Intelligent Public Transport System Design

Intelligent Public Transport System Design An Intelligent Public Transport System for Smart City Gurnoor Walia, Kuljit Kaur Abstract Road safety has changed into a main subject for governments and automobile manufacturers in the last decade. The advancement vehicular technologies has privileged researchers, institutions and companies to target their efforts on improving road safety. new kinds of networks, such as for instance Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), have now been designed to assist communication between vehicles themselves and between vehicles and infrastructure. Smart cities embrace intelligent traffic management in which data from the Traffic Information Centre (TIC) infrastructures might be accessible at any point. In this paper we have listed the details of various features relating to intelligent transportation system. INTRODUCTION Cities are complex, networked and continuously changing social ecosystems, shaped and transformed through the interaction of different interests and ambitions. Cities represent a promise for future years: a vision of creativity, opportunity, freedom and prosperity. More than half of the global population has become urban and surveys estimate this percentage may even grow towards 70% in 2050 [2]. The services are increasingly enabled by broadband infrastructures, Internet-based networked applications, wireless sensor networks, open data and open platforms. Within the last decade digital technologies have begun to cover our cities, working together to make the backbone of a big, intelligent infrastructure. Wireless telecommunications grids and broadband fiber-optic are supporting smart phones, mobile phones and tablets which can be increasingly affordable. Add to this foundation a uncompromisingly growing network of sensors and digital control technologies such as smart meters, all tie d together by inexpensive, powerful computers and our cities are quickly fitting like computers in open air[3]. Smart City A smart city use digital technologies to boost the performance and wellbeing, to decrease costs and resource consumption, and also to engage more successfully and actively with its citizens. The core smart sectors comprise energy, health care, transport, water and waste. It should be able it to respond more rapidly to needs of a city and global challenges than one with a simple transactional association with its people. Interest in smart cities is motivated by major challenges, including economic restructuring, climate change, ageing populations, the move to online retail and entertainment, and pressures on public finances.[4] The terms ‘intelligent city’ and ‘digital city’ are also used. [5][6].According to IEEE A smart city brings together technology, government and society to enable the following characteristics: smart cities, a smart economy, smart mobility, a smart environment, smart people, smart living, and smart governance.[7]. 1.3 Intelligent Transportation System As India plans to take a leap forward with approval for smart cities, intelligent transportation is a must have technology. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are applications which, without embodying intelligence as such, intend to offer innovative services relating to traffic management and different modes of transport and enable users to be much better informed and make safer, more synchronized, and smarter use of transport networks. Intelligent transport systems differ in technologies used, from basic management systems such as traffic signal control systems; car navigation; container management systems; automatic number plate recognition; variable message signs or speed cameras to observe such applications, such as security CCTV systems; and to more complex applications that combine live data and feedback from numerous sources, such as weather information; parking guidance and information systems; bridge de-icing (US deicing) systems; etc. INTELLIGENT TRAFFIC SYSTEM USING VANETs The development of new vehicular technologies has shifted companies, researchers and institutions to focus their efforts on improving road safety. The evolution in wireless technologies has allowed researchers to style communication systems where vehicles directly take part in the network. Thus networks such as for instance VANETs are produced to facilitate communication between vehicles themselves and between vehicles and road side unit (infrastructure). Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a technology which uses moving cars as nodes in a network to make a mobile network [10]. VANETs are becoming a useful consideration due to the various important applications related to traffic controlling road safety. Smart cities saturated in traffic want to minimize their transportation problems due to the increasing population that results in congested roads. VANET helps to fix this issue by improving vehicles mobility and also helps at having more secured and sophisticated cities. VANETs provide easier communication facility among vehicles and also with fixed infrastructure. This can not merely improve the trail safety, but also gives benefits commercially. Pollution reduction, accidents prevention, congestion reduction and safer roads are some of the benefits of VANETs. The development of an efficient system in VANETs has many important benefits, to the traffic police as well as to the drivers. Proper traffic alerts and updated information about traffic incidents will make safe driving, increase road safety and reduce the traffic jams in the city. It also helps to indentify where the traffic rules are violated. Furthermore, it also helps economically; real-time traffic alerting will reduce trip time and fuel consumption and therefore decrease pollution as well [11]. So it is definitely beneficial in many ways. TECHNIQUES FOR IMPELMENTING VARIOUS ASPECTS OF VANETS The smart city can utilize VANETs by having intelligent traffic lights (ITLs) set in the crossroads of a city. These ITLs gathering traffic information (e.g. traffic density) from the passing vehicles, updating traffic statistics (congestion) of the city and reporting those statistics to the vehicles to ensure that vehicle can select the very best path that is congestion free. Also, ITLs will send warning messages to vehicles in case accident occurs to prevent further collisions. As [14], the proposal manages traffic information to be able to avoid accidents, though the information here is gathered from the vehicles themselves so no more infrastructure is needed. Also the system could easily be utilized by the traffic information centre to style an adaptive traffic light system similar to [12] and [13]. The proposed system architecture [16] is as shown in figure 4. Figure 4. The proposed System architecture [16] with intelligent traffic lights It is assumed that vehicles have a global positioning system (GPS), aboard unit, full map information of the city including the exact position of the each ITL, to ensure that vehicles can very quickly select the nearest ITL. Warning message is of three types: yellow circle indicates that vehicle is independent and not communicating with every other vehicle, green circle indicates communication is made and messages transition is certainly going on red and signal indicates two vehicles come closer and there could be the chances of collision as shown in figure 4. Inter-vehicular communication is presented based on an adaptive traffic signal control system [12]. This system reduces the waiting time of the vehicles at the square also results in decrease in waiting time at the signal. To realize this system, the concept of clustering is used to collect the data of the vehicles coming towards the intersection. System that takes the control decisions based on the information coming from the vehicles is very well described by the authors [13]. Every vehicle is equipped with a short range communication device and controller nodes are placed in the intersection with traffic lights. This controller node at intersection acts as adaptive control signal system. In [12] and [13] two adaptive traffic light systems based on wireless communication between vehicles and fixed controller nodes deployed at squares are designed. Both systems improve traffic fluency, reduce the waiting time of vehicles at squares and help to avoid collisions. The work in [14] is a survey about multifunctional data driven intelligent transportation system, which collects a large amount of data from various resources: Vision-Driven ITS (input data collected from video sensors and used recognition including vehicle and pedestrian detection); Multisource-Driven ITS (e.g. inductive-loop detectors, laser radar and GPS); Learning-Driven ITS (effective prediction of the occurrence of accidents to enhance the safety of pedestrians by reducing the impact of vehicle collision);and Visualization-Driven ITS (to help decision makers quickly identify abnormal traffic patterns and accordingly take necessary measures). But, it requires large amount of memory to stores the videos. The e-NOTIFY [15] system was designed for automatic accident detection, which sends the message to the Emergencies Center and assistance of road accidents using the capabilities offered by vehicular communication technologies. The e-NOTIFY system combines both V2V and V2I communications to efficiently notify an accident situation to the Control Center. A technique of finding water-logging-prone areas is given in [8]. This recognition technique is principally based on the following steps. (i) Prediction of locations of low valleys in a sound prone 2D curve. (ii) Confidence score obtained from the calculation of valley area. The proposed solution could easily be integrated with participatory sensing for smart cities. If the smart-phone users voluntarily submit the GPS information received in their hand-held devices, the same can be used for water logging zone calculation. This can help the city authority to create a dynamic water logging prone map of the entire city. In [9] researchers propose a radically different road pricing scheme to avoid and decrease the traffic congestion in metropolises. Unlike designating a small congestion charge zone in an area, they propose to employ a road pricing system over the entire city. Thus, the road pricing system can control the traffic flow in the whole traffic network of the city. Furthermore, the road costs are adjusted dynamically on the basis of the instantaneous traffic densities of every road in the city in order torapidly and efficiently control the traffic flow and to prevent the traffic congestion. Geographical source routing is just a promising routing technique for VANETs, because adaptability for network dynamics and ability to take care of topology holes. In traditional geographical source routing algorithms a best-known neighbor, usually the neighbor nearest to another junction in a greedy fashion, is designated as the following hop. This method may cause two drawbacks: (1) the designated neighbor mightnt have the packet correctly and (2) non-neighbor nodes are never given opportunities to complete forwarding. In [1],two problems are solved by introducing the thought of opportunistic routing to geographical source routing. A new routing protocol, named Geographical Opportunistic Source Routing (GOSR), is developed. GOSR allows non-neighbor nodes as well as the best-known neighbor to become forwarder. The notification cost of opportunistic routing is minimized by enforcing a scope from which candidate forwarders are selected. Defer timers are adopted in order to avoid confl icts due to simultaneous transmissions by nodes in the designated scope. Simulation results also reveal that GOSR can substantially reduce hop count and also improve end-to-end delivery ratio remarkably. TOOLS USED FOR SIMULATING VANETS It is significant to estimate the performance of any network in order to highlight any issues that may exist; the most appropriate way to accomplish this task is therefore to deploy simulations that provide the closest results to real-world annotations. Various simulation tools have been used to evaluate and simulate the performance of routing protocols in VANET. 5.1 Network simulator (NS2 and NS3 ) The NS-2 provides significant support for the simulation of TCP, routing and multicast protocols over wired and wireless networks. The NS-2 simulator is written in C++ with an OTcl (Object Tool Command Language) interpreter as a command and configuration interface. C++ is fast to run but slower to change, making it appropriate for use in comprehensive protocol implementation. NS3 is exclusively written in C++ and it is available for different platform such as Windows, Linux, Unix and OSX, with the coding limited to only a few hundred lines as opposed to 300,000 lines for NS-2. For the sake of huge network simulation,NS3 has come to support distributed and federated simulation tasks. NS-3 is free software available for researchers and developers in order to simulate internet protocols and huge systems in a controlled environment. 5.2 GlomoSim GlomoSim was developed to simulate wireless network simulation. It was coded in Parsec, in which all new protocols need to be described. GlomoSim has the ability to run on SMP (shared-memory symmetric processor: memory simultaneously accessible by all programs) and to assist in dividing the network into separate modules, each running as a distinct process. This decreases the load on the CPU by dividing its workload. GlomoSim supports multiple wireless technologies. GlomoSim was developed to support million of nodes as a single simulation. 5.3 MOVE The mobility model generator for vehicular networks is based on the Java programming language and is built on SUMO (Simulation of urban mobility). MOVE has greater consideration of traffic levels supported by GUI facilities. Mobility trace files can be generated from the Google Earth or TIGER databases. Custom (random and user) graphs a real so supported, although the node movement is constrained to a grid in a random graph. 5.4 TraNs TraNs (traffic and network simulator environment) is based on Java with a visualization tool to integrate SUMO and NS-2 and is specially designed for VANET (Traffic and network simulation environment) in a single module to support vehicular simulation. This can be accomplished by converting traffic files in to a dump file by SUMO. This file can then be read by NS-2. 5.5 VANET MobiSim VANET MobiSim was developed to overcome the limitations of CanuMobiSim. It supports car-to-car and car-to- infrastructure communications, which support stop signs, traffic lights and activities based macro-mobility with the support of human mobility dynamics. TIGER, GDF and random and custom topology are used to obtain road and traffic topology. Vanet MobiSim uses a parser to obtain the topology from GDF or TIGER. 5.6 NCTUns NCTUns (National Chiao Tung University Network Simulator) (WangandLin,2008) is built using C++ programming language with a high level of GUI support. The user has less need to be concerned about code complexity. NCTUns combines the traffic and network simulators in a single module, making a distinct vehicular network environment available. NCTUns supports the ITS (intelligent transport system) environment by using automatic road assignment supported by the SHARPE-format map file. Vehicle movement can be controlled automatically. FUTURE WORK and CONCLUSION In previous work researchers have designed a smart city framework for VANETs including intelligent traffic lights (ITLs) that transmit warning messages and traffic statistics. Simulation results reveal that the usage of ITLs in smart cities can not merely improve road safety but also the drivers quality of life. They have explained the way the ITLs gather traffic and weather conditions of the roads and how they update those statistics. The goal is that the drivers assistant device usually takes proper trip decisions, for instance in order to avoid congested roads, and therefore reducing the trip time and pollution as well. As a near future work, ITLs could communicate to passing vehicles indicating where would be the free parking spots in the city. With this specific information, the driver assistant device could indicate the driver where free spots are located. This technique could use a WSN to obtain the data about free parking spots and communicate it to the nearest ITLs. The ITLs could share that information although sub-network they form. This might save trip time, petrol and CO2 as a consequence, which helps to own sustainable smart cities. Also, statistics collected by the ITLs can improve data routing protocols selecting the road that offers an increased chance to forward a supply to the destination successfully. A VANET routing protocol that considers those statistics in its operation can also be designed. REFERENCES [1] Zhongyi, L., Tong, Z., Wei, Y., and Xiaoming, L., â€Å"Poster Abstract: GOSR: Geographical Opportunistic Source Routing for VANETs,† Mobile Computing and Communications Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2009 [2] United Nations, â€Å"World Urbanization Prospects, The 2007 Revision Highlights,† United Nations, New York, 2008. [3] Schaffers, H., Ratti, C., and Komninos, N., â€Å"Special Issue on Smart Applications for Smart Cities – New Approaches to Innovation,† Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, Universidad de Talca – Chile, Dec 2012 [4] Dept Business, Challenges Faced by Cities and the Need for Smarter Approaches, pg-5, 2013 [5] Moir, Challenges Faced by Cities and the Need for Smarter Approaches, pg-18, 2014 [6] Smart City, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city [7] IEEE Smart Cities ,http://smartcities.ieee.org/about.html [8] Choudhury, A.D., Agrawal, A., Sinha, P., Bhaumik, C., Ghose, A., and Bilal, S., â€Å"A Methodology for GPS-based Water logging Prediction and Smart Route Generation,† 12th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (ISDA), Kochi , 2012. [9] Soylemezgiller, F., Kuscu, M., and Kilinc, D., â€Å"A Traffic Congestion Avoidance Algorithm with Dynamic Road Pricing for Smart Cities,† presented at IEEE 24th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications: Mobile and Wireless Networks, London, 2013 [10] Emmelmann, M., Bochow, B., and Kellum, C.C., â€Å"Vehicular networking: Automotive applications and beyond,† John Wiley and Sons, 2010. [11] Ferrari, G., Busanelli, S., Lotti, N., and Kaplan, Y., â€Å"Cross- Network Information Dissemination in VANETs,† 11th International Conference on ITS Telecommunications, pp. 351-356, 2011. [12] Maslekar, N., Boussedjra, M., Mouzna, J., and Labiod, H., â€Å"VANET based Adaptive Traffic Signal Control,† IEEE 73rd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), pp. 1-5, 2011. [13] Gradinescu, V., Gorgorin, C., Diaconescu, R., Cristea, V., and Iftode, L., â€Å"Adaptive Traffic Light Using Car-to-Car communications,† IEEE 65th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), pp. 21-25, 2007. [14] Junping, Z., Fei-Yue, W., Kunfeng, W., Wei-Hua, L., Xin, X., and Cheng, C., â€Å"Data-Driven Intelligent Transportation Systems: Survey,† IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol. 12, Issue 4, pp. 1624-1639, 2011. [15] Fogue, M., Garrido, P., Martinez, F. J., Cano, J. C., Calafate, C. T., Manzoni, P., and Sanchez, M., â€Å"Prototyping an Automatic Notification Scheme for Traffic Accidents in Vehicular Networks,† Wireless Days (WD) IFIP, pp. 1-5, 2011. [16] Khekare, G.S., Sakhare, A.K., â€Å"Intelligent Traffic System for VANET: A Survey,† International Journal of Advanced Computer Research (2277–7970) Volume-2 Number-4 Issue 6, December 2012.

Macbeth - Downfall Of Macbeth Essay -- essays research papers

We see in the play Macbeth that when the motivation to succeed in life becomes overpowering, other people may easily influence one and elements and one may decide on wrongful actions to achieve a goal. Some of the influences on Macbeth include the witches and the apparitions, Lady Macbeth, and lastly Macbeth's own insecurities and misguided attempts to control his future. The witches and their prophecies are the first major influence on Macbeth's actions. Macbeth seems happy and content with himself until the witches tell him he will be king. He begins immediately to consider murdering Duncan. "If good, why do I yield to that suggestion / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair / And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, / Against the use of nature?" (I, iii. 144-147). Macbeth immediately writes Lady Macbeth. "'They met me in the day of success; and I / have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in / them than mortal knowledge." (I, v. 1-3). He obviously has great faith in the witches' words. Later on, the apparitions, called by the witches, influence Macbeth by making him believe he is invincible. "Rebellion's head, rise never, till the wood / Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth / Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath / To time, and mortal custom." (IV, i. 106-109). Lady Macbeth is a second major influence on Macbeth. As soon as Lady Macbeth learns of the witches' words from Macbeth's letter, we learn Macbeth is c...

Reliving the Nightmare: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Essay examples -

Reliving the Nightmare: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder After the terrorist attacks on September 11th, horrific images of the towers collapsing, survivors fleeing, and the rescue and recovery efforts inundated television viewers. In the weeks following the attacks, numerous news accounts reported increasing general anxiety among Americans, with many individuals reporting sleep difficulties and trouble concentrating. Additionally, much attention focused on the effects on those who directly witnessed and/or were injured the attacks, and whether they would suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD (4). I will give a brief overview of the definition of PTSD, the neurobiology behind it, and what environmental factors may put certain people at heightened risk for developing the disorder. Post traumatic stress-disorder is an anxiety disorder which results from exposure to an event which threatens the physical safety of an individual (1). PTSD originated as a mental illness category after the Vietnam War, when veterans exhibited sets of symptoms that did not fit into any current illness categories. However, in previous wars soldiers had complained of "shell shock" or "combat fatigue," which researchers now believe were essentially the same conditions as PTSD (2). As many as thirty percent of Vietnam veterans and eight percent of Persian Gulf War veterans exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (1). Today the definition of PTSD has broadened to include not just those in combat, but people who have experienced any man-made or natural disasters, accidents, violent crime such as rape, and abuse. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, emotional detachment, ... ...ic events, as well as the co-occurrence of PTSD with other mental illnesses. WWW Sources 1)National Institute of Mental Health information sheet on PTSD. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/reliving.cfm 2)About.com website , On PTSD, with definitions and links to other web resources. http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/traumaptsd/a/trauma.htm 3) Surgeon General's Report: "Mental Health- Culture, Race, Ethnicity" . A supplement to "Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General 1999." http://www.mentalhealth.org/cre/default.asp 4) Scientific American . Article on September 11th and PTSD. http://www.sciam.com/missing.cfm 5) Cal State-Chico website on serotonin. http://www.csuchico.edu/psy/BioPsych/serotonin.htm 6)Anxiety Disorders Treatment Target: Amygdala Circuitry" from the ADAA 18th annual meeting. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/events/pranxst.htm

Negative Effects of Divorce on Children Essay

In today’s society, there are an increasing number of social ills and stigmas that follow the family unit. One of the most prevailing detriments to the family structure is that of parental divorce. Divorce can be one of the most difficult transitions for any family to go through; it can have lasting effects on both parents, as well as children in the teenage years. However, one of the greatest impairments can be to school aged children. In the Bahamian society, this fact of divorce has not changed. Most couples who are married and starting families can run into problems that can be irreconcilable; and in that case, divorce may seem like the only option for the couple. Constance Ahrons states, â€Å"†¦ the reality is that 43 percent of first marriages will end in divorce† (pg. 7). This may leave children to become adjusted to seeing their parents be with other people and with a lot of unanswered questions. In most cases, parents may choose to re-marry and this could spawn contention between the kids and the step-parents. Most times, kids who have parents who are going through a divorce may have to deal with coping to new changes, behavioural issues, and academic problems. First, one of the reasons that divorce can be extremely hard on children is because it may force them to deal with many sudden changes in their lives. Depending on the situation, these changes can range from alterations in living arrangements to changing schools. One of the most common changes that can happen after parents are divorced is that they can begin to have hostility towards one another and the children get caught between the  fighting; in this scenario, the child is put at risk. Kendra Randall Jolivet states, â€Å"More specifically inter-parental conflicts concerning child-related issues, such as custody, child support, and child rearing practices have been closely associated with child adjustment problems† (pg. 175). Continually, she states that divorces with a lot of infighting between parents â€Å"doubles the rate of behavioural and emotional adjustment problems† (pg. 176). Another problematic scenario that can rise from divorce is the matter of children constantly having to move from household to household to spend time with each respective parent. In some instances, this can be very manageable and as a result, the child may adjust to the constant movement rather quickly; however, if this is not the case and one or both parents decides upon taking sole custody of the child, this can lead to other problems. In her book, We’re Still Family, Constance Ahrons quotes a child who having gone through that particular situation said that: Although sometimes the going back and forth was a hassle, what really upset me was how my parents kept fighting about whether I spent more time with one of them than the other one. It made me feel like it wasn’t really the time with me that mattered, it was only whether one of them won the tug of war. (pg. 67) Situations like these can have adverse effects on children and cause them to be at greater risk of having lasting after effects. Furthermore, some effects may not end in childhood but can also be taken into adulthood. Sandford M. Portnoy states, â€Å"Evidence suggested that these negative effects lasted into adulthood† (pg. 126). In the attempt to cope with the changes in their family structure being unsuccessful, some kids may be at risk of â€Å"lower measures of academic success, conduct, psychological adjustment, social competence, and health† (Portnoy, pg. 126). This can also result in children having negative views of social concepts such as love, family and marriage. Second, for most children, parental divorce can be a very traumatic experience; one which even after resolved can have emotional and behavioural side effects. Molepo, Sodi and Maunganidze states, â€Å"Younger children show a  greater sense of self-blame, acting-out behaviours and regression. They may express more feelings of rejection and abandonment† (pg. 251). In many cases, the age of the child at the time of divorce can play a very critical role in how children deal with the stress of divorce. Molepo et al. states, â€Å"Older children express intense anger towards the parent perceived to carry the responsibility for the divorce† (pg. 251). Continually, children may not only act out at home but also at school with their teachers and peers as well. Steven R. Rose states that, â€Å"Children of divorce are more likely than other children to be engaged in conflict in school systems† (pg. 89). Furthermore, the effects of the divorce may differ based on the sex of the child. For instance, boy may be prone to aggression, violence, criminal tendencies and delinquency whereas girls may be prone to skipping school, ducking classes, sexual promiscuity, running away and acting out (Jolivet, pg. 177). Jolivet also states that children may also have: A tendency toward lower rates of education, early marriage, living together before marriage, and a group of behaviours which can be described as: lower commitment to marriage, infidelity, problems with anger management, feelings of insecurity, neediness, demandingness, denial and blame, contempt, and poor conflict resolution skills, higher levels of depression, and more problems with peers. (pg. 177) Children who do not cope with their parent’s divorce properly can be affected so much that they can take these same problems into their adult life. Children who struggle with feelings such as these may grow up to be adults in society who have marriage problems as well and have to go through a divorce themselves. Furthermore, children who do not cope properly with divorce can mature into teenagers or adolescents who are violent and aggressive and increase the crime rate in the country or who increase the rate of teen pregnancies and high school dropouts. Third, children of divorce can be affected in the area of school work and academic studies. In some instances, children of divorced parents can be negatively affected in academic and social adjustments. Rose also states that, â€Å"Children of divorce have more school attendance difficulties and higher dropout rates, more difficulties in social interaction, classroom conduct that interferes with performance and have a greater number of learning disorders than other children† (pg. 88). Furthermore, because of family problems, children may end up becoming introverted and internalizing many of their problems and feelings; however, this can also be reversed whereas kids may decide to externalize their problems and act out or disrupt other students from learning. Rose also states that, â€Å"Children and adolescents who are distracted from learning in school, because of their cognitive and emotional responses to family events, are less likely to achieve satisfactorily than other youngsters† (pg. 89). Children of divorce who have problems focusing on their studies or behaving in school can result in an increased number of students who fail national exams and are forced to repeat or students who grow up to be bullies. Moreover, it can increase the number of persons who drop out of school and don’t go to college or does not finish college. Conclusively, in the Bahamian society, children who have gone through a situation of parental divorce or have been through a situation of parental divorce may have warped views of family, love and marriage. Furthermore, they may have problems coping with difficult or stressful situations, behavioural issues or academic problems. These kids can grow up to become members of society that join the percentage of failed marriages, or couples with domestic issues. They may also develop or mature into young adults who could positively or negatively affect the statistics in the country concerning education, crime, teen pregnancy and other such sensitive social topics. Children of divorce are at an even higher risk for a plethora of social ills and can reproduce the same actions and behaviours in their own children if they are not careful. In most of these cases, the children are not directly involved in their parents’ divorce but due to circumstances and factors such as age, they can start to feel responsible for their parents’ actions and then blame themselves for splitting up the family. All of these possibilities may be the result of one simple action: divorce.

Political Elite Revised Essay

Do you want to belong to the elite? Or do you sometimes feel that, in a way, you belong to the elite? Without its political meaning, the elite simply refer to a group that possesses superior qualities than the rest. It is the â€Å"cream of the crop†. In one way or another, some of us may have already experienced belonging to the elite, such as when we became part of an important club in school or belonged to the top of the class. In the book Concept and Issues in Comparative Politics, Frank Wilson explained that when applied to politics, the term elite acquires a negative connotation to mean a â€Å"small group who conspire to monopolize power and use it for their benefit†. However, without this political meaning, term elite refers to those who are active in political processes. Thus, Wilson stresses that not only the politicians belong to the elite, but also the opinion leaders and influence wielders and the senior civil servants. While politicians seek and hold elective or appointed government positions, influential figures participate in the process by shaping the ideas and preferences of others. This makes the media and business group as parts of the political elite. Bureaucrats or senior civil servants are also one of the components of the elite because they are involved in the policy- and decision-making processes in the government. Can a person enter the circle of the elite by moving his or her way up in the bureaucracy? Yes, if the person’s career achievements merit him or her to be recruited into the elite. Basically Wilson suggests two ways of recruitment to the elite: by achievement and by ascription. Recruitment by achievement does not only refer to technical skills, but also pertains to interpersonal, leadership or money-making skills. This is in stark contrast with the ascriptive mode of recruitment wherein a person automatically becomes a member of the elite because he or she was â€Å"born with silver spoon in the mouth,† so to speak. Also, Wilson points out that recruitment by achievement is characteristic of developed political systems, while recruitment by ascription is more common in traditional societies. However, it is not uncommon to find elites by birth who also developed the necessary skills to lead by achievement. For example, George W. Bush did not become the US President simply because he is the son of George H. W. Bush; but his first-hand observation of his father’s former job, the Bush’s network of influence, and the name recall surely helped in his campaign. Wilson also classifies elites into open and closed elites. The US is considered as one of the most open political recruitment processes because of the system of primary elections. One does not have to be a dedicated party worker to get nominated and eventually elected. According to Wilson, it also explains why movie stars could become elected officials, as well. Most democratic societies have open elites hence outsiders have multiple opportunities to enter the elite circle; but there are also democratic societies which require aspiring politicians to serve apprenticeships in local or party politics. This is to prevent just anybody, especially those who are only famous, to get elected without any political experience.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   On the other hand, closed elites are characteristic of authoritarian regimes wherein membership to the elite is controlled. In practice, however, there are also democratic regimes which also have closed elites, in a sense that ruling elites may hinder other members of the society from obtaining enough political leverage to become one of the political elite. For instance, I want to get in the elite circle because I have sufficient background, knowledge and skills to become a leader, but the circle is controlled and very elitist (snobbish). Do I have other options if I do not get recruited through achievement? Yes, by ascription such as by marrying a member of the elite, as Wilson stresses, or stage a revolt or a coup d’etat to overthrow the ruling elite.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Nevertheless, violent successions of the elites usually happen when there is no predictability or long-established rules in the change of leadership. In most advanced political systems, there are approved procedures in the transition and legitimation of leadership that would render the blood spill unnecessary. However, even if Wilson contends that unpredictable successions are common to authoritarian regimes and third world countries, he also cites examples to the contrary. He takes particular exception to the Party politics in China which has proven that orderly manner of succession is possible, even in an authoritarian system. To add to this example are a number of â€Å"illiberal democracies† in Asia wherein rulers could maintain their hold in power, yet such undemocratic rule were long accepted by the people.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Wilson also adds that there are other ways to make the elite’s hold on power legitimate such as tradition, charismatic appeal, accepted rational processes, and more importantly, capability of the political elite to deliver its promises to the people. The capability to perform to improve the welfare of the people could be a more powerful factor for legitimacy than election, and thus could make people’s obedience possible even if the rule is considered undemocratic. However, whether in democratic or authoritarian regimes, any elite that would exercise coercive force to command obedience from the people is bound to fail – and that is when we observe violent or tense transitions of political power.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Still, there is always a certain elite or a small group that would be most directly involved in the political processes. Even erstwhile socialist regimes which claimed to promote equality among the people have been ruled by elites, and have in fact used their position to perpetuate themselves in power. The widely-held notion of democracy is that of a representative democracy. As such, it has been a nagging controversy in the studies of elite that even the most democratic systems are not truly democratic because political leadership is in the hands of a representative elite that would never mirror the general citizenry. Wilson has provided enough empirical evidence that those who usually get recruited into the elite are from the middle and upper classes, educated, from dominant societal groups, and male. Even if the elite would recruit from the ranks of the masses, those who would enter the elite would soon acquire the certain values and perspectives that are characteristic of the elite. Thus they get absorbed into the system – and could not possibly reform the system. As such radicals view that only by changing the system itself, say, by supplanting a genuinely socialist one, that political elitism would end. The above proposition is grounded on the assumption that elitism is bad, as Wilson has scrutinized effectively. Breaking down this assumption brings us to the sub-assumptions that firstly, political elites always rules in its own best interests; and that   secondly, the best political representation of a particular group is made by people who are from that group. Wilson debunks these assumptions for lack of sufficient empirical evidence. In the first instance, political elites ruling only on their interests can always be checked in democratic societies. In democratic systems wherein the succession of political power is determined by elections, the ruling elites would have to bend to the wishes of important portions of the population because they would ultimately need their support come election time. Of course, it is also possible that the political elite sincerely care for the people; that is why we now have welfare states and taxation systems that really hurt the rich and benefit the poor. The argument that one can best represent the interests the group where he or she comes from, at all times, may not always hold true since as Wilson explained in the text, new entrants to the elite may change their values by virtue of their position thus may render them useless in advancing his original group or class. A very concrete example would be the socialist Russian revolution which catapulted the working class into power, which in the long run only became a self-seeking and self-defensive class of its own.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Thus Wilson argues that a pluralist democracy, wherein various interests are articulated and political competition prevents domination of political power of a single set of elites, holds the answer to the controversy that bedevils the political elite. As such, the rule of the elites, per se, is not bad – as long as it is in the context of a working pluralist democracy.

Fin USD

Morgan is one of the world's leading global investment banks, with the client from corporations, governments, states, municipalities, healthcare organizations, educational institutions, banks and iinvestors sector around the world. It is also well known for providing Securities Services, Asset Management, Commercial Banking, Private Banking and treasury services.These different financial services are offered to their customers maintaining an ethical standard as well as having employee commitment in the workplace. It is such kind of financial service provided that is committed to optimize efficiency, mitigate risk and enhance revenue with is valued assets. Despite of being such a reputed company for such a long time the in May 2012 they incurred loss of 2billion USD in the first quarter. Besides these, they are also assuming that this loss with increase by another $1 billion in the second quarter. After incurring the loss their share piece falls by 7% a day.They fall down from Credit Rating (AA-). They lose the market and customer's satisfaction. Few institutes are investigating on such loss in the financial market. The U. S. Security Exchange Commission is having a preliminary investigation into JPMorgan's accounting practices and public disclosures about the trading loss. Besides these the U. K. ‘s Financial Services Authority examined the role London employees played in the loss. In the end, one of the executive of the bank claimed that the loss was originated from he firm's Chief Investment Office (CIO).The Wall Street Journal reports a trader at J. P. Morgan known in the market as the ‘London Whale' made large bets on credit derivatives. Iksil used a little-known index of 125 firms – CDX IG 9, which iincluded the Campbell Soup Company and Walt Disney. They based their estimates on the trades and price movements of credit default swaps – complex instruments used as a type of insurance against companies defaulting they witnessed as w ell as their understanding of the size and structure of the markets. J. P. Morgan says his unit is meant to ‘hedge structural risks'.The failed hedge likely involved a bet on the flattening of a credit derivative curve, part of the CDX family of investment grade credit indices, said two sources with knowledge of the industry, but not directly involved in the matter. JPMorgan was then caught by sharp moves at the long end of the bet, [it] said. The CDX index gives traders exposure to credit risk across a range of assets, and gets its value from a basket of individual credit derivatives. In essence, JPMorgan made a series of bets which turned out very, very adly. proprietary trading†, using their own cash to take bets on financial markets. The 2007-09 financial crisis originated in the deterioration of traditional home mortgage lending, as opposed to banks' short-term trading of exotic financial instruments for profit. Proprietary trading has a bad image because it's so ea sily likened to gambling. The JPMorgan trading losses come at a difficult time for the international banking system as it faces up to risks linked to the Eurozone debt crisis and international economic uncertainty. J.P. Morgan lost the money by betting its own capital†albeit while â€Å"hedging† risks† much of the discussion since the news has been on the â€Å"Volcker rule,† which bans banks from trading for themselves rather than their clients. JP Morgan started buying share for their own rather than their clients. So when the rule is announced then they fall in big trouble. This is also led them to incur the huge loss. In a conference call disclosing the problem on Thursday, Dimon said the $2 billion in losses could rise by a further $1 billion.However a 2 billion dollar loss for JP Morgan is nothing compared to their total exposure of over 70 trillion dollars. Overall, the 9 largest U. S. banks have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. That is approximately 3 times the size of the entire global economy. So let's not make too much out of this 2 billion dollar loss by JP Morgan. This is Just a preview of coming attractions. Soon enough the real problems with derivatives will begin, and when that happens it will shake the entire global financial system to the core.

Business Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 2

Business Plan - Essay Example Such expansion will entail the setting up of a store location to offer the pretzels and its new selection not only during annual state fairs, but whole year round. Its customer will no longer have to wait during annual state fairs to avail of the pretzels and its new selection but can now go to a permanent location where they can avail of the product. Such expansion and setting up of store location however needs more capitalization. To this end, the present owner, son of the original owners Mr. and Mrs. Smith, will infuse a $ 50,000 capitalization to finance the expansion. The additional $50,000 loan with additional credit line will be used to cover the additional equipment to expand production and to cover additional overheads. To continue and expand the operation of Pretzels Galore and be able to cater to its unserved market by making Pretzels Galore available through a fixed store location creating and developing delicious, innovative, and a wider array of pretzels selection to the highest quality that will be appealing to different age groups and across different market segment and enhance the company’s market base and profitability. To become the leading provider of pretzel in the next two years through its distinct and delectable taste and by offering a wider array of Pretzels that is innovative and appealing while competitive in price. Pretzel is a unique knot like shape type of baked food made from dough and can be offered in a variety of soft and hard varieties and savory or sweet flavors. It originated from Europe and has a distinct symmetrical looped form. Pretzels Galore was a creation of Mr. and Mrs. John Smith who after years of participation in annual state fair has created a market following owing to the distinct taste and flavor of its pretzels. This was enhanced by the second generation of the Smiths who after experimenting for new flavors of the original