Case Predicting Performance

The pressure of the SAT exam is very great, and many students suffer from test anxiety. The results, therefore, may not truly reflect what a student knows. There is evidence that coaching improves scores by between 40 and 1 50 points. Test scores, therefore, may adversely affect the chances of acceptance for students who cannot afford the $600 or $700 to take test-coaching courses. Are Stats valid, or do they discriminate against minorities, the poor, and those who have had limited access to cultural growth experiences?Alternatives: 1- Keep student selection criteria and its weights as it is for now â€Å"including SAT at 0%† 2- Increase SAT weight 3- Decrease SAT weight to 20% and add to the criteria intelligent test with weight of Alternatives Evaluation: 1 . Keep student selection criteria and its weights as it is for now â€Å"including SAT at 40%† Positives; l. It will give Alex more time to do further study and benchmark with similar colleges. Ii. Alex will gain m ore practical experience to be able to judge fairly on SAT score iii. People who design the SAT† lb. Stats tap intelligence and employers want intelligent job applicants Negative; I.Alex concerns about SAT score will remain 2. Increase SAT weight Positives; I. SAT score are valid predictors of how well a person will do in college. â€Å"According to people who design the SAT† IL. Stats tap intelligence and employers want intelligent I. Alex concerns about SAT score will increase 3. Decrease SAT weight to 20% and add to the criteria intelligent test with weight of I. SAT will remain part of the selection criteria it. Intelligent test is used by multimillion companies to choose their future employees so by using it in the student selection criteria it will improve the college graduates in finding their Jobs.Negative; I. What if a student â€Å"poor† excels in intelligent test but didn't do so well in SAT score? It will remain a dilemma to accept him in Ale's highly selective college. Recommendation:- First alternative is for me is the best†¦ Although it's scores less than second alternative in the evaluation yet it will allow Alex to have enough time to gain more practical experience and benchmark with other similar organization to improve her decision making process. Also in the second alternative Alex concerns about SAT score will not be eliminated or solved! Prepared by: Amman Taft

International Marketing Management Essay

According to Glossary of Marketing (2010, p. 1), self reference criterion refers to â€Å"the assumption that a product can successfully be sold abroad on the basis of its success in the home market. † cultural diversity is experienced in the global markets such that different people interact in the global markets. Marketers should recognize the fact that customers from different backgrounds have different cultural aspects. It is very important for marketers operating in the global markets to understand the cultural differences of their customers. Self reference criterion is an aspect which does not allow marketers to incorporate the culture of other people. As such, people believe that other people will accept their cultural believes and that there are no cultural conflicts between different cultural groups (Noth, Bishara, 2007). Businesses in the modern era are experiencing a lot of changes in terms of social, economic, technological, political and cultural aspects. Emerging trends in business indicate that cultural diversity is affecting many organizations since managers lack the ability to adopt strategies which match the cultural needs of their customers. Jackson, Loehr and Azman (n. d. ) explain that changes in technology have led to changes in economic conditions and organizations should come up with policies which reduce costs and maximize profits. There is need for managers operating in multicultural environments to develop proper policies to satisfy needs of customers located in different regions (Mueller, 2008). Obstacles to international marketing Decision making is a very important aspect in the organization and managers should attempt to integrate the needs of all stakeholders. Decisions which affect all stakeholders should be made by combing ideas from different people. Imposing decisions is a very dangerous activity that managers can engage in since people have different perceptions about how things should be done. Self reference criterion in decision making leads to conflicts in an organization since all stakeholders do not own the decisions made by the management. Communication is a very important factor to consider when making decisions since misunderstanding between people may lead to poor decisions being made. Diversity in culture requires people to understand the needs of each other and to create a link between all people involved in the activities of the organization. Different countries have different culture and marketers in the global scene need to understand the cultural aspects of the people they work with. The culture of the people determines their perception towards the products in the market and they will attach a particular image to a brand according to their cultural perspective. The brand image of a product is the perception that people have towards a certain product in the market. The marketing programs should aim at improving the brand image of a product in the market. Customers create meaning about a product depending on the general market perception of the product and managers should identify the specific cultural aspect of their customers in order to improve brand image. The culture of the consumers shapes the brand image of a product (Gupta, 2003). Self Reference Criterion impedes the ability to assess a foreign market Organizations working in global markets tend to incorporate cultures of different people. Foreign markets have different aspects from local markets and cultural diversity is an important aspect that managers operating in such environments need to note. In the modern business environment, global marketing has become a very important aspect since competition has intensified. Globalization has a great impact on the marketing strategies adopted by companies and managers must use modern technologies in their marketing process to maintain a high customer profile. International markets require integrating and understanding the cultural diversity of different customers in the global markets. The branding strategies of a company must integrate the cultural needs of the people in different countries. The marketing mix, that is, the price, product, promotion and the place must be aligned to the cultural diversity of the people involved in the global markets (Batra, V Ramaswamy, Alden, Steenkamp, and Ramachander, 2000). Managers tend to use their cultural concepts when solving problems at a multicultural environment. This creates misunderstanding especially when solutions do problems to not favor some cultural groups. Culture is defined as the set of believes, values, attitudes and behavior that people in a given region share in common. People tend to use their own experiences in life to interpret things. Culture is a strong factor which determines the decisions made by individuals. The purchasing behavior of the consumers will be shaped by the brand image of the product in the market. The marketing mix strategies will be determined by the purchasing habit of the consumers and hence; is a factor of cultural perception of the consumers in the market. To establish a competitive advantage in the market, the marketers need to identify the perception of the customers towards the products in the market. Culture determines the brand image since it affects the attitudes, behavior, and lifestyle of the customers. Satisfaction of the consumers depends on the experiences they have with the products and the emotional connectivity derived from the use of a variety of brands (Gupta, 2003). Possible impact of the SRC to marketing strategies in different cultures Self reference criterion causes poor communication between people in an organization. Communication is a process where people exchange understanding with each other. Communication is more efficient when the parties are able to understand each other. The sender of the message must encode the message in a manner that the receiver will be able to understand it. The receiver must decode the message to reveal the information contained in it. Misunderstandings occur when people fail to communicate effectively. Gupta (2003, pg 71) suggests that â€Å"culture works by generating a sequence of paraconscious vibrations in human life, which reverberate through the mental attitudes, psychological beliefs, physical behaviors and social breeding of individuals in the system. † Culture affects the overall marketing strategies of an organization; it influences product awareness, trial and repeat purchase by the consumers. It also affects the relationship and communication between the marketers and their customers. The customers select, scan, interpret, validate and prioritize the information they receive from the marketers. There is a positive relationship between the effectiveness of communication and the cultural understanding by the marketers in the survey conducted. The international marketing strategies require the management of global businesses match the cultural aspects of the societies they operate in with the brand image of their products (Jain, 1989). Ethnocentrism and self reference criterion The product features should match the culture of the consumers. Companies operating in the global markets should study the culture of their customers and design products which have cultural attachment. Prices in different markets will be determined by the culture of the customers. Some people believe that high prices represent good quality in products and as such, the marketers should provide suitable prices according to believe of the consumers. When the lifestyle of people changes, new products are demanded. Marketers with the ability to provide products which match new lifestyles charge high prices since they are able to satisfy the needs of a particular niche. Promotional strategies should be matched to the cultural needs of the consumers. Customers respond positively to adverts which capture their culture. The place element of a marketing model requires marketers to introduce their products at the right place. Since different countries have different cultures, marketers should not place certain products in places where the culture does not accept such products. For example, Muslims do not consume pork. A marketer who delivers such products to Muslim countries might not sell anything. When introducing products in a new market; marketers should collaborate will all stakeholders in the market to identify the best strategy to forecast the market demand for the new products (Lindgreen & Hingley, 2009). Cross cultural analysis International marketing refers to the trade of products in many countries. The marketers should research about the most viable markets before establishing their products in those markets. Strategic planning is required to establish the relevance of the marketing strategies to the cultural aspects of the international consumers. The international markets are composed of people with different cultures and this affects the strategies to be adopted by the marketers. Some companies operating in the international markets have failed in some countries due to poor cultural analysis of the consumers in the global market. Wal-Mart is a U. S. company which has opened stores in many countries. The company operates departmental stores and is ranked among the largest organizations of its kind in the country. The company established strategies to open stores in different countries to expand its operations. However, the strategy of opening subsidiaries in Germany, South Korea and other countries failed due to poor cultural analysis of consumers in these markets (Gupta, 2003). PART (B) Market differentiation according to sub-cultures There are different subcultures in the world and marketers must recognize that global markets are not homogenous. There are different groups of customers with different needs. Establishing a uniform marketing strategy for a multicultural market may not be profitable since different consumers have different needs. Marketing policies should be differentiated to ensure adequate coverage of consumer needs. In some cases, marketers are required to differentiate their markets according to regions since within a country, there are cultural differences. Gupta (2003, pg 71) suggests that â€Å"culture works by generating a sequence of paraconscious vibrations in human life, which reverberate through the mental attitudes, psychological beliefs, physical behaviors and social breeding of individuals in the system. † Culture affects the overall marketing strategies of an organization; it influences product awareness, trial and repeat purchase by the consumers. It also affects the relationship and communication between the marketers and their customers. The customers select, scan, interpret, validate and prioritize the information they receive from the marketers. In order to succeed in global marketing process, a marketer should be able to identify the needs of different customers and design marketing strategies which match their needs. Cultural diversity within geo-political boundaries Within a country, there are different cultures since different groups exist and marketers should assume that domestic markets are homogenous. However, cultural diversity in domestic markets is lower compared to international markets. Multinational companies operate in different cultures and the marketing strategies to be adopted should match the cultural aspects of different customers from different regions. There is need to understand cultures of different countries when working with a multinational company since multicultural aspects determine the success of the company (Rao, 2003). Subcultures in marketing It is important for marketers to subdivide their markets according to sub-cultures in order to use the best marketing mix strategies which satisfy specific needs of their consumers. Traditional theories of management assumed that people and cultures are homogenous. Managers should understand that cultural diversity affects the activities of an organization and that they should integrate cultural aspects in their marketing strategies to avoid conflicts. Productivity in an organization requires developing ideas which create understanding in cross-cultural environments. The behavior pattern of people is determined by the culture of the place they work, live and interact. Culture gives people a sense of belonging since human beings like identifying themselves with certain social groups. Culture is dynamic and changes as time goes by. The competitiveness of the organization in the global markets depends on the ability to understand the different cultures and integrating the culture in the products manufactured by the company. The management should do market research about the different cultures of the people they are working with. Products which match the culture of the people develop high demand in the global markets. Therefore, culture should be understood from internal and external systems of the organization (Krueger & Nandan, 2008).

Letter to Government Essay

I am writing to you on behalf of your article in this weeks paper I think the curfew is a fantastic idea I am in full support of the Council proposing this great curfew. Where I live under 16’s are taking over my neighbourhood me and the other residents in the area are feeling threatend by these gangs of ‘yobs’ hanging around our area. All they do is go around drinking and creating uneeded noise which I and the rest of our neighbourhood would agree on. While we adults are staying indoors scared of going out they are out commiting crimes and going round doing under age drinking and under age sex and if the parents of these children could see what I see nearly every night then I’m sure they would be in support with me. As I said before I am scared to go out of my house to go to the shops or to the pub or anywhere! because I am scared of getting jumped or mugged or even killed. Also this curfew would be a good idea because it would give new employees in the police force good experience of dealing with these situations so they are confident and experienced when it comes to a really big proper crime. Also if this curfew goes through then once all of the under 16’s are indoors then it will make life easier for the police patrolling to catch the proper criminals because they won’t have to put up with the cheek and disrespect that they recieve off the under 16’s, also the under 16’s need to respect the police force and realise that they are trying to protect them but they are just trying to show off in front of friends.

Exectutive Coaching Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Exectutive Coaching - Essay Example And Terry Larsen wants to turn the bully nature style of management environment into caring and more open cooperate culture which is made up of mutual trust, teamwork, spirit and respect. In the time of Yvette Hyater-Adams and Terry Larsen, they both aimed on these issues and arranged and conducted workshops and training conferences related to diverse cultural, gender discrimination and diversity. The main issues which CoreStates was going through were also the same. There were these inside politics which were eating the environment of organization like termite. So the main issues which a company was going through were culture issues, lack of respect, openness towards diversity, mutual learning, lack of teamwork and trust. Hyater Adams and Terry Larsen though both were from different background believed in same vision and wanted to bring discipline and mentor the people of organization. So they aimed to improve the cultural relation of workers in Corestate. OCCURANCE OF ISSUES: When Hyater Adams joined the Corestate, she being a black woman has always faced hard difficulties. She wanted to apply her broad vision of culture and diversity to the people of Corestate. Being a vice president she had a position to bring and apply her vision which was not an idea leading to personal betterment but to the organization. Tarry Larsen and Hyater Adams

Assignment 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Assignment 4 - Essay Example Turkle used the Rorschach metaphor to show the relationship between people and machines, he asserted that computers are just projective screen for other actions such as a mirror of mind as well as self (Tapscott, Don, Alex and David, 167-175). Over the recent times Rorschach metaphor has turn out to be less popular due to its limited applications (Tapscott, Don, Alex and David, 167-175).Recently a lot of creativity and innovations have been ongoing making the digital technology more dynamic. Just like human beings, some objects such as computer robots have been put in place, those objects tend to work just like human being with minimum human supervision (Tapscott, Don, Alex, and David, 167-175). Researchers predict that, the future technological innovation will encompass computation technology that will not only have a feelings love but also humor (Tapscott, Don, Alex and David, 167-175). Therefore, the most important thing is to understand the relationship between people and Artifac ts during this digital period. This is because the emergence of new objects will have a significant impact to human life. Therefore, it is important to understand how people are going to relate with new computational technology objects (Tapscott, Don, Alex, and David, 167-175). The study has further explored Staves Jobs contribution in the digital world. In above connection, the study has provided a sharp insight of how life was before and after face book. Sherry Turkle describes an encounter with Chatroulette.What do you think? Is this typical today’s digitech culture and how do you see the development in the near future? The dynamism in digital culture has been

A Perspective on Information and Communication Technologies Dissertation

A Perspective on Information and Communication Technologies - Dissertation Example Increasing complexities, combined with the availability of technology to tackle them, are the milestones of technological progress requiring all sections of society to keep pace. The academic world is no exception. Information society has been defined as ‘a society in which the creation, distribution, and manipulation of information has become the most significant economic and cultural activity’ (UK National Inventory Project, 2000). To meet demands of the information society a number of initiatives have to be taken to ensure that the new generations are prepared to meet its challenges. The associated changes in the way in which knowledge is produced and used are of key relevance to higher education in the twenty-first century (Gibbons, 1998). Â  Through an appreciation of historical and contemporary literature key impact areas are identified in relation to their effect on students, their teachers and the quality of education imparted. These key areas are then evaluated to determine the relative importance of each. Using the reported experience of two schools that have incorporated ICT into their education systems, assessment of the actual experience and impacts felt is made and compared with the impact areas identified. This is done with the objective of giving substance to the recommended steps for deriving maximum benefit from the positive impacts of ICT in education. Â  The term ICT is quite broadly used and covers all aspects of computers, networks (including the Internet) and other devices the important thing is to understand what the technology can do, not how it works. Making a distinction between devices on the basis of technology employed is futile as digital technology pervades more and more areas of our lives every day (TTA, 1998).

Critical Review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 4

Critical Review - Essay Example The main aim of this research is to investigate hCGÃŽ ² triggered signaling pathways and the linkage between hCGÃŽ ² expression and cell motility in the cancerous cells. The study aims to understand more on hCGÃŽ ². This aids the formulation of a study that may help in understanding molecular therapy in treating prostate cancer. Various methods are used in the treatment of cancer patients although they have not been successful in reducing the level of mortality rate among cancer patients (Chiu et al., 2012). Molecular therapy is a new method that takes a different approach to treat cancer since the carcinoma regenerates and as a result attacking the tumors is therefore only for the short-term making it impossible to stop the problem (Armstrong and George, 2008). The human chorionic gonadotropin ÃŽ ² (hCGÃŽ ²) induced migration and invasion in human prostate cancer cells is one of the methods although the molecular mechanisms are unclear. hCGÃŽ ² is therefore studied as the main trigger and its effects to the ERK 1/2 and MMPs studied to understand its effect on these regulators in order to come up with a conclusive argument as to whether the molecular therapy method is feasible in treating prostate cancer. The transfection method that involved establishing a stable cell line overexpressing hCGÃŽ ² in DU145 cells revealed that; the cells without integration were of hCGÃŽ ². The genes were dead and floating in the medium and the single colonies which stably express hCGÃŽ ² were collected (Babykutty et al., 2012). The method was used in dividing the cells and collecting cultured cells that could be used in other procedures as the process took place for two weeks. Typically, the dead cells from the experiment were not found (Leahy et al., 2012). The real time PCR separating the total RNA ensured that the culture cells remaining in the experiment

Corporate law for managers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Corporate law for managers - Essay Example The courts had found that contracts which were subsequently ratified in a general meeting were not valid as well. (Ashbury Railway & Iron Co v Riche) The Parliament tried to reform such tensions and debates in respect of the objects clause by specifying a provision under the Companies Act 1985.Under section 3A of the Companies Act 1985, a company could carry out business of any nature and could do anything that was incidental or conduct to such business. However, the problem in respect of the objects clause remained and there were cases whereby on the basis of the objects clause the acts of a company were challenged and it was said that the actions of the company were ultra vires. The sole reason for such action was the fact that the company could do acts which were incidental or conductive, however, acts, which were completely separate from such business were still caught for being ultra vires thereby creating problems for companies and their directors for actions which could be hit by way of such an objects clause. In lieu of the problems the Companies Act 2006, by way of section 1295 repealed section 3A and in section stated that unless there were restrictions placed on the objects of the company, the company could indulge in any actions whatsoever.

The United States from the World War II as the Strongest Economy in Research Paper

The United States from the World War II as the Strongest Economy in the World - Research Paper Example Each of the countries which signed their allegiance to the Bretton Woods indicates its recognition of four important factors. This uniformity becomes the cornerstone and the main factor which holds the international economy together. First, all the nations involved recognize and agree that â€Å"the interwar period had conclusively demonstrated the disadvantages of unrestrained flexibility of exchange rates† (Cohen 4). It can be recalled that the Great Depression in the 1930s has become a grim reminder of how floating exchange rates discourages trade and investment while increasing the risk of destabilization and competitive depreciation. On the other hand, architects of the Bretton Woods are also reluctant in adopting a permanently fixed exchange rate like the 19th-century gold standard. Thus, avoiding both maxims, delegates agree on a â€Å"pegged rate† or â€Å"adjustable peg† currency regime or a par value system (Cohen 5). Thus, each country is obligated to choose a par value in their national currency and intervene in order to maintain the exchange rate within 1% above or below the preset rate. Secondly, all nations hold that â€Å"if exchange rates were not to float freely, states would also require assurance of an adequate supply of monetary reserves (Cohen 6).† The financial hegemony held by the United States during the period significantly affected the final decision: â€Å"a system of subscriptions and quotas embedded in the IMF, which itself was to be no more than a fixed pool of national currencies and gold subscribed by each country†.

Evaluating Decision Alternatives and Assessing Risk Essay

Evaluating Decision Alternatives and Assessing Risk - Essay Example The chairman to the bank Kenneth Lewis admitted that the information he gave out was not accurate. The executive of the bank, therefore, made mistakes that were against the ethics required in corporations (Cohen, 2009). There are many decisions that the executive of the bank of America took that render them unethical. Among them includes the disguise by Merrill lynch on the risk involved. It was done by changing the â€Å"investment grade† to other investments referred to as the CDOs. The problem was further increased by the credit derivatives. It was because a person could trade the investments many times. It could only get understood by the professionals due to payments on mortgages being done in several years. The activities in the bank continued deteriorating in the prevailing days that loans begun defaulting (James et al., 2002). Merrill lynch as indicated was not able to trade billions of the CDOs as if it had traded them, the players in the market had a chance of discounting the CDOs. The workers in the Merrill had the intentions of earning high bonuses continuously; as a result, they did not trade the CDOs. The employees did not indicate losses and later escaped with the lies. The accountants in the Merrill lynch failed to perform their duties and obligations. The problem raised alarms to the non professionals, however, the management allowed Merrill to escape with the funds. The bank of America acquired the Merrill lynch in the year 2008. A month later it was known that Merrill had losses that summed up to $15 billion. It was in the fourth quarter of the year and BofA made claims that the losses got incurred in December (Cohen, 2009). The bank did not give information to the shareholders and moved on to putting $20 billion in TARP funds. SEC (Slumbering Esquires Club) filed another complaint against the Merrill failure to disclose information about the losses in the month of

Death of a Salesman Willy Lomans Mental Breakdwon Essay Example for Free

Death of a Salesman Willy Lomans Mental Breakdwon Essay In Death of a Salesman Willy Loman was a man made of false dreams. Willy Loman was a man who destroyed himself with his false hopes and dreams. Throughout his whole life he was trying to become a Salesman like his father and he thought he would die a rich and successful man. Willy Loman was a man who tried so hard to achieve the American dream but failed to do so due to the multiple circumstances throughout his life. Environment around Willy Loman has had a huge affect on him which is causing him to be instable. Willy is not only destroyed by his own ideals but destroyed by his own two children Biff and Happy and Howard firing him also broke him down even more. Willy Loman is destroying himself trying to achieve the American Dream and trying to become a salesman like his own father but is failing to do so. He wants to own his own business. Willy also wants to be â€Å"bigger† then Uncle Charlie and that is why he never takes a job under Uncle Charlie even after getting fired. He wishes to die the â€Å"Death of a Salesmman† where many people to mourn for him and remember him as a great salesman. Willy has spent his whole life trying to achieve all these dreams of his but he still hasn’t really achieved any of them which is causing him to have a mental breakdown. However Willy aims in life have been useless as he hasn’t really achieved anything. Willy Loman is constantly lying to himself and his family to escape from being a failure. He is constantly trying to achieve his dream of becoming a great salesman but is lost in reality and is running out of time. In the play Charlie said to Willy â€Å"When are you going to grow up. † Even though Charlie was made fun of by Willy he still is his only friend and cares for him and even offers him a job after Willy gets fired by Howard but Willy refuses to take the job because of his high standards and his dreams which he hasn’t be able to accomplish yet. Willy knows he hasn’t accomplished anything yet and that is why he is guilty and starts lying to himself and to his family and even goes on and has an affair with another woman. He has the affair with the other woman to give himself a â€Å"boost† or to go into another world because he feels he has been a failure at not achieving the â€Å"American Dream. † Having an affair also caused Willy to breakdown because Biff caught him cheating and Willy feels guilty about it. Willy put in his whole life for his sons, Biff and Happy and they turned their backs on him. Willy always loved Biff and thought he would be an amazing business man but after Biff saw Willy cheating it tore Biff apart. Biff failed math and went to Boston to get his dad to talk to his math teacher but at that time he caught his father cheating which made him not get along with his dad for the rest of his life. Willy knows deep down it his fault that Biff never became a successful business man. The fact that he feels guilty is also a huge factor in his mental breakdown. The psychoanalytic theory describes how the environment around a person has an effect on the person. In Willy’s case it his sons and his failiures in life which is causing him to be unstable. From the multiple causes of Willy’s mental breakdown the biggest thing that broke him down was when Biff at the end of Act II shows him the rubber tube he found and explains to him that he was never what Willy wanted him to be. After all that Willy realizes his sons actually do love him even though they aren’t successful businessman. When will realizes he is almost finished is when Biff says â€Å"Pop, I’m nothing! Im nothing Pop. Cant you understand that? There’s no spite in it anymore. Im just what I am, that’s all. † Biff also says â€Å"Will you let me go for Christ’s sake† Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens? After this situation Willy realizes he has not accomplished much in life and his life is almost finished but Biff does love him. Willy has been chasing the American dream for ever trying to follow his father but has never succeeded which has caused him to fail throughout his whole life because he never really did what he was good at which was using his hands. After Willy committed suicide biff tells us what Willy could have been which could have made him successful. Biff says â€Å"Charley, there’s more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made. † This shows that Willy was never a salesman but was good with his hands. The played concluded with Willy committing suicide so his sons could collect the insurance money and because he had realized he was a failure in life but still wanted his children to be happy and successful. The multiple complications lead to the destruction of an American Dream. Willy wanted a dream that seemed materialistic and unimportant which caused his own life and destruction of his kids. Willy trying to chase the American dream and trying to be better then Charley and trying to be like his dad caused him to be a failure and eventually take his own life. Him not being able to achieve his dreams throughout his life caused him to be a failure and destroying his kids as well.

The Play the Crucible is set in New England Essay Example for Free

The Play the Crucible is set in New England Essay A Crucible is a melting pot in which metals are melted together to form a pure metal. Millers characters represent these impure metals from Danforths eyes, as he came to determine Abigails accusations. Miller allows the reader to see how it was believed that the Bible should be interpreted in one way. This belief made sure that if you interpreted the bible wrongly, you would then have to undergo a thorough investigation. But the investigation Danforth underwent, interpreting if Abigails accusations were true or false was not thorough enough as his misinterpretation led to innocent deaths. In the beginning of the play we can already see that the characters are already being put to the test. Betty, Parriss daughter, is not waking up, will you wake, will you open your eyes? Paris saw the girls dancing naked in the woods. This line is significant as it allows Miller to get into the readers mind and makes them think a million thoughts at once. The reader knows that Paris saw the girls dancing, but now he/she is thinking could the dancing have anything to do with her not waking up, is Paris blaming himself for this because he saw what was going on and didnt stop it before the spell was cast on Elizabeth, which is not known at this point of the novel. Miller not only creates a scene but he builds tension with each and every single line. In this scene tension builds as more and more characters get to know that Betty is not waking up. John Proctor, a father of two boys, a farmer in his middle 30s and a man who made a fool feel foolish in his presence, in this case the fool of the novel was Reverend Samuel Parris. Well Proctors character gets toyed around with and tested in act 2 by Elizabeth Proctor his wife. She has never lied but she loves her husband so much that she will lie for him, when she is asked by Danforth if Proctor has ever committed the crime of lechery (adultery), she tells a lie and says no, sir. This tests Elizabeths character by making her do something she has never done (tell a lie). This test proves to the reader that she loves her husband so much that she will go to the extent of do anything for him, even something she has never done before. Why, then, it is not as you told me, Elizabeth proctor toys around with Proctor in the beginning of Act 2, slowly making him admit to her, that he committed lechery (but he doesnt say he does). The toying around with Proctor that Elizabeth did is an excellent test that shows the reader Proctors limits. We know Proctors limit has been reached as he bursts out and tells her she shouldnt judge him I must have mistaken you for God Let you look for the goodness in me, and judge me not. The questioning of Proctor by Hale in Act 2 is a moment in the reader gets proof of Proctor s deep regret for the sin he had committed. You have said that twice, sir, Proctors failure to complete the reciting of the ten commandments is key as it lets the readers imagination loose. This could be interpreted in many ways but it made me think that he was really ashamed of what he had done, as he knew the commandment but didnt want to say it because he was ashamed of it. The questioning of Proctor during this Act allows the reader to get to grips on Proctors character. So in the contrary Miller constantly put his characters through the process of trying to purify them and make them become perfect in Danforths eyes but had a massive turn around in the end of it all and resulted in death, take his shame away, we have seen how much proctor didnt want his name to be spoilt for his children, what more proof is needed to show the reader that this is a man who loved others more than himself and . He refused to sign away his name and decided to die a man with a good name. Nothing could have changed his mind he had decided on keeping his name. Miller may have formed his pure metal but his crucible had a hole in it and this hole allowed some metals to escape so I guess it wasnt fully a pure metal.

Is Neo-Liberalism closer to Neo-Realism than it is to traditional Pluralism?

Is Neo-Liberalism closer to Neo-Realism than it is to traditional Pluralism? Is Neo-Liberalism closer to Neo-Realism than it is to traditional Pluralism? The paradigm of pluralism originated during the 1970s by writers such as Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, as they sought to establish an alternative to traditional realism. Through works such as, Transnational Relations and World Politics, and, Power and Interdependence, Keohane and Nye explained their concepts of transnationalism, multiple access channels and complex interdependence which expanded theoretical pluralism. Their analyses, which studies in these books conclude that through studying foreign policy, decision-making showed that the premise of the unitary nature of the state had now become untenable. In 1979, Kenneth Waltz, a neo-realist, introduced a new approach, through his book, Theory of International Politics, which looked at international relations in a more structural and methodological perspective, while keeping to the same state-centric view of traditional realists such as Hans Morgenthau. Neo-liberalism being the most modern of the three paradigms, established in t he 1980s, takes key concepts from both pluralism and neo-realism but goes further and incorporates the ability of cooperation occurring in an anarchical international system. In order to assess whether neo-liberalism is closer to neo-realism than it is to traditional pluralism, it is firstly important to define the three paradigms, consider the important elements of neo-liberalism and to analyse the similarities and differences it has to the other two paradigms. It is also important to examine the arguments for and against the notion of neo-liberalism being closer to neo-realism, which would help to gauge to what extent neo-liberalism is closer to neo-realism. During the 1960s and 1970s, changes to the world structure started occurring as the role of non-state actors, for example the European Economic Community and multinational companies, had greater significance. In, Transnational Relations and World Politics, Keohane and Nye argue that a definition of politics in terms of state behaviour alone may lead us to ignore important non-governmental actors that allocate view. It is clear that from a pluralistic view, states as well as non-state actors all contribute to world politics and it is this fundamental assumption, which clearly challenges and distinguishes itself from realism. Furthermore, states are not seen as the single most important actors in international politics, as they often can not regulate all other cross-border transactions. Nye argues, A good deal of intersocietal intercourse takes place without governmental controlstates are by no means the only actors in world politics. This emphasises the pluralist theory that states do not act in a unitary fashion, rather the state is fragmented and, composed of competing individuals, interest groups and bureaucracies, which shape state policy. Transnational co-operation was needed to respond to common problems and co-operation in one sector would inevitably lead to co-operation in other sectors and as a result, the effects of transnational relations are becoming more important and pervasive. In the 1970s, the liberal pluralists highlighted the understanding of non-state actors, undermining the state-centric world of realism. Keohane and Nye claimed that world politics was no longer the exclusive preserve of states and that, the growth of transnational organizations has lead to the state-centric paradigm becoming progressively inadequate, therefore a new theory called complex interdependence was introduced to run as an alternative to realism. This theory has three key assumptions the first was introduced, being that the state is not a unitary actor but there are multiple channels of access between societies. In, Power and Interdependence, Keohane and Nye argue that these channels include, informal ties between governmental elites; informal ties among non-governmental elites and transnational elites and transnational organizations. The second feature of the theory is that though military force is an important issue; from a pluralistic perspective it does not dominate the a genda. The paradigm allows for a multiple of issues to arise in international relations compared to the neo-realist concept, where it emphasises the military and security issues which dominate international politics. Pluralists have a low salience of force and believe that actors have different influences on different issue areas. Therefore pluralists argue that military power is not the only factor indicating how powerful a state is. The final assumption considers the fact that there is no hierarchy of issues; therefore any issue area might be at the top of the international agenda at any one time. This emphasises the second assumption of complex interdependence that, military security does not consistently dominate the agenda, furthermore, with the complicated interactions between various sub-state actors, the boundary between domestic and foreign politics becomes obscure, such that traditionally low political issues, for example the environment and the economy take greater signif icance in the domain of international politics. The neo-realist reply to the pluralist challenges came in the form of a structuralist theory which regarded international systems to be either hierarchical or anarchical in nature. The distinction between hierarchical and anarchical is crucial to Waltz, who argued that the present international system was anarchical in nature and the pluralist challenge had failed to provide sufficient grounds to suggest that the system had changed fundamentally; therefore underlying the reality of the system remained in tact. Neo-realism deems the anarchic system has led to a self help system which lacks authority. He says, each unit seeks its own good: the result of a number of units simultaneously doing so transcends the motives and aims of the separate units. Therefore, states are only able to survive if they increase their military capabilities, which will enhance their security. This is directly criticised by pluralists as they argue that liberal democracies are more pacifist and the fact that more states are becoming liberal democracies, shows the potential for changing the structure of the international system, and they claim that, when complex interdependence prevails military force is not used. However, in his critique of transnational and other pluralist efforts, Waltz raises an important idea. He defies the challenge of the state-centric paradigm by saying that students of transnational phenomena have developed no distinct theory of their subject matter or of international politics in general. Keohane argues this critique by pointing out that for concepts such as transnational relations to be valuable; a general theory of world politics is needed. Neo-realism contains analogies from economics, especially the theory of markets and the firm where the market is a structure and exists independent of the wishes of the buyers and sellers who nonetheless create it by their actions. Waltz states, international political systems, like economics markets, are formed by the co-action of self-regarding units. This overall perspective draws its central ethos from the discipline of economics and rational choice assumptions. However, even pluralists like Keohane soon accepted the neo-realist concepts of the international system being anarchic in nature and states as the principle actors in it. Therefore, he repositioned himself to neo-liberalism, moving away from his previous pluralistic concerns of interdependence and transnational relations. The debate between the two came to be known as the neo-neo debate since there appeared to be a convergence between the two positions. The foundation of neo-liberalism is that states need to develop strategies and forums for co-operation over a whole set of new issues and areas and this has been facilitated by the fact that regimes, treaties and institutions have multiplied over the past two to three decades. Thus the pluralists of the 1970s such as Keohane and Nye have become the neo-liberals of today and in the process have become quite close to the neo-realists. Neo-liberalisms acceptance of anarchic principles, states becoming the principal actors and the adherence to the importance of rational choice further highlights the close intellectual position with neo-realists. Nevertheless, despite this neo-liberals are trying to distinguish themselves from neo-realists when including the notion of co-operation. Neo-liberals have concerned themselves with analysing the extent of co-operation possible under conditions of anarchy and the conclusions that the two sides reach are radically different. Neo-realists claim that under anarchy, conflict and the struggle for power are enduring characteristics of international politics, and that because of this, co-operation between states is at best precarious and at worst non-existent. Neo-liberals agree that achieving co-operation is difficult in international relations but disagree with neo-realists pessimism of it not being able to occur effectively in an anarchical system. In Keohanes book, After Hegemo ny, he claims that, Cooperation requires that the actions of separate individuals or organizations be brought into conformity with one another through a process of negotiation. Neo-liberalism goes further and claims that co-operation could be increased through establishment of international regimes and the exchange of information. They see regimes as the mediator and the means to achieve cooperation in the international system. According to neo-liberals, institutions can exert casual force on international relations, shaping state preference and locking states into cooperative arrangements. However, neo-realists doubt that international regimes have the ability to do this efficiently, if not at all. Their pessimistic view of international relations put forward the argument that states must stress security to promote their own survival. The neo-liberal view is that though there is an anarchic system in place; institutions have the ability to, encourage multilateralism and cooperation as a means of securing national interests. However, they do concede that cooperation may be difficult to achieve in areas where leaders perceive to have no mutual interests. Thus, there is a difference of opinion between neo-liberals and neo-realists on the notion of international regimes. The former believes that regimes can only persist so long as states have mutual interests, while the latter argues that only with a hegemon in place, can a regime work effectively. Despite their differences over the question of co-operation in the international system, both neo-realism and neo-liberalism are rationalist theories; both are constructed upon assumptions held in micro-economic theory that the main units in the international system, states, are assumed to be self-interested and rational and act in a unitary fashion. Neo-liberals accept the basic neo-realist assumptions of international anarchy and the rational egoism of states. However, their aim is to show that to an extent rational actors can co-operate even when anarchy in the system prevails. The issue of gains is a key difference in this debate as neo-liberals assume that states focus primarily on their individual absolute gains and are indifferent to the gains of others. Whether co-operation results in a relative gain or loss is not very important to a state as far as neo-liberalism is concerned, so long as it produces an absolute gain. In contrast, neo-realists, such as Waltz, argue that stat es are concerned with relative gains, rather than absolute gains and a states utility is at least partly a function of some relative measure such as power. Furthermore, the acceptance of states being rational actors allows the enactment of game theory, thus allowing the behaviour of states to be foreseen, aiding the scientific rigour of neo-liberalism. It is arguable therefore, that neo-liberalism is a doctrine that is close to both neo-realism and traditional pluralism. It is the most contemporary of the paradigms and thus has been able to take key concepts from both neo-realism and traditional pluralism to produce a new theory of international relations. However, pluralism still has strong similarities with neo-liberalism in that they both agree on the concept of different issues areas that are not necessarily military based, such as economic welfare, whereas neo-realists concentrate on military issues which they identify as being high on the political agenda. Therefore, there are no hierarchical issue areas in contrast to neo-realism where military and the struggle for power is at the top of the agenda. Furthermore both paradigms show optimism on the concept of cooperation occurring in international politics. However, it is arguable that neo-liberals have abandoned the pluralist thought of the state not being the principal actor s in international relations. Here, neo-liberals have concurred with the neo-realist state-centric view; with states being described as rational actors. To a greater extent, it is the key concept for the ability of cooperation to occur in an anarchical system which distinguishes neo-liberalism from the other two paradigms, especially neo-realism, whereby cooperation can be mitigated through the establishment of international regimes and institutions. The differences on cooperation are clearly evident between neo-liberalism and neo-realism as the latter paradigm is pessimistic, in arguing that under anarchy cooperation would be very difficult to achieve. This emphasises the autonomous nature of neo-liberalism and it now becoming the main challenger to the traditional realist paradigm. BIBLIOGRAPHY Burchill, Scott Theories of International Relations (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan,  2005) pp.64-70 Kauppi, Mark and Viotti, Paul International Relations Theory: Realism, Pluralism, Globalism, and Beyond (Boston ; London: Allyn and Bacon, 1999) pp.199-204 Keohane, Robert O. After hegemony: cooperation and discord in the world political economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005) pp.51-63 Keohane, Robert O. The Demand for International Regimes in Krasner, Stephen International Regimes (Ithaca;  London:  Cornell University Press, 1983) pp. Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Transnational relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) pp. ix-xxix Keohane, Robert O., Institutional Theory and the Realist Challenge After the Cold War in Baldwin, David Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) pp. 269-300 Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Power and Interdependence (New York; London: Longman, 2001) pp. 19-27 Lamy, Stephen Contemporary Mainstream Approaches: Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism in Baylis, John and Smith, Steve (eds.) The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) p.207-218 Little, Richard, International Regimes in Baylis, John and Smith, Steve (eds.) The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) pp. 370-380 Waltz, Kenneth Theory of International Politics (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1979) pp.51-95

A Comparison of Love in The Knights Tale, Wife of Baths Tale, and Fra

Love in The Knight's Tale, Wife of Bath's Tale, and Franklin's Tale    The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer around 1386, is a collection of tales told by pilgrims on a religious pilgrimage. Three of these tales; "The Knight's Tale", "The Wife of Bath's Tale", and "The Franklin's Tale", involve different kinds of love and different love relationships. Some of the loves are based on nobility, some are forced and some are   based on mutual respect for each partner. My idea of love is one that combines aspects from each of the tales told in The Canterbury Tales.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In "The Knights Tale", the love between the two knights and Emily is intensely powerful. The love that Palomon and Arcite feel towards Emily is so strong that the two knights feel that it is worth more than life. At one point Palomon says to Arcite, " Though I have no weapon here . . . either you shall die or you shall not love Emily." The love that Palomon feels for Emily is so overwhelming that he is willing to take on an armed man, in mortal combat, just for the love of a woman. Perhaps he feels that without her he will surely die, so why not die trying to win her.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The ironic fact about the relationship between the two knights and Emily is that Emily does not wish to marry either of the knights. she expresses this in a prayer to Diana, the goddess of chaste, " Well you know that I desire to be a maiden all my life; I never want to be either a beloved or a wife." This is so ironic because Arcite and Palomon are about to kill each other for her love and she doesn't want to beloved by either of them. She enjoys the thrills of maiden ho... ... Wife of Bath's Tale" the knight is forced into a love relationship, which I feel could only lead to an unfulfilling relationship. Also in " The Knight's Tale ", Arcite and Palomon are in love with a woman to whom they have never even spoken to. This is hardly the basis for a strong and lasting relationship.    Works Cited    Bowden, Muriel.   A Reader's Guide to Geoffrey Chaucer.   New York:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1964.    Howard, Edwin J. Geoffrey Chaucer.   New York: Twayne Publishers,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In., 1964.    Justman, Stewart. "Love in The Canterbury Tales."   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Modern Critical Views on Geoffrey Chaucer.   Ed. Harold   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Bloom.   New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1995.    Patterson, Lee.   Chaucer and the Subject of History.   Wisconsin:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991

The Naked Truth of the Poultry Show World :: Personal Narrative

The Naked Truth of the Poultry Show World Professor’s comment: This student’s wonderfully vivid, often funny, first-person report brings readers into a little-known world of poultry exhibitors. Who could have imagined what it’s like to bathe fifteen chickens and groom them for judging? From this essay I learned a great deal about chickens, and the student’s talents as a writer made the experience thoroughly engrossing. Most people seem to think it’s pretty weird that I show chickens. They’re right, I suppose. It’s an odd hobby. I started showing when I was eight years old, and thirteen years later I’m still at it. I went to a county fair way back then, and decided that one day I would own some of those cute little bantam chickens. On July 29, 1987, that dream came true, and from then on I’ve been a dedicated member of the poultry show world. Why do I show chickens? Well, you could say I’m just weird. But I love everything about it: my birds, my poultry friends, the competition, and the camaraderie. The number of chickens that I have varies from season to season. The breeding season usually starts out with about seventy-five birds, and I hatch anywhere from 200 to 400 chicks between March and July. Throughout the summer and fall, I gradually sell almost all of those chicks until I am down to just the cream of the crop again. I raise Rosecomb Bantams, one of many breeds of miniature chickens. The adults are only a little over twenty ounces. I work with color genetics to develop new and improved color patterns on these birds (that’s what happens when you’re an art major who raises chickens), and to bring back old colors that have long since disappeared in the Rosecomb breed. I used to name every one of my chickens, back in the old days when I only had a few. But as the population grew, I started running out of names, and out of time to spoil each chicken enough so that it was worthy of a name. Now I only name my favorites — those that win a show or those that simply win my heart. Poultry shows are a huge part of my life. My show season runs from September through February. I go to about six shows a year, and show about fifteen birds each time.

The US Involvement in The Vietnam War Essay -- Vietnam War Essays

The Vietnam War was one of the worst wars in the United States history. The reason for the United States involvement was due to the start of communism in North Vietnam. The citizens in South Vietnam feared the control of North Vietnam and were worried that the north would take control of the south. The communist North Vietnam had support from the Soviet Union and China, making the South Vietnamese vulnerable to the north. In their time of struggle the South Vietnamese were able to receive aid from the United States. The North Vietnamese had set up a series of radar stations along bays and islands on the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 1, 1964 the U.S.S. Maddox was posted on a surveillance mission to study the North Vietnamese defenses in the Gulf area. In early morning on August 2, 1964 the U.S.S. Maddox spotted three North Vietnamese patrol boats, located twenty- eight miles from the coast. The patrol boats were still in International waters, which meant that they had no right to patrol South Vietnam. Captain John Herrich of the Maddox ordered fire upon the three North Vietnamese patrol boats. The Maddox had assistance from the carrier U.S.S. Ticonderoga. The two ships managed to sink one of the patrol boats, while the other two boats bailed out. To this day government officials are still unsure whether the United States or the North Vietnamese fired first in the situation. United Sates President Lyndon B. Johnson received word of the attack and ordered the Maddox to return to the Gulf of Tonkin and patrol for more action. The Maddox accompanied by the U.S.S. Turner Joy returned to the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964. While stationed in the Gulf the radar engineers on the destroyers thought that they saw an adva... ...n technology could offer. The soldiers carried fully automatic M-16 rifles. The air swarmed with helicopters, fighter planes, and bombers. The U.S. had destroyers, tankers, and patrol boats along all of the water routes. They were supplied with medicines, surgical equipment, packaged food, and other necessities. On average one U.S. soldier had one hundred pounds of supplies given to them each day, while the Vietcong had nothing. The United States transformed South Vietnam with roads, bridges, airstrips, etc. Cafes were turned into part places, while the women turned to prostitution for money. Fishing ports were turned into deep harbors for U.S. warships. Even with all of the money that the United Sates put into the war, it proved to be useless. The Vietcong needed none of it and were ready to shut down the United Sates and proved that they could.

Unified Threat Management System

`Unified Threat Management System’s What is Unified Threat Management System? Unified threat management system is the emerging trend in the network security market. Utm appliances have evolved from traditional firewall/VPN products into the solution with many additional capabilities . i. e Spam blocking, Gateway antivirus, Spyware Prevention, Intrusion prevention, URL filtering. (guard, n. d. ) All these functions were previously provided and handled by multiple systems.UTM systems also provide integrated management, monitoring and logging capabilities to streamline deployment and maintenance. How Unified Threat Management Systems works? Unified Threat Management eliminates the need for machine to machine protection. It is the combination of multiple security features integrated into one single hardware platform. Therefore offering layers of security features within a corporations network. The Machines UTM Machine is what provides multiple solutions to an entire network of mac hines.It works off the assumption that blended threats cannot be abated under one solution alone. Even with the use of multiple solutions there seems left a hole within the security of the network. When there is the use of multiple different solutions there seems a confusion as well as the need for updates and monitoring of several different brands of security measures which lead to problems within an organization. With the introduction of Unified Threat Management in 2004, this idea was taken and turned into one system solution for businesses on the small to medium level.The idea of this solution was to take the need for multiple brands of solutions and combine it into a multilayer solution for the security needs of an organization. (jaringankita, 2012) Data Security services in cloud computing is still mystery for the customers although service providers have implemented all standard technologies that you can imagine: state ful inspection firewalls, Intrusion Detection and Prevent ion devices, Web services firewalls, Application firewalls, Spam filters, Antivirus, Anti-Spyware, Gateway Level File Inspections, etc.But customers are not able to specifically identify the controls applicable on their files/folders because they do not know the physical location of them (as you must be knowing, files get distributed into multiple virtual machines spread across multiple data centres). In this context, a new concept is evolving. It is called â€Å"Unified Threat Management System (UTM System)†.In UTM, a separate service provider builds a lot of controls for the customers that can be shared through â€Å"subscription model† (similar to the cloud computing model) and can assure security for the customer’s assets by seamlessly integrating their UTM solutions with the Cloud hosting service providers. The customer just needs to buy a leased line connection to the UTM provider and will get all the controls applicable on their hosted environments Curren tly, cloud computing service providers are operating in three different modes – Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).However, a fourth mode is emerging rapidly to provide security solutions on cloud computing infrastructures – Unified Threat Management as a Service (UTMaaS). Unified threat management (UTM) service for cloud hosting users is a rapidly emerging concept in which, the security controls for the end users are managed by a third party, that allow the user sessions from thousands of clients through their systems and ensure optimum protection and personalization.Their services span from network security controls to application security controls. Cloud hosting customers may need a Leased Circuit Connection to the UTM provider, that serves as a backhaul connection to the Cloud Hosting provider with appropriate peering between the security controls and the infrastructure maintained by the cloud provider and the corresponding client environment for the customers. (etcoindia, 2012) Works Cited etcoindia, 2012. cademic research on new challenging in it. [Online] Available at: http://etcoindia. blogspot. com/ [Accessed 15 November 2012]. guard, w. , n. d. unified threat management system. [Online] Available at: http://www. watchguard. com/why/utm. asp [Accessed 21 November 2012]. jaringankita, 2012. knowing unified managemnet system. [Online] Available at: http://www. jaringankita. com/blog/knowing-unified-threat-management-utm [Accessed 21 November 2012].

Part of Speech Recognizer

Improving Identi?er Informativeness using Part of Speech Information Dave Binkley Matthew Hearn Dawn Lawrie Loyola University Maryland Baltimore MD 21210-2699, USA {binkley, lawrie}@cs. loyola. edu, [email  protected] edu Keywords: source code analysis tools, natural language processing, program comprehension, identi?er analysis Abstract Recent software development tools have exploited the mining of natural language information found within software and its supporting documentation. To make the most of this information, researchers have drawn upon the work of the natural language processing community for tools and techniques.One such tool provides part-of-speech information, which ?nds application in improving the searching of software repositories and extracting domain information found in identi?ers. Unfortunately, the natural language found is software differs from that found in standard prose. This difference potentially limits the effectiveness of off-the-shelf tools. The pres ented empirical investigation ?nds that this limitation can be partially overcome, resulting in a tagger that is up to 88% accurate when applied to source code identi?ers.The investigation then uses the improved part-of-speech information to tag a large corpus of over 145,000 ?eld names. From patterns in the tags several rules emerge that seek to improve structure-?eld naming. Source Part of Extract Split Apply Source ? Code ? Field ? Field ? ? Speech Template Code Mark-up Tagging Names Names Figure 1. Process for POS tagging of ?eld names. The text available in source-code artifacts, in particular a program’s identi?ers, has a very different structure. For example the words of an identi?er rarely form a grammatically correct sentence.This raises an interesting question: can an existing POS tagger be made to work well on the natural language found in source code? Better POS information would aid existing techniques that have used limited POS information to successfully improv e retrieval results from software repositories [1, 11] and have also investigated the comprehensibility of source code identi?ers [4, 6]. Fortunately, machine learning techniques are robust and, as reported in Section 2, good results are obtained using several sentence forming templates.This initial investigation also suggest rules speci?c for software that would improve tagging. For example the type of a declared variable can be factored into its tags. As an example application of POS tagging for source code, the tagger is then used to tag over 145,000 structure?eld names. Equivalence classes of tags are then examined to produce rules for the automatic identi?cation of poor names (as described in Section 3) and suggest improved names, which is left to future work. 1 IntroductionSoftware engineering can bene?t from leveraging tools and techniques of other disciplines. Traditionally, natural language processing (NLP) tools solve problems by processing the natural language found in do cuments such as news articles and web pages. One such NLP tool is a partof-speech (POS) tagger. Tagging is, for example, crucial to the Named-Entity Recognition [3], which enables information about a person to be tracked within and across documents. Many POS taggers are built using machine learning based on newswire training data.Conventional wisdom is that these taggers work well on the newswire and similar artifacts; however, their effectiveness degrades as the input moves further away from the highly structured sentences found in traditional newswire articles. 1 2 Part-of-Speech Tagging Before a POS tagger’s output can be used as input to down stream SE tools, the POS tagger itself needs to be vetted. This section describes an experiment performed to test the accuracy of POS tagging on ?eld names mined from source code. The process used for mining and tagging the ?elds is ?rst described, followed by the empirical results from the experiment.Figure 1 shows the pipeline used for the POS tagging of ?eld names. On the left, the input to the pipeline is mode=â€Å"space†/> (683 came from C++ ?les and 817 from Java ?les). A human accessor (and university student majoring in English) tagged the 1500 ?eld names with POS information producing the oracle set. This oracle set is used to evaluate the accuracy of automatic tagging techniques when applied to the test set. Preliminary study of the Stanford tagger indicates that it needed guidance when tagging ?eld names.Following the work of Abebe and Tonella [1], four templates were used to provide this guidance. Each template includes a slot into which the split ?eld name is inserted. Their accuracy is then evaluated using the oracle set. †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ Sentence Template: List Item Template: Verb Template: Noun Template: . – Please, . is a thing . Figure 2. XML queries for extracting C++ and Java ?elds from srcML. source code. This is then marked up using XML tags by srcML [5] to id entify various syntactic categories. Third, ?eld names are extracted from the marked-up source using XPath queries.Figure 2 shows the queries for C++ and Java. The fourth stage splits ?eld names by replacing underscores with spaces and inserting a space where the case changes from lowercase to uppercase. For example, the names spongeBob and sponge bob become sponge bob. After splitting, all characters are shifted to lowercase. This stage also ?lters names so that only those that consist entirely of dictionary words are retained. Filtering uses Debian’s American (6-2) dictionary package, which consists of the 98,569 words from Kevin Atkinson’s SCOWL word lists that have size 10 through 50 [2].This dictionary includes some common abbreviations, which are thus included in the ?nal data set. Future work will obviate the need for ?ltering through vocabulary normalization in which non-words are split into their abbreviations and then expanded to their natural language equiva lents [9]. The ?fth stage applies a set of templates (described below) to each separated ?eld name. Each template effectively wraps the words of the ?eld name in an attempt to improve the performance of the POS tagger. Finally, POS tagging is performed by Version 1. 6 of the Stanford Log-linear POS Tagger [12].The default options are used including the pretrained bidirectional model [10]. The remainder of this section considers empirical results concerning the effectiveness of the tagging pipeline. A total of 145,163 ?eld names were mined from 10,985 C++ ?les and 9,614 Java ?les found in 171 programs. From this full data set, 1500 names were randomly chosen as a test set 2 The Sentence Template, the simplest of the four, considers the identi?er itself to be a â€Å"sentence† by appending a period to the split ?eld. The List Item Template exploits the tagger having learned about POS information found in the sentence fragments used in lists.The Verb Template tries to encourage the tagger to treat the ?eld name as a verb or a verb phrase by pre?xing it with â€Å"Please,† since usually a command follows. Finally, the Noun Template tries to encourage the tagger to treat the ?eld as a noun by post?xing it with â€Å"is a thing† as was done by Abebe and Tonella [1]. Table 1 shows the accuracy of using each template applied to the test set with the output compared to the oracle. The major diagonal represents each technique in isolation while the remaining entries require two techniques to agree and thus lowering the percentage.The similarity of the percentages in a column gives an indication of how similar the set of correctly tagged names is for two techniques. For example, considering Sentence Template, Verb Template has the lowest overlap of the remaining three as indicated by it’s joint percentage of 71. 7%. Overall, the List Item Template performs the best, and the Sentence Template and Noun Template produce essentially identical resu lts getting the correct tagging on nearly all the same ?elds. Perhaps unsurprising, the Verb Template performs the worst.Nonetheless, it is interesting that this template does produce the correct output on 3. 2% of the ?elds where no other template succeeds. As shown in Table 2 overall at least one template correctly tagged 88% of the test set. This suggests that it may be possible to combine these results, perhaps using machine learning, to produce higher accuracy than achieved using the individual templates. Although 88% is lower than the 97% achieved by natural language taggers on the newswire data, the performance is still quite high considering the lack of context provided by the words of a single structure ?eld.Sentence List Item Verb Noun Sentence 79. 1% 76. 5& 71. 7% 77. 0% List Item 76. 5% 81. 7% 71. 0% 76. 0% Verb 71. 7% 71. 0% 76. 0% 70. 8% Noun 77. 0% 76. 0% 70. 8% 78. 7% this context is used to represent a current state, and is therefore not confusing. Rule 1 Non-boolea n ?eld names should never contain a present tense verb * * ? * * Table 1. Each percentage is the percent of correctly tagged ?eld names using both the row and column technique; thus the major diagonal represent each technique independently. Correct in all templates Correct in at least one template 68. 9% 88. 0% Table 2.Correctly tagged identi?ers As illustrated in the next section, the identi?cation is suf?ciently accurate for use by downstream consumer applications. 3 Rules for Improving Field Names As an example application of POS tagging for source code, the 145,163 ?eld names of the full data set were tagged using the List Item Template, which showed the best performance in Table 1. The resulting tags were then used to form equivalence classes of ?eld names. Analysis of these classes led to four rules for improving the names of structure ?elds. Rule violations can be automatically identi?ed using POS tagging.Further, as illustrated in the examples, by mining the source code it i s possible to suggest potential replacements. The assumption behind each rule is that high quality ?eld names will provide better conceptual information, which aids an engineer in the task of forming a mental understanding of the code. Correct part-of-speech information can help inform the naming of identi?ers, a process that is essential in communicating intent to future programmers. Each rule is ?rst informally introduced and then formalized. After each rule, the percentage of ?elds that violate the rule is given.Finally, some rules are followed by a discussion of rule exceptions or related notions. The ?rst rule observes that ?eld names represent objects not actions; thus they should avoid present-tense verbs. For example, the ?eld name create mp4, clearly implies an action, which is unlikely the intent (unless perhaps the ?eld represent a function pointer). Inspection of the source code reveals that this ?eld holds the desired mp4 video stream container type. Based on the contex t of its use, a better, less ambiguous name for this identi?er is created mp4 container type, which includes the past-tense verb created.A notable exception to this is ?elds of type boolean, like, for example, is logged in where the present tense of the verb â€Å"to be† is used. A present tense verb in 3 Violations detected: 27,743 (19. 1% of ?eld names) Looking at the violations of Rule 1 one pattern that emerges suggests an improvement to the POS tagger that would better specialize it to source code. A pattern that frequently occurs in GUI programming ?nds verbs used as adjectives when describing GUI elements such as buttons. Recognizing such ?elds based on their type should improve tagger accuracy. Consider the ?elds delete button and to a lesser extent continue box.In isolation these appears to represent actions. However they actually represent GUI elements. Thus, a special context-sensitive case in the POS tagger would tag such verbs as adjectives. The second rule consi ders ?eld names that contain only a verb. For example the ?eld name recycle. This name communicates little to a programmer unfamiliar with the code. Examination of the source code reveals that this variable is an integer and, based on the comments, it counts the â€Å"number of things recycled. †While this meaning can be inferred from the declaration and the comments surrounding it, ?eld name uses often occur far from their eclaration, reducing the value of the declared type and supporting comments. A potential ?x in this case is to change the name to recycled count or things recycled. Both alternatives improve the clarity of the name. Rule 2 Field names should never be only a verb ? ? or ? ? Violations detected: 4,661 (3. 2% ?eld names identi?ers) The third rule considers ?eld names that contain only an adjective. While adjectives are useful when used with a noun, an adjective alone relies too much on the type of the variable to fully explain its use.For example, consider th e identi?er interesting. In this case, the declared type of â€Å"list† provides the insight that this ?eld holds a list of â€Å"interesting† items. Replacing this ?eld with interesting list or interesting items should improve code understanding. Rule 3 Field names should never be only an adjective ? Violations detected: 5,487 (3. 8% ?eld names identi?ers) An interesting exception to this rule occurs with data structures where the ?eld name has an established conventional meaning. For example, when naming the next node in a linked list, next is commonly accepted.Other similar common names include â€Å"previous† and â€Å"current. † The ?nal rule deals with ?eld names for booleans. Boolean variables represent a state that is or is not and this notion needs to be obvious in the name. The identi?er deleted offers a good example. By itself there is no way to know for sure what is being represented. Is this a pointer to a deleted thing? Is it a count of dele ted things? Source code inspection reveals that such boolean variables tend to represent whether or not something is deleted. Thus a potential improved names include is deleted or was deleted.Rule 4 Boolean ?eld names should contain third person forms of the verb â€Å"to be† or the auxiliary verb â€Å"should† * ? is | was | should * 5 Summary This paper presents the results on an experiment into the accuracy of the Stanford Log-linear POS Tagger applied to ?eld names. The best template, List Item, has an accuracy of 81. 7%. If an optimal combination of the four templates were used the accuracy rises to 88%. These POS tags were then used to develop ?eld name formation rules that 28. 9% of the identi?ers violated. Thus the tagging can be used to support improved naming.Looking forward, two avenues of future work include automating this improvement and enhancing POS tagging for source code. For the ?rst, the source code would be mined for related terms to be used in sug gested improved names. The second would explore training a POS tagger using, for example, the machine learning technique domain adaptation [8], which emphasize the text in the training that is most similar to identi?ers to produce a POS tagger for identi?ers. 6 Acknowledgments Special thanks to Mike Collard for his help with srcML and the XPath queries and Phil Hearn for his help with creating the oracle set.Support for this work was provided by NSF grant CCF 0916081. Violations detected: 5,487 (3. 8% ?eld names identi?ers) Simply adding â€Å"is† or â€Å"was† to booleans does not guarantee a ?x to the problem. For example, take a boolean variable that indicates whether something should be allocated in a program. In this case, the boolean captures whether some event should take place in the future. In this example an appropriate temporal sense is missing from the name. A name like allocated does not provide enough information and naming it is allocated does not make l ogical sense in the context of the program.A solution to this naming problem is to change the identi?er to should be allocated, which includes the necessary temporal sense communicating that this boolean is a ?ag for something expected to happen in the future. References [1] S. L. Abebe and P. Tonella. Natural language parsing of program element names for concept extraction. In 18th IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension. IEEE, 2010. [2] K. Atkinson. Spell checking oriented word lists (scowl). [3] E. Boschee, R. Weischedel, and A. Zamanian. Automatic information extraction.In Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligence Analysis, 2005. [4] B. Caprile and P. Tonella. Restructuring program identi?er names. In ICSM, 2000. [5] ML Collard, HH Kagdi, and JI Maletic. An XML-based lightweight C++ fact extractor. Program Comprehension, 2003. 11th IEEE International Workshop on, pages 134–143, 2003. [6] E. Hà ¸st and B. Østvold. The programmer’ s lexicon, volume i: The verbs. In International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Beijing, China, September 2008. [7] E. W. Hà ¸st and B. M. Østvold. Debugging method names.In ECOOP 09. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2009. [8] J. Jiang and C. Zhai. Instance weighting for domain adaptation in nlp. In ACL 2007, 2007. [9] D. Lawrie, D. Binkley, and C. Morrell. Normalizing source code vocabulary. In Proceedings of the 17th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, 2010. [10] L. Shen, G. Satta, and A. K. Joshi. Guided learning for bidirectional sequence classi?cation. In ACL 07. ACL, June 2007. [11] D. Shepherd, Z. P. Fry, E. Hill, L. Pollock, and K. Vijay-Shanker. Using natural language program analysis to locate and understand action-oriented conerns.In AOSD 07. ACM, March 2007. [12] K. Toutanova, D. Klein, C. Manning, and Y. Singer. Feature-rich part-of-speech tagging with a cyclic dependency network. In HLTNAACL 2003, 2003. 4 Related Work This section brie?y reviews three projects that use POS information. Each uses an off-the-shelf POS tagger or lookup table. First, Host et al. study naming of Java methods using a lookup table to assign POS tags [7]. Their aim is to ?nd what they call â€Å"naming bugs† by checking to see if the method’s implementation is properly indicated with the name of the method.Second, Abebe and Tonella study class, method, and attribute names using a POS tagger based on a modi?cation of minipar to formulate domain concepts [1]. Nouns in the identi?ers are examined to form ontological relations between concepts. Based on a case study, their approach improved concept searching. Finally, Shepherd et al. considered ?nding concepts in code using natural language information [11]. The resulting Find-Concept tool locates action-oriented concerns more effectively than the other tools and with less user effort. This is made possible by POS information applied to source code. 4

Paradise Lost: Censorship and Hypocrisy Essay

I love movies. I especially adore those films with an artistic, literary quality that is timeless and classical. In my experience, Italian movies seldom fail to evoke such feelings in me, and Cinema Paradiso was no disappointment. This heartwarming story about a little boy’s love affair with movies, and his subsequent coming-of-age in the repressive environment of ecclesiastical censorship and hypocrisy stirred great emotion in me, as I expected it would. The young Toto made me feel his awe as he attempted to see the forbidden film images hidden from him by his friend Alfredo at the behest of the town priest. The issue of censorship ran deep throughout the film. I believe censorship can actually provide a valid function in a community in some circumstances and situations, such as the protection of children from harmful imagery, literature or speech. Pornography, for example, can and should have its availability limited only to consenting adults. Falsely holding oneself out to be someone else, fraud, is also certainly not a protected form of free speech and should be censored. As a staunch civil libertarian, I have always believed that communities should set their own standards on censorship as much as possible. However as Rosenblatt (2002) points out in his persuasive essay about Cinema Paradiso, without the neutral and objective oversight of outsiders – such as the United States Supreme Court – even well-intentioned censorship can become repressive. Even in the movie, little Toto’s friend Alfredo felt that the local priest’s strictures were repressive. He told Toto, â€Å"You leave [the village] or you will never find your life in so narrow-minded a place. † The priest’s attempts to protect the town from movies’ love scenes were presented in a comical manner in the film, and certainly they were ridiculous, but not only for the way the scenes were produced. The censorship struck me as hypocritical and nonsensical if viewed as necessary to protect the morality of the community. For example, very early in the film we see young Toto stealing peeks into Alfredo’s projection booth. The boy sees many of the very scenes he is not supposed to be seeing. Later, he views by candlelight some of the frames the censor/priest demanded Alfredo remove from the films. But Toto does this in full view of his mother who seems more concerned with the fire hazard Toto creates than in his viewing of forbidden imagery. Clearly the priest’s attempts to protect Toto from the sordid scenes were ineffective. In at least one place in Cinema Paradiso, the omitted kiss scene was followed immediately by violent slapstick comedy. The teacher at Toto’s school severely beat and emotionally abused a young man named Boccia because he was poor at math. Toto’s mother physically abused Toto when she discovered he had spent the milk money on movies. In both cases, it seemed that no one had any problem with physical violence, even against children. Frequently in the movie several men in the audience laughed and jeered at the missing love scenes in the movies they were watching, knowing exactly what was missing from the film. It struck me as hypocritical that a community would see fit to strike scenes of love – kissing – from movies (even though everyone knew exactly what was being struck) while having no problem with actual physical violence. Lastly, I found it hypocritical that this town’s people would publicly vilify a family for being nominally â€Å"Stalinist† or â€Å"Communist† while ignoring the actual Stalin-esque repression in their midst. The scene in which the people wanted very much to see the movie playing at the Cinema Paradiso, but were turned away, was a good example of this. The filmmakers clearly wanted to portray the inappropriateness of the town’s hypocritical censorship and repression because they gave us such powerfully symbolic clues. As a result of Alfredo’s defiant act of projecting the movie into the street for the people, he inadvertently started a fire that burned down the old theater and cost him his sight. The man who defied the censorship of the town, symbolized by the refusal of the cinema’s owners to allow people in the street to see the film, and who provided them the vision of the movie (and Toto’s vision of becoming a filmmaker) – lost his vision. And his vision he lost in a fire, an intense symbol of purging, repression, or censorship.

Non-Verbal Communication Essay

A number of people pay more attention on what they want to say,however,how to say it means more important. â€Å"In fact, studies suggest that during face-to-face communication, only 7% of meaning comes from the verbal content of the message —38% comes from tone of voice and 55% comes from body language. † Obviously, non-verbal communication refers to the process of the communication by means of receiving and sending the messages which are wordless. As an important tool of communication, non-verbal communication plays an important part in job interviews, medical care and social interactions. The process of a job interview is full of communication, including both verbal and nonverbal communications; however, nonverbal communication is more important than verbal communication in some ways. When people do the interview, it is critical for people to send the right messages and receive the good responses as well as maintaining eye contact, using facial expressions and making proper postures. Eye contact is essential when people are talking to the interviewer. The sustained eye contact could be respectful which show your confidence and trust. Also, this makes sure that you are listening and understanding about what you are communicating with each other. However, it’s not good to stare at interviewers constantly, which make them uncomfortable. The best way is to maintain the eye contact for several seconds, and then change your vision away from the interviewers briefly, finally put the eye contact on the interviewers. Meanwhile, facial expression is a necessary component in a job interview. Commonly, smile is a powerful communication tool, which is able to deliver the friendliness, happiness and interests. It helps people relieve nervous tension in order to make a good performance in the front of the interviewers. Also, it’s better to add a smile with your eyes so that you can show a real smile in your face, which makes your interview more successful. Additionally, making good postures can affect the quality of the job interview. The way of standing, sitting or talking shows the level of our attitude and manners, particularly in a job interview. For example, first, sit on the edge of the chair is a signal of nervousness and express you’re uncomfortable. Second, stand in the space belonging to the others and cross the arm, which can be hostile. In order to make your job interview extremely successfully, you’d better prepare eye contact, facial expressions and right postures. Furthermore, nonverbal communication is related to the development of medical care. Usually, most people are getting involved with each other through verbal communication. However, when people are getting older, they are lacking the functions of social network and body function degradation so that they need to depend on nurses’ care— nonverbal behavior,which establish the relationship between nurses and patients, such as, smiling, body positioning and touch. Smiling may be one of the most important characteristics of a nurse who wishes to establish good rapport with patients (Schabracq 1987; Heintzman et al. 1993). Smiling is positively judged by other people and is considered as a sign of good humour, warmth and immediacy (Mehrabian 1972, Reece & Whitman 1962). † The body positioning points out whether the person is caring and listening. In the process of nonverbal behavior, the forward leaning indicates that nurse pay attention and care about the condition of the patients. In earlier research Reece & Whitman (1962) showed that leaning forward conveys warmth and friendliness. Forward leaning combined with smiling, eye contact and verbal attentiveness (‘hm-hm’) communicates an attitude of involvement. † Additionally, touch is an essential part in the medical care, which is a significant connection between nurses and patients. Touch can deliver the feeling of comfort, identification and encouragement in order to give patients a strong response to be optimistic through the medical process. In the medical way, touch can be divided into two parts; one is â€Å"instrumental touch†, another is â€Å"expressive† touch. Instrumental touch refers to the physical touch, such as bind up a wound. Expressive touch is more emotionally and spontaneous. Hence, touch is a key tool in the medical care; it makes patients more positive to face the medical treatment. What’s more, social interactions are a significant form of nonverbal communication. Symbolic stands for religious and status. On one hand, status can be a symbol of social level with person through his uniform, the brand of the car, and the size of the house. On the other hand, religious belief is equal to the culture, which makes certain people have unique communication. However, comparing to the difference between cultures, it’s pretty obviously that we can see the difference in the nonverbal communication. For example, physical space is a main difference. The acceptable physical distance in Latin America and Middle East is much shorter than it in America and Europe. Commonly, that’s why people often leave enough space for each other when they are standing online to buy the food. Besides, in terms of physical postures, the common example is the habit of many Americans who prefer to have a rest with their feet on the desk, but in Asia, Europe, and Middle East is unrespectable behavior. Additionally, hand and arm gestures means different between cultures. In some cases, for instance the â€Å"OK† sign, commonly it means everything is all right perfect. However, it means worthless in France and is money in Japan. Also, it even means rude in Germany. Another gesture â€Å"thumbs up†, usually it indicated all things are OK. But, in Nigeria, it means very offensive, while in Turkey, it means political rightist party. To sum up, nonverbal communication affects the way of people’s daily life, which tends to add more value to our communication. It makes our job review perfectly, promotes the development of the medical care, and enhances the progress of social interactions. As a result, nonverbal communication, as an essential communication skill, is getting more important and brings people the powerful communication with each other in different areas.

Aristotle and Virtue Essay Example for Free

Aristotle and Virtue Essay Aristotle believes that we need virtue, both of thought and of character, to achieve that completeness leading to happiness. This is the function: activity in the soul in accord with virtue, where soul is defined as what is in us that carries out our characteristic activity. Aristotle is right in believing we need virtue. The end of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Book I introduces the idea that since happiness is â€Å"a certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with complete virtue, we must examine virtue,† because doing so will allow us to closer analyze and understand how to study happiness. He goes on to identify two areas: virtues of thought and virtues of character. I believe the philosopher is right when he thinks that a good life requires harnessing both kinds of virtues. Virtues of thought are simpler to identify, as they include excellence in problem solving skills, abstract and rational thought, mathematics and the like. Virtues of character, which are also called ‘moral virtues’, seem to be more complex and are also an integral part of the completeness that Aristotle said was necessary for a good life. Some examples of these virtues are generosity and patience. Virtues of character are definitely good for the possessor as Aristotle states in chapter 6, â€Å"having these feelings at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is the proper virtue. † Finding that mean or middle ground, that balance or yin and yang, is essential to establishing a completeness which ultimately lead to happiness. One problem may be actually the path to virtue. The idea of pleasure without pain is not realistic in the mortal world. Everything on this plane is relative. Take, for example, two dogs: Dog A lives on the street and has all of his life. He has to find himself food everyday in alleys and has to deal with the weather. This life is good to him because it is his world and he does not know any better. As far as Dog A is concerned, he is in ‘heaven’. Dog B lives in a mansion with air conditioning and gourmet steaks that are given to him on a regular basis. This is all Dog B knows and he is not aware of anything else out there better than this (even though it surely exists), so this dog is in heaven also. Imagine their own individual and relative differences if they were to switch places. Dog A would go to a mansion atmosphere and the comfort of his life would dramatically improve, while Dog B’s life would be hell all of a sudden. This relation of pleasure to pain and how it is all relative makes one take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Nelson, W. Philosophy 1305 Proteus Classics Readings. Thomson Custom Publishing, Mason. pgs 81-122. Aristotle and Virtue. (2016, Dec 13).

Managing Products and Services Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Managing Products and Services - Essay Example 100 million. Growing competition in the local hospitality sector, changing customer preferences and the rising importance of green practices were the primary reasons behind this decision to undertake an extensive of the entire hotel. The hotel remained closed for nearly 3 years and opened in 2007 after investing over ?220 million (an excess of ?120 million over the initial budget) in the renovation and replacement of its entire infrastructure (Schwab, 2010). All along, the emphasis on the part of Savoy’s management was to preserve the hotel’s identity, elegance and its old-fashioned glory. Notable features such as the statue of Peter II or the American bar were retained although having undergone extensive makeovers and improvements. In simple words, Spenceley (2008) terms the restoration project implemented by Savoy can be termed as an elaborate improvement. A lot has been written about the green makeover that the hotel underwent during this phase. While the identity of Savoy as a luxury hotel or a place of extravagance does not require any introduction, the question does arise over just how green the hotel has become. The resulting strategies that the hotel’s management has adopted to market and promote its efforts towards environmental safety and customer satisfaction present an interesting situation with the reopening of the hotel. This paper describes an analysis that begins with an analysis of the key internal and external factors that influences the strategic decisions of the Savoy Hotel. The effectiveness with which the hotel has positioned itself in the market post-renovation and the steps taken to maintain and improve customer satisfaction are discussed thereafter. Key macro and micro factors influencing Savoy Hotel The effects of global warming and climate change are being felt the world over. Travelers and customers are increasingly aware of this growing problem and are becoming more active towards reducing their carbon footprint . Renewed needs from customers for green solutions and practices and rising costs associated with conventional methods of operation have prompted some much needed change on the part of the hospitality sector in the UK. The restoration of the Savoy hotel that commenced in 2007 was mainly driven by these considerations and the need to adopt a greener image (Peeters, 2010). Another factor that prompted the Savoy hotel to undergo the expensive renovation was the constantly rising costs as the hotel had previously not considered long-term savings through cheaper, greener solutions (Roth, 2011). The latest renovation and reopening of the hotel in 2010 has also led to the question of how much farther the hotel must go in order to become sustainable. Competition from rival hotels in implementing similar solutions to aid in environmental protection is another trend that facilitated a change in strategy on the part of Savoy hotel. Since 2006, the UK hospitality industry has witnessed a rapid surge in energy costs due to rising fuel prices (Horner, 2008). Prices for conventional fuels like gasoline and natural gas have been on higher over previous years. The ongoing tension in the Middle East and the resulting volatility in the markets have also contributed to this increase in fuel costs. Hotel chains like the Hilton International and the Grosvenor House Hotel have