Animal Testing Essay Example for Free

Animal Testing Essay In this topic, I will show animal testing. Animal testing is a part of our everyday life. Do you know that many of the products around us and use everyday are still tested on animals? However, many people complain about using animals testing, and they argue animals have life right. People produce a new medicine or cosmetics. But the new product needs to be tested what will affect humans. If the new product wont be tested on animals, who will volunteer for new product testing? I think nobody wants to do it. Animal testing saves our lives. Animal testing is necessary for many reasons. A lot of animals are used for experimentation every year. For example: white mice, dog, rabies, and monkey. Without them we dont know if a product is safe to use or not. Animal testing is important because it provides an excellent insight into the complex interactions within a biological system that no existing alternative can provide. Humans and animals alike share many of the same basic biological processes and interaction (Jason,1996). We need to understand animal testing; it is helpful to be aware of different kinds of research conducted on animals and engage in testing. The story Animal Experimentation Is Ethical by Derbyshire, he agrees animal experimentation is necessary. He says: the best hopes to treat or cure any number of diseases all rely on current animal experiments(Derbyshire, 2006 pg 11). Animal testing improves our safety and increases our knowledge of nature and can therefore increase the possibilities for human action, advancing the cause of human freedom. Also, his consensus has formed regarding the three Rs: refinement, reduction, and replacement are defined. The three Rs is importance and advantages of alternatives to animal testing methods are mentioned. Successful promotion of animal research can only begin when we withdraw support for the three Rs. On the other hand in the story Animal Have Rights by Tom Regan, the author argues that non-human animals have the same rights as humans do because animal are similar rational and emotional beings. He contends that viewing animals as inferior constitutes specialism, a prejudice similar to sexism and racism. Furthermore, he claims that treating animals equally fosters individual growth and helps society become more compassionate. Regan (1997) says using animals for testing is a wrong way. It is wrong to treat weaker human beings, especially those who are lacking in normal human intelligence, as tools or renewable resources or models or commodities. It cannot be right, therefore, to treat other animals as if they were tools, models and the like (Regan,1997 pg 21). Animal testing is a part of everyday life. From the shampoos and conditioners that consumers buy to medicines that patients receive, many everyday products are tested on animals. Hampton (2010) says the new products testing is difference between humans and animals. Companies test the new products on animal protect people safety; people can buy the safe products and couldnt hurt them. Companies test on animals to ensure their products are safe not just for profit (Hampton,2010). Animal testing has advanced human welfare and animal testing is necessary. Ranganatha (2012) information is given about the institutions researching alternatives to animal testing and resources available to assist in searching for alternatives are listed. Ethical considerations on the alternative methods are also discussed. It is concluded that much greater effort should be put into overcoming the barriers to the acceptance of replacement alternatives which currently limit the contributions they have to make toward greater humanity and better biomedical science (Ranganatha, 2012). Animal testing can help save human lives. Some animal testing is done to promote a product or to understand the effects of those products. Anonymous (2012) without animal testing first, nobody know whether it is safe for someone to take a new drug or use an improved anesthetic. Researchers may start to use the small flies, if the products havent happen wrong thing, then move up to mice or rabbits and then up to animals much like ourselves. The new products are safety they might test on human volunteers try it, and see the side result. The new products havent killed any animals or people yet, they will sell the new products to the market (Anonmous, 2012). PIR Partners Research (2008) Consumers demand and have a right to expect that the products they depend upon are safe if used properly. They also need reassurance that physicians can save victims in case of accident. Currently, the only way to guarantee these protections is through knowledge gained from animal testing( PIR Partners R esearch, 2008 pg 33). Animal testing is a good way to protect consumers able to use these new products to help them with their illness and even save some of their lives. Without animal testing we dont know if a product is safe to use or not . PIR Partners Research (2008) animal testing has helped people using safe products of the important ways. For example: the company produce the baby food and victims, before the use animal testing and the researcher to resolve the problem that might be caused by a drug or product. It is the first test step. The results were sometimes tragic. The researcher would make sure the products is safe. Many parent hope and have right to expect that the product that they believe on are safe if used properly. Today the only way to guarantee these protection is through knowledge gained from animal testing. ( PIR Partners Research, 2008). Animal experimentation is necessary to ensure product safety. The government requires that the new drugs be tested on animals before sale to market. On the other hand, the computer testing cannot substitute for animal testing . George Poste suggests (2006) although present-day technology cannot yet replace many types of animal research, the research community is committed to finding new ways to reduce and replace animal testing. This ethical commitment is embodied in strict animal welfare protocols at most university, government and industrial laboratories(Poste,2006). Today animal testing is only because of animal experimentation. If the new drugs are only test in a computer lad, who is first able to use them? Kyle(2007) lab animals are also used to help train doctors and veterinarians to be able to practice doing operations before doing the operation on a person. All of these tests work because, according to the BBC website there are No differences between lab animal and humans that cant be factored into tests. (Kyle, 2007). Many of the people who oppose animal testing believe that replacement should be used in these test. If the new product wont be tested on animals, who will volunteer for new product testing. Naik (2011) if some of people oppose animal testing, who would like to volunteer for new products testing. I think nobody wants to do it. The people who against it and say is unjust for animals, also they say animals are equal to people. If the company produces a new medicine or cosmetic. Researchers dont test on animal at the first, they look for some volunteers to test on the new products. I think nobody wants to test at the first. (Nail, 2011). Many people suggest new products test on Syrian hamster embryos(SHE). On the other hand, Partners Research (2008) computer data banks allow for the reduction of test duplication. They are also useful in the initial evaluation of chemicals slated for further study; unsuitable chemicals can be eliminated from consideration prior to the institution of animal testing. But computers can only process and store existing knowledge, much of which has come from animal studies. Animal testing is needed to expand that knowledge base (Partners Research, 2008). Animal testing cannot separate with new technology, too. People produce a new medicine or cosmetics. But the new product have to be test for what will affect for humans. Kyle (2007) says that animal testing is a well regulated method to improve the safety of products and to help develop life saving medicines, for which there are no alternatives. This is currently the only way to test many products and must continue to be used to ensure our safety (Kyle,2007). Researchers want to discover the products information. The information is collected and used to make assumptions about how the products will work on humans and how the products might affect humans. In conclusion, animal testing based on scientific result, it is given us a lot of safe products. The scientific community has been successful in reducing the number of animals used in safety testing, as well as in refining test methods to reduce any pain or distress these animals may experience. The new medicine or cosmetics are always tested on animals first. The new products if safe might be tested on people, try it and see the result. Today, many companies use animal and lab computers to test new products. However, animal testing would find out more detail information and dont hurt people. Animal testing is safe for our live. This is currently the only way to test many products and must continue to be used to ensure our safety.

Workforce Obsolescence

Workforce Obsolescence The loss of critical skills, i.e., the disappearance of non-replaceable workforce, is a problem faced by many product sectors tasked with supporting critical systems. This problem is common for organizations that must manage the DMSMS-type obsolescence problems for hardware, software and materials discussed in the other chapters of this book. For some products, the loss of worker skills and experience can be mitigated by simply adjusting hiring rates and instituting training of younger workers, however, in other sectors experience can be very difficult to replace. This chapter focuses on the loss of critical skills that are either non-replaceable or take prohibitively long times to reconstitute. 13.1 Defining Workforce Obsolescence Mismatches between the skills possessed by the workforce and the skills needed by employers create a number of issues that complicate the long-term manufacturing and sustainment of systems. These mismatches have been classified into the following three general categories: skills obsolescence, skill shortage, and critical skills loss. Skills obsolescence (also referred to as human capital obsolescence) describes situations in which workers lack the skills needed to either become employed or remain employed, (De Grip and Van Loo, 2002). This often includes the segment of the workforce that have skills, but those skills are obsolete requiring retraining of the worker. Where obsolete skills refer to skills that are no longer needed. Skill shortage describes situations where there are insufficient available skill competences to fill the needs of an organization, e.g., (Green et al., 1998). Skills shortage articulates the need to identify, train and retain the workforce to fill current and expected future skill needs. Skills shortage has many causes including the speed of technology advancement, e.g., (Duan et al., 2002), training and education gaps (Skinner et al., 2004), and can also be the result of an organizations inability or failure to protect its core skill competencies over long periods of time or during economic downturns (Melymuka, 2002). Critical skills loss is relevant to this book and is the focus of this chapter. Critical skills loss refers to the loss of skills that either cannot be replaced or require a prohibitively long time to reconstitute, (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015). In this case reconstitution of the skills may require many years if possible at all. Critical skills loss is a special case of organizational forgetting, i.e., the loss of knowledge gained through learning-by-doing. Organizational forgetting can be caused by labor turnover, periods of inactivity, and/or failure of an organization to institutionalize tacit knowledge (Brsanko et al., 2010). Critical skills loss is a permanent and involuntary form of organizational forgetting that may be unrecoverable. Critical skills loss (in the context of legacy system support) is the result of long-term (20+ years) of workforce attrition where highly-skilled workers retire without a sufficient number of younger workers to learn their skills and take their p lace.[1] Critical skills loss is not necessarily the result of poor planning or lack of foresight (and although activity is light, it is not nonexistent); rather it is an inevitable outcome of the organizations dependence on a highly-specialized highly-critical skill set for which there is small, but non-zero, demand, (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015). It should be stressed that critical skills loss is a long-term phenomenon it occurs gradually over 20+ years, i.e., over the span of several generations of management coupled with mergers, acquisitions, and product line changes, critical skills often diffuse and eventually disappear. In the context of this book, the salient issue that defines workforce obsolescence for legacy mission-, infrastructure-, and safety-critical systems is critical skills loss. 13.2 How Critical Skills Loss Impacts Systems and Where it Comes From Critical skills loss is rarely a problem in high-volume low-skill manufacturing applications, e.g., assembly-line workers. For these applications, an appropriate workforce nearly always exists or can be readily constructed through training programs. However, managing human skills obsolescence is becoming a significant problem for organizations tasked with supporting legacy systems. These support organizations need to be able to understand, forecast and manage a highly-specialized workforce with potentially irreplaceable skill sets. The system support and management challenges created by the loss of critical human skills have been reported in many industry sectors including: healthcare (Waldman, 2004), nuclear power (Nuclear Workforce Planning, 2008), aerospace (Testimony of Elliot Pulham, 2002), and other enterprises(Leibold and Voelpel, 2002). In the IT industry, the shortage of mainframe application programmers experienced in legacy applications is very problematic, (Goodridge and McGee, 2002) and (Hilson, 2001); in this case the necessary skills are no longer being taught because demand has dropped and younger workers interests are elsewhere. The loss of critical skills is most troublesome for organizations that must provide long-term support for legacy systems. For example, for defense systems, the loss of critical skills is potentially devastating: Even a 1-year delay in funding for CVN-76 [aircraft carrier] will result in the loss of critical skills which will take up to 5 years to reconstitute through ne w hires and training. A longer delay could cause a permanent loss in the skills necessary to maintain our carrier force. (Congressional Record, 1994). The causes of critical skills loss include: education and training declines (e.g., universities no longer educate engineers in the programming languages that are used in many legacy systems, (Shead, 2013); younger workers may perceive that certain occupations are in decline, e.g., nuclear power (Nuclear Workforce Planning, 2008) and are therefore discouraged from entering them; similarly younger workers may perceive certain occupations as not cutting-edge and therefore not enter them (Ahrens et al., 1995) (Adolph, 1996); younger workers may leave jobs supporting legacy systems to pursue other positions that appear to be more lucrative and exciting (Figure 13-2 in Section 13.3.3 shows an exit age distribution for a legacy control system); the shrinkage of feeder occupations, e.g., historically the U.S. Navy has provided highly-skilled workers to the nuclear power industry (Nuclear Workforce Planning, 2008); older workers protecting their jobs by not passing knowledge along to younger workers, e.g., (AndolÃ…Â ¡ek, 2011); and fundamental differences between young and old workers regarding job perceptions (i.e., social and cultural influences) (Goodridge and McGee, 2002). 13.3 Quantifying the Impact of Critical Skills Loss Critical skills loss impacts the sustainment of mission-, infrastructure- and safety-critical systems. As the human capital that possesses the skills to support a system shrinks, the time that the system is down (non-operational) when the system requires support will increase. Downtime increases lead to increased business interrupt time, which results in a loss of revenue for manufacturing systems. Increases in downtime in the transportation, defense and service industries decreases system availability, which can lead to a loss of revenue, safety compromises, property damage, and loss of life (e.g., emergency vehicle unavailability). In this section, we briefly review the applicability of some existing models to quantifying the impact of critical skills loss and then describe one modeling approach that estimates the financial impact of the problem. 13.3.1 Existing Approaches Nearly all of the existing modeling and quantitative treatments address the problem of skills obsolescence, which is a different problem than the critical skills loss problem addressed in this chapter. Most skills obsolescence treatments assume that workers skills become outdated or are otherwise no longer useful, possibly as a result of automation and other advances in technology. These works focus on the mitigation of skill decay in a workforce over time. The only existing work applicable to critical skills loss focuses on knowledge preservation, i.e., the capture of non-replenishable knowledge, (Joe and Yoong, 2004) (Hailey and Hailey). Some applicable work has also been done on retirement wave planning (Friel, 2002); however, this work focuses on head count rather than skill content. The modeling performed by Bohlander and Snell (2010) addresses a situation that is similar to critical skills loss, however, worker attrition and the costs associated the unavailability of the workers is not considered. In Bordoloi (1999), a model for different skill level workers that enter and exit a company is developed; the model takes into account the rate at which the company gains and loses workers. However, the model in(Bordoloi, 1999) does not estimate workers experience as a function of time and therefore does not determine the impact of critical skills loss on supporting systems. In the planning model developed by Huang et al.(2009) the goal is the determination of an ideal hiring rate using differing worker skill levels. While this model uses workforce simulation and determines the ideal hiring rate, the model does not take into account the costs incurred by the unavailability of workers. The basis for most workforce planning models is the physical sum of people employed, (Holt, 2011). However, the model developed by Holt, however, does not consider the aging of individual workers over time. There are models that have some applicability to critical skills loss in the maintenance workforce planning literature, e.g., (Koochaki et al., 2013) (Martorell et al., 2010) (Ait-Kaki, et al. 2011) and (Ahire et al., 2000). These models focus on optimizing maintenance scheduling and resource allocation. Maintenance policies have the goal of maximizing plant or process line availability while concurrently minimizing cost through the timely presence (and appropriate skill set) of maintenance workers. Koochaki et al., 2013) points out that maintenance workers are usually highly skilled and therefore difficult to recruit and that the efficient and effective use of a scarce maintenance workforce is very important. The model in (Koochaki et al., 2013) addresses the impact of limited ma intenance workers (i.e., maintenance resource constraints) on the grouping of maintenance activities while comparing age-based replacement and condition-based maintenance (CBM). In (Ahire et al., 2000), the makespan (which is the total length of the schedule) is minimized for a groups of preventive maintenance tasks constrained by workforce availability. Other papers treat the influence of CBM on maintenance scheduling and workforce planning, for examples see (Koochaki et al., 2013) and the references contained therein. In general these references focus on the determination of the optimum size maintenance workforce. 13.3.2 Modeling Human Skills Loss A detailed model for the loss of non-replinishable maintenance resources has been developed in (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015) and (Sandborn and Williams, 2016). The technical development of the model is briefly summarized here, see (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015) and (Sandborn and Williams, 2016) for more detail. The model uses historical workforce data to forecast the size and experience of the workforce pool as a function of time. The workforce experience pool is then used to determine the cost of supporting (sustaining) a system as a function of time. The model was created to address the questions: what will todays skills pool look like in the future? and what impact will the future skills pool have on the organizations ability to continue to support the system? A key assumption in this model is that sufficient experience exists today to adequately support the system, and we wish to forecast the future workforce skills pools experience relative to todays skills pool. The model has four primary inputs: a current age distribution (fC), a hiring age distribution (fH), an exit age distribution (fL) and the hiring rate (H). Assuming a stationary analysis, the distribution of exit ages (fL) and the distribution of hiring ages (fH) and are constant. This does not mean that the same number of people are hired each year, but rather that the hired peoples ages are always distributed equivalently. The same assumption is made for fL. The distribution of current ages (fC) is used as an initial condition. To assess workforce pool size and experience over time, we must project the experience of the workers in the pool into the future. This projection starts with the initial conditions in the pool and accounts for age related loss and subsequent hiring. The level of experience within the skills pool changes over time and can be determined from: 1) the new hires added to the skills pool; 2) the attrition (loss) rate of skilled workers; and 3) the varying skill levels of the workers in the pool and how those skill levels (experience) increase as workers remain in the pool. The net frequency of people in the pool of age a during year i relative to year 0 is given by, (13-1) where, i is the number of years from the start of the analysis, a is age, and Hi is the fraction of new hires per year (fraction of the pool size at the start of the analysis period i = 0). The first term in the brackets in Equation 13-1 is the current workforce pool size (relative to year 0), the second term in the brackets in Equation 13-1 is the number of new hires (relative to year 0), and the multiplier accounts for the retention rate. Note, Equation 13-1 assumes that the hiring rate, Hi is the same for all ages, a. The initial condition for the model is that the fraction of people of age a relative to year 0 in year 0 is given by,. The cumulative net frequency of people in the skills pool, NNET, in year i is determined by summing Ni(a) over all the ages (y = youngest to r = retirement), (13-2) Calculating the size of the workforce pool (head count) over time is necessary but not sufficient to capture an organizations future ability to support a system because workers have different levels of experience. Because of the varying experience, not all workers provide an equivalent level of value to the support of the system. In this model, experience is defined as the length of time that a worker has spent in a particular position. The cumulative experience in the workforce pool in year i, Ei, is calculated using, (13-3) where, RE and IE map age to the experience measured in years (RE and IE are determined using a parametric model from actual data). Note, while experience has the units of time, Ei, which is used in this model, represents the cumulative experience relative to the initial condition. The time to perform maintenance in year i is found from the cumulative experience using, (13-4) where, is the time to perform a maintenance activity with a skills pool having E0 experience at i = 0. In Equation 13-4 the time required to perform maintenance increases as experience decreases due to the following factors: 1) less-experienced workers require more time to perform maintenance (learning curve effects), and/or 2) if the pool of workers capable of performing the required maintenance task shrinks, appropriate workers may not be available at every site and may have to travel from a different location, which takes time. The most significant impact of the loss of critical human skills for legacy systems is the ability to perform system support (corrective maintenance) in a timely manner. Corrective maintenance costs consist of: spare parts, labor, downtime, overhead, consumables/handling, and equipment/facilities. When a corrective maintenance event occurs, the cost of performing the required maintenance action is, (13-5) where is the fraction of the maintenance events of severity level j that result in a business interrupt, is the cost of replacement parts (if replacement parts are needed) in year i,is the cost of labor (per unit time) in year i (with appropriate overhead applied), and is the cost of business interrupt (per unit time) in year i. , and are assumed to be discounted using an appropriate discount rate. 13.3.3 Example System Support Case Study A detailed case study was previously published in (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015) and (Sandborn and Williams, 2016). In this section we only provide a few highlights from that case study. The case study considered the support of a legacy control system for a chemical product manufacturing company (the system was originally developed and deployed in the 1970s) and has over 2000 instances (plants) installed and currently operating and supported worldwide. In this case, because the process line availability is very important, unscheduled downtime cannot be tolerated. The model overviewed in Section 13.3.2 requires three distribution inputs: the current age distribution (fC), the distribution of hiring age (fH) and the distribution of exit age (fL). Two of these distribution inputs are readily available from organizations field data: the hiring age (fH) and a current age distribution (fC), Figure 13-1. The current age distribution (in Figure 13-1b) has a mode of 55 years, which is very close to the early retirement age in the organization, thereby demonstrating the issue that this chapter is focused on. The exit age distribution (fL) shown in Figure 13-2 for this case study was synthesized using the distributions for fH(a) and fC(a) in Figure 13-1 along with the assumption of a stationary process. Figure 13-2 is a bathtub curve. It indicates that workers either exit early or exit late (but few exit between ages 45 and 60. The younger workers exit because they are changing jobs within the company. The company modeled in this case study, has had difficulty retaining young workers (engineers) to support the legacy system. The younger engineers have a tendency to relocate to other job opportunities within the company that they perceive as having better long-term career prospects. Above age 60 the workers are retiring. Figure 13-2 supports the critical skills loss observation made in Section 13.2 that younger workers leave legacy system support jobs (presumably for other positions). The number of workers (pool size) is shown in Figures 13-1 and 13-2, but the experience contained within the pool is not reflected in these distributions. To get from pool size to the workforce pool experience, the mapping from age to applicable experience is needed. The parameters for the mapping function in Equation 13-3 were generated from the years of experience (on the control system) and the years of service to the company. The net pool size (number of workers) over time as a fraction of the pool size in 2010, NNET, is shown in Figure 13-3a. Figure 13-3b shows the experience relative to 2010, and Figure 13-3c shows the average age of the workers in the pool. The results in Figure 13-3 assume no hiring, H = 0. Figures 13-3a and 13-3b indicate that although a 10% drop in head count occurs in the first 6 years, the experience remains approximately constant (existing workers are gaining enough on-the-job experience to offset the drop in head count). After 2016, the experience drops as the oldest and most experienced workers leave and are not being sufficiently replenished. Assuming that the lost skills are replenishable (they are not for the real company treated in this case study), we can estimate what the future hiring rate, Hi, would have to be to preserve the initial level of experience, E0, in the skills pool. Equation 13-1 is used to determine the annual hiring rate, Hi, that is required to replenish the cumulative experience lost as a result of attrition and retirement. Figure 13-4 shows results for hiring rate, Hi, relative to the initial pool size P0as a function of the number of years from the start of the analysis. Figure 13-4 shows that no hiring is required in the first five years (we are not allowing hiring to drop below 0, a hiring rate below 0 would reflect a layoff situation). A hiring rate of over 6% is required starting in 2017 for 9 years and then settles to 2-5% for all the years thereafter. When H is greater than zero in (4), the hiring rate is applied to the entire hiring age distribution, fH. The required hiring rate solved for in Figure 13-4 accounts for both the time required for new workers to learn the skills necessary to support the system and the exit age distribution in Figure 13-1. Figure 13-5 shows the annual cost of supporting the legacy control system through year 2040 (all 2000+ instances of the system are costed here). The cost modeling is performed using a stochastic discrete-event simulator that samples time-to-failure distributions for the components of the control system to obtain maintenance events (determining the maintenance event dates and the components that need replacement). Subsystem-specific (and severity category specific[2]) failure distributions are sampled to obtain failure dates for the system. At each maintenance event, maintenance resources are drawn and a cost is estimated using Equation 13-5. Most of the maintenance events do not result in business interrupt time because they only impact one of the two parallel control systems and = 0, however, a small fraction (the most severe events) result in dual control system failures where > 0. The risk of dual failures and the resulting business interrupt is captured by the differing severit y categories. The specific data associated with the system count, the subsystem/severity category reliabilities, and the cost of business interrupt time is proprietary to the customer and therefore not included here. For this case study, was determined to be 0.54, meaning that when the number of people in the pool drops below 54% of the number that are in the pool initially (in 2010), the extra maintenance time penalty (modeled by (15)) is applied. Figure 13-5 shows two support cost results. The results demonstrate that there is minimal effect of skills loss prior to 2030. In year 2028 existing lifetime buys of spares parts (hardware) start to run out resulting in the cost step between 2028 and 2030. We obtain the lower curve in Figure 13-5 when there is no skills loss, Ei/E0 = 1 for all i in Equation 13-4. In this case there is still an annual cost increase caused by part obsolescence that is mitigated via lifetime buys of parts (these buys commit significant capital to the pre-purchase of spare parts and long-term holding costs). The higher cost curve in Figure 13-5 is the case where no replenishment of lost skills is possible (H = 0), this is close to reality for the company considered in this case study. 13.4 Discussion Workforce planning means ensuring that you have the right number of people, with the right skills sets, in the right jobs, at the right time. This chapter presents a model that enables workforce planning in cases where the workforce is non-replenishable. The model developed estimates both the number of skilled employees (workforce pool size) and the cumulative experience in the workforce pool. This information is used to determine the resources available to maintain a system as a function of time. Cumulative experience dictates the time (and the resultant cost) required for workers to perform the maintenance activities necessary to support the system. Because of the prohibitively large cost of legacy system replacement, these systems are rarely replaced unless a catastrophic failure occurs or their support costs become impractical. The model can potentially be used by companies to support the development of business cases for system replacement, see (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015). Numerous important assumptions were made in the development of the model. In the solution presented here, we assume that years on the job is the only way workers can gain experience. We have not accounted for methods that could be used to accelerate the rate at which workers become more experienced, e.g., capturing older workers knowledge in knowledge bases [29,30] could accelerate experience. We have performed a discrete-time analysis because the input data that was available to us only exists annually. A continuous-time solution could also be developed, but one must be careful to match the model to the form of the input data. There are several indirect consequences of the loss of critical skills that we have not addressed, and which would be challenging to quantify in terms of cost. The workers that are maintaining systems (particularly engineers) are likely to be performing other beneficial tasks in addition to corrective maintenance. Besides corrective maintenance, they may also perform: preventative maintenance, projects intended to upgrade the reliability and/or performance of the system, and knowledge transfer activities. As workforce resources decrease, it is reasonable to assume that all tasks, except corrective maintenance, would decrease. Even if sufficient resources remain available for corrective maintenance tasks, an inability to perform the other tasks that the engineers might do results in a loss of: maintenance efficiency improvements, system reliability improvements that could decrease future maintenance requirements, and system performance. Further, if the job satisfaction amongst the eng ineers that are forced to only perform maintenance decreases then their retention may be negatively impacted. There are other factors that may modify the case study presented herein. These factors include location (culture certainly impacts the likelihood that highly-skilled workers remain in system support jobs), gender, the product sector, etc. These effects could be analyzed with the presented in this chapter model if sufficient data existed. [1] For many types of legacy systems, 5 or more years of on-the-job experience may be required to become competent. [2] The level of maintenance required (which dictates the maintenance resources required) and the degree of business interrupt associated with the maintenance event are governed by the severity categories. See From (Sandborn and Williams, 2016) for details.

The Strength And Weaknesses Of Oracle Company Information Technology Essay

The Strength And Weaknesses Of Oracle Company Information Technology Essay The company Oracle is particularly keen to keep all its newly acquired customers happy and convince them to buy into its Fusion roadmap. For enterprises making strategy software decisions, the company believes that it has the richest most complete portfolio of applications and middleware. The company also complies with all the ethical guidelines that law has placed and it also has its own ethical guidelines that the entire work force follows. Oracle is the only company that is capable of implementing complete global e-business solutions that extend from the front office customer relationship management to back office operational applications. Larry Ellison saw an opportunity that other companies missed more than three decades ago. This was a description of a relational database. There was no company at that time that committed itself to commercializing the technology, but Ellison and co-founder Bob miner and Ed Oates realized the business potential of the relational database model. The company is headquartered in Redwood Shores, California. Throughout history, the company has proved that it can build for the future, meeting all demanded and changes in trends. The intimate knowledge of customers and successes analysed by the best technical and business minds in the world, made the company what it is today. The main focus of the company is to fulfil its customers needs and implement key technology and business decisions that upend conventional wisdom and take its products and services in new directions. If one looks at companies that are similar to Oracle, it has become a standard for database technology and applications in enterprises throughout the world. The products of the company can be found in nearly every industry, and in the data centres of 100 of the fortune Global 100 companies. Oracle was the first company to develop and deploy 100% internet -enabled enterprise software across its entire product line: database, business applications, application development, and decision support tools. (Wikipedia) Strength and Weaknesses Oracle being the first company to introduce relational database, had the first mover advantage. It helped businesses improve their organization of information and also helped them improve their business processes. It is the worlds leading supplier of software for information management, and it is the worlds second largest independent software company. It has annual revenues of more than $10.1 billion. The company offers its database tools, application products, along with related consulting, education, and support services, in more than 145 countries around the world. Oracle is the only company that is capable of implementing complete global e-business solutions that extend from the front office customer relationship management to back office operational applications. Oracle software runs on PCs, workstations, minicomputers, mainframes and massively parallel computers, as well as on personal digital assistants and set-top devices. This makes its product the best in the market. The attribute of compatibility is what gives Oracle an edge over the other companies being its major strength. Oracles internet-enabled solutions provide a cost-effective way to expand market opportunities and improve business process efficiencies, and attract and retain customers. This is especially for the small and medium businesses that need an IT infrastructure in their organization that would help them get an edge over their competitors. With Oracles help, these companies are able to replace expensive, unwieldy client/server computing models with the efficiency and reach of the internet, companies can deploy a wealth of innovative applications that can be accessed with a Web browser. A weakness of the company that hurts its market is the way it markets its product. Because of the image perception that it has, it is always trying to gain market on the basis of this brand recognition. And this brand recognition has badly affected it in the past. The company markets most of its products using the slogan Cant break it, cant break in, or Unbreakable. (Wikipedia)What this signifies is the increasing demands on information safety. People expect the software to be unbreakable. The company also stresses on reliability of networked databases and network access to databases as major selling point. But two weeks after its introduction in 2002, David Litchfield, Alexander Kornbrust, Cesar Cerrudo and others demonstrated a whole suite of successful attacks against Oracle products. (Poulsen, 2002). Then the commentators criticized the slogan as unrealistic and as an invitation to crackers, but the companys chief security officer Mary Ann Davidson portrayed the criticism as unfair. Environmental factors Competition It is a fact that IBM dominated the mainframe relational-database market with its DB2 and SQL/DS database products, it delayed while entering the market for a relational database in UNIX and windows operating systems. What this did was that it opened the door to Sybase, Oracle, and Informix then eventually Microsoft to dominate mid-range and microcomputers. This was the time Oracle lagged behind Sybase and in 1990-1993 Sybase became the fastest-growing database company and the database industrys darling vendor, but soon it merged mania and to technical issues with System X. But in 1993, Sybase sold the rights to its database software running under the windows operating system to Microsoft Corporation, which now markets it under the name SQL Server. Informix Software overtook Sybase in 1994 and became Oracles most important rival. But eventually Oracle defeated Informix in 1997. And in November 2005 a book detailing the war between Oracle and Informix appeared. This book provided a detailed background on what happened and how Informix Softwares CEO Phil White landed in jail because of his obsession with overtaking Ellison. But once it overcame Informix and Sybase, it enjoyed years of dominance in the database market. But everything changed when Microsoft SQL Server became widespread in the late 1990s and IBM acquired Informix Software in 2000. It is still the same today as it competes for license on UNIX, Linux, and Windows operating systems primarily against IBMsDB2 and Microsoft SQL Server. In 2004 was the year when Oracles sales grew at a rate of 14.5% to $6.2 billion, giving it 41.3% and the top share of the relational-database market. (InformationWeek March, 2005). Oracle Corporations main competitors in the database arena remain IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server and to some lesser extent Sybase and Teradata. With open source databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL, has recently made inroads by claiming that its product delivers Oracle compatibility features at a much lower price point. The software-application market tells the same story. Oracle Corporation primarily competes against SAP. And on March22, 2007 Oracle used SAP, accusing them of fraud and unfair competition. But due to the expanding market for business-intelligence software, many other software companies have successfully competed in quality with Oracle and SAP products. But more products will appear within the next 10 years. Oracle Strategy The company Oracle is particularly keen to keep all its newly acquired customers happy and convince them to buy into its Fusion roadmap. For enterprises making strategy software decisions, the company believes that it has the richest most complete portfolio of applications and middleware. The companys breadth and depth is a big plus and it has helped it in earning a good reputation for supporting acquired best-of-breed products. Furthermore, the company capitalizes on these amassed solutions, Oracle will need to further develop its ISV partner-friendly, solution-centric ecosystem a d continue to chip away at its historically less than customer focused perception. (Duncan Jones) Corporate Governance Oracles Board of Corporations has always developed a corporate governance practice in order to fulfil its responsibilities to the Oracles Corporation stockholders. There are certain guidelines that the board must follow to help ensure that it has the necessary authority and procedures in place to oversee the work of management and to exercise independence in evaluating Oracle Corporations business operations. These guidelines help them align the interests of directors and management with those of the company stockholders. The company continually applies good corporate governance principles to multiple areas. Director The major members of the Board of Directors of Oracle must qualify as independent directors in accordance with the applicable provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The person to be selected as a Director will possess certain attributes including business judgment, management, economics, accounting and finance, legal, marketing, industry and technology knowledge, international business, leadership and strategic vision. 2. Director Responsibilities One of the basic responsibilities of the directors is to exercise their business judgment to act in a manner they reasonably believe is in the nest interest of Oracle and its stockholders and in a manner consistent with their fiduciary duties. The directors can conduct any type of investigation as they deem appropriate, and may reasonably rely on the information provided to them by Oracles senior executives and its outside advisors and the auditors. The board is also responsible for overseeing managements efforts to assess and manage material risks and for reviewing options for risk mitigation. It also reserves the right of overseeing the major risks facing Oracle and may delegate risk oversight responsibility to committees of the Board. Directors are expected to attend the Annual Meeting of Stockholders and to regularly attend Board meeting and meetings of committees on which they serve, to spend the time needed in preparation for such meetings and to meet as frequently as they deem necessary to properly discharge their responsibilities. In addition to this the directors should stay well-informed of Oracles business and markets and as appropriate, meet with Oracles customers or attend events or take other actions they deem appropriate to enhance Oracles business and its effectiveness as directors. The board also believes that the management speaks for Oracle. Individual Board members may, from time to time, expressly represent Oracle in meetings or otherwise communicate with various third parties on Oracles behalf. It is expected that Board members will do this with the knowledge of the management. The most important thing is that all the directors are expected to comply with the Oracle code of Ethics and Business Conduct. (Oracle, The Oracle Code of Ethics and Business Conduct, 2010) Conflicts of Interest The director also has the responsibility to ensure that other commitments do not conflict or materially interfere with the directors responsibility to Oracle. 11. Performance Evaluation There is a Board that is led by the Nomination and Governance Committee that will periodically conduct a self-evaluation to determine whether the Board and its committees are functioning effectively. The Board with the assistance of the nomination and Governance committee shall periodically review these Corporate Governance Guidelines to determine whether any changes are appropriate. (Oracle, ORACLE CORPORATION CORPORATE GOVERNANCE GUIDELINES, 2010) Finance and Audit Committee The purpose of this committee is to provide advice with respect to corporations financial matters, to oversee the accounting and financial reporting process of the Corporation and the audits of the financial statements of the Corporation, to assist the Board of Directors in fulfilling its oversight responsibilities regarding finance, accounting, tax and legal compliance, and to evaluate merger and acquisition transactions and investment transactions proposed by the Corporations management. Decision making: There are three types of decision making all of which are distorted and affected while in the state of crisis. Intelligence Identify conditions that are required for decision making Design Invent, develop different courses of action and analyse them Choice Choose the best alternative, make a choice Structured decision making: This is defined which becomes unstructured when in the state of crisis and when it is not managed properly. Unstructured decision making: Non-routine decision making (this is not defined) TYPES OF SYSTEMS: There are four types of system which we have covered in this (MIS) course which I will be discussing here with their importance in the Crisis management: Transaction Processing System: This system serves the manager at operating level. This system helps to record the transaction that took place within the organization as well as outside the organization. Management Information System: This system serves the managers at the middle level. This system is used to control and monitor the business functions. The input it gets is from the T.P.S. this system is not flexible and it is used for routine decision making. Decision Support System: This system also serves the manager at middle level. This system uses the analytical models to show the performance and it is used for non-routine decision making. This system gets it input from T.P.S and M.I.S. This system has flexibility to change data/information. Executive Support System: This system serves the manager at top level. This system is used to dig out information from big stores. This is used for non-routine decision making, and uses graphical representation of data. Its input sources are M.I.S and D.S.S. But it does not use analytical models for it representation. This means that the decision making processes within the organization get distorted. And because the decision in any company is vital to its operations, hence it is important to have IS as a supporting tool in crisis management. The company uses all these software in its IT infrastructure. It does not need to do anything in order to change this or to improve this. All it needs to do is to maintain a place where all the information of the organization could be accessed easily. This would reduce the time of data retrieval and would also help them in improving them customer relations and their business. Oracle and Ethics Internet technology has posed new challenges for the protection of individual privacy. Information sent over this vast network of networks may pass through many different computer systems before its final destination. Each of these systems is capable of monitoring, capturing and storing communications that pass through it. It is possible to record all online activities of literally tens of millions of people, including which online newsgroups or files a person has accessed, which Web sites and Web pages he or she has visited, and what items that person has inspected or purchased over the Web. Much of this monitoring and tracking of Web site visitors occurs in the background without the visitors knowledge. Tools to monitor visits to the World Wide Web have become popular because they help organizations determine who is visiting their Web sites and how to better target their offerings. Some firms also monitor the Internet usage of their employees to see how they are using company network resources. Web retailers now have access to software that lets them watch the online shopping behaviour of individuals and groups while they are visiting a Web site and making purchases. The commercial demand for this personal information is virtually insatiable. Information technology has made it difficult to protect in tellectual property because computerized information can be so easily copied or distributed on networks. Intellectual property is subject to a variety of protections under three different legal traditions: trade secrets, copyright, and patent law. Oracle takes this into account and makes sure that these things are kept in mind and that the company name is not amongst the ones that are not known for their services. All the products produced by the company are up to customer standards and they try to fulfil them by being true and not being fraudulent.

Aggressive Children in the School Enviornment Essay -- Special Educati

Many children come to school with behavior problems that impede their learning and disrupt the learning of other children. As early as preschool as many as twenty-five percent of children demonstrate problematic behaviors which place them at risk for future negative school experiences (Conroy, Sutherland, Haydon, Stormont, Harmon, 2009). These children exhibit aggression, defiance, bullying of others, poor work habits, and acting out in class. Many teachers feel frustrated as they spend the majority of their classroom management time on the same few children each day. Researchers (Conroy, Sutherland, Haydon, Stormont, Harmon, 2009) suggest that around 70% of behavior management time is spent on the same 20% of student. Ratcliff. Jones, Costner, Savage-Davis, and Hunt (2010) found a pattern of student misbehavior followed by attempts to correct the behavior that failed, resulting in increased time and attention on misbehavior instead of instruction. Over the course of several years of negative interactions these students begin to see themselves as failures. Henricsson and Rydell (2004) have noted that self-perception is formed through interactions with others and the reduced number of positive interactions children with behavior problems experience put them at risk for low-self esteem. Henricsson and Rydell (2004) also note teacher criticism is associated with student stress, increased feelings of helplessness, and increased negative self-judgments. Many children with severe behavior problems have significant emotional trauma, serious emotional losses, and deficits in social skills. These problems are often never officially diagnosed or professionally treated despite theeffects on the children. Kehel, Bray, and Theodore (2004... ... Abrams, L., & Vo, A. (2010). Improving Interactions Between Teachers and Young Children with Problem Behavior: A Strengths-Based Approach. Exceptionality, 18(2), 70-81. Delveaux, K. D., & Daniels, T. (2000). Children's social cognitions: physically and relationally aggressive strategies and children's goals in peer conflict situations. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 46(4), 672-692. Morrow, M. T., Hubbard, J. A., Rubin, R. M., & McAuliffe, M. D. (2008). The Relation between Childhood Aggression and Depressive Symptoms: The Unique and Joint Mediating Roles of Peer Rejection and Peer Victimization. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 54(3), 316-340. Fleming, C. B., Haggerty, K. P., & Catalano, R. F. (2005). Do Social and Behavioral Characteristics Targeted by Preventive Interventions Predict Standardized Test Scores and Grades?. Journal Of School Health, 75(9), 342-349.

Essay --

Anxiety disorders are the 2nd most diagnosed mental illness in the United States. Anxiety comes from the â€Å"fight or flight† physiological response in ones body. The fear a person experiences is an intense emotional alarm accompanied by a surge of energy in the autonomic nervous system. The surge is what motivates us to flee from danger, cueing the â€Å"flight† response. However, some anxiety is good for us in moderate amounts. Most people perform better when we are a little anxious (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908). Anxiety can improve test performance or make you more energetic and charming on a date. It improves, social, physical, and intellectual performance. In fact little would get done if we didn’t have any anxiety. However anxiety can be negative as well. The most common symptoms are looking worried and anxious or fidgeting. That is pretty normal for most people. These symptoms are a physiological response that starts in the brain. It elevates the heart rate and creates muscle tension. Most of the research has been done with animals. Animals seem to experience anxiety in a similar way to ...

Death of a Salesman- Act 2 Essay

Q1. Why is Willy’s mood upbeat at the start of Act Two? What does he expect to happen? Ans: Willy’s mood is upbeat at the start of Act two because he felt that his family and everything was finally coming together. Before, Biff decided that he was going to meet Oliver and join into the business field. Willy finally felt revealed because Happy came up with an idea for Biff and Happy to start a business together. He expected that Bill Oliver would recognize Biff and give him a job with Biff asking for at least fifteen thousand. This made him over excited because he felt that the family would be happier and Biff would get the success that he wants. Q2. Why does Willy tell Howard about Dave Singleman? Describe the dramatic effect when Howard listens to the voices of his family while Willy tries o talk business. Why does Howard tell Willy to drop off his samples and forbid him to go to Boston? Why is this such a blow to Willy? Ans: Dave Singleman was a great salesman who made his living without leaving his house until the age of eighty-four. He was a very popular and well known man who was greatly missed when he died. Willy told Howard about Dave because he wants to prove to him that Willy can also be a successful salesman while staying at home too. He also wants to show him how there was gratitude and respect for one another back then, and how everything changed in this generation for the worse. When Willy was trying to speak about business, Howard kept listening to the voices of his family. Willy was trying to also listen and patiently wait until Howard was done, but soon felt irritated after a while when Howard would not pay attention to him. This set a bad mood for Willy as he was waiting for the chance to talk to Howard. Howard tells Willy to drop off his samples and forbids him to go to Boston because he feels that Willy needs to take a break. After listening to Willy’s emotional break out, he was sure that he wanted to send Willy home until he was able to gain control over himself and his life. He felt that Willy wouldn’t be able to do his job right anymore and make the business suffer if he continues. This is such a blow to Willy because now he doesn’t have a job. Just for a small request to stay home and work, Willy suffered by overall losing his job. Now he would have the problem to make money for his family and pay for their bills, etc. Q3. What is Willy’s philosophy? How does Biff as a football hero embody his father’s dreams? Why does Charley say Willy hasn’t grown up? Ans: Willy believed to become successful you needed to be physically attractive and fit. He felt that playing sports and being popular, and revolving everything around the personal appearance would lead anyone to easy success and well performance. Willy used to dedicate himself to Biff when he used to play football. He allowed Biff to do anything as long as he succeeded in football and tried to become the best. This would fulfill his dreams of his children being physically fit and stable and being able to have the strength and determination to succeed. Charley says that Willy hasn’t grown up because Willy still seems to have a stubborn attitude where he always wants to be superior compared to everyone else. Willy made himself believe that he was always better than everyone, even if it wasn’t true. Charley felt that Willy hasn’t seen the reality of life yet and still chooses to live in his illusions. Q4. What is Willy’s impression of Bernard when he sees him in his father’s office? Why does Willy exaggerate Biff’s importance? Why does Bernard ask what happened after the game at Ebbets Field? Ans: Willy was shocked to see Bernard at his father’s office. When they started talking, Willy seemed to feel a little jealous of Bernard as he was going to Washington and staying with some friends who were rich. When he hears about Bernard’s plans and success, he starts to exaggerate about Biff’s importance. He does this because he cannot stand the fact that Bernard is more successful than Biff, and therefore tries to make Biff sound superior compared to everyone else. Bernard asks what happens after the game at Ebbets Field because he notices that Biff’s life changed completely afterwards and nothing good ever happened after that time. He noticed that there was a change in Biff’s attitude and the he could tell that Biff gave up on life, and he wanted to know what had caused all this. -Q5. Why won’t Willy work for Charley? Why is Willy able to ask Charley for money? How is Charley’s view of what a salesman needs different from Willy’s view? Ans: For many years, Willy has made himself feel like he is better than most people, and has had this superior complex. He tries to compare himself to Charley and finds excuses and ways to say that he is better than him, even though he knows that Charley is more successful in life which makes him jealous of Charley. Therefore, Willy refuses to work for Charley because that would just be another way of saying that Charley is more successful than him. Willy is able to ask Charley for money because he knows that Charley is his only friend he has, and will be the only one who will actually lend him money. Charley’s view of what a salesman needs is different from Willy’s view because Charley feels that -Q6. In the restaurant, how does Happy reflect Willy’s values? Why does Miller have the girls come in? Ans: Miller had the girls come in so we could see how arrogant Biff and Happy are as they leave the restaurant leaving Willy all by himself and go with those girls. This shows us how much they cared for their father at the time and how irresponsible they were. Q7. How does Biff’s realization that his life is a lie underline the theme of the play? Why does Biff take Bill Oliver’s fountain pen? Why can’t he tell his father what happened with Bill Oliver? Why do Biff and Happy leave Willy at the restaurant? Ans: After meeting Bill Oliver and realizing that he didn’t even remember him, Biff finally understands that his life in business is just a joke and that it was a waste of time to continue. This underlines the theme of the play as it shows how he saw his life the way he wanted to and was in his own illusions and dreams for fifteen years until he met reality. Biff realizes now that success doesn’t come easily, and that he should do what he wants in life. Biff takes Bill Oliver’s fountain pens while a rush of anger and confusion is going through his mind. Because Oliver didn’t even recognize Biff, he had an urge to just go into his office and just take what he could to satisfy and calm himself. Biff cannot tell his father what happened with Bill Oliver because he doesn’t want to disappoint him. He knows that his decision to meet Bill made Willy extremely happy, and he was ashamed as Bill Oliver wasn’t even able to give him a job, yet recognize him. And even when he had tried to tell Willy any bad news, Willy would jump to conclusions and wouldn’t give him the proper chance or time to let Biff explain himself. Happy and Biff leave Willy at the restaurant because they didn’t want to discuss what had happened that day. They left with a couple of girls for some fun leaving Willy alone because Happy wanted Biff to feel better and take his mind off all his problems. Q8. Why did Biff go to Boston? What does he discover when he see the Woman? Why is it that Biff never went to summer school? Why can’t he believe his father? Ans: Biff flunked math and didn’t get enough credits to graduate. Therefore he came to Boston to meet his dad and ask him to talk to his teachers to give him some points. He thought that Willy would be able to talk to them in â€Å"his way† and could be able to get enough points to make Biff pass. When Biff sees the Women, he discovers that his father is a fake and was doing something completely wrong. He also sees that Willy had given his mothers stockings to the woman. Biff never went to summer school after that incident because he was completely shocked and let down by his father. He wasn’t in the position anymore to take summer school classes as the situation left him into a state of depression. He couldn’t believe his father because he never thought that he would actually turn on his mother and do this to her and their family. This left Biff in a state of confusion and shock where he wasn’t able to forgive his father. Q9. Why does Linda tell the boys, â€Å"Get out of here, both of you, and don’t come back!†? Ans: Linda yells at the boys because she is disappointed and furious with them. When she found out that they had left Willy all by himself at the restaurant, she was very angry and didn’t want to see or speak to either of them. She was also disappointed because she just started to think that things in their family were going to go back to normal and everyone was going to be happy, and after the incident, she was disappointed that there were still more issues to take care of. She feels that the boys don’t respect their father, and care more about the women they went off with. She also feels like her sons are just tormenting Willy and using him for financial backup, shelter, etc. but are not giving him the support, love and respect he needs and deserves. Q10. Why does Willy keep planting seeds when they’ve never grown before? Why does Willy think Biff will be impressed with his funeral? Why does Ben say that Biff will call Willy a fool? Ans: Willy keeps planting seeds because he wants his family to have something left to remember him by after he passes away. He knows that he hasn’t succeeded much in life and wasn’t able to give him family much and therefore he wants to leave something behind for them. They could use the plants to use or sell them, and they will have a nice garden in their house. Willy thinks that Biff will be impressed with his funeral because he feels that many people from different states all over the country will come to visit him at his funeral. He wants to show Biff that he is well known and cared for by others. Ben says that Biff will call Willy a fool because he knows that Willy is not well known, and that no one will show up at his funeral, and Biff will know that his father was a coward and end up hating him. Q11. Why doesn’t Willy want to see Linda? Why does he think Biff is spiting him? Why does Biff show him the rubber hose? Why does Biff confront Willy and Happy? Ans: Willy doesn’t want to see Linda because he is ashamed of himself. Everyone knows about Biff’s failure to get a business job with Bill Oliver, and Willy feels that it is his fault why this had happened. Therefore, he feels ashamed to show his face to Linda. He feels that Biff is spiting him because he feels that Biff is blaming all his failure on Willy. He doesn’t seem to care about the family and tells them to forget that he is alive, and that he would just send them a cheque if he could. Biff shows Willy the rubber hose because he wants Willy to know that the entire family knows what is going on and what he has been up to. Biff wants to show Willy that they are all worried about him and let him know what kind of pressure he is putting the whole family under but trying to commit suicide. Q12. What does Biff do that elates Willy? How does Happy try to attract Willy’s attention? How does Ben influence Willy at this point? Ans: Biff starts to cry for his father which seems to elate him. After stating what kind of life Biff was in before coming home, he broke into tears for Willy to help him get rid of his childish dreams before something happens. He wanted to stop imagining his future, and actually start something that he could do. Happy tries to attract Willy’s attention by telling them that he was going to chance, get married soon, and his the department he was working for. Ben influences Willy at this point by showing him how Biff would be better off with Willy’s insurance money as it would be more than what Willy is making now. He states that â€Å"the jungle is dark but full of diamonds.† He tells Willy that Biff can succeed in life, but just needs a starting push. This influences Willy to commit suicide so that his family could get his insurance money. Requiem:- Q1. What is a requiem? What is the purpose of the final act? To what extent is it successful? Ans: A requiem is a celebration for the commemoration of the dead. It is usually a funeral service or a memorial service. The purpose of the final act was for the Loman’s to figure out what they should do with their lives. Biff and Happy wanted to finally get a hold of their goals and start something in their life. This all could have made the family happier and successful. Even though the family had planned to try to become successful in business, it didn’t work out. Biff finally decided what he wanted to do in his life, which was to be outdoors. This upset Willy, which therefore led the family into a different situation. The final act ended in a disrupt manner as Willy committed suicide to help his family with their financial problems, and help Biff and Happy to start their careers and lives. Q2. Charley says: â€Å"No man only needs a little salary.† To what is he referring? What else does a man need? Ans: When Charley says that â€Å"no man only needs a little salary†, he is trying to say that just the minimum money earned will never be enough for any man. Men always want more than what they have for their own satification and to have more for their happiness. A man also needs the due respect they deserve. A man wants the best for their family, and wants to see their families excelling and to be superior to others. Q3. Explain the irony of Linda’s last speech. Ans: In Linda’s last speech she questions Willy and asks why he had to leave them. She doesn’t understand why Willy had chosen to make that decision and still feels like waiting for him to come back. She tells Willy that she isn’t able to cry for him. This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care about him and isn’t able to show her emotions, but she is in such a confused state, that she doesn’t even know what to do.

North Coast Town Essay

Robert Gray’s North Coast Town is a poem that shows how Australia is becoming more influenced by America and how the world is filled with artificiality. He presents us with a detailed description of the town which reflects his views on the changing nature of Australia. The poem takes on the persona of a hitchhiker without any money. The first stanza talks about how the persona gets up in the morning after sleeping on the beach. The use of descriptive language creates a visual image for the reader, â€Å"a Shell station (with their Men’s locked),† The symbol of that petrol station is of a shell yet it’s devoid of any authenticity towards a natural shell signifying an artificial world. The craze of rock n roll in America made it’s way to Australia and having the same â€Å"greasy Fifties pompadourâ€Å" hairstyle like Elvis Presley’s was considered popular. The use of imagery in the fourth stanza creates a visual image of the typical 50’s hairstyle for the reader. This represents the superficiality and America’s strong influence on Australia’s identity. The use of alliteration in the fifth stanza, â€Å"stucco†¦ sea shells† evokes a stronger sense of the town’s lack of depth through its exaggerated decorations. Gray suggests that the town has lost its individuality, everything is borrowed from foreign cultures. The use of metaphor, â€Å"They’re making California†, highlights the fact that Australia idolizes America and are therefore strongly influenced by them. As the persona hitches a ride, he comes to see various superficial sides of the place. The idea of Americanisation is incorporated through the visual image of the â€Å"pink ‘Tropicana motel†. It reveals the town’s pathetic attempt at imitating America. This represents the town people’s desperation to make money off of tourists. The â€Å"image flaps in shop fronts† also symbolizes the hopeless replicas everywhere. The town’s imitation of America is further enforced through use of verbs. â€Å"We pass bulldozed acres. † This signifies the increase of urbanization within the settlement as their way of â€Å"making California†. In this poem, Gray utilizes various poetic techniques to show perspective on the artificiality and the influences of America corrupting the town.