Determination of the vitamin D status of adults living in the UK and identification of factors influencing the efficacy of dietary intervention

Introduction There is overwhelming clinical evidences that vitamin D plays a significant role in terms of the normal functioning of human body. One of the most common functions of vitamin D is to ensure normalcy in maintaining blood levels of both calcium and phosphate. The two elements are essential for normal bone mineralisation, contraction of muscles, conduction of nerves, and other general body cellular functions. As such, deficiency of vitamin D is associated with various adverse health complications including failure in proper bone development, cancer, and heart diseases (Holick, 2011, p.6). A review of several studies has also established evidence that vitamin D replacement can boots longevity among other health benefits (Gaddipati, et al. 2010). Adequate synthesis of vitamin D3 from the skin, everyday diet and supplements is essential for health of bones. In addition to the well-known role of vitamin D in regulating calcium metabolism, active form of vitamin D is also associated with ant i-proliferative as well as immunomodulatory effects that are linked to several serious conditions such as cancer, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes, tuberculosis, dementia among other illnesses (Zitterman,et al., 2001). There have been concerns that vitamin D deficiency is significantly increasing in the western nations, and the likelihood of the problem becoming an epidemic in itself worries nutritionists as well as medical practitioners alike (Hypponen and Power (2007). A recent survey in England has revealed a worrying statistics that half of the adult population does not have sufficient levels of vitamin D (Pearce and Cheetham, 2010). The same study also revealed that 16% of this population has experienced severe hypovitaminosis D during winter and spring, with the highest rate being residents of Northern England regions. It is perhaps unsurprising that there have been increasing calls for regular screening during normal health care services. The concerns over vitamin D deficiency has led to a shift over the past decade, with several researchers striving to establish some of the most common risk factors associated with vitamin D deficiency (Holick, 2004). In a study to establish difference in propensity to vitamin D deficiency between metabolically health and unhealthy obese adults, Esteghamati et al. (2004) found out that metabolically healthy obese registered more concentration of vitamin D than metabolically unhealthy obese. This difference persisted even after accounting for body mass index (BMI) and circumference of the individuals’ waists. Further, there was significantly better metabolic status and higher concentration of serum 25-hydro vitamin D among the subjects with metabolically healthy obesity. The researchers also noted that the metabolically unhealthy subjects had higher concentrations of liver enzymes and inflammatory markers. In February 2014, Health & Social Care Information centre released a report on obesity, physical activity, and diet in England, which indicated that obesity cases were on the rise (HSCIC, 2014). The data indicate that there has been a significant increase in the proportion of obese populat ion from 13.2 percent in 1993 to 24.4 percent of men in 2012. Women recorded a similarly high increase during the same period from 16.4 percent to 25.1 percent. Linking this data to relationship between obesity and vitamin D deficiency, it prudent to highlight that vitamin D deficiency prevalence is a point researchers should note with keenness it deserves. The extent to which vitamin D deficiency is a public health problem in Britain is believed to have increased for several reasons ranging from lifestyle to weather patterns. On lifestyle as a factor, Hypponen and Power (2007) states that the sedentary lifestyle in the western world, including Great Britain, leads to vitamin D deficiency, which is exacerbated by a number of other factors including working indoors during daylight hours, high latitude and a mostly cloudy climate in regions such as Manchester. Statistics also indicate that vitamin D dietary intake is much lower in Great Britain compared to other western nations incl uding United States and Canada (Calvo et al, 2005, p.314). The variance in dietary intake of vitamin D between Britain, on the one hand, and United States and Canada, on the other, may be due to the mandatory fortification of both milk and margarine in the USA and Canada. Some of the most common food sources rich in vitamin are fish, liver, fortified margarine and fortified cereals. However, clinical nutritional assessments of natural food items suggest that with the exception of fish and cod liver oil, most natural food stuff contains minimal vitamin D, if any (Brough et al., 2010). Significantly, it is important to note that insufficient natural sources for vitamin D is a risk factor in itself, and should be taken into consideration when plans are put into place to tackle the problem. Moreover, vitamin D supplements’ availability cannot be described as reliable since demand always exceeds supply (Brough et al., 2010). Studies have revealed that there are high rates of vitam in D deficiency all over Great Britain, particularly in the cloudy regions like Manchester and Scotland (Pal et al., 2003). Obesity is a well-known risk factor for vitamin D deficiency, and its high prevalence in Great Britain is likely to affect vitamin D status in the population of high-risk regions such as Greater Manchester. In another nationwide study conducted to investigate the demographic characteristics of white population and possibility of supplements use, it emerged that women and non-obese participants were more likely to use vitamin D supplements (Gaddipati et al, 2010). Similarly, residents of Northern England were found to consume less oily fish, an important source of vitamin D, compared to their Southern counterparts. The study concurs with reports that people living on the Northern England and Scotland have higher risk of hypovitaminosis D (Roy et al., 2007; Holick, 2004). In fact, those who are obese and also live in high-risk regions have a likelihood of having vitamin D deficiency twice as high as other obese people living in other areas of Great Britain. Vitamin D deficiency has also been reported to be prevalent among minority communities living in Great Britain (de Roos et al, 2012). Some ethnic minorities living in Great Britain are more susceptible to vitamin D deficiency than other groups. According to Brough et al. (2010), minority ethnic communities, particularly those who trace their roots to Indian subcontinent and Africa as they tend to suffer from rise in skin pigmentation. They are also found to increase their susceptibility to vitamin D deficiency by wearing clothes that tend to cover their entire bodies and staying indoors longer hours during the day (de Roos et al, 2012; Brough et al., 2010). Other researchers recognise the need to increase vitamin D supplement intake among the minority population, amid report that there are no consistent or routine supply of vitamin D; neither are there recognised screening programs targeting this group (Dealberto, 2006). A study looking at population demographics in the North West has revealed that the region has increasing number older people (North West Regional Assembly Report, 2000). As stated earlier, elderly people are at high-risk of vitamin D deficiency. Clinical studies have investigated age-related decline in vitamin D intake, including rate of skin absorption and response to targeted methods of increasing vitamin D through dietary interventions (Shaw and Pal, 2002). Several other studies have also linked low vitamin D status with people living in low economic status (Dealberto, 2006.). In many of these linkages, the authors cite issues such as poor nutrition, poor lifestyle and inability to afford supplements. For instance, poor nutrition intake is prevalent in regions with high poverty rate, mostly affecting middle aged women of child-bearing age (Brough et al., 2010). According to Brough et al. (2010) a socially deprived population cannot afford some of the basic nutrients essential for normal metabolic function such as vitamin D and thus resort to ‘shortcuts of life’ while exposing their immune system to chronic diseases. Poverty report released by the Greater Manchester Poverty Commission in 2002 identified Manchester as one of the regions with the highest cases of extreme poverty, with 25 percent of its population living in abject poverty (GMPC, 2012). The report further reveal that poor families cannot protect themselves from winter temperature, which makes them stay indoors longer than other UK residence with average annual income. This can only mean that they have higher risk from vitamin D deficiency. OECD report (2014) suggests that the first step in ensuring low income community members in the United Kingdom are protected from lifestyle related diseases is through social interventions. Tests have revealed that modest rise in vitamin D intake of up to 20 Â µg per day for this group can significantly reduce the rate of bone fracture (Hypponen and Power, 2007). The findings have raised focus by agencies and researchers, who have recommended that vitamin D intake for the elderly should raised from the current 5Â µg per day to between 10-20Â µg per day in order to maintain the normal hydroxy vitamin D of 25 (de Roos, 2012, p.6). Considering the need to increase vitamin D intake among the population at risk of vitamin D deficiency, the UK Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy (COMA) recommended that people eat at least 280 g of fish per week, with preference to oily fish (de Roos, Sneddon and Macdonald, 2012, p.6). The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) endorsed the COMA recommendation, emphasising that this is the bare minimum fish consumption recommended for the average population goal to achieve the desired vitamin D status. However, they acknowledged that this recommendation does not represent the level of fish consumption required for optimal nutritional benefits. The campaign to encourage more UK population, particularly those living in North Western region, should be directed at increasing oily fish intake by at least 280 Â µg per week as statistics indicate that majority of them do not consume enough fish (de Roos, 2012; Holick, 2011; Hypponen and Power, 2007). Although studies (de Roos, 2012; Holick, 2004) have dwelt on the need for multiple interventions ranging from dietary to medical, of more significant for the efficacy of dietary intervention is the need for education among the population on the importance of adopting healthy diet and lifestyle. This is mostly recommended for the high-risk persons including the low-income population, those living in marginally wet and cloudy regions including Manchester, obese, and young women of child bearing age group. References Brough. L., Rees, G., Crawford, M.A. Morton. R.H. and Dorman, E.K. 2010. Effect of multiple- micronutrient supplement on maternal nutrient status, infant birth weight and gestational age at birth in a low-income, multi-ethnic population. British Journal of Nutrition, 104 (3): 437- 445. Calvo, M.S., Whiting, S.J. and Barton, C.N. 2005. Vitamin D intake: a global perspective of current status. J Nutr 135: 310–6. de Roos, B. Sneddon, A. and Macdonald, H. 2012. Fish as a dietary source of healthy long chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC n-3 PUFA) and vitamin D: A review of current literature. Food & Health Innovation Service, available at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/rowett/documents/fish_final_june_2012.pdf. Dealberto, M.J. 2006. Why immigrants at increased risk for psychosisVitamin D insuffiency, epigenetic mechanisms, or bothMedical Hypothesis, Vol. 68, pp. 259- 267. Esteghamati, A., Aryan, Z. and Nakhjavani, M. 2004. Differences in vitamin D concentration between metabolically healthy and unhealthy obese adults: Association with inflammatory and cardiometabolic markers in 4391 subjects. Diabetes & Metabolism, 5 May 2014, Available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1262363614000469 Gaddipati, V.C., Kuriacose, R. and Copeland R., et al. 2010. Vitamin D deficiency: an increasing concern in peripheral arterial disease. J Am Med Dir Assoc. 11(5): 308-11. Greater Manchester Poverty Commission (GMPC). 2012. Research Report . The Centre for Local Economic Strategies. Holick, M.F. 2011. Vitamin D: a d-lightful solution for health. J Investig Med. 59(6):872-80. Holick MF. 2004. Sunlight and vitamin D for bone health and prevention of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr 80 (suppl):1678S–88S. HSCIC. 2014. Statistics on Obesity, physical Activity and Diet. Health & Social Care Information Centre, England 26 February 2014. Hypponen, E. and Power, C. 2007. Hypovitaminosis D in British adults at age 45 y: nationwide cohort study of dietary and lifestyle predictors. Am J Clin Nutr, 85(3): 860-868. North West Regional Assembly, 2000. An Aging Population: Impact for the North West. North West Regional Laboratory. Lancaster University. Available at www.northest-england.org.uk. OECD Report. (2014). Society at a Glance 2014 Highlights: United Kingdom OECD Social Indicators. Last accessed on 19 May 2014 at http://www.oecd.org/unitedkingdom/OECD-SocietyAtaGlance2014-Highlights-UnitedKingdom.pdf Pal , B.R., Marshall ,T. and James, C. 2003. Shaw NJ. Distribution analysis of vitamin D highlights differences in population subgroups: preliminary observations from a pilot study in UK adults. J Endocrinol. 179:119–29. Pearce, S.H. and Cheetham, T.D. January, 2010. Diagnosis and management of Vitamin D deficiency. BMJ, 11: 340. Roy D.K, Berry J.L., Pye, SR et al. 2007. Vitamin D status and bone mass in UK South Asia women. Bone 40(1): 200-4. Epub 2006 Sep 6. Shaw, N.J and Pal, B.R. 2002. Vitamin D deficiency in UK Asian families: activating a new concern. Arch Dis Child, 86: 147-149, Available at http://adc.bmj.com/content/86/3/147.full Zittermann A, Schleithoff SS, Koerfer R. 2005. Putting cardiovascular disease and vitamin D insufficiency into perspective. Br J Nutr 94: 483–92.

Mi Ultimo Adios Essay

Mi Ultimo Adios was the farewell poem of Rizal that originally had no title and was unsigned. This was believed as Rizal’s last will because he wrote it on the night before he was executed. Also through this poem, Rizal was giving his last message to his countrymen. For him, offering his life was the best way he could show his love for the country. Even he was going to die, he was not resentful instead he challenged the each of the Filipinos to serve and love our country. However he was also hopeful that his death would serve as inspiration to everyone. He encouraged the youth to continue to dream and fulfill it. The poem ‘My Last Farewell’ was Jose Rizal’s patriotic goodbyes, first to his country, his family and above all to his Heavenly Father. To his country he said, ‘With gladness do I give you my life.’ He tried to comfort his parents and dear ones with these lines: ‘I’ll go where there are no slaves, tyrants or hangmen; where faith does not kill and where God alone does reign.’ The last line of the poem says: ‘To die is to rest.’ Mi Ultimo Adios was the farewell poem of Rizal that originally had no title and was unsigned. This was believed as Rizal’s last will because he wrote it on the night before he was executed. Also through this poem, Rizal was giving his last message to his countrymen. For him, offering his life was the best way he could show his love for the country. Even he was going to die, he was not resentful instead he challenged the each of the Filipinos to serve and love our country. However he was also hopeful that his death would serve as inspiration to everyone. He encouraged the youth to continue to dream and fulfill it. The poem ‘My Last Farewell’ was Jose Rizal’s patriotic goodbyes, first to his country, his family and above all to his Heavenly Father. To his country he said, ‘With gladness do I give you my life.’ He tried to comfort his parents and dear ones with these lines: ‘I’ll go where there are no slaves, tyrants or hangmen; where faith does not kill and where God alone does reign.’ The last line of the poem says: ‘To die is to rest.’ Reference: http://kwentongebabuhayrizal.blogspot.com/2013/05/rizals-poem-my-last-farewell.html

“Night” by Elie Wiesel Essay

Elie Wiesel, a famed author and survivor of the Holocaust stated quite simply that anyone who witnessed a crime, and did nothing to stop it is just as guilty as the one committing it. Elie Wiesel learned a lot about man’s nature by surviving the Holocaust, but his statement about a bystander being just as guilty as the actual criminal is wrong. People are responsible for there own actions, and it is not fair to blame someone for a crime they did not commit, whether they could have done something to stop it or not. During the Holocaust there were over 6 million people persecuted, but there were many more silent bystanders who were unable to do anything because they feared for their lives. It is human nature to look after your own wellbeing and those closest to you, and many people felt if they tried to do something to stop the persecution of Jews it would endanger them in one way or another. In some cases somebody can witness a horrible atrocity, but have no power to stop it. Elie wrote in his book about how he and his fellow Jews were forced to watch the hanging of a young and innocent child by the S.S. The Jews that witnessed the hanging of the boy were all silent bystanders who, according to Elie, should be punished in the same manner that the executioner was. This shows how wrong Elie’s judgment is. The Jews were unable to do anything to help the boy for fear of their own lives, people cannot be blamed for their most fundamental and primitive instinct which is self preservation. Elie Wiesel experienced a lot of pain and suffering during the Holocaust, but the silent bystanders cannot be punished the same way the actual criminal is no matter what the circumstance is. If Elie truly believes that a silent bystander is just as guilty as a criminal, then that would mean that he is guilty of hanging a young innocent boy and deserves to be killed or sent to prison. Although it’s easy to see where Elie’s statement is coming from and why he chose to make it, it is clear that he made his statement more out of emotion than actual logic. I disagree with his judgment because silent bystanders do not always have the power to stop or intervene with the crime without endangering themselves.

Corporate Fraud in Richards Letter Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Corporate Fraud in Richards Letter - Essay Example The seriousness of Richard’s action against Richard, as the global head of sales, in the Computer Associates Corporation, he was involved in various acts, which affected his responsibilities in the company. One of his actions was the facilitation of an extension of the fiscal quarter (Soltes 4). This was indeed serious since it affected the reporting of the other fiscal quarters. The effectiveness of the information reported by extension of a fiscal quarter would be affected. Richard was also accused of allowing his subordinates to obtain contracts after the end of a fiscal quarter (Soltes 4). This is serious because it will influence the accuracy of the financial reports used by the stakeholders. The accuracy of financial information for the organization is remarkably essential for both the management and other stakeholders involved such as the investors. Inaccurate financial information may affect the expectations of the prospecting investors and shareholders of the organiza tion. It is better for an organization to give accurate financial information rather than falsehood representation. Information represented falsely can lead to extortion of investors emanating from misleading financial information. ... Although the actions of Richard emanated from the company’s culture of maintaining its performance, the actions of Richard did not follow ethical standards. When proper accounting approaches according to GAAP are used, accurate and efficient financial information is obtained. The chief reason for carrying out investigations on Computer Associates Company was because SEC doubted the accounting reporting of the company. When GAAP approaches are not used in a company’s financial reporting, it is most likely that the company’s financial reporting would have problems. For instance, one of the GAAP approaches is the matching principle, where revenues are recognized in the period of their earning or in the period when expenses that match the revenues are paid. In Computer Associates Company, there was a problem regarding the recognition of revenues. It was noted that; some of the contracts were signed after the last day of a fiscal quarter. This had an impact on the rec ognition of revenues since revenues obtained from the contracts signed after the end of a trading quarter, could either be related to the first quarter or the following fiscal quarter. Falling of stocks by 42% and fall in expected financial results in the first quarter of 2001 made SEC notice that some accounting procedures of the company were not proper (Soltes 3). If the company achieved the same accounting results through GAAP, it would have implied that there could be other contributing factors other than the use of wrong accounting principles. For instance, there could be a misappropriation of funds, which could also be investigated by the relevant authorities.  

Measures of Working Capital Management Efficiency and Their Essay

Measures of Working Capital Management Efficiency and Their Relationship to Corporate Profitability - Essay Example Smith (1980) first signaled the importance of the trade-offs between the dual goals of working capital management, i.e., liquidity and profitability. In other words, decisions that tend to maximize profitability tend not to maximize the chances of adequate liquidity. Conversely, focusing almost entirely on liquidity will tend to reduce the potential profitability of the company. The most conventional measures of corporate liquidity are the current ratio and the quick ratio. Because of the static nature, their adequacy in examining a firm's efficiency in managing its working capital has been questioned by many authors (see, for example, Emery, 1984; and Kamath, 1989). Liquidity for the on-going firm is not really dependent on the liquidation value of its assets but rather on the operating cash flow generated by those assets. Gitman (1974) introduced the cash cycle concept as a crucial element in working capital management. The total cash cycle is defined as the number of days from the time the firm pays for its purchases of the most basic form of inventory to the time the firm collects for the sale of its finished product. Richards and Laughlin (1980) operationalized the cash cycle concept by reflecting the net time interval between cash expenditures on purchases and the ultimate recovery of cash receipts from product sales. The Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) i s an additive measure of the number of days funds are committed to inventories and receivables less the number of days payments are deferred to suppliers. Gentry, Vaidyanathan, and Lee (1990) developed a modified version of the CCC called the Weighted Cash Conversion Cycle (WCCC), which scales the timing by the amount of funds in each step of the cycle. The weights are calculated by dividing the amount of cash tied up in each component by the final value of the component. Therefore, the WCCC includes both the number of days and the amount of funds that are tied up at each stage of the cash cycle. The Net Trade Cycle Although the WCCC provides a better appreciation of the complexities of the cash cycle, in this study, we use the Net Trade Cycle (NTC). First, the break-up of inventories into its three main components, i.e., raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods, is not readily available for the outside investigator; consequently we cannot calculate the WCCC. Second, the CCC is an additive concept, but unfortunately the denominators for the three components (i.e., number of days inventories, accounts receivable, and accounts payable) are all different, making addition not really useful. In contrast, the NTC is basically equal to the CCC whereby all three components are expressed as a percentage of sales. The NTC actually indicates the number of "days sales" the company has to finance its working capital under ceteris paribus conditions. This instrument provides an easy estimate for additional financing needs with regard to working capital expressed as a function of the projected sales growth. For example, assuming that Wal-Mart's sales would again grow with 13% during 1996 as they did over 1995, and assuming the same 40 days NTC, this would imply a $1.19 billion financing need just for

Police in New Orleans Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Police in New Orleans - Essay Example In 2002 and 2003, the state reported highest number of homicide cases. The law enforcement agencies are criticized for their failure to protect and safeguard the lives and properties of the citizens. Poverty is considered to be the major reason behind the involvement of the police into corrupt practices, the official poverty rate of the state is 28%, more than 25% of the residents of New Orleans, which include large number of police officials, earn less than $20,000. The Katrina episode brought the inefficiency and incompetence of the police officials evident, in the Times Picayune edition it was reported that, "Neighbors in the area near Hickory and Short Streets Uptown said a body has been floating nearby in five feet of water since the unidentified man was shot five times on Monday. Neighbors said the shooting was reported, but police and other officials apparently have been unable to respond" (Nicole Gelinas, 2005). The New Orleans police was previously considered to competent force, in mid 1990s the former commissioner Richard Pennington struggled hard and was successful in reducing the crime rate. However, since Pennington's departure, the crime rates have risen significantly. The New Orleans police department is considered as corrupt, brutal and an incompetent institution and the Katrina episode turned the situation worst. The police have been involved in differe... The investigations concluded that more than 12 officers were involved in the alleged practices of their involvement in looting. More than 250 police officers i.e. 15 percent of the police force faced disciplinary motions against them for their unreported absence during and post Katrina disaster (Associated Press). The police department was reportedly accused of violence and brutality, and the senior police officials personally involved themselves for the clarity and investigation of the allegations. In one of the cases, an officer's wife lodged complain for being physical tortured by three police officers, who penetrated into her house without any warrant. The police authority launched the investigation instantly, and three officers were suspended with immediate notification. According to Police Supt. Warren Riley, 'We take our integrity very, very seriously'(Hampton, 2005). There were certain other accusations, in many of the crimes the police officials were caught red-handed. In one of the cases the police officials interrogated 12 officials for looting a market. The accused were traced through the installed security camera. The senior police officials were frank enough to confirm the allegations, and promised 'swift and decisive' actions against the accused, the senior officials reported th at, 'There is zero tolerance for misconduct or unprofessional attitude by any member of this department'. (Hampton, 2005) The police authorities did take considerable remedial measures to combat the allegations of corruptions. The police department revised their infrastructure, and the federal government provided the required resources for the up gradation of the services. The police department adopted

The world rate of diabetes keeps increasing mainly because of physical Research Paper

The world rate of diabetes keeps increasing mainly because of physical activities, high rate of stress, and high rate of obesity - Research Paper Example The deficit indicates an increase of 250 million people in a span of 24 years (McClaughlyn 1). The data shows a consistent increase in diabetes because of physical activities, high rate of stress and an elevated rate of obesity. Lack of insulin resulting from destruction of insulting secreting beta cells in the pancreas causes diabetes. An individual’s white blood cells attacks and destroys the beta cells rendering it unproductive in the protection against bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. The condition frequently attacks children and young adults. Heredity plays a fundamental role in determining the manifestation of the disease. The parents pass the instructional genes making proteins essential body cell functions to their children. The genes determine the body’s susceptibility to and defense against type 1 diabetes. The corrective mechanism for this condition involves daily injections of insulin to make the victim survive. Lack of physical activities poses an influence in the rate of diabetes manifestation. Without sufficient involvement in physical activities, one develops conditions of overweight and obesity, which ultimately leads to the acquisition of Type 2 Diabetes. Overweight and obesity result from an imbalance occurring between caloric intake and burn out physical activities. The conditions cause insulin resistance that yields Type 2 Obesity. When a person has excess abdominal fats, he or she is at a major risk for insulin resistance and remains vulnerable to attack by other illnesses including heart diseases and blood pressure. High rate of stress enhances the prevalence of diabetes. Stress induces mental stress leading to the general unhappiness of the victims. The unhappiness and unstable mental condition lowers the productivity of individuals influencing the state’s economy negatively. Elevated levels of stress and mental upset indirectly affect an individual’s blood sugar levels making the affected to forget the usual diabetes

Italy Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces Term Paper

Italy Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces - Term Paper Example New Europe shares 3 common divisors: Hellenism, Germanic migration and Christianity. The Germanic who ran into the Roman Empire about the 1st century A.D. was changed to Christianity [Catholicism] in final years of Western Roman Empire. In 800 A.D. the pope laurelled Karl [Karl der Grosse], the king of Germanic Frank, as the Emperor of Western Roman Empire. Karl’s enthronement was a historical milepost intending that the Rome society which transmitted Hellenism Culture was mixed with the Teutonic by Christianity. Thenceforth Western Roman Empire was separated into 3 different territories, inherited by Karl’s 3 grandkids severally, and they turned the source of present Germany, France, and Italy. 2 sources of the European centripetal force are in general recognized to have motivated the European conjugation following the World War II: 3 common divisors [Hellenism, Christianity and Germanic attitude which Europe has been dealing after the fourth century, and balancing of Germany and France which had been in opposition for numerous years. However 3 European common divisors never exist in parallel mode; they made multilayer structures, lapping in numerous layers in strain relations. Likewise, Germany-France association had formerly been under the significance of such multilevel constructions even earlier than the enthronement of Karl, whom both France and Germany admire as the founder of a nation. Then how and when such multilevel constructions were made and what do they do to the conjugation of Europe today? Let’s take a nearer look. Chapter II refines on how centripetal forces were integrated into multilevel shapes.

Facial Expression Categorization by Chimpanzees Using Standardized Essay

Facial Expression Categorization by Chimpanzees Using Standardized Stimuli - Essay Example Four experiments were conducted onchimpanzees using a set of standardized, prototypical stimuli created using the newChimpFACS coding system. 1) The first experiment was to determine whether chimpanzees could discriminate the3D facial expression figures in a MOT (matching-to-sample). It was a reproduction ofthe study by study by Parr, Hopkins, et al. (1998) Procedure: Data were collected on experimenting 6 male and female chimpanzees aged11 years and above. They were tested in their home cage. The computer placed in anaudio visual cart was positioned about 30 cms from the cage and the eye of each animalwas about 40 cms from the computer. A joystick was attached protruding 4 cms into themesh. The experiments conducted were: 1) Initial Discrimination of Poser Stimuli 2)Inversion Effect for Facial expression 3) Examining Perceived Dissimilarity usingMultidimensional Scaling 4) Discriminating Facial Expressions using ComponentMovement. Experiment 1:The aim of this initial experiment was to verify whetherthe Poser facial expression stimuli were prominent for the subjects, and whether it couldbe discriminated at high levels of skill and that expressions were dealt with no evidentparent stimulus biases. The analysis showed that 'scream' was the most salientexpression to single out. In fact the subjects reached the final testing criteria for screamsin minimum time. Experiment 2:Experiment 2 revealed a significant inversion effect suggesting a generalconfigural processing strategy for all expressions. Experiment 3:Subjects' pattern of error when differentiating all expressions. Apart from screams and pant-hoots showed much difference based on the identity of thefoil expression. They share the majority of their individual component movements, suchas the bared-teeth display, the presence of these similarities did little to confuseperformance. The MDS analysis provides a statistical interpretation of howexpressions were categorized based on their perceived dissimilarity. Experiment 4:The results showed that for each facial expression, at least one component movement wasseen to

Global economic development Essay Example for Free

Global economic development Essay Evaluation of Gwlad’s position within the global economic environment Swot analysis (Hewings, 1995) Strengths – Gwlad as a country should focus on its administrative strength in the public sector. This would allow the country to delivery better services to the public in terms of quick processing of documentary and information needed by the citizens. Secondly, the country has seems to be one of the states in Western Europe which has highest number of population with diverse cultural activities. The Gwlad country’s population diverse cultural work attracts a number of tourists. Weakness- the country offers low level services. It also shows that it has low manufacturing productions. In the overall results, the country has not developed to high production scale hence there is relatively low gross domestic productivity per head. Threats-the fact that the country has no ties with the other neighboring countries is vulnerable to incur high import and exports taxes. Other threats that may exits are those associated with shortages of vital good which are not produced locally. Opportunities- the country being in the region of Western Europe is most likely to be having advanced technology. This means that the wealthy in technology based activity can be worked to increase both the level of manufacturing as well as GDP per head within the country. Suggested policies to follow (Trogen, 1999) Technological policy- the group needs to utilize this policy in curbing the problem associated with the low productivity. In such a policy, the teams must emphasis both on innovation and invention work. Still many efforts should seek technical assistance from part of the globe where possible. Competition policy- in every kind of economic growth of region, amicable environment which allows competition is a must for spurring economic growth and development. This means that the local competition environment should be bestowed to all potential citizens in every particular sector of production. Apart from the local competitors, the policy should encompass other issues that would allow the external competition as part of initiating news ways of economic growth. activity2: yes! The issues that Dai has identified part of the main issues to look when deciding, marketing of Gwlad. It is clear that Dai has taken location, distance and labor as the main factors to consider in this marketing strategy. However, it should be known that security and resources available within the country plays important role in economic developments. Furthermore, the means of communicating available and the accessibility of they location goes hand in hand in determining the attraction external investors to come and invest in a particulars region. Overall, it would be very important to first consider the costs involved in the marketing of the Gwlad to the external world. While business activities are diverse, they entail a lot of interwoven interaction of many sectors. Any decision made within the government directly and indirectly affects the performance of the business. This form the fundamental issues as the governance procedure are final on business prosperity or failure. Hence, incentives and subsidiaries that are offered by the government in Gwlad perhaps would make the citizens and the foreigners’ interest to invest much aroused. Politics and policies enacted in the Gwlad also have enormous impact to business. Services and the rate at which they are available to interested business operators are also major part of marketing the state. This is because delay and bureaucracies in service and information acquisition are both derailing factors in business operations. Activity 3- (Meier, 2004): (I)-no! I do not agree that technological advances are the only key factors to economic development. There are other issues which are also of great importance. This is because economic development focuses on three or more area in its development. One of the focuses is the government policies. In such a field, economist examines issues which are concerned with price stabilities, employment and taxation as well as the policies set to have sustainable growth. as the economic development protocols are integrations of several factors, government operates on many areas which are directly in connection with economic development such monetary policies, trade transaction and taxation policies together with regulation pertaining to financial institutions. The second major area determining the economic development of a place or region is the manner in which policies dealing with services and infrastructures are set. These include highways, housing, security and still parks. Thirdly and the final section in which economic developments is determined is directed to policies of job creation, retention and expansion, technology transfers and marketing as well as neighborhood development. In such consideration, it is vivid that the economic development is not achieved only through technology advancement. Certain factors are physical factors which are needed for the operations of certain economical activities. Other factors are human based availabilities like policy making that affects the economic growth of an area. For instance, trade restriction may be major factor contributing to low rates of economic developments due to lack of competitive environments. Abolition o such trade restrictions create a better environment for potential foreign investors. Financial factors have been seen as prominent factors that enable economic developments as can be revealed in most developing and underdeveloped countries. Their economics developed rates are not associated with inadequate funding for projects based on economic development and projects on research work which brings about technical advances. Thus, human policy factors, financial status factors and technical factors are all attribute to economic development As from the above revelation, I do not agree the three sectors are the core that economic policy should concentrate in. Energy; environmental, telecommunication and ICT are not the core that can bring economic growth in a country without integrating changes in governance. Management of any organization/ institutions is vital. Thus the inclusion of effective management and services delivery would enhance proper utilization of the resources available in the three sectors which would lead to economic growth. Activity4-(Isard, 1985): analysis of inward investment attraction, domestic company development and combination strategies Inward investment Strengths- depending on the financial ability of the surrounding neighbor countries, this form one of the greatest strong hold in which the foreigners can capitalized in. this means that they would be able to provided financial services and their products. Weakness- the fact that the country has got no ties in trade transactions such as free trades areas with the neighboring states, many inwards investments are likely to be heavily taxed and barred in their operations. Generally, unfair treatment to the inward investors is likely to cause low rate of investment. Opportunities- the fact that most neighbors have advanced technology and also they are able to having greater GDP than the Gwlad, it means that the inwards investment would be able to replicate similar productivity phenomenon making trading a competitive issue in the country. This means that the inward investors would enjoy the advantages of large scale production (Pleeter,1990) Threats- following the inwards investors interacting with the locals, there is that possible of technology transfer which the local would gain an advantage of learning the new techniques and therefore begin producing local products that would halt the utilization of the investors’s products Domestic company development: strength- the country seems to be lagging behind in all the areas. This implies it has very limited strengths on which it can take an advantage over its neighbors. (Peterson, 2001) Weakness- the country is portrayed to lag behind in general productivity which implies that their is low trade activities in the regions Opportunities- the country having a score of learned individuals within its boundaries can be utilized both in the management level to bring technology to its required standards enhancing production which is a core to level of trade activities in country. Threats- the domestic company development are likely to be threaten when the country goes to inwards investment. The inward investors being more competitive than the domestic companies would render the local companies uncompetitive in terms of quality of products, price and in marketing strategies. For the above consideration of the analysis, I would choose the combined strategy the main reason for choosing this particular mode is because, with proper policy formulation and enactment for both internal and external investor companies, there are high chances of mutual benefits. Technology advancement, financial investment availability leading to higher production of the products would enhance the general growth of the economy of the country. Activity 5:- (Bulmer-Thomas, 1992, Leistritz, 1991): the GDEAD’s members are supposed to come up with policies which would enable low cost in the supply chains. These policies includes:- The policy of strategic vision and concrete actions in cooperating in the supply of the material and the distribution of the products to all parts on the country Reduction of taxes in the products produced locally the investors Development of local infrastructures that will enhance logistics from one area to another Recruitment and training of human resources to enable smooth distribution of the products Policies to enable persuasion of U. S multinationals in financing, marketing and RD in Gwlad The GDEAD must come with policy that allows globalization of market in Gwlad The team should use merger systems of the a few industries so that they begin venturing in to the same market in which the multinationals are operating to break monopoly of the U. S automotive companies. The team should advocate for new methods of technology in information and communication to enhance global advertising both from local and multinational companies. Activity 6:- (Dewhurst, 1991) Pros of the EU are that the EU members have several methods in which its negotiations and terms are based. First, the EU group has strong negotiating power than any other union. This means that the pooling together of efforts in the negotiating process makes the members to have great influence in international trade. Its members are said to be first in the leading in foreign direct investment. The united stated are depicted as the second while they remain the first for foreign investment. While the EU operations are undertaken within the 130 countries, it commands a relative open economy that accounts over 14% of the international trade of its gross domestic products. In comparison with the United States gross domestic products, it commands of 12%. It implies that the EU association with the Gwlads is of more advantageous than joining any other of the above state. (Bull, 1995) I would make arrangements of integration type in joining EU for the Gwlad. This because the EU integration would protect the local first and then from the integration the other collaborating states would have an influence in Gwlad in political, security, technology and other areas in which economic issues are connected. He Gwlad would be changed in its institutions through the established rules and regulations of the EU integration that sets the culture and philosophical basis of government as well as other authoritative bodies which could change economic Institutions. However, free trade would definitely bring in unfair competitions to the locals industries and communities leading to the poorly performing ones. (Dewhurst, 1991) Activity7:- (Grady, 1989) The clusters economic development established in this region is not of best nature. Locating an economic zone far 100km from each other is like creation of monopoly of the various institutions established. Secondly, the interaction of the various institutions when they are far from one and yet they are no quicker means of communication implies less information transfers/ ineffectiveness or delay actions would be frequent. This implies especial in the health, bioscience, financial services/ products and professional services. Similar disadvantages would exist in creative, automotive and aerospace zone. However, the distance would be of advantage to automotive and aerospace in advancing the technological world as this would be determined by increased needs to travel from one zone to another. In organizing the above sectors, I will use different policy as they all differ in the application of creating and reduction economic growth. While the bioscience and the health sectors are there for the purpose of ensuring fitness of the community, the automotives and aerospace are established for saving time in production. Thus health and bioscience would policies towards health facilities and proper nutrition while the latter two would venture policy on technology of speedy safer means. Activity8:- (Grady, 1989, Brace, 1993) Costs and benefits of meeting the demands of the aerospace industry The costs of the meeting the demands of the aerospace industry involves the productions costs. This would require importation of new materials for the manufacture of the aerospace device. Second is the maintenance cost, which will be cut through the use of the correct quality materials. Thirdly is the training cost which will be an essence in having potential skilled human resources and engineers who work on the technological manufacture of the aero plane as well As maintaining them. Finally, the country would have to invest in R D that would enhance development of modern aerospace using the most advanced technologies than any other competing companies Suggested policy to GDEAD: (Hunter, 1999, Walsh, 1996) The GDEAD should come u p with a policy for which given the current financial situation, it would be able to meet the same demands, but through institution establishment and collaboration with the industry, it would support them in the research work. Reference: Brace, P. (1993). State government and economic performance: Johns Bull, A. (1995): The economics of travel and tourism: Longman. Bulmer-Thomas, V. (1992): Input-output analysis in developing countries: Wiley Dewhurst, J. (1991): Regional input-output modeling / new development and interpretation: Avebury Grady, D. (1989): Governors and economic development policy: vol. 17, pp 870-84 Hewings, G. (1995): Regional input-output analysis, Beverly Hills: Sage Publications Hopkins University Press Hunter, K. (1999): Interest groups and state economic development policies: Praeger Publishers Isard, W. (1985): Introduction to regional science: Prentice Hall. Leistritz, F. (1991): The socioeconomic impact of resource development: Westview Press. Meier, G. (2004): Leading issues in economic development. Oxford Peterson, W. (2001): technology, planning, and Development: Oxford University Press. Pleeter, Saul (1990). Economic impact analysis: Boston: Maritinus Nijhoff Publishing Trogen, P. (1999): Which economic development policies work: retrieved from http:// University Press Walsh, R. (1996): Recreation economic decisions: Venture Publishing, Inc www. spaef. com, on 1st December 2008

An Analysis Of A Mergers Profitability

An Analysis Of A Mergers Profitability Abstract Introduction In the last few years we have observed a revived surge in the number of mergers. They are more often observed in countries with better accounting standards. Companies undergo mergers for a number of reasons. The primary reason is the proper allocation of resources and thus, increasing cost efficiency. A small amount of research has been done in the past years analyzing the short and long term effects of mergers in creating value for the companies. It has been seen that most mergers result in failures but not much research has been done in analyzing the reasons behind it. My research would be based on few of the biggest mergers that have taken place in the last few years. Firstly, my analysis of a mergers profitability would be based on standard event study methodology. It would take into account the return to shareholders. Secondly, it would also aim to provide evidence regarding the signalling theory and the synergistic and the agency views. This would be based on an in-depth analys is of various determinants such as the excess returns around the announcement of the merger bid and around the termination of the merger and the significant differences in the responses of firms attempting focusing versus diversifying mergers respectively. Lastly, this would be followed by a thorough analysis of the valuation effects of mergers. There have been varied views but no one conclusion has been reached. I would thus, like to investigate deeper into it 2. Literature Review and Hypotheses Analysis revealed My research concentrates on the effects of a focusing and diversifying merger on the abnormal returns around the announcement period of the merger. The study by Delong (1999) can be seen as an extension to my research. He based his research on evaluating the stock pricing behaviour of the bidder and the target in bank mergers. He further studied the abnormal returns according to the nature of the merger i.e. focusing or diversifying. In my analysis, I take into account only activity focused mergers, whereas Delong (1999) considers mergers which focus on both activity and geography. His results show an enhancement in value of a focusing firm of about 2 % to 3 % as compared to a diversifying firm irrespective of the time period. On investigating further, he found that the relative market size of the target to the bidder and the pre-merger performance of the targets show an apparent relationship with the cumulative abnormal returns so calculated. Wong and Cheung (2009) analyse the changes in the stock prices of the bidding and target firms in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, following a merger or an acquisition announcement. It can be seen from their analysis that such an announcement yields positive results for the bidding firms but does not prove to be very beneficial for the target firms. Their hypotheses considered the consequences of the mode of payment, the type of acquisition and the type of the target firm on the stock pricing. Out of them only the second variable seems to have a direct effect on the post announcement returns of the bidding firm. Huang and Walkling (1987) conducted similar research by extracting a sample of acquisitions from the Wall Street Journal which consisted of all initial front-page acquisition announcements. But this, took into account slightly different variables as compared to the other analyses discussed above. They determined the effect of tender offers vs. mergers; cash offers vs stock offers and resisted offers vs. unresisted offers. Their analysis revealed higher abnormal returns for tender offers which were quite insignificant once the effect of the extent of resistance and the payment type were isolated from it. The deals which faced resistance during a merger or tender offer showed higher abnormal returns irrespective to the mode of payment. All the results obtained above were either insignificant or marginally significant, but the effects of the third variable i.e. the form of payment showed some concrete results. The cumulative abnormal returns obtained from cash offers were radically high er than those obtained from stock offer. This research carried out by Huang and Walkling gave quite a holistic overview of the effect of the announcement of an acquisition, as it took into consideration, variables which are affected by both the bidding and target firms decisions. All the literature discussed earlier in this paper, has illustrated some positive effects of an acquisition for both the bidders and the target firms. But, the analysis conducted by Bruner (2001) showed a little variation to the above. It suggested that only the target shareholders draw upon the benefits of the acquisition. No such profitable return is observed for the bidding firms. But, the combined returns of the bidder and the target yield positive results. The approach followed by Bruner differs significantly from most of the research discussed earlier. He measures the performance of a merger and acquisition based on the investors required returns. After observing the abnormal returns of the acquirer around the announcement date of the merger as per my research, the most obvious next step would be to analyse the long term effects of the merger. Various studies have been done in order to rightfully determine the outcome .The study by Asquith (1983) showed drastic negative returns after about three years of the merger. One of the best analyses that I found was by Agrawal, Jaffe and Mandelkar (1992) in their paper ‘The Post-Merger Performance of Acquiring Firms: A Re-examination of an Anomaly. Their results are based on a thorough analysis of a number of mergers that took place from 1955 to 1987. They explored the effect of the size of the firm and its beta risk, and found a loss of 10 % in the total wealth of the acquiring firm, five years after the merger was completed. An attempt was also made to find the additional NPV which is not captured by the announcement returns analysis. But, it was seen that the modification of t he market was similar for both the announcement and post merger analyses. Cole et al (2006) Investigate a number of unsuccessful mergers in order to determine if they create or destroy value for acquirers by using mainly two approaches. Their signalling approaches show that the value of the bidding firm is reduced by a large margin in the market, which is a form of a punishment for considering the acquisition of a low NPV project. They also find that horizontal mergers yield negative CAR. Hypothesis 1: The average abnormal returns (AAR) yield positive results for all sub-periods in the event Hypothesis 2: The Cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR) yield positive results for all sub-periods in the event. Hypothesis 3: The type of acquisition, kind of acquisition, the mode of payment and the type of target firms affects the value of the cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) around the announcement day t=0 in the event. Take into account focusing and diversifying 3. Methodology We begin by classifying the effective sample into two categories – Focusing and Diversifying. The classification approach has been adopted by Mann and Sicherman (1991).This can be done by comparing the two-digit SIC Codes of the acquirer and the target firm respectively. If both the firms involved in a deal have the same two-digit SIC Code, it can be classified as a focusing acquisition, whereas, if both firms have different codes, it is classified as a diversifying acquisition. Now we progress towards analysing the cumulative value created by a focusing and diversifying acquisition around the announcement date, using a standard event-study methodology described by MacKinlay (1997), Huang and Walkling (1987) and Wong and Cheung (2009). The Market Return Model is used in this case, to calculate the abnormal returns of the sample using a linear relationship between stock returns and market return. Rit = ÃŽ ±i + ÃŽ ²iRmt + ÃŽ µit (1) E (ÃŽ µit = 0) var (ÃŽ µit) = ÏÆ'ÃŽ µt2 Where: Rit : Return on security i on day t Rmt : Return on market portfolio on day t ÃŽ µit : Zero mean disturbance term ÃŽ ±i, : expected value of the difference between Ri and ÃŽ ²iRmt ÃŽ ²i : covariance between Rit and Rmt divided by the variance of Rmt ÏÆ'ÃŽ µt2 : variance of the error term We use the market model instead of the constant mean return model as it gives us a more accurate judgement of the effect of the event. This is true as it does not take into account the variation of the market return , thus, giving us more accurate abnormal returns. ( if any words remain add how to calculate rit and rmt) In order to calculate the abnormal returns, we use the market model parameter estimates. ^ ^ ARit = Rit – (ÃŽ ±i + ÃŽ ²iRmt) (2) Where: ARit : the abnormal return for security i on day t ^ ^ ÃŽ ±i and ÃŽ ²i : estimates of ÃŽ ±i and ÃŽ ²i In order to calculate the abnormal returns we use a maximum of 351 daily observations (Huang and Walkling, 1987). We start collecting data from t -300 to t +50 days, with t = 0 being the announcement date of the acquisition. These 351 days include non-trading days as well. In other words, we actually gather data from t -214 to t +36, taking only trading days into account. We use different time periods of an event for a complete comparative analysis of abnormal returns in each sub period which is described as below: Event period : day t -10 → day t +30 (41 days) Pre-announcement period : day t -10 → day t -2 ( 9 days) Announcement period : day t -1 → day t 0 ( 2 days) Post Announcement Period : day t +1 → day t +30 (30 days) diagram To analyse the effect of the event , we now calculate the average abnormal return (AAR) for all the securities for a time period t. AAR is the sum of all abnormal returns of firms on day t divided by N( the number of firms): (3) The t statistic, à Ã¢â‚¬ ¢, is calculated by dividing AARt by the standard deviation of the average abnormal returns. This is final step of the model, which helps in determining the significance of the AARt in the event period. (4) While calculating the standard error, an estimator is used to calculate the variance of the abnormal returns in the absence of but in this case we use the sample variance measure of that we derive from the market model regression. The estimator is as follows: In order to establish a more holistic viewpoint, the cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR) are calculated: Where T1 to T2 is the duration of the event in which the AARt is collected. According to our hypotheses we have to calculate one more variable, the cumulative average abnormal return (CAAR) over a certain period. In order to find out the significance of CAAR we calculate its t statistic as follows: Where var(CAAR) is the variance of the cumulative average abnormal returns. We could use a variety of formulas to calculate the standard deviation and t statistic such as those described in Campbell, Lo and MacKinlay (1997) and Brown and Warner (1985). But we calculate using the method adopted by Kothari and Warner (1985): Where: : Variance of the average abnormal return for one period. L : Longer the L, the higher is the variance of CAAR To test the third hypothesis, another variable is taken into consideration the Cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). We now develop a regression model using dummy variables to test the effect of the type of acquisition, kind of acquisition, the type of the target firm and the mode of payment on the CAR of the acquirers. The control variables are the relative market size of the market value of the target to acquirer (RMV) and the market size of the acquiring firm (M) (Wong and Cheung, 2009). Where: : Cumulative abnormal return from day d1 → day d2 D1 : 1 if the type is acquisition D1 : 0 otherwise i.e. merger D2 : 1 if it is focusing D2 : 0 otherwise i.e. diversifying D3 : 1 if target firm is private D3 : 0 otherwise i.e. public D4 : 1 if mode of payment is cash D4 : 0 otherwise i.e. stock M : Market Value of the acquiring firm=Number of outstanding share *closing price on the announcement date The tests of hypotheses 1, 2 and 3 can be described as the following tests: H1 : H0 : AARt = 0 H1: AARt ≠  0 H2 : H0 : CAARt = 0 H1: CAARt ≠  0 H3 : H3i :ÃŽ ²1 = 0 (Acquisitions vs. Mergers) H3ii :ÃŽ ²2 = 0 (Focusing vs. Diversifying) H3iii :ÃŽ ²3 = 0 (Public vs. Private target firms) H3iv :ÃŽ ²4 = 0 (Cash offer vs. Share offer) 4. Data Description The number of mergers and acquisitions carried out in India has been quite extensive. Hence, certain criterion has been used to select a suitable sample. The deals carried out with Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deustche Bank and Citi as their financial advisors should be included. These banks have been chosen as they deal with high valued mergers which are perfect for highlighting the true effects of a focusing or diversifying merger. All deals should have been completed from January, 2003 to March, 2010. The sample consists of only 178 completed transactions. All the acquirer firms must be publicly listed in the Bombay Stock Exchange. The SIC Codes for the target and acquirer should be available in the CRSP Database. This helps in dividing the sample into focusing and diversifying mergers. Because of these restrictions, the sample reduces to 70 firms, three of which have some information missing regarding the stock returns etc and hence our effective sample is 67. It has been further classified into 44 focusing and 23 diversifying deals. Using only publicly listed firms enables us to extract information about these deals such as – announcement dates, termination dates, stock returns, market returns etc. from the Thomson One database, company websites and the Bombay Stock Exchange. The Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitivity Index or the BSE Sensex (30) has been used to gather the market returns of the firms.

Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip: An Analysis

Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip: An Analysis The Role of Imagination in Lloyd Jones’  Mister Pip  and Its Analysis In Terms Of Reader-Oriented Criticism The imaginative and creative aspects of literature are essentials components of the word literature itself. Literature is the product of human being’s imagination and intellect so through literature we can live more than one life. Imagination can be expressed as a mental faculty which all people have and as an important principle in literary theory. Only imagination provides the possibility to take us to times, places and realities that we have not lived before.  Lloyd Jones’  Mister Pip  won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Jones shows us that literature provides an escape from real life through imagination and it also allows entrance to another world escaping from oppressive political regimes in his novel  Mister Pip. In this essay,  Mister Pip  will be analyzed in terms of the role of imagination and reader – oriented criticism. The novel  Mister Pip  by Lloyd Jones is set in the early 1990s on Bougainville Island in the Ocean, in the middle of a civil war. There is a blockade around the island, and the majority of natives and non-natives have gone. The last white man on the island, Mr Watts, has stayed behind with his native wife and he decides to teach the children. The only thing he knows, is Charles Dickens’s  Great Expectations. He reads the novel to them and the children are greatly affected by it. When the children carry on the story to their parents, and soldiers and rebels invade the village, a misunderstanding due to the novel results in the destruction of the village. In  Mister Pip, we can realize that thanks to imagination an author and reader are able to deal with, judge, and enjoy literature. Literary works give the possibility of manifold inner experiences, because imagination enables the author to create and the reader to follow literary realities on different levels. According to Albert Einstein, â€Å"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.† In  Mister Pip, although Mr. Watts has the only textbook which is Dicken’s Great Expectations, he gives his students more than knowledge by showing the true way to reach their imagination. Besides, if we have looked at the Dictionary of Psychology, we actually understand what imagination is. It is â€Å"the reorganization of data derived from past experiences, with new relations, into present ideational experience.† In other words it’s the ability to take old datas with some new datas mixed in and make a picture in your mind. We can divide imagination into three basic types: Imitative imagination, creative imagination and literary imagination. Imitative imagination is apparently the mind’s reconstruction of the past. People use their brains to conceptualize something they have experienced and recreate it. In  Mister Pip, we can illustrate this imitative imagination that when the copy of  Great Expectations  which the only thing that the children have is stolen, the children are invited to recreate the text from the fragments they can remember. On the other hand, creative imagination involves mental imagery, which is based on past images or experiences to construct feelings or conditions that we have never experienced before. The island children discover the Great Expectations by means of Mr. Watts and for them the novel provides an imaginative escape route from their daily realities to a new friend for their adventures and confidences. Moreover, at the end of the novel, Matilda, the protagonist, comments on her life with these following sentences : People sometimes ask me â€Å"Why Dickens?† which I always take to be a gentle rebuke. I point to the one book that supplied me with another world at a time when it was desperately needed. It gave me a friend in Pip. It taught me you can slip under the skin of another just as easily as your own, even when that skin is white and belongs to a boy alive in Dickens’ England. Now if that isn’t an act of magic I don’t know what is. (Jones 199) She reveals her success in becoming a scholar and a Dickens expert and concludes her narrative by emphasizing the power of literature to offer escape and solace in the worst of times.  Great Expectations  has a long-lasting influence on her, and considering the novel as a whole, it is Dickens’ novel that prompts her to look back and write her life story. She also learns that â€Å"escape† can be achieved imaginatively, that one can furnish an alternative world in one’s own mind. Imagination also enables Matilda to learn that things could change and even a person can change into something because literature has a transformative power. Literature of significance says to us, â€Å"Change your life†. An intelligent voice appeals to our way of thinking and feeling and proposes a challenge. How does this affect the possibilities in your life? Steiner (142) remarks on the indiscretion of serious art; it invades our last privacies and exposes our unknown motives and belief. [] When we are emotionally engaged, our minds are more attentive and our opportunity for learning is heightened. Emotions code the information we are receiving and it enters more deeply into our awareness. When we are moved by what we read, we respond, either in thinking, discussions with others, or sometimes in writing our own stories. Our interpretation is a moral act. We find that our response to what is on the page is immediate, no matter how long ago the author laid down her words. With time and experience in reading, we form an intensity of sight, what we might call a literary intelligence.(Susan Barber, 2005) Based on the quotation above, we can grasp this idea that any author and reader can see the literary or possible world in reference to their personal realities by appealing to the imagination. Whether literature works best as an agent for social change or whether it is just entertainment, art is still able to delight us through contact with the author’s creativity and imagination. In addition, Lloyd Jones said in an interview that he chose to introduce it, rather than any other classic novel, because it would be â€Å"the perfect book [†¦] to position in a society that was broken down and [†¦] pulled apart by eternal strife and war. Here is [†¦] the role model, here is the possibil ity for you to think about your own life. You can reinvent yourselves† (Lloyd Jones Podcast) . In  Mister Pip, Matilda realizes that the characters of  Great Expectations  teach her to enter the soul of another, ultimately to imagine and the novel invites her to imagine another life and also Mr. Watts gives his students a friend: Pip and their imagination. At the beginning of the novel, Mr Watts promises that the children get acquainted with Mr Dickens, at the same time he opens up the classroom as a space of ambiguity, a place where he acknowledges differing opinions and the subjectivity of interpretation. He wants to show them that it is possible to change their lives because Pip did it and Mr. Watts did it, too. He intends to give the village children an alternative world to the one they live in: an imaginary world where everything is new and different, as opposed to their own world of constant fear. The children perceive  Great Expectations  with fascination and are open to the idea of the imagination. When the soldiers invade the island and are told that this new world is fictitious, they refuse to believe it because they are far away from this new world. The rebels, all of them teenagers, do not get to listen to  Great Expectations  but Mr. Watts tells them a made-up story about his life acting like Pip, a character of  Great Expectations  although it is fiction, they believe it to be a true story and are fascinated, reacting just like the village children initially reacted to  Great Expectations. All of them perceive it each in their own way. The world depicted in Mister Pip is one of Lloyd Jones’ imagination, because he has never been in Bougainville during the conflict. Moreover, Matilda’s imagination is so powerful that she believes her island will be saved and her life will change like Pip who is her childhood friend, however, when Matilda is a t the university, she reads  Great Expectations  once more but she interprets it quite differently.   Matilda temporarily reinvents herself, by starting a new life in Australia after leaving the island, but at the end of the novel she decides to return home. Her confronting the previous traumas will also be the subject matter of this article. Mr. Watts is somewhat similar to Pip, because he manages to move away from a situation he was unhappy in, and reinvent himself, just like Pip. However, his past continues to haunt him till his death. The novel affects people both positively and negatively. When the redskins have burnt down the village, Mr. Watts tries to comfort the children and himself by telling them that â€Å" we have all lost our possessions and many of us our homes, but these losses, severe though they may be, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations’’ (Jones 106). From this it is clear that fiction and the imagination work together to reinvent ourselves. In  Mister Pip,  Mr. Watts reads  Great Expectations  to his pupils in a different way and the characters in the novel understand it in a different way. A literary work can have more than one interpretation and each reader does not interpret in the same way. This is called reader-oriented criticism. According to the nineteenth-century essayist, novelist and literary critic Henry James, â€Å"this house represents the literary form-a story, a novel,a poem,or an essay-with each window being an individual reader’s distinct impression of that literary work†. Each person reads the same text but all will obtain different impression. Reader response criticism declares that the reader is just as much a producer of meaning as the text itself. Reader-response criticism began in the 1960s and 70s, particularly in America and Germany, in works byRoland Barthes, Norman Holland,Wolfgang Iser,Hans-Robert Jauss,Stanley Fish. Wolfang Iser, a German literary scholar, builds a reader oriented theory around the concepts of narrative. According to Iser’s gap theory and Rosenblatts’ transactional theory, no text can exist until either the reader or an interpretive community creates it and gaps mean the absent details and connections within a narrative that a reader must fill in or make up his or her own experiences. Iser also claims that â€Å"the reader is an active, essential player in the text’s interpretation, writing part of the text as the story is read and concretized and, indispensably, becoming its coauthor†. For Rosenblatts, â€Å"the text acts as a stimulus for eliciting various past experiences, thoughts and ideas from the reader, those found in both our everyday existence and in past reading e xperiences. Simultaneously, the text shapes the readers’ experiences by functioning as a blueprint, selecting, limiting and ordering those ideas that best conform to the text†. In this case,  Mister Pip  is an example novel which shows that a reader interprets the text in ways that reveal his or her identity and different readers produce different interpretations and even different texts. With this following quotation, we can openly comprehend that each reader should fill the gaps with his or her interpretation or imagination. Gist. This needed explaining. Mr. Watts put it this way.† If I say tree, I will think English oak, you will think palm tree. They are both trees. A palm and an oak both successfully describe what a tree is but they are different trees.† So this is what gist meant. We could fill in the gaps with our own worlds.(Jones 113) Based on the quotation above, we can realize that Mr. Watts teach to the children how to see and analyze something with their own eyes. An other important literary theorist, Norman Holland points out that the reader makes sense of the text by creating a meaningful unity out of its element. He also claims that if the facts of a text have satisfied the reader’s ego, the reader readily projects her or his fears and wishes onto it. For him, the text frees the reader to reexperience his or her self-defining fantasies and to hold their importance. For example, if we have deeply looked at the novel, we see that through its plot, characters, technical and stylistic preferences, it makes the reader reconsider roles of literature. In The Fictive and the Imaginary (1993), Iser argues that literature has lost the quality to lead and improve the reader because media and schools have imposed established beliefs and fixed thoughts so Iser suggests that fiction and imaginary provides breaking the boundaries and overcoming these fixed ideas. In this following quotation, we can see how fiction and imagination provide a psychological escape from thoughts of daily life in a novel. Mr Watts had given us kids another piece of world. I found I could go back to it as often as I liked. What’s more, I could pick up any moment in the story. No. I was hearing someone give an account of themselves and all that had happened. I was still discovering my favourite bits. Pip in the graveyard surrounded by the headstones of his dead parents and five dead brothers ranked high. We knew about death-we had seen all those babies burried up on the hillside. Me and Pip had something else in common ; I was eleven when my father left,so neither of us really knew our fathers.(25) Dickens’ novel changes the way Matilda perceives her life and her surroundings, lets her to draw parallels between Pip and herself, and provides her with another world to which she can escape. Additionally, literature has the potential to open up our minds, not only to what is but to what could be. Like Iser, Stanley Fish, a contemporary reader oriented critic, argues that meaning inheres in the reader, not the text and the text is tabula rasa and the reader determines the form and content of the text. His theory is radical and controversial. He states that In the procedures I would urge, the readers activities are at the center of attention, where they are regarded not as leading to meaning but as having meaning.† He defends this idea because he believes that there is no stable basis for meaning. There is no correct interpretation that will always be true. Meaning does not exist in the text. It exists, rather, within the reader. From this following quotation, we can co mprehend that Matilda interprets her experiences in the light of reader-response criticism. By now I understood the importance of the forge in the book. The forge was home: it embraced all those things that give a life its shape. For me, it meant the bush tracks, the mountains that stood over us, the sea that sometimes ran away from us, it was the ripe smell of blood I could not get out of my nostrils since I saw Black with its belly ripped open. It was the hot sun. It was the fruits we ate, the fish, the nuts. The noises we heard at night. It was the earthy smell of the makeshift latrines. And the tall trees, which like the sea, sometimes looked eager to get away from us. It was the jungle and its constant reminder of how small you were, and how unimportant, compared to the giant trees and their canopy’s greed for sunlight. [] It was fear, and it was loss. (Jones 46) Based on the quotation above, Jones shows us that Reader-oriented criticism opens a new window to the readers and shows that the subjective experiences and imagination affect readers’ interpretations. We can comprehend from these lines that interpretations of each work change from person to person.   In conclusion,  Mister Pip  is a novel that shows how literature and imagination can change our lives for the better or for the worse. Matilda also shows the reader that it is possible to get lost in a fiction and by means of imagination we can start a new life. In the novel, Lloyd Jones gives us the fact that there is always hope in spite of our bad memories. Through reading we can imagine ourselves into someone else’s life and empathize with them and we start feeling as them, to see the world as they see it. So this essay will be helpful to understand that considering Reader-oriented criticism, everybody has a different interpretation about literary works and also through imagination each work can be invaluable for the reader to guide him/her in the way of life.    Works Cited Barber, Susan. The Importance of Developing the Feeling Function: How  Literature Can Help.  Sfu Ca. Apr 2005. Web. 17 Apr. 2014. Bressler,Charles E..  Literary Criticism.New Jersey:Pearson,2007.Print Daly, Sathyabhama. and Stephen Torre.â€Å"Ecosublimity in Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip†.  Townswille: James Cook UP,2011.Print. Dickens, Charles.  Great Expectations. New York: Collins Classics,2010. Print.  Jones, Lloyd.  Mister Pip.New Zealand:Penguin,2006.Print. . â€Å"Lloyd Jones Podcast.†Ã‚  Mister Pip – Random House Official Website. Web. 14  Sept. 2010. Audio. 13 Mar. 2014. Klein, Jà ¼rgen. Vera Damm and Angelika Giebeler. â€Å"An Outline of a Theory of Imagination.†Ã‚  Journal for General Philosophy of Science  14,1 (1983): 15-23.JSTOR. Web.10  November 2013. Mazzoni, Giuliana. and Amina Memon. â€Å"Imagination Can Create False Autobiographical  Memories.†Journal of Psychological Science,  14.2 (2003):186-188.  JSTOR. Web.10  November 2013. Quincey, Thomas De.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power.†Ã‚  Essays of  Yesterday and Today. L.Tinker, Harold. London: Macmillan,1934. 617-626. Print Robertson, Ian.  Opening the Mind’s Eye: How Images and Language Teach us How  to See. New York: St. Martin.2002.Print Taylor, Beverly . â€Å"Discovering New Pasts: Victorian Legacies in the Postcolonial Worlds of  Jack Maggs  and  Mister Pip. †Victorian Studies ,52,1,(2009):95-105.JSTOR.Web.11  November 2013. Tompkins, Jane P..Reader Response Criticism:From Formalism To Poststructuralism.  Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins UP, 1980.Print

Human-Animal Relationships :: Essays Papers

Human-Animal Relationships Animals can be perceived in many different ways. While some humans consider animals to be mindless machines programmed with instinct, others view them as spiritual creatures capable of coherent thought and emotions. I feel that animals are somewhere in the middle. Although they rely heavily on instinct, the ability to feel emotions shows that their mental capacity is not far from that of a human. Since animals, especially dogs, share similar emotions as people they to make great companions. Animals do show us how to love better, because their emotions are more pure than a human's. According to Mary Lou Randour, in "What Animals Can Teach Us About Spirituality", animals are spiritual companions to humans. She tells the story of a boy who, after murdering someone, receives a dog to care for as a form of therapy. The dog comforts him, and the teenager learns to love the animal over time. The boy's pet is "healing his soul" by teaching him how to love. Dogs give their masters unconditional love, never questioning the human's orders or disciplines. I thought the story of the dog appearing in the author's backyard as her dead grandfather was rather outlandish. All of Randour's examples of how animals influence our feelings were viable aside from the disappearing ghost dog. Although their minds are not as advanced as a human's, animals are still capable of thought. Frans de Waal, author of "The Whole Animal", feels that humans and animals are closely related, through anthropomorphism. I agree with anthropomorphism, but not with anthropodenial. I also disagree with Rene Descartes' statement that animals are machines, because just as humans have different individual personalities, animals of the same species also have different behavioral characteristics. For example, some cats are arrogant and rude, while others are kind and playful, just like people. Georgia, the chimpanzee who spit water on unsuspecting visitors, did not do this out of instinct. Instinct would have told her to swallow the water.

Parkinsons Disease Essay -- Health

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a striatal dopamine deficiency disorder as a consequence of neuronal loss in the substania nigra. It is named after James Parkinson, a British apothecary, who first fully documented its physical signs in 1817. Since then, significant advances have been made in our understanding of characteristic pathophysiology as well as in the medical treatment of different stages of PD. An overview of condition features in terms of epidemiology, manifestations, diagnosis and disease management will be discussed in this paper. I. Epidemiology Parkinson’s disease is a common form of Parkinsonism, affecting as many as one out of every hundred people aged 65 years and over. The disease prevalence increases with age, with approximately 2% of those older than 80 years having PD. It is estimated that the number of patients diagnosed with PD is around 110,000 in the UK. No significant gender predominance has been recognised in most epidemiological studies although some evidence implies that men are more likely to develop PD than their counterparts. Owning to population aging, the incidence of PD is anticipated to rise dramatically in the coming decades. Despite being the second most common neurodegenerative illness after Alzheimer’s disease, the cause of PD remains elusive. To date, a considerable amount of literature has suggested that the disorder may be precipitated by either or both genetic and environmental factors (e.g. ingestion or inhalation of a neurotoxin called MPTP (1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydro pyridine). II. Manifestations Parkinson’s disease is classically characterised by the tetrad of clinical features, as follows: bradykinesia or slowness of movement, rest tremor (usually described as pil... ...W, Poewe W, Stocchi F, et al. Rasagiline as an adjunct to levodopa in patients with Parkinson’s disease and motor fluctuations (LARGO, Lasting effect in Adjunct therapy with Rasagiline Given Once daily, study): a randomised, double-blind, parallel-group trial. The Lancet. 12;365(9463):947–54. 10. Rabey JM, Sagi I, Huberman M, Melamed E, Korczyn A, Giladi N, et al. Rasagiline mesylate, a new MAO-B inhibitor for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease: a double-blind study as adjunctive therapy to levodopa. Clin Neuropharmacol. 2000 Dec;23(6):324–30. 11. Oldfield V, Keating GM, Perry CM. Rasagiline: a review of its use in the management of Parkinson’s disease. Drugs. 2007;67(12):1725–47. 12. Chen JJ, Ly A-V. Rasagiline: A second-generation monoamine oxidase type-B inhibitor for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Am J Health Syst Pharm. 2006 May 15;63(10):915–28.

Media Analysis †The Apprentice Essay

The purpose of the introduction to The Apprentice is to introduce the programme to its audience; the main aim is to gain TV ratings so the first four minutes are crucial in drawing in the audiences’ attention and making the show interesting and appealing to the target audience so they continue to watch. There are many visual codes in the opening of the programme. The contestants are first introduced and the camera is watching them enter the city of London. All of the contestants are shown near or on some form of transport, this could symbolise how the best people have been chosen from all over the country to come to one business orientated and busy city to compete for one life changing journey. Furthermore, the journey is metaphorically amplified by the contestants carrying suitcases and walking forwards, this creates a sense of them embarking on a life changing journey together with only one outcome. This is anchored by the dialogue the contestants use, for example â€Å"I am a winner† this shows to the audience that this is going to be an intense battle to find the winner. The contestants are seen walking in a group together over a bridge, this could connote the ‘bridge to successes’ and they are walking over to the other side trying to gain the success that they want, which again signifies a journey and the camera movement used here is tracking the whole group so the audience know that they will be following them on the journey. The programme is set in London which is pragmatically suggesting this is the centre of business in the United Kingdom and that’s why they have gathered here. In the clip the audience are shown how busy the city is by the amount of transport and people, this could suggest that there is competition between the contestants and also competition in the business world. The scene is set at dawn this connotes the idea that business never rests in London and that the business world is awake and ready. There are also visual codes displayed by the characters that anchor business; firstly all of the contestants are dressed smart, in suits or skirt suits. They also all carry some form of briefcase which is stereotypically something that a business person has with them all the time. When the characters speak they pragmatically and stereotypically show that they are business minded people â€Å"I am the best† â€Å"I am what Alan Sugar is looking for† are examples of what are said and these are expressed in a very strong, arrogant and argumentative way. In the opening there is a point where the audience are shown Alan Sugar on top of a large building in the central of London looking out to the city which suggests his power, this is anchored by the camera shot used here which is a low angle, this connotes the idea that he is a powerful man and the centre of attention, the use of the camera movement ‘crab’ also anchors his power as it arcs around Alan Sugar so we are given a 360 degree view of him and the city. Sound is used to anchor Alan Sugar’s power throughout; the soundtrack and underscoring music builds up into a dramatic tension when he is talking to the contestants and when the camera is focusing on him. Furthermore, the iconic dialogue â€Å"you’re fired† is repeated more than once in the scene, something which is significant to his persona and something the audience recognise. This is reinforced with the crop shop of Alan Sugar’s hand pointing towards the fired contestant, in addition to this the crop shot also creates a sense of mystery as the audience are left unaware of the contestant that has been fired and who he is pointing at, so they are left wanting to watch the show with the suspense that all but one contestant will be fired and they can try judge who he will fire within the programme. The contestants are portrayed as weak when they are around Alan Sugar; there are lots of reaction shots used to show their expressions and reactions to the tasks and what Alan Sugar says to them, this shows his power over them and signifies the meaning of the programme and his role and the contestants’ role. The underscoring music also adjusts to the mood and atmosphere and is anchorage for what the contestants are portraying themselves as, at the beginning when the contestants are trying to display power then the music is louder and faster but when they are portrayed as more vulnerable facing Alan Sugar the music is quieter and slower and towards the end of the opening fades out into the beginning of the programme. I think that the opening scene of The Apprentice is very successful in fulfilling its purpose. I feel that it engages the audience by the visual codes and they all create a strong anchorage for what the programme is about. There are many different camera shots, angles and movements used which again draws in the audience’s attention and makes them want to carry on watching the programme. Finally, the mix of the soundtrack and underscoring music with the dialogue allow the opening to intensify reality and give an insight into the programme and also the contestants and Alan Sugar.

Differences Between Daisy and Brett Essay

Differences between Daisy and Brett I. Introduction Thesis: Daisy and Brett differ in conformity, personality, and lifestyle. II. Body A. Daisy 1. Conformity 2. Personality 3. Lifestyle B. Brett 1. Conformity 2. Personality 3. Lifestyle III. Conclusion Differences between Daisy and Brett In the two novels, â€Å"The Great Gatsby† and â€Å"The Sun Also Rises,† the differences between the two major female characters are greatly evident. Daisy, who is a major female character in â€Å"The Great Gatsby,† and Brett, who is a major female character in â€Å"The Sun Also Rises,† plays major roles in providing apparent themes for the two novels. They do so with different strategies and beliefs. Daisy and Brett differ in conformity, personality, and lifestyle. Daisy is a beautiful young woman who is married to Tom Buchanan. She is expected to be like other proper women of that time; therefore, she is. She is not independent and relies on her husband Tom for everything. In the novel, â€Å"The Great Gatsby,† Daisy can not decide between her husband Tom and her past lover Gatsby. In chapter seven it states, â€Å"As Tom left the room again Daisy got up and went over to Gatsby, and pulled his face down kissing him on the mouth. † She then murmured, â€Å"You know I love you. † This shows that she does not have a personality of her own and that she can not make decisions alone. In chapter one, Miss Baker states, â€Å"We ought to plan something. † Daisy then replies, â€Å"All right, what will we plan? † She then turned to Nick, the narrator, helplessly and asked, â€Å"What do people plan? † She lives an exuberant lifestyle with her wealthy husband and she gets everything she wants. In chapter one Nick states, â€Å"Their house was even more elaborate that I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. † Money is the source of her contentment as she states, â€Å"I’m p-paralyzed with happiness. † In â€Å"The Sun Also Rises,† Brett is an extremely attractive young woman. In the book Jake, the narrator, states, â€Å"With them was Brett. She looked very lovely. † Also, Brett does not give in easily to conformity as most women of that time. She loves to drink in large intervals as did most of the people during the period of time the story took place. An excerpt in chapter seven states, â€Å"Let’s enjoy a little more of this,† Brett pushed her glass forward. Then Mrs. Barnes states, â€Å"She is the only lady I have ever known who was as charming when she was drunk as when she was sober. † Brett is very independent and does not rely on a single man for anything. She makes her own decisions and looks after herself everyday. Brett’s lifestyle is far from perfect because she does not really own any possessions, but she is happy. Other females occasionally look upon her as a whore or slut solely because she is different, but she chooses the lifestyle she lives and loves it. To prove this point true Jake states, â€Å"Brett was radiant. She was happy. The sun was out and the day was bright. † The differences between Daisy and Brett are very evident to the reader. They are almost as complete opposites if analyzed closely. Daisy and Brett have very distinctly different views on conformity, different types of personalities, and two totally different lifestyles.

Literal translation Essay

Domestication and foreignization are strategies in translation, regarding the degree to which translators make a text conform to the target culture. Domestication is the strategy of making text closely conform to the culture of the language being translated to, which may involve the loss of information from the source text. Foreignization is the strategy of retaining information from the source text, and involves deliberately breaking the conventions of the target language to preserve its meaning. [1] These strategies have been debated for hundreds of years, but the first person to formulate them in their modern sense was Lawrence Venuti, who introduced them to the field of translation studies in 1995 with his book The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. [1][2] Venuti’s innovation to the field was his view that the dichotomy between domestication and foreignization was an ideological one; he views foreignization as the ethical choice for translators to make. [1] Theory [edit] In his 1998 book The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference, Venuti states that â€Å"Domestication and foreignization deal with ‘the question of how much a translation assimilates a foreign text to the translating language and culture, and how much it rather signals the differences of that text'†. According to Lawrence Venuti, every translator should look at the translation process through the prism of culture which refracts the source language cultural norms and it is the translator’s task to convey them, preserving their meaning and their foreignness, to the target-language text. Every step in the translation process—from the selection of foreign texts to the implementation of translation strategies to the editing, reviewing, and reading of translations—is mediated by the diverse cultural values that circulate in the target language. He estimates that the theory and practice of English-language translation has been dominated by submission, by fluent domestication. He strictly criticized the translators who in order to minimize the foreignness of the target text reduce the foreign cultural norms to target-language cultural values. According to Venuti, the domesticating strategy â€Å"violently† erases the cultural values and thus creates a text which as if had been written in the target language and which follows the cultural norms of the target reader. He strongly advocates the foreignization strategy, considering it to be â€Å"an ethnodeviant pressure on [target-language cultural] values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad. † Thus an adequate translation would be the one that would highlight the foreignness of the source text and instead of allowing the dominant target culture to assimilate the differences of the source culture, it should rather signal these differences. [3]

Chapter 2 Outline and Key Terms

Chapter 2 First Farmers The Revolutions of Agriculture, 10,000 b. c. e. –3000 b. c. e. Chapter Overview CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVES †¢TO MAKE STUDENTS AWARE THAT AGRICULTURE EVOLVED INDEPENDENTLY IN SEVERAL REGIONS OF THE WORLD †¢To trace the development of agriculture and its local variations †¢To consider the social implications of the Agricultural Revolution Chapter Outline I. OPENING VIGNETTE A. In the past two centuries, there has been a dramatic decline in the number of farmers worldwide. 1. United States an extreme case: only around 5 percent of Americans, many of them over 65 years old, were still on farms in 2000 2. reat increase in the productivity of modern agriculture B. The modern retreat from the farm is a reversal of humanity’s first turn to agriculture. II. The Agricultural Revolution in World History A. Agriculture is the second great human process after settlement of the globe. 1. started about 12,000 years ago 2. often called the Neolit hic (New Stone Age) or Agricultural Revolution 3. deliberate cultivation of plants and domestication of animals 4. transformed human life across the planet B. Agriculture is the basis for almost all human developments since. C.Agriculture brought about a new relationship between humans and other living things. 1. actively changing what they found in nature rather than just using it 2. shaping the landscape 3. selectively breeding animals D. â€Å"Domestication† of nature created new mutual dependence. 1. many domesticated plants and animals came to rely on humans 2. humans lost gathering and hunting skills E. There was an â€Å"intensification† of living: getting more food and resources from much less land. 1. more food led to more people 2. more people led to greater need for intensive exploitation III. Comparing Agricultural BeginningsA. The Agricultural Revolution happened independently in several world regions. 1. Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia 2. several areas in sub-Saharan Africa 3. China 4. New Guinea 5. Mesoamerica 6. the Andes 7. eastern North America 8. all happened at about the same time, 12,000–4000 years ago 9. scholars have struggled with the question of why agriculture developed so late in human history B. Common Patterns 1. Agricultural Revolution coincided with the end of the last Ice Age a. global warming cycle started around 16,000 years ago b. Ice Age was over by about 11,000 years ago . end of Ice Age coincided with human migration across earth d. extinction of some large mammals: climate change and hunting e. warmer, wetter weather allowed more wild plants to flourish 2. gathering and hunting peoples had already learned some ways to manage the natural world a. â€Å"broad spectrum diet† b. development of sickles, baskets, and other tools to make use of wild grain in the Middle East c. Amazon: peoples had learned to cut back some plants to encourage growth of the ones they wanted d. Australians had elaborat e eel traps 3. omen were probably the agricultural innovators 4. gathering and hunting peoples started to establish more permanent villages a. especially in resource-rich areas b. population growth perhaps led to a â€Å"food crisis† 5. agriculture developed in a number of regions, but with variation a. depended on the plants and animals that were available b. only a few hundred plant species have been domesticated c. only fourteen large mammal species were domesticated C. Variations 1. the Fertile Crescent was the first to have a full Agricultural Revolution a. resence of large variety of plants and animals to be domesticated b. transition to agriculture triggered by a cold and dry spell between 11,000 and 9500 b. c. e. c. transition apparently only took about 500 years d. much more societal sophistication (mud bricks, monuments and shrines, more elaborate burials, more sophisticated tools) 2. at about the same time, domestication started in the eastern Sahara (present-day S udan) a. the region was much more hospitable 10,000–5,000 years ago b. domestication of cattle there about 1,000 years before Middle East and India c. n Africa, animals were domesticated first; elsewhere, plants were domesticated first d. emergence of several widely scattered farming practices e. African agriculture was less productive than agriculture in the Fertile Crescent 3. separate development of agriculture at several places in the Americas a. absence of animals available for domestication b. only cereal grain available was maize or corn c. result: replacement of gathering and hunting with agriculture took 3,500 years in Mesoamerica d. Americas are oriented orth/south, so agricultural practices had to adapt to distinct climate zones to spread IV. The Globalization of Agriculture A. Agriculture spread in two ways: 1. diffusion: gradual spread of techniques and perhaps plants and animals, but without much movement of human population 2. colonization or migration of agric ultural peoples 3. often both processes were involved B. Triumph and Resistance 1. language and culture spread with agriculture a. Indo-European languages probably started in Turkey, are spoken today from Europe to India b. similar process with Chinese farming . spread of Bantu language in southern Africa d. similar spread of Austronesian-speaking peoples to Philippines and Indonesian islands, then to Pacific islands 2. the globalization of agriculture took about 10,000 years a. did not spread beyond its core region in New Guinea b. did not spread in a number of other regions c. was resisted where the land was unsuitable for farming or where there was great natural abundance 3. by the beginning of the Common Era, gathering and hunting peoples were a small minority of humankind C. The Culture of Agriculture 1. griculture led to much greater populations 2. changes in world population a. 10,000 years ago: around 6 million people b. 5,000 years ago: around 50 million people c. beginning of Common Era: around 250 million people 3. farming did not necessarily improve life for ordinary people a. meant much more hard work b. health deteriorated in early agricultural societies c. new diseases from interaction with animals d. the first epidemics appeared due to larger communities e. new vulnerability to famine, because of dependence on a small number of plants or animals 4. ew constraints on human communities a. all agricultural people settled in permanent villages b. the case of Banpo in China (settled ca. 7,000 years ago) 5. explosion of technological innovation a. pots b. textiles c. metallurgy 6. â€Å"secondary products revolution† started ca. 4000 b. c. e. : a new set of technological changes a. new uses for domesticated animals, including milking, riding, hitching to plows and carts b. only available in the Eastern Hemisphere 7. deliberate alteration of the natural ecosystem a. removal of ground cover, irrigation, grazing b. vidence of soil erosion and def orestation in the Middle East within 1,000 years after beginning of agriculture V. Social Variation in the Age of Agriculture A. Pastoral Societies 1. some regions relied much more heavily on animals, because farming was difficult or impossible there 2. pastoral nomads emerged in central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Sahara desert, parts of eastern and southern Africa 3. relied on different animals in different regions a. horses were domesticated by 4000 b. c. e. ; encouraged the spread of pastoral peoples on Central Asian steppes b. omesticated camels allowed human life in the inner Asian, Arabian, and Saharan deserts 4. no pastoral societies emerged in the Americas B. Agricultural Village Societies 1. most characteristic form of early agricultural societies, like Banpo or Jericho 2. maintenance of equality and freedom (no kings, chiefs, bureaucrats, aristocrats) 3. Catalhuyuk, in southern Turkey a. population: several thousand b. dead buried under their houses c. no streets; pe ople moved around on rooftops d. many specialized crafts, but little sign of inherited social inequality e. o indication of male or female dominance 4. village-based agricultural societies were usually organized by kinship, group, or lineage a. performed the functions of government b. the Tiv of central Nigeria organized nearly a million people this way in the late nineteenth century 5. sometimes modest social/economic inequality developed a. elders could win privileges b. control of female reproductive powers C. Chiefdoms 1. chiefs, unlike kings, usually rely on generosity, ritual status, or charisma to govern, not force 2. hiefdoms emerged in Mesopotamia sometime after 6000 b. c. e. 3. anthropologists have studied recent chiefdoms in the Pacific islands 4. chiefdoms such as Cahokia emerged in North America 5. distinction between elite and commoner was first established VI. Reflections: The Legacies of Agriculture A. Agriculture is a recent development in world history. 1. was an a daptation to the unique conditions of the latest interglacial period 2. has radically transformed human life and life on the planet more generally B.One species, Homo sapiens, was given growing power over other animals and plants. C. Agriculture also gave some people the power to dominate others. Key Terms AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION: ALSO KNOWN AS THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION, THIS IS THE TRANSFORMATION OF HUMAN (AND WORLD) EXISTENCE CAUSED BY THE DELIBERATE CULTIVATION OF PARTICULAR PLANTS AND THE DELIBERATE TAMING AND BREEDING OF PARTICULAR ANIMALS. Austronesian: An Asian-language family whose speakers gradually became the dominant culture of the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Pacific islands, thanks to their mastery of agriculture.Banpo: A Chinese archeological site, where the remains of a significant Neolithic village have been found. (pron. bahn-poe) Bantu: An African-language family whose speakers gradually became the dominant culture of eastern and southern Africa, thanks to their agricultural techniques and, later, their ironworking skills. (pron. BAHN-too) Bantu migration: The spread of Bantu-speaking peoples from their homeland in what is now southern Nigeria or Cameroon to most of Africa, in a process that started ca. 3000 b. c. e. nd continued for several millennia. broad spectrum diet: Archeologists’ term for the diet of gathering and hunting societies, which included a wide array of plants and animals. Cahokia: An important agricultural chiefdom of North America that flourished around 1100 C. E. (pron. cah-HOKE-ee-ah) Catalhuyuk: An important Neolithic site in what is now Turkey. (pron. cha-TAHL-hoo-YOOK) chiefdom: A societal grouping governed by a chief who typically relies on generosity, ritual status, or charisma rather than force to win obedience from the people. iffusion: The gradual spread of agricultural techniques without extensive population movement. domestication: The taming and changing of nature for the benefit of humankind. end of the last Ice Age: A process of global warming that began around 16,000 years ago and ended about 5,000 years later, with the earth enjoying a climate similar to that of our own time; the end of the Ice Age changed conditions for human beings, leading to increased population and helping to pave the way for agriculture.Fertile Crescent: Region sometimes known as Southwest Asia that includes the modern states of Iraq, Syria, Israel/Palestine, and southern Turkey; the earliest home of agriculture. horticulture: Hoe-based agriculture, typical of early agrarian societies. intensification: The process of getting more in return for less; for example, growing more food on a smaller plot of land. Jericho: Site of an important early agricultural settlement of perhaps 2,000 people in present-day Israel.Mesopotamia: The valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq. native Australians: Often called â€Å"Aboriginals† (from the Latin ab origine, the people who had been ther e â€Å"from the beginning†), the natives of Australia continued (and to some extent still continue) to live by gathering and hunting, despite the transition to agriculture in nearby lands. pastoral society: A human society that relies on domesticated animals rather than plants as the main source of food; pastoral nomads lead their animals to seasonal grazing grounds rather han settling permanently in a single location. â€Å"secondary products revolution†: A term used to describe the series of technological changes that began ca. 4000 b. c. e. , as people began to develop new uses for their domesticated animals, exploiting a revolutionary new source of power. stateless societies: Village-based agricultural societies, usually organized by kinship groups, that functioned without a formal government apparatus. teosinte: The wild ancestor of maize. (pron. tay-oh- SIN-tay)