The Natural History Museum in London from 19th Century to Modernity Essay - 1

The Natural History Museum in London from 19th Century to Modernity - Essay Example Alfred Waterhouse changed the design from Renaissance to German Romanesque, which came to be known as the Waterhouse building up to today. This is an analytical survey at the museum’s space in relation to its interior, creator and the 19Th century society. The space inside the museum is extensive with beautifully decorated ceiling panels displaying pictures of plants from all over the world. The museum has extensive halls that house different departments within the museum. The entrance to the museum is located between two towers representing the Victorian style of architecture. There are rounded arches, made of bricks, and layered with terracotta. This design was inspired by the basalt columns at Fingals cave in western Scotland. Inside the entrance, there is a large hall with a grand staircase that leads up to the second floor that houses the galleries. Albert Waterhouse’s artistic mind made him leave the bare iron and glass exposed to express the beauty of the building materials. The outer design comprising of terracotta was both for aesthetic purpose and practical reasons (Anderson, 2004 p5). The blue colour, of the terracotta designed in relief, portrays different plants and animals as well as offering protection from the c haracteristic Victorian acidic smog. The halls in the museum are high ceilinged creating a comfortable ambience for visitors. High above the halls, there is an exhibition of sorts in the form of panels that depict various species of plants from around the world. The painted panels, on the ceiling, are in dark shades, which make the ceiling appear lower than it is. This makes a person feel intimate with the room; the vast spaces do not overwhelm people. The lighting in the museum is cleverly done so as not cause reflective glares when viewing the exhibits. The light emanates from hidden lighting sources on the walls and panels for effect and for protecting the exhibits from

Strategic management assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Strategic management assignment - Essay Example Now-a-days the organizations are bringing rapid, volatile and discontinuous changes. It makes strategic management more multifaceted and challenging. There are two principal drivers that influence the nature of competitors’ background. These will help the organizations to adopt and maintain that change. Technology and global economy are two important drivers of businesses. Therefore, substantial changes in these drivers can affect the strategic management process of an organization. Several models can help the CEOs to respond to the discontinuous changes. The combination of those two change approaches is suitable for the transformation of the organizations. This approach is considered as holistic approach. This holistic approach will help to produce effective flexibility to the businesses to counter the uncertain situations. It is necessary to have a strategic change plan that can be learned in order to relieve the fear of this change among the employees. Critical learning is indispensable. It will help to create a knowledge based work environment of understanding the critical problems. Moreover, transfer of knowledge will help to enhance the decision making ability in a situation of sudden change. Rapid, Volatile and Discontinuous Change Rapid and volatile organizational change is an intentional and structured approach that helps to transit the employees, groups and organizations from a current position to a significant future position. On the other hand, discontinuous change can be defined as sudden, unintentional and non-incremental change that threatens the power structure and existing traditional authority (Hubbard, 2004). The organizations implement rapid and volatile changing process to improve the internal structure of an organization. This process helps the management of the organization to capitalize on the potential opportunities and to meet with the changing customer demand rapidly by effective redesigning of product and services (Foster & Br owne, 1996). On the other hand, the objective of the discontinuous change process is to identify and rectify the current organizational problems. The organizations implement this change to establish new strategies to improve the organizational performance. Leading organizations around the globe are trying to capitalize on the potential opportunities by implementing these changes. Moreover, continuous changes in the organization required for any changes in external environmental factors help the organization to maintain a healthy work environment and achieve competence in the industry. It is important for the information managers to review the environmental factors and identify the current trends. This strategic audit planning will help the organizations to understand the external and internal information services (Sutton, 1999). PEST analysis is a common tool that helps the organization to assess the external factors, such as political, social, technological and economical changes. Another important common strategic audit tool is SWOT analysis. It helps the organization to assess the internal factors. This SWOT analysis considers internal strengths, weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. Following is the strategic management model that used to assess the role, impact and implication of rapid, volatile and discontinuous organizational change. An important principle of strategic managem

SABMiller Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

SABMiller - Essay Example While the company itself is in those who consume its products do not know many instances, its brands are quite popular among the consumers. In many of the African nations, in which it has businesses, the brands under SABMiller are often the most popular. SABMiller is a company that has throughout its history, displayed a high capacity for being able to manage and develop its brands to a high quality level that many of its rivals have rarely been able to match. This skilful management of its brands in different countries has enabled the company to become highly successful, as those who work for it receive a high level of training to ensure that the quality of its products is retained. The wide range of products that this company produces means that it has to hire and maintain a large workforce in order to be able to function effectively. Unlike other companies, SABMiller has since its founding, been extremely careful with the management of its staff, not only because of the need to ma ke profit continuously, but also to further the good reputation that the company has always had. Because of the skill that SABMiller has been able to display in the production of its products in diverse countries, it has been able to achieve success on the international scene where other companies take years to achieve the same. One would claim that SABMiller’s success is based not only on the quality of the company’s products, but also on the strategies that it has been able to implement to make its operations successful. This company was founded as South African Breweries towards the end of the 19th century in South Africa, and for many years afterwards, the functions of this company were restricted to Southern Africa. This is because of the fact that this company had established an overriding position in the southern African market. However, in 1990 this company decided to venture into the European market, and in 1999, it managed to get listed in the London Stock Ex change, with the intention of raising enough capital to make acquisitions. It is in 2002 that the company was able to acquire Miller Brewing Company in North America, and with this acquisition, the company chose to change its name to SABMiller (Hobday, 2002). A series of hostile takeovers in Latin America and Europe saw the swift growth of the company, and this eventually brought it to its status as the second largest brewer in the world (Bruss 2002, p.10). The company’s innovation has ensured that it has remained at the top of the world’s brewing industry and an example that can be given of this innovation, is the recent introduction of Impala Cervejas, the first cassava beer that has been produced for commercial purposes in Africa (Appropriate Technology 2012, p.23). This company has about 70000 employees all over the world and its operations have, according to its 2012 records, it managed to bring in revenue of just over 21 billion dollars (Buck 2012, p.49). In Afri ca, the activities of SABMiller are conducted in 15 countries, all of which are in the Sub-Saharan region. This company has been dominant in the region for many years and because of this, its brands are well known by the people. The large customer base of SABMiller’s products has ensured that the company has been successful in the region and has creates a loyal market for its products (Peaple, 2012). A further 21 countries in Africa are enclosed all the way through a strategic alliance with the Castel group which has ensured that SABMiller has become the largest brewer in Africa, by market share, a feat that has not been achieved by any other brewing company on the continent. In addition to the brewing activities of SABMiller in Africa, it is under license from Coca-Cola to bottle soft drinks on behalf of the latter

Economic Indicators Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Economic Indicators - Essay Example The major pro cyclic economic indicators are GDP, Interest rates, Investment, Inflation, Labor etc. While the main counter cyclic economic indicators are Unemployment, International Trade, and Federal Finances etc. The Gross Domestic Product is one of the most significant direct indicators in the economy. It is vital to monitor the growth rate of the GDP. Any deviation from the range tends to have a significant impact on the economy. An increase in the growth rate above the general level may lead to high inflation and poor performance in the rate of growth leads to a recession. Interest Rate is a pro cyclic or direct economic indicator. They are used to manage the booms and slumps in the business cycle and finely tune it. The interest rates fall in recessions and they rise in inflationary periods. International trade is the swapping of goods and services between countries, which tends to have countercyclical nature. When an economy is prospering and experiencing an economic boom then people choose to spend a bigger part of their income on imported and local goods and services, however, exports donà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t have such alterations. This in turn upsets the balance of trade, as net exports are negative, which results in more being imported and less being exported. Whereas, when an economy is in a slump, people tend to spend less on imported goods and services and just focus on the basic necessities. This encourages more goods and services to be exported and has a favorable impact on the balance of trade as less is being imported.

Canterbury tale and medieval art Essay Example for Free

Canterbury tale and medieval art Essay Tale and Art in middle Ages The Middle Ages have been regarded as extending approximately from the end of fifth century AD to 1600s. The Middle Ages were a society significantly more civilized and developed than previous times. Some sections of Italian society had begun to mimic the art and philosophy of ancient Greece, but commonly in Italy and Europe, generally no all-pervading change had occurred. The Canterbury Tale is a story written by Geoffrey Chauser in Middle English. It is the story of a group of thirty people who are all from different occupation. They told each other stories to kill time when traveling to Canterbury. In the Canterbury Tale, an illustration of the Medieval Christian church is presented. When talking about the church, it cant be considered separately. The church has to always be related to social, economic and political context of that period because people in that society gather in groups, make religious and church. Moreover those people create these tales of a pilgrimage of Canterbury. One of the stories in the Canterbury Tale, The Pardoners Tale, is the story of churchs corruption. The story was made to parody the Western Schism, churchs greed. At the time when the tale was written, the church was corrupted by spread of the unrestricted sale of indulgences by pardoners. Popes sold the indulgences, which were suppose to forgive peoples sins. The Pardoner, the main character in the Pardoners Tale preaches to villagers about sin and collects money. When telling the story, the Pardoner gives an example f three rioters who commit sins and show what happened because of them committing sins. He uses this story to emphasize morals to the audience, however, it is ironic that even if the Pardoner is kind of a bishop who gives sermons to the villagers, he is as corrupted as the rioters. His purpose is to gather money from the villagers, not to correct the sins. Chaucer used a certain character like Pardoner in the Pardoners Tale, to represent one of the many popes who were ruined by greed. I chose this art piece depicting Chaucers Pardoners tale. It is a carved wooden anel made of Elmwood with scenes from the story. It is describing the part when the three rioters found gold. They planned how to divide it but their greed to get it all themselves caused their downfall. The left-hand panel shows a man buying wine and putting poison in it to kill the other rioters, so that he could take all the gold. In the central panel, the other two attack the man who comes with the wine, and stab him to death. In the right hand panel the murderous pair sit down and drink the poisoned wine. Eventually, their greed leads all of them to their death. This art work describes the story so precisely that people who lived in that era, who were illiterate, could have been able to understood what Chaucer wanted to say, and fgure out what was wrong about church by looking at the art works. After they get aware of the churchs corruption and popes they were into, by learning through the story from the artworks, people might have tried to find solution for the corrupted situation. In this way, it can be said that artwork might have succeed in giving people in that period, a new perspective tor what they were believing at.

Different Types of Database Management System Essay Example for Free

Different Types of Database Management System Essay A database can be a set of flat files stored on computer tape or disk or it could consist of database tables that are managed by a Database Management System (DBMS). There are different types of DBMS products: relational, network and hierarchical, multidimensional, object. The most widely commonly used type of DBMS today is the Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). Database management systems (DBMS) are designed to use one of five database structures to provide simplistic access to information stored in databases. The five database structures are: the hierarchical model, he network model, the relational model, the multidimensional model, and the object model. Inverted lists and other methods are also used. A given database management system may provide one or more of the five models. The optimal structure depends on the natural organization of the applications data, and on the applications requirements, which include transaction rate (speed), reliability, maintainability, scalability, and cost. Hierarchical Model The hierarchical data model organizes data in a tree structure. There is a hierarchy of parent and child data segments. This structure implies that a record can have repeating information, generally in the child data segments. Data in a series of records, which have a set of field values attached to it. It collects all the instances of a specific record together as a record type. These record types are the equivalent of tables in the relational model, and with the individual records being the equivalent of rows. To create links between these record types, the hierarchical model uses Parent Child Relationships. These are a 1:N mapping between record types. This is done by using trees, like set theory used in the relational model, borrowed from maths. For example, an organization might store information about an employee, such as name, employee number, department, salary. The organization might also store information about an employees children, such as name and date of birth. The employee and children data forms a hierarchy, where the employee data represents the parent segment and the children data represents the child segment. If an employee has three children, then there would be three child segments associated with one employee segment. In a hierarchical database the parent-child relationship is one to many. This restricts a child segment to having only one parent segment. Hierarchical DBMSs were popular from the late 1960s, with the introduction of IBMs Information Management System (IMS) DBMS, through the 1970s. The hierarchical structure was used in early mainframe DBMS. Records’ relationships form a treelike model. This structure is simple but nonflexible because the relationship is confined to a one-to-many relationship. IBM’s IMS system and the RDM Mobile are examples of a hierarchical database system with multiple hierarchies over the same data. RDM Mobile is a newly designed embedded database for a mobile computer system. The hierarchical structure is used primarily today for storing geographic information and file systems. Network Model The popularity of the network data model coincided with the popularity of the hierarchical data model. Some data were more naturally modeled with more than one parent per child. So, the network model permitted the modeling of many-to-many relationships in data. In 1971, the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) formally defined the network model. The basic data modeling construct in the network model is the set construct. A set consists of an owner record type, a set name, and a member record type. A member record type can have that role in more than one set, hence the multiparent concept is supported. An owner record type can also be a member or owner in another set. The data model is a simple network, and link and intersection record types (called junction records by IDMS) may exist, as well as sets between them . Thus, the complete network of relationships is represented by several pairwise sets; in each set some (one) record type is owner (at the tail of the network arrow) and one or more record types are members (at the head of the relationship arrow). Usually, a set defines a 1:M relationship, although 1:1 is permitted. The CODASYL network model is based on mathematical set theory. The network structure consists of more complex relationships. Unlike the hierarchical structure, it can relate to many records and accesses them by following one of several paths. In other words, this structure allows for many-to-many relationships. Relational Model (RDBMS relational database management system) A database based on the relational model developed by E. F. Codd. A relational database allows the definition of data structures, storage and retrieval operations and integrity constraints. In such a database the data and relations between them are organised in tables. A table is a collection of records and each record in a table contains the same fields. Properties of Relational Tables: Values Are Atomic Each Row is Unique Column Values Are of the Same Kind The Sequence of Columns is Insignificant The Sequence of Rows is Insignificant Each Column Has a Unique Name Certain fields may be designated as keys, which means that searches for specific values of that field will use indexing to speed them up. Where fields in two different tables take values from the same set, a join operation can be performed to select related records in the two tables by matching values in those fields. Often, but not always, the fields will have the same name in both tables. For example, an orders table might contain (customer-ID, product-code) pairs and a products table might contain (product-code, price) pairs so to calculate a given customers bill you would sum the prices of all products ordered by that customer by joining on the product-code fields of the two tables. This can be extended to joining multiple tables on multiple fields. Because these relationships are only specified at retreival time, relational databases are classed as dynamic database management system. The RELATIONAL database model is based on the Relational Algebra. The relational structure is the most commonly used today. It is used by mainframe, midrange and microcomputer systems. It uses two-dimensional rows and columns to store data. The tables of records can be connected by common key values. While working for IBM, E. F. Codd designed this structure in 1970. The model is not easy for the end user to run queries with because it may require a complex combination of many tables. Multidimensional structure The multidimensional structure is similar to the relational model. The dimensions of the cube-like model have data relating to elements in each cell. This structure gives a spreadsheet-like view of data. This structure is easy to maintain because records are stored as fundamental attributes in the same way they are viewed and the structure is easy to understand. Its high performance has made it the most popular database structure when it comes to enabling online analytical processing (OLAP). Object/Relational Model Object/relational database management systems (ORDBMSs) add new object storage capabilities to the relational systems at the core of modern information systems. These new facilities integrate management of traditional fielded data, complex objects such as time-series and geospatial data and diverse binary media such as audio, video, images, and applets. By encapsulating methods with data structures, an ORDBMS server can execute comple x analytical and data manipulation operations to search and transform multimedia and other complex objects. As an evolutionary technology, the object/relational (OR) approach has inherited the robust transaction- and performance-management features of it s relational ancestor and the flexibility of its object-oriented cousin. Database designers can work with familiar tabular structures and data definition languages (DDLs) while assimilating new object-management possibi lities. Query and procedural languages and call interfaces in ORDBMSs are familiar: SQL3, vendor procedural languages, and ODBC, JDBC, and proprie tary call interfaces are all extensions of RDBMS languages and interfaces. And the leading vendors are, of course, quite well known: IBM, Inform ix, and Oracle. The object oriented structure has the ability to handle graphics, pictures, voice and text, types of data, without difficultly unlike the other database structures. This structure is popular for multimedia Web-based applications. It was designed to work with object-oriented programming languages such as Java. Object-Oriented Model Object DBMSs add database functionality to object programming languages. They bring much more than persistent storage of programming language objects. Object DBMSs extend the semantics of the C++, Smalltalk and Java object programming languages to provide full-featured database programming capability, while retaining native language compatibility. A major benefit of this approach is the unification of the application and database development into a seamless data model and language environment. As a result, applications require less code, use more natural data modeling, and code bases are easier to maintain. Object developers can write complete database applications with a modest amount of additional effort. The object-oriented database (OODB) paradigm is the combination of object-oriented programming language (OOPL) systems and persistent systems. The power of the OODB comes from the seamless treatment of both persistent data, as found in databases, and transient data, as found in executing programs. In contrast to a relational DBMS where a complex data structure must be flattened out to fit into tables or joined together from those tables to form the in-memory structure, object DBMSs have no performance overhead to store or retrieve a web or hierarchy of interrelated objects. This one-to-one mapping of object programming language objects to database objects has two benefits over other storage approaches: it provides higher performance management of objects, and it enables better management of the complex interrelationships between objects. This makes object DBMSs better suited to support applications such as financial portfolio risk analysis systems, telecommunications service applications, world wide web document structures, design and manufacturing systems, and hospital patient record systems, which have complex relationships between data.

Review - Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out :: Essays Papers

Review - Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out Who can resist a book with a chapter titled, "Labia Lumps, Chunky Discharge, and Other Things They Never Taught Me in Library School"? Released this past summer, Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out takes no prisoners as its contributors ponder everything from the backtracking of '60s values by ALA's baby boomers to librarian imagery in erotica. This edited volume is a sequel to a 1972 self-published book titled Revolting Librarians. The original is worth checking out for its historical value alone. The editors of the 2003 volume, Katia Roberto and Jessamyn West gathered essays from ten of the original writers from the 1972 book for this version and it is interesting to see what thirty years has done to these radical librarians. The book contains some of what you would expect in a book by revolting librarians. There are the requisite essays on the suppression of civil liberties through the Patriot Act along with essays detailing the problem of cultural representation in the Library of Congress Subject Headings. And of course, there's something both by and about Sandy Berman, a living legend among progressive librarians. But there are also quite a few surprises. Ever curious about the astrological breakdown of librarians? You'll find an extensive article complete with enough statistics to make you break out your notes from IRLS 506. [Leos dominate the field, with Aquarians an astrological minority.] Another notable essay concerns what services librarians can offer to day laborers. From my perspective as a library graduate student, however, my attention was drawn to the section titled "Library School is Revolting." This collection of essays explores questions such as "Are we really learning the practical skills necessary to be librarians, such as public relations and professional writing?" and "Is accreditation really a big deal?" While I felt fortunate that some of the not-so-subtle digs at library schools didn't really apply too heavily to SIRLS, some of it is familiar enough to make you laugh (or cry). I also felt myself drawn to essays that dealt with the everyday work lives of these revolting librarians. I have not been in the library world my whole life. In fact, I applied to library school less than one month after the idea of becoming a librarian occurred to me for the very first time. Any writings that describe the "real world" of librarianship, therefore, pique my interest.