Course project - Group G Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Course project - Group G - Essay Example In this case, in making sure requirements are quite understood, there is need to find out the actual driving changes in the levels of staffing for the company. In order to achieve this, one has to make sure he/she fully understands the business alongside its plans and strategies. Secondly, the company needs to find out the needs of the driving staffing. This encompasses establishing what actually creates or changes the company’s staffing requirements, whether defined by the staffing levels or skill levels (Thomas 118). It is worth noting that, more often than not, the requirements of staffing are driven by business activity changes, either services mix or product mix, the geographical expansion, service improvement, alongside similar factor as highlighted in chapter 5 of the staffing drivers. It also essential for the company to find out the constraints that regards staffing. Other than defining the staffing drivers, the company needs to identify the limiting factors in regard to the staffing levels required. For instance, supposing the marketing forecasts products to increase sales by on average 20 percent for the following year, and the levels of sales drives the sales reps required. Looking at it at the first glance, one would conclude that the increase it would be appropriate to increase the number of sales reps. However, maxing out the manufacturing capacity, and making sure that the manufacturing capacity remains unchanged in the next year, there is low likelihood that there would be additional products produced. This happening would imply that there is no likelihood of sales increasing since there would be no additional reps needed. Fourthly, in defining the staffing levels, the company needs to begin defining changes in both positions and roles. Before attempting to define the staffing levels of staffing required, the managers should first establish the roles alongside changes required in implementing business strategies and plans. In

Factors responsible for Industrial-Economic Revolution in America Essay Example for Free

Factors responsible for Industrial-Economic Revolution in America Essay The last decades of the nineteenth century saw tremendous development ion the industrial and economic sectors. The boundless economic expansion was triggered and augmented by the entrepreneurs like Carnegie, Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan etc. the innovations of the Thomas Edison. This scientific and technological adventures coupled with entrepreneurial risks and innovations introduced by great businessmen pushed America toward a new industrial era and helped it develop as an industrial-economic power. The history fabricated by many historians illustrates that late 19th century of American history is marked with the economic exploitations of robber barons† that deprived American citizens of the potential benefits of industrialization and collected huge profits for themselves. But some of the great industrialist and businessmen of the 19th century America like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller helped America to establish itself on sound economic footings and constructed huge infrastructures of banks, railroads, steel mills and cities etc. Although these entrepreneurs were market oriented businessmen but whatever their ambitions and objectives were, they contributed in the industrial and business sector. Andrew Carnegie remained the greatest industrialist in American history. His entrepreneurial competencies and his business acumen were the foremost qualities that capacitated him to grasp every opportunity to build a well-advanced business empire. Livesays (1975) manifests that his ability â€Å"to recognize the potential of a new service or product and to seize upon an auspicious moment to associate himself with it. Time and again he manifested this acumen, shifting his talents from factory to telegraph, from telegraph to railroad, from railroad to iron and then steel, meanwhile investing his money in express companies, oil fields, sleeping cars, and telegraphs before he finally fused his energies and capital in Carnegie Steel† (19). Rockefeller and Morgan were the other businessmen who set an impetus for heavy industry; mass production and merger of small industries. They further capitalized on the new ideas, activities of scientist and technologists like Edison whose experimentation revolutionized the industrial world. Mergers and acquisitions were an important phenomenon that capacitated the American industry to grow by leaps and bounds. Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thompson-Houston Electric Company in 1892 and hence the great industrial conglomerate i. e. General Electric came into being. Morgan further established Federal Steel Company and later on merged it with Carnegie Steel Company. In 1901, he further assimilated many small steel and iron mills to establish the United States Steel Corporation. In this perspective, life of the laborers in this industrial domain was subject to long working hours and dangerous working settings. Several of the policies of the industries had only obligations for the workers but there rights were never recognized and granted. This resulted in the low production output as workers were not satisfied. This background led many labourers to try to institute the rights of the workers in the form of labor unions regardless of well-organized resistance from entrepreneurs and the courts. After the recognition of these labor unions, collective bargaining resulted in much improved wages and working conditions for the laborers as well the productivity. So the industrial development further progressed. So it is quite clear from the above-mentioned facts and supported arguments that American industrial and economic development in the last decades of the 19th century was primarily due to the endeavours of the great entrepreneurs, scientific and technological innovations and the emergence of labor unions.

Medical Data Analytics Using R

Medical Data Analytics Using R 1.) R for Recency => months since last donation, 2.) F for Frequency => total number of donation, 3.) M for Monetary => total amount of blood donated in c.c., 4.) T for Time => months since first donation and 5.) Binary variable => 1 -> donated blood, 0-> didnt donate blood. The main idea behind this dataset is the concept of relationship management CRM. Based on three metrics: Recency, Frequency and Monetary (RFM) which are 3 out of the 5 attributes of the dataset, we would be able to predict whether a customer is likely to donate blood again based to a marketing campaign. For example, customers who have donated or visited more currently (Recency), more frequently (Frequency) or made higher monetary values (Monetary) are more likely to respond to a marketing effort. Customers with less RFM score are less likely to react. It is also known in customer behavior, that the time of the first positive interaction (donation, purchase) is not significant. However, the Recency of the last donation is very important. In the traditional RFM implementation each customer is ranked based on his RFM value parameters against all the other customers and that develops a score for every customer. Customers with bigger scores are more likely to react in a positive way for example (visit again or donate). The model constructs the formula which could predict the following problem. Keep in repository only customers that are more likely to continue donating in the future and remove those who are less likely to donate, given a certain period of time. The previous statement also determines the problem which will be trained and tested in this project. Firstly, I created a .csv file and generated 748 unique random numbers in Excel in the domain [1,748] in the first column, which corresponds to the customers or users ID. Then I transferred the whole data from the .txt file (transfusion.data) to the .csv file in excel by using the delimited (,) option. Then I randomly split it in a train file and a test file. The train file contains the 530 instances and the test file has the 218 instances. Afterwards, I read both the training dataset and the test dataset. From the previous results, we can see that we have no missing or invalid values. Data ranges and units seem reasonable. Figure 1 above depicts boxplots of all the attributes and for both train and test datasets. By examining the figure, we notice that both datasets have similar distributions and there are some outliers (Monetary > 2,500) that are visible. The volume of blood variable has a high correlation with frequency. Because the volume of blood that is donated each time is fixed, the Monetary value is proportional to the Frequency (number of donations) each person gave. For example, if the amount of blood drawn in each person was 250 ml/bag (Taiwan Blood Services Foundation 2007) March then Monetary = 250*Frequency. This is also why in the predictive model we will not consider the Monetary attribute in the implementation. So, it is reasonable to expect that customers with higher frequency will have a lot higher Monetary value. This can be verified also visually by examining the Monetary outliers for the train set. We retrieve back 83 instances. In order, to understand better the statistical dispersion of the whole dataset (748 instances) we will look at the standard deviation (SD) between the Recency and the variable whether customer has donated blood (Binary variable) and the SD between the Frequency and the Binary variable.The distribution of scores around the mean is small, which means the data is concentrated. This can also be noticed from the plots. From this correlation matrix, we can verify what was stated above, that the frequency and the monetary values are proportional inputs, which can be noticed from their high correlation. Another observation is that the various Recency numbers are not factors of 3. This goes to opposition with what the description said about the data being collected every 3 months. Additionally, there is always a maximum number of times you can donate blood per certain period (e.g. 1 time per month), but the data shows that. 36 customers donated blood more than once and 6 customers had donated 3 or more times in the same month. The features that will be used to calculate the prediction of whether a customer is likely to donate again are 2, the Recency and the Frequency (RF). The Monetary feature will be dropped. The number of categories for R and F attributes will be 3. The highest RF score will be 33 equivalent to 6 when added together and the lowest will be 11 equivalent to 2 when added together. The threshold for the added score to determine whether a customer is more likely to donate blood again or not, will be set to 4 which is the median value. The users will be assigned to categories by sorting on RF attributes as well as their scores. The file with the donators will be sorted on Recency first (in ascending order) because we want to see which customers have donated blood more recently. Then it will be sorted on frequency (in descending order this time because we want to see which customers have donated more times) in each Recency category. Apart from sorting, we will need to apply some business rules that have occurred after multiple tests: For Recency (Business rule 1): If the Recency in months is less than 15 months, then these customers will be assigned to category 3. If the Recency in months is equal or greater than 15 months and less than 26 months, then these customers will be assigned to category 2. Otherwise, if the Recency in months is equal or greater than 26 months, then these customers will be assigned to category 1 And for Frequency (Business rule 2): If the Frequency is equal or greater than 25 times, then these customers will be assigned to category 3. If the Frequency is less than 25 times or greater than 15 months, then these customers will be assigned to category 2. If the Frequency is equal or less than 15 times, then these customers will be assigned to category 1 RESULTS The output of the program are two smaller files that have resulted from the train file and the other one from the test file, that have excluded several customers that should not be considered future targets and kept those that are likely to respond. Some statistics about the precision, recall and the balanced F-score of the train and test file have been calculated and printed. Furthermore, we compute the absolute difference between the results retrieved from the train and test file to get the offset error between these statistics. By doing this and verifying that the error numbers are negligible, we validate the consistency of the model implemented. Moreover, we depict two confusion matrices one for the test and one for the training by calculating the true positives, false negatives, false positives and true negatives. In our case, true positives correspond to the customers (who donated on March 2007) and were classified as future possible donators. False negatives correspond to the customers (who donated on March 2007) but were not classified as future possible targets for marketing campaigns. False positives correlate to customers (who did not donate on March 2007) and were incorrectly classified as possible future targets. Lastly, true negatives which are customers (who did not donate on March 2007) and were correctly classified as not plausible future donators and therefore removed from the data file. By classification we mean the application of the threshold (4) to separate those customers who are more likely and less likely to donate again in a certain future period. Lastly, we calculate 2 more single value metrics for both train and test files the Kappa Statistic (general statistic used for classification systems) and Matthews Correlation Coefficient or cost/reward measure. Both are normalized statistics for classification systems, its values never exceed 1, so the same statistic can be used even as the number of observations grows. The error for both measures are MCC error: 0.002577   and Kappa error:   0.002808, which is very small (negligible), similarly with all the previous measures. REFERENCES UCI Machine Learning Repository (2008) UCI machine learning repository: Blood transfusion service center data set. Available at: http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Blood+Transfusion+Service+Center (Accessed: 30 January 2017). Fundation, T.B.S. (2015) Operation department. Available at: http://www.blood.org.tw/Internet/english/docDetail.aspx?uid=7741pid=7681docid=37144 (Accessed: 31 January 2017). The Appendix with the code starts below. However the whole code has been uploaded on my Git Hub profile and this is the link where it can be accessed. https://github.com/it21208/RassignmentDataAnalysis/blob/master/RassignmentDataAnalysis.R library(ggplot2) library(car)   # read training and testing datasets traindata à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   read.csv(C:/Users/Alexandros/Dropbox/MSc/2nd Semester/Data analysis/Assignment/transfusion.csv) testdata à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   read.csv(C:/Users/Alexandros/Dropbox/MSc/2nd Semester/Data analysis/Assignment/test.csv) # assigning the datasets to dataframes dftrain à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(traindata) dftest à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(testdata) sapply(dftrain, typeof) # give better names to columns names(dftrain)[1] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ ID names(dftrain)[2] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ recency names(dftrain)[3]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸frequency names(dftrain)[4]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸cc names(dftrain)[5]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸time names(dftrain)[6]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸donated # names(dftest)[1]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ID names(dftest)[2]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸recency names(dftest)[3]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸frequency names(dftest)[4]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸cc names(dftest)[5]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸time names(dftest)[6]à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸donated # drop time column from both files dftrain$time à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ NULL dftest$time à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ NULL #   sort (train) dataframe on Recency in ascending order sorted_dftrain à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ dftrain[ order( dftrain[,2] ), ] #   add column in (train) dataframe -   hold score (rank) of Recency for each customer sorted_dftrain[ , Rrank] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 #   convert train file from dataframe format to matrix matrix_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ as.matrix(sapply(sorted_dftrain, as.numeric)) #   sort (test) dataframe on Recency in ascending order sorted_dftest à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ dftest[ order( dftest[,2] ), ] #   add column in (test) dataframe -hold score (rank) of Recency for each customer sorted_dftest[ , Rrank] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 #   convert train file from dataframe format to matrix matrix_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ as.matrix(sapply(sorted_dftest, as.numeric)) # categorize matrix_train and add scores for Recency apply business rule for(i in 1:nrow(matrix_train)) { if (matrix_train [i,2]   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_train [i,6] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 3 } else if ((matrix_train [i,2] = 15)) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_train [i,6] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 2 } else {   matrix_train [i,6] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 1   }   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   } # categorize matrix_test and add scores for Recency apply business rule for(i in 1:nrow(matrix_test)) { if (matrix_test [i,2]   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_test [i,6] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 3 } else if ((matrix_test [i,2] = 15)) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_test [i,6] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 2 } else {   matrix_test [i,6] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 1 }   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   } # convert matrix_train back to dataframe sorted_dftrain à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(matrix_train) # sort dataframe 1rst by Recency Rank (desc.) then by Frequency (desc.) sorted_dftrain_2à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ sorted_dftrain[order(-sorted_dftrain[,6], -sorted_dftrain[,3] ), ] # add column in train dataframe- hold Frequency score (rank) for each customer sorted_dftrain_2[ , Frank] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 # convert dataframe to matrix matrix_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ as.matrix(sapply(sorted_dftrain_2, as.numeric)) # convert matrix_test back to dataframe sorted_dftest à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(matrix_test) # sort dataframe 1rst by Recency Rank (desc.) then by Frequency (desc.) sorted_dftest2 à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ sorted_dftest[ order( -sorted_dftest[,6], -sorted_dftest[,3] ), ] # add column in test dataframe- hold Frequency score (rank) for each customer sorted_dftest2[ , Frank] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 # convert dataframe to matrix matrix_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ as.matrix(sapply(sorted_dftest2, as.numeric)) #categorize matrix_train, add scores for Frequency for(i in 1:nrow(matrix_train)){    if (matrix_train[i,3] >= 25) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_train[i,7] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 3    } else if ((matrix_train[i,3] > 15) (matrix_train[i,3]   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_train[i,7] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 2    } else {   matrix_train[i,7] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 1   }   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   } #categorize matrix_test, add scores for Frequency for(i in 1:nrow(matrix_test)){    if (matrix_test[i,3] >= 25) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_test[i,7] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 3    } else if ((matrix_test[i,3] > 15) (matrix_test[i,3]   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_test[i,7] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 2    } else {  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   matrix_test[i,7] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 1   } } #   convert matrix test back to dataframe sorted_dftrain à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(matrix_train) # sort (train) dataframe 1rst on Recency rank (desc.) 2nd Frequency rank (desc.) sorted_dftrain_2 à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ sorted_dftrain[ order( -sorted_dftrain[,6], -sorted_dftrain[,7] ), ] # add another column for the Sum of Recency rank and Frequency rank sorted_dftrain_2[ , SumRankRAndF] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 # convert dataframe to matrix matrix_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ as.matrix(sapply(sorted_dftrain_2, as.numeric)) #   convert matrix test back to dataframe sorted_dftest à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(matrix_test) # sort (train) dataframe 1rst on Recency rank (desc.) 2nd Frequency rank (desc.) sorted_dftest2 à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ sorted_dftest[ order( -sorted_dftest[,6],   -sorted_dftest[,7] ), ] # add another column for the Sum of Recency rank and Frequency rank sorted_dftest2[ , SumRankRAndF] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 # convert dataframe to matrix matrix_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ as.matrix(sapply(sorted_dftest2, as.numeric)) # sum Recency rank and Frequency rank for train file for(i in 1:nrow(matrix_train)) { matrix_train[i,8] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ matrix_train[i,6] + matrix_train[i,7] } # sum Recency rank and Frequency rank for test file for(i in 1:nrow(matrix_test)) { matrix_test[i,8] à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ matrix_test[i,6] + matrix_test[i,7] } # convert matrix_train back to dataframe sorted_dftrain à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(matrix_train) # sort train dataframe according to total rank in descending order sorted_dftrain_2 à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ sorted_dftrain[ order( -sorted_dftrain[,8] ), ] # convert sorted train dataframe matrix_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ as.matrix(sapply(sorted_dftrain_2, as.numeric)) # convert matrix_test back to dataframe sorted_dftest à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(matrix_test) # sort test dataframe according to total rank in descending order sorted_dftest2 à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ sorted_dftest[ order( -sorted_dftest[,8] ), ] # convert sorted test dataframe to matrix matrix_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ as.matrix(sapply(sorted_dftest2, as.numeric)) # apply business rule check count customers whose score >= 4 and that Have Donated, train file # check count for all customers that have donated in the train dataset count_train_predicted_donations à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 counter_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 number_donation_instances_whole_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 false_positives_train_counter à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 for(i in 1:nrow(matrix_train)) {    if ((matrix_train[i,8] >= 4) (matrix_train[i,5] == 1)) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   count_train_predicted_donations = count_train_predicted_donations + 1   } if ((matrix_train[i,8] >= 4) (matrix_train[i,5] == 0)) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   false_positives_train_counter = false_positives_train_counter + 1}    if (matrix_train[i,8] >= 4) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   counter_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ counter_train + 1   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   }    if (matrix_train[i,5] == 1) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   number_donation_instances_whole_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ number_donation_instances_whole_train + 1    } } # apply business rule check count customers whose score >= 4 and that Have Donated, test file # check count for all customers that have donated in the test dataset count_test_predicted_donations à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 counter_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 number_donation_instances_whole_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 false_positives_test_counter à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 0 for(i in 1:nrow(matrix_test)) {    if ((matrix_test[i,8] >= 4) (matrix_test[i,5] == 1)) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   count_test_predicted_donations = count_test_predicted_donations + 1   } if ((matrix_test[i,8] >= 4) (matrix_test[i,5] == 0)) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   false_positives_test_counter = false_positives_test_counter + 1}    if (matrix_test[i,8] >= 4) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   counter_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ counter_test + 1   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   }    if (matrix_test[i,5] == 1) {   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   number_donation_instances_whole_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ number_donation_instances_whole_test + 1   Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   } } # convert matrix_train to dataframe dftrain à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(matrix_train) # remove the group of customers who are less likely to donate again in the future from train file dftrain_final à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ dftrain[c(1:counter_train),1:8] # convert matrix_train to dataframe dftest à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(matrix_test) # remove the group of customers who are less likely to donate again in the future from test file dftest_final à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ dftest[c(1:counter_test),1:8] # save final train dataframe as a CSV in the specified directory reduced target future customers write.csv(dftrain_final, file = C:\Users\Alexandros\Dropbox\MSc\2nd Semester\Data analysis\Assignment\train_output.csv, row.names = FALSE) #save final test dataframe as a CSV in the specified directory reduced target future customers write.csv(dftest_final, file = C:\Users\Alexandros\Dropbox\MSc\2nd Semester\Data analysis\Assignment\test_output.csv, row.names = FALSE) #train precision=number of relevant instances retrieved / number of retrieved instances collect.530 precision_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   count_train_predicted_donations / counter_train # train recall = number of relevant instances retrieved / number of relevant instances in collect.530 recall_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ count_train_predicted_donations / number_donation_instances_whole_train # measure combines PrecisionRecall is harmonic mean of PrecisionRecall balanced F-score for # train file f_balanced_score_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 2*(precision_train*recall_train)/(precision_train+recall_train) # test precision precision_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ count_test_predicted_donations / counter_test # test recall recall_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ count_test_predicted_donations / number_donation_instances_whole_test # the balanced F-score for test file f_balanced_score_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ 2*(precision_test*recall_test)/(precision_test+recall_test) # error in precision error_precision à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ abs(precision_train-precision_test) # error in recall error_recall à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ abs(recall_train-recall_test) # error in f-balanced scores error_f_balanced_scores à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ abs(f_balanced_score_train-f_balanced_score_test) # Print Statistics for verification and validation cat(Precision with training dataset: , precision_train) cat(Recall with training dataset: , recall_train) cat(Precision with testing dataset: , precision_test) cat(Recall with testing dataset: , recall_test) cat(The F-balanced scores with training dataset: , f_balanced_score_train) cat(The F-balanced scores with testing dataset:   , f_balanced_score_test) cat(Error in precision: , error_precision) cat(Error in recall: , error_recall) cat(Error in F-balanced scores: , error_f_balanced_scores) # confusion matrix (true positives, false positives, false negatives, true negatives) # calculate true positives for train which is the variable count_train_predicted_donations # calculate false positives for train which is the variable false_positives_train_counter # calculate false negatives for train false_negatives_for_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ number_donation_instances_whole_train count_train_predicted_donations # calculate true negatives for train true_negatives_for_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ (nrow(matrix_train) number_donation_instances_whole_train) false_positives_train_counter collect_trainà ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸c(false_positives_train_counter, true_negatives_for_train, count_train_predicted_donations, false_negatives_for_train) # calculate true positives for test which is the variable count_test_predicted_donations # calculate false positives for test which is the variable false_positives_test_counter # calculate false negatives for test false_negatives_for_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ number_donation_instances_whole_test count_test_predicted_donations # calculate true negatives for test true_negatives_for_testà ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸(nrow(matrix_test)-number_donation_instances_whole_test)- false_positives_test_counter collect_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ c(false_positives_test_counter, true_negatives_for_test, count_test_predicted_donations, false_negatives_for_test) TrueCondition à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ factor(c(0, 0, 1, 1)) PredictedCondition à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ factor(c(1, 0, 1, 0)) # print confusion matrix for train df_conf_mat_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(TrueCondition,PredictedCondition,collect_train) ggplot(data = df_conf_mat_train, mapping = aes(x = PredictedCondition, y = TrueCondition)) +    geom_tile(aes(fill = collect_train), colour = white) +    geom_text(aes(label = sprintf(%1.0f, collect_train)), vjust = 1) +    scale_fill_gradient(low = blue, high = red) +    theme_bw() + theme(legend.position = none) #   print confusion matrix for test df_conf_mat_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ data.frame(TrueCondition,PredictedCondition,collect_test) ggplot(data =   df_conf_mat_test, mapping = aes(x = PredictedCondition, y = TrueCondition)) +    geom_tile(aes(fill = collect_test), colour = white) +    geom_text(aes(label = sprintf(%1.0f, collect_test)), vjust = 1) +    scale_fill_gradient(low = blue, high = red) +    theme_bw() + theme(legend.position = none) # MCC = (TP * TN FP * FN)/sqrt((TP+FP) (TP+FN) (FP+TN) (TN+FN)) for train values mcc_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ ((count_train_predicted_donations * true_negatives_for_train) (false_positives_train_counter * false_negatives_for_train))/sqrt((count_train_predicted_donations+false_positives_train_counter)*(count_train_predicted_donations+false_negatives_for_train)*(false_positives_train_counter+true_negatives_for_train)*(true_negatives_for_train+false_negatives_for_train)) # print MCC for train cat(Matthews Correlation Coefficient for train: ,mcc_train) # MCC = (TP * TN FP * FN)/sqrt((TP+FP) (TP+FN) (FP+TN) (TN+FN)) for test values mcc_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ ((count_test_predicted_donations * true_negatives_for_test) (false_positives_test_counter * false_negatives_for_test))/sqrt((count_test_predicted_donations+false_positives_test_counter)*(count_test_predicted_donations+false_negatives_for_test)*(false_positives_test_counter+true_negatives_for_test)*(true_negatives_for_test+false_negatives_for_test)) # print MCC for test cat(Matthews Correlation Coefficient for test: ,mcc_test) # print MCC err between train and err cat(Matthews Correlation Coefficient error: ,abs(mcc_train-mcc_test)) # Total = TP + TN + FP + FN for train total_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ count_train_predicted_donations + true_negatives_for_train + false_positives_train_counter + false_negatives_for_train # Total = TP + TN + FP + FN for test   total_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ count_test_predicted_donations + true_negatives_for_test + false_positives_test_counter + false_negatives_for_test # totalAccuracy = (TP + TN) / Total for train values totalAccuracyTrain à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ (count_train_predicted_donations + true_negatives_for_train)/ total_train # totalAccuracy = (TP + TN) / Total for test values totalAccuracyTest à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ (count_test_predicted_donations + true_negatives_for_test)/ total_test # randomAccuracy = ((TN+FP)*(TN+FN)+(FN+TP)*(FP+TP)) / (Total*Total)   for train values randomAccuracyTrainà ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸((true_negatives_for_train+false_positives_train_counter)*(true_negatives_for_train+false_negatives_for_train)+(false_negatives_for_train+count_train_predicted_donations)*(false_positives_train_counter+count_train_predicted_donations))/(total_train*total_train) # randomAccuracy = ((TN+FP)*(TN+FN)+(FN+TP)*(FP+TP)) / (Total*Total)   for test values randomAccuracyTestà ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸((true_negatives_for_test+false_positives_test_counter)*(true_negatives_for_test+false_negatives_for_test)+(false_negatives_for_test+count_test_predicted_donations)*(false_positives_test_counter+count_test_predicted_donations))/(total_test*total_test) # kappa = (totalAccuracy randomAccuracy) / (1 randomAccuracy) for train kappa_train à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ (totalAccuracyTrain-randomAccuracyTrain)/(1-randomAccuracyTrain) # kappa = (totalAccuracy randomAccuracy) / (1 randomAccuracy) for test kappa_test à ¯Ã†â€™Ã… ¸ (totalAccuracyTest-randomAccuracyTest)/(1-randomAccuracyTest) # print kappa error cat(Kappa error: ,abs(kappa_train-kappa_test))

Essay --

Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydropower in the world, has claimed to be a project that gives â€Å"hope† to the people in China. Located on the Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world, the Three Gorges Dam is the symbol of China’s technology and economic progress. For years, the government has claimed that it could benefit people’s living quality by improving the navigation on Yangtze River, providing hydroelectric power, and improving flood control. But does it true? Do the people in China get any benefit from this project? This paper will discuss about the environmental impact, the social consequence, and the current status of Government’s plans toward the Three Gorges Dam. Flood control is the main reason for building the Three Gorges Dam. Since Han Dynasty (300BC), flood has been killed millions of lives, and destroyed millions of acres of farmland and homes every ten years. Billions of money has been spent on recovering the damage. The Three Gorges Dam is meant to be responsible for controlling the flood by changing the water height of the reservoir upstream from the dam according to season. It was planned to allow the water level to reach 185 meters above the sea level during the dry season, from November to April, and reduce to 135 meters during flooding months in order to attempt to contain flood waters. ("Biggest flood control,") Energy production is the second major reason for the construction of Three Gorges Dam. China’s demand of energy has been increasing rapidly that the Government have to find ways to fulfill the huge demand. The Three Gorges Dam becomes one of the solutions in meeting the needs. According to China Three Gorges Corporation, the dam contains twenty-six turbines, each generating 700MW, thus ... ...s very inefficient. Besides hydroelectricity, China has a lot of potential in other alternative energy, like wind energy and solar power. The investment of these alternative energy could be cheaper and faster compare with the large dam. According to the China Academy of Meteorological Sciences, the potential of wind energy is massive, with 235 GW of practical onshore wind power potential and 750GW offshore. For the solar power, China is already a global manufacturer of PV panels which makes it likely to have a large market for grid-tied solar in the future. ("Three gorges dam:," 2008). The Chinese government’s goal is to get 15% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. With the strong financial and political power of China government, China could become the world leader of energy revolution while protecting the environment and human rights at the same time.

Education and Forthcoming English Olympiad

P. T. M. T. T. I MARUTHOORKONAM, BALARAMAPURAM Attention Students!!! ENGLISH OLYMPIAD-2012-13 P. T. M. T. T. I wishes to inform all teacher trainees the details of the forthcoming English Olympiad 2012 on 12th Dec 2012 at T. T. I Auditorium. Items for competition 1. Skit 2. Choreography 3. Book Review 4. Group discussion  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Details 1. A Skit of about 15 minutes can be staged by 10 participants. The dialogue, stage settings etc. hould be decided by the Trainees under the guidance of Teachers. Theme: Human Values 2. A poem composed by a student /a group of students of the school may be staged. Maximum 10 students can participate among whom not less than two students may be for recitation. Theme: Love. (Time. 10 Minutes) 3. Book Review.Three Books will be suggested for reading. The selected student can read the books and come prepared to answer the questions of the panel of judges. Time: 10 Minutes. Books will be informed. . Group Discussion. Time: 20 Minutes A group of ten trainees will be selected to participate in the discussion. G. D. Topic will be announced on the spot. Evaluation: All the items will be assessed based on the criteria in the English Source books. The decision of the judges will be final and may not be questioned. Please register the name and the participating items by 5th Nov 2012 to Smt. Sheeba Rani, Club Convener. Best of luck to all participants! R,Anu Krishnan, Teacher Educator.

Discuss imagery of Dulce est Doreum

Wilfred Owen's Dolce et Decorum Est uses effective imagery to uncover the hidden realities of the World War. The appalling cruelties soldiers were left to face were captivated to the reader through his dramatic use of expressive imagery. The compelling images drawn in this poem are so graphic, that it carries the ability for the reader to perfectly compose the authors intended scenery in their minds. Bent, double, like old beggars under sacks†(line 1) â€Å"knock kneed, coughing like hags†(line 2). This gives the reader a more realistic view on the appearances of the soldiers as they are normally portrayed to be strong bulky figures. The comparison of the men to â€Å"beggars† or â€Å"hags† show the effect the war has had on them, causing premature ageing and exhaustion within them from the war life for which they cannot even maintain a straight posture and is why they look so beggar like.The exhaustion is further conveyed in the lines â€Å"and towards o ur distance rest began to trudge† (line 4). The use of â€Å"trudge† expresses the slow and crucifying progress of the army. â€Å"Flound'ring like a man in 12). â€Å"He plunges at me guttering,choking,drowning† (line 16) indicates that men drowned helplessly in the toxic gasses, tragically in front of the eyes of fellow soldiers. Despite being so disturbingly graphic, it shows the reader the extent of pain soldiers are to bear.Orwell brilliantly showcases the fatality of the soldiers deaths in the lines â€Å"†It you could near, at every Jolt, odl Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs/ Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud,†(line 21-23) Another powerful use of imagery Mle, incurable sores on innocent tongues†(line 24) suggests the pain and misery of the soldiers were unforgettable and scars left on them both externally and internally were permanent. These graphic images play a very effective role to draw the reader to the poem, and to generate a way to show the gruesome, heartless, and horrifying effects of war.

AP by John Updikes

AP by John Updikes Introduction The story, set in a small town in New England, opens with three teenage girls, wearing just their bathing suits, walking into an AP grocery store; it is the watching of these girls that gets the story rolling (Tiger-town). The narrator, Sammy, a teenage boy working in the store, watches these girls closely, taking note of how they behave and carry themselves, their hair styles and bodies as they go on about their business in the store.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on AP by John Updikes specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Sammy and his coworker, the married Stokesie, ogle over the girls and joke about it. But Sammy is conscious of the fact that Stockesie is married and cannot go after the girls but he feels he still has the opportunity and freedom to go after the girls himself. The store manager, Lengel, reproaches the girls because of the way they are dressed and the girls are embarrassed. When the girls le ave, Sammy, hoping that they are watching, reproaches his boss for his treatment of the girls and decides to quit. Against his boss’s pleas he insists and in the end, he leaves only to find the girls long gone. Discussion The story explores a number of themes; the key one around which the rest seem to revolve is the power of desire (Tiger-town). The author manages to bring out this through the behavior of the characters. The girls, although there’s no beach around, are dressed in bathing suits, a symbol of their disregard for the town’s social norms and a deliberate and explicit provocation of the men. Now they have set the men’s desires rolling, including the married Stocksie and Lengel who downplays it by confronting them. While every man watches them, they act nonchalantly, especially Queenie; thus, by not acknowledging the men, the girls further inspire the men’s desire while managing to avoid being subject of it. In Sammy, the narrator, the gi rls inspire much stronger desires since his desire for Queenie inspires his imagination. His description of the girls shows, on one end, his appreciation of the females, and on the other, how aggressive the male gaze is. In the end he quits his job; it is largely argued that Sammy’s reckless behavior is not purely as a result of his desire. Instead it is blamed on his hormones. Nonetheless, his response cannot be separated from his desire. For Sammy, he has attained a kind of freedom and the deliberate behavior by the girls against the norms, symbolized in their dressing, opens up a world of possibilities for him. As such when Lengel reproaches the girls, it is as if he has hurt Sammy’s belief in possibilities; Sammy’s quitting may as well be his effort to reassert to himself the world he has just envisioned.Advertising Looking for essay on american literature? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Upd ike also explores the pervasiveness of advertising (Tiger-town). The brand names in the shop sets the story in the American prosperity after the war. These names don’t just reflect the plenitude of the time, but also the domination of marketing in shaping people’s tastes. Sammy’s revolt is partly against the artificiality of these brand names. Conclusion Generally, AP is a story about desire; the girls’ desire for male attention; Stocksie’s desire of freedom from his wife, Sammy’s desire of Queenie and for the desire that the adverts spark from the consumers among others. But it is equally the role that age plays in the belief on possibilities that is explored. Tiger-town. â€Å"AP  by john updike.† 2009. Web. tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/

The Humankind and Its Laws through the Eyes of a Child

The Humankind and Its Laws through the Eyes of a Child There is hardly anything more difficult for a child than trying to adjust to the specifics of an adult world. Ruled by what seems from a child’s perspective shockingly insane principles, the universe of the grown-up people is far too absurd to embrace and far too exciting to stay away from.Advertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on The Humankind and Its Laws through the Eyes of a Child specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Touching upon the problem of children trying to comply with the rules set by adults and for adults, as well as addressing the problem of growing pains, Mun-Yol Yi in his Our Twisted Hero, as well as Mo Yan in his Pow!, considers the chances of a child to survive in the world of adults. Although the two authors create completely different universes, with colorful and unique characters and different plotlines, there is still a tangible similarity in which children portray adult world and consider moral and ethical dilemmas that they encounter on their way. Whenever both authors start taking about the childhood experiences of their characters, they would always mention the obstacles that these characters were forced to fight in order to become a part of the adult society. In many cases, the lead characters will have to face injustice; interpreting it as a part of growing up, the authors make their leads accept the fact that they will have to fight their way to the top. Another peculiar issue regarding the lessons that both leading characters learn about the adult world concerns morality in the community. As the reader sees the adult world through the lens of a small child, all the threats of this new and potentially dangerous environment come out in full blue, literally making the reader shudder.Advertising Looking for critical writing on comparative literature? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More However, by far the most cringe inducing element of the adult world reality appears to be the lack of justice, which the leading characters in both novels often become witnesses for and even victims of: â€Å"Suddenly, my nose began to sting and tears rolled around my eyes. It wasn’t completely clear to me then, but I suppose I was tasting the sorrow of the ostracized, the bitter loneliness that goes with alienation†1. Among the most graphic examples of Han facing injustice, the moment at which he realizes that he actually has enemies, whom he did nothing to and who are nevertheless hate him, Eom being one of those people. Even though in the end, the two characters finally reconcile, it is still clear that the thought of having a person who nurtures hatred against him comes as a huge and unpleasant revelation to Han. While in Our Twisted Hero, the ethical issues seem rather obvious, in Pow!, the conflict between the moral code of the protagonist and the principles and values that the society is trying to foist on him, is described in a much more subtle manner. By creating a realm of hallucinatory realism, Mo Yan blurs the line between dreams and reality, therefore, questioning the very essence of being. Thus, the ethical issues come as more subtle, yet nonetheless demanding answers. Mo Yan poses such questions as where the line between the socially acceptable and the socially inacceptable must be drawn. Of all the details that prevent the readers to relate the characters from one book to the characters from another one, the difference in pacing should be mentioned first.Advertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on The Humankind and Its Laws through the Eyes of a Child specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More It is remarkable that Yi immediately sets the stage for the young character to explore the world and cognize reality; even though the idea of starting a novel in a flashback does seem a little weird, the payoff, which the readers experience as they watch the reader’s universe collide with the harsh adult reality, is well worth the risks that the author takes with his well-trodden approach. Yan, on the contrary, decides to set his novel in the realm of the present-day world, and reveals the fact that his protagonist is mostly going to be shown as a child throughout the entire novel only a while after the readers start relate to the Monk, Yan’s lead character. While the given differences do not affect the way in which the readers relate to the protagonist, it does change the audience’s vision of the leads as children. Yan’s Monk is capable of evaluating the childhood experience of his vis-a-vis in a calm and reserved manner, which reduces the shock value for the reader as the latter finds out about the negligence that the leading character experienced in his relationships with his father: â€Å"He had forgotten I ever existed†2. Yi, on the contr ary, throws the reader into the realm of a little kid, the realm, which is about to collide with the world of adults and suffer severe damage in the process. At the end of the day, the lessons that the audience learns from both novels, are quite obvious. However, these lessons have still been introduced in a very clever way; both authors could have simply gone into creating a dram displaying the faults of society as they are seen through the eyes of children.Advertising Looking for critical writing on comparative literature? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Instead, both authors manage to provide a rather fair account of the rights and wrongs of the society, with the adult versions of their leading characters summarizing the key points that both authors make. Han defeating Eom at the end of Our Twisted Hero serves as a cautionary tale about being irresponsible about one’s power, while the ending of the Pow! seems quite random, much like the novel itself. As for the Pow!, its lessons seem to have stuck in the thicket of magical realism, and the ending of the novel literally dissolves in the final chapter. Regardless of the complexity of the plot, however, Pow! Still offers an important lesson to consider – it shows the perils of escapism, which children usually resort to when bumping into the harshness of the real world. While in Pow!, the lesson might be too on the nose, it is still admirable that the author spends so much time on making his character three-dimensional, and his childhood experience relatable for the reade rs. Though the universes created in each of the novels differ strikingly from each other in terms of the time, setting, characters and plot, they still have the same conflict of children facing the disturbingly unpleasant reality of the adult world. Both novels shed the light on how lonely it is to be a child, and what effort it takes to come out of one’s shell in order to explore the world and only get disappointed in the process. Showing that children actually need parental guidance in order to cognize the world around them and be able to retain their optimistic attitude without turning into cynics, both authors make it clear that for a child thrown into the adult world and left completely on his or her own, life becomes a fight for survival. Very few people come out of this fight safe; for the most part, the lessons learned in the process leave the battle scars that will not go away any time soon. Bibliography Yan, Mo. Pow! New York, NY: Seagull Publications. 2012. Yi, Mun -Yol. Our Twisted Hero. New York City, NY: Hyperion East. 2001. Footnotes Mun-Yol Yi, Our Twisted Hero, (New York City, NY: Hyperion East. 2001), 511.. Mo Yan, Pow!, (New York, NY: Seagull Publications. 2012), 17.

Summary of the three ethical theories that are most central in Research Paper

Summary of the three ethical theories that are most central in philosophic ethics today - Research Paper Example One renowned deontologist is Immanuel Kant who has proposed that those actions should be considered as moral for which the reason for conducting an action was that the performer of the action is ready to accept the same action being considered against him in the same situation or in any other situation. This reason has been regarded as the maxim by the theorist. According to the principle of virtue ethics an act is considered as ethical or virtuous if and only if the person carrying out that act complies with the standards of honesty as well as righteousness (trinity.edu, 2014). Virtue ethics emphasizes upon the significant characteristics of an individual who can be regarded as a good human being. The theory of ethics of virtue has proposed the position that a person who can be regarded as good in nature is an individual who complied with various principles of

Enterprise and Innovation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Enterprise and Innovation - Essay Example We can categorize age structure as per preferences of the population in a particular age group. Thus we can have the various sub-groups as – 15 to 19, 20 to 29, 30 to 49 and 50 and above. We can safely assume that people falling in these sub-categories of age groups will have more or less similar preferences and hence we can target our products as per these 5 segments. An important point to note is that the population in the segments 15 to 19 and 50 and above will have more leisure time as compared to the other two which fall in working age group. These segments will have more time during the week-ends. Looking at the timings of the games, we have 3 week-ends between 27th July and 12th August 2012 (the period scheduled for the games). Thus, we can introduce products as per following plan: Based on the tastes of the various age group segments different flavors have been introduced. People in the age group of 15 to 19 would prefer the flavors mentioned above. People above 50 years tend to get digestive problems and hence the products mentioned for their category will appeal to them. 20 to 29 years age people are more experimental and nor very money conscious. Hence, new flavors not introduced so far will appeal to them. And finally people in the age group of 30 to 49 are generally more health conscious and hence would prefer fruit based drinks which do not have the ills of carbonated drinks and at the same time will also be healthy. The Price elasticity of Demand (PeD) determines how sensitive the demand for a product is to changes in prices. We will look at the general factors impacting all products as well as factors that are specifically impacting Coca-Cola at Olympics. 1. Substitute availability: Coca-Cola has direct competition with its substitute – Pepsi. Both are similar in taste and thus have very high PeD. Moreover in UK Coke has a direct rival Robins. This

The Theories of the Job Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

The Theories of the Job Design - Essay Example The various elements that consideration entails include job enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation and activities to be perfromed. Successful companies according to organizational psychology are companies which takes human capital as a critical and fundamental asset. As such, there is needed to come up with a management team whose role is to manage human captial with an intention of achieving competitive advantage and success in the organization. The human response tries to identify and exploit the employees’ talent in the organization through motivation and training. It also rewards the employees who have shown significant growth and development. The overal approach to management of human resource in a strategically is defined as strategic human resource management. The management is in line with the organization’s intention and its future projecction. It entails issues affecting the employees in long term basis and big isssues about quality, culture, structure, val ues and commitments that supports the organization’s futureachievments. The definition of culture according to hofdtede (2010) is a cummulative mind programming which identify a set of people from a group. It entials people’s way of understaning and their behaviours. Elements of job design There are three key elements of job design that affects any organizations ability to laverage its human resource. These are the task analysis, employee analysis amd environmental analysis. Task analysis The element entails all the tasks in the organization that needs to be done, hoiw each task will be performed and the connection of the task with the aim of forming a job. In the given case, it is evident that task anlysis is one of the factors that... This essya stresses that job enrichment- the element aims at enhancing a job position through opportunity addition meant for higher ranks of recognition and responsibilities via development of personal skills and acheivement. To ease the difficulties related to task management, Legacy Leisure Centre management need to implement planning and control features assignment to the workers. This report makes a conclusion that every organization’s aim is to constantly improve the business with a view of achieving competitive advantage. The neture of job design contributes significantly to achieving this goal since it has critical influence on maintaining organizational culture and corporate employees. The organization should take job design theory as a critical tool of achieving the business goals through employee satisfaction and elimination of boredom. When ther is stiff competition between different firms, the key assset of the company is the employees. It is therefore improtant to have in place a well established job design whose key responsibility is to embrace employee satisfaction by developing and motivating employees. In the modern, the culture that an organization has developed is an inherent aspect of an organization. The way a business firm organize itself to create a competitive advantage in a particular field very improtant int the company. The repor t has clearly potrayed how the relationship between human resource management, corporate culture and strategic objectives and goal in an organization.

Interest Rates an Exchange Rate Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Interest Rates an Exchange Rate - Essay Example The government raised interest rates to increase the demand for pound in the international market, this increase in demand was anticipated to make the pound stronger against other major currencies, however a speculative attack by investors led to the loss of funds, the government lost and some investors gained huge profits on that day. This model depict that there is a relationship between the prevailing interest rates and the exchange rate, using historical data a country can use the data to estimate an appropriate model that will help in forecasting future values. The model depicts that a rise in interest rate will lead to a rise in the value of the currency, when interest rates fall then the value of the currency declines, the following diagram shows the relationship between the two variables: From the above diagram it is evident that an increase in the interest rates will lead to an increase in the value of the currency, however a decline in interest rates will lead to a decline in the value of the currency. However the assumption of this model is that there are no speculative attacks and that the exchange rate depends on the demand and supply of the currency. The relationship between the exchange rate and the interest rates can be demonstrated using two currencies from countries with different interest rates, we take hypothetical values and countries to demonstrate this and we choose country A and country B, for country a the interest rate is 4% and for country B the interest rate is 6%, those who have their funds deposited in country A will earn 4% for their investment, however it is more profitable to invest the funds or deposit the amount in country B due to high interest rates and therefore higher earning. For this reason therefore investors will move their fund from country A to country B, investors from country A will exchange their money to get country B currencies, as a result of this the demand for country B currency will rise and therefore will the value of the currency. Therefore higher interest rates will encourage investors to invest in country B, if country B was to increase the interest rates from 5% to 10% then the higher will be the demand for their currency. British forecast: The exchange of the pound in 1992 was determined by the market demand and supply, in September the British government experienced a decline in the demand for their currency, many investors started selling the pound to acquire other currencies, as a result of this demand declined and therefore the pound lost value against other currencies. The government had a role to play to resolve the crisis and this was done by increasing interests rates as described by the above model, the prevailing interest rates at the time was 10% and the government increased the interest rates to 12%, however despite this effort the investors still sold the pound to hold other currencies. Realizing this problem the government on the same day announced an increase in interest rates to 15%, this was the second attempt to resolve the problem, however it was unfortunate that investors kept on selling the pound and purchasing other currencies, as a result of this the value of the pound declined and this resulted into a decline in the value of the

The Impact of Inward Foreign Direct Investment on Host Countries Essay

The Impact of Inward Foreign Direct Investment on Host Countries - Essay Example According to the research findings, Foreign Direct Investment has over the last three decades aroused conflicting responses from the first and third world. In essence, FDI gives the investor the power to operate a company in another country for the long term. Developed host countries are not too welcome to the idea on the premise that they fear foreign firms will end up dominating their local firms. In contrast to this, developing countries are more welcome to the idea on the grounds that FDI will bring additional capital, expertise and new technology into their country. Host countries record FDI flows as liabilities along with similar items in their balance of payments. In host countries like these FDI flows make up a large percentage of the total investment in the economy as compared to more developed countries; the effects of FDI on these countries differ as well, with developing countries showing a steady growth trend as compared to developed countries who showed boom and bust cy cles as a result of engaging in FDI. Growth is normally measured by looking at the trends in per capita GDP growth. Analysts relate FDI to per capita to GDP growth by looking at figures of gross FDI inflows and FDI inflows per capita to see if they have any impact on the economic growth of a country. Research has revealed a positive relationship between FDI levels and growth levels in an economy, in some cases, these results have been insignificant as well but these variables have never shared a negative relationship. The extraneous variable has a magnitude changing effect on this relationship. It has been seen that the more developed a country is, the better and greater positive effect FDI will have on its economic growth. Most studies that have analyzed the impact of FDI on the economic growth of the host country have found the results to be pretty elusive. Most established relationships are based specifically on the host country’s own specific economic characteristics. Thu s it is difficult to generalize these effects and apply them to other countries as the findings of a study. However, the probable effects are not completely elusive, as the endogenous growth theory provides a framework for the positive linkage between growth and FDI inflows.

Contemporary Debates in Food and Farming Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Contemporary Debates in Food and Farming - Essay Example gases and climate change: whereas growing population and globalization stimulate industrial and economic growth, the side effects of it are disturbing in terms of greenhouse gases emission and hence climate change. According to Rust & Rust (2013, p. 255), â€Å"climate change and its effects on existence on earth are becoming more and more relevant as physical evidence of change in our climate is beginning to mount†. Among numerous economic areas affecting condition of the atmosphere, agricultural sector is one of rather influential factors. Agriculture is the sector aimed at production of food products and raw materials for other industry branches and employing about 1 billion people all over the world. As far as this sector is crucial for economic well-being, it is present almost in all countries of the world. Thus, due to economic reasons, environmental effect of agriculture is literally unavoidable for each of the countries with agricultural sector. The map presented in the Figure 1 illustrates that almost all the countries are engaged in agricultural activity to certain extent. With the population growing rapidly, scientists of agricultural sector, demand for products of agricultural sector and particularly of animal origin is increasing worldwide (Webb & Erasmus, 2013, p. 413). Considering growing demand, specialists do their best deploying their scientific knowledge and developed technological means in order to intensify production of food. However, economic growth is connected to volumes of CO2 emissions produced by different industrial and agricultural enterprises. In the recent fifty years, amounts of greenhouse gas emissions in the sectors of forestry, fishery, crops cultivation and other agricultural segments have increased twice and are likely to keep increasing at a fast pace in future. As it is shown in the Figure 2, agricultural sector in the United States accounts for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions (EPA, 2014). On the global scale, agricultural

Interest Rates an Exchange Rate Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Interest Rates an Exchange Rate - Essay Example The government raised interest rates to increase the demand for pound in the international market, this increase in demand was anticipated to make the pound stronger against other major currencies, however a speculative attack by investors led to the loss of funds, the government lost and some investors gained huge profits on that day. This model depict that there is a relationship between the prevailing interest rates and the exchange rate, using historical data a country can use the data to estimate an appropriate model that will help in forecasting future values. The model depicts that a rise in interest rate will lead to a rise in the value of the currency, when interest rates fall then the value of the currency declines, the following diagram shows the relationship between the two variables: From the above diagram it is evident that an increase in the interest rates will lead to an increase in the value of the currency, however a decline in interest rates will lead to a decline in the value of the currency. However the assumption of this model is that there are no speculative attacks and that the exchange rate depends on the demand and supply of the currency. The relationship between the exchange rate and the interest rates can be demonstrated using two currencies from countries with different interest rates, we take hypothetical values and countries to demonstrate this and we choose country A and country B, for country a the interest rate is 4% and for country B the interest rate is 6%, those who have their funds deposited in country A will earn 4% for their investment, however it is more profitable to invest the funds or deposit the amount in country B due to high interest rates and therefore higher earning. For this reason therefore investors will move their fund from country A to country B, investors from country A will exchange their money to get country B currencies, as a result of this the demand for country B currency will rise and therefore will the value of the currency. Therefore higher interest rates will encourage investors to invest in country B, if country B was to increase the interest rates from 5% to 10% then the higher will be the demand for their currency. British forecast: The exchange of the pound in 1992 was determined by the market demand and supply, in September the British government experienced a decline in the demand for their currency, many investors started selling the pound to acquire other currencies, as a result of this demand declined and therefore the pound lost value against other currencies. The government had a role to play to resolve the crisis and this was done by increasing interests rates as described by the above model, the prevailing interest rates at the time was 10% and the government increased the interest rates to 12%, however despite this effort the investors still sold the pound to hold other currencies. Realizing this problem the government on the same day announced an increase in interest rates to 15%, this was the second attempt to resolve the problem, however it was unfortunate that investors kept on selling the pound and purchasing other currencies, as a result of this the value of the pound declined and this resulted into a decline in the value of the

Contemporary Debates in Food and Farming Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Contemporary Debates in Food and Farming - Essay Example gases and climate change: whereas growing population and globalization stimulate industrial and economic growth, the side effects of it are disturbing in terms of greenhouse gases emission and hence climate change. According to Rust & Rust (2013, p. 255), â€Å"climate change and its effects on existence on earth are becoming more and more relevant as physical evidence of change in our climate is beginning to mount†. Among numerous economic areas affecting condition of the atmosphere, agricultural sector is one of rather influential factors. Agriculture is the sector aimed at production of food products and raw materials for other industry branches and employing about 1 billion people all over the world. As far as this sector is crucial for economic well-being, it is present almost in all countries of the world. Thus, due to economic reasons, environmental effect of agriculture is literally unavoidable for each of the countries with agricultural sector. The map presented in the Figure 1 illustrates that almost all the countries are engaged in agricultural activity to certain extent. With the population growing rapidly, scientists of agricultural sector, demand for products of agricultural sector and particularly of animal origin is increasing worldwide (Webb & Erasmus, 2013, p. 413). Considering growing demand, specialists do their best deploying their scientific knowledge and developed technological means in order to intensify production of food. However, economic growth is connected to volumes of CO2 emissions produced by different industrial and agricultural enterprises. In the recent fifty years, amounts of greenhouse gas emissions in the sectors of forestry, fishery, crops cultivation and other agricultural segments have increased twice and are likely to keep increasing at a fast pace in future. As it is shown in the Figure 2, agricultural sector in the United States accounts for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions (EPA, 2014). On the global scale, agricultural

DVD Technology Essay Example for Free

DVD Technology Essay It is truly a fact that we are living in this modern world which all technologies are advanced and improved. One of these technologies is in the DVD technology. Before, we normally used CDs as main novelty to the PC’s world but now, DVD is more used and preferred by multitudes of masses due to its admirable features which the CD doesn’t have. DVD was formerly represented as Digital Video Disc but then changed into Digital Versatile Disc and is considered as the next generation of the optical disc storage technology which is predicted and awaited to quickly substitute the CD-ROM disc along with audio compact disc around the following several years. DVD contains 4. 7 information’s gigabytes on one of its both sides or sufficient for a 133-minute movie. Having two layers on every of its both sides, it will keep up to 17 gigabytes of audio, video and other data. DVD-Video is the typical term for the DVD format designed for full-length motion pictures and which will drive with our television set. The DVD-ROM keeps computer information and is read through a DVD-ROM drive which is connected to a computer, the DVD-RAM is the writeable version while the DVD-Audio is a player which is designed to substitute our compact disc player (see Bellis, Mary. â€Å"DVD†. http://inventors. about. com/library/inventors/bldvd. htm). A DVD with correctly structured and formatted video substance is a DVD-Video. The DVDs with correct structured and formatted audio are termed as DVD-Audio discs. And everything as well is named as a DVD-Data disc as well as the other types of DVD discs which have video (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 27, 2006). The purposes of this study are to: (1) know the history of DVD technology; and (2) be acquainted with its useful features and its functions; and how it is being distinct from CD. History The invention of DVD was all started in early of 1990s which two high-density optical storage standards were being technology advanced: the first one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc which was supported by Sony and Philips; and the second one was the Super Density disc which was approved and accepted by Time-Warner, Hitachi, Pioneer, JVC, Mitsubishi Electric, Toshiba, Thomson, and Matsushita Electric. The IBM president named Lou Gertsner has exerted an effort to join and bring together the two companies to back up solitary standard, getting ahead a repeat of the expensive and inflated format war amongst Betamax and VHS in 1980s (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 27, 2006). In 1994 of May, Philips and Sony promulgated that they would be willingly and jointly develop a newfangled high-density medium popularly known as Digital Video Disc or DVD. This new technology was considered as the successor to compact discs or CD-ROM for computers and substitute laserdiscs and VHS tapes in the amusement industry. Just like a CD, DVD discs have similar diameter-about 120mm and thickness is about 1. 2 mm- just as Compact disc has but DVD is more advance and useful due to its capability to use both discs’ sides for data storage. The large video games which need and require a number of CDs would merely necessitate only one DVD disc. Later on, newfangled technology’s development instantaneously induced dilemmas of a political nature. The Warner Home Entertainment and Toshiba declared their own project to work out the same but yet precisely distinct from DVD technology at the same time. Associations like the Hollywood Digital Video Disc Advisory Group had a sensible and rational interest in this technology’s development. Movie suppliers started to stir up disagreements and controversies which concern the essential of copy protections in the DVD requirement and description. But then, Sony was the first to display its DVD technology. In 1995, John Eargle explained and illustrated the presentation which was conducted at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show. In his writings entitled â€Å"The Great DVD debate† stated that: â€Å"its color and sharpness was more than a match for the Laserdisc â€Å". But Eargle’s attention was on the technological requirements which had been formally and legitimately promulgated in December of the same year. The DVD’s intensification and enlargement data density was credited to a laser of a color advanced in the light spectrum and a technology that were being technologically advanced with 3M which permit the laser to be focus again to one second â€Å"layer† in the disc. It has a double-layer disc which amplifies the volume and dimensions to 7. 4 gigabytes. Throughout the spring of 1995, the disagreement of both developers had been stimulated through Toshiba’s personal growth and advancement of a two-layer disc named as SD or Super density (Chapin, R. â€Å"History of DVD†). DVD recordable and rewritable DVD recordable and DVD rewritable denote to DVD optical disc formats which can be â€Å"burned† either rewritable or write once format. DVD recordable is an overall name which denotes to both rewritable and writes-once formats, while DVD writable denotes solely to rewritable formats. The DVD promoted and marketed as 4. 7 GB might seem to keep not more than that for the reason that manufacturers quote the volume of a writable DVD disc utilizing decimal prefixes instead of the binary prefixes utilized by number of software. On the other hand, a 4. 7 GB DVD can be able to accumulate 4. 7 billion bytes, utilizing the binary prefixes which has similar capacity is approximately 4. 38 GiB (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 18, 2006). Dual Layer Recording Dual Layer recoding permits DVD-R and DVD+R discs to accumulate and put in storage extensively more info or data which is capable of 8. 5 Gigabytes per disc, when contrasted with 4. 7 Gigabytes designed for single-layer discs. The DVD-R DL or â€Å"dual layer† was technologically advanced for the DVD Forum by the Pioneer Corporation while the DVD+R DL or â€Å"dual layer† was technologically advanced intended for the DVD+RW Alliance by Sony. Below are the two figures of DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 28, 2006). Figure of DVD-R DL Double Layer DVD+R Its Restrictions The DVD-Video includes four corresponding systems designed to limit and constraint the DVD user in a variety of procedures and these are the Content Scrambling System, Region codes, disabled user operations (UOP) and Macrovision. *Content Scrambling System* It is a Digital Rights Management or DRM plan make used on various DVDs. It make uses a weak, proprietary 40 bit stream cipher algorithm which has successively been compromised. It was in 1996 that the system was presented and established (wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 26, 2006). *Region Codes* it is the programming practice, chip, physical barrier, or code which is make used to stop or block the playing media designed for a device which comes from a place where it is introduced and distributed on the version of similar device distributed in another place. It is a kind of a form of vendor lock-in (Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. August 26, 2006). *Disabled User Operations* DVD-Video permits the disc to identify or indicate whether or not the handler may carry out any operation like skipping chapters, rewinding or forwarding, selecting a menu which is fundamentally any function on the remote control. This system is named as Prohibited User Operations or User Operation Prohibitions. *Macrovision* It is a company which makes electronic prevention plans and was established in 1963. The term is occasionally used to denote to specific video copy prevention plans which were technologically advanced by the company. Its features Some of the DVDs main features are: (1) copy protection built into standard; (2) DVD-ROM for improved multimedia and games applications; (3) every format uses a common file system; (4) DVD-Audio for advanced quality music, graphics and other features and surround sound and optical video and many others; (5) Backwards compatibility with current CD media and many others (see DVD (Digital Versatile Disk)†. http://www. usbyte. com/common/dvd. htm#Introduction). Hence, DVD it is widely used now globally. ______________________________________________________________________________ References: 1. Bellis, Mary. â€Å"DVD†. http://inventors. about. com/library/inventors/bldvd. htm) 2. †DVD†. August 28, 2006. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/DVD 3. Chapin, R. â€Å"History of DVD†. http://www. miqrogroove. com/writing/History%20of%20DVD. html 4. â€Å"DVD recordable†. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. August 18, 2006http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/DVD_recordable 5. â€Å"Content Scramble System†. August 26, 2006. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Content_Scrambling_System 6. â€Å"DVD (Digital Versatile Disk)†. http://www. usbyte. com/common/dvd. htm#Introduction

Biometric Passport With Rfid Information Technology Essay

Biometric Passport With Rfid Information Technology Essay Radio-frequency identification is the use of an object typically referred to as an RFID tag applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader. Radio-frequency identification comprises interrogators (also known as readers), and tags (also known as labels). The RFID device serves the same purpose as a bar code or a magnetic strip on the back of a credit card or ATM card; it provides a unique identifier for that object. And, just as a bar code or magnetic strip must be scanned to get the information, the RFID device must be scanned to retrieve the identifying information. RFID Works Better Than Barcodes: A significant advantage of RFID devices over the others mentioned above is that the RFID device does not need to be positioned precisely relative to the scanner. Were all familiar with the difficulty that store checkout clerks sometimes have in making sure that a barcode can be read. And obviously, credit cards and ATM cards must be swiped through a special reader. In contrast, RFID devices will work within a few feet (up to 20 feet for high-frequency devices) of the scanner. For example, you could just put all of your groceries or purchases in a bag, and set the bag on the scanner. It would be able to query all of the RFID devices and total your purchase immediately. RFID technology has been available for more than fifty years. It has only been recently that the ability to manufacture the RFID devices has fallen to the point where they can be used as a throwaway inventory or control device. Alien Technologies recently sold 500 million RFID tags to Gillette at a cost of about ten cents per tag. One reason that it has taken so long for RFID to come into common use is the lack of standards in the industry. Most companies invested in RFID technology only use the tags to track items within their control; many of the benefits of RFID come when items are tracked from company to company or from country to country. Figure 2: Types of RFID tags Figure 3: RFID scanners History and technology background: Mario Cardullos U.S. Patent 3,713,148 in 1973 was the first true ancestor of modern RFID; a passive radio transponder with memory. The initial device was passive, powered by the interrogating signal, and was demonstrated in 1971 to the New York Port Authority and other potential users and consisted of a transponder with 16 bit memory for use as a toll device. The basic Cardullo patent covers the use of RF, sound and light as transmission media. The original business plan presented to investors in 1969 showed uses in transportation (automotive vehicle identification, automatic toll system, electronic license plate, electronic manifest, vehicle routing, vehicle performance monitoring), banking (electronic check book, electronic credit card), security (personnel identification, automatic gates, surveillance) and medical (identification, patient history). An early demonstration of reflected power (modulated backscatter) RFID tags, both passive and semi-passive, was performed by Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle, and Robert Freyman at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1973. The portable system operated at 915Â  MHz and used 12-bit tags. This technique is used by the majority of todays UHFID and microwave RFID tags. The first patent to be associated with the abbreviation RFID was granted to Charles Walton in 1983. Miniaturization: RFIDs are easy to conceal or incorporate in other items. For example, in 2009 researchers at Bristol University successfully glued RFID micro transponders to live ants in order to study their behavior. This trend towards increasingly miniaturized RFIDs is likely to continue as technology advances. However, the ability to read at distance is limited by the inverse-square law. Hitachi holds the record for the smallest RFID chip, at 0.05mm x 0.05mm. The Mu chip tags are 64 times smaller than the new RFID tags. Manufacture is enabled by using the Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) process. These dust sized chips can store 38-digit numbers using 128-bit Read Only Memory (ROM). A major challenge is the attachment of the antennas, thus limiting read range to only millimeters. Potential alternatives to the radio frequencies (0.125-0.1342, 0.140-0.1485, 13.56, and 840-960Â  MHz) used are seen in optical RFID (or OPID) at 333 THz (900Â  nm), 380 THz (788Â  nm), 750 THz (400Â  nm). The awkward antennas of RFID can be replaced with photovoltaic components and IR-LEDs on the ICs. Figure 4: Miniature RFID tag Modular Decomposition Our system requirements are very clearly and not expect to change frequently. So, we will use in our system Waterfall model. And because the requirements are well understood. Project Activities Task# Duration (week) Description T1 2 -Feasibility study of the system T2 2 -Requirement analysis -Requirement specification T3 6 -System design -Code programming -Interface design T4 2 -System testing -Feedback on system testing -validation of system Risks Management Risk type Possible risks Technology Not all system familiar with RFID hardwares and softwares. People -Key staff is ill and unavailable at critical times (Only one employee work in this system). Requirements -Customers fail to understand the impact of Requirements changes. Estimation -The time required to develop the software is underestimated. -The rate of defect repair is underestimated. -The size of the software is underestimated. Risks Analysis Risk Probability Effects Technology Low Serious People Low Catastrophic Requirements High Serious Estimation Moderate Serious Risk Management Strategies Risk type Strategy Technology Will choose the software hardware Carefully. People -Gave every task over-days, and some days will Have overtime of work. Requirements -After every task there is a feedback, The costumer will see it. -Investigate buying-in components. Estimation -Replace potentially defective components With bought-in components of known reliability. RFID Tools: Most RFID tags contain at least two parts. One is an integrated circuit for storing and processing information, modulating and demodulating a radio-frequency (RF) signal, and other specialized functions. The second is an antenna for receiving and transmitting the signal. There are generally two types of RFID tags: 1. Active RFID tags An RFID tag is an active tag when it is equipped with a battery that can be used as a partial or complete source of power for the tags circuitry and antenna. Some active tags contain replaceable batteries for years of use; others are sealed units. (Note that it is also possible to connect the tag to an external power source.) Advantages of an active rfid tag: 1- It can be read at distances of one hundred feet or more, greatly improving the utility of the device 2- It may have other sensors that can use electricity for power. 3- Longest communication range of any tag. 4- The capability to perform independent monitoring and control 5- The capability of initiating communications 6- The capability of performing diagnostics 7- The highest data bandwidth 8- Active rfid tags may even be equipped with autonomous networking; the tags autonomously determine the best communication path. Disadvantages of an active RFID tag: 1- The tag cannot function without battery power, which limits the lifetime of the tag. 2- The tag is typically more expensive, often costing $20 or more each. 3- The tag is physically larger, which may limit applications. 4- The long-term maintenance costs for an active RFID tag can be greater than those of a passive tag if the batteries are replaced. 5- Battery outages in an active tag can result in expensive misreads. 2. Passive RFID tags: A passive tag is an RFID tag that does not contain a battery; the power is supplied by the reader. When radio waves from the reader are encountered by a passive RFID tag, the coiled antenna within the tag forms a magnetic field. The tag draws power from it, energizing the circuits in the tag. The tag then sends the information encoded in the tags memory. Advantages of a passive tag: 1- The tag functions without a battery; these tags have a useful life of twenty years or more. 2- The tag is typically much less expensive to manufacture. 3- The tag is much smaller (some tags are the size of a grain of rice). These tags have almost unlimited applications in consumer goods and other areas. Disadvantages of a passive rfid tag: 1- The tag can be read only at very short distances, typically a few feet at most. This greatly limits the device for certain applications. 2- It may not be possible to include sensors that can use electricity for power. 3- The tag remains readable for a very long time, even after the product to which the tag is attached has been sold and is no longer being. Figure 5: Active and Passive RFID tag Current uses of RFID: 1- Biometric passport: A biometric passport, also known as an e-passport or ePassport, is a combined paper and electronic passport (hence the e-, as in e-mail) that contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of travelers. It uses contactless smart card technology, including a microprocessor chip (computer chip) and antenna (for both power to the chip and communication) embedded in the front or back cover, or center page, of the passport. Document and chip characteristics are documented in the International Civil Aviation Organisations (ICAO) Doc 9303. The passports critical information is both printed on the data page of the passport and stored in the chip. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used to authenticate the data stored electronically in the passport chip making it virtually impossible to forge when all security mechanisms are fully and correctly implemented. Note that the USA Passport card is not a biometric passport. The passport card does not follow the ICAOs Doc 9303, can only be used in a limited number of countries and uses a simple RFID chip instead of the contactless smart card technology that is used for biometric passports. Contactless smart card technology includes a microprocessor, data access control, communications security and other functionality as programmed. 2- Microchip implant (human): A human microchip implant is an integrated circuit device or RFID transponder encased in silicate glass and implanted into a humans body. A subdermal implant typically contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information contained in an external database, such as personal identification, medical history, medications, allergies, and contact information. Hobbyists: The first reported experiment with an RFID implant was carried out in 1998 by the British scientist Kevin Warwick. As a test, his implant was used to open doors, switch on lights, and cause verbal output within a building. The implant has since been held in the Science Museum (London). Since that time, at least two additional hobbyists have placed RFID microchips implants into their hands or had them placed there by others. Amal Graafstra, author of the book RFID Toys, asked doctors to place implants in his hands. A cosmetic surgeon used a scalpel to place a microchip in his left hand, and his family doctor injected a chip into his right hand using a veterinary Avid injector kit. Graafstra uses the implants to open his home and car doors and to log on to his computer. Neither implant was the VeriChip brand. Medical records use: The PositiveID Corporation (previously known as The VeriChip Corporation; Applied Digital Solutions, Inc.; and The Digital Angel Corporation) distribute the implantable chip known as the VeriChip. The company suggests that the implant could be used to retrieve medical information in the event of an emergency, as follows: Each VeriChip implant contains a 16-digit ID number. This number is transmitted when a hand-held VeriChip scanner is passed within a few inches of the implant. Participating hospitals and emergency workers can enter this number into a secure page on the VeriChip Corporations website to access medical information that the patient has previously stored on file with the company. Building access and security: The VeriChip Corporation has also suggested that the implant could be used to restrict access to secure facilities such as power plants. Microchip scanners could be installed at entrances so locks would only work for persons with appropriately programmed chips. The downside is the relative ease with which the 16-digit ID number contained in a chip implant can be obtained and cloned using a hand-held device, a problem that has been demonstrated publicly by security researcher Jonathan Westhues and documented in the May 2006 issue of Wired magazine, among other places. A nightclub in Barcelona offered a chip implant for identifying VIP guests. Figure 6: Biometric passport with RFID tag Figure 7: Microchip human implant Technical problems with RFID: Problems with RFID Standards: RFID has been implemented in different ways by different manufacturers; global standards are still being worked on. It should be noted that some RFID devices are never meant to leave their network (as in the case of RFID tags used for inventory control within a company). This can cause problems for companies. Consumers may also have problems with RFID standards. For example, ExxonMobils SpeedPass system is a proprietary RFID system; if another company wanted to use the convenient SpeedPass (say, at the drive-in window of your favorite fast food restaurant) they would have to pay to access it an unlikely scenario. On the other hand, if every company had their own SpeedPass system, a consumer would need to carry many different devices with them. RFID systems can be easily disrupted: Since RFID systems make use of the electromagnetic spectrum (like WiFi networks or cellphones), they are relatively easy to jam using energy at the right frequency. Although this would only be an inconvenience for consumers in stores (longer waits at the checkout), it could be disastrous in other environments where RFID is increasingly used, like hospitals or in the military in the field. Also, active RFID tags (those that use a battery to increase the range of the system) can be repeatedly interrogated to wear the battery down, disrupting the system. RFID Reader Collision: Reader collision occurs when the signals from two or more readers overlap. The tag is unable to respond to simultaneous queries. Systems must be carefully set up to avoid this problem; many systems use an anti-collision protocol (also called a singulation protocol. Anti-collision protocols enable the tags to take turns in transmitting to a reader. RFID Tag Collision: Tag collision occurs when many tags are present in a small area; but since the read time is very fast, it is easier for vendors to develop systems that ensure that tags respond one at a time. Security, privacy and ethics problems with RFID: The following problems with RFID tags and readers have been reported: The contents of an RFID tag can be read after the item leaves the supply chain: An RFID tag cannot tell the difference between one reader and another. RFID scanners are very portable; RFID tags can be read from a distance, from a few inches to a few yards. This allows anyone to see the contents of your purse or pocket as you walk down the street. Some tags can be turned off when the item has left the supply chain. Zombie RFID Tags: One of the main concerns with RFID tags is that their contents can be read by anyone with an appropriately equipped scanner even after you take it out of the store. One technology that has been suggested is a zombie RFID tag, a tag that can be temporarily deactivated when it leaves the store. The process would work like this: you bring your purchase up to the register, the RFID scanner reads the item, you pay for it and as you leave the store, you pass a special device that sends a signal to the RFID tag to die. That is, it is no longer readable. The zombie element comes in when you bring an item back to the store. A special device especially made for that kind of tag re-animates the RFID tag, allowing the item to reenter the supply chain. RFID tags are difficult to remove: RFID tags are difficult to for consumers to remove; some are very small (less than a half-millimeter square and as thin as a sheet of paper) others may be hidden or embedded inside a product where consumers cannot see them. New technologies allow RFID tags to be printed right on a product and may not be removable at all. RFID tags can be read without your knowledge: Since the tags can be read without being swiped or obviously scanned (as is the case with magnetic strips or barcodes), anyone with an RFID tag reader can read the tags embedded in your clothes and other consumer products without your knowledge. For example, you could be scanned before you enter the store, just to see what you are carrying. You might then be approached by a clerk who knows what you have in your backpack or purse, and can suggest accessories or other items. RFID tags can be read at greater distances with a high-gain antenna: For various reasons, RFID reader/tag systems are designed so that distance between the tag and the reader is kept to a minimum. However, a high-gain antenna can be used to read the tags from much further away, leading to privacy problems. RFID tags with unique serial numbers could be linked to an individual credit card number: At present, the Universal Product Code (UPC) implemented with barcodes allows each product sold in a store to have a unique number that identifies that product. Work is proceeding on a global system of product identification that would allow each individual item to have its own number. When the item is scanned for purchase and is paid for, the RFID tag number for a particular item can be associated with a credit card number. Goals of the project: Many students skip more than 20% of their lectures, and using an embed RFID tags in their student card will help to keep track of attendance. It can be a reference to the doctor in keeping records of attendance. It can also be used to provide any extra information to the doctor or the department without the need to type in the student number. It can be upgraded to include money amounts to be used around the university campus. Provides better management for the doctor in his lecture. Reduce the use of paper to keep track of the students. User Requirements: Any user can use the system. Students are able to see their attendance online and almost in real time. Ordinary student cards can be implanted with an RFID tag. DATA Flow Diagram: Figure 8 Scenario Diagram : The first step , the user scans his card The user opens the website. { For example Just website } The user chooses if he will log-in like member or visitor. Figure 9 If he clicks sign in Button, the system asks him to insert his ID and the Password, and then the system checks the validity of the inserted information and then asks him to rescan his card to match it with that ID. Figure 10 If the password valid and is a match with the card, the system redirect him to the member page. Figure 11 If a doctor has logged in , the system ask him if he would like to open the attendance list of his lectures , or opens the student list of a certain lecture to have the students check for attendance . If a student has logged in, the students will be able to view a list of his lecture absence or check for a certain lecture attendance By rescanning the card, the member signs out of the system. If he clicks the Visitor button, He can view a guide on how to obtain an RFID tagged card. Figure 12 Information sources: RFID tags are a new technology and few companies support it, one of these companies that provide support to RFID tags is TOUCHATAG. So we tried to collect as many information from the touchatag website about it and about the RFID hardware before we start using it and these resources are: 1- Touchatag webpage: we entered Touchatag webpage to read about how to use touchatag device, tags. 2- Taking the website tour: we took a tour about touchatag DIY. 3- Reading books and tutorials: we read many tutorials and online books about RFID tags and hardware. Software Requirements: To do this project we needed some hardware to help us in the building: 1- Touchatag RFID scanner: we must have touchatag rfid scanner to do this project, so we obtained it. 2- RFID tags from Touchatag Company: these tags are used with the scanner to have a working RFID environment. 3- A programming software: Programming software is required to implement the project, then uploading it to the touchatag website and attach it with the account associated with the RFID scanner. System Requirements: As Touchatag application is a software attached to the touchatag server, client must satisfy these requirements to run the application, here we are using this application under Windows (requirements vary depend on OS machine): Windows Minimum requirement Recommended Internet Connection: Cable or DSL Cable or DSL Operating System: 2000, XP, or Vista XP or Vista Computer Processor: 800 MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better 1.5 GHz (XP), 2-GHz (Vista) 32-bit (x86) or better Screen Resolution: 1024768 pixels 1024768 pixels or higher Graphics Card for XP/2000 NVIDIA GeForce 2, GeForce 4 MX or better NVIDIA Graphics cards GeForce Go Series: 7600, 7800, 7900 ATI Graphics Cards X2600, X2900 X3650, X3850 Graphics Card for Vista (requires latest drivers) NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better OR ATI Radeon 9500 or better OR Intel 945 chipset NVIDIA Graphics cards GeForce Go Series: 7600, 7800, 7900 ATI Graphics Cards X2600, X2900 X3650, X3850 Implementation: For the implementation part, and due to the lack of possibility to develop my application directly on the Touchatag device, I took the approach of developing two things and link them together, first Ive created the website and the data base using ASP.net and C#, stored the data and performed the operation that Ill explain later on, and the second part was creating a visual basic script, that is attached to each tag and performs the task needed when it is called by the tag. ASP.net : Ive started the project with programming on ASP.net using C#, to accomplish the following tasks: Create a Doctor ID for login. Create a Doctor Password for login. Save the Doctor ID and Password in the database. Login as a Doctor and open the Student attendance system page. Check lectures where this function do the following : Upon clicking the button the system checks the time on the system and then scan the database for any lectures that is in this time and then return the tables ID which matches the time of the system and then store it in a hidden label, then the program checks the hidden label for the ID of the lecture and goes to the database to retrieve the students who are attached with that ID, along with two fields for the Time in and Time out. Upon clicking one of the four buttons which are labeled {Open Sign in, Close Sign in. Open Sign out, Close Sign Out} the values of a hidden label are changed to specific values. When the student types in his Student ID and Student Password , then press the login button , the system checks the student ID and the password if they are stored in the data base , once he found the data it checks which button of the four was clicked by the doctor first by checking a hidden label that stored the values of the button that was clicked , then based on that value it stores the time when the Login button was clicked, and by doing so it also updates the Database at the same Time. Visual Basic Script : The visual basic script is what links the ASP.net website to the Touchatag card; it is implemented through statements that do the following: Each Tag is assigned to a script of its own. The Tag when scanned activates the script that is assigned to it. The script is constructed with few simple statements that opens the web page, writes the user ID and Password in the cross ponding field, and the press the login button. Touchatag reader and Tags : The Touchatag reader is connected to the Touchatag server which does the specific task you have assigned it already on the Touchatag Server, and by scanning each tag the specific Tag ID goes to the Server and retrieves the function that is assigned to that specific Tag. Screen Shots: Asp.net Doctor Login Page : Figure 13: ASP.net Student Login Page , with Check Lectures and other Prompts: Figure 14: ASP.net Visual Basic Script: Figure 15: Visual Basic Touchatag: Figure 16: Touchatag Figure 17 Figure 18 : Touchatag Figure 19: Touchatag Testing Security: Rfid ID tags provided by touchatag have several security measures which include: 1- Accounts password: Every user has a password to access his account in the webpage and the server. This password is created when the user signs up. 2- IPs: touchatag server changes its IP from time to time to avoid hacking. 3- Report Abuse: This feature allows any user to report any object or person if they abused them. 4- Unique tags ID: each tag has a unique tag provided by the tag itself. Copyrights: The touchatag RFID tags are copyright protected and cant be used without a reference from touchatag. Performance Testing: Each tag is scanned effortlessly without any problems, the website might crash sometimes but it is restored without any problems. Unit Testing: Ive tested the tags, they work fine even after being placed in a wallet for more than 6 months and the wear and tear process is slow, and the tags are durable. Conclusion This project is the first step towards building Jordan University of Science Technology fully automated attendance system; JUST administration can take this step further, build on it to reach a better-enhanced project and can add more features and services to staff, officers, and students. Furthermore, the administration can also use this new technology to improve students attendance services and activities. I faced many problems during this project. The first problem is when I have to work in this system alone. Really, this problem gave me a big challenge to complete the project, but with the help of Dr. Qutaiba Al Thebyan, Dr. Qusai Abu Ein, Mrs. Alaa Mestarihi and the department, I could complete it. Finally, RFID tags is the future and every day services now a day require more interaction , but with those tags , many services and jobs can be done effortlessly without the ever getting your hand out of your pocket.