinking and worrying due to the high monetary requirement. Gardiner, Brereton, Frey, Wilkinson-Meyers, & Gott, (2014) gave similar description in their which suggested the cost of caring for a family member led to increased caregiver burden. This resulted in sleepless night and loss of concentration. Effects of financial burden on caregivers have also been reported to include increased worrying and difficulties in coping (Gardiner et al., 2014).

This study also found pains that persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) went through also emotional affected their caregivers. They were worried when the clients were going through pain or grief due to unexpected injury. They empathized with their care recipients when they were in pain. As commented by PP3 ‘When he went to the theatre and came back, that very day the doctors needed to do (wound) dressing, the way the child was shouting, I could not stand there. It was as if I was the one they were working on.’ The findings of this study is similar to those reported by Angel & Buss, (2011) among cohabitant couples whose partners had SCI in Denmark that the injured person’s pain increased psychological stress of healthy partners. Studies have also shown that caregivers go through sorrow without having emotional assistance (Lucke et al., 2013;Wells et al., 2009) but are however expected to provide emotional support to the injured person. This current study reported caregivers who could not control their emotions after their client’s injury wept upon seeing them immediately after the injury. Consistent with other findings, a qualitative study using grounded theory approach by Lucke et al., (2013) indicated that family caregivers of newly Latino persons with SCI experienced feeling of sadness during the early months of caring. The issue was not peculiar to only this study, Chen & Boore, (2009) reported that caregivers wept because of the incapacitation of their clients at the early stage of the injury. Dickson et al., (2011) also suggested moderate depression among 40% of caregivers caring for persons with SCI due to caregiver burden.

5.2 Challenges of caregivers

Caregivers reported being worried by myriad challenges. According to ABCX family stress model, stressors are the issues or needs that upset the caregiver or the family. The study revealed caregivers were faced with financial need because of the huge cost of treatment that affected the family’s finances. The findings of this study mirrors those by Monlinari, Gum, Roscore & Mills, (2008) which found family members were upset by the continual financial demands of caring for an injured relative. Similarly, Chen & Boore, (2009) reported caregivers and their families were faced with financial challenges after the unexpected injury. They were worried because of fear of lack financial resources required for the treatment of the disabled member (Chen & Boore, 2009). Caring for persons with SCI is financially intensive as a result, a huge financial burden is placed on families whose member is injured in the Ghanaian setting. A study reported financial cost included transportation to hospital, costs of medical service, prescription drugs and hospital bills (Gardiner et al., 2014; Sun, 2014). It was revealed that inadequate funding could limit the quality of medical treatment the client could access since the cost of treatment had to be paid by the family before certain services could be rendered.

The study also identified that, transportation of persons with SCI to the hospital was perceived a challenge for caregivers because the client’s condition, cost involved and scarcity of ambulances in certain remote parts of Ghana. Other studies found lack of access to transportation as a vexed challenge that made the need for physiotherapy and going out with the person with SCI for social activities difficult (Beauregard & Noreau, 2009; DeSanto-Madeya, 2009). Use of taxi and other commercial vehicles were employed to convey persons with SCI to the hospital and this sometimes caused the clients a lot of discomfort. This study result supports claims by Ahidjo et al., (2011), that indicated the use of ambulances and commercial vehicles for transportation of person with SCI in Nigeria. According to Ahidjo et al., (2011), the use of commercial vehicles and crouch positions were factors that negatively influence the outcome of the injured person condition.

Besides, the art of caregiving was as a major challenge that caregivers estimated as a difficult. Caregivers had to take care of all personal care activities that the clients could not perform personally. Caregiving tasks identified included bath??ing, dressing, diaper change, transferring, laundry, and transportation, feeding, managing medications (Rodakowski et al., 2013). Physical care of clients was reported by this study as a cumbersome activity that required extra training or caution. Likewise, 68% of caregivers in a comparable study reported being overwhelmed by their caregiving responsibilities (Arango-Lasprilla et al., 2010). They reported being anxious about the risk of causing further injury and pain to their clients because such clients require special attention (DeSanto-Madeya, 2009). This study reported their caregiving functions affected their physical health. Chen & Boore, (2009) gave a similar description when they reported, caregivers complained of exhaustion due to caregiving tasks. This study also found bed sore made caregiving tasks complex because the sores were never healing. Caregivers felt unprepared to deal with the complications of the client’s condition such as bedsores (Lucke et al., 2013). This was supported by PP1 as he pointed out ‘He is going to be discharged but here he is having some bed sores. Which we know it is not something which can be handled easily by us or any other person’Now how are we going to handle it’?

Though caregivers lacked the skills for caring for the injured family member, they were not given any training. A study found caregivers observed nurses without being able to assist their clients much at the initial stages of care. They further indicated how significant it is to involve relative in the caring process Angel & Buus, 2011). It is apparent that a special training for caregivers of person with SCI on the management of the injured family member at home in the Ghanaian setting would be worthwhile. This current study found that caregivers faced difficulties at the health facility during admission of their clients due to limited access to beds, uneasy access to medical specialist and unfriendly relationship of some healthcare providers. Brew Richardson, (2002) reported 7.7% of clients were delayed at the emergency because they had difficulty accessing hospital inpatients beds. This means that delays in access to inpatient beds could also delay certain specialist care. This study found that, relationship with healthcare providers had two facets. While some caregivers reported having supportive relationship with healthcare providers others were not treated friendly. The finding of this study is consistent with those by Lucke et al., (2013) which identified some caregivers found healthcare providers very helpful and supportive with the educational and physical aspects of care. Unfriendly relationship with family caregivers resulted in poor discharge information that complicated client’s condition. This finding pararelles other studies that suggested poor discharge information to caregivers can have direct effect on the care of clients in the community placing client safety in danger (Shivji, Ramoutar, Bailey, & Hunter, 2015). PP5 pointed out she was not given any information with regards to her daughters wound dressing at home except being told to come for review in two (2) weeks’ time. She was also not able to make enquiry from the nurse on duty because she was very unfriendly and that resulted in her daughter’s wound being infected. Accordingly, healthcare providers need to ensure good relationship with clients and their family caregivers so that their concerns can be broached for redress.

Also, caregivers were reported by this current study to spend more time at the hospital while their clients were on admission. Some caregivers came to the hospital early in the morning to attend to their clients and left there late in the evening. Similar findings have been reported by Lucke et al., (2013) that caregivers visited the hospital frequently while the family member was on admission, to learn to care for their loved ones.

Electrical Engineering: writing essay help

Electrical Engineering is a standout amongst the most imperative designing fields. It is a blend of different majors, for example, hardware, computerized interchanges, information transfers, and force gadgets, sign handling, incorporated circuits, micro processors and controllers. Livelihood opportunities are bounty in this field of study. Designers of this stream get employments in PC related firms, electrical and electronic firms, telecom commercial ventures and different assembling businesses. Electrical Engineering employments incorporate research, advancement, and outline, testing, counseling and educating. To be effective in Electrical Engineering we ought to be productive in critical thinking, innovative, and expert of PC plan, science and great learning in physical science and power to deliver adequate and decided yields.

“The architect and the technologist utilize a blend of science, math, and critical thinking abilities to outline, build, keep up, and circulate products, administrations, and data. In particular, specialists and designing technologists outline and grow new items and administrations. They create testing techniques and utilization research strategies to deliver sheltered, practical, and tough items and deal with the improvement and creation of products and administrations” [FDU Library]. Imagination is the real perspective that an Electrical Engineer ought to have.An Electrical Engineer ought to have solid learning at ideas in material science and math.

Moreover, specialized abilities and PC capability are needed for an essential basic occupation. There are some extra aptitudes helps Electrical Engineer manages diverse labs, for example, VHDL lab, Mat lab furthermore for outlining new CAD programming. Architects oblige manual and itemized learning of numerous sorts of get together procedures and different devices. Livelihood prerequisites differ by the forte of the stream we work.

We ought to have definite learning of the properties of metal and outline to make sheltered, proficient yields when we construct modern apparatus. To discover the vocation as an Electrical Engineer an individual ought to have a professional education. A percentage of the little occupations we traverse single guys degree just. The work here taking into account the standards and procedures in outline and usage with utilization of equipment and programming. Individuals who buckle down and fit for showing their abilities have extensive variety of headway opportunities in the assembling organizations and designing firms. Relational abilities are important to have the capacity to work with gatherings. We ought to comprehend proficient and moral obligations to be an impeccable specialist. We ought to have capacity direct new examinations, plan and examine to decipher information.

Electrical Engineers have difficulties, for example, critical thinking and the utilization of proper specialized arrangements, test supplies, and systems which will help us to accomplishment over the span of study. In this field we have long lasting adapting through course in specialized correspondence, research facility and division research exercises. Effective electrical designers have an alternate way to the issues furthermore conceive brand new ideas to discover the better arrangements. We ought to be meticulous when are dealing with our items. An effective specialist is one who is fit for checking little subtle elements at every step.

To be effective we ought to be great communicators and we ought to know how to compose clear and compact reports, the best approach to pass on our thoughts to our directors and ready to convey the guidelines to our representatives. Cooperation is most imperative in this field in light of the fact that it have all that much hard works which could be possible effortlessly when imparted. In a group the designer ought to work with an inspirational disposition for the accomplishment of the venture. Certainty at the work will pick up trust from the associates and great distinguishment from the higher powers.

In the event that you are an Electrical designer you are a regular learner on the grounds that innovation changes continually, so it keeps us to proceed with our training and stays overhauled with any progressions or new thoughts in the field. To be effective in this field we need to ceaselessly look at things and thinking in distinctive ways help us in adapting new ideas. We must think well when we are doing our work in light of the fact that slight blunder can result in the whole thing to come up short. Time administration is all that much essential here on the grounds that the vast majority of the things we bargain here are with time just; every gear is situated to work in the certain timeline. Fruitful electrical specialist can dissect and interfere with information and outline new gear’s when vital. We ought to be ready take obligations and difficulties at work. We ought to be mindful of the contemporary issues. You must realize what your errand is and ready to create dependable yield.

A decent specialist makes a supplies and innovation to the serve client needs. You must impact the client with the venture what you made. One ought to be dedicated furthermore a have decent hard working attitude. We ought to look after a ‘can do’ state of mind at the work space. Promptness ought to be kept up by great architect. Versatility and adaptability furthermore the capacity buckle down are fundamental for the development in this field when we take occupation as an issue. Impeccable judgment abilities are essential in adjusting expense issues, advantages, wellbeing quality.

There are a few vital subjects in this field, for example, Power hardware, Control frameworks, Integrated Circuits, Computer Communication Networks, VLSI, Electrical Circuits, Embedded frameworks, Micro Processors and Controllers, Electrical Circuits, CAD, Wireless Communications, Telecommunications and numerous more fields that an individual ought to have great learning for the gigantic accomplishment in Electrical Engineering.

In the present day world Telecommunication assumes a critical part as we all utilizing the some correspondence mediums, for example, Cell Phones to correspond with others, so the individual with great learning in Telecommunications have incredible interest concerning livelihood. IC circuits are vital on the grounds that it manages the outline of chips and coordinated circuit. Any electronic supplies ought to utilize coordinated circuits for its process. So IC circuits likewise assume a noteworthy part in Electrical building.

All the fields in Electrical Engineering are co related with one another, in the event that you have incredible information in any of the fields of Electrical Engineering one can have great job opportunities. Electrical and Communications Engineering is a stream in which we can work in Software field too. So Electrical Engineers will have double open doors.

At last an Electrical Engineer ought to have exhaustive information in different subjects and definite learning of central Electronics. One ought to be actually sound, inventive with new thoughts, effective with yields, great at arithmetic to manage the issues furthermore ideas of material science in light of the fact that one needs to manage significant ideas of physical science, look into, and grow new systems, gears. One ought to have learning on distinctive dialects and be arranged to work in different nations for turning into an effective Electrical Engineer.

Flora in the oral cavity: essay help

The oral cavity contains some of the varied and vast flora in the entire human body and is the main entrance for two systems vital to human function and physiology, gastrointestinal and respiratory systems. The mouth harbors a diverse, abundant and complex microbial community. This highly diverse microflora inhabits the various surfaces of the normal mouth. Bacteria accumulate on both the hard and soft oral tissues in biofilms. Bacterial adhesion is particularly important for oral bacteria. Some bacterial population causes the oral disease like dental caries, gingivitis, periodontitis etc. (Seymour et al.,2007)

The periodontal diseases are a diverse group of clinical entities in which induction of an inflammatory process results in destruction of the attachment apparatus, loss of supporting alveolar bone, and, if untreated, tooth loss. Periodontal disease is one of the most common diseases of the oral cavity and is the major cause of tooth loss in adults. Recently, there has been increasing interest in the relationship of periodontal disease to important systemic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease. (O’Toole G et al.,2000)

The group of bacteria identified as causative organisms in periodontitis are Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Bacteroides forsythus, Treponema denticola, T. socranskii, and P. intermedia.

2.2 Atherosclerosis

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), also called heart disease, is caused by disorders of the heart and blood vessels. It includes coronary heart disease (CHD), cerebrovascular disease, raised blood pressure, peripheral artery disease, rheumatic heart disease, congenital heart disease and heart failure. Many of these conditions are related to atherosclerosis.

Fig1: Showing atherosclerosis phenomenon

Atherosclerosis is a condition that develops when a substance called plaque (atheroma) builds up in the walls of the arteries. It involves a gradual and focal accumulation of lipids, smooth muscle cells, white blood cells, cholesterol crystals, calcium, and fibrous connective tissue under the surface lining (endothelium) of the artery, ultimately forming an elevated plaque that protrudes into the vessel’s lumen and significantly reducing blood flow.

2.3 Relation between periodontal disease and atherosclerosis

Oral conditions such as gingivitis and chronic periodontitis are found worldwide and are among the most prevalent microbial diseases of mankind. The cause of these common in’ammatory conditions is the complex microbiota found as dental plaque, a complex microbial bio’lm.

The association between periodontal diseases and coronary heart disease such as atherosclerosis, has been realised. (Chun Xiao et al.,2009)

Several studies have shown bacteria in the atherosclerotic plaques. In a study by Ford et al. , real-time PCR was used to show Porphyromonas gingivalis in 100% of atherosclerotic plaques. Chlamydia pneumoniae was found in approximately 30%. Helicobacter pylori and Campylobacter rectus were both found in approximately 4% of the arteries. These results clearly show that oral organisms can and do invade blood vessel walls.

Possible explanations for the association between periodontal disease and atherosclerosis

1. It may merely reflect confounding by common risk factors that cause both periodontal disease and atherosclerosis, such as smoking, obesity, and diabetes.

2. The autoimmune theory, according to which antibodies against bacterial antigens may also react against endothelial protein, causing destruction of the artery wall and initiating the arterial lesion

3. Both atherosclerosis and periodontitis are inflammatory processes. The presence of gum inflammation enhances theory is supported by an increase in white blood cells, C-reactive protein and other markers for inflammation in patients with periodontitis.

4. Periodontal bacteria entering the bloodstream during chewing, or small cuts and tears made by dental procedures. Once in the bloodstream, bacteria can produce an enzyme that causes blood platelets to become sticky and form small blood clots which may contribute to the development of atherosclerosis. (Wong et al.,2004)

For adherence and entry into bacterial surface some surface structures are important which include:Fimbrae i.e, binding partner Fibronectin(FN) and Arg-gingipain A and Arg-gingipain B and they form the complex with tranglutaminase of the host epithlial cell.

Fig2: Showing difference in normal and atherosclerotic condition of blood vessel

The connection is indeed biologically plausible. Various epidemiological studies have shown this association in the past 20 years. There is 25% increase in the risk for CHD associated with periodontal disease. A longer follow-up period demonstrated a stronger relationship, and the risk for CHD increased gradually with the severity of periodontal disease. It is important to note that periodontitis and atherosclerosis share a number of powerful risk factors like smoking, diabetes mellitus, and low socioeconomic status, all of which can contribute to a confounded association.

2.4 Vaccine development

A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and keep a record of it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters. Exploration of available bioinformatics tools for epitope based vaccine design affords a thorough consideration of vaccine design without expenditure of excess time or resources.

2.5 Emerging concepts regarding vaccine development

Three emerging concepts of periodontal disease may influence the development of a sophisticated vaccine to eradicate or alleviate the disease burden. The first is that periodontal disease is a polymicrobial infection. The second is that it is a major cause of adult tooth loss worldwide. The third is that periodontal disease contributes to the perpetuation of systemic diseases of critical importance (atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus, etc.)

Recruitment methods

The recruitment methods can be informal or formal, depending on the source.

Informal recruitment methods:

filling job openings above entry-level positions with current employees. A major advantage of a promotion-from-within policy is its positive effect upon employee motivation. Availability provided by this practice thus may not only motivate employees to perform better and increase their satisfaction with the company, but also improve their morale and commitment toward the company.

filling a vacancy with a candidate that comes with a personal recommendation. This approach is usually favored when the costs of recruiting needs to be reduced. It is considered that when a candidate comes with a referral, they are better suited for the job and they already have a mentor. There are also disadvantages to putting too much emphasis on referral schemes, such as reduced workforce diversity and unfairness regarding other prospective candidates

Portfolio with hiring requests: this method works only when the hiring requests database is updated.

hiring interns reduces time and training costs because the intern already knows the company and its requirements.

has the advantage of knowing the employee and their potential and also reducing time and costs. The main disadvantage is that an employee who left the company once can’t be a long-term investment.

‘

Formal recruitment methods:

These are paid for by the government and are responsible for helping the unemployed find jobs or get training. They also provide a service for businesses needing to advertise a vacancy and are generally free to use.

Advertisements are the most common form of external recruitment. They can be found in many places (local and national newspapers, notice boards, recruitment fairs, websites) and should include important information relating to the job. Where a business chooses to advertise will depend on the cost of advertising and the coverage needed.

if a company decides to go outside to fill an upper level management position, it may ask an executive search consultant to find potential candidates. Head-hunters usually analyze the vacancy and offer an opinion about the type of person required, conduct initial screening, and administer psychometric tests, etc. This may save the client many administrative costs and advertising expenses.

Provides employers with details of suitable candidates for a vacancy and can sometimes be referred to as ‘head-hunters’. They work for a fee and often specialise in particular employment areas e.g. nursing, financial services, teacher recruitment

Under this method of external recruitment, educational institutions such as schools, colleges and universities offer opportunities for recruiting fresh candidates. Most educational institutions provide placement services where the prospective recruiters can review credentials and interview the interested graduates.

When the application period is over, the process of recruitment comes is said to have ended. The next step of the process is to select the candidate.

The selection process is a series of specific steps used to decide which candidates should be hired. The process starts with an evaluation of application forms and ends with the selection decision or a job offer. Each step in the selection process seeks to expand the organization’s knowledge about the candidates’ background, abilities, and motivation, and it increases the information from which HR managers/specialists can make their predictions and final choice.

Museums: college admission essay help

Museums are defined as institutions that seek to serve the public by way of acquiring, conserving, researching, communicating and exhibiting the natural and cultural inheritance. At the center of these institutions is one important component which is research. Research is a major constituent of museum business. Smith (1960: 311) describes museums as centers for research, study, and contemplation. It can be noted that research is a significant part in museums because it fosters generation of new knowledge, it is also important in acquisition, preservation, conservation, and interpretation of the objects. It is against this background that this paper is going to discuss the relevance of research in museums.

According to Desvallees et al (2010), research in museums is mainly classified into four major categories. The first deals with museum’s collections, relating to disciplines such as history, and natural sciences. The second type is that which relates the material objects to science and other subjects outside the realm of museology, such as physics and chemistry. The third form is concerned with the operations of the museums, and the final category addresses the issues to do with institutional analysis. All these various forms of research are conducted within a museum at different levels, therefore, it can be noted that research is of importance in museum business.

Museums have the mandate to acquire, preserve, conserve, and promote their collections, as a contribution to safeguarding the natural, cultural, and scientific heritage (ICOM Code of Ethics, 2006). For museums to be able to fulfill this mandate there is need for them to conduct research so as to protect the potential value of their collections. Desvallees et al (2010) further note that, ‘the objective of conservation is to use all the means necessary to guarantee the condition of an object against any kind of alteration in order to bequeath it to future generations.’ It can therefore be noted that research is a crucial part of museums because before conservation can be done, there is need to first conduct research so as to guarantee the possible and appropriate measures to be taken for conservation and preservation of different material objects. Hence, research is a major component in museums because it is through research that information about how to preserve and conserve the material objects is acquired.

A museum mainly deals with the collection of objects. Desvallees et al (2010) defines a collection as a set of material or intangible objects which have been assembled, classified, selected, and preserved. These collections keep the museums in motion. However, collection of objects or intangible aspects of culture, is not just done at random, the set of objects collected must form a coherent and meaningful whole. This assessment whether the collection is meaningful is reached at through research. Therefore, it can be argued that research is a major component of museums because it is crucial in acquiring meaningful collections.

Bearing in mind that a good museum needs a good collection, and a good collection a, good scholarship; research is viewed as a crucial section of museums. Research in museums leads to the development of the collections. Smithies (2011) argues that the need to keep actively developing collections, including through ongoing acquisition and disposal all depend on the research which is conducted. Therefore, research is a significant component in museums because it leads to the acquisition of good collections, hence excellent museums in the end.

Museums can be said to be institutions that seek to serve the society through interpreting the cultural and natural inheritance to the general public. Lewis (2004: 6) notes that these museums are concerned with the up keep and interpretation of any aspect of the world’s tangible and intangible cultural legacy. For museums to be able to appropriately interpret the cultural and natural heritage, they need to first conduct research before they come up with conclusions based on their expertise. Van Mensch (1992) then elude that, research entails the scientific interpretation of the information value of cultural and natural heritage, to come up with new conclusions. Therefore, it can be noted that research is a major component in museums because it fulfills that main aims of the museums which is to interpret the cultural and natural inheritance to the society.

Desvallees et al (2010: 73) notes that in museums, research consist of the intellectual activities and work aimed at discovering, inventing, and the advancement of new knowledge connected with the museum collections. In other words, research can be said to be the driving force in the function of museums. The main aim of museums is to conduct research about the material objects that will have been acquired; this will then generate knowledge about the objects. Smithies (2011: 9) notes that, sufficient expertise research in museums generate new knowledge and create new narratives that speak to the general public. Therefore, it can be argued that research is a major component of museum business because it provides new insights to the objects and also aide as a form of communication between the audience and the silent objects.

Museums have also accepted the role of being learning centers; therefore there is need for research to be conducted in these institutions so that the information disseminated to the audience is adequate. Dudzinska-Przesmitzki et al (2008: 9) notes that, apart from their usual roles as conservators and collectors, society have bestowed upon museums, and most museums have acknowledged, the mission of acting as cultural and enlightening centers of knowledge. Research therefore is crucial if museums are continue to be learning centers as Jelinek (1978) contends that, neglecting of the scientific activities of research in museums will result in liquidation of the whole work even the educative discourse. It can therefore be argued that research is a major factor of museum business because museum act as center of attaining information by the general public, thus they should always have relevant and adequate information for the audience.

Research is viewed as the stronghold of any museum. Sofka (1978: 59) contend that with the absence of research, the collecting, cataloguing, and preservation function of the museum will be curtailed. It is argued that research is important for museums because without it, there will be no knowledge acquisition from the material objects. Also it is significant because through research museum personnel acquire knowledge and will be able to convey it to the general public in a way which they can understand better. Research therefore, improves the scientific quality of the collection and acts as the connection between the collection and the society.

Museums are regarded as important institutions, especially at national level; they do carry with them the sense of national consciousness. In Prague for instance, the revival of nationalism led to the foundation of the national museum in 1818, and later it became the Czech nationalism. It is against this background that research should be a paramount factor in museums because it is through research that the heritage of a nation can be preserved. Lewis (2004) further reiterates that, museums are appropriate institutions for the preservation of a nation’s historic heritage. Therefore, it can be noted that research is significant in museums because it provides the platform where the heritage can be preserved appropriately.

Research is a major constituent of museum business because it gives the responsible authority, the perception of users of the museum. Chang (2006) notes that, research give an understanding to the authorities, of the different characteristics of museum visitors and the nature of their museum experience. This is crucial for museum business because it is through the use of such knowledge that the museum is developed. Therefore, it can be argued that research is a major component for museums because aide the development of museums through understanding the visitor perceptions.

Moreover, it can be drawn from the above presentation that research is surely a major component of museum business. Research is the central constituent in the running of the museum. It provides the knowledge about how to acquire, conserve, preserve, communicate, and dispose the objects. It is through research that most museums in the world do have different obligations to meet. However, it should be noted that the role of research is not the same in all parts of the world.

Fish

Fish are very susceptible to both microbiological and chemical deterioration, due to large amounts of free amino acids, volatile nitrogen bases, highly unsaturated fatty acids and higher final pH Razavi Shirazi (2001). Chemical, enzymatic and microbial activity caused to loss of fish quality during storage ??zogul et al., (2006) and ??zyurt, (2009). Lipid oxidation is one of the major problems encountered in fish processing which have high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Synthetic antioxidants have been widely used as food additives to provide protection against oxidative degradation and to prolong the storage stability of foods. According to some reports, these compounds have possible toxic properties to human health and environment and can exhibit carcinogenic effects in living organisms Stich (1991), Ames (1983) and Baardseth (1989). Many efforts have been done to reduce these activities for supplying fresh fish according to consumers’ demand Hassan (2002). In this situation, using natural additives such as essential oils has been studied on shelf life of different food Burt (2004), to develop natural preservative with high antioxidant and antibacterial effect that could extent the shelf life of fish.

Recently, increasing attention has been focused on the use of natural antioxidants, such as essential oils. Essential oils possess antibacterial, antioxidant, antiviral and anti-mycotic properties Burt (2004). The antioxidant properties of these plant extracts have been mainly attributed to their polyphenolic compounds, which are plant secondary metabolites, have many positive effects on human health, including their anti-inflammatory activity and anti-carcinogenic properties. Moreover, the activity of these components as food lipid antioxidants is well known Iqbal Bhanger et al., (2008) and Fazel et al., (2008).

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum L.) also called as ”cilantro’ is an annual herbaceous plant originally from the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, cultivated for its culinary, aromatic and medicinal use Mildner-Szkudlarz et al., (2009). This plant is of economic importance since it has been used as a flavoring agent in food products, perfumes, cosmetics and drugs. This culinary and medicinal plant widely distributed and mainly cultivated for the seeds which contain an essential oil Neffati et al., (2011). The essential oil and various extracts from coriander have been shown to possess antibacterial, antidiabetic, anticancerous, antimutagenic, antioxidant and free radical scavenging activities Sreelatha et al., (2009) and Zoubiri and Baaliouamer, (2010).

Cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.) is a small annual plant belonging to the Apiaceae family, and is native to the Mediterranean region, where it is cultivated extensively. It is one of the popular spices regularly used as a flavouring agent Thippeswamy and Naidu (2005). Cumin’s distinctive flavour and strong, warm aroma is due to its essential oil content that may be considered as an interesting source of antibacterial, antifungal and antioxidant components, which are used as potent agents in food preservation and for therapeutic or nutraceutical industries. Its main constituent and important aroma compound is cuminaldehyde (4-isopropylbenzaldehyde) Hajlaoui et al., (2010).

Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is a member of Apiaceae family that has been employed in the food, pharmaceutical, perfume, and cosmetic industries Lopez, Sanchez-Mendoza and Ochoa-Alejo (1999). Many investigations point out to the antioxidant properties of parsley. The flavonoid apigenin, one of the components of parsley plant, was shown to express strong antioxidant effects by increasing the activities of antioxidant enzymes and related to that, decreasing the oxidative damage to tissues. Potential for anticancer activity by parsley was reported as well Nguyen et al., (2004) and Kinoshita et al., (2006).

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of some essential oils in improvement some quality attributes of fish finger freeze stored at -18??C up to 6 months.

Bureaucratic Approach (Management Theory)

This theory was proposed by Max Weber, a German Sociologist. It focused on a stratified structure, which outlined apparent assignment of authority providing managers with a constitutional control over their workers. Weber saw each firm as an administration with aims to be accomplished at the cost of individual contribution. He stated that managers would be obeyed just because of their position as managers (O’ Connor, T., 2013).

His theories had two dominant characteristics which are the stratification of authority and the system of rules. Through his analysis of firms he stated three basic types of authorities are legal and these are;

‘ Traditional Authority: the approval of people in authority had its roots in tradition and custom.

‘ Charismatic Authority: In this case, the approval came from solidarity to, and trust in, the individual abilities of the leader.

‘ Rational-legal Authority: The approval came from the office, or level of the individual in authority as restricted by the guidelines and procedures of the firm. This rational-legal authority is what constitutes the form of authority in firms today and Weber’s bureaucracy theory is attributed to this form of authority (Caughey, et al, 2009).

Features of Bureaucracy

‘ Funct??ons ??n a f??rm are defined by rules.

‘ Workers operate within the boundaries of the specialization of the task, the level of authority attributed and the guidelines running the use of authority.

‘ A stratified framework of offices.

‘ Employment is made based on technical capability only.

‘ The ownership of the firms is distinct from officials.

‘ The authority is imputed on the legitimate positions and not on the individuals holding these positions (Debra Mesch et al, 1995).

Advantages of Bureaucracy

‘ Employment, promotion and authority depend only on technical capability and is put in place by written down guidelines and procedures of elevating those capable of managing rather those who are favored to manage as in nepotism and corruption.

‘ The implementation of bureaucracy management theory enables firms to develop into large and elaborate firms with the vision of formalizing clear goals.

‘ Weber’s theory can be used as a basis on which to compare and propagate new modern theories (Jessica Snow, 2014).

Disadvantages of Bureaucracy

‘ There is a likelihood of firms becoming more procedure-oriented than goal-oriented.

‘ There is a tendency of greatly formalized firm objectives to superintend creativity and resilience of workers.

‘ Strict attitude of senior managers may cause regulated services that do not meet the customer needs.

‘ Strict procedures and guidelines do not motivate the employees in a firm.

‘ Implementation of authority based on knowledge has caused the development of ‘experts’ whose ideas and behavior may frequently go against those of other general managers and coordinators (Rubin C. et al, 2012)

2.4.1.4 Human Relations Movement Theories (Behavioral Management Theories)

It is called the human relations movement because it focuses on the human aspect of work. Human relations theorists’ belief that a good understanding of the behavior of people at their work places such as the drive, prospects, rivalry, group gestures will improve productivity. They saw the employees as individuals, resources and not liabilities that are to be improved upon and worked with. Hence the foci of human relations theory are motivation of different factions of a firm and leadership (Joseph Kennedy, 2007).

The different human relations theorists, there experiments, the criticisms and strengths of their works are discussed below:

2.4.1.4.1 Elton Mayo

In the 1920s, Elton Mayo, a Harvard Professor, after his observation of the importance of both human interaction and individual relationships in the work place, performed experiments to comprehend the influence of different working conditions on worker’s productivity. His experiments proved that when the social needs of employees are met, it improves the working conditions and hence has positive effects on productivity (Houghton Mifflin, 2014).

As an improvement on the scientific management theory of seeing managers as task masters; his new human relations approach was concerned with the essence of group dynamics, collective team work and positive effects of social interaction. Managers under this theory now have care and affection for the employee’s needs and health as part of their roles (Slayor Foundation, 2015)

Also, human relations and the social requirements of workers are necessary aspects of managing an organization (Houghton Harwert, 2015).

Advantages

‘ Mayo’s experiment was the premier attempt to carry out leg??t??mate social experiments in an industrial environment.

‘ It proved that people cannot be worked with in isolation, but work with other group members.

‘ He proved that personal motivation did not rest solely in monetary or physical incentives, but in their necessities and their roles in a group.

‘ It stated the need for managers to be shown concern and cater for the social desires of employee’s in a group (Richard Trahair, 2012).

Disadvantages

‘ Doubts started to rise between the 1930s and 1950s on the increased usefulness of these theories in day to day working life (Korajczyk, 1961).

Power quality of AC system: essay help online free

With the outburst in number of electronic equipment’s, power electronics & High voltage power systems including induction motors and inductive loads , the power quality of AC system has become a matter of concern. Heavy Penalty is laid on people who do not follow the limited value of PF (Power Factor) allocated by Electric Power Companies. All this is done so as to prevent excessive drawing of power and increased number of connected load which lead to harmonic contamination in power lines and degradation in transmission efficiency. Because of all these reasons PF correction has become a hot topic in today’s world. There are many methods proposed for PF correction.

In this project we have tried studying about nature of industrial load, designing of a PF corrector for the same and Development of a single phase PF corrector using PIC microcontroller chip. Using PIC microcontroller and sensors it measures and senses the PF of the load. With the help of programming done right it will determine and switch appropriate number of capacitors to compensate the reactive components of the electrical load. Thus, driving a Power Factor value to unity results in higher efficiency and reducing the maximum demand.

Exposure to construction of manual and automatic Power Factor Correction apparatus is also imparted at DDK (DoorDarshan Kendra) and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.) Sub Stations.

In earlier times the loads have been fairly benign, having either resistive characteristics (light bulbs) or input currents that are sinusoidal but phase shifted (AC Motors). Most electronics systems now use one or more switch mode power converters that will tend to draw currents from the power line in a non-sinusoidal fashion. This input current characteristics results in current & possibly voltage distortions that can create problems with other equipment connected to the power lines & degrade the capability of the mains. In electrical plants the loads draw network electrical power as power supply source or convert it to other form of energy or into mechanical output. To get this, it is often necessary that the load exchanges with the network, the reactive energy, mainly of inductive type. This energy if not immediately converted into other forms, contributes to increase the total power flowing through the electrical network, from the generator along the conductors, to the users. To smooth such a negative effect, the power factor correction obtained by using capacitor banks to generate locally the reactive energy necessary for the transfer of useful electrical power, allows a better & rational technical- economical management of plants.

In our work we aim to improve the overall power factor of an installation. Improving power factor means taking necessary steps to increase the power factor in a defined section of the installation by locally delivering necessary reactive power so that the value of current & consequently of the power flowing through the upstream network can be reduced, at the required output power. Our work provides a solution which allows technical & economic advantages.

A modern technological development in our society

It’s agreeable that, Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going whether forwards or backwards as well. Technology has enable Us to increase our comfort and to achieve efficiency in all sectors of life .without technology ,we can’t achieve any progress or development . thanks to technology ,we can modernize our industry so life becomes easier for us and next generations .despite advantages mentioned above, there are drawbacks of technology . so we can consider technology is a servant but a bad master.

There are some modern technological developments that play a major role in making our daily life more effective . television is ,no doubt, a good servant .it’s the cheapest source of information and entertainment nowadays .TV has a big influence in our life . It can be an educational tool. there is a considerable variety of TV programmes which give us instruction as well as education . there are , for examples , some programmes for educating adult illiterates and others for teaching foreign languages . besides ,a lot of films, plays and series are presented time at home . Television also provides outlet for creative talents . many playwrights ,actors emerged from television . color TV has given greater opportunities for such talents.

However ,television is a bad master . it has a negative effect on our behavior It encourages us to accept violence and to be inactive and unimaginative. it occupies most of our time . thus , we have no time left to pursue our hobbies , listen to music or read books . it also regulates our free time . we rush home ,gulp food and then sit in complete silence before the TV screen . Many television channels broadcast violent films and programs. The more our children see violence on television , the less sensitive they become to it . So , violence doesn’t seem wrong . We can also notice that violence on television doesn’t seem to have consequence s . An actor who is killed in a film an hour ago ,can be seen laughing in another program . This may confuse with reality and we forget killing must be permanent

Television also encourages passive enjoyment it is a tool to cut us off from the real world .We become less active . We do nothing except turning it on and changing the channels . We can’t even move around to practice sports . we get little so lazy and of course we will suffer from physical diseases . we choose to spend a fine day in semi ‘darkness ,glued to our sets , rather than go out into the world itself. Besides , its bad effect concerning social relationship, we notice that TV cuts the soul of gathering people in one trend . In addition, we notice the bad morals that spread in society among people . Crimes spread as a result of bad films and forcing scenes . social illnesses prevail over the countries Addiction to watching TV acts as a hindrance to our imagination . Stories are told for us . We don’t even have to imagine what the place of stories look like

On my opinion . television can tight relations . News and other information , we see on television gives us topics to discuss with our friends and family . Television also helps us to understand each other better as we all have access to its programmes . TV can help us share our interests with other people . Television programmes give us topics to think about . Now we can know about news in a few minutes after they happen all over the world . For example , now we know about those who die of birds flu minutes after the event . We all like to discuss these matters with other people . So , Television news and information programmes help us to discuss our ideas with others . No matter where you live ,you have access to many television channels . You can watch television programmes and movies of many other foreign countries . through them you can get information about many different cultures . When you go to a new city to work , study or take a vacation , you will already have something in common with the people there . Where you meet new people ,you will probably be familiar with at least some of the television programs they watch . The gives you something to talk about and a way to begin new friendships

Most people use television as a way to pursue their interest . People who play sports usually like to watch sports on television . Those who like to cook prefer to watch cooking programs . Television encourage s communication among people . Television is a tool that gives access to information and entertainment as well as education . You can share others’ interests effectively

Technology is also needed to raise our standard of living . our homes are more comfortable and use fewer energy recourses thanks to improvements in home construction techniques as well as computer technology . without technology we couldn’t have treatments for heart diseases thanks to progress in medicine

From the above ‘ mentioned lines we come to a conclusion that says “technology is good ” Without it there would be no change ,no improvement s in our economy ,our standard of living , or our health . Hence , We can’t deny the necessity of technology.

Holography: essay help online

Hologram is defined as ‘a three-dimensional image reproduced from an interference pattern produced by a split coherent beam of radiation (as a laser)’ [1]. Holograms can achieve a three-dimensional image, but it can be easily minded of a hologram as a photograph which can be refocused at any depth [2]. Therefore, as a photograph taken of two people standing far apart would have one in focus and one blurry, a hologram taken of the same scene can be reconstructed to bring either person into focus [2].

This chapter will concern on the definition of holography and its advantages over the conventional imaging techniques. Also it will investigate the holographic technology development and its application including microscopy.

In conventional imaging techniques, such as photography, what is recorded is merely the intensity distribution in the original scene resulting that all information about the optical paths to different parts of the scene is lost [2].The unique characteristic of holography is the concept of recording both the phase and the amplitude of the light waves from an object [2].

When a hologram is illuminated by a proper light source, the exact amplitude and phase is reconstructed and the original light field recreated, Since the observer has the whole light field available, the genuine three dimensional sensation is achieved, therefore, Holography is about capturing and reproducing light field, and each point in this field is determined by an amplitude and phase [3].

Holography has advanced to the digital area since 90s, after the advent of CCD and CMOS digital cameras [4]. In digital holography there is no need of wet processing to record the holograms and it is convenient to evaluate the properties of the specimen structures quantitatively [4]. Three major areas of holography which usually addressed in a context of digital holography can be considered, They are the capturing, the reproduction and hologram fringes synthesis, in addition, digital holography introduces one specific issue that don’t have parallel in optical holography, the area is numerical reconstruction[3].Since the mid 90’s, digital holography had attract many applications such as in optical metrology, encryption of information and microscopy[4],which is the goal of this thesis.

Digital holographic microscopy is proposed to yield a microscope that can image optical thickness as well as phase object [4].

Fig.(1.1) Digital holographic microscopy of SKOV3 ovarian cancer cells (60 ?? 60 ??m^2,404??404 pixels): (a) hologram, (b) amplitude image,(c)phase image, (d) unwrapped phase image, and ( e) phase image in pseudo-color pseudo-3D view [5].

An example of DHM imaging of a SKOV3 ovarian cancer cells is shown in Fig. (1.1), where Fig. (1.1) a) is the hologram and Fig. (1.1) b) is the reconstructed amplitude image, similar to what one would see through a conventional microscope, the phase image in Fig. (1.1) c) indicates that the cells appear having thickness of several microns, therefore the phase profile varies by several cycles of 2?? radians. A public domain phase unwrapping algorithm is used to remove the 2 ?? discontinuities in Fig. (1.1) d), and it is rendered in pseudo-color pseudo-3D perspective in Fig. (1.1) e). The apparent height profile is the profile of optical thickness that includes both physical thickness and index variation [5].

Stage plays in Ancient Greece and the film Selma: essay help online free

It was the tradition of the Ancient Greek civilization to have their Tragedies and poetry performed in a stage play; more confident writers would enter their work in competitions and have it compete with the works of other fellow writers. These traditions were carried on and adapted into more modern channels of expression, progressing alongside with the changing times. The Tragedies and poetry that were once performed by actors on a stage for a present audience, are now performed by actors projected onto a screen upon the discretion of the viewer ; more commonly known as film. The tradition of having one’s work compete with others was also carried on and a modern day counterpart being the Cannes International Film Festival. The modernization of the channels of expression significantly affect the process of creation and overall outcome of the work. However the underlying principles of what makes Tragedy efficient and proper, as introduced by Aristotle, and the poet as inspired by the divine, as proposed by Socrates, maintains its place at the very core of it all; an example is the film Dancer in the Dark. In summary the film is centralized upon Selma, a Czech immigrant with a hereditary eye condition and passion for American musicals. After accidentally killing her neighbor, in an attempt to retrieve her savings for her son’s eye operation, she is wrongfully convicted of murder and is sentenced to the death row.The film, which garnered the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival, exhibited the elements of proper and efficient Tragedy and poetry as divine inspiration.

To illustrate, it should be noted that at certain parts of the film Selma made use of the surrounding noise to initiate a musical number; with the exception of the last song, where in the number was unaccompanied by any noise or instrument and Selma was unable to finish her song. These musical numbers were packaged as a daydream as well as a coping mechanism. It depicts how Selma would breakaway from reality during distressing situations, such as upon the realization of the gravity of her crime and the moments leading up to her execution. The performance of the ballads is analogous to the performance of poetry by the Rhapsodes of Ancient Greece. While the disassociation with reality prior to the performance is also analogous to Socrates’ concept of Divine Inspiration as the primary source of the Rhapsode’s driving force. However to concede to the notion of Divine Inspiration would also concede to the idea that the Rhapsode, Selma (and to some extent the actress, Bj??rk Gu??mundsd??ttir, herself), is without talent and incapable of achieving such feats in art without the aid of the divine. Yet, it can be argued that talent and inspiration are forces that complement rather than negate. Inspiration may function as a stimulant for an inherent talent, and the execution of said talent will in turn give justice to the inspiration.

Likewise, the film also conformed to the standards of Aristotelian tragedy. Since Tragedy, according to Aristotle, is an imitation of action, rather than man; in the hierarchy of elements Plot is superior superior to all. According to Aristotle Plot must be whole, complex, must posses magnitude, a single issue and the elements of emotional interest. The film exhibits all of these elements; it his whole as it has a beginning, middle and end. In terms of complexity, the innocence of Selma but wrongful conviction excites pity; while her execution arouses fear. Although the film’s magnitude was twice as long as a regular film, still it is considered to be the proper length because it was able to narrate the plot without being too vast for easy consumption. The single issue in the film is the mistrial that led to Selma’s demise. Finally, the element of emotional interest namely: Reversal of situation, Recognition, and Scene of suffering. The Scene of suffering can be found at the very end, it was the moments of psychological turmoil leading up to the execution and finally as Selma was hung from the gallows. The Reversal of situation is when Selma’s savings became Bill’s,her neighbor, inheritance money. Although the reversal did not occur on screen, it is still an event that is probable within the given parameters of the film; thus it is valid. Lastly, Recognition was achieved during the scene where Selma was going to put away her final salary only to realize that the tin box was empty and Selma realizes that the person with the motive and capability to commit the act was Bill.

Following Plot is Character and Thought, respectively. The Character performs the action, thus reigns over Thought. Aristotle states that a character of Tragedy must be good, true to life, consistent, aim at propriety and must transition from prosperity to despair. The character of Selma conforms to these standards. As a mother Selma wants to provide the best life for her child, Gene, thus she saves her salary and work overtime to ensure that he does not suffer the same eye condition. As a person with a passion for musicals, Selma joins a local theater play and finds music in everyday noise. As a friend, she refused to divulge Bill’s motives for theft, stating that she had promised to keep it a secret, which destroys her only chance in winning the case. As a victim of circumstance, Selma expresses her trust that all of her savings are still intact as she retrieves it from Bill; as well as the grave remorse she experiences as she desperately takes the money by force. Thought, on the other hand, is portrayed through Selma’s song rather than proverbs or maxims. The song, “I’ve Seen It All”, displays how Selma no longer fears being blind and how grand objects have a more simplified version. In the lyrics Selma sing how Niagara Falls, considered to be one of the great waterfalls in the world, is nothing more than water. Another example is the song “107”, which narrates the supposed one hundred and seven steps of the convict to the death row. It portrays how Selma copes with reality using her songs.

Below the level of Thought is Song followed by Diction, both of which are mediums of imitation.The songs are reflective of Selma’s situation and character. An example of a Song is her final one entitled, “Next to the Last Song” that delivered the final blow in arousing the audience’s pity and fear. This was achieved by executing Selma, thus preventing from finishing the song but revealing to the audience the final stanza: “They say it’s the last song/ They don’t know us you see/ It’s only the last song/ If you let it be.” In terms of Diction, the generally short dialogue allowed the tension to gradually build. This was best exhibited in the scene where her neighbor asks for a loan, but Selma refuses for the second time. The conversation did not progress any further but it heightened the sense of foreboding.

Finally, the remaining element is Spectacle. In the hierarchy of the elements of Tragedy, Aristotle places Spectacle as the least relevant element; claiming that a Tragedy need not be an extravagant stage play to achieve its purpose. The “Spectacle” being referred to equates to the special effects, setting, editing, and other components that deal with the visual aspect of the film. With regard to Spectacle the film had minor continuity errors in most of the scenes, it was shot using cheap digital cameras, and settings were very commonplace (a factory, the railroad, a trailer home, etc.). Compared to the usual Hollywood movies that makes use of professional cinema-cameras, flamboyant musical numbers, and high end special effects, the film’s Spectacle is inferior but it did not hinder the arousal pity and fear.

The great interval between the creation of the works of Aristotle and Plato to the production films of the modern day, did not alienate these works from each other. Although some concepts are debatable while others provide an exemplary standard for art. It can be said that the elements of the classics still reign true and are applied to its contemporary counterparts.

The history of newspapers in the US

The United States political structure transformed from loosely organized states to a strong central government with a strong constitution. In America’s early years of independence, the two dominant political parties that contested for power were Federalism and Republicanism. Federalists advocated a strong central government while Republicans favored less centralization and more power for states. Federalist and the country’s second President, John Adams, pushed for the Alien and Sedition Acts to silence newspapers that opposed the Federalist Administration. It embodies the notion of ‘patriotism to write in favor of our government; it is sedition to write against it’ (Copeland, 151). Newspapers could help or hurt people in an office since it had a great influence on the public. Literacy rates surpassed ninety percent in some regions of the United States by 1800. The popularity of newspapers and other forms of print reflected the attractiveness of public debate. However, writers faced certain risks when publishing their work because it may land them in trouble with certain groups. As a result, writers resorted to anonymity, which protected writers from defamation charges and reflected a pledge to a cause, rather than an appeal to a personal agenda (Copeland, 141). Interestingly, the author points out that certain news were published to avoid controversy in the colonies (Copeland, 142). I agree with the claim to a degree because the extensive circulation of the newspaper gave way to debate and discussion, people would discuss what was on the news. However, if the state or whoever controls the press, they can choose what contents can be printed to control the debates in public spheres. The 1750s was engulfed by the French and Indian War, and it lead newspapers to increase coverage of local, trans-colonial and international events that had an effect on America. Also, the debate concerning the enactment of the Constitution and Bill of Rights between 1787 and 1791 drove the growth of newspapers farther. To obtain news people in the colonies would attend taverns to borrow newspapers that recently arrived in a town or listen to someone read the paper out loud (Copeland, 143). Congress authorized the Secretary of the Sate to select newspapers to publish the latest resolutions it passed. By 1799, it ordered that at least one newspaper in each state. Newspapers allowed individuals at all levels of society to become part of the public sphere and ‘join in debate of issues bearing on state authority’ (Copeland, 144). People wrote letters to publishers regarding an article or any topic of discussion and sometimes their letters were published in the newspaper. Copeland also mentions that in colonial America the phrase ‘Printed by Authority’ appeared in the paper’s nameplate indicated that newspapers needed a license from the colonial government to publish news. However, this licensing never stopped those without permits from printing. By 1760, increases in sales meant that printers did not need a government contract to produce a profitable newspaper. The daily newspaper made its debut in the colonies in 1783. Before that, most papers were published on a weekly basis. As America’s population grew, and the economy strengthened, political issues became the central focus of opinion in newspapers (Copeland, 145). The press sought to influence the country’s managing of its international affairs by supporting causes and urging adoption of political action. It was then considered as an architect of political culture and an agenda-setter for public debate (Copeland, 146). As the number of newspapers thrived during the early nineteenth century, so did their level of political affiliation. For example, in 1808, out of 329 newspapers in the United States, only fifty-six were not aligned with a political party (Copeland, 149). Affiliation to a political party in power meant that newspapers could incentives from the party in power. Some of those incentives include government printing contracts and political office. Patronage was a hefty source of income for newspapers.

Furthermore, the establishment of institutions of learning and a printing press were objectives of the settlers (Thomas, 4). Presses and printers in the colonies were sent over from England but for religious purposes, which was spreading the gospel among the Native American in the colonies (Thomas, 5). Similar to Copeland’s discussion of licensing to print newspapers. Thomas takes a more in-depth analysis, where he gives the reader a specific state (Massachusetts). According to the author, in 1664, Massachusetts passed a law concerning the publication of contents. “No printing should be allowed in any towns within the jurisdiction, expect in Cambridge; nor should anything be printed but what the government permitted’ (Thomas, 6). The author also mentions that offenders against the 1664 law were to forfeit their presses to the country and to be stripped of the privilege of printing. What is eye-opening in Thomas’s work is how colonial authorities chose to keep people in ignorance. For example, in the colony of Virginia decided it was best not to allow public schools, nor to allow the use of the press. In doing so, they kept the people unaware, so they can be more obedient to the laws, to prevent them from causing political unrest, and prevent heresy (Thomas, 7).

Indeed Uribe’s The Birth of a Public Sphere claims that the development of a legitimate public sphere in New Spain was obstructed by the absence of printed news and the lack of a literate population (Uribe, 425). From 1760 to 1800 a new feeling of equity emerged, and the rejection of public powers based on privilege, status, or tradition became the dominant paradigm. ‘Capitalists’ and ‘scholars’ were groups that developed new institutions of sociability which made it possible for individuals to gather, critique, and ultimately mold ‘public opinion’ to influence State policies. Members of such societies were more knowledgeable about American and French revolutionary events, intellectual debates, enlightened ideas, and modern scientific doctrines. In addition, some men launched scientific expeditions, academic and literary groups, and newspapers in the colonies (Uribe, 437). Interestingly, Venezuelan Francisco Miranda organized a secret society of Spanish Americans in London to promote the independence of the Spanish colonies. Individuals later active in the liberation movements in the Americas were initiated in Masonic groups during their time in the European continent. For example, General Simon Bolivar joined the French Masons in 1804. With that, the public sphere was created and expanded New Spain. Colonial regimes in Spanish and Portuguese America tried hinder any open discussion of or participation in politics and policymaking. Such efforts made possible by eliminating printing presses and political organizations (Uribe, 427). As with Freemasonry, tertulias were accused of heresy where they questioned the divine right of monarchs and charged with advocating popular sovereignty and the need to free the colony from Spanish tyranny (Uribe, 430).

Therefore, in Guerra’s work, An Alternative to Modernity, societies are presented as a place to think and share ideas; to arrive at a collective opinion (Guerra, 6). Most importantly, the author discusses tertulias. They were the first form of modern sociability similar to the ‘salon’ in France. Nobles, officials or the bourgeoisie assembled at such places to discuss an array of topics such as literature, science, or religious issue (Guerra, 9). Additionally, Guerra does talk about other societies that are somewhat similar to the tertulias. The numbers of such societies were about one hundred in Spain and a dozen in the Americas. Interestingly, several of the peninsular economic societies were connected to the Spanish Crown. Spain promoted some of the societies to exemplify enlightened despotism and show that such societies can coincide with the Crown and not result in an all-out overthrow of rule like in France. In a way, the authorities wanted to show that such societies did not pose a threat to the state. However, Guerra mentions that in America, the role of the State as a supportive motor was missing (Guerra, 21). The absence of support was interpreted by many people in New Spain as a sign that the crown was uninterested in them (Guerra, 22). Guerra points out that in Mexico, the extent of literacy due to an abundant circulation of printed sources facilitated for progressive ideas of the elite to travel faster to the masses and provoke very strong reactions of rejection. However, from my understanding, Mexico did not have numerous newspapers or high literacy. In Copeland’s America 1750, he mentions that America experienced an expansion of newspaper circulation and publishing along with high literacy rates. With that, the spread of progressive ideas is much easier and faster than in a place that lacked such qualities. Guerra explains that the spread of liberal ideas in Mexico is demonstrated by the Independence of Mexico and Father Hidalgo, who he was able to mobilize indigenous communities (Guerra, 27). According to Guerra, public space was formed not just by the press, but also by the abundance of books, and enlightened practices.

Drosophila melanogaster: essay help

Drosophila melanogaster is a model organism used in genetics and various research in cellular and molecular biology for many years. This organism is known for its short life cycle, small size, genetic variability, and its in-expensive trait to be studied in the laboratories. Thomas Morgan, an American geneticist is heavily credited for his work in discovering eye pigment mutation in the flies. He discovered mutation of white eyed Drosophila and concluded they were sex-linked. For many years, 75% specific genes in Drosophila have equivalency with humans in relation to certain diseases. Disease include cancer, renal disorders, Parkinson’s disease, and Azhelmer’s. (Russel and Tikko 2002).

The recessive allele rugose (rg) is one of many genes studied for eye color pigmentation in D. melanogaster. rugose was first seen as a rough eye phenotype due to abnormal retina and cone development. This abnormality resulted in loss of cone cells. Furthermore, this gene encodes for a kinase protein A and is mandatory for retinal formation and cell differentiation. The gene rugose (rg) is an aging gene, that plays a role in physiological age and senescence. Fecundity changes are also incorporated into this, and assimilate dramatically with age. SNPs, otherwise known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms, affect fecundity and life span as well. With this said, increase in SNP levels, result when comparing fecundity with age. This relation provides adequate support and provides theory of aging (Durham, 2014).

At the biological level rugose participates in imaging circadian pacemakers in order to detect brain study and intact cAMP levels by a neuropeptide pigment dispersing factor also known as PDF. In some flies, pacemakers were elevated by, activating ortholog of mammalian adenylate cyclase 3 (AC3), however it seemed to have no effect. Although, a different isoform was utilized known as AC78C by RNAi which reduced, but did not completely take usage of PDF (Duvall, 2013).

Phenotypic characteristics in the mutation of the gene

The sex-linked recessive rugose (rg) gene is located on chromosome 1 is observed to have small rough eye phenotype showing an abnormality in the ocelli. Many are seen with two or three cone cells in their ommatidia when normal complements are observed to have four. In comparison to wild type the ommatidia are not hexagonal in shape. rugose (rg) bristles are positioned irregularly and excess bristles tend to form at the corner of the ommatidia. Photo receptors are also lacking in the ommatidia and position of them tend to be disoriented resulting in disformity in the retina. Wings are curled upward, thin and frayed toward the margins with body being pale in color (lindsley,1992). These phenotypic classes cause a mutation in both dominant and recessive alleles and contribute in being lethal. Two alleles in particular address this chromosomal effect; rugose (rg1) and rugose (rg7) to signify differences as rugose (rg) in the phenotype.

The (rg1) allele is the only non extinct allele associated with rugose (rg). This allele is hypomorphic with a slight rough appearance at 17??, but moderately rough at 25??. Depending on the severity of the roughness, the eye is classified into mild, moderate, and severe classes. The (rg1) allele deals with loss in memory similar to rugose (rg), in addition to learning disability. On the other hand, (rg7) has the same phenotypes seen as rugose (rg), but differentiates by having a mutation of eclosion delay.

Molecular characteristics of the gene and gene product

rugose (rg) is responsible for the regulation protein kinase A and targeting the membrane. Pathways predicted to direct memory formation are anesthesia-resistant memory and protein synthesis-dependent. With the membrane it may or may not include surrounding organelles associated proteins. Its identity of being required for retinal pattern as well as, interactions with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling pathways links to learning, short-term memory loss, neuromuscular junction, and their body. Short-term memory impairment is one of the main discrepancies caused in this gene by the absence of cold shock. This deficiency is seen at three hours after one cycle training. After every three hours more deduction in memory is seen to occur (Qin, 2013). At the molecular level, it is said, in the pathway of memory formation theirs a direct link which connects dysfunction in short-term memory into long-term memory (Zhao, 2013). Pathways predicted to direct memory formation are anesthesia-resistant memory and protein synthesis-dependent (Zhao, 2013).).

The mutation of rugose (rg) primarily causes abnormal or complete loss of cone cells. This can be retrieved by proapoptotic signals. However, a complete rescue can only be completed by Notch signaling. Cone cell loss is also seen by N-terminal kinase activity and reduction of EGFR signaling pathway. Together, both these aspects accumulate in integrating various signals for accurate regulation of cone cell development.

Conclusion

The biological and molecular perspective of Drosophila melanogaster leads up to gaining insight on different genes and their specificity on how they function and various mutations they cause to help scientists understand what they are experimenting with. In such a case, rugose a protein A kinase induced allele has been evident to be seen in 58 other alleles that are crucial in learning, mushroom body development, and neuromuscular junction development. Studying gene rugose (rg) further, can help gain knowledge on cone cell abnormality in the Drosophila as well as memory loss and learning impairment. Even though, there is no research that rugose (rg) has yet a significance in human diseases currently, Drosophila argose (aos) share similar phenotypes that are visualized in Drosophila rugose (rg). argos also, a protein coding gene located on chromosome 3 functions In enlargement of cell size as well as the development of the optic lobe located in the midbrain of the Drosophila melanogaster. While this gene affects cell size and the midbrain it is also important in photoreceptors of the eye and is hypomorphic as rugose (rg1) (Shamloula, 2002).

With ongoing research, the various functions and perspectives that play a part in the abnormality of cone cells in the retina, and memory loss disability have gave scientists the access and knowledge of rugose mutations that can be observed in other Drosophila flies. Research supports the idea that short-term memory is always associated with long-term memory and factors into olfactory attributes as well. Furthermore, this condition of memory impairment is still inconclusive due to rising alleles which develop and are complemented with others for further research.

Australia and obesity

Australia is the fattest nation in the world, and due to this there is an increasing obesity epidemic. The Brisbane Bariatric Centre (n.d) stated that obesity is an excess total of fat, which results from kilojoule intake that exceeds the energy usage, measured by the Body Mass Index (BMI). Whether it is lifestyle choices, genetics, parental, peer or social influence, these many causes are largely affecting the health of the nation. This research assignment will cover why with all the media coverage of obesity in society the numbers are increasing, and it will argue that individuals, families and society must change to be responsible for guaranteeing a decline in obesity epidemic numbers, starting now.

The Gympie State High School year 11 Home Economics class of 2015, have the surveyed the school community including teachers, parents and students in order to gain information about lifestyle choices (Appendix 1). The most significant figures out of each question was taken and put into percentages and the data is as follows (Appendix 2). Out of those surveyed, 55% saw themselves as overweight, 45% saw themselves as having a healthy weight while only 5 % saw themselves as obese. Out of these figures, 20% have take-away once a week, 45% have once a month and a small sum of only 5% have it once year, with the most predominant meal being take-away pizza. In addition, 95% of the participants stated that they were responsible for their own health, and in leisure time 50% watch TV and 20% spend it on their phone/ iPod. The statistics furthermore validate the undeniable fact that the nation is detrimental to its own health, through not eating healthy foods and spending large amounts of time watching TV/social media and not exercising.

The media has many outlets; television, print and social media sites, for example, Facebook or twitter. Due to this there are many ways for fast food companies to promote their products. The numerous advertisements showing delicious, appetising meals at an inexpensive price, is ultimately creating the desire in viewers to consume these products. Also, the simplicity and ease of driving and not having to put any time or effort into making meals makes it so much easier when in a hurry to purchase fast food and this relates directly to many Australians, especially mothers who work full time and are time poor. However, what many do not realise is no matter how tasty, quick and easy the food is to get, it is extremely unhealthy due to high levels of saturated fats, sugars and salts. These fats increase low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels which are linked to cardiovascular diseases (Better Health Channel, 2015) such as coronary heart disease and possibly causing heart attacks and/or strokes. Overall, these foods are contributing to the numbers of obese individuals, therefore making health problems more prevalent.

Obesity has many consequences in terms of health and the damage can be seen both physically and psychologically through many conditions. Depression, poor body image, low self-concept/esteem, behavioural and learning problems (Obesity Society, 2014) are just a few of the possible psychological conditions associated with obesity. Type 2 diabetes, asthma, hypertension (high blood pressure), High LDL cholesterol levels, low HDL cholesterol levels, sleep apnea, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, coronary heart disease, fatty liver disease, osteoarthritis, gallbladder disease and some forms of cancer including endometrial, breast and colon/colorectal (Obesity society, 2014), (Cdc.gov, 2015) are the physical conditions. These illnesses are directly linked to obesity, and as a result doctor and hospital visits ultimately end up costing the economy millions each year.

The enormity of these visits in relation to the illnesses caused by obesity, the cost to the economy is into the millions. Data from (The growing cost of obesity 2008: three years on, 2008) clearly corroborates this and includes specific information with regard these associated diseases and health conditions. The many financial costs to the Australian health system can include the costs of running hospitals and nursing homes, GP and specialist services, the cost of pharmaceuticals, allied health services, research, productivity losses, carer costs, deadweight loss (DWL) from transfers, aids, equipment and modifications, transport and accommodation costs along with respite and other government programs. As well as the financial costs there are also the non-financial costs. These can include, disability, loss of wellbeing, premature death caused by the disease obesity and its affects which is measured in Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), also known as Burden of Disease (BoD). (The growing cost of obesity 2008: three years on, 2008) also gives specific financial information from both 2005 and 2008 on obesity related diseases and the data is as follows. (Table 4-1: Cost Summary, Obesity ($M), 2005): In 2005 alone, the total of the diseases including BoD was at a whopping 21’013 million dollars with the individual diseases including: Type 2 diabetes at $2’289 million, CVD at $12’653, osteoarthritis at $2’027 and cancer at $3’954. This rapidly increases over the three year gap with Type 2 diabetes increasing 57.3% to $8’251 million, CVD increasing 71.4% to $34’565 million, osteoarthritis increasing 63.6% to $5’662 million and cancer increasing 72.4% to $9’701 million with a total of 58’179 million dollars. This data furthermore validates the fact that obesity is not only affecting the lives of Australians but also the Australian economy and due to this an immediate change is needed, and eating healthy and exercising each week can make the positive impact Australia so desperately needs.

Bridge to Terabithia characters by Katherine Paterson

Author: Katherine Paterson

Illustrator: Donna Diamond

Genre: Friendship

Publisher: HarperTrophy

Publication date: January 1, 1977

Number of pages: 176

Jesse Aarons is a eleven-year boy who lives in England, he loves running. his dream is to be the fasted boy from year five out of his class. When school starts in the fall, feeling that this is his change to be in the spotlights amomg his five sisters, he might aswell will get more attention of his preocupied dad. Jess is realy insecure about his identety. He likes painting and drawing, but he dosn’t realise that other people bully him for likeing those things. including his dad. In addition, his family is stretched so tight by poverty that he has little chance to really explore his own identity during this crucial period of adolescence. He has therefore built up the importance of winning in his mind, feeling that here, at least, is something that he is good at which won’t win him an undesired label of “sissy” in the eyes of his father or schoolmates, and which will allow him to shine in his own right. He practices each morning, always dreaming of his upcoming victory. However, when the races come around at recess, a new girl, Leslie Burke, who just moved next door to Jess, boldly crosses to the boys’ side of the playground and beats everyone.

A rather unpromising start, but Jess en Leslie became friends realy quikly. They builded a secrect fantasy place accros the creek in the woods, named Terabithia, where they play everytime. This place makes them forget that the rest of the world exist. Like the kids at school or Jess’s family. The time they spend in Terabithia, in fact, seems to strengthen them for these trials of everyday life: it is there that they map out a plan of revenge on the school bully when she steals May Belle’s Twinkies, and it is there that they discuss Jess’s feelings of insecurity when Leslie begins to draw closer to her father. Leslie also introduces Jess to the world of imagenation and creativity. Telling him the stories of such classics of literature as Moby Dick and Hamlet. All of this made Jess’s artestic talent stronger, Leslie Supports his ambition and, through the stories she tells, provides him with great subject matter. But much of the time they play wonderful games of their own invention-defeating intruders on Terabithian territory, praying to the Spirits of the Grove to end a long spell of rain, and numerous other fantasies.

However, Jess and Leslie’s friendship, although centered in Terabithia, is not limited to Terabithia.They see each other at school, where they have a ribbing of fun for their diffrents in gender, but now Leslie dosn’t have the feeling to tease Jess now, and Leslie is never particularly bothered by what others think. At home, they celebrated together on holiday, such as Christmas, when Jess gives Leslie a puppy and she gives him an expensive art set to his artistic talent to develop. At Easter, when Jess goes to the Church he takes Leslie with her. Leslie is impressed by the beauty of the story of Christ.

One day there music teacher at school, Miss Edmunds, who Jess realy likes, invites him to go with her to the art galleries in washington. This trip does a lot for his spirit to expand and make him feel as if he is special, a feeling that he only had when he was whit Leslie. Jess has a perfect day, but when he comes home, he’s told that Leslie drowned in the Creek that morning trying to sway in Terabithia on the rope that they used to get to Terabithia. Jess is completely devastated and goes through the stages of denial, anger, fear and tears incredibly painful to suffer and, indeed, to read about. Initially he does not see how he is in the first place. Leslie has him raised to new heights as the King of Terabithia, and now he feels that without her, he has no choice but to return to the old Jess, plagued by fear and uncertainty. But in the end he realizes that he just Leslie’s memory, and his own newly discovered sense of self, live by the continuation of the fantasy of Terabithia. He brings his little sister May Belle there and makes her the new Queen, make sure that a part of Leslie will live as well.

Jesse Oliver: The main character. Jess is a guy from year five at his school. He is lonely because he likes art, people at his school call him sassy. Then a girl arrives at his school named Leslie Burke. She became the fasted runner at their school, something that Jesse always dreamed of. Jess en Leslie become best friends. Jess is very talented in art.

Leslie Burke: Jesse’s new neighbour and best friend she is a realy intelligent girl. She came with the idea to create there own fantasyland named Terabithia. Leslie’s family is well educated in diffrent then the rest of the neighbours, esecially Jess’s neigbours.

For me the theme of the book is friendship, because its all about the friendly relationship between Jess and Leslie. They both have the same hobbies, for example they both like running.

My opinion of this book is that its a good book, i realy enjoyed reading it. Especially the bond between Jess and Leslie, They proof that a boy and a girl can be friends.

FUNDAMENTALS OF SERVICE MANAGEMENT: custom essay help

A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Research

OBJECTIVE: To attain the insights in the importance of quality in service industry through an extensive exploratory research.

SUMMARY: For a tangible good, the products quality has always been measurable by various marketers and it has been one of the important roles of the organizations to maintain their quality standards throughout their run. But, for the service sector, a lot of researchers have not been able to find the quality of the service and are yet to focus on it. In this article, the authors have focussed and tried to rectify this situation by using numerous methods some of which are:

‘ Recording the perceptions obtained in an extensive exploratory investigation of quality in four service businesses

‘ Developing a separate model for determining the service quality.

‘ To create new propositions to help future research in this field.

The main problem for the authors here is the INTANGIBILITY of service sector, which prevents many from having an access to its insights. Most services cannot be calculated, measured, inventoried, confirmed, and verified in progress of sale to promise quality. This intangibility makes it difficult for the firm to understand how consumers perceive the services and its quality. Secondly, services are heterogeneous i.e, they differ from maker to maker, customer to customer and time to time.

The authors used exploratory investigation in this article which included,

1) Executive interviews- This included a nationally recognized company from each of the four service businesses participated in the study. The respondents held titles such as president of the company, senior vice president of the company, director of customer relations and manager of consumer market research.

2) Focus Group Interviews- This was done in 12 groups for, 3 for each selected service industry. 6 groups consisted only male and 6 consisted only female. The groups were formed on the basis of age and sex to maintain the homogeneity.

FINDINGS

Two types of service quality exist: Technical and functional. The technical quality involves what the customer gets from the service and functional quality is the manner in which the service is delivered. The service quality can actually be attained by the interaction between the customers with the elements of the service organization. They have actually used three quality dimensions which are

Physical quality: This includes the physical aspects of the service (e.g., equipment or building)

Corporate quality: This involves the company’s image or profile

Interactive quality: This actually derives from the interaction between contact personnel and customers as well as between some customers and other customers.

After conducting the interviews and the focus group a discussion, a table was formed which mentioned the determinants of service quality. The following were found out to be the determinants:

1. Reliability: Consistence of performance and reliability.

2. Responsiveness: Readiness of employees to provide service.

3. Competence: Having the required skills/knowledge to provide the service.

4. Access: Ease of contact.

5. Courtesy: politeness of contact personnel.

6. Communication: Making the customers understand in a language they know.

7. Credibility: Honesty and reliability

8. Security: Freedom from risk or danger.

9. Understanding the customer: Understanding what the customer needs.

10. Tangibles: Physical evidence of the service.

CONCLUSION:

The quality of service given to the customers plays a pivotal role in the growth of any service industry. The importance of quality has been mentioned clearly in the article which leads them to find out on how to measure the same. The research methodologies used by the authors have provided us with various insights and propositions, concerning consumer’s perception of service quality. The authors also mentioned 10 various dimensions through which the customers actually perceive the service quality given to them. The article can be used a base for further investigation and research in the findings of the quality of service provided by industries

OBJECTIVE: combine implementation of service marketing and strategic bonds in health care sector.

SUMMARY:

Fundamentals of service marketing must be practiced by hospitals in spite of the policies followed by healthcare industry which benefits them and sustain its competition, compromised of physicians, consumers, pharmaceutical firms, etc. A service lead culture plays in important role in the positioning of hospitals. Hospitals will need to differentiate themselves by making effective strategic alliances to position themselves as members of an integrated healthcare organization. It is known that various existing strategies will continue to dominate this industry for the next several years, hospitals need to redefine the concept of marketing, sales and service to include establishing comprehensive customer service centers and information centers.

FINDINGS:

1. SERVICE MARKETING IS HERE TO STAY: in order to sustain the competition from the players in same industry and meet customer requirements, service marketing principles are to be followed. Positioning hospitals’ potential role as the most important activity of health care industry will help a hospital to remain it s position in market. Since a decade service marketing has been in practice in hospital industry.

2. NEED FOR STRATEGIC ALLIANCES AND SERVICE MARKETING: Hospitals that are standing out from others with service market programs are those which are effective in making strategies. As the network of healthcare market has increased, the conversion of health care delivery programs into managed care is implemented by Group Health Assoc.

3. A PARADIGM SHIFT FOR HEALTH CARE MARKETING: In the forthcoming decade, it is clear that health care industry will be dominated by different capitation strategies. These strategies will not affect the requirements that are necessary for a hospital to be ‘market- oriented’ but affects the style of marketing of a hospital and its business activities.

4. MARKETING, SALES AND SERVICE- REDEFINED: Hospitals should have the positioning strategy in order to act as reliable source of information for customer to access various services. Embracing this responsibility can position hospitals successfully in a market that will continue to separate winners from losers. To abandon this responsibility places them at risk, as they will lose the ability to favorably influence activities within their market.

5. APPLYING MARKETING TECHNOLOGY TO THE NEW PARADIGM: Information systems technology is readily available to support a broad range of strategic marketing activity. Consumer information extends beyond basic demographics to include past and predicted use of health care services. Consumers with predefined health profiles should be targeted in order to detect in early stages regarding health situation. It is important to monitor the consumers who have accessed to the services in the past, since it is as important as various reform models implementation.

6. PUSHING THE EDGE OF THE ENVELOPE THROUGH STRATEGIC ALLIANCES: The programs which use the health information for the hospitals are important as they manage risk under certain captivated contracts. The service centers of a hospital acts as a tangible asset for the other providers who seeks this information in order to have some extent of security.

CONCLUSION:

The conclusion is that these service marketing and selective alliances will prepare the changes which are hidden so that it simplifies the important strategies for the hospitals. The hospitals can concentrate on the activities which create value addition and attract the business partners while the hospitals’ health care proposals remain controversial. Rather than going for a particular strategy which is uncertain about predicting of success, fundamentals of service marketing and strategic alliances will help the organization in positioning for success under any policy.

Richard Ford – The Sportswriter (1986)

Richard Ford is one of the most gifted novelists in the contemporary America. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Independence Day. This novel is the first one in history to win together the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1995. His works are being associated by the literary critics to the movement of ‘foul realism’. Ford is widely respected for the work with the language he applies in his texts. He was born in 1944. Ford has written eight novels and a collection of short stories in American literature. Ford’s The Sports Writer is a highly acclaimed pattern of contemporary realistic fiction. It revolves around the thoughts and observations of one central character, the protagonist Frank Bascome. This paper encapsulates the protagonist, life, affairs, happiness, love, feelings and pain, as well as the dramatic change in his style. Of course the soundless plight of men in contemporary society was skilfully depicted by American author Richard Ford in his award winning novel The Sportswriter (1986).

Ford’s Frank novels efficiently dramatize the poverty of human relationships in contemporary culture. Frank, the protagonist, and the men with whom he interacts suffer from problems that are quite conman to many North American men. Thirty year-old Frank faces the tragedies and disappointments in his life without self ‘ pity. He faces difficulties similar to those the earlier athlete faces. Frank is no longer a husband and barely a father. He is a writer for an American sports magazine who is struggling to understand himself and the world around him. The opening paragraph, “My name is Frank Bascombe. I am a sportswriter” (3).provides us with a complete list of al1 the things which are clear to Frank as the novel begins. The paragraphs which follow reveal his confusion over the disappointments and failures of his life; he has made money but is neither happy nor stable, as he thought he would be. Mid-life crisis has cast the protagonist into a state of dreaminess and depression. He remains, yet, a unfailing narrator as he assures us early on: ‘I have a voice that is really mine, a frank argues in rural voice more or less like a used car salesman: a no-frills voice that hopes to uncover simple truth by a straight-on application of the facts”(11). The Sportswriter chronicles a weekend of Frank’s life and the lives of three men he encounters, and reveals the problems the male mystique causes them. Frank responds to his feelings of alienation by joining The Divorced Men’s Club, a group of five single men who meet occasionally to relax and engage in traditionally masculine activities such as watching baseball games and fishing. These activities are alluring to Frank and other men because they appear to promote social interaction; unfortunately, the activities also distance the men from interaction with women and true progress in their lives The men are unable or unwilling to express their feelings about their individual lives, and the club exists simply as an excuse for the men to drink and display bravado, rather than engage in any manner of therapeutic conversation.’ This unfortunate arrangement is attributable to the masculine mystique and the manner in which it encourages men to conceal their emotional problems so that they do not appear weak or feminine. While Frank does not address his problems another club member, Walter Luckett, does and is, in fact, the only man to do so in the novel.,

In the novel’s starting page, Frank and his ex-wife (Anne Dykstra, but referred to in this novel only as X) are standing in a cemetery sharing a moment of reflection on the anniversary of their first son’s death. Even as in the cemetery, Frank makes mention to three poems: “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot, “To An Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman, and “First Meditation” by Theodore Roethke–each of which is thematically relevant to The Sportswriter. Like the men described in the poem, lead empty, meaningless, life-in-death existences in a dying and meaningless world. The American men lead empty lives, dedicated to accumulating wealth and power instead of friendships and happiness. These poems indicate that there is something wrong.

With the social codes that govern men’s lives; the codes create an absurd world and ruin the lives of its inhabitants. Frank and X exemplify Ford’s disregard for gender conventions; while each retains feelings for the other, they each transmit those feelings in unconventional ways. Frank still cares deeply for his wife and openly displays his emotions when they are together. X still cares about Frank but she erects a transparent facade of stoicism. Frank is often depicted as fragile, dreamy, and sympathetic. He notes that “I have always liked hearing women talk more than men” (11). And believes that ‘men feel things women don t”(329). The death of his first son has dispelled the notion of continuity for Frank, as has his divorce. Trapped in what he refers to as the Existence Period, Frank inhabits a world that is seemingly unknowable and retreats within himself to escape. Frank, like many men, lacks the vocabulary to describe the psychological turmoil from which he suffers, so Existence Period is his label for this turmoil. The turmoil includes his divorce, the death of one son, and his inability to fa11 in love again, and regrets from his past. The Sports Writing is unambiguous and Frank depends on the simplicity of his profession to keep himself sane, but the therapeutic qualities of his vocation are a lie. Frank

Claims to love Sports writing superficiality, but the truth is that the job is perp&uating Frank’s dreaminess. Rather than confronting his mid-life problems, Frank is allowing himself to slip in and out of a dream-like state (10).

His dreaminess provides temporary escape, but it provides no true solace because, in his dreamy state, he sees that he is himself, as complex, chaotic, and mysterious as the world around him. Frank does not fit into the world because the world insists on obedience to the doctrines of the masculine mystique-doctrines against which Frank is unconsciously rebelling as he suffers his mid-life crisis. Frank’s divorce, for example, tags him as socially dysfunctional. As he notes, it is not, I have come to understand, easy to have

a divorced man as your neighbour. Chaos lurks in

him–the viable social contract called into

question by the smoky aspect of sex. Most people

feel they have to make a choice and it is always

easier to choose the wife, which is what my

neighbours and friends have mostly done(5).

Frank responds to his feelings of alienation by joining The Divorced Men’s Club, a group of five single men who meet infrequently to relax and engage in traditionally male activities such as watching baseball games and fishing. These manners are alluring to Frank and other men because they appear to promote social contact; unfortunately, the activities also distance the men from interface among women and true progress in their lives. The men are unable or unwilling to express their feelings about their individual lives, and the club exists simply as an excuse for the men to drink and display bravado, rather than engage in any manner of therapeutic conversation. While Frank does not address his problems, another club member, Walter Luckett, does and is, in fact, the only man to do so in the novel. Even though, Frank listens with discomfort and annoyance, Walter explains that his life is in shambles. He is undergoing a crisis, a mid-life crisis, which he does not fully understand and which recently has led him to have sexual intercourse with a man he met in a bar. After his shocking revelation, Walter reflects on his inability to bond with Frank during his confession. Even though his future is uncertain, he is able to take consolation in the knowledge that his own problems with the men mystique and the male mid- life crisis are shared by others: ‘We have all felt that way, I am confident; since there’s no way that I could feel what hundreds of millions of other citizens have not (375). What separates Frank from the crowd is that he redeems himself from his life long participation in the men mystique, which tens of millions of other American men are unable to do. Because Frank plays the role of “the saved” in The Sportswriter, it is not he who is most illustrative of the negative effects of the masculine mystique because he manages to survive his mid-life crisis

and re-focus his life. While Frank’s fate preserves optimism and saves the novel from a morbid conclusion, it is the men who interact with Frank, “the damned,” who are more interesting subjects of study. Unlike Frank Bascombe, Walter Luckett, Herb Wallagher, and Wade Arcenault do not contend well with the masculine mystique and the male midlife crisis.

At the end of the novel Frank is dumped by Vicki because of his argument at the supper table. It is an interesting separation because it marks a physical separation form those from whom he is ideologically distancing himself–those who, like the Arcenaults, are-content to live under the thumb of the masculine mystique. The separation is a violent one–Vicki punches him in the face, making his mouth bleed when he protests–which marks the abrupt termination of his association with mental and. ideological apathy and the birth of a new Frank, who is more clearly able to understand his own life and the world around him.

The Berlin Wall: custom essay help

History

After Germany lost World War II the country was split into four zones, each occupied by one of the four Allied powers that defeated the Nazis. (je kan misschien een foto hiervan plakken in je verslag; je kan het opnemen als bijlage I) The zones controlled by France, Great Britain and America became West Germany, or Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany = FRG). The Soviet-controlled zone became East Germany, or Deutsche Demokratische Republik (Germany Democratic Republic = GDR). Germany’s capital, Berlin, was situated in Soviet-controlled East Germany , but as this city was the administrative area for the Allied forces, it too was split into four. This meant that France, Great Britain and America controlled West Berlin, whereas the Soviet Union controlled the East. Relations between America and the Soviet Union soured considerably during much of the second half of the Twentieth Century. The Berlin Wall was a symbol of this hostility, a physical representation of what was called the Iron Curtain.

Iron Curtain

The Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolized efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the west and non-Soviet-controlled areas. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. On either side of the Iron Curtain, states developed their own international economic and military alliances.

Economic situation in West and East Berlin

West Berlin received financial help from the Allied powers (especially Marshall Fund of the United States) , but East Berlin didn’t get any help from Soviet Union. Unlike East Berlin West Berlin could build a good economy. In East Berlin, there was food shortage and there was unemployment, while they had enough food and luxury in West Berlin. The result was that many people who lived in East Berlin fled to West Berlin. There were so many people that the GDR fell from 18.4 million in 1950 to 17.2 million in 1960. Especially highly skilled workers moved to West Berlin, to find a better job there. Only low-skilled workers remained in East Berlin.

The rise of the Wall

On August 13,1961 Premier Khrushchev of the Soviet Union gave the East German Government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall’the Berlin Wall (45 kilometers long)’that divided one side of the city from the other.

Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. After the wall was built, it became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints: at Helmstedt, at Dreilinden and in the center of Berlin at Friedrichstrasse. (Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall.) At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. Except under special circumstances, travelers from East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the border.

Politicsl

After World War II Germany was divided into West Germany and East Germany (as stated above). In East Germany the Communism arose and in West Germany the capitalism.

In the west, it was actually quite good. There was free economy, so it went well with the prosperity. This was done with the help of the United States. There were free elections and a parliamentary democracy.

In East Germany the communists took control and the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) became the official state party. There was a people’s democracy under the leadership of the communists. There were no free elections. There was a dictatorship because the political party was the only party that did exist. The residents of the East were very suppressed. There was no freedom of speech. Only positive things about the SED appeared in the newspaper and the negative things were omitted (propaganda). East Berliners wanted to live in freedom like the West Berliners.

Social and economical consequences of Berlin Wall

Most people lost their jobs because 60,000 East Berliners were working in West Berlin and 13,000 West Berliners in East Berlin. Before the wall West Berliners could buy their products for lower prices in East Berlin. People were separated from relatives, because they were living on the other side of the wall.

At the beginning the West Germans felt imprisoned by the Berlin Wall, but it soon became apparent that the East Germans were locked. Unlike the East Germans the West Germans lived in luxury. The West Germans could just eat, drink and wear anything what they wanted. In fact, the West Germans were not much affected by the wall beyond the fact that they were separated from relatives in the East (as stated above). Until 1972 it was not allowed to travel to the other side of the city. The East Germans tried to smuggle all kinds of articles like food and clothes from the West.

Animal testing: essay help

Every year thousands of animals are tested on for human safety and die of agonisingly long and painful deaths. Animal testing is a valuable asset in scientific research, drug development, health and medical research and cosmetic manufacturing. Animals are frequently used as a test subject since their body are very similar to the humans and will react in a similar way to different substances. Do you want innocent animals suffer painful deaths just for your beauty?

Not surprisingly, many types of animals tested on are mice, rats, rabbits, monkeys, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, birds and mini pigs. Mice are the most popular animal to be tested on due to their size, ease of handling, fast reproduction rate, availability and low cost. 7342 mice are used in worldwide labs everyday- one every 12 seconds! They are widely considered to be the prime model of inherited human disease and share 99% of their genes with humans. In 2012, 3,045,690 mice, 262,641 rats and 28,677 other rodents were used in the UK alone (83.1% of total animals used that year). In 2011, the statistics show animal use totalled to 3,792,857 animals. This equates to 10,391 per day, or one every 8.3 seconds.

Even though many people oppose to the idea of animal testing, it has saved so many human lives and helped with our knowledge of different drugs, cosmetics(etc.). For example, we now have the technology for organ transplants. Organ transplants have improved the quality- and length- of life for millions of people across the world. For example, the first human cornea transplant took place over 100 years ago, following research using rabbits. In 2007, 2,403 people had their sight restored by cornea transplants. In addition, of the 5,000 people to develop kidney failure every year in the UK, 1 in 3 would die without a transplant. The surgery behind transplantation itself but also method of tissue-typing and anti-rejection drugs were developed using dogs, rabbits and mice from 1950 onwards. In 167, the first human to human heart transplant finally took place. Few people knew it took 60 years to prepare for this using animal research. Professor Christian Barnard carried out nearly 50 animal heart transplants over 4 years. Heart-lung transplants were later developed using monkeys.

The animals tested on can either survive; they won’t react to the product or the animal will suffer in great pain a die from a reaction from the product. They can be infected with a disease, poisoning, burning skin, brain damage, implanting electrodes into the brain, and blinding. They are abused and tortured. Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned and abused in US labs every year. When used in cosmetic tests, mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs are often subjected to skin and eye irritation tests were chemicals are rubbed onto shaved skin or dripped into the eye without any pain relief given. Some tests can involve a killing of a pregnant animals and testing on their fetus. This is inhumane.

Animals in labs live stressful, monotonous, and unnatural lives of daily confinement and deprivation. The only changes in their lives may come from being called into a research or testing protocol- which may include an invasive experiment, or a procedure whose endpoint id death. Imagine spending your whole entire life as a hospital patient or a prisoner.

Would you pay a high amount of money for designer make-up when an animal has suffered in great pain and lost their life for something that isn’t necessary in life?

Use of fossil fuels and global warming

Due to global warming and other ill-effects of conventional energy sources, there is a need to produce energy by clean and environmental friendly ways. Fuel cell is one of the effective solution to produce energy without polluting the environment. There are various types of fuel cells viz. solid oxide, proton exchange membrane, alkaline fuel cells, etc. We are going to discuss more about solid oxide fuel cells. A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is a device which generates electricity by using chemical energy stored in the fuel viz. hydrogen or hydrocarbons. SOFC consists of three parts ‘ electrolyte, anode and cathode. SOFCs have fuel flexibility, are low cost and have long-term stability. Operating temperature is the main disadvantage of the SOFC. To overcome this disadvantage, nanomaterials are used for electrolytes, anodes and cathodes of SOFC in order to improve their performance. Various fabrication and preparation methods are used to integrate different nanomaterials in the different parts of SOFCs. In this research, different fabrication methods along with their applications are discussed. [1, 2]

‘ Problem statement or gap:

The high use of fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil in last 100 years has increased the carbon dioxide and other poisonous gases emissions from power generation devices. This is considered to be an important factor for some of the environmental problems like global warming. The energy demand is always increasing and fossil fuels are depleting at faster rate. The power generation by using fossil fuels would not be sustainable. Thus, there is a need to find alternative or renewable energy sources that can meet this demand. The fuel cell is considered to be the one of the efficient and clean power generating device. Now, as we are considering fuel cells as replacement for the current power generating devices, the efficiency and durability of the fuel cells should be ideally equal or higher than those devices. To increase the efficiency and durability, different nanomaterials can be used in three different parts i.e. electrolyte, cathode and anode of fuel cells. Thus, in summary, there is need for better understanding of how these nanomaterials can be integrated on these parts in an efficient, fast and low cost ways. [1, 2, 4]

The research questions that the paper is going to address are:

1. What are some of the efficient methods to integrate the nanoparticles?

2. What are some of the applications of above methods along with the results to show the power output and durability of the fuel cells? [2, 3, 4, 5]

3. What future work needs to be done in order to improve the long term performance of the fuel cells? [6]

‘ Objectives of your research:

The objective of the current study is to provide a comprehensive review of literatures related to the application and advantages of each fabrication method of SOFCs. The fabrication methods discussed in the current study are photolithography process, sintering process and infiltration process. These processes are used for fabrication of nanomaterials on electrolyte, anode and cathode respectively. In this research, the methods are discussed using one nanomaterial for each fabrication method. The nanomaterial used for photolithography is YSZ (yttrium stabilized zirconia) [1, 2], for sintering is NiO/YSZ [3, 5] and for infiltration is metal salt nitrate [4]. These materials would increase the power output and performance of SOFCs. Different nanomaterials can also be used other than the mentioned, for improving the performance. The long term goal of the research is to help the researchers to understand the impact of use of nanomaterials in SOFCs.

‘ Expected solution or anticipated results of your research:

The results of this research will be shared in a form of paper, power point and poster presentation. The results would primarily include the schematic diagrams of the fabrication methods. They would also include the preparation methods for a particular nanomaterial used in the fabrication. The results for nanomaterial in electrolyte would include tables and graphs related to performance of SOFCs with respect to crystalline sizes, temperature, durability and cell voltage. For anode, the results would include performance of fuel cells with respect to temperature and cell voltage. The results for cathode would include performance with respect to temperature. In summary, the performance and durability of SOFCs are expected to increase with addition of nanomaterials.

‘ Timetable for completion:

February 28, 2015 ‘ Literature review and start research from the reference papers.

March 13, 2015 ‘ Proposal for Final Project.

March 27, 2015 ‘ Progress Report for Final Project.

April 17, 2015 ‘ Present Results in Poster Presentation.

April 24, 2015 ‘ Submit Final Paper.

‘ Your qualifications:

I am pursuing Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I am writing this research paper as a part of curriculum for TCM 460.

‘ Limitations, discussion, conclusion:

In this research paper, we will see how nanomaterials can be used by using fabrication methods for electrolyte, anode and cathode of SOFCs. Introducing these nanomaterials will increase performance and durability of SOFCs. But, there are some limitations of this research. We are going to see only limited number of fabrication methods for integration of nanomaterials in fuel cells and only one application of the nanomaterial used for electrolyte, anode and cathode. There might be several other fabrication methods and nanomaterials which are not covered in this research paper. Degradation of performance after a certain number of working hours of SOFCs should also be considered while doing future work. [6]

Situated learning: essay help online free

Situated learning is a type of learning that allows individual learners to learn through socializing with other people, or with knowledgeable people or through observing and imitating real activities in real life situations. The above mentioned practice builds on participation and observation in activity.

Situated learning is based on practical activities whereby learners gain beneficial knowledge that they ought to get from schools. In the past years, learners were taught things that were not really useful to them in their everyday life. Learners need to learn or acquire skills or knowledge that are relevant to their lives, and that might be related to the career that they are going to choose in the near future.

Situated learning declared that thinking, learning and doings cannot be separated from the practical and social situations in which they occur. They work in harmony

When the teacher allows learners to have an opportunity to participate, demonstrate and interact their own thoughts, this will build their cognition abilities. Learners will acquire specific skills by observing, visualize, hear and listen by having someone to imitate or follow.

In situated learning, learner’s works through participating in a particular activity of a certain community. Participation involves joining in with the community or group of people who are performing that activity. For example, if a learner wants to know to design clothes or wants to become a fashion designer, he will probably join a group of people who design different types of clothes. In this way a learner will gain his designing experience through doing and from there, he will be able to become productive in his life after mastering the designing skills.

Teaching method -Demonstration

The teaching method that I will use in situated learning perspective is demonstration. It is the process of teaching through giving or showing examples, or acting out situations or carries out experiments. Demonstration can be used as a proof or evidence about whatever theory or situation explained to the learners, through a combination of visual evidence (of things that you can really see with your eyes) and associated reasoning.

Demonstration gives learners an opportunity to relate to the presented information individually and reinforce memory storage, because they provide the link between facts and real world implementation of those facts.

Heather (2009) on his education reference article when he explained the demonstration method of teaching stated that: ‘when using the demonstration model in the classroom, the teacher or some other expert on the topic being taught, perform the tasks step-by-step so that the learner will be able to complete the same task independently. After performing the demonstration, the teacher’s role becomes supporting students in their attempts, providing guidance and feedback and offering suggestions for alternative approaches.

Implementing the practice in my teaching, using demonstration method to improve learning

According to the situated learning perspective, people learn through participation and we participate by joining the group of people who are experts or experienced in carrying out a particular activity. To implement the practice of working to bring authentic practice into the classroom, a learner need to be able to do things or carry out tasks appropriately in real life situations . And the teacher or an expert from a certain community of practice will act as a scaffold in this situation, by carrying out demonstrations.

In English language teaching under the speaking domain, I will implement this practice in teaching my learners about how to give (deliver) a speech in public. Firstly I will teach my learners about what is a speech, how people present speeches and what is the layout of a speech, in presenting it as well as in writing, and also about the main components of a speech such as: The speech should be logically written (should have an introduction, body and conclusion) speaker should be relaxed and try to be calm even when he knows that he is nervous, speech should be interesting, the speaker should use the body language correctly. I will also demonstrate to learners by giving them a short speech as an example.

Secondly I will invite an expert from the community of practice, a person who deliver speeches at different occasions to my class. This person will demonstrate to my learners about how people present speeches, so that they can improve their skills. After the expert’s presentation, learners will be given an opportunity to ask questions, I will also ask them questions to check what they have captured from the presentation. Then I will ask them to work in collaboration with each other in groups, to come up with a speech following the layout that I taught them, and then they should choose a presenter from their groups to present the speech to class. After the group’s presentations, they will be given a chance to comment or make suggestions about others presentations.

As the learners become able to perform the task on their own effectively, more tasks are given, until they master the tasks of speeches presentations. Learners will then be given a task to prepare their own speeches, individually. Before presentations, they will be given opportunities to rehearse. Firstly, they will submit their speeches that they wrote down (draft). I will give those comments and suggestions. In the second rehearsal they will present their speeches in class, this will be done with the purpose to increase their fluency in reading, and to remind them of speech presentation strategies such as: use of voice, facial expressions, and use of body language. Then I will ask them to make changes in their speeches where necessary. Finally they will present their speeches again with an expert observing them. The expert would give comments after the presentations. If possible the presentations should be recorded or videotaped.

From the situated learning perspective, learning is a process that does not take place in an individual mind, but it takes place in a situated learning. In the case of situated practice of speech presentation rehearsal, the teacher as an instructor and the learners constructed the changes in participation that were observed as the learners developed skills from peripheral to fuller participation. In these process learners participation was transformed through demonstration and the teacher’s participation complemented the learner’s learning.

Diabetic ketoacidosis

Introduction:

Diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA, is one of the most serious metabolic disorders seen in both human and veterinary medicine. A severe complication of diabetes mellitus, DKA is characterized by a more concentration of blood sugar, the presence of substances called ketones in the urine, and decreased concentrations of bicarbonate in the blood. Some dogs with DKA will be less affected but the majority will be seriously ill and may have severe complications such as neurological problems due to brain swelling, acute kidney failure, pancreatitis, and anemia. DKA will lead to death in many cases, but aggressive diagnostics and treatment can be life saving.

DKA often develops in diabetes that had previously been unrecognized or untreated. Thus, it is essential to identify diabetes mellitus or the development of additional symptoms in a dog that is known to be diabetic to prevent DKA from occurring.

Clinical Signs:

Clinical signs include weight loss, lethargy, anorexia, and vomiting. Complications may include anemia, electrolyte abnormalities, neurological disorders, and acute renal failure.

Symptoms:

Some of the symptoms related to this disease are as follows;

‘ Increased thirst

‘ Loss of appetite

‘ Frequent urination

‘ Weight loss

‘ Tiredness

‘ Vomiting

Explanation:

In addition to diabetes mellitus, another most serious condition that may develop. Ketones, also called ketone bodies, are used for energy production in most body tissues. They are normally formed when fatty acids are released from fatty tissue and are transported to the liver. The liver then makes ketones from the fatty acids. Excessive production of ketones can occur in uncontrolled diabetes mellitus, and as they accumulate, ketosis, and eventually acidosis, develop. The four major factors that contribute to ketone formation in DKA are

1. insulin deficiency

2. fasting

3. dehydration, and

4. increased levels of “stress” hormones such as epinephrine, cortisol, glucagon, and growth hormone.

DKA is more common in animals with previously undiagnosed diabetes mellitus, but it can also be seen in dogs with established diabetes that are not receiving enough insulin. In these dogs, there may be an associated inflammatory or infectious disease. Other canines may develop conditions associated with insulin resistance such as hypothyroidism or Cushing’s disease. Dogs may be only mildly affected by DKA, or they may be close to death at the time of diagnosis. DKA develops at an unpredictable rate, and some diabetic dogs may be able to live fairly normal lives for several months with no treatment at all. However, once DKA develops, most dogs become seriously ill within one week.

The aggressiveness of treatment depends on how sick the dog is. While dogs with mild DKA may be successfully treated with intravenous fluids and insulin, dogs with severe manifestations of disease will need more significant intervention. Fluid therapy, potassium, bicarbonate, and phosphorus supplementation can be vitally important. Any accompanying disorders must be identified and treated specifically where possible to enhance resolution of DKA.

Complications during DKA treatment are common, and can include the development of hypoglycemia, neurological signs due to brain cell swelling, and severe electrolyte abnormalities. Anemia due to red blood cell breakdown can occur if the serum phosphorus concentration drops too low. Acute kidney failure also is possible.

DKA is one of the most serious metabolic disorders seen in both human and veterinary medicine. Many patients will die from it. However, the majority of patients can pull through a crisis successfully with aggressive diagnostics and treatment.

Diagnosis

The diagnosis of DKA is based on the clinical signs and the presence of elevated serum glucose concentrations and ketones in the urine, and reduced serum bicarbonate concentrations within the blood stream. Mild DKA is present when dogs with high serum glucose concentrations and ketones in the urine appear healthy, or have only mild clinical signs, or have mild decreases in serum bicarbonate concentration. These dogs do not require extremely aggressive treatment, and should be distinguished from dogs with severe DKA. Dogs with severe DKA have high serum glucose concentrations, ketones in the urine, extreme reductions in serum bicarbonate concentration, and often show severe signs of illness.

In addition to the serum glucose concentrations and urinalysis results, other key diagnostic procedures include measurement of venous total carbon dioxide, blood gas evaluation, and analysis of electrolytes and serum kidney values. In addition to a routine urinalysis, a urine culture should be performed on any dog with DKA, as urinary tract infections are very common complicating factors for this condition. A complete blood count, serum liver and pancreatic enzyme measurements, and cholesterol and triglyceride levels should also be obtained. X-rays of the chest and abdomen, and ideally an abdominal ultrasound, should also be used to investigate underlying or associated factors, as well as other abnormalities that might require specific treatment.

Prognosis

The prognosis for DKA is guarded. As many as five to 10 percent of humans with DKA die from this condition. Death rates for dogs may be as high as 30 to 40 percent in some environments.

Transfer:

DKA usually occurs in either dogs with diabetes that has been present but unrecognized and untreated for a long time, or in previously diagnosed diabetic dogs that have become ill with another problem or that are taking inadequate amounts of insulin

Cure:

Relatively healthy dogs with DKA can be treated with potent but regular short-acting crystalline insulin injections to help get the serum glucose levels back under control. It may take a few days for serum glucose and urine ketone levels to fall, but aggressive treatment may not be needed as long as the dog’s condition is basically stable.

Treatment of sick diabetic dogs needs to be more aggressive. Paramount to the treatment of DKA is the gradual replacement of fluid deficits, as well as the maintenance of normal fluid balance. Many dogs will seem substantially better after being treated by intravenous fluids alone. Phosphate supplementation may also be needed, since serum phosphorus concentrations can drop to dangerously low levels during the treatment of DKA leading to serious complications such as a red blood cell breakdown that results in anemia. Bicarbonate is given to help correct acid-base disturbances. Insulin also is vital in the treatment of DKA. In some situations, fluids need to be replaced quickly, while the glucose levels will need gradual adjustment.

Until safer serum glucose concentrations are obtained, most dogs with DKA are treated first with regular crystalline insulin, the most potent and shortest acting form of insulin, which may be given intravenously or on an hourly basis in the muscle. If the dog is not eating on its own, dextrose may be added to the fluids to keep the serum glucose level from dropping too low after insulin is started.

Concurrent illnesses must be identified and treated specifically where possible. Pancreatitis is extremely common in DKA, but there is no specific treatment for this disorder. Bacterial infections need to be identified and treated in a timely manner. Antibiotics usually are given even if a bacterial infection has not been confirmed, due to the problems that infections cause in DKA. Acute kidney failure may also accompany DKA, and needs to be treated aggressively with fluids. Drugs may be needed to stimulate urine production if it appears inadequate.

Complications during treatment of DKA that occur most frequently include the development of hypoglycemia, central nervous system signs, electrolyte abnormalities, and anemia. The best way to prevent these side effects is to aim for gradual correction of the multiple abnormalities associated with DKA. Excessively rapid correction of glucose concentrations and electrolyte abnormalities often leads to brain cell swelling and neurological signs. Electrolyte concentrations need to be monitored very carefully during the treatment of DKA, as frequent adjustments of fluid type and rate, and the amount of potassium supplementation, are often needed. Also, close attention must be paid to the serum phosphorus concentration, as supplementation with phosphorus is often needed to prevent the development of severely low serum phosphorus concentrations and the anemia that can result from this.

Once the dog is stabilized and eating and drinking on its own, longer-acting insulin types can be initiated. In addition, the supportive measures, such as fluid therapy and medications, can be tapered, as long as no other complicating issues surface and improvement continues. Eventually, the animal should be able to go home with an insulin regime designed for at home use, as well as any other treatments necessary to address additional disorders that might be present.

Preventive measures:

There is no specific method for preventing DKA, but careful treatment and monitoring of diabetic dogs is essential. Recognition of the common signs of diabetes mellitus in a dog–increased thirst and urination, increased appetite, and weight loss–also is important so the diagnosis of uncomplicated diabetes mellitus can b

Rhetorical Analysis of Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'

A Modest Proposal is a satirical pamphlet that examines the attitude of the rich towards the poor starving children in their society. Jonathan Swift uses a number of rhetorical devices effectively as he highlights his proposal. He uses logical fallacies, metaphors, repetition and parallelism as well as humor, sarcasm and satire tone to highlight these negative attitudes.

Jonathan swift begins by mocking and blaming the mothers of the children by telling them that they should engage or find themselves in working to earn an honest living instead of strolling to beg for alms. He also predicts tough future for these children that when they grow up they will turn to be thieves. This is simply because the parents did not train their children the modest way of life.

Swift uses logical fallacies to make his argument in ‘A Modest Proposal’. His way of argument and thinking is incorrect and lack validity in what is proposing. This is evident in this pamphlet on line 69 to 73, ‘that a young healthy Child well Nursed is at a year Old, a most 71 delicious, nourishing, and wholesome Food, whether Stewed, Roasted, 72 Baked, or Boyled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a Fricasie’. He notes down that a young healthy child is a delicious food to be roasted, stewed and boiled to be served and eaten. Secondly, he has computed twenty thousand children to be reserved for breeding. This dehumanizes the children to be like animals.

Jonathan swift uses emotional appeal in his argument by proposing slaughter houses to be erected or built in suitable places and butchers to be employed to do the work of slaughtering the children. He further exaggerates by saying that the children will be roasted like pigs. Jonathan knows clearly that this proposal will affect many because no person would want his or her child to be butchered. Beyond that, Swift captures the reader’s emotion on line 34 and 35 ‘prevent those voluntary Abortions, and that horrid practice of Women 35 murdering their Bastard Children’. This is a horrific behavior that is being opposed everywhere in this world.

Another rhetorical device that Jonathan Swift use in his work is irony. He says ‘I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders’ and ‘how this number shall be reared and provided for’. This suggestion is ironic because he compares women to animals. Also, this creates a good argument because human beings do not breed and cannot be reared. He therefore dehumanizes human beings and creates satire in this statement.

Jonathan swift in his scheme of supporting his argument, he is sarcastic that certain body parts of a child are good to eat. He further clarifies that in certain occasion, the body parts will be on demand. He further suggests that good and healthy children will be skinned and the skin will be used to make admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for gentlemen. This idea is ridiculous to an extent that children will not only be a delicacy, but their body parts will be used to make ornaments. Secondly, he sarcastically suggests option to Ireland to counter its economic problems. Jonathan proposes that if the poor children can be food, this will create a good revenue to the country through exporting the surplus child’s flesh to the rich outside Ireland. Thirdly, Swift computes the selling price of one child to be ten shillings. This is recorded on line 103-105 ‘I believe no gentleman would repine to give Ten Shillings for the Carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said will make four Dishes of excellent Nutritive Meat’. He proceeds and make fun of the mothers that they will get eight shillings profit to use until they will able produce another child.

Swift applies a sympathetic tone in his proposals, especially at the beginning. In paragraph two, he is requesting for amicable and a permanent solution to help these children from deplorable state they are living. He goes ahead to award anyone who will find cheap and easy method of making these children useful by building a statue in his or her memory. Jonathan’s tone is not constant in his recording of his proposals. He later changes to scary tone as he progresses to give his personal opinions about these children. For instance, he talks of butchering these children to be made delicious food and skinning of the children to make admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for gentlemen. This tone shocks and creates fear for the reader.

To what extent the psychiatric services can be improved in the special observation ward in a general hospital under Hospital Authority by nurse leader?: college application essay help

What is leadership about?

There are many different people defined leadership in different ways (Heacock, 2013). According to Hickman (1998), leadership aimed to induce the followers to follow and take action in order to complete the specified goals, and it can helped to show the values of the leaders and the followers and also their motivations can be showed. According to Jooste (2004), leadership is more complicated and not simply acted as a role by how to control the followers, and leaders always tried to help and teach the followers to complete the task by step by step such as planning, leading, controlling and organizing. According to Northouse (2009), leaders can have the ability to affect the followers to complete a specified goal. Rogers (2003) stated that leaders can help the followers to become more aware of the uncertainty and possible outcome about the possible changes. The above information showed that a leader must have good leadership skills in order to affect the followers about what is happening and the values to change the current conditions. It can helped the followers to have a more and better understanding of the specified goal, as a result, the followers are more willing to follow and complete the tasks smoothly.

Importance of Leadership

According to the Strategic Service Plan of the Hospital Authority (2009-2012), health care workers and the frontline staff need to increase and enhance their related skills for the raising patient’s service’s needs, the number of patients, the complexity of medical devices and more complicated medical cases. In order to solve the above problems and needs, Hospital Authority has focused on three main different aspects such as including management skills, leadership skills and clinical competence. Hospital Authority emphasis the importance of leadership and put sufficient resources such as overseas training and classroom courses in order to enhance the leadership skills to current ward mangers, nursing officer, advanced practice nurse and future leaders. According to the Hospital Authority Annual Plan (2011-2012), one of the key objectives was ‘Build People First Culture’ and the one of the priority services for 2011-2012 was to ‘Enhance professional competencies and build up effective management and leadership’.

Overview of psychiatric services in Hong Kong

According to the Hospital Authority Mental Health Service Plan for Adults (2010-2015), there was estimated 1 million to 1.7million people were having psychiatric problem in Hong Kong and about 70,000 to 200,000 people were suffering from severe psychiatric problems. And around 40,000 of them with diagnosed schizophrenia and nearly half of them were treated at out-patient setting.

According to Chui, Mui and Cheng et al. (2012), the aim for public psychiatric hospital was to minimize the psychiatric admission rates and wanted to focus on psychiatric community services such as psychiatric out-patient clinic, psychiatric community out-reach team services and the Consultation Liaison team (CLT) in public general hospital for patients who needed to have psychiatric services. Hospital Authority tried to minimize the psychiatric admission rate by implementing some services since the year 2009.

Why I chose the topic to discuss and how it is important to me and others

I chose this topic because I am working in a ward call special observation ward which strongly supported by the Consultation Liaison team (CLT) services in public general hospital for patients who needed to have psychiatric services. Some of the patients are not physically fit for transfer to psychiatric unit, some of them are patients who are transferred back from psychiatric unit for medical problem, some of them are elderly with newly diagnosed dementia with relatives cannot accept the reality even with poor social support. However, many problems such as placement problems, complaint cases, safety problem and long waiting lists for patients who needed to admit to my ward existed.

This paper will start with the introduction and my selected real case scenario in my ward (special observation ward). I will compare different leadership models such as laissez-faire leadership, transactional leadership and transformational leadership. I will discuss the leadership style of my leader in my case scenario. For the discussion part, force field analysis will be used for analysis the data and I will summarize the findings, and also, I will discuss how the situation can be more effectively with how to improve the situation. Reflective summary will be the last part of this paper with my comment.

Context

Case scenario:

I am working in a special observation ward in one of the general hospital under Hospital Authority and this ward aimed to receive patient with unstable emotion or some psychiatric problem, but they are not physically fit for transfer to psychiatric hospital or need some close observation in general hospital. There are only 24 beds available with long waiting list that patients needed a bit long time to be admitted to my ward. There are only 3 APNs, 13 RNs and 5 ward assistants to support the ward within 3 shifts with heavy workload and stress.

My ward manger wanted to improve the quality of service and reduce the long waiting time for admission. She carried out a lot of guidelines and policies for staff to follow. Some of the policies are: 1) Discuss with relatives whom patients got dementia to find a placement to reduce the length of hospital stay, 2) Team in-charge should screen out cases who can be early discharged or transfer to psychiatric hospital. 3) Writing detailed report in each patient’s record to reduce the chance of getting challenge when patient’s service department receives complaints.

One month later, 1) some relatives complained that nurses forcing them to find old age home within a short period of time and forcing patients to discharge even they were not yet prepared well. 2) Doctors felt unpleasant and complained that nurses overriding their decisions about the discharge plan as some newly upgraded nurses does not have sufficient knowledge to screen suitable cases which causing low morale and conflicts. 3) Nurses needed to spend a lot of time in writing patient’s record causing low morale because nurses always need to spend their own time after duty turnover to finished writing detailed patient’s record (usually more than one hour). Also, many junior nurses do not have sufficient knowledge about detailed and special required documentation skills which put the nurse in-charge in a very difficult position.

Analysis

I will compare different leadership styles and analyze the leadership style in this scenario. According to Hickman (1998), transactional leaders will only correct the problems or mistakes once it happened in which will threatens the leader’s management plan and no changes will be made if nothing happened. Hickman (1998) also stated that transactional leaders also avoid development and improvement as they do not have motivation to have any changes. According to Bass (1990), transactional leadership will use rewards or punishments to the followers in order to achieve the goals.

For the transformational leadership, Hickman (1998) stated that transformational leadership will try to motivate the followers to achieve the goals and needs to changes, and the morality of the followers could be higher. Transformational leader need not to use the authority or power to control the followers. According to Bass (1990), transformational leaders will acted himself/herself as role model to the followers in order to obtain trustfulness and loyalty of his followers. Besides, through mentoring and empowering, Transformational leaders also use the mentoring and empowering skills to let the followers to enhance and develop the potential power in order to complete the specified goals.

According to Gill (2011), there are no guidelines and protocols for the followers to follow for the laissez-faire leadership style. The morale of the followers may be high or low as the followers can do whatever they wanted. However, the followers will have their own style of work and therefore more easily to reach the specified goal.

However, both transactional leadership and transformational leadership will set a clear objectives and goals for their followers with clear guideline. As a result, the followers can have a better understanding of what they should do in order to achieve the goals.

The leadership style of my case scenario:

Firstly, in this scenario, the leadership style of my ward manager was autocratic leader style and she was as a transactional leader. She has the greatest powers and the highest position in order to influence all the staff including nurses, doctors and patients with their relatives. According to Bass (1990), transactional leader got the power to make the plan and ask the followers to perform that in order to achieve the specified goals with the authority power.

In this scenario, she used her power to set some guidelines and policies for the staff to follow in order to improve the quality of service and reduce the long waiting time for admission. The advantages were 1) Admission rates to special observation ward were increased from average 10 patients per days after one month time as evidenced by the admission book. 2) Patient’s Services Department sent an e-mail to department head to appreciate the detailed documentation written in patient’s record in order to minimize the investigation time to answer the complaint cases. 3) Discharge rates were increased as many elderly with placement or caring problem were directly discharged to aged home other than home. And also, the cases which were medically fit for transfer to psychiatric unit were screened out earlier. That evidences were showed in the discharge record. Although her goals were achieved, there were disadvantages such as 1) Low morale of the nurses as they have to spend a lot of time in writing documentation by using their own time. 2) Heavy workload for staff for writing detailed documentations together with the routine work. Junior staff may have difficulties in proper and special documentations and senior staff also felt fatigues by doing their own work together with teaching and supervising the junior staff. 3) Poor relationship between nurses and doctors together with the relatives. As they always said that nurses forcing early discharge of patients which leading to increase in complaints.

Discussion

Changes and Force Field Analysis

According to Carney (2000), the basic and essential skills for all nurse leaders are manage, implement and support the changing process in order to ensure the followers to adopt about the changes. If the leaders lack of the quality of leadership skills, the changing process may be not successful. Force Field Analysis (Lewin, 1951) stated that it can help to how and what were the difficulties about the followers encountered. In the year 1951, Force Field Analysis was done in order to assess the followers for how to the implement the Family-Centered Care Program from the original situation. There were some advises given to improve the leadership skills according to the analysis result of the Force Field Analysis.

Force field analysis is a model designed by Lewin on the year 1951. It is useful to determine the effectiveness of the variables included and also helped to develop some strategies to change or by intervene some of the variables. Lewin assumed that both driving and restraining forces will be occurred when there were any changes existed. Driving forces are equal to the forces in which it keeps the changes are going on continuously. And the restraining forces are equal to the forces that occurred to resist the driving forces. According to Baulcomb (2003), equilibrium can be occurred once the leader can be able to decrease the restraining forces and allow reaching to the desired status by increasing the driving forces.

From the analysis, restraining forces were 1) Poor documentation skills of new staff, 2) Poor communication skills between staff and relatives, 3) Heavy workload due to extra jobs such as teaching new staff and extra time for detailed documentations, 4) High stress from staff to choose potential early discharge patient would due to conflicts with doctors and relatives and 5) Increase in the number of complaint cases. And the pushing forces were 1) Reducing waiting time for admission, 2) increase discharge rate, 3) improve documentation skills of staff and 4) increase the quality of services.

What has been successfully done listed in the Force Field Analysis in this scenario?

1) Reduce the waiting time for admission to special observation ward.

2) Increase the discharge rates in special observation ward.

3) Increase documentation skills for some of the nurses in special observation ward. (but not all).

What has been addressed but failed to success at the beginning without changes?

1) Increase documentation skills for some of the nurses in special observation ward.

2) Reduce the rate of complaints (as increasing rate of conflicts about placement issues)

3) Improve the quality of care as the morale of nurses is low and they feel stressful with heavy workload.

After identify the restraining and pushing forces, some changes or solutions can be established in order to eliminate and minimize the negative factors to make improvement. For the stress issues, as many junior nurses needed a lot of time to handle the routine work because lack of experiences, so they needed to stay after duty off to finish the all the tasks including the detailed documentations. Senior nurses also have the responsibilities to supervise the junior nurses in which they also have to leave lately after off duty. Documentation class training can be implemented by some experienced staff to junior staff and some samples of special documentations can be shared for reference. For the discharge issues, there are communication problems and many doctors and relatives would not listen to nurse’s advice and leading to conflicts and complaints. This can helped by holding a meeting with doctors with agreement made before starting the program. And nurses can invite medical social worker and pre-discharge team if difficult to handle to placement problem in order to avoid conflicts and complaints from relatives. As a result, stress and workload can be reduced with the specified goals can also be achieved.

According to Cain and Mittman (2002), there should be promoting and supporting in changes within the health care setting, but should not greatly influence the existing situations. Conner and Patterson (1982) stated that the reason for the failed to changes were due to the lack of commitment for the followers to changes and it was important for the followers to accept and support the changes in order to success any changes.

In this scenario, although changes were necessary for improving the quality of services, but the leader did not provide adequate support, time and training before implemented the policies and protocol. As a result, the followers showed lack of energy and even felt stressful to support the changes.

Conclusion

Different leadership style such as laissez-faire leadership, transactional leadership and transformational leadership were introduced with a case scenario was shared. Force Field Analysis was used to point out the pushing and restraining forces which can help to improve the situation. There is also a discussion part to discuss the case scenario for improvement. A good leader should show the advantages to changes and to minimize the weaknesses. Regular review and support are essential and a good leader should be ready to accept feedback and suggestions.

Part2:

Reflective Summary

I am a Registered Nurse who is working in Medical Department for nearly nine years and rotated to the special observation ward under medical department for about seven years. I am the second highest appointment Registered Nurse working in this ward and always needed to perform the job as ward in-charge and mentors for new comers and student nurses. As my ward manager decided to implement the guidelines and protocols as stated in Part 1, the workload was increased and I felt very stress as I needed to choose some potential early discharge cases and presented to my ward manager and doctor-in-charge. Also, I needed to spend a lot of time to explain the importance of placement issues to the relative with caring problem during visiting hour with half of my colleagues went out for dinner time and some of them will scolded nurses for forcing patients to aged home. For the potential complaint cases, nurses involved needed to write detailed documentations in patient’s record in which sometimes involves three pages of papers to write. All of the nurses feel fatigue and stress about the new guidelines.

If I am my ward manager, I will choose to be a transformational leader. It is because transactional leadership only focuses on the goals achievement with punishment and rewards were made for the followers. Although Outhwaite (2003) stated that the transactional leaders must have their own abilities to achieve a common goal and the routine job should be done sufficiently. The followers have sufficient instructions from the transactional leader to ensure the work having done successfully and effectively. However, the moralities of the staff under transactional leadership were low as they will always tried to avoid punishment by following the standard guidelines to achieve the specified goals.

I think that transformational leadership is more suitable in nursing field because the followers can have more opportunities and freedom to involve in the decision making process. The transformational leader can allow the followers to implement some tasks with their specified abilities. It provides opportunities for the followers to learn the leadership skills and knowledge. The relationship between the leader and the followers will be better for transformational leadership.

Transformational leader always try to emphasis changes and encourage having commitments. Moreover, I believed that transformational leaders will spend more time to teach and provide coaching to the followers, as a result, the followers should be more satisfied and happier. Transformational leader will also provide the followers some training and for further development of the specified areas and helps to develop the strengths of the followers.

As all of the public hospitals are facing the problem of manpower insufficient already and the turnover rates are high due to heavy workload and poor working environment. It is not practical to implement some new guidelines without sufficient support to increase the workload of staff. If I am the leader, I will have sufficient information and suggestions before implement a new guideline or policy and I will provide adequate professional training and support to the staff in order to allow them to develop their strengths. I will also listen and allow staff to provide suggestions or advises for improvement and changes because the morality will be higher if the staff having the chance for involvement.

To improve my leadership skill, I will use a reflective diary to written down some special events which are happened in my ward together with the advantages and the disadvantages of the leadership style of my ward manager in order to have further improvement or what is good for learning. It can help me to summarize all the events and make an evaluation to be a role model before I can promote to Advanced Practice Nurse. Also, I can seek the approval of my ward manager to set some projects such as the topic ‘Documentation’ by using transformational leadership style to test the effect of performing projects and it can helped to observe the response of the followers for me for further development.

I will set a three to twelve months leadership developmental plan in special observation ward -by SMART. The SMART Objectives of the project as set below:

1) To implement a documentation training course for all of the nurses working in the special observation ward to enhance the documentation skills and special documentation style especially for the patients in special observation ward. For 100% of nurses working in special observation ward have the chance to join the training course within six months time.

2) To implement a communication skills training course for all of the nurses working in the special observation ward to enhance the communication skills especially for the patients and their relatives in special observation ward. For 100% of nurses working in special observation ward have the chance to join the training course within twelve months time.

3) To increase the morale of the colleagues in my ward by receiving feedback of the new guideline to allow their involvement to improve the services within three months time.

Manhole Rehabilitation

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Manhole rehabilitation has become common. It costs less to rehab manholes that to replace them. It has become an important approach in the trenchless sector. Our keyword city state experts assist you in manhole inflow issues, restoring the structures etc. Manhole Rehabilitation is a service focused at repairing the damaged manholes rather than replacing them. Handling the manhole issue on your own is impossible. You need to call a reputable full-time servicing company to involve in keyword city staterather than replacement at competitive prices.

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Decentralisation: college essay help online

Over the past two decades a wave of decentralization to the local political bodies has been noticed all over the world. (Martinez-Vazquez, May 2007, p. 1) These worldwide trend towards decentralization is welcomed by the academicians and experts as a positive sign for democratic transformation and the process can be perceived in two fundamental observations,:’First, decentralization is most often associated with an increase in local autonomy. Second, the connotations and values attached to decentralization and local autonomy are almost exclusively positive.’ (Beer-T??th, 2009, p. 29)However, it is observed in most of the cases that political or administrative transfers of power were not followed by proper empowerment in fiscal affairs. Low fiscal autonomy has been a major policy problem in the decentralization process at local level both in developed and developing nations. Central control and supervision of local affairs also found to be a major obstacle in the trends of governing local governments around the world. Lack of fiscal autonomy is closely related to ensuring accountability and transparency for the local government bodies. For better governance at local level, it is urged that more emphasis should be given to local level fiscal decentralization so that local governments can have a certain level of financial resources to organize their internal affairs and ensure peoples empowerment at local level .This paper is designed to examine the major issues and concerns related to fiscal autonomy, accountability mechanism and decentralization at local level around the world and connect those issues to broder governance paradigm and find out the major challenges to advance democratic practices at local level. The paper will try to give an overall view of the trends of local level governance practices in both developed and developing world and will try to bring under a comparative lens of all the concurrent issues and challenges related to local level governances financing.

A) Financing by Central Government: central control and the question of autonomy

Dependence on central government in fiscal affairs is a worldwide trend in local government financing. Intergovernmental transfers are the important sources of local government financing around the world. It is thought that these government transfers have political dimensions as most of such kinds of transfers are designed from center with political motives. Therefore, it is important to assess the role of center government in financing local bodies around the world. In this part, the global trends of intergovernmental transfers, imbalance between center and local and its political dimensions around the world will be discussed and analyzed with the purpose to comprehend the magnitude of central government transfers to local government around the world.

1. Intergovernmental transfers for financing local governments

Intergovernmental transfers are the main source of local governmental finance around the world.

The transfers are especially important for developing nations because local government taxing powers are very limited in most of the developing world. In fact, many different types of transfers are in use around the world and it is difficult to settle on a best practice (Roy, 2008, p. 30). It is urged to reduce the flow of government grants to local governments and increase the scope of local taxation and resource mobilization. In fact, the share of government grants in local government budgeting is recognized as an indicator for financial autonomy at local level (Daniel Bergvall & Merk, 2006, p. 4) and bridging the gap between revenues and expenditures remain the main challenge for the effective execution of decentralization and democratic transformation. However, there is yet any consensus whether those transfers promote efficiency or misallocate resources at local level. In one view, lack of adequate resource transfers to local governments creates difficulties to finance their expenditure responsibilities, while in other view; overdependence of central grants can undermine local accountability. According to one analyst over-dependence can created perverse incentives at the local level to misallocate public resources in federal system. (Khemani, July 24,2001, pp. 5-6)

2. Political dimension of financial decentralization

Local autonomy is a fundamental base for making democracy work, and is often referred to as a ‘school in democracy.’ (Shimizutani, 2010, p. 99) People’s participation should come from the roots and decentralized and autonomous local body can equip the people at local level to promote democratic procedures .Nevertheless, it can backfire from its own strength. Decentralization which is believed to break down the asymmetric relationship of clientelism at local level can create a new type of clientical political practices in real world (Garc??a-Guadilla & P??rez, 2002, p. 104). Indeed, in many cases, decentralization simply empowers local elites to capture a larger share of public resources, often at the expense of the poor (Johnson, Deshingkar, & Start, 2005, p. 937). Recentralization process also can be noticed for political reasons. Nicholas Awortwi examines the administrative reform policy of Ghana and Uganda; and showed that recentralization and further weakening of LGs are likely to continue in both countries because the initial path that was created benefited politicians and bureaucrats and they are committed to staying on that course. (Awortwi, 2011) Political calculation is always a major factor in any policy setting. Even, in Developed world, like UK, political trend of targeting local government fund can be identified. (John & Ward, 2001).Central-periphery financial relations in different countries always evolved differently in different political perspective. Moreover, developing countries often reach their decision about intergovernmental transfers for political reasons as well. (Roy, 2008, p. 33) Bahl Roy explained the politics behind the intergovernmental transfers in three categories:

i. The Central authority likes to provide local governments with intergovernmental transfers that carry stringent conditions to bypass the decentralization demand.

ii. A reason for advocating intergovernmental transfers by central government is the goal of enforcing uniformity in the provision of public services.

iii. A transfer system may be put in place as part of a political strategy to hold open the option of offloading the budget deficit on to subnational governments (for example, underfunding a grant program). (Roy, 2008, pp. 33-34)

Thought, it is thought that there are political calculations behind the sanctions of government grants, it is the dominating trends in both developed and developing world and the trend of Intergovernmental transfers is likely to continue.

3) Financial Gap between local and central governance

Countries, both developed and developing, transfer funds to equip the local governments for providing services and generate development at local level .However; Developing and transition countries are characterized by wide disparities among regions in economic well-being. (Roy, 2008, p. 31) Nevertheless, vertical imbalance existed between centre and periphery is a common symptom of fiscal imbalance of developing nations which is believed to treat with taking policies of financial empowerment. An analyst emphasized the solution to adopt equalization measures of inter-regional differences in financial capacities and it can be accomplished by providing intergovernmental transfers. (Roy, 2008, p. 31) In a study of 9 major developed and developing countries , it is suggested to adopt more equalization formula to face the disparity problem. (Ma, 1997)Roy Bahl identified a reason behind transfers (subnational) is to offset externalities so that local governments can make their own decision and may underspend on services where there are substantial external benefits (Roy., 2000, p. 3). It is also argued by Roy that reducing administrative cost of taxing may be another cause to collect tax by central authority and then the central government transfers grants to local level. (Roy., 2000, p. 4)

In OECD countries 34.4 percents of revenues come from transfers. (Shah & Shah, 2006, p. 37). In a study of OECD countries , a growing trend of widening gap between sub-national tax and expenditure shares in the last twenty years is identified (Daniel Bergvall & Merk, 2006, p. 5)which caused a higher dependence of sub-national governments on grants. So fiscal decentralization in OECD countries, in fact, shrink the scope of fiscal autonomy as sub-national governments have become more dependent on central governments for their resources. Intergovernmental transfer from centre to state governments in USA constitutes a larger part of state budgeting. These transfers accounted for about 38% of all local government revenues, ranging from a low of 19.2% in Hawaii to a high of 70.2% in Vermont (Wildasin, 2009, p. 7).In developing countries, the dependence of fiscal transfers is more instrumental. Intergovernmental fiscal transfers finance about 60 percent of subnational expenditures in developing and transition economies. (Shah. A. , 2007, p. 1) In a study of World Bank on some selected countries, it is found that the average funding of local governments by government transfer is 50.9 percent. (Shah & Shah, 2006, p. 37)It is found that the fiscal transfers are much larger than average in Uganda (85.4 percent), Poland (76.0 percent), China (67.0 percent), Brazil (65.4 percent), and Indonesia (62.0 percent). (Shah & Shah, 2006, p. 37) It is also noticed in AND report that significant vertical fiscal imbalances prevails in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, and at the local level in the Philippines, the PRC, and Viet Nam. (Martinez-Vasquez, 2011, p. 5)In case of revenue autonomy, lower autonomy can be found as a common practice in many countries. Revenue autonomy is found low outside Japan and the Republic of Korea, and much less in Indonesia and the Philippines. However, autonomy at provincial level can be traced in India, Pakistan, and the PRC. (Martinez-Vasquez, 2011, p. 5)

4) Fiscal autonomy and the question of public service delivery of Local Government

Decentralization is recognized as a way to bring people closer to government services and also as a feedback mechanism to response the local people needs. This move reflects public preferences for more democratic and participatory forms of government in order to improve the level of public services to respond to the needs of users of those services. (Sayuri, 2005) Though the notion of fiscal autonomy is central in fiscal decentralization literature; the idea of fiscal autonomy did not get proper academic investigation at the beginning. The local autonomy concept can be traced from Tibeout model of 1956 as an arrangement for local competition. Probably the earliest attempt was from Clark who described autonomy as a relative concept with two specific powers: power of initiations and power of immunity. (Beer-T??th, 2009, p. 31) Early theorization was mostly involved to deal with the question of the capacity of local government following Clark and then later literatures incorporate other issues including local government autonomy. The European Charter of Local Self-Government taken by the Council of Europe in 1985 described local self-government (i.e. local autonomy) along the double characteristics of right and ability to manage local public affairs. (Beer-T??th, 2009, p. 36) Therefore, it is obvious that fiscal empowerment is an important part of decentralization and without it, the goal of effectively providing services from local level cannot be achieved.

Though a wave of decentralization is recorded around the globe in the last two decades, the decentralization of local bodies did not supported by proper autonomy in fiscal affairs. Low expenditure autonomy due to the central supervision lacks the local government to introduce or keep services by their own. A study on the local government finance of some OECD countries found that the most common way of transferring resources from central to subnational government is through earmark grants and these grants are used for the purpose of financing and subdivision of services and for equalization of tax or service capacity (Daniel Bergvall & Merk, 2006) The study affirmed that non-earmark grant can be more effective instrument for financial purposes. On the other hand, a study on fiscal decentralization of Asian countries found that many Asian countries exhibits the highest level of decentralization in the world in term of the share of subnational government in total expenditures. (Martinez-Vasquez, 2011, p. 3) It is showed in the report that 70% of total expenditure is allocated at subnational level in PRC, 66% in India, 60% in japan,45% both in republic of Korea and Vietnam. However, this data in many cases failed to interpret the actual level of autonomy at local level. Throughout the entire region, heavy reliance and dependence on transfers and revenue sharing can be found. Lower tier governments in most Indian states have a very little expenditure autonomy from their state governments. (Martinez-Vasquez, 2011, p. 3) It is also noticed that central government in many countries involved in local functions as well. Expenditure autonomy (percentage of own expenditure under effective control of sub-national governments), is on average higher (74% for all but 96% in Croatia, and 7% in Albania) in transition economies than developing countries (58% for all but 95% for Dominican Republic and 23% for South Africa. (Shah. A. , 2004, p. 17)

B) Financing by own: three major sources for local financing

There are different means of financing local needs by own resources of local governments. Three sources from which local level bodies mostly rely on are local level taxation, local government Borrowing and Public private partnership which have significant importance to enforce local financing.

1. Local level Taxation: empowered by own sources

Taxes are the most important sources of the local government revenues. Financial decentralization process provides the Local governments institutions with the necessary authority to change tax rate, initiate new tax and enhance the scope of the tax. It is thought that fiscal decentralization will increase taxation net and a greater share of GDP will be reached by tax system. Indeed, it is believed that increased subnational revenue mobilization will reduce the need for intergovernmental transfers from central revenues (Bird & Bahl, 2008, p. 4).

Significant tax assignment to subnational governments has become prevalent in developed countries (Bird R. , November 2010, p. 1). Bird & Bahl examines different country cases and identified the trend of developed world. (Bird & Bahl, 2008, p. 6)US State governments and Canadian provinces have almost complete autonomy in choosing any tax base, so long as there is no interference with interstate commerce. In Denmark and Sweden, local taxes account for nearly one-half of local government spending. Revenues from subnational government taxes in Switzerland are greater in amount than revenues received from grants. Though, Japan had a conservative tax policy which allow little to local government in term of taxing capabilities but the country is planning to introduce new intergovernmental reform to shift taxing power significantly to local governments (Bird & Bahl, 2008, p. 6) However, it is noticed that in most developing countries, central governments have been reluctant to reform the taxing system for subnational governments. (Bird & Bahl, 2008, p. 7) The subnational tax share in total taxes in developing countries is only about 10 percent while it is 20 percent in industrialized countries. These figures have changed little in the last 30 years. (Bird & Bahl, 2008, p. 7) Local governments in countries like Cambodia, China and Vietnam get less than 5 percent of their total revenues from their own sources (Talierciao, 2005, pp. 107-128) On the other hand, in a few developing countries, like the Philippines, Brazil, and Colombia, a third or more of subnational government expenditure is met up by own sources (Bird & Bahl, 2008, p. 7)

It is thought that increased fiscal autonomy would improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the public sector governance. (Fjeldstad & Semboja, 2000, p. 28) However, strengthening autonomy by providing more taxation power to local government can cause greater mismanagement and corruption in local authorities. In developing country like Tanzania where Local taxes represent less than 6 per cent of total national tax revenues (Fjeldstad & Semboja, 2000, p. 7), it is strongly recommended to restructure the revenue system combined with capacity building and improved integrity mechanism. In case of India, it is noticed that decentralization of fiscal power to local Panchayat Body eventually decreases the volume of taxes and also shrink the tax base. The chiefs of the Panchayats always count the elections factors which is one of the cause of declining taxes. So it is recommended to undertake more accountability measures and provide intensives in tax collection of the Panchayat. (Jha, Kang, & Nagarajan, 2011) Therefore, in case of tax autonomy, it can be assumed that capacity building and ensuring accountability and transparency are crucial while transferring power to local authority.

A major part of local revenues is collected from property taxes around the world. OECD countries raise 54 percent of local revenues from property taxes, 23 percent from personal income taxes, 14 percent from corporate taxes, and 9 percent from other taxes. (Shah & Shah, 2006, pp. 37-39) Therefore, it is apparent that local governments in OECD countries depend more on property and income taxes than other sources. But developing word lacks proper tax autonomy because of the unwilling political elites and capacity problems. For all developing countries, revenues from property taxes constitute only 0.5percent of GDP which is about 2 percent (1 to 3 percent) of GDP in industrial countries. (Shah & Shah, 2006, p. 39) Therefore, property taxes may represent significant untapped potential for funding local affairs in developing countries.

2. Local government borrowing: Challenges and promises

Unavailability of government grants and Lack of local funding sometimes compelled local governments to take loans from public and private sectors. Local government bodies usually collects loans from banking sector ( both national and international development program loans) or issued bonds. (Bucic & others, 2011, p. 2) Developments projects are designed with such type of borrowing options for emergency situation. Large infrastructure deficiencies in developing countries call for significant access to borrowing by local governments. (Shah & Shah, 2006, p. 40) Local access to credit requires well-functioning financial markets and creditworthy local governments; however, in most of the local governments in developing countries lacks both. (Shah & Shah, 2006, p. 40) Heavy reliance on borrowing also can jeopardize macroeconomic stabilization. For example, perversely structured intergovernmental systems destabilized the economy of Argentina in the late 1990s. (Yilmaz, Beris, & Serrano-Berthet, 2008, p. 281) After the 90es Japan took some initiatives to empower local governments by issuing bonds with guarantees, uniform issuing conditions, and secured finance from public funds to meet up the gap between revenues and expenditure. But it was proven ineffective and unproductive in most of the cases and it is suggested to adopt accrual-based accounting system instead of cash-based accounting system. (Sayuri, 2005)Most countries follow the policy to limit, control, or even prohibit the issuance of debt by local governments. A World Bank study report found none of the local governments of ten country’s health and education sectors that are surveyed in the study was given full discretion to borrow. However, it is noticed in the study that local governments in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kerala, Philippines, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, have partial authority over borrowing. (Bank, 2009, p. 55)

3. Public Private Partnership (PPP): A New Window of local Financing

Public-Private Partnerships (PPP’s) have been hailed as the latest institutional form of co-operation between the public sector and the private sector. (Greve & Ejersbo, 2002, p. 1) If local government enjoys necessary autonomy from central government, PPP can be used as effective instrument to respond to the local demand without looking funding from central government. For example, Mandaluyung city of the Philippines build a new Market place using the PPP formula which had lacking of fund at that time. But PPP has some instrumental risks concerning the possibilities of misuse of power, corruption and transparency. The Danish local government of Farum in Denmark was considered as one of the success story of PPP at local level governance in 90s.But later, a huge scandal of corruption and irregularities were erupted in the organization in 2002. Clash between central government and lack of democratic accountability mechanism were thought to be responsible for the failure of the local governance. (Greve & Ejersbo, 2002) In an article on the PPP taken by Morogoro municipality in Tanzania, Lameck analyzed various PPP project by the city and urged that there should be a framework of rule and regulation to undertake such practice; otherwise Government will lose control over the whole procedure. (Lameck, 2009).As private organizations are more profit oriented, the local governments should be more careful about the accountability and responsiveness of the project. John Hood and N Mcgarvey showed that the local Government PPP initiatives taken by Labour Government in Scotland lack proper risk management procedures which might jeopardize the whole arrangement. (Hood & Mcgarvey, 2002)

C) Corruption, accountability and Fiscal decentralization

Decentralization of fiscal affairs is thought to be a panacea for corruption and to promote accountability and transparency at local level. However, it has some significant policy risks as it can open up new windows of nepotism, corruption and mismanagement.

1. Does fiscal decentralization combat corruptions?

It is assumed that fiscal devolution to local governments creates space to bring the services to the people and installs a way of trustworthiness which can decrease the culture of corruption practice. A flow of increasing intergovernmental and political competition installed by decentralization can reduce rent seeking and monopolistic behavior and improve service deliveries. (Fisman & Gatti, 2002) But there is huge debate on the effectiveness of fiscal reforms to bring accountability and transparency by installing decentralized structure. Some researchers have an optimistic assessment on the effect of decentralization of fiscal affairs on corruption while some other explained decentralization as a way of corruption. Treisman argued that decentralized government creates many levels of governments and a more complex system of governance reduce accountability and increase corruption. (Treisman, 2000) Prud’homme stated that there is more opportunity for corruption at local level as local bureaucrats have more powers to execute and they are influenced by the local interest groups. (Prud’homme, 1995) Goldsmith argued that it is easy to hide corruption in local level than center level. (Goldsmith, 1999) But most other studies found a negative relationship between the two variables. An exclusive study on 24 countries in the time frame of 1995-2007 found that fiscal decentralization has a positive impact in reducing corruption. (Padovano, Fiorino, & Galli, 2011) In another rigorous study of 182 countries, it is founded that decentralization and corruption has a negative relationship. (Ivanyna & Shah, 2010)

In Malawi, a move to decentralize the local government body in 2000 following the act of 1998 opened up a huge window of corruption in the country. (Tambulasi & Kayuni, 2007) After the fiscal reform and devolution of fiscal power to local bodies, the new-patrimonial leadership became reinforced exploiting the opportunities which eventually broke down the accountability system. (Tambulasi & Kayuni, 2007) Tambulasi in another article expressed the view that adaptation of new public management strategy is the policy problem of the whole process and suggested to take public governance reform model with more participation and transparency. (Tambulasi R. I., 2009) Some argues that using bribery as an indicator of corruption is problematic and other social and economic indicators should be examined. (Bardhan & Mookherjee, 2005) He summarized that the relation between corruption and decentralization is very complex as a lot of variable is involved in the process and single one approach is not enough to unveil the underlying relationship. He also mentioned that the problem of capture and lack of accountabilities are the major obstacles in developing countries. Robert Klitgaard (1988) explained the principle’agent theory and argued that monopoly and discretion can exacerbate corruption while accountability has a reducing effect. (Witz, 2011, p. 5)A report on the corruption of Local governments in Latin American countries also suggested taking legal and institutional reforms to combat the problem. (Bliss & Deshazo, 2009) The Report emphasizes on the availabilities of information and urged for performance management efforts to be undertaken. (Bliss & Deshazo, 2009, pp. 14-15) Nina Witz in a paper showed that accountability in local level water governments is relatively higher than central government in Sweden and described decentralization as an antidote of corruption. (Witz, 2011)Arikan also found evidence that decentralization can lower the level of corruption. (Arikan, 2004) .Furthermore, fiscal decentralization believed to have positive impact on the citizen behaviors regarding the corruption issues and can boost social capital by increasing trust among the citizens to the government officials and bring the government closer to the people. Oguzhan Dincer found a positive correlation between fiscal decentralization and trust using data from US states. (Dincer, 2010) Following the seminal work of Putnam, a good number of empirical studies found a positive impact of social capital on the economic growth of a country and it is suggested to follow fiscal decentralization as a policy to increase social capital and trust in both developing and developed countries. (Dincer, 2010, p. 189). In case of Zambezia of Mozambique, Akiko Abe found that Social trust (one dimension of social capital) was formed in a shorter period of time than Putnam has outlined. (Abe, 2009, p. 77)

2. Risks of Local fiscal Autonomy and accountability mechanism

Financial devolution of power is thought to empower the local leadership and provides accountability and transparency to the whole settings. However, providing financial autonomy at local level has some potential risks. Fiscal decentralization depends on the ability of local governments to manage revenues and expenditures effectively and requires strong institutions for financial accountability. (Yilmaz, Beris, & Serrano-Berthet, 2008, p. 23) Financial accountability seeks transparency in the management of public funds. It also requires that governments manage finances prudently and ensure integrity in their financial reporting, control, budgeting and performance systems. (Sahgal & Chakrapani., 2000., p. 3) In an article, Serdar Yilmaz, Yakup Beris and Rodrigo Serrano-Berthet explained two methods of downward accountability (Public accountability approaches and Social accountability approaches) of local financial organization along with other methods .They examined different experiences of financial autonomy and accountability from different countries and identified different issues arising from the lack of internal controls. (Yilmaz, Beris, & Serrano-Berthet, 2008) They showed that many nations impose central control over local governments as a policy to restructure subnational relations observing the capacity problem of local governments around the world. They suggest not taking only upward accountability mechanism which may limit local government autonomy in decision-making and service delivery negating the intended empowering of local governments. (Yilmaz, Beris, & Serrano-Berthet, 2008, p. 26) Yilmaz and Felicio examined the decentralization and low accountability problems of Angola and urged for a checked and balanced policy to cope with the tendency of abusing of discretion power. (Yilmaz & Felicio, 2009) Though citizen participation is ensured at local level there, Provincial and Municipal administrators did not genuinely embrace the spirit of the citizen councils. It is suggested to incorporate appropriate advocacy efforts to ensure quality participation processes at the municipal and provincial levels and emphasis on strengthening civil society’s skills that will incrementally increase accountabilities in public expenditure management activities and will ensure proper oversight. (Yilmaz & Felicio, 2009, p. 21)In Ethiopia, it is noticed that progressive features of fiscal decentralization were not followed by political management. A strong upward accountability structure without the accompanying discretion and downward accountability mechanism was the main feature of the system which failed to ensure the accountable nature of organization. (Yilmaz & Venugopal, 2008, pp. 23-24) It is evident from different experiences that a combination of upward and downward accountability arrangement and a participatory nature of governance only can ensure democracy, better management and transparency at local level. Anwar Shah, in an article, urged for judicial accountability measures in developing countries where laws on property rights, corporate legal ownership and control, bankruptcy, and financial accounting and control are not fully developed. (Shah. A. , 2004, p. 34) He also emphasis on traditional channels of accountability such as audit, inspection and control functions should be strengthened, since they tend to be quite weak in transition and developing economies. (Shah. A. , 2004, p. 34)

3. Participatory local budgeting for more accountability and transparency

Budgeting at local level is a significant instrument for the fiscal health of a local body. Traditional municipal budgets which is in fact, focused with incremental line-item budgeting practice, have historically been constructed on giving emphasis on accounting staffs to face the audit requirements and it said by one analyst mentioned that it is aimed to the audited financial statements required to be submitted by municipal authorities after the fiscal year. (Schaeffer & SerdarYilmaz, 2007, p. 8)Over the last two decade, it is observed that different reform measures have been taken incorporated with the traditional budgeting to ensure more transparency and accountabilities. Program budgeting at local level brought different planning and accountability measures differing from the traditional line-item approach in preparing, reviewing, and presenting the budget. In recent changed global world, participatory local budgeting becomes a powerful good governance tool to integrate citizens in government’s matters. Participatory budgeting is considered as a direct-democracy approach to budgeting and by enhancing transparency and accountability participatory budgeting can help reduce government inefficiency and curb clientelism, patronage, and corruption. (Shah, Overview, 2007, p. 1) However, Participatory budgeting has some significant risks. Participatory processes can be captured by interest groups. Such processes can mask the undemocratic, exclusive, or elite nature of public decision making, giving the appearance of broader participation and inclusive governance while using public funds to advance the interests of powerful elites. (Shah, Overview, 2007, pp. 1-2)

4. E-Governance for strengthening decentralization

The potential of e-government in advancing good governance is increasingly being recognized. (Bank., 2004) E-governance is identified as an efficient tool to generate transparency and ensure accountability in government procedures. Moreover, one of the strength of e-governance is that it is cost effective. E-procurement creates a highly competence and transparent environment of procurement and a faster method of getting quotes which can narrow the scope of corruption and also reduce the cost as well. E-procurement can even cut 50 % municipalities public procurement cost. In this backdrop, it is highly recommended to induce electronic methods in government procurement and other administrative procedures for transparency and ensure easy access of the citizens.

World Bank funded some pilot cases in developing world (some state in India) and found a positive result in widely used services, such as issuance of licenses and certificates and collection of payments and taxes (Bank., 2004). One of the strength of e-governance is that it provides transparency which acts as a viable tool against corruption. For example, Karnataka State of India digitalized the transfer system of teachers and it eventually reduced the scope of corruption in the transfer process. (Bank., 2004) In Andra Pradesh of India, the e-governance strive faced lot of difficulties due to manage huge information of complex administration which is related to a vast population. Reengineering and changing work processes across 70 departments in the secretariat have been a challenge even for the country’s largest information technology company, which is implementing the project. (Bank., 2004) Most e-governance project requires huge funding to automation the whole system and also huge population in developing countries are outside the internet facilities. In a report on African prospect to introduce e-governance, it is identified that adequate funding and low rate of literacy and PC penetration rate are the challenges to update the whole system under e-governance. (Kitaw, 2006, p. 8) Another study of six African southern countries (Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland) examined e-Readiness conditions and suggested to initiate more capacity building measures to strengthen the procedures. (Meyaki, 2010)Digital divide is a big challenge to integrate all the people in a more citizen centric structure of e-governance. Growing mobile networks around the world and also in developing countries can be easily recognized and m-Governance (providing services though mobile phones) can be an option to fight the digital divide. Integrating fiscal measures in local affairs can ensure accountability and transparency at local level as well. Kerala state of India initiated m-governance by launching varies services focusing on the utilization of mobile technologies to deliver citizen services which includes electricity and water services billing, road tax and vehicle registration. (Young, 2009)

Conclusion

Strengthening Local governments by providing more autonomous power in fiscal affairs and ensuring citizen involvement is believed to empower people at local level and can bring changes from root level as local governments only know the needs from grassroots. In this paper a wide range of literatures is examined to recognize the trends and issues concerning fiscal autonomy and financial accountability mechanism at local governments around the world. Most of the local government experiences indicate positive relations between financial decentralization and better governance. In this age of globalization and Information technology revolution, a more global world with localization of governments is emerging. This trend must be supported by financial empowerment of local bodies and accountability mechanism at local level. Access to untapped revenue sources and digitalization of organization procedures has become an important tool to cope with the challenge of globalization and Information technology revolution nowadays. Bangladesh, a developing nation which has a huge population living under local government bodies and the weakness of her local government is depicted as the root cause of her dysfunctioning democracy, can be benefited from the lessons of decentralization around the world and can reevaluate her policy regarding local government and decentralization.

The emerging role of distance bounding protocol in aerospace systems: college essay help near me

Abstract: RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) systems are vulnerable to replay attacks like mafia fraud, distance fraud and terrorist fraud. The distance bounding protocol is designed as a countermeasure against these attacks. These protocols ensure that the tags are in a distant area by measuring the round-trip delays during the rapid challenge response exchange. Distance Bounding protocols are cryptographic protocols which enable verifier to establish the upper bound on the physical distance to the prover. They are based on timing the delay between the sending out a challenge bit and receiving back the corresponding response bits. A timing based response followed by consecutive timing measurement provides more optimistic approach in authenticating the prover.

Index Terms: RFID, Mafia fraud, Distance fraud, Terrorist fraud, Distance Bounding protocol.

I. INTRODUCTION

A famous story of the little girl who played against two Chess Grandmasters’ How was it possible to win one of the games? Annie-Louise played Black against Spassky. White against Fisher. Spassky moved first, and Ann-Louise just copied his move as the first move of her game against Fisher, then copied Fisher’s replay as her own reply to Spassky’s first move, and so on.

This problem exploited by Anne-Louise is known in the cryptographic community as mafia-fraud. Mafia fraud is a man in the middle attack against an authentication protocol where the adversary relays the exchanges between the verifier and prover, making them believe they directly communicate together. The mafia fraud is particularly powerful against the contactless technologies. The most threatening systems are Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC) because the devices answer to any solicitation without explicit agreement of their holder. The vulnerability of these technologies has already been illustrated by several practical attacks [10]. The two attacks related to mafia fraud are distance fraud and terrorist fraud. The distance fraud only involves a malicious prover, who cheats on his distance to the verifier. The terrorist fraud is an exotic variant of the mafia fraud where the prover is malicious and actively helps the adversary to succeed the attack.

Measuring the physical distance between communicating parties is important for communication security. For example, we can imagine a building security system that allows a visitor to open the door to the building only when the visitor has an authorized radio frequency Identification (RFID) tag for entering the building. When authenticating the tag, the security system should also verify the upper-bound distance between the door and the tag to thwart the remote attackers who may desire to open the door from a distance between communicating parties [4].

To solve the above problem, Brands and Chaum have proposed a distance-bounding protocol. In this protocol, a verifier V seeks to authenticate a prover P while measuring the distance d between V and P. For authentication, most of these protocols rely on multi-rounds of single-bit challenge and response, also known as a fast bit exchange phase. They are also lightweight in the sense that they do not require an additional (time and resources consuming) slow phase to terminate the protocol. A timing based response followed by the consecutive timing measurement provides more optimistic approach in authenticating the prover.

II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

By using distance bounding protocols, a device (the verifier) can securely obtain an upper bound on its distance to another device (the prover). The security of distance-bounding protocols was so far mainly evaluated by analyzing their resilience to three types of attacks. For historical reasons, these are known as Distance Fraud, Mafia Fraud and Terrorist Fraud. In Distance Fraud attacks, a sole dishonest prover convinces the verifier that he is at a different distance than he really is. In Mafia Fraud attacks, the prover is honest, but an attacker tries to modify the distance that the verifier establishes by interfering with their communication. In Terrorist Fraud attacks, the dishonest prover colludes with another attacker that is closer to the verifier, to convince the verifier of a wrong distance to the prover. So far, it was assumed that distance bounding protocols that are resilient against these three attack types can be considered secure. In case of hostile attackers, the dishonest prover can pretend to be closer to or further away from the verifier than it actually is by either jumping the gun or sending a response before the request, or pretend to be further away than it is by delaying its response. Hostile attacker could attach its own identity to the prover’s response, and pass off honest verifier’s location as its own [1], [13].

Finally, dishonest provers can conspire to mislead the verifier, one prover lending the other prover its identity so that the second prover can make the first prover look closer than it is. The idea is that the prover first commits to a nonce using a one-way function, the verifier sends a challenge consisting of another nonce, the prover responds with the exclusive-or of its and the verifier’s nonce’s, and then follows up with the authentication information.

Fig 1: System Architecture

METAR is constructed to analyze the Weather report and cloud base height of an airplane. These details or information is passed between the verifier and prover. METAR is Meteorological elements observed at an Airport at a specific time. The verifier uses the time elapsed between sending its nonce and receiving the prover’s rapid response to compute its distance from the prover, and then verifies the authenticated response when it receives it. Through the wireless, verifier raises an authentication query to the prover side. If the prover gives an exact answer to the question means he/she is able to receive the extracted information at the end.

III. RFID TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW

RFID frequency identification (RFID) technology consists of small inexpensive computational device with wireless communication capabilities. Currently, the main application of RFID technology is in inventory control and supply chain management fields. In these areas, RFID tags are used to tag and track the physical goods. Within this context, RFID can be considered a replacement for barcodes. RFID technology is superior to barcodes in two aspects. First, RFID tags can store information than barcodes [3]. Unlike a barcode, the RFID tag, being a computational device, can be designed to process rather than just store data. Second, barcodes communicate through an optical channel, which require the careful positioning of the reading device with no obstacles in-between [12]. RFID uses a wireless channel for communication, and can be read without line-of-sight, increasing the read efficiency.

The pervasiveness of RFID technology in our everyday lives has led to concerns over these RFID tags pose any security risk. The future applications of RFID make the security of RFID networks and communications even more important than before. The ubiquity of RFID technology has made it an important component in the Internet-of-Things (IoT), a future generation Internet that seeks to mesh the physical world together with the cyber world. RFID is used within the IoT as a means of identifying physical objects [11]. For example, by attaching an RFID tag to medication bottles, we can design an RFID network to monitor whether patients have taken their medications.

IV. DISTANCE BOUNDING PROTOCOL

Verifying the physical location of a device using an authentication protocol is an important security mechanism. Distance Bounding protocol aim to prove the proximity of two devices relative to each other. Distance bounding protocol determines an upper bound for the physical distance between two communicating parties based on the Round-Trip-Time (RTT) of cryptographic challenge response pairs. Brands and Chaum proposed a distance bounding protocol that could be used to verify a device’s proximity cryptographically. This design based on a channel where the prover can reply instantaneously to each single binary digit received from the verifier [1]. The number of challenge ‘response interactions is being determined by a chosen security parameter, Distance bounding protocol not only in the one-to-one proximity identification context but also as building blocks for secure location systems. After correct execution of the distance bounding protocol, the verifier knows that an entity having data is in the trusted network. Distance bounding protocol can be dividing in three phase: the Commitment Phase, the Fast Bit phase and signing phase.

The first DB protocol suitable for resource-constrained devices example: RFID tags. This protocol is considered lightweight in the sense that a single computation of a hash function and a call to a Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) are the most costly operations required for its execution. The simplicity and efficiency of this protocol yield to similar designs for other DB protocols which modify how answers are calculated in order to improve the security performance. The protocol first contains a slow phase in which nonce are generated and exchanged [4], [7]. From this nonce and a secret value x, the possible response used in the first phase are computed via a function f. Then the fast phase consists of n consecutive rounds. In each of these rounds, the verifier picks a challenge ci, starts a timer and sends ci to the prover. When the prover receives the challenge he computes the answer ri and sends it back to the verifier as soon as possible. Upon reception of the answer, the verifier stores as well as the round trip time. Once the n rounds are elapsed, the verifier checks the validity of the answers, i.e., the n rounds, the protocol succeeds. Initialization, execution and decision steps are presented below and a general view is provided in Fig. 2.

Fig 2: Distance Bounding Protocol

Initialization. The prover (P) and the verifier (V ) agree on (a) a security parameter n, (b) a timing bound ‘tmax, (c) a pseudo random function P RF that outputs 3n bits, (d) a secret key x.

Execution. The protocol consists of a slow phase and a fast phase.

Slow Phase. P (respectively V ) randomly picks a nonce NP (respectively NV ) and sends it to V respectively P). Afterwards, P and V compute P RF (x, NP , NV ) and divide the result into three n-bit registers Q, R0 , and R1 . Both P and V create the function fQ : S ‘ {0, 1} where S is the set of all the bit-sequences of size at most n including the empty sequence. The function fQ is parameterized with the bit-sequence Q = q1 . . . qn, and it outputs 0 when the input is the empty sequence. For every non-empty bit-sequence Ci = c1 . . . ci where 1 ‘ i ‘ n, the function is defined as fQ(Ci) = Lij=1(cj ‘ qj ).

Fast Phase. In each of the n rounds, V picks a random challenge ci ‘R {0, 1}, starts a timer, and sends ci to P. Upon reception of ci , P replies with ri =Rcii ‘ fQ(Ci) where Ci = c1…ci. Once V receives ri , he stops the timer and computes the round-trip-time ‘ti .

Decis.ion. If ‘ti < ‘tmax and ri = Ri ci’ fQ(Ci) ‘ i ‘ {1, 2, …, n} then the protocol succeeds.

V. SECURITY ANALYSIS

Being resistant to both mafia and distance fraud is the primary goal of a distance bounding protocol. An important lower-bound for both frauds is (1/2) n [6], which is the probability of an adversary who answers randomly to the n verifier’s challenges during the fast phase. However, this resistance is hard to attain for lightweight DB protocols. Therefore, our aim is to design a protocol that is close to this bound for both mafia and distance frauds, without requiring costly operations and an extra final slow phase[5],[2].

A. Mafia Fraud:

A mafia fraud is an attack where an adversary defeats a distance bounding protocol using a man-in-the-middle (MITM) between the verifier and honest tag located outside the prover.

Fig 2(a): Mafia fraud

Among the DB protocols without final slow phase, those achieving the best mafia fraud resistance are round dependent. The idea is that the correct answer at the ith round should depend on the ith challenge and also on the (i-1) previous challenges.

B. Distance Fraud:

A distance fraud is an attack where a dishonest and lonely prover supports to be in the neighborhood of the verifier.

Fig 2(b): Distance Fraud

In mafia fraud, the best protocols in terms of the distance fraud are round dependent. However, round dependency by means of predefined challenges fails to properly resist to distance fraud. Intuitively [9], [7], the higher control over the challenges the prover has, the lower the resistance to distance fraud is. For this reason, our proposal allows the verifier to have full and exclusive control over the challenges.

C. Terrorist Fraud

A terrorist fraud is an attack where an adversary defeats a distance bounding protocol using a man-in-the-middle (MITM) between the reader and a dishonest tag located outside the neighborhood.

Such that the latter actively helps the adversary to maximize her attack success probability, without giving to her any advantage for future attacks. Terrorist fraud attack is not considered in our proposed system.

Fig 2(c): Terrorist Fraud

VI. PREVENTION TECHNIQUE OF ATTACKS

Different methods are used for prevention of these attacks. In the distance fraud the location will not be sufficient because the verifier does not trust the prover [5]. He wants to prevent a fraud prover claiming to be closer. Different type’s location mechanism that prevent these attacks are:

A. Measure the signal strength

Node can calculate distance from other node by sending it a message and see how long it takes to return. If response authenticated, fraud node can lie about being further away than it is, but not closer. Sender includes strength of transmitted message in message; Receiver compares received strength to compute distance.

B. Measure the Round Trip Time

Another solutions measure the round trip time. The round trip time is the time required for exchange a packet from a specific destination and back again. In this protocol the verifier sends out a challenge and starts a timer. After receiving the challenge, the prover does some elementary computations to construct the response. The response is sent back to the verifier and the timer is stopped. Multiplying this time with the propagation speed of the signal gives the distance.

C. Measure the Consecutive Time

Timing based input information followed by consecutive timing measurement provides more optimistic approach in authenticating the user. The verifier uses the time elapsed between sending its nonce and receiving the prover’s rapid response to compute its distance from the prover, and then verifies the authenticated response when it receives it. Our proposed system provides a proof breaks down concept if the prover is dishonest.

D. Validation and Identification

i. Validate the authentication information provided by the user

ii. Extract the MAC address to validate the request origin location

iii. Consecutive Execution time duration on the request processing.

VII. CIPHER BLOCK RIVEST ALGORITHM

Cipher Block Rivest Algorithm is used in our proposed system for encryption process. Fast symmetric block cipher. Same key used for encryption and decryption algorithm. Plaintext and cipher text are fixed-length bit sequences.

In cryptography, RC% is a symmetric-key block cipher notable for its simplicity. Designed by Ronald Rivest in 1994. RC stands for ‘Rivest Cipher’, or alternatively ‘Ron’s Code’ (compare RC2 and RC4). A key feature of RC5 is the use of data-dependent rotations; one of the goals of RC5 was to prompt the study and evaluation of such operations as a cryptographic primitive. RC5 also consists of a number of modular additions and exclusive OR (XOR). The general structure of the algorithm is a Fiestel-like network. The encryption and decryption routines can be specified in a few lines of code. The key schedule, however, is more complex, expanding the key using an essentially one-way function with the binary expansions of both e and the golden sources of nothing up my sleeve numbers.

The RC5 is basically denoted as RC5-w/r/b where

w = word size in bits,

r=number of rounds,

b= number of 8-bit in the key.

Cryptanalysis 12-round RC5 (with 64-bit blocks) is susceptible to a differential attack using 244 chosen plaintexts. 18-20 rounds are suggested as sufficient protection. Block Ciphers plaintext is divided into blocks of fixed length and every block is encrypted one at a time. The number of rounds can range from 0 to 255, while the key can range from 0 to 2040 bits in size [7]. Cipher text involves

C = E (PUB, E (PUA, M)

Cipher text can be generated by the encryption of public key with the private key associated in the source place. De-cipher text involves

M = D (PUA, D (PRB, C))

Actual message can be generated by public and private key followed by the consecutive timings.

BLOCK CIPHER

Defined as a cryptosystem with large plaintext space

P=C=Z2n

Typically n’64 bits

Round structure

Apply same function on the intermediate cipher text repeatedly Nr time.

Use different key Ki defined from K on ith round.

Pseudo code 1

1. INPUT: plaintext x, key K

2. OUTPUT: cipher text y=ek(x)

3. ASSUME: round function g, last function h, key scheduling procedure Ki

w0=x

For i = 0 to Nr-1

wi = g (wi-1,Ki)

y = g (wNr-1, K Nr-1)

VIII. EXPERIMENTAL AND COMPARISON

A. Error free environment

The first lightweight DB protocol was proposed by Hancke and Kuhn’s [11] in 2005. Its simplicity and suitability for resource-constrained devices have promoted the design of other DB protocols based on it [2], [13]. All these protocols share the same design: (a) there is a slow phase4 where both prover and verifier generate and exchange nonces, (b) the nonces and a keyed cryptographic hash function are used to compute the answers to be sent (resp. checked) by the prover (resp. verifier). Below, we provide the main characteristics of each of these protocols, especially the technique they use to compute the answers.

a) Mafia Fraud

Mafia Fraud

a) Tradeoff with memory constraint

Hancke and Kuhn’s protocol [11]. The answers are extracted from two n-bit registers such that any of the n 1-bit challenges determines which register should be used to answer.

Avoine and Tchamkerten’s protocol [2]. Binary trees are used to compute the prover answers: the verifier challenges define the unique path in the tree, and the prover answers are the vertex value on this path. There are several parameters impacting the memory consumption: l the number of trees and d the depth of these trees. It holds d ‘ l = n, where n is the number of rounds in the fast phase.

Trujillo-Rasua, Martin and Avoine’s protocol [12]. This protocol is similar to the previous one, except that it uses particular graphs instead of trees to compute the prover answers.

b) Distance Fraud

Mafia Fraud

b)Tradeoff without memory constraint

Kim and Avoine’s protocol [13]. This protocol, closer to the Hancke and Kuhn’s protocol [11] than [12], uses two registers to define the prover answers. An important additional feature is that the prover is able to detect a mafia fraud thanks to predefined challenges, that is, challenges known by both prover and verifier. The number of predefined challenges impacts the frauds resistance: the larger, the better the mafia fraud resistance, but the lower the resistance to distance fraud.

Mafia and distance fraud analysis in a noise free environment can be found in [12]. Fig. 3(a) and Fig. 3(b) show that the resistance to mafia fraud and distance frauds respectively for the five considered protocols in a single chart. For each of them, the configuration that maximizes its security has been chosen: this is particularly important for AT and KA2 because different configurations can be used.

In case of draw between two protocols, the one that is the less memory consuming is considered as the best protocol. Trade-off chart represents for every pair (x, y) the best protocol among the five considered ones. Fig. 4(a) shows that our protocol offers a good trade-off between resistance to mafia fraud and resistance to distance fraud, especially when high security level against distance fraud is expected. In other words, our protocol is better than the other considered protocols, except when the expected security levels for mafia fraud and distance frauds are unbalanced, which is meaningless in common scenarios.

Another interesting comparison takes into consideration the memory consumption of the protocols. Indeed, for n rounds of the fast phase, AT requires 2n+1 -1 bits of memory, which is prohibitive for most pervasive devices.

We can therefore compare protocols that require a linear memory with respect to the number of rounds n. For that, we consider a variant of AT [10], denoted n/3 trees of depth 3 instead of just one tree of depth n. The resulting trade-off chart shows that constraining the memory consumption considerably reduces the area where AT is the best protocol, but it also shows that our protocol provides the best trade-off in this scenario as well.

IX. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

The time stamp based distance bounding protocol has been introduced in this paper which provides the optimistic approach to identify the relay attack. This protocol deals with both mafia and distance frauds with less computer memory and additional computation. The analytical expressions and experimental results show that the new protocol provides best trade-off between mafia and distance fraud resistance. Such a performance is achieved based on the round dependent design where the prover is unable to guess any challenge with a probability higher than the 1/2.

For computer-intensive systems, our consecutive timed response provides significantly better throughput for a broad variety of scenarios, including the mafia fraud, distance fraud and terrorist fraud attack. The encryption and decryption can use more than one different algorithm on each round of the resistance, which provides more confidential services in the system.

REFERENCES

[1] Ronalndo Trujillo-Rasua, Benjamin Martin, and Gildas Avoine,’Disrance-bounding facing both mafia and distance frauds,’IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications,vol 9, May 2014.

[2] Sangho Lee, Jin Seok Kim,Sung Je Hong, and Jong Kim, ‘Distance Bounding with Delayed Responses,’ IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 16, september 2012.

[3] Kapil Singh,’Security in RFID Networks and Protocols,’ International Journal of Information and Computation Technology, vol.3, pp.425-432, 2013.

[4] Ammar Alkassar,Christian Stuble,’Towards Secure IFF:Preventing Mafia Fraud Attacks,’Sirrix AG security technologies, Germany Saarland University,D-66123 Saarbrucken,Germany.

[5] Srikanth S P,Sunitha Tiwari,’A Survey on Distance Bounding Protocol for attacks and frauds in RTLS system,’International journal of Engineering and Innovative technology(IJEIT),vol.3,April 2014.

[6] J.H.Conway,’on numbers and games,’AK Peters,Ltd., 2000.

[7] Claus P.Schnorr,’Efficient signature generation by smart cards,’Journal of Cryptology, vol.4, no.3, pp. 161-174, 1991.

[8] Capkun, Srdjan and EI Defrawy,Karim and Tsudik, Gene. GDB: Group Distance Bounding Protocols, arXiv.org, 2010.

[9] S.Brands and D.Chaum, ‘Distance-bounding protocols,’in 1993 EUROCRYPT.

[10] G.Avoine, C.Lauradoux,B.Martin,How secret-sharing can defeat terrorist fraud, The 4th ACM Conference on Wireless Network Security,WiSec’11,pp.145-156.

[11] G.Avoine ‘RFID, Distance Bounding Multiple Enhancement’, progress in cryptography, pp.290- 307.

[12] J. Munilla, A.Painado, ‘Distance Bounding Ptotocol for RFID enhanced by using void challenges and analysis in noise channels’, compute 8(2008) 1227- 1232.

[13] J. Kelsey, B. Schneier, and D. Wagner. Protocol interactions and the chosen protocol attack. In Proc. 5th International Workshop on Security Protocols, volume 1361 of LNCS, pages 91{104. Springer, 1997.

Center Parcs

Strategy

A company has to stand for something in order to have success. You need to know where it is at this certain point and where you want the company to be in the future. To reach those goals in the future you have to have a strategy and so does Center Parcs.

The mission of Center Parcs is to let the guests experience a moment of happiness in a save and stimulating place. This is being created with the help of caring employees.

Their vision is that people need a place to connect with their friends and family. Therefore Center Parcs tries to offer a place where they can enjoy the simpel but yet special things in life and give the oppurtunity to just be yourself.

In the near future Center Parcs will be building new parcs. In 2015 they hope to open Center Parcs Vienne and in 2016 Village Nature (nearby Disneyland Paris). Center Parcs is innovative in the designs of their cottages. Some new cottages for example are tree houses, eden cottages and boats.

In the longer term they want to further develop their innovative desings and renovate the already existing parcs. In this way they want to distinguish themselves from the competition, offering short holidays which can not be found anywhere else. With this they want to be an inspiration towards their guests and be an recognizable ‘brand’.

Center Parcs’ most important visitors are families with children 0-11, this group accounts for 49% of the visitors, followed by families with children 12-18 and adults 18-54 with both 21%. Given the 49% of the families with children 0-11 it is presumable that this is the target group of Center Parcs. Center Parc is with 3.1 million visitors per year the European market leader. 1.3 million visitor have a Dutch nationality, this makes them the best represented nationality. Followed by the German with 806.000 visitors. The French account for 589.000 visitor and 372.000 are Belgian. the last 12.400 visitors have other nationalities.

The three biggest competitors of Center Parcs are Landal Greenparks, Dinseyland Paris and Roompot.

Landal Greenparks advertises the nature in their parks as well as Center Parcs. Landal Greenparks also focuses on young families and they offer many activities, outdoor and indoor. The parks are located in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium and therefore they aim for the same group geographically speaking.

Disneyland Paris has several hotels in and surrounding the attractionpark. Each hotel has his own theme and atmosphere. They offer a attractionpark with mutiple activities and focusses on extended families, with this families with smaller childern.

Roompot also has parks in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France. They also offer facilities for business people. Roompot’s parks are also located in nature enviroments and they advertise with the possibilty to cycling and hiking.

They are competitors of Center Parcs because they share the same target group. They focus on young families and are geographically all located in the same locations. They offer the same facilities and Landal and Roompot are cheaper than Center Parcs. This makes them competitors of Center Parcs.

3. Structure

Every organisation needs some sort of organisational structure in order to function. An orginasational chart shows how tasks are divided between departments and individuals. At Center Parcs they work according to the line and staff organsation. The most traditional organisational structure is a line organisation. Authority and accountibilty travel downwards from the top to the bottom. There is a strong hierarchy between the department managers and the department employees. One of the function at the top of the charts is the function of General Manager, the departments at Center Parcs all have to report back to the General Manager. Center Parcs has the following departments: Safety & Pool department, Leisure department, Technical department and the Houskeeping department.

In a line-and-staff organisation there are staff departments which support the line departments. In the staff departments there are experts in specific areas who advice and inform the line management in that specific area. The overall responsibilty belongs to the line manager and the staff departments are responsible for qaulitative advice. Center Parcs has two staff departments: Human Resource department and Finance department.

As you can see in de organogram up top the top manager is the General Manager, after that follows the manager of the department, after that the floor manager of the department and at the end of the chain comes de rest of the staff in that department.

If an employee of the Kids Club faces a problem he goes to the the Floor manager of the Kids Club. If the Floor manager cannot solve this problem alone he turns to the manager of the Leisure department. The Leisure manager reports the problem to the General Manager. If the Leisure mananger needs financial advice, he can contact the Finance department. If he has a question for the Human Resource department, he can also contact them.

As a Finance Manager you fulfil a management position as well as a executive position and carrie the responsibility for business analysis and reports of the park. He manages the budget of the park and pro-actively assist the other staff of the Management Team to meet set targets and budgets. Besides the responsibilty for an appropiate administrative organisation and internal control, the Finance Manager is also the financial oracle for the entire park organisation. Moreover the Finance Manager is partly responsible for the business implementation of the park, excluding the Horece & Retail Food activities.

5. Staff

Center Parcs has 11.600 employees of which 7.000 full-time and 4.600 are in part-time or other employement. Of all those employees, 66% is female and 34% is male.

19 % of the employees is under the age of 25. Most of the employees are between the ages of 25 and 45, in fact a large 51% is. Followed by the second biggest group of people over 45 with a 21%. Which leaves 9% left for the employees over 55.

The nationality that is most represented at Center Parcs are the French with 4960 employees. Followed by the Dutch with 2965 employees. Belgium accounts for 2511 employees, Germany for 926 employees and Spain accounts for another 238 employees.

The management functions are almost equally divided with 55% male managers and 45% female manangers. The techinal part is mostly in hand of the male employees and female employees overrule the housekeeping and reception departments.

Most of the employees of Center Parcs are native speakers. Especially in the higher positions, as for example the management positions. In those positions it is also expected that you speak more different languages, such as English, German, French or Dutch. All the positions in which you have contact with the customers it is important that you are a native speaker and in some cases it might even be necessary that you speak a little of the other lanuages. In the jobs such as housekeeping and maintenance it is not necessary to be a native speaker. Those jobs can also be performed by expats, since contact with the customer is exceptional.

7. Skills

A good hospitality performance will make your guests feel welcomed in your company, in this case in the park. As a company you should do everything within your power to let your guests have the most comfortable experience. This is important in all sorts of companies but even more so for companies within the hospitality industry such as Center Parcs. They can dustinguish themselve from the other competitors by offering quality service. Guests come to enjoy their holiday and with this comes a good experience of the park. For a stay at a bungalow park a big part of this experience is created by the behavior of the staff. Therefore ‘customer service’ skills is a requirement for the staff.

A good way to accomplish this is by offering good working conditions and rewarding them to the employees to keep them motivated. The employees will emit this positivity to the customers, which hopefully results in happier customers. Another way is by offer employees a training to learn about ‘customer service’ skills and how to put them into practice.

Another important point is that if problems occur the staff needs to respond professionally, the problems needs to be solved according the situation and immediately.

Waiting times are need to be kept as short as possible and the staff needs to be on time for an appointment or meeting.

Enviromentally speaking there should always be enough and nearby parking space. The guests have to easily find their way around the property. In smaller businesses like a restaurant or caf?? this is not essential, but at Center Parcs the guests have to be able to find their way around the park, to the reception, their bungalow, the pool etc.

The company has to have a corperate identity. The guests have to recognise the staff by the cloting and so on. The uniforms need to be appropiate and clean. The hospitality performance can also be improved by greeting the guests at the welcome and the receptionist or spokesperson for the park needs to be a native speaker and preferably be fluent in English, even better would be if they speak several languages.

And at last the facilities should be in working order and clean.

Center Parcs askes you to respond immediately in case of a complain, you can file a complain in the park so the management gets the chanche to solve it right away. If you feel like your complain is not handled accordingly you can send an e-mail to ‘[email protected]’ or send a letter by mail, this can be done untill a month after leaving the park. Still not sattisfied? Then you can file a complain to the ‘Geschillencommissie Recreatie’ and they will look at it, this can be done untill three months after leaving the park.

This shows that Center Parcs always tries to solves problems immediately and if that cannot be done, the guests are given mutiple oppurtunities to complain. That they try to solve it immediately and the chanches the guests get to file a complain are according to the hospitality performance.

This picture shows that Center Parcs has clear indication signs to lead the guests around the park. the numbers of the cottages are reffered to as well as all the other facilities in the park.

Center Parcs got elected top employer 2014. They have be scored on 5 different critertia: primary conditions, secundary conditions, training & development, career perspectives and cultural management. The fact that they received this quality mark shows that employees have good working conditions. Happy employees results, most of the time, in happy customers.

This picture show the corporate identity. Most of the employees wear a blue shirt with a Center Parcs logo on the sleeve, this is very recognizable for the guests and in this way they will know who to approach. The logo can be found around the park, on the internetsite etc. which also cnotributes to the corporate identity.

If you would like to become a receptionist at Center Parcs in the Netherlands, there are a few job requirements you need to meet. One of them is that you have sufficient oral and written knowledge of the English and German language. This is to make sure you can help guests from different nationalities and that contributes to the hospitality performance.

Health and safety – Capstan construction site in Kutno, Poland: online essay help

This report is written on 07/02/2015 following Health and Safety inspection of Capstan construction site in Kutno, Poland. Capstan project involves approximately three hundred people working on ap. 20 000 square meters, the aim is to build a snack factory. The factory will include main production building, utilities building, waste water treatment plant and other facilities.

The factory main building is already erected, wrapped with sandwich panels. The project has already reached its milestone but there is still a lot of works performed on site. Most of them, inside of the building. Civils, mechanical works, pipe installation (hot works) and Manufacturing machinery installation are main activities at the moment. There are also pressure and other tests carried on. The works are being performed by 8 contractors and their subcontractors. Each has at least one works supervisor and one first aider with certification. Construction Management company with 25 engineers staff is managing the project on the spot and supervising all the works.

Executive Summary

Inadequate access and egress routes inside of the main building make it a high-traffic area with too many pedestrians and mobile elevating work platforms or forklifts passing by every hour. Outside is not bad, pedestrian paths and a road for vehicles are both separated and kept clean. There are signs informing about speed limit and a ‘zebra’ straps marked for crossing the road.

Every task must be first planned and introduced in a method statement including time and equipment used (Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2007),

Despite a large amount of time spent on trainings, working at height is an issue to be solved. Some of workers were wearing their safety harnesses incorrectly, or did not anchor themselves while working. Mobile Elevating Work Platforms should be operated only by certified operators. There was equipment out of date for inspection found on site. Working at heights is one of the biggest killers in construction, therefore there must be an extra care and awareness along all the people involved.

Hot works is a big issue on this contruction site. Cutting, grinding and welding are only allowed when Permit-to-work has been issued. Permits are clear instructions and a source of information for both workers and supervisors, yet lack of firefighting accessories, lack of fire watch after works are completed and poor housekeeping are everyday threat.

Cabling and electrical works should also be improved. Many cables were found lying without protection on the floors easy to be damaged by MEWP, they are a trip hazard for people and, if destroyed, may cause an electric shock.

Main findings of the inspection

Working at height

There are MEWP (mobile elevation work platforms), scaffolds and ladders used every day on site. Despite of a monthly inspection, some of the above equipment was found damaged and missing manufacture manual instructions. Before using MEWP, all the documentation of each machine must be checked (Ustawa z dnia 21 grudnia 200r o dozorze technicznym Dz.U.z 2013, poz. 963) according to Polish law. Also, this documentation should be on the workplace for all times attached to the machine. All the works at heights, including MEWP are marked as a dangerous zone. Workers must use a safety tape to barrier they area and protect people from falling objects.

All works at height must be performed with fall protection system. International (Amendment of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulation 1998/2005) and Polish (Rozporzadzenie Ministra Pracy I Polityki Socjalnej, 26/09/1997 no. 169, 1650) laws are clear about this matter. To prevent falling and death risk, no worker is allowed to work at heights without ‘harness training’. Workers are using safety harness when working above 1 meter height. This PPE must be not only visually inspected each time before and after use but also annually checked by a proper company / third party organization. This inspection should result with a mark or certificate as ‘good to use’. Without such proof, no harness should be used.

Mobile scaffolds must be erected, used and maintained according to its design and manufacturer instruction to prevent displacement and collapse ( ILO R175, art.17) Only after an inspection made by a certified engineer, works on scaffold are allowed. Workers should always check by themselves if the scaffold is levelled, wheels are blocked and authorised to use by an inspector.

Lack of anchoring, safety harness worn too loose or damaged, missing parts of scaffolds are one of the most common problems found during inspection. The management must take care of these matters every day putting pressure on daily inspections of the equipment, placing barriers where applicable and wearing safety harness according to manufacturer instructions. The indirect costs of WAT accident may be crucial for an organisation, moreover, potencial loss of a human life and living with responsibility of somebody’s death are higher cost than any money.

Fire

Fire is one of the main dangers on construction site. Along with WAT, it can cost life, time ‘ dalay, loss of property, materials, equipment. It is much cheaper and easier to prevent fire than maintain the workplace after fire occure.

When hot works performed, there must be Permit- to- work system introduced. Also, ongoing supervision is a must in order to execute all the actions/ preventive measurements included in a hot work, method statement, risk assessment, safety plan and a legislation of a country we work in.

Before working, all the flammable materials must be removed, area should be barried and marked as a Hot Works Zone/Workshop. Fire blankets and extinguishers must be always on the work place and gas cylinders kept properly: stored vertically, minimum 10 meters from the flame, secured in order not to fall. Works can be performed after supervisor check the workplace comparing to measures and information from a Hot Work Permit.

Electricity

Every activity with using electricity must be supervised. Labels, LOTO procedures, Work Permit, are one of the ways to avoid shock, death and burns. Only certified electricians and engineers should have access to life electricity. All the cables and electrical tools must be checked by an authorised inspector once a month, and labelled according to a ‘sticker system’. Each month has its own colour and all the equipment missing current label is being removed from a work place immediately. In order to avoid damage and tripping, all the cables lying on the floor must be protected.

Welfare

The temperature inside of the building was less than 10C. Hand function drops very fast in the cold. Workers are forced to perform activities with safety gloves which are not warm enough for them, and tend to restrict hand movement. Workers are also at risk of cold stress injuries. According to International Labour Organisation (Ambient Factors in the Workplace, paragraph 8.4.) the employer has a responsibility to lower the risks connected with cold workplace. The temperature held in the work area is unacceptable.Workers must be provided with more heating.

Moreover, the lighting went on and off during the inspection making it very difficult for people to work, and creating a very dangerous Environment.

With that amount of traffic and works at heights, problem with lightening is a huge risk. Tripping and falling along with collisions are more likely to happen, especially during late/night shifts.

A Lack of breakfast break was also noted, workers are only allowed to have a lunch break. This is inadequate, especially taking under consideration the low temperatures in the workplace.

Housekeeping

Housekeeping standards aren’t bad, but can be higher. Tripping and slipping hazards should be taken under consideration and removed.

Chemical Substances

Chemical substances must be stored properly, marked with safety signs, labelled and kept as the manufacturer recommends. Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) should be attached in the area and available for everyone involved to read.

Conclusions

The amount of supervisors on site would be enough if not for a poor safety culture among engineers. Health and Safety matters are only HSE department problem according to many people on site. Safety should be everyone responsibility and priority.

Working at heights must be taken seriously at all times, ongoing inspections of MEWP, scaffolds, laders and fall arrest PPE is very important, sharing awareness throughout contractors by trainings should be carried out.

Fire is a grate cost in many dimensions. Therefore, Hot Works must be done as carefully as possible. The area must be checked before, during and after performing works. This takes less time, than delay and loss caused by fire.

Welfare is a big issue, the organisation must improve lightetnig and rise the temperature in order to avoid workers sick leave payments or legal threats.

All in all, the safety culture and supervision must be improved, Hot Works, Electrical works must be authorised by a Permit- to- Work, WAT supervised. Each activity on site is a potential risk of harm for people working around.

Pesticides

Pesticides are designed to kill, supposedly insects but not humans. Numerous pesticides are sprayed upon crops to keep them glamorous enough until they reach grocery stores and last until consumption. Even though assessing detailed health effects is still a scientific challenge, the accumulated health risks and detriments cannot be completely ignored. These toxins have been developed to eradicate insects but are causing side effects to our health too. The pesticide residues remaining on what we consume each day have proven to be harmful and can be attributed as the source of many untraceable and unexpected health problems in the long run.

While leading a more natural and healthy lifestyle has been under the spotlight in this age of artificialization, pesticide usage could be targeted as a root cause for many chronic diseases and prolonged health effects. The chemical composition of certain pesticides has been discovered to hinder the biochemical processes of vital organs

As soon as a pesticide enters the passageways of the body and comes in contact with any cell, it chemically reacts with its newfound surroundings, lowering the toxicity. These counter effects occur to make it more water soluble and easier to excrete out of the system. The body reacts to each pesticide depending on its chemical structure and properties including its shape, size, electronic charge, and how stable it is, defining how soluble the pesticide will be in different solutions and surroundings. These unique characteristics can determine if the substrate, or the reacting pesticide molecule, can bind onto its complementary receptor site on cells. As electron distribution changes and energy transition states are lowered, chemical reactions via enzymes instigate the formation of products, in this case the catalysis of a biological process.

Enzymes are the proteins present in our body that speed up the reactions taking place within us at a desired rate for life to sustain. The presence of pesticides interrupts the rate of habitual routines that the body performs. Any interruptions or interferences in the midst of these enzymatic processes can trigger a toxic response, acting as an inhibitor to the natural reactions. Homeostasis is disrupted as a result, creating numerous imbalances that cause organs to respond in unpredictable manners.

Sodium bisulfite is one of the ordinary pesticides that prevent the browning and blackening of fresh fruits, vegetables. Known as sodium hydrogen sulfite, has a chemical formula of NaHSO3. Refer to its structural formula in Figure 1. This chemical combination has the properties of readily reacting against dissolved oxygen. In addition, it discharges sulfur dioxide as a byproduct in the presence of water, which inhibits bacterial and fungal growth caused by common chemical reactions (3).

Generally, any foreign substance that goes into the lungs elicits reactions which set off asthma attacks as the airways in the lungs contract and restrict airflow. The presence of pesticides in the respiratory system creates a more hyperactive and aggressive response as the constriction of airways causes bronchiole contractions to occur, causing wheezing and breathlessness. The high level toxicity of pesticides that engulfs the lungs through residues from food puts your respiratory system under enormous stress, which is detrimental to victims of asthma.

Organophosphates are a type of phosphoric acid consisting of the elements phosphorus, carbon, and hydrogen. Refer to the structural formula in Figure 2. Especially seen on fruits we eat every day, organophosphates are repeatedly sprayed on pounds and pounds produce to keep them insect-free enough to catch your eye at the grocery store even though the EPA classifies them to moderate to highly toxic. Tests conducted by the USDA in 2008 found that ‘95% of celery tested contained pesticides, and 85% contained multiple pesticides, 93.6% of apples, 96% of peaches, a single blueberry has residue from 13 different chemicals,’ (HuffPo).

The organic molecule, whose purpose is to function as a neurotoxin to insects has been now discovered as an inhibitor to multiple processes. Since cells aren’t physically connected to one another, the synapses of neuron relay messages to the brain. These ‘bridges’ forming the entire network throughout the body are broken when hit by organophosphates. In the nervous system, the organophosphate is accountable for restraining the flow of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme crucial to nerve transmissions of impulses between our cells or a neurotransmitter. The breaking down of this particular enzyme signals when one transmission is completed and another is ready to begin. Figure 3 displays how the toxin enters the neuron and obstructs its path.

Synthetically composed pesticides in today’s industry are causing health deterioration greatly impacting children at a young age. Children in general are about twice as more vulnerable to intoxication by pesticides as eating and drinking more, they take in more pesticides and toxic chemicals relative to body weight. Their undeveloped organs are unable to filter out hazardous chemicals, which remain in their system and overtime produce a negative effect in several mediums.

The excess buildup of AChE makes young children whose bodies are still in growing stages, extremely susceptible to neurological damage and dysfunction, preempting problems in behavior and cognition. The conditions of an over-stimulated nervous system is the defining neuropathic cause of ADHD, holding about 5.9 million children captive in the United States (CDC 2015).

High percentages of residues present in common foods we eat daily, the vast use of these human-composed toxins is directly unsafe. The exact chemical arrangement of these, have been proved to collide with the cellular functions performed to sustain life within us. While organic foods are considered healthier but also more expensive, currently less than 1% of US farmland has been adopted for implementation of organic farming systems. As we wait for organic farming to amplify and become more affordable, an alternative resolution is the evolution of biopesticides. Recently, the federal government has proposed to increase research in alternate solutions using biotechnology under the National Bio-economy Blueprint. They have given their consent to find microbiological substances and microorganisms to synthesize chemicals replacing toxic pesticides.