4_11 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

4_11 - Assignment Example In realization of these, players in various sectors have to keep pace with the rising competition to give their consumers the best experience so as to remain relevant; otherwise, they face the danger of being faced out. The healthcare sector is one of the sectors where competition is common and helpful. The beneficiaries of competition in healthcare are the patient whose needs are met to the best of their expectations. This paper examines how various organizations in the healthcare sector are coping with competition. It will look into measures taken by these organizations so as to remain more competitive, and also on how they seek to offer the best experience to their customers. A research by The Heritage Foundation on Competitive Markets in Healthcare ‘The Next Revolution’ shows that competition in healthcare offers patients greater quality, more options, and lower costs. The research, conducted in the US, discusses several ways that the US government has over time tried to make its healthcare more competitive. One of the ways its federal and state lawmakers came up with was to instill competition, and make the industry operate like a traditional market. The study establishes that previous measures to make its healthcare more competitive had not yielded the expected results of financial gain. It takes the example of 2012, when the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Douglas Elmendorf, turned down the proposal of a competition-based Medicare Premium Support Proposal. His explanation to the House Budget Committee (HBC) was that, based on the evidence of previous measures to enhance competition, there was no quantitative proof of i ts benefits. However, this study differs with Elmendorf’s assertion by explaining various instances where competition in healthcare has proven gainful. One of the fields where the research found competition to be beneficial is the utilization of care. The research depicts a perfect example of the

Is the War on Terrorism a War Essay Example for Free

Is the War on Terrorism a War Essay The Global War on Terrorism is a military campaign that began shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. First used by George W. Bush, the phrase ‘war on terror’ has become to be conceptualized as a term used to signify ‘global military, political, lawful, and conceptual struggle targeting both organizations designated as terrorists and regimes accused of supporting them. † The war on terror main focus has been with Islamist militants and Al-Qaeda. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq are both considered to be part of the war on terrorism. There is much speculation on whether the war on terror is actually a war. This essay will argue that both points of view are valid. There are reasons which validate the war on terrorism as being considered an actual war such as the fact that an actual decelaration of war was waged by both the US and Al-Qaeda, it can be considered a new way of war, and that ultimately like war, terrorism is a mean to a political end. On the other side of the spectrum, it may not be considered a war because it does not have a clear end or possible victory, it does not have a confined battle space as regular wars, and it is a ‘war’ against an immaterial concept such as the wars on poverty, drugs, and crime. There is an extensive amount of literature on the subject of terrorism and especially the war on terror. Mia Bloom in ‘Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror’ examines the use strategies, successes, and failures of suicide bombing in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. She claims that in many instances the effort of Israel, Russia, and the United States have failed to deter terrorism and suicide bombings. Bloom also contemplates how terrorist groups learn from one another, and thus how they react and retaliate to counterterror tactics the financing of terrorism, and the role of suicide attacks against the backdrop of larger ethnic and political conflicts. Another current scholar writing on terrorism is Mark Juergensmeyer. Juergensmeyer studies religious terrorism more specifically. Bruce Hoffman gives a brilliant insight to terrorism and all its aspects. Hoffman describes its historical evolution and the mindset of the terrorist. He examines this invisible enemy and his tactics and motivation in a globalized world. Hoffman argues that the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers radically altered the USA’s and the Wests view on terrorism. When attempting to answer the above question it is important to clarify and define the terms. Terrorism has a vast number of definitions and varies greatly depending on who is trying to define it and from what perspective it is being defined and at which scope. For example one definition of terrorism is the FBI’s definition of it as ‘the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in further political or social objectives’. Another definition is from the Department of Defense which states it to be as ‘the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological objectives. A final example of one of the many definitions of terrorism is that of the Department of homeland Security which states it as ‘any activity that involves an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critic infrastructure or key resources; and†¦must also appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. ’ These definitions vary quite greatly from one to another. Any definition of terrorism suits a particular agency and how they look at the act of violence, whereas very few look at the causes for it and what its essence is. Notice the selected vocabulary for each definition will suit the type of agency’s profile. The problem with defining terrorism is one that it is a subjective thing, and two that the parties trying to define it try to include everything and nothing in it. They try to put and various different events that happened and situations as well to help define it so as to make sure that terrorism encompasses a large number of things. For example the discotheque bombing of Bali. It seems that the definitions need to include anything that attacks the west. With regards to the war on terror, is it the war on terror or terrorism? Is there really a war on terrorism and if so according to whom? The USA? Al-Qaeda? And in which theatres and locations are we talking about? The war on terror might be a war on terror in Afghanistan but not in other places. Also the title of the question is quite ambiguous because is terrorism is an act of war, or is war is an act of terrorism? Each one can be unfolded onto the other easily. It is also important to consider who is included in the war on terror, is it all terrorists groups including terrorist groups like the IRA? Or is it just limited to Islamist militant terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda? It is not always clear who are the terrorists and who are the terrorized†¦ â€Å"All politics is a struggle for power, and the ultimate kind of power is violence. † Hoffman writes that terrorism is where politics and violence intersect in the hope of delivering power. And that all terrorism involves a quest for power. Power to do many things such as to dominate, coerce, control but ultimately to ‘effect fundamental political change. Clausewitz’s definition of war was ‘war is the continuation of Politick by other means’. In this context terrorism fits in accordance to his definition as terrorism too can be considered part of war. Terrorism can be considered a tactic or act of war, or war a tactic or act of terrorism. For example the French used torture during the Battle of Algiers, the US uses terror tactics itself such as Abu Ghraib. It is very difficult to separate war from terrorism neatly. Being a terrorist is a stepping-stone to becoming a politician. Thus because of the very ambiguous relationship and line between war and terrorism, terrorism can be considered as a new way, or military tactic of fighting war. Thus anything that tries to counter attack it can also be considered a war. Thus rending the war on terrorism a war. Terrorism is ‘a complex phenomena in which violence is used to obtain political power to readdress grievances ’ In order for one to consider the war on terrorism as an actual war, an actual statement of waging war has had to been made. This is the case with the war on terrorism. Al-Qaeda did declare war on the USA in 1998. The bush administration created the term of the ‘axis of evil’ and the USA did fight a conventional war in Iraq in 2003. The war on terrorism might not be a war in itself but it could be made up and composed by several on going wars such as Chechnya, the government of Sri Lanka versus the Tumult Tigers (which was actually the first country to successfully defeat terrorism), and Mali. There have been clear objectives set out and enemies to defeat. Although this enemy is invisible, and the way of fighting the battles are different (due to the asymmetrical aspect of the war on terror) it does not mean this is not a war. The rules have changed, the battle space as well, the way of thinking of the enemy and war has changed drastically. But it is still war. It is just a new face of war. However, the war on terrorism is hard to define as an actual ‘war’ for several reasons. One, because it seems the US and the West are just policing and engaging in nation building to promote liberal democracy. Hoffman mentions the second factor, which is vastly important in discrediting the war on terrorism as a war stating that ‘unlike traditional wars, the war on terror does not have a clear end’. This is because the victory seems unattainable. Terrorism won’t die along with the terrorist leaders. Not even when the most wanted terrorist has been killed. DCIA Leon E. Panetta stated that I dont think theres any question that when you get the number one terrorist in the world, that were a little safer today than we were when he was alive. But I also dont think we ought to kid ourselves that killing Usama Bin Ladin kills al-Qaida. Al-Qaida still remains a threat, theyre still going to try to attack our country, and I think we have to continue to be vigilant and continue the effort to ultimately defeat these guys. We damaged them, but we still have to defeat them. In order for a war to be a war, shouldn’t it have a clear end? Or at least a possible one? The war on terrorism also is discredited as being an actual war because it does not take place on a clear battle space. The director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald quoted London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, soldiers. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a war on terror, just as there can be no such thing as a war on drugs He continues by stating that ‘the fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement. The war on terror could simply be a war against a ‘thing’ such as the war on poverty, drugs, crime tc†¦ There is no real way to defeat, destroy and rid the planet of such immaterial concepts. The war on terrorism looked under these aspects becomes more difficult to truly accept as a war. It is difficult to answer the question if whether the war on terrorism is an actual war. It appears that there is a struggle between Al-Qaeda fighting secularism, consumerism, and immorality and the US and the We st is fighting against backwardness and against groups of people who reject western values and globalization. Is this what the real war being fought is about? Is this the actual war that is going on? There are both aspects crediting the war on terrorism as a war and others discrediting it. This question however is highly relevant and intertwines to other aspects of IR305 such as the changing nature of war (is the war on terror the new type of war? ), the different types of warfare (is the war on terror the new western way of warfare and terrorism the Arab way of warfare? ), and the topic of risk societies (are we breeding more terrorism by fighting the war on terror, thus creating more risk). All of these various aspects of IR305 are relevant to the topic of the war on terrorism.

Scheduler Choice in Cluster Environment

Scheduler Choice in Cluster Environment Clusters have become more popular and ubiquitous and the number of processors in cluster have also increased considerably. They consist of collection of a homogeneous machines or a host of diverse computational devices which collaborate via a high speed network to execute high-performance applications. Computer industry has widely accepted that future performance increases must largely come from increasing the number of processing cores on a die. This has led to NoC processors. Efficient scheduling of high performance applications on these parallel computing systems is critical to enhance their performance and to improve system throughput. It has been proved that the problem of scheduling tasks with precedence constraints is NP-Complete [Papad, 1994]. The data flow model is gaining popularity as a programming paradigm for parallel computers. Many high-performance applications are a collection of modules which have control/data dependences among them. When the characteristics of an application is fully deterministic, including tasks execution time, size of data communicated between tasks, and task dependencies, the application can be represented by a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). With an increase in the number of processing units, expressing parallelism of an application has become a major challenge. Many studies have proved that designing parallel applications using both task and data parallelism is an effective approach than pure data or pure task parallel models. This mixed parallelism achieves both higher scalability and performance. Mixed parallel applications are represented as Parallel Task Graph (PTG), a graph of data parallel tasks. Understanding the importance of task scheduling on a parallel system, an attempt is made to address issues in scheduling multiple applications with the objectives of enhancing the performance of individual applications and also increasing the throughput the parallel computing system. In this thesis, we introduce two new algorithms Level Based Scheduler (LBS) and Improved Level Based Scheduler (ILBS) to schedule parallel applications represented as parallel task graph onto a cluster of multi-core processors with the objective of reducing their completion time. Both algorithms can be used both as static or hybrid schedulers. We argue that hybrid scheduler is a good scheduler choice in a cluster environment to optimize the utilization of its resources. We state that a better way to deal with multiple applications on a cluster is through adoptive space-sharing approach with a promise to benefit both the user and the cluster administrator. In a space-sharing approach, each application is given a set of processors and it is executed on these processors only. A parallel application can be run on a varied number of processors i.e. a moldable job. Hence we argue that it is good to change processor allotment for executing applications depending on the workload on cluster. To perform initial processor allotment and subsequent adaptations if required, methods to find the optimal and maximal number of processors that an application can utilize are developed. Also a novel method to share available processors among multiple competing task graphs is proposed. A framework is developed to bring together the proposed hybrid schedulers, methods to find processor requirement of each application, the scheme to share processors among multiple applicat ions and a new policy to decide processor allotment for each submitted application. Approaches to improve scheduling on a NoC processor is attempted. An approach to make any list scheduling method more time efficient to schedule a task graph on NoC is proposed and experimented. To schedule multiple applications on NoC, the number of cores and which cores to be assigned for each application must be decided. Our belief is that this job of deciding number of cores can be better performed by the joint collaboration of the user and system instead of any one doing it alone. Hence we have developed methods to find the optimal and maximal block of cores that an application can utilize which is later used to decide the actual core allotment for each application. Policies to decide how many and which cores to be assigned for each application are suggested. All the experiments in this thesis are carried out using a discrete event simulator. Benchmark task graphs are taken from different sources, from where other researchers have taken to compare their scheduler performance. The metrics makespan and efficiency of the schedule are used. The developed LBS is compared with MCPA the most widely accepted good scheduler and EMTS the recent PTG scheduler are chosen for performance comparison. The benchmark suite includes regular task graph, random task graph and few real applications task graph. For regular task graphs LBS shows in improvement in makespan by 2-9% in comparison to MCPA. But for irregular PTGs, LBS shows 4-12% performance improvement over MCPA, which is significantly higher than for regular PTGs. Since EMTS uses evolutionary methods, it generates better schedule but at the expense of more computing time. The proposed LBS performance is inferior to EMTS by around 2-7% and 2-4% for regular and random PTGs respectively. Another metric used is the efficiency which is a measure of effective utilization of resources. The efficiency of LBS is more than MCPA, but the improvement is less than that for makespan. This is attributed to the fact task allocation in MCPA leads to better utilization of processors than in L BS. Efficiency of LBS is more than MCPA by 1-3% and less than EMTS by 1-2%. Another scheduler ILBS is compared with LBS and TwoL[rauber 1998], a good method to schedule set of independent tasks. ILBS exhibits performance improvement of 2-7% over LBS and 2-10% over TwoL for regular PTGs. For random PTGs improvement is 6-12% over LBS and 4-8% over TwoL. The increased performance of ILBS for regular PTGs is attributed to the method of finding of the best possible schedule at each level. The performance of the proposed novel method of sharing processors among multiple task graphs is compared with the most recent methods suggested by Tapke et al. The new method exhibited a performance improvement of 6-9% for all categories of task graph and is maximum when the demand for the processors is relatively more than available processors. A complete framework is developed to tailor together the pieces of work carried out. The new policies suggested to decide processor allotment for each task graph show 4-7% performance improvement in average completion time of a task graph. The proposed policy also exhibits better performance for the time required to complete a set of task graphs by 4-7%. Thus the new policy is good from both user and system perspectives. The approach to make list scheduling method more time efficient to generate a schedule for a NoC processor is implemented in DLS[] method and it recorded around 20-45% improvement in execution time. The time is recorded by executing the application on the cycle accurate multi2sim simulator. The new policy proposed to decide the cores allotment for each application performs better than the best methods found in the literature by 4-20%. The issues in scheduling multiple applications on a cluster of multi-core processors and a NoC processor is addressed in this thesis. The observed performance improvement indicate the usefulness of proposed methods.

Europeans and the EURO :: essays papers

Europeans and the EURO - A New Era Monetary Union represents a major step forward in the building of Europe and one of the most ambitious collective projects at the tail-end of this century. All European citizens should be fully aware of the extent of the change taking place, a change which goes far beyond the framework of the financial markets alone. Today’s presentation, which is aimed not at the experts but at the future users of the Euro, that is, all of us, offers an excellent opportunity for highlighting the impact of Euro. From the very first day of this year something amazing happened in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. From January 1, these 11 countries have a single currency, the Euro. A currency that will be the only one used among the European Union. The first person who had the idea of creating a single currency for his country was the Roman Emperor, Diocletian back in 300 AD. He established a primitive gold standard and set up a coin that was used throughout the realm. After many centuries passed, in 1958 the European Economic Community was formed having as an objective the monetary unification. But the year that the final agreement was signed, was 1992 in the Maastricht Treaty of the European Union, which points to the introduction of a single European currency in 1999. The Euro is the name of the single currency of the European Community. Essentially the Euro is the ECU renamed, since ECU’s will be exchangeable one-for-one for new EUROS. The ECU is currently the basis for the European Monetary System. ECU stands for European Currency Unit, but is pronounced â€Å"EK-you†, after the name of an old French coin with an equivalent spelling. The ECU is defined in terms of pieces of European currencies, making it a composite currency in origination since its creation it has become a currency of denomination for eurobonds and bank certificates of deposits, among many other uses. But some of you will start wondering why do we need the Euro? Well, the answer is obvious. Europe’s economy is now built on a single market and the single market will work much better with a single currency. Just imagine a situation in USA, for example, with every state having its own currency! Total chaos.

Fast Food Consumption Propostition Paper Essay

Fast food consumption is becoming a major concern as obesity and diseases are linked to unhealthy eating habits. Due to the prevalence in obesity, controversy has been raised around the question of whether or not it is the consumers or the corporations to blame. Many fast food chains have been sued for allegedly contributing to obesity and have been blamed for the poor health of many people. Although some fast food restaurants may be partially responsible when they fail to post nutrition information and warnings about the foods content as well as use sophisticated marketing strategies to lure in consumers, it is a ridiculous claim to say that the corporations are completely at fault. In my opinion, people who suffer from obesity and other related diseases caused by unhealthy eating habits have no one to blame but themselves. The lack of personal responsibility has many people blaming fast food restaurants for making such unhealthy food available when in reality it is the people themselves who are making the decision to go out and buy and consume fast food. There is no one pressuring consumers into eating fast food, the same goes for people who smoke cigarettes and blame the tobacco industry for getting cancer when it is solely the consumer’s decision to start smoking in the first place. Regardless of whether or not a fast food restaurant labels their food with their nutrition information, it should be common sense that greasy, processed food is not a healthy choice. It is clear that fast food and obesity go hand in hand, consumers need to start taking responsibility for their life choices rather then trying to turn it around on the corporations and blame them for their own failure to take care of their health and well being. References Travali, D. (2007). Fast Food Industry Not Completely to Blame for Obesity. Retreived from http://voices.yahoo.com/fast-food-industry-not-completely-blame-obesity-553714.html?cat=51 Howard, M. (2012) Obesity: Personal Responsibility or Blame Food Companies? Retrieved from

Free Essays on Ukiyo-e And Art Nouveau

Ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e means â€Å"pictures of the floating world†. In 1603 through 1867, Ukiyo-e defined an art movement of the Tokuguawa period, it was the final phase of traditional Japanese history, and also a time of cultural arts. Ukiyo-e mixed influences from decrorative design and traditional picture scrolls. Mainly used in the entertainment district of Edo, the subjects that were used ranged from actors to royalty to even prostitutes. Ukiyo-e artists quickly embraced the woodblock print. Japanese were collaberated between the publisher, the artist, the block cutter, and the printer. The publisher financed and directed the work. The artist supplied a separate drawing for each color, which were glued onto the woodblocks, with the white areas cut away, destroying the original artwork. Once all the blocks were cut, they would move onto the printing process using water-based ink. Okumura Masanobu was one of the first artists to move from hand-coloring single-color woodcuts to two-color. He experimented with embossing, unusual inks, and the application of gold and silver dust sprinkled like glitter over a mixture of ink and glue. He mainly portrayed beautiful women, which landed Utamaro in jail for three days in 1804 for depicting the wife and concubines of deposed military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and was also forced to wear handcuffs for fifty days. Utamaro died at the age of fifty-three two years later. Ando Hiroshige was the last great master of the Japanese woodcut. His ability to capture the landscape inspired European Impressionists. Hiroshige died in 1858 from a cholera epidemic brought about by the collision of Asian and European cultures. Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was an international decorative stile that thrived for about twenty years. It was found in graphics, fashions, furniture, architecture, and product design. It’s reaches affected all aspects of the man-made environment including posters, packa... Free Essays on Ukiyo-e And Art Nouveau Free Essays on Ukiyo-e And Art Nouveau Ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e means â€Å"pictures of the floating world†. In 1603 through 1867, Ukiyo-e defined an art movement of the Tokuguawa period, it was the final phase of traditional Japanese history, and also a time of cultural arts. Ukiyo-e mixed influences from decrorative design and traditional picture scrolls. Mainly used in the entertainment district of Edo, the subjects that were used ranged from actors to royalty to even prostitutes. Ukiyo-e artists quickly embraced the woodblock print. Japanese were collaberated between the publisher, the artist, the block cutter, and the printer. The publisher financed and directed the work. The artist supplied a separate drawing for each color, which were glued onto the woodblocks, with the white areas cut away, destroying the original artwork. Once all the blocks were cut, they would move onto the printing process using water-based ink. Okumura Masanobu was one of the first artists to move from hand-coloring single-color woodcuts to two-color. He experimented with embossing, unusual inks, and the application of gold and silver dust sprinkled like glitter over a mixture of ink and glue. He mainly portrayed beautiful women, which landed Utamaro in jail for three days in 1804 for depicting the wife and concubines of deposed military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and was also forced to wear handcuffs for fifty days. Utamaro died at the age of fifty-three two years later. Ando Hiroshige was the last great master of the Japanese woodcut. His ability to capture the landscape inspired European Impressionists. Hiroshige died in 1858 from a cholera epidemic brought about by the collision of Asian and European cultures. Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was an international decorative stile that thrived for about twenty years. It was found in graphics, fashions, furniture, architecture, and product design. It’s reaches affected all aspects of the man-made environment including posters, packa...