Attitude Toward Power Essay

Both Ulysses and Macbeth were able to gain power of kingship, but the way they gained the powers are different. In this essay I am going to compare how they regard power, both differently and similarly. I intend to use Heinemann, (1994), version of Macbeth by Shakespeare and the class handout of Ulysses. The main focus of Macbeth will be from Act1 Scene 7, lines 1-28 and Act 2 Scene 1, line 33-61, whilst I will also take account of other related part throughout the play. Since Lord Tennyson and William Shakespeare are from different era in the history, their perspective of the world will be different, therefore I will also mention about Shakespeare’s and Lord Tennyson’s different perspective towards power and language they used. Most great writers reflect their attitude to life on their work, so it is important to consider the social and historical background of the Jacobeans- the time when Shakespeare wrote the play, and the Victorian time, when Lord Tennyson was alive. In Victorian times, Britain was a powerful country. There were unlimited opportunities for mainly the upper class people to broaden their knowledge by going to new places and experience the foreign cultures. When Lord Tennyson wrote this poem, he was grieving over his best friend’s death. By writing this poem he was able to express his emotional feeling as well as to persuade him to let it go. He also had the opportunities to tell people that it is â€Å"never too late to seek a newer world†. For examples, Ulysses’ new world would be the after life world and Lord Tennyson’s new world would be the world without his best friend. At the end of Macbeth, the moral we get is that never to cross the line of Divine Order. During Jacobean time, they believed that the duty of the King is chosen by God: They believed that every living organism has an order and it is decided by God, this is call the Divine Order. If one decides to go against the Divine Order, like killing the King to be the monarchy himself then, he had done something that is very morbid during the Jacobeans: going against God. Shakespeare tried show that by the cost of Macbeth have to face after he had murdered the King, one example is that he lost his respects from his courtiers and at the end he was all by himself. Jacobeans were also very superstitious; they believed that witches are evil because they worship demon, so if there was a plague or a natural disaster, they blamed on the witches: they are first put to trials and then was executed, mainly hanged or burned. Because Shakespeare made Macbeth associate with the witches by talking and worse of all trusting them, that made Macbeth evil. Shakespeare did this to please his King, King James, as he was against the supernatural and was able help King James to spread the evilness of the witches through his play. The poem, â€Å"Ulysses† started by a slow rhythm. Lord Tennyson managed this by using the words with long vowels such as, â€Å"hoard, and sleep, and feed†. These words give us the sense of dullness and mundane, which was how Ulysses feels at the beginning. However, as we go further down the poem, the dullness was decrease as he started to talk about his adventurous days.

Operational Budgeting and Profit Planning Essay

Introduction: Why Budget? While a budget planning is a laborious process it is crucial for the success of any company. The budgeting process forces managers to be proactive in planning for the future while fostering communication and coordination within a company. Different departments must work together in order to develop a proper budget. A properly formulated budget will aid to define a company’s objectives and provides guidelines to avoid wasted actions. Also, risk can be mitigated when objectives and action plans are clarified through the budgeting process. This article will identify the key components of a budget as well as the methodologies involved in the budgeting process. The influences of management behavior will be discussed followed by a brief example of bad budgeting practices and its consequences. Master Budget The master budget is a summary of a company’s plans that sets concrete targets for sales, production, distribution and financing activities. Companies prepare cash budget not only for operating activities but also for investing and financial activities. This is because management should be aware in advance of any borrowing needs and when loans can be repaid. Budgets are interdependent because the figures of one budget are conventionally utilized in the preparation of another. Budget estimates are dependent on the nature of the business, its products and services, processes, organization, and management needs. It is a detailed model of the firm’s operating cycle that includes all internal processes which is developed into a cash budget, a budgeted income statement, and a budgeted balance sheet. Advantages The Master Budget defines the organizations objectives and strategies. As well as allowing the company to realistically project future cash flows, it also smoothens the functioning of organizations operating cycle. Disadvantages Disadvantages of developing a master budget is that it is both time consuming and highly complex. However, it should be noted that the advantages of a proper Master Budget far outweighs the disadvantages. Components of the Master Budget The Sales Budget includes the forecast of sales revenue, sale units and sales collection in the future market conditions. The Purchase budget would include purchase of merchandise for sale and raw material for manufacturing. It is expressed in terms of sales dollars. The Selling Expense Budget presents expenses the organization plans to incur in connection with sales and distribution. The General and Administrative Expense Budget presents the expenses the organization plans to incur in connection with general administration such as the accounts department, the IT department, law etc. The Cash Budget summarizes all cash receipts and disbursements expected to occur during the budgeting period. After a company makes sales predictions, an organization uses information regarding credit terms, collection policy, and prior collection experience to develop a cash collection budget. Other items included are an allowance for bad debt, cash sales, sales discount, allowance for volume discounts, and seasonal changes of sales prices and collections. The cash budget shows cash operations deficiencies and surplus expected to occur at the end of each month, which is used to plan for borrowing and loan payments. Budgeted Financial Statements are pro forma statements that reflect the â€Å"as  if† effects of the budgeted activities on the actual financial position of the organization. It reflects the results of operations assuming the budget predictions. Budget Development in a Manufacturing Organization Manufacturing organization converts the raw materials into finished goods and sells it to the customer for consumption. It prepares the master budget before production to make the organization successful and survive in a competitive environment. For example, a Bicycle manufacturer will plan a Master Budget in the following fashion: A Sales Budget will be based on the anticipation of sales of the Bicycle and pricing policy, expected number of units to be sold and the revenue generated. Once the sales budget is completed the Production Budget will derive the total volume of Bicycle units to be manufactured based on the targeted sales and inventory required to maintain sales. For example, if the expected number of sales of Bicylces for the month of January is 500 units, the production budget will plan for 650 units (Sales projected (500) + inventory as per company s strategy (30%)). The Purchase budget will be obtained based on volume of Bi Cycles to be manufactured, material required to manufacture a single unit and the cost of materials. As per the above example, the material required for 650 units will be budgeted for the month of January. The Manufacturing Cost Budget will be derived from the cost of making 650 units of bicycles using the design of product and process used to manufacture while considering the raw material cost, direct labor cost and manufacturing over headed cost. Finalizing the Budget For efficient and effective budgeting two questions must be addressed: Is the proposed budget feasible? Is the proposed budget acceptable? To be feasible the organization must be able to implement the proposed budget. Possible actions include obtaining equity financing, issue long-term debt, reducing the amount of inventory on hand, or obtaining a line of credit. Constraints for infeasibility are availability of merchandise and production capacity for a manufacturer. When evaluating the budget, management must consider various financial ratios such as return on assets, profit margins, etc. The company must compare the return provided by the proposed budget, the past budget and industry average as well as the organization’s goals. Budgeting Methodologies Input/Output Approach Companies using the Input/Output approach calculate the required input or resources through estimating the potential output or performance. For example, if a microchip manufacturing plant requires 5 grams of metal to create one microchip and each gram costs $2, then each microchip costs $10 of material. Thus, a projected output of 1000 microchips would cost $10,000 and 5 kilograms of material. This approach is mainly used for industries with a measurable relationship between effort and return, such as manufacturing, service, and merchandising but is not compatible with industries that are inelastic to unit level changes. Activity-based Approach The Activity-based Approach is subset of the Input/Output which reduces the potential for error by determining cost through evaluating the cost of each activity in the manufacturing process rather than focusing on inputs such as machine or labor hours. Thus, the approach provides a more accurate picture of costs involved by providing costs at each level of production. It results in a more efficient budget by allowing the identification of the optimal set of activities. However, it is far more time consuming to produce. Incremental Approach A budget prepared using the previous year budget as a base with some percentage increase or decrease is called incremental budget. Budget  justification is to be given only for the percentage change not for the base amount (previous year’s budget). This type of budget is best suited for non-profit organizations, government organizations or in organizations in which the amount of output is weakly correlated to the money spent. For example, the Boston Public School budget for FY12 increased by 1.2% from the FY 11 and for FY11 it increased by 0.4% of the FY 10 budgets (OBM 2011, 2012). The increase in both budgets was justified as improving opportunities for English Language learners, arts and physical education, but not for their existing programs. The advantages of this budget are that it is easy to practice, quick preparation, stability and conflict avoidance between departments due to different budget approval. Some of the main disadvantages are there is no incentive to red uce expense as peopmsle are tempted to spend the allotted expense so that their future budget is not affected. Also, no room for innovative changes to the budget is given. Minimum Level Approach In this type of approach a minimum budget level is fixed for carrying out ongoing projects and activities and anything above the budget should be justified. For example, the R&D budget in a pharmaceutical company is fixed for ongoing projects and new projects must be approved by the management. Main advantages are ongoing projects will not be disturbed due to budget changes and last year budget will not be approved without revision as in the case of Incremental approach. The Minimum level approach is considered as Zero Level Budgeting in some organizations in which for every amount spent, justification must be (TWF n.d.). For example if an R&D department of an Electronics manufacturer puts forth many project proposals to the management , based on the market trend and project feasibility, the management will approve the most profitable project. Advantages of this method are that allocation of resources is very efficient and detects inflated budgets. However, this method consumes a significant amount of time and resources. Manager Behavior Top-down vs. Bottom-up In addition to macro methods of budgeting (Input/output, activity based, incremental, and minimum level) there is also a distinction between top-down/imposed and bottom-up/participative budgets. These two methods represent opposite extremes of a spectrum of which a company’s budgeting procedure may fall on any point. As the name suggests, a Top-down Budget is formulated by a small number of high ranking managers who make all decisions regarding a company’s objectives which are then received by the lower managers who implement the plan. Because only a few people are involved in the decision making, it is quick and saves time. It also avoids the cushion that is lower management tend to build into their budgets. However, because only a few people are involved in the decision-making process, those not involved may lack the motivation and commitment to properly implement the plan. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Bottom-up process of budgeting. It begins at the lowest possible management level, whose budget plan is then integrated with the proposals at the next level. The process is continued until a comprehensive holistic budget is developed for the company. The Bottom-up process ensures that managers at each level clearly understand their roles in meeting company objectives. Therefore, budgets are usually far more accurate and employees are more committed to their self-made budget. However, inefficiencies tend to occur with a bottom-up process. Managers tend to provide a budgetary slack (understating revenues or overstating expenses) in order to provide a cushion against underperformance or unfavorable reviews. While this may cause inefficient spending, it can provide funds to reduce risky activities of which there is insufficient information. Budgeting Periods There are three types of budgeting periods used by companies: Fixed-length, Life Cycle and Continuous/Rolling Budgets. The type of period used is determined by the context of the budget. Most companies use fixed-length budgets determined at the beginning of a specified period. However, for single projects, a Life Cycle budget is more attractive, where a company  determines the budget for the entire project; especially if the project occurs within a period or over multiple periods. A continuous budget may be more useful than a fixed-budget as it forces managers to be continually updating their budget. Where a one-year budget plan is only available at the beginning of the year, a 4 quarter rolling budget requires managers to continually have a budget plan for a whole year at the beginning of each quarter, thus, sustaining the budgets relevancy. Forecasts, Ethics, and Open Book Management In addition to deciding methodologies of budgeting, a manager must also consider company forecasts, ethics and employee support. A manager must allow for the development of various forecasts and consider them during the budgeting process. Industry forecasts, such as economic conditions, as well as internal forecasts, such as collection periods, should be factored into the budget. Because ethical issues regarding budgeting are rarely illegal, there is a strong incentive to either pad the budgetary slack or overstate performance. Organizations should be firm in their rules against unethical behavior as it is easy to fall into a moral gray area. Finally, in order to properly motivate employees by gaining support for the budget, many companies have adopted an Open Book Management approach. The approach involves interacting with employees by sharing information and teaching employees to understand the relevant financial information. Sample Analysis A well formulated budget is crucial in order to facilitate a company’s operations. However, when a company’s budget is poorly formulated, it can have disastrous consequences. An example is OGX Petrà ³leo e Gà ¡s Participaà §Ãƒ µes S.A. owned by Eike Batista. At the company’s peak in 2009, it achieved an IPO of $3 billion (Spinetto et al. 2013). However, the company filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 30, 2013 with debts of $5.11 billion with Batista being sued for violations of disclosure ruels (Fontevecchia 2013). While its failure was due to a variety of factors, we will argue that poor budgeting  is a crucial factor. Within the petroleum industry, the exploration and production process is both a high risk and high expense venture where predicted outputs require complex calculations (Suslick et al. 2009). Even after production has begun, the projected output may change depending on a variety of variables (Katusa 2012). OGX had calculated potential output at 4.8 billion barrels and therefore invested heavily into the required infrastructure based on this estimate (Spinetto 2013). However, these decisions were made before the wells were operational which resulted in final outputs at roughly 50% of the initial amount (Katusa 2012). Management decisions at OGX were made by Bastista and a small group of managers and its inputs were based on an estimation of outputs (Katusa 2012, Spinetto 2013). In addition, performance was highly overstated due to â€Å"[Batista’s] tendency to shoot the messenger† (Spinetto 2013). Therefore, OGX should have adopted a bottom-up minimum level approach of budgeting as well as adopting a policy of reporting performance after confirmation. A bottom-up approach would have generated a much more precise picture of performance and costs while a minimum-level approach would have required confirmation of projected outputs before beginning operations at the cost of time. In addition, reporting performance after confirmation would have avoided any overstatements of performance. Conclusion To be successful in a competitive environment a company must develop proper Master Budget in order to promote proactive thought, communication and coordination within a company. It is also an important aide to planning and risk management. In order for a company to run smoothly, the Master Budget must balance all the variable constituents of a company’s operational activities. In addition, methodologies used, while utilized at the management’s discretion, should reflect the context of the company’s operations. As illustrated in the OGX example, failure to properly develop a budget can have catastrophic consequences to a company. References City of Boston: Office of Budget Management (OBM). 2011. Summary Budget. Retrieved Oct. 2013 from http://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/02%20Summary%20Budget_tcm3-16341.pdf City of Boston: Office of Budget Management (OBM). 2012. Summary of Budget. Retrieved Oct. 2013 from http://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/02%20Summary%20Budget%20A_tcm3-24767.pdf Easton, P.D., Halsey, R.F., McAnally, M.L., Hartgraves, A., & Morse, W.J. 2013. Financial & Managerial Accounting for MBAs 3rd Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Business Publishers. Fontevecchia, A. 2013. Death of the Brazilian Dream: Ex-billionaire Eike Batista’s OGX Files for Bankruptcy. Forbes, Oct. 30. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/10/30/death-of-the-brazilian-dream-ex-billionaire-eike-batistas-ogx-files-for-bankruptcy/ Katusa, M. 2012. Brazilian Oil Dreams Get a Sobering Reality Check. Casey Research, July 2012. Available at: http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/brazilian-oil-dreams-get-sobering-reality-check Spinetto, J.P., Millard, P., & Wells, K. 2013. How Brazil’s Richest Man Lost $34.5 Billion in a Year. Bloomberg Businessweek. (October): 60-65. Suslick, S.B., Schlozer, D., & Rodriguez, M.R. 2009. Uncertainty and Risk Analysis in Petroleum Exploration and Production. Terrae 6 (1): 30-41.

Gold Bear Golf INC. Essay

1.The professional auditing standards have a set of five management assertions. Of the five assertions, three are very important in regards to the Paragon audit. The descriptions below, audit procedure is explained that would have ensured the audit was completed accurately. a.Occurrence- The management assertion that ensures a particular transaction actually happened. In the case of a construction company such as Paragon, this could be verified by going to a job site and checking to see if the job is actually happening. b.Valuation/Allocation- The management assertion that ensures the transactions are accounted for the correct amount. Changing from percentage-of completion method to the earned value method resulted in significantly overstated revenues and material misstatements in the financial statements. The audit procedure that should take place in this situation is inspection of the records. Looking back at the records would show the change was not supported by the accepted accou nting standards. c.Presentation/Disclosure- The management assertion that ensures all changes within a company are stated in the notes of the financials. These changes should be easy to understand and depict a complete picture of the company from the year. The audit procedure that should have taken place during the audit is inquiry. Sullivan and the staff should have questioned the managers on his or her decisions instead of taking their word as to why the changes were made. 2.The audit failures the SEC were referring to was the fact that Sullivan and his staff relied on the manager’s word. Sullivan and staff did not perform the accurate assertions to test the information provided from Paragon’s managers. The audit partner, Sullivan in this case, is the individual who is in charge of ensuring everyone on the audit is performing his or her job completely and accurately. Sullivan will take the blunt of the responsibility because he is ultimately the person who is in charge of overseeing the auditing the audit as a whole, but the audit staff should also face consciences from the findings. 3.A high risk audit means the chance that of material misstatement and fraudulent activities are significantly higher. Weak controls, changes in management, and changes in accounting methods are several reasons why an auditor would conclude a company is a â€Å"high risk† engagement. The audit partner basis the risk of engagement on his or her observations from the company. When working a high  risk engagement, an auditor will examine a higher percentage of the transactions from throughout the year. Checking more transactions means the auditors are going to produce the most accurate financials possible and ensuring no fraudulent activities are taking place within the company. 4.Auditors do have the responsibility of following the AICPA Audit and Accounting Guides for specialized industries. The AICPPA set guidelines for companies in these industries to follow to ensure the end product is of highest quality. Auditors should make sure the managers are following all of the rules and regulation set forth for that type of company, but these guidelines should never override or replace the Statements on Auditing and Standards. The Statement and Auditing Standards is the rule book for how and what is to be performed in an audit. the AICPA should make the Audit and Accounting Guides for specialized industries in accordance with the Statement and Auditing Standards so the companies are operating with the highest quality, in both products and financial standing. 5.When making a change in the accounting principle used within a company, there has to be very good reason why the company wants to. When these changed are made, they must be presented retrospectively. Managers must produce the financial statements for the past several years so the public can see the effects it has on the company. On the other hand, the changes in accounting estimates are applied prospectively. Managers use the new method in estimating cost and revenues from that point forward. The changes Paragon made are for accounting estimates. The percentage-in-completion method and the earned value method are accounting estimate methods. Boyd and Curbello will use the new method from that point forward. The problem Paragon ran into is disclosure. The changes were not properly disclosed in the financials. This is a problem because two method result in very different numbers for the company.

Impact of UK reservoirs on the surrounding environment Dissertation

Impact of UK reservoirs on the surrounding environment - Dissertation Example The paper tells that over the last 25 years, the â€Å"freeboard and spillway arrangements† for reservoirs in the UK have been based on the unit hydrograph rainfall-runoff and losses model. The model was used to obtain the design of the events of flood that would enable to determine whether the prevailing arrangements might convene the floods. The characteristics of drainage such as the area of the basin, the basin shape, the type of soil, use of the land, drainage density and drainage network topology, and the rainfall characteristics that include duration of the rainfall, its intensity, its distribution and direction are the different factors that might affect the shape of the hydrograph. The unit hydrograph model was established in the year 1975. However in the recent years, the model has been revitalized and hence replaced with the ReFH or Revitalized Flood Hydrograph Model that comprises three significant components – the loss, routine and baseflow models. The seas onality of the floods is also measured through this model such that factors of seasonal corrections are applied to the estimates of the flood designs and conditions with the purpose of meeting the floods. The Reservoirs Act 1975 led the responsibility of the law to protect the reservoirs in the UK. Approximately 25000 cu m of water is held by the UK reservoirs and the Act covers around 2500 reservoirs under its framework. England, Wales and Scotland are under the purview of this Act. However, the Act does not cover the reservoirs across the Northern Ireland. Undertakers, Enforcement Authorities, Qualified Civil Engineers, and the Secretary of the State are the four major persons or organizations in charge under the Act who have the different responsibilities in regard to the protection of the UK reservoirs. The undertakers are referred to the owners of the reservoirs and thus have the most significant responsibility for the reservoir’s safety. The role of the enforcement authorities comprises monitoring the performance of the undertakers. The design and supervision of the constructions of the reservoirs focusing on the safety issue are the responsibilities of the qualified engineers. The Secretary of State is in charge of supervising the activities of the other three major persons or organizations (The British Dam Society, 2010). It is in the last five years that the risks arising out from the reservoirs have been considered significantly as a matter of c oncern. The risk factors have arisen as a result of the uncontrolled discharge of water from the reservoirs threatening the lives of the heavily populated regions where the reservoirs are located in the UK. The reservoir safety legislation was introduced in the year 1930. Since then such disastrous incidents have not occurred. However, there have been several incidents that could have taken several lives (Morris, Hewlett & Elliott, n.d., p.3). Not only are the risks associated with such reservoirs, but also several advantages and disadvantages and impacts are associated related to the surrounding environment that might occur as a result of the constructions and use of the reservoirs in the UK. The present study focuses on the impacts that UK reservoirs have on its surrounding environment. The following figure represents the overall reservoir stocks in England and Wales between 1996-2005: Figure 1: Overall Reservoir Stocks in England and Wales 1996-2005 (Water Levels, 2007). 2. Liter ature Review: For a better understanding of the literature relating to the impact of reservoirs in the UK on the surrounding community it would be significant to gain a proper understanding of reservoirs and their function in the society. This will allow for

A Structured Stakeholder Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

A Structured Stakeholder Analysis - Essay Example This paper will review The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal organization as a key stakeholder in healthcare, with regards to how it acts towards solving the issue of microbial resistance. The association of the Rosenthal Family foundation to health care is derived from its connection with the Institute of Medicine, IOM which in 1988 initiated an outreach program. The program aimed at creating a communal innovative outreach through which organizations and other able parties could team up with the IOM and brainstorm together in solving specific issues in health care. The Rosenthal Family Foundation, which at that time was known as the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation, strongly moved in to support the move by the IOM. Ever since, the two have been working as partners year after year, and have been including additional experts in the fields in addressing some health policy issues. The main operational base of this partnership has been around Washington DC, although their services in health care have at times extended to other parts of the United States (Institute of Medicine, 2014). One of the most recent campaigns hosted by the partnership between the Institute of Medicine and the Rosenthal Family Foundation is titled â€Å"The 2014 Richard and Rosenthal Symposium 2014: Antimicrobial Resistance: A Problem without Borders†. In this campaign, the foundation reveals that it was inspired by a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report stated that of the five threats currently facing the United States, antimicrobial resistance dominates as one of the most critical. The issue lies in that about two million Americans acquire bacterial infections, which prove resistant to one or more antibiotics. The result of this is approximately twenty-three thousand annual deaths (CDCP, 2014). The Rosenthal Foundation is representing the World Health Organization, which through the White House in 2011

Essay style Why has the European Union been particularly active in its

Style Why has the European Union been particularly active in its employment anti-discrimination measures Set out the ma - Essay Example The diverse nature of conflicts within the European requires some form of moderation in order to achieve a level playing ground that can effectively lead towards the attainment of the shared goals (Salama & Council of Europe 2011, p. 121). The EU membership comprises of countries that speak different languages, which imply different cultures and worldviews. Some of the countries have had some historical challenges that could threaten the harmonious coexistence within the Union. Concerns over the possible dominance of some countries over others and presumed imbalances in various aspects of life such as business, global influence, and resources have fueled concerns of prejudice, preferential treatment, and discrimination within the union. It is because of this that the EU endeavors to enhance its operations in ways that foster unity and balance among member countries. Discrimination is largely a factor of competitive advantage (European Commission, 2008, p. 65). Discrimination is most likely to occur in conditions where many nationalities come together towards the attainment of certain objectives. Internal competitions and power struggles will tend to surface in ways that make it problematic for countries to articulate their concerns more effectively. The constituent members within the Union seek the attainment of certain political goals, social goals, and economic goals. The reality of discrimination places a direct hurdle towards the attainment of these goals. Tendencies of cultural supremacy and fears of cultural inferiority have, in the past, slowed down the integration of the EU members. Some countries have expressed reservations that the current operational climate is skewed in favor of particular countries (Corry, 1996). Internal differences between Anglophone members of the EU and other countries have led to fears of discrimination, which are because some countries are likely to benefit from undue advantage over others. It is for this reason that the EU s ought to draft specific legislations that provide sufficient safeguards against the possibility of lapsing into acts of discrimination based on language, culture, or country of origin (Fella & Ruzza, 2012, p. 40). These specific safeguards are meant to assure the member countries of fairness in the treatment of their citizens and countries in terms of certain benefits that relate to the specific issues that connect with the mutual interests that connect with the union. Discrimination usually imposes structural and systematic obstacles to the victims (Kahn, 2008). It curves out a system that provides privileges to some people or groups while subjecting others under unfair treatments. On this score, the EU sought to prevent the possibility of discrimination, as a way of encouraging the full participation and impartial treatment of its member countries and the citizens of the same countries as they moved about within the region covered geographically by the union (Falkner, Treib, & Hol zleithner, 2008). Efforts to determine the real extent of EU’s power should be understood from the fact that the union embodies certain qualities and virtues that must be upheld for the sake of its sustenance. The realization of the projected ends of the union depends significantly on the manner in which the unions operate and the balance of power and relations between them. The handling of matters of discriminati

Read Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley and compare the advantages Essay

Read Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley and compare the advantages and disadvantages of first person point of view to point - Essay Example 2. Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley Every work of fiction is an amalgamation of fiction and reality where reality acts as a source of inspiration for the writer to enter the realm of fiction and twist the harsh veracity of life into a less brutal and bearable depiction of this world. â€Å"Devil in a Blue Dress† is a novel about the tale of Easy Rawlins who is a black American and is a self-made detective by profession. After fighting in World War 2 the protagonist of the novel settles in segregated Los Angeles and he is shown to be an individual who is haunted by his memories of the trauma of the war although he is fiercely proud of his home and overall achievement in life. The novel portrays the corrupt human existence and the degeneration that is gradually engulfing human beings and is turning them into robots that are channelized to attain monetary security, the more the better. The novel is narrated in first person narration which presents the readers with a myopic view of the whole situation i.e. the narrator Easy is the guide for the readers to understand the whole situation. ... This explanation about Albright might be true yet the readers do not have any evidence about this piece of information to be true or false because it is Easy’s personal point of view rather than an objective fact. However it cannot be denied that this form of narrative style establishes a close relation between the protagonist and the reader as it gives a chance for the audience to closely examine the protagonist’s actions and understand him well, as compared to rest of the characters who are introduced and described by the protagonist rather than an unbiased portrayal of every other character in the novel. The reader’s perception of Easy’s character can also be figuratively interpreted as the situation of majority of his fellow black men in real life i.e. his character is easily relatable to the hardships and problems that were faced by most of the American Blacks during and after World War 2 as it is stated in the novel, â€Å"I always tried to speak pr oper English in my life, the kind of English they taught in school, but I found over the years that I could only truly express myself in the natural, 'uneducated' dialect of my upbringing† (Mosley 10). It is such a common and heartfelt problem that has been faced by most of the Black Americans which not only makes such descriptions autobiographical but also help in forming a close bonding between the reader and the protagonist as Mosley rather than depicting farfetched or intangible ideas focusses on the mundane daily life of a black man and the problems he faced while growing up as well as an adult. At another place in the text it is stated, â€Å"A job in a factory is an awful lot like working on a plantation in the South. The bosses see all the

Selecting a Supplier or Contractor Research Paper

Selecting a Supplier or Contractor - Research Paper Example The four different projects chosen include that of production of electronic products, construction of a retail outlet, manufacturing glass containers and construction of residential buildings. The criteria for supplier selection followed by these projects include that of quality, the speed of delivery, cost and reputation respectively. After analyzing these criteria, a comparison of these supplier selection methods has been given along with the critique that identifies the best method of supplier selection. Every business has the impact of competition in the market due to increased globalization and various technological advancements. In such a competitive scenario, good supply chain becomes an important part of the corporate strategy. Coyle, Bardi, and Langey (2003) say that this prime need has driven the logistics managers to concentrate more on supplier capabilities, conceptualizing and designing and implementing the supply process. Traditionally, there were only a few criteria like cost, delivery time and quality of the goods that were mainly concerned with supplier selection says Smith et al (1963), in the recent there are many other criteria in selecting a suitable supplier. Selecting a competent supplier becomes the key to the production and delivery of high-quality products. Hence the supply chain managers need to adopt a proper strategy for selecting the suppliers based on some criteria. Selecting and maintaining a good supplier involves an important decision regarding the purchase of quality goods as it leads to quality products. The selection of competent suppliers can be based on various criteria as prescribed by Dickson (1996) are the net price quoted by the supplier, the reputation of the supplier, the extent up to which the supplier is able to meet the quality requirements, the replacement or

Christianity and the world at large Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Christianity and the world at large - Essay Example Its main aim can be summarized in the following ways: 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes; 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax; 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance; 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels; 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly; 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State; 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan; 8. Equal liability of all to work and establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture; 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the c ountry; and 10. Free education for all children in public schools, abolition of children's factory labor in its present form and combination of education with industrial production (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm).3 Since communism is against any form of subjugation, the Church is considered its enemy for a church has leaders, even a hierarchy of elders who would oversee the flock and make sure that no one goes astray. Charles Darwin's teaching of Natural Selection is anchored on the principle of preservation. According to him, natural selection, "on the principle of qualities being inherited at corresponding ages, can modify the egg, seed, or young, as easily as the adult."4 Plainly speaking, this...The likes of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington led the United States of America anchoring on Biblical truths and Christianity as a whole. America still looks back and acknowledges that some of the glorious past of this country were under the leadership of these two figures.Christianity in general should put itself in its proper place and not quarrel with other people insisting only on what it thinks is right. The first step is accepting that people of all ages and nations vary in many ways and one of these is their belief and principle in life. By learning to accept others the way they are leads to a better understanding of why they are so different and why they behave in the way they do. Having a n open mind can lead to less prejudice and judgmental spirit. The second step is respect. Since people are free to choose what they should believe in, Christianity should not impose on others what it thinks is right or wrong. In other words, to respect other’s religious conviction will lead to a more harmonious relationship. It has been said that man is not supposed to do to others what he does not want others to do to him. In this way, if Christianity seeks respect, it should also respect others. Finally, Christianity must not cease to be vigilant. It should continue to be a watchdog, a spiritual eye to the government and the nation as a whole. Although it may not force itself, its very presence will shed light to the world around it and will lead others to know the difference.

Business Forecasting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Business Forecasting - Essay Example Business forecasting can be done using two methods as covered in this paper. This method of forecasting depends on the market experts and thus short-term predictions are best situated for this method of forecasting. For the method to work and attain the desired goals of the company, then experts must be involved in financial statements so as to predict and rely on measures that can be followed. If the measures outlined by the experts are followed, then short term goals and success will be accomplished (McKinley and Lee, 2005). The only disadvantage of the qualitative method of forecasting is that the management of the companies relies on the opinions of individuals or the experts who estimate the budget and provide the measurable data that is going to be used in the company. For this method to be successful in any organization then it will involve the following aspects. This simply means that the company will have to conduct a market research relating to the kind of products and services the company offers (Adams, 2000). Well carried market research will involve the number of participants in the exercise and thus it will be showing the potential customers who will use the products or services when it is launched. This method involves experts who carry general opinions and then the experts will compile that data so as to forecast on the trend. For example, the company may look at the competitive advantage over other companies, as well as corporate governance among other aspects. Quantitative model do away with human analysis but solely depends on the data. This method of forecasting also involves other variables which are predicted sales, the gross domestic products among others which are predicted for long term goals (Lawrence, 2010). Quantitative model involves the following tools. The approach depends on some indicators like unemployment rate, and the gross domestic product among others in the company. To get the indicator then a comparison and the

To what extent are football violence and sectarianism linked Essay

To what extent are football violence and sectarianism linked - Essay Example In Scotland, sectarianism takes the form of political sectarian rivalry and religious sectarian rivalry which occurs between Catholics and Protestants. Sectarianism is clear in football clubs such as the fierce rivalry between Celtic football club and Rangers football club. Discussion Sectarianism According to Murray (2000), sectarianism in the Scottish football arises from offensive behaviours on the pitch. The behaviours include expression of religious, social, political and racial incitement. This aspect may occur between players of two opposing teams or among the fans. The behaviour of managers and players influences sectarianism whereby, players may receive influence from the manager who is in rivalry with the manager of the opposing team (Murray, 2000). This implies that the players will consider the opposing team as a rival, not just in the football contest, but also in the physical sense. The managers play a vital role in ensuring that there is no sectarianism among players s ince they are the role models of the players. Sectarianism may also occur during the broadcasting of a match where the commentary may use sectarian terms and incite the fans. The commentators have personal beliefs and interest. Their interests may be on one team compared to the other team; this implies that, in their commentary, they will favour one team leading to rivalry between the two teams. Sectarianism in a broad perspective may lead to threats of solemn harm, which intend to cause fear and alarm to an opposing team. To demonstrate the rivalry that one team has over the other, there is the use of implied threats such as images that depict serious harm such as bullets and threats that incite religious hatred (Murray, 2000). In the Scottish football, many deaths and assaults have occurred and have a direct link on sectarian tension within the nation. Such assaults leading to death occur before or after a football match featuring rivalry teams. Sectarianism, which is present amon g the old Firms in Scotland, occurs due to religious conflicts where some of the teams identify themselves as Catholics while the rest, which constitute a small percentage, are protestant and are from the rival team as seen in the study work of Ward & Williams (2010). Sectarianism is openly demonstrated where some clubs put up the Union flag on their pitches while some put up Irish tricolored flags. The clubs, which demonstrate Catholic faith, sign players who are Catholics. This applies to Protestants who do not allow Catholics to play for their club such as Rangers football club. Though many researchers argue that football is not the main cause of sectarianism in the Scottish football, there is evidence to show that sectarianism is until now rampant among many fans as seen in the research work of Potter & Jones (2008). Sutherland (2012) states in his research studies that politics plays a considerable role in promoting sectarianism around Scotland. This is because influential poli ticians are supporters of some teams. If an influential politician supports a club while the rival politician supports another club, it implies that the supporters of the different politicians will become rivals not just on the pitch but also outside the football pitch. Football violence This is the act where the fans or the players’ turn against each other during a football match leading to destruction of property and injuries of people.

Philippine President Benigno Simeon Essay Example for Free

Philippine President Benigno Simeon Essay Philippine President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino delivered his sixth State of the Nation Address on Monday, July 29, 2015 at the Batasang Pambansa in front of joint session of the Upper and Lower House of the country’s Legislative Branch of Government. Some students will surely give their reaction paper with the Pres. SONA as part of their assignment. The State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Benigno S. Aquino started at around 4:00 PM (PST) and concluded after two hours and 15 minutes. The SONA 2015 is one of the highly anticipated date of the administration, as the head of state reports his accomplishments and plans for the country. During the entire SONA, the President received a total of .. rounds of applause. President Aquino started his Sixth SONA by issuing an apology that the traditional processional walks was not made because Main Topics for Discussion: Blaming the Previous Administration: President Aquino once again blamed the previous administration of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo mentioning the problems he inherited during his earlier days as President such as the NBN ZTE Deal, Hello Garci controversy, questionable bank accounts of Jose Pidal, Maguindanao Massacre, MWSS Bonuses and the NFA anomalies. Highlighting the Achievement of His Cabinet Members: The President applauded the members of his Cabinet for an excellent jobs as members of his Daang Matuwid program. He showcased the achievements of his administration in transportation and communications, tax/revenue, labor and wages, international relations, education, budget and finance, peace, social welfare, justice, calamity and disaster preparedness, national security, economy, infrastructure, governance and reform. Pres. Aquino lauded Commissioner Kim Henares for her tax reforms mentioning the 380 cases filed against tax evaders. The collections of the BIR also went up to P1.3 trillion and this year 2015, the BIR collection went up to P1.5 trillion. Manufacturing Unemployment: Pres. Aquino stated that there’s a 3% average growth in the manufacturing  sector from 2001-2009 but under his administration from 2010 to 2014, the manufacturing sector grew by 8%. The unemployment rate of the Philippines also dropped to 6.8% last year and considered as the lowest ever recorded in a decade. 4Ps and the Education Sector: Pres. Aquino highlighted the ‘Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program’ or 4Ps which now have 4.4 million beneficiaries from 786,523 in 2010. In 2008, there were 2.9 million out of school youth in the country. In 2013, only 1.2 million out of school youth remained. On education sector, PNoy said that Alternative Learning System helped to ensure that even indigenous peoples and street children are not left behind. The requirements for the K to 12 programs – backlogs of 66,800 classrooms, 145,827 teachers, 73.9 million textbooks already provided. For TESDA program of the government, studies show that 71.9% [of TESDA graduates] found employment right away, compared to the 28.5% recorded before. Health and Social Welfare: Around 89.4 million Filipinos are already member of the Philhealth program of the national government and beginning in 2014, the poorest 40 percent of the population were treated in public hospitals for free. In social welfare, PNoy said that in the Sitio Electrification program, 25,257 sitios out of 32,441 were served. Aviation Transportation Sector: In aviation, ICAO lifted the safety concerns it imposed to the Philippines in 2013. The EU Air Safety Committee lifted the travel ban in all local carriers. For the unresolved problem on Metro Rail Transit (MRT), Aquino said plans of purchasing of new MRT train coaches. Armed Forces of the Philippines: In the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) modernization, the government has plan to buy 2 more C-130. There will be additional 6 landing craft utilities and 3 C-295 medium lift transport. President Aquino mentioned the PNP’s project such as their Capability Enhancement Program of which 2,523 patrol jeeps and 577 utility vehicles were purchased. Important Bills and Legislations: Pres. PNoy wish to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law and his interest on the controversial Anti-Dynasty Law which received the loudest applause from SONA expectators. When he mentioned his interest on Anti-Dynasty Law, it received the loudest applause from SONA expectators. â€Å"Panahon na para ipasa ang isang Anti-Dynasty Law.† PNoy also thanked Congress and Senate for other bills and acts such as Philippine Competition Law, Sin Tax Reform Act and Responsible Parenthood Act. The president also thanked officials of the government for their contributions, sacrifice and wellspring of inspiration to the nation. He lauded Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas for his contributions to Daang Matuwid. Pres. Aquino ended his speech with the following statement â€Å"Simula pa lang ito. [Palakpakan] Nasa unang yugto pa lang tayo ng dakilang kuwento ng sambayanang Pilipino. Sa gabay ng Panginoong Maykapal, at sa patuloy nating pagtahak sa Daang Matuwid, lalo pang tatayog ang mga pangarap na maaabot natin. Lalo pang lalawak ang kaunlarang tinatamasa natin. Nasasainyo pong mga kamay ang direksiyon natin. Magandang gabi po sa inyong lahat, maraming salamat sa inyong lahat po.† Reactions to President Aquino’s SONA: President Aquino missed so many important topics during his last and final SONA, the entire SONA centered on his administration’s accomplishment and giving credits to his partners on his â€Å"Daang Matuwid.† Some of the important issues that the President failed to mention during his sixth SONA are the following, the controversial PDAF issue, the Mamasapano Massacre, the expansion of Chinese territories in the West Philippine Sea and the Freedom of Information Bill to name a few.

Higher Quality Input Phrase To Driven Reverse Dictionary

Higher Quality Input Phrase To Driven Reverse Dictionary Implementing a Higher Quality Input Phrase To Driven Reverse Dictionary E.Kamalanathan  and C.Sunitha Ram ABSTRACT Implementing a higher quality input phrase to driven reverse wordbook. In contrast to a conventional forward wordbook, that map from word to their definitions, a reverse wordbook takes a user input phrase describing the specified construct, and returns a group of candidate words that satisfy the input phrase. This work has important application not just for the final public, notably those that work closely with words, however conjointly within the general field of abstract search. The current a group of algorithms and therefore the results of a group of experiments showing the retrieval accuracy and therefore the runtime latency performance is implementation. The experimental results show that, approach will offer important enhancements in performance scale while not sacrificing the standard of the result. Experiments scrutiny the standard of approach to it of presently on the market reverse dictionaries show that the approach will offer considerably higher quality over either of the opposite presently on the market implementations. Index Terms : Dictionaries, thesauruses, search process, web-based services. . INTRODUCTION A Report work on creating a reverse dictionary, As against a regular (forward) wordbook that maps words to their definitions, a WD performs the converse mapping, i.e., given a phrase describing the required conception, it provides words whose definitions match the entered definition phrase. It’s relevant to language understanding. The approach has a number of the characteristics expected from a strong language understanding system. Firstly, learning solely depends on unannoted text information, which is abundant and contain the individual bias of an observer. Secondly, the approach is predicated on all-purpose resources (Brill’s PoS Tagger, WordNet [7]), and also the performance is studied below negative (hence additional realistic) assumptions, e.g., that the tagger is trained on a regular dataset with doubtless totally different properties from the documents to be clustered. Similarly, the approach studies the potential advantages of victimization all potential senses (and hypernyms) from WordNet, in an endeavor to defer (or avoid altogether) the necessity for Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD), and also the connected pitfalls of a WSD tool which can be biased towards a particular domain or language vogue BACKGROUND WORK Natural Language Processing: Natural Language Processing (NLP) [6] is a large field which encompasses a lot of categories that are related to this thesis. Specifically NLP is the process of computationally extracting meaningful information of natural languages. In other words: the ability for a computer to interpret the expressive power of natural language. Subcategories of NLP which are relevant for this thesis are presented below. WordNet: WordNet [7], [2]is a large lexical database containing the words of the English language. It resembles the traits of a thesaurus in that it structures words that have similar meaning together. WordNet is something more, since it also specifies different connections for each of the senses of a given word. These connections place words that are semantically related close to one another in a network. WordNet also displays some quality of a dictionary, since it describes the definition of words and their corresponding part-of-speech. Synonym relation is the main connection between words, which means that words which are conceptually equivalent, and thus interchangeable in most contexts, are grouped together. These groupings are called synsets and consist of a definition and relations to other synsets. A word can be part of more than one synset, since it can bear more than one meaning. WordNet has a total of 117 000 synsets, which are linked together. Not all synsets have a distinct path to another synset. This is the case, since the data structure in WordNet is split into four different groups; nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs (since they follow different rules of grammar). Thus it is not possible to compare words in different groups, unless all groups are linked together with a common entity. There are some exceptions which links synsets cross part-of-speech in WordNet, but these are rare. It is not always possible to find a relation between two words within a group, since each group are made of different ba se types. The relations that connect the synsets within the different groups vary based on the type of the synsets. Application Programming Interface Several Application Programming Interfaces (API) exists for WordNet. These allow easy access to the platform and often additional functionality. As an example of this the Java WordNet Library [8] (JWNL) can be mentioned. This allows for access to the WordNet Library files. PoS Tagging PoS tags[8] are assigned to the corpus using Brill’s PoS tagger. As PoS tagging require the words to be in their original order this is done before any other modifications on the corpora. Part-of-speech (POS) tagging is the field which is concerned with analysing a text and assigning different grammatical roles to each entity. These roles are based on the definition of the particular word and the context in which it is written. Words that are in close proximity of each other often affect and assign meaning to each other. The POS taggers job is to assign grammatical roles such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. based upon these relations. The tagging of POS is important in information retrieval in general text processing. This is the case since natural languages contain a lot of ambiguity, which can make distinguishing words/terms difficult. There are two main schools when tagging POS. These are rule-based and stochastic. Examples of the two are Brill’s tagger and Stanford POS tagger, respectively. Rule-based taggers work by applying the most used POS for a given word. Predefined/lexical rules are then applied to the structure for error analysis. Errors are corrected until a satisfying threshold is reached. Stochastic taggers use a trained corpus to determine the POS of a given word. Stopword Removal Stopwords, i.e. words thought not to convey any meaning, are removed from the text. The approach taken in this work does not compile a static list of stopwords, as usually done. Instead PoS information is browbeaten and all tokens that are not nouns, verbs or adjectives are removed. Stop words are words which occur often in text and speech. They do not tell much about the content they are wrapped in, but helps humans understand and interpret the residue of the content. These terms are so generic that they do not mean anything by themselves. In the context of text processing they are basically just empty words, which only takes up space, increases computational time and affects the similarity measure in a way which is not relevant. This can result in false positives. Table: 1 List of Stop words This class includes only one method; which runs through a list of words and removes all occurrences of words specified in a file. A text file, which specifies the stop words, is loaded into the program. This file is called â€Å"stop-words.txt† and is located at the home directory of the program. The text file can be edited such that it only contains the desired stop words. A representation of the stop words used in the text file can be found in table 1. After the list of stop words has been loaded, it is compared to the words in the given list. If a match is found the given word in the list is removed. A list, exposed from stop words, is then returned. Stemming Words with the same meaning appear in various morphological forms. To capture their similarity they are normalised into a common root-form, the stem. The morphology function provided with WordNet is used for stemming, because it only yields stems that are contained in the WordNet dictionary. This class contains five methods; one for converting a list of words into a string, two for stemming a list of words and two for handling the access to WordNet through the JWNL API[8]. The first method listToString() takes an ArrayList of strings and concatenate these into a string representation. The second method stringStemmer() takes an ArrayList of strings and iterates through each word, stemming these by calling the private method wordStemmer(). This method checks if the JWNL API has been loaded and starts stemming by looking up the lemma of a word in WordNet. Before this is done, each word starting with an uppercase letter is checked to see if it can be used as a noun. If the word can be used as a noun, it does not qualify for stemming and is returned in its original form. The lemma lookup is done by using a morphological processor, which is provided by WordNet. This morphs the word into its lemma, after which the word is checked for a match in the database of WordNet. This is done by running through all the specified POS databases defined in WordNet. If a match is found, the lemma of the word is returned, otherwise the original word is simply returned. Lastly, the methods allowing access to WordNet initializes the JWNL API and shuts it down, respectively. The initializer() method gets an instance of the dictionary files and loads the morphological processor. If this method is not called, the program is not able to access the WordNet files. The method close() closes the dictionary files and shuts down the JWNL API. This method is not used in the program, since it would not make sense to uninstall the dictionary once it has been installed. It would only increase the total execution time. It has been implemented for good measure, should it be needed. Stemming[5] is the process of reducing an inflected or derived word to its base form. In other words all morphological deviations of a word are reduced to the same form, which makes comparison easier. The stemmed word is not necessarily returned to its morphological root, but a mutual stem. The morphological deviations of a word have different suffixes, but in essence describe the same. These different variants can therefore be merged into a distinct representative form. Thus a comparison of stemmed words turns up a higher relation for equivalent words. In addition storing becomes more effective. Words like observes, observed, observation, observationally should all be reduced to a mutual stem such as observe. PROPOSED SYSTEM Reverse dictionaries approach can provide significantly higher quality. The proposed a set of methods for building and querying a reverse dictionary. Reverse dictionary system is based on the notion that a phrase that conceptually describes a word should resemble the word’s actual definition, if not matching the exact words, then at least conceptually similar. Consider, for example, the following concept phrase: â€Å"talks a lot, but without much substance.† Based on such a phrase, a reverse dictionary should return words such as â€Å"gabby,† â€Å"chatty,† and â€Å"garrulous.† Forward mapping (standard dictionary): Intuitively, a forward mapping designates all the senses for a particular word phrase. This is expressed in terms of a forward map set (FMS). The FMS of a (word) phrase W, designated by F(W) is the set of (sense) phrases {S1, S2, . . . Sn } such that for each Sj à Ã¢â‚¬Å¾ F(Wi), (Wi à ¯Ã†â€™Ã‚   Sj) à Ã¢â‚¬Å¾ D. For example, suppose that the term â€Å"jovial† is associated with various meanings, including â€Å"showing high-spirited merriment† and â€Å"pertaining† to the god Jove, or Jupiter.† Here, F (jovial) would contain both of these phrases. Reverse mapping (reverse dictionary): Reverse mapping applies to terms and is expressed as a reverse map set (RMS). The RMS of t, denoted R(t), is a set of phrases { P1, P2, Pi,†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦, Pm}, such that à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢Pi à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ½ R(t), t à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ½ F(Pi). Intuitively, the reverse map set of a term t consists of all the (word) phrases in whose definition t appears. The find candidate words phase consists of two key sub steps: 1) Build the RMS. 2) Query the RMS. A. COMPONENTS The first preprocessing step is to PoS tag the corpus. The PoS tagger relies on the text structure and morphological differences to determine the appropriate part-of-speech. For this reason, if it is required, PoS tagging is the first step to be carried out. After this, stopword removal is performed, followed by stemming. This order is chosen to reduce the amount of words to be stemmed. The stemmed words are then looked up in WordNet and their corresponding synonyms and hypernyms are added to the bag-of-words. Once the document vectors are completed in this way, the frequency of each word across the corpus can be counted and every word occurring less often than the pre specified threshold is pruned. Stemming, stopword removal and pruning all aim to improve clustering quality by removing noise, i.e. meaningless data. They all lead to a reduction in the number of dimensions in the term-space. Weighting is concerned with the estimation of the importance of individual terms. All of these have been used extensively and are considered the baseline for comparison in this work. However, the two techniques under investigation both add data to the representation. a PoS tagging adds syntactic information and WordNet is used to add synonyms and hypernyms. B. BUILDING REVERSE MAPPING SETS The input phrases sentence is split into words and then removes the stop words ( a, be, person, some, someone, too, very, who, the, in, of, and, to) if any appears, and find other words, which is having same meaning from the forward dictionary data sources. Given the large size of dictionaries, creating such mappings on the fly is infeasible. Thus, Procreate these Rs for every relevant term in the dictionary. This is a one time, offline event; once these mappings exist, we can use them for ongoing lookup. Thus, the cost of creating the corpus has no effect on runtime performance. For an input dictionary D, we create R mappings for all terms appearing in the sense phrases (definitions) in D. C. RMS QUERY This module responds to user input phrases. Upon receiving such an input phrase, we query the R indexes already present in the database to find candidate words whose definitions have any similarity to the input phrase. Upon receiving an input phrase U, we process U using a stepwise refinement approach. We start off by extracting the core terms from U, and searching for the candidate words (Ws) whose definitions contain these core terms exactly. (Note that we tune these terms slightly to increase the probability of generating Ws) If this first step does not generate a sufficient number of output Ws, defined by a tuneable input parameter ÃŽ ±, which represents the minimum number of word phrases needed to halt processing and return output. D. CANDIDATE WORD RANKING In this module sorts a set of output Ws in order of decreasing similarity to U, based on the semantic similarity. To build such a ranking, we need to be able to assign a similarity measure for each (S,U) pair, where U is the user input phrase and S is a definition for some W in the candidate word set O. Wn and Palmer’s Conceptual similarity, WUP Similarity between concepts a and b in a hierarchy, Here depth(lso(a,b)) is the global depth of the lowest super ordinate of a and b and len(a,b) is the length of the path between the nodes a and b in the hierarchy SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE We now describe our implementation architecture, with particular attention to design for scalability. The Reverse Dictionary Application (RDA) is a software module that takes a user phrase (U) as input, and returns a set of conceptually related words as output. Figure 1. Architecture of reverse dictionary. The user input phrase, split the word from the input phrase, perform the stemming. Predict every relevant term in the forward dictionary data source. In the generate query. input phrase, minimum and maximum output thresholds as input, then removal of level 1 stop words ( a, be, person, some, someone, too, very, who, the, in, of, and, to) and perform stemming, generate the query.Execute the query find the set of candidate words. Finally sort the result based on the semantic similarity EXPERIMENTAL ENVIRONMENT Our experimental environment consisted of two 2.2 GHz dual-core CPU, 2 GB RAM servers running Windows XP pro and above. On one server, we installed our implementation our algorithms (written in Java). The other server housed is wordnet dictionary data. CONCLUSION We describe the many challenges inherent in building a reverse lexicon, and map drawback to the well-known abstract similarity problem. We tend to propose a collection of strategies for building and querying a reverse lexicon, and describe a collection of experiments that show the standard of our results, similarly because the runtime performance underneath load. Our experimental results show that our approach will give important enhancements in performance scale while not sacrificing answer quality. The higher quality input phrase to driven reverse dictionary. Unlike a traditional forward dictionary, which maps from words to their definitions, a reverse dictionary takes a user input phrase describing the desired concept, it reduce the well-known conceptual similarity problem. The set of methods building a reverse mapping querying a reverse dictionary and it produces the higher quality of results. This approach can provide significant improvements in performance scale without sacrificing solution quality but for larger query it is fairly slow. REFERENCES T. Dao and T. Simpson, â€Å"Measuring Similarity between Sentences,† 2009. http://opensvn.csie.org/WordNetDotNet/trunk/ Projects/ T. Hofmann, â€Å"Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing,† SIGIR ’99: Proc. 22nd Ann. Int’l ACM SIGIR Conf. Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 50-57, 1999. D. Lin, â€Å"An Information-Theoretic Definition of Similarity,† Proc .Int’l Conf. Machine Learning, 1998. M. Porter, â€Å"The Porter Stemming Algorithm,†http://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/ , 2009. G. Miller, C. Fellbaum, R. Tengi, P. Wakefield, and H. Langone, â€Å"Wordnet Lexical Database,† http://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/download/, 2009. P. Resnik, â€Å"Semantic Similarity in a Taxonomy: An Information-Based Measure and Its Application to Problems of Ambiguity in Natural Language,† J. Artificial Intelligence Research, vol. 11, pp. 95- 130, 1999. AUTHORS PROFILE E Kamalanathan is pursuing his Master of Engineering (part time ) from Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SCSVMV University Enathur,

Danone company in India analysis

Danone company in India analysis In early 1900s a small yogurt producing factory with a vision to reach its scrumptious yogurts in every part of the world was started in Barcelona, Spain. Later Danone entered the biscuit industry in 1986 by buying General Biscuit and in 1989 it added to its portfolio of biscuit brands by acquiring Nabiscos European subsidiaries  [1]  . Later Danone began aggressively venturing globally and took over 40 acquisitions in Asia, Latin America, Central Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The Globalization vision would have been futile if Danone Group would have not entered Indian market where 1/6th of the world population resided. It took 7 decades for Danone to reach India with an immense hope of stabilizing its brand through a joint venture with Wadia group. Together they took over 51 percent holding of Indias leading biscuit manufacturer, Britannia Industries Limited. Danone did foresee this venture as a potential growth for one its core business lines of biscuits. Along with stre ngthen its biscuit portfolio, it saw strategical entry of the other two businesses of dairy products and beverages (specifically water). Antoine Riboud founder of Danone stated during unveiling of the companies from BSN to Danone that We wanted our name to be an added source of momentum for the global expansion that is now our priority. The food industry has in the past treated markets as discreet entities separated from each other by the culinary traditions of countries or regions, but it is now caught up in the same swing to globalization as others. This is because not only tastes, but also distribution and media are becoming just as global (Franck, 1996). Antoine Riboud and his successor Franck Riboud knew that they had to develop a response to this allegation by entering the Indian market to strengthen the growth of its biscuits, dairy products and beverages. However Danones association with its joint venture persuaded a change of strategy which eventually restructured its core business line and future actions. However, Danone stayed consistent with its priority of expansion globally and considering India to be important nation to pursue its vision. About Danone Group The Danone Group is a multinational food products company and currently consists of four principal business lines namely fresh dairy products, bottled water, baby nutrition and medical nutrition. Danones fresh dairy products sector represents 60% of the group sales according to 2009 report making it the number one company in fresh dairy products. The two lines of probiotic dairy products named as Actimel and Activia are the most accepted products of Danone [refer exhibit 2]. As for the other business lines, the bottled waters and baby nutrition products were ranked number two in the world and its medical nutrition products as number one in European market (Press Pederson, 2000). The Globalization strategy of Danone products commenced in early 1990s. Before entering India, Danones major business lines consisted of fresh dairy, biscuits, glass containers and beer [refer exhibit 3]. Based on world rankings in 1995, Danone was categorized as the world seventh largest food group, and the pioneer in fresh dairy products and biscuits. It was also ranked as number two in pasta, beer and glass containers. In May 1997 Franck Riboud announced the adoption of a new company strategy focusing on three core business areas namely dairy products, biscuits, and beverages (specifically water and beer)in which the company had global leadership [refer exhibit 1]. These areas also represented 85 percent of group sales (Press Pederson, 2000). Background In far far away land a small cookie making factory was started and K. Ranjan Pillai sobriquet as Biscuit King was crowned in the late 1980s. The throne of Mr. Pillai resided with Britannia Industries Ltd (BIL), which was a pioneer in Indian Biscuit Industry. However the reign of the Biscuit King soon got over, as the 43-year old Biscuit-King was pleaded guilty to the charge and admitted he had authorised the release of the companys funds to pay debt incurred by two of his cashew-trading firms. The biscuit tycoon was sent to Tihar Central Jail of India in 1995 and whose death in the same year closed what  the Economic Times  referred to as one of Indias most dramatic corporate sagas (Padmakshan, 2007). This closed the case of Rajan Pillai, however opened its empire and assets for auction. Group Danone grabbed this opportunity and entered the Indian market by establishing a joint venture with oldest Indian conglomerate Wadia Group. A marriage of two diverse entities was formed giving birth to two equal joint venture companies, UK registered Associated Biscuits International Holdings Ltd in 1992 and Wadia BSN in 1995. The Groupe Danone and Wadia together hold 50.96% in Britannia through Associated Biscuits International Ltd. The ABI Holdings, was a 50:50 JV between Groupe Danone and Wadia group. Nusli Wadia owner of the Wadia Group took over as a chairman for Britannia and Sunil Alag was appointed as the Managing Director. Sunil Alag was known as the Danone man as he was instrumental for Danone to join hands with Wadia. This new entity, Wadia BSN India, was meant to manufacture and sell food products and beverages in India, covering all Danone products, but the venture did not move. As per the Wadia BSN agreement signed in 1995, in case of a deadlock between the partners, Danone is obliged to buy all the shares of the Wadia group at a `fair market value. This agreement does not include Britannias holding firm, ABIH which has a separate agreement signed in 1992 and is subject to the British law (Chatterjee, 2007). Expect the unexpected On 29th June 2007, the French dairy major, Group Danone formally initiated arbitration proceedings to end its partnership with the Mumbai based Wadia group. The 15 years of foray came to an end leading to speculations of Danones growth in India. Eight days before the final declaration of end of relation of Danone and Wadia group the shares  of Danone on 21st June 2007 fell by 1.1 percent, to 57.42 Euros in Paris as Frances benchmark CAC 40 stock index dropped 1 percent (Saikat Ladka, 2007). Danone Secretary General,  Philippe-Loic Jacob said that We are addressing the current issues with our Indian partner, and this was a priority as Danone wished to continue developing its activities in India. It was revealed by both parties that this discontinuation was advantageous to both parties as Danone was no longer interested in the biscuits business line globally. Whereas The Wadia group having increased its stake in Britannia gained an opportunity to focus on its core business of Bisc uits. Britannias core business was always biscuits, where it enjoyed 38 percent in value and about 32 percent in volume in 2007 (Babu, 2007). Further, the Rs 6,500-crore  [2]  organised biscuit market in India was growing at 14-16 per cent per annum (Archana Rai, 2003). Issue 1: 2001 On 27th October 2001, Britannia formed a joint venture with Fonterra Co-operative Group of New Zealand, the worlds largest milk company, to explore the potential for dairy products (www.businessweek.com, 2009). Britannia took this stand even though it was associated with one of the most powerful leaders of dairy products-Danone. Fonterra was among the ten biggest dairy companies in the world and had integrated process where it included every part of the chain from procurement of milk to value-added products such as cheese and buttermilk (Krishnan, 2002). This was unlike as that of Danone who did market dairy products such as yoghurt, cheese and desserts. Issue 2: 2003 On June 04, 2003, Sunil Alag was ousted as a CEO, but it was claimed that Danone was not informed until the last minute. There were speculations that Nusli Wadia had realized that outsiders were seeing Britannia as a one man show and Mr. Alag was its face. Alagh took all the critical operational decisions and had shaken up a company associated with staid biscuit brands-like Goodday, Marie and Bourbon-by launching Pure Magic and Tiger (Archana Rai, 2003). Mr. Alag had a support from Danone as he was a strong link between the two companies.. Apart from being a successful CEO, Alagh was also flashy, flamboyant, with friends among the Page 3 crowd in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. So its likely that he helped his friends in some way, as is common with most Indian CEOs. To oust Alagh, Wadia devised the idea of the audit report, the logic being Danone would not support a corrupt CEO (Archana Rai, 2003). An internal audit report, which was recently leaked to the media, did find that Alagh pro bably favoured ad agencies, media houses and ngos run by his friends. Other claims were that Wadia wanted to have a say in the company and eventually get his son, Jeh, on board (Archana Rai, 2003). Mr Alagh, 56, joined Britannia in 1974 and has been MD CEO for over a decade (Chakravarty Kurian, 2009). Issue 3: In June, 2006:  Danone registered the Tiger trademark in over 70 countries without prior consent  [3]  . Due to this Britannia demanded royalty from Danone for use of Tiger brand that was registered under them. The tiger brand was the strongest brand of Britnannia which corporate to 20% of the companys revenue  [4]  . To this Danone also asked Britannia for royalties for using its trademark recipes for Britannias product Little Hearts. Issue 4: In November, 2006 the Wadias dragged Groupe Danone to court over the French company picking up a minority stake in a Bangalore based bio-nutritional foods company Avestha Gengraine Technologies, through its subsidiary Daninvest.com SA (Sangameshwaran, 2007). This was in violation of the governments Press Note 1, 2005, which requires a foreign company to obtain the consent of its Indian joint venture partner before pursuing an independent business in a similar area  [5]  . Actions to be India The allegation of not informing Danones partner for picking up minority stakes of Avestha Gengraine Technologies was denied by Danone. A letter dated 10th May 2007 was sent to the Indian Government that it is not a joint venture with Britannia and its 25 percent shareholdings in the biscuit company is a joint venture with wadia group ABIH through UK and not India (Chakravarty, 2007). Hence, Danone claimed that it dint have any direct joint venture in India and hence the Press Note 1, 2005 was not applicable to them. However, to this the government repeatedly told Danone that it would require no objection certificate as per the press note regulation governing the joint venture between domestic and foreign market (Chakravarty Kurian, 2009). Shortly within few months, Danone had to address a court case in September 2007, for allegedly usurping the intellectual property rights (IPR). Vinita Bali the new managing director of Britannia, said: Danone paid 220 million rupees as fee for usin g the Tiger brand  [6]  . However, to this Danone asked Britannia to pay royalty for using its trademark recipe the brand Little Hearts. However this claim was turned around as Britannia had obtained Danones approval for it and was authorized to sell it elsewhere. Ironically the exchange of technical co-operation and intellectual property was approved during Sunil Alaghs tenure as Britannia CEO, who was known to share a good rapport with the Danone top brass (Vijayraghavan, 2007).  On April 14, 2009, Groupe Danone officially exited Britannia Industries by selling its entire 25.48 per cent interest to a Wadia Group company, Leila Lands, which indirectly held a similar stake in the biscuit firm  [7]  . In 2007, Danone sold its global biscuit business to Kraft Foods for à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬5.3 billion, enabling the American company to add the portfolio to its Nabisco cookies and crackers  [8]  . Danone position now in India Group Danone is now particularly keen on focusing on the dairy products in India. The Danone India, the firms fully-owned subsidiary in India, will manage the dairy and baby foods business, the water business will be managed separately through a new joint venture (JV) with Narang Hospitality Services, which is the distributor for Evian in India. Group Danone is particularly keen on the baby nutrition segment, especially after its $17 billion acquisition of Dutch firm Royal Numico, which made it Europes largest player in the baby foods category and the second-largest in the world after Nestle. According to Yakult group (http://yakult.co.in/), In 2005 Yakult Danone India (P) Ltd was formed with a joint venture between Yakult Honsha, Japan and Group Danone of France. The 50:50 Joint venture Yakults probiotic drink was launched in December 2007  [9]  . Conclusion Danones main motive to enter Indian market was to seek potential growth for its products. Indian market being complex and diverse, the best option Danone predicted was through Joint Venture. However Danone when coming out of the Indian joint venture certainly learnt about the social environment, consumer behaviour and organizational cultures in India. With this it also got aware factors of strategic asset seeking. The trail and turbulence in the Indian market undoubtedly lost focus of the firms orientation where its earlier core business was of Biscuits, Dairy products and beverages. However during its reign in India Danone completely mislaid its establishment in biscuit sector and ended up having its new portfolio of nutrional and baby products instead of biscuits. In 2007 it swapped its world number 2 position as producer of cereals and biscuits  for the same position in baby foods, having sold the biscuits division to  Kraft Foods  [10]  . The 15 years of learning also all owed Danone to change from its diversification strategy to being focused in its Business line. According to Comment/ Jarrell (1995) companies with decrease diversification show better result in the market. This is eventually being true with Danone, however adding its risk due to focused diversification. As observed in the case study, Danone did foresee growth in India. Also as per the Global Competitveness report [Exhibit 5] India ranked second in world which showed huge opportunity for the Danones growth. Danone assumed that the even though perceived distance of India and France and opposite, its establishment in India through joint venture would minimize any complexity. Moreover unperceived rules, regulations and laws of Indian company made the Danones existence in India more complex. However, one of the profound complexity Danone faced was adapting to the managements working ethics. India corruption index is more than double to that of France. Positioning the French company as not to be affected by the political sway was challenging. Lastly the Power Distance Index (PDI) according to Hoftedes model shows that India had higher power index than the France. The higher PDI states that there is unequality of power and acceptance of rule by higher authority. This lead to monopoly in the Indian joint venture by giving rise to diverging and setting of incoherent rules. However, the French had lower power index than India, stating that challenging and opposing inequality was within them. Eventually this was perceptible and which lead French Danone to break its joint venture with the Indian partner. Appendix Exhibit 1 Consolidated sales report according to business lines in 1995 Source: http://www.danone.com/images/pdf/10_danone.pdf Exhibit 2 Best sellers of Danones dairy range: Actimel and Activia Exhibit 3 DAIRY PRODUCTS: Bledina SA; Danone GmbH (Germany; 99.9%); Danone SA (Argentina; 99.5%); NV Danone SA (Belgium); Danone SA (Brazil); Danone Inc. (Canada); Danone SA (Spain; 55.7%); Danone Kft (Hungary); Danone SpA (Italy; 99.7%); Danone de Mexico SA de CV; Danone Sp zoo (Poland); Danone Portugal SA (52.8%); Danone A/S (Czech Republic; 95.1%); Danone Clover SA (South Africa; 66.8%); The Dannon Company (U.S.A.; 89%); Galbani (Italy; 90%). Beverages: Aguas de Lanjarà ³n (Spain; 78.5%); Aguas Minerales (Argentina; 50%); Alken-Maes (Belgium; 99.6%); Birra Peroni Industriale (Italy; 24.4%); Evian; Font Vella SA (Spain; 77.8%); Italaquae SpA (Italy; 91%); Kronenbourg; Mahou SA (Spain; 33.3%); San Miguel (Spain; 80.5%); Volvic. Biscuits: Bagley SA (Argentina; 91%); Bolshevik (Russia; 72.8%); Danone Cokolà ¡dovny A/S (Czech Republic; 49.1%); Danone SA (Brazil); Griesson-De Beukelaer GmbH Co.KG (Germany; 40%); Heudebert; Irish Biscuits (Ireland); The Jacobs Bakery Ltd (U.K.); LU; LU Benelux (Belgique) (Belgium; 99.6%); LU Benelux (Pays-Bas) (Netherlands; 99.6%); LU Espaà ±a (Spain); Papadopoulos (Greece; 60%); Saiwa SpA (Italy). OTHER: HP Foods Ltd (U.K.); BSN Emballage (44%); Amoy Food Ltd (Hong Kong; 90.3%); PT Aqua Golden Mississippi (Indonesia; 36.1%); Britannia Brands (Malaysia) SDN BHD (90.3%); Britannia Industries Ltd (India; 18.4%); Calpis Ajinomoto Danone Co Ltd (Japan; 25%); Continental Biscuits Ltd (Pakistan; 44.7%); Griffins Foods Ltd (New Zealand; 90.3%); Hangzhou Wahaha Co. Ltd (China; 41%); Shanghai Danone Biscuits Foods Co. Ltd (China; 54.2%); Shenzhen Danone Health Drinks Co. Ltd (China; 54.2%); Tangshan United European Haomen Brewery Co. Ltd (China; 63.2%); Wuhan Euro Dongxihu Brewery Co. Ltd (China; 54.2%); Danone International Brands Paris; Great Brands of Europe. Exhibit 4 The controversial tiger brand Exhibit 5 Source: Global competitiveness report, world economic forum (2009-2010) Link: https://members.weforum.org/pdf/GCR09/GCR20092010fullreport.pdf Exhibit 6 Source: Corruption Perception Index (2010) Link: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

Design & Architecture in Britain Essay -- Architecture in the UK

One of the essential roles that architects are trained to fulfil is taking a clients brief and developing it creatively. Developing a brief is a crucial starting point of design to achieving a clear objective, well structured and financed plan of work. When architects are involved early in the planning stage they have an opportunity to create a much more enriched brief as they will have a greater understanding of the clients needs and the nature of the project Setting out a development/design brief: Before any design work is undertaken it is important that a development/design brief is in place. A good design brief provides a platform for buildings to be used; -More Efficiently – so that space can be utilised in the best approach possible with minimum wasted space. -Effectively – in a way that allows the building to be socially sustainable. -Expressively – within the built environment to the value of society. -With Purpose –giving the building’s function and placement significant, accessible and prosperous. Good briefing provides all involved professionals with a greater understanding of the desired outcomes and the responsibilities towards achieving those. Briefing – A six step process 1. Scope Definition of breadth, focus, scope and parameters of the briefing project 2. Role Statement describing what the user organisation (public, community, city authority, etc.) is for 3. Activities -Activity statement is a description of what will go on in the building 4. Draft requirements Includes a space budget listing functional requirements, also spatial... ... Process’,Dawe.L.2014 Part B: Lecture 4 - ‘Practice Management’,Dawe.L.2014 Lecture 5 - ‘An introduction to BIM’- Past Present and future, Comiskey.D.2014 Lecture 6 - ‘Plan of Work 2013’,Dawe.L.2014 Lecture 7 - ‘Procurement&Construction process’,Dawe.L.2014 Books Greenhalgh, B (2011). Introduction to Building Procurement. London: Spon Press Ostime, N (2013). Architects Job Book. London: RIBA Publishing. Websites RIBA. RIBA Plan of Work 2013. Available: http://www.architecture.com/TheRIBA/AboutUs/Professionalsupport/RIBAOutlinePlanofWork2013.aspx#.Uz5Cm_ldUgQ. Last accessed 2nd April 2014. placeni. Summer Urban design school. Available: http://www.placeni.org/. Last accessed 2nd April 2014 The Joint Contracts Tribunal. (1998). Contracts. Available: http://www.jctltd.co.uk/home.aspx. Last accessed 2nd April 2014. Design & Architecture in Britain Essay -- Architecture in the UK One of the essential roles that architects are trained to fulfil is taking a clients brief and developing it creatively. Developing a brief is a crucial starting point of design to achieving a clear objective, well structured and financed plan of work. When architects are involved early in the planning stage they have an opportunity to create a much more enriched brief as they will have a greater understanding of the clients needs and the nature of the project Setting out a development/design brief: Before any design work is undertaken it is important that a development/design brief is in place. A good design brief provides a platform for buildings to be used; -More Efficiently – so that space can be utilised in the best approach possible with minimum wasted space. -Effectively – in a way that allows the building to be socially sustainable. -Expressively – within the built environment to the value of society. -With Purpose –giving the building’s function and placement significant, accessible and prosperous. Good briefing provides all involved professionals with a greater understanding of the desired outcomes and the responsibilities towards achieving those. Briefing – A six step process 1. Scope Definition of breadth, focus, scope and parameters of the briefing project 2. Role Statement describing what the user organisation (public, community, city authority, etc.) is for 3. Activities -Activity statement is a description of what will go on in the building 4. Draft requirements Includes a space budget listing functional requirements, also spatial... ... Process’,Dawe.L.2014 Part B: Lecture 4 - ‘Practice Management’,Dawe.L.2014 Lecture 5 - ‘An introduction to BIM’- Past Present and future, Comiskey.D.2014 Lecture 6 - ‘Plan of Work 2013’,Dawe.L.2014 Lecture 7 - ‘Procurement&Construction process’,Dawe.L.2014 Books Greenhalgh, B (2011). Introduction to Building Procurement. London: Spon Press Ostime, N (2013). Architects Job Book. London: RIBA Publishing. Websites RIBA. RIBA Plan of Work 2013. Available: http://www.architecture.com/TheRIBA/AboutUs/Professionalsupport/RIBAOutlinePlanofWork2013.aspx#.Uz5Cm_ldUgQ. Last accessed 2nd April 2014. placeni. Summer Urban design school. Available: http://www.placeni.org/. Last accessed 2nd April 2014 The Joint Contracts Tribunal. (1998). Contracts. Available: http://www.jctltd.co.uk/home.aspx. Last accessed 2nd April 2014.

Humorous Wedding Roast by a Fellow Gambler :: Wedding Toasts Roasts Speeches

Humorous Wedding Speech by a Fellow Gambler Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Josh and following the time-honored tradition, I will now do my best to give Roy the most uncomfortable five minutes of his life. For the record, the most uncomfortable five minutes of Joyce's life will be later on this evening, courtesy of Roy. Roy and I became acquainted many years ago, when we had three encounters in one week. I first saw him when he was placing a bet at the Horse Racing track. Then he appeared again at my local pub. And then, unbelievably, he appeared yet again - this time at poker night. It was at this moment that I realized someone very special had entered my life. Yes, I had a stalker! Or as his clothes suggested†¦ a gay stalker! This aside, we soon became friends and being a betting man myself I was immediately impressed by his outstanding knowledge of horse racing. He can name any trainer, jockey or horse which finished 4th or worse in any race in the last five years. But apparently, in the run up to the wedding, Roy’s form at the races has vastly improved and he’s been doing better than he’s ever done before. That’s right, Joyce hasn’t been letting him go. On the subject of betting I have a bit of an issue to raise. It came to my attention earlier that Roy is running a book on the length of the best man's speech. I am sure you will all be glad to know that I got wind of this and, not being known to Roy at the time, I put a tenner on myself to last an hour at the bargain odds of 500-1. So I suggest you top up your glasses and make yourselves comfortable - but do let me know if Roy tries to slip out. Attending university was definitely the best decision Roy ever made. Because he didn’t just meet me, he also met Joyce – who looks absolutely stunning today. October 1993, Roy Solomon, a county swimmer and keen football player, meets Joyce Reeves. And eight years later, Roy hasn’t so much as looked at a swimming pool and doesn’t play football anymore. But all is not lost, I understand he still has a good breaststroke, doesn’t have any problems with his ball control and can certainly use his head, even if he is a bit clumsy around the box.

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Contents MODULE 2 1 Scatter graphs 1. 1 Scatter graphs and relationships 1. 2 Lines of best fit and correlation 1. 3 Using lines of best fit Chapter summary Chapter review questions 1 1 5 6 10 10 4 Processing, representing and interpreting data 4. 1 Frequency polygons 4. 2 Cumulative frequency 4. 3 Box plots 4. 4 Comparing distributions 4. 5 Frequency density and histograms Chapter summary Chapter review questions 51 51 56 64 65 68 73 73 2 Collecting and recording data 14 2. 1 Introduction to statistics 2. 2 Data by observation and by experiment 2. 3 Grouping data 2. 4 Questionnaires 2. 5 Sampling 2. Databases Chapter summary Chapter review questions 14 14 16 18 20 23 27 28 5 Probability 5. 1 5. 2 5. 3 Writing probabilities as numbers Sample space diagrams Mutually exclusive outcomes and the probability that the outcome of an event will not happen 5. 4 Estimating probability from relative frequency 5. 5 Independent events 5. 6 Probability tree diagrams 5. 7 Conditional probability Ch apter summary Chapter review questions 77 77 79 81 84 86 88 89 92 93 3 Averages and range 3. 1 Mean, mode and median 3. 2 Using frequency tables to find averages 3. 3 Range and interquartile range 3. 4 Stem and leaf diagrams 3. Estimating the mean of grouped data 3. 6 Moving averages Chapter summary Chapter review questions 31 31 34 36 38 41 44 47 47 MODULE 3 6 Number 6. 1 6. 2 Properties of whole numbers Multiplication and division of directed numbers M4 6. 3 Squares, cubes 6. 4 Index laws 6. 5 Order of operations 6. 6 Using a calculator 6. 7 Prime factors, HCF and LCM Chapter summary Chapter review questions 97 97 98 100 101 102 104 106 110 110 Chapter summary Chapter review questions 124 124 8 Expressions and sequences 8. 1 8. 2 Expressions and collecting like terms Working with numbers and letters and using index notation M4 8. Index laws M4 8. 4 Sequences Chapter summary Chapter review questions 127 127 129 131 134 138 139 7 Angles (1) 7. 1 7. 2 7. 3 7. 4 7. 5 Triangles Equilat eral triangles and isosceles triangles Corresponding angles and alternate angles Proofs Bearings 113 113 114 116 119 120 9 Measure (1) 9. 1 9. 2 Compound measures – speed and density Converting between metric and imperial units Chapter summary Chapter review questions 141 141 144 145 145 ii 10 Decimals and fractions 10. 1 10. 2 10. 3 10. 4 Fractions revision Arithmetic of decimals Manipulation of decimals Conversion between decimals and fractions M4 10. Converting recurring decimals to fractions 10. 6 Rounding to significant figures Chapter summary Chapter review questions 147 147 149 151 154 157 159 161 161 14 Estimating and accuracy 14. 1 Significant figures 14. 2 Accuracy of measurements Chapter summary Chapter review questions 192 192 194 196 196 15 Three-dimensional shapes (1) 197 15. 1 Volume of three-dimensional shapes 15. 2 Surface area of three-dimensional shapes 15. 3 Coordinates in three dimensions Chapter summary Chapter review questions 197 202 204 205 206 11 Exp anding brackets and factorising 11. 1 11. 2 11. 3 11. 4 11. Expanding brackets Factorising by taking out common factors Expanding the product of two brackets Factorising by grouping Factorising expressions of the form 164 164 165 167 168 170 171 174 174 16 Indices and standard form 16. 1 Zero and negative powers 16. 2 Standard form M4 16. 3 Fractional indices Chapter summary Chapter review questions M4 207 207 208 215 217 217 x2 bx c 11. 6 Factorising the difference of two squares Chapter summary Chapter review questions 12 Two-dimensional shapes (1) 176 12. 1 Special quadrilaterals 12. 2 Perimeter and area of rectangles 12. 3 Area of a parallelogram 12. Area of a triangle 12. 5 Area of a trapezium 12. 6 Problems involving areas Chapter summary Chapter review questions 176 177 178 178 179 181 184 184 17 Further factorising, simplifying and algebraic proof 220 220 222 225 228 230 230 17. 1 Further factorising 17. 2 Simplifying rational expressions 17. 3 Adding and subtracting rationa l expressions 17. 4 Algebraic proof Chapter summary Chapter review questions 13 Graphs (1) 13. 1 Coordinates and line segments 13. 2 Straight line graphs Chapter summary Chapter review questions 186 186 187 191 191 18 Circle geometry (1) 18. 1 Parts of a circle 18. Isosceles triangles 18. 3 Tangents and chords Chapter summary Chapter review questions 232 232 232 233 236 237 MODULE 4 19 Angles (2) 19. 1 Quadrilaterals 19. 2 Polygons 19. 3 Exterior angles Chapter summary Chapter review questions 238 238 240 244 246 247 20 Fractions 20. 1 20. 2 20. 3 20. 4 248 248 249 251 253 Addition and subtraction of fractions Addition and subtraction of mixed numbers Multiplication of fractions and mixed numbers Division of fractions and mixed numbers iii CONTENTS 20. 5 Fractions of quantities 20. 6 Fraction problems Chapter summary Chapter review questions 255 256 258 258 7 Inequalities 27. 1 Inequalities on a number line 27. 2 Solving inequalities 27. 3 Integer solutions to inequalities 27. 4 Pro blems involving inequalities 27. 5 Solving inequalities graphically Chapter summary Chapter review questions 358 358 359 361 362 363 368 368 21 Scale drawings and dimensions 21. 1 Scale drawings and maps 21. 2 Dimensions Chapter summary Chapter review questions 260 260 262 263 264 28 Formulae 28. 1 28. 2 28. 3 28. 4 Using an algebraic formula Writing an algebraic formula Changing the subject of a formula Expressions, identities, equations and formulae 28. Further changing the subject of a formula Chapter summary Chapter review questions 372 372 374 376 378 379 381 382 22 Two-dimensional shapes (2) 266 22. 1 Drawing shapes 22. 2 Circumference of a circle 22. 3 Area of a circle 22. 4 Circumferences and areas in terms of 22. 5 Arc length and sector area 22. 6 Segment area 22. 7 Units of area Chapter summary Chapter review questions 266 268 270 272 273 274 276 277 277 29 Pythagoras’ theorem and trigonometry (1) 29. 1 Pythagoras’ theorem 29. 2 Finding lengths 29. 3 Applying Pythagoras’ theorem 29. 4 Line segments and Pythagoras’ theorem 29. Trigonometry – introduction 29. 6 Finding lengths using trigonometry 29. 7 Finding angles using trigonometry 29. 8 Trigonometry problems Chapter summary Chapter review questions 384 384 385 388 390 392 393 396 398 401 401 23 Linear equations 23. 1 The balance method for solving equations 23. 2 Setting up equations 23. 3 Solving equations with fractional terms 23. 4 Simultaneous linear equations 23. 5 Setting up simultaneous linear equations Chapter summary Chapter review questions 280 280 284 287 289 292 293 294 24 Percentages 24. 1 Percentages M3 24. 2 Increases and decreases 24. Use of multipliers 24. 4 Reverse percentages Chapter summary Chapter review questions 296 296 299 306 309 311 312 30 Ratio and proportion 30. 1 Introduction to ratio 30. 2 Problems 30. 3 Sharing a quantity in a given ratio 30. 4 Direct proportion 30. 5 Inverse proportion Chapter summary Chapter review questions 405 40 5 408 409 411 413 415 415 25 Graphs (2) 25. 1 Real life graphs 25. 2 Solving simultaneous equations graphically 25. 3 The equation y mx c 25. 4 Further uses of y mx c Chapter summary Chapter review questions 314 314 319 321 324 328 329 31 Three-dimensional shapes (2) 418 1. 1 Planes of symmetry 31. 2 Plans and elevations 31. 3 Volume of three-dimensional shapes 31. 4 Surface area of three-dimensional shapes Chapter summary Chapter review questions 418 420 422 427 430 431 26 Transformations 26. 1 Introduction 26. 2 Translations 26. 3 Rotations 26. 4 Reflections 26. 5 Enlargements 26. 6 Centre of enlargement 26. 7 Combinations of transformations Chapter summary Chapter review questions 332 332 332 336 338 343 346 351 354 354 32 Graphs (2) 32. 1 32. 2 Graphs of quadratic functions Using graphs of quadratic functions to solve equations 32. Using graphs of quadratic and linear functions to solve quadratic equations Chapter summary Chapter review questions 433 433 436 439 442 442 iv CONTE NTS 33 Further graphs and trial and improvement 33. 1 Graphs of cubic, reciprocal and exponential functions 33. 2 Trial and improvement Chapter summary Chapter review questions 445 445 449 453 453 40 Simultaneous linear and quadratic equations and loci 40. 1 40. 2 40. 3 Solving simultaneous equations Loci and equations Intersection of lines and circles – algebraic solutions Chapter summary Chapter review questions 30 530 532 536 538 538 34 Constructions, loci and congruence 34. 1 Constructions 34. 2 Loci 34. 3 Regions 34. 4 Drawing triangles 34. 5 Congruent triangles 34. 6 Proofs of standard constructions Chapter summary Chapter review questions 458 458 461 464 467 468 469 470 471 41 Similar shapes 540 540 544 547 550 552 554 555 41. 1 Similar triangles 41. 2 Similar polygons 41. 3 Areas of similar shapes 41. 4 Volumes of similar solids 41. 5 Lengths, areas and volumes of similar solids Chapter summary Chapter review questions 35 Bounds and surds 35. Lower bounds and upper bo unds 35. 2 Surds Chapter summary Chapter review questions 474 474 476 478 479 42 Direct and inverse proportion 42. 1 Direct proportion 42. 2 Further direct proportion 42. 3 Inverse proportion 42. 4 Proportion and square roots Chapter summary Chapter review questions 559 559 561 563 566 568 568 36 Circle geometry 36. 1 Circle theorems Chapter summary Chapter review questions 481 481 487 488 37 Completing the square 37. 1 Completing the square Chapter summary Chapter review questions 491 491 494 494 43 Vectors 43. 1 43. 2 43. 3 43. 4 43. 5 43. Vectors and vector notation Equal vectors The magnitude of a vector Addition of vectors Parallel vectors Solving geometric problems in two dimensions Chapter summary Chapter review questions 571 571 573 574 575 578 583 587 587 38 Quadratic equations 38. 1 Introduction to solving quadratic equations 38. 2 Solving by factorisation 38. 3 Solving by completing the square 38. 4 Solving using the quadratic formula 38. 5 Solving equations with algebrai c fractions 38. 6 Problems that involve quadratic equations Chapter summary Chapter review questions 496 496 496 498 499 501 502 505 505 44 Transformations of functions 4. 1 44. 2 44. 3 44. 4 44. 5 44. 6 Function notation Applying vertical translations Applying horizontal translations Applying reflections Applying stretches Transformations applied to the graphs of sin x and cos x Chapter summary Chapter review questions Index Licence 591 591 592 596 599 602 605 608 608 611 618 39 Pythagoras’ theorem and trigonometry (2) Problems in three dimensions Trigonometric ratios for any angle Area of a triangle The sine rule The cosine rule Solving problems using the sine rule, the cosine rule and 1 ab sin C 2 Chapter summary Chapter review questions 39. 1 39. 39. 3 39. 4 39. 5 39. 6 507 507 512 516 519 522 525 527 527 v Introduction Welcome to Edexcel GCSE Mathematics Modular Higher Student Book and ActiveBook. Written by Edexcel as an exact match to the new Edexcel GCSE Mathematics H igher Tier specification these materials give you more chances to succeed in your examinations The ActiveBook The ActiveBook CD-ROM is found in the back of this book. It is a digital version of this Student Book, with links to additional resources and extra support. Using the ActiveBook you can: ? Find out what you need to know before you can tackle the unit ?See what vocabulary you will learn in the unit ? See what the learning objectives are for the unit ? Easily access and display answers to the questions in the exercise sections (these do not appear in the printed Student Book) ? Click on glossary words to see and hear their definitions ? Access a complete glossary for the whole book ? Practice exam questions and improve your exam technique with Exam Tutor model questions and answers. Each question that has an Exam Tutor icon beside it links to a worked solution with audio and visual annotation to guide you through it The Student BookEach chapter has a number of units to work th rough, with full explanations of each topic, numerous worked examples and plenty of exercises, followed by a chapter summary and chapter review questions. There are some Module 3 topics that may also be assessed in Modules 2 or 4. These are identified in the contents list with the symbol: M4 These topics are also also assessed in highlighted within the Module 4 chapters themselves, using this flag by the relevant unit headings: The text and worked examples in each unit have been written to explain clearly the ideas and techniques you need to work through the subsequent exercises.The questions in these exercises have all been written to progress from easy to more difficult. At the end of each chapter, there is a Chapter Summary which will help you remember all the key points and concepts you need to know from the chapter and tell you what you should be able to do for the exam. Following the Chapter Summary is a Chapter Review which comprises further questions. These are either past e xam questions, or newly written exam-style questions – written by examiners for the new specifications.Like the questions in the exercise sections, these progress from easy to hard. In the exercise sections and Chapter Reviews Recommendation specification Pentium 3 500 Mhz processor 128MB RAM 8 speed CD-ROM 1GB free hard disc space 800 600 (or 1024 768) resolution screen at 16 bit colour sound card, speakers or headphones Windows 2000 or XP. This product has been designed for Windows 98, but will be unsupported in line with Microsoft’s Product Life-Cycle policy. Installation Insert the CD. If you have autorun enabled the program should start within a few seconds.Follow on-screen instructions. Should you experience difficulty, please locate and review the readme file on the CD.   vi by a question shows that you may use a calculator for this question or those that follow. by a question shows that you may NOT use a calculator for this question or those that follow. Tech nical support If after reviewing the readme you are unable to resolve your problem, contact customer support: ? telephone 0870 6073777 (between 8. 00 and 4. 00) ? email schools. [email  protected] com ? web http://centraal. uk. knowledgebox. com/kbase/