A Brief History of Hci

A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology Brad A. Myers Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Technical Report CMU-CS-96-163 and Human Computer Interaction Institute Technical Report CMU-HCII-96-103 December, 1996 Please cite this work as: Brad A. Myers. â€Å"A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology. † ACM interactions. Vol. 5, no. 2, March, 1998. pp. 44-54. Human Computer Interaction Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891 [email  protected] gp. s. cmu. edu Abstract This article summarizes the historical development of major advances in human-computer interaction technology, emphasizing the pivotal role of university research in the advancement of the field. Copyright (c) 1996 — Carnegie Mellon University A short excerpt from this article appeared as part of â€Å"Strategic Directions in Human Computer Interaction,† edited by Brad Myers, Jim Hollan, Isabel Cruz, A CM Computing Surveys, 28(4), December 1996 This research was partially sponsored by NCCOSC under Contract No. N66001-94-C-6037, Arpa Order No. B326 and partially by NSF under grant number IRI-9319969. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of NCCOSC or the U. S. Government. Keywords: Human Computer Interaction, History, User Interfaces, Interaction Techniques. [pic] 1. Introduction Research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been spectacularly uccessful, and has fundamentally changed computing. Just one example is the ubiquitous graphical interface used by Microsoft Windows 95, which is based on the Macintosh, which is based on work at Xerox PARC, which in turn is based on early research at the Stanford Research Laboratory (now SRI) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another example is that virtually all software written today employs user interface toolkits and interface builders, concepts which were developed first at universities. Even the spectacular growth of the World-Wide Web is a direct result of HCI research: applying hypertext technology to browsers allows one to traverse a link across the world with a click of the mouse. Interface improvements more than anything else has triggered this explosive growth. Furthermore, the research that will lead to the user interfaces for the computers of tomorrow is happening at universities and a few corporate research labs. This paper tries to briefly summarize many of the important research developments in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) technology. By â€Å"research,† I mean exploratory work at universities and government and corporate research labs (such as Xerox PARC) that is not directly related to products. By â€Å"HCI technology,† I am referring to the computer side of HCI. A companion article on the history of the â€Å"human side,† discussing the contributions from psychology, design, human factors and ergonomics would also be appropriate. A motivation for this article is to overcome the mistaken impression that much of the important work in Human-Computer Interaction occurred in industry, and if university research in Human-Computer Interaction is not supported, then industry will just carry on anyway. This is simply not true. This paper tries to show that many of the most famous HCI successes developed by companies are deeply rooted in university research. In fact, virtually all of today's major interface styles and applications have had significant influence from research at universities and labs, often with government funding. To illustrate this, this paper lists the funding sources of some of the major advances. Without this research, many of the advances in the field of HCI would probably not have taken place, and as a consequence, the user interfaces of commercial products would be far more difficult to use and learn than they are today. As described by Stu Card: â€Å"Government funding of advanced human-computer interaction technologies built the intellectual capital and trained the research teams for pioneer systems that, over a period of 25 years, revolutionized how people interact with computers. Industrial research laboratories at the corporate level in Xerox, IBM, AT&T, and others played a strong role in developing this technology and bringing it into a form suitable for the commercial arena. † [6, p. 162]). Figure 1 shows time lines for some of the technologies discussed in this article. Of course, a deeper analysis would reveal much interaction between the university, corporate research and commercial activity streams. It is important to appreciate that years of research are involved in creating and making these technologies ready for widespread use. The same will be true for the HCI technologies that will provide the interfaces of tomorrow. It is clearly impossible to list every system and source in a paper of this scope, but I have tried to represent the earliest and most influential systems. Although there are a number of other surveys of HCI topics (see, for example [1] [10] [33] [38]), none cover as many aspects as this one, or try to be as comprehensive in finding the original influences. Another useful resource is the video â€Å"All The Widgets,† which shows the historical progression of a number of user interface ideas [25]. The technologies covered in this paper include fundamental interaction styles like direct manipulation, the mouse pointing device, and windows; several important kinds of application areas, such as drawing, text editing and spreadsheets; the technologies that will likely have the biggest impact on interfaces of the future, such as gesture recognition, multimedia, and 3D; and the technologies used to create interfaces using the other technologies, such as user interface management systems, toolkits, and interface builders. [pic] [pic] Figure 1: Approximate time lines showing where work was performed on some major technologies discussed in this article. [pic] 2. Basic Interactions †¢ Direct Manipulation of graphical objects: The now ubiquitous direct manipulation interface, where visible objects on the screen are directly manipulated with a pointing device, was first demonstrated by Ivan Sutherland in Sketchpad [44], which was his 1963 MIT PhD thesis. SketchPad supported the manipulation of objects using a light-pen, including grabbing objects, moving them, changing size, and using constraints. It contained the seeds of myriad important interface ideas. The system was built at Lincoln Labs with support from the Air Force and NSF. William Newman's Reaction Handler [30], created at Imperial College, London (1966-67) provided direct manipulation of graphics, and introduced â€Å"Light Handles,† a form of graphical potentiometer, that was probably the first â€Å"widget. † Another early system was AMBIT/G (implemented at MIT's Lincoln Labs, 1968, ARPA funded). It employed, among other interface techniques, iconic representations, gesture recognition, dynamic menus with items selected using a pointing device, selection of icons by pointing, and moded and mode-free styles of interaction. David Canfield Smith coined the term â€Å"icons† in his 1975 Stanford PhD thesis on Pygmalion [41] (funded by ARPA and NIMH) and Smith later popularized icons as one of the chief designers of the Xerox Star [42]. Many of the interaction techniques popular in direct manipulation interfaces, such as how objects and text are selected, opened, and manipulated, were researched at Xerox PARC in the 1970's. In particular, the idea of â€Å"WYSIWYG† (what you see is what you get) originated there with systems such as the Bravo text editor and the Draw drawing program [10] The concept of direct manipulation interfaces for everyone was envisioned by Alan Kay of Xerox PARC in a 1977 article about the â€Å"Dynabook† [16]. The first commercial systems to make extensive use of Direct Manipulation were the Xerox Star (1981) [42], the Apple Lisa (1982) [51] and Macintosh (1984) [52]. Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland coined the term â€Å"Direct Manipulation† in 1982 and identified the components and gave psychological foundations [40]. The Mouse: The mouse was developed at Stanford Research Laboratory (now SRI) in 1965 as part of the NLS project (funding from ARPA, NASA, and Rome ADC) [9] to be a cheap replacement for light-pens, which had been used at least since 1954 [10, p. 68]. Many of the current uses of the mouse were demonstrated by Doug Engelbart as par t of NLS in a movie created in 1968 [8]. The mouse was then made famous as a practical input device by Xerox PARC in the 1970's. It first appeared commercially as part of the Xerox Star (1981), the Three Rivers Computer Company's PERQ (1981) [23], the Apple Lisa (1982), and Apple Macintosh (1984). Windows: Multiple tiled windows were demonstrated in Engelbart's NLS in 1968 [8]. Early research at Stanford on systems like COPILOT (1974) [46] and at MIT with the EMACS text editor (1974) [43] also demonstrated tiled windows. Alan Kay proposed the idea of overlapping windows in his 1969 University of Utah PhD thesis [15] and they first appeared in 1974 in his Smalltalk system [11] at Xerox PARC, and soon after in the InterLisp system [47]. Some of the first commercial uses of windows were on Lisp Machines Inc. (LMI) and Symbolics Lisp Machines (1979), which grew out of MIT AI Lab projects. The Cedar Window Manager from Xerox PARC was the first major tiled window manager (1981) [45], followed soon by the Andrew window manager [32] by Carnegie Mellon University's Information Technology Center (1983, funded by IBM). The main commercial systems popularizing windows were the Xerox Star (1981), the Apple Lisa (1982), and most importantly the Apple Macintosh (1984). The early versions of the Star and Microsoft Windows were tiled, but eventually they supported overlapping windows like the Lisa and Macintosh. The X Window System, a current international standard, was developed at MIT in 1984 [39]. For a survey of window managers, see [24]. 3. Application Types †¢ Drawing programs: Much of the current technology was demonstrated in Sutherland's 1963 Sketchpad system. The use of a mouse for graphics was demonstrated in NLS (1965). In 1968 Ken Pulfer and Grant Bechthold at the National Research Council of Canada built a mouse out of wood patterned after Engelbart's and used it with a key-frame animation system to draw all the frames of a movie. A subsequent movie, â€Å"Hunger† in 1971 won a number of awards, and was drawn using a tablet instead of the mouse (funding by the National Film Board of Canada) [3]. William Newman's Markup (1975) was the first drawing program for Xerox PARC's Alto, followed shortly by Patrick Baudelaire's Draw which added handling of lines and curves [10, p. 326]. The first computer painting program was probably Dick Shoup's â€Å"Superpaint† at PARC (1974-75). †¢ Text Editing: In 1962 at the Stanford Research Lab, Engelbart proposed, and later implemented, a word processor with automatic word wrap, search and replace, user-definable macros, scrolling text, and commands to move, copy, and delete characters, words, or blocks of text. Stanford's TVEdit (1965) was one of the first CRT-based display editors that was widely used [48]. The Hypertext Editing System [50, p. 108] from Brown University had screen editing and formatting of arbitrary-sized strings with a lightpen in 1967 (funding from IBM). NLS demonstrated mouse-based editing in 1968. TECO from MIT was an early screen-editor (1967) and EMACS [43] developed from it in 1974. Xerox PARC's Bravo [10, p. 284] was the first WYSIWYG editor-formatter (1974). It was designed by Butler Lampson and Charles Simonyi who had started working on these concepts around 1970 while at Berkeley. The first commercial WYSIWYG editors were the Star, LisaWrite and then MacWrite. For a survey of text editors, see [22] [50, p. 108]. †¢ Spreadsheets: The initial spreadsheet was VisiCalc which was developed by Frankston and Bricklin (1977-8) for the Apple II while they were students at MIT and the Harvard Business School. The solver was based on a dependency-directed backtracking algorithm by Sussman and Stallman at the MIT AI Lab. †¢ HyperText: The idea for hypertext (where documents are linked to related documents) is credited to Vannevar Bush's famous MEMEX idea from 1945 [4]. Ted Nelson coined the term â€Å"hypertext† in 1965 [29]. Engelbart's NLS system [8] at the Stanford Research Laboratories in 1965 made extensive use of linking (funding from ARPA, NASA, and Rome ADC). The â€Å"NLS Journal† [10, p. 212] was one of the first on-line journals, and it included full linking of articles (1970). The Hypertext Editing System, jointly designed by Andy van Dam, Ted Nelson, and two students at Brown University (funding from IBM) was distributed extensively [49]. The University of Vermont's PROMIS (1976) was the first Hypertext system released to the user community. It was used to link patient and patient care information at the University of Vermont's medical center. The ZOG project (1977) from CMU was another early hypertext system, and was funded by ONR and DARPA [36]. Ben Shneiderman's Hyperties was the first system where highlighted items in the text could be clicked on to go to other pages (1983, Univ. of Maryland) [17]. HyperCard from Apple (1988) significantly helped to bring the idea to a wide audience. There have been many other hypertext systems through the years. Tim Berners-Lee used the hypertext idea to create the World Wide Web in 1990 at the government-funded European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN). Mosaic, the irst popular hypertext browser for the World-Wide Web was developed at the Univ. of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA). For a more complete history of HyperText, see [31]. †¢ Computer Aided Design (CAD): The same 1963 IFIPS conference at which Sketchpad was presented also contained a number of CAD systems, including Doug Ross's Computer-Aided Design Project at MIT in the Electronic Syste ms Lab [37] and Coons' work at MIT with SketchPad [7]. Timothy Johnson's pioneering work on the interactive 3D CAD system Sketchpad 3 [13] was his 1963 MIT MS thesis (funded by the Air Force). The first CAD/CAM system in industry was probably General Motor's DAC-1 (about 1963). †¢ Video Games: The first graphical video game was probably SpaceWar by Slug Russel of MIT in 1962 for the PDP-1 [19, p. 49] including the first computer joysticks. The early computer Adventure game was created by Will Crowther at BBN, and Don Woods developed this into a more sophisticated Adventure game at Stanford in 1966 [19, p. 132]. Conway's game of LIFE was implemented on computers at MIT and Stanford in 1970. The first popular commercial game was Pong (about 1976). 4. Up-and-Coming Areas Gesture Recognition: The first pen-based input device, the RAND tablet, was funded by ARPA. Sketchpad used light-pen gestures (1963). Teitelman in 1964 developed the first trainable gesture recognizer. A very early demonstration of gesture recognition was Tom Ellis' GRAIL system on the RAND tablet (1964, ARPA funded). It was quite common in light-pen-based systems to include some gesture recognition, for example in the AMBIT/G system (1968 — ARPA funded). A gesture-based text editor using proof-reading symbols was developed at CMU by Michael Coleman in 1969. Bill Buxton at the University of Toronto has been studying gesture-based interactions since 1980. Gesture recognition has been used in commercial CAD systems since the 1970s, and came to universal notice with the Apple Newton in 1992. †¢ Multi-Media: The FRESS project at Brown used multiple windows and integrated text and graphics (1968, funding from industry). The Interactive Graphical Documents project at Brown was the first hypermedia (as opposed to hypertext) system, and used raster graphics and text, but not video (1979-1983, funded by ONR and NSF). The Diamond project at BBN (starting in 1982, DARPA funded) explored combining multimedia information (text, spreadsheets, graphics, speech). The Movie Manual at the Architecture Machine Group (MIT) was one of the first to demonstrate mixed video and computer graphics in 1983 (DARPA funded). †¢ 3-D: The first 3-D system was probably Timothy Johnson's 3-D CAD system mentioned above (1963, funded by the Air Force). The â€Å"Lincoln Wand† by Larry Roberts was an ultrasonic 3D location sensing system, developed at Lincoln Labs (1966, ARPA funded). That system also had the first interactive 3-D hidden line elimination. An early use was for molecular modelling [18]. The late 60's and early 70's saw the flowering of 3D raster graphics research at the University of Utah with Dave Evans, Ivan Sutherland, Romney, Gouraud, Phong, and Watkins, much of it government funded. Also, the military-industrial flight simulation work of the 60's – 70's led the way to making 3-D real-time with commercial systems from GE, Evans, Singer/Link (funded by NASA, Navy, etc. ). Another important center of current research in 3-D is Fred Brooks' lab at UNC (e. g. [2]). Virtual Reality and â€Å"Augmented Reality†: The original work on VR was performed by Ivan Sutherland when he was at Harvard (1965-1968, funding by Air Force, CIA, and Bell Labs). Very important early work was by Tom Furness when he was at Wright-Patterson AFB. Myron Krueger's early work at the University of Connecticut was influential. Fred Brooks' and Henry Fuch's groups at UNC did a lot of early research, including the study of force feedbac k (1971, funding from US Atomic Energy Commission and NSF). Much of the early research on head-mounted displays and on the DataGlove was supported by NASA. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Doug Engelbart's 1968 demonstration of NLS [8] included the remote participation of multiple people at various sites (funding from ARPA, NASA, and Rome ADC). Licklider and Taylor predicted on-line interactive communities in an 1968 article [20] and speculated about the problem of access being limited to the privileged. Electronic mail, still the most widespread multi-user software, was enabled by the ARPAnet, which became operational in 1969, and by the Ethernet from Xerox PARC in 1973. An early computer conferencing system was Turoff's EIES system at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (1975). †¢ Natural language and speech: The fundamental research for speech and natural language understanding and generation has been performed at CMU, MIT, SRI, BBN, IBM, AT Bell Labs and BellCore, much of it government funded. See, for example, [34] for a survey of the early work. 5. Software Tools and Architectures The area of user interface software tools is quite active now, and many companies are selling tools. Most of today's applications are implemented using various forms of software tools. For a more complete survey and discussion of UI tools, see [26]. †¢ UIMSs and Toolkits: (There are software libraries and tools that support creating interfaces by writing code. ) The first User Interface Management System (UIMS) was William Newman's Reaction Handler [30] created at Imperial College, London (1966-67 with SRC funding). Most of the early work was done at universities (Univ. of Toronto with Canadian government funding, George Washington Univ. with NASA, NSF, DOE, and NBS funding, Brigham Young University with industrial funding, etc. . The term â€Å"UIMS† was coined by David Kasik at Boeing (1982) [14]. Early window managers such as Smalltalk (1974) and InterLisp, both from Xerox PARC, came with a few widgets, such as popup menus and scrollbars. The Xerox Star (1981) was the first commercial system to have a large collection of widgets. The Apple Macintosh (1984) was the first to actively promote its toolkit for use by other developers to enforce a consiste nt interface. An early C++ toolkit was InterViews [21], developed at Stanford (1988, industrial funding). Much of the modern research is being performed at universities, for example the Garnet (1988) [28] and Amulet (1994) [27] projects at CMU (ARPA funded), and subArctic at Georgia Tech (1996, funding by Intel and NSF). †¢ Interface Builders: (These are interactive tools that allow interfaces composed of widgets such as buttons, menus and scrollbars to be placed using a mouse. ) The Steamer project at BBN (1979-85; ONR funding) demonstrated many of the ideas later incorporated into interface builders and was probably the first object-oriented graphics system. Trillium [12] was developed at Xerox PARC in 1981. Another early interface builder was the MenuLay system [5] developed by Bill Buxton at the University of Toronto (1983, funded by the Canadian Government). The Macintosh (1984) included a â€Å"Resource Editor† which allowed widgets to be placed and edited. Jean-Marie Hullot created â€Å"SOS Interface† in Lisp for the Macintosh while working at INRIA (1984, funded by the French government) which was the first modern â€Å"interface builder. † Hullot built this into a commercial product in 1986 and then went to work for NeXT and created the NeXT Interface Builder (1988), which popularized this type of tool. Now there are literally hundreds of commercial interface builders. †¢ Component Architectures: The idea of creating interfaces by connecting separately written components was first demonstrated in the Andrew project [32] by Carnegie Mellon University's Information Technology Center (1983, funded by IBM). It is now being widely popularized by Microsoft's OLE and Apple's OpenDoc architectures. 6. Discussion It is clear that all of the most important innovations in Human-Computer Interaction have benefited from research at both corporate research labs and universities, much of it funded by the government. The conventional style of graphical user interfaces that use windows, icons, menus and a mouse and are in a phase of standardization, where almost everyone is using the same, standard technology and just making minute, incremental changes. Therefore, it is important that university, corporate, and government-supported research continue, so that we can develop the science and technology needed for the user interfaces of the future. Another important argument in favor of HCI research in universities is that computer science students need to know about user interface issues. User interfaces are likely to be one of the main value-added competitive advantages of the future, as both hardware and basic software become commodities. If students do not know about user interfaces, they will not serve industry needs. It seems that only through computer science does HCI research disseminate out into products. Furthermore, without appropriate levels of funding of academic HCI research, there will be fewer PhD graduates in HCI to perform research in corporate labs, and fewer top-notch graduates in this area will be interested in being professors, so the needed user interface courses will not be offered. As computers get faster, more of the processing power is being devoted to the user interface. The interfaces of the future will use gesture recognition, speech recognition and generation, â€Å"intelligent agents,† adaptive interfaces, video, and many other technologies now being investigated by research groups at universities and corporate labs [35]. It is imperative that this research continue and be well-supported. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I must thank a large number of people who responded to posts of earlier versions of this article on the announcements. hi mailing list for their very generous help, and to Jim Hollan who helped edit the short excerpt of this article. Much of the information in this article was supplied by (in alphabetical order): Stacey Ashlund, Meera M. Blattner, Keith Butler, Stuart K. Card, Bill Curtis, David E. Damouth, Dan Diaper, Dick Duda, Tim T. K. Dudley, Steven Feiner, Harry Forsdick, Bjorn Freeman-Benson, John Gould, Wayne Gray, Mark Green, Fred Hansen, Bill Hefley, D. Austin Henderson, Jim Hollan, Jean-Marie Hullot, Rob Jacob, Bonnie John, Sandy Kobayashi, T. K. Landauer, John Leggett, Roger Lighty, Marilyn Mantei, Jim Miller, William Newman, Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman, Dan Olsen, Ramesh Patil, Gary Perlman, Dick Pew, Ken Pier, Jim Rhyne, Ben Shneiderman, John Sibert, David C. Smith, Elliot Soloway, Richard Stallman, Ivan Sutherland, Dan Swinehart, John Thomas, Alex Waibel, Marceli Wein, Mark Weiser, Alan Wexelblat, and Terry Winograd. Editorial comments were also provided by the above as well as Ellen Borison, Rich McDaniel, Rob Miller, Bernita Myers, Yoshihiro Tsujino, and the reviewers. References 1. 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Williams, G. , â€Å"The Lisa Computer System. † Byte Magazine, 1983. 8(2): pp. 33-50. 52. Williams, G. , â€Å"The Apple Macintosh Computer. † Byte, 1984. 9(2): pp. 30-54.

Voltaire and Rabelais

Voltaire and Rabelais satirize war and religion in their works. Voltaire goes after religious hypocrisy in chapter three of Candide. An orator asks Candide whether or not he supports â€Å"the good cause†. Candide, being a man of reason, responds by saying â€Å"there is no effect without a cause†. The orator, feeling challenged by Candide's reaction challenges him right back by asking Candide if he believes the Pope to be the Anti-Christ. Candide doesn't know and changes the subject bringing up the fact that he's hungry.The orator declares that Candide does not deserve to at because of his lack of affirmation toward believing in the Anti-Christ. The orator's wife suddenly enters the scene and sees Candide as one who does not believe that the Pope was Anti-Christ. She proceeds to pour trash on his head. This is an example of Voltaire Jabbing at Protestants and Catholics of the world. He is explaining his views, through the use of satire, on religion. War is an evil that is satirized in Candide. Voltaire as a foundation for his war satire uses the Bulgarians.Voltaire explains on page 13 how the Bulgarians seized Candide and then gave him the option to be â€Å"thrashed thirty-six times by the whole egiment, or receive twelve lead bullets at once in his brain. † Candide decides to run the gauntlet but comes up about 34 short. He pleads that the Judges would Just smash his head instead. Voltaire shows more war satire on page 14 in Candide when the Bulgarians' burn down the Abarian village â€Å"in accordance with the rules of international law†. Voltaire satirizes war in another sense.He goes on in chapter three by writing about the atrocities that the Bulgarian soldiers would indulge in. Not only did they kill people but they also raped, disemboweled, and dismembered innocent women and children. As a matter of fact, Candide's was trained as a soldier by being abused and pummeled. Voltaire uses this to show his hatred toward the cruel a nd vulgar acts of war and which such belligerent groups like the Bulgarian soldiers demonstrated. Voltaire believed these acts of injustice to be morally wrong. Voltaire in this section of Candide is now showing his true thoughts towards Leibniz's theory of optimism.Leibniz believes that if this is â€Å"the best of all possible worlds† then innocent women and children would not be slaughtered and dehumanized and there would be no bloodthirsty Bulgarians. Rabelais rejects all types of war. On page 299 Grandgousier explains his thoughts to Picrochole about going to war: â€Å"†¦ l shall nevertheless go to war before trying all the arts and ways of peace. Of that I am resolved†. This shows Rabelais' opposition to war. Rabelais also mentions Pangrue's absurd Justification of the killing of 660 knights on pages 124-125 of Gargantua and Pantagruel.Pangurge says to them: â€Å"Gentlemen, I believe you have brought some harm on yourselves. We are sorry, but it was none of our doing: it was because of the lubricity of the sea-water – sea-water is always a lubricant and we entrust ourselves to your good pleasure. † This example of satire lso shows Rabelais' opposition to war. In canto XVII in lines 92 and 93 ot Dante's Purgatorio Dante's guide Virgil explains to Dante the two types of love (natural and mind directed) and the differences between them. He goes on to explain to Dante that some people choose to love the wrong thing or sin by loving something too much or something not enough.Virgil's main point of his speech is that love is the inspiration to people's action. Love is the only thing that motivates people. Love and Justice are basically one in the same. According to Dante, God created the Justice system (the system we see throughout Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven) based out of love. And because love inspires Justice, love and goodness are practically synonymous. It is safe now to connect this Justice to the gift God gives to man. In Paradiso Dante explains on page 43 in canto V on lines 20-30 â€Å"God's greatest gift†.Lines 20-22 specifically give the reader Dante's interpretation of God's grace: â€Å"God's greatest gift, the gift in which mankind is most like Him, the gift by Him most prized, is the freedom He bestowed upon the will. † Goodness comes from free will according to Dante. On line 27 Dante goes on to remind readers that â€Å"God ives his consent when [one] consents. † It is in this sense that we must realize that evil exists in this world even though God is good. Voltaire, a very skeptical man, believed that people did not get what they deserved.He makes it clear through his satire that he was against Leibniz's idea of life being the best of both worlds. Voltaire says that evil is random. It comes at random moments Just as the 1746 and 1755 earthquakes in Lima, Peru and Lisbon, Portugal did. There was an imbalance of Justice at this time because Jews were assumed to be t he cause for this natural disaster and then publically killed for their wrongdoings. People believed that the disaster happened because God was angry. However Voltaire's point is proven when the second earthquake strikes. He is proving that things Just have the ability to sporadically happen.Three deists influenced Voltaire John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Their theories encouraged Voltaire to understand that there is no balance of Justice. To explain his point Voltaire creates the character: Dr. Pangloss – a wholehearted believer of Leibniz's philosophy. Voltaire discreetly states Leibniz's idea early on Candide by stating on page 16, â€Å"Dr. Pangloss was right in telling me that all is for the best in this world†¦ . To contrast Pangloss, Voltaire creates Martin, a more practical thinker to point out the flaws of Leibniz's philosophy. St.Augustine understands that solved his problem of evil by believing that there was a lack of goodness in something. He exp lains that if something is corruptible and thus evil then it is good by nature because it exists. If something can be tarnished by means of evil or by vices it's because there is goodness that can be taken away from it. Basically saying that everything is good because it is corruptible St. Augustine explains himself on the bottom of page 127 of his Confessions: â€Å"And I made an effort o understand what I had heard, that free will is the cause of our doing evil†¦ 3) Quote A is taken from Act l, Scene Ill, lines 201-207 of Shakespeare's King Hamlet IV. In this section we see another classic ABA rhyme scheme. Hotspur, a very valiant soldier, is worried about his honor. He is demonstrating his concern for his honor by ranting on about his excitement to take down King Henry. Hotspur's initiative is so strong that he claims, on line 202, that it would not be difficult for him get honor from â€Å"the pale-taced moon†. This is Shakespeare's way ot saying that Hotspur could get light from the sun, or â€Å"the pale-faced moon†.Shakespeare continues in this passage with a clothing metaphor in lines 206-209. Hotspur is saying that his honor would show the same way clothes show on people. These lines show that he's not only ready for battle but also that he has a very tangible idea of honor. Honor, according to Falstaff is useless because it means nothing if you're dead. Fallstaffs view of honor clearly undercuts Hotspur's. Falstaff sees honor in a different sense. He sees it as something that is useless. This is an important quote that relates to the larger work because it shows an aspect that is seen throughout the story: honor.Honor, as we earn throughout King Henry ‘V, is perceived in a different sense in the end of the book. It goes from a goal to be achieved with direction to something that is more personable and to be reached to a more personal idea to treasure. Quote B is from Chapter 20 of Candide. On page 68 Martin is explaining how corrupt the world can be. Candide does not believe Martin when he says that he is indeed a Manichaean. This quote puts into perspective Voltaire's idea of the world and how he believed it to be a cruel place.This quote relates to the larger work because it reinforces what Voltaire is attempting to get across to the reader. The corrupt families who seek to destroy others and acquire power through it are examples of an evil that comes from his belief that bad things can still happen even in a world where there is goodness. Quote C is from Dante's Paradiso on page 134, Canto XIII, line 130-135. In this passage we see Dante using his standard ABA rhyme scheme. St. Thomas of Aquinas is giving Dante advice. He is warning is warning Dante not to Judge too soon because things could change and go the opposite way.He explains this through two metaphors. He explains how a bush has the capability to lose all of its leaves but hen eventually blossom to a beautiful rose when the springtime comes around. By these two examples St. Thomas means that a change can pop up out of nowhere. He explains his point in another fashion on this in the third stanza of this passage in lines 133-135. These lines explain that St. Thomas has seen a strong ship sail and eventually sink Just as it was about to set anchor at its port. Quote D is a portion of Rabelais' Gargantul and Pantagruel on page 229 of chapter six.Gargantua crying is being described here. It is explained that if he were to start crying out of annoyance then he would drink all of his tears and use them to bring im back to his original condition. Quote E is a passage from Shakespeare's Hamlet. In this quote Ophelia is commenting on how she misses when Hamlet's mind was noble. She's beginning to realize now that Hamlet is going mad. She claims that he wouldVe been considered noble and possibly a King if he had not gone so mad when she says: â€Å"Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state† on line 166.She goes on to note that he used to be idolized by all. She explains this by saying on line 167 that he was â€Å"The glass of fashion and the mold of form†. â€Å"The glass of fashion† is Shakespeare using a metaphor for saying that he was respected by all. When she says, â€Å"the observers quite, quite down! † she is commenting that the observers of Hamlet no longer think of him the same way they used to. This passage is basically Ophelia realizing that Hamlet is changing and she cannot believe it. This quote relates to the larger work, Hamlet because it sums up basically the thoughts ot the rest ot the kingdom.Ophelia speaks tor everyone else when she says notes that Hamlet's behavior has drastically changed. As the story goes on it changes even more and more as we learn how complex of a character Hamlet is. Quote F is taken from page 43 of Beowulf, specifically lines 2529-2531. This assage follows the speech that Beowulf gives his warriors. Beowulf, who is getting old and wor n down, explains to his men the importance of this battle. He salutes his men then explains that he will not give up no matter what. The brave warrior that this passage describes is indeed Beowulf.The poet is emphasizing the fact that he is indeed the bravest of all warriors the Danes have ever seen. The poet hopes to get the reader to comprehend the amount of courage he has for standing up to the dragon to defend his honor and his community. This quote relates to the larger work because it clearly shows the Beowulf's heroic qualities. It also relates to the larger work because it shows a Germanic value. Beowulf is showing that he's not afraid of death. Quote G is a passage from Part IV, lines 2025-2030 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.The narrator is explaining the gear that Gawain is putting on as he gets ready for his rendezvous with the Green Knight. The poet is using alliteration to give better detail of the attire Gawain is donning. The letter R is used significantly on line 2025, the letter C on line 2026, the letter S on line 2027, the letter W on line 2029, and both letters L and G are used simultaneously in line 2030. The poet aims to grasp the eaders attention at the beauty of his battle outfit. However the last line of this passage is most important: Yet he left not his love-gift, the ladys girdle.The hosts's wife promises to Gawain that this magic girdle save from one from death. This quote relates to the larger work because this girdle ends up being a major symbol of the book. The girdle is a way to show that Gawain is weak for using it as a way of cheating to survive against the Green Knight. Quote H is from Act Ill Scene II of Shakespeare's Hamlet. In this scene Hamlet makes it clear to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he is not tricked by their phony riendship. In Hamlet's speech from lines 393-402 Shakespeare uses a play on words with a musical metaphor.Pluck, an action used to play a string instrument, is said on line 395. Hamlet is accus ing his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of playing him. The same way a musician would pluck (play) a string instrument. Another music reference Shakespeare makes is found on lines 396-397. The lines read: â€Å"†¦ you would sound me from my lowest note my compass†¦ † A note is basically a note or pitch that is made from an instrument. Here Hamlet is saying that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bring him up and down yet he is not fazed by it.

Management decision Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Management decision - Coursework Example The explosion in the mine was triggered by different factors like the continuous emission of coal dust and methane which are taken to aid in the cause of emergence of explosive circumstances. Other conditions that led to the mining disaster were accounted for the absence of maps identifying escape routes for people in the emergence of fatal incidents like mining explosions. Absence of effective equipments that would help the mining personnel to maintain proper communication with the personnel at the surface of the mines was also accounted to be a potential factor contributing to the mining disaster (Urbina, 2010). Massey’s approach to ethical and social responsibility is reflected in the company information published in its company reports. It states that the company management is committed in conducting its activities in the correct fashion to help protect the stakes of the people, community and the natural environment. The company also reflects to be a proven leader in the areas of safety such that it aims to incorporate effective technologies to ensure the safety of the mining community. The company report reflects that issues related to safety of the people working in the mines are generated the highest priority. It aims to potentially invest in the areas of training and development of its personnel while procuring the right quality of equipments. Massey Energy also reflects of working based on highest safety standards to help in the prevention of accidents of the mining staffs (Massey Energy , 2008). In the break of the mining disaster that occurred in the coal mine, Upper Big Bra nch situated in Montcoal, West Virginia that claimed around 29 lives, the management body of Massey Energy is observed to deny its responsibility in the incident while shifting the blame to the Federal Government. In a report published by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MHSA) during 2011, the corporate culture of Massey

Philosophy- READ THE INSTRUCTIONS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Philosophy- READ THE INSTRUCTIONS - Essay Example The theory of empiricism says that we get knowledge through experiences. We acquire our experiences making use of senses. We know that there is a constant change in our experience. Therefore, whenever our knowledge is a subject of changes we cannot depend upon sense knowledge ultimately. I think that rationalism is the best way of viewing things. There are so many reasons to say rationalism is the best way. We can sea, hear, taste, smell, feel things. These are called experience in general. In view of neuro physiology limbic system, amygdale and hypothalamus are the responsible organs to get experience. But even a simple chemical change or damage to these organs can cause difference in experiences. Therefore, the stability of knowledge through this way is questioned. Whenever we feel the instability in knowledge, we fail to say about anything firmly that this is. So, rational knowledge is correct and superior to any other knowledge. We use our rationale to solve the problems. In mathematics we find the result through reasoning. One plus one is two. It is true and it cannot be any other number. Therefore it is a fact of necessity it cannot be gone wrongly. So we can tell that whatever conclusion may we infer through rationalizing is right knowledge. This is also an argument for stating that rational knowledge is accurate. All men are mortal, Joseph is a man, and therefore Joseph is mortal. This fact is logically proved and so it cannot be fallible. In logic we come to the conclusion through reasoning. Therefore we tell that rationalism is the accurate and correct theory. In our daily experiences we realize that many of our observations go wrong. We misunderstand things. Sometimes we misperceive things around us like seeing coir we perceive it as snake. Likewise, there are a number of such instances even in the science. At first we imagined that our world is flat but in the long run the science proved that world is oval shaped. Therefore, we

Critical Thinking Reflection Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Critical Thinking Reflection - Essay Example Most government in the world are developing methods to improve on the lives of their citizens. America is no exception. This part of the paper will be looking at how America can reduce its citizens’ poverty. There are several methods through which the issue of poverty can be addressed. The most important is through creating jobs. The best pathway to avert poverty is through a decent income. America needs about 5.6 million new jobs so that the country can avoid heading deeper into poverty (Sherman, 2011). To create jobs, the federal government should consider investing in strategies such as rebuilding infrastructure, renovating abandoned housing structures, developing non-renewable energy, and so on. Raising the minimum wage is also another method of combating inequality. Today’s minimum wage is $7.25 which cannot be able to lift a family of three out of poverty. If the minimum wage is raised from that figure to about $10.10, nearly 20 percent of children will see their parents receive a raise which will reduce poverty (Wage & Primer, 2014). Gender inequality is one of the contributing factors of poverty in most parts of the world. Women usually earn less than their male counterparts even when they are doing the same job and have same level of qualification. If the wage gap is closed, poverty in women will be cut by half and will add almost half a trillion dollars to the US GDP (Seguino, 2009). To bridge this gap, employers should be held accountable if they have any discriminatory salary practices. The above question required the use of critical thinking to develop not only a logical but also relevant and accurate response. In America, poverty is not as pervasive as it is in countries for instance in Asia or Africa. The process of critical thinking helped in gathering the information presented in Part â€Å"1† of the paper. To identify the actual number of people that are in poverty, it is crucial to first understand and define what poverty is, which I

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES FOR THE Research Paper

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES FOR THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY - Research Paper Example A Multinational Corporation (MNC) is an enterprise engages in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which possesses or built facilities, operates and controls value-added undertakings in many countries. A firm is considered an MNC when 25% of its production and services output came from external through trading and services as well as infuse capital, technology, and managerial expertise to undertake production in foreign countries (Spero & Hart, 1997). Economists posit that a company is considered multinational when it has nurtured a number of affiliates or has subsidiaries in other countries; operate in an array of services and operations globally; gather high rate or percentile of assets, revenues, or profits; its human capital, stockholders, and administrators composed of varied nationalities, and their offshore operations are extensive, ambitious, and inclusive of manufacturing, research and developments (Spero et.al.1997, p 117). Often, the subsidiary company got financial and supervisory support from its parent company or may undertake joint venture in the operations. The financial transfer is called by economists as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which is aimed at controlling some offshore assets and when it invests capital to a subsidiary in other nation by purchasing an enterprise or by feeding capital to commence a new operation (Spero et.al.1997). Sometimes, MNCs does portfolio investment by buying stock or bonds from a national corporation (Spero et.al.1997). Many MNCs are engaged in extractive industries, manufacturing of technology, banking and finance, and the like, but in its corporate management, they are distinct in their technological capacity, corporate structure and the nature of products and services they introduced to the market (Spero et.al.,1997). Their characteristics illustrate that their profit sometimes is more that the gross domestic product (GDP) in almost 170 nations (Spero et.al.1987, p. 119) because they

Importance of Information Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Importance of Information Management - Essay Example This is important in that it would assist the management plan on better ways of servicing its client. This supports the arguments form the paper that states that information management forms the basis for improving the students’ satisfaction and learning experience. Information is the only way through which management or the administration can interact with the students. I also realized that a channel linking the academic staff and the teaching staff or the teacher and the student is very important. Consequently, there must be a channel that should link them. It is clear that information presented in the paper support the claims made by Erlanger (2005)that states that knowledge management or information management impacts on innovation and organizational performance directly and indirectly (through an increase on innovation capability). This is because the acquisition of the right information from the clients, for this case, students would enable the management or the school a dministration to plan for the best strategies to adopt towards improving the performance of the students (Levy, 2003). Information management provides the basis for improving the performance of the employees. Based on the discussion from the paper, it is clear that in school setting, the performance of the teachers can be enhanced through course unit evaluation. Course unit evaluation is where the students fill a form that targets at exploring whether the teacher or the tutor is doing as expected. The paper reveals that although the course unit evaluation is important, most people especially the students take it lightly and hence fail delivering comprehensive information to the academic staff. This would prevent the staff from coming up with appropriate intervention measures. The paper affirms that it is possible to resolve this by imposing a forceful feedback into the system. This would make the student take the issue seriously. The time for evaluation is also very important. It is undisputable that if the evaluation is done at the end of the course, then the respondent, or rather the students may not benefit because the kind of changes that would be adopted would be possibly implemented in the next session. Because of this, it is true that appropriate and effective evaluation should be carried out in the middle of the course (Babcock, 2004). Appropriate and effective information management provides the basis for improving the performance of the client. Grading, for example, is an example in which this point becomes relevant. It is clear that grading is a means through which the management can meet the students’ needs. Just as the paper puts it, it is true that appropriate grading system should be able to motivate the student and not just to give them grade. The paper affirms that comments are imperative because it offers detailed, personalized feedback that would help in measuring progress towards strategic targets (Kanyengo, 2009). Additionally, the paper gives an insight of significance of using the online quizzes and homework tasks on blackboard. I wholly support this fact because adoption of online quizzes and homework task on blackboard would be time-consuming and also it allows provision of grade or a few generic statements of feedback. A study that was done by Liu & Cavanaugh (2011) reveals that teacher’s comments and feedback on the student’s assignments as well as teacher-student interaction are very

Consumer Health Informatics and Privacy Research Paper - 1

Consumer Health Informatics and Privacy - Research Paper Example er increasing demands at the healthcare delivery systems, expectations of the beneficiaries), in order to improve efficiency of clinicians and enhance quality of life of the populace on the planet. It is worth mentioning that there are numerous applications of Information Technology in healthcare and each of them is aimed at empowering all or at least one of the following stakeholders: healthcare delivery systems, clinicians and the patients alike. This research throws light two key issues those have been posing challenges for Consumer Health Informatics – one of the applications of information technology in healthcare. The research also lists the steps taken to address the challenges being faced by consumer health informatics. Consumer health informatics has been defined as (Eysenbach, 2000) â€Å"the branch of medical informatics that analyses consumers needs for information; studies and implements methods of making information accessible to consumers; and models and integrates consumers preferences into medical information systems.† The domain of consumer health informatics is majorly centered around the general information and advice from clinicians and other paramedical personnel, and this advice pertains to subjects like nutirition, general wellness, disease management, smoking etc. Users of consumer health informatics are not only those who are suffering from various ailments but even those who have been treated and are willing to share their experiences through bulletin boards, discussion forums and modalities of instant messaging, this kind of information sharing forms a two way communication model as this could take place when the users exchange information with the healthcare service prov iders and other users (Kieschnick, Adler, & Jimison, 1996). Social networking tools and modalities are helping the users of consumer health informatics to share information. IT researchers and practitioners have claimed that on one side IT applications

Peirce criticizes the three methods of inquiry Essay Example for Free

Peirce criticizes the three methods of inquiry Essay Peirce criticizes the three methods of inquiry that he sees as pre-scientific as unable to fix belief permanently, only able to allow the person who uses them a temporary degree of certainty. These three methods are: tenacity, authority and apriorism. Tenacity is, essentially, the ability to hold on to a belief with ones will, turning away from anything that might make one doubt the belief. This is an irrational way of fixing belief, and, as anyone can see, very easily leads to error – like Peirce himself said, it compares to an ostrich who burrows his head in the sand. This may fixate belief, but neither does it help survive nor to increase knowledge. But this isnt its only fault: should the â€Å"tenacious† man accidentally realize that others hold opinions, too, and that they vary, he will lose certainty in his belief, and thus, this method of defense will no longer work for him it will not fix his ideas. He must somehow resist the influence of the community, and this method is weak against it. Authority is the temporary solution – it is a method that fixes belief by referencing it to someone who is an authority for the community. Better yet, to follow a group which is designated by the community to decide properly – and the others should be kept dull on the subject so that there is no diversity of opinion that may undermine authority. It is very effective for the survival of a community, and Peirce admits that for most people it is most effective – it fixes individual belief even though the real collective belief changes: it goes through its phases so slowly it is unnoticeable in an individuals life. But this is only as long as these people wish to be intellectual slaves. There are, however, always those who slip through the cracks of such a system. Those who are not important enough to silence but still dare to think – and should they see other cultures (which is unavoidable), they will think otherwise and the system will fail at least in part. However, the solution proposed by these men is still far from perfect – though much closer to the ideal because it relies on intuitive concepts which are far from experience. The axioms of these systems are taken from intuition alone, and thus more a subjective matter, a matter of taste, as Peirce puts it. Thus this, too, becomes a fallacy and degenerates into relativism or elaborately built cloud castles. Besides, subjective opinions and any manner of social reasoning are too easily influenced, and thus not very prone to the fixation of beliefs. It is authority once more, as is well enough shown by the fact that any system of science soon receives an aprioristic method of confirmation from some branch of philosophy. . The fourth method, that of science, however, is closest to the truth – it derives itself from the logic of nature, one and indivisible, unlike the thoughts of men. It is the only method which actually contains notions of right and wrong – as compared to the world and practical results. It is the only thing, in Peirces opinion, which can truly settle opinions between men. It is simply testable by reproducing a similar situation and allowing the experiment to solve the doubt between scientists. In this he agrees with a member of the Vienna circle named Herbert Feigl. He, too, consider science to be the most adequate tool for the perception of reality. Indeed, the only tool really worth using – if, of course, the scientific criteria are followed. The greatest requirement that Feigl makes of science is that of intersubjective testability. This means that any knowledge that is presumed scientific must be principally testable. Any person with the necessary tools and of sufficient intelligence to understand the topic at hand, whichever topic it may be, must be able to repeat any situation out of which knowledge arises and be able to come to the same conclusion. If this is so, then science as a social structure and an effective body of knowledge becomes essentially self-correcting: any new assumption or hypothesis will sooner or later be tested by others and not accepted on word. Empirical experience, once again, is featured as the final judge of whats to come. He accepts that â€Å"true† and â€Å"testable† are not necessarily one and the same, but science as the best method of fixing knowledge can only reach so far as the empirical world and its tests. This method, presented by men of science for men of science, are far from complete – they do not take into account many difficult social situations or reduce them to a mere need to spend more time observing – and yet it is rather effective. Though rather difficult for humanitarian use, it brought the natural sciences to their fruition, and it is the method which has the most credibility in current society.

Stephen King the Dead Zone Essay Example for Free

Stephen King the Dead Zone Essay What The Future Holds While Stephen King has rightfully garnered a reputation as a horror writer, some of his best fiction revolves around stories of everyday humanity affected by elements of the supernatural, such as the Dead Zone. After awakening from a five-year coma, John Smith has come back from the ether with a clairvoyance to see certain futures and hidden pasts of others by touch alone. Opting to use his powers for good, John is alled upon for such tasks as helping the police to catch a elusive rappist. hen he shakes hands with a political candidate at a rally, he sees a future where the candidate will start a nuclear holocaust as president. Leading John to the ultimate dilemma of potentially altering the future, and perhaps even losing his life in the process. While this is a novel about a supernatural ability, and how John lives after his accident as well as how other people around him react to him and his new ability s the theme of the novel. A reader feels for him because he comes out of his coma an altered man, alternately awed and feared by those who cannot understand what it is to receive an unwanted gift for psychic vision.. He wrestles with the possibly that assassinating the politican will lead to his probable death or his incarceration. Is the future he glimpsed even certain. The Dead Zone tackled issues to do with predestination, and what the future holds. Were things happening Just because Johnny was drawing attention to them because he thought they were going to happen, or would they have happened anyway? Should he tell people, or let nature run its course? And when he is driven to act on a vision that he thinks will affect the greater population, the big issues roll out. even if precognition probably isnt something we all need to dwell on, because King brings up other conundrums about human nature and other things for the reader to chew over.

Literature Review: Wireless Sensor Networks

Literature Review: Wireless Sensor Networks CHAPTER 2 To complete this project, a lot of literature reviews have been done. These include many case studies from past to recent research and general understanding towards the theory behind each technology. Articles, journals, books, previous projects and internet have served as sources of literature reviews. Some major case studies are described below. 2.1.1 Case study 1 Case study towards paper Integration of RFID into Wireless Sensor Networks: Architectures, Opportunities and Challenging Problems (2006) [1] In this paper, Lei Zhang and Zhi Wang propose three different forms of network architecture based on integration of RFID and wireless sensor network, The three architecture are Heterogeneous network, Distributed reduced functional sensor reader network, and Mini node network. Heterogeneous network architecture uses 802.11b/Wi-Fi technology as its platform. In Physical layer, 802.11b/Wi-Fi uses the unlicensed 2.4 GHZ band and Discrete Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) technique. Its maximum data rate can reach to 11 Mbps. In MAC sub-layer, 802.11b/Wi-Fi uses Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) scheme, which will improve the efficiency of network. This architecture is good for real-time operation but limited range. Distributed reduced functional sensor reader network architecture uses ZigBee protocol as its platform. The reasons are ZigBee uses lower power consumption in physical layer and MAC layer, more reliable and low cost. This architecture is good for wide range but no real-time requirement. The last architecture which is the Mini node network architecture uses IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee standard protocol as its platform since there is little data flow and reduced cost. The mini node is actually the Mica nodes which allow communication between each mini node. This architecture is specially fit for industrial security and remote condition-based maintenance system, Figure 2.1 below describe remote condition-based maintenance systems based on the application of Mini node network architecture. By using this architecture, the reader from the forklift will sense signal from each mini node and will move toward the signalled mini node to perform tasks like move rotating parts of a machine automatically. Figure 2.1: Fork lift operation dispatching in a factory [1] Case study 2 Case study on paper Smart Home Mobile RFID-based Internet-Of-Things Systems and Service (2008) [2] Mohsen Darianian, Martin Peter Michael introduce a RFID reader system architecture for a home comprised of several readers in master slave architecture. The communication protocol between the readers and tags is based on RFID standard protocols like UHF. As shown in Figure2.2 below, the system consists of following reader components: Master Reader (MR), a number of Slave Readers (SR), and Mobile RFID (MRFID) Reader The Master reader is a conventional powerful fixed reader with a direct fixed or wireless connection to the smart home server. It starts the read process of slave readers and power up passive tags for reading process. In addition, this master reader also acts as the so-called RF Energy Generator for mobile RFID reader so that the mobile RFID reader can have lower consumption of power. The Slave reader acts as middleware for capturing tag ID information tags which are not accessible by the direct radio transmission of the master reader. Slave readers will be integrated in the home appliances. Since location of the slave readers is known by the system, it is good for localization of tags As for the Mobile RFID reader, in this paper, it has been improved so that it does not consume a lot of energy. The mobile RFID reader will use the proposed architecture so-called RF Energy Generator to be powered up by master reader or slave reader. Thus, these mobile readers will act like passive readers. In this paper, Mohsen Darianian, and Martin Peter Michael have apply the proposed system architecture as described above to create a smart home which apply wireless concepts along with RFID technologies for creating services almost everywhere in a house. It applications include control electrical appliances, home tele-monitoring, and give intelligent suggestions inside the house automatically and wirelessly. Figure 2.2: Smart Home using RFID and WSN [2] Case study 3 Case study on Paper Bus Management System Using RFID in WSN by Ben Ammar Hatem and Hamam Habib (2009) [3] In this paper, intelligent bus tracking application applying integration of RFID and wireless sensor network technology to monitor whether the bus will be arriving on time, early or late inside the bus station is introduced. The design approach is proposed. As shown in Figure 2.3, first, each bus will has its own UHF tag. Next, Entrance and exit doors will be equipped with an RFID reader, antennas and motion sensors. When a bus enters or exits the station, the RFID reader will send its identification to the central computer where the event is displayed on a Map. Finally, a software application on the control station keeps track of the entrance and the exit of buses and updates the displays related to those buses with useful information. The communication will be wireless using ZigBee protocol. To execute this proposed architecture, they choose to use Ultra High Frequency generation 2 (UHF Gen2) RFID which operates between 860MHz to 960MHz bandwidth. UHF is better suited for reading tag attached to buses. It uses backscatter technique to communicate with the tag and provides higher read range compared to HF and LF technology. As for the antenna, they used Alien circular antenna to read RFID tags to improve orientation of reading. Two antennas are used in each gate, to communicate with tags. One is used for the emission of energy to the tag and the other receives energy back from the tag. The display is using the LCD and LED technologies. By completing this proposed system, it is hope to provide a smart solution for managing the bus schedule in the bus stations and offering helpful information to passengers. Problems like under employment of buses fleet and long waiting time at the bus station can be minimised. Case study 4 Case study on paper Intelligent Traffic Management System Base on WSN and RFID by Lejiang Guo, Wei Fang, Guoshi Wang and Longsheng Zheng (2010) [4] This paper introduces Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) base on RFID and WSN, and discusses the hardware and software design principles of the system. Figure 2.4 shows the ITS system architecture. It consists of Access and Terminal Layer, Application Processing Layer, and Data storage and access management. The Access and Terminal layer mainly completes information exchange between each subsystem of ITS. Application Processing Layer will be responsible for processing the information. And lastly the Data storage and access management will be the data management system for the ITS system. As for the composition of the system, RFID tags and sensor nodes are used to keep stored in the monitoring area. RFID reader is used for the base station. At the same time, the sensor nodes send the data after its transfer to the local PC or remote network. RFID can be used for dereliction of duty as an intelligent base station device for RFID and data WSN systems Integration. In the network, the system consists of five types of facilities which are Base Station, Sensor nodes, RFID Tags, Device reader and Center Data Platform. Zigbee protocol is implemented in this system architecture. Figure 2.5 show how the sensor nodes are deployed and communicate to each other. As for the data communication middleware, advanced web Service architecture is implemented. The reason is web service is the most advanced platform for distributed applications, by which it not only can achieve basic distributed application, but also improve fault tolerance. Messaging middleware is using XML format for the transmission of information. Geographic Information System (GIS) is also combined in the system. GIS is based on one of the technologies supported by Public Security Traffic Management GIS platform. GIS is used to process all information associated with visual processing, to provide simple and direct for visualization information interface. By utilizing the application of ITS based on combination of RFID and WSN. The real-time traffic management system can provides the basis for efficient data monitoring. Second, the system uses the heterogeneous adaptive network architecture for road monitoring will provide a more flexible way, efficient, reliable system communication architecture for traffics management system Case study 5 Case study on paper Innovative Application of RFID Systems to Special Education Schools by Shu-Hui Yang and Pao-Ann Hsiung (2010) [5] In this paper, the uses of RFID system innovatively broaden. Application of innovative Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems has been incorporated to special education school campus to improve the teaching and learning and control process in special education schools. For the Implementation Platform and Architecture, the main RFID campus system was implemented using the YesTurnkey technology, which includes four parts, namely front-end RFID middleware server, front-end RFID application server, backend database server, and backend RFID application server. Front-end RFID Middleware Server consists of YesTurnkey Asset Tracking Manager which is a manager of all network resources that includes the set of active RFID readers installed on campus and RFID Processor DLL that processes RFID data. Front-end RFID Application Server is a server which used by the Type 1 (Direct-Connected) RFID scenario windows applications. Backend Database Server implemented the Microsoft SQL Server. And finally, Backend RFID Application Server: which manages the execution of two kinds of applications which are YesTurnkey WiNOC (Wired/Wireless Network Operations Center) Web Application and Type 2 (LAN-Based) RFID Scenario Web Application. However, five of the innovative works are focused, including student temperature monitoring (STM), body weight monitoring (BWM), garbage disposal monitoring (GDM), mopping course recording (MCR), and campus visitor monitoring (CVM) by applying the RFID system technology. Basic operation for mopping course recording (MCR) system will be described below. (Swab with the reader is moving across tag) As shown in Figure 2.6, first, they patch up of a mobile pedestal, an artificial plastic floor with embedded passive RFID tags, and a real mop equipped with a Bluetooth passive RFID reader. The mobile pedestal carried a laptop for displaying the real time status of how a student is performing the cleaning job and a projector connected to the laptop, which could project a black, dark grey, light grey or white image on the artificial floor, which represented dirty, little clean, quite clean, and clean. By using this MCR, teacher can monitor these special education students so that the students will learn to complete their task better. As can be seen, by using this RFID technology, outcomes shown above have truly give benefits not only to teacher but also the student. Research is still ongoing to include RFID technologies in teaching method and materials. Summary of the case studies Theories behind this project This section explains general theory on the technologies involve in this project. The theory and technology involve include Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), Radio-frequency identification (RFID), Integration of WSN and RFID and Visual Basic Programming (VB). 2.2.1 Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) A Wireless Sensor Network is a self-configuring network of small sensor nodes communicating among themselves using radio signals, and deployed in quantity to sense, monitor and understand the physical world such as temperature, pressure, humidity and more. Figure 2.7: WSN Sensor Node 2.2.1.1 Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) Topology Wireless sensor network topology show how each sensor node inside a wireless network are connected. Some of the WSN topologies are like star, mesh and cluster/tree. They are shown Figure 2.8 below. Basic WSN topology is the star topology in which each node maintains a single, direct communication path with the gateway. To increase wireless coverage, cluster/tree topology can be used although it increases complexity. Finally, although network latency may be experienced, mesh topology is especially good in increase network reliability. [6] Figure 2.8: WSN network topologies 2.2.1.2 Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) components A wireless sensor network may consist of the following components: power supply, microcontroller, wireless communication, sensor, local storage, and real time clock systems. Some components may be optional and are depend on the function purpose. The main idea is that the sensors are connected to a tiny computer that coordinates the measurement, pre-processes, stores and delivers the information. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) characteristics This section describes the behavior or the uniqueness of wireless sensor network. Some of them are: harvest or store limited power, Able to withstand harsh environmental conditions, able to adapt with node breakdown, nodes mobility, dynamic network topology, heterogeneity of nodes, large scale of deployment, unattended operation, and lastly, node capacity is scalable and only limited by bandwidth of gateway node. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) protocols There are a lot of wireless sensor network protocols in market nowadays. Some of the well- known WSN protocols are Bluetooth, WiFiZone, IEEE and ZigBee. Choosing the wrong protocol may cause severe inefficiency and prevent the WSN to accomplish user need. The protocol will affect energy dissipation, system cost, Latency and Security. Thus, it is very important to choose the best protocol for a system as it strongly impact on system performance. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) platform Wireless sensor network platform basically include the hardware design, modular design, smart sensor interface, software design, and operating system. The hardware designs include super node, simple node and gateway. All these design have to follow several standardized specification developed by IEEE, Internet Engineering Task Force, and International Society of Automation. Modular design has to be flexible and expandable for various applications. Smart sensor interface has to equipped with plug and play modules. Important topics to be considered in software design include security, mobility and middleware which allow communication between software and hardware. And finally, operating system has to be compatible with TinyOS as TinyOS allows easy establishment to wireless sensor network. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) RFID is a means of identifying a person or object using radio frequency transmission. Mainly, RFID consists of three parts which are reader, tag and also host computer. There are also various types of reader and tags depend on their uses. Figure below show basic operation of a RFID system. First, to read data for tag, tag is move and enter RF field of reader through antenna. Then, RF signal from antenna will power the tag to allow the tag to transmit its ID and data back. Reader will then capture the data and send them to the computer for displaying. To write data to the tags, we just write the data into the computer, and the reader will take the data from the computer and transmits them into the tag via the antenna. Figure 2.9: Basic Operations of RFID 2.2.2.1 RFID reader RFID reader is also called as RFID interrogator and it is used to read/write data from/to tags. It can operate on single or multiple frequencies, and perform anti-collision processing. There is also a hybrid RFID reader which can read bar code. There are mainly three types of RFID reader which are fixed, hand-held and mobile reader. Each reader has their own uniqueness. RFID reader consists of components like receiver, transmitter, oscillator, controller/processor and input/output port. The receiver holds an amplifier and a demodulator. Transmitter has a modulator and power amplifier. Oscillator is used to provide carrier signal to modulator and a reference signal to demodulator circuits. Then, the controller/processor will perform data processing and communicates with external network. And lastly, input/output port is connected to the antenna. 2.2.2.2 RFID tag RFID tag consists of RFID chip, antenna and power source. RFID chip consists of modulation circuitry, control circuitry, processor and memory. Modulation circuitry can change the signal from reader to include data to be transmitted back to the reader. Control circuitry control internal function under the command of processor. Processor interpret signal from reader and control memory storage with retrieval. And memory serves as writable and non-writable data storage. Antenna is only used by Ultra high frequency and Microwave frequency tags. Low frequency and High frequency tags will use induction coils. As for power sources, the tags can be divided into three types which are active tags, semi-passive tags and passive tags. Active tags have internal power source. Passive tags draw power from reader. And Semi-passive tags are battery-assisted but communicated by drawing power from reader. Integration of WSN and RFID Wireless sensor network (WSN) is used to sense and monitor various parameters in the environment while RFID is used to detect presence, location and identification of objects. By integrating these two technologies, they will provide a significant improvement on monitoring application. The basic idea of integration of WSN with RFID is to connect the RFID reader to an RF transceiver, which has routing function and can forward information to and from other readers wirelessly. RFID will act as a sensor in the WSN. With combination of RFID and WSN, monitoring and tracking application can be done not only outdoor but indoor also (with obstacle). The coverage can also be improved depends on the specification of WSN platform used. Visual Basic Programming (VB) Visual Basic is a programming language and environment developed by Microsoft which is based on the BASIC language. Visual Basic is commonly used to develop graphical user interface. Visual Basic was one of the first products to provide a graphical programming environment for developing user interfaces. Since it uses graphical programming environment, we can be sure to increase the efficiency in design the graphical user interface.

An Observation of Virgils Aeneid, Book II :: Virgil Aeneid Essays

An Observation of Virgil's Aeneid, Book II The Romans, unlike the Greeks were not gifted in abstract thought. They constructed no original system of philosophy, invented no major literary forms, and made no scientific discoveries. Yet, they excelled in the art of government and empire building, they created a workable world-state and developed skills in administration, law, and practical affairs. In the Punic Wars, the Roman republic defeated the Carthaginians in North Africa and Rome inherited the Pergamene Kingdom from the last of the Attalids in 133 B.C. Rome became heir to the legacy of the Hellenistic world of the Greeks. The Hellenistic period which lasted 300 years in is noted by the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. It is marked by its rich, sophisticated and diverse culture. Many Romans were eager to merge with this Greek culture in order to exhibit the dominance of their rule over conquered societies. This exhibition of dominance was the primary motivation of the Roman desire to possess fine works of Greek Art. Whereas, other Romans, were convinced that the pursuit of the assimilation of foreign cultures would only harm the republic. During this time, much social disintegration and unhindered individualism threatened political stability. However, the adoption of Greek art for Roman needs was very popular. An educated Roman was well versed in the history of Greek Art and was socially compelled to collect Greek art for personal embellishment. The modernization of the old Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia is an example of the new Roman attitude toward art and architecture as Greek artists migrated in vast numbers to the new capital of the world. Roman generals and their quest to establish Rome as the new unchallenged capital of the world justified the expense of replanning the old sanctuary. This accomplishment would bring them personal glory and uplift the majestic status of Roman people. Roman architecture benefited as the city's wealth grew as other leaders contributed to the expansion of new monuments. Lucias Cornelius Sculla, (82-78 B.C.) led the Romans is Social War and later became dictator and master of the city of Rome. He brought Corinthian columns form the temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens to renew the shrine of the Roman Jupiter in the capital. This act symbolized the transferal of spiritual power from the aristocracy of the Senate to autocratic leaders, and art began to be shaped by their preferences. This satisfied the Roman desire for grandiose architecture by being the model of Hellenistic majestic ornate style.

Lead Poisoning :: Journalistic Essays

Lead Poisoning Lead has the atomic symbol of Pb (for plumbum, lead in Latin). The atomic number for lead is 82 and the atomic mass is 207.19 AMU. It melts at about 327.502 Â °C and boils at 1740 Â °C. Lead is a heavy, ductile, soft, gray solid. It is soluble in nitric acid and insoluble in water. It is found in North, Central and South America, Australia, Africa and Europe (Heiserman 686). "It generally occurs in nature in the form of ores and was recovered in early times as a by-product in the smelting of silver. Once lead is mined, processed and introduced into man's environment, it is a potential problem forever." Lead has been mined, smelted and compounded for thousands of years. It even has been found in the Egyptian tombs. Its versatility, as well as its physical and chemical properties, accounted for its extensive use. Lead can be rolled into sheets which can be made into rods and pipes. It can also be molded into containers and mixed with other metallic elements. Mini blinds are a prime source of lead poisoning. The greatest risk of injury from lead poisoning is to children under the age of seven. The kinds of injuries lead poisoning can cause are learning disabilities, brain damage, organ failure, death and many more. Studies have shown that lead poisoned children are more likely to drop out of high school and to live a life of unemployment. HUD estimates that 75% of the houses built in the United States before 1978 contain some lead-based paint. It is universally accepted that the most common cause of lead poisoning in children is deteriorated (chipping and peeling) lead-based paint on the exterior and interior of houses. Lead poisoning doesn't only occur in children, but adults too. Adults can get it from leaded soldering fumes, lead tainted soil or heroin. It takes more lead to poison adults than children because an adult's body has formed and is prepared for such things unlike children who are still growing. Some common symptoms of lead poisoning in adults are fatigue, depression, heart failure and high blood pressure. There are myths about lead that many people believe are true.