The Twilight Saga 4: Breaking Dawn 2. LONG NIGHT

â€Å"I miss you already.† â€Å"I don't need to leave. I can stay___† â€Å"Mmm.† It was quiet for a long moment, just the thud of my heart hammering, the broken rhythm of our ragged breathing, and the whisper of our lips moving in synchronization. Sometimes it was so easy to forget that I was kissing a vampire. Not because he seemed ordinary or human – I could never for a second forget that I was holding someone more angel than man in my arms – but because he made it seem like nothing at all to have his lips against my lips, my face, my throat. He claimed he was long past the temptation my blood used to be for him, that the idea of losing me had cured him of any desire for it. But I knew the smell of my blood still caused him pain – still burned his throat like he was inhaling flames. I opened my eyes and found his open, too, staring at my face. It made no sense when he looked at me that way. Like I was the prize rather than the outrageously lucky winner. Our gazes locked for a moment; his golden eyes were so deep that I imagined I could see all the way into his soul. It seemed silly that this fact – the existence of his soul – had ever been in question, even if he was a vampire. He had the most beautiful soul, more beautiful than his brilliant mind or his incomparable face or his glorious body. He looked back at me as if he could see my soul, too, and as if he liked what he saw. He couldn't see into my mind, though, the way he saw into everyone else's. Who knew why – some strange glitch in my brain that made it immune to all the extraordinary and frightening things some immortals could do. (Only my mind was immune; my body was still subject to vampires with abilities that worked in ways other than Edward's.) But I was seriously grateful to whatever malfunction it was that kept my thoughts a secret. It was just too embarrassing to consider the alternative. I pulled his face to mine again. â€Å"Definitely staying,† he murmured a moment later. â€Å"No, no. It's your bachelor party. You have to go.† I said the words, but the fingers of my right hand locked into his bronze hair, my left pressed tighter against the small of his back. His cool hands stroked my face. â€Å"Bachelor parties are designed for those who are sad to see the passing of their single days. I couldn't be more eager to have mine behind me. So there's really no point.† â€Å"True.† I breathed against the winter-cold skin of his throat. This was pretty close to my happy place. Charlie slept obliviously in his room, which was almost as good as being alone. We were curled up on my small bed, intertwined as much as it was possible, considering the thick afghan I was swathed in like a cocoon. I hated the necessity of the blanket, but it sort of ruined the romance when my teeth started chattering. Charlie would notice if I turned the heat on in August___ At least, if had to be bundled up, Edward's shirt was on the floor. I never got over the shock of how perfect his body was – white, cool, and polished as marble. I ran my hand down his stone chest now, tracing across the flat planes of his stomach, just marveling. A light shudder rippled through him, and his mouth found mine again. Carefully, I let the tip of my tongue press against his glass-smooth lip, and he sighed. His sweet breath washed – cold and delicious – over my face. He started to pull away – that was his automatic response whenever he decided things had gone too far, his reflex reaction whenever he most wanted to keep going. Edward had spent most of his life rejecting any kind of physical gratification. I knew it was terrifying to him trying to change those habits now. â€Å"Wait,† I said, gripping his shoulders and hugging myself close to him. I kicked one leg free and wrapped it around his waist. â€Å"Practice makes perfect.† He chuckled. â€Å"Well, we should be fairly close to perfection by this point, then, shouldn't we? Have you slept at all in the last month?† â€Å"But this is the dress rehearsal,† I reminded him, â€Å"and we've only practiced certain scenes. It's no time for playing safe.† I thought he would laugh, but he didn't answer, and his body was motionless with sudden stress. The gold in his eyes seemed to harden from a liquid to a solid. I thought over my words, realized what he would have heard in them. â€Å"Bella†¦,† he whispered. â€Å"Don't start this again,† I said. â€Å"A deal's a deal.† â€Å"I don't know. It's too hard to concentrate when you're with me like this. I – I can't think straight. I won't be able to control myself. You'll get hurt.† â€Å"I'll be fine.† â€Å"Bella . ..† â€Å"Shh!† I pressed my lips to his to stop his panic attack. I'd heard it before. He wasn't getting out of this deal. Not after insisting I marry him first. He kissed me back for a moment, but I could tell he wasn't as into it as before. Worrying, always worrying. How different it would be when he didn't need to worry about me anymore. What would he do with all his free time? He'd have to get a new hobby. â€Å"How are your feet?† he asked. Knowing he didn't mean that literally, I answered, Toasty warm.† â€Å"Really? No second thoughts? It's not too late to change your mind.† â€Å"Are you trying to ditch me?† He chuckled. â€Å"Just making sure. I don't want you to do anything you're not sure about.† â€Å"I'm sure about you. The rest I can live through.† He hesitated, and I wondered if I'd put my foot in my mouth again. â€Å"Can you?† he asked quietly. â€Å"I don't mean the wedding – which I am positive you will survive despite your qualms – but afterward†¦ what about Renee, what about Charlie?† I sighed. â€Å"I'll miss them.† Worse, that they would miss me, but I didn't want to give him any fuel. â€Å"Angela and Ben and Jessica and Mike.† â€Å"I'll miss my friends, too.† I smiled in the darkness. â€Å"Especially Mike. Oh, Mike! How will I go on?† He growled. I laughed but then was serious. â€Å"Edward, we've been through this and through this. I know it will be hard, but this is what I want. I want you, and I want you forever. One lifetime is simply not enough for me.† â€Å"Frozen forever at eighteen,† he whispered. â€Å"Every woman's dream come true,† I teased. â€Å"Never changing†¦ never moving forward.† â€Å"What does that mean?† He answered slowly. â€Å"Do you remember when we told Charlie we were getting married? And he thought you were†¦ pregnant?† â€Å"And he thought about shooting you,† I guessed with a laugh. â€Å"Admit it – for one second, he honestly considered it.† He didn't answer. â€Å"What, Edward?† â€Å"I just wish†¦ well, I wish that he'd been right.† â€Å"Gah,† I gasped. â€Å"More that there was some way he could have been. That we had that kind of potential. I hate taking that away from you, too.† It took me a minute. â€Å"I know what I'm doinq.† â€Å"How could you know that, Bella? Look at my mother, look at my sister. It's not as easy a sacrifice as youimagine.† â€Å"Esme and Rosalie get by just fine. If it's a problem later, we can do what Esme did – we'll adopt.† He sighed, and then his voice was fierce. â€Å"It's not right I don't want you to have to make sacrifices for me. I want to give you things, not take things away from you. I don't want to steal your future. If I were human – â€Å" I put my hand over his lips. â€Å"You are my future. Now stop. No moping, or I'm calling your brothers to come and get you. Maybe you need a bachelor party.† â€Å"I'm sorry. I am moping, aren't I? Must be the nerves.† â€Å"Are your feet cold?† â€Å"Not in that sense. I've been waiting a century to marry you, Miss Swan. The wedding ceremony is the one thing I can't wait – † He broke off mid-thought. â€Å"Oh, for the love of all that's holy!† â€Å"What's wrong?† He gritted his teeth. â€Å"You don't have to call my brothers. Apparently Emmett and Jasper are not going to let me bow out tonight.† I clutched him closer for one second and then released him. I didn't have a prayer of winning a tug-of-war with Emmett. â€Å"Have fun.† There was a squeal against the window – someone deliberately scraping their steel nails across the glass to make a horrible, cover-your-ears, goose-bumps-down-your-spine noise. I shuddered. â€Å"If you don't send Edward out,† Emmett – still invisible in the night – hissed menacingly, â€Å"we're coming in after him!† â€Å"Go,† I laughed. â€Å"Before they break my house.† Edward rolled his eyes, but he got to his feet in one fluid movement and had his shirt back on in another. He leaned down and kissed my forehead. â€Å"Get to sleep. You've got a big day tomorrow.† â€Å"Thanks! That's sure to help me wind down.† â€Å"I'll meet you at the altar.† â€Å"HI be the one in white.† I smiled at how perfectly blase I sounded. He chuckled, said, â€Å"Very convincing,† and then suddenly sank into a crouch, his muscles coiled like a spring. He vanished – launching himself out my window too swiftly for my eyes to follow. Outside, there was a muted thud, and I heard Emmett curse. â€Å"You'd better not make him late,† I murmured, knowing they could hear. And then Jaspers face was peering in my window, his honey hair silver in the weak moonlight that worked through the clouds. â€Å"Don't worry, Bella. We'll get him home in plenty of time.† I was suddenly very calm, and my qualms all seemed unimportant. Jasper was, in his own way, just as talented as Alice with her uncannily accurate predictions. Jasper's medium was moods rather than the future, and it was impossible to resist feeling the way he wanted you to feel. I sat up awkwardly, still tangled in my blanket. â€Å"Jasper? What do vampires do for bachelor parties? You're not taking him to a strip club, are you?† â€Å"Don't tell her anything!† Emmett growled from below. There was another thud, and Edward laughed quietly. â€Å"Relax,† Jasper told me – and I did. â€Å"We Cullens have our own version. Just a few mountain lions, a couple of grizzly bears. Pretty much an ordinary night out.† I wondered if I would ever be able to sound so cavalier about the â€Å"vegetarian† vampire diet. â€Å"Thanks, Jasper.† He winked and dropped from sight. It was completely silent outside. Charlie's muffled snores droned through the walls. I lay back against my pillow, sleepy now. I stared at the walls of my little room, bleached pale in the moonlight, from under heavy lids. My last night in my room. My last night as Isabella Swan. Tomorrow night, I would be Bella Cullen. Though the whole marriage ordeal was a thorn in my side, I had to admit that I liked the sound of that. I let my mind wander idly for a moment, expecting sleep to take me. But, after a few minutes, I found myself more alert, anxiety creeping back into my stomach, twisting it into uncomfortable positions. The bed seemed too soft, too warm without Edward in it. Jasper was far away, and all the peaceful, relaxed feelings were gone with him. It was going to be a very long day tomorrow. I was aware that most of my fears were stupid – I just had to get over myself. Attention was an inevitable part of life. I couldn't always blend in with the scenery. However, I did have a few specific worries that were completely valid. First there was the wedding dress's train. Alice clearly had let her artistic sense overpower practicalities on that one. Maneuvering the Cullens' staircase in heels and a train sounded impossible. I should have practiced. Then there was the guest list. Tanya's family, the Denali clan, would be arriving sometime before the ceremony. It would be touchy to have Tanya's family in the same room with our guests from the Quileute reservation, Jacob's father and the Clearwaters. The Denalis were no fans of the werewolves. In fact, Tanya's sister irina was not coming to the wedding at all. She still nursed a vendetta against the werewolves for killing her friend Laurent (just as he was about to kill me). Thanks to that grudge, the Denalis had abandoned Edward's family in their worst hour of need. It had been the unlikely alliance with the Quileute wolves that had saved all our lives when the horde of newborn vampires had attacked___ Edward had promised me it wouldn't be dangerous to have the Denalis near the Quileutes. Tanya and all herfamily – besides Irina – felt horribly guilty for that defection. A truce with the werewolves was a small price to make up some of that debt, a price they were prepared to pay. That was the big problem, but there was a small problem, too: my fragile self-esteem. I'd never seen Tanya before, but I was sure that meeting her wouldn't be a pleasant experience for my ego. Once upon a time, before I was born probably, she'd made her play for Edward – not that I blamed her or anyone else for wanting him. Still, she would be beautiful at the very least and magnificent at best. Though Edward clearly – if inconceivably – preferred me, I wouldn't be able to help making comparisons. I had grumbled a little until Edward, who knew my weaknesses, made me feel guilty. â€Å"We're the closest thing they have to family, Bella,'7he'd reminded me. â€Å"They still feel like orphans, you know, even after all this time.† So I'd conceded, hiding my frown. Tanya had a big family now, almost as big as the Cullens. There were five of them; Tanya, Kate, and Irina had been joined by Carmen and Eleazar much the same way the Cullens had been joined by Alice and Jasper, all of them bonded by their desire to live more compassionately than normal vampires did. For all the company, though, Tanya and her sisters were still alone in one way. Still in mourning. Because a very long time ago, they'd had a mother, too. I could imagine the hole that loss would leave, even after a thousand years; I tried to visualize the Cullen family without their creator, their center, and their guide – their father, Carlisle. I couldn't see it. Carlisle had explained Tanya's history during one of the many nights I'd stayed late at the Cullens' home, learning as much as I could, preparing as much as was possible for the future I'd chosen. Tanya's mother's story was one among many, a cautionary tale illustrating just one of the rules I would need to be aware of when I joined the immortal world. Only one rule, actually – one law that broke down into a thousand different facets: Keep the secret. Keeping the secret meant a lot of things – living inconspicuously like the Cullens, moving on before humans could suspect they weren't aging. Or keeping clear of humans altogether – except at mealtime – the way nomads like James and Victoria had lived; the way Jasper's friends, Peter and Charlotte, still lived. It meant keeping control of whatever new vampires you created, like Jasper had done when he'd lived with Maria. Like Victoria had failed to do with her newborns. And it meant not creating some things in the first place, because some creations were uncontrollable. â€Å"I don't know Tanya's mother's name,† Carlisle had admitted, his golden eyes, almost the exact shade of his fair hair, sad with remembering Tanya's pain. â€Å"They never speak of her if they can avoid it, never think ofherwillingly. â€Å"The woman who created Tanya, Kate, and Irina – who loved them, I believe – lived many years before I was born, during a time of plague in our world, the plague of the immortal children. â€Å"What they were thinking, those ancient ones, I can't begin to understand. They created vampires out of humans who were barely more than infants.† I'd had to swallow back the bile that rose in my throat as I'd pictured what he was describing. â€Å"They were very beautiful,† Carlisle had explained quickly, seeing my reaction. â€Å"So endearing, so enchanting, you can't imagine. You had but to be near them to love them; it was an automatic thing. â€Å"However, they could not be taught. They were frozen at whatever level of development they'd achieved before being bitten. Adorable two-year-olds with dimples and lisps that could destroy half a village in one of their tantrums. If they hungered, they fed, and no words of warning could restrain them. Humans saw them, stories circulated, fear spread like fire in dry brush___ â€Å"Tanya's mother created such a child. As with the other ancients, i cannot fathom her reasons.† He'd taken a deep, steadying breath. â€Å"The Volturi became involved, of course.† I'd flinched as I always did at that name, but of course the legion of Italian vampires – royalty in their own estimation – was central to this story. There couldn't be a law if there was no punishment; there couldn't be a punishment if there was no one to deliver it. The ancients Aro, Caius, and Marcus ruled the Volturi forces; I'd only met them once, but in that brief encounter, it seemed to me that Aro, with his powerful mind-reading gift – one touch, and he knew every thought a mind had ever held – was the true leader. â€Å"The Volturi studied the immortal children, at home in Volterra and all around the world. Caius decided the young ones were incapable of protecting our secret. And so they had to be destroyed. â€Å"I told you they were loveable. Well, covens fought to the last man – were utterly decimated – to protect them. The carnage was not as widespread as the southern wars on this continent, but more devastating in its own way. Long-established covens, old traditions, friends†¦ Much was lost. In the end, the practice was completely eliminated. The immortal children became unmentionable, a taboo. â€Å"When I lived with the Volturi, I met two immortal children, so I know firsthand the appeal they had. Aro studied the little ones for many years after the catastrophe they'd caused was over. You know his inquisitive disposition; he was hopeful that they could be tamed. But in the end, the decision was unanimous: the immortal children could not be allowed to exist.† I'd all but forgotten the Denali sisters' mother when the story returned to her. â€Å"It is unclear precisely what happened with Tanya's mother,† Carlisle had said. â€Å"Tanya, Kate, and irina were entirely oblivious until the day the Volturi came for them, their mother and her illegal creation already their prisoners. It was ignorance that saved Tanya's and her sisters' lives. Aro touched them and saw their total innocence, so they were not punished with their mother. â€Å"None of them had ever seen the boy before, or dreamed of his existence, until the day they watched him burn in their mother's arms. I can only guess that their mother had kept her secret to protect them from this exact outcome. But why had she created him in the first place? Who was he, and what had he meant to her that would cause her to cross this most uncrossable of lines? Tanya and the others never received an answer to any of these questions. But they could not doubt their mother's guilt, and I don't think they've ever truly forgiven her. â€Å"Even with Aro's perfect assurance that Tanya, Kate, and Irina were innocent, Caius wanted them to burn. Guilty by association. They were lucky that Aro felt like being merciful that day. Tanya and her sisters were pardoned, but left with unhealing hearts and a very healthy respect for the law___† I'm not sure where exactly the memory turned into a dream. One moment it seemed that I was listening to Carlisle in my memory, looking at his face, and then a moment later I was looking at a gray, barren field and smelling the thick scent of burning incense in the air. I was not alone there. The huddle of figures in the center of the field, all shrouded in ashy cloaks, should have terrified me – they could only be Volturi, and I was, against what they'd decreed at our last meeting, still human. But I knew, as I sometimes did in dreams, that I was invisible to them. Scattered all around me were smoking heaps. I recognized the sweetness in the air and did not examine the mounds too closely. I had no desire to see the faces of the vampires they had executed, half afraid that I might recognize someone in the smoldering pyres. The Volturi soldiers stood in a circle around something or someone, and I heard their whispery voices raised in agitation. I edged closer to the cloaks, compelled by the dream to see whatever thing or person they were examining with such intensity. Creeping carefully between two of the tall hissing shrouds, I finally saw the object of their debate, raised up on a little hillock above them. He was beautiful, adorable, just as Carlisle had described. The boy was a toddler still, maybe two years of age. Light brown curls framed his cherubic face with its round cheeks and full lips. And he was trembling, his eyes closed as if he was too frightened to watch death coming closer every second. I was struck with such a powerful need to save the lovely, terrified child that the Volturi, despite all their devastating menace, no longer mattered to me. I shoved past them, not caring if they realized my presence. Breaking free of them altogether, I sprinted toward the boy. Only to stagger to a halt as I got a clear view of the hillock that he sat upon. It was not earth and rock, but a pile of human bodies, drained and lifeless. Too late not to see these faces. I knew them all – Angela, Ben, Jessica, Mike†¦. And directly beneath the adorable boy were the bodies of my father and my mother. The child opened his bright, bloodred eyes.

Hewlett Packard Case

PANAMERICAN UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATION SCHOOL CASE 3 – HEWLETT-PACKARD COMPANY ADRIANA MA. DE LA PENA SANDOVAL 8 SEMESTER PROF. RAFAEL SANTANA VILLEGAS CORPORATE COMMUNICATION February 2013 INDEX Company†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 3 Background†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦3 Importance†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦3 Information of the company†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 4 Characters in the case†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 4 Summary case†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã ¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Questions†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 5 Personal Opinion†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 5 COMPANY Hewlett-Packard Company (www. google. com) Background Founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, HP's global operations are directed from its headquarters in  Palo Alto, California, USA. Its U. S. operations are directed from its facility in  unincorporated  Harris County, Texas, nearHouston. Its Latin America offices in unincorporated  Miami-Dade County, Florida, U. S. , near  Miami  and in  Medellin  Colombia.Its Europe offices are in  Meyrin, Switzerland, nearGeneva. Its Asia-Pacific offices are in  Singapore. [47][48][49][50][49][51][52]  It also has large operations in  Boise, Idaho;  Roseville, California;  Fort Collins, Colorado, San Diego, andPlano, Texas  (the former headquarters of  EDS, which HP acquired). In the UK, HP is based at a large site in  Bracknell, Berkshire  with offices in various UK locations, including a landmark office tower in London,  88 Wood Street. Its recent acquisition of  3Com  will expand its employee base to  Marlborough, Massachusetts. [53].The company also has a large workforce and numerous offices at  Bangalore,  India, to address their back end and IT operations. MphasiS, which is headquartered at Bangalore, also enabled HP to increase their footprint in the cit y as it was a subsidiary of EDS which the company acquired. Importance is an American  multinationalinformation technology  corporation headquartered in  Palo Alto,  California,  United States. It provides products, technologies, software, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors.Family legacy and employee royalty were a deeply engrained parto f HP corporate culture. The founders, known to friends and employees alike as Bill and Dave, developed a unique management style that came to be known as  The HP Way. In Bill's words, the HP Way is â€Å"a core ideology †¦ which includes a deep respect for the individual, a dedication to affordable quality and reliability, a commitment to community responsibility, and a view that the company exists to make technical contributions for the advancement and welfare of humanity. â€Å"[62]  The follow ing are the tenets of The HP Way:[63] 1.We have trust and respect for individuals. 2. We focus on a high level of achievement and contribution. 3. We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity. 4. We achieve our common objectives through teamwork. 5. We encourage flexibility and innovation. Information of the company Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), incorporated in 1947, is a provider of products, technologies, software, solutions and services to individual consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises, including customers in the Government, health and education sectors.Its operations are organized into seven segments: the Personal Systems Group (PSG), Services, the Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN), HP Software, HP Financial Services (HPFS) and Corporate Investments. The Company’s offerings include personal computing and other access devices; multi-vendor customer services, including infrastr ucture technology and business process outsourcing, technology support and maintenance, application development and support services and consulting and integration services, and imaging and printing-related products and services.Characters in the case Bill Hewlett David Packard Damian Nash Patricia Dunn Summary case Questions WHAT ARE THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESS OF HP’S CORPORATE CULTURE IN TERMS OF COMMUNICATIONS, AS DESCRIBES IN THE CASE? IN CONSIDERING WHETHER TO RESPOND TO THE STORY, WHAT OTHER COMMUNICATIONS DEPARMENT FUNCTION SHOULD NASH CALL ON FOR CONSULTATION? WHAT CHALLENGES DO YOU FORESEE FOR NASH GOING FORWARD, AND WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE HIM? WHAT ROLE SHOULD CORPORATE COMMUNICATION PLAY AT HP TO HELP THE COMPANY ADVANCE ITS Personal opinion

The influence of the european culture in management leadership style Research Paper

The influence of the european culture in management leadership style of european managers working in Asian countries focusing on - Research Paper Example The approach used in leadership and management therefore determines the outcome of the various decisions made. However, all these are influenced by factors such as the immediate as well as external environment, the structure of the organisation or institution, business culture and the relationships which exist between the management and the subordinates (Marcus et al, 2003). Management and leadership are inherently dependent on each other although leadership is a component of management and success in any decision made is influenced by the balance between the two elements (Hofstede, 1991). Management styles are influenced by the leadership styles employed in the running of business entities. There are four fundamental leadership styles although there are several others which are based on the particular management approaches used. These include democratic, laissez faire, autocratic and participative leadership styles. Democratic, laissez faire and participative management leadership s tyles involve staff while autocratic style is purely based on the management making decisions for the business or company (Marcus et al, 2003). ... Asia in specific India has been receptive to the European leadership styles compared to other parts of Asia and African countries. According to Ralston et al (1993), the increase in international affairs has led to the convergence and divergence debate where organizations take strategic positions in different ways. The authors point out that convergence thesis is where economic ideology is the main driver of cultural values for example exposure to European business leads to the adoption of European culture. Thus culture is treated as something accidental that does not have any prior planning for it to take place. On the other hand, Hosfede, (1980, 1991), Adler (2002) point out that a divergence perspective recognizes a country and its cultural differences, they emphasize that culture plays a big role in influencing the way management is conducted. Ward et al (1999) and Ralston et al (1993), indicate that when two cultures meets and equally exchange ideas and values, that is cross â⠂¬â€œdivergence, this type of divergence recognizes the importance of national culture and economic ideology and the synergy between the two â€Å"â€Å"when an individual incorporates both national culture and economic ideology influences synergistically to form a unique value system that is different from the value set supported by either national culture or economic ideology† (Ralston et al, 1997: 183). According to the Centre fro Comparative Management Studies (2011) the relationship between culture and leadership styles and agrees with the notion that culture has a small but significant impact on the leadership styles of an individual , other factors that affect an individuals leadership styles are the

Giving adice to another student how well to do on test,why it is Essay

Giving adice to another student how well to do on test,why it is important it is to do well - Essay Example First of all, I advise that you study your lessons first thing, early in the morning while your mind is well rested and free from any worries. This will allow you to easily grasp information and remember them because your brain is not yet worked up. Moreover, the silence in the early morning allows your mind to work more efficiently without the disturbances or distractions noise and other things could bring. Secondly, it would be most helpful if you plan what you study starting from what is most difficult for you. Subjects you are having difficulty with requires more efforts to understand than those you usually enjoy so while your brain is still freshly rejuvenated, take the chance of devouring and understanding information which are difficult. Lastly, study your own notes because it is easier to remember things that you have written yourself. Of this demands that you take notes during lectures and that you have to listen well so you know the important information you need to jot

Planner R US Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Planner R US - Case Study Example This leisurely event is created for the entertainment of the targeted audience which includes the music fans of the region, local residents and students. A meeting was made with the officials of city and the school for planning and organization of the event and the activities about the administration, operations, marketing and risk management of the project were discussed in length. The framework provided by EMBOK which is quite close to the Event Management International Competency Standard is given in Appendix 1. (Silvers, 2003) To manage this project there are four very important facets which are expected to be well understood. The first aspect is the Phases which highlight the significance of time for the sequential nature of managing event. The Phases aspect begins with the initiation of the project, followed by its planning. Once the plan is finalized, the Implementation phase begins which ultimately leads to the event. The last phase for the management is the closure of the ev ent. The rate and rhythm of the work is determined by the time as illustrated in Figure 1. (Silvers, 2003) Figure 1: Phases The second important aspect is the Processes which are required for the success of the event. These processes are sequential as well as iterative and are applied according to the progress and occurrence of changes. First process is that of assessment followed by selection. It includes people, materials and many other resources needed for implementation of the project. Once selection is made the third process is that of monitoring the plan whether it is followed according to the specifications prescribed. The fourth process is that of communication amongst the workers, audience and the market. The last of the process is documentation. All these widely-accepted five process systems begin with Communication, iterate through Assessment, Selection and Monitoring and ends up with the Documentation as illustrated in Figure 2 (Silvers, 2003) Figure 2: Processes The thi rd important aspect is the Core Values which are the rules that must be followed in each and every decision making and infused in all the phases and processes. As illustrated in Figure 3, aim for continuous improvement, creativity in the work, understanding and practising ethics, unity of work through integration amongst all the sections and thinking strategically are fundamental values for the management of the event. All these values are equally important. (Silvers, 2003) Figure 3: Core Values The fourth important aspect is the Domain which defines the region and scope of required functions and activities for managing the event. It also describes the responsibilities and organizational structure needed to manage the project. Administration is one of the domains, designing is another domain. Marketing of the event, its operations and the potential hazards or risk are the other three domains. All the five domains as illustrated in Figure 4 are equally important and none of them have any implied hierarchy. Figure 4: Domains Section II – Work Breakdown Structure There are twelve activities that were drafted out from the meeting with the school and city officials. The work breakdown for each one of these activities is produced below:- A. Contract Negotiation with selected music group 1. Defining of event goals and objectives to the music group 2. Finalizing pricing structure of hiring music group 3. Finalizing benefits like accommodation, transport and travel

Expanding Business to Singapore Research Proposal - 1

Expanding Business to Singapore - Research Proposal Example Currently the trends of business operations management have visibly tilted emphasizing over contemporary advanced factors that includes focus on globalization, efficient on time production, supply chain efficacy, innovative procedures for product development, customer oriented customized production, leadership cultivation by employee empowerment and ethical deliberation with environmental friendly initiatives. Singapore, that was a main focus of the research proposal is an acceptable choice for international business expansion on the grounds of favorable features of micro environment. The purpose of this research proposal is to align the information and informal values for company expansion under a defined strategy to come up with the best results in terms of profit and sustainability. Thus, it can be stated that an efficient operations management can be achieved through efforts to enhance the potential of an organization through outstanding performance in each of the business functi on. The researcher provides PEST Analysis on the topic of Aspects of Macro Environment as well as the analysis of Strategic management and corporate public affairs. Therefore, the operations management of recent times can be acclaimed far more challenging because of advanced technology of engineering, finance, marketing and information system strategy. In addition, the modifications have further supplemented business sustainability by means of significant element such as capacity planning and forecasting.

The Pro's and Con's of Obama Care Research Paper

The Pro's and Con's of Obama Care - Research Paper Example With this healthcare plan, individuals and small business owners can acquire health-related insurances based on subsidized premium. However, the health care plan has been opposed on the ground of racial prejudice. It is also criticized for adding extra taxes, which has increased government spending. Moreover, the other limitation of the healthcare plan is that citizens are required to have health insurance by the year 2014, if not a tax penalty might be imposed on them. In addition, employers are necessitated to contribute not less than the figure of 50% of the health plan premium in order to get advantage of the benefit of tax credit. The employers who do not have adequate tax liability are not eligible to obtain complete current benefit. In this regard, comparing the benefits and the limitations of Obama Care, it can be affirmed that the plan should be continued in the US with aim of providing better quality health insurance plan. In the United States, the people are provided with different healthcare plans along with policies with the aim of improving health coverage. The healthcare plans are implemented in order to ensure that the people are facilitated with effective care as well as treatment services. Obama Care has been implemented in the US with the aim of ensuring that people are provided with better health insurance coverage. The healthcare plan has been implemented as an affordable health care policy, which is identified as ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’ (PPACA). It has been also identified that the healthcare plan includes new taxes, which have adversely affected the effectiveness of the plan. Additionally, the healthcare plan is also identified to be criticized on different grounds that include legal along with political considerations. On the legal along with political ground, the healthcare plan has been criticized to be based on racial prejudice. In this regard, the health care plan has been ineffective in its approach due to improper management of the policies.

Competitiveness in the International Electronics Industry Essay

Competitiveness in the International Electronics Industry - Essay Example The author Morri tells us that though the electronic industry is fairly small in the Dominican Republic by global standards, it employs however about 10,000 workers and contributes to about 5 percent of total Dominican exports (8). He further states that the electronic industry is by far the most important industry for a small economy (8). But in order to increase the competition in the electronic industry, the manufacturers in the electronic industry must learn to work together with the public sector to increase the competition position of the industry (Morri 9). The Dominican Republic has to meet the challenges of the public demands in order to ensure their competition in the electronics industry. The number of workers employed tells us how much is going into the export part of the trade. In order to accomplish competitiveness in the electronic industry, certain factors must be adhered to such as the "improvement in the quality and the cost of the electricity supply. Assistance with both local and international supply sourcing issues including possible common import purchasing and horizontal integration for inputs such as fabricated metals and moldings. In addition, the encouragement of domestic and foreign investment in critical local suppliers in such areas such as sheet metal fabrication, printed circuit boards, transformers, and general electronic component distribution (Morri 9)." In Latin America, there is extensive foreign investment in the sector by companies such as Verizon, Tricom, Centennial and Cable and Wireless and the cost of a T1 which is a high speed internet is the lowest priced in the whole of Latin America (Morri 16). On the other hand, "Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have competitively low labor rates per hour, but they are not currently considered a competitive threat to the Dominican Republic because all three countries lack a secure environment (Morri 24)." In the above scenario, foreign investment in the Latin American companies makes it possible to guarantee low prices on certain commodities and labor being cheap makes it not a very feasible environment and so lacks the basis for a competitive environment. Another country that is ideal to examine would be the Chinese and Mexican market in relations to the US market. These two countries supply a lot of their goods to the US markets. According to Morri (9), China and Mexico supply a lot of their electronics to the US markets. In doing so, the global supply chain from the US to Asia threatens competition including low levels of linkages existing between the electronic manufacturers and the lack of industry expertise in the policy making and FDI promotion framework (Morri 10). The US markets are highly dependent on countries such as Mexico and China to provide a steady supply of electronic goods. Another important factor in increasing competition in the electronic industry is to : "create a one-stop-shop to streamline red tape. Increase image of electronics and the electrical industry locally. Also, employ or train electronic industry experts in policy and FDI promotion. In addition, build electronic industry support infrastructure for industry investors including offering investors full pre-, during- and post investment services and support. It would also help to decrease exit as well as entry barriers to increase investor confidence (Morri

Crime Control Policy Transfer from the US to the UK Essay

Crime Control Policy Transfer from the US to the UK - Essay Example The closing section will then attempt to summarise the study before making an overall conclusion on these findings. Moreover, the work of previous authors will be used as sources to back up assumptions and to formulate arguments throughout the entirety of the case study. In Britain, recent years have seen a particular spotlight put upon the perceived influence of developments in the USA over domestic public policies, an occurrence not only related to Conservative administrations, but progressively more associated with developments under New Labor. It has also been argued that the Blair-led Labor Party used to 'look across the Atlantic for inspiration and not across the Channel' (Marquand, 1996). These particular facts will be used as the core of the study, as well as for its justification. This case study will attempt to examine one particular example of policy transfer in the relatively under investigated area of crime control policy, together with the emergence of the idea of 'zero control' in the UK. It will briefly look at the concept of crime control policy transfer, and more particularly, at where this appears to have occurred between the US and the UK over the past decade. It will also analyse the evolution of the idea of zero tolerance in the US before offering some suggestions on the processes that have underpinned the transfer of its most recent manifestation to the UK. Crime control policy was chosen a

Law Synopsis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Law Synopsis - Essay Example Justice Holmes of the Supreme Court began his ruling by giving a brief overview of the case. The Porto Rican leadership based the case. The Porto Rican leadership intended to introduce a bill that would enable the locals to dig deeper in their pockets while paying tax. It prompted the appellant to file a case to stop the implementation of the tax collection bill. The appellant succeeded in temporarily preventing the implementation of the bills when the District court gave an injunction on 31ST of March 1925. It directed the Porto Rican government to put on hold all the plans they had regarding the introduction of the bill while the case was being listed to before the court. Following the court injunction, the hearings for the case began on 7TH April 1925 at the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal reversed the ruling that had been made by the District Court thereby giving green light to the Porto Rican authorities to begin the implementation of the tax collection bill. The preparations by the Porto Rican government were nonetheless, put on hold when the Court of Appeal upon listening to further hearings temporarily suspended any preparations for the introduction of the bill and in the process transferring the case to the Supreme Court. The Act of September 14TH, 1922, c 305 allowed the Court of Appeal to transfer the case to the Supreme Court.

The Great Gatsby Essay Example for Free

The Great Gatsby Essay Life is a balancing act between the past, present, and future. Expressing guilt and regret about the past is almost instinctual, but we accept that it is unchangeable and we put it behind us. However, there are some, who so desperately cling to the idea of the past and believe that they have the power to repeat it. While an action can be repeated in order to emulate an action of the past, the entirety of the moment can never be recreated. This is due to the fact that unlike a physical action, the emotions and intent behind the action are impossible to duplicate. The character Jay Gatsby in Fitzgerald’s iconic novel, The Great Gatsby, embodies the desire to, â€Å"beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,† (189). Regarding his relationship with Daisy, Gatsby tries so desperately to override this inability to repeat the past. Gatsby, â€Å"wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: â€Å"I never loved you. † After she had obliterated three years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken,† (116). What he did not realize is that even if Daisy had returned to her relationship with Gatsby after the five years they were separated, it would not be the same as it was. Though the action of the relationship would be repeated, the emotions and intent behind the actions would have been altered, mostly due to the factors of time, environment, and the changes in both Gatsby and Daisy since their relationship during wartime. When Gatsby made the statement, â€Å"’Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can! He did not take into consideration that Daisy is not in the same emotional state as she was five years ago, and neither is he. For an individual, history can never be recreated. This is because the personal change that occurs after the first instance stands in the way of repeating the past. Daisy is now married, and a mother, and Gatsby spent the past five years trying to be the person he thought Daisy wanted him to be, and he changed so much from the man she used to know. Nick observed, â€Å"he talked a lot about the past and I gathered he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy,† (117). They both evolved from the people they were during their relationship during the war, and because of this, even if they were to be together again, their relationship would be completely different. This can also be attributed to the environment in which their relationship first blossomed in comparison to the environment of life five years later. Their love was heightened by the dying need for hope during the time of war. They can repeat the action of their relationship, but contrary to Gatsby’s belief, it will never be recreated to what it once was due to the change in Gatsby and Daisy, the environment, the circumstances, and the emotion behind it all. Though it is unmanageable to recreate the past, the maxim, â€Å"History often repeats itself,† exists because of the misunderstanding that action is the only factor in recreating a moment. In reality, the intent and emotional connection are what make the moment unable to be recreated. The most basic of examples is this: every morning, Monday through Friday, I come into school. Though my actions are repeated everyday, some days I am exhausted and don’t wish to speak with anyone, other days I am in the sunniest of moods. At first glance, it appears history repeats itself each day I repeat the action of walking into school. However, everyday I have a different experience based on my emotions, environment, and other circumstances that affect the entirety of the situation. History is more than just a simple action, as the maxim, â€Å"history often repeats itself,† suggests; it incorporates all aspects of the situation, not just the face value of the deed itself. Though actions throughout history are often repeated, this does not merit to the statement, â€Å"History often repeats itself. † Other factors that need to be considered are the changes in people, environment, emotions, and circumstances. As much as Gatsby believes in the ability to repeat the past, he does not realize that the past is made up of more than just actions. Unfortunately for Gatsby, just because an action can be repeated, does not mean that one can repeat or recreate the past.

PESTEL Analysis of Petrochemical Gulf Markets

PESTEL Analysis of Petrochemical Gulf Markets GCC countries are almost representing the best miscellaneous prudent wealth among the Middle East countries with more stability at their political situation and homogenized society. This is in addition to relaxed position within their neighborhood countries. However, the main social problem is that its citizens are representing less that 50% of the total population of the country. Further, GCC countries are enjoying a political stable regime; moreover, there are not such unexpectedly shifting in business regulations and procedures within GCC countries. In addition, there are some other threats around the Middle East but it has not affected seriously at GCC countries business such as the conflict between Palestinians and Zionists and the war in Iraq. However, there is some risk from Iran, because it attends to acquire nuclear weapons. This is besides the illegally occupying of Iran into three islands of the UAE (Abu Musa, the greater and the lesser Tunbas). Economy: The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) is an oil-based region by the largest persistent oil reserves in the globe; 483.7 billion barrels, 40.2 percent of the worlds total crude oil reserves, OPEC accounts at 78 percent of the worlds total proved oil reserves. Nonetheless, this area ranks as the biggest producer as well as an exporter of petroleum and plays a key role in the world generally along with the OPEC in particular. Thus, the six countries of the GCC region are taking pleasure in a remarkable economic growth that is expected to remain in excess of the medium-term. However, the GCC economy is anticipated to continue through $1 trillion within the year of 2010, making an almost three-fold raise in just five years. However, four GCC countries which are the portion of the OPEC together with KSA, UAE, Kuwait, as well as Qatar account for 51 percent of the total OPEC reserves and 46 percent of the total OPEC crude oil production for the states of GCC area, oil as well as gas represent s just about 73 percent of the total export earnings. Furthermore, oil along with gas sector accounts for lots 63 percent of governments revenues and 41 percent of its GDP. In addition, here, we have to say that the district is continuing its economic adjustment program additionally currently its focus is to attract domestically, regionally, as well as foreign private sector investment involved in oil as well as gas, power generation, telecommunications, along with real-estate sectors. The rush ahead in oil prices, the rising up of fiscal along with external; balance of payments positions, moreover improvements toward the business atmosphere have combined to produce an impressive infrastructure improvement. Therefore, in June 2010, there was practically $2 trillion worth of GCC projects announced, planned or else underway, mostly related in the rule of construction, oil, gas as well as petrochemicals sectors. The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) areas economy has doubled in size during 2004 to 2009. Moreover, a combined official GDP of the area grew by the rate of 12.5 percent within 2009 toward $812.95 billion measured into a growth rate of 17.3 percent to $722.49 billion in 2008. On the other hand, the strong economic performance is endorsed to secure global oil demand; better geopolitical situation; acceleration of growth measures; powerful boost in privatization activities; growth of assets of central banks along with the strength of the GCC corporate sector. For that reason, nominal GDP is expected to grow powerfully through a 25.8 percent toward $1022.62billion within the year 2009 and is the project to develop at an 8.8 percent to $1112.08 billion in 2010. In original terms, the economy of the area grew via 5.5 percent in 2008 compared near a rate of 5.8 percent in the year of 2009. Moreover, it is expected to grow at the rates of 5.8 percent and 6.5 percent in 2010 as well as 2011 respectively. Social: The Societies in the GCC countries are combining of the conservative as well as advanced another attractive than in several of the further countries in the Middle East region. Conceivably due in the piece to the widespread level of development that has been accomplished along with the success of the GCC countries in integrating up to date technology keen on their society with no considerable disruptions. The state religion of the GCC countries is Islam. However, there are people of other religions in the GCC countries such as Hindus, Christians and others. Anyone who wants to continue along with setting up a business in GCC countries should follow the Islamic rules. The official language of the GCC countries is Arabic but English is the language of business. On the other hand, the Arab Gulf states all have substantial revenues from oil and gas and have remarkably little local citizens. This has grown their related per capita incomes to greater than those of their neighbors consist. To join the labor shortages they provide significant quantities of temporary non-citizen economic migrants mainly from South Asia as well as South East Asia, chiefly the Philippines in addition to Indians. In the earlier stage, there were additional remarkable numbers of immigrants coming from Jordan (mainly of Palestinian origin) as well as Egypt. Technology: The GCC countries are one of the ideal locations to market products and services to Middle East and Asia. The users of Information Technology cover all aspects of society, private, consumer businesses, and governments, military in addition to educational facilities. The field has been used primarily through the Internet for business purposes. The governments in the GCC countries act as a matchmaker, to assist businesses and private users to take advantages of the information technology revolution. GCC countries are enjoying the highest advances in communications technology comprise considerably widened the range of services carried through the network. Satellites, besides microwave radio, as well optical cable links, besides digital switching in addition to transmission, offer a potential for the enhancement of quality and for the expansion of right to apply to the most remote areas. The world is presently a perfectly integrated information network. Environment: The GCC countries face a quantity of environmental problems, driven through people pressure, particularly in the cities where metropolitan growth has taken situate. Property degradation, especially, appropriate to desertification in several parts of the district is becoming progressively more critical. Nevertheless, the most severe problem is that of the fast turn down in fresh water accessibility. On the other hand, it is widely known that oil continues to control the worlds energy supply as well as the regions energy sector. GCC oil exports expansion in addition to contribute to advanced incidents of oil spills from offshore extraction along with transportation, foremost to elevated hydrocarbon concentrations in the waters of the Arabian Gulf that negatively have an effect on the desalination production progression, as well human health, in addition to the environment. Legislation: Although legislation are almost similar at the GCC countries, as we find most of them were driven out of Islamic Sharia. On the other hand, for the civil laws, there were two sources at the GCC countries, the first one from the Egyptian laws, which were initially driven out from the France laws. The other source of the GCC countries was the Jordanian laws, where they were driven out from the British laws. SWOT Analysis: Strengths: The GCC countries economy has many positive points that make GCC countries economy strong and we can summarize these points in the following: GCC countries are applying the open economy policy in most of its states. The mighty prestigious location for GCC countries between Asia and Africa continents GCC countries advance ranked among countries that export oil. Policies and procedures that the governments apply ought to support the economy. GCC countries Provide different facilities for investors (local and foreign), like: no restrictions on the foreign currencies, competitive import fees (4%), no taxes on the personal and companies income (except oil companies and the branches of foreign banks) and other facilities. The GCC countries governments offer many investment opportunities for investors in all sectors in most of its countries. The GCC countries governments build many industrial cities and free zones in different places in GCC countries that have all the services that need. Weakness: The GCC countries economy weaknesses are summarized in these points: Financial Frauds in some GCC countries economy from transferring money and no restrictions in loans (UAE and Bahrain). GCC countries currencies are linked with the US dollar and this cause a change in the value of the GCC countries local currencies as the change in the US dollar. Legal system in GCC countries tie to the ruling elite Opportunities: The GCC countries economy has many opportunities, because it is now in the growth period. We can summarize the opportunities in these points: The GCC countries have the opportunity to change from depending on oil as a main source of funds to other sources (non-oil sectors). The GCC countries have enough funds to improve all the sectors. There are many facilities to export GCC countries products to other countries especially Middle East countries. Threats: The inflation fluctuation within GCC countries is representing high threats to their economies. The continuous changing in oil prices which is affecting badly the budgets of GCC countries. Political environment in the neighborhood area might effect on the foreign investments.

System to Filter Unwanted Messages from OSN User Walls

System to Filter Unwanted Messages from OSN User Walls M.Renuga Devi, G.Seetha lakshmi, M.Sarmila Abstract—One fundamental issue in today’s Online Social Networks (OSNs) is to give users the ability to control the messages posted on their own private space to avoid that unwanted content is displayed. Up to now, OSNs provide little support to this requirement. To fill the gap, in this paper, we propose a system allowing OSN users to have a direct control on the messages posted on their walls. This is achieved through a flexible rule-based system, that allows users to customize the filtering criteria to be applied to their walls, and a Machine Learning-based soft classifier automatically labeling messages in support of content-based filtering. 1. INTRODUCTION ONLINE Social Networks (OSNs) are today one of the most popular interactive medium to communicate, share, and disseminate a considerable amount of human life information. Daily and continuous communications imply the exchange of several types of content, including free text, image, audio, and video data. According to Facebookstatistics1 average user creates 90 pieces of content each month, whereas more than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news, stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month. OSNs there is the possibility of posting or commenting other posts on particular public/private areas, called in general walls. Face book allows users to state who is allowed to insert messages in their walls (i.e., friends, friends of friends, or defined groups of friends). The aim of the present work is therefore to propose and experimentally evaluate an automated system, called Filtered Wall (FW), able to filter unwanted messages from OSN user walls. We exploit Machine Learning (ML) text categorization techniques. The major efforts in building a robust short text classifier (STC) are concentrated in the extraction and selection of a set of characterizing and discriminant features. We base the overall short text classification strategy on Radial Basis Function Networks (RBFN) for their proven capabilities in acting as soft classifiers, in managing noisy data and intrinsically vague classes. We insert the neural model within a hierarchical two level classification strategy. In the first level, the RBFN categorizes short messages as Neutral and Non-neutral; in the second stage, Non-neutral messages are classified producing gradual estimates of appropriateness to each of the considered category. The system provides a powerful rule layer exploiting a flexible language to specify Filtering Rules (FRs). In addition, the system provides the support for user-defined Black Lists (BLs), that is, lists of users that are temporarily prevented to post any kind of messages on a user wall. 2. RELATED WORK The main contribution of this paper is the design of a system providing customizable content-based message filtering for OSNs, based on ML techniques. As we have pointed out in the introduction, to the best of our knowledge, we are the first proposing such kind of application for OSNs. However, our work has relationships both with the state of the art in content-based filtering, as well as with the field of policy-based personalization for OSNs and, more in general, web contents. 2.1 Content-Based Filtering Information filtering systems are designed to classify a stream of dynamically generated information dispatched asynchronously by an information producer and present to the user those information that are likely to satisfy his/her requirements. In content-based filtering, each user is assumed to operate independently. As a result, a content-based filtering system selects information items based on the correlation between the content of the items and the user preferences as opposed to a collaborative filtering system that chooses items based on the correlation between people with similar preferences. Documents processed in content-based filtering are mostly textual in nature and this makes content-based filtering close to text classification. Single label, binary classification, partitioning incoming documents into relevant and non-relevant categories. More complex filtering systems include multi label text categorization automatically labeling messages into partial thematic categories. Content-based filtering is mainly based on the use of the ML paradigm according to which a classifier is automatically induced by learning from a set of pre-classified examples. Several experiments prove that Bag-of-Words (BoW) approaches yield good performance and prevail in general over more sophisticated text representation that may have superior semantics but lower statistical quality. The application of content-based filtering on messages posted on OSN user walls poses additional challenges given the short length of these messages other than the wide range of topics that can be discussed. 3. FILTERED WALL ARCHITECTURE The architecture in support of OSN services is a three-tier structure (Fig. 1). The first layer, called Social Network Manager (SNM), commonly aims to provide the basic OSN functionalities (i.e., profile and relationship management), whereas the second layer provides the support for external Social Network Applications (SNAs).The supported SNAs may in turn require an additional layer for their needed Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). The core components of the proposed system are the Content-Based Messages Filtering (CBMF) and the Short Text Classifier modules. The latter component aims to classify messages according to a set of categories. In contrast, the first component exploits the message categorization provided by the STC module to enforce the FRs specified by the user. The possible final publication can be summarized as follows: 1. After entering the private wall of one of his/her contacts, the user tries to post a message, which is intercepted by FW. 2. A ML-based text classifier extracts metadata from the content of the message. 3. FW uses metadata provided by the classifier, together with data extracted from the social graph and users’ profiles, to enforce the filtering and BL rules. 4. Depending on the result of the previous step, the message will be published or filtered by FW. 4. SHORT TEXT CLASSIFIER Established techniques used for text classification work well on data sets with large documents such as newswires corpora but suffer when the documents in the corpus are short. In this context, critical aspects are the definition of a set of characterizing and discriminant features allowing the representation of underlying concepts and the collection of a complete and consistent set of supervised examples. We approach the task by defining a hierarchical two-level strategy assuming that it is better to identify and eliminate â€Å"neutral† sentences, and then classify â€Å"non-neutral† sentences. The first-level task is conceived as a hard classification in which short texts are labeled with crisp Neutral and Non-neutral labels. The second-level soft classifier acts on the crisp set of non-neutral short texts. 4.1 Text Representation The extraction of an appropriate set of features by which representing the text of a given document is a crucial task strongly affecting the performance of the overall classification strategy. We consider three types of features, BoW, Document properties (Dp) and Contextual Features (CF). Text representation using endogenous knowledge has a good general applicability; however, in operational settings, it is legitimate to use also exogenous knowledge, i.e., any source of information outside the message body but directly or indirectly related to the message itself. We introduce CF modeling information that characterizes the environment where the user is posting. These features play a key role in deterministically understanding the semantics of the messages. In the BoW representation, terms are identified with words. Dp features are heuristically assessed; their definition stems from intuitive considerations, domain specific criteria and in some cases required trial-and-error procedures. Bad words: They are computed similarly to the correct words feature, where the set K is a collection of â€Å"dirty words† for the domain language. Correct words: It expresses the amount of terms tk 2 T K, where tk is a term of the considered document dj and K is a set of known words for the domain language. Capital words: It expresses the amount of words mostly written with capital letters, calculated as the percentage of words within the message, having more than half of the characters in capital case. Punctuations characters: It is calculated as the percentage of the punctuation characters over the total number of characters in the message. For example, the value of the feature for the document â€Å"Hello!!! How’re u doing?† is 5/24. Exclamation marks: It is calculated as the percentage of exclamation marks over the total number of punctuation characters in the message. Referring to the aforementioned document, the value is 3/5. Question marks: It is calculated as the percentage of question marks over the total number of punctuations characters in the message. Referring to the aforementioned document, the value is 1/5. 4.2 Machine Learning-Based Classification We address short text categorization as a hierarchical two level classification process. The first-level classifier performs a binary hard categorization that labels messages as Neutral and Non-neutral. The first-level filtering task facilitates the subsequent second-level task in which a finer-grained Classification is performed. The second-level classifier performs a soft-partition of Non-neutral messages assigning a given message a gradual membership to each of the non-neutral classes. Among the variety of multiclass ML models well suited for text classification, we choose the RBFN model for the experimented competitive behavior with respect to other state-of-the-art classifiers. RFBNs have a single hidden layer of processing units with local, restricted activation domain: a Gaussian function is commonly used, but any other locally tunable function can be used. RBFN main advantages are that classification function is nonlinear, the model may produce confidence values and it may be robust to outliers; drawbacks are the potential sensitivity to input parameters, and potential overtraining sensitivity. The first-level classifier is then structured as a regular RBFN. In the second level of the classification stage, we introduce a modification of the standard use of RBFN. The collection of pre-classified messages presents some critical aspects greatly affecting the performance of the overall classification strategy. To work well, a ML-based classifier needs to be trained with a set of sufficiently complete and consistent pre-classified data. The difficulty of satisfying this constraint is essentially related to the subjective character of the interpretation process with which an expert decides whether to classify a document under a given category. A quantitative evaluation of the agreement among experts is then developed to make transparent the level of inconsistency under which the classification process has taken place. 5. FILTERING RULES AND BLACKLIST MANAGEMENT In this section, we introduce the rule layer adopted for filtering unwanted messages. We start by describing FRs, and then we illustrate the use of BLs. In what follows, we model a social network as a directed graph, where each node corresponds to a network user and edges denote relationships between two different users. In particular, each edge is labeled by the type of the established relationship (e.g., friend of, colleague of, parent of) and, possibly, the corresponding trust level, which represents how much a given user considers trustworthy with respect to that specific kind of relationship the user with whom he/ she is establishing the relationship. 5.1 Filtering Rules In defining the language for FRs specification, we consider three main issues that, in our opinion, should affect a message filtering decision. First of all, in OSNs like in everyday life, the same message may have different meanings and relevance based on who writes it. As a consequence, FRs should allow users to state constraints on message creators. Given the social network Scenario, creators may also be identified by exploiting information on their social graph. Definition 1 (Creator specification): A creator specification creator Spec implicitly denotes a set of OSN users. It can have one of the following forms, possibly combined. Definition2 (Filtering rule): A filtering rule FR is a tuple (author, creator Spec, content Spec, action), where author is the user who specifies the rule; creator Spec is a creator specification, specified according to Definition 1: Content Spec is a Boolean expression defined on content constraints of the form à °C; mlÞ, where C is a class of the first or second level and ml is the minimum membership level threshold required for class C to make the constraint satisfied; action 2fblock; notifying denotes the action to be performed by the system on the messages matching content Spec and created by users identified by creator Spec. In general, more than a filtering rule can apply to the same user. A message is therefore published only if it is not blocked by any of the filtering rules that apply to the message creator. Note moreover, that it may happen that a user profile does not contain a value for the attribute(s) referred by a FR (e.g., the profile does not specify a value for the attribute Hometown whereas the FR blocks all the messages authored by users coming from a specific city). 5.2 Online Setup Assistant for FRs Thresholds As mentioned in the previous section, we address the problem of setting thresholds to filter rules, by conceiving and implementing within FW, an Online Setup Assistant procedure. 5.3 Blacklists A further component of our system is a BL mechanism to avoid messages from undesired creators, independent from their contents. BLs are directly managed by the system, which should be able to determine who are the users to be inserted in the BL and decide when users retention in the BL is finished. To enhance flexibility, such information are given to the system through a set of rules, hereafter called BL rules. Such rules are not defined by the SNMP; therefore, they are not meant as general high-level directives to be applied to the whole community. Similar to FRs, our BL rules make the wall owner able to identify users to be blocked according to their profiles as well as their relationships in the OSN. Therefore, by means of a BL rule, wall owners are, for example, able to ban from their walls users they do not directly know (i.e., with which they have only indirect relationships), or users that are friend of a given person as they may have a bad opinion of this person. 6. EVALUATION In this section, we illustrate the performance evaluation study we have carried out the classification and filtering modules. We start by describing the data set. 6.1 Problem and Data Set Description The analysis of related work has highlighted the lack of an publicly available benchmark for comparing different approaches to content-based classification of OSN short texts. 6.2 Short Text Classifier Evaluation 6.2.1 Evaluation Metrics Two different types of measures will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of first-level and second-level classifications. In the first level, the short text classification procedure is evaluated on the basis of the contingency table approach. In particular, the derived well-known Overall Accuracy (OA) index capturing the simple percent agreement between truth and classification results, is complemented with the Cohen’s KAPPA (K) coefficient thought to be a more robust measure taking into account the agreement occurring by chance . At second level, we adopt measures widely accepted in the Information Retrieval and Document Analysis field, that is, Precision (P), that permits to evaluate the number of false positives, Recall (R), that permits to evaluate the number of false negatives, and the overall metric F-Measure (F_), defined as the harmonic mean between the above two indexes. 6.2.2 Numerical Results By trial and error, we found a quite good parameter configuration for the RBFN learning model. The best value for the M parameter, that determines the number of Basis Function, is heuristically addressed to N=2, where N is the number of input patterns from the data set. 6.2.3 Comparison Analysis The lack of benchmarks for OSN short text classification makes problematic the development of a reliable comparative analysis. However, an indirect comparison of our method can be done with work that show similarities or complementary aspects with our solution. 6.3 Overall Performance and Discussion In order to provide an overall assessment of how effectively the system applies a FR. This table allows us to estimate the Precision and Recall of our FRs, Let us suppose that the system applies a given rule on a certain message. In contrast, Recall has to be interpreted as the probability that, given a rule that must be applied over a certain message, the rule is really enforced. Results achieved by the content-based specification component, on the first-level classification, can be considered good enough and reasonably aligned with those obtained by well-known information filtering techniques. 7. DICOMFw DicomFW is a prototype Face book application8 that emulates a personal wall where the user can apply a simple combination of the proposed FR’s. Throughout the development of the prototype, we have focused our attention only on the FRs, leaving BL implementation as a future improvement. However, the implemented functionality is critical, since it permits the STC and CBMF components to interact. To summarize, our application permits to 1. View the list of users’ FWs; 2. View messages and post a new one on a FW; 3. Define FRs using the OSA tool. When a user tries to post a message on a wall, he/ she receive an alerting message if it is blocked by FW. 8 CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we have presented a system to filter undesired messages from OSN walls. The system exploits a ML soft classifier to enforce customizable content-dependent FR’s. Fig. 3. DicomFW: A message filtered by the wall’s owner FRs We plan to study strategies and techniques limiting the inferences that a user can do on the enforced filtering rules with the aim of bypassing the filtering system, such as for instance randomly notifying a message that should instead be blocked, or detecting modifications to profile attributes that have been made for the only purpose of defeating the filtering system. REFERENCES [1] A. Adomavicius and G. Tuzhilin, â€Å"Toward the Next Generation of Recommender Systems: A Survey of the State-of-the-Art and Possible Extensions,† IEEE Trans. Knowledge and Data Eng., vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 734-749, June 2005. [2] M. Chua and H. Chen, â€Å"A Machine Learning Approach to Web Page Filtering Using Content and Structure Analysis,† Decision Support Systems, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 482-494, 2008.

Motherly Love Essays -- essays research papers

Motherly Love   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the three stories we read by Flannery O’Connor; â€Å"The Comforts of Home†, â€Å"Everything That Rises Must Converge†, and â€Å"The Enduring Chill†, the major relationship portrayed was between mothers and their hypersensitive sons. While all of the major characters, the sons, were noticeably similar, the lesser characters of the mothers were also very alike in many ways. Many of their views, gestures and outward qualities paralleled throughout the stories. After rereading all of the stories again I came to the realization that the mothers O’Connor wrote in her stories were variations of the same person.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the qualities that jump out first is that all three mothers are incredibly proud of their sons, even if they have no reason to be. Julian’s mother loves to tell people how her â€Å"son finished college last year. He wants to write but he’s selling typewriters until he gets started† (10). She does not care that he has not truly written anything, but that he has graduated college and that he is trying to get his life on track. She is constantly reminding him that â€Å"Rome wasn’t built in a day† (11), and she truly believes this about her son; that eventually he will go places with his writing. Mrs. Fox, Asbury’s mother, while not particularly glad that he is a writer, is proud that he is an artist and has every faith that her son â€Å"might be writing a long book† (90). While not as vocal about how she is proud of her son, she is happy that he is doing what he wants; writing. Thomas’ mother was often found boasting about her son to Star Drake. In the two’s first meeting, Thomas’ mother tells Star that â€Å"Thomas writes history†¦ He’s the president of the local Historical Society this year† (123). This statement alone proves that she is impressed by what her son does and what he has become in his life, otherwise I doubt his mother would have mentioned it. A lot of the pride these mothers have in their son’s may be due to the fact that, except in the case of Asbury, they are only children to single mothers. Since they are all portrayed as older women, of course they will have pride in what their sons do, since they have little in their lives to boast about. Yet, it seems to me that these mothers feel their sons can do no wrong in life, which may be a cause of why their sons tend to walk all over them. &nb... ...l are single and assumed to be widowed. O’Connor uses the blue eyes to further connect these background characters who have more in common then what initially meets the eye.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the three stories by Flannery O’Connor that we read for class, the mothers played more important roles then initially thought. They help to shape the story and their sons. Each of them has their own individual qualities, but is very similar to the others. They are all proud of their sons and their achievements, even though these boys feel that they are lacking in one-way or another, are very innocent in all that they do and think, and have many similar outward qualities. These factors put together lead me to believe that O’Connor had the same person in mind when writing each of these stories. Maybe she used different aspects of the same person, but it would be hard for me to believe that more then one person was in mind when writing these stories. The same innocent, heart-driven, blue-eyed mother was depicted in all three stories, just in slightly different situations. In summary, O’Connor had the same person in mind when writing about the mother in all three of these stories.

Caffeine in Athletics Essays -- Nutrition Sports Health Essays

Caffeine in Athletics The world’s most popular drug is legal, inexpensive, and believed to amplify workouts. It supposedly motivates athletes and helps them stay alert and focused while also boosting physical endurance by twenty to fifty percent. This stimulant is found naturally in sixty-three plants and is consumed by eighty percent of Americans. This white, bitter, crystalline substance is known as caffeine, and is commonly consumed in efforts to enhance athletic ability (http://gopher1.bu.edu/COHIS/substance/caffeine/about.htm). Caffeine is a very popular stimulant among athletes because most believe that it provides energy, increases alertness, and quickens reaction time. When in beverage form, caffeine reaches all body tissues within five minutes of ingestion. However, peak blood levels are reached in thirty minutes. Therefore, many cyclists consume a cup of coffee half an hour before short races begin. Others drink a bottle of coke diluted with water during the last half of longer races (http://www.roble.net/marquis/caffeine). The use of caffeine is controversial in the sports world, because it is a stimulant. In fact, the UCI forbids drinking caffeine in large quantities prior to competitions. But, why is there such a desire amongst athletes to consume this drug? Are its results really that effective? To answer these questions one must investigate how caffeine works. How does it affect the body? The exact process by which it affects the body is unknown. It is suspected that caffeine affects the nervous system by altering the perception of effort and exciting the neurons responsible for contracting muscles. It may also be accountable for causing more fat and less... ...1. Kaminsky, Martin, and Whaley (1998) Caffeine consumption habits do not influence the exercise blood pressure response following caffeine ingestion. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 38, 53-8. Pasman, van Baak, Jeukendrup, and de Haan (1995) The effect of different dosages of caffeine on endurance performance time. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 16, 225-30. Tarnolpolsky (1994) Caffeine and endurance performance. Sports Medicine, 18, 109-25. Wemple, Lamb, and McKeever (1997) Caffeine vs caffeine-free sports drinks: effects on urine production at rest and during prolonged exercise. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 18, 40-6. William (1991) Caffeine, neuromuscular function and high-intensity exercise performance. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 31, 481- 9.

The Roots of Artificial Intelligence Essay -- History Historical Essay

The Roots of Artificial Intelligence The roots of artificial intelligence can be traced back to ancient Greece with myths like that of Pygmalion, which incorporated the idea of an intelligent robot. These early thoughts soon developed into stories like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818, which was the story of a monster created by man and brought to life. These stories make for interesting fireside tales and bedtime reading, but where did artificial intelligence truly get its start? Most scientists and historians would give this credit to â€Å"the father of artificial intelligence†1, John McCarthy. Without McCarthy, the term â€Å"artificial intelligence† would not have been coined; and many discoveries in this growing field would not have been made or pursued without his preliminary research into this previously uncharted territory of computer science. This early research in artificial intelligence has led to many of the most important technological advances of all time. By loo king at John McCarthy’s life and a few of these applications of artificial intelligence, it is easy to see how much of an impact the field of artificial intelligence has had on our world. John McCarthy was born in 1927 in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, a journalist for the Federated Press wire service, and his father, a fisherman, carpenter, and a union organizer, were both Communist party activists. â€Å"McCarthy has ascribed his early interest in science to his family’s political views, pointing to their general belief that technology was good for humanity†2. Due to his family’s controversial political views, John was kept on the move for most of his childhood, first to New York and then on to Los Angeles. As a junior in... ...ries that will help society just as much, if not more, than a true artificial intelligence. Works Cited 1Morales, Edu. Online: http://web.mit.edu/STS001/www/Team7/home.html 2 Ibid. 3Weiss, Sonia. â€Å"John McCarthy†. Online: http://www.digitalcentury.com/encyclo/update/mccarthy.html 4Ibid. 5Ibid. 6Ibid. 7Christiansen, Brian. â€Å"History of Speech Recognition†. Online: http://www.stanford.edu/~jmaurer/history.htm 8Howard-Spink, Sam. Online: http://www.research.ibm.com/thinkresearch/pages/2002/20020918_speech.shtml 9Ibid. 10 â€Å"Remote Control in Deep Space.† Science News Weekly. 29 May 1999. 11Artificial Intelligence. Exploration Systems Autonomy Section, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Online: http://www-aig.jpl.nasa.gov/ 12Roush, Wade. â€Å"Immbots Take Control.† Technology Review. December 2002-January 2003.

“That’s Not My Job” †Learning Delegation at Cin-Made

â€Å"THAT'S NOT MY JOB† – LEARNING DELEGATION AT CIN-MADE When Robert Frey purchased Cin – Made in 1984, the company was near ruin. The Cincinnati, Ohi-based manufacturer of paper packaging had not altered its product line in 20 years. Labor costs had hit the ceiling, while profits were falling through the floor. A solid quarter of the company's shipments were late and absenteeism was high. Management and workers were at each other's throats. Ten years later, Cin – Made is producing a new assortment of highly differentiated composite cans, and pre-tax profits have increased more than five times. The Cin – Made workforce is both flexible and deeply committed to the success of the company. On-time delivery of products has reached 98 percent, and absenteeism has virtually disappeared. There are even plans to form two spin – off companies to be owned and operated by Cin-Made employees. In fact, at the one day â€Å"Future of the American Workforce† conference held in July 1993, Cin-Made was recognized by President Clinton as one of the best – run companies in the United States. â€Å"How did we achieve this startling turnaround? †    Mused Frey. â€Å"Employee empowerment is one part of the answer. Profit sharing is another. †   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In the late spring of 1986, relations between management and labor had reached rock bottom. Having recently suffered a pay cut, employees at Cin- Made came to work each day, performed the duties required of their particular positions, and returned home-nothing more. Frey could see that his company was suffering. â€Å"To survive we needed to stop being worthy adversaries and start being worthy partners,† he realized. Toward this end, Frey decided to call a meeting with the union. He offered to restore worker pay to its previous level by the end of the year. On top of that, he offered  something no one expected: a 15 percent share of Cin-Made's pre-tax profits. † I do not choose to own a company that has an adversarial relationship with its employees. † Frey proclaimed at the meeting. He therefore proposed a new arrangement that would encourage a collaborative employee-management relationship â€Å"Employee participation will play an essential role in management. †   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Managers within the company were among the first people to oppose Frey's new idea of employee involvement. â€Å"My three managers felt they were paid to be worthy adversaries of the unions.    Frey recalled. It's what they'd been trained for. It's what made them good managers. Moreover, they were not used to participation in any form, certainly not in decision making. †    The workers also resisted the idea of extending themselves beyond the written requirements of their jobs. † (Employees) wan ted generous wages and benefits, of course, but they did not want to take responsibility for anything more than doing their own jobs the way they had always done them,† Frey noted. Employees were therefore skeptical of Frey's overtures toward â€Å"employee participation.   Ã‚   â€Å"We thought he was trying to rip us off and shaft us,† explained Ocelia Williams, one of many Cin-Made employees who distrusted Frey's plans. Frey, however, did not give up, and he eventually convinced the union to agree to his terms. † I wouldn't take no for an answer,† he asserted. â€Å"Once I had made my two grand pronouncements, I was determined to press ahead and make them come true. †    But still ahead lay the considerable challenge of convincing employees to take charge   :   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   I made people meet with me, then instead   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Of telling them what to do, I asked them. They resisted. † How can we cut the waste on his run ? † I'd   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   say, or â€Å"How are we going to allocate the overtime on this order ? † â€Å"That's not my job,† they'd say. â€Å"But I need your input,† I'd say. â€Å"How in the   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   World can we have participative management   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   If you won't participate? â€Å"I don't know,† they'd say. â€Å"Because that's   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   not my job either. That's your job. ?† Gradually, Frey made progress. Managers began sharing more information with employees. Frey was able slowly to expand the responsibilities workers would carry. Managers who were unable to work with employees left, and union relations began to improve. Empowerment began to happen. By 1993, Cin Made employees were taking responsibility for numerous tasks. Williams, for example, used to operate a tin-slitting machine on the company's factory floor. She still runs that same machine, but now is also responsible for ordering almost $ 100,000 in supplies. Williams is just one example of how job roles and duties have been redefined throughout Cin-Made. Joyce Bell, president of the local union, still runs the punch press she always has, but now also serves as Cin- Made's corporate safety director. The company's scheduling team, composed of one manager and five lead workers from various plant areas, is charged with setting hours, designating layoffs, and deciding when temporary help is needed. The hiring review team, staffed by three hourly employees and two managers, is responsible for interviewing applicants and deciding whom to hire. An employee committee performs both short – and long – term planning of labor, materials, equipment, production runs, packing, and delivery. Employees even meet daily in order to set their own production schedules. â€Å"We empower employees to make decisions, not just have input,† Frey remarked. â€Å"I just coach. †   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Under Frey's new management regime, company secrets have virtually disappeared. All Cin-Made employees, from entry-level employees all the way to the top, take part in running the company. In fact, Frey has delegated so much of the company's operations to its workers that he now feels little in the dark. â€Å"I now know very little about what's going on, on a day-to-day basis,† he confessed. At Cin-Made, empowerment and delegation are more than mere buzzwords; they are the way of doing business – good business. â€Å"We, as workers, have a lot of opportunities,† said Williams. â€Å"If we want to take leadership, it's offered to us. † Questions and answers: Q. 1   How were principles of delegation and decentralization incorporated into Cine – Made operations? Answer :- a. The employee participation was made an integral part of the company's management practices. b. Establishing Participative Management c. Centralized hiring process which was independent in itself and managed by esignated managers. Q. 2  Ã‚   What are the sources and uses of power at Cin – Made? Answer : Collaboration, Innovation, Participative management Empowerment through delegation and decentralization Deriving more output through employees' sense of ownership for their actions Improving flexibility of the companies' employees. Giving a free hand to their imagina tion rather than reining it in. Q. 3. What were some of the barriers to delegation and empowerment at Cin –Made? Answer : Our perceptions about work and the way we are part of it need to change. These are the lessons in management that can be learnt from the Cin-Made experience. a. Transparent management policies are the call of the day b. Managers must lead by example rather than simply lecturing and ordering the employees. c. Any status quo achieved or stagnation point reached by way of policies being in place for long term must be challenged and remedied with cautious efforts; that to while taking care of sentimentalities and emotional attachments of old employees of company – all leading to change for the better.

Origin of babies Essay

Once, there is young man who wished to have a good life, a great family he can call his own and offspring that he wanted to share his life with. During his bachelorhood, he would usually sit on his patio and think of these things. Years went by and he was able to marry the love of his life, the queen of his heart. He shared with her, his dreams when he was still a bachelor and together, they made that single simple dream come true. Under the clear blue sky of Paris, they both decided to have a family of their own, raise kids and be good parents. Soon after, their dream materialized and was blessed with a son. Being the kind of man that he his, he wants to raise his son the same way that his parents did to me. He would read to his son stories that deal with bravery, courage and respect to others. They were both a loving parent to their son they would give him all that he want if it is the best for him. When he was a year older, his father wants to mold his son into the kind of man that he is. They would often go out together and enjoy things that boys really do enjoy. Years and years passed, the son was already full-grown. He had finished college, had a secure job and is intending to marry his college girlfriend. They got married after several months of preparation and eventually bore their own child and a grandchild to their parents. The life cycle was already completed. The cycle of human life is chain and so it needs to be fulfilled step-by-step in order to arrive at the finish line. Upon the birth of their son, they were able to satisfy their urge of having a child and raise it the same that their parents did to them. They were able to fulfill the dream of their parents’ who wanted to see little children running around the lawn.