A Similar Theme in Works of Neoclassical and Romantic

The genesis of Neoclassical Art and that of Romantic Art thrived in close proximity as far as chronology was concerned.Neoclassicism or Neo-Classicism marked the revival of Classical interests in literature, visual arts, music, theater and architecture between the mid-eighteenth and the nineteenth century. Mainly canonical works of ancient Greek and Roman times were reproduced by the neoclassicists, but not without experimenting with their own impressions and improvisations. Maintaining the tradition of a culture which was rich and opulent in the past was a major objective of the neoclassical craftsmen.But the Romantic genre of decorative and performing art, which hit the scene in the eighteenth century Western Europe, was a trendsetter in its own rights. While neoclassicism dealt with the resurgence of the antique ideal that was conceived of by Virgil, Raphael and many other eminent artists, the Romantic Movement was a reaction against the severities of reality and rationalization. Naturalistic cultural expressions were regained and given newer dimensions by the neoclassicists.On the contrary, the Romantics escaped from the sternness of routine life by delving into fanciful musings on nature in its untamed form. The point of resemblance between both these movements can be found in their dealing with aesthetics of art and subjective virtues. This essay is going to compare and contrast between two archetypal artworks from the eighteenth century Neoclassical and Romantic genres.The eighteenth century Europe was woken up from a slumber of inertia when the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann showered accolades on the ingenuity and authenticity of the ancient Greek sculptor in his essay Gedanken à ¼ber die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture), published in 1755. While this treatise concerned only the Neoclassical frameworks of art, our proposed course of study in this paper is going to be based on finding a common theme from the Neoclassical and the Romantic era.The basic problem in doing so is to excogitate a way to match the sublimities of ancient Greek tastes and preferences with the realism of the Romantic Europe. Subject matter, style and period played a pivotal role in shaping the vision of the neoclassical artist.[1] Moreover, fastidiousness over maintaining the class is a definitive neoclassical approach. Now if we take into account the cultural influence as well as the artistic nuances of a given work of art, we are unlikely to appreciate it insightfully.[2] These two parameters are independent of each other in that the former has nothing to do with the artist’s vision and objective.The cultural precondition exists in the subconscious of the creator while he goes about his business with the brush and the canvas. The same holds true for the Romantic artist as well. Sublimity, as claimed by Prager,[3] is essentially a romantic quality. The Romantic preoccupation with aesthetics analyzes the underlying meaning of the theme which is being worked upon, and makes a differentiation between sublime and beautiful. But the paradigmatic cases of neoclassical painting do not distinguish between these two viewpoints. By and large, what stands out in any typical neoclassical artwork is its chastity of emotion and lofty ideals that are reflective of the root source and time.Mother of the Gracchi by Angelica Kauffmann is widely regarded to be a representative work of the eighteenth century neoclassical age. Being a trained and well-cultivated painter, Kauffmann was extremely scrupulous about the subtleties of expression and proper treatment of the theme.Hence, Mother of the Gracchi goes beyond the lifeless imitation of a Classical theme at a latter period. Drawing inspiration from the classical Greek and Roman history and literature, Kauffmann repudiated the ancient characters and replaced them with modern one s. The settings too were changed so that the modernistic charm of the neoclassical period could be retained.Revered as an exemplum virtutis (example or model of virtue),[4] this artwork superseded the more flaunty and playful rococo style both in the gravity of theme as well as in taste. This painting thematically concerns the virtue of Cornelia, mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. It displays motherly affection in its most profound manner as Cornelia is seen bringing her two sons as jewels to a visitor who is seated.The Romantic artwork we have picked up in our present study is Alexander Cozens’ paintings. Just as Kauffmann belonged to a learned community of painters, Cozens too was aware of the systematic and accurate drawing procedures from the very beginning of his career as a painter.His works were largely influenced and shaped by his prolonged academic tenure in Italy, where he had to make topographical pen and wash drawings in oil. The salient features of Cozensâ₠¬â„¢ works included â€Å"speed and spontaneity in execution† along with a firm focus on the subject at hand.[5]While it is a daunting task to compare and contrast between two entirely different schools of painting, it would be worth taking a look, first of all, at the similarities. In many ways, Cozens’ works captured the pastoral beauty of nature in its unblemished form. Albeit Kauffmann addressed to a historical theme, she portrayed Cornelia as emblematic of Mother Nature.Moreover, Cozens’ drawings continue to evoke a sense of awe and bewilderment among contemporary critics for their taste and sublimity. Like Kauffmann, he too was able to convey his powerful feelings by using select washes of a few basic colors.Now if we are to look into the contrasting aspects of the Neoclassical and the Romantic artworks, we should be beginning with the cultural remnants of the Classical times that shaped the neoclassical attitude towards painting. It was imperative that Ka uffmann should incorporate the Roman architectural patterns in Mother of the Gracchi – a compulsion Alexander Cozens did not have to pay attention to.Again, the spontaneous flow of emotions, which is so typical of the Romantic movement at large, are missing in the neoclassical paintings. It was as if the neoclassicists were more preoccupied by the exactness of form than by imbibing a sense of freedom and expressionism into their works.Much in sync with the prerequisites of the Romantics, Cozens was a visionary poet who could blend colors with subtle use of light and shade to render a mystic charm to his works. But Kauffmann had to follow stricter rules and norms set by the earlier trends of the Classicism. However, the use of symbolism was more prominent and effective in Mother of the Gracchi and other neoclassical works than what was observed in the works of Cozens.[1] Kleiner et al., p. 767 [2] Binkley, p. 12 [3] Prager, p. 93 [4] Kleiner et al., p. 767 [5] Murray, p. 227

Women participation in US public Sector/Government

Research on the male-female balance in numbers, power and opportunities in the government and public sector has included several works and research that highlight the dwindling and adverse ratios in female/male working proportions, status and conditions in the US over the decades, which is also observed as a world wide trend. This is in line with the traditional bias against the female worker that has characterized the world employment scenario for the last several years. Notable works that throw light in this regard are that of Mary E. Guy’s Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Backward: The Status of Women’s Integration into Public Management (1993). Guy wrote, â€Å"When tracing women’s integration into public management, we see pattern of rapid progress in the middle and late 1970s, followed by a period of quiescence in the mid-1980s. The late 1980 and early 1990s, however, are showing enhanced progress again. † Still, â€Å"women occupy the lower rungs on the agency ladders and men occupy the upper rungs,† she wrote (Guy,1993. ) Research and data collected in later years by 2 arious agencies such as the US Department of Labor, the Census Bureau, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have corroborated similar viewpoints. Table I below clearly displays the trend of female/male composition in federal employment. Table I Composition of Federal Work Force – Ten-Year Trend: Some Progress, Little Overall Change FY 1997 – FY 2006[5] Work Force Participation Rate 2000 CLF FY 2006 FY 1997 % FY 2006 % Men 1,487,030 58. 35 56. 94 53. 20 Women 1,124,463 41. 65 43. 06 46. 80 As compared to 1997 there is a minor increase in female employment from 41. 65% in 1997 to 43. 6% in 2006. The positions in which women work have a strong influence on their earnings, facilities and career growth opportunities. Women in managerial positions have greater job flexibility as compared to those in lower service jobs. In some states and departments in the US, employment in managerial 3 positions varies by race and et hnicity, however much anti discriminatory policies may have been put in place. Amongst women, only 25% of managerial positions were occupied by American African women while white women held 41% of such positions. Overall, women earn 85. 5% of what men earn. A majority of women still continue to work in traditionally women’s occupations. In this regard recently released Census data collected by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research clearly indicated that workplace payment gap between women and men is gradually getting bad as compared to earlier times. Between 2003 and 2006 the median annual earnings for women workers in government reduced by 0. 6% at $ 35000 while that for men was almost unchanged at $ 44000. However the overall situation has improved since 1960, when the average American woman earned 60 cents against every dollar earned by the American male. Presently the situation has improved to a woman earning about 85 cents against a dollar earned by a man. It can be seen that status of women has improved in general and particularly in the federal government as also evedenced from census figures. Major contributors for this have been the gradual changes made in law, social and business practices. Moreover the US ec onomy has grown more than five times since then whereby more 4 opportunities for women have been created. Jobs have also shifted from physical tasks to cognitive and calibre related functions thus opening wider avenues for women. Measured by 1960 standards the overall status of the American woman has improved considerably, but they have not got their due proportional share in as much as the economy has grown. In this context an additional observation is the fact that women and most minorities in the US as also in most parts of the world represent a higher percentage of employees at lower levels in any department or undertaking of the government while being absolutely underrepresented at the higher end of the ladder, implying that a very small percentage of women make it to the top positions of the government and public sector undertakings. This is clearly evident from Table II 5 Table II Senior Pay Level Representation FY 1997 / FY 2006 Senior Pay Level Positions FY 1997 FY 2006 Number % of SPL Number % of SPL Total SPL Work Force 15,381 20,070 Men 12,124 78. 83 14,814 73. 81 Women 3,257 21. 17 5,256 26. 19 It can be seen that in 1997 there were 21. 17% women occupying the senior positions while in 2006 the position improved marginally only to 26. 19% The Federal work force has for decades reflected patterns that show disproportionately high numbers of women in lower ranks in the public ector and government departments. Similarly there is lot of disproportion in the number of women occupying higher positions. In 2005, only 6. 2% of federally employed women were occupying positions ranked as upper middle management positions (General Schedule [GS]-13 and above). Comparitively male representation was as much as four times higher with 28% of all males employed in the upper level of GS-13 and above. 6 This is often referre d to as the glass ceiling concept and has become an important tool to understand working environment particularly in the American working context. Significantly the Civil Rights Act of 1991 established the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission which was entrusted the task of assessing the barriers that hindered the advancement of women to top ranking decision making positions. It also set into motion measures that would hinder such discrimination. Discrimination issues based on gender have long been a subject of debate at various forums internationally and was strongly taken up in the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and in Civil Rights Act of 1964. However it was soon realised by the mid 1980s that although massive changes took place in the emographic, social, and legal aspects of the US society, such discrimination on the basis of gender continued to exist. Hymowitz and Schellhardt used the term glass ceiling to describe this discrimination in 1986. The few women who managed to rise due to their calibre were also blocked by barriers of strongly embedded disrimination practices that continued to exist and they consequently could not break through the glass ceiling. 7 One particular aspect of gender disparity in lowering the status of women workers is the strong pattern in disparity of pay and benefits as figured from he data available from US Federal salary data for positions primarily occupied by females. Figures available from the Department of Labor show that in 2005 the hourly earnings of women were only 76. 5% as compared to men. It is primarily for this reason that women have started to opt out of bureaucratic employment towards entrepreneurship and other part time work. Table III validates the findings of the federal government census. Table III Federal Wage System (FWS) Representation FY 1997 / FY 2006 Federal Wage System (FWS) P ositions FY 1997 FY 2006 Number % of FWS Number % of FWS Total FWS Work Force 243,343 194,858 Men 217,573 89. 41 173,389 88. 98 Women 25,770 10. 59 21,469 11. 02 8 In the light of these stark revelations the Federal government has taken steps to remove the imbalance in gender employment by attempting to make equal opportunity a possibility for women. All government departments have been asked to devise a strategy and adopt policies to remove the glass ceiling that has been pulling back women from rising higher in their careers and to award them with senior management and decision making positions. A strong measure for gender inequality is the salary levels that differentiate the positions occupied by males and females. Data proves that on an average males earn more than females in the federal government. The average salary for male managers in FY 2005 was $45,300; and for females, $35,300. Thus as an average female employees made about 84. 7% of the salary made by her male counterpart. Since Federal pay scales are never based on gender, they are obviously different due to lower ranks occupied by women. It is also clear that majority of the higher positions are occupied by men. Women occupy 1/3 rd positions below the GS-12 level and only 1/6th of positions above G-13 levels thus implying that majority of women are clustered in the lower echelons of the heirarchy. Table IV below illustrates the percentage details of high ranking women with various government agencies. 9 Significantly and in contrast it can be seen that women occupy 75% and 66. 67% of the top positions with the Defense Security Service and Defense Human Resource Activity respectively. Table IV Ranking of Agencies with the Highest Percentage of Women in Senior Pay Level Positions in FY 2006 (Agencies With 500 Or More Employees) Agency Total Work Force # SPL # Women in Senior Pay Level Positions # % Defense Security Service 544 4 3 75. 00 Defense Human Resource Activity 880 12 8 66. 67 Corp. for National and Community Service 558 19 10 52. 63 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 2,195 32 15 46. 88 Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency 1,140 12 5 41. 67 The years that followed 1991 brought significant changes in the American political landscape and in the entire federal work force. New Presidents brought new concepts and practices regarding women in high positions. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice as also Attorne General Janet Reno became the pioneering and powerful women to hold cabinet positions, and other appointees like Donna Shalala as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alice Rivlin at the Office of Management and Budget, and Sheila Widnall as Secretary of the Air Force caused one dignitary to comment that when senior staff members meet at White House 11 meetings half the attendees are usually women. This is however farfetched and isolated compared to the large array of discriminatory evidence available.

YOU Be the Judge Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

YOU Be the Judge - Assignment Example He knew well that he was headed for the large pond in the Newark Country Club (Barks n.d). The children slid through a hole in the trail-fence country club, where there was a sign posted â€Å"no trespasser†. The arising argument is why the country club failed to stop these children from playing over there, and why the country club did not say there was a deep pond(Barks n.d). Many claim that the country club has a duty to safeguard its pond, while children are are known to play close by. According to a country club employee, David Cox, he has told the children repeatedly to leave from that place because trail fence and signs cannot keep them away. However, this pond has certain best features that make it an attraction for kids (Smith, and Lee, n.d). During their free time, kids play on the ice, especially skating, meaning that these children have enough experience to realize the dangers associated with the pond. Jeremiah’s mother had cautioned her kids severally to stay away. After the death of the child, the club said that Jeremiah death is accidental, but also denied responsibilities. His mother reported the incident to the court, claiming that it was careless for â€Å"failing to childproof the pond† during its expansion (Sith, and Lee, n.d). Jeremiah’s mother’s lawyer said to the court that the club was so attractive that children could not identify danger. She claimed that the death of her son was a result of the attractive setting of the golf course pond, and her son could never understand what was in there. The incident at Newark Country Club left many people arguing about why the country club owner did not put up signs that told the children where they were supposed to be playing. The country club employee, David Cox stated that he has been warning the children against playing near the pond, that there are a split-trail fence and the signs (Smith, and Lee, n.d). However, the two

The Irish Economy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Irish Economy - Essay Example Our paper is divided into five sections. The first one is the discussion of the current economic state of Ireland particularly using the 2008 and 2009 data plus the recent 2010 figures for an update, then we discuss the contributing factors to such a state in the next section. To get into the details, we examine and analyze the fiscal and monetary policies done recently. This will compose of the third and the fourth sections respectively, wherein analyses using economic theories will be in-depth. The last section discusses the question of how successful has the Irish government and the Central Bank been in managing the economy. Here we will be able to directly answer the question. Ireland has been a success story, until the recent global economic recession. From an agricultural country at the start of 1900, Ireland experienced an unprecedented economic growth with its GDP doubling in size in a little more than a decade (ESRI). It entered the European Union in 1973, as one of the pioneering countries. Fuelled by its EU membership and several investment promotion policies, the Irish economy became the fastest growing economy among the EU members (iExplore). "In recent decades the Irish economy has been transformed from being agrarian and traditional manufacturing based to one increasingly based on the hi-tech and internationally traded services sectors. In 2007, the services sector accounted for 64 per cent of Irish GDP, while industry accounted for 33 per cent and agriculture just 3 per cent" (ESRI). Ireland's economic transformation was achieved through the promotion of export-led and advanced technology business thorough an open economy. It has attractive packages to investors with its banking and finance growing significantly, together with tourism (iExplore).Mr. John Hurley, Governor of the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland noted that the current Irish economy is not comparable to what it has been 20 to 25 years ago, particularly in the area of standard of living, transforming from a relatively low standard of living to one with an average per capital income being above the entire EU Average (Hurley). Over-all, it is the EU membership that can be safely assumed to have brought forth the change in Irish economy, transforming it from a mainly agricultural society into the "modern, technologically advanced Celtic Tiger economy" (European Union). The remarkable economic growth that the country has achieved face an uphill at the start of 2007. "The pace of economic growth decelerated in the second half of 2007, largely due to a contraction in housing construction. In 2008 it is estimated that output fell for the first time since 1983, and the recession deepened in 2009" (ESRI). The graph below shows the GDP growth from 1997 to 2009. After 11 years of positive growth, with the highest posted in 1999 at near 12%, Ireland suffered a recession in 2008 and 2009. It posted a real GDP growth of around -2.5% in 2008 and around -7.1% in 2009. Source: (ESRI) The decline in GDP has been manifested in various economic aspects such as prices, production and employment. Volatile Money Supply: Irish Inflation Inflationary pressures has

Strategic Management in a Global Environment Assignment - 5

Strategic Management in a Global Environment - Assignment Example The paper tells that good governance means that all the authority and power is used in the most convenient way to uplift the performance of the institution without necessarily exploiting all the stakeholders and available resources. The secret of success lies in the power of the management team to utilize the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to place the institution in a better functioning state. Good governance provides clear direction for the business institution. Transparency, fairness, accountability, planning, monitoring, and vigilance are the main building blocks of good governance. There is increased investment, boosted investor confidence, as well as interest. There is fairness in handling all stakeholders especially when there is good governance in a company. Good governance also strengthens the competiveness of the company besides making it cruise through the constant economic crises. Another benefit is scrapping off corruption and fund embezzlement, good g overnance has better strategies for conducting quality assurance programmes and giving comprehensive feedback for improvement in areas of weakness. The other side is bad governance; this is the true opposite of good governance. There lacks fairness, equity, responsiveness, transparency, effectiveness, and efficiency, in bad governance. In most case, bad governance precedes the downfall of a company. This means that the company is unable to survive the harsh and overwhelming market competition. Furthermore, many funds are misappropriated through lack of monitoring and evaluation. Bad governance is almost synonymous with poor planning and inadequate preparedness.

Raymond Carver, Analytical paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Raymond Carver, Analytical paper - Essay Example The story tries to explore the notion of different people about love, the uncertainty they face in their love life and the common ideological conflicts they face. In addition, one can see a certain degree of effort from the part of Carver to show the hollowness of the so called ‘true-love’ and its short term nature. The basic ideology the writer tries to express through this story in which nothing happens seems to be that every ‘true love’ contains a certain degree of selfishness as a basic element, and this selfishness haunts every person at varying degrees. In the story, four people sit around a table in an afternoon and start discussion on the topic love while drinking gin. The four people, Terri, her husband Mel, the writer and his wife Laura engage in a discussion on the true meaning of love, though Mel leads the discussion. While Terri and Mel seem to have differences in opinion on the subject, and a greater degree of insecurity too, the other people a ppear strong in their attachment. However, one can see exhibition of selfishness reaching the extent of violence and even killing exhibited by some characters. The first factor that needs to be analyzed seems to be the degree of selfishness expressed by each character. The former love of Terri deserves that place. His love turned a physical obsession with violence. The man loved Terri so much that he even tried to kill her. Terri knows it was love and even now, after marrying Mel, she says ‘I know it was’. As she says it, one can see a rise in the feeling of insecurity faced by Mel and he even strongly argues that true love is spiritual in nature and it has nothing to do with physical. One can see his humble efforts to prove that what Terri got from her first lover was not love. However, Terri seems to possess little idea about the feeling of insecurity her husband faces, or is totally neglecting it, stating again and again that her first lover loved her very much. It s eems from the story that the couple, though sit and drink together, lives in two different poles and have little common consensus. The story makes it clear that though Mel does not like his wife meeting her former lover, she visited him again on his death bed. She accepts the fact that she and Mel spent many days in the fear of that man attacking them, but, even then, she keeps a ‘soft corner’ for him against the wishes of her husband. However, she feels happy, contented, and satisfied in the fact that her husband does not like to talk to his first wife Majorie. She happily explains to others that Mel wishes that Majorie be married again or dies. Thus, the writer succeeds in picturizing how selfishness and obsession are intermingled in the feeling of love. In addition, it shows the female ability to feel for two people at the same time. Terri, based on her personal convenience, jumps from one to another totally ignoring the impact of her activities on the others. Terri even now knows that her first lover loved her and knows very well that Mel loves her. However, she still goes on keeping sentiments for the former lover and yet prefers to live with Mel as it does not involve physical violence. Thus, she adopts a position that is good to no one. Her behavior seems annoying Mel a great deal and that seems to be the reason for his admiration of the narrator’s wife Laura and saying to Laura â€Å"if I did not have Terri, I would fall in love with you†. However, this statement instantly hurts Terri and

Movie assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Movie assignment - Essay Example Mendez seeks for an alternative, and he came up with an idea. Together with his supervisor, they contact a Hollywood make-up artist. They jointly set up a fake film studio, make their plans public, and they fruitfully establish the deception of developing a science fantasy called ‘Argo’. Posing as a producer for Argo, Mendez manages to enter Iraq and link up with the six escapees. He gives them Canadian passports and phony identities to enable them get past the airport security. Through a series of events and intrigues, Mendez manages to save the six hostages. I choose to analyze Tony Mendez. Tony Mendez-The values that I choose to explore about Tony Mendez include; Values, Commitment, Goals and Potentiality. Goals; Goals are the elements in a movie that give meaning to the general story that unfold momentarily in scene. In every movie plot, all main characters have at least one goal in the story that is long-term, and one minor goal or even more in every scene. The long term goal usually sets up the frontward movement of the story. This is the front story which is referred to as the Dramatic plot action. Short term goals on the other hand are objectives, actions or tasks a character needs to achieve within a speculated period of time so as to achieve his goals which are long-term. Incase the long-term identify the Dramatic Action Plot, and then the short-term goals will help identify the character development plot. My take on Tony Mendez’s Goals are as follows; one of the goals that Mendez had was to prove right his disapprovals of the US State Department’s options for saving the hostages from Iran. He had to help the hostages pretend that they knew everything about Canada; otherwise they would have been caught and killed. Another short-term goal that Mendez had, was to set up a fake film studio, manage to make public their plans, and productively set up the deception of developing Argo. While in Iran, he had a goal of providing the six hostages with Canadian passports and phony identities. That was to assist him achieve his minor goal which was to organize the hostages and help them get through the tight airport security. The long-term goal of Tony Mendez is to rescue the hostages from Iran successfully and safely. This long-term goal clearly sets up the frontward movement of the movie. These goals that Mendez had were meant to enable him save the hostages from their captivity in Iran without any casualties. All the short-term goals mentioned above were to make the rescue operation successful. If any of those short-term goals was not well handled, then chances of them not having a successful mission would be close to zero. The function of the long-term goal that Mendez had was to set the motion of the movie in a fluent manner from the first stage to the last stage. These goals have been further changed over the movie’s course by the intrigues that momentarily take place in the movie. The long-term goal was cemented by the fact that security at the airport was tight, and just as they were departing the airport, the security tried in vain to stop them. These goals are brilliant at creating and sustaining suspense all through the movie. Values; These are valuable and durable ideas or beliefs shared by a character of a movie about what is bad or good and undesirable and desirable. These are the regards that a character is held to deserve. They are the importance

Human Resource policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Human Resource policy - Essay Example Positive action approach has been adopted by most of the organizations to ensure diversity and gender and racial balance is attained (Roberts & Institute of Personnel and Development, pp 22). Positive action is a termed used to refer to the measures which are employed by companies and organizations to counteract the negative impacts of discrimination in employment and also to help reduce stereotyping and this discrimination. However, positive action is not meant to bring about favorable treatment for some people who are marginalized. While employing people using the positive action, employers are not to employ unqualified individuals. Positive action is an initiative which is used to help employers encourage some certain groups of people who inequitably represented in the employment sector to apply for promotions and jobs. Due to the previous discrimination in work places, some people feel unworthy or unfit to apply for jobs in certain areas either because of their lifestyle, race or background and at times because of past experiences which such people could have encountered in other organizations which made them believe that they may not be welcome in other companies as their employees. Positive action initiatives have been made legal by some particular sections of the law although different it raises different questions regarding cases of positive discrimination which can arise while employing the positive action during recruitment and selection processes (Roberts & Institute of Personnel and Development, pp 28-33). Recruitment and selection techniques While carrying out the recruitment and selection process, the human resource department uses different approaches to ensure that the best candidates are selected and appointed for particular posts. While implementing the positive action policy, the human resource department should ensure that the form of technique being employed would enhance this practice rather than hindering it. While deciding on the right technique to employ while carrying out the recruitment and selection process, it is vital to ensure that the selection technique would meet the needs of an organization. Also, the technique being employed should meet the requirements of the company. The kind of posts being filled also determines the kind of recruitment and selection process or technique (Roberts & Institute of Personnel and Development, pp 55). One of the major techniques which is employed while carrying out the selection and recruitment process is use of interviews. This process begins with advertising whereby a vacant post is advertised to the public and/ or employees and they are invited to apply for the post. This attracts a pool of applicants from whom a few are selected based on merits and other qualifications which the company or an organization deems necessary. In cases where positive action is being employed, the advert put forward should clearly state so to ensure that the advert attracts the attention of the under represented individuals in an organization. So as to attract the desired individuals while advertising for jobs using positive action policy, an organization may advertise job vacancies in minority ethnic media or other media means which are bound to reach the target group more efficiently especially. This is more so when an organization wishes to attract diverse cultures or races. During the

President Kennedy as the person who saved the west from nuclear war Essay Example for Free

President Kennedy as the person who saved the west from nuclear war Essay Section 1 The Cold war, which existed between the Soviet Union and the United States following World War ll, and the constant threat of nuclear devastation, which it presented, evolved throughout its history. The relationship between these two super powers was strained at the best, at its worst; it was hostile and came near the unleashing of the devastating nuclear arsenal both countries possessed. The term cold war was used first by an American banker relating to the tension between the U. S.S.R and the USA, when he said cold he was referring to the fact that both countries were doing there best to stop direct fighting and for it to become a hot war. The reason these two super powers fought were over their ideologies on how to live in each others country where as America was run by Capitalism, this was the system that gave common civilians the right to vote for which ever government party they wanted to run the country it also gave the press freedom of speech where government scandals were hardly censored, unlike The Soviets who ran a one party state consisting of only the Communist party called Soviets, but because most of the soviets were Communist the government was really run by the one party. Also there was mass government run industries like the media as this was run by them, the news was censored strictly throughout covering up any government scandal. The other major difference was the distribution of wealth and the line between the rich and the poor as this was very low in Russia however in the U.S average living standards where much higher as wealth was dispersed more unevenly throughout business Tycoons and their estate s. All these factors lead to nuclear war and the cold war between Russia and America, America was the first to release a nuclear attack and used, the first nuclear atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, on 6th August 1945 showing the world what lengths America would go to, to win a war. Source 1a A concluding sentence The relationship also evolved over time, and the emergence of Fidel Castro in Cuba was a catalyst for a change in the relationship between these powers. The threat he and his Communist party presented to his American neighbours would change the way the Americans dealt with their Cold War enemies. In the same way, Castros Communists also gave Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviets an entrance into North and Central American affairs. Section two Prior to the revolution in Cuba, during Batistas brutal regime there was a period of time describes as an easing of tensions in relationships between the East and the West. These tensions were eased because many of the potential conflicts between Eastern and western sides had been resolved, such as the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. During Batistas regime as dictator over Cuba the Americans had been its main customer of Cubas main resource, Sugar cane, this made relationships between Cuba an America quite friendly and Cuba was full of American influence with Gentlemens Clubs, Brothels and Casinos it was nick named the rich Americans playground, also on the island were strong Mafia connections, yet the police did little to stop them as they could easily be bribed and were often dealing themselves. The easing of tensions and the apparent lack of interest from either of the two cold war powers in aggression against one another would be brought to an end following Castro taking over Cuba in early 1959, but at this time the relationship between Fidel Castro and the Cuban Communist was not entirely clear. During the Cuban revolution that saw Fulgencio Batistas brutal regime overthrown and come to an end, Castro had been at the fore of the uprising. He sold all the American owned businesss the mere presence of a Communist island within 100 miles of the United States drew much attention to Cuba, both to the Soviet Union and their American rivals. The real cold war evolution did not have its beginnings in the working relationship, which was to be established between Havana and Moscow, but rather in the deteriorating relationship between the Cuban capital and Washington. American business interests in Cuba were being threatened by Castros policy of nationalisation of lands, and the U.S. was begging to feel that they could not do business with Castros government this feeling was the reason for the beginnings of an action against the Castro Regime approved by President Eisenhower, and late adopted by John Fitzgerald Kennedy when he was elected to office in November 1960. This program consisted of political action, propaganda and military operations and was behind the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion, although this program was directed against Cuba it may also have sent another message to the soviet Communists that the Americans were not prepared to tolerate communism so near their own borders. In any case, Source 2b Concluding sentence This policy, a direct reaction to Fidel Castro himself and the communist regime, which he had brought to power, could not have any positive effect on relations between the Capitalist Americans and the communists. The real advantage of Cuba to the Soviets was in the form of gaining leverage in negotiations over Berlin, which was of far more importance to the communist than the small, poor island ruled by Castro. Tensions over Berlin came about after Khrushchev demanded the western powers, which occupied Berlin, evacuate the city. Khrushchev, alarmed at the growing military and economic strength of West Germany otherwise, the soviets would turn the administration of Berlin to the East German government, with which the west had no agreements and under the rule of which the western powers would have no access whatsoever to Berlin. By removing the western influences from the area, Khrushchev hoped to Weaken ties between the United States and West Germany and provoke disunity among NATO allies The NATO powers however did not back down, however there came to be a dà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½tente over the question of administration of Berlin. This still existed in 1962, and Fidel Castro would prove to be a willing pawn in a move by Khrushchev to gain the upper hand in the negotiations over the administration of Berlin. Prior to the events of 1962, which made up the Cuban missile crisis came the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion, this great American failure showed to which lengths the Americans were prepared to go to remove the influence of Castro and communism from the island of Cuba. On 16th April 1961, 1,300 CIA- trained Cuban exiles in American-surplus planes and boats left to invade Cuba and liberate their countrymen this so called liberation was unsuccessful the Cuban people had been prepared for such an invasion and in fact the Cuban Military forces and Castro himself also knew of the plans of the invasion. One hundred and fifty invaders were killed, the rest taken prisoner and the American attempt to overthrow Castro and his regime had failed. There were several crucial outcomes to this invasion however, all affecting the relationship between the eastern and western powers. The soviets, due to the ability of the island nation to withstand the invasion, became convinced of the value of Cuba in gaining the upper hand over the U.S. enough so that the Castros regime would now be worthy of a major military and diploma. But while the Soviet Union now considered Cuba a worthy ally, it became evident to Castro that he also needed to pursue a relationship with the Soviet Union for protection because his island was very much within the U.S. sphere of influence. The invasion, while unsuccessful, showed that the Americans were willing to go to great lengths to remove him from office, and at this point, the best solution for Castro appeared to be the pursuit of an alliance with Moscow, directed against his American neighbours. The strengthening of ties between Cuba and the Soviet Union, as a result of this Bay of Pigs invasion, led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis. As much as that conflict resulted from Khrushchevs design to take advantage of Cubas proximity to the U.S. to install missile sites, it was the American policy towards Cuba, that which sought, by any means necessary, to remove Fidel Castros influence over Cuba, which pushed the new Communist allies into each others arms. The mere presence of Fidel Castro was responsible for the heightening of tensions between the Soviet Union and John F. Kennedys United States leading up to the crisis. There was a strong Soviet presence in Cuba prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The sanctions, which followed Castros rise to power placed a large burden on the Cuban economy, as the U.S., naturally, had been the islands primary trading partner. This burden was eased by the Soviets who, in 1960, agreed to buy out Cubas U.S. sugar share, and later made the promise to provide necessary aid in the case of armed intervention. In fact, United States sanctions against Fidel Castro and his government provided the rationale and the catalytic action which accelerate close economic, military and political relations between Cuba and the USSR. But the gravity of the Soviets economic pursuits in Cuba is far less than the deal made which allowed the Soviets to build missile sites on the island. Due to the deadlock over the Berlin question, Khrushchev felt he needed to gain the upper hand in military might to have his way. Because the USSR was falling behind in the arms race, a creative solution was needed which would achieve equality and the cheapest and fastest way was to install shorter-range missiles on Cuba. The role of Castro in this affair was to accept the missiles from the USSR, but for his own set of reasons. Castro felt that some protection was needed from the threat of any more American invasions, and the addition of missile sites to his island would strengthen his position considerably. The military installations instilled confidence and would be a tremendous asset given any aggression by the Americans or their Western allies. In any case, both nations had interests in the missiles being installed in Cuba, so Castro gave the plan his blessing. By this time, it had become clear to the Soviets that their high expectations of Castro were warranted, as this revolutionary leader had given them the opportunity they thought they needed to tip the scale in their favour where there real interests lay, Berlin. For someone who had so critical a role in bringing about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro played only the smallest role once it began. When an American U-2 first spotted evidence of the construction of a missile site in Cuba on 14 October 1962, the crisis began. While negotiations to end the crisis were underway between Kennedy and Khrushchev, Castro was left out and did not take the exclusion lightly Castro even went so far as to make a speech, on 23 October 1962, denying that either the Cubans or the Soviets would ever consider withdrawing their missiles While the Soviets and the Americans were negotiating a peace, while still on the brink of launching an all-out nuclear attack, Castro was still trying to extract some political gain from the conflict. He imposed a set of conditions on the removal of missiles from his island, which called for the end of the U.S. blockade of the island, which had resulted when the crisis began, and for the end of subversive acts on the part of the U.S. against Cuba. All of these were ignored when a final agreement was hammered out between the U.S. and the USSR. Castros stubborn refusal to admit that he had been the real loser in the entire crisis was brought into focus when he refused entrance into Cuba to UN observers who were to assure that the missiles were dismantled, as had been agreed upon by Kennedy and Khrushchev. Castros reaction to his personal failure in the affair would signal the lesson he learned, as he made it known that never again in the chess game of power would his country play the docile pawn While Castro was involved in conflicts in Africa in the 1960s, and supported the communism of Vietnam, his involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis left the greatest of marks upon relations between the Cold War powers. What Castro may not have realized in all his bitterness over the results of the crisis is that, unwittingly, he had the effect of easing tensions between the U.S. and the USSR. His mere presence and his part in bringing about the crisis were instrumental in beginning a new era in the relationship between East and West. Prior to this point, any move by one side was met by an equally strong move by the other. Under such a system, no peaceful end could be sought to any conflict, only the escalating of tensions to a breaking point. The breaking point in the Cold War was the most undesirable, nuclear conflict, the implications of which were most destructive and grave. Indeed, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, while Castro was dreaming of power and prestige for his native Cuba, the Americans were reportedly minutes away for launching their nuclear arsenal against Russia, and likely the Soviets were in a similar position. But the diplomatic resolution to the problem, in spite of Castros designs, represented a turning point in the way problems were dealt with between the United States and their nuclear rivals. In a game of such high stakes, no longer could move be met with countermove because in such a case both would be losers. The value of diplomacy was realized and, in a way, Fidel Castro and his regime were facilitators for this lesson. After the crisis, relations once again eased into detente between the U.S. and the USSR and Castro, standing by his assertion that he would no longer be the pawn for any other, no longer wielded much influence in Cold War politics. And the relations between the two powers eased, that existing between Castros Cuba and the USSR grew more strained. These were restored somewhat later, but no longer were they of particular military or international significance. Cuba has continued to be a source of frustration to the United States, but this mainly from an ideological or philosophical point of view. While Cuba gradually began to pursue a pro-Moscow course their alliance with Moscow no longer posed any real threat to America in the way of future military aggression. Through the Cold War, the Americans had developed a great hostility towards anything perceived as being communist, Marxist, or socialist and Cuba has retained this aspect, but to have had any great fear of Castro and what he mig ht do after the resolution of the missile crisis would not have been warranted. Castros role in the relationship between East and West, therefore, was played out over a short period of a few years, but on the largest of stages. His initial contribution to the evolution of this relationship was to cause it a large degree of strain. When the revolution of Castro became successful, he infuriated the Americans whose businesses and lands were being revoked by Castros policy of nationalization. The U.S. would accept this treatment at the hands of so insignificant a neighbour and launched the Bay of Pigs invasion. The reaction of the Cubans to this was the strengthening of ties with the USSR and inevitably the tensions between the USSR and the U.S. were raised as well. The USSR had one foot in the door, intolerably close to the American border and when the Soviets but this played this strategic card but installing the missile sites, the tensions were raised further. Castros role in the evolution of East/West relations ended soon after this point as both the Americans and Russians began to ignore him and pursue their own solutions to the conflict Castro brought about. Because of this exclusion, Castro no longer wielded any influence and faded into the background. Nevertheless, the Americans had been humiliated by seeing an island nation, which they had once dominated fall under the influence of the Russian communists, and this was Castros own accomplishment. It brought the prominence and importance to his country, which he desired and did fulfil some of the more immediate goals such as removing the economic stresses placed on his country by the U.S. sanctions. While the new tensions he brought about between the Soviet Union and the U.S. were alleviated following the crisis, Castro undeniably brought the world one step closer to witnessing nuclear war. It could therefore be said of Castro that his role and influence in Cold War politics was twofold. Firstly, it was largely his doing that the two powers came closer to clashing than they had ever come before, and it was largely in spite of him that this clash never took place. Instead, what followed was a detente, which, while still filled with suspicion and mistrust of one another, never again came so close to a boiling point as during the early days of Castros regime in Cuba.

Turning patients prevents pressure ulcers Essay Example for Free

Turning patients prevents pressure ulcers Essay I.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Introduction/ Preparation Statement of the Problem As for the study, the main problem to be considered is to determine the significant effects of turning in the prevention of pressure sores or ulcers. With the relational focus between the occurrence of the condition and the physiological processes involved, the study determines the most appropriate time allowance that the nurse should provide in bed turning administration to the patients. Considering different factors that influence the occurrences of bedsores, the study takes into account the possible factors contributing to their occurrences. The study aims to determine the relationship of providing bed turn for patients in order to reduce the occurrences of pressure ulcers. Within the study, the nursing intervention of bed turning is to be analyzed as to how it can further alleviate the condition of the patient, especially those who are prone to the development of pressure ulcers (e.g. skinny individuals, immunocompromised, immobile patients, unconscious, etc.). The condition of Pressure ulcer consists of localized disruption of skin integrity as well as the underlying tissue layers experience intense and prolonged exposure to most commonly pressure, while other etiologies can also include shear, friction, or any combinations of these causal factors. According to Lyder CH. (2003), pressure sores or also known as decubitus ulcers tend to occur in all cases wherein skin experiences sustained mechanical loads, but are usually common in those patients who are immobile and bedridden or those with administered orthopedic devices. Background and Significance of Problem The occurrences of decubitus ulcers have become one of the most common health problems that occur throughout the heath care unit, especially for clients who are immobile and currently under orthopedic therapy. According to statistics, it has been approximated that 1 million adults annually progress into acquiring pressure ulcers due to faulty nursing or care management. The incidence rates vary greatly depending on the health care delivery system. However, statistics evidently show that the occurrence of pressure ulcers range from 0.4% to 38%, which if broken down and categorized to the scope of quality of nursing care, it resulted from ranges 2.2% to 23.9% for health care facilities, and 0% to 17% for home health agencies (Fitzpatrick and Wallace,   2006 p.482). The most common age groups to develop this type of condition are those individuals aging from 70s and above due to the decreasing blood circulation. Significantly, insufficient and incompetent nursing care in the inpatient setting has been linked to the increasing conditions of this disease condition. In addition, the statistical incidence rates of decubitus ulcers are most prominent among inpatients of the hospital population under this age criteria. In fact, epidemiological ratings usually exceeds higher for those orthopedic cases (Baumgarten M et al., 2003). From the physiological point of view, the reason for the occurrence of decubitus ulcers is the inadequate oxygenation due to progressive or reoccurring pressure. This impedes the normal case of capillary refill and blood flow, which is responsible for cellular oxygenation; hence, due to impediment and impaired tissue perfusion, the end results to tissue necrosis. The development of these pressure ulcers usually occurs on the lower half body, two-thirds around the pelvis and a third on the lower limbs (National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel, 1989). Added by Fitzpatrick and Wallace (2006), the development of pressure ulcers and high epidemiologic ratings of patients under a particular health care delivery system can negatively influence the credibility of nursing care provided by the indicated institution (p.482). Considering the attempts made in order to reduce or prevent the occurrences of pressure ulcers, the results obtained have significantly provided a small decline of in the epidemiological statistics. Bed turning is one of the most commonly utilized nursing procedures in order to alleviate and reduce the cases of bed sore occurrences. However, there has been no clear study on how to better apply this procedure in terms of frequency as influenced by etiologic factors contributing to the occurrence of pressure ulcers. To be able to do so, a thorough literature review has been conducted in order to determine the conditions for the application of patient turning. The gathered literature review is an essential component of this study since outcomes of the data gathered could be used in order to act as basis for coming up a nursing care plan for these patients in an effort to reduce the morbidity ratings of pressure ulcers in the health care setting (Gordon MD, Gottschlich MM, Helvig EI, et al., 2004). In the study done by De Laat et al published in 2005, the authors did utilized a form of review of literatures for the purpose of demonstrating the measures that other studies have utilized in order to prevent or treat pressure ulcers. From this, turning patient had become the most simple and commonly used nursing procedure for this purpose. By determining the standard frequency time for the turning of patients in consideration of factors associated to bed sore occurrences, further guidelines can be mandated in health sectors to effectively reduce the cases of prolonged immobility of patients; hence, reducing as well the risk of pressure ulcer occurrences. Purpose of the Study   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The purpose of the study is to provide information for the physiological relationship between the occurrence of pressure ulcers and the time standard required in between turning of patients. Critical analysis, comprehensive data integrations, and interpretation of research outcomes are the founding methodologies applied in the course research. The study should provide additional learning awareness for the public and health care institutions especially in terms of the most appropriate time allowance to be allotted in between patient turning. Turning patients can proved to be an important nursing procedure; hence, this study explores this procedure in an effort to raise the credibility of nursing care management in pressure ulcer management via patient turning. Independent and Dependent Variables Independent Variables Patient Age group Patient – Nurse ratio Dependent Variables Hospital protocols and policies Awareness of nursing facilities in the procedure Patient cooperation Definition of Terms: Independent Variables Patient Age group This pertains to the age criteria of those patients who have incurred the condition of bed ulcers. The study does not limit the age criteria although considers and categorizes the age group who had conjured the condition. Patient – Nurse ratio This variable pertains to the number of nurses available to cater to patients and the number available in providing the nursing procedure of bed turning for patients against the number of patients requiring need for turning, specifically those are at risk at acquiring the condition and those who have the condition already. Dependent Variables Hospital protocols and policies This dependent variable consists of those rules and standards utilized by the nursing service as the foreground basis in administering nursing procedures to their patient. This component can be modifiable granted that ethical concerns and rightful justifications are provided. Awareness of nursing facilities in the procedure The variable involves the knowledge of the nursing facility in terms of properly administering the turning of the patient, which consists of the standard time allotted per patient turning, and if there are considerations being applied depending on the etiology of pressure ulcers. Patient cooperation This involves the patient’s willingness to participate in the procedure provided by the nurse. Some patients demonstrate feeling of anxiety and reluctance, which causes resistance in participating in the given procedure. Significance of Project: To Patient Care The study is significant to patient care because the concept of turning patients facilitate appropriate physiological advantage on the part of the patient. By knowing the most recommended time allotted for every turns or repositions, the patient can lessen the risk of developing pressure ulcers, which, on the longer perspective, this can help reduce to morbidity ratings for pressure ulcers among patients. To Nursing The study is significant to nursing service since by knowing the most appropriate time necessary to stand as basis for every patient turns or repositions, the nurse may increase their competency in preventing the occurrence of bed sores for in-service patients. In addition, the decrease of pressure ulcer epidemiology in the nursing care facility can provide higher credentials in terms of perception in the nursing unit specified. To Society The study is significant to the community as it provides awareness expansion in the boy of nursing care for the sick. The concept of the study is more of a preventive task; hence, those families requiring preventive means for pressure ulcers can utilize the result of the study to further develop their care standards for their own patients; hence, fostering independence among family and community nursing care perspective. References Baumgarten M et al., (2003). Risk factors for pressure ulcers among elderly hip fracture patients. Wound Repair Regen;11:96-103. Fitzpatrick, J. J., Wallace, M. (2006). Encyclopedia of Nursing Research. Springer Publishing Publisher. Gordon MD, Gottschlich MM, Helvig EI, et al. (2004). Review of evidence-based practice for the prevention of pressure sores in burn patients. J Burn Care Rehabil.;25:388-410. Lyder CH. (2003). Pressure ulcer prevention and management. JAMA;289:223-226. National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel. Pressure Ulcers: Incidence, Economics, Risk Assessment—Consensus Development Conference Statement. West Dundee, Ill: SN Publications; 1989

The Scope And Limitation Of The Study An Example

The Scope And Limitation Of The Study An Example The current traditional help desk mechanisms used in UUM-CAS postgraduate help desk department at UUM are no longer enough to support the increase of the interactions between the users and the technical support employees because There is no standard and organized process for handling the users requests. This paper proposes a technical support system that can help students, staff and even lecturers at UUM Postgraduate CAS department to freely interact with the customer service employees by sending their requests and inquiries through a web-based help desk system. In the other side, this proposed system will also increase the productivity of the employees of the customer service department since each specific ticket or problem will received by a specific group of the technical support employees. In order to achieve that , we are going to use a problem tracking technique . This technique will enable the users (students, staff or lecturer) to send their inquiries to the proper person in the customer service department. Also this technique will aim to track the problem or ticket of the users until it gets their direction to the proper person of the customer service employees who will try to solve it within a convenient time. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.0 Background Nowadays, a technical support service plays a main role in a Universitys ability to assist their students , staff and lecturers who really need some information and technical support guides. In the meanwhile , Educational institutions face the challenge of providing technical support to faculty, staff, and students for answering their questions and responding to their inquiries and problems with a suitable solutions and within a convenient time. (Cruess, 2002 and Niedzwiecki Peterson, 2002). Moreover, The main goal of customer service is to provide better overall service to the customer when they contact the customer service employees, either through email, or a phone call. We want to make sure that everyone is satisfied with the first answer they receive with a correct solution in a timely manner. We want to be proactive and resolve as many issues as we can before the customer even notices that something may have gone wrong. The customer should notice an improvement in the turnarou nd time when a help request is submitted, as well as a reduction in the number of times they have to ask for help until he/she gets the solution. (Schauer Thompson, 2004). This proposed study will make an enhancement in the current technical support mechanism used by the UUM Postgraduate technical support department. It will be conducted based on Problem Tracking Technique which help to ensure consistent and quality support, track the information and problems that come into the Help Desk and assign or forward the problems to the appropriate workgroup and follow-up to make sure the problems were corrected. Problem statement Previously, by using the traditional help desk tools, the web interface was just a simple interface with an engine for generating an e-mail to our support staff. When an e-mail is sent to the [emailprotected] for example, different staff will receive it. This sometimes resulted in duplication of work since multiple people could work on the same ticket or email, or no one would handle it since some groups would assume other groups or individuals would be handling a certain email. There was no standard and organized process for handling the users requests. Sometimes no one responded right away and other times multiple people did, showing that we were not very coordinated. The same thing happens when using a traditional phone call as a tool of communicating with the customer service (Schauer Thompson, 2004). Also Recently, there have been increasing number of interactions between users and customer service employees online. Therefore employees must take great deal of time to process in quiries from customers through the Internet (Iwai, Iida, Akiyoshi Komoda, 2010). In this research we are going to concentrate on the UUM Postgraduate CAS department to be as a domain of our study. In the meanwhile, students, staff and lecturers at UUM Postgraduate CAS department have always been able to submit problem reports via e-mail, or by phone. That is still true, but the question is : How effective is the use of these tools? In fact , The current campus help desk has become the hub of support with the many spokes of user services centered on it (Cruess, 2002). Students, staff and lectures do not have to be waited and passed on from one technical support employee to another until they get the answer of their problem or inquiry. In addition, once the student sends his/her problem to the help desk department by email , it will take long time until it gets solved. Because the ticket will not send immediately to the proper person that he/she is aware of the problem that has already been sent .In this case, the number of times that they have to ask for help will increase . As a consequence, and based on the points that we mentioned previously, we proposed a web-based help desk system that can be used as a bridge between the users (students, staff, lecturer) and the technical support employee at UUM Postgraduate CAS department. In order to provide consistent and quality support to the students, staff and lecturers. In the proposed system we are going to use a problem tracking technique to track the information and problems that come from the customers into the Help Desk. In addition, assign or forward the problems to the appropriate workgroup and make sure that the problems are solved. Research Questions Based on the problem statement mentioned before, the following questions are constructed: What are the Limitations of the current UUM Postgraduate CAS help desk system? What are the techniques that we are going to use during the developing stage of the prototype of Postgraduate UUM help desk system? How can we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system? Research Objectives The main objective of this study is to enhance the current technical support of UUM Postgraduate department by developing an organized and significant web-based technical support system based on a problem tracking technique. In order To achieve this main objective, some sub-objectives can be formulated: To identify limitations of the current help desk system. To design and develop a prototype web-based help desk system based on problem tracking technique. To evaluate the prototype web-based help desk system based on problem tracking technique among the users. Significance of the study The proposed model will provide a significant and flexible way of communicating between the customer service at UUM and their users. Here are some significant and beneficial achievements that the proposed system is expected to provide: The system can assist the students in postgraduate department to find the solutions for routine questions through FAQ part and manage its requests by using problem tracking technique. The system will help the university to build a strong relationship with their students. Increase the productivity of the employees at work and provide faster and more convenient services to their students, staff or lecturers. All the users requests will directly send to the proper department of the customer service for finding a solution instead of sending all requests to one customer service department and then this department will try to find the suitable person who can answer the incoming request, and here we waste the time. Thus, we expect from this system to enhance the previous customer services tools and make it more effective and organized. Scope and limitation of the study This study will focus on developing a web-based help desk system using a problem tracking technique for Postgraduate UUM-CAS department at UUM. This system will let users (staff, students or lecturers) to freely interact with the technical support employees who have the ability to answer all problems related to the postgraduate services provided by the UUM-CAS. In addition, UUM-CAS postgraduate students can navigate FAQ section which contains a groups of frequently asked questions that are related to UUM-CAS Postgraduate department at UUM and they can find their problem or inquiry there. Moreover, the proposed system will help the students, lecturers, and staff at UUM-CAS postgraduate department to see the latest UUM-CAS postgraduate news and articles added by the technical support employees. The prototype to be developed is based on problem tracking technique. Organization Of The Report This report consists of six chapters which will cover the designing and the developing online help desk system for UUM-CAS postgraduate department at UUM. Here is an overview of the content of each presented chapter: Chapter One: this chapter introduces the problem, gives an overview about the study and describes the needs of help desk systems in the educational sectors. This chapter also discusses the scope of the study, the significance of the study and its objectives. Chapter Two: this chapter covers the literature review which is the previous related works that been done before. Moreover, this chapter represents relevant information for understanding the study more. Chapter Three: this chapter explains the details of the selected methodology that we are going to use in the project. Chapter Four: this chapter discusses about the prototype development and the implementation of the online help desk system for UUM-CAS postgraduate department at UUM. Chapter Five: this chapter discusses the evaluation process of the proposed help desk system. Chapter Six: this chapter discusses the conclusion, recommendations and future works to improve this study. CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction This chapter discusses the relevant help desk researches that had been done before by researchers. Moreover, this chapter presents the current techniques used by UUM-CAS technical support department also it presents the techniques that we are going to use in the proposed study including problem tracking technique. In addition , it discusses the previous researches that had been done before using this techniques. Definition of Online Help Desk System Online Helpdesk as defined by Donna Knapp in a Guide to Customer Service Skill and Helpdesk Professional is a single point of contact within a company for managing customers problem and request and providing solution oriented support services (Knapp, 2009). Online help desk is also define a Help Desk as a formal organization that provides support functions to users of the companys product, services, or technology (Wooten, 2001). Another definition has been defined by Albin who said Technical support is a service. Its about assisting pertaining to technology, especially regarding computers. It is also has to do with providing acceptable, effective and efficient resolutions(Albin, 2002). As a consequence, Helpdesk is usually known as a department within a company that responds to users technical questions or inquires. Background of Online Help Desk Often the term Helpdesk is used for internal support within the organization or for external support groups. Educational Institutions need to provide high quality of customer service and support to respond to the users inquires and problems within a convenient time . A well designed Help Desk product should have the ability for the support customer to be part of the solution by offering a searchable knowledge base of common support issues and questions and a way for customers/users to easily create their own support tickets. With a web based interface, most users are able to navigate simple web forms with fairly high success rates to submit a trouble ticket or find answers to frequently asked questions or common problems. The helpdesk is responsible for bringing an organizations resources together in order to provide its customers with quality support and service (Czengel, 2001 and Vanderlip, 2004). Thus, to be able to choose the right techniques and to use them effectively in the he lp desk system, you have to understand what customers want. Knowing this will help you make sense of the techniques youll be looking at (Bacal, 2005). Benefits of Online Help Desk System Web-based support offers an extremely wide variety of benefits. These will vary depending on factors such as the generation of the support site, the tools employed, the profile of the customer base, the services offered, and so on. Benefits typically originate from two aspects of support: Self-service Single source access The benefits of self-service On a Web-based support site, self-service refers to all information, functions, and services that customers can take advantage of on their own, without having to contact a support representative. Users might view or download information or seminars, search for solutions in a knowledge base, download a software upgrade, or check on the progress of their support log. The primary benefit of self-service is the ability to offer customers some form of support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These extended hours of support come at no additional cost. The self-service functions you offer on your site would be available around the clock. Another significant benefit of self-service is the reduction in calls to the staffed support area. This means the more calls you are able to divert from your support area to your Web-based support site, the more benefits you will gain. This can achieved by specifying FAQ part in the system which contains the most frequently asked questions which eat up mo st of technical support employees time (Czengel, 2001). The Benefits of Single Source Access A Web-based support site that contains documents such as Knowledge base, FAQs, News, and so onà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦This documents will provide users with a single source access to the service provided by the institute or the organization. Implementing Online Helpdesk System, management can have a single point of contact with the users and resolve their problems (Czengel, 2001). In addition to the two benefits that we have mentioned before there are some other important benefits of using Online Helpdesk Systems and they are as follows: Improved help desk service quality as all inquiries or problems are immediately taken action timely identification, diagnosis and resolution of problem Improved user or customer satisfaction. Providing existing users or customers with knowledge and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) concerning the educational institutions services. 24-hour availability which means that the system is available always to receive the problems or inquiries from the users at any time and in any day. Troubleshooting features gives users or customers the ability to solve many support problems on their own. This tool provides the users or customer with an easy way of connecting with the technical support employees and within a convenient time. Serves as a tool for tracking and recording helpdesk inquiries, which provides a knowledge base of resolutions to previous calls concerning similar issues. The Potential Pitfalls of Web-based Support The potential pitfalls in Web-based support come from poor planning and implementation. A site that offers little actual value to the customers or users, no matter how visually perfect it is, is worthless. Sites that are difficult to navigate, that contain out-of-date information, that do not offer help for the most common problems, that are designed at too advanced or too simple a level for the customer base they support all fall into the worthless category. You can spend a fortune on support tools, but if you havent done a thorough job in planning and implementation, your support site will fail and you will get no payback on what you invested. Customers/users will go to alternatives such as telephone support, and getting them back to the Internet would be difficult (Czengel, 2001). Web-Based Application Web application known as an online communication services that client can access through their computer or handheld devices, this communication can be optimized via network support such as the Internet or an intranet (Grove, 2009). Problem Tracking Technique There are many researches had been done before using a Problem Tracking Technique. This technique had been used in order to improve the efficiency of using help desk systems by the users. One of the research that had been already done is a help desk system that had proposed for The Information Technology Services Department in North Dakota State University . The system allows them to track problems by assigned person, assigned group, for a specific user and many other ways. They can generate ad hoc reports to analyze problems that have occurred over a set period of time or by department as needed. Thus, For a help desk to be effective and efficient, it needs to have a proper set of tools. These tools are used to manage the incoming calls, monitor servers and network connections, track problems as they enter the help desk and are transferred to other support units, being able to view the end users screen, documentation, training and many others. User Part Once the user did not find the solution of his /her problem in the FAQ part, he/she is going to use the ticketing system which is one of the system functionality. The user will create a new ticket and include his/her inquiry or problem within this ticket. The process of creating new ticket includes several steps. At the beginning the customers must choose the section that the faced problem belongs to. For example students fees section or registration section. After that, the customer will enter his/her personal information and he can specify a priority to his/her ticket for example urgent or normal .The customer can attach a file with his/her ticket in order to explain his/her problem more (Edwards, 2010 and Kayako, 2009). Technical support employees part After the user completes the process of sending his/her ticket to the suitable group of the technical support employees, here comes the role of technical support employees to respond to this ticket .Each ticket has a status which can be Open, Waiting for reply or Closed .Once the user creates his/her new ticket and sends it to the technical support employees, the status of his/her ticket will be automatically Open since it is a new ticket. Thats mean it needs a reply from the technical support employees. After one of the technical support employees replies this ticket, he/she will change the status of this ticket to be Waiting for reply which means the ticket has been replied by the suitable technical support employee and its status now is Waiting the user to send another reply if the first answer that he/she already got is not clear enough. Suppose that the customer needs more explanation or more details about his/her problem, then after he/she got the reply from the customer servic e, the user can change the status of this ticket from Waiting for reply to be Open and send it again with his/her new inquiry to the customer service employees. The status of the ticket will automatically become closed after a period of time called DUE which is specified by the administrator of the system and it is defined as the maximum time that the ticket will be remained in case of waiting for a response from the user. That means after the expiration of this time, the status of the ticket will be closed. After this time called DUE the ticket will be closed and it will become as a read-only ticket from the side of users. In other words, the problem has been solved and does not need any reply anymore. The last thing that we want to indicate that imagine that a user has sent a ticket to the technical support employees through the system and lets answer this question: what will happen if the ticket still in the queue of the tickets queue without any answers from any technical suppor t employee? In fact this case is the worst case that it might make the user in the status of waiting for reply through unlimited time. In order to handle this problem, In the proposed system there is a part for administrators which enable the help desk managers or administrators to monitor and manage the process of ticketing system. They can view the tickets that no one has answer it and assign it to the suitable technical support employee. (Edwards, 2010; Schauer Thompson, 2004; and Kayako, 2009). Building up FAQ Building up FAQ is also an important task of help desk. The purpose of building up the FAQ is to reduce the number of inquiries that come from users. Users can browse the FAQ pages and clear up their unfamiliar matters before they send emails or tickets to the help desk employees. Help desk employees also can analyze inquiry records, construct questions and add them to the FAQ part. For example, if the help desk employees see that there are questions that come out from users several times, then they can simply organize these questions by added them to the proper group of FAQ section so the users can find it there before they send a new question which is already exists at FAQ section (Iwai, Iida, Akiyoshi Komoda, 2010 and Kayako, 2009). UUM-CAS help desk mechanisms In the meanwhile, the current technical support mechanisms used by UUM-CAS postgraduate technical support department are still limited to phone call and email as a way of communicating between users and the technical support employees. Generally, the disadvantages of using this current techniques are divided into two parts based on email or phone call. The first part of disadvantages are the problems of using phone call as a tool of providing the technical support service. The first problem of using the phone call is that the technical support employees are not always the same who answer the phone. Which means, every time you talk to different technical support employee, you should explain your problem again and again until you get the solution of your problem. The second issue of using a phone call is the wasted time that the user should wait since he/she may pass on from one technical support employee to another until he/she gets the answer of his/her problem or inquiry. The third issue appears during the registration time while the pressure on the technical support center is more comparison to other time and especially on using phone call. At that time, the user should wait on the phone until he/she can talk to the customer service employees since the phone is busy. From the other side, there are some issues comes from using the email as a way of interacting between the users and the customer service employees. First of all, it takes long time from the customer service employees side until they solve the issues since the problem will not be received from the proper technical support employee who has an infrastructure about the problem that had been sent by the users. The second thing is multiple people could work on the same email or no one would handle it since some customer service employees will assume that other employees would handle it. Thus, and as we can see there is no standard and organized way of handling with the users inquiries and problems. Chapter Summary The analysis of literature review had broadened the scope of Online Helpdesk issues. The information and findings collected form this chapter is used as a guidance to develop the Online Helpdesk system. By reviewing the UUM-CAS postgraduate help desk case study, we can conclude that helpdesk system plays an important role in the educational institutions. This chapter has also demonstrated the importance of helpdesk system in the context of UUM-CAS postgraduate help desk department. CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Introduction This chapter discusses the adopted methodology which applied to achieve the objectives of the study in designing and developing the proposed web-based help desk system for UUM-CAS help desk department. Research Methodology Research methodology plays a very important role to proceed and carry out with the whole all research study. Moreover, it is very important to choose the suitable methodology for your study in order to achieve the objectives of the study. In general, a lot of studies that had been done before use the research methodology to achieve many purposes such as gathering data and information, development and evaluation (Refsdal, 2008 Schmuller, 2002). Besides that, Research methodology step makes us fully awareness about the requirements of our study and the problem statement of the research. Thus, The methodology of this research the we are going to apply is based on the five general research steps that are proposed by Vaishnavi Kuechler. These steps includes the awareness of problems, suggestions, development, evaluation, and the conclusion of the research as they are illustrated in the Figure 3.1. The awareness of problems In this step, some important information had been gathered about the current problems and limitations of using the current traditional help desk mechanisms at UUM-CAS help desk department. This can be achieved by interviewing the students, lectures, and staff to see what are the disadvantages of using the current customer service in order to overcome it. Moreover, we can use some beneficial instruments such as questionnaire. In addition, we can collect some information from some related work that had been done before by other researchers. Thus, This step aims to identify the problems and come out with a significant and more organized solution. Suggestions The second step of the methodology of this research is to suggest building a web-based application based on problem tracking technique in order to enhance the current technical support tools used by UUM-CAS help desk department. In this phase, some flow charts and some Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams will be used to design the proposed prototype. The Figure 3.2 illustrates briefly the technical support operation of the proposed system: Figure 3.2: Diagram explains the proposed system Design Pattern Design patterns describe how objects communicate without become entangled in each others data models and methods. Keeping this separation has always been an objective of good OO programming, and if you have been trying to keep objects minding their own business, you are probably using some of the common design patterns already (Cooper, 2002). Why Design Pattern? Why do we need to use design pattern? Nowadays computers programs is becoming more complicated, for this reason it is important to have a way of making building software easier and less complexity. For example, SQL Server and Oracle are become the most common databases used in the meanwhile . Lets imagine that we are working in a software company and we already developed a costly system using SQL Server database and because of a certain reason the company wants to change its database server into Oracle. Does that mean we want to ignore everything has been built and start building our new system from scratch? The answer is no of course. By using a design pattern we will be able to build a system which rebuilding ability exists. As a result, we just need to change the part of code which deals with SQL Server with Oracle one. Design pattern has divided the system into layer each layer has its own job starting from the View layer and ending with the database layer and the figure 3.4 belo w is really express what i just mentioned. If we ignore using design pattern in our system , then our system simply will miss the usability technique. As the figure 3.5 shows that we should not ignore the Business tier and dealing directly with the data tier if we do so then it is hard to make changes in the application. Thus, In this case and if we want to change in one place, then we should change in many other places that are related to the change instead of make the changes in one place by using the organized design patterns. To explain how does the design pattern technique work, lets take the following scenario : Once the system has started, it will collect some configurations from configuration file about the connection string of the database and the name of Business Logic Layer DLL (BLL). That means the connection with the database will not establish until the business layer successfully retrieved the configuration from the configuration file. Business Logic Layer is responsible for retrieves data from the data layer, so the business logic layer plays the role of mediator between presentation layer and database layer. IDAL (Interface Data Access Layer) is an interface that we just need to deal with it regardless the type of database that the system works with. Hardware Requirements Of The System Since the proposed system is a web-based application, so to run the system on the web environment we need a web application server that can handle the requests that come from the users of the proposed help desk system. In addition to the web server, To run the system on the web server, it has to have the minimum hardware characteristics that enable the web server from installing dot net features such as dot net framework which is necessary to run the application on the web server smoothly and successfully. Software Requirements Of The System As we mentioned in the hardware requirements of the system, we need to install the dot net framework on the web server since the developing environment of the proposed system is Microsoft Visual Studio and this framework is necessary to run the application successfully on the server. Besides that, a web browser application is necessary to be installed which is the middle tool that will make the connection with the system application which is running on the server side. User Requirements Of The System Generally, The user of the proposed system is divided into three categories. That is, UUM users (student and lecturer), technical support employee, and administrator. Each group of the system has its role based on its authority of using the system. Since the proposed system consists of three parts ( User, Technical support employee, Administrator) , each group of the users can use the suitable part based on their authority. UUM users can use the user part of the system to submit the problems as a tickets to the customer service employees. In addition, they can see the latest news and articles added by the customer service employees and download the files that are related to UUM-CAS. While the technical support employees are responsible to respond to the tickets that come from the user part, in addition to manage the articles, news and download sections in the user part. The last part is the administrator which is responsible to manage the technical support part throw adding new group in addition to manage the technical support employees. Development A software development process is a process to build a software product or to enhance an existing one. Moreover, the Development stage of the research methodology is the most significant stage in our study since it represents the answer o

Miss America Essay -- Sociology, Pageant

â€Å"She represents the type of womanhood America needs, strong, red-blooded, able to shoulder the responsibilities of homemaking and motherhood. It is in her type that the hope of the country rests† (Martin & Watson, 2004, p.3). This was Samuel Gompers sharing his thoughts about the very first â€Å"Miss America†, Margaret Gorman. The Miss America Pageant was established in the most fitting of all decades: the 1920s. During a time when women were just starting to experience newfound independence and rights, the Miss America Pageant strengthened the idea that women had more freedom to express themselves. The competition began as a simple tourist attraction, but the fact that the Miss America Pageant survived throughout the decades exemplifies that the competition was so much more. In the year 1921, Conrad Eckhold, the owner of Atlantic City’s Monticello Hotel was looking for a way to keep tourists in town past Labor Day. After discussing the tourist problem with other Atlantic City business owners, the idea of a â€Å"Fall Frolic† was created. The Fall Frolic included a two-day competition to be called â€Å"Atlantic City’s Inter-City Beauty Pageant†, in years after it would be known as the â€Å"Miss America Pageant† (Miss America, 2/20/2011). To become a contestant, women across the country entered themselves into popularity contests that featured their pictures in the newspapers. Editors of the paper then chose winners based on physical appearance. The winners were then given a free trip to Atlantic City where they were placed in the Inter-City Beauty Pageant (Bivans, 1991). The â€Å"Fall Frolic† began with â€Å"King Neptune†, a man named Hudson Maxim, who wore a crown, seaweed robe, and long white beard. King Neptune announced the competitors and partici... ...ever, bad press was bound to come about. Younger girls were often spared criticism, being seen as young and fun-loving. The elder competitors, though, were greatly disapproved of because of the indecency of the pageant (Carter, 1977; Deford, 1971) The Miss America Pageant was a wake-up call for people everywhere. The roles of women were changing, and there was little anyone could do to stop it. New attitudes were showcased in the pageant by young women who were well-educated and ready to take on the world. They inspired people and showed America a different kind of woman, one who was proud of her looks, personality, and intelligence. Not everyone supported the pageant though, and those who did not made their opinions known. The competition had its fair share of scandals as well, but good or bad the Miss America Pageant has enthralled audiences long past the 1920s.

MUDs, MOOs, and Society :: Technology Society Technological Papers

MUDs, MOOs, and Society INTRODUCTION Imagine a place where one can encounter strange creatures that are part human and part animal. Imagine a place where human beings have the ability to destroy and create things with just a flick of a finger. Imagine a place where people from all over the world come together at all times of the day and night to talk about attacking the evil overlord to free their kingdom. Imagine a place where people can meet and talk without ever seeing the other but still create a world or an academic project. This place is found in the endless void that is called the internet. This place has two names: MOO and MUD. These virtual places create many different worlds, have different purposes, and allow different actions by the user. Essentially, these MUDs and MOOs allow many people to be whatever they want and do whatever they want. This concept alone open up many issues that may and will affect a society that increasingly connects RL (real life) to the VL (virtual life). In analyzing this technology, MUDs, MOOs, etc. are essentially online societies. Therefore, it is subjected to nearly all the issues that RL (real life) society is subjected to. People are people regardless if they interact face to face, over the telephone, or in the virtual realm. The only difference is the physicality of the parties involved. By no means is this difference to be taken lightly because physicality of parties does and will affect the interaction of everyone involved. However, humanity still reacts, emotes, feels, and communicates regardless of time, space, or dimension. All of these issues will be addressed through analyzing what the technology is, the types of literacy necessary to be involved with this technology, and the ethical issues bred out of this technology. TARGET TECHNOLOGY Description Cowan defines a MUD as a "†¦multi-user domain, multi-user dungeon, or multi-user dimension, all of which are referring to the same thing, an environment where multiple people may be logged on and interacting with one another." This environment creates a society much like any other RL society. The only "real" prerequisite is to be a part of these online societies is to have a computer with an internet connection. Once entered in the MUD/MOO domain, prompts will appear asking for your real name, email address, the sex of the character to be playing, and a password for logging in.

Realism in 21st Century

Realism in 21st Century The world, in view of the fact that it was created is changing. With the changing desires and demands of today’s standard of living, individual needs to be in sync with the demands and trends of modern day living. Not too long ago, people were seen doing stuffs that have turned out to be more of a routine in today’s humankind. Every single day a new type of technology is been introduced in today's world. So, the question arises that is theses changes necessary in today's world? If yes, does it have a good or a bad impact to the human society in today's world? We need to talk about in which approach hi-tech advancements that pace into our daily lives have altered our lifestyles in the very last few centuries. In today’s world each and every single people rely on new and advance technologies. Everyone loves new technologies and gadgets that promise innovative and better ways of living. A pace of life is frequently increasing with the increase in new technologies. Nowadays somewhat more a quarter of the earth’s population can be found in the industrialized societies. And half of the population still lives on past agriculture, but they are also relying on machines. The remaining of the world’s population, however, is no longer of either the past or the present. They live in the future, within the most important centers of cultural and technological change, in New York, California, Cambridge, London and Tokyo (Toffler, p. 38). A new part of technology is like a new relationship to an individual, it will be cool and thrilling at the first, but sooner or later it gets addictive to the people. I doubt technology’s give your word to improve the quality of life, makes our life easier and simpler, but it gets more addictive and makes one lethargic. People have turn out to be physically and psychologically dependent on many behaviors and substances for centuries. The compulsive and frequently use of these technologies have negative impact on our daily lives. The key life areas that appear to be impacted are relationships, health, employment, and financial status. In the present day people find their reality have changed because they have to get used to the new culture and behavior according to the pace of technology. Presently people like to live in this current industrialized era but some of them are overwhelmed by the change of new technologies and inventions. Changes in the life are important, but the acceleration of changes leads to the victim of overchoice and impacts on our personal and psychological, as well as sociological, consequences (Toffler, p. 2). Philip Morris now it is Altria Group, for example, when it was introduced in USA in 1954, it only sold a single major brand of cigarettes i. e. Marlboro specifically to men. By now Altria Group has introduced additional 16 new brands with so many options with respect to size and flavors (Toffler, p. 265). Not only in cigarettes there are many overchoices in food, clothing, gasoline, and many more. There is a huge diversity in education industry too, students have a huge selection on what field they want to study and nowadays students can even get their degree online. More often than not society does not leave freedom for avoidance and as a result one need to adjust and learn about the new technologies that become part of our lifestyles. These days when people are faced with having to decide one option out of many popular choices, they will start on to think about imaginary trade-offs. The people do make their best choice out of the variable products, but afterwards it affects their level of satisfaction they had from the one before. The people now can’t escape this situation of freedom because they are not committed to the choice they make. People don’t know that the current loads of choice over and over again lead to feelings of loneliness and depression. The creation of the Internet has been the main source of innovative information, connectivity, and possibilities to create new private freedom. There are presently more than a billion web pages of information on the Internet about every topic that you can think of. The Internet users around the world have been increased by 444% since the starting of the 21st century (Internet Usage Statistics). In this era, computers and Internet are an important part of everyday life. Computers are used everywhere. Today Internet and computers can exactly take us to the different worlds and different realms of reality by a thought referred to as virtual reality. Inception is the latest â€Å"virtual reality† movie of this time. In this movie Leonardo DiCaprio plays an unlawful with the technology to plan himself into the dreams and ideas of others. The characters spend an important amount of time entirely powerless with beeping tools nearby. In the meantime their minds are busy occupied navigating avatars in a virtual world of Inception. In this movie, a machine would let you to connect to a virtual atmosphere by getting into someone’s dream. Even in the movies â€Å"The Matrix† and â€Å"Avatar† was computer generated and were in the different world of imagination. In â€Å"Plowing the Dark† by Richard Powers, on one side of a story a band of researchers in Seattle working on a 3D reality on how an empty white room that can become a jungle, a painting, or a Byzantine cathedral. And the other follows an individual kidnapped and held hostage by terrorists in Lebanon in an empty white room, equipped only with his imagination and memory. In the novel, the two stories overlap, but the people in the different stories do not know one another and never communicate. But at the end, the imaginative experience of Adie and Taimur intersect, with Taimur’s control leading to an unexpected change in Adie’s life and Adie inspiring Taimur at a serious moment. In this novel, the author addresses this issue of creating an inspiring character of life in an unreal environment that becomes frightening real to us (Powers). The novel â€Å"Plowing the Dark,† alludes to several poems including â€Å"Sailing to Byzantium† by W. B. Yeats. In this poem, Yeats highlights the aspect of world he lives in, is scared of becoming older and complains about the world he lives in, so he decides to escape to the city i. e. Byzantium where the poet can achieve immortality. In all the movies (â€Å"Inception,† â€Å"The Matrix,† and â€Å"Avatar†), the novel â€Å"Plowing the Dark,† and the poem â€Å"Sailing to Byzantium† the people wants to escape the real world and wants live in their own virtual mind and places they created. Virtual reality is becoming more prominent and dangerous as the days passes. One can assume a second identity in their imaginary world through the Internet. In 2003, a game called â€Å"Second Life† appeared on the Internet, is an online virtual world mainly targeted to the children who are aged thirteen and over, and as of 2011 â€Å"Second Life† has more than 20 million egistered user accounts (Secondlife). They can get married, have children, rob banks, and shoot people all in the name of fun. Virtual reality makes it a good tool for education because it allows children to learn in a more interactive environment where they are m ore likely to retain information. But it also has some negatively psychological and social effects. These days many students are showing a decrease in usual emotion and affection due to their stable communication with lifeless cyber friends. Cyberspace can be a help out, but when used in the wrong behavior it can be very damaging to our physical and mental well-being. Virtual reality in fact minimizes the significance of our physical bodies and encourages people to misuse their time. It causes people to get lost from exact relations by focusing on the mind freezing effects of video games and online cyber world. In this generation, the Internet is so ingrained into our lives that life without the access of Internet is completely unimaginable. The use of the Internet offers a variety of benefits to every person in today’s world. Internet has a giant amount of information added on it every day and it’s developing as the most powerful source of information. Also, use of the Internet makes easier to find jobs in a minute. One can also buy and sell things on the Internet. Last, the Internet is one of the most important tools in educations seeing as it provides a massive amount of information and is the greatest source of reference for teachers and students. The Internet has influenced, and is still influencing the way culture communicates in a lot of different ways. The rise of the Internet has caused people to communicate differently in areas never dreamed of before the Internet came into existence. In the book, â€Å"The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,† by Nicholas Carr argues that surfing the World Wide Web is causing the damage to your brain. This book has been expanded from the article, â€Å"Is Google Making Us Stupid,† by the same writer Nicholas Carr. In this book, Carr describes how human thought has been changed through the centuries by â€Å"tools of the mind† – from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer (Carr). This all tools are very useful in this 21st Century in getting directions, determining time and finding information on the computer through the Internet which is very faster and saves a lot of time. This all tools are easy and convenient in today’s life, but the effect of all this tools is that it is breaking the focus and the creativity of the human brain. Carr in the article, â€Å"Is Google Making Us Stupid,† stated that one he was a scuba diver in the sea of words, but now he zips along the surface like a guy on a jet ski. This is nothing but the Internet, which, with its search engines, blogs, social network such as Twitter and Facebook, pornography and online games has chipped away the capacity for concentration and contemplation. I totally agree with Carr, that when we use the Internet, we totally enter into a different environment; we enter into the world which is not real, that leads us to quick reading and diverts our thinking and distracts our brain. Right now, you can take example of me, as I am writing this paper or whenever I find myself assigned with a research paper for class I get simply unfocused from looking up references online and manage to find myself on completely unrelated websites. The pop-ups and the advertisement usually get our mind diverted. Then after half an hour of researching I find myself on checking the emails, uploading status or new photos on Facebook or either playing games on the computer. Then I realize that I have wasted almost an hour doing nothing instead using the time sensibly. Yes, Internet is the main source of information, but is actually affecting our brains. Not only Internet, the smart phones, TVs, online video games and many other digital technologies also damage our brain. According to a survey published by Forrester Research, Americans are now spending a large amount of their time using the Internet than watching television, and the amount of time people spend on the Internet has increased 121 percent in excess of the last five years (Joshua). The amount of time spent on the Internet not only has been increased by the teenagers or adults, but also have been increased by up to six to eight hours a day among the people over 66 years. But the rapidly increase in the use of Internet has not affect a drop in television consumption for the reason that the Internet, and mostly the mobile Internet, cleanly creates additional facilities and opportunities for the nation to consume media. In today’s world, TV is still important, but the content where the people are getting from is changing. Nowadays, most of the people are getting the content from the use of the mobile Internet. Smartphone and tablets are a life changing to many users since it is so personal, in terms of how and how frequently the device is carried and how it is used to connect and to expand relationships. Smart phones went from being a luxury and became an everyday tool for students, employees and the businessmen. For a lot of us, communicating with friends and family used to mean writing letters and cards via mail and have to wait for weeks for the response. But now we communicate with each other through emails and text messages in a fraction of seconds. Now younger generations have forgotten how to write and spell a complete sentence due to rapid increase in text messaging. Teenagers are totally reliant on simple tenses and a limited use of vocabulary, and that to with the help of spell check. At the same time there is also a reduction in a personal face to face communication. Nowadays, people just text message their friends, chat online, do discussion on the blogs, and they even date online. Due to these changes; the people have mentally changed their communication skills. People don’t know that more and more use of the technologies gets addictive to them and changes the mental and physical shapes of the brain, and can lead to a decrease in the sense of self and human identity. Our neurological systems are actually being spoiled, and we are less able to process and remember information, even if we are continually reading, or surfing, online. The person who spends more of their time playing games and reading web pages are experiencing visual problems. Most people are clueless that how the cell phones affects their brain by the radiation. In J. D. Salinger's â€Å"The Catcher in the Rye†, the main character of Holden Caulfield views the humankind as a place where the most human behaviors such as love, sympathy and kindness are all been overridden by the power of money and technology. Holden Caulfield is desperately holding to the concept that necessary human kindness is far more vital to a joyful way of life than material wealth and technology. Holden in the novel feels similar to a loner or a rebel in an environment where the people are dishonest and corrupted, and he is badly looking for someone to talk to that will make him happy. In the beginning of the story, Holden says, â€Å"As a matter of fact, I'm the only dumb one in the family† (David, p. 67). In the whole story, Holden describes himself as a failure and immature, and also has been told by his parents, friends, and teachers number of times but still, Holden every time hangs to his ideals and looks his failings as almost laughable. In the story, Holden is suffering from mental and emotional problems due to his attitudes and behavior. The only thing that can â€Å"cure† Holden, as stated in the story, is to get more and more interaction with the people around him. From the novel, â€Å"The Catcher in the Rye†, possibly one can learn from the main character, â€Å"Holden Caulfield†, that in regards to corruption, wealth and the dream, foes not matter how expensive and attractive it is, but only the true pleasure and satisfaction can only be establish from within. Holden also oversimplifies the whole lot and in his view children are straightforward and innocent image of wholesome life compared to adults who are by now influenced by the accepted public way of life, which adjusts or fakes everyone’s realism. An individual in our society today feels that, they are separated from one another and has lost the interaction between people same way, as Holden in the novel, â€Å"The Catcher in the Rye†. †¢JOSHUA, BRUSTEIN. â€Å"American Internet Use Catches Up With TV Use. † (2010): Web. 2 May 2011. . †¢Ã¢â‚¬ INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS. † (2011): Web. May 2011. . †¢TOFFLER, ALVIN. Future shock. Bantam, 1984. 38. Print. †¢TOFFLER, ALVIN. Future shock. Bantam, 1984. 2. Print. †¢TOFFLER, ALVIN. Future shock. Bantam, 1984. 265. Print. †¢CARR, NICHOLAS. â€Å"Is Google Making Us Stupid? â€Å". Atlantic Magazine July/Aug 2008: Web. 2 May 2011. < http://www. theatlantic. com/magazine/archive/2008/07 /is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/>. †¢DAVID, JEROME. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 1951. 67. Print. †¢POWERS, RICHARD. Plowing the Dark. Picador USA, 2001. Print. †¢Ã¢â‚¬ Secondlife. † Web. 2 May 2011. <