Thursday, October 31, 2019

Country analysis by 17 criteria Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Country analysis by 17 criteria - Coursework Example The second criterion involves population growth. It can be scrutinized that population growth in Argentina in 2013 stood at 0.90% whereby the growth of Argentina population created a wider market for UNIQLO products. The third criteria entail the rate of unemployment in Argentina which stood at 7.50%. This means that higher unemployment rate subjected UNIQLO to incur higher cost of labour in the production of Apparel and footwear industry (Encyclopaedia, 2013). The forth demographic criteria entail income distribution which stood at a weight of 46.30% in 2013. This means that as the income distribution increases among Argentina population, more people could manage to buy more apparel and footwear products and hence leading to an increase in sales volume and profitability of UNIQLO Company (Arnold, 2011). The fifth criteria entail Argentina population demographics of people between the ages of 15 to 64 years. It can be observed that the Argentina population of people between the ages of 15-64 years increased to 36897.8 whereby, most people at this age are financially independent and could afford to buy UNQLO products. The sixth criteria involved urban population which stood at 38517. An increase in urban population caused the demand of apparel product by urban population to increase and consequently making the sale units made by UNQLO Company to rise (International Monetary Fund, 2013). The seventh criterion entails GDP (purchasing power parity); the Argentina population in 2013 was 977983, the higher the GDP means that the economy of Argentina was performing exceptionally well which in turn created a higher demand for Apparel and footwear products. Under the eighth criteria, the real growth rate in Argentina stood at 3%. This means the rate of growth of GDP from one year to another changed at the rate of 3%. The higher

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Globalgiving and environmental study of the organization Essay

Globalgiving and environmental study of the organization - Essay Example The present study focuses on an analysis of the environmental factors associated with the registered charity thus studying its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and realizing the competitive advantage of the organization in regard to its objectives and goals. In order to develop plans for any new project, or business and for the purpose of its marketing, often the need for a charity might occur. In such cases, registered charities are essential for the purpose to be fulfilled. Globalgiving is one such registered charity organization that allows the donation from donors in different projects as well as assist in the initiation of new projects across the US and the UK. The Globalgiving provides with the opportunities of getting connected to large number of donors as well as project initiators thus enhancing the chances and of the project or the business to reach out in the public. Through Globalgiving, the new projects have the opportunity to present their ideas and caus es behind along with contribution from the different donors for the successful achievement of the plan. In other words, new plans get the opportunity to raise funds by presenting their thoughts and participating in the challenges as organized by the organization. The micro environment factors associated with an organization include its customers, employees, suppliers, competitors, shareholders as well as the media. As far as the Globalgiving charity organization is concerned, the most effectively working factor is an excellent team. The organization believes in hiring people who are ardent and committed to their work. The purpose of the organization is to consider all the new and good plans for the achievement of a better world to live in. The team is accordingly worked out thus accepting and supporting the new and exciting plans for the common masses, as proposed by different individuals or groups (Our team, 2011). In regard to the customers and suppliers of the organization, it ca n be obtained that Globalgiving efficiently brings in the connection between the individuals or groups who are interested to donate for the causes and those who come up with the new plans and projects to be listed in the charity (How Globalgiving works, 2011). The macro environmental factors can be understood to be associated with the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal implications as reflected by the charity organization. As far as the Globalgiving charity is concerned, it can be realized that the organization has created a position of its own in the industry thereby having donors and new projects listed for its website. Its tendency of welcoming new plans can be understood to have a positive effect on the society as well as the economic conditions of business in a country. However, in this context it can also be stated that success of the organization and support of the new plans might be expected to create newer competitors for the charity organiz ations. In regard to Globalgiving as well, several other registered charities are available across the US and the UK

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Non Financial Performance Measures: Summary and Analysis

Non Financial Performance Measures: Summary and Analysis Total quality management and non financial performance measures In order to answer the first, fundamental, question of using non financial performance measure: why should companies use non-financial reporting, it is necessary to look at the relationship between market value and book value. The market value of a company reflects the investors’ perception of the company’s present, and future, value, as manifested by stock prices. The book value, on the other hand, reflects the value of the company as reported in the official balance sheet: assets less liabilities, or net assets. Thus book value represents, in a way, the official company value and is reported to shareholders and the financial community. The market and book values for companies were very close by the end of the 1970s. The picture has, however, changed dramatically, and one estimate from the current level of stock market valuations says that book value now represents on average just around one quarter of the market value (Dutta and Reicheistein, 2005). Other data indicates an even more dramatic change in companies with valuable brands, a reputation for high quality or technical expertise, for example, in individual companies, e.g. Microsoft, the estimated book value portion is around 9%, for SAP around 5%, and for Coca-Cola around 7%. (Daum, 2002) The ratio of book value to market value is often so small that the relevance of the balance sheet to modern has often questionable. It is, of course, crucial to understand the gap between market and book values, as the market value comes from the intangible assets, such as the customer, human resource, partner, and brand assets. In order to understand the gap, there is an ob vious need for relevant and reliable information on these intangible assets, thus non-financial performance measures aim to providing such information to the stakeholders, and in particular, to the present and future investors. Lack of reliable and relevant information on intangible assets implies there is no basis for non-financial reporting, which in turn implies that market values will change over time in a less well-founded way. There is always a certain level of volatility on the stock markets, and the increasing relative importance of intangible, non financial performance measurements that has emerged over the last few decades, in combination with a persistent lack of reliable and relevant information on these assets, and no systematic non-financial reporting, is expected to create an increasing volatility. This is clearly seen, for example, on the trends in the NYSE over the past three decades (Kristensen and Westlund, 2003). It is, naturally, expected that a lack of non financial reporting will imply a significant portion of unnecessary volatility, which is clearly demonstrated by the stock price development for technology stocks (Kristensen and Westlund, 2003). For example, the IT ‘bubble’ to a significant extent was built up by a lack of proper information and analysis of intangible assets in these companies, due to a lack of non financial performance measurement and thus an overvaluing of intangible technology assets, such as AOL’s telecommunications distribution networks at the time of the AOL-Time Warner merger (The Economist, 2002). It is clear that this demonstrates a malfunctioning of the capital markets, causing significant negative consequences by destroying values in the short term, as well as long term. As such, the main purpose of non financial performance measurement is to provide the market investors and analysts with information to verify the present and expected future value of a company. Ultimately, the process of verifying the market value at a certain time will then be more fact based, thus reducing the unnecessary price volatility. In order to accurately achieve this, the key predictors of a company’s future financial performance: revenue, profits and market share, are crucial. Most recent research identifies these predictors as being primarily intangibles, non financial assets, thus explaining why market value today is basically determined by intangible assets. (Kristensen and Westlund, 2003) In particular, indicators related to the customer asset: the size and ‘quality’ of the customer base, the human capital, the brand assets, the value of corporate citizenship, and the firms product quality and expertise, will dominate. If such an indicator is a reas onably stable, strong and sustainable predictor of future financial performance, it should be called a ‘Value Driver’ (Kristensen and Westlund, 2003). Non-financial reporting aims at disclosing information on value drivers, which must be operationalised and transparent and, ideally, verifiable according to new accounting standards in order to become true non financial performance measures. Total quality management (TQM) practices have been implemented by firms interested in enhancing their survival prospects by including quality and continuous improvement in their strategic priorities. As such, they often have to be measured using both financial and non financial measures, as the expertise and cultural aspects of the TQM process are often difficult to measure by purely quantitative, financial means. One of the key measures of the success of TQM is the balanced scorecard (BSC) approach, which appraises both the four key dimensions of firm performance: customers, financial, learning and growth, and also the internal business processes. The main advantage of this is that TQM does not consider employee satisfaction in its search for continuous improvement, but the BSC does consider employee satisfaction. (Hoque, 2003) Therefore, by adopting a BSC a firm that has adopted TQM will overcome this oversight which will in turn increase employee satisfaction and subsequently firm performance. Indeed, in the modern business context, employee satisfaction is key to firm performance, and so the BSC is an important non financial performance measure. TQM’s relentless pursuit of quality demands that firms identify all non-value adding waste in the manufacturing process and implement procedures to eliminate, or at least reduce, such activities. This implies better production planning to limit over-production and excessive inventory and improved product and plant design to eliminate wasteful movement and handling. (Smith, 1997) Substandard items must be eliminated and a changed attitude reinforced which is customer-focused and adopts ‘the next person on the production line is my customer’ approach (Hoque, 2003). The cost of quality is a potentially important component of management accounting systems which may facilitate the implementation of total quality management, despite being difficult to measure in absolute financial terms. The costs of prevention, appraisal and failure are all aspects of the cost of quality, and it is often necessary to use non financial performance measures to assess these. Prevention costs include the costs of plant, product and process planning, preventive maintenance, training and the implementation of statistical process control systems, and appraisal costs include the costs of inspection and testing of both incoming and outgoing materials, and the cost of maintaining and administering appraisal systems and equipment, both of which can be measure financially However, whilst failure costs include, at the internal level, the financial costs of scrap, rework, redesign and safety stocks necessary to provide a buffer against such failure; at the external level they include losses associated with customers, goodwill and reputation, all of which require non financial performance measurements. Analysis of the costs of external failure is increasingly becoming the focus of attention in this area, reflecting the current trend towards increasing customer orientation of management accounting. (Smith, 1997) Quality considerations also extend beyond those focused on the difficult ‘cost of quality’ question, and non financial reporting is useful in providing measures of other aspects of quality, such as the quality of purchased components, equipment failure and maintenance efforts. As a result, it is necessary for TQM practitioners to consider the relationship between the types of targets or benchmarks used in the two main contrasting performance improvement strategies continuous improvement and radical change. (Johnston et al, 2001) hypothesised that the process of target setting and the reward structures adopted would be different between the two strategies, proposing that organisations involved in continuous improvement of a process will base their performance targets on past performance and internal benchmarking, arrived at through consultation and with a mixture of financial and non-financial measurements of targets. However, for processes involving radical change, targets will be based on external benchmarks imposed by senior management, with purely financial targets, and financial rewards for their achievement. However, research showed that financial measurement and reward strategies predominated in both improvement strategies, thus implying that the pot ential benefits of adopting process changes are being constrained by only considering the financial side. However, whilst academic research and other research activities among accounting organisations on intangible assets has so far mainly focused on creating awareness of the significant importance of intangibles on future financial performance, to a lesser extent, research has dealt with the serious information deficiencies related to intangible assets (Hothorn et al, 2005). In particular, the research focus seems to have been on studying the dramatic shift in production functions and asset composition of the economy, rather than the underlying problems associated with measuring intangible assets, especially in cases such as Enron, where derivatives were grossly overvalued (Wilson et al, 2003). This research involves a multitude of research activities, including the macroeconomic theory of growth, as well as empirical studies on individual companies. The growing importance of intangible assets has already been demonstrated, and one rationale behind this development is the fact that the annual United States investments in intangible assets are of approximately the same magnitude as investments in physical assets: approximately $1.2 trillion (Lev, 2001). These activities have clearly led to a rather general acceptance that traditional, financial, accounting-based, information systems fail to provide investors and policy makers with insights on the impact on the economy from intangibles. This is of increasing importance, given that the volatility of stock prices is becoming abnormally high, and this raises many serious consequences, including systematic inefficiency in managerial decisions. The recommendations so far from researchers seem to be voluntary disclosure of information on intangibles, and indeed, some companies now report externally on various aspects of intangible assets, but this happens in a very non-standardised way and seems to be of limited value for investors’ decisions. Consultants, in particular linked to the accounting industry, are empirically analysing causes and consequences of investments in intangible assets, but this research provides only marginal guidelines in identifying best practice for non financial reporting (Kristensen and Westlund, 2003) Different suggestions have been presented by researchers to identify the new research agenda to understand better and manage intangible assets, with Lev (2001), for example, suggesting a focus on research related to organizational structures. The obviously incorrect validation of intangible assets in the cases of Enron and WorldCom (The Economist, 2002), shows that another focus of research mus t be to identify best practice methodology to measure intangible assets, and to measure the main intangible value drivers for future financial performance. Indeed, the sustainability of non financial reporting is completely dependent on how it will be accepted by the stakeholders of the business community: investors, analysts, customers, boards, management, employees, the accounting profession, etc This, in turn, completely depends on the ability and willingness by the accountants to provide a formal verification of the process to generate information, as well as on the information itself. Finally, this in turn depends on the quality of the information: â€Å"Companies must start by first identifying their true value drivers both financial and non-financial within the context of their business model, and by ensuring they have defined the right metrics as well as the measurement methodologies and systems to capture the right information for internal management† (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2001). Recognising that the treatment of non financial performance is a key current issue in accountancy, accounting associations have already identified a number of criteria and principles to secure and describe the quality of non-financial information. This process, however, appears far from being finalised, and in particular lacks a focus on the statistical characteristics of the information, and there is also a need for further operationalisation and transparency of the quality principles (Lev, 2001) As a general principle, any verification process should verify that non-financial reporting includes the right choice of information, has the necessary degree of relevance, and that the information provided has a reasonable level of reliability. If these three requirements are not sufficiently fulfilled there is unlikely to be a sustainable future for non financial performance measurement, in TQM or any other business aspect. Further to this, information that does not say anything or very little about future financial performance should not be included in non-financial reporting. All the included information must manifest the so called Value Drivers (Kristensen and Westlund, 2003) and such value drivers should be either directly linked to future financial data, or they could be indirectly linked, through a direct value driver. Thus, relevance should be defined by the existence of verified links to future financial numbers; however this raises a number of pertinent questions to be answered by the accounting profession. Mainly, they would need to decide which financial criteria should primarily be considered to secure relevance; and which future time period is of interest to investors. For the moment, it is probably worthwhile to have a very broad scope here, as this would mean that any financial information of interest could be used and, in addition, the future time period is defined in a very generic way. Of course, it is much more difficult to verify links to financial numbers if the lead time is substantial, and so care should be taken that the data will have a recognised financial impact within a reasonably short period of time. Indeed, whatever financial criterion and time period is chosen, it is crucial to be able to verify a strong enough and stable likely future financial impact from the non financial data. In order to better, and more accountably, measure this, such impacts should be statistically significant according to a standard statistical measurement, written into the accounting standards. However, the question that remains is still whether impacts should also exceed a certain financial level, as well as a statistical level, in order to qualify as a significant non financial value driver. In this context, it is also difficult to decide whether these qualifying criteria should also involve the extent to which a value driver will explain any likely variation in the future financial criterion. There are many potential principles to be found in information theory and statistics that might be used here, such as direct explanatory power (Kristensen and Westlund, 2003), but unfortunately the requirement levels necessary to use these principles are not very easy to determine, and could be open to abuse. In summary, in almost all modern industries, the book value of a company does not reflect the actual market value of the company, due to the increasing importance of branding, technology, knowledge and reputation. Whilst the market and book values were still very close at the end of the 1970s, since then the picture has changed dramatically, with estimates stating that book value now represents just one quarter of the market value. As a result, it is reasonable to conclude that the measurement of intangible, non financial factors is now roughly three times as important to investors as the measurement of financially measured, tangible assets. As the market value comes from intangible assets, like the customer, human resource, partner and brand assets, in order to understand the gap there is an obvious need for relevant and reliable information on these intangible assets, which is best provided by non financial performance measures. In the context of TQM, a large portion of the process improvements seen due to TQM initiatives will not have a definite financial effect; rather they will improve a product’s attractiveness to customers, or improve the efficiency of a firm’s processes. As a result, their primary impact will be difficult to measure by financial measures, and so non financial performance measures will be most relevant. From this, it follows that the accountancy profession needs a new reporting system and also need to define a best practice of measurement for these non financial performance measures, in order to reflect the true value of initiatives such as TQM. This system has a number of requirements, including causality, standardisation, relevance or link to financial results and reliability. The prevailing opinion appears to be that it is time that new reporting systems are introduced and implemented, as the discrepancy between the importance of intangibles and the ability to account for these types of assets constitutes a growing challenge for companies, investors and for society in general. The relevant people, including academics, managers, accountants, practitioners and auditors, should thus come together and formulate a new charter for future reporting of non financial performance measures. References: Daum, J. H. (2002) Intangible Assets or the Art to Create Value Wiley. Dutta, S. and Reicheistein, S. (2005) Stock Price, Earnings, and Book Value in Managerial Performance Measures. Accounting Review; Vol. 80, Issue 4, p. 1069. Hoque, Z. (2003) Total Quality Management and the Balanced Scorecard Approach: A Critical Analysis of their Potential Relationships and Directions for Research. Critical Perspectives on Accounting; Vol. 14, Issue 5, p. 553. Hothorn, T. Leisch, F. Zeileis, A. and Hornik, K. (2005) The Design and Analysis of Benchmark Experiments. Journal of Computational Graphical Statistics; Vol. 14, Issue 3, p. 675. Johnston, R. Fitzgerald, L. Markou, E. and Brignall, S. (2001) Target setting for evolutionary and revolutionary process change. International Journal of Operations Production Management; Vol. 21, Issue 11, p. 1387. Kristensen, K. and Westlund, A. H. (2003) Valid and reliable measurements for sustainable non-financial reporting. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence; Vol. 14, Issue 2, p. 161 Lev, B. (2001) Intangibles: Management, Measurements and Reporting Brookings Institution Press. PriceWaterhouseCoopers (2002) Value reporting, Forecast 2002 Bringing Information out into the Open. Smith, M. (1997) Putting NFIs to work in a balanced scorecard environment. Management Accounting: Magazine for Chartered Management Accountants; Vol. 75, Issue 3, p. 32. The Economist (2002) A steal? Vol. 365, Issue 8296, p. 57. Wilson, A. Key, K. G. and Clark, R. L. (2003) Enron: An In-Depth Analysis Of The Hedging Schemes. Journal of Applied Business Research; Vol. 19, Issue 4, p. 15.

Friday, October 25, 2019

One Life Aquatic :: essays research papers

One Life Aquatic Steve Zissou is a world known, and partially renowned oceanographic explorer. He has been depicted through his documentary films as a larger than life character, yet it seems that each unsuccessful film shows more and more of his humanity. The film introduces us to Steve Zissou when he is at an all time low in his career, having just lost his best friend and crewmate Esteban. Steve is now searching for something more amazing than anything he has ever done, just to reaffirm his place in life. In the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004), parallelism can be found between two very similar scenes. By contrasting the second film premiere to the first, the transformation of Steve Zissou can be seen through his departure down the red carpet. The crew of the Belafonte starts their stroll down the red carpet; red knit caps shaping their heads, clad in their finest suits. Classical music fills the air, ringing the delicate atmosphere. The ragtag team exits their film premiere; their half cocked smiles tell us more than an interview ever could. A heckler from the crowd shouts toward the most somber of them all, Steve Zissou; a middle-aged oceanographer carrying a â€Å"crayon seahorse† he just received from a crewmate’s nephew, named Werner. Steve stands unassuming for a second, and then rushes the man, only to be punched in the face seconds later. He suddenly realizes the bag containing the seahorse has been punctured by the fight. He grabs a passerby’s wine glass and pours the seahorse in. The scene finalizes as Steve Zissou flees the film premiere. He makes his way through the crowd as the only visible part of him is the raised wine glass. While exiting his film premiere, Steve is looking for reassurance of his film’s credibility. The only comfort offered comes in the form of a â€Å"crayon seahorse† from Werner, a crewmate’s pre-pubescent nephew. As Steve leaves he is surrounded by his friends and colleagues; and though their proximity is close, their demeanor shows some distance in their relationships. After the ensuing fight, Steve exits by himself, blending into the crowd except for the raised wine glass containing the seahorse. The raised wine glass represents an obvious conflict of disposition in Steve Zissou. Though the film has shown him to be imperfect in many ways, he attempts to adapt to the persona of a very confident and brash person, much like a person who raises his wine glass to propose a toast. One Life Aquatic :: essays research papers One Life Aquatic Steve Zissou is a world known, and partially renowned oceanographic explorer. He has been depicted through his documentary films as a larger than life character, yet it seems that each unsuccessful film shows more and more of his humanity. The film introduces us to Steve Zissou when he is at an all time low in his career, having just lost his best friend and crewmate Esteban. Steve is now searching for something more amazing than anything he has ever done, just to reaffirm his place in life. In the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004), parallelism can be found between two very similar scenes. By contrasting the second film premiere to the first, the transformation of Steve Zissou can be seen through his departure down the red carpet. The crew of the Belafonte starts their stroll down the red carpet; red knit caps shaping their heads, clad in their finest suits. Classical music fills the air, ringing the delicate atmosphere. The ragtag team exits their film premiere; their half cocked smiles tell us more than an interview ever could. A heckler from the crowd shouts toward the most somber of them all, Steve Zissou; a middle-aged oceanographer carrying a â€Å"crayon seahorse† he just received from a crewmate’s nephew, named Werner. Steve stands unassuming for a second, and then rushes the man, only to be punched in the face seconds later. He suddenly realizes the bag containing the seahorse has been punctured by the fight. He grabs a passerby’s wine glass and pours the seahorse in. The scene finalizes as Steve Zissou flees the film premiere. He makes his way through the crowd as the only visible part of him is the raised wine glass. While exiting his film premiere, Steve is looking for reassurance of his film’s credibility. The only comfort offered comes in the form of a â€Å"crayon seahorse† from Werner, a crewmate’s pre-pubescent nephew. As Steve leaves he is surrounded by his friends and colleagues; and though their proximity is close, their demeanor shows some distance in their relationships. After the ensuing fight, Steve exits by himself, blending into the crowd except for the raised wine glass containing the seahorse. The raised wine glass represents an obvious conflict of disposition in Steve Zissou. Though the film has shown him to be imperfect in many ways, he attempts to adapt to the persona of a very confident and brash person, much like a person who raises his wine glass to propose a toast.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Pre Writing Skills

PRE WRITING TECHNIQUES Prewriting is the first stage of the writing process, typically followed by drafting, revision, editing and publishing. Elements of prewriting may include planning, research, outlining, diagramming, storyboarding or clustering etc. Prewriting is important because it helps you generate ideas for writing. Some of the prewriting techniques are: 1. Outlining 2. Free Writing 3. Thinking maps 4. Cubing 5. Directed Questioning 6. Note making and note taking 7. Brain storming 8. Clustering 9. Charting 10. ScanningThe detail of each skill along with its examples is given below. 1. Outlining An outline is a document that briefly summarizes the information that will be included in a paper, book, speech, or similar document. It shows the order in which the information will be presented and indicates the relationship of the pieces of information to each other. By making an outline of the document which we begin to write gives us inside of our document. Examples: 1. Suppose a general situation in which a person is given to write an article on a general topic, what should he do after selecting his topic?Of course he will begin to collect data for his article, now while collecting data, as he read through books and articles, he will create an index card. From each source the gathered information will be put in an index card. That index card will be his outline of that article and that process which he has adopted is outlining. 2. Consider another situation in which you are required to write an essay on your favorite personality (say Quaid-e-Azam). You will make an outline for the material you want to include in the essay. E. g. Birth, early education, higher education, interests, works, death etc. . Free Writing A strategy designed to â€Å"free† ideas from your subconscious mind and gets them down on paper. This kind of writing is â€Å"free† in another sense; you don't need to worry about punctuation, correct grammar usage, etc. Your main objective is to write for a sustained period of time (ten to fifteen minutes) without stopping. In this you are free to make mistakes and write whatever you want. Examples: 1. Suppose you are a student and your professor has just given you an assignment. You are required to write a paper about a specific topic, or to come up with a topic of your own.You begin to panic. â€Å"Where do I start? † you may ask yourself. â€Å"How do I begin? † There is just no need to be worried. Take your pen and start writing each and everything related to that topic. Once you have done this, now just organize the things and note them neatly. 2. Suppose you are an Electrical engineer and you work in an office and your BOSS has assigned you a task to estimate budget plan of constructing a building. Obviously it is not your job but order is order. As it is not your job, you don’t need to be panic and you can write anything that comes in your mind about the assigned task. . Thinking Maps Thinking maps are powerful tools to help you gather ideas and arrange information as you prepare to write for any occasion and purpose. It shows you how the parts of a subject are related. Once a person understands the essentials, â€Å"thinking maps† can be like completing a puzzle which is interesting. Examples 1. 2. Condensation Precipitation Evaporation Water vapor, a gas returns to liquid state Liquid water falls as rain, sleet, hail, or snow Liquid water becomes water vapours, a gas| 4. Cubing Cubing is the art of explaining any topic from different perspectives.Cubing is an excellent tool for rapidly exploring a topic. It reveals quickly what you know and what you don't know, and it may alert you to decide to narrow or expand your topic. These perspectives may include: 1. Describing to others. 2. Comparing with others. 3. Associating with others. 4. Analyzing it. 5. Its applications and usage. 6. Argue for or against it. Examples 1. If you produce a cosmetic item , you share your production with others, compare it with other cosmetic items, relate it to a good quality item, analyze it either it is costly or not, tell its benefits and at last give arguments in its favor. . If you are a mobile phone dealer, you go to different shops and tell them you sell Nokia or Samsung phones, you compare your items with other mobiles, relate your links that you are trustworthy dealer, you discuss its financial aspects and try to convince shop keeper to buy mobiles from you. Cubing helps you to write all this procedure in a good way. 5. Directed Questioning This technique works when you have a topic of your interest but you are not sure what and how to write it. It this kind of situation, you don’t need to expand your thoughts, rather you have to limit your ideas to the point.Also when you question yourself about the topic you are going to write, this mechanism of questioning makes it easier to write about the topic. Examples 1. If you are asked to w rite about educational services of Sir Sayad Ahmad Khan, you can discuss historic background of Sir Sayad but your focus should be educational services, and not the other aspects because it is not necessary to include all the things. 2. If you are given any project, you select it and then questions can make it easy to write about it†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦e. g. why you are interesting in this project?How you got this idea? What are merits of it? What are demerits of it (if any)? Is this project financially supportive? etc. 6. Note making and Note taking The storing capacities of human memory are limited. It is useful, therefore, to know how to efficiently make notes of what one wants to remember. Note taking is a technique which is used when a person is reading or hearing something for the first time and he is trying to jot down the key information so he can use it later. Note making is when you return to those notes and make notes on them.This means you just go through notes, put things into your own words or summarize them and highlight key points. This technique is useful while gathering information for a respective article from books and lectures etc. Examples: 1. This technique is helpful when you are going to study a language other than you mother tongue. Because it is not easy to remember a lot of knowledge and vocabulary of the secondary language in one attempt. So there will be a need to read it again to learn and remember more about new language. 2. If you are attending a technical lecture (e. g. elated to some machine or something else), it is a good practice to make lecture notes because you might need them to make comprehensive understanding of the topic. 7. Brainstorming It means thinking of as many ideas as possible in a short amount of time. Brainstorming involves capturing all of the thoughts, ideas, and fragments in your head and writing them down on paper. Brainstorming is an informal way of generating topics to write about, or points to make about yo ur topic. The important point about brainstorming is that there should be no pressure to be â€Å"excellent†. You should simply open their minds to whatever comes into them.Think of it as a kind of free association. When someone say â€Å"literacy† what pops into our mind? Most of us will come up with more useless ideas, but that's okay. Examples 1. If a person has a lot of money, he thinks what he can do with it. He can visit other countries, can give donations to charity, he can buy books and also he can give scholarships with this money. This is brainstorming because all these ideas come in a person’s mind n a short time duration. 2. If you are asked to write some memorable experiences of your life, your mind just click and many such moments will come in your mind.This is also brainstorming. 8. Clustering Clustering is a non-linear brainstorming technique whose results yield a visual representation of subject and organization. Clustering is a generative tool that helps us to connect thoughts, feelings, and ideas not connected before. It allows us to loosely structure ideas as they occur in a shape that allows for the further generation of ideas. It taps our associative powers in a self-organizing process, encouraging us to create personally meaningful patterns. Examples 1. What else caused the War? Was slavery really the main issue?Civil War Main Events Outcomes Causes People of Interest Slavery Pres Emancipation Poverty Gettysburg ? Atlanta Mobile phone 2. Phone calls, messaging Cost and comparison Media player specifications 9. Charting Sometimes you will want to organize your ideas in the form of a chart. This technique works very well for comparison or contrast writing or examining advantages and disadvantages ( that is also a comparison). You can make many kind of charts depending on your topic and also the king of writing you are doing. Examples 1. 2. | City | village|Advantages | More Job, health, education and transport faciliti es| Less job, health, education and transport facilities| Disadvantages | Noise, air, water pollution| Calm atmosphere, pure vegetables, no noise| 10. Scanning Scanning involves a process of quickly searching reading materials in order to locate specific bits of information. When scanning you don't start from the beginning and read to the end. Instead, what you do is jump around in the text, trying to find the information you need. Scanning can help you locate specific pieces of information and gain an overview of the main points in an article or text.Examples 1. Suppose you are searching the meaning of a word in dictionary. Easy way to do this is that you first look the first alphabet, then second and so on until you reach the desired word. It is easier than starting from the first word of the dictionary to look the meaning. 2. While looking a number in a telephone book, you simply jump to the starting word of the name or other information known to you. This saves time. In this way Scanning involves moving one’s eyes quickly down the page seeking specific words and phrases.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Aerobic Exercises act as Brain Boosters

Many newspapers, magazines and online articles have in the past reported research findings done by other people. For those people who may not be critiques, the information found from these media avenues may be complete sources of information, but for those that are interested in verifying any given information, then studying the original research will be very vital. This is because the research reports in media may not provide finer details of methodology or other cautionary statements that have been made by the researchers.This term paper makes a critical analysis of Peter Jaret’s article on the CNN’s website entitled â€Å"Brain boosters: Exercising your mind as you age. † Research: Aerobic Fitness Reduces Brain Tissue Loss in Aging Humans The research entitled â€Å"Aerobic Fitness Reduces Brain Tissue Loss in Aging Humans† was conducted to examine the relationship between aerobic fitness and brain tissues in an old adult population (Colcombe ET al, 200 3). The research was important in that the brain starts losing tissues as one gets older which in turn makes the cognitive performance to decline.This can enable measures that can reduce costs related to geriatric care put in place. This may be done by coming up with mechanisms that can be used to reverse or reduce this brain deterioration. The research was also done to either confirm or refute the previous researches that suggested that aerobic fitness training does improve the cognitive function of old people and that it can improve the brain health of aging animals tested in the laboratory (Colcombe ET al, 2003).The targeted population was made up of older adults in the community who were over fifty five years, were right handed, high functioning, and had been recruited for public fliers, campus wide e-mailings and newspaper advertisements (Colcombe ET al, 2003). Those who were excluded were those that were below the stated age, got less than twenty in Mini-Mental State Examinati on and had a history of organic brain dysfunction and stroke. Also the participants were excluded if the reported claustrophobia or had pacemakers or metallic implants, this was done for safety reasons pertaining to magnetic resonance imaging setting.The respondents were also to get written approval letters from their doctors so that they can undergo the cardiovascular stress test. The research was approved by the University of Illinois’ Institutional Review Board in addition to the researchers meeting ethical standards that were relevant (Colcombe ET al, 2003). The first part of the research methodology was to measure the gray and white matters of the brain from the Magnetic Resolution (high density) images and then the estimates of the maximal oxygen uptake (V O2max).The brain images were taken using three dimensional spoiled gradient sequences on a General Electric scanner. The Rockport 1-mile walk protocol was used to assess the participant’s cardiovascular fitness . The impact of cardiovascular fitness on brain tissue differences in density that are age related was accessed using a voxel-based morphometric technique. The technique is useful in that it provides a means of estimating tissue atrophy in the entire brain with spatial resolution that is high which then allows conclusions of the variables on brain matter change (Colcombe ET al, 2003).Before analysis was done the images were taken through different preprocessing stages. First the tissues that are non brain were removed from the image of the head of the participants. The other three images were divided into three maps to represent the density of the white matter, the grey matter and the cerebrospinal fluid. All the images were then examined by experts who did not have prior information of the participants’ fitness so that they could be objective in their calibration (Colcombe ET al, 2003).Though sixty individuals had expressed their interest to participate in the study, fifty f ive were eligible to complete both faces due to the fact that three were younger; one person had an implanted pacemaker, eight had claustrophobia and one scored less MMSE score. The participants were aged between fifty five and seventy nine years meaning that the age mean score was 66. 5 years. Generally the sample was 44. 4 percent men; many being well educated (average 16. 1 years in education). The results showed that the white matters of the brains were being lost as one continued aging.Also, those regions that are mostly affected by aging are the ones that showed the greatest advantages of aerobic fitness. Fitness according to the results plays the role of moderating decline in tissue density that is related to age. The results showed that tissue densities in the parietal, frontal and temporal cortices of the brain reduce as the aging process progresses. Also it was found that the losses were reduced by the cardiovascular fitness function even when other variables were controll ed (Colcombe ET al, 2003).The research was very important as it was a confirmation that there is a relationship between cardiovascular fitness and the degeneration the fact that had previously been hypothesized. There was also the confirmation that cardiovascular fitness protection and enhancement of the cognitive function in the older adults has a biological basis. This is a justification of the other studies that had shown that taking antioxidant supplements could reverse aging in older brains; cognitive training could assist in the preservation of brain function.The research report also suggest that there are aerobic exercises’ benefits that go beyond health markers (cardiovascular) which can even affect the brain (Colcombe ET al, 2003). Synopsis of the article In the CNN’s article online that is entitled â€Å"Brain boosters: Exercising your mind as you age,† there are some research issues that the author, Peter Jaret has handled. He states that the research ers have established that physical and mental activities protect one’s memory and helping him or her stay alert (Jaret, 1999).He also refers to the previous researches stating that the speed of brain processing does slow down as one continues to advance in years and also that between the age of twenty five and fifty five people can loose about twenty five percent of their synapses (connections which relay messages between neurons). Also that the older people experience problems in coming up with either numbers or names; this being because memory takes more time in retrieving the data.He also mentions Robert Dustman’s article in 1990 that states that those people who are aerobically fit are better in staying alert and pay attention or even in remembrance of information. He quotes the director of Gerontology at the University of Texas who states that two physical factors are the ones that predicts the performance (on tests of information processing) of a person. The auth or gives the reason why aerobic fitness affects the brain precisely because exercises allow blood vessels to remain open and the heart to remain strong, thus allowing the brain to function properly since the nutrients can reach the brain cells.He states that neurons that make two percent of the total body weight use about one quarter of the oxygen and glucose intake by the body. Exercises also allow parts of the balance and movement that keep the connections of the neurons strong (Jaret, 1999). Jaret (1999) also mentions the researches that found out that mental gymnastics are useful in the preservation of brain power. He cites the research by Meyer who recorded his research findings in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society in 1990 stating that blood flow for those who have allowed their minds to be inactive declines.The author mentions the 1998 issue of Neuroscience where the researchers found that brain cells can reproduce; the study that was done using rats. He also menti ons Robert Goldman’s suggestions on the ways one can develop brain connections that are underused. First, one can play games that require thinking, memorize poetry and verses, reading articles and books that are challenging and finally engage in practices that are regarded as complex or difficult (Jaret, 1999).Critique of the Article Studying the article, it is clear that the author had done enough research before he decided to submit it for publishing. This is because many of the research findings that he mentions are either preceded or followed by their authors or the sources from where the information had been gotten. Information about the speed of brain’s processing slowing with the advancement of age had already been proved in the researches by Colcombe ET al.Other claims that the author has made and that are verified by the findings of this research include the percentage of the synapses that are lost as age progresses, between the age of twenty five and fifty fi ve and that exercises keeps the blood flowing to the brain cells facts that are also mentioned in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. When he states that mental gymnastics can preserve brain power he aggress with the research done by Marks Et al (2007) entitled â€Å"Role of aerobic fitness and aging on cerebral white matter integrate. †Despite the researched facts that the writer of the article has given, there are details that he has not given the readers perhaps because of the space limit allowed in the media publications. The methodology used by the researchers has not been indicated and other important details such as research designs, data collection methods, and the variables. This makes the readers unable to get the final details of the researches. This however does not at any form mislead the reader as the author was careful to cite the sources of the information that he has written.Conclusion In conclusion, it is clear that Peter Jaret article was well written, citing the sources from where the information has been retrieved. However, the article could have been made more informative by giving finer details of the original researches that were conducted. REFERENCES Colcombe, J. et al (2003). Aerobic fitness reduces brain tissue loss in aging humans. The Journal of Gerontology Series: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 58:M176- M-180. — (2003). Aerobic exercise training increases brain volume in aging humans. The Journalof Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 61:1166-1170. Erickson, K. , Kramer, A. (2008). Aerobic exercise effects on cognitive and neural plasticity in older Adults. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 43:22-24. doi:10. 1136/bjsm. 2008. 052498 Jaret, P. (1999). Brain boosters: Exercising your mind as you age. Retrieved March 12, 2009, from http://archives. cnn. com/1999/HEALTH/aging/12/15/brain. boosters. two. wmd/index. html Marks, B. Et al. (2007). Role of aerobic fitness and aging o n cerebral white Matter Integrity. New York: New York Academy of Scienc

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

4 Ways Customer Feedback Determined Our Greatest Design Features

4 Ways Customer Feedback Determined Our Greatest Design Features Your feedback matters. Here at , we want to be the #1 marketing calendar for everything you need organized. And we know that it’s the little things that matter the most†¦ which is why we are constantly making improvements to your calendar, so you can focus on the big things. In the past six months (yep, just six  short  months), made a few AWESOME updates: Calendar Refresh: Updated the format of your calendar so you can easily track and manage your content from the master view. Custom Content: Added more content types (not just the ones we originally thought you needed), and now you can organize them to boot. New Content Editor: Eliminated distractions from your content editor by creating a simplified and clean interface. And starting today†¦.NEW custom color labels (keep reading)! All of these updates were because of YOUR feedback. Your ideas make even better, and let’s be honest, they help us  get more organized, too. Which is why we are excited to announce the launch of our newest feature†¦

Monday, October 21, 2019

Demo speech essays

Demo speech essays As I walk into the room, the ringing of my phone and my side of the conversation. Has this ever happened to you? You get a call and you need a quick gift for an unexpected visit to a sick friend or relative. And weve all had the need for a gift for someone who is So hard to buy for. Or perhaps your pocket is a little low on dough around the holidays; you still need to give a gift! Thats why today I am going to show you how to make a gift jar As a child, I always made gifts for family and friends; then I grew up and decided that a store bought gift was much better. I realized I was forgetting about birthdays, I was needing a gift for someone I wasnt necessarily close with or someone who had just caught the flu. Well instead of running to the store, once again I began making gifts, Gift Jars. Regardless how my checkbook looks, I still find it much more rewarding to make most of my gifts. I have had tons of positive feedback, people really enjoy receiving something that took time and effort. Today I am going to show you an example of a quick and inexpensive heartfelt gift jar. When it is mixed up and baked by the recipient, it will be appreciated for its thoughtful convenience and ease of preparation. So, sit back and think of your favorite cookie mix, and youll see just how easy it is to put together a gift jar. I: THE FIRST STEP TO MAKING A GIFT JAR IS TO CONSIDER WHO YOU ARE GOING TO GIVE IT TO. A. Most everyone likes cookies, so cookie recipes are always good choices. B. You might have someone who is on a special diet, or an elder who perhaps cant have many sweets, so you might try a hearty soup mix, which also makes a unique gift in a jar. C. You can get ideas for gift jars from a website, Cookieinajar.com.. ...

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Critical Success Factor Analysis

Critical Success Factor Analysis Critical Success Factor Analysis Critical Success Factor Analysis: How to Reach Success? Welcome to the best paper writing website! First and foremost, lets find out what factors are called critical success factors! The notion critical success factor or CSF denotes an element (some action, condition or a type of conduct) that is necessary for a company or an organization to reach success. You should know that there are 4 types of critical success factors. They are: Industry CSFs that result from industrial characteristics of a subject (an organization or a company); Environmental CSFs resulting from the outside world (economic, political or technological changes); Temporal CSFs resulting from different circumstances within the subject; Strategy CSFs that result from the strategy chosen by the subject. What is the purpose of making critical success factor analysis? Actually, critical success factor analysisis necessary to be made when some new actions are planned. It may be launching of a new program, project or something else. It goes without saying that the main aim of any action that is planned is to reach success. If a company or an organization reaches success in new business it reaches all aims stated. What should you do before making your critical success factor analysis? Critical success factor analysisis a complex work. That means that you cannot consider critical success factors as separate phenomena. You should study them in the context of the given case. When speaking about a case we mean that there is a subject (for example, a company) that is planning to do some actions (to launch a new product, for instance) and is interested in what circumstances are necessary for it to reach success. Thus, when making critical success factor analysis, first and foremost, you should study a subject and an action that is planned and find out on the basis of the obtained results what critical success factors are vital in this case. Why should you study a subject? You should know its strengths and weaknesses, its previous experience in the sphere (if there is some) in order to find out in what way strong qualities may be used and disadvantages may be compensated. Thus, you may define what factors are necessary for this subject to reach success. Why should you study an action? You should know what challenges it suggests and what behavioral patterns it will require. When you analyze all this information, you may start making your critical success factor analysis: Need help in making critical success factor analysis? If you have any problems with your critical success factors analysis, you are welcome to contact us! You may rely on us. Every day we provide students like you with help in their studying and we will be glad to help you. Just make an order on our essay writing site. Read also: How to Write a Thesis History Thesis Dissertation Writers Dissertation Thesis Dissertation Service

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Effective Team and Performance Management Essay

Effective Team and Performance Management - Essay Example 6). The team has become more effective, in norming stage. Each individual began to focus on the possible ways to improve their team. Due to this, more group effort and unity has increased within the team. At this stage, the team is focusing on collaboration or cooperation. The task of the group is to interact, and to ensure the flow of data. It is my duty to support the members and group as a whole. â€Å"During the norming stage of team development, team members will begin to solve discrepancy they felt between their individual expectations and the reality of the team experience† (Parcon 2007, p. 33). I have been a part of the best  team, and that worked out very well, for the reason that all of us, as a team loved the work we were doing. So the teams are ready to set aside their differences, and we truly move forward for attainment of team goals. In norming stage, leaders â€Å"help the team take responsibility for progress towards the goal. This is a good time to arrange a social or a team-building event† (Gears off a Leader Seriies (GOALS) 2011, p. 2) team interacted well each other. This means that we worked together efficiently, and are well with conscious of our goals, and the ways to accomplish those goals. There is no teamwork, devoid of regular communication. â€Å"Teamwork accomplishes a task more effectively and efficiently than individual efforts. Every team member should contribute equally toward accomplishing the task† (Gibson et al. 1980, p. 6). The â€Å"individual behavior† (Gupta 2010) is influenced by factors like abilities, gender, race and culture, perception, attributes, and attitude of the individuals. Behavior and Expectation for the Team in Each Area of Norms: Meeting: All team members should be attending at the meeting, so that they can own group norms resulting from the meeting. In the meeting, only one person at a time is supposed to speak. The opinion of each member is to be placed during the meeting t ime itself. If a member is found to be late, the member is not supposed to interrupt in between the meeting. A member, if always comes late for the meeting, should be asked to depart the group. All members are asked to get involved in the meeting, and the silent members are encouraged to speak and place their opinion. Specific time is also alloted for each member to speak. â€Å"Meeting norms  set ground rules or expectations on how people treat each other at a meeting† (Meeting Process Recommendations n.d.). Decisions: Decision is made by the consensus of the team members. Consensus means the voluntary support from the group. It is difficult to obtain complete consent for a team decision, but the members have to support the decisions, whatever it might be. All members are supposed to contribute their views and opinions regarding the issues. If they remain silent in the group means they too support the decisions. This is applicable for those who abstain from the meeting, as their opinions in absentia have no value. Communication and Co-ordination: Every member should participate, speak on one’s burn behalf, and also give chance for others to speak. Each person will be held responsible for their own actions. There are three choices left before every member: to accept the decisions, or to try to work to make it superior, or leave it. But they are not expected to complain about it, if one is not ready to work on it. Communication

Friday, October 18, 2019

Visual Arts and Design Assignment in The Engineering II building in UC Essay - 11

Visual Arts and Design Assignment in The Engineering II building in UC Santa Barbara - Essay Example    The building’s interior design provides the essential space that the university would require in addressing congestion through the provision of conference rooms, lecture halls, and staffrooms (Foulsham 1). The building’s architectural design coincides with the use of energy efficient facilities that reduce the exploitation of the non-renewable energy sources; hence, it is renowned for its conservative measures. Further, the building’s engineers used the recommended materials to make the world’s greenest public facility. The essence of evaluating the building’s inclusion of solar panels on the dome emanate from the society’s emphasis that the mankind should adopt renewable energy sources in order to avoid the risk of pollution from non-renewable energy sources. The Engineering II building’s construction process adhered to the institution’s mission that fosters the need of its constituents to apply eco-friendly measures in order to safeguard the future outcomes (Foulsham 1). For example, the facility’s architectural design reduced the use of electricity by 36 percent for every square foot of its space. Arguably, the plumbing team in stalled a natural gas system that would suppress the units consumed at a rate of 15 percent compared to the previous year. Despite the institution bordering the state’s coastline, the artistic building’s drainage facility evokes the understanding that its drainage system instills the environmentally conservative measures, which reduce the risk of pollution. Another architectural aspect, which is evident in the building’s interior design, is the utilization of space to serve the engineering department’s teachers and students.  Ã‚  

Assessment to cover m5 Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Assessment to cover m5 - Coursework Example The early microprocessors were usually 4-bits and were used in electronic calculators that used binary coded decimal. The microprocessor consists of three component units. The Arithmetic and logic unit is a digital circuit that performs all the arithmetic operations that include additions, multiplications, subtractions, and divisions, and logic operations which entail comparison operations using logic operators such as AND, OR. The control unit directs and controls the operation of other units by providing timing and control signals, it fetches and decodes machine instructions, and co-ordinates the input and output devices of a computer system. The registers act as cache memory for the microprocessor and provide the storage of data and instructions to be executed. The CPU is mounted on the motherboard (a printed circuit board that holds components of the system and provide connection to other peripheral devices) of the computer system, where other electronics are also mounted. ... The microprocessors are differentiated according to the instruction set executed, the number of bits processed in a single instruction, and the clock speed (instructions executed per second), given in megahertz (MHz). In both cases, the higher the value, the more powerful the CPU will be in terms of performance. 8-bit microprocessor An 8-bit microprocessor refers to a processor architecture that computes 8-bits as the data size. All the instructions executed by such a processor consist of 8-bits (binary digits). The arithmetic and logic unit, the internal buses, and the data processing registers are 8-bits. An 8-bit CPU can process 8 bits of data simultaneously, and its data bus consists of 8 lines to transfer data between the memory and other input/output devices. The Intel 8085 is an 8-bit microprocessor that consists of instruction sets such as data moving, arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), logic (AND, OR, XOR), control transfer (both conditional an d unconditional, call subroutine, return from subroutine), setting and clearing flag bits, interrupts, stack operations and input/output instructions. This processor consists of 8-bit ALU that performs arithmetic and logic operations, the control unit, seven 8-bit general purpose registers A,B,C,D,E,H, and L, which are paired to form BC, DE, and HL. Register A is referred to as the Accumulator and it stores one operand of arithmetic and logic operation, and the results of the arithmetic and logic operations. There are two special purpose registers which are 16-bit registers, namely, the stack pointer (SP, which points to the top of the stack where data can be retrieved),

Thursday, October 17, 2019

HR Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

HR - Essay Example This is because according to Westphal and Fredickson (2001), management is a complex phenomenon that entails both an art and a science, revolving round the utilization of human resource and human capital to achieving organizational goals. As an art, management can be said to be the practice of making people more effective than they would naturally be in the absence of any management in place (Tushman and Nadler, 2009). Meanwhile, the twenty-first century has become a very challenging and competitive century for all organizations, businesses and companies to be more effective (Armstrong and Overton, 2007). The need for competitiveness is because the world is now a global village and so any company operating in any part of the world finds itself competing with all other companies in the same industry (Argyris and Schon DA. 1996). With such kind of competition, the best way to ensure survival is through the maximization of human resource, which the definition makes clear, can only be ac hieved through management. What is more, the science in management has been said to manifest in the various ways in which management is performed. In this regard also, it would be said that the twenty-first century comes with so much opportunities for leaders to be highly dynamic in the science of management, consolidating the continual growth of management. Why management will not die anytime soon Generally, management will not die anytime soon in the twenty-first century as Koch & Godden (1996) claim because the principles and pillars on which management strives continue to be important and even more important in the twenty-first century than they were before. These four pillars have been identified by Tushman and Nadler (2009) as being planning, organizations, directing and monitoring. Van (2006) notes that planning is the process of identifying what an organization would need in the short to long term basis and putting in place structures to ensure that those needs are met, whil es identifying the cost and benefits that will come with achieving those goals. Generally, proper planning has been said to prevent poor performance. The debate that management will die soon in the

Cybersecurity Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 8

Cybersecurity - Coursework Example Having maliciously developed functional Private keys from one Secure Socket Layer certificate, attackers can use these keys to sign other certificates. This weakness in MD5 hashing exposes risk to information in systems because attackers can easily pass off fake Certificates of authority. In some cases, this algorithm has been subjected to reversing which allows attackers to crack passwords. It is therefore safer for CAs to opt for safer algorithms like SHA-1 and SHA-2. The suggestion that a system of ‘least privilege’ is the best way of restricting information damage is viable. Putting in place at least privilege policy in an organization would be the most appropriate way to manage information damage and misuse. This policy guarantees that not a single person is granted an indiscriminate clearance level of data therefore; the risk of exposure to malicious damage is reduced. Division of duty also works well especially in the IT department in cases where accidental erasure of data is experienced. The loss is then only limited to the level of access that particular staff has. It is therefore appropriate to grant staff in the organization access to information only on a need

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Legal Aspects of Healthcare Administration Research Paper

Legal Aspects of Healthcare Administration - Research Paper Example This study gathers information from state laws, codified statutes, case laws and regulatory laws. The source under consideration, hence, is credible by all means. The data and information used in it is valid. The sources includes details of Alcohol distribution laws, tax systems, legal principles on driving while intoxicated and Alcohol Sale and Purchase laws etc. This study analyzes data of the 40 states and provides legal implications of violating any laws. It gives an understanding of punishments and fines which are imposed in case of law violation. The state laws and policies are also discussed. The changes that occurred in the regulations over time are also discussed. For example, the lowered down blood alcohol concentration limits are discussed. The healthcare diseases and risks associated with excessive alcohol consumption require stricter laws and narrower space for legal alcohol use. The teenagers as well as adults are equally affected by the negative outcomes of alcohol consumption. Hence, in order to manage a stable healthcare system, there is a need to curb these issues. Legal proceedings and principles are a helpful tool in controlling the worsening situations that are observed in the recent years. This study hence, is a good source of information to understand the laws. Most of the legal principles, policies and laws are discuss ed efficiently in this study. The overview of the laws and the statistical data for the 40 states provide a better view on the effects of legal system as it relates to the overall health conditions in the United States. In my opinion, this source provides a good starting point to understand the impact of laws on law violators. This study provides a clear account of punishments and penalties for the law violators. Moreover, tax systems and fines are also explained. This source is undoubtedly helpful in understanding the law implications and principles. However, the weaknesses

Cybersecurity Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 8

Cybersecurity - Coursework Example Having maliciously developed functional Private keys from one Secure Socket Layer certificate, attackers can use these keys to sign other certificates. This weakness in MD5 hashing exposes risk to information in systems because attackers can easily pass off fake Certificates of authority. In some cases, this algorithm has been subjected to reversing which allows attackers to crack passwords. It is therefore safer for CAs to opt for safer algorithms like SHA-1 and SHA-2. The suggestion that a system of ‘least privilege’ is the best way of restricting information damage is viable. Putting in place at least privilege policy in an organization would be the most appropriate way to manage information damage and misuse. This policy guarantees that not a single person is granted an indiscriminate clearance level of data therefore; the risk of exposure to malicious damage is reduced. Division of duty also works well especially in the IT department in cases where accidental erasure of data is experienced. The loss is then only limited to the level of access that particular staff has. It is therefore appropriate to grant staff in the organization access to information only on a need

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

William Shakespeare also known as “The Bard” Essay Example for Free

William Shakespeare also known as â€Å"The Bard† Essay William Shakespeare was one of the best writers of his time, and has written stories that are still being read and talked about today. He was thought of to be an inspiration to many upcoming writers and has helped to shape literature into what is today. Shakespeare’s writing s give vivid and interesting details about the topic he is writing about. His writings also tend to make others enjoy reading more often. Even though Shakespeare has no birth records there are church records which indicate that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564. From that information they believed that he was born either on or near April 23, 1564. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582. William was 18 and she was 26 and also pregnant. Shakespeare’s first child was a daughter born on May 26, 1583, they named her Susanna. Shakespeare was the third child of John Shakespeare who was a leather merchant and his mother Mary who was a local landed heiress. Shakespeare had two sisters Joan and Judith, and his three younger brothers Gilbert, Richard and Edmund. From roughly 1594 Shakespeare was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men Company of theatrical players. It was said that â€Å"Shakespeare wrote plays that capture the complete range of human emotion and conflict. Shakespeare was also often called the English national poet and is to be considered the greatest dramatist of all time. Also there are little Cox 2 records of Shakespeare’s childhood and virtually none about his education, but scholars think Shakespeare attended King’s New School. Others often ponder on whether William Shakespeare really existed. By 1952 there was some evidence that Shakespeare was living as an actor and a playwright in London and may have had several plays produced. Around 1597 15 of Shakespeare’s 37 plays  had been published. By 1599 Shakespeare and his business partners built their own theater, which they later called the Globe. Shakespeare’s early plays were written in a conventional style of his time with complex metaphors and rhetorical phrases that didn’t always match with his plot or characters. Although Shakespeare was very modern, adapting to the customary style to his own motives and creating a freer flow of words. Shakespeare’s work and been a major influence on later theatre and literature. Throughout the 1590’s Shakespeare’s reputation continued to grow. From 1594 to 1608 he was fully involved in  the London theater world. During much of this period, Shakespeare was ranked as London’s most popular playwright, based on the number of times his plays were performed and published. By the late 1590’s Shakespeare had become an established writer and a prosperous. Cox 3 By 1612 Shakespeare had become England’s most successful playwright. It was said that he divided his time between Stratford and London. Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in the late 16th and early 17th century. Today his plays are highly popular and are persistently studied and reinterpreted in plays. The genius of Shakespeare’s plays will forever be performed and read. Furthermore William Shakespeare also known as â€Å"The Bard† was a man who changed the way we look at literature today. Also he was thought to be a literature genius making his plays different and extraordinary. Shakespeare is a man who others have looked at throughout the course of history to learn to be better writers. William Shakespeare was a legend and shows just how much reading and writing can take you. Cox 4 Citation Page www. biography. com – William Shakespeare www. worldbookonline. com – William Shakespeare.

Monday, October 14, 2019

Marcel Duchamps Influences on Modern Art

Marcel Duchamps Influences on Modern Art Marcel Duchamps Influence on 20th/21st Century Art 1: Introduction The influence of Duchamp’s notion of readymade art has had widespread and profound connotations for the development of art in the 20th and 21st century. Firstly, Duchamp’s art attempted to avoid many of the traditions of art at the time; his use of readymades stigmatised the notion of the artist as a creator. This radical redefinition of the role of artist informed future Conceptual artists in their attempts to relocate the boundaries that would define their role. Duchamp’s role was precisely the opposite role as those artists concerned about formulating an ideal form of subjective expression – Duchamp was more concerned about the political role of the artist and the institutions that serve to create art, rather than of the production of art itself. His readymade work challenges many of these conceptions and institutions by drawing attention to the political and social processes behind the production of art. Secondly, Duchamp’s readymade work also b roadened what could be defined as art. This placed art within a broader philosophical, structural and linguistic field of discourse in which the placement of art was more ephemeral. Ultimately, Duchamp’s project was to untie and disassemble art entirely; this is linked to the postmodern notion that categories and objects do not possess any inherent meaning, but only contain the meanings that we ourselves assign to them. As such, Duchamp’s legacy in both a practical and a theoretical and philosophical sense has served to inform cultural and artistic debate throughout the 20th century, from Jasper Johns, to pop art, performance art and other forms of avant-garde art that challenge the underlying principles behind artistic production. Duchamp’s readymade has left a profound legacy across the board of contemporary art for a number of reasons. Responses to the readymade and the challenge that it poses for a redefined art divorced from the artefact are widespread. Firstly, the elevation of a readymade work of art alters the role of the artist in the production process: Buchloh comments that the extent of Duchamp’s influence on art can be answered by responding to three particular points for discussion. Firstly, he suggests that Duchamp’s influence can be seen in how â€Å"the specific forms of how traditional forms of mark-making can be displaced by an exclusively photographic or textual operation of recording and documentation† (Buskirk Nixon, 205). The impact of this method is to erode and to redefine the role of artist. Whereas we can say that the classical and modernist form of the artist was to present us with a version of reality authenticated by the presence of the artist and the s ubjective aesthetic rules that made that artist â€Å"good† or â€Å"bad†, Duchamp’s readymade work, namely The Fountain, challenges this approach by stressing the role of the artist as a collector and an assembler rather than as a creator. Because it is obvious that Duchamp’s Fountain would not be considered a work of art if it were presented to us in a lavatory, Duchamp highlights and challenges the prejudices inherent to artistic production: namely, the traditional methods for artistic production and for â€Å"mark-making† are redefined and with it, the artist. Of course, this implication has had a profound impact on the development of 20th and 21st century art, from Jasper John’s flags to Warhol’s pop art, and has served to change the material conditions behind the production of art. The mechanistic connotations invoked by Duchamp and his readymade radically challenges and redefines the aesthetic palette available to artists; Duch amp’s influence was to challenge the subjective aesthetic of artistic production – Duchamp’s systemic use of a readymade on the one hand broadens the philosophical and conceptual basis for art production while on the other hand exposing the fallacies of art production in its more traditional sense. Of course, the impacts of this challenge have served to inform critical debate about the role of the artist in art ever since. 2: Readymades In Advance of The Broken Arm, Trebuchet (Trap), Hat Rack, Bicycle Wheel, Bottle Dryer, Air de Paris (400 words) â€Å"The elevation of a common object to the level of a work of art did not consist in merely choosing and signing it. It implied following a set of four rules: de-contextualisation, titling, limiting the frequency of the act and, the most esoteric of all, the necessity of a ‘rendez-vous’ – the meeting of the artist and the object† (Schwarz, 126). Duchamp’s readymade also served to interrogate the principles by which we define objects themselves; because Duchamp’s readymade work inherently interrogates the status of objects by changing their relation to one-another, it can be asserted that Duchamp’s project was to challenge how categories and objects are defined by their intrinsic properties rather than by their relationship to their broader environment. Buchloh points out that Duchamp facilitated the â€Å"radical dismantling of all traditional definitions of objects and categories – the ‘dematerialisation of the work of art,’ as Lucy Lippard called it – and its transfer onto the linguistic, the photographic, and the site-specific operations within which Conceptual art was defined† (Buskirk Nixon, 205). Of course, the linguistic and structural properties of Duchamp’s readymade serves to interrogate and dismantle the traditional role of artist. It also broadens the scope and the context of art itself. However, perhaps more significantly, the nature of Duchamp’s readymade does not allow for a particularly easy redefinition of art’s aesthetic role. For example, if it is asserted that Duchamp’s role was to reposition items of artistic worth and to place them into the political space of a gallery, this highlights the political rather than the aesthetic role of the gallery and the artist in measuring items of subjective worth. In addition, Duchamp’s process of selection is also telling: â€Å"The great problem was the act of selection. I had to pick an object without it impressing me and, as far as possible, without the least intervention of any idea or suggestion of aesthetic pleasure. It was necessary to reduce my personal taste to zero. It is very difficult to select an object that has absolutely no interest for us not only the day we pick it but which never will and which, finally, can never have the possibility of becoming beautiful, pretty, agreeable or ugly† (Paz, 88). Duchamp’s aim, therefore, was to divorce art from its meanings and from the methods of judgement that are usually assigned to it. His desire to locate an object that had absolutely no interest whatsoever highlights both his desire to challenge the centrality of the artistic object, and also helps us to trace his legacy through what can be construed as an attempt to apply Duchamp’s philosophical theory on locating a work of art that can never be â€Å"beautiful, pretty, agreeable or ugly†, and the inevitable failure entrenched within the politics of the readymade: despite Duchamp’s intention to create art that did not have any meaning, the assignation of meaning to Duchamp’s readymades as a series of fetishised objects seemed inevitable and also influenced other Conceptual artists in their project to erode the stability and the legitimacy of the artefact via a number of means: the fetishisation of art in late capitalism, for example, causes art to am ass a capitalistic value regardless of whether the artist him or herself wishes for a value to be attached to it. Trebuchet: a coat rack, which means a â€Å"trap for small birds and is a pun on the phonetically identical ‘trebucher’, meaning to stumble over.† (Schwarz 126-7). Section 3: Duchamp as Rrose Selavy (400 words) Duchamp and the dada movement in general were concerned about elucidating through irony and humour the role of the artist in the production process. Although the concept of the readymade changed this role from that of creator to selector of appropriate works of art, the role and identity of the artist was questioned in a more thoroughly mocking way with his invention of his female alter-ego, Rrose Selavy, whom several works of art were ascribed to. Naumann (2008) suggests that the invention of Rrose Selavy served the grander purposes and preoccupations of Duchamp’s work, whose interests and themes include â€Å"disguise, reflection and signature† (70). Taken generally, the invention of an alter-ego who has as much artistic authority as the artist himself serves to obfuscate, delude and disorient the viewer of the art in itself; the notion of disguise functions as a means of disrupting the traditional role of the artist as singular creator of the work in question. Rrose Selavy also has a performance aspect to it, which, among other things, helps to blur the boundaries between the work of art and the artist himself. Along with this, Duchamp’s alter-ego also has obvious connotations through the paradigm of gender studies. The peculiarities of Rrose Selavy’s role is particularly problematic concerning this. As well as satirising the role of artist, the construction of Rrose Selavy also expressed many of the reservations expressed by Duchamp about the increasingly blurred boundaries between gender. Hopkins (2008) argues that Duchamp’s views were deeply conservative regarding the growing concern over gender equality: â€Å"he was deeply wary of the growing autonomy and mannishness of contemporary ‘liberated’ women. [†¦] The evident preoccupation with gender indeterminacy [†¦] became thematized conclusively in the photographs of his female alter ego Rrose Selavy† (Hopkins, 81). But while Rrose Selavy can be read as a satire of the mannish women who had become increasingly empowered in 1920s France, the role of Selavy could also be seen as a satire of the â€Å"traditional† French aristocratic woman, whose conservative sensibilities are also mocked by Duchamp’s character. This problematic is also supported by the texts that frequently anchored the print representations of Rrose Selavy. Litterature magazine tagged one of his portraits with the following sentence: â€Å"Here is the Domain of Rrose Selavy – how arid it is – how fertile – how joyous – how sad† (from Hopkins 2008, 87), which demonstrates warmth and empathy with Rrose Selavy rather than irony or satire. Hopkins adds that â€Å"The Paris group may well have understood Duchamp to be killing off his old ‘dry’, dusty male persona and being reborn as Rrose (Eros).† (Hopkins, 86-7). Section 4: Duchamp’s use of language, wordplay, puns, paradoxes and humour in his work Fresh Widow, Why Not Sneeze Rrose Selavy, L.H.O.O.Q., Ready Made Rectified (Wanted $2000 Reward) (400 words) Duchamp’s assault on the art establishments and its values was executed in a manner that used a great deal of wordplay, irony and often cryptic allusion to more salacious and scandalous depths. Fresh Widow, for example, features a play on the words for French Window and can be read, as Hopkins comments, as â€Å"a salacious allusion to the sexual availability of bereaved women in Paris after the war†. Other puns assist in denigrating the stature of the traditional artistic canon by anchoring them in a completely different, and somewhat lewder context. This eroticism is exemplified by Duchamp’s famous work, â€Å"L. H. O. O. Q.†. Mundy (2008) suggests that humour and eroticism were key components to this Dada aesthetic, as Duchamp reinvented himself as a woman, disfigured a Mona Lisa with a moustache and printed underneath the letters â€Å"L. H. O. O. Q.† which, in French when pronounced phonetically translates as â€Å"she has a hot arse†. T he intention of this clearly stems from an attempt to intentionally sabotage works treated with reverence by the establishments at the time by using sexual innuendo and wordplay. In addition, the linguistic addition draws attention to what exists outside of Da Vinci’s original framing, perhaps drawing attention to extraneous factors in artistic production and reproduction that cannot be framed as easily. In many respects, the titles of Duchamp’s works have almost as great a significance as the works themselves; Mundy (2008) comments that this focus intentionally blurs the boundaries between traditional points of anchorage in the artistic production process: â€Å"The title-cum-impossible-question of another readymade, Why Not Sneeze Selavy?, posits unfathomable relationships between objective reality and subjective intentionality† (35). Paradox between different elements of the sculpture are brought into question and serve to defy simple, certain interpretation. Duchamp’s famous readymade The Fountain challenges the utilitarian role of the urinal by placing the signature horizontally rather than vertically, thus metamorphosing the work into a piece of art by defying its utilitarian purpose. For de Duve, the challenge of Duchamp’s legacy is, in part, linguistic: â€Å"I went straight for what I think to be the heart of the issue, namely the status of the sentence: ‘this is art.’ It entails no definition or redefinition whatsoever, neither of ‘this,’ nor of ‘art.’ To take a shortcut, I’d say it is the modern formula for the aesthetic judgement† (213). Because Duchamp primarily and explicitly asserts that his fountain is art because it is socially defined as such (by its location, its reception etc.), he places art within an unfamiliar field of discourse – namely that, anything can be seen as art providing it is anchored by the notion that what is being done is art. As su ch, Duchamp’s interrogates and problematizes any objective qualities that may have previously been considered â€Å"artistic† by nature. Of course, this has impacted significantly on conceptual and avant-garde art throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. His work Ready Made Rectified utilises Rrose Selavy by juxtaposing his own portrait with a wanted poster, on the one hand emphasising his role as enfant terrible of the artistic establishment and drawing ironical attention to the fallacious nature of the spectacle in itself. Humour and irony is always used to expose these central paradoxes and to create a detachment between the various angles that are interrogated by these pieces. Mundy (2008) suggests that, for Duchamp, â€Å"humour is always of a tragic nature. Humour signals a total independence of mind and is, essentially, a revolt of the spirit and of the unconscious against the conditioning of life and society. Humour has an endless power to challenge and provoke. It is a factor of opposition, superbly subversive in so far as it establishes a victory of the pleasure principle over the reality principle.† (35). Section 5: Duchamp’s work with Chance Three Standard Stoppages (400 words) Duchamp also interrogates the place of art in society by using chance operations. Three Standard Stoppages provides an example of this strategy, and again serves to undermine and interrogate the role of artist in the production process, as well as interrogating a number of other devices and standards. Firstly, Three Standard Stoppages draws attention to the authority of standardised meters. Judovitz (1995) suggests that, because the work is on the one hand based on standardised measurement, but on the other hand does not produce consistent results, undermines the legitimacy of â€Å"universal† systems of measurement, which has metaphorical connotations for the way in which value judgements are made: â€Å"it demonstrates the recognition that the meter itself as a unit of length is generated through approximation: the straightening out, as it were, of a curved meridian. Duchamp sets the viewer straight by graphically showing that the authority of the meter as a measuring devic e relies upon distortions that he corrects through chance operations† (Judovitz 1995, 48). In addition, the work also interrogates notions of artistic authority: Three Standard Stoppages â€Å"puts into question the voluntaristic and intentional logic that defines the creative act and the identity of the artist. To assume chance as a locus for production is to understand causality itself not as an origin but as a productive event, whose plasticity can redefine the notion of artistic creativity† (Judovitz 1995, 49). The utilisation of chance, therefore, metaphorically serves to emphasise the temporal element of artistic production – the â€Å"traditional† role of the artist as an objective, isolated producer of universal and timeless works is drawn into question by these chance operations. As such, the prior legitimacy of artistic creativity being equated to notions of timelessness are jeopardized. Section 6: Duchamp (or more accurately his alter-ego Rrose Selavy) The Green Box the use of Photomechanical Printing, instead of the usual autographic printing methods (400 words) The use of unusual printing methods in Duchamp’s The Green Box draws significant attention to the traditional methods associated with mechanical reproduction of works of art. The mechanical drawings of The Green Box, combined with the intentionally disruptive printing methods utilised draw attention to the very process of printing and the relationship between mass production techniques and the innately singular nature of hand-made works of art. Judovitz suggests that Duchamp’s use of mechanical drawing does not base itself around physical or scientific principles. Instead, â€Å"they represent a ‘symbolic way of explaining,’ one that privileges the logic of the machine, only to reveal its ironic underpinnings† (Judovitz 1995, 58). Significantly, the use of photomechanical printing further emphasises the problematic nature of these drawings which, on the one hand aesthetically reproduce the visual methods of mechanical drawing, while on the other hand is representative of a more outlandish, pseudoscientific principle that disrupts the legitimacy of the rubric, codes and language used to construct such mechanical, scientific devices. The use of photomechanical technology to construct these prints also draws attention to the more invisible process of production, rather than to the mere surface of the production itself. The legacy of Duchamp’s mixing and matching of various print processes has been widespread, both in terms of its philosophical qualities (questioning the authority of a single method of printing, and of the singular importance of a single work of art) and also its more technical aspects. Of course, this interrogation of the notion of artistic originality can be found in pop art, that reconciled notions of art, commerce and mass production in the generation of works of art that were no more artistically meaningful (meaningful in the traditional sense) than mass produced wallpaper or a newspaper advertisement. Thirkell (2005) comments that â€Å"Duchamp’s questioning of the notion of originality has also had a profound influence on modern print, ultimately triggering the revolution in print expression exemplified by photomechanically driven vehicle of Pop Art.† The Green Box, therefore, in its playfulness with printing processes would prove influential in the emerg ing debate surrounding artistic legitimacy, authority and originality. Section 7: Duchamp’s work in Optics in Motion Rotary Demisphere, Rotaryrelease (400 words) Many of Duchamp’s optical works focussed on optical illusion and the ambiguity of depth perception. His Rotoreliefs in particular create the illusion of depth and draw attention to the role of the artist as a magician or trickster. In addition, many of these works also had erotic connotations, as the voyeuristic proclivities of the viewer of the art are made explicit by overt and metaphorical sexualised content. Mundy (2008) comments that the Rotoreliefs and their disorientating movement echoes that of eroticism: â€Å"the visual sensation of movement back and forth had an erotic undertone† (31). This work in optics was also drawn from Picabia’s optical work, which was more overtly eroticised (Octophone II, for example). This draws attention to the innately subjective nature of sexualised imagery, and suggests that sexual content somehow alters and transfigures the technical quality of art in itself; by suggesting that sexuality is in itself a subjective illusion , Duchamp erodes the boundary that is arbitrarily placed between the art and the consumer of the artistic product. Mundy suggests that â€Å"he took the eroticisation of vision – the power of the corporeal and mental responses to control the interpretation of what is seen – to new heights† (31). This fragmentation of the process of interpretation serves metaphorically to activate the subjective, sensual feelings of the viewer of the art, who interprets the illusion as though is was not illusory. The use of optical illusion questions the boundary between what is â€Å"real† and what is â€Å"illusory†, as the eyes of the viewer effectively trick the viewer into perceiving the illusion as real. Perspective and depth and its illusory nature is made explicit by Duchamp’s works in optics. In Hand Stereoscopy, special glasses are required to give the work a level of depth, and also equates the use of colour and the use of depth: Judovitz comments that â€Å"these dots of pigment are the projection of the perspectival (mathematical) principles underlying optics† (138-9). In addition, the drawing together of depth illusions and colour serves to blur and make explicit the relationship between these technical attributes of the artistic product itself: as Duchamp himself suggests, â€Å"perspective resembles color† (Sanouillet Peterson 1973, 87). Section 8: Duchamp’s work influencing artists:Cornell: Duchamp’s work With Hidden Noise influenced Cornell’s Untitled (Rattle and Music Box); Cornell’s Cabinet of Natural History (Object) (one of the bottles containing shards of glass and labelled Methode de M. Duchamp) alludes to Duchamp’s work The Large Glass. Box Assemblages have become the process for Cornell’s entire oeuvre. (400 words) The legacy of Duchamp’s work has been significant, as many artists serve to draw attention (either explicit attention or implicit, coded reference) to the themes and codes of Duchamp’s disruptive oeuvre. Perhaps the most explicit reference to Duchamp’s legacy can be found in the work of Cornell, whose works drew directly from Duchamp and utilised much of his iconography. In particular, his Untitled works, such as Mona Lisa, Rattle and Music Box serve to use imagery popularised by Duchamp; in the former piece, the Mona Lisa in placed in a significantly different context, perhaps drawing more attention to Duchamp’s Mona Lisa of L. H. O. O. Q. than it does the original. The repetition of this imagery also draws attention to the mechanical processes of production that Duchamp used to interrogate the notion of the artist as a producer of singular works of art. Cornell’s use of readymade works can also be traced back directly to the influence of Duchamp. His Cabinet of Natural History, for example, is an assemblage of various found pieces of art placed in a glass cabinet. Apothecary bottles, maps and photographs are recontextualised in a manner thematically similar to Duchamp. In addition, Duchamp is also referenced directly, as if to interrogate further the concept of artistic authority and originality: Kosinski (2006) notes that â€Å"one bottle, containing shards of glass and labelled ‘Methode de M. Duchomp’ alludes to Duchamp’s key work, the Large Glass while playfully toying with the correct pronunciation of his French name† (39). The significance of Duchamp to Cornell is made explicit by the direct reference he makes to Duchamp’s legacy. In addition, his use of economy and meticulous, scientific rigour echoes the attention to detail of Duchamp’s scientific works. Thirdly, Cornell uses li nguistic anchorage, wordplay and the discrepancy between speech and writing (via the use of puns and misspellings) in a manner that echoes Duchamp’s work that places classical works of antiquity within a surprising new context. Section 9: Duchamp’s work influencing artists: Johns: Johns work Device makes reference to diagrams and sketches found in Duchamp’s Green Box. Johns acknowledged the powerful provocation of the readymade in his work Thoughts on Duchamps, published in1969 in Art in America. (400 words) Duchamp’s aesthetic statements on the role of artist was explored in an aesthetic sense by artists such as Jasper Johns, whose use of flags and collage sought to redefine what was considered as authentic art, Duchamp’s legacy also permeates into more conceptual fields. Buchloh comments that â€Å"the legacy of Duchamp was transformed from its first level of reception in the work of Jasper Johns to the second level in Morris – what one might call the semiological, or the structural / linguistic axis† (205). The effect of Duchamp on Jasper Johns is, by Johns own admission, significant. Again, Johns utilises Duchamp’s iconography and reformulates classical imagery in a manner that echoes Duchamp’s original idea to redefine the role of the Mona Lisa. For example, in Johns ambitious work The Seasons, explicit attention is drawn to the figure of the Mona Lisa in the first of the four paintings. Kosinski comments that irony is utilised in a manner t hat resembles the work of Duchamp himself: â€Å"The shadow in each panel of The Seasons is Johns himself, melancholic perhaps and surely self referential, although it is executed after a drawing of his cast shadow that was executed by someone else. This game of ironic distance is surely rooted in Duchamp’s play with shadow portraits† (32). This drawing of attention away from the subject and onto peripheral objects surrounding the subject draws immediately from Duchamp’s attempts to raise speculation about the single classical subject of painting. In addition, the dual authorship of these pieces raises questions about artistic integrity in a manner similar to Duchamp. Section 10: Duchamp’s work influencing artists: Rauschenberg: Duchamp’s influence is present in Rauschenberg’s boxes. He was influenced by With Hidden Noise for his work Music Box (Elemental Sculpture). (400 words) Thirdly, Duchamp’s legacy is explicitly referenced in the works of Rauschenberg, which look at the different ways in which the relationship between artistic modes of production and the increasingly fraught and disturbed relationship between artist and viewer. Rauschenberg’s Music Box (Elemental Sculpture), for instance, bears significant resemblance to Duchamp’s readymade With Hidden Noise, which demands the viewer to activate the piece in order for it to make a sound. The challenge that this poses for the viewer is similar to that of Rauschenberg: â€Å"Unwieldy, the box demands the physical engagement of the spectator-turned-performer, and the central issue is not the mysterious hidden object, but rather the potential sound itself, and the implied demands on the viewer to wrestle with the cumbersome crate† (Kosinski 2006, 19). The boxes that demand the attent ion of the viewer, and disturb the cherished role and piece of the artistic piece disturbs and challenges the traditionally voyeuristic relationship between the artist and the work in question. In addition, Rauschenberg’s boxes are more expansive in their approach to the role of art in the society that surrounds them; in a manner similar to Duchamp’s readymades, Rauschenberg takes directly from the society that surrounds it rather than approaching the production of art in a purely â€Å"creative† sense. Of course, this draws significantly upon the thematic content of Duchamp’s legacy, and draws explicit attention to the paradoxes and the frustrations that both artists had with the traditionally impotent role of art regarding the broader society that served to pigeonhole it. Rauschenberg’s process, while drawing upon Duchamp’s legacy, serves to reappropriate many of its central motifs and preoccupations in a manner that distinguishes it from the work of Cornell and Johns. While both Cornell and Rauschenberg utilised boxes in a manner that drew upon the work of Duchamp to frame its preoccupations, the nature and the content of these boxes were very different in their overall thematic context: â€Å"Cornell’s boxes are highly refined and rich in their variety of cultural allusion.† Kosinski (2006, 44) comments: â€Å"Rauschenberg’s early boxes, though small, are cruder, atavistic and dangerous rather than delightful† (44). As such Rauschenberg can be seen as taking a specific element of Duchamp’s thematic approach to readymade art and pushing it to its logical conclusion; his work is more confrontation than Cornell, who sought to beautify and protect his modified readymades by placing them in a more aestheti cally pleasing context, surrounding them in glass, etc. Rauschenberg’s work, by contrast, offers a more directly political assault on the establishment ethics at the time, drawing more upon Duchamp’s concept of the readymade as â€Å"junk from life† (Kosinski 2006, 46). Section 11: Duchamp’s work influencing artists: Robert Morris: Morris’s work Mirrored Cubes is influenced by Duchamp’s Green Box. Morris’s Three Rulers was influenced by Duchamp’s Three Stoppages. (400 words) The work of Robert Morris is also framed significantly by the central paradoxes opened up by dada and by Duchamp in particular. It’s attention, according to Benjamin Buchlow, is secondary to the primary reception in the artists described above. Here, the response to Duchamp’s work is based on â€Å"what one might call the semiological, or the structural / linguistic axis† (Buskirk and Nixon, 205). By this, Buchlow suggests that Morris’s Cardfile piece in particular draws attention to these categories of meaning regarding the tension between artistic subjectivity and anonymity. The development of Conceptual art in America, which is epitomised by Morris’s problematic work which draws attention to notions of artistic validity and of the tension between this structural and linguistic axis, is heavily indebted to the particular tensions opened up by Duchamp and his technical works which oriented itself around an exploration of the role of subjectivity in the artist. While this is drawn attention to, it is significant to note that the problematic surrounding artistic subjectivity in a given artistic piece continues to remain prevalent even in Morris’s deeply deconstructive and polymorphous work. Alberro comments that â€Å"Behind the Duchamp / Morris legacy I always see the figure of the artist; the artist / agent is always there. It’s there in both Duchamp and Morris, even in the Cardfile where he’s trying to remove it† (209). Thus, the drawing of attention to the purely linguistic sphere in Morris’s work equates to Duchamps utilisation of processes of artistic production that were traditionally outside of the traditional camp of visual, plastic art production. Like the readymades, Morris’s Cardfile is conceptual as it draws explicit attention to its own inherent aesthetic meaninglessness. It does not connote anything by itself; rather, it is defined by its context as an exhibition piece. I n addition, its purely linguistic role serves to disturb the previous aesthetic determinants of giving a piece artistic value as such. The role of artist in Duchamp’s readymade has been transfigured in a radical way into a political and social figure – namely, he is not defined by the artwork that he / she produces, but is defined by his / her position within the political space offered – this is explored by conceptual artists such as Robert Morris and in performance art where the artist does not decide to entrench himself in the dogmas of an accepted aesthetic tradition, and does not distance himself fro