Organizational behaviour Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Organizational behaviour - Essay Example Employees help in the decision making power and their insight is valued in the organization. The employee insight is important because often employees have a better idea of dealing with problems in the organization because they face such problems on a daily basis. Also employees perform well in cultures which’ nurtures and supports them and helps them to work towards the achievement of their ambition’ (Business Case Studies, n.d.). An example of this is Siemens that values its employees by motivating, monitoring and nurturing them. Organizational structure also has a strong impact on the performance on an organization. When the role and position of the employees are clearly mentioned, there is little conflict in the organization. Also employees understand their value in the organization which then motivates them to perform better in the organization. Organization culture and structure are inherently linked. When organizational structure is flat, it develops a high performance culture in the organization. When there is a high level of hierarchy present in the company, then the culture is often rigid. Rigid cultures prevent employees from developing attachment with the organization which effects overall performance of the employees. Business Case Studies, n.d. Creating a high performance culture: A Siemens case study, Retrieved from

The Future of Londons Museums

The Future of Londons Museums The following research paper investigates the present condition of London’s museums, focusing upon three aspects: their historical development, their present issues and debates, and their strategies for ensuring future survival and prosperity. To ascertain these facts five senior management figures from five leading London museums were interviewed and asked to complete questionnaires discussing the themes mentioned above. The research focuses at much length upon the decision of the present Labour government to introduce free admission to London’s museums and to finance this policy with funds from the National Lottery. Another key aspect of the research was to determine the level of competition posed to London’s museums by European, American and other international museums; further, to discover how London’s museums might raise their performance to match this competition. In addition, another type of competition faced by London’s museums is that of domestic attractions perceived by tourists and the public to be more sensational and exciting than ‘old-fashioned’ museums. Famous examples include the London Eye, Madam Taussards, and the Tower of London amongst others; these attractions fit well with the zeitgeist of modern British youth and it is a major problem for London’s museums as to how they will re-assert their prominence. A third central aspect of the research, viewed both from the sides of museum management and from the government, is the question of the strategies that London’s museums will pursue in the twenty-first century. The survival and success of London’s museums will very much depend upon the decisions made regarding such strategy and its efficacy once put into place. The present research assesses the likely efficacy of such strategies, and the consequences that their implementation will have upon the public’s ‘museum experience’. The results of the research paint double-sided picture: on the side, of optimism regarding the increased admissions figures witnessed since free admissions began, and, on the other side, a gloomy scene dominated by the London museums’ lack of financial support and by the negative consequences of the government insistence of putting attendance figures before a qualitative artistic and cultural experience. Section 1: Introduction Since the foundation of the British Museum almost two hundred and fifty years ago, London has had an international reputation as the museum capital of the world, as the city with the finest collections, the best specialists and the most to offer the fascination of the public. In addition to the British Museum, London can boast the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the London Transport Museum, the Victoria Albert Museum and the Theatre Museum amongst numerous other world-class museum-experiences. In their early decades London’s museums flourished through the generosity of private donations and gifts, and through royal and government funding; these ample resources gave museums such as the British Museum unrivalled funds for the construction of magnificent architecture and the gathering of the most splendid specimens and pieces from across the globe. But by the early 1990’s, and reflecting Britain’s changed economic circumstances, London’s museums found themselves in need of considerable new funds to pay for refurbishments and developments so as to keep pace with other museums in the capital cities of Europe and in America. The advent of the National Lottery in 1994, and the terms of its constitution whereby a majority of its funds would go to museums and galleries, apparently offered the very chance to bring about a revival in the fortunes and prosperity of London’s museums. Thus between 1994-2003 more than  £13 billion was given to good causes by the National Lottery and the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) (Selwood Davies, 2005: p.3);  £1 billion was given to six hundred museums across the country (Selwood Davies, 2005: p.3). These funds were intended for the construction of new buildings and exhibition halls, and to compensate museums and galleries for the loss of revenue that they would incur once free admission was introduced. A few smaller museums were also enabled to open in London because of grants from the HLF. The next radical step in the recent history of London’s museums came when the Labour Party in their 1997 manifesto, promised that when elected they would introduce free admission into London’s museums a move that it was anticipated would greatly increase attendance from members of the general public. In the event, this prediction turned out to be just right, particularly in the two years immediately succeeding the introduction of free admission. The government minister then in charge of museums in 2001, Estelle Morris, spoke of 2000 as ‘an unprecedented season of openings and flourishing’ (DOC, 2000) for London museums. The year 2000 witnessed nine major construction or refurbishment projects in London’s great museums and a total of  £379 million spent on this ( £193 million of which came from lottery sources) (Selwood Davies, 2005: p.4). The most spectacular of these projects was the construction by Norman Foster of the Great Court at the British Museum costing  £110 million (of which  £47 million was derived from lottery sources) (Selwood Davies, 2005: p.5). All in all, it seemed that the lottery was proving a vital fertilizing force in the rejuvenation and restoration of London’s great museums. This optimism was very clearly reflected in the visitor figures following free admission. In 2001/2002 London museums that had previously received capital funding from lottery sources noticed a staggering rise in visitor numbers of 5.3 million when compared with the 1999/2000 season; in 2002/2003 this figure jumped again to 6.3 million extra visits compared with 1999/2000 (this representing an increase of 89%). In stark contrast London museums that did not receive lottery funding say they annual attendance figure drop by 7% in 2001/02 and 13% in 2002/03 when compared to the 1999/00 season. To take an individual instance, the Victoria Albert Museum witnessed an increase in attendance from 75,773 in November 2000 to 132,882 in November 2001 (this figure even jumped 270% by March 2002). Likewise, attendance figures at the Science Museum rose by 120% and the National History Museum by 74% in the same period (All figures: Selwood Davies, 2005: pp. 6-10). Nonetheless, this stream of incessantly impressive and rising admissions figures masked a major concern unsettling many of the managers and director’s of London’s leading museums. These figures of course welcomed lottery funding as a vital means of rejuvenating London’s museums and making them competitive with museums found in New York, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere. Nonetheless, the advent of free admission introduced at the same time a far greater degree of vulnerability and uncertainty in the financial arrangements and security of London’s museums. It was obvious to museum strategists and directors that a great deal of lottery money would be needed to compensate for the loss of revenue endured once free admission was introduced. Crucially, it would be paramount that lottery contributions of the levels of 2001 would be sustained for the long-term; nothing would be worse that one spectacular year for two of prosperity and massive investment followed by ten or twenty years of under investment and decline. It is recent charge imputed by many museum directors against the government and the HLF directors that they were naà ¯ve in profoundly underestimating the levels of investment that would e required to sustain not only the rejuvenation of London’s museums but merely also their survival. The British Museum alone, for instance, according to its director Neil MacGregor stands to lose  £80 million over ten years from lost revenues and reclaimed VAT. Increased attendance figures are welcomed naturally by all museum directors on the absolute condition that sufficient funds are made available to pay the costs of this increased attendance. Selwood and Davies calculated that since the advent of free admission and 7.3 million extra visitors each of these visitors cost London’s museums on average  £3.56 per visitor  £3.56 extra that has to be found by the museums from non-lottery funding (Selwood Davies, 2003: p.8). Thus free admission has had a bitter sting in its tale, and it may be said that presently a great many of London’s famous museums find themselves in financial difficulties, unable to pay for restorations and improvements; unable to compete with American and European museums for the finest pieces and exhibitions, unable to attract the brightest researchers and curators and ultimately in danger of losing the great reputations that some have nurtured for as long as two centuries. It is clear to all, museum directors and government officials alike, that the present funding arrangements of London’s museums are precarious and that a serious strategy needs to be devised to offer such museums long-term financial security and thus a platform to compete with the other leading museums of the world. This present dissertation conducted interviews, by way of questionnaires with five senior figures from five of London’s leading museums the British Museum, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the London Transport Museum and the V A museum to ascertain their thoughts and attitudes regarding the present state and the likely future state of London’s museums. These senior figures were questioned on their beliefs regarding the lottery funding of museums, on the advent of free admission, on the extent of government funding, on international competition, and on future strategy. The picture that emerges from these interviews is one of profound uncertainty over the future survival and prosperity of London’s museums; buffeted on the one side by the loss of revenue from free admission, and on other sides by the short-fall in promised lottery investment and the present government’s obsession with the quantitative aspect of museum attendance at the expense of the quality of the visitor’s experience. Section 2: Literature Review It perhaps appropriate to preface this literature review with a few remarks about its undertaking. Often when undertaking research that refers to relatively recent events, the researcher finds that the academic world has not yet had time to catch-up in print and publish scholarly books and articles covering these events. With the present research however the proposition was entirely opposite; even though the subjects of lottery funding, free admission and so on are relatively recent, there is nonetheless an abundance of literature dealing with the specific question of the future of London’s museums. The task of the researcher was thus to sift this material so as to isolate its most pertinent and relevant parts. Another unusual aspect of this present literature review is its wide use of government documents and announcements. An overriding theme throughout the present paper is the intimacy of the relationship between the government and museum managers and directors. Naturally, the government perspective upon events is not published through academic books and journals, but by speeches, white-papers, press releases and so on. This research of course made much use of the outstanding museum journals, pre-eminently Curator: The Museum Journal. Of the several articles from this journal used in this dissertation, one was of seminal importance in providing statistical and analytical evidence of the impact of lottery funding and free admission upon London’s museums, this being: S. Selwood and M. Davies (2005) ‘Capital Costs: Lottery Funding in Britain and Consequences for Museums. The article excellently articulates the dilemma that has crept upon London’s museums now that the inadequacy of lottery funding to meet extra visitors numbers has become apparent. There are hints in the above article to possible solutions to the funding crisis facing London’s museums, and these solutions are discussed in greater depth in R. Baron’s ‘Reinventing a State Program for Museum Funding’ (2003). Question marks as to the thoroughness and efficacy in practice of the government’s free admissions policy is raised in several places: Freudenheim’s ‘That Politics Problem’ (2005), Babbidge’s ‘UK Museums; Safe and Sound? (2000) and Sharp’s ‘Controversy and Challenge: British Funding Increases Nationally, But Not to National Museums’ all echo the apprehensiveness and fear felt by many museum directors and staff towards the financial liabilities that would arise in the wake of free admissions (2006). Freudenheim, in particular, highlights a certain naivety in government’s attitude towards the workings of national museums; citing in particular the government’s inveterate insistence upon the increasing of admissions figures no matter what the effects of this upon either museum costs or the aesthetic museum-experience of visitors. The government’s position, and its obvious delight and sense of fulfilment at increased attendance figures since free admission, is given in a number of documents. Principally, the paper London Cultural Capital – Realising the Potential of a World Class City published by the London’s Museums Agency (2004) establishes the governments intentions and strategy towards the future of London’s museums. The paper gives fifteen government policies, under the headers value, access, creativity, and excellence by which the government’s museum strategies will be delivered in future. The government, in association with the National Lottery, has written in several places of its satisfaction at the results of the introduction of the policy of free admissions. In particular, the paper One Year On Visitor Numbers Soaring At National Museums Following Abolition Of Entry Charges published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 1 January 2003 gives a sense of the euphoria and achievement perceived by the government. Also, the paper Two Years On Free Admission to National Museums Draws Even Bigger Crowds again published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 9 March 2003 gives much the same impression. In each of these documents the government stresses its loyalty and commitment to the principle of free admission and to the extension of this principle as far as possible. At the same time, there is little reference in these documents to the nervousness and trepidation felt by museum directors and managers about the future prosperity of the institutions they preside over. It is in this absence of self-criticism, that the reader perceives the origins of the discrepancy between that government’s perception of the financial condition of London’s museums and the reality of their condition. The possible consequences of such as disparity increasing, and of a competition gap widening between London’s museums and those in America and Europe, are well delineated in Cain’s article ‘Museums and the Future of Collecting’ (2005). In short, the extant literature paints the present picture of London’s museums as a time of grave uncertainty with respect to their financial predicament and thus their world-class legacies and reputations. These sources also acknowledge the considerable benefits already brought by lottery funding and free admission, and point also to the great future potential of these schemes; they instil in the reader at the same time a warning that idealism must be checked by pragmatic considerations before London’s museums can attain the future they deserve. Section 3: Methodology The principal method of primary data collection for this research was the interviewing, by way of questionnaires, of several senior figures at five of London’s leading museums. The decision to interview senior management and directing figures, rather than members of the public, had the obvious advantage that the answers obtained would be the specialist opinions of people with an intimate knowledge of the subject matter of the research. Members of the general public, especially those living in London, often show much interest and curiosity towards the subject of the prosperity and fate of London’s museums, but at the same time are not professionals with direct experience of the key debates and consultations. To arrange these five meetings, the researcher wrote fifteen letters to major London museums. Of these fifteen requests for an interview, seven positive responses were returned to the interviewer, of which five eventually furnished the opportunity of an interview. In requesting these interviews letters were sent to the director of each museum, irregardless of the sex, race, or religion of the person. Of the five eventual interviewees, three were men and two women; their ages ranged between forty-one and sixty-three. At the behest of interviewees, all of whom preferred to speak off the record due to the sensitivity of many of the issues of discussion, neither their names nor their titles are given in the final publication of this research. Thus, in the transcripts presented in the appendix of this research, each of the five interviewees are referred to as ‘a senior figure’ and ascribed a coded number following the simple scheme 001-002-003-004-005. This sensitivity, arising from the various present tensions over funding between London museums, the HLF and the government, clearly raises certain ethical questions about the present research. Above all, is it permissible to expose senior figures to possible embarrassment or worse, for the sake of the findings of this research. In answer to this question, the present researcher would say two things: firstly, that explicit consent for every interview was obtained by the researcher before the commencement of each interview, thus all interviewees participated at their own volition; secondly, following Utilitarian principles of seeking ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’, the researcher decided that the possible positive benefits and improved public understanding of the topic that might arise from this research could justify the slight ethical risks associated with the carrying-out of this research. It is a belief of the researcher that by informing the academic community and the public of the chief issues and controversies now affecting London’s museums, that the debate generated from this knowledge will lead to greater consideration on all sides being shown towards the preservation and improvement of London’s world-famous reputation as a museum centre. A number of criticisms may be levelled at the methodology discussed in this section. Firstly, it might be asked, with some justification, whether or not the interviewing of only five museum figures can produce results characteristic of attitudes and opinions of London’s museums as a whole. Naturally, critics might ask how the researcher can infer from the collection of five opinions general trends governing the many hundreds and thousands of senior figures working for the management of London’s museums. Likewise, why does the report interview exclusively figures from museum management and not from the government or from the National Lottery? In response to the first question the reply must be that with limited resources and limited time, it seemed most prudent to the researcher to restrict the field of investigation to a narrow focus, where the results obtained could be subjected to a significant scrutiny and analysis something which resource constraints would have rendered impossible had the field been extended much wider. Moreover, whilst only five persons were interviewed, these figures preside over London’s five largest museums which between them see greater attendance figures and government investment than all of London’s other museums combined. Thus the opinions of the figures interviewed actually are far more representative of London as a whole than would first appear likely. In response to the second question, a similar answer might be given: only museum directors were interviewed because they are the persons with the most intimate knowledge of the matters under discussion. If the present researcher were in future to extend the present research, then the opinions of others outside of museum management would certainly have to be included. As it was, the present report incorporates sufficient expert opinion, to make its findings relevant to the better academic and public understanding of the issues affecting the future of London’s museums. Section 4: Results Analysis The aim of the present research was to investigate the likely future of London’s museums; this research was undertaken by way of interviews with five senior figures from five leading London museums. From the information gained from the literature review undertaken by the researcher it seemed most appropriate to question these museum directors on five main subjects: lottery funding, the advent of free admission, international competition, future strategy and the employment of new researchers and curators. The expectation of the researcher was that the general opinion of these senior figures would have initially been one of welcome to the proposed lottery funding, but that this initial welcome would have turned to mild scepticism in the wake of free admission and the provocation of severe uncertainty following the extra costs incurred by increased visitor numbers and lesser-than-expected lottery investment. What opinions then did these results produce in actuality? (1) Lottery Funding. The five interviewed senior figures unanimously (5 of 5) welcomed the original government proposals to aid London’s and Britain’s museums through funds made available by the national lottery. Museums such as the British Museum, with its newly built Great Court, was given considerable lottery funding amounting to  £47 million (Selwood Davies, 2003: p.3). Museum directors were quick to concede that such developments would have been impossible without these lottery funds or an extremely large, but unlikely, private donation. In short, museum directors were united in their praise for proposed lottery investment. (2) Free Admission. The chief feature of the respondents’ answers to questions posed about free admission were twofold: on the one hand, respondents welcomed the opportunity to open their doors to ever greater numbers of people, thus disseminating cultural and scientific experience as far as possible; on the other hand, words such as ‘apprehension’ and ‘scepticism’ were used liberally by nearly all of those interviewed. What most strongly prompted this apprehension was the ‘twining’ of free admission introduction with the compensation for lost revenue by lottery funding. Directors confided that when allowed to charge admission fees their museums did at least have a degree of self-sufficiency and so could determine their own future strategies and successes. But lottery funding conditioned by the introduction of free admission policies has subjected London’s museums to a profound financial vulnerability and loss of independence. These museums, now depend upon the HLF for often as much a half of their income; if controversies or difficulties arise with the lottery directors or with the ministers directing them, then the museums are forced to abide by outside instruction and policy. Moreover, the great fear that lottery investment would not be sustained appears to have come true for all of the five museums whose for whom senior figures were interviewed for this research. So too, insufficient lottery funding has been made available to compensate for the extra costs incurred by the vastly increased visitor numbers experienced after the introduction of free admission. Interviewees hinted at a certain naivety and lack of preparation on the part of ministers and lottery managers with respect to the projected visitor increases following free admission and the costs that would be incurred by this. (3) International Competition. On the question of international competition there was further unanimity of opinion amongst the senior figures interviewed. Each respondent vigorously asserted that the collections of the museums he or she presided over as a manager were the equal of any equivalent museum anywhere in the world. Managers from the British Museum and the Natural History Museum, not to mention others, could rightly boast that their reputations were pre-eminent amongst international museums. At the same time, three of the figures interviewed (the exceptions presided over specialist museums with little international competition) confided that many American and European museums simply had far better funding and so purchasing-power than their own London museums. For the immediate future, this gap will mean that these international museums will continue to purchase new pieces of exceptional public interest whilst London’s museums will have to remain content with their exi sting impressive but static collections. In the medium- and long-term future, if this purchasing disparity continues then a qualitative difference will emerge ever more clearly between the museums of London and those of America and Europe. (4) Recruitment. When embarking upon the present research the researcher did not anticipate that ‘the difficulty of recruiting new researchers and curators’ would be a major concern to London’s museums regarding their futures. Nonetheless, as the searching through the literature review proceeded and as the topic came into better perspective this problem seemed to be a central concern for several of the major London museums. Specialist museums like the V A and the Theatre Museum do not, according to results, face such problems; but senior figures from the Natural History Museum, the British Museum and the Science museum may all face crises over recruitment in the near future. According to these figures the recruitment of new staff has been a subject neglected by the government in their ceaseless quest for higher admission figures and in ‘measuring the value’ of a museum-goers’ experience. The science museum can no longer attract top scientists and researchers because they are paid so little:  £20,000 as a starting salary, peaking at  £50,000 ( ). Commercial companies and American museums offer far better salaries and improved facilities. If this ‘brain-drain’ continues for much longer, then it may prove to be the greatest of all dangers to the future prosperity of London’s museums. These institutions are sustained not only by their pieces and specimens, but by the care and expertise of their curators and other staff; it is this expertise and the respect that arises from it that gives these institutions their world-class reputations. If this expertise evaporates, then no amount of increased admission or funding or improved strategy will protect the legacies and future prosperity of London’s museums. But towards the re-capture and enticement of these experts the government and the lottery fund seem somewhat blinded; given the extent to which London’s museums now rely upon government funding, it is precisely with the government that the responsibility lies for providing sufficient funding for home-grown and international experts to crave as they used to the opportunity to work in the prestigious museums of London. (5) Future Strategy. The senior figures interviewed for this research are nearly as one when they declare that future strategy has to be built around the attainment of financial stability; this is to be sought through an improved, more efficient and more effective relationship with the government and the HLF. A better balance has to be struck between the government’s ardent desire for ever increased admissions and the practical and pragmatic methods by which these extra admissions, dragging with them their extra costs, will be paid for. If a resolution and balancing is not achieved here then the obvious and inevitable path down which London’s museums must slide is that of ever greater debt and so lesser purchasing-power for new pieces and so a general decline in the standing and reputation of London’s museums. The reality of this predicament is brought home, even as this dissertation is written-up, by the announcement today of the London Theatre Museum (BBC, 2006) that they face imminent closure unless a major cash injection from the lottery fund is received. The alternative strategies are these: firstly, an abrupt about-face by the museums whereby they begin to charge for admission. This path is unattractive as there are numerous legislative, ethical and civil obstacles to this policy’s reinstatement. Another alternative is increased public funding from a source other than the lottery; this however looks most unlikely in the short-term. Thus, setting aside the remote chance that a massive private donation will save them, museums must, in their strategising come to agreement with the government about how extra funding from the lottery may be obtained. In short, the results obtained from this present research point to two things: firstly, that senior figures from the five museums interviewed welcomed in general lottery funding as a means to achieve rejuvenation and restoration; secondly, that this optimism changed to apprehension and tentativeness once it became clear the extent to which lottery funding would be dependant upon free admissions policies. Thirdly, it is obvious from all the interviews, that London’s museums are at a cross-roads and a defining moment in their illustrious history. To the left, is the danger of an ever greater financial disparity caused by increasing visitor figures and inadequate lottery funding; to the right is offered a sound financial structure that will ensure the continuation and prosperity of London’s museums’ world-class reputation. Section 5: Conclusion In the final analysis, it seems most appropriate to say that London’s museums are now at a seminal moment in their historical development a moment of both opportunity and precariousness. The opportunities promised by massive lottery funding at first seemed likely to engender a great rejuvenation of London’s museums; indeed, this new source of funding promised to keep London’s museums competitive with the other great museums of the world for the foreseeable future. The advent of free admission was met with both tentativeness and warmth by the senior figures interviewed by this researcher; apprehension because free admission, and thus loss of revenue from admission charges, meant a far greater degree of dependence upon the government and the LHF and thus greater financial uncertainty. If the new relationship between lottery funding and free admission worked in practice as some had suggested in theory that it would, then London’s museums would have a bright and perhaps glorious future. If, on the other hand, the organization and administration of lottery funding was inadequate or improperly practised then a disparity would open between increasing admissions numbers and the ability of museums to pay the extra costs of these visitors. In the event, both expectations and fears were realised by the introduction of free admission in London’s museums. As the figures cited throughout this dissertation attest, visitor figures rose spectacularly in the wake of free admission. Greater numbers of the British general public and international visitors than ever before were able to receive the cultural and scientific treasures of London’s great museums. Nonetheless, once the honeymoon period had waned, it became clear to many museum managers and directors that insufficient lottery funds were being supplied to compensate for loss of revenue incurred after the dropping of admissions charges and after the increase of visitors also from this policy. In the years since free admission was introduced, London’s museums have acquired ever greater deficits on t

Djuna Barness The Diary of a Dangerous Child :: Djuna Barnes Diary Dangerous Child Essays

Djuna Barnes's The Diary of a Dangerous Child "By this I mean that I am debating with myself whether I shall place myself in some good man's hands and become a mother, or if I shall become wanton and go out in the world and make a place for myself." -Olga, "The Diary of a Dangerous Child" In Djuna Barnes's short story "The Diary of a Dangerous Child" (1922), the narrator, an adolescent girl named Olga, ponders her destiny on the occasion of her fourteenth birthday: should she marry, settle down, and have children or become a "wanton," independent woman? During the rest of the story, however, the same young girl seduces her sister's fiancà ©, plans to dominate him using a whip, yet has her plan spoiled when her mother disguises herself as the fiancà © and arrives at the proposed midnight rendezvous. The youth consequently decides to become neither a maternal wife nor an independent tramp; instead, Olga decides "to run away and become a boy" ("Diary" 94). Like many of her early writings, this Barnes story ultimately problematizes the unrelenting sexuality and corresponding apathy of the child vampire Olga and the "traditional" view that women have only two mutually exclusive lots in life: that of the domestic and that of the worldly. What differentiates this female va mpire from other literary examples of her type is her age and the issues pursuant to it. Although disciplined in the end by her mother, Olga is but a child herself yet comes close to luring the unsuspecting fiancà © into her game of sexual supremacy. Because literature and criticism lack a solid tradition concerning vampires and children, particularly a mixture of the two, one must pursue other sources as contextual avenues into this figure in Barnes's early works. In its mixture of the domestic (baby/child/adolescent) and the sensual (vampire) and the dangerous appeal that fusion entails, the child vampire in Barnes's writings and illustrations symbolizes the ambivalence that American society of the Modernist period had about newly acquired freedoms for women. This paper explores a kind of perilous yet unwavering attraction that the child vampire epitomizes. In pursuing a contextual, interpretive framework that provides a path into Barnes's use of the child vampire, I turn to visual culture of the period, focusing upon the tradition of the screen vamp and the use of children in early American cinema as initial sources of these conflicting feelings.

Icloud Current Situation Analysis

CURRENT SITUATION ANALYSIS Christopher Dobrinski Esra Arnaudova Evanzhelin Stoyanova Jora Cakuli Apple Inc. is an American  multinational corporation  that designs and sells  consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company is widely recognized by its logo which is an apple that is bitten on the right side which symbolizes lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy. Apple’s most famous products include the iPad, the iPhone, the iPod, and the MacBook series of laptops. All products offered by Apple use the iOS operational system.On August 20th, 2012 the company’s value broke the world record which is 624 billion dollars. iCloud is one of the company’s flagship applications, which allows its users to store data on remote computer servers, so that they can synchronize that data with almost every device that has the iOS system. The iCloud system provides its users with the ability to upload everything from music to books, photos, apps, and et c. Every iCloud account offers 5gb of free storage space, additional space be purchased in 10, 20 or 50 GB.Other features that the application has are Find My Phone which allows users to track the location of their iOS device or Mac. Find My Friends is another feature which allows users to share their location. Back To My Mac is a service on the iCloud that allows users to login remotely to other computers configured with the same Apple ID. iTunes Match is newest feature of the storage app, customers can match and scan tracks from CDs or other sources and listen to the same tracks on iTunes free of charge. Cloud’s main competitors include Amazon Cloud Drive, Box. net, Dropbox, and Microsoft Skydrive. Amazon Cloud Drive is a storage system much like the iCloud, it was launched in March 2011 by Amazon. com, just like the iCloud it offers 5 GB of free storage, any additional storage can be purchased, the cost is 1$ per GB a year, which is a lot cheaper than the product that Appl e Inc. offers. Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by Dropbox Inc. which offers client software, file synchronization and cloud storage.Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on each personal computer that they have, which then Dropbox synchronizes so that the folder and its contents can be viewed on every PC or phone that it is synchronized with. Unlike Apple and Amazon, Dropbox only offers 2 GB of free space, while the paid Pro account offers up to 100 GB. Dropbox works with iOS, Android and Blackberry for mobile users and on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Which is amazing because itis one of the few storage services that can be used on multiple software platforms. Box. net has been on the market since 2005 and has been a powerhouse in the segment.The personal edition of Box. net offers 5 GB of free space, while the maximum that can be purchased is 500 GB for 15 dollars a month with enhanced features. Box. net just like Dropbox works on multiple platform s. Microsoft Skydrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage system. The system offers 7 GB of free space, users that signed up prior to April 22nd received 25 GB of free storage enhancement. The service uses HTML5 technologies which allows customers to upload files of up to 300 MB in size by dragging and dropping the file into the web browser. Microsoft Skydrive works only for Windows Home and Windows Phone users.

That Newfangled Technology

Set Phasers on Stun Case Case 14: That Newfangled Technology Summary: On the morning of September 8, 1923, Lieutenant Commander Donald T. Hunter was assigned to responsible for leading fourteen destroyers of Destroyer Squadron 11 to depart from San Francisco to San Diego. They were returning home after an escorting Battle Division 4 from Puget Sound to San Francisco. At that time, the Destroyer Squadron comprised with leading flagship that commanded by Captain Hunter, USS Delphy (DD-261) and followed by; the four ships of Destroyer Division 33, USS S. P.Lee (DD-310), USS Young (DD-312), USS Woodbury (DD-309), and USS Nicholas (DD-311); the five ships from Destroyer Division 31, USS Farragut (DD-300), USS Fuller (DD-297), USS Percival (DD-298), USS Somers (DD-301), and USS Chauncey (DD-296); and four ships from Destroyer Division 32, USS Kennedy (DD-306), USS Paul Hamilton (DD-307), USS Stoddert (DD-302), and USS Thomson (DD-305). The warships conducted tactical gears and weaponry exe rcises en route, including a competitive speed run of 20 knots. Later in the day, as weather worsened, the ships formed up a column on the squadron leader â€Å"Delphy†. That evening, around 2000 hours (8:00 p. . ), the leading flagship broadcast an erroneous report, based on an improperly interpreted radio compass bearing, showing the squadrons position about nine miles off Point Arguello. About an hour later, the destroyers turned east to enter what was thought to be the Santa Barbara Channel, though it could not be seen owing to the thick fog. Unfortunately, due to a combination of abnormally strong currents and navigational complacency, it led the squadron onto the rocks offshore point and rugged area of San Miguel Island, near Honda Point. Just after turning, Delphy struck the rocks at 2105 (9:05 p. m. ), plowing ashore at 20 knots.More than worse, Delphy was followed by S. P. Lee, which hit and swung broadside against the bluffs. Young piled up adjacent to Delphy and ca psized, trapping many of her fire and engine room crew below. While Woodbury, Nicholas, and Fuller struck reefs and ran aground offshore, Chauncey ran in close aboard Young. However, the alarm sirens slowed Somers and Farragut enough, so they just touched ground before backing off to deeper water while the five other destroyers steered completely clear. Although heavy pounding surf broke over the seven stranded destroyers, eventually breaking the Delphy into two parts.Hundreds of thousands gallons of fuel oil from seven ships spilled into the crashing waves, carbide bombs were exploded when they came in contact with the water, and numerous fires began on the ships and on the surface of the sea. Finally, 23 men died in the ensuring attempts to abandon the ships and make it to shore in the darkness and heavy surf. About 450 survivors from the seven warships made their way slowly to the narrow and rocky beach below the cliff during the hour that followed. S. P. Lee S. P. Lee Fuller Ful ler Woodbury Woodbury Chauncey Chauncey Delphy Delphy Young Young Nicholas Nicholas What Went Wrong:It later turned out to the light that the Squadron was actually several miles north and further east, but Captain Hunter had disbelieved the accuracy of a Point Arguello radio signal. Following the turn, Point Arguello was dead ahead, and distant only about two nautical miles. The Point Arguello light may have been hidden by the fog. However, did Captain Hunter issue an order to change-of course of 95 ° left turn, or did he order his ships to turn to a bearing of 95 ° magnetic? Additional Factors: Communication between Captain Hunter and Radioman Falls: The communication between Captain Hunter and the radioman was misunderstood.The radioman would report the wrong bearings, when the reciprocal bearing should have been reported instead. Had the correct bearings been reported from the beginning, the ship wouldn’t have crashed. â€Å"Newfangled Technology† Feedback: The mistaken â€Å"error† proved that Captain Hunter cannot always rely on his strong self-reliance and that even a skilled mathematician makes mistakes; and that it’s acceptable to rely on technology. There was no feedback given back to Captain Hunter to state its’ reasoning behind the bearing that was being reported to him. Also, there was no feedback given to challenge Captain Hunter’s navigations.If more feedback was given, it could have been sensed that navigation was off route. Continued use of â€Å"That Newfangled Technology†: After the incident of being reported the wrong bearings, Captain Hunter still continued to use the navigation by radio bearing. It was assumed as an honest mistake. It wasn’t until after the crash that Captain Hunter realized that the radioman was giving him the correct bearings from the beginning. This could have been prevented if the system would have been checked after the first wrong bearing, to see what the re asoning behind such an error was; instead of continuing on the journey.More Information: According to an article by Noah Andre Trudeau, â€Å"California Naval History – Point Honda: A Naval Tragedy’s Chain of Errors†, a lean budget and distrust of new technology contributed to a naval tragedy at Honda Point, California (Trudeau, 2012). Speed was the essential creed of the early to mid-20th century destroyer driver. Determination and self-confidence was a style of command in which those qualities could achieve the impossible while in peacetime the same attributes contributed to one of the U. S. Navy’s most significant disasters (Trudeau, 2012).The 18 ships were meant to travel along the California coast to San Diego, with their two high powered and low powered turbines, four tall thin funnels and a book speed topped at 32 knots. Due to the postwar budget cutbacks, they were operating at 20-30% below full complement. Although a lot of live were lost during this tragedy, all the blame wasn’t on Captain Hunter. Everyone played a part, from, Watson’s fixation on making a record 20-knot passage along with his failure to supervise the navigation, Blodgett’s inability to express his concerns, and the silence of the other squadron officers.Uncertainties surround the new technology, unusual weather conditions and minor equipment problems also played a part (Trudeau, 2012). Lesson Learned: This case illustrated the importance of human error and testing all new technology before use. Although all faults in the technology may not be quickly discovered testing all aspects is critical. It is learned that although you may be proficient in a skill and have applicable experience, mistakes still happen. The people with great skill and power, like Lieutenant Commander Donald T.Hunter, are still fallible as human beings. Despite having a fully functioning technology system to navigate, it shouldn’t completely be dependent on. Instead, the two should assist each other, human intelligence and newfound technology. Additional Reference: Trudeau, N. A. (2012, March 2). California Naval History-Point Honda: A Naval Tragedy's Chain of Errors. Retrieved October 29, 2012, from The California State Military Museum: A United States Army Museum Activity: Preserving California's Military Heritage: http://www. militarymuseum. org/PtHonda. html

Analysis of Dead Man Walking Essay Example

Analysis of Dead Man Walking Essay Example Analysis of Dead Man Walking Paper Analysis of Dead Man Walking Paper Dead Man Walking Meaning The United States has one of the few overspent, and majority of citizens who condone and continue capital punishment. In the book Dead Man Walking, by Sister Helen Prepare, the topic of capital punishment is discussed through an eye-witness account of her experience befriending a death row inmate. It takes place in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana from 1982-1991. Sister Helen is asked if she would be willing to correspond with a death row inmate. When she agrees, she is assigned to Elm Patrick Sonnies, a man convicted of raping and murdering a young woman and her boyfriend. This kook is written in a first-person, subjective narration from Preseasons perspective revolving Mr.. Sinners and Sister Helene interactions, and throughout the trial involving Mr.. Sonnies death sentence. There are many effective devices used in this book that strongly show her opinions towards capital punishment, and convincing the audience that capital punishment is morally wrong and fundamentally flawed. Sister Helen does this by using with the use of pathos. She utilizes the use of pathos predominately by her compassionate tone of voice, the importance of personal accessibility, and the moral cost of executions. This is her most effective argument showing why the death penalty is wrong. The first effective argument opposing the death penalty that Sister Helen uses is the use of pathos. She uses pathos by her compassionate tone of voice, the importance of personal responsibility, and the moral cost of executions. Her tone of voice can be interpreted by multiple passages. There is a clear passage showing her compassion towards Mr.. Sonnies. He looks up at me. Sister Helen, I am going to die. My soul rushes towards him. I am standing tit my hands against the mesh screen, as close as I can get to him. I pray and ask God to comfort him, cushion him, wrap him round, give him courage to face death, to step across the river, to die with love. The words are pouring from me. (88) This shows the compassion she has towards Mr.. Sonnies and the situation involving his death. She genuinely wants him to feel comfortable, loved, and peaceful in his last moments on Earth. Saying that her soul rushes towards him, meaning that she feels an internal force to comfort him, that she feels a compassion to help this man, not just an obligation. This tone of voice, showing compassion, using pathos by showing the audience the emotion involved in death row inmates and the people involved in their lives. This shows how Mr.. Sonnies is human, and others are still capable of having compassion for him. That regardless of his actions, he has people who care about him and who are we to in the name of Justice end these relationships and his life? This causes the reader to see the inmate on a more personal level. Compassion is more prevalent, once a person is able to see themselves in the persons situation. This can be seen discussed for centuries. In the story of Plainclothes was a good man and a good soldier. He one day was bitten by a snake, that caused him horrendous pain, which in return he shouted religious obscenities that offended his fellow soldiers. His commanders then decided to leave him to suffer. He lives in pain, with animals as his friends and his food. According to the story, the chorus of soldiers that heard about his story 10 years later, decided even before they see the man, they imagine vividly what it is like to be him- and they enter a protest against the callousness of the commanders and demand to go back and save him. For my part, I pity him- thinking of how, with no living soul to care for him, seeing no friendly face, wretched, always alone, he suffers with a fierce affliction, and has no resources to meet his daily needs. How in the world does the poor man survive? Nassau 27) This story is another example of how even when a person makes a mistake, if you can put yourself in that persons position, or see them on a more personal level, naturally humans are to have more compassion for the person. This is what Sister Helen does, by showing emotion and compassion through her tone of voice, aiming to make the audience see Mr.. Sonnies as a person, who deserves life. Another way Sister Helen uses pathos to express that all criminals deserve life is by solidifying the importance of personal responsibly. She explains the refusal for personal responsibility in this passage: Who killed this man [Patrick Sonnies]? Nobody. Everybody can argue that he or she was Just doing a Job the governor, the warden, the head of the Department of Corrections, the district attorney, the Judge, the Jury, the Pardon Board, the witnesses to the execution. Nobody feels personally responsible for the death of this man. 101) This aims to show the audience that each person involved in the case, and execution should feel as if in some aspect, it was if they each pulled the switch that caused the man to lose his life. That from the governor who feared a loss of support for his campaign if he was to oppose Mr.. Sonnies death, to the head of corrections who organizes the executions who which feels that the death penalty is morally wrong. She raises the question, if these people are against the death penalty, shouldnt they have a personal responsibility to stand up for the inmates facing execution? What is the severance between personal values, and personal duty? These are reasons she feels there is personal responsibility involved in the death penalty that people refuse to believe, adding to her argument opposing capital punishment. The last form of pathos she uses to show why capital punishment is wrong, is showing the morality involved in executions. She wants the reader to see the immoralities of killing a man in the name of Justice. How is a government to say they are powerful enough, or wise enough to take the life of a man? She claims Government cant be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill (21) Society condemns the men who take the lives of others, but when it is done is the hands of the government, is it right and Just? How does the government have the right to such an absolute power, which is death? Throughout the whole first-person account, she is constantly questioning the morality involved with legal murder. She believes that an eye for an eye, is not to be taken literally. That the Jesus she believes in does not mete out violence with violence, pain with pain, torture with torture. She believes that people can be forgiven by God, and do not deserve to be removed from the world before they can redeem themselves to God. Also, as long as they removed from society, and the possibility to kill again, that is as moral and Just as punishment can be. The Iowa Supreme Court stated this, Crime indicates a diseased mind in the same manner that sickness and pain do a diseased body. And as in the one case we provide hospitals for the treatment of severe and contagious diseases, so in the other, prisons and asylums should be provided for similar reasons. (Regis) This goes along with Sister Hellene statement that imprisonment is the only moral way to punish criminals, that death passes the line of morality. As a hospital is made for the diseased, prisons are made for the criminally deranged. There are places made for people who commit crime, and they have a right to be put where they are designed to go. Death is a design far to cruel, for anyone with a moral conscience to enforce. Sister Helen has a very graceful way of explaining why the death penalty questions morality and does this through the strong use of pathos. Pathos are used in this non- action book by Sister Helene strong, compassionate tone of voice, the question of moral responsibility and the immorality of capital punishment. She does this through several passages, that show her compassion, her call-out to the people involved in Sinners murders, and how governments should not have an absolute power which is death. In conclusion Sister Helen makes many strong points that show multiple reasons why the death penalty is an unjust, and immoral way of punishment. She makes the reader question their opinions on capital punishment, and proves over and over how wrong it is. The opposing side is mentioned, but she always has an intelligent, emotion-stirring response.

The Effects of Television on Americans Health Essays

The Effects of Television on Americans Health Essays The Effects of Television on Americans Health Essay The Effects of Television on Americans Health Essay Televisions Effect on Health in American Culture Liberty University English Abstract Television has a detrimental effect on the health in American culture. Studies show that Americans view more than 151 hours of television a month or 5 hours or more a day. The lack of physical activity during that time is linked to the high obesity rate in America today. Children and adults alike are affected by obesity, which also lead to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, different types of cancers, etc. n which are only a few of the diseases associated with obesity. Excessive television watching with no physical also leads to poor eating habits because of exposure to commercials on television advertising unhealthy foods. It is stated that children are the main targets of these commercials. Studies showed that children are exposed to more than 40,000 commercials a year, making them very vulnerable to these ads. Television has a very negative impact on the health of Americans. Watching television can be hazardous to your health.This fact has been confirmed by any studies that have been done for decades on children and adults. Television affects the health of Americans because excessive television watching causes less physical activity that leads to obesity due to poor eating habits associated with commercials advertising unhealthy foods. A person is considered obese when they have too much fat accumulation, causing their body weight to be 20% higher than normal (medical news today), w hich often occurs when a person sit for a long period of time watching television with no physical activity.The Nielsen Company reported hat at the end of 2008 the average person viewed overl 51 hours of television in a month, or 5 hours or more a day (Rosen, 2009), and those figures are even more extensive today. Televisions effect on the health of American society has been of great concern for decades. One of the main concerns is its strong link to the high obesity rate in America today. Research conducted at Harvard first linked television watching to obesity more than 25 years ago.Since then extensive research has confirmed the link between television viewing and obesity in children and adults Harvard School of Public Health, 2013, Para. 3). Additional studies show that for every extra two hours people spend watching television per day (over the 2 hours recommended), their chances of contracting type 2 diabetes rises 20%, and heart disease is raised by (Gardner, 2011). These ar e only a few diseases associated with obesity, others include, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, different types of cancer, liver and gall bladder disease etc.These diseases are increasing more and more each day and are no longer considered adult diseases, but children re being affected as well. Two studies that followed children from birth found that TV viewing in childhood predicts obesity risk well into adulthood and mid-life, especially with children with televisions in their bedrooms, which gained more weight than those that did not (Harvard School of Public Health, 2013).Nevertheless, many Americans do not realize the connection between watching television and obesity because it is considered one of Americas leading pass times, and is not believed to be harmful in any way. Most people consider it entertaining, others view t to relax, relieve depression, stress, and loneliness. Television does have some positive effects on the American culture, but very few studies have been found to show these effects. Some of these positive effects consist of shows and commercials that promote healthy living and eating habits.These include exercise programs that can be viewed throughout the day to help people incorporate a good fitness program into their busy schedules, commercials that advertise good healthy food choice, like menus. However, the majority of television commercials use beautiful models or amous actors to promote unhealthy food products, which camouflage the hidden dangers of eating these products and deceive people into thinking they can eat these unhealthy foods and look like the people that are in the ads. These ads affect children more than adults because they cannot differentiate between what is real and whats not.Dittmann (2004) stated that the average child is exposed to more than 40,000 TV commercials a year, and because children are the target of these commercials, and easily persuaded, after Just one exposure to a commercial, hildren can recall the ads content and have a desire for the product (Para. 19). Therefore, making it difficult for parents that try to encourage healthy eating habits, and because, most of these numerous commercials on television advertise Junk food, being exposed to these commercials cause individuals to prefer these foods over healthy ones.This exposure leads to mid-meals snacking, consumption of high fatty foods, and decrease in energy levels in adults as well as children (Dennison Laskoski, 2004), which are major contributor to the high obesity rate. For example, n todays society people can get almost everything fast. There are multiple fast food restaurants in every city. People are enjoying the convenience of not having to prepare meals whenever they choose. Families can run out and pick up a meal, bring it home and eat dinner while watching television.This is done several days a week because it is quick and inexpensive, unaware of the dangers that are associated with this simple pass time. Parents that should encourage decreased television time and monitoring what their children are watching are instead contributing to the problem ecause of their own inability to live a healthy lifestyle. Children perceive this as a normal way of life, causing this behavior to be passed down for generations to generation, which is a vicious cycle that has been handed down for decades.Adults and children alike are encouraged to incorporate some form of physical activity in their daily lives along with watching television, whether its walking, riding a bicycle, jogging, or Just adding some type of movement throughout the day to reduce their chances of contracting these diseases. Regardless of the knowledge that is seen and taught or studies that have been done on how to be healthy and remain healthy, Americans are still not taking heed to these warnings and are spending more and more time watching television and living sedentary lives, contributing to the already high obesity rate.Obesity does not discriminate it affects individuals of every ethnic background. Regardless to race, age, gender, and income or education level the statistics are found to be staggering. Therefore, there is an obesity epidemic in America because of the excessive amount of television Americans are watching. If excessive television watching is not decreased and substituted with some form of physical activity, the physical health of America will remain in Jeopardy for decades to come.The widespread of obesity will continue at an alarming rate, because of the unhealthy diets of Americans due to television commercials advertising unhealthy food Ounk food). television watching causes less physical activity that leads to unhealthy eating habits associated with commercials advertising unhealthy foods.Televisions Effect on the Health in Americans CultureI. Negative effects of Television on Health. A. Contribute to high obesity rate.1. Less physical activity.2. Poor eating habits3. Comm ercials advertising unhealthy foods.II. Links between excessive television watching and obesity confirmed.A. Americans watch 151 hours per day.1. 5 hours or more a day.2. Extra 2 hours per day.a. Type 2 diabetes risk increase 20%.b. Heart disease risk increase 15%.c. Causes high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, cancers, and liver and gall bladder diseases.III. Positive Effects of Television on Health.A. Commercials that promote Healthy Eating habits.1 . Advertise good healthy food choices.2. Subway restaurant (healthy meals).3. Healthy food choices on fast food menus.B. Television shows that promote health and fitness.IV. Solutions and prevention to the problem.A. Encourage physical activity.1. Walking daily.2. Bike riding.3. Jogging daily.4. Incorporate some type of movement throughout the day.V. Conclusion.A. Television is linked to the high obesity rate, because Americans are indulging in oo many unhealthy foods due to excessive television watching void of physical activi ty. References [Online image, boy watching tv eating chips]. Retrieved September 23, 2013 from cdc. gov/obesity/childhood/problems. html Dennison, B. , Laskovski, K. (2004).Television viewing and health: Encyclopedia of health and behavior 2, 791-793 Dittmann, M. (2004). Protecting children from advertising. 35 (6) p. 58 Retrieved from apa. org/monitor/Jun04/protecting. aspx. Garner, A. (2011).TV watching raises risk of health problems, dying young. Retrieved from cnn. om/2011/health/ 06/14/tv. watching. nhealthy/index. html Harvard School of Public Health (2013).The obesity prevention source: Television watching and sit time Retrieved from http:// www. hsph. harvard. edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-causes/television-and- sedentary-behavior-and-obesity/#Adult-TV-Viewing-and-ObesityMedical news today. Retrieved from medicalnewstoday. com/info/obesityRosen, D. (2009).Watching TV leads to obesity: The more TV you watch the fatter you become psychologytoday. com/blog/sleepingangels/200908/watc hing-tv-leads-to-obesity

The Popular Childrens Books, The Spide Chronicles

The Popular Children's Books, The Spide Chronicles The Spiderwick Chronicles is a popular children’s book series written by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. The fantasy stories revolve around the three Grace children and their frightening experiences with fairies when they move into an old Victorian home. The Spiderwick Chronicles Series According to a letter from co-author Holly Black that appears at the beginning of each of The Spiderwick Chronicles series, it all started when she and Tony DiTerlizzi were at a bookstore book signing and were given a letter that had been left for them. The letter was from the Grace children, and it mentioned a book that â€Å"tells people how to identify faeries and how to protect themselves.† The letter went on to say, â€Å"We just want people to know about this. The stuff that has happened to us could happen to anyone.† A few days later, according to Black, she and DiTerlizzi met the Grace children, and the story the children told them became The Spiderwick Chronicles. After their parents’ divorce, the Grace children and their mother move into the ramshackle Victorian home previously occupied by their great-aunt Lucinda. The three children, thirteen-year-old Mallory and her nine-year-old twin brothers, Jared and Simon, are still adjusting to their parents’ divorce and are not happy with their new home. While Mallory has her fencing to keep her occupied and Simon his menagerie of animals to care for, Jared is angry and at loose ends. Almost immediately, odd things begin to happen, beginning with strange sounds in the walls, and leading to the discovery of the small unexpected and unfriendly other occupants of the house and area. Written in the third person, the books emphasize Jared’s point of view. It’s poor Jared who tends to get blamed for all of the unpleasant things that happen, thanks to the faeries. He finds a secret room and an amazing book Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You, a book about identifying and protecting yourself from faeries. While the first book is quite mild and provides a basic introduction to the human characters and the threat from the fantastical creatures, the action and suspense is ratcheted up in the remaining books. The Grace children come in conflict with goblins, a shape-shifting ogre, dwarves, elves and other frightening characters. The series ends with the kidnapping of Mrs. Grace and her children’s desperate, and ultimately successful, attempt to rescue her. The Appeal of The Spiderwick Chronicles The short length of these children’s novels - about 100 pages - the uncomplicated, yet suspenseful and scary  fantasy stories, the engaging main characters, the attractive design of the small hardbound books and the full-page pen and ink illustrations in every chapter make the books particularly appealing to younger children who are independent readers or who enjoy having an adult read to them. The Books of The Spiderwick Chronicles The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Field GuideThe Spiderwick Chronicles: The Seeing StoneThe Spiderwick Chronicles: Lucindas SecretThe Spiderwick Chronicles: The Ironwood TreeThe Spiderwick Chronicles: The Wrath of Mulgarath Other Spiderwick books include: Arthur Spiderwicks Field Guide to The Fantastical World Around YouThe Notebook for Fantastical Observations   The Creators of The Spiderwick Chronicles Tony DiTerlizzi is a best-selling author and an award-winning illustrator. His books include Jimmy Zangwows Out-of-This-World Moon-Pie Adventure and Ted. Mary Howitt’s The Spider and the Fly was awarded a Caldecott Honor because of the quality of DiTerlizzi’s illustrations. Tony DiTerlizzi is both the co-author and the illustrator of The Spiderwick Chronicles. He has illustrated work by such well-known fantasy authors as J.R.R. Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey. His pen and ink drawings in The Spiderwick Chronicles give life to the characters and help to set the mood of adventure and suspense. Holly Black is also a best-selling author. She specializes in contemporary fantasy novels for teens and children. Her first book, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, a fantasy novel for young adults was published in 2002. Although they have known one another for a number of years, The Spiderwick Chronicles series and related books represent the first collaboration between Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black.

A Good Man is Good to Find by Flannery O'Connor Essay

A Good Man is Good to Find by Flannery O'Connor - Essay Example Written in 1953, this selection is a realistic short story because it illustrates the characteristics of realism. In â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find†, the grandmother attempts to persuade her son, Bailey, and his wife to take the family to east Tennessee for holiday instead of Florida. Finally, on the day of the journey, grandmother puts out of sight her cat, Pitty Sing, by putting her in a basket in the car. She dons a dress and a hat adorned with flowers on it so that people will realize she is a lady if there is an accident. As the story develops, the family stops at a restaurant known as the Tower, owned by Red Sammy Butts. Red Sammy grumbles that people are had to trust, remarking that he lately let two men purchase gas on credit. Grandmother informs him he’s a good man for doing it. Contrary, Red Sammy’s wife declares she does not trust anyone, including her husband. When the grandmother asks Red Sam’s wife whether she has heard about the Misfit, th is makes her somewhat apprehensive and starts to worry that he’ll rob them. Red Sammy then remarks: â€Å"A good man is hard to find.† He and grandmother grieve the state of the world. The first characteristic of realism is that the story is the story takes place in a recognizable, common setting. A Good Man is Hard to Find is set the rural Southern American in the fall of 1953. Flannery O’Connor does not however give exact town name. This story takes place in numerous states as the family travels by vehicle toward a vacation. Further, the author puts, believable characters living ordinary, believable lives. The Baileys are very ordinary family of five—a grandmother, a wife, two kids-an eight old boy and a daughter. All great mix up of a happy, stable ordinary family. A perfect example of a realistic fiction, right? Realistic writing puts a lot of focus on the characters more than it does on the plot. In fact, there is a lot more action in this story. The grandmother views herself morally superior to others by her virtue of being a lady, and she freely often passes judgment on others. She asserts that her scruples are the guiding forces in her life, such as when she informs Bailey that her conscience would not permit her to the take the kids in the same direction as the Misfit. She admonishes Bailey’s wife for not vacationing to a place that would open new ideas for the kids. The grandmother also criticizes Bailey for not having more reverence for Georgia, his place of birth. Even so, she also takes the chance to judge the lack of decency in people in the world. As result, the grandmother unwillingness to turn her decisive eyes on herself to examine her mistakes reveals to the readers her hypocrisy, dishonesty and selfishness. Another characteristic of realism is presence of conflicts between people and society. Of course, the major conflict starts when the family’s enjoyable vacation has taken an abrupt turn for the w orse. However, the high of the conflict starts back in the car, when the grandmother wakes from a snooze and notices that a plantation she had once vacationed was nearby. She explains that the house had six white columns and was at the edge of an oak tree-lined driveway. The grandmother deceives the family that the house had a surreptitious pane to make the house appear more interesting. Overwhelmed, the children plead until their father finally gives in. The family drives through the clump of woods. The grandmother then suddenly recalls that the house was in Tennessee, not in Georgia. At this point, we suspect that something bad is about to happen until the accident happens. Furthermore, in realistic fiction there is complication also. The Misfit turns up, exacerbating a bad situation. The grandmother puts the family squarely in jeopardy by

Meaning of Globilazation Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Meaning of Globilazation - Research Paper Example who are engaged in artistic media have pointed out that YouTube plays an important role in popularizing pop-culture and music to a broader scale globally. In accordance to the current culture, gaining popularity around social culture is an important step in life that almost everybody in the world is currently aspiring to achieve. Contrastingly, YouTube has developed legal policies that govern sharing of immoral images globally while also ensuring enough protection concerning potential copyrights infringements. Some of the global impacts of YouTube include: Despite the fact that YouTube was initiated in the United States, it has gained recognition across different cultures globally. Some countries such as china do not allow their citizens to stream or download video files from YouTube platform. Having been designed as a free interactive platform, YouTube embraces accessibility of over 70 million clients and new entrants across the globe. Moreover, YouTube acts as a center of interactive culture thus leading to the creation of one independent culture known as social culture that allows sharing of idioms and norms of varied societies as a single society. In conclusion, YouTube can be used to share world remorseful events such as an enactment of peace to offer tribute to those died while fighting for the benefit of the society (Gorman & McLean, 2009) Burgess et al. (2009), argues that through internet infrastructure and video sharing platforms, YouTube has enabled societies of different cultural backgrounds to share ideas across a bigger coverage of an audience. Such sites are not only meant to share musical files, but they also act as appropriate social grounds for business personalities to promote their wares while politicians and medical personnel’s globally also a similar platform to post speeches of vital concern. Most of all, YouTube and other related sites have been used by personalities of different religions to address issues of faith globally. It can be

Types of organizations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Types of organizations - Essay Example Although the world and its intelligent inhabitants have progressed greatly in these years, the importance and magnitude of innovation has been a constant factor. Even in this highly compact, globalized, industrialized culture, we need a constant burst of innovation to keep the society from going back into ultimate regression. A society that does not move forward goes backward. The reason is the constant competition, which is peculiar to the capitalist world economy. Societies, which cease to innovate, lag behind than those who keep changing for the better. Thus, in totality, they regress (Knights, 2003). Familiar with the importance of innovation in modern times, it is important to emphasize the central role it plays in the organizational settings. All sorts of organizations across the world need to keep their pace with the ever-expanding world economy. With more and more people joining the competition and striving for an upward financial mobility, the instinct to bring out something new and unique than others is of paramount importance. Companies that cannot stand out from their competitors do not survive. It is not difficult to comprehend then, that recruiters look out for candidates who stand out and have an ability to offer something new, something unique than their counterparts (Argyris, 1965). Anyhow, this paper attempts to expand on impact of innovation on organizations by evaluating three different types of organizations, namely armed forces, universities and non-governmental organizations and the role, innovation or innovative individuals play in their working. Armed forces are the most crucial part of a state. Although, popular notions about army makes one think that they are the most rigid structures available with the least amount of spaces for innovation. However, opposite is true. Army operates in times of war where all forces thrive on their estimation of the enemy’s strategies and it is at this front that innovation saves the day. By stra tegizing innovatively, the armed force can escape the estimations made by the enemy and save them a defeat. An innovative captain will save his army and land by placing his army men at spots where they are least expected. University is a place where ideas are born and tested. It is, in fact, the home of all innovations. It is also a place, which keeps changing. With an influx of new sets of students every year, a university has to keep revising its policies, criteria, and strategies to cater to the changing needs of the student body. A rigid system of education will only produce students who will not be able to survive the new world that they have been blinded from. For example, imagine what will happen if a medical, school teaches an outdated method to its students which is recently deemed dangerous. Those who were apt enough to stay updated with the new technology and learn the new methods will leave behind the doctors who did not. Finally, an NGO is one place where one cannot do without innovation. The reason being, innovation resides at the very core of the ideology at which the whole NGO industry is built up. This underlying ideology is to provide innovative solutions to the problems faced by the deprived people of developing nations. The need for innovation is crucial because the people approached by the NGOs

Substainable developement Homework Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Substainable developement Homework - Coursework Example The main stage includes drastically expanding the gainfulness of common assets, extending them as much as 100 times more remote than they do today. In the second stage, organizations receive shut circle generation frameworks that yield no waste or poisonous quality (Lovins and Hawken, 1999). The third stage obliges an essential change of plan of action from one of offering items to one of conveying administrations. The last stage includes reinvesting in regular money to restore, manage, and extend the planets biological community. Since common free enterprise is both important and productive will sub-sume conventional industrialism, the creators contend, pretty much as industrialism sub-sumed agrarianism. A helpful prospective for maintainable business professionals will be between the adjusted qualities approach and the frameworks approach. It would utilize a frameworks approach; however it would concentrate on the framework from within the business point of view and concentrate on the business association with the outside environment. Seeing social obligations, for example, acting with thoughtfulness regarding manageable quality, as an open door as opposed to as harm control or an advertising battle requires for most privately owned businesses to significantly move their reasoning to a brain set, the creators contend, that will get to be progressively essential to focused achievement (Bendell, 2000). The guideline of maintainable quality engaging organizations edified venture toward oneself works best for issues that correspond with an organizations financial investments and when the organization has deliberately evaluated what activities to address. For the economy and society generally speaking, organizations regard for supportability has as of now turn into a wellspring of social advancement, as organizations apply impressive consideration and assets to diminish their natural foot shaped impression, which profits their end result

This I believe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

This I believe - Essay Example Advice on how to get involved can be obtained from our local churches, non-profit organizations, and governmental institutions. The reason I believe so much in volunteerism is because I have in the past been involved in volunteer work. I use to help out at a local shelter for homeless people. The experience of helping out the poor was very gratifying form me. The act of giving back to the community can help fulfill our souls. I have had some family members that have fallen on some hard times and become homeless. Knowing that there are people out there that are willing to help out the poor by volunteering their time makes me believe that society’s problems no matter how complex can be solved if we put our minds to it. Volunteer work can help out a lot of American families. In the United States there are over 37 million people living under the federal poverty line (Americanprogress). This figure means that nearly 12% of the US population is suffering from poverty. The efforts of volunteers can help become a part of the solution. Volunteer work can also help the sick and the elderly. There are lots of benefits of volunteering. It can help a person increase their skills, gain experience, and expand their network of contacts.

English Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 42

English - Essay Example The answer is that there are serious problems in terms of distribution. Food is not accessible to everyone. Some governments, for example, steal food from their people. They might buy large quantities of rice on the world market and store it in warehouses hoping to resell it when the price goes up, instead of giving it to the people who need it most. This is a serious problem. Also, may poor countries have bad infrastructure. They simply lack the ports, railways, and roads that are needed to distribute food to rural areas. If a country lacks a port to bring in cargo it can be much more difficult to feed people. In Africa this has long been a problem. Fortunately new infrastructure is being built by the Chinese there which will hopefully alleviate the problem. Hunger is a terrible problem. But the cause is not necessarily or simply a lack of food. In order to solve this problem we need to empower people to build up their infrastructure so as to have better access to food. Mad Max Auto is a famous car company. We have a good market share, but we are looking to expand in a new direction. For the last few years there has been a lot of talk about the environment and about how to go green and save the planet. This is becoming a very important part of the decision consumers make when they buy a car. Therefore, I, as CEO, have become convinced that we need to make our cars greener. We need to develop the ultimate green car. This change in the culture has been several years in the making. People have slowly been learning more about climate change. They want to change their buying habits to reflect their new â€Å"green consciousness.† When they look at cars, they no longer want a big gas guzzler—they want something that will have low emissions and use less gas. They want something they will good about. In short, they want a car that makes them feel like a good person rather than a wasteful person. As a businessman it’s very important that I make note of changes

This I believe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

This I believe - Essay Example Advice on how to get involved can be obtained from our local churches, non-profit organizations, and governmental institutions. The reason I believe so much in volunteerism is because I have in the past been involved in volunteer work. I use to help out at a local shelter for homeless people. The experience of helping out the poor was very gratifying form me. The act of giving back to the community can help fulfill our souls. I have had some family members that have fallen on some hard times and become homeless. Knowing that there are people out there that are willing to help out the poor by volunteering their time makes me believe that society’s problems no matter how complex can be solved if we put our minds to it. Volunteer work can help out a lot of American families. In the United States there are over 37 million people living under the federal poverty line (Americanprogress). This figure means that nearly 12% of the US population is suffering from poverty. The efforts of volunteers can help become a part of the solution. Volunteer work can also help the sick and the elderly. There are lots of benefits of volunteering. It can help a person increase their skills, gain experience, and expand their network of contacts.

Change using frame theory of Kurt Lewin Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Change using frame theory of Kurt Lewin - Essay Example These stages are unfreezing, movement, and refreezing stages. Unfreezing is the stage when the person needing the changes realizes and accepts that the change is needed. In the stage of movement, the suitable approaches and measures are decided that would actually bring about the changes in the needed, ensuring that the driving forces can positively influence the person towards the change (Marquis and Huston, 2009, pp.167-169). The last stage is the refreezing stage where the change stabilizes the system and hence the change gets integrated into the life of the person. Without this stage, the change would remain ineffective (Marquis and Huston, 2009, pp.167-169). The study of Lewin was focused on a deep understanding of the mind of the humans and their personalities. This is particularly suitable in regard to the fact that the factors that influence individuals vary from person to person and hence understanding of such driving forces need to be identified (Friedman, 2008, p.238). This particular theory would enable to bring about change in the person, say ABC, talked about in this study where the following steps would be considered. Step 1: Unfreezing: In this step, ABC will be tried to be communicated and understood how overweight and hypertension are harmful for the health, and that control on these factors is essential. The negative effects of ice-cream, cheese cake and heavy meals will also be explained to him. Step 2: Movement: In this step the step 1 will be performed with the help of the driving forces of ABC. The major driving forces of ABC are his family and his girlfriend. Thus his family members and his girlfriend will have to take the initiative to constantly talk to him about how he can positively influence his life avoiding the heavy meals and ice-creams. This can be achieved through offering him with other healthy foods and habits such as exercises, tours, visits to different places that he would enjoy and not indulge in bad

Linguistic Automatic Generation Natural Language

Linguistic Automatic Generation Natural Language 1. Introduction 1.1. The Problem Statement This thesis deals with the problem of Automatic generation of a UML Model from Natural Language Software Requirement Specifications. This thesis describes the development of Auto Modeler an Automated Software Engineering tool that takes Natural Language Software System Requirement Specifications as Input, performs an automated OO analysis and tries to produce an UML Model (a partial one in its present state i.e. static Class diagrams only) as output. The basis for Auto Modeler is described in [2][3]. 1.2. Motivation We conducted a short survey of the Software Industry in Islamabad in order to determine what sorts of Automated Software Engineering Tools were required by the Software houses. The result of the Survey (see Appendix-I for the survey report) indicated that there is demand for such a tool as Auto Modeler. Since such tools i.e. [2][3] that have already been developed are either not available in the market or are very expensive, and thus out of the reach of most software houses. Therefore we decided to build our own tool that can be used by the software industry in order to enable them to be more productive and competitive. But at present Auto Modeler is not ready for commercial use. But it is hoped that future versions of Auto Modeler will be able to cater to the needs of the Software Houses. 1.3. Background 1.3.1. The need for Automated Software Engineering Tools: In this era of Information Technology great demands are placed on Software Systems and on all those that are involved in the SDLC. The developed software should not only be of high quality but it should also be developed in minimal amount of time. When it comes to Software quality, the software must be highly reliable and it should meet the customers needs and it should satisfy the customers expectations. Automated Software Engineering Tools can assist the Software Engineers and Software Developers in producing High Quality Software in minimal amount of time. 1.3.2. Requirements Engineering: Requirements engineering consists of the following tasks [6]:  · Requirements Elicitation  · Requirements Analysis  · Requirements Specification  · Requirements Validation / Verification  · Requirements Management Requirements engineering is recognized as a critical task, since many software failures originate from inconsistent, incomplete or simply incorrect System Requirements specifications. 1.3.3. Natural Language Requirement Specifications: Formal methods have been successfully used to express Requirements Specifications, but often the customer cannot understand them and therefore cannot validate them [4]. Natural Language is the only common medium understood by both the Customer and the Analyst [4]. So the System Requirements Specifications are often written in Natural Language. 1.3.4. Object Oriented Analysis: The System Analyst must manually process The Natural Language Requirements Specifications Document and perform an OO Analysis and produce the results in the form of an UML Model, which has become a Standard in the Software Industry. The manual process is laborious, time consuming and often prone to errors. Some specified requirements might be left out. If there are problems or errors in the original requirements specifications, they may not be discovered in the manual process. OOA applies the OO paradigm to models of proposed systems by defining classes, objects and the relationships between them. Classes are the most important building block of an OO system and from these we instantiate objects. Once an individual object is created it inherits the same operations, relationships, semantics, and attributes identified in the class. Attributes of classes, and hence objects, hold values of properties. Operations, also called methods, describe what can be done to an object/class.[1] A relationship between classes/objects can show various attributes such as aggregation, composition, generalization and dependency. Attributes and operations represent the semantics of the class, while relationships represent the semantics of the model [1]. The KRB seven-step method, introduced by Kapur, Ravindra and Brown, proposes how to find classes and objects manually [1]. Hence, Identify candidate classes (nouns in NL). Define classes (look for instantiations of classes). Establishing associations (capturing verbs to create association for each pair of classes in 1 and 2). Expanding many-to-many associations. Identify class attributes. Normalize attributes so that they are associated with the class of objects that they truly describe. Identify class operations. From this process we can see that one goal of OOA is to identify NL concepts that can be transformed into OO concepts; which can then be used to form system models in particular notations. Here we shall concentrate on UML [1]. 1.3.5. Natural Language Processing (NLP): If an automatic analysis of the NL Requirements Document is carried out then it is not only possible to quickly find errors in the Specifications but with the right methods we can quickly generate a UML model from the Requirements. Although, Natural language is inherently ambiguous, imprecise and incomplete; often a natural language document is redundant, and several classes of terminological problems (e.g., jargon or specialist terms) can arise to make communication difficult [2] and it has been proven that Natural Language processing with holistic objectives is a very complex task, it is possible to extract sufficient meaning from NL sentences to produce reliable models. Complexities of language range from simple synonyms and antonyms to such complex issues as idioms, anaphoric relations or metaphors. Efforts in this particular area have had some success in generating static object models using some complex NL requirement sentences. 1.3.5.1. Linguistic analysis: Linguistic analysis studies NL text from different linguistic levels, i.e. words, sentence and meaning.[1] (i) Word-tagging analyses how a word is used in a sentence. In particular, words can be changeable from one sentence to another depending on context (e.g. light can be used as noun, verb, adjective and adverb; and while can be used as preposition, conjunction, verb and noun). Tagging techniques are used to specify word-form for each single word in a sentence, and each word is tagged as a Part Of Speech (POS), e.g. a NN1 tag would denote a singular noun, while VBB would signify the base form of a verb.[1] (ii) Syntactic analysis applies phrase marker, or labeled bracketing, techniques to segment NL as phrases, clauses and sentences, so that the NL is delineated by syntactical/grammatical annotations. Hence we can shows how words are grouped and connected to each other in a sentence.[1] (iii) Semantic analysis is the study of the meaning. It uses discourse annotation techniques to analyze open-class or content words and closed-class words (i.e. prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns). The POS tags and syntactic elements mentioned previously can be linked in the NL text to create relationships. Applying these linguistic analysis techniques, NLP tools can carry out morphological processing, syntactic processing and semantic processing. The processing of NL text can be supported by Semantic Network (SN) and corpora that provide a knowledge base for text analysis. The difficulty of OOA is not just due to the ambiguity and complexity of NL itself, but also the gap in meaning between the NL concepts and OO concepts.[1] 1.3.6. From NLP to UML Model Creation. After NLP the sentences are simplified in order to make identification of UML model elements form NL elements easy. Simple Heurists are used to Identify UML Model elements from Natural Text: (see Chapter 7) * Nouns indicate a class * Verb indicates an operation * Possessive relationships and Verbs like to have, identify, denote indicate attributes * Determiners are used to identify the multiplicity of roles in associations. 1.5. Plan of the thesis In Chapter 2 we present a brief survey of previous work and work similar to our work. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 describe the theoretical basis for Auto Modeler. Chapter 8 Describes the Architecture of Auto Modeler. In Chapter 9 we describe Auto Modeler in action with a case study. In Chapter 10 we present conclusions. 2. Literature Survey The first relevant published technique attempting to produce a systematic procedure to produce design models from NL requirements was Abbot. Abbott (1983) proposes a linguistic based method for analyzing software requirements, expressed in English, to derive basic data types and operations. [1] This approach was further developed by Booch (1986). Booch describes an Object-Oriented Design method where nouns in the problem description suggest objects and classes of objects, and verbs suggest operations.[1] Saeki et al. (1987) describe a process of incrementally constructing software modules from object-oriented specifications obtained from informal natural language requirements. Their system analyses the informal requirements one sentence at a time. Nouns and verbs are automatically extracted from the informal requirements but the system cannot determine which words are relevant for the construction of the formal specification. Hence an important role is played by the human analyst who reviews and refines the system results manually after each sentence is processed.[1] Dunn and Orlowska (1990) describe a natural language interpreter for the construction of NIAM (Nijssens, or Natural-language, Information Analysis Method ) conceptual schemas. The construction of conceptual schemas involves allocating surface objects to entity types (semantic classes) and the identification of elementary fact types. The system accepts declarative sentences only and uses grammar rules and a dictionary for type allocation and the identification of elementary fact types.[1] Meziane (1994) implemented a system for the identification of VDM data types and simple operations from natural language software requirements. The system first generates an Entity-Relationship Model (ERM) from the input text and then generates VDM data types from the ERM.[1] Mich and Garigliano (1994) and Mich (1996) describe an NL-based prototype system, NL-OOPS, that is aimed at the generation of object-oriented analysis models from natural language specifications. This system demonstrated how a large scale NLP system called LOLITA can be used to support the OO analysis stage.[1] V. Ambriola and V. Gervasi.[4] have developed CIRCE an environment for the analysis of natural language requirements. It is based on the concept of successive transformations that are applied to the requirements, in order to obtain concrete (i.e., rendered) views of models extracted from the requirements. CIRCE uses, CICO a domain-based, fuzzy matching, parser which parses the requirements document and converts it into an abstract parse tree. This parse tree is encoded as tuples and stored in a shared repository by CICO. A group of related tuples constitutes a T-Model. CIRCE uses internal tools to refine the encoded tuples called extensional knowledge and the knowledge about the basic behavior of software systems called intentional knowledge derived from modelers to further enrich the Tuple space. When a specific concrete view on the requirements is desired, a projector is called to build an abstract view of the data from the tuple space. A translator then converts the abstract view to a concrete view. In [5] V. Ambriola and V. Gervasi describe their experience of automatic synthesis of UML diagrams from Natural Language Requirement Specifications using their CIRCE environment. Delisle et al., in their project DIPETT-HAIKU, capture candidate objects, linguistically differentiating between Subjects (S) and Objects (O), and processes, Verbs (V), using the syntactic S-V-O sentence structure. This work also suggests that candidate attributes can be found in the noun modifier in compound nouns, e.g. reserved is the value of an attribute of â€Å"reserved book†.[1] Harmain and Gaizauskas developed a NLP based CASE tool, CM-Builder [2][3], which, automatically constructs an initial class model from NL text. It captures candidate classes, rather than candidate objects. Bà ¶rstler constructs an object model automatically based on pre-specified key words in a use case description. The verbs in the key words are transformed to behaviors and nouns are transformed to objects.[1] Overmyer and Rambow developed NLP system to construct UML class diagrams from NL descriptions. Both these efforts require user interaction to identify OO concepts.[1] The prototype tool developed by Perez-Gonzalez and Kalita supports automatic OO modeling from NL problem descriptions into UML notations, and produces both static and dynamic views. The underlying methodology includes theta roles and semi-natural language.[1] 3. Software Requirements Engineering Software requirements engineering is the science and discipline concerned with establishing and documenting software requirements [6]. It consists of: * Software requirements elicitation:- The process through which the customers (buyers and/or users) and the developer (contractor) of a software system discover, review, articulate, and understand the users needs and the constraints on the software and the development activity. * Software requirements analysis:- The process of analyzing the customers and users needs to arrive at a definition of software requirements. * Software requirements specification:- The development of a document that clearly and precisely records each of the requirements of the software system. * Software requirements verification:- The process of ensuring that the software requirements specification is in compliance with the system requirements, conforms to document standards of the requirements phase, and is an adequate basis for the architectural (preliminary) design phase. * Software requirements management:- The planning and controlling of the requirements elicitation, specification, analysis, and verification activities. In turn, system requirements engineering is the science and discipline concerned with analyzing and documenting system requirements. It involves transforming an operational need into a system description, system performance parameters, and a system configuration This is accomplished through the use of an iterative process of analysis, design, trade-off studies, and prototyping. Software requirements engineering has a similar definition as the science and discipline concerned with analyzing and documenting software requirements. It involves partitioning system requirements into major subsystems and tasks, then allocating those subsystems or tasks to software. It also transforms allocated system requirements into a description of software requirements and performance parameters through the use of an iterative process of analysis, design, trade-off studies, and prototyping. A system can be considered a collection of hardware, software, data, people, facilities, and procedures organized to accomplish some common objectives. In software engineering, a system is a set of software programs that provide the cohesiveness and control of data that enables the system to solve the problem.[6] The major difference between system requirements engineering and software requirements engineering is that the origin of system requirements lies in user needs while the origin of software requirements lies in the system requirements and/or specifications. Therefore, the system requirements engineer works with users and customers, eliciting their needs, schedules, and available resources, and must produce documents understandable by them as well as by management, software requirements engineers, and other system requirements engineers. The software requirements engineer works with the system requirements documents and engineers, translating system documentation into software requirements which must be understandable by management and software designers as well as by software and system requirements engineers. Accurate and timely communication must be ensured all along this chain if the software designers are to begin with a valid set of requirements. [6] 4. Automated Software Engineering Tools Software engineering is concerned with the analysis, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance of large software systems. Automated software engineering focuses on how to automate or partially automate these tasks to achieve significant improvements in quality and productivity. Automated software engineering applies computation to software engineering activities. The goal is to partially or fully automate these activities, thereby significantly increasing both quality and productivity. This includes the study of techniques for constructing, understanding, adapting and modeling both software artifacts and processes. Automatic and collaborative systems are both important areas of automated software engineering, as are computational models of human software engineering activities. Knowledge representations and artificial intelligence techniques applicable in this field are of particular interest, as are formal techniques that support or provide theoretical foundations.[7] Automated software engineering approaches have been applied in many areas of software engineering. These include requirements definition, specification, architecture, design and synthesis, implementation, modeling, testing and quality assurance, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution, configuration management, deployment, reengineering, reuse and visualization. Automated software engineering techniques have also been used in a wide range of domains and application areas including industrial software, embedded and real-time systems, aerospace, automotive and medical systems, Web-based systems and computer games.[7] Research into Automated Software Engineering includes the following areas: * Automated reasoning techniques * Component-based systems * Computer-supported cooperative work * Configuration management * Domain modeling and meta-modeling * Human-computer interaction * Knowledge acquisition and management * Maintenance and evolution * Model-based software development * Modeling language semantics * Ontologies and methodologies * Open systems development * Product line architectures * Program understanding * Program synthesis * Program transformation * Re-engineering * Requirements engineering * Specification languages * Software architecture and design * Software visualization * Testing, verification, and validation * Tutoring, help, and documentation systems 5. Natural Language Processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of artificial intelligence and linguistics. It studies the problems of automated generation and understanding of natural human languages. Natural language generation systems convert information from computer databases into normal-sounding human language, and natural language understanding systems convert samples of human language into more formal representations that are easier for computer programs to manipulate. 5.1. Language Processing Language processing can be divided into two tasks:[11] * Processing written text, using lexical, syntactic, and semantic knowledge of the language as well as any required real world information.[11] * Processing spoken language, using all the information needed above, plus additional knowledge about phonology as well as enough additional information to handle the further ambiguities that arise in speech.[11] 5.2. Uses for NLP: 5.2.1. User interfaces. Better than obscure command languages. It would be nice if you could just tell the computer what you want it to do. Of course we are talking about a textual interface not speech.[10] 5.2.2. Knowledge-Acquisition. Programs that could read books and manuals or the newspaper. So you dont have to explicitly encode all of the knowledge they need to solve problems or do whatever they do.[10] 5.2.3. Information Retrieval. Find articles about a given topic. Program has to be able somehow to determine whether the articles match a given query.[10] 5.2.4. Translation. It sure would be nice if machines could automatically translate from one language to another. This was one of the first tasks they tried applying computers to. It is very hard.[10] 5.3. Linguistic levels of Analysis Language obeys regularities and exhibits useful properties at a number of somewhat separable levels.[10] Think of language as transfer of information. It is much more than that. But that is a good place to start. Suppose that the speaker has some meaning that they wish to convey to some hearer.[10] Speech (or gesture) imposes a linearity on the signal. All you can play with is the properties of a sequence of tokens. Actually, why tokens? Well for one thing that makes it possible to learn.[10] So the other thing to play with is the order the tokens can occur. So somehow, a meaning gets encoded as a sequence of tokens, each of which has some set of distinguishable properties, and is then interpreted by figuring out what meaning corresponds to those tokens in that order.[10] Another way to think about it is that the properties of the tokens and their sequence somehow elicits an understanding of the meaning. Language is a set of resources to enable us to share meanings, but isnt best thought of as a means for *encoding* meanings. This is a sort of philosophical issue perhaps, but if this point of view is true, it makes much of the AI approach to NLP somewhat suspect, as it is really based on the encoded meanings view of language.[10] The lowest level is the actual properties of the signal stream: phonology speech sounds and how we make them morphology the structure of words syntax how the sequences are structured semantics meanings of the strings There are important interfaces among all of these levels. For example sometimes the meaning of sentences can determine how individual words are pronounced.[10] This many levels is obviously needed. But language turns out to be more clever than this. For example, language can be more efficient by not having to say the same thing twice, so we have pronouns and other ways of making use of what has already been said: A bear went into the woods. It found a tree. Also, since language is most often used among people who are in the same situation, it can make use of features of the situation: this/that you/me/they here/there now/then The mechanisms whereby features of the context, whether it is the context created by a sequence of sentences, or the actual context where the speaking happens is called pragmatics.[10] Another issue has to do with the fact that the simple model of language as information transfer is clealy not right. For one thing, we know there are at least the following three types of sentences: statements imperatives questions And each of them can be used to do a different kind of thing. The first *might* be called information transfer. But what about imperatives? What about questions? To some degree the analysis of such sentences can involve the ideas of a basic notion of meaning Speech acts.[10] There are other, higher-levels of structuring that language exhibits. For example there is conversational structure, where people know when they get to talk in a conversation, and what constitutes a valid contribution. There is narrative structure whereby stories are put together in ways that make sense and are interesting. There is expository structure which involves the way that informative texts (like encyclopedias) are arranged so as to usefully convey information. These issues blend off from linguistics into literature and library science, among other things.[10] Of course with hypertext and multi-media and virtual reality, these higher levels of structure are being explored in new ways.[10] 5.4. Steps in Natural Language Understanding The steps in the process of natural language understanding are:[11] 5.4.1. Morphological analysis Individual words are analyzed into their components, and non-word tokens (such as punctuation) are separated from the words. For example, in the phrase Bills house the proper noun Bill is separated from the possessive suffix s.[11] 5.4.2. Syntactic analysis. Linear sequences of words are transformed into structures that show how the words relate to one another. This parsing step converts the flat list of words of the sentence into a structure that defines the units represented by that list. Constraints imposed include word order (manager the key is an illegal constituent in the sentence I gave the manager the key); number agreement; case agreement.[11] 5.4.3. Semantic analysis. The structures created by the syntactic analyzer are assigned meanings. In most universes, the sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously [Chomsky, 1957] would be rejected as semantically anomalous. This step must map individual words into appropriate objects in the knowledge base, and must create the correct structures to correspond to the way the meanings of the individual words combine with each other. [11] 5.4.4. Discourse integration. The meaning of an individual sentence may depend on the sentences that precede it and may influence the sentences yet to come. The entities involved in the sentence must either have been introduced explicitly or they must be related to entities that were. The overall discourse must be coherent. [11] 5.4.5. Pragmatic analysis. The structure representing what was said is reinterpreted to determine what was actually meant. [11] 5.5. Syntactic Processing Syntactic parsing determines the structure of the sentence being analyzed. Syntactic analysis involves parsing the sentence to extract whatever information the word order contains. Syntactic parsing is computationally less expensive than semantic processing.[10] A grammar is a declarative representation that defines the syntactic facts of a language. The most common way to represent grammars is as a set of production rules, and the simplest structure for them to build is a parse tree which records the rules and how they are matched. [10] Sometimes backtracking is required (e.g., The horse raced past the barn fell), and sometimes multiple interpretations may exist for the beginning of a sentence (e.g., Have the students who missed the exam ). [10] Example: Syntactic processing interprets the difference between John hit Mary and Mary hit John. 5.6. Semantic Analysis After (or sometimes in conjunction with) syntactic processing, we must still produce a representation of the meaning of a sentence, based upon the meanings of the words in it. The following steps are usually taken to do this: [10] 5.6.1. Lexical processing. Look up the individual words in a dictionary. It may not be possible to choose a single correct meaning, since there may be more than one. The process of determining the correct meaning of individual words is called word sense disambiguation or lexical disambiguation. For example, Ill meet you at the diamond can be understood since at requires either a time or a location. This usually leads to preference semantics when it is not clear which definition we should prefer. [10] 5.6.2. Sentence-level processing. There are several approaches to sentence-level processing. These include semantic grammars, case grammars, and conceptual dependencies. [10] Example: Semantic processing determines the differences between such sentences as The ink is in the pen and The ink is in the pen. 5.6.3. Discourse and Pragmatic Processing. To understand most sentences, it is necessary to know the discourse and pragmatic context in which it was uttered. In general, for a program to participate intelligently in a dialog, it must be able to represent its own beliefs about the world, as well as the beliefs of others (and their beliefs about its beliefs, and so on).[10] The context of goals and plans can be used to aid understanding. Plan recognition has served as the basis for many understanding programs PAM is an early example. [10] 5.7. Issues in Syntax For various reasons, a lot of attention in computational linguistics has been paid to syntax. Partly this has to do with the fact that real linguistics have spent a lot of work on it. Partly because it needs to be done before just about anything else can be done. I wont talk much about morphology. We will assume that words can be associated with a set of features or properties. For example the word dog is a noun, it is singular, its meaning involves a kind of animal. The word dogs is related, obviously, but has the property of being plural. The word eat is a verb, it is in what we might call the base form, it denotes a particular kind of action. The word ate is related, it is in the past tense form. You can imagine Im sure that the techniques of knowledge representation that we have looked at can be applied to the problem of representing facts about the properties and relations among words. [11] The key observation in the theory of syntax is that the words in a sentence can be more or less naturally grouped into what are called phrases, and those phrases can often be treated as a unit. So in a sentence The dog chased the bear, the sequence the dog forms a natural unit. The sequence chased the bear is a natural unit, as is the bear.[11] Why do I say that the dog is a natural unit? Well one thing is that I can replace it by another sequence that has the same referent, or a related referent. For example I could replace it by: [11] Snoopy (a name) It (a pronoun) My brothers favorite pet (a more complex description) What about chased the bear? Again, I could replace it by died (a single word) was hit by a truck (a more complex event) This basic structure, in English, is sometimes called the subject-predicate structure. The subject is a nominal, something that can refer to an object or thing, the predicate is a verb phrase, which describes an action or event. Of course, as in the example, the verb phrase can also contain other constituents, for example another nominal. [11] These phrases also have structure. For example a noun phrase (a kind of nominal) can have a determiner, zero or more adjectives, and a noun, maybe followed by another phrase, like: the big dog that ate my homework Verb phrases can have complicated verb groups like will not be eaten Syntactic theories try to predict and explain what patterns are used in a language. Sometimes this involves figuring out what patterns just dont work. For example the following sentences have something wrong with them: [11] * the dogs runs home * he died the book * she saw himself in the mirror * they told it to she Figuring out exactly what is wrong with such sentences allows linguists to create theories that help understand the way that sentences