Ethical Issues Involved in Non-Admittance of Financially Incapable Clients Essay

Running a service-oriented business is never easy. One has to deal with a lot of things and consider a lot of factors in order to manage the business effectively. Policies are always set for the purpose of achieving the goals of the company and at the same time, adhering to the laws of the state and contributing to the common good. Being a case manager requires knowledgeable field and relevant experience to resolve issues concerning the benefits of the clients and the company as well. A health center has the responsibility to meet the needs of its patients. Sometimes, it has to impose policies that are against the existing ones to ensure the survival and growth of the center as a business entity. The clients are needed to be carefully informed of these policies and rules because they are the ones who are directly affected when these policies take into effect. As for the ethical issues involved in the problem of a certain dialysis center, the situation calls for adherence to the set policy rules of the company, concurrently, to the ethical standards of human services professionals as is quoted from the National Organization for Human Services (2007): Human service professionals provide services without discrimination or preference based on age, ethnicity, culture, race, disability, gender, religion, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status. As a health care provider, the company must admit patients without discrimination based on different aspects. This may be suitable for health centers which are not yet in the brink of bankruptcy or closure. If the center is at a high risk of shutting down in the near future because it lacks budget and the expenses are exaggeratingly greater than the income, then non-admittance of patients who are not financially capable may be justifiable for the economic survival of the business. As a health care provider of a hemodialysis center which advocates for the patients’ needs, the best thing to do is to cut down the patients’ 3 times a week visits to once or twice a week, depending on how much they can pay. Firstly, the company must check the benefits of the insurance to cover the expenses that may be incurred, and allocate these benefits to the whole health program. The company may also offer the patients financial help through different government agencies so they can still continue with their hemodialysis. Transportation to and from other government dialysis centers may also be offered for a discounted cost or, if the company can handle it, it can be offered for free to those who are in dire need of treatment in order to sustain life even longer. A health care organization may contradict its code of ethics if the economic status and the future of the company are put at a high risk. The company may choose to impose policies that may be unacceptable to the clients but are just and reasonable for the welfare of the company. It is also reasonable for a health care professional to refuse the admittance of a certain patient having an infectious disease that will later cause severe damage to other patients’ condition, let alone cause loss of lives. In this case, the company may offer help by means of referring the client to other health care organizations specializing in that kind of disease.

Analysis of “The Ethics of Respect for nature”

In this paper, I will be conducting an analysis of the article â€Å"The Ethics of Respect for nature† written by Paul W. Taylor. In this paper Taylor presented the foundational structure for a life-centered theory of environmental ethics. The structures according to Taylor are based on three categories which are related. The first part of the structure is called respect for nature. What this section of the article basically talked about was how human being only respects living things. And it also mentioned how if we as human beings were to adapt to the life-centered system of environmental ethics, the way in which we view the world right now will have to have to change we would be caring for nature more than we are now. Taylor argued that, it is the good (well-being, welfare) of individual organisms, considered as entities having inherent worth that determines our moral relations with the Earth’s wild communities of life. In order to prove his argument he was able to relate the argument with the anthropocentric views. In the anthropocentric view, human actions affecting the natural environment and its nonhuman inhabitants are right (or wrong) by either of two criteria: they have consequences which are favorable (or unfavorable) to human well-being, or they are consistent (or inconsistent) with the system of norms that protect and implement human rights. From this human-centered standpoint it is to humans and only to humans that all duties are ultimately owed (James). We as human have no obligation to promote or protect the good of nonhuman living things. The difference between the life-centered system of environmental ethic and the human-centered system of environmental ethic is in life centered system (as noted earlier) we as human will have more duty to the nature. Our duties to respect the integrity of natural ecosystems, to preserve endangered species, and to avoid environmental pollution stem from the fact that these are ways in which we can help make it possible for wild species populations to achieve and maintain a healthy existence in a natural state (Taylor). Our duties with respect to the â€Å"world† of nature would be seen as making prima facie claims upon us to be balanced against our duties with respect to the â€Å"world† of human civilization. We could no longer simply take the human point of view and consider the effects of our actions exclusively from the perspective of our own good. The evidence that the author used to justify the respect of nature is by making clear the fundamental moral attitude that underlies and makes intelligible the commitment to live by such a system. The second part of the structure is a belief system that constitutes a way of conceiving of the natural world and of our place in it. This belief system underlies and supports the attitude in a way that makes it an appropriate attitude to take toward the Earth’s natural ecosystems and their life communities. This section focuses more on the perception of biocentric outlook on nature. Taylor believed that the biocentric outlook on nature has four components; the first is human are thought of as member of the earth’s community of life, second the earth’s natural ecosystems as a totality are seen as a complex web of interconnected elements, with the sound biological functioning of each being dependent on the sound biological functioning of the others. Third, each individual organism is conceived of as a teleological center of life, pursuing its own good in its own way. And the last component, whether we are concerned with standards of merit or with the concept of inherent worth, the claim that humans by their very nature are superior to other species is a groundless claim and, in the light of elements (1), (2), and (3) above, must be rejected as nothing more than an irrational bias in our own favor (Taylor). To further understand his argument he was able to relate human with other species in a biological aspect. The laws of genetics, of natural selection, and of adaptation apply equally to all of us as biological creatures. In this light we consider ourselves as one with them, not set apart from them. We, as well as they, must face certain basic conditions of existence that impose requirements on us for our survival and well-being. Each animal and plant is like us in having a good of its own. This argument is considered a strong one because it logically self-explanatory and there are many scientific evidence to support this argument (Darwin’s theory of evolution). What differentiate us humans from any other species according to Taylor is our good. This argument is reasonable because, although our human good (what is of true value in human life, including the exercise of individual autonomy in choosing our own particular value systems) is not like the good of a nonhuman animal or plant, it can no more be realized than their good can without the biological necessities for survival and physical health (Taylor). Taylor also argued about the possibility of extinction. The possibility of the extinction of the human species, a possibility which starkly confronts us in the contemporary world, makes us aware of another respect in which we should not consider ourselves privileged beings in relation to other species. This argument has some strength to it because according to biology, the well-being of humans is dependent upon the ecological soundness and health of many plant and animal communities, while their soundness and health does not in the least depend upon human well-being. Thinking about it, one can argue that the existence of the human race is not necessary. Every last man, woman, and child could disappear from the face of the Earth without any significant detrimental consequence for the good of wild animals and plants. On the contrary, many of them would be greatly benefited. The destruction of their habitats by human â€Å"developments† would cease. The poisoning and polluting of their environment would come to an end. The Earth’s land, air, and water would no longer be subject to the degradation they are now undergoing as the result of large-scale technology and uncontrolled population growth. Life communities in natural ecosystems would gradually return to their former healthy state. Tropical forests, for example, would again be able to make their full contribution to a life-sustaining atmosphere for the whole planet. The rivers, lakes, and oceans of the world would eventually become clean again. Spilled oil, plastic trash, and even radioactive waste might finally, after many centuries, cease doing their terrible work. Ecosystems would return to their proper balance, suffering only the disruptions of natural events such as volcanic eruptions and glaciation. The third component is a system of moral rules and standards for guiding our treatment of those ecosystems and life communities, a set of normative principles which give concrete embodiment or expression to the attitude of respect for nature. Taylor was able to support his argument by relating the idea of human superiority to the system of moral rules. The relations that the author made in this case certainly helped his argument because, knowing that we as human are superior to other animals, we tend to overlook the morals in which we are supposed to look at which result in humans not respecting other species (James). The author also argued that various nonhuman species have capacities that humans lack. There is the speed of a cheetah, the vision of an eagle, the agility of a monkey. Why should not these be taken as signs of their superiority over humans in the way we as human treat other species? This evidence is reliable because according to research a cheetah is faster than an average human being, an eagle has a much better vision than an average human and a monkey is much more agile than an average human being (Taylor). In the aspect of moral rights and the matter of competing claims, Taylor argued that animals and plants should not be included in the class that have moral rights. He argued that there is no reason, why plants and animals, including whole species populations and life communities, cannot be accorded legal rights under my theory. This is a strong argument because to grant them legal protection could be interpreted as giving them legal entitlement to be protected, and this, in fact, would be a means by which a society that subscribed to the ethics of respect for nature could give public recognition to their inherent worth (James). The strength of this article is that it can be related to many aspect of the human race today in consideration to the definition of right and human rights today. Most of the term that was used in the article was well defined for example the definition of both life and human centered environmental ethics. There was also enough adequate support of his argument, for example in the way Taylor used the anthropocentric view to support his argument of life-centered environmental ethics. One weakness that I found in this article is the way the author went about relating his topic in order to make his argument more sufficient. The author should have stated in introduction that he will be using â€Å"the attitude of respect of nature†, â€Å"the good of being and the concept of worth† etc. to support his argument instead of jumping into the discussion. In conclusion, Taylor presented the foundational structures for a life-centered theory of environmental ethics. The structures according to Taylor are based on three categories which are related. The first part of the structure is called respect for nature, the second part of the structure is a belief system that constitutes a way of conceiving of the natural world and of our place in it and the third component is a system of moral rules and standards for guiding our treatment of those ecosystems and life communities, a set of normative principles which give concrete embodiment or expression to the attitude of re pect for nature . The author’s main purpose in this paper has been to try to establish a base point from which we can start working toward a solution to the problem. Most of the arguments that Taylor constructed in this paper are really convincing and was supported by evidence both scientific and philosophical evidence.

Glocalization

WC = 1,489 GEO 101 Dr. Housel April 20, 2012 Nike – Hilversum, The Netherlands Hilversum, The Netherlands Hilversum, The Netherlands Beaverton, OR Beaverton, OR Have you ever heard of the phrase â€Å"Just Do It? † Do you know what the ‘Swoosh’ is that represents Nike’s logo? Nike’s headquarters in the United States is in Beaverton, Oregon and became a mainstream sporting sales corporation in 1978. The popularity of their apparel increased when multiple athletes signed a contract to promote and wear Nike in sporting events.Since citizens in other countries thrived on Nike clothing, Nike finally went overseas to build a corporation in The Netherlands (or The Dutch); this project was complete in 1999. The headquarters is located with easy access to the train station and was the site of a former harness track and Olympic training ground (McDonough). Nike products are sold to customers around the world. The athletic gear is made to have style and catch the eye of others. If the sales were good and there wasn’t a relapse, then why did Nike go overseas?In 2007, Nike got a lift courtesy of favorable exchange rates; a weaker dollar means greater sales abroad, as the products are priced more cheaply (Forbes). The income that Nike receives is thrived on by many features including promotions, new gear, and athletes. Both promotions and new gear have to do with buyers altering their costs to Nike for their deals and willingness to pay for the product. Athletes are the ones who sign a deal (either with Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, etc†¦) to wear and encourage viewers to buy their apparel while participating in their sport.As Nike moved into Europe where soccer is popular, more European soccer professionals made contracts with Nike. In past years, Nike has been one of the most prolific companies to excel in overseas sales with reaching 1. 48 billion dollars a year (Forbes). As football continues to be rise in the United Sta tes, Nike sales in football equipment are doing the same. Likewise, soccer is dominant in Europe, therefore more soccer paraphernalia is being produced overseas; every corporation will produce whatever brings in the most capital.The Netherlands’ most popular sport is soccer, with the Royal Dutch League being the largest sports federation in the country with over a million players (WIKI). Following the transaction of Nike going to Hilversum, The Netherlands National Soccer Team that participates in the Olympics changed sponsors to Nike in appreciation and to support the new corporation. Viewers realized the move and sales of The Netherlands gear rose to an all-time high. Another reason why they built in The Dutch was their living standards.The Dutch prosper through life with building wealthy families and neighborhoods to provide one of the most attractive places to settle in. The architecture of Nike’s Corporate Office in Northern Europe reflects the creativity and eye- catching techniques they believe in. When Nike went global, they made sure to adapt to the culture of The Netherlands and Northern Europe – if they didn’t and kept everything that Americans viewed as normal, employees may not feel comfortable in the workplace.Once the building was signed off, architects had already started implementing a plan to make the architecture of the new Nike European Headquarters match the unique, beautiful designs of other buildings in The Netherlands. The creative company of architects, William McDonough + Partners, has built many structures in Europe and this was their next challenge. In 1999, after years of work, the building was ready to be put to use and attract everybody in sight. The part of culture that sports, especially soccer, plays in Northern Europe is a strong.Therefore, it’d be smart to establish grounds around the Headquarters to promote athletics; and that’s what they did. The Nike European Headquarters site was once a former harness track and Olympic training ground that now continues the tradition of physical excellence through a jogging track, a central pond that freezes in the winter for an ice rink, and numerous athletic fields and courts (McDonough). Nike welcomes customers day in and day out to visit their grounds and enjoy the outside comradery with the rest of the community.Also, Nike created and bought multiple soccer attires to sell to the soccer-like customers in the region. As expected, the articles of clothing were a hit and that only created different types of soccer gear to be produced. The public was very intrigued with the effort and creativity of Nike employees, leading the entire Nike company (in both Europe and the United States) to receive gains of almost two billion dollars a year. A main environmental aspect The Netherlands flourishes on is ‘going green. Nevertheless, providing healthy air and helping the environment with an eco-friendly building is also what t he architects did. The Headquarters in Europe is said to be the most prominent example of green design and the green revolution is spreading to historic landmarks around the Northern European area now (Preservations). The building had success in doing the practice that they foresaw in the future. This architecture philosophy strives to minimize buildings resource and energy needs by using recycled or renewable building materials, solar power, and water efficiency (Preservations).The community was in awe when the building was finalized because they realized the new building in Hilversum was environmental friendly and did zero harm to society with saving energy. The Nike Headquarters in Hilversum opened up in 1999 – customers and employees immediately accepted the inside of the building because of the art placed throughout the structure. The art that is most accepted in Northern Europe is Flemish and Dutch due to religious backgrounds of most. Nike felt it would be more accepte d if they place these types of art throughout the building, in another way of a warm welcome to everybody that enters.The changes that Nike in Europe did from Nike in the United States put on inside is immense and the McDonough partners did a phenomenal job with it. In general, most businesses lose money when they outsource and go overseas. When Nike built in Hilversum, the attractiveness the building brought to the area encouraged everyone to visit, buy their apparel, and have fun outside the Headquarters. The main expense Nike had to worry about was advertising the new Headquarters and clothing that was being produced.But after Nike took a hit in the United States from low sales, Nike in Europe did more than making up the shortage and produced up to one point four eight billion dollars in the previous year (Forbes). The sales did not taper off, as they were seen to do, and Nike continues to be extremely popular in places other than just the United States. Nike building a Headquart ers overseas was one of the best ideas they could have implemented as a worldwide company. When they saw the sales weren’t increasing in the states and the dollar was down in Europe, they took the smart move and produced in Hilversum.Right away, the company universally flourished and provided a means of athletic gear to the European nation. The glocalization that Nike did made them even more of a world renowned entity to buy sportswear and to have attractive clothing that was bought at a great price. The takeaway for businesses expanding overseas is about competition and providing quicker access to items others don’t have near them. For instance, the competition that was brought to Europe when Nike moved allowed for those people to check out Nike rather than home-named brands that were in the area.Also, even though Nike was still heard of, they had to order it from the United States, which involved days of travel and excess money of shipping than if Nike was within ran ge of their homes. Before writing this paper, I didn’t realize that glocalization was a big part of how businesses excel overseas. After seeing the positives it brings, I believe more American businesses should expand overseas with a Headquarters (just not a sweatshop). I thought it was very unique in that Nike provided a place that made adapting simple to the new building; it created limited confusion and great attitudes throughout their new workplace.If I were a president of a company and wanted to receive more capital than I was getting, I would reach an identical plan to what Nike did and surpass any opinion or prediction that people would make on what the overseas business would do for the company worldwide. Works Cited McDonough, William. â€Å"Nike European Headquarters. † William McDonough Partners. William McDonough, 2012. Web. 06 Apr. 2012. . Farrell, Andrew. â€Å"Nike Swooshes Up Overseas. † Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 21 Sept. 2007. Web. 6 Apr. 2012. . â€Å"Nike, Inc. † Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 Mar. 2012. Web. 06 Apr. 2012. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Nike,_Inc. â€Å"Companies: Shared Services Centers. † Company Profiles. Oct. 2008. Web. 06 Apr. 2012. . Hawes, Alex. â€Å"Going Green. † Preservationnation. org. 27 Nov. 2001. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. .

Art Critique Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Art Critique - Essay Example The tails wind around from the normal spot on the creatures and become plugs that are each inserted into an electrical outlet that sits in the center foreground. One creature sits facing away from the picture plane, revealing the depth of the TV and the source of the cords. The other creature sits facing it and its face, or TV screen, is visible. This reveals that the creature is reflecting an image that is a mirror reflection of the creatures from the perspective of the human viewing the painting. The image is clearly making a statement about the current state of existence among especially the younger generations. His approach is described as combining the â€Å"age-old aesthetic of realism with the conceptual ideologies of pop art and the absurdities of surrealism† (Zucker, 2009). The blue-green color palette is deliberately representative of the color that the television screen paints the room when it is the only light source. There is even the discernable bright light immediately surrounding the TV set at the horizon line that glows with pale yellow. The creatures are the blue-gray that human skin becomes when seen in the light of the TV. This introduces the idea that the creatures are really people who have dedicated themselves so fully to the entertainment of the television that they have become symbiotically connected to it – they cannot survive without it. But the message seems to go deeper in the scene found on the TV screen. â€Å"Williams’ biti ng wit and shady humor have become more honed and subtle in his recent body of work† (Mukul, 2009). In this scene, the artist is also sending the message that the television can only reflect the experience of real life. If the people aren’t doing anything, than that’s all that the television can reflect. When I first looked at this image, I simply felt amused looking at these two things looking at each other. The longer I

Shakespeare as an Author Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Shakespeare as an Author - Essay Example [Thesis statement]: His tragedies may be interpreted as true depictions of human nature and emotions. One can learn through his plays how deep and complex human emotions are and what great impact they have on our decision-making and judgment abilities. He constructed his tragedies on seemingly small and base human emotions like jealousy, ambitiousness, and procrastination that render great errors of judgment on the part of the protagonists, thus triggering their downfall. Through his tragedies, he not only painted the social, political and intellectual mindset of 16th century England; but also enriched English Literature by breathing life into his characters with his originality and creativity. Shakespeare was a versatile playwright as he wrote tragedies, romantic comedies, and historical plays-- each type speaking of his imagination. Among his most famous tragedies are Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear. His tragedies revolve around the error of judgment that his tragic-heroes make: Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear are all men of distinction. Shakespeare handles each character differently and illustrates how the tragic flaws of the tragic heroes change their lives forever. He handles his comedies equally well and deals with different themes about the lighter side of life in his plays like, love and personal relationships. However, â€Å"†¦these are not the only ideas implicit in the comedies; Shakespeare was also concerned with time, destiny, and patience, with old age and youth, with the individual and society, with ignorance and knowledge, confidence and melancholy, with contrasts between love and friendship, nature and art, justice and mercy.† (Brown, 160-161)

Introducing New Products and Services Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Introducing New Products and Services - Essay Example The company aims to provide the superior buying experience to its customers and as a result the company wants to launch its official website where all their items would be available. The company felt the importance of launching its website because of the changing trends, technology and the wide use of internet (Chang, & Tseng, 2011). The demand of the online shopping has been increasing in recent times and it has encouraged the company to introduce its own official website (Ganesh, Reynolds, Luckett, & Pomirleanu, 2010). SITE MAP: Summary of the overall pages or the sitemap of the website is presented below: Main Page: Paul Royce, the marketing executive of the Company, told that the home page would include all the features of the company including men’s and women’s clothing. The site will contain a weekly magazine and accessories including detail information regarding the current fashion. Historical facts about some fashion and garments would be presented on the pages of the products. The website will contain colorful photos and videos of the clothing. Videos will contain the styling tips of men and women by some of the fashion designers. These videos will not be more than one minute in order to make customers comfortable and not making them stressed out while searching for products. This way customer will remain updated of the Company. The company provides online shopping of footwear, having all types of categories for example from casual to formal. Consumers can gain access to all types of footwear without wasting their time by visiting the retail shops. The mockup of the main page of the site is presented below: With introducing online shopping, customers could have an ease of access and could save their time. To appeal men and women, the company would feature profiles of real life for example the presentation of the person wearing stylish clothes. The site would be open and will contain mini video clips with style. The company would aim to de liver the orders on the same day in UK. Deliveries of the product will be arrived in a lush package rapped in a tissue paper under the box. The website would contain all the sizes available regarding clothing and footwear. The customers would also be informed of the unavailability of products, for example product size, color etc. Prices of the product would be tagged along. Layout and design of the website play an important factor in the consumer experience (Ha, & Stoel, 2012). The logo of the brand would be placed at the left top corner of the site which would gain the attention of the customers. The company site will include the payment methods of net banking through ATM and credit cards. The company in order to attract more customers towards their online shopping introduced a delivery package, the deliver package is a new strategy developed by the company which states that customers would pay for their orders after the delivery. Which means that the Company wants to give its cust omer maximum level of satisfaction, making customer to pay when they are satisfied. The company targets the middle and upper class and feels the importance of their online shopping site, as it is observed by that higher levels of income and education correspond more to an online shopping. The company will provide wide range of clothing and footwear providing the customers with wide variety of options regarding their consideration. The main sections of the home page are:

Educational Program of the Graduate School of Computer and Information Essay

Educational Program of the Graduate School of Computer and Information Science at Nova Southeastern University - Essay Example Respectfully, the following paragraphs are the stories of my open -book life as I knock on my New Alma Mater's door with hope and understanding.My life has been focused on two major goals. First, my long-term goal in obtaining this degree will be to increase the intensity of my continuing contributions to the field of Information Technology (Mcginn, 2008). To this end, I will light that midnight oil as I engross myself in the exchange of intelligence information among my classmates and mentors as a graduate student at Nova Southeastern University. But, my ultimate goal is to inspire innovation and passion for Computer Science in the lives of my future students. For, I firmly believe that someday many will continue the fire burning in me to touch the lives people in all walks of life through the use of information technology. Definitely, both goals can be achieved faster because I have found the missing link.And, I learned that the unique educational program of the Graduate School of Computer and Information Science at Nova Southeastern University is one of the many features why many students study and research here. For, one of the main reasons for my selection of Nova Southeastern University is its Cluster classroom format. Since I am a firm believer in the concept of teamwork, I believe the cluster meetings will be beneficial for me as I network and team with others in my field with the guidance and wisdom of my instructors.

Power and Politics in the Criminal Justice Organization Essay

Power and Politics in the Criminal Justice Organization - Essay Example Since aims and objectives of criminal justice organizations; the police, the courts and the corrections persist over elongated time periods, the advantages and disadvantages of occupational socializations also increase. Through another perspective, occupational socialization can be seen as legitimate and illegitimate. The legitimate occupational socialization works in favor of criminal justice organization and the illegitimate occupational socialization hinders its working. Criminal justice organizations have both formal and informal settings that provide the team members, the opportunity to interact with one another. Organizational conflict is the clash of interests, needs, and values amongst the various members of the team at the workplace. It can also be understood as the difference of personal and departmental goals (Champion, 2005). Organizational conflict affects the quality of work in criminal justice organizations adversely. Organizational conflict hampers smooth functioning of the criminal justice organizations thus denying or delaying justice to the needy. Conflicts in the criminal justice organizations can primarily emanate from two kinds of causes; personal and professional. The personal reasons can be fired by zeal for fame and concern for higher wages, promotion and reward. On the professional front, conflict can arise from failure to arrive at a consensus, making a wrong decision, etc. A law, a statute, or precedence can be interpreted d ifferently by the criminal justice organization’s administrators and managers giving rise to conflict. Organizational conflicts hamper the speedy working of criminal justice system and can also derail the process of criminal justice. They also lead to unnecessary dissipation of time and energy making the decision making process slow and cumbersome. Power is defined as the ability of an individual or a team

INDIA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

INDIA - Essay Example Despite their superiority in the war field, other natural factors prevented them from capturing vast areas (Kulke & Rothemund, 34). The Vedic who lived along rivers settled and started doing cultivation. This led to a more settled life. The Vedic gave rise to the Indian culture. As people settled, different classes of people emerged. This was the start of the current caste system in India. The earlier Vedic were classified into Vish(ordinary people), Kshatriya(Warriors) and Rajan (chieftains). The chieftains were selected from the warriors (Kulke & Rothemund, 34). The late Vedic established kingdoms that were headed by a king. The Vedic introduced Buddhism and the Indians philosophy. The introduction of kingdoms led to the building of dynasties. The Vedic moved east and occupied Gangetic plains. This led to the development of Gangetic culture. Mahajanapada rose from the small kingdoms. The Majanapadas gave rise to states after asserting powers on others. Koshalla and Magadha are the few examples of states that were formed during that time. These states continued to expand in Northern India to form bigger Dynasties. Bimbisara of Magadha started the annexation of other states. The Nanda’s dynasty was the first to be formed which gave rise to the Mauryas headed by Chandragupta Maurya. The Gupta dynasty is referred as the golden age of India. It was one of the most successful dynasties. The Mughal Empire was set up by Muslim rulers who unified India. Baber helped the Muslims in capturing most parts of India. Some of the weapons used were brought from the west and helped in defeating its enemies (Kulke & Rothemund, 184). Delhi became the centre of the mogul empire. Akbar, who was uneducated but with a lot of wisdom, became one of the greatest leaders of Mogul empire. He conquered Gujarat and Bengal to grow the size of the Mogul empire. Southern India was fertile and different groups fought to control it. Southern India was close to the

Pricing Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Pricing Strategy - Essay Example As economic cycles decline, however, management teams cannot drive volume improvements. Pricing improvements, however, are an important route to increasing profitability. The key to improving profitability through pricing lies in moving from a tactical to a strategic approach to pricing. Pricing strategy involves much more than merely setting price points. In order to achieve profitable pricing, managers must consider both their price structure and their pricing process. Pricing structure is built around target customer segments and culminates in constructing the Product-Service-Price menu. The menu then becomes the basis for constructing and positioning offerings for the customer targets. Pricing processes focus on communicating value delivery to the target customers while minimizing negotiation driven price discounting in the selling process.1 "We begin with the most fundamental of economic constructs, price, because much of the analytic power of economic theory stems from the abstract image of markets that generate prices.On the surface, price adjustment might seem like an odd place to understand a process of social construction. Few economic precepts are more taken for granted than the notion that markets determine prices. Moreover, few economic concepts offer so little social content as price. Neoclassical price theory is a highly stylized theory of market behavior. It presumes that social content is unimportant to market outcomes. It offers no theory of how prices work in a firm; simply a notion that they do work. In neoclassical economic theory, firms readily react to changes in market conditions by adjusting prices. A wide variety of changes may take place: changes in costs, supply, or demand, competitive entry or actions, change in technology, and so on. Firms incorporate those changes and adjust prices upward or downward. Classical economics assumes that because organizations are endowed with this ability to adjust prices, industries, markets and economies can function efficiently. Much of the existing literature in economics takes this ability for granted, assuming this as a kind of innate organizational capability. To a student of organizations, this seems like an unrealistic belief, and indeed, some economists acknowledge this. In economics the literature on the costs of price adjustment argues that price adjustment can be a complex and costly organizational problem. For example, Caplin and Leahy (1991) argue that price adjustment is a "very difficult, costly and time-consuming process," Levy, et al. (1997) suggest that changing prices "is a complex process, requiring dozens of steps and a non-trivial amount of resources," and Ball and Mankiw (1994, p.142) "suspect that the most important costs of price adjustment are the time and attention required of managers to gather the relevant information and to make and implement decisions." According to Blinder, et al. (1998, p. 21) these costs have become "one of the main strands of New Keynesian theorizing." Yet it remains a problem about which, Blinder, et al. (1998: 4) argue, economists know "next to nothing," even though "a small mountain of

Does the Policymaking Is the Preserve of Decision-Making Elites Essay

Does the Policymaking Is the Preserve of Decision-Making Elites - Essay Example This paper illustrates that to suggest that public policy is a technical aspect of politics is insufficient, instead it should be viewed as a multi-faceted, interactive system that is directly influenced by social and political inputs that are highly diverse. For elite policymakers to promote only a singular agenda which is aligned with elitist perspectives would lead to backlash or outrage by other societal stakeholders (i.e. community citizens or special interest groups). Hence, to state that policymaking is the preserve of elitist groups would be both irresponsible and impractical. This essay explores the notion of policy-making under an elitist agenda, offering case studies which refute the notion that bargaining, negotiation, and accommodations cannot supersede an elitist agenda. A policy is a shared resource with many multi-faceted inputs influencing policy, including the responsibility to maintain social cohesion and responding to different systemic pressures that impact multi ple societal stakeholders. Elite statesmen maintain the absolute responsibility to incorporate conceptions of brotherhood, justice, social cohesion and ensuring the proper allocation of states’ resources to provide the most benefit to all society members that maintain a vested interest in policy-making outcomes. The idea that a single elitist group can create the policy that preserves its own ideas and intended outcomes of policy does not take into consideration that maintaining unitary power in policy-making would be challenged by other societal stakeholders that have the ability to pressure or coerce policy outcomes. One can consider a policy-making situation in New Haven, Connecticut in which there were imbalanced power resources (such as wealth, knowledge and social standing) in a policy-making scenario. Even in an environment in which voters were apathetic and power resources were concentrated with the privileged and influential, city politicians considered demands impos ed by activists to develop the relevant public policy that would satisfy not only the agenda of the privileged politicians but a broader group of stakeholders as well. This represents the notion of pluralism in policy-making that must respond to diverse needs and expectations which may not always be congruent with elitist agenda.

Library classification Essay Example for Free

Library classification Essay This unit is concerned with the selection and purchase of reading material in what so ever from it may be. Books are accessioned in this section. It keeps a complete and up-to-date record of such books and other reading materials. Books are purchased keeping in view the requirements of the University Faculty, the Students and the Research Scholars. Books are generally selected from the local as well as foreign publishersï ¿ ½ catalogues, current lists and local book exhibitions/fairs, etc. These catalogues and lists are sent to the Heads of the concerned teaching departments for selection and approval of the reading material of their subjects. They select and approve the reading material for addition to the main library from these lists. After getting their approval, the titles approved are thoroughly checked with the library catalogue to avoid duplication. Special attention is paid to provide text books and research material to the library users. It also acquires rare manuscripts and microfilms, etc. CATALOGUING SECTION After purchasing, accessioning and labeling of the reading material in the Acquisition section, it is sent to the cataloguing section for technical processing. Main responsibility of this section is to classify and catalogue the reading material. The reading material is being classified according to Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme. Library of Congress Subject Headings List is used for assigning subject headings. Catalogue cards are prepared according to ALA Cataloguing Rules 1978. Catalogue cards are filed according to ALA Rules for Filing Catalogue Cards 1968.

Cultural differences in leadership

Cultural differences in leadership To what extent is leadership culturally dependent? Take a look at the following statements collected from interviews with different managers from different countries: The American people value two types of leaders. They search for empowerment from leaders who establish self-sufficiency governance and assign authority to subordinates. They also give high opinion to the confident, forceful, risk-taking and bold leader as personified by John Wayne. The Dutch puts high importance on egalitarianism and are doubtful about the significance of leadership. Words like manager and leader are seen to be dishonoured. If a father is in employment as a manager, Dutch children will not acknowledge this to their friends. Arabs adore and give veneration their leaders as long as they are in authority! Iranians search for supremacy and strength in their leaders. Malaysians imagine their leaders to act in a manner that is meek, reserved, and distinguished. The French value two types of leaders e.g. Mitterand and De Gaulle. Mitterand is an example of a harmonious builder, association former and successful negotiator. De Gaulle seen as an example of a strong charismatic and enigmatic leader. Given the quick expanding of globalization of firms and improved interdependencies among countries, the need for greater understanding of cultural pressures on leadership and managerial practices has never been higher. In recent times, managers of global organisations face stern and hastily altering in international competition. The up-and-coming drift in the direction of an international economic society is apparent and this 21st century we find ourselves in may just become called the global world (McFarland, Senen, Childress, 1993). The huge significance depended on the interaction and communication in todays business world which is becoming known as a global village makes it mandatory for multinational firms and their leaders to dig deeper to acquire the knowledge of other global leaders and their culture to be able to better interact and conduct lucrative business with them without offending their way of life. As national economies, political systems, cultures, technologies, res ources and industries increasingly converge perhaps to meld, perhaps to take shape in new forms global management skills and abilities become more important to all organizations. These skills will be diverse. (Parker, B. (2005) p. 24). The globalization of firms shows quite a few leadership and organizational challenges which the success of organisational leadership happens to be majorly dependent on for the success of international operations. There are essential limitations in conveying theories from one culture to the next. What is successful in a particular culture may not necessarily be as victorious or openly accepted in another culture. According to Triandis (1993), leadership researchers would be able to modify theories by exploring cultural dissimilarities as constraints of those theories. According to Northouses (2004) general definition of leadership Leadership is a process whereby a person influences a group of people to achieve a common goal. Organizational leadership can be described as the ability of a person to inspire, persuade, encourage and allow others to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members (GLOBE PROJECT, 1997. Pg.5). In addition, the GLOBE PROJECT research (1997) views culture as being operationally defined by the use of measures reflecting two kinds of cultural manifestations: (a) the commonality (agreement) among members of collectives with respect to the psychological attributes specified above; and (b) the commonality of observed and reported practices of entities such as families, schools, work organizations, economic and legal systems, and political institutions. With the ever growing trend of globalization in todays world which is categorized by the never-ending growth of global trade and to a greater extent international mergers acquisitions, the necessity of knowing and having a better grasp of the different qualities of various cultures become s mandatory for individuals working in these conditions. A lot of the impending disagreements, inconsistencies and disturbances in international joint ventures are mainly a result of the lack of taking into account the cross-cultural differences when establishing the venture (Lichtenberger, B. et al., 1993). Apart from companies that have the intention or plan or already have merged or acquired companies from other countries, this understanding is very vital for companies which are located in other counties with the intent of doing business with other companies from different countries. When it comes to the stage of outsourcing and transferring of production products or plants, issues arise on the matter of deciding which particular manager will be the most appropriate to put in the national or regional branches of the firm. The cultural background of the manager and that of the firm would also be considered. The kind of manager that will be able to go about the operations of the fi rm with little or no distractions from the culture of the firm and its employees and also how effective leadership for the firm can be guaranteed are all issues that would be taken into consideration when choosing a suitable manager. With the help of a feasible framework to assist in conducting and directing cross-cultural leadership research, it is easier understood. Some of these frameworks would be discussed below. One of the many research carried out on cross-cultural issues in leadership includes the Globe Project. The prime researcher of GLOBE (the Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness Research Project) is Robert J. House, along with numerous co-prime researchers and an international coordinating group. He directs a group of over 190 researchers from all over the globe in the study of the different types of networks of leadership, organizational culture and societal culture. Other dimensional frameworks include those by Hofstedes (1980), Schwartz (1999), Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961) Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997), Hofstede (1980, 2001) and those which were originated during the GLOBE study (e.g. House et al., 1999House and Hanges, Ruiz-Quintanilla, 1997;). According to Bass , B. M. et al, one of the major characteristics of a charismatic leader is having an enormous influence on its followers (Bass, B. M. et al. (1990) p. 184). The supervision and management of a charismatic leader will direct its followers to performing better as it increases their motivation and zeal to become more productive which in turn increases the power and authority the leader has over them therefore, charismatic leadership is extremely vital in the organizational context as well (Hwang, A. et al. (2005) p. 963). Charismatic leaders are often seen as very energetic and self-motivated individuals who offer motivation and encouragement, are enthusiastic about what is necessary and competent (De Vries, M. K. (1996) p. 486). Therefore, following a charismatic leader is not just obeying orders to satisfy the superior, it is more a conviction about the performance and the beliefs of the leader (Ladkin, D. (2006) p. 173). This implies that the influence of a charismatic leader is hig hly accepted by his followers. They do not follow the leader because they have to but do so because they feel a sense of loyalty and attraction towards the leader. Charismatic leaders are viewed to require strong emotional and social skills because of the need of an intimate communication with the subordinates and offering the inspiration needed for them (Grove, K. S. (2005) p. 258). The United States and Japan have been chosen as comparison cultures due to their highly divergent relevance for a broader understanding of communication phenomena in cultures. According to Hofstede (2001, pg 9), the United States is a highly individualistic culture. However Japan is a collectivistic culture. Japanese management and leadership styles have received extensive attention in both the scholarly and popular management literature in the United States (Hofstede, 2001, pg 9). Ochi (1981) suggested Theory Z due to the organizational management principles in Japanese firms. He suggested that most Japanese firms operations could be implemented by some of the American firms. Therefore, Japan is seen to have a similar culture to that of the United States for scholars examining leadership within organisations. Leadership in the United States is identified by recognising leaders functions in organisations and grouping the various kinds of leadership found into different leadership styles. For example, Yukl (2002) defines leadership as leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how it can be done effectively, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish the shared goalsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Leadership is treated as both a specialized role and a social influence process (Yukls 2002 pg. 5). Yukl (2002) also suggested that decision making is an important function for leaders. Therefore, the techniques which different leaders decide to engage in making decisions has been raised as a subject matter which has to be further investigated. A way of making efficient decisions by a leader is known as participatory leadership. Yukl (2002), also suggested that a lot of the functions of administrators and managers inc lude deciding executing decisions involving the different procedures needed to complete a particular task, choosing the right subordinates, finding solutions technical difficulties, deciding on which subordinate deserves a pay increase and so on. In addition, Indvik, 1986 proposed that supportive leadership has been proven to show that there is consistent strong positive connection between the subordinates satisfaction and the organisations commitment and also with fair to strong connections with the subordinates positions uncertainty and performance in the United States. The moderate masculinity and low power distance ratings for the United States culture are highly reflected in these findings. Directive leadership has also been a significant factor in most United States firms with some analysis made which showed strong positive associations determining the subordinates satisfaction and role ambiguity and moderate positive associations with the surbordinates performance (Podoff, Tudor, Schuler, 1983). Nevertheless, these findings are profoundly based on the characteristics of the firm and the individual. Kerr and Jermier (1978) argued that employees who are extremely skilled, knowledgeable and certified will need little or no directive leader role model to be able to carry out their responsibilities. As pointed out by Hofstede (1980) and Smith and Peterson (1988) the exceedingly high individualism trait found in the United States strongly relies on the participative management processes. Keys and Miller (1982) proposed that the reason for the effectiveness leadership style is due to the fact that their style of decision making has lead to inherent job contentment, dedication, allocation of decision making and increased levels of motivation. Ochi (1981) proposed that the Japanese culture is seen as a collectivistic culture. Therefore the practise in the Japanese organisations would be to put emphasis on collective responsibility and collective decision making. According to Hirokawa (1981), he used a communicative perspective to explain the Japanese firms style of participative leadership communication. Leaders in Japanese firms are meant to act as effective communicators in order for them to be fully understood and effective. Managers aid, persuade and assist the flow of information and knowledge between their members and this also leads to the effectiveness of the Japanese firms. Most leaders in Japanese organisations endeavour to sustain harmony within the firm and also adopt a bottom-up process of decision-making so that they are more accessible by their workers. The United States, as depicted by Hofstede (1980) is highly individualistic, medium on masculinity and low on power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Howell and Dorfman (1988) explained paternalism in the United States as medium while Confucianism in Japanese firms needs reverence and submission from subordinated to leaders who have in the past responded with highly paternalistic attitudes (Peter W. Dorfman et.al, 1997) The high achievement and high individualism motivations that characterizes United States employees are shown in rewards and retribution contingent on a persons performance (McClelland Boyatzis, 1982). Over and over again, affirmative effects for reliant reward behaviour in the United States has been proven by Podoff and his associates (1992). Showing concern for followers and getting engaged in their private lives is expected by managers in japanese firms therefore these organisation are exceedingly hierarchical and are firmly organized (Chen, 1995) Given the various leadership styles and differences and similarities between the United States and Japan, some recommendations on how to better achieve effective leadership between them from ( from the Japanese perspective) is discussed as follows. In affective cultures, such as the United States, leaders tend to exhibit their emotions. They reveal their thoughts verbally and non-verbally. Touching, gesturing and strong facial expressions are commonly used and their statements are made fluently and dramatically while in neutral cultures, such as Japan and China, leaders do not tend to show their emotions. They do not reveal what they are thing or feeling. Physical contact, gesturing or strong facial expressions are not used and their statements are mostly said in a monotonous voice. Some of the key factors that a Japanese Manager should keep in mind before venturing out to the U.s to lead a group of employees is that he should avoid a detached, ambiguous and cool demeanor as this will be perceived as a negative behavior. They should try and find out whose work and enthusiasm are being directed into which projects so that they are able to better appreciate the vigor and commitment the U.S employees have for these efforts towards their jobs. They should let people be emotional without personally becoming intimated by their behavior. These Japanese managers also have to work a bit on themselves as this is not just a one-way street. They should not put off stride when the employees create scenes and become hysterical; they should take some time out for sober reflection and not react on impulse. They should also keep in mind that the purpose of the business is typically focused on themselves as a person rather than the aim or purpose of the proposition that is being presented. In conclusion, as discussed above about the different leadership frameworks in which both countries fall into, it is quite clear that the differences out-weighs the similarities in their leadership styles. These differences need to be taken into consideration if an effective leadership is desired.

Intelligent Public Transport System Design

Intelligent Public Transport System Design An Intelligent Public Transport System for Smart City Gurnoor Walia, Kuljit Kaur Abstract Road safety has changed into a main subject for governments and automobile manufacturers in the last decade. The advancement vehicular technologies has privileged researchers, institutions and companies to target their efforts on improving road safety. new kinds of networks, such as for instance Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), have now been designed to assist communication between vehicles themselves and between vehicles and infrastructure. Smart cities embrace intelligent traffic management in which data from the Traffic Information Centre (TIC) infrastructures might be accessible at any point. In this paper we have listed the details of various features relating to intelligent transportation system. INTRODUCTION Cities are complex, networked and continuously changing social ecosystems, shaped and transformed through the interaction of different interests and ambitions. Cities represent a promise for future years: a vision of creativity, opportunity, freedom and prosperity. More than half of the global population has become urban and surveys estimate this percentage may even grow towards 70% in 2050 [2]. The services are increasingly enabled by broadband infrastructures, Internet-based networked applications, wireless sensor networks, open data and open platforms. Within the last decade digital technologies have begun to cover our cities, working together to make the backbone of a big, intelligent infrastructure. Wireless telecommunications grids and broadband fiber-optic are supporting smart phones, mobile phones and tablets which can be increasingly affordable. Add to this foundation a uncompromisingly growing network of sensors and digital control technologies such as smart meters, all tie d together by inexpensive, powerful computers and our cities are quickly fitting like computers in open air[3]. Smart City A smart city use digital technologies to boost the performance and wellbeing, to decrease costs and resource consumption, and also to engage more successfully and actively with its citizens. The core smart sectors comprise energy, health care, transport, water and waste. It should be able it to respond more rapidly to needs of a city and global challenges than one with a simple transactional association with its people. Interest in smart cities is motivated by major challenges, including economic restructuring, climate change, ageing populations, the move to online retail and entertainment, and pressures on public finances.[4] The terms ‘intelligent city’ and ‘digital city’ are also used. [5][6].According to IEEE A smart city brings together technology, government and society to enable the following characteristics: smart cities, a smart economy, smart mobility, a smart environment, smart people, smart living, and smart governance.[7]. 1.3 Intelligent Transportation System As India plans to take a leap forward with approval for smart cities, intelligent transportation is a must have technology. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are applications which, without embodying intelligence as such, intend to offer innovative services relating to traffic management and different modes of transport and enable users to be much better informed and make safer, more synchronized, and smarter use of transport networks. Intelligent transport systems differ in technologies used, from basic management systems such as traffic signal control systems; car navigation; container management systems; automatic number plate recognition; variable message signs or speed cameras to observe such applications, such as security CCTV systems; and to more complex applications that combine live data and feedback from numerous sources, such as weather information; parking guidance and information systems; bridge de-icing (US deicing) systems; etc. INTELLIGENT TRAFFIC SYSTEM USING VANETs The development of new vehicular technologies has shifted companies, researchers and institutions to focus their efforts on improving road safety. The evolution in wireless technologies has allowed researchers to style communication systems where vehicles directly take part in the network. Thus networks such as for instance VANETs are produced to facilitate communication between vehicles themselves and between vehicles and road side unit (infrastructure). Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a technology which uses moving cars as nodes in a network to make a mobile network [10]. VANETs are becoming a useful consideration due to the various important applications related to traffic controlling road safety. Smart cities saturated in traffic want to minimize their transportation problems due to the increasing population that results in congested roads. VANET helps to fix this issue by improving vehicles mobility and also helps at having more secured and sophisticated cities. VANETs provide easier communication facility among vehicles and also with fixed infrastructure. This can not merely improve the trail safety, but also gives benefits commercially. Pollution reduction, accidents prevention, congestion reduction and safer roads are some of the benefits of VANETs. The development of an efficient system in VANETs has many important benefits, to the traffic police as well as to the drivers. Proper traffic alerts and updated information about traffic incidents will make safe driving, increase road safety and reduce the traffic jams in the city. It also helps to indentify where the traffic rules are violated. Furthermore, it also helps economically; real-time traffic alerting will reduce trip time and fuel consumption and therefore decrease pollution as well [11]. So it is definitely beneficial in many ways. TECHNIQUES FOR IMPELMENTING VARIOUS ASPECTS OF VANETS The smart city can utilize VANETs by having intelligent traffic lights (ITLs) set in the crossroads of a city. These ITLs gathering traffic information (e.g. traffic density) from the passing vehicles, updating traffic statistics (congestion) of the city and reporting those statistics to the vehicles to ensure that vehicle can select the very best path that is congestion free. Also, ITLs will send warning messages to vehicles in case accident occurs to prevent further collisions. As [14], the proposal manages traffic information to be able to avoid accidents, though the information here is gathered from the vehicles themselves so no more infrastructure is needed. Also the system could easily be utilized by the traffic information centre to style an adaptive traffic light system similar to [12] and [13]. The proposed system architecture [16] is as shown in figure 4. Figure 4. The proposed System architecture [16] with intelligent traffic lights It is assumed that vehicles have a global positioning system (GPS), aboard unit, full map information of the city including the exact position of the each ITL, to ensure that vehicles can very quickly select the nearest ITL. Warning message is of three types: yellow circle indicates that vehicle is independent and not communicating with every other vehicle, green circle indicates communication is made and messages transition is certainly going on red and signal indicates two vehicles come closer and there could be the chances of collision as shown in figure 4. Inter-vehicular communication is presented based on an adaptive traffic signal control system [12]. This system reduces the waiting time of the vehicles at the square also results in decrease in waiting time at the signal. To realize this system, the concept of clustering is used to collect the data of the vehicles coming towards the intersection. System that takes the control decisions based on the information coming from the vehicles is very well described by the authors [13]. Every vehicle is equipped with a short range communication device and controller nodes are placed in the intersection with traffic lights. This controller node at intersection acts as adaptive control signal system. In [12] and [13] two adaptive traffic light systems based on wireless communication between vehicles and fixed controller nodes deployed at squares are designed. Both systems improve traffic fluency, reduce the waiting time of vehicles at squares and help to avoid collisions. The work in [14] is a survey about multifunctional data driven intelligent transportation system, which collects a large amount of data from various resources: Vision-Driven ITS (input data collected from video sensors and used recognition including vehicle and pedestrian detection); Multisource-Driven ITS (e.g. inductive-loop detectors, laser radar and GPS); Learning-Driven ITS (effective prediction of the occurrence of accidents to enhance the safety of pedestrians by reducing the impact of vehicle collision);and Visualization-Driven ITS (to help decision makers quickly identify abnormal traffic patterns and accordingly take necessary measures). But, it requires large amount of memory to stores the videos. The e-NOTIFY [15] system was designed for automatic accident detection, which sends the message to the Emergencies Center and assistance of road accidents using the capabilities offered by vehicular communication technologies. The e-NOTIFY system combines both V2V and V2I communications to efficiently notify an accident situation to the Control Center. A technique of finding water-logging-prone areas is given in [8]. This recognition technique is principally based on the following steps. (i) Prediction of locations of low valleys in a sound prone 2D curve. (ii) Confidence score obtained from the calculation of valley area. The proposed solution could easily be integrated with participatory sensing for smart cities. If the smart-phone users voluntarily submit the GPS information received in their hand-held devices, the same can be used for water logging zone calculation. This can help the city authority to create a dynamic water logging prone map of the entire city. In [9] researchers propose a radically different road pricing scheme to avoid and decrease the traffic congestion in metropolises. Unlike designating a small congestion charge zone in an area, they propose to employ a road pricing system over the entire city. Thus, the road pricing system can control the traffic flow in the whole traffic network of the city. Furthermore, the road costs are adjusted dynamically on the basis of the instantaneous traffic densities of every road in the city in order torapidly and efficiently control the traffic flow and to prevent the traffic congestion. Geographical source routing is just a promising routing technique for VANETs, because adaptability for network dynamics and ability to take care of topology holes. In traditional geographical source routing algorithms a best-known neighbor, usually the neighbor nearest to another junction in a greedy fashion, is designated as the following hop. This method may cause two drawbacks: (1) the designated neighbor mightnt have the packet correctly and (2) non-neighbor nodes are never given opportunities to complete forwarding. In [1],two problems are solved by introducing the thought of opportunistic routing to geographical source routing. A new routing protocol, named Geographical Opportunistic Source Routing (GOSR), is developed. GOSR allows non-neighbor nodes as well as the best-known neighbor to become forwarder. The notification cost of opportunistic routing is minimized by enforcing a scope from which candidate forwarders are selected. Defer timers are adopted in order to avoid confl icts due to simultaneous transmissions by nodes in the designated scope. Simulation results also reveal that GOSR can substantially reduce hop count and also improve end-to-end delivery ratio remarkably. TOOLS USED FOR SIMULATING VANETS It is significant to estimate the performance of any network in order to highlight any issues that may exist; the most appropriate way to accomplish this task is therefore to deploy simulations that provide the closest results to real-world annotations. Various simulation tools have been used to evaluate and simulate the performance of routing protocols in VANET. 5.1 Network simulator (NS2 and NS3 ) The NS-2 provides significant support for the simulation of TCP, routing and multicast protocols over wired and wireless networks. The NS-2 simulator is written in C++ with an OTcl (Object Tool Command Language) interpreter as a command and configuration interface. C++ is fast to run but slower to change, making it appropriate for use in comprehensive protocol implementation. NS3 is exclusively written in C++ and it is available for different platform such as Windows, Linux, Unix and OSX, with the coding limited to only a few hundred lines as opposed to 300,000 lines for NS-2. For the sake of huge network simulation,NS3 has come to support distributed and federated simulation tasks. NS-3 is free software available for researchers and developers in order to simulate internet protocols and huge systems in a controlled environment. 5.2 GlomoSim GlomoSim was developed to simulate wireless network simulation. It was coded in Parsec, in which all new protocols need to be described. GlomoSim has the ability to run on SMP (shared-memory symmetric processor: memory simultaneously accessible by all programs) and to assist in dividing the network into separate modules, each running as a distinct process. This decreases the load on the CPU by dividing its workload. GlomoSim supports multiple wireless technologies. GlomoSim was developed to support million of nodes as a single simulation. 5.3 MOVE The mobility model generator for vehicular networks is based on the Java programming language and is built on SUMO (Simulation of urban mobility). MOVE has greater consideration of traffic levels supported by GUI facilities. Mobility trace files can be generated from the Google Earth or TIGER databases. Custom (random and user) graphs a real so supported, although the node movement is constrained to a grid in a random graph. 5.4 TraNs TraNs (traffic and network simulator environment) is based on Java with a visualization tool to integrate SUMO and NS-2 and is specially designed for VANET (Traffic and network simulation environment) in a single module to support vehicular simulation. This can be accomplished by converting traffic files in to a dump file by SUMO. This file can then be read by NS-2. 5.5 VANET MobiSim VANET MobiSim was developed to overcome the limitations of CanuMobiSim. It supports car-to-car and car-to- infrastructure communications, which support stop signs, traffic lights and activities based macro-mobility with the support of human mobility dynamics. TIGER, GDF and random and custom topology are used to obtain road and traffic topology. Vanet MobiSim uses a parser to obtain the topology from GDF or TIGER. 5.6 NCTUns NCTUns (National Chiao Tung University Network Simulator) (WangandLin,2008) is built using C++ programming language with a high level of GUI support. The user has less need to be concerned about code complexity. NCTUns combines the traffic and network simulators in a single module, making a distinct vehicular network environment available. NCTUns supports the ITS (intelligent transport system) environment by using automatic road assignment supported by the SHARPE-format map file. Vehicle movement can be controlled automatically. FUTURE WORK and CONCLUSION In previous work researchers have designed a smart city framework for VANETs including intelligent traffic lights (ITLs) that transmit warning messages and traffic statistics. Simulation results reveal that the usage of ITLs in smart cities can not merely improve road safety but also the drivers quality of life. They have explained the way the ITLs gather traffic and weather conditions of the roads and how they update those statistics. The goal is that the drivers assistant device usually takes proper trip decisions, for instance in order to avoid congested roads, and therefore reducing the trip time and pollution as well. As a near future work, ITLs could communicate to passing vehicles indicating where would be the free parking spots in the city. With this specific information, the driver assistant device could indicate the driver where free spots are located. This technique could use a WSN to obtain the data about free parking spots and communicate it to the nearest ITLs. The ITLs could share that information although sub-network they form. This might save trip time, petrol and CO2 as a consequence, which helps to own sustainable smart cities. Also, statistics collected by the ITLs can improve data routing protocols selecting the road that offers an increased chance to forward a supply to the destination successfully. A VANET routing protocol that considers those statistics in its operation can also be designed. REFERENCES [1] Zhongyi, L., Tong, Z., Wei, Y., and Xiaoming, L., â€Å"Poster Abstract: GOSR: Geographical Opportunistic Source Routing for VANETs,† Mobile Computing and Communications Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2009 [2] United Nations, â€Å"World Urbanization Prospects, The 2007 Revision Highlights,† United Nations, New York, 2008. [3] Schaffers, H., Ratti, C., and Komninos, N., â€Å"Special Issue on Smart Applications for Smart Cities – New Approaches to Innovation,† Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, Universidad de Talca – Chile, Dec 2012 [4] Dept Business, Challenges Faced by Cities and the Need for Smarter Approaches, pg-5, 2013 [5] Moir, Challenges Faced by Cities and the Need for Smarter Approaches, pg-18, 2014 [6] Smart City, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city [7] IEEE Smart Cities ,http://smartcities.ieee.org/about.html [8] Choudhury, A.D., Agrawal, A., Sinha, P., Bhaumik, C., Ghose, A., and Bilal, S., â€Å"A Methodology for GPS-based Water logging Prediction and Smart Route Generation,† 12th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (ISDA), Kochi , 2012. [9] Soylemezgiller, F., Kuscu, M., and Kilinc, D., â€Å"A Traffic Congestion Avoidance Algorithm with Dynamic Road Pricing for Smart Cities,† presented at IEEE 24th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications: Mobile and Wireless Networks, London, 2013 [10] Emmelmann, M., Bochow, B., and Kellum, C.C., â€Å"Vehicular networking: Automotive applications and beyond,† John Wiley and Sons, 2010. [11] Ferrari, G., Busanelli, S., Lotti, N., and Kaplan, Y., â€Å"Cross- Network Information Dissemination in VANETs,† 11th International Conference on ITS Telecommunications, pp. 351-356, 2011. [12] Maslekar, N., Boussedjra, M., Mouzna, J., and Labiod, H., â€Å"VANET based Adaptive Traffic Signal Control,† IEEE 73rd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), pp. 1-5, 2011. [13] Gradinescu, V., Gorgorin, C., Diaconescu, R., Cristea, V., and Iftode, L., â€Å"Adaptive Traffic Light Using Car-to-Car communications,† IEEE 65th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), pp. 21-25, 2007. [14] Junping, Z., Fei-Yue, W., Kunfeng, W., Wei-Hua, L., Xin, X., and Cheng, C., â€Å"Data-Driven Intelligent Transportation Systems: Survey,† IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol. 12, Issue 4, pp. 1624-1639, 2011. [15] Fogue, M., Garrido, P., Martinez, F. J., Cano, J. C., Calafate, C. T., Manzoni, P., and Sanchez, M., â€Å"Prototyping an Automatic Notification Scheme for Traffic Accidents in Vehicular Networks,† Wireless Days (WD) IFIP, pp. 1-5, 2011. [16] Khekare, G.S., Sakhare, A.K., â€Å"Intelligent Traffic System for VANET: A Survey,† International Journal of Advanced Computer Research (2277–7970) Volume-2 Number-4 Issue 6, December 2012.

SWOT Analysis Essay -- Business Analysis

Organizational performance is a result of business interaction with its internal and external environment (Houben, Lenie & Vanhoof, 1999). There are a variety of internal and external forces that either stimulate or compromise the organization's performance in achieving objectives or goals (Houben, et al., 1999). An analysis can identify and evaluate areas within or outside of the organizations to provide information for leadership. The analysis can be done by internal personnel or external experts. Experts are often used to identify, monitor, forecast and assess environment trends (Swayne, Duncan & Ginther, 2008). Often the SWOT analysis is used to review internal and external areas in the four components; strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. The SWOT analysis indicates that the strengths and weakness are internal. Strengths are the organizational competitive advantages and distinguishing competencies (Houben, et.al, 1999). Weaknesses hinder the progress of the organization in a certain direction (Houben, et.al, 1999). Weakness can be considered areas of opportunities. Data collections from employees and customer surveys along with financial information can indicate the strengths and weakness. Opportunities and threats are viewed more as external forces. Opportunities are investment or change which the organizations may consider. Threats could be competitors or other known factors which the organization should identify. This paper will review a SWOT analysis that was conducted by an external exporter on the healthcare organization, Kaiser Permanente. The external expert is Datamonitor and is familiar with nonprofit organizations. Datamonitor (2011) indicates â€Å"that Kaiser Permanente (KP) is one of the ... ...amonitor (2011). Kaiser Permanente.,Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. SWOT Analysis; Dec2011, p1-9, 9p DATAMONITOR (2010). Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. SWOT Analysis; Nov2010, p1-8, 8p Hardwick, P.l (2005). Want a better business? Invest in SWOTing . Mississippi Business Journal, 1/31/2005, Vol. 27 Issue 5, pA5-A5, 3/5p Houben, G. Lenie, K. Vanhoof, K. (1999). A knowledge-based SWOT-analysis system as an instrument for strategic planning in small and medium sized enterprises. Retrieved from. http://www.cuaed.unam.mx/puel_cursos/cursos/d_gcfe_m_dos/modulo/modulo_2/m2-10.pdf Weisman, S (2008). S.W.O.T. analysis is no longer the best approach to planning for success. Hudson Valley Business Journal, 10/27/2008, Vol. 19 Issue 43, p11-11, 1/3p Swayne, L. E., Duncan, W. J., & Ginter, P. M. (2008). Strategic

Shakespeares The Tempest - Miranda :: Tempest essays

The Character of Miranda in The Tempest The character of Miranda in "The Tempest" is extremely compelling for two reasons. First and foremost it is important to note that the Miranda is the only female character who appears in the entire play. This is the only Shakespeare play where a character has this kind of outstanding distinction. This is not just a fluke on the part of Shakespeare, for it is very important that the character of Miranda appear by herself. The reader is not able to compare her beauty and virtue to any other female in the world of "The Tempest", and this serves both to show her value as a character and the fact that no other living women has the virtue of Miranda. While Miranda may not have many outstanding lines or solioquys, she makes up for this in sheer presence alone. Miranda's character encompasses all the elements of perfectionism and goodness which is lacking in all the other respective characters. All of the other characters in "The Tempest" are reflected by Miranda, and even if she did not spe ak one line she would still serve this important purpose. Secondly, Miranda also serves as the ultimate fantasy for any male who (like Ferdinand) is a bachelor. She is extremely beautiful, she is intelligent, and she has never been touched (or even seen) by another male. Shakespeare makes Miranda even more desirable by including the fact that she has never seen or even talked to another man (with the obvoius exception of Prospero). Miranda personifies the ultimate source of good in the play, and provides the ultimate foil for the evil character of Caliban. When Ferdinand is forced to chop wood by Prospero, Miranda offers to do it for him. Finding a woman this humble in the world of Shakespeare is almost impossible. One does not have to look farther than her last line in the play to realize her purpose in the plot. Miranda states "O wonder! / How many goodly creatures there are here! / How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world / That has such people in't" (Tempest,5.1,185-7) Through this passage and many of her others Miranda shows a posit ive attitude which is almost uncanny when compared to the other characters.

Effects of Music Essay

Music and Its Effects on Our Emotions: Can Music Really Change Your Mood? Music can control a much larger part of your life than most people would like to believe. Music can affect us in ways in which we’re not even aware of, and for this reason, music is simply amazing. There is a large number of studies behind music. Not even just the typical music you hear on the radio or that you download from the Internet, but any sounds and the way they can affect your mood and reflect your personallity. It has been proven that certain types of music can evoke sadness, while others can give you an excitement. Music is used in millions of places for this reason. Advertisements. Advertisements and movies are based around the audio! Certain types of music are more likely to evoke emotions in people which will in turn make them feel a certain way. Sometimes this is great for producers in the economy because they can use music in their advertisements to help produce more profits, because people will become much more interested in the products that they’re of fering. This works the same in the film industry. The film industry is interested in inflicting some sort of mood on its audience. If a movie is able to inflict an emotion into people, then the movie is looked upon as a much better movie, and therefore is more likely to make more money. Music can really affect more parts of the economy than you would ever even take into consideration. One amazing thing, that I’m sure you’ve never even stopped to think about, is the music in a casino. They tend to play very uplifting music, music that will make you want to stay longer. Theoretically, the longer you stay in a casino, the more money the casino will make from you. The casino wants to keep you in their business for as long as they can. Music is one way the owners can go about this. Another irrelevant yet interesting method they have is to release scents that cause people to become more satisfied with what they’re doing, and will make them in turn be more comfortable in the environment and want to stay longer, making the casino more money in the long run. Pop, lighter rock, and most dance music tends to be a very uplifting type of music. If you’re ever looking for a booster, listen to some of this music! I actually enjoy listening to this music every day before going to take classes, because it lifts my spirit and helps me make it through the day. Downbeat music such as death metal and rap music tends to affect people’s emotions in a much darker form. However, this is all personal preference and you cannot  base all of this on my opinion. Overall, music has a much greater affect on you than you would believe. Experiment. Listen to new music all the time. See what music gives you chills down your spine. See what music you can’t understand and hate. There’s something out there for everyone. The Effects of Music In some way, music affects everyone. Whether it is, a young girl’s favorite song on the radio, a college student’s escape from reality or a form of entertainment to a married couple, music brings everyone together. Music definitely affects the lifestyles of people in many different ways. The diverse styles of music makes people look and act differently. Music has many different levels. To me, levels meaning; the more independent and progressive the music is, the more the fans take it to the extreme. Music creates style. It causes people to talk, act, and dress the way they do. I hope to discover how much music influences people, especially college students. Also, the more fascinated they are the more influences it has to them. I would like to prove, that to some, music is nothing more than the pop song playing on the radio in the car, and to others, it is a major part of their life. It is very interesting to me, to learn the effects music has toward people. Music impacts everyone in some way (positive or negative), but I think it impacts college students the most. I would like to know the reasons people are listening to music they buy and support. Also, the reasons certain groups are more popular than others. I used a couple various methods of research to conduct my research. I wrote up ten surveys with some questions about gender, age, what they buy, do they attend concerts, and do they support local music. I passed these surveys out to completely random students so there was no imbalance of the results. I hope to find out certain things like: are males affected more than females from music; who buys more clothing/ accessories; is local music important to college students. Another form of research was done by making some observations. I observed places that college students live. I observed a few of my friends apartments very closely and also observed a couple other houses that I was  invited to over the past month. By doing this, I hope to generalize what they like and how it influences them. For example, posters of music groups hanging everywhere will indicate a more of an influence than paintings, by say Picasso. Clothing, jewelry, and actual speech from people may also provide some interesting details. While making these observations, I had also done a couple interviews. A couple were formal, sit-down interviews and the others were just conversations that I thought would be helpful to making my research complete. After giving some thought to my results, I decided to add a section about my personal history. Throughout my life music has affected me in many different ways. It has helped me through some very important decisions, such as, how I feel, who I am with, where I am going to go. When I was ten years old, I got my first guitar. It was an acoustic guitar. I loved to play it, but dreaded going to the lessons. My parents forced me because I couldn’t play a single note. After a year or two things started to come together and I could play some songs. Then I decided to purchase an electric guitar. For me, this was the greatest thing to ever happen to me. I played everyday at any time that I could. My favorite group was the Beastie Boys. My friends and I would pretend we were them and put on shows pretending to be them. As I got older, I would purchase any music that I could; cassette tapes, records, videos, posters, anything that dealt with music. Around seventh or eighth grade, I purchased a used drum set. My other friends all played, so we decided to form a band. We would practice in the garage as much as often until my parents said enough, until it became an obsession. We played a couple of parties (nothing big, because this was the eighth grade), but still a major part of my life at the time. One day during practice, I remember my good friend, the lead singer, telling me booked a real gig, in downtown Pittsburgh. We got a set ready and about a month to practice our songs. The place was called the Electric Banana, it was real dive bar. Most people there were friends and family, but still a nice turnout. Since then I haven’t been playing in a band, but still love making music. Most of my friends are really into music too. We swap music  with each other and talk about it all the time. When I switched schools in high school, music really helped me make some friends. Without music my life would be totally different and a lot more boring, so I’m glad it turned out this way. I am very happy with the results that I got from the surveys. There were ten surveys filled out. Of the ten, six were females and four were males. Eight of the ten all liked rap/hip hop music or said rap along with some other forms. The other two liked rock, punk, or emo. No one put classic rock as their choice (which I found to be very interesting, because I like classic rock). There were two other questions I found to be very much related. Everyone that collects music, any form, (CD, cassette tape, or vinyl) has clothing and/or accessories that support music, for instance, posters, T-shirts, and hats. Four out of ten said they regularly attend concerts. I was very pleased to hear that eight of ten support local musicians/bands. I am a music lover, (as you know) so the local scene is very important to me. Here is a graph I constructed from the surveys. Females Males 60% 40% The interviews came out to be very useful also. I talked to a music lover/musician/collector. His name was Neil and he was very cooperative. We talked about the unusual styles of music he liked. He has a very wide range of music in his collection. We talked about some of his favorite artists, some being Pittsburgh based groups. He loves live music and goes to as many shows as possible. He said â€Å"it’s hard to get to places without a car and with classes† He also said â€Å"I just saw The Roots play for my sixth time last week, at a little place in Oakland.† We were talking about how they are definitely one of his favorites, if he had to pick. I asked him why he was so into music. He replied â€Å"It’s a stress reliever. It takes my mind off school, work, and people’s pettiness.† Another interview that I performed was not as formal. This one was with my dad at the dinner table. It was pretty short and to the point. I asked him if he likes music. He said â€Å"No.† I then asked him if he ever listens to it and he said â€Å"No, when I am in the car I listen to the news or talk radio and when I’m home I’m either working or watching TV.† After doing this research, I realized that by doing interviews you can really feel the emotion from the answers compared to reading a survey. I think that interviews did help me make certain things easier to understand on the survey. The Effects of Music on People’s Emotions By Rachel Mattison, eHow Contributor , last updated July 02, 2012 Movie producers and recording artists use music to manipulate the emotions of audiences to feel everything from excitement to sadness during movies and performances. No one can deny that music has either positive or negative effects on the emotions of listeners. However, music therapy or the study of music’s impact on emotions examines how music cause positive changes in listeners and patients for areas including early childhood development, healing and recovery, and overcoming negative emotions. 1. Early Childhood Development * Music plays an important role in early childhood emotional and intellectual development, according to information compiled by Brad Kennedy and Jennifer Durst. Their research confirms that even while in the womb, babies can tell the differences between certain types of music. Also called prenatal stimulation this technique has many positive effects including higher levels of intelligence and creativity, along with the ability to calm down when listening to music. Suggested usages for music in early childhood development include teaching children to analyze songs so they can learn how to express and identify their emotions, though processes, behaviors and situations as a way of developing cognitive and motor skills. Healing and Recovery * The American Music Therapy Organization states music therapy can  allow â€Å"emotional intimacy with families and caregivers, relaxation for the entire family, and meaningful time spent together in a positive, creative way.† Additional studies show that music therapy can cause changes in physiology by releasing brain chemicals including melatonin, norephinephrine, epinephrine, serotonin and prolactin, which help to reduce depression, regulate mood and make patients feel calm and more able to sleep. Doctors have used music therapy to help stroke, cerebral palsy and Parkinson’s patients improve. Dr. Suzanne Hasner says head trauma and dementia patients retain music ability because â€Å"deep in our long-term memory is this rehearsed music. It is processed in the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala. Here’s where you remember the music played at your wedding, the music of your first love, that first dance. Such things can still be remembered even in people with progressive diseases. It can be a window, a way to reach them.† * Negative Emotions and Fear Management * Dr. Zbigniew Kucharski, from the Medical Academy of Warsaw, has studied the effects of music when used for fear management in dental patients. He discovered that children who listened to 30 minutes of music preceding and following dental procedures were less likely to experience negative feelings. Another study, â€Å"Quantification of the effects of listening to music as a noninvasive method of pain control,† conducted in 1992 found that relaxing music helped to reduce anxiety and pain in patients undergoing certain medical procedures including painful gynecological procedures and pediatric surgical burn units. How Music Affects Us and Promotes Health Music is one of the few activities that involves using the whole brain. It is intrinsic to all cultures and can have surprising benefits not only for learning language, improving memory and focusing attention, but also for physical coordination and development. Of course, music can be distracting if it’s too loud or too jarring, or if it competes for our attention with what we’re trying to do. But for the most part, exposure to many kinds of music has beneficial effects: 1Music heals Effective therapy for pain Overall, music does have positive effects on pain management. Music can help reduce both the sensation and distress of both chronic pain and postoperative pain. Listening to music can reduce chronic pain from a range of painful conditions, including osteoarthritis, disc problems and rheumatoid arthritis, by up to 21% and depression by up to 25%, according to a paper in the latest UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing29. Music therapy is increasingly used in hospitals to reduce the need for medication during childbirth, to decrease postoperative pain and complement the use of anesthesia during surgery30. There are several theories about how music positively affects perceived pain: * 1. Music serves as a distractor * 2. Music may give the patient a sense of control * 3. Music causes the body to release endorphins to counteract pain * 4. Slow music relaxes person by slowing their breathing and heartbeat Reducing blood pressure By playing recordings of relaxing music every morning and evening, people with high blood pressure can train themselves to lower their blood pressure – and keep it low31. According to research reported at the American Society of Hypertension meeting in New Orleans, listening to just 30 minutes of classical, Celtic or raga music every day may significantly reduce high blood pressure. Medicine for the heart music is good for your heart. Research shows that it is musical tempo, rather than style. Italian and British researchers32 recruited young men and women, half of whom were trained musicians. The participants slipped on head phones and listened to six styles of music, including rap and classical pieces, with random two-minute pauses. As the participants kicked back and listened, the researchers monitored their breathing, heart rates and blood pressure. The participants had faster heart and breathing rates when they listened to lively music. When the musical slowed, so did their heart and breathing rates. Some results were surprising. During the musical pauses, heart and breathing rates normalized or reached more optimal levels. Whether or not a person liked the style of music did not matter. The tempo, or pace, of the music had the greatest effect on relaxation. Speeds Post-Stroke Recovery A daily portion` of one’s favorite pop melodies, classical music or jazz can speed recovery from debilitating strokes, according to the latest research. When stroke patients in Finland listened to music for a couple of hours each day, verbal memory and attention span improved significantly compared to patients who received no musical stimulation, or who listened only to stories read out loud, the study reports33. Chronic headaches & migraine remedy Music can help migraine34 and chronic headache35 sufferers reduce the intensity, frequency, and duration of the headaches. Music boosts immunity Music can boost the immune function. Scientists explain that a particular type of music can create a positive and profound emotional experience, which leads to secretion of immune-boosting hormones22. This helps contribute to a reduction in the factors responsible for illness. Listening to music or singing can also decrease levels of stress-related hormone cortisol. Higher levels of cortisol can lead to a decreased immune response23-24. 2Effects of music on the brain Music enhances intelligence, learning and IQ The idea that music makes you smarter received considerable attention from scientists and the media. Listening to music or playing an instrument can actually make you learn better. And research confirms this. Music has the power to enhance some kinds of higher brain function: * Reading and literacy skills11-13 * Spatial-temporal reasoning14-15 * Mathematical abilities16-17 – Even children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder benefit in mathematics tests from listening to music beforehand. *Emotional intelligence The Mozart effect Earlier it has been thought that listening to classical music, particularly Mozart, enhances performance on cognitive tests. However, recent findings18 show that listening to any music that is personally enjoyable has positive effects on cognition. Music improves memory performance The power of music to affect memory is quite intriguing. Mozart’s music and baroque music, with a 60 beats per minute beat pattern, activates the left and right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action maximizes learning and retention of information. The information being studied activates the left brain while the music activates the right brain. Also, activities which engage both sides of the brain at the same time, such as playing an instrument or singing, cause the brain to be more capable of processing information. Listening to music facilitates the recall of information19. Researchers have shown that certain types of music are a great â€Å"keys† for recalling memories. Information learned while listening to a particular song can often be recalled simply by â€Å"playing† the songs mentally. Musical training has even better effect than just listening to classical music. There is clear evidence20, that children who take music lessons develop a better memory compared with children who have no musical training. Note: For learning or memory performance, it’s important that music doesn’t have a vocal component; otherwise you’re more likely to remember the words of the background song than what you’re supposed to be recalling. Music improves concentration and attention Easy listening music or relaxing classics improves the duration and intensity of concentration in all age groups and ability levels. It’s not clear what type of music is better, or what kind of musical structure is necessary to help, but many studies have shown significant effects21. 3Music improves physical performance Music improves athletic performance Choosing music that motivates you will make it easier to start moving, walking, dancing, or any other type of exercise that you enjoy. Music can make exercise feel more like recreation and less like work. Furthermore, music enhances athletic performance6-8! Anyone who has ever gone on a long run with their iPod or taken a particularly energetic spinning class knows that music can make the time pass more quickly. The four central hypotheses explaining music’s facilitation of exercise performance include: * Reduction in the feeling of fatigue * Increase in levels of psychological arousal * Physiological relaxation response * Improvement in motor coordination Music improves body movement and coordination Music reduces muscle tension and improves body movement and coordination25-26. Music may play an important role in developing, maintaining and restoring physical functioning in the rehabilitation of persons with movement disorders. 4Music helps to work more productively Fatigue fighter Listening to upbeat music can be a great way to find some extra energy. Music can effectively eliminate exercise-induced fatigue9 and fatigue symptoms caused by monotonous work10. Keep in mind that listening to too much pop and hard rock music can make you more jittery than energized. Vary what you listen to and find out what type of music is most beneficial for you. You could try classical music one day, pop the next day and jazz the third. Music improves productivity Many people like to listen to music while they work and I am certainly one of them. How about you? Did you know you can perform better at your work with music? Whilst there may be many reasons for wishing to listen to music in the workplace, it really improves your productivity27! According to a report in the journal Neuroscience of Behavior and Physiology28, a person’s ability to recognize visual images, including letters and numbers, is faster when either rock or classical music is playing in the background. 5Music calms, relaxes and helps to sleep Relaxing music induces sleep Relaxing classical music is safe, cheap and easy way to beat insomnia1. Many people who suffer from insomnia find that Bach music helps them. Researchers have shown that just 45 minutes of relaxing music before bedtime can make for a restful night2. Relaxing music reduces sympathetic nervous system activity, decreases anxiety, blood pressure, heart and respiratory rate and may have positive effects on sleep via muscle relaxation and distraction  from thoughts. Music reduces stress and aids relaxation Listening to slow, quiet classical music, is proven to reduce stress3. Countless studies have shown that music’s relaxing effects can be seen on anyone, including newborns. One of the great benefits of music as a stress reliever is that it can be used while you do your usual deeds so that it really doesn’t take time. How does music reduces stress? * Physical relaxation. Music can promote relaxation of tense muscles, enabling you to easily release some of the tension you carry from a stressful day. * Aids in stress relief activities. Music can help you get â€Å"into the zone† when practicing yoga, self hypnosis or guided imagery, can help you feel energized when exercising and recover after exercising, help dissolve the stress when you’re soaking in the tub. * Reduces negative emotions. Music, especially upbeat tunes, can take your mind off what stresses you, and help you feel more optimistic and positive. This helps release stress and can even help you keep from getting as stressed over life’s little frustrations in the future. Researchers discovered4 that music can decrease the amount of the cortisol, a stress-related hormone produced by the body in response to stress. 6Music improves mood and decreases depression Prescription for the blues Music’s ability to â€Å"heal the soul† is the stuff of legend in every culture. Many people find that music lifts their spirits. Modern research tends to confirm music’s psychotherapeutic benefits5. Bright, cheerful music (e.g. Mozart, Vivaldi, bluegrass, Klezmer, Salsa, reggae) is the most obvious prescription for the blues. The 5 Weirdest Ways Music Can Mess With the Human Brain By: C. Coville, Kathy Benjamin February 11, 2011 1,619,046 views The entire reason music exists is because of its almost magical ability to push your buttons. An upbeat song gets you going, a sad song makes you cry and drink. But the more science studies music’s effect on the human brain, the more bizarre things we discover. For instance †¦ #5. It Changes Your Ability to Perceive Time  old music — the stuff you hear on the line when you call everyone from the bank to your local bail bond agency — didn’t fall into America’s phone lines by accident. It’s designed specifically to reduce the amount of time you think you’re waiting, so that you’re less likely to hang up in anger. Other places that involve waiting, such as doctors’ offices, use a similar trick. Time shrinkage is also the aim of most retail stores, which is why you’ll rarely enter a mall, supermarket or clothing store without hearing some sort of music in the background. How the hell does music do that? To understand why exactly music makes it seem like less time has passed, think of the human brain as a mountain lion that is eating a bag of money. It doesn’t matter what the zookeepers distract it with — food, shiny objects or just shouting and yelling. All that matters is that they give another zookeeper the chance to sneak up and retrieve the money while the lion is busy deciding which one of them to eat. Similarly, when your brain is steadily distracted, you’ll be less likely to notice things around you in detail, and this includes the passage of time. Our brains have limited input capacity, and when something else is using up that capacity, we’re less likely to think things like, â€Å"I’ve been standing in line to get Richard Moll’s autograph for three goddamn hours† or â€Å"Do I really need this Garfield alarm clock?† But it works the opposite way, too. In some situations, listening to music can actually expand perceived time. For example, listening to music while performing tasks that require concentration will usually cause us to overestimate the amount of time that has passed. The theory is that as your mind switches back and forth between perception of the music and concentration on the challenging tasks, it forms separate â€Å"events,† or distinct memories. When your brain thinks about what you’ve been doing for the past hour, you’ll remember more of these events and recall that the hour was quite long. Experiments have found that time also expands when we’re listening to familiar music that we dislike. When we hear the opening chords of a song, our brain remembers the whole thing and immediately skips ahead and plays it mentally. This fake mind-music is  extremely vivid, working on exactly the same parts of the brain as actual music does. So the effect is that you take a few moments to vividly imagine that you’re sitting through five minutes of that damn New Radicals song before you come back to reality only to realize that you still actually have to sit through it. #4. It Taps Into Primal Fear OK, imagine how you would sound for a second if you saw your friend Jason across the street and wanted to get his attention by yelling his name. Now imagine you see your friend Jason across the street, suddenly realize a car is careening down the road about to hit him, and shout his name to warn him.Despite the fact that you are yelling the same thing both times, even in your head you can hear how the two sound different. Human beings have a very good, very nuanced sense of what kind of noise indicates a greeting and what kind of noise indicates you are about to be mauled by a honey badger. And that sense is being used against you in every scary movie you have ever seen. There is a reason that horror films scare the crap out of us, and it’s not just the creepy settings, dramatic buildup and sudden reveal of the bad guy RIGHT BEHIND YOU. It’s the music. How the hell does music do that? There are certain sounds that humans will automatically associate with sudden and painful death because they tap into our evolutionary fear of the screams of other animals (and other human beings). Screams of fear in almost any animal are made up of what scientists have dubbed â€Å"discordant noises.† Any noise that makes you feel very unpleasant falls into this category. We know if we hear other living things making those discordant noises that we have to get the fuck out, because something bad is going to happen. Movie directors know this and make good use of it when deciding on the score for a film. That dramatic buildup and subsequent scary reveal is almost always accompanied by really freaky music or somebody screaming his ass off (or both). But this technique is hardly limited to horror movies. For instance, in his original draft of The Social Network, Andy Sorkin wanted a song called â€Å"Love of the Common People† to play over the opening credits scene. Here’s what that would have looked like: That poppy calypso music makes you feel that everything is dandy. Sure, Mark Zuckerberg has just been dumped,  but it’s all OK! He’s running through the Harvard campus and is about to invent Facebook and become a billionaire. Yay!Listen to that lower-level background music throughout. It sounds like random, angry notes played behind a simple piano tune, and those notes are creating discordant sound. Suddenly you’re apprehensive, feeling like something really bad is about to happen (we’re talking getting sued for $64 million bad). So next time you’re getting a little too freaked out by a movie, remember that muting the television is a far better decision than looking away. #3. It Makes You Stronger It’s no secret that many people prefer to listen to music when they work out. But music doesn’t just make physical activity more pleasant — it actually makes our physical performance measurably better. When listening to music, people are able to hold heavy weights for longer than when they’re standing in silence. They can also complete sprints in smaller amounts of time and are even able to reduce their oxygen intake. How the hell does music do that? Similar to the time-perception effect we referenced above, one element is just plain old distraction. Obviously, if your mind is listening to music, it’s not thinking about how much your legs hurt or how much longer you’ve got to run before the treadmill makes that final beeping noise. But there’s much more to it than that. First, there’s synchronicity. When you match your movements to a steady musical tempo, you spend less time and effort on the inefficient slowing down and speeding up that happens when you’re going by your own rhythm. Music also increases the incidence of â€Å"flow† states — states of meditation-like calm in which everything works right for an athlete and that is strongly linked to enhanced performance. Music can even make you feel less pain. Patients listening to music after surgery need less sedatives, report less pain and have lower blood pressure. As if that’s not impressive enough, doctors have found that specially selected melodic music dramatically reduces stress in patients during unsedated brain surgery. In some cases, music caused patients to relax so much that many of them fell into a deep sleep, while people sliced into their exposed brains with fucking scalpels. And even if you’re lucky enough to be asleep during  surgery, there’s a good chance the doctors working on you are listening to music, since most surgeons believe it improves their performance, too. So the next time you’re about to go under a general anesthetic, consider the fact that the guy with the scalpel might soon be timing his incisions to Whitesnake. #2. It Changes Your Drinking Habits Did you ever wake up in the back of a taxi after a long night of tossing down cognac and prune juice and wonder how your pants got replaced by a thick but clumsily applied coat of colorful body paint? Well, now there’s something to blame it on besides your bad childhood: music. What they play in the bar doesn’t just affect how much you drink, but what you drink. How the hell does music do that? Did you know you can make a person buy more expensive wine just by playing classical music? Experiments prove it. It makes people feel like they’re in a wine commercial or in a movie depicting refined, snooty rich people. OK, that one sort of makes sense — we doubt anyone ever drank Wild Irish Rose while listening to Vivaldi. But in another blind study, different types of music playing in the background caused drinkers to change how they’d described the drinks they already had. Laid-back music led people to rate drinks as â€Å"mellow,† and upbeat music resulted in more people calling their drinks â€Å"refreshing.† Even stranger, in another study researchers placed German and French wines in supermarkets, with small flags next to each display so customers could tell which countries they came from. They then played some unobtrusive international music in the background. When German music was played, the percentage of German sales rose, and vice versa. This wasn’t because customers thought to themselves, Ah! Germany! I will celebrate the Fatherland with some nice wine! Questionnaires showed that customers couldn’t recall what type of music was playing and thought they’d chosen a particular wine simply because they’d felt like it. The people selling you the drinks know all of this stuff — or at least, the successful ones do. We’ve pointed out before that bars and nightclubs often play fast music to increase alcohol-based profit. But other establishments, particularly upscale restaurants, prefer slow, relaxing music, which,  believe it or not, can also make you drink more. The tempo of music is linked to your body’s arousal level, or the â€Å"speed† at which your nervous system operates. Fast music heightens arousal (heh), so patrons will do everything more quickly, including eating and drinking and leaving their infant by the salad bar. Which is good for a restaurant owner if he’s just concerned with getting you out the door so he can serve more (and presumably better) people. On the other hand, slower music means that you eat at a more leisurely pace. Maybe you’ll even stay to chat with your companions after you’re done with your meal. All this time passing means you’re likely to buy more drinks every time the waiter comes around to ask, and at a restaurant that’s charging $70 a bottle, that makes up for any lost table space. Some restaurants go as far as to purchase a personalized selection of songs specially designed by â€Å"sound branding† companies, which select songs based on whatever tempo or atmosphere the restaurant is aiming to achieve. #1. It Makes You a Better Communicator How does a narcissistic ass like John Mayer, who isn’t even that attractive, still have hot women of all ages throwing themselves at him? It’s the guitar, isn’t it?Actually, a trained musician like Mayer would probably be able to talk a woman into his bed without ever even playing a note. It turns out that studying music gives you an advantage when it comes to perceiving the emotions of others, so all those years of being chained to a piano as a child are finally going to work in your favor. People who can play instruments at near-professional level can detect subtle emotional changes and intonations in the vocal tones of others. In other words, they know whether you are actually sad when you say you’re fine, even when most non-musicians would have no idea. Not only that, but the fact that they studied music makes them better able to tune out background noise, so they are even better at paying attention to what you are saying in that crowded restaurant or bar. How the hell does music do that? Research shows that people who have studied music actually have brains wired differently than non-musicians. This rewiring makes them better able to express emotions they are feeling, but it also makes them more able to understand the emotions others express. Music is very emotional, and people  wired to understand those subtle emotional changes can also detect them in the vocal tones of someone talking. The emotion of the music translates to knowing when your boss is secretly mad or your mother is secretly disappointed. The sooner you start learning music, the more pronounced this re-wiring is. Scientists think that teaching children music might help kids with autism better understand vocal cues and encode speech. The fact that this brain re-wiring helps them tune out background noise could also help kids stay focused in noisy classrooms. It is also something that gets better the more you play, so sticking to your piano lessons now could lead to a powerful advantage in your future dating world. Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19006_the-5-weirdest-ways-music-can-mess-with-human-brain_p2.html#ixzz0MMCXjaIv Music is one of many important parts of our lives because it can be an approach not only to reduce each of our mental tension but also to inspire our feelings in artistic sense. Then, there are only two subtopics to develop into two paragraphs in the body: 1) music is an approach to reduce people’s mental tension 2) music inspires people’s feelings in artistic sense