Charles Darwin and His Voyage Aboard H.M.S. Beagle

Charles Darwin and His Voyage Aboard H.M.S. Beagle Charles Darwin’s five-year journey in the mid 1830sâ on H.M.S. Beagle has gotten incredible, as bits of knowledge picked up by the splendid youthful researcher on his excursion to intriguing spots enormously affected his masterwork, the book On the Origin of Species. Darwin didn’t really detail his hypothesis of advancement while cruising the world over on board the Royal Navy transport. In any case, the colorful plants and creatures he experienced tested his reasoning and drove him to think about logical proof in new manners. In the wake of coming back to England from his five years adrift, Darwin started composing a multi-volume book on what he had seen. His compositions on the Beagle journey closed in 1843, an entire decade and a half before the distribution of On the Origin of Species. The History of H.M.S. Beagle H.M.S. Beagle is recollected today due to its relationship with Charles Darwin, yet it had cruised on an extensive logical crucial years before Darwin came into the image. The Beagle, a warship conveying ten guns, cruised in 1826 to investigate the coastline of South America. The boat had a grievous scene when its skipper sank into a downturn, maybe brought about by the separation of the journey, and ended it all. Man of his word Passenger Lieutenant Robert FitzRoy accepted order of the Beagle, proceeded with the journey and restored the boat securely to England in 1830. FitzRoy was elevated to Captain and named to order the boat on a subsequent journey, which was to circumnavigate the globe while directing investigations along the South American coastline and over the South Pacific. FitzRoy thought of carrying along somebody with a logical foundation who could investigate and record perceptions. Some portion of FitzRoy’s plan was that an informed non military personnel, alluded to as a â€Å"gentleman passenger,† would be acceptable organization on board transport and would assist him with keeping away from the depression that appeared to have bound his antecedent. Darwin Invited to Join the Voyage in 1831 Requests were made among teachers at British colleges, and a previous educator of Darwin’s proposed him for the situation on board the Beagle. Subsequent to taking his last tests of the year at Cambridge in 1831, Darwin put in half a month on a land undertaking to Wales. He had planned to come back to Cambridge that succumb to philosophical preparing, however a letter from a teacher, John Steven Henslow, welcoming him to join the Beagle, made a huge difference. Darwin was eager to join the boat, however his dad was against the thought, thinking it irresponsible. Different family members persuaded Darwin’s father in any case, and throughout the fall of 1831, the 22-year-old Darwin made arrangements to withdraw England for a long time. Withdraws England on December 27, 1831 With its anxious traveler on board, the Beagle left England on December 27, 1831. The boat arrived at the Canary Islands toward the beginning of January and proceeded ahead to South America, which was reached before the finish of February 1832. South America From February 1832 During the investigations of South America, Darwin had the option to invest significant energy in land, in some cases orchestrating the boat to drop him off and get him toward the finish of an overland excursion. He kept note pads to record his perceptions, and during calm occasions on board the Beagle, he would translate his notes into a diary. In the late spring of 1833, Darwin went inland with gauchos in Argentina. During his treks in South America, Darwin burrowed for bones and fossils and was likewise presented to the abhorrences of servitude and other human rights mishandles. The Galapagos Islands, September 1835 After impressive investigations in South America, the Beagle arrived at the Galapagos Islands in September 1835. Darwin was captivated by such peculiarities as volcanic rocks and mammoth tortoises. He later expounded on moving toward tortoises, which would withdraw into their shells. The youthful researcher would then hop on top, and endeavor to ride the enormous reptile when it started moving once more. He reviewed that it was hard to keep his equalization. While in the Galapagos Darwin gathered examples of mockingbirds, and later saw that the winged creatures were to some degree distinctive on every island. This made him feel that the winged creatures had a typical progenitor, yet had followed differing developmental ways once they had gotten isolated. Circumnavigating the Globe The Beagle left the Galapagos and showed up at Tahiti in November 1835, and afterward cruised forward to arrive at New Zealand in late December. In January 1836 the Beagle showed up in Australia, where Darwin was well dazzled by the youthful city of Sydney. Subsequent to investigating coral reefs, the Beagle proceeded on its way, arriving at the Cape of Good Hope atâ the southern tip of Africa toward the finish of May 1836. Cruising once more into the Atlantic Ocean, the Beagle, in July, came to St. Helena, the remote island where Napoleon Bonaparte had passed on in a state of banishment following his thrashing at Waterloo. The Beagle additionally arrived at a British station on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, where Darwin got some exceptionally welcome letters from his sister in England. Back Home October 2, 1836 The Beagle at that point cruised back to the shoreline of South America before coming back to England, showing up at Falmouth on October 2, 1836. The whole journey had taken almost five years. Sorting out Specimens and Writing In the wake of arriving in England, Darwin took a mentor to meet his family, remaining at his father’s house for half a month. Be that as it may, he was soon dynamic, looking for guidance from researchers on the most proficient method to sort out examples, which included fossils and stuffed flying creatures, he had carried home with him. In the accompanying not many years, he expounded widely on his encounters. A rich five-volume set, The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, was distributed from 1839 to 1843. Also, in 1839 Darwin distributed an exemplary book under its unique title, Journal of Researches. The book was later republished as The Voyage of the Beagle, and stays in print right up 'til today. The book is an enthusiastic and enchanting record of Darwin’s ventures, composed with knowledge and incidental flashes of cleverness. The Theory of Evolution Darwin had been presented to some contemplating advancement before setting out on board H.M.S. Beagle. So a mainstream origination that Darwin’s journey gave him the possibility of advancement isn't precise. However is it genuine that the long periods of movement and research centered Darwins mind and honed his forces of perception. It tends to be contended that his stumble on the Beagle gave him important preparing, and the experience set him up for the logical request that prompted the distribution of On the Origin of Species in 1859.

Essay --

Preceding my enlistment in this class, I didn't have presentation or any sort of recognition with the Zen convention. The remarkably Japanese part of Buddhism has without a doubt prospered, and centers around disposing of the wellsprings of human torment, or at the end of the day, dukkha. On its least difficult level, the impact on the improvement of this Japanese-Buddhist culture keeps on reverberating among its devotees, as it did roughly 2500 years back. In any case, there is an inquiry that remaining parts to a considerably bigger degree. How really did Zen come to impact not just the universes of craftsmanship, writing, and design, yet in addition mainstream society and Western life? The association including Zen and workmanship is unfathomably beguiling, on the grounds that upon assessment Zen craftsmanship itself has all the earmarks of being present day. Shunryu Suzuki clarifies that â€Å"Zen practice is the immediate articulation of our actual nature† (32). He likewi se makes reference to â€Å"when you practice Zen, you become one with Zen† (49). Completely presenting ourselves to remote ideas might be abnormal, yet so, all in all is it that Zen rises above into workmanship? As said by an obscure writer, Zen is the â€Å"spiritual venture towards edification, known as satori, an enlivening that is accomplished through the acknowledgment that one is as of now an illuminated being† (1). With regards to my past inquiry, customary expressions do have establishes in the Zen convention. So as to arrive at edification, one needs to discover importance inside the extent of their ordinary encounters. It isn't especially valuable to make something new or scan for essentialness in different articles. As everyday life is a part of Zen instructing, and there might be creativity well amidst routinal exercises. Maybe workmanship is a managing apparatus for those people who look for illumination. Consequently, the ... ...by its boundaries† (Hoover 9). We delay to make a stride back, take a gander at the entire picture, and recover full self-restraint. After all we are the results of lifetime molding, as it identifies with our passionate and thought designs. Every single living being attempt to maintain a strategic distance from incident, then again, actually negative feelings originate from the brain and are nonexistent. Zen helps me to remember the total requirement for limitation and persistence. You need to start at one point and hold onto life’s extraordinary ridiculously. At the point when an individual is charmed and excited with the Zen practice, craftsmanship is plainly a declaration of their edification. Zen craftsmen, like Ranzan Shoryu, are not devoured by the luxurious appearances of their artistic expressions. The religion and strict workmanship are associated, and should characterize one another. To discover nirvana, is there not a requirement for interruption in relationship however?

Marking the difference between right and wrong

Marking the difference between right and wrong Marking: the difference between right and wrong If you want to improve your essay grades, there are two crucial pieces things you need to know: what you are doing wrong and what you can do right. This requires feedback â€" after all, how can you know what you don’t know? Ideally, a marker â€" or even mentor or tutor â€" would provide this kind of feedback for their students. Unfortunately, though, you will not always get it. In fact, very often what you get is a lot of “don’t do that”, without so much “do this”. With that in mind, this blog post will look at the little things that students commonly do that can lower their marks and steps you can take avoid falling into the same traps. Do your best It sounds so trite, doesn’t it? Do your best. Really, isn’t that what you have been doing? But then, have you really? The sad reality is that there truly are one or two students who can sit down the night before a paper is due, write out a perfect essay in a few hours, and receive high marks and a thumbs up. But the chances are pretty good that you are just a poor ordinary mortal. So if you waited until the night before an essay was due and you received a low mark, you probably deserved it. If you plugged in whatever research materials (books, articles, etc.) that were easiest to find, skimmed over it, cited it uncritically, and received a disappointing grade, it was probably warranted. If you didn’t give the essay a single thought until you sat down to write it, never developed a plan of attack and just started typing away, don’t be surprised if the grade reflects this. If you didn’t take time to read or edit any of your paper before handing it in, then, well you get the idea. Many students suppose that because they are writing, they are doing work, and because it is work that they don’t particularly enjoy or because it feels challenging, they are doing (or have done) their best. But that “best” is not good enough. An essay is just a final physical product, but the work is 90% mental. As soon as you have the assignment topic, or prompt, you need to start thinking about it. You need to start seeing the essay in your head. What is the question? What is your answer? What do you need to show your answer? Where will you get what you need? One problem that often comes up for students is right there at the start: where do I begin? There are really only two options available: you can start by writing or you can start by reading. If you know what you want to talk about, you should write first and then read. Ideally, that reading will sharpen what you wrote and help you rewrite it. If you are not sure what to write, you should read (whatever it is in your topic) until ideas start forming. Do either of these processes sound like they can be accomplished in a single night? Not really. In order to do your best on a paper you have to be willing to put the time in. You need to think about the problem, develop a strategy of getting the paper written, and break that work down into manageable chunks. There is a famous saying in writing classes and it goes something like this: Question: How do I write a paper? Answer: The same way you eat an elephant; one bite at a time. Writing your paper is not one big bite, but lots and lots of nibbles. Markers very quickly develop an instinct for work that is genuinely a student’s best effort, and something hastily and sloppily done. And this point is critical: markers and teachers are far more willing to help students that have done their best work but not done the assignment well, than students who have turned in sloppy and careless work, regardless of the final quality. Always turn in your absolute best effort, even if you’re unsure if it’ll quite hit the mark. Know the assignment Key to ensuring you’re on the right track from the get-go is understanding the assignment. In a well-known case study of composition classes, a scholar revealed that the students' assumptions of what will be asked is a key determinant of their performance. Their assumptions are often based on the teachings in class, and for students that performed poorly there was often a mismatch between their expectations of what is being asked, and what the instructor expects. This is a case of prevention being more important than a cure. You need to read through the assignment carefully, and if there are any tips or suggestions, read those even more carefully (because often tips and suggestions are actually expectations). If you have any questions, ask them early. Be serious Now, there are various features of essay writing that are not formally listed in any course guidelines or handouts from your professor. Things like tone, style, and so forth. There is no reason to complicate these. No matter how easy-going your instructor might be, when you write a paper for a university course, be formal and be serious. Your tone should be formal, your style should be professional. You should hand in a paper that looks like you are applying for a job that you desperately want. The internet abounds with advice on how to write formally â€" read it. Don’t be chatty. Don’t use contractions. Don’t stray from your subject, etc. That said, you also want to find a balance between formal writing style and work that’s comprehensible. Don’t throw in complicated words or phrases simply because you think they sound good. Always assume that you’re writing for someone who knows little-to-nothing on the subject, and choose your language and style accordingly. Many students actually have some anxiety about their writing style. Students in the sciences often feel that they write too concisely, or that their work isn’t ‘exciting’, and that this may mean they get lower marks. Conversely, creative students can tend to bend the rules of writing and perhaps get carried away with the liveliness of their writing, to the detriment of the quality of argument. We don’t know who is marking your papers; maybe they are looking at style and creativity. But you cannot lose marks for being professional and serious in your writing. Personally, we think it helps to write your essays by imagining that you are writing to or for your employer. Think of this from a marker’s perspective. Writing is, notionally, your job. If your job was to assign a formal grade to someone’s work, would you be more receptive to someone who was clearly serious, professional, and had done their best work? Or something that was clearly dashed off, not so serious, or not their best effort? Take your work to the next level with our marking service Having your work marked by an experienced academic not only provides you with valuable and actionable insight â€" it can be the difference between good grades and great grades. Find out more Structure â€" at a glance We will talk a little more about the process of marking in the next post, but something that will help you now is knowing this one little bit of information. Most markers can tell at a glance â€" truly a glance, without having read more than a few words â€" if a paper is low calibre. Now, markers cannot really say if a paper is average, above average, or first-class without reading it. But they know from just the way the first page looks whether or not the essay is low or mediocre. So this should compel two questions on your part: 1) how do they know? And 2) why is this important? Let’s take question 1 first. When you are writing at academic/university level, you are writing at the paragraph level and above. What does this mean? It means that your marker is looking to grade you on the quality of your paragraphs and anything else more complex than this (for example, quality of argument, ability to think critically, etc.). Anything less complex than paragraphs â€" formatting, font, layout, etc. â€" the marker will not want to be having to take care of, at university level. The first page or two of an essay (at least) should look professional at a glance. Clean paper, no folds, etc. All the pertinent information (name, title, date, class) needs to be there on the the title page as directed in the syllabus or formatting guide. If there isn’t one for the class, ask. And pro tip: never ever ever turn in a paper that does not have at least your name and some kind of title. To a marker, a paper without a title just looks like you couldn't be bothered. You seem laz y, even if you aren’t. And, of course, margins and standard font (Times New Roman 12pt is standard). An incorrect or sloppy bibliography with inappropriately formatted citations is also a giveaway of sub-standard work. But the biggest indicator for most markers of the quality of the paper being graded is the paragraphs. A paragraph should be full, probably somewhere between 175-400 words. Very often students hand in papers where there are no paragraphs or lots of really short paragraphs. This immediately suggests to markers that the student has a problem organising the material. Take a good essay and just cast your eyes over it. You will not find any short paragraphs, or one sentence paragraphs (like in some novels). We should add, you might find very long paragraphs in a higher-level academic work, but at undergraduate level you probably wont. Now, why is this important? Because markers do not have lots of time to devote to evaluating papers and they are essentially sorting your paper into a grade box. They will start thinking about where your paper belongs as soon as they pick it up. Not uncommonly, markers will skim through to ensure those details are there that we mentioned above. If your paper does not look like you have command of structure and control over the way you present your discussion and information, then the marker will not be encouraged to actually read your essay. The chances are quite good, in fact, that they will skim over your paper to confirm what they already suspect from the way the paper is presented. You may have first-class ideas in your paper, but without appropriate structure, those ideas are not likely to be given due attention. So, find a sample essay somewhere (there are scads of these online), and before you turn your essay in, make sure that yours at least looks structurally similar in the formatting and the shape of things, with no consideration for content. Structure â€" in detail What you are after in your paper is a logical continuity of thought. What this means is the structure of your paper follows a line of development, in the way you might give someone directions. You start with a general overview (an introduction), develop the ideas and discuss your points in a few to several paragraphs (the body), and you then wrap up what you have discussed (the conclusion). And everything in these sections should be relevant only to the topic that you are discussing. Put even more simply: tell the reader what you are going to tell them. Then tell them what you need to tell them. Then tell them what you have told them. That is essentially the structure of an essay. Where many students go wrong is in one or all of these areas. Often, if a student is operating at a paragraph level, one of the major shortcomings is how the paragraphs themselves are organised. Sometimes the way information is organised in your head is not the way it is organised on paper when it comes out. Something that, perhaps, you should spend a few sentences on, or even a paragraph, you might suppose is covered by a single sentence. Or, conversely, something easily covered by a few sentences gets several. This is where feedback can be helpful. A paper that you write will never be fresh to you, and it will never be read for a first time the way it will be by a marker. That is one reason why it is so difficult to gauge how a marker will respond to your work. The closest you can come is to write the paper, set it aside for a few weeks, then come back to it. But you do not likely have that kind of time. Lastly, all good writers rewrite their papers. You are setting yourself up for disappointment if you believe you can write a first-class paper without having reread and revised the paper, or turning it in without having someone else read it through (preferably a competent expert). The Ultimate Guide to Marking See all articles in the series Marking: from a marker’s perspective Understanding feedback from your essay marker Understanding feedback from your essay marker Unpaid postgrad students are being used for teaching academic writingbetter gradesessay helpmarking processstudy skills

An Analysis of Body Language in Communication Between...

Catalog Abstract 2 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Background 1.2 The aim of the paper 1.3 The organization of this paper Chapter 2 Literature review 2.1 The definition of body language 2.2 The importance of body language 2.2.1 Body language is widely used in daily life 2.2.2 Benefits body language bring to us during communication Chapter 3 Characteristics of body language from the view of Sino-America cultural communication 3.1 Same body language conveys different meaning due to different culture 3.2 Same body language represents same meaning in different cultures 3.3 Only few body language exist in unique culture, one Country or one region 3.4 Different body†¦show more content†¦1.2 The aim of the paper Language differs from country to country, from culture to culture. As a symbol of culture, body language has different meanings in different culture. Besides, to express the same meaning, different body languages are used in different cultures. In any case, to expect the nonverbal behaviors of other cultures to match our own is unrealistic. Therefore, to have a good understanding of body language in intercultural communication is helpful to avoid culture conflicts and culture shocks. This study will focus on: 1, the definition and the importance of body language; 2, the differences of body language between China and America. It aims at not only making people have a better understanding of body language, but also a better understanding of body language in Sino-America cultural communication. 1.3 The organization of this paper The paper is composed of the following four chapters: Chapter one states the introduction, it focus on the background and the purpose of this study; Chapter two gives a literature review; including the definition of body language; the importance of body language; Chapter three presents the main characteristics discovered while comparing body languages in China and America; Chapter four provides the advices for using body languageShow MoreRelatedNonverbal Communication1553 Words   |  7 PagesCommunication is a common necessity among people. Communication is needed in order to interact with other people in almost everything within day to day life. Communication can be viewed in two subdivisions, verbal communication and nonverbal communication. 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How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate Free Essays

string(81) " Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s disruptive-innovation theory\." SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION Spotlight ARTWORK Josef Schulz, Form #1, 2001 C-print, 120 x 160 cm How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate Inside the company’s new-growth factory by Bruce Brown and Scott D. Anthony 64 Harvard Business Review June 2011 HBR. ORG Bruce Brown is the chief technology o? cer of Procter Gamble. We will write a custom essay sample on How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate or any similar topic only for you Order Now Scott D. Anthony is the managing director of Innosight. June 2011 Harvard Business Review 65 B SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION 66 Harvard Business Review June 2011 BACK IN 2000 the prospects for Procter Gamble’s Tide, the biggest brand in the company’s fabric and household care division, seemed limited. The laundry detergent had been around for more than 50 years and still dominated its core markets, but it was no longer growing fast enough to support PG’s needs. A decade later Tide’s revenues have nearly doubled, helping push annual division revenues from $12 billion to almost $24 billion. The brand is surging in emerging markets, and its iconic bull’seye logo is turning up on an array of new products and even new businesses, from instant clothes fresheners to neighborhood dry cleaners. This isn’t accidental. It’s the result of a strategic effort by PG over the past decade to systematize innovation and growth. To understand PG’s strategy, we need to go back more than a century to the sources of its inspiration— Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. In the 1870s Edison created the world’s first industrial research lab, Menlo Park, which gave rise to the technologies behind the modern electric-power and motion-picture industries. Under his inspired direction, the lab churned out ideas; Edison himself ultimately held more than 1,000 patents. Edison of course understood the importance of mass production, but it was his friend Henry Ford who, decades later, perfected it. In 1910 the Ford Motor Company shifted the production of its famous Model T from the Piquette Avenue Plant, in Detroit, to its new Highland Park complex nearby. Although the assembly line wasn’t a novel concept, Highland Park showed what it was capable of: In four years Ford slashed the time required to build a car from more than 12 hours to just 93 minutes. How could PG marry the creativity of Edison’s lab with the speed and reliability of Ford’s factory? The answer its leaders devised, a â€Å"new-growth factory,† is still ramping up. But already it has helped the company strengthen both its core businesses and its ability to capture innovative new-growth opportunities. PG’s efforts to systematize the serendipity that so often sparks new-business creation carry important lessons for leaders faced with shrinking product life cycles and increasing global competition. Laying the Foundation Innovation has long been the backbone of PG’s growth. As chairman, president, and CEO Bob McDonald notes, â€Å"We know from our history that while promotions may win quarters, innovation wins decades. The company spends nearly $2 billion annually on RD—roughly 50% more than its closest competitor, and more than most other competitors combined. Each year it invests at least another $400 million in foundational consumer research to discover opportunities for innovation, conducting some 20,000 studies involving more than 5 million consumers in nearly 100 countries. Odds are that as you’re reading this, PG researchers are in a store somewhere observing shoppers, or even in a consumer’s home. These investments are necessary but not sufficient to achieve PG’s innovation goals. â€Å"People will innovate for financial gain or for competitive advantage, but this can be self-limiting,† McDonald says. â€Å"There needs to be an emotional component as well—a source of inspiration that motivates people. † At PG that inspiration lies in a sense of purpose driven from the top down—the message that each innovation improves people’s lives. At the start of the 2000s only about 15% of PG’s innovations were meeting revenue and profit targets. So the company launched its now well-known Connect + Develop program to bring in outside innovations and built a robust stage-gate process to help manage ideas from inception to launch. (For more on C+D, see Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab, â€Å"Connect and Develop: Inside Procter Gamble’s New Model for Innovation,† HBR March 2006. ) These actions showed early signs of raising innovation success rates, but it was clear that PG needed more breakthrough innovations. And it had to come up with them as reliably as Ford’s factory had rolled out Model Ts. HOW PG TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG Idea in Brief Procter Gamble is a famous innovator. Nonetheless, in the early 2000s only 15% of its innovations were meeting their revenue and pro? t targets. To address this, the company set about building organizational structures to systematize innovation. The resulting new-growth factory includes large newbusiness creation groups, focused project teams, and entrepreneurial guides who help teams rapidly prototype and test new products and business models in the market. The teams follow a step-by-step business development manual and use specialized project and portfolio management tools. Innovation and strategy assessments, once separate, are now combined in revamped executive reviews. PG’s experience suggests six lessons for leaders looking to build new-growth factories: Coordinate the factory with the company’s core businesses, be a vigilant portfolio manager, start small and grow carefully, create tools for gauging new businesses, make sure the right people are doing the right work, and nurture cross-pollination. ithout a further boost to its organic growth capabilities, the company would still have trouble hitting its targets. PG’s leaders recognized that the kind of growth the company was after couldn’t come from simply doing more of the same. It needed to come up with more breakthrough innovations—ones that could create completely new markets. And it needed to do this as reliably as Henry Ford’s Highla nd Park factory had rolled out Model Ts. In 2004 Gil Cloyd, then the chief technology officer, and A. G. Lafley, then the CEO, tasked two 30-year PG veterans, John Leikhim and David Goulait, with designing a new-growth factory whose intellectual underpinnings would derive from the Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s disruptive-innovation theory. You read "How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate" in category "Papers" The basic concept of disruption—driving growth through new offerings that are simpler, more convenient, easier to access, or more affordable—was hardly foreign to PG. Many of the company’s powerhouse brands, including Tide, Crest, Pampers, and Swiffer, had followed disruptive paths. Leikhim and Goulait, with support from other managers, began by holding a two-day workshop for seven new-product-development teams, guided by facilitators from Innosight (a firm Christensen cofounded). The attendees explored how to shake up embedded ways of thinking that can inhibit disruptive approaches. They formulated creative ways to address critical commercial questions—for example, whether demand would be sufficient to warrant a new-product launch. Learning from the workshop helped spur the development of new products, such as the probiotic supplement Align, and also bolstered existing ones, such as Pampers. In the years that followed, Leikhim and Goulait shored up the factory’s foundation, working with Cloyd and other PG leaders to: Teach senior management and project team members the mind-sets and behaviors that foster disruptive growth. The training, which has changed over time, initially ranged from short modules on topics such as assessing the demand for an early-stage idea to multiday courses in entrepreneurial thinking. Form a group of new-growth-business guides to help teams working on disruptive projects. These experts might, for instance, advise teams to remain small until their project’s key commercial questions, such as whether consumers would habitually use the new product, have been answered. The guides include several entrepreneurs who have succeeded—and, even more important, failed—in starting businesses. Develop organizational structures to drive new growth. For example, in a handful of business About the units the company created small groups focused Spotlight Artist Each month we illustrate primarily on new-growth initiatives. The groups our Spotlight package with (which, like the training, have evolved significantly) a series of works from an acaugmented an existing entity, FutureWorks, whose complished artist. We hope charter is to create new brands and business mod- that the lively and cerebral creations of these photograels. Dedicated teams within the groups conducted phers, painters, and instalmarket research, developed technology, created lation artists will infuse our pages with additional energy business plans, and tested assumptions for specific and intelligence and amplify projects. hat are often complex and Produce a process manual—a step-by-step abstract concepts. This month’s artist is guide to creating new-growth businesses. The Josef Schulz, a German manual includes overarching principles as well as photographer who often detailed procedures and templates to help teams turns his lens on modern industrial constructs and describe opportunities, identify requirements for digitally strips away de? ning success, monitor progress, make go/no-go decisions, details to render moreand more. abstract, universally relRun demonstration projects to showcase the evant images. In the ? rst step I’m a photographer emerging factory’s work. One of these was a line of with his limitations,† he pocket-size products called Swash, which quickly once told an interviewer, refresh clothes: For example, someone who’s in a â€Å"and then an artist with his freedom of decisions. † hurry can give a not-quite-clean shirt a spray rather View more of the artist’s than putting it through the wash. work at josefschulz. de. June 2011 Harvard Business Review 67 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION Sustaining Commercial Commercial innovations use creative marketing, packaging, and promotional approaches to grow existing o? erings. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, PG ran a series of ads celebrating mothers. The campaign covered 18 brands, was viewed repeatedly by hundreds of millions of consumers, and drove $100 million in revenues. PG’s Four Types of Innovation Sustaining innovations bring incremental improvements to existing products: a little more cleaning power to a laundry detergent, a better ? avor to a toothpaste. These provide what PG calls â€Å"er† bene? s—better, easier, cheaper—that are important to sustaining share among current customers and getting new people to try a product. Sharpening the Focus By 2008 PG had a working prototype of the factory, but the company’s innovation portfolio was weighed down by a proliferation of small projects. A. G. Lafley charged Bob McDonald (then the COO) and CTO Bruce Brown (a coauthor of this article) to dramatically increase innovation output by focusing the factory on fewer but bigger initiatives. McDonald and Brown’s team drove three critical improvements. First, rather than strictly separating innovations designed to bolster existing product lines from efforts to create new product lines or business models, PG increased its emphasis on an intermediate category: transformational-sustaining innovations, which deliver major new benefits in existing product categories. Consider the Crest brand, the market leader until the late 1990s, when it was usurped by Colgate. Looking for a comeback, in 2000 PG launched a disruptive innovation, Crest Whitestrips, that made teeth whitening at home affordable and easy. In 2006 it introduced Crest Pro-Health, which squeezes half a dozen benefits into one tube—the toothpaste fights cavities, plaque, tartar, stains, gingivitis, and bad breath. In 2010 it rolled out Crest 3D White, a line of advanced oral care products, including one that whitens teeth in two hours. Such efforts helped Crest retake the lead in many markets. Pro-Health and 3D White were both transformational-sustaining innovations, meant to appeal to current consumers while attracting new ones. These sorts of innovations share an mportant trait with market-creating disruptive innovations: They have a high degree of uncertainty—something the factory is specifically designed to manage. Second, PG strengthened organizational supports for the formation of transformationalsustaining and disruptive businesses. It established several new-business-creation groups, larger in size 68 Harvard Business Review June 2011 and scope than any previous growth-factory team, whose resources a nd management are kept carefully separate from the core business. These groups— dedicated teams led by a general manager—develop ideas that cut across multiple businesses, and also pursue entirely new business opportunities. One group covers all of PG’s beauty and personal care businesses; another covers its household care business (the parent unit of the fabric-and-household and the family-and-baby-care divisions); a third, FutureWorks, focuses largely on enabling different business models (it helped guide PG’s recent partnership with the Indian business Healthpoint Services). The new groups supplement (rather than replace) existing supports such as the Corporate Innovation Fund, which provides seed capital to ideas that might otherwise slip through the cracks. PG also created a specialized team called LearningWorks, which helps plan and execute in-market experiments to learn about purchase decisions and postpurchase use. Third, PG revamped its strategy development and review process. Innovation and strategy assessments had historically been handled separately. Now the CEO, CTO, and CFO explicitly link company, business, and innovation strategies. This integration, coupled with new analyses of such issues as competitive factors that could threaten a given business, has surfaced more opportunities for innovation. The process has also prompted examinations of each unit’s â€Å"production schedule,† or pipeline of growth opportunities, to ensure that it’s robust enough to deliver against growth goals for the next seven to 10 years. Evaluations are made of individual business units (feminine care, for example) as well as broad sectors (household care). This revised approach calls for each business unit to determine the mix of innovation types it needs to deliver the required growth. HOW PG TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG Transformational-Sustaining Transformational-sustaining innovations reframe existing categories. They typically bring order-of-magnitude improvements and fundamental changes to a business and often lead to breakthroughs in market share, pro? t levels, and consumer acceptance. In 2009 PG introduced the wrinkle-reducing cream Olay Pro-X. Launching a $40-a-bottle product in the depths of a recession might seem a questionable strategy. But PG went ahead because it considered the product a transformational-sustaining innovation—clinically proven to be as e? ective as its much more expensive prescription counterparts, and superior to the company’s other antiaging o? erings. The cream and related products generated ? rst-year sales of $50 million in U. S. food retailers and drugstores alone. Disruptive Disruptive innovations represent newto-the-world business opportunities. A company enters entirely new businesses with radically new o? erings, as PG did with Swi? er and Febreze. Running the Factory Let’s return now to Tide, whose dramatic growth highlights the potential of PG’s approach. Over the past decade the brand has launched numerous products and product-line extensions, carved new paths in emerging markets, and tested a promising new business model. If you had looked for Tide in a U. S. supermarket 10 years ago, you would have found, for the most part, ordinary bottles and boxes of detergent. Now you’ll see the Tide name on dozens of products, all with different scents and capabilities. For example, in 2009 PG introduced a line of laundry additives called Tide Stain Release. Within a year, building on 26 patents, it incorporated these additives into a sible to 70% of Indian consumers and has helped to significantly increase Tide’s share in India. More radically, Swash moved the Tide brand out of the laundry room. The line has clear disruptive characteristics: Swash products don’t clean as thoroughly as laundry detergents or remove wrinkles as effectively as professional pressing. But because they’re quick and easy to use, they offer â€Å"good enough† occasional alternatives between washes. Swash took an unconventional path to commercialization. When the products were first sold, in a store near PG’s headquarters in Ohio, they carried a different brand name and had no apparent connection to Tide. After that experiment, PG opened a â€Å"pop up† Swash store at The Ohio State University. Both Tide Dry Cleaners is a factory innovation that represents an entirely new business model. new detergent, Tide with Acti-Lift—the first major redesign of Tide’s liquid laundry detergent in a decade. The product’s launch drove immediate marketshare growth of the Tide brand in the United States. PG has also customized formulations for emerging markets. Ethnographic research showed that about 80% of consumers in India wash their clothes by hand. They had to choose between detergents that were relatively gentle on the skin but not very good at actually cleaning clothes, and more-potent but harsher agents. With the problem clearly identified, in 2009 a team came up with Tide Naturals, which cleaned well without causing irritation. Mindful of the need in emerging markets to provide greater benefit at lower cost—â€Å"more for less†Ã¢â‚¬â€PG priced Tide Naturals 30% below comparably effective but harsher products. This made the Tide brand accestests helped the company understand how consumers would buy and use the products, which PG then began selling exclusively through Amazon and other online channels. In early 2011 the company ramped down its promotion of Swash, although learning from the effort will inform its work on other disruptive ideas in the clothes-refreshing space. Whereas Swash was a new product line, Tide Dry Cleaners represents an entirely new business model. It started when a team began exploring ways to disrupt the dry-cleaning market, using proprietary technologies and a unique store design grounded in insights about consumers’ frustrations with existing options. Many cleaning establishments are dingy, unfriendly places. Customers have to park, walk, and wait. Often the cleaners’ hours are inconvenient. PG’s alternative: bright, boldly colored cleaners June 2011 Harvard Business Review 69 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION The Factory’s Consumer Research at Work In October 2010 PG launched the Gillette Guard razor in India, a transformational-sustaining innovation whose strategic intent was simple: to provide a cheaper and e? ective alternative for the hundreds of millions of Indians who use double-edged razors. The company’s researchers spent thousands of hours in the market to understand these consumers’ needs. They gained important insights by observing men in rural areas who, lacking indoor plumbing, typically shave outdoors using little or no water—and don’t shave every day. The single-blade Gillette Guard was thus designed to clean easily, with minimal water, and to manage longer stubble. The initial retail price was 15 rupees (33 cents), with re? ll cartridges for ? ve rupees (11 cents). Early tests showed that consumers preferred the new product to double-edged razors by a six-to-one margin. Its breakthrough performance and a? ordability position it for rapid growth. featuring specialized treatments, drive-through windows, and 24-hour storage lockers to facilitate after-hours drop-off and pickup. Using the new-growth factory’s process manual, the development team identified key assumptions about the proposed dry cleaners. For example, could the business model generate enough returns to attract store owners willing to pay up to $1 million for franchise rights? In 2009 PG’s guides helped the team open three pilots in Kansas City to try to find out. That year PG also formed Agile Pursuits Franchising, a subsidiary to oversee such efforts, and transferred ownership of the dry-cleaning venture to FutureWorks, whose main mission is to pursue new business models that lie outside PG’s established systems. It remains to be seen how Tide Dry Cleaners will fare, but one promising sign came in 2010, when Andrew Cherng, the founder of the Panda Restaurant Group, announced plans to open 150 franchises in four years. He told BusinessWeek, â€Å"I wasn’t around when McDonald’s was taking franchisees, [but] I’m not going to miss this one. † To ensure strategic cohesion and smart resource allocation, Tide’s innovation efforts have been closely coordinated through regular dialogues among several leaders—CEO McDonald, CTO Brown, the vice-chair of the household business unit, and the president of the fabric care division. They’ve also been the focus of discussions at Corporate Innovation Fund meetings and similar reviews. This isn’t just the methodical pursuit of a single innovation. It’s part of a steady stream of ideas in development—a factory humming with work. and learning, and personally engage. Our journey at PG suggests six lessons for leaders looking to create new-growth factories. 1. Closely coordinate the factory and the core business. Leaders sometimes see efforts to foster new growth as completely distinct from efforts to bolster the core; indeed, many in the innovation community have argued as much for years. Our experience indicates the opposite. First, new-growth efforts depend on a healthy core business. A healthy core produces a cash flow that can be invested in new growth. And we’ve all known times when an ailing core has demanded management’s full attention; a healthy core frees leaders to think about more-expansive growth initiatives. Second, a core business is rich with capabilities that can support new-growth efforts. Consider PG’s excellent relationships with major retailers. Those relationships are a powerful, hard-to-replicate asset that helps the factory expedite new-growth initiatives. Swiffer wouldn’t be Swiffer without them. Third, some of the tools for managing core efforts—particularly those that track a project’s progress—are also useful for managing new-growth efforts. And finally, the factory’s rapid-learning approach often yields insights that can strengthen existing product lines. One of the project teams at the 2004 workshop was seeking to spur conversion in emerging markets from cloth to disposable diapers. Subsequent in-market tests yielded a critical discovery: Babies who wore disposable diapers fell asleep 30% faster and slept 30 minutes longer than babies wearing cloth diapers—an obvious benefit for infants (and their parents). Advertising campaigns touting this advantage helped make Pampers the number one brand in several emerging markets. 2. Promote a portfolio mind-set. PG communicates to both internal and external stakeholders that it is building a varied portfolio of innovation Lessons for Leaders Efforts to build a new-growth factory in any company will fail unless senior managers create the right organizational structures, provide the proper resources, allow sufficient time for experimentation 70 Harvard Business Review June 2011 HOW PG TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG approaches, ranging from sustaining to disruptive ones. See the sidebar â€Å"PG’s Four Types of Innovation. †) It uses a set of master-planning tools to match the pace of innovation to the overall needs of the business. It also deploys portfolio-optimization tools that help managers identify and kill the least-promising programs and nurture the best bets. These tools create projections for every active idea, including estimates of the financial potential and the human and capital investments that will be required. Some ideas are evaluated with classic net-present-value calculations, others with a risk-adjusted real-option approach, and still others with more-qualitative criteria. Although the tools assemble a rank-ordered list of projects, PG’s portfolio management isn’t, at its core, a mechanical exercise; it’s a dialogue about resource allocation and business-growth building blocks. Numerical input informs but doesn’t dictate decisions. A portfolio approach has several benefits. First, it sets up the expectation that different projects will be managed, resourced, and measured in different ways, just as an investor would use different criteria to evaluate an equity investment and a real estate one. Second, because the portfolio consists largely of sustaining and transformational-sustaining efforts, seeing it as a whole highlights the critical importance of these activities, which protect and extend legitimate disagreement about the best way to organize for new growth. Whereas we believe in a factory with relatively strong ties to the core, some advocate a â€Å"skunkworks† organization. Others argue for â€Å"distinct but linked† organizations under an â€Å"ambidextrous† leader; still others recommend mirroring the structure of a venture capital firm. (PG’s factory uses several organizational approaches. Treating capability development itself as a new-growth innovation lets companies try different approaches and learn what works best for them. A staged approach serves another important purpose: It’s a built-in reminder that a new-growth factory is not a quick fix. The factory won’t provide a sudden boost to next quarter’s result s, nor can it instantly rein in an out-of-control core business that’s veering from crisis to crisis. GILLETTE GUARD After thousands of hours of research in the ? eld, PG learned that a single-blade razor was a cheaper and e? ective alternative to double-edged razors for many consumers in India. CREST 3D WHITE Usurped by Colgate in the late 1990s, Crest has regained the lead in many markets owing to its introduction of several innovative oral care products, including ones that make teeth whitening at home a? ordable and easy. 4. Create new tools for gauging new businesses. Anticipated and nascent markets are notoriously hard to analyze. Detailed follow-up with one of the project teams that attended the pilot workshop showed PG that it needed new tools for this purpose. PG now conducts â€Å"transaction learning experiments,† or TLEs, in which a team â€Å"makes a little and sells a little,† thus letting consumers vote with their wallets. Teams have sold small amounts of products online, at mall kiosks, in pop-up stores, and at amusement parks—even in the company store PG now conducts â€Å"transaction learning experiments,† which let consumers vote with their wallets. core businesses. Finally, a portfolio approach helps reinforce the message that any project, particularly a disruptive one, may carry substantial risk and might not deliver commercial results—and that’s fine, as long as the portfolio accounts for the risk. 3. Start small and grow carefully. Remember how the new-growth factory began: with a simple two-day workshop. It then expanded to small-scale pilots in several business units before becoming a companywide initiative. Staged investment allows for early, rapid revision—before lines scribbled on a hypothetical organizational chart are engraved in stone. It also provides for targeted experimentation. For example, there is and outside company cafeterias. PG devised a venture capital approach to testing the market for Align, its probiotic supplement, providing seed capital for a controlled pilot. The company has also tested entire business models—recall the Kansas City pilots of Tide Dry Cleaners. 5. Make sure you have the right people doing the right work. Building the factory forced PG to change the way it staffed certain teams. At any given time the company has hundreds of teams working on various innovation efforts. In the past, most teams consisted mainly of part-time members—employees who had other responsibilities pulling at them. But disruptive and transformational-sustaining efforts June 2011 Harvard Business Review 71 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION HBR. ORG CONNECT WITH THE AUTHORS Do you have questions or comments about this article? The authors will respond to reader feedback at hbr. org. TIDE DRY CLEANERS Still in an early stage, this innovation arose in part from insights about consumers’ frustrations with the dinginess and inconvenience of most existing drycleaning establishments. require undivided attention. (As the old saying goes, nine women can’t make a baby in a month. ) There need to be people who wake up each day and go to sleep each night obsessing about the new business. New-growth teams also need to be small and nimble, and they should include seasoned members. PG found that big teams often bog down because they pursue too many ideas at once, whereas small teams are better able to quickly focus on the mostpromising initiatives. Having several members with substantial innovation experience helps teams confidently make sound judgment calls when data are inconclusive or absent. Finally, building a factory requires a substantial investment in widespread, ongoing training. Changing mind-sets begins, literally, with teaching a new language. Key terms such as â€Å"disruptive innovation,† â€Å"job to be done,† â€Å"business model,† and â€Å"critical assumptions† must be clearly and consistently defined. PG reinforces key innovation concepts both at large meetings and at smaller, focused workshops, and in 2007 it established a â€Å"disruptive innovation college. People working on new-growth projects can choose from more than a dozen courses, ranging from basic innovation language to designing and executing a TLE, sketching out a business model, staffing a new-growth team, and identifying a job to be done. 6. Encourage intersections. Successful innovation requires rich cross-pollinat ion both inside and outside the organization. PG’s Connect + Develop program is part of a larger effort to intersect with other disciplines and gain new perspectives. Over the past few years PG has: †¢ Shared people with noncompeting companies. In 2008 PG and Google swapped two dozen employees for a few weeks. PG wanted greater exposure to online models; Google was interested in learning more about how to build brands. †¢ Engaged even more outside innovators. In 2010 PG refreshed its C+D goals. It aims to become the partner of choice for innovation collaboration, and to triple C+D’s contribution to PG’s innovation development (which would mean deriving $3 billion of the company’s annual sales growth from outside innovators). It has expanded the program to forge additional connections with government labs, universities, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, consortia, and venture capital firms. †¢ Brought in outside talent. PG has traditionally promoted from within. But it recognized that total reliance on this approach could stunt its ability to create new-growth businesses. So it began bringing in high-level people to address needs beyond its core capabilities, as when it hired an outsider to run Agile Pursuits Franchising. In that one stroke, it acquired expertise in franchise-based business models that would have taken years to build organically. SOME THINK it’s foolish for large companies to even attempt to create innovative-growth businesses. They maintain that organizations should just outsource innovation, by acquiring promising start-ups. But PG’s efforts appear to be working. Recall that in 2000 only 15% of its innovation efforts met profit and revenue targets. Today the figure is 50%. The past fiscal year was one of the most productive innovation years in the company’s history, and the company’s three- and five-year innovation portfolios are sufficient to deliver against their growth objectives. Projections suggest that the typical initiative in 2014 and 2015 will have nearly twice the revenue of today’s initiatives. That’s a sixfold increase in output without any significant increase in inputs. Our experience tells us that although individual creativity can be unpredictable and uncontrollable, collective creativity can be managed. Although the next Tide or Crest innovation might stumble, the factory’s methodical approach should bring many more innovations successfully to market. The factory process can create sustainable sources of revenue growth—no matter how big a company becomes. HBR Reprint R1106C At PG’s â€Å"disruptive innovation college,† people working on new-growth projects can choose from more than a dozen courses. 72 Harvard Business Review June 2011 Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009 Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses. Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. For rates and permission, contact permissions@harvardbusiness. org. How to cite How PG Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate, Papers

The Importance of Family and Community Engagement in Elementary Schools

The essay is a reaction to an article titled â€Å"Improving Parent Involvement in Schools: A Cultural Perspective† written by Keane Theresa published in 2007.Advertising We will write a custom article sample on The Importance of Family and Community Engagement in Elementary Schools specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The article contends that parent involvement is of paramount significance to students’ success in academic just like teachers are. Additionally, the barrier to parent involvement and what can be done to curb them are also discussed in the article. Despite the significance attached to parent involvement, the article notes that although standards for students are on the rise, parent involvement is on the decline. Being able to point out the factors leading to the decline will help address the problem. When considering the link between parent involvement and achievement, the author notes that involvement mean s different things to different people. There are indeed benefits when all the factors deemed to be parent involvement are considered. It has been shown that parent involvement to issues relating to their children helps them achieve more. In situations where parents actively monitor the progress of their student, they will be able to know their areas of weakness and try to help them. Additionally, when parents are involved, they create a learning environment back at home. This has been seen when they help their children do homework and encourage a culture of learning. Similarly, parents do encourage their children by making them know they are unique and are capable of achieving academic excellence. In terms of social behavior, parent involvement help in shaping the manner of student and will try to avoid being in trouble.Advertising Looking for article on communications media? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Lastly and more i mportantly, student whose parent are actively involved in their learning develop positive attitude hence have lower chances of dropping out of schools. All these help teachers to concentrate in imparting knowledge rather than doing what parent opt to have done back home. However, there are barriers that block or hinder parent involvement in the academic lives of their children. The author acknowledges the woks of other scholars such as Lazar Slostad, 1999 who held that parent do care very much about the academic lives of their children. However, parents hold a negative perception about involvement since there are no frameworks in place that make teachers and parents to understand each others as well as network. Inadequate preparation of teachers to work with other adults or parent is the main challenge in parent involvement. Other barriers include cultural different; institutions where teachers are highly respected parent activities might be seen as an interruption and hence unwelc ome. Additionally race, language barrier, lack of transportation and economical status of an individual also acts as a barrier to active involvement of parents in school activities. Lastly decline in family which has seen to it that there is a rise in single parents also contributes to the problem. It is true that single parents are not able to divide their time appropriately to indulge in all activities that will foster the academic lives of their children. With this barriers, there is need to have in place mechanisms that will help reverse the trend. One approach can entail having conferences per semester where thorough consultation are made before decision are arrived at. Additionally, having in place an initiative in which parents will be educated on various issues regarding leadership, communication as well as importance of actively taking part in school activities is called for.Advertising We will write a custom article sample on The Importance of Family and Community Eng agement in Elementary Schools specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Similarly creation of policies and guidelines that will clearly outline the goals and expectations for parents and teachers will help in overcoming the barriers previously mentioned. Training teachers on how best to work and network with other adults (parents) will go an extra mile in creating an environment where parents will feel welcomed and give their best in terms of involvement. In my view encouraging parents to volunteer in issues such as school building will encourage a culture of parent involvement. Reference Keane, T. (2007). â€Å"Improving parent involvement in schools: A Cultural Perspective† River Academic Journal, 3(2): 1-4. Lazar, A. Slostad, F. (1999). â€Å"How to overcome obstacles to parent-teacher partnerships† Clearing House, 72(4): 206-210. This article on The Importance of Family and Community Engagement in Elementary Schools was written and submitted by user Desmond Q. to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Urban Poor essays

Urban Poor essays Urban Social Movements In Latin America: Latin America is made up of diverse countries, peoples and cultures. It is a continent rich in resources; however, it has many problems facing its people, such as; debt, urbanization, environmental issues, multinationals and continuing wars and unrest. Many people in Latin America withstand sever hardship because of these issues and how their governments lack the ability to respond. This essay will examine 1 key issue facing Latin America urbanization. This issue will be analyzed on more micro level through local social movements and how particular communities have come together to meet their needs and face an often-imposing government. This essay will concentrate on the time during the 1980s, however, will have to add some historical context leading up to this period. The last half of the 20-century saw many rural third world nations become rapidly urbanized. Latin America was one of these continents to transform. Most of this is due to migration after the Second World War where migrants from rural areas were forced to leave to find work in order to survive. Many countries in this area couldnt cope with this urban growth, which led to people living in conditions well below the poverty line. Families migrating to the city centers quickly erected independent houses through squatting or claiming land through land invasions on land surrounding the city that was either owned by the government or privately. Food, shelter and community services were the main issues that these people dealt with everyday often with little or no help from their government. Urbanization is caused by many factors, studies have been done in modernization theories, dependency theories and urban bias all to analyze how and why urbanization exists. This essay doesnt explore how urbanization has come about but more how different communities have coped and organized social movements to change th...

How to Generate Hundreds of Writing Ideas

How to Generate Hundreds of Writing Ideas How to Generate Hundreds of Writing Ideas How to Generate Hundreds of Writing Ideas By Ali Hale Do you ever feel completely out of ideas? Sometimes, I’ve got time to write – but I’m just not feeling inspired. I might want to write an article for one of my blogs, or work on a short story. I may just want to write something personal, perhaps a letter to a friend, or a journal piece, but for some reason I can’t think up a topic. Inspiration doesn’t always come easily. But for any writer, it’s vital to be able to generate ideas and get on with the work. I’m going to cover some great ways of coming up with more ideas than you’ll ever be able to use †¦ Brain-Storm or Spider-Chart I like to brainstorm ideas on paper, though there are lots of pieces of software available – these might be useful if you want to develop an idea into a full article, as they allow you to move things around. For the low-tech method, though, just grab a bit of paper – a full blank sheet of computer paper works well, as it’s good to give yourself plenty of room! Write your topic (maybe the name of your blog, or the subject for a short story writing competition) in the center †¦ and start jotting ideas around the edge. Timed Ideas Set a stopclock for five minutes and start writing. Scribble down as many ideas as you can in that time, and don’t let yourself stop – keep your pen moving, or keep typing, until the timer goes off. The pressure of time can force you to be creative: you’ll find yourself jotting things almost in desperation, but when you look back over the ideas that you’ve written down, you may well find some gems in there. Lists of 50 or 100 Ideas When I’m coming up with topics for blog posts, I often start by opening up a new document and typing â€Å"50 Ideas for My Blog† and then sitting there until I come up with all fifty! For the truly brave, 100 is even better. It’ll take you a while to get there, but the more ideas you write down, the more you’ll find yourself coming up with new and different possibilities. If you really want to challenge yourself, combine this with the stopclock idea above (I’d suggest allowing at least fifteen minutes). Joining the Dots You can use your list or your spider diagram for this. Draw lines to connect related ideas together: sometimes one thought won’t in itself be enough for you to write a whole article from it, but several points could combine together well. Alternatively, one topic may be far too broad – so jot down sub-points around it. If you’re brainstorming for fiction, try combining ideas from opposite sides of your page – you could even stick a pencil in at random. Juxtaposing two very different elements can give you that spark you need to come up with something truly creative. Using Other People’s Ideas There are hundreds of ways to find ideas ready for the taking. If you write fiction, try using writing bursts or writing prompts. You could try picking two novels at random from your shelf, choosing a character from each one – and then combining those characters. Or how about borrowing the plot from a fairy tale or traditional story? (Think that’s cheating? Shakespeare did it†¦) For non-fiction writers, try using a list of famous quotes to spark off new ideas for articles. Responding to someone else’s words – whether you agree, disagree, or go off on a tangent – can start to get your own ideas flowing. How do you come up with ideas? Do you ever feel uninspired and plough on regardless? Share your tips in the comments. If you try some of the above methods, it’d be great to hear how you get on! Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Writing Basics category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:10 Rules for Writing Numbers and NumeralsHow Long Should a Paragraph Be?Preposition Review #1: Chance of vs. Chance for

Do you think that juvenile offenders who have committed a homicide Essay

Do you think that juvenile offenders who have committed a homicide should be tried as adults - Essay Example ne has done; so a young offender should at least be evaluated on the matter of psychological abnormality and must be provided with special mental treatment along with some legal measures of punishment like a short sentence in prison. The main question is whether children are capable of acknowledging their actions and their consequences. Thus the claims concerning lack of brain development in kids doesn’t justify any criminal actions that children may do. If it was so, then any juvenile offender would be excused just because it was not his fault for commiting the crime, but it was lack of brain development which made him act cruelly. Such excuses would let children do whatever they want and no one could have blamed them for anything. However, a great argument was stated by representatives of the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Offenders who reasonably noted in one of NY Times articles concerning this issue: â€Å"While juvenile advocates often note that a youth’s brain is still developing, we all learn from an extremely early age that killing is wrong† (Kozlowska n.pag.). The statement definitely makes sense as it is difficult to imagine a child who wouldn’t know that killing is a bad thing to do. Thus it means that when a juvenile offender was about to make a crime, he had already known that the action was extremely bad and illegal. Moreover, it is obvious that if someone close to a child died, the child would feel grief, because one would know that death is a bad thing, especially when people kill each other. Doesn’t this mean that kids’ brain is developed enough to understand moral standards and discern good from bad? Although when a child kills a human, for some reasons people say that children’s brains are not developed enough, so they shouldn’t be charged for anything. The situation creates a kind of double standard regarding the issue. As far as an action must be evaluated according to a person’s acknowledgement of what is good

Case study of Tata Cross Culture analysis Essay

Case study of Tata Cross Culture analysis - Essay Example Since being advertised in strongly positive terms as cheapest car of the world, it has been the idle gossip around the world (Stokes, Wilson, & Mador, 2010). Significant people of large organisations have been driving in by numbers only to take a look at the most outstanding work of creative engineering in the shape of â€Å"Tata Nano.† Nano is a new form of cars of this century which represents a philosophy of an investor who deliberately decided to go against the prevailing wisdom of other investors of lighter, smaller, cheaper and signify a new age in cheap private transportation and with a possibility of becoming actual, "worldwide deadlock." The word "Nano" is derived from the Greek word ‘Nanos’ which means "small" in the Indic language spoken by the people of India who live in Gujarat in western India which is also the language of the Tata Group’s founders (Stokes, Wilson, & Mador, 2010). In 2003, under the Chairmanship of Mr. Ratan Tata, the project to manufacture a car while keeping the price to one Lac rupees was started. The main aim of this â€Å"Tata Nano plan† was the demand and requirement of many families of India who could not afford 4 wheel cars instead utilized Motorbikes and bicycles for the purpose, and was grounded on the successful project of low cost four wheeled â€Å"Ace truck† by the company in May 2005 (Boone & Kurtz, 2011). Company’s Profile In 1945, Tata Motors was established. ... Among the 3 best companies in the segment of a vehicle carrying passengers, Tata Motors is also included. Tata Motors has manufactured several outstanding cars in utility, compact and medium-size segment. It furnishes its services and products on a worldwide ground. Within India it offers 5 different categories of services and products namely trucks, commercial passenger carriers, passenger cars, defence vehicles, and utility vehicles. Why Tata Nano Is Important The Chairman of Tata Group perceived the thought behind the Tata Nano, when he saw a four member family was travelling via motor scooter in rain. At that time the idea of Nano came in his mind and he desired to manufacture an automobile that could be safe, affordable and could be used in all weather condition (Byron, 2008). (Byron, 2008) This desire of Mr. Ratan Tata emerged as the most inspirational plan of Tata motors till time when the Chairman of Tata Group Mr Ratan Tata stated his thought of Tata Nano to Mr. Ravi Kant, h is managing director. From his managing experience Mr. Ravi Kant had discovered that citizens desire to shift from 2 wheelers vehicle to 4 wheelers vehicles but they have not got enough money for it. Automobile industry of India has an average growth rate of twelve percent for the past decade. Despite that this industry sold only 1.3 million vehicles for passengers in the financial year ending on March 2006. This shows that a billion of peoples of India purchase approximately the equal quantity of cars in a year as three hundred million peoples of US purchase in a period of month. However, this situation could be changed only when the cost of 4 wheels vehicle could be lowered to the extent that

Mothers That Work Essay examples -- essays research papers

The Effects of Working Mothers on their Children   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One mother expresses her personal experience and opinion on the effects of her employment on the children â€Å"I am happy to see support for the mom who wants to work outside of the home. By my children seeing me go to work, I am teaching them the values of hard work, commitment, and responsibility. I am also showing them that mothers and fathers share in all responsibilities of raising a family, financial and housework. There is no doubt in either my mind or my child’s that the first priority is each other. Out times together are positive. I have seen too many stay at home moms yelling at their children and worse, the children yelling at their mothers. I do not think this is the message that stay at home moms like to give. Their lives are now more enriched, never been happier, and that they are more fulfilled. Actually, I think a lot of stay at home moms justify their laziness and lack of ambition by saying they are staying at home for the benefit of the children† (abcnews.com 2).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For many years women have believed that if they returned to work after having children, their children would be harmed by the lack of a mother’s presence. This belief is no longer true. Studies have shown, â€Å"Despite the declining population of young people, the number and proportion of children with working mothers rose steadily during the past decade† (Kamerman 13). In fact, â€Å"1979 was the first time more U.S. children lived in families with a mother in the labor force than in families with a mother who was a full-time homemaker† (Kamerman 13). Mothers no longer have to worry; they are free to choose the career path they want to follow. Mothers can make this decision with confidence because experts believe that a mother who works has a positive effect on her children. Children with mothers in the workforce are taught responsibility, independence, the importance of an education, and also social skills that are acquired from day-care.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are still a few experts that argue children are negatively effected by the absence of their mother. They believe that this absence can cause an attachment disorder. Some also report that the lack of their mother can make it harder for a mother and child to form an effective relationship. A recent study suggested ... ...dvantage of group care is the friendships that children develop with their peers during the care. One expert observed that children’s â€Å"contacts with each other often develop a sibling-like quality† (Webb 43). Some children involved in this study even went to one another’s homes to have dinner, to play on weekends, and occasionally, to stay for the night.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The mother who works as a professional has an extremely different influence on her children than one who works in a less intellectually demanding job or one who does not work at all. Children learn from the environment and the people that they are exposed to in life, especially in the early stages. When children are exposed to hard working parents it helps them to appreciate the value of responsibility and independence. The importance of a good education is immeasurable and is also a necessity for a child to grow into a prosperous adult. Another important factor that affects a child is the day care environment that the child is exposed to on a daily basis. A good day care provider can teach a child many skills. A child can also learn from the other children that they spend many hours with in day care.

Japanese Culture Essay

Abstract It is important to understand that an individual’s perspective of death and dying is greatly impacted by their culture. In this paper I will discuss how the Japanese culture approaches death and dying. I will also discuss the unique concept of organ transplantation that surrounds that Japanese culture. This paper presents the law of organ transplantation in Japan, which allows people to decide whether brain death can be used to determine their death in agreement with their family. Japan could become a unique example of individual choice in the definition of death if the law is revised to allow individuals choose definition of death independently of their family. The death and dying rituals involved in the Japanese culture will be discussed. Overview of the Japanese Culture In the latter half of the twentieth century, developed countries of the world have made remarkable strides in organ donation and transplantation. However, in this area of medicine, Japan has been slow to follow. Japanese ethics, deeply rooted in religion and tradition, have affected their outlook on life and death. The Japanese have only recently started to acknowledge the concept of brain death and transplantation of major organs has been hindered in that country. Currently, there is a dual definition of death in Japan, intended to satisfy both sides of the issue. This interesting paradox, which still stands to be fully resolved, illustrates the controversial conflict between medical ethics and medical progress in Japan. The Japanese culture considers a human being both alive and dead, an integrated body, mind, and spirit (Dennis, 2009, p.12). Therefore removing an organ from a brain-dead person involves a disturbance in this natural integrated unit. In the Japanese culture organ donation and organ transplantation are unpopular and rare (Dennis, 2009). According to Dennis (2009), the Japanese culture believes that a dead body must remain whole because if they are not whole, that dead person will be unhappy in the next world. Japanese Culture on Death and Dying It is crucial to understand that an individual’s perspective of death and dying is greatly impacted by their culture. Japan is the only country, which permits individual choice in death definition for the purpose of organ transplantation, and in agreement with the person’s family. The Japanese organ transplantation law of 1997 is a long debate on brain death and organ transplantation. Over almost three decades, medical, legal and public discussion has occurred; a lack of consensus on the definition of human death caused a long delay in adopting a law on organ procurement (Akabayashi, 1997). Finally, policy makers in Japan have adopted a law with unique features, such as giving an opportunity to individuals to choose the definition of death based on their own views. Therefore, in Japan individuals may choose either cessation of cardio†respiratory function or loss of entire brain function for their death pronouncement (Morioka, 2001). However, the choice is permitted in Japanese law only if organs can potentially be used for transplant with the agreement of the family, which means that although individuals can choose the definition of death based on their own views, the law gives power to the family to confirm or reject the choice. The law allows the family to override the individual choice in death definition (Akabayashi, 1997). The first effort to pass a law on organ transplantation following brain death failed in 1994. The main reason why the proposed law was rejected in 1994 is said to be because it stated that brain death is equal to death, and also because it approved surrogate decision making by the family. These issues raised serious arguments and concerns among some members, resulting in defeat of the legislation (Akabayashi, 1997). However, the situation has changed since then and, as public polls show, the number of people who accept the concept of brain death has increased from 29% to 60%. (Lock, 1996) . The current law states that for organ removal, the donor’s prior declaration and family agreement are both necessary requirements (Japan Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare, 1997). The organ donation provisions of the law apply for brain dead donors as well as any cadaver. The law authorizes organ removal from a brain†dead person only if the donor has, during his life expressed in writing his consent to the diagnosis of brain death, as well as, his intention to donate his organ(s). Therefore, the law authorizes individuals to choose between the traditional definition or the alternative standard based on brain function by signing an â€Å"Organ Donation Decision Card†. Individuals can state their wishes at the back of this card by marking one of the following items: (1) I wish to be a donor based on the brain†oriented definition; (2) I want to be a donor after cardiac death; or (3) I refuse to donate organs (Bagheri, 2003). The law is not free of criticism, especially in terms of adopting a double standard regarding the role of the family. On the one hand, it gives the family the power to veto an individual’s willingness to donate. On the other hand, it does not authorize the family to be a surrogate decision maker based on the interests of their beloved ones when they are in a brain†dead state and the organ donor card cannot be found. Nevertheless, the unbalanced role and power of veto of the family under the present law can be seen as a hindrance to organ procurement in Japan (Bagheri, 2003). The process of dying is regarded not as an individual event but as a family event in the Japanese culture (Kimura, 1998). There is no doubt that any transplant†related legislation should be concerned with inclusion of the opinion of the family in the decision†making process. This forms a basis for social acceptance of the legislation. However, in any culture a practical question arises: to what extent is the family’s opinion to be taken into consideration? According to the law, family consent is required both for organ procurement and for declaration of death according to brain†based criteria. Therefore an individual can choose the definition of death with the agreement of her or his family, but not independently (Kimura, 1998). Japan is the only country that allows individuals to choose either the traditional definition or the brain†oriented definition of death, but individual choice must be confirmed by the family; therefore, it is a family based choice (Kimura, 1998). Death and Dying Rituals in the Japanese Culture A Japanese funeral includes a wake, the cremation of the deceased, a burial in a family grave, and a periodic memorial service. According to statistics, 99.82% of all deceased Japanese are cremated. While the ashes of many are buried in family graves, the scattering of ashes has become more common in recent years, including a burial at sea (Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2011). Many funeral services are carried out in the form of Buddhist ceremonies. After a person has died, their lips are moistened with water, in a ceremony referred to as Matsugo-no-mizu â€Å"Water of the last moment† (Wakabayashi, & Sekiguchi, 2011). The household shrine is closed and covered with a white paper, to keep out impure spirits. This process is known as Kamidana-fuji. A small table placed beside the deceased’s bed is also decorated with flowers, incense, and a candle. A knife may placed on the chest of the deceased to drive away evil spirit (Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2011). Funeral arrangements are made and the body is washed and the orifices are blocked with cotton or gauze. The funeral clothing will consist of either a suit for a male or a kimono if the deceased is a female. Makeup may also be applied in order to improve the appearance of the body. The body is then put on dry ice and placed inside the casket with the head positioned towards the north or west, along with a white kimono, sandals and six coins for the crossing of the River of three hells. Items which the deceased was fond of will also be placed inside the casket as well, so long as they are flammable. The casket is then placed on the altar in preparation of the wake (Nakata, 2009). Guests who attend the funeral are expected to dress in black attire. The men usually wear black suits with a white shirt and a black tie, while women wear either a black dress or a black kimono. A Buddhist prayer bead called juzu may also be carried by guests. Guests are expected to bring condolence money in a special black and silver decorated envelope. At the funeral, the guests will be seated, with the next of kin closest to the front. The Buddhist priest will read a sutra. The family members will each in turn offer incense three times to the incense urn in front of the deceased. The closest relatives may stay and keep vigil with the deceased overnight in the same room (Nakata, 2009). Japanese funerals are usually performed on the day following the wake. The funeral service is similar to that of the wake service, the difference being that during the funeral service, the deceased will receive a new Buddhist name to prevent the return of the deceased if their name is called. At the end of the ceremony, flowers may be placed inside the casket before it is sealed and carried to an elaborately decorated hearse where it is transported to the crematorium. In some regions of Japan, the casket may be nailed shut by mourners using a stone (Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2011). Once the casket has arrived at the crematorium, the family witnesses the sliding of the body into the cremation chamber, then leave. After the cremation process is complete, the family returns to pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to an urn using chopsticks. In some instances, two family members will hold the same bone at the same time with their chopsticks or pass the bones from chopsticks to chopsticks. According to Japanese custom, this is the only time when it is proper for two people to hold the same item at the same time with chopsticks. The bones are picked up and transferred to the urn in a manner which ensures that the deceased is not placed upside down in the urn. Therefore the bones of the feet are picked up first, the bones of the head last (Nakata, 2009). A typical Japanese grave is usually a family grave consisting of a stone monument with a place for flowers, incense, and water in front of the monument and a chamber underneath for the ashes. The date of the formation of the grave and the name of the person who purchased it may be engraved on the side of the monument. The names of the deceased may or may not be engraved on the front or left side of the monument or on a separate stone in front of the grave Nakata, 2009). The Japanese honor the dead with shrines in their homes and tending to the gravesite (Dennis, 2009). During three days in August, the Japanese Buddhist celebrate at The Bons Festival in honor of the departed spirits of ones’ ancestors (Dennis, 2009). Until the early twentieth century most bodies were buried and cremation was limited to the wealthy. Cremation became more common after World War II due to its efficiency and cleanliness. In 2009, 99.9% of Japanese bodies were cremated, and some local governments ban burials (Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2011). Conclusion I learned a lot about the Japanese culture while researching my paper. One of the things that I found surprising was that the majority of Japanese bodies are cremated. The similarities that I found between the American and the Japanese culture are that both cultures were black to funerals. In both cultures items that are valuable are placed in the caskets and funerals are followed by the wake. While cremation is popular in Japan, I was surprised to learn that cremation is on the rise in the United States; however, not everyone approves of it (Dennis, 2009). References Akabayashi A (1997). Japan’s parliament passes brain death law. The Lancet, 349 (9069). Retrieved from http://www.lancet.com. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)63895-0. Bagheri A. (2003). A criticism of brain death policy in Japan. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13 (4), 359-372. Dennis, D. (2009) Living, Dying, Grieving. Sandbury, MA: Jones and Barlett Publislhers. Japan Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare, The law concerning human organ transplants The law no. 104 1997. Translation 1999. Kimura R. (1998). Death, dying and advance directives in Japan: socio†cultural and legal points of view. In: Sass HM, Veatch RM, Rihito K, eds. Advance directives and surrogate decision making in health care. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Lock M. (1996). Deadly dispute: ideologies and brain death in Japan. In: Stuart J, Youngner Laurence J, O’Connell Renee C, eds. Organ transplantation meaning and realities. Fox. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Morioka M. (2001). Reconsidering brain death: a lesson from Japan’s fifteen years experience. Hastings Center Report 31, (4), 41-46. Nakata, H. (2009). The Japan Times. Japan’s funerals deep-rotted mix of ritual, form. Retrieved from http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20090728i1.html. Wakabayashi, D., & Sekiguchi, T. (2011). â€Å"After Flood, Deaths Overpower Ritual†. Wall Street Journal.