Practice Makes Perfect

Practice means constant use of one's intellectual and aesthetic powers. Perfect means ‘ideal, complete and excellent. ‘ proper planning and practice promote perfect performance. Practice depends on training and it means repeating an activity. Constant practice also sharpens talents. One has to follow certain qualities to be perfect. These are hard work, strong will and power, faith, tolerance, positive approach, self confidence and dedication. The quality that prepares one for all other qualities is practice. One should not stop practicing and be satisfied until one achieves perfection.Practice is a one and best way by which a person can achieve perfection. Practice makes one feel and understand the idea or thing again and again. The more one practices, the more errorless one becomes. He doesn't repeat the errors that were done previously. Practice begins from the cradle and ends in the grave. Right from childhood man practices various activities like talking, reading, wr iting, cooking, etc. The child practices speaking, first by learning the alphabets, then words, sentences and finally speech. The childs thorough practice reaches perfection in speaking.One cannot ride a bicycle or motor bike or drive a car at the very first instance. Man needs practice until he reaches perfection. The same method applies to other areas too. Pefection is necessary in every shape of life. Perfection in shooting is an essential quality. Practice is essential in law and medicine too. Surgery can be mastered by practice. Even the practice of cooking enables one to get the perfect taste one wants. Thus, from the kitchen , to the office, practice is needed to gain perfection in every field. A person cannot be perfect in every sphere of life. It is quite natural to have certain deficencies.One can practice repeatedly to lessen these deficencies. One may face difficulties during the coarse of practice. One should not feel dejected in such a case, he should overcome them ino rder to achieve perfection. Practice enables a person to reach the heights of success in all walks of life. Practice develops outstanding qualities in ones character. It not only brings perfection but also helps in building ones character. Thus, it is practice that makes a man perfect who can free every challenge in his life. So, remember ‘ A man is not fully perfect but practice makes a man perfect! ‘

How The Internet Destroys Your Brain? Essay

Central Idea – Three ways how the internet destroying our mind are the internet may give you an addicts brain, your brain get tired because of lack of sleep and the internet may makes you more lonely and jealous. Main points – I. The internet may give you addict’s brain. II. Your brain get tired because of lack of sleep. III. The internet may makes you more jealous and lonely Introduction – I. – Imagine you live in a world without internet. Would you survive in it? II. – I encountered this topic as I was surfing the internet a few weeks ago and I felt responsible to share it to you as most of us use internet in our life for doing assignments, socializing and other sorts of things. III. – The internet become a big influence in our daily life. It is becoming more and more important for nearly everybody as it is one of the newest and most forward-looking media and surely ‘the’ medium of the future. But, if you spends too much time surfing the internet, it may cause a serious damage to the brain. (Transition): Let me begin with my first main point which is how the internet  destroys your brain. Body: I. The internet may give you an addict’s brain. The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers. These kind of people tends to become lazy and because of that their brain cannot function well. â€Å"People who spends a long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations†, Dr. Henrietta Bowden Janes, an Imperial College, London psychiatrist who runs a clinic for internet addicts and problem gamblers, told the Independent. II. Your brain get tired because lack of sleep. We technophiles are accustomed to falling asleep while surfing the internet with laptop glows softly by our beds. Susan Greenfield, a British Neuroscientist said that during her research she suspected the glowing lights emitted by laptop screens will disturb the brain’s â€Å"sleep mode† and mess with your body’s sleep inducing hormones. Exposure to bright lights will probably cause lasting effects as it making people harder to fall asleep, especially for those who struggle with insomnia. III. You may feel more lonely and jealous. Social media makes it easy to connect with others Recent research by German scientists suggests that constantly viewing images of other’s vacation photos, personal achievement, etc, can trigger strong feelings of envy. Researchers have been described the phenomenon as â€Å"Facebook Depression†. Conclusion : – in conclusion we have seen that the internet can do harm especially to our brain that can cause a lot a personal problems to the society. An entire creative and traditional way generations will be slowly wiped out and a non-creative and technology depending generation will be born. Before it’s too late, a lot of efforts are needed in order to prevent future problems Give ourselves chance to disconnect from the internet and go outside and meet friends and families to have fun. The best connection is stay connected to our family.

Earths Magnetosphere Essay

The Earth is an enormous magnet, and its magnetic power extends distant into space. It has south and north magnetic poles that reverses at uneven periods of hundreds of thousands of years. The magnetic field of the Earth reaches 36,000 miles into space, and it is surrounded in an area described as the magnetosphere (The Earth’s Magnetic Field p. 1). Magnetosphere is the region contiguous to the Earth where the latter’s magnetic field dominates. The other planets in the universe including the sun have magnetospheres; however, of all the rocky planets, the Earth has the strongest magnetospheres (The Earth’s Magnetic Field p. 1). The magnetosphere averts the sun’s particles that are carried in solar wind from hitting the Earth. However, a number of particles from the solar wind can still penetrate the magnetosphere. The aforesaid particles that penetrate from the magnetotail pass through the Earth and generate the Aurora Borealis light exhibitions, and possibly more spectacular, magnetic storms, which can blow out communication and power systems on the planet. Further, the said particles are accountable for various wonderful natural occurrences such as the natural radio emissions that produce the whistler waves and lion roars (Magnetosphere p. 1). The Earth’s magnetosphere is composed of magnetic flux and charged particles. It is extremely active, and has a number of key components, such as the radiation belts, plasmasphere, lobes, plasmasheet, magnetotail, magnetosheath, bow shock, and numerous electric currents (Magnetosphere p. 1). The magnetosphere changes regularly, even spinning its course every few thousand years. Regardless of its low density, the solar wind is strong enough to cooperate with the Earth’s magnetic field to form magnetospheres. As the ions in the solar plasma are charged, they act together with these magnetic fields, and the particles of the solar wind are brushed away around planetary magnetospheres. The particles circulate and move around the magnetosphere and even produce storms. The contour of the Earth’s magnetosphere is the direct consequence of being blasted by solar wind. Solar wind reduces its sunward side distance of merely 6 to 10 times of the Earth’s radius or some 67,000 kilometres (The Earth’s Magnetosphere p. 1). On the borders, or 90 degrees from there, the distance is approximately 15 Earth radii, and about 25 Earth radii in radius as the borders continue to move towards the cylinder (Stern p. 1). A supersonic shock wave is produced sunward of Earth to some extent like a sonic boom. On the other hand the precise length of the night-side of the Solar wind is unknown; however, it is estimated that the nigh-side magnetosphere extends to 1,000 times the radius of the Earth (Magnetosphere p. 1). The Earth’s magnetosphere has no clear borders during midnight. In fact, what occurs is that exceeding 50 to 80 Earth radii the solar wind breaks into the magnetotail, so the substance is predominantly solar wind, although the magnetic field is still that of Earth. It persists like this for no less than 220 Earth radii (Stern p. 1). Nevertheless, when the force of the solar wind increases, the perimeter shifts inwards, which erodes the magnetic field by process of reconnection. Therefore, a few occasions every year the perimeter overtakes satellites in synchronous orbit, at 6. 6 Earth radii (Stern p. 1). In contrast, resembling in 1999 when the solar wind was exceptionally profound, the noon-side perimeter went out exceeding 20 Earth radii (Stern p. 1). Our planet is bordered by an intense battle zone that commences only a few hundred kilometres above us and until now most of us are completely unaware to the fact. Our innate protection from this assault is the Earth’s magnetosphere; an imperceptible bubble that is surrounding our whole planet. Performing like a cosmic punch-bag the magnetosphere is subjected to groups of solar wind charging away from the sun at supersonic paces and continuously bombarding this protective bubble. For that reason, life on Earth has developed underneath the shelter of this magnetosphere. Works Cited â€Å"Magnetosphere. † 18 November 1996. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. 25 September 2008 . Stern, David. â€Å"Get a Straight Answer. † 28 September 2004. NASA. 25 September 2008 . â€Å"The Earth’s Magnetic Field. † 3 June 2003. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. 25 September . â€Å"The Earth’s Magnetosphere. † 28 August 2008. Cosmicopia. 25 September 2008 .

State Agencies- Structure Models Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

State Agencies- Structure Models - Research Paper Example The centers of urgent care operate with a cheaper fee and do not have the space of providing services to patients who do not pay. Additionally, the health facilities are normally certified by the joint commission (Winston, 2012). Assuming the center is working under the tax identification number of the hospital, the surveyors could choose to carry out the operation of the outpatient Center and the standards simply not appropriate for the urgent care. When that is done, the excessive cost would be brought down. Consequently, the prospective payment mechanism, established by the Medicare needs that all the services offered to the same clients for the similar diagnosis by a related organization with three days of hospital admission, is taken to be part of the admission. For the same reason, any facility operating the urgent care center as a super agency model will be required to have and maintain the mechanism of tracking the patients to follow the post treatment in the centers of urgen t care and to consolidate he service charges that meet the criteria(Williams & Connor,

Social Change Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Social Change - Research Paper Example The system depends on satellites to provide precise location and time data to the specified users (Helms 20). GPS-consumer products that exist in cell phones and smart phones accompany the technology. It is through this technology that turn-by-turn directions of everything that the consumer is looking for is available to the car dashboards, smart phones and iPhones among others (Kaplan and Hegarty 13). Navigation for a long time has been considered a skill up to now. It required a lot of knowledge and effort to interpret the maps in the past. The end of the 19th century and the entry of the 20th century emerged with a new technology that bridged the distance between an ordinary person and a knowledgeable navigator. (Roy and Beringer 32) This technology refers to the global positioning system. The technology has made navigation simple because with a single click on the screen; every person can find the intended way via a complex system that consists of satellites. The system works through receivers that translate satellite data and give precise positions of the features in question (Sherman 45). The first people to come up with the idea of the GPS were the military personnel and proof that the system worked in 1991.The American forces found it difficult to navigate through the desert terrain due to the lack of landmarks, the introduction of the technology made it easy for the forces to navigate with ease through any terrain that they came across with a lot of ease. The exact accuracy of this technology in the navigation sector showed the power of the GPS technology (Sonokpon 32). The technology also has a lot of impact on the economy of the country. Many companies are turning the GPS technology for collection of accurate and useful relevant geographic information data to improve their market targets (Hannon 50). A good example is the airport sector where an airline is in a position to find out the shortest possible distance between two

Zara - Fast Fashion from Savvy Systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Zara - Fast Fashion from Savvy Systems - Essay Example The essay "Zara - Fast Fashion from Savvy Systems" talks about fast fashion of Zara. The businesses today operate in real-time in the global market place and they have to leverage comparative advantage. Thus, tapping into the foreign markets and the process of market entry, in addition to the innovative practices and technology can give a firm comparative advantage. Zara needs to ascertain the strategy for the way forward. The organization has a customer-focused vision since the beginning and this continues to be the defining feature. Their challenge is to live up to customer expectations. The group philosophy can be summed up as â€Å"good designs and good quality at affordable prices† (Business Week, 2004). They have total control over the fashion process right from designing to manufacturing and distribution. The company aims to differentiate itself because of its fast fashion approach but intense competition has diluted this advantage. To alter the strategy an organization needs to evaluate its position compared to its competitors. This requires a review of its internal and external business environment. The external environment is being evaluated based on the PESTILE and the industry analysis is based on Porter’s Five Forces.The Political condition of the nations were Zara enters is fairly stable and its mode of entry depends upon the local/regional situation. Accession of Spain into the EU benefitted Spain as the export policies were revised and tariff deregulation took place.

Capstone Course Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Capstone Course - Essay Example Looking back, much of my time as a student was spent deciphering theories and philosophies with little or no effort in comprehending the practicality and application of these concepts, perspectives, and beliefs. Like many others, I too questioned the relevance of my learning with what I aimed to do in my professional life. Thus, the senior capstone course has acted as a bridge between theory and application, which is an outcome that I value the most. While an integration of subject-specific and cross-disciplinary knowledge and the assimilation of theory and application are the outcomes of my course experience that I greatly value. The learning outcome that I believe will be most helpful in my professional career is that of an enhanced level of self-efficacy, which is one of the characteristics internalized in a student during capstone courses (Dunlap 65). The systematic design of the course included class participation, interdisciplinary project, e-portfolio, research presentation an d a course reflective essay. The effort undertaken for the completion of these tasks allowed me to assume a larger share of the responsibility for my education and also played an integral role in acting as a means of socialization with my classmates and course instructor (Collier 285-299). The fact that the capstone project was planned as an independent endeavor meant that each student had to embark upon the task of using his/her individual learning, distinct perspectives on a range of topics and issues and cross-disciplinary knowledge to produce an independent study. My course project on insurance fraud was reflective of a range of understandings and comprehensions on the subject matter. The most critical factor which shaped the course of my independent study on insurance fraud was being on the ground. I also noted in my reflective essay on insurance fraud, how my interactions with the victims of this menace helped in the establishment of a relationship of trust.

Email for Prescription for control system Coursework

Email for Prescription for control system - Coursework Example er relevant budgets that need to be prepared to analyze the movement of costs are: production budget; raw materials and purchasing budget; as well as labor budget (Agriculture and Consumer Protection, n.d.); 4. The production budget should contain the following the following information where the budget is â€Å"expressed in quantitative terms only and is geared to the sales budget. The production managers duties include: (a) analysis of plant utilization; and (b) work-in-progress budgets. If requirements exceed capacity he may: (i) subcontract; (ii) plan for overtime; (iii) introduce shift work; or (iv) hire or buy additional machinery† (Agriculture and Consumer Protection, n.d., p. 1); 5. The raw materials and purchasing budget should be evaluated in the light of factors that could influence and affect these, including production requirements; planning stock levels; storage space; and trends of material prices (Agriculture and Consumer Protection, n.d.). 6. The labor budget, finally, must be analyzed in terms of the following factors that influence and affect the costs: production requirements; man-hours available and used; grades of labour required; wage rates (union agreements); and the need for incentives (Agriculture and Consumer Protection, n.d.). 10. These costs should therefore be monitored on a regular basis, say monthly, quarterly and annually, against the budgets prepared to determine the factors influencing them and to institute the required courses of action to control and manage these costs. In response to your proposal to purchase an offset press to print manuals, instead of purchasing them from local print shops, please be advised that to enable management to decide on its feasibility and viability, the following information would be required for comprehensive and effective review: 2. The installation cost to be incurred should be determined. Some suppliers incorporate the cost of installation to their quotation price for the equipment. Since

Contract Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Contract Law - Essay Example On the other part of a contract is the acceptance of any given offer. In terms of definition, acceptance refers to the concluding unqualified term of acquiesce to all the conditions of an offer as declared by the postal law. With reference to offer, acceptance must be communicated to be valid as demonstrated through several different studies. Notably, the communication of acceptance is usually in writing, orally, and inferred from demeanor. Noteworthy, there can always be an acceptance simply when there is an offer. Nevertheless, in the absence of an offer, acceptance cannot take place at all and so there is no officially binding contract that can be produced. This paper critically examines the law that relates to acceptance and offer. Examining the law relating to Acceptance of an Offer The law relating to acceptance and offer can be examined through various ways. Such methods come in relation to the basics of contract law, which to some extent have some comparable aspects. Essentia lly, the law that relates to acceptance and offer can be clearly understood through understanding the essential elements of contract law that define such aspects accordingly. In one way or the other, various studies have explored this topic from a thoughtful standpoint. However, the most important thing is that such studies bring comparable understanding in terms of the law that relates to offer and acceptance. In general, there is always a law that defines various aspects of a contract1. That is been the case there is some evidence that the law that relates to offer and acceptance is comprised of several segments. Through the definition of the two terms that is, offer and acceptance, we will be competent enough to explore and examine the law in a thoughtful standpoint. This is well depicted through the case of Gibson v Manchester City Council [1979] 1 WLR 294 Through critically examining the law relating to acceptance and offer, one can deduce that there are various concepts that a re taken into consideration. From literature and with reference to the postal law declaration, it is evident that an offer may rescind an offer previous to been accepted. However, the revocation has to be communicated to the offered party, even though not essentially by the party offering. Most importantly, an offer may not be withdrawn if it has been summarized in an option. On the contrary, acceptance is the final and expression of concord based on the terms of an offer as declared by the postal law. It is no protection to an act based on an agreement for the defendant to assert that he never intended to be bound by the concord2. This is especially if at all the circumstances is proved at examination that the conduct was such that it corresponded to the other party that the defendant had actually settled. Through the case study of Gibbons v Proctor (1891) 64 LT 594, this can be well understood. Through examining the law relating to acceptance and offer, it is worth to contemplate that a contract has to be created, in the assumption that the other requirements are met accordingly. This occurs especially during instances when the parties provide objective demonstration of the aim to form the contract3. For sure, the assent must be provided to terms of the accord. More often than not, this entails the generation, through making sure that one party involved in the offer has to bind in the lead of certain terms, and the involved parties' that is,

Give it any topic based off 5 topics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Give it any topic based off 5 topics - Essay Example ase in the pollution of the air and this in turn has produced many unwanted results which have affected not only the environment but also human health (Park 2007, Jeremy et al 2010). According to the statistics of the World Health Organization in the year 2008, every year 2 million deaths can be attributed to air pollution. Not only this, air pollution has been linked to many health problems of the human beings and it has resulted in alterations in the atmosphere and led to environmental problems like global warming. This has called for the implementation of strategies to overcome the issue of air pollution so that the unwanted affects of this form of pollution can be overcome. It can also be analyzed that the reduction in the air pollution will result in the reduction of the health hazards that it poses. This paper will serve to explain the different causes of air pollution along with the different impacts that it lays on the environment and the human beings. It will further elabora te the methods that can be employed to overcome this issue. Air forms the environment of the earth with which all living beings are in direct contact. It is essential for the survival of all living beings and the existence of life on this planet is not possible without air. The transmission of sound is only possible through air and it is also a source of the major gases which are essential for the survival of living beings. It is a mixture of different gases which include mainly nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide and the percentage of these gases in the air is 78.1, 20.93 and 0.03 respectively. It has many essential functions which can be explained by the fact that survival processes which include respiration and combustion cannot occur in the absence of air. The close contact between the air and the human beings can be used as the basis to explain the fact that contamination of this air can have affects on the health of the living beings. The pollution of air can be defined as the

Expression in Human Imagination, Values and Emotions Essay

Expression in Human Imagination, Values and Emotions - Essay Example According to Vernon (1999), the birth of baroque style was an extension of the renaissance art period. Eventually, renaissance gave way to baroque, as the baroque style became more and more distinct. Baroque paintings, sculpture and architecture of a dramatic character were influential tools in the possession of secular and religious absolutisms. Baroque flourished in the service of the Catholic monarchies and the Catholic Church. The artists of this style concentrated on space lights, natural forms, colors, as well as the literal relationship between the portrait subject and the observer. This style produces experience emotions, immensely powerful and thrilling to the observer. The logical purpose of this style was to relay messages to the illiterate people rather than the educated ones. This explains why the paintings were portraits of common and famous stories in the scripture. Initially, baroque art style was dominated by history paintings, religious paintings, portraits and allegories, but later, genre scenes, still life and landscapes gained notoriety rapidly (Vernon, 1999). The most striking feature of the baroque painting was immense drama, dark shadows and intense light. The artists used to select the moment when the action was taking place and also slightly before a sweeping action would take place (Vernon, 1999). For example, the portrait of a steady David daring the giant and another portrait of David throwing the stone with his sling. Baroque style of art was meant to evoke passion and emotion, as opposed to calm rationality of Renaissance. Baroque came up during a period of political and religious strife. Reformation was bringing chaos among the religion of Roman Catholic. As such, it formed a counter reformation to check the increase of Protestantism (Vernon, 1999). Rome was the centre of patronage at that period, and the church was in need of an art style that would lure people back to Catholic Church. The art was further influenced by the prevailing political climate as the monarchies of Spain, which promoted this style. This art period denied people the freedom to choose their life style and enjoy entertaining pieces of art, as it concentrated on religious issues only. Further, the political and religious chaos was ruining people’s happiness. This pressure led to the development of the rococo art movement. #2 Rococo Art was a decorative interior design and French art that emerged in the period (c.1700-1789). Rococo art style focuses on the indulgence and lavishness of the aristocracy. The paintings of this style have outstanding erotic themes, and they are also whimsical with striking flowering brushstrokes and petal colors (Vernon, 1999). The design of rococo rooms was total works of art with ornate and elegant furniture, tapestry complementing style, ornamental mirrors, and small sculptures, wall paintings and relief. Painters used curving forms and delicate colors to produce exceptional artistic works that were naughty. Many people believe that rococo serves the same purpose to baroque as mannerism serves to Renaissance. Therefore, rococo is

The murder of Duncan on Macbeth Essay Example for Free

The murder of Duncan on Macbeth Essay To what extent is it fair to place the main blame for the murder of Duncan on Macbeth? It is obvious that Macbeth did actually kill Duncan, but is Macbeth really to blame for his actions? There are many other factors to take into account. One reason for Macbeths actions is that he was under a lot of pressure from other people and changes in his life. Also there maybe a supernatural element to take into account for the killing of Duncan by Macbeth, which may have influenced Macbeths decisions. There also maybe of coarse, no-body else that could have influenced Macbeth and just Macbeth himself. Or maybe all of the different pressures and influences combined together, making one mass attack on Macbeths mind. The blame for the murder of Duncan could be placed on anyones shoulders, but who do we blame specifically? Do we blame Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, The Three Witches, or was it the atmosphere and society of the 11th century? The most obvious person to blame for the murder of Duncan is Macbeth. This is because he actually took hold of the knife and stabbed Duncan. Therefore he should be and feel responsible for the murder. His motives for the murder are that if he kills Duncan then he will be made king of Scotland. He believes strongly in the afterlife, but still doesnt care about what happens to him when he dies, may it be of old age, or of murder also. All he cares about is becoming king. He backs that up by saying: Wed jump the life to come. It is his high ambitions that drive him into murdering Duncan. But, surely Macbeth knows that killing Duncan is a treasonable offence, and he could also be killed for it. He would lose everything because it would be obvious that Macbeth killed Duncan. This is because no-body else would have the right motives. He would lose his titles of Thane of Glamis, and also when he became Thane of Cawdor, he would lose that too. So he cannot really afford to commit the murder. This is where the argument of whether Macbeth is mentally ill comes into play. A sane person wouldnt risk his life and livelihood like that. His normal personality is that of a human being that hasnt got it in his personality to kill someone who hasnt done anything to harm him. Macbeth is able to kill a man on a battlefield, but that is a totally different situation. On a battlefield you dont know the person you are about to kill, and he is also prepared to kill you also, so it is like killing in self-defense. But by killing Duncan, it is killing in cold blood, someone that is asleep and has no defense. A split personality perhaps, where one minute he is nice, and wouldnt hurt a fly and the next minute he is a cold-blooded killing machine. You could even say that he is slightly sycophantic towards Duncan. Even Duncan himself says that Macbeth is loyal: What he hath lost noble Macbeth has won The word noble says it all in that line. Macbeth has the respect of the King, and so has won the position of Thane of Cawdor. Lady Macbeth or The Three Witches could also have influenced Macbeth into killing Duncan. The Three Witches prophesised that Macbeth would become Thane of Cawdor, and then King. They say: FIRST WITCH: All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! SECOND WITCH: All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! THIRD WITCH: All hail Macbeth, thou shalt be King here- after! Macbeth was already Thane of Glamis, so that doesnt count as a prophecy, but he wasnt Thane of Cawdor when The Witches spoke to him, but then Ross and Angus came from the battle with the Norwegians, and told Macbeth that he was Thane of Cawdor because Sinel had been killed in battle. So the witches first prophecy had come true. That is when Macbeth fell into The Witches trap, or spell, or whatever you wish to call it. He decided to trust The Witches, so he expected that Duncan would die soon, whether it be of old age or by murder, but the prophecy did not come true. So Macbeth decided to kill Duncan himself, to make the prophecy come true. He was greedy, because the witches forced Macbeth into killing Duncan through temptation. But, Macbeth could have backed out at any point along the road to the murder. Lady Macbeth influenced Macbeth by putting so much pressure onto Macbeth to kill Duncan, to give her and Macbeth a better life. Macbeth gets pushed around by her, and does whatever she tells him to. This may have caused Macbeth to murder Duncan, but again, Macbeth could have backed out at any point. Lady Macbeth first finds out about The Witches prophecies when he writes her a letter. He writes this letter because he knows he needs somebody to push him to kill Duncan. She drives him to the crown, and therefore acts as a catalyst to Macbeth. She bullies his and uses emotional blackmail against him. She knows that he has good positive morals, and so she has to push him. She ridicules him by saying: When you durst do it, then you were a man; And to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. This basically means that when he dared to do it, then he was a man. This is insulting towards Macbeth, because she knows he is a warrior and is mocking his bravery. She also answers every objection that Macbeth has against the murder, and tries to motive his with her answer. Macbeth says this: If we should fail Lady Macbeth then immediately jumps in by saying: We fail? There is a hint of surprise in that reply, surprise about Macbeth, of him thinking that they will fail. But Lady Macbeth could also be implying that if they get caught, then Macbeth should get all the blame. Macbeth also doesnt believe that they will be able to cover up the murder successfully. Lady Macbeth objects to this lack of optimism by saying: Who dares receive it other, As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar Upon his death? This suggests that no one will dare believe anything else (this is referring to the daggers planted on the soldiers), because Lady Macbeth and Macbeth will mourn so much that everybody will think that the couple is genuinely upset. Lady Macbeth also organises the finer points of the murder. When Macbeth come back from the murder scene with the daggers, she is annoyed with him because he is being careless. She then has to plant the daggers onto the soldiers herself because Macbeth is too scared of getting caught. The reason why Lady Macbeth is pushing so hard is maybe because she is possessed. She actually asks to be possessed by Demons or Spirits. She says: And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty She is asking to be possessed because then she will be able to lose here feminine side and become cruel and greedy. These evil spirits may be connected to The Witches. Macbeth first meets The Witches after the battle with Norway, and they predict that he will become the Thane of Cawdor and then King. When the first prophecy comes true, Macbeth and Banquo are extremely surprised. We can tell this because Banquo says: Can the devil speak true? This shows us that they did not expect The Witches to be telling the truth. Then Macbeth goes into deep thought about the second prophecy. Banquo tells us this when he says: Look how our partners rapt We could say that Macbeth is thinking that it is his destiny to be King, and therefore King he must be. After this point Macbeth is always thinking about the second prophecy and whether to do anything about it or not. The Witches made him fell like this and so must take some of the blame. The Witches also may have contributed to the murder of Duncan because they were making some kind of spell onto Macbeth at the start of the play. There is obviously some kind of sorcery going on in this first scene because the First Witch says: I come Greymalkin! A Greymalkin is a greycat, which is a spirit associated with the Devil. The Witches would not call to this demon if they werent planning on evil spells, and in this context Macbeth is surely going to be involved. Also, The Witches obviously arent bluffing about their power, because they then hovered off, which is a tricky thing to do if you arent a witch. This proves their power and their strength for the rest of the play. We fist get an idea of what the atmosphere is like in 11th century Scotland when Macbeth and Banquo appear. Macbeth says: So foul and fair a day I have not seen. There is a contradiction here, because a day cannot be foul and fair at the same time. But what he may mean is that the weather is bad, but because of the victory over the Norwegians, it has made his day good. Perhaps The Witches made the weather bad with their evil presence. In the 11th century, it was not unusual for highly respected people to get murdered, so that other people could climb higher up the ranks. Macbeth may have just been following the custom of that time. The atmosphere of the 11th century is evidently that of an evil, brutal place. I conclude that Macbeth should take the main blame for the murder of Duncan. He actually committed the murder and let ambition and greed rule him, despite knowing the consequences. I think that the other three factors are less important, but acted as catalysts, working alongside the main factor. If the other three factors were taken away, then the murder would have still occurred, but not as quickly.

BT Group: Financial Performance Analysis

BT Group: Financial Performance Analysis BT Group (BT) is the leading UK company providing landline telecommunication services and equipment. It also had the mobile telecommunication business which was subsequently sold as MMO2. After the sale of mobile business, BT’s profile has now changed from a growth company to a mature cash generating company. A)  Financial performance The most common objective assessment of the financial performance of a firm is the return it generates on its assets and the quantity and quality of the returns. Quantity is measured by the absolute and percent change in total profits. The profit and loss account of an organisation and its analysis are the prime and first indicators of a firm’s financial performance. The latest annual results of BT is for the period ending 31 March 2005. Appendix I shows the summary of key profit and loss figures over the last three years. BT’s turnover and profit after tax in 2005 have increased as compared to 2004 but are still lower than those in 2003. The turnover has declined by 5.7% only whereas profit after tax has declined by 32.7% over the two year period. This shows that the business has very low variable costs which is in line with the heavy fixed cost investments normally made by telecommunication companies in establishing their networks and subsequent very low variable costs in carrying data. While turnover increased in 2005, operating profits have declined. This indicates that the business is facing some pricing pressures or is spending more on advertisement as the operating profit declined by 0.5% only. BT’s 2005 profit after tax was  £1,820m and was substantially higher than  £1,406m. Though the absolute profit is very high number compared to most of the businesses and indicates that the company is in strong financial position, it also shows that BT has high financial leverage. The company paid a significant high interest and if revenues and operating margins come under more pressure, it could have trouble paying interest costs. BT is aware of this issue and has focused on reducing its net debt. After facing tough times in early 2000s, it has sold many previous investments to raise money for repaying debt. BT’s share price rose after it announced its strategic decision to reduce net debt by raising money through divestments. The net interest payments have declined from  £1,439m in 2003 to  £801m in 2005. Not only that, the net interest payment has declined from 49.5% of operating profit to 29.0% from 2003 to 2005. The reduction in net interest as a percent of operating profit is an important improvement as it gives investors comfort that even if operating margins come under pressure, the company would still be able to meet its interest liabilities. One quick way to analyse a company’s performance is to look at the earnings per share pattern. The earnings per share had also a change pattern similar to that of profit after tax. It first decreased from 31.4p in 2003 to 16.4p in 2004 before increasing to 21.4p in 2005. The 2005 increase in earnings per share highlights the improvement in performance. Though the profits did decrease in 2004, BT kept on increasing total dividend paid to shareholders. This shows the management’s faith in business going forward and its ability to meet higher dividend expectations in future. The returns generated on assets is measured by Return on Capital employed (ROCE). Appendix II shows the calculation of ROCE for BT. BT had a healthy ROCE of 19.0% and 20.7% in 2004 and 2005. The quality of returns is measured by their consistency and by the spread of profits, i.e., the percent of profits being generated from different divisions and locations. The less reliance of profits on any one division and/or location means the company is in better shape to withstand downturns in its markets. None of BT’s business contributed more than 50% in its turnover in the year ended 31 March 2005 (BT, 2005). This indicates that BT Group is reasonably well protected from the declines in a business line. The situation is slightly different if we look at the operating profits where BT Wholesale division contributes more than 50% of net operating profits. Any more margin pressures in this business could reduce future earnings. Most of BT’s earnings originate from UK and hence it earnings are susceptible to changes in UK economy. Financial position The financial position of a company covers its financial structure, its assets and liabilities, its liquidity and risk management approach (Accounting Standards 2004/2005). Appendix III gives the highlights of BT Group’s balance sheet from 2004 to 2005. The total fixed assets have increased by  £639m in the last year. While total fixed assets have increased, the total current assets have decreased by  £254m, so total assets have increased by  £385m. The lower increase in total assets as compared to increase in fixed assets is mainly due to decrease in cash and investments. The major change in financial structure has occurred on the liabilities side. The total current liabilities have gone up by  £3,938m due to increase in current loans and borrowings of  £3,227m. This shows that BT is financing much more of its assets from current borrowings. The massive increase in current loans and borrowings has reversed the net current assets (liabilities) position. BT had net current assets of  £2,027m in 2004 and had net current liabilities of  £2,165m in 2005, a net decrease in current assets of  £4,192m. While the current liabilities have increased, the long term creditors have decreased by  £4,335m. If we just look at long-term creditors, the reduction is impressive and it gives more confidence to the investors that company is in better financial position now. But when we combine the decrease in long term creditors with the increase in current liabilities, the net change is very less. And the fact that changes in current liabilities is mainly due to borrowing instead of increase in trade creditors means that the financing of assets has merely shifted from long term borrowings to short term borrowings. The current assets to current liabilities ratio has declined from 1.24 to 0.83 in the last one year, a sign of concern in terms of liquidity especially when the increase in liabilities is not mainly due to higher trade creditors. Debt to equity ratio indicates the financing of assets. BT had total debt of  £13,697m in 2004 and the corresponding figure for 2005 was  £12,589m, a decrease of  £1,108m. If we now exclude cash and short term investments from total debt, BT’s net debt was  £8,425m and  £7,786m in 2004 and 2005 respectively. The net debt to book value of equity ratio declined from 2.75 in 2004 to 2.02 in 2005. This means that debt finances almost twice assets as being financed by equity. Higher amount of debt results in lower weighted average cost of capital as debt is cheaper equity. But as BT reduces more debt, its weighted average cost of capital will increase. The increase would be partially offset by lower cost of equity due to lower chances of bankruptcy. Risk of bankruptcy is measured by interest cover ratio which is defined as the ratio of cash available for interest payments to net interest. Appendix IV shows the EBITDA calculation and interest cover ratio. The interest cover ratio has increased from 6.1 in 2004 to 7.0 in 2005. The healthy interest cover ratio shows that BT has further reduced the risk of bankruptcy and is in better financial position now. The debt level is now very much within manageable levels and is more like a cash rich mature company. Companies normally tend to follow certain dividend trend to signal market of their assessment of future earnings. Dividend declaration is also part of risk management as it is based on management’s assessment of future cash generation and expenditure expectations. The hike in dividend in 2004 and 2005 inspite of decline in profits in 2004 shows the management assessment of future low risks to cash flows. Financial Adaptability An entity’s financial adaptability is its ability to take effective action to alter the amount and timing of its cash flows so that it can respond to unexpected needs or opportunities (Accounting Standards 2004/2005, page 26). Appendix V shows the main elements of consolidated cash flow statement of BT Group. BT Group is generating high amounts of cash inflow from operating activities. During the year ended 31 March 2005, the company generated  £5,900m of net cash from operating activities. BT is in telecommunication business which demands relatively high level of absolute investments. It spent  £2,408m on capital expenditure during the year ended 31 March 2005. Even if we believe that all of capital expenditure was required under normal operations, BT was still left with  £2,282m of surplus cash in 2005. As we can see from the Appendix III that BT has now focused on repayment of loans. During the last three years, the company has reduced borrowings by  £7,395m. Though BT is able to generate significant amount of cash before disposals but that was not enough in 2003 and 2004 to repay loans. The company then sold some of its investments to generate cash for loan repayments. BT also pays a significant amount of dividend to its shareholders. So if its net cash from operations do decrease in future, it has still some buffer in terms of dividend payments to take care of loan repayments. B) The objective of financial statement is to provide information about the reporting entity’s financial performance and financial position that is useful to a wide range of users for assessing the stewardship of the entity’s management and for making economic decisions (Accounting Standards, 2004, page 22). The compliance of an entity’s financial reports with UK’s Accounting Standards can be gauged over two main areas – content and format. Content is important to give true and correct picture of a firm’s financial performance and position. Different users need different information. Financial statements are used by investors to base their investment decision. So it is important that financial statements have the right content to help achieve this goal. It is also important to have right format of presentation. Investors are more likely to feel comfortable if they see familiar presentation style and can then evaluate the company easily. We will look at the content and major financial statements to see whether they comply with UK Accounting Standards. We will then also at few additional notes to financial statements to see whether they are also in line with true and fair principle and give the readers a clear picture of the entity. First of all we compare profit and loss statement with FRS 3 ‘Reporting financial performance’. BT’s consolidated profit and loss statement clearly shows the total turnover and share from joint venture and associates, and in doing so gives more clarity of its earning base. The financial statement format is similar to the example formats shown in Accounting Standards 2004/2005. BT’s 2005 Annual Report however doesn’t show share of turnover and profits from discounted operations (BT, 2005). It is because BT didn’t sell any business in 2005. If we look at the 2002 Annual Report (BT, 2002), it shows the turnover and profits from discounted operations also. The financial statement also has statement of total recognised gains and losses in line with FRS 3 practices. So the accounts meet profit and loss statement UK Accounting Standards in terms of both content and format. We now compare BT’s cash flow statement with the format prescribed in FRS 1 ‘Cash flow statements’. BT’s cash flow statement has not only got all the headings but they are also in the same order as mentioned in FRS 1. BT report also gives sub-categories under the major headings and hence is a genuine effort to educate investors as much as possible on the generation and use of cash flows. BT cash flow statement uses the format prescribed for the ‘Group’ accounts. The notes to financial statement also has detailed reporting on reconciliation of operating profit to operating cash flows, analysis of net debt, acquisition and disposals in line with formats for the ‘Group’ accounts. The next section we analyse is on segmental reporting and check its comparability with SSAP 25 ‘Segmental Reporting’. SSAP 25 says that a public limited company should provide segmental analysis on lines of business class and geographical location. The notes to financial statement section in the 2005 Annual Report has a section on segmental reporting wherein BT shows the turnover, operating profit/(loss) and net assets/(liabilities) of different business lines. It also provides the above data based on the geographical location of reverse generation. The above meets SSAP 25 requirements and also helps investors make a better judgment of risks faced by BT. BT is in telecommunication business where technology change is rapid. BT has acquired many companies in recent years to keep pace with the technological developments. So it is important to analyse the acquisition policies and disclosures are in line with the UK Accounting Standards. FRS 6 ‘Acquisitions and Mergers’ and FRS 7 ‘Fair values in acquisition accounting’ govern the acquisition accounting policies. BT’s annual report under ‘Notes to financial statements’ gives detailed disclosure of total and fair value of the acquisitions made by it. BT’s financial statements not only give the book and fair value of acquisitions but also a detailed explanation of them for each acquisition. The clear and easy to understand format of financial statements and the depth of information in them signals that BT not only just do the minimum to meet UK Accounting Standards but also follows them in true spirit. Appendix I – Highlight of BT Group’s profit and loss accounts (Source: BT Annual Report and Form 20-F; http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Howwehavedone/Financialreports/Annualreports/AnnualReports.htm) Appendix II – ROCE of BT Group (Source: BT Annual Report and Form 20-F; http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Howwehavedone/Financialreports/Annualreports/AnnualReports.htm) Appendix III – Highlight of BT Group’s balance sheet (Source: BT Annual Report and Form 20-F; http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Howwehavedone/Financialreports/Annualreports/AnnualReports.htm) Appendix IV – Interest cover ratio (Source: BT Annual Report and Form 20-F; http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Howwehavedone/Financialreports/Annualreports/AnnualReports.htm) Appendix V – Highlight of BT Group’s cash flow statements (Source: BT Annual Report and Form 20-F; http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Howwehavedone/Financialreports/Annualreports/AnnualReports.htm) Bibliography and references Accounting Standards 2004/2005 – Extant at 30 April 2004 (2004); Wolters Kluwer (UK) Limited. BT (2005); BT Annual Report and Form 20-F for the year ended 31 March 2005; http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Howwehavedone/Financialreports/Annualreports/AnnualReports.htm BT (2002); BT Annual Report and Form 20-F for the year ended 31 March 2002; http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Howwehavedone/Financialreports/Annualreports/Annualreportsarchive.htm

Investigation: Water Scarcity in Australia

Investigation: Water Scarcity in Australia Students Name: James Yu Abstract This paper indicates the water scarcity and water pollution in Australia. These two things can be serious problems in Australia because it is so major a food exporting country. The sources we use as references are all websites and two scientific paper. The solution for these two water issues are cloud seeding and enacting some laws which forbid people from throwing plastic casually. However, just clouding seeding probably can work efficiently if Australia have sufficient capital to conduct these experiments. The limitation of this paper is source availability, all what I can use is Internet because it is tough for me to find books on this topic in English version. 1.0 Introduction This scientific paper indicated several causes of water scarcity and water pollution in Australia, and also provided some solutions of solving this issue. Australia is one of the most developed countries all over the world, however, this country got a severe water restriction. One of the most underlying causes is sea surface temperature (SST). In the south of Australia , the SST is lower than average. This signified that there was few evaporation of water, caused atomospheric desiccation, and led to limitation of raining (Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Contour Charts 2013). The cause of water pollution in Australia was polyolefins, which accounts for 52% of plastic production and were used for manufacturing throwaway packaging (Schneider J 2013). These plastics could spoil our food web and ecosystem. Australia mostly gather water from raining and a large proportions of water was used for agriculture, because Australia was a major food exporting country (M. Ejaz Qureshi, Munir A. Hanjr a, Ward J 2013). Our hypothesis was Australia could conquer water scarcity and water pollutionif they develop cloud seeding and enact some regulations on environmental protection. Table 1: Variability of à ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡ow in some of the worlds major rivers compared with a Australian rivers. COUNTRY RIVER RATIO BETWEEN THE MAXIMUM and THE MINIMUM ANNUAL FLOWS Switzerland China Sudan USA South Africa Australia Rhine Yangtze White Nile Potomac Orange Hunter 1.9 2.0 2.4 3.9 16.9 54.3 This table illustrated the Australian river got a very unstable fluctuation between the maximum and the minumum flows, compared to one major river in other countries. Reference: http://www.wentworthgroup.org/docs/Chartres__Williams.pdf 2.0 Methodology The source of this scientific paper was all Internet. I typed some key words like Water scarcity in Australia. I look through all the web pages and gathered the beneficial information and type them into search box once again. For instance, I found one of the solutions of water scarcity in Australia is Cloud seeding and I typed this term into search box to get further information. I spent about 40 minutes on researching and found 2 websites for each solution. I haved verified all these sources were all written by reputable professors, scientists or publishers by researching these people and publisher to ensure if their dependency is strong enough for my paper. Some of my sources were another scientific paper. 3.0 Findings Two of the most severe fresh water issues in Australia were water scarcity and water pollution, these problems have existed for last of a decade. These two water issues could be a massive problem for Australia. Cloud seeding was a significant solution which throws drikold into cloud, it could increase supply moderately in Australia. Figure 1 demonstrated the mean of precipitation of seeded clouds was 2X103 m3 exceeded from unseeded clouds, it means seeded clounds can actually raise the percipitation (E. J. Smith). In fact, a great percents of water in Australia was polluted by plastics. Meanwhile, Australian plastic production had increased from 170 thousand in 1950s to 280 million in 2011. Figure 2 shows the distribution of plastic pollution in water of Australian city . Most heavy polluted cities were concentrated in the south-eastern and north-western Australia, the place where need to control the plastic production. Some cities in south-eastern Australia had over 15500 km-2 of pl astic concentrations. During the a long term of flowing, these plastics could be broken down into small fragments within 5 mm length, which commonly called microplastic and damaged to the food web and ecosystem easily. Therefore, we had two methods to solve this issue. Approximately 37% of plastics were used for manufacturing disposable packaging, comprising bottle, cups and bags,hence, the first solution was reducing the production of single-use plastic package and decreased the demand of using these plastic manutacture by advocating awareness of this water issue (Schneider J 2013). Another efficient solution was enact the laws which prohibit people and also factories from dumping plastics into sea. Figure 1: Total rainfall from isolated cumulus clouds The total rainfall of seeded cloud and unseeded cloud whose tops were -100C or cooler with 30 minutes of seeding from isolated cumulus clouds. Reference: http://www.wentworthgroup.org/docs/Chartres__Williams.pdf Figure 2: Distribution map of plastic concentrations in Australia    Marine plastic concentrations in waters around Australia. White crosses indicate location of major Australian cities Reference: http://theconversation.com/australian-waters-polluted-by-harmful-tiny-plastics-20790 4.0 Discussion From the scientists and researchers perspectives, they think that the best solution that is able to augment the amout of water is cloud seeding. Via this solution, Australia could have sufficient supply and overcame water scarcity lightly. But on the contrary, cloud seeding can be very costly. In most of the cases, it takes millions of RMB to implement one cloud seeding, therefore, Australia would better have a strong economic background beforehand like developing their agriculture or IT industry. On the other hand, as for the water pollution in Australia, most of water is polluted by fragmented plastic and majority of people and factories concentrated in the eastern coast of the Australia, so we could see eastern Australia is more polluted than any other part of Australia. Moreover, because it is hardly to eliminate all these plastic pollutants and made sure there is no plastic contamination in the furture in a scientific way, we could just do it in a political approach. For instanc e, government could enact laws of environmental protection or making some advertisments to persuade people do not throw plasctic bags or products into any kind of natural water source. In addition, some eco-friendly organizations can just simply set some dustbins around those highly polluted cities for recycling the plastic. But its a little bit tough for them to conquer water pollution via this method. All in all, I think Australia can conquer these two water issues based on the previous contents. 5.0 Conclusions and Recommendations In general, cloud seeding still got a substaintia chance to resolve water restriction by it extra precipitation. Australia just need to develop their economy and have enough capital to conduct these experiments. To handle the increasing plastic pollution in Australian water, government have appeal people do not throw any plastic manufactures casually and set several laws to forbid people from doing this, in particular the eastern part of Australia. The effectiveness of this measure rely on the governmental actions and Australian qualities. There are some limitations in this scientific paper, first of all is source restrictions. Sources in this paper are all from Internet. The research suggestion is using books references, because books always much more trustworthy than websites. If we get enough money, we will find a new scientific way to reduce the plastic pollution in Australian water. Reference List      Ã‚   Chartres C., Williams J.(2006), Can Australia Overcome its Water Scarcity Problems, Wentworth Group. [Online]. Available from: http://www.wentworthgroup.org/docs/Chartres__Williams.pdf [Accessed 1 October 2016] (2013),Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Contour Charts, NOAA. [Online]. Available from: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/contour/ [Accessed 1 October 2016] (2013), M. Ejaz Qureshi, Munir A. Hanjra, Ward J.,Impact of water scarcity in Australia on global food security in an era of climate change, Science Direct. [Online]. Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919212001170 [Accessed 1 October 2016] E. J. Smith, Cloud Seeding Experiments in Australia, Berkeley. [Online]. Available from: http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/math/ucb/text/math_s5_v5_article-10.pdf [Accessed 1 October 2016] Schneider J.(2013), Australian waters polluted by harmful tiny plastics, The Conversation. [Online]. Available from: http://theconversation.com/australian-waters-polluted-by-harmful-tiny-plastics-20790 [Accessed 2 October 2016

Blessing and Vultures Essay -- English Literature

Blessing and Vultures In the poems ‘Blessing’ and ‘Vultures’, the poets both use vivid descriptive language to create pictures and moods. In ‘Blessing’, the poet begins the second stanza with the word ‘imagine’. This word involves the reader and tells them to create a mental picture of the scene. He uses lots of onomatopoeia in this stanza. Words like ‘drip’ and ‘splash’ create an image of a small amount of water falling into a tin mug. This also creates a mood of thirst and drought. The stanza is finished with the line â€Å"the voice of a kindly god.† This personifies the water and makes it seem heavenly. The third stanza creates a sense of rushing, in the same way that water would rush out of the burst pipe. This mood is created by using fast sounding words, such as ‘rush’, ‘bursts’ and ‘crashes’. These words are also onomatopoeic because they sound like the pipe bursting, the water rushing and crashing to the ground. It uses the word ‘silver’ metaphorically to describe the look of the water and also how precious it is. Another metaphor is â€Å"a roar of tongues†. Th...

Penn State Crew :: Rowing Regattas Sports Athletics Essays

Penn State Crew Penn State Crew is a completely student run organization dedicated towards preparing its members towards rowing competitions, called regattas. Since its inception in 1994, the team has seen periods of immense growth. No longer is the day when Penn State Crew is struggling to compete for dead last. Instead, we are bringing home the hardware as evidenced by our very successful fall and winter seasons (for complete results, please visit the team's homepage.) The team just recently purchased two eight-man Vespoli shells and a new boathouse is currently in the design phase and is planned on being constructed at the team's home lake, Bald Eagle Lake, located about thirty plus minutes from the University Park campus. Penn State Crew is very fortunate because it is one of a few club sports here at Penn State that has actual, paid, highly qualified coaches who bring an immense rowing knowledge base to the team. We are looking forward to this Spring 2003 season as one filled with much pr omise, lofty expectations and phenomenal competition with some of the nation's premier rowing squads. Please follow our progress all season at the team's homepage, http://www.clubs.psu.edu/psucrew/. The Reason We Do This... A fierce shriek pierces the serene darkness of night. Snoring is still heard from the football players who live next door as a figure stirs in the lofted bed. Groggily, without glasses or contacts, a calloused hand reaches out towards the annoying sound that all non-morning people have come to hate. Suddenly complete, utter silence is restored as the alarm is shut off. A yawn and swing of the legs soon lands bare feet on the cold floor of a dorm room in Hartranft Hall at Penn State. Eyes are rubbed and open and shut five or six times rather rapidly as they try and focus on the iridescent green digits that stare back. â€Å"4:37† reads the alarm clock and radio contraption designed with an alarm loud enough to wake Satan from deep slumber in the bowels of hell. Without any warning, a whirlwind of action commences and within fifteen minutes, the rower emerges from the shadows and is on his way to another Penn State Crew practice. Craziness. Sheer craziness is how the athletes on the crew team are most commonly described by anyone at all who resides on this campus.

Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation Essay

These include search, cloud computing, software, and online advertising technologies. Most of its profits are derived from AdWords. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together they own about 16 percent of its shares. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was â€Å"to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful†, and its unofficial slogan was â€Å"Don’t be evil†. In 2006 Google moved to headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond Google’s core search engine. It offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and social networking . Desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and instant messaging. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system and the browser-only Chrome OS for a netbook known as a Chromebook. Google has moved increasingly into communications hardware: it partners with major electronics manufacturers in production of its high-end Nexus devices and acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012. In 2012, a fiber-optic infrastructure was installed in Kansas City to facilitate a Google Fiber broadband service. The corporation has been estimated to run more than one million servers in data centers around the world and to process over one billion search requests and about 24 petabytes of user-generated data each day. In December 2012 Alexa listed google.com as the most visited website in the world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger. Its market dominance has led to criticism over issues including copyright, censorship, and privacy. History Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a  better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank; it determined a website’s relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site. A small search engine called â€Å"RankDex† from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking. The technology in RankDex would be patented and used later when Li founded Baidu in China. Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine â€Å"BackRub†, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word â€Å"googol†, the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. Originally, Google ran under Stanford University’s website, with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu. The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend’s . In January 2013, Google announced it had earned $50 billion in annual revenue for the year of 2012. This marked the first time the company had reached this feat, topping their 2011 total of $38 billion. Financing and initial public offering The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. Early in 1999, while graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had developed was taking up too much time and distracting their academic pursuits. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer and later criticized Vinod Khosla, one of Excite’s venture capitalists, after he negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced, with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal. The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. The vast majority  of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place. There were concerns that Google’s IPO would lead to changes in company culture. Reasons ranged from shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many company executives would become instant paper millionaires. As a reply to this concern, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would not change the company’s culture. In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. In an effort to maintain the company’s unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer, who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on: a flat organization with a collaborative environment. Google has also faced allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees. The stock performed well after the IPO, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007, primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market. The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds. The next year, against Page and Brin’s initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company’s pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court; Google agreed to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. In 2001, Google received a patent for its PageRank mechanism. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. The complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. The Googleplex interiors were designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects. Three  years later, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million. By that time, the name â€Å"Google† had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb â€Å"google† to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as â€Å"to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.† 2013 onward Google announced the launch of a new company called Calico on September 19, 2013, which will be led by Apple chairman Arthur Levinson. In the official public statement, Page explained that the â€Å"health and wellbeing† company will focus on â€Å"the challenge of ageing and associated diseases†. As of September 2013, Google operates 70 offices in more than 40 countries. Google celebrated its 15-year anniversary on September 27, 2013, although it has used other dates for its official birthday. The reason for the choice of September 27 remains unclear, and a dispute with rival search engine Yahoo! Search in 2005 has been suggested as the cause. The Alliance for Affordable Internet was launched in October 2013 and Google is part of the coalition of public and private organisations that also includes Facebook, Intel and Microsoft. Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable so that access is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will help to decrease internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commission’s worldwide target of 5% of monthly income. The corporation’s consolidated revenue for the third quarter of 2013 is reported in mid-October 2013 as US$14.89 billion, a 12 percent increase compared to the previous quarter. Google’s Internet business was responsible for US$10.8 billion of this total, with an increase in the number of users’ clicks on advertisements. Acquisitions and partnerships Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, primarily small venture capital-funded firms. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc. The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a three-dimensional view of the Earth. Google renamed the service to Google Earth in 2005. Google acquired Urchin Software in April 2005, using their ‘Urchin on Demand’ product to create Google Analytics in 2006. In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired the video-sharing site YouTube  for US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006. Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube’s running costs, and YouTube’s revenues in 2007 were noted as â€Å"not material† in a regulatory filing. In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 YouTube revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in advertising sales. On April 13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies. Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million. The site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company, purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million. Google also acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for $50 million, and commented on its internal blog, â€Å"we’re looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it†. In April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux. In addition to the many companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other organizations for research, advertising, and other activities. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames Research Center to build of offices. The offices would be used for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Google entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October 2005 to help share and distribute each other’s technologies. The company also partnered with AOL to enhance each other’s video search services. Google’s 2005 partnerships also included financing the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson. Google would later launch â€Å"AdSense for Mobile†, taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market. Increasing its advertising reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corporation entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on the then-popular social networking site MySpace. In 2007, Google began sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, displacing former sponsor AOL. NORAD Tracks Santa purports to follow Santa Claus’ progress on Christmas Eve, using Google Earth to â€Å"track Santa† in 3-D for the first time. Google-owned YouTube gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel. In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing  Google with high-resolution imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008. Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting an archive of Life Magazine’s photographs. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine. The photos were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status. In 2010, Google Energy made its first investment in a renewable energy project, putting $38.8 million into two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced the two locations will generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. NextEra Energy Resources sold Google a twenty-percent stake in the project to get funding for its development. In February 2010, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission FERC granted Google an authorization to buy and sell energy at market rates. The order specifically states that Google Energy—a subsidiary of Google—holds the rights â€Å"for the sale of energy, capacity, and ancillary services at market-based rates†, but acknowledges that neither Google Energy nor its affiliates â€Å"own or control any generation or transmission† facilities. The corporation exercised this authorization in September 2013 when it announced that it will purchase all of the electricity produced by the not-yet-built 240-megawatt Happy Hereford wind farm. Also in 2010, Google purchased Global IP Solutions, a Norway-based company that provides web-based teleconferencing and other related services. This acquisition enabled Google to add telephone-style services to its list of products. On May 27, 2010, Google announced it had also closed the acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob. This occurred days after the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the purchase. Google acquired the company for an undisclosed amount. In July 2010, Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy 114 megawatts of energy for 20 years. On April 4, 2011, The Globe and Mail reported that Google bid $900 million for six thousand Nortel Networks patents. On August 15, 2011, Google made its largest-ever acquisition to-date when announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion subject to approval from regulators in the United States and Europe. In a post on Google’s blog, Google Chief Executive and co-founder Larry Page revealed that the acquisition was a  strategic move to strengthen Google’s patent portfolio. The company’s Android operating system has come under fire in an industry-wide patent battle, as Apple and Microsoft have sued Android device makers such as HTC, Samsung, and Motorola. The merger was completed on the May 22, 2012, after the approval of People’s Republic of China. This purchase was made in part to help Google gain Motorola’s considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies to help protect it in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies, mainly Apple and Microsoft After the acquisition closed, Google began to restructure the Motorola business to fit Google’s strategy. On August 13, 2012, Google announced plans to layoff 4000 Motorola Mobility employees. On December 10, 2012, Google sold the manufacturing operations of Motorola Mobility to Flextronics for $75 million. As a part of the agreement, Flextronics will manufacture undisclosed Android and other mobile devices. On December 19, 2012, Google sold the Motorola Home business division of Motorola Mobility to Arris Group for $2.35 billion in a cash-and-stock transaction. As a part of this deal, Google acquired a 15.7% stake in Arris Group valued at $300 million. On June 5, 2012, Google announced it acquired Quickoffice, a company widely known for their mobile productivity suite for both iOS and Android. Google plans to integrate Quickoffice’s technology into its own product suite. On February 6, 2013, Google announced it had acquired Channel Intelligence for $125 million. Channel Intelligence, a technology company that helps customers buy products online, is active globally in 31 different countries and works with over 850 retailers. Google will use this technology to enhance its e-commerce business. The official confirmation of Google’s acquisition of the Israel-based startup Waze occurred in June 2013. Waze is promoted as a â€Å"community-based traffic and navigation app†. Following the acquisition of Waze, Google submitted a â€Å"10-Q† filing with the Securities Exchange Commission that revealed that the corporation spent US$1.3 billion on acquisitions during the first half of 2013. The filing also revealed that the Waze acquisition cost Google US$966 million, instead of the US$1.1 billion figure that was initially presented in media sources. The 2012 acquisition of WIMM Labs, a company that previously made an Android-powered smartwatch, was confirmed in August 2013. As of August 31, 2013, Google has not publicly commented on the news concerning WIMM Labs. The acquisition of  Flutter, a creator of hand gesture recognition technology, was confirmed by the corporation in early October 2013. The reported price is US$40 million and Google spokesperson stated: â€Å"We’re really impressed by the Flutter team’s ability to design new technology based on cutting-edge research.† Flutter’s technology allows users to enact hand gestures to control navigation for apps such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Winamp. Google data centers As of 2011, Google Inc. owned and operated six data centers across the U.S., plus one in Finland and another in Belgium. On September 28, 2011, the company announced plans to build three data centers at a cost of more than $200 million in Asia and purchased the land for them. Google said they will be operational within two years. Products and services Advertising For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues. In 2011, 96% of Google’s revenue was derived from its advertising programs. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them. Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google’s AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid. In February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship’s sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorialpolicy at the time, stating â€Å"Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations.† The policy was later changed. In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized because of antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2008. In an attempt to advertise its own products, Google launched a website called Demo Slam, developed to demonstrate technology demos of Google Products. Search engine According to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google Search is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%. Google indexes billions of web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire through the use of keywords and operators. In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google’s indexing, claiming that Google’s caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content. In this case, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google. The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has compiled a list of words that the web giant’s new instant search feature will not search. Google Watch has criticized Google’s PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites. The site has also alleged that there are connections between Google and the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. Google also hosts Google Books. The company began scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into its new book search engine. The Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in a New York City federal court against Google in 2005 over this service. Google replied that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. Google eventually reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Canada. Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking it to remove the works of La Martinià ¨re from its database. In competition with Amazon.com, Google sells digital versions  of new books. On July 21, 2010, in response to Bing, Google updated its image search to display a streaming sequence of thumbnails that enlarge when pointed at. Though web searches still appear in a batch per page format, on July 23, 2010, dictionary definitions for certain English words began appearing above the linked results for web searches. The â€Å"Hummingbird† update to the Google search engine was announced in September 2013. The update was introduced over the month prior to the announcement and allows users ask the search engine a question in natural language rather than entering keywords into the search box. Productivity tools Gmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an invitation-only beta program on April 1, 2004, The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009, at which time it had 146 million users monthly. The service was the first online email service with one gigabyte of storage. It was also the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum. The service offers over 15 GB of free storage, shared with other Google Apps, with additional storage ranging from 20 GB to 16 TB available for per 1 GB per year. Gmail uses AJAX, a programming technique that allows web pages to be interactive without refreshing the browser. Steve Ballmer, Liz Figueroa, Mark Rasch, and the editors of Google Watch have criticised the privacy of Gmail, but Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. In 2004, Google started opensource software project hosting, called Google Code, which allows developers to download incomplete programs at no charge. Google Docs, another part of Google’s productivity suite, allows users to create, edit, and collaborate on documents in an online environment, similar to Microsoft Word. The service was originally called Writely, but was obtained by Google on March 9, 2006, and was released as an invitation-only preview. On June 6 after the acquisition, Google created an experimental spreadsheet editing program, which was combined with Google Docs on October 10. Enterprise products Google Search Appliance was launched in February 2002, targeted toward providing search technology for larger organizations. Google Apps allows  organizations to bring Google’s web application offerings, such as Gmail and Google Docs, into their own domains. The service is available in several editions: a basic free edition, Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Education, and Google Apps for Government. In the same year Google Apps was launched, Google acquired Postini and proceeded to integrate the company’s security technologies into Google Apps under the name Google Postini Services. Other products Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35 different languages. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program â€Å"learns† from professionally translated documents, specifically UN and European Parliament proceedings. Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites. In March 2005, Agence France Presse sued Google for copyright infringement in federal court in the District of Columbia, a case which Google settled for an undisclosed amount in a pact that included a license of the full text of AFP articles for use on Google News. In 2006, Google made a bid to offer free wireless broadband access throughout the city of San Francisco along with Internet service provider EarthLink. Large telecommunications companies such as Comcast and Verizon opposed the efforts, claiming it was â€Å"unfair competition† and that cities would be violating their commitments to offer local monopolies to these companies. In his testimony before Congress on network neutrality in 2006, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf blamed the tactics on the fact that nearly half of all consumers lack choice in broadband providers. Google currently offers free wi-fi access in its hometown of Mountain View, California. In 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project with plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities. On March 30, 2011, Google announced that Kansas City, Kansas would be the first community where the new network would be deployed. In July 2012, Google completed the construction of a fiber-optic broadband internet network infrastructure in Kansas City, and after building an infrastructure, Google announced pricing for Google Fiber. The service will offer three options including a free broadband internet option, a 1Gbit/s internet option for $70 per month, and a version that  includes television service for $120 per month. The project, called Android, turned out not to be a phone but an operating system for mobile devices, which Google acquired and then released as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license. Google provides a software development kit for developers so applications can be created to be run on Android-based phones. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the G1, the first Android-based phone. On January 5, 2010, Google released an Android phone under its own company name called the Nexus One. A report in July 2013 stated that Google’s share of the global smartphone market, led by Samsung products, was 64% in March 2013. Other projects Google has worked on include a new collaborative communication service, a web browser, and a mobile operating system. The first of these was first announced on May 27, 2009. The company described Google Wave as a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. The service is Google’s â€Å"email redesigned†, with realtime editing, the ability to embed audio, video, and other media, and extensions that further enhance the communication experience. Google Wave was initially in a developer’s preview, where interested users had to be invited to test the service, but was released to the general public on May 19, 2010, at Google’s I/O keynote. On September 1, 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open source web browser, which was then released on September 2, 2008. On July 7, 2009, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open source Linux-based operating system that includes only a web browser and is designed to log users into their Google account. Google Goggles is a mobile application available on Android and iOS used for image recognition and non-text-based search. In addition to scanning QR codes, the app can recognize historic landmarks, import business cards, and solve Sudoku puzzles. While Goggles could originally identify people as well, Google has limited that functionality as a privacy protection. In 2011, Google announced Google Wallet, a mobile application for wireless payments. In late June 2011, Google soft-launched a social networking service called Google+. On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in this â€Å"limited† trial phase. After four weeks in operation, it reached 25 million users. At a launch event on July 24, 2013 in San Francisco, U.S., a newer version of the Nexus 7 Google tablet device was released to the public, alongside the  Chromecast dongle that allows users to stream YouTube and Netflix videos via smartphones. In 2013 Google launched Google Shopping Express, a delivery service initially available only in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Moto X  Speaking at the D11 conference in Palos Verdes, U.S. in late May 2013, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, a former Google employee, announced that a new mobile device will be built by his company, which is wholly owned by Google, at a 500,000 square-feet facility in Texas, U.S. formerly used by the Nokia company. The facility will employ 2,000 people by August 2013 and the new phone, named the â€Å"Moto X†, will be available to the public in October 2013. The Moto X features Google Now software, and an array of sensors and two microprocessors that will mean that users can â€Å"interact with in very different ways than you can with other devices,† in the words of Woodside. Media reports suggest that the phone will be able to activate functions preemptively based on an â€Å"awareness† of what the user is doing at any given moment. Corporate affairs and culture On Fortune magazine’s list of best companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007, 2008 and 2012 and fourth in 2009 and 2010. Google was also nominated in 2010 to be the world’s most attractive employer to graduating students in the Universum Communications talent attraction index. Google’s corporate philosophy includes principles such as â€Å"you can make money without doing evil,† â€Å"you can be serious without a suit,† and â€Å"work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun.† Employees After the company’s IPO, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come from owning stock in Google. Before 2004, Schmidt made $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each received an annual salary of $150,000. In 2007 and early 2008, several top executives left Google. In October 2007, former chief financial officer of YouTube Gideon Yu joined Facebook along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer. In March 2008, Sheryl Sandberg, then vice-president of global online sales and operations, began her position as chief operating officer  of Facebook. At the same time, Ash ElDifrawi, formerly head of brand advertising, left to become chief marketing officer of Netshops. On April 4, 2011, Larry Page became CEO and Eric Schmidt became Executive Chairman of Google. In July 2012, Google’s first female employee, Marissa Mayer, left Google to become Yahoo!’s CEO. As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of Google’s newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience until July 2012, showed that half of all new product launches at the time had originated from the Innovation Time Off. Googleplex  Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, is referred to as â€Å"the Googleplex†, a play on words on the number googolplex and the headquarters itself being a complex of buildings. The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters, and a projection of search queries on the wall. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, table football, a baby grand piano, a billiard table, and ping pong. In addition to the recreation room, there are snack rooms stocked with various foods and drinks, with special emphasis placed on nutrition. Free food is available to employees 24/7, with paid vending machines prorated favoring nutritional value. In 2006, Google moved into of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The office was specially designed and built for Google and houses its largest advertising sales team, which has been instrumental in securing large partnerships. As of February 2012, a significant engineering team is based in New York City, and has been responsible for more than 100 engineering projects, including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets. As of September 2013, Google’s East Coast office is located at 76 Ninth Ave, New York City, New York. In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Pittsburgh, focusing on shopping-related advertisement coding and smartphone applications and  programs. By late 2006, Google also established a new headquarters for its AdWords division in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Other office locations in the U.S. include Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colorado; Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York City; San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; Reston, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Furthermore, Google has several international offices. In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels to provide up to 1.6 megawatts of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus’ energy needs. The system will be the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. The idea of trimming lawns using goats originated from R. J. Widlar, an engineer who worked for National Semiconductor. Google has faced accusations in Harper’s Magazine of being an â€Å"energy glutton†. The company was accused of employing its â€Å"Don’t be evil† motto and its public energy-saving campaigns to cover up or make up for the massive amounts of energy its servers require. Easter eggs and April Fools’ Day jokes Google has a tradition of creating April Fools’ Day jokes. On April 1, 2000, Google MentalPlex allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. In 2007, Google announced a free Internet service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, where one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet. Also in 2007, Google’s Gmail page displayed an announcement for Gmail Paper, allowing users to have email messages printed and shipped to them. In 2008, Google announced Gmail Custom time where users could change the time that the email was sent. In 2010, Google changed its company name to Topeka in honor of Topeka, Kansas, whose mayor changed the city’s name to Google for a short amount of time in an attempt to sway Google’s decision in its new Google Fiber Project. In 2011, Google announced Gmail Motion, an interactive way of controlling Gmail and the computer with body movements via the user’s webcam. Google’s services contain easter eggs, such as the Swedish Chef’s â€Å"Bork bork bork,† Pig Latin, â€Å"Hacker† or leetspeak, Elmer Fudd, Pirate, and Klingon as language selections for its search engine. The search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the  Universe, and Everything from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. When searching the word â€Å"recursion†, the spell-checker’s result for the properly spelled word is exactly the same word, creating a recursive link. When searching for the word â€Å"anagram,† meaning a rearrangement of letters from one word to form other valid words, Google’s suggestion feature displays â€Å"Did you mean: nag a ram?† In Google Maps, searching for directions between places separated by large bodies of water, such as Los Angeles and Tokyo, results in instructions to â€Å"kayak across the Pacific Ocean.† During FIFA World Cup 2010, search queries including â€Å"World Cup† and â€Å"FIFA† caused the â€Å"Goooo†¦gle† page indicator at the bottom of every result page to read â€Å"Goooo†¦al!† instead. Philanthropy In 2004, Google formed the not-for-profit philanthropic Google.org, with a start-up fund of $1 billion. The mission of the organization is to create awareness about climate change, global public health, and global poverty. One of its first projects was to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 miles per gallon. Google hired Larry Brilliant as the program’s executive director in 2004, and the current director is Megan Smith. In 2008 Google announced its â€Å"project 10100† which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then allowed Google users to vote on their favorites. After two years of silence, during which many wondered what had happened to the program, Google revealed the winners of the project, giving a total of ten million dollars to various ideas ranging from non-profit organizations that promote education to a website that intends to make all legal documents public and online. In 2011, Google donated 1 million euros to International Mathematical Olympiad to support the next five annual International Mathematical Olympiads . On July 2012, Google launched a â€Å"Legalize Love† campaign in support of gay rights. Tax avoidance   Google uses various tax avoidance strategies. Out of the five largest American technology companies it pays the lowest taxes to the countries of origin of its revenues. The company accomplishes this partly by licensing technology through subsidiaries in Ireland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Netherlands. This has reportedly sparked a French investigation into Google’s transfer pricing practices. Following criticism of the amount of  corporate taxes that Google paid in the United Kingdom, Chairman Eric Schmidt said, â€Å"It’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic.† During the same December 2012 interview Schmidt â€Å"confirmed that the company had no intention of paying more to the UK exchequer.† In 2013, Schmidt responded to questions about taxes paid in the UK by pointing to the advertising fees Google charged UK companies as a source of economic growth. Google Vice president Matt Brittin testified to the Public Accounts Committee of the UK house of commons that his UK sales team made no sales and hence owed no sales taxes to the UK. Environment Since 2007, Google has aimed for carbon neutrality in regard to its operations. In June 2013, the Washington Post reported that Google had donated US$50,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank. In July 2013, it was reported that Google had hosted a fundraising event for Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who has called climate change a â€Å"hoax†. See also Comparison of web search engines Criticism of Google Don’t Be Evil Google Google Balloon Internet Google Catalogs Google China Google Chrome Experiments Google logo Google platform Google Ventures – venture capital fund Google X Google+ Googlebot – web crawler Googlization List of Google domains List of mergers and acquisitions by Google Ungoogleable References External links not add links –> at the Internet Archive at Hoover’s Bibliography: Wikipedia