Contract and Demand

This is a case of a sales firm which operates for 203 days in a year. Each day the firm operates, it generates revenue (profit) of Rs. 10 Lac. At the beginning of the year, the employees’ union confronts the management of the sales firm over wages and the union presents its demand. The management either accepts this, or rejects it and returns the next day with a counteroffer for wage to be paid to the employees. The firm can open and start functioning only after an agreement on wage is reached between the management and the union.As per the prevailing law in the state and the industry, it is the union’s turn to present its demand on the first day/round of negotiation. At this point the management may either accept or reject the demand made by the union and wait till the next (second day of the year) day to come with its offer. Where again the union has the choice to either accept or reject the offer made by the management and go on to the next (third day of the year) da y to make their demand to management. The rounds of negotiation may go on and on till the last day unless an agreement is reached between the parties over wage. x 5 = 20 (Please indicate the demand and offer in Rupee value and indicate the pay off for both union and management as [a, b] where a = union’s pay off and b = management’s pay off) a. What would be the union’s wage demand on the 1st day/round of wage negotiation between management and union, and in case management accepts it what would be the management’s pay off from such negotiation? b. Who would make an offer or place a demand on the 4th day/round of wage negotiation? What would be the offer / demand? What would be the pay off of each party (union and management) in case the offer / demand made is accepted by the other party? . Who would make an offer or place a demand on the 200th day/round of wage negotiation? What would be the offer / demand? What would be the pay off of each party (union and management) in case the offer / demand made is accepted by the other party? d. Who would make an offer or place a demand on the 203rd day/round of wage negotiation? What would be the offer / demand? What would be the pay off of each party (union and management) in case the offer / demand made is accepted by the other party? Name- SID- SMS ID- Centre Name-

Qrb/501 – Week 3 – Forecasting with Indices

Week 3 – Forecasting with Indices QRB/501 Week 3 – Forecasting with Indices The individual assignment for this week tasked the students to select one organization from either our week two assignment or the University material. This paper will show the data in an index using the time series data to forecast inventory for the next year. The Winter Historical Inventory Data from the (University of Phoenix, 2010) shows four years of actual demand of inventory data for the seasonal Winter Highs. Each year is divided into 12 month increments.Methods This breakdown of data allows for quantitative analysis. This approach is objective in nature compared to qualitative analysis which is developed using the judgment of experts. Results The data was plotted and graphed into a chart to show the trend. Based on the chart the index has shown an increase from year to year during December but the other winter months do not show a clear trend. University of Phoenix Material Winter Histor ical Inventory Data | Typical Seasonal Demand for Winter Highs| | | | | | | | | Actual Demands (in units)| | | | | | | | | Month| Year 1| Year 2| Year 3| Year 4| Forecast| 1| 55,200| 39,800| 32,180| 62,300| 47,370| 2| 57,350| 64,100| 38,600| 66,500| 56,638| 3| 15,400| 47,600| 25,020| 31,400| 29,855| 4| 27,700| 43,050| 51,300| 36,500| 39,638| 5| 21,400| 39,300| 31,790| 16,800| 27,323| 6| 17,100| 10,300| 31,100| 18,900| 19,350| 7| 18,000| 45,100| 59,800| 35,500| 39,600| 8| 19,800| 46,530| 30,740| 51,250| 37,080| 9| 15,700| 22,100| 47,800| 34,400| 30,000| 10| 53,600| 41,350| 73,890| 68,000| 59,210| 1| 83,200| 46,000| 60,200| 68,100| 64,375| 12| 72,900| 41,800| 55,200| 61,100| 57,750| Avg. | 38,113| 40,586| 44,802| 45,896| 42,349| Conclusion This inventory provides good information to suggest that forecasting December will show an increase but the other winter months are not clear. My recommendation would be to would be to increase the inventory for December but hold the inventory for t he other two winter months at an average level. This would allow for the businesses minimal risk of inventory shortage and overage based on the data.

American Dream Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

American Dream - Essay Example According to the author, thought of achieving a prosperous and rich life by sticking on the phenomenon of the American dream is inaccurate (Selby). The American dream is a psychological pressure on the lives of human being that leads the life of an individual to mass destruction and unpleasantness. The theory of American dream reflects the idea of only getting and demanding things in life which is insanity. People engage themselves in continuous efforts and hard work to satisfy their needs but at the end of the day when the demand is not fulfilled, it leads a person to dissatisfaction and discouragement. The lust of getting stuff and accumulating wealth is a nature of mankind. American dream gives rise to such unfavorable wishes that lead the society to more desperation and despair. It does not lead to the fulfillment of desire but creates a sense of envy among those who do not have the power and wealth. The concept of American Dream spread the sense of getting and demanding the stuff for themselves so that they can satisfy their needs and enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. In order to achieve such goals, people serve their entire life in working like a mad. Such people are of the opinion that the American dream can assist them in getting what they want (Laslett and Lipset). Unfortunately, such dreams lead the individual to agitation and self-destruction if they cannot meet their objective. It has also been observed that an individual not only risk their life in fulfilling this dream but also engage their loving ones with them. It shows how the American dream is building pressure on the lives of common citizens. Society is said to be ungrateful until they do not success in realizing their desire. The American dream is derailing people from their vision and putting their energy in collecting stuff that is inappropriate. A report in Times by David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy says that the middle class of Canadians

ASSIGNMENT - List relevant regulations for information security in an

- List relevant regulations for information security in an industry segment of your choice. Healthcare (HIPPA) - Assignment Example Innovation can generally be defined as changing or creating more effective and efficient processes, products and ideas that increase the likelihood of business succeeding. For the business, innovation could mean implementing new ideas, creation of more dynamic products and improving the already existing products. Businesses that employ technology create more effective and efficient work processes and have better performance and productivity (Brotby, 2009). Technology can catalyze the growth and success of the business and enable the adaptation of business in the marketplace. For a business to compete strongly in the market, the ability to come up with new strategies, products or even services play an important role in ensuring that the business forge onwards. This creativity is usually deemed to produce products of higher quality, smarter and more enticing to the clients (Cuff, 2014). In this study, however, we discuss the impact of technology as far as regulation for information security is concerned. In the healthcare security, technology has an undisputable crucial role to play, otherwise known as the Electronic protected health information (ePHI). However, ePHI is run by the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which specifically focuses on safeguarding it (Khansa, Cook, James & Bruyaka, 2012). All the entities covered by the HIPAA, which includes a number of federal agencies must comply with the security regulation; which primarily deals with the safeguarding of the confidentially, integrity and the presence of ePHI as outlined in the security rule or regulation. Some of the regulations covered by the HIPAA for information security are outlined below (Khansa, Cook, James & Bruyaka, 2012). The first one is the security standards or the general rules. This is an explanation of all the requirements

What is the connection between transgendered individuals and masculine Thesis

What is the connection between transgendered individuals and masculine violence - Thesis Example The story explores how the trans-gendered’s inability to identify his sex and sexual orientation invites the masculine violence, where the trans-gendered has to undergo severe butchery, physical assault, abdication, mental torture, agony and finally murder at the hands of the cruel and vindictive killers. The film reveals how males turn aggressive and violent towards the trans-gendered because of their attempt to declare them as males and developing relationships with females. Since the trans-gendered individuals attempt to deceit the girls, the males justify their nefarious act of raping and battering them in order to bring them to terms as well as for saving the females to go into the hands of the trans-gendered. The same is applied to the film under analysis. It has aptly been observed that humans undergo some unpleasant incidents in their childhood, which turn them psychologically disturbed ones for the rest of their life. It is particularly the case with child rape and domestic violence, which leave indelible horrible impact on the innocent minds of the children. The same is applied to the purported trans-gendered Brandon Tina, who was excessively raped by his obnoxious uncle for many years during his childhood, which created feelings of fear and hatred for the male stratum of society. The same happened because of the posthumous death of his father, which made the entire family insecure and unsafe amongst the wolves-like relatives and neighbors. Since the wretched uncle’s continuous raping developed disliking for the male stratum at large in the heart of the poor Brandon, she consequently started taking interest in females, and mistakenly started considering him as belonging to the male gender. Thus, he developed friendship with males in his locality, and dated females without revealing his real sex and anatomy. His developing

Medicaid Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Medicaid - Essay Example These seven conditions didn’t apply to senior executive branch officials, members of Congress, members of the armed forces, or members of the judiciary. The complaint had to be sealed, served on the Government, not on the defendant, and be accompanied by a list of proof for the claim. However, amendments in 1986 significantly sharpened the focus to include protection for employees who filed claims, more compensation for whistleblowers, and more liability for those who were a part of the fraud process. There were even tighter restrictions added in 2009. Through this method, the government has been able to reclaim more than $22 billion from 1987 through 2008. There have been significant recoveries of tax money through the FCA with regards to selling unlicensed pharmaceuticals to Medicaid by big pharma companies. The burden for monitoring this rests with the individual states. In 2007, section 1909b of the Social Security Act requires the OIG (Office of Inspector General) to work with the Attorney General of the U.S. to meet certain requirements in an effort to eradicate Medicaid fraud; that State’s percentage of the Social Security funding depends on reporting and facilitating the location of fraud.

Indigenous Australians Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Indigenous Australians - Essay Example The constitution grants the rights to all citizens and it is designed to ensure that that equality and equity prevail among all citizens regardless of race disparities. However, it has been realised that the indigenous Australians have been sidelined in the country’s constitution on the basis of racial bias. As such, it has been realized that there is need to achieve full inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution. This can be done through removing the notions of racial bias towards the indigenous people while at the same time recognising their heritage, culture as well as language. On the other hand, it can be noted that Langton (2008) states that people are still disillusioned by the widely held perceptions they have about the aborigines who are often viewed as backward and primitive. In many people’s minds, the indigenous Australians are not equal to other people as a result of their backwardness. Constitutionally, the indigenous people have often been viewed as second class citizens while they are the original people in Australia. This view is also supported by Behrendt (2010) who argues that the constitutional gap between haves and have notes (Indigenous people) is wide hence concerted measures should be taken in order to bridge it. This is mainly as a result of inequality that was created when the Australian constitution was adopted. Poverty is high in reservations which are often home to indigenous people since they are structured in such a way that discourages investment. As noted by Kristof (2012), the level of poverty in reservations like the sprawling Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is high and this can be attributed to factors such as lack of education and alcohol abuse and dysfunctional families. This situation is also resembles the case of indigenous Australians, the aborigines who for a long period of time have been

Managing Creativity and Change Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Managing Creativity and Change - Essay Example The pyramid scheme structure looks reflects the organization of authority. The hierarchical organization structure is common in both the public and private sectors. In a typical private organization or public institution, departmental heads, as well as, unit managers report directly the general managers or the vice presidents, who in turn report to the president (Marlow, 2011). In small businesses, the layers are lesser than the layers in the large organizations. Although hierarchical organizational structures may be effective as far as managing thousands of employees is concerned, they have numerous weaknesses, which will result in them being less evident in the future. In today’s business world, the level of competition in every industry is growing rapidly. One of the key factors behind the ever-increasing competition is the fact that globalization is ever increasing. In other words, the ever-increasing interconnectedness has substantially contributed to the rapidly increasi ng competition. Companies are spreading their operations outside the local borders to take advantage of new markets. Another key reason why countries are going global is to take advantage of the hap labor especially in the emerging markets including China, India, and Brazil among other emerging economies. Firms that are taking advantage of the cheap labor in today’s competitive world are enhancing their competitiveness. Production using cheap labor translates into competitive prices for the goods and services. Therefore, for all the global organizations that have shifted some of their operations to some of the cheap labor economies are becoming more competitive. This is because they are able to supply their goods and services at competitive prices in both the local and international markets (Dutz, 2011). The global economy has significantly changed in many ways. Countries are more dependent on each other than ever before. The world has become a global village and an external effect on a single major economy or region has direct, as well as, indirect effect on the global economy. For example, a major economic outcome in the U.S. could positively or, negatively affect the whole world. This is because of the increased interconnectedness and dependence amongst nations. If there were an economic boom within the U.S., other countries including the small ones would benefit from the high demand of goods and services in the world’s largest economy. On the other hand, a recession in the world’s largest economy could adversely affect the rest of the world. For example, following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, the poor economic state in the U.S. affected the entire global economy (Ofd.ncsu.edu, 2013). The world’s economy is shifting from hierarchical organization structures to flat organization structures. The expectations amongst employees are different under the tall and the flat structures. For example, under the hierarchical structu res, employees feel that they have a job security. This is because of the fact that this type of organizational structure is present in large organizations, which have attained a higher level of stability. In these organizations, the level of innovation is lower, compared to organizations that embrace flat structures. This is because of the fact that the senior high-level management keeps a close eye to the employees. In other words, there is more

Strategic and Transport Planning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Strategic and Transport Planning - Essay Example Question one (A). The chief advantages/disadvantages of shifting more freight from road to rail. Modes of transportation are many in the United Kingdom. The movement of these goods include pipelines, truck, rail, water, and air. The progress of goods moved by way of a truck, per recent statistics; show very small increases. However, in contrast this same amount of freight moved by rail is comparable when one considers mathematically that when the amount multiplied the distance of this measurement is in ton-miles. Advantages Any thriving growing economy has to depend upon freight transportation. Freight lines are is a critical component of any economy. In the United Kingdom, it necessitates that the improved punctuality and reliability, tracked in rail services delivery was at least 85% in 2006. By 2010, that number increased substantially. The use of public transport (bus and light rail), has increased by more than 12% in England. When readers compared this with 2000, it maintains steady growth in every region (stalban.gov). Very impressive when readers can look at the reduction of the amount people killed or seriously injured in Great Britain on all road accidents. In a literal context, the numbers decreased by 40% and the number of children's death toll went down by 50%. These government statistics shows the UK has made large improvement to the death percentages and overall death tolls have decreased. This further shows a dramatic difference especially, in several of disadvantaged communities that, statistically by 2010 compared with the average deaths that reported in the past of 1994-98. The UK quietly has dropped many targets fixed in the 10-Year Transport Plan published in 2000: Found in (Future of Transport, 2030). †¢Source: the Future of Transport: a network for 2030 Disadvantageous Going by rail has several disadvantageous. However, when looking at the advantageous is seems almost insignificant. Rail has limited routes at times, is just does not stop everywhere. The routes and the timetable s seem to be a bit inflexible. It can be more expensive if the corporation has a large amount of freight to haul, and it can sometimes be unreliable. Question two (B). Using an example of a major rail freight facility describes the opportunities that may take up by industry. The UK shows this to be a monumental success story in rail freight in the transport sector over the last 15 years. An estimated ?one point five billion of investment is in rolling stock, terminals, and support facilities show growth of over 60% that the industry achieved. The industry’s reliability and punctuality in all business segments meets its customers’ requirements. A very high and improving percentage of inter-modal services in past arrivals were at their destinations on time (stalbans.gov). The company runs more than 5,000 freight trains a day throughout Europe and is the parent business of DB Schenker rail (UK) Ltd (DBSR). DBAG’s purchase of EWS was a strategic move to offer a netw ork of integrated rail services throughout Europe. DBSR announced the establishment of a new service for the temperature-controlled product collected from suppliers called Tesco goes through Spain, then transported by rail across France and through the Channel Tunnel to London. One train per day initially covers this service. This gives Tesco and other major UK retails significant potential for

IP 2 - Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

IP 2 - Art - Essay Example The sphinx was smashed into fragments by Hatshepsut’s successor and cousin, but it was later reassembled the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York, where it is on view in gallery 131. The Statuette of Eros depicts a winged Eros, wearing Herakles’ lion skin. The sculpture’s dimensions are 39.4 cm x 26.7cm x 16.5 cm. The sculptor used terracotta (clay-based ceramic) to produce this masterpiece back in the 1st Century B.C. The statuette belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. However, the Statuette of Eros is not on view. The sculpture is slightly in motion because Eros’s left hand is extended while his left hand is hidden behind his back. Ero’s posture shows that he is standing, but the arms show that there may be small movements. Ero’s wears a lion skin that covers him head to toe. There are traces of red on his chest, perhaps from the lion’s blood. Eros wear a circlet on his left thigh and a bracelet on his upper left arm. The sculpture captures the viewer because it portrays Eros as Herakles. The Statuette is chubby, beautiful (wings and ornaments), and seductive. Heracles of Mantinea or Heracles Combattant is a muscular representation of Heracles in action. The small structure is a representation of ancient Greek art and was sculpted between the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. The figure is made out of bronze and is 13 cm tall. The sculpture is located in the Room 22, Sully Wing of the Louvre Museum in Paris. However, the room is currently not open to the public. The small bronze represents a bearded man who appears to be taking a lunge with his left foot. Heracles’ right arm is raised behind his head (as if grabbing his mythical club), whereas his left arm is stretched forward (as if clasping something/someone). The aforementioned attributes, along with the powerful musculature, are a clear indication that the figure is a representation of the Greek legend

Understanding HealthCare Essay Example for Free

Understanding HealthCare Essay Hospitals and other health care institutions, whether voluntary or for-profit, need to be financially solvent to survive growing market pressures. In what ways has this â€Å"bottom line† focus changed the nature of the US health care system? The establishment of health services now depends almost entirely on its profitability. The predominant view of corporate-minded politicians at federal, state and municipal levels is that government does not belong in the health care business and should divest itself of its health care assets. To save themselves the hospitals must cut costs, merge in order to realize greater economies and capture markets and generally begin to function similar to other competitive business entities. The hospital, the final holdout in the total commodification of health care, must now drastically rewrite its traditional mission statement if it is to survive. If present tendencies continue, two developments are likely to occur. First, the hospital will become a thoroughgoing creature of the marketplace. The financial bottom line will displace the clinical base line, wherever it not already done so. Hospital mergers â€Å"downsizing† and â€Å"shrinkages† are likely to accelerate. Hospital staff will continue to be replaced by machines wherever it is economically and technically feasible. The ideal patient will be one who’s got lots of insurance coverage, but isn’t particularly sick. Second, those without insurance coverage will receive less medical care. As private hospitals tighten admissions policies to maximize reimbursements, the poor and uninsured will be caught in a double bind. The cash-strapped public system will close its clinics or restrict access, cut back on services, and be generally less capable of providing quality care. Discussion Week Two Although your textbook states that ambulatory care is the predominant mode of health care delivery in the United States (p. 121), the CDCs National Center for Health Statistics National Health Care Survey revealed a 32% increase in the number of emergency room visits between 1996 and 2006. What factors do you believe contribute to the increase in emergency room visits and what is the impact on health care costs? Support your answer. What good is having health insurance if you can’t find a doctor to see you ? The  Massachusetts Medical Society reported that the average wait time for a new patient looking for a primary care doctor ranged from 36 to 50 days, with almost half of internal medicine physicians closing their doors entirely too new patients. And when you consider that Massachusetts already has the highest concentration of doctors nationwide, wait times will likely be worse in other, less physician-abundant parts of the country, should universal coverage be enacted fe derally. When patients are forced to wait weeks to obtain medical care, they inevitably find their way into the emergency department for treatment that ordinarily can be handled in a doctor’s office. According to a report from the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, expanded coverage may have contributed to the rise in emergency room visits, as newly insured residents entered the health care system and could not find a primary care doctor or get a last-minute appointment with their physician. David Morales, commissioner of the division, said several national and statewide studies have shown that expanding insurance coverage does not reduce emergency room visits. I’m on record with supporting health reform, and expanding coverage. I simply don’t think it’s acceptable to have tens of millions of Americans without health insurance. But we have to be cognizant of the unintended consequences if primary care continues its disastrous decline. It will take significantly more than what’s included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to convince medical students to go into the field, and prevent current primary care doctors from leaving. And to those who say physician assistants and nurse practitioners are the answer, they’re not. First, there’s simply not enough of them to meet the demand, and second, the lucrative allure of specialty practice is also drawing mid-levels away from primary care. Unless drastic measures are taken soon, the emergency room will surely be the next domino to fall as more than 30 million newly insured patients are set to further strain our health system. Discussion Week Three Given the increasing longevity of Americans and the costs of providing long-term care, anticipation of the costs should be a major element of every family’s financial planning. Current information suggests however, that very few families or individuals give this consideration. What factors might impede this advance planning? What measures might be effective in raising  awareness among the Americans about this important matter?

MEMS Accelerometer Based Hand Gesture Recognition

MEMS Accelerometer Based Hand Gesture Recognition MEMS ACCELEROMETER BASED HAND GESTURE RECOGNITION Meenaakumari.M1, M.Muthulakshmi2 1Dept.of ECE, Sri Lakshmi Aammal Engineering College, Chennai, 2Asst.Prof, Dept.of ECE, Sri Lakshmi Aammal Engineering College, Chennai, Abstract This paper presents an MEMS accelerometer mostly based on gesture recognition algorithm and its applications. The hardware module consists of a triaxial mems accelerometer, microcontroller, and zigbee wireless transmission module for sensing and collecting accelerations of handwriting and hand gesture trajectories. Users will use this hardware module to write down digits, alphabets in digital kind by making four hand gestures. The accelerations of hand motions measured by the accelerometer are transmitted wirelessly to a personal computer for trajectory recognition. The trajectory algorithm composed of information assortment collection, signal preprocessing for reconstructing the trajectories to attenuate the cumulative errors caused by drift of sensors. So, by changing the position of MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems) we can able to show the alphabetical characters and numerical within the PC. Keywords MEMS accelerometer, gesture, handwritten recognition, trajectory algorithm. INTRODUCTION NOW A DAYS, the expansion of human machine interaction technologies in electronic circuits has been greatly reduced the dimension and weight of consumer electronics products such as smart phones and handheld computers, and therefore will increases our day to day convenience. Recently, an attractive alternative, a conveyable embedded device with inertial sensors, has been projected to sense the activities of human and to capture their motion trajectory information from accelerations for handwriting and recognizing gestures. The foremost necessary advantage of inertial sensors for general motion sensing is that they can be operated without any external reference and limitation in operating conditions. However, motion trajectory recognition is comparatively tough for different users since they have different speeds and styles to generate various motion trajectories. Thus, several researchers have tried to avoid the problem domain for increasing the  accuracy of handwriting recognition systems. During this work a miniature MEMS accelerometer based recognition systems which acknowledge four hand gestures in 3-D is constructed by using this four gestures, numerical and alphabets will be recognized in the digital format. MEMS are termed as micro electro mechanical system where mechanical parts like cantilevers or membranes have been manufactured at microelectronics circuits. It uses the technology known as micro-fabrication technology. It has holes, cavity, channels, cantilevers, membranes and additionally imitates mechanical parts. The emphasis on MEMS is based on silicon. The explanation that prompt that prompt the utilization of MEMS technology are for example miniaturization of existing devices, development of new devices based on principal that do not work at large scale and to interact with micro world. Miniaturization reduces cost by decreasing material consumption. It also increases applicability by reducing mass and size allowing placing the, MEMS in places where a traditional system. Instead of having a series of external components connected by wire or soldered to printed circuit board the MEMS on silicon can be integrated directly with the electronics. These are called smart integrated ME MS already include data acquisition, filtering, data storage, communication interfacing and networking. MEMS technology not only makes the things smaller but often makes them better. A typical example is brought by the accelerometer development. An accelerometer is a device that measures the physical acceleration. The physical parameters are temperature, pressure, force, light etc. it measures the weight per unit mass. By contrast, accelerometers in free fall or at rest in outer space will measure zero. Another term for the type of acceleration that accelerometers can measure is g-force. It works on the principle of displacement of a small proof mass etched into the silicon surface of the integrated circuit and suspended by small beams. RELATED WORK There are mainly two existing types of gesture recognition methods, i.e., vision-based and accelerometer and/or gyroscope based. Due to some limitations like ambient optical noise, slower dynamic response, and relatively large data collections/processing of vision-based method [1], our recognition system is implemented based on an inertial measurement unit based on MEMS acceleration sensors. If gyroscopes are used for inertial measurement [2] it causes heavy computational burden, thus our system is based on MEMS accelerometers only and gyroscopes are not implemented. Many researchers have focused on developing effective algorithms for error compensation of inertial sensors to improve the recognition accuracy. For few examples, Yang et al. [3] proposed a pen-type input device to track trajectories in 3-D space by using accelerometers and gyroscopes. An efficient acceleration error compensation algorithm based on zero velocity compensation was developed to decrease the acceleration err ors for acquiring accurate reconstructed trajectory. An extended Kalman filter with magnetometers (micro inertial measurement unit (ÃŽÂ ¼IMU) with magnetometers), proposed by Luo et al. [10], was employed to compensate the orientation of the proposed digital writing instrument. If the orientation of the instrument was estimated precisely, the motion trajectories of the instrument were reconstructed accurately. Dong et al. [4] proposed an optical tracking calibration method based on optical tracking system (OTS) to calibrate 3-D accelerations, angular velocities, and space attitude of handwriting motions. The OTS was developed for the following two goals: 1) to obtain accelerations of the proposed ubiquitous digital writing instrument (UDWI) by calibrating 2-D trajectories and 2) to obtain the accurate attitude angles by using the multiple camera calibration. However, in order to recognize or reconstruct motion trajectories accurately, the aforementioned approaches introduce other sensors such as gyroscopes or magnetometers to obtain precise orientation. This increases additional cost for motion trajectory recognition systems as well as computational burden of their algorithms. In this paper, a portable device has been developed with a trajectory recognition algorithm. The portable device consists of a triaxial accelerometer, a microprocessor, and an zigbee wireless transmission module. The acceleration signals measured from the triaxial accelerometer are transmitted to a computer via the zigbee wireless module. Users can utilize this portal device to write digits and make hand gestures at normal speed. The measured acceleration signals of these motions can be recognized by the trajectory recognition algorithm. The recognition procedure is composed of acceleration acquisition, signal preprocessing, feature generation, feature selection, and feature extraction. The acceleration signals of hand motions are measured by the portable device. The signal preprocessing procedure consists of calibration, a moving average filter, a high-pass filter, and normalization. First, the accelerations are calibrated to remove drift errors and offsets from the raw signals. The se two filters are applied to remove high frequency noise and gravitational acceleration from the raw data, respectively. The features of the preprocessed acceleration signals of each axis include mean, correlation among axes, interquartile range (IQR), mean absolute deviation (MAD), root mean square (rms), VAR, standard deviation (STD), and energy. Before classifying the hand motion trajectories, we perform the procedures of feature selection and extraction methods. In general, feature selection aims at selecting a subset of size m from an original set of d features (d > m). Therefore, the criterion of kernel-based class separability (KBCS) with best individual N (BIN) is to select significant features from the original features (i.e., to pick up some important features from d) and that of linear discriminate analysis (LDA) is to reduce the dimension of the feature space with a better recognition performance (i.e., to reduce the size of m). The objective of the feature selection an d featureextraction methods is not only to eradicate the burden of computational load but also to increase the accuracy of classification. The reduced features are used as the inputs of classifiers. The contributions of this paper include the following: 1) the development of a portable device with a trajectory recognition algorithm, i.e., with the hardware module , can give desired commands by hand motions to control electronics devices anywhere without space limitations, and 2) an effective trajectory recognition algorithm, i.e., the proposed algorithm can efficiently select significant features from the time and frequency domains of acceleration signals and project the feature space into a smaller feature dimension for motion recognition with high recognition accuracy. III.HARDWARE DESIGN OF  PORTABLE DEVICE The portable device consists of a triaxial accelerometer (MMA2240), a microcontroller (C8051F206 with a 12-b A/D converter), and a wireless transceiver (nRF2401, Nordic). The triaxial accelerometer measures the acceleration signals generated by a users hand motions. The microcontroller collects the analog acceleration signals and converts the signals to digital ones via the A/D converter. The wireless transceiver transmits the acceleration signals wirelessly to a personal computer (PC).The MMA2240 is a low-cost capacitive micro machined accelerometer with a temperature compensation function and a g-select function for a full-scale selection of +_}2 g to +_}6 gand is able to measure accelerations over the bandwidth of 0.5 kHz for all axes. The accelerometers sensitivity is set from à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬â„¢2 g to +2 g. The C8051F206 integrates a high-performance 12-b A/D converter and an optimized signal cycle 25-MHz 8-b microcontroller unit (MCU) (8051 instruction set compatible) on a signal chip. The output signals of the accelerometer are sampled at 100 Hz by the 12-b A/D converter. Then, all the data sensed by the accelerometer are transmitted wirelessly to a PC by an zigbee transceiver at 2.4-GHz transmission band with 1-Mb/s transmission rate. The overall power consumption of the digital pen circuit is 30 mA at 3.7 V. The block diagram of the portable device is shown in Fig. 1. MEMS PIC ACCELEROMTER MICROCON ZIGBEE TX TROLLER PC RS 232 ZIGBEE RX Fig.1. Block diagram of the portable device. IV. TRAJECTORY RECOGNITION ALGORITHM The proposed trajectory recognition algorithm consisting of acceleration acquisition, signal preprocessing, feature generation, feature selection, and feature extraction. In this paper, the motions for recognition include Arabic numerals alphabets. The acceleration signals of the hand motions are measured by a triaxial accelerometer and then preprocessed by filtering and normalization. Consequently, the features are extracted from the preprocessed data to represent the characteristics of different motion signals, and the feature selection process based on KBCS picks p features out of the original extracted features. To reduce the computational load and increase the recognition accuracy of the classifier, LDA is utilized to decrease the dimension of the selected features. The reduced feature vectors are then fed into a PNN classifier to recognize the motion to which the feature vector it belongs. A. Signal Preprocessing The microcontroller collects the acceleration signals of hand motions which are generated by the accelerometer. Due to slight tremble movement of hand certain amount of noise is generated. The signal preprocessing consists of calibration, a moving average filter, a high-pass filter, and normalization. First, the accelerations are calibrated to remove drift errors and offsets from the raw signals. The second step of the signal preprocessing is to use a moving average filter to reduce the high-frequency noise of the calibrated accelerations, and the filter is expressed as where x[t] is the input signal, y[t] is the output signal, and N is the number of points in the average filter. In this paper, we set N = 8. The decision of using an eight-point moving average filter is based on our empirical tests. Then, a high-pass filter is used to remove the gravitational acceleration from the filtered acceleration to obtain accelerations caused by hand movement. In general, the size of samples of each movement between fast and slow writers is different. Therefore, after filtering the data, we first segment each movement signal properly to extract the exact motion interval. Then, we normalize each segmented motion interval into equal sizes via interpolation. B. Feature Generation The characteristics of different hand movement signals can be obtained by extracting features from the preprocessed x-, Fig 2 Block diagram of the trajectory recognition algorithm. 5) Correlation among axes: The correlation among axes is computed as the ratio of the covariance to the product of the STD for each pair of axes. For example, the correlation (corrxy) between two variables x on x-axis and y on y-axis is defined as where E represents the expected value, à Ã†â€™x and à Ã†â€™x are STDs, and mx and my are the expected values of x and y, respectively. 6)MAD 7)rms Y-, and z-axis signals, and we extract eight features where xi is the acceleration instance and m is from the triaxial acceleration signals, including mean, the mean value of xi in (6) to (7). STD, VAR, IQR [6], correlation between axes [7], MAD, rms, and energy [8] . They are explicated as follows. 8) Energy: Energy is calculated as the sum of 1) Mean: The mean value of the acceleration the magnitudes of squared discrete fast signals of each hand motion is the dc Fourier transform (FFT) components of the component of the signal signal in a window. The equation is defined as where W is the length of each hand motion. 2) STD: STD is the square root of VAR where Fi is the ith FFT component of the window and |Fi| is the magnitude of Fi. C. Feature Selection Feature selection comprises a selection criterion. The KBCS can be computed as follows: Let (x, y) (Rd ÃÆ'- 3) VAR Y) represents a sample, where Rd denotes a d dimensional feature space, Y symbolizes the set of class labels, and the size of Y is the number of class c. This method projects the samples onto a kernel space, where xi is the acceleration instance and m is and m i is defined as the mean vector for the I th class in the kernel space, ni denotes the number of the mean value of xi in (3) and (4). samples in the ith class, m denotes the mean vector 4) IQR: When different classes have similar for all classes in the kernel space, S B denotes the between-class scatter matrix in the kernel space, and mean values, the interquartile range S/ Wdenotes the within-class scatter matrix in the represents the dispersion of the data and kernel space. Let (à £Ã†â€™Ã‚ ») be a possible nonlinear eliminates the influence of outliers in the mapping from the feature space Rd to a kernel space data. ÃŽÂ º and tr(A) represents the trace of a square matrixA. 1889 www.ijarcet.org ISSN: 2278 1323 International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering Technology (IJARCET) Volume 2, No 5, May 2013 The following two equations are used in the class separability measure: 1 2 3 4 The class separability in the kernel space can be measured as To maintain the numerical stability in the maximization of J à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ , the denominator tr(Sà ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ W ) has to be prevented from approaching zero. IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS In this section, the effectiveness of trajectory recognition algorithm is validated. A.Handwritten Digit Recognition The acceleration signals after the signal preprocessing procedure of the proposed trajectory recognition algorithm for the digit 0. The calibrated acceleration signals acquired from the accelerometer module are shown. With the preprocessed accelerations, alphabets and numerical features are generated by the feature generation procedure. Subsequently, the KBCS is adopted to choose characteristic features from the generated features. We choose digits 0 and 6 to illustrate the effectiveness of the KBCS, since their accelerations and handwritten trajectories are pretty similar and difficult to classify. The IQR features of these two digits are closely overlapped. Thus, the features are not effective for 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Fig. 4. Trajectories of four hand gestures. corrxy, meanz, energyx, energyy, and energyz selected by the KBCS. Finally, the dimension of the selected features was further reduced by the LDA not only to ease the burden of computational load but also to increase the accuracy of classification. Fig. 5.a Trajectories of alphabets Fig. 5.b. Trajectories of alphabets. Fig. 6. IQR features of (red star) digit 0 and (blue diamond) digit 6. Fig. 3. Generation of numerical 1890 www.ijarcet.org ISSN: 2278 1323 International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering Technology (IJARCET) Volume 2, No 5, May 2013 Fig. 6.a. Mean feature of (red star) digit 0 and digit (blue diamond) 6. Therefore, the total testing samples were 100 (10 ÃÆ'- 10 ÃÆ'- 1) for the testing procedure, and the total training samples were 900 (10 ÃÆ'- 10 ÃÆ'- 9) for the raining procedure. Because there are ten digits needed to be classified, the maximum of the dimension of the feature extraction by the LDA was nine. To see the performance variation caused by feature dimensions, we varied the dimensions of the LDA from one to nine. In Fig. 10, the best average recognition rate of Fig. 7. Average recognition rates versus the feature dimensions of the PNN classifier by using the LDA. Fig. 8. Average recognition rates versus the feature dimensions of the PNN classifier by using the KBCS. V. CONCLUSION The development of a portable device, is used to generate desired commands by hand motions to control electronic devices without space limitations. The time and frequency domains of acceleration signals of motion recognition, which has high recognition accuracy. The acceleration made by the hand gesture is measured by accelerometer are wirelessly transmitted to computer. In the experiments, we used 2-D handwriting digits, alphabets by using four hand gestures to validate the effectiveness of the proposed device and algorithm. The overall handwritten digit recognition rate was 98%, and the gesture recognition rate was also 98.75%. This result encourages us to further investigate the possibility of using our digital pen as an effective tool for HCI applications. In this project, an additional button can be used to allow users to indicate the starting point and ending point of motion. That is, the limitation of the proposed trajectory recognition algorithm is that it can only recognize a letter or a number finished with a single stroke. VI. FUTURE ENHANCEMENT The algorithms can be developed for letters or words with multistrokes which involve more challenging problems. REFERENCES S. Zhou, Q. Shan, F. Fei, W. J. Li, C. P. Kwong, and C. K. Wu et al.,Gesture recognition for interactive controllers using MEMS motion sensors, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Nano/Micro Engineered and MolecularSystems, Jan. 2009,pp. 935-940. S. Zhang, C. Yuan, and V. Zhang, Handwritten character recognition using orientation quantization based on 3-D accelerometer, presented at the 5th Annu. Int. Conf. Ubiquitous Systems, Jul. 25th, 2008. J. Yang, W. Chang, W. C. Bang, E. S. Choi, K. H.Kang, S. J. Cho, and D. Y. Kim, Analysis and compensation of errors in the input device based on inertial sensors, in Proc. IEEE Int. L. Wang, Feature selection with kernel class separability, IEEE Trans.Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., vol. 30, no. 9, pp. 1534-1546, Sep. 2008. Z. Dong, U. C. Wejinya, and W. J. Li, An optical-tracking calibration method for MEMS-based digital writing instrument, IEEE Sens. J.,vol. 10, no. 10, pp. 1543-1551, Oct. 2010. J. S.Wang, Y. L. Hsu, and J. N. Liu, An inertial-measurement-unit-based pen with a trajectory reconstruction algorithm and its applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 57, no. 10, pp. 3508-3521, Oct. 2010. S. Zhou, Z. Dong, W. J. Li, and C. P. Kwong, Hand-written character recognition using   MEMSmotionsensingtechnology,in Proc.IEEE/ASME Int. Conf. Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, 2008, pp.1418-1423. J. K. Oh, S. J. Cho, and W. C. Bang et al., Inertial sensor based recognition of 3-D character gestures with an ensemble of classifiers, presented at the 9th Int. Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, 2004. Conf. Inf.Technol.-Coding and Computing,2004, pp. 790-796. Y. Luo, C. C. Tsang, G. Zhang, Z. Dong, G. Shi, Y. Kwok, W. J. Li, P. H. W. Leong, and M. Y. Wong, An attitude compensation technique for a MEMS motion sensor based digital writing instrument, in Proc.IEEE Int. Conf. Nano/Micro Eng. Mol. Syst., 2006, pp. 909-914. Z. Dong, G. Zhang, Y. Luo, C. C. Tsang, G. Shi, Y. Kwok, W. J. Li,P. H. W. Leong, and M. Y. Wong, A calibration method for MEMS inertial sensors based on optical tracking, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf.Nano/Micro Eng. Mol. Syst., 2007, pp.542-547. S. J. Preece, J. Y. Goulermas, L. P. J. Kenney, and D. Howard, A comparison of feature extraction methods for the classification of dynamic activities from accelerometer data, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. 56,no. 3, pp.871-879, Mar. 2009. L. Bao and S. S. Intille, Activity recognition from user-annotated acceleration data, Pervasive, Lecture Notes in Computer Science,no. 3001,pp. 1-17, 2004. Y. P. Chen, J. Y. Yang, S. N. Liou, G. Y. Lee, and J. S. Wang, Online classifier construction algorithm for human activity detection using a triaxial accelerometer, Appl. Math. Comput., pp. 849-860, Nov. 2008. L. Wang, Feature selection with kernel class separability, IEEE Trans.Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., vol. 30, no. 9, pp. 1534-1546, Sep. 2008. Z. Dong, U. C. Wejinya, and W. J. Li, An optical-tracking calibration method for MEMS-based digital writing instrument, IEEE Sens. ,vol. 10, no. 10, pp. 1543-1551, Oct. 2010. J. S.Wang, Y. L. Hsu, and J. N. Liu, An inertial-measurement-unit-based pen with a trajectory reconstruction algorithm and its applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 57, no. 10, pp. 3508-3521, Oct. 2010. S. Zhou, Z. Dong, W. J. Li, and C. P. Kwong, Hand-written character recognition using MEMS motion sensing technology, in Proc.IEEE/ASME Int. Conf. Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, 2008, pp.1418-1423. J. K. Oh, S. J. Cho, and W. C. Bang et al., Inertial sensor based recognition of 3-D character gestures with an ensemble of classifiers, presented at the 9th Int. Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, 2004. A. H. F. Lam, W. J. Li, Y. Liu, and N. Xi, MIDS: Micro input devices system using MEMS sensors, presented at the IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf.Intelligent Robots an

The Great Gatsby: Analysis of Deception

The Great Gatsby: Analysis of Deception There are few American novels that are honest and captivating about human nature as Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby. At the center of the novel, we discover the deep, dark secret of mankind: deception. The people of East and West Egg use one another for their own benefits and have no concern of the affect their actions may have on the people around them. As Nick Carraway narrates, we get a look into the lives of the wealthy which is merely lavish society surrounded by a wall of lies and deception. Looking inside this wall, everything seems perfectly in place; however, their money cannot buy them happiness and this is the reason for each characters use of deception. There is deception everywhere in this novel and not even the married are saved from it. Daisy is beautiful, and travels, making her a known figure in many different circles; she also has a large bank account. Tom Buchanan, her husband, is very fortunate to be with her and should not do anything to risk this marriage; nevertheless, he is cheating on her with some one of a lesser social status. Myrtle Wilson, Toms mistress, lives with her husband in the middle of East and West Egg: â€Å"The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land; the third was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON† ( 29 ). It is terrible that Mr. Wilson does not even realize that his wife is carrying on an affair with another man. â€Å"She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye† (29). Daisy has a high reputation and in order to keep that reputation, she makes sure to do nothing that would embarrass her: â€Å"They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out absolutely perfect† (82). Tom has used Daisy for her social standing and her wealth; Tom would be cast out of the elite world if he left Daisy, making that option not even considerable. Deception is part of human nature, and, unfortunately, no on can escape from it. Even though Tom is using Daisy, Daisy also uses Tom, but for different reasons. Nick unveils the fact that Daisy does not need Tom anything except his ability to provide her with the emotional stability that she needs. It becomes clear throughout the course of the story that Daisy and Gatsby loved each other very deeply; however, when Gatsby went away to war, Daisy found and married Tom. Daisy had hidden her love for Gatsby from Tom and everyone who surrounded her; thus, when Gatsby returned to tell her that he loved her, she did not know how to react to the situation because she had been hiding her love for so long. Daisy then began to see Gatsby never telling Tom what she was doing. Jordan told Nick that on the night before Tom and Daisys marriage, â€Å"she [Daisy] was as drunk as a monkey. She had a letter. She began to cry—she cried and cried† (81). Daisy cried because she knew that she was not marrying Gatsby—her true love. Finally, five years later, Daisy breaks down and admits that she loves Gatsby but that she loved Tom as well. â€Å"Even alone I cant say that I never loved Tom† (140). Daisy used Tom as her support so that she would never feel lonely or neglected as she did when Gatsby left for the war. Mr. Jay Gatsby has also used others for his own personal gain. Over the time that Gatsby and Nick become friends, Gatsby tells of his love for Daisy. As Daisys cousin, Nick has the power to get both of them together. Gatsby sees this possibility and has Jordan call to set up a tea in hopes of just â€Å"running into† Daisy. Thus Jordan calls up and tells Nick that â€Å"‘He [Gatsby] wants to know if youll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over. He wants her to see his house and your house is right next door† (83-4). Gatsby is using Nick in order to see Daisy, and also Jordan to ensure that this meeting will occur. Also, Gatsby takes advantage of Nicks social status to progress his own dreams; â€Å"‘I dont want to do anything out of the way! he [Gatsby] kept saying. ‘I want to see her right next door.† This was Gatsbys plan—he wanted Daisy to see the difference between himself and Nick—Nick is poor whe reas Gatsby is wealthy and his large house looks even bigger next to Nicks smaller one. Gatsby uses Nick for Daisy, but Nick never realizes it. From Nick Carraways perspective, he tells of how the people of West and East egg exploit each others trust in hopes of receiving what they want. The people around Nick all wanted to attain some sort of feeling of happiness and were not concerned with who they might hurt in the process. The affluent recognized something that they wanted, so they used each other to get that satisfactory feeling, no concern with how temporary that happiness may be. Nicks narration reveals the degree the wealthy would go in order to receive what they desired. Nicks truthfulness and honest character throws a shadow upon the deception of the wealthy.

How to Care for Aging Parents Essay -- sandwich generation, taking care

As a parent, you probably think about how to raise happy, well-adjusted children. Many books, articles, and journals describe ways to fulfill your child’s every need and want†¦but what about your parents? How much time do you spend thinking about the happiness of your aging parents and how much information have you seen about caring for aging parents? Are you Part of the Sandwich Generation? Are you a parent caring for your child while also caring for your own parent? Merriam Webster defines "Sandwich Generation" as a generation of people who are caring for their aging parents while supporting their own children.[1] Just how common is it for adults to be â€Å"sandwiched† between aging their parents and their kids? Chances are many people you know are or will be caring for an aging parent at some point in their lives. By 2030, there will be more than 72 million people over the age of 65 in the United States.[2] In 2012, 47% of adults aged 40 to 50s have a parent over 65 and they are either raising a young child or providing financial support to an adult child. One-in-seven middle-aged adults are financially supporting an aging parent and a child. Are you also providing another type of support? You're probably not alone. If you are caring for a parent, you most likely feel a tremendous duty to take care of and help make decisions about your aging parents’ health, finances, day-to-day functioning, and overall well-being. You are taking on a huge responsibility that you probably never imagined you would have. According to the Pew research center, â€Å"Adults who are part of the sandwich generation-that is, those who have a living parent age 65 or older and are either raising a child under age 18 or supporting a grown child- are pulled in... ...ell as grief & loss counseling. Her work with diverse populations has allowed her to understand and connect with people of all walks of life, which earned her the title of Life Transitions Specialist ® by her colleagues and patients. As part of her commitment to her community, Francine lectures and provides workshops throughout Los Angeles County on aging, caregiving, and other topics of interest to various organizations and clinics. Francine has also contributed to online publications including SheKnows.com, ABCNews.com, Forbes Woman, Next Avenue, Fox News, and AgingCare.com. When not wearing her clinical hat, Francine spends her free time with her husband and children. Click the image below to visit Francine’s site, L. A. Talk Therapy for information about individual counseling and consultations for families who need help navigating their parent's aging process.

Violence :: essays research papers

Media Violence   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Psychological research has shown three major effects of seeing violence on television. The three major effects that many parents world wide fear are children may become More aggressive and behave in harmful or hazardous to others. Be less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, and children may be more fearful of the world around them. Violent programs on television lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch those programs. Children begin watching television at an early age, sometimes as early as six months, and are ardent viewers by the time they are two or three years old. The general pattern of viewing is one of the steady rise in the number of hours viewed from early childhood to preadolescence and then a sharp drop in viewing during the adolescent years. According to audience rating surveys, the typical American household has the television set on for more than seven hours each day, and children age 2 to 11 spend an average of 28 hours per week viewing. There is a growing concern in this country about teenage violence and how it is connected to the violence seen on the television. The impressionable youth of America somehow fall victim to spending many hours a day watching television and is exposed to violence. Studies show that the average child has witnessed eight thousand murders before they actually finished elementary school. Most of the shows that the younger generations watch contain some vi olence. Several years ago when Power Rangers was first Broadcasted, it had a great effect on the younger population concerning violence. Many children began trying to imitate these so called â€Å"Heroes.† Three out five children, eight-six percent males had a tendency to want to rough house with the other children and or had outbursts of violence. Of course, conditions in society, does not make it easy to pull a child away from the television. Parents work and most families cannot afford to have a parent stay home and watch the children. This situation is understandable and does not necessarily mean that parents do not care for their children. Parents regardless of the situation should try to be as involved as much as possible. Parents should take time out to speak to their children about certain programs they might come across while viewing the television. Parents should also view programs with their children so they can get a better understanding of what their children see when they turn on the television.

Gay and lesbians today :: essays research papers fc

Gay and lesbians today In was late July of 1999, five of my buddies and I had just graduated from high school and we were enjoying one of the greatest summers of our lives in Ocean City, Maryland. We were renting out what we thought was the best bachelor pad in all of O.C. on 139th street. Even friends of ours that we graduated with and had known for several years were living at the beach as well. Life was good. But two girls in particular that all of our friends knew from Paint Branch H.S. would, throughout the remainder of the summer, indirectly change and redefine the way in which most of us thought about homosexual relationships. Mel and Kel had always been close amongst our circle of friends and naturally know one ever suspected that either of them were outfitted for a lesbian lifestyle, at least not both of them. It was during that unforgettable summer that their other lifestyle would become vividly clear to the rest of us. The majority of us openly embraced their relationship and undoubtedly respected their audacity to endure the resentment and unacceptance that they may possibly confront one day. But, it was not until two years later that Mel and Kel would challenge their friends’ opinions again, only this time concerning a much more controversial issue. Apparently over the course of the two-year relationship that Mel and Kel had spent together, a commitment had developed between them that only few of us could possibly fathom. They were convinced that the unconditional devotion they shared was worthy of a unique union, and that this devotedness they shared would endure for a lifetime.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In a Utopian society most of us would rejoice in knowing that two people such as Mel and Kel who care so deeply for one another, have found each other and are willing to spend the rest of their lives together. Unfortunately we don’t live in a society of that quality and admiration. In any culture, it’s generally conceived that the family is the absolute core of a society. In that, the norms and values of a civilization are directly conveyed from one generation to another through this bloodline. But what exactly is a family? Are there distinct specifications, qualifications or even guidelines that govern the framework for what a family should be? In the Webster’s dictionary a â€Å"family† is clearly defined as: â€Å"the basic unit in society having as its nucleus two or more adults living together and cooperating in the care and rearing of their own or adopted children.

How major minerals differentiate from trace minerals

How are the major minerals differentiated from the hint minerals? What are 2 factors that can diminish bioavailability of a mineral? What are 3 maps of minerals in the organic structure? Minerals that we need to devour more than 100mg per twenty-four hours see as major mineral, minerals that we need to devour less than 100mg per twenty-four hours is considered as trace mineral ( Bryd-Bredbenner et al. 2009 ) . The bioavailability of a mineral is referred to a step of the proportion of the sum in a diet that is absorbed and utilized for normal organic structure map. The sum of mineral that is absorbed from the GI piece of land determines their bioavailability. However it is different between minerals. Bioavailability is affected by the interactions with other dietetic constituents in the GI piece of land. For illustration, vitamin C enhances iron soaking up but tannins suppress it. Besides, the looks of cellular transporters, which allow the mineworkers to be transported into blood stream from stomachic lms, besides affect the bioavailability. When there is less transported, intending the mineral will hold lower bioavailability ( Harvey, L 2001 ) . Minerals in our organic structure keep the H2O balance in our organic structure. The concentration of the minerals in and out of the cells drives the H2O in and out of the cells. When the concentration of Na is higher in the cell, the H2O will travel into the cell through osmosis. Besides, Na, K and Ca assistance in the transmittal of nervousnesss urges throughout the organic structure. In the absence of Ca, musculus contractions will ne'er happen. Some minerals like Mg, Cu and Se act as cofactors and enable enzymes to transport out chemical reactions ( Bryd-Bredbenner et al. 2009 ) . What are the chief maps of Na and how is extra Na eliminated from the organic structure? Intakes of salt in the Australian diet remain high ; explicate why there is a demand for Na at all in the diet. What are some schemes for diminishing Na in the diet? Excess Na is eliminated out of the organic structure by micturition. When the Na degree is high in our organic structure, we have higher blood force per unit area. This reduces the production of chymosin enzyme by kidney. Therefore, angiotensinogen is less produced, so angiotesin II is non form. Angiotesin II helps in the release of aldosterone by adrenal secretory organ. Since the permeableness of kidney tubule is controlled by the aldosterone, the kidney tubule is non permeable to sodium when the Na degree in blood is high. Therefore, the Na is so excreted together with H2O in the signifier of piss ( Campbell et al. 2009 ) . Sodium helps in the soaking up of glucose and some aminic acids in little bowel. Besides, it is of import in musculus contraction and presenting the nervus impulse through the nervus cells. Muscle contraction and nervus impulse conductivity is conducted by the shifting of both the K and Na ion across the nervus cell membrane. Sodium besides aids in H2O balance. Sodium is the chief solute in extracellular fluid. It regulates the ECF and plasma volume. When the sum of Na in organic structure additions, more H2O is retained in our organic structure until extra Na is excreted ( Bryd-Bredbenner et al. 2009 ) . There is a demand for Na at all in the diet because salt is of import in the agitation of nutrients. Fermentation preserves nutrients for due to the suppression of peculiar types of bugs. Salt inhibits the growing of spoilage bacteriums and Fungis that present in the nutrient. Salt besides helps to pull H2O and sugars out of works tissues during agitation of veggies which reduces O and prevents the growing of lactic acid bacteriums. Salt is besides used in the processing of merchandises such as sausages and restructured meats. The presence of salt solubilizes myofibrillar proteins that are indissoluble in H2O. It helps to pull out these salt-soluble proteins to the surface of the meat and lodge the little pieces of meat together during cookery ( National Center for Biotechnology Information 2010 ) . Schemes for diminishing Na in the diet are to cook the nutrient with small salt. Beside, nutrient can be prepared with sodium-free flavoring such as basil, bay foliages, curry, garlic and ginger. Last, ever choice low-salt merchandise or salt-free merchandises when available ( Rolfes, Pinna & A ; Whitney 2006 ) . Where is most K in the organic structure found? What are 2 serious upsets linked to low K consumptions? Why is hyperkalemia rare? Potassium is largely found in the cells of the organic structure and performs many of the same maps as Na. Low blood K is known as hypokalemia. It is a life endangering disease. Low K can besides do high blood force per unit area. Hyperkalemia is rare because even though the consumption of K is high, the extra K is readily excreted by kidney ( Bryd-Bredbenner et al. 2009 ) . What are the maps of Mg in the diet? Where is Mg in the organic structure found and what are the symptoms of Mg lack. Which groups are most likely to be magnesium deficient? Magnesium is of import in stabilising the ATP by adhering to the phosphate group of this molecule. Magnesium is needed by more than 300 enzymes that utilize ATP, including those required for energy metamorphosis, musculus contraction and protein synthesis. Magnesium is besides needed for Deoxyribonucleic acid and RNA synthesis. Its function in Ca metamorphosis contributes to cram construction to cram construction and mineralization. It is besides of import for nervus transmittal, bosom and smooth musculus contraction. It besides decreases blood force per unit area by distending the arterias, prevents bosom beat abnormalcies and protect against bilestone formation ( Bryd-Bredbenner et al. 2009 ) . Magnesium is chiefly stored in bone. Magnesium lack causes irregular pulse, sometimes accompanied by failing, musculus cramp, freak out, sickness, purging and ictuss. This is due to the damage of Na and K pumping ( Bryd-Bredbenner et al. 2009 ) . Magnesium lack most frequently occurs in people who have been fed intravenously for a long clip, whose diet does n't incorporate adequate Mg, or who are unable to absorb and egest the mineral decently ( Harvey 2001 ) . Describe the function of Ca in the patterned advance of osteoporosis, including in your drumhead an overview of Ca metamorphosis, demands in the lifecycle and Ca beginnings. Further discourse how make parathyroid endocrine and vitamin D regulate serum Ca? Osteoporosis is a disease caused by the low consumption of Ca. When Ca consumption is unequal, organic structure withdraws Ca s from the bone to maintain the indispensable map of Ca. For illustration, Ca is needed to maintain our musculus catching ( Bryd-Bredbenner et al. 2009 ) . Bone formation needs Ca and P and other minerals. As bone begins to organize, Ca salts and phosphorus signifier crystal, hydroapatite, and bind with the collagen fibres. As the crystal become denser ( mineralization ) , they give strength and rigidness to the maturating castanetss. Collagen protein allows the skeleton to absorb impact. When Ca degree in blood is low, parathyroid endocrine is released by parathyroid secretory organ. This endocrine associated with 1,25 ( OH ) 2 vitamin D stimulate the release of Ca from the bone into blood stream to increase the Ca degree in blood. Besides, the endocrine besides increases the consumption of Ca in bowel to increase blood Ca degree. Third, parathyroid secretory organ besides increases blood Ca in association with 1,25 ( OH ) 2 vitamin D to increase the kidneysaa‚Â ¬a„? resorption of Ca which eventually prevent the elimination of Ca. When blood Ca degree is high, the release of parathyroid endocrine falls. This causes the Ca elimination via the piss to increase. The synthesis of 1,25 ( OH ) 2 vitamin D besides decreases, doing bead in Ca soaking up. Besides, thyroid secretory organ secretes hormone calcitonin which prevents the Ca from loss from castanetss. The Ca degree in blood eventually back to norm al degree. Calciums are usually come from yoghurt, milk and cereal ( Bryd-Bredbenner et al. 2009 ) .

Green Building Technology Essay

1. Introduction Would there be a technology that can benefit nature and human beings at the same time? Conventional belief over the use of technology is that nature is sacrificed and used up for the sake of human beings. However, technology is not simply about efficiency anymore, and its associated grounds are expanding. Concern over environment is one of the most prominent ones, and ‘Green building technology’ falls under it. Green building technology aims to create environmentally responsible buildings or housings throughout its life span, while using the resources available efficiently. It involves the whole process of building certain structure, covering the processes of design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation and deconstruction (EPA). In short, it is construction technology that tries to optimize environmental sustainability and efficiency while not giving up the necessary qualities of living spaces. Idea of Green building arose as OPEC oil embargo occurred in year 1973 with an Initial goal of reducing its fossil fuel usage. This being a motive, further researches was done by different groups and green building came into housing trend (Marble Institute) After that, there had been increased attention and development of green building technology. People are more interested in looking for environmentally friendly housings and many governments are promoting it through different kinds of green construction standards. Yet, is this technology really giving us substantial benefit in our daily lives? What kind of benefits, in specific, is it providing? What would be the processes of achieving such impacts? Even though this technology does not have a long history, it is already causing changes in reducing energy and resource usages; economic and social benefits are in rise too. Green building has substantial positive effect in both environment and economy, with potential for better outcomes in the future. This can be supported by numerous facts and application of technology. Specific applications of controlling energy usage leads to outright reducing of resources used in construction, which in bigger ground, leads to overall change of human society. 2. Functions in Resource Conservation 2.1 Background The need to conserve natural resources arose from several natural changes in climate. First major change was the global increase of temperature, which also caused devastating natural disasters. (Figure 1) For example, this diagram from NASA’s investigation implies that until the point of 1990s, at least there were below-zero global temperature anomaly. But it has exceeded the point of 0 degrees Celsius since then, reaching higher points. This caused problems like shifting natural characteristics for some countries (i.e. gaining more tropical climate, while the area doesn’t fall under tropical area) and extreme weathers like heat waves leading to hundreds of casualties (IPCC). Stanford researchers predicts summers will keep getting hotter for the next 20 years (Rust,2011) Additional problems of high energy dependencies and its consequences are not negligible too. Oil prices have doubled since 10 years ago with annual increase of 25% between 2004 and 2008 (Bauer, 2010). For countries who import their energy resources, reducing the energy usage and saving money is a big concern. High dependency in energy usage often causes crisis in some special crisis situations. It could be financial, political, or literally natural disaster. While so, housing alone takes up major portion of total energy usage. According to United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it accounted for 38.9 percent of total U.S. energy consumption in 2005. In year 2006 it took 72 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption and this number will rise to 75% by 2025. So it can be seen how change in managing housings can lead to positive changes (EPA). Green building technology tackles against these problems with many different technologies, adopting them appropriately for each aspects of energy conservation. While so, 2 examples that directly fight against specific aspects are brought up here. 2.2 Heat Control Firstly, it has been said that the heating and cooling process of a household heavily uses electricity and causes substantial carbon emission. Following are statistics stated by EPA: †¢ The average household spends at least $2,000 a year on energy bills — over half of which goes to heating and cooling. †¢ Out of the total energy consumption in an average household, 50% goes to space heating, 27% to run appliances, 19% to heat water and 4% goes to air conditioning. The numbers are self-explanatory; heating and cooling alone is a big part of whole energy consumption. Temperature control technology for green building enables reducing such consumption and carbon emission. During summer the sun light directly enters through houses through windows or hits the surfaces of outer building and heats up the whole construction. Four factors affect heat accumulation in a home: solar heat gain, internal heat gain, air leakage, and temperature difference. To solve these problems, approaches such as using shades, changing color of outer building, change of roof structure, reducing internal heat generating sources (ex. Electronic equipment), and better use of spaces for air ventilation are used. Today’s buildings also use machine controlled ventilation system or, manual adjustment of ventilation openings to control the heat (Bauer, 2010). On the other hand, during winter it is important to keep and gain every possible heat. A simple method like building the houses facing towards south or optimizing use of sunlight would be the most well-known methods. Additionally, methods of ‘loading up’ the heat into the building are also used, which is using methods like using atria or double faà §ade- dual dimensioned surfaces like windows or wall surfaces- which can support the heat insulation by 20% (Bauer, 2010). As a particular example, window films are proven to be effective in solar radiation cut, reducing the heat level entering a house. The benefit of windows films is clear; it reflects the sun radiation that causes heat and let the room keep cool with less efforts, in terms of both cost and energy usage. This means less air conditioning is used and less energy is consumed. It is proposed by Solar Gard ®, that â€Å"Not only do Solar Gard’s architectural solar control window films help cut energy expenditures by up to 30%, its Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) scientifically proves that Solar Gard and Panorama ® solar control window films have a net positive environmental impact worldwide (Solar Gard). These are specific effects of window film proposed by them; 1. One square meter of a low-e wood window, the type with the smallest carbon footprint, has a carbon cost of 253 kilograms. The carbon cost of Solar Gard window film is less than one kilogram per square meter. 2. Solar Gard window film saves 1001 times more GHG emissions from entering the atmosphere than is used and/or created during its manufacture. 3. Solar Gard window film installed between 2007 and 2008 saved 3.6 million tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere; this is equivalent to the carbon output of 16,350 American families (with four people). This particular products’ such effects can be expected from other window films too. In short, all these heat controlling technologies serve to reduce the electricity usage with additional energy conserving effects of reduced carbon emissions. 2.3 Emission Control Speaking of carbon emissions, there are specific uses of materials that combats them. In United States, housing alone takes 38 percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions (EPA). Carbon dioxide emission is one of the well-known factors that are blamed for the global warming. The famous Kyoto Protocol was established in order to limit this and also to achieve better results with global warming around the world. Choice of materials for constructions is thus carefully chosen from the planning stage, since once used in the process of construction, it is hard to replace them afterwards. Different sorts of materials has different amount of carbon emissions, and in green building that is considered as major criteria. Other aspects of renewability and sustainability are also considered carefully when material is picked. One specific example of such effort would be use of wood for floorings. Wood has its advantage as a building material from its characteristics of low embodied energy, low carbon impact, low pollution emission, and sustainability. Low embodied energy means it takes less efforts and resources in order to get it. Wood, since it has minimal energy processing during harvesting, has relatively lower embodied energy than those like steels, concrete, aluminum, plastic. In terms of carbon impact, it has lower carbon emission than most of other construction materials. Compared to other artificial or metal types or materials, it shows significantly lower level of carbon emission just as shown in figure 2. Figure 2 Basically, this is the most important characteristic of wood usage for green building, and it is listed as the followings in the website of The Solid Wood Flooring Company: * For every tonne of CO2 a tree absorbs from the atmosphere nearly  ¾ of a tonne of oxygen is produced * Over 83% of the timber supplied in the UK is certified to be sustainable * Using wood instead of other building materials saves an average of 0.9 tonnes of CO2 per cubic metre. * An ‘EUR’ wooden pallet stores around 29kg of CO2 taken from the atmosphere during the growth of the tree While metals and other fossil-based materials are not renewable resources, wood can be maintained forever if carefully used. It has to be accompanied by careful forestry planning, but it is definitely one resource that can be continuously re-grown. 3. Impacts 3.1 Social Impacts With all the features that efficiently use the natural energy and resources, green building technology also supports well-being of tenants in the buildings. It typically contributes to improve employees’ and students’ health, comfort and productivity. Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)—one of the criteria of the U.S Green Building Council’s LEED-H rating system—evaluates the subtle issue that influences people’s status of mind and body in a space. It has been scientifically proven by related study that people tend to be more productive and contribute better performance in environment with better ventilation and proper temperature control (Abdou, 2006). Figure 3 Just as shown in figure 3, improved working or living condition leads to better work performances. The study sponsored in part by commercial real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield, reported 30 percent fewer sick days among one company’s employees, and discovered a 10 percent increase in net revenue per employee in another company, after each office moved to LEED-certified buildings. Schools operating in green buildings also demonstrate higher test scores and heightened academic enthusiasm among students (Abdou, 2006) Plus, nature friendly methods and materials used in green buildings proved to ease sicknesses that could occur in daily lives of tenants. It is believed to contribute widely to respiratory problems, allergies, nausea, headaches, and skin rashes. With much emphasis on ventilation, non-toxic, low emitting materials and cutting use of air conditioning, green buildings indeed create healthier and more comfortable living environments, which keep people away from ‘Sick Building Syndromes’ (Fisk, 2002). In summary, all these benefits retrieved from applying green building technology can lead to wholesome social benefit of people, by promoting health initiatives and pleasurable living spaces. Hence it further goes on to the bigger scale of expanding economic ground, by improving productivity and economic activity of the users of this technology. 3.2 Economic Impacts Green buildings are so much more cost effective compared to conventional buildings. According to the USGBC’s LEED rating system, green buildings tend to be 25-30% more energy efficient and more likely to generate the renewable resource on-site. Due to its cost effectiveness, energy saving and easy maintenance, green buildings outperform non-green buildings in the resale market. Basically a newly–constructed green building will perform 10.9% better than its original construction value. Prospective buyers who realize the utility and maintenance cost and are more concerned about the sustainable design of the building will be attracted towards it. Though there is a common perception that green buildings cost a heavy premium over normal buildings, the cost of green design has dropped in the last few years as the number of green buildings has risen. Hence buildings both residential and commercial with sustainable design component continue retaining a high property value in th e retailing market (McGraw Hill Construction, 2010). By continuing to grow in different ground of constructions from the usual ones, green building technology is opening new opportunities for more economic activities with its prospects. As consumers and suppliers become more interested in such technology, it carries much potential for better outcomes. 4. Future Prospects Then would these outcomes continue to exist in the upcoming future too? Green building is getting on the line of popularity within the general public who are becoming more aware of environmental conservation. Governments are encouraging it with various policies and incentives with brandings. It does seem like there are some positive prospects for green building technology to continue to grow in the future. There are supple amounts of factors encouraging such potentials. Regarding the future upcoming green building designs, buildings such as Zero-Energy Buildings are being explored. Zero-energy building (ZEB) is the designation given to buildings that have zero net energy consumption and zero carbon emissions annually. These buildings harvest energy produced on-site to meet their own energy needs. In addition to this, ideas of green schools are also being developed. Certified Green Schools are growing rapidly as part the LEED System. This trend will accelerate as understanding of the health and educational benefits of green schools grow (Yudelson, 2010). On the other hand, research efforts for further protection of environment are encouraging the future growth too. Awareness of the coming global crisis in fresh water supply leads building designers and managers to take further steps to reduce water consumption to increase sustainability. This will be done in buildings through the use of more conservation-oriented fixtures, rainwater recovery systems and innovative new water technologies. Lifecycle Analysis (LCA) examines the impact of materials and will allow architects to determine what products are more sustainable and what combination of products can produce the most environmentally friendly results (GEP, 2011). In 2011, the annual Image Power Global Green Brands Study polled more than 9,000 people in 8 countries (USA, UK, China, Brazil, India, Germany, France and Australia) to analyze consumers’ perception of green products. All participating countries, either developed or developing, indicated that they were quite willing to open up their wallets and pay a bit more for green options in real estate. Most of the informants showed great interest to the green buildings. To be precise, 60% of the surveyed consumers globally intend to extend their green choices more and more to items in the real estate, energy and technology sectors (Longsworth, 2011). By 2013 overall global green building market, both residential and commercial, may more than double in its scale from approximately $36-$49 billion to $96-$140 billion. When looking solely at the commercial and institutional real estate development markets, the green building market is projected to grow from its current occupation of 10-12% of the market to 20-25% (GreenBuildings.com). The future market trends are predicted to continue to grow with certain incentives and initiatives. One of them would be green building technology being encouraged to be used in government sectors. Government offices will need to be transformed into green buildings because of regulatory requirements in many countries. Such need will be the key growth area for green building market. Cash incentives for developers will play a major role in this too. Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and Japan have developed strong support system and incentives for green building developers, designers and owners. Seeing benefits from such incentives, more experts will enter into green building area, stimulating its growth (Frost&Sullivan, 2009). 5. Conclusion Green building, regardless its short history, has achieved a lot in a short term. Its variety of technologies gave rise of new solutions for using less energy yet enjoying more nature friendly benefits, and as it get popular, economic and social benefits arose. Specific technologies that have been discussed were temperature control technologies and choice of building materials. Such direct outcomes lead green building’s positive impacts to be applied on overall human society and economy. From the current outcomes of green building technology and its rising popularity, it seems to have good prospects for the future growth too. There are different factors of future designs and economic incentives encouraging this trend, and so further growth followed by more positive impacts can be expected. These all consequently support the idea; green building has substantial positive effect in both environment and economy, with potential for even better outcomes in the future. Still, there are problems and limitations of green building technology that we have to consider about for the moment. It is a new born technology and yet to be fully developed. Hence full green buildings that incorporate much of the technology are prone to be accused for its high costs as mentioned before and also its insufficient development of efficiency are often pointed at as something unworthy of further developments. Nevertheless, its future potentials cannot be abandoned simply because of its current limitations. Since the initial goal of green building is to reduce human use of natural resources and promote sustainability, current green building technology should be pushed on for further developments that can solve problems at the moment and so forth move on to achieve its goal in an even better way. Besides, its potentials are sufficient to predict better efficiency and profound benefits for our society. Hence green building technology should be acknowledged for its supportive impacts on environment not only for the current moment, but also for the upcoming future that will aid human beings to continue to live on without exhausting the natural resources.

Stefan’s Diaries: Origins Chapter 5

The next morning, I awoke to breathless news from Rosalyn's servants that her prized dog, Penny, had been attacked. Mrs. Cartwright summoned me to her daughter's chambers, saying nothing had stopped Rosalyn from crying. I tried to comfort her, but her wracking sobs never abated. The whole time, Mrs. Cartwright kept giving me disapproving glances, as if I should be doing a better job calming Rosalyn. â€Å"Y have me,† I'd said at one point, if only to ou appease her. At that, Rosalyn had flung her arms around me, crying so hard into my shoulder that her tears left a wet mark on my waistcoat. I tried to be sympathetic, but I felt a stab of annoyance at the way she was carrying on. After all, I'd never carried on like that when my mother had died. Father hadn't let me. You have to be strong, a fighter, he'd said at the funeral. And so I was. I didn't cry when, just a week after Mother's death, our nanny, Cordelia, began absentmindedly humming the French lullaby Mother had always sung. Not when Father took down the portrait of Mother that had hung in the front room. Not even when Artemis, Mother's favorite horse, had to be put down. â€Å"Did you see the dog?† Damon asked, as we walked into town together that night to get a drink at the tavern. Now that the dinner where I was to publicly propose to Rosalyn was just days away, we were heading out for a whiskey to celebrate my impending nuptials. At least, that's what Damon called it, elongating his accent to a flat Charlestonian drawl and wiggling his eyebrows as he said it. I tried to smile as if I thought it was a great joke, but if I began talking, I knew I wouldn't be able to hold back my dismay about marrying Rosalyn. And there wasn't anything wrong with her. It was just †¦ it was just that she wasn't Katherine. I turned my thoughts back to Penny. â€Å"Y Its es. throat had a gash in it, but whatever the animal was didn't go for her innards. Strange, right?† I said as I rushed to keep up with him. The army had made him stronger and faster. â€Å"It's a strange time, brother,† Damon said. â€Å"Maybe it's the Yankees,† he teased with a smirk. As we walked down the cobblestone streets, I noticed signs affixed to most doorways: A reward of one hundred dollars was being offered to anyone who found the wild animal responsible for the attacks. I stared at the sign. Maybe I could find it, then take the money and buy a train ticket to Boston, or New Y ork, or some city where no one could find me and no one had ever heard of Rosalyn Cartwright. I smiled to myself; that would be something Damon might actually do–he never worried about consequences or other people's feelings. I was about to point out the sign and ask what he'd do with one hundred dollars when I saw someone frantically waving at us in front of the apothecary. â€Å"Are those the Salvatore brothers?† a voice called from up the street. I squinted across the twilight and saw Pearl, the apothecary, standing outside her shop with her daughter, Anna. Pearl and Anna were two more victims of the war. Pearl's husband had died at the Vicksburg siege just last spring. After that, Pearl had found a home in Mystic Falls, and she ran an apothecary that was always busy. Jonathan Gilbert, in particular, was almost always there when I walked by, complaining about some ailment or purchasing some remedy or another. Town gossip was that he fancied her. â€Å"Pearl, you remember my brother, Damon?† I called as we walked over the square to greet them. Pearl smiled and nodded. Her face was unlined, and a game among the girls was trying to determine how old she was. She had a daughter who was only a few years younger than me, so she couldn't be that young. â€Å"Y two certainly look ou handsome,† she said fondly. Anna was the spitting image of her mother, and when they stood side by side, the two looked as if they could be sisters. â€Å"Anna, you look more beautiful each year. Are you old enough to be going to dances yet?† Damon asked, a twinkle in his eyes. I smiled despite myself. Of course Damon would be able to charm both a mother and a daughter. â€Å"Almost,† Anna said, her eyes sparkling in anticipation. Fifteen was the age when girls were old enough to stay through dinner and hear the band strike up a waltz. Pearl used a wrought-iron key to lock the apothecary, then turned to face us. â€Å"Damon, can you do me a favor? Can you make sure Katherine gets on tomorrow night? She's a lovely girl, and, well, you know how people talk about strangers. I knew her in Atlanta.† â€Å"I promise,† Damon said solemnly. I stiffened. Was Damon escorting Katherine tomorrow night? I hadn't thought she'd come to the party, and I couldn't imagine proposing in front of her. But what choice did I have? Tell Father that Katherine wasn't invited? Not propose to Rosalyn? â€Å"Have fun tonight, boys,† Pearl said, breaking me out of my reverie. â€Å"Wait!† I called, the dinner momentarily forgotten. Pearl turned around, a quizzical expression on her face. â€Å"It's dark, and there have been more attacks. Would you like us to escort you ladies home?† I asked. Pearl shook her head. â€Å"Anna and I are strong women. We'll be fine. Besides †¦Ã¢â‚¬  She blushed and glanced around, as if afraid to be overheard. â€Å"I believe Jonathan Gilbert wants to do that for us. But I do thank you for your concern.† Damon wiggled his eyebrows and let out a low whistle. â€Å"Y know how I feel about strong women,† ou he whispered. â€Å"Damon. Be appropriate,† I said, slugging him on the shoulder. After all, he wasn't on the battlefields anymore. He was in Mystic Falls, a town where people liked to eavesdrop and loved to talk. Had he forgotten so quickly? â€Å"Okay, Auntie Stefan!† Damon teased, raising his voice in a high lisp. I laughed despite myself and slugged him again on the arm for good measure. The punch was light, but felt good–a way to unleash some of my annoyance that he was able to escort Katherine to the dinner. He good-naturedly slugged me back, and we would have broken out into an all-out brotherly brawl if Damon hadn't pushed open the wooden door to the Mystic Falls Tavern. We were immediately greeted by an enthusiastic smile from the voluptuous, red-haired barmaid behind the counter. It was clear that Damon had made himself at home here on several occasions. We elbowed our way to the back of the tavern. The room smelled of sawdust and sweat, and men in uniform were everywhere. Some had bandages on their heads, others wore slings, and some hobbled to the counter on crutches. I recognized Henry, a dark-skinned soldier who practically lived at the tavern, drinking whiskey alone in a corner. Robert had told me stories about him: He never socialized with anyone, and no one ever saw him in the light of day. There was talk that maybe he was associated with the attacks, but how could he be, if he was always at the tavern? I peeled my eyes away to take in the rest of the scene. There were older men tightly grouped in a corner, playing cards and drinking whiskey and, in the opposite corner, a few women. I could tell from the rouge on their cheeks and their painted fingernails that they weren't the types to spend time with our childhood playmates, Clementine Haverford or Amelia Hawke. As we walked past, one of them brushed my arm with her painted fingernails. â€Å"Y like it here?† Damon pulled out a wooden ou table from the wall, an amused smile on his face. â€Å"I suppose I do.† I plunked down on the hard wooden bench and surveyed my surroundings once again. Being in the tavern, I felt I'd stumbled into a secret society of men, just one more thing I knew I'd have little chance to discover before I was a married man and expected to be at home every evening. â€Å"I'll get us some drinks,† Damon said, making his way to the bar. I watched as he rested his elbows on the counter and easily talked to the barmaid, who tilted her head back and laughed as if he'd said something hilarious. Which he probably had. That's why all women fell in love with him. â€Å"So, how does it feel to be a married man?† I turned around to see Dr. Janes behind me. Well into his seventies, Dr. Janes was slightly senile and often loudly proclaimed to anyone who'd listen that his longevity was due exclusively to his prodigious indulgence in whiskey. â€Å"Not married yet, Doctor.† I smiled tightly, wishing Damon would come back with our drinks. â€Å"Ah, my boy, but you will be. Mr. Cartwright at the bank has been discussing it for weeks. The fair young Rosalyn. Quite a catch!† Dr. Janes continued loudly. I glanced around, hoping no one had heard. At that moment, Damon appeared and gently set our whiskeys on the table. â€Å"Thank you,† I said, drinking mine down in one gulp. Dr. Janes hobbled away. â€Å"That thirsty, huh?† Damon asked, taking a small sip of his own drink. I shrugged. In the past, I'd never kept secrets from my brother. But talking about Rosalyn felt dangerous. Somehow, no matter what I said or felt, I still had to marry her. If anyone heard even an inkling of regret from me, there'd be no end to the talk. Suddenly, a new whiskey appeared in front of me. I glanced up to see the pretty bartender Damon had been talking to standing over our table. â€Å"Y look like you need this. Seems you've had out a rough day.† The barmaid winked one of her green eyes and set the sweating tumbler on the rough-hewn wooden table in front of me. â€Å"Thank you,† I said as I took a small, grateful sip. â€Å"Anytime,† the barmaid said, her crinoline skirts swishing over her hips. I watched her retreating back. All the women in the tavern, even those with loose reputations, were more interesting than Rosalyn. But no matter who I glanced at, the only image that filled my mind was Katherine's face. â€Å"Alice likes you,† Damon observed. I shook my head. â€Å"You know I can't look. By the you end of summer, I'll be a married man. Y ou, meanwhile, are free to do as you please.† I'd meant it to be an observation, but the words came out as a judgment. â€Å"That's true,† Damon said. â€Å"But you do know you don't have to do something just because Father says so, right?† â€Å"It's not that simple.† I clenched my jaw. Damon couldn't understand because he was wild and untamable–so much so that Father had entrusted me, the younger brother, with the future of Veritas, a role I now found stifling. A sliver of betrayal shot through me at this thought–that it was Damon's fault I had to shoulder so much responsibility. I shook my head, as if trying to remove the idea from it, and took another drink of whiskey. â€Å"It's very simple,† Damon said, oblivious to my momentary annoyance. â€Å"Just tell him you are not in love with Rosalyn. That you need to find your own place in the world and can't just follow someone's orders blindly. That's what I learned in the army: Y have to believe in what you do. Otherwise, ou what's the point?† I shook my head. â€Å"I'm not like you. I trust Father. And I know he only wants the best. It's just that I wish †¦ I wish I had more time,† I said finally. It was true. Maybe I could grow to love Rosalyn, but the thought that I could be married and have a child in just one short year filled me with dread. â€Å"But it'll be fine,† I said with finality. It had to be. â€Å"What do you think of our new houseguest?† I said, changing the subject. Damon smiled. â€Å"Katherine,† he said, drawing the name into the full three syllables, as if he could taste it on his tongue. â€Å"Now, she's a girl who's difficult to figure out, don't you agree?† â€Å"I suppose,† I said, glad that Damon didn't â€Å"I suppose,† I said, glad that Damon didn't know that I was dreaming of Katherine at night, and by day pausing at the door to the carriage house to see if I could hear her laughing with her maid; once I even stopped by the stable to smell the broad back of her horse, Clover, just to see if her lemon and ginger scent had lingered. It hadn't, and at that moment, in the barn surrounded by the horses, I'd realized how unbalanced I was becoming. â€Å"They don't make girls like her in Mystic Falls. Do you think she has a soldier somewhere?† Damon asked. â€Å"No!† I said, annoyed once again. â€Å"She's in mourning for her parents. I hardly think she's looking for a beau.† â€Å"Of course.† Damon knit his eyebrows together contritely. â€Å"And I wasn't presuming anything. But if she needs a shoulder to cry on, I'd be happy to lend it to her.† I shrugged. Even though I'd brought up the subject, I was no longer sure I wanted to hear what Damon thought of her. In fact, as beautiful as she was, I almost wished that some far-flung relatives from Charleston or Richmond or Atlanta would step forward to invite her to live with them. If she were out of sight, then maybe I could somehow force myself to love Rosalyn. Damon stared at me, and I knew in that moment how miserable I must have looked. â€Å"Cheer up, brother,† he said. â€Å"The night is young, and the whiskey's on me.† But there wasn't enough whiskey in all of Virginia to make me love Rosalyn †¦ or forget about Katherine.