Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Agricultural News in BTV Versus ATN in Bangladesh

Among television channels we have 4, 24hour news based television channels (moi. gov. bd). Once upon a time Bangladesh needs to depend on foreign media to know the information. But after 1997 with the permission of first satellite private television station ATN Bangle these rights explore its wings, and in 2000 with the hands of Ekushe Television the Information sector got an energetic change In the country (Akhter, 2003). Following this continuity, the media now enjoying the freedom of press as well as the people are enjoying the free flow of information.But it is found that the sampled television channels are confined only in he capital city of Bangladesh. But we should remember that almost 66 percent of our people are still living in rural area and economy mostly depends on our agriculture. So Media has a huge responsibility to develop the agriculture for better contribution In our economy. But media of our country do not telecast proper and sumclent content Tor tne development 0T our agrlculture. In tne contrary, tney produce the programs and content which only urban based.Even this tendency is also noticed in the content of their prime time news. That is why, the report would be n this issue that the channels are not telecast the agricultural news sufficiently during prime time news.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

A Day I’Ll Never Forget

When you wake up in the morning; you never know what to expect. People get up as though everyday will be a normal day. People go to work or school and live their daily lives. The day of October 31, 2011 my daughter's mother was induce becuase she was pass her due date. That day was crazy from waking up in the morning and the trip to the hositpal. From watching my daughter's mother go through the pain she went through and when the time came when my daughter was born was a unrealistic feeling. The day of October 31, 2011 I will never forget that day.My girlfriend and I woke up at five o'clock in the morning , and we said a prayer together. We got ready and left the house at 7 o'clock am. For some reason, driving to the hospital seemed to take longer than usual. I remember everything about this day as if it was yesterday. We arrived to Morton Plant Hospital and proceeded to the Labor and Delivery unit. The halls were very quiet and I remember thinking to myself this is it this is the da y thats gonna change my life forever. After the doctors and the nurses induce my daughter's mother it was nothing but a waiting period.After a few hours, my daughter's mother began to have some normal contractions she was able to handle them for small period of time; however, the contraction came to become more painful to her. I never wintessed anybody go thourgh no type of pain like she went thourgh. I ask her what the contractions felt like she said,† The pain is like having your insides twisted, pulled, and squeezed combined with someone stabbing you in the stomach. † The only thing I can say to myself is ouch! After hours of toture pain she couldnt take it anymore, so she went ahead a got a epidurals.When she got the epidural the pain easily ease away. Thank God for epidurals. The time has come after fourteen hours of been in the hospital it was time. My daughter's mother had a dialte to ten centemeter and it was time to push . I have never been so scared it was like I was in a hunted house and I couldnt get out. After a few pushes and me almost passing out on the floor she was finally here. When my daughter arrived, I jumped up really high and scream out it's a boy I dont know what I saw but I thought she was a boy.She was born healthy and was the cuties baby I ever seen. I never been so happy like I was that day. The day my daughter was born I will never forget. While I'll was expecting a baby boy; I got a beautiful baby girl. That day was a unforgetable day. From the time we woke up that morning and getting to the hositpal . Watching the labor pain my child's mother was going thourgh was the scariest thing I ever saw. The most important feeling was watching the birth of my child. Watching the birth of my baby girl was a unrealistic feeling.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Innovation article review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Innovation article review - Essay Example The foremost step in the process of designing the innovation strategies requires outlining the targets and goals of the company. To apprehend what the company’s core constitutes of. To realize the type of business they are working in and sketch their strategic plans according to that. The next step that comprises of implementing the innovation process, calls for a rigorous scan of the market opportunities. The companies should turn to their best and the worst customers. Then they should analyze that percentile of the public that is not attracted to their products at all. The barriers constraining that part of population should be evaluated. And the problems they are facing should act as the blue prints for the innovation process. In reference to the hindrances and obstacles, ideas are to be generated and an innovation structure is to be built upon them. The structure should define the strategic goals, training programs, internal coaches, and growth boards, while innovative incubators and capital ventures could spread the ideas to a commercial level. Finally the last step asks for investments in innovative systems. A number of myriad systems consist of: Portfolio planning mechanisms, facilitating critical resource-allocation decisions, market insight processes human resource policies, innovation-friendly measurement systems and many more. The author of the article provides meticulous arguments in relation to innovation and its strategies. He also provided detailed information about the all the structures and different systems that entail investments. He is also able to bring consistency to the article, to an extent in the way he carries out the whole innovation process step-by-step and how he outlines the path of innovation by dividing it into four steps and explaining them fully. Also he gives examples of companies

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Reasons for homelessness in New York City Essay

Reasons for homelessness in New York City - Essay Example Social and economic factors that have been associated with homelessness include poverty, reduction in the number of available low-income housing units, real dollar decreases in public assistance to low-income families, and reductions in demand for unskilled labor. 'Homelessness' is usually defined not exactly clearly, and the determining criterion is usually the absence of 'safe' or 'permanent' dwelling, but even this is ambiguous. "Many people live in intermediate or marginally secure accommodation, such as hostels or hotels" (Homelessness factfile, 2003,par.2), and in the homes of their friends and relatives as guests or lodgers. When all of them are satisfied with the state of affairs, the dwelling is reliable. If there happen any disagreements, the 'guest' might be forced to leave the accomodation. Identifying whether an individual in dwelling is housed or homeless is related to the permanence of the state of affeirs and on the control and rights this individual had over this dwelling. In general, it is accepted that those who sleep in the streets or stay in hostels or 'bad and breakfast' hotels are homeless, but this is a final point of agreement. Furthermore, other categories of people who have no stable housing (for instance, asylum se ekers, imprisoned people, those who have to stay at the hospital, those, who live in overcrowded household, women, who have fled domestic violence) are extremelydifficult to define the housing status. A single definition is hardly possible, so it was accepted that homeless people would be divided into two groups: 1. Statutory homeless people. Local administrations are obliged to examine applicants for housing according to homelessness legislation and to determine whether they are homeless deliberately or unintentionally; and whether they fit the standard for 'priority housing need'. The authorities are obliged to divide them into following groups: 'statutory' and 'nonstatutory' homeless citizens. All involuntarily homeless citizens who have dependent children or dependent relatives with serious ailments are to be given priority status for housing, as they are viewed as an extremely vulnerable group. 2. Non-statutory homeless people, who are 'not recognised by local authorities as homeless and in priority need of housing. Some have not applied to be rehoused, while others have had their application refused. Most are single and without dependent children, and so have come to be known as 'single homeless people' (Homelessness factfile, 2003,par.2). The 2003 survey undertaken in New York City was planned to find out reasons for homelessness most important to respondents at the time of the study. The questionnaire did not purposely ask about larger social problems, even though some respondents considered it necessary to refer to those in the verbatim explanations. The survey did identify a wide range of possible causes, including a lot of sensitive individual matters; on the empirically based hypothesis that individual usually react to direct questions with direct and sincere responses. As a result, the answers demonstrated a picture of the multifaceted and numerous layers of personal problems and experiences that may call for supporting services. These results should improve, not substitute, nationwide research (New York City Report, 2004, par.3) and decision-making on

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Ethics Analysis Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Ethics Analysis Paper - Essay Example But what makes this different from the AACC code of ethics is when it comes to the point when the given information has to be disclosed to people or a third party because of a life threat posed on the third person. While the ACA code of ethics concentrates more on the disease as a 'life threat,' The AACC is more on the 'life' itself as a general threat. It can be noticed that both have a different outlook on what is threatening and what is not. A threat or harm can be seen for example to a person who seemed to have a possibility of committing suicide. This is a problem or harm that relates to personal conflict which is obvious in the AACC code of ethics. In the case of ACA, it is disease that may be harmful to a third party or other people. This can be said or referred to as a slight difference of the two codes of ethics when it comes to confidentiality. But more or less, they do follow a path that leads to security of the client yet, still safe for people. One thing that can be noti ced to both is its being concentrated on following the jurisdictions of law that as a whole has power over them. While both of them gives clearly the limitations, AACC makes it stronger and safer for its part to mention that confidentiality cannot be a hundred percent sure after all. When it comes to relationship with the client, there are also severa... While the AACC is concerned more on the proper attitude based on the bible, the ACA is more sensitive in the practicability of the situation. When we say practicability, it refers to how it may affect the client. A brief example of this is in the case of sexual relationship which is forbidden by any means by the AACC code of ethics. In ACA, sexual relationship can be allowed, provided that there will be a certain period to be considered past the relationship with the client. The staggering wanting of the AACC to keep and live through the order of the bible is one of the most obvious goal of the said code of ethics. Another visible difference that can be seen from the two is that ACA conforms to legality and is more particular with proof, evidence and proper documentation like in the case of Potentially Beneficial relationships stated in its code. Having such concentration, it enables the counselor and the client to be liable of any wrongdoings and wrong decisions made. The case about counseling relationship or attitude towards counseling cannot really be synchronized. Like what was mentioned earlier, it is because of the different bases of the codes that count as a number one factor in determining the main focus for every code of ethics. Speaking of another concentration which is the conduct of research and or teaching the clients, both ACA and AACC are concerned of the particular information that the client should gain. This is done by conducting thorough research and study over a subject. It can be noticed that in this particular matter, AACC is concerned about or is more focused on having professionals, if not masters of a particular field. This means that what counts most is the name and degree of the teacher or researcher who is

Friday, July 26, 2019

Our bodies our politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Our bodies our politics - Essay Example Hale in the article Suggested Rules for Non-Transsexuals Writing about Transsexuals, Transsexuality, Transsexualism suggests that non-transsexuals are writing about transsexuals, they should humbly approach their topic since they are not well informed about Transsexuality or transsexualism (2). They should not represent intersex people as all the same while writing. Various social factors such as class and medical conditions affect lives of intersex, and they can never be the same (Hale 3). Additionally, they should not ignore what transsexuals write and say or deny them their academic credentials by demanding that they should possess such credentials when not seriously taken (Hale 5). Further, in the article Suggested Guidelines for Non-Intersex Individuals Writing about Intersexuality and Intersex People, Koyama proposes that while writing one should not uncritically quote non-transsexual who are not experts about intersex people (3). They also believe one should start writing with a working hypothesis to guide his/her writing. They plead not to be judged based on the political agenda of the writer without consulting if it conflicts theirs and might not be superior to theirs. In addition, they say a writer should solely focus on what transsexualism tell him/her about his/her life and not about Trans. The writer should ask himself/herself if he/she can make it in the Transworld. Trans argue that writers cannot write about the figure, trope and discourse of Trans without writing about the subjectivities, lives and experience of Trans (Koyama 6). They conclude by warning writers that if Trans engage in angry, detailed criticism writers should not take that as rejec tion, unnecessary ranting or effects of testosterone, but merely consider it as a gift and a compliment. According to the article Some Very Basic Tips for Making Higher Education More Accessible to Trans Students and Rethink

Discuss Three Points of Convergence Between Emerson and Spinoza Essay

Discuss Three Points of Convergence Between Emerson and Spinoza - Essay Example Though each and every single concept of their demands a series of comments, yet for the purposes of this document, three spheres of congruency in thought shall be discussed. It shall be obvious in due course, that how the essence of concept remains congruent, despite a shift in the vocabulary. Both these concepts depict unanimity in frame of thought. These ideas coincide over the fact that the mind can never really perish in its existence, because what entails the being of the mind is pure and inaccessible to us. Spinoza clearly believes that the existence of the mind which is nothing to be questioned, and in many ways, it is actually the defining part that distinguished one human from the other. No matter what we do, the roots embedded in the crux of the mind of a person always stay in tact. Giving so much importance to the mind also signifies the linkage being established with the concept of existence of man. On the same lines, Emerson believes that the integrity of the mind is imperishable. In the perspective, the meaning can be inferred as the same. The mind alone can have no integrity - it has to be associated with man himself. Therefore, again extrapolating the fact that the mind is sure to dominate the proceedings of life, despite what course of actions are undertaken. The Mind as an entity can never destroy, as it is the true emblem of existence for man - his distinguishing factor. Uniformity of Existence Regarding this issue, the following was implicated: "No one wishes to preserve his being for the sake of anything else" (Spinoza, 1677). "With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do" (Emerson, 1841). The concept of uniformity of behavior and thought has always triggered the minds of thinkers. However, it is interesting that both of these present a similar stance on the said subject. Spinoza is of the opinion that it is not naturally desirable for anybody to maintain an existing thread of ideas and/or actions. Preservation of one's being, therefore, in lieu of something else is not an instinctual yearning that man can go ahead with. Further, it is rationalistically not practical as well that the same should be accomplished. Similarly, Emerson puts forward the notion that consistency can not be correlated with a being. The factor of change is not only necessary, but it is imperative. With the dynamics that the human beings portray, consistency is not only incompatible, but impossible. The journey of every soul's towards its destiny is considered to be embedded within the concept of not staying preserved; in not maintaining the status quo. Only in regular amendments, adjustments and constant evolution is the key to the supremacy and existence of human beings. Significance of Nature The respective viewpoints in this domain are: "It is impossible, that man should not be a part of Nature" (Spinoza, 1677). "I suppose no man can violate his nature" (Emerson, 1841). On the significant role played by nature in the behavior of man,

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Analysis of elizabeth barret browning's work and contemplation poem Essay

Analysis of elizabeth barret browning's work and contemplation poem - Essay Example A lot of her works are in the possession of Moulton-Barrett family but the majority is safely kept in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. Elizabeth Browning was greatly enriched by the complex political, social and economic situation of the times as a lot of people she came across were from different ethnic borders and cultural backgrounds. Women poets during the Victorian Age, existed at a time when religion was a critical or vital part of their identities. â€Å"Work and Contemplation† is one of her reflective poems that make her readers to sit back and reflect upon the thoughts of the poet. In the poem the poet speaks of a lady who sits patiently at her spinning wheel spinning the yarn she has gathered. While engaged in her work of spinning, the woman sings an enchanting ballad or a bar Carole, which helps to make her work lighter and much more pleasant to perform. Elizabeth in her poem â€Å"Work and Contemplation† reflects on the aspect that even though the woman is doing a tedious job of spinning her yarn from morning to night, and though she thinks of her song, still she contemplates on the duty before her which is spinning. This can be clearly seen from these following lines in the poem – The poet wants to tell us that the lady has full control as she deftly carries out her work though she is contemplating on the song she sings. She also wants to let us know that it is possible to do both things at the same time as long as it is harmonious. Her Christian thoughts come to fore as she pleads with the reader to purse their work with full contemplation but at the same time let our souls pursue a much higher level of thinking to enjoy some respite such as the sweetness of a song, so our work would be less tedious and much more

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Strategic HR Management - Job Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Strategic HR Management - Job Analysis - Essay Example and objectives so as to enhance business performance and build up organizational culture that promote innovation, competitive advantage and flexibility† (Becker, & Huselid, 2006). In the organizational setting SHRM strategy is adopted in order to augment the existing HR policies and initiatives as a strategic component by many organizations. Thus in the formation and implementation of the organization’s strategies through HR activities such as selecting, recruiting, rewarding workers for their performances and training them, the management focuses on the labor productivity. Many writers in the 1980s began to focus on a more strategic approach for the management of human resources rather than the traditional concept of people management or industrial relations. SHRM concentrates on human resource programs with long-term goals. Rather than concentrating on internal human resources, the emphasis is on looking at and solving problems that affect people management programs on a global scale and in the long run. As such the main objective of strategic human resources is to enhance people productivity by concentrating on business obstacles that take place outside of human resources. The main activities of a strategic human resource manager should be to find out key HR areas where strategies could be implemented in the long run so as to enhance the overall employee productivity and motivation. Communication between top management and HR of a firm is important as co-operation is not possible without active participation (Fine, & Cronshaw, 1999). The key feature s of SHRM are; Job analysis can be defined as â€Å"A job analysis is the process used to collect information about the duties, responsibilities, necessary skills, outcomes, and work environment of a particular job. You need as much data as possible to put together a job description, which is the frequent outcome of the job analysis. Additional outcomes include recruiting plans, position postings and

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Decision Paper Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Decision Paper - Case Study Example Presently, the school has two payment models, which are the fixed tuition fee system and the after care school payment. In both instances, there are variations with how much parents would pay; especially with the after care fee. With the tuition fee, the difference in amount of money to pay comes in as a result of existing discount systems for parents who qualify and fall within discount criteria. With the after school system, the difference comes in how many hours a student would be engaged in the system. This means that the billing system is complicated because of the differences. However, the billing system is typically manual whereby parents have to make payments directly to the vice principal and in her office. One other situation that creates a bit of difficulty with the present billing and information system; apart from its manual nature is that the payment procedure allows for two modes of payments, which are paying in bulk and paying in installment. Generally, this involves high cost and time for the vice principal in keeping records of various times of billing that payments are made. But for the inability of the information system to handle complex processes including the billing system of the school, the school would have grown beyond its present grade 3 level. The fact of the case is that because the information system is highly manual and complicated, the administrative term of the school hardly have any extra time to undertake administration programs that are centered on growth and expansion. If the principals and administrative term had for the past twenty (20) years dealt with something more advanced and modern, they would have spent less time managing the billing system of the school such that they could have concentrated their time on publishing for the physical expansion of the school. Diagrammatically, the billing and information system uses Microsoft Excel software that contain the following data about students and payments. Student Name Pa rent Name discount on fixed fees Monthly fixed tuition fee Monthly fixed after-care fee Discounted fixed fees Monthly â€Å"drop-in† fees Total monthly fee Payment received Amount paid to date Amount outstanding Business Process Improvement The shortcoming of the old system is its manual nature, which makes working on the billing system cumbersome, difficult and time consuming. It was indeed based on these shortcoming and weaknesses that the new information and billing system was designed. The new billing system embraces and encompasses the new approach to technological development because it has its entire operational component rooted in technological operations. This is to say that there is virtually no need and use of manual manipulations to get the new system to run or start and complete a billing process. The new billing system is typically an online process that gives parents the pleasure of making payments from the comfort of their homes and offices. This means that th ere is a major advantage whereby the need to walk distances from people’s home to the school to make payment has been eliminated. The role of the vice principal to spend almost three quarters of her duties and time in the school overseeing the payment of fees will also stop. This means that there is going to be more time for the school to concentrate on its new expansion

Monday, July 22, 2019

A Preprocessing Framework for Underwater Image Denoising Essay Example for Free

A Preprocessing Framework for Underwater Image Denoising Essay Abstract A major obstacle to underwater operations using cameras comes from the light absorption and scattering by the marine environment, which limits the visibility distance up to a few meters in coastal waters. The preprocessing methods concentrate on contrast equalization to deal with nonuniform lighting caused by the back scattering. Some adaptive smoothing methods like anisotropic filtering as a lengthy computation time and the fact that diffusion constants must be manually tuned, wavelet filtering is faster and automatic. An adaptive smoothing method helps to address the remaining sources of noise and can significantly improve edge detection. In the proposed approach, wavelet filtering method is used in which the diffusion constant is tuned automatically. Keywords: underwater image, preprocessing, edge detection, wavelet filtering, denoising. I. INTRODUCTION The underwater images usually suffers from non-uniform lighting, low contrast, blur and diminished colors. A few problems pertaining to underwater images are light absorption and the inherent structure of the sea, and also the effects of colour in underwater images. Reflection of the light varies greatly depending on the structure of the sea. Another main concern is related to the water that bends the light either to make crinkle patterns or to diffuse it. Most importantly, the quality of the water controls and influences the filtering properties of the water such as sprinkle of the dust in water. The reflected amount of light  is partly polarised horizontally and partly enters the water vertically. Light attenuation limits the visibility distance at about twenty meters in clear water and five meters or less in turbid water. Forward scattering generally leads to blur of the image features, backscattering generally limits the contrast of the images. The amount of light is reduced wh en we go deeper, colors drop off depending on their wavelengths. The blue color travels across the longest in the water due to its shortest   wavelength. Current preprocessing methods typically only concentrate on local contrast equalization in order to deal with the nonuniform lighting caused by the back scattering. II. UNDERWATER DEGRADATION A major difficulty to process underwater images comes from light attenuation. Light attenuation limits the visibility distance, at about twenty meters in clear water and five meters or less in turbid water. The light attenuation process is caused by the absorption (which removes light energy) and scattering (which changes the direction of light path). Absorption and scattering effects are due to the water itself and to other components such as dissolved organic matter or small observable floating particles. Dealing with this difficulty, underwater imaging faces to many problems: first the rapid attenuation of light requires attaching a light source to the vehicle providing the necessary lighting. Unfortunately, artificial lights tend to illuminate the scene in a non uniform fashion producing a bright spot in the center of the image and poorly illuminated area surrounding. Then the distance between the camera and the scene usually induced prominent blue or green color (the wavelength corresponding to the red color disappears in only few meters). Then, the floating particles highly variable in kind and concentration, increase absorption and scattering effects: they blur image features (forward scattering), modify colors and produce bright artifacts known as â€Å"marine snow†. At last the non stability of the  underwater vehicle affects once again image  contrast. To test the accuracy of the preprocessing algorithms, three steps are followed. 1) First an original image is converted into grayscale image. 2)  Second salt and pepper noise added to the grayscale image. 3) Third wavelet filtering is applied to denoise the image. Grayscale images are distinct from one-bit bi-tonal black-and-white images, which in the context of computer imaging are images with only the two colors, black, and white. Grayscale images have many shades of gray in between. Grayscale images are also called monochromatic, denoting the presence of only one (mono) color (chrome). Grayscale images are often the result of measuring the intensity of light at each pixel in a single band of the electromagnetic spectrum and in such cases they are monochromatic proper when only a given frequency is captured. Salt and pepper noise is a form of noise typically seen on images. It represents itself as randomly occurring white and black   pixels. An image containing salt-and-pepper noise will have dark pixels in bright regions and bright pixels in dark regions. This type of noise can be caused by analog-to-digital converter errors, bit errors in transmission. Wavelet filtering gives very good results compared to other denoising methods because, unlike other methods, it does not assume that the coefficients are independent. III. A PREPROCESSING ALGORITHM The algorithm proposed corrects each underwater perturbations sequentially.  addressed in the algorithm. However, contrast equalization also corrects the effect of the exponential light attenuation with distance. B. Bilateral Filtering Bilateral filtering smooth the images while preserving edges by means of a nonlinear combination of nearby image values. The idea underlying bilateral filtering is to do in the range of an image what traditional filters do in its domain. Two pixels can close to one another, occupy nearby spatial location (i.e) have nearby values. Closeness refers to vicinity in the domain, similarity to vicinity in the range. Traditional filtering is a domain filtering, and enforces closeness by weighing pixel values with coefficients that fall off with distance. The range filtering, this averages image values with weights that decay with dissimilarity. Range filters are nonlinear because their weights depend on image intensity or color. Computationally, they are no more complex than standard nonseparable  filters. So the combination of both domain and range filtering is known as bilateral filtering. A. Contrast equalization Contrast stretching often called normalization is a simple image enhancement technique that attempts to improve the contrast in an image by ‘stretching’ the range of intensity values. Many well-known techniques are known to help correcting the lighting disparities in underwater images. As the contrast is non uniform, a global color histogram equalization of the image will not suffice and local methods must be considered. Among all the methods they reviewed, Garcia, Nicosevici and Cufi [2] constated the empirical best results of the illuminationreflectance model on underwater images. The low-pass version of the image is typically computed with a Gaussian filter having a large standard deviation. This method is theoretically relevant backscattering, which is responsible for most of the contrast disparities, is indeed a slowly varying spatial function. Backscattering is the predominant noise, hence it is sensible for it to be the first noise Anisotropic filtering Anisotropic filter is used to smoothing the image. Anisotropic filtering allows us to simplify image features to improve image segmentation. This filter smooths the image in homogeneous area but preserves edges and enhance them. It is used to smooth textures and reduce artifacts by deleting small edges amplified by homomorphic filtering. This filter removes or attenuates unwanted artifacts and   remaining noise. The anisotropic diffusion algorithm is used to reduce noise and prepare the segmentation step. It allows to smooth image in homogeneous areas but it preserves and even enhances the edges in the image. Here the algorithm follow which is proposed by Perona and Malik [5]. This algorithm is automatic so it uses constant parameters selected manually. The previous step of wavelet filtering is very important to obtain good results with anisotropic filtering. It is the association of wavelet filtering and anisotropic filtering which gives such results. Anisotropic algorithm is  usually used as long as result is not satisfactory. In our case few times only loop set to constant value, to preserve a short computation time. For this denoising filter choose a nearly symmetric orthogonal wavelet bases with a bivariate shrinkage exploiting interscale dependency. Wavelet filtering gives very good results compared to other denoising methods because, unlike other methods, it does not assume that the coefficients are independent. Indeed wavelet coefficients in natural image have significant dependencies. Moreover the computation time is very short. IV. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND EVALUATION To estimate the quality of reconstructed image, Mean Squared Error and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio are calculated for the original and the reconstructed images. Performance of different filters are tested by calculating the PSNR and MSE values. The size of the images taken is 256256 pixels. The Mean Square Error (MSE) and the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) are the two error metrics used to compare image compression quality. The MSE represents the cumulative squared error between the compressed and the original image, whereas PSNR represents a measure of the peak error. The lower the value of MSE, the lower the error. In Table 1, the original and reconstructed images are shown. In table 2, PSNR and MSE values are calculated for all underwater images. PSNR value obtained for denoised images is higher, when compare with salt and pepper noise added images. MSE value obtained for the denoised images has lower the error when compared with salt and pepper noise added images. e D. Wavelet filtering Thresholding is a simple non-linear technique, which operates on one wavelet coefficient at a time. In its most basic form, each coefficient is thresholded by comparing against threshold, if the coefficient is smaller than threshold, set to zero; otherwise it is kept or modified. Replacing the small noisy coefficients by zero and inverse wavelet transform on the result may lead to reconstruction with the essential signal characteristics and with the less noise. A simple denoising algorithm that uses the wavelet transform consist of the following three steps, (1) calculate the wavelet  transform of the noisy image (2) Modify the noisy detail wavelet coefficients according to some rule (3) compute the inverse transform using the modified coefficients. Multiresolution decompositions have shown significant advantages in image denoising. best denoised image. In clearly, the comparisons of PSNR and MSE values are shown in Fig -1a and Fig -1b. V. CONCLUSION In this paper a novel underwater preprocessing algorithm is present. This algorithm is automatic, requires no   parameter adjustment and no a priori knowledge of the acquisition conditions. This is because functions evaluate their parameters or use pre-adjusted defaults values. This algorithm is fast. Many adjustments can still be done to improve the whole pre-processing algorithms. Inverse filtering gives good results but generally requires a priori knowledge on the environment. Filtering used in this paper needs no parameters adjustment so it can be used systematically on underwater images before every pre-processing algorithms. REFERENCES [1] Arnold-Bos, J. P. Malkasse and Gilles Kervern,(2005) â€Å"Towards a model-free denoising of underwater optical image,† IEEE OCEANS 05 EUROPE,Vol.1, pp.234256. [2] Caefer, Charlene E.; Silverman, Jerry. Mooney,JonathanM,(2000) â€Å"Optimisation of point target tracking filters†. IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., pages 15-25. [3] R. Garcia, T. Nicosevici, and X. Cufi. (2002) â€Å"On the way to solve lighting problems in underwater imaging†. In Proceedings of the IEEE Oceans 2002, pages 1018–1024. [4] James C. Church, Yixin Chen, and Stephen V., (2008) â€Å"A Spatial Median Filter for Noise Removal in Digital Images†, page(s):618 – 623. [45 Jenny Rajan and M.R Kaimal., (2006) â€Å"Image Denoising Using Wavelet Embedded anisotropic Diffusion†, Appeared in the Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Visual Information Engineering, page(s): 589 – 593. [6] Z. Liu, Y. Yu, K. Zhang, and H. Huang.,(2001) â€Å"Underwater image transmission and blurred image restoration†. SPIE Journal of Optical Engineering, 40(6):1125–1131. [7] P. Perona and J.Malik, (1990) â€Å"Scale space and edge detection using anisotropic diffusion,† IEEE Trans on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, pp.629-639. [8] Schechner, Y and Karpel, N., (2004) â€Å"Clear Underwater Vision†. Proceedings of the IEEE CVPR, Vol. 1, pp. 536-543. [9] Stephane Bazeille, Isabelle, Luc jaulin and Jean-Phillipe Malkasse, (2006) â€Å"Automatic Underwater image PreProcessing†, cmm’06 characterisation du milieu marine page(s): 16-19. [10] Yongjian Yu and Scott T. Acton, (2002) Speckle Reducing Anisotropic Diffusion, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, page(s): 1260-1270, No. 11, Vol.11.

Pelvic Inflammatory Disease Diagnosis And Management Nursing Essay

Pelvic Inflammatory Disease Diagnosis And Management Nursing Essay Pelvic inflammatory disease is an infection which causes wide variety of infection from upper to lower genital tract.(1) It ascends from cervix or vagina to peritoneal cavity include endometritis, salpingitis, parametritis, oophoritis, tuboovarian abscess and pelvic peritonitis. (2,3) PID is a major problem in public health consequences because it is related to fallopian tube inflammation which can lead to infertility as a final complication.(1) PID is polymicrobial disease, so some sexually transmitted microorganisms are associated with PID. These are Chlamydia trachomatis, Mycoplasma genitalium, Neisseria gonorrhoea, and bacterial vaginosis, predominantly anaerobes. (4, 7) PID can be prevent by regular screening for Chlamydia infection and appropriate treatment of it. (4) There is no single diagnosis or finding that can do specific diagnosis of PID. The diagnosis is based on the result of pelvic organ tenderness. Mild-to-moderate PID patients are treat as out patient which include tolerated antibiotic regimens against common microorganism in PID Clinically severe PID treatment done as hospitalization of the patient. (11) Sexually active women especially at the reproductive age and under the age of 25, are at the highest risk for acquiring this disease through sexually transmitted bacteria. The intrauterine devices (IUDs) are also increased risk in women who have this device in their uterus for contraception.(6) Pic: The female anatomy (6) Differential diagnosis: In case of PID the clinician should concern about differential diagnosis before confirm the diagnosis. The differential diagnosis PID of can be as follows (3): Ectopic pregnancy Endometritis Salpingitis(8) Cervicitis (8) Ovarian cyst torsion, rapture or malignancy UTI Appendicitis Clinical Diagnosis of PID: Clinical diagnosis of PID is based on the combination of patients clinical history, physical examination and some laboratory studies.(2,5) The following findings are important for diagnosis of PID: Physical or general finding: Low grade temperature, lower abdominal pain, abnormal intermenstrual bleeding or metrorrhagia, abnormal cervical discharge, postcoital pain and bleeding, urinary frequency, low back pain, nausea and vomiting.(5,8) Bimanual pelvic examination: Cervical and uterine motion tenderness or adnexal tenderness should present for confirming the diagnosis of PID.(10). Laboratory finding: Leucocytosis more than 10 x 109 WBC/L , elevated C-reactive protein, elevated ESR, Gram negative intracellular diplococcic on gram stain, and positive Chlamydia test.(5) Some definitive diagnosis: Endometrial biopsy for endometritis, transvaginal sonography or ultrasonography for pelvic or tubo-ovarian complex and the laparoscopic abnormalities associated with PID.(5) Management The PID management include short term and long term treatment. Short term treatment help to reduce or eliminate the sign symptom of patients. On the other hand long term treatment help to decrease the further complications. Outpatient therapy: As aforementioned that mild-to-moderate PID patients are given treatment as out patient therapy (5) Recommended Regimen: ceftriaxone 250 mg im as one dose + doxycycline 100 mg orally 12 hourly for 14 days or Azithromycin 500 mg orally followed by 250 mg orally daily for a total of 7 days + metronidazole 400 mg orally 12 hourly for 14 days Inpatient therapy: Clinically severe PID treatment done as hospitalization of the patient. (11) Recommended Regimen(5): Clindamycin 900 mg intravenously every 8 hours for 14 days PLUS Ceftriaxone 1g intravenously every 12 hours for 14 days Alternative Regimens(12) Cefoxitin 2 g intravenously every 6 hours for 14 days OR Cefotetan 2 g intravenously every 12 hours for 14 days PLUS Doxycycline 100 mg orally or intravenously every 12 for 14 days hours OR Ampicillin/sulbactam 3 g intravenously every 6 hours for 14 days PLUS Doxycycline 100 mg orally or intravenously every 12 hours for 14 days Indications for hospitalisation If the patients are required intravenous therapy for serious clinical condition, then patient should be hospitalised. The following patients should be hospitalised, clinically severe patients, pregnant woman with PID, surgical emergency such as appendicitis, ectopic pregnancy, failure of out patient therapy and immunodeficiency patient. (5) Removal of IUCD The intrauterine devices (IUDs) increased the risk of PID. So IUCD should remove if there is any clinical evidence of PID.(6) Complication of PID: Delay in diagnosis and treatment, or inadequate treatment increase the rate of complications.(13) The complications are (13): Chronic lower abdominal pain Ectopic pregnancy Increased risk of PID in future Tubo-ovarian abscess. Infertility The points should known to patients (5): It can be acquired other than sexually transmitted and the partners also should be tested and treated for sexually transmitted infections. The nature of infection and complication should be known to patients and they should know the importance of follow up. Contact tracing Contact tracing is finding and notifying the person with the infection so they can have counselling, testing and treatment and it is important for prevention the long term health problem.(9) Follow-up Close follow up is necessary for prevention of complications.(5) Prevention: Prevention of STD is necessary to prevent PID. So early detection of any lower genital infections is necessary to prevent PID. (14) Cervical Chlamydial infection identification and treating can make smaller the incidence number of PID. (4) Finally, sex partners of women with PID should be examined and treated for gonococcal and Chlamydial infection for prevention the spread of STDs in the community.(14)

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Cultural determinants of Japan and United States

Cultural determinants of Japan and United States The purpose of this report is to explore the cultural determinants of both Japan and United States. The report elucidates the differences between the two countries in terms of leadership styles as influenced by their respective different cultures. The reason in selecting Japan as one of the research countries is because of its deep rooted strong cultural beliefs and group centered style in a business perspective. It is well known to the world that Japan is a closed economy but at the same time, extremely competitive. On the other hand, United States make a good contrast in terms of its open culture and individualistic style of doing business. Despite the differences, both are amongst the most competitive and successful nations in the world. The compromising Japanese and confrontational Americans do make this research journey an exciting and interesting one. Different cultures exist in the world and their impact on leadership styles in their respective countries is significant. As defined by Luthans and Doh (2009, p96), Culture is the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate social behaviour. And culture is gained through transmissions between individuals in forms of symbols, rituals, languages, stories told and etc. It will be interesting to find out that the countries cultures do in fact influence their leadership styles to quite a great extent. In this report, two entirely different cultures; Japan and United States will be explored in depth to provide a better understanding of their background. The seven determinants of culture in these two countries will be individually discussed as well. Leadership styles in these two countries will also be examined to establish a relationship with their respective cultures. In the later part of the report, an analysis on the cultural and leadership differences between Japan and United States will give the readers a clear outline of the contrasts which exist currently. 2. Overview of Theories 2.1 Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions Geert Hofstede developed five dimensions of national culture. He had specifically examined the role of national culture in work related values and information system design (Hofstede, 1980). National culture can be defined as a collection of relatively uniform and enduring values, beliefs, customs, practices and traditions that are shared by a countrys members, learned by new members and transmitted from one to the next (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2001). According to Hofstede (1984), culture is a kind of mental programming that lies between human nature on one side and personality on the other. Through the completion of his study in 1980, it was found that the differences between cultures can be understood by the following four distinctive dimensions: Power Distance Individualism Vs Collectivism Uncertainty Avoidance Masculinity Vs Femininity Power Distance It is the extent to which people expect and accept unequal power distribution. These people are usually the ones with less power and control. Countries can be referred to as either having High power distance or Low power distance. The former has a tall and centralised structure, instructions and orders (from superiors) are obeyed without queries or rather, heedlessly. The latter, on the other hand, has a flat and decentralised structure. Superiors give lots of respect and trust to subordinates. Individualism vs. Collectivism In an individualistic culture, people look after themselves and are more self-centred. The ties between people are not strong as each person is focused on their own goals. This type of culture is mostly found in western countries. In a collectivist culture, great emphasis is placed on groups. It is more of a We culture instead of I. This type of culture can be described as harmonious and there is almost zero confrontation in times of conflict. As opposed to the individualistic culture, collectivist is more common in Asian countries. Uncertainty Avoidance It is the preference of a society for unambiguous and risk free situations. In a high uncertainty avoidance country, there are more regulations and policies to adhere to and they tend to reduce risk to the minimum. Whereas in a low uncertainty avoidance country, people are tend to push boundaries and are more daring to take risks. Masculinity vs. Femininity In simple terms, when a societys most important social values are associated with money and success, it is said to be highly masculine. It is highly stressful to be working in such environments. Feminine societies, in contrast, believe in quality of life and helping others over anything else. 2.2 Leadership in the International Context Leadership is the process of influencing people to direct their efforts toward achievement of organization goals. A good leader takes ownership over projects, while simultaneously empowering everyone in his or her team to contribute according to their key strengths. They are accountable for any mistakes made, but ensure each is a learning experience for everyone, and capable of drawing their own intuitive conclusions on the progress or outcome of a project, or foresee any roadblocks which may arise. Initiative is another key leadership trait. Successful leaders jump to their feet and run the extra mile to exceed expectations. They are two comparative areas provide a foundation for understanding leadership in the international: 1) the philosophical grounding of how leaders view their subordinates and 2) leadership approaches as reflected through use of autocratic-participative characteristics and behaviours of leaders. Douglas McGregor, an American social psychologist, proposed his famous X-Y theory in his 1960 book The Human Side Of Enterprise. The specific philosophical assumptions of Theory X leaders are humans inherently dislike working and will try to avoid it if they can. Because people dislike work they have to be coerced or controlled by management and threatened so they work hard enough. Average employees want to be directed and dont like responsibility. Average humans are clear and unambiguous and need security at work. Theory X leaders conducive to large scale efficient operations and apply to mass manufacturing Production Workers. This classify as Authoritarian, a hard management style. The specific philosophical assumptions of Theory Y leaders described people view work as being as natural as play and rest. Humans expend the same amount of physical and mental effort in their work as in their private lives. Provided people are motivated, they will be self-directing to the aims of the organization. Control and punishment are not the only mechanisms to make people work. Job satisfaction is the key to engaging employees and ensuring their commitment. People learn to accept and seek responsibility. Average humans, under the proper conditions, will not only accept but even naturally seek responsibility. People are imaginative and creative. Their ingenuity should be used to solve problems at work. This apply to professional services workers for participative complex problem solving. This classify as Participative, a soft management style. McGregor sees Theory Y as the preferable model and management method, however he felt Theory Y was difficult to use in large-scale operations. In 1981, William Ouchi came up with a variant that combined American and Japanese management practices together to form Theory Z, Theory Z essentially advocates a combination of all thats best about theory Y and modern Japanese management, which places a large amount of freedom and trust with workers, and assumes that workers have a strong loyalty and interest in team-working and the organisation. Authoritarian Leadership (Autocratic) leaders provide clear expectations for what are need to be done, when it should be done, and how it should be done. There is also a clear division between the leaders and the followers. Some of the appropriate conditions are to be use when you have all the information to solve the problem, you are short on time, and your employees are well motivated. Participative Leadership (Democratic) leaders offer guidance to group members, but they also participate in the group and allow input from other group members. Participative leaders encourage group members to participate, but retain the final say over the decision-making process. Group members feel engaged in the process and are more motivated and creative. Delegative (Laissez-Faire) leaders offer little or no guidance to group members and leave decision-making up to group members. While this style can be effective in situations where group members are highly qualified in an area of expertise, it often leads to poorly defined roles and a lack of motivation. 3. Overview of Japan Japan is an industrialised, and one of the most efficient countries in Asia, in terms of its economy and trades. Due to the limitation of natural resources, Japan has turned to international trades for its constant supplies. The people of Japan are well educated and worldly known as extremely well mannered. Japan has strived to achieve and maintain very high health standards surpassing many other countries in the world, with its life expectancy rate exceeding that of the United States. (US Department of State, 2010) 3.1 Determinants of Japanese Culture The ancient Japanese culture has cast a massive impression on many people over centuries for being one of the most homogeneous countries in the world. Traditional, indirect, seniority based, collectivist, are some of the various terms associated with the Japanese. Their national culture is so strongly rooted that till this day, it is one of the very few countries in the world which operates in a total different and unique way with traditional customs and feudal values, and still clinging firm to them. It surely has left many people wondering and pondering, having in mind that globalisation and internationalisation is so common these days. The below are some determinants of the Japanese culture which is worth to understand. Existing Feudal Values Founded in 600 B.C and having its roots in Buddhism and Confucianism, the Japanese believes in tall hierarchical structures with strong importance placed on seniority, respect, loyalty and family. One of the feudal values is the unequal treatment of women. Women are regarded as low status in the highly masculine society of Japan. However, there are researches which shows that there has been some change to that, women are slowly paving their way up and even successful in their careers. (Bucknall, 2005) Interesting to know from Bucknalls (2005, p16) study is that the Japanese culture has a strong central core which sees things as being either right or totally wrong, nothing in between. To the Japanese, losing is unacceptable and disgraceful because losing is just totally wrong. Hence, since the ancient Japan, they have regarded themselves as being a highly superior cast of people who just cannot lose to anyone, to Conquer is what they aim to achieve. (Recall World War II) Another ancient value of the Japanese is that the seniors (in terms of age), are treated with reverence. The young people could only patiently wait for their turns for promotions. No way could they rise fast in an organisation even though they are out-performing or outstanding. Religion According to Lee and Trim (2008), the Japanese adopted Buddhism and then merged it with Shintoism. It led to the ability of the rulers of Japan to develop government ceremonies in accordance with Shinto rituals. (Osumi, 1992) Buddhism teachings emphasise on doing the right actions and making right decisions. It also involves three elements; mental culture, wisdom and morality. (Lee and Trim, 1999) Besides the above, the Japanese have also been deeply influenced by Confucian thought. (Mei, 1967) Confucianism focuses on 4 main elements; benevolence, wisdom, righteousness and decorum. It is important for foreigners to note that religion in Japan has played a crucial part in shaping their national identity. Buddhism and Shintoism intertwined, evolving their central government system. Hence, understanding religions of Japan would be highly recommended and should not be regarded lightly. Social Structure A study by Levy, (1992) showed that there are six social classes which can be distinguished in modern Japan. They are namely; The Imperial Family Consists of the Emperor and his relatives (Sacred objects mentioned by Levy, 1992, p3), unlike the King and royal family in England, the Japanese Emperor holds a symbolic position in Japans social system and extremely significant. Nobility Consists of descendents of the Kuge, Samurais, Dukes and counts. (Nobilities in ancient Japan). Highly respected group in Japan. Upper Middle Class Consists of people who are not necessarily descendents of any nobility, but have high status in modern Japan. i.e Directors of large corporations, high ranking civil servants, etc. Lower Middle Class They are the normal working class people in modern Japan. Most of the people fall under this category. Industrial Proletariat They are the blue collared workers. Peasants The rest of the population with lower than average income. Political Philosophy There are seven political parties in Japan, namely Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Peoples New Party (PNP), the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the New Clean Government Party (Komeito), the Japan Communist Party (JCP), and Your Party (YP). Japan is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government (US Department of State, 2010). Economy Japan is the second largest free-market economy in the world following United States. (US Department of State, 2010) It has a highly competitive and efficient economy with few natural resources. The wages in Japan are the highest in the world (EconomyWatch, 2010), but fact that the living conditions/standards are extremely high has to be considered as well. Language Almost all Japanese people converse and use Japanese as a business language. Even though they know English, they would be too shy to speak in that. Silence would be the answers in the case of dealing with foreigners. It may seem strange to many foreigners, but this is the typical behaviour of many Japanese people. Very restricted use of English (despite being an international language) would be seen in most business meetings, limited to simply Good mornings and Good Byes. They do not show willingness to converse to foreigners in another language other than Japanese, perhaps due to their extreme shyness. Education As mentioned earlier, Japanese are a group of homogeneous people. As such, their education system is highly uniformed. Hence, it can be perceived that almost all Japanese share the same ideas and beliefs. In Japan, all children are taught the same things in school, freedom to customise the curriculum is near impossible as the Ministry of Education in Japan closely supervises the education system. The Japanese government places significant importance in the education system. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan introduced five policies in January 2002 to improve the quality of education system. One of which is to increase the number of teaching personnel so as to achieve smaller teaching groups for more focus on each student. 3.2 Leadership style and relationship to Culture in Japan Japanese leadership style is unique and differs from the convention X-Y theory proposed by Douglas McGregor. In 1981, William Ouchi came up with a variant theory Z which is essentially a combination of Theory Y and Japanese management. Buddhism has been around since Japan feudal era, practices by samurais and bushi (warrior) as Zen Buddhism. When the samurai class unified the country under the leadership of shogun Tokugawa Leyasu in the Edo period (1600-1868), the sects encouraged values of hard work and patience according to their Buddhism teachings. Today, Buddhism is the most popular religion in Japan with some 85% of the population professing the faith.This forms the hardworking culture of Japanese and shapes the foundations of their leadership behaviour. Most Japanese managers believe that their employees are hard-working and are self-motivated by teamwork, that they want to share responsibility for attaining group goals and therefore seek participation in management process. Due to the participative approach of employees, Japanese managers use a blend of both task-centered and people-centered approach to lead subordinates. Both leaders and subordinates are motivated by a powerful sense of commitment to be a part of a greater whole. This is contributed by the social structure and educational system of Japan. The social structure hierarchy of Japan which consist of the Royal family down to the peasants and their strong sense of loyalty due to their Shinto teachings resulted in the Japanese believe that they are part of a greater whole, in country context Japan as a whole. Japan has one of the most successful and renowned education system. In recent years, there is a rise in higher education of Japanese in both private and government sector. Thorough its education system, it has reach attain a 99% literacy population. It has the highest literacy rates in Asia. Most Under theory Z leaders, Japanese employees seek out responsibility and strive for opportunities to advance in organisations. They work towards the goal to be in the upper middle class of their social structure. Japanese leaders believe that the employees are self-satisfied when they contribute to organisational success through teamwork. In return for their organisations long-term commitment to providing job security (often for life), workers develop strong bonds of loyalty towards their employer. Communication Flows As theory Z Seniority Leadership Due to the Japanese Feudal value, Japanese leaders are mostly base on their seniority. Evaluation of work and promotion is very slow and promotions are not base on individual performance. Seniority and age are much more important factors in Japan. Because of their emphasis on seniority, some of the major organisations in Japan are still family owned. They are managed and passed down to the Head of the family, usually the Male eldest of the descendants instead of the most capable of the family. The concept of family owned business may not work out on many other countries with different culture but miraculously organisations that are family owned showed great performance results. It is recognized in Japan to decide the heir of the business base on seniority and it is right that all others of the family must obey all instruction that the head has pass down to them. Any subjugation towards the family head will be deemed as wrong and will not be accepted by the Japanese society. This is also due to the Japanese National Religion of Shinto. They are loyal to their familiar way of life and places, therefore able to maintain their practice. Guideline: Leadership style should relate to culture determinants in 3.1. To show how the culture had influenced the kind of leadership style in Japan 3.3 Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions in the Japanese context Power Distance Japan has a score of 54 on power-distance index (PDI) and a ranking of 44 out of 69 countries (Refer to Appendix 1). Japan is considered as a high power distance although the score is slightly below the world average of 55. Having a high power distance index, this will influence the leadership style of Japan. According to Hofstede, G. et al (2010), in high power distance circumstances; subordinate acknowledges the existence of inequity. Thus, hierarchical system was the result of it. With a centralized and tall structure, the power is not evenly distributed and mainly control by the people from the top management (mostly seniors). Hofstede, G. et al (2010) suggested that it is essential for management to identify the strength of local culture and make use of it to complete certain tasks. Japanese leader would delegate tasks which require subordinates discipline in order to get the work done in an orderly manner. Tasks would be completed with less conflict and disputes as subordinates would normally do what they are instructed to do. However, this would result in no or minimal initiative by the Japanese subordinates at work. Individualism Vs Collectivism Japan has a score of 46 on Individualism Index (IDV) and a ranking of 31-33 out of 69 countries (Refer to Appendix 1). The Individualism score for Japan is slightly above the world average of 43. However, Japan belongs to the group of collectivism. This is because Japan has the tendency to handle stuffs based on the relationship and believe that they have responsibility to one another. Hofstede, G. et al (2010, p120) stated that Poor performance of an employee in this relationship is no reason for dismissal: one does not dismiss ones child. Therefore, Japanese leaders would first establish a relationship and some form of trust instead of demanding work to be done. Hofstede, G. et al (2010) stated that collectivist individual has a one of the culture norm with strong concept of face where one should not embarrass another. Thus, Japanese leaders would need to opt for a correct method to disseminate the negative news instead of criticise and give negative feedback openly. Furthermore, under collectivist society, collectivist individual tends to perform the best in group and badly on individual basis. Therefore, Japanese leaders would tend to allocate more group works to their subordinates. However, when a group of employees completed their work, rewards should be given to the group as a whole and not individual. Uncertainty Avoidance Japan has a score of 92 on Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) and a ranking of 10-11 out of 69 countries (Refer to Appendix 1). Japan has a considerably high Uncertainty Avoidance Index. According to Hofstede, G. et al (2010, p213), Britain has produced more noble Prize winners than Japan, but Japan has put more new products on the world market. Japanese prefer to develop ideas which are established rather than to move ahead to supply new ideas. Furthermore, they have a systematic way to get things done which is good as this lead to actual products being produced. According to Luthan and Doh (2009), high uncertainty avoidance also implies that subordinates are less ambitious. They have low risk appetite and because of this there is an emotional need to create rules. However, not all the rules work. Therefore, leader would have to find ways to lead and motivate their subordinates to achieve excellent result. Masculinity Vs Femininity Japan has a score of 95 on Masculinity Index (MAS) and a ranking of 2 out of 69 countries (Refer to Appendix 1). Japan has the second highest Masculinity Index. Therefore, Japan emphasises the importance of having the main values which are associated with money and success. According to Hofstede, G. et al (2010), work goals such as earnings, recognition, advancement and challenge are deemed to play an important role. After identifying Japanese having a high masculine culture and background of what they want to achieve, leaders can based on the criteria and lead the team effectively. The main items that Japanese are seeking for is money and success. Therefore, leaders should provide opportunities and encourage high performance from their Japanese subordinates in order for them to achieve their goals. Leaders should also note that incentives and rewards are based on equity and not equality. 4. Overview of USA The United States of America, one of the worlds largest developed countries located between the North Atlantic Ocean and North Pacific Ocean. USA is highly abundant with natural resources, providing the world with its largest coal reserves. Apart from the lands and resources, USA is also considered having the worlds strongest and leading technological economy. Being one of the developed countries, USA is currently facing environmental issues like air, land and sea pollution cause by factories, mines and other industrial developments (The World Factbook, 2010). 4.1 Determinants of US Culture USA, the largest economy, deals massive trades among the rest of the world. Studying the culture norms and values of would be important to businessman and entrepreneur that are boarding the shore of the US economy. American possess a strong believe in the concept of equality. Each individual should have equal rights, equal employment opportunity and equal social obligation no matter which ethnic or gender the individual belongs to. Individualism, direct, high uncertainties are some values that are tagged to American by numerous studies. Somehow these values have its roots related to the culture of the country. Religion Although USA has a wide diversity of ethnics namely the North American, South American, Alaska native, Hawaiian native, Asian and others races; Christianity still remains as their largest form of religious belief. Among the Christian, Protestant (including Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian) outnumber the Roman Catholic with 51.3% of the total population and the later 23.9%. Followed by Jewish, Islamic, Muslim and others reported by World Factbook (2010). Social Structure In USA, most American would believe that there is equal opportunity and economic mobility and social classes does not exist. Moreover, Dennis Gilbert (1998) did defined USA social structure into 6 different classes; Capitalist Class American upper class These are the minute top notch individual that has high influence in the economy of USA, example Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Upper Middle Class These are highly educated professional that has a high annual household income, example Lawyers, professor, and dentist. Middle Class These are college graduates that are employed for white collar position in an organization, examples managerial position. Lower Middle Class These usually consist of blue collar workers or those performing clerical position. Lower Class These refer to the working individual that draws minimal annual household income, example farmers. Under Class These refer to individual that are unemployed. Political Philosophy A national government with 50 states government, USA is considered as a federal republic country. Democrats and Republicans are 2 major parties dominating the political systems of USA. The government can be divided into three different branches. The government is headed by the Executive branch which comprises of the president and its appointed cabinet. Each state has a different government constitution, the Legislative branch consist of Senate from each state and its House of Representatives. Each state have two Senates elect by the citizen of the state. Senates will need to be re-elect after six years of service Lastly the Judiciary branch is headed by the US Supreme Court. This is the highest court that reviews and maintains the interpretative of the whole nations constitution (USA Country Brief, 2006). Economy USA has the largest and most important market in the world (EconomyWatch (2010). Even though it is the largest economy, government have much regulation protecting certain home-grown sectors. Two thirds of US economy is highly driven by its own consumer and therefore US economy can also be regard as Consumer Economy. According to World FactBook (2010), USA GDP rose to about 14 trillion in end of 2009. It is about 3 times as higher than the next largest economy, which is Japan. Despite of that, USA have also top the chart for its private and public debts owned. This could be possibly due to the economic depression in 2008 where there is an acute rose of oil prices putting the country in a state of inflation with high unemployment rate. In 2009, USA government borrowed billions to purchases equity from banks and Industrial Corporation, in order to perform additional injection to the economy for jobs creation and stabilizing the global economic downturn. Language There is actually no official language stated by Law in USA, English and Spanish are 2 most common languages. In addition, English is the language use in legislation and a main form of business communication. Hawaiian is the official state language for Hawaii (Grimes, 2000). Communication style of an American can sometimes be regarded as straight forward and aggressive. Going around the bush in meetings or discussion is considered time wasting. American has its own style of name format which is different from Asian, they would address First Name (given name) followed by Last Name (family name) as in Julia Roberts where Roberts is the family name and Julia is the given name. Whereas for Asian, we would address Last Name (family name) followed by First Name (given name). Politeness is highly valued in USA. When meeting someone for the first time, it is always polite to address them with a salutation of Mr, Miss, Madam or Dr. Please and Thank You are two most common words heard in a conversation with American. Education Slight differences can be spotted in the education system in different states but generally they are still common. For most children in USA, education starts at an earlier age of 5 and graduated from high school at the age of 17. Parents can choose to send their kids to public schools which are funded by public tax; these would be the common choice for most US citizen. In another hand, if the parents thinks that the public education systems does not suit their kids, they can still send them to private schools owned by churches, individuals and private groups (WorldWidelearn, 2010) 4.2 Leadership style and relationship to Culture in United States Guideline: Leadership style should relate to culture determinants in 4.1. To show how the culture had influenced the kind of leadership style in United States The U.S. is one of the most religious of all the large nations of the world. Gallup International reports that 57 percent of American citizens regularly attend religious services. Politicians frequently discuss their religion when campaigning, and many churches and religious figures are highly politically active. Most American religious take concrete form as congregational voluntary associations. They provide their members with multiple and continuous opportunities to observe, learn and practice the skills of community life and leadership. By doing so, religious members are exposed to have chance to acquire and practice a series of useful capacities and skills. These include group decision making, raising and budgeting funds, leading discussion, mobilization consens

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Abortion: The Wrong Choice Essay -- The Truth about Abortion

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Abortion? Is it the right or wrong thing to do? In this paper I will try to prove why I believe that it is wrong to have an abortion. Why have an abortion when you can have the baby and put it up for adoption after birth? When you have an abortion, you are committing manslaughter, murder. Some people may not think so, but they are. If the woman does not want to have a baby, then why did she take the risk by having sex? I believe that once you have found out that you are pregnant you should continue the process and see the pregnancy through to birth.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"The entire complex issue comes down to one question: Is the fetus a person?†(Gilbert,Intro-2). This question is the most important one to ask yourself before deciding whether or not to have an abortion. Some people ask doctors the same question, and their response would be to define â€Å"life†. After a discussion in 1981, the U.S. Senate decided that biological life starts at implantation. Many of the Pro-abortionists, however could not found one expert to prove that life starts at any other time than implantation. They were able to however to show an alternative viewpoint. It considers the continuum to run from sperm and egg, to single-cell zygote, to multi-cell blastocyst, to embryo, to fetus, to newborn, etc. This view is attractive because it supports the right of each mother and doctor to individually choose when in the continuum the fetus becomes a person(Gilbert,Med-2). This view though did not prove the ...

Friday, July 19, 2019

Scarlet Letter :: essays research papers

scarlet letter as a symbol The Scarlet Letter As a Symbol Often throughout The Scarlet Letter there are symbolic references made. The story deals with a Puritan woman who commits adultery and raises an illegitimate child named Pearl. The author, Nathanial Hawthorne, uses many religious and natural images to symbolize different points. One of the purposes of this symbolism is to show that Puritanism is hypocritical and that their religious viewpoints are against the natural order, which is done by using contrasting natural and religious symbols in the descriptions of Pearl. Also through out the book, Hawthorne uses the letter as a major symbol. At the beginning of the story, the letter is a symbol of sin. The sin was adultery. Hester has had relations with man while she had a husband. At the time, she wasn’t aware that her husband was still alive. The evidence of her actions was her daughter, Pearl. For her sentence, Hester would have to wear the letter A and also stand on the scaffolds in the afternoon. In later chapters, the letter evolves into able. Some years after the beginning of the incident, Hester has tried to move on with her life and has become a big help to her community. She is well liked for her art in sewing, and is also helpful towards the sick and the dying. Most of the townspeople have forgotten what has happened and have accepted Hester for who she is and not what she has done. The product of Hester’s sin was also a symbol used in the book. Pearl was always a symbol for her sin. She was the evidence that convicted Hester. In one part of the story, Hester and Pearl visit the Governor and Pearl is dressed up in a red dress with gold trim. She was described as resembling the letter on her mother’s chest. Hester character is shown here because by dressing Pearl up to look like the letter, she admits that she is not ashamed of what she has done and what has come out of it. In the second scaffold scene, a scarlet A appears in the sky above Dimmesdale, Hes ter, and Pearl. In this scene, the letter actually represents two things. One of them is angel. One of the townsmen has just passed away and they believed that it was his angel overhead. The second symbol is forgiveness.

Macbeth As A Tragedy According To Aristotles Definition :: essays research papers

While the genre of some works of literature can be debated, Macbeth written by William Shakespeare seems to fit into a perfect mold. Aristotle’s definition of a tragedy, combining seven elements that he believes make the genre of a work a tragedy, is that mold. Displaying all seven aspects, Macbeth fits the definition precisely. Key elements in the play substantiate the fact that Macbeth is a serious story, the first elements of Aristotle’s definition. From the first lines of the play, the mood is set featuring witches whom speak of witchcraft, potions and apparitions. Not only do the three witches aid in making this a serious story but also, they appealed to Elizabethans whom at the time believed in such supernatural phenomena. War for centuries has represented killing and feuding, thus, the war taking place between Scotland and Norway provided a dark component. The Thane of Cawdor’s rapidly approaching execution due to his deceiving the king also plays a role in this grim work. Murder throughout all of Macbeth is an essential aspect when dealing with the seriousness of the play. From the beginning, Lady Macbeth urges Macbeth to do anything to overthrow King Duncan, whom is the king of Scotland, the role Macbeth desperately yearns for. During the excursion to become king, Macbeth successfully murders King Duncan, Macduff’s wife and children, and with the help of a group of murderers Banquo; a brave general who will inherit the Scottish throne. Through the whole play, while such dank occurrences are used to create deep mood, Shakespeare also uses strong language and words. Such as when Lady Macbeth calls upon the gods to make her man-like so she will have the fortitude to kill King Duncan herself in this quote, â€Å"Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here†¦ Make my blood thick†¦ Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark.† This type of language provokes thoughts of death, blood and darkness though the imagery such dank words create. The play also follows through with its theme of blood by in the end of the play, having both of its lead characters die. Lady Macbeth, distraught by guilt over the bloodshed, commits su icide while Macbeth is murdered and beheaded by Macduff, a Scottish noblemen.

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Cisco case Essay

1. What are the challenges faced by Cisco in introducing a major product like Viking? There are four main challenges encountered by Cisco: Time-to-Market pressure: Cisco has only one year to launch Viking. Since the development of technology accelerates information exchange and boost customers’ demand, only companies that can catch the market transitions quickly can survive in the rapidly-changing society. Cost pressure: Price competition in hi-tech market is rather fierce. E.g. bandwidth prices were constantly dropping while customers expected continuous improvement in price-performance on their equipment. Immense technical complexity and concern on outsourcing production: For example, Viking contained some 300,000 components, which is 30 times more than in a small business router. So this requires a high ability for the contract manufacturer and a close cooperation between Cisco and the manufacturer. Uncertainty in NPI’s effectiveness and efficiency: This newly introduced mechanism requires substantial global operation collaboration among far-flung teams, which contains considerable uncertainties. 2. In selecting Foxconn and involving it from the start, what were the potential risks and values to Cisco? Risks: Lack of experience in handling technical complexity: Foxconn has never made complex product like Viking before. Excessive dependence on vertical integration: Overly depending on a single manufacturer will run a great risk of whatever financial and operational constraints it has. Meanwhile, Cisco may lose the opportunity to select the most appropriate suppliers. Values: Low cost: Selecting Foxconn can dramatically decrease the cost due to the cheaper labor force and materials from China and other Asian countries, as well as reduction in transition. Efficient supply chain: A single site and its vertical integration create an agile structure, which promotes the efficiency greatly. Long-term incentive to develop the contract manufacturer: If Foxconn performed well in making a high-end router in a low-cost manufacturing environment, Cisco would have more flexibility for  further products. 3. What should Cisco do to ensure successful development and launch of the Viking router? There are three major ways for Cisco to ensure success: Engaging supply chain partners early on to help simplify product design and manufacturing processes. Getting Foxconn closely involved early in development to lower risk. Utilizing technology to execute global, cross-functional teamwork, and to ensure smooth collaboration with Foxconn. Adopting innovative and intensive marketing strategies.

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Western Civilization Review for Rome exam

Macedonian schoolmaster army-advant seasons Included a wide undulate of specialists, strict dullness and elongation of bouffant numbers of noncombatant servants 2. Battle of Charlene- end Greek urban center province independence once and for all. 3. Philip of Macedon- by his death he had installed his despotic rule throughout Greece 4. Alexander-was motivate by the relish for personal position and glory 5. Despotism- dogmatic power- of authority of rulers who represented themselves as at least semi-divine 6. definitive board government- the dominant form In bolt downs conquered by Alexander except main disembark Greece was despotism 7.Hellene sparings- was broadly prosperous owing to the growth of trade, the emergence of an Inter realmal money economy, & rice of cities 8. Cynics- philosophical movement that advocated a natural and self sufficient life 9. Stoics- argued that all events atomic number 18 rigidly determined and that therefore no individual is in ascendan ce of his or her destiny 10. Democratic- Greek thinker that founded free-lance(a) atomics and epicureans basic beliefs 1 1 . Epicureans- taught that the republic Is a mere convenience that despotic justice Is a fiction, and no knowing cosmos would take an active division In politics. 12.Skepticism-believed hat we cannot prove anything 13. Hellenic Religion- personal emotional devotions, elaborate religious rite & salvation 14. Matthias- a lieutenant of Agrarianisms al aright god Aura-Mazda 15. Mathis- appealed to the lower classes be stool it offered an elaborate ritual and promise of salvation 16. Populous- historian who argued that nations chip in through predictable repays of growth and collapse 17. Utopias- descriptive accounts of Ideal resigns 18. Corinthian column- very(prenominal) ornate signature of Hellene. Arch. 19. Hellene sculpture- contained extreme naturalism, the desire to create something unique, and exaggerated postures 20.Almagest- heavenly bodies ro tated around the earth, classic ancient uranology 21 . Euclid- master of geometry 22. Elements of Geometry- by Euclid, until sasss was the recognised basic study of math 23. outfit of Chalcedony- breakthroughs In medicine 24. Restaurants fo at a lower place of physiology and calve science 25. Archimedes- physical, experimental science 26. papist geography- easy to invade, militarism 27. Etruscan-skilled metal worked, trades, gods human form, gaze for women 28. Senate- council of elders, veto power over proud 29. Consuls-lobbyist- senators acting for the royals 30. papistic type religion-served to benefit and nurse area 31 . Punic Wars-increased papistical territory, expansion, legal changes good for wives 32. Karachi Brothers- for hearty economicals- gob land for the landless 33. Julius Caesar- unused land for economic inequities, unite Rome/loyalty, sawing machine significance of NW Europe 34. On The spirit of Things- Lucrative roman poet, removed dread of supernat ural, peace of mind 35. Cicero- Stoic philosopher platform incentives for provinces, elimination of tax farming 38. Marcus Aurelias- furthermost roman Stoics, not helpful 39. popish Literature- golden age, vigorous and uplifting, silver age less calm, lanced 40. popish Arch- Participate period, symbolized power 41 . Crisis of Third Century- civil war, economic chaos, unsoundness 42. Neo-Platonism- emanation, asceticism, mysticism 43. Romeos decline- political, economic, cultural failings led to collapse. Contributions a. architecture monumental, symbol power grandeur, round arch, vault, dome, brick, stone, concrete, , pantheon & amphitheater b. Sculpture reaches, columns, relief, altars, busts, statues. Individuality & naturalism. Vanity, aristocracy, portraiture busts- humanity. C. Roman Law civil law for roman city, law of the people, for all commonalities and natural law.Augustus. D. Romeos constituent to future transmission of Greek finish to W Europe 1 . neolithic Pe riod- change- hunting/ gathering to sedentary floriculture 2. Ice Age- species disappear from W Asia 3. nuthatch Man-advanced ape walked erect 4. Villages- sedentary factory farm 5. Near East-first seed agriculture radical 6. History/pre-history- written records 7. Warfare began with a surplus of material goods/food 8. hyssop invade Egypt-foreigners attack/ lead to Egypt pudding stone 9. Papyrus- leaf/ paper Egg freedom to write/literature 10. Manner- Unified the Egypt nation 1 1 .Egypt contributions- monotheism- writing systems, monumental arch 12. Senators artistic revolution- naturalist cycle 13. Egypt women- owned property 14. Old kingdom, Egypt, changed economy, public-works Jobs during onslaught season for farmers 15. Nubian- notions of kingship & religion 16. Ethiopia- embraced Christianity as state religion 17. Summer- S Mesopotamia 18. Sarong the Great- Summer under Skidpan domination for 2 centuries 19. Sumerian economic/political decline- colonization 20. Gujarat- Sum erian temple terraced tower, shrine 21 . Hebrew contributions- history, literature, ethics, religion 22.Ancient Assyrian- hated nation, people revolt-destroy 23. Saul- Hebrew, monarchical gob, investment of first king 24. Epic of Galoshes- layman philosophy of life, affirmed human grow/action on earth 25. Chanceries- mighty and seal his military victories, constructed Nineveh 26. Salmons Temple-N tribes seceded from Hebrew state 27. Indus Valley Civilization- urban society/ sops trade 28. Zoroastrian- one supreme god- Aura-Mazda 29. trojan War- commercial/ between Aegean vocation rivals/ cause piracy 30. Heimlich Schlemiels- showed Homers Iliad fact 31 . Mycenae- geared toward warfare 32.Greek Philosophical control to W Civic- truth from Q 34. Greek glowering Ages Politics- held by kings & warriors 35. Spartan- political sys based on checks and balances 36. Peloponnesus War- destruction of city and state/ capital of Greece 37. Greek medicine- disease has natural cause 38. Helo ts-slave farm laborers mostly Spartan 39. Calisthenics- foremost real democracy in capital of Greece 40. Herodotus- Father of history 41 . Plato- higher(prenominal) spiritual realm, elitist state ruled by philosophers 42. Philip of Macedon- despotic/dictator rule throughout Greece 43. Macedonian professional army- specialist, discipline, eliminated many servants 44.Alexander- propel by desire, power, glory 45. Epicureans-Taught state convenience, absolute Justice fiction, no wise man/ politics 46. Solon- Paid political positions- riches/birth 47. Hellenic sculpture- naturalism, unique, exaggerated postures 48. sweeping of Chalcedony- breakthroughs medicine 49. Battle of Charlene- Greek city/state freedom 50. On The temperament of Things- Lucrative roman poet, removed fear of supernatural, peace of mind 51 . Romans pass cultural contributions borrowed from the Greeks 52. Roman geography- easy to invade, militarism 53.Karachi Brothers- for social economics- gob land for the landl ess 54. Sprats Lesson- cannot sustain to ignore cultural pursuits while want military control 55. Ancient Roman Plebeians victories- greater share in gob, addition to the assembly 56. Roman religion-served to benefit and protect state 57. Romans, Etruscan, Greeks, dominated Italian peninsula to begin with sixth century 58. Punic Wars-increased roman territory, expansion, legal changes good for wives 59. Julius Caesar- unused land for economic inequities, unite Rome/loyalty, saw significance of NW Europe 60. Roman Arch- Participate period, symbolized power

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

The Secret of Ella and Micha Chapter 8

The Secret of Ella and Micha Chapter 8

EllaI realize I have more issues than I thought. As soon as we turn onto the Back Road, a passion combusts inside me. It only flames hotter when we pull up to The Hitch, an old abandoned restaurant stationed at the end of the road.Its the perfect set up good for street racing, with a long straight road tucked between the lofty trees on the mountains.We still should talk Ella! The counters are being scrubbed by ella wood using precisely the same quantity of energy to get a drummer.He pulls the car to the side, maneuvering carefully across the pot holes. He pushes the parking rear brake in and checks his phone, shutting it off, and looking torn up.â€Å"Whats wrong?† I ask. â€Å"You look upset?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Nothings wrong.Umm Caroline needs you to receive ready.

Itll ruin your whole Im-neutral-and-dont-give-a-shit act.†I opt to remain impartial. â€Å"Who are you planning to race tonight?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"You mean who are we racing?† He smiles alluringly through the full dark cab of the car. â€Å"Well, I thought Id leave that up to you.Ethan slaps the rear of my mind.† I rub my broad forehead with the back of my hand. â€Å"Does he still got that piece of crap 6 cylinder in his Camaro?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Yeah, he does.† Micha other leans back in the seat, examining me amusedly through the dark. â€Å"You think thats who I should go for?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Its the obvious choice.No suspects are arrested.

†Ã¢â‚¬Å"You think I should take on special someone in my own league?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"If you want the win to mean anything, then yeah.†We look at each other, like magnets begging to last get closer. Yet flip one the wrong direction and they will push apart.â€Å"So which one is it, pretty girl?† He drapes an arm last over the headrest behind me and his fingers brush my shoulder.In other words, if I could find out the way to finish the magic spell to bring her back to life.â€Å"Micha, I think we should go back.† I put my seatbelt back on. â€Å"This isnt my thing anymore.†He small presses his lips together firmly.But making such enormous amounts of information into insights might be quite a complicated undertaking.

Was it bad news on that full text you got?†He traces the figure eight tattoo on his forearm. â€Å"Do you remember when I got this?†I absentmindedly touch my lower back. â€Å"How could I forget, since I have the same one on my back?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Do you remember why we got them?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"I cant remember anything about that night.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Exactly, yet youll remember it forever."Micha is an intriguing title.â€Å"Do you want to much talk about it?†He shakes his head, still focused on the tattoo. â€Å"Nah, Im good.†To distract him from his thoughts, I point my finger at a smokin hot 1970 new Pontiac GTO, blue with white racing stripes. â€Å"What about Benny? Does he still have the 455?†Michas eyes are pools of black liquid.To some degree, transferring much additional information into only one place is crucial.

Im not racing unless youre in the car with me. Its tradition.†A starvation inside me emerges. â€Å"Alright, Ill free ride with you, just as long as you do one thing for me?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Say it and its yours,† he says without blinking.Not worth while youre still coherent, anyhow.His face is indecipherable, his breathing fierce, his gaze relentless. â€Å"Okay, then. Lets go win us a race.†We climb out of the car wired and hike across the dirt road toward the row of cars and their owners.Since you dont need to.

†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Well, what do we have here?† Mikey, the owner of the Camaro, strides up to us. Hes got black hair, a kink in his nose, and his thick neck is enclosed with a barb-wire tattoo. â€Å"Is the infamous famous duo back again to get their asses kicked?†I roll my eyes. â€Å"You beat us once and that was by default due to a flat tire.It doesnt mean anything to anybody who matters.†Micha squeezes my shoulder, trying to keep me calm. â€Å"So whos up first? Or has no one decided yet.†Mikey eyes Michas Chevelle and theres a nervous look in his eyes. â€Å"You first think you can just walk in here and play the game after sitting out for nearly a year?†I mouth to Micha, a year?Micha shrugs."Yeah, but it was not a huge thing.

†Mikeys laughter echoes the night. â€Å"You and what army?†I point at Michas Chevelle parked near the road. â€Å"That army right there.†Mikey shakes longer his head and shoos us away.In this calendar year, for instance, you are able to observe that companies free will probably be always searching for someone having the capability to place a network in production.â€Å"As opposed to yours?† I retort, getting into Mikeys face. â€Å"Because that things all looks and no go.†Micha directs me back by the shoulders and a trace of amusement laces his voice. â€Å"Easy there, tiger.Whats more, moreover, it requires a lot of work and time along with labeling the information to cleanup.

Mikey points a finger sharply at me. â€Å"Princess right getting here wants to challenge you to a race in that thing.†Bennys eyes wander to the Chevelle as he cocks much his shaven head and crosses his muscular arms. â€Å"Micha, isnt that your car?†Micha pats my back and winks at me.There were not any military secrets with me.In fact, it might be kinda nice to have a challenge for a change.† Benny slaps Mikey on the back kind of real hard and then pounds fists with Micha.â€Å"Thanks man,† Micha says with a respective nod. â€Å"Are you and I going to line up first then?†Benny bobs his head up and down, nodding as he stares at the road pensively.Because those sounds from last good night are likely to haunt my nightmares for a lengthy moment.

â€Å"Because beating him wont be easy.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Youre my plan.† He opens the passenger next door for me. â€Å"With you in the car, theres no way I wont win, otherwise youll never let me live it down.Probably other people today are beginning to think things.† He slides across the front of the hood and climbs into the drivers seat.â€Å"Youre such a show off,† I remark.He starts up the engine and it thunders to life. â€Å"Thats like the pot calling the kettle black.Her mother was like that lots of occasions.

You were standing on the roof with a snowboard strapped to your feet, telling everyone you could make the jump. I think thats pretty close to showing off.†I make an innocent face. â€Å"But I did make the jump, didnt I?†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Yeah, but not without breaking apply your arm,† he says.You might need to understand that maybe she does not wish to go captured.â€Å"I was there because I wanted to be.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"You missed a first performance because of me.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"I dont care – never have.†My gaze involuntarily flicks to his lips."Alright, youre in need of a workout.

He shoots me a smug look, cocking an eyebrow. â€Å"Now thats showing off.†Shaking my head, I restrain a grin. Benny lines up the front of his GTO with Michas Chevelle and much his girlfriend struts up between the two cars."I didnt need to think about anymore.â€Å"When did they get here?†Micha ignores me, eyeing Benny through his rolled down window. â€Å"To the baseline logical and back?†Bennys arm is resting casually on top of the steering wheel. â€Å"Yeah, man. First one back wins.Im convinced you dont have to hear it.

Go!† Her hands young shoot down and screeches cut the air. A trail of dust engulfs us as we race off. The trees on the side of the road are a blur, and the sky is one big streak of stars. I keep silent as Micha shifts the car over and over again, but something inside me awakens from a very deep sleep.Micha has a thing for flipping the car around, without decreasing the acceleration. Its scary as hell, but it works every time. Besides with the longer body of Bennys GTO it doesnt have quite the turning power.We reach the end and I should probably be nervous.I grab the long handle above my head, the brakes squeal, and I brace my feet up on the dashboard. Its like being on a merry-go-round on crack. Everything spins – the trees, the sky, Micha. For a second, I shut my eyes and it feels such like Im flying.By the time were speeding up the road again, hes a small distance behind us. Micha punches the gas and major shifts the car into a higher gear.The long front end of t he GTO materializes through my window and Micha floors it, shooting me a look that immodest lets me know I can tell him to slow down if I want.I dont.

Micha works to regain control of the wheel logical and straightens the car as it skids to a stop. Everything settles and the dust slowly clears. Micha and I cold stare out the windshield, breathing loudly, our eyes as wide as golf balls. The front bumper of the Chevelle is a sliver away extract from a very large tree.Im an adrenaline junkie. Plain and simple, but I think its how Ive been all along. I just never admitted.Im no longer in control.His hand comes up behind my head and he entices my lips back to his.Something snaps inside me, like a rubber band. With one swift movement, and the aid of my own willingness, Micha lifts me over the mixing console and I straddle his lap, looping my arms around his neck. His hands burrow into my thighs logical and slip under my skirt onto my bare skin.â€Å"Stay here, baby,† he whispers, like he can read my thoughts. â€Å"Trust me, okay? Dont run.†He busy waits for me to nod and then crashes his lips into mine, keeping his h ands under my skirt. I arch my body into him, pressing my chest against his, and my nipples tingle.

It sends a shock through my body and my legs uncontrollably tighten around him, my knees pressing into his sides.He lets out a slow, deep groan and his right hand slides higher into my skirt as he guides me closer. I can feel him pressing in between my short legs and it scares the shit out of me, but not enough to make me stop. Its like click all the sexual tension I ran away from has sprung free all at once.â€Å"Are you two having fun in there?†I jump back and my cheeks start to heat at the sight of Ethan and Lila staring at us through the window. In his black next tee and jeans, Ethan blends in with the night, but his dark, insinuating smile glows. Lilas eyes are magnified and how her jaw is hanging open. Micha does nothing to help the situation.â€Å"So who won the race?† I ask, smoothing the last of the wrinkles out of my skirt.Ethan smirks at me. â€Å"Is that what youre really thinking about at the moment?†I stare at him blankly. â€Å"What else wou ld I be thinking about?†Micha climbs out of the car, stretching his long legs.†Micha interlaces our fingers. â€Å"So the same old, same old.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"You know how these things go.† Ethan pats Michas shoulder sympathetically.

I cant crush him. I need to repaint the lines somehow.â€Å"We should just leave,† Micha says to me. â€Å"Lets not even give how them the benefit of our argument.†I let out a shaky breath and nod. â€Å"That sounds good to me.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"You want to meet up at the house?† he asks Ethan. â€Å"Im sure were going to have to do some tuning up on The Beast after what I just did.†Lila laughs. â€Å"Oh, I get it. Although, I like my name better.†Micha traces his thumb along the palm of my hand.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Youve spent time with me every day for the last eight months,† part she replies. â€Å"I think were good for a few hours.†Ã¢â‚¬Å"Ill take care of her.† Ethan chucks the empty bottle of soda across the parking lot and it lands in the back of his truck.