Different Approaches in The Wisdom of Teams

Jon R. Katzenbach is a director of McKinsey & Company, Inc., where he has served the senior executives of leading companies for over thirty years. His experience includes work with both public and private sector clients from the industrial, financial, and consumer industries. He has also served a variety of nonprofit institutions. He specializes in issues involving corporate governance, organization, and leadership. Douglas K. Smith is a former consultant at McKinsey & Company, Inc., who today is a leading commentator on organizational performance and change. Simply, teams outperform people working alone. This is especially true when the performance requires multiple skills, judgements, and experiences. Consultants or former consultants of large consulting firms wrote the Wisdom of Teams. The Wisdom of Teams authors have roots at McKinsey. A consulting firm based out of Dallas Texas. The authors have spent considerable time working with teams, studying them and are now using their books to impart that knowledge to those seeking to form, develop and facilitate successful teams in their organizations. However, the two books take very different approaches. Teams are one of the catchwords of the 90's. And with them has come an explosion of literature telling us what teams are and what they are not; how to create them, measure them, use them and empower them. A new vocabulary has emerged that distinguishes work groups from work teams, and self-directed teams from all other teams. Some of the essential lessons learned about teams and team performance are: – Teams do not arise without a perforce challenge that is meaningful to those involved. – Real team†s results will be greater if the leaders aim their sights on preference. – Biases toward individualism cannot interfere with the team†s goals. The Wisdom of Teams presents lessons learned from the success and failure of actual teams. The authors base their wisdom on personal experience along with extensive interviews conducted with 50 different businesses. Katzenbach and Smith's lessons are supported by case studies. â€Å"Real† teams are the focus of the book. According to Katzenbach and Smith, a â€Å"real† team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. These elements of a team — purpose, performance goals, common approach to work and mutual accountability — define what teams are and how they should be managed. Teams are distinguished from work groups in that the work they perform is collective as opposed to the sum of individual contributions, leadership roles are shared, and the team does real work together that result in a specific product or service being delivered. This distinction is important, because the focus of the book is on what teams are, what it takes to become a team and how to exploit the potential of successful teams. The authors also present useful guidelines for determining when to use a team and when to use a work group. Teams are not presented as an organizational ideal. In fact, Katzenbach and Smith encourage looking at the organization's goals and policies to determine if a team or work group is the best choice. Their bias is that teams are worth the trouble where they support organizational goals. In their view, the potential of teams is unlimited and cultivating real teams is one of the best ways of upgrading the overall performance of an organization. Katzenbach and Smith's advice is simple, straightforward, and practical. They look at teams in an organizational context. Certain elements are critical to team success. The organization needs to have or develop a strong â€Å"performance ethic.† In other words, compelling clear purposes and performance standards need to be an important part of the organization's culture. According to Katzenbach and Smith, performance, not chemistry, shapes teams. â€Å"Real† teams emerge when the individuals in them take risks involving conflict, trust, interdependence, and hard work. Making conflict constructive by developing ways to handle differences and concerns and molding them into common goals is when real teams emerge. The authors suggest achieving this by establishing urgency and clear direction in teams, selecting members based on skill balance, not personality, and with opportunities to learn from each other. Establishing clear start-up rules for behavior and seizing upon a few immediate performance-oriented tasks that are challenging but achievable also help teams develop. Spending lots of time together and giving positive feedback are key. The authors describe the senior management team as the hardest to establish they present this as a fact of organizational life that can be addressed. Their solution: start by creating a strong senior management work group and go from there. Many successful organizations using teams have them. The authors are also realists. The difficulty teams may face such as lack of management direction is described with suggestions for addressing them. Finally, and maybe most importantly, Katzenbach and Smith are optimists. They believe that most people are able to lead. Leaders need to provide guidance and give up control and most importantly believe in the team and put them first. It is that attitude, belief in the team, that is the most important characteristic of a leader. They conclude that a strong performance ethic leads to the pursuit of common performance results that benefit customers, shareholders, and employees. An overemphasis on any one area creates distortions that lead to turf battles and politics. Managers must demand and then relentlessly support pursuit of performance by teams. This clear simple model can easily be applied to any type of organization. All of this advice is offered while keeping jargon to a minimum. In fact, the book starts by acknowledging what we all know creating change in an organization can be difficult. Yet, The Wisdom of Teams provides simple strategies, to analyze organizational readiness, and alternatives that will get your organization closer to a real team environment. It outlines the basics elements of team and then offers techniques for sticking to them to achieve success. You do not need to be a process consultant to make teams work in Katzenbach and Smith's world. In addition, this is the book's greatest strength. While the advice offered is good, the book could be much more concise and easier to read. Many of the points are redundant. This is a good book for the beginner, who wants to understand the issues.

Foundation and Empire Acknowledgments

The date was August 1, 1941. World War II had been raging for two years. France had fallen, the Battle of Britain had been fought, and the Soviet Union had just been invaded by Nazi Germany. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was four months in the future. But on that day, with Europe in flames, and the evil shadow of Adolf Hitler apparently falling over all the world, what was chiefly on my mind was a meeting toward which I was hastening. I was 21 years old, a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University, and I had been writing science fiction professionally for three years. In that time, I had sold five stories to John Campbell, editor of Astounding, and the fifth story, â€Å"Nightfall,† was about to appear in the September 1941 issue of the magazine. I had an appointment to see Mr. Campbell to tell him the plot of a new story I was planning to write, and the catch was that I had no plot in mind, not the trace of one. I therefore tried a device I sometimes use. I opened a book at random and set up free association, beginning with whatever I first saw. The book I had with me was a collection of the Gilbert and Sullivan plays. I happened to open it to the picture of the Fairy Queen of lolanthe throwing herself at the feet of Private Willis. I thought of soldiers, of military empires, of the Roman Empire – of a Galactic Empire – aha! Why shouldn't I write of the fall of the Galactic Empire and of the return of feudalism, written from the viewpoint of someone in the secure days of the Second Galactic Empire? After all, I had read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire not once, but twice. I was bubbling over by the time I got to Campbell's, and my enthusiasm must have been catching for Campbell blazed up as I had never seen him do. In the course of an hour we built up the notion of a vast series of connected stories that were to deal in intricate detail with the thousand-year period between the First and Second Galactic Empires. This was to be illuminated by the science of psychohistory, which Campbell and I thrashed out between us. On August 11, 1941, therefore, I began the story of that interregnum and called it â€Å"Foundation.† In it, I described how the psychohistorian, Hari Seldon, established a pair of Foundations at opposite ends of the Universe under such circumstances as to make sure that the forces of history would bring about the second Empire after one thousand years instead of the thirty thousand that would be required otherwise. The story was submitted on September 8 and, to make sure that Campbell really meant what he said about a series, I ended â€Å"Foundation† on a cliff-hanger. Thus, it seemed to me, he would be forced to buy a second story. However, when I started the second story (on October 24), I found that I had outsmarted myself. I quickly wrote myself into an impasse, and the Foundation series would have died an ignominious death had I not had a conversation with Fred Pohl on November 2 (on the Brooklyn Bridge, as it happened). I don't remember what Fred actually said, but, whatever it was, it pulled me out of the hole. â€Å"Foundation† appeared in the May 1942 issue of Astounding and the succeeding story, â€Å"Bridle and Saddle,† in the June 1942 issue. After that there was only the routine trouble of writing the stories. Through the remainder of the decade, John Campbell kept my nose to the grindstone and made sure he got additional Foundation stories. â€Å"The Big and the Little† was in the August 1944 Astounding, â€Å"The Wedge† in the October 1944 issue, and â€Å"Dead Hand† in the April 1945 issue. (These stories were written while I was working at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia.) On January 26, 1945, I began â€Å"The Mule,† my personal favorite among the Foundation stories, and the longest yet, for it was 50,000 words. It was printed as a two-part serial (the very first serial I was ever responsible for) in the November and December 1945 issues. By the time the second part appeared I was in the army. After I got out of the army, I wrote â€Å"Now You See It-† which appeared in the January 1948 issue. By this time, though, I had grown tired of the Foundation stories so I tried to end them by setting up, and solving, the mystery of the location of the Second Foundation. Campbell would have none of that, however. He forced me to change the ending, and made me promise I would do one more Foundation story. Well, Campbell was the kind of editor who could not be denied, so I wrote one more Foundation story, vowing to myself that it would be the last. I called it â€Å"-And Now You Don't,† and it appeared as a three-part serial in the November 1949, December 1949, and January 1950 issues of Astounding. By then, I was on the biochemistry faculty of Boston University School of Medicine, my first book had just been published, and I was determined to move on to new things. I had spent eight years on the Foundation, written nine stories with a total of about 220,000 words. My total earnings for the series came to $3,641 and that seemed enough. The Foundation was over and done with, as far as I was concerned. In 1950, however, hardcover science fiction was just coming into existence. I had no objection to earning a little more money by having the Foundation series reprinted in book form. I offered the series to Doubleday (which had already published a science-fiction novel by me, and which had contracted for another) and to Little-Brown, but both rejected it. In that year, though, a small publishing firm, Gnome Press, was beginning to be active, and it was prepared to do the Foundation series as three books. The publisher of Gnome felt, however, that the series began too abruptly. He persuaded me to write a small Foundation story, one that would serve as an introductory section to the first book (so that the first part of the Foundation series was the last written). In 1951, the Gnome Press edition of Foundation was published, containing the introduction and the first four stories of the series. In 1952, Foundation and Empire appeared, with the fifth and sixth stories; and in 1953, Second Foundation appeared, with the seventh and eighth stories. The three books together came to be called The Foundation Trilogy. The mere fact of the existence of the Trilogy pleased me, but Gnome Press did not have the financial clout or the publishing knowhow to get the books distributed properly, so that few copies were sold and fewer still paid me royalties. (Nowadays, copies of first editions of those Gnome Press books sell at $50 a copy and up-but I still get no royalties from them.) Ace Books did put out paperback editions of Foundation and of Foundation and Empire, but they changed the titles, and used cut versions. Any money that was involved was paid to Gnome Press and I didn't see much of that. In the first decade of the existence of The Foundation Trilogy it may have earned something like $1500 total. And yet there was some foreign interest. In early 1961, Timothy Seldes, who was then my editor at Doubleday, told me that Doubleday had received a request for the Portuguese rights for the Foundation series and, since they weren't Doubleday books, he was passing them on to me. I sighed and said, â€Å"The heck with it, Tim. I don't get royalties on those books.† Seldes was horrified, and instantly set about getting the books away from Gnome Press so that Doubleday could publish them instead. He paid no attention to my loudly expressed fears that Doubleday â€Å"would lose its shirt on them.† In August 1961 an agreement was reached and the Foundation books became Doubleday property. What's more, Avon Books, which had published a paperback version of Second Foundation, set about obtaining the rights to all three from Doubleday, and put out nice editions. From that moment on, the Foundation books took off and began to earn increasing royalties. They have sold well and steadily, both in hardcover and softcover, for two decades so far. Increasingly, the letters I received from the readers spoke of them in high praise. They received more attention than all my other books put together. Doubleday also published an omnibus volume, The Foundation Trilogy, for its Science Fiction Book Club. That omnibus volume has been continuously featured by the Book Club for over twenty years. Matters reached a climax in 1966. The fans organizing the World Science Fiction Convention for that year (to be held in Cleveland) decided to award a Hugo for the best all-time series, where the series, to qualify, had to consist of at least three connected novels. It was the first time such a category had been set up, nor has it been repeated since. The Foundation series was nominated, and I felt that was going to have to be glory enough for me, since I was sure that Tolkien's â€Å"Lord of the Rings† would win. It didn't. The Foundation series won, and the Hugo I received for it has been sitting on my bookcase in the livingroom ever since. In among all this litany of success, both in money and in fame, there was one annoying side-effect. Readers couldn't help but notice that the books of the Foundation series covered only three hundred-plus years of the thousand-year hiatus between Empires. That meant the Foundation series â€Å"wasn't finished.† I got innumerable letters from readers who asked me to finish it, from others who demanded I finish it, and still others who threatened dire vengeance if I didn't finish it. Worse yet, various editors at Doubleday over the years have pointed out that it might be wise to finish it. It was flattering, of course, but irritating as well. Years had passed, then decades. Back in the 1940s, I had been in a Foundation-writing mood. Now I wasn't. Starting in the late 1950s, I had been in a more and more nonfiction-writing mood. That didn't mean I was writing no fiction at all. In the 1960s and 1970s, in fact, I wrote two science-fiction novels and a mystery novel, to say nothing of well over a hundred short stories – but about eighty percent of what I wrote was nonfiction. One of the most indefatigable nags in the matter of finishing the Foundation series was my good friend, the great science-fiction writer, Lester del Rey. He was constantly telling me I ought to finish the series and was just as constantly suggesting plot devices. He even told Larry Ashmead, then my editor at Doubleday, that if I refused to write more Foundation stories, he, Lester, would be willing to take on the task. When Ashmead mentioned this to me in 1973, I began another Foundation novel out of sheer desperation. I called it â€Å"Lightning Rod† and managed to write fourteen pages before other tasks called me away. The fourteen pages were put away and additional years passed. In January 1977, Cathleen Jordan, then my editor at Doubleday, suggested I do â€Å"an important book – a Foundation novel, perhaps.† I said, â€Å"I'd rather do an autobiography,† and I did – 640,000 words of it. In January 1981, Doubleday apparently lost its temper. At least, Hugh O'Neill, then my editor there, said, â€Å"Betty Prashker wants to see you,† and marched me into her office. She was then one of the senior editors, and a sweet and gentle person. She wasted no time. â€Å"Isaac,† she said, â€Å"you are going to write a novel for us and you are going to sign a contract to that effect.† â€Å"Betty,† I said, â€Å"I am already working on a big science book for Doubleday and I have to revise the Biographical Encyclopedia for Doubleday and -â€Å" â€Å"It can all wait,† she said. â€Å"You are going to sign a contract to do a novel. What's more, we're going to give you a $50,000 advance.† That was a stunner. I don't like large advances. They put me under too great an obligation. My average advance is something like $3,000. Why not? It's all out of royalties. I said, â€Å"That's way too much money, Betty.† â€Å"No, it isn't,† she said. â€Å"Doubleday will lose its shirt,† I said. â€Å"You keep telling us that all the time. It won't.† I said, desperately, â€Å"All right. Have the contract read that I don't get any money until I notify you in writing that I have begun the novel.† â€Å"Are you crazy?† she said. â€Å"You'll never start if that clause is in the contract. You get $25,000 on signing the contract, and $25,000 on delivering a completed manuscript.† â€Å"But suppose the novel is no good.† â€Å"Now you're being silly,† she said, and she ended the conversation. That night, Pat LoBrutto, the science-fiction editor at Doubleday called to express his pleasure. â€Å"And remember,† he said, â€Å"that when we say ‘novel' we mean ‘science-fiction novel,' not anything else. And when we say ‘science-fiction novel,' we mean ‘Foundation novel' and not anything else.† On February 5, 1981, I signed the contract, and within the week, the Doubleday accounting system cranked out the check for $25,000. I moaned that I was not my own master anymore and Hugh O'Neill said, cheerfully, â€Å"That's right, and from now on, we're going to call every other week and say, ‘Where's the manuscript?'† (But they didn't. They left me strictly alone, and never even asked for a progress report.) Nearly four months passed while I took care of a vast number of things I had to do, but about the end of May, I picked up my own copy of The Foundation Trilogy and began reading. I had to. For one thing, I hadn't read the Trilogy in thirty years and while I remembered the general plot, I did not remember the details. Besides, before beginning a new Foundation novel I had to immerse myself in the style and atmosphere of the series. I read it with mounting uneasiness. I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversations. No action. No physical suspense. What was all the fuss about, then? Why did everyone want more of that stuff? – To be sure, I couldn't help but notice that I was turning the pages eagerly, and that I was upset when I finished the book, and that I wanted more, but I was the author, for goodness' sake. You couldn't go by me. I was on the edge of deciding it was all a terrible mistake and of insisting on giving back the money, when (quite by accident, I swear) I came across some sentences by science-fiction writer and critic, James Gunn, who, in connection with the Foundation series, said, â€Å"Action and romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy – virtually all the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost invisible – but the stories provide a detective-story fascination with the permutations and reversals of ideas.† Oh, well, if what was needed were â€Å"permutations and reversals of ideas,† then that I could supply. Panic receded, and on June 10, 1981, I dug out the fourteen pages I had written more than eight years before and reread them. They sounded good to me. I didn't remember where I had been headed back then, but I had worked out what seemed to me to be a good ending now, and, starting page 15 on that day, I proceeded to work toward the new ending. I found, to my infinite relief, that I had no trouble getting back into a â€Å"Foundation-mood,† and, fresh from my rereading, I had Foundation history at my finger-tips. There were differences, to be sure: 1) The original stories were written for a science-fiction magazine and were from 7,000 to 50,000 words long, and no more. Consequently, each book in the trilogy had at least two stories and lacked unity. I intended to make the new book a single story. 2) I had a particularly good chance for development since Hugh said, â€Å"Let the book find its own length, Isaac. We don't mind a long book.† So I planned on 140,000 words, which was nearly three times the length of â€Å"The Mule,† and this gave me plenty of elbow-room, and I could add all sorts of little touches. 3) The Foundation series had been written at a time when our knowledge of astronomy was primitive compared with what it is today. I could take advantage of that and at least mention black holes, for instance. I could also take advantage of electronic computers, which had not been invented until I was half through with the series. The novel progressed steadily, and on January 17, 1982, I began final copy. I brought the manuscript to Hugh O'Neill in batches, and the poor fellow went half-crazy since he insisted on reading it in this broken fashion. On March 25, 1982, I brought in the last bit, and the very next day got the second half of the advance. I had kept â€Å"Lightning Rod† as my working title all the way through, but Hugh finally said, â€Å"Is there any way of putting ‘Foundation' into the title, Isaac?† I suggested Foundations at Bay, therefore, and that may be the title that will actually be used 1. You will have noticed that I have said nothing about the plot of the new Foundation novel. Well, naturally. I would rather you buy and read the book. And yet there is one thing I have to confess to you. I generally manage to tie up all the loose ends into one neat little bow-knot at the end of my stories, no matter how complicated the plot might be. In this case, however, I noticed that when I was all done, one glaring little item remained unresolved. I am hoping no one else notices it because it clearly points the way to the continuation of the series. It is even possible that I inadvertently gave this away for at the end of the novel, I wrote: â€Å"The End (for now).† I very much fear that if the novel proves successful, Doubleday will be at my throat again, as Campbell used to be in the old days. And yet what can I do but hope that the novel is very successful indeed. What a quandary!

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Developing a Business Model - Essay Example The company should allocate at least 50 percent of future American capacity to small and medium-size cars, so that it can adapt to what is turning out to be a permanent transition to a smaller and more gas-efficient cars. The company should also develop and incorporate flexible body shops in all its American assembly plants to facilitate quick response to evolving consumer needs (Trompenaars and Coebergh, 2014:47). In addition, it should make its entire engine and transmission plants flexible and able to manufacture different combinations of engine and transmission series. Between 2009 and 2011 Ford announced 4 more plant closures as well as its intent to sell or close 4 ACH plants that were remaining. It is imperative for the company to aggressively align its manufacturing capacity to actual demand. Regarding suppliers, the firm should work very hard to boost its US based supply operations, which represent eighty percent of its North American acquisitions. The firm should implement several business practices with its suppliers, aimed at maximising collaboration, supporting data transparency and expanding the capacity of business with desired suppliers, while enhancing its business model to make it m ore sustainable (Schein, 2012:53). The company should also be able to lower the total number of its production suppliers who qualify for significant sourcing, with more reductions to take place in the future. The company should pay special attention to enhancing its women and minority suppliers – which currently represent roughly $4 billion of its yearly $35 billion of acquisitions from American supplier bases. So far, consolidation initiatives have led to, and will lead to, more business for its chief suppliers which will maximise their financial strength. Regarding dealers, Ford currently has too many at its current and forecasted future market share. The

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Abnormal Psychology - Lab Report Example They can be intrusive thoughts or can be experienced as distressing impulses. The second manifestation consists of physical tension. Muscles tense in a state of readiness, whether there is an actual threat or not. If the muscles involved in the tensing action are not relieved, the tension can become chronic, creating a necessity for some sort of intervention to calm the body. The third type of symptom are physical symptoms which can range from heart palpitations and nausea to sweating and fainting. The fourth set of effects can be identified as disassociative anxiety which can be seen through symptoms of depresonalization, derealization, out-of-body experiences, hallucinations, waves of dark mood patterns, episodes of numbness, and amnesia (Healy, 2009, p. 136-137). There are a great number of anxiety disorders that range in effect from long term to short term. These disorders can include, but are not limited to: stage fright, neurotic anxiety, phobic neurosis, panic disorder, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, hysterical or disassociate disorders, hypochondriasis, and a generalized anxiety disorder which has individuated manifestations (Healy, 2009). Large scale events that happen at a public level can cause people who were not directly involved in the incidents to have anxiety problems after the occurrences of those events. Events such as terrorists attacks can cause individual to have a sense of a lack of safety, the concept manifesting in post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTST, as the individual tries to process the change in the way in which they perceive their world. According to a study done in the United States five months after the events of the World Trade Towers being destroyed on 11 September, 2001 with a surveyed group of 2,126 people, 17% of those people who were outside of New York were in

bpo management system Essay Example for Free

bpo management system Essay 1. Introduction 1.1 Purpose This document describes the high level design for the CHART/EORS Intranet Mapping Application and the CHART Internet Mapping Application. The purpose of this design is to show the high-level technical approach to meeting the requirements defined in system requirements specification. This serves to identify the architecture of the system and high-level interactions between major system components. 1.2 Objectives Identify and describe the software architecture for the system. Provide  high-level approaches to various technical challenges. Provide a guide for future development efforts, such as detailed design and coding. 1.3 Scope This high level design encompasses the approach for meeting the requirements as defined in the documents CHART/EORS Intranet Mapping System Requirement Specification and CHART Internet Mapping System Requirement Specification. 2. System Architecture 2.1 Overview The following diagram shows the system architecture used by CHART mapping applications.  The system design utilizes web based multi-tier system architecture. The data storage is managed at the data tier by the databases. The main business logics are hosted in the two applications in the web server. Because mapping is an area that there are many requirements related to client side interactions with the graphic content of the application, application logics are partitioned based on the most appropriate location to execute them. Some are located on the client browsers to provide instantaneous feedback to the user. The general system operation flow involves the following: 1. Data updates from various sources such as the CHART II CORBA events, EORS data inputs, device and event editing modules are stored in the databases. 2. When a mapping application receives a mapping request, it sends the image map generation request to the ArcIMS map server. The ArcIMS server retrieves the map data from the databases and creates a rendering of the map and saves it as a raster image file. The mapping application generates HTML pages embedded with the image and sends it to the browser client. 3. For the CHART Intranet mapping client, the application also generates the dynamic content in VML format, which encodes the device and event information in vector format. This enables the application to update the dynamic data without having to reload the whole map image. This avoids the heavy load on the map server when the application scales up. 4. When the images and VML  data arrives at the client browser, the client displays the map to the user. The user can interact with this data on the client. 2.2 SQL Server and ArcSDE ArcSDE from ESRI allows managing of geographic information in commercial databases such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 and Informix. ArcSDE provides functionalities to efficiently store and retrieve spatial information using spatial indexing mechanisms. ArcSDE provides a set of API and administrative utilities that help manage the spatial data storage. For the CHART mapping systems, the combination of ArcSDE and SQL Server manages the spatial information in the relational database. ArcSDE adds spatial functionalities without disrupting standard SQL database capabilities. 2.3 Map Server (ArcIMS) ArcIMS includes a few components that will play important roles in the CHART mapping application. The workhorse component that processes the data and generates maps is the spatial server. Managing the spatial servers is the ArcIMS Application Server, which monitors each spatial server’s activity and brokers map requests to the least busy spatial server. The detailed interaction of a map request is as the following: When the ASP.Net page receives a map request, it parses it and uses the ActiveX Connector object model to construct a map request. The connector then sends the map request in ArcXML format to the Application Server. The Application Server then finds the least busy spatial server and forwards the map request to it. The spatial server performs the query against the ArcSDE database, retrieves the data and renders them into a raster image file. The location of the file is then sent back to the connector and the ASP.Net page writes it back to the client as HTML page with the image embedded in it. 2.4 Web Server (IIS) .Net Framework and ASP.Net The web server hosts and publishes content to the client browser. In the case of the CHART mapping applications, most of the content is dynamic content generated by ASP.Net modules. When IIS recognizes a page being an ASP.Net module (an aspx extension), it passes the request to the .Net Framework to load the module and handle the request. The ASP.Net pages are then loaded into memory and executed. The .Net Framework provides many utilities such as garbage collection, tracing, just-in-time compilation that manages the execution of ASP.Net modules. The ASP.Net page modules are where the CHART mapping application logic is coded. The web server also provides security via the Secured Socket Layer (SSL), allowing interactions between the user’s browser and the web server to be encrypted when necessary. 2.5 Security 2.5.1 Network Level Security Network layer security will be managed by the network security configurations like firewall and RSA secure ID. 2.5.2 Secured Socket Layer (SSL) MDOT has a certificate server to provide digital certificates for the SSL configuration. The server name must remain consistent with the certificate. All links shall use the same server name, otherwise, if the server is referred using an IP address or a local server name, etc., the user will see an alert indicating the certificate is in-consistent with the resource. IIS supports the configuration of one folder in the web application requiring SSL while other portion does not. The session information remains consistent between SSL portion of the web site and the non-SSL portion. 2.5.3 Enterprise User Enters Read-Only View Many of the CHART mapping functionalities are for display and reviewing data, i.e. a read-only view. The design allows enterprise viewers and CHART users to access the read-only portion of the web site without having to input user name and password. This also enables CHART users to reach the viewing area without having to enter their login information again. When system receives a user request to enter the secured area, the system checks whether the current session has been authenticated. If not, system displays login screen. The user shall enter their CHART user name and password. Upon receipt of the user name and password, the system checks it  against the CHART II database’s user tables. If they are authenticated, the system stores the user information in the session. The session will be managed in the server until the configured timeout expires. All subsequent requests from the same user session will inherit the same authorization information for the user. 2.5.4 CHART User Enters Editing Area Other applications, like future versions of CHART II and CHART Lite, can launch the map editing URL via the HTTPS protocol. The user name and password can be sent via https request. The system verifies their authentication information against the CHART II user database using an OLEDB/ODBC connection. If the authentication information is correct, the system will store this information in the session. The user will be redirected to the map page. If the authentication is rejected, the user request will be redirected to the login screen to reenter the authentication information. Associating a CHART user with an op-center/default map view area: Based on CHART II R1B3 database design, users are not associated with an op-center; rather, the user specifies an op-center during logon. In order to display a default map view area based on an op-center, an external application launching the CHART mapping application will also need to pass in the operation center name to initialize the map to the associated extent. Passing user name and password in URL request: The mapping site shall have a module that verifies the user name and password, then forward the page to the map page, hence avoiding showing the password on URL address box. At the current time, without the full integration with CHART II and CHART Lite, the system will expect plain text user name and password. In the future, an encryption/decryption algorithms agreed between the systems can be added to achieve higher security. 2.5.5 EORS Security Currently, the EORS security has not been implemented. EORS functions will be hard-coded with security configuration. 3. Network Configuration The design above depicts CHART network configuration as the Internal network, a Demilitarization Zone (DMZ) network for hosting the web server and connecting out to the external Internet network. There will be two firewalls, one between the Internet and the DMZ network and another one between the DMZ network and the internal network. The map server and database servers are to be hosted in the internal network for maximum security. The initial configuration calls for two physical computers to host the map servers and database servers. In the future, if the system needs to scale up, additional physical servers can be added. The Intranet web server can optionally be hosted on the load-balanced virtual server too. 3.1.1 Map Server Load Balancing The design achieves load balancing by a combination of Windows 2000 Advanced Server Network Load Balancing (NLB) Service and the ArcIMS Application Server. The system utilizes two physical server computers. The two servers are configured with NLB. NLB works on the TCP/IP level. Any incoming traffic from web server to the virtual server IP address is load balanced between the two application servers by NLB. ArcIMS Application Server operates at the application level, monitoring each spatial server’s load and operation. When a spatial server is busy, it directs the map request to idling spatial server(s). Each physical map server hosts one ArcIMS Application Server and two ArcIMS Spatial Server instances. An application server failure forces NLB to direct new connections to the remaining application server. When the failed server is recovered, new client connections should once again be shared between the two servers. The two spatial server instances are â€Å"cross registered† to the application servers. As shown in the diagram, Spatial Server A1 and A2 are registered to Application Server B and A correspondingly. This arrangement ensures that when a spatial server is down, the application server can still  utilize the spatial server from the other server to serve the map request and the application server continue to function. Also, this configuration also allows ArcIMS to load balance at the Spatial Server level as opposed to just the network traffic level, which is what NLB provides. This configuration can withstand an Application Server failure, a Spatial Server failure, a simultaneous Application/Spatial Server failure or hardware failure of one of the physical map servers. Using two map servers with network load balancing should provide high-availability load balanced ArcIMS web site. 3.1.2 Database Load Balancing By running two SQL Server and ArcSDE instances with NLB to balance the load, the system can achieve high availability at the database server layer. The database servers are completely independent and share no hardware components. This type of availability is achievable with the standard edition of SQL Server. The two database servers are setup with Transactional replication. One of the two SQL Servers is configured as the publisher and the other one as a subscriber. All the data modification such as insert, delete and update will be performed on the publisher and changes are replicated to the subscriber. Transactional replication can provide very low latency to Subscribers. Subscribers receiving data using a push subscription usually receive changes from the Publisher within one minute or sooner, provided that the network link and adequate processing resources are available (latency of a few seconds can often be achieved). When the web server and map server requests use the virtual IP address on the load-balanced group of database servers, they are directed to the database server with the least amount of load. If one of the database servers goes down due to hardware failure, NLB detects that this server is down and no longer directs database requests to this machine. The remaining machine handles the database requests and apart from a slight drop in performance the users are unaware that a database server has failed. When the hardware is fixed the offending machine can be brought back online. One limitation exists for this design. It happens when the publisher database is down. In this situation the data updates cannot be committed until the publisher database comes back. But at the same time, all read access from the Internet and Intranet server could still be directed to the secondary server. In the case when the publisher data is going to be down for extended time period, system configuration need to allow system administrator to change the configuration so that the replica will serve as the main database. Compared with clustering solution, this system design provides the maximum database availability and performance benefit. The databases that need to be replicated would include: 1. Background map database. Background map data does not change often. A snapshot replication is sufficient for replicating data updates in one database to the other. 2. CHART/EORS Spatial Database CHART/EORS spatial database stores CHART and EORS device and event information with spatial data. They are dynamically updated throughout the day. Transactional replication will be setup to ensure that data change in one database gets replicated to the other one. 3. SDE metadata. In general, the system can continue to provide access of map and data to both the Internet and Intranet users in the case of failure of any one component in the system. The only exception is that when the publisher database is down, the new data cannot be updated into the system. Users will get delayed information. 3.1.3 DMZ Configuration CHART is currently implementing a Demilitarization Zone (DMZ) network to enhance the network security. This entails creating a separate network for the web server computer(s) and separating it from the internal network with a firewall. In an ideal world, the DMZ would have no physical connection to the internal network. This would require two separate map server setups to serve the  Internet and Intranet users. The recommended way to implement is to disallow any access from the DMZ to the internal network, but allow access from the internal network to the DMZ. In other words, allow out-bound connections. On each of the ArcIMS server computers, mount a network drive to a shared drive on the Web server. Each ArcIMS spatial server would write the output raster image files to the location on the web server to be delivered to the Internet client browsers. 4. Database Organization To reduce the dependency and operation interference between the spatial data and the attribute data, the EORS spatial database and CHART spatial database will be created as two SQL Server databases. To reduce the performance overhead when joining data between the spatial and attribute data, the EORS spatial database will reside on the same database server(s) as the EORS database. 5. Technical Challenges 5.1 Map Display Mechanism CHART Intranet mapping application requires that changes in event and device data be reflected on all map clients in a near-real-time fashion (within 5 seconds). To do so via the traditional raster map publishing mechanism will result in all clients retrieving updated map every 5 seconds or at least when event/device status update requires a new map to be generated. When there is large number of users of the system, it will result in a high map server load in a concentrated short time period. To resolve this issue, the project team reviewed various technical approaches and summarizes their advantages and disadvantages as the following: 5.1.1 Raster (JPEG, GIF or PNG) Image This is a popular approach that utilizes the basic image display functionality of web browsers. It utilizes the server processing power efficiently. The disadvantages are that the images have limited client side intelligence, leaving most of the computation concentrated on the server. It’s capability of handling large number of concurrent map requests is limited. Generally, one map server can support 4-8 requests per second. For  CHART’s situation, when an event changes status, if a new map image needs to be generated, it would be about 40 requests per second (200 users at 5 second update interval). Many servers will be required to support the load. With the license fee involved with using GIF format, we will not use GIF for map publishing. Compared with JPG format, PNG graphics do not have the â€Å"bleeding† effect inherent with the JPEG compression algorithm. With the map displaying lines rather than continuous tone images, it is much cleaner. PNG also results in a smaller file, which translates into faster download times for client. The only JPG advantage is server side image generation times. It is recommended to utilize PNG for the Intranet application to produce highest quality images for standardized IE browser while utilizing JPG for the Internet to allow for support of as many browsers as possible. Also, the reduction in image processing time should deliver better web image generation performance. 5.1.2 XML Based Vector Graphics 5.1.2.1 Vector Markup Language (VML) VML is a XML based W3C standard in describing vector graphics. Basically, it encodes the vector coordinates of points, lines and polygons in XML format. The support of VML is included in Internet Explorer 5.0 and later. There is no download needed to display VML encoded vector graphics. It also has built-in support for style sheet and scripting. This makes it possible to modify the display properties and positions of the vector graphics using the JavaScript on the client-side browser. Using this functionality, we can dynamically update the display of devices and events. 5.1.2.2 Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Scalable Vector Graphics is another XML-based W3C standard format for vector graphics. Compared with VML, it requires Java or ActiveX based plug-in to be displayed. Also, based on review of the plug-ins (SVG Viewer by Adobe), there is not as much support for scripting as for VML. 5.1.3 ArcIMS Java Viewer ArcIMS includes a Java Viewer, which provides a Java Applet that can be customized to a certain extent to display vector encoded GIS data on the client side. It requires a download to the client. The Java Viewer reads vector data from ArcIMS feature server encoded using an ESRI proprietary compression format, which makes it difficult to implement special features such as WSMS offsetted road networks because they need to be offset dynamically based on map scale. 5.1.4 MapObjects Java MapObjects Java from ESRI provides a set of Java-based objects for GIS functionalities. It has an extensive set of functionality that can satisfy the requirements. But, it requires a license fee of $100/seat, or comparable server-based licensing. It also requires a download to client machine to run it. 5.1.5 Summary Based on the research above, the project team recommends the following design: Use raster map for background map display (background data with SHA grid map are often large amount of data, suitable for server side processing) Use XML data format to transport the device and event data from server to browser client. Use JavaScript to create and update the VML vector data elements to display the dynamic layers including all the CHART/EORS devices and events. The diagram above illustrates the map display mechanism: 1. Map server reads the spatial data from background database and sends the published map image to the client browser to be displayed as background. 2. Device and event information is broadcasted from the CHART II system in the form of CORBA events. 3. CORBA event listener receives the event broadcast and saves the data into CHART spatial database. 4. CHART/EORS device and event data are published in XML format to the client. Client browser parses the XML into a XML Document Object Model (DOM) using the XML parser. 5. The client browser then iterate through the DOM tree structure and create corresponding VML elements based on the XML device and event data. The VML elements are displayed on the top of the background raster map image. 6. At a pre-configured interval, the browser client retrieves update of device and event data from the IIS server in XML format and update the VML display  based on the updated information. 5.2 Automated Refresh of Device and Event Data CHART/EORS device and event information needs to be updated at a pre-configured interval. They should be updated separate from the background map to reduce the load on the map server. The technical approach to achieve this will be to use a hidden frame to send the request to retrieve updated device and event data and receive the response. The response will package the data in XML file to be parsed into a document object model (DOM) and display the data on map. The request can be to retrieve all data or only retrieve data newer than last retrieval. When the new device/event is received and it requires changing the display of the device/events, the style assignment for the elements can be changed to update the device and event display.   The VML elements will be sent using real-world coordinates (Maryland State Plane 1983). After the data has been retrieved to the client side, the VML map layers can be dynamically projected using the â€Å"local coordinate space†. When user zooms or pan the map, the VML will be projected using the updated coordinates to fit the new map extent without going back to the server to retrieve new data set. 5.3 Inter-Frame Client Script Synchronization The map page has a few frames and the browser loads them asynchronously. Scripts in one frame may call scripts in another frame that may not have been loaded. The approach to resolve this is to add client-side exception handling and verification routine to ensure that the script is called always after the frame is loaded. 5.4 Assigning and Editing Event Location The dynamic nature of VML elements in the browser allows adding and modifying VML elements by scripting. When the user clicks or drags the mouse on the map, client-side script manages the transformation of screen coordinates and real-world map coordinates. The coordinates are sent back to the server’s secured URL where the information is extracted and saved to the database. 5.5 Scalability The CHART mapping application serves not only the Intranet users, but also Internet browser clients. During emergency situations, the load on both the Internet and Intranet servers could get extremely high. The system must be able to scale up to serve large amount of users. The technical approach to solve this issue involves two main facets. As described in the network configuration section, the system will employ network load balancing and allows adding additional hardware in the future. The system should also be able to utilize the caching feature of IIS and ASP.Net to scale up without significantly increase hardware investment. ASP.Net allows caching configuration for individual page modules, such as whether the page is cached and how long it is cached. After the application is deployed, these caching settings can be configured on the web pages. For example, if it is determined that the Internet mapping can be up to 3 seconds late, by setting caching time to 3 seconds, all requests from the Internet will receive a cached response without creating additional load on the map and database server. 5.6 Exception Management and Recovery CHART II keeps its clients updated via a push model using the CORBA Event Service. The Event Service does not guarantee delivery; therefore it is possible for event data to be lost/dropped (although in practice, this is rare). To account for this possibility, the CHART Web Event Listener will refresh its information about the status of devices and traffic events from CHART II at a configurable interval. Also, each time the Event Listener is started, it will retrieve all relevant data from CHART II. Thus, the update model becomes a push model with an occasional pull to be safe. This process will be used to recover from the following situations: 1. The Event Listener was down and did not receive new data from CHART II. 2. CHART II CORBA event(s) occasionally dropped while the Event Listener is up and running. Another likely scenario is that the CHART II server or service(s) restart. After a typical restart, the CORBA Event Service CORBA objects will be  recreated with the same characteristics allowing the Event Listener to continue to automatically receive CHART II CORBA events. As the CHART II services will not be processing events during this time, no events are likely to be missed. Therefore, the Event Listener does not need to do anything special to handle a CHART II server or service(s) restart. Sometimes CHART II maintenance will require that new (and different) Event Service CORBA objects be created. This might happen during a CHART II upgrade, for example. In this case, the Event Listener will need to be restarted so that it can pick up the new objects. Since this type of maintenance does not occur often and the Event Listener restarting is fast, the restart can be handled as part of the CHART II upgrade procedures. 5.7 Integration with ASP Code in EORS and CHART Web Application The CHART Intranet Mapping, replacing the existing EORS mapping application, will still be launched as a separate window by a URL string with a few parameters identifying the district, view type, etc. The impact on EORS web application should be limited to modifying the URL links. The current CHART Internet Mapping site uses â€Å"include† statement to include site navigation pages from upper level CHART web site’s pages. When upgrading Internet Mapping to ASP.Net, â€Å"include† statement is no longer used. Instead, a ServerXMLHTTP request can be formulated to request the text from the included ASP page and merge them into the mapping ASP.Net pages. The limitation of this implementation would be that the ASP.Net application couldn’t share the session and application variables from the ASP application. Currently, there are only a couple of them, such as database connection string. The ASP.Net mapping application will maintain a separate set of application variables. 6. User Interface Design 6.1 Intranet Map Site User Interface Design Here following is a high-level frame structure for the Intranet mapping site: 1. AppFrame is the highest-level frame that includes all the child frames. On the top of the page, there will be the title frame, which will host the  CHART icon. Also inside the title frame will be a group of tabs, such as Traffic, Roadway Weather, Message Sign, etc. 2. ToolsFrame hosts the map navigation and other map related tools. The ToolsFrame will also host menu system that allows the user to bring up data and other detailed information. 3. HiddenFrame will be used to submit and receive information from the server. 4. ContentFrame is further divided to a map frame on the left and a data frame on the right. The user shall be able rearrange the frame boundary to give more space to the map or data area. Data frame will display data as well as legend, layer control and other items when needed. 5. PromptFrame will display the current tool selected and instructions for user activities. Here is a screen shot of the preliminary user interface design: 6.2 Internet Map Site User Interface The overall CHART Internet mapping web site design will stay the same as current web site. The site will stay as part of the overall CHART web site by including the CHART navigation menus into the site. The site will not be using frames; instead, all elements will be laid out as HTML tables. 7. References 1. CHART/EORS Intranet Mapping System Requirement Specification 2. CHART Internet Mapping System Requirement Specification 3. Security and ArcIMS – ESRI White Paper 4. ArcSDE Configuration and Tuning Guide for Microsoft SQL Server – ESRI White Paper 5. ArcIMS 4.0 High-Availability Configuration Testing Using Network Load Balancing –ESRI White Paper 6. Vector Markup Language (VML) Specification – W3C 8. Terms and Glossary ArcXML – ESRI’s map request/response specification in XML format CORBA – Common Object Request Broker Architecture CSS – Cascading Style Sheets DOM – Document Object Model ESRI – Environment System Research Institute GIS – Geographic Information System GML – Geography Markup Language NLB – Network Load Balancing SSL – Secure Socket Layer SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics VML – Vector Markup Language XML – Extensible Markup Language

Causes of PSE and DFD Meats and Treatments

Causes of PSE and DFD Meats and Treatments What is PSE DFD meat? The terms pale, soft and exudative PSE and dark, firm and dry DFD describe two undesired quality characteristics that can be exhibited in the meat from most species of meat producing animals. However the PSE condition is predominantly found in pigs whilst the DFD condition occurs across all species. Within this essay the incidence rates of both PSE /DFD, the causative factors, consequences and commercial factors as well as prevention shall be considered. Pictures of the two conditions can be seen in fig 1. These undesirable conditions are very important when considering both functional and specified meat quality. They are significant factors that contribute to the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of the entire sector and encompass wide ranging issues affecting meat production, profits, yields, animal welfare considerations, processing, customer perception, consumption, food safety, spoilage, waste and levels of carbon dioxide production. Both conditions affect the colour of meat, as it can be considered abnormally pale or dark relative to what is considered normal. Colour is one of the major discriminatory factors in a buyers selection, excessively pale or dark meat is unlikely to be purchased. The texture of the meat with PSE and DFD is also affected detrimentally leading to unacceptable levels of softness or firmness. Undesired changes in water holding capacity of the meat occur, leading to problems in processing and the commercial yields of products, as well as detrimental effects on the sensory attributes of meat such as juiciness or succulence. There is thought to be a link between DFD and a lack of flavour in a cooked product. The development of both PSE and DFD meat can be associated with earlier development of rigormortis  [1]  . Products may subjectively exhibit one or more of the descriptive characteristics e.g. too pale or too dark, too soft or too firm, too exudative or too dry relative to the characteristics of normal meat. Normal acidification of muscles after an animal is slaughtered occurs through glycolysis. Glycogen and creatine phosphate are depleted. Glycogen conversion to lactic acid is described here. C6H10O5 +H2Oà ¯Ã†â€™Ã‚  2C3H6O3 There is no oxygen for aerobic metabolic processes to occur. The circulatory system can no longer remove lactic acid and it accumulates within the muscle. The abnormal conditions of PSE and DFD are linked to abnormally high or low acidity, thus the pH value of the meat can be used to more objectively describe the conditions at different times after slaughter (table 1). However these values can be different in different muscles within a carcass and different packaging methods may affect pH values. Accurate pH recordings are also particularly difficult with various methods having various problems such as lack of homogeneity of sample, fat smearing, dilution of sample etc. Using objective indices of PSE and DFD tends to produce higher estimates of the prevalence of the conditions in a population than using subjective assessment.  [2]  Subjective methods of gauging DFD / PSE using people may be less sensitive. People may only be able to judge the extremes of the conditions. There appears to be an increase in the levels of incidence of PSE and DFD. Within the United Kingdom one quarter of pigs may show evidence of PSE and one tenth DFD. The cost of PSE to the American pork industry was estimated at 30 million dollars in 1992, that of DFD pork 0.2 million dollars  [3]  estimated at 16% and 10% of total United States production respectively. This gives an indication of the economic significance of the problems. The levels of glycogen available in the muscle prior to slaughter will determine the ultimate pH. These levels can be changed through stress, theses stresses prior to slaughter are the main factors involved in causing the PSE and DFD conditions. Although there are genetic, muscle composition and processing factors that can be instrumental, these shall be discussed later and these ultimately link to abnormalities in post mortem acidification of the muscles anyway, the effects of long term and short term stress shall be considered now. It is well known that the handling of meat animals prior to slaughter is not only important from a welfare point of view but also affects the quality of the resulting meat  [4]  . It has also been known for many years that hunted animals keep less well than those kept in relative calm conditions. With PSE the cause appears to be acute (or short term) stress to the animal prior to slaughter. This acute stress leads to rapid acidification as glycogen breaks down quickly after slaughter to give lactic acid, resulting in a low ultimate pH. If carcass temperatures are high e.g. within deep muscle regions of the carcass, or rates of cooling are not rapid enough, conditions can develop that allow denaturing of the proteins within these muscles. The muscles are characterised by having lower water holding capacity due to the myofibrillar components of the muscles shrinking. This expels fluids into the space between the muscle fibres. When cut the meat will exude or lose this fluid, this is called drip. Excessive drip represents a loss in total yield but is also unsightly in shelf ready packaging and less likely to be purchased by a potential consumer. The paler appearance of PSE meat is likely due to the different refractive index of the myofibrils and the sarcoplasm. The reduction in the size of the myofilament lattice increases the light reflected from the meat, less light is absorbed by the meat, more is reflected and crucially blood pigments like myoglobin absorb less green light making the meat look more yellow as opposed to red. Also the low ultimate pH promotes oxidation of myoglobin and oxyglobin to metmyoglobin which makes the meat appear browner rather than red or purple. Again this discoloration makes the product less likely to be purchased at point of sale DFD is caused by chronic (or long term) stress to the animal. Glycogen levels are depleted prior to death, meaning that less glycogen is converted to lactic acid after slaughter and the ultimate pH of the meat remains high. Being closer to pH neutral there are significant issues with potential spoilage organisms and food borne pathogens as well as the quality issues discussed here. With a high ultimate pH there is less denaturing of the proteins leading to increased binding of the fluids and less exudates or drip giving a firm dry appearance. The lattice of myofilaments which shrank in the case of PSE does not in the case of DFD. This means that the affects of the refractive index differences of the myofibrils and sarcoplasm are reduced. More light is absorbed with less reflected leading to a darker colour. The tightly packed structure with less extracellular space between the fibres means that less oxidation of the myoglobin can occur, surface oxidation only may occur as oxygen cannot permeate the structure, this leads to a thin translucent / red outside layer with the reduced purple myoglobin pigment predominantly showing through from underneath this thin layer. The stress factors to consider are many fold but are worth at this stage categorising as acute and chronic in terms fear, pain and physical stress and their potential affect on the PSE DFD conditions. These might include noise, temperature variations, fasting or starvation, overcrowding or being put with animals of different social groups. Practical causes of short term stress might include reaction to goading, striking, restraining systems or conveyors, long term stressors associated with DFD might include long transport journeys and being exposed to other social groups of animals for periods of time. Young Bulls and veal calves have been linked to higher incident rates of DFD perhaps due to storage conditions and their fractious nature when exposed to other social groups, respectively. Different species are known to show different sensitivities to different stress factors, for example sheep are known to be less sensitive to noise than pigs. With pigs in particular there appears to be a genetic link to them being susceptible to stress, this is sometimes known as porcine stress syndrome. It exists as a double recessive gene that when apparent as an abnormal homozygote can be exposed and witnessed as a reaction to Halothane. Typically pigs with this double recessive gene react by becoming rigid and tense as opposed to the usual symptoms of anaesthesia through halothane In pigs with this mutation, Ca2+ is released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum at a rate that is equivalent to twice that of normal  [5]  Glycogen conversion to lactic acid happens much more readily and there are higher incidence of PSE amongst this genetic grouping. Measures to breed this characteristic out of pigs have been tried, it is thought that selective breeding for confirmation and fat level may have brought about this genetic mutation. The Halothane test does not work on the heterozygote parent and DNA tests are required to identify parents with the mutation to try and breed this sensitivity out. Another gene has been identified in certain strains of the Hampshire breed of pigs, known as the RN- gene. It is thought that this mutation increases the glycogen content of the white muscles that contain a higher number of glycolytic fibres, again resulting in post mortem rapid acidification leading to a lower pHu upon death leading to the PSE condition. There are other breed effects which can be demonstrated by a comparative study undertaken (Table 2) where traditional breeds were compared against modern commercially important breeds and an extreme of muscularity, this also seems to demonstrate a correlation between lighter more exudative muscles in those bred for confirmation or muscularity. In the search for modern breeds of the desired confirmation, stress susceptibility may have also been bred in. Even within the defined subjective and objective norms there are variations of colour, texture, pH and water holding capacity within different muscles of the carcasses of all species. The muscles affected by a particular stressor may be specific to a region of the anatomy rather than throughout the entire carcass. A particularly undesirable effect can be seen in the two tone appearance of meat, where the PSE, DFD and normal conditions can be exhibited in the extreme within a single carcass. An animal that is susceptible to PSE may exhibit DFD characteristics in those muscles that have been subject to long term stressors and thus have glycogen depletion prior to death. However some of the other muscles e.g. m. longissimus dorsi, within the same pig that are less likely to have glycogen depletion may exhibit the PSE condition. Processing methods can also have an effect, carcass cooling regimes that dont achieve deep muscle temperatures that are cold enough or at the wrong cooling rates can contribute to the conditions required to denature the proteins and exhibit the PSE condition. Howard and Lawrie (1956) found that the rate of pH fall post mortem was inversely proportional to the tenderness of the meat on subsequent cooking  [6]  Animal handling systems, shearing washing, crushing etc will have a direct effect on the levels of glycogen within the muscle systems and so ultimately the levels of PSE DFD occurring. Being able to measure stress indicators and indices of PSE DFD is critical if there is to be an understanding of the prevention of stress and therefore a reduction in the incidence of PSE and DFD in meat. Measurements of the level blood lactic acid, levels of creatine kinase and the electrical characteristics of pork through electrical impedance can give good objective indicators. Levels of cortisol, creatine kinase, pH and colour characteristics measured through online light reflectance spectrophotometrey can give objective PSE DFD measurements. Signs of stress in the animals can give ante mortem indications. These might be obvious in the case of fallen or injured stock but may also include levels of vocalisation, mounting, biting etc as less obvious indicators. Identifying an reducing these conditions is the key in improving functional and specified meat quality, most of the work undertaken to reduce the levels of PSE and DFD is involved in improving welfare conditions of animals in the short and longer term leading up to slaughter. It is a difficult process to reduce stressors, even with very careful handling the animals are subject to a degree of stress. Keeping handling to a minimum is the ideal situation, carefully controlling transport, design of transport to prevent loading and unloading stress, training and certification schemes to improve the skills and knowledge of animal handlers. With pigs it would be better to avoid breeding the susceptible genotypes although as seen there appears to be a direct correlation between improved confirmation and musculature and the stress susceptibility mutation. Keeping animals, especially young bulls in their own social groups would seem to be a logical preventative measure but can be very difficul t to achieve. Physical measures like cooling pigs with water sprays and covering the pens of young bulls may help stop such stress behaviour as fighting and mounting, adding supplements to feed and watering systems prior to slaughter in order to try and replenish glycogen levels may be one way in order to reduce the number of incidence of PSE , DFD as may using tranquilisers and muscle relaxants, however there are issues of potential residues in meat as well as negatively effecting the quality expectations of the consumer by treating an animal in this way. In conclusion to reduce the levels of PSE DFD in meat of all species a combined approach of improving welfare conditions, reducing fear, physical stress and pain, training and education staff, as well as online monitoring and feedback to key stakeholders is required. Carcass cooling rates should be closely controlled. There is a need to develop new methods of objective measurement, both as soon as possible after slaughter and at point of sale, emerging technologies such as near infra red spectrophotometrey, nuclear magnetic resonance, developments in immunoassay techniques and genetic markers may help us identify and prevent the causes of PSE and DFD. Linking the relationship of animal welfare and profit is very important, Traditionally it has been thought that increasing welfare means increasing costs, for example in stocking densities of transport. In seeing that increasing welfare conditions could actually be a profitable activity, aiding reduced quality complaints, increased yiel ds, better sales and less waste there is an opportunity to have large positive impact on the well being of the whole meat sector. there are few, if any, figures comparing the overall economics of these alternatives. However it seems the net effect of greater care could often be greater profitability  [7]  .

Men vs Women at the Pool Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Argument

Men vs Women at the Pool It was a Friday afternoon and the sun was shining off of her freckled nose. She was in a rage because her male counterpart had made plans to go the pool with the rest of his male friends. â€Å"Why can’t I go?† She asked in a whiney voice. â€Å" Because this is man time. Besides, you said you had things to do today.† He replied in a deep voice, as he scratched at his five o’clock shadow. It was funny how she would always have her â€Å"Girls Night Out† and he wouldn’t say a word about it. He actually liked the peace and quiet it afforded him. But if the tables were to ever turn as they did on that beautiful day, she could not understand for the life of her where this sudden urge to be separated came from. They both knew what was going to be going on at the pool that day. Groups of men sitting around their coolers talking about the girl with the big butt or helping their friends strategize on how to get the girl in the string bikini to come closer or at least bend over. That is what men do. The ones that are taken help...

Shit :: essays research papers

Cornerstone Graphics What is Web Page Design?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The World Wide Web is comprised of interconnected documents stored on the global network of computers known as the Internet. The documents are called Web pages. Linked pages are called Web sites. Web sites are uniquely formatted to provide information, collect information, and to capture the attention of consumers.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In today's global marketplace, a presence on the World Wide Web is vital to business success. Creating effective and appealing Web pages is both a skill and an art form that takes technical knowledge, creative abilities, and practice. Reasons for Developing a Web Site   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Studies show that millions of people have access to the Internet at home and/or at work. Forecasts predict that in the near future, Internet access will be as ubiquitous as television and telephones, and those left off the Web will be left behind in competition.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Due to the vast numbers of Internet users around the world, it is simple and cost effective to contact customers, suppliers, and others on-line. The cost of maintaining a Web site is minimal, especially in comparison to other types of marketing. Savings are made throughout the organization, including travel and entertainment costs. Expand Customer Base   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  These same contacts will lead to business expansion opportunities, with a minimum of actual travel. Another benefit is that a huge amount of information about businesses, markets, regulations, etc. is available on-line. Research can be successfully accomplished from a home office, without requiring costly travel and time spent abroad. Flexibility   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Work can be accomplished regardless of time zone differences and work habits. Not only can your staff use the Web to communicate with others, but also people around the world can contact you even in the middle of the night. Information is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Web sites can be created to suit the customers' needs. Information, design, links, and other features can be developed per customer specifications. Sites can include as many or as few pages as the customer requires. Pages may include order forms, product catalogues, general information, contact names, and so on. Sites can link to existing sites, or other newly developed sites.

Intelligence Definition and Measurements Essay -- Intelligence

Psychologists have differed on the definition for intelligence and how to measure intelligence. In this paper the definition of intelligence and how it is measured will be discussed by comparing and contrasting the two intelligence tests and two achievement tests chosen from the Mental Measurement Yearbook. The intelligence tests chosen were the Primary Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (PTONI) and the Test of Memory and Learning, 2nd ed., (TOMAL-2) and the achievement tests chosen were the Basic Achievement Skills Inventory (BASI) and the Differential Ability Scales, 2nd ed. (DAS-II). The measures of the intelligence tests will be evaluated for reliability, validity, normative procedure, and bias, and then compared with the achievement tests. Definition of Intelligence According to Cohen and Swerdlik, (2010), â€Å"Intelligence is a multifaceted capacity that manifests itself in different ways across the life span but in general included the abilities and capacities to acquire and apply knowledge to reason effectively and logically, to exhibit sound judgment, to be perceptive, intuitive, mentally alert, and able to find the right words and thoughts with facility, and to be able to cope with and adjust to new situations and new types of problems† (p. 277). This definition is very broad but inclusive. Professionals in psychology have different definitions and personal biases that make a standard definition difficult. Some professionals believe intelligence is observable but others believe life experiences influence and develop intelligence and form information to deal with future situations. Various psychologists, behavioral specialists and lay people have different definitions or ideas of what intelligence is. A widely accepted defini... ...ogy.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/p/intelligence.htm Cohen, R.J., Swerdlik, M.E. (2010). Psychological testing and assessment: An introduction to tests and measurement (7th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Ehrler, D. J., & McGhee, R. (2008). Primary Test of Nonverbal Intelligence. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Elliott, C. (2007). Differential Ability Scales-Second Edition. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Gredler, G. R. (1999). The twelfth mental measurements yearbook/The thirteenth mental measurements yearbook (Book). Psychology in the Schools, 36(1), 79. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Net Industries and its Licensors. (2011). Racial Difference-Standarized Tests and Race. Retrieved from http://social.jrank.org/pages/529/Racial-Differences-Standardized-Tests-Race.html Reynolds, C. R., & Voress, J. (2007). Test of Memory and Learning, Second Edition. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Women’s right movement

As the time past, and more women are educated, they started to think about the equal rights. Women's status are always lower than men's status. They did not want to be in this kind of situation any more. Therefore the feminist movement started in the 19th century. The movement began in Europe and America. This is a major turning point in women history, because at this time the idea of liberty and equality just germinated. At this time, women finally challenged the idea that they must always please men. And because of this idea, men always think they are better than women.At the time, women even became the property of men. Men can even abuse women if they wanted to. Of course, it was impossible for women to have any rights. At that time, women always suffered from all those stresses. The situation do not only occurred in the family, but also in the entire society. For example if a woman has the same ability as a man, she would get less payment than a man and for no reason. Sometimes i f a man and a woman goes to an interview at the same time, the employ will consider the man first. This is a kind of discrimination against women. That is unfair to the women.In families women always give up their career for husbands and kids and they would take care of them. But men do not sacrifice anything. Without income, some women were looked down by their husbands. Without economic support, women are very frail. Therefore women need to be protected by men. However, men mostly control the society: therefore, it is unfavorable for women to compete with men in this kind of situation. Finally the succeed of the feminist movement established the bright further of women. As a mature and prosperous society women should have exactly same rights as men.! In the present society, citizens have many rights.Such as the right to vote, suffrage right, property right, guardianship, citizenship and so on. These rights ensure our lives' quality. As citizens own these rights they can have many benefits from those rights. They can be protected by the law and the country. But long time ago women did not have any right. Generally women are much weaker than men no matter from mental or physical. Under the men's control if they did not get any protection they will be so vulnerable. They did not have any power to revolt. In old China women had no rights , and people believed men are better than women. Therefore they rather have boy than girl.Sometimes if they had a girl they Just kill her or throw her away. At that time, they had to suffer from foot-binding in order to marry a good man. Old China allow one husband have more than one wife, and they treat their wives like slaves. Those things reflected the women's situation at that time. They can not even chose what kind of life they were going to live. Because men chose them and those women's future were in men's hands. As females, we are so lucky that we are born in this time.! In the past women even did not have citizenship. T hey were belongings to their husbands Juts like items.Some of the women were forced to stay at home for their whole life. They can not go outside. Husbands could asked their wives to do work, but instead husbands would get payment. Women were treated like animals without any humanity. Because they do not consider female as a person. That was so horrible. There is a doggerel in Chinese, the basic meaning is † A husband's wife is his donkey, you can beat her and ride on her. † Not only husband can do this to his wife. If the fife give birth to a girl, the husband's parents would not be happy and they can get rid of her if they want to.Women do not have any status in ancient China at all. Of course they would not be considered as a citizen, even a part of the society. To be a citizen the most basic rights are the right to vote, the right to be elected and the right of personal liberty. But at that time they were Just like slaves. To have any rights was like a dream which wo uld never come true for them. Especially for those vulnerable groups without security they Just like a clam without shell. That is why those women get so hard to gain their proper rights. They learn to become powerful, to become stronger, learn how to be independent. We must remember that men and women are spiritual equals† (Galatians 3: 26-29) â€Å"God is no respecter of persons. † (Acts 10: 34-35) He does not play favorites. Faithful women mean Just as much to God as faithful men. (Women's rights and responsibilities) Now, as the Feminist Movement succeed, more and more women get educated. This made the gap between men and women getting smaller. Now the equality between the sexes became a reality. ! ! Finally in 1918 women got one of the most important rights eight to vote. But it was limited only for women above 30. In 1928 it changed into women above 21 get the right to vote. A Brief History of Women's Rights Movements) † This was the very first time for wome n to vote. The event established the succeed of feminist movement in the history of women. In 1946 the United Nations established a Commission on the status of Women. † (wisped) It covered gender equality and the empowerment of women. For such a long time women had been under controlled by men, but now they are free. They really became independent by themselves not only physically, but also mentally. Because they have their own rights now.! ! Later women became legal citizens. They owned citizenship and many other rights.Also they could go outside and work. Two of the most important rights are property right and guardianship. Which means women can have their own property. Also when a couple divorce the woman can have the guardianship to the children as well. These rights make women became more strong, they can be independent without men and have a good life. It is very important for women to have a economy support. If they do not have money, they can not live by themselves. Th at is why men did not allow women go out to work. Because if they got money, men can not control women any more.That is why it is so important for women to have her own Job. As citizens women can participate in this society and be considered as a part of the society. They are no longer an unimportant role. They became valuable, these made males know they need to treasure them. Otherwise women became powerful enough to protect themselves. Males no longer can hurt females. Also there are laws sets for females' benefits. Now they can use them to protect themselves from men's abuse, to like in the old times they have no choice but suffer the rest of her life or commit suicide.! As a citizen, when we own rights at the same time we also own responsibilities to this society. No matter the legal responsibilities or the responsibilities to our families. Those are the things we have to fulfill. Sometimes women have more things to worry about than men. Because men always busy on his work, only focus all his attention on how to make money. Men always think they are too busy to think about other things, therefore women have to take care of their home. However, women also need to work. Which means they have to work and take care of home at the same time.They need to worry about those fussy housework, their children's lives, their parents, cook meals and a lot of other things. But men also have responsibilities to the home, not only about the economic support but they also need to care about the home with love. A good example is children. Almost each family has at least one child. In China there is a investigation and statistics result about the time father spent with child and the time mother spent with child. Everyday a father spent less than an hour with children. More than 0% fathers says they are too busy with their work.About 20% fathers do not realize the importance to spend time with their children. ( ) It is very important for a father to be a good example for a chi ld, but they think their Jobs are more important than their children. Men give up their responsibilities for the family because their Jobs, and give it all to women. Therefore women have take all the responsibilities. But that is a little bit unfair for women because man and woman share a family. If there is any rights or responsibilities they should share instead of push all of them to one of the person.! There are some other responsibilities for women in other ways.In the bible wives are required to respect husband, honor your father and your mother, bring up children. Women are responsible to a lot of things. Therefore they need to work much more harder. Because they love their children so much that they need to spend so much vigor on children, but men always careless and do not care much as women, they would have less things to care about than women. ! Sometimes husband has some trouble during work, as wife she has responsibility to share weal and woe with him. If the husband lo se his Job or broke, he wife has to stand out and keep the family.That makes women have to take those responsibilities men did not take but they should take. This is a little bit unfair but that is the reality. ! Women are also has responsibilities in God. In the church women were used as prophets. † This was a public capacity which had been foretold † (Acts 2:16-18). In 1 Corinthians 12:28, prophets were listed second among the gifts. According 1 Corinthians 11: 51 † This was a very important position and women worked at it. † Women are concerned by God more in the ancient time. Because nobody would listen to women's witness.But when Jesus die and came back to life again. Some women went to his grave to see him. God let those women to spread the message out. That was such an important message. God let the women to told others instead of men. This reflected that God considers men and women as the same. And women also used as teachers. Len John 4:28-29, 39, a women taught men who did not know about Jesus Christ. If they could do it then, they can do it now. Women have the right to learn (1 Timothy 2:11). John 4:9-15 shows us that the Samaritan woman was asking Jesus directly and not one of her five husbands.In the community, women can work.. In Acts 9:36-39, Dorsa made them tunics and worked for the people around her. The picture of a worthy women in Proverbs 31 :12-20, 24 demonstrates that a woman can work! Women can work but they must choose the correct priorities. They will answer to God for what they have chosen Just like men will have to answer to God if they have chosen their careers over the well-being of their family (Proverbs 31:21-23, 28-29). ! ! Women also have the responsibility of loyalty to her husband. Men should not cheated on his wife, also women should not cheated on his husband also.If they cited to live as a family, they have the responsibility to each other and their children. As a women it is not responsible and imm orality if she decided to abortion. Because that is murdering. Every baby comes from God's blessing, God does not give anybody any right to take other people's life, even it is her own child's life. Once a woman has physical relationship with a man, she and he both have the responsibility to the baby if they had one. ! In conclusion the personality, life. Status between men and women are equally, no matter men or women. We should not have a sense of discrimination that women re lower than men.We should abandon the old idea about women, such as women belongs to men, women should not go outside to work, women should do all the housework at home and take care of the whole family, women were considered as slaves and so on. The As the time past, women's status is rising. In a modern society, women are same as men in mentally. Everybody soul is equal in God's eyes. Nobody is special. Therefore under this situation, men and women should have same rights and responsibilities to the country. Rights and responsibilities are coexisting. Everybody has to fulfill their own responsibilities.They cannot only have rights but do not take the responsibilities. And responsibilities and obligation are respectively. Under these situation the whole society will be prosperous. People will have happy lives. The country will run normally. Everybody would welling to contribute to the society. The country would be prosperous. This is good for the country and good for the people. If women and men all have same status, these will not cause family conflicts. Children will have a healthy circumstance for them to grow up and they will have a correct value. All of these came from the equal rights.There are so many advantages to have equal rights. Therefore no matter what rights men have, women should have as well. A mature society is a mixture. It can not only has men in it, or it can not only has women in it either. Men and women can not live without each other. Because God created us in thi s way, women is a part of men and men is a part of women. It is same for a couple. In a family, women and men are sharing the same family. Under this situation, they should communicate with each other rather than one control the other. Therefore we should have a sense of men and women are equal at all aspects.