Computers In Our World Essays - Computer, Internet,

Computers in our World In the 1950's, computers were a new race of machines and most common person did not know anything about them. Today, computers and new Innovation like the internet has changed the business world and even our daily lives. How did it change the business world and our own personal lives and is it for the best, that's what will be discussed in this report. Contents

Why There is No Such Thing as a Vegan

Why There is No Such Thing as a Vegan An odd criticism of veganism seems to be there is no such thing as a vegan, or vegans kill animals. A popular but misleading infographic points out the many ways, obvious and not so obvious, that animal products are used in common consumer goods. But the creator of the infographic misunderstands what veganism is, and how easy it is to avoid many animal products. What is Veganism? Contrary to what some people think, veganism is not about being absolutely 100 percent pure and free of animal products. Veganism is about minimizing harm to other animals and avoiding animal products as much as possible. What does this mean? Vegan blogger Mylene of My Face is on Fire writes: Is it possible in this overwhelmingly speciesist world to live a life that is 100% free of the use of animal products? Of course not. Does this mean that its OK to sneak in the occasional chicken wing for kicks and still call yourself a vegan? Again, of course not. But veganism is a lifestyle thats the hands-on application of an ethical framework where every single day you need to inform yourself so that you can assess situations and make the proper choices. Hidden Animal Products Vegans know about avoiding meat, fish, dairy, honey, gelatin, leather, wool, suede, fur, feathers and silk. At a minimum, people who call themselves vegans avoid these products. But being vegan means more than simply changing ones dietary habits. Its also a lifestyle. So vegans also avoid circuses, rodeos, zoos and other industries whose prime purpose is animal exploitation. Some other animal products are not so obvious, and some are considered unavoidable. Below is just a partial list. Agriculture: Any kind of agriculture, even farms growing fruits and vegetables, displace wildlife. Forests that were once home to songbirds, insects, squirrels, deer, wolves and mice are converted in order to produce commercial crops. Commercial farms kill crop-eating animals (labeled pests) with natural and chemical insecticides, traps and gunfire. Even organic farms shoot deer, kill moles with traps and employ natural pesticides. Farms also commonly use fertilizer made from bone meal, fish meal, manure and other animal products.Bug parts in food: Because it is nearly impossible to harvest, process and package food without some contamination from mouse feces, rat hair or insect parts, the FDA allows small amounts of these animal products in food. Have you ever had an old bag of flour suddenly sprout bugs? Its not spontaneous generation. Those insect eggs were in the flour all along, and the FDA regulates the amount of these insect parts in our food. According to CBS News, an FDA spo kesperson says when these levels are exceeded, FDA can and will take regulatory action immediately if any disease-causing microbes are present. Shellac, beeswax, and casein on fruits and vegetables: Shellac is a resin harvested from the lac beetle. While the beetle does not need to be killed in order to harvest the shellac, some beetles are inevitably killed or injured in the shellac collection process. Most people associate the word shellac with furniture, but it can be used as wax to coat fruits and vegetables, and is disguised in candy as confectioners glaze. Beeswax, which comes from bees, is also used to preserve fruits and vegetables and delay rot. Casein, a milk product, is used in wax to coat fruits and vegetables. The wax can also be vegetable-based. The FDA requires a label or sign to identify fruits and vegetables that have been coated with wax but does not require the label to state whether the wax is of animal or vegetable origin.Cars and insects: Everyone who drives knows that hitting insects is an inevitable fact of life. People tend to think of it as insects hitting car windshields, but cars are hitting and k illing insects everywhere. Tires, rubber, paint, glue, and plastics: Because rubber, paint and plastic products are not foods, manufacturers are not required to disclose the ingredients. However, these products often contain chemicals and additives that originate from animals. Paint, glue and other chemicals often contain animal products. Shellac, as explained above, comes from insects.Consumer products in general: Aside from the known animal ingredients in various products, consumption kills animals in the form of farming, mining, drilling and pollution. Whether buying products made of wood, metal, plastic, rubber, or plants, the manufacture and harvesting of these products take habitat away from wildlife. The energy used in manufacturing the products, as well as the packaging, often pollutes the environment. When those products are thrown away, they end up in a landfill, perhaps being buried or incinerated. Some will end up in waterways, the air, and in the soil, affecting human health as well as animal heal th and the environment. Medical Issues  Sometimes vegans need medication. Premarin, a hormone replacement therapy, uses the urine of pregnant mares who are confined in deplorable conditions. There are other HRTs, but women need to research to find those, if any, that are cruelty-free. And keep in mind that although the final product is labeled â€Å"no animal testing,† the individual ingredients that went into the making of that product may have been tested on animals. The CDC is pushing Americans more than ever to get their flu shots. Flu shots are not only created in fertilized chicken eggs but contain proteins from the eggs themselves. Formaldehyde is used to create a chemical reaction to pull those proteins together. Some medicines necessary for high blood pressure or other health problems may contain animal parts or are encapsulated in gel-caps made of gelatin, which is made from animal bone, skin and ligaments. The purpose of discussing hidden animal products and the many ways in which all humans kill animals is not to discourage veganism or to make veganism seem impossible. The purpose is for vegans to strive for minimal harm to other animals while realizing that eliminating every last animal product on the market is impossible. Vegans can work on ways to make car tires without animal products, try to buy unwaxed fruit or grow fruit and consume less in general. This article has been edited and updated by Michelle A. Rivera

Report Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Report Plan - Essay Example 1). The software enables events organizers to plan, design, manage, and communicate crucial facets and components of the events with minimum costs and with greater efficiency. 3. Identify the purpose of the report. (What need or problem will the product, service, or program resolve?) The purpose of the report is to persuade decision-makers to purchase the exhibition management software and enable their organization to generate greater profits through cost minimization and through optimization of resources. 4. Identify potential resources that will be needed for support. The potential resources that will be needed to support one’s report and persuade decision-makers to select the most effective course of action are as follows: (1) identification of specific advantages or benefits of using the software; (2) be able to present a cost-benefit analysis which would itemize the net gain, in the long run, for purchase and installation of the software program; (3) to provide costs of p urchase, installation; as well as maintenance and support of the exhibition management software from Ungerboeck and be able to compare it with other providers, which could be viewed from the Association Forum Buyer’s Guide (Webvent, Inc., 2013). 5. Identify methods to be used to gather information. To gather all relevant information, the following methods are proposed to be used: (1) research online for costs, features of the software being offered, benefits, added support systems, and other crucial details; (2) research for organizations who have opted to purchase exhibition management software and collect feedback; (3) gather information from the organization in terms of current costs being incurred while planning for traditional events and compare the efforts and costs with the planned benefits and costs if the exhibition management software would be purchased and installed; (4) solicit information from customers and other stakeholders regarding the advantages and disadvan tages of having the system installed; and (5) use secondary sources of information to determine feedback, as well as informative details which would assist decision makers in the selecting the most effective course of action. Thus, both primary and secondary research methods could be undertaken to gather crucial information and be presented in the report. When time, resources, and funds would allow, primary methods of research through questionnaire, survey and interviews could be undertaken to determine the credibility and reliability of information gathered from secondary sources of information. The list of customers of each providers could be very good sources of information to determine the efficiency of the current exhibition management software that they availed. They would also be the most credible and reliable source to determine any problems that ensued with the software and also with the provider, if any. 6. Identify criteria to be used to evaluate the information collected . (What factors will you consider to make your recommendation?) The criteria to be used to evaluate the information collected would be as follows: Cost: how much would the exhibition management software cost, including maintenance and annual fees, if any. These should be made available, not only

Find three logical fallacies from the article Essay

Find three logical fallacies from the article - Essay Example The post hoc fallacy claims that ‘after this therefore because of this’. Two events simply following a sequential pattern is not sufficient to prove that the second event took place because of the first one. They are mere coincidences. It is necessary to conduct a controlled study that rules out all other factors that might influence the outcome to establish a casual connection between the events that took place in sequence. However, in the present case, this study does not take place. Straw man fallacy One fallacy that is evident in the article is straw man fallacy. In fact, Straw Man fallacy is the outcome when a person plainly ignores another person’s actual position, and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. In the given article, Lott claims that there were many armed attacks in the US when there was ban on carrying guns, and he claims that they might be preventable if the law allowing the public to carry concealed gu ns was enacted. The point that the attacks were not prevented is replaced by Lott with the point that they could be prevented if people had guns. Thus, he justifies his claim that people should be allowed to carry guns.

Human Resources Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Human Resources - Assignment Example Personnel management department is part of the organization that deals with recruitment and development of employees so that they become productive in the organization. Personnel management is concerned with the affairs of the human resources of the organization.  It advises the management on matters concerning the human resources from the beginning of the recruitment program to the end of employment contract. Personnel management department plays a significant role of assisting the management in handling all the affairs of the human resource in the organization. A personnel manager act as spokes man of the human resources since he has personal contact with the employees and managers. Personnel management office is the link between the human resources, and the management thereby ensuring there is harmonious interaction and communication between the two. It is the counseling department of all human resource problems in an organization. The office devices solutions to human resource problems and guide them on what measures to put in place (Patel, 2007, p. 46) Human resource management is the department that is concerned with management of the affairs of the human resources in the organization. Functions of the human resource management department It set out the rules and regulations that govern the human resources within the organization. It is responsible with the reward systems of the organization. They ensure that the employees are rewarded in accordance with the set standards and their productivity. This is to ensure that the organization does not exploit the human resources. It organizes training and development activities for the human resources to ensure that they improve their productivity. The department ensures that the organization is compliant with employment and labor laws set out by various organs. The department ensures that the human resources operate in safe working conditions by providing them with safety working facilities (Levine, 1987, p.25 ). Differences between human resource and personnel management Hrm advocates for decentralization of power from the top management to the employees while personnel management advocates for full authority in the top management during decision making. Personnel management employees human resources based on a written agreement that is a short term. This contract is so compact and does not give room for changes or modifications. On the contrary, hrm advocates for a long term employment where the working conditions are less rigid and can be amended regularly to accommodate the interests of all parties involved.

The Agenda Setting And Spiral Of Silence Media Essay

The Agenda Setting And Spiral Of Silence Media Essay Alan Crosbie, who is the Chairman of Thomas Crosbie Holdings, a large Irish media player said in his speech  commented on new media there is a tsunami of information coming from new media some of which has the capacity to destroy civil society and cause unimaginable suffering. Let us try and understand why Media holds so much power. Significantly Media has had a dominating influence over peoples lives and opinions since time immemorial. A classic example of convincing people of ones beliefs was during the Nazi Regime. The entire nation was convinced of the Nazi ideologies through getting the entire media channels either under the governments control or having censorship rights over the privately owned ones. This resulted in patriotic and nationalistic sentiments being instilled in songs, movies and even the news was censored to suit the ideology of the Nazis. The world as we see and know of around us is through the media and is hence is a second-hand reality portrayed to us by the media owners of the society. This becomes highly ominous in face of the fact that the entire world media is owned by about 9 Conglomerates only. Hence when there is a plethora of news bytes available, the news that reaches us is what the Media channels think newsworthy. And this is just a percentage of the world news that is present around us. This ability to influence which issues, persons and topics are perceived as the most important of the day is called the agenda-setting role of the mass media McCombs, 2004. The origin of the Agenda Setting Theory happened when Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw (1972), professors at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill used the presidential elections of the United States of America in 1968 as a live study to investigate the relationship if existed between the important issues of the public and that between the priority issues of the mass media.   McCombs and Shaw were able to determine the degree to which the media, in Bernard Cohens words, tell us [(the public)] what to think about. Agenda setting theory has two levels to it. The magnitude of media coverage the particular article gets How the article or object in question has been covered First Level Agenda deals with the issues present on the public, political and media domain. This is the most important area of the agenda setting research where media is seen as a highly influencing factor to the public and political issues. Second level agenda setting is more closer to framing. McCombs in his study discussed how second level agenda setting is more specific to the attributes that define the object in question. Balmas and Sheafer (2010) argued that the focus at the first level agenda-setting which emphasizes medias role in telling us what to think about is shifted to medias function of telling us how to think about at the second level agenda-setting. The similarity between second level agenda setting and framing is that they both are related with how a particular issue is portrayed, with mildness or with sensationalization. They are generic and not the issue or object specific. However they differ on the account of intensity, since framing is a higher degree or an ext ension of second level agenda setting. Spiral of Silence Spiral of Silence originates from understanding the Asch experiment (1958) and the Milgram experiment (1963). Asch experiment was a study on conformity. This basically measures how much other people get pressurized into changing their opinion or falling in line when people more powerful or in more volume than them do so. Other reasons for conforming are to not be isolated from the mass and be liked by their peer groups. The Milgram experiment tested the effects of punishment and hence understood the concepts of Obedience and Authority. These experiments prove that mass or volume opinions have a huge impact on individual opinions. The Spiral of Silence theory was created by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1974). Public opinion is the dominant opinion which compels compliance of attitude and behavior in that it threatens the dissenting individual with isolation and the politician with loss of support. In the words of  its  originator  Elisabeth  Noelle-Neumann: observations  made  in one context the  mass  media spread to  another  and  encouraged  people  either  to proclaim  their  views  or to  swallow  them  and  keep  quite  until ,in a  spiraling  process,  the one  view dominated  the  public  scene  and  the  other  disappeared  from  public  awareness as  its  adherents  became mute  ,  this  is the  process  that  can be  called  a  spiral  of  silence. This basically emphasizes on how when an individual feels they are in a minority, out of numerous fears and insecurities, they feel it better to be a part of the popular and mass opinion and hence an issue even if relevant if doesnt have anything to do with the majority will spiral into silence. The silence of a person, who differs from the majority, spirals upwards thus forcing other people to stay silent. theory09a-789436.gif Strengths Explains why the people remain silent when they find themselves to be the minority. Explains the influence created by media over the crucial issues. Explains why people prefer to withhold their true feelings. Rather than take the risk of being isolated Explains how the spirals of silence solve the societal conflicts. Limitations Does not apply completely to the field of media as the aspects of fear of isolation reprisal does not hold true in the virtual world. Questions the transparency in quantifying the majority the minority. Co-relation between Agenda Setting and Spiral of Silence According to Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, the spiral of silence and the agenda setting theory go hand in hand. She believed that media plays a major role in forming public opinions. Therefore the masses shape their opinions in accordance with the media and according to her, media is the strongest bridge between these two theories. We can support the above point with the help of an example. During the Nazi period, Hitler was convinced that German race is far superior than anyone else on this planet. He made an extensive use of the media tools available at that time to convince the people about the same. Some people believed this but there were a lot of them who did not believe in this concept of German superiority. Although they did not believe, none of them raised their voice because of the fear of the Nazi regime and the fear of isolation. They convinced this case. Examples of Agenda Setting Theory The role of media in shaping public opinion about The Iraq War The marketing effort by the Bush administration to gain support for the invasion of Iraq began to get into full swing by the fall of 2002. When Condolezza Rice, then National Security Advisor to the President, was asked a question on the case of preemptive war in a CNN interview, she said- We know that he [Saddam] has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought, maybe six months from a crude nuclear deviceà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we dont want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. Even the President made similar remarks about Saddams WMD program less than a month later on 7th October, 2002, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof-the smoking gun-that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. These and other such statements marked the beginning of what the Center for Public Integrity called, false statements, in their 2008 report titled, Iraq-The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War. The number of false reports increased tremendously towards the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, so did the general perception about Saddams nuclear program, suggesting a strong case for media agenda-setting. Future of Agenda Setting Theory With the introduction of the horizontal media and the internet, people have the option of following what they want without anyone forcing an opinion on them. The change in the technology and media has led to several changes in the agenda setting theory. This change is called as Agenda Mending which talks about the personal agendas of individuals vis-à  -vis their community and group affiliations  . This means that individuals join groups and blend their agendas with the agendas of the group.   Criticisms Agenda Setting Theory does not take into account the personal interests of an individual. Any issue considered salient by the media does not necessarily has to be important for the people. This theory uses a very scientific approach, therefore its not able to stand the test of scrutiny as humans are very unpredictable.

Ligation of EGFP into pET41a(+) vector transformed into E. coli cells :: PCR amplification of extracted DNA plasmid

Ligation of EGFP into pET41a(+) vector transformed into E. coli cells followed by PCR amplification of extracted DNA plasmid for success evaluation along with gel electrophoresis at each step. Introduction Enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) was originally isolated from a bioluminescent jellyfish called Aequorea victoria. As suggested by the name, this protein fluoresces green when exposed to light in the ultraviolet range. The ultimate goal of the following experiment was to successfully create a pET41a(+)/EGFP recombinant plasmid that was transformed into live E. coli cells. The success of this transformation could be evaluated based on whether EGFP’s fluorescence properties were displayed by the colony in question. The protein’s fluorescence properties â€Å"triggered the widespread and growing use of GFP as a reporter for gene expression and protein localization in a broad variety of organisms† (Ormo, et. al., 1996). Although EGFP and GFP differ for a few amino acids that make EGFP’s fluorescence mildly stronger, the basic principle that such a protein allows for the evaluation of transformation success remains intact. The first step of the experiment was ligation, and the objective was to insert EGFP cDNA into a restriction cut pET41a(+) vector to obtain a recombinant plasmid that would express green fluorescent gene. pET41a(+) was the choice of vector to ligate the EGFP into. Its structural design and genomic sequential properties render it especially well-suited for cloning and high-level expression of peptide sequences. This 5933 bp circular vector contains a built in sequence for Kanamayacin resistance gene. â€Å"Rooting of non-transgenic shoots was completely inhibited in all culture media containing kanamycin† (Montserrat, et. al., 2001). This allowed the growth of recombinant and non-recombinant colonies of E. coli, all of which contained the vector insert. Once the recombinant plasmid was obtained, it was then inserted into E. coli cells through transformation. From a successful transformation, we expected the bacterial cells to translate the inserted EGFP sequence into its protein form. The bacteria cultures were plated on petri dishes containing growth supplement, Luria Broth (LB), an antibiotic: Kanamycin, and IPTG which induced the fluorescence property within successfully transformed bacterial colonies. Different variants of the petri dishes were also included as control and unknown. The miniprep consisted of isolating the DNA plasmid from the bacterial cells. This was used to identify the success of EGFP ligation into pET41a(+) vector upon restriction digest and gel electrophoresis. Additionally, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) was run on the isolated DNA plasmids with one of the primers specifically annealing to a part of pET41a(+) sequence and the other annealing to the EGFP gene.