Judaism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 4

Judaism - Essay Example But what sets Judaism apart from other monotheistic faiths, like Islam and Christianity? Cunningham and Katzew clearly explained that Judaism acknowledges only the the Torah as a source of revelation. The Torah, in general, comprises the thorough description of God’s plan for hmanity. In their essay, Cunningham and Katzew provide an exploratory, analytical, and thorough description of the theology and tradition of Judaism. They provide an explanation of practices, values, and beliefs, theology as conveyed in mythological stories, and standards of symbolic act and rites. They also talk about scripture and revelation, God’s teachings, the series of tradition represented in the narrative of the oral and written Torah, and signs and representations in Judaism. But more importantly, Cunningham and Katzew take a courageous leap forward by arguing that none of the historical epochs can be dismissed from the shared processes between Christianity and Judaism. The authors support the assumption that the major monotheistic religions are

Discuss the following problems in relation to the Scots law of Coursework

Discuss the following problems in relation to the Scots law of contract. You must refer to primary sources such as judicial precedent and legislation in your answer - Coursework Example The plaintiff being a chief inspector of police force alleged that the defendant had violated this section by offering the knife for sale. It was held that the display of knife in the defendant’s shop was not an offer but an invitation to treat. Hence, no liability arose. Advertisements are generally regarded as invitation to treat and are not considered as valid offers. However, advertisements can also amount to a general offer which can be accepted by anyone. It depends on the words used in the advertisement whether it is to be treated as an offer or an invitation to treat. In Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company2, the defendants made a product called â€Å"smoke ball† which was claimed to be a cure for influenza. The defendants published an advertisement in various newspapers in which they claimed to pay  £100 to anyone who used their product according to the instructions but still contracted influenza. The plaintiff saw this advertisement and bought one of the balls. She used it three times daily for almost two months but contracted the flu. She claimed  £100 from the defendants. The defendants rejected her claim arguing that there was no legally binding contracted between them and the plaintiff. The courts held that the advertisement was not a unilateral offer to the whole world but it was open for acceptance for anyone who fulfilled the condition of using the product according to the instructions. The satisfaction of conditions constituted acceptance of this offer. Further, the purchase and use of the smoke ball constituted good consideration. Therefore, the defendants were held liable to pay  £100 to the plaintiff since there was a legally binding contract. Christina’s advertisement was a unilateral offer to anyone who fulfilled the condition of spending  £50 or more in Elegante. Anyone who fulfilled this condition accepted this offer and was entitled to the voucher. David

Describe How Bacteria Decode Its Genetic Information to Produce Proteins Essay Example for Free

Describe How Bacteria Decode Its Genetic Information to Produce Proteins Essay Bacteria belongs to a group of organism that lacks cell nucleus and membrane bound organells. This group of organisms are termed as prokaryotes. Prokaryotes follows the central dogma of molecular biology first proposed by Francis Crick in 1958 to synthesize proteins from mRNA through a process called translation and the mRNA is being synthesized from the DNA by another process called Transcription. Temperature, nutrient availibity are some key factors that start the process of synthesizing proteins in response to these key factors. Example. This paper will provide an explanation as to how bacteria decode the genetic information to produce proteins. Transription generates 3 kinds of RNA. Transfer RNA(tRNA) carries amino acid during protein synthesis, ribosomal RNA molecules come together to form ribosomes while mRNA bears the message for protein synthesis. In bacteria, mRNA often carries coding information of more than 1 gene therefore it is said to be polycistronic (DIAGRAM). MRNA is synthesized under the direction of DNA by RNA polymerase. This polymerase in its core enzyme form has 5 subunits. A 6th subunit called the Sigma factor helps the core enzyme to recognise and bind to the promoter regions which are often found at -35 basepair and -10 basepair(also called Pribnow box) upstream of the transcription site. Upon binding, RNA polymerase unwinds the helical DNA and this open region becomes a open complex. There is a reason as to why the -10bp site is chosen. The hydrogen bonds between the nucleotides in the Pribnow box are weak and easily broken, forming the open complex. RNA polymerase progresses along the DNA unwound DNA strand and starts to synthesize mRNA in the 5` to 3` direction. MRNA synthesized is thus complementary and anti parallel to the template DNA. Termination of transcription require a terminator. There are two kinds of terminator, rho-independent terminator which refers to a nucleotide sequence that when transcribed into RNA, forms hydrogen bonds within the single-strande RNA, this intrastrand bonds creates a hairpin-shape loop and causes RNA polymerase to stop transcribing and dissociate from the template strand. Another terminator depend on a protein called the rho factor which causes RNA polymerase to dissociate from the mRNA. Its exact mechanism remains unclear. With the mRNA synthesized by the RNA polymerase using DNA of the bacteria as template, the mRNA are translated to amino acids which are linked covalently to form a polypeptide. Translation begins when a ribosomes binds to mRNA and tRNA molecules carry the amino acid correspending to the codons dictate by the mRNA to the ribosome so that the amino acid can be added to the polypeptide chain as the ribosome moves down the mRNA strand. Translation initiated by formation of initiation complex consisting of 30s and 50 sribosomal subunits, Formyl-methionyl tRNA and the mRNA. Proteins called intitial factors are also required to form the complex. The two ribosomal subunits that come together to for, the complex are commonly refer to as the 70s ribosome. This 70s ribosome has two sites in which tRNA carrying amino acids can bind to. One is called the P site and A site. There is also an E site where tRNA are released. The initiating transfer t RNA carrying formylmethionyl binds to the P site, a tRNA that recognises the next codon ann carries the second amino acid moves in to the A site. The formylmethionie carried by the tRNA in the P site is then joined to the amino acid carried by the tRNA that just entered the A site by a peptide bonds. The ribosome then advance a distance of 1 codon. The tRNA that carries the formylmethionie is released at the E site. A tRNA carrying the next amino acid now moves in through the A site where the anti codon matches the codon of the mRNA. The ribosome shift down a distance of 1 codon, the 2 amino acid on the tRNA in the P site are transferred to the new amino acid and the 2nd tRNA is released at the E site. This cycle is repeated. Elongation is terminated by a stop codon. Stop codon do not code for any amino acid.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Pan-Islamic terrorism in the Middle East Essay Example for Free

Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Pan-Islamic terrorism in the Middle East Essay Being unique is what sets us apart from others; it gives us the edge over other people. Differences amongst us have been one of the most unique features God has granted human beings. One look and the differences are evident, making it clear no one is the same and no one will end-up in the same way. Human beings not only vary physically but also in lifestyle, culture, emotions, perspective in life, and in religion. At times human set aside these differences for the greater good, for the cause of peace and prosperity, but most of the time they fight for what they believe in even if it costs them or others life. Countless wars have been waged for the cause of justice, freedom and sovereignty over a piece of property. One dispute over a piece of land known to the world is the dispute between Israel and Palestine over the Land of Israel/Palestine. Israelites are Jews while the Palestinians are Arabs, but, this does not mean that the dispute is a religious one, it is solely a dispute over a 10,000 sq. mile property where both party claim rights over it. The reason for such a 60-year old dispute is based on the history of the land each party is trying to claim. According to the History Guy1, historically, the ancient Jews from Biblical times called their land Israel, Canaan, Judea, etc. and that in the days of the Bible God gave the land to the ancient Jews known as the Hebrews. But due to massive killings brought about by the Roman Empire, Jews were forced to move out from their land resulting to â€Å"The Diaspora†. But after some years, the Palestinians settled, earning them as the majority ethnic group in the land, thus Palestines claim the right over it. And since the Jews have returned, they also want their rights over the land given that it was granted to them by God. Both of these groups struggle to keep what they believe is theirs, by law or by nature. But the Palestinians went over board. They have inflicted intolerable pain to the world. Where Palestinians send out death threats, destroying infrastructures as well as eliminating __________________________ 1 â€Å"The Israeli-Palestiniam Conflict†, The History Guy. Retrieved June 5, 2007 from The History Guy Website. http://www. historyguy. com/israeli-palestinian_conflict. html job opportunities, and worse, destroying the lives of countless innocent souls now forever shadowed by fear. Terrorism as defined by Britannica Online2, is the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Many Islamic groups have arisen in different parts of the earth to spread terrorism in the face of the planet. The Al-Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf and others are examples of the different Islamic groups present in different locations on Earth with one mission in mind, to inflict pain. Islamic issues on terrorism have stopped the world in its tracks, as the massive killings became worse. The world became spectators as bomb after bomb set off, killing people stripping them of their right to live. The world watched in horror as the World Trade Center where many employees work, were blown off to pieces. Some were found severely injured, others were never found under dusts and pile of debris. No one surely knows the reason for such terrorism; could it be that these Palestinians want to rule the world? Or they just want to prove something? There are many speculations on the cause of the terrorism brought about by these Arabs. But a certain speculation reveals that this terrorism was started by the dispute of the Palestinians and Israelites over the piece of property. That due to this dispute over a piece of property, the Palestinians brought terrorism to the world to inflict fear and pain in order to get what they want, and eliminating those who stand in their way. And as these Palestinians see it, the only way to get what they want, and in this circumstance that piece of land, force has to be used. Believing that inflicting pain and fear to the masses can weaken their decisions and give these Arabs what they want. These Palestinians truly believe that the piece of land they are fighting for is truly theirs. And they will fight for the right over it even if it takes how many lives or how much blood shall be spilled, as long as this goal is achieved.  2 terrorism. (2007). In Encyclop? dia Britannica. Retrieved June 5, 2007, from Encyclop? dia Britannica Online: http://www. britannica. com/eb/article-9071797 References: terrorism. (2007). In Encyclop? dia Britannica. Retrieved June 5, 2007, from Encyclop? dia Britannica Online: http://www. britannica. com/eb/article-9071797 â€Å"The Israeli-Palestiniam Conflict†, The History Guy. Retrieved June 5, 2007 from The History Guy Website. Being unique is what sets us apart from others; it gives us the edge over other people. Differences amongst us have been one of the most unique features God has granted human beings. One look and the differences are evident, making it clear no one is the same and no one will end-up in the same way. Human beings not only vary physically but also in lifestyle, culture, emotions, perspective in life, and in religion. At times human set aside these differences for the greater good, for the cause of peace and prosperity, but most of the time they fight for what they believe in even if it costs them or others life. Countless wars have been waged for the cause of justice, freedom and sovereignty over a piece of property. One dispute over a piece of land known to the world is the dispute between Israel and Palestine over the Land of Israel/Palestine. Israelites are Jews while the Palestinians are Arabs, but, this does not mean that the dispute is a religious one, it is solely a dispute over a 10,000 sq. mile property where both party claim rights over it. The reason for such a 60-year old dispute is based on the history of the land each party is trying to claim. According to the History Guy1, historically, the ancient Jews from Biblical times called their land Israel, Canaan, Judea, etc. and that in the days of the Bible God gave the land to the ancient Jews known as the Hebrews. But due to massive killings brought about by the Roman Empire, Jews were forced to move out from their land resulting to â€Å"The Diaspora†. But after some years, the Palestinians settled, earning them as the majority ethnic group in the land, thus Palestines claim the right over it. And since the Jews have returned, they also want their rights over the land given that it was granted to them by God. Both of these groups struggle to keep what they believe is theirs, by law or by nature. But the Palestinians went over board. They have inflicted intolerable pain to the world. Where Palestinians send out death threats, destroying infrastructures as well as eliminating __________________________ 1 â€Å"The Israeli-Palestiniam Conflict†, The History Guy. Retrieved June 5, 2007 from The History Guy Website. http://www. historyguy. com/israeli-palestinian_conflict. html job opportunities, and worse, destroying the lives of countless innocent souls now forever shadowed by fear. Terrorism as defined by Britannica Online2, is the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Many Islamic groups have arisen in different parts of the earth to spread terrorism in the face of the planet. The Al-Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf and others are examples of the different Islamic groups present in different locations on Earth with one mission in mind, to inflict pain. Islamic issues on terrorism have stopped the world in its tracks, as the massive killings became worse. The world became spectators as bomb after bomb set off, killing people stripping them of their right to live. The world watched in horror as the World Trade Center where many employees work, were blown off to pieces. Some were found severely injured, others were never found under dusts and pile of debris. No one surely knows the reason for such terrorism; could it be that these Palestinians want to rule the world? Or they just want to prove something? There are many speculations on the cause of the terrorism brought about by these Arabs. But a certain speculation reveals that this terrorism was started by the dispute of the Palestinians and Israelites over the piece of property. That due to this dispute over a piece of property, the Palestinians brought terrorism to the world to inflict fear and pain in order to get what they want, and eliminating those who stand in their way. And as these Palestinians see it, the only way to get what they want, and in this circumstance that piece of land, force has to be used. Believing that inflicting pain and fear to the masses can weaken their decisions and give these Arabs what they want. These Palestinians truly believe that the piece of land they are fighting for is truly theirs. And they will fight for the right over it even if it takes how many lives or how much blood shall be spilled, as long as this goal is achieved. __________________________ 2 terrorism. (2007). In Encyclop? dia Britannica. Retrieved June 5, 2007, from Encyclop? dia Britannica Online: http://www. britannica. com/eb/article-9071797 References: terrorism. (2007). In Encyclop? dia Britannica. Retrieved June 5, 2007, from Encyclop? dia Britannica Online: http://www. britannica. com/eb/article-9071797 â€Å"The Israeli-Palestiniam Conflict†, The History Guy. Retrieved June 5, 2007 from The History Guy Website. http://www. historyguy. com/israeli-palestinian_conflict. html.

Stereotypes in media Essay -- essays research papers

â€Å"Bringing Down the House† featuring Steve Martin and Queen Latifah is a clever comedy that creatively showcases the sociolinguistic phenomena covered in this course. The film is about a tax attorney named Peter, played by Martin, who stumbles into an online lawyer chat room and meets Charlene, played by Latifah. The two chat frequently, mostly about court cases, and eventually decide to meet in person. When the day finally comes, Peter is greeted at the door with who he thought would be a middle-aged Caucasian woman, but happened to be Charlene, a black woman who just escaped from prison. Thinking this was a mistake, Peter tries to kick out Charlene but is later convinced she is the one who he was speaking with in the chat room. Charlene was able to successfully impersonate a lawyer through speech, and along with a deceiving picture, able to convince Peter she was a petite blonde. During these chats, the two talked about court cases that happened to relate to Charleneâ⠂¬â„¢s predicament with the law. In attempt to clear her name from a crime she did not commit, Charlene researched the judicial system and similar court cases to hers while in prison. Now that she is out, she seeks personal assistance from Peter who has already through the internet, given her support. All throughout the movie the characters contrast in viewpoints, culture, and most importantly for our studies, language. Charlene and Peter represent different language backgrounds which we can analyze as the root of their character development and actions throughout the film.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To illustrate generational conflict, the scene when Peter confronts his daughter about her crazy night, best conveys the phenomena. In the scene Peter’s daughter sneaks out of the house late at night to attend an unsupervised party with some friends which involved drinking, smoking, and other activities that make up a parent’s worst nightmare. While at the party, the boy who accompanied her there begins to make sexual advances. Frightened and confused, Sarah calls Charlene who comes to pick her up, teach the boy a lesson, and bring her home safely. This is when Charlene tells Peter what just happened and tries to cool him down before he explodes with anger. By instinct, Peter plans to scold his daughter with an intimidating language, tone, and overall authoritarian speech. Before letting him conti... ...es can lead to difficulty in understanding one who is from a different background. Peter, who we assume was brought up in a suburban environment with the upper class, portrays standard English compared to Charlene who was brought up in a black urban neighborhood which would explain her AAVE speech. Although both speak English, it is simply the variation that arose from class, gender, ethnicity, and other distinct traits that led for misunderstandings to occur. In part of the scene, in attempt to explain her course of actions through her alleged crime, Charlene says â€Å"When Roscoe cracked that doe, I was strait off day heezy and bounced.† After Peter looked at her with a lost look and asked her what she said, Charlene restated the phrase by saying â€Å"I was recently liberated from a correctional facility†¦Ã¢â‚¬  This moment illustrates not only the language variations of English, but the necessity for one to style shift according to their audience. English has m any dialects, pronunciations, and other factors that may require one to adapt temporarily to facilitate communication with somebody who is accustomed to a different form. This was the case for Charlene, as it is for others in the film. Stereotypes in media Essay -- essays research papers â€Å"Bringing Down the House† featuring Steve Martin and Queen Latifah is a clever comedy that creatively showcases the sociolinguistic phenomena covered in this course. The film is about a tax attorney named Peter, played by Martin, who stumbles into an online lawyer chat room and meets Charlene, played by Latifah. The two chat frequently, mostly about court cases, and eventually decide to meet in person. When the day finally comes, Peter is greeted at the door with who he thought would be a middle-aged Caucasian woman, but happened to be Charlene, a black woman who just escaped from prison. Thinking this was a mistake, Peter tries to kick out Charlene but is later convinced she is the one who he was speaking with in the chat room. Charlene was able to successfully impersonate a lawyer through speech, and along with a deceiving picture, able to convince Peter she was a petite blonde. During these chats, the two talked about court cases that happened to relate to Charleneâ⠂¬â„¢s predicament with the law. In attempt to clear her name from a crime she did not commit, Charlene researched the judicial system and similar court cases to hers while in prison. Now that she is out, she seeks personal assistance from Peter who has already through the internet, given her support. All throughout the movie the characters contrast in viewpoints, culture, and most importantly for our studies, language. Charlene and Peter represent different language backgrounds which we can analyze as the root of their character development and actions throughout the film.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To illustrate generational conflict, the scene when Peter confronts his daughter about her crazy night, best conveys the phenomena. In the scene Peter’s daughter sneaks out of the house late at night to attend an unsupervised party with some friends which involved drinking, smoking, and other activities that make up a parent’s worst nightmare. While at the party, the boy who accompanied her there begins to make sexual advances. Frightened and confused, Sarah calls Charlene who comes to pick her up, teach the boy a lesson, and bring her home safely. This is when Charlene tells Peter what just happened and tries to cool him down before he explodes with anger. By instinct, Peter plans to scold his daughter with an intimidating language, tone, and overall authoritarian speech. Before letting him conti... ...es can lead to difficulty in understanding one who is from a different background. Peter, who we assume was brought up in a suburban environment with the upper class, portrays standard English compared to Charlene who was brought up in a black urban neighborhood which would explain her AAVE speech. Although both speak English, it is simply the variation that arose from class, gender, ethnicity, and other distinct traits that led for misunderstandings to occur. In part of the scene, in attempt to explain her course of actions through her alleged crime, Charlene says â€Å"When Roscoe cracked that doe, I was strait off day heezy and bounced.† After Peter looked at her with a lost look and asked her what she said, Charlene restated the phrase by saying â€Å"I was recently liberated from a correctional facility†¦Ã¢â‚¬  This moment illustrates not only the language variations of English, but the necessity for one to style shift according to their audience. English has m any dialects, pronunciations, and other factors that may require one to adapt temporarily to facilitate communication with somebody who is accustomed to a different form. This was the case for Charlene, as it is for others in the film.

Herman Melvilles Billy Budd - Captain Vere was Correct :: Herman Melville Billy Budd Essays

Captain Vere was Correct in Billy Budd Captain Vere makes the correct decision by executing Billy Budd. If CaptainVere lets Billy live the rest of the crew might get the impression that they will not be held accountable for their crimes. If the crew feels that they can get away with what ever they want then there is a chance that they might form a rebellion and have a mutiny. A mutiny would destroy the stability and good name of the ship and the crew. Captain Vere does not want to see this happen. There are three main reasons Captain Vere makes the right decision by executing Billy Budd. These reasons are that if Billy lives then a mutiny might occur, because the law states that a crime as severe as Billy's is punishable by death, and Captain Vere feels sorry for Billy and does not want Billy to suffer with guilt until a martial court could give a decision. If Billy is not executed then corruption might occur on the ship and cause a mutiny. Captain Vere knows that a mutiny might occur and does not want it to happen. Captain Vere could possibly be using Billy's execution for his crime of killing Claggart as an example for the rest of the crew. It shows the crew what will happen to them if they try to start a mutiny. After Billy's death CaptainVere obviously feels regret for executing Billy. Captain Vere's last words are "Billy Budd, Billy Budd" (p. 76) show an example of this. Those last words might symbolize that Captain Vere killed Billy for the wrong reasons. If CaptainVere uses Billy's death for an example to the rest of the crew then it might not necessarily be the wrong reason. CaptainVere has to decide between one life and the lives of the entire crew. No matter what Captain Vere's reasons are he does make the right decision. Another reason CaptainVere might of executed Billy Budd is because CaptainVere follows the law to the letter. The law states that mutiny is punishable to by death. Some readers might not see this accidental murder as mutiny, but killing a superior officer in the British navy is considered mutiny.

Make Way Movie Brats Essay

In the late 1960s to late 1970s, as the veteran directors retired, a new generation gradually took their place. Associated with â€Å"New Hollywood,† these young and diverse directors, often in their late twenties and early thirties, were considered â€Å"movie brats. † These new directors Some of the more famous were Francis Ford Coppola, Stephen Spielberg, and George Lucas; all of whom had an intense awareness of film history, worked with quotations and remakes, and created extremely successful films. With an influx of new directors, it seemed fit that they would take over the industry entirely. However, director Robert Altman, born around twenty years earlier and being significantly older than his â€Å"movie brats† successors, Altman remained essential to the industry. Post mid-1970s, it was less commonplace for efforts to be put toward maintaining Hollywood art cinema. The new directors were focusing on box-office revenue and the production of both action-oriented and youth-oriented, blockbuster films with radiant special effects. Two films that demonstrated such qualities were Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and George Lucas’s Star Wars. Altman persisted for efforts to be continued. He, as well as other older directors like Paul Mazusky and Woody Allen, ventured into the American art cinema. Altman had to work at a rapid pace during the 1970s as he completed more than a dozen films. He also had to compete with the younger generation of Hollywood that was producing huge blockbuster hits. Though rather than trying to create an action flick, Altman stayed true to his roots and produced films primarily based on the character’s emotions rather than plot. Two specific movies in which Altman emphasized shifts from objective reality and subjectivity of the character are Images and 3 Women. In 1970, Altman directed M*A*S*H*; a film praised for its uses of humor with a topic as heavy as the Korean War and for becoming one of the highest grossing films of the year. However, Altman’s films did not always prove to do exceedingly well at the box-office. McCabe and Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye created a few years later were generally well received and proved to be moderate earners. His films That Cold Day in the Park, Brewster McCloud, and Thieves Like Us evidently all became box-office disappointments, even though the three generally received good reviews from critics. Although Altman’s movies are not always top box-office earners, they are still habitually the subject of a lot of critical attention. Such is evident with his film Images where the movie didn’t garner a lot of praise for Altman, even though the film might have been considered a peak for other directors. It was released between the films â€Å"McCabe† and â€Å"The Long† and as mentioned previously, they were moderately successful. They received more acclaim and attention resulting in less appreciation of Images upon its release on-screen and it’s availability in today’s time. For this reason, the film can be compared to Francis Coppola’s The Conversation. Although a great movie, it was only considered to be a minor significance to Coppola’s career coming between the crowd pleasers and box-office smash hits The Godfather and The Godfather 2. Images was shot in the wet autumn months of 1971 in Ireland. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival the following May. It was there that Susannah York won the award for best actress. York credited her role as Cathryn in the film as the role she is most proud of. Although taking home an award, Cannes audiences were primarily confused. Images isn’t the type of film an audience would feel sympathetic towards. It’s somewhat complicated to follow and comes off as cold. However, it’s not as nearly as hard to comprehend as the first reviewers of the movie suggested. As film critic Roger Ebert states, â€Å"[The film] is a technical success but not quite an emotional one. † Because Altman was a hot ticket item in 1971 with M*A*S*H*; Columbia Pictures took the distribution rights of the film and entered it in the New York Film Festival. Unfortunately for Images, neither Vincent Canby nor Roger Greenspan (two dominant film critics for the New York Times) took up the movie to review. It was then left to Howard Thomson, a journalist and film critic for the New York Times nicknamed â€Å"mishmash† for writing brief reviews for films. Thomson made no exception for Images, leaving it only with an imperceptive review. The film never went on to have a traditional commercial release in America. Essentially the film is about a children’s author and housewife Cathryn (Susannah York) who receives several phone calls on a gloomy night in her London home. The voice on the other end is a female stating that Cathryn’s husband Hugh (Rene Auberjonois) is having an affair with another woman. Hugh comes home seeing his wife in grief and tries to comfort her. He vanishes and another man is shown acting as if he was her husband. Frightened at the sight, she screams and backs way, later seeing the figure change back into the â€Å"image† of her husband. Hugh feels that her angst is a result of stress and her budding pregnancy. He takes her to vacation at an isolated cottage in an attempt to relieve some stress. As she stays there, Cathryn dives farther into foreboding delusions as the stranger reappears. It becomes difficult for her to distinguish what is happening in reality and what’s just going on her head. Images shows a lot of subjectivity through its characters because of the extreme personas of the characters and the situations they are placed in. Cathryn begins hearing sounds and hallucinates constantly. She feels guilt sexually after envisioning encounters with two men that are not her husband. One is a sinister Frenchman who asked to be shot by Cathryn to exorcise his ghost. After he apparently falls dead, it is shown that her husband’s expensive camera is all that was really shot. The other man is more realistic, portraying a neighbor who’s infatuated with her and believes Cathryn has rape fantasies and needs strong care. She bares an attraction to him but also feels guilt. She eventually stabs the neighbor with a kitchen knife eventually â€Å"killing† him. The husband Hugh is relatively the only normal character of the film. He never completely comprehends the extent of his wife’s mental horror. Truly having his wife’s best interests in mind and acting as an ideal husband, Hugh thought relocating her to a more isolated place would relieve her of woes. He’s a typical simple American who is addicted to dumb jokes. What Cathryn actually feels about him is only pointed at towards the last 20 minutes of the film where she tries killing off a ghost she incorrectly sees as her other self. Altman’s introduction of his characters and plot comes off as him trying his hand at feminist tax. For one thing, there’s barely any scenes that don’t revolve around the main protagonist Cathryn. Her character isn’t compelling which somewhat dooms the film from the beginning. The male characters come across as jerks. Altman’s goal seemed to make a point about the way movies objectify women, turning them into the â€Å"images,† the film’s title indicates, for the consumption of male viewers. After all, Cathryn is only a little more than something for the men in the film to enjoy. Cameras figure plainly in the film’s mise-en-scene. Her pointing and shooting a gun (a symbol of male power) is yet another example of Altman’s use of gender associations. Although Altman’s point is clear, it seems like he went about delivering the message in a cliched way. In terms of objective reality, every image revealed rovides a lot of suspense and anticipation of what effect Altman will provide next. However it is somewhat difficult to find the reality as it is one of Altman’s most abstract films. It is full of so much symbolism and images that it reflects the work of Bergman and Kubrik. These â€Å"images† consist of shimmering water and tinkling ornaments. They are astonishing beautiful â€Å"images† cut often by shocks of Cathryn’s sensibilities. One daunting scene that does not occur in her head is when she is writing her story and watching ponies, but a dog and frantic sounds break the peacefulness. Altman wrote the film entirely, but the children’s story that accompanies some of â€Å"the images† was composed by Ms. York. This blends art and actuality. The film also has a wonderful use of color that separates the protagonist Cheryl from her ambience in a particularly unique and incomparable way. A few things that this movie can be credited for is its complete originality and uniqueness. Images is a very bizarre Altman film. For a filmmaker who characteristically produces works with large ensembles and layered dialogue, Images feels more blunt and almost claustrophobic. One thing that makes it so different is that the visual style is more lyrical at some points while jagged at the others. Another difference is that the dialog does not overlap. In charge of photography was Vilmos Zsigmond, one of the best cinematographers of the seventies and Altman’s favorite cameraman at the time of production. He does an amazing job with his photography by remaining with the woman’s point of view while never suggesting at what is really going on. Altman added a clever touch to interchange the character’s names with the actors that portray them. Susannah is played by actress Cathryn Harrison and Cathryn is played by actress Susannah York. Another switch of names is shown in the characters of three actors: Hugh played by Rene Auberjonois, Rene played by Marcel Bozzuffi, and Marcel is played by Hugh Millai. Altman’s demand of the audience’s senses is both nontraditional and expert. The fragmented style applied to the movie will definitely not please all senses to each audience member. However its witty script, brave look at a twisted inner world, and the eerie atmosphere the film creates is enough to keep one’s attention for the films entirety. If that’s not enough, there is always the pleasure of watching characters played by phenomenal actors Altman is so famous for providing. American film critic and film/animation historian Leonard Maltin described the film best in stating the film was â€Å"difficult but fascinating† and that it comes off as â€Å"off-putting at first, but worth the effort to hang on. † It is a definite must see for Altman admirers who want to see him in a new style. Altman doesn’t worry about the defenses needed for his film, but rather simply creates a spiritual and poetic vision letting logic and caution fall in the depths of the films beauty. Whether or not Altman produced a commercial success, didn’t change the pace at which he put forth films. Five years after Images was produced, Altman came out with the film 3 Women. The idea for the film came to Altman in a dream. It was because of Allen’s success with filmmaking; 20th Century Fox approved the movie before he had a definite script. Although it was original intention to film without a script, he eventually had one made before filming. This script was more like a â€Å"blueprint,† which he regularly did with previous films. The film centers around two women whose characters are in keen contrast with one another among their first encounters. The third woman the title hints at is a minor character but has a key supporting role, although not first recognized to the audience but gradually can be understood. Essentially the movie tells a story of three women whose characters change and merge, until finally, in the perplexing ending scene, switch roles. 3 Women, although praised for its uniqueness, was not very popular at the time. American audiences may not have even recognized its release at the time. Why you might wonder? A little movie directed by George Lucas bearing the name Star Wars was released in the same year. The three women the title hints at are Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Janice Rule who live in the same apartment complex in the desert of California. Duvall plays Mildred â€Å"Millie† Lammoreaux, who works as a physical therapist at a senior care center. She comes off as very confident about her charm and her appeal to men, even though the men she goes after openly mock her. Pinky Rose, played by Spacek, is a young, naive, and childlike woman from Texas who too gets a job at the senior center. With Millie’s roommate moving out, she is forced to find a new roommate, after accepting the conditions, Pinky becomes that new roommate. Rule plays the supporting yet vital role of Willie Hart, the pregnant wife of the landlord of the apartment complex. She gives off an incredibly sad aura as she moves with a gloomy silence, keeping isolated from other people. Willie is a muralist who makes visually appealing yet moderately unsettling murals; one in which is painted at the bottom of the apartment pool depicting godlike creatures, absurd men, and women who annoy each other. The opening scene of the film reflects roles of each of the three women that women in general often play. Willie, the pregnant wife, represents a mother. From the mural she is painting in the pool, one can determine that she seems very sad. Millie reflects a teenager in that she is often very interested in the opposite sex. She is an odd character in that she obsessively gives recipes to others and tells them how she organizes them by the allotted time, even though no one seems to care. Pinky, when first introduced at the clinic, comes off instantly as immature and naive just like an average child. During lunch, she blows bubbles through a straw into her drink and later plays around in a wheelchair, pretending as if she was a patient. Along with making faces at the workers, she says to Millie, â€Å"You’re the most perfect person I’ve ever met,† resembling a young child admiring their cooler older sister. As with Images, this film is also extremely subjective in terms of the characters. Each character has an excessive emphasis on their moods, attitudes, and opinions. There’s no subtly in any of the way the characters act. Millie, as explained in the previous paragraph, is portrayed as an annoying friend who talks excessively. We’ve all experienced or know someone who has experienced a friend like this before, but someone having a personality as dramatic as Millie is just unusual. The audience quickly understands how desperate she is to find a man. Tom, a neighbor who works the grill during poolside dinners, is someone Millie fancies a lot but can’t get attention from. She even tells Pinky that he has asked her out on dates but she’s always been too busy to accept; clearly an act of desperation over someone she cares fantasizes about so deeply. During her lunch break she eats and sits with the doctors, consisting of only men, rather than her co-workers even though it’s more expensive. Her efforts are useless in that they still don’t really acknowledge her. Her last hangout spot to socialize with men is a local bar/ recreation area, owned by Edgar and bartended by his wife Willie. The boys too preoccupied with shooting at a gun range and riding bikes outback, provides yet another obstacle for Millie to find someone. Pinky too reflects the extreme of a personality behaving as some would call childlike. She is a withdrawn woman trying to begin a new life in California, refusing to go into specifics of her past life. The way she looks up to Millie after knowing her for less than a day is extremely odd. Most people emulate people, especially when they are the new one in town as Pinky was, when they are popular or are known for doing something good. They think by acting similar to that person, they will share that same sense of praise and popularity. What’s strange about Pinky’s situation is that Millie isn’t your ideal role model and is the complete opposite of a popular girl. Millie is more of the nerd that’s oblivious to what other people truly think about her. It brings to the question, why would anyone want to duplicate Millie? Also, what made Pinky not want to keep her past life hidden? Altman was very creative in creating Willie’s character. Although Willie doesn’t have many lines in the film, shown mostly with her paintings instead of with people, her supporting role is necessary for the flow of the movie. With a macho husband possessing such an extravagant personality, it wouldn’t be hard to miss her character entirely. Although withdrawn from social interaction, it is made evident that she is still caring. After Pinky attempted to commit suicide by jumping into the apartment pool, Willie didn’t hesitate to jump in and save her. Also in the final scene, even though Willie and Pinky were both messing around with her husband, she still decided to take them in and let them work at the bar with her after the â€Å"accidental† death of her husband. The three women make a complete 360 from polar opposites, into a family. The objective reality of the film is evident through its use of the visual representation found in the mirrors and the water. Mirrors and reflections represent the way Millie views herself. Through the mirrors, we begin to understand Millie’s obsession with looking good, something she is proud of accomplishing. Millie is always beautifying herself by making small changes to her clothes, touching her hair constantly to make sure her curls are intact, and perfecting her makeup. She looks at her reflection, apparently adoring what she says looking back at her, even though no one can figuratively see her. The mirror and the reflections represent Millie’s invisibility to other people in that when you look in the mirror, you are the only one to take notice of what’s reflecting back. Water is also extremely prevalent in the film’s entirety. Each of the three female protagonists of the film is associated with water in one way or another. The opening shot of pregnant Willie painting a mural and water being immersed as a backdrop is said by Altman to represent â€Å"the amniotic fluid surrounding a fetus,† (Ebert). The seceding scene shows Millie and her coworkers helping old people slowly descend into a pool- going to the water as their lives initially started. The wavy line shown on the screen is thought to represent an umbilical cord connecting the person to its life line. Also located in the pool is the crucial turning point in which Pinky jumps into the pool from the balcony, to be later saved by Willie. The movie does feature men; however they are of far less significance to the main protagonists. Edgar, played by Robert Fortier, is the husband of Willie. What someone might call a â€Å"manly man,† Edgar showcases himself with motorcycles, beer, and guns. He is very much a drunk who tries to portray himself as a benevolent western gunslinger and fails to acknowledge his wife properly. The other men, often seen lounging around the apartment’s pool, are objects of Millie’s captivation. She always comes off in preparation for dates or dinner plans with these gentleman, even though they never actually happen and they fail to notice her. It is understood fairly quickly that Millie is a lonely soul. The men are used only to further emphasize the personality of the female characters they come in contact with. It is obvious that this film was primarily focused on the significance of the character rather than creating an high-suspense adventure like Stephen Spielberg did with his film Jaws created a mere two years previously. Each actress perfectly resembles their characters through their looks and acting capabilities. Rule depicts Willie with no apparent expression on the face and a sad look in her eyes. Spacek’s light hair and eyes that stare in adoration fit a character named Pinky. Duvall especially contributed a lot to the creation of the film. She was accountable for creating the recipes, the diary entries, and a great deal of the dialogue her character Millie had. Her big brown round eyes resemble a deer in headlights as she is oblivious to the feelings others have towards her. It’s no wonder why she took home the Cannes Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards best actress award. Though the actors fit the characters well and portrayed each scene wonderfully, some things are left unanswered for the audience. Although Pinky is a main character, not a lot is understood about her past. Upon completion of the film, it is still left a mystery why she left Texas and whether or not she was actually from there. When Millie asked for specifics on what part of Texas she was from, Pinky accused her of giving her the third degree and avoided the question. Also, when Pinky saw her â€Å"parents† in the hospital she claimed that she had never seen them before, screaming for them to get out. This was a very peculiar scene since the old couple claim to be Pinky’s parents, but look far too old to actually be them. Whether they are frauds, grandparents, or her adoptive parents, is never actually presented. Another mystery Altman added to make the movie come off as a dream, where not everything makes sense and only certain details are vivid. For its use of water coming in and out of scenes with the primary characters, even though water is not actually present, and the mysteries that leave the audience questioning scenes, 3 Women possesses a dream-like quality. The idea of the film, the story, the cast, and everything included, was said by Altman to come to him in a dream, so he wanted to express it as such. The message and the overall point of the film are left open to interpretation for the audience. Altman himself says he is not exactly sure what the ending means but has a â€Å"theory† on what it signifies and what actually occurred. He wanted to create a film filled with emotion and allusion rather than â€Å"surface realities caught with the camera’s allegedly objective eye,† (Sterritt). Essentially this movie is not a narrative in any way but reflects the three stages of a woman’s life. The three women merge into a single person, who is mother, daughter, and granddaughter, â€Å"isolated but serenely self-sufficient (Canby). The film is about age and youth and the overall quality of American life. Trying to decipher the exact meaning of the movie is pointless in that no one could be definite for sure. 3 Women is a film concentrated more on mystery, mood, and behavior than the use of plot devices. In both Images and 3 Women, it is evident that Altman avoided an attempt to make a flashy movie in order to compete at the same level as his younger comrades in the business. Images depicted a fairytale and 3 Women, a dream; both very unconventional types of films. He was far too interested in the preservation of Hollywood art to care about garnering publicity. These were films that had emphasis on ambiguous between objective reality, and character subjectivity, decorated with abstract, enigmatic compositions. Both were films in which Altman was involved both with the writing and directing process, enabling him to project on screen what he himself envisioned as the direction of the movie. Also, these films examined madness in its female characters. It is no coincidence that these specific films both won a best actress award at Cannes. Although Altman’s movies don’t always do extremely well at the box office, they are perpetually the subject of a lot of analytical attention.

BPO: The Boon with a Twist Essay

The India business process outsourcing (BPO) ‘success story’ needs to be tempered with a strong dose of caution. The two issues that this paper seeks to raise viz. employees’ welfare and working at the lower end of the value chain, need to be addressed if indeed the BPO phenomenon is to be called a ‘boon’ for India. The paper discusses the state of the industry in India and the reasons why BPO is the ‘Big Wave’. However, the emphasis of the paper is on another aspect of the story that at best ignored and at worst completely discounted. Some vital questions have been raised like- what is the impact that this newly spawned industry is having on the millions that is now employs? Also, it is not just about the health of the individual that is of concern here. It is about the entire social, physical and psychological fabric of a nation that is slowly changing. From the perspective of the companies also, the high staff turnover must makes it increasingly expensive for India based operations to maintain and improve their quality of service. Another dark side of the story is that India is still working on the low end of the value chain of the business-processes. Over time India’s success will depend on moving up the value chain and make the competitiveness non-replicable by other low cost countries. Read more:  BPO Management System The paper concludes with some solutions to the above-mentioned problems, concentrating primarily on the employee welfare and moving up the value chain. This requires the concerted efforts of both the industry and the government. BPO: The Boon with a Twist â€Å"Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today I wish that man would go away† The Sunrise Sector: An Introduction There have been various studies and papers highlighting how the BPO is the best thing to happen to the Indian youth since the Internet. And not without reason. McKinsey and Co. tell us that by 2008 India will have a whooping 5 million people employed in the BPO sector and will be able to boast of additional revenues in excess of $57 billion. We need this opportunity like never before. However, there is another aspect of the story that is relatively ignored by both, the industry captains and the popular press alike. This paper looks into that aspect of the BPO industry in India and attempts to question the ‘blind faith’ in the sector. It raises some vital questions like- what is the impact that this newly spawned industry is having on the millions that is now employs? Are the reports that we keep hearing, about over-stressed 22-somethings leaving their jobs and the irritable alienated-from-friends-and-family youngsters true? It is not just about the health of the individual that is of concern here. The entire social fabric of a nation that is slowly changing as fresh graduates suddenly find themselves with lots of money due to these sunrise sector jobs, but no time or energy to spend it. The Bright Side The major driving force in the BPO sector is money. In his or her first job, an Indian back-office recruit can easily earn between Rs.15, 000 and Rs.20, 000 a month, which may only be a tenth of what their US counterparts earn, but considering that in terms of the World Bank-calculated purchasing-power parity, $1 can buy four times as much in India as it can in the US, Rs.15,000 per month is certainly a lot more than pocket change to an average youngster. Competition, sense of achievement, and financial freedom are the other driving forces, say BPO professionals. A brief snapshot of how the BPO industry operates puts forth some very interesting facts. The BPO industry is built around the raison d’ etre of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. With the current focus on core business capabilities, many companies in the Western world are outsourcing select business functions to expert partners. BPO takes a set of activities and takes on the responsibility of reengineering the entire way the operation is done. The most popular BPO activity currently outsourced to India is Call Centre operations. Companies selling products or services very often promise 24Ãâ€"7 support through telephones, email or the Internet for their wares. These require a large workforce to constantly be ready at helpdesks with answers to questions customers may call in with. The cost of setting up a call center in the US combined with the cost of wages is 10 to 20 times the cost of setting up a center in a developing nation like India. Hence, these companies re-route the calls made to helpdesks for their products to Indian call centres. These calls are handled by Indians sitting in India and donning an identity (and an accent) similar to their US counterparts. In pure economic terms it is much more sensible to run cost centres like these out of India. The average savings are in the region of 20-30%. And in an age when a penny saved is a penny earned these savings can be used to fuel further growth. The Not So Bright Side: The Human Face One of the reasons that provides India this opportunity is that Indians have readily adapted to – and are working entirely in the US time zone. This phenomenon has only increased over the past few years, popularly known as working the ‘Graveyard Shift’. In its eagerness to pave the way for the BPO boom, the government is infringing on protections bitterly fought for, like the eight-hour day.1 Labor legislation governing employment of workers in this sector is being amended to allow for night-shift work, work during notified holidays in India, staggering of weekends off and the like. Registered trade unions already struggling against this onslaught. Various researches on this darker aspect present some hard facts: * There is an increasing number of BPO employees who leave because they can’t handle the pressure and schedule of jobs * For most of them stress at work is their biggest source of discomfort * Most of these stressed-out employees suffer from sleep-related disorders and have digestive disorders. * Women who work the night shift face an increased risk of breast cancer of up to 60 percent2. * Stress is leading to impairment of conventional social and family life. Difficulties are particularly acute for women with child-care responsibilities. The high stress and irregular hours are taking their toll on many of the mostly just-out-of-college employees. Nutritionists, doctors and psychiatrists say there has been a dramatic increase in call center employees coming to them with problems like hair loss, ear infections from contaminated head phones, ulcers and digestion problems, piles and sleeplessness. All this is having far reaching consequences on the lives of the individuals who are working in this industry. The Not So Bright Side: The Value Chain Outsourcing – a job that no graduate or educated person in the US wants to do is shifted to low wage developing countries like India where there are ‘high quality’ graduates to do the job. In fact that’s the main USP of India – English speaking, ‘high quality’ people being employed for work that may not require half their potential. If we take our best and brightest and put them in dead end outsourcing jobs, where is this country headed? NASSCOM is touting the BPO industry as the new wave. There is no denying that it creates jobs. However the real question is for how long and what kinds of jobs? The government is spending huge resources to educate the highly talented young people only to relegate them to mindless transaction processing. The lucre of these jobs can be ascertained from the disinterest shown the educated people in Europe and US. In these ‘sending countries’ its seen as a part time job – something a college dropout or housewife with time to kill would do. India needs to worry about her youth. The best and brightest go to the US and work there which is an intellectual drain for India. The others – and undoubtedly a lot of bright ones do remain – seem to be sucked by into this BPO machine. India cannot afford continue working at the lowest end of the value chain. Sooner or later Indian companies will have to realize – and fight for – the fact we need to do a little more of the ‘value-added work’. In the long run, the business model of Indian BPOs will become unsustainable and unless they re-engineer a transformation the entire sector will fail to exist as an industry3. Taking a Moment As BPO employees soon find out, money and the college-like ambience is not everything. Cultural shifts, loss of identity, stress due to continuous night shifts and adverse effect on health were only some of the problems that cropped up in several interviews with employees of BPOs. For youngsters it’s a trade-off between what they gain in poise and confidence, and what they lose out in family life and social circle of friends who were not part of this field. Suffering severe sleep disturbances, headaches and even blackouts, most spend all their time away from the job sleeping. And the only long-term solution they can suggest is to quit. Hence, it is of serious concern not only for the employees but also for the companies. The issue of quality of service is raised by the very high staff turnover rates in India, especially at call centres, where annual turnover is said to exceed 50 per cent. High staff turnover is reported even amongst the more established, employee friendly IT companies, some of whom offer stock options and residential accommodations to entice employees to stay on. High staff turnover must make it increasingly expensive for India based operations to maintain and improve their quality of service. This is due to the rising costs for hiring and training and the higher wages needed to attract quality employees. It costs an average of Rs.20,000 to train every Call Center employee4. With the attrition rate so high this is hitting the bottom line for these companies very hard. Moreover high dropout rates have much larger implications for maintaining consistent quality standards. It is impossible to maintain a high quality of service when the entire workforce turns over every 3 years.5 The Road Ahead This section deals with some proposed solutions to fight the two challenges. Improving Employee Welfare: In some countries where the call center industry has been there for a while, e.g. UK and Australia a lot of understanding on what this unique workplace entails and what needs to be done about it, has evolved. For instance, in the UK, the government intervened a while ago with a local authority circular called ‘Advice Regarding Call Center Working Practices’. This circular lists in detail the stress factors and ailments peculiar to this industry, and has various measures to deal with them. However in India, no understanding of the problem exists. This is a serious concern not only from the employee’s end but also from the company’s perspective. The employers incur huge costs of agent attrition due to stress. It’s high time that the Indian government and the industry made some concerted effort on the lines of the above-mentioned countries and brought forth proactive measures of dealing with employee issues in call centers. Role of Companies Companies need to get their act together quickly if they have to arrest the high rate of inflation and avoid the high burnout rate among employees. One of the things to be understood is that the BPO sector is not yet being looked at as a career but rather as a stop-gap arrangement till a better job comes up. Unfortunately as is turns out the next ‘non-bpo’ sector job for most of these individuals turns out to be a fairly less paying one as well. Towards this end taking care of the employees well being becomes a priority for the companies. Most companies are already moving in this direction with well established programs that take care of the all round well-being of the employees with regular health checkups, reduced work hours, adequate training programs and a concern for the employees growth in the organization. Employee welfare will work on three factors each of which need to be understood by organization. Towards this goal an integrated strategy for employee welfare can be developed. Some specific recommendations regarding ensuring employee well being can include regular mental and physical check-ups for employees, periodic counseling on career regulating the number of night shifts worked in a row etc. More importantly, such programs wherein certain employees can avail of funding to aid further studies should be introduced. Role of Government An important part needs to be played by the government in regulating the industry with regards to labour laws. Although the government’s provisions to make it easier for the industry to grow at the pace it has are commendable, this growth cannot be had at the expense of human capital. It is necessary to safeguard the interests of the employees through enforced regulations to ensure sustenance. Specifically the government needs to re-look at * Specific regulations monitoring night-shift work * Monitoring work during notified holidays and weekends * Review of policies regarding food arrangements at workplaces * Policies regarding working of women at night – ensuring safety Moving up the value chain: Despite the fact that the world’s athletic shoes are produced in low-wage environments, their design remains firmly rooted in developed nations. Even today, despite all of the electronics manufacturing located in developing nations, the bulk of the value-added design remains in the developed nations. Taking on the ‘risks’ of the business-processes instead of simply reengineering them is one of the surest ways of convincing outsourcing companies to give greater value added work to the Indian firms. Similarly, it is important to forge alliances and partnerships of the outsourcing companies to convince them to trust us with their core processes instead on taking on fringe work. To summarize, in the end there are only two sustainable end-game models for companies in the BPO segment – the first is insight driven and the other is a platform model. Both of them leverage on proprietary capabilities of individual companies. Over time, a country’s competitiveness will eventually be commoditized and therefore become replicable. India is at that stage. For further growth a company will have to differentiate itself from the labor arbitrage and country competitiveness gamut and build on in-house capabilities that sets it apart. When Indian BPOs move away from the ‘replication’ model and start providing specialized value-added services for clients, they have a far greater chance of surviving, he said. The issue of differential time zones that forces Indian employees to take on jobs with permanent night shifts seems to be completely non-negotiable. However, by shifting the nature of work away from real time to delayed time, this too can be man aged in some companies over a period of time.    1 The Karnataka government has â€Å"simplified† labor legislations: Several barriers, including employment of women at night, flexible working hours, mandatory weekly offs have all been removed by necessary amendments to relevant laws to create an â€Å"optimal environment† for the growth of the BPO sector in the State. 2 A study (2001) by the Seattle based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in association with the National Cancer Institute 3 Presentation on the BPO landscape and possible end-game models at the NASSCOM ITES-BPO Summit in Bangalore in June 2003. 4 McKinsey-Nasscom study 2002 5 Went for Cost, Stayed for Quality: Moving the Back Office to India, paper by Rafiq Dossani, Senior Research Scholar, Asia/Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

Digital Fortress Chapter 4

The crypto door beeped once, waking Susan from her depressing reverie. The door had rotated past its fully open position and would be closed again in five seconds, having made a complete 360-degree rotation. Susan gathered her thoughts and stepped through the opening. A computer made note of her entry. Although she had practically lived in Crypto since its completion three years ago, the sight of it still amazed her. The main room was an enormous circular chamber that rose five stories. Its transparent, domed ceiling towered 120 feet at its central peak. The Plexiglas cupola was embedded with a polycarbonate mesh-a protective web capable of withstanding a two-megaton blast. The screen filtered the sunlight into delicate lacework across the walls. Tiny particles of dust drifted upward in wide unsuspecting spirals-captives of the dome's powerful deionizing system. The room's sloping sides arched broadly at the top and then became almost vertical as they approached eye level. Then they became subtly translucent and graduated to an opaque black as they reached the floor-a shimmering expanse of polished black tile that shone with an eerie luster, giving one the unsettling sensation that the floor was transparent. Black ice. Pushing through the center of the floor like the tip of a colossal torpedo was the machine for which the dome had been built. Its sleek black contour arched twenty-three feet in the air before plunging back into the floor below. Curved and smooth, it was as if an enormous killer whale had been frozen mid breach in a frigid sea. This was TRANSLTR, the single most expensive piece of computing equipment in the world-a machine the NSA swore did not exist. Like an iceberg, the machine hid 90 percent of its mass and power deep beneath the surface. Its secret was locked in a ceramic silo that went six stories straight down-a rocketlike hull surrounded by a winding maze of catwalks, cables, and hissing exhaust from the freon cooling system. The power generators at the bottom droned in a perpetual low-frequency hum that gave the acoustics in Crypto a dead, ghostlike quality. TRANSLTR, like all great technological advancements, had been a child of necessity. During the 1980s, the NSA witnessed a revolution in telecommunications that would change the world of intelligence reconnaissance forever-public access to the Internet. More specifically, the arrival of E-mail. Criminals, terrorists, and spies had grown tired of having their phones tapped and immediately embraced this new means of global communication. E-mail had the security of conventional mail and the speed of the telephone. Since the transfers traveled through underground fiber-optic lines and were never transmitted into the airwaves, they were entirely intercept-proof-at least that was the perception. In reality, intercepting E-mail as it zipped across the Internet was child's play for the NSA's techno-gurus. The Internet was not the new home computer revelation that most believed. It had been created by the Department of Defense three decades earlier-an enormous network of computers designed to provide secure government communication in the event of nuclear war. The eyes and ears of the NSA were old Internet pros. People conducting illegal business via E-mail quickly learned their secrets were not as private as they'd thought. The FBI, DEA, IRS, and other U.S. law enforcement agencies-aided by the NSA's staff of wily hackers-enjoyed a tidal wave of arrests and convictions. Of course, when the computer users of the world found out the U.S. government had open access to their E-mail communications, a cry of outrage went up. Even pen pals, using E-mail for nothing more than recreational correspondence, found the lack of privacy unsettling. Across the globe, entrepreneurial programmers began working on a way to keep E-mail more secure. They quickly found one and public-key encryption was born. Public-key encryption was a concept as simple as it was brilliant. It consisted of easy-to-use, home-computer software that scrambled personal E-mail messages in such a way that they were totally unreadable. A user could write a letter and run it through the encryption software, and the text would come out the other side looking like random nonsense-totally illegible-a code. Anyone intercepting the transmission found only an unreadable garble on the screen. The only way to unscramble the message was to enter the sender's â€Å"pass-key†-a secret series of characters that functioned much like a PIN number at an automatic teller. The pass-keys were generally quite long and complex; they carried all the information necessary to instruct the encryption algorithm exactly what mathematical operations to follow tore-create the original message. A user could now send E-mail in confidence. Even if the transmission was intercepted, only those who were given the key could ever decipher it. The NSA felt the crunch immediately. The codes they were facing were no longer simple substitution ciphers crackable with pencil and graph paper-they were computer-generated hash functions that employed chaos theory and multiple symbolic alphabets to scramble messages into seemingly hopeless randomness. At first, the pass-keys being used were short enough for the NSA's computers to â€Å"guess.† If a desired pass-key had ten digits, a computer was programmed to try every possibility between 0000000000 and 9999999999. Sooner or later the computer hit the correct sequence. This method of trial-and-error guessing was known as â€Å"brute force attack.† It was time-consuming but mathematically guaranteed to work. As the world got wise to the power of brute-force code-breaking, the pass-keys started getting longer and longer. The computer time needed to â€Å"guess† the correct key grew from weeks to months and finally to years. By the 1990s, pass-keys were over fifty characters long and employed the full 256-character ASCII alphabet of letters, numbers, and symbols. The number of different possibilities was in the neighborhood of 10120-ten with 120 zeros after it. Correctly guessing a pass-key was as mathematically unlikely as choosing the correct grain of sand from a three-mile beach. It was estimated that a successful brute-force attack on a standard sixty-four-bit key would take the NSA's fastest computer-the top-secret Cray/Josephson II-over nineteen years to break. By the time the computer guessed the key and broke the code, the contents of the message would be irrelevant. Caught in a virtual intelligence blackout, the NSA passed a top-secret directive that was endorsed by the President of the United States. Buoyed by federal funds and a carte blanche to do whatever was necessary to solve the problem, the NSA set out to build the impossible: the world's first universal code-breaking machine. Despite the opinion of many engineers that the newly proposed code-breaking computer was impossible to build, the NSA lived by its motto: Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer. Five years, half a million man-hours, and $1.9 billion later, the NSA proved it once again. The last of the three million, stamp-size processors was hand-soldered in place, the final internal programming was finished, and the ceramic shell was welded shut. TRANSLTR had been born. Although the secret internal workings of TRANSLTR were the product of many minds and were not fully understood by any one individual, its basic principle was simple: Many hands make light work. Its three million processors would all work in parallel-counting upward at blinding speed, trying every new permutation as they went. The hope was that even codes with unthinkably colossal pass-keys would not be safe from TRANSLTR's tenacity. This multibillion-dollar masterpiece would use the power of parallel processing as well as some highly classified advances in clear text assessment to guess pass-keys and break codes. It would derive its power not only from its staggering number of processors but also from new advances in quantum computing-an emerging technology that allowed information to be stored as quantum-mechanical states rather than solely as binary data. The moment of truth came on a blustery Thursday morning in October. The first live test. Despite uncertainty about how fast the machine would be, there was one thing on which the engineers agreed-if the processors all functioned in parallel, TRANSLTR would be powerful. The question was how powerful. The answer came twelve minutes later. There was a stunned silence from the handful in attendance when the printout sprang to life and delivered the cleartext-the broken code. TRANSLTR had just located a sixty-four-character key in a little over ten minutes, almost a million times faster than the two decades it would have taken the NSA's second-fastest computer. Led by the deputy director of operations, Commander Trevor J. Strathmore, the NSA's Office of Production had triumphed. TRANSLTR was a success. In the interest of keeping their success a secret, Commander Strathmore immediately leaked information that the project had been a complete failure. All the activity in the Crypto wing was supposedly an attempt to salvage their $2 billion fiasco. Only the NSA elite knew the truth-TRANSLTR was cracking hundreds of codes every day. With word on the street that computer-encrypted codes were entirely unbreakable-even by the all-powerful NSA-the secrets poured in. Drug lords, terrorists, and embezzlers alike-weary of having their cellular phone transmissions intercepted-were turning to the exciting new medium of encrypted E-mail for instantaneous global communications. Never again would they have to face a grand jury and hear their own voice rolling off tape, proof of some long-forgotten cellular phone conversation plucked from the air by an NSA satellite. Intelligence gathering had never been easier. Codes intercepted by the NSA entered TRANSLTR as totally illegible ciphers and were spit out minutes later as perfectly readable cleartext. No more secrets. To make their charade of incompetence complete, the NSA lobbied fiercely against all new computer encryption software, insisting it crippled them and made it impossible for lawmakers to catch and prosecute the criminals. Civil rights groups rejoiced, insisting the NSA shouldn't be reading their mail anyway. Encryption software kept rolling off the presses. The NSA had lost the battle-exactly as it had planned. The entire electronic global community had been fooled†¦ or so it seemed.

Business Environment Essay

1.LIST SOME STAKEHOLDERS OF MCDONALDS. CLASIFY THEM AS INTERNAL, CONNECTED AND EXTERNAL TYPES. Stakeholders can be defined as â€Å"individuals and groups who are affected by the activities of an organization. The most important stakeholders can be seen as those with most to lose from the organization’s actions, but this does not always reflect their relative power† An organization’s stakeholders are all parties who can reasonably be understood to be affected by its decisions. They can be deemed to represent the business’s social and environmental capital as well as economic. Stakeholders can be of very different and varied guises and also harbor conflicting interests consequently, its image and reputation in the eyes of its stakeholders is critical to the company. Mainly they can be categorized into three major groups: 1) Internal Stakeholders 2) Connected Stakeholders 3) External Stakeholders 4) Stakeholders Conflicts Stakeholders are found in all organizations, businesses or firms – from a local grocery store to huge multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Microsoft. The number of stakeholders per business will vary as will their importance and influence. The type of organization or product / service it supplies will also determine its stakeholders. A Public Limited Corporation may have far more stakeholders than a family owned business due to its vast numbers of shareholders. Discussing about McDonalds, it also hold many stakeholders those who get  affected and vice versa. Stakeholders of McDonalds can be categorized into the three major groups as shown under: Internal Stakeholders Following are the stakeholders which fall under this category: 1)Managers or Directors 2)Staff or Employees Internal stakeholders are those who are ‘members’ of the business organization. These stakeholders are situated within the McDonald and may affect the ‘day-to-day’ running of McDonalds or be affected. Their interest would be in the McDonald`s success which will alternatively secure their career and assure them for high wages and benefits.   Example of the internal stakeholder for McDonald would be as follows: †¢The employees/staff member working in the McDonald’s restaurant Connected Stakeholders Following are the stakeholders which fall under this category: 1)Shareholders 2)Customers 3)Suppliers 4)Finance providers Connected stakeholders are those outside the organization but have a direct interest with the progress of the business. McDonald’s suppliers would want that the business runs and grows well, as this will ensure more supplies to McDonald. The owner/shareholder will look forward for high turnover, while the customer will look for a great value of the money which they are going to spend Example of connected stakeholders for McDonald’s would be as follows: †¢Shareholder/owner: Emirates Fast Food Corporation LLC †¢Supplier: Coca-Cola External Stakeholders Following are the stakeholders which fall under this category: 1)Community 2)Environmental Pressure Groups 3)Government 4)Trade unions External stakeholders are those who are not the member of the organization, but they are indirectly affected with the ups and downs of the business. Example of the external stakeholders of the McDonald’s in UAE is as follows: †¢Government: Environment Agency UAE Stakeholders Conflicts There are many chances of conflicts among the interests of the stakeholders, i.e. customers would like to avail the best product and service at a very low price, while on the other hand managers and directors would be expecting increase in the profit ratio, which cannot be achieved by offering the products and services at a low price.   Logically, a company should tailor its communication to each stakeholder group individually to engage the special concerns of that group. It is important that an organization meets the needs of the most dominant stakeholders, but the needs of the other stakeholders need to be considered – nearly every decision becomes a compromise. 2.How does McDonald`s social responsibility affects its business and stakeholders? Analyze McDonald`s corporate social responsibility for its suppliers and the community. Corporate responsibility means many things to many people. At McDonald’s, being a responsible company means living our values to enable us to serve food responsibly and work toward a sustainable future. The goal of McDonalds CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company’s actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, CSR-focused businesses would proactively promote the  public interest (PI) by encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public sphere, regardless of legality. By maintaining their CSR policy the leave a great impact on their stakeholders, and ultimately maintains their reputation. This also affects their business in a very positive manner. McDonald’s Corporation is among â€Å"Most Admired Companies† for social responsibility. In 2001 it was ranked in the Wall Street Journal as number five in reputation for corporate social responsibility. McDonald’s social responsibility always focuses on a goal of influencing a behavior change among the community and its stakeholders which is to contribute in improving the environmental and community well-being. McDonald’s CSR policy for its Suppliers As it is assumed, McDonalds supply chain is large and complex. They have numerous direct suppliers – companies that make or deliver final products for restaurants. They have an even larger number of indirect suppliers – farms and facilities that grow and process the ingredients that get delivered to their direct suppliers. They envision a supply chain that profitably yields high-quality, safe products without supply interruption while leveraging their leadership position to create a net benefit by improving ethical, environmental and economic outcomes. Ethical – They envision purchasing from suppliers that follow practices that ensure the health and safety of their employees and the welfare and humane treatment of animals in the supply chain. Environmental – They envision influencing the sourcing of the materials and ensuring the design of their products, manufacturing, distribution and use minimize lifecycle impacts on the environment. Economic – They envision delivering affordable food, engaging in equitable trade practices, limiting the spread of agricultural diseases, and positively impacting the communities that their suppliers operate in. McDonald’s suppliers are expected to share and apply McDonald’s vision of sustainable supply to their own suppliers (McDonald’s indirect suppliers). They launched an enhanced Social Accountability program, including online training for suppliers, their facility managers, and McDonald’s supply chain staff. †¢99% of our 523 approved abattoirs were audited for animal welfare in 2007, and 99.2% of those passed their audits. †¢Seven of our nine largest markets have introduced the environmental scorecard to their suppliers. †¢In 2007, 91% of our fish was sourced from fisheries without any unsatisfactory sustainability ratings †¢McDonald’s global minimum standard prohibits the use of antibiotics when used solely for growth promotion purposes. 100% of their direct relationship poultry suppliers around the world have acknowledged their compliance with their antibiotics policy McDonald’s CSR policy for the Community According to the McDonald community approach, it states that: Giving back has been fundamental to our business ever since Ray Kroc founded McDonald’s more than 50 years ago. Our communities give us so much in return—not just by supporting our business— but by increasing our brand visibility and strengthening our relationships with our stakeholders. We use three key strengths—our scope, our people and our profits—to make a meaningful and lasting impact on the global communities where we live and work. McDonald’s support its communities by working for them in a wide perspective. Mentioning some of the activities that McDonalds carry in favor of the community as under: WHEN DISASTER STRIKES †¢When tragedy arrives, McDonald’s the McDonald’s System responds. McDonald’s employees, franchisees and suppliers mobilize to provide assistance in many  forms. Over the last several years, our System has provided food and other assistance to victims of such disasters as the 9/11 tragedy in New York City, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. in 2001, the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004 and the devastating hurricane season in the U.S. in 2005 †¢During the May 12 earthquake in China. McDonald’s China served almost 40,000 meals to earthquake victims, relief workers, military personnel, hospitals and police and fire department officers. THE MCDONALD’S FAMILY GIVES BACK †¢McDonald’s employees, and others within the McDonald’s system, are given the opportunity to provide support for members of the system in the aftermath of natural disasters. McDonald’s Family Charity, established in 2000, has succeeded in distributing close to $4 million to over 4,000 individuals who have lost their homes or possessions during natural disasters. †¢In January 2004, McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada created the 10 Cent Happy Meal Donation program. Through this program, RMHC Canada receives 10 cents from the sale of every Happy Meal purchased, at every Canadian McDonald’s restaurant, every day of the year. It is RMHC Canada’s largest source of funding, reaching a milestone in 2009 of CA$25 million in total donations since inception GOING GREEN †¢McDonald’s delivery trucks in the United Arab Emirates are running on 100 percent biodiesel made with recycled vegetable oil from the chain’s more than 80 restaurants in the Emirates. 3.What are the factors that contributed to a ‘good’ corporate image of McDonald’s? A corporate image is the sum of the impressions that stakeholders (customers, suppliers, employees and the community) hold about your company—in other words, your reputation. The goal is to show what you are as a company throughout all its facets (not pretending to be something you aren’t) Following are the factors that lead to a good corporate image of McDonalds: †¢Being a Responsible and Good Employer †¢Fair Dealing with Suppliers †¢Taking care of the Customers †¢Transparent company policy Being a Responsible and Good Employer McDonalds is considered to be one of the best examples as a good employer. They provide their employees with a friendly and very convenient workplace to work in. As an employer they take care of the followings: Human Rights and the Law They prohibit physical punishment or abuse. They respect the right of employees to associate or not to associate with any group, as permitted by and in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. They comply with employment laws in every market where we operate. Respect and Dignity They provide equal opportunity for employees and applicants. McDonald’s employees work in a place that is free from harassment, intimidation or abuse, sexual or otherwise, or acts or threats of physical violence. Inclusion and Diversity McDonald’s provides equal treatment and equal employment opportunity without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, military status or any other basis protected by law.it also applies to the employment decisions, including recruitment, hiring, placement, development, promotion, training, scheduling, benefits, compensation and termination Fair Dealing with Suppliers They treat their suppliers respectfully, fairly and honestly, and expect their suppliers to treat them in the same way. McDonald’s bases its relationships with suppliers on lawful, efficient and fair practices.  McDonald’s is committed to fair employment practices and strives to provide a safe, healthful and productive work environment for its employees. In turn, they strive to work with suppliers who share their values. Taking care of the Customers McDonalds is highly focused about its customers, and it could be observed in this statement â€Å"Our customers are the reason for our existence†. Best Product Quality and Safety McDonald’s is committed to ensuring that the foods and beverages they serve to their customers are safe. Their safety and quality standards for food, beverages, toys and promotional items meet or exceed all applicable government requirements. They take this as part of their responsibility as a good corporate citizen, and know it is also essential to the continuing growth and profitability of their business. Best Customer Care/Handling McDonalds assures that each and every customer entering the restaurant is properly welcomed with due attention, is satisfied excellently in terms of the product they offer. They make sure that customer while leaving is satisfied with the product and service so that they retain their each customer. Transparent Company Policy McDonald is committed to have a crystal clear policy in terms of the followings: ïÆ'ËœCommunicating with the public/media ïÆ'ËœTrade Practices ïÆ'ËœFair competition ïÆ'ËœGovernment inquiries 4. Analyze McDonald’s mission statements in the case. What is the value of mission statement to McDonald’s employees, Customers and suppliers? A Mission Statement defines the organization’s purpose and primary  objectives. By crafting a clear mission statement and vision statement, you can powerfully communicate your intentions and motivate your team or organization to realize an attractive and inspiring common vision of the future. McDonalds MISSION STATEMENTS The two most famous mission statements of McDonalds are as follows: 1)â€Å"To be our customers favorite place and way to eat† 2)â€Å"Promote diversity and inclusion among our employees, owner/operator and supplier who represent diverse populations McDonald’s serve around the globe† Looking at the brand mission statement of McDonalds it clearly indicates that McDonalds is highly customer focused. They are committed to improve their operations and enhance their customers’ experience. They follow QSC&V strategy, QSC&V is an abbreviation for Quality, Service, Cleanliness & Value which is said to be a benchmark used throughout the world by the McDonald’s Corporation. This criterion is used for every customer, each and every time. In order to fulfill the mission statement the staff and employees form a friendly and happy environment in their respective restaurants. By doing so they achieve their goals and ultimately fulfill their mission statement The second mission statement of McDonalds describes the following approach: At McDonald’s, diversity and inclusion are part of our culture- from the crew room to the board room, we are working to achieve this goal every day by creating an environment for everyone to contribute their best. Our journey to bring our values to life have been documented in â€Å"None Of Us Is As Good As All Of Us† and it is a journey that continues today through our continued efforts with our employee business networks, diversity education, and our outreach in diversity communities. The value of mission statement for the Employees Mission statements hold an important and inspiring value to the employees. Likewise McDonalds mission statements work as a guideline for the employees so that they do their best to achieve the desired mission of the McDonalds. The value of mission statement for the customers  Ã¢â‚¬Å"our customers are the reason for our existence†. This is what the McDonalds mission statement defines. When the customers get to know the company`s attitude towards the community and customers is really appreciable and when they are sure about the products and services that they are going to avail will be beyond their expectations and meet their needs, so the customers will definitely return to the business. And this will ultimately give a rise to the business. The value of mission statement for the suppliers According to the McDonald, its business model is depicted by the three-legged stool of owner, suppliers and the company employees. So this indicates that Suppliers of the McDonald are of great importance for the organization and therefore the mission statements states their importance as well. The mission statement will guide its suppliers that they should always supply and deliver the best they have and maintaining the quality. It will also strengthen the relation among suppliers and the McDonalds. REFERENCES: †¢http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/etc/medialib/aboutMcDonalds/corporate_governance/standards_of_business.Par.44618.File.dat/9497_SBC_layout_McD_Eng-India%20101909.pdf †¢http://www.corporateregister.com/a10723/mcglob08-csr-us.pdf †¢http://jayzy2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/chapter-13-stakeholders.html

The Circulatory System Essay Example

The Circulatory System Essay Example The Circulatory System Paper The Circulatory System Paper General Functions   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The circulatory system is the body’s main transport network and cooling system (De Graff, 1998). The human body needs many external substances to survive. We need air, food, and water. However, these substances are not readily absorbed by the body through initial intake. For example, food that is eaten and digested is not yet used to fuel the body’s billions of cells. The nutrients that have been processed need to be transported to each cell in the body in order for them to be used. This is one of the jobs of the circulatory system. The circulatory system is tasked with carrying the important substances that the body needs where they are needed (Hillendale Health, 2007). Furthermore, the system is also responsible for carrying some of the wastes from the cells such as carbon dioxide, away from the cells to be expelled by the body (Delos Johnson, 2006). This cycle of carrying nutrients to body cells and carrying wastes from th em is a way by which the system contributes to the maintenance of physiological homeostasis. Another way that it contributes to homeostasis is by helping maintain the temperature of the body. Without oxygen to burn, the cells in the body will become cold and eventually die (Delos Johnson, 2006). Thus, oxygenated blood carries oxygen to the cells and releases it in order to maintain homeostatic temperature. Last but not the least, the circulatory system also maintains homeostasis by fighting off outside threats that have infiltrated the body. White blood cells which also travel through the system fight back diseases and help keep the body healthy and they need the circulatory system for them to be able to reach the places in the body where particular bacteria are doing damage (Delos Johnson, 2007). Interactions with other organ systems   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   When we eat food or drink water, it enters our body through our digestive system and is processed in the stomach. Afterwards, the processed food is transported through the small intestines where it is further digested. The small intestine’s inner walls are covered with microscopic finger-like projections called villi which are primarily responsible for taking the nutrients from the digested food and transferring them to the bloodstream where they are carried to the rest of the body (Maton et. al., 1993). Thus, the digestive system and the circulatory system work closely together to nourish the body with food and drink. The circulatory system also works closely with the respiratory system. We take in air through our nose and from there it travels to our lungs. From there, pulmonary arteries which are a part of the circulatory system carries oxygen-depleted blood to absorb more oxygen while releasing the carbon dioxide that it has accumulated from the cells that it delivered nutrients to (Maton et. al., 1993). Of course, the circulatory system takes blood containing nutrients and oxygen to other organ systems of the body in order to enable them to continue functioning. The blood carries nutrients to our muscles, our sensory organs, our brain, and all other parts of our body that need it (Maton, 2003). Parts and functions The Heart   It is a powerful muscle that pumps the blood through the entire circulatory system (Hillendale Health, 2007). The Blood It is the main substance that flows throughout the circulatory system. There are red blood cells and white blood cells that both travel through the circulatory system (Hillendale Health, 2007). Plasma which is the liquid part of the blood carries both these blood cells through the system (Hillendale Health, 2007). The red blood cells carry nutrients from the small intestine and oxygen from the lungs to the cells all over the body (Hillendale Health, 2007). They are also the ones that carry carbon dioxide away from body cells and back to the lungs to be released as waste (Hillendale Health, 2007). The white blood cells travel to areas where harmful germs are infecting body cells and fight those foreign elements to keep the body healthy (Hillendale Health, 2007). There are also platelets found in the bloodstream which acts to help stop bleeding whenever the body gets wounded (Hillendale Health, 2007). For example, whenever we cut ourselves on some sharp object and bleed, the platelets stick to where we cut ourselves and attract more platelets to do the same. This plugs out the wound so that the bleeding stops. The Blood Vessels The blood vessels are the tubes where the blood passes through. There are three types of blood vessels which are arteries, veins, and capillaries (Hillendale Health, 2007). The arteries are blood vessels that carrying oxygenated blood away from the heart while veins carry blood back to the heart (Hillendale Health, 2007). Capillaries are very tiny blood vessels that serve as connections between arteries and veins (Hillendale Health, 2007). The Heart: A closer look   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The human heart is found in the middle of the thorax with its largest part slightly situated to the left just beneath the breastbone (Maton et. al., 1993). It is a mesh of muscle cells that are joined together by contiguous cytoplasmic bridges (Maton et. al., 1993). Tissues found on the heart’s walls are unique because they have qualities both of smooth muscle tissues and skeletal muscle tissues. The heart is covered by a protective sac called the pericardium (Maton et. al., 1993). The pericardium itself is composed of two parts. The fibrous pericardium is made of dense fibrous connective tissue that serves as the heart’s outer protection while the serous pericardium contains fluid that eases friction generated by heart contractions thus protecting the heart from friction caused by its own beating (Maton et. al., 1993). The right atrium is situated on the right side of the heart where the veins carrying deoxygenated blood are found. This is so that the right atrium can collect the deoxygenated blood and pass it through the heart which pumps it by the right ventricle to the lungs to be oxygenated once more (Maton et. al., 1993). After the blood is oxygenated by the lungs, it goes back to the heart through the left atrium and is pumped by the heart through the left ventricle to the rest of the body. It should be noted that the muscle wall that surrounds the left ventricle is thicker than the wall surrounding the right ventricle. This is because it is harder to pump blood to the rest of the body than to just pump it to the lungs and back (Maton et. al., 1993). Hence, thicker muscle means that the left ventricle is more powerful in pumping blood than the right ventricle. Hypertensive heart disease   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This diseases pertains to complications caused by arterial hypertension that affects the heart (eMedicine, 2007). Arterial hypertension which is more commonly known as high blood pressure is a condition wherein the pressure of the blood being pumped through the circulatory system is steadily increasing (eMedicine, 2007). This happens due to a variety of factors. Excessive intake of fat can clog up arteries and thus make it more difficult for blood to pass through. Thus, this makes the pressure of blood passing through the arteries increase. Because of the heightened pressure, the arterial walls are subjected to greater strain (Lip et. al., 2000). This can be imagined by visualizing a hose whose channel has been partially blocked. Fluid passing through that hose exerts more pressure on the hose walls and threatens to rupture the hose. In the same way, too much clogging in the arteries can cause pressure to build so much that it could ruptur e the arteries. Once this condition is elevated to dangerous levels, the heart gets affected by the imbalance in the pressure and hypertensive heart disease is developed (Lip et. al., 2000). The disease causes the heart to be strained more and more and may eventually cause it to breakdown and fail. The pressure can also burst blood vessels which can also damage the system. People suffering from this disease are easily fatigued due to the excessive work that the heart is coping with from the increased blood pressure (eMedicine, 2007). They would also have an irregular pulse, have difficulty sleeping, and feel a greater need to urinate at night (eMedicine 2007). If not treated with appropriate medicine, proper exercise and a good diet, hypertensive heart disease can lead death and is in fact one of the leading causes of death in the country (eMedicine, 2007). References De Graaff, V. (1998). Human Anatomy, 5th edition. WCB McGraw-Hill. Delos Johnson, D. (2006). The Circulatory System. Retrieved May 22, 2008 from: globalclassroom.org/hemo.html eMedicine. (2007). Hypertensive Heart Disease. Retrieved May 22, 2008 from: emedicine.com/med/topic3432.htm Hillendale Health. (2007). Circulatory System. Retrieved May 22, 2008 from: http://hes.ucfsd.org/gclaypo/circulatorysys.html Lip, G., Felmeden, D., Li-Saw-Hee, F., and Beevers, D. (2000). â€Å"Hypertensive heart disease. A complex syndrome or a hypertensive cardiomyopathy?† European Heart Journal. no. 21 p. 1653–1665. Hopkins, J., McLaughlin, C., Johnson, S., Warner, M., LaHart, D., and Wright, J. (1993). Human Biology and Health. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.