Is the Emphasis on a Color-Blind Society an Answer to Racism

Racism is a word that sparks a nerve in many individuals today. As hard as it is to believe, racism is still a big factor in what we as a society know as a unified America. Although, it is not as obvious as it was in the past, it still goes on, just in ways that are less noticeable. We ask the question, is the emphasis on a color-blind society an answer to racism. Ward Connerly claims it is a way to stop the segregation and make America a whole as it has been striving to be for the longest. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva believes color-blind racism is the new racial ideology and still brings about racial inequality. As the solution to the question progresses, we ask ourselves, will a color-blind society change the way whites view blacks and minorities? Will it change the discrimination that is brought about everyday from individualistic opinions? Those that say they are not biased against other races are the main ones that are judgmental to how certain ethnicities act. Regardless of a color-blind society, there is still going to be racial inequality. Color-blind racism is basically racism that acts as if color doesn’t matter, when in actuality, it really does. Whites believe that if they use color-blind racism, they aren’t racist. They bypass the word â€Å"black† and use other words to substitute it for. They bypass the word â€Å"race† and instead use words such as â€Å"ethnicity,† â€Å"culture† or â€Å"background† to make their statements not sound so harsh. Despite the fact that they believe they may not sound prejudiced at the time that does not stop them from thinking it. As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva believes, color-blind racism may not be as crude as the Jim Crow era, but it resembles it in a more minor way. For example, whites will vote for a black man for President of the United States, but they still look down on the black society, most likely hoping that the â€Å"black President† will help those stereotypes. Ward Connerly attended the American River Junior College and earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in political science with honors at Sacramento State College. He is the founder of the American Civil Rights Institute and an outspoken supporter of equal opportunities for all Americans. He expressed his views on racism by discussing an encounter he had with a woman. While explaining his desire to succeed at having a color-blind government, the woman commented by replying what he was doing was going to be best for his people. Although, she may not have realized her remark offended him, situations similar to that occur all the time especially with blacks and minorities. Persons may do it without the intention to insult, but that just proves that everyone is viewed more so by color than by characteristics and personality. Many minorities will always be judged by their color because whites believe that they will never have higher power. Even though Ward Connerly went through rough obstacles growing up involving race, rather than focusing on the bad experiences he had, he claimed that if you â€Å"take people at face value and give them an opportunity, race is irrelevant. † He supports the emphasis on a color-blind society so people won’t use discrimination based on the color of one’s skin. He used examples such as classifications and how there was no need to classify people by race. After the Civil War, with having separation for bathrooms, poll taxes and water fountains, distinguishing differences between people should have been stopped. He decided to place the Racial Privacy Initiative in California, to prevent governments from categorizing individuals by race, color, ethnicity and origin. That may help to some degree, but there’s still going to be physical appearances by all people and no one is going to worry about classifications, because whites are still going to have their assumptions about blacks, even if they don’t completely say so. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva received his Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin. He has authored two books called White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era and Racism without Racists. He currently teaches sociology at Duke University focusing on race relations. Professor Bonilla-Silva proved his points with adequate examples shown in daily life. He uses the theory that blacks and most minorities are â€Å"at the bottom of the well. † He brought up that steering highly successful and educated blacks towards the poor, less paying jobs in the worst conditions are ways to keep minorities away from the upscale white society. According to Bonilla-Silva, the U. S. has scarcely moved beyond the era of segregation. He argues that all whites today rely more on cultural rather than biological analogies to explain blacks’ position in this country. I concur with his support because he has more supporting evidence than Connerly. Based on his interpretations, I’ve come to the conclusion that whites do come up with explanations to prove that they are so-called non-racial but as Bonilla-Silva said, â€Å"regardless of whites’ sincere fictions, racial consideration shade almost everything in America and black and dark skinned minorities lag behind in every area of social life. † An emphasis on a color-blind society is not the answer to racism. It’s just an excuse for whites to say that racism is not part of everyday life; that it simply just doesn’t exist. Ward Connerly had good claims, but his evidence did not support his conclusion enough to make me feel this topic would change the state of race in the U. S. Him describing his encounter made me feel that racism was never going to cease or for that matter, get better. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva brought out great support. By reviewing his examples and opinions, it is true that color-blindness is a front. Most whites will always have animosity towards those that don’t â€Å"resemble them. † Both authors did focus on the matter of race and how it is seen in the country. Race is seen differently throughout all individuals. Some find it just a word that has no meaning and is only involved with the past, but others find it an exaggeration of the word hatred. A word that brings out the worst in people’s personalities. Regardless of how much emphasis is even involved in having a color-blind society, racism still and always will exist.

Customer Service Policies Essay

Research has indicated that there are a number of areas of customer service that are a priority for people. In particular, delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude are deemed important. Aspects of these key areas include a prompt initial contact with the customer and the ability to keep to agreed timescales, provision of accurate and detailed information with regular development updates, keeping promises and dealing with problems and issues in a professional and timely manner. Throughout all contact with customers, staff should aim to meet their needs through professional, courteous and efficient service. Staff will: * treat all customers with respect and courtesy; * listen to what customers have to say; * personalise service to the needs and circumstances of each service user where practical; * always do what they say they are going to do, or update the appropriate people promptly if things change, offering an explanation for the change; * respond to enquiries promptly and efficiently; * consult customers about their service needs Customer service is an organization’s ability to supply their customers’ wants and needs. Excellent customer service is the ability of an organization to constantly and consistently exceed the customer’s expectations. Accepting this definition means expanding our thinking about customer service; if we’re going to consistently exceed customers’ expectations, we have to recognize that every aspect of our business has an impact on customer service, not just those aspects of our business that involve face-to-face customer contact. Improving customer service involves making a commitment to learning what our customers’ needs and wants are, and developing action plans that implement customer friendly processes. Talmac delay policy| If your aircraft remains on the tarmac no later than two hours after leaving the gate for a departure, or touches down after an arrival, we will provide food and potable water from the normal on board catering. Whilst the aircraft remains on the tarmac, medical attention will be given if needed.| Customer service plan| Our staff is dedicated to ensure always a safe and enjoyable journey.| Flights delays| Will provide customers at the airport and onboard a delayed aircraft with timely and frequent updates regarding the delay, beginning 30 minutes after we become aware of such a delay.| Essential customer needs during extraordinary delays| On very rare occasions ,extraordinary events may result in lengthy onboard delays ;in this case we will make reasonable efforts to ensure that your essential needs, such as food, water, restroom facilities, and basic medical assistance are met.| Cancelling reservation policy| A reservation may be cancelled online or through the c ompany call centre within 24 hours of ticketing, for a full refund.| Assistance in case of delayed flights policy | Our company will take all the reasonable measures necessary to avoid delays on carrying you and your baggage. If a flight is being cancelled, or delayed by five hours or more, fail to stop at your place of stopover or destination, you can choose one of the three remedies set up below:1. We will carry you as soon as we can to the destination shown on your ticket, without charging you extra.2. Giving you or obtain for you an involuntary fare refund , without charging you extra.3. Giving you additional assistance , such as compensation ,refreshments and other care .| Baggage delivery| In the event that your checked bags do not arrive on your flight ,we will make reasonable efforts to ensure that the bag is returned to you within 24 hours.| Baggage liability| Liability for lost, damaged or delayed baggage is 1,131 Special Drawing Rights(SDR) per passenger.| Ticket refunds| Foe all tickets and services purchased from our company with a credit card or cash, refunds will be provided withi n 7 business days of receipt of the required refund information. | Accommodation of customers with special needs| We provide passengers with disabilities and all other special needs dignified, professional and courteous service and proper accommodation at all times ,including during lengthy tarmac delays.| Flights with oversales| If at departure time more customers with confirmed reservations are present than there are seats available, gate agents will first ask for volunteers who are willing to give up their seats in exchange for compensation and a confirmed seat on a later flight.| Lowest fare availability | Customers calling our reservation office or visiting our ticket offices or counters to purchase a ticket for a specific day and time will be offered the lowest fare available through our company, exclusive of Internet only fares.| Reasons for Customer Service Policy Developing customer service policies are the life blood of any business. Although customer policies are unique to each business ,there are still some guiding principles that all corporations should adopt. Successful customer service policies are guided by the following principle: knowing what your customers want and delivering on it .Having only a vague idea of what customers want means there can be no concrete policy in place for when problems or misunderstanding arise. Knowing what customers want will also lead to correct business decisions. In order to be competitive ,all businesses must have outstanding customer service practices and policies. Customer policies and relationship standards should be part of your mission statement, neither receiving substandard or preferential treatment over employees, contractors ,or even stakeholders. Providing great customer service is a great step in building a relationship with your clients. The greater the relationship you develop ,the more likely it is that your client will become an evangelist for your brand and your organization. Customer service department need way to measure their success. Employees can’t expect to provide your idea of great service if they don’t know what that means. In the book Award-Winning Customer Service, Renee Evenson writes ‘’Before you can expect the people in your organization to provide outstanding customer service ,they have to know how to give outstanding customer service.’’ Policies set service guidelines and train employees. Customers demand to be treated like their money matters .Having a policy is a pre-requisite to business. Just providing a body in a store to answer questions or having enough staff in a call centre to answer calls quickly will go unnoticed. A customer service policy is a way to design a standard to go beyond expectations. A customer service policy is a tool to give guidance to employees on how to solicit information from customers to improve products. Train your staff to be problem-solvers and to incorporate up-sell tactics to capitalize on the doors they’ve open by providing great service.

Analyzing A Selection Of Childrens Literature English Literature Essay

Analyzing A Selection Of Childrens Literature English Literature Essay With the birth of the field of children’s literature over two centuries old, Carnegie Medal winners represent only a small part of the history and tradition of children’s literature. The Graveyard Book (2009), the most recent addition recipient of the award, follows some of the traditions of the field, and differs in others. In my attempt to discuss how The Graveyard Book fits into the history and tradition of children’s literature, I will be comparing it with other notable works in the field, specifically, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883), J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997), and Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958). As a fellow Carnegie winner, Tom’s Midnight Garden, offers a comparison of fantasy fiction, and when considered with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone provides an interesting view of the changes that have occurred in the genre over the years . Treasure Island is structured similarly to The Graveyard Book, and both novels are good examples of the bildungsroman genre. In the course of this essay I will be referring to a range of critical material relevant to my discussion. The effect of children’s literature on children, and the reverse, is circular; as children’s attitudes to the world around them change, so too does the literature written for them, and as that literature changes, it again affects children’s attitudes. Furthermore, the evolution of adults’ understanding of childhood has affected which books are deemed suitable for publication. Children’s literature commonly exemplifies the beliefs and context of the culture in which it is written, however, since the majority of children’s literature is written by adults, it often reflects issues that concern adults, and not the intended audience. Adult-authors must make assumptions about the reaction of a child-reader or the beha viour of a child-protagonist, and in doing so, can sometimes offer a poor representation of a child’s perspective. This difference between the adult’s and child’s attitude to children’s literature can often be seen in the contrast between best-selling books, and those books that win literary prizes. Contrary to this, The Graveyard Book has won the Newbery Medal, Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Young Adult novel in 2009, and the 2010 Carnegie Medal (Wikipedia contributors, 2011), spent fifteen weeks on the New York Times best-seller list for children’s chapter books (Rich, 2009), and has a film adaptation currently in production (Wikipedia contributors, 2011). Gaiman himself recognized the unusual nature of a book being both popular and prestigious, saying that typically ‘there are books that are best sellers and books that are winners’ (Gaiman quoted in Rich, 2009). The popularity and prestige of a children†™s book is dependent on a number of different elements; instruction and/or delight, and social, cultural and historical contexts (Maybin, 2009, p. 116). Maybin states that ‘prizes signify a book’s prestige in the eyes of the critics, but they are not necessarily an indication of its appeal to children’ (Maybin, 2009, p. 118). The division between the children’s books awarded literary prizes, and those that are popular with children is significant. An example of such division can be seen when comparing Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (1995) and Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; Northern Lights was the 1995 Carnegie Medal winner, while Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone only reached the shortlist for the 1997 Medal, but went on to win the Nestlà © Smarties Book Prize, The British Book Award for Children’s Book of the Year and the Children’s Book Award, all of which, suggestively, have invo lved children in the judging process. Like The Graveyard Book, both books are fantasy-adventure novels featuring a young protagonist. All three novels are read an enjoyed by adults and children, but while Northern Lights is considered by adults to be ‘quality’ literature, Harry Potter is criticised being not literature but a ‘phenomenon’ (Zipes, 2009, p. 289). Nicholas Tucker (2009) argues that the criteria for judging the quality of children’s books varied according to conceptions of childhood; for those with a romantic conception, the emphasis is on an exciting, imaginative storyline, whilst those who view childhood primarily as preparation for adulthood favour books that are ‘truly representative’ (Tucker, 2009, p. 153). If compared to earlier children’s books, it appears that modern children’s literature reflects the development of a clearer concept of childhood.

StarBucks Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

StarBucks - Essay Example Furthermore Starbucks does not follow traditional aggressive advertising strategy; rather it focuses on high-level branding and marketing practices (Larson, Marketing Strategy and Alliances Analysis of Starbucks Corporation). Word-of-mouth has been a widely practiced marketing communication strategy by the company. The ‘differentiation’ generic strategy provides sustainable competitive advantage to the company. Starbucks intentionally avoids traditional promotional approach. It believes that its brand is promoted through excellent in-store service, quality of the product, premium price and unique customer experiences. Such a strategy has definitely provided sustainable competitive advantages to the company. As far as customer response is concerned, Starbucks is very quick to respond to all their customer queries. Starbucks is committed to provide a unique experience to all its customers. It has all the required resources in order to support and sustain all its rapid response activities. Starbucks is one of the most successfully marketed brands in the world. The company has 16,706 stores (including both company operated and licensed) throughout the world. The company’s long term objective is to have 15,000 U.S. stores and 30,000 stores in the entire world (Horovitz, Starbucks aims beyond lattes to extend brand). Starbucks’s mission says that it is working for inspiring and nurturing human spirit – â€Å"one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time.† Generally strategic planners of any organisation develop the long term objectives in seven major areas which are profitability, competitive position, productivity, employee development, technological leadership, employee relations and public responsibility. Moreover quality of any long term objective can be evaluated on the basis of five factors namely flexible,

Faster, Pussycat Kill Kill (Russ Meyer, 1965) Essay

Faster, Pussycat Kill Kill (Russ Meyer, 1965) - Essay Example Tura Satana, the actress, who plays the main role in the film, has a violent and magnificent appearance. Her makeup is aggressive; she wears black costume and scares off men. What was the main intention of the director, when he showed a woman from a different perspective, than it used to be in the society? Female empowerment can be seen in the aggressive female characters. This is a kind of fantasy, where a female dominatrix leads the whole story. This is a strong female character, which is able to cause a physical damage to a man with her karate moves or with the help of her car, pressing Vegetable to the wall. In such a way, we can claim that the film director created an image of a pop powerful woman, showing her unnatural and weird, but really attracting for the audience. A strong female character has an enormous power influencing men around her. Her appearance is not the main toll for her, but her energy and emotions, which are directed on destruction. All these features enable the main female characters to be violent and aggressive creatures, who want to take power back from men and live on their own, for their own satisfaction. On the one hand, the character of a violent woman is a great social challenge. There is no tenderness or vanilla in these girls†¦They do not make any attempt to be calm housewives, but remain rough and speed up in their cars. In the episode of young man’s spine cracking, there is a great panic and emotional turmoil among the girls. There is a direct juxtaposition of men and women power, when Varla comes to the Old Man and his two sons live. There is an air of danger, but this air is filled with sexual restrain. Billie reveals her libido and wants to stay alone with a handsome young man. On the other hand, the main features of female feelings and emotions are prevented by a potential intention of exploting women. Therefore, there is rather ambiguous feeling after watching this film. I am sure that

Karim Rashid Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Karim Rashid - Assignment Example The concept of not liking the black color and preferring the color pink implies that black denotes fear, hatred, scare and anything that is harmful for us. The color pink on the other hand, is more bright and vibrant and depicts freshness. Therefore, instead of using black Rashid prefers to use pink in his designs to make his customers feel vibrant, lovely and confident. The concept of installing cameras in restaurants is an excellent idea because if any kind of unethical activities take place in any restaurant then, the criminals can easily be caught with the help of such cameras. (Karim Rashid, 2010)    Karim Rashid is one of the famous designers in the world who aims at changing the world with his classy designs. He is an Egyptian born in the year 1960. Rashid is an artistic person and the sight of sunset fascinates him. Rashid has won many awards for his designs. His recent project will be showcased in the Milan Furniture Fair. Rashid’s father is the greatest mentor of his life. Rashid is also a music lover. Some of his favorites are Terry’s cafà ©, Baby Mammoth etc. Rashid also has a passion for reading books. In fact, three books are very close to his heart. One of the books speaks of how a person can motivate the world with his ideas and thoughts thereby bringing in a change in the world. The other book is on psychology by Donald Norman and the last one is an autobiography by Miles Davis. Rashid feels that pink color portrays an energetic feeling and therefore he avoids black. The restaurants that he has designed have been planned in such a way that the customer s can make themselves feel comfortable, entertained and relaxed. Rashid does not love nature. His greatest loss in his life is that of his wife’s death. Disloyalty is that one quality that Rashid hates most. Rashid has also written a book named â€Å"I want to change the world, it’s a big world†. He has introduced modern technology in his

Analysis of Generals Die In Bed through the eyes of two chosen authors Essay

Analysis of Generals Die In Bed through the eyes of two chosen authors - Essay Example ng set the tone of this Paper, one work each of the prominent French philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Jean Jaques Rousseau and the renowned British naturalist of the nineteenth-century, Charles Robert Darwin, is also reviewed in the same light. Those who have seen the highly acclaimed award-winning TV Series made by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Blackadder (September-November 1989), starring comedians Rowan Atkinson, et al. will understand World War I in its true perspective. Rather than the Germans, who remain unseen, Blackadders adversary comes in the form of his superior, General Melchett who rallies his troops from a French chà ¢teau 35 miles behind the front, wining and dining on Champagne, Caviar and Cigars while his troops, rotting in damp trenches and existing on one distasteful looking meal, die of lack of medical care, sepsis, diarrhea and dysentery, a dozen to the day. Blackadders final line is poignant, just before leading his men into a suicidal final push at Flanders: â€Å"Well, I am afraid its time to go. Whatever your plans to avoid certain death were, I’m sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad. I mean, who would have noticed another madman around here? Good luck, everyone.† (www.imdb.com, www.express.co.uk). New Orleans, reviewed the parody in 2002 (www.eclectica.org) as follows. â€Å"Generals Die in Bed (Harrison, 1930), is almost unknown today. It was published in 1930 to rave reviews. ‘It has a sort of flat-footed straightness about it that gets down the torture of the front line about as accurately as one can ever get it’ ( John Dos Passos, 1930). The New York Evening Post called it ‘the best of the war books.’ Harrisons novel, based on his own service as a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, is graphic, intense, and very powerfully anti-war while not being overtly political. It is remarkable to read about a war that was plainly hell, and for the man

Buyer Behaviour & Market Research Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 6

Buyer Behaviour & Market Research - Assignment Example The cognitive attitude consists of the positive and negative attribute that is related to the object. The effective component mainly consists of the attributes that include the emotions and the feelings that are related to the attitude of an object. The effective response has impacted the attitude in various ways. The behavioral component can be described as the attitude that comprises of the experiences and behavior of the past towards the attitude of an object. Attitudes are supported by behaviors if the influence of behavior has motivational significance for the concerned person. Attitude can be based on effective or cognitive behavior. The attitude that is based on cognitive behavior is mainly influenced by the knowledge and perception that the consumer develops by directly using and experiencing the product. There function mainly includes object appraisal which explains that people mainly classify or distinguish the object according to the punishment and the reward received by the customers. The cognitive theory can be defined as the process of improving and developing the knowledge and learning of the consumer behavior. The cognitive psychology is just the opposite of the behavioral approach. It mainly focuses on prioritizing the psychology of the internal organization. The characteristics and features of the cognitive buying behavior include experience, knowledge, understanding, and thinking of an individual and enforce or compel an individual in buying or purchasing a particular product. While purchasing the particular product the consumer is required to consider price, quality, and functionality for choosing the particular product.  

Answer the questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Answer the questions - Essay Example The paper takes into account the quality of voluntary narrative disclosure, evaluates the overall presentation of the report and the impact of reporting corporate responsibility matters on the information received by users regarding corporate performance of Imperial Tobacco. Finally, an evaluation of the IIRC agenda upon the quality of financial information coupled with the role of the accountant in safeguarding this agenda is undertaken. Viewing from the development of information disclosure system, voluntary disclosure appears after compulsory information disclosure (Tian & Chen, 2009). Specifically, the paper addresses the use of voluntary reporting on the Annual General Meeting notice. Quality of Voluntary Narrative Disclosure at Imperial Tobacco: Imperial Tobacco has made bold steps in ensuring that it integrates corporate responsibility into its ordinary financial operations. The firm understands that it has social and economic roles to play in order to safeguard positive gains already made by other players in society. The issues that ITG generally endeavors to engage in at various levels, according to the 2012 financial reports include: 1) Tackling child labour, The company understands the temptation that comes with the expectation for higher returns and it has undertaken to fight the vice of child labour at all levels of production. As a result, we joined the movement â€Å"Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Foundation† where ITG is a board member. 2) Consumer support: Various municipalities have lately come up with extremely exaggerated laws in the company’s view not only undermine free trade in tobacco products, but also limit the rights of the consumer to the extent they are prevented from freely enjoying their freedom at using tobacco products. 3) Response to environmental challenges: Among the most common environmental challenges associated with tobacco use is emission of carbon dioxide. The company has lately adopted latest technolo gy in cigarette manufacturing and as a result the products have seen a 4% reduction in carbon dioxide emission, as research into how to reduce this rate further continues. Furthermore, the company has reduced energy consumption by 5%. 4) Fighting illicit trade: The sale of counterfeit products bearing the company’s name is seen as a major blow to the trust bestowed upon the company by consumers of its products, and therefore the company has made bold steps in ensuring that this vice dies completely. The company has employed personnel in various major shipping centers to track any suspicious trade in ITG’s products while working closely with local authorities. 5) Job creation: Being a multi-national, ITG Plc has directly and indirectly employed thousands of persons who are instrumental in the company’s daily operations while scooping their living out of the mutual relationship thus established. 6) Issuance of dividends Each financial year, the company establishes a certain amount of returns per share owned by shareholders and disperse the same to the esteemed shareholders who gladly get returns for their trust in the company and their choice to invest in Imperial Tobacco. The 2012 annual report surpassed all other reports given earlier, especially due to the attempt to indicate corresponding figures alongside the activities. The ratios relating to various aspects of the report are easy to work out, since all the required figures are

Revenue Management in Hospitality Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Revenue Management in Hospitality - Assignment Example YM majorly focuses on revenue generation and management by emphasizing the concept of ‘4 C’s’, comprising Calendar, Clock, Capacity and Cost associated with forecasting of demand. From the provided case study, it has been identified that Aldermar Resorts & Spas is a premium and luxurious family run company that specializes in the hotel industry and is located in Greece. The business is recognised to be facing a number of problems associated with fluctuations in demand patterns. Hence, the operation management consultant is to concentrate on the development of an YM strategy that would replace the existing strategy used by the company in order to ensure effectiveness and success of the YM performance in the business operations. The report would outline the importance and applicability of YM in enhancement of performance and would assess the impact of CRM integration in YM. Furthermore, the report would concentrate on discussion of the various job roles that must be adhered by the staff members concerned with the implementation of YM. Moreover, the report would examine the strategies that can be used by Aldermar Resorts & Spas to enhance performance and mitigat e the problems. Finally, the report would disclose a number of YM metrics that the firm needs to consider for performance assessment and generation of higher revenues. YM is considered as one of the prominent tools to determine the risks associated with decisions taken by the firm to ensure generation of higher performance and revenues in the present as well as future markets. Aldermar Resorts & Spas comprises eight properties that have a distinct client mix including conference guests, individual clients and tour operators. Each of the eight properties is concerned with application of a unique product mix, which assures successful application of the YM strategy with due consideration to the available resources. The problem of high fluctuations

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks Essay Example for Free

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks Essay ABSTRACT. Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks is a kind of special wireless ad hoc network, which has the characteristics of high node mobility and fast topology changes. The Vehicular Networks can provide wide variety of services, ranges from safety and crash avoidance to internet access and multimedia applications. Attacking and misusing such network could cause destructive consequences. It is therefore necessary to integrate security requirements into the design of VANETs and defend VANET systems against misbehaviour, in order to ensure correct and smooth operations of the network. In this paper, I propose a security system for VANETs to achieve privacy desired by vehicles and traceability required by law enforcement authorities, in addition to satisfying fundamental security requirements including authentication, nonrepudiation, message integrity, and confidentiality. Moreover, we propose a privacy-preserving defense technique for network authorities to handle misbehaviour in VANET access, considering the challenge that privacy provides avenue for misbehaviour. The proposed system employs an identitybased cryptosystem where certificates are not needed for authentication. I show the fulfilment and feasibility of our system with respect to the security goals and efficiency. 1 INTRODUCTION VEHICULAR ad hoc networks (VANETs) are receiving increasing attentions from academic and deployment efforts from industry, due to the various applications and potential tremendous benefits they offer for future VANET users. Safety information exchange enables life-critical applications, such as the alerting functionality during intersection traversing and lane merging, and thus, plays a key role in VANET applications. Valueadded services can enhance drivers’ traveling experience by providing convenient Internet access, navigation, toll payment services, etc. Other applications are also possible including different warning messages for congestion avoidance, detour notification, road conditions (e.g., slippery), etc., and alarm signals disseminated by emergency vehicles (e.g., ambulance) for road clearance. The attractive features of VANETs inevitably incur higher risks  if such networks do not take security into account prior to deployment. For instance, if the safety messages are modified, discarded, or delayed either intentionally or due to hardware malfunctioning, serious consequences such as injuries and even deaths may occur. This necessitates and urges the development of a functional, reliable, and efficient  security architecture before all other implementation aspects of VANETs.Fundamentally,VANET security design should guarantee authentication, nonrepudiation, integrity, and in some specific application scenarios, confidentiality, to protect the network against attackers. Besides the fundamental security requirements, sensitive information such as identity and location privacy should be reserved from the vehicle owner’s perspective, against unlawful tracing and user profiling, since otherwise it is difficult to attract vehicles to join the network. On the contrary, traceability is required where the identity information need be revealed by law enforcement authorities for liability issues, once accidents or crimes occur. In addition, privilege revocation is required by network authorities (e.g., network administrator) once misbehaviour is detected during network access. It is less difficult to prevent misbehavior of unauthorized users (i.e., outsiders)since legitimate users and roadside units (RSUs) can simply disregard communication requests from outsiders by means of authentication. Nevertheless, misbehaviour of legitimate users of VANETs (i.e., insiders) is more difficult and complex to prevent, the reason being that insiders possess credentials issued by the authority to perform authentication with peer vehicles or RSUs who canbe  easily tricked into trusting the insiders. Consequently, the insiders misbehaviour will have much larger impact on the network and will be the focus of this paper. I proposed system in this paper and many recent proposals on VANET security provide the option of using anonymous credentials in authentication, rendering it even more complex to handle misbehaviour in VANETs, since the user identity is hidden and cannot be linked arbitrarily which curbs the punishment of misbehaving users. Contributions. Given the conflicting goals of privacy and traceability, and the challenges in designing a privacy-preserving defense scheme for VANETs,  i motivated to propose a security system that can effectively and efficiently solve the conflic ts and challenges. Specifically, my main contributions in this paper include: 1. I propose a pseudonym-based scheme to assure vehicle user privacy and traceability. 2. I design a threshold signature-based scheme to achieve nonframeability in tracing law violators. In this scheme, an innocent vehicle cannot be framed by a corrupted law enforcement authority due to rolesplitting mechanism. 3. A novel privacy-preserving defense scheme is proposed leveraging threshold authentication. It guarantees that any additional authentication beyond the threshold will result in the revocation of the misbehaving users. This defense scheme differs from others mainly in that it yields flexibility in the revocation (i.e., not all types of misbehaviour should be punished). Moreover, the dynamic accumulators in the threshold authentication technique facilitates each user to place further restrictions (besides the threshold) on other communicating users, which is an attractive feature to service providers. 4. My design incorporates mechanisms that guarantee authentication, nonrepudiation, message integrity, and confidentiality. 2 RELATED WORK There is a large body of research work related to the security and privacy in VANETs. The most related works are on the design of privacypreserving schemes. Raya and Hubaux [1]investigated the privacy issue by proposing a pseudonym-based approach using anonymous public keys and the public key infrastructure (PKI), where the public key certificate is needed, giving rise to extra communication and storage overhead. The  authors also proposed three credential revocation protocols tailored for VANETs, namely RTPD,RC2RL, and DRP [5], considering that the certificate revocation list (CRL) needs to be distributed across the entire network in a timely manner. All the three protocols seem to work well under conventional public key infrastructure (PKI). However, the authors also proposed to use frequently updated anonymous public keys to fulfillusers requirement on identity and location privacy. If this privacy preserving technique is used in conjunction with RC2RL and DRP, th e CRL produced by the trusted authority will become huge in size, rendering the revocation protocols highly inefficient. A lightweight symmetric-key-based security scheme for balancing  auditability and privacy in VANETs is proposed in [2]. It bears the drawback that peer vehicles authenticate each other via a base station, which is unsuitable for inter vehicle communications. Gamage et al. [6] adopted an identity-based (IDbased) ring signature scheme to achieve signer ambiguity and hence fulfill the privacy requirement in VANET applications. The disadvantage of the ring signature scheme in the context of VANET applications, is the unconditional privacy, resulting in the traceability requirement unattainable. Group signature-based schemes are proposed in [4] where signer privacy is conditional on the group manager. As a result, all these schemes have the problem of identity escrow, as a group manager who possesses the group master key can arbitrarily reveal the identity of any group member. In addition, due to the limitation of group formation in VANETs (e.g., too few cars in the vicinity to establis h the group), the group-based schemes [4]may not be applied appropriately. The election of group leader will sometimes encounter difficulties since a trusted entity cannot be found amongst peer vehicles. There are also a number of defense techniques against misbehaviour in VANET literature besides those in [1]. An indirect approach via the aid of infrastructure is used in [4].The TA distributes the CRL to the infrastructure points which then take over the TA’s responsibility to execute the revocation protocol. The advantage of this approach is that vehicles never need to download the entire RL. Unfortunately, the conditional anonymity claimed in [4]. only applies to amongst peer vehicles, under the assumption that the infrastructure points are trusted. The infrastructure points can reveal the identity of any vehicle at any time even if the vehicle is honest. Recently, Tsang et al. [7]proposed a blacklistable anonymous credential system for blocking misbehavior without the trusted third party (TTP).The blacklisting technique can be applied to VANETs as: if the vehicle fails to prove that it is not on the blacklist of the current  authenticator, the authenticator will ignore the messages or requests sent by this vehicle. Although not proposed specifically for VANETs, the proposal in [7] has a similar claim as the capability of a TTP (network authority in this paper) to recover a user’s identity in any case is too strong a punishment and highly undesirable in some scenarios. The downside of this  technique is the lack of options to trace misbehaving users, since any user in the system(misbehaving or not)will by no means be identified by any entity including the authorities. I proposed a privacy-preserving defense scheme against misbehavior in [8] leveraging threshold authentication technique. This scheme and the scheme in [3] both preserve user privacy, and simultaneously provide trace ability (i.e., tracing law violators by enforcement authorities in [3] and tracing misbehaving users by network authorities in [8]). The major differences between these schemes are the different technical realizations of the privacy and traceability schemes, due to the different application 3 SYSTEM MODEL We describe the functionalities of our security system and define security requirements in this section. 3.1 Overview Major entities in a VANET environment are depicted in A VANET system diagram. As mentioned before, traceability is needed by law enforcement authorities (LEAs) who require the identity of a violating vehicle to be disclosed for investigating the cause of accidents or crimes. Due to the seriousness of liability issues, if a single authority (e.g., the police) is fully capable of revealing the vehicle identity, this privilege may be abused. It is desirable if two or more authorities (e.g., the police, judge, special agents, and other possible law enforcement authorities) are granted distributed control over the identity retrieval process. One benefit in doing so is that corrupted authorities (the number being less than the threshold) cannot arbitrarily trace vehicle users to compromise their privacy. Another benefit is that malicious authorities cannot falsely accuse (or frame) honest users. Such role-splitting is not required for network authorities since the threshold authentication technique in our defense scheme prevents a network authority from falsely accu sing honest users. The proposed security system primarily consists of techniques addressing the privacy, traceability, nonframeability, and revocation (only by network authorities) issues. The  logic diagram of the entities interactions is depicted in logic diagram, where the arrowed lines indicate the direction of packet flow or physical communications, the bracketed numbers near each line index the major events or procedures between the connected entities. The vehicle users are split into access group owners and members, whereas the RSUs can only be access  group owners. The entities and events/procedures are described in what follows. 3.2 Entities and Procedures The entities in this system are the regional transportation authorities (RTAs), law enforcement authorities (LEAs),network authorities, roadside infrastructure including border RSUs for pseudonym management and regular RSUs (simply RSUs) for Internet access, and vehicle users. Considering practical scenarios, the RSUs in this system are mainly responsible for providing infrastructure access and network services. The RSUs are assumed to be operated by third-party service providers (SPs) who have business contracts with the RTA to build access infrastructure in the RTA’s region. The RSUs are thus not owned by the RTA and have no preestablished trust relationship with the RTA. On the other hand, borders RSUs are owned and operated by the RTA, and can be considered as the agents who are delegated with the RTA’s authority. These entities are involved in the following procedure:  may be caused by malfunctioning hardware and thus is incidental. These types of misbehavior share a common feature, i.e., their occurrence or frequency is low, specifically, lower than a predetermined threshold. Threshold authentication-based defense further consists of six sub-procedures: Membership registration: RSUs and vehicle users register with the RTA to use VANETs. Upon successful registration, a member public/private key pair (mpk;msk) is issued to each RSU and vehicles. The RTA associates the member’s credential with the issued public key and includes this pair of information into a credential list IDlist. Access group setup: RSUs and vehicles setup their own access groups, the member of which is granted privilege to communicate with the access group owner. The group owner adds members to the group and updates related public information. Each added member obtains an access key mak for the group. Access group revoking: The access group owner revokes the granted privilege when deciding to stop communications with a member, due to some decision criteria for misbehaviour. The access group owner removes the member from the access group and updates related public information. Threshold authentication: This procedure is executed between an RSU and a vehicle, or between peer vehicles. We call the authenticator in this procedure Alice who announces the threshold k possibly different for each user being authenticated. The  authentication succeeds if and only if the following conditions are met simultaneously: the user Bob authenticating with Alice is a registered member of the VANET system, Bob is a legitimate member of Alice’s access group (if Alice is an access group owner) whose member privilege has not been revoked, and the authentication threshold has not been exceeded. Alice records the authentication transcripts in AUTHlog: Tracing: This procedure is used by Alice to trace a misbehaving member Mn who attempts to authenticate more than k times. Alice relies on the AUTHlog and public information, and obtains Mn’s credential n as the procedure output which is reported to the RTA.Revocation/recovery: Upon receiving the complaints from other entities in the system as the output of Tracing, the RTA decides if the misbehaving member’s credential needs to be revoked. The RTA then performs the identity recovery by looking up the same pseudonym lookup table PLT (cf.System setup above) which also records the correspondence between the credential n and identity IDn. Note that for the ease of presentation, we assume the RTAs to act as network authorities for the defense scheme in this paper. In reality, when the roles of RTA and network authority System setup: This procedure is executed by the RTA for initial VANET system setup including domain parameter publication, public/private key assignment for entities in the system to perform desired tasks, and database creation for storing necessary records (i.e., the pseudonym lookup table PLT). Pseudonym generation and authentication for privacy: RTA and border RSUs execute this procedure to assign pseudonym/private key pairs to both vehicles traveling in their home domain and vehicles from other RTAs’ domains, so that these vehicles are able to authenticate with RSUs and other vehicles to obtain services and useful messages. Threshold signature for nonframeability: This procedure is invoked by LEAs to share the secret information for recovering a guilty vehicle’s identity. Meanwhile, it prevents corrupted authorities from gathering full power to accuse an innocent vehicle. The functional component of this procedure is the threshold signature. Threshold-authentication-based defense: Designed for the network authorities, this procedure is used to revoke a misbehaving vehicle’s credential, refraining the vehicle from further disrupting system operations. As the core of this procedure, the threshold authentication  technique provides a mechanism to allow certain types of misbehavior that should not result in revocation. For instance, the misbehavior  are separate, the network authority can simply take charge as the RTA in the above sub procedures. Nonetheless, in the execution of Revocation/recovery, the network authority needs to establish trust with or be delegated by the RTA in order to access the PLT. When we mention network authorities in what follows, we implicitly refer to RTAs in the network authority role. 3.3 Security Requirements I define the security requirements for a VANET security system, and will show the fulfillment of these requirements after presenting the design details. 1. Privacy: The privacy requirement states that private information such as vehicle owner’s identity and location privacy is preserved against unlawful tracing and user profiling. 2. Traceability: It is required where the identity information of violators need be revealed by law enforcement authorities for liability purposes. The traceability requirement also indicates that a misbehaving user will be identified and the corresponding credential revoked, if necessary, by network authorities, to prevent this user from further disrupting system operations. Certain criteria have to be met for the traceability of a misbehaving user as explained in the next section. 3. Nonframeability: Nonframeability requires that no entity in the system can accuse an honest user for having violated the law or misbehaved. 4. Other requirements: A secure VANET system should satisfy several fundamental requirements, namely, authentication, nonrepudiation, message integrity, and confidentiality where sensitive information is being exchanged, to protect the system against unauthorized-message injection, denial of message disseminations, message alteration, and eavesdropping, respectively. Nonrepudiation also requires that violators or misbehaving users cannot deny the fact that they have violated the law or misbehaved. 4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK I have presented the VANET security system mainly achieving privacy, traceability, nonframeability, and privacy-preserving defense against misbehaviour and reducing traffic in the network. These functionalities are realized by the  pseudonym-based technique, the threshold signature, and the threshold authentication bas ed defense scheme. The ID-based cryptosystem facilitates  us to design communication and storage efficient schemes. Our future work consists of simulating the proposed security system and experimenting it in real VANET settings. REFERENCES [1] M. Raya and J-P. Hubaux, â€Å"Securing Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks,† J. Computer Security, special issue on security of ad hoc and sensor networks, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 39-68, 2007. [2] J.Y. Choi, M. Jakobsson, and S. Wetzel, â€Å"Balancing Auditability and Privacy in Vehicular Networks,† Proc. First ACM Int’l WorkshopQoS and Security for Wireless and Mobile Networks (Q2SWinet ’05), pp. 79-87, Oct. 2005. [3] J. Sun, C. Zhang, and Y. Fang, â€Å"An Id-Based Framework Achieving Privacy and Non-Repudiation in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks,† Proc. IEEE Military Comm. Conf., pp. 1-7, Oct. 2007. [4] X. Lin, X. Sun, P.-H. Ho, and X. Shen, â€Å"GSIS: A Secure and Privacy-Preserving Protocol for Vehicular Communications,†IEEE Trans. Vehicular Technology, vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 3442-3456, Nov. 2007. [5] M. Raya, P. apadimitratos, I. Aad, D. Jungels, and J.-P. Hubaux,â€Å"Eviction of Misbehaving and Faulty Nodes in Vehicular Networks,† IEEE J. Sele cted Areas Comm., vol. 25, no. 8, pp. 15571568,Oct. 2007. [6] C. Gamage, B. Gras, B. Crispo, and A.S. Tanenbaum, â€Å"An Identity Based Ring Signature Scheme with Enhanced Privacy,† Proc.Second Int’l Conf. Security and Privacy in Comm. Networks (SecureComm ’06), Aug. 2006. [7] P. Tsang, M.H. Au, A. Kapadia, and S.W. Smith, â€Å"Blacklistable Anonymous Credentials: Blocking Misbehaving Users without TTPs,† Proc. ACM Conf. Computer and Comm. Security (CCS),pp. 72-81, 2007. [8] J. Sun and Y. Fang, â€Å"A Defense Technique against Misbehavior in VANETs Based on Threshold Authentication,† Proc. IEEE Military Comm. Conf., Nov. 2008.

What is Hajj Essay Example for Free

What is Hajj Essay Hajj is one of the five Islamic pillars. It is where all capable Muslims must go on a pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime to Makkah in the last month of the Islamic year. These months are Muharram, Safar, Rabi al-Awal, Rabi al-Thani, Jumad al- Ula, Jumad al-Thani, Rajab, Shabaan, Ramadaan (Month for Daily Obligatory Fasts), Shawwaal, Dhul- Qidah and Dhul- Hijjah (the month for Hajj). And Hajj (pilgrimmage to Makkah) to the House (Ka`abah) is a duty that mankind owes to Allah, those who can afford the expenes (for ones conveyance, provision, and residence) Al-Quran:Surah 3 (Al-Imran); Verse 97 Hajj is the name given to the journey made by Muslims to the Kabba at Makka in Arabia. It is a very large, spiritual gathering and they arrive in very large numbers, sometimes up to 340 a minute. Women wear a burka (a long cloth covering from the head to the feet) men wear a sort of tunic for hajj. When they arrive at Makka the first thing they do is bathe and put white sheets on to enter purity (Ihram). They then go to a sacred mosque to start prayers; they repeat the Talbiya over and over again (translated into English): Here I am O Allah, Here I am Here I am. There is no partner with you. Here I am. Verily, Thine is the praise, the blessings and the sovereignty of the Universe Thou has no partner They then run between two hills to represent what happened when Hajar did this to find water for her son Ishmal. They come to the spring (Zam Zam), which Allah found and people desperately try to drink and bathe in the water which comes from it. This is a Muslims search for spiritually. After this they walk 7 times around the Ka`aba (black stone), this symbolizes when 630 people rode into Makka and destroyed all Idols and Allah forgave the citizens. The first night of the Hajj is spent at Mina. The second day is spent at Arafat; this is where the prophet Muhammad gave his farewell speech, it is desert location approximately 9 miles from Makka. Muslims say this prayer upon entering Arafat so that Allah forgives their sins: O Allah! Forgive my sins, help me repent to you, and grant me all that I beseech of You. Whenever I turn, let me see goodness. Allah be praised! All Praise is due to Allah! There is no deity except Allah! And Allah is The Most Great. The Muslims collect small stones for the following day. Day three is spent at Mina; this is where the Muslims stone the devils (Jamrahs). 7 stones are thrown at each of the 3 pillars; they do this because the devils tempted Ibraham to disobey Allah three times, it shows that they are against anything devilish. Weak and sick people can appoint others to throw stones at the Jamrahs in Mina on behalf of them. Tawaf al-Wada is the farewell Tawaf that a pilgrim performs just before leaving Makka for other destinations. It is the same as before when they go around the black stone in 7 circuits, starting from the black stone line. After completing the Tawaf, it is good but not required to pray too Rakahs behind Maqam Ibrahim. This day is the sacrifice day where they sacrifice an animal (Eid-ul Adha); they are supposed to sacrifice goats, sheep, rams, camels or cows. This act is performed to commemorate Prophet Abrahams act of sacrificing his oldest son Prophet Ismaeel on the command of Allah. Allah substituted Prophet Ismaeel with a ram. Muslims are required to donate 1/3 rd of the meat to the poor, distribute 1/3 rd of the meat to friends and relatives, and keep 1/3 rd of the meat for themselves. Men shave their heads and women cut off locks of hair. After this they return to Makka again to do 7 more circuits of the Ka`aba. Muslims take part in the Hajj because they believe that it is their duty to go, so that Allah will respect them and they will live in paradise when they die. Even if they cannot go for any reason they believe that having the right attitude about going will be acceptable to Allah. It provides an opportunity for Muslims with diverse racial, ethnic and geographical heritage to exchange views, get acquainted and feel unified as one Ummah (community) on a global level. They also go because they enjoy the spiritual gathering, they are happy and they like being around other Muslims who share the same beliefs as they do. Not all Muslims go to Hajj however, as there are certain difficulties effecting whether or not they can go. Some people cannot afford to go but would do if they have the money, if they still have the intention to go (Niyyah) this would still be acceptable to Allah. They can send one person to represent a whole community, which is also accepted. As Hajj is so popular (over 2 million people go each year) they have to limit the numbers of people who go, this means that not everyone who wants to go can, so this is again another difficulty Muslims have. People also have difficulties attending Hajj because they have disabilities or they are unable to walk etc. For example and old person who is frail may not be able to cope with the heat and walking/travelling far. People who are ill and have ill health may also not be able to attend Hajj, as they may be bed-ridden etc. If people cannot attend Hajj for various reasons but have intention (Niyyah) to go, it is still acceptable to Allah. Participating in Hajj affects the life of a believer because they come alive spiritually. It is important for them to go and they feel love from Allah while they are there. They enjoy going, to be around other Muslims. When they return they feel closest to God as they stood on the site where the Prophet delivered his sermon during his first and last pilgrimage. They go back full of joy as they have for filled Allahs wish. They also return with a better understanding of Allah and a born a spirit of caring for others and an understanding of their own heritage that will last throughout their lives. A true pilgrimage is really a journey within. It is important to physically go to Makka but if it is not possible to go I believe that you can still participate spiritually. I believe that if it is in your heart to go this should be accepted as you can still enjoy Hajj without going. You can use technology to participate in Hajj, for example you could pray while watching the festival on television or look at a video of the gathering on the Internet. You could also have your own party at home with other Muslims who do not go to Makka and celebrate Hajj and the end of Hajj (Eid ulad ha) together. Just because you do not go to Makka does not mean you do not follow Allah, you can still participate in Hajj without physically being there. So people who cannot go for various reasons such as old age etc can still enjoy the celebrations and not be cast out of them for being different. If I were a Muslim I may have a different view on this subject because they believe that if it is physically possible to go, you should go no mater what, as Allah would want you to. They feel that it is a religious duty to go, as it is one of the five pillars. A Muslim would go because they want to please their God, Allah.

Two Recent Technological Advances In Endoscopy Nursing Essay

Two Recent Technological Advances In Endoscopy Nursing Essay I am currently working at a day case endoscopy unit, the two advances in endoscopy procedures I will be looking at are, scope guide and minimal sedation. I will be assessing patients at the day case endoscopy unit I currently work at by participating in procedures which use scope guide and minimal sedation. During this period, I will be emphasising at the improvements in the care and safety of patients, to see how these have improved quality of patient care and diagnose problems at ease. Endoscopist, Nurses and Surgeon depend largely on advancement in technology for delivering enhanced patient care and ability to diagnose problems at ease. The application of computer-assisted image guidance technology to the Endoscopic surgical procedures allow creation of new methods to address the challenges by providing the needed 3-D imager that ultimately improves accuracy, efficiency and safety during procedures. (Daniel L Farkas et al 2008). Scope guide 3-D imager, is a non contact form which uses a low intensity magnetic field to display a real time 3 dimension view of the position and orientation of the colon scope with the abdominal cavity by means of detromagnetic transmission coils built into the colonoscope insertion tube. 3 D imager that ultimately improves accuracy, efficiency and safety during procedures (Daniel L. Farkas et al 2008). The scope guide 3 D imager assist in identification of the correct combination of manoeuvres necessary to straighten out the loops o nce formed Olympus 2008. A consultant Endoscopist London UK commented about scope Guide 3 D imager when we started to develop the electromagnetic imaging technology for scope guide. I envisioned a system that would allow colonoscopist to feel as comfortable as a tourist driving through the most unpredictable city with the assistance of a safety navigation system he commented today scope guide does just that i.e. improving colonoscopy by providing a real time 3 dimensional display of colonoscope position and configuration, the endoscopist no longer need to rely on guess and feel to determine the orientation of an inserted scope, scope guide will change the why you see colonoscopy, 3 D imager is an essential part of quality colonoscopy. 3 D imager is able to show shape both from lateral and anterior view direction simultaneously in split screen mode. The use of this scope guide eliminates the hazard of radiation for patients, doctors, this makes the 3 D imager ideal for daily clinical usage and for training purpose. (Yamamate (2008) and Koichin et al, (2008) both stated that is pain free colonoscopy possible? The greatest advantage of this new technology is that when using insufflators air is an enemy. The 3 D imager gives easy visualization and manoeuvres and to orientate the scope along the colon. Easily it avon loops and whenever loops occurs straightening it on and takes less time unlike long time procedures. 3 D imager couple with EVIS EXERA 11 260 series system delivers images in high definition. There are certain scopes that can be used with the 3 D imager which deliver image on the scope guide monitor in three dimensional, which make it possible for the patient watches it on the screen. No sedation sometimes or individual sedation given, patient tolerate the procedure well with aid of the scope guide makes the procedure quicker, safer and comfortable for most patients. The use of this 3 D imager is done by attaching the cord from the guide monitor to the scope, which transmits a current to the scope and shows on the 3 D imager monitor showing where the scope is, if there are loops in the colon, and serves as a guide to the endoscopist. 3 D imager is safe and effective equipment for treatment of making colonoscopy less painful especially in patients with long colon or loopy colon, whereas procedures are abandoned most times when patients cannot tolerate it because its very painful and far fear of perforation. Some of the producing real time 3D imager is that it is capable of producing real time 3D image display of position and orientation of the colonoscopy. The endoscopist no longer needs to rely on guess work or fluoroscopy to determine the configuration of an inserted scope. The Scope Guide 3-D imager uses a low intensity magnetic field to display a real time 3-dimension view of the position and orientation of the colon scope with the abdominal cavity by means of electromagnetic transmission coils built into the colonoscope insertion tube. The scope guide assist the endoscopist in the identification of the correct combination of manoeuvres necessary to straighten out the loops once formed (Olympus, 2008) It shows the correct ways to manoeuvres and straightens complex looping. It is completely safe for daily usage due to the electromagnetic transmission coils within the scope creates a low intensity magnetic field. It generally reduces pain during colonoscopy which enhance advance total cave of patient in today endoscopy procedures. It helps in giving quality care throughout the procedure for the patient, endoscopist and nurses, it eliminates the hazard of radiation from X-ray during colonoscopy, but with the 3 D imager scope guide, X-ray is no longer required. It helps to reduces time during procedure by making complicated procedure easy, hence less lengthy procedure, it helps their ability in pain management of their painful. The scope guide can be dangerous if the cords are not well attached to the scope, which could give a false picture. The nurse plays an important role in the care of the patient before during and after 3 D imager scope guide is used. In my unit all the advantage of scope guide demonstrated at Solna conference for all endoscopists in UK and Ireland can be seen practically every day since the colonoscopist started using the equipment. We have three procedure rooms running and the unit is having only one Scope Guide 3-D Imager. It is now a competitions between the endoscopist, as to who will use the equipment even when the procedure is not too difficult as some might claim but because it give them easy visualisation and manoeuvres and to orientate the scope along the colon. Easily they can avoid loops and whenever loop occurs straightening it on was very easy and takes less time unlike before when we do not have the equipment. All the noise and shout of pains by the patient during colonoscopy procedures has drastically reduced since the introduction of the equipment in the unit, and nurses job in the procedure room has become less stressful unlike before. When a patient requires the use of 3 D imager scope guide due to post hysterotory operation or very difficult previous colonoscopy because of looping, we care for them in the following way. Initially the patient is admitted for an outpatient procedure and checked in, consented, during consenting the doctor will explain to the patient for the need of using the 3 D imager what difficulties involved in manoeuvring the scope and patient during the use of it, repositioning of the patient to get a good view and to minimise the looping if that why, hence the patient will sign the consent form (nursing and midwifery council 2008), British Society of Gastroenterology 1991, 2008) (BSG guidelines) sedation is given via intravenous (IV) route and if to give any emergency injection if need be. A nasal catheter sponge is also attached to the patient for oxygen administration. The patient is given blue knickers for privacy and because of repositioning to prevent unnecessary exposure of patient (privacy and dignity). The patient is firstly positioned on the left lateral with knees bent towards the chest, meanwhile monitory if the oxygen saturation, pulse and blood pressure are checked throughout the procedure. The patient is talked through the procedures, informing the patient when to expect more pain when negotiating the flexures of the colon. The monitor of the scope guide cord is then attached to the scope to be used, and right setting done which brings on the light on monitor of the scope guide. Sedation and if possible muscle relencant i.e. antispasmodic or analgesic is administered through the intravenous route, everyone i.e. the doctor and nurses in the room will wear an apron, gloves and goggles (Health and Safety Executive 1992). The Endoscopist will reconfirm from the nurse whether the constant the procedure, the scope guide must be checked and the cotside on the left hand side is let down and the flexible plate is placed near the patients stomach and to be sure no damage and plate well placed prior to start of procedure. The big movable plate should be put in right position and not on the chest or let (Aorn 2004). During the procedure the scope guide setting is changed as the patient is repositioned which should be visually seen on the monitor to give a right direction of the scope in the colon and monitored. The procedure time, the patient is observed and monitored for abdominal pain and possible sweating or vasovagal reactions. The pain level of the patient is assessed which will determine whether to top up the sedation , pain reliever or antispasmodic injections by the endoscopist, through the nurse in there is there as the patients advocate, the cardiac arrest trolley with the defibrillator should be ac cessible within easy reach (BSG 2003). Post care of the patient should be monitored for severe abdominal pain caused by 3 D imager (Malick 2006). The patient will be wheeled on the trolley to the recovery ward and continuous monitory of the observations and vital signs for any of the complication must be recorded and documented. During the consenting time, the patient must have been provided with verbal and written instructions emphasising on observations for severe pain and bleeding (in case of perforation), if any unexpected symptoms arise, they should go to accident and emergency immediately (Norton et al 2008). In the endoscopy unit where I work, 3 D imager scope guide was implemented late last year, through its a new technology its own. This initially course some problems because some of the medical team I work with, some will say leave the cortside up, some say let it down because of the insufficient training on the use of the imager. Even on repositioning the patient, some medical team do not know where the arrow on the monitor should be which will affect the image. In treating conditions or scoping patients who has had hysterectomy or with lots of looping in the colon, I have observed the differentiation between when the scope guide is used and when not. The colonoscopist find it much comfortable for the patient and each visualisation and manoeuvres, loops avoided easily and easily straightening, loops if it occurs, the scope guide used may delivers images in high definition. The scope guide has gradually wins the heart of most Endoscopists in my unit for less lengthy time on one procedure. The use of the scope guide there is no need of colonoscopy procedure under X-ray i.e. between barium Enemy or CT scan this eliminates the hazard of radiation for patients. My unit is regards as one of the best bowel cancer screening unit due to the use of scope guide 3 D imager. The procedure is quick, safer, painless and comfortable for most patients, this has really encouraged patient to come for the screening process at my unit. 2nd assignment Minimal sedation is given according to patients preferences in procedures (BSG 2008) such as gastroscopy, brochoscopy flexible sigmodoscopy, colonoscopy, stent insertion to my unit, minimal sedation is mandatory for endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatograph patients (ERCP). Minimal sedation is a method of sedation which was formally known as conscious sedation. In this case, its a technique in which no pain relievers are used therefore making patient to be awake an aware during unpleasant procedure without too much discomfort experience for successful endoscopy, general anaesthesia and minimal sedation used, but minimal sedation is much a safer method to control pain and anxiety during procedures (Rex 2006). In my unit, minimal sedation is used for most procedures done i.e. both lower and upper gastro intestinal endoscopies, formally in my workplace 6 8 mg midazolam was used which is no more used. The report of the rapid response (2008) the maximum dose of midazolam is 5mg which is now the most recent practice in my unit. Minimal sedation has been used and accepted because it does not require an anaesthetist, which is more economical this technique is very useful for endoscopist in providing a better examination which improves patients comfort and amnesic effect (Regula and Sokol-Kobielska 2008). The drug of choice because of its rapid onset, short duration of action is Midazolam, it provide an amnesic effort and help to relax the patient (Norton et al 2008). The most common benzodiazepines are diazepam and midazolam, majority of Endoscopist prefer to use midazolam because of it fast onset of action and high amnesic effect (National Guidelines Clearing House 2003). During procedures the group called benzo diazepams are used either alone or in combination with an opiate e.g. pethidine or fentanyl, when it is been used alone the occurrence of respiratory complication with either midazolam or fentanyl is fairly low. Contrary, the implications increases when both drugs are given in combination.

My Goals Essay -- essays research papers

As the most of my peers, I have been asking myself a question, what is it really I want out of my life? This question has been bothering many people, and not only the college students who are trying to figure out the path which will lead them to the comfortable life. One might ask, what is that comfort that we all are striving for? Is it a state of mind or is it some unknown world that we are so eager to enter? Well, it varies from person to person, it depends on the life that the person has left behind when the decision to go to college was made. There are several aspects of our lives that could influence us and the future decisions that we'll make. The biggest part of our decision making is the way we were raised and the culture we have got used to. Many Americans believe that the success depends on the family background that you have. There are those who say that if the person was raised in a rich family, all opportunities are available to them and there is a high! chance that th e person will live a comfortable life. The same people are saying that if the person was raised in a poor family there are too many obstacles to overcome and most of the time these barriers on the way are too hard to cross. On the other hand, there are those people who say that the America is the land of opportunities and any person could achieve his/her goals if they set their mind to it. It is true that being born in the rich family helps a great deal during the course of your life. You are brought up in the household that provides the best conditions for exploring the world of knowledge. There are no worries about the basic needs like food, shelter or security, and all the resources are provided thanks to the excessive amount of money. Being rich allows people to worry less about the material things and more about the fundamentals of the learning and knowledge. Being born in a rich family also means meeting people and making the contacts earlier in life, which will later be helpful in that most difficult step of finding the first job. There is also the morality, which comes from the conditional learning of the environment that person is surrounded by. Person that is surrounded by the morally and financially stable people will adopt that thinking. Another aspect of being born to a rich family is the set example by the surroundings. When people that! you feel close to have acco... ...lder generation knows that they will do what ever it takes to put their children through school, even if it takes working late nights. For the most part the immigrants do not go to the restaurants very often, they try to save money by cooking home meal and limiting the extra expenses, such as entertainment, clothing and vocation. Within a short period of time, in less than three years immigrant families began to receive middle class income. Their children are in school, and most likely they had gone to school as well to obtain a better profession than the one that pays minimum wage. This is a clear example that it is possible to achieve something in life for any person in the United States. This argument will not be solved until people realize that the excuses are not the easy way out. It seems to me that many people would use their family poverty as an excuse for themselves not to make something of their life. To strive for a certain goal and not to loose interest or motivation is the name of the game for the twenty-first century. Only then, the desirable state of mind and your "pocket" will be achieved. The life that so many people are dreaming of only few steps away.

Halloween And Christianity :: essays research papers

Halloween and Christianity It is often said that Halloween is not the "harmless" holiday it is thought to be, instead it is believed to be a pagan ritual which dates back to the ancient Celtic Druids. According to the article "Should Our Kids Celebrate Halloween?" in Catholic Digest Halloween's origin is very much Christian and American. Although the ancient Celts celebrated a minor festival on the 31st of October, it fell on that day because the Feast of All Saints or "All Hallows" falls on November 1st. During the 840s Pope Gregory IV gad All Saints Day to be celebrated everywhere. The day before the feast became known as "All Hallows Even" or "Hallowe'en". At the time, that day did not have any real significance. In the year of 998, the abbot of the monastery of Cluny in southern France, St. Odilo added a celebration on November 2nd called All Souls Day. The new celebration was a feast whose purpose was to recognize those in heaven and in purgatory. The tradition of dressing up in costumes on Halloween is derived from the Feast of All Souls Day in France. During the 14th and 15th centuries when Europe was hit by outbreaks of the bubonic plague, about half of its population was wiped out. Since life spans were greatly shortened because of the plague, Catholics began to focus on the after life. The number of Masses help largely increased and people of all social classes gathered to dress in different garments and lead lost spirits to the tomb in a daisy chain which became known as the "Dance of Death". Dressing up did not become part of Halloween until the creation of the British colonies in North America. During that period of time, Catholics had no legal rights in England. At times English Catholics attempted to resist. One such occasion was a plot to destroy King James I and his Parliament with gunpowder. The plan was ill-conceived and easily foiled when the guard of the powder, Guy Fawkes, was found and hung on November 5, 1605. The date became widely celebrated in England. Bands of revelers began to wear masks on that date

The Importance of Freedom in Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” Essay

Kate Chopin’s â€Å"The Story of an Hour† grabs its readers from the start and creates an unexpected twist at the end of the short story. Louise Mallard is given the news that her husband has died in a terrible train accident. To her surprise, he arrives home and â€Å"did not even know there had been one† (Chopin, 607). Upon the death of Louise who once believes she was a widow only to find that her husband is still alive, the confusion begins. The death of Louise is questioned by many critics as a state of shock, depression, and sadness. However, Mark Cunningham’s criticism of Kate Chopin’s â€Å"The Story of an Hour† states that her death was instead a discovery of freedom from the physical strains of her marriage with her husband and societal views on women. Cunningham argues that at the sight of her living husband, â€Å"Louise’s death lies elsewhere: in the joy† (Cunningham, 49), that she had finally escaped her marriage a nd the burdens it placed on her life. Cunningham also states that it’s possible that Louise didn’t actually even see her husband but that it doesn’t necessarily matter. Lastly, Cunningham argues that not only does she escape the strains of the marriage, but Louise also escapes society’s natural and degrading views on women and the place they hold in society. In best judgment, Cunningham does an exquisite job at defining the meaning of the significance of Louise’s death. However, I will argue that Louise Mallard’s sight of her husband is important to study because it emphasizes her desperate escape from her physically dangerous marriage, which also needs to be considered. I think emphasis should be placed on the idea of symbolism and the role it played in explaining Louise’s freedom from her marriage. It could be beneficial to ... ...opin, 607). Finally, Cunningham stated that it’s not important whether or not Louise saw her husband before she died. But, I think its important to address that she did see her husband, because this symbolizes her final stretch to freedom. Cunningham’s criticism was certainly successful in creating an understanding of why Chopin wrote the short story in the nineteenth century. Women were in a very tough place in society, but for some like Louise Mallard, there may have been other factors that made freedom such a desirable hope. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. â€Å"The Story of an Hour†. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. Eds. Alison Booth & Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 607-608. Cunningham, M. â€Å"The autonomous female self and the death of Louise Mallard in Kate Chopin’s Story of an Hour.† English Language Notes. 42.1 (2004): 48-55.

Business Law I Chapter 9 Answers Essay

1. Consideration consists of mutual exchange of gains and losses between contracting parties. In the exchange, a gain by the offer is at the same time a loss to the offeror. The legal term used to designate the gain that each party experiences is that party’s legal benefit. Consideration has three characteristics 1) The agreement must involve a bargained-for exchange; 2)the contract must involve adequate consideration; and 3) the benefits and detriments promised must themselves be legal. 2. A legal detriment can be any of the following: 1) doing something that one has a legal right not to do; 2) giving up something that one has a legal right to keep; and 3) regaining from doing something that one has a legal right to do. 3. The law will not enforce an agreement that has not been bargained for. An agreement involves a bargained-for exchange when 1) a promise is made in exchange for another promise, 2) a promise is made in exchange for an act, or 3) a promise is made for forbear ance of an act. 4. A court may refuse to enforce a contract or any clause of a contract if is considers the contract or clause unconscionable, that is, the consideration is so ridiculously inadequate that it shocks the court’s conscience. This designation usually happens when there is a great inequality in bargaining power between the two parties. 5. Consideration can be a promise not to sue. A promise not to sue, when there is right, or at least the apparent right, to sue, is enforceable when it is supported by consideration. Promising not to sue is forbearance. Acceptance of an agreement not to sue, supported by consideration, terminates one’s right to continue any lawsuit, presently or on the future, on grounds described in the agreement. 6. There are three ways that the courts can seek to uphold charitable pledges. The first way involves actual consideration, which occurs when charitable contributions are made on the condition that the promisor be remembered for the gift by having his or her name inscribed in some way on a memorial associated with the project. Another approach is to use either promissory estoppel or public policy to support the claim. Also, when there is no promise to carry out a specific project, the courts have held each pledge made is supported by the pledges of all others who have made similar pledges. This concept of consideration is used in support of all promises of money for undefined causes. 7. If a creditor accepts as full payment an  amount that is less than the amount due, the dispute has been settled by an accord and satisfaction. Accord is the implied or expressed acceptance of less than what has been billed the debtor. Satisfaction is the agreed-to settlement contained in the accord. Only if the dispute is honest, and the offer to settle made in good faith, and not superficial or trivial will the courts entertain arguments based on accord and satisfaction. 8. The agreements that be enforceable by a court of law even though they lack consideration are: a) Promises under seal – enforceable in some states for contracts not involving goods Unenforceable under UCC for contracts involving goods. b) Promises after discharge in bankruptcy – enforceable in most states. c) Promise to pay debts barred by statute of limitation – enforceable. d) Promises enforced by promissory estoppel – enforceable only if offeror knew that offeree would rely on the promise and offeree places himself in a different and difficult position as a result of that promise. e) Option – enforceable under UCC if made by a merchant, in writing, stating the time period over which the offer will remain. 9. Promissory estoppel is a legal doctrine that restricts a party from denying that a promise was made under certain conditions, even though consideration has not been exchanged to bind an agreement. To be effective, promissory estoppel requires that the party making the promise know, or be presumed to know, that the other party might otherwise make a definite and decided change of position in contemplation of those promises. In reaching this doctrine, courts have accepted the principles of justice and fairness in protecting the party receiving the promise from otherwise unrecoverable loses. 10. Shopping online is one of the fastest growing market places on record. Despite its many advantages (quick & efficient, comparison shopping, availability of hard-to-get products) , there are many difficulties: – Cyber-payment option: Wide variety of methods. One of the most popular methods is by credit/debit card. Most online sellers will accept the major credit cards such as Visa, Master Card. This type of system protects both the buyer and the seller. This process may become the most acceptable process because most of the times when people buy and sell in  cyberspace they are dealing with strangers. The online payment process eliminates the identity verification problem. This is important because one of the biggest concerns about online shopping is security. – Cyber-Payment Security Issues: the ease and efficiency of using credit/debit cards is frequently offset by the security concerns associated with their use. The US is not up-to-date as the EU in providing data and privacy protection to its consumers. The EU Data Protection Directive along with EU E-Privacy Directive guarantee the rights of European citizens while at the same time ensuring the smooth exchange of data among those nation-states that honor the privacy and data protection standards themselves. US corporations that are involved with EU corporations must demonstrate that, despite the lack of legislation in the US, the companies themselves will promise to honor the same degree of protection to data and to privacy as guaranteed by the EU. These guarantees have been labeled the Safe Harbor Principles. They are enforced by the US Department of Commerce. It is best for a consumer to check directly with the US Department of Commerce to determine the true status of a company rather than just relying on the company’s blanket assertion that they follow the safe harbor standards.

Language and Identity Essay

Who am I? What is it that defines that personality? Anzaldua argues in her essay that the language is what defines one’s identity. Language is indeed an important component of culture, and culture is known to be a crucial definer of identity. People use language to connect to their identities and communicating their realities and values to themselves and to the world around them†¦ In other words, language is important because people use it to express their thoughts and beliefs. â€Å"People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances† (Baldwin 109). Consequently, language does not necessarily define identity as much as identity defines language. People decide on what language to use in order to communicate with their communities according to their identities. One’s identity defines and regulates the use of language and not the contrary. People speak different languages; this difference is used to identify and distinguish between different people, different ethnicities and races. The human need to belong to a group makes them abide to a specific language and dialect that represents their specific community and differentiate it from the rest. Language is what connects people to their communities; they are directly connected to people who speak the same language as them. Anzaldua argues that â€Å"Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic, I am my language† (Anzaldua 136), which strongly supports the fact that language is used to ensure that people belong to group. Talking the same language and using the same expressions defines to which group people belong to, it also evaluates the truthfulness of the affiliation. â€Å"Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself†, which basically states that language shapes one’s identity. This statement however, does not apply to all situations and communities and is certainly not constant. There are people who cannot identify to a specific group but rather to a variety of communal affiliations. Most people speak multiple languages; each language connects them to a specific culture and group of people. Tan clearly mentions in her story that she had to speak two different languages to her Asian mom who had her own made up English. Tan relates to both her Asian descent and American belongings by using her mom’s made up English to speak with her mom, and uses the proper English to give lectures and speak to most Americans. On the same grounds, Anzaldua learned through her life experiences to frequently use multiple types of English, and many other Dialects of proper Spanish and Mexican Spanish. She uses each language to communicate, connect and affiliate to specific people according to their background. This proves that the assumption that language defines culture and identity fails. What happens to the people who speak many languages, do they not get the benefit and pride of belonging to a certain community? Rather the contrary, they belong to multiple communities and they choose which group they want to communicate with and with which language. People have the ability to switch from a language to another to be part of a group and this supports the idea that identity defines and shapes language, and not the opposite. Language is used as a way to identify with people, but it is also used to distinguish between them. People use language to differentiate between people and associate them to a specific culture and community according to the language they speak. America is known for having a diverse population, and people are identified based on their language; Mexicans can be recognized to be Mexicans because of their accents even though they might be Caucasian. Tan argues that her mom spoke broken English that limited the people’s perception of her capacities. â€Å"People in department stores, banks, restaurants, did not take her seriously† (Tan 144)which strictly proves that people who do speak the proper language of the specific group they happen to be in generates a different treatment than that a true English speaker. Baldwin denounces that black Americans are treated differently than white Americans because they speak English with a different accent. When speaking â€Å"Black English, you have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future† (Baldwin 110) according to Baldwin. People associate language with background which then leads to choose to treat that specific person a talk to him a way they associate with the people who speak that exact same language. In this case, for the minority, it is language that assumes their behavior, but for the other dominant group, it is identity that shapes behavior. It is their identity that tells them that a specific language must be allocated with that specific type of person and then treat them in the way it is conventions set. People speak a specific language because it is in their identity to do so, and they choose to treat people differently according to language. This allows me to conclude that identity defines language, and language triggers behavior. Language is a major crucial component of our everyday life; it is used to differentiate between different categories of people, connect with one each group, and then choose how they will address those people. People argue that it is language that defines which type of person you are and shapes your identity. The arguments and the authors I quoted obviously proved the contrary, and stated that it is one’s identity that sets up and decides on the language used. References: Anzaldua, Gloria.  «How to Tame a Wild Tongue. » Nancy R Comley, David Hamilton, Carl H Klaus, Robert Scholes, Nancy Sommers, Jason T ougaw. Fields of Reading. New york : Bedford/ St. Martin’s , 2010. 131-141. Baldwin, James.  «If black english Isn’t a language, Then Tell Me, What is. » Nancy R Comley, David Hamilton, Carl H Klaus, Robert Scholes, Nancy Sommers, Jason Tougaw. Fields of Reading. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. 109-113. Tan, Amy.  «Mother Tongue. » Nancy R Comley, David Hamilton, Carl H Klaus, Robert Scholes, Nancy Sommers, Jason Tougaw. Fields of Reading. New York : Bedford/St. Matin’s, 2010. 142-147.

Communication and professional relationships Essay

Assessment task – TDA 2.3 Communication and professional relationships with children, young people and adults. 1.1) Describe how to establish respectful, professional relationships with children and young people Establishing relationships with children and young people can be hard, especially within a school environment. Ground rules must be established, in order for there to be mutual respect. It is important that the child/young adult understands that you are there to support them, but not to be their friend. It is important to understand the age of the person you are communicating with – what issues and problems may be affecting them, at what is significant to their lives at that time. This understanding will enable you to support them effectively at any phase of their life. Simple things like maintaining eye contact when speaking, and listening and commenting appropriately, ensure that the other person knows you have heard and understood what they have said. By setting a good example, you show children what is appropriate, and how to communicate correctly with each other. Something as simple as praising a child for correct behaviour is enough to inspire them to repeat it, and also inspires others to do the same. By using positive behaviours, you inspire a positive result. Five key things to remember when building and maintaining any relationship within the school are: Always remain professional: no bad language, inappropriate conduct, and don’t bring your home life to work with you. Treat others with respect. It is surprising how well they will respond! Notice the efforts and achievements of others, staff or students, however small. Give practical support when it is needed. Always avoid gossip, and negativity, within the workplace. 1.2) Describe with examples how to behave appropriately for a child or young person’s stage of development. By the time the child/young person has reached the age range of key stages 3 – 4, they will most likely have a different style of communicating from stages 1-2. They may have a better attention span, be able to immerse themselves in tasks for longer periods of time, and communicate about their activities in a more adult manner. At key stage 1-2 you can expect children to lose focus easily, with play being more interesting than class work, and  they will be far more excitable. It will be important to recognise, and adapt, to each age level, and encourage behaviour that is expected at that age, and discourage behaviour that is not. As children age, it is inevitable that language will become less formal, and they may well be less willing to contribute in a discussion, or speak out in class, due to heightened self-awareness, and less self-confidence. They will also start using different methods of communicating – email, instant messaging, and social networking are becoming more and more common, with children as young as 5 having Facebook accounts and virtual profiles. An understanding of these technologies will be useful to support children to stay out of danger. As a teaching assistant, it is important to help those who are less outgoing, and support them to make themselves heard. You can do this by quietly encouraging them to put up their hand and answer a question, or even by setting them goals to speak up once a day. It is important to recognise each achievement of a child or young person, no matter how small it seems to you, as it is likely that it would be a big accomplishment for them. Changing the style of language that you use will help interaction with different age ranges, but children and young people are always conscious of how adults communicate with each other – and it is this observation that teaches them for the future. 1.3) Describe how to deal with disagreements between children and young people Disagreements between students (and staff) usually happen at either break, or lunch time. With any argument or disagreement, it is important to find out what happened. This includes each person’s opinion of what happened, from the beginning, in their own words, and how it made them feel. Each person must feel that they have been listened to and understood, and that they have had a fair chance to say their piece. It may be that you need support from other members at this stage, especially if the debate has become heated! Once all sides have been heard, you can decide how to progress. An apology may be needed from one party, or if a misunderstanding has taken place, it may be appropriate to sit everyone down together to discuss the incident as a group. It is important with all students that they understand the link between emotions and behaviour, and how their own behaviour can affect the others around them. By talking in groups, everyone can appreciate how their own behaviours and emotions contribute to the well-being of the other students. 1.4) Describe how own  behavior could†¦ Promote effective interactions with children and young people Your own behaviour, as a teaching assistant, can have a very positive affect and influence on the children and young people you help and support. If they see that you are being respectful, courteous and tolerant, listening attentively, being kind and understanding with the children and adults surrounding you, and that you are recognising their achievements and ideas, then children will hopefully, in turn value and respect one another. Impact negatively on the interactions with children and young people If children or young people see that you are rude to someone, for example a member of staff; not saying please or thank you, interjecting in conversation, or not paying attention when someone is talking to you, they may well think that these are acceptable behaviours. Children and young adults may also may not find you approachable, and not be so keen to come to you with their problems, issues or concerns. 2.1)Describe how to establish respectful, professional relationships with adults Adults working within the education profession should expect an environment of mutual support, and openness. However, this is dependent on the attitude of each individual, and their commitment to maintaining positive relationships. Staff should work in a team – there should be no lone working in schools, and the team should communicate positively with each other, parents, and professionals from outside the school. You will need to remain professional even outside of the education setting. For example, you might be out at the Christmas party, with friends, colleagues, or even parents of the children you support. You need to be trustworthy – avoid talking about people in a negative way, this will only impact you negatively in return. Be respectful of others: you not always see eye to eye with a colleague, but listening to what they have to say, and valuing their ideas and opinions helps keep communication open. There are varied ways and means of supporting individuals, but the PIPE acronym is a good way to remember the basics: Practical: This may be as simple as helping someone who is unfamiliar with the class room layout or school surroundings, or assisting a disabled student to navigate a corridor Information: You may be required to pass on material about a situation, or be asked to a write reports on the student you are supporting Professional: This could be by helping the teacher or session leader with their lesson plan, or you may be asked if you can assist and observe a new member of staff Emotional: This could be anything from supporting a student with an emotional situation, to talking to a colleague at lunch time about a stressful incident, or even just keeping a good sense of humour during a difficult time. 2.2) Describe the importance of the adult relationship as a role models for children and young people Children will be leading by example, and will want to come to school if the environment is positive, constructive, and supportive. Communication and support between team members should be practical, informative, professional, and emotional, and as a role model in the school environment, this should reflect in the relationships that that team has with students, and other adults. Whilst at work you must remember to leave your personal feelings, and home life, at home. However stressful life might be, the children and young people you support need your concentration and focus to enable them to achieve their goals. Negative behavior can impact those around you, and make for an uncomfortable working environment for all involved. 3.1)Describe how communication with children and young people differs across different age ranges and stages of development Communication techniques will differ depending on the ages of the person. Young children will need more reassurance than older children, to ensure they feel safe, and are doing the right activity in the right way. Young children will be anxious to see their parents during the first term, often asking how long it will be until they can go home. Supporting them at this time is crucial, as it can make school a rewarding, exciting place if they are encouraged and nurtured in the right way. Teenagers will likely need more guidance, and some help to talk about their issues, problems and thoughts. TAs will need to adapt their vocabulary when talking to different age ranges, so that they can be understood. Communication can be verbal, nonverbal, informal and formal, as they learn to communicate and adapt using these different types of communication as they mature. 3.2)Describe the main differences between communicating with adults and communicating with children and young people There are similarities between the age ranges, in terms of communication techniques, such as maintaining eye contact and interest, listening to what is being said and responding appropriately, and treating the student with the courtesy and respect that you would expect yourself. Always be clear with your dialogue: don’t use unnecessarily complicated language or sarcasm, make sure that what you have said has been understood, and keep your instructions clear and precise (no long lists), and always stay professional. However, there are differences between the communication techniques used for children and adults. For example, the relationship that you have with a child in the school setting is that of a carer, and may appear patronising if used on others. An approach that was successful in the classroom when supporting a student to understand a maths problem, may not be an appropriate approach when speaking with a colleague or co-worker. Children copy adult behaviours, so keep this in mind when communicating with them! Show respect for your colleagues and children will pick up on this, and show respect for their peers. Acknowledge the contributions of others, and say thank you, even if you don’t always agree. Remember that as an elder in the school environment, you will be looked to as a role model. 3.3)Identify examples of communication difficulties that may exist It is likely that communication difficulties will be encountered occasionally, within the school environment, but there are ways to avoid this happening. There are many, many examples of communication difficulties that could arise in the school environment, some examples of potential problems are: speech delay impairment With any one of these examples, a care package/person centred support plan would accompany the student, and it is essential that all staff who work with them has read and understood every element of it. 3.4)Describe how to adapt communication to meet different communication needs To support your students, and team, effectively, you will need to be constantly adapting your communication style. This will depend on the needs of the individual, and you will need to be aware of their potential problems. As a good teaching assistant, you should be able to quickly observe as assess the situation, in order to cope effectively and ensure a positive result. You will need to detect any sensitivity in the student, and support them if they are nervous or shy about speaking. Some examples of good communication are: Speak slowly and clearly. Do not interrupt. However tempting it may be, the person needs the opportunity to speak without interjection. Arrange a translator in advance if required. Whether it is for a foreign language or signing, it is crucial that this be prepared for, to spare the student and embarrassment or upset. Use different methods of communication – if a student is struggling with verbal instruction, get creative! Use flash cards, drawings or hand signals! Maintain eye contact, respond appropriately, and use positive body language. Be empathetic: a child hearing the words â€Å"I understand† can be comforting and reassuring. Have respect for the speaker, don’t allow yourself to be distracted by other conversations. These are the basics for communication with a child, young adult or colleague. In any situation communication can be adapted to be appropriate for the audience, such as: Think about the situation or occasion, and with whom you are speaking. The context of your communication makes a difference both in the way you engage with others, and in the way they interpret your communication. To adapt effectively, you need to understand who you are talking with. See things from their view, and tailor your communication to them as much as possible, by using the points above. Acknowledge that there are differences in personality, whether you are speaking with children are adults. Some children might appreciate a  light hearted approach, whereas the head teacher will expect professionalism at all times. Be intentional with the language you use. Words can help you quickly connect with someone, but they may also offend them. A joke that was funny in the staff room may be wildly inappropriate in the classroom! Avoid using sarcasm with children. It is generally considered as a negative form of humour, and may easily be misunderstood. Choose words based on the age, education, and literacy level of the person you are talking to. By assuming that someone understands the level at which you are speaking, you could easily offend them. 3.5)Describe how to deal with disagreements between†¦ The practitioner and children and young people Dealing with disagreements can be difficult. You cannot always say exactly what you are thinking, and in order to remain professional, you must always be polite, fair, and respectful. Disagreements and misunderstandings should be dealt with as soon as possible, preferably with another adult as a mediator. When dealing with a disagreement or argument between children, for example in the playground, you should not allow yourself to be drawn into any bickering. If the pupil does not calm down, or is particularly defiant, it may be wise to take a ‘time out’ from a difficult situation, in order to have the time and space to think about what has been said, and to calm down. You can then approach the situation logically and rationally, giving each side of the argument a chance to speak. It is important at this time that you remain supportive to each child, be polite, and sympathetic. The practitioner and other adults In a disagreement between colleagues, this kind of situation is unlikely to resolve itself if left, and it is uncomfortable to work in an atmosphere of tension. Bear in mind that this will soon be picked up by other staff and students. Avoid being drawn into disagreements, if they do not concern you, as this rarely has a good outcome and can often turn into negativity and gossip. Asking the advice of an impartial adult can also help to get an unbiased review of the situation, and how to progress from it. 4.1)Identify relevant legal requirements and procedures covering confidentiality, data protection and the disclosure of information Whilst communication is the key to good relationships with students and colleagues, there are times when  information shouldn’t be shared with others, and it is crucial to know who, and when, to pass it on to. The key people working with children in the school setting should have a good understanding of the current laws and legislations that protect the children they support. These people are: teachers, teaching assistants, healthcare staff (nurses) and any principals/head teachers. There are laws protecting children, and staff, with regards to safeguarding information. The main legislation that governs the safeguarding of materials is The Data Protection Act 1998. This ensures that relevant information is not passed on without consent, and outlines what must be shared, in the interests of child safety. There are eight principles, regarding the principles of practice or information, and these state that information should be†¦ â€Å"used fairly and lawfully; All data about an individual must be obtained fairly, and lawfully. The individual must be informed of the purposes that the information is being collected, and who is going to process it. The new Data Protection Act covers personal data in both manual and electronic form, meaning that emails are just as safe as paper files, and must be treated the same way. With information kept in electronic form, appropriate measures must be taken to keep it safe. While a padlock may be sufficient for a filing cabinet, data encryption and regular back-ups may be required for information stored on a  computer. Under the Data Protection Act, all organisations that hold confidential information about individuals must be registered with the Information Commissioners Office. This helps to protect the information that is held, and ensure it is not shared unnecessarily. Training on safeguarding children is mandatory in the education setting, and this will provide all the information about the specific policies and procedures that apply to each school, and who to contact about concerns, or questions. Usually, the first point of contact for a concern or question would be the line manager, such as head of safeguarding or principal, or the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO). The individual who provided the information is also entitled to certain rights, under the Data Protection Act 1998. Any individual can make an access request to view the information that is stored, and also to change, block or erase it. The information is also subject to protocols to ensure it is not used to cause damage or distress, or to make significant decisions, by means of an automated system. These guidelines, regulations and policies not only protect children within the education environment, but also staff. For example, at an interview or hearing, everything that is said can be written down, and safely stored for reference, only being shared on a need to know basis. 4.2)Describe the importance of reassuring children, young people and adults of the confidentiality of shared information and th e limits of this It is important to reassure children that they will stay safe, and that you will only repeat what they have told you to those who need to know. Parental consent is usually required before information can be shared; however, if the pupil is at risk of harm to themselves or others, confidentiality can be breached. In all situations, it is necessary to tell the pupil that you will not be able to maintain confidentiality, and that you will have to tell someone else. It is crucial to be educated in the policies and procedures of the individual school setting, and to know who to turn to, should the situation ever arise. 4.3)Identify the kinds of situations when confidentiality protocols must be breached There may be times when it is crucial for staff to know sensitive information about a student, for example, if they are suffering a health condition that could affect them in the classroom, such as asthma or epilepsy. In these circumstances, an agreed protocol would be set up within the school, and all staff would be trained on how to manage  such circumstances. The parents of the child must give permission for the information to be shared, and the staff must do everything in their power to protect the privacy of every child, and adult. It is also required for the school to have designated first aiders, and for the children/young adults to know who these people are, in case of an emergency. There are certain circumstances in which a practitioner can pass on the information to the relevant authority without permission. If you become aware of information which led you to a genuine suspicion that a child is being abused at home, then it would it be right for the responsible adult to pass on the information. The general rule is that if you believe a child to be at a significant risk of harm then you should pass on personal information to those who would be able to prevent harm. Every school will have policies and procedures that must be followed in these circumstances.