Marriage versus living together

Trends are showing that there is a change in the way intimate relationships are constituted throughout the world. Cohabiting, in the absence of a marriage contract has only become so common over the past few decades. This practice of living with a partner in an intimate relationship that does not involve signing a marriage contract, referred to by any of the terms consensual unions, cohabiting unions, cohabitation, or living together, is evidenced both in developed and developing countries. Mokomane (2005) notes an increase over marriage in this type of relationship (p. 57). Kenny and McLanahan also observe that, in the U. S., cohabitation has surpassed marriage as the preferred mode of intimate unions. It is useful, therefore, to understand differences between a cohabiting and a marriage relationship, in order to determine why couples are now choosing this type of union over marriage. The most apparent difference between a marriage and a cohabiting relationship is in their institutional makeup. A marriage is, by its very nature, a contractual type of relationship where both couples agree to an intimate union. A cohabiting relationship is also an agreement between two partners. The difference is that a marriage requires signing a legal document representative of the couples’ legal obligations to each other. In a cohabiting union such legality is not evident. Marriage relationships are therefore more permanent than cohabiting unions specifically because of this legality. A cohabiting couple may choose to end a relationship at any time without facing much external difficulties but a married couple has to apply for a divorce. Simply put a married couple is legally accountable for either staying together or separating while this is not so in the case of cohabiting couples. Mokomane (2005) notes a further difference in the average age of individuals who enter either union. She has observed that couples in a cohabiting relationship are usually much younger than those in a cohabiting relationship. From her research it was discovered that cohabiting men and women average 37.9 and 32.8 years respectively while their married counterparts average 51.3 and 45.6 years respectively based on the 2001 census in the U.S. (p. 63). This is suggesting that cohabiting relationships is usually the first choice relationship and later there is the transfer into a marriage union when the individual gets older. It has also been noted that married couples earn more than their cohabiting counterparts. According to Clarkberg (1999), income is usually a predictive factor for individuals to get married. She argues that, since individuals with more income seem to be the ones that enter into married unions, then a good income is probably seen as a requirement for entering into a married union. Clarkberg cites research conducted in Puerto Rico in which it was concluded that cohabiting relationships are ‘a poor man’s marriage’(p. 947). Markowski, Croake and Keller also found that cohabiting couples had more lifetime partners than married couples suggesting a higher rate of promiscuity in the former group. They establish that cohabiting couples are more likely than married couples to have had more than six sexual partners (p. 33). Finally research has found that there is a higher rate of domestic violence among couples that are cohabiting than those that are married. Even further there are also higher rates of homicide within this group (Kenny & McLanahan, 2006). In consistent cases it has been found that the rate of domestic violence among married couples is significantly less than the rate among cohabiting couples. These researchers estimate that cohabiting relationships are between two and four times more likely to involve domestic violence than married relationships. It appears therefore that, for reasons of economy and because of its perceived permanence, more persons are staying away from marriage relationships, at least in their younger days, while enjoying the privileges of an intimate living relationship with their partner. Related essay: â€Å"My Ideal Wife† Reference Clarkberg, M. (1999). The price of partnering: The role of economic well-being in young adults’ first union experiences. Social Forces, 77(3), 945-968. Kenny, C. T. & McLanahan, S. S. (2006, Feb). Why are cohabiting relationships more violent than marriages? Demography, 43(1), 127-140. Markowski, E. M., Croake, J. W. & Keller, J. F. (1978, Feb). Sexual history and present sexual behavior of cohabiting and married couples. The Journal of Sex Research, 14(1), 27-39. Mokomane, Z. (2005). A demographic and socio-economic portrait of cohabitation in Botswana. Society in Transition, 36(1), 57-73.   

Mozart’s “Clarinet Quintet” and Mahler’s Symphony no.1 in D major “Titan” Essay

The Music of the classical and Romantic era is a period of time where it shows the development and different styles of music. This can be shown through the manipulation of musical elements, (dynamics, pitch, tempo, rhythm, texture, meter, tonality, structure, melody, harmony, instrument) while contrasting them, but it can also be shown through the composers of the music, the size of the orchestra, musical directions, emotional content, and non-musical developments through that period of time. After the Renaissance and the Baroque era, the Classical era soon followed at around the 1720-1820’s. During these times in Europe, there were many non musical developments, ideas of the enlightenment, political issues, scientific discoveries and the reexamination of established ideas, including the existence of God. Many of these ideas and has got huge impact on the heavy Monumental baroque style and later developed with a more intimate rococo style, with its light colors, curved lines, and graceful ornaments, which greatly resembles the classical period. Shortly after the Classical period, the Romantic era appeared during the 1820-1900’s. At these times, non-musical developments such as cultural movements strongly expressed emotion, imagination, and individuality. People such as Romantic painters and writer often emphasized the freedom of expression; they often saw political revolution as a reflection of their own struggles for artistic freedom. This had made a huge i mpact on Romantic music, because the emotional subjectivity turned into a basic quality of Romanticism. Comparing the musical elements of Classical era and Romantic era, we would notice the many differences, and hence we can identify and recognize the music of both periods. The first musical element that I will discuss is rhythm. As we can see, the rhythm of the Classical era tends to be less complex and quite repetitive. Classical style usually includes unexpected pauses, syncopations, and frequent changes from long notes to shorter notes, and the change from one pattern of note lengths to another may be either sudden or gradual. As we can see in the Finale of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, we can see that during each of those variations, the rhythms are not very complex and quite repetitive, for example, the first 3 – 8 bars of the introduction in Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet show a somewhat consistent rhythm  consisted 4 of crotchets each bar, the 2nd variation show a consistent rhythm of 4 sets of triplets between the 2nd violin and viola, the 3rd variation shows a consistent rhythm of 4 sets of semi-quavers in each bar, with the clarinet normally. Through what I have described just now, one could see that the pattern of note lengths have gradually changed to shorter and shorter, in this case, from 4 crotchets to 4 triplets to 4 semi-quavers. Also, in variations like Mozart’s clarinet quintet, triplets and syncopations can be found frequently. In contrast, romantic music tends to not emphasize that much on simple and consistent rhythms. There are often changes in the number of beats in a measure, cross-rhythms, syncopations, etc. For example in Mahler’s Symphony no.1 in D major â€Å"Titan†, consistent notes goes against syncopations, there are accompaniments with skips and staccatos etc. (p.116) Both Classical and Romantic eras have written musical directions, unlike Renaissance and Baroque which does not have any. Moreover, I have noticed that the musical directions of both pieces have extreme differences. As we see in Mahler’s symphony no.1 in D major â€Å"titan† 3rd movement, there are many written musical directions: dynamic, emotional, tempo directions. For example, in the first 20 bars, there are already 7 written musical directions, whereas in Mozart’s clarinet quintet, there are extremely small amounts of written musical directions, only 2 written musical directions in the first 20 bars. This significantly shows that there are differences in the use of written musical directions in the Classical and Romantic era. Classical and Romantic music has differences in melodies and structures too. In classical music, the structures emphasize more the grace of proportion and balance, moderation and control; polished and elegance in character with expressiveness and formal structure held in perfect balance. Furthermore, the forms do not vary as much as the Romantic era, they had forms like sonatas, symphonies etc. The melodic phrases are usually balanced and symmetrical made up of two phrases of the same length. For an example, in Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, the music is very symmetrical and well balanced, in a variation form. However, in Romantic music, they rather emphasize on the emotional content than trying to sound balanced and symmetrical, and expanded their use of forms and created new forms, like impromptu, ballade,  etude, nocturnes etc,. Moreover, the melodies normally have either really long or short phrases, increased in range, but also increased in chromaticism. For example in Mahler’s symphony no.1 in D major â€Å"Titan†, we can see that except it is in a ABA form, the whole movement was not as symmetrical and well balanced as the Mozart, although it is in a variation form, the melodic phrases have increased in range, are either really long, for example in the first 18 bars, or really short, where the melody can be hardly seen in bar 134-137. Classical and Romantic era are very different in the use of harmonies too. In Classical music, harmonies were formed from the chords. If the chords in a music composition are all major chords, then the harmonies would create emotions that express bright, happy and positive feelings, in contrast, if the chords are all minor chords, then the harmony would express the emotion which is sad and depressed, negative feelings. However, in Romantic music, harmonies are more complex due to the development of the complex chords. For example, a diminished chord that is usually found in Romantic music would create a harmony that is rarely found in Classical music. In general, the use of harmonies is very different in both Classical and Romantic music. Another difference I have noticed between Classical and Romantic music is the range of dynamics used. In the Classical era, the dynamic range normally used was between pp – ff. This range was expanded in the Romantic period, ranging from pppp – ffff. This difference can be evidently proven in Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, where the range was kept within the range of p – f, a small range of pitch in each part of instruments. However, in Mahler’s symphony no. 1 in D major â€Å"titan†, the range of dynamics increased to pppp – f, with a big range of dynamics in each of the instrumental parts. In general, the range of pitch of Classical and Romantic era varies when the classical as small range of dynamics, whilst the Romantic as a larger range of dynamics. The range of pitch of the Classical and Romantic era is used very differently too. In the classical era, the range pitch is not as big as the Romanic era, as he range of pitch in the Romantic era was expanded, as the composers seek  for more extreme high and low sounds. For example in Finale of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet as a Classical song, the range of pitch of the whole song was only D2 – C6 with little range of pitch in every instrumental part, but the range of pitch in Mahler’s symphony no. 1 in D major, as a Romantic song, is B1- D6, with a very broad range in every instrumental part. In general, the range of pitch of Classical and Romantic era varies when the classical as small range of pitch, whilst the Romantic as a larger range of pitch. The tempo of classical era and Romantic Era is used very differently too. In the Classical era, the tempo only changed when there are written musical directions to change the mood, but tempo of Romantic music changed the mood constantly with not only the written musical directions, which is often underlined by Accelerando, Ritardando, and subtle variations of pace: but there are many more fluctuations in tempo than there are in Classical music, which they also intensify their emotions by using effect of Rubato. As we can see in Mozart’s clarinet quintet, there are only 3 written musical directions: â€Å"Allegretto con Variationi†, which means a little lively, moderately fast, with variation, â€Å"Adagio† which means at ease: slow, and allegro, which means cheerful or brisk; but commonly interpreted as fast, lively, and there are no written musical directions which guide the tempo within the scores. However, in Mahler’s symphony no. 1 in D major, there are not only main musical directions to guide the tempo, like â€Å"Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen†, which means dignified but not too slow, but there are small ones in between the scores which appears constantly, like Zurluckhaltend which means holding back tempo, creating Rubato effect and Poco. Rit etc. These two pieces, Mozart’s clarinet quintet as a Classical music, Mahler’s titan as a Romantic music, clearly shows that there are significant differences in the tempo of the Classical and Romantic era, Classical with a less frequent change of tempo, Romantic with a frequent change of tempo. The texture of Classical and Romantic music can be contrasted. Classical music is basically homophonic; for example in Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, we can see that the texture is basically homophonic, with a few that is  polyphonic, and the pieces shifted smoothly from one texture to another, like in the changes from variation 1 to variation 3, there is a gradual change from thin texture to thicker texture. In contrast, even though romantic music can be homophonic and polyphonic and most of the time between the two, the texture turns thicker, it has lots of changes in texture, more drastic and frequent, and they use a lot more instruments to exaggerate this thick and emotional content. As we can see in Mahler’s symphony no.1 â€Å"Titan†, the texture is pretty thick in general, due to the size of the orchestra which creates density, and during the bars of 134-137, the whole orchestra is used, which creates the intense and climax moment. In general, although both Classical and Romantic music are mainly homophonic, the thickness of the texture is contrasted significantly. Chromaticism was also used differently in the Classical and Romantic era. In the classical era, melodic chromaticism was used frequently (especially by Mozart) to balance the harmonic plainness. In its simplest form of chromatic scales, it occurs a lot in unaccented passing notes. Melodic chromaticism does not usually affect the harmony; it is mainly used for color-modification of diatonic notes, to add tone color by composers. However, Romantic music generally uses chromaticism to form the music’s harmonies and create chords. This helps the composer to expand the emotional contents and express a few different emotions of the musical piece. In general, chromaticism was used very differently in the Classical and Romantic era. Cadenza chords of Classical and Romantic music is similar, but you can say that cadenza chords of Romantic music are built on top of the cadenza chords structures of Classical music. In Classical music, they generally have a cadenza chord structure of I – V – I. In Mozart’s clarinet quintet, the cadenza chords can easily be recognized as chords I – V – I, as we can see in the first 16 bars. In Mahler’s symphony no.1 in D major â€Å"titan† however, the cadenza consist of only chord I from bar 158 to the end, 11 bars all written in chord I. This type of chord structure is seldom found in Classical music, because Classical music usually ends a piece of music in an authentic cadence, plagal cadence, or deceptive cadence. In Romantic music,  these cadences are still used, but composers like to end their music in their own unique way, just like Mahler’s symphony no. 1 in D major. Another difference that I have noticed between Classical and Romantic music is the size of their orchestra. In a Classical orchestra, there are normally only 20-60 players, which involve strings: 1st & 2nd violins, violas, cellos, double basses. Woodwinds: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons. Brass: 2 French horns, 2 trumpets. Percussion: 2 timpani. However, towards this end of the Romantic era, the orchestra might have included around 100 musicians. The constant expansion of the orchestra reflected composes changing needs as well as the growing size of concert halls and opera houses, due to technological advances. The brass, woodwind and percussion sections of the orchestra took on a more active role, calling for trombones, tubas, and more horns and trumpets. The woodwind took on new tone colors such as contrabassoon, bass clarinet, English horn and piccolo. Orchestral sounds became more brilliant and sensuously appealing through increase uses of cymbals the triangle and the harp. One of the most evident differences between Classical and Romantic music is how composers express their emotion and creating emotional intensity. Composers from the Classical Period tend to focus more on the structure of music, creating music that is structural and compact in form, and captures our attention by the beauty and structure of the music, which usually just expresses one emotion. However, composers from the Romantic Period focused more on depicting their emotions in their music, emphasizing on expression rather then structure, expressing several different emotions. When we compare Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet to Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major â€Å"Titan†, Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet tends to be more focused on perfecting the harmony between the different melodies and also the structure and forms, while Mahler’s Titan emphasized much more on the emotional content. In short, Classical music tends emphasize on the beauty of balanced structures, expressing one emotion, while Romantic music tends to express more emotional contents, expressing several different emotions. In general, the music of Classical and Romantic era are very different in  many ways, in all aspects of the elements, dynamics, pitch, tempo, rhythm, texture, meter, tonality, structure, melody, harmony, instrument, and especially how they express their emotional contents. However, the Classical and Romantic eras are both historical developments of western music, which significantly contributes to the music that we listen to today. References Classical music. (2007, April 11). Retrieved April 15, 2007, from wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_musicClassical period (music). (2007, April 13). Retrieved April 14, 2007, from wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music_eraLogan, J., & Swann, J. (n.d.). Classical Music and Romantic Music – Part 1. Retrieved April 7, 2007, from http://trumpet.sdsu.edu/m345/Romantic_Music1.htmlRomantic music. (2007, April 12). Retrieved April 13, 2007, from wikipedia Web site: http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_musicSchmidt-Jones, C. (2006, January 3). The Music of the Romantic Era. Retrieved April 7, 2007, from connexions Web site: http://cnx.org/content/m11606/latest/Sexton, T. (2007, January 17). The Classical and romantic Eras in Music History. Retrieved April 4, 2007, from associatedcontent Web site: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/119869/the_classical_and_romantic_eras_in.html

A Guide for Designers on the Construction

The Construction Design and Management 2015, which is also known as CDM 2015, were enacted into place in 6 th April 2015 replacing the CDM 2007. The main requirement in this act helps to provide legal requirements for the construction industry concerning the health and safety in the industry. In this view, the act helps to define the different roles of the people in the construction industry in maintaining the health and safety during working environment[1]. The CDM 2015 offers the HSE legal series and guidance on the construction industry and helps to keep the sector accident free. The HSE official has to take care of the initial conditions of the construction status and helps to control the hazards. Several rules do apply on the triangular house due to the advancement of the different hazards, which can be found on such site considering the working height. The regulations also defines requirement to have the perfect personnel for their rights jobs and be able to cooperate and coordinate the work with others. Moreover, the CDM 2015 helps the HSE official to convey the right information concerning the risks and the way to manage them at the site, help to pass the safety and health information to the right people perfectly and on time and be able to consult and engage other workers about the available risks and help to cooperate to come up with solutions on the risks[2]. In this view, the CDM 2015 requires the people to keep the construction industry accident free by maintaining the different aspects and safety issues. Triangular house must have a lift to enhance the movement due to its location that is near the road. The lift requires proper management and check up to ensure that it is secure and safe for use. In addition, it requires one to be able to pass the information concerning the risks available and help to define the solutions well. This legislation requires proper passing of information in order to enhance its effectiveness in the construction industry. The project manager has to design the proper channel for this communication and then pass it to the HSE personnel. The triangular house has several floors and therefore passing of information from one floor to another is difficult. The workers cannot be shouting to one another considering the noise at a working site. The CDM therefore stipulates for the existence of proper channel and method of communication to enhance passing of information. Through the talks, the proper message on CDM 2015 can therefore be passed and solution concerning the risks passed to the people. This will help to minimize some of the risks such as personal injuries, which can be sustained due to lack of concentration while working. In addition, passing the information that each person should be allocated the duties they are qualified on will help to minimize the injuries and risks. In addition, in order to effect this regulation effectively, workshops and trainings to ensure that workers are conversant with the tools and machines will help to attain the goals of this regulation[3]. This will ensure that proper and qualifi ed personals are allow to operate and perform their specific function, in relation with this regulation, the measure will help to reduce the cases of personal injuries and therefore providing a safe working environment. In conclusion, the client, HSE officer and project manager have great say in the health and safety of the triangular house and any other buildings as well.   In addition, the regulation can also be effected through holding proper meetings to plan and derive solutions for the available risks and problems[4]. The project manager can arrange to have these meeting and discuss the location of the specific parts such as the lift, which help to solve the problem issues. This will help to reduce risks, which may occur due to knocks by the objects on the air. Fire safety is a key element, which need to be considered in any development of a structure. Projects and measures to curb the future incidents of fire are made in advance and taken care of and provision of the key escape route of the people in the triangular house. Considering the amount of millions inserted in the development of structure of the triangular house, the fire safety becomes an important component, which must be addressed. Since the fire can destroy the structure in few hours, the addresses of the fire safety are an economical measure, which defines the incidents of fire, can be addressed to bring on minimal losses when they happen[5]. In this connection, the fire safety regulations are practices, which are brought on board to help reduce the destruction include the provision of escape routes which are enough to ensure proper evacuation. Since these regulations are meant to control both passive and active fire incidents, the provision of guidelines and warning helps to provide the solutions to fire incidents. Ignition prevention for the uncontrolled fire is one of the major design measure which is key in provision of the fire safety[6]. In order to protect the building from such incidents, the building facility is built in accordance with the building codes. Some of these key regulations include the definition of maximum occupancy of the building, maintaining of fire exits points in the triangular house and especially on the ground floor. Correct type of fore fighting machines such as fire extinguishers is essential to ensure that in case of any incident, the firefighting machines can be accessed easily on every floor[7]. In addition, the fire safety arrangement helps in providing the required alerts through the alarm systems. This ensures that people are able to evacuate the affected areas on time and therefore it shows the reason beyond its importance. The fire safety enhances the awareness of the main actions that need to be undertaken each time an incident happens. According to building fire safety regulations 2005, the rules help to reduce the obstruction, which might happen whenever the incident of fire happens[8]. The regulation provides the procedure through which the process has to take place and therefore reducing the casualties, which might happen. In addition, the floor plan must also have enough space, which must allow the movement of the people in the triangular house. The single staircase provided in the triangular house is not sufficient to allow the evacuation in case of internal fire on all the floors and emergency exits are required to ensure proper safety in case of fire. Moreover, the fire safety regulations help to define the type of structures that will be set up according to their use. In conclusion, the triangular house requires proper fire requirement for both external and internal fires. Considering it is a high-rise building, proper fire consideration is required and equipment is placed on order. This provision is provided according to the use of the structure and helps to define the duration, which the structure can withstand during fire incidents. In conclusion, the fire safety requirements have to be met because they are able to maintain the safety of structures and procedure of ensuring that all personnel in the buildings are safe. Bone, Stephen., & Great Britain. 2000. Designing for health and safety in construction: A guide for designers on the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994. Sudbury: HSE Books. Cassidy, Kevin A. 1992. Fire safety and loss prevention. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann. Construction Industry Training Board (1963-2003). 1995. CDM: The view from here : the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations. London: CITB. Great Britain. 1995. Managing construction for health and safety: Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994. Sudbury, Suffolk [England: HSE Books. Hughes, Phil, and Ed Ferrett. 2016. Introduction to health and safety in construction: for the NEBOSH national certificate in construction health and safety. Joyce, Rose. 2001. The construction (design and management) regulations, 1994: Explained. Ludhra, Subash. 2015. Common sense guide to health and safety in construction. Construction Industry Training Board (1963-2003). 1995. CDM: The view from here : the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations. London: CITB. Rose, Joyce. 2001. The construction (design and management) regulations, 1994: Explained. Stephen, Bone., & Great Britain. 2000. Designing for health and safety in construction: A guide for designers on the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994. Sudbury: HSE Books. Great Britain. 1995. Managing construction for health and safety: Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994. Sudbury, Suffolk [England: HSE Books. Robert, Ratay T. 2012. Temporary structures in construction. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Education LLC. https://accessengineeringlibrary.com/browse/temporary-structures-in-construction-third-edition. Subash, Ludhra. 2015. Common sense guide to health and safety in construction. Kevin, Cassidy A. 1992. Fire safety and loss prevention. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann. Phil, Hughes, and Ferrett Ed. 2016. Introduction to health and safety in construction: for the NEBOSH national certificate in construction health and safety.

Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 55

Essay Example ities are responsible for the diminishing quantity of water in the world today a feature that requires speedy and effective solution through a change of attitude in order to safeguard the provision of water thus the continuation of life on the planet as the discussion below portrays. Effective management of water requires both effective legislation and change of attitude of the population in order to embrace economical utilization of water. In such extreme cases of water shortage as is the case in California, the government must encourage the citizens to utilize water economically and effectively in order to ensure that everyone has adequate amount of water. The state government has for example formulated a number of legislations that will compel the population to utilize water appropriately. The legislation for example bans the use of water in the maintenance of lawns and golf courses among others. Such uses of water consume large volumes of clean and safe water that other people would require for consumption. Unsafe farming practices are some of the major factors that enhance the depletion of water resources. The use of fertilizers in farms pollute water sources a feature that renders safe and clean water unfit for human use. Furthermore, the chemicals in the fertilizers make the water unsafe for other animals that live and use in water (Charles, 2011). Farmers spend billions of gallons of clean water in irrigating their famers. They end up wasting most of such water since they do not employ strategies that maximize water usage. Most farmers divert such fundamental sources of water as rivers into their famers thereby destroying entire ecosystems besides wasting the water, the excess water from the farms flow back into the rivers. Such water is never safe for human consumption given the fact that they possess sedimentation. Furthermore, some of the water mixes with pesticides and herbicides among other chemicals from the farm. The population of humans continues

Is self-confidence necessary for effective leadership Essay

Is self-confidence necessary for effective leadership - Essay Example Learning to be lowly and learning to be small will make us great somedayThere is a great host of leaders recorded in the Bible. If we have to learn their ways, faith, principles, and beliefs, we will come to the inevitable conclusion that these great leaders like Moses, Noah, Peter, Paul, and many others, was found to be able and successful leaders because they have learned to accept that they are nothing; that the Creator is able to produce great things from nothing. Nothingness is the best place and idea to start a creation. When we do something out of something that already exists, we fashion it in a manner by which we always consider the kind of material that exist; but everything is possible, and every idea can be freely conceived if you create something out of nothing like what God have done (Soriano, E. F., 2004). Hollenbeck and Hall also mentioned in their article that "Leader's self-confidence causes followers to believe in the capabilities of the leader and the direction set." Contrary to that, Soriano said that "A leader, in the truest sense of the word, must be someone being followed intelligently by followers of understanding.

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PHIL-COIS- Cyberethics Eassy - Essay Example Cyber bullying is increasing and resulting dangerous outcomes, which is becoming a serious threat in the community. Cyber bullying needs serious concerns for both online community and regulation to overcome this cyber crime. Possible solution of prevention from cyber bullying will be also discussed. The safer legal and disciplined use of the internet is the basic understanding of Cyber-Ethics (Cyberethics, 2011). Ethics have some standard rules and principles that are followed by humans. Same standards are followed in cyber activities. The way in which one can behave on the internet comes under cyber ethics. It involves the legal concerns as well, like following the law during internet usage. In digital media, the moral norms and duties should be followed and this comes under the definition of cyber ethics. The ethics that are needful for the internet environment comes under the definition of cyber-ethics. Another name of cyber ethics is computer ethics or internet ethic and all that comes under the spectrum of cyber-ethics. The alone computer user have own personal ethics while interacting with a system, when a same user becomes the internet user more principles involved under ethics and as a whole the user should follow the ethical norms (Tavani, 2006). The reason why one should concern about cyber ethics is to use the internet in a safe manner. The cyber-ethics are equally important as other areas (Pelgrin, 2011). Facebook and MySpace as social networking websites are so popular that these sites are difficult to control. Serious problem of cyber bullying has aroused. Girls commit suicide when their parents had taunted them on identifying their children’s identity. Description of cyber-ethics is explained in many categories regarding cyber-ethics. Some ethical values are common throughout the universe and same actions are applied in everywhere in the world, for example theft, murder, and assault. Same legal and

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Answer questions - Essay Example These principles remain the bedrock of modern management theory; recent researchers have reï ¬ ned or developed them to suit modern conditions and part of it is the use of information system to make the management’s five activities to be more efficient. All of these management activities involve effective handling of information and this is where effective information systems come in helpful. For example, in performing the controlling aspect of management, it would involve handling various set of information to check if certain standards are met in production, sales or other business function. Information system will help me get this information through a network and handling this massive amount of information will be easier through the use of information software which would have been otherwise laborious without the help of information system. This makes me efficient and able to more effectively at a lesser time. Guidelines for its ethical use however must be established. Private information that relates to the employee or information that does not relate to the job must not be disclosed or used for other purpose other than what it is intended. Technology can be helpful but can also be destructive if it is not guided by ethical consideration. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. Tim Berners-Lee, an engineer from CERN originally developed the idea of HTML. The idea of HTML came out of Berner-Lee’s frustration of having to log on to different computers just to get the information he needed. He mulled that there must be a better way to get a set of information from different computers which gave birth the idea of HTML. So the original concept of HTML was a hyper-text system that connects networking technology and protocols to share information between computers. From then on, it later developed to become the basis and fundamental language of the world wide web or internet (www.landofcode.com). It started with its

Annonated Bibliography Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Annonated Bibliography - Essay Example The conclusive issues stated in the articles chosen below are not dependent on personal feelings or prejudice. The articles contain knowledge that has been presented after critical examination of the available facts with no potential for discrepancies. It is quite obvious that the knowledge contained therein exists independently. The articles were chosen specifically due to the fact that they contain knowledge that is factual just like any objective knowledge. The information is quite independent that even after being researched from various authors, the deduction is independent on any prejudice or personal feelings. It is a reality that cancer exists and is caused by all the causes stated in the documents. The palliative care for patients suffering from the various types of cancer is quite explicit and almost similar. Almost all the authors have the same ideas about cancer as a family health concern and its significance to the nursing profession. The first article is authored by the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario who state that environmental pollution can lead to cancer giving an excellent reason why they believe so (RNAO 2008). Echoing these sentiments is the Center for Disease Control; they also go further giving explicit explanations and evidences on the same (CDC 2012). These among the many articles utilized in this research fulfill the characteristics of objective articles on cancer. Nursing has been viewed as more of a female suited kind of profession, a good reason why it is dominated by females. According to Converse (2010), feminism has both negative and positive effects in nursing. Apparently, this profession being a potent and easy target for feminist attacks, it became quite ambivalent with the group. This led to a few changes in the profession. The author looks at feminism in terms of power which serves as an easy source of information. A good example stated by the author is on the

American History Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 2

American History - Assignment Example Although improvements came into being, efforts were not enough to overhaul America’s take towards slavery which was the obvious reason behind the civil war. On the other hand, if we travel back in time to that year, the US may not be in its best shape to hold such election. Considering the economic aspect of the country and the budget to be allocated for the elections, it may not be the best time to spend so much for something in the midst of depression. Nonetheless, the elections went on and former president Lincoln was re-elected, the strategies, plans and progress were maintained that led us to what we are today. It reassured and secured the American citizens the vision of the incumbent administration back then, which we reap today. The issues the country has been facing for centuries are present today. But major improvements have come into surface. Such issues are not resolved overnight, or even by changing administration.

American Indian Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

American Indian - Essay Example There is, however, another side to Native American history, a much more positive story that is missing from accounts that treat Indian history merely as an on-going tragedy. This is a story of cultural persistence and survival. The key themes of Native American history are continuity, resistance, resilience, and adaptability in the face of extraordinary challenges and dislocations (Native American Voices). The Indians have great capacity for adaptability. The survivors splintered, migrated, and ultimately amalgamated to form new groups and devise strategies for dealing with the invaders (Indian History and Culture). Native Americans struggled to preserve the fundamental aspects of their cultures while adapting to the changes brought about by the Europeans (New American Voices). American Indians were not simply a band of small migratory bands that existed by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. In fact, Native American societies were rich, diverse, and sophisticated (New Ameri can Voices). Throughout their history, Native Americans have been dynamic agents of change. Food discovered and domesticated by Native Americans would transform the diet of Europe and Asia.

“Everybody knows what religion is, and so, we do not need to define it.” Essay Example for Free

â€Å"Everybody knows what religion is, and so, we do not need to define it.† Essay The study of religion may be as old as humankind itself according to one author. Defining religion is difficult as there are many definitions as there are many authors. The word religion is the most difficult to define because of the lack of a universally accepted definition. Specifically the root meaning of the word religion can be traced to Latin. Relegare or religion means to bind oneself, emanating from the Latin religio, which is translated to re-read emphasising tradition passing from generation to generation. Douglas Davies says â€Å"some have simply described religion as a belief in spiritual beings.† (10). In the book The World Religion there is a suggestion of approaches for tackling the question of religion such as viewing it anthropologically, sociologically, through history, in a scholarly way, theologically and by reductionism. In this paper I will try and assess the definition of religion from aforementioned views and identify the problems of defining religion. James Cox states that in their introductory textbook on religion the American scholars Hall, Pilgrim and Cavanagh identify four characteristic problems with traditional definitions of religion; these are: vagueness, narrowness, compartmentasation and prejudice (9). The authors argue that vagueness means there are so many definitions that they do not distinguish the matter of religion from other fields of study. Tilich’s defines religion as ultimate concern or a simple idea of religion meaning living a good life (9). Living a good life is subjective to an individual since the concerns and values we have are influenced by culture and the community that we live in. The definition of religion may also be viewed as narrow by means of compensating for the vagueness. In most cases the study of religion is fixated on a certain field or line of thought. Hall, Pilgrim and Cavanagh use Thomas Aquinas’ claim that religion denotes a relationship with a God, thereby excluding non-atheistic or polytheistic forms of religion (Cox 9). Most definitions are narrowed down to religious beliefs such as Christianity among other world religions. In narrowing down the definition of religion it excludes other religions such as African Traditional Religions. Due to the fact that African religions lack most characteristics needed of World religions they are excluded from being religion. Atheism is a growing phenomena in the world that does not believe in a God, which I feel have its own belief system. Many definitions focus too narrowly on only a few aspects of religion; they tend to exclude those religions that do not fit well. It is apparent that religion can be seen as a theological, philosophical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological phenomenon of human kind. To limit religion to only one of these categories is to miss its multifaceted nature and lose out on the complete definition. The same authors by way of compartmentalisation explain religion in terms of just one single, special aspect of human life. This compartmentalisation reduces religion to one part of human life and ignores its relevance to the totality of human existence. They also argue against Schleiermachers’ definition of religion as a feeling of absolute dependence which might reduce religion to a mere psychological condition, (Cox 9). By compartmentalisation you are taking the part of the whole to be the whole, thereby reducing religion to one aspect of human existence ignoring the totality of existence. Religion is not just a feeling but encompasses the totality of existence in a human being his beliefs, culture and language. Religious or religion is not static but dynamic from one generation to another and they are ever developing in accordance with time and nature. Religion is not only a compartment in life of a human being but a totality, a large elephant it is huge and complex. Most definitions of religion may be viewed as prejudice because they are evaluative in process which cannot present an objective picture of what religion actually is. The same scholars argue giving the example of Karl Max that religion is the opium of the people which is clearly biased (Cox 9). A scholar by the name of Barnhart criticizes traditional definitions of religion identifying in them five issues in prejudice: belief in supernatural, evaluative definitions, diluted definitions, expanded definitions and true religion. In his argument, Barnhart denies that religions must not hold a belief in God or supernatural beings to qualify as religions. He believes that such definitions restrict the subject matter of religion and thus are too exclusive, (Cox 9). In the same argument he concurs with Hall and company call on narrowness of definition of religion.  In the same view disagrees with E.B Tylor ‘religion consists of beliefs in spiritual’ beings as too narrow. In asserting that religion definitions are evaluative in nature, Barnhart concurs with Hall that these definitions are prejudiced. He argues against Marx and Freud saying the ultimate concern is itself an evaluative concept imposed on religion from the perspective of Western philosophy. Citing Clarke’s statement that ‘religion is the life of God in the soul of man’ tells us nothing about either God or the soul thereby diluting the definition and affirming other scholars view that religion’s definition is vagueness. Compartmentalisation of the definition of religion can also be likened to what Barnhart calls expanded definitions. He argues against Russell who tries to expand the definition of religion so far as to make it seem an effort to seek comfort in a terrifying world. The argument follows that by trying to define religion as a way of expanding a list of what comprises religion to accommodate one compartment of human existence it has an opposite effect of diluting the definition rather than searching for consolation, (Cox 10). Lastly Barnhart finds a problem in defining all religions in terms of one religion which by definition claims itself to be true. He gives the example of ‘Religion is belief in Jesus’ or ‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet’. This clearly categorises the definition of religion are subjective (Cox 10). The example also clearly shows how exclusive some definitions of religion are and proves the earlier mentioned problem of prejudice against one belief system or being traditionally fixated on belief systems of faith. The problem of plurality according to Roger Schmidt religion is difficult to define because it is a collective term applied to a wide range of phenomena. The phenomena include beliefs and practices that all religions have in common. Closely related to plurality is the problem of culture as religion and culture are closely linked. Religion is a child of culture, which is a result of religion being found in a certain contextual culture, therefore, difficult to define religion in all cultures. Religion itself is dynamic the Buddhism of a hundred years ago is not the same today. This shows that religion is not static but dynamic.

Literary Criticism Quotes and Explanation Essay Example for Free

Literary Criticism Quotes and Explanation Essay â€Å"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. † -Gene Fowler Fowler conveys that writing is a difficult, exacting task. The purpose of writing is to put our thoughts into words, and to make our words move our readers. Many writers are frustrated by their inability to put their thoughts onto paper. I have always had a difficult time writing. I find that I have good ideas, but that putting my thoughts into words is challenging. I find this problem in all kinds of writing, even projects I enjoyed like a short story we wrote in the 7th grade. I enjoy reading science fiction; it is the most interesting to me. I have always had a hard time picturing what I am reading in my head, but science fiction is easier to visualize. I dislike non-fiction the most because I find it uninteresting. â€Å"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars. † -G. Flaubert Flaubert’s message is that human speech is imperfect and inelegant. Many people strive to speak fluently but aspects of their speech like word choice and grammar are imprecise. One way to express yourself when words do not work is body language. For example, if somebody doesn’t understand that you are trying to be sarcastic you can use body language to convey your message. You can also express yourself through art, like paintings or music. Some people also try to express themselves through the way that they dress. One advantage to using these methods is that you do not have to say anything but people can simply interpret your message. This can also act as a disadvantage because they might interpret it the wrong way.

Task Centred Practice And Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Social Work Essay

Task Centred Practice And Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Social Work Essay This assignment will focus on two approaches of intervention: Task-Centred Practice (TCP) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Along the theories interventions description, it will take note on any issues of anti- discrimination practice. It will also point out, the similarities and differences; the advantages and disadvantages of the approaches and finally bring a conclusion. Accordingly to Marsh (2002, p.106) cited in Trevithick (2005), task-centred is a practice approach given that it does not have knowledge based unlike other approaches. However, Doel alleges that t is a practice with knowledge based and one of models of problem solving emerged from both system and learning theory (Trevithick, 2005, p276). Trevithick (2005) states TCP originated from the study done by Reid and Shyne (1969) and Reid Epstein (1972) who allege task-centred practice undertake within the time-limits is effective compare to long-term interventions. TCP deals with problems recognised by service users; problems clients can solve outside hours of sessions; obviously defined problems; problems result from life issues that clients want to change and finally; problems from unacceptable desires by service users (Payne, 2005) It is a most effective practice that tackles individuals and families problems with the process based on the empowerment and partnership work between practitioner and clients who have to work on the agreed tasks based on one task at a time, achievable goals and objective task that can successfully be completed within time-limited (Parker and Bradley 2007). However, task-centred practice has five stages which in relating to scenario one; first, professional, Tom, Mary and Matt have to identify their behaviours problems. Second, they have to agree on the specific tasks with expected changes. For example Tom and Matt, have to agree tasks that will help to modify their anxieties. Mary also needs to agree tasks to help to lessen her fear so that she re-engages with her friends and families. In addition, Mary needs parenting skills to enable her to handle Matts unwanted behaviour. Third, they have to devise tasks based on the agreed goals. Fourth, signed contract on the achievable tasks and lastly, end tasks (Coulshed 2006). Moreover, task-centred practice required social worker in addition to the selective agreed targets within time-limited; to use tasks to improve obvious problems; re-assess tasks and finally negotiate with clients (Stepney 2000). Hence, professional has to work with Mary, Tom and Matt within time schedule to identify their obvious maladaptive behaviour and to review and continue negotiation them to realise what changes have been made. Stepney Ford (2000) cited in Howe (2009) describe task-centred as a method that can be easily modified to use in the various circumstances to solve individuals problems but it doesnt focus on the clients unconscious mind. However, Reid Epstein (1972) argue that Task-centre model is effective to a particular problems of interpersonal conflict within families; disaffection in social relationship; problems in dealing with formal organisations; difficulties in role performance; problems of social transition; reactive emotional distress and problems in securing adequate material resources including behavioural problems (Stepney Ford, 2000, P.52) Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was emerged in 1950 1960 to counter the primacy of the psychoanalytic practice however; it was originated from social psychology (Coulshed 2006). It is also an approach that deals with humans thoughts, images, beliefs and attitudes that human have and how humans behaviour are impacted by and influenced these (Lindsay, 2009). Moreover, Cognitive Behaviour practice focuses on modifying individuals environment whereby behaviours arise, cause, prompt, provoke and its consequences (Parker Bradley, 2007) as well as describing and pointing out clients behavioural problems of social phobias, anxiety and depression (Payne, 2005). According to Coulshed and Orme (2006) behaviour is learnt and can be unlearned then new one can be learned to replace an existing behaviour therefore, they state four types of learning: respondent conditioning whereby humans unconscious behaviour can be controlled; operant conditioning whereby behaviour is modified as a result of its consequences for instance the reward. Next, observational learning in which human being can adapt new attitude by learning from other people. This could be a case of Matt with Tom who is a fathers figure in the family. Finally, cognitive learning whereby humans attitudes are controlled by the environment as their feeling and thoughts are attached to an event (Coulshed 2006). Moreover, CBT is a model that deals with anger, depression, anxiety, conduct disorders such as phobias as well as helping the individuals to manage their anxiety and offending behaviour by challenging the unacceptable behaviour and negative thoughts (Howe 2009 P.70). Coulshed Orme (2006) suggest eight stages in CBT. Stage one: is the engagement whereby clients and professional have to explore expectations and be clear about roles and who should do; stage two: is problem focus whereby worker is required to identify and clarify problems that troubled clients and dealing with it in the chronological order; stage three: is problem assessment whereby practitioner have to ask open question to enable clients to openly discuss his behaviour, feeling and thoughts on event so that worker find out how clients would behave differently; stage four: required professional to equip clients with cognitive therapy skills and then make observation whether clients have understood and responded positively to the thoughts; stage five: target and challenge the associated assumptions; stage six: use of questions to motivate clients to recognise oneself in order to change their personal negative view; stage seven: setting behavioural homework task for clients whereby wo rker have to keep records of the positive progress; stage eight: ending task by enhancing clients skills so that he is able to handle future problem (Coulshed, 2006) Moreover, CBT helps clients to manage their anxieties and to realise when they are getting angry by teaching them the relaxation methods as well as requiring practitioner at the same time to identify problems in order to make an accurate evaluation in detail by taking notes of when, with whom and how often it occurs (Howe 2009 P.70) [According to Scott and Dryden (2003), CBT is underpinned by knowledge about how we learn and it is divided into four main areas of increasing coping skills, problem solving, cognitive restructuring and structural cognitive therapy (Lindsay 2009, p.68)] There some similarities between two models, they focused on the specific problems, follow particular structures and they are experimental to problems and practice within time-limits (Coulshed, 2006). Both approaches have problem-solving characteristics and their practices are based on partnership and agreed tasks between worker and clients to plan and implement achievable goals; they also use motivation to encourage clients so that they obviously and precisely detail the disturbed experiences (Payne, 2005). Moreover, Nezu et al. (1989) allege, TCP and CBT as problem-solving; they motivate clients to recognise their existing problems in order to describe it and find alternative solutions and by choosing most successful solution to plan and implement it and then re-examine their progress (Lindsay 2009) However, they are some differences. TCP was initiated and developed on its own merit for particular work in social work whereas CBT was originated from psychological approach (Lindsay 2009) In CBT, the support offer to clients can go beyond intervention schedule whereby client has setback but TCP, is more structured and practice within set time-limits. Moreover, in CBT practitioner make use of observations, assessments and evaluations to weigh up the level of the problem by relying on the behavioural learning theory and techniques whereas in TCP; client is requested to describe and discuss their problems on their own (.) Task-centred model has numerous advantages making it to be very popular in most social work practices. It is a practice that encourages partnership work between worker and clients which contributes to solve other parts of clients problem (Parker Bradley 2007) As a problem-solving practice, its intervention is based on short-term; clear distinct tasks and dealt with problems in the chronological order; clients are motivated to help to boost their self-esteem and strengths to succeed goals (Lindsay 2009] In addition, Task-centred model has more power to deal with anti-discriminatory because of its acknowledgement of the environment demands; clients are empowered and; it also deals with oppression issue Ahmad (1990) and OHagan (1994) cited in (Payne, 2005). Furthermore, Task-centred approach elicits a series of problems and tempts to enhance clients capability to handle their difficulties and focuses on the practical achievable tasks to help bring solution to the problems in order to assist clients emotions. Payne 2005) Task-centred practice is disadvantaged because it also deals with reluctant clients and those who have inability to consent or sign contract given that this practice is based on collaboration between practitioner and clients who both have to discuss and agreed specific tasks to be done (Payne, 2005). This is shows an anti-discrimination practice as Thompson (2006 argues that, discrimination practice leads to oppression in the way that people with prominent position can in their roles or relation with powerless people discriminate against them. The intervention of the task-centres model based on the time-limits and partnership between worker and clients constitutes barriers as professional might not evidenced clients full recovery as tasks success are rely on the relationship between worker and client (Payne 2005). Moreover, the results of the task-centred practice intervention might bring clients to accept a certain standard or norms of behaviour and at its worst time; the practice might be seen as the behaviour modification and also the need of the organisations management and performance to meet their targets might also hindered clients needs (Coulshed, 2005). Disadvantages of CBT: The application of CBT has ethical issue grounds given that service users do not take control of behaviour other than worker controlling clients behaviour which could lead practitioner to impose his desires on service users who might not prior consented as this is in the favour of social or political policies. This can sometimes lead to excess of power of control and particularly when techniques are badly applied by other practitioners (Payne 2005 p.129) that can be oppressive and anti-discriminatory. It is also a practice that deal with individuals because its procedures omits the feelings of clients and doesnt recognise clients past events as well as denying human its integral part (Parker Bradley 2007).

Artificial Neural Networks :: Essays Papers

Artificial Neural Networks Artificial neural networks are systems implemented on computer systems as specialized hardware or sophisticated software that loosely model the learning and remembering functions of the human brain. They are an attempt to simulate the multiple layers of processing elements in the brain, called neurons. These elements are implemented in such a way so that the layers can learn from prior experience and remember their outputs. In this way, the system can learn to recognize certain patterns and situations and apply these to certain priorities and output appropriate results. These types of neural networks can be used in many important situations such as priority in an emergency room, for financial assistance, and any type of pattern recognition such as handwritten or text-to-speech recognition. The most basic elements of a neural network, the artificial neurons, are modeled after the neurons of the brain. The "real" neuron is composed of four parts: the dendrites, soma, axon, and the synapse. The dendrites receive input from other neuron's synapses, the soma processes the information received, the axon carries the action potential which fires the neuron when a threshold is breached, and the synapse is where the neuron sends its output, which are in the form of neurotransmitters, to the dendrites of other neurons. Each neuron in the human brain can connect with up to 200,000 other neurons. The power and processing of the human brain comes from multitude of these basic components and the many thousands of connections between them. The artificial neurons simulate the four basic functions of the "real" neuron. The artificial neuron is much simpler than the neuron of the brain. It takes inputs just as the "real" neuron but also multiplies these inputs by a weight value. Then they are sent to a processing unit which does what it needs to do to the value and then sends this value to the output path. In the simplest case the products of these values are simply summed and then put through a transfer process and output. This is the basic building block of all artificial neural networks, although there are many different implementations of this simple block and fundamental differences which allow for different artificial networks to be built. The major concerns of the developer is the design of the neural network system.

Order, Memory, and Anxiety in Borges Fiction :: Reading Memorize Memory Essays

Order, Memory, and Anxiety in Borges' Fiction The fundamental questions of how and why we read have an infinitude of answers, none of which entirely 'do the job', simply because they bear too closely upon the automatic, (and therefore, to us, secret) processes of the mind; the act of reading is too closely related to the act of living in the world for us to comprehend definitively. There are few writers who understand and exploit this primal link more persistently than Jorge Luis Borges. One of the ways in which he forces us to examine the parallels between reading and existing (I use the word 'force' because it is not always a pleasant confrontation) is through the thematic use of memory. I. Total Recall "It is because I forget that I read." -Roland Barthes, S/Z One of the most masterful treatments of the memory theme is in "Funes the Memorious", the brilliantly, (and somewhat absurdly), touching story of a man who cannot live under the strain of his natural and inescapable ability to remember everything perfectly. The story begins with the words "I recall", and immediately we are plunged into the realm of memory-we understand that what we are about to read is a semblance of a reminisence. Jon Stewart calls attention to the importance of the repetition of this verb in the opening paragraphs of the story: "The continual use of this verb clearly foreshadows the most important element of the character of Funes-his prodigious mnemonic powers: but there is more to it than this. Borges continually uses the same verb and with it brings together a number of scattered and seemingly chaotic memories that he has of Funes. The point of this repetition is to underscore his own impoverished memory of Funes." (p.74) But Stewart neglects to take this point to its logical and important conclusion; the narrator's 'impoverished memory' is not merely a foreshadowing of Funes' infinitely rich one-it comes to be, in fact, the necessary circumstance, and the subject of the story. Borges tells us that the story grew out of his own bouts of insomnia: "I remember that I used to lie down and try to forget everything, and that led me, inevitably, to remember everything. I imagined the books on the shelves, the clothes on the chair, and even my own body on the bed... and so, since I could not erase memory, I kept thinking of those things, and also thinking: if only I could forget, I would certainly be able to sleep.

Antitrust Summary :: Film Review

Antitrust   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The movie Antitrust is a movie that does what many technology based movies do today. It exposes the truth about what we can really do with our increasingly advancing technology and how it can affect our lives immensely. In the story of Antitrust the plot evolves around what is called S.Y.N.A.P.S.E., which represents what will â€Å"Transform the way people communicate.† This new form of communication, due to S.Y.N.A.P.S.E., will be the first satellite delivered global communications system that links simultaneously every communication device in the world. The film addresses various sociological issues and deals with topics relevant to today’s society. The main character, Milo, is an idealistic young computer genius with an artist girlfriend and a bright future. He and his friend, Teddy fantasize about launching a start-up company when he’s recruited by NURV (Never Underestimate Radical Vision), a multi-billion dollar corporation, run by his professional hero, Gary Winston. Winston takes a personal interest in Milo. Little to Milo’s knowledge, Winston has ulterior motives. He needs his brilliance to stay ahead of the field in the race for convergence. â€Å"There is no second place,† Winston implants in his employees as a motivator. For Milo it’s a dream come true, a chance to become a legend in his own right. It’s hard to disappoint Teddy, but their offer is too good to refuse. With a talented new colleague, Milo is soon caught up in the exciting challenge of realizing Winston’s vision. Winston is an inspired mentor and no problem remains unsolved for long, but new developments are brought to Milo with such speed and frequency, he begins to doubt their source.

Booth Multiplier

Low Power Booth Multiplier by Effective Capacitance Minimization P. Nageshwar Reddy Dr. Damu Radhakrishnan Stu. in SUNY, New Paltz, NY Prof. in SUNY, New Paltz, NY Abstract: In this paper we present an energy efficient parallel multiplier design based on effective capacitance minimization. Only the partial product reduction stage in the multiplier is considered in our research. The effective capacitance is the product of capacitance and switching activity. Hence to minimize the effective capacitance in our design, we decided to ensure that the switching activity of nodes with higher capacitances is kept to a minimum.This is achieved in our design by wiring the higher switching activity signals to nodes with lower capacitance and vice versa for the 4:2 compressor and full adder cells, assuming the initial probability of each partial product bit as 0. 25. This reduced the overall switching capacitance, thereby reducing the total power consumption in the multiplier. Power analysis is do ne by synthesizing our design on Spartan-3E FPGA and used XPower Analyzer tool that is provided in ISE Xilinx 10. 1. The dynamic power for our 16? 16 multiplier was measured as 360. 4mW, and the total power 443. 31mW. This is 17. 4% less compared to the most recent design. Also we noticed that our design has the lowest power-delay product compared to the multiplier presented in the literature. Index Terms- Booth multiplier, Effective capacitance, 4:2 compressor. 1. Introduction A multiplier is the most frequently used fundamental arithmetic unit in various digital systems such as computers, process controllers and signal processors. Thus it has become a major source of power dissipation in these digital systems.With the exponential growth of portable systems that are operated on batteries, power reduction has become one of the primary design constraints in recent years. In the present era, each and every electronic device is implemented using CMOS technology. The three major sources of power dissipation in digital CMOS circuits are dynamic, short circuit and leakage [1]. Generally, power reduction techniques aim at minimizing all the above mentioned power dissipation sources but our emphasis is on dynamic power dissipation as it dominates other power dissipation sources in digitalCMOS circuits. The switching or dynamic power dissipation occurs due to the charging and discharging of capacitors at different nodes in a circuit [2]. The average dynamic power consumption of a digital circuit with N nodes is given by: where VDD is the supply voltage, Ci is the load capacitance at node i, fCLK is the clock frequency and ? i is the switching activity at node i. The product of switching activity and load capacitance at a node is called effective capacitance.Assuming only one logic change per clock cycle, the switching activity at a node i can be defined as the probability that the logic value at the node changes (0->1 or 1->0) between two consecutive clock cycles . For a given logic element, the switching activity at its output(s) can be computed using the probability of its inputs and is given by: where and denote the probability of occurrence of a ‘one’ and ‘zero’ at node i respectively. When Pi = 0. 5, the switching activity at a node is maximum and it decreases as it goes towards the two extreme values (i. e. both from 0. to 0 and 0. 5 to 1). The two main low power design strategies for dynamic power reduction are based on (i) supply voltage reduction and (ii) the effective capacitance minimization. The reduction of supply voltage is one of the most aggressive techniques because the power savings are significant due to the quadratic dependence on VDD. Although such reduction is usually very effective, it increases leakage current in the transistors and also decreases circuit speed. The minimization of effective switching capacitance involves reducing switching activity or node capacitance.The node capacitance de pends on the integration technology used. To reduce switching activity only requires a detailed analysis of signal transition probabilities, and implementation of various circuit level design techniques, such as logic synthesis optimization and balanced paths. It is independent of the technology used and is less expensive. Admiring the advantages of switching activity reduction, this paper focuses on switching activity reduction techniques in a multiplier. Digital Multiplication is done in three steps in a Booth coded multiplier.The first step is to generate all the partial products in parallel using Booth recoding. In the second step these partial products are reduced to 2 operands in several stages by applying Wallace/Dadda rules. These stages follow one after the other, feeding the output of one stage to the next. The final step is adding the two operands using a carry propagate adder to produce the final sum. Our main focus in this paper is the second step, partial product reduc tion. Fig. 1 shows the modified Dadda reduction tree for a 6? 6 unsigned multiplier, which uses full adders (FA) and half adders (HA) as basic elements.Stage 1 is the rearranged 6? 6 unsigned partial product array obtained using the partial product generator. At every partial product reduction(PPR) stage the number of bits with the same order (bits in a column) are grouped together and connected to adder cells following Dadda’s rules. Each column represents partial products of a certain magnitude. The sum output of a FA or HA at one stage will place a dot in the same column at the next stage and an output carry in the column to the left in the next stage (i. e. one order of magnitude higher). Fig. 1. Modified Dadda reduction tree for 6? unsigned multiplication The Wallace and Dadda designs use only FAs and HAs in the reduction stages, which form an irregular layout and increases wiring complexity. Wiring complexity is a measure of power. Since then Weinberger [3] has proposed a 4:2 compressor, the majority of the multiplier designs today make use of 4:2 compressors to increase the performance of the multiplier. They also contribute to power reduction as they decrease the wiring capacitance due to a more regular layout, contributing to fewer transitions in the partial product reduction tree. It also reduces hardware cost.The design of the 4:2 compressor got impoved in time, and modified design presented by Jiang et al. claimed improvements in both delay and power dissipation compared to earlier designs [4]. Several logic and circuit level optimizations are possible by using higher order compressors instead of simple FA cells for reducing the number of transitions in the partial product reduction stage. Because of this we used 4:2 compressors, FA (3:2 compressor) and HA cells in our partial product reduction stages. We reduced the switching activity by minimizing the effective capacitance at every node in the circuit.This stands as the main focus of this paper. This paper is organized as follows: related research in section 2 and 2. Related Research Many researchers have elucidated different low power multiplier architectures by using different techniques to reduce the total switching activity in a multiplier [ ]-[ ]. Ohban, et al. proposed a low power multiplier using the so called bypassing technique [5]. The main idea of their approach is to minimize the signal transitions while adding zero valued partial products. This is done by bypassing the adder stage whenever the multiplier bit is zero.Masayuki, et al. proposed an algorithm using operand decomposition technique [6]. They decomposed the multiplicand and the multiplier into 4 operands and using them they generated twice the number of partial products compared to the conventional multiplier. By doing this, they reduced the one probability of each partial product bit to 1/8 while it is 1/4 in the conventional multipliers. This in turn decreases the switching probability. Chen, et al. proposed a multiplier based on effective dynamic range of the input data [7].If the data with smaller effective dynamic range is Booth coded then the partial products have greater chances to be zero, which decreases the switching activities of partial products. Fujino, et al. proposed a multiply accumulate design using dynamic operand transformation technique in which current values of the input is compared with previous values [8]. If more than half of the bits in an operand change then it is dynamically transformed to its two’s complement in order to decrease the transition activity during multiplication. Chen, et al. roposed a low power multiplier, which uses spurious power suppression technique (SPST) equipped Booth encoder [9]. The SPST uses a detection logic circuit to detect whether the Booth encoder is calculating redundant computations which yield in Zero partial product and stops such PP generation process. To implement the basic principles used in all the ab ove mentioned multiplier architectures not only increase hardware intensity but also introduce delay in the operation. Also the extra circuitry employed to implement them consumes power.So our research interest is focused on techniques which decrease power without introducing any delay and additional hardware. Oskuii et al. proposed an algorithm based on static probabilities at the primary inputs [10]. At every PP reduction stage the number of bits with the same order of magnitude (bits in a column) are grouped together and connected to the adder cells in a Dadda tree. The selection of these bits and their grouping influences the overall switching activity of the multiplier. This was illustrated in Oskuii’s paper by referring to an early work, which is described below. Only one column per stage is considered here. As the generated carry bits from adders propagate from LSB towards MSB, optimization of columns is performed from LSB to MSB and from first stage to last stage. Thu s it can be ensured that the optimization of columns and stages that has already been performed will still be valid when later optimizations are being performed. * Glitches and spurious transitions spread in the reduction stage after a few layers of combinational logic. To avoid them is not feasible in most cases. Therefore it seems beneficial to assign short paths to partial products having high switching activity.Oskuii’s goal was to reduce the power in Dadda trees. The one probability for sum and carry of the FA and HA can be calculated from their functional behavior [10]. According to Oskuii’s algorithm, assuming the switching probabilities of partial products in a particular stage are calculated using the previous stage one probabilities and in each column and they arranged these partial product bits in ascending order. They first use the lower switching probability bits to feed full and half adders and transfer the higher switching probability bits to the next st age.From the set of bits to feed adders they tried to feed the highest switching probability signal to the carry input of the full adder as its path in full- adder is shorter than the other two inputs. Fig. 2. Example to illustrate Oskuii’s approach [10] Fig. 2 gives an example where 7 bits with the same order of magnitude are to be added. This is shown as the shaded box in the 2nd group of bits from top in Fig. 2. According to Dadda rules of reducing a partial product tree, 2 FAs must be used and one bit will be passed to the next stage together with the sum and carry bits generated by the full adders. s for i varying from 1 to 7 represent the switching probabilities of the seven bits. These are sorted in ascending order and listed as ? i* with the highest one as ? 1*. According to their approach, the bit with highest switching activity is kept for the next stage i. e. in Fig. 3. 2, and assign and to the carry inputs of the two FAs as their path is shorter and the other bits to the remaining inputs of FAs in any order. In this way they reduced the partial product tree by bringing the highest transition probability bits more closer to the output such that it reduces the total power in the multiplier without any extra hardware cost.Oskuii claimed that power reduction varying from 4% to 17% in multiplier designs could be achieved using their approach. On careful analysis of Oskuii’s work we notice that further reduction in power can be achieved. This is elaborated in our design presented in the next section. 3. Proposed Work By using a partial product generator (PPG) for the n? n multiplier employing radix-4 Booth encoder we obtained the required partial products. These partial products are then reduced to 2 operands employing several partial product reduction (PPR) stages. We used a combination of 4:2 compressors, FAs and HAs in reduction stages.At each stage modified Dadda rules are applied to obtain operands for the next stage. While minimizing the partial product bits in each column using 4:2/3:2 compressors and HA cells, emphasis was given on higher speed and lower power. Higher speed is achieved by allowing the partial product bits to pass through a minimum number of reduction stages, while minimizing the final carry propagate adder length to the minimum. Fig. 3. Proposed PPG scheme for a 16? 16 multiplier Fig. 3 shows the proposed partial product reduction scheme for a 16? 16 parallel multiplier.Nine partial products obtained by PPG are reduced to 2 operands using 3 reduction stages. The vertical green boxes in each column represent 4:2 compressors. It takes five bits and reduces them into 3 output bits, one sum bit in the same column position and two carry bits in the next higher significant column (one bit left) of next stage. The vertical red boxes represent full adder cells, which reduce three partial product bits in a column and generate the sum and carry bits. Similarly, the vertical blue boxes represent half add ers and add two partial product bits to reduce it to 2 output bits.The order in which the inputs are fed to 4:2 compressor, full and half adders is discussed in the next section. In Fig. 3 the maximum number of partial products in a column is 8 (columns 14 to 17). Since we are using 4:2 compressors that can take up to 5 input bits, to reduce the partial products in the first stage, we want to make sure that the maximum number of partial products in the next stage is only 5. This way we can reduce the bits in each column in stage 2 using one level of 4:2 compressors. And in the third stage, we want to ensure that the maximum number of bits in any column is only 3, so that full adders can be used to add them.This will permit the whole reduction process to be achieved in 3 stages. The half adder in column 2 in reduction stage 1 and the full adder in column 3 in reduction stage 2 are used so as to minimize the size of the final carry propagate adder. 4. Power Reduction Once the minimum number of reduction stages is established for a design, the next criterion is to minimize power consumption. This is achieved by delay passing and reducing the effective capacitance at every node in the reduction stages also following Oskuii’s rules (discussed in Section 2).To minimize the effective switching activity, the design must ensure that the switching activity of nodes with higher capacitance value must be kept to a minimum. This is achieved by a special interconnection pattern used in our design. The higher switching activity signals are wired to nodes with lower capacitance and vice versa. Our multiplier design uses the above idea to minimize power. This paper therefore focuses on selective interconnection of signals to the inputs of 4:2 compressors and FAs and HAs using the above concept.The logic diagram and the input capacitances for a full adder are shown in Fig. 4(a). For the following we will assume that each and every input lead to a logic gate is considered as one unit load (C1). Hence if a signal is connected to the inputs of two logic gates, then the load is two units (C2). From the logic diagram of the full adder in Fig. 4(a), input B is connected only to an XOR gate, where as inputs A and C are connected to both an XOR and a Mux. Hence, the input capacitance of the B-input is smaller than the other two inputs.The load presented by the B input is one unit load, while the loads presented by A and C are 2 unit loads. Hence a transition on input B will result in less effective capacitance. This is represented by the capacitance values C1 (1 unit load) and C2 (2 unit loads) as shown in Fig. 4. 9. Again by comparing the three inputs, the C input goes through only one logic device (XOR gate or Mux) before it reaches the output, where as both A and B goes through two logic devices before reaching the output. Hence, a transition on any of the inputs A or B could result in output transitions on all the three logic devices.But a transition o n input C will affect only two of these logic devices. Therefore we can conclude that even though the inputs A and C represent the same load, the overall switching effect on the full adder due to C input will be less than that due to A input. Hence, as a rule of thumb, the first two higher transition inputs among a set of three inputs that are given to a full adder should be connected to the B and C inputs and the last one to A. (a) (b) Fig. 4. a) FA logic diagram and input capacitances (b) 4:2 compressor logic diagram and input capacitances Similarly, the logic diagram of a 4:2 compressor and its input capacitances are shown in Fig. 4. (b). The input capacitances presented by X1, X3, X4 and Cin are twice that presented by X2. Hence, the highest transition probability signal must be connected to the X2 input. Again by using a similar argument as in the full adder, the second highest transition probability signal must be given to the Cin. The remaining inputs are given to X1, X3 and X4 in any order. This minimizes the overall effective capacitance in a 4:2 compressor.The probability of a logic one at the output of any block is a function of the probability of a logic one at its inputs [11] [12]. From the logic functions of 4:2 compressor, FA and HA we can calculate their output probabilities knowing their input probabilities. Table 2: Probability equations for 4:2 Compressor | 4:2 Compressor| PSUM| | PCout| | PC0| | Table 1 shows the probability expression for the sum and carry outputs for the full adder and half adder in terms of their input signal probabilities. The 4:2 compressor output probabilities are shown in Table 2. By comparingTables 1 and 2 we can say that the statistical probabilities of the output signals of basic elements (4:2 compressors, full adders and half adders) used in partial product reduction stages vary. Table 3 shows the output signal probabilities of 4:2 compressor, full adder and half adder, assuming equal ‘1’ probabiliti es of 0. 25 for all inputs. In each partial product reduction stage the signals in a particular column have different switching probabilities. The output signals of one stage become inputs to the next stage. So the switching probabilities of the outputs diverge more as we move down the partial production reduction stages.Table 3. 1: Output Signal Probabilities of FAs and HAs | Full-adder| Half adder| SUM| | | CARRY| | A. B| PSUM| | | PCARRY| | | Table 3: Output probabilities of 4:2 compressor and adder cells Input signal probabilities = 0. 25| 4:2 compressor| Full adder| Half adder| SumCoutC0| 0. 48440. 15630. 2266| SumCarry| 0. 43750. 1563| SumCarry| 0. 3750. 0625| Several reduction stages are required to reduce the partial products generated in a parallel multiplier. As shown in Fig. 3, at each stage a number of bits with the same order of magnitude are grouped together and connected to the 4:2 compressors and adder cells.The selection of these bits and their grouping influences t he overall switching activity of the multiplier. This is what we will exploit to reduce the overall switching activity of the multiplier. Fig. 5 shows the array structure of the proposed partial product reduction scheme for a 16? 16 multiplier. In the following we assumed that the one probability of all the 9 partial product bits are same and is equal to 0. 25 (as discussed in Section 3. 26). These 9 partial product bits are fed to 4:2 compressors, full and half adders and are reduced to 5 operands. The bits in these 5 operands will have different one probabilities.From these one probabilities we can calculate their switching probability. If we look at each column all the bits in that column have the same weight but different one probability. So we have enough freedom to choose any of these signals which can be connected to any of the inputs of the basic elements. The way these signals are wired to basic elements to achieve reduction will affect the total power consumption in a mult iplier. Show an example Fig 5 shows how we wired the input signals to 4:2 compressors and full adders in the proposed design. To illustrate the principle consider column 16 of reduction stage 2 in Fig. , where we have five bits with the same order of magnitude, which are to be wired to the inputs of a 4:2 compressor. The first higher transition bit is fed to X2 input and next higher transition bit is fed to Cin, as they provide lower switching activity when compared to others. The remaining three bits can be fed to X1, X3 and X4 in any order. Similarly on column 11 in reduction stage 3, three bits of the same order are to be added. The highest transition bit is given to B input of the adder and the next higher transition bit is fed to C input. The third bit is fed to A input.This way of feeding the inputs, we can decrease the output switching probabilities of compressors and adders. By applying the same technique to every stage we can reduce the overall switching capacitance of the multiplier, thereby reducing power. Fig. 5. Wiring patterns for 4:2 compressors and full adders 5. Simulation Power analysis was done by synthesizing our 16? 16 multiplier design on Spartan-3E FPGA and using XPower Analyzer tool provided in ISE Xilinx 10. 1. We evaluated the performance of our 16? 16 multiplier by comparing with the conventional Wallace and Oskuii’s multipliers.Table 4 shows the quiescent and dynamic powers of different multipliers obtained by simulation. The quiescent power is almost the same for all multipliers. The dynamic power for our design is only 360. 74 mW, where as Oskuii’s and Wallace multipliers consume 454. 06mW and 475. 08 mW respectively. Hence the total power consumption is only 443. 31mW for our multiplier, which is less by 17. 39% and 20. 51%, compared to Oskuii’s and Wallace multipliers. Table 4: Power reports from simulation for a 16? 16 Multiplier Design| QuiescentPower (mW)| DynamicPower (mW)| TotalPower (mW)| Our Design| 8 2. 7| 360. 74| 443. 31| Oskuii’s Design| 82. 57| 454. 06| 536. 63| WallaceMultiplier| 82. 67| 475. 08| 557. 75| Table 5 Power-Delay products of 16? 16 multipliers Design| Total Delay (ns)| Power (mW)| Power-Delay Product| Our Design| 30. 889| 443. 31| 13. 693*10-9| Oskuii’s Design| 31. 219| 536. 63| 16. 753*10-9| WallaceMultiplier| 35. 278| 557. 05| 19. 651*10-9| Table 5 shows the power-delay products of different multipliers. Smaller the power delay product of a multiplier the higher is its performance. Our design has the shortest delay of 30. 889ns, compared to 31. 219ns and 35. 78ns for Oskuii’s design and Wallace’s design respectively. Hence our design has the lowest power-delay product compared to both Oskuii’s and Wallace multipliers. 6. Conclusions We have presented an investigation of multiplier power dissipation, along with some techniques which allow reductions in power consumption for this circuit. Given the importance of multipliers, it is essential that further research efforts are to be directed in the following ways. * In this thesis the switching activity criteria for the interconnection pattern in 4:2 compressors was used only for two of the inputs of the 4:2 compressor.The interconnections of signals on the other three inputs are made without any importance given to their switching activity. This is because at the gate level, the load capacitance at a node is measured simply based on the number of connections made at that node. In the 4:2 compressor, three of the inputs are feeding two inputs each (except the carry input). Hence, we consider them with the same load capacitance. In reality, this is not true. To get an accurate estimate on capacitance, an actual layout of the cell has to be made using VLSI layout tools and then their capacitances are to be extracted.Hence further research could focus on the above so as to find an ordering for these inputs based on their capacitance values. Also, different impl ementations of 4:2 compressors may be compared so as to select the one with the lowest capacitance values. * Extending the proposed interconnection technique to the partial product reduction stage by employing higher order compressors such as 5:2, 9:2, 28:2, etc. In this manner, different architectures using various combinations of compressors in the partial product reduction stage can be compared so as to select the best one with the lowest power dissipation for any multiplier.References 1] D. Soudris, C. Piguet, and C. Goutiset , Designing CMOS Circuits for Low Power. Kluwer Academic Press, 2002. [2] L. Benini, G. D. Micheli, et al. , Dynamic Power Management Design Techniques & CAD Tools. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. [3] A. Weinberger, â€Å"4:2 Carry Save Adder Module,† IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, vol. 23, 1981. [4] S. F. Hsiao, M. R. Jiang, and J. S. Yeh, â€Å"Design of High-Speed Low-Power 3-2 Counter and 4-2 Compressor for Fast Multipliers,â €  Electronics Let. , vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 341-342, 1998. [5] J. Ohban, â€Å"Multiplier Energy Reduction Through Bypassing of Partial Products† in Proc. Asia-Pacific Conf. on Circuits and Systems, vol. 2, pp. 13–17, 2002. [6] M. Ito, D. Chinnery, and K. Keutzer, â€Å"Low Power Multiplication Algorithm for Switching Activity Reduction Through Operand Decomposition,† 21st Int. Conf. on Computer Design, 2003. [7] O. T. Chen, S. Wang, and Yi-Wen Wu, â€Å"Minimization of Switching Activities of Partial Products for Designing Low-Power Multipliers,† IEEE Trans. on VLSI Syst. , vol. 11, pp. 418 – 433, 2003. [8] M. Fujino, and V. G. Moshnyaga, â€Å"Dynamic Operand Transformation for Low-Power Multiplier-Accumulator Design,† in Proc. of the Int. symp. n circuits and systems, 2003. [9] K. H. Chen and Y. S. Chu, â€Å"A Low Power Multiplier with Spurious Power Suppression Technique,† IEEE Trans. VLSI Syst. , vol. 15, no. 7, pp. 846-850, 20 07. [10] S. T. Oskuii, â€Å"Transition-Activity Aware Design of Reduction-Stages for Parallel Multipliers,† in Proc. of Great Lakes Symp. on VLSI, 2007. [11] K. Parker and E. J. McCluskey, â€Å"Probabilistic Treatment of General Combinational Networks,† IEEE Trans. on Computers, C-24: 668-670, June 1975. [12] M. Cirit, â€Å"Estimating Dynamic Power Consumption of CMOS Circuits† in Proc. of ICCAD, pp. 534–537, 1987.

Invention: History of the Internet and Wheel

From the earliest record of civilization stemming twelve thousand years ago in Kyushu, Japan, mankind has strived to make the quality of life easier, better and more convenient with each generation. Great imagination combined with science, research, skill and patience are the tools used to create remarkable inventions that allow people today to take so much for granted in life. From my point of view, the three inventions that are the most important ones to mankind are the wheel, electricity, and the Internet.The most profound invention of all time is the wheel. Not only does it provide many sources of convenience in life, but it is also essential in the success of several other inventions. Without the wheel, discovering new lands would have been impossible, as explorers needed carriages to carry supplies, people, medicines, and other essential items for journeys. Agriculture would not be anywhere near what it is today without the basic wheel. Planes would not be able to take off or l and without the wheel.People would not be able to commute long distances to and from work. Police cars, fire engines, and ambulances would not be able to get to victims with speed without the wheel. In every aspect of life, the wheel is the one invention that people cannot live without. Long gone are the days where the sun determined when a functional day would start or end. It is the invention of electricity that gives people the opportunity to read books printed in mass copies from a machine at any time of the night and gives everyone freedom to come home to a warm meal.Today, it is routine to wake up to the sound of an alarm, and turn on the coffee maker. With each step taken during the day comes the need to use more electricity. From starting a car to get to one’s destination, and listening to the radio, or watching television, and using computers to write essays such as this one, electricity is the driving force that enables man to accomplish these tasks, which makes ele ctricity one of the greatest inventions of all time.With the invention of the Internet and its implementation in society, the world as we know it has changed drastically in the last fifteen years. The idea of direct communication first introduced by the telephone has far been surpassed with online communication tools such as Skype and Facetime. The convenience of ordering everything imaginable, from groceries, to books, to clothes, to vacation packages, and making dinner reservations all with the click of a button, is a convenience that is only possible because of the Internet.Today, the entire world and answers to all questions are easily accessible and so convenient that society has become as dependent on internet, as they are to electricity and the wheel. From the discussion above, we may safely draw the conclusion that the wheel, electricity and the internet are the most important inventions that shape society. For most, living without these is an impossibility. Not only do the serve as the foundation to other inventions, but they will continue to influence inventions to come.

Bangladesh Labor Law 2006 and 7 General Codes of Conduct Essay

Since the adherence to international social standards has become a mandatory requirement in the international business arena, the local suppliers have to be compliant to these standards in order to remain in business. There have been some significant revisions to the Bangladesh Labor Law in 2006. This newly revised law already covers a lot of the common standards like employment conditions, occupational health and safety issues as well as the ILO core labor standards. Besides being complaint to the national labor law, the suppliers must also adhere to the international standards. These international standards may be defined through their individual buyers’ codes of conduct or general codes of the conduct. Compliance to the buyers’ codes of conduct is mandatory but compliance to the general codes of conduct is optional unless the buyer accepts a specific general code as a substitute for its own audits or requirements. These voluntary monitoring or verification initiatives have taken root since the 1990s to add legitimacy and credibility to companies’ social and environmental compliance programs. The comparative analysis shows that the Bangladesh Labor Law 2006 significantly covers majority of the requirements of the different general codes of conduct. This indicates that if a factory is 100% compliant to the national law, it will cover approximately 85% of the requirements of the other general codes of conduct. Hence RMG factories should be encouraged to improve their compliance with the national law as a first step towards meeting the compliance demands of the brands and retailers who they supply to. The analysis does reveal that a few requirements are not fully or partially covered by the national labor law. It should be noted that the components which are not fully covered by the Bangladesh Labor Law are either covered by the Bangladesh Constitution or are not directly applicable in the Bangladesh context. This study clearly reveals that the revised Bangladesh Labor Law along with other supporting national legislations such as the Bangladesh Building Code and the Environmental Conservation Rules as well as the overall constitutional framework of Bangladesh, provides a comprehensive guideline for factories in the RMG sector to comply with majority of all international social compliance and environmental standards. By being 100% compliant with the national labor law, a supplier has significantly met majority of the international requirements. The Bangladesh Labor Law has gone through some majority revisions in 2006 which has made it into a strong piece of legislation. However, it is not still 100% perfect. There are still few gaps and lackings which need to be adjusted and amended in the future. As implementation of the revised law is ongoing, numerous other deficiencies might gradually be identified over time. Since recent revisions just took place, another series of revisions are not anticipated in the near future. This comparative analysis of the newly revised Bangladesh Labor Law 2006 and seven general codes of conduct clearly illustrates where the commonalities and differences are. Overall, the recent revisions to the Bangladesh Labor Law and other national legislations that are associated with the RMG sector such as the Bangladesh Building Code and the Environmental Conservation Rules jointly provide comprehensive guidelines for RMG suppliers to manufacture and export products under socially and environmentally responsible working conditions which also meet majority of all prevailing international standards. 2. 1 General Codes of Conduct Definition of Codes The interest in the social situation of workers in developing countries has increased constantly over the last years in particular under civil societies and consumers in the industrialized countries. Social criteria have become an important part of consumer and investment decisions of individuals and organizations and therefore also big brands and retailers become more aware of compliance to social standards. Since Bangladesh is part of 1 A comparative analysis between the Bangladesh Labor Law 2006 and seven general codes of conduct he global market social compliance is extremely relevant for the export-oriented industry of Bangladesh, especially for the RMG sector. For competitiveness in the global markets, the compliance with environmental and social standards is a key point. Through modern information and communication technologies the economic activity of companies becomes increasingly transparent and makes it easier for the civil society to uncover and communicate social and ecological failure of multinational companies. Companies know about the vulnerability of their brand names and messages concerning bad working conditions can easily damage their image as well as the market position. A social responsible management policy is therefore in the long-term interest of the enterprise. However companies can have a positive influence on the economic development in the target countries through the introduction of social standards and on the same time improve their image and market share through social and ecologically responsible behavior. To address these issues voluntary monitoring or verification initiatives have taken root since the 1990s to add legitimacy and credibility to companies’ labor compliance programs. They are all voluntary, meaning that companies opt to participate in them. Each requires member companies to adopt its respective workplace code of conduct and verifies that they have complied with organizational requirements. Today, some industries have developed or are developing codes for the entire industry. That can be best seen for the apparel and footwear sector. General Codes of Conduct as well as buyers’ codes are very common in this industry. These codes of conduct are rules, which companies impose upon themselves in order to embody social and ecological goals in the enterprise. Companies formulate these rules mostly for itself and partly also for the suppliers and orient themselves with the formulation at the international regulations and agreements already mentioned. Codes of conducts may also be recognized as useful instruments to build on the companies’ image. A lot of companies are participating in this initiatives to show their interests in improving the working conditions of their business partners/suppliers across the global. Fair trade and buying practices are a competitive advantage for many businesses. The codes show their commitment to this process. Codes of conduct may be developed through a multistakeholder approach such as ETI etc. or companies may have their own codes of conduct which are specific for their suppliers or codes could be sector specific such as for garments, food, electronics etc. 2. 2 Basis of codes Social compliance can be measured in relation to a certain standard. Concerning environmental and quality management a multiplicity of standards and certification systems already exist. The introduction of examinable social standards represents however a new challenge. Internationally recognized social standards exist, e. g. ? United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights UN Convention on Children’s Rights UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women ? ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work ? Rio Declaration on Environment and Development However these are guidelines and recommendations which can be converted voluntarily. Standards that can be certified only exist to a small extent. Most of the codes refer to these mentioned international standards, especially the ILO core labor standards. The ILO formulates international standards in the form of conventions and recommendations setting minimum standards of basic labor rights: Freedom of association The right to organize 2 A comparative analysis between the Bangladesh Labor Law 2006 and seven general codes of conduct Collective bargaining Abolition of forced labor Equality of opportunity and treatment Besides the above mentioned standards, there are other standards regulating conditions across the entire spectrum of the work related issues. These principles are concretized in eight ILO conventions, in each case two for the four fundamental principles mentioned (see table 1). The ILO conventions are obligatory only if they are ratified by the member states. The entire number of the ratifications increased in the last years noticeably and varies – depending upon convention – in the order of magnitude between 148 and 172. Until July 2007, 128 countries had ratified all eight conventions. Bangladesh has ratified seven out of the eight core conventions. Table 1: ILO Core-Conventions and ratifications in Bangladesh1 Standard Freedom of association and bargaining Elimination of forced and compulsory labor Elimination of discrimination Abolition of child labor Convention Convention 87 (Freedom of association) Convention 98 (Right to organize; collective bargaining) Convention 29 (Forced labor) Convention 105 (Abolition of forced labor) Convention 100 (equal remuneration) Convention 111 (employment and occupation) Convention 138 (Minimum age) Convention 182 (worst forms of child labor) Ratification Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Codes of practice develop frequently from public pressure or are preventively developed. In addition to the mentioned core labor standards these codes include general working conditions like occupational health and safety, minimum wages, leave days and working hours. Other common aspects include women’s rights or environmental standards. Also the implementation of a management system can be a requirement. 2. 3 How codes evolved The overall aim of social standards is to protect the workers. During the industrialization in Europe they evolved as a reaction to bad working conditions in the newly emerging factories. The depletion of large parts of the workforce moved child labor, forced labor, freedom of association and collective bargaining as well as women’s rights in the centre of public attention. Socially responsible behavior – this means also ecologically responsible behavior – has its starting point predominantly in the developed industrialized countries. The observance of social standards must be further supervised also in these countries. The by far larger action needs lie however in developing and emerging countries. Through the increasing world-wide division of labor large parts of the production chain are located in developing countries which have deficits with the observance of social standards. While working abroad companies are supposed to be compliant to the legal regulations. In developing and emerging countries legal regulations do not always correspond to the domestic standards of the companies. So it can be difficult for companies to combine national legislation and generally recognized basic values. Even if the legislation in developing and emerging countries corresponds to the standards of the industrialized countries there are deficits in monitoring and implementation of the standards. 1 Refer to the ILO website: http://www. ilo. org/ilolex/english/docs/declworld. htm. 3 A comparative analysis between the Bangladesh Labor Law 2006 and seven general codes of conduct However an internationally defined and recognized social standard does not exist. Thus different stakeholder came up with the idea of codes of conduct to verify the compliance to international social standards. Social standards are extremely important in an industrialized world. Nowadays due to financial benefits, most companies outsource their production to developing countries where compliance to social standards is not as important. The problem is that consumers and respective governments ask for socially responsible behavior and working conditions and often the suppliers and governments of the developing countries cannot enforce or ensure compliance to these international standards. This issue has become a concern for the companies located in Europe and the USA and hence the companies came up with formulating codes of conduct which their suppliers have to adhere to if they want to do business with them. Companies started off by developing their own codes of conduct. Then gradually as the codes evolved, many companies teamed up with NGOs, trade unions, academia etc. to formulate common codes of conduct. Most general codes of conduct were developed with this multistakeholder approach. 2. 4 †¢ Classification of codes epending upon the standards they contain (all codes have similar requirements but differ in the definitions/design and some have also additional requirements e. g. waste management or anti-bribery policy); depending upon which organization or institution introduced the code and who controls the observance (companies, enterprise federations, trade unions, NGOs, management consultations or testing institutes); depending upon their members and their prevalence. Within these four categories subjects were identified as well as indicators to measure the implementation and coverage of the subjects. The indicators were selected according to the most common aspects of the general codes as well as the Bangladesh Labor Law. 2 Please refer to Annex I for a broad overview on the general codes of conduct. 4 A comparative analysis between the Bangladesh Labor Law 2006 and seven general codes of conduct Subjects of Codes of Conduct ILO Core Labor Standards Employment Conditions Occupational Health and safety