Choose one topic in the attachment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Choose one topic in the attachment - Essay Example The saying on regret mentioned above is the best way to sum up or describe the plot and story of this movie. In this movie, every person is related or their story is linked and connected with the other person. Therefore, every scene and story of every individual in the movie consists of complex situations which get along very well with each other. "Magnolia" is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves. (Magnolia Movie Review & Film Summary (1999) | Roger Ebert) It is said that Magnolia is not one of those movies which could be understood by every viewer. Even when Magnolia was released worldwide in 1999, there were many viewers and those who reviewed the movie, their responses were quite conventional regarding it. They believe that it is a representation of emotional vulnerability. Therefore, due to these reasons, this movie can be looked through various aspects, perspectives, and prism as it includes a religious world an d dimension. After releasing the first trailer of this movie, it demonstrates that the movie about love which is either lost, gained, given, or withheld according to different situations. Basically, the religious aspect which is given in this movie shows the action of trapping the conflicted sinners and miscreants due to their wrongdoings in past relationships of reprobating. As it is clearly shown that this movie does not really have a plot but it conveys a very strong message as well as some great views and points. As this movie is about the lives and doings of 9 to 11 individuals, it is really hard to have a specific plot on which a movie had to be directed but the least a good movie can do is to motivate and spread out a strong message to its viewers. Not only the movie brings forward the shortcomings and fear but also sexual and emotional abuse. It is said that the people and viewers who call this movie exemplary are â€Å"actively dodging the social gravity, the psychological resonance, and the emotional poignancy of the conflicts mined in the film’s sensitive writing and talented ensemble acting. Most of the Magnolia’s characters have hit a crisis point at the start of the story. (Lane, 2) Anderson’s (the director) only philosophy was that bigger is better which was proven right with the help of this movie. However there are certain points in the movie where the director has shown inability to create a good film. It would be one thing if Magnolia offered multiple points of view, but Anderson is really only concerned with his own: a heavy-handed, self-pitying indictment of bad parenting and its sorry effects. Anderson expands his timeworn theme with a motif about chance and destiny (MAGNOLIA) As this movie is basically based on 9 to 11 people’s lives who are faced with regrets, his biggest failure in this movie is technical failing. As from every person to the stories and scenes, everything is linked and correlated. Therefore , switching the stories and making right decision at the right time is a difficult task. Therefore, the narration and writing of this movie is very complex. He has not perfected it yet that the way he crosscuts and switches from one scene to another which eventually is not the match of temporal relationships. For instance, there was a scene where a couple breaks up at one second, and the next moment the whole movie is switched Stanley who was the genius boy, deciding to put a stop at playing the tawdry game show. Even

The Changing of American Workplace Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The Changing of American Workplace - Assignment Example The Changing of American Workplace There are various factors which may affect the workplace and working environment in a radical manner. One of the important factors is balancing family and work life. Balancing family and work life signifies that an individual should be engaged as well as satisfied with his or her responsibilities in relation to work life and family life. Employees are required to develop a balance amid work life and their personal life so that they are able to perform their activities in a relaxed way with zeal and dedication. Furthermore, the instability in personal and professional life has been affecting the working environment as well as personal life. It has been ascertained that there lays numerous factors such as workload pressure, demographic changes in relation to dual-income family and the sandwich generation and changes in workforce composition which dramatically influence both personal as well as professional life. This paper intends to discuss the various factors in relation to work-life balance which are accountable for affecting environment and workplace environment. Additionally, the discussion will also emphasize on asserting certain recommendations towards facilitating social as well as economic benefits. Work-life balance plays an important role in the life of every individual. Moreover, this aspect is also seemed to be adversely affecting the workplace and working environment. There are few major components on which the balances for work and life are dependent. These components are as follows: Time Balance An individual is required to devote equal time for personal and professional life. In this respect, time should be managed in an effective manner with the objective of creating a better balance amid work and life so that an individual is able to play his or her role proficiently. Time is to be managed in a flexible way so that individuals are capable to co-ordinate their activities efficiently (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2013). Involvement Balance Individuals are required to be involved psychologically in both family life as well as work life. In this regard, individuals should be mentally involved with activities in order to accomplish the required objectives successfully. Subsequently, employees with better psychological involvement are likely to deliver or execute their activities in accordance with the objectives and goals of an organization (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2013). Satisfaction Balance Individuals are required to have a balance in their satisfaction level both in their roles as well as activities which are performed in their professional and personal life. The appropriate balance in their professional as well as personal life, employees will attain increased level of satisfaction from their work and personal life accomplishments (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2013). These are the three major components which are essential for employees in order to manage and balance their work as well as personal life. On the basis of these three elements a work-life balance can be ascertained. The working environment and workplace are significantly influenced with certain social changes. The social chan ges are the major factors which are accountable for an increased concern in relation to balancing professional and personal life in an effective manner. The ultimate factor which is primarily accountable for the social changes in the working environ

Africa’s Physical Geography

Africa’s Physical Geography Africas Physical Geography Africa is a continent rich in beauty, culture, and wealth. It has several diverse and singularly captivating landscapes including vast savannah and desert, lush rainforest, and sun-kissed beaches. There is potential for great wealth and prosperity, due to the resources in this luminous continent. North and South Africa are split into almost two equal parts by the equator, and the climate and physical features in both the north and the south repeat themselves. For example, the Sahara and Kalahari deserts, the Cape region and the Mediterranean, and the Karoo and the Maghreb. It is incredibly hot in most places, and insanely bright. Although it is so diverse, Africa is mainly made up of rolling flat plateaus. There is not a great variety of physical features, though those that are there can be quite remarkable. Compared to other continents, there are few broad coastal plains. It is an enormous mass of land, connecting at the Isthmus of Suez to Asia and almost to Europe at Gibraltar. Africa is the only continent which lies in all four hemispheres, lying on the equator at zero degrees latitude and Prime Meridian at zero degrees longitude. It has no deep indentations and very few well defined peninsulas. Africa is surrounded by major bodies of water such as the Mediterranean Sea in the north, the Red Sea in the northeast, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The coast, stretching 18,900 miles is largely level. There are few islands, Madagascar being the largest and the thirteen Canary islands being the largest group. The major landforms of Africa include the Nile River System, Atlas Mountains, Great Rift Valley, Sahel, Congo River Basin, Kalahari Desert, and the Sahara Desert. The Nile River is the longest river in the world with a length of 4,160 miles. It runs north, rising from the highlands of the southeast, and then draining into the Mediterranean Sea. It is made up of multifarious dams, rapids, streams, swamps, rivers, rapids, and tributaries. The major rivers making up the Nile are the Albert Nile, Blue Nile, White Nile, and the Victoria Nile. The great Nile River is a lifeline for the inhabitants on its banks. It provides nourishment for crops which are both food and a means of business. The Atlas Mountains are located in Northern Africa and stretch from southwestern Morocco across the coast of the Mediterranean, to the extreme east of Tunisia. These mountains are made up of several smaller mountain ranges namely, the High Atlas, Middle Atlas, and Maritime Atlas. The highest in the entire range is Mt. Toubkal located in western Morocco at a height of 13,671 feet. The Great Rift Valley is a dramatic depression in the surface of the earth which extends from an area near the Red Sea in Jordan in the Middle East, to the country of Mozambique in Africa, which is a length of about approximately 4,000 miles. The Great Rift Valley is essentially a series of depressions caused by volcanic activity thousands of years ago, which also created what is now called the Ethiopian Highlands. Some of the highest peaks in the continent are found in the Great Rift Valley including Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and Mount Margherita. The Sahel is a great expanse of land running across north and central Africa, across the extreme southern Sahara. The Sahel is the transition between the desert conditions of the north and the tropical conditions of the south. The region receives very little rainfall, about six to eight inches annually, and vegetation is relatively sparse. The Congo River Basin dominates the landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo and a large portion of neighboring Congo. It also stretches into Angola, the Central Republic of Africa, Cameroon, and Zambia. This fertile basin contains about twenty percent of the worlds rainforest. The Congo River Basin is about 1,400,000 square miles in size. The Congo River is the second longest river in Africa and is made up of multiple tributaries, streams, and rivers that help intertwine the people in the cities along the banks of these waterways. The Kalahari is the major desert of southern Africa. It extends about 100,000 square miles and covers much of Botswana, the southwestern region of South Africa, and all of western Namibia. Dry river beds and shrubs crisscross along the desert plateau. A few small mountain ranges are located in the Kalahari Desert: the Karas and the Huns. The Kalahari Gemsbok Wildlife National Park in southern Africa near the border of Namibia hosts large herds of animals. The Sahara Desert covers about one-third of Africa, making it the largest desert in Africa and is around 3,500,000 square miles in total size. Elevations range from one hundred feet below sea level to mountains which exceed 11,000 feet (the Ahaggar and Tibetsi mountains). The Libyan, Western desert of Egypt, and Nubian deserts are regional deserts located just west of the Nile. The area receives almost absolutely no rainfall, although a few rivers flow from the Atlas Mountains underground which assist in irrigating alienated oases. The water of the Nile helps fertilize the eastern parts of the landscape. These landforms occupy a large section of the land, and the climate, resources, and vegetation of these are similar to those of the countries they stretch through. The people are largely reliant on the natural resources the earth yields in their country. Agriculture makes up a huge part of the economies of several countries. Each country has its own unique characteristics and although each separate one cannot be listed here, it is accurate to say that Africa is a diverse country which could be rich due to the resources the breathtaking country yields, and which the inhabitants can manipulate to their profit. Bibliography: http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/aflnd.htm

Essay --

Out of the many experiments being conducted, I have the pleasure of introducing a layered density column to the class. Density is defined as mass divided by volume or the amount of stuff in a certain amount of space. Composed of many different household products (vegetable oil, rubbing alcohol, and even water), density columns present different layers through the masses of each liquid. These columns can contain as many products the experimenter desires. The liquids chosen that have a higher density tend to weigh more, unlike those that weigh less and float to the top if poured into the column. Along with the liquids chosen objects can be placed into the column, and then we would be able to see how each layer has an effect on the objects. For my lab experiment, I will be using 7 products throughout my demonstration. I could use as many products that I want, however 7 is a common amount to start with. Every product will be measured according to the amount that the cup can hold. To conduct my experiment, I will be pouring the products into 2 ounce cups and will construct the column th...

Nursing Homes Essay

For many of us we have a place that we go to, to rest, relax, and sleep a place that’s filled with memories, laughter, tears, and family a place we call home. Then we have the people such as the elderly that is forced or persuaded to believe that their place of comfort where they shared in memories with their family and love ones in their home is no longer suitable to meet their demanding needs due the illness and capabilities. So, their love ones take them on a tour to this place that tries to imitate a familiar place, but are far from feeling like home. What is this place you may ask?! A nursing home that is â€Å"a home away from home†, really? In my opinion Nursing homes do not benefit the ones that it’s design to help, rehabilitate, and care for but to strip the elderly of their dignity, sense of belonging, and respect. Many elderly people are at times helpless and really depending heavily on the individual who was hired to help them with day-to-day activiti es that we may take for granted. We wake up every day get out of bed, go to the restroom, and dress ourselves without any assistance, but the elderly do not have the opportunity to do the same day-to-day activities without waiting tirelessly on the people who seem to have forgotten that the elderly are humans. I have personally experience the careless and unthinkable acts of the people who work at the nursing home from ignoring the elderly who is screaming desperately from the depths of their soul to the top of their lungs for help! Yet the workers walk on by as if the sounds of help are sounds of sweet humming birds singing. As we freely walk to the restroom and cleanse ourselves the elderly waits upon the answer of their call button that seems to go unanswered until the elderly has no choice, but to release all that they were holding onto themselves and their beds. A lot of families think that they are doing their elderly love ones a good deed by sending them to a place that portrays to be a loving and caring because the family feel that they are unable to provide the round the clock care that their love one’s now need. But little do they know the place that they are sending their love one’s is not the place that appears to be, in my experience you have to ensure that your love one is receiving the care that the nursing homes promise to deliver by making daily visits to show the workers that this particular resident has a family that care and visit daily. When the workers see that the residents have family that comes daily the worker tends to answer pages and stay on top of what their job consist  upon. However, if you are a family that don’t visit your love one daily but just on holidays your elderly love one is more at risk of neglect then the motto of most nursing homes â€Å"We want those special members of your family to become equally special members of ours. We want to relieve the anxiety and frustration you may be experiencing by providing a nursing home community of constant support, attention and personalized care. Above all, we want to serve each person entrusted to us with compassion, dignity, purpose and respect.†

Making Effective Workplace Decisions Essay

,.,decision making – nerovivo Steps outlined in this article will help you to determine if you’re making, or that you have made, the right decision about a pending issue. Do you ever wonder how to know that you’re making, or that you have made, the right decision? Decisions are an important of lives. Every day, we make decisions in our home life and work life that will impact our future. That is why having the skills to make good, solid decisions is important. This article outlines a 6 Step Process that will help you to make wise and confident decisions. The objective of making a decision is to choose your best alternative – based on the facts provided – that will lead to a productive end result. These steps will help anyone (at home, school or in business) that has to make decisions. They can be applied when making any decision at any time, from the start of the problem-solving process to the finishing stages of implementing the course of action. Step 1: Identify the problem Read This Next * Workplace Stress and the Decision Making Process * Website Design Trends * Five Steps for Effective Problem Solving in the Workplace A problem can be identified as a difficult issue that needs to be resolved. Quite possibly, failure to resolve the issue could lead to additional, more crucial issues. Most problems in business exist in the form of a statement or a question. For example, a statement problem in might be â€Å"Choose the best vendor to match our product budget.† Likewise, a question problem might be â€Å"What type of product should we develop?† For both types of problems, several sets of conclusions may be derived. Each one making a different impact. When you understand exactly what the problem is, you can use sound judgment to render a decision. Step 2: Determine who should be involved During the first stages of the decision-making process, you should determine who should be involved. This lets you know whether or not the problem would best be solved by forming a team to examine the facts. If so, the team can make recommendations based on those facts. Decisions in the workplace are commonly done as a team. It can be a powerful way to make efficient and expedient progress. The greatest benefit is the combination of talent and creativity that exists when joining heads. When everyone contributes to effective brainstorming, the ideas are compared and different perspectives are examined. A team is far more likely to discover more creative and innovative solutions than one would individually. Step 3: Evaluate the alternatives When you evaluate the alternatives, consider how the making the decision (or even not making the decision) is going to impact any future objectives. Here’s an example: An employee asks a manager for permission to work from home a few days a week. The manager is pondering impact of this decision on the rest of your staff. Things to consider are whether or not the workload can be done from home, and whether the same permission can be granted to the other employees. Some possible alternatives could be as simple as shortening the workday on Fridays. To do this, the manager could require that the employees, as a team, meet certain stated objectives during the week in order to work fewer hours on Friday. This example shows how a decision that, at first, seems to be related to only one person, is in fact a catalyst for impacting the entire department. Step 4: Examine the pros and cons What are the positive and negative results associated with the decision and the related alternatives. For example: There is a question of whether or not to launch a new product at this time. Doing so could put the company ahead of the competition by at least 6 months. However, there could be a problem with quality if the production is rushed. There hasn’t been enough testing and documentation, so quality assurance is moderate at best. The benefit is that you’re outshining the competition, but the risk is that the company could suffer scrutiny for putting out a faulty, non-tested product. Step 5: Making the final decision A large part of making the final decision will be your ability to address the needs of the organization. There will be short-term needs and long-term needs. What are the expectations of the company administrators? The final decision should be in line with the company goals and objectives. In other words, the final decision has to be supported by a solid purpose. Consider this: You don’t make a decision that will cut production by half, if the original mission (purpose) was to increase sales by 30%. Be sure that your choice is based on more on company vision, rather than personal opinion. Narrow your information down to what is vitally important making the decision. For any decision that you make today, always consider the impact that it will make on future Read more at Suite101: Making Effective Workplace Decisions | Suite101.com http://roslyn-johnson.suite101.com/making-effective-workplace-decisions-a358141#ixzz1nnl02Xob

The Dead Essays - The Dead, Epiphany, Dubliners, Free Essays

The Dead Essays - The Dead, Epiphany, Dubliners, Free Essays The Dead 8. Where does epiphany occur in The Dead? Who has the epiphany? What is the emotional state it creates? How does it compare to other epiphanies in Dubliners? Is there an Irony in the story as well? Epiphany of the Soul In The Dead, Gabriel has the epiphany. The epiphany occurs when Gretta was telling Gabriel the story of a young boy she used to know. Jealousy, Anger, and yet compassion are the emotional state it creates. The epiphany of The Dead is basically about death of the soul and person. This epiphany is different to other epiphanies in Dubliners because instead of feeling good towards one-self, Gabriel feels sorry towards himself. In this epiphany, the story starts off with irony. After the party, Gabriel looked at his wife Gretta and found out how much he loved her. He had seen how beautiful she was that night of the party at Aunt Julia and Aunt Kates house. It was like lust all over again for him when he saw her standing at the stairs and singing the song Mr.DArcy was playing. He was thinking of how both of them would be alone in the hotel and they would spend time together. He had thought about her a lot that evening and he assumed that she was also thinking about him. When he had asked her what was on her mind, she had answered something that he would never have expected her to say. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him with another (179). This is the Irony of the story because he had thought that they were both truly happy. He had always thought that Gretta was happy with him. The epiphany of the story occurs when Gabriel had asked her what was on her mind. She told him that she was thinking of the song that Mr.DArcy was playing. That song, The Lass of Aughrim, had reminded her about a boy named Michael Furrey. She had cared about him deeply and they had been young lovers when she was a child. Gabriel tries listening to Gretta but deep inside he was jealous and full of anger. He started questioning her about the man and by her words, Gabriel knew he had lost touch with his wife. When Gretta explains to him that he had died at the age of seventeen and that he had died for her, Gabriel got a sudden insight. Joyce writes, So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life (181). His anger and jealousy soon turns to compassion as he tries once again to regain the lost intimacy with his wife. In the epiphany, Gabriel realized how many people had died. When saying how many people died, this does not necessarily mean that the person doesnt exist anymore. In this case, he means the soul of the person. For example, Gabriel realized that part of Gretta is dead because she had always and will always compare him to Michael Furrey, even though he is gone. This is one thing that you can never bring back to life because the situation is not the same now and time has changed. Part of Gabriel himself is dead because he knew that one of his Aunt would soon pass away. He would regret that he had never really appreciated Aunt Julies and Aunt Kates traditions and culture of having that family dinner together. Later in the end of the story, Gabriel thought to himself, His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead (182). This was the epiphany of Gabriel and the epip hany of the story because the whole theme of the story is about death. This may not necessary mean death of the body but the soul. When he said, faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead,

7 Signs Your Coworkers Don’t Like You

7 Signs Your Coworkers Don’t Like You Many people spend half their waking weekday hours with their co-workers. So, if you figure you’re asleep a majority of your home hours, you’re getting to know what’s going on in the lives of your cubicle mates more than your family and friends most weeks. Such intimacy does not mean  everyone always get along. In fact, the opposite is sometimes true. And, sorry to say, the problem isn’t always with the other guy. It’s hard to accept it, but there may be times when your coworkers don’t like you. Being able to recognize the warning signs may help you to change the things that have made you an outsider. Here comes the tough love- the signs the issue is you, not them.1. You’re invisible.Probably the clearest sign that you’re not well liked is that people don’t want to talk to you. If you try to engage your coworkers in conversation or simply make eye contact and they breeze by like you don’t exist, it’s likely that they are not thrilled with you.2. You’re the talk of the office- not in a good way.Are your coworkers whispering about you? Well, people usually don’t whisper when they have something nice to say. If you find yourself the source of hushed talk or nasty gossip, you might have a serious workplace problem.3. You’re getting bad body language vibes.Coworkers don’t express displeasure through words alone. Sometimes they speak with their movements. Have you noticed your coworkers rolling their eyes or even sneering when you speak? Maybe they move away from you in the break room or speed in the other direction when you come down the hall. None of these are positive signs.4. You’re always in trouble.There may be a workplace conspiracy against you brewing if you constantly find yourself in the doghouse. Coworkers who don’t like you may rat you out to the boss for the smallest infraction. Things can get even more dire when its management that has a problem with you.5. People don’t seem to trust you.Are your ideas constantly being questioned? Is management constantly looking over your shoulder? Then there may be trust issues at play. When people deem you untrustworthy, personal fondness tends to fly out the window.6. Everyone talks down to you.Do coworkers sometimes speak to you as if you’re a child or you might have trouble understanding the simplest direction? Do they speak to you veeeery sloooowly through a nasty smirk? Then they are condescending to you, and few things feel more demeaning than that. No one condescends to someone they like.7. You’re unwelcome.Because they are forced to spend so much time together, coworkers tend to build bonds and friendships. After eight hours on the job, they may decide to spend their after-work hours grabbing dinner at a restaurant or drinks at a bar together. But is everyone invited to the party except for you? Then your coworkers might not want to spend their tim e in or out of work with you.Sometimes your coworkers may have a genuine gripe against you. However, people are often ostracized at work for foolish reasons–their coworkers are bored and decide to fill their time by picking on someone for no reason at all. It’s mean and unfair. In such cases, they’re the ones with the problem, but it still feels lousy to be on the receiving end of such cruelty. Maybe you can try asking someone you find relatively trustworthy for feedback on why you see to be on the outs with everyone. If that person can’t give you any constructive criticism, then it may be time to get out of that toxic environment.

Administrative Law Rev Essay Example for Free

Administrative Law Rev Essay ? Freedom of Information Act 1982 is entirely in the interest of public who can have access to various documents of government of Victoria and its public agencies for verification or for any other useful purpose.   The sole objective of FOI Act is to bring awareness among public whether the functioning and operations of government are in order   and how public analyze the same. Section 22 provides about the charges to be paid for having access to specific documents.   The section provides technical details of payment of fee that is calculated with time that is taken for search of documents.    This is particularly due to the fact that   the time taken for search of documents may vary depending on the date of publication of document. This is also in order to reduce the payment of fee to be paid by public.   All sectors of public may not afford to pay high rate of fees for having access to government documents.   In view of such as these reasons, hourly rate and time taken for search of documents has been included in this section. The section also covers transcription (h)   and routine requests (g)   and in case of inspection of documents no charge shall be calculated (f) in pursuance of Section 8(1) or 11(1). Section 27 clearly states about reasons of refusal of documents by a Minister of state to that effect, applicant shall be informed about the reasons in writing.   This section is somewhat complicated with the fact that a minister or a government official is a servant of public and with that motive, public must be provided access to the documents which is the sole purpose of FOI Act. This section is likely to give rise to conflicts between and may bring a deep dissatisfaction to public. Some of the documents that contain health information are also restricted with the provisions of Health   Records Act 2001, which of these reasons are also to be stated to applicant.   Although there are clauses for applying of review of decisions, launch complain to Ombudsmen, it is both time consuming and   undecisive for applicants to move further with such grievances. Section 50 deals with applications for review which would be pending with Tribunal for decisions.   This may pertain to a request for document, charge made, decision for access, or any other specific request regarding information under FOI Act.  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Tribunal in all respects has to deal with each individual case, giving its due importance of provisions along with genuine reasons. This section is in favor of public, as Tribunal shall reconsiders and reviews the decisions and grants permissions to public in various aspects that are relevant to FOI Act. The Tribunal may refuse the decision of Minister or agency and give an order in favor of public. Those issues or requests for documents which were not considered by Minister, are very well resolved at Tribunal by applicants. Section 51 states that an applicant may apply to Principal officer or Minister for review of decision, which was given in the deemed absence within 28 days   for review of decision or refusing to give access to health documents as per Section 36 of Health Records Act 2001. This section offers powers and opportunities to public   for   reconsideration of requests for having access to documents.   Applicants have to be excessively vigilant in deriving the maximum benefit from the government bodies and officials.  Ã‚  Ã‚   This section is both useful for public and for principal officers to check the veracity of facts in all respects. Section 51A  Ã‚  Ã‚   deals with conciliation of Health Service Commissioner   which state that issues that were deferring in Section 50 and 51 in the matters of health documents, may suitably be taken up by applicant with this section and apply for Health Service Commissioner’s decision.   In case Health Service Commissioner fails to conciliate a request, to that effect an notice in writing must be issued to both applicant and Principal Officer. This appears as a last resort for applicant as the decision of Health Service Commissioner is the final approach for an applicant. Conclusion The enactment of FOI is made with a view of regularizing the functioning and to increase the   working efficiency of governments.   Apart from this fact, the public are also provided an in-depth knowledge about information and working status of governments. Although there are many technicalities involved in FOI Act, each section, sub-section and clause, a significance of reason is attached to it for the benefit of both public and governing bodies. Administrative Law Rev. (2018, Nov 11).

Consumer behavior Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Consumer behavior - Research Proposal Example life easier and improve the accessibility of communication and social interaction, while ensuring that our lives are enjoyable and full of fun (IGI Global, 2015:121). In this respect, the state-of-the-art mobile phones to enable people keep in touch with friends and loved ones, portable game consoles to enable people have fun playing games whenever they want to, as well as portable internet access gadgets that ensure people are connected to the internet all the time, represent the 21st century technological inventions (Khosrow-Pour, 2014:77). Nevertheless, while this technological advancement seeks to make our lives easier and full of fun, our lives have inevitably become more complicated than ever (Arena & Quà ©rà ©, 2003:36). This is because, while it would have taken an individual just a few minutes to walk in an electronic shop and purchase a phone, a game console or any other technological device in the 1900s, it is increasingly difficult for consumers to make purchase decisions in the 21st century. Every new technological device that comes into the market promises the buyer increased and improved features, ease of use, enhanced internet accessibility and wider GPRS navigation reach (Khosrow-Pour, 2014:72). In the process, the basic cellular phone features such as the battery life and call-reception features have suffered, and thus the promises of efficiency, simplified and ease of use of technological products still remains elusive. The decision to purchase a product by any consumer is influenced by various factors. Therefore, the consumer purchase behavior comprises of a process of decision-making, which allows the consumer to reach the final decision in choice and selection of the product to purchase (Nielsen, 1993:102). The purpose of this research is to establish what informs the consumer choice of technological devices, in a world where there are numerous, duplicated and feature-enhancing technological devises and gadgets. What exactly do consumers look

EU Enlargement to Eastern Europe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

EU Enlargement to Eastern Europe - Essay Example Following the launch of the euro as EU's common currency, the EU found it necessary to shift its attention to the East. The decision to enlarge EU membership to Eastern European countries was finalized in 2002 and its first phase would have been carried out between 2004 and 2006. Here, EU negotiates what analysts perceive as a bumpy road. belonged to the former communist bloc which just emerged from half a century of Soviet domination. Throughout this long period, they operated on a planned economy and it is only now that they are moving in unison towards a market economy. As a lingering effect of a less efficient economic system, their incomes are much lower than those of existing EU members. This poses a problem to the process of harmonizing the entry of these countries into EU. EU enlargement to Eastern Europe will boost the European common market from 320 million people to about 470 million. Unlike Switzerland, Norway and Iceland which joined only EU's free trade area, the Eastern European countries need to be full EU members or they will not enjoy the promised benefits. This entails huge costs on the part of the new members. Eastern Europe is a low-income region of about 100 million people whose combined income will raise the GDP of EU by a mere 5 per cent. This is very much less than the result of previous EU expansions to the North and South. It is not only their low income levels that may bring deleterious effects to EU but also the fact that these countries are in the middle of a transition phase from a centrally planned to a market economy. In addition, the new members will have to cope with more EU regulations than before because of the recent creation of the Single European Market concept. Although many of the former communist bloc countries are convinced of the superiority of the free market, some have retained their faith in the socialist system and in the role of government in steering economic growth. Thus, many of them continue to bring up the rear on the list of world's freest economies. In the 2003 Economic Freedom of the World Report, only Estonia made it to the16th rung. Hungary was 35th, Czech 39th and Latvia 51st. At the bottom of the list were Bulgaria at 103rd place, Russia 112th, Romania 116th and Ukraine 117th. (Tupy, L., 2003) Initially, liberalization of these economies pushed output down, but they gradually recovered. By 2002, their separate GDPs grew as foreign investment started to come in. During that year, the World Bank reported that Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Sloavakia led the pack with an average 2.3 per cent growth. Poland is the largest of these former communist bloc countries and may prove to be of strategic importance to EU since it is the gateway of Western Europe into the large Eastern European countries of Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. (Mind Your Business, 2004) The other big countries in the East that are slated to join EU are Russia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia. Poland's Problems Signs that Poland is a possible problem child for EU became evident as soon as the homeland of the beloved Pope John Paul II took the first step of joining the union in May 2004. Polish

See directions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

See directions - Essay Example This meant that he did not have to be transferred from one slave to another work in out of season without payment. Being free, Douglass could do any kind of work of his choice without being forced and eat well even if it was not much food. As illustrated in the narrative, Douglass hired out his time to worker as a calker but all that he earned went to his Master Hugh. If only could enjoy what he toiled for, then he could say he had freedom. According to Douglass (p.68), the desire to be free then started to overwhelm him while in slavery and that prompted him to find a way to achieve his own freedom. This was a matter of death and life but Frederick Douglass decide to give it a try than to acknowledge his life as a slave and live with it. The only way that Douglass could be free and get to enjoy freedom for the rest of his life was to escape from the slaveholders. After planning it all, and making up his mind, Frederick Douglass finally achieved his freedom from slavery by escaping out of the slavery and went seek a better life in a free world. It is fact that at the time, the cases of slavery and slave trade was something common. That is why a narrative like this of Frederick Douglass was very popular. Many black men and women were sold and enslaved by the white people. There they could work for their work white masters for the rest of lives (Douglass p.113). However, others like Douglass who are lucky to escape get a chance to start their lives a fresh out of slavery. This is clearly seen from the fact that Mr. Ruggles was there to help those who escaped from slavery. This means that there were many black people who worked as slaves. In Bedford there were people who had escaped from slavery and went to start new lives in freedom. Thus the story of Frederick Douglass was not a unique case at that time. The techniques used and the flow of the narrative by Douglass was very descriptive and flowing. Therefore, one can say

E-commerce Security Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

E-commerce Security - Assignment Example The product of GAP is majorly the GAP image. Apart from just selling accessories and clothes, GAP makes huge sales of their own image as well as a trendy upper class environment of shopping. The company has branched out to many other markets like GAP outlet and Baby GAP. The company deals in various clothes of which some are in the stage of maturity with other brand new lines in the stage of introduction. GAP can keep up with the stiff competition online as it continually rolls out varying products to its clients. GAP is influenced by many factors just like other online retail centers. These can be both external and internal factors. They are hence considered when marketing strategy is being created. Today, GAP is trading towards being a driven by brand marketing rather than by creative marketing. GAP as a company experiences various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The strengths of the company include: effective customer service; quality products; reliable services ; and branching out to the internet. On the other hand, its weaknesses include: the price point; competition from other available stores; and the stuffiness image of the company. GAP Company enjoys varying opportunities from the internet ranging from the stock market prices, and development of the new plan of marketing. However, the threats that are in store for GAP include: the industrial expansion; increasing competition; and high competition in internet shopping. The primary target of GAP is a Caucasian female ranging between 21 and 35 years of age. The male Caucasians of between 24 and 35 years and females lying between 15 to 20 years makes the secondary target market of the company. There are other targets in the online market but those two forms its major targets. The product of the GAP Company include: Baby GAP, GAP outlet, and SKU’s such as Old Navy and banana republic. The company is influenced by internal and external factors such as; competitive forces, economic fo rces, political forces, legal forces, regulatory forces, technological forces, and socio cultural forces (Holmes, 2011). Company history and background The first GAP store was opened by Doris and Donald Fisher on August 21, 1969 in San Francisco, Ocean Avenue. The merchandise of the store was composed of LPs and Levi’s. The Fishers raised about 63,000 US dollars in order to open the store. In about a year, the sales of GAP had grown to 2 million US dollars. A second GAP store was opened in 1970 in California, San Jose, with its headquarters established in Burlingame, California with mere four employees. The company grew rapidly. It had more than 25 stores by 1973 covering up to outskirts of California and entered the market of East Coast with a new online store in New Jersey, Voorhees. GAP began selling private label merchandise in 1974. Drexler Millard led GAP to its phenomenal growth in 1990s due to the transformation of the humble jeans discount emporium. In 2002, Drexler was ousted after an over expansion and slump sales. There was a strong rebound in GAP’

No topic need Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 2

No topic need - Essay Example Cost based pricing is a pricing form determined by the manufacturing and production cost of a commodity. The form of pricing is advantageous since an organization is assured of not gaining a loss of its products. However, the strategy may prefer a high price than the preference of the customer (Nagle & Holden 35). In Ford Company, cost based form of pricing is preferred due to the diverse range of products it produces. The organization sets its minimum and maximum price range depending on the particulars of the product. The pricing strategy has ensured the organization record its required profits on products. In addition, in regards to the experience of the organization in the market, consumers feel comfortable with the prices set of the products (Nagle & Holden 56). At the start of the production in the organization, Ford used penetration pricing. Penetration is where an organization quotes relatively low prices. The prices are then raised when the organization gains market share. The growth of the pricing range will be determined by factors influence the market (Nagle & Holden

See directions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

See directions - Essay Example This meant that he did not have to be transferred from one slave to another work in out of season without payment. Being free, Douglass could do any kind of work of his choice without being forced and eat well even if it was not much food. As illustrated in the narrative, Douglass hired out his time to worker as a calker but all that he earned went to his Master Hugh. If only could enjoy what he toiled for, then he could say he had freedom. According to Douglass (p.68), the desire to be free then started to overwhelm him while in slavery and that prompted him to find a way to achieve his own freedom. This was a matter of death and life but Frederick Douglass decide to give it a try than to acknowledge his life as a slave and live with it. The only way that Douglass could be free and get to enjoy freedom for the rest of his life was to escape from the slaveholders. After planning it all, and making up his mind, Frederick Douglass finally achieved his freedom from slavery by escaping out of the slavery and went seek a better life in a free world. It is fact that at the time, the cases of slavery and slave trade was something common. That is why a narrative like this of Frederick Douglass was very popular. Many black men and women were sold and enslaved by the white people. There they could work for their work white masters for the rest of lives (Douglass p.113). However, others like Douglass who are lucky to escape get a chance to start their lives a fresh out of slavery. This is clearly seen from the fact that Mr. Ruggles was there to help those who escaped from slavery. This means that there were many black people who worked as slaves. In Bedford there were people who had escaped from slavery and went to start new lives in freedom. Thus the story of Frederick Douglass was not a unique case at that time. The techniques used and the flow of the narrative by Douglass was very descriptive and flowing. Therefore, one can say

No topic need Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 2

No topic need - Essay Example Cost based pricing is a pricing form determined by the manufacturing and production cost of a commodity. The form of pricing is advantageous since an organization is assured of not gaining a loss of its products. However, the strategy may prefer a high price than the preference of the customer (Nagle & Holden 35). In Ford Company, cost based form of pricing is preferred due to the diverse range of products it produces. The organization sets its minimum and maximum price range depending on the particulars of the product. The pricing strategy has ensured the organization record its required profits on products. In addition, in regards to the experience of the organization in the market, consumers feel comfortable with the prices set of the products (Nagle & Holden 56). At the start of the production in the organization, Ford used penetration pricing. Penetration is where an organization quotes relatively low prices. The prices are then raised when the organization gains market share. The growth of the pricing range will be determined by factors influence the market (Nagle & Holden

Operations Function Essay Example for Free

Operations Function Essay This therefore implies that Operation Management decisions are not made in isolation. Rather, each decision is intertwined with other organizational functions following the strategic direction developed at the top level of the organization. In a nutshell, many of the decisions made by operations managers are dependent on information from the other functions. At the same time, other functions cannot be carried out properly without information from operations as detailed below: 1. Finance: The finance function ties all departments together with monetary measurements that tell whether the company is making money. They also regulate the acquisition of funds to keep the business operations going, and investing money received wisely. Finance managers need to work closely with the operations function to be able to determine the need for capital investments, make-or-buy decisions, plant expansions, or relocation of business operations. On the other hand, operations managers cannot make large financial expenditures without understanding financial constraints and methods of evaluating financial investments. It is essential for these two functions to work together and understand each other’s constraints. . Sales and marketing: The sales and marketing function focuses on maintaining and attracting customers to the companys products and services. To be able to satisfy customer needs, the marketing function needs to understand what operations can produce, what due dates it can and cannot meet, and what types of customization operations can deliver. The marketing function can develop an exciting m arketing campaign, but if operations cannot produce the desired product, sales will not be made. In turn, operations managers need information about customer wants and expectations. It is the responsibility of the operations function to design products with characteristics that customers find desirable, and they cannot do this without regular coordination with the marketing department. 3. Information and Communications Technology (ICT): ICT is the function that enables information to flow throughout the organization and enables the operations function to operate effectively. The ICT function must understand the needs of operations and endeavour to meet those needs as regards timely provision of required information.

Report On Bed Capacity Planning In Hospitals

Report On Bed Capacity Planning In Hospitals Nowadays, the number of medical treatment and medicines increases which allows a spectacular growth of the health care sector. Despite this development, the sector suffers from inefficient management and ineffective planning [15]. Managing patients, nurses and physicians is a difficult problem that needs to be solved. Hospital bed planning is a central problem that affects hospital capacity, health care quality and also management of nurses and physicians. During the last decades, hospitals are a non profit organization where the demand is not a primary concern for the manager of these hospitals. Today, many private hospitals are acting with a primary objective to satisfy the demand and to provide outstanding services to compete with other private hospitals [10]. The hospital is not just a medical care unit but also is providing hotel and transportation services. To insure competiveness of hospitals we need to improve the quality of services and to satisfy as much as we can the deman d. Therefore, hospitals need to look for their supply chain and how to manage it. In this report, we focus on the supply chain management of hospitals in Dubai. Dubais health services are internationally recognized and due to their high standard and their modern facilities equipment, are comparable to other developed countries. The location of hospitals in Dubai is strategic to ensure accessibility for patients. There are approximately 20 clinics and hospitals distributed across the Emirate. The ratio of clinics/hospitals to patients is 1:78,000. One of the more impressive practices of medical professionals in Dubai is the post-clinic, private medical call. These are considered as part of their responsibilities. Medical attention is provided, regardless of residency or nationality. In general, Dubai aims to improve the over-all wellbeing of its people. Its strategy is to provide patient-specific care. The most popular medical services provided by healthcare providers in Dubai include immunizations and vaccinations, psychiatric treatments, medical fitness examinati ons, community services (such as marriage and family counseling), adult and infant yoga therapy, rehabilitation, and education on health and nutrition. We focus on this report on Rashid private hospital in Dubai, UAE. We mainly present a multiple objective stochastic programming for the bed capacity planning taking into account the quality of the service and the stochastic demand in that hospital. In the next chapter, we present a general overview of the hospital supply chain in general before we present in chapter 3 some of the Rashid hospital operations. In chapter 4, we focus on hospital bed capacity planning in order to introduce to the multiple objective stochastic program that we are going to propose for Rashid hospital bed capacity planning. The obtained model is transformed in chapter 6 into its certainty equivalent and solved in chapter 7 using data from Rashid hospital. Chapter 2 Hospital supply chain 2.1. Introduction Health is defined as à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"a state of complete physical, mental and social well beingà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ . The health care sector is an important sector as regards to the welfare of people. Health services require the synchronization of various resources, such as Human resources, medicines and medical equipment. In any organization, a supply chain must be designed in accordance with its mission. The mission of all hospitals includes the maximization of the level of patient care. The size of a hospital, geographical location, diversification, and the various specializations all affect the nature of care provided in a hospital and, therefore, the goals of its supply chain. The hospital chain may have some of the following goals [7]: To secure the availability of product , To Reduce the storage space and to maximize the patient care, To reduce time and cost of handling the medical team (nurse, pharmacist, physician) Minimize the stocks of inventory The main functions of hospital supply chain are defined as follows [7]: To allocate the main resources (technical platforms, beds, physicians, nurses ) and their location in the hospital. To plan for extra resource needed (medical staff, medical equipment), and to schedule the care activities. To organize transportation of patients and equipment. Generally, the hospital supply chain may be split into two parts (see Figure1): the external chain and the internal chain [14]. Fig 1: Hospital supply chain [15] 2.2. The external supply chain The external chain begins with companies specialized in the creation of the raw material (patent, drug, machinery, etc). The raw material can be materialized (machine, drug, etc.) or immaterialized (know how to cure). The manufacturer may itself be the creator or a company that works in relationship with him. In this case, the company is responsible for the duplication (making molecules on a large scale and add excipients or drug) for the test and for the control. Once the product is ready to be used and receives the necessary certifications, the role of the distributor is to place the product on the market. The market is generally formed by a central purchasing (WHO, national distributors, NGOs, etc) or individual (hospital, pharmacy, etc). Each health facility may maintain direct relations with manufacturers so that products pass through certain distributors. 2.3. The internal supply chain The health establishment is the last link in a supply chain consisting of manufacturers and distributors from various industries (medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, food, laundry, maintenance, etc). The supply chain within the hospital is complex. The size of the hospital, the geographical location, the diversification, various specializations, the high cost and perishable goods, all affect its supply chain. The first characteristic of the appropriate health care supply chain is its diversity in distribution channels. Inside the hospital, the hospital product is made up of items at low prices or high-prices and durable and perishable goods that are consumed in large or small quantities. A health institution is composed of five main activities that manage different types of flows to offer many services or products to patients. These activities are defined as follows: Intralogistics activities which are the fact that the hospital acquire, receives and distribute different supplies used in the service. The demand management that is the planning and the coordination between the different necessary resources. Operations and services given to the patient within the hospital from admission to discharge. External logistic represented by the medical follow-up for the patient. Services to the patient which are all auxiliary activities that are not linked to medical activities offered to the patient (gift shop, religious programs, etc). The supply chain within the hospital can therefore be presented as follows: 2.4. Conclusion The hospital supply chain must be developed for a specific product based on its unit cost, demand variability and the physical size. We can say that integration of the supply chain in the health care sector requires the synchronization of internal and external supply chains to each individual service. A good supply chain management within a hospital is necessary and must be performed efficiently Chapter 3 Operations in Rashid hospital 3.1. Introduction Rashid Hospital is a 454-bed general medical/surgical hospital in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and is a part of the Dubai Government Dubai Health Authority. Rashid Hospital is considered in Dubai as one of the first medical facilities for trauma, emergency, ambulatory care and critical care which provide a high-quality of services to all patients within the community. The Rashid hospital provides also leadership in the training and education of health care professionals. In the emergency, Rashid Hospital is considered as one of the most reputable and prominent medical centers in the Gulf region. It receives the majority of complicated case other hospitals are destined to Rashid hospital which coordinates also closely with the Dubai Civil Defense and Police for the training of emergency medical staff inside the airports In Rashid hospital, two types of admissions are used: the outpatient admission and the admission through emergency department 3.2. Outpatient registration This type of admission or registration is present in all hospitals and it can be defined as follows: An outpatient admission is presented when a patient is admitted to the hospital, surgical center or ambulatory center for a surgical or nonsurgical operation, therapeutic procedure or diagnostic procedure, that does not require an overnight hospital stay. The preparation for outpatient admission varies with each procedure [20]. In Rashid hospital, the responsible physician, the treating physician and the admitting physician are responsible of the admission procedure of the outpatient. The registration of the outpatient is done after the patient gets a discharge from the emergency department or the inpatient unit. This must is done by the physician who gives the patient an outpatient appointment for follow up with the required specialty. After that the patient will be transferred to the required specialty. The next step is the direct admission which must be done during the same day. The admitting physician/clinic nurse informs the case manager and the admission office that the patient requires admission, and then the admission of the concerned patient is linked with the availability of a bed. Next, the account department or the admission office informs the patient about charges for treatment as per the hospital payment policy. The clinic nurse will inform the patient about the admission conditions and about provisional diagnosis. But if the hospital cant find an available bed, the treating physician will give to the patient another appointment or ask for a transfer of the patient to another healthcare unit (if the case is urgent). In Rashid hospital, urgent case admission is directed to the emergency department. The admission in this department is different from the outpatient admission. In the next section, we are going to overview admissions procedures in the emergency department. 3.3. Admission through the emergency department This type of admission is different from the outpatient admission because patient must access directly to health due to the urgency of his/her case of illness. It can be defined as housing the patient in the hospital to provide special interventional procedure(s) or definitive treatment. We can distinguish three types of patients in this admission. First, the unstable patients who will suffer irreversible damage or loss of life if not admitted immediately. Second, the stable patients who are the patients that requires urgent treatment or interventional procedures(s) that cannot be accomplished on an outpatient basis. Third, patients are not suffering loss life or serious damage if not admitted [21]. In the emergency department, the emergency physician has to observe and to investigate to know if the patient needs admission and to refer the patient to the on call physician. The emergency physician and on call physician will decide about the required screening and diagnostic tests after examining/before admitting the patient. The emergency department must inform the case management about the admission, provisional diagnosis and level of care needed and check for the availability of bed. If there is no available bed in the selected department, the case manager can admit the patient temporarily in another department where bed is available (with adequate equipment). But if there are no available beds throughout the hospital, the case manager has to refer patient to another hospital. The patient flow in Rashid hospital can be presented as the following figure [10]: Bed flow in hospital 3.4. Rashid hospital departments At Rashid Hospital it exists many specialized medical and paramedical departments all equipped to receive all kinds of patients and also patients from neighboring hospitals. The existing specialities in this hospital are: Psychiatry Cardiology Gastroenterology General surgery Hematology Infectious disease Respiratory Neurosurgery Traumatologie Geriatric 3.5. Conclusion Rashid Hospital aims to provide an outstanding service to all outpatients and patients that are admitted through the emergency department. This aim cannot be achieved if the hospital has not the adequate capacity in terms of hospital bed and human resources (physicians and nurses). At the same time the hospital must run in profit to ensure the future of its activity. In this study we will try to answer this important question of hospital capacity planning in order to determine both the level of beds and the number of resources that Rashid hospital needs to satisfy the random demand. Chapter 4 Hospital capacity planning 4.1. Introduction The capacity is defined as the quantity of service that the health care institution must provide to satisfy patients need. Capacity management is related to the control of the impact of demand variability on the management of the health care institution. It concerns the good coordination of resources through the management of medical equipments, human resources and bed occupancy. Hospital capacity has long been an indicator of the importance of the hospital structure and for budget allocation [18]. The capacity planning is a component of the internal hospital supply chain. This planning is usually used to help hospitals, to do well their objectives which are: Trying to avoid an underestimating of the number of beds, planning for the future maintain a good service quality, optimize resource use, satisfy the requirements of internal and external security. 4.2. Bed capacity management In hospitals, capacity planning usually focuses on the total capacity of beds, the capacity of the surgical system, the allocation of beds for different services, equipment capacity, the ability of auxiliary services, and the number of staff and their competence [11]. Before we plan capacity in a hospital, the following issues must be clarified [1]: The length of the planning horizon (operational, tactical and strategic) The level of the provided care (primary, secondary) The type of care (provided to inpatient and / or outpatient) The quality, cost and types of available resources (physicians, nurses, technicians, rooms, beds, medical equipments and all what constitute an input for health) The hospital capacity depends not only on the number of beds, but also how these beds are used. The hospital capacity can be influenced by several factors: The geographic distribution of patients: each locality has its own hospital. The type of resources currently in use: a patient who wants to have a particular diagnosis by the nearest hospital must visit the hospital where it exist the necessary equipment. availability of nurses, physicians, and support equipment in the hospital Hospital bed management may affect cost, quality and accessibility of care. The daily management of beds is closely related to the management of the hospital. To properly determine the capacity of beds, we need to track the activities of hospital patients (admission, assignment, stay and leave) [12]. The essential role of the hospital bed manager is to ensure balance between supply and demand for hospital beds. Bed management has a long-term component, which is the choice of the overall number of beds as well as sharing among different departments, and a short-term component for the daily bed allocation to patients. We conclude that hospital beds are important measure to determine the hospital capacity. The bed management does not only affect the overall capacity but it also impacts on cost, quality and accessibility of care [8]. 4.3. Models for hospital bed capacity management Many models were elaborated to determine the optimal number of beds inside a hospital. The simple and the most used models to evaluate the adequate capacity of a hospital department are based on the following index: N = (length of stay * number of patient)/number of days = number of patient per day / number of days The transfer between departments and the randomness of some of the index parameters are not considered in the above model. To overcome this shortness in the index model more elaborate stochastic models can be used. These models can be used for the short term (daily problem), the long term (monthly problem) or even for the case of a disaster. The Queuing models are short term models that are usually related to the operational level of the hospital capacity planning. These models characterize the relationship between the number of beds, the average occupancy levels and the number of patients transferred from one department to another based on the arrival time of patients, the nature of patients transferred from one unit to another and the period of use of each type of bed by the patients. [13]. The simulation models have the ability to consider the results of a decision on an item without carrying out the experiment on the actual item [9, 19]. They represent an artificial reproduction of what will happen when random parameters change their values. Sally C. Brailsford [16] proposed a simulation model to plan for the capacity of an intensive care in hospital using software called SIMUL8. Nowadays, the health sector, an increasingly privatized sector, seeks to find an effective planning of his resources for the long term. Taking into account the benefit t and also the quality of offered service. The medical ethics and money profit are two conflicting criteria. Multiple objective programming is a model that can deal with several criteria. Chu and Chu [6] proposed a goal programming model for hospital beds allocation in Hong Kong. The model takes into account the constraints of location, the demand constraint and constraints related to manpower. Black and Carter modeled the problem of allocating physicians to hospital department using a linear goal programming model [3]. The model focuses on the number of cases handled by a physician taking into account that the hospital must be able to generate enough revenue to cover fixed costs and variable production. 4.4. Conclusion The models developed for the hospital bed capacity planning problem are mostly categorized as stochastic models. These models are suitable for short and medium term. In this study, we are more concerned with the long term. This is way we focus on multiple objective programming models to plan for the bed capacity in Rashid hospital. Chapter 5 The model In this document, we follow Ben Abdelaziz and Masmoudi model to determine the optimal bed capacity in Rashid hospital [2]. The model was first developed for bed capacity planning in all public Tunisian hospital to evaluate of missing beds. 5.1. Notations l: specialty in a hospital department, . We have two kinds of specialties. Those called primary health specialties for which we cannot transfer the patient to another hospital and secondary healthcare specialties that in case of no hospital bed available can be transferred to another hospital. : A subset of primary healthcare specialties that can be served by the same hospital bed (for which we are using the same equipment), . : A subset of secondary healthcare specialties that can be served by the same hospital bed, . : the set of specialties that may be served by the same type of nurses , : the set of specialties that may be served by the same type of physician , 5.2. The parameters : Existing beds in specialty in the hospital, . : the number of beds that can be added in the specialty in the hospital, . : ratio of nurses per bed, i.e. the number of nurses needed to serve one patient in the specialty l, . : ratio of physicians per bed: The number of physicians needed to serve one patient in the specialty l, . : the stochastic yearly demand for the specialty in the hospital where express the random demand. 5.3. Decision variables : number of beds in the specialty in the hospital. 5.4. Constraints of the model Maximum and minimum number of beds in the hospital The demand for the set of specialties in the hospital must be satisfied The demand for the set of specialties must be satisfied otherwise transferred to another hospital (1) where express the number of vacant beds in the set of specialties and the number of missing beds in the set of specialties . 5.5. Objective functions The first objective function is to minimize the cost of adding and managing new beds where is the daily cost of creating and managing an additional bed of the specialty in the hospital during the period of investment. The stochastic constraint (1) is related to the satisfaction of the demand in secondary health care specialties. This transfer generates an additional cost (transfer cost). We have to use a recourse approach to get certainty equivalent constraint. In a recourse approach a penalty in the objective function is generated when the solution does not satisfy the random constraint. Here the penalty is the transfer cost. The expected transfer cost is where is the expected transfer cost. The third group of objective functions is to minimize the number of nurses in the groups of specialities in the hospital The fourth group of objective functions is to minimize the number of physicians in the groups of specialities in the hospital 5.6. The final model The final model is expressed as the following multiple objective stochastic program 5.7. Conclusion To solve the above multiple objective program, we need to transform it into an equivalent mathematical program. This transformation must be done following the problem hypotheses. In the next chapter, we will review these hypotheses and we will provide a suitable transformation of the program (P) into its certainty equivalent program. Chapter 6 The certainty equivalent program 6.1. Introduction The program (P) is a stochastic program as it presents two stochastic constraints (P.5) and (P.6) and a multiple objective program as it has several objective functions to minimize. To solve a multiple objective stochastic program, we need to transform it into its certainty equivalent program, under predefined approaches. In the next sections and using a chance constrained approach for the constraint (P.5), a discretization technique for the constraint (P.6) and a goal programming approach to deal with the two objective functions (P.3), and (P.4), we are going to build such a certainty equivalent program to the program (P). 6.2. Chance constrained approach The chance constrained approach transforms the random constraint into a deterministic constraint by considering as feasible solution those satisfying the uncertain constraints with a predefined level of probability [4]. Therefore, under a chance constrained approach, the following stochastic linear constraint where , and are random variables, will be transformed into the following deterministic constraint where is fixed level of probability. It means that a feasible solution must satisfy the uncertain constraints for all scenarios with a probability of occurrence higher than . The constraint (P.5) expresses the satisfaction of the demand on primary health care specialties (the demand on these specialties cannot be transferred to another hospital). It is difficult and not justified to satisfy the demand for all scenarios and especially scenarios with a small probability of occurrence. In the following, we propose a chance constrained approach to deal with the constraint (P.5). Therefore, the demand on the primary health care specialties Ar must be satisfied with a given fixed probability level as follows (3) The constraint (3) is a chance constraint. Using the model hypotheses, the random daily demands are normally distributed with a mean of and standard deviation of . Note that, Then, we can rewrite the chance constraint (3) as follows 6.3. Discretization approach We must satisfy almost surely the constraint (P.6). In stochastic programming, the normal distribution is approximated by a discrete distribution and then the constraint (P.6) can be rewritten as follows: The total recourse cost and the monthly transfer cost for secondary health care specialities are transformed using the discretization of the normal distribution of demands as follows: 6.4. Goal programming approach Charnes and Cooper [5] are the first to introduce the goal programming approach which is essentially used to transform multiple objective linear program into a linear program. This transformation consists on these steps: First, to fix a target values for some or all objectives (called also goals) Second, to transform the objective functions to constraints and third minimizing the difference between objective functions value and these goals. Using a goal programming approach, the following objective functions can be transformed to constraints as follows where and are the negative and the positive difference, respectively, between the fixed goals and the achievement , and the new objective function to optimize is expressed as follows where and are weights of the negative and the positive deviation, respectively. The objective functions (P.3) and (P.4) minimize the number of nurses and physicians in each hospital. As the actual number of nurses and physicians can not be reduced, a goal programming approach is used to deal with objectives (P.3) and (P.4) where goals must be equal to the number of nurses and physicians already working in hospitals. Let us denote by and the number of nurses and physicians, respectively, who already work on the specialty in the hospital. We denote by and the goals for the objective functions (P.3) and (P.4), respectively, and are expressed as follows where is the number of nurses in shortage in the group of specialties in the hospital, is the number of nurses in excess in the group of specialties in the hospital, is the number of physicians in shortage in the group of specialties in the hospital and is the number of physicians in excess in the group of in the hospital. From these goal constraints the additional cost that gives monthly salary of new nurses and physicians is as follows: where is the nurse salary per month in the group of specialty in the hospital and is the physician salary per month in the group of specialty in the hospital. The monthly salary of nurses and physicians who work in hospitals is fixed. Now, as all objective functions represent yearly expenses, we propose to combine all cost objectives which are the yearly transfer cost, the yearly cost of creating and managing new beds and the yearly salary of new nurses and new physicians, into a single objective function expressed as follows: 6.5. The certainty equivalent Finally, under a chance constrained approach and a goal programming approach, the certainty equivalent program to the multiple objective stochastic program (P) is expressed as follows: (CE) 6.6. Conclusion The chance constrained and the goal programming approaches are used to generate the certainty equivalent program. Their use is motivated by the problem hypotheses. In the next chapter, we are going to test the model using real data from Rashid hospital. Chapter 7 The experimental study In this chapter, we discuss the results obtained by the previously presented model for hospital bed capacity planning using data from Rashid hospital. The data was obtained from the administration of the hospital and is related to a recent period (2009-2011). The quality of results here is highly linked to the quality of the input data. We are going in the following to report some of the data given to us as well as the model output. 7.1. Model parameters From the Rashid hospital we collected data related to the following parameters: Number of patients / specialty New admissions/ day Discharges / day Stay of every patient Number of Physicians / specialty Number of physicians / team Number of teams / specialty Number of hours worked by each physician Number of patients assigned to each team / day Number of nurses / specialty Number of beds / specialty A description of the system of operation of each specialty. In this document we cannot disclose the information that was given to us. We refer the reader to the manuals that the hospital published yearly and that are related to his yearly activity. 7.2. Lingo 12.0 To solve the linear programming (CE), we used the commercial software Lingo 12.0. Recently Lingo was ranked by INFORMS (www.informs.org) as one of the most valuable package for linear and nonlinear mathematical programming problems. For the mixed integer linear program (CE), Lingo uses a modified Branch and Bound algorithm [17]. 7.3. Hospital beds The Rashid hospital must have 467 beds in the total. It means that 15 supplementary beds must be added to the hospital. The number of optimal beds in each speciality is presented in the following table: Specialty Current number of beds Optimal PSYCHIATRY 46 46 CARDIOLOGY 74 74 GASTRO 9 9 GEN.SURGERY 84 84 HEMATOLOGY 4 4 IDU 23 23 RESPIRATORY 22 22 NEUROSURGERY 39 44 TRAUMA 104 114 GERIATRIC 47 47 TOTAL 452 467 Table 1: number of optimal beds Only two specialities require additional beds. These specialities are the Neurosurgery where 5 beds must be added and the trauma speciality which requires 10 additional beds. This difference between the optimal number of beds and the current beds is also represented with the following histogram: 7.4. Nurses The Rashid hospital needs to hire 3 additional nurses to the hospital to cover the demand. The optimal number of nurses per specialty is represented in the following table: Spec. Current number of Nurses Optimal PSYCHIATRY 12 14 CAR

Continuing Education: Market Driven or Student Centered? :: School Education Learning Essays

Continuing Education: Market Driven or Student Centered? One enduring controversy in continuing education is whether programs should be market driven. The controversy has some connection with the pervasive image of the marginality of continuing education in higher education as well as the concept that continuing education programs must be self-sustaining. As Edelson (1991) says, "This principle of having to pay its own way is the single most distinguishing feature of American continuing education today" (p. 19), adding that adult education is the most blatantly market-driven segment of education. At the heart of the controversy is the issue of whether "market driven" is necessarily antithetical to the principles and philosophy of adult learning. This publication looks at whether this is a misconception or a reality. The Case against Market Driven According to Beder (1992), successful market-driven programs must have "sufficient numbers of voluntary adult learners who are motivated to exchange enough of their time and money to yield the clients and fee income" needed to operate programs (p. 70). This need to target areas of high demand leads to what Beder sees as the primary problems of market-driven systems: (1) they perpetuate inequality by neglecting the needs of those less able to pay; (2) they may meet individual needs efficiently but not overarching social needs; and (3) they often displace educational benefit with profit as an overriding goal. Rittenburg (1984) agrees that the demands of the marketplace are not a sufficient foundation for continuing education: "The nature of aesthetic and ideological products is such that production to meet consumer demand is not an adequate framework" (p. 22) because such products have intrinsic value. Controversy over a market orientation for adult education programs is not a new issue. Edelson (1991) reviews the history of the Ford Foundation/Fund for Adult Education's Test Cities Project (1951-61), which sought to demonstrate that noncredit liberal adult education could and should pay for itself. Over time, this obsession with economic viability led to the sacrifice of small-group discussion forums to the need for economies of scale and formats that produced higher revenues (such as large lectures). The controversy crosses many fields. In social work, Laufer and Shannon (1993) describe how program quality, which requires long-term investment in lieu of short-term profit, can suffer when programs must pay as they go. They argue that quality should be "the bottom line below the bottom line" (p.

Inhalants: A Cheap, Easy and Deadly High Essay -- Inhalant Abuse

Hundreds of household products are being misused as inhalants. Some of these products include nail polish remover, hair spray, cleaning fluids, spray paint, and the propellant in aerosol whipped cream (â€Å"Inhalantsâ€Å", 2010). Inhalants are breathable chemical vapors that users intentionally inhale because of the chemical’s mind-altering effects (National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA], 2010). The trend in inhalant abuse is growing among the young community throughout the country. Surveys have shown in 2008 2 million Americans of 12 or over reported using inhalants (NIDA, 2010). Young children from the age of 12 to 17 are the primary age group of abusers (National Drug Intelligence Center [NDIC], 2001). The numbers reflect that it is becoming more popular for young America to abuse the various inhalants available to them without realizing the short term and long term effects of the drug. Inhalants come in many different shapes and sizes. Each inhalant falls into one of four general categories for the substances. Liquids that are vaporized at room temperature if left in unsealed containers are considered volatile solvents. Gasoline, nail polish remover, felt-tip markers, and glue contain volatile solvents. Sprays that contain propellants and solvents fall under the aerosol category. Paint, deodorant, cooking products, and silver and gold spray paint are familiar aerosols. Substances that lack definite shape or volume such as refrigerants and medical anesthetics are gases. Nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, is abused more often than any gas. It can be obtained from whipped cream dispensers, products that boost octane levels in racing cars, balloons, or small sealed vials called whippets. Gases found in butane lighters, air c... ...alize that abusing inhalants causes serious effects. Not only does a person experience the short term effects that attract them to the drug but also experience the long term effects that can leave a critical mark on a person’s health. Abusers of inhalants need to be educated that what is thought to be a satisfying high is actually a deadly high. References Inhalants. (2010). Web. 30 Mar. 2015. http://www.drugfree.org/portal/drug_guide/inhalants Missouri Department of Mental Health. (n.d.). Inhalants. Web. 30 Mar. 2015. http://www.well.com/user/woa/fsinhale.htm National Drug Intelligence Center. (2001). Intelligence Brief: Huffing The Abuse of Inhalants. Web. 30 Mar. 2015. http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs07/708/index.htm National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2010). Inhalants. Web. 30 Mar. 2015. http://www.drugabuse.gov/drugpages/inhalants.html

World Trade Organization

The courage and dedication that was displayed by the protestors in the video was what I took to heart. It was something else to see a group of people come together to protest something that they believed so strongly despite being pepper sprayed, shot at with rubber bullets, and thrown into jail†¦.. But why would anyone go to these lengths to protest against an organization? The World Trade Organization was created in Jan. 1 1995 and has 140 member countries. According to their official website www. wto. org the organizations main purpose is to, â€Å"help trade flow as freely as possible-so long as there are no undesirable side-effects. This partly means removing obstacles. † However the organization isn’t a democratic organization. Instead the WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the negotiations. Citizen input by consumer, environmental, human rights and labor organizations is consistently ignored as WTO meetings are held in secret. According to the video, out of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations and only 49 are countries. As a result it is no wonder why so many came to protest this secret meeting held in Seattle, WA. According to the video many protestors argued that the WTO and its motto of free world trade is stomping over labor and human rights in countries throughout the world as the use of cheap labor and child labor are continually ignored by the WTO. The magazine Global Exchange states that the WTO is blocking human rights abuses since they have ruled that, â€Å"1) It is illegal for a government to ban a product base on the way it is produced and 2) Governments cannot take into account the behavior of companies that do business with vicious dictatorships such as Burma. The protestors in the video also felt that the WTO was destroying the environment. Evidence of this, dates back to 1993 when according to the Global Exchange, â€Å"The very first WTO panel ruled that a regulation of the US Clean Air Act, which required both domestic and foreign producers alike to produce cleaner gasoline, was illegal. Recently, the WTO declared illegal a provision of the Endangered Species Act that requires shrimp in the US to be caught with an inexpensive device that allows endangered sea turtles to escape, and the WTO is currently negotiating an agreement that would eliminate tariffs on wood products, which would increase the demand for timber and escalate deforestation. As a result I believe that these corporations should not be allowed to continue to get away with such actions. The people in Seattle honored their legal right to assemble. The actions taken by the city of Seattle against these protestors were too extreme and I’m still unclear for what reason they took such extreme measures against the protestors. These were peaceful protests and the city freaked out over a few broken windows at corporations such as Starbucks and Nike. In my point of view the steps taken by the city of Seattle was way over the line and its disgusts me that peaceful protestors were thrown into jail for demonstrating a legal right in the constitution.

Lipstick Jihad

In Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran, Azadeh Moaveni has written a memoir of growing up first as an American girl born of Iranian parents in Southern California, then as an adult working as a reporter for Time magazine while living in Tehran, Iran. Azadeh Moaveni tells of her jihad (struggle) to develop from a self-centered, spoil girl into an adult with recognition that there are billions of others in the world, each of whom has opinions and beliefs that are equally as important as her own. While living among the community of expatriated Iranians and going to public schools, Azadeh Moaveni sometimes felt she was living a schizophrenic life: at home she was an Iranian daughter of upper middle class Iranians who had escaped Iran just prior to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran and installed a Moslem Republic in its place. At school and at the mall she felt like an outsider because she was darker skinned and had a name no one could pronounce. She was ashamed of her parents, ashamed of being an Iranian because so many people remembered the taking of the American hostages and harbored resentment against Iranians. Since she felt out of place in California, Azadeh Moaveni had built a fantasy of what her life Iran would be like; it would be perfect. What she fails to realize is that she was really just a typical teenager; no one feels they fit in while going through adolescence; everyone is ashamed of his or her parents and other family members. Although the book isn't formally divided into two sections, it is in fact divided in this manner. The first four chapters tell of her life growing up in Palo Alto and San Jose and her first few months working as a reporter. The second half of the book tells about her realization that the beliefs and opinions of others matters; she moves from an egocentric worldview to a more realistic, balanced view of the world and her place in it. The first chapter, â€Å"The Secret Garden,† Moaveni tells of her life in the United States living within the Diaspora community of Iranian expatriates. Her parents and others of that generation had been among the upper classes in Iran before the 1789 revolution. In Iran they had lived well, they had servants, and led a life separate from the vast majority of the people of Iran. In many ways they had absorbed the superior attitude of the British who lived and worked in Iran to exploit the considerable oil resources at the expense of the less privileged members of Iranian society. In the United States they lived in their own Iranian community within the California community at large. Naturally they held a positive, nostalgic belief that Iran of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s was the real Iran and they waited for the Shah or his son to return to power so they could go home. Azadeh Moaveni had visited Iran once as a child when she and her mother spent a summer with their relatives in her grandfather's walled compound in downtown Tehran. In this compound she felt absolutely free. She climbed the trees and ate the fruit of the trees. Due to this memory from her childhood and to the almost fanatical reverence of Iran that the adults around her believed Azadeh Moaveni developed a fantasy of life in Iran. When she was unhappy that fantasy was her escape from the difficulties of the day-to-day problems of being an adolescent. Consequently, when she finished college and was looking for a place to work, she chose to return to Tehran. Azadeh Moaveni called chapter two â€Å"Homecoming† because she anticipated that she would finally be where she should be, among her people, people that could pronounce her name, people who could understand her.   She was to be disappointed, â€Å". . . we had assumed here, in this country where people could pronounce our names, our world would expand. Instead we felt constricted† (Moaveni, 2005). Everywhere she went she found barriers from the officials, from the police, and from the volunteer, Basig, a group of young toughs who enforced the rules of public dress and behavior with force, if necessary. Azadeh Moaveni had an elitist attitude indicated by her opinion of the Basig. â€Å"The Basig were carefully selected in the poorest of neighborhoods and were cultivated to violence with a skillful balance of brainwashing and small incentives.† Certainly the violence practiced by the Basig was wrong, but Azadeh Moaveni's failure to realize the Basig may not have seen their role as making barriers, but of enforcing the Islamic law established by the current administration. The fact that she speaks of them being from the â€Å"poorest of neighborhoods† indicates an aristocratic slant to her view of those less fortunate than she was. Much of her struggle at this point was a failure to look at any issue from any vantage point other than her own. She was very much the California girl. Her priorities were shallow and self-serving. â€Å"Celine became my first new Iranian girlfriend, guiding me to the best manicurist, waxing lady, and private pastry chef in the city with the shared belief that these were urgent priorities.† (67).   Throughout the remainder of the first half of the book she exhibited similar attitudes and priorities. Even her attempts to practice the precepts of Islam were lacking depth. For Ramadan I had â€Å"resolved to fast, naively expecting to spend the month in harmony with the daily rhythm of the millions of Iranians around me† (Moaveni, 2005). When she realized others she knew did not do, she was disappointed and gave up her fasting. Her fantasy view of Iran had begun to crumble. In the second half of the book, Azadeh Moaveni began to grow. More oppressive violence began to be practiced by the clerical militants in Iran in an attempt to discourage people from voting at all. It was clear to everyone that the reformist President Khatami would win the election, however the more conservative clerics wanted to make sure he did not win with a large enough majority to be able to claim that he had a mandate from the people to make changes and lift restrictions that had been established by the Ayatollah Khomeini when the Islam Republic had been established in 1979. Khatami was reelected with 78% of the vote with 66% of the people voting (Moaveni, 2005). Many of Azadeh Moaveni's friends had boycotted the election because their vote would mean nothing in a repressive society. She began to realize that the political and educational elite she lived among had little in common with the people who lived in Iran. Their non-voting meant absolutely nothing. It was irrelevant to the majority of people of Iran. For the first time Azadeh Moaveni began to look beyond herself and her class and realize the Iran she carried in her head, was not Iran at all. What she and her friends thought meant nothing. â€Å"About six months after I came to Tehran, I put my labors of self-interrogation to rest, happy to nominally consider myself Iranian from America, but mostly happy just to live, and not consider myself so much† (Moaveni, 2005). When the attack on the United States occurred on September 11, 2001, Azadeh Moaveni was devastated. She couldn't understand why no one seemed to care. The three thousand plus dead was a small number compared to the millions killed in the struggles in Bosnia, the genocide in the Sudan and Somalia. Thousands of men died in the recent Iran-Iraq war. Both sides in this war were armed by the United States. Azadeh Moaveni began to understand the anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East. When this book began, I was disappointed. Based on the word â€Å"Jihad† in the title and the fact that it had to do with Iran, I expected something more universal than a memoir of a young woman. I felt deceived as if she had composed her title to attract more buyers who saw the word â€Å"Jihad† and were interested in learning about the Middle East and not at all interested in another teenager comes of age book. Throughout the first half of the book I saw little reason to change my opinion. I became more and more disappointed. Frankly, I did not care about Azadeh Moaveni or anything she did or thought. She seemed to be little more than a typical upper middle class teenager who thought the center of the universe coincided with her particular location at any particular moment. She was self-centered, arrogant and egotistical. By the time I had read half of the book, I was suffering from a Jihad of my own and wondered how I would be able to stand Azadeh Moaveni for the rest of the book. However, in the second half this changed. Azadeh Moaveni became a woman, a real person who understood that there were other people besides herself and her circle of friends and relatives. She recognized there were millions of people in Iran, and in California for that matter, who lived and struggled and died. Each of them was just as much a person as her educated, young, elite friends, and her relatives who had been made wealthy under the Shah and had made their wealth at the expense of workers in Iran. By the time I finished reading the book I had come to appreciate it. It was a Jihad for Azadeh Moaveni, a struggle to grow from the girl with childlike fantasies about life into a woman with sensitivity and balanced worldview that was not populated by solely her friends and relatives. It is a book well worth reading, not only for those who like coming of age stories, but for those interested in learning about the Middle East and America's role in the development of its current political, religious and ideological structure. It can help the reader begin to understand the anti-American attitudes of other countries. Interestingly, the United States has in many ways behaved in the past the way Azadeh Moaveni did in the first half of the book: like a spoiled, self-centered child. Hopefully we will see the same growth that Azadeh Moaveni experienced begin in the United States and its interactions with other countries and peoples. References Moaveni, A. (2005). Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran. New York: Public Affairs, a member of Persius Books Group.