Cultural Differences and People Management ,self reflection Essay

Cultural Differences and People Management ,self reflection - Essay Example During the training session I was able to learn that culture is not just a characteristic of individual but it is a characteristic of individuals that share the same ideas in the group. As culture is learned, I was able to figure out that during time with my friends, colleagues, family and other groups that individual becomes a member of; the individual learns the culture from them in order to have share common ideas and values. I have also learnt that culture plays a dominant role in affecting the motivation level of an individual along with personality and attitude of individual. Since culture helps an individual to change his/her behaviour regarding things, it is considered as an important factor for success in daily life. After understanding the concept of culture, I was able to understand the importance of culture in daily life. The first and the foremost important thing about culture is that it creates bond between people and group. This bond helps in bringing the people together. It is not just a bond but it provides the individual with the identity and helps in building a personality which helps the individual to distinguish himself from others in the community. I have also been able to understand that how culture shapes the standards and behaviour of an individual. For an individual, culture acts as a system of social control. As the life of an individual revolves around the culture learnt from older generation in the form of language, art and religion it helps the individual to make crucial decisions in one’s life. Cultural difference occurs when there is a difference in culture, race or any other factor that might lead to different perception regarding others in the workplace (Gellner, 1983). I have learnt that individual belong from different cultures which help the individual to create his/her unique identity in the group, it is quite important to accept and appreciate others culture. By doing so, an individual can create a bond between

Neighbourly Relations Essay Example for Free

Neighbourly Relations Essay Examine the argument that neighbourly relations are characterised by friendly distance. Neighbourly relations are an aspect of life which affects every single one of us at some point in our lives. When we look to live somewhere we not only consider the property and general area, but are also curious about our neighbours. A common question when viewing a property is ‘what are the neighbours like? ’ and the answer is usually ‘they are really nice’ whether they are or not! But what makes a good neighbour? Some people get on with their neighbours but just as many don’t and usually it’s due to what can appear as trivial disputes. This essay will look at the term ‘friendly distance’ which plays a huge part in how neighbours interact with each other. Many studies have asked the question ‘what makes a good neighbour? ’ and social scientists have found that despite different back grounds or settings the majority of people want the same set of standards from the people living near or around them. People need to be friendly and be there for each other but at the same time respect each others’ ‘need for privacy and reserve’ (Willmott. , cited in Byford, 2009, p. 253). So you have to be friendly but keep your distance at the same time. So how do we do this? Neighbouring relations comes with it’s own set of unwritten rules. These rules are constantly being portrayed and carried out in our day to day lives subconsciously. A 2004 study carried out in Manchester neighbourhoods further shows that this is a widespread practice. Neighbours of various areas demonstrated similar actions and practices of what is expected from neighbours, a common one being that they will chat with their neighbour when they are outside of the house if they see them but wouldn’t they wouldn’t go in each other’s house (Harris and Gale, cited in Byford, 2009, p. 55). This type of understanding of what is expected of a neighbour is also echoed in another study where neighbouring is seen as an ‘occasioned activity’ (Laurier et al. , cited in Byford, 2009, p. 256). This study showed that whilst neighbours can exchange pleasantries quite happily with one another if they meet in a public place, they would only directly go to the neighbours house and ring their door bell if there was something specific they wanted of if something was wrong. Although similar studies were carried out in the USA and findings were very much the same as the UK, other countries and cultures can be quite different. In 1970, the anthropologist Stanley Brandes visited Spain to study how modernisation and urbanisation affected small rural communities there. He resided in the village of Becedas and observed the daily life of it’s residents. What he found there was quite different to the UK, in that neighbours would enter each other’s houses without knocking or a second thought. They introduced themselves immediately by name and offered their help and went out of their way to make Brandes feel welcome. (Brandes, 1975, cited in Byford, p. 260). But as Brandes resided there longer he came to understand that what appeared at first as welcoming and friendly practices, it actually belied a community that in reality was quite mistrusting and critical of each other. Privacy was not seen as necessary and someone who required it would be considered rude and impolite. The poor status of the village meant that the villagers relied on each other for daily help with manual labour and other traditional activites. Without each other they felt they couldn’t surive even, but this high dependence on each other masked the underlying feeling of distrust they had for each other. But what about when neighbouring goes wrong? As human beings we can’t get it right all the time and relations can break down leading to disputes and disagreements. Noisy neighbours is a common complaint and one that is suffered more commonly in overcrowded housing estates where insulation is poor. This in turn leads to a lack of privacy and leads to a neighbours making adjustments within their daily life to prevent embarrassment of being overheard. These adjustments can referred to as ‘distancing mechanisms’ (Bourke, 1994, cited in Byford, p. 266). Such adjustments could include turning the bed away from the adjoining wall, and other ways of preventing noise from being heard. So although people can do what they like in their own homes, they are expected to take necessary steps to minimise what other’s can hear. Another much more serious example of neighbourly relations going wrong is exhibited within the cases of the murders of Catherine Genovese and James Bulger. Although neighbours assume they offer security to one another and ‘look out for each other’ (Attwood et all. , cited in Byford, p. 271) the public exposure of both the above cases uncovered a massive breakdown in neighbourly relations. In both cases a large number of residents heard screams, or observed unusual behaviour which left them concerned but they failed to do anything. A number of studies were carried out to study ‘bystander intervention’ to determine why these people didn’t help. One study carried out showed that if one person helps out then nother may do as well, but people are led by each other’s actions (Latane and Darley, cited in Byford, p. 279) and this was referred to as the ‘bystander effect’. In another study by Levine (1999) he found that the percieved relationship between the three boys in the Bulger case led to the reason why no-one intervened. People failed to get involved because they assumed the boys were all brothers and it was nothing to do with them. As neighbours we commonly share a social identity, or even a collective identity through our relationship with each other. This shared identity should profer a loyalty to each other as people within a shared group usually ‘stick together’. However, it would seem neighbourly relations are alot more complex than merely a shared identity. Neighbouring practices are carried out without thinking within our normal day, and these practices allow us to manage the fine line of private and public space. Neighbourhood life is ordered and defines how people should live together, and go about their daily lives without interfering but also by being there for each other too.

Sleep Monitoring System Technology

Sleep Monitoring System Technology Fully equipped quilt Improve your sleep with new media and communication technology Explosion of information and advance of technology boost our life into a faster paced mode than ever before. This fast paced life increases the productivity of the whole society, but at the same time, brings healthy problems to an increasing number of individuals. Sleeping is one of the most important aspect of our daily life, as well as a critical period for fixing the damage we have done to our bodies in the daytime. However, more and more people are losing their sleeping due to the pressure comes from outside world, leading to a vicious circle to their health. The product, a quilt, introduced in this article will be devoted to improving sleep and health conditions of the group of people who have sleep disorders and potential health problems. It will make use of the known facts of health indicators and existing technologies to inform the current health condition of the user and help with getting better experience in sleeping. Health Indicator Detector There are many things that people will use every day, the one with the longest consecutive using period is our quilt. The quilt I design takes advantage of this characteristics, making use of touch-skin sensors to detect and monitor user’s health indicators in a quiet and precise way. One of the basic functions of this part is measuring body temperature. Traditional mercury thermometer will not be used, instead of it, infrared thermometer will be a better way to go. An infrared thermometer is a thermometer which indicates temperature from a part of the thermal radiation emitted by the object being measured. It can be used to help aim the thermometer, to describe the devices ability to measure temperature in a certain distance. By knowing the amount of infrared energy emitted by the object and its emissivity, the objects temperature can often be determined (Infrared Thermometer). Another basic function for this part is measuring heartbeat. Since the heartbeat’s contraction is equal to the pulse, which is how many times a minute, our arteries expand because of the increase in blood pressure originated by our heartbeat. So the heartbeat is a very vital health parameter that is directly related to the soundness of the human cardiovascular system (Microcontroller Measures). The microcontroller, fingertip will be used for measuring heartbeat. Heartbeat will pump the blood go through the body and that makes the blood volume inside the finger artery to change too. This fluctuation can be used on an optical sensing mechanism to put on the fingertip. The signal can also be used in this microcontroller to calculate the volatility, it is actually in the heart rate is magnified. (Microcontroller Measures) Both these heartbeat measuring machine and infrared thermometer two devices will be placed in a Wi-Fi environment, and the data which is collected from the user will be transmitted to the personal computer. Users can set a certain indicator, if the data exceeds the normal values, it will warning the user to go to the hospital to check their body whether they have health problems or not. Wireless Sleeping Respiration Monitor To achieve the goal of monitoring users’ respiration while sleeping, respiration sound sensor will be needed for the quilt. In addition, after detecting sleeping hazards like respiration arrest or sleep apnea, vibrate module hidden inside of the quilt will function to wake up the user to prevent further risk. The whole system consists of three major parts, monitoring and data collection device, wireless communication devices and vibrating wake-up device. Monitoring and data collection device, as known as respiration sound sensor, will sense the user’s respiration sound, reduce the noise, amplify and digitalize the signal and pass it to wireless communication module. Wireless communication device will take over the collected data, encapsulate it and then send it via either Wi-Fi connection or Bluetooth connection. Those connections are connected with a device with data processing power, our smartphones will easily serve the purpose. After processing the received data, the data processing device will inform the vibration unit whether it needs to wake up the user based on the result comparing to the data in an online database. If the vibration module receives the signal to wake up the user, it will send pulse vibration to user’s body to wake them up. The significance of the advantage is that sensors could be close to user’s nose and mouth to collect much better and precise data without interrupting or hindering the proper sleeping process. It improved the user experience by a remarkable amount from head-wearing devices with similar functions. In addition, the data is amplified and sent to user’s smartphone, a hand-held device, which increases the scalability. We could achieve more usage of the existing sensors by programming the applications on those hand-held devices, and keep them working properly and even better by distributing software/firmware updates over the internet. What if the computing devices is installed into the quilt? Users will feel hard to fall asleep because it is too heavy, and there could be hazards when the computing unit overheats over a period of intensive data processing. So using external hand-held device reduces the total weight and potential hazard of the quilt and in the meantime increase s the processing power and stability (Patent). Sleep Monitoring System There is no doubt for the importance of sleeping, but because of the quick paced and high pressure environment, we cannot have a good sleep, which will threaten our health. But with the development of advanced technology, we can use it to trace our sleeping status, to find the problems and solve it, in order to improve our sleeping quality. There are many applications exist on the phone, like in IOS platform, in the Android system and in the Windows Phone. The principle for smartphones and applications to monitor the sleep status are similar. They place an accelerometer in the phone to sense your action like turn over while you sleeping, in order to determine the depth of sleep. Of course, compare to the professional equipment, the monitor of mobile phones is not that much accurate, but the cost is much lower than other equipment. However, studies show that the radiation phone emit will affect the quality of our sleep. According to the working principle of the smartphone, an accelerometer can also be placed in the quilt, it will percept the user’s motion during sleep more precisely. There will also a small microphone in the quilt, it can record user’s fudge while their sleeping. Like I mentioned in the Health Indicator Detector, the recorder is also connected with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, transmitted to the personal computer or application on the smartphone. Besides this, tiny speaker can also be placed with the microphone, since the system can be connected with the personal computer, user can play some white noise in the speaker, which can be used to block snoring and other unwanted sounds, leading to deeper, more restful sleep (White Noise). When the system find out the user enter a deep sleep, it will pause playing the white noise. This system can be used by anyone who even has little knowledge of scientific facts about sleeping or biology to easily track their status of sleeping. Reports could also be generated for a day, a week or a month based on the stored data in the personal computing device. It is really helpful for users to figure out what the trend of sleeping quality is like, either becoming better or worse. Additionally, the reports could be used for consulting doctors and physicians for what they need to improve their sleeping. Conclusion This quilt is not a product with totally new media or communication technology. It is a practical product with many existing technologies to provide an innovative service, and all the technologies used in this product have been used in years and are very mature in the market. However, products that can provide the similar convenience as the quilt does haven’t been found yet. Tossing and turning will not be a huge obstacle anymore for them to fall asleep with the help of white noise. Potential health hazards could also be found out be various monitoring system and data analyzing device. We can imagine that if this quilt arrives in store, it could save an enormous group of people with sleeping problems and using the media and communication technology to serve people, to help them feel better when the night comes. Citations Infrared Thermometer.Infrared Thermometer. OMEGA Engineering Inc., 1999. Web. 19 Apr. 2014. Microcontroller Measures Heart Rate through Fingertip.Instructables.com. Instructables, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014. White Noise Benefits and Uses.White Noise Cds.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.Patent CN102860840A Wireless Sleeping Respiration Monitor.Google Books. Ed. Yujuan Quan, Qingnan Liu, Lei Wang, and Deming Chen. Google Patents, 09 Jan. 2013. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.

Its Time to Terraform Mars :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

It's Time to Terraform Mars "Earth is Heaven. Venus is Hell. Mars is neither, yet." K.G.M. Paterson Introduction Our solar system began to form 4.6 billion years ago from a swirling mass cloud. Give or take a couple of million years, the gas cooled and joined to form large bodies called â€Å"protoplanets,† which later became the planets we know today. Whatever was left after the planets formed became comets or asteroids, strewn about all over the solar system. After 100 million years, the enormous ball of gas at the center of this swirling mass cloud overheated and exploded in a huge nuclear reaction. This reaction gave birth to the sun we know today. This sun has enough energy to provide for nine planets, and just the right mix of masses and orbits to provide Earth with the right ingredients to support life. Of course, after many more millions of years, these right ingredients led to the recipe for human life; soon people of the ancient world observed the movements of the planets. The ancient Greeks thought they were wandering stars, and gave them the name planetes, or wanderers . Of course, the Romans conquered the Greeks, and renamed the planets after their gods. Earth is the only planet whose name doesn’t derive from ancient Greek or Roman mythology. Earth comes from the Old English word Gaia; but the Romans called our planet Terra, hence Terra Firma. Mars was said to be named after the god of war because of its angry red color; but early on Mars was worshipped as a god of growth and fertility. Earth This third rock from the sun has just the right mix of variables to encourage and sustain life on it for so many years. But why here and no where else you ask? Most of it has to do with the fact that it is the third rock from the sun. The distance from the sun (150 million km) is just the right distance to allow for water to exist as a liquid, an important ingredient to sustain life. With over 2/3 of the planet covered with water, the Earth’s oceans are perfect for regulating the temperature of the planet at a consistent 22 °C, another important ingredient to allow life to survive. With a powerful magnetic field

Current topics

A Wag Whenever one sits down to write on the mess that one finds in the arena of higher education, one is struck by a sense of d ©J ¤ vu as well as a sense of inability to say nything new. Pawan Agarwal's comprehensive paper that he wrote for ‘CRIER, the excellent report by National Knowledge Commission (headed by the irrepressible Sam Pitroda) are Just two of the many articles that easily come to mind. The first one mentioned, has exhaustive data at a fairly disaggregated level so that this aspect need not detain us here.The issues and challenges in this context -that are fairly well understood – are diverse not typical. Thus, the challenge is not epistemological but one of political will and at a more mundane level of implementation. In India, it oes not take a genius to point out the problems in any sphere, least of all in the higher educational sector. The point however is (ought to be) to identify workable solutions. In this article I will concentrate on the cap acity, flexibility and quality issues that beset the higher educational sector in India and suggest some steps that need to be taken to remedy the situation.Rest assured, there will be no magic wand and no single solution. Help and initiative from whatever quarter must be sought and grabbed by both hands. A bouquet approach will alone be realistic, driven by ragmatism rather than ideology. Whilst finance is undoubtedly important, I argue that governance is the key. The essentials of the story are easily told: Despite tremendous expansion in the sector, there is inadequate capacity and hence access; after all we have 350 universities with huge enrollment (one of the largest in the world).The system is characterized by rigidity with absolutely no flexibility; we have degrees being offered in a rigid framework with very little choice for the students (who should matter the most) and the regulations are archaic with peculiar unresponsiveness to the current context. Thanks to the pervers e hiring policies and protracted procedures (not to mention politics: with and without state interference) the quality of faculty is in a state of rapid decline. The reasons and solutions are well known and yet some of them bear repetition.Having made a first cut let us revisit the issues in some detail, but first some preliminaries. India is at cross roads. It has all the pretensions of emerging as a knowledge economy and yet the time is running out for it to catch the bus. Surely, we don't require Thomas Friedman to point out the gravity of the situation. After all, what we o today – by way of investment – will have a decisive influence fifteen years from now. For that is how long (even in these fast paced times) it takes for changes in educational system to fructify.It is no secret that a genuine knowledge has a prerequisite of solid foundation provided by educational institutions characterized by relevance and excellence in training and research. This then must pro vide us with the parametric environment for what follows. The long queues in front of the colleges as well as the screaming headlines in the newspapers, starkly present the scarcity of capacity in the higher educational sector. The premium that the seats in better colleges for almost all the courses attract is common knowledge.Whilst there are supervisory mechanisms in place (de Jure) we know that supervision many a time means additional side payments. As an aside, the only solution lies in self enforcing system design which in this case would clearly imply removal of striuctural and overall scarcities through increased capacities. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) report talks of setting up 50 National Universities (over a period) with augmented resources leading to capacity enhancement.There is the private universities' bill which should help too. There is a scope for great enhancement of capacity in the PPP mode, for which the regulation has to be more welcoming if not frie ndly. Whilst there is a need to think out of box, there is no denying the fact that the traditional state funding mode will however continue to be of importance for at least some time to come. We must once and for all put an end to view that improvements are possible witn Just non-monetary means.This implies a self binding commitment on the part of governments at all levels to provide the necessary financial resources. The urrent spending on higher education that is pegged at around 0. 7% of GDP must be doubled. This will require a serious lobbying effort. In this context, it may be noted that there is much that can be done by the institutions on their own in terms of raising resources. Alumni represent a huge potential source, so also setting up of off shore campuses and attracting foreign students are other obvious sources.However, this will require some amendments in the existing provisions of the ‘Act', also, experience suggests that such efforts are ‘rewarded' by cu t back in aid, instead of matching incentive grants being proffered. Such efforts in the past have been – post facto – subjected by the government, to severe restrictions on the use of monies so collected. Clearly there is a governance issue involved here. This apart, the required enabling (through regulatory changes) of private sector is a must for the purposes of raising supplementary resources.The private endowments which at one time were significant, have to be restored through incentive based legislation. At the same time the interference – as distinct from engagement – of the State in all aspects of education has to be significantly reduced, especially in the ‘operations' and rocedural aspects. This has been a major cause that led to the Universities being converted into patron saints of mediocrity! The state must truly practice private enablement with ‘oversight from a distance'. Of course, the processes involved in the setting up in th e national universities (or even investing in old ones! are so long drawn and convoluted that with the given absorption capacity of the institutions it will be some time before the plan becomes a reality. Also, and more importantly, the paucity with regard to the attendant requirement of quality faculty (which we shall ook at later) is so great that even with physical infrastructure the delivery will not be assured. This requires some bold and innovative thinking and application which requires a key governance initiative. The external agencies like the corporations and industries will have to play (be enabled to do so) a major role.In the interim, I would suggest that IT enabled distance learning mode as well as the platform for e-learning have to be exploited to the fullest extent. This will require huge organization and collaborative effort of the best minds. It is especially required to mention this here ecause these avenues (particularly the first mentioned) are pretty much have received step treatment and have been left to the whims and fancies of the second raters. This has created sections of milch cows that fraudulently extract money from the hapless students and give nothing in return.

Vhdl for Synthesis

ELE591 – VHDL for Synthesis Issue 1. 0: 1st December 2010 The purpose of this laboratory experiment is to familiarise you with the principles of VHDL for synthesis targeted at programmable logic devices. You will observe how various VHDL descriptions result in Register Transfer Level (RTL) implementations and how these can be implemented within specific logic devices. The principles of back-annotation will also be explored and how this can be used to examine performance limitations of specific hardware resource mappings. This lab assumes you are already familiar with Xilinx ISE and ModelSim, given that ELE335 is a prerequisite for this module. If necessary, consult the ELE335 lab guide, which is included in the Coursework section of the ELE591 module webpage. Most of the VHDL files needed for this lab are also available from the same location. Exercise 1: Aim: To compare the results of different architectural descriptions for the same entity Steps: †¢ Create a project named â€Å"exercise1†. Add the file ex1a. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module† †¢ Select the Spartan3 as the target device Compile and synthesise the VHDL description and examine the design report file, paying particular attention to the resource utilisation summary (and timing path analysis). Also examine the RTL design. †¢ Repeat with the files ex1b. vhd and ex1c. vhd and compare the results. Exercise 2: Aim: To illustrate the use of â€Å"don’t care† values in synthesis Steps: †¢ Create a proje ct named â€Å"exercise2†. Add the file docare. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module† †¢ Compile and synthesise the design targeting the Spartan3 device †¢ Add the file dontcare. hd as a â€Å"VHDL module† and repeat the synthesis. †¢ Compare the report files. Exercise 3: Aim: To illustrate logic resource requirements for conditional versus mutually exclusive input conditions Steps: †¢ Create a project named â€Å"exercise3†. Add the file cond. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module† †¢ Compile and synthesise the design targeting the Spartan3 device †¢ Add the file exclusiv. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module† and repeat the synthesis. †¢ Compare the report files. Also compare the timings at the design logic level and at the place and route level. Exercise 4: Aim: To review resource and timing requirements of a complex reset function Steps: †¢ Create a project named â€Å"exercise4†. Add the file cntpt. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module† †¢ Compile, synthesise and simulate the design targeting the Spartan3 device †¢ Review the report file paying particular attention to the reset equation. †¢ Now examine the file cntpt2. vhd which employs a synchronous complex reset. †¢ Attempt to simulate the designs and comment on the reset timing in both cases. Exercise 5: Aim: To compare CPLD and FPGA implementations of a FIFO design Steps: Create a project named â€Å"exercise5†. Add the file fifo. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module† †¢ Compile and synthesise the design targeting the Spartan3 device †¢ Recompile the design for a Coolrunner2. †¢ Compare the report files and the resulting RTL layouts. †¢ Place and route both designs †¢ Compare the design files paying particular attention to the maximum operating frequency and the amount of resources used. Which timing parameter is the limiting factor on the operating frequency in each case? Exercise 6: Aim: To illustrate the effects of implicit memory Steps: †¢ Create a project named â€Å"exercise6†. Add the file memcont. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module† †¢ Compile and synthesise the design targeting the Spartan3 device. †¢ Examine the report file. †¢ Add the file memcont2. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module†. In this file the signal assignments for oe, we and addr are removed from under the reset condition. †¢ Compile and synthesise the design targeting the Spartan3 device. †¢ Compare the report file with that of the original design. Verify that implicit memory resulted in the creation of a combinatorial latch. Exercise 7: Aim: To illustrate the advantage of â€Å"one hot† encoding of large state-machines implemented in FPGA architectures Steps: †¢ Create a project named â€Å"exercise7†. Add the file onehot. vhd as a â€Å"VHDL module† †¢ Compile and synthesise the design targeting the Spartan3 device †¢ Place and route the design and record the number of logic cells required, the setup time, clock-to-output delay and maximum operating frequency. †¢ Now employ the file notonehot. vhd. This uses the synthesis tool to assign values to the various enumerated states. Compile and synthesise the updated design targeting the Spartan3 device. †¢ Place and route the design and record the number of logic cells required, the setup time, clock-to-output delay and maximum operating frequency. †¢ Compare the results with the original design. This series of experiments should be written up as an INDIVIDUAL formal lab report. The report will be limited to a maximum of 8 pages of main text (i. e. omitting title page etc). The hand-in date is the 17th December, unless you are informed otherwise.