GM Food Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

GM Food - Essay Example estimates that over 700 million people from 79 middle and low income countries suffer from food insecurity, with the poorest countries suffering the most. Globally, about an eighth of the population suffers from chronic hunger and do not regularly get enough food to actively engage in life’s activities. Countries that have improved their food security measures have leveraged on modern technology to achieve their objectives. One such technology that has been used to improve food production is referred to as genetic modification. As defined by Freedman, genetic modification involves the scientific alteration of characteristics of organisms, encompassing both animals and plants, through removal or addition of genes (85). In crops, Shaw observes that biochemical changes would be induced through inserting or expressing alien cells leading to the difference in metabolites observed in genetically modified, GM foods and their non-GM counterparts (278). This usually aims at developing new traits considered as desirable in these organisms, including higher yield, herbicide resistance, improved nutritional qualities and pest protection among others. With the criticisms against GM foods proven to be mere fears, GM foods should be adopted globally as an effective strategy to enhance food security. Of prime importance to the world is the fact that GM foods increase food supply. Genetic modification leads to development of seeds that produce high yields. Freedman gives evidence to this noting that through genetic modification, humans have been able to increase the yield of cotton, soy and corn by a range of between 20% and 30% (86). Furthermore, a majority of GM crops are able to withstand the current harsh climatic conditions attributed to global warming. These crops have the ability to withstand salty land, dryness, diseases, insects and a wide range of herbicides. They are also able to withstand extreme temperatures (Shaw 256). Therefore, adoption of GM foods into our food

Synchronization Of Federal And Dod Procurement Policies And Ethical Standards Essay Example for Free

Synchronization Of Federal And Dod Procurement Policies And Ethical Standards Essay The United States is not just admired of its technological advancement, its economic status and its military power but also of its sound and tight laws including its internal rules and regulations covering government agencies. In the case of the Department of Defense, Federal Laws and rules were kept updated as much as possible in the sense that revisions of internal policies were carried out. New versions of rules and regulations kept on coming in with reference to new laws or executive orders being approved and released. The biggest problem however, as it has also been with other agencies is that there is indeed a lack of strict implementation of such rules and regulations. This problem is proven by the increasing number of fraud cases in the procurement transactions undergone by the DOD. In order for us to find the flaw on the implementation system, let us evaluate the performance of the agencies wherein policy implementation on DOD were being delegated and entrusted. These agencies were not merely responsible for the implementation of the policies and procedures, specifically on procurement process but also for its monitoring. Let us closely look into the Office of the Government Ethics which is, according to Executive Order 12731, will be responsible for the administration of Principles Of Ethical Conduct For Government Officers And Employees. Specifically, EO 12731 (Section 201) should be administered by: (a) Promulgating, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Office of Personnel Management, regulations that establish a single, comprehensive, and clear set of executive-branch standards of conduct that shall be objective, reasonable, and enforceable. b) Developing, disseminating, and periodically updating an ethics manual for employees of the executive branch describing the applicable statutes, rules, decisions, and policies. (c) Promulgating, with the concurrence of the Attorney General, regulations interpreting the provisions of the post-employment statute, section 207 of title 18, United States Code; the general conflict-of-interest statute, section 208 of title 18, United States Code; and the statute prohibiting supplementation of salaries, section 209 of title 18, United States Code. d) Promulgating, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Office of Personnel Management, the regulations establishing a system of nonpublic (confidential) financial disclosure by executive branch employees to complement the system of public disclosure under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. Such regulations shall include criteria to guide agencies in determining which employees shall submit these reports. (e) Ensuring that any implementing regulations issued by agencies under this order are consistent with and promulgated in accordance with this order.  The main point of determining the responsibilities of the Office of the Government Ethics is to have a clear basis of determining who is supposed to be overseeing the ethical policies and the implementation thereof. Since this office has been specially designated for such a responsibility, it is expected that it should have specially designed delegation and communication tools of coordinating such policies to other agencies under it. The methods are clear: promulgation, delegation, consultation and dissemination of the policies and procedures with other agencies and of course DOD is not an exemption. It is therefore but fair to conclude that communication tools and the power to use them are available at anytime for the Office of the Government of Ethics to use for synchronizing policies throughout all agencies. Section 301 of Executive Order 12731 specifies how synchronization of ethical policies and standards should be done through the specifications of the responsibilities of the Office of the Government of Ethics. This section directs the agency to : a) Supplement, as necessary and appropriate, the comprehensive executive branch-wide regulations of the Office of Government Ethics, with regulations of special applicability to the particular functions and activities of that agency. Any supplementary agency regulations shall be prepared as addenda to the branch-wide regulations and promulgated jointly with the Office of Government Ethics, at the agencys expense, for inclusion in Title 5 of the Code of Federal Regulations. (b) Ensure the review by all employees of this order and regulations promulgated pursuant to the order. c) Coordinate with the Office of Government Ethics in developing annual agency ethics training plans. Such training shall include mandatory annual briefings on ethics and standards of conduct for all employees appointed by the President, all employees in the Executive Office of the President, all officials required to file public or nonpublic financial disclosure reports, all employees who are contracting officers and procurement officials, and any other employees designated by the agency head. d) Where practicable, consult formally or informally with the Office of Government Ethics prior to granting any exemption under section 208 of title 18, United States Code, and provide the Director of the Office of Government Ethics a copy of any exemption granted. (e) Ensure that the rank, responsibilities, authority, staffing, and resources of the Designated Agency Ethics Official are sufficient to ensure the effectiveness of the agency ethics program. Support should include the provision of a separate budget line item for ethics activities, where practicable. The enumeration of such responsibilities appears to be just a matter of written rules for federal agencies. This is especially in the procurement process where more and more people are getting involved in procurement fraud. Every year, millions and millions of dollars are being recovered by the Department of Justice for running after the contractors and DOD personnel who acted in bad faith. Looking at the brighter side of things however, it can be stipulated that such events can be considered an indicator that these policies and rules on ethical standards are now being implemented quite well. Either way, we cannot consider each effort to be successful not until we have the occurrences of fraud lessen to a considerable amount. What should always be the goal is zero tolerance of any type of fraud. The synchronization efforts of the federal government must go beyond the circle of agencies. It is always recommended that the lawmakers be vigilant enough in evaluating every policy and laws governing the federal procurement process. It is their job to look into the flaws in the laws and recommend better and more efficient laws to be implemented. To be fair with enforcement agencies, policies are now in the process of strict implementation as more and more efforts are being done to revise and tighten procurement rules especially in contracting data. The government’s central repository of contracting data has long been criticized for being incomplete and inaccurate. Last year, the Office of Management and Budget launched an effort to clean up what gets fed into the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) by directing agencies to sample their data for accuracy. The Defense Department is still working on validating its data. Depending on the agency, data is accurately entered into FPDS between 85 percent and 100 percent of the time. Automated reporting has made it easier for agencies to load data into the system and reduced the errors associated with manual entry under the old system. But the volume of contracts has grown, making the issue of validating data more important and more challenging. While the quality of the data in the database is improving, there are still problems, say some critics who use FPDS regularly. Even with automated reporting and validation steps, people entering data still make mistakes the current software can’t catch. The rate the accuracy of the data is a seven out of 10. The new certification requirement has raised the importance of data accuracy to the highest levels of management. Agencies are much more focused on getting data right than they have been in the past. With more than $400 billion spent through procurements each year, the data is critical to managing functions and determining the type of staffing needed, OMB procurement policy chief, in a March memo to agencies. The launch of the federal spending Web site, USASpending. gov, in December has given new insight into the accuracy concerns with FPDS. As of Jan. 31, 6 percent, or $23 billion, of the 2007 contract dollars reported in the system had an unknown level of competition, which means a box in FPDS didn’t get checked. The inaccuracies found in FPDS come from the push to be current, which meant GSA had to relax some of the verification rules. The government had the option of waiting months for perfect data or entering data as contracts were awarded to provide transparency. GSA is seeking smarter validation technologies when it upgrades to the next generation of FPDS in 2010. Instead of simply telling users which fields in their system are missing, GSA hopes to create a system where fields can be compared to make sure the data makes sense, Fornecker said. For example, the system would be able to flag a $6 billion award to a small business or question conflicting information, such as when a contract award is labeled as â€Å"not competed† even though two or more bids were received. The Defense Department won’t have an assessment of the accuracy of its data until spring, said Shay Assad, the department’s procurement policy chief. Software bugs and missing data fields in FPDS were causing some inaccuracies, and those are being fixed, Assad said. The biggest cause for inaccurate data is human error, but system errors also play a role. For example, the Energy Department reported that between 8 percent and 17 percent of its errors came from how FPDS interpreted the data sent by its contract writing system. The remaining errors were human errors, according to the Energy report. The ever-popular multiple-award contracts — long praised by acquisition professionals and contractors as a speedy way to get competitively priced goods and services without threat of protest — are about to get a makeover. The conference report for the Defense authorization bill includes a new rule that would give contractors who are eligible to bid on a multiple-award contract order the right to protest an order worth more than $10 million. The White House and industry have opposed this provision, claiming it would promote unnecessary litigation. Contracting officers would also be prohibited from awarding a task order worth more than $100 million to a single contractor without written justification, further limiting how the contracts are used. The conference report also includes another controversial provision that would require agencies to report all critical inspector general audit findings, including questioned costs, to Congress. Industry groups have opposed this provision saying it could misrepresent routine audit questions and misunderstandings as major contracting irregularities. Other contracting provisions in the bill include: new associate administrator position within the Office of Management and Budget’s procurement policy office that will be dedicated to acquisition work force programs, permanent acquisition work force training fund, and contingency contracting training for people outside the acquisition profession including whistleblower rights for contractor employees. One more thing to reconsider in the policies synchronization is training needs. A yet-unreleased survey of government acquisition employees shows the work force needs more training in contract negotiations, program management and performance-based contracting, a White House official said today. OMB is working with Federal Acquisition Institute and the Defense Acquisition Institute to craft training that targets these and other areas identified in the survey, he said. OMB has approached Congress to renew procurement offices’ direct hire authority, which expired on Sept. 30, to allow agencies to quickly fill these critical positions, he said. OMB is also encouraging agencies to rehire retirees to train and mentor new workers and fill openings. Apart from training rules synchronization, the Department of Defense is also accused of discrimination is hiring or employment procedures including contract awarding against minorities and women. Still, this issue is an important consideration in ethical rules and standards set by the Federal Government. There are critics in an online publication that pinpoints the following areas of improvement in relation to ethical rules synchronization: Reorganization: Some observers emphasize the need to rationalize and coordinate the web of federal programs serving minority- and women-owned firms. For example, in 1992 the U. S. Commission on Minority Business recommended the creation within the Commerce Department of an Administration for the Development of Historically Underutilized Businesses which would assume SBAs responsibilities. Graduation: The program now requires graduation after nine years, and has phased requirements of non-8(a) and non-federal business mix designed to wean firms from sheltered competition and dependency on federal contracting. In February 1995, of the 1,038 firms in the fifth through ninth year of  §8(a) participation, nearly two-thirds met or exceeded the minimum non-8(a) business levels. Some observers have emphasized the need for analogous graduation and business-mix requirements in the DOD and DOT programs. Regional/Sectoral Concentration: Our analysis found SDB contracts and limited competition concentrated in certain industries and regions, which is undesirable for minority and non-minority firms alike. For example, while DODs overall goal for SDBs was only 5 percent, more than 35 percent of all DOD construction awards went to SDBs, and more than two-thirds of these were awarded under sheltered competition. Moreover, in ten States, more than 40 percent of all construction contracts awarded to small business was awarded to SDBs. This concentration occurs at particular sites as well, where in rare instances virtually all small business contracting is with SDBs. On the other hand, some degree of sectoral concentration in SDB procurements is inevitable to balance the many sites and sub-industries with virtually no SDB participation, and huge procurements for weapons systems and the like, for which no SDBs are available as prime contractors, and still too few as major subcontractors. Additional efforts are clearly needed to expand SDB opportunities more broadly. Self-Certification: Because DODs program is based on self-certification by SDBs, it may be prone to abuse, particularly through front companies. For example, DODs IG investigated Tyco Manufacturing and referred the case to the US Attorney. The companys owner pled guilty to charges that he falsely represented his firm as Hispanic-owned and controlled. Top officials of Automated Data Management, Inc. were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government for concealing the firms ownership structure to participate in the  §8(a) program. Self-certification has obvious advantages in terms of reduced administrative expense and regulatory intrusion. Nevertheless, this must be balanced with the importance of ensuring that affirmative action measures are fair, which means as free of abuses as can reasonably be achieved. Subcontracting: In FY 1993, the most recent data available, small businesses received about $63 billion of federal contract dollars, out of roughly $180 billion in total. About one-third of that amount was from subcontracting. SDBs, on the other hand, received a little over $13 billion in federal contract dollars, but only one-sixth of that was through subcontracting. These figures are consistent with the widely held view that SDBs face greater obstacles to subcontracting participation than do other small firms. The SBA and other agencies believe that expanding the use of SDBs in subcontracting is both feasible and desirable as a strategy for creating more SDB opportunities. Other Program Changes: Several earlier analyses by the GAO, the SBA Inspector General and commentators have raised criticisms of the  §8(a) program, several of which SBA is moving to address by aggressively implementing recent statutory amendments which had languished under the prior Administration. These are reviewed more specifically immediately below. Past criticisms are that too many  §8(a) contracts were awarded on a sole-source basis, i. e. , without competition of any kind. This criticism has largely been addressed by recent and pending reforms. The 1988 law reforming the  §8(a) program requires that companies in the program compete among themselves for contracts valued at $3 million or more. (There is a higher competition threshold of $5 million for manufactured goods. Currently, however, many of the larger  §8(a) contracts are open-ended agreements that started out as small contracts and grew well beyond the competition threshold when a contracting officer renewed the order. To increase the number of contracts available for competition, SBA has proposed regulations to change this procedure so that an estimated value will be set on these open-ended contracts, which probably will be higher than the initial value. This means more  §8(a) contracts will be subject to competitive bidding among participating firms. In all these cases, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy must now especially tighten its implementation techniques. This office does have around $350 billion annual spending (Office of the Federal Procurement Policy, Whitehouse, 2008). According to their website, The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) in the Office of Management and Budget â€Å"plays a central role in shaping the policies and practices federal agencies use to acquire the goods and services they need to carry out their responsibilities. Established by Congress in 1974, OFPP is designed to provide overall direction for government-wide procurement policies, regulations and procedures. Given special authority for the procurement policy administration and implementation, OFPP is expected to find the means of having such procurement policies implemented in accordance with the Federal Ethical Standards. OFPP’s statutory authorities and responsibilities are set forth in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act, 41 U. S. C. 401, et seq. OFPP’s primary responsibilities. First, it is appointed to oversee the development of acquisition regulations. The Office’s primary focus is on the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), the government-wide regulation governing agency acquisitions of goods and services. OFPP staffs are to review and coordinate such changes with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It is also its responsibility to formulate and coordinate acquisition legislation. OFPP oversees the formulation of the executive branch position on all legislation relating to procurement. In close consultation with the major procuring agencies, OFPP develops legislative proposals for the Administration and formulates positions on congressional bills addressing acquisition issues. OFPP staff works with OMB’s Legislative Reference Division, Office of Legislative Affairs, and congressional committees to explain and refine legislation as it proceeds through hearings, markups and conference to final passage. Apart from this, OFPP is required to lead the activities of the Chief Acquisition Officers Council (CAOC). The OFPP Administrator leads the Council’s activities on behalf of OMB’s Deputy Director for Management, who officially serves as the Chair. OFPP staff provides support to each of the Council’s working groups, which currently are focusing on competitive sourcing, contracting with small businesses, human capital, electronic government, performance management, and contingency contracting. The office also is responsible for collecting, developing, and disseminating procurement data. This responsibility is accomplished through several government-wide data collection tools, the most significant being the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). OFPP directs the Federal Acquisition Institute to improve the caliber and professionalism of the acquisition workforce. For example, FAI provides core acquisition training and workforce support to the civilian acquisition community and actively partners with the Defense Acquisition University to leverage workforce development opportunities. In 2004, OFPP chartered a Board of Directors, which reports to the OFPP Administrator, and ensures that FAI’s focus is synchronized with government-wide policy priorities. OFPP is responsible for developing policies, in consultation with SBA, that promote maximum participation of small businesses in government contracts. Lastly, it serves as Chair of the Cost Accounting Standards Board (CASB), an independent board which has exclusive authority to establish standards for use by contractors and subcontractors to achieve uniformity and consistency in the measurement, assignment and allocation of costs to government contracts. The CASB’s cost accounting standards are promulgated as regulations. OFPP provides staff support to the CASB. It is now but fair enough to say that Federal Laws on Ethical Standards relative to procurement policies are well defined, clear and tight enough. The problem arises on the implementation of such rules. It is therefore a strong recommendation to begin the strict implementation of such policies as soon as possible. The step can rightfully begins with appointing or hiring able, dedicated people to oversee the agency and those people whose morality and principle cannot be bought by material things, especially with money where the Federal government and the Department of Defense are undeniably abundant of.

Anorexia and Bulimia :: Causes of Bulimia Nervosa, Anorexia

Bulimia Nervosa   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  June Engel (1993), found that today’s society’s idealization of thinness is producing an alarming increase in eating disorders especially among young women. The never-ending efforts to lose weight and conform to the media image of an â€Å"ideal† shape are leading more and more young people to diet at the cost of health. Weight – preoccupation is now widespread in our society, affecting the people of all ages, classes, occupations and ethnic backgrounds. June, Engel (1993) reported that once considered just a subclass of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa is now recognized as its own disease, occurring mainly in women aged 16 to 25, especially among high school students. Bulimia nervosa affects an estimated 2-4 percent of Canadian females aged 12-25 (and some adolescent males.) Like anorexia nervosa, it too involves extreme weight-preoccupation, but with alternate side effects of binging and fasting, vomiting and purging being common pla ce after binges. Factors of Bulimia include a family history of alcoholism and depression. National Institute of Mental Health (1993) reported that even though it’s easier to talk about anorexia and bulimia being different conditions, individual patients often suffer from symptoms of both. Indeed, it often happens that bulimia develops after a period of months or years of anorexic symptoms. Women suffer from these disorders 10 times more than men, and so this leaflet refers to the sufferer as â€Å"she†! Although often thought of as adult problems these disorders most often start in the teenage years while the sufferer is still at home.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Corben and Lindsey (1990) described that lots of people are becoming aware of obesity. Though these concerns are good, excessive concern for thinness is also a major problem (like Bulimia â€Å"a fear of obesity†.) June Engel (1993) illustrated that once you have an eating disorder sadly many remain eating – disordered and dissatisfied with themselves for life. Bulimics share the anorexic’s fear of losing control, being depressed, and obsessed with weight loss. Bulimics start on restricted diets but can never stick to them, and occupy their time in cycles of restricted eating, binging and self-inflicting vomiting and purging. They use a lot of laxatives, diuretics and sometimes even ipecac syrup (to force themselves to vomit.) When their dietary restraint breaks down, bulimics binge on cast amounts of food – cakes, desserts, hotdogs, whatever is appetizing, then they vomit it all up to avoid weight gain. Self-imposed vomiting, which may take hours per sess ion, gets rid of only a few calories and is extremely hard on the digestive system, throat and heart.

Marketing Channel Analysis

The furniture industry is a very lucrative business that spans domestic and international markets. With that fact in mind, it goes without saying that different channels of distribution exist with regards to delivery of furniture from manufacturer to consumer. Furniture manufacturers who target the domestic market segment have three (3) major marketing distribution channels: (1 ) Through online shopping portals, (2) through public showrooms in malls, and (3) through prouder by catalogue. Online shopping portals.With the rise of the digital age, the use of the net is to just limited to advertisements, but has transcended to become a means of direct shopping via the Internet. Online shopping portals like Amazon . Com, Testamentary. Com, and Alabama. Com are just some of the mediums widely used by consumers to buy an assortment of products suitable to their needs. The success of online shopping portals can be attributed primarily to its wide reach of consumers and its ease of access-?on e click away as long as internet is available.However, this also means that a lot of choices are available for consumers to choose from prompting companies to always try to innovate ND improve on product designs and concept. Also, customer feedback and satisfaction is difficult to track. Internet traffic and thousands of mail per day are difficult are problems to be addressed. Public showrooms in malls and buildings. Public showrooms are one of the most known venues for selling furniture.It is very effective for selling because it exhibits the products in actual with tasteful arrangements while you sell. Customers are able to see for themselves the quality of the product and be active in choosing process before buying. However, public showrooms tap sees consumers than online shopping portals. This goes without saying that people in the immediate area are the primary consumers of the furniture. Prouder via Catalogues.Some companies use catalogues in selling their products wherein con sumer choose a product of their choice and place an order by giving the item name of what they are going to buy. It is then delivered to them after a time at their doorstep.

ACA Paper

Therefore, I will give some my personal inspirations, which earn from this course, to illustrate these deficiencies in the AC. Finally, I will present a brief conclusion about evolution of laws, which will influence the future. Five Provisions of the AC The five provisions are related to the humans rights and people daily life. I choose these five provisions, because I think they have good aspects, which can embrace American spirit and value rights of humans, but they have some deficiencies, which need to be innovated. Some of them are the most popular topic in nowadays, and others have great impacts in people future life.Therefore, I want to choose them, and clarify my personal views of them, which I will present following. Provision 1. My first provision is Sec. 1555. â€Å"Freedom not to participate in Federal health insurance programs†( PACE, 201 0 This provision illustrates that â€Å"everyone in America has a right to choice whether if participate in federal insurance c are program, and who opt out federal insurance care program will not be PACE, 2010 According to this provision, I firmly consider that everyone can choose to out of Beamer without penalty.In my personal point of view, really admire this provision. I always considered everyone should join Beamer before, but now, I know it is not mandatory. This provision can absolutely represent the spirit of America. When I originally knew America, I learned that freedom, democracy, and equity are the essential America spirit. Sec. 1 555 completely embodies human rights. Individuals have right to freely decide their own affairs, no one can enforce them to do anything illegally. Provision 2.My second provision is individual mandate provision. † individuals who are not covered by a healthcare insurance will be charged an annual tax penalty f $95, or up to 1% of income over the filing minimum, this provision takes effect on January 2014, but this fee will be more greater, this fee will rise to a minimum of $695 (SO,085 for families), or 2. 5% of income over the filing minimum, on 2016. This fee is prorate, if individuals are not covered by a minimum insurance in half a year, they should pay half of $695 ($2,085 for families).Moreover, exemptions are permitted for religious reasons, or for those for whom the least expensive policy would exceed 8% of their income, and US citizens who qualify as residents of a foreign county under the IRS foreign earned income exclusion rule†( The Individual Shared Responsibility Provision, 2014 In my perspective, I believe that this provision has a reasonable aspect, but some explanations, in individual mandate provision, are inconsiderate. First of all, this provision gives poor people who incomes can not afford the extra taxes. Think it is beneficial to poor people and release their financial burden.It also gives US citizens who live and work in a foreign country this exemption. In addition, exemption for religious reason also can emb race a humankind idea. However, this provision is unreasonable in total. According to Sec. 1 555, people should not get a penalty for opting out of minimum health insurance, but this provision seems to like exchanging the penalty to extra tax. This point is inconsiderate, because it enforces everyone to participate Beamer, otherwise people will be punished. The government should not use such a means to compel citizens participate health insurance program, even though health insurance is good for them.As I have mentioned above, I always consider America is an equal country, but an extra tax breaks my belief. In my personal view, government would take a moderate provision. Government should help people get health insurance through health education. Let people know the importance of health insurance, make people have a long-tern view of their own health. In this way, people will join in insurance consciously. Just like the Florida smoking ban. Florida is the first state which sues toba cco companies, and using compensations to educate people keep away from cigarettes.According to this case, I firmly believe that let people know always more rational than penalties. Provision 3. † Protecting young adults and eliminating burdens on families and genuineness, which is a beneficial provision to all young people who under 26- year-old. These young adults are permitted to remain on their parents health insurance programs, even if they on long live with their parent, are married, are not dependent on parents' tax return, or are not students†( Young Adults and the Affordable Care Act: Protecting Young Adults and Eliminating Burdens on Families and Businesses,201 0). Horology believe this provision is beneficial to all young adults and children. As know, the cheapest bronze level of health care insurance is approximately 5500 per year, and this level insurance, in my opinion, is very limited to utilization. If parents have higher level health insurance, their chi ldren also get higher protection, and families will save more money. Therefore, young people can remain on their parents' insurance not only reduce costs of families, but also will enhance their own health condition.Moreover, I also think, for extending health insurance coverage of young people, some actions can be implemented. Comparing with China, the government gives all school funds to support students buying their health insurances. Young people on school will get a discount for their lath insurances, which means students only need pay few fees to have their own health insurances. Furthermore, companies buying insurance for their employees is also compulsory. Therefore, America government can diversify the way of extending coverage of insurance of young people to lead more of them join in the benefits of insurances. Provision 4. Medicaid Drug Rebate Program also benefits to society, drug manufacturers will get rebates from states, which including, innovator drugs will obtain 23 . 1% of average manufacturer price per unit, blood clotting factor drugs will again 17. % price rebates per unit, non-innovator or multiple source drugs will get 13% average manufacturer price†( Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, 2014 ). According to Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, all people can buy these drugs cheaper, which means people are affordable for some daily drugs and some special diseases' drugs. In my perspective, this provision lets poor people are affordable to their drugs. Ally think it can improve people's health conditions. However, a problem should be defined that not every drug will get a rebate. As a consequence, drug manufacturers in this program will eve a risk to barely manufacture these drugs which can get rebates. Therefore, some useful drugs will not be produced for out of the program. It will cause these non- rebate drugs to merge a market shortage, and people will terribly hard buy these drugs. Therefore, the government should also balance the ratio of re bate drugs and non-rebate drug, and improve drug market condition.Provision 5. † Health Care Education Reconciliation Act of 201 0 has a provision that Chain restaurants and food vendors with 20 or more locations are required to display the caloric content of their foods on menus, drive-through menus, ND vending machines. Additional information, such as saturated fat, carbohydrate, and sodium content, must also be made available upon request†( Federal Health Care Reform, 2010 This provision is available for the customers to distinguish their foods' ingredients, through this way, customers can judge a food whether if good for their health.According to a report, â€Å"more than one-third ( 34. 9% or 78. 6 million ) of U. S adults are obese†( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014 ). Obesity has been the most popular disease in America and will cause a lot of subsequent diseases, including hypertension, hyperglycemia, and cardiograph. Therefore, the governm ent who regulates chain restaurants and other big food companies to illustrate their foods' calorie and other ingredients, which ingest excessively will result to obesity, is a good way to improve the health situation of individuals.In my personal point of view, although the government's action is reasonable, it is very limited to realistic circumstance. People know the way of calculation necessary caloric for daily life, bur sports and diets are proper means to keep health. Government need to educate their people to recognize lately life and improve their diets. However, this is an extremely difficult way to improve persons' health, because adults have accustomed their foods and their living habits.Therefore, how to initiate a new health education for a new generation and tell them good diets and living habits become significant. In conclusion, good health care is not to treat patient, it is reasonable to prevent ills from humans through improve their behaviors and thoughts. Regula tions of the AC The three regulations are enacted by executive agencies for supplementation of the AC. The three regulations are all related to people's health and their lily life. In my opinion, the first regulation, which will mention, is a good sample for the government instructing humans in a healthy life.The second regulation also protects people who cannot afford their healthcare fees. The third regulation is close to people work and safety. Nevertheless, I believe that the government should modify these three regulation continuously to provider citizens a better situation. Regulation 1. The first regulation is just existing on September 2014, which is â€Å"Guidance for Industry Reporting Drug Sample Information Under Section 6004 of the Affordable Care and Drug Administration, 2014 In my perspective, this regulation has 2 praiseworthy points.Firstly, manufacturers need report information of drugs on the internet. This is very convenient for the ETC supervising quantity and category Of drugs and assessing these drugs demand and supply. In this way, the F-DC can indicate a commercial tendency of these drugs, and accordingly the FDA forecasts what diseases will be happened. This is cheaper than paperwork. Secondly, These drugs reported by manufacturers, which usually have side effects or dangerous ingredients. Therefore, monitoring these drugs is necessary for people's health safety.For example, We know some medications have an ingredient named ephedrine is used for manufacturing methamphetamine, also called ice drug. Some lawbreakers use these medications to extract ephedrine. Therefore, for preventing this case happening, drugs reporting is mandatory. Nevertheless, this regulation need to be consummated. Electronic reporting is a reasonable way to record information, but 2 shortages must be considered. Electronic information leakage has been a serious problem now, although HAIFA has enacted the data breach notification rules. The information safety sys tem should be reinforced.In addition, supervising manufacturers reporting correct information is requisite. Whatever these manufacturers hide information for financial reason or unintentional mistake. These producers need to be audited. Regulation 2. The second pending regulation is † the State Medicaid HIT Plan, Planning Advance Planning Document, and Implementation Advance Planning. In the regulation, SMS wants to invite tenders from the public to design a health information collection software, which can reduce paperwork and collect arsenal health information efficiently.In this regulation, SMS has defined some detail requirements of this software, which includes information of fingerprints Of people, suspension Of Medicaid Payments and re-screening Of Medicaid and chip providers every five years†( Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services, 2014 These details are reasonable, also deem that an electronic tool is not only convenient for government using and collecting basi c data, but is also useful to people recognize their health information. Person just need a cellophane to manage their own physical condition data.However, mom important rules do not cover in this regulation, and this regulation also has its own deficiencies. Think two managements are required in this regulation. The first of all, there is a possible issue that some information cannot be matched from different software, when they are sent to each other. SMS should make a identical standard in order to all collecting data in diversified health data software can be commonly handled. Finally, for information abusing and breach, SMS should through HIPPO to monitor data of health of software providers and improve the system for safety of data ace ritzy Regulation 3.The third regulation has been exiting, which is† people applies healthcare insurance, and the insurance needs to take effect in ninety days. All insurance companies cannot delay applicants' insurances beyond ninety days with any excuse. However, this period can only be amended by the government. This is the Ninety-Day Waiting period Department of Health an Human Services, 2014 I firmly believe that the regulation will be admired by all people. This regulation gives people a safeguard, because people may have some accidents when they wait their insurances taking effect.Therefore, the sis of accidents will be reduce by this regulation, whatever people on working or daily life. However, I think the waiting period can be shorter. On the one hand, ninety-day means three months that people will be out of insurance. If the government can cut the waiting time, the risk can be smaller. On the other hand, some insurance companies, for financial concern, will delay people insurance until the deadline. Therefore, if the limitation can be shorter than three months, it also can spur the work efficiency of insurance companies, and let people obtain their insurances as soon as they can. TheConstitutionality of the AC These two cases including the National Federation of Business v. Sublime and Barbell v. Hobby Lobby ,which greatly impact the constitutionality of AC. According to these cases, I clearly realize the main deficiencies of AC and it constitutional process. National Federation of Business v. Sublime In this case,† Twenty-six States, several individuals, and the National Federation of Independent Business brought suit in Federal District Court,challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate and Medicaid expansion, the U. S. Supreme court judge this case with following mints.Firstly, the U. S. Supreme court considers that the individual mandate takes a penalty to people, who dose not have health insurance, is unreasonable, but penalty can be regarded as a tax which imposes on people who dose not buy health National Federation of Business v. Sublime, 201 0 ). In my personal point of view, I agree with the statement that people should not be taken a penalty fee for out of health insurance. However, I think that changing this penalty as a tax, which is somewhat far- fetched, because, it just changes an explanation to enforce people join in health insurance programs.No matter this tax influences peoples' action to buy insurance or not, the government has no right to compel its persons to purchase a product, which they do not like it. Moreover, † U. S. Supreme court decides that states will lose their Medicaid funds, which compels Medicaid expansion, and this is unconstitutional ( National Federation of Business v. Sublime, 201 0 † I firmly agree this decision. I learned that America is the federal state, every state of U. S. Has right to administer itself. Furthermore, every state also has right to depart from U. S. , if its people agree. Rule insider the state government has equal status with the federal government. Therefore, the federal government can not exploit their right or threatens them to agree Medicaid expansion. As the case mentioned that † When a court confronts an unconstitutional statute, its endeavor must be to conserve, not destroy, the legislation†( National Federation of Business v. Sublime, 201 0 ). For some rational reason, it is right to preserve AC and tear out Medicaid expansion. However, I quite sure the constitutionality need to be cautious and considerate. In AC it still has some unconstitutional acts and rules.Although conserving AC is better than destruction, AC passes too fast to inspect by congress. Therefore, constitutionality is a long-term process, AC still need to be carefully checked by congress and society. Barbell v. Hobby Lobby In this case, the Supreme Court holds three main points. † At the first, the Supreme Court considers that the government has failed to satisfy the least- restrictive-means standard of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. HAS has not shown that it lacks other means of achieving its desired goal without imposing a substantial burden o n the exercise of religion.This decision follows the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. Secondly, the Supreme Court deems that, according to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, no conceivable definition of a person includes natural persons and non-profit corporations, but not for-profit corporations, which is different from He's defined action. Finally, the Supreme Court declares that only the contraceptive insurance can be picked out of the insurance mandate, and only closely held companies are suitable for this decision†( Barbell, Secretary of Health and Human Services V.Hobby Lobby Stores, 2014 Without a doubt, firmly Greer the first and second decisions of Supreme Court. Religions, beliefs, and religious actions should be respected. Moreover, for-profit companies also is including the scope of the person. Think HAS cannot support more evidences to demonstrate Hobby Lobby and others violate the RAFF and for- profit companies also need to be regarded as non-profit companies in this case for religious reason. Therefore, these two decision can embrace justice and equity for treating religion and religious companies.However, I concern that the third decision is partial. I have three points to illustrate my perspective. Firstly, it is partial to women who work in religious companies, because these women have no right to obtain contraceptive insurance comparing with other women who work in non-religious companies. Firmly consider that this partiality can be regarded as discrimination of women. Managers cannot deprive a right from employees, which should be reasonably procured, even for a religious reason. Secondly, the exemption only for closely held corporations and its religious reason, which is not rational.I firmly believe some companies will intentionally change their status to closely held corporations for avoiding contraceptive insurance. The last but not least, the Supreme Court has exempted religious reason for the declination of contrac eptive insurance currently, in the future, have reason to believe that some companies will utilize religious reason to avoid more mandate insurances. All in all, in this case, the Supreme Court fails to predict potential imparts, which will make more difficult for congress to enforce the laws.Actually, this decision makes harder to force employers to provide health insurance. Therefore, it really influences both implementation and constitutionality of AC badly. The conclusion I believe that, in total, AC is enacted for innovating the health environment of people. It covers all aspects of human daily life and wants to affect quickly. Indisputably, related agencies and congress are best effort for consummating and renewing AC. I can see that they want to regulate all behavior and rule all possible situation. This is an extremely huge work.

20 Classification Essay Topics What to Write about in a Marketing Communication Paper

20 Classification Essay Topics What to Write about in a Marketing Communication Paper If you are searching for a topic on which to write your next piece, consider the following 20 topics below. These follow the complex world of marketing communications, including how to properly communicate with marketing teams in order to use consumer data to your advantage, all the way to understanding how to communicate messages to consumers through new products. Remember that these are only meant as an example, and there are many other possible classification essay topics out there so choose carefully: Using Tough Management for Marketing Communication How Leadership Style Influences Marketing Communication Marketing to Different Office Departments Communicating to Different Marketing Professionals Communication Methods for Freelance Marketing Challenges New Marketing Managers May Face How Unions Influence Marketing Communication Remote Management and Communications with Marketing Staff Using Marketing Communication to Predict Consumer Behavior Understanding the Impact That Market Stimuli Has on Consumers How Consumers Acquire Marketing Information Psychologically What Information Helps Consumers Make Purchasing Decisions What Information Do Consumers Need to Have a Favorable Impression Digital Marketing Communication Multisensory Marketing and Communication Communicating a Product Experience Marketing Communication and Its Relationship to Consumer Behavior Persuasive Communication in the Business Place Cultivating Positive Consumer Experiences in the Marketing World Communicating Design and Emotion in Marketing Aren’t those great? The topics above are, again, just a short example of what constitutes a great topic for a paper about marketing communications. Of course, it is also helpful to see a real sample so that you can gain a better idea of what type of writing is required of you which is why you will find a sample essay on one of the topics listed above. Sample Classification Essay on Challenges New Marketing Managers May Face If a company is facing conflicts between their salaried marketing staff and their warehouse workers, it can cause serious conflict. Any marketing scheme is only as reliable as the implementation, which is reliant upon warehouse workers. But should the employees on the production floor cultivate a union, it would manifest into a lobbying organization which lobbies on behalf of the employees within the workplace. This typically leads to the development of better contracts between management and employees, something that would likely cost this company a significantly higher amount of existing profits. A union can quickly become the sole representative for the production employees, and in doing so, will assume the role of the sole bargaining unit on their behalf. Should a union get underway in this company, it would limit what management can and cannot do. The study conducted by Slichter, Healy and Livernash (1960) concluded that unions place pressure on existing management to not only i mprove job production standards, but to improve workplace accountability among salaried staff, and to offer higher wages to production level staff. Some of the new policies for which unions regularly fought, and would likely fight for with this company, included better work hours, more wage incentives, and additional promotions. This study also found that unions became the single communication point between employees and employers, the negative effects of which can include interfering with company production, restraining efficiency, and monopolizing management over employees (Slichter, Livernash Healy, 1960). At present, the company faces some current liabilities from a legal standpoint which must be rectified immediately. New state law, put into effect in June of 2015 clearly states that employers are not legally allowed to deny their employees the right to use sick days, to threaten to let them go if they do use them, or to take any adverse action against them when they try and use their sick days as the current management is doing to the production level employees (Gonzalez, 2016). This new law also allows employees who are subject to any of the aforementioned violations the legal right to file a complaint with the Labor Commissioner after which investigations will take place into the violation of the law. If the company does not adhere to these regulations, and if an employee files suit then an investigation will look into that suit and any others that follow. Should the results fall in favor of the employee, there are many penalties the company might face for violating the law. It is imperative that the company manages this risk immediately to prevent any further violations of the law and to prevent employees from filing official complaints and launching investigations. Some plants are currently large enough to justify a position focused solely on human resources. As of now, the company has diverted the internal business operations to multiple managers throughout the company, in an attempt to employ cost-savings techniques that keep the company from hiring an HR representative. However, with the high number of production workers and salaried employees, some companies might move into the category of a medium sized business, and is standing on the edge of being defined as a large business. Industry standards maintain that having a staff of 40 people or more warrants investing in a full time HR representative (Workforce, 2015). That being said, it is now important for all of the current managers tasked with various HR responsibilities to focus solely on their position and the responsibilities therein as this company has long surpassed that figure. The time for the salaried workers is valuable and delegating HR tasks to other managers takes away that va luable time. This has been noticed in the employees not meeting the extra demands within the company and the productivity level dropping. These two problems can be fixed immediately if an HR generalist can be hired to assume all of the duties of HR. References: Clow, Kenneth E, and Donald Baack.  Integrated Advertising, Promotion Marketing Communications. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004. Print. Gonzalez,. (2016).  Bill Text AB-1522 Employment: paid sick days..  Leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Retrieved 5 January 2016, from https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB1522 Kotler, F. Keller K, L. Framework for Marketing Management 5th Edition by Prentice Hall Koekemoer, Ludi, and Steve Bird.  Marketing Communications. Lansdowne, South Africa: Juta Academic, 2004. Print. Slichter, S., Livernash, E., Healy, J. (1960).  The impact of collective bargaining on management. Washington, D.C.: the Brookings Institution. Workforce,. (2015).  How Big Should We Be Before Hiring an HR Manager?.  Workforce.com. Retrieved 5 January 2016, from workforce.com/articles/how-big-should-we-be-before-hiring-an-hr-manager

Changes in the family essays

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E - French Pronunciation of E The French letter E can be pronounced several different ways - such as the schwa sound, a long A sound, and short E sounds. Below are examples of the different sounds and sound files to hear the way theyre spoken. Examples of the Various E Sounds Like the E in angel (like a schwa) - listen. This sound is often heard in single syllable words like le, me, etc.Like the vowel sound in weigh except without the y sound at the end - listen. This sound occurs in the following:E with an acute accent: à ©tà ©E in an open syllable (i.e., a syllable that ends in a vowel sound): trajetthe verb endings -er and -ez: manger, veuillez.Like the E in bed - listen. This sound is found in the following:E with a grave accent: exprà ¨sE with a circumflex: tà ªteE followed by a double consonant: belleE in a closed syllable (a syllable that ends in a consonant sound): septAn unaccented E at the end of a word is called an E muet and may or may not be pronounced. French Words With E Click on the links below to hear the words pronounced in French: le  (the)à ©tà ©Ã‚  (summer)manger  (to eat)veuillez  (please)exprà ¨s  (on purpose)tà ªte  (head)belle  (beautiful)sept  (seven)

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How did the term 'Butskellism' arise Was it justified - Essay Example In this paper the historical view will look at the content of ‘consensus’ and how it emerged and was translated into actual policies. In short what actually was the postwar consensus? There onwards the academic debate which surrounds and is continuing as we write; so to speak; will be examined. The core questions like; was it a consensus or was it political rivalries misnamed as consensus? Was it an elite consensus or a broad consensus of electorate to the political center? Reference will also be made to the consensus or otherwise of the interest groups (trade unions etc.). An attempt will be made to situate this discussion within the overall structural matrix of British Political System. The purpose is to show that the structure and the dynamics within, actually construct constraints and boundaries which form the context of UK Politics and any radicalism/drastic change is perceived as out of context. This argument will be supported by a brief comparative political analy sis with mainland European model. It will also be supported by referring to the underlying core value structure of UK, which forms the basis of any socio-political construct. The consensus has probably always existed in British Politics, in its different variants, within the confines of practically two-party parliamentary system. This will be demonstrated in the later part of this paper, as for now, as a point of departure of this paper, it is suffice to address the ‘postwar consensus’ and it’s ‘moderately satirical’ Economist typification as Butskellism. It is perhaps an erroneous assertion to call consensus; postwar. It did not spring up suddenly between two political antagonists just after the Second World War. The War time Conservative government was a consensus government. The achievements of the Coalition Government of 1940-45 are termed as the harbinger of postwar-consensus (Addison.1975). Our assertion however is that consensus is the quintessential British Political

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Personal Statement for M.S in statistics - Essay Example Since my teenage years, my curiosity found out that ‘a man will always be a man.’ I am the kind of person who does not fit many of the typical expectations of many young women in many societies. Whenever other people give negative attitudes to my new ideas, I always refuse to give up but chose to believe in myself. It is believed that girls do better in humanities than in sciences; however, I can compose popular stories and also construct SAS and R programs. People always argue that statisticians are introverts and as such poorly socialize with other people. However, I have built up a large social network of friends and business associates. I always surprise people with my personality, my hard work and insistence. Nevertheless, nothing could be easy forever. I still remember the moment when I first came to the United States, ready for a new life, full of passions and hope. Facts turn to be cruel; my tuition fee is and has been a burden for my family and I could not easily figure out befriending the Americans. I suffered a heavy blow of depression, felt helpless and was nostalgic. This led to my doubts in the future of my college studies and career aspirations. Such negative attitudes resulted in poor academic performance. Nonetheless, my strong will is never easily beaten by such hindrances. I therefore used my statistics ability to design ways and means to reduce the financial crises I faced and at the same time, gained great academic performances. Thanks to challenges, I could proudly say that I am an independent, resilient and highly empowered woman with strong wills. The above traits have greatly enhanced my performance in all aspects of life, more specifically in financial empowerment. Having participated much in social and academics involving data analysis in my undergraduate studies, I feel better placed to earnestly pursue my lifetime

Carlos Slim Helu - Future of his company Research Paper

Carlos Slim Helu - Future of his company - Research Paper Example nchez-Runde, and Nardon 192). Therefore, this essay explores the future of Carlos Slim Helu’s company in terms of economic prospects and market share. Essentially, Carlos Slim Helu has made himself a name in the world of entrepreneurship due to his relentless efforts in doing global business (Casanova 28). Currently, the business tycoon owns a chain of about 200 companies that operate in Latin America and even beyond to the extent of employing over 200,000 people (Healy 129). This actually means that he is a man who holds a significant stake in the economy of the states of Latin America by his businesses. Since he has used his personal resources in improving the welfare of the people of Latin America especially the immediate communities in which his companies were situated, the legacy of Carlos Slim is one that will never go away very soon (Steers, Sa?nchez-Runde, and Nardon 192). Perhaps it is worth noting that Carlos Slim, through his fortune, helped educate over 165,000 Mex ican people to the university level. This great and commendable achievement won him the heart of many (Casanova 28). In this respect, many people particularly the Mexicans, have full confidence in his company and products offered. In addition, Carlos Slim did a great deal of work when he came with the initiative of building rural schools so that the rural folk could take their children to school (Steers, Sa?nchez-Runde, and Nardon 192). In terms of justice, the business mogul bailed over 50,000 Mexicans from jail because they were unfairly detained and they could not afford the bail. Perhaps these factors have led to his business booming in Mexico and beyond. Lastly but more importantly, it is important to note the fact that he has reserved over $4 billion for education in addition to $6 billion for other programs including but not limited to his Telmex Foundation (Casanova 28). As the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim has invested in building extensive networks with some of t he world’s most powerful figures including heads of states in order to penetrate his businesses further into many countries and consequently, conquer the global market share (Casanova 28). With this competitive edge in the market, the companies of Carlos Slim are able to survive any turbulence in the market that will send other companies winding up and for this reason, it is proper to insinuate that Carlos Slim together with his companies, are here to stay (Casanova 28). Although several critics have come strongly against the business mogul, Carlos Slim has always been relentless in his business enthusiasm particularly when it comes to dealing with sharp criticisms (Casanova 28). While he has had to deal with such criticisms as being a monopolist who will go any length in order to floor his business rival, Carlos Slim has taken it positively and instead of retorting to such allegations. Besides, he has instead opted to direct his effort to improving the world through educatio n, health, food, and justice (Steers, Sa?nchez-Runde, and Nardon 192). When it comes to collaborating with other tycoons, billionaire Carlos Slim Helu tops the list (Healy 129). This is particularly so when it comes to the search for the untapped opportunities in the world. In this regard, Carlos Slim

The Impact of Macro and Micro Environmental Factors on International B Case Study

The Impact of Macro and Micro Environmental Factors on International Business Activities - Case Study Example Macro environmental influences can better be explained by the use of the PESTEL framework. According to Johnson et al (2006), the PESTEL framework is a framework that can be used to categorise the factors that influence the business environment of an organisation into six main types including Political Influences, Economic influences, Technological influences, Socio-cultural Influences, Environmental influences, and Legal influences. The business environment of Inditex is indifferent as Inditex is affected by governmental laws, international laws, competition from other fashion distribution companies, change in interest rate, politics, technology (Dixon 2007) etc. Industria de Diseno Textil S.A (Inditex) together with its subsidiaries operates as a fashion distribution worldwide (Inditex Review 2008). The company's operations include various phases of the fashion process, such as design, manufacture, logistics and distribution to its own managed stores (Inditex Review 2008). The company offers eight commercial concepts including Zara, Pull, Bear, Massimo Donati, Besishka, Stradivarius etc. The company remains a strategic and a key player in the European fashion and distribution market. For example, despite the global economic crisis, the company announced flat same stores sales for 2008 (Inditex Review 2008). ... The company's operations include various phases of the fashion process, such as design, manufacture, logistics and distribution to its own managed stores (Inditex Review 2008). The company offers eight commercial concepts including Zara, Pull, Bear, Massimo Dolti, Besishka, Stradivarius etc. The company remains a strategic and a key player in the European fashion and distribution market. For example, despite the global economic crisis, the company announced flat same stores sales for 2008 (Inditex Review 2008). However, as part of the mega-environment in which the company depends on to effectively carry out its activities, the creator of the Zara fashion chain is not impervious to the global recession (Inditex Review 2008). 2.0 The PESTLE Framework According to Dixon (2007), the PESTLE framework is a way to understand the industry's external environment, which includes Political, Economic, and Social and Technological analysis. These factors will influence company long-term decisions in an industry. Today's business environment is increasingly becoming more turbulent, chaotic and challenging than ever before and to survive, it is vital that a firm can do something better than its competitors ( Wonglimpiyarat 2004:1). Globalization has not only altered the nature and the intensity of competition but has had to dictate and shape organisations in terms of what consumers want, how and when they want it and what they are prepared to pay for it (Hagan 1996:1). Kanter (1995:71) on his work of "Mastering Change" argues that success in the present day business is not for those companies that re-engineer the way they do things, or for those fixing the past. According to Kanter (1995), such an action will not constitute an adequate response. This is so because success is based on an organization’s ability to create, rather than predict the future by developing those products that will literally transform the way the world thinks and view itself and the needs.     

Carlos Slim Helu - Future of his company Research Paper

Carlos Slim Helu - Future of his company - Research Paper Example nchez-Runde, and Nardon 192). Therefore, this essay explores the future of Carlos Slim Helu’s company in terms of economic prospects and market share. Essentially, Carlos Slim Helu has made himself a name in the world of entrepreneurship due to his relentless efforts in doing global business (Casanova 28). Currently, the business tycoon owns a chain of about 200 companies that operate in Latin America and even beyond to the extent of employing over 200,000 people (Healy 129). This actually means that he is a man who holds a significant stake in the economy of the states of Latin America by his businesses. Since he has used his personal resources in improving the welfare of the people of Latin America especially the immediate communities in which his companies were situated, the legacy of Carlos Slim is one that will never go away very soon (Steers, Sa?nchez-Runde, and Nardon 192). Perhaps it is worth noting that Carlos Slim, through his fortune, helped educate over 165,000 Mex ican people to the university level. This great and commendable achievement won him the heart of many (Casanova 28). In this respect, many people particularly the Mexicans, have full confidence in his company and products offered. In addition, Carlos Slim did a great deal of work when he came with the initiative of building rural schools so that the rural folk could take their children to school (Steers, Sa?nchez-Runde, and Nardon 192). In terms of justice, the business mogul bailed over 50,000 Mexicans from jail because they were unfairly detained and they could not afford the bail. Perhaps these factors have led to his business booming in Mexico and beyond. Lastly but more importantly, it is important to note the fact that he has reserved over $4 billion for education in addition to $6 billion for other programs including but not limited to his Telmex Foundation (Casanova 28). As the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim has invested in building extensive networks with some of t he world’s most powerful figures including heads of states in order to penetrate his businesses further into many countries and consequently, conquer the global market share (Casanova 28). With this competitive edge in the market, the companies of Carlos Slim are able to survive any turbulence in the market that will send other companies winding up and for this reason, it is proper to insinuate that Carlos Slim together with his companies, are here to stay (Casanova 28). Although several critics have come strongly against the business mogul, Carlos Slim has always been relentless in his business enthusiasm particularly when it comes to dealing with sharp criticisms (Casanova 28). While he has had to deal with such criticisms as being a monopolist who will go any length in order to floor his business rival, Carlos Slim has taken it positively and instead of retorting to such allegations. Besides, he has instead opted to direct his effort to improving the world through educatio n, health, food, and justice (Steers, Sa?nchez-Runde, and Nardon 192). When it comes to collaborating with other tycoons, billionaire Carlos Slim Helu tops the list (Healy 129). This is particularly so when it comes to the search for the untapped opportunities in the world. In this regard, Carlos Slim

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Amazon Database Essay Example for Free

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Amazon never ceases to amaze me, said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. If they create this database, it will be used for other purposes. They are really creating something worth a great deal of value that will help their company. The patent disclosure comes at a time of heightened awareness over online security and a rash of recent security breaches. AOL recently published a list of more than 650,000 user queries that revealed names, addresses and Social Security numbers, and the company this week apologized and removed the data, but its unknown how many copies of the sensitive information were made. Amazons pending patent, which would bar competitors from replicating the companys process for gathering information, details how it could compile data from customers to create a profile of products that a person might want to buy. Such a database would include the gender, date of birth, interests, occupation, education, income level, residence, race and ethnicity of customers for Amazons gift clustering program. Customers already willingly disclose some personal information on the site to create a wish list of desired products, for example. The larger potential database would go beyond that. Even if a customer does not know demographic information or interests of a possible recipient, the system may be able to access such informatio n from a user profile for the recipient, from past ordering patterns of the recipient, or from publicly accessible databases, the patent application said. Company spokeswoman Patty Smith said Amazon.com has no current plans to implement such a system. Not every company uses a patent it has in its name, but it may have a patent in portfolio, Smith said. Who knows 10 years down the road or five years down the road? It might be good to implement. We want to protect our intellectual property. Smith said the document released Thursday is an addendum to a patent Amazon sought in October 2000 and received in February of this year. She said much of what was in the original patent was also disclosed Thursday, but she didnt have details on what was new. Smith said that six years ago Amazon was trying to figure out ways to make it easier for customers to find information on the companys wish list feature for gifts. Amazon is always careful how it uses customer data so the customer experience will be as good as it can be, she said. The system described in the patent would give shoppers, with the click of a mouse, additional detailed information at the discretion of the gift recipient. Amazon already groups or clusters gifts, such as camping items or back-to-school goods, and then suggests them to buyers based on generic factors such as price, the relationship between the giver and receiver or the recipients age or gender. The patent disclosure also comes at a time when Amazon, originally an online bookseller in 1995, is moving into new ventures to boost profits. The companys stock took a huge hit last month after Amazon reported disappointing second-quarter earnings and company executives said there would be continual heavy spending on technology. Amazon recently started its own toy and food stores. The patent application, filed Dec. 9, 2005, by Amazon inventor Amit Agarwal but made public Thursday, could take years to be approved, according to Brigid Quinn, a Patent Trademark Office spokeswoman. Quinn said theres a backlog of more than 700,000 patent applications, and the agency reviews about 300,000 a year. Its in the early stages. Its not even on an examiners desk yet, Quinn said. But they could use it without it being patented. The patent only prevents others from using it. Greg Linden, a former technology team leader at Amazon, said it sounds to him like Amazon is just protecting its wish list feature. Linden, founder of Findory.com, an online news site, also warned not to read too much into a patent application because lawyers throw in everything they can think of to keep competitors from copying an idea. Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Amazon-database-would-put-shoppers-intimate-1211419.php#ixzz24rlGoBic http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/amazon-oracle/ AWS Case Study: Amazon.com Oracle DB Backup to Amazon S3 Amazon.com is the world’s largest online retailer. In 2011, Amazon.com switched from tape backup to using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for backing up the majority of its Oracle databases. This strategy reduces complexity and capital expenditures, provides faster backup and restore performance, eliminates tape capacity planning for backup and archive, and frees up administrative staff for higher value operations. They were able to replace their backup tape infrastructure with Cloud-based Amazon S3 storage, eliminate backup software, and experienced a 12X performance improvement, reducing restore time from around 15 hours to 2.5 hours in select scenarios. The Business Challenges As Amazon.com grows larger, the sizes of their Oracle databases continue to grow, and so does the sheer number of databases they maintain. This has caused growing pains related to backing up legacy Oracle databases to tape and led to the consideration of alternate strategies including the use of Cloud services of Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon.com. Some of the business challenges Amazon.com faced included: Utilization and capacity planning is complex, and time and capital expense budget are at a premium. Significant capital expenditures were required over the years for tape hardware, data center space for this hardware, and enterprise licensing fees for tape software. During that time, managing tape infrastructure required highly skilled staff to spend time with setup, certification and engineering archive planning instead of on higher value projects. And at the end of every fiscal year, projecting future capacity requirements required time consuming audits, forecasting, and budgeting. The cost of backup software required to support multiple tape devices sneaks up on you. Tape robots provide basic read/write capability, but in order to fully utilize them, you must invest in proprietary tape backup software. For Amazon.com, the cost of the software had been high, and added significantly to overall backup costs. The cost of this software was an ongoing budgeting pain point, but one that was difficult to address as long as backups needed to be written to tape devices. Maintaining reliable backups and being fast and efficient when retrieving data requires a lot of time and effort with tape. When data needs to be durably stored on tape, multiple copies are required. When everything is working correctly, and there is minimal contention for tape resources, the tape robots and backup software can easily find the required data. However, if there is a hardware failure, human intervention is necessary to restore from tape. Contention for tape drives resulting from multiple users’ tape requests slows down restore processes even more. This adds to the recovery time objective (RTO) and makes achieving it more challenging compared to backing up to Cloud storage. Advantages with Amazon Web Services Amazon.com initiated the evaluation of Amazon S3 for economic and performance improvements related to data backup. As part of that evaluation, they considered security, availability, and performance aspects of Amazon S3 backups. Amazon.com also executed a cost-benefit analysis to ensure that a migration to Amazon S3 would be financially worthwhile. That cost benefit analysis included the following elements: Performance advantage and cost competitiveness. It was important that the overall costs of the backups did not increase. At the same time, Amazon.com required faster backup and recovery performance. The time and effort required for backup and for recovery operations proved to be a significant improvement over tape, with restoring from Amazon S3 running from two to twelve times faster than a similar restore from tape. Amazon.com required any new backup medium to provide improved performance while maintaining or reducing overall costs. Backing up to on-premises disk based storage would have improved performance, but missed on cost competitiveness. Amazon S3 Cloud based storage met both criteria. Greater durability and availability. Amazon S3 is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year. Amazon.com compared these figures with those observed from their tape infrastructure, and determined that Amazon S3 offered significant improvement. Less operational friction. Amazon.com DBAs had to evaluate whether Amazon S3 backups would be viable for their database backups. They determined that using Amazon S3 for backups was easy to implement because it worked seamlessly with Oracle RMAN. Strong data security. Amazon.com found that AWS met all of their requirements for physical security, security accreditations, and security processes, protecting data in flight, data at rest, and utilizing suitable encryption standards. The Business Benefits With the migration to Amazon S3 well along the way to completion, Amazon.com has realized several benefits, including: Elimination of complex and time-consuming tape capacity planning. Amazon.com is growing larger and more dynamic each year, both organically and as a result of acquisitions. AWS has enabled Amazon.com to keep pace with this rapid expansion, and to do so seamlessly. Historically, Amazon.com business groups have had to write annual backup plans, quantifying the amount of tape storage that they plan to use for the year and the frequency with which they will use the tape resources. These plans are then used to charge each organization for their tape usage, spreading the cost among many teams. With Amazon S3, teams simply pay for what they use, and are billed for their usage as they go. There are virtually no upper limits as to how much data can be stored in Amazon S3, and so there are no worries about running out of resources. For teams adopting Amazon S3 backups, the need for formal planning has been all but eliminated. Reduced capital expenditures. Amazon.com no longer needs to acquire tape robots, tape drives, tape inventory, data center space, networking gear, enterprise backup software, or predict future tape consumption. This eliminates the burden of budgeting for capital equipment well in advance as well as the capital expense. Immediate availability of data for restoring – no need to locate or retrieve physical tapes. Whenever a DBA needs to restore data from tape, they face delays. The tape backup software needs to read the tape catalog to find the correct files to restore, locate the correct tape, mount the tape, and read the data from it. In almost all cases the data is spread across multiple tapes, resulting in further delays. This, combined with contention for tape drives resulting from multiple users’ tape requests, slows the process down even more. This is especially severe during critical events such as a data center outage, when many databases must be restored simultaneously and as soon as possible. None of these problems occur with Amazon S3. Data restores can begin immediately, with no waiting or tape queuing – and that means the database can be recovered much faster. Backing up a database to Amazon S3 can be two to twelve times faster than with tape drives. As one example, in a benchmark test a DBA was able to restore 3.8 terabytes in 2.5 hours over gigabit Ethernet. This amounts to 25 gigabytes per minute, or 422MB per second. In addition, since Amazon.com uses RMAN data compression, the effective restore rate was 3.37 gigabytes per second. This 2.5 hours compares to, conservatively, 10-15 hours that would be required to restore from tape. Easy implementation of Oracle RMAN backups to Amazon S3. The DBAs found it easy to start backing up their databases to Amazon S3. Directing Oracle RMAN backups to Amazon S3 requires only a configuration of the Oracle Secure Backup Cloud (SBC) module. The effort required to configure the Oracle SBC module amounted to an hour or less per database. After this one-time setup, the database backups were transparently redirected to Amazon S3. Durable data storage provided by Amazon S3, which is designed for 11 nines durability. On occasion, Amazon.com has experienced hardware failures with tape infrastructure – tapes that break, tape drives that fail, and robotic components that fail. Sometimes this happens when a DBA is trying to restore a database, and dramatically increases the mean time to recover (MTTR). With the durability and availability of Amazon S3, these issues are no longe r a concern. Freeing up valuable human resources. With tape infrastructure, Amazon.com had to seek out engineers who were experienced with very large tape backup installations – a specialized, vendor-specific skill set that is difficult to find. They also needed to hire data center technicians and dedicate them to problem-solving and troubleshooting hardware issues – replacing drives, shuffling tapes around, shipping and tracking tapes, and so on. Amazon S3 allowed them to free up these specialists from day-to-day operations so that they can work on more valuable, business-critical engineering tasks. Elimination of physical tape transport to off-site location. Any company that has been storing Oracle backup data offsite should take a hard look at the costs involved in transporting, securing and storing their tapes offsite – these costs can be reduced or possibly eliminated by storing the data in Amazon S3. As the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon.com continuously innovates in order to provide improved customer experience and offer products at the lowest possible prices. One such innovation has been to replace tape with Amazon S3 storage for database backups. This innovation is one that can be easily replicated by other organizations that back up their Oracle databases to tape.

Origin Of The Term Identity Politics Cultural Studies Essay

Origin Of The Term Identity Politics Cultural Studies Essay A Contested Term. The origin of the term identity politics is sometimes traced to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement but it was articulated by women of colour in their 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement. The term refers to collective group identities like race, ethnicity, sex, religion, caste, sexual orientation, physical disability as the basis for political analysis and action. Its main objective is to empower individuals to articulate their discrimination and invisibility through consciousness raising and action. Identities and Movements It is important to debate this term and its politics as it has been the basis for several movements as well as an ideological challenge to existing analytical frameworks and explanations. In the 1980s, there was a cultural and religious revivalism in the form of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, Hindu communalism in India and global Islamist fundamentalism. In the 1990s, there was the violence and tragedy of former Yugoslavia, movements based on tribal identities in Rwanda and Sudan. Many countries especially in the European Union saw right wing movements in the context of immigration and nationalism with debates on Britishness or the banning of headscarves in France. Currently, scholars have seen its re-appearance in the Presidential contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton in the USA i.e. pitching their campaigns around the first woman president or the first black president. Making of an Identity Some identities come with birth like the black, caste or religious ones. Or they can be acquired like national ones, sexual preferences or interest groups. Identities are fluid, multiple and unstable. They may be blurred or erased over a period of time. That they may be created as the identity of being Indian was propagated after Independence from British colonialism. Multiple identities mean that they are competing with each other often resulting in conflicting loyalties like a woman may during a communal riot have to choose between her religious group identity and that of her gender. Often there is strong societal resistance to crossing identity boundaries like in the case of sexual identities. Social norms and institutions do not allow people to step out of their prescribed identity. Causes for Identity Mobilisations Why have identity movements emerged during this conjuncture of history? Theoretical explanations bring together the cultural, political and economic. The global flight of capital has spread industrialisation all over the world. World wide trade and communication has created a homogenization of culture and politics. Young people in most parts of the world are familiar with the Coke and Jean culture, American films and TV serials. However the impact of the economic process has been uneven. There is a polarisation between the rich and the poor in a country and between nations of the North and the South. Gender relations are also changing as more women are joining the workforce often when men are unemployed creating resentment and competition. Women are more mobile and visible. And the patriarchal family structure is weakening. Bitter Sweet There is a section of people who are benefiting from the globalised world market. But the aspirations and hopes of many are belied. Descending social and economic groups resent their loss of privileges. So there is a public outburst in UK that Indian doctors are taking over the British medical system or that outsiders are taking over jobs which should rightfully belong to Marathi speaking people in Mumbai. The onslaught of Westernisation and its values due to globalisation has created a reaction of orthodoxy. Right wing Muslim, Hindu and Christian groups have called for cultural re-assertion and pride in ones identity. Parallel to the sweeping cultural, political and economic changes and identity based movements was the rise of post modernism in academia. As a critique of Marxist dominance in theory, post modernists gave culture a significant place in analysis and shifted the focus to power relations, identities, construction of gender, class, race etc. The Rise of Identity Movements [ Used in Womens Movement] Identities are powerful sources of consciousness and mobilization as they make an individual conscious of his/her identity and bring them together for political protest and demands through violent or other means. At present there are large mobilisations based on identities like: World wide Islamist Movements Hindu right wing movements Regional self determination movements like Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka, Kashmir and North East in India, Kurds in Turkey Sexual preferences like the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered [LGBT] movement Trade Union Movements There is a tendency to see id based movements as regressive because they are usually associated with right wing movements. But the sexuality movements have challenged conservative notions of sex and sexual activities. 6. The Other Exclusion and Inclusion are critical criteria for identity formation. The we of a certain group can only be identified versus they of the other group. The process of defining and controlling these boundaries of difference has been coined as Other-ing. This process of creating sameness and otherness amongst people, has been used to justify all manners of oppression and violence against marginalized, weaker, less powerful groups. Across history these have included Women, Blacks, Jews, Homosexuals, Dalits, Tribals, lower classes, People with Disabilities etc. The Ideal Woman Identity Movements, which are right wing, have given a special place to women. For example, both Muslim fundamentalism and Hindu communalism project an ideal woman as indispensible for society. These ideals are related to womens dress, behaviour, sexual activity and motherhood. Nazi Germany glorified the blond Aryan woman, who bears children, accepts secondary status to her husband and the State. Muslim fundamentalism advocates a return to tradition as Islam is in danger, reinforces Muslim identity by rejecting Westernisation and especially by propagating the veil for women, role of a homemaker, and the return to or imposition of the Sharia Laws or Muslim Personal Laws. Roots of tradition are in the past and is not open to interpretation. Life and Laws flow from the holy book, and its meanings are fixed and non debatable. Women are regarded as guardians of Muslim culture and honoured as long as they perform their duties to be good mothers and raise their sons as warriors of Islam. 8. Sita not Draupadi Hindu communalists idealise Sita, the wife of the mythological god, Ram. The qualities of Sita are that of a chaste pati vrata or ideal wife who follows her husband to the forest, bears him sons and immolates herself when her fidelity is in suspicion. Draupadi on the other hand was an articulate, assertive and proud woman who has 5 husbands, who she continually challenges and even seeks revenge. Women have been part of the internalisation process since their childhood. They too believe in many of these values and strive to maintain the roles propagated by fundamentalists. And for doing so, they are honoured and given status by their men and fundamentalist leaders. Many educated, professional and Westernised women have turned to their religion because it also offers them mental and physical security. Crisis in Feminism The womens movement and feminist theory went into a crisis with the advent of post modernism and identity based movements. The former contested the category woman as also all universalisms. Women could not be considered a homogenous group and the using of we was politically incorrect. The slogans of women of colour were picked up by Jewish women, indigenous and later Third World women. Global sisterhood was laid to rest. These voices of other feminists introduced the notions of feminisms, rather than simply feminism. In addition, these feminisms brought in the notion of multiple oppressions, multiple patriarchies and womens movements. Feminist analysis shifted from standpoint feminism to various postmodernist feminisms. Studies on womens subordination across cultures, societies, and historical periods shifted to micro-narratives of class/race/and gender. 10. Crisis in Feminist Politics The clash of multiple identities and allegiances which surround them came out into the public. The womens movement in India and the feminist groups are not that large or popular to have reached the masses of women to shore up a gender based identity. In the absence of a popular secular movement, the majority of women align with their caste or religious identities. Large numbers of them participated during the Mumbai Riots of 1992-93 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid against Muslims and in support of the sati of Roop Kanwar [1987] against feminist groups and progressive movements asking for a ban. In the Shah Bano Case [1985], women supported a maintenance law formulated by the govt and Muslim leaders against their own interests. Sometimes women are pulled into battles not of their making as in the case of the Cauvery River riots. Both Tamil and Kannadiga women had no knowledge of river water issues but were subjected to rape and molestation by the rival community. Domestic violence becomes invisible in the face of other state wide violence like in Kashmir, North East and Sri Lanka. Women would like to address domestic violence but sacrifice their individual rights as women to community rights for self determination. 10. Strategies One of the main problems with identity politics is that its assumptions can lead to an almost infinite number of small, atomised identity groups. Taken forward this logic comes to mean that ultimately each individual is her own group. Identity politics makes it difficult to bring together large groups to protest and collectively act for radical social change. In an oblique way, it supports conservatism and status quo and works against collective struggle. On the other hand, identity politics has introduced important elements and lessons within the womens movement. It has changed its lexicon, challenged its assumptions and visibilised many sections of women and transgendered people. Sexual minorities, religious minorities, women with disabilities and race and caste based womens groups have come into their own with vibrant movements. The lessons for the womens movement in general is that it has to respect and build bridges with different identity groups, take on board their agendas and issues and together move towards transformative strategies for a just society.