Ballistics Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Ballistics - Research Paper Example o empirical evidence to back up this claim that criminal cases have been affected because the jurors are now more well-versed in Forensic Science through these television series—making it more difficult to get a guilty verdict as jurors require more forensic evidence—a study has been conducted on 1027 jurors that show that â€Å"46 % expected to see some kind of scientific evidence in every criminal case† (Barak, Kim and Shelton, 2006 as cited in Shelton, 2008, p. 5). Now, because gun-related crimes continue to rise since 2002, with 68% of murders in the United States in the year 2006 being committed with the use of a firearm, it can be said that much of the scientific evidence being expected by jurors relate to ballistics, which is a specialized area in the field of Forensics (National Institute of Justice, 2010, para. 2). In fact, the study on â€Å"the CSI Effect† found that â€Å"32 % expected to see ballistic/firearms laboratory evidence in every criminal case† (p. 5). This introduction into Forensic Science and Ballistics does not only highlight their key role in crime-solving, but also emphasizes the role of scientific evidence in serving justice. It can be said, then, that no matter how the television series may have exaggerated some aspects of crime scene investigation, like the time the evidence is processed, it cannot be refuted that the field of Forensics and Ballistics play crucial roles in the criminal justice systemâ €”CSI Effect or not. Having established the importance of Forensic Science and Ballistics, I will now outline what this paper will contain. In the course of my paper I will provide background and history of the field and I will then examine the many changes undergone by ballistics in the 20th century. Case studies will be examined to highlight the points that I will be making. I will then conclude with some thoughts as to where the field may go in the future. Forensic Science, most commonly known by its shortened name of Forensics, is

Challenges Faced By Medical Laboratories Information Technology Essay

Challenges Faced By Medical Laboratories Information Technology Essay Healthcare is always a top priority within any collection of individuals, whether it is the workforce, schools, churches, communities, states, countries etc. This is because mortality rates are directly affected by the level of healthcare available, and effective productivity is dependent on good health and high mortality rates. Developed nations tend to invest large sums of money into healthcare, in order to prevent most ailments before they become epidemics, however, due to lack of emphasis on the importance of healthcare, African nations suffer from low mortality rates caused by lack of proper laboratory procedures and equipment, to test and accurately diagnose problems ahead of time. Even though we are now in a highly advanced technological era, Nigerian hospitals still conduct tests, data collection, and calculations manually, leaving a huge opening for errors which could lead to wrong diagnosis and in turn, wrong treatment. As we humans become ever increasingly dependent on computer technology in our daily lives, it then would be appropriate to utilize technological solutions to problems conventional methods prove inefficient at. These problems can be solved with the use of a properly configured software system to manage all administrative tasks in the laboratories. The most effective use of technology to solve to these issues would be carried out using open source software popularly known as a Laboratory Information System (L.I.M.S). The model of this work seeks to provide an application which will enable vital functionalities such as proper documentation and storage of patient information, patient specimen/sample tracking, and most important, patient test results. In the light of the above, the proposed system applies the web application development approach in its information architecture and processing, however this system will run on a local machine as opposed to running on a remote server over the internet. Consequently at completion of this work, the end product should be a Laboratory information management system which handles activities in the lab from the entry of a patient to the laboratory to the generating of a test result or Laboratory report. BACKGROUND OF STUDY The study for the development of the laboratory information management system uses a medical laboratory facility: Bakor Medical laboratory as its case study. Investigations indicate that the following steps or procedures are undertaken in the process of getting tested in the medical laboratory. On entry into the laboratory a document known as the Patient Investigation form. This form holds information such as the Patients name, age sex, on filling this form the patient is then billed. The patient Investigation form is then transferred to a second laboratory attendant who then uses the information retrieved from the aforementioned form to fill the laboratory request book. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM In recent times, due to increase in population, there is constant pressure on providers of various services to provide innovative methods of dispensing a sizable amount of services to great amount of people in the shortest possible time. Consequently, organizations are constantly resorting to technological solutions to meet up with the ever increasing demand for quality and speedy service delivery and with virtually everything in our day to day lives being technologically driven, should there not be a scenario where paper documentation is completely annihilated from medical laboratories?, where a system is adopted in which patient records and data are properly stored such as to enable features such as patient/visitor history tracker, where a returning patients history can aid the laboratory in deducing what type of test a visitor would request for, statistical reports generation where useful statistical information is inferred based on test results e.g whether or not there is an incr ease or decrease of new HIV infections, should there not be a software/application where other stakeholders in the health-care delivery processes such as doctors and pharmacists have access to laboratory generated information to aid in their health-care administration?, should the retrieval of patient test records be slow and cumbersome?, why must results be entered directly on the result document, therefore a backup copy is unavailable. Questions such as these will serve as a guide to the development of a robust system than manages various tasks in the medical laboratory. 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS Based on the statement of the problems above the research question for this study are: How will the development of a laboratory information management System greatly increase the laboratorys efficiency? OBJECTIVE OF STUDY To design a robust Laboratory information System that will efficiently aid in the running of the laboratory facility To hold and provide timely information about each visitor to the laboratory To reduce the need to hire staff through the proper application of technological solutions therefore cutting cost. With a proper functioning and comprehensively designed application, Laboratory tasks such the following can be achieved: SAMPLES MANAGEMENT A LIMS can automate the management of samples. An organization can configure its analytical parameters and calculations into the LIMS before implementing the software in the laboratory. After sample registration, the system can print barcodes which it can scan at the end of the analysis when loading results into the LIMS. The system can check the completed results, automatically validating those which comply with specifications; and reporting (but not validating) out-of-specification results. A LIMS may release or retain lots and batches, according to a laboratorys specifications and calculations. Once results come available for the labs clients or owners, they can extract them in  PDF, XML  or spreadsheet files from the LIMS interface. (Note that moving insufficient data to a spreadsheet may lose the traceability of changes). LABORATORY USERS One may configure a LIMS for use by an unlimited  number of users. Each user owns an interface, protected by security mechanisms such as a login and a password. Users may have customized interfaces. A laboratory manager might have full access to all of a LIMS functions, whereas technicians might have access only to functionality needed for their individual work-tasks. ADMINISTRATIVE TASKS AUTOMATION As of 2009  LIMS implementations can manage laboratory sampling, consumables sampling schedule and financial (invoices). SCOPE OF STUDY Bakor Medical centre has various departments and sections based on the issue at hand to be dealt with; however this study focuses mainly on the lab processes, including data collection and management. This study takes the patient from the moment of entry into the medical centre, filling forms, up till the moment the test is taken, from that point onwards the study will focus on the methods used by the laboratory attendant to collect and store data, through recording of findings and submission of results This study will also concentrate on data backup and retrieval methods and will highlight potential errors and problems that could be encountered if the entire process was carried out manually instead of using a well configured computer application. SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY The Computer based Laboratory information management System is quite desirable as it will benefit the laboratory in the area of repetitive task automation. It will serve as an assistant to the medical laboratory scientist. It will also benefit patients as they will be able to retrieve record from previous visits to the laboratory. LIMITATIONS OF STUDY The limitations of this study include: Inability to obtain actual test result document, as this goes against medical ethics for a third party to view Laboratory specimen or test results. Unavailability of qualified laboratory scientist at the study locations to properly explain terms and laboratory procedures. LITERATURE REVIEW From tasting urine to microscopy to molecular testing, the sophistication of diagnostic techniques has come a long way and continues to develop at breakneck speed. The history of the laboratory is the story of medicines evolution from empirical to experimental techniques and proves that the clinical lab is the true source of medical authority. Three distinct periods in the history of medicine are associated with three different places and therefore different methods of determining diagnosis: From the middle ages to the 18th century, bedside medicine was prevalent; then between 1794 and 1848 came hospital medicine; and from that time forward, laboratory medicine has served as medicines lodestar. The laboratorys contribution to modern medicine has only recently been recognized by historians as something more than the addition of another resource to medical science and is now being appreciated as the seat of medicine, where clinicians account for what they observe in their patients. The first medical diagnoses made by humans were based on what ancient physicians could observe with their eyes and ears, which sometimes also included the examination of human specimens. The ancient Greeks attributed all disease to disorders of bodily fluids called humors, and during the late medieval period, doctors routinely performed uroscopy. Later, the microscope revealed not only the cellular structure of human tissue, but also the organisms that cause disease. More sophisticated diagnostic tools and techniques such as the thermometer for measuring temperature and the stethoscope for measuring heart rate were not in widespread use until the end of the 19th century. The clinical laboratory would not become a standard fixture of medicine until the beginning of the 20th century. Ancient diagnostic methods In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the earliest physicians made diagnoses and recommended treatments based primarily on observation of clinical symptoms. Palpation and auscultation were also used. Physicians were able to describe dysfunctions of the digestive tract, heart and circulation, the liver and spleen, and menstrual disturbances; unfortunately, this empiric medicine was reserved for royalty and the wealthy. Other less-than-scientific methods of diagnosis used in treating the middle and lower classes included divination through ritual sacrifice to predict the outcome of illness. Usually a sheep would be killed before the statue of a god. Its liver was examined for malformations or peculiarities; the shape of the lobes and the orientation of the common duct were then used to predict the fate of the patient. Ancient physicians also began the practice of examining patient specimens. The oldest known test on body fluids was done on urine in ancient times (before 400 BC). Urine was poured on the ground and observed to see whether it attracted insects. If it did, patients were diagnosed with boils. The ancient Greeks also saw the value in examining body fluids to predict disease. At around 300 BC, Hippocrates promoted the use of the mind and senses as diagnostic tools, a principle that played a large part in his reputation as the Father of Medicine. The central Hippocratic doctrine of humoral pathology attributed all disease to disorders of fluids of the body. To obtain a clear picture of disease, Hippocrates advocated a diagnostic protocol that included tasting the patients urine, listening to the lungs, and observing skin color and other outward appearances. Beyond that, the physician was to understand the patient as an individual. Hippocrates related the appearance of bubbles on the surface of urine specimens to kidney disease and chronic illness. He also related certain urine sediments and blood and pus in urine to disease. The first description of hematuria or the presence of blood in urine, by Rufus of Ephesus surfaced at around AD 50 and was attributed to the failure of kidneys to function properly in filtering the blood. Later (c. AD 180), Galen (AD 131-201), who is recognized as the founder of experimental physiology, created a system of pathology that combined Hippocrates humoral theories with the Pythagorean theory, which held that the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water), corresponded to various combinations of the physiologic qualifies of dry, cold, hot, and moist. These combinations of physiologic characteristics corresponded roughly to the four humors of the human body: hot moist = blood; hot dry = yellow bile; cold moist = phlegm; and cold dry = black bile. Galen was known for explaining everything in light of his theory and for having an explanation for everything. He also described diabetes as diarrhea of urine and noted the normal relationship between fluid intake and urine volume. His unwavering belief in his own infallibility appealed to complacency and reverence for authority. That dogmatism essentially brought innovation and discovery in European medicine to a standstill for nea rly 14 centuries. Anything relating to anatomy, physiology, and disease was simply referred back to Galen as the final authority from whom there could be no appeal. Middle Ages In medieval Europe, early Christians believed that disease was either punishment for sin or the result of witchcraft or possession. Diagnosis was superfluous. The basic therapy was prayer, penitence, and invocation of saints. Lay medicine based diagnosis on symptoms, examination, pulse, palpitation, percussion, and inspection of excreta and sometimes semen. Diagnosis by water casting (uroscopy) was practiced, and the urine flask became the emblem of medieval medicine. By AD 900, Isaac Judaeus, a Jewish physician and philosopher, had devised guidelines for the use of urine as a diagnostic aid; and under the Jerusalem Code of 1090, failure to examine the urine exposed a physician to public beatings. Patients carried their urine to physicians in decorative flasks cradled in wicker baskets, and because urine could be shipped, diagnosis at long distance was common. The first book detailing the color, density, quality, and sediment found in urine was written around this time, as well. By a round AD 1300, uroscopy became so widespread that it was at the point of near universality in European medicine. Consequently, the clinical laboratory became a standard fixture of medicine at the beginning of the 20th century; it is now an integral part of the health-care delivery process and is seen as the basis for medical diagnosis. In recent times a medical laboratory scientist (MLS), formerly known as a medical technologist (MT) or clinical laboratory scientist (CLS), functions as a medical detective, performing laboratory tests that provide physicians with information that assists them in preventing, diagnosing and treating diseases and maintaining patient wellness.   The medical laboratory scientist performs a wide variety of laboratory tests, ranging from simple dipstick urine tests to complex DNA tests that help physicians assess risk of diseases. Using test results, physicians can uncover diabetes, cancer, heart attacks, infections and many other diseases.   Medical laboratory scientists interact with physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other members of the healthcare team to provide timely, accurate information so the patient can receive the correct medical treatment.   Medical laboratory scientists use sophisticated biomedical instruments and technology, microscopes, complex electronic equipment, computers, and methods requiring manual dexterity to perform tests on blood, body fluids, and tissue specimens. Clinical laboratory testing sections include clinical chemistry, hematology, Immunohematology (Blood Bank), immunology, microbiology and molecular diagnostics. EFFECTS OF MEDICAL LABORATORIES Medical Laboratories have played a pivotal role over the years. As stated above, in ancient times, physicians relied on various inaccurate means of disease diagnosis such as urine tasting, listening to the lungs etc. However with the advent and subsequent evolution of modern medical laboratory facilities, plus the discovery of the cellular nature of human tissue and the invention of the microscope, medical diagnosis made a tremendous leap from a 50-50 accuracy ratio to an 80% accuracy rating for laboratory based medical diagnosis. Therefore the use of medical laboratories has greatly increased the accuracy of diagnosis; hence the physician can administer the proper kind of treatment. The use of laboratories has also led to various discoveries, such as new strands of Viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi. It also acts as a monitor for new strands of drug resistant bacteria. CHALLENGES FACED BY MEDICAL LABORATORIES The main challenges and bottle-necks encountered by medical laboratories over the years include. Inability to preserve patient samples or specimens such as blood, sputum, stool, over a long period of time for reference purposes hence making patient to specimen matching and tracking, Efficient information sharing and retrieval between the laboratory scientist and those administering treatment has been a problem. MEDICAL LABORATORIES: IMPROVEMENTS AND THE FUTURE For the efficient functioning of the diagnosis system, health-care delivery, scientific research into bacteriology and disease causing organisms, technology should be applied to automate administrative tasks, such as the visitor registration and result documentation. By making judicious use of computer software to automate and manage tasks in the laboratory there will be a dramatic increase in its efficiency. Consequently this will greatly reduce the need to recruit and pay personnel to carry out administrative duties therefore such resources can be channeled towards more important needs of the laboratory. TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM/PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE TO BE USED IN STUDY The technologies to be used in the development of this Laboratory Information Management system is an open source programming language known as PHP, together with a MYSQL driven database, a solid browser based application will be developed. PHP: PHP also known as Hypertext Pre-processor, it belongs to a class of languages known as middleware (Needham, 2006). These languages work closely with the web server to interpret the request made from the web, processes these request, interact with other programs on the server to fulfill the request and then indicates to the web server exactly what to serve to the clients browser. It is the leading web programming language for design of web applications. It possesses a language similar to C, Java or Pearl. Its uses include: retrieving user input and saving it in a database, retrieving information from a database and general data manipulation processes. THE CLIENT: Simply refers to end users of an application that connect to a remote server to carry out computational processes THE SERVER: An application known as a web server listens for requests a client makes, responds to those requests and serves out the appropriate response (Greenspan, 2002) MYSQL: Refers to an open source relational database management system with a set of programs that access and manipulate these records. (Descartes, 2003). It is a  relational database management system (RDBMS)  that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. APACHE WEB SERVER: Apache is a web server notable for playing an important role in the initial growth of the world-wide web. It is responsible for accepting Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request from web client (web browsers) and serving the HTTP responses along with optional data content which usually are HTML pages. These platforms are used in this research work because: There are open source meaning there are free to use and develop with without having to purchase licenses or fulfill any legal obligation to the owners of the technology. It is easy to deploy on a local machine Its hardware requirements are minimal therefore making its installation and usage less cumbersome. Developer tools and support services for the platform/technology are readily available at absolutely no cost. DATA COLLECTED FOR LABORATORY TEST Lab Investigation Form: This form is used for general patient registration and data collection. Data collected on this form include Patient Name Patient age Hospital Number Specimen Blood Specimen Sputum Stool Urea Various Swap Investigation Record Clinic Details Name of Doctor Lab Request Book: Used to record Patients data for that day. Name Lab Investigation Done Amount Time in Data Collected for lab tests Lab result book (Used for recording patients results) Patients Name Date of birth Gender Test Results Date Hospital registration Number Extra Comments SUMMARY The use of technological solutions greatly reduces costs, increase profits, save human effort and provide better services to customers/clients The use of an LIS (Laboratory information System) in the running of a medical laboratory facility greatly improves the documentation process; makes patients records retrieval a lot easier and faster, records are not lost and are kept safe via regular backup of the available data. With the use of a Laboratory information system, various kinds of data deductions, surveys and reports can be easily generated for statistical purposes such as the average percentage of persons with a certain kind of disease, Genotype or blood type etc. CONCLUSION A properly developed Medical Laboratory information system will greatly increase productivity, increase the quality of services delivered by the facility and greatly reduce the amount of man hours put into the delivering the laboratory services

Francois Viete :: essays research papers

"Francois Viete" Francois Viete went to many places and did a lot of things. He lived for 63 years. In his life he got to do more or at least as much he wanted to do. He got to work for Kings, and also been married twice. Francois Viete was a very interesting. He also went to a few different countries. Francois Viete was born in 1540 in Frontenay-le-Comte, France. It is now the province of Vendee. His father was Etenne Viete, who was a lawyer, and his mother was Marguerite Dupont. They both came from well-to-do families. He enjoyed all the available educational opportunities. He did preliminary studies in Frontenay, before moving to study law at the University of Poitiers. He earned his degree in 1560. He practiced it for four years, then abandoned it for a legal profession in 1564. He wanted to enter the employment of Antionette d'Aubeterre, as private tutor to her daughter, Catherine of Parthenay. He became a friend and was confidant of Catherine during the years he spent as her tutor. He remained her loyal and trusted adviser for the rest of his life (Parshall 1). He took his teaching duties very seriously, while he was preparing lectures for his charge on variety an of topics about science. The first scientific work dates were all from this period. It involves topics, which would continue to occupy him throughout his life. In 1571, he began publication of his track. It was intended to form a preliminary mathematical part of a major study on the Ptolemaic astronomical model. He continued to embrace the Ptolemaic (Parshall 1). The service to Catherine's noble family took him to La Rochelle, ultimately then to Paris. In 1573, he came under the eye of King Charles IX. He appointed him as counselor to the parliament of Brittany at Rennes. Then he remained in this post untill 1580 when he returned to Paris to take up offices of the Maitre de Requetes, also as a royal privy counselor. Form 1584 to 1589, political intrigue resulted both in free time, and then for the continuation of his mathematical studies, especially when they were evolving ideas on algebra (Parshall 1). His education was at the University of Poitiers, where he took practice of law in his hometown. Soon he rose to prominence by the astute legal services to prominent people (Parshall 1). Henry III called him back in 1589 to serve as a counselor to parliament.

Production and supply process of bottled water in dhaka Essay

Chapter – 1 Introduction As we know that now-a days people of Bangladesh are becoming very health conscious and pure drinking water is one of the main component to become healthy and sound. In that light lot of companies are coming up with different brand of mineral water with different types of package and promotion. So, there are high responds from the consumer sides on mineral water (Bureau of Statistics). Here my objective is to find out MUM’s Market Penetration Strategy comparing with other mineral water in the market. Origin of the report In today’s world academic education is not enough to enable student compete  with confidence and reach his/her goal without having experience of the outside world. The report which has given the opportunity to learn about how a particular company sets its Marketing Strategy to launch its product in the market place to satisfy the organizational goal. Topic of the report A topic has to be selected for the report. A well-defined topic reveals what is going to be discussed throughout the report. The topic has been assigned â€Å"The Marketing Strategy of MUM drinking water in Bangladesh†. Background of the study Consumers often judge the quality of a product or a service on the basis of a variety of on formational cues that they associate with the product. Some of these cues are intrinsic to the product or services, others are extrinsic. Either singly or in composite, such cues provide the basis for perception of product and service quality. Cues that are intrinsic concern physical characteristics of the product its self, such as size, color, design etc. In the absences of actual experience with a product, consumers often within â€Å"evaluate† quality on the basis of extrinsic cues- cues that are external to the product itself, such as price, brand image, manufacturers, retail sores, or even the country origin. Partex Beverage Limited (PBL) is one of the risen mineral water company in Bangladesh which serves MUM to the consumer. They have lots of distributors for their distribution who serves their product to the retailers time to time. For the institution most of the time they distribute directly to the end user or that institution. When the wholesaler sell their product to retailer or institutions, sometimes the wholesalers give them credit facility. Now MUM wants to run out them from this strategy (wholesaler). They want to distribute their product to the retailers or institutions through distributors or directly, not through wholesalers while other competitors like Super Fresh, ACME, Duncan Kinley, Jibon, Pran etc. are selling their product through wholesalers. Super Fresh come up with different types of pack sizes where MUM has only 2 types of pack sizes. Super fresh are offering some kinds promotion to their dealer to promote their product and increase their sales and increase the awareness of their brand. In that concern I have to find out that what MUM should do for their dealer and at the same time for their end user. Objective of the  project General objective The general objective of this study is to complete the report. As per requirement of Business Administration Department of ASA University Bangladesh, all students need to prepare a report for the BUS 498 course to acquire practical knowledge about real business operation. Specific Objective The report that I have to do as Marketing student, must have some specific objectives. The specific of the report is to explore the Marketing strategy of â€Å"MUM† a bottled water product of Partex Beverage Limited (PBL). Specific objective Identifying the market size & market share. Identifying the target consumers according to demographic segmentation social class. Identifying marketing & sales objectives according to positioning of the product. i.e. Identifying the product attribute(s) (hygiene, convenience, safety, environmentally responsible etc.) that are highlighted in the communication message. Identifying the perception of quality compare to different mineral water brands. Identifying the pricing policies. Identifying the effectiveness of distribution strategy Identifying different promotional activities that the company offers like credit facility, discount, occasional gift, incentive etc. Identifying the standardization of the product Identifying the awareness of the consumers regarding the product in percentage. Scope of the project Gathering information Gathering the information from different places in Dhaka city. Collect information from different types of age group, habitants etc. What are the benefits of those consumers who are taking these mineral waters like MUM, Super Fresh, ACME, Pran, Jibon, Duncan, Kinley etc. Whether consumer prefer different types of pack sizes. Are the consumers satisfied about the quality of MUM? Habit and life style of the consumer who take mineral water. Does  advertising play a positive role to increase the awareness of their brand? Analyzing the information Analysis the above information from facts gathered and discussed with management of MUM. Methodology Sources and methods of data collection For this study it will require both the Secondary and Primary data. Secondary Data: In the report I use both internal and external secondary data. 1. Internal Secondary Data: We collected some data (Market share, growth rate etc) from the management of PBL. 2. External Secondary Data: To compare some data we collected some information from different organizations and BSTI. Primary Data: Primary data is always known as survey data. This type of data is collected from the respondent. For this study we collected the primary data by taking personal interview with the consumer and different types of institution. Sampling Plan Target Population People from different profession dink mineral water. So those who drink mineral water are our targeted population Sampling frame 60 different outlets where the company serve their products are sampling frame. Sampling unit Every individual who are chosen for questioning are considered as sampling unit. Sampling size The sample size is near about 60for this report.   Sampling method As there are so many outlets located in different places in Dhaka city which cost very high to go everywhere, convenient sampling technique is applied. Limitations of the study There are some limitations of the study that might have prevented in reaching more faithful result. The limitations are stated below: Because of unavailability of the information of DPHE, CAB, BBU, it was not possible to make the report as accurate as possible. Time is one of the constraints of  the study. The time duration to prepare the assignment is not enough to learn about the Marketing Strategy of any organization’s product. Besides, some important aspects of the report could not be covered because of time constraint. If more Marketing and other related factors that affects the market potentiality could have been considered, then the result might have contained more validity. Every organization wants to maintain the confidentiality of the information. Because of this reason, the managers and officers who were interviewed did not disclose much information Chapter – 2 Literature review Marketing A social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and values with others. Product Life Cycle (PLC) The course of a product’s sales and profits over its lifetime. It involves four distinct stages: Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline stage. The product life cycle stage in which a product’s sales start climbing quickly. Pull Strategy A promotion strategy that calls for spending a lot on adverting and consumer promotion to build up the consumer demand. If the strategy is successful, consumers will ask their retailers for the product, the retailers will ask the wholesalers, and the wholesalers will ask the producers. Push Strategy A promotion strategy that calls for using the sales force and trade promotion to push the product through channels. The producer promotes the product to the wholesalers, the wholesalers to retailers, and the retailers promote to consumers. Packaging The activities of designing and producing the container or wrapper for a product. Traditionally, the primary function of the package was to maintain and protect the product. In recent years, product safety has also become a major packaging concern. Product Anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a want or need. It include physical objects, services, persons, places, organizations, and ideas. Price The amount of money charged for a product or service, or the sum of the values that consumers exchange for the benefits of having or using the product or services. Distribution Distribution or place includes company activities that make the product available to target consumers. Promotion Promotion means activities that communicate the merits of the products and the persuade target customers to buy it. Brand Awareness Brand awareness is the ability of a potential buyer to recognize or recall that a brand is a member of a certain product category. A link between product class and brand is involved SWOT Internal analysis to identify the company’s Strengths, Opportunities, Weakness and Threats. Vertical Marketing System (VMS) A distribution channel structure I which producers, wholesalers and retailers not as a unified system. Satisfaction The extent to which a product’s perceived performance matches a buyer’s expectations. If the product’s performance falls short of expectations, the buyer is dissatisfied. If the performance matches or exceeds expectations, the buyer is satisfied or delighted. Chapter – 3 Company information and product Marketing Strategy Company information Partex Group: Partex Group is one of the largest companies of our country. It was established in 1962. Partex Group of 17 industries. Net wrth at current market price nearly US $150 million. It has over 350distributor around the nation. There are more than 45,000 outlets it’s products are available. And Partex Group has over 7,000 employees. Partex Beverage & their aim Partex Beverage Limited consists of 2 products – these are RC Cola and MUM. MUM offers a variety in consumer choice; 500 ml as individual and 1500 ml as a family pack size. The sky is not the limit for them but their expectations are within limits. Their imagination soars beyond conventional barriers. They share their beloved motherland. They want to serve her better in the greater quest for national economic emancipation. Enterprise is their life. They manufacture quality substitute consumer and industrial products. They offer consumer satisfaction keeping environmental and human factors in mind. It is this thrust that gives their organizational integrity. They treasure their reputation and protect it zealously. Company product & its Marketing Strategy MUM: 1. Producer & Marketer – Partex Beverage Ltd., units of Partex Group 2. Brand name – MUM 3. Type of the product – Natural drinking water 4. Pack size – 500ml &1500ml 5. Packaging – Primary packaging – PET (Polyethylene Terepthalate) Secondary packaging – A tray made of corrugated paper contains 12 bottles which is covered by shrink wrap 6. Product attributes – Product quality – Strictly following guideline & standard specification of quality level of WHO, IBWA, ICDDRB, Food and Nutrition Dept. of DU It is free from adulteration and contamination Produced under hygienic condition Obtained BSTI license Unique packaging feature – Safe & pure natural Calcium – 29 mg/L Potassium – 2 mg/L Bicarbonate – 134 mg/L Sulphate – 1 mg/L Sodium – 4 mg/L Magnesium – 1 mg/L Chloride – 10 mg/L Fluoride –

Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel The Sistine Chapel is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican City. It is one of the most famous and memorable pieces of art in the history of art. This beautiful piece of art history took a little over four years to complete. He started this project in July of 1508 and finished in October of 1512. Pope Julius II had requested Michelangelo paint the ceiling in the chapel. The Pope was strong-minded that Rome should be renovated to show its prior exaltation.He was on a mission to show this by painting the ceiling of the chapel and he wanted the very best painter complete it, which he believed to be Michelangelo. Julius II assumed that if he had the ceiling painted that it would glorify his name and he would become more popular with the people under him. Pope Julius II wanted to make sure that every job he did for the Vatican City was more impressive than Pope Alexander VI, which was Julius’s rival. The ceiling to this day is 131 feet lon g by 43 feet wide which means that Michelangelo painted roughly 5,000 square feet of the ceiling.There were questions such as why was Michelangelo painting when he was a sculptor and the answer was that the Pope believed he would be the best for the job, even though that Michelangelo had only painted one other painting in his career because he worked mostly with sculptures. The start to this painting was slow simply because Angelo had never painted frescoes before. Angelo had to learn many new techniques for this painting but once he understood what he was doing his pace of painting sped up quite a bit. (Esaak. Many questions were asked about the painting and about Michelangelo while the painting was going on and many, many years afterwards. There are still questions going on to this day. One questions asked was why it took four years to paint the ceiling and there were many various reasons as to why this was. There were many setbacks such as mold, which made the painter and some of the others in the building during this time sick, and glum, wet weather often because of the frequent rain that prevented the plaster and molding to dry and stick together.During the time period of the painting Pope Julius II went off to war, and became close to death at one time. (Katz. ) This prevented Michelangelo from getting paid and furthering the painting because, although the entire project and design was his, Angelo did not want to make any decisions without the conformation from Julius. Angelo created this whole design himself, but he did need assistants when it came to completing the project. His assistants did things such as mix paints, rush up and down the ladders, and prepare the plaster he needed for his project.Angelo trusted very few to let him ever paint the ceiling. There were rare incidents that allowed him to trust someone enough to work on the sky or landscape parts, but they never did more than that. Most people always wondered if he completed the ceiling all by himself and questioned if that was a reason the painting took so long to accomplish. One question that also struck the audience was if Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel lying on his back, as most rumors would tell. The answer to this question was no, he did not.There was a movie made which reenacted the painting of the chapel, and the actor in that movie did lie on his back to create a more dramatic effect of how challenging the painting was. Angelo actually assembled a scaffolding system, which is a temporary structure for holding workers and materials during the production or decoration of a building mostly used by painters. The one he created himself was sturdy enough o hold himself, workers, and materials needed to complete his project but was higher up because there was always a chance it couldn’t hold the weight up. Katz) There were many rumors going around that Angelo had a few misfortunes when it came to his health during the duration of the painting. He had to bend over backwards to paint the ceiling and paint over his head, which was quite a weird, uncomfortable position to be in for the long period of time he was there. This type of position could cause neck and back aches permanently, and cause a burning in ones arms that would not help the pain. Angelo also claimed that this permanently ruined his vision, which led to rumors of him being blind.Andrew Graham-Dixon, who was the chief art critic for London’s Sunday Telegraph said, â€Å"He (Angelo) was working on the largest multi-figure compositions of the entire ceiling when the actual fresco plaster itself became infected by a kind of lime mold, which is like a great bloom of fungus, so he had to chip the whole thing back to zero and start again. Eventually he sped up. He got better. † The audience’s today question how someone could start off so badly on a project like this, and complete something as magnificent and beautiful as this when they had never painte d before, and it end up the way it did and become so popular and famous?Some people say that most artists are born with talent and started whatever they’re good at well; Angelo was good at sculpting, not painting. He had only completed one other painting and the rest of his artwork was sculptures. Graham-Dixon asked a very inquisitive question that went into great detail of the painting. Andrew asks, â€Å"Yet I found myself wondering, why did Michelangelo have God create Adam with a finger? † (Katz. ) This is a type of question that digs further than the questions the general audience would ask simply because he understands art and tries to reveal true meanings behind his findings.Graham-Dixon wrote a book, which this previous question was asked in, and he also states: â€Å"In other representations, for example, if you look at Ghiberti’s doors in Florence, God raises up Adam with a gesture of his hand. And as I turned over various ideas and theories, I began to see it as the creation of the education of Adam, because that’s the symbolism of the finger. God writes on us with his finger, in certain traditions of theology. In the Jewish tradition, that’s how he writes the tablets of the Ten Commandments for Moses—he sort of lasers them with his finger.The finger is the conduit through which God’s intelligence, his ideas and his morality seep into Man. And if you look at that painting very closely, you see that God isn’t actually looking at Adam, he’s looking at his own finger, as if to channel his own instructions and thoughts through that finger. † Statements and questions like this in the book take up many debates and myths about the Sistine Chapel, like the rumor about Angelo lying on his back to complete the painting when really it was just portrayed that was because of a movie.Another stimulating testimony made in Andrew Graham-Dixon’s book, Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, wa s a short exert from a poem Angelo wrote to his friend trying to be amusing saying, â€Å"My beard toward Heaven, I feel the back of my brain upon my neck. My loins have penetrated to my paunch†¦I’m not in a good place, and I’m no painter. † The obvious idea of the ceiling is the principle of humanity's need for Salvation as offered by God through Jesus. This is a visual representation of the need for a strong relationship with God.When studied by professional researchers and scientists, the picture unravels more interesting details than most would imagine. The entire sections of the painting tell the story from nine scenes that came out of the Book of Genesis. (Sistine) The visual effects of this project portray the idea the God created a perfect world then placed the humankind as part of this perfect world but humanity couldn’t handle it and they completed actions that deserved punishments as bad as death and separation from God.The painting goes o n to show the deeper troubles that humanity dug themselves into, and the punishments they endured to show they were becoming a disgrace. It goes on to show God sent their savior, Jesus, to better the world and rid them on their sins. Although most of the painting is linked back to the early church beliefs, the ceiling also has components that express the exact Renaissance thinking that required reconciling Christian theology with the belief of Humanism of the Renaissance. (Sistine. ) Angelo was an odd individual in his younger years.At the age of 17 he began dissecting corpses from the church graveyard. There were reasons to believe that Angelo had secret messages in the painting he completed for Pope Julius II. This was followed by the evidences that Angelo was also a anatomist and not just an artist. Angelo tried to hide this detail about him by destroying almost all of his anatomical drawings and notes. After many years of study with the evidence Angelo did not get a change to de stroy, scientists discovered that his drawings and notes were hidden in the painting of the Sistine Chapel.In the panel of God Creating Adam was a clearly and easily seen visual of the human brain in the cross section. (Fields. ) Scientists guess that Michelangelo surrounded God with a veil representing the human brain to suggest that God was giving Adam not only life, but also supreme human intelligence. (Fields. ) In the panel The Separation of Light from Darkness there is more evidence of Angelo having anatomical visuals in his painting. Leading up to God’s chest and developing though his throat, there is a clear depiction of a human spinal cord and brain stem that researchers and scientists have discovered.Some people have come to the understanding or belief that these hidden discoveries are just homage to God. (Fields. ) The lighting in the neck of God in one panel showing the clear visual of the brain is questioned because scientists do not understand how one can commit the clumsy act of highlighting the secrets he was trying to keep hidden. There is more that researchers have not discovered yet, but there will be more studying of the painting until what scientists believes to be everything hidden by Angelo is uncovered.Once the Sistine Chapel was completed Pope Julius II celebrated, and shortly after a few years later he passed away. After his passing, Michelangelo was asked to paint the wall behind the alter; he accepted this request and title this piece of art The Last Judgment. (Last Judgment. ) He started the project in 1536 and finally finished it in 1541. The picture comes out from the center of Christ, and Michelangelo had decided to show the many different saints included in the work holding the instruments of their martyrdom instead of the actual scenes of torture.Once Michelangelo completed this painting, the new Pope, Pope Paul III, had officially decided that since these paintings were in House of God that the naked people had to be c overed with some type of veils, loincloths, or any type of cloth as long as they were not being exposed to the public in this House of God. (Last Judgment. ) Angelo had been given an artistic license too not only portray images from the Bible in his paintings, but also in mythology. The genitalia in the fresco was covered in 1564 when Michelangelo passed about by the mannerist artist Daniele da Volterra, when the Council of Trent condemned nudity in religious art.Some artists have become famous just by using techniques used by Michelangelo and inspire such artists to try to achieve a greatness he has accomplished, and is undertaking today still even though he isn’t around anymore. Works Cited Esaak, Shelley. â€Å"Michelangelo – The Sistine Chapel Ceiling. † About. com Art History. N. p. , n. d. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. Fields, Douglas R. â€Å"Michelangelo Secret Message in the Sistine Chapel: A Juxtaposition of God and the Human Brain | Guest Blog, Scientific Amer ican Blog Network. Michelangelo Secret Message in the Sistine Chapel: A Juxtaposition of God and the Human Brain. N. p. , 27 May 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. Katz, Jamie. â€Å"Smithsonian. com. † Smithsonian Magazine. N. p. , 10 Apr. 2009. Web. 22 Sept. 2012. â€Å"The Last Judgement. Images of a Masterpiece. † Last Judgement, Michelangelo's Sistine Masterpiece. N. p. , n. d. Web. 30 Sept. 2012. â€Å"The Last Judgment (Michelangelo). † Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Nov. 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2012. â€Å"Sistine Chapel Ceiling. † Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Nov. 2012. Web. 26 Sept. 2012.

Pre Civil War essays

Pre Civil War essays Slavery was the dominating reality of all southern life from about 1840-1860. Social and economical aspects of Southern life can validate this generalization. Socially, the elite people who owned large farms for planting the cash crop relied on slave labor, which caused them to obtain more slaves. Economically, southerners profited from the slaves because of their slave labor, which produced Cotton, as the worlds leading export. One of the deciding factors of social class was the number of slaves a landowner possessed. The social group of the planters consisted of the upper class that owned 50 or more slaves. They became a class to which all others paid deference, and they dominated the political and social life of their region.(APUSH 65). The elite possessed more slaves than any other class thus they assumed superiority over the blacks. Furthermore there were the yeoman farmers who were the independent whites of the middle-class-they owned 1-2 slaves. Finally there were also the poor white trash, the lower class that had no slaves at all in-fact they lived in squalor worse than the slaves (APUSH 65). Since the purchase of slaves made all jobs requiring manual labor scarce, the poor became even poorer due to the absence of jobs. Hence as the necessary relationship of this plantation expanded, the Peculiar Institution of black slavery fastened itself upon the Southern people, even as it isolated them from t he rest of the world. (APUSH 65). The southern economy was a slave based cash crop agriculture that was dependent on the exportation of cotton. Also the whole U.S. was dependent on cotton because the south produced more than half of the entire world s supply of cotton" (Bailey 360) because of the slaves. Even the British relied on the south for cotton. Therefore in 1840 the exportation of cotton alone earned the US $75million and in 1860 the amount raised to $19...

Present Perfect Tense in Spanish

Present Perfect Tense in Spanish Despite its name, the present perfect tense in Spanish (and English as well) is used to refer to events that happened in the past. Its use in Spanish can be tricky, however, because its usage varies with region and it sometimes is used in slightly different ways than it is in English. In Spanish, the present perfect tense is formed by the present tense of haber followed by the past participle. (In English its the present tense of to have followed by the past participle.) It generally indicates that an action has been completed that has some bearing on the present. Forms of Present Perfect Tense Here are the forms in which the present perfect would be stated. Pronouns are included here for clarity but often arent necessary: yo he past participle (I have ...)tà º has past participle (you have ...)usted/à ©l/ella ha past participle (you have, he/she has ...)nosotros/nosotras hemos past participle (we have ...)vosotros/vosotras habà ©is past participle (you have ...)ustedes/ellos/ellas han past participle (you have, they have ...) Note that while in English, as in some of the examples above, it is possible to separate the have from the past participle, in Spanish you normally dont separate  haber  from participles. However, if haber applies to two participles, the second haber can be omitted, as in the second sample sentence below. Sample Sentences Here are some examples of sentences using the present perfect tense along with the way theyd most commonly be translated: Me he comprado una esponja rosa. (I have bought a pink sponge.) ¡Es lo mejor que he visto y escuchado en mi vida! (Its the best thing I have seen and heard in my life!) ¿Alguna vez has hablado con las ranas a medianoche? (Have you talked with the frogs at midnight?)Todos lo hemos pensado. (All of us have thought it.)Minerva ha conocido ya a los padres de su novio. (Minerva has already met her boyfriends parents.)Siempre he anhelado tener un metabolismo con el cual pueda comer lo que quiera. (I have always wanted to have a metabolism that would let me eat whatever I want.)Hay videojuegos que han hecho historia. (There are video games that have made history.)He leà ­do y acepto la polà ­tica de privacidad. (I have read and I accept the privacy policy.) Subjunctive Use The subjunctive present perfect functions in much the same way: Mi amiga niega que su madre haya comprado un regalo para el perro. (My friend denies that her mother has bought a gift for the dog.)Titular: 14 piscinas que no se parecen a nada que hayas visto antes. (Headline: 14 swimming pools that dont seem like anything you have seen before.)Es probable que hayan escondido micrà ³fonos en la casa y està ©n escuchando nuestras conversaciones. (It is likely that they have hidden microphones in the house and are listening to our conversations.)El la eleccià ³n ms sucia que hayamos conocido en los à ºltimos tiempos. (It is the dirtiest election that we have known in recent times.) Present Perfect With Meaning of the Preterite You should be aware, however, that the Spanish present perfect tense should not always be thought of as the equivalent of the English present perfect tense. In many regions, it can be used as the equivalent of the English simple past tense. Sometimes the context will make this clear: Ha llegado hace un rato. (She arrived a little bit ago.)Cuando lo he visto no he podido creerlo. (When I saw it I couldnt believe it.)Leo la carta que me han escrito esta maà ±ana. (I am reading the letter they wrote to me this morning.)Esta maà ±ana he estado en Madrid. (This morning I was in Madrid.) But even where the context doesnt dictate so, the present perfect can be the equivalent of the English preterite, also known as the simple past. This is especially true for events that occurred very recently. Youre also more likely to hear the present perfect used in this way in Spain than in most of Latin America, where the preterite may be preferred (e.g., llegà ³ hace un rato). Key Takeaways The present perfect tense is formed by following the present tense of haber with a past participle.No words should intervene between haber and the participle.The Spanish present perfect sometimes is used to indicate than an action recently took place rather than merely that it has occurred.

Adjectives Synonymous with Best

Adjectives Synonymous with Best Adjectives Synonymous with Best Adjectives Synonymous with Best By Mark Nichol A recent post discussed nouns employed to refer to ultimate achievement. Here, you’ll find details about adjectives that describe something that is the best, highest, or most important. Cardinal is from the Latin term cardinalis, meaning â€Å"essential† or â€Å"principal.† Chief, meaning â€Å"highest in authority† or â€Å"most important†- by way of the Anglo-French word chef, still used in French and English as the title for a professional cook in charge of a kitchen- comes from the Latin word caput, whence capital and captain as well. Foremost, interestingly, is not a compound of fore and most; its derivation is the Old English term fyrmest or formest, meaning (and related to) â€Å"first.† (The -est ending is the same superlative suffix seen in highest, smartest, and so on; see below for a mention of superlative.) Paramount, ultimately derived from the Latin phrase per ad montem (â€Å"to the hill†), means â€Å"superior to all others.† Preeminent, from the Latin adjective praeeminere, meaning â€Å"to be outstanding,† means â€Å"better than others† (eminent, the word without the prefix, means simply â€Å"respected† and â€Å"successful†); the root is also seen in prominent, and all three words are distantly related to mount and mountain. Premier and primary both come from Latin primarius, meaning â€Å"excellent, of the first rank,† which in turn is derived from primus, meaning â€Å"first.† From that word we also get prime, which, among other things, means â€Å"first-rate†; the Italian and Spanish adjective primo is sometimes used in informal English to denote something excellent. Premium, distantly related, means â€Å"high† or â€Å"higher than normal†; it stems from the Latin noun praemium, meaning â€Å"reward,† which is the meaning of the noun form. (The adjectival form, which developed less than a hundred years ago, was originally applied to a better grade of butter.) Superior, meaning â€Å"higher,† comes directly from Latin and stems ultimately from the Latin word super; supreme, from the Latin word supremus, meaning â€Å"highest,† is related. Another related word is superlative, ultimately from superlativus, meaning â€Å"exaggerated† or â€Å"extravagant.† (A superlative is also the ultimate form of an adjective, such as largest, the superlative of large; larger is the intermediate comparative form.) Best is itself a superlative; its comparative is better, but oddly, they are intensifications not of a word beginning with be- but of good (to make up for the lack of gooder and goodest as options); the base adjective was originally bot, which survives only in the form of boot in the idiomatic phrase â€Å"to boot,† which roughly means â€Å"in addition.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Using "a" and "an" Before WordsAmong vs. AmongstEducational vs. Educative

How Can Organisations Ensure that Information Held within their Essay

How Can Organisations Ensure that Information Held within their Information Systems is Secure - Essay Example This research will begin with the statement that the business environment is highly competitive in the 21st century as free market economies, which run by the principles of supply and demand, are becoming more prevalent. While no economy is completely a free market economy without any government intervention, most economies are at least partially free market. This intensifies competition as businesses seek to attract customers based on prices, quality, and other unique selling propositions. An essential part of the business process is the processing and dissemination of information. Businesses rely upon accurate and quickly gathered information regarding markets, products, customers, ideas, and other aspects concerning the business, in order to properly plan and implement their future strategies. Businesses must also keep accurate records of their past, current, and future plans in order to function in an organized manner. As businesses must take due care of their possessions and ass ets to prevent damage or theft, businesses must also protect their information from being stolen or misused. While assets may be quite expensive and valuable for the firm, information is worth much more and has a higher risk involved. Cybercrime is at large in today’s technologically advanced world, in which thieves do not attempt to take physical assets from people, but directly aim to access intangible information, which is regarded as more valuable. Corporations keep their information safe on computers that are locked with passwords and only staff is permitted to access the information. However, often there are instances of information leaks or access to restricted records by competitors, which causes the business immense damage. Hackers and other cyber thieves access important information to commit frauds or to manipulate the business’s financial records. Many times, large amounts of cash are transferred from the business account to other accounts and they become i rretrievable. There are thousands of ways that businesses can suffer harm through the access of their personal information. Account numbers, financial information, customer records, meeting plans, and new business strategies are all recorded on computers and it is regarded as a safer place to put such information rather than in paper form where it is easily accessible to all. Unfortunately, while computers may be the safer place to put such information, saving it from ordinary people and ordinary thieves, yet it is still considerably unsafe from technologically perceptive cyber thieves and hackers. Hence, businesses must take several measures to protect themselves from cyber crimes and keep their information safe. Before the electronic means of controlling the access to data is discussed, it must also be noted that information may also be disseminated through employees and through simple discussion conducted by employees with outsiders. Businesses also take measures to protect thems elves from such situations as they are perhaps more likely to occur than even cybercrime. As mentioned above, employees are a primary source of information about a company and are the people who are given access to a company’s databases. The first and foremost method a company uses to protect its information from being openly disclosed or discussed is through a confidentiality agreement between a company and its employees. This legal document binds the employee within a secrecy agreement and ensures that the employee agrees to keep all the information regarding the company and its strategies confidential. In the case that such information is dispersed by the employee, the employee will be liable for losses and legal action can be taken against the employee.

The General characteristics of Angels in Supernatural Research Paper

The General characteristics of Angels in Supernatural - Research Paper Example The paper discusses the angels in the TV series appear to show commonalities with the Bible, but the divergences are profound. I have stated the proof and the verses to show the conclusion of what I found in the research. The research has been somewhat more expansive than what is provided here. What was really found was that post modern and humanistic thinking is behind the portrayal of the TV series? â€Å"Humanism is naturalistic and rejects the super naturalistic stance with its postulated Creator – God and cosmic Ruler†. The most recent trend is to make the super natural a fad but still reject the creator at the center and replace one’s own ideas there. The TV series supernatural has done that successfully. The Biblical angels too are extremely powerful. However unlike the beings in the TV Series there power is focused and driven by a purpose. As ministering spirits, angels carry out the commands of God pertaining to the heirs of salvation. This involves warning, guiding, protecting, comforting, providing, and delivering the children of God according to His perfect will. This is exemplified in the verse â€Å"The angel of the LORD encamped round about them that fear him, and delivered them†. The power of the Angles in the Bible is derived from them being the army of God. Again central is God and his purposes to all this. They are so under the command of God that the meaning Gabriel is man of God. A relevant question is ‘What Is the Army of God?’.

Deficit Spending Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Deficit Spending - Essay Example Deficit financing has many advantages that benefit the economy in times of economic trouble but it has many disadvantages and overemphasis on it may turn hazardous for the economy. In a modern economy, budget deficit often evolve due to some common reasons like increase in government expenditure, fall in aggregate income level, inefficiency in the tax collection mechanism, subsidies granted by government in diverse sectors of the economy and so on. All these results in diminished pool of the state exchequer causing budget deficit wherein the mechanism of budget deficit by the government make its intervention coming with its own set of advantages. As discussed earlier, with two major tools like borrowing and printing new currency, the economy experiences development in infrastructure with capital infusion which in turn propels productivity boom in essential sectors like education, medicine and real estate to name a few. Money supply within the economy increases that as a spillover effect increase price level (although inflation acts as a predicament) of the economy that fetches gains to the producers in the supply side luring investments. One of the major advan tages of deficit financing is that it increases the aggregate demand within the economy increasing employment opportunities, income and thus more investments (Hajela, 2010, p. 348). After analyzing the advantages of deficit financing, it can be stated that there are some disadvantages of it as well. Inflation is one of the most prominent disadvantage or evil effects of deficit financing. If deficit financing cannot be controlled in a proper manner then inflationary pressure will increase. As for instance, in case of production owing to excess capacity deficiency, discrepancies between demand and supply of goods within the market and shortage of complementary factors coupled with increase in money supply accelerates inflationary pressure. Apart from that some

Defining Territories in different regions Essay

Defining Territories in different regions - Essay Example certain types of clothes whereas others do not, for instance in most Arabian nations it is a requirement that women adorn in veils in a move to symbolize their status and religion. Finally, there are modern gulf cities such as Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait that evolved from colonial dependency into statehood (Commins, 2012). The essay will relay information on the four types of territories in addition to how they are marked and maintained. A continent such as Europe, the culture of a single city such as trade in addition to its population is most likely to become cosmopolitan and varied. Although hopelessly outweighed in matters regarding geopolitics, networked cities are normally in a better position of achieving and retaining astonishing power hence achieving independence in terms of nominal sovereignty (Hohenberg & Lees, 2002). This is similar in the case of gulf cities, for instance Bahrain. According to Kermeliotis (2010), just like any other nation in the gulf, Bahrain has its own territories. This is because the city has a global recognition for its tolerance and openness hence becoming the most liberal society in the region. Apart from having the lowest cost of living, it also boasts of being the first nation in the gulf to allow education for both boys and girls. The veiling territory is when a city comes up with measures on how its citizens ought to appear in public. Whereas some nations embrace veiling territories, others such as France and the US do not have it; instead, their dress code is normally termed secularism or westernization. Conversely, gender territories involve both male and female in which they ought to receive equal recognition. This is normally achievable through abolition of certain norms such as the urban planning that has gender dimensions whereby whereas men travel distance locations in search of employment while women are to stay at home and take care of the home and children (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007). Due to the

Week 7 questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Week 7 questions - Essay Example He has seemed depressed, often a few minutes late for work, low-energy. One of Mitchs coworkers mentioned to you that Mitch told him he "just wanted to blast everybody", and at another time he "just wanted to close the door and turn off the lights." The coworker is concerned about Mitch. What should you do? As a supervisor of 10 employees, I have the responsibilities about their safety and health. I will talk to Mitch and will so that I would know his condition and if I found out that he is not really capable of working along with the other employee’s advice to leave will be highly recommended until he will be ok and ready to work again. As an employee he has the responsibilities to work safety along with the other employees and I do also have the responsibilities of protecting all my employees as a supervisor especially inside the premises of the workplace. Employers and employees have corresponding responsibilities to each their while in the workplace and I think it would just be relevant to give justice equally to all the members of the organization. You are the HR person for Midwest Aviation, a company that provides private charter flights and maintenance services for private planes. The safety guidelines and regulations require that pilots and maintenance people wear belts, harnasses, and other safety gear when performing their jobs in and around the airplanes. You know - from first hand experience as well as what others have told you - that most times they dont wear the safety gear. "It gets in the way," is the reason given. "Weve been doing it this way for years and nobodys been hurt yet," they say. Short of threatening to fire people, what are some ways you could motivate them to follow the safety procedures? Some of the ways I can do to be able to convince them to follow the safety procedure is that, I will try to talk to the high ranking position of

Pros and Cons of Situational Leadership Theory Essay

Pros and Cons of Situational Leadership Theory - Essay Example The strengths of situational leadership theory are its current use in many organizations, practicality, and prescriptive approach. Situational leadership theory is appealing to many leadership/management practitioners because it is seen as common sense for leaders to be flexible and adaptable to different situational variables, especially the conditions and characteristics of their subordinates and workplaces (Schedlitzki & Edwards, 2014, p.53). In addition, this theory is practical because it can be easily explained and understood, it is intuitive, and it can be applied across diverse settings (Northouse, 2013, p.105). Moreover, this theory is also prescriptive, where it is clear on what leaders and subordinates should do and should not do (Northouse, 2013, p.105). Its guidelines are valuable in guiding situational leadership. Besides strengths, situational leadership theory has its weaknesses, namely its over-simplified description of the relationship between leader behaviors and situational variables and lack of empirical research that can support assumptions and propositions. Scholars criticize the vagueness of the relationship between leader behaviors and situational variables, specifically the lack of explanation of variations for each leadership behavior category and how they can impact situational factors (Northouse, 2013, p.107; Schedlitzki & Edwards, 2014, p.54). Furthermore, this theory lacks empirical support for its assumptions and prescriptions. There is lack of empirical testing on the theoretical basis of the theory and how it can affect performance variables and outcomes (Northouse, 2013, p.107; Schedlitzki & Edwards, 2014, p.54). Situational leadership theory is a practical, simple, and prescriptive theory that appeals to practitioners and trainers alike. However, it lacks further explanation of the

Week 7 questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Week 7 questions - Essay Example He has seemed depressed, often a few minutes late for work, low-energy. One of Mitchs coworkers mentioned to you that Mitch told him he "just wanted to blast everybody", and at another time he "just wanted to close the door and turn off the lights." The coworker is concerned about Mitch. What should you do? As a supervisor of 10 employees, I have the responsibilities about their safety and health. I will talk to Mitch and will so that I would know his condition and if I found out that he is not really capable of working along with the other employee’s advice to leave will be highly recommended until he will be ok and ready to work again. As an employee he has the responsibilities to work safety along with the other employees and I do also have the responsibilities of protecting all my employees as a supervisor especially inside the premises of the workplace. Employers and employees have corresponding responsibilities to each their while in the workplace and I think it would just be relevant to give justice equally to all the members of the organization. You are the HR person for Midwest Aviation, a company that provides private charter flights and maintenance services for private planes. The safety guidelines and regulations require that pilots and maintenance people wear belts, harnasses, and other safety gear when performing their jobs in and around the airplanes. You know - from first hand experience as well as what others have told you - that most times they dont wear the safety gear. "It gets in the way," is the reason given. "Weve been doing it this way for years and nobodys been hurt yet," they say. Short of threatening to fire people, what are some ways you could motivate them to follow the safety procedures? Some of the ways I can do to be able to convince them to follow the safety procedure is that, I will try to talk to the high ranking position of

Topic related to child or adolescent development Term Paper

Topic related to child or adolescent development - Term Paper Example As such, they make poor decisions that may lead to life-threatening consequences, which include premature sexual intercourse, premature pregnancies, sexual molestation, transmission of STDs, and abortions. Peer pressure, media influence, lack of enough preparation and guidance on responsible sexual behavior, drug and substance abuse, and curiosity fosters sexual activities during adolescent sexual development. Statistics show that most adolescents in America are prone to sexual intercourse, STDs, unprotected sex, premature pregnancies, sexual molestations, and carryout abortions. Parents, educators, policy makers, and medical practitioners can help adolescents to make wise sexual decisions. The provision of accurate sex information, parental guidance, sex education, national programs, and relevant legislations can address this problem. Young people face numerous challenges from adolescent sexuality. Indeed, all adolescents are prone to sexuality issues at this stage. These challenges relate to adjusting to the new body appearance and dealing with the functionality of the sexually maturing body. Adolescents also face challenges in dealing with the emerging sexual desires, sexual attitudes, and values. Moreover, adolescent sexuality poses another challenge as adolescents develop new sexual behaviors, integrate sexual feelings, and seek to identify themselves in the new experience (Crocket et al, 2003). The challenge posed by adolescent sexual development emanates from the strange excitement of sexual arousal, the attention connected to being sexually attractive, and the new level of physical intimacy, and psychological vulnerability created by sexual encounters (Crocket et al, 2003). Notably, social and cultural background and environment determines how adolescents respond adolescent sexuality. The effects of adoles cent sexual development derive significant problems to the young people and the society. Ideally, the fact that

The Portrayal Of Women In Horror Movies Film Studies Essay

The Portrayal Of Women In Horror Movies Film Studies Essay DEFINITIONS: Woman: Whist the term girl can be used for a child or female adolescent, the term Woman would refer to an adult female human. Horror film: Cinema that is created to disgust and cause fear and distress to its spectator though themes of a gruesome and paranormal nature. INTRODUCTION This dissertation will consider the roles of women in the horror film genre and will deconstruct the way in which the conventions of the horror film prescribe such roles. Despite continued criticism for presenting women in a negative manner, many of the films explored here appear to suggest strong female representation so it will possible to investigate the position of the female from a number of different angles allowing a fluid discussion and counter argument. The passive female roles will be studied from the perspective of the male gaze and abjection, whilst active female roles will be explored from the role of the mother and the outcome of The Final Girl. As it would be impossible to discuss the entire history of the horror genre and womans relationship to it within the space available, so three chosen films will support the discussion. In all cases these films are regarded as classic horror films and, importantly, landmark and watershed moments in the horror genre. Psycho (1960), The Exorcist (1973), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) all represent meta statements in the history of the genre and provide essential examples of the arguments discussed here. It should also be noted that all three films contain also ambiguous female characters for example; Mrs Bates in Psycho, the cross dressing Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the possessed Regan in The Exorcist who will all be debated. Significantly the films were produced and released during periods of change for womens rights, including the beginnings of the womens liberation movement in the early sixties though to the publishing of The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, and Spare Rib magazine in the seventies. This help to fuel the debate more significantly as the selected films span a time when women in the real world (as opposed to the constructed world of the cinema) had made great steps toward equality through the feminist movement. Horror films are told as stories of good versus evil. The drama of their narratives tends to derive from the clash between a monster and an innocent, So I want to understand why so many gratuitous, unjustified acts of violence towards woman could be justified on screen. I will consider the following aspects: male gaze, abjection, family structure, and the outcome of the final girl in the context of horror film genre. These are four common tendencies embedded within the literature of women and horror film and the background to these discussions will be framed within the context of the chosen films. This writing will deconstruct and examine the structure of those films, the motives behind their structure, and will consider their target audience. It will examine the symbolism that is used to express the plots and sub-plots and, most importantly, consider the roles of the female characters in those films. I will employ psychoanalytic and feminist theory to explore the female roles and will interpret commentary on Freudian and Lacanian theory, including castration anxiety and the role of the subconscious and apply them to horror film. Semiotic and populist perspective will also be considered to set out this debate. Much has been written on the subject and over twenty books have been researched to discuss this consideration of women and horror film in detail. Key texts include: Ways of Seeing (1972) by John Berger, Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992) by Carol J. Clover, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993) by Barbara Creed and Powers of Horror (1982) by Julia Kristeva.  The texts outline the intellectual context into which this dissertation enters. People assume that horror film exclusively represent women in a reactionary fashion, but further analysis has suggested that female characters are not as weak and vulnerable as they first may appear. For example The Final Girls last moments have been radically written and rewritten across the remakes and sequels to give new meaning. Analytical and theoretical analysis has been informed by the writing of Laura Mulvey and in particular her discussions of the male gaze. Mulvey argues in her polemic essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema that cinema was primarily created for the male spectator exploiting women as objects of desire. Julia Kristevas essay The Powers of Horror provides essential understanding on the position of abjection in the context of horror and mortality. All of the above writers discuss theoretical studies and theories of Dr Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan who are both indirectly referenced throughout this dissertation. Barbara Creeds The Monstrous-Feminine and Carol Clovers book Men, Women, and Chainsaws will inform debate around the matriarchal figures in Psycho and the outcome of the final girl in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. CHAPTER 1 Gendered Spectatorship The male gaze is made explicit in the horror genre, and this is inscribed in both the aesthetics of the films and its exhibition context. One of the most important essays about women in cinema is Laura Mulveys theory on the male gaze. As Mulvey states: The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. One is scopophilia (pleasure in looking). There are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure (1989, p16). (do I reference?) If scopophilia can be defined as love of looking or deriving pleasure from looking, then this can be a definition of the cinema experience. Cinema is, after all, a form of visual entertainment. It involves the individual singularly engaging with the screen and its projections as a form of escapism and even relaxation, and can be comfortably achieved alone as it involves very few social skills, since the viewers only commitment to the process is to look. However, once we question how the film is viewed and who views the film, the relationship becomes more complex. The purpose of this essay is to question how the female is viewed from the perspective of the spectator; to question how women are portrayed in horror films, and how they are looked at. It will explore the argument that cinematic looking comes from a male perspective and will question what kind of pleasure is obtained from looking at horror films from this perspective. As Mulvey explains: The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking (1989, p17). It allows the spectator the opportunity to observe in an entirely passive role while the action takes place. The experience of cinema is a one-sided arrangement between the film itself and its viewer. However, as Mulvey discusses regarding Dr Sigmund Freud, it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect (1989, p17). Scopophilia can also suggest that sexual pleasure can be derived from looking at objects; that how they are interpolated can make them erotic, and while they are not erotic in their own right through their relationship with the spectator they can become sexually objectified. The celebrated psychologist Dr Sigmund Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexuality which exist as drives independently of the erotogenic zones. At this point he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze (Mulvey,1989, p16). The history of art emphasises this aspect of scopophilia. Throughout art history, painters have been commissioned to paint female models as objects of desire that have been and still are masquerading as works of art more closely related with pornography than with the great masterpieces. Moving forward, Clover debates that the cinematic gaze, we are told, is male, and just as that gaze knows how to fetishize the female form in pornography it also, she suggests (going on to relate this to cinematography), knows how to follow a female character as she moves through a forbidding house, and scrutinise her face for signs of fear in a way that it does not do with male characters, since: a set of conventions we now take for granted simply sees males and females differently. (1992 p50-51). This suggests that the ownership in the context of cinema is the cause of the effect that the viewer, by objectifying the figure on screen, gives it new meaning, a new social place. By simply being viewed, new rules apply. To place this into the context of women within horror, the male can now view the woman and the conditions and events around her in a newly detached manner and freely let the actions against her take place on the screen. In psychoanalytic terms, the female figure poses a deeper problem. She also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows, claims Mulvey (1989, p21). This could be suggesting that as the spectator is assumed to be male, the appearance of a female (ie non-male) form creates an anxiety around the potential for castration and an un-penised body à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦hence unpleasure. Mulvey argues in Lacan: and Post feminism by Elizabeth Wright (2000, p45-46) that the look is linked to the discovery of sexual difference, and that the lack of a penis must be filled by multiple images of glamourised women as a substitute for the imaginary phallus. Mulvey writes that cinema, and in particular horror cinema, is inclined to focus attention on the human form (1989, p17). The human form and the human condition are key aspects in the horror genre, especially the female body. Horror displays visceral and exaggerated versions of our basic desires and a strong and aggressive version of body lust. The horror film in particular relies on the physical human form and hostility towards the body to carry its plots and storylines in the most extreme sense. This is clearly not a natural state of being: to be seated in a darkened room, with a huge rectangular screen in view and surround sound at high volume. But this is the environment of the cinema, where the viewer is asked to focus on exaggerated and extreme events far beyond the realms of real life in the name of entertainment.   Here, not unlike in other places in the media, the female form is prevalent, to be exhibited again for entertainment and it is the female characters in the horro r film genre that appear to command most of the attention on the cinema screen. Mulvey suggests that, since the world displays such disparities between the genders, with the masculine nearly always holding the reins of power: Do I reference here as well? pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly (1989, p19). So since society isnt equal in terms of who holds the power, either sexually or otherwise, women act a certain way because they are aware of how men expect them to be that is, passive and sexualised. Mulvey states this as a symbolic equation, woman = sexuality. (1989, p35). John Berger differentiates men from women as he describes a mans presence as being defined by what he is capable of doing to you or for youà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦but the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others. (1972, p39-40) Expand Mulveys view is that narrative cinema positions its spectators as male, catering only for male fantasies and pleasures (p39 Feminist Film Theorists). This suggests that women are objectified in film in general (and for the purposes of this argument, substantially in horror films). Mulvey also claims that the spectator/viewer/audience is said to be a man; cinema almost expects its viewers to be male and therefore creates characters and plots to fulfil a mans gaze. So prevalent is this notion that Mulvey claims narrative cinema does not offer a place for female spectators'(p40 Feminist Film Theorists); that cinema essentially isolates the female as a serious viewer: As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence. (Mulvey, 1989, p20). Shorten Clearly men can easily identify with the male protagonist but the female audiences have to distance themselves from their femininity in order to participate in the cinematic experience; critics refer to this as gender confusion. Freud would argue that to share these experiences, woman would have to revert back to her pre-Oedipal phallic phase. It might now be relevant to explore the male gaze specifically functions in the context of the horror genre. Looking back at the history and evolution of the horror film, the cinemas flourished at a time when there was less available to the public and strong moral codes and rules about relationships were in place. The clichà ©d idea of horror films was being scripted and edited to fulfil the role of the dating couple on a Saturday night. (pg 61 Horror: The Film Reader Edited by Mark Jancovich (different authors per chapter) The cinema was a place where young couples could escape family life for the few hours of a date. It allowed them space to be alone together at a time, before the sexual revolution, when men were expected to be chivalrous and protect and provide support for their female companion, as Mark Jancovich explains: Women cover their eyes or hide behind the shoulders of their dates. (pg 61 Horror: The Film Reader Edited by Mark Jancovich (different authors per chapter). This then created an opportunity for the male viewer to comfort his date as she squirmed and shrieked at the on-screen horror. He could become closer and more intimate as she was lured into vulnerability by the action projected in front of her. Mulvey highlights this dominant order: As an advanced representation system, the cinema poses questions about the ways the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking. (1989, p15) Paraphrase or include in text. Given this climate, the notion of the girl as victim was allowed to evolve. A connection could then be made between the female viewer and her on-screen female counterpart, in that the spectator cannot bear to look on helplessly as her cinematic alter ego that is, a close representation of herself suffers the horrors of rape, mutilation and murder. Mulvey argues that women have had two different functions within cinema: as erotic objects for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic objects for the spectator within the auditorium. (1989, p19) There is clear evidence of this in Tobe Hoopers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It follows the story of a group of young Americans as they venture into the countryside and meet their fate in the shape of a disturbed and hostile cannibalistic family whose weapons of choice are butchers tools and chainsaws. The three young men meet their deaths quickly, paving the way for the females more drawn-out and gratuitous torture. While one of the women meets her slow, lingering fate via a meat hook and deep freezer, the other is chased and tortured repeatedly across the final third of the film. Female characters in horror films are generally young and attractive. They maintain a key role in the film; examples of this would be Laurie in Halloween and Marion in Alfred Hitchcocks infamous Psycho. When Michael Myers pretty sister meets her fate in the opening scene of Halloween, she is pursued by (and through the eyes of) her killer; indeed, throughout Halloween the story is often seen/told through the eyes of the killer, a technique referred to as the POV (point-of-view) shot. But before the murder takes place, the audience are offered a completely superfluous view of her naked body, seen through the male gaze as she brushes her hair. It could be argued that the female characters occupy many on-screen hours and appear to dominate the films, yet on closer inspection the real lead role is saved for the star psychopath, who is almost always male. It could be debated that male spectators are therefore being asked to identify with the killer. With respect to Halloween there are a number of shots explicitly from Myers physical point-of-view with an acoustic close-up of his monstrous heavy breathing (Isabel Pinedo 1997, p52). It cannot be proven that the whole audience identifies with him but they are forced to see through his murderous gaze, which almost compels a form of affinity. Horror genre is traditionally thought of as low culture. It has a casual tone and audiences have grown to expect violence, nudity and cheap thrills. This position in low culture appears to grant a licence to horror films to get away with more than high art cinema, and horror is rarely studied for meaning or metaphor to the same extent. But because of these lower expectations, the reality can be stretched (not unlike in cartoons), leading to irrational storylines with horror far more extreme than could be expected in real life. Therefore, it could be argued that horror films make explicit the assumption of a male spectator which is, according to Mulvey, only implicit in all popular cinema. Other films, under the pressure of higher expectation, have to keep such a misogynist perspective more contained, but horror can afford to make it overt. Clearly all normal rules do not apply. So, once reality is dropped in favour of visual pleasure, why do we ask audiences to witness hostility and brutality against women? Brian De Palma assesses the motives behind this argument. It is, he suggests, not that women are presented for male pleasure but that they provide a greater capacity for terror in the audience: If you have a haunted house and you have a woman walking around with a candelabra, you fear more for her than you would for a husky man. (Clover, 1992, p42). This provides a greater margin for a violent death. But why is this? Why would a woman be more vulnerable than a man in this age of equality? The answer to this lies far deeper than in the relatively trivial world of the slasher movie or psychological thriller. This genre is simply a form of entertainment and perhaps not the place for intellectual analysis, as John Carpenter hinted when he was challenged with the notion that he is responsible for the tasteless massacre of sexually active women. He claimed that, although the victims in his (and so many other) horror films are indeed the more sexually active characters, to insist that this is why they die is to miss the essential pointThey get killed because they are not paying attention. How do I reference Carpenter? And it could be argued that academics were reading a little too much into Halloween, since a male character is also murdered straight after sex with his girlfriend. One could even claim that this balances the plot and clears the director of the accusation that he is somehow guilty of misogyny. However à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦argues that: His death is usually only a device to remove protection from the now vulnerable female. (pg 165 Bitches, Bimbosà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦). This suggests that the male character is now secondary and his death is insignificant by comparison to the murder of the female. It could also be argued that Carpenter and other celebrated film makers just want to make entertaining horror and dont intend to make hateful statements against women, or objectify them for the male gaze, but that this is simply what people find exciting and why they fill up cinemas. Irrespective of Carpenters intentions, the standards of what is considered entertainment tell us a great deal about our views towards women in horror cinema and perhaps in society as a whole. CHAPTER 2 The Abject Feminine The ultimate figure of abjection is the corpse. As the horror genre is ultimately obsessed with death one could suggest that horror fetishizes the abject. It has been suggested that the horror film attempts to bring about confrontation with the abject. (p4 Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freuds Worst Nightmare.) Creed refers to Kristevas notion of the border: When we say such-and-such a horror film made me sick or scared the shit out of me we are actually foregrounding that specific horror film as a work of abjection or abjection at work almost in a literal sense. (1993, p10) By the presentation of repulsion one knows what is not repulsive; to understand abjection one must understand boundaries. As we grow up we stop playing in dirt and become more dignified; this is something we learn from society as well as from our mothers teaching us how to be clean and proper. This notion references Lacans concept of the mirror stage, Kristeva supports: It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. (1982, p4). Woman and abjection The horror genre has a historical tendency to represent the female form as abject. In Kristevas view, woman is specifically related to polluting objects, which fall into two categories: excremental and menstrual. This in turn gives woman a special relationship to the abject. (1982, p10) What we are scared of is not the matter that we expel but what it signifies loss of identity, loss of control, death and the unknown. Nor is it the end of a natural life that contributes to the tension of horror cinema, but an endless list of horrific deaths that we could possibly encounter. Paul Wells backs this notion with his comments on the forbidden facets of the human body its propensity to foul secretions and physical corrosion which are linked to our relentless descent towards death, and which are reflected in images of abjection in the horror film (2000, p16). IS THIS 2ND PERSON? When we are children our parents encourage us to respect boundaries about cleanliness and behaviour, and we reject the abject. But in the context of the horror film there is perverse pleasure that allows us to explore our curiosity about the abject. The abject confronts the repressed/un-civilized side of the ego and allows us to investigate the other. The horror film makes good use of the abject. Julia Kristeva uses her experience with milk as a child in an attempt to explain the idea of abjection: Food loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection. When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of milkà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly: and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire. Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. (p23 Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection by Julia Kristeva). Does this need to be cut? This could suggest that when a skin forms on top of milk, it is crossing over a border or breaking a rule regarding what is acceptable as good food, and so the milk is no longer pure. The milk has perhaps split into two; milk being the acceptable form and its solidified state being the abject. Hence it fulfils a similar role in our imagination as a corpse does over a living, breathing body. We will no longer accept/drink the milk as it has turned bad and represents death, a state beyond living. The maternal body grows and delivers a living being but it is also the sister of the corpse so it can remind us of life but also death. If we confronted the abject in everyday life we would be constantly aware of our own mortality. Milk described in the context above provides an effective example of abjection, as it suggests the differential between acceptable breastfeeding as a child and unacceptable breast-feeding as an adult. The Exorcist was the first of many possession films. Its premise involves an innocent young girl named Regan McNeil who displays abnormal behaviour in the middle class American home she shares with her mother and house keeper. Throughout the film her father appears absent so it is her mother (Chris McNeil) who bears witness to the profound and hostile series of events and paranormal behaviour as the plot unfolds. Creed states that: The possessed or invaded being is a figure of abjection in that the boundary between self and other has been transgressed (1993, p32) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦by the devil himself, who appears to be the only male central figure in the film until the arrival of a psychiatrist and two Roman Catholic Priests. Within the plot of The Exorcist, Regans character is a vehicle that allows the portrayal of abjection to the mass audience. Had a young boy been cast in a similar role, the horror could have been undermined, but due to our own preconceptions of femininity and youth, the possession portrayed within this young girl only adds to the horrific events. Regan is the most passive of female victims, repeatedly switching from tearful little girl to demonic aggressor. She expels her bodily fluids, blood, vomit and urine; she is a playground for bodily wastes (1993, p40). Creed goes on to point out that the female body is more abject because its maternal functions acknowledge its debt to nature 1993, p11). She also points out that, as Regan cavorts and flaunts herself, we become all too aware of the forbidden fascination of the abject , as well as its horror, inherent in the fact that this young girl has overtly flouted her respectable feminine function, and has; put her unsocialized body on display. And to make matters worse, she has done all of this before the shocked eyes of two male clerics. (p 198 Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. edited by Bordwell, D and Carrol, N) Creed (1993, p37) puts forward: In Kristevas view the abject represents that which disturbs identity, system, order. Regans possessed soul projects this through levitation and deep spoken foul language. As the film continues, an exorcism takes place in the form of a battle between the Church and the Devil. If religion could be used to explore the abject, no film does it more tellingly than in The Exorcist. Creed puts forward, according to Kristeva: Kristeva argues that, historically, it has been the function of religion to purify the abject. (1993, p14) As the film comes to an end, Regan is saved by the church and restored to purity. She turns to hug the one person who saved her: a male Priest, or perhaps God himself? Spectator In the real world, when confronted with something genuinely repulsive, we reject that object of repulsion. But in the cinema it is not necessary to fully block what confronts us. The positioning of the spectator within the cinema experience must be recognized if abjection is going to be fully absorbed. The viewer happily sits as the spectacle of horror unfolds and is projected onto them. Though the viewer has no control over the events projected before them, the unpleasant acts witnessed by the spectator can comfortably be dismissed when the credits roll and the film is over. Viewing the horror film signifies a desire not only for perverse pleasure where boundaries are crossed, both attracting and repelling (confronting sickening, horrific images/being filled with terror/desire for the undifferentiated) but also a desire, once having been filled with perversity, taking pleasure in perversity, to throw up, throw out, eject the abject (from the safety of the spectators seat). CHAPTER 3 The Absent Mother Relationships in the maternal melodrama are almost always between mother and daughter; it is to the horror film we must turn for an exploration of mother-son relationships. The latter are usually represented in terms of repressed Oedipal desire, fear of the castrating mother and psychosis. Given the nature of the horror genre its preoccupation with monstrosity, abjection and horrific familial scenarios the issues surrounding the mother-child dyad are generally presented in a more extreme and terrifying manner. (Creed,1993, p139) Cut down One area of female representation that is more ambiguous is the figure of the Mother in the horror film genre. No longer could the killer be simply defined by gender. At the beginning of the 1960s audiences were subjected to a new kind of cinematic terror, as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ explains in her essay: The monster was no longer out there; it was in here. The monster was the human mind. (Pg 160 Gary, J and Sheila, S (ed) Bitches, Bimbos and Virgins: Women in the Horror Film) As Hitchcocks psychological thriller Psycho was released The early sixties audience would be led to believe that the approachable Norman Bates (played by Antony Perkins) was simply a victim of his over-zealous mothers bullying. But as the plot unravelled, the film presented a deeply obsessive human mind as the real monster, as Steven Jay Schneider further explains: When used to shed light on horror cinema, psychoanalysis in its various forms has proven to be a frightful and provocative interpretive tool (Pg 187 Schneider, S. J. Horror Film and Psychoanalysis Freuds Worst Nightmare) The film follows its self-sufficient central female character, Marion Crane, jaded by her affair with a married man, as she embezzles a large amount of money from her male employer and leaves town in pursuit of a new life. On arrival at the infamous Bates Motel she meets the proprietor, the twitchy but approachable and, more importantly, passive Norman Bates, who is clearly attracted to Crane, something she comfortably takes in her stride, suggesting a non-passive female. However, on closer inspection, Marions actions throughout the first section of the film are defined by male characters she comes into contact with: her lover Sam, her male employer and the male client, the highway patrol officer and Norman Bates who all define her destiny with their attitudes towards her. Robert Kolker supports this theory: Psycho: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the mix of pleasure and pain common to all horror viewing, and aligned with a feminine subject position, is negotiated differently by men than by women. (p193 Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho: A Casebook edited by Robert Kolker) Throughout the first part of the film Marion is portrayed as feminine, attractive and defying the typical representation of women in horror films; however, from the perspective of the male gaze Bates watches Marion, unbeknown to her, through a hole in the wall as she undresses and prepares to shower. Normans eye is filmed in extreme close-up, drawing attention to the activity of the voyeurism. (1993, p145). As the camera lingers on her it is this scene that suggests that Hitchcock cannot break away fully from the traditions of the horror genre where the female becomes objectified and is observed from the gaze of the active male. Norman Bates mother is another female character significant to the plot, not seen but heard off-screen discouraging her son from having any social contact with the newly arrived female and, throughout most of the film, verbally abusing her son. Surrounded by stuffed birds, Bates even states a boys best friend is his mother. The viewer can assume that he is a loyal and reliable son. However, as Lacans theorys are refered :