Western Civ Continuous or Discontinuous

Is Human Development Continuous or Discontinuous? Human Development is lifelong, continuous and discontinuous and goes in so many different directions throughout a lifespan. It is plastic, multidisciplinary and is embedded in a changing socio-historical context. I truly believe I live in a continuous development pattern, as I believe the rest of us hope our children to follow in our footsteps of continuity. Sigmund Freud addresses continuous versus discontinuous in the understanding of mental illness. We tend to wonder if a mental illness if just an ordinary person taking something to an extreme, or if it is just a matter of degree. I think there is a difference in the way someone with a mental illness experiences reality. There are so many different kinds of mental illnesses so it is far more complicated than a single entity. There is even debate out there as to what exactly is considered a mental illness versus what is not. I guess to some it is all in the eyes of the beholder. What do we know about Sigmund Freud’s theory? His Psychoanalytic Theory is an intrinsic struggle between ego, id and superego. In children, it focuses mostly on the manifestation of disorders as seen from individual case studies. This theory has psychosexual stages which include oral (birth-1year), anal (1-3yr), Phallic (3-6yr), Latency (6-11yr) and Genital (Adolescence). This theory is unique in that it is a kind of lifespan and states that behavioral manifestations are a result of internal struggles. This theory emphasizes on the role of early experiences on child development and the mediating role of parents. Sigmund Freud proposed that if the child experienced anxiety, thwarting his or her sexual appetite during any libidinal (psychosexual) development stage, said anxiety would persist into adulthood as a neurosis, a functional mental disorder. The biggest problem with this theory is that it is hard to verify. A continuity life is one that basically believes of having stages of development. From infancy and learning to walk and talk to adolescence and making decisions on your own a person living a continuity life accepts life as it changes and adapts to it. Whether it be first day of kindergarten and learning to read to becoming a first time parent we accept that something new is about to happen in our lives and adjust for the change. I don’t know how often people would not accept the stages of life and move forward with the stages/changes but o feel it’s important to do so. Another theory from the text I found interesting with respect to continuity was in the sensorimotor period (behavior reflecting on actions) to the formal operations period (perfection of development) are part of Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. The cognitive development theory is one that I found to be quite interestin g. This theory suggests that a child could adjust to the surroundings based on what was happening at the time; that the stage of a child’s life and growth is a continuous process. The stages, according to Cleverley & Phillips Piaget’s theory suggest that â€Å"whenever a difficulty was encountered, it threw the child out of mental equilibrium, and the child was then forced to make some addition to its mental apparatus; cognitive accommodation occurred. † (pg. 87). In other words, what I think this means is that whenever an event would occur in a child’s life that was of a difficult nature, it would force the child to adjust to the situation and then move forward. Ultimately, every decision that is made (whether these decisions are made during infancy, adolescent or adult) these decisions impact the next stage of life. It’s clear that the cognitive theory of Piaget is one that the stages of development occur in the cognitive state of mind. Discontinuity on the other hand appears to me to be more a religious theory and a basis that there are not necessarily stages to life but events and that the events occurring don’t necessarily predict how the future outcome of that individual might be. The idea behind a discontinuity life is that the events or obstacles that a person is faced with are the pre mapped out plan of god. According to Augustine’s theory that all children are born in sin and act of free will it is my understanding that Augustine’s theory is a theory of discontinuity. This is because discontinuity is having a life with â€Å"personal decision, freely chosen, that will profoundly change the direction of one’s life. (Module Commentary – Historical Antecedents II)    From what I’m understanding Augustine’s theory on discontinuity is that a decision has the ability to significantly impact the outcome of one’s life. According to module commentary research suggests that the past of an individual doesn’t necessarily suggest what the outcome of that person may be. When looking at my life and trying to determine whether my life would be of continuity or discontinuity I have to admit I struggled with the differences. I think that I my life could be either actually. However, after reading the text I would have to say that I would think the majority of my life is continuous in that my life has been full of stages. From infancy to adolescence and then into adult hood these were distinctive stages to which I lived through and made distinctive decisions. I recall events during my childhood such as my parents divorcing that helped me to comprehend and realize that life isn’t perfect. Instead of pitying on the fact that my parents were no longer together and revert back to being an infant (i. e. inability to cope with life and depend on others to make decisions for me and becoming depressed) I opted for the continuity approach and accept the event and move forward. I will say I’m one of five siblings and I can tell you that my youngest brother reverted and fell in a life full of bad decisions with severe impacts and he struggles with moving forward and accepting life as it is. I graduated high school and went off to college. My first child was born while I was in my associates program in college but I kept plugging along with my studies determined and focused to get what I was working so hard for. I had many relationships that ended badly, however, I didn’t revert to a life of pity but rather felt the pain, dealt with the impacts of my decisions and moved forward. Every stage in my life whether it be when I was a child and care free to being a mother of two beautiful children and full of responsibility I’ve realized that my life is continuous. I will keep moving forward with all the events and stages that take place in my life. I do believe these events have the ability to mold a person just by the decisions that were made. I believe that people can have an event happen in their life that in turns has a drastic impact. Take the death of Ivan Ilych for example. He struggled with an illness and then was given the opportunity to reflect on his life and to see things differently. This man had an incredible transformation. In essence what I’m suggesting is that while my life is continuity I am married to a man whose life to me appears to be of discontinuity. The more I learn of what his faith and beliefs are the more easily it is to find complications between the two. According to Cleverley & Phillips â€Å"descriptions of typical behavior can only be made in the context of a theory, because what is to count as typical behavior very much depends upon the point of view of the observer, and furthermore, the language that is used to describe the behavior is usually orrowed from theory, or may have political or ideological connotations. Thus, what the observer sees in children depends upon what model he or she brings along. † (pg. 96). Therefore, I take this to mean that how a person views either their life or the life of someone else is a matter of opinion by the basis of what their foundation of knowledge is based on and what they bring into your l ife with. References: Cleverly, John & Phillips, D. C. (1986) Visions of Childhood. Influential Models from Locke to Spock

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Clinton Kopas Susan Gabriel English 102 December 1, 2011 The Goal of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Research studies are constantly being conducted in order to improve certain aspects of human life and knowledge. In many cases, these research studies involve human test subjects. One of the more famous studies involving human test subjects was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that began in 1932. Most have heard of this study, few would ever claim that any good came of it.What had originally been a research study aimed at improving knowledge dealing with syphilis in the black male, turned into an extremely long and detrimental study that damaged hundreds of lives. Considering the damage that was done to the subjects and their families, it is easy to wonder if this study actually provided any real advances in medicine or medical knowledge. The origin of the study had good motives, being that it was to promote the health of blacks in the South. The U. S. Public Health Service collaborated with t he Julius Rosenwald Fund to conduct demonstration programs to control syphilis in southern counties.This failed due to funding issues, and the project had to be scrapped. However, the PHS was anxious â€Å"to salvage something of value from the project† (Thomas). So in 1932, a group of doctors recruited a total of 399 syphilis infected black men from Macon County, Alabama to participate in a study concerning the study of â€Å"bad blood†. The organizers took their initial idea and converted â€Å"the original treatment program into a nontherapeutic human experiment aimed at compiling data on the progression of the disease on untreated African-American males† (Herried; Fourtner; Fourtner).This study became formally known as the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (Herried; Fourtner; Fourtner; Thomas). The formal name that was applied to this study may imply the true motives of the researchers behind it. The study was not necessarily meant to fi nd major breakthroughs in medicine, but to simply study the effects of untreated syphilis. The researchers attempted to justify what they were doing by saying it was going to be for a greater good, and that these men got more treatment than they would have gotten otherwise.This may be true in a sense, but the men in the study were still intentionally withheld from treatment once penicillin was known to cure syphilis. By 1948, penicillin was known to be the most and best effective cure for syphilis. The study went on for 22 more years even though a cure had been found. There is no point in attempting to learn anything more about an infection when a cure has been found. The only treatment that the infected men received was treatment involving arsenicals and heavy metals.This type of treatment was not nearly as effective and researchers knew it would not cure the men entirely, just keep them from being infectious (Reverby). It might not be going too far to even say that the researchers were conducting this experiment on the basis of pure curiosity. After all, there could not be much advancement made just studying the effects of syphilis in blacks compared to whites. Much about syphilis had already been known prior to the beginning of the Tuskegee Study. German scientists had already discovered most of what there is to know about syphilis over 20 years before the Tuskegee experiments had begun. The cause of syphilis, the stages of the diseases development, and the complications . . . . were all known to medical science in the early 1900’s† (Herried; Fourtner; Fourtner). It has been stated by many journalists and even some that were involved in the experiment, that nothing was gained from this long and drawn out experiment. All signs begin to point that it truly was an experiment based solely on curiosity. The black men that participated in the study were poor sharecroppers that would do and believe anything that the doctor told them. Most of these men had never even seen a doctor before in their lives.These men were promised free medical care for their bad blood, and drawn in by signs that claimed â€Å"last chance for treatment†. The doctors and scientists conducting the research had church leaders and other respected members of the community help to enlist people to participate in the study. The researchers even enlisted the help of a black nurse and admired her ability to help them gain the trust of the participants. If the researchers needed to lie to a group of people in order to conduct their experiment, these men would have been some of these easiest to fool (Infoplease; Thomas).The researchers that were involved in the Tuskegee Study are said to have been fairly liberal for the time and open to the education of blacks. However it seems that there was some sort of racist mind set involved in this scheme. The researchers seem to have had no regard to other human life and treated the men like lab rats. The researcher s even made sure that their goal would not be interrupted by others. They went to great lengths to make sure all medical professionals in the area participated in the study and gave orders not to give treatment to the men.The black men were even excluded from the draft during WWII to keep their research from being interrupted (Herried; Fourtner; Fourtner; Thomas) As the years went by, the study did not become less organized and forgotten. There were meetings held and new people were added to the project. The experiment was constantly reviewed throughout the years as the focus changed. Ethical issues were not brought up until halfway through the 1960’s, over 30 years after the experiment had begun. During the 1950’s, the focus turned to the aging of syphilis and the negative impact it had on the body.It was quite clear that syphilis caused great damage over time and would shorten the life span of the host. Even at this point in the study, when so many men had passed awa y and others had gone unaccounted for, the study continued. The researchers believed that the study had gone on for so long that the men were untreatable anyways, even with use of penicillin (Herried; Fourtner; Fourtner). To continue a research study like this and deny men treatment just on the basis of curiosity seems too unethical to be true. But all signs point to this especially when considering another research study that took place during the same time period.From 1946 to 1948, the American government performed research in Guatemala that involved intentionally infecting Guatemalan subjects with syphilis. The idea was to test the effectiveness of penicillin on different stages of syphilis. A very interesting detail is that a man by the name of Dr. John C. Cutler was involved not only in the Guatemalan study, but the Tuskegee study as well. It is strange that although Dr. Cutler was involved in both experiments, he did not choose to test the effectiveness of penicillin on the me n who were already infected with syphilis in the Tuskegee Study.Instead, he and his colleagues chose to allow syphilis infected prostitutes to sleep with Guatemalan prisoners. This truly shows the ethical value that the researchers held and what their true motives were (Villaroasa). Dr. Cutler and the other men involved in the Tuskegee research had no interest in any kind of advancement with the prevention of syphilis. A kind of bureaucracy was formed that helped fuel this unethical study. Men who were involved in the Tuskegee study would be promoted to surgeon general of the U. S. Public Health Service. Dr.Cutler even obtained the position of assistant surgeon general in the PHS. Dr. Cutler defended the integrity of the study up until his death (Thomas; Villarosa) It is hard to imagine that an idea that began with such good intentions could have turned into the catastrophe that was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The men who conducted this study seemed to have been fueled by a strange curiosity that they masked with the idea of medical advancement. It is clear that the researchers did not view people with darker skin colors as equal, as they treated them like lab animals.It is evident and even admitted by some involved in the study that there were no advances in medicine because of the study. The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male only came to a close because of a national press release in 1972. By this time, over 370 men that had been used for research were either dead or believed to be dead. If the researchers had any true notion to help them, that number would have been much smaller. Not only had this study affected the men directly involved in it; it affected the men’s wives and their children as well.There is no questioning the goal of the experiment being to see what would happen to someone if syphilis was left untreated. The doctors could have only continued this experiment based off of some strange curiosity. It is possible tha t some of them may have believed what they were doing was for the better, but that is hard to imagine. Nothing was gained from the experiments in the Tuskegee Study. The only possible advancement would be the understanding of ethics for future research. Works Cited Fourtner, A. W. , C. R. Fourtner, and C. F. Herreid. â€Å"†Bad Blood†: A Case Study of the Tuskegee Syphilis Project. Philosophy. tamucc. edu. Texas A&M University. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. Reverby, Susan M. â€Å"Listening to Narratives from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. † Lancet 377. 977B (2011): 1646-647. TheLancet. com – Home Page. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. Thomas, Stephen B. â€Å"The Legacy of Tuskegee. † Thebody. com. HealthCentral Network, Jan. -Feb. 2000. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. â€Å"The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. † Infoplease. com. Pearson Education, 2007. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. Villarosa, Linda. â€Å"The Guatemala Syphilis Experiment's Tuskegee Roots. † Theroot. com. The Slate Gro up, 02 Oct. 2010. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.

Gattaca Film Essay

Gattaca 2. 10 Gattaca by Andrew Niccol Robbie Bentley In the film Gattaca by Andrew Niccol, an important scene that conveys meaning in the film is the night club/alley scene. It shows us Vincent’s feelings towards Irene and how desperate he is to not getting caught. I chose this scene to write about because it uses multiple aspects of film to convey meaning in the text. The aspects I’ve chosen to analyse are Mise En-Scene, Camera, Sound and Editing. In the night club/alley scene, an important aspect used to get across meaning is music and sound effects.When Jerome and Irene are sitting in the night club there is relaxed, low-tempo music playing which gets progressively louder whilst they dance, until it builds up to the kiss which is interrupted by the detective. This is a good use of music as it fits the elegancy of the scene. Nice easy going, almost dreamlike as it builds up, drawing in the audience audience into the moment. The music cuts out, snapping everything bac k to reality as the detective walks in. Another important example of sound is when Jerome and Irene are escaping through the alley.The use of both music and amplified sound in this part of the scene helps build tension. When they start running, a sort of low aching strings music comes in which sounds almost tortured and off-note. This gradually gets louder the longer they run to help the audience understand the tension in this part. Also their footsteps are amplified to emphasise the desperateness in their escape. After Irene slips and they hide in the alley, the music cuts out and Anton yells â€Å"Vincent! † The cut out of music shows the seriousness of this part due to the very sudden cuts of music.Another important aspect of film in the alley scene is camera work. An example of this is when Jerome and Irene are escaping through the alley. When they start running, the camera starts tracking their feet. This is to show the audience directly they’re running away. The camera slowly pans up to an almost point of view shot, trailing behind them. This is a good film technique because it makes the audience feel as if they’re being chased by the camera, which in this shot symbolises not only the detectives but Jerome’s fear of being caught.It then moves into a shot from the front of them, still running they pass the camera into another follow shot. I think this is a good shot because them passing the camera shows the speed at which they are going. A third effective film aspect use in the night club/alley scene is editing. In the night club scene, the length of each shot is very stretched out. This a good use of editing because the slow transitions of shots and the relaxed music makes the scene seem very relaxed.It also lets the audience stop and take in the environment of the night club. This contrasts well when the scene changes in the alley. In the alley everything picks up pace, with the shots transitioning much faster as Vincent knoc ks out the bodyguard and they escape. This sudden speed up from the previous scene draws the audience into the moment as the tension lifts dramatically. After Irene trips over and they go to hide in the alley, the shots start to drag out again. This helps show that they’re safe.A serene sort of music comes in which supports the slow transitions, taking the feel of the scene back to that slow sort of romantic feeling. A useful film technique used in conjunction with sound, editing and camera work is mise en-scene. The set in the night club is made to look very elegant, with chandeliers hanging from the high-arched beautifully decorated ceiling. The lighting fits into the look as well with a dim low yellow light. The night clubs seat really compliments Irene’s dress.This is done on purpose to show the audience Vincent’s feelings that he has towards Irene and to highlight her significance to him in the film. The contrast moving from the elegant night club to the da rk, gloomy alley is quite a significant one. This transition helps change the mood of the audience from being happy/lovey dovey to a more serious, tense mood. The use of the alley being lit by the green light from the cop car is a good example of effective lighting because as Irene and Vincent are running it looks like a fog light almost, chasing for them.The walls of the alley almost look wet, this gives it a gloomy, cave like look. I think this is used to symbolise Vincent running into a big dark cave in which he can’t turn back in. The night club/alley scene is an important scene in Gattaca because it shows the audience how Vincent feels towards Irene but also how desperate he is to not get caught. I think Andrew Niccols purpose of this scene is to show the passion between Vincent and Irene to the audience by using several film techniques used to pull the two parts of the scene together and convey meaning.

Computer Science Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Computer Science - Coursework Example Morals talk about sujective own doctrines concerning wrong and right. This essay discusses morality and ethics and the social framework of ethics in the society. Morals have a bigger social component to principles and have a habit of having a very broad approval. Morals are broadly more about upright and wicked than other principles. We therefore critic other people more intensely based on morals than principles. An individual can be termed as wicked, however there is no word for them not succeeding principles. Values or routine with regard to good or bad conduct. While moralities also recommend dos and donts, principles is eventually a subjective scope of good and bad. Since we have faith in in something being good or bad. Typically stable, however can transform if a person’s faith change. Moral individual even if conceivably certain by a higher agreement, may opt to trail a code of conduct as it would relate to an ethic framework "Make it fit". Ethics rise above cultural customs (Velasquez et al., 2015). Some individuals reason that there are universal guidelines that apply to every person. This kind of reasoning is known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutism disputes that there are some ethical guidelines that are constantly correct and that these guidelines can be revealed and that these guidelines are applicable to all individuals. Immoral deeds are actions which go againist these ethical guidelines are regarded as wrong regardless of the conditions or the results of those deeds. Absolutism perceives a worldwide outlook of mortality. With absolutism there is one established rule for all individuals which facilitates the enlisting of universal guidelines such as the Assertion of Human Rights. Certainly more and more individuals reason that for several moral concers there isnt a single good response just a collection of

Compare and contrast software analysis techniques Essay

Compare and contrast software analysis techniques - Essay Example After the detection of that fault in the fifth month, a software programmer was contacted and briefed with the entire story. Even a small miscalculation can lead to a bad reputation and penalties from regulatory authorities that may lead to business loss. Similarly, a software malfunction was detected in November 1979, where the strategic air commander receives an alert scramble. The scramble alarm indicated that the Worldwide military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) reported that the Soviet Union has launched missiles that are moving towards the United States of America (Software engineering (sie) 7E). Likewise, later it was found that the simulated attack was considered as a real attack, however, the U.S department of defense has not provided the details of that incident as it was marked as confidential. Conclusively, it was also a software fault that may have intimated U.S to launch a counter attack. With these two examples of billing a customer or getting false alarms in air defense, the completion time of software is always late, over budgeted or with many faults and may not cope with clients requirements. To overcome, these issues, software engineering methods are invented. Likewise, it is an attempt to provide a solution of these problems. In this brief, we will discuss two software engineering techniques i.e. formal software engineering and semi-formal software engineering. 2 Formal Software Engineering Techniques There are various formal software engineering techniques available; however, they are exceedingly diverse. For instance, Anna is considered to be a formal specification language pertaining to Ada (Luckham, von Henke, Krieg-Brueckner, & Owe, 1987). Likewise, some of the formal techniques are based on knowledge such as Gist, as it was designed for describing processes aligned with user friendliness i.e. the closest alignment of describing the process. Likewise, this is only achievable by formulating the constructs that are utilized in natura l languages. The Gist specifications are very difficult to read in practice, a separate paraphrasing tool has been deployed from Gist to English. Moreover, one more formal software engineering technique known as (Schach, 1993) Vienna definition method (VDM) is also invented. Likewise, this technique is based on DE notational semantics (Fitzgerald & Larsen, 2009). Moreover, one remarkable factor of this technique encompasses not only on the application but the design and deployment, as well. The VDM technique has been successfully applied in many projects, most amazingly on the ‘Datamatik Center development’ that was integrated with DDC AdaCompiler System (Diaz & Orejas, 1989). A unique perspective of reviewing specifications is to analyze them in the context of sequences of events. Likewise, an event can be an ordinary action or a communication signal that transmits data inward or outward of the system. For instance, a case study related to an elevator, where one event comprises of pressing the button of the elevator for floor f on elevator e along with its consequential illumination. Similarly, another event comprises of elevator e that is leaving the floor f downwards along with cancellation of illumination that is associated with conforming floor button. The CSP language abbreviated as the Communication Sequential Processes (CSP) is invented by Hoare in

Religion - The Upanishads Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Religion - The Upanishads - Essay Example For instance, when we get to question where life comes from or who created the earth and the heavenly bodies. The Kena Upanishad tries to answer these questions through use of events and words contained in the Kena Upanishad. The overall message underlined in the Kena Upanishad is that God (Brahman) is the overall in charge of everything in the world. A person who knows the truth will acknowledge the power of the Brahman and it continues to stress that human beings are mortal because they fail to fully grasp understanding of Brahman (Parmananda, 2004). Brahman is mentioned in the Kena Upanishad as the ultimate and the whole. The Kena Upanishad tries to explain that all we see or perceive in the world comes from one source which is the Whole. The Kena Upanishad strives to make it known that knowledge of God (Brahman) and the acknowledgement of his power is very important in life. Most of the Upanishads are related in their content and identification with one’s self. The Upanishads relate to the relationship between Brahman and us as human beings. One of the similarities between the Kena Upanishad and the other Upanishads is that it acknowledges that life without acknowledgment of the Brahman is pointless. For instance, in the Isha Upanishad it talks of seeing the world through Brahman as the only we to live since it is not possible to enjoy life and realize happiness. The phrase â€Å"He who sees all beings in his Self and his Self in all beings, never suffers† is a thought echoed through the other Upanishads. Another great similarity between the Upanishads is that all of them begin with a c hant. This is so done so that people can have the time to reconcile with their maker or Brahman. This is because it is difficult to cultivate the teachings of the deities if you cannot make peace with your brothers. The chant helps in withdrawing our minds from different distractions of the world before entering into the spiritual world. However, there are differences between the Kena Upanishad and the other Upanishads is that, the Kena Upanishad tries to explain the origin of Man. The main difference is the fact that this Upanishad tries to locate and expand the human being’s consciousness to the level it becomes identical to God’s consciousness (Easwaran, 2007). It does this through questions and answers, for instance when a disciple asks the teacher about the source of the world. He explains of the world emerging from a Whole and the whole becoming the World. The Kena Upanishads resembles the message available in other sacred books such as the bible whereby the orig in of the World and God is explained in the book of John. Topic Two The Upanishads are narrated in a way that makes the reader to more aware of his life through the teachings. Moreover, the Upanishads does not provide answers since it talks of the things that cannot be seen but rather believe in. Thus, I tend to agree with Alex Levin that the Upanishads make the reader aware of his connection to God through the spirit. The Upanishads are narrated in a format whereby the lessons of understanding God are done through thought provoking phrases. For instance, in the Isha Upanishad, there is this phrase â€Å"Whatever We see, movable or immovable, good or bad, it is all â€Å"That.† This phrase is not necessarily an answer but it tries to jog the mind of the reader to be fully aware of the questions that the Sage was asked. Several texts have been used in the Upanishad to make the reader alert and learn more and not just to get simple answers of life (Easwaran,

Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneurship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneurship - Essay Example Still, entrepreneurship is limited in resources (including financial resources) and has fewer possibilities to compete on the global scale. The paper will discuss differences of concepts, their piratical application, the main driven forces and risk related factors. The study of new venture development and entrepreneurship as a process, and the study of the early stages of the business life cycle, belong as much or more to marketing than to any other business function. Indeed, some argue that the very term management may be somewhat in definitional conflict with the term entrepreneurship (Clark and Lee 2006). Further, the entrepreneurial spirit can be hypothesized that marketing is the organizational function most dominated by boundary agents; by open interactive systems; and by truly entrepreneurial activity. Market opportunity analysis, new product development, the diffusion of innovation, and marketing strategies to create growing firms are at the heart of both marketing and entrepreneurship. These also represent the most relevant, existing marketing literature bases. Entrepreneurship as defined by Burns (2001) focuses on opportunity and is therefore particularly relevant to the marketing interface; it is the process of creating value by com bining resources to exploit an opportunity. Although entrepreneurship requires innovation, not all innovation is entrepreneurial. There is an extensive body of knowledge on creativity in science and the arts that does not involve "the commercial or industrial application of something new--a new product, process, or method of production; a new form of commercial, business, or financial organization" (Burns 2002, p. 54). Pinchot and Pellman (2000) explain that "intrapreneurs are linked to the speed and cost-effectiveness of technology transfer from research and development to the marketplace" (p. 45). The researchers claim that Intrapreneurship is often associated with inventions that come up with new products and new processes. There is also considerable research on innovation and the management of research and development that deals with an end product of ideas or objects whose ability to deliver economic value has yet to be tested. In the entrepreneurship literature, innovation is coupled with its ability to create economic v alue. Whether done by an individual or a team, there is general agreement that entrepreneurship involves an act by a motivated individual who innovates by creating value through

Inernationalization of UK Businesses in Brazilian Market Essay

Inernationalization of UK Businesses in Brazilian Market - Essay Example As the discussion highlights  many companies adopt different strategies in order to grow in the Brazilian market and to successfully achieve the goal of improved bottom line. Brazil is a country which cannot be avoided to do business because of the huge market size. Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, and it is one of the most populous countries, as well. It has high GDP and legal system, which encourages international companies to tap this market. However, not every company can be successful in the Brazilian market. Size of the country market does not guarantee success in that market. There are many factors, which play a role in the success and failure of international companies. Among such factors, culture has a crucial role. Not only in Brazil but also in every country, culture plays a vital role for success and failure of international companies.  This study stresses that  globalization is growing becoming an integral part of the business in the business world . It has changed the competitive landscape for doing business in local and international markets as a matter of fact that competitive pressures arise not only from local players but also from the international players. On the other hand, in contrast to the pace of globalization, the success rate of businesses in the international market remains under constant challenges.  It is practically a sin for business operating in today’s competitive landscape if it ignores internationalization of business.

Write a report style essay on one of the topics listed below

Write a report style on one of the topics listed below - Essay Example , businesses, especially those with overseas operations and branches all over the world rely on wireless networks to send and receive information on short notices. However, its effects may not all be good. In recent times, issues have been voiced out relating to health hazards arising from long term exposure to electro magnetic radiation emitted by wireless networks. Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) is a networking system which interconnects devices within a small geographic area. Such devices would include multiple printers, telephones, keyboards, mice and personal computers that need not be connected with wires anymore. An example of this would be Bluetooth. Worboys & Duckham (2004, p. 281) have described Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) as technology that uses radio instead of wires to transmit data back and forth across distances of 100 m or so from LAN access points. It connects computers in a small area such as a home, office or school. An example of this would be WiFi (wireless fidelity) networks. Mobile Device Networks are alternative means of carrying computer data through smart phones and cell phones. Such networks include Global System for Mobile Communications, Personal Communications Service and D-AMPS. Research has been carried out about the risks to health caused by wireless networking systems. Studies have linked radiation from mobile phones to cancer and brain damage and scientists believe that it can cause premature senility and tumors. Children are especially at risk as they have thinner skulls than adults and developing nervous systems. According to Bangeman (2006), Fred Gilbert, the president of Lakehead University, declares that since younger people have fast growing tissues, wireless networking system poses a threat for them and that even if the risks associated to wireless networking have not been realized yet; it may be so 30-40 years down the road. Another cause of concern is that wireless networking systems use 2.4 GHz radio

Assembly of God Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Assembly of God - Essay Example atement of Fundamental Truths (SFT) defines the 16 basic components for AG ritual, which mostly include the two biblical ordinances of baptism and Holy Communion (Poloma, 2013). However, they do not baptize infants and regard baptism by water as public declaration of ones commitment to Christ. Notably, the AG believes in the Holy Trinity, which relates to only One True God revealed in three persons that include the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Believers give their tithes and offerings that pay church bills (The General Council of the Assemblies of God, 2014). The doctrine of salvation in AG follows the teachings of Jacob Arminius that reckons that believers can fall from grace if they fail to repent their sins. The AG has unique Pentecostal beliefs where it follows a fundamentalist approach to the Bible. Notably, the AG concentrates on evangelism and missions, and faith healing crusades in practicing their religion. Worship in the AG adopts music as a major component practiced before, during and even after the service (The General Council of the Assemblies of God, 2014). The music has different accompaniments that inspire singing during the service. The music may include traditional hymns, hand-clapping gospel songs, contemporary compositions, or reverent worshipful choruses for congregational and special ministries (The General Council of the Assemblies of God, 2014). Subject to the congregational nature of the Assemblies of God, there is no formal liturgy, and most church bulletins do not include details about the order of service (Pol oma, 2013). However, most Sunday services follow a familiar routine that starts with a congregational hymn followed by worship session, prayer session, and the sermon (Poloma, 2013). The history of the Assemblies of God dates back to 1914 when a group of Evangelicals from the Pentecostal movement started the denomination (Gotquestions.org, 2014). The initial purpose of forming the AG was to foster unity and doctrinal

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

Assignments - Essay Example I am deeply dedicated to the accomplishment of required endeavors and am committed to being instrumental in creating progress and development to the organization I am connected with. I am well aware that Mandelbaum Security Company is consistently in pursuit of people who are ambitious, competitive, with a strong focus to succeed and a force to work for the betterment of mankind. I would like to be part of your workforce being guided by values of integrity, honest dealing, treating everyone with respect and dignity, striving for mutual advantage, transparency and contributing to human progress. Pursuant to the guidelines set by the National Network for Child Care, â€Å"an employer saves the cost of a replacement or lost work time when an employee uses a sick child care program rather than staying home with a child.† (Beierlein & Van Horn, 1991, par. 1) Previous records of absenteeism at our educational institution reveal that majority of mothers opt to stay home to tend a sick child needing appropriate health care. In this regard, to prevent further losses in work time and to ensure an improvement in the attendance of personnel, I am hereby seeking your approval for the provision of a sick-child care service in this institution. Beierlein & Van Horn (1991) averred that the advantages of a sick-child care service are as follows: â€Å"improves recruitment, employee morale, and workflow; reduces absenteeism, relieves stress on parents; enhances company image.† (par. 10). Although, it also has the following disadvantages (â€Å"monitoring quality control may be difficult in a visiting nurse program; caregiver/surroundings may be unfamiliar to the child; recruiting/retaining qualified staff may be difficult; usage may be low due to unfamiliarity with the concept.†) (par. 11), our educational institution can still evaluate several options which could cater to the organization’s needs and goals. The

Narrative Criticism of Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer” Essay Example for Free

Narrative Criticism of Gillian Welch’s â€Å"Caleb Meyer† Essay Throughout this essay I will identify â€Å"Caleb Meyer† as a rhetorical narrative, criticize its form and function, and evaluate its effectiveness. In order to criticize â€Å"Caleb Meyer† using Rowand’s method of narrative criticism, I must first establish that it meets all of the criteria of a narrative according to Sonja Foss. The first criteria Foss requires is that the artifact contain two events. The song in fact includes multiple events, but for explanative purposes we will assign those two events as Meyer drunkenly wandering into the narrator’s yard and raping her, and the narrator slicing his throat with the broken bottle. Foss then requires that the two events in a narrative happen in a sequence of some sort, which, using the examples above, we can easily find to be true in a chronological nature. Meyer first assaults the narrator, and it is not until he does that she retaliates. Foss’s third standard for a narrative requires that the sequential events have a casual relationship. Again, using the events above, we can easily argue that without the first event (Meyer assaulting the narrator) the second event (the narrator slicing his neck with the bottle) would not have occurred, for there would have been no reason for her to retaliate against Meyer. The last criteria Foss requires is that the sequential, casual events be about a unified subject. All of the events that take place in the artifact, including those aforementioned, are about the interaction between Caleb Meyer and the narrator from the time he gets drunk and rapes her to the time she cuts his throat. Now that I have satisfied Foss’s requirements for a narrative and determined â€Å"Caleb Meyer† to be such, I am able to apply Rowand’s method of narrative criticism. According to Rowand, the main components of a narrative are the characters and their roles, the setting, the plot, and the theme. While on the surface many of these things may seem obvious to the audience, in order to discover the artifact’s rhetorical purpose it is important that we uncover more than just who, where, and why. There are two main characters in Welch’s song: the antagonist, Caleb Meyer, and the protagonist, the narrator. Caleb Meyer is established as a lonely, drunken abusive male whose purpose in the artifact is to create conflict to allow resolution (he rapes the narrator and pays the price). The narrator is a married woman whose husband has left her home alone while away on business. Her function is to tell a story and create Welch’s message. She is established as religious (prays to God and believes in Hell [Caleb Meyer your ghost is gonna wear them rattling chains]), brave, and resilient. Meyer represents the abusive, alcoholic male figure in society, while the narrator represents women who are taken advantage of and decide to put up a fight. A secondary character, Nellie Kane, is minimally important but adds to the severity of Meyer’s actions, as he is the narrator’s husband whom Meyer knows is not around to protect her. The setting in the narrative is a wooded area on a mountainside, although it is unspecific where exactly. Meyer asks the narrator if her husband has gone down the mountainside after emerging from where he lives â€Å"in them hollering pines. † This setting, including the fact that the narrator’s husband has gone to Bowling Green for work, creates a picture of a helpless, isolated woman in the woods. This forces the audience to empathize with the narrator as the antagonist attacks, knowing that there is no one to aid her after being thrown down by her hair and pinned beneath a drunken man. It is because of intrinsic humanitarian values that the audience cannot help but wish they could come to her relief, which makes the persuasiveness of Welch’s message more powerful. The plot of Welch’s song first provides that Caleb Meyer lives alone and drinks to pass the time, implying that he is an alcoholic. Lonely, he stumbles to the back of the narrator’s home and yells until she comes outside. We then hear the chorus, which consists of the narrator claiming that Meyer’s ghost will wear rattling chains, implying either that he is going to hell or that he will forever be tormented in the afterlife. Meyer then asks the narrator where her husband has gone and if he has left her alone, to which she replies that he has indeed left on business. Meyer then grabs her by the hair and pins her hands above her head as he lay across her dress, implying that he is attempting to rape her. The narrator begins to pray and finds the bottle of whiskey that Meyer had dropped, slicing his neck open as he bleeds all over her. Welch provides a fantastic crescendo into a climax, which includes a conflict and resolution in order to keep the audience engaged. The theme of â€Å"Caleb Meyer† stems directly from the plot. Meyer represents generic abusive, womanizing, and drunken men that sadly exist in society, while the narrator represents women who are imposed upon by them. Welch’s â€Å"Caleb Meyer† sends a message to women to be strong and independent, while it sends a message to men to mind their belligerence and forcefulness or there will be consequences, as seen in the death of Caleb Meyer. Another message that Welch may be trying to get across is that alcohol is wicked and leads to sinful behavior. One could even go as far as saying that her message is intended to warn men of the dangers of leaving their loved one’s side, however the supporting evidence for these two arguments are insignificant in comparison to the support for the message to women to stand against abuse. Gillian Welch’s â€Å"Caleb Meyer† not only meets all of Foss’s requirements of a narrative, but also establishes itself as a powerful narrative by persuading the audience to feel hatred and anger toward the actions of Caleb Meyer. It forces the audience to identify with the narrator, and understand that what she is experiencing is wrong. Certain audiences, women in particular, and abuse victims especially, identify greatly with Welch’s narrative because rape is the greatest fear of many women. However, men too can see the pain in the narrator’s words as Welch does a wonderful job evoking the emotions of the audience. It is because of her ability to do so that the crescendo is so effective, creating great relief when at the end of the song she sings â€Å"Then I felt his blood pour fast and hot / Around me where I laid† as the antagonist meets his rightful demise.

Erp Implementation At Lupin Information Technology Essay

Erp Implementation At Lupin Information Technology Essay Lupin is a transnational pharmaceutical company producing an extensive range of quality specific generic and branded formulations and APIs in more than 70 countries like India, USA, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Philippines, with its headquarters located in Mumbai. Lupin was found in the year 1968 by Dr. Desh Bandhu Gupta who had the vision to fight life threatening infectious diseases and manufacture drugs which had superior quality. His dream has steered Lupin to be a part of Indias top 5 pharmaceutical companies. Lupins success story begins with the manufacture of tuberculosis drugs followed by a range of intermediaries and APIs and it also strengthened its position by making innumerable formulations. Financial Performance The following statistics about Lupin have been impacted by the recent changes in its business integration processes. In FY 2010, net sales grew by 26% to INR 47,405 million up from INR 37,759 the previous year and net profits grew at 36% to INR 6,816 million compared to INR 5,015 million in FY 2009 Manufacturing facilities Lupin has formulation plants at 5 different locations namely Aurangabad, Jammu, Mandideep, Goa and Indore and API plants at Ankaleshwar, Mandideep, Tarapur and Vadodara. Its ultimate aim is to deliver quality and scale, with successful integration of their capabilities and capacities to deliver a wide product portfolio that caters to the varied needs of diverse markets. Precisely committed to quality, safety and the environment, most of their manufacturing facilities have been inspected and approved by the US FDA and UK MHRA, WHO, Australian TGA and Japans MHLW. RD Research will continue to be the main driver for Lupins success. Lupin has a state of art Research and development centre at Pune, Maharashtra. It is a 19 acre land with more than 320 scientists working there. Lupin has 145 patents filed and 53 patents granted worldwide. BACKGROUND BEFORE ERP IMPLEMENTATION As we see above, with extensive manufacturing facilities and products coming in mainly from research, to sustain its position in the market it was essential for Lupin to integrate its manufacturing units by enhanced connectivity between them. In the year 2002, it had operations spread across 5 plants and more than 30 depots to manage. They were at this time using the FoxPro based systems. This system would not work online and the key issue with it was it used to take almost 10 days to get the month end sales figure compiled together and presented to the authorities. With this key problem in the backdrop, Lupin felt the need to adopt and implement an ERP system for its operations. At this point, Lupin initially went for a localized ERP version which was specific for every location and as per location specific requirements. But the problem here was decentralization. Lack of cohesion hampered the successful implementation of this. Thus a ERP software which would help Lupin set up, implement, monitor and evaluate business processes and then make it possible to integrate that information so that management may take a review of efficiencies was required. TIMELINE FOR IMPLEMENTATIONS OF VARIOUS ERPs AT LUPIN IMPLEMENTATION OF SAP ERP Impact SAP ERP package has benefitted LUPIN by streamlining business processes increasing accessibility and connectivity. From the time of implementation, Lupin has not required any additional staff in the service areas like accounting, IT, finance and HR. The 4 main modules, namely materials, production and quality management, have been adapted into the system. After implementation the company has doubled in size but this was possible with the same number of people. It also improved ease of access to available information. For instance, now even a sales manager has access to real time data with respect to the inventory levels which was not possible earlier. Online connectivity has improved the online accounting system considerably. It has also enhanced the inventory tracking and helped in materials planning as now the required raw materials can be ordered online, resulting in cost saving to a large extent. Implementation Problems and its overcoming Lupin had to overcome certain hurdles for the successful implementation of this ERP package. Some of these included user training including basics such as the mere operation of a computer; master data supervision, day to day trouble shooting and configuring new business processes coming into the system as per requirements. All these problems were mainly done by several rounds of user training, interaction, discussions which was mainly done by IBM. Also the 1st problem faced for implementation included to get all the disjoined systems connected online. This was done by establishing a complete VSAT network and Lotus workflows. This implementation was done by IBM and the initial investment including up gradation of network, hardware installations and cost of implementation cost Lupin around Cr.15. NEED FOR MORE ADVANCED AND SPECIFIC ERP MODULES Between the years 2003 and 2008, Lupin had successfully got US FDA approvals for plants in 5 places across India. These approvals specified stringent quality levels which needed to be measured and tracked daily. Sales and order management, travel and expense management and environmental and safety compliance management also become more and more important. It had started operations in Japan, South Africa, Australia, Germany and others through acquisitions. Regulatory compliance across these different countries needed to be managed. Accounting and financial reporting compliance was also a requirement. It had started its own research centre in Pune which required extensive information protection and security. Management of investigator sites, proper documentation, site agreements and contracts management were some other problems faced by the company. Increasing end-user productivity, product design cost estimations, shared services for HR, talent retention and attraction, procurement were some other business need faced. SOLUTIONS There were 4 major technology changes that were made to overcome a majority of these problems. Upgradation of existing SAP software to SAP ERP 6.0 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) from LabWare Quality Management System Enterprise version from Novatek International Language Independent Proof Reader Enterprise version from Novatek International Lupin has been successful in gaining a competitive advantage by using enterprise resource planning systems in combination with its existing systems. The major reason for this success lies in the fact that it decided to choose an ERP vendor which was familiar with the pharmaceutical industry and this gave it the advantage of financial savings and increased efficiencies. ERP IMPLEMENTATION SAP ERP 6.0 BUSINESS CHALLENGE ERP 6.0 ENHANCEMENT IMPACT Support growth plan Service in new therapy areas and business segments Accounting and Financial report Compliance: Enhanced contract accounting and collections Automated allocations and balancing by multiple dimensions Ability to operate a HR shared service center New general ledger for consolidated financial statements Better management of internal controls of 8 manufacturing units across the globe Contract Accounting with almost 10 contractors Advanced financial supply chain management Universal work lists for global operations Time management HR administrator Ensure quality compliance in products Ability to import rules regulations from third party providers Support for OSHA Monitoring dangerous material Increased support to: Occupational health Waste management Industrial hygiene Hazardous material management These factors are of utmost importance for a pharmaceutical company Sustain position of Global market leader in several drugs like cardiovascular anti-tuberculosis Better planning Better forecasting tools Investment tracking Superior product costing module Enables express Planning Business consolidations Product design cost estimate Important from global operations point of view Improve operational efficiencies in core business processes while bringing down interim costs Sales Order Management Better order-entry process Support to internet sales Price configurations Travel Expense management Speedy expense reporting Better travel planning Order quotation management Automated credit card feeds Integrated mileage calculation Mobile travel expense Integration with travel agency The implementation was done by a multi disciplinary core team from Lupin in partnership with Bristlecone, a company which specializes in SAP supply chain ERP implementation. Increasing end user productivity New application interfaces Updated role-based access Greater use of adobe interactive forms Self-serviced employees, managers Employee interaction center Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) from LabWare Need Patent of new drugs is a very integral part of pharmaceutical companies. Also at Lupin, documentation for intellectual property management was not organized and the IP registration rules were becoming more and more stringent. Another problem faced at Lupin was that research labs were treated as a separate part of the business. As the pharmaceutical industry has gradually progressed, it has been seen that research laboratories have become an integral part if the company want sustainable growth. The key problem here was that it was difficult to communicate RD with other business systems like MRP and Process Control System. WHY LabWare LIMS Can be integrated with SAP ERP The core code is separated from the configuration and thus allows LIMS systems to be implemented with ease. Easy Upgradation Scalable architecture for centralized operations at Lupin Multi lingual support which allows application across Lupins operation globally High level of security required by research laboratories in the pharmaceutical sector Compatible with any browser including Mozilla FireFox operated in Lupin LIMS Implementation Support for LUPIN Templates were designed in accordance with the requirements of Lupin as decided by the core team. Some of the important templates designed were stability testing, environment monitoring and QA/QC manufacturing. The following chart gives an indication of the various modules of LIMS used by LUPIN Main Business System(s) Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS) Project Management (PM) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Testing/Stability/Shelf-Life Please refer appendix 1 for snapshots of stability and shelf life testing using LIMS Please refer appendix 2 for snapshot of a summary report of sample testing prepared by LIMS Impact: The benefit seen after the implementation of LIMS was that today when Lupin develops a new product, LIMS is used to; Test the new prototype product. Scale up manufacturing of the product Release to the market Testing defective samples after production. Environment monitoring Storage of historical research data Full sample tracking User certification Instrument and calibration management Standards reagents management Full auditing Report and sample scheduling Bar coding Please refer appendix 3 to get detailed understanding of how modules work, and information flow within the system using LIMS Quality Management System Enterprise version from Novatek International Need: Risk Reduction Integration to Key Systems Reporting: Documentation Flexibility Industry Best Practices Document Management Application Modules: SOPs, policies, work instructions Batch records Certificates of Analysis (COAs) Regulatory submissions Regulatory correspondence CAPA objective evidence Documentation related to change control Validation documentation Manuals, instructions Employee training and qualification records Project documentation Investigation documents, photographs, etc. Contractor batch records, quality records Audit reports and follow-ups Impact: Allows compliance with industry standards like 21 CFR Part 11, 21 CFR Part 210, 211, and ISO Consistent with FDA Compatible with ERP Maintenance of quality across different plants Reduce re-works scrap cost Reduce cycle time and process down time By implementing this software, Lupin has been able to manage audits like GMP/GLP/GCP, Clinical support audits, internal quality audits, site audits, pre-clinical studies etc. Language Independent Proof Reader Enterprise version from Novatek International This software is basically related to Automatic packaging. It has an Analyzer which proof reads insets, cartons and other printed material. It is language indifferent and hence most suitable for Lupin packaging as Lupin is a supplier of drugs across the globe. This software allows to spot and correct not only discrepancies between characters but also changes in color and pictures. This is very important for any drug packaging as it has life threatening outcomes. SOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE Lupin plans to implement more applications like the Human resources, to control attrition rates and developing the internal organizational structure. ERP 6.0 has been successful in bringing together core business components. Lupin now plans to upgrade to SAP Netweaver 7.0 and also Business Intelligence for a more extensive and specific approach to pharmaceutical operations. Personally, I believe the company should aim at integrating their system with the customers i.e. contract manufacturers to enhance their supply chain further. Bandwidth and infrastructure are the two biggest setbacks that Lupin is currently facing and needs to improve upon. APPENDIX Appendix 1 LIMS from LabWare Module: Testing Stability of a product (Various graphs for pH testing have been produced) Appendix 2 Snapshot of LIMS showing a summary report of a sample produced Appendix 3 Modules used in LIMS along with their information flow throughout the system

Data Warehouse Characteristics And Definition Information Technology Essay

Data Warehouse Characteristics And Definition Information Technology Essay A data warehouse provides an integrated view of the customer and their relationship with the organisation by bringing together the data from a number of operational systems. A data warehouse provides a complete picture of the enterprise by focusing on its enterprise-wide components like profits, sales and customers by looking beyond the traditional information view structure. These components require information from various sources as they have both organisational and process boundaries. The data warehouses are made up of large databases. These databases store the integrated data of the enterprise. This data may be obtained from both, internal as well as external sources. Internal sources of data refer to the data that is obtained from the operational systems of the enterprise. External data sources are the government bodies, third party organisations, business partners, customers etc. These databases also store the metadata that gives a description of the content of data that is st ored in the data warehouse. The data warehouses are designed and constructed in a denormalized manner. This is done to replicate the dimensional view of the business by the user. This makes it possible to better analyze, examine and summarize the data. This can be done over different periods of time and at different levels of detail when the data structure is denormalized. The data warehouses have a time dimension where all the data is time stamped. This is done so that the data can support the reports that are used to compare the figures from the earlier months or years. It is helpful for the decision takers of the organisation to better understand the trends and patters of the market and customer behaviour over the period of time. The data warehouses contain both atomic as well as summarised data. The atomic data is the data that provides a great level of detail. This makes responding to queries a faster process when the tasks are at the highest level of detail. As the name sugges ts, the summarised data provides a quick summary of data and does not go much into detail. Thus only storing summarised data is not an option. However, the storage of atomic data requires much larger space. 2.2 Purpose Previously, the data was not easily accessible because it was stored in environments which were unfriendly and not easy to access. The data warehouses solve this problem by providing access to the integrated organisational data that was stored in such environments. The data warehouses provide security either by their front-end applications or from the database servers. As a result, the users can now have a secure connection to the warehouse from their personal computers. Because the data warehouses provide integrated data, the need for users to understand and access operational data is greatly reduced. The information provided by the data warehouses is consistent and is of high quality. They are the common source of information for the organisation. Due to this there is consistency in the data and the organisations decision making process becomes much easier. They are also used to store historical data. Actual historical data is not stored on operational systems but is simply loaded and integrated with the other data in the warehouse so that it can be accessed quickly. Data warehouses provide the ability to their users to view the data at different levels of detail and go through it as and how they require. Such freedom to view the data from different angles improves the analysis process by reducing the time and effort required to collect, format and present the information from the data. To make the information technology infrastructure of the organisation stronger, the data warehouses distinguish between analytical and operational processes. They provide additional system archite cture to execute the decisions. With the focus of the data warehouses on achieving the requirements for business decisions, they are the best suited systems for the redesigned decision-making business processes. 2.3 Trends in data warehousing Data warehousing is no longer just a concept or used for educational purposes only. It has become mainstream. Almost 90% of the multinational corporations either use data warehousing or are planning to implement it. Data warehousing has transformed the way business analysis and decision making takes place. The organisations that already use it have witnessed the enormous benefits that it has to offer. Web technologies have only added to the benefits provided by data warehousing and has paved the way for easy delivery of critical information. There have been many changing trends in the field of data warehousing since its evolution. Scientists have always felt that technology has been the driving force behind data warehousing. But now, the softwares being used have had a significant progress rate and in the years to come, we can expect data warehousing to take a major leap not only in software but also in optimising queries, indexing big tables, improved data compression and expanding dimensional modelling. Real-time warehousing Real -time data warehousing is increasingly becoming the focus of top executives in the organisations. As compared to conventional data warehousing, real-time data warehouses provide the most recent views of the business and are dynamic in nature. A conventional data warehouse is more passive in nature and provides historical trends. The tools of business intelligence along with the data warehouse have been mainly used to make strategic decisions. But now they are required more for making tactical decisions on a day to day basis. There is a lot of pressure in the companies as they are expected to come up with real-time information with everyone connected to important business processes. Providing real-time information has increased the productivity of the companies tremendously. However, there a number of challenges that the company has to face while trying to do so. Data types Previously the companies included mostly numeric structured data in their data warehouses. This divided the decision support systems in to two parts, one that worked with structured data and the other one that worked with knowledge management involving unstructured data. Most of the structured data is numeric and most of the unstructured data is in the form of images. Now, if we were to consider a situation where the decision maker of the company has to perform an analysis in order to find out about the top-selling products, where he/she would like to take a look at the images of the products for further decisions, then this wouldnt have been possible. This fact has been realised by the organisations and therefore the need is felt to integrate both the structured as well as the unstructured data in the data warehouses. In order to include the unstructured data in the data warehouses, the vendors are considering multimedia like images and texts as just another data type. They are stor ed as binary large objects and are considered to be a part of the relational data. They are defined as user-defined-types by the user-defined-functions. But it is not possible to simply consider all binary large objects as relational data type. That is because, if we were to consider video clips, there would be a need for a server that is able to support delivery of multiple video streams at a given rate along with audio synchronisation. After having included unstructured data in the data warehouses, there should also be a way to search for this data. Without proper ways to search for this data, the integration of unstructured data will prove rather useless. Vendors have now started providing search engines so that the user is able to search for all the information that he/she requires. The example of such a mechanism would be the query by images mechanism. Its purpose is to let the user search for pre-indexed images on the basis of their shape, size and colour. For text-data, the s earch engine retrieves the documents based on words, characters, phrases etc. The use of search mechanisms for audio and video data is still in the research stages. Another data-type would be the spatial data. Including the spatial data-type in the data warehouses adds a great deal of value to the data warehousing systems. Spatial data answers questions like average income of the people living near the store, average driving distance for the people coming to the store etc. Examples of spatial data include address, city, county, state etc. The database vendors do realise the importance of this type of data and some of them do add special SQL extensions to their products in order to include such data. Data visualisation Data visualization is necessary to improve the performance of the user in terms of analysis. The users expect to see the query results in the form of charts or graphics. If the query results are in the form of spread sheets, it affects the quickness and ease by which the users can carry out the analysis. It also means that the data warehouse is outdated. If we consider the last few years, there have been many trends in the way the data visualization softwares work. Now, the variety of charts to view different types of data has increased. For example, there are pie charts available to view the numerical results. Dynamic charts are available which allow the users to see the results, manipulate it and check for the new views online. The newer versions of the data visualization softwares make it possible to see a large number of results at once and complex data structures. Some of the more advanced visualization techniques available today are the chart manipulation technique, drill down technique and the advanced iteration technique. Companies have also started adopting scorecards and dashboards as a means to view the performance. Different types of users have different needs. The business users require bar charts, the scientific users require constellation graphs, and the analysts require three dimensional views and so on. The latest trends in the softwares have made it possible to fulfil the ever changing needs of the current users of the data warehousing systems. Parallel processing One of the most important aspects of data warehousing is delivering top-quality performance. The users of the data warehouses are constantly performing large complex queries. These queries read enormous amounts of data to give out the results. Again, to analyse these results, a large number of queries are executed one after the other by individual users. Some of the other functions involved are the loading of data and creating indexes for the data. Both the processes can be slow because of the huge amounts of data and large number of indexes. For the data warehouses to give out quality performance, it is necessary to speed up these processes like query processing, data loading and indexing. An efficient way to do this is to achieve parallel processing. This is done by utilising both hardware options as well as software techniques together. For parallel processing, the hardware options may include multiple CPUs, many server nodes, memory modules, high speed links between interconnecte d nodes etc. In the software implementation of parallel processing, the hardware configuration needs to be chosen properly. The reason for this is that if the hardware configuration is not proper, then the operating systems and the databases will be unable to use the hardwares parallel features. Parallel server and parallel query are the two options that the database vendors generally provide for parallel processing. The parallel server option makes it possible to have separate database instances for each of the hardware nodes. The database instances are also allowed to access a common set of database files. On the other hand, the parallel query option supports the important functions like query processing, data loading and index creation. Considering the current technology, executing the data warehouse without parallel processing is not at all an option to be considered. Tools for query processing The tools that are required for query processing are the most important set of tools in data warehousing. The success of a data warehouse is not possible without them. Because of this, the vendors have started coming out with new and improved query tools since the past few years. Some of the query tools that are of most importance and have undergone significant changes by the vendors are flexible representation, aggregate awareness, crossing subject areas, multiple heterogeneous sources, overcoming SQL limitations etc. Browser tools Here the term browser is not restricted to the use of web browsers alone. One of the major advantages of data warehousing is that the users are able to execute queries in the data warehouse that generate reports without any help or assistance from someone who is in the I.T. field. Here, the browser tools come in handy when the users want to go through the metadata and search for specific chunks of information. This allows the users to directly go to the data warehouse. Their need is also felt when a data warehouse for the company is being developed and the I.T. team has to go through all the data structures, data sources and business rules. Some of the major improvements that the browser tools have gone through in the past few years are: extensible tools that allow to define any type of data or information objects, open APIs, navigation through hierarchical groupings, web browsing and search techniques to go through information catalogues etc. Data Fusion In order to provide an integrated view of the enterprise, the data warehouse stores data collected from a number of sources. The data may be taken from different operational systems running on different platforms, each using a different DBMS. Data may also be taken from a number of external sources. Data fusion is the technology that fuses together all this different types of data from multiple sources and stores it in the data warehouse. It provides a wider scope and the real-time integration of data from the monitoring systems. A vast amount of research is being carried on in order to improve this technology as it has a direct application in the field of data warehousing. Apart from the integration of data from multiple sources, the data fusion technology is also expected to address the problem of finding the right information at the right time as it can be a difficult task due to the vast amounts of data that is stored. The data fusion technology as for now is still in its researc h phase and therefore the vendors are not hurrying to develop the tools for data fusion. Integrating ERP and Data Warehouses Enterprise resource planning was introduced in the markets in the 1990s. The goal of ERP was to help in the decision making as well as the taking of necessary actions from one integrated environment. It was also supposed to provide the companies with the integrated corporate data repositories. For this, the data was cleansed, transformed and integrated in one place. But soon, the companies that implemented these systems realised that the relational databases that were designed and normalised to carry out the business operations were not able to provide the necessary strategic information. Also the data from the external sources and the operational systems was not included in the ERP data repositories. As a result, the companies that were planning to acquire the ERP systems started to consider the integration of ERP systems with data warehousing. There are three major options that are available that allow the companies to do so. They are the ERP data warehouse, the custom developed data warehouse and the hybrid ERP data warehouse enhanced with third party tools. The ERP data warehouse option allows the companies to implement data warehousing with the current available functionality and wait for further enhancements. But the only negative about this option is that the enhancements may take a long time to come. The 2nd option that is the custom-developed data warehouse allows the companies to have a customized data warehouse along with the use of 3rd party tools to get the data from the ERP datasets. Although reclaiming and loading the data from the ERP datasets is not an easy task. The 3rd option that is the hybrid ERP data warehouse enhanced with 3rd party tools allows the combination of the functionalities of the existing data warehouse with the additional functionalities from the third party tools. The companies need to sel ect the option that will be most suitable for their corporation. Data Warehousing and CRM The benefits of having a CRM-ready data warehouse are substantial. Now-a-days, there is an increasing competition among the companies and also, there is a need to retain the existing customers and attract new ones. The companies have now started targeting individual customers and fulfilling their needs instead of having a mass focus group. To achieve this, the companies have adopted customer relationship management. To build a data warehouse that is customer ready, there is a need to develop CRM-ready data warehouses. But, doing so is by no means an easy task. The data warehouses need to have all the information of every transaction with every individual customer. What this means is that each unit of each sale of every product to each customer must be recorded in the data warehouse. Not only the sales data, but also, information regarding every other type of interaction with the customer needs to be recorded. The CRM-ready data warehouse becomes flexible with such detailed recording of data. There is a huge amount of increase in the volumes of data. These large amounts of data can be stored across multiple storage management devices. They are accessed by using common data warehouse tools. Also, there is a need to improve functions like cleansing and transformation functions that are more complex in nature. These are some of the major efforts to achieve a CRM-ready data warehouse. Although, the previous tools of data warehousing are not quite capable of adopting the specialized requirements of customer-focused applications. The Web and Data warehouse The introduction of internet has deeply affected the way in which computing and communication has been taking place previously. From its start in 1969 with only four host computers, it has come a long way with a huge amount of increase in the host computers, almost up to 95 million hosts by 2000. And it still continues to grow with exponential speeds. In the year 2000, there were almost 26 million web-sites and 150 million users using the available web technologies for one reason or the other. Now, the companies have come up with intranets (private networks) and extranets (public networks) in order to properly communicate with their employees, customers and business partners. The web has transformed itself in to a universal information delivery system. Today, there is no business that can survive without making use of the available web technologies. E-commerce has now become the main focus of the businesses and there is an annual investment of 300 billion dollars which is soon expected to cross the 1 trillion mark. Therefore, it has become extremely important for the companies to transform their data warehouses to make them web-enabled in order to make use of the tremendous potential that the web technologies have to offer. But while doing so, the companies need to bring the data warehouses to the web and also bring the web to the data warehouses. Bringing the warehouse to the web: During the early times of the evolution of data warehousing, the data warehouses were developed only for the top-level management such as the managers, analysts and a few others to help them with critical analysis and decision making. The necessary information was delivered to this user group by making use of the client/server environment. But today, the needs of the businesses have increased tremendously. The warehousing technology has been made available to all the members included in the corporations value chain. It is not just confined to a select group of people. Important information is not only provided to employees alone but also to the customers, business partners and the suppliers. In todays highly competitive times, these changes are necessary to increase the productivity of all the members of the company. This can only be possible with the help of internet along with web technology. The way the users of the data warehouse retrieve, analyse and share the information is changed drastically with the help of the new information delivery mechanism that is the web technology. The information delivery will be a little different having new components and the internet interface will provide a browser, search engine, a homepage, hypertext links, downloadable Java etc. The important requirements of the users while bringing the data warehouse to the web are strict security, self data access, unified metadata, high performance etc. Bringing the web to the warehouse: In order to bring the web to the warehouse, the company needs to collect the number of clicks the company website gets from all the visitors and then perform the traditional data warehousing functions. This must be accomplished in real-time and involves extraction, transformation and loading of the number of clicks to the data warehouse. Dimensional schemas are then developed from this data and the information delivery systems are launched. The click data helps in analysing how exactly the visitors went about through the company web-site. Also important information like what made the visitors purchase the company product, how they were attracted and what made the visitors come back to the web-site can also be recorded. The web-house as it is known has become an extremely important tool for retaining, identifying and prioritising the e-commerce customers. The combination of data warehousing and web technology has become very important to all the businesses in the 21st century. Using web technologies for information delivery and integrating the click data from the company web-sites for analysis has become the need of the day.

Evolution: Just More Proof of God Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Es

Evolution: Just More Proof of God      Ã‚   The world around us changes. This simple fact is obvious everywhere we look. Streams wash dirt and stones from higher places to lower places. Untended gardens fill with weeds.   - National Academy of Sciences    Humans are inquisitive creatures. Throughout the centuries, we have thought, "Why are we here?" This one question has brought thousands of answers. Once Gods and Goddesses reigned. The many hands of Tishri and Buddha, Tao, Confucius, Muhammad, Huitzpotcly of the South Americas, Re of Egypt, and countless others have been worshiped. From these gods comes the creation of man. In our local, modern society, Christ is present in the vast majority of homes, and behind Christ, the Bible, or the book of God's word.    In the New International version of the Bible, creation was performed by GOD. It took Him seven days. On the first day, He created the earth, covered in water. The "glory of God" provided the light for Earth, as He proclaimed, "Let there be light." He created an atmosphere on the second day. Dry land emerged, on day three, from the sea, displacing it. On this day, He also brought forth trees and plants, which grew and matured before the end of the day. God distinguished night and day on day four. The sun and moon were placed to mark the passing of time. Adam, Eve and all of their descendants knew it to be so. Day five: creatures reproduce according to species. The next day, day six, brought the reproduction of humans and animals alike. Then, God rested on the seventh day (hollaway2).    This is the accepted Christian story of creation. People believed it undoubtedly until Charles Darwin, possibly the world's most noted evolutionist, ... ...more secure faith in a greater good, or possibly a great god.    Bibliography Bethel, Tom. "Evolution Is Not a Scientific Fact." Science and Religion: Opposing Viewpoints. RohrJanelle. San Diego, CA. Greenhaven Press Inc. 1988 davidll@cit-tele.com. November 30, 1998. Evolution vs. Creation Resource Center. Evolution vs. Creation Resource Center. Halloway, Kevin1. November 18, 1998. Is Evolution Science? Evolutionism vs. Creationism; Is Evolution Science? Halloway, Kevin2. November 18, 1998. Creation; Faith or Fact? The Final Countdown? Creation; Faith or Fact? Johanson, David. Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind. New York. Simon and Schuster. 1981 National Academy of Sciences. November 30, 1998. "Teaching about evolution and the nature of science [Working Group on Teaching Evolution, National Academy of Sciences]".      

Homosexual Undertones in the Movie, Bride of Frankenstein :: Movie Film Essays

Homosexual Undertones in the Movie, Bride of Frankenstein James Whale recreates the original horror of Frankenstein with his sequel Bride of Frankenstein, in which Henry Frankenstein once again tries to play God with the addition of an Eve to his already thriving Adam. "Henry Frankenstein...may attempt to reverse the Original Sin and re-enter the community by acquiescing to the horror clichà © that 'there are things we are not meant to know'--except that his initial hubristic motive was not just to figure out eternity but to create life without the help of any Eve (he wants to 'be as God' in a double sense), and when in the sequel he manages to get married it is a sure bet that some Dr. Praetorius will 'force' him into an all-male effort to create a bride for the monster" (Kawin 683). Unfortunately, the creation of Eve does not necessarily mean that her heart will belong to Adam. When the female monster first lays eyes on Monster, she lets out a blood-curdling scream. Thus, showing that love cannot be created, just like a person should not be created out of the dead. The only successful loving relationship of the film is between Monster and the blind hermit, which is viewed as a satire against heterosexual family values by critics. It is a satire because the heterosexual relationships in the film fail. For example, the relationship between Henry Frankenstein and his bride is doomed because of the kidnapping and blackmailing, which is destined to ruin even the most solid relationship. Also, the relationship between the male and female monsters is not meant to be because the female monster will not stop screaming, thus making Monster set fire to the laboratory causing their deaths. Thus, the only relationship that thrives is between the two loners. The relationship only thrives until society discovers them and deems their friendship unnerving, which parallels the way in which society viewed, and in some ways still views,

Historical Perspective of Alcoholism

Introduction Alcohol is the oldest and still probably the most widely used drug today. Some consider alcohol as an opponent but many consider it as an ally. Moderate amounts stimulate the mind and relax the muscles, but larger amounts impair coordination and judgment, finally producing coma and death. It is an addictive drug leading to alcoholism. Alcohol is known since antiquity to have some therapeutic value. Opium and alcohol had long been used as analgesics. Greek medicine had employed wine and vinegar in wound care. Now we know that alcohol is a good antiseptic. Alcohol has other values in modern medicine such as pain relief, delay labor, raising HDL level, etc. Pure ethanol is a colorless, flammable liquid (boiling point 78. 5? C). Ethanol, produced by fermentation as in wine or beer or by synthesis, is a dilute solution and must be concentrated by distillation for making other alcoholic beverages or pure ethanol for injections. This article will review the origins of alcohol and its many uses throughout history. Early Alcoholism Since antiquity, alcohol-containing beverages played a vital part in the daily lives of ancient people. Beer, from fermented barley, is the earliest known alcoholic drink to man. Beer was an integral part of their religious ceremonies and mythology. Early civilizations found the mood-altering properties of beer supernatural, and the newfound state of intoxication was considered divine. Beer, it was thought, must contain a spirit or god, since drinking the liquid so possessed the spirit of the drinker. Remnants of this belief persist to modern times. We still refer to alcohol and alcoholic beverages as â€Å"spirits†. The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer†, is an ancient Egyptian proverb. Indeed, numerous ancient Egyptian inscriptions and documents show that beer, together with bread, was a daily food. Beer was an important offering to the gods, and was placed in tombs for the afterlife. An inscription in the tomb of Ramses II (c. 1200 B. C. ) reads: â€Å"And thou shall give me to eat until I am satisfied, and thou shalt give to me beer until I am drunk. † The ancient Greeks called beer â€Å"zythos†, which was derived from the Egyptian word â€Å"zythum†. The Romans brewed and drank â€Å"cerevisia†, named after Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. The Romans had a god Dionysus, or Bacchus, the god of wine, who they worshipped in bouts of alcoholic frenzy. The hangover plagued mankind. It was a top medical priority in the days of ancient Egypt. Cabbage juice was the Pharaoh’s remedy. For many hundreds of years we have looked upon this â€Å"old wives† tale with amusement. However, recent scientific studies have shown that cabbage juice can chelate some of alcohol’s byproducts after the liver has detoxified it. Ancient cultures brewed beer for religious ceremonies as well as for their own enjoyment. Drinking beer was the principal means by which worshippers achieved religious ecstasy. Beer occupied a major role in ancient literary repertoire. For example, the Finnish poetic saga, Kalewala, has 400 verses devoted to beer but only 200 were needed for the creation of the earth. According to the Edda, the great Nordic epic, wine was reserved for the gods, beer belonged to mortals, and mead [an alcoholic drink of fermented honey and water] to inhabitants of the realm of the dead. Although beer and brewing was known in many ancient cultures, the oldest proven records of brewing are about 5,500 years old and can be traced to Mesopotamia [ancient Iraq]. A vast repository of cuneiform writings from the area depicts beer and brewing, hence the Mesopotamians are credited with the first beer. The earliest account of barley is found on an ancient Sumerian engraving describing beer making. Beer made people feel â€Å"exhilarated, wonderful and blissful. † The Royal Cemetery of Ur, one of the most spectacular discoveries in ancient Mesopotamia, contains mid-3rd millennium BC tombs of kings and queens of the city of Ur. One of the tombs belonged to Queen Pu-abi who was buried with her servants. Among the hundreds of gold and silver items found to accompany her to the afterlife was a five-liter silver jar, her daily allotment of barley beer. Hammurabi, who decreed the oldest known collection of laws, established a daily beer ration. This ration was dependent on the social standing of the individual. For example, a normal worker received 2 liters, civil servants 3 liters, and administrators and high priests 5 liters per day. In those ancient times beer was not sold, but exchanged for barley. As beer brewing was a household art, it was also women’s work. Hammurabi once ordered a female saloon-keeper drowned for serving low quality beer. The importance of beer to early man is highlighted in Gilgamesh, the great Mesopotamian Epic and written in the 3rd millenium B. C. It is the oldest literary epic in the world. Enkidu, the bestial primitive man, â€Å"drank seven cups of beer and his spirit loosened and his heart soared. In this condition he washed himself and became a human being. Thus, Enkidu, the wild-man, evolved from primitive man to â€Å"cultured man† after tasting beer. History of Alcoholism in Arab â€Å"The oldest alcoholic drinks were fermented beverages of relatively low alcohol content, that is, the beers and wines. When the Arabs introduced the then recent science of distilling into Europe in the Middle Ages, the alchemists believed that alcohol was the long-sought elixir of l ife. Alcohol was therefore held to be a remedy for practically all diseases, as indicated by the term whisky (Gaelic: ‘water of life’)†. The concept of an elixir or life-giving potion originated from the writings of Jabir ibn Hayyan (8th century AD) and al-Rahzi (9th century AD) and known to the West as Geber and Rhazes respectively. They were the most important scientists in the history of chemistry and chemical technology in Islam. Their works exerted a dominating influence on later generations of Muslims and Europeans. The most important of the great chemical discoveries in the Middle Ages were alcohol and mineral acids, and the key to finding them was through the process of distillation, which the Arabs developed and mastered. Distillation was one of the most important processes in Islamic chemical technology and was employed for both medicinal preparations and a variety of other technological and industrial uses, including the preparation of acids and the distillation of perfumes, rosewater and essential oils. Several great Muslim chemists clearly described the distillation of wine using specialized distillation equipment. Al-Rahzi, in his book Kitab al-Asrar (The Book of Secrets) described the process of distillation and the apparatus used. He used distillation to concentrate alcohol, which was then taken as an anesthetic. Al-Kindi (9th century AD), describes distillation and the apparatus in his book, Kitab Kimya’ al-‘itr wa al-Tas-idat (Book of Perfume Chemistry and Distillation). Al-Kindi says: â€Å"In the same way, one can distill wine using a water-bath, and it comes out the same color as rosewater. † In Spain, the Arab surgeon Aub al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, (d. 1013 AD), known to the West as Albucasis, described the distillation of vinegar in an apparatus similar to that used for rosewater, adding that wine could be distilled in the same way. He described using alcohol as a solvent for drugs. The flammable property of alcohol was noted by Jabir (Geber): â€Å"And fire which burns on the mouths of bottles [due to] . . . boiled wine and salt, and similar things with nice characteristics which are thought to be of little use, these are of great significance in these sciences. † The flammable property of alcohol was utilized for various applications in Arabic military and chemical treatises of the 12th and 13th centuries. Many Arabic manuscripts describing the chemical recipe for alcohol eventually found their way into 12th and 13th century European works and attributed to various European authors. Clearly, the Arabs were the first to distill alcohol and used it for medicinal purposes. From the Arab world, knowledge of distillation spread to Europe and European alchemists began experimenting with the distillation of many items, but medicines were still mostly given as infusions or decoctions of single herbs. Arabic writings in Spain began to influence Christian schools of medicine in Italy and France. The 13th century Spanish alchemists, Arnold Villanueva and Raymond Lully, introduced wine spirits, which they called aqua vitae (water of life) as a solvent into European medicine. This later became known as brandy, shortened from the German term for â€Å"burnt wine. † Brandy was used as medicine by itself for various diseases and later became popular as a recreational drink as well. In the 16th century, the Swiss physician Paracelsus popularized the use of distilled alcohol as a solvent to prepare tinctures from herbs and chemicals. History of Alcoholism in USA During the early 1970s, partly in response to student movements of the period — many states lowered the drinking age to 18 — the thought being that if a young man could be sent to war, he should be able to legally purchase and consume alcohol. It was also at this time that the voting age was lowered to 18. In short, what happened at this time is that college students demanded, and received, the same constitutional rights as adults — e. g. to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, rights to privacy (including access to contraception, and abortion), etc. This consensus was challenged by the College Alcohol Study started by a group of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, led by social psychologist Henry Wechsler, who began exploring the problem of college drinking in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Their work in part led to the passage of the National Minimum Drinking Age act of 1984. It also led to the construction of â€Å"binge drinking† as a disease and social problem particular to young adults in higher education settings. I was an undergraduate at the University of Vermont while all this was going on — the state was a holdout on keeping the drinking age at 18 but was eventually forced to raise the drinking age to get those federal highway funds. More recently still, the abstinence approach bolstered by the College Alcohol Study has been challenged by research conducted by the Social Norms Institute, who argue that the â€Å"health terrorism† perpetuated by the â€Å"binge drinking† model has not solved the problem of campus drinking, it simply has created an underground culture of drinking. They argue that by focusing on the most egregious cases, prevention efforts have exaggerated the extent to which most college students drink. Their approach is remarkably similar to that proposed by the Yale Center in the 1940s — i. . emphasize wellness, resilience, and informed decision making. Harmful effects of alcohol The long-term harmful effects of alcohol abuse on the body are also great. Fifty percent of chronic liver disease is caused by alcohol abuse. Alcohol is also associated with many other diseases, including pancreatitis, cardiomyopathy, peripheral neuropathy, dementia and other central nervous system d isorders, and the fetal alcohol syndrome. Alcohol abuse is associated with cancers of the alimentary and respiratory tracts and possibly with breast cancer. High amounts of alcohol or longterm ingestion increase insulin resistance, triglyceride levels, blood pressure and all-cause mortality. Binges may result in arrhythmias. Alcoholics have elevated levels of plasma homocysteine, which has been linked to premature vascular disease. Beneficial effects of alcohol There is no doubt that when used appropriately, alcohol has many medicinal uses, as mentioned earlier. Beer was used as anesthetic since ancient times and was a common component in ancient prescriptions in Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek medicine. Since many recorded ancient prescriptions contain many ingredients, it is often difficult to determine which is the active component. Many powerful drugs must have been administered unintentionally, for the wisdom behind many folk remedies rests on the accumulated weight of empiric experience through the millennia. One of the fascinating finds of medical archaeology is the detection of the antibiotic tetracycline on a thin section of bone from Roman Egypt. It is thought that tetracycline was formed in the brewing process as a result of contamination with an airborne streptomycete, and then ingested with the beer. Beer, therefore, might have been an unintentional vehicle for the delivery of powerful antibiotics in those early times. Since beer was a fundamental food staple, a constant intake of this antibiotic might have influenced the pattern of bacterial infection. It is possible that the well-known great bacterial resistance to tetracycline today maybe due to bacterial exposure to it since antiquity.