Bread Mold Imrad Essay Example for Free

Bread Mold Imrad Essay The materials needed to conduct this experiment are six small squares of bread, a container of milk, four small Ziploc bags, a thermometer, a phone to record data and a heat lamp. The container of milk will be used for residue on the inside of two of the plastic bags. The heat lamp will be used to generate heat onto the bread towards the possibility of mold. The thermometer is used to measure the heat that the heat lamp is producing; this is to make sure it does not get too hot. The thermometer, milk, and heat lamp are part of the independent variables. The dependent variable is the amount of mold that grows. The experimenter should begin this experiment by organizing their materials so that they are all in front of he/she. Start by opening one of the plastic bags. Over a sink, pour a small amount of milk into the bag, close it then make sure the inside is completely covered in milk residue. Then pour the milk out into the sink. Repeat this process with another bag. Carefully place a piece of bread in each of the milk-saturated bags and secure. Put these bags aside and grab the other two clean plastic bags. Put a piece of bread in each of them and close it. The two extra pieces of bread with be used without a bag, this is the control group. Next find a safe location to keep the bags of bread for the experiment, away from possible culprets such as mice. Once the location is decided, plug in the heat lamp and angle it towards the surface where the bread will sit. The head of the heat lamp should not be anymore than ten inches away from the bags of bread. After the heat lamp is situated, place a bag with milk-residue, a bag with only bread, and a single piece of bread under the heat lamp. Put the other two bags and the other single piece of bread away from the heat lamp, out of the light. Record the data of the bread at the same time everyday for as long until mold appears.

The Creation Of The Oyster E System Information Technology Essay

The Creation Of The Oyster E System Information Technology Essay Introduction TfL is the body responsible for the majority of Londons transport systems. It manages London Buses, the Underground, the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) and Croydon Tramlink, Londons road network and traffic lights, traffic management and the congestion charging scheme. It runs London River Services and regulates taxis and the private hire trade. However, National rail services are not TfLs direct responsibility except some services in London (Mezghani, 2008). This paper aims to analyse TfLs Oyster ticketing system and provide a balanced assessment of its deployment, functionality and efficiency. Further, it would aim to propose recommendations pertaining to improving operability or scalability as the case may be. Oyster e-Ticketing System TfL was created in 2000 and is the integrated body responsible Londons transport system (TfL, 2010). Oyster was launched in 2003 with more than seven million Oyster cards operating in London since. Each week, fifty-seven million journeys are made using Oyster and more than 80 per cent of all bus and tube payments are now by Oyster card. TfL processes 10 million Oyster transactions a day whilst Barclaycard MasterCard processes 40 million transactions a day- half of the worlds credit card transactions (oyster-factsheet, 2010). This further elucidates the volume and importance of the Oysters operations. The Oyster card is a contactless transport smartcard which can store period tickets as well as Pre-Pay value which can be used to pay for individual fares. It encourages public transport use by reducing barriers to access, improving bus journey times and free staff from the ticket office as well as providing an integrated ticketing platform (Inglesant and Sasse, 2005). The aim of the Oyster (as of any other e-Ticketing system) is to have an open payment scheme which promotes inter-modality, inter-operability, inter-services (e-purse), parking and road pricing, customer relationship management (CRM), network monitoring and planning, secured access and individual safety (Mezghani, 2008). TfL Fare system There are a variety of tickets for both single rides and for periods of time over various modes of transportation. A capping system guarantees that an Oyster card user will be charged no more than the cheapest combinations of single tickets, travelcards and/or bus pass that cover all journeys made that day. The cap is based on modal choice, maximum zonal journey made on the Tube and time of day. A 50p discount is given where the price is capped at the travelcard or bus pass rate. Unlike paper daily travelcards, Oyster cards capped at travelcard rates are not valid on National Rail services other than those routes which accept Oyster Pay as you go. Concessionary fares exist for children, students, elderly and physically impaired people, as well as adults on some types of benefits (Mezghani, 2008). E-ticketing When discussing e-Ticketing systems, there are a few things which should be considered mandatory. These are: The fare levels and structure The ticketing spectrum The possibilities for integration The smartcard technology The interoperability issue The business case The business model The clearing mechanisms The exploitation of data However, due to the limitations of the scope of this paper only some factors will be discussed with relevance to the oyster ticketing system. Technology The Oyster card is a contactless smartcard, with a claimed proximity range of about 8  cm (3  inches). The card operates as a RFID  system and is compatible with ISO 14443A standards; although the Oyster readers can also read other types of cards including ISO14443B and Cubic Go-Cards. From its inception until January 2010, Oyster cards were based on NXP/Philips PhilipsKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , most commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics corporation. MiFare MIFAREMIFARE is the NXP Semiconductors -owned trademark of the reputedly most widely installed contactless smart card, or proximity card, technology in the world with over 1 billion smart card chips and 10 million reader modules sold standard 1k chips provided by Giesecke Devrient Giesecke DevrientGiesecke Devrient is a German company headquartered in Munich that provides banknote and securities printing, smart cards, and cash handling systems. , Gemalto and SchlumbergerSema. Since December 2009 all new Oyster cards were produced using the MiFare DESFire  chips. From February 2010 MiFare based Oyster cards were no longer issued to the public. DESFire cards are now widely used in transport smartcard systems (Absolute Astronomy, 2010). MiFare and DESFire chips, on which the Oyster card is based, are memory smartcards, meaning that they do not have any computing power of their own. They are activated only when they are in an electromagnetic field compatible with ISO14443A. The Oyster readers provide this electromagnetic field. The readers read information from the cards, carry out computation to check whether to allow travel and to assess the payable fare and write back information to the card. Some basic information about the MiFare or DESFire chip can be read by any ISO14443A compatible reader but further, Oyster specific information cannot be read without access to the encryption used for the Oyster system. While it has been suggested that a good reader could read personal details from quite a distance there has been no evidence of anyone being able to decrypt Oyster information. By design the cards do not carry any personal information, such as names, addresses, etc. (Mezghani, 2008). As a smartcard system, the Oyster card uses a distributed settlement framework. All transactions are settled between the card and reader alone. Readers transmit the transactions to the back office in batches but there is no need for this to be done in real time. The Oyster back office system acts mainly as a record of transactions that have been completed between cards and readers. This provides a high degree of resilience in the system (Absolute Astronomy, 2010). Memory The size of the dynamic memory on a smart card into which data can be written or changed is limited, at present, both by the cost of this kind of memory (EEPROM Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) and by the physical size of the memory chip within the cards processor. Many of the first generation read-write cards offer only a few hundred bytes of EEPROM. However, commercial cards with 4, 8 and reliably up to 64K bytes are now available- albeit at a cost. Cards with 100K bytes are also emerging. 2-4K bytes of memory is sufficient to store the financial balance and contract information, plus an auditable register of around 100 of the most recent transactions (containing information such as time, location, service, charge and final balance). However, the memory is really a function of what and how many applications the card is expected to support and this largely determines the unit cost of the card (Mezghani, 2008). Security The security of public transport systems against fraud relies on many components- which the smartcard is just one. Typically, to minimize costs, system integrators will chose a relatively cheap card and concentrate the security efforts in the back office (which also is the case with Oyster). Additional encryption on the card, transaction counters, and other methods recognized in cryptography are then required to make cloned cards useless, or at least to enable the back office detect fraud in case a card is compromised, and put it on a blacklist. Systems that work with online readers only (i.e., readers with a permanent link to the back office) are easier to protect than systems that have offline readers as well, for which real-time checks are not possible and blacklists cannot be updated as frequently (Mezghani, 2008). Mezghani (2008) recalls a presentation by Henryk Plà ¶tz and Karsten Nohl at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress in December 2007 which described a partial reverse-engineering of the algorithm used in the MiFare Classic chip, and potentially revealed some insecurities in the MiFare Classic security model, which resulted in people gaining access to transport facilities without charge. Integration In the context of fare collection, it is important to distinguish between tariff integration and ticket integration. It is important to note that integrated (multi-mode, multi-operator) fare schemes are initiatives taken or at least endorsed by transport authorities to make travel by public transport easy. Fare integration is treated differently on single tickets compared to season tickets. Single tickets tend to be mode-exclusive (e.g. surface transport vs. heavy rail) while season tickets are in most cases multi-modal. Besides, the more fare-setting is controlled by the authority, the higher fare integration becomes. E-ticketing makes ticketing integration easier to implement because it can manage a more complex fare system without necessarily harmonising amongst fares of different operators or modes. Each operator or mode keeps its own single fares and the smartcard acts as a unique means of payment. In addition, the system can include rules for transfer rights in order to be more attractive. Fares integration is no longer a pre-requisite to achieving seamless travel- this is the case with TfLs Oyster, Hong Kongs Octopus and Seouls T-Money (Mezghani, 2008). Mari (2008) in an article for computing.co.uk posed the question: Will poor integration derail smart tickets? With London 2012 in sight, its quite clear it would be very difficult for visitors to move about the country without a properly integrated ticketing system. Yes, the Oyster is focused on London and transportation for London. However, it is an opportunity to generate extra income via commissions and TfLs position is important as it is a leader in the smart e-Ticketing field. Interoperability The term interoperability can create confusion, since it can be defined in more than one way. Standardisation is an important concern in particular when it deals with interoperability. In this respect, several initiatives have been developed at national level in order to define interoperable standard specifications, e.g. ITSO standard in the UK and VDV Kernapplikations in Germany. They have jointly developed some basic concepts for European e-ticketing. A suite of three standards which serve as a generic framework has been published: a standard for data elements (EN 1545), a standard for a framework for interoperable ticketing (EN 15320, also known as IOPTA Interoperable Public Transport Application), and a basic standard for the functional interoperable fare management system architecture (ISO 24014-1, also known as IFM SA) which was additionally jointly developed with US and Japanese experts. According to IFM system architecture, there are four different levels of the interoperabil ity concept (Mezghani, 2008). This is believed to be a new gestalt in the field of smartcard e-Ticketing and will eventually become the modus operandi for all e-Ticketing technologies. Below is an illustration of the interoperable architecture applied to the Helsinki e-Ticketing system. Source: www.emta.com/IMG/pdf/EMTA-Ticketing.pdf Standardization ITSO started in 1998 and was incorporated in 2001. Its a company whose membership covers the width of the Transport arena; including transport operators (both bus and train operating companies), suppliers to the industry, local authorities and public transport executives. Supported by the Department for Transport, ITSO links with major transport industry organizations and established smartcard schemes in the UK and overseas. Having evolved from the initiative of various UK Passenger Transport Authorities who were concerned with  the lack of standards for interoperable smartcard ticketing,  ITSOs objective is to maintain and develop the ITSO Specification; to  operate and manage an interoperable smart media environment and  to facilitate and support development of interoperable smart ticketing schemes that comply with the ITSO Specification (ITSO, 2010). TfL has been working with the ITSO since 2006 and is currently expanding its interoperability through various products provided by the organization. ITSO supports the following Product Types: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP0: Private Application à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP2: Stored Value à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP3, 17: Loyalty à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP4, 5: Charge to Account à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP14, 16: Entitlement and ID à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP22, 23, 24: Pre-defined Tickets à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP25: Voucher à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP26: Tolling à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP27, 28, 29: Space-saving Tickets à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢TYP34: Transient Ticket The diagrams below illustrate the structure of the ITSO system and its benefits. ITSO System Overview. Source:www.ctst.com/CTST08/pdf/Hochfield.pdf ITSO stored value proposition Source: http://www.itso.org.uk/page45/About%20ITSO/ Weinstein (2009) elucidates the options Oyster has in expanding its scope and maintaining efficiency by stating the need to look outward; especially at other e-Ticketing systems around the world and learn from advancement in these systems or the transport schemes put in place. The EMV standard could be a path to inter-operability as it uses global networks that already exist and that work effectively every day for millions of purchases (Weinstein, 2009). Conclusion There are several reasons transport authorities introduce or re-model e-Ticketing systems. However, they do not have the same priorities. With EMV gradually gaining ground, Oyster is constantly striving to ease customer experience as well as strengthen its competitive advantage. However, the main focal point for the Oyster should be scalability. This ensures seamless integration when new technology is introduced and platform independence as a result of interoperability. It also aids data mining which serves as input for future modelling and design. Scalability should, above anything, be the primary focus of Oyster as it forecasts.

Placement Reflection On Caring For The Dying Nursing Essay

Placement Reflection On Caring For The Dying Nursing Essay When I told people that I was going to do my practicum with people who are dying I felt like an alien. And yet death is a part of the life process. Death is something that touches every individual and family but the reality is that we live in a contemporary death denying culture. To confirm this fact, numerous expressions are used to describe dying. To conceal fear of death people use euphemisms like, gone to meet his or her maker, gone on to a better place, passed on and numerous other expressions that do not engage the word died. The idea of doing my practicum at a hospice excited me because it was a new domain for me. I was ready and eager to apply theories learned into a practical setting. My placement experience provided me insight that as a social worker one is never better prepared to deal with death of a client or even ones impending death. I watched clients grapple with mental and emotional turmoil that comes with having a terminal illness and my religious perspective shifte d. While working with individuals who are dying can be complicated and stressful, it provided potential to bring countless personal and professional rewards which helped me challenge my own mortality. Philip Aziz Centre is a home hospice created as an alternative discourse addressing service users needs beyond gender or medical diagnosis. Services provided include practical, physical, emotional and spiritual support for people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life threatening illnesses. Because bureaucracy is one of the tools of development that organizes and structures operations of any efficient agency, my placement is no exception. Autonomy of both worker and client is carefully regulated in relation to specific rules of behaviour. Hence, the importance of analyzing the potential impact organizations may have to exert power and influence on employees and clients (Handy, 1997). My placement agency like any other hierarchical bureaucracy provides both social care and social control. During my first few weeks, I recall being sceptical and uncomfortable about the spiritual component. This was because of an incident that happened a few weeks into my placement. I was assigned to work with the Chaplain to organize a retreat for a group of terminally ill clients who access spiritual care services from the agency. I started to increasingly feel uncomfortable when the Chaplain started to make unreasonable demands on me; that she wanted to pray for me. Ogbor (2001) contends corporate culture can be used to reinforce informal norms and can become an expectation on the part of employees that would be otherwise lost (p.594). Indeed, I felt lost in this religious dilemma and felt like I was in what Ogbor refers to as psychic prison. A mechanism often constructed by individuals to protect against internal tensions. It occurred to me that I was not only losing my sense of self but my identity was being manipulated through the prayer rituals. Couzen (2005) citing Foucault states that through norms individuals can be programmed by social institutions. This is because once there is dominance normalization makes dominance invisible. Hence, I found myself assimilating into the assigned organizational religious cultural values and norms. When I reflected on the theories of corporate hegemony, I became aware of the intersections of whiteness and the cultural imposition that was taking place. Why was I succumbing to what appeared as religious indoctrination? Was I being manipulated? Institutional patterns operate as techniques of power and domination (Ogbor, 2001). The imbalance of power was emotionally unsettling. Using Foucaults work to examine self-regulation, I take full responsibility for self-regulating and being complicit in my own domination. My failure to be critical about ideological practices that went against my personal beliefs and values gave the Chaplain permission to legitimize and enforce the prayer rituals. Thu s, techniques of domination intersect with self to produce what Foucault describes as governmentality. . The self-imposed surveillance constituted a form of internalized panopticon (Ogbor, 2001). As a result, self-oppression and conformity was hindering my project of freedom. My consciousness was provoked by this realization. The harboured angry feelings turned me into an ugly person. Unable to contain the anger, the situation exploded into a nasty confrontation with the Chaplain. Imagining that the Chaplain perceived me as a transgressor requiring to be saved by religion, I became what Zimbardo (1971) describes as a dangerous prisoner. I lashed out at the Chaplin; yelling and accusing her of trying to be self-righteous and ethnocentric. I regret this verbal altercation because it was not professional on my part. In retrospect, I realize that the factors influencing my angry reaction ran deeper and were political. I felt that as a person of colour, the Chaplain was using the historical colonial weapon of religion to save me from myself. I grew up during the apartheid and religion was sh oved down my throat from childhood until high school. Religion then was used as an ideological tool to teach Africans morals and civility. Thus, the very idea that the Chaplain may have been reproducing my painful colonial past made my blood churn. It is through such learning processes that my individual colonial past and fears manifest into a defence mechanism. This defence mechanism often times projects the deep colonial scars that lie deep inside. Now, I am aware that the residue of what happened in the past can mar my social interactions. For the most part, I have spent my life focussing on my painful colonial experiences of being treated as the Other and reacting negatively. I am aware that when a white person speaks I find myself analyzing every single word just to ensure that there are no racial connotations. This is a problem because it means that I enter into this conversation with strong biases and prejudice. I realize the need to look beyond my physical and psychological trauma in order to move forward. Nonetheless, I am encouraged by Bell Hooks (1990) thesis in Choosing the margin. Through practice, I have learned that we choose our marginal identities but are not confined to these rigid positions. I admit that I ha ve to change the way I speak. My language should not bind or fence in my dominator. Because words have meaning, I have to engage in meaningful and respectful dialogue. When the conflict with Chaplain escalated, I recalled the words of one of my professors in College that: conflict was healthy and a normal part of any human relationship. I knew that allowing conflict to escalate can limit opportunities to engage in open and respectful dialogue. But, for some strange reason, I allowed the conflict to fester for too long. I lost the learned key conflict resolution principles of using the I statements rather that you statements. In fact, I cast blame on the Chaplain and turned myself into a victim; a principle we learned in the first year that it did not exist because power is everywhere. A fact I later disproved by exercising negative power through yelling at the Chaplin. Lessons from Foucault came into focus that power is not always repressive because it is relational. Eventually, I took ownership of my role in this particular conflict, an opportunity that enabled me to step back from the emotional attachments that went with the religious disagreemen t. This introspection allowed me to seek help from my Faculty Field Supervisor. It was after my meeting with my Faculty Supervisor that I began to reflect on my own behaviour in the whole process. I took ownership and apologized to the Chaplain for behaving in an unprofessional manner. I was able to convey to her my feelings about the situation and the matter was resolved amicably. She in turn apologized because she had not realized the implication of her behaviour. She immediately stopped bringing the idea of praying for me in our work relationship; a decision that I appreciated because it allowed my individuality and growth in my practicum. I must admit that this conflict was a driving force for my improved performance in my practicum. My relationship with the Chaplain turned into a healthy and positive experience which led to better team decisions and more creative ideas. My Faculty Adviser helped me realize the importance of taking a step back before reacting. In our meeting, I recall him advising me to use a critical reflective approach as a tool to resolve practice dilemmas in a constructive way. This useful advice was turned a somewhat poisoned environment into an amenable situation. Through dialogue this situation was resolved and my relationship with the Chaplain became cordial. In fact, she became one of the people I sought advice from as I encountered my clients struggling with the meaning of life after a terminal diagnosis. Through this experience, I gained insight into my workplace, my colleagues and myself. I was able to identify my own assumptions and biases about religion which was interfering with my professional practice. I have learned that spirituality is an essential component of the bio-psycho-social framework particularly in palliative care. Identifying spiritual assets and strengths can help clients cope with or solve problems. The conflict with the Chaplain was pivotal in my self-awareness and consciousness raising as I pursued my journey with Grace, a fifty year old woman battling terminal cancer. My journey with Grace (pseudonym) gave me prose to think about the meaning of life. As a social worker, my client taught me that when a life threatening illness such as cancer confronts us, it is the realities of death and questions about life that prompt us to step back from our lives including theory. Ironically, my perspective on realities of implications of a terminal illness emerged from spiritual and philosophical orientation. It became evident that the end of life was one of the most important times for a social worker to address spirituality. In this process, I discovered that spirituality is an essential yet undeveloped component of cultural competence. My interaction with my client led me to examine spirituality as a form of cultural competence. Spirituality represents a potential influence on emotional well-being of the cancer patient as well as the family members or caregivers. As Graces cancer progressed she confronted me with a myriad of questions. When Grace said why me? Why now? My social work textbooks could not provide practical solutions. What do you tell someone asking you why she is dying? At that moment, I realized that cancer causes not only physical but mental, emotional and spiritual suffering. I discovered that some clients find safety in discussing spiritual issues with a social worker because of the professions lack of alignment with a specific religious or spiritual base (Healy, 2001). However, as a social worker, I felt challenged because my training does not incorporate the topic of spirituality as part of service provision. But, through our interactions, Grace was able to teach me that spirituality was in fact a significant part of ones cultural identity and can be a source of healing. Healy (2001) provides helpful account of benefits of spirituality in palliative care. My experience at Philip Aziz made me aware of the importance of spirituality in social work practice. Healy argues spiritual issues are often apparent in palliative care and require social work to extend practice which may at times be limiting because of opposition by some proponents who argue that religious and spiritual care are incompatible with the image of modern profession (p.85). The incident described above, allowed me to reflect on my own practice and confusion arising from my failure to understand the difference between spirituality and religion. Working with Grace raised my consciousness in understanding that spirituality refers to search for meaning and mutually fulfilling relationships. Religion on the other hand is often an organized activity for the expression of faith. This distinction helped me to be reflexive and draw on social work theory to come up with creative solutions to help my client. I was able to explore a broad range of practice options for my client. For example, conducting a needs assessment helped to identify my clients strengths and capacities that were evidently invisible because of my resistance to spirituality as a form of intervention. Despite the fact that cancer was ravaging her body, Grace was able to let me know that her priority need was working on spiritual distress she was experiencing. Integrating spirituality in my work practice presented incredible effective cross cultural communication techniques in palliative care. Using the strength perspective framework, she was able to articulate her hopes for the future in our relationship. I discarded my idea of seeking to remedy her personal cancer pathology and focussed on her need. Our relationship blossomed until Grace died peacefully on February 26, 2010. Because Grace was Jewish, I had the honour to be invited by the family to what is called a Shiva, an occasion for family and close friends only. I learnt that in Judaism, a person mourns for a relative in seven stages. The mourners sit on low stools throughout that period to symbolize the mourners awareness that life has changed. The low chairs shows desire to be close to the earth in which the loved one was buried. Finally, I concluded that social work and spirituality had much to learn from each other. I learnt that death is central to the meaning of human life and provides a backdrop against which life is lived. Throughout this process, my greatest learning outcome came from understanding that as a social worker my role is not to work miracles but to provide support and actively listen. To help people discover their own strength rather than an attitude of rescuing them. I will value taking fifteen minutes of my every day to reflect on how my actions negatively or positively impact everyone I come into contact with. This reflective process will enable me to avoid pointing fingers to other but at myself and find ways to change whatever needs to be improved.

Ivan Denisovich Essay -- Social Issues, Poverty, War

The crimes of Stalinism in Europe are endless. The experience of the people who lived under the Soviet regime after the end of World War II lived in a time of terror, hopelessness and misery. For Soviet citizens and the prisoners life was miserable. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a short novel written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is a story about the one day in the life of a person caught between the chaos of the war and the faceless entity that controls their lives. The story takes place somewhere in Siberia in 1951 at a â€Å"special† (forced labor) camp. Ivan is sent here after escaping from the Germans that captured him and some other men on the northwest front. Due to the control and paranoia of Stalinism, instead of being welcomed as a hero, he is accused of being a spy for the Germans and is forced to â€Å"confess† or be killed (71). During this one day of Ivan’s life the iron clad control Stalin has is apparent in daily life and there are little touches of humanity, faith and hope that give him and the others on the 104th the strength to get through each day at the camp. Ivan is representative of mainstream Soviet society; he is an uneducated, peasant Russian man. Ivan has an average name and does not aspire for much and his needs are fairly simple. The first suggestion of Ivan being uneducated is at the beginning of the story when Ivan goes to the dispensary in hopes of getting out of work for few days. From the masonry work that the squadron does during the day we know that Ivan is a skilled laborer. The other prisoners in his squadron long for freedom but Ivan views freedom as home. Ivan received a sentence of ten years but learns later that there is a chance that they could give him another term at the camp or he woul... ...world and after the work day ends continues to work. This is only space that Ivan feels he can claims as his own. The prisoners quietly fight the system by holding onto anything that makes them feel they still have individuality and control. Solzhenitsyn illustrates the life of an average Soviet citizen. Stalin controlled everything about a person’s private and public life. Individuality was taken away through various methods such as making giving numbers instead of names and taking away personal belongings. Families were torn apart by sending men away to camps and letters were censored. People were deprived of all things that made them feel human. The story emphasizes the importance of having faith to endure hard times and to keep the human spirit intact even in one of the most ominous regimes in history. Ivan concludes that it was â€Å"almost a happy day† (p 159).

The Progress of Human Rights Reform in Turkey Essay example -- Politic

The Progress of Human Rights Reform in Turkey Throughout the last half-century of American politics, the Presidents of the United States have been more susceptible to public attack and scorn than ever before in our history. Through events such as Nixon's Watergate, Clinton's impeachment, and the Bush wars the public has voiced scathing criticism of our national leaders without fear of personal harm. People in America know that they can openly criticize anyone and anything in our country including our president or the pillars of our country's history like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, or even our first president George Washington. Americans do not think much about human rights because they are interlaced into the very fabric of our society. However, such rights and freedoms are not afforded to all people, and in some countries, like Turkey, a person could be killed or tortured for simply criticizing their government. Turkey is an interesting nation because in many ways it represents the divide between Western Judeo-Christian societies and Middle Eastern Islamic societies. In fact, since the beginning of the 1900's, Turkey has always been the place where Europe trails off, and another reality, another world begins.[i] As a result, it possesses many different tenets that form an amalgam within their culture, government, and everyday life. For many years Turkey and human rights were tantamount to oil and water so in order to examine their progress we must consider the short history of Turkey as a country, Turkey?s current status, and the impact of the European Union. Turkey?s brief history ?Since being founded on July 24, 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the self-proclaimed ?Father of the Turks?, Turkey?s ... ...ic, p.96. [xiii] Kilic, p.97. [xiv] Richard F. Nyrop ed., Turkey a Country Study (Washington: American, 1980), p. 188. [xv] Kilic, p. 98. [xvi] Pope, p. 152. [xvii] Pope, p. 152. [xviii] Kilic, p. 99. [xix] Kilic, p. 95. [xx] Kilic, p. 101. [xxi] Great-if they really happen; Turkey?s reforms, The Economist, August 10, 2002, pNA. [xxii] Great-if they really happen; Turkey?s reforms. [xxiii] Turkey?s human rights, The Economist, September 4, 1999, p. 50. [xxiv] Owen Matthews and Sami Kohen, Glasnost in the Air, Newsweek International, July 14, 2003, p. 33. [xxv] Matthews and Kohen, p. 33. [xxvi] Matthews and Kohen, p. 33. [xxvii] Matthews and Kohen, p. 33. [xxviii] Great- if they really happen; Turkey?s reforms. [xxix] Romano, p.12. [xxx] Matthews and Kohen, p. 33. [xxxi] Pope, p. 256. [xxxii] Kilic, p. 104.

Models for Change Business Process Reengineering Essay

Assess Business Strategy Like many other approaches, BPR claims to align organisation change (and IT development) with business strategy. This is important because BPR concentrates of improving processes which are of primary strategic importance. The assumption is that strategy is already determined, and that it is externally focussed, dealing with customers, products, suppliers and markets. BPR is quite distinct from strategic planning. Select Processes Here we choose those processes on which we will concentrate our reengineering effort. This choice involves a number of steps. Identify Major Processes A process as â€Å"a structured,measured set of activities designed to produce a specified output for a particular customer or market, process is â€Å"an interrelated series of activities that convert business inputs into business outputs (by changing the state of relevant business entities)†. Determine Process Boundaries This is easy to say and hard to do. Some processes, such as product manufacture, are fairly obvious, though there may be doubt whether to include activities such as materials procurement within this process. Sometimes the boundaries between processes which follow one another (eg marketing and sales, delivery and installation) are hard to agree. Processes which involve more than one company can also cause boundary problems. Assess Strategic Relevance Usually reengineering will concentrate on a small number of processes. This may seem suboptimal, but provided the processes chosen are complete (not parts of processes) and the reengineering is thorough, a flow-on effect will probably mean that unsatisfactory neighbouring processes will soon become candidates for redesign. So we should begin with those processes which are most critical to the organisation’s strategy. At UTS, for instance, the major strategy might be to obtain more money from industry. Processes directly contributing to this strategy would be good candidates for reengineering. Qualify Culture and Politics This step (which is even less quantifiable than the others) assesses the culture and politics of the organisational units performing activities within the process, and how these units are viewed in wider organisational politics and culture. Processes in a medical school, for instance, may be harder to reengineer than those in a business school, both because the medical school places a high value on its independence and because it is highly regarded by the rest of the university (or even society). Since successful reengineering ultimately depends on the cooperation of those performing the process, it is better to deal with processes where the culture and politics are favourable. Creating a Process Vision â€Å"Creating a strong and sustained linkage between strategy and the way work is done is an enduring challenge in complex organizations. Because business processes define how work is done, we are dealing with the relationship between strategy and processes.In BPR, as in all design work, creating the vision is the crucial stage; and it is also the least structured. In assessing strategy and selecting processes we were trying to understand things which (in theory) already exist. Similarly when we come to assess existing processes and resources. For design and implementation we may be helped by guidelines, methodologies and examples of similar systems. But in creating a vision we are more or less on our own. There are a number of techniques, which are known to help in the creative process. When working on process visions it is also helpful to consider in which areas of the business we wish to redesign processes. Davenport deals with two aspects of vision creation: the search for a vi sion and vision characteristics. Vision – search Process visons must be related to strategy, so we may look to the organisation’s strategy for inspiration. This assumes that the strategy is sufficiently specific to give a sense of direction (eg â€Å"improve quality of service to regular customers† rather than â€Å"improve quality†). Thinking about strategy also keeps the vision search at the right level – broad but specific. Because much BPR work supports a customer focused strategy, it is important to have customer input to the vision. More generally, the â€Å"customer† is the one receiving the business output, and this includes internal customers; it is important that we know the output is â€Å"right† before we start working out how to produce it. Benchmarking, in the context of creating a project, means seeing how other people do it. This is related to the idea of adopting â€Å"best practice†, though if we want competitive advantage we may have to do better than â€Å"best†; nevertheless, it is good to find out what is best so far. We are looking for ideas, not imitating, so we may look for benchmarks in quite different types of organisation; in fact this may be easier, since our direct competitors may not wish to reveal their â€Å"best† practice to us. Vision – objectives and attributes â€Å"Process visions, like strategies, should be easy to communicate to the organization, no threatening to those who must implement (or who are affected by) them, and as inspirational as measurable targets can be.† [Davenport,p119] The process vision shows what we want our new process to do and to a very limited extent how it will do it. These are respectively the process objectives and attributes. The objectives should have a customer or business focus – they must truly be concerned with outcome. They must according to all the experts be measurable – we must be able to tell how we have done. And they should be simple and non-contradicty – we don’t want a long list of competing objectives, nor objectives whose measures are only comprehensible to a mathematician, economist or accountant. Typical objectives would be â€Å"reduce delivery time by 50%† or â€Å"double the number of potential customers contacted per month†. The attributes indicate how we intend to achieve the objectives, perhaps in terms of technology or general principles. It is somewhat unusual to develop objectives and means simultaneously but since BPR is aiming for radical objectives it is necessary to have some indication of how they will be achieved before management will be prepared to commit to the design phase. Notice that it is important at this stage to consider a variety of means before the vision is finalised. Adding attributes to our objectives might give â€Å"reduce delivery time by 50% by outsourcing delivery services† or â€Å"use to internet to double the number of potential customers contacted per month without increasing staff†. Davenport points out that radical change will only be achieved by setting ambitious objectives – â€Å"creativity must be encouraged by setting impossible goals†. Understand and Improve Existing Processes Some proponents of BPR advocate starting with a â€Å"clean slate† but most (including Davenport) recommend that we spend time studying existing processes. There are a number of reasons for this: †¢People in the organisations (and customers) will use language based on the existing processes. We need to use this language to explain our proposals. †¢When implementing the new processes we will have to plan change from the current situation – the existing processes. †¢The existing processes may be causing problems which we could easily repeat if we do not understand them. Existing processes may also contain activities for avoiding problems which we might not anticipate. †¢The existing processes are the base from which we measure improvement. Studying the existing processes includes the following activities: †¢The current process flow is described using any suitable diagramming method. Such a method should indicate the sequence of activities, trigger events, time taken for each activity and any buffering delays. †¢The current process is evaluated against the new objectives and assessed for conformance to the new attributes. †¢Problems with the current process are identified. It is important to remember that reengneering is not meant simply to rationalize existing processes. †¢Short term improvements to the current processes are proposed. It is not advisable to postpone simple improvements until complete reengineering is done. Assess Social and Technical Resources In this step we judge whether we have the resources available to proceed with the project. â€Å"Social resources† refer to the organisation and the people in it. Is the organisation used to change? Are there key supporters of BPR? Does the organisation have a tradition of team work and open discussion? Is there an atmosphere of trust? What skills are available? Are people willing to learn? If social resources appear to be inadequate, they will need to be developed before or during the reengineering project. The same applies to technical resources, though these are easier to judge. Is appropriate technology available to support the new processes? This means hardware, software and skilled people. Limitations particularly occur with network infrastructure. Again, missing capabilities will have to be developed, although in this case (unlike social resources) outsourcing is a possibility. Design and Implement New Processes Design and implementation of the new processes can use any suitable methodology, but a number of points need to be remembered. †¢Since BPR is performance oriented the methodology must be able to predict performance during design. †¢BPR projects are meant to be done quickly – the methodology should support this. †¢Stakeholders (both customers and those who will be operating the process) must be involved. †¢We are looking for radical design as well as radical vision so there will be more brainstorming. †¢For any design proposal we must be able to assess feasibility, risk and benefit. †¢It would be difficult to achieve the previous objectives unless the methodology was strongly based on prototyping. 5 stages of reengineering: †¢preparation †¢identification †¢vision †¢design – technical, social †¢transformation These stages are very similar to Davenport’s, although they go into more detail about process modelling. Manganelli pays more attention to improving existing processes and his methodology has more emphasis on entities rather than processes – ie it has more of a data base flavour. Davenport (1993) notes that Quality management, often referred to as total quality management (TQM) or continuous improvement, refers to programs and initiatives that emphasize incremental improvement in work processes and outputs over an open-ended period of time. In contrast, Reengineering, also known as business process redesign or process innovation, refers to discrete initiatives that are intended to achieve radically redesigned and improved work processes in a bounded time frame. Contrast between the two is provided by Davenport (1993):

Mogen Inc. Essay

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In 2006, Merrill Lynch become the lead book runner for a $5 billion convertible bond issue for MoGen, Inc., which was the single-largest convertible bond issuance in history. Merrill Lynch’s Equity Derivatives Group needed to convince MoGen’s management of the best coupon rate and conversion premium for MoGen and the potential investors in the issue. BACKGROUND MoGen, Inc was one of the leading company in the biotechnology industry. MoGen (Molecular Genetics) emerged with two of the first biologically derrived human therapeutic drugs that helped to offset the damaging effects from chemotherapy for cancer patients undergoing treatment. This products were the first â€Å"blockbuster† drugs to emerge from the nascent biotechnology industry. SWOT ANALYSIS 1.Strength : †¢Leading company in biotechnology industry. †¢Succesfully treating the patient as well as making the company competitive leader in drug quality. †¢Credit rating A+ 2.Opportunity : †¢Tren gaya hidup masyarakat yang mulai mementingkan kesehatan †¢Munculnya berbagai gangguan kesehatan di zaman modern 3.Threat : †¢Faced uncertainty of new product creation. †¢Competitive threat of follow-on biologics or â€Å"biosimilar† began emerging.