Negative Effects of Violent Video Games on Teenagers Essay examples --

Video games halt been available to consumers for the last 30 years. They argon a unique form of entertainment, because they encourage players to become a part of the games script. Todays sophisticated movie games require players to pay constant attention to the game, rather than passively observation a movie. My working thesis is Although there are other factors that can lead to unwarranted behaviors such as inner stress, playing ruby video games are one of the main factors that can lead to violent behavior in teens relationships. For the categorizing exercise, I brainstormed for the charting using some of the examples we hold in class. I institute three main classifications to divide my evidence based on. Those categorizes are background of author, for and against, and type of evidence. The near important categorizes for my final paper is the background of the author, and for / against. The authors of both articles have an academic specialty background in the study of violenc e causes in teenagers. Although the two authors have two opposing opinions. The first one is Craig Anderson, got a PHD in psychology in Iowa state university wrote an article entitled The Influence of Media Violence on Youth, supported my working thesis about the harming effect of violent video games. He stated that violent video games increase levels of aggression in teenagers. He stated his argument based on his observations which claims that teenagers spend most of their times in front of games. He found out that when reducing the exposure to violent video games, teenagers tend to lessen the violent behavior. When I render more about this point from some other resources, I found out that there is another clear explanation to this claim. The main direction of... ...idnt give anything. He found that those who played violent video games lack academic skills in reading and math. He concluded through his study that violent video games affects teenagers academic life too. I see that violent video game consumes so much time from teens lives that it drains their energies to lessen their concentration. As a conclusion, I found the charting exercise very useful to write the evaluating essay. I ended up with four main categories. The most important two are mixed together which are categories by for/against and background of author. Then I introduced the categories by the type of evidence and by effects. I found out that there are many counter argument for all categorizes, which gave me the space to argue for my working thesis. I reached that I have a good start based on the unique significant classification for my final paper.

Alaska Drillings :: essays papers

Alaska Drillings Drilling for crude oil in Alaskas Arctic Wildlife refuge will not solve our nations energy crisis, just now it will put down one of the worlds nearly unique animal habitats. The Arctic National Wildlife stamping ground would satisfy only six months worth of the nations oil take while oil drilling would destroy a wilderness that is home to the 150,000 animals of the Porcupine animal group. Our nations natural refuges should not be turned to destruction when a solution to a problem shadower be found else where. In addition to not being economically productive, drilling for oil will do nothing to help energy shortages experienced throughout the United States, while still destroying one of the only habitats of its kind in the world. Despite common thought, the Alaskan refuge is not a atomic number 6 covered desert. It is important to what exactly would be destroyed if the United States decides to drill for oil. The Arctic Refuge is among the most fil l out and undisturbed ecosystems on earth. The Arctic Refuge contains an impressive variety of arctic wildlife. The rich variety of wildlife found within the Refuge includes more than 160 dame species, 36 kinds of land mammals, 9 shipboard soldier mammal species, and 36 types of fish. The reality is that opening the Arctic refuge to drilling will accomplish little tho destroying one of the last pure keep of its kind in the world. Another reason why it would be unwise to drill is because it is just not equal efficient. For the oil industry to invest, the Refuge mustiness hold a lot of oil, and the oil must sell for a high enough price for ample enough to recover costs and put on profits. We need to think of a solution that will affect us today and will alleviate our problems. In exchange for this short-term return, we would have to compensation a very high long-term price, threatening one of the planets most unique animal and plant habitats. scientific analyses by the U S Fish & Wildlife receipts have concluded that drilling would severely harm the refuges abundant populations of caribou, polar bears, musk oxen, and snow geese.Alaska Drillings essays papersAlaska Drillings Drilling for oil in Alaskas Arctic Wildlife refuge will not solve our nations energy crisis, but it will destroy one of the worlds most unique animal habitats. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would satisfy only six months worth of the nations oil needs while oil drilling would destroy a wilderness that is home to the 150,000 animals of the Porcupine animal group. Our nations natural refuges should not be turned to destruction when a solution to a problem can be found else where. In addition to not being economically productive, drilling for oil will do nothing to help energy shortages experienced throughout the United States, while still destroying one of the only habitats of its kind in the world. Despite common thought, the Alaskan refuge is not a snow covered dese rt. It is important to what exactly would be destroyed if the United States decides to drill for oil. The Arctic Refuge is among the most complete and undisturbed ecosystems on earth. The Arctic Refuge contains an impressive variety of arctic wildlife. The rich variety of wildlife found within the Refuge includes more than 160 bird species, 36 kinds of land mammals, 9 marine mammal species, and 36 types of fish. The reality is that opening the Arctic refuge to drilling will accomplish little except destroying one of the last pure preserves of its kind in the world. Another reason why it would be unwise to drill is because it is just not cost efficient. For the oil industry to invest, the Refuge must hold a lot of oil, and the oil must sell for a high enough price for long enough to recover costs and earn profits. We need to think of a solution that will affect us today and will alleviate our problems. In exchange for this short-term return, we would have to pay a very h igh long-term price, threatening one of the planets most unique animal and plant habitats. Scientific analyses by the US Fish & Wildlife Service have concluded that drilling would severely harm the refuges abundant populations of caribou, polar bears, musk oxen, and snow geese.

adversity :: essays research papers

Overcoming Adversity Questions1.He struggles with mental and social adversityMental Adversity creation misfortunately intellectually challenged.Social Adversity Being misfortunately unable to overhaul with people on the same level as us. 2.Some of the difficulties that he faces in daily life with his schizophrenia are that later his hospitalization, when he is on the medication he corporationt react to his wife, baby son, or anyone else. Other difficulties that he encounters is that he has 3 characters which he can only see with him all the time, which he learns to ignore so he can live his life off the medication, resulting in being able to communicate with others, and soon being able to teach again, being still unsure of who is real and who is imaginary. Before his schizophrenia is diagnosed he is stuttering because as he says to Charles he doesnt like people very much.3.Charles- Charless role in John Nashs life is to give him someone to talk to and to help Nash thrash the fa ilure he encounters since he believes that it is improbable to fail, by doing this, he helps Nash find himself, and helps him come up with his economic equation that he later receives the Nobel prize for.William Parcher (Big Brother) - He helps John Nash find himself in the way that I believe he is helping his schizophrenia come out due to the missions which are given to him which call for cracking Russian codes. After Nash believes he was nearly shot at by Russian Spies, he becomes very scared of people in grim and is always spirit out the window for the Russian spies who he believes are going to kill him, and because of this his wife, Alicia calls a Marcy (Charles niece) - 4.His hospitalization is prompted by him being scared of everything, since he believed he was shot at by Russian Spies. His wife is getting scared by him acting so crazy, and always peering out the window looking for Russian spies.5.The thing that prompts his second attempt at being hospitalized is when Agent Parcher points a gun at Alicias head, and because he believes that William Parcher is real, he pushes him but in the process also pushes Alicia, and scares her immensely. Johns reaction is upsetting as he dose not want to go there and wants to move on, without pickings the pills and live a life where he can react to his wife and hold his son.

Technologies role today :: essays research papers fc

Technology is a key element in the world today. It plays an important role in just about everything. Education is no exception to this technology has been present in didactics for many years now. The purpose of this paper is to discuss why education is go bad with the addition of technology. More importantly, I am talking about this so that my audience will become more than awargon of how technology supports what is being through with(p) in education.Technology in schools has made drastic improvements within the last five years. Computers have gone from being in every school, to being in every classroom. Access to computers specifically has become very easy for students to obtain. Technology isnt restricted to computers there are also projectors, DVD players, VCRs, and telecasting screens that are used today. These wide varieties of useful classroom tools have become very common in schools today. Heartland Community College supports the growth of technology in education very w ell. HCC has stepped up to the highest demands of technology by offering computers in every classroom. Also, the school provides each classroom with overhead projectors, which are run by agitate screens placed near computer systems in every classroom. The overhead light show presents the pictures onto the pull-down screen in the front of every classroom, via DVD, VCR, or computer screen. These are many of the options available for students and teachers to use at HCC. This available technology helps advance the learning process and saves time. Furthermore, the learning process is easily enhanced when technology is used. First, with cyberspace access in each classroom, it allows the teacher to access massive amounts of information in just a few seconds. This information can be presumptuousness to the students in a clear, easy to read format as it is projected onto the screen. With such easy access to information, students are able to learn more in a smaller time span, while teacher s are able to be more efficient in how they teach. This makes the education a person gets from their school more valuable for their money and money is important as college costs continue to rise. Most of these new technological advances arent cheap. Technology has brought the price of schools to higher levels, forcing the budget of schools and students to be changed. These plans are very well thought out and work in accordance to many of the programs the government has already set-up for schools.

O’Connor’s Mission Essay -- Literary Analysis

It is a given that Flannery OConnor is one of the most recognized southern pistillate writers. This is mostly due to the pure religious content and reality in her writings. One of those stories, A Good Man Is problematic to Find, is one that combines her love of faith with her personal experience. It is a story on which its simple beginning tricks the reader, and its complex ending brings both questions and tears. What looks like just a field trip spend turns into an unnecessary massacre for the purpose of understanding both religion and the human race. In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, OConnor is able to bring out impressions of her spirit on the perspective, characters, and scenes by the use of her love of religion and life experiences. Most of her life, Flannery OConnor traveled around the United States, yet most of her life was spent in a place near Milledgeville, Georgia (May 17). On this detail, we can infer that it was no coincidence that she picked Georgia as her start ing location for the story. It was a town she knew best, and could certainly describe to the perfection any places that she wouldve wanted to add. In the case of the story, OConnor only describes one place, The Tower, and a little eatery inside it where the family dines in. The tower was a part stucco and part filling station and dance hall set in a clearing away(p) the Timothy (OConnor 302). Deferring from this description, OConnor must have been in that place at least ten times because a person who has neer been to Georgia could never know what The Tower, its location and the Timothy were, nor would they have been able to guess on such a place. OConnor included some of her life settings in fix to make the storys setting more realistic and credib... ...ically with A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Flannery OConnor shows her biography to the world, and keeps her identity hidden magic spell making a realistic story that we can all learn and ponder about. Works CitedFlannery OConnor. Georgia Literary Festival. Georgia College and state University, 12 Dec 2000. Web. 27 Mar 2012. .Magee, Rosemary M. Conversations with Flannery OConnor. Mississippi University Press of Mississippi, 1987. 5-10. Print.May, Charles Career, Life, and Influence Critical Insights Flannery OConnor. 1st edition. Salem Press, 2012. 3-22. Print.OConnor Flannery A Good Man Is Hard To Find The Norton Introduction To Literature. Shorter 10th ed. Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. New York, London W.W. Norton & Co Inc., 2010. 299-310. Print.

O’Connor’s Mission Essay -- Literary Analysis

It is a given that Flannery OConnor is one of the most recognized southern female writers. This is mostly due to the sharp religious content and reality in her writings. One of those stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, is one that combines her love of religion with her personal experience. It is a spirit level on which its simple beginning tricks the reader, and its complex ending brings both questions and tears. What looks like just a field trip vacation turns into an unnecessary massacre for the persona of understanding both religion and the human race. In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, OConnor is able to leave impressions of her life on the location, characters, and scenes by the use of her love of religion and life experiences. Most of her life, Flannery OConnor traveled around the United States, yet most of her life was spent in a place near Milledgeville, Georgia (May 17). On this detail, we can infer that it was no coincidence that she picked Georgia as her starting locati on for the story. It was a town she knew best, and could for certain describe to the perfection any places that she wouldve wanted to add. In the case of the story, OConnor only describes one place, The Tower, and a little restaurant inside it where the family dines in. The tower was a part stucco and part filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside the timothy (OConnor 302). Deferring from this description, OConnor moldiness have been in that place at least ten times because a person who has never been to Georgia could never know what The Tower, its location and the Timothy were, nor would they have been able to guess on such a place. OConnor included some of her life settings in order to make the storys setting more existent and credib... ...ically with A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Flannery OConnor shows her biography to the world, and keeps her identity hidden while making a realistic story that we can all learn and ponder about. Works CitedFlannery OConnor. Geor gia Literary Festival. Georgia College and state University, 12 Dec 2000. Web. 27 damage 2012. .Magee, Rosemary M. Conversations with Flannery OConnor. Mississippi University Press of Mississippi, 1987. 5-10. Print.May, Charles Career, Life, and Influence Critical Insights Flannery OConnor. 1st edition. Salem Press, 2012. 3-22. Print.OConnor Flannery A Good Man Is Hard To Find The Norton Introduction To Literature. Shorter tenth ed. Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. New York, London W.W. Norton & Co Inc., 2010. 299-310. Print.

Changing social diversity in the United States Essay

As USA is a land of opportunities, millions of people of different origin have migrated to the nation and settled there, thus changing the social and cultural diversity of the nation. Children at the young age face problem as they get exposed to twain sets of language and culture at school and home. A massive increase in Latino population has increased the importance of Spanish language and more than businesses related to Spanish have come up. But this Hispanic population has no difficulty in accepting English as their main language.The singularity of the immigration is that everybody wants to get integrated into American mainstream. ever-changing diversity in USA 3 Changing social diversity in the United States As United States is known as the land of opportunities for many decades, millions of people had migrated to this country since long time. It has been mentioned in the website http//www. sedl. org/pubs/sedletter/v12n02/2. html that the make up of the US population has cha nged so much over the last three decades that the definition of diversity has itself got transformed in the process.It has also been stated that for the first time in the US enumerate held in 2000, individuals were allowed to tick on more than one race in the form. Due to this change in diversity, cultural and socioeconomic factors are now meet increasingly important while interacting in the society. The website http//www. naeyc. org/about/positions/pdf/psdiv98. pdf deals with the problem children faces in schools due to increased linguistic and cultural diversities.To quote from the above mentioned website, At jr. ages, children are negotiating difficult transitions between their home and educational settings, requiring an adaptation to two or more diverse sets of rules, values, expectations, and behaviors. If the child forgets his home language, it may cause interruption in family communication methods. Thus families are facing increasingly complex responsibilities. The websit e http//knowledge. allianz. com/en/globalissues/demographic_change/gender_diversity/hispanics_integration_us.html states that there has been a massive growth in Hispanic population in the USA and most of them have accepted English as their main language. But the importance of Spanish is also growing as many newspapers have come up in Spanish and Hispanic related businesses are growing in the United States. Changing diversity in USAReference List1) Responding to Linguistic and Cultural Diversity Recommendations for Effective Early Childhood Education in National Association for the Education of unripened Children adopted November 1995 Retrieved on 13th March 2009 from the website http//www.naeyc. org/about/positions/pdf/psdiv98. pdf 2) A Changing Nation The Impact of Linguistic and Cultural Diversity on Education by Kathleen Trail SED letter Volume XII Number 2 December 2000 Retrieved on 13th March 2009 from the website 3) Ethnic Business in a Changing America, Allianz Knowledge Partner site, published on September 11, 2007 Retrieved on 13th March 2009 from the website http//knowledge. allianz. com/en/globalissues/demographic_change/gender_diversity/hispanics_integration_us. html

Person Centred Care

Person Centred Care is a major skills acquired by a health trade providers.Which main hindquarters is individual traits of character in doing health tending provision. Treat every person as a unique human being disregard his/her age, culture, rouse and race.Ac cogniseledge, respect, and take into retrieveations the choice that every service is entitled to. Set some standards for practice but not so precise to deny the specific practical application demands of each individual uniqueness. Guidelines might be essential for the care providers to include complex concerns that help the nurses but sometimes leads to apart a patients rights.According to Professor Draper ,getting to know the person behind the illness is the key principle of person centred nursing care.We as the care providers needs to listen diligently to our patients conditions, treat as a unique human being.Psychologist Carl Rogers, founder of person care centred define as building result from distributing pont of vi ew and assertion of oneself . It is a positive persuasion tactile sensation of our senses, ideas, and valuing of a person capabilities of what he/she can do. It is having assurance to see her actions as interactions made with confidence.Roger use these therapy in treating individual as a person to repair his quality of life. Carl establish supporting evidence that individual inductive knowledge as the fundamental healthful effect. He also states that the therapeutic process is whole achievement made by the patient. He strongly believed that his structured analysis should be practice kind of than the other way round. His persuasion for the improvement of care is based on sincerely felt or expressed in a genuine emotion in helping patient grief.Some Psychologist criticised Rogers order for lacking(p) structure and by Psychoanalyst in providing care race , which in some studies, proves to be effective and approved therapy. Carl Rogers optimistic and warmer approach say that Ind ividuals self concept and understanding modify behavior way and means of letting facilitative attitudes.The Royal College of Nursing adapted Rogers analysis by utilize person care centred in all aspect of holistic care system given to patients, colleague, and relatives. It was recommended at all levels of health care organisations from government policy-making to a group of health care providers that they operate. Contributing to the overall idea of excellence care delivered in nursing practice.By delivering PCC in our practice we combine Rogers method of care a genuinely following the concepts of person centred care byHighly consider everyone and by showing them that they are worthy of esteem. Respect and consider their opinions with regards to the whole course of treatment.Listen to their interest, dislikes and honor their views if they refuse to be treated. Respect individual judgment consider it as a challenge for improvement. As a health care provider everyone expected to have a different desire and wishes. We hold and accept those attention and disposition into considerations.Be an open minded with their distinction, dissimilarity, and characteristics quality could adhere corresponds to their needs. ask for their preference needs could mean a lot in delivering care and building a good therapeutic relationships between them.According to (Chambo and Amned, 2000), effective communication is familiar as a device part of excellence care. Linguistic communication involves knowledge substitute of refining moral and intellectual of a person and cognitive content of individuals.(Gillam and Levenson, 1999).Continuity and trustworthiness is of vast significance vision of nursing care.(Patmore,2001 Raynos et al., 2001 5WRDU,2007 Francis and Nelten, 2006). It is particularly noted the importance of effective communication towards the whole aspect of care.Patient security is conventional in NMC code ( Nursing and Midwifery Council 2008), and the RCN Principles of Nursing Practice (RCN 2010a) as a substantial area of risk of danger every patient in the practice.(RCN 2010b, Principles). Provides updated information about patient safety.Valuable Things of a Person Centred Care in PracticeThe objective of these study is to transform our knowledge and experience into an excellence exercise in in of PCC in our clinical skills. Staff of all levels are expected to use the person centred care as a standard grand basis in determinants of the quality care and significantly the client experience of that care. Our contribution as a humane quality of better understanding the sufferings of others and abstracted to do something about it. Rogers concept theory was widely used healthcare settings area because it was focus on the humanistic therapies. Better knowledge of ones consciousness rather than external observation.Person centred care was implemented in nursing practice by taking into considerations client unconditional positive regard.Accept their ow n personality and characteristics as they unfeignedly are. To hold and consider their worth and being value regardless of their status in the society. Estimate the true nature of a person is one of the structure model discuss in person centred care. We care in all-embracing maintained our positive attitude towards client.Being empathetic to clients feelings and always participate good communication skills. Understanding sincerely their feelings. Rogers describe empathic understanding, as an experience of each client, how life was viewed and interpret, but Rogers emphasised thatIf you put yourself into their world and truly deeply understand feels to be in their world , without being judgmental you will precisely undesirable believe to be an effective role well in delivering excellence care.Work as a team by getting assurance, trust, and hope to the people we rendered care. Able to listen and hear what they want and connect to us how we value them. Our positive words with them ful ly assured with professional confidence. Having the power of positive direction influence our care with our client . Person centred care strengthen our movement in focusing care with them.Being a role model and implementing person centred care in nursing practice, gives others a chance to follow your acts and play in the same pattern in accordance to NMC code of nursing practice. Inspire and increase everyone confidence to help forward the quality of care in nursing practice. Good motivation and challenges others requires full use of resources in performing most challenging task in delivering care ideality.To partnerships with families, colleagues and other social care people gives you satisfactory outgrow. Positive relationship and building their trust means a lot to you as a person who gives care with their family. You meet their needs and expectation is already a great contribution in nursing practice.

Gender Equality

Gender equality is to a greater extent than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reduce poverty, promoting sustainable break upment and building good governance. (Kofi Annan) In Paulette Jiless rime, Paper Matches and in Judith Ortiz Cofers poem, The Changeling the theme described is gender roles. In the two poems the women do not feel appreciated. These two poems argon very similar in theme, content, and figurative language. However, the structures of the two poems are very different.Jiles and Cofer both use symbolism, dialogue, figurative language, nd imaging as instruments to reflect the cruelty of the women during these times. In Paper Matches, Jiles uses the simile of a match to display the irritation and anger of the gender roles forced when she was a child. Matches are tiny, insignificant items that are sold in packages, and one is interchangeable from another. They have no use unless theyre lit theyre only good for one flame. These connotat ions roughly cut down down what the author saw as womans condition in society.It seemed to her that women were hardly more than servants and not allowed much individuality. Another facet of the match-comparison is that matches are passive. Someone strikes up a flame with it, but matches cant do anything on their own decision. Jiles anger is displayed by the final two lines, We come bearing supper, / our heads on fire. This tracks the match-metaphor, but besides implies anger directly resulting from the servitude involved in bringing in supper. If someones angry, they might be called hot-headed,Jiles womens heads are fguratively on fire, theyre so incensed at their position.Something slightly wry in the image is that the matchs/womens usefulness starts at their heads. In the male- predominate society Jiles describes, omens headsbrainswouldnt be very cute. That their heads are on fire in the end suggests that their anger at their position is borne out of the fact that they can t hink, reason and realize the limitations creation placed on them, and this in turn suggests a basis for womens equality and the injury of their situation in this poem.The poem, The Changeling by Judith Ortiz Cofer, is a dramatic monologue that describes the life of a little young woman who is wing for her fathers love and attention (line 2). The girl who does not seem to be noticed by her father invents a game that ould make him notice. Yet , the father is baffled and amused by her actions(line 5. ) In The Changeling, the speaker tells her audience that they were molding me into boy shape (line 8).This line is for the most part an image because it is a specific detail that appeals to the senses. An image that helps theorise something beyond just a thought. This image is visual as we can actually see something macrocosm molded into a specific shape. Denotation is an significant part of understanding fgurative language, for it gives the reader the literal meanings of the words u sed. Molding eans to work into a required shape or form and to have influence in determining or forming. This image is very significant to the theme of the poem.It shows that the young girl wants to be a boy to make her father happy and she is willing to totally change her shape to make this happen. There are three main points to consider when determining if a piece of literature is worthy of being placed in the canon. The piece ot literature must nave a perceived aesthetic value, nave historical or cultural significance, and have longevity or ensuant influence on other works of literature. The poem The Changeling has these qualities and therefore should be part of the canon.This poem has aesthetic beauty. It contains symbols, imagery, and ambiguities that help tell its true story. The poem is also full offgurative language, which adds to the beauty. The poem contains both historical and cultural value. It contains information about a great Argentinian revolutionary leader and des cribes how woman lived and were valued not only in society generally but also inthe hispanic culture. Because the poem has both the aesthetic and cultural value, contributes to the third point of being included in the canon.Gender EqualityWhat instances in society influenced the change in acceptance of women while playing sports and doing other nontraditional things?Rational I want to study gender roles in society today, because Id like to further understand when it became acceptable for women to play more male dominated sports. I also want to understand why some women chose to play the sports they did, the criticism they got, and how playing the sport may have changed the way they were viewed within their community. compendiousToday women playing more male dominated sports has become much more acceptable. Women all around are playing roughersports. 30 years past youd never hear of a girl stepping onto a football field, playing baseball, basketball, soccer, or hockey. Society has slowly accepted women into the sports world, by acknowledging successful acrobatic women.PredictionWhile researching this topic, i think Ill find out more women were looked down upon while male dominated sports, and praised while succeeding in more feminine sports. I think women were looked down upon while playing male dominated sports because theyre considered outsiders. I hope to discover that women have and will continue to succeed and push past the stereotypes that restrict them. Athletics is kind of a double-standard for women..were supposed to be athletic yet feminine. SourcesAtta Girl A solemnisation of Women in Sports Alexandra Powe Allred. A to A of American Women i Sports Paula Edelson. The Girl Who Threw Butterflies Mick Cochrane. U.S. Womens Gymnastics Wins Team Gold Medal At London Olympics Chris Greenberg, The Huffington Post.Discussion People should upkeep about this topic because social acceptance is a must for a society to thrive. By playing sports, women explore uncharted territoriesand while succeeding in sports women show men that they can perform just as well as any male can, and can continue to excel. Its important for women to develop this form of independence and nonconformity in order to gain some self confidence, and believe in themselves.

How Did Geography Affect Where Colonists Settled

Beginning in 1607, when ambitious English colonists settled in Jamestown, and continuing until the last of the bakers dozen colonies was established geography was a real(a) factor in the maturement of colonial America. The crops that essentially saved the colonists lives, such as tobacco, rice, and indigo, wouldnt have firen with step forward a certain type and enumerate of soil to grow properly. Also, the Appalachian Mountains and the dense forests provided a barrier for the colonists, preventing them from going too far west right away, and causing the colonies to form in the concord they did.Finally, the population was the most dense in middle colonies, such as New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania partly because of the mild landscape and fertile soil. archean in the 1600s, John Rolfe and his wife Pocahontas discovered tobacco. It was soon heavily sought after in Europe, and quickly became a cash crop for Virginia. After establishing the tobacco industry in Virgin ia, many of the other colonies soon followed suit. Unfortunately, tobacco quickly drains the nutrients of the soil that it is planted on.Without the plentiful and fertile soil that these settlers were using, it would have been very intemperate for the colonists to survive much longer. Tobacco wasnt the only crop that the colonists discovered early on, however. In South Carolina, many rice and indigo plantations began to emerge. In govern for rice to grow, it needs to be planted in a swamp, or some other sort of low-watered area. The swamps of South Carolina were a perfect place to grow rice, and was considered a rich mans crop because of the labor it took to harvest and grow it.Without certain soil and growing conditions, it would have been very difficult for the colonists to uphold themselves in the early years of America. The natural landscape of what is now known as the United States also was a big part of how the original thirteen colonies developed. The Appalachian Mountains stretch from Maine all the way to Georgia. This mountain range prevented the first colonists from going too far west. This, in turn, made it so that the population were more than dense, and there was a higher concentration of people. The dense forests of the eastern seaboard disallowed for large cities to be created right away.This geological factor forced colonists to spread out within the perimeters of the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, without being too close together. Both of these factors could be overlooked easily enough, but did have a reasonable come to of the learning of colonial America. Finally, the geography of the middle colonies, such as New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania played a big role on the development and population of this area. In the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, the above colonies were the most populated of the thirteen establishments.There was plentiful and fertile soil, in which tobacco was heavily grown. The Susquehanna River also flowed through and through this region, opening the possibility of fur trade. Other minor rivers that were found in the middle colonies were gentle, which provided for easy transportation and fishing. The land in the middle colonies was broad and expansive, make it easy for even the middle class residents to create an enjoyable and profitable lifestyle. In conclusion, there were many factors that contributed to the development of the colonial America, but geography was clear a sizable influence.If the geography of America wasnt the way it was, the colonists who settled here may have not survived as well as they did. By the time the tobacco industry was established, and small cities began to rise, American came to realize that not only were they surviving, but they were thriving. This realization had to do with more than the fact that they had separated themselves correspond to religion, or put aside the issue of the Native Americans. There is no question that the lay o f the land had a substantial impact on the development of not only colonial, but also current America.

The phenomenon of bipolar affective disorder

The phenomenon of bipolar affective cark has been a mystery since the 16th Century. History has shown that this affliction rear appear in nearly anyone. Even the Great painter Vincent Van Gogh is believed to have had bipolar pain. It is clear that in our society some people live with bipolar disorder however, despite the abundance of people suffering from it, we are still waiting for definite explanations for the causes and cure.The one event of which we are painfully aware is that bipolar disorder badly undermines its victims ability to obtain and maintain social and occupational success. Because bipolar disorder has such debilitating symptoms, it is imperative that we remain vigilant in the point for explanations of its causes and treatment. Affective disorders are characterized by a smorgasbord of symptoms that can be broken into frenetic and depressive ends. The depressive episodes are characterized by in decennaryse smackings of sadness and despair that can become fee lings of hopelessness and helplessness.Some of the symptoms of a depressive episode include anaerobia, disturbances in sleep and appetite, psychomotor retardation, passing game of energy, feelings of worthlessness, guilt, ifficulty thinking, indecision, and recurrent thoughts of death and suicide (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990 ). The manic episodes are characterized by elevated or irritable mood, increased energy, decreased need for sleep, poor judgment and insight, and often reckless or irresponsible fashion (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990). bipolar affective disorder affects approximately one percent of the tribe (approximately three million people) in the United States.It is presented by both males and females. Bipolar disorder involves episodes of love and depression. These episodes may alternate with profound epressions characterized by a pervasive sadness, almost inability to move, hopelessness, and disturbances in appetite, sleep, in concentrations and driving. Bipolar disorder is di agnosed if an episode of mania dies whether depression has been diagnosed or not (Leiby,1988). Most commonly, individuals with manic episodes dwell a period of depression.Symptoms include elated, expansive, or irritable mood, hyperactivity, pressure of speech, flight of ideas, increase self-esteem, decreased need for sleep, distractibility, and excessive involvement in reckless activities (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990). Rarest symptoms were periods of loss of all interest and retardation or agitation (Gurman, 1991). As the field of study Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (MDMDA) have demonstrated, bipolar disorder can create substantial developmental delays, marital and family disruptions, occupational setbacks, and financial disasters.This devastating disease causes disruptions of families, loss of jobs and millions of dollars in cost to society. Many quantify bipolar patients report that the depressions are longer and increase in frequency as the individual ages. Many ti mes bipolar states and psychotic states are isdiagnosed as schizophrenia. Speech patterns help distinguish between the two disorders (Turner,1989). The onset of Bipolar disorder usually occurs between the ages of 20 and 30 years of age, with a second peak in the mid-forties for women. A typical bipolar patient may experience eight to ten episodes in their lifetime.However, those who have rapid cycling may experience more than episodes of mania and depression that succeed each other without a period of remission of sin (DSM III-R). The three stages of mania begin with hypo mania, in which patients report that they are energetic, extroverted and ssertive (Hirschfeld, 1995). The hypomania state has led observers to feel that bipolar patients are addicted to their mania. sodium thiosulphate mania progresses into mania and the transition is marked by loss of judgment (Hirschfeld, 1995). Often, euphoric grandiose characteristics are displayed, and paranoid or irritable characteristics begin to manifest.The thirdly stage of mania is evident when the patient experiences delusions with often- paranoid themes. Speech is generally rapid and hyperactive behavior manifests sometimes associated with violence (Hirschfeld, 1995). When both manic and depressive ymptoms occur at the same time it is called a sundry(a) episode. Those afflicted are a special risk because there is a combination of hopelessness, agitation, and anxiety that makes them feel like they could jump out of their skin(Hirschfeld, 1995). Up to 50% of all patients with mania have a variety of depressed moods.Patients report feeling dysphonic, depressed, and suffering yet, they exhibit the energy associated with mania. Rapid cycling mania is another presentation of bipolar disorder. Mania may be present with quaternary or more distinct episodes within a 12-month period. There is now evidence to uggest that sometimes rapid cycling may be a transient manifestation of the bipolar disorder. This form of the disease exhibits more episodes of mania and depression than bipolar. Lithium has been the primary treatment of bipolar disorder since its introduction in the 1960s.It is main function is to arouse the cycling characteristic of bipolar disorder. In four controlled studies by F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, the overall response rate for bipolar subjects treated with Lithium was 78% (Turner,1998). Lithium is as well as the primary drug employ for long- term maintenance of bipolar disorder. In a majority of bipolar patients, it lessens the duration, frequency, and severity of the episodes of both mania and depression. Unfortunately, as many as 40% of bipolar patients are either unresponsive to lithium or cannot tolerate the side effects.Some of the side effects include thirst, freight gain, nausea, diarrhea, and edema. Patients who are unresponsive to lithium treatment are often those who experience dysphonic mania, mixed states, or rapid cycling bipolar disorder. One of the probl ems associated with lithium is the fact the long-term lithium treatment has been associated with decreased hyroid functioning in patients with bipolar disorder. Preliminary evidence overly suggest that hypothyroidism may actually lead to rapid-cycling (Gurman,1991). with child(predicate) women experience another problem associated with the use of lithium. Its use during pregnancy has been associated with birth defects, particularly Ebsteins anomalousness. Based on current data, the risk of a child with Ebsteins anomaly being born to a mother who took lithium during her first trimester of pregnancy is approximately 1 in 8,000, or 2. 5 times that of the general population (Leiby,1988). There are other effective treatments for bipolar disorder that are used in cases where the patients cannot tolerate lithium, or have been unresponsive to it in the past.The American Psychiatric Associations guidelines suggest the next line of treatment to be Anticonvulsant drugs such as valproate and c arbamazepine. These drugs are useful as antimanic agents, especially in those patients with mixed states. Both of these medications can be used in combination with lithium or in combination with each other. Valproate is especially helpful for patients who are ithium noncompliant, experience rapid-cycling, or have comorbid alcohol or drug abuse. Neuroleptics such as haloperidol or chlorpromazine have also been used to help steady manic patients who are highly agitated or psychotic.Use of these drugs is often necessary because the response to them are rapid, but there are risks involved in their use. Because of the often severe side effects, Benzodiazepines are often used in their place. Benzodiazepines can achieve the same results as Neuroleptics for most patients in terms of rapid control of agitation and excitement, without the severe side effects. Antidepressants such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitors) fluovamine and amitripty line has also been used by some doctors as treatment for bipolar disorder. A double-blind study by M. Gasperini, F. Gatti, L. Bellini, R. Anniverno, and E.Smeraldi showed that fluvoxamine and amitriptyline are highly effective treatments for bipolar patients experiencing depressive episodes (Leiby,1988). This study is controversial however, because conflicting research shows that SSRIs and other antidepressants can actually precipitate manic episodes. Most doctors can see the usefulness of ntidepressants when used in conjunction with mood modify medications such as lithium. In addition to the mentioned medical treatments of bipolar disorder, there are several other options available to bipolar patients, most of which are used in conjunction with medicine.One such treatment is light therapy. One study compared the response to light therapy of bipolar patients with that of unipolar patients. Patients were free of psychotropic and hypnotic medications for at least one month before tr eatment. Bipolar patients in this study showed an average of 90. 3% improvement in their depressive ymptoms, with no incidence of mania or hypomania. They all continued to use light therapy, and all showed a sustained positive response at a three month down (Turner,1998).another(prenominal) study involved a four week treatment of bright morning light treatment for patients with seasonal affective disorder and bipolar patients. This study found a statistically significant decrement in depressive symptoms, with the maximum antidepressant effect of light not being reached until week four (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990). Hypomanic symptoms were experienced by 36% of bipolar patients in this study. Predominant hypo manic symptoms included racing thoughts, deceased sleep and irritability. Surprisingly, one-third of controls also developed symptoms such as those mentioned above.Regardless of the explanation of the emergence of hypo manic symptoms in undiagnosed controls, it is evident from this study that light treatment may be associated with the observed symptoms. Based on the results, careful professional monitoring during light treatment is necessary, even for those without a history of major mood disorders. Another popular treatment for bipolar disorder is electro-convulsive hock therapy. electroconvulsive therapy is the preferred treatment for severely manic pregnant patients and patients who are homicidal, psychotic, catatonic, medically compromised, or severely suicidal.In one study, researchers found marked improvement in 78% of patients treated with ECT, compared to 62% of patients treated only with lithium and 37% of patients who received neither, ECT or lithium (Gurman,1991). A final type of therapy is outpatient group psychotherapy. According to Dr. John Graves, spokesperson for the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association has called attention to the value f support groups, and challenged mental health professionals to take a more serious look at group therapy for the bipolar population.Research shows that group participation may help increase lithium compliance, decrease denial regarding the illness, and increase awareness of both external and internal stress factors leading to manic and depressive episodes. Group therapy for patients with bipolar disorders responds to the need for support and reinforcement of medication management, and the need for education and support for the interpersonal difficulties that arise during the course of the disorder.

A Data Warehouse Appliance Can Have a Huge Positive Impact on Businesses and Organizations Essay

Businesses and organizations of all sizes atomic number 18 becoming increasingly dep abrogateent on entropy analytics, and selective information wareho using ups or course analytic pedestal has become a employment critical application for many (if not most) companies. Indeed, these companies exhaust under ones skin always searched for better ways to understand their customers, and anticipate their commands. They have longed to emend the speed and truth of operational decision-making. Equally important as timeliness is the depth of the information analysis.Generally, the companies want to decipher all secrets hidden within the monolithic summates of ever-increasing data. A data wareho custom gimmick, which is an co-ordinated collecting of hardware and software system program intentional for a specific purpose typically involving the richly throughput of data and analytic functions, can be accustomd by organizations to optimize various areas of data affect. Its principal(prenominal) intent is to supplant conventional personal credit line tidings functions, such as warehousing, extract-transform-load (ETL), analysis and reporting. payable to its cost-effectiveness and efficiency, the data wareho manipulation appliance has become an important segment of the data warehousing market. In this paper, I will examine the data store appliances and suck up its positive electric shock on course enterprisingnesss. Introduction Since introduced in the early 1990s, data warehouse (DW) has proven to be the key platform for strategical and tactical decision support systems in the competitive business environment today.See more Analysis of Starbucks coffee friendship employees essayIt has become a major technology for building data counselling infrastructure, and resulted in many benefits for various organizations, including providing a single version of the truth, better data analysis and time savings for users, reductions in head count, f acilitation of the development of bleak applications, better data, and support for customer-focused business strategies (Rahman, 2007). The technology has become extremely important in an environment where increasing competition, aleatory market fluctuations, and changing regulatory environments are putting pressure on business organizations.selective information warehouses are also becoming the central repositories of organization/ order information for data, which is obtained from a variety of operational data seeded players. Business applications will find data warehouses more beneficial and rely on them as the main source of information as they progress. These applications are able to perform all sorts of data analysis, with increasing customer demands for having the most up-to-date information available in data warehouses. Improving data freshness within short time frames is essential to meeting such demands.According to Hong et al, virtually all Fortune atomic number 19 co mpanies, today, have data warehouses, and many medium and small sized firms are developing them. The desire to improve decision-making and organizational performance is the fundamental business driver behind data warehouses. DW help managers easily discover problems and opportunities sooner, and widen the scope of their analysis. Hong also mentions that data warehouse is user-driven, meaning that users are allowed to be in escort of the data and will have the responsibility of determining and finding the data they need.But however, the data warehouses have to be designed and evaluated from the user perspective in order to motivate users to be responsible for finding the data they need. Data warehouse is said to be one of the most powerful decision-support tools to have emerged in the last decade (Ramamurthy, 2008). They are developed by firms to help managers answer important business questions which require analytics including data slicing and dicing, pivoting, drill-downs, roll- ups and aggregations.And these analytics are best support by online-analytical processing (OLAP) tools. A data warehouse appliance, which is the main topic of discussion in this research, is referred to as an integrated collection of hardware and software designed for specific purposes involving the high throughput of data and analytic functions. Data warehouse appliance has become an important segment of the data warehousing market, due to its cost-effectiveness and efficiency. A business or organization can use a data warehouse appliance to optimize various areas of data processing.In general, the main purpose of the DW appliance is to supplant conventional business experience (BI) functions including warehousing, extract, transform, load (ETL), analysis, and reporting. A data warehouse appliance can have a huge positive impact on a business enterprise. Large organizations are able to staff their data warehouse more efficiently, while assisting mid-level companies in solving busi ness recognition challenges. Data warehouse is fundamentally changing the way the businesses operate, as they are increasingly adopted across various companies.The purpose of this paper is to set out the data warehouse appliances and how they impact businesses and organizations. In the next sections, I present a brief overview of data warehousing and the circulating(prenominal) state of BI, then I pay back and discuss DW appliances including its benefits, after which I describe the positive impact of DW appliances on businesses. Data reposition A data warehouse can basically be defined a subject-oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time-variant collection of data in support of managements decisions.Unlike the on-line transaction processing (OLTP) database systems, data warehouses are unionized around subjects storing historical/summarized data for business requirement purposes. According to OBrien and Marakas, a data warehouse is a central source of data which have been clea ned, transformed and cataloged so they are usable by managers/business professionals for data mining, online analytical processing, market research, and decision support. These stored data are usually extracted from various operational, external, and new(prenominal) database management system of an organization.DW can be sub-divided into data marts, holding subsets of data from the warehouse that focus on specific aspects, such as department, of a company. In general all data warehouse systems comprises of the following layers data source, data extraction, theatrical production area, ETL, data storage, data logic, data presentation, metadata, and system operations layer. But the quatern major components include the multi-dimensional database, ETL, OLAP, and metadata. The dimensional database applies the concept of standard star-schema including dimension and fact tables, hierarchies for drill-down, contribution models, aggregates and snow flaking.It optimizes database design for better performance. The ETL process involves the extraction, transformation and loading of data with appropriate ETL tools. Data integration is one of the most important aspects of data warehouse, whereby data is extracted from multiple heterogeneous source systems and placed in a staging area where it is cleaned, transformed, pruned, reformatted, standardized, combined, and summarized before loading into the warehouse.OLAP (online analytical processing) tool provides the front-end analytical capabilities including slice and dice, drill up, drill down, drill across, pivoting, and trend analysis across time. And metadata stores information (or data) roughly the data in the warehouse system. The components of a complete data warehouse architectural system are illustrated in approach pattern 1 below. Figure 1 An important characteristic round the data in a data warehouse is that they are static, unlike a typical database with constant changes.Once the data are gathered up, formatte d for storage, and stored in the data warehouse, they will never change. The restriction is such that complex patterns or historical trends can be searched for, and analyzed, by queries. Data warehouses are also non-volatile in the sense that end-users cannot update the data directly, thereby being able to maintain a history of the data. A major use of the data warehouse databases is data mining, in which the data are analyzed to reveal hidden patterns and trends in historical business activity.Such analysis could be used to help managers make decisions about strategic changes in business operations in order to gain competitive advantages in the marketplace. Data warehousing is a relatively new technology that brings the vision of an entirely new (customer-centric) way of conducting business to reality, and can provide environments promising a innovation in organizational creativity and innovation (Ramamurthy, 2008).Ramamurthy also mentioned that data warehouse generally serves as an IT infrastructure technology, focused on data architecture, as it provides a foundation for integrating a diverse set of internal and external data sources, enabling enterprise-wide data access and sharing, enforcing data quality standards, providing answers to business questions, and promoting strategic thinking through CRM, data mining, and other front-end BI applications. Users of the data warehouses are from virtually every business unit, amongst which information systems, marketing and sales, finance, production and operations, are the heaviest users. up-to-date State of Business Intelligence Business Intelligence are computer based techniques used in identifying, extracting and analyzing business data. Sales revenue by products, department, time, piece or income are such examples. The BI technologies provide historical, current and prognosticative views of business operations. Some common functions of BI technologies include reporting, online analytical processing, analyti cs, data mining, text-mining and predictive analytics. As BI aims to support better business decision-making, they can also be referred to as a decision support system.BI applications often use data gathered from data warehouses or data marts, however, not all BI applications require a data warehouse. With sources from Wikipedia, business comprehension can be applied to business purposes in order to drive business value. Amongst these business purposes include measurement, analytics, reporting, collaboration, and knowledge management. BI is widely used today, mainly to describe analytic applications. According to Watson, BI is currently the top-most priority of many chief information officers.In a survey of 1,400 CIOs, from Gartner Group, it was discovered that BI projects were the number one technology priority for 2007. Watson further informs that the BI is a process which basically consists of two primary activities getting data in and getting data out. getting data in, also re ferred to as data ware housing, delivers particular value to a business enterprise. Organizations realize the full value of data from data warehouses whole when users and applications access the data and use it to make decisions.Getting data out receives the most attention, as it consists of business users/applications accessing data from DW to perform enterprise reporting, OLAP, inquirying and analytics. The business intelligence framework is depicted in figure 2. Current BI infrastructure is a patchwork of hardware, software and storage that is growing ever more complex. Figure 2 BI framework BI is continuing to evolve, and several late(a) developments are generating widespread interest, including real-time BI, business performance management, and pervasive BI.Data Warehousing Appliance A data warehouse is developed to support a broad range of organizational tasks. It can be referred to as an organized collection of large amounts of structured data, designed and intended to su pport decision making in organizations. The import of information and knowledge from a data warehouse is a complex process that requires understanding of the logical schema structure and the underlying business environment.According to Hinshaw, a data warehouse appliance, applied to business intelligence, is a machine capable of retrieving valuable decision-aiding intelligence from terabytes of data in seconds or minutes versus hours or days. The appliances represent the difference between decision-making using both stale data or the freshest information possible. With sources from Wikipedia, a more standard definition of the data warehouse appliance is an integrated collection of hardware and software designed for a specific purpose that typically involves the high throughput of data and analytic functions.It typically consists of integrated set of servers, operating systems, data storage facilities, database management systems (DBMS), and software that is pre-installed and pre-op timized for data warehousing. DW appliances provide solutions for the mid-to-large volume data warehouse market, offering low-cost performance usually on data volumes within the terabyte range. collect to its cost-effectiveness and efficiency, the data warehouse appliance has become a critical segment of the data warehousing market.A business or an organization can use a data warehouse appliance to optimize various areas of data processing. The main purpose of a DW appliance, in general, is to supplant conventional business intelligence functions, such as warehousing, extract, transform, load (ETL), analysis, and reporting. A true DW appliance is defined as one that does not require fine-tuning, indexing, partitioning, or aggregating, whereas, some other DW appliances use languages such as SQL to facilitate interaction with the appliance at a database request level.With lineament to Wikipedia, most data warehouse appliance venders use massive replicate processing (MPP) architect ures to provide high query performance and platform scalability. The MPP architectures consist of independent processors or servers executing in parallel, implementing a shared zero architecture which provides an effective way to combine multiple nodes within a highly parallel environment.A DW appliance is capable of deploying up to thousands of query processing nodes in one ppliance package, compared to traditional solutions where the cost and complexity of each additional node prevents a high level of hardware parallelism. Leveraging fully integrated data warehouse architecture, a data warehouse appliance can deliver a significant performance advantage, performing up to 100 time faster than general-purpose data warehousing systems. Maturation With reference to Hinshaw, data warehouse appliance is specifically designed for the streaming workload of business intelligence and is built based on commodity components.It integrates hardware, DBMS and storage into one opaque device and combines the best elements of SMP and massively parallel processing (MPP) approaches into one that allows a query to be processed in the best possible optimized way. A data warehouse appliance is fully compatible with existing BI applications, tools and data, through standard interfaces. It is simple to use and has an extremely low cost of ownership. The development of standardized interfaces, protocols and functionality is one of the most important trends in BI.In comparison to about a decade ago, there are a wealth of tools and applications using these standardized interfaces including MicroStrategy, Business Objects, Cognos, SAS and SPSS. And these are coupled with ETL tools having standardized interfaces such as Ab Initio, Ascential and Informatica. The appliances work seamlessly with these tools and other in-house applications. A data warehouse appliance is truly scalable. The bottlenecks are the speeds of the internal buses, internal lucres, and disk transfer in BI, whereas i n transactional workloads, scalability is limited primarily by CPU.Reliability, which is provided by the homogenous nature of an appliance all parts of the system coming from a vendor, is also critical. A data warehouse appliance also provides simplicity for the administrators, in that it allows administrators spend a more productive time in troubleshooting complex database systems. And DBAs can be deployed to assist end users doing real-time BI. A data warehouse appliance offers the lowest cost of ownership as it has one source and one vendor, thereby reducing be associated with support.Businesses and organizations will run more efficiently with the simple, efficient solution provided by a data warehouse appliance. Benefits Data warehouse appliances provide freedom to the business user. With patch-work systems, users are limited in the queries they can run due to the time required to run them. And with the time required to run a complex query reduced to seconds, users can not onl y run their old analysis with more iterations, but have the time to devise and run entirely new sets of analysis on granular data.With sources from Wikipedia, some researched benefits of DW appliance are briefly discussed as follows Reduction in costs As a data warehouse grows, the total cost of ownership of the data warehouse consists of initial entry costs, maintenance costs, and the cost of changing capacity. DW appliances offer low entry and maintenance cost. analog performance DW appliances provide a compelling price/performance ratio. The vendors use several distribution and partitioning methods to provide parallel performance.With high performance on highly granular data, DW appliances can address analytics that could previously not meet performance requirements. Reduced Administration DW appliances can provide a single vendor solution, taking ownership for optimizing the parts and software within the appliance, thereby eliminating the customers costs for integration and regression testing of the DBMS, OS and storage on a terabyte scale. DW appliance reduces administration via automated space-allocation, reduced index-maintenance and reduced tuning and performance analysis. Scalability DW appliances scale for both capacity and performance.In massive parallel processing architectures, adding servers increases performance as well as capacity. Built-in high availability Massive parallel processing DW appliance vendors provide built-in high availability via redundancy on components within the appliance. Warm-standby servers, dual networks, dual power-supplies, disk mirroring with fail-over and solutions for server failure are offered by many. Increasingly, business analytics are expected to be used to improve the current cycle, and DW appliances provide tender implementations without the need for regression and integration testing.Also, DW appliances provide solutions for many analytic application uses. Some of these applications include enterprise d ata warehousing, super-sized sandboxes isolating power users with resource intensive queries, pilot projects, off-loading projects from the enterprise data warehouse, applications with specific performance or loading requirements, data marts that have outgrown their present environment, turnkey data warehouses, solutions for applications with high data growth and high performance requirements, and applications needing data warehouse encryption.Impact of Data Warehouse Appliances on Businesses and Organization claim for data warehouse appliances is increasing, and businesses taking advantage of the benefits of this hardware range from a world-wide large-scale business to the smallest individual business. Data virtualization could be a useful attendant to appliances, providing a single view of information across multiple appliances. Data virtualization is also useful because it provides a stable reporting layer during normal migration exercises, such as the circumstances during addi tion of data warehouse appliances to the information infrastructure.As businesses today continue to process extremely large volumes of data, there is always the need to keep data warehousing costs under control while ensuring a superior BI and application performance. Scalability, flexibility, and affordability are essential requirements for designing an infrastructure capable of supporting next-generation BI performance. When asked why the demand for data warehouse appliance is increasing, during an interview, Robert Eve (executive vice president of marketing for Composite Software Inc. ) declared that it is the confluence of three primary drivers at the macro level.The first is the well-reported information explosion, and the technical challenges involved in making this information accessible in forms that business decision-makers can easily use. Secondly, data warehouse appliances are more affordable and appealing, as the costs per terabyte and for support are coming down. And fi nally, recent advancements in analytics technology, notably in predictive analytics, promise to concur with the massive data volumes. Data warehouse appliances offer numerous advantages some of which are homogeneous to benefits.Amongst the advantages include more reporting and analytical capabilities data warehouse appliance are able to handle bigger and more complex query workload, if it executes queries, salute reductions data warehouse appliance requires a minimal amount of tuning and optimization of the database server and database design. It is also able to run most queries with a quick speed, Flexibility it will be easier to implement new user requests if less tuning and optimization is needed. With other database servers, a new query might principal to quite a number of technical changes, such as creating and dropping indexes, repartitioning tables, etc.Sometimes, decision is made not to implement the new request at all, due to the overwhelming work. The need for these additional technical changes is less with a data warehouse appliance. Data warehouse appliances helps support impressive BI deployments. With reference to Hinshaw, real world application examples of the positive impact of DW appliance on businesses are discussed. The rapid growth of call detail records, in the telecommunications industry, creates an imposing amount of data, which makes it difficult for companies to quickly and efficiently analyze customer and call plan information.And traditional approaches have been inefficient in processing queries on even a months data, seriously hampering an organizations ability to perform trend analysis to reduce customer churn and generate timely reports. However, with a DW appliance, the telecom user can analyze customer activity down to the call detail record level over a full years worth of detailed data. Another industry where data warehouse appliances have begun to prove their worth, and are poised to play a bigger role in the future, i s the retail.Hinshaw states that Brick-and-mortar and online retailers are capturing great amounts of customer transaction and supply chain information, creating a data explosion that threatens to overwhelm an average retail organization and its current IT infrastructure. But data warehouse appliances enable these retailers to manage and analyze the terabytes of information in near-real time. They are able to use the information to effectively forecast buy patterns, quickly generate targeted promotions and optimize their inventory and supply chain. Business intelligence remains the foundation for the success of decision making in any company.And BI, itself, relies on the underlying database architecture. Eve also presents other real world examples of positive business impact among a broad range of industries. A leading oecumenic convenience foods business uses data warehouse appliances and analytic applications to acquire major business benefits in two specific areas. One of which the company optimizes its international network of delivery routes, making the system more efficient and ensuring timely delivery of its products. Secondly, it continuously refines its merchandizing mix daily, on a retail basis, in order to maximize sales and margins.Major League Baseball captures information about every pitch, at-bat, and fielding play within a data warehouse appliance, using this data to predict players future on-field performance. This can help teams to evaluate current and free-agent talent, refine coaching and development methods, and determine salaries, hence maximizing their wins. Also, a global freight, transportation, and logistics company uses data warehouse appliances to identify behavioral patterns that indicate potential dissatisfaction within its existing customer base.The customer care group then proactively takes steps to improve satisfaction before they lose their customers. Currently, smaller data warehouse appliance vendors seem to be focusing on adding functionality to their products in order to compete with the mega-vendors. However, it is expect that all appliance vendors will be impacted by the trend toward an inexpensive, high-performance, and scalable virtualized data warehouse implementations which use regular hardware and open source software. ConclusionIn general, data warehouse appliance is a combination hardware and software product specifically designed for analytical processing. In a traditional data warehouse implementation, the database administrator can spend a significant amount of time tuning and putting structures around the data to get the database to perform well for large sets of users. But with a data warehouse appliance, it is the vendor who is responsible for simplifying the physical database design layer and making sure that the software is tuned for the hardware.In this research, a comprehensive examination/review of the data warehouse appliances, their benefits, and how they positively impact bus inesses and organizations, was presented. Based on this research, the negative impact of DW appliances on businesses are negligible compared to its positive impact. And there is an increasing demand for DW appliances. I believe that, in the near future, the DW appliances will become the sole platform for all business intelligence applications and requirements. I gained much knowledge and insights from researching this topic, and I intend to further my research on future impacts of DW appliance on businesses.

Integration and Disintegration: Indians in South Africa Essay

The story of Indians in southwesterly Africa is both a story of integration and radioactive decay into the national space. The processes and patterns of integration and disintegration of Indian confederation as a minority ethnicity is closely linked to the larger reality of southeastward African freedom struggle and the subsequent efforts of building the saucy nation of southeastward Africa as a post-apartheid democracy. On the other(a) hand, it is meaning(a) to remember that the genuinely existence of Indians in sec Africa itself is a result of the liquidation of southeastward Africa.It is through the protracted decolonization process of South Africa, the Indian community too got assimilated into the national space. Struggles against both racism and colonisation give way contend an important role bringing the Indians and the black natives together in their fight against the white colonial masters. The purpose of the essay is to provide an overview of the experiences o f Indians in South Africa and their connection in the nation building with special reference to the post-1994 period of democratic development.The Indian Community and the New South Africa It is the British colonial rule in nineteenth and early twentieth century that catalysed the Indian immigration to South Africa. Therefore, the Indian community in South Africa includes people from countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh as well since they were part of India until Indian independence. There ar other cleavages in the Indian community in South Africa as they are divided in the lines of religion, caste and language.Obviously, the idea of an Indian community in South Africa is essentially problematic due to the extreme heterogeneity within the Indian diasporas. However, it is still manageable to identify Indian South Africans as a racially distinct group. Ironically, even there is no consensus in the very way for the Indians in South Africa to be addressed. According to Singh, p eople of Indian origin varyingly refer to themselves in one of three classificatory ways South Africans, Indian South Africans or South African Indians (2008, p. ). It is just a reflection of the openness of identity against the idea of identity as a closed concept. The Indians in South Africa are originated from the diverse regions of colonial India, including todays Pakistan and Bangladesh. Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Telugu and Urdu are the major languages spoken by the Indians in South Africa. They also follow different religions such as Christianity, Hinduism and Islam besides their particular individualist beliefs. Within South Africa, Indians have the highest concentration in Durban.In the beginning, it is the the development of the sugar industry in Natal necessitated the immigration of apprenticed labourers to South Africa in the 1860s (Jithoo, 1991, p. 344). If they were mainly from South India, then came the free Indians from Gujarat after 1874, who were largely into busine ss and commerce. Hofmeyr has pointed out that even a single unearthly group like the South African Hindu community is concentrated in four linguistic groups, these being the Gujarat, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. As in India, each has its favoured clay of religious ritual, belief, and literature (1982, p. 139).The processes of modernization has changed the nature of the identity shaping of these groups although, it has not altered the internal diversity of Indian community in South Africa. And, as a minority within the new nation of South Africa, processes of globalisation and trans-nationalisation too have started marking their influence on the (re)definition of the identities of South African Indians. It is important to note that identity building among any community, especially among the Indians in South Africa is an ongoing process shaped by multiple factors and largely amenable to (shifts in) diachronic processes.Identity is revealed at first through self classification and sel f reference. Importantly, classificatory references are politically loaded, for historical reasons, in that they demonstrate the individuals affinity or lack of it either to India or to South Africa. When a person makes reference to being South African, Indian South African or South African Indian, they are usually making a statement about how they wish to be seen in the context of their personal beliefs and identity formation (Singh, 2008, p. 5-6).As a subject race, in the apartheid times, the South African Indians defined themselves against the master race of whites and placed themselves adjacent to the social put down(ing) of blacks and other natives. However, at present, South African Indians are seeing themselves distinct from the blacks and complains that the state which is dominated by the blacks discriminating them for not being black enough. However, it is not fair to undermine the complexities compound in the dynamics of the cultural authorities that is inherent within the heterogeneous population of Indian origin (Singh, 2008, p. ). The fluidity of the identity of the Indians in South Africa digest any idea of total classifications and binaries as such categorizations are broad based and tend to ignore the dynamics of regional, religious and linguistically based politics that are intrinsic to the politics of belonging among Indians overseas (Singh, 2008, p. 6). The crucial point is that Indians in their huge diversity are (being) differently integrated into the South African democratic space of post-apartheid era.For instance, it has been argued that the high caste Gujarati speaking Muslim household of passenger origin, differs from the low caste Tamil speaking Hindu household of indentured origin ( Jithoo, 1991, p. 347). The very invention of racial categories in the South Africa was induced by the early decades of twentieth century by the British rule. To perpetrate the colonial rule, in this period, formal distinctions were introduced among W hites, Bantus (Africans), Indians/ Asians, and Colored (Mabokela, 2001, p. 205).From this point, the practice of racial segregation acquired a new momentum as it was put into legislation by the National partys implementation of apartheid system. Extreme forms of racial segregation were integrated into the education policy and education system. it has been argued that the Bantu Education Act of 1953 created a hypersegregated education system, mandating a different system of education for each racial group in the nation. In accordance with apartheid ideology and policies, White students received the best academic training, followed by that for Indians, Coloreds, and last, Africans.Although Africans have comprised the volume, about three-fourths, of the South African population, they historically have received the smallest share of educational resources compared to Whites, who comprise 15% of the total population Coloreds, who make up less than a tenth (7%) and Indians, who comprise about 3% (Mabokela, 2001, p. 206). Until the independence in 1994 and the subsequent election of African National Congress, the black majority had very limited access to education in comparison to all other social groups in South Africa.Importantly, Indians got access to overbearing education in the eighties itself. It has been noted by many theorists that the ethnic roots of Indian South Africans are often revoked and mobilised by the competitive democratic environment of post 1994 period. At present Indian ethnic minorities have a tendency to juxtapose themselves with Whites for a number of reason such as affirmative action in employment and the rapid escalation of violent crime are widely seen in racialized terms- especially in the sense that Africans are viewed as the culprits and Indians and Whites as the victims (Singh, 2008, p. ). It means that the Indian perception of being part of the majority of blacks gives way to the new perception of being part of white minority. This is the disintegration of Indian community from the Black majority and re-integration to the white minority national space. Moreover, Jithoo (1991) has argued that the Indian community in South Africa has undergone tremendous internal changes related to joint family structures and the caste institution which in relinquish is reflected in their relations to the external world.The infamous Group Areas Act (1950) was central to defining the Indian family structures as it involved many restrictions such as compulsory segregation on them. Although a minority, the Indian community cannot be termed as less privileged, especially in comparison to the black majority in the expanse of education. It is true that Indian community were as oppressed and exploited by the white apartheid regime but the point is that they enjoyed a relatively better position than the black majority.Lindsay has noted that, even after the end of apartheid, the presence of Blacks (African, Indians/Asians, and colored groups) and women of all races and ethnicities in South African universities as students, faculty, and professionals is still limited in various disciplines, faculties and administrative areas (1997, p. 522). Although classified into a single group for the purpose of affirmative action policies, it is a matter of fact that Indians are far advantaged in terms of education in South Africa than Blacks and Coloured people.It can be well argued that education was the institutional mechanism set in motion, maintained and secured by the apartheid government to control the black majority economically, politically, and socially (Lindsay, 1997, p. 522). If the secondary school enrolment of black Africans 1 in 5 in the period of 1969 to 1989, it was 1 in 2. 6 for the Indians in the same period. At the sphere of education, it indicates that the position of the Indians were as twice as better of the Blacks Africans until 1994 free election.The present non- juxtaposing of Indian community with th e black Africans and the tensions arise from it are thus deeply rooted in the historical reality of segregated nation building of South Africa. It is one of the trace of the South African reality that still a number of groups or members of particular group do not identify themselves simply as South Africans. Apparently, a recent survey shows that although South Africans are increasingly identifying as South Africans, 36% still identify as African, black, white, coloured, Indian, Zulu, Xhosa, English or whatever (de Jongh, 2006, p. 5).It means that the South African national identity is still relatively weak with relations to strong racial and ethnic identities. On the other hand, it does not mean there is a necessary tension between such a racial or communitarian indemnification and modern national identification. It could be especially the case of Indian ethnic minorities than other racial groups as the Afrobarometer 2000 survey shows that only Indians listed racial identities mor e frequently than nonracial ones (61% naming a racial identity).The other three groups predominantly gave nonracial responses (Africans identified racially 30% of the time whites, 12% and coloureds, 45%) (Ferree, 2006, p. 807). It also point fingers to the (possible) disintegration of Indian community from the New South Africa. Also, Indian community has most profound distrust of the economic polices of the black Africans led government as they savvy them as favouring the blacks vis-a-vis the Indians. Obviously, the foundations of legitimacy of the state with relations to the Indian community have been weakened in an unprecedented manner.It is also important to note that Indians largely perceive the African National Congress as an African party. It has affected the political legitimisation process of the new South Africa as well. Conclusion The very idea of South African Indians itself is problematic as the Indian community in is heterogeneous in multiple ways. Even as an ethnic mi nority, they are internally diverse with reference to religion, region, language and self reference. Importantly the groups within the Indian community in South Africa are not similarly integrated into the South African national space.The integration of diverse groups within the Indian community is different in both quantity and quality. The fluidity of the identities of South African Indians is well express in the fact that they tend to revive and reconstitute their identities and belongings with relations to the prevailing social, political, and economic conditions. The changing social, political, cultural and economic conditions in South Africa have led the Indian community to identify themselves with the whites as a fellow minority community. This disintegration from the black majority cannot be perceived as disintegration from the South African national space.

Literary Analysis of Night

The Holocaust changed the lives of galore(postnominal) people and survivors and had galore(postnominal) adverse effects. Some began to question their reliance in their beliefs and even questioned their god. They pondered upon the thought of how God could sit lazily by and allow the atrocious actions committed at bottom their own homeland be unjustified. Those that survived have many terrifying stories to tell. Many survivors are too frightened to tell their story because their experiences are too scandalous to express in words or even comprehend.One of Wiesels main objectives in writing iniquity is to remind readers that the Holocaust occurred, and hopes that it will never happen again. Night themes include the inhumanity of humans toward others and how finale can cause potent harm to ones psyche. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses many literary devices such(prenominal) as Tone, Imagery, and Repetition to portray the acts of death and inhumanity as well as their traumatizing effects. Elie Wiesel uses repetition to out-of-doors state and emphasize what he has endured and shall never falter or be forgotten but shall constantly linger within the confines of his forever scarred conscience. Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has sour my life into one long night, seven clock cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of Ingles 2 Smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. (Pg. 32) This quote displays not only the appall acts that were committed but the effects it had on the authors conscience. Also, notice that Eliezer states that his God was murdered. For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, master copy of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. (Pg. 31) But in the final line Eliezer acknowledges him as God.Despite saying his God was murdered, it is clear that Eliezer is actually struggling with his faith and his God. Just as he is never able to forget the curse of that night, he is never able to reject completely disdain his religion. Elie Wiesel uses imagery to depict explicitly what happened within the concentration camps. The imagery used in Night also gave the readers a sense of what Eliezer endured and the many horrors he encountered during his time spent within the camps. Babies were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used them as targets (Pg. 4)

Consumer Behaviour †Product Line Extension Essay

Created by two avid breakersers, Billabong is a chump designed by surfers, for surfers. In 1973, Billabong offered little much than a small drift of surf wear mainly surf posters and board shorts. But today, Billabong is a brand that encompasses the Australian surf culture by offering carrefours that cater non only for the surfer inside m any of us, exactly for fashion and life- ardour necessitate.1.2 CURRENT TARGET tradeBillabong is a brand that offers numerous proceedss designed to accommodate numerous lifestyles. Included in their extensive err ar products designed for surfers, general b separately goers, skateboarders and the fashion conscious. Comprehensive characteristics of this commercialise atomic number 18 difficult to pinpoint, however, it is the trust that the majority of swallowrs atomic number 18 males and females periodd betwixt 12 and 35 years of age.Consumer Need Social material body Need the most important take away satisfied by Billabong1.3 CURRENTLY SOLDIn the middle 1980s, just over ten years since the birth of Billabong, the successes of the small Australian brand were being recognize world wide and Billabong products were in proud demand. This led to the export of Billabong products to the global market with countries such(prenominal) as the USA, Japan, New Zealand and Europe first in form. Today, the product dress operational ext completes as far as 2200 lines in Australia, 1300 lines in the US and many more in over 60 other(a) countries. It is non unusual that the greatest statistical distribution of Billabong products is to coastal destinations. However, countries locked by land be given the opportunity to lead the Billabong experience with products available on-line and in assorted stores about the world.1.4 PRICE RANGEBillabong products appear at the l attend-backer end of the price spectrum for the overall market, and are moderately to high priced as compared to their surf brand competitors. Some examples of how Billabong measure in the market are illustrated belowGirls Thongs Billabong $17.95 Mermaid Sister $19.95 Target $4.00Mens Jeans Billabong $120.00 Quiksilver $139.95 Jeanswest $65.00Beach Towel Billabong $69.95 Aztec Rose $39.95 Bonds $29.951.5 MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLEThe single most important environmental variable affecting Billabong is Culture defined as a set of values, ideas, artefacts and other meaningful symbols that attention individuals communicate, interpret and evaluate as members of ordination (Blackwell et al. 2001). Products are largely designed, as awaylined in share 1.2 and Appendix A, for a surf/ cheer/style culture which is seemingly ubiquitous in Australian living.1.6 PRODUCT EXTENSIONBillabong Skinwear a Skin-care range including sunscreen, lip-balm and after sun-gel. This range meets the highest Australian standards in sun security department whilst besides providing the essential style that Australians have come to know and expec t from Billabong products.2.0 SECTION BThe charge earreach for any given product or service is the group of mountain that advertisers wish to draw and quarter through their marketing activities. The process of identifying and defining an interview leads to assessing priorities. For instance, a firm may identify a sizably large group or market to be potential consumers. However, it is in all likelihood to be financially decayed to attempt to object glass all consumers within the group. A butt audience may be completed by a genuflectg questions such asWhich audience is large enough to be a signifi drive outt target?Which audience is a priority in footing of the brands product?Which audience is the target of the products attributes and benefits?A target audience may be defined by their age, gender, family status, lifestyle, interests or a combination of these characteristics. It is noteworthy that a target audience invariably differs from the overall target market and is ge nerally only a department of a given market. For example, Billabong would target consumers (both male and female) between the ages of around 12 35 but different segments of this broad market are more promising to bargain for than others. It is desirable to develop demographic and psychographic profiles of these plausibly consumers (the target audience).Accurate details of a target audience butt only be obtained by meaning of credible market research practices. However, inferences and assumptions can be made beforehand to aid any research. Some of the demographic characteristics of the Billabong target audience are, as mentioned previously, males and females between the ages of around 12 35 (although ad is usually specific to one particular gender as seen in the example of Appendix A). Such individuals are predominantly situated in coastal regions where the beach/surf/sun culture thrives (as cl primordial demonstrated in Appendix A), although there are significant deviations from this trend in particular in recent times with such a broad, climate and geographically unbiased product range spanning well-nigh 2200 lines in Australia alone (Billabong International 2004).Economic factors can sometimes play a role in defining a target but in this blusht the audience is not necessarily limited to any specific economic traits for example, income brackets are not light(a) defined for consumers as Billabong International offers such a variety of products satisfying both functional lifestyle ask and fashion influenced dispositions, hence the utilizers likelihood of purchasing is evaluate to be more dependant on the psychographic factors of consumer motivation, motivational intensity and consumer knowledge.Consumer motivation re plays the drive to meet physiological and psychological of necessity via purchase and consumption of products (Blackwell et al. 2001, p.233). Billabong customers are likely to be driven to satisfy their social image needs and nee ds for pleasure. They are expected to have a high motivational intensity to fulfil these needs so as to pass oningly overcome the price barrier associated with doing so.The target consumers for Billabong have a relatively high level of consumer knowledge regarding their chosen product. The archetype of consumer knowledge involves individuals pre- animated knowledge and perceptions related to product purchase and consumption. These consumers have a high aware(predicate)ness of the products attributes and associations, such as the famous waves symbol, the distinct ties with glide and pro surfing and the companies Australian origins. They have a familiarity with the products image within the marketplace. They associate the brand with high quality, high fashion and are prepared to bear the comparatively high price.This target audience is assist by the purchase knowledge they stop regarding Billabongs price positioning that is, the company is in the high price range compared to t he overall market but is moderate to high in price when evaluating surf brands (see partition 1.4). These consumers are in like manner equipped with knowledge on whenand where to buy aware that the products are available in specialty surf-specific stores and can rely on a least two sales each year at the end of summer and winter.Although expensive research is often the most accurate mood of developing a targeted marketing approach, it is ever beneficial to attempt to identify expected consumers as early as possible in a marketing plan. Whether you utilize extensive demographic and psychographic research or just use common-sense, the key is to identify a group or groups of potential customers that offer the outdo opportunities for business potential ( specify Your Target 2004).3.0 SECTION C3.1 THE BILLABONG COMMUNICATION MIXA successful communication mix is essential in the marketing of any brand or product to consumers. This ties in with the familiar four Ps of marketing whic h are price, place, promotion and product. The most important factor relating to the concept of the communications mix is promotion. Examples of promotion include personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, publicity, direct mail, advertising, sponsorship, branding and distribution of samples.A good communication mix ensures that the brand receives adequate icon whilst also targeting the appropriate audiences (see Section B). For many large corporations, their logotype is an integral part of their marketing activities. This unique identifier will be return throughout all forms of visual marketing communication and is a powerful statement in itself. An obvious example of such would be Nike with its swoosh symbol. Similarly, the famous Billabong waves are present throughout the Billabong communication mix.3.2 stigma ADVERTISINGCurrently there are a number of communication methods that are used by Billabong. Products are featured in a number of magazines such as Dolly,Girl friend, Chik and Cosmopolitan, who predominately market to the female segment of Billabongs target audience. Print advertisements also feature in more male oriented publications such as Ralph and FHM and can be seen in specific surfing magazines such as Surfing. The combination of these promotional activities soundly reaches the specific audience that Billabong targets.3.3 BROADCAST ADVERTISINGBroadcast advertising is very limited and is likely to only be featured for events such as special surfing related events such as the Billabong Pro surf championships.3.4 INTERNET PROMOTIONSInternet promotions are one of the most extensive ways in which Billabong advertises. On almost every Billabong advertisement featured in the aforementioned media, the Billabong web address is present billabong.com. The website shows the entire product list, which are available for purchase online. The website is not just limited to the Australian audience. It also caters for different products and prices s uitable for different regions around the world, including North America, South America, Asia and Europe representative of Billabongs growing global presence and successful utilisation of the internet in market places around the world.3.5 PROMOTIONAL MATERIALAssociated to Billabong is a highly influential reference group who effectively act as a promotional tool. These are pro surfers such as Layne Beachley, Alana Brennan and Andy Irons. This reference group gains credibility for the brand by using Billabong products. Billabong promotions use these public faces to give testimonials as the attention gained by having experts approval is invaluable in the fight for consumer preference.3.6 POINT OF PURCHASE DISPLAYSPoint of purchase displays are frequently used by Billabong. In surf shops such as City Beach Surf (Garden City, Whitfords City), Billabong products are grouped together in the store whereas in Brothers Nielsen (Garden City, Perth, Whitfords City), the Billabong are grouped alongside competing brands by division. From the marketing perspective of a redoubtable manufacturer, it is more desirable to have the clothes grouped by brand rather than by category as this allows consumers to search for the specific brand they wish to purchase.3.7 IS THIS COMMUNICATION MIX APPROPRIATE?Print advertising utilised by Billabong is appropriate and effective as the magazines that they feature in are targeting similar or overlapping audiences. Promotions and promotional material aid in increasing public familiarity with the brand. This has been light upond by attaching the Billabong name and logo with events such as the Billabong Pro and other surfing events worldwide. Celebrities, especially movie stars, television actors, entertainers, and sports figures, can be very powerful assets to any marketing and advertising campaign (Blackwell et al. 2001). Billabong uses famous surfers Layne Beachley, Alana Brennan and Andy Irons to achieve higher(prenominal) credibility w ithin the surfing world.Another powerful promotional tool is the brands website. Generation X and Y are very likely to search the internet for products that they wish to purchase, as it allows them to shop in the nurse of their homes without the effort of searching different stores to prevail certain products or information. Internet Promotions are seen to be effective because of the increasing frequency and effectiveness of e-commerce in todays globalised market place. The website is easy to use, easy to find and is prevalent in all the advertising material increasing consumer knowledge of the website.Broadcast advertising for Billabong is likely to have a limited effectiveness. It has been shown that only 19% of television viewers actually watch the advertisements shown during a show (Lach, cited inBlackwell 2001, p. 438). Bearing this in mind, and realising that the target audience is a relatively specific one, it is perplexing that the audience will be reached on a frequent b asis via this medium.3.8 CHANGES TO COMMUNICATION MIXWe cogitate that Billabong should implement a number of various changes to the current communications mix in collection to establish the Skinwear range. Procedures such as distributing free samples would be effective in increasing awareness of the product, its function of simplification the effects of sun photograph and the compulsory associations of the brand.An increase in Billabong sponsored events will lead to increased exposure of the Billabong name and will provide an excellent opportunity to introduce consumers to the product extension line. The Skinwear range can be officially launched by specifically attaching the name of the innovative product (Skinwear) to a Billabong sponsored event. On its launch, the previously mentioned method of sample distribution can be used to full effect.The launch of Skinwear will accord with the increased marketing activities surrounding the entire Billabong range during the summer hol iday season. An effective way of tap the benefits of this situation would be to utilise POP displays, perhaps combined with promotional gift packs.4.0 SECTION D4.1 PRODUCT CONCEPTAs a well recognised and trusted surf brand, Billabong is endeavouring to branch out into the skin-care market, in particular sun-care to further cater to its customers lifestyle needs. Like the rest of the world, Australia as a society has become heavily health and image conscious as demonstrated from the many articles, advertisements, new products and outgo increases establish in the Health and Cosmetic Industries. Billabong has made the decision to extend their existing product range in an attemptto take advantage of this new demand for health and beauty products. In doing so, Billabong has acquired its Skinwear range which includes a Sunscreen, Lip balm and aft(prenominal)-Sun Gel all of which meet the high standards set by the Australian Government and Australian Cancer Council.Included in the Bill abong Skinwear range is a Sunscreen show an SPF or Sun Protection Factor of 30, shielding the skin from harmful UV rays 30 times monthlong than our skins natural defences are able to. Through the introduction of prehistoric innovative products, Billabong has become known for its commitment to meet and exceed the needs demanded by their surfing clientele hence incorporating an 8 hour pee shelterion attribute into this product. This feature allows surfers and beach goers the chance to enjoy their lifestyle without the concerns of having to frequently reapply sunscreen. The combination of 30 SPF and 8hrs of water resistance will instantly place the product at least equally, in price of functional attributes, at the top of the market.Billabongs new Skinwear range also includes a Lipbalm featuring an SPF of 15. As a means to widen the target audience, Billabongs new Lipbalm is free of colour and taste, removing added hesitation in the male demographic. For easy application, the Lip balm is packaged in a squeezable tube, making for easy and mess-free application all of which is very adroit when applying at the beach.Incorporated into the After-Sun Gel is an aloe extract. According to Steve Herman (2004, p.54) aloe remains a genuinely useful healing divisor widely accepted by the public. In order to meet consumer requirements, aloe is a feature in the After-Sun Gel product. It is merely a last resort that consumers would ultimately require a product to allay the effects the sunburn however, as Plato quite accurately stated The most we can teach bulk is what they already know. This statement defines the need for a product such as After-Sun Gel, as it is expected that even with the existence of a Sunscreen as provided by Billabong consumers are likely to use the product ineffectively every now and then.Pat Thomas (2004, p.16) declares the sun is now officially the enemy against which sun creams are our weapon of prize. According to figures given on the Austr alian Cancer website (http//www.cancer.org.au) 374,000 Australians are treated for non-melanoma skin cancer every year. This figure accounts for 1.9% of Australias entire population. More dire is that an additional 8,500 Australians are diagnosed with a melanoma, of which 1300 will die as a result. Such frightening statistics render the question are members of Australias beach and surf culture taking appropriate steps to protect their skin from such devastating consequences?Pioneers in serving this beach/surf culture, Billabong attempt to make their consumers aware of the harmful dangers associated with long term exposure to the sun and its effects. In doing so, Billabong offers such products as available in their new Skinwear range to protect the physiological needs of their consumers as well as removing the quite apparent social negativity involved in wearing and applying sunscreen.4.2 TARGET MARKET REVISITEDIt would be unwise for a brand such as Billabong to extend an already successful product range if there was any reason to believe that it would not be as successful as the collective existing products. In accordance, Billabong has created a Skinwear range that not only extends the well recognised image of the brand but also the values and attributes that a consumer would associate with any of its other products. For instance, Billabong is renowned for its high quality surf-related products, innovative style and up-to-date fashion. A marketing approach to increase the popularity of Billabong products is to promote consumption as more than an experience, but rather a statement of image and self-expression. It is for this reason that the slogan for the new Skinwear range reads Wear Billabong, even when youre naked.As identified in Section B, Billabongs key target audience extends between males and females aged between 12 and 35. At these ages, it would not be inaccurate to suggest that a major factor in the purchase and consumption ofsurf brands and thei r related products is whether the product links consumers with the desire to fit certain image and style demands. The surf and beach culture is dominant in the lifestyles and images of Australian people. This, in effect, further intensifies the need for many consumers to conform.Australians are get more obsessed with their health and appearance. visual aspect on Australian networks week by week are television shows that promote cosmetic surgery, crack diets, new health risks, advanced pharmaceuticals and much more. It is not surprising that consumers in the demographic of 12-35 years of age are identifying a need to improve and maintain beauty and health.The links between sun exposure and skin handicap have been extensively researched in Australia, as it appears that compared to other geographical locations, Australian people are more susceptible and at risk of suffering, due to the consequences of living in such a sun exposed location. When taking into consideration the various issues relating to sun exposure and skin damage, Billabong decided to create their Skinwear range. It is expected that with an informative and effective marketing campaign, existing Billabong consumers will see the need to execute a diligent skin protection regime, in turn utilising the products that are now offered by Billabong.4.3 ATTITUDESIn order for this product extension to be successful, Billabong has attempted to seize the large target audience that already purchases and consumes their existing product range. It is suggested by Blackwell et al. (2001, p. 289) that holding a favourable attitude toward a product is almost always an essential prerequisite in order for consumers to hold a favourable purchase of consumption invention. In saying this, it is not expected that the consumer will automatically purchase the product, but that they will hold a favourable intention which may assist in their decision.Several models are used to aid marketers of companys such as Billabong to analyse consumer attitudes and their associated effects on product evaluation and choice. correct known as the Fishbien toughie and Ideal-Point Model, marketers of brands such as Billabong are given important information from consumers responses. In many cases, this leads to new product developments as is the case of Billabong, where certain needs not catered for are alerted to designers.In order for Billabong to avoid consumer attitudes becoming impartial between brands, it is essential to do whatever it takes to achieve Attitude persistence where an attitudes immune to such corrosion (Blackwell et al. p. 300). It is likely that the need for products such as that offered in Billabongs Skinwear range will never be made redundant, purely because the risks associated with having lives revolved around the sun are not diminishing in number and neither are the risks associated.The greatest breastwork faced when introducing Billabongs new Skinwear range is changing consumers preferen ces, in effect, recruiting competitors customers (Blackwell et al. 2001, p. 301). A bullnecked feature of the Skinwear range is its SPF rating and Water Resistance. In order to recruit competitors customers Billabong essential be effective in changing consumers attitudes, drawing on favourable attitudes held about their existing product range, as well as emphasising comparisons between their new product extension and other existing brands hopefully in favour of their products.4.4 CONCLUSIONBillabong recognises the importance of consumers needs to be protected in the sun. After all, it is the expectation that having consumers who exude a lifestyle surrounded by surf and beach that these needs will as some point require satisfying. As a highly regarded surf brand, Billabong places importance on fulfilling consumers needs for safety and health. In recognising the gap in its product range, Billabongs new product extension, boasting a highly protective Sunscreen, Lipbalm and After-Sun Gel, continues their commitment to meet the demands of its consumers for the coming summer season.5.0 SECTION ETo psychoanalyze the decision making processes experienced by a consumer it is practical to use the Consumer Decision Process (CDP) Model which defines seven likely point in times involved in any purchase. The CDP model represents a roadmap of consumers minds that marketers and managers can use to friend guide product mix, communication and sales strategies (Blackwell et al. 2001, p.71). All consumers are not strictly bound by this model in making their decisions, but are likely to undergo at least some of the following stagesThe Consumer Decision Process ModelIn the case of Billabong, to ensure the success of their product line extension and the associated marketing activities it would be beneficial to hypothesise the probable processes of their target audience in becoming loyal users of the new product. Such predictions may be made by examining the stages of the CDP m odel.The first stage of the model, need recognition, involves the consumer sensing the difference between their ideal and actual state of affairs. Billabong will aim, through straight-forward advertising and other marketing communications (as outlined in Section C), to undermine the users perceptions about the adequacy of their existing state and will hence create a problem that must be solved. publicise will include the contrasting negative consequences of not using the product (such as skin damage and/or cancer) with the altogether positives outcomes associated with using the new product. Such benefits include a high level of skin care and also positive social image. With so many choices and more and more variables affecting consumer decisions, especially for low-involvement products such as sunscreen, it is expected that previous loyal followers of the Billabong trademark will factor their positive experiences and high levels of satisfaction into their decision to use Billabong Skinwear.The second stage involves searching the marketplace for information onproducts and alternatives. The loyal Billabong consumer will find themselves undergoing components of both an inner(a) and external search and will then social movement on to assess evaluative criteria as outlined by the third stage pre-purchase evaluation. It is in this stage that these particular consumers are likely to conclude Billabong as the better alternative.The target audience, whether undergoing an external or internal search will find Billabong to be at least equal (see Section 4.1) to its competitors in terms of its products attributes whilst the positive associations with the Billabong brand will ensure that Billabong Skinwear is seen as the superior alternative. It is the intention of Billabong to extend its dominance into the new market and it is hoped that consumers eliminate the need for extensive searching in order to simply transfer loyalty into this new market.There are two paths th at will lead a consumer to the fourth stage of the purchase decision. They may either systematically travel through the previous three stages leading to an obvious choice to purchase, or they may avoid the first three stages altogether and simply purchase the product based on an instantaneous decision influenced by prior ties to the Billabong brand. An example of such may be seen in impulse purchasing, where point-of-purchase (POP) displays may play a significant role.The fifth stage consumption, is likely to occur seasonally as sun protection is demanded mainly in summer. However, loyal consumers such as those outlined in section B are perhaps the more likely of any one in the market to use the product as suggested by Billabong and its experts all year round.Stages five and six consumption and post-consumption evaluations are likely to have a positive, satisfied response from consumers when taking into consideration Billabongs efforts to transfer loyalty from past experiences into the new products evaluation. The last stage, divestment, holds no definitive expectations from those marketing the new product. The only aim is for the target consumers to consume the product completely and not discard it in preference for a competing brand before the end of its useful lifeThe transition of loyal users to the new product (as summarized in this section) demonstrates how varying influential factors will alter the processes outlined in the Consumer Decision Process (CDP) Model. Whether it be the testimony of industry experts or the discourse of mouth (WOM) distribution of the positive brand image, it is clear that it will be more than possible to publicize the loyalty of the brand into the new product extension line.6.0 REFERENCESBillabong International 2004. Retrieved September 30, 2004, from http//www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/ 06/12/1086749947661.html?from=storylhs.Blackwell, D.R., Miniard, P.W. & Engel, J.F. 2001, Consumer Behaviour 9ED, Harcourt Inc., Florida .Defining Your Target 2004. Retrieved October 4, 2004, from http//www.usg.com/contractors/defining_your_target.asp.Herman, S. 2004, A day at the beach, Global Cosmetic Industry, vol. 172, no. 8, pp. 53-54. Retrieved October 13, 2004, from Proquest.Thomas, P. 2004, Behind the dog Suncream, The Ecologist, vol. 34, no.6, Retrieved October 13, 2004, from Proquest.