Forensic Deoxyribonucleic Acid: History and Applications

Forensic Deoxyribonucleic Acid: History and Applications Paulean Gonzalez Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is located in the nucleus of every cell and is the genetic material that makes up cellular organism and viruses. However, DNA can be used in multiple ways when it comes to forensics. It assists in linking an individual to a criminal act, to exonerate victims or even to identify victims in mass disasters. DNA is what accounts for genetic information and DNA also codes for the proteins that are necessary for our body to survive. The history of DNA dates back to Gregor Mendel as well as Francis Crick and James Watson. DNA can be found in many different parts of the body but none of that would really matter if forensic units had no way of determining and linking the DNA to certain individuals which is why the multiple ways of DNA testing are so important. The inheritance of characteristics as well as the functions of DNA also plays an important role in forensic DNA. While what could be considered the most important part to how forensic DNA is used is the outcomes and the ways it was used in courts. History Gregor Mendel It was in 1865 that Gregor Mendel, who was an Austrian monk, went before the Brno Natural Science Society and presented two lectures that summarized his experiment results on heredity in the garden pea. Mendel’s experiment was based off the cross pollination of a wrinkly green pea plant with a smooth yellow pea plant. In this experiment Mendel was able to discover that there was both a dominant and a recessive trait. His experiment allowed him to come up with three different conclusions. His three conclusions were that the inheritance of each trait was determined by what is known as a gene, that an individual receives one set of genes from each parent, and that even though a trait does not show up in an individual it is possible to still be carried on to the next generations. In Mendel’s experiment he discovered what is known as the Principle/Law of Segregation or otherwise known as his First Law. In this law there was four different parts that were included. The first part was that there were other forms of the genes that were inheritable known as alleles. The second part was that each offspring receives one allele from each parent. The third part both the sperm and the egg hold one allele for each trait and during fertilization they pair. Lastly, if the alleles are different only one appears while the other is not. The one that is shown is the dominant trait while the one that is not shown is the recessive trait. Mendel also came up with what is known as the Principle/Law of Independent Assortment which is also known as Mendel’s Second Law. In this principle, Mendel discovered that the different alleles were passed on individually and not based on one other. Mendel saw many different combinations which meant that there was separation from one another. In the early 1900’s it was believed that inheritance was fluid in nature, which was termed â€Å"half-blood† and â€Å"true-blood.† However due to Mendel’s experi ment and his repeat experiments, it was discovered that the genetic information was a particulate, which is the â€Å"unchanging nature of the DNA molecule that allows DNA fingerprinting† (Herrero, 2009, p. ). Crick and Watson Roughly around 50 years ago Francis Crick, an English graduate student, and James Watson, an American post doctorate researcher, first proved that the structure of DNA was a double helix. For their efforts Crick, Watson, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their â€Å"discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acid and its significance for information transfer in biological material† (Herrero, 2009, p. ). Both Watson and Crick have helped in the basic understanding of manipulating DNA as well as the understanding of DNA replication, transcription, and translation. They believed that DNA was shaped like twisted ladder. The sugar phosphate backbone made up the sides of the ladders while the nitrogenous bases made up the rungs of the ladder. The ladder of DNA is made up of building blocks that are known as nucleotides. DNA makes up every chromosome and gene and is a polymer of repeating units that are known as nucleotides. Each of the nucleotides contains three specific parts; the phosphate group, sugar, and the nitrogenous base. The nitrogenous base consists of one of the four molecules including adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine (Herrero, 2009). Types of DNA There are also two types of DNA’s. The two types of DNA’s are the nuclear or chromosomal DNA which is inherited from mother and father and the mitochondrial DNA which is inherited from only the mother. DNA can be located in the cells of our body. Nuclear DNA can be present in a cell’s nucleus and is a combination of information that is inherited from both parents. It helps in the makeup of an individual’s genetic material. Nuclear DNA is best known as the â€Å"molecule of life and contains the genetic instructions for the development of all living organisms† (Nuclear DNA, n.d). Nuclear DNA can be found in almost every single cell except for red blood cells. Nuclear DNA was clearly expressed in Gregor Mendel’s Pea Experiment. His experiment was able to present information to back up the statement that half the information that was received was from the mother while the other half of information was received from the father. Mitochondrial DNA does not come from cell nucleus; it instead is located in the mitochondria of the cell. The mitochondrion is a â€Å"specialized subunit within a cell that functions as the powerhouse of the cell† (Herrero, 2009, p. ). It is more likely that a small sample of mitochondrial DNA could be discovered compared to nuclear DNA. This is because mitochondrial DNA is present in hundreds to thousands of copies in each cell compared to the only two nuclear DNA copies that are present in a cell. This means that all muscle, bone, hair, skin and many other body fluids are capable of finding mitochondrial DNA. The advantages to using mitochondrial DNA are that they are more sensitive which means less DNA is needed, degrades slower than nuclear DNA, and it can be used in cases where nuclear DNA cannot. The disadvantages to mitochondrial DNA are that all people of same maternal line will be indistinguishable and there is more work to be done, it is more time consuming, and it is more costly (Herrero, 2009). DNA Tests The two previous methods that were used were the Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) Analysis and the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). While the new method that is currently being used is the Short Tandem Repeat (STR). Although all tests may be different, they all require that an extraction of DNA from the sample. All three tests have had their fair share of helping the forensic units as well as being the go-to test that was responsible for the prosecution of many felons as well as the exoneration of many former criminals. Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism RFLP was the first DNA profiling technique that was used and was seen in a widespread of areas. It was developed by Sir Alec Jeffreys in 1984. This test was capable of allowing the fragments of DNA to be measured. However as it became difficult and expensive as well as taking weeks to perform and being very demanding it became outdated. For this test analysts linked the size of fragments from a reference that was known to a crime scene sample that would allow them to match two DNA profiles. One thing that caused problems for this type of testing was that many samples from the crime scenes appeared to be too small to be tested. For example a speck of blood would be of no use with the RFLP testing. Due to biotechnological advances there would soon be more sensitive tests that would turn into what is today’s DNA profiling (Herrero, 2009). Polymerase Chain Reaction The PCR test was invented so that multiple copies of a small DNA could be replicated. This test was created in 1987 by Kary Mullis, a biochemist, and Henry Elrich, a nuclear biologist. The way that this test works is that an enzyme was found that could withstand the het needed to â€Å"unzip the two strands of the DNA double helix for replication without breaking apart the enzymes itself† (Herrero, 2009, p. ). A problem that regularly occurs with the PCR test can be contamination. When the samples are being amplified it is crucial to be very careful and avoid adding extra cells onto the sample before it is amplified. A simple sneeze to a laugh could ruin the evidence (Herrero, 2009) Short Tandem Repeat By 1998, the FBI created a more multiplex version of the PCR test known as the Short Tandem Repeat (STR). This test is still being used today. Similar to the PCR test, the STR test is capable of working with small samples. There are three different color dyes that are used to â€Å"distinguish STR alleles with overlapping size ranges† (Herrero, 2009). The STR test evaluates specific regions within nuclear DNA. It is color coded as well as automated and computerized which makes it so easy to navigate (Herrero, 2009). Combined DNA Index System In 1998 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). Today, 44 of the 50 states are allowed to collect DNA from all felons, 28 of the 50 states are allowed to collect DNA from juvenile offenders and 39 of the 50 states can collect DNA from those who commit certain misdemeanors. In 1994, Congress came up with the DNA Identification Act of 1994 which authorized the FBI to maintain a national database that allowed the sharing of DNA information between states. There are three tiers to CODIS, which are the local (LDIS), state (SDIS), and national (NDIS). CODIS uses 13 different DNA regions that can vary from person to person and matches are searched for at more than one location on a genome for more accurate results. By 2004, all 50 states were connected with the limited profiles of those who had been convicted of serious, violent crimes. On October 30, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Justice For All Act that expanded the CODIS system and allowed the collection of DNA from all federal felons and allowed the states to upload the profiles of anyone who had been convicted of a crime (Herrero, 2009) Inheritance of Characteristics The many different characteristics that we inherit are in the form of DNA. However, we do not inherit the characteristic; we simply inherit the information that produces our characteristics. Half of the genetic material that we inherit is received by each parent. The sperm and egg are produced in the gonads of the parents and results in the â€Å"production of gametes that carry only half of the DNA that made the parents unique† (Herrero, 2009, p. ). A new individual is created when the sperm and egg are bonded. Much like the parents this new individual has two copies of all the genetic information and can produce eggs that will only have one copy of each gene if a female; however if it is a male it also has two copies of all the genetic information but can only pass one of the two to each of his offspring. The information that we receive is in pairs. The reason for this as stated before is because half the information is received from the mother while the other half of inform ation is received from the father (Herrero, 2009). DNA in Courts Due to fact that DNA can be found in blood, semen, saliva, urine, hair, teeth, bone and tissues, it plays an everyday role in courts. Kirk Bloodworth On March of 1985, Kirk Bloodworth had been convicted of the killing as well as sexual assault of a little nine year old. The little girl’s body was found dead in July of 1984. It had been discovered that she had been beaten with a rock, strangled and raped. Bloodworth was arrested based off an eye witness stating that they had seen him with the little girl earlier on the day that she went missing. Five eyewitnesses were even able to identify Kirk Bloodworth based off sketches. Other evidence that was presented against Bloodworth was that on the day of the incident he had told his wife that he had done something that would change their lives forever as well as him mentioning something about a bloody rock (Know the Cases-Kirk Bloodworth, n.d.). Bloodworth appealed the decision. His reason for appealing was that the bloody rock had only been mentioned because during interrogation the police had shown him a bloody rock. The incident in which he told his wife their lives would change forever had been dealing with him forgetting to buy the food she had requested. The police also did not inform the defense that there was a possibility that there was another suspect. The appellate court decision led to Bloodworth being convicted and also sentenced to two life terms that would run consecutively (Know the Cases-Kirk Bloodworth, n.d.) â€Å"In 1992, the prosecution agreed to DNA testing to be performed by the Forensic Science Associates† (Know the Cases-Kirk Bloodworth, n.d., p. 1). The victim’s shorts and underwear, a stick that been discovered at the scene, as well as an autopsy slide had been compared to Bloodworth. The PCR testing that was used was able to determine that the evidence left on the underwear did not match with Bloodworth. The same tests were then performed again by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the same results were found (Know the Cases-Kirk Bloodworth, n.d.). In June of 1993, Bloodworth was released from prison and in December of 1992 he was pardoned. Over eight years of his life were lived in prison with two of those years him facing execution. Bloodworth became the first person to be â€Å"exonerated from death row through post-conviction DNA testing† (Know the Cases-Kirk Bloodworth, n.d., p. 1). Kirk Bloodworth’s case set the stage for many cases that are soon to come (Know the Cases-Kirk Bloodworth, n.d.) Freddie Peacock After serving five years in a prison in New York and nearly three decades after being released on parole, Freddie Peacock was able to clear his name thanks to DNA testing. Peacock was the 250th person cleared through DNA testing after being convicted for crime in which he did not commit (Know the Cases-Freddie Peacock, n.d.). The crime in which he had been serving had occurred on a night in July of 1976. A New York woman was returning to her apartment from work and was attacked. When the woman was unlocking her apartment door, the man approached her from behind, took her keys and threw her to the ground. Where she was thrown to the grown she struck her head. The woman was told that if she screams she would be killed. The woman was pulled by her perpetrator to the side of a house that was nearby and was raped. Once the perpetrator was done he returned the woman her keys and left. The woman went back to her apartment building where she told the building superintendent who then proceeded to call the police. She later testified that she was only able to see her perpetrators face when she was in a dark are. She was able to describe that her perpetrator was an African-American man who weighed about 150 pounds and had been wearing a white, flower shirt (Know the Cases-Freddie Peacock, n.d.). The woman had originally struggled to remember the details of the crime but later admitted that she believed that her neighbor was the perpetrator. The superintendent responded by asking if it was Freddie and she had said yes. Peacock’s photo was included in a 10-photo collection where she identified him again. Two hours after the attack, Peacock was arrested. The woman once again identified him through a window in one-person show up procedure. After being interrogated for two and a half hours, he had initially denied being the perpetrator but the police claimed he confessed. Peacock confessed to having several severe mental illnesses and was hospitalized for it multiple times. Peacock was unable to tell authorities how, when, and where was raped. Peacock never signed the alleged confession that the officer wrote with all the details to the crime (Know the Cases-Freddie Peacock, n.d.). At the trial, the victim testified saying that she knew he was a perpetrator because of his beard and eyes and claimed that deep down she knew it was him. She claimed that Peacock and she had only spoken twice and he had entered her apartment once uninvited. A doctor even testified that the bodily samples that were collected from the victim at the hospital, but other evidence was not presented. Peacock was eventually convicted and sentenced to up to 20 years in prison (Know the Cases-Freddie Peacock, n.d.). Peacock had been released on parole after five years in the New York prison. Thanks to his families and church support he was able to receive treatment for his mental illness. After contacting The Innocence Project in 2002 to help him clear his name. DNA evidence was obtained and able to rule him out. This evidence was taken before a judge. A state judge tossed out the conviction. This meant his name had been cleared after 34 years of wrongful convictions (Know the Cases-Freddie Peacock, n.d.). Conclusion All types of cells in the body contain the copy of the same DNA, for example DNA can be found in the blood cells, saliva cells, tissues cells and even the semen cells. DNA Functions DNA has two primary functions. These two functions include transmitting information from one generation to the next as well as providing the blueprint for making proteins the same way every time. References Herrero, S. (2009). Forensic DNA: Technology, Application, and the Law. In S. H. James J. J. Nordby (Eds.), Forensic Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Investigative Techniques (pp. 303-325). FL: CRC Press. Know the Cases-Freddie Peacock (n.d.). The Innocence Project. Retrieved from http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Freddie_Peacock.php Know the Cases-Kirk Bloodworth (n.d.). The Innocence Project. Retrieved from http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Kirk_Bloodsworth.php Nuclear DNA (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_DNA

Guide to performing a Job Evaluation

Guide to performing a Job Evaluation What are the main issues faced by the residents in Portugal? Click on the play button to watch the video. Highlight the issues and look for the solutions. Share your opinions in the LMS Forum. [MMP: Create video screen and embed video as shown in link] Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vKDyPJmQD0 Job evaluation is the process of determining the worth of jobs assigned to employees.The worth of a job is determined by the demand for it in relation to its job description, job specification and the expected outcomes from that job. In some cases, it is found that an employee who holds a similar position as his colleague may hold a different role, and have different responsibilities and accountability. In such cases, he/she should receive different pay. This chapter discusses the importance of job evaluation, basic job evaluation methods, the hay guide chart method, and inputs to refer to when pricing jobs. Job Evaluation and Its Importance Job evaluation is the process of determining the value of one job in comparison to the other jobs within the organisation so a fair salary system can be established. The job evaluation process is the most common method used to provide a rationale for a pay structure and to assign a job to a pay grade. Job evaluation can also be defined as a practical technique for trained and experienced employees to judge the size of one job relative to others. It does not directly determine the pay levels but establishes the basis for an internal ranking of jobs. Among other definitions are as follows: Job evaluation is concerned with assessing the relative demands of different jobs within the organisation. Its usual purpose is to provide a basis for relating differences in rates of pay to different in-job requirements. It is therefore a tool which can be used to help determine a pay structure. (Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), London 1984) A job evaluation system consists of compensable factors and a weighting scheme based on the importance of each compensable factor to the organisation. Compensable factors are the characteristics of jobs that an organisation values and chooses to pay for. These characteristics may include job complexity, working conditions, required education, required experience and responsibility. (Noe et. al. 2003) Job evaluation is a systematic procedure to determine the relative worth or value of jobs. Although there are several different approaches, each one considers the duties, responsibilities and working conditions of the job. The objective of job evaluation is to identify which jobs should be paid more than others. (Schwind et. al. 1999) The objectives of a job evaluation process in an organisation are as follows: Establishes the relative value or size of jobs, i.e. internal relatives. Produces the information required to design and maintain equitable and defensible grade and pay structures, critical in any organisation. Provides as a basis for grading jobs within a grade structure, thus enabling consistent decisions to be made about job grading. Ensures that the organisation meets ethical and legal equal pay for work of equal value obligtions. More recently the use of job evaluation is the hinge of most equal pay cases. Despite its popularity, it is often misunderstood. So, the following facts about job evaluation must be made clear: SELF-CHECK What is job evaluation and why is it important? What are the four facts about job evaluation? Job Evaluation Methods The human resource management is usually responsible for administering the job evaluation programme. However, actual job evaluation is typically done by a committee. The committee might include the human resource director as the chairperson and the finance, marketing and production heads. Job Evaluation Committee Chairperson (Human Resource Director) Head of Finance Head of Marketing Head of Production Figure 8.1: The job evaluation programme is typically performed by a committee within the organisation Small and medium sized organisations may elect to use outside consultants as they often lack job evaluation experience. When employing a qualified consultant, management should require the consultant to develop an internal job evaluation programme and train company employees to administer it correctly. This can be done by reviewing information obtained through job analysis regarding the duties, responsibilities and working conditions of the organisation. With this knowledge, the relative worth of jobs is determined and the consultant will be able to shape a job evaluation programme suitable to the company by selecting an appropriate job evaluation method. Figure 8.2: The 10 basic steps in conducting an effective job evaluation There are four basic job evaluation methods commonly used by organisations. They are job ranking, job classification (or job grading), factor comparison and the point system. Job ranking and job classification are categorised as non quantitative methods while factor comparison and the point system are classified as quantitative methods. A job evaluation committee or an outside consultant needs to choose one method and modify the method to suit the organisations particular need. Figure 8.3: Job evaluation methods Job Ranking Method In the ranking method, jobs are compared to each other and arranged in order according to their worth to the organisation. The worth of a job is usually based on judgements of skill, effort (physical and mental), responsibility (supervisory and fiscal), and working conditions. The steps involved in ranking jobs are Rank Jobs Make an overall comparison between jobs, by focusing on certain factors such as, responsibility, skills, effort, and working conditions. It is possible that elements of some jobs may be overlooked or weighed too heavily. Rank jobs from the highest to the lowest. The highest and lowest are ranked first, followed by the next highest to the next lowest, until all jobs are ranked. Conduct job analysis and write job descriptions. Pay scales are established based on the rankings, where more important jobs are paid more. However, as the ranking of jobs are subjective and lack precision, the pay levels may be inaccurate. The job ranking method is perhaps the simplest method of job evaluation but it is also known to be the least precise among the four evaluation methods. WEB-SITE Find out the ten worst jobs in the US of 2010. Go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/worst-jobs-2010-careercas_n_413511.html Job Classification Job classification is a form of evaluation that assigns jobs to an existing grade/category structure according to their relative worth to the organisation. First, job grades or categories are established and each is given a standard description, as shown in Table 8.1. Table 8.1: A Job Classification schedule for use with Job Grading Method Job Grade Standard Description I Work is simple and highly repetitive; done under close supervision; requires minimal training and little responsibility, or initiative. II Work is simple and repetitive; done under close supervision; requires some training or skill. Employee is only rarely expected to assume responsibility or exhibit initiative. III Work is simple, with little variation; done under general supervision; training or skill is required. Employee has minimum responsibility and must take some initiative to perform satisfactorily. IV Work is moderately complex, with some variation; done under general supervision; requires high level skills. Employee is responsible for equipment and safety, and must exhibit initiative regularly. V Work is complex and varied; done under general supervision; requires advanced level skills. Employee is responsible for equipment and safety, and must show a high degree of initiative. Next, the standard description that most nearly matches a job description determines the grade of that job. Job classification or job grading is slightly more sophisticated than job ranking, but it too is not very precise. Factor Comparison In the factor comparison method, each job is ranked according to a series of factors. This method includes five major steps. Under this method, instead of ranking complete jobs, each job is ranked according to a series of factors (as shown in Figure 8.3). Figure 8.4: The five universal job factors Job evaluators must then identify factors relevant and common in a broad range of jobs as shown in Table 8.2. A numerical point value is assigned to each job factor. The weights might be different for different job positions. Some organisations use different factors for managerial, professional, sales and other positions. Table 8.2: Factors relevant and common in a broad range of jobs Job Mental Skill Physical Responsibility Working Condition System Analyst 1 4 2 1 3 Data Entry Clerk 4 1 1 4 1 Programmer 2 3 3 2 4 Operator 3 2 4 3 2 Note: In the mental requirement, systems analyst ranked highest (1), followed by programmer (2), operator (3) and clerk (4). The evaluation allows the committee to determine the relative importance of each job. In this method, pay will be assigned by comparing the weights of the factors required for each job. This method of job evaluation is more systematic. Point System This method evaluates the critical factors of each job. But instead of using wages, as the factor comparison method does, it uses points. Under the point rating system, a number of factors such as skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions are identified as being common to all jobs being evaluated. Each factor is then given a weighting indicating its values relative to the others and for each factor there are varying degrees (as shown in Table 8.3). Table 8.3: Point system matrix No. Critical Factors Levels or Degrees Minimum I Low II Moderate III High IV 1 Responsibility Safety of others 25 50 75 100 Equipment and materials 20 40 60 80 Assisting trainees 5 20 60 50 Product/ Service Quality 20 40 60 80 2 Skill Experience 45 90 135 180 Education / Training 25 50 75 100 3 Effort Physical 25 50 75 100 Mental 25 70 105 150 4 Working Condition Unpleasant condition 20 20 60 80 Hazards 20 40 60 80 Total Points 100 A job description is prepared for each job and a committee then considers each description in turn, comparing it factor by factor, with the degree definitions. Points are allocated for each factor and the total point value determines the relative worth of each job. A point system is more precise than the factor comparison method because it can handle critical factors in more detail. This method is also used more than the other methods. Some 95% of the major corporations in the US are thought to use some variation of this method to evaluate jobs. Accountability Accuracy Analysis and judgment Complexity Contact and diplomacy Creativity Decision-making Dexterity (clever, skilful, neatness) Education Effects of errors Effort Initiative Judgment Know-how Knowledge and skill Mental effort Mental Fatigue Physical demands Physical skills Planning and coordination Problem-solving Responsibility for cash/material/confidential Information equipment, process, record and reports Social skills Supervision given/received Task completion Training and experience Work condition Work pressure Figure 8.5: A list of factors used most frequently in the point rating method as prepared by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) SELF-CHECK Describe how each of the four job evaluation methods below determine the worth of a job to an organisation. a) Job ranking b) Job classification c) Factor comparison d) Point system Hay Guide Chart The job evaluation process is enormously time consuming, complex and often a frustrating task as it is subjected to political pressures and biases that is natural among committee members who represent different functional areas. It has been proven that the job evaluation process is easier to do if the committee compares factors common to all jobs (compensable factors). For evaluating management jobs, the Hay Guide Chart Profile Method is the most popular method. This method provides a common language, an organised framework and the criteria to ensure that judgements applied can be tested and defended in an objective, consistent and equitable manner. This method is based on assessing three main factors, which are: know how problem solving accountability INPUT PROCESS CONTRIBUTION KNOW-HOW PROBLEM SOLVING ACCOUNTABILITY Figure 8.6: The Hay Guide Chart Method (a) Know How Knowledge, skills and experience needed for acceptable job performance. It consists of three dimensions which are: Scientific disciplines, specialised techniques, and practical procedures The depth and range of specialised knowledge required to perform the job. It requires a deep authoritative knowledge in areas of considerable significance to the organisation disciplines or general knowledge required to deal with strategic issues at the most senior level within the organisation. Managerial know-how Requirements needed in the job to plan, supervise, coordinate and integrate different activities, resources or parts of the organisation. Human relation skills Skills needed to communicate with and influence individuals and groups within and outside the organisation to achieve the necessary results. (b) Problem Solving The span, complexity and level of analytical, evaluative and innovative thought required in the job. The problem solving factor has two components. They are: Thinking environment The environment in which thinking takes place. Identifies and addresses problems that arise. Depends on the absence or presence of policy, procedure, supervision as well as other guidance. Thinking challenge Thinking done to assess the complexity of problems encountered, ranging from simple to complex situations. Also involves the extent of original thinking needed to arrive at conclusions. (c) Accountability Discretion given to the job holder to influence or determine the course of events and his/her answerability for the consequences of his/her decisions and actions. Accountability has three dimensions which are: Freedom to Act Assesses the degree of freedom of action given to a job by the organisation. Magnitude Gauges how much of the organisation is effected by the job holders accomplishment of the job. Job impact on end results Concerned with how directly the job affects end results in that area. SELF-CHECK Explain the three factors that the Hay Guide Chart method considers in evaluating the worth of a job to the organisation. Pricing Jobs Pricing jobs are divided into two activities: Establishing the appropriate pay level for each job. Grouping the different pay levels into a structure that can be managed effectively. It would not be unusual, for instance, for the personnel manager of Motorola to regularly share wage data on key positions. Firms in the community like Hewlett Packard identify job positions such as maintenance engineer, electrical engineer, key punch operators or clerk-typists and give comprehensive descriptions of these jobs. During the wage survey, various information can be requested (as shown in Figure 8.7). Figure 8.7: Information that can be requested when conducting a wage survey (a) Pay Level The appropriate pay level for any job reflects its relative and absolute worth. A jobs relative internal worth is determined by its ranking through the job evaluation process. The absolute worth of the job is controlled by what the labour market pays for similar jobs. Figure 8.8: Pay level Source: http://www.nursingtimes.net/whats-new-in-nursing/acute-care/pay-levels-confirm-lower-status-of-nurses/5008226.article (b) Scattergram In order to set the right pay level, the job evaluation ranking and the survey wage rates (the going rates in the industry) are combined through the use of a graph called the scattergram. [GD: Insert image of scattergram] Figure 8.9: Scattergram (c) Wage-trend line Through the dots that represent key jobs, a wage-trend line is drawn as close to as many points as possible (the line can be drawn freehand). Most importantly, this method can be used to identify jobs whose pay is out of the trend line. When a jobs pay rate is too high, it should be identified as a red circle rate. Undervalued rates (wage rate is too low) carry a green circle and attempts should be made to grant these jobs an average pay increase. Figure 8.10: Wage-trend line (d) Pay structure Jobs that are similar, in terms of class grades and points, are grouped together. For instance, pay grade 1 may cover 0-100 points, pay grade 2 from 1-200 points, and so on. The result is a hierarchy of wages. The more important jobs are paid more, and as individuals assume jobs of greater importance, they rise within the wages structure. Figure 8.11: Pay structure Source: http://skorcareer.com.my/images/salary-survey-asia.jpg Rate ranges are simply pay ranges for each job class. For example, the wage-trend line indicates that $8.00 is the average hourly rate for a particular job class. With a rate range of $1 for each class, a marginal performer is placed at a midpoint or $8.00. When performer appraisals indicate above-average performance, the employee may be given a merit rise of, say 25 cents per hour. Once the employee reaches the top of the wage range, no more wage increase will be forthcoming. Either a promotion or a general across-the-board pay raise needs to occur for this worker to exceed $8.50 an across-the-board increase moves the entire wage trend line upward. As new jobs are created, the wage and salary section of the personnel department performs a job evaluation. For this evaluation, the new job is assigned to an appropriate job class. If rate ranges are used, the new incumbent will start at the bottom of the range and receive raises, where appropriate, to the top of the rate range. SELF-CHECK What are the inputs that can be requested when conducting a wage survey to price jobs? Case Study The Thai Silk Company, Ltd. Source: http://www.retireearlylifestyle.com/ThaiSilk.html (a) Thai Silk Industry The production of Thai silk involves a number of stages. The earliest fiber production, was carried out by approximately 500,000 individual peasant families primarily in the economically-depressed northern portion of the country. Several hundred family firms located in the larger provincial towns and in Bangkok undertook intermediate stages dyeing, spinning and weaving. The final stages printing, converting and retailing were dominated by fewer than 100 enterprises located in Bangkok. (b) Finishing and Converting Thai silk moved directly from weavers into retail channels to be sold as fabric. However, a portion was finished (e.g. printed with a design) and/or converted (e.g. made into a pillow case, garment, window drape, etc.) before reaching retail. There were seven finishing establishments in the country, all located in Bangkok. The largest of these was a 51%-owned joint venture of Thai Silk Company Ltd. (TSC). It contained 16 hand painting tables compared to only 10 by its next largest competitor. It was the only finisher in the country specialising in silk to own an automatic printing machine. (c) Proposed New Weaving Mill On top of these changes, an important new development is currently under consideration. It involves a proposed 51-owned weaving joint venture, the Thai Silk Handweaving Co. Ltd. (TSHC). The plant was to be located at Pakthongchai in Korat Province about 100 miles northeast of Bangkok. It would initially contain 120 hand looms of the tradiational variety with capacity to supply about 20% of TSCs fabric needs. Currently, there are plans for an increase in the number of looms to 600 over a 6 year period. TSCs share of initial capitalisation would amount to 2.4 million Baht. SELF-CHECK The silk production involves many processes and stages, from dyeing to printing and retailing. As the Human Resource manager, how would you price the pay for employees working in the different stages of the silk production? Summary This chapter introduced you to job evaluation, its methods, the hay guide chart method, and inputs to refer to when pricing jobs. We have learned that: Job evaluation is the process of determining the value of one job in comparison to the other jobs within the organisation so a fair salary system can be established. It is the most common method used to provide a rationale for a pay structure and to assign a job to a pay grade. Job evaluation is usually administered by the human resource manager. However, it is typically performed by either a committee within the organisation or by outside consultants. The four basic job evaluation methods commonly used by organisations are: Job ranking Job classification (or job grading) Factor comparison The point system The hay guide chart method of evaluating jobs assesses three main factors: Know-how Problem solving Accountability When performing a job survey to price jobs, the following information can be requested: Pay level Scattergram Wage-trend line Pay structure Glossary Terms Definition Factor comparison Each job is ranked according to a series of factors, namely mental requirement, skill, physical requirement, responsibilities and working conditions. Hay guide chart method A job evaluation method that considers know-how, problem solving and accountability. Job classification/Job grading A form of evaluation that assigns jobs to an existing grade/category structure according to their relative worth to the organisation. Job evaluation The process of determining the value of one job in comparison to the other jobs within the organisation so a fair salary system can be established. Job ranking Jobs are compared to each other and arranged in order according to their worth to the organisation. Pay level What the labour market pays for similar jobs. Pay structure Jobs that are similar, in terms of class grades and points, are grouped together. Point system method Evaluates the critical factors of each job. But instead of using wages, as the factor comparison method does, it uses points. Scattergram A graph that uses plotted points to represent a set of data. Wage-trend line A line drawn as closely as possible to as many points representing key jobs in a graph.

Animal Farm, by George Orwell :: Animal Farm Essays

The fiction book that I am doing my book report is on the novel, Animal Farm. This book was written by George Orwell in 1946. The setting of my book took place in a farm called â€Å"Manor Farm† during the Russian Revolution ear. The characters are basically farm animals. Some of these animals’ names are Old Major, Snowball, and Napoleon. They are all pigs from the farm. The animals on the farm get tired of how they are getting badly treated. So they end up overthrowing their farm owner Mr. Jones. After they overthrow their owner, the pigs start taking over the farm and taking control over all the other animals in the farm. Old Major was one of the oldest pigs in the farm. He was a very smart pig. He would tell the other animals how they were suppose to be living, how they were suppose to be getting treated and how they were suppose to get rid of their owner. One day Old Major was going to tell the animals what they must do and Old Major dies. Once Old Major dies the animals start fighting back against Mr. Jones. The animals even ended up getting rid of Mr. Jones. After Old Major died Napoleon and Snowball took over everything. Snowball didn’t last long on being one of the leaders with Napoleon. Napoleon ended up getting rid of Snowball too. Napoleon turned out to be an evil pig. He was just turning just like the humans in the book. Napoleon became a very mean pig that he ended up lying to all the farm animals and saying one thing and then doing another thing. Napoleon mainly just be treated the animals and started treating them bad. He would treat them like slaves in other words. So ever since the animals started to take control of the farm and the animals they finished up changing everything. The animals even ended up changing the farms name from â€Å"Manor Farm† to â€Å"Animal Farm†. But out of all the animals in the farm the smartest animals were the pigs. And the meanest pig out of all of them was Napoleon. Everything was a mess in the farm ever since the pigs got rid of Mr. Jones. Later on Mr. Jones tires to come back and get back his farm but the pigs did not let him. The book Animal Farm does not relate to me in any way.

In this study I will be comparing the 2 poems, To Autumn and Ozymandias

In this study I will be comparing the 2 poems, To Autumn and Ozymandias. I have chosen these two poems because out of the four that we have looked at, I have found these to be the most interesting. In this study I will be comparing the 2 poems, To Autumn and Ozymandias. I have chosen these two poems because out of the four that we have looked at, I have found these to be the most interesting. Ozymandias revolves more around time than nature, whereas To Autumn revolves around nature more than time. Ozymandias is on the surface a nice little tale of a big bad man who made a statue that has been destroyed. However if you probe at it, you realise that it is actually all about time and nature destroying everything. I shall go into this further later. To Autumn would, at first glance, seem to be simply about Autumn and how it is the "close-bosom friend of the maturing sun" but if you look in detail at the words used you can see that there is an underlying tone that is far more grim. Both poems have both rhyme and rhythm. In Ozymandias, there are 10 syllables per line, except one, where there are 11. In To Autumn, there are also, about 10 syllables per line. As a result the rhythm in both is pretty constant. As well as rhythm, they have rhyme. In Ozymandias, the rhyme is the end of lines 1 & 3 & 5, 2 & 4, 6 & 8, 7 & 10, 9 & 11 & 13, and 12 & 14. In To Autumn the end of all lines in each stanza do rhyme with at least one other, in this way: 1st & 3rd, 2nd & 4th, 5th & 9th & 10th, 6th & 8th, 7th & 11th. This pattern is repeated in each stanza. Ozymandias is simply a big single stanza; To Autumn however is a poem with 3 stanzas. But these do not really seem to flow together. They rather seem to be almo... ...zymandias talks more about the strength of time, whereas To Autumn talks about how Nature, and in particular, Autumn are forces that provide much in the world. If you are someone who doesn't class a poem as a poem unless it has rhyme, rhythm, poetic language, sound patterns etc, then you are far more likely to prefer To Autumn, because it is much more the poet's poem than Ozymandias. I personally prefer Ozymandias, because it has great power. Although it doesn't have much in the ways of standard poetic tools, it does have rhyme and rhythm, as well as a deep and strong message. Self-Criticism - Not enough actual comparison, too much just talking about the poem. - Used the words 'think' and 'believe' to often Is that even a word? - It doesn't read well, it jaws, I have obviously just looked at what to write and written about it just like that.

Bluetooth based smart sensor network Essay

Currently, huge electronic data repositories are being maintained by banks and other financial institutions. Valuable bits of information are embedded in these data repositories. The huge size of these data sources make it impossible for a human analyst to come up with interesting information (or patterns) that will help in the decision making process. A number of commercial enterprises have been quick to recognize the value of this concept, as a consequence of which the software market itself for data mining is expected to be in excess of 10 billion USD. This paper is intended for those who would like to get aware of the possible applications of data mining to enhance the performance of some of their core business processes. In this paper discussion is about the broad areas of application, like risk management, portfolio management, trading, customer profiling and customer care, where data mining techniques can be used in banks and other financial institutions to enhance their busin ess performance. INTRODUCTION: As knowledge is becoming more and more synonymous to wealth creation and as a strategy plan for competing in the market place can be no better than the information on which it is based, the importance of knowledge and information in today’s business can never be seen as an exogenous factor to the business. Organizations and individuals having access to the right information at the right moment, have greater chances of being successful in the epoch of globalization and cut-throat competition. Business Intelligence focuses on discovering knowledge from various electronic data repositories, both internal and external, to support better decision making.  Data mining techniques become important for this knowledge discovery from databases. In recent years, business intelligence  systems have played pivotal roles in helping organizations to fine tune the business goals such as improving customer retention, market penetration, profitability and efficiency. In most cases, these ins ights are driven by analyses of historical data. Global competitions, dynamic markets, and rapidly decreasing cycles of technological innovation provide important challenges for the banking and finance industry. Worldwide just-in-time availability of information allows enterprises to improve their flexibility. In financial institutions considerable developments in information technology have led to huge demand for continuous analysis of resulting data. Data mining can contribute to solving business problems in banking and finance by finding patterns, causalities, and correlations in business information and market prices that are not immediately apparent to managers because the volume data is too large or is generated too quickly to screen by experts. The managers of the banks may go a step further to find the sequences, episodes and periodicity of the transaction behaviour of their customers which may help them in actually better segmenting, targeting, acquiring, retaining and maintaining a profitable customer base. Business Intelligence and data mining techniques can also help them in identifying various classes of customers and come up with a class based product and/or pricing approach that may garner better revenue management as well. The broad categories of application of Data Mining and Business Intelligence techniques in the banking and financial industry vertical may be viewed as follows: Risk Management Managing and measurement of risk is at the core of every financial institution. Today’s major challenge in the banking and insurance world is therefore the implementation of risk management systems in order to identify, measure, and control business exposure. Here credit and market risk present the central challenge, one can observe a major change in the area of how to measure and deal with them, based on the advent of advanced database and data mining technology.( Other types of risk is also available  in the banking and finance i.e., liquidity risk, operational risk, or concentration risk. ) Today, integrated measurement of different kinds of risk (i.e., market and credit risk) is moving into focus. These all are based on models representing single financial instruments or risk factors, their behaviour, and their interaction with overall market, making this field highly important topic of research. Financial Market Risk For single financial instruments, that is, stock indices, interest rates, or currencies, market risk measurement is based on models depending on a set of underlying risk factor, such as interest rates, stock indices, or economic development. One is interested in a functional form between instrument price or risk and underlying risk factors as well as in functional dependency of the risk factors itself. Today different market risk measurement approaches exist. All of them rely on models representing single instrument, their behaviour and interaction with overall market. Many of this can only be built by using various data mining techniques on the proprietary portfolio data, since data is not publicly available and needs consistent supervision. Credit Risk Credit risk assessment is key component in the process of commercial lending. Without it the lender would be unable to make an objective judgement of weather to lend to the prospective borrower, or if how much charge for the loan. Credit risk management can be classified into two basic groups: Credit scoring/credit rating: Assignment of a customer or a product to risk level. (i.e., credit approval) Behaviour scoring/credit rating migration analysis. Valuation of a customer‘s or product’s probability of a change in risk level within a given time. (i.e., default rate volatility) In commercial lending, risk assessment is usually an attempt to quantify the risk of loss to the lender when making a particular lending decision. Here credit risk can quantify by the changes of value of a credit product or of a whole credit customer portfolio, which is based on change in the instrument’s ranting, the default probability, and recovery rate of the instrument in case of default. Further diversification effects influence the result on a portfolio level. Thus a major part of implementation and care of credit risk management system will be a typical data mining problem: the modelling of the credit instrument’s value through the default probabilities, rating migrations, and recovery rates. Three major approaches exist to model credit risk on the transaction level: accounting analytic approaches, statistical prediction and option theoretic approaches. Since large amount of information about client exist in financial business, an adequate way to build such models is to use their own database and data mining techniques, fitting models to the business needs and the business current credit portfolio. Portfolio Management Risk measurement approaches on an aggregated portfolio level quantify the risk of a set of instrument or customer including diversification effects. On the other hand, forecasting models give an induction of the expected return or price of a financial instrument. Both make it possible to manage firm wide portfolio actively in a risk/return efficient manner. The application of modern risk theory is therefore within portfolio theory, an important part of portfolio management. With the data mining and optimization techniques investors are able to allocate capital across trading activities to maximise profit or minimise risk. This feature supports the ability to generate trade recommendations and portfolio structuring from user supplied profit and risk requirement. With data mining techniques it is possible to provide extensive scenario analysis capabilities concerning expected asset prices or returns and the risk involved. With this functionality, what if simulations of varying market c onditions e.g. interest rate and exchange rate changes) cab be run to assess impact on the value and/or risk associated with portfolio, business unit counterparty, or trading desk. Various scenario results can be regarded by considering actual market conditions. Profit and loss analyses allow users to access an asset class, region, counterparty, or custom sub portfolio can be benchmarked against common international benchmarks. Trading For the last few years a major topic of research has been the building of quantitative trading tools using data mining methods based on past data as  input to predict short-term movements of important currencies, interest rates, or equities. The goal of this technique is to spot times when markets are cheap or expensive by identifying the factor that are important in determining market returns. The trading system examines the relationship between relevant information and piece of financial assets, and gives you buy or sell recommendations when they suspect an under or overvaluation. Thus, even if some traders find the data mining approach too mechanical or too risky to be used systematically, they may want to use it selectively as further opinion. Trading is based on the idea of predicting short term movements in the price/value of a product (currency/equity/interest rate etc.). With a reasonable guesstimate in place one may trade the product if he/she thinks it is going to be over valued or undervalued in the coming future. Trading traditionally is done based on the instinct of the trader. If he/she thinks the product is not priced properly he/she may sell/buy it. This instinct is usually based on past experience and some analysis based on market conditions. However, the number of factors that even the most expert of traders can account for are limited. Hence, quite often these predictions fail. The price of a financial asset is influenced by a variety of factors which can be broadly classified as economic, political and market factors. Participants in a market observe the relation between these factors and the price of an asset, account for the current value of these factors and predict the future values to finally arrive at the future value of the asset and trade accordingly. Quite often by the time a trained eye detects these favourable factors, many others may have discovered the opportunity, decreasing the possible revenues otherwise. Also these factors in turn may be related to several other factors making prediction difficult. Data mining techniques are used to discover hidden knowledge, unknown patterns and new rules from large data sets, which may be useful for a variety of decision making activity. With the increasing economic globalization and improvements in information technology, large amounts of financial data are being generated and stored. subjected to data mining techniques to discover hidden patterns and obtain predictions for trends in the future and the behaviour of the financial markets. With the immediacy offered by data mining, latest data can be mined to obtain crucial information at the earliest. This in turn would result in an improved market place  responsiveness and awareness leading to reduced costs and increased revenue. Advancements made in technology have enabled to create faster and better prediction systems. These systems are based on a combination of data mining techniques and artificial intelligence methods like Case Based Reasoning (CBR) and Neural Networks (NN). A combination of such a forecasting system together with a good trading strategy offers tremendous opportunities for massive returns. The value of a financial asset is dependent on both ma croeconomic and microeconomic variables and this data is available in a variety of disparate formats. NN and CBR techniques can be applied extensively for predicting these financial variables. NN are characterized by learning capabilities and the ability to improve performance over time. Also NN can generalize i.e. recognize new objects which may be similar but not exactly identical to previous objects. NN with their ability to derive meaning from imprecise data can be used to detect patterns which are otherwise too complex to be detected by humans. NN act as experts in the area that they have been trained to work in. these can be used to provide predictions for new situations and work in real time. Thus, historic data available about financial markets and the various variables can be used to train NN to simulate the market. CBR methodology is based on reasoning from past performances. It uses a large repository of data stored as cases which would include all the market variables in this case. When a new case is fed in (in the form of a case containing the concerned variables), the CBR algorithm predicts the performance/result of this case based on the cases it has in its repository. Data mining techniques can be used to detect hidden patterns in these cases which may then be used for further decision making. CBR methods can be used in real time which makes analysis really quick and helps in real time decision making resulting in immediate profits. Thus data mining and business intelligence (CBR and NN) techniques may be used in conjunction in financial markets to predict market behaviour and obtain patterned behaviour to influence decision making. †¢ Customer Profiling and Customer Relationship Management Banks have many and huge databases containing transactional and other details of its customers. Valuable business information can be extracted from these data stores. But it is unfeasible to support analysis and decision making using traditional query languages; because human analysis breaks down with volume and dimensionality. Traditional statistical methods do not have the capacity and scale to analyse these data, and hence modern data mining methodologies and tools are increasingly being used for decision making process not only in banking and financial institutions, but across the industries. Customer profiling is a data mining process that builds customer profiles of different groups from the company’s existing customer database. The information obtained from this process can be used for different purposes, such as understanding business performance, making new marketing initiatives, market segmentation, risk analysis and revising company customer policies. The advantage of data mining is that it can handle large amounts of data and learn inherent structures and patterns in data. It can generate rules and models that are useful in enabling decisions that can be applied to future cases. Customer Behaviour Modeling (CBM) or customer profiling is a tool to predict the future value of an individual and the risk category to which he belongs to based on his demographic characteristics, life-style and previous behaviour. This helps to focus on customer retention. The two important facts that have important implication in selecting customer profiling methods are: – Profiling information can consist of many variables (or dozens of them). – Majority of them are categorical variables (or non-numeric variables or nominal variables). Customer profiling is to characterize features of special customer groups. Many data mining techniques search profiles of special customer groups systematically using Artificial Intelligence techniques. They generate accurate profiles based on beam search and incremental learning techniques. Customer profiling also uses many predictive modeling methods. Predictive modelling techniques applicable can be categorized into two broad approaches. They depend on the type of predicted information or variables, also called target variables. If the type of predicted values is categorical, classification techniques is preferred to be used. Classification Methods: In this approach, risk levels are organized into two categories based on past default history. For example, customers with past default history can be  classified into â€Å"risky† group, whereas the rest are placed as â€Å"safe† group. Using this categorization information as target of prediction, Decision Tree and Rule Induction techniques can be used to build models that can predict default risk levels of new loan applications. Value Prediction Methods: In this method, for example, instead of classifying new loan applications, it attempts to predict expected default amounts for new loan applications. The predicted values are numeric and thus it requires modelling techniques that can take numerical data as target (or predicted) variables. Neural Network and regression are used for this purpose. The most common data mining methods used for customer profiling are: – Clustering (descriptive) – Classification (predictive) and regression (predictive) – Association rule discovery (descriptive) and sequential pattern discovery (predictive) In CRM, data mining is frequently used to assign a score to a particular customer or prospect indicating the likelihood that the individual will behave in a particular way. For example, a score could measure the propensity to respond to a particular insurance or credit card offer or to switch to a competitor’s product. Data mining can be useful in all the three phases of a customer relationship-cycle: customer acquisition, increasing value of the customer and customer retention. For example, a typical banking firm let say sends 1 million direct mails for credit card customer acquisition. Past researches have shown that typically 6% of such target customers respond to these direct mails. Banks use their credit risk models to classify these respondents in good credit risk and bad credit risk classes. The proportion of good credit risk respondents is only 16% out of the total respondents. So, as net result, roughly only 1% of the total targeted customers are converted into the cr edit card customers through direct mailing. Seeing the huge cost and effort involved in such marketing process, data mining techniques can significantly improve the customer conversion rate by more focused marketing. Using a predictive test model using decision tree techniques like CHAID (Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection), CART (Classification And Regression Trees), Quest and C5.0; it can be analyzed which customers are more probable to respond. And using this with the risk model using techniques like neural network can help build a test model. The way data mining can actually be built into the CRM application is determined by the nature of customer interaction. The customer interaction could be inbound (when the customer contacts the firm) or outbound (when the firm contacts customers). The deployment requirements are quite different. Outbound interactions such as direct â€Å"Building Profitable Customer Relations with Data Mining†, Herb Edelstein mail campaign involve the firm selecting the people whom to be mailed by applying the test model to the customer database. In other outbound campaigns like advertising, the profile of good prospects shown by the test model needs to be matched to the profile of the people the advertisement would reach. For inbound transactions such as telephone or internet order, the application must respond in real time. Therefore the data mining model is embedded in the application and actively recommends an action. In either case, one of the key issues in applying a model to new data set is the transformations that are made in building the model. The ease with which these changes are embedded in the model determines the productivity of deploying these tools. †¢ Marketing and customer care Because high competitions in the finance industry, intelligent business decisions in marketing are more important than ever for better customer targeting, acquisition, retention and customer relationship. There is a need for customer care and marketing strategies to be in place for the success and survival of the business. It is possible with the help of data mining and predictive analytics to make such strategies. Financial institutions are finding it more difficult to locate new previously unsolicited buyers, and as a result they are implementing aggressive marketing program to acquire new customer from their competitors. The uncertainties of the buyer make planning of new services and media usage almost impossible. The classical solution is to apply subjective human expert knowledge as rules of thumb. Until recently, replacing the human expert by computer technology has been difficult. An interesting tool available in marketing and financial institution is analysis of client’s data. This allows analysis and calculation of key indicators that help bank to identify factors that affected customer’s demand in the past and customer’ need in the future. Information about the customer’s personal data can also give indications that affect future demand. In case of analysis of retail debtors and small corporations, marketing tasks will typically include factors about the customer himself, his credit record and rating made by external rating agencies. With the advent of data mining and business intelligence tools it has become possible for banks to strengthen their customer acquisition by direct marketing and establish multi- channel contacts, to improve customer development by cross selling and up selling of products, and to increase customer retention by behaviour management. It is possible for the banks to use the data available to retain its best customers and to identify opportunities to sell them additional services. The profiling of all the valuable accounts can be done and the top most say 5-10 % can be assigned to Relationship Managers, whose job will be to identify new selling opportunities with these customers. It is also possible to bundle various offers to meet the need of the valued customers. Data mining can also help the banks in customizing the various promotional offers. For example the direct mails can be customized as per the segment of the account holders in the bank. It is also possible for the banks to find out thepr oblem customers who can be defaulters in the future, from their past payment records and the profile and the data patterns that are available. This can also help the banks in adjusting the relationship with these customers so that the loss in future is kept to its minimum. Data mining can improve the response rates in the direct mail campaigns as the time required to classify the customers will be reduced, this in turn will increase the revenues, improve the sales force efficiency from the target group. Data mining helps the banks to optimize their portfolio of services, delivery channels. A record of past transactions can give useful insight to the bank and different locations /branches of same branch can also follow some patterns that when noticed can be used as past records to learn from and base the future actions upon. Data Mining techniques can be of immense help to the banks and financial institutions in this arena for better targeting and acquiring new customers, fraud detection in real time, providing segment based products for better targeting the customers, analysis of the customers’ purchase patterns over time for better retention and relationship, detection of emerging trends to take proactive stance in a highly competitive market adding a lot more value to existing products and services and launching of new product and service bundles. Reference:

The Disadvantages of Smoking in Facilities

The Disadvantages of Smoking in Facilities A decade ago, it wasn’t unusual to see people smoking in public buildings. It seemed that everywhere people went there were countless chain-smokers lighting up cigarettes in public facilities where the smoke consumed anything in its path. Presently, there has been a policy around the nation that has canceled out the bad habit of smoking in public buildings’. This has removed the common issue of an untidy, reeking fire hazard waiting to happen.I couldn’t be happier with the idea of walking into a room and not dealing with the sight of ashtrays piled in every corner, and the walls drenched in brown tar. As a child I remember flinching at the thought of going out to dinner with my family and being seated in the smoking section if the smoke free section was full. I hated sitting down after someone who just finished smoking in the area where I wanted to enjoy my meal. Most times I would wait for my family to finish dinner so I could take my meal home.The inconvenience had me irritated when all I wanted was a stress free night out. But, the appearance of a public place was the least of my problems. From what I can remember, the dreadful part about being a non-smoker in a smoking environment was being trapped in the stench. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to get away from cigarette smoke the odor would follow. In my opinion, the smell of cigarettes comes close in comparison of spoiled eggs left out in the sun. Which caused my eye’s to water and my stomach to become upset.Imagine that smell leaking onto your clothes and having to wear it around for the rest of the day. I never understood why someone wanted to inhaled something that smelled so horrible, and have non-smokers around them to suffer at their caught? Not only is the smell of cigarettes harmful and disgusting to nonsmokers. Allowing people to smoke inside buildings is unsafe. I’ve even witnessed a cigarette to start burning 72 hours after being put out. If someone isn’t careful they can leave a cigarette to re-burn in an astray and cause a fire.I personally don’t want to be put in a situation where my life is in someone else’s hands. It’s scary to think that something as small as a cigarette can burn down a whole forest. Whether someone smokes or not, a policy causing public buildings to become smoke free is a good idea. Smokers might not be able to enjoy a cigarette while inside a public facility, but it wouldn’t limit them from smoking at all instead of doing it in someone else’s expense. It also eliminates the negative feedback that non-smokers would have concerning their health or safety. The Disadvantages of Smoking in Facilities The Disadvantages of Smoking in Facilities A decade ago, it wasn’t unusual to see people smoking in public buildings. It seemed that everywhere people went there were countless chain-smokers lighting up cigarettes in public facilities where the smoke consumed anything in its path. Presently, there has been a policy around the nation that has canceled out the bad habit of smoking in public buildings’. This has removed the common issue of an untidy, reeking fire hazard waiting to happen.I couldn’t be happier with the idea of walking into a room and not dealing with the sight of ashtrays piled in every corner, and the walls drenched in brown tar. As a child I remember flinching at the thought of going out to dinner with my family and being seated in the smoking section if the smoke free section was full. I hated sitting down after someone who just finished smoking in the area where I wanted to enjoy my meal. Most times I would wait for my family to finish dinner so I could take my meal home.The inconvenience had me irritated when all I wanted was a stress free night out. But, the appearance of a public place was the least of my problems. From what I can remember, the dreadful part about being a non-smoker in a smoking environment was being trapped in the stench. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to get away from cigarette smoke the odor would follow. In my opinion, the smell of cigarettes comes close in comparison of spoiled eggs left out in the sun. Which caused my eye’s to water and my stomach to become upset.Imagine that smell leaking onto your clothes and having to wear it around for the rest of the day. I never understood why someone wanted to inhaled something that smelled so horrible, and have non-smokers around them to suffer at their caught? Not only is the smell of cigarettes harmful and disgusting to nonsmokers. Allowing people to smoke inside buildings is unsafe. I’ve even witnessed a cigarette to start burning 72 hours after being put out. If someone isn’t careful they can leave a cigarette to re-burn in an astray and cause a fire.I personally don’t want to be put in a situation where my life is in someone else’s hands. It’s scary to think that something as small as a cigarette can burn down a whole forest. Whether someone smokes or not, a policy causing public buildings to become smoke free is a good idea. Smokers might not be able to enjoy a cigarette while inside a public facility, but it wouldn’t limit them from smoking at all instead of doing it in someone else’s expense. It also eliminates the negative feedback that non-smokers would have concerning their health or safety.

Changing of America and humanity’s responsibility to society

The challenges of the twenty-first century, whether economic or environmental, cultural or biological will require new methods of thinking and behaving at both the individual and social levels. There must be an emphasis on changing the perceptions, particularly in twenty-first century America, which many people have about the nature of personal responsibility and personal empowerment. While it seems obvious enough to say, as Barack Obama asserts that new generations of Americans are â€Å"waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised† (Obama, 42) the ramifications of such a politics of maturity and realism extend to many important areas of American society including economics, technology, and philosophy adn religion. What is necessary for America to meet the challenges of the future is a social cultural acceptance of the fact that responsibility, and not merely the pursuit of self-interests, is a path to personal empowerment. This last statement may seem contradictory to many Americans. A great number of people view themselves in purely materialistic terms and want what they can get out of society without taking any personal responsibility for the consequences. For some people, life holds no meaning outside of its material dimension and this loss of meaning in American culture has consequences beyond the immediately personal: The loss of meaning[†¦ ] is a product of modern thought. From Marx and Freud to neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, western thought has systematically undermined responsibility. We have no choice, we are constantly told, because of economic forces, our unconscious, or our genes. Yet, at the same time, we live in a world that presents us with endless choices. (Sardar) As strange as it sounds, the only way to break the cycle of endless anxiety over our limitless freedom is by accepting responsibility for the choices we make. This is a kind of paradox in American society, â€Å"We want to have it both ways, and so we end up confused and cynical. Our obsession with individuality and self-interest further erodes personal and collective responsibility† (Sardar) which means, the less one begins to value their own existence the less responsibility they will feel for their actions. To accept responsibility is, in itself, to accept that life is meaningful and to accept that life in meaningful is an act of self-empowerment. we must learn to understand that â€Å"Freedom is both a gift and a challenge. It has value only when we respect it and enhance it individually and collectively. And when we exercise it with responsibility. † (Sardar). In this way, a change in the basic philosophical vision present in American culture may help us to begin to make inroads against the challenges which face us in the new world. As Barack Obama points out, economics in the twenty-first century no longer function along the same models they had embodied for years. He writes that â€Å"In this more competitive global environment, the old corporate formula of steady profits and stodgy management no longer worked† (Obama, 156). What Obama is driving at with this statement can be considered an aspect of â€Å"humanizing† economics, a must-needed step for America in the twenty-first century. By accepting responsibility for our actions we will understand the connections between the injustices and disparities in society and the damages which have been inflicted upon the environment. Though some of our challenges may be economic and some may be based in moral and ethical issues, the unifying factor is always: human responsibility. We begin to understand ourselves much more clearly and understand our challenges more clearly when we admit that we live in a world which â€Å"desperately needs fixing and in which denial is seductively easy and cheap, at least for a time. We must acknowledge and seek to understand the connection between poverty, social injustice, and environmental degradation. † (Orr 89) Barack Obama's insistence that the new economics has paved a way clear of the old economics which stressed only self-interests and profits is a key to understanding the kind of view of business and corporate responsibility which will have to be embraced in American society as we move forward to accept our responsibilities and meet the challenges of the future. Instead of viewing purely money and material growth as the only forms of â€Å"profit† in business, corporations of the future will begin to realize that â€Å"business behavior and government policy toward business requires, more than ever, an appreciation of the firm’s human dimensions, the dimensions left out of the neoclassical theory† (Tomer 1). The future corporation will accept responsibility for its actions and view itself as shaped by not only â€Å"market forces but by societal ones† (Tomer 19) and in so recognizing other forms of â€Å"success† and â€Å"profit† namely, the maintaining of ethical and environmental standards which contribute to the overall growth and well-being of humanity may over-ride present-day obsession with self-interest and materialistic profit. If Barack Obama's writings in â€Å"The Audacity of Hope† are any real indication of the politician of the future — or the President of the future — it si clear that America still has the capacity to grown adn recognize leaders who can summon a bold-enough vision as well as present workable solutions to meet the challenges we have at least partially created for ourselves.