The Importance of the 14th Amendment

The fourteenth amendment covers equal protection as well as due process. One of the most influential amendments that is still playing a huge role even today in the court system is the equal protection clause. This clause which states in section 1 â€Å"No State shall†¦ deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. † In section 5, the Amendment establishes the federal civil rights legislation: â€Å"The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. These clauses have been the basis for many court challenges, and ultimately the Supreme Court must decide if discrimination issues are unreasonably discriminatory against a particular group or class of individuals. This country has witnessed laws challenged under this Amendment such as the separate but equal laws, also known as Jim Crow laws. The Supreme Court must use three different tests to determine if a law breaks the equal protection clause .The three tests are to include strict scrutiny, which prevents certain groups from practicing a fundamental right, such as freedom of speech. The law must be a compelling state interest. A law based on a suspect classification such as race falls under this test. There must be justification that a law is written and it is a compelling state interest. The next test is intermediate scrutiny. This is more difficult for the Court to decide on, but under this test, laws based on gender classification are allowed only when they are clearly related to a government issue.The punishment for statutory rape was an example used. Men are punished but women generally aren’t. The reason being, women are the ones who become pregnant, so an over age man who impregnates an under aged girl has left her dealing with the ramifications of his actions. It is not as clear cut with an over aged women and under aged male. Yet having separate drinking ages for males and females does not meet the criter ia of the intermediate scrutiny because it is unreasonable to think there should be any different in the genders in this case.The last test is the rational test. Most laws pass this test as most laws are reasonable. An example given was a city that didn’t want street venders in a certain area of town. The city just needs to show that it is reasonable to not want venders in an area because the city doesn’t want an increase in traffic issues in an area, or any other reasonable justification for prohibiting certain actions. This clause however has been used to eventually overturn the idea that separate but equal is constitutional.In 1955, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated school was a violation and even harmful to children. Much of the civil rights movement was based on this clause, that all people are to be equal under the eyes of the law. Today we are looking at very similar battles going on in our courts. It is no longer an issue of race or even gender, but disab ilities and sexual orientation. Many are fighting for their equal protection under the law. They aren’t asking for special treatment, just equal treatment, as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Opposites Attract

Opposites attract, similar to how magnets are drawn to each other. This tragic love story sheds light on Romeo and Juliet, a pair of star-crossed lovers. The play Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare, features a love story between the two main characters, Romeo and Juliet and takes place in Verona, Italy. There are two rival families, the Capulets and the Montagues, and Juliet and Romeo are the â€Å"star-crossed lovers† from the two opposing families. In Act II Scene II, Romeo is talking to Juliet on the balcony immediately after they meet.Here, Shakespeare reveals Romeo’s and Juliet’s personalities in the scene. Shakespeare reveals a passionate and impulsive side to Romeo, while on the other hand, reveals a hesitant and cautious side to Juliet. Shakespeare reveals that Romeo has a passionate, as well as impulsive love for Juliet. In the balcony scene he says to Juliet, â€Å"My life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love. †(82) This suggests that Romeo is saying that he would choose death over Juliet not loving him, and reveals his fervent love for Juliet.Also, he boldly states, â€Å"Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me. †(72) He declares this because he is so deeply in love with her. He has the courage to say this even when he knows that Juliet’s relatives want to kill him because he is a Montague. Romeo’s impulsive behavior is suggested when he asks, â€Å"Th’ exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine†(134). Even though Romeo had just met Juliet that night, he proposes that they get married, which reveals that he is impetuous. Romeo is characterized as passionate but impulsive, which leads him rushing into decisions, and ultimately his death.Juliet is shown to be hesitant and cautious because is mature beyond her age. She is cautious about Romeo’s love for her, almost skeptical of it, because she says to him, â€Å"And if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully† (99). This shows that she wants to be reassured that he truly loves her. When Romeo proposes for them to marry, she responds â€Å"It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden† (125) which shows that Juliet thinks that they should be careful, because she believes their love is developing too quickly.She then compares their love to what it could be, â€Å"Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be† which means that like lightning, their love can disappear as fast as it appeared. She is worried that this will happen to them as well. Her cautious and hesitant behavior balances out Romeo’s character and actions. Shakespeare suggests that Romeo and Juliet are very different in character. Romeo is quick to act, while Juliet takes her time and thinks of the possible outcomes. Their personalities create a perfect balance.Although they complete each others’ personalities, their young and sudden love is like the always ch anging and tumultuous ocean. The two lovers should not rush into their love because their love for each other, as Juliet says â€Å"Follow thee my lord throughout the world†, foreshadows that Juliet will ultimately follow Romeo into death because of their love. Love holds the power to make people do extraordinary things but sometimes may lead to irreversible consequences, such as death.

Is Marriage Out of Style

Research Essay Wendy Is marriage out of style? What is the most popular topic of girls? The answer to the question is â€Å"love and marriage†. It’s true. Almost all of girls hope Mr. Right would appear with â€Å"glass slipper† next second. As a girl, I have taken part in lots of talks about marriage with same-aged girls. However, my cousin is an exception. I had to listen to her â€Å"Single Theory† whenever I mentioned the imagination of marriage. She said, â€Å"Marriage is out of date. It will be not necessary anymore. † At that time, I was too young to distinguish whether she is right.As I grew up, I found that most people debate marriage from the following five aspects: Is marriage just a form of commitment? Would cohabitation replace it? Is marriage the tomb of love? Does it lead people to losing freedom? Whether marriage is still necessary as women have been more and more independent? To begin, as with women becoming more and more independe nt, many of them get the same idea as Caroline. On the BBC News, she says that women have been changing their values and increasing independence recently.They get their own jobs and have enough ability to support themselves; therefore, Caroline thinks it’s no need for women to get marriage. (Caroline, 1997). It seems true on this aspect, while I prefer Rich Rivers’ viewpoint. For the question â€Å"Do independent women need a permanent man or marriage† on the home page of Helium, he responds that a woman needs a man in her life to talk with and she â€Å"needs a shoulder to lean on and cry on† whether she is independent or not. (Rich Rivers, 2006). Personally speaking, becoming independent is a good thing; however, it doesn’t mean independent women don’t need marriage or stable life.Independence aside, freedom after marriage is also one of the issues people worry about, especially for men. According to James Walsh in his essay â€Å"Why Peo ple Don’t Want to Get Married†, he mentions that marriage kills freedom. You have to give up parties and report to your â€Å"spouse† that â€Å"where you are at a particular time and how long will it be before you reach home†. (James Walsh). Yes, marriage adds another person to your life and â€Å"places you a huge responsibility on your shoulders†; nevertheless, every coin has two sides. In Michael G.Lawer’s essay â€Å"Changing Catholic Models of Marriage†, he writes that spending time on your â€Å"spouse† can improve your â€Å"mutual relationship†. (Michael G. Lawler, 2001). You can share the happiness and sorrow with him or her, which lightens your burden. From this viewpoint, I don’t think marriage is the killer of freedom. Besides independence and freedom, both men and women believe marriage out of date because it is the grave of love. In Zhao Xu’s essay â€Å"Marriage is the Grave of Love†, he writes â€Å"Marriage is the manifestation of love when two people are just getting married, and it is a killer of love as well when they have got married. (Zhao Xu, 2009). I believe with no doubt until I saw PS & SR Branch Welfare Services Group’s essay â€Å"Family Life Education Series-Why do we get married nowadays†. In this essay, it states that love exists between the two people all along. They feel dull because they completely â€Å"expose† themselves after marriage. (PS & SR Branch Welfare Services Group). For my part, marriage just reflects people’s natural personalities, and makes life more realistic. It cannot be regarded as the grave of love. Cohabitation is also a thing that affects people’s viewpoint about marriage.Statistics supplied by Nation statistics shows that from 1996 to 2006, the proportion of marriage couple families decreased from 76 percent to 71 percent, while the cohabitating rate increased to 14 percent from 9 perce nt. (Nation statistics, 2007). Another statistics showed by Hewitt Belinda, â€Å"In Australia, the proportion of marriages preceded by cohabitation has risen from 30% in the 1980’s to around 75% in 2003. †(Hewitt Belinda, 2006). It seems that cohabitation may take the place of marriage in the future.On the contrary, in the essay of Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, Has Being Married Gone Out of Style, they point out that couple just cohabitate before they marriage; they will get marry ultimately. ( Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, 2006). As far as I’m concerned, cohabitating before marriage can lower the divorce rate. It indicates that cohabitation can be a step of marriage, but cannot replace it. The last thing is the commitment, which is ignored as the increasing rate of divorce. On the BBC News, Lissa Hynes says marriage is going out of fashion because it is just a form. Lisa Haynes, 1999). Deep down, I disagree with her statement, and support the superiority of th e idea of Kelly Knowles. On the same home page of BBC News, she says that marriage means the â€Å"permanent relationship† and it declares your happy life to others. (Kelly Knowles, 1999). In my opinion, besides this, marriage is also the protection for each side of the couple. It’s not just a form. After get so many ideas, have you already got a better perception about marriage? Well, I have. Everyone needs a stable marriage, and so do independent women.To some extent, an independent woman needs much more care from a man than others. Marriage doesn’t bind you; as long as you deal it properly, you’ll realize how wonderful marriage is. Marriage represents not only a form of commitment, but also an approach to show your happy life and a safeguard for your love. High divorce rate means people want to have high quality marriage rather than living together without love. Marriage doesn’t kill your love; it reflects the truth of love. It is a filter, and only the true love family can remain romance forever. By seeing this, you may ask â€Å"why don’t cohabitate†.Imagine you’re a parent. If your daughter fell in love with a guy who refuses to marry her, but just live with her, would you feel relieved to let them together? Absolutely not! Is cohabitation all right before marriage? Maybe, but your bottom line must be making sure that your daughter has a stable and happy marriage. As I mentioned before, cohabitation has good effect on marriage, but it cannot replace it. Indeed, different people have different opinions. It doesn’t matter if you still think marriage is not necessary anymore. Time and experience will tell you the truth.Do you remember my cousin who vows solemnly to be single? She has already got married and had a lovely baby. Isn’t it the most wonderful life? Marriage is destiny, and it won’t be out of style forever! References Caroline. (1997). BBC News. Retrieved April 1, 2009 fr om http://news. bbc. co. uk/2/hi/talking_point/33312. stm Hewitt Belinda. (2006). ‘Trial Marriage’: Is premarital cohabitation an effective risk minimisation strategy for marriage breakdown? Retrieved April 11, 2009, from http://eprints. qut. edu. au/6134/1/Hewitt_FIN. pdf James Walsh. Why People Don’t Want to Get Married.Retrieved April 3, 2009, from http://www. rightarticle. com/Article/Why-People-Don-t-Want-to-Get-Married-/67388 Kelly Knowles. (1999). BBC News. Retrieved April 1, 2009, from http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/talking_point/452257. stm Lisa Haynes. (1997). BBC News. Retrieved April 1, 2009, from http://news. bbc. co. uk/2/hi/talking_point/33312. stm Michael G. Lawler. (2001). Changing Catholic Models of Marriage. Retrieved April 3, 2009, from http://www. americamagazine. org/content/article. cfm? article_id=1796 Nation statistics. (2009). Overview of Families.Retrieved April 11, 2009, from http://www. statistics. gov. uk/cci/nugget. asp? id=1865 Po B ronson & Ashley Merryman. (2006). Has Being Married Gone Out of Style. Retrieved April 11, 2009, from http://www. time. com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1547431,00. html? cnn=yes PS & SR Branch Welfare Services Group. Family Life Education Series-Why do we get married nowadays. Retrieved April 3, 2009, from http://www. police. gov. hk/offbeat/849/eng/f01. htm Rich Rivers. Helium. Retrieved April 5, 2009, from http://www. helium. com/items/1412961-do-independent-women-need-a-permanent-man-or-marriage

CASE STUDY Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 9

Case Study Example The employees of AIG believed that the company had an obligation to pay them their bonuses, while the public thought that the bonuses were unethical as the money had come from federal reserves. Companies should have well-detailed contracts with employees clearly showing when bonuses should be paid and cases when the company may fail to issue the bonuses, to prevent such scenarios in the future. External regulations ensure that firms and individuals act ethically towards the general public. They are very efficient as in the AIG case where a 90% tax was imposed on the bonuses thereby protecting the general public. The company had an obligation to pay the employees their bonuses while at the same time had an obligation to the public to use the bailout money prudently. To ensure that both requirements were met the company needed to pay the bonuses in installments depending on future profits that the company made. The company should have used the bailout out money first to get back to profit ways and later pay the bonuses to deserving employees. eBay pursued international growth through their three main components; products, sense of community and aggressive expansion. It had a broad range of product categories and trading platforms that offered a wide variety of pricing formats allowing it to compete directly with major competitors such as amazon.com and to penetrate new markets. eBay created trust between buyers and sellers and enlarged their market ventures through the creation of more localized sites. The greatest source of competitive advantage for eBay at the moment is its broad capital base. With an average net income of about $2 billion yearly, eBay has a large capital base that allows it to deal with competitors through acquisitions and strategic partnerships. Through acquisitions, eBay has attempted to acquire a stake in the

Compare the characteristics of an operational database and a Essay

Compare the characteristics of an operational database and a dimensional database - Essay Example The data normalization for the operational database is required at a very high level to avoid the data redundancy. This type of databases is also referred to the â€Å"On-Line Transaction Processing† OLPT. This type of database is updated after every transaction and also represents the snapshot of a very current business situation. In an operation database, records are changed, updated, added and replaced. Relational model is used to compose operational systems with update and insert operations. Current databases are multidimensional, and technology is applied to distributed data. Large, complex, and high performance data is only facilitated by the dimensional database. For example, a sale manager wants to view the sale of a product for the particular region over a period. This is the dimensional view of data as higher dimensionality requires the high volume of data. The â€Å"On-Line analytical processing† known as OLAP enables the managers, analysts and professional to gain insight in view of information. An OLAP server supports the structures of the dimensional database. For dimensional databases, the multidimensional model is used to model the system. A company has multidimensional database of products, sales, finance, and employees. (IBM

The Primary Benefits of Telenursing Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The Primary Benefits of Telenursing - Assignment Example The e-health practice is applicable in various avenues such as remote monitoring and patient consultations (Kumar & Snooks, 2011). Ethics is a core concept in nursing because of the sensitivity of the practice. Almost all nursing institutions incorporate the study of ethics in their curriculum in order to enable learners to practice fairly and efficiently in the field. The ethical principals in nursing entail caring, communication and relations between the nurses and the patients. These ethical principals provide guidelines to telenurses in an ethical dilemma situation. Telenursing has various ethical dilemmas like in cases where a third party person (relative) calls the telenurse on behalf of the patient. In this case, the ethical dilemma entails a conflict between the relative’s and patient’s autonomy as well as the telenurse’s desire to help (Kumar & Snooks, 2011). In addition, telenursing has other ethical issues such as confidentiality of the information because the patients rely on different methods of communication to explain their condition. Additionally, the information provided to the nurses may lack credibility especially in situations where the patient is a minor, and they cannot comprehend their condition effectively. Ethical principles such as listening and communication abilities enable the telenurses to establish a particular condition in a patient effectively. The nurses also apply various ethical principles to resolve a situation where the interests of the concerned parties’ conflict during a telenursing process (Kumar & Snooks).

The write choice Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The write choice - Assignment Example Amnesty International, an international human rights organisation has also argued that capital punishment is the ultimate denial of for human rights. They argue that since death penalty is the premeditated taking of a human life by a government, it is the ultimate disrespect for human life and therefore should not be allowed. Today, United States, according to Amnesty international has the fourth highest number of executions in the world and together with the first three countries (China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia) make up over 91% of total executions in the world (Gill, para 1). This has raised concerns especially seeing that USA is in the company of the most undemocratic nations in the world such as China and Iran. One of the biggest challenges in justifying death penalty as a way to bring justice to victims of murder and their family is the fact that it is possible to wrongfully convict a person. If a person in convicted of any other crime and imprisoned and later seen to be not guilty, they can always be acquitted. If on the other hand a person is executed and later new evidence shows that he was not guilty, there is no way of bringing back that person to life, which would mean that the government will have committed murder. According to Robertson (221), there is always a chance that a person can change and should therefore be given a second chance by preserving their lives. Robertson, Diane. Tears From Heaven: Voices From Hell: The Pros and Cons of the Death Penalty as Seen Through the Eyes of the Victims of Violent Crime and Death Row Inmates Throughout America. New York NY: iUniverse, 2002.

Advertisement in the Far East Economic Review magazine in 1972 Essay

Advertisement in the Far East Economic Review magazine in 1972 - Essay Example This "Advertisement in the â€Å"Far East Economic Review† magazine in 1972" outlines and analyzed the ad which was published in this particular media, its style and strategies. This advertisement uses sexual appeal to attract potential customers to use the airline. The advertisement poem is based entirely on sexuality to attract customers to choose MSA for there are beautiful airhostesses waiting to serve them early in the morning. Not just that, the picture that accompanies the text, shows a very pleasant looking woman standing amidst the passengers who are all men. This too is hinting at some sort of sexual discrimination that the airline seeks to exploit in order to get new customers (Goffman, 1979). Besides the critical sexist outlook of the advertisement, the poetry used in the advertisement is pretty catchy. Small verses are always helpful since the readers get them on their tongues quicker and they can relate to what they read when they are looking for a reliable service or product. The ad by MSA uses short verses, catchy words and sexual attraction to persuade customers to the airline. Although the ad is about attracting all kinds of customers to MSA, the picture depicts a slightly different story. It shows customers who are well suited indicating that MSA would be a great service for professional elites. By doing so, it would attract customers who are at the wealthier side and can afford more airline visits. This is indeed a clever strategy by the airline. That is again a very important aspect in the advertisement.

Collecting Data Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Collecting Data - Essay Example It is not unusual for ethnographers to live in the culture for months or even years. The middle stages of the ethnographic method involve gaining informants, using them to gain yet more informants in a chaining process, and gathering of data in the form of observational transcripts and interview recordings. Data analysis and theory development come at the end, though theories may emerge from cultural immersion and theory-articulation by members of the culture. However, the ethnographic researcher strives to avoid theoretical preconceptions and instead to induce theory from the perspectives of the members of the culture and from observation. The researcher may seek validation of induced theories by going back to members of the culture for their reaction Ethnography is a form of research focusing on the sociology of meaning through close field observation of sociocultural phenomena. Typically, the ethnographer focuses on a community (not necessarily geographic, considering also work, leisure, and other communities), selecting informants who are known to have an overview of the activities of the community. Such informants are asked to identify other informants representative of the community, using chain sampling to obtain a saturation of informants in all empirical areas of investigation. Informants are interviewed multiple times, using information from previous informants to elicit clarification and deeper responses upon re-interview. This process is intended to reveal common cultural understandings related to the phenomena under study. These subjective but collective understandings on a subject (ex., stratification) are often interpreted to be more significant than objective data (ex., income differentials). Ethnography is a qualitative research method that is used by anthropologists to describe a culture. Culture has many definitions but usually consists of origins, values, roles, and material items associated with a particular group of people. Ethnographic research, therefore, attempts to fully describe a variety of aspects and norms of a cultural group to enhance understanding of the people being studied. Historically, anthropologists who performed ethnographic research often would live in the community being investigated. Ethnographic research has focused on various foreign cultures to gain understanding about native people who are isolated from Western civilization. One famous anthropologist who performed this type of research was Margaret Mead. Her classic study of three New Guinea cultures explored those cultures' gender characteristics and roles. By studying a variety of cultural norms, gender characteristics, and roles, this type of research can help scientists categorize nature versus nurture gender characteristics. Many ethnographic studies have documented cultural roles that challenge Western perspectives of innate gender characteristics.(1) In ethnographic studies, the orientation of the researcher is termed etic or emic. An etic orientation is a view from an outsider's perspective. For example, if an ethnographer studied the culture of perioperative nurses and had no perioperative nursing experience, that researcher's interpretations would be from an etic perspective. If a perioperative nurse studied the culture of the OR or the organization of AORN, those interpretations would be from an insider's, or emic, perspective. Ethnographic resea

Romanticism as Literary Period Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Romanticism as Literary Period - Essay Example Even Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, a confessional account of how nature is more than a memory of youth ("And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with joy / Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, ) was coming from a man whose social and intellectual moorings reflected not just rustic roots. More particularly, the poem renders philosophical and meditative aspects of the sophisticated thinker often found in cultural and urban centers, which consequently finds ways to go back to the original sources of inspiration, mystery and awe, peeling the layers of stale customs and traditions to reveal the workings of nature or even the supernatural, (as portrayed by Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). The Lyrical Ballads, objectively speaking could be said to a political statement asserting the primacy of the individual's feelings and imagination, and it has done so, moreso in intent. Execution-wise it was a bit too grandstanding, as other writ ers of other periods could also be called "romantic". The way that Wordworth's self-consciously and literally chose ordinary individuals and the rustic life as the worthwhile romantic subjects was an attempt to further drive down the point that poetry should be democratic (an offshoot of the influences of the French Revolution) and that it is the individual that matters, not custom and traditions. Shelley In the last two lines of A Defence of Poetry, Shelley sums up the power of poets to change society and awaken the masses: "Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." The poets, according to Shelley, belong to those classes of men in which the excitability of passions is strongest, and which the impressions or going-ons of nature and society work their magic - the apprehensions of the formerly "unapprehended", and consequently, this is communicated by the poets to society which is responsible for the continuity of language, and thus of society. Furthermore, according to Shelley, "the great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting u pon the cause." It is not that poetry directs or points out the rights and the wrongs, but in as much it moves mankind to the pursuit of what are sublime and beautiful and the eternal, and these have been the common goal of poetry since the ancient times. Shelley's poetry in awe-inspired tones invokes this spirit of poetry as a mover of mankind and society, primarily in they way that this spirit moves them, the poets. In Mutability, the endurance of human beings, rooted in nature's unchanging mutability, day in and day out is upheld. In Mont Blanc, Shelley regards the mountain as containing the "secret Strength of things / Which governs thought. More emphatically, Shelley in Ode to the West Wind, pleads for this

Expected Frequency even in dessert Research Paper

Expected Frequency even in dessert - Research Paper Example It has also been observed that families with children have higher rates of consumption as compared to those without children. Various flavors of ice cream are found in the market today and these include chocolate, vanilla, cookie dough/ cookies and cream, mint chocolate chip, butter pecan/ Swiss almond, strawberry, peanut butter, coffee, cherry vanilla and peach, among many others. According to a Harris Interactive poll conducted in 2013, chocolate and vanilla are the favorite flavors followed by cookie dough/cookies and cream. In terms of gender, a disparity exists in favorite flavor: for women, almost a third prefers chocolate flavor followed by mint chocolate chip and cookie dough/cookies and cream. However, for men, vanilla tops the list of favorite flavors followed by chocolate and cookie dough/cookies and cream. The dynamics of ice cream and frozen desserts consumption does not end with demographics and flavor, how the consumers actually eat their ice cream also varies from one group to another. Methods of consumption include eating it form a cup, cone, sundae, sandwich and others, including eating it as a topping on a cake. Disparities exist here too. It has been hypothesized that a relationship exists between gender and how they eat ice cream. For instance, according the aforementioned Harris Interactive poll, more men than women prefer eating ice cream in cups while more women than men prefer cone. This influence of gender on how a person eats their ice cream has not been well researched and this is the motivation for this research. The paper aims to investigate whether gender and ways of eating ice cream and other frozen foods are related, or whether the choice is independent of gender. For this study, data will be collected from students on how they eat their ice cream. Accordingly, data was collected from a sample of 40 students. To ensure that the data is not biased, efforts were be made so that the

Conditioning and Learning Essay Example for Free

Conditioning and Learning Essay Learning, acquiring knowledge or developing the ability to perform new behaviors. It is common to think of learning as something that takes place in school, but much of human learning occurs outside the classroom, and people continue to learn throughout their lives. (Gregory, 1961) Conditioning is the term used to designate the types of human behavioral learning. Since the 1920s, conditioning has been the primary focus of behavior research in humans as well as animals. There are four main types of conditioning: ? Classical Conditioning ?Operant Conditioning ?Multiple-Response Learning ?Insight Learning. Conditioning and Learning 2 LITERATURE REVIEW Classical Conditioning Classical conditioning, also called associative learning, is based on stimulus-response relationships. A stimulus is an object or situation that elicits a response by one of our sense organs, like how a bright light makes us blink. Associative learning allows us to associate two or more stimuli and change our response to one or more of them as a result of simultaneous experience. (Moore, 2002) According to classical conditioning, learning occurs when a new stimulus begins to elicit behavior similar to the behavior produced by an old stimulus. Studies into classical condition began in the early 1900s by the Russian physiologist Ivan P. Pavlov. (Klein, 1998) Pavlov trained dogs to salivate in response to two stimuli: noise or light, and food or a sour solution. The dogs salivation is automatically elicited by the food and sour solution, so these were called the unconditional stimulus. However, when the noise or light (conditional stimulus) was repeatedly paired with the food or sour solution over an extended period of time, the dogs would eventually salivate at the noise or light alone. This is a prime example of a conditioned response. Unconditional stimuli, such as the food and sour solution, allow the learning to occur, while also serving to reinforce the learning. Without an unconditional stimulus in his experiment, Pavlov could not have taught the dogs to salivate at the presence of the noise or light. Conditioning and Learning 3 Classical conditioning is particularly important in understanding how people learn emotional behavior. For example, when we develop a new fear, we have learned to fear a particular stimulus, which has been combined with another frightening stimulus. Operant Conditioning. Operant conditioning is goal-directed behavior. We learn to perform a particular response as a result of what we know will happen after we respond. (Blackman, 1975) For example, a child may learn to beg for sweets if the begging is usually successful. There is no single stimulus that elicits the begging behavior, but instead it occurs because the child knows that this action may result in receiving treats. Every time the child receives sweets after begging, the behavior is reinforced and the tendency of the child to beg will increase. During the 1930s, American psychologist and behaviorist Burrhus F.Skinner performed several important experiments into operant conditioning. Using what is now termed a Skinner Box, he trained rats to press levers to receive food. A hungry rat would be placed in a box containing a special lever attached to concealed food. At first the hungry rat would wander around the box, investigating its surroundings. Eventually it would accidentally press the lever thereby releasing a food pellet into the box. At first the rat would not show any signs of associating the two events, but over time its exploring behavior becomes less random as it begins to press the lever more Conditioning and Learning 4Â  often. The food pellet reinforced the rats response of pressing the lever, so eventually the rat would spend most of its time just sitting and pressing the lever. This type of learning is based on the idea that if a behavior is rewarded, the behavior will occur more frequently. There are four main types of operant learning: Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Punishment and Omission Training. Observational Learning When we learn skills, we must first learn a sequence of simple movement-patterns. We combine these movement-patterns to form new, more complicated behavioral patterns with stimuli guiding the process. (Domjan, 1995) For example, efficient typing requires us to put together many finger movements, which are guided by the letters or words that we want to type. We must first learn to type each letter, and then learn to put the movements together to type words and then phrases. To investigate this type of learning, psychologists have observed animals learning to run through mazes. An animal first wanders aimlessly through the maze, periodically coming to a choice-point, where it must turn either left or right. Only one choice is correct, but the correct direction cannot be determined until the animal has reached the end of the maze. By running through the maze numerous times, the animal can learn the correct sequence of turns to reach the end. It has been found that the sequences of turns near the Conditioning and Learning 5 Two ends of the maze are learned more easily than the parts near the middle. Similarly, when we try to learn a list of items, we usually find the beginning and the end easier than the middle. Insight Learning Insight refers to learning to solve a problem by understanding the relationships of various parts of the problem. Often insight occurs suddenly, such as when a person struggles with a problem for a period of time and then suddenly understands its solution. Therefore insight learning is solving problems without experience. Instead of learning by trial-and-error, insight learning involves trials occurring mentally. In the early 1900s, Wolfgang Kohler performed insight experiments on chimpanzees. Kohler showed that the chimpanzees sometimes used insight instead of trial-and-error responses to solve problems. When a banana was placed high out of reach, the animals discovered that they could stack boxes on top of each other to reach it. (Schwartz, 1983) They also realized that they could use sticks to knock the banana down. In another experiment, a chimp balanced a stick on end under a bunch of bananas suspended from the ceiling, then quickly climbed the stick to obtain the entire bunch intact and unbruised (a better technique than the researchers themselves had in mind). Kohlers experiments showed that primates can both see and use the relationships involved to reach their goals. Conditioning and Learning 6 CONCLUSION There are many differences and similarities between each of these learning processes. For example, classical conditioning involves only involuntary or reflex responses where as operant conditioning involves both involuntary and voluntary reflexes. These diverse learning processes can be used independently in many different situations. Where classical conditioning may be extremely effective in one situation it might be ineffective in another. For this reason each of these learning processes, classical and operant conditioning and observational and insight learning are each as important and effective as the other. Conditioning and Learning 7 References. Kimble, Gregory: (1961) Conditioning and Learning, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc. John W Moore: (2002) A Neuroscientists Guide to Classical Conditioning. Stephen B. Klein: (1998) Contemporary Learning Theories: Pavlovian Conditioning and the Status of Traditional Learning Theory, Chap. 5 (Perceptual and Associative Learning). Derek E. Blackman: (1975) Operant Conditioning: Experimental Analysis of Behaviour (Manual of Modern Psychology). Michael Domjan: (1995) The Essentials of Conditioning and Learning. Tighe, Schwartz: (1983) Modern Learning Theory, Psychology of Learning and Behavior 2nd edition.

Goa The Tourism System Analysis Tourism Essay

Goa The Tourism System Analysis Tourism Essay Destination of Goa is a dream for all travelers who are all visiting India. Goa is also the wonderful coastal place for destination. Most delight area or region in Western Ghats. It has green expand in space of land and normal pictures and excellent landscapes. It is also called queens of the beach. Goa is also having bird paradise, adventure sports and water of epicenter, and nature that following some of most delighted waterfalls in India. Identifying the feature of home tour is the beautiful sunny beaches, wonderful white sands in beautiful sea. Travelers can discover a satisfaction our in ancient temple and churches in the place of goa. So for travelers are mostly eating sea foods like fish, prawn, gin, crabs and feni. One of the famous festivals in goa is shimoga festival and its for people enjoyment with music, playing and having fun. Most of visitors emigrate to goa for look at the world class casino and also people enjoying the night life and parties in goa. Introduction: Goa has been an ideal destination for tourists for decades. Millions of tourists flock to Goa, a small city along the coast of the Arabian Sea. Its beautiful coastline beach, tropical landscape and with coconut palm as a backdrop makes it a most preferred destination for travelers. Goa was once dominated the Portuguese, their architecture, churches can also be found there even today. Goa still has that Portuguese flavor to their streets which still remains narrow and in their cuisines. Goa has several beautiful locations to offer. From the Dona Paula a spot which oversees the magnificent harbor of Goa at Mormugau. Panjim was once a fishing village, which the Portuguese declared it as the Capital. It still remains with the charm it had its glorious past. The buildings, churches, still remain intact and have overcome the testimony time had to offer. Panjim has houses and villas built along the banks of the river Mandovi. Goa has a mixture of old fashioned markets selling vegetables and fruits to Bars and Pubs which have a western culture associated to it. Several foreigners have made it into Goa and never left, those who have left have only wished to make it back. It has been the summit spot for tourism in India. It has the highest concentration of foreign settlers in India. Its all thanks to the well preserved natural beauty and the serenity that Goa has to offer. Goa attracts more tourists than any single city within India and it will remain the same way for years to come. Pest analysis: Social: Hostels and resorts are always seemed something that made a damage of the public material and place. More quantity of foreign arrivals arriving in to a position, the more chance of that position to decline its identity. A perfect example of goa from the past sixties to the beginning eighties when their life style of the goa people was at its peak, goa was a dreamful city for such oldest people. However they came in plenty of years and improved the total life style of the condition. This is how make something impact on the nations. Individual became careful, especially of the foreign travelers. Nevertheless a certain position became popular place in goa; they was mentioned to prevent the influx of foreign travelers some of the locations such as Rajasthan and Kerala has been able to attack a stability between their life style and the requirements of the foreign travelers and have producing money and attractive in a strong in the deal. People are how utilizing on their own points that travel and leisure will pay and it will be a considerable. Revenue for them. However, travel and tourism as a way of enjoyment has actually taken. People on their own have started visiting and are prepared to travel to a places that is out of the distinctive. Generally, travelling on a holidays supposed to going out mountain position or beaches, now every people is keen to go for getting practical experience over travel and location that could be individuals and cannot be genuine in the position of the place. Legal: The rules that control by the organization are not the similar in all the places. Various part of rules which are in impact are mature and ancient and its not developed to get assemble the issues of the twenty first century. The process of would valuations and journey of authorities has experimental to that taxes paying by travelers in local peoples are the maximum on the global. Hotels are indicting about forty percentage of tax indicating to other countries somewhere it varies among three percentages and six percentages. Although high duty to provide the travel and enjoyment of travel sectors as a entire mutually respectful. The additional, factors among the taxes of state level, mainly on a prepared drink and foods. In detail, the taxes to bring soft drinks vary generally and its sixty three percentage in Karnataka to twenty eight percentage in Bengal. Political: The Government aspects are the principal power of the tourism sector. The local travel industry of India is to developing on the main reference of government guidance and the market cannot continue to devoid of it. A range of standard websites and the spaces of common meaning all the servicing solutions methods like the location of the organization, the travel agencies and the vendors to identify the few guidance and the efforts of the management. The main purpose as to why the visitors to verify out ancient part of India are the intensive and loaded life style of our region. That is below the regulate authorities by means of the standard study of the nature in India. The method alter it happens into strength will have wonderful results on the travel sector players execute. There are several locations in which the development of vacation quick to found wonderful fall simply because the administration of ecosystem in positive way. Environment: The guidance an idea has seen developed by the administration in review with the travel sector and are becoming utilize the non relaxation the travel sector not in different to the other areas to deliver the past in the doing an expense to the people. The additional people spending the extra the travel sectors People who recently utilized to occur to the nation on a constrained amount vary and appearance for around cost effective of genuine property it will be deal with the star hotels. The progress of huge section of accommodation in the nations. Nevertheless a improvement of providing an expense dont only to control themselves to genuine property. Making an expense of evident in the huge variety of family visitors travelling by flights has considerably removed. Technical: While the innovation dont look to be a necessary have an impact on initial look, it attributes a main features in the marketing and advertising of the locations. Better interactions features are the initial situation for the development in the improvement of visitors. This has been developed by feasible with situation for the development in the improvement of visitors. This has been developed by feasible with scientific development. Although greater connection implies to marketing. The necessary of any location needs to be foreign visitors. In the same way to improves their travel operates have include to a wonderful development in the range of visitors observing and certain location. The use of an terminal and the variety of great enjoyment to all visitors. Three range of years: Vision in 2022: To arriving the place back up to the team whereas the demand is to receive an revenue dont visitors out of alternating place obtaining a extra does not alternate being more capability or lack of capability, efficient price, national or area of qualification of units does not avoid people from major and damage from growing goa city of organization and growth discuss it was offered by an specialist in the location of goa. The farming organization participation can maintain to minimize the farming organization do not generate plenty of revenue, we can continues layout to the area destination for the career possibilities in our sites. The culture of goa may comfortable in the process of the destination. Several necessary information with the objective of goa in 2022 inhabitants will exist approximately one eighty five million as well as the travel population would in unwanted of about three million situation all will go fit. The primary can attack proof raised of three hundred dollars a package more over to value of earning might healthy be extreme. Therefore the rest of this product will focus on this concentration of cleaning fit in the prospective. We recognize that faming department play a role on several percentage of the left over ninety three percentage and the rate of growth and development department is innovation them the tourist it will be spring time to alter the providing specifics. Designed of growth is a great deal with partially straight through issues somewhere as tourists will increase. Vision in 2030: The huge possible in the floor of farming mostly late towards its place, atmosphere scenario limited enhance perfect for large costs vegetation as well as its extremely designed individual. Resources it requirements to indicate efficiently to separate left beginning established to farming and meeting point on function benefits and to travel beginning product breath taking to impressive difference to less important and elevated the costs further vegetation increasing and require for brought up assessment products to the cost. Over all look of impresser organization such as part breaths taking in little property because of bright to personal offer also suggest numerous chance foe growth of agriculture. The majority of significant is the enchasing of the breath taking area to carry watching the location in addition to the restricted inhabitants. Growth of restricted fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh vegetables probably will rise of amount with the purpose of they probably will be sell overseas. The daily trade is enchasing and requirement maintain to turn into self relevant and further a similar breath taking item for consumption become recognizable to hold plenty performance. Vision in 2035: It should be the development of a main center designed for advanced learning with explore inside the India. The learning as well as study focuses among a center taking place in order to contact skill, public fitness, Nano technology, bio technology and architecture. Must stand a personal in price to provide brought up operate economical as well as organization, providing within bookkeeping, law, marketing, group relationship, organization in the level of creating growth and inner mean along with in the creating technology such as media, books, movies, TV and transferring. Here an remarkable possible during the education within pressure growth such as with stand their arts. Sustainability: To maintain the journey and vacation therefore labor to generate average accomplish occurring the environment along with area way of life whereas area to generate financial commitment more over career used for inhabitants because fit as to market the good company of limited system. it is efficient journey and vacation development up to impressive amount, it is be likely to position an awesome specification on top of the various position more over to these commitment as damaged. In frequent journey and vacation might be fast to rapidly least complete destination. The recantation and you will find the scenario. The supporting of journey and the scenario means are defeat the purpose as problem the beach along with over filling. The energy is a quality of a system or scenario it is able to be immediate organization dropping because anywhere needed on the way to make it is constant. The restricted inhabitants have an essential place to sign up during maintain viewing the places as well as dedication to remain the following place of intelligence with the sound used for the achievement of the situation. A lot of travelers beginning to global be amazingly different from the location with purpose of the inhabitants impact than look by the aspects of them along with the following. The place anywhere the travelers are trip off with this purpose incredibly a lot of trip and holiday promote is come across a serious accomplish of the benefits. Travelers in goa and other travelers position exercise a collection of discomfort starting the region supplier in particular adolescents again and again keep on guests with continue with the aim of the generating the goods. Conclusion: Goa has been attractive destination for Decades. It has attracted millions of tourists from across the globe. The tourists are mainly from United Kingdom, Russia, Scotland, Germany, France, Australia and United States of America. They all come there to explore the natural sanctuary and serenity that Goa has to offer in abundance. People come here to have a wonderful experience, explore the natural heritage and resources Goa has to offer. People come here empty and take home a lot of memories they could cherish for a lifetime. Goa also has a interesting night life, which interests a lot of people from the west. Goa is seen a place where tourists from several parts come and meet each other and share cultures with each other. People flock to Goa for a reason it has several naturally attractive locations to offer the tourists. It is also considerable cheap to stay at Goa considering other tourist destination making it an ideal location. There have been instances where foreigner stayed in Goa for years before the cash they had ran out. The destination has a lot of pubs, bars and Casinos that interest tourists. No one comes to Goa and goes back dejected. This makes Goa an ideal place to stay. Being a Union Territory, Goa has liberal laws for tourists settlers. Hence making it an ideal location for immigrants and tourists. There are several foreigners residing in Goa been there for generations. Goa has the essence to make it an ideal spot to rest and settle down. A place where culture mixes and harmony precedes the natural serenity makes it a most preferred tourist destination. Goa with its natural sanctuary that is being preserved has a long way to look forward to. It will remain to have tourists knocking at its doorsteps for years to come. The culture it shares with the immigrants and the locals have a unique tale to tell. The harmony and peace that looms around its surrounding makes tourists not wanting to leave and most of them wish to return to Goa at some point of their life. Goa has a long way to go, with tourists setting foot on its shores daily, it has room for development and improvement and the future seems bright.

Spectrometry Types and Applications

Spectrometry Types and Applications Spectrophotometry is the quantifiable study of interaction of electromagnetic radiations with the matter. Electromagnetic radiations do not require any medium for its transmission. It consists of two components, electric and magnetic field. Spectrophotometry involves the use of a spectrophotometer. A spectrophotometer is a photometer (a device for measuring light intensity) that can measure intensity as a function of the color (or more specifically the wavelength) of light. Spectrophotometry is the spectroscopic technique used to assess the concentration or amount of a given species. Spectrophotometer makes use of the transmission of light through a solution to determine the concentration of a solute within the solution. It is often used in physical and analytical chemistry for the identification/characterization of substances through the spectrum emitted from or absorbed by them. It is also used to examine the behavior of chemical substances after electromagnetic irradiation such as gamma rays, X-rays, ultra violet rays, infrared rays, radio waves and microwaves. It gives detailed information about inter-molecular bonding types or molecular changes occurring during enzymatic reactions and mitochondrial electron transport chain. Qualitative and quantitative measurement of biomolecules even in impure samples can be done rapidly and conveniently. Uses: To determine the molecular structure To estimate the energy levels of the ions and complexes in a chemical system along with the compositions. To get an idea regarding absorption and emission details of the specimen To understand the intrinsic configuration and relative association and chemical shifts Determine the wavelength of maximum absorbance. UV-Visible Spectroscopy: UV-visible spectroscopy investigates the interactions between ultraviolet or visible electromagnetic radiation and matter. Ultraviolet and visible spectroscopy (UV-vis) is a reliable and accurate analytical laboratory assessment procedure that allows for the analysis of a substance. Specifically, ultraviolet and visible spectroscopy measures the absorption, transmission and emission of ultraviolet and visible light wavelengths by matter. UV-visible spectroscopic measurements provide precise information about atomic and molecular structure. It consists of light of several colors ranging from violet to red. This is now termed the UV-visible electromagnetic spectrum. The ultraviolet and visible regions of the electromagnetic spectrum are linked in UV-vis spectroscopy because similarities between the two regions allow many of the same research techniques and tools to be used for both regions. The ultraviolet region (about 450-200 nm) is particularly important for the qualitative and quantitative determination of many organic compounds. In the visible region (about 450-700 nm), spectrophotometric methods are widely used for the quantitative determination of many trace substances, especially inorganic species. Special instrumentation is used in UV-vis spectroscopy. Hydrogen or deuterium lights provide the source of light for ultraviolet measurements. Tungsten lamps provide the light for visible measurements. These light sources generate light at specific wavelengths. Deuterium lamps generate light in the UV range (190 to 380nm). Tungsten-halogen lamps generate light in the visible spectrum (380 to about 800 nm).Xenon lamps which can produce light in the UV and visible portions of the spectrum are used to measure both UV and visible spectra. Uses: Uv/Vis Spectrophotometry is used to determine the absorption or transmission of Uv/Vis light (180 to 820 nm) by a sample. It can also be used to measure concentrations of absorbing materials based on developed calibration curves of the material. It is routinely used in the quantitative determination of solutions of transition metal ions and highly conjugated organic compounds. Its main applications are; Quantitative determination of chromophores concentrations in solution Impurity determination by spectrum subtraction Determination of reaction kinetics Fluorescence Spectroscopy: Fluorescence spectroscopy, fluorometry or spectrofluorometry, is a type of electromagnetic spectroscopy which analyzes fluorescence from a sample.Fluorescence occurs when a molecule absorbs photons from the U.V.-visible light spectrum (200-900 nm), causing transition to a high-energy electronic state and then emits photons as it returns to its initial state, in less than 10-9 sec. Fluorimetry characterizes the relationship between absorbed and emitted photons at specified wavelengths. It is a precise quantitative analytical technique that is inexpensive and easily mastered. Fluorescence spectroscopy is an important investigational tool in many areas of analytical science, due to its extremely high sensitivity and selectivity. With many uses across a broad range of chemical, biochemical and medical research, it has become an essential investigational technique allowing detailed, real-time observation of the structure and dynamics of intact biological systems with extremely high resolu tion. It is particularly heavily used in the pharmaceutical industry where it has almost completely replaced radiochemical labelling. Fluorescent compounds or fluorophors can be identified and quantified on the basis of their excitation and emission properties. The excitation and emission properties of a compound are fixed, for a given instrument and environmental condition, and can be used for identification and quantification. The principal advantage of fluorescence over radioactivity and absorption spectroscopy is the ability to separate compounds on the basis of either their excitation or emission spectra, as opposed to a single spectra. This advantage is further enhanced by commercial fluorescent dyes that have narrow and distinctly separated excitation and emission spectra. The sensitivity of fluorescence is approximately 1,000 times greater than absorption spectrophotometric methods. Uses: Fluorescence spectroscopy is used in, among others, biochemical, medical, and chemical research fields for analyzing organic compounds. There has also been a report of its use in differentiating malignant, bashful skin tumors from benign.In particular, the measurements of fluorescence spectrum, lifetime and polarization are powerful methods of studying biological structure and function. The fluorescence spectrum is highly sensitive to the biochemical environment of the fluorophor. Fluorophors have been designed such that their spectra change as a function of the concentration of metabolites, such as pH and calcium. A major disadvantage of fluorescence is the sensitivity of fluorescence intensity to fluctuations in pH and temperature. Flame Photometry: Flame photometry (more accurately called flame atomic emission spectrometry) is a branch of atomic spectroscopy in which the species examined in the spectrometer are in the form of atoms. Flame photometry is suitable for qualitative and quantitative determination of several cations in biological specimens, especially for metals that are easily excited to higher energy levels at a relatively low flame temperature (mainly Na, K, Rb, Cs, Ca, Ba, and Cu). This technique uses a flame that evaporates the solvent and also sublimates and atomizes the metal and then excites a valence electron to an upper energy state. Light is emitted at characteristic wavelengths for each metal as the electron returns to the ground state that makes qualitative determination possible. Flame photometers use optical filters to monitor for the selected emission wavelength produced by the analyte species. Comparison of emission intensities of unknowns to either that of standard solutions or to those of an interna l standard allows quantitative analysis of the analyte metal in the sample solution. Because of the very narrow and characteristic emission lines from the gas-phase atoms in the flame plasma, the method is relatively free of interferences from other elements. Flame photometry has many advantages. It is a simple, relatively inexpensive, high sample throughput method used for clinical, biological, and environmental analysis. The flame photometers are relatively simply instruments. There is no need for source of light, since it is the measured constituent of the sample that is emitting the light. The energy that is needed for the excitation is provided by the temperature of the flame (2000-3000  °C), produced by the burning of acetylene or natural gas (or propane-butane gas) in the presence of air or oxygen. By the heat of the flame and the effect of the reducing gas (fuel), molecules and ions of the sample species are decomposed and reduced to give atoms, e.g.: Na+ + e- à ¯Ã†â€™Ã‚  Na. Atoms in the vapour state give line spectra. (Not band spectra, because there are no covalent bonds hence there are not any vibrational sub-levels to cause broadening). The mono chromator selects the suitable (characteristic) wavelength of the emitted light. The emitted light reaches the detector. This is a photomultiplier producing an electric signal proportional to the intensity of emitted light. Atomic Absorption Spectrometry: In analytical chemistry, atomic absorption spectroscopy is a technique for determining the concentration of a particular metal element in a sample. The technique can be used to analyze the concentration of over 70 different metals in a solution. The technique makes use of absorption spectrometry to assess the concentration of an analyte in a sample. Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) determines the presence of metals in liquid samples. Metals include Fe, Cu, Al, Pb, Ca, Zn, Cd and many more. It also measures the concentrations of metals in the samples. Typical concentrations range in the low mg/L range. The electrons of the atoms in the atomizer can be promoted to higher orbitals for a short amount of time by absorbing a light of a given wavelength. This amount of energy (or wavelength) is specific to a particular electron transition in a particular element, and in general, each wavelength corresponds to only one element. This gives the technique its elemental selectivity. In order to analyze a sample for its atomic constituents, it has to be atomized. The sample should then be illuminated by light. The light transmitted is finally measured by a detector. The light source is usually a hollow-cathode lamp of the element that is being measured. Lasers are also used in research instruments. Since lasers are intense enough to excite atoms to higher energy levels. The disadvantage of these narrow-band light sources is that only one element is measurable at a time. AA spectroscopy requires that the analyte atoms be in the gas phase. Ions or atoms in a sample must undergo desolvation and vaporization in a high-temperature source such as a flame or graphite furnace. Flame AA can only analyze solutions, while graphite furnace AA can accept solutions, slurries, or solid samples. The graphite furnace has several advantages over a flame. It is a much more efficient atomizer than a flame and it can directly accept very small absolute quantities of sample. It also p rovides a reducing environment for easily oxidized elements. Samples are placed directly in the graphite furnace and the furnace is electrically heated in several steps to dry the sample, ash organic matter, and vaporize the analyte atoms. AA spectrometers use monochromators and detectors for uv and visible light. The main purpose of the monochromator is to isolate the absorption line from background light due to interferences. Simple dedicated AA instruments often replace the monochromator with a bandpass interference filter.

Corporate Entrepreneurship Essay -- Entreprenuer

Corporate Entrepreneurship Corporate Entrepreneurship can be seen as the process whereby an individual or a group creates a new venture within an existing organization, revitalizes and renews an organization ,or innovates. Zahra’s(1986) definition of corporate entrepreneurship suggests a formal or informal activity aimed at creating new businesses in established firms through product and process innovations and market developments,whereas sathe(1985) defines corporate entrepreneurship as a process of organizational renewal. Corporate Entrepreneurship has emerged as a much needed ingredient contributing towards the growth of any organization under a changing business environment. Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is widely considered as a vital means to stimulate and sustain the overall competitiveness of an organization. Both practitioners and researchers have recognized the challenges of pursuing entrepreneurship within a corporation. CE is the result of the joint activities of an organization’s members, activities that pursue strategic objectives and constitute strategic roles. Thus, to face the challenges that CE poses for both theory and practice we need to advance our understanding of the activities and strategic roles involved in the CE process and their implications for performance. While strategic roles have been extensively studied, most studies analyze the strategic role of top managers and ignore the contribution of middle managers. Moreover, while there is a growing body of empirical evidence of a positive relationship between CE initiatives and performance, little research emphasizes the contribution of middle managers’ strategic rol es to superior performance. Innovation and entrepreneurship are often regarded as ... ...ll as private sectors have gone international with new ventures outside the country. These companies are generating revenue, though modest compared to their overall sales revenue, by deputing their expert personnel outside. Strategic renewal is another desired outcome of corporate entrepreneurship. The new economic order and business environment has created a pace of change which requires businesses to adapt more frequently and rapidly than ever before. The changes could involve corporate structure, mergers and acquisitions, addressing new market opportunities, changing product portfolios, repositioning, adapting infrastructure, or adopting new technology. Managers in an organization must be able to take stock of its situation under changing market conditions and agree on a coherent new strategy that will meet the challenges of the present as well as of the future.

Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa :: Causes of Anorexia, Bulimia Nervosa

What is an eating disorder? A simple definition of an eating disorder is abnormal patterns of behavior and thought. All eating disorders have shared characteristics. There is fear of becoming fat, drive to become thin, an obsession with food, weight, and calories. Families of sufferers also have an increased incidence of depression, obesity, substance abuse, and eating disorders. Two main eating disorders are Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Anorexia is an eating disorder in which a person is obsessed by thoughts of an unattainable image of â€Å"perfect† thinness. This occurs by starvation and/or excessive exercise and can result in death. Bulimia is an eating disorder involving the alternation between the extremes of eating large amounts of food in a short time, and then compensating for the added calories either by vomiting or other extreme actions to avoid gaining weight. There are other eating disorders other than Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Some include Food Avoidance Emotional Disorder (FAED), Food Refusal, Pervasive Refusal, Selective Eating, and Appetite Loss Secondary to Depression. Food Avoidance Emotional Disorder was first introduced by Higgs and colleagues in 1989. Sufferers of FAED have a history of food avoidance or difficulty. They also have a disorder of emotions. FAED patients have an absence of organic brain disease, psychosis, illicit drug abuse, or prescribed drug-related causes. Food Refusal is common in young children. "I'm all done." "Mommy, I don't want anymore." "No! I won't eat." These are all common phrases that a child of this problem might utter. These children often need to be bribed with threats of no dessert, or bribing them with their favorite foods. It is hard to distinguish between fads and eating disorders. Food refusers will eat their favorite foods with complete ease and also in certain situations such as a friend's house. Surprisingly these types of children are not underweight and not calorie conscious. This eating behavior is generally viewed as a behavioral problem that usually resolves itself in time. It does not represent a serious threat to the child's health or well being. Described by Lask, "Pervasive Refusal is a condition that is manifested by profound and pervasive refusal to eat, drink, walk, talk or engage in self-care. Children with this particular combination of symptoms do not fit any existing diagnostic category, and suggest that the condition may be understood as an extreme variation of the avoidance behavior seen in posttraumatic stress disorder.

“Consumer Banking” Compliance Assessment Essay

â€Å"Consumer Banking† Compliance Assessment Introduction Part One            The business entities have evolved tremendously over time. Among the many advancements made in the business industry is the issue of the creation of different operating units. One of the most important operating units is the compliance unit. Each operating unit is accorded its own mandates and terms of references. This way, each unit is made somehow independent to the extent that it operates within the requirements of the entire organization’s goals. In addition, each operating unit is charged with its responsibilities. This is in line with the purpose of the creation of the unit in the first place. The number of the operating units depends on the classes of functions that are identifiable in the entire organization. Furthermore, all the operating units must be able to link with one another. This is because they are all operating in the best interest of the entire organization. If one fails, all the others are affected. Therefore, none can work in solitude. It is also important to note that all the units should have a proper reporting procedure to the management and finally to the board of directors. This is because they are answerable to the board. Understanding the nature of each business unit is therefore very important. Identification of the elements that constitute the business unit is also important. In this way, we can appreciate the role of each business unit, how they link to each other and ultimately how they contribute to the success of the entire business.            Compliance unit is a very special unit in the financial industry. It is special because its functions are not business activities but giving advice to other business units on how to improve compliance with the rules and regulations. Just like any other operating unit, the effectiveness of the compliance unit in discharging its duties is affected by factors such as terms of reference, authority, reporting responsibilities, accountability and the quality of the staff. All these factors together will see that the unit is successful in its operations or it fails. If it is successful then it is relevant to the entire firm because it will provide the much needed assistance. If it fails, the entire firm will likely fail because the compliance risks will ultimately catch up with it while unaware. It is therefore important to look critically at the factors that ensure that the established compliance unit is effective.            First and foremost, the terms of reference for the compliance unit predict the effectiveness of the unit. The terms of reference spell out the specific task that the unit is mandated to carry out. The task should be stated clearly with no ambiguity. For instance, in the case of the compliance unit, the task is to advise the business on how to comply with the set rules, regulations, laws and standards. In addition, the compliance department monitors the business activities to find out whether they are within the regulations set out. The department also monitors the conduct of employees to identify actual violations or potential violations of rules, procedures, policies, regulations and standards that are guidelines in the industry. In a nutshell, the duty of the compliance department is to create programs that support the firm’s compliance. It is the duty of the senior management and the business line supervisors that ensure ultimately that there is firm comp liance with laws and the regulations. Furthermore, in the terms of references, the objectives of the compliance unit must be stated clearly. This way, the department will have the backdrop for measuring its performance just like any other business unit. The objectives of the department may be with regard to how many trainings that will be done at a given time, how often surveillance will be conducted, how often policies will be reviewed among others. Lastly, the purpose of existence of the department must be clearly understood if the department has to be effective in discharging its duties. For instance, the department should be made aware that its main purpose is to assist the management in identifying compliance risks, assessing them and advising on what should be done to avert their repercussions as well as their recurrence. There are set guidelines that dictate the operations of the compliance unit. They stipulate the boundaries of the operations of the department and the limits of its mandate. If these guidelines and the instructions are adhered to, the effectiveness of the compliance unit will be realized in the firm. There will be no conflicts of interest between the compliance unit and the management responsibilities.            The other important factor that influences the effectiveness of the compliance department is the authority. The authority of the compliance department should be clearly stated out. To ensure monitoring of the business activities and the conduct of the employees, the compliance staff should be given unlimited power to access all the information in all the business units in the firm. The compliance staff should be answerable to the board and the senior management alone. For instance, suppose the business unit in a bank in charge of loan processing is about to commit a crime with respect to the regulations that govern the operations. A client comes to the office of the business line manager in this business unit. It happens that the client is a friend of the manager. According to the set regulations governing advancing loans, the client does not meet the criteria. The manager maneuvers and bends the rules in favor of his friend to get the loan. This is an issue that t ouches on compliance. Without enough authority on the part of the compliance staff to investigate the conduct of the manager in this business unit, then it would be impossible to unearth such a misconduct. Perhaps it could end up undetected. To this extent, the compliance department would be deemed to have failed, but only because it had no authority over such circumstances.            How the compliance staff report their findings is also very important if the department is to be effective. In order of hierarchy, the board of directors is at the top. The senior management is the second. The board gives instructions to the senior management staff. The senior management gives instructions to the business line managers who in turn command business unit supervisors. The supervisors give orders to the employees. The compliance department does not play any direct role in the business, it is therefore termed as a non-business department in the firm. The board and the senior management ultimately enforce compliance with the rules and the regulations starting with the business line managers and the business unit supervisors. Then the supervisors ensure that the employees toe the line in matters that regard laws, rules, regulations, procedures and the standards of the firm. The compliance department is involved identification of the possible violations of the compliance. If such violations are identified, they should be communicated to the right person. The head of the compliance department reports directly to the board and senior managers for an appropriate action to be taken. This is because, as we have already mentioned above, it is the responsibility of the board and the senior managers to ensure full compliance in the entire firm. The fact that the compliance department can report directly to the board makes it possible to avert a possible crisis that could result from misconduct of employees.            Another factor that influences the effectiveness of the compliance unit in a firm is the quality of the staff members. The staff should be well educated in matters that regard the state laws that affect the firm. In addition, they should have a good understanding of the rules, regulations, procedures and standards of that firm. This knowledge will help them in making proper decisions when carrying out their duties. This is because it is impossible to tell when a violation has happened or is about to happen if one does not know what was supposed to done in the first place. The issue of quality of staff arises also in business units that are involved selling process. It is important for the compliance officers to know the line of products that are being sold and the suppliers who supply them. This is because some business entities enter into agreements with certain suppliers.For instance, in a certain business entity in Singapore that sells electronics from Samsung C ompany, the following violation of the compliance was committed and went unidentified. In this particular instance, the manager in charge of sales decided that he could order some electronic devices from Sony Company without informing the rest of the management team.. The reason why this manager decided to do such a thing oblivious of its consequences to the entire business was because he thought that Sony products sold more than Samsung products of the same line. One junior compliance officer was inspecting the products in the business stock. He noticed both Sony and Samsung products but did not question. This is because he did not know that there was a deal between the business entity and Samsung Company and that presence of Sony products meant that the manager was not compliant. Part Two            The regulation of the financial services sector requires a delicate balance being maintained between over-regulation on the one hand and under-regulation on the other. This is because financial services are delicate matters that are sensitive to any external changes and the impact of any external force is significant in the survival of the financial industry. Regulation of financial industry emanates from two levels. These levels include external and internal levels. External regulations are the most significant because they essentially target satisfaction of the consumer of the services and not necessarily the well-being of the financial industry. They are meant to make the financial institutions disciplined in terms of their services to their consumers. They are made by external bodies that oversee how the financial institutions operate with respect to the quality of services that the end user receives. For instance, the consumer requires to know the truth about the services that they are about to purchase. Therefore, they require information that is not misleading. If left to the financial institutions, they would not care the truthfulness of the information they give but the quantity of the sales. They would give misleading information that is only aimed at convincing the consumers to like their services. Internal regulation is aimed at maintaining the survival of the business in the world of competition. It ensures that the business shapes its niche and maintains its reputation. This way, it ensures that the business maintains the competitive atmosphere. Too much external regulation would have catastrophic effects in terms of survival of financial institutions. Too little regulation would lead to suffering of the consumers. A balance is therefore paramount to be maintained.            In Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), besides being the Central Bank, itis the institution that is charged with the responsibility of regulating all financial institutions including the banking and insurance sector. The MAS uses many instruments to regulate financial institutions. First and foremost, it uses Acts of Parliament to regulate financial institutions. These Acts constitute the laws that if broken or violated culminate to a severe penalty. Among the most important Acts are the Banking Act 1999, the Financial Advisers Act 2005 and the Insurance Act 2002. Another instrument that the MAS uses is directives. They directives spell out the legal requirements of the financial institution. Notices are also issued to certain class of financial institutions to impose certain requirements that are legally binding. Moreover, the MAS applies guidelines as an instrument to regulate financial institutions. Guidelines dictate the best practice standard s that govern the conduct of the specified institutions. Codes are also applicable because they set out the rules governing the conduct of financial institutions with regard to the performance of certain activities. Examples of codes are those that govern how Takeovers and Mergers can be done. Practice Notes are used to guide the financial institutions on administrative procedures that pertain to the matters of licensing, reporting and compliance. Circulars are also very useful. They are documents sent to specified financial institutions to pass particular information such as changes that can be anticipated in the near future. Finally, the policy statements of the MAS give more information on the expectations of the MAS on the financial institutions.The MAS has immense powers to regulate all the financial institutions. Among its powers is the power to approve financial institutions and to control their operations.            The MAS strives so hard to maintain the balance in the regulation matters to avoid over-regulation and under-regulation. Over-regulation hinders the creativity and innovations of the companies. The insurance personnels would feel restricted in the way they respond to the external demands if the MAS monitors the company’s every move. On the other hand, if the insurance companies were to be left unregulated or under-regulated, the consumers would suffer greatly. This is because the insurance companies would use any means, whether ethical or unethical to gain an advantage over the competitors at the expense of the consumers. According to the Insurance Act 2002, Cap 142 has several provisions that dictate how insurance companies should be created and operated. For instance, it is only a person who has been licensed by the Authority under the Act who can carry out an insurance business in Singapore. This provision ensures that all the insurers are recognized by t he state of Singapore and that there is no chance that a consumer may be conned by a fraudster. According to the Act, anyone who claims to carry out insurance business while unregistered is liable to a criminal offense. The Act also gives guidelines that pertain to how Take-overs should be done in the insurance companies. Without proper Take-over procedures, the consumers may suffer. The authority also dictates how shareholding to the insurance companies is done. This way, the rights of the shareholders are maintained and their confidence in the insurance companies to which they have shares is boosted.            The MAS has also issued circulars to the insurance companies to convey important messages . An example of the circular issued to the insurance companies Chief Executives is that dated 18 November, 2013. It required all the insurers to submit their assets and liability exposures. As already stated, guidelines are another important tool through which the MAS regulates the insurance companies. An example of a guideline that is dated 1st April, 2013. It was a guideline on the use of internal models for liability and capital requirements for life insurance products containing investment guarantees with non-linear payouts. Also, on 17th May 2013, a guideline outlining the criteria for the registration of an insurance broker was issued. It requires that the applicant be a company among many other requirements. On 6th September 2013, a guideline was issued to all the financial institutions guiding them on how to safeguard the integrity of Singapore’s financial syste m. It categorically stated that MAS would not tolerate the use of the financial system to conduct illegitimate and criminal activities. Therefore, all financial institutions were required to uphold the integrity of the financial systems. Notices have also been issued on several occasions by the MAS the insurance companies. An example of the notice is that issued on 29th November 2013 with regard to the unsecured credit facilities to individuals. This notice provided requirements that an insurer has to comply to when granting unsecured credit facility to an individual.            All the above are illustrations where the MAS has regulatory authority over the insurance companies. We have seen that it regulates all the steps of the operations of insurance companies from establishment to matters of takeover and mergers. It is imperative that such a state body like the MAS should have control over financial institutions. The MAS is known to enhance open operations in the financial institutions in order to promote competitiveness and spirit of innovations. This way, the MAS fulfills our argument that financial institutions should not be over-regulated. On the other hand, the MAS ensures that transparency,accountability and integrity principles are upheld in the operations of these financial institutions. It ensures transparency because the consumers need to know what kind of services they are about to purchase from a financial institution. Again, these financial institutions are to be held accountable for their operations when they lead to posit ive or negative results. As already mentioned, all the financial institutions are supposed to uphold the principle of integrity by not carrying out their operations to advance criminal and illegitimate activities. In this manner, the MAS is fulfilling our argument that financial institutions should not be under-regulated. Part Three            The need to escalate â€Å"Non-routine and Complex Matters† to a designated officer would not arise if all the officers are properly trained in dealing with such issues. This statement simply means that escalation of non-routine and complex matters is done because the officer who detects such an issue is not trained adequately to handle it. This also happens when a compliance officer identifies an issue, but then his or her authority is limited to escalating it to a supervisor or manager.            First and foremost, it is important to know which are these non-routine and complex issues that can arise in matters of compliance. According to the Financial Industry Competency Standards for Compliance, the following issues constitute non-routine and complex matters. They include issues such as intentional breaches of regulations, guidelines and policies; insider dealing; misconduct; misrepresentation; sign-off new product; sign-off advertising and promotional materials by the insurance institution among others. These are issues that are not covered by the existing policies on how they should be handled in case they happen.            A compliance officer has no power to reprimand an employee. He or she has no power to fire an employee on the grounds of misconduct. If this is the case then, issues such as intentional breaches of regulations, guidelines and policies need someone who can resolve them so fast to avert any compliance crisis. The power to deal with the complex and non-routine matters is in the hands of the supervisors and the executives of any firm. The compliance officer is left with an option to escalate such matters whenever they arise. This process of escalation takes time because the compliance officer has to document all the steps involved as well as the action taken by the appropriate person to whom the matter has been reported starting with the head of compliance department.            There are certain things that can be done to empower compliance officers to be able to deal with these non-routine and complex matters. First, these compliance officers need proper training to make them aware of possibilities of occurrence of such matters. Moreover,they need to be equipped with adequate skills to cope with such issues when they occur in order for them totake appropriate and rational steps. Although they may not be given powers to demote or fire a disobedient employee, they can be given a means through which they can address such matters to the board as a matter of urgency. In addition,when these compliance officers are trained adequately and are competent, supervisors may delegate some functions to them. Such functions may include the power to demote and to fire misbehaving employees. However, it is the responsibility of these supervisors to conduct a follow-up and review to ensure that the delegated functions are performed properly. Most important is the fact that the supervisor remains responsible for such delegated activities.            In short, if the compliance officers are adequately trained so that they can adequately handle the non-routine and complex matters, the wastage of time in averting possible compliance crisis would not occur. This wastage of time occurs especially if the supervisors don’t take the necessary action to handle such issues. This requires that the matter should be escalated to the board of directors. Before the board sits to discuss the issue, it may be too late to avert the crisis and enough damage would already have occurred. Moreover, the process of escalation is very lengthy. It starts with the Head of Compliance. A complete brief need to be prepared explaining the issue and giving any relevant background information and the impact or the implications for the involved business unit, the personnel and the entire organization. Where possible, possible recommendations and alternative courses of action should be provided and their possible implications. All these steps cause unnecessary delays at could be detrimental to the organization in the long run. Therefore, training compliance officers as well as empowering them can help save the reputation of the firm in time. In addition, this could also help save an imminent collapse of the firm like in cases when employees decide to disregard the set regulations in the operations. References Scanlan, A. and Purdon, C. 2006. Compliance Program Management for Financial Services Institutions in Today’s Environment. Bus. Law., 62 p. 735. MAS Annual Report 2011/20 (www.msa.gov.sg) Source document

Experimental Psychology Stroop Effect Essay

The research assessed in this article discusses the Stroop effect. The Stroop effect occurs when our selective attention fails and we are unable to attend to some information and ignore the rest. This study tests the Stroop effect by presenting the participant with a congruent or incongruent word and the participant is asked to type the color of the word or the actual word in a series of trials. In this research, it has been found that participants had faster reaction times for congruent items and slower reaction times for incongruent items. In addition, participants had faster reaction times when asked to type the word and slower reaction times when asked to type the color. Racing Horses and the Stroop Effect We have the ability to attend to the things we’re looking for; however, sometimes this ability of selective attention becomes compromised. Where’s Waldo is a game that tests one’s ability to selectively attend to a stimuli; you must find Waldo in an overly crowded picture that attempts to hide him. If one’s selective attention becomes compromised, one would either not be able to locate Waldo or would take a long amount of time to locate Waldo. We can study this phenomenon of selective attention via the Stroop effect. According to J. R Stroop, â€Å"it takes more time to name colors than to read color names (1935). † In addition, it is faster to name the color for congruent items than incongruent items. Congruent items include items such the word â€Å"red† in the color red; incongruent items include items such as the word â€Å"blue† in red ink. In a basic Stroop experiment, participants are provided with a list of congruent words and a list of incongruent words and are asked to name the color of the word or the actual word itself. Having a big Stroop effect indicates that one’s selective attention has failed. In Stroop’s original version of the experiment, results demonstrated that when participants were asked to name the color of the ink of an incongruent item, there was an increase in ink naming time. However, when the participants were asked to name the word, incongruence of the ink to the word did not have an effect on the amount of time it took to read it (Dunbar & MacLeod, 1984). In Kevin Dunbar & Colin M. MacLeod’s paper, they refer to what is known as the horse race model (1984). This horse race model attempts to explain the Stroop phenomenon as a race between two responses. The first response, which always seems to win the race, is the response to the word; the second response is the one to the color of the ink. The horse race model states that color naming is slower than word naming because words and colors have different processing times; when the faster process finishes, it’s result can interfere with the slower process. â€Å"The simplest hypothesis, consistent with all the evidence, is that the interference occurs after naming (Morton & Chambers, 1973). Words interfere strongly with color naming; in an incongruent trial, one identifies the word first, the identification of color of the word only comes later and there is a need to overcome the incorrect response, which causes a slight delay in response time. The purpose of this experiment is to further test the horse race model of the Stroop effect. In this experiment, the two independent variables are congruency, whether the items are congruent or incongruent, and task, participants will be asked to name the color of the item or the word. Results will be measured by how long it takes participants to respond in each condition. There are several predictions made about this replication of the Stroop experiment: firstly, we predict that there will be a main effect of congruency; we expect an overall Stroop effect. Secondly, we predict that there will be a main effect of task; we expect that participants should be faster to type words than colors. Finally, we predict an interaction between congruency and task; we expect that the Stroop effect will be larger for typing colors than for typing words. Method Participants Twenty-one undergraduate, male and female students were recruited from an experimental lab class at the City University of New York Brooklyn College. Materials and Design In this within subjects design, we used a 2 (Congruency: Congruent vs. Incongruent) x 2 (Task Type: Naming color vs. Naming word) factorial; the dependent variable measured was reaction time. The stimuli were presented on a seventeen inch computer monitor and participants were given a standard keyboard for their responses. The stimuli used were four words: red, green, blue, yellow; and four colors: red, green, blue, yellow. For the independent variable of congruency, there were four possible congruent items and twelve possible incongruent items. For the independent variable of task, there was one block of forty-eight trials asking the participant to type the word and one block of forty-eight trials asking the participant to type the color. The order of each block was randomly determined by the computer for each participant. Half of the participants did the word naming then color naming; the other half did color naming then word naming. Each trial begins with the presentation of a fixation cross in the center of the screen, visible for 500 milliseconds. The fixation cross is removed and immediately followed by the word and color stimulus; this stimulus remained on the screen until a response was typed and the participant pressed the spacebar key. There are four possible responses: red, green, blue, and yellow. Responses are given by having the participants type the word into the keyboard. Immediately after the response, the stimuli were removed from the screen and the next trial appeared 500 milliseconds after the participant pressed the spacebar. Procedure Participants were given instructions by the experimenter, separated into groups, and sent randomly to different rooms which held the computers they would be using for this experiment. Each participant was given a total of ninety-six trials; there was one block of forty-eight trials asking the participant to type the word and one block of forty-eight trials asking the participant to type the color. The order of each block was randomly determined by the computer for each participant. Half of the participants did the word naming then color naming; the other half did color naming then word naming. The participants were prompted to read the instructions on the screen and enter their initials prior to starting the experiment. Once the experiment begins, there is a fixation cross displayed for 500 milliseconds. Following the fixation cross, the task cue and stimuli were displayed at the same time until the participant responded. After the participant responded and pressed the spacebar key, they were prompted with another trial. After each participant completed the experiment they were instructed to return to the classroom where they were debriefed by the experimenter and allowed to leave. Results The results of this experiment are presented in Figure 1. The mean for the naming color/congruent condition is 1044. 57ms; the mean for the naming color/incongruent condition is 1210. 62 ms; the mean for the naming word/congruent condition is 838. 05 ms; and the mean for the naming word/incongruent condition is 862. 24 ms. The mean reaction times (RTs) from each condition were submitted to a 2 (Task type: name word vs. name color) x 2 (Congruency: congruent vs. incongruent) within-subjects ANOVA. The main effect for task was significant, F(1,20) = 62. 48, MSE = 1616576. 0, p < 0. 05; this shows that participants had a faster RT when asked to name the word (M = 850. 14 ms) as opposed to when asked to name the color (M = 1127. 60 ms). Mean RTs were faster for word than color naming. In addition to a main effect of task, there is a significant main effect of congruency, F(1,20) = 22. 65, MSE = 190000. 30, p < 0. 05; this illustrates that participants had a faster RT when the items were congruent (M = 941. 31 ms) than when the items were incongruent (M = 1036. 43 ms) Mean RTs were faster for congruent items than incongruent items. Finally, we found a ignificant interaction between congruency and task type, F(1,20) = 42. 43, MSE = 105648. 11, p < 0. 05; this interaction demonstrates that there is a greater difference between the means of congruent and incongruent items when asked to name color than there is between the means of congruent and incongruent items when asked to name the word. Discussion We predicted a main effect of congruency which is, in fact, what we see from our results. We see this main effect due to the Stroop effect, which states that it is faster to name the color for congruent items than incongruent items. In addition, we expected to see a main effect of task type and that the word task will produce faster RTs than the color task; which is precisely what we have found. We can explain this finding with the theories of the horse race model. It has been found, through earlier research, that reading words is a faster process than color naming because reading is an automatic process (Dunbar & MacLeod, 1984). We predicted to see that naming the color will intensify the Stroop effect whereas naming the word will minimize the Stroop effect; we have found exactly this in our results. These outcomes can be explained with the horse race model as well. The horse race model assumes two things: first, words and colors have different processing times; color naming is slower than word naming. Second, the Stroop effect is asymmetrical: when the faster process is finished, the result of that process can interfere with the slower process. Words interfere strongly with color naming; however, colors interfere weakly with word naming. MacLeod’s (1991) study explained: This speed difference is seen as particularly critical when two potential responses (e. g. , one from a word and one from an ink color) compete to be the response actually produced. The time cost of this competition is â€Å"interference. This general interpretation is referred to as response competition occurring at the end of a horse race, because the two codes are seen as racing to control final output. (p. 187) One of the flaws of this experiment is that it is possible that not all participants are proficient in the placement of keys on a computer keyboard; this would affect the reaction time for theses participants as they would need extra time to find the keys. Another flaw is that we didn’t take into account typing errors and the program used did not record error rate. This could mean that we have not successfully measured one of the items we attempted to measure. We attempted to see if there was a difference in processing time between the task of naming the word and the task of naming the color. Since we did not take into account typing errors and error rate, it is possible that a participant could have responded quickly with an incorrect response and therefore caused the RT time to be quicker. The greatest defect of this experiment is the sample size, 21 participants. In future studies it is recommended that this experiment be run with at least 30 participants who can comfortably recognize the keys on a standard computer keyboard. In addition to a larger sample size, perhaps changing the colors and the names of colors (from red, green, blue, and yellow to, for example, pink, purple, orange, grey) would yield a smaller or larger Stroop effect. Another change that can be experimented with is age. MacLeod (1991) references a study done by Lund (1927) which finds that â€Å"children younger than reading age were faster on color naming than word reading. † Perhaps there may be difference between children that are younger than reading age, children who have just recently learned the alphabet, and/or children who just recently learned to read. Also, could there be a difference between children, adolescents, middle-age, and/or old-age? MacLeod (1991) also references a study conducted by Ligon (1932) that tested the â€Å"differential-practice concept† in children between the ages of about 5-14. Ligon found that practice and training did improve RTs for both color naming and word naming tasks, however, â€Å"the difference between the skills remained unchanged. † A final suggestion for future research would pose this question: would we find similar results if ran such a study with adults?