The Life and Times of American POWs in Korea

The world war two as well as the cold war was understood in a different concept from the Korean War. In them the Americans fought for both survival and virtue not Realpolitik, there was little chance in the imaginative minds for negotiation even though the general public had a very simple understanding of the Korean conflict. The U.S government planners tempered them own impressions with such strategy and belief of thrust and parry. The U.S interest in the Korean peninsula is often said to have been limited in that planners were ready to cut their losses in the even that the conflict challenged to undermine the global prepondence of power. Thus, there were various effects whose magnitudes were immeasurable. For instance, the shootings within the peninsula may have been limited, but the magnitude of fear among the fighting soldiers was not.[1] The fighting was so intense and fierce as well as unpredictable that even Seoul, changed hands about 4 times.   Initially the Americans seemed to have won the war when General Douglas until the people’s republic of china got involved in the war. The Chinese army and other communist forces surrounded the Americans to hand them their worst defeat ever. The often called â€Å"great bug out† was a cruel shock and a rude awakening to a nation that had invented the atomic bomb, beat the Axis of â€Å"evil† attained prosperity while rebuilding Europe and with the belief that their Asian counterparts were backward and incapable of mounting any major challenge. The Chinese propaganda machine put a lot of emphasis on allied atrocities as well as conversion of POWs to Marxism. [2]At the early stages of the wrangles ever peace terms Republic of China started relentless changes of germ warfare. A majority of the reports published were supported by confessions relieved from POWs who were under () with often supervision from international inspectors with varying credibility. A large number and probably all the germ warfare confessions were falsified. At the end of the armistice talks, most of what was left was dedicated to the prisoners with the talks lasting for about half the time of the war. More recently the thesis that the Korean prisoners of war certainly prone to collaborate have been judged as a tenacious one, even though it had been meticulously debunked as early as 1963 by the pentagon. The situation in Korea was that of captivity being different rather than the captive. The U.S prisoners were coerced to give confessions in Marxist jargon. Instead of having just a quite session to inform fellows, as had been the case in earlier conflicts. The Korean was encompassed periods of incarceration as cruel as any American encounter, with about a third perishing resulting in a highly coercive atmosphere. If by any chance there was collaboration in Korea, then the situation can best be explained by the demands of the captors as well as the conditions the captive were subjected to instead of just a decline in character of youth. Although the POWs, may not have a permanent or profound revolution in their thought patterns still they were subject to vigorous and routinely indoctrination processes. This kind of methodology was responsible for a large number of collaboration that superficially appeared as a personality transformation. Within the camps, separating officers and â€Å"natural† leaders from the rest of POWs did the segregation. Such tactics like the encouraging race, class as well as political affiliation so as to abrade personal lies and group places among the POWs. Albeit the Chinese forces proclaimed the policy of â€Å"leniency† it was often on the theoretical basis as most the camps were inherently coercive.   In this often-coercive environment the Chinese forces added a forum from where the prisoners could often be minutely scrutinized for compliance. A brief summery of personal accounts from some of the soldiers who took part in the Korean War would probably provide a better insight to the flight of the prisoners of war. After graduating from high school (1950) Tom Gaylets was recruited in the U.S army, fort Knox, Kentucky for a period of six weeks. He later joined his brother and other soldiers who were in Korea. His unit has changed with the duties of blowing up bridges making roads while at same time removing and locating enemies. This particular unit according to tom moved up and down Korea encountering 21 battles in extreme wealthier condition. (summer 100 degrees) to less than 40 degree in winter) the experience according to him was like â€Å"a hell hole because we fought the war 24 hours a day seven days a week†.[3] There was no such a thing as taking a break. The soldiers were always at the frontline. The following year (may 17 1951) tom was called up by his commanding officer with the excitement at the prospect of arriving home was short lived the following morning when Chinese soldiers attacked their division. After a while the Chinese soldiers captured them, they were taken to a holding area until later at night in order to move them. After that the torture exercise began the Chinese made them carry sickness, hunger, and fatigue! They were not offered anything to eat by the Chinese soldiers, and ate anything that they could find on their way.[4] The food that was served to soldiers was terrible though there was a gradual change after some time. For instance there was one point where tom says that they were served rice and noticed some piece of meat in the rice. Thinking that things had changed for better the soldiers were upbeat only to realize the following day that a rat had accidentally gotten in to their food but the Chinese soldiers intentionally ignored and instead went a head to serve it to them. They were not served meat in their meals until some time in 1953. In the course of his stay at the camp as a POW tom says in the book that about 1,500 men died. During the winter seasons the dead soldiers were wrapped and chopped on the hillside without any decent depict an act of dehumanization. Tom himself almost succumbed to death due to various factors like starvation, bouts of dysentery and apparently about 100 pounds.[5] The Chinese soldiers were constantly looking for excuses in order to punish the POWs. A friend was routinely (every morning) put in a four –by- four foot-hole and left for the rest of the day with a hat on his head. After that he would be taken out of every night only to be returned the next morning where he would fill out information with his hat on and then taken back to the hole. When Tom left to go and see some of his friends in the other company the Chinese solders would move him into a hut their start a fire there and leave him closed up for days. Another account by a soldier named David is a description of the deplorable conditions that they were subject to. After eluding the enemy soldiers for a couple of days, David and his compatriot were captured they were then taken through then initial positions and in fields and then hidden under cliff during the day. (Out-doors) they were not offered any sanitation or medical care. The food that was served to them was a brown powder and which was very little in quantity. This state of affairs was routinely carried out until June of 1951 when they were moved to a mining camp. At this stage a large number of prisoners began to die from starvation, while others died as a result of no medical care for the wounds and injuries sustained and others died from torture. Within his camp everyone according to David was plagued with dysentery that resulted in large number of soldiers dying in this camp. After about three months at the camp the soldiers then started moving them out to new camps. The transfer involved a matching process with no food while at the same time some of them were bombed by the U.S B24 which resulted to even more deaths. During the winter seasons some prisoners were given a pair of cotton pajamas but this all they had for the remaining seasons in spite of the fluctuating weather conditions which could go as well as below zero by about 40-50 degrees in the cold season be as lot as this in the included: body lice, dysentery, pneumonia, skin disorders, intestinal disorders, night blindness, beriberi, frostbites and the more insensitive one was the threat to be executed which often accompanied all Out of the approximately 7,190 prisoners of war, who were captured largely in the first months of the war, about 3,000 of them are estimated to have died in captivity about 43% of the mortality were as a result of starvation in a period that last about for six months (Nov 1950-Apr 1951. often the Chinese soldiers communist apologist normally argue that the U.S bombed most of the areas, thereby preventing the delivery of food.[6] However, some soldiers also claim that even though a large apart of the North Korean supply were heavily bombed most of the camps where the POWs were situated were right on the border of china, which had been exempted from bombing. Although the purposeful starvation of the American POWS had ceased in the early summer of 1951, a new phase of treatment greeted the POWs. This phase easy characterized by very disturbing experiences even to the American public than the initial murder by starvation method; the mass indoctrination in propaganda that were anti-American in philosophy often referred as brainwashing as well as the recruitment of the prisoners of war to regurgitate/repeat the learned propaganda in signed statements and even public broadcasts took hold. Even though the â€Å"brainwashing† term eventually fell out of favor, due to the belief by psychologists that the communist indoctrination had no permanent effect on a majority of POWS as soon as they returned, it however was both a mental and physical torture process. In the history of the war they were some points (1950-1951) that are considered significant. For instance, the purposeful starvation of POWs by the Korean and Chinese soldiers often broke the spirit of the prisoners. The resulting effect was that they ceased to help one another. Attempts by most officers to take command, coercing them to cooperate in their common interest, were often thwarted by the communist guards, unless the officers were willing to be collaborators. Some officers took up this choice, for example a Lt. Col Paul Liles and Harry Fleming chose this method by creating communist propaganda, and in return cutting down on the number of deaths in their camps.   Even though these officers were later court martialed, many still believe they played a crucial role in saving many lives that would otherwise have been lost if they had not taken this stance. Elsewhere, many prisoners were too apathetic to defend their comrades and even themselves from the predators and other thugs like James Gallagher and PFC Roth well Floyd. In one particular instance, that has stood out happened in 17 Feb 1951 when Sgt. Gallagher tossed two POWs that had been severely weakened by dysentery from inside the barrack to the cold where they froze to death. The reason given by him was that the body stench and the general stink of the unclean dysentery patients was a revolting one.   Although this may be accurate, when soldiers act as a team and care for one another, the survival rates is gotten very high. There were some prisoners too who were never reported. The U.S authorities had documented about 66 American personnel that had been held back by the communist forces against their will after the war ended. A majority of them had been captured outside of Korea, and as such were not considered under the armistice terms. So far nothing ever came of them over after concerted efforts by diplomatic missions to secure their release. There were about three general phases to the encounters of the POWs per most of the soldiers especially the ones who hired to tell their tale. For instance the soldiers who gave their personal accounts had the experience of marching which can be referred to as the â€Å"marching phase† in this phase the communist soldiers and particularly the Chinese subject the POWs to often walking barefoot while poorly clothed in bitterly cold weather. They were then marched from their points of capture to camps that were situated deep inside North Korea. The second phase which took place until sometime in October 1951 when a majority of the camps were left to the Chinese control, In this phase where a great deal of deaths about 40 percent as a result of starvation, malnutrition as well as denial of Medicare by the unsympathetic north Korean PA guards. Other than malnutrition, starvation and lack of medical care the experience of the soldiers also included such acts like night blindness. Most of the men interviewed have discussed night blindness among prisoners as well as guards, vegetable competing lacking from their diet or in small quantities that do not make up a balanced diet. These are enough conditions about torture lice cold together with dysentery. There are instance where a guard is told who was ready to offer his bag of lunch plus 2 hours head start to any prisoners of war was willing to escape from the prison camps. This is a testimony of the deplorable state of the prisons and the treatment offered to the soldiers. Most of the times there was no medication and if it was provided then it was inadequate with no records at all. Some prisoners were indoctrinated on a daily basis with the sessions lasing from morning to night with just a short break for the Chinese soldiers to have their lunch. In the mean time the prisoners were not offered any food and it is during such times when the brains rushing process began. The perception that was instilled in them was that of repeating communist ideals and philosophy that they had learned in the process.   At night the soldiers would come into the huts and make the soldiers sit while facing eth wall, and warmed with flash lights that shone on the prisoners’ faces, the soldiers made them repeat the communist philosophy References: Harry Spiller, 1998. American POWs in Korea, sixteen personal accounts. McFarland & Company Raymond B. Lech, 2000, Broken soldiers, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago IL, 330pp [1] Raymond B. Lech, 2000, Broken soldiers, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago IL, 330pp [2] Raymond B. Lech, 2000, Broken soldiers, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago IL, 330pp [3] (Harry Spiller, 1998). [4] (Harry Spiller, 1998). [5] Harry Spiller, 1998. American POWs in Korea, sixteen personal accounts. McFarland & Company [6] (Harry Spiller, 1998)   

JFK: The Epitome of Success

â€Å"Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.† This quote was said by and embodied by a man who was very effective and smoothly functioning in life. This man was the late John F. Kennedy. JFK was one of the most successful and influential people to ever live. He had strong beliefs and never succumbed to pressure. Kennedy's success was shown through his tough foreign and economic policies. JFK kept the USA as a world powerhouse and will forever be remembered as one of the greatest presidents to ever live. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on Tuesday, May 29, 1917. He spent the first ten years of his life in Brookline until he moved with his family to Riverdale, Bronx. Two years after that he moved to a 21-room mansion on a six-acre estate in Bronxville, New York. JFK had a very sickly childhood dealing with appendicitis, colitis, and possible symptoms of leukemia. In September 1936 he enrolled as a freshman at Harvard College where he eventually graduated cum laude with a degree in international affairs. Kennedy then spent four years in the US Navy during World War II. Before his political career, JFK originally aspired to become a journalist. However, in 1946, Kennedy ran for a vacated U.S. Representative seat and beat his opponent by a large margin. On January 2, 1960, Kennedy officially declared his intent to run for President of the United States. It was a tight race against Richard Nixon but JFK won and was sworn in as the 35th President at noon on January 20, 1961 (Ke lly). At Kennedy's inaugural address, he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens, famously saying, â€Å"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.† JFK felt that all the responsibility should not rest in the hands of the government; instead it should be shared amongst all Americans. He also spoke of his hope for unity amongst the nations in order to end â€Å"tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself† across the world. His inaugural address alone showed signs of future success for this young president. JFK immediately gained great popular support amongst Americans. His strong willed personality and hope for change were some of the many reasons for his success. Little did he know his abilities would be tested early in his presidential term. In October of 1962, a Soviet ballistic missile site was discovered under construction in Cuba. JFK was faced with a dilemma; attack the missile site and face a possible nuclear war with the Soviets, or stand down and risk a nuclear attack on the U.S. Another consideration was that if the U.S. backed down it would appear to the world as weak in its own hemisphere. Kennedy decided to take action and ordered a naval quarantine in which the U.S. Navy inspected all ships arriving in Cuba. He began negotiations with the Soviets and ordered the Soviets to remove all defensive material that was being built in Cuba. Kennedy's risky actions proved successful as Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles subject to U.N. inspections if the U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and quietly removed US missiles stationed in Turkey (Sierra). JFK's iron-willed actions prevented a possible all out nuclear war with the U.S.S.R. Not only was JFK strong-minded with his foreign policy, he was also forceful with his economic policy. His plan entitled the â€Å"New Frontier† ambitiously promised federal funding for education, medical care for the elderly, and government intervention to halt the recession (Rosenthal). Kennedy also promised an end to racial discrimination. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court had ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Despite public opposition Kennedy did what was right and made sure this ruling would be upheld throughout the country. In 1962, James Meredith tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi, but he was prevented from doing so by white students. Kennedy responded by sending some 400 federal marshals and 3,000 troops to ensure that Meredith could enroll in his first class. He was a very caring president and would do anything to enforce justice. Kennedy's determination and perseverance helped end segregation in our great nation. Another great example of Kennedy's strong-willed personality is shown through the space race of the 1960's. After recent Soviet success of space exploration, JFK felt the need to put the U.S. on the map in terms of space discovery. Kennedy asked Congress to approve more than $25 billion for the Apollo Project, a human spaceflight program undertaken by NASA with the goal of conducting manned moon landing missions (Dumoulin). Not only did JFK feel that landing a man on the moon would benefit science, but that it would create nationalism and make a statement to the world that America was on top. Unfortunately, Kennedy wouldn't live to see his Apollo project take place. On November 22, 1963, while on a political trip to Texas, Kennedy was shot twice and pronounced dead at 1:00 PM. At the age of 46, President Kennedy died younger than any U.S. president to date. Despite Kennedy's short term as President, he is still considered as one of the greatest. His success can be attributed to his strong willed personality and determination in everything he did. JFK was the epitome of a successful and effective individual.

Food Security Bill Essay

The bill was truncated from the NAC version at the first stage when the government finalized it and then the parliamentary standing committee went along similar lines and recommended further paring down of the benefits. Sources said concerns were raised by the Congress leadership about reducing existing benefits under the Antodaya Anna Yojana to the 2. 5 crore poorest families as well as the recommendation of the standing committee to remove the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) from the mandate of the bill, which was advised by the women and child development ministry. Sources said the party leadership was unhappy with the move to reduce existing entitlements under UPA’s flagship scheme instead of providing larger benefits. The government is likely to revise the bill keeping these views in mind and look at a much higher coverage in at least the 250 poorest districts of the country. The standing committee had recommended providing 5 kg of rations per person to 75% of rural population and 50% of urban India – a formula the government was happy with till the party leadership intervened. The standing committee had recommended doing away with two categories of beneficiaries with differential benefits – a move the government had contemplated anyway after having sent the bill to Parliament. But curtailing the total number of beneficiaries and reducing the benefits to the poorest has not found acceptance with the party leadership, sources said. The government could now consider restoring the monthly allocation to the poorest back to 35 kg of rations per family. Under an apex court order, the poorest and most disadvantaged are provided 35 kg rations at present. With the party keen to see the bill in Parliament during the budget session, a revised version could see the ICDS scheme coming back under the purview of the bill as a legally guaranteed right along with other food delivery mechanisms such as community kitchens. The UPA has already been caught on the back foot with opposition-ruled states providing cheaper rations to greater numbers under their own schemes following the lead of Chhattisgarh. The delay in pushing the bill through, coupled with the constant and often publicly expressed differences between different arms of the government and the UPA on the shape of the legislation have taken the sheen off UPA-2’s big ticket scheme Food Security Bill is affordable The subsidies meant for the poor are always under attack, while the rest are able to retain their privileges. The additional allocation in grain and money terms will neither distort the grain market nor place a burden on the fisc. Many recent commentators have portrayed the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) as an â€Å"unbearable burden† on the exchequer. The facts, however, do no substantiate the claim. The NFSB has been trashed from time to time in the English dailies. For instance, Business Line (March 21, 2013) published an article titled â€Å"Food Security Bill will torpedo Budget†. Another national daily claims that the Bill has a â€Å"fundamental flaw† that places â€Å"an unbearable burden† and â€Å"distorts agriculture† (Indian Express, March 19, 2013). Quite often, the claims are partly due to a misconception that the government is making new financial and grain commitments under the NFSB. In fact, the NFSB does little more than turning into legal entitlements pre-existing food security schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme, Mid-Day Meal (MDM) Scheme, Public Distribution System (PDS) and maternity entitlements. Some commentators have said that it is precisely the legal commitment that will lead to problems in the future — for example, the fear of the emergence of a government monopoly in the grain market. This fear is not borne out by the facts. Under the PDS, ICDS and MDM, the government currently allocates about 58 million tonnes of grain. To meet this commitment, the government currently procures about 30 per cent of grain. The NFSB commits 62 million tonnes, i. e. , an additional 4 million tonnes. The Budget of 2013-14 allocates Rs. 31,000 crore for two children’s food schemes — school meals and the ICDS which reaches children under six. The Budget allocation for the food subsidy in 2013-14 is Rs 90,000 crore. According to our estimates, the food subsidy will increase from Rs 80,000 crore (in 2012-13) to Rs 1,11,221 crore, under the NFSB. Thus, the NFSB implies an increase of just over Rs 30,000 crores in financial terms and 4 million tonnes in real (grain) terms. Can India afford this? Speaking at a panel discussion at IIT Delhi in February, Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said â€Å"it would be dishonest† to say that we cannot afford the Food Bill, and that the subsidies that we need to target are those enjoyed by the middle classes (e. g. , fuel). Speaking at the same discussion, Amartya Sen made a pertinent point — that the reason why it is more difficult to reduce subsidies enjoyed by the middle classes (fuels such as LPG, petrol and diesel) is that the beneficiaries of those are more vocal than the rural poor or children under six who benefit from the food subsidies. This point is well illustrated by the events following last year’s Budget. The Budget 2012-13 announced a 1 per cent excise duty on unbranded jewellery and doubled custom duty on gold to 4 per cent. Gold is the country’s second biggest import, after crude oil. This burden on the current account deficit was an important reason for doubling the customs duty. Following this, the All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation and others initiated a strike which went on for 21 days. They argued that the industry, including the â€Å"large† number of people it employs, and buyers of gold, would suffer. A massive media campaign was launched, following which the Finance Minister withdrew the excise duty. According to the revenue foregone statement presented along with the Budget 2013-14, the revenue foregone from the gold and diamond industry for the previous financial year was Rs. 5,000 crore. Such tax breaks are often justified on the grounds of the employment potential of the gems and jewellery industry. According to Invest India, a website of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, â€Å"The sector provides employment to around 1. 8 million people. In the next five years, the sector is expected to create additional employment for around 1. 1 million people. † According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, 2009-10, the size of the Indian workforce is between 430-471 million persons. If the gems and jewellery industry employs 3 million people as per the Ministry’s target, this would be 0. per cent of the workforce. An industry that employs less than one per cent of the Indian workforce is currently enjoying tax benefits amounting to Rs 65,000 crore (nearly 20 per cent of all revenue foregone). The Food Bill will benefit 67 per cent of the population at an additional cost of Rs 30,000 crore, yet it is said that it will â€Å"torpedo† the Budget. If anything, the NFSB does not go far enough. The NFSB tabled in Parliament in December 2011 included special provisions for the destitute and other vulnerable groups (e. g. , community kitchens and social security pensions). These have been discarded in the version cleared by Cabinet on March 19, 2013. In many rural areas, the Block is already too far to go to complain, yet for violations of rights under the NFSB, grievance redressal only begins at the District level. Viewed in this comparative perspective (for example, it is approximately 1 per cent of the GDP), few can question the affordability or desirability of the NFSB. In absolute terms it is not a small amount. One might argue whether such expenditure is worth it, given the â€Å"fact† that the programmes in its ambit, for example, the PDS, are â€Å"dysfunctional† (Indian Express, March 19, 2013). However, recent data from the National Sample Survey of 2004-05 and 2009-10 suggest that while the functioning of the PDS is far from perfect, we do need to update our â€Å"facts†. In joint research with Jean Dreze, we show that the implicit subsidy from the PDS eliminates 18 per cent (14 per cent) of the â€Å"poverty gap† — or the difference between the poverty line level of income and the median income (or monthly per capita consumption expenditure) of poor households — among poor rural (urban) households. Again, there are marked inter-State contrasts — in Tamil Nadu the corresponding figure is 60 per cent and in Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh it is nearly 40 per cent. The real question then is not whether India can afford to have a right to food but as the Food Minister said in a recent interview, â€Å"Can we afford not to? † Food as a right In its latest form, the National Food Security Bill, 2013 promises to address the extreme irony of an ambitious nation holding mountains of food in storage, while masses of its people are undernourished or even starving. The right to food is finally on the threshold of being legislated. Every step taken to widen the coverage of food security schemes is an advance. Yet, the empirical truth is that incremental measures at targeting the needy are a poor substitute for a cohesive, rights-based universal system of food entitlements. There are, no doubt, many positives to the new legislation, such as coverage of up to 75 per cent of eligible priority households in rural areas, the importance given to women as the head of the household for issue of ration cards, inclusion of pregnant and lactating women for free meals (some in government wanted to take away this entitlement from women ho bear more than two children but the idea was sensibly dropped), and setting up of State Food Commissions to investigate violations of entitlements. Under the proposed law, it will be up to the States to frame criteria and choose the priority households for food entitlements, an exercise that will inevitably be accompanied by the well-documented troubles associated with targeting any welfare scheme. Exclusion of any deserving household is unfair and divisive. It poses a challenge to States that wish to provide universal access, an issue that is bound to be felt acutely in urban areas attracting tens of thousands of migrant labourers. The Centre is unwilling to countenance a Universal Public Distribution System on the ground that too much money is involved. Even under the latest Bill, it is argued, the exchequer would have to bear a heavy expenditure of Rs. 1. 24 lakh crore. Yet, the government has not hesitated to build up expensive food stocks over the years, some of which is left to rot, mainly to pay the high support prices demanded by influential sections of the farm lobby. Moreover, the policy orientation is disproportionately favourable towards some sectors such as infrastructure, compared to food and health care. Evidently, the Food Bill can and should do a lot more, to become near-universal and win over sceptics such as Tamil Nadu, which has opposed it on the ground that it is inferior to the universal PDS in the State. Also noteworthy is the fact that the Chhattisgarh Food Security Act has done better than the Centre’s proposed law in some respects — by supplying subsidised pulses and covering 90 per cent of households, for example.

International Financial Reporting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 3

International Financial Reporting - Essay Example anges in a given period, cash flow statement for the period, financial position statement in the period’s balance sheet, comprehensive income statement and the notes which include a summary of explanatory notes and the accounting policies. Any given entity may apply titles for the stated above statements other than those referred to above. A fair presentation as well as compliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) is the emphasis of IAS 1.15. The use of the relevant IFRSs which contain additional disclosures as necessity calls for is usually presumed to have an end result of a set of financial statements which reflect a fair presentation as IAS 1.15 states. (iasplus.com, 2010) According to the definition given under IAS 1’s stipulations, fair presentation is the requirement that there is a faithful representation of the transaction effects, other events as well as the conditions with emphasis on the recognition and definitions criteria for income, assets, liabilities and expenses stated in the framework. That entity which ensures that its financial statements are in accordance with the IFRSs shall do an unreserved and explicit statement of its compliance in the notes. Also any entity that describes its financial statements as complying with IFRSs where the case is contrary, then that entity will be in contravention with the IFRS requirements. (ec.europa.eu, 2010) The reporting is required for general purpose financial statements as IAS 1 says. The main objective of these financial statements is to give information concerning the position of the business financially, cash flows and performance which is useful to various users while making decisions economically. So as to meet the objective, the entity’s financial statements provide such information as; liabilities, assets, equity, expenses and income cash flows and changes in equity. This information combined with notes to financial statements helps the users of such statements to

Country paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Country paper - Essay Example The country is endowed with a number of minerals such as emerald, iron, copper, bauxite and gold. The temperatures along the coastline, for the most part of the year are usually high. The interior is usually warm even during the cool seasons that come in between April and September. The country has an estimated population of aboput24, 692,144 of which the Maku Lomwe of the north accounts for more than half. The country has over 9 ethnic groups. The larger demographic of the population is between the ages of 25 to 54 with females accounting 3,553,256 for while males account for 3,113,095. The major religions are Roman Catholics (28.4%) and Muslims (17.9%). Two political organizations; Frelimo and Renamo dominate the country, though allowing of multi–party democracy. As of 2013, the Gross Domestic Product stood at 15.63 Billion dollars with 25.83 Million people living under or dangerously close to the poverty line. The per capita income, in the same period stood at $605.5. As of 2013, statistics illustrated that domestic tourism accounted for 7.2% of Mozambique’s economic growth. The country’s population is not as indulgent in tourism because they are focused more on development through agriculture. In the same period, international tourism only brought in 6.11% of the economic development. This could be attributed to low levels of tourism promotion. The infrastructural development is substantially low and is rated amongst the worst in the world. In light of this, there country’s government has taken measures to try to improve this. Notably, the development of infrastructure is directly linked to the success of tourism. $17 Billion has been invested in pipeline development as a bid to improve economic growth. Mozambique has 7700 hotel beds that register only 40% occupancy rate. The country is challenged with access to land for hotel development in terms of speed and availability for access.

What is the best solution to preventing deaths from drunk driving this Essay

What is the best solution to preventing deaths from drunk driving this is a(problem solution) - Essay Example To start with, drivers who drive under alcohol influence have impaired driving skills. According to Duke University, drunk drivers show deviations from pure rational decision making (4). Driving under influence of alcohol makes many people fail to obey the traffic rules accordingly or even fail to see the road signs at all. This is because many of those drivers may have taken the alcohol for fun or out of stress. Those who consume the alcohol for the fun bit of it may start exercising funny driving habits like driving with loud music in the vehicles just for fun but, loud music can cause obstruction to the driver leading to accident. On the other hand, drivers who take alcohol as a way of relieving stress can unknowingly drive the vehicles at very high or extremely low speeds that can obstruct other road users leading to accident. Secondly, the road fatalities that result from drunk driving are alarmingly high calling for attention to solve the problem. Considering the number of road trips taken by people while driving under alcohol influence, the increased road fatalities are inevitable. According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, â€Å"one out of every two thousand trips† are taken by drivers under alcoholic influence in America (1). This indicates the high probability of having road accidents caused by drunk drivers. Further, Mothers Against Drunk Driving state that someone gets killed in a drunk driving accident on an average of 53 minutes (1). The large numbers of deaths resulting from drunk driving indicate the seriousness of the problem to the society. However, despite the seriousness of the problem, there exists a viable solution that when implemented could result into zero alcohol related accidents. Incorporation of technology to assist deter drunk drivers from driving vehicles can minimize if not end the problem. Use of alcohol detection gadgets by police on road patrol and

Comparative analysis of Marketing Communications strategies and mix Essay - 2

Comparative analysis of Marketing Communications strategies and mix for the fashion market in the UK - Essay Example In the 21st century organization in the apparel business face a new reality due to the start of the convergence age which creates new challenges for companies regarding their marketing and communication mix of products or services. This report studies the apparel & fashion industry in Europe by analyzing three firms: Zara, French Connection and H&M. The report is divided into four major segments: research methods, market overview, analysis & discussion, and recommendations & conclusion. The study of the effects of marketing channels in the apparel industry in the United Kingdom utilizes secondary obtain from a variety of sources. The information used in this report was collected from sources such as academic databases, corporate websites, annual reports, journal articles, textbooks and other online sources. Secondary research is the utilization of information that already exists such as a journal article which was crated by another author (Asiamarketresearch, 2007). In the analysis and discussion session of the report it recommends various solutions for the companies targeted in the report on how primary research can be utilized by the company decision makers in order obtain certain data to improve their operations. One particular research technique that the writer of this paper planned to implement, but was not able to perform the primary research due to time constraints was a customer questionnaire. The idea was to spend three hours with a team of four people wit hin a hundred feet distance of a location of each of the three stores studied (Fcuk, H&M and Zara) to collect data from the customer’s of these stores using a short anonymous questionnaire. The questionnaire would include 10 questions and the minimum collection necessary to achieve a representative sample was 25 questionnaires. Appendix A illustrates an example of a questionnaire that could be utilized to collect data from customers regarding marketing

Images of Japan Within and Without Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Images of Japan Within and Without - Term Paper Example It is characterized by rudimentary agriculture and pit dwellings (Walt, 1980). Decorated clay vessels are examples of the oldest surviving world pottery. Japan was also characterized by Neolithic and Mesolithic culture of semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer. Japanese culture has evolved from its origin. This study is aimed at examining the images of Japan within and without. These include Japan and Japanese images in the western world. The primary objective is to determine the kinds of images, and how Japan has been seen by the outside world - western images and western myths. The other area of interest is the nationalism of Japan together with key aspects of change in the country; home and family in Japan’s continuity and transformation. Japan as Seen by the Outside World- Western Images and Myths Japan is seen by the western world as a country of cherry trees and volcanoes. Japan’s icons are cherry blossoms and volcano Fudzijama. This makes Japan to be viewed as a loyal, h onorable and brave country. Samurai traditions demand that profits to Japanese only be second to prestige and honor. The virtues of old warriors were courage, loyalty and endurance, which smoothly translated into managerial skills (Black, 1999). Japan is also an isolated country with great contradictions. It has booming cities in the south, which are beautiful and peaceful (Escola & Rikkinen, 1976). This is an indication that Japanese people are hard working and group oriented. According to Totman (2005), the tradition of Japan has been working together by discussion and agreement. Japanese people are hardworking and highly skilled. Japan is also clean and neat. The garden has little stream, waterfall and small bridges. There are also manicured paths shrubs, rocks and flowers. It therefore, has the image of being very neat and cleans (Clavell, 1998). Japan is also seen as unique and different for many years remaining an unresolved riddle and enigma. Though it is in Asia, it is so we sternized, unlike any other country of Asia. It is uniquely adaptable countries where modernity and traditions are consisting of one continuum (Whitney, 1967). In the entire world, Japanese are known to be polite and courteous people (Clement, 1906). Littlewoods (1996) says that Japan’s idea on western images and myths is that different western countries have different views towards Japan. On the other hand, European images also differ from American images. The west has always been seen as an industrialized, urbanized, capitalist, modernized and highly developed. Its concept is therefore a product of 16th century historical processes as people tend to divide the world into west and non west, Japan’s position becomes confusing. The images are based on old pictures and descriptions. The historical perspective of Japanese images is mainly based on historical notes and books written by authors from the west. Historians have for a long time debated on the seclusion of Japan . Few European works in description of Japan, appeared during the period of seclusion, and were exclusively attached to the Dutch factory. Although there were several information limitations, Kaempfer formed the most popular western image in Japan (Clavell, 1998). The two compilations that were widely read were published in New York and London, two years before the expedition of Perry. Perry’s arrival in Uraga was especially felt because of his decorative fine arts. It was also conspicuous in architecture ceramics, religious studies dance, fashion, interior design, literature and landscape gardening among others. The interest of Americans and European first rose from observable images, without an intermediary aid. The popular Japanese imaginations were stirred by fans, curios, kites, parasols, combs,

The Gettysburg Address Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Gettysburg Address - Essay Example They constituted the last line of defense between Lee and the Union capital of Washington D.C. On the third day, the Confederate Army’s frontal assault was repulsed and the Battle of Gettysburg was won by the Union forces. This was the only battle waged in the North and resulted in 23,000 causalities for the Union Army. The Confederates lost 28,000 (BookRags Web site). In the aftermath of the battle, the dead lay unburied, or were hastily bundled into makeshift graves in the fields. Pennsylvania’s Governor, Andrew Curtin, commissioned a reputed local Attorney, David Wills, to purchase land to serve as an appropriate cemetery for the Union dead. This resulted in the acquisition of the 17 acres of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. While the work of reinterring the Union dead from the field graves to the cemetery was still in progress, the cemetery was formally dedicated on 19 November, 1863. At present, the cemetery is home to over 6,000 American service men who died in t he Civil War, Spanish-American War, the World Wars and the Vietnam War (Gettysburg.com Web site). On 19 November, 1863, President Lincoln, members of his Cabinet, Governors of the Northern States and Civil and Military Officials gathered at Gettysburg, along with a crowd of about 15,000 citizens. A crude platform had been constructed on the battlefield, with journalists seated on one side and the dignitaries on the other. The keynote speaker at the dedication ceremony was Edward Everett from Massachusetts, an ardent Unionist and renowned Orator, who was considered one of the best speakers of the time.

Pheochromocytoma Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Pheochromocytoma - Essay Example They are usually derived from the adrenal medulla but may develop from chromaffin cells in or about sympathetic ganglia (pheochromocytomas or paragangliomas). The mechanism of catecholamine release is not well documented. It is suspected that the tumor may be caused by the changes in blood flow and necrosis within the tumor. The tumors do not contain nerves and therefore neural stimulation will not trigger catecholamine release. They also store and secrete a variety of peptides, such as endogenous opioids, neuropeptide Y, and chromagranin, which may contribute to the clinical manifestation in selected cases. The term pheochromocytoma was coined by a pathologist named Pick after the Greek work phaios, meaning dark or dusky, and chroma, meaning color - to describe the chromaffin reaction seen in adrenomedullary tumors. The term is mostly used to refer to tumors that arise from the adrenal medulla. Pheochromocytoma's most common manifestation is hypertension. Spectacular and alarming hypertensive paroxysms or crises may occur in over half the cases. Although they only occur in .1% of the hypertensive population, it is nevertheless a significant cause of high blood pressure and is correctible, if properly diagnosed and treated. If it is ignored, then it could be fatal and will put patients at risk for a lethal hypertensive paroxysm and long-term sequelae (a pathological condition resulting from a prior disease, injury or attack) of the disease. It is also an indication of the presence of a familiar disorder. An early detection may reduce the risk of metastasis. Description Pheochromocytoma is a rare disease in which tumors form in chromaffin cells of the body. Most pheochromocytomas, about 98% of the time, start inside the adrenal glands (adrenal medulla). It is a tumor which is made up of large, polyhedral, pleomorphic chromaffin cells, which is only malignant in less than 10% of the case, and which causes the adrenal glands to produce too much adrenaline. The histologic appearance will not show malignancy. A local invasion of the surrounding tissue or distant metastases will reveal malignancy. It usually affects only one of the adrenal glands, although it may also start in other parts of the body, such as the area around the heart or bladder. Pathology Statistically, pheochromocytoma occur in 1-2 out of 100,000 adults, around 80% of which are unilateral and solitary, only 10% are bilateral, and the remaining 10% are extraadrenal. Majority of these cases, about 80-90% are sporadic, and the remaining are connected to hereditary syndromes (.eg. multiple endocrine neoplasia). In pediatric patients, about are bilateral and another are extraadrenal. For yet unexplained reason, lesions are usually in the right side. Most pheochromocytomas are small, weighing less than 100 grams and are about 10 cm in diameter. They may however grow to over 3 kg in size. The tumors have vessels or ducts, or are highly vascular. Extraadrenal pheochromocytomas usually weigh 20-40 g and are less than 5 cm in diameter. Most are located within the abdomen in association with the celiac, superior mesenteric ganglia. Approximately 1% are in the thorax, 1 percent are within the urinary bladder, and less than 1% are in the neck, usually in association with the sympathetic ganglia or the extracranial branches of the ninth or tenth cranial nerves. Clinical Features Most of pheochromocytomas

Lending Decision Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Lending Decision - Case Study Example It has tremendous staying power. But it is time to change. It has to take a good look at how others in the same field are doing business and catch up with them. There is nothing wrong in the figures. The figures are only representative of the facts. Past performance of Coles is not going to help its future prospects unless the causes of the dismal figures are rectified. The company's accounts department is doing its job well. Problem is somewhere in the communications system and customer relations policies. Not enough seems to be happening to attract better customer base. Painting rosy pictures year after year cannot be a solution. The company must look lean and handsome in the sight of its patrons. Good advertisements, sponsorship of popular events, forays into new areas of business or expansion of good, existing ones must seen to be happening every now and then to build customers and investors confidence. Make a list of large potential customers like hotels, restaurants and other eating joints. Marketing strategies must go hand in hand with understanding and catering to the needs of individual as well as corporate clients. Concentrate on products that yield better profit margin location-wise. Product A may rake in higher profit margin in one location, whereas Product B may show similar margin in another location.

Policy Making Essay Example for Free

Policy Making Essay In the United States, a Constitutional form of government mandates a separation of powers between the respective branches of government. Therefore, the methods and avenues of the policymaking process are complex. Because of this unique separation between its executive and legislative functions (Schroedel 3) the governmental system in America lacks a formal hierarchical or organic link between the executive and the legislative branches of government (Schroedel 3) and this results in two primary progenitors of policymaking. Policy may be forwarded by the legislative or executive branches. The idea behind the division of policymaking powers to establish a government composed of functionally separated branches that are required to share legislative responsibilities (Schroedel 4) with neither of the branches exerting primacy. In addition to the formal branches of government, policymaking is impacted by public activism and public opinion as well as media. Such influence, often referred to as agenda setting, can be a primary motivator in the policymaking chain. Plainly stated, Agenda-setting is the course by which issues are adopted for Governmental consideration and perhaps remedy (Nelson 161), so, technically, one of the branches of government, legislative or executive, must at some point be engaged in the policymaking process set forth by public agenda-setting. A case which illustrates the combination of all aspects of policymaking fro public activism to legislative and executive influence, is the issue of child abuse in America. Rather than having long-standing laws and protections against child abuse, It was not until the 1950s and 1960s [ ] that the problem again came to the fore (Nelson 163); a key point being that the bringing of the problem to the forefront of public and governmental awareness lay largely with the media and with popular interest groups and activists. It was by examining how child abuse achieved these agendas that government came to understand new categorical social service policies (Nelson 163) and subsequent legislation broadened to include a more sensitive governmental response to rape, as well as recognition of such new problems as spouse abuse, child sexual abuse, child pornography, and abuse of the elderly (Nelson 163). The conclusion is that public interest and activism, along with the legislative and executive branches of government plays a pivotal role in policymaking in American government.

Characteristics of a Metropolitan

Characteristics of a Metropolitan ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to understand what Groningen appropriates as a mini-metropolis city. The first step is to find the meaning of the metropolis from a variety of sources, the second step of searching for data about Groningen and the third step is to compare between the two data. In the end is at a conclusion that the metropolis are not only associated with the factor number of population, area and economy of a city, but a related metropolis of a character which is owned by the city. So Groningen with all matters and functions and its ability to further develop its compliance is said to be a mini-metropolis city. Metropolis Characteristics Metropolitan is a term used to describe a relatively large urban area, both of the size of area, population, and the scale of economic and social activity. While the etymology, said metropolitan (noun) or metropolis (adjective) is derived from the Ancient Greek language, which the word meter means mother, and the word polis means city. (Wackerman, 2000) In general, the metropolitan can also be defined as a large residential center that consists of a large city and some in the surrounding area with one or more major cities that serve as a point of contact (hub) to the towns in the surrounding areas. A metropolitan area is an agglomeration of several settlements, settlements should not be the city, but the overall form a unity in nature activities and lead to the city center (a large city that is the core) that can be seen from the flow of labor and commercial activities. According Goheen (in Bourne, ed. 1971), City / Metropolitan District is an urban area with a population characteristic that stand out in comparison with the surrounding countryside. This term is used to give a more precise picture of the amount and concentration of the population in a large area, which in turn can show the magnitude of the centers of the main settlements in the country. In general, the metropolitan region can be defined as large, with economic and social unity integrated and characterize the activity of the city. The characteristics of the Metropolitan of several aspects such as the amount of population, economic activities, mobility, activities of the population, and the structure of the region. 1. The amount of the total population The magnitude of population becomes a major consideration in determining the aspects of the definition of a metropolitan. However, some urban experts set different limits for the determination of the minimum number of metropolitan area population. 2. Economic activity In the metropolitan area occurs agglomeration residential areas and jobs. That is, the metropolitan area is an urban area with a specializing in social and economic activities function. The economic specialization is the industrial and services sectors. Industrial activities and services is the dominant sector in the growing metropolitan region. Economic activities that take place in the metropolitan area is heterogeneous and has a role as a central / center of economic activities on a regional scale, both within the province or state and national scope. Growth and development of the urban economy are the driving factors behind the metropolitan and will continue to affect the prospects of the future metropolis. In fact, metropolitan anywhere carry out the functions of the national economy, which is a very significant contribution to the whole country. Metropolitan supposedly able to play a role and function in accordance with its share in national economic development. On the other hand, the role of the national economy must be balanced with the metropolitan economy comparable level and is able to also write a decent life for the citizens of the metropolitan community itself. Metropolitan should be able to create jobs and income level sufficient for people to be able to survive and even enjoy life in the metropolitan environment. The income levels are generally far exceeds the metropolitan cities and other areas as well as rural, and the main attraction for the current metropolitan population who are looking for work and a decent lif e. Surely there must be taken into account that the level of public spending in general metropolitan also much higher than the city and other areas. 3. Mobility of peoples activities One characteristic of the metropolitan area is shown in the form of ease of mobility by Angotti (1993) seen in 3 forms (Winarso et al, 2006), namely: a. Occupational mobility (mobility Employment), characterized by the ease with which people move workplace without having to move residence because of the many types and variations of jobs available. b. Housing Mobility (Residential Mobility), occurs in line with the mobility of the workplace. c. Mobility trip (Trip Mobility), occurs because of the mobility of the workplace and residence. 4. Structure Regions Broadly speaking there are two kinds of physical form metropolis that shapes the metropolis spread (dispersed) and the shape of the metropolis centered (concentrated). To spread the metropolis consists of the metropolis spreads and galactic metropolis. As for the centralized metropolis comprises centered metropolis, metropolitan and metropolitan ring star (jayadinata, 1986: 221-226). The Mini Metropolis There is a definition of a mini metropolis of Dr. Peter Kurz, where he was a major in Mannheim, Mannheim as the city he called mini-metropolis. Not because of its large size, not too big for its population, but because of Mannheim managed properly so that this city we can eat, live and work. Geographically, the city is located between two rivers, providing public transport links and good shopping center, and a center of culture, science, research and creativity. In other words, Dr. Peter Kurz said that in this town people can feel the balance of life and comfort of staying in Mannheim Groningen Characteristics Groningen is the main municipality as well as the capital city of the province in the Netherlands. Groningen is the largest city in northern Netherlands, so Groningen is the regional power of the northern Netherlands. When viewing a map of the Netherlands, it appears that groningen is downtown for northern Dutch region, and there are no other major city within a radius of about 150 kilometers from Groningen. Apart from being the capital of the province of Groningen is also a historical and geographical center of Groningen is also a center of trade since the end of the 15th century. The existence of the center of the city of Groningen Martini tower is a symbol of power and later with the establishment of the University of Groningen in 1614 with the development of the city of Groningen now has about 50,000 students (25% deari total population), it is seen that the Groningen become an important educational center for the Netherlands. In addition to being the city with a ratio of the number of students that a lot of the population, the city of Groningen also a leading city in terms of innovation, research development, and entrepreneurship Figure 1. Netherland Map (Steen, 2015) Population in Groningen Groningen as a province has a population of 579.036 residents, and as a Municipality of Groningen has a population of 189.991 residents, which means the city of Groningen has 33% of the total population in the province of Groningen (Steen, 2015). Table 1. composition of the population of the cities in netherland (Steen, 2015) 2000 2009 Amsterdam 731,288 (44,4%) 755,605 (49.5%) Rotterdam 592,673 (40,0%) 587,134 (46,9%) The Hague 441,094 (40,1%) 481,864 (47,3%) Utrecht 233,667 (29,8%) 299,891 (31,5%) Groningen 173,139 (16,5%) 184,227 (19,7%) Netherlands 15,863,950 (17.5%) 16.485.787 (19.9%) Note ( % ) = % of ‘allochtoon’ = 1 or more parents born abroad From the population compotition table, we can see that Groningen become the 5th largest city in population in cities in Netherland, although there is a significant difference in the population of western part of the Netherland city Economic activity According to data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the Netherlands is the 18th largest economy in the world in 2012. GDP per capita Approximately $ 43.404 makes netherland one of the richest countries in the world. Netherlands has a large natural gas reserves northern sea areas, but most of the production is from onshore wells and natural gas produced from the Groningen province, Consumption of natural gas in the Netherlands is only about 2/3 of its production, while the rest is exported. Netherlands is currently the fifth largest exporter of natural gas in the world. Figure 2. Largest Gas Fields In The World (http://www.energy-pedia.com/news/netherlands/exxonmobil-to-continue-to-tap-the- enormous-resources-at-the-slochteren-field-for-another-50-more-years) Employment Data Based on data up to April 2012, Groningen providing 135 537 jobs during the two years in which the growth 3010 = 2.3%. And Groningen has 15 909 firms, with over 2 years experience growth in 1417 = 9.8%. This shows that Groningen has good economic growth in terms of the number of jobs available. According to data from 2009 recorded that the ratio of the number of people who work for 1000 residents, Groningen ranks 3rd in the Netherlands the number of 730 jobs per 1,000 residents. This means th culture/recreationat is above the national average of 490 jobs per 1,000 Netherland resident Tabel 2. Employment Growth per-Sector 2009 – 2011 (Steen, 2015) Employment Growth 2009- 2011 agriculture 0.10% industry 5.20% utilities 2.30% ++ construction 4.30% trade 12.30% restaurants, hotels 4.20% transport, communication 8.00% finance 1.50% business services 18.40% + government 8.80% education 9.90% + health 20.70% culture/recreation 4.50% + Mobility of peoples activities The city of Groningen has been recognized as a Word Cycling City, this is because 57% of trips in the city is done by using a bicycle vehicle. Transport infrastructure in the city has been designed well so convenient for cyclists. In 2000, Groningen was elected as Fiedsstad 2002 The Top Bike City of The Netherlands for 2002. The transport system in the city center provides priorities for bicycles and pedestrians, by making traffic cirlulation prohibiting private vehicles into the inner city, inner city divided by 4 zones A, B, C, D. So that private vehicles can not be moved from zone A to B through the middle of town but directed at the ring road towards the road first. so although the distance A to B near as be felt far as having to turn first. Rail: Groningen has three train stations, namely station Groningen, There are three stations in Groningen, Groningen Europapark and Groningen Noord. The main train station has regular services to almost all major cities in the Netherlands (served by the Nederlandse Spoorwegen and Arriva) as well as other European cities. Bus: Groningen has inter-city bus transportation and inter-state bus which flies to several cities in the Netherlands and Germany. It also has a special bus transportation routes within the city groningen that connects several areas in the city groningen CONCLUSION There are diverse opinions of experts on the definition and characteristics of a metropolis, where many describe as a city with a high population and high-income economy, with pomp owned a city. Groningen, with a population of only about 200,000 residents but has a soul and spirit as a mini-metropolis city, Why a mini metropolis, not as a metropolis? I think this is just a comparison of size alone. Groningen has a very compact design and the city continues to grow but never leave its cohesiveness. As a cultural center, education center and a regional economic center in the northern Netherlands, with all its facilities and functions, Groningen has played a role as an attractive city, good for work, interesting place to visit, and certainly comfortable place to live. If I may suggest, I would say that the Groningen like a towering lighthouse and shining brightly, illuminating the surrounding areas. References http://www.energy-pedia.com/news/netherlands/exxonmobil-to-continue-to-tap-the-enormous-resources-at-the-slochteren-field-for-another-50-more-years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Netherlands http://www.cbs.nl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen http://gemeente.groningen.nl/ https://www.scribd.com/doc/50565637/The-city-of-Groningen-has-been-described-as-a-mini-metropolis-Is-this-justifiable http://www.cityoftalent.nl/ http://www.ob-peter-kurz.de/data/minimetropolis.pdf

Movie Analysis Of Leadership Development

Movie Analysis Of Leadership Development You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. -Eleanor Roosevelt The above stated lines speak up the spirit of Norma Rae and the power of a leader. The quotation highlights the two main points shown in the film; the strength and courage of a woman and the idea of justice and equal rights for all. The film shows how an oppressed, young American lady who in initial stage did not had courage to fight against intolerable environment, converts into a charismatic leader and helps up bringing the whole textile labour society. The Film: The film Norma Raes release came in an era when labour unions were falling out of favour with the American public and politicians appeared eager to criticize organized labour for harming American competitiveness in the global marketplace. Norma Rae (played by actress Sally Field) focuses on the experiences of an individual who lived in Roanoke Rapids, NC and played a leadership role in the struggle to win union representation from the J.P. Stevens Company. Her real name was Crystal Lee. Crystal Lee had grown up in a family of mill workers, laboured in a variety of jobs, including textiles, and then, rather suddenly, discovered an interest in unions when she heard the speech of an organizer who had come to Roanoke Rapids. She successfully demonstrated that power is not based on title or status; it comes by connecting with people and standing up for what you believe in (Goleman et al, 2002). The movie clearly sends out the message that strong will power, hard work and determination can surely make impossible possible. It substantiates the bonding between a leader and his follower, the importance of such a symbiotic relationship and how the follower can become a leader too by synergizing bonds. It is a live commentary on the inherent leadership potential lying latent in everyone of us and how the environmental factors, situations and a suitable guidance can convert us into a charismatic leader. The movie begins with the loud noise of machines in the mill doing its job and still shots from Ms. Raes life from being an infant to a sad woman, one amongst the 800 mill-workers; a cog in the cotton mill machinery who is not enjoying life, but is only struggling with it to survive. Workers are portrayed as being machines themselves making machines in unceasing eight hour shifts and trying to come to terms with this machine age .Norma Raes mother facing the problem of temporary deafness due to the unbearable noise produced by the machines in the mill. These pathetic working environmental conditions with short and few breaks in-between the working hours, no windows, no proper working conditions and poor management played a major role in transforming Norma Rae into a leader. To begin with, she is a young, hard working, energetic lady with no decided goals. She is a rebel without a cause, unharnessed youth of the age who fearlessly confronts the management. The bosses first tried to hold her by offering a rise in salary by 1$/hr and offering a higher position than others. At first, she plays into their hands, she accepted the offer, but when she was cut off from her people and saw an attitude change in them then she realizes a very important lesson of life that to find strength, one must be with and from the people. Then comes into play Reuben Warshofsky (played by Ron Leibman), an urban union leader who knows the labour laws and the legal system and just needs an insider to materialize his goals from within, who could support him in serving the good cause of publicising the labour union and telling the benefits of it. With Ruebens coordination and learning, Norma slowly transforms into a strong and confident leader. This symbiotic conventional mentor-protà ©gà ©e bond develops into an affective partnership where Norma and Reuben spread awareness and overcome personal and work related obstacles together. Reubens authority, knowledge and wittiness to handle situations helped making a path and strategy to confront the problems. Norma Rae had been marketed to the American public as a story about a female Rocky and as a film that exuded feminist spirit while not overtly preaching feminism. Leadership Styles: There are various leadership styles reflected by various characters in the film Norma Rae, following theories and styles help us explain them: Leaderships gender perspective Transformational Leadership Authoritarian and Participative leadership Style Contingency Theory and Situational leadership Vision Development Conflicts Social Identity Theory Leaderships gender perspective: Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, She doesnt have what it takes. They will say, Women dont have what it takes. (Clare Boothe Luce) There is a cultural ideal in most societies that generally men are the leaders. This ideal persists despite the fact that women in many nations have participated in governing the whole nation operating at the topmost positions like Prime Minister and President (Table 1). There still seems to be, in some circles, a belief in some societies that women do not belong in the leadership, and are especially ill-perceived in leadership positions. There still appears to be a commonly held belief that, while women are tolerated in the ranks, many men still believe that leadership in their domain alone. The male centred society has usually associated women with certain specific roles; such taking care of household tasks, looking after children etc. The film Norma Rae tries to evolve such typical and orthodox mindset. The above said sentences can easily be collected from a scene where Normas husband shows anger on her when she used to come late and tries to let her realize her duties towards hou sehold works like washing clothes, cooking food, and looking after kids. But Norma made him realize that she has been working for a great cause and motive and he should understand it. Norma proves it to the whole society that women can not only look after the house and children but also can work, earn, lead and change the system. She also proves that women who are not associated with leadership can be taught and developed to be good leaders. It is truly and beautifully said that: Women have certain characteristics that give them an edge over men in being leaders, like- empathy, and a caring attitude (Heller, 1982). Transformational Leadership: Transformational leadership is a leadership approach that is defined as leadership that creates valuable and positive change in the followers. A transformational leader focuses on transforming others to help each other, to look out for each other, to be encouraging and harmonious, and to look out for the organization as a whole. In this leadership, the leader enhances the motivation, morale and performance of his follower group (source: www.wikepedia.org). This is a leadership style exhibited primarily by Rueben, Norma gradually adopts this style. Transformational Leadership occurs when the leader take a visionary position and inspires others to follow. The essence of transformational leadership lies making the followers understand the goals and inspire them to achieve them (Bass et al, 1994). Like many other leaders Norma used the help of her mentor Rueben to understand various leadership traits. To understand the complexity of the environment Rueben who is the mentor here shares all his knowledge and expertise with his protà ©gà © Norma, to become a better leader. Norma evolves as a leader with the help of her mentor, Rueben. She learnt about how she can help people to fight the inequality and how to make them stand against the prevailing evils in the work environment. She understands the fact that: To lead, one must follow. -Lao Tzu Reuben has better Leadership skills than Norma, but his profession and demands matched while that of Norma didnt. Ruebens strength lies in the fact that he inspires people to come forward and realise their potential. He follows the principle of Leadership Development. Reuben better knows how to use the processes of leadership development, i.e., assessment, challenge and support (Howell et al, 2006). Rueben has a better understanding than Norma about of the psychology of his followers to inspirationally motivate them and intellectually stimulate them (Pierce et al, 2008). He makes Norma and the workers understand the fact that a union is essential for them and thus sets the ball rolling. Norma takes the lead and spreads awareness amongst the workers. Normas leadership style is quite inspired by Rueben and she also grows up into a transformational leader. Norma learned the lesson from Rueben: If you are not the lead dog scenery never changes (Source: LeadershipAdvanceOnline) Authoritarian and Participative leadership style: Authoritarian: This style is used when leaders tell their employees what they want done and how they want it accomplished, without getting the advice of their followers. (Source: www.nwlink.com) Norma is shown as an energetic and hard working character in this film, thus authoritarian characteristic, though in a very small content, is exhibited in her natural characteristics. This style is used when Norma tells her peers working for the formation of the labour society about what they want to be done and how she wants it to be accomplished, without getting the advice from them. This leadership style can even be seen the scene when Norma shouts on one of her peer for not getting the work done on time and she had to spend extra effort on augments than to concentrate on other core tasks like planning and management. This leadership style is primarily exhibited by management of O.P Henley textile mill; the management is too much authoritarian and does not want any employee to raise voice against the odds in the mill. The management misuses its authority to restrict union activities been performed by Norma in the work place. The management is least bothered about the employee care , they just want the work to be done without giving any concerns to the voice, needs and requirements of employees. The management of O.P Henley textile mill seems to deny the truth: The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. -Kenneth Blanchard Participative (Democratic): This style involves the leader including one or more employees in the decision making process (determining what to do and how to do it) (Source: http://www.nwlink.com) This leadership style is very much exhibited in the Norma Rae character of the film; in fact the core of the film revolves round this leadership quality. Norma Rae participates in decision making with Rueben. Planning, controlling, pursuing, managing, organizing, and all other tasks are performed by her in a participative manner, either with the peer members of the union supporting group, peer workers or Rueben. An example of participative leadership of Norma could be seen in a scene in which she and the fellow employees wear a large union button in the work setting to speak their fellow workers about joining a union which was protected under the new rules. Norma used to involve and convince people working in the mill to get involved in union formation; she generally used to take inputs from peer workers and Rueben on how to manage tasks. Situational Leadership: Another leadership concept clearly visible from the film Norma Rae is Situational Leadership or the Contingency Theory of Leadership. As per this concept the leadership style is contingent to situations and circumstances (Howell et al, 2006). It is said to be the best style of leadership. The style to be used depends on the readiness level of the people the leader is trying to influence (Pierce et al, 2008). Norma Rae realized the intolerable situation of the textile mill workers were working in, that propelled her to change of the situation and lead the labour society to form a union for their own and for the sake of whole textile labour society. Situational leadership is clearly demonstrated by Norma Rae in the scene when after getting fired from her job in the mill, she mounted a table in her work room and held up a sheet of cardboard with the word UNION marked on it in large letters. She turned around slowly, demonstrating her bold message to the assorted hemmers, terry cutters and packers in the room. As a result of this action, the workers who had been facing the unbearable situations since long, without revolting, were stunned and realized that the time has come to be united and to stand against the management for the common objective of equality and justice, Norma clearly demonstrated her leadership in the odd situation, this scene though silent left a big impact and played a major role in union formation in American textile industry. By demonstrating situational leadership at various instances Norma Rae proved the following definition of leadership: Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it Dwight Eisenhower Vision Development: A vision is a guiding image of what success looks like. It answers the question what do you wish to become. (Source www.thepracticeofleadership.net) Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. She was born and brought up in a family of workers who were facing these conditions since long. In the opening scene of the movie, the viewer is immediately introduced to what it might really be like working all day in a textile factory. The operation of the machinery is deafening. At the end of the scene, we discover that is exactly the case as Norma Rae realizes her own mother cannot hear. Norma from her past had a vision of what is prevalent in the environment and needs to be removed, but since she was used to it and was unaware of her latent leadership abilities she was unable to pursue that vision. Rueben made her realize her leadership capabilities and supported her vision to resolve the issues which she and the society was facing since long. To use vision as a strategy, she needed to define three elements-the plan, current state and desired state (Refer appendix 2). It means defin ing where she was now, where she wanted to be in the future and how she was going to get there This concern about the situation gave her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labour union organizer. They knew the present situation, they developed a plan and structure to bring as many people together with them as possible. Together, they undertook the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory) and saved the future of many workers working in textile industry. It was their vision which led them to succeed and let them attain their objectives. Normas success which was lead by her vision justifies the following quote: The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. Its got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You cant blow an uncertain trumpet. -Theodore Hesburgh Conflicts: Dont be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against; not with; the wind. Hamilton Wright Mabie This is the main idea which Norma Rae seems to be following in the film. Any leader cannot grow without facing conflicts or without fighting the situations against him/her. In the film Norma Rae, Norma also comes across various conflicts while trying to achieve her goal. The first conflict is at her workplace i.e. against the management of O.P. Henley Textile Mill, the mill management never wanted Norma to form a union, and the management was against her since the beginning of union chapter. Norma had to face many conflicts from the management, some examples of it are, the management warned her at various moments that she might lose her job if she continues to raise voice for union in the work place, she was asked why she used workplace telephone in office hours?, she was asked to remove the unions button, she was warned while favouring the Unions notice on the notice board at work place, But Norma continued with her union objectives and kept on publicising the union, its cause and i ts functions to her peers, finally the management called the police chief to take her away to book her on disorderly conduct charges. Norma Rae did not leave calmly. She kicked, twisted, and screamed, and she had to be stuffed into the squad car and kept behind the bars for a night. At her home, being a lady she was expected to cook food, wash clothes, look after the kids, and perform all other household activities, but since she was very much involved in the union activities she could not take out time for all these works, there was a conflict between her and her husband regarding the same on which she reacted aggressively showing her discontent that while she kept busy in work it was the responsibility of him to take care of such tasks. All these conflicts made her stronger to fight for her cause. Social Identity Theory: Social identity theory: leader is picked by followers or chosen to be supported by followers because s/he is most like them. (Source- Slides) Norma Rae is a co-worker of the labours in the O.P Henley textile mills, this is an additional benefit which she enjoys to become a leader of them and for them, as stated in the social identity theory. There is a peer trust relationship between Norma and her followers, followers know that Norma is well aware of the situations and conditions prevalent in the working condition as she is one of them. This trust, respect and belief can be seen when she held up a sheet of cardboard with the word UNION marked on it in large letters, all her followers supported her and stopped working, they knew that what she was doing is for them and for their well being. In an earlier scene we see that Norma was offered a better designation and salary as that of peers, but when she realised the value of social identity she left the designation. Norma knew that without winning the confidence of her peers and without being one of them she would not be able to succeed to reach her destination. She knew the v alue of social identity. Conclusion Norma Rae though a great social transformer, does not depict the characteristics of a very great leader with a big following. In fact, Norma didnt even have any followers as seen from a conventional view. Yet, she achieved and benefited many. She transformed the way labours were treated in the society, depicting a very interesting, unique and a subtle style of leadership. Norma Rae proved that passion and not position is where courage of a great leader to fulfil his vision, comes from. She along with Reuben, achieved her goal of establishing a union, yet facilitated the workers to believe that it was their effort and achievement. The following lines best describe the leadership style of Norma Rae: Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves. -Lao Tzu Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Vision as a Strategy

Double Standard for Women of Homers Odyssey Essay -- Homer Odyssey wo

Double Standard for Women of the Odyssey      Ã‚   Odysseus plans to tiptoe back into his hall through various schemes, one of which is to become beneficial and amiable to the maidservants. With this motivation, he offers to guard the hearth so that the fire won’t dwindle, but the response he receives is more than unwelcoming. Melantho, a beneficiary of Penelope, spurns him saying:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   You must be crazy, punch drunk, you old goat.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Instead of going out to find a smithy—or a tavern bench—you stay   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   putting your oar in, amid all our men.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Numbskull not to be scared! The wine you drank   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   has clogged your brain, or are you always this way,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   boasting like a fool? Or have you lost   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   your mind because you beat that tramp, that Iros?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Look out, or someone better may get up   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   and give you a good knocking about the ears   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   to send you out all bloody. (18.405-15).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Unexpectedly and unconventional for his character, Odysseus says: â€Å"One minute: let me tell Telemakhos how you talk in hall, you slut; he’ll cut your arms and legs off† (18.416-20). â€Å"This hard shot took the women’s breath away and drove them quaking to their rooms, as though knives were behind: they felt he spoke the truth† (18.421-23).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   From the perspective of Melantho, her reason to believe the hungry bellied pariah, Odysseus, seems unclear. There seems to be a lapse in her reasoning. Since the old beggar’s arrival at Odysseus’ estate, Telemakhos—not ever publicly acknowledging the hunched-over man's entry—appears to wholly neglect him. Intimidated by the suitors’ death threats and revealing Odysseus’ identity, the only way out for Telemakhos, ... ... Athens," 5-16. Diana Buitron-Oliver and Beth Cohen,   "Between Skylla and Penelope: Female Characters of the Odyssey in Archaic and Classical Greek Art," pp. 29-58. "Female Representations and Interpreting the Odyssey," by Seth Schein, pp. 17-27. Griffin, Jasper. Homer on Life and Death, 1980, Clarendon Press. Richard Brilliant, "Kirke's Men: Swine and Sweethearts," pp. 165-73. Helene Foley, "Penelope as Moral Agent," in Beth Cohen, ed., The Distaff Side (Oxford 1995), pp. 93-115. "The Odyssey, History, and Women," by A. J. Graham, pp. 3-16 Lillian Doherty, Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey (Ann Arbor 1995), esp. chapter 1. Marilyn Arthur Katz, Penelope's Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in the Odyssey (Princeton 1991). Nancy Felson-Rubin, Regarding Penelope: From Courtship to Poetics (Princeton 1994).

The Goal, By Eliyahu Goldratt Essay -- Productivity, Bottlenecks

When reading the book The Goal written by Eliyahu Goldratt, there were many lessons that I learned in order to have a clear and concise understanding of a positive level of productivity in a company. To have a positive level of productivity there are may components that are taken into consideration. Understanding what it actually means to be productive and how to increase the level of productivity by knowing the actual goal of the company that is trying to be reached and the components that go into the process of being productive. There are many factors that contribute to the level of productivity and being able to identify these factors is the key ingredient to having a successful level of productivity. When trying to improve productivity for a company, one must first understand what it means to be productive and what it means to not be productive. Jonah classifies that, â€Å"I have come to the conclusion that productivity is the act of bringing company closer to its goal. Every action that brings the company closer to its goal is productive. Every action that does not bring a company closer to its goal is not productive† (Goldratt, 32). But when determining on what is productive and not productive, the actual â€Å"goal of the company must first be determined. â€Å" If the goal is to make money, then an action that moves us toward making money is productive and an action that takes away from making money is non-productive† (Goldratt, 41). Alex has finally realized what it means for his company to be productive, but the key is to know how to see if the company is meeting the goal that is desired or in this case making money. There are certain measurements that ca n â€Å" express the goal of making money perfectly well, but which also perm... ...ventory and operational expenses decrease. Once the constraint is determined, the five-step process is followed to find out how to fix or correct the restraint. From what I haven taken from this book, I have come to a conclusion that with a few steps, you can find a way to make your company productive and meet the overall goal of your company. A clear understanding of what your company’s goal is and to be able to use this goal to understand what being productive means in terms of your company. Knowing the measurements that are needed to reach your goal. The ability to try new experiments and be able to brainstorm and talk together with a dedicated team of researchers that want to reach the goal and wont stop experimenting different processes until the end goal is met. Works Cited Goldratt, Eliyahu M., and Jeff Cox. The Goal. N.p.: Gower, 1989. Print.

Dune Essay -- essays research papers

Dune   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This book all started with the family Atreides landing on plant Arrakis, commonly known as Dune. The planet Dune was the centre of the universe due to its immense amounts of spice. This spice is greatly needed for all planets as fuel and for raw materials. The family Atreides were asked by Emperor himself to go and mine the spice on the planet. Their greatest enemy the Harkonnen's, were also on Dune. These two families mining the precious spice on the same plant would lead to great troubles and wars.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Soon after that, I was introduced to a very brave and insightful young man. The young man is Paul Atreides. Paul is medium height with short, black hair. His mother Jessica is a Bene Gesserit that means she knows the â€Å"weirding way.† This means Jessica is trained to kill and is also trained as a mind reader. She is very tall and beautiful and is always concerned with the actions of Paul, the future ruler of the galaxy.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jessica's teacher, the Reverend Mother heard of Paul and thought that he might be the great leader that the prophets told of. The Reverend Mother came to Dune and tested Paul to see if this was so. Paul underwent great pain and suffering but passed the tests with the highest reverence. Duke Leto, Paul's father now came into the picture. He was the leader of the Atreides Family. He seemed very established and perceptive. The Atreides family represented good and honesty while their enemies, the Harkonnen's, were ruthless killers.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Harkonnen home planet, Gedi Prime was very desolate and dark. It represented the immorality and darkness within the Harkonnens. Their leader Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was very obese and inhuman. He killed his own slaves for fun and hated the Atreides with a passion. He hated their peaceful and honest ways. Most of all he despised their coming to Dune. This Harkonnen leader appeared the typical tyrant leader. Vladimir Harkonnen's most trusted solider Feyd-Rautha was also like him except his physical appearance was that of ideal shape and form.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Back at the Atreides base more characters are introduced to me. They are Duncan Idaho who was the personal trainer for Paul Atreides, Dr. Yeuh who was a good friend of the Duke and later was found out to be a traitor, and Thufir... ... understand the characters and their emotions with more comprehension. There were many themes in ‘Dune' such as â€Å"you shall get your just deserves.† This means that what you have done to others shall be done back to you in full. The Harkonnens army combined with the Emperors attacked and beat the Atreides. Paul in turn strikes back with brute force that many have not seen throughout their existence. The Harkonnens and the Emperor were annihilated and Paul's vengeance was paid. I must say that this science fiction book did create a sense of reality meaning that this situation could happen in the future. A boy or girl born in the future who is destined to be the almighty ruler. He/she will guide us out of depression and into a new era of peace and prosperity. Their may be truth to this story and one day a fight between good and evil may come to reality. Dune is the typical `Good guys vs. Bad guys' theme. The Atreides are at war with the Harkonnens and the good always win (as you already know.) Although this plot is really used too much Frank Herbert did an excellent job to disguise this fact. He blended this into a great story line of action packed adventure and dreams of the future.

Frankensteins Cat Essay

In China, the world’s manufacturing powerhouse, a new industry is taking shape: the mass production of mutant mice. Peek into the 45,000 mouse cages at Shanghai’s Fudan University and you’ll see a growing collection of misfits. By randomly disabling the rodents’ genes, the scientists here are churning out hundreds of odd animals, assembly-line style. They have created mice studded with skin tumors and mice that grow tusks. There’s a mouse with male-pattern baldness, hair everywhere save for a lonely bare spot on its head. Some of the mice have strange behavioral quirks—they endlessly bury marbles, for instance, or make only left turns. One strain ages at warp speed. Another can’t feel pain. While some of the rodents have obvious abnormalities, others reveal their secrets over time. One variety appears normal on the outside, with thick white fur and healthy pink ears and noses. But the animals are klutzes. They are clumsy and spectacularly uncoordinated. They fail miserably when researchers put them through their paces at a special rodent boot camp. In one test, the mice are tasked with standing on top of a rotating rod for as long as they can manage, the rodent equivalent of a logrolling challenge. It’s not an easy undertaking, but normal mice eventually find their footing. The mutant mice never do. They also have trouble balancing on a narrow wooden beam and keeping their grip when suspended, upside down, from a wire screen. And they have strange gaits—taking abnormally wide steps and holding their tails at odd angles, curved up toward the ceiling, instead of letting them simply drag along the floor behind them, as mice usually do. Even stranger, perhaps, are the Lonely Hearts Club mice. The males of this strain look like regular rodents, but the females consistently refuse to mate with them. The poor guys, lacking some certain je ne sais quoi, simply have no sex appeal, and they are rejected time and time again. These mice are just a small sample of the more than 500 different kinds of mutants the Fudan team has created. Ultimately, the researchers hope to create 100,000 strains of modified mice, each eccentric in its own way. It would be enough to fill a carnival sideshow thousands of times over. * * * As long as we’re dreaming up animal sideshows, we needn’t stop with peculiar mice. Science has given us a whole new toolbox for tinkering with life, and we have the power to modify animals in profound new ways. We are editing their genetic codes, rebuilding their broken bodies, and supplementing their natural senses. Headlines frequently herald the birth of strange new creatures: Bionic beetles! Glowing cats! Spider goats! Roborats! The breakthroughs are simultaneously astounding and puzzling. What are these creatures exactly? What do they look like? Who’s creating them, and why? And are these animals really so novel? Indeed, we have a long history of refashioning animal bodies. Take the varied members of the species Canis lupus familiaris—the modern dog—which are products of millennia of life with humans and bear little resemblance to their ancestors, gray wolves. Exactly how this dog domestication began is a subject of intense debate. Some scientists suggest that we deliberately set out to acquire canine companions, adopting wild wolf pups. Others hypothesize that hungry wolves, attracted to the bones, trash, and scraps produced by early humans, approached our camps on their own terms, and that our tolerance of the least threatening interlopers gave rise to future generations of human-friendly canines. Either way, as wolves became part of human society, moving from cold ground to warm hearth, they lost many of the traits they needed to survive in the wild. Their bodies and heads shrank, their faces and jaws grew more compact, and their teeth decreased in size. As our relationship with canines developed, we began to breed them more carefully, molding dogs that excelled at specific tasks. We created the bulky, barrel-chested mastiff to guard our homes, and the dachshund, a wiggly salami of a dog, to shimmy into badger burrows. The diversity among modern dogs is so astounding that the thirty thousand dogs that strut their canine stuff at Crufts, the largest dog show in the world, don’t even look like members of the same species. One year, the â€Å"Best in Show† contenders included King, a hound with a deer’s build, all legs and lean muscle, and Ricky, a tiny black-and-white fluff ball who could stand easily underneath King’s smooth brown belly. They shared the ring with Donny—a standard poodle whose shaved gray haunches were set off by a thick white mane—and Cruella, an Old English sheepdog whose long, shaggy hair obscured all but the black dot that presumably served as her nose. Today, thanks to us, dogs are the most physically diverse species on Earth. We’ve reshaped other species, too, turning scrawny chickens into plump broiler birds and bristlyhaired wild sheep into producers of soft wool. The list goes on and on. We learned to breed animals that suited our every need, creating hunters, herders, guardians, food sources, and companions. Over the course of generations, the members of many species diverged from their wild ancestors and took their place in a human world. But selective breeding was a blunt instrument, one that required us to transform animals using educated guesswork, breeding desirable hounds together, over and over again, until a puppy we liked squirmed into the world. It took thousands of years to turn wolves into dogs. Now we can create novel organisms in years, months, even days. Today, the tools of molecular biology allow us to target one specific gene, to instantly turn it on or off, to silence or amplify its effects. For instance, the researchers at Fudan University are creating their stunning array of strange mice simply by knocking out a single gene at a time. To do so, they’re relying on a special genetic tool called a transposon or a â€Å"jumping gene,† a segment of DNA capable of hopping around the genome. When the scientists inject a transposon into a mouse embryo, this foreign piece of DNA inserts itself into a random place in the rodent’s genome, disabling whatever gene it finds there. But the real beauty of the system is that when this mouse grows up and mates, the transposon jumps to a different location in the genome of its pups, sabotaging a new gene. With each mating, researchers have no idea where the transposon will end up, what gene it will disrupt, or what the ultimate effects will be. It’s like throwing darts at a genetic dartboard. Blindfolded. Only when the pups are born, and start exhibiting various abnormalities, do the scientists learn what part of the genome has gone haywire. The approach is allowing the researchers to create cages upon cages of novel mutants, simply by playing matchmaker between their amorous rodents. In some cases, the scientists are making furry freaks faster than they can figure out what’s wrong with them. We can also recombine genes in ways that nature never would—just consider a very curious cat skulking about New Orleans. With downy orange fur and a soft pink nose, the feline looks like your average tabby. But flick on a black light, and the cat becomes Mr. Green Genes, his nose turning from soft pink to electric lime, due to a bit of jellyfish DNA tucked into each of his cells. The insides of his ears and the whites of his eyes glow brightly, his face emerging from the dark like a modern-day Cheshire cat. (His son, Kermit, also glows green. ) Meanwhile, nearly two thousand miles away, a barn in Logan, Utah, is home to a strange herd of goats. Thanks to a pair of genes borrowed from a spider, each female goat produces milk that’s chockfull of silk proteins. When the milk is processed in the lab, scientists can extract the spider proteins and spin them into silk. Genetics isn’t the only field providing us with the power to reengineer other species. Advances in electronics and computing make it possible to merge animal bodies with machines, to use tiny electrodes to hijack a rat’s brain and guide the rodent, like a remote-controlled toy, through a complicated obstacle course. Breakthroughs in materials science and veterinary surgery are helping us build bionic limbs for injured animals, and we can train monkeys to control robotic arms with their thoughts. Today, our grandest science fiction fantasies are becoming reality. * * * Some of us may find our growing control over living, breathing beings to be unsettling. After all, biotechnology is the stuff of dystopian nightmares, and many an apocalyptic scenario has been constructed around crazy chimeras or world-conquering cyborgs. Ethicists and activists worry about whether we should be altering other species when we can’t possibly get their consent. Some say that manipulating the planet’s wild things—whether we’re inserting genes or electrodes—is profoundly unnatural, causes animal suffering, and turns other life-forms into commodities. Critics worry that our effort to remake the world’s fauna is the worst example of human hubris, the expression of an arrogant desire to play God. It’s true that remaking other species according to our own wants and needs doesn’t necessarily put animal welfare first. Selective breeding hasn’t always turned out well for animals—we’ve saddled dog breeds with all sorts of hereditary diseases and created turkeys with such gigantic breasts that they can barely walk. And of course, biotechnology gives us new ways to do damage. The Fudan University scientists have created mouse embryos with defects so severe that they die in the womb. Some of their mutant mice are prone to tumors, or kidney disease, or neurological problems. One strain, unable to absorb nutrients from food, essentially starves to death. In fact, a whole industry has sprung up to sell diseased lab animals to scientists, with numerous biotech companies hawking their unique creations. In October 2011, many of these companies converged on St. Pete Beach, Florida, for an international meeting of scientists who work with genetically modified organisms. Representatives from various biotech firms held court from booths ringing a hotel ballroom, advertising animals that had been engineered to suffer from all sorts of medical afflictions. One company was selling pigs with cystic fibrosis and cancer; a brochure from another outlined eleven available strains of rodents, from the NSE-p25 mouse, designed to display Alzheimer’s-like symptoms, to the 11BHSD2 mouse, which has a tendency to drop dead of heart failure. (And just in case nothing there caught your fancy, one company’s poster promised, â€Å"You design the experiment, we’ll design the mice. †) These companies aren’t making sickly animals purely to be cruel, of course; studying these creatures yields valuable insight into human disease. That’s good news for us, but little consolation for a tumor-riddled rodent. If there is peril here, there is also great promise. Biotechnology could do more for animals than it’s given credit for. Sure, we can make animals sick, but we can also choose to deploy our speciesshaping powers to help other species survive and thrive, to create healthier, happier, fitter critters, and some scientists are doing just that. With the sophisticated techniques at our fingertips, we may even be able to undo some of the damage we’ve done to other species, alleviating genetic disorders in dogs, for instance, or bringing wild animal populations back from the brink of extinction. Some forwardthinking philosophers are dreaming of more extreme interventions, such as boosting the brainpower of apes, and using genetic modification and electronic enhancement to help animals transcend the limits of their own bodies. Right now all the options are open. Though biotechnology’s strange new creatures are being created in the world’s labs, they don’t tend to stay there very long, and there are already cutting-edge animals living in fields, homes, and nature preserves across America. Before long, we may all be able to shop for animals the same way that scientists in Florida shopped for carefully engineered mice. Imagine a future in which we can each pick out the perfect animal from a catalogue of endless options. We could create something for everyone. Avid nighttime reader? How about your own Mr. Green Genes so you can stay up late, reading by the light of the cat? For the twelve-year-old who has everything, skip the toy cars and planes at Christmas and wrap up a remote-controlled rodent. Equestrians could order up a foal with the same genes as the winner of last year’s Kentucky Derby, while sprinters could get themselves a golden retriever whose artificial carbon-fiber legs would allow it to run as fast as a greyhound. The tools of biotechnology are becoming increasingly accessible to the public; future generations of animal lovers may be able to design their own creatures without fancy lab equipment or advanced scientific training. * * * In the pages that follow, we’ll go on a journey from petri dish to pet store, seeking out the revolutionary breeds of beasts that are taking their places in the world. We’ll venture from the rocky shores of California to the dusty fields of Texas, from the canine clones that live in Korean labs to the pets that sleep in our homes. We’ll delve into genes and brains, into work that seems frivolous and projects that are anything but. We’ll meet an engineer who is turning beetles into stunt planes and a biologist who believes cloning just might save endangered species. And, of course, we’ll come to know the animals themselves—from Jonathan, a sad sack of a seal with hundreds of online friends, to Artemis, a potentially life-saving goat whose descendants could one day take over Brazil. Along the way, we’ll puzzle through some larger questions. We’ll probe how our contemporary scientific techniques are different from what’s come before and whether they represent a fundamental change in our relationship with other species. We’ll consider the relationship we have with animals and the one we’d like to have. Most of us care deeply about some form of animal life, whether it’s the cat or dog curled up on the couch—60 percent of Americans share their homes with pets of one species or another—the chickens laying our eggs, or some exotic predator fighting to survive as its habitat disappears. Now that we can sculpt life into an endless parade of forms, what we choose to create reveals what it is we want from other species—and what we want for them. But even if you feel no special affection for the creatures with whom we share this planet, our reinvention of animals matters for us, too. It provides a peek into our own future, at the ways we may start to enhance and alter ourselves. Most of all, our grand experiments reveal how entangled the lives of human and nonhuman animals have become, how intertwined our fates are. Enterprising scientists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers are dreaming up all sorts of projects that could alter the course of our collective future. So what does biotechnology really mean for the world’s wild things? And what do our brave new beasts say about us? Our search for answers begins with a tank of glowing fish. 1. Go Fish To an aspiring animal owner, Petco presents an embarrassment of riches. Here, in the basement of a New York City store—where the air carries the sharp tang of hay and the dull musk of rodent dander —is a squeaking, squealing, almost endless menagerie of potential pets. There are the spindly-legged lizards scuttling across their sand-filled tanks; the preening cockatiels, a spray of golden feathers atop their heads; and, of course, the cages of pink-nosed white mice training for a wheel-running marathon. There are chinchillas and canaries, dwarf hamsters, tree frogs, bearded dragons, red-footed tortoises, red-bellied parrots, and African fat-tailed geckoes. But one of these animals is not like the others. The discerning pet owner in search of something new and different merely has to head to the aquatic display and keep walking past the speckled koi and fantail bettas, the crowds of goldfish and minnows. And there they are, cruising around a small tank hidden beneath the stairs: inch-long candy-colored fish in shades of cherry, lime, and tangerine. Technically, they are zebrafish ( Danio rerio), which are native to South Asian lakes and rivers and usually covered with black and white stripes. But these swimmers are adulterated with a smidgen of something extra. The Starfire Red fish contain a dash of DNA from the sea anemone; the Electric Green, Sunburst Orange, Cosmic Blue, and Galactic Purple strains all have a nip of sea coral. These borrowed genes turn the zebrafish fluorescent, so under black or blue lights they glow. These are GloFish, America’s first genetically engineered pets. Though we’ve meddled with many species through selective breeding, these fish mark the beginning of a new era, one in which we have the power to directly manipulate the biological codes of our animal friends. Our new molecular techniques change the game. They allow us to modify species quickly, rather than over the course of generations; doctor a single gene instead of worrying about the whole animal; and create beings that would never exist in nature, mixing and matching DNA from multiple species into one great living mash-up. We have long desired creature companions tailored to our exact specifications. Science is finally making that precision possible. * * * Though our ancestors knew enough about heredity to breed better working animals, our ability to tinker with genes directly is relatively new. After all, it wasn’t until 1944 that scientists identified DNA as the molecule of biological inheritance, and 1953 that Watson and Crick deduced DNA’s double helical structure. Further experiments through the ’50s and ’60s revealed how genes work inside a cell. For all its seeming mystery, DNA has a straightforward job: It tells the body to make proteins. A strand of DNA is composed of individual units called nucleotides, strung together like pearls on a necklace. There are four distinct types of nucleotides, each containing a different chemical base. Technically, the bases are called adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, but they usually go by their initials: A, T, C, and G. What we call a â€Å"gene† is merely a long sequence of these As, Ts, Cs, and Gs. The order in which these letters appear tells the body which proteins to make—and where and when to make them. Change some of the letters and you can alter protein manufacturing and the ultimate characteristics of an organism. Once we cracked the genetic code, it wasn’t long before we figured out how to manipulate it. In the 1970s, scientists set out to determine whether it was possible to transfer genes from one species into another. They isolated small stretches of DNA from Staphylococcus—the bacteria that cause staph infections—and the African clawed frog. Then they inserted these bits of biological code into E. coli. The staph and frog genes were fully functional in their new cellular homes, making E. coli the world’s first genetically engineered organism. Mice were up next, and in the early 1980s, two labs reported that they’d created rodents carrying genes from viruses and rabbits. Animals such as these mice, which contain a foreign piece of DNA in their genomes, are known as transgenic, and the added genetic sequence is called a transgene. Encouraged and inspired by these successes, scientists started moving DNA all around the animal kingdom, swapping genes among all sorts of swimming, slithering, and scurrying creatures. Researchers embarking on these experiments had multiple goals in mind. For starters, they simply wanted to see what was possible. How far could they push these genetic exchanges? What could they do with these bits and pieces of DNA? There was also immense potential for basic research; taking a gene from one animal and putting it into another could help researchers learn more about how it worked and the role it played in development or disease. Finally, there were promising commercial applications, an opportunity to engineer animals whose bodies produced highly desired proteins or creatures with economically valuable traits. (In one early project, for instance, researchers set out to make a leaner, faster-growing pig. ) Along the way, geneticists developed some neat tricks, including figuring out how to engineer animals that glowed. They knew that some species, such as the crystal jellyfish, had evolved this talent on their own. One moment, the jellyfish is an unremarkable transparent blob; the next it’s a neon-green orb floating in a dark sea. The secret to this light show is a compound called green fluorescent protein (GFP), naturally produced by the jellyfish, which takes in blue light and reemits it in a kiwi-colored hue. Hit the jelly with a beam of blue light, and a ring of green dots will suddenly appear around its bell-shaped body, not unlike a string of Christmas lights wrapped around a tree. When scientists discovered GFP, they began to wonder what would happen if they took this jellyfish gene and popped it into another animal. Researchers isolated and copied the jellyfish’s GFP gene in the lab in the 1990s, and then the real fun began. When they transferred the gene into roundworms, rats, and rabbits, these animals also started producing the protein, and if you blasted them with blue light, they also gave off a green glow. For that reason alone, GFP became a valuable tool for geneticists. Researchers testing a new method of genetic modification can practice with GFP, splicing the gene into an organism’s genome. If the animal lights up, it’s obvious that the procedure worked. GFP can also be coupled with another gene, allowing scientists to determine whether the gene in question is active. (A green glow means the paired gene is on. ) Scientists discovered other potential uses, too. Zhiyuan Gong, a biologist at the National University of Singapore, wanted to use GFP to turn fish into living pollution detectors, swimming canaries in underwater coal mines. He hoped to create transgenic fish that would blink on and off in the presence of toxins, turning bright green when they were swimming in contaminated water. The first step was simply to make fish that glowed. His team accomplished that feat in 1999 with the help of a common genetic procedure called microinjection. Using a tiny needle, he squirted the GFP gene directly into some zebrafish embryos. In some of the embryos, this foreign bit of biological code managed to sneak into the genome, and the fish gave off that telltale green light. In subsequent research, the biologists also made strains in red—thanks to a fluorescent protein from a relative of the sea anemone—and yellow, and experimented with adding these proteins in combination. One of their published papers showcases a neon rainbow of fish that would do Crayola proud. * To Richard Crockett, the co-founder of the company that sells GloFish, such creatures have more than mere scientific value—they have an obvious aesthetic beauty. Crockett vividly remembers learning about GFP in a biology class. He was captivated by an image of brain cells glowing green and red, thanks to the addition of the genes for GFP and a red fluorescent protein. Crockett was a premed student, but he was also an entrepreneur. In 1998, at the age of twenty-one, he and a childhood friend, Alan Blake, launched an online education company. By 2000, the company had become a casualty of the dot-com crash. As the two young men cast about for new business ideas, Crockett thought back to the luminescent brain cells and put a proposal to Blake: What if they brought the beauty of fluorescence genes to the public by selling glowing, genetically modified fish? At first, Blake, who had no background in science, thought his friend was joking. But when he discovered that Gong and other scientists were already fiddling with fish, he realized that the idea wasn’t far-fetched at all. Blake and Crockett wouldn’t even need to invent a new organism—they’d just need to take the shimmering schools of transgenic fish out of the lab and into our home tanks. The pair founded Yorktown Technologies to do just that, and Blake took the lead during the firm’s early years, setting up shop in Austin, Texas. He licensed the rights to produce the fish from Gong’s lab and hired two commercial fish farms to breed the pets. (Since the animals pass their fluorescence genes on to their offspring, all Blake needed to create an entire line of neon pets was a few starter adults. ) He and his partner dubbed them GloFish, though the animals aren’t technically glow-in-thedark—at least, not the same way that a set of solar system stickers in a child’s bedroom might be. Those stickers, and most other glow-in-the-dark toys, work through a scientific property known as phosphorescence. They absorb and store light, reemitting it gradually over time, as a soft glow that’s visible when you turn out all the lights. GloFish, on the other hand, are fluorescent, which means that they absorb light from the environment and beam it back out into the world immediately. The fish appear to glow in a dark room if they’re under a blue or black light, but they can’t store light for later —turn the artificial light off, and the fish stop shining. Blake was optimistic about their prospects. As he explains, â€Å"The ornamental fish industry is about new and different and exciting varieties of fish. † And if new, different, and exciting is what you’re after, what more could you ask for than an animal engineered to glow electric red, orange, green, blue, or purple thanks to a dab of foreign DNA? Pets are products, after all, subject to the same marketplace forces as toys or clothes. Whether it’s a puppy or a pair of heels, we’re constantly searching for the next big thing. Consider the recent enthusiasm for â€Å"teacup pigs†Ã¢â‚¬â€tiny swine cute enough to make you swear off pork chops forever. Harold Herzog, a psychologist at Western Carolina University who specializes in human-animal interactions, has studied the way our taste in animals changes over time. When Herzog consulted the registry of the American Kennel Club, he found that dog breed choices fade in and out of fashion the same way that baby names do. One minute, everyone is buying Irish setters, naming their daughters Heather, and listening to â€Å"Bennie and the Jets†Ã¢â‚¬â€welcome to 1974! —and then it’s on to the next great trend. Herzog discovered that between 1946 and 2003, eight breeds—Afghan hounds, chow chows, Dalmatians, Dobermans, Great Danes, Old English sheepdogs, rottweilers, and Irish setters—went through particularly pronounced boom and bust cycles. Registrations for these canines would skyrocket, and then, as soon as they reached a certain threshold of popularity, people would begin searching for the next fur-covered fad. Herzog identified a modern manifestation of our long-standing interest in new and unusual animals. In antiquity, explorers hunted for far-flung exotic species, which royal households often imported and displayed. Even the humble goldfish began as a luxury for the privileged classes. Native to Central and East Asia, the wild fish are usually covered in silvery gray scales. But ancient Chinese mariners had noticed the occasional yellow or orange variant wriggling in the water. Rich and powerful Chinese families collected these mutants in private ponds, and by the thirteenth century, fish keepers were breeding these dazzlers together. Goldfish domestication was born, and the once-peculiar golden fish gradually spread to the homes of less-fortunate Chinese families—and households elsewhere in Asia, Europe, and beyond. As goldfish grew in popularity, breeders stepped up their game, creating ever more unusual varieties. Using artificial selection, they created goldfish with freakish and fantastical features, and the world’s aquariums now contain the fantail, the veiltail, the butterfly tail, the lionhead, the goosehead, the golden helmet, the golden saddle, the bubble eye, the telescope eye, the seven stars, the stork’s pearl, the pearlscale, the black moor, the panda moor, the celestial, and the comet goldfish, among others. This explosion of types was driven by the desire for the exotic and exquisite—urges that we can now satisfy with genetically modified pets. We can also use genetic engineering to create animals that appeal to our aesthetic sensibilities, such as our preference for brightly colored creatures. For instance, a 2007 study revealed that we prefer penguin species that have a splash of yellow or red on their bodies to those that are simply black and white. We’ve bred canaries, which are naturally a dull yellow, to exhibit fifty different color patterns. And before GloFish were even a neon glint in Blake’s eye, pet stores were selling â€Å"painted† fish that had been injected with simple fluorescent dyes. With fluorescence genes, we can make a true rainbow of bright and beautiful pets. * Engineered pets also fit right into our era of personalization. We can have perfume, granola, and Nikes customized to our individual specifications—why not design our own pets? Consider the recent rise of designer dogs, which began with the Labradoodle, a cross between a Labrador retriever and a standard poodle. Though there’s no telling when the first Lab found himself fancying the wellgroomed poodle down the street, most accounts trace the origin of the modern Labradoodle to Wally Conron, the breeding director of the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia. In the 1980s, Conron heard from a blind woman in Hawaii, who wanted a guide dog that wouldn’t aggravate her husband’s allergies. Conron’s solution was to breed a Lab, a traditional seeing-eye dog, with a poodle, which has hypoallergenic hair. Other breeders followed Conron’s lead, arranging their own mixed-breed marriages. The dogs were advertised as providing families with the best of both worlds—the playful eagerness of a Lab with the smarts and hypoallergenic coat of the poodle. The rest, as they say, is history. The streets are now chock-full of newfangled canine concoctions: puggles (a pug-beagle cross), dorgis (dachshund plus corgi), and cockapoos (a cocker spaniel–miniature poodle mix). There’s even a mini Labradoodle for doodle lovers without lots of space. Tweaking the genomes of our companions allows us to create a pet that fulfills virtually any desire —some practical, some decidedly not. When I set out to get a dog, I thought I had settled on the Cavalier King Charles spaniel: small, soft, and bred for companionship. Then I discovered a breeder who was crossing Cavaliers with miniature poodles, yielding the so-called Cavapoo. I was sold. I loved the scruffier, shaggier hair of the Cavapoo, and given what I knew about biology, I figured that a hybrid was less likely to inherit one of the diseases that plague perilously inbred canines. A dog that didn’t shed would be an added bonus. Plus, poodles have a reputation for being brainy, and I’m an overachiever; if I was going to get a dog, I wanted to be damn sure he’d be the valedictorian of his puppy kindergarten class.