Web Mining Homework

A Recommender System Based On Web Data Mining for Personalized E-learning Jinhua Sun Department of Computer Science and Technology Xiamen University of Technology, XMUT Xiamen, China [email  protected] edu. cn Yanqi Xie Department of Computer Science and Technology Xiamen University of Technology, XMUT Xiamen, China [email  protected] edu. cn Abstract—In this paper, we introduce a web data mining olution to e-learning system to discover hidden patterns strategies from their learners and web data, describe a personalized recommender system that uses web mining techniques for recommending a student which (next) links to visit within an adaptable e-learning system, propose a new framework based on data mining technology for building a Web-page recommender system, and demonstrate how data mining technology can be effectively applied in an e-learning environment.Keywords–Data mining; web log,;e-learning; recommender readily interpreted by the analyst. A virtual e-learnin g framework is proposed, and how to enhance e-learning through web data mining is discussed. II. RELATED WORK I. INTRODUCTION With the rapid development of the World Wide Web, Web data mining has been extensively used in the past for analyzing huge collections of data, and is currently being applied to a variety of domains [1]. In the recent years, e-learning is becoming common practice and widespread in China.With the development of e-Learning, massive amounts of learning courses are available on the e-Learning system. When entering e-Learning System, the learners are unable to know where to begin to learn with various courses. Therefore, learners waste a lot of time on e-Learning system, but don’t get the effective learning result. It is very difficult and time consuming for educators to thoroughly track and assess all the activities performed by all learners.In order to overcome such a problem, the recommender learning system is required. Recommender systems are used on ma ny web sites to help users find interesting items [2], them predict a user's preference and suggest items by analyzing the past preference information of users, e-learning system is applied on the basis of the method. The user’s learning route is given and then provides the relevant learners useful messages through dynamically searching for the appropriate learning profile.This paper recommends learners the studying activities or learning profile through the technology of Web Mining with the purpose of helping they adopt a proper learning profile, we describe a framework that aims at solution to e-learning to discover the hidden insight of learning profile and web data. We demonstrate how data mining technology can be effectively applied in an e-learning environment. The framework we propose takes the results of the data mining process as input, and converts these results into actionable knowledge, by enriching them with information that can beThe route where the learner brow ses through the web pages will be noted down in Web log, carries on the technology of Web mining through Learning Profile and Web log, and analyzes from the materials related to association rule. It can be found the best learning profile from this information. These learning profiles combine with the Agent and put them on the learning website. Furthermore, the Agent recommends the function of learning profiles on learning website. Therefore, the learner will acquire a better learning profile.This chapter briefly illustrates the relevant contents including: e-Learning, Learning Profile, Agent, Web Data mining and Association rule. A. E-learning E-learning is the online delivery of information for purposes of education, training, or knowledge management. In the Information age skills and knowledge need to be continually updated and refreshed to keep up with today’s fastpaced study environment. E-learning is also growing as a delivery method for information in the education fiel d and is becoming a major learning activity. It is a Web-enabled system that makes knowledge accessible to those who need it.They can learn anytime and anywhere. E-learning can be useful both as an environment for facilitating learning at schools and as an environment for efficient and effective corporate training [3]. B. A Glance at Web Data Web usage mining performs mining on web data, particularly data stored in logs managed by the web servers. All accesses to a web site or a web-based application are tracked by the web server in a log containing chronologically ordered transactions indicating that a given URL was requested at a given time from a given machine using a given web client (i. e. browser).As shown in table 1, Web log contains the website â€Å"hit† information, such as visitor’s IP address, date and time, required pages, and status code indicating. The web log raw 978-1-4244-4994-1/09/$25. 00  ©2009 IEEE data is required to be converted into database f ormat, so that data mining algorithms can be applied to it. TABLE I. WEB LOG EXAMPLES Web logs 172. 158. 133. 121 – – [01/Nov/2006:23:46:00 -0800] â€Å"GET /work /assignmnts/midterm-solutions. pdf HTTP/1. 1†³206 29803 2006-12-14 00:23:56 209. 247. 40. 108 – 168. 144. 44. 231 GET /robots. txt – 200 600 119 125 HTTP/1. 0 www. a0598. com ia_archiver – – sefulness and certainty of a rule respectively [5]. Support, as usefulness of a rule, describes the proportion of transactions that contain both items A and B, and confidence, as validity of a rule, describes the proportion of transactions containing item B among the transactions containing item A. The association rules that satisfy user specified minimum support threshold (minSup) and minimum confidence threshold (minCon) are called strong association rules. D. Web Mining for E-learning Learning profile help learner to keep a record of their current knowledge and understanding of e-learn ing and elearning activities.Web mining is the application of data mining techniques to discover meaningful patterns, profiles, and trends from both the content and usage of Web sites. Web usage mining performs mining on web data, particularly data stored in logs managed by the web servers. The web log provides a raw trace of the learners’ navigation and activities on the site. In order to process these log entries and extract valuable patterns that could be used to enhance the learning system or help in the learning evaluation, a significant cleaning and transformation phase needs to take place so as to prepare the information for data mining algorithms [6].Web server log files of current common web servers contain insufficient data upon which to base thorough analysis. The data we use to construct our recommended system is based on association rules. E. Recommendation Using Association Rules One of the best-known examples of data mining in recommender systems is the discove ry of association rules, or item-to-item correlations [7]. Association rules have been used for many years in merchandising, both to analyze patterns of preference across products, and to recommend products to consumers based on other products they have selected.Recommendation using association rules is to predict preference for item k when the user preferred item i and j, by adding confidence of the association rules that have k in the result part and i or j in the condition part [4]. An association rule expresses the relationship that one product is often purchased along with other products. The number of possible association rules grows exponentially with the number of products in a rule, but constraints on confidence and support, combined with algorithms that build association rules with item sets of n items from rules with n-1 item sets, reduce the effective search space.Association rules can form a very compact representation of preference data that may improve efficiency of s torage as well as performance. In its simplest implementation, item-to-item correlation can be used to identify â€Å"matching items† for a single item, such as other clothing items that are commonly purchased with a pair of pants. More powerful systems match an entire set of items, such as those in a customer's shopping cart, to identify appropriate items to recommend. The web data is massive since the visitor’s every click in the website will leave several records in the tables.This also allows the website owner to track visitors’ behavior details and discover valuable patterns. C. Data Mining Techniques The term data mining refers to a broad spectrum of mathematical modeling techniques and software tools that are used to find patterns in data and user these to build models. In this context of recommender applications, the term data mining is used to describe the collection of analysis techniques used to infer recommendation rules or build recommendation model s from large data sets.Recommender systems that incorporate data mining techniques make their recommendations using knowledge learned from the actions and attributes of users. Classical data mining techniques include classification of users, finding associations between different product items or customer behavior, and clustering of users [4]. 1) Clustering Clustering techniques work by identifying groups of consumers who appear to have similar preferences. Once the clusters are created, averaging the opinions of the other consumers in her cluster can be used to make predictions for an individual.Some clustering techniques represent each user with partial participation in several clusters. The prediction is then an average across the clusters, weighted by degree of participation. 2) Classification Classifiers are general computational models for assigning a category to an input. The inputs may be vectors of features for the items being classified or data about relationships among th e items. The category is a domain-specific classification such as malignant/benign for tumor classification, approve/reject for credit requests, or intruder/authorized for security checks.One way to build a recommender system using a classifier is to use information about a product and a customer as the input, and to have the output category represent how strongly to recommend the product to the customer. 3) Association Rules Mining Association rule mining is to search for interesting relationships between items by finding items frequently appeared together in the transaction database. If item B appeared frequently when item A appeared, then an association rule is denoted as A B (if A, then B).The support and confidence are two measures of rule interestingness that reflect III. WEB DATA MINING FRAMEWORK FOR E-COMMERCE RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS A. A Visual Web Log Mining Architecture for Personalized E-learning Recommender System In this section, we present A Visual Web Log Mining Architec ture for e-learning recommender to enable personalized, named V-WebLogMiner, which relies on mining and on visualization of Web Services log data captured in elearning environment. The V-WebLogMiner is such a odel: with the mining technology and analysis of web logs or other records, the system could find learners’ interests and habits. While an old learner is visiting the website, the system will automatically match with the active session and recommend the most relevant hyperlinks what the learner interests. As shown in Figure1, V-WebLogMiner is a multi-layered architecture capable to deal with both Web learner profiles and traditional Web server logs as input data. It maintains three main components: data preprocessing module, Web mining module and recommendation module. ) Web Mining Module The Web mining module discovers valuable knowledge assets from the data repository containing learners' personal data by executes the mining algorithms, tracked data of learners' perfor mance and behavior, automatically identify each learner’s frequently sequential pages and store them to recommend database. When the learner visit the site next time, hyperlinks of those pages will be added so that the learner could directly link to his individual pages being remembered.The major component of Web mining module is Web data mining which acts as a conductor controlling and synchronizing every component within the module. The Web data mining module is also responsible for interfacing with the storage. The learning profile evaluation component provide profiling tool to collect personal data of learner and tracking tool to observe learners' actions including like and dislike information. For personalization applications, we apply rule discovery methods individually to every learner’s data.To discover rules that describe the behavior of individual learner, we use various data mining algorithms, such as Apriori [8] for association rules and CART (Classificatio n and Regression Tress) [9] for classification. 3) Recommendation Module The recommendation module is a recommendations engine; it is in charge of bulk loading data from course database, executing SQL commands against it and provides the list of recommended links to visualization tools.For the recommendation module, recommendations engine is responsible for the synchronizing process indexing and mapping, is a component for storing and searching recommend assets to be used in the learning process. The recommendation engine considers the active learners in conjunction with the recommended database to provide personalized recommendations, it directly related to the personalization on the website and the development of elearning system. The task of the recommendation engine is to determine the type of the learner online and compute recommendations based on the recent actions of that learner.The decision is based on the knowledge attained from the recommended database. The recommender en gine is activated each time that the learner visits a web page. First, if there are clusters in the recommended database, then the engine has to classify the current learner to determine the most likely cluster. We have to communicate with the engine to know the current number of pages visited and average knowledge of the learner. Then, we use the centroid minimum distance method [10] for assigning the learner to the cluster whose centroid is closest to that learner.Finally, we make the recommendation according to the rules in the cluster. So, only the rules of the corresponding cluster are used to match the current web page in order to obtain the current list of recommended links [11]. 4) The Visualization tools Visualization tools should be used to present implicit and useful knowledge from recommendations engine, Web services usage and composition. Data can be viewed at different levels Figure 1. A visual web mining architecture for Personalized E-learning Recommender System ) Da ta Preprocessing Module The data preprocessing module is set of programs used to prepare data for further processing. For instance: extraction, cleaning, transformation and loading. This module uses Web log files and learner profile files to feed the data repository. The data preparation component is used to parse and transform plain ASCII files produced by a Web server to a standard database format. This component is important to make the architecture independent from the Web server supplier. of granularity and abstractions as patrolled coordinate’s graphs [12, 13].This visual model easily shows the interrelationships and dependencies between different components. Interactively, the model can be used to discover sensitivities and to do approximate optimization, etc. B. The Procedure of the Data is Explained As show in figure 1, the beginning learner, that is to say the earliest one, will study in the e-Learning teaching platform. The course materials of Web studying system c ome from the course database. The data of learner’s learning profiles may be recorded in the learner profile files and Web log files.Then next step is to find out the best learning profile from the proceeded data of Web log through web mining to proceed with Association rule and others data mining algorithm. These learning profiles need to be classified—every field has relevant courses and better learning profiles. The recommender engine will offer the list of recommended links when learners study the courses. With the above information and learning profiles, when the future learners study in Web, recommender engine offers related link lists according to recommend database. However, these link lists may not be suitable for all learners.Therefore, after finishing recommendation every time, there are systems of assessing. The learner (n +1) evaluates the learning profiles that are recommended. Because the profiles analyzed by system may not be perfect, if there are adjus tments of evaluation would make the recommendation conform to learners’ asks more. These suggestions can help learners navigate better relevant resources and fast recommend the on-line materials, which help learners to select pertinent learning activities to improve their performance based on on-line behavior of successful learners.IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK There are some possible extensions to this work. Research for analyzing learners’ past studying pattern will enable to detect an appropriate. Furthermore, it will be an interesting research area to effectively judge session boundaries and to improve the efficiency of algorithms for web data mining. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial subsidy provided by the Xiamen Science and Technology Bureau under 3502Z20077023, 3502Z20077021 and YKJ07013R project. REFERENCES [1] [2] D. J. H and, H. Mannila, and P. Smyth.Principles of Data Mining. MIT Press, 2000. J. B. Schafer, J. A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. Recommender systems in ecommerce. In ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pages 158166, 1999. Liaw, S. & Hung ,H. How Web Technology Can facilitate Learning. Information Systems Management, 2002. Choonho Kim and Juntae Kim, A Recommendation Algorithm Using Multi-Level Association Rules, Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE/WIC International Conference on Web Intelligence, p. 524, October 13-17, 2003. J. Han and M. Kamber, Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, Morgan Kaurmann Publishers, 2000 Za ane, O.R. & Luo, J. Towards evaluating learners’ behaviour in a web-based distance learning environment. In Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT01), p. 357– 360, 2001. Sarwar, B. , Karypis, G. , Konstan, J. A. , & Reidl, J. Item-based Collaborative Filtering Recommendation Algorithms. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 285 – 295, 2001. R. Agrawal et al. , Fast Discovery of Association Rul es, Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, AAAI Press, Menlo Park, Calif. , 1996, chap. 12. L. Breiman et al. Classification and Regression Trees, Wadsworth, Belmont, Calif. , 1984. MacQueen, J. B. Some Methods for classification and Analysis of Multivariate Observations. In Proceedings of of 5-th Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, 1967, pp. 281297. Cristobal Romero, Sebastian Ventura and Jose A. Delgado et al. , Personalized Links Recommendation Based on Data Mining in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems, Creating New Learning Experiences on a Global Scale,2007, pp. 292-306. Inselberg, A. Multidimensionl detective, In IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, 1997, vol. 00, p. 00-110 . Ware, C. Information Visualization: Perception for Design,Morgan Kaufmann, New York, 2000. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Recommender systems have emerged as powerful tools for helping users find and evaluate items of interest. The research work presente d in this paper makes several contributions to the recommender systems for personalized e-learning. First of all, we propose a new framework based on web data mining technology for building a Web-page recommender system. Additionally, we demonstrate how web data mining technology can be effectively applied in an e-learning environment. [11] [12] [13]

Ducati & Texas Pacific Group †a ”Wild Ride” Leveraged Buyout

Ducati & Texas Pacific Group – A †Wild Ride† Leveraged Buyout 1. What is the nature of the opportunity? Could the Ducati brand be expanded beyond motorcycles? Why or why not? TPG strategy is to invest in undervalued firms’ that usually have been poorly managed. The investments are made in privately hold firms that are either unlisted from the beginning or that is being delisted from the stock exchange under the LBO process. TPG wants to invest in firms with a â€Å"healthy† basis but that are experience some problems that TPG believes’ that they can fix. Does Ducati live up to this? TGP has the opportunity, if the deal goes through, to purchase a controlling stake in Ducati Meccanico, producer of the best motorcycles in the world. The article describes that Ducati was in a great position of becoming for street bikes as what Harley-Davidson was for cruisers. They have a recognized brand, in spite of limited marketing, associated with high performance, i. e. high quality and high technology. Their bikes crushed the competition and won the World Superbike championships for several years in a row; 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994 and 1995. Their racing performance indicated on technical brilliance which is just what street bike customers’ prefer and therefore they had customers on the wait lists to buy their bikes. The core business possible growth was considered as high when comparing their number of sales to Harley-Davidson sales. In addition, to this the market didn’t foresee any new entrants of street bikes which also work in their favor. The manufacturing fundamentals were strong with low fixed costs due to high levels of outsourcing, 85 %. They offered the customers 15 models of bikes in four families founded on seven various engines. Furthermore, the most expensive part of an engine is the crank cases and cylinders but Ducati can keep these costs low since they have high levels of standardization of their engines and therefore only need two crank cases and three cylinders because. All these factors’ make Ducati look like an attractive brand that should have a prosperous economy. But they were under great financial pressure and faced severe problems in both manufacturing and financing. They had no money and weren’t allowed to borrow any either which caused extreme delays on payments to key suppliers. Therefore their factor was full of unfinished/almost-finished bikes. This affected their sales and extended their customer wait lists but it also affected suppliers and some of them went bankrupt. Ducati were short on working capital and the business was so entangled with Cagiva Group, which Ducati was a part of, that the detail’s on Ducati’s performance was not transparent at all. In the time span from 1993 to 1995 there was only a reliable balance sheet from 1995. TPG managed to assemble the profit and losses for the other years. All this together indicates a really poorly handled management. The forecasted EBIT for 1996 was negative and there was an imminent chance that Ducati went bankrupt since they couldn’t meet there payments. This lack of transparency has made it hard to find financing. TPG can succeed if they manage to build a model that captures their payback goal times three in three to five years. They need to find out what the Ducati should be earning and around these assets construct an international company. TPG can expect to take over a mismanaged company under financial pressure/distress but that have great potential in their strong brand and manufacturing fundamentals. To make this work they need to use a capable management team that can build up both the brand and the company. They need arrange the financing to be able to recover from the distress and to start making some money. But as they state in the article they will have to write at least a thousands of checks on their first day. Ducati brand could and should probably be extended beyond motorcycles even though a first step is to close the deal, take control over and built up the company. There for it might not be a good idea, at least not the first thing to start with. As I already pointed out Ducati is in a great position to imitate, for street bikes, what cruisers are for Harley-Davidson. Harley-Davidson has succeeded in creating a life-style brand with as much as 15% of its sales, with a growth potential, coming from just clothing and mechanical accessories. Ducati could look at the products Harley-Davidson is selling and how their selling them. They could also compare with a car company, like Ferrari, that has a lot of clothing and accessories that they sell. Ducati has a great potential to extend beyond motorcycles with motorcycle clothing and accessories and mechanical accessories. There are probably a lot of motorcycle stores that would want to sell their products and they could also sell them through their own shops and from online shops. It is just the imagination, costs and the combination of a balanced brand expansion that sets the limits. 2. How does this deal differ from a typical deal in the US? In terms of deal flow generation, due diligence process, negotiations and context? Deal flow generation The deal flow is the ability used by equity firms to identify attractive potential investment candidates, i. e. the ability to generate deal flow. This flow is generated from a wide range sources’, from for instance the experience and network built up by working in specific businesses to the network of senior corporate executives and it is this flow that discover opportunities that otherwise would have gone by unnoticed. Now days’ investment banks generally works as agents that sells the opportunity to invest for a fee paid by the seller in a sale process akin to an auction. To help Cagiva through its financial distress the Castiglioni brothers wanted to get a bridge loan from DMG so they contacted Razzano but he wasn’t interested in signing them a loan agreement. Instead he saw the potential of an investment and contacted Halpern since they were looking for a joint investment. Due diligence Due diligence is the valuation process undertaken before the parties sign the deal to identify the future of the potential investment but also to estimate the proper price for the investment. Equity firms’ usually creates a model on several hypotheses that captures the payback of the investment. Due diligence is a vital process in investigating the financial health, technology, the market, and the current management. A lot of different sources are used and in connection to this the investing firm usually signs a confidential agreement. The due diligence process generally starts after the parties have signed a Letter of Intent and paves the path to further negotiations between them. TPG have signed a Letter of Intent with the Castiglioni brothers and are trying to build a model that captures their payback. The problem for them is to separate the intertwined Ducati from Cagiva to find out what the Ducati should be earning to be able construct an international company around these assets. Negotiation If the sale is conducted through an auction by an investment bank intermediate the due diligence process often leads to a final proposal by the bidders’ and this is where the negotiation phase starts with chosen bidders. The negotiations then lead to an agreement between the parties. According to the article the negotiations in the US are done more in a linear path but the negotiations with Cagiva can best be described as a circular path. TPG has been negotiated with Ducati for almost a year. This is probably were the cultural difference is most prominent. Americans chose to discuss every issue separately step by step and after every discussion they want to include this in the contract between the parties. Italians see the whole picture in every discussion so when the Americans have decided something new in the next step of the precoess the Italians want to go back to the previous steps and re discuss them. Furthermore, Italians don’t like do business if they can’t trust the other part in America you don’t have to feel the trust since you include every little detail in the arrangement otherwise you can get sued. Maybe that is why the Castiglioni brothers might not trust TPG if they are not willing to re discuss everything again. Maybe that is why they are trying to shop the deal to others even though they have signed a Letter of Intent with TPG. This would never happen in America. But they have not participated in any meetings and in America it would probably not be hard to sign a contract under an LBO situation. TPG believed that their behavior replicated an act of trying to back out of the deal. Context LBO’s in U. S. eems much more organized than in Italy but at the same time this might make it harder to find interesting targets that have the same growth potential or at least the competition of acquire them might be harder. The development of the high-yield markets in Europe compared to US differ since the markets in Europe was not as developed as the US market. This made it harder for TPG to accomplish the same level of leverage as in the US. Halpern compare the debt-to-equity rat io as 2:1 in Italy compared to 3:1 in the U. S. On the other hand TGP were looking for companies that had grown hastily but still was arranged as small company and in Italy companies aspired to be small because of the fact that they then paid less tax. In order to pay even less tax it wasn’t uncommon, according to Halpern, to find relatively small companies with as much as 50 subsidiaries. This is usually not the case in the U. S. To overcome the aim to stay small and to not go public â€Å"Tremonti Law† allowed companies that went public in 1996 a two years tax relief. 3. What is the value of Ducati at the time of the deal? How much should TPG be willing to pay for 51 percent of the equity? Please assume that the target return is 35 percent (annualized). Observe that you are required to value the firm. For the valuation of Ducati, observe that since this is a leveraged buyout, the debt-to-equity ratio will change drastically, and you need to handle this in the appraisal model you use. Furthermore, you need to think about the inputs you shall use in the valuation. How do you determine return on assets? Which risk free rate of interest should be used? Which risk premium should be used? Etc. To value Ducati we can use the APV-model. APV treats the firm as it is all equity financed. A suitable unleveraged beta for the estimation is a beta in the same industry that is all equity financed and the article states that Harley-Davidson don’t have any long-term debt which means that their beta is unleveraged. I will therefore use their beta of 1. 09. We will use CAPM to discount the cash flows and a rule of thumb to know which rate to use is to match the risk free rate with the country that we are going to invest in. The 10-year government bond is 6. 4% in both the US and Italy so this wouldn’t have caused any trouble here. Since the 10-year bond is 6. 74% in both countries we will not add any extra country risk for the investment. The risk premium that we are going to use is 7. 5%. TABEL 119961997199819992000200120022003 EBIT-5. 4+58. 2+79. 4+96. 3+111+123. 3+146 -Taxes(53. 5%)0-31. 1-42. 5-51. 5-59. 4-6. 6-72. 3-78. 1 +Depreciation+6+7. 3+9. 1+11. 1+13. 5+15 . 7+18. 1+20. 7 +Amortization+24. 7+24. 7+24. 7+28. 5+28. 5+28. 5+28. 5+28. 5 -Capex-12. 9-15. 5-20-24-22-24-24-25 Change in Working Capital (see TABEL 2)-0. 9-1. -32. 9-17. 3-2. 9-11. 2-10. 5-10. 3 Total cash flow 13. 342. 317. 843. 168. 766. 37580. 8 +1229. 8 TABEL â€Å"199519961997199819992000200120022003 Cash9. 411. 322. 689. 837. 279. 987. 2132. 2 6%6%6%6%6%6%6% Transaction cash required 9. 411. 322. 628. 532. 636. 2138. 841. 344 Accounting receivables 8084. 583. 2124. 5139. 9141. 6152161. 4170. 6 Inventory5537. 249. 265. 461. 768. 172. 676. 380. 2 Other3. 32. 22. 73. 21516. 81819. 120. 2 Current assets147. 7135. 2157. 7221. 6249. 2262. 7281. 4298. 1315 Accounting payable4030. 350. 478. 794. 4104. 1110. 9116. 6122. 6 Other11. 39. 410. 13. 27. 88. 79. 49. 910. 5 Current Liabilities 51. 339. 760. 991. 9102. 2112. 8130. 3126. 5133. 1 Working Capital 96. 495. 596. 8129. 7147149. 9161. 1171. 6181. 9 Change in Working Capital 0. 9 1. 3 32. 9 17. 3 2. 9 11. 2 10. 5 10. 3 CAPM: Re= R f+? (Rm-Rf) = 0. 0674 + 1. 09 x 7. 5 = 14. 92% Terminal value by with a multiple: TPG is willing to pay 400-500 billion lire for 100% of Ducati. Enterprise value: 280+140=420-40=380 Earnings multiple: (Enterprise value)/(EBITA for 1995)=380/60. 4=6. 3 (how many times this year’s profit is TPG willing to pay for Ducati) We use the multiple on EBITA for 2003 ? 195. 2 x 6. 3 = 1229. 8 (this have to be discounted to present value we will therefore add it to 2003) Value of Ducati if it was all equity financed: 13/1. 1492 + 42. 3/1. 14922 + 17. 8/1. 14923 + 43. 1/1. 14924 + 68. 7/1. 14925 + 66. 3/1. 14926 + 75/1. 14927 + 1310. 6/1. 14928=602. 3 billion lire But Ducati has liabilities so we need to value that as well. TABEL 319961997199819992000200120022003 Net interest expenses1131. 128. 928. 123. 117. 912. 36. 3 Tax shields(53. 5%) 5. 916. 615. 51512. 49. 66. 6 The tax shields illustrate how much less taxes’ Ducati needs to pay because of the interest expenses and that is what we need to discount in order to value Ducati. 5. 9/1. 1125 + 16. 6/1. 11252 + 15. 5/1. 11253 + 15/1. 11254 + 12. 4/1. 11255 + 9. 6/1. 11256 + 6. 6/1. 11257 = 56. 7 billion lire Value of Ducati: 602. 3+56. 7=659 billion lire Value of equity= 659-280=379 billion 4. Should Halpern consider applying a country risk premium in determining the appropriate discount rate for Ducati? They should not consider applying a country risk premium since the Italian the long government bond of Italy and the US are the same, i.. . 6. 74%. 5. Should Halpern walk away from this deal? Why or why not? Ducati has a lot of problems that I already covered under the first question. But as a summery are under great financial pressure and have faced severe problems in both manufacturing and financing. The reporting of their financial performance is not transparent at all instead it is entan gled with the Cagiva Group. This has made it hard for TPG to hunt financing to the LBO. It is perhaps not a surprise but they have a problem with their working capital and the payment delays leave them with a lot of unfinished bikes. This has lead to a decrease of their sales and enlarged wait lists. Then we have a badly manage management by the Castiglioni brothers who continues to shop around for other deals even though they signed the Letter of Intent. There is also the risk of insolvency of Ducati and bankruptcy of Cagiva which have made TPG worried about the Italian legacy. A bankruptcy of Cagiva after a closed deal could lead to a delay of the deal for up to four years and this would be cost them a lot of money. The deal also has a lot of benefits. Ducati is the world leading manufacturer of motorcycles and if managed well they could probably be profitable very soon. They already believe that this want be a problem with Minoli as CEO. The brand is well-known and easy for investors to understand. This opens up the opportunity for IPO which could in fact obtain higher sales compared to trading. TPG has worked with the deal for one year so they have really had time have to plan for the changes in the Ducati. 6. If TPG pursues the deal and purchases a stake in Ducati, what are the critical steps that TPG needs to take in order to make the deal successful? Please be specific in your answer! First of all they need to get the Castiglioni brothers to stop shopping around for other deals. They have â€Å"signed† the deal through the Letter of Intent and it is the brothers and Cagiva responsibility to follow the contract. Maybe easier said than done be the negotiations must continue in order to get a deal. TPG also need to finish their due diligence model so to that they can identify the future of the potential investment but also to estimate the proper price for the investment. It is hard to close a deal otherwise. The due diligence is also important in investigating the financial health, technology, the market, and the current management. If they sign the deal TPG can expect to take over a mismanaged company under financial distress that has great potential through its strong brand and manufacturing fundamentals. To make this work they need to use a capable management team that can build up both the brand and the company. They also need to start up and arrange the NewCO establishment, the senior debt and write at least thousands of checks on their first day.

Disseration Analysis Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Disseration Analysis - Assignment Example The paper "Disseration Analysis" based on published literature and established facts derived from evidenced researches, this analysis interprets the requirements in the form of four main hypotheses. Research based on quantitative data obtained using Guskey’s model has been used for the purpose of evaluating impact of teachers’ professional development on student achievement. Based upon the results obtained from our study, the most important derivation is that of goal clarity for teachers, which provides a base to frame and achieve school’s basic objectives, a point advocated in literature studied. Secondly, the practices implemented for this purpose did not cover all required aspects of professional development. Nevertheless, participation in planning was high. However, study indicated low correlation with actual intended outcome, i.e., enhanced student learning. These findings underpin the need for this study to evaluate the impact of teachers’ profession al development on student achievement, which further signifies the role of teachers’ development in students’ overall improvement.

E-Environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

E-Environment - Essay Example As the paper highlights  e-commerce (electronic commerce) is a process of carrying out business tasks using internet. However, there is a small difference between e-business and e-commerce. E-business does not engage commercial transaction, is an online company, a transition made on the web, however that does not essentially comprise a commercial transaction. In this scenario, the executive of e-commerce business, for instance, that professional is in-charge for dealing and managing relationship between the business and consumers on the web. On the other hand, the executive of e-business, actually, is accountable for consulting the business's internet. In this scenario, one has to work on company’s sales tasks and the other does not. This is the major dissimilarity.This discussion stresses that  with the developments in the information technology there have emerged a large number of opportunities and prospects for the businesses. Though, the information technology has offe red countless opportunities to businesses however also caused a number of legal, privacy and ethical issues. In this scenario, the web based businesses are facing a more open and less secure arrangement that can cause various serious problems for business arrangement. This can lead to a number of business and corporate issues. In this scenario, the customer security management is one of the main issues that need to be resolved in order to improve corporate performance.... In this scenario, the customer security management is one of the main issues that need to be resolved in order to improve corporate performance. Additionally, the implementation of information technology offers an excellent support for the business as a result improves corporate performance but also causes danger of exposing business customer details (Wolverton). In addition, in past few years we have seen a number of security and privacy attacks to the world’s big business corporations. In this scenario, one of the major corporations is Amazon.com that has experienced attacks from a website hacker who attacked the business network servers and hacked the records of more than 98,000 customers and forced the company to go offline. On the other hand, there are many cases in which business firms faced massive credit card frauds. Additionally, these situations caused serious issues and challenges for businesses for maintaining customer belief on business. Thus, the impact of legal and privacy and ethical issues extensively influence the business performance. In this scenario, business firms can face issues regarding customer loyalty that can negatively affect the business position in the marketplace. Such business arrangement can lead to some serious issues which create problems for business management. Thus, these all issues need to be effectively managed in order to improve the business performance (Wolverton). Impact on Organization’s Opportunities   E-business also offered a great deal of opportunities to business sector. At the present, businesses are more and more concerned with business performance and operational management. In addition, at the present business sector is having a lot of opportunities and ease of web and

Alan Mathison Turing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Alan Mathison Turing - Essay Example Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer. He is often considered to be the father of modern computer science as he has contributed immensely towards the field of computer science through his Turing test. Though not considered a philosopher, he is cited by many modern day philosophers. The Turing Test which is named after him is the most significant contribution he has made in the world of modern computers. Though there are many who has opposed this test, it has undoubtedly a turning point in today's world. In a very short span of life, Alan Turing has provided significantly. This paper describes briefly Alan Turing's Life and his achievement through the Turing Test. This paper also gives a brief overview of the future that this test holds and concludes that the Turing Test has been, and will continue to be, an influential and controversial topic.Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer and he was an original thinker. He is often considered to be the father of modern computer science as he has contributed immensely towards the field of computer science through his Turing Test. Even though Turing never designated himself as a philosopher, his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" is most frequently cited in modern philosophical literature as it gave a new approach to the traditional mind-body problem, by connecting it to the mathematical concept of computability (Hodges, 2002). Today, it is well known fact that the Turing Test is one of the most discussed topics in artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and mechanical science. This paper describes in detail about the life of Alan Turing and also how his Turing test has an influence in the modern science. Besides, in this paper Turing's ideas are discussed in detail and also present the important comments made by many philosophers and others. Turing's test and criticism by different people are also discussed. Finally, the paper concludes looking at the future applications of Turing's test and looks at the current situation and analyzes programs that have been developed with the aim of passing the Turing Test. Alan Turing Life Alan Mathison Turing was born to an upper middle class British family in London, 23 June 1912. He was educated at Sherborne School. While in his school, he was criticized for his handwriting by his teachers. He also struggled at English and mathematics as he was too involved with developing his own ideas to produce solutions to problems using the methods taught by his teachers. From his early years of schooling he has amazed many of his teachers. He tried to always find his own solutions and in spite of producing unconventional answers, Turing did win almost every possible mathematics prize while at Sherborne. This has amazed many of his teachers. The one subject he liked was chemistry. However from a very early age, he carried out experiments following his own plan which did not please his chemistry teacher. As a result of these Turing's headmaster once wrote:- "If he is to stay at Public School, he must aim at becoming educated. If he is to be solely a Scientific Specialist, he is wasting his time at a Public School". In spite of the difficult schooling years, Turing entered King's College, Cambridge, in 1931 to study

D3 H1N1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

D3 H1N1 - Essay Example Isolating within the embroyonated eggs reduces the possibility of contaminating the virus strain. The now hybrid virus is tested to determine its effectiveness, safety and establish whether it stimulates appropriate antigen response in the body. The entire production process of influenza vaccine takes about six to nine weeks (Gerdil, 2003). New influenza vaccines are produced every year because the virus undergoes constant genetic mutation that changes the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase surface glycoprotein of the pathogen (Gerdil, 2003). The mutation undermines effectiveness of the influenza vaccines. When a healthy person is vaccinated with the influenza vaccine, the body immune system responds by producing relevant antigens to fight and destroy the influenza virus. Therefore, when influenza pandemic occurs, the immune system of the vaccinated persons is capable of fighting the infection easily. Though the vaccinated individuals could become infected, the symptoms and the effect s of influenza are less severe compared to individuals who are not vaccinated. This limits transmission of the highly virulent influenza virus to other persons who are exposed to the infected person. Influenza is an airborne disease that is mainly transmitted when a person inhales droplets that are released when an infected person coughs or/and sneezes (Carrat, et al, 2008). Vaccinating people helps in preventing the spread of diseases and reduces the severity of ailments in the community. Failure to vaccinate people against influenza and other diseases could cause outbreaks that affect economy, social interactions and the environment negatively. When people are infected with a particular disease, the productivity of the country is lowered because of lengthy bed rests, incapacitation and deaths, which reduce the number of people capable of working. Disease outbreaks undermine social activities such as sports, travelling

EL's Case Analysis Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

EL's Analysis - Case Study Example The changes included increasing the activities of the group and opening up store in new markets such as Asia and increasing the exposure in Europe (Richard Ivey School of Business, 2012). One main advantages of implementing the new strategies is the fact that the group increased its competitive advantage. Other luxury companies such as Hugo and Armani have in their strategies other activities such as accessorizing their clients. Additionally, these companies have worldwide store and distribution channels. By implementing these strategies, Elie Saab ensured that their clients have a variety of services to choose from. Additionally, increasing their market and distribution stores to Asia and Europe increased their sales significantly (Richard Ivey School of Business, 2012). This was observable in the sales recorded in 2008 in which for the first time Asia recorded percentage sales in its products (Richard Ivey School of Business, 2012). Elie Saab also benefits in the implementation of the new strategies by the fact that their contacted with other organizations before increasing its market exposure. This enabled the organization to share the risks that may be generated in the new markets. Additionally, contracting with other organizations ensures the group generates fresh ideas thus maintaining market relevance. The decision to brand valuable products with the organizations logo was crucial in ensuring the brand retains its originality (Richard Ivey School of Business, 2012). Venturing in to new markets exposed the company to numerous risks that may have long terms effects on the organization. Before implementing the new strategies, Elie Saab focused its attention small and limited stores in the Middle East, America and Europe. Additionally, Saab focused on creating high profiled clothing, Haute Couture. With the new suggestions, the organization seeks to increase its creation of ready to wear clothing which

Hypothetical Situation Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Hypothetical Situation - Assignment Example Indeed, when it comes to making a moral decision, feelings often distract people for the correct option. As a result, her decreased ability to feel should be seen as an advantage of her as an advisor, not a disadvantage. 2. Given the option of choosing either Dekisha or Christina, I believe I would choose the former. First of all, it has already been stated that she is superbly qualified medical professional; so, I trust that she would do anything possible to help me. Secondly, speaking of the peculiarity of her character, namely being dedicated, I am strongly convinced that this is far better than being joyous. I have nothing against the latter; however, I think that medical assistance as an important activity which requires attention and any mistake might cost a life. Contrary to that, a joyous person is more likely to make a mistake if compared to a dedicated one. Finally, it must be noted that the choice that I make will not be affected by the question what person is morally better since this aspect is not involved in any way. 3. It would not be a mistake to suggest that the comparison of an ethical behavior and swinging a golf club is a rather effective one since the author was able to grasp some of the most essential elements of the two activities. Indeed, some people often think that acting morally is difficult; however, many find that it may actually be rather easy as the innate moral compass that everyone has will definitely point out the a person is moving in the right direction. That is why while making a difficult decision, a person should always listen to one’s heart and do as it truly says. The next element which is mentioned in the quotation suggests that acting moral is natural. Indeed, I do believe that all people are originally good and that they will always choose the right option when they have such ability. That is why when one considers different

A Child Called It Encourage Speech Essay Example for Free

A Child Called It Encourage Speech Essay Hello guys I’m Grace and I am a volunteer of this youth center, below I just to ask do you have these feelings before? Desperate, depressed, desolated. I believe these emotions will bump out in every one of your mind when you think you are in a disadvantaged situation, and sometimes you think the whole world owes you, aren’t you? But indeed, are you really that pathetic? For me, people used to say I’m a pessimism. Yet, after reading a book based on a true story of a boy, it blows my mind. And it changes my mind in way in seeing the world with cherishing and forgiveness, and now I want to share this with all of you and I hope it will change yours too. The boy who gives me such an impact is called Dave Pelzer and he is the author of the book called ‘A child called IT’. He was being abused by his mom since he was a child, starving, pain, hopeless are what he gone through, but in the end, he was being rescued. The state of California said that it may have been the worse case of child abuse in the history of state. I guess you could imagine how tough the life was for Dave. However, despite of all these memories, he still managed to survive and become a bright person. So first of all, the precious of survival is the first thing Dave had taught me. In our daily lives, our often take everything for granted, just take a simple example. When we are eating our cereal breakfast, we would complain from our mom and say ‘ How come it’s the same taste again! I have ate this cereal for whole week! I’m bored of it! while you are complaining with things you are not satisfied, Dave was managing not to starve to die. From the book, his mother rarely treated Dave as a son nor a human being, he is just an ‘it’, a non-existence. Eating is not a normal right for Dave, he had to finished all his chores in order to have a mouth of food, finding food from the trash and stealing food from a grocery store and classmates was the way to keep him alive. Just think about it? We are really l ucky aren’t we? As all us sitting in here and no need to worry about tomorrow’s live and will we survive or not. And it’s time to back to basics, don’t focus on things we don’t have but the things we have! We have friends, families and everyone sitting next to you in this youth center, what we got is far more than survive, and we should better treasure it, and not focus on the dark side. As I about the dark side, you might think Dave’s heart was full of hatred to his mum because her mum treated him so badly. But in contrast, Dave teach me forgiveness—the art of letting go. No matter what lies in their past, they can overcome the dark side and press on to a brighter world and turn tragedy into triumph’ Dave said in the book. How come a person can let go of his anger and bring love to her mum and his loving child, that’s Dave. Look at what happened to us, sometimes people or ourselves makes mistakes and the hatred will last in our heart, but actu ally what’s the point in remembering all those tragedy? Why don’t we move on? Just forgive ourselves and forgive others, your friends, your family. Then, you will find you heart is brighter and clearer than ever, just like Dave. In conclusion, I think this book is remarkable and incredible as Dave’s experience do change my way in looking in the world in more perspective such as survive, forgiveness, love, courage and faith, but the time is limited so I have to stop here. Lastly, I just want to say we could always let go of the bad things happened to us and treasure everything we got, be positive! Everyone in the youth center would support you. Even the darkest will end and sun will rise. Thank you.

Some things you need to know about Mary Shelleys Frankenstein Essay Example for Free

Some things you need to know about Mary Shelleys Frankenstein Essay In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the definition of the monstrous is both entirely obvious and entirely ambiguous. Frankenstein’s creation, often dubbed ‘Frankenstein’s monster,’ is at once both innocent and murderous; corrupted and corrupting. The discrepancy between the different aspects of his nature can be read in the very definition of the word monster as it has developed over time. The definition of ‘monster’ is â€Å"Originally: a mythical creature which is part animal and part human, or combines elements of two or more animal forms and is frequently of great size and ferocious appearance. Later, more generally: an imaginary creature that is large, ugly, and frightening† (OED). This definition is particularly apt in studying the monstrous in Frankenstein, as it demonstrates the extent to which the creature labeled a ‘monster’ is construed to be something morally and physically disturbing because of its combination of elements from numerous animal forms. Being â€Å"of great size and ferocious appearance† alone would not constitute cause for moral connotations about the creature, and yet the present monstrosity also encompasses fear. It is this fear that ultimately makes the creature a monster, rather than his appearance or any innate moral compass. This essay will seek to demonstrate how Frankenstein’s creature is used to explore morality through his creation and animation, his namelessness, loneliness, and death. Finally, it will examine possible connections between Shelley’s characterization of Frankenstein and the creature, as the two are inextricably linked—not only by their relationship as creator and created, but also according to their logic, their desires, and the consequences of each of their choices throughout the novel. Firstly, the way in which Frankenstein assembles his creature is a substantial and significant part of the novel and should be closely examined. Frankenstein’s own life is put entirely on hold while he obsesses over the dark and mysterious discovery that he has made. After he makes his discovery about the creation of life, Frankenstein says, â€Å"Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate lifeless clay?† (Shelley, 46). The phrase, â€Å"the horrors of my secret toil† heavily emphasizes Frankenstein’s isolation and obsession, as he put himself under such immense stress with the scientific project that he frequently became ill. The secrecy of his project also shows how he cut himself off from his family and friends, not even writing home or attempting any social activity or life outside of his own study. In this, he loses sight of humanity, and as such he loses sight of beauty. This results in the utterly fragmented identity of his creation. At the moment of its animation, Frankenstein says, â€Å"How can I†¦ delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God† (60). Despite Victor’s greatest efforts to create something beautiful, it is clear that he focused too much on the task at hand, and upon each individual part of his appearance, rather than on the holistic nature of his creation. Victor has essentially focused more on the scientific side of his creation than upon his responsibility, as its creator, to also endow a sense of humanity. The creature is not only comprised of corpses, but of animal parts, and while he has taken care to ensure that â€Å"His limbs were in proportion,† he has entirely ignored the importance of the body as a whole, which is made up of parts that do not match. As such, he has created a monster. This foreshadows the way in which Victor, by focusing solely on the scientific endeavor and not its results, essentially causes the creature to become the monster that he perceives it to be. This will be further discussed with regards to the effects of loneliness on both Frankenstein and his creature. Another important aspect of the Frankenstein’s act of creation is that it encompasses both birth and death in one terrifying spectacle. As Frankenstein has not been able to manufacture a body himself, he has instead relied wholly on taking various body parts from both animal and human corpses in order to piece a body together. This means that while the body is comprised of the dead, it is also the birthplace of new life. The irony of this is not lost upon the narrating Frankenstein, seen in the previous quote: â€Å"I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay† (46). The culmination of both death and life in this strange creature is another aspect of its fragmented identity. Throughout Shelley’s Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s so-called monster is given a slew of insulting and hateful names. These are given to him by the villagers who chase him away, and more notably, by Frankenstein himself. The creature is never ascribed a name, instead being referred to as â€Å"creature,† â€Å"fiend,† â€Å"spectre,† â€Å"demon,† â€Å"wretch,† â€Å"devil,† â€Å"thing,† â€Å"being,† and â€Å"ogre† (Baldick). The lack of a name given to the creature does not only demonstrate that Frankenstein does not consider him human, though much criticism offers perspectives on this. It is true that it shows the dehumanization of the creature by its creator, but this also forces any critics or readers to similarly dehumanize the creature in discussion of him. By denying him a name, it is impossible for any essay or discussion to fully embrace the human and highly intelligent aspects granted to the crea ture. The repetition of these abstract and possibly overreaching terms emphasizes a lack of identity that is by no means manifest in Shelley’s characterization of the creature. The creature has a distinct personality and development arc throughout the novel, and yet is never referred to inhuman or personal terms. This informs much of the reader’s perspective of the creature, both inciting sympathy and becoming an obstacle to relation to it. Names such as these, especially those such as â€Å"devil,† also have broad moral connotations. While the creature may be truly â€Å"monstrous† in appearance, being comprised of so many and such various parts, large and apparently frightening, nothing of his character or morality can be derived before Frankenstein has already effectively dubbed him as evil. This heavy emphasis on appearances as contributory to perceived morality acts in stark contrast to the way in which Elizabeth’s character is first introduced. Victor’s parents adopt Elizabeth entirely because she is physically beautiful. Frankenstein narrates, â€Å"They consulted their village priest, and the result was that Elizabeth Lavenza became the inmate of my parents’ house—my more than sister—the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures† (4). Frankenstein also comments that â€Å"Everyone loved Elizabeth† (5). In this way, appearance and perceived character are inextricably linked, and while this works in Elizabeth’s favor, in the case of Frankenstein’s creation it means that he is instantly perceived to be inherently evil because of his outward appearance. While horrific, this appearance is the fault of Frankenstein himself and reflects more on his own ideas of beauty and the necessi ty of scientific progress than it reflects on the genuine character of the creature himself. It is only through this presentation of his character that the creature is perceived to be, and eventually becomes a monster in the later sense of being â€Å"large, ugly, and terrifying† (OED), as he could otherwise have been simply defined in terms of size and the variety of his body parts. These, as well as other factors, ultimately contribute to the corruption of Frankenstein’s monster. While many critics suggest that his immorality may indeed have been somehow innate, it is far more convincing to study Shelley’s Frankenstein as a presentation of how nurture is more important to the development of character that nature. The creature is first abandoned at birth, then chased away by the only people he comes into any kind of contact with—people he comes to trust, and, in a way, love—and finally denied the chance at companionship. He is ultimately alone, the only creature of his kind in existence, and hated and feared by all humanity. While Frankenstein understandably did not have the power to alter the opinions and perceptions of others, he nonetheless had ample opportunity in which to take responsibility for his creation and to teach it morality and show it companionship and love. It is only when these opportunities are repeatedly forsaken th an the creature becomes, morally speaking, a monster. The creature himself argues this point, pointing out, â€Å"No mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses,† and saying to Victor, â€Å"I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam but I am rather the fallen angel†¦ I was benevolent and good, misery made me a friend†¦ what hope can I gather from your fellow creature†¦ they spurn and hate me† (78). Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the creature’s character that is being highlighted here is that he is so completely aware of what he lacks, and how he is different. He is aware that he lacked a mother, who may well have provided his education, unconditional love, and companionship. Similarly, he has read Paradise Lost, which provides a detailed analysis of what it means to be loved by one’s creator and be given a companion. God loves Adam despite his sin and provides him with Eve as a wife and partner, which are both denied him by his own cr eator, Frankenstein. The creature’s initial abandonment by Frankenstein is shortly afterward followed by his rejection from the family he learns to love. After the creature leaves Frankenstein’s apartments, he wanders in the woods until he eventually comes across a family upon whom he can spy and learn from. From these people, he learns not only how to communicate, but how to relate to other people. With them, he begins to form some semblance of a life of routine and safety: he is safely hidden and knows that he is in no danger and able to provide for himself, and works out a life for himself around the family’s routine. By watching them, the creature eventually begins to feel as though he is a part of this family. He also begins to feel this because he has been long providing for them, leaving them firewood that he collects in order to show his gratitude for being able to share in their life and home, even if they are not aware of his presence. It is precisely because of this connec tion that the monster feels so utterly betrayed by their rejection. His response to the rejection of this family is initially to rail at Frankenstein, saying, â€Å"Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?† (176). This quotation shows that the creature has a conscience, and is able to regret his actions. He blames Frankenstein for creating him, as well as for abandoning him, and the fact that he describes the act of creation as â€Å"wanton† shows that he does not believe it was a just or wholesome use of science. Continuing to reflect on the rejection that he faced at the hands of this family, the monster then recalls, â€Å"I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter and stupid despair. My protectors had departed and had broken the only link that held me to the world. For the first time, the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom† (178). The creature’s utter despondency shows his deep emotional connection to the family. In a sense, because he was never raised by a parent or creator, the family had become like a parental, guiding figure to him, showing how to coexist with others and how to live in a way that Frankenstein had so completely neglected. This is highlighted by his calling them â€Å"protectors,† as this word implies an active role of protection. However, the family had not even been aware of the monster’s existence while acting as his protectors, and this shows both the extent of the creature’s desperation for companionship and the pain of rejection by those he hoped would continue to protect him. This is a milestone moment in the development of the monster as a truly monstrous character, as his appearance frightens the family and villagers to the extent that they chase him away. They believe him to be dangerous, and therefore morally corrupt, despite the fact that he is, in reality, extremely young and impressionable. Their fear of him inspires the creature to become something he can be sure of a monster. â€Å"This then was the reward of my benevolence! †¦The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind† (179). This passage shows the final transition of the creature from innocent, desperate new-born, to a dejected creature seeking to cause pain and enact revenge. However, this transition was not necessarily permanent, as the creature still asks for the chance to begin anew, and offers to show mercy and bec ome benevolent once more, should Frankenstein create for him a companion. The creature proposes that Frankenstein embark on this new project of creation, saying, â€Å"If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them a hundred-fold†¦ I would make peace with the whole kind† (119). This shows that just as the creature has been willing to punish all of humanity for the crimes of his creator, he would also be willing to forgive â€Å"the whole kind† if one human were to show him kindness—even if only under extreme duress. Despite the crimes and wrongdoings of Frankenstein’s monster, it is very problematic to characterize him simply as a monster in the moral sense. While his aspect is clearly repulsive, his physical manifestation is by no means reflective of personality, until he is treated as though it must be. Indeed, Lancaster observes that â€Å"Frankenstein’s Monster represents a less threatening version of the social outsider†¦ because the Monster’s identity disconnects him from humanity† (133-34). This suggests a total reversal of conventional depictions of monstrosity, as the creature is presented as a sympathetic character, rather than as inherently evil. Works Cited Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein’s shadow: myth, monstrosity, and nineteenth-century writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Lancaster, Ashley. â€Å"From Frankenstein’s Monster to Lester Ballard: The Evolving Gothic Monster.† The Midwest Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 2, 2008, pp.132-148. â€Å"Monster.† Oxford English Dictionary. Accessed online at www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/121738.Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 2nd ed. New York: WW Norton Co, 2011.

Theoretical Framework Of Internet Addiction Psychology Essay

Theoretical Framework Of Internet Addiction Psychology Essay The theoretical framework that this study used to discuss about internet addiction will be Uses and Gratifications theory. UG theory founded by Elihu Katz in 1959, when Herzog examined the reasons people use the radio to listen to quiz programme (Herzog, 1942), and soap operas (Herzog, 1944) (as cited in Katz, 1959). According to Katz (1959), the outcomes of media usage depend on why and how they decided to use the media. Therefore, there are two main components that discuss in UG theory which are media that choose to be engaged and gratification that get from the media (Ruggiero, 2000). By explaining about the UG theory, mainly this theory works operationally through the social and the psychological needs for individuals generating motives and expectation of mass media(Katz, 1959), and how individuals use media to satisfy their needs and to achieve their goals (as cited in Patrick, 2010). Newhagen and Rafaeli (1996) mentioned that UG theory is suitable for the internet because internet has something suitable for everyone, be it information-seeking, inter-personal communication, entertainment, or escapism. It just likes chameleon-like character (as cited in Patrick, 2010). According to Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch (1974) UG theory is commonly used to: (1) Explain how the psychological and social needs of people give rise to their expectation and motivations to choose and to use the mass media that will best meet their needs and expectations, (2) Explain how people use the media to meet their specific needs, (3) Understand the motives for their dependency on a particular media, and (4) Identify the consequences that resulted from the needs, motives, and dependency on a particular media (as cited in Patrick, 2010). (see Figure 1) Figure 2.jpgFigure 1: Uses and Gratification Framework (Katz, Blumler, Gurevitch, 1974 as cited in Patrick, 2010) According to Wimmer and Dominick (1994), in between 1950 to 1960, many researches began identifying social and psychological factors that resulted in different patterns of media consumption and gratification. For instance, individuals mental ability and relationships with parents and peers influences the nature of childrens television (Schramm, Lyle Parker, 1961 as cited in Patrick, 2010). In 1970, UG studies focused on audience motivation, which at the same time also proposed by McQuail, Blumler, and Brown mentioned that media serve four important functions at the level of the individual, which are (1) Emotional release through escapism and diversion from routine or problems, (2) Social utility through companionship, (3) Value reinforcement or personal identity through reality exploration, and (4) Self enrichment through information surveillance. Hence, the factors and motivations which discussed just now will be modify and apply to this study. (see Figure 2) chart 1.jpg Figure 2: Conceptual modified of Uses and Gratification model Figure 2 shows the conceptual modified of UG theory which apply to this study. In this study, the social factor stand for peer influence, and this peer influence affect both audience motivation that get from internet and also the consequences. For instance, if a person being influenced by the peer to using the internet (usage), the person will get the value reinforcement (audience motivation) by the peer as a sign to follow the peer and not being deviant to the peer group, then with the long hours in internet will addict to internet (consequences). There is another example by using this theory model. Example like if now the social factors change to unpleasant peer relationship or problematic peer relationship, it will also affect the outcome of this theory. If a person facing an unsuccessful peer relationship in the real communication, the person will go into internet to seek for another social utility from internet (audience motivation) and also shown as escapism from problem (audience motivation) that the person facing currently. With the fully focus and gratification that the person get from internet, he or she might refuse to get out from the internet and at the end lead the person to internet addiction (consequences). Factors and causes of Internet Addiction According to Chou, Condron, and Belland (2005), there are few studies found that there is a relationship between internet addiction and users social-psychological or personality variables, such as sensation seeking, pleasure experiences, use-and-gratification, loneliness, and depression. Besides that, there are also few significant factors which associated with the internet addiction such as, drinking behaviour, dissatisfaction with family, and experiences of stressful event (Lam, Peng, Mai, Jing, 2009). There are two similarities in these two studies, both mentioned that internet addiction is due to the stressful event or depression that one encounter, and dissatisfaction with their social relationship (which are social loneliness and family relationship). In Lam et al s (2009) study, found that internet addiction is a behavioural manifestation of internal stress and stress is a known risk factor of addiction. Besides that, Esen and GÃ ¼ndoÄÅ ¸du (2010) stated that internet addiction might be an escape for adolescents when they cannot cope with the problems of life and one of the main problems is not be able to handle the pressure from peer. So, when adolescent feel stress due to some problem, they cannot cope with it, they will chose to escape from the real world to get into the imaginary world of internet. On the other hand, Young (1996) found that there is 53% of internet addicts have experiencing important relationship problems, those might included family problem, friendship problem and soon. As a consequence, individual who experiences this kind of problem will feel hesitated to communicate with people in the real world to avoid the communication anxiety. Young (1997) had mentioned that internet provides dynamic social support group to the individual experiencing insufficient interpersonal relationships in real life, thus, person can take the emotional risks in the imaginary world than the real world (as cited in Esen GÃ ¼ndoÄÅ ¸du, 2010). At the same time, Lin, Lin and Wu (2009), pointed out that parental monitoring is an inhibitor in adolescents internet addiction. Especially for parents, they should manage to supervise and guide their children in using computer and internet, and also control the amount of unsupervised time they spend alone (Lin, Lin, Wu, 2009). Besides that, KÄÂ ±ran-Esen (2007) also mentioned in their study that parents and teacher support were significant predictors of internet addiction (as cited in Esen GÃ ¼ndoÄÅ ¸du, 2010). Parents should always encourage their children to talk to them rather than talk to the computer, teacher also play an important role in educate students the correct to using internet and support them when they facing any problem, such as family problem or peer problem in school. Moreover, Milani et al (2009) reported that with the advancement of new technologies, different online social support system start appears (as cited in Torres, 2010). People start sharing and communicate among one and another within the internet world and start seeking social support from internet, and this might lead them to the internet addiction. This is because, according to Torres (2010), online social support can enhance internet use. Moreover, the easy access to unlimited online information and little censorship also contribute to the problem of internet addiction (Patrick, 2010). Social Group According to Thomas (2011), adolescent normally do not make decision in a vacuum, rather they are highly influenced by the environment around them, especially within the social context (such as parent and peer). Eijnden, Spijkerman, Vermulst, Rooij, and Engels (2009) had reported that, parents are important and influential agents, and their parenting practices may promote or prevent the development of internet-related problems. Besides that, as cited in Eijnden, Spijkerman, Vermulst, Rooij, and Engels (2009), Liu and Kuo (2007) mentioned about the quality of the parents-child relationship was negatively associated with the level of internet addiction among students. Moreover, in the same research pointed out that parent-adolescent conflict and lower satisfaction with family functioning we positively related to adolescent internet addiction ( Yen et al, 2007, Ko et al Yen et al, 2007 as cited in Eijnden, Spijkerman, Vermulst, Rooij Engels, 2009). In year 2001, one of the Thomas studies stated that parent and peers actually influence adolescents delinquent activity, specifically through the manner in which they influence adolescents moral values (Thomas, 2011). Thomas (2011) explained that when an individual behaves in a manner that is consistent with the values of the social unit, the behaviour is viewed as rewarding to the individual, whereas behaviours that are inconsistent with the values of the social unit are seen as emotionally unfulfilling. So, adolescent might choose those activities which are match with the social value to avoid the social anxiety. Catalano and Hawkins (1996) said individuals who are bonded to social unit which uphold antisocial values and beliefs are most likely to engage in antisocial or delinquent behaviours (as cited in Thomas, 2011). Hence, when individuals are strongly bond with their social unit, they will be influenced by the social value and follow the norm although the behaviour maybe not the healthy activity or activity that might bring negative consequences (Thomas, 2011). Peer Influence Parents and peer influence playing role in different areas in the lives of youth (Bowerman Kinch, 1959; J.W. Young Ferguson, 1979), and peer are more influential in decisions on social issues such as choice of friends and group membership (J.W. Young Ferguous, 1979) (as cited in Patrick, 2010). According to Aseltine (1995), the peer group has traditionally been the center of attention in the sociological literature on adolescent deviance, there is research clearly documented the links between peer influence and substance use, as well as delinquent behaviour and antisocial values (Thomas, 2011). A study done by Walker and Bean (2009) to examine adolescents perceptions of negative and positive peer influence by using a sample of African American, European American, and Hispanic adolescents. In their study, they supported that association with deviant peers is often assumed to influence adolescents to engage in antisocial behaviour (negative influence), and the findings suggest that negative peer influence has stronger impact on adolescent behaviours than does positive peer influence. Besides, Brown and Klute (2006) mentioned that positive peer influence serve as a deterrent to negative behaviour and encouragement for positive behaviour (getting along with family and perform well in academic) (as cited in Walker Bean, 2009). Peer and Risky Behaviour There is study done by Agrawal, Lynskey, Bucholz, Madden and Heath (2007) indicated that having peer with favourable attitudes towards cannabis use is an important correlate of starting in cannabis use. Besides, a research by Trucco, Colder and Wieczorek (2011) concluded that reinforcement and modelling of alcohol use appear to be important mechanisms by which delinquent peers influence the initiation of drinking among adolescents. In Thomas studies (2011) indicated that adolescent choose to engage in delinquent activity in spite of having a supporting and loving family, because the peer rewards were more salient. In such case, the pressure to get a higher reward from peer lead adolescent to engage in different behaviour, although the behaviour might be delinquent but, as long as is in favour of the values of the peer unit (Thomas, 2011). Besides family support, adolescent seek support from their friends in order to satisfy unmet needs in the family environment (Nickerson Nagle, 2005) and friendship are an extension of family relationships (Bowlby,1969; Wilkinson, 2004) (as cited in Patrick, 2010). Peer group provide appropriate socials roles, norms, values, and attitude for group member, such social role determine what pattern of behaviour is expected and in this case, influence the behaviour of the adolescent (Lombardi, 1963). Dodge, Dishion, and Lansford (2006) stated that adolescent who are at risk for delinquency are susceptible to negative influences from deviant peers, and higher levels of deviant peer association were found to predict later increases in pro-delinquency beliefs which highlights the influence peers can have on adolescent beliefs about delinquency (Pardini, Loeber, and Stouthamer-Lober, 2005) (as cited in Thomas, 2011). Besides that, many research studies about juvenile delinquency stress the importance of peer groups in the form of bad neighbourhood, companions, and gangs (Lombardi, 1963). Peer and Internet Addiction Based on Harman, Hansen, Cochran, and Lindsey (2005), an internet addiction adolescent interact less with peers and have incompetent relationship quality. Normally, adolescent who are addicted to internet are having a poor peer relationship according to Sanders, Field, Diego, and Kaplan (2000) and Wang, Lee, and Chang (2003), they also experience the difficulty in making friends based on Mesch (2001), isolated socially (Nalwa Anand, 2003) and had lower social skills and deficient relationship explained by Harman, Hansen, Cochran, and Lindsey (2005) (as cited in Esen GÃ ¼ndoÄÅ ¸du, 2010). Moreover, Patrick (2010) revealed that people, who lack friends, also use the Internet more heavily to compensate socially, meaning that lack of friends may increase the motivation of online social interaction. As cited in Esen GÃ ¼ndoÄÅ ¸du (2010), Kiran-Esen (2007) found out that peer pressure is a significant predictor of internet addiction. Peer pressure is another variable discuss in internet addiction. According to Esen GÃ ¼ndoÄÅ ¸du (2010), internet addiction and peer pressure are related variables, their result showed that the lower the peer pressure, the addiction of internet also decrease. Gender differences in internet addiction There are some empirical support about the notion that males are more subject to internet addiction, example like, according to Morahan-Martin and Schumacker (2000), males were more likely than females to be pathological users (which is 12% vs 3%), whereas females were more likely than males to have no symptoms (28% vs. 26%) or have limited symptoms (69% vs. 61%) of behavioural pathology (as cited in Chou, Condron, Belland, 2005). In Greece, there is studies found out that people who suffering from internet addiction are mostly young male, and also showing that the rates of exhibiting the disorder among females is increasing (Lam, Peng, Mai, Jing, 2009). In Taiwan also, a study done by Griffiths (1998) showed that only three respondents were female students out of a total of 54 internet addiction cases gleaned from more than 900 Taiwan college student respondents (as cited in Chou, Condron, Belland, 2005). Zhang, Amos, and McDowell (2008) also mentioned that male have higher level of internet addiction. The notion that males are more subject to internet addiction has empirical support, such as according to Scherer (1997) indicated that dependent internet users included a significantly larger proportion of men to women (71% men and 29% women) than the non-dependent users (50% are men and women). Besides that, Lam, Peng, Mai, and Jing (2009) also reported that males are 50% more likely than females to be addicted to the internet. Moreover, according to Chou, Chondron, and Belland (2005), they concluded that men use internet differently from woman, and that men are more likely subject to internet addiction. Women using internet differently than men, according to Jackson, Ervin, Gardner, and Schmitt (2001) , women are using internet more to communicate and maintain relationships online and men are mainly interested in less relational activities (as cited in Torres, 2010). Young (1998) had mentioned that women are usually more drawn to social and interactive aspects of the internet, and men are more likely to access the internet to play interactive video games (as cited in Torres, 2010). Young (1998) found out that women normally seek out close friendship and prefer anonymous communication in which they can hide their appearance, have a sense of belonging and the ability to share their feelings and emotions in private and convenient ways; whereas men tend to seek out dominant activities or content online (which rely particularly on power, dominance, control, and violence) and also tend to explore sexual fantasies online (as cited in Chou, Condron, Belland, 2005). Summary This section discussed the theoretical perspectives and major concept (social factor) that is used throughout this research. The application of Use and Gratifications (UG) Theory explained how the social factor (peer influence) affect the adolescent engage in internet use and how to lead to internet addiction. Besides, above review also pointed out that many factors which cause one addicted to internet. The most influential factor could be social support group, and among so many social groups, the review discuss about how the peer influence the most in adolescent on risky behaviour. One of the risky behaviour which being discuss above is overly using internet, which will lead to internet addiction. In addition, the gender differences also playing a role in internet addiction.

segmental reporting :: essays research papers

1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Review and approval of the previous meeting’s minutes. 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Financial overview from Rosaline, on Jim’s behalf. She shared the annual budget of Hope House (see page 7 of Hope House project proposal, Appendix A, attached). Rosaline then explained how money is obtained to meet expenses. There was a long list of either annual, monthly, or semi-regular donors. From month to month, however, there is no guarantee that money sufficient to cover expenses will come in. Rent is paid regularly, but other expenses are not. The people who usually suffer end up being the support staff, and the home is currently behind on their salaries. The home also has a large outstanding debt with Gertrude’s Garden Hospital. 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Rosaline then provided an overview of some of the Home’s key needs. These included: -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  staff salaries -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  a vehicle -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  a generator -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  heaters -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  baby care items food and nutritional formula -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  medical care -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  pharmaceuticals   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  among others. 4.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Katherine then provided her overview of the research she carried out on fundraising (see Appendix B, attached). Basically there are 3 ways to make money: a solicitation campaign, selling a product, or hosting an event. There is no one-size-fits all perfect fundraising solution. Katherine emphasized the importance of having quality campaign materials (perhaps we could find a business willing to print these for us free of charge) and good publicity. The general wisdom is that no more than 2-3 initiatives should be undertaken each year so as not to exhaust either volunteers or donors. We also need to determine who our audience is: who would want to give to babies? Roz mentioned that here in Kenya it is generally best not to focus on using the money raised for wages, though Katherine K. said that this would not be a problem abroad. 5.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This led quite naturally to a productive brainstorming session on ways to fundraise. The ideas generated are listed below: -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Java House pancake breakfasts -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Leo Club at ISK -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Concert at ISK of local musicians, e.g. Eric Wainaina -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Model United Nations dance -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Golf tournament -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Art exhibition -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Auction -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Develop list of prospective donors and send out solicitation letters (e.g. General Motors, Toyota, Brookside, baby food companies, baby care items companies, etc.) -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Newsletter for donors -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"shopping list†? -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  food drives (already being done occasionally) -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  cans for collecting coins in businesses (already being done to some extent) -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Friends of Hope House† program -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Adopt a Cot program (already being done to some extent) -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  British Army – shipment -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ten pin bowling/mini golf -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Working with one of the theatres for an opening night event on a new film -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Dinner/dance at a major hotel or a BBQ around the pool with some entertainment

Post World War Two Immigrants :: history

Post World War Two Immigrants During World War Two Australians finally realised just how vulnerable they were to enemy attacks. The reality of this possibility hit home hard when the Japanese attacked Darwin and when Japanese midget subs penetrated Sydney harbour. We now realised that our island was not an impenetrable fortress. They government also realised that our country was dangerously under-populated. The fact was that we had too much space and only 7 million people living in it which once again made us very vulnerable to attack. The government realised something must be done. In 1947, during a historical speech made by the minister for immigration, Arthur Augustus Calwell announced that Australia was opening its doors to European immigrants, preferably British. Refugees and immigrants from all over Europe rushed to apply for visas. While many different cultures migrated to Australia the two we are going to focus on are the Italians and the British. At the conclusion of the war Italian soldiers and POW’s returned to a destroyed Italy. The only thing worse than the immense destruction was the human suffering. The displaced Italians sought refuge in communal camps while dreaming of escape to countries such as Canada, the USA and Australia. Italy had been looking for an overseas country that would accept its unemployed, homeless Italians and when Australia opened her doors to them Italy’s President encouraged his people to â€Å"learn a foreign language and emigrate†. Meanwhile the Britain was also in ruins and although they had won the war, it had come at a big loss. Luckily though for the British, Australia was very keen for British refugees to make up a large part of Australia’s refugee take-in. In Arthur Augustus Calwell’s initial speech he said, â€Å"It is my hope that for every foreign migrant there will be ten people from the United Kingdom.† So from the start it was obvious that 'White Australia' was the cornerstone of the immigration policy. Australia established schemes to attract immigrants from post war Britain and they created Australian Citizenship in 1948 so that ‘Australians’ were no longer British subjects. Meanwhile, much stronger and stricter restrictions were imposed against the Italians. They were only permitted to immigrate if they already had close family already resident in Australia. The Italians suffered because they were not a priority group. The British had been given assistance and had been allowed to bring their families with them into Australia.

Applying Ethical Frameworks in Practice Essay

Patient confidentiality is essential in developing a trusting relationship between a healthcare worker and the patient. Confidentiality means that the patients personal and medical information that is given to a health care provider will not be disclosed to others unless the patient has given permission for the information to be released (â€Å"Confidentiality,† 2014). There are situations where a breach of confidentiality may occur and is acceptable. These situations include information when an individual has been diagnosed with a specific disease, such as Tuberculosis or an injury, such as a gunshot wound. Other situations may be when there is evidence that the patient may cause harm to himself or others. The nursing profession is one that promises to abide by the laws of patient confidentiality. Protecting the patients’ rights is guaranteed by both common law-which is the decisions of the courts, and statute law-which is passed by Parliament (O’Dowd, 2014). This commitment to the patient helps preserve high quality care for that patient, as disclosing important information between the patient and nurse, is essential for the patient to receive the appropriate medical care. Patients put their trust into the nurse, as they expect the nurse to respect their privacy, when that trust is broken, the relationship between the nurse and patient declines. Losing the trust is one of the ethical implications that may occur when a breach of confidentiality occurs. Other ethical implications that can occur are disciplinary action by the employer, disciplinary proceedings under the health professionals regulatory statute, and a fine may be imposed (â€Å"Patient Confidentiality,† n. d. ). Pamela G. Nathanson wrote an article in reference to an episode of NBC’s ER which reveals an ER nurse who faces an ethical dilemma in regards to patient confidentiality. The ER nurse has made a promise to two fourteen year old girls that she will not disclose any medical information to their parents. The girls trust the nurse that she will keep her promise; therefore, they disclose their personal concerns. One of the girls test positive for a serious medical condition, at this point, the ER nurse has reached an ethical dilemma. She needs to make an ethical decision as to whether or not she should disclose the information to the young girls’ parents. In this situation, the ER nurse has made the appropriate decision to have a breach of confidentiality and inform the young girls’ parents of their daughters’ medical condition. In understanding ethical theories and/or ethical principles, this has assisted the ER nurse in making the correct decision. Ethical theories and principles guide individuals in making decisions. When using ethical theories to determine an appropriate decision, the theory must be directed towards a common set of goals, which are ethical principles (Rainbow, 2002). The ER nurses’ goal is to ensure that the young girl receives the appropriate medical treatment for her condition. Ethical principles that can relate to this situation are beneficence, which is to do what is good and least harm, which is to do the least harm to an individual. In looking at ethical theories, using Deontology and Utilitarianism is useful in that Deontology relates to the nurses obligations and duties to disclose the information and Utilitarianism relates to being able to foresee the consequences of actions if the information is not disclosed. A utilitarian looks at what is the greatest benefit for that individual (Rainbow, 2002). When an individual is confronted with an ethical dilemma, using an ethical-decision making model is useful. This type of model assists in breaking down all the facts and individuals’ involved in the dilemma and helps to develop possible alternatives to address the dilemma. It guides ones’ decision making from an objective, cognitive perspective, rather than an emotional perspective (â€Å"GCU,† 2014). In the article discussed, the ER nurse can incorporate an ethical-decision making model to make the most appropriate decision. First is to address who is involved and what the actual dilemma entails and identify the ethical dilemma. Next, she can look at the situation at hand and determine how her own personal values see this issue and determine what alternatives can be used to help resolve the dilemma. Once the alternative actions are decided upon, the ER nurse can look at each one and decide if they conflict with her own personal values. If so, she may need to get another health care provider involved to eliminate any biases. In the article, the nurse is advised by the physician that the girls’ parents need to be informed; therefore, guiding her into making the appropriate decision. The next step is to prioritize the acceptable alternatives from most acceptable to least acceptable. The alternatives in the articles dilemma can be 1). The young girl informing her parents herself. The implication with this alternative is that most likely she will not inform her parents. 2). The nurse informing the parents of their daughters medical condition. The implication here is that the patient will not feel she can trust the nurse; however, by choosing this alternative, the decision is in the best interest of the child and 3). Not disclosing information at all. The implications here is that the minor child will not receive the appropriate care needed which will cause further harm. The significance in using this model is to ensure that the appropriate ethical decision is made. Ethics committees are available as well to assist and guide when ethical dilemmas occur. In regards to the article, an ethical committee can discuss the alternatives and make recommendations, still keeping in line with the patients’ rights. These committees focus on issues of morality, patient autonomy, legislation, and states’ interest. They have a significant influence on decision making and the power to influence a judge or jury (â€Å"GCU,† 2014). Ethical dilemmas will always be in a health care professionals’ daily work. Using ethical theories and principles will guide health care professionals in making the most appropriate ethical decision. Following these theories and principles will ensure that the patient is receiving the best quality care that they deserve. References