Accreditation Audit Task Essay

The Joint Commission defines the Periodic Performance Review as an assessment tool created to assist health organizations improve and monitor their performance throughout the year. This tool focuses on the processes that influence patient care and safety while providing the structure for unremitting standards fulfillment. Nightingale Community Hospital is compliant with most standards as set forth by the Joint Commission. However, upon inspection and in an effort to stay focused on compliance, our standards committee has located a few discrepancies that must be resolved to maintain our accreditation with the Joint Commission. Rather than focus on the discrepancies found within each unit, we will look at the trends that affect the hospital’s compliance with the Joint Commissions recommendations regarding patient care. Armed with the trends, we will then explore staffing patterns and how they relate to patient care in order to establish a plan that will assist our hospital to minimize patient safety issues as they relate to falls, pressure ulcers, pneumonia, and the general safety of our patients. See more:  Manifest Destiny essay NON-COMPLIANT TRENDS Although the Joint Commission standards clearly define the requirements for an organization to remain in compliance with the patient care and safety criterion for accreditation, Nightingale Community Hospital’s policies are not being routinely followed throughout each unit. The policy that states verbal orders must be authenticated within 48 hours is not being followed in several units and there seems to be little, if any consistency throughout the hospital with regards to policy observations. Generally, the compliance rate in the second quarter was steady and the best of all quarters, while the third quarter compliance results were very poor. Policy must be reviewed and standards improved in order to bring the hospital into compliance. Policy that should be implemented include a form in which the nurse who takes the order must sign and date the form and place it on outside of the patients chart to alert the physician that actions are  required of him regarding this patient. Only two abbreviations were monitored in ICU, Telemetry, 3E, and 4E because they are the most frequently used forbidden abbreviations. These forbidden abbreviations are â€Å"cc† and â€Å"qd†. The audit revealed â€Å"cc† was most often used in the months of April and September. The abbreviation â€Å"qd† was used much more sparingly but was used most often during the months of June and July. The second and third quarters proved to be the quarters when the two prohibited abbreviations were used the most. To increase awareness of prohibited abbreviations, a list will be posted in the nursing station in close proximity to where the charting takes place. Nurses and nursing staff will receive education regarding the use of approved abbreviations as set forth by the Joint Commission. Additionally, everyone who documents in the patients chart will be required to sign and date the entry at the time of documentation. The pain assessment audit was another standard that was out of compliance with the Joint Commission recommendations. The ED, 3E, and PACU were the units focused on for this portion of the audit. Clearly, the Emergency Department was the least compliant throughout the year for pain assessment. This may be due to the urgency or life threatening events in which pain assessment is not a priority. Regardless of the reason for neglecting to assess for pain, it is a requirement for accreditation. Each assessment should be documented in the patient’s record of care and all personnel responsible for patient care must receive education regarding the necessity of the pain assessment. The Nurse Managers of each department has the responsibility of implementing a corrective action plan based on the particular department standard of care. The Joint Commission’s focus is on safety. At Nightingale Community Hospital, safety is also important and the policies and procedures are reviewed to ensure the hospital is compliant with the Joint Commission’s recommendations. The hospital policy for fire drills requires one drill per shift per quarter. The audit shows that there are some compliancy concerns regarding the fire drills. During third shift, for the first and third  quarters, no fire drill occurred. Also, there was no fire drill on the second shift during the fourth quarter. Obviously, there should be further study to determine the cause for the compliancy issue vs. staffing deficiencies during third shift. Additionally, each department will have a safety monitor assigned to ensure the fire drills occur as per hospital policy. The safety monitor will complete a form documenting the staff involved in the fire drill, date, and time the drill took place and will keep a copy in the safety manual to be inspe cted monthly. Other safety concerns that were identified during the PPR rounds include clutter in the hallways, smoke wall penetrations, master alarm panel for medical gasses was not tested, and the gift shop did not have the required 18† clearance from the sprinklers. The maintenance department manager will need to implement a corrective action plan and be held accountable for the discrepancies identified. Additionally, the Moderate Sedation Monthly Audit of the Endoscopy Department shows some compliancy issues regarding pre-procedure events. Mallampati classification, ASA, Sedation plan documentation, and completion of reassessment are consistently below 90% for all four quarters. However, the actions that must occur during the procedure and post procedure rated at 90% or higher with regards to the Joint Commission recommendations for compliancy. Per the Joint Commission, compliancy should idealistically be 100%, therefore, the majority of the pre-procedure events are out of compliance and a corrective action plan to improve consistency must be implemented. Patient falls continue to be a concern throughout the healthcare industry because many times the fall results in injury. Other concerns of patient safety that are addressed by the Joint Commission are related to pressure ulcers and ventilator associated pneumonia. The Intensive Care Unit had an increase in falls but no correlation was found between the numbers of falls to nursing care hours. However, ventilator associated pneumonia increased this year. Corrective actions were put into place to improve the VAP numbers. On the Oncology Unit, 3E, both falls and pressure ulcer rates  decreased. There were no trends identified with falls and ulcers in relation to nursing care hours or overtime. On 4E, patient falls and pressure ulcers increased when nursing care hours increased. To determine the causes of non-compliance, the committee should look into the events that occurred during the fourth quarter. While there are trends during the second and third quarter, the fourth quarter appears to have been when the majority of falls, pressure ulcers, and VAP’s occurred. Otherwise, hospital-wide, the trend seems to show a decrease in compliancy during the third quarter. STAFFING PATTERNS The Joint Commission depicts staffing effectiveness as ensuring a proper mix of expertise and numbers of proficient staff necessary to effectively provide for the needs of the patient population in a hospital setting. Although costs incurred due to staffing levels consume a considerable portion of the hospitals revenue, studies have shown that sufficient staffing has a direct effect on quality and safety. (Joint Commission, 2010) Dall, Chen, Seifert, Maddox, and Hogan discovered financial benefits for increasing nursing staff levels. They determined that nosocomial infections and hospital length of stays were decreased when there was adequate nursing staff available. They also determined that mortality rates decreased as a result of increased nursing staff. (Dall, 2009) Nursing hours indicate the quantity and complexity of patients for each area in the hospital. In order to determine how many nurses and other nursing staff will be necessary to care for the patients, one must determine the nursing hours per patient day. This is calculated by comparing the amount of nursing staff providing care to the total number of patients requiring care. Nightingale Community Hospital has combined staffing effectiveness with performance improvement in order to demonstrate sustained improvements throughout selected clinical units. The units selected are based on the clinical and human resource indicators such as patient population,  historical staffing issues, and input from staff and existing data. Traditionally, the clinical indicators have been falls, falls with injury, pressure ulcer prevalence, and ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP). Additionally, the human resource indicators include overtime and nursing care hours. Although the Joint Commission has not directed specific staffing levels or ratios, hospitals and other organizations are expected to ascertain their own levels with regard to their experience and history. Based on the data from 3E – Oncology, no trends were identified with regard to falls, falls with injury, pressure ulcer prevalence, nursing hours, or overtime indicators. In fact, 3E experienced a decrease in falls and pressure ulcers. This may be the result of the nursing staff focusing on these indicators due to their patient population. Also, increasing awareness, improving education, and providing a skin care representative has improved patient safety. The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) experienced an increase in falls without regard to nursing care hours. However, the unit did show an increase in ventilator associated pneumonia events. This occurred during the month of September when nursing care hours decreased. Prior months showed an increase in overtime hours for nursing staff which caused fatigue and burnout to become noticeable later. Due to increases in both falls and VAP’s, corrective actions were implemented to reduce these statistics for the coming year. The Unit, 4E, data proved just the opposite as this unit encountered increases in both falls and pressure ulcer prevalence. According to the date obtained regarding falls, it is apparent that nursing care hours showed a relational trend with falls. In other words, when the nursing care hours decreased, falls increased. In comparison, when nursing care hours increased, the falls rate decreased. Drastic increases in falls occurred during June, September, November, December and February. Nursing hours during this time averaged 15 hours per shift. It appears the overtime hours occurred as a result of the holiday season and therefore caused nursing burnout. Due to vacations, holidays, and absenteeism, nurses are often required to work overtime. This pattern is obvious again during the summer  months when accommodations for vacations are necessary. However, the opposite is true with regards to pressure ulcers vs. nursing care hours. When the nursing care hours increased, the occurrences of pressure ulcers increased as well. This is possibly caused due to increased overtime hours resulting in the fatigue and burnout. This is a perfect environment for errors or the potential to cause harm. A more extensive study in the nursing care hours must be implemented in order to establish an aggressive corrective action plan to reduce the occurrences of pressure ulcers and falls. If the study shows the nursing staff to be working overtime, additional staff may be necessary as part of the corrective action plan. Hiring additional nurses will improve patient care, result in decreased turnover rates, and lead to increased job satisfaction which will ultimately lead to positive outcomes in patient care. STAFFING PLAN Hiring and retaining an adequate number of competent nurses is the greatest challenge facing hospitals and other healthcare organizations. Nursing has to work with the human resources department to improve hiring procedures. Human resources should implement plans to recruit competent nurses with the skills and education necessary to provide the care Nightingale is known for. Human resources will perform an analysis to determine the best qualities for nursing candidates and will recruit according to that standard. Additionally, alternative plans for additional staffing during known periods of absenteeism such as vacations and holidays will be constructed. It is imperative that nursing coverage does not become impaired due to absenteeism. In order to attract and retain the best nurses, Nightingale needs to improve the benefit package. Nurses have often stated that caring for their patients is a joy, but administrative duties, non-nursing activities, and poor staffing practices results in low job satisfaction. Increased job satisfaction in turn, results in improved patient care and increased positive outcomes. Studies have shown that unhappy nurses have unhappy patients. Other strategies that Nightingale Community Hospital can implement are to encourage nurses to cross train in multiple units in order to fill positions in other units when staffing shortages occur. Inadequate staffing levels can cause considerable harm to the patients but is also a financial burden to the organization. Adverse events are more common when staffing levels are low which are associated with increased costs due to the need for more intensive nursing care. (Stanton, 2004) The Utilization Guide for the ANA Principles for Nurse Staffing suggests the use of patient classification systems. (Utilization guide for the ANA principles for nurse staffing, 2005) Utilizing a patient classification system provides guidelines for difficult staffing issues by identifying processes and procedures for improved staffing. Organizations benefit by supporting nursing judgment regarding individual patient needs, incorporating sources that reinforce standards of nursing practice, encouraging nursing participation evaluating products that may be used in staffing decision making, and champion the use of patient classification systems. Works Cited Dall, T. C. (2009). The Economic Value of Professional Nursing. Medical Care, 97-104. Joint Commission. (2010). Management of Human Resources. CAMH: Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals, Hr-1 – HR-10. Stanton, M. R. (2004, March). Hospital Nurse Staffing and Quality of Care. Research in Action. Rockville, MD, USA: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2005). Utilization guide for the ANA principles for nurse staffing. Washington, DC: American Nurses Association.

Environmental Impacts of Aviation Essay

Noise is said to have a variety of definitions. For people who are inclined towards acoustics, noise is identified as a complex form of sound waves that have irregular vibrations and has no known pitch. In the field of engineering, noise is considered as a signal that interferes with the detection and quality identification of another signal. However, for psychoacoustic studies which are focused on the study of human response to sound, noise is deemed as an unwanted form of sound (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association [ASHA], 2008). According to K. D. Kryter (1996), noise is an enhanced form of sound signals that post a negative effect in the physiological and psychological aspect of an individual (Kryter, 1996 cited in ASHA, 2008). For the most part, noise is something that could be identified as an unwanted sound which is a pollutant and a hazard to the health of human beings (ASHA, 2008). Noise can be derived from a variety of contributors, and such noises have their own levels that are detrimental to the hearing of an individual. Noise levels are measured in decibels. Sounds that are louder than 80 decibels are considered to be hazardous. One of the leading sources of potentially hazardous noise is the airport. Noises from airports could come from constructions and operating machines. However, the major contributor for airport noise is caused by the aircrafts. There are two ways on how aircraft noises are generated. First, airframe noise appears whenever air passes through the fuselage or body and wings of the plane. The activity causes friction and turbulence which often result in the production of unwanted sound. Gliders which are planes without engines produce noise during its flights. Second, engine noise is derived from the action of the moving parts of the aircraft’s engine. Such noise is also produced whenever the sound of air passes through the engines during high speed. Engine noise mainly comes from the plane’s exhaust or the jet situated behind the engine whenever the air sound from the engine combines with the air surrounding it (Wellington Airport, 2008). Based from the study carried out by Daniel Nunez (1998), airplane noise poses disturbance in the human sleep more than any other forms of noises. It was also indicated that more than 50% of the people residing near airports are awakened by airplane noise (Holland-Wegman, 1967 cited in Nunez, 1998). The onset of aircraft noise as a major problem began during the time when there is an upsurge in the need of air transportation after World War Two. By the end of 1950’s, the introduction of jet planes became widely known which later on catapulted the â€Å"aviation revolution† where commercial air passengers were also introduced (Nunez, 1998). The augmentation in the aircraft use also resulted in the increase in the noise level produced by air transportations. Because of the outstanding length of service and success of aircraft operations, airports gradually become larger and noisier. The attractive activities of airports also began to grab the attention of people, wherein surrounding communities started to spread all throughout the nearby areas. The more airports become bigger and nosier, the more residential structures, churches, and schools come closer to the area. Eventually, conflicting issues arise. Aside from the land expansion of airports which often cause nearby residents to act defensively, noise is also regarded as an issue that is very much integrated with airport operations (Bachman, 2003). As such, the painful sound from aircraft take offs and landings were viewed as the primary reasons of annoyance by the residents living near the area. From then on, airport noise has become a complex psychophysiological and economic issue (Nunez, 1998). The issues regarding aircraft noise are said to be complicated because of the aviation industry’s significance in the economy of developing countries. Without the presence of the aviation industry various economic industries would be gravely affected, some of which include the tourism business and mail transportation (Nunez, 1998). Many airports have spent large amounts of money in order to provide sound insulation for residential buildings and community owned structures to reduce aircraft noise (Bachman, 2003). One of the airports that have reached an agreement regarding their noise issue with the people in the surrounding community is the Wellington International Airport Limited (WIAL) situated in New Zealand. WIAL was constituted as a legal corporation on October 16, 1990. The aviation company is partly owned by the Wellington City Council which shares 34% of the total stocks, while the other 66% are owned by Infratil Limited. Wellington International Airport is known as the third largest airport in New Zealand and is classified as a regional hub that extends its international flight service not only in New Zealand but also to the Eastern part of Australia and the neighboring island countries in the south-west Pacific. Almost 90% of the passengers of WIAL travel domestically and majority of whom are business people (Ministry of Economic Development [MED], 2005). As it was said, no other cities in the world have an airport location that could be compared to Wellington International Airport. WIAL is situated on a narrow strip of land in the center of the residential areas. The airport is just minutes away towards the capital’s centre. It is also accessible through a short coastal scenic drive or passing through the tunnel at Mount Victoria. Although the location of the airport is said to be unique, the airport is faced with substantial challenges in terms of its environmental impact, specifically the aircraft noise. The location of Wellington International Airport which is close to the residential area became a ground for the residents to organize the Residents Airport Noise Action Group, the noise abatement requirement, as well as different actions from the internal operations of the airport in order to decrease the noise pollution (Wellington Airport, 2008). Residents Airport Noise Action Group In 1963, Maxine Harris first moved into her home at Strathmore which is near Wellington International Airport. Five years after, Harris reported that the jet noise began. According to documents, Harris and her neighbors were not at all bothered by the jet noise. However by 1980’s, Harris and her neighbors started hearing the night-time acceleration of the airplane engines of National Airways. Harris even noted that they heard the revving of the airplane engines that sounded like a high-pitched whining that would wake her up in the middle of the night and would not allow her to get back to sleep. Harris complained about the noise issue, but an airport official told her that no other individual complained about the noise. Harris talked to her other neighbor about the issue and her neighbor told her that he had also complained, yet the airport official also told him that no other person called the airport to complain. Both Harris and her neighbor responded to the issue by putting leaflets in the mailboxes of their neighbors. The leaflet called for the other residents to phone the airport whenever they were disturbed by the aircraft noise (Samson, 1997a). Because of this, the neighbors responded well, and in 1986, the Residents Airport Noise Action Group was established. The group was focused on performing two tasks: to halt the engine testing at night and to lessen the noise produced by the 737’s. It was in 1986 when the group had their first meeting with the city council. During that time, they have voiced their complaints regarding the noise issue. Their first attempt became successful after the city passed the first by-law which is focused on the engine-testing. The by-law limits the testing times of the National Airways Friendship fleet. However, subsequent efforts of the group were not as successful as their first attempt. The noise problem of the Boeing 737’s still remains (Samson, 1997a). In 1987, the Ansett Airlines became a part of the internal air service market. In return, Air New Zealand has to expand their operations. It was stated that the residents regarded 1987 as the year of â€Å"big explosion† because of the noise produced by the aircrafts. In response to the growing issue of the airport noise, the residents put forward a proposal, stating that all the 737’s should be phased out in 1997. Three months after the proposal was passed, Ansett acknowledged the residents’ plea by replacing the fleets with whisper jets that are much quieter compared to the 737’s. On the other hand, the city council framed a proposed by-law that would have ordered the Air New Zealand to reduce its fleet on a stage by stage process. However, the propose by-law did not take in effect (Samson, 1997a). By 1992, Air New Zealand promised that by the following year seven of their Boeing 737-200’s would have devices that would reduce noise known as hush kits and other fleets would be phased out and will be replaced by 737-300’s. However, the residents did not agree with this. Arguments were once again raised that have even reached the select committees of the parliament, yet the resolutions were unidentifiable (Samson, 1997, p. 19a). As a response to the noise issue that has been gaining public interest, the city council put forth a proposed district plan, but the residents opposed to it. However, in order to resolve the issue, environment court judge Shonagh Kenderdine ruled out in August of 1997 that the airport and the airlines should adhere to the strict rules as proposed by the district plan regarding the air noise boundary wherein a specific maximum noise level will be set. Furthermore, the noise boundary would later on be dissolved if there is an improvement with the airport and airlines noise management. Other regulations that were included in the ruling involve the night curfew, engine-testing, ground noise control, and land-use. The first three issues being disputed were already progressive after the issues were ruled out. The last dispute which was focused on the land use was not settled until November of 1997 (Samson, 1997a). As a follow up to the court ruling done on August of 1997, in order to end the ten-year fight regarding the acceptable noise level in Wellington area, and to finally conclude the last remaining area of dispute which was focused on the land use, Judge Shonagh Kenderdine ended the noise issue on November 20, 1997. The major players during the court case involved the Residents airport noise action group, the board of airline representatives, the Wellington city council, and the Wellington international airport. It was stipulated in the ruling that: â€Å"All new housing developments within the airport’s air-noise boundary would be deemed unrestricted discretionary activity† (Samson, 1997b, p. 3). Under the said ruling, any individuals who are interested to build residential structures within the surrounding airport area and all the application permits have to be approved by the Wellington City Council. Therefore, the council has the right to refuse or consent the details of the application depending on the criteria that are still to be set by the district plan (Samson, 1997b). Despite the criteria being on the process of completion, the interested party should be governed by the assessments set in the ruling wherein new homes that will be built within the airports air-noise boundary should use construction materials that could pass the standards of noise reductions. Such materials include: thicker gib boarding, double or thicker window glazing, and the installation of noise insulations. The ruling also required the city council to implement stricter rules regarding the development of new housings compared to the original proposition of the district plan (Samson, 1997b).

Monopolistic Competitive Market

Monopolistic Competitive Market Introduction The term market refers to the place where buyers and sellers meet to engage in transactions that entail the exchange of goods or the provision of services for a consideration. A market is not only characterized by a building where people carry out business transactions. This is because any place that people carry out commerce can be referred to as a market. A market is characterized by various mechanisms that facilitate trade. These mechanisms usually pertain to the supply and demand of products and services (Bergin, 2005).From this explanation it should be clear that a market is comprised of three main elements. The sellers these are the people who bring the products or services to the market to be procured by the willing buyers. At this stage it is imperative to highlight that in most cases sellers are the produces however in other instances the sellers are not necessarily the producers instead they can be traders. The second element of the market is the buyers. Buyers are individual who are willing and able to acquire the products or services being offered at the prevailing market price.Buyers are of two types; there are those that buy the products or services for their own consumption and there are those that buy the products or services in order to resell them in different markets. The buyers who buy the products for their own consumption are referred to as consumers whereas buyers who buy the products or services in order to resell them in different market are commonly referred to as trades and they can also be called arbitragers (Nicholson & Snyder, 2008). The third element of the market is the products that are being traded.The term product can be used to refer to either goods or services that are being offered in exchange for a consideration. The term product can also be used to refer to commodities only. General Objectives One of the general objectives of this paper is to facilitate the readers of this docu ment to gain an understanding of how markets work and most importantly how a monopolistic competitive market works. This paper will achieve this through briefly discussing various types of markets and their characteristics.Another general objective of this paper is to compare and contrast the various characteristics of the different forms of market structures. This will serve to enable the readers to carry out a comparative analysis of the various forms of market structures thus they will be able to enhance their knowledge on market structures. This objective will be attained through the analysis of the factors, which are mainly in play for the existence of a particular form of market. The paper will also seek to analyze how the various factors in such markets interrelate in order to develop a market mechanism for that form of market structure.This is because all forms of markets structures have market mechanisms. These market mechanisms are usually as result of the interaction of v arious factors that are both internal and external to a particular market. Specific Objectives One of the specific objectives of this paper is to discuss the conceptual theory of a monopolistic competitive market. The discussion of the monopolistic competitive market entails analyzing the various factors that characterize this particular form of market structure. This is will be important form enhance the knowledge of the readers of this paper, on monopolistic competitive market structure.The discussion of the conceptual theory will also enable the readers to have a good basis for analyzing and responding to questions that relate to monopolistic competitive market structure. Another objective is to discuss the characteristics of a monopolistic competitive market. The discussion of the characteristics of a monopolistic competitive market structure is important because it will serve to explain how the various factors involved in this type of market structure interrelate in order to th is unique type of market.The discussion of the characteristic of a monopolistic competitive market will serve to enhance the understanding of the readers of how companies that operate in such a market carry out their operations. The discussion of these characteristics will serve to inform the readers the various factors that companies operating in this type of market put into consideration during decision-making. This discussion will also enable the readers to be able to identify a monopolistic competitive market in a real business situation.This paper also aims at establishing how market equilibrium is achieved both in the long – run and in the short run. This is mainly because in a monopolistic competitive market structure, market equilibrium is achieved differently both in the short – run and in the long – run. This analysis is imperative mainly because this knowledge enables the management to have a good basis for decision-making. The analysis will provide f actors that the management should put into consideration whenever they are making decisions concerning either the short term or the long – term future of a company.The illustration of how market equilibriums are achieved in the short run or in the long run will enable the readers to gain understanding of how the various factors in this market structure relate in the determination of the equilibrium market prices. It will also enable to understand how companies that operate in a monopolistic competitive market adapt themselves in order to be able to operate in this particular form of market at minimal costs and manage to obtain maximum profits. This paper will also provide a practical example of a monopolistic competitive market.In this example, the paper will seek to illustrate how the conceptual theory is exhibited in this form of market structure. This paper will utilize this example in order to enhance the knowledge of the reader on how market equilibrium is attained both in the long – run and in the short – run. This example will illustrate how the various factors are displayed in a real market situation, also this paper will utilize the example to look at the type of decisions that are made by mangers of companies that operate in a monopolistic competitive markets structure. Conceptual TheoryThere are four forms of market structure namely, monopoly, perfect competition, monopolistic competition and oligopoly. These forms of market structures are characterized by different market conditions. Markets are mainly classified according to the number of firms in the industry or the form of products sold in them. The number of firms operating in a particular market determines the level of competition in that market. Product markets are mainly categorized according to the number of firms in the industry and the degree of competition that is prevalent in a particular industry.At this stage it is also important to highlight that equilibrium pric es in these markets are subject to the forces of supply and demand. The forces of supply and demand are known as the price mechanism. An individual firm on itself cannot influence the price of a commodity and can therefore only take the price prevailing in the market. Due to this condition a firm is therefore said to be a price taker (Nicholson & Snyder, 2008). The movement along a demand curve is caused by changes in price of a commodity.An increase in price results in a decrease in quantity demanded hence a movement along the demand curve to the left. A shift in the demand curve is caused by changes in factors other than the price of the commodity in question. Different quantities are therefore demanded at the original price. A shift in the demand curve outwards to the right indicates that more quantities are demanded at the original price whereas a shift inwards to the left indicates that fewer quantities are demanded at the original price (Dwivedi, 2006).Movement in the supply c urve is similar to movement in the demand curve. A shift in the supply curve refers to a relocation of the supply curve either outwards to the right or inwards to the left due to change in the factors that affect supply other than price. This means that at each price, a different quantity will be supplied that was previously supplied. Equilibrium price refers to the price, where the quantity demanded equals that supplied. It is the price at which the amount the customers are able and willing to buy is equal to the quantity producers willing and able to supply.The equilibrium point, refers to a point at which the demand and the supply curve intersect. Any price above the equilibrium price leads to excess supply, whereas any price below the equilibrium price leads to excess demand. Excess demand or supply causes disequilibrium in the market. Due to the excess demand for a particular commodity in the market, a shortage is created. This shortage causes the consumers to compete for the l imited commodity in the market thus making the price of that commodity go up. As he price continues to rise, suppliers put more of the commodity into the market (Mandal, 2007). On the other hand, the high price also discourages some consumers from buying the commodity. This scenario of increased supply and reducing demand continues until the equilibrium price and quantity are set. When there is excess supply of a commodity in the market the prices begins to fall. As the price falls more consumers purchase the commodity. The suppliers also reduce the amount of the commodity they are releasing into the market due to the falling prices.This scenario of falling supply and increasing demand continues until the equilibrium price and quantity are set. It is also important to highlight that a general assumption in the study of this subject is that firms aim at attaining maximum profits using minimal costs possible. This means during decision making the managers of the firm will always aim a t using the least resources possible and utilise them efficiently in order to attain the maximum achievable profits possible. The level of output that will bring about maximum profit in a firm depends on the costs incurred and the revenues earned.Revenues refers to incomes obtained by a firm from the sale of its outputs and they may be categorized into three namely, total revenue, average revenue and marginal revenue. Total revenue refers to the total income earned by a firm from the sale of its output. Total revenue is obtained through multiplying the total output sold by the price. Average revenue refers to income per unit of output. Average revenue can be obtained by dividing the total revenue obtained by the number of units of output. It is important to note that the average revenue is the same as the price of the commodity (Dwivedi, 2006).This implies that the average revenue curve, which relates average revenues to output, is the same as the demand curve, which relates prices to output. Marginal revenue refers to the addition to the total revenue arising from the sale of an additional unit of output. Marginal revenue can also be obtained by subtracting the previous total revenue from the current one and can be seen to be equal to the price and average revenue. Characteristics of a monopolistic competitive market This is a market structure that combines aspects of perfect competition and those of a monopoly.There are many sellers and many buyers just like in perfect competition. The commodities dealt with are similar but each firm tends to differentiate its products from those of its competitors through acts such as branding, packing, wrapping and coloring. A monopolistic competitive market structure is a combination of the features that will be discussed in the succeeding paragraphs. In a monopolistic competitive market there exist many buyers and sellers. This comes in adequately because there is no single firm that can influence the prices of commoditi es or services in the market.If a business sells its goods or services above the market price then consumers can buy their goods from other businessmen. If a company sells its products at a lower price then chances of making a loss is very high (Mandal, 2007). Though a business may increase its prices in a perfect competition, the action may be risky since customers will move to another business. This is not the case with a monopolistic business, though a firm may lose some of the customers, some will remain due to the kind of relationship they have with the seller or even the quality of the given products.All the aforementioned factors are due to the fact that there is a large number of buyers and customers that act independently. In this form of market structure it is assumed that the sellers and the buyers of commodities are well informed about the market. That is they know the prices, quality of products and all the factors affecting the market. In this market the products are d ifferentiated. The products from different producers either vary in quality or the product is a group of commodities which are close substitutes of each other (Mandal, 2007).For instance, in the toothpaste industry there are different brands such as Colgate, Close– up and Aquafresh. This differentiation of products from different firms enables each firm to enjoy a certain degree of monopoly power. A monopolistic competitive market is characterized by freedom of entry and exit. This means there are no barriers to a business entering or living the market. This means that new firms wishing to supply the same commodity are free to do so (Bergin, 2005). Similarly, existing firms wishing to leave the market are free to do so.How to determine equilibrium in the short – run and long – run on Monopolistic Competitive Market Structure Price and output determination under monopolistic competition Due to product differentiation, a firm under monopolistic competition is able to exercise some influence on the price of the product. This means that a firm can raise prices yet some customers will still buy at these high prices (Dwivedi, 2006). However, many customers will switch to rivals’ products. On the other hand, if the firm lowers the price, it would attract some buyers from the rival firms, thereby increasing its product’s demand.A monopolistically competitive market has a demand curve that slopes downward from left to right. In a monopolistic competitive market the demand curve is fairly elastic. This means that a small change in price will bring about more than proportionate changes in quantities demanded. This is because there are many substitutes in the market. The demand curve is more elastic than the one faced by a monopolist but less elastic than a perfectly competitive market whose demand is perfectly elastic (Jehle & Reny, 2011). The relationship between average revenue and marginal revenue is similar to that of a monopolist.F or average revenue to be increasing as more units of output are sold, the marginal revenue must be lower than the average revenue. Short – run equilibrium output under monopolistic competition A firm under monopolistic competition will be at equilibrium at an output when profits are maximized. This is the position when marginal revenue is equal to marginal cost. This is at price P1 and quantity Qe. However, there still excess demand and the firm can maximize its profits by changing price Pe. The firm will therefore produce quantity Qe and sell at price Pe (Jehle & Reny, 2011).Qe represents equilibrium output and P1 represents equilibrium price. The price at which the equilibrium output can be sold is determined by the demand Curve (Average Revenue) and its price. Profits are maximized at a level of output between O (zero) and the equilibrium quantity demanded. Long – run equilibrium output under monopolistic competition A firm under monopolistic competition can make su pernormal profits in the short – run. Since there is free entry of new firm into the market, the supernormal profits will attract the new firms with the effect that demand for the old firm’s customers will be taken by new firms.The demand curve for the old firm therefore shifts right to left (Mandal, 2007). A lower quantity is demanded at each price. Firms are likely to increase expenditure on product promotion due to increased competition, which in turn would cause the average total cost curve to shift upwards. New firms will continue to enter the market as long as the existing equilibrium is achieved and all firms would be earning normal profits. The equilibrium point is where the average revenue is equal to the average cost. This point is achieved in the long run when the average revenue curve is a tangent to the average cost curve.The firm will be at equilibrium when it produces output at the equilibrium quantity demanded (Bergin, 2005). This is where the marginal revenues equal the marginal cost because the firm is in the business of profit maximization. At the point of equilibrium, the average cost is equal to the average revenue. This is so because competitive pressure means that a firm can neither make a loss nor earn supernormal profits. At this point of equilibrium the firm is making normal profits only. Conclusion An example of a monopolistic competitive market is the toothpaste market.The toothpaste market is characterized by firms that offers products that are similar but they are highly differentiated. Consumers of Colgate toothpaste believe that Colgate is the number one brand of toothpaste that ensures strong teeth. As a result of this the consumers are normally willing to buy toothpaste regardless of the price. Consumers of Aquafresh toothpaste believe that Aquafresh is the number one brand that ensures healthy germs and fresh breathe. As a result of this customers are willing to always procure the Aquafresh toothpaste regardless of the price.Consumers of the two products believe the products are different and this is because of the way the manufacturers have positioned the brands. REFERENCES Bergin, J. (2005). Microeconomic Theory: A concise Course. New York: Oxford University Press. Dwivedi, D. N. (2006). Microeconomics: Theory & Applications. New Delhi: Dorling kindersley. Jehle, G. A. , & Reny, P. J. (2011). Advanced Microeconomic Theory. New York: Pretence Hall. Mandal, R. K. (2007). Microeconomic Theory. New Delhi: Atlantic Publisher. Nicholson, W. , & Snyder, C. (2008). Microeconomic Theory: Basic Principles and Extension. New York: Cengage Learning.

Faisal Mosque in Pakistan Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Faisal Mosque in Pakistan - Research Paper Example The mosque was built as an attribution to the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Its symbolism was based on the fact that it was to portray the hopes and aspiration of Pakistani people (Archnet Digital Library, â€Å"Faisal Mosque†). According to Serageldin, the Muslim culture values the symbolic portray of the architectural building. Some of the most important symbolic structures in Muslim architecture include the minaret, dome, gateway and mihrab. These parts communicate a message to everybody, Muslims or non-Muslims. Vedat Dalokay implemented this symbolic meaning into the Faisal Mosque and, that is why it has become a landmark. According to Mandour, Islamic culture includes art, design, education, science, religion and sport, which has a specific meaning. The design architecture by Vedat Dalokay symbolized and implemented art, beliefs, values and customs in the Pakistani people. The architecture of the mosque was based on a new design that was not related to the usual and t raditional mosques that had been previously built. As a tribute to King Faisal, it was to have a unique architecture and that was why Vedat Dalokay was chosen to make it a state of the art construction. Some of its characteristics were that it was looking like a desert tent where its height was approximately 40 m, and it had girders that supported its concrete walls. The surface was pure white, and its interior design was decorated with mosaic designs and a Turkish chandelier that was strategically placed by its architect, Vedat Dalokay. Its space was big to accommodate a total of 10,000 worshippers in the main prayer hall, and it had four minarets, each measuring approximately 90 m, and they were slender and sharply pointed. Lastly, it was a people’s mosque, meaning it was a contribution to the people of Pakistan by King Faisal, and thus it also accommodated the mausoleum of General Zia-ul-Haq, who was the President of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988 (Archnet Digital Library, â⠂¬Å"Faisal Mosque†). Thesis Architecture is one of the most prestigious arts that can be portrayed in form of a structure. The King Faisal Mosque is one of the best-designed mosques in Pakistan and in the world. This research paper will seek to analyze the architecture of the Faisal Mosque, its symbolism, the color of the mosque and its design and some of the quotes from the founding architect Vedat Dalokay. The paper will also seek to discuss the possible symbolism of the mosque and its historical and cultural concept. Analysis of the design Dalokay was a great architect whose designs were based on the 20th century designs. The mosque's architecture is modern and unique. The mosque was also constructed with the twist of Turkish design as well as Islamic designs. The modern mosque lacked the traditional dome shapes design, as compared to other mosques that are located in the world. The traditional shapes for the olden mosques were related to the historical religious designs th at were dated back then to the olden days of the Islamic culture. The mosque’s design also includes a triangular prayer hall that can hold up to 10,000 people, and in addition to that, it has four minarets that depict the classical shapes of modern architecture. The minarets are also said to have been designed with regard to the Turkish tradition because they are sharp-pointed. It has an eight-sided shape, which was inspired by the famous desert Beduoin's tent and the cubic Kaaba in Mecca and whose architect was Vedat Dalokay, according to Rengel. Speaking to students, the architect, Vedat Dalokay later explained his acute and unique architectural design to design school students commenting that: I tried to capture the spirit, proportion and geometry of Ka'aba in a purely abstract manner. Imagine

Slavery and The Genesis of American Race Prejudice Essay

Slavery and The Genesis of American Race Prejudice - Essay Example Degler however refers to the writing of Frank Tannenbaum to cast doubt to this assumption held not only by Tocqueville, but many others in regard to the issue, he argues that if slavery was the course of discrimination, then the ensuing prejudice should have been uniformly evident in all societies that embraced slavery. However, the levels of discrimination that Negroes in the United States underwent after slavery is significantly more severe than those suffered by Negroes in other parts of the world. Degler argues that that slavery cannot be seen as a cause for discrimination since the prejudice existed long before slavery, thus, he thus seeks to strengthen his position by examining the retrospective treatment of Negroes before the term slavery came to be applied socially and legally to them. He argues that before, and during slavery, a Negro free or slave occupied a lower and degraded position in society than any white man. Degler also opposes an argument suggested by Handlin that during the 17th century the position of the white servants was improving while that of the black ones was becoming worse; Degler demonstrates that white servants were very badly treated in New England. He uses this to prove that if the position of blacks was to be compared to that of the white servants, the fact that the former were worse off leaves one in doubt of the validity of the explanation that blacks were not being discriminated before slavery became a legal reality. Degler emphasizes that despite the fact that a negro was rarely called as lave before the 17th century, the position he held as an individual and a servant was subject to extreme discrimination and was at no time comparable to that of even the most oppressed white servant. The difference between the treatment of Negros, slave or free in the Iberian and English colonies is explained thus; in the English colony, discrimination antedated slavery ergo slavery when it was developed there simply inherited the attitude of Negro inferiority that was already in existence. Degler further assets that before the official use of the term slave, black servants were often in servitude that exceeded that of white ones, for example, in case of escaped servants, while white servants had time added to their term of service blacks were either made â€Å"servant† the rest of their natural lives. In some cases their punishment did not have to do with time since they were already serving for life, in addition, servitude, while a white servants children could not inherit it was often passed on from parents to children. Based on this and other reasoning Degler disputes the assumption that slavery gave birth to discrimination and attempts with a significant degree of success to prove that discrimination was not a result of slavery but it was borne off prejudice and xenophobia dating long before slavery. Degler has referred to several works in his quest to disabuse the notion that slavery gave birth to prejud ice and one of them is Frank Tannenbaum, he reasoned that the reason the inferiority of slavery did not continue in Iberian countries after slavery could be attributed to three factors (Charles). These were; that the Roman law of slavery, which was influenced, by the Catholic Church and constant contact with dark skinned people took a pragmatic view of slavery as a mere accident to which anyone despite their color could be a victim. Ergo, unlike the North America where slavery was mostly the reserve of the dark blacks and laws put up to

Modern women in modern songs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Modern women in modern songs - Essay Example As it is, the song invites men to become insensitive to women and it gives men the right to treat women badly under the premise that women are liars and that they cannot be trusted. To give us a clear picture of the way the artist sees women, let us take a look at the lyrics of the song, the tempo of the music, the style, the phrasing and the tone. II. The Anatomy of the Song The song â€Å"Superman† is divided into three parts, namely the intro, the verses and the choruses. To put the song in context, the singer tells the listener about his experience with women and how his experience shaped his opinion about the female population. Although the singer did not really expound on what sad or bad experience he had with women, from the tone of his song, one can clearly see that this person does not trust the female specie and that he does not want to be in a serious relationship with any of them. The song starts with a woman’s voice moaning in the background and Eminem rapp ing in multisyllabic rhymes. Eminem rap along the beat of the drum as he delivers his lines in a rhythmic pattern. The voice of the woman moaning gives the intro of the song a sexual context which picture women as creatures who are meant to sexually satisfy the male. This personification of the female is rather disturbing as females are complex creatures and although they may have a sexual side to them, this sexual side does not define them as persons. Note that as complex creatures, women are capable of a lot of things and to box them in as sexually charged creatures moaning with pleasure is demeaning. The rhythm of the background music does not change much as the song graduate from the introduction and move into Chorus A. The voice of the singer goes with the beat of the drum as we move from the intro of the song to Chorus A and the woman moaning in the background fades away. In Chorus A, he describes how he might love the girl and how the girl might love him too so he comes to re scue the girl like superman does. If we take a closer look at the message of Chorus A, the singer implied that women cannot protect themselves and that they need men to save them. The song shows an even more blatant disregard of women’s potentials and capacities while trying to project men as the superior specie. Stereotyping women as â€Å"weak† creatures is not only grossly unfair, it is also demeaning especially when most women are actually more than capable of taking care of themselves. Verse 1 of the song pictures a woman as somebody who wants to trap the man in marriage. In an effort to get away from the grasp of the woman, the man tries to demean the woman by calling her a â€Å"slut† and saying â€Å"I would never let another chick bring me down.† The first few lines of Verse 1 are rather telling about the mental state of the man especially when he said â€Å"save it bitch, babysit†. Aside from fearing commitment, the singer seem to send a message to the listener that he sees women as homemakers who are only fit to do household chores and babysit. Asking a woman to babysit is not so bad but when you put babysitting in the wrong context, it can become quite offensive to the female sensibilities. Note that parenting should be a shared responsibility so both men and women have the duty to take care of the kids. Verse 1 of the

Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 15

Research Paper Example n informed the public that Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), a bacterium that resists the strongest antibiotics, lead to 19,000 deaths in America annually (Walsh and Fischbach 44). They emphasized that 20% of those who died from MRSA were young and healthy people who got infected while going through their daily routines. Furthermore, antimicrobial resistance is not only a national problem because it can soon develop into a global national health issue without immediate and long-term national and international collaboration. Doctor Anuj Sharma of the World Health Organization (WHO) stresses that without local and worldwide resolutions, diseases that used to be easily cured would soon be untreatable. Before resolutions to the problem of superbugs, or drug-resistant microbials, are discussed, the paper explores the history of MRSA first because it will help understand the justification for the proposal. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is not a new healthcare problem. Christopher T. Walsh, a Hamilton Kuhn professor of biological chemistry, and Michael A. Fischbach, a microbiologist at the University of California, describe the development of superbugs, which started in the late 1950s. Methicillin, a drug derived from penicillin, was used in 1959 to treat infections that were already resistant to penicillin, like S. aureus and Streptococcus pneumonia (Walsh and Fischbach 44). Two years after, European hospitals reported that they experienced methicillin-resistant strains of S. aureus, and since then, MRSA spread to other healthcare institutions across the globe (Walsh and Fischbach 44). By the 1990s, a new strain of MRSA infections developed in the community, as microbials learned t o fight the drugs that aimed to kill them. The most effective antibiotic then was vancomycin, but soon, vancomycin-resistant bacteria developed. Walsh and Fischbach illustrate the reality of antibiotics, wherein â€Å"from the moment an antibiotic is introduced in the clinic,

Internet Security Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Internet Security - Essay Example The privacy aspect has been given significance in the wake of the cyber crimes which are rampant in the time and age of today and Facebook is not an exception to this rule. It is quite understandably one of the major reasons why looking over the shoulder of a Facebook user would actually tell the other individual his username and password, and hence his account can be compromised upon. In addition, the fact that saving a password can be deemed as a nuisance for the original user since his Facebook page can be opened by any laptop user which accesses it. The second aspect of Internet security for the sake of Facebook is related with Authentication. This would mean that the social networking website would ensure that the user is genuine and that he is using Facebook from a location which is registered with him alone. No one else would have the right to make use of Facebook from a location or a computer which does not belong to the original Facebook user (Aceituno, 2005). Authentication asks the users to validate that both the parties, i.e. the user and the Facebook website that they have a connection between the two so that the next step could be moved on towards. The third aspect of Integrity deals with the rationale that data cannot be modified without detecting it properly. This means that a proper code is encrypted within Facebook which asks of the users to log in and hence use Facebook for their own genuine wishes. No one else does have a right to compromise on the integrity premise and hence be a source of trouble for the original user of Facebook. The fourth and last aspect deals with nonrepudiation. This encloses the terms and conditions as laid down by Facebook as well as its privacy policy. This is in essence a contract which has the intention to fulfill a contract between the user and Facebook (Dhillon, 2007). It also states that neither of the parties, i.e. the Facebook user and the Facebook company can deny that they did not

Evaluation Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Evaluation Report - Essay Example As practice based learning is linked to the learning activities that require application of theories in a practical work scenario; it provided me the insight of the workplace which could not be achieved by sitting in a lecture room. Cherry et al. (2005) proposed that effective communication is the core of nursing profession. Keeping this in mind I have tried to analyze my communication skills developed, as part of the training session, by issuing handover reports to the nurses on the next shift. I have also made an effort to appraise the level of improvement in my listening skills. Through reflection I tried to summarize my personal and professional development during training. It is a process in which nurses’ team delivers the information about the patient’s care to other nurses normally as the shift changes. It usually focuses on the nursing care plan (Smith, 2004, p.4). Continued reflection on my experience enabled me to assess that handover is one beneficial way of communicating with other nurses. Through handovers nurses are better able to conceive the patient’s condition. Before this work based learning experience I used to make disorganized handovers but by the end of this shift I have witnessed several handovers instructed by the senior nurses and now I am proficient enough to develop a concise hand over in time. During my experience as a trainee nurse, I have seen nurses making unstructured handovers that were a total waste of time as they indicate patient’s information in a biased manner. The time assigned to submit a hand over was usually limited. Attendance was also mandatory at the time of handovers. According to me the current handover practice was efficient as I never witnessed the time of handover process changed. Handovers also formulates a way for personnel education and debriefing (Jones & Bourgeois, 2006, p.155).Nurses used to exchange handovers informally thus

Joffrey Ballet Essay Example for Free

Joffrey Ballet Essay When school is out, dance students have more time to dedicate to training. Choosing a summer intensive program of study can be a challenge, though. How do you know if the program you are considering is a good fit for you? Dance Informa spoke with faculty from The Joffrey Academy, Cary Ballet Conservatory, Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts’ Next Generation and Patel Conservatory’s Dance Department to learn more about what constitutes a great summer program and how you can be prepared to get the most from your experience. What should a student look for in a summer intensive program? Deanna Seay, Ballet Mistress, Cary Ballet Conservatory In looking at a summer intensive, each student needs to evaluate his or her own goals. Does the student want a program where the focus will be on improving technique? Is the student at an age when he/she wants to be considered potential company material? Does the student want an experience focused on one discipline, or does he/she want to use the summer to broaden his/her horizons? Defining these goals can help to narrow the possibilities. A student wanting to improve a lot can look for smaller programs where they will be able to receive personal attention as well as a place that provides many hours of instruction. Those on the verge of professional careers will want to find company related programs. Students wishing to broaden their horizons can look for programs that offer classes in a wide number of dance styles. Students enjoy Patel Conservatory’s Next Generation Ballet Summer Intensive. Photo by Bill Kraulter. Peter Stark, Artistic Director of the David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts’ Next Generation and chair of thePatel Conservatory‘s Dance Department Students should look for: 1. Training. The school should demonstrate a history of training dancers well. Check on their website for recent graduates that are dancing professionally. 2. A schedule that keeps a young dancer busy and working hard. More classes will increase strength and technique. 3. A focus on the type of dance a student wants to study (ballet, modern, jazz) with a sampling of other styles for diversity. 4. A performing and/or rehearsing opportunity. As a performance art, in dance it is important to learn new dances and to get on stage. Alexei Kremnev, Artistic Director, and Amanda McAlpine, Communications Associate, Joffrey Academy and Community Engagement, The Joffrey Ballet Students should assess the quality of a summer intensive program by it’s faculty members (their experience and background), brand recognition (affiliation with professional company), variety of classes provided, performance opportunities, location and length of program. What are the advantages to training locally or going out of state? Peter Stark A family must decide how far they want to travel for a summer program. There is an expense with increased distance. Summer programs can offer a great sampling of an area for future employment. There are many excellent programs worldwide that will improve a young dancer both near and far. Do check out the security of the city, school and dormitory to determine if it meets the family needs. Also, ask about transportation for the students during the program. Students at the Joffrey Ballet Summer Intensive Deanna Seay The most obvious advantage to staying local is the possibility of staying at home while attending the session, or at least being close to home, which can be comforting to both parents and students attending boarding programs the first time. As long as students have access to local programs that provide the number of classes they need, there isn’t really a need to travel far at a young age. Once students reach high school age and are more mature, going out of state becomes an option parents might feel more comfortable with. That being said, there will always be those young students who have the talent and maturity for an out-of-state experience at eleven or twelve. What advice do you have for those taking summer intensive auditions? Alexei Kremnev and Amanda McAlpine It is important to be as prepared as possible. Check the program’s website for any headshots or photos needed, audition fee and attire requirements. If it is possible to pre-register online, it will save you time during the day of the audition. During the audition, do your best and keep a positive attitude. If you excel in a particular area or step, be sure to stand in front or go in the first group. If you are not as strong in other areas, you may want to wait to go in the second group. Regardless, always look pleasant and smile. The judges may not realize that you may have made a mistake because they are concentrating on watching many other dancers too. Peter Stark Always dress neat in a dress code. Do not wear any warm-up shorts, skirts or jewelry. Have a head shot and dance photo (arabesque is good) available even if not specifically requested in the audition announcement. Have a positive attitude and try your best. Often schools are looking for potential, not accomplishment. If a combination isn’t perfect, that’s okay as long as you gave it a good try with a happy demeanor. Try to also pick up any nuance when the teacher is demonstrating the combination. What accents are they using in the music? How are they holding their hands and head? Be open to change and to trying something new. Deanna Seay PAY ATTENTION TO THE DETAILS! Watch everything the teacher does when demonstrating a combination and listen to everything the teacher may say. These details are part of what the teacher will be trying to teach the student, so the students need to prove that they are responsive, receptive and truly interested. Some teachers will be very specific about where students stand and how they enter or exit the dancing space and it is important to understand and adhere to their wishes. When changing groups, students need to walk into formation quickly and place themselves immediately in the starting position. Students should appear neatly dressed. Female ballet students need to wear pink tights and a conservatively colored leotard. Black is traditional and the best choice. Men need to wear the traditional black tights and white t-shirt, which needs to be tucked in. Absolutely under no circumstances should the student wear any sort of cover-ups. Shoes, whether flat shoes or pointe shoes, need to be properly sewn and all drawstrings, ribbons and elastics should be tied and tucked out of sight. Hair should be securely pulled away from the face in a bun, French twist or other practical, yet attractive, shape. What does a summer intensive cost? Students at Cary Ballet Conservatory’s Intensive Summer Training Program. Deanna Seay Families with students wishing to attend a five-week summer ballet intensive will need to prepare to spend about $5,000 for tuition, room and board. A few smaller programs may cost $1,000-2,000 less. Many programs offer financial aid and scholarships, so it is good to ask. Peter Stark. On average most ballet summer intensive programs run about $1,000 per week, including tuition, room and board. However, this can vary greatly and many full and partial scholarships can offset some of that cost. What benefits, aside from technical and artistic, are there to attending a summer dance intensive? Peter Stark Hearing the same correction from a different teacher can open a young dancers’ perspective greatly. Of course, each teacher also has new information that can improve a dancer technically and artistically. Summer programs also pool talent from smaller schools. Students learn from each other and being surrounded by talent can be motivational and create lasting connections through one’s performance career. Many dancers enter the field professionally at 18 and it is a big adjustment to be away from home. A summer program can start to prepare a dancer to be self-sufficient and strong in a new setting. Deanna Seay Aside from the artistic and technical improvement that is often seen during intense summer ballet sessions (attributed to the concentration of class hours), students have a chance to meet other like-minded students and make new friends. The student can become re-inspired by seeing himself/herself in a new setting. These summer programs also expose the student to other students from other schools, and can help the student identify where she stands in relation to her peers. Alexei Kremnev and Amanda McAlpine Attending a summer dance intensive helps a dancer grow and mature in many ways. Often times, students form lasting friendships, make valuable connections, gain confidence and widen their perspectives. Taken from the Dance Magazine.

Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks (HWSN) Management

Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks (HWSN) Management A Key Management Establishment Scheme in Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks (HWSN) Premamayudu B, Venkata rao K, and Suresh Varma P Abstract: Key management is the one of the fundamental requirement for securing the hierarchical wireless sensor networks (HWSN) and also prevents adversarial activities. This paper presents a new pairwise key management scheme using matrix for HWSNs. In HWSN, cluster headers are more powerful than cluster members in all the resources like power, storage, communication and processing data. This heterogeneity alleviates the overhead of cluster members during the key establishment. All the expensive computations can be given to cluster headers in the network. Compared with other popular key management schemes, our scheme has many advantages in consuming the resources. The experiment and analysis show that our scheme can maintain the full network connectivity, easy configuration management, neighbor cluster members directly establish pairwise keys during the communication and reduce storage overhead. Keywords: Pairwise key, Symmetric matrix, Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks, Key establishment. 1. Introduction A wireless sensor networks build with a large number of sensors, which are equipped with batteries, sensing, communication unit, data processing and radio communication unit. At present any real time applications implementing on wireless sensor networks, like home automation, environment monitoring, military or security areas, targeting and target tracking systems, agriculture monitoring system and battlefield surveillance. However all the applications need protection in all the level of the sensor network. The wireless connectivity, the interaction among the sensor nodes, data gathering and query processing and physical protection. If the sensors are equipped with built-in tamper-resistance mechanisms, the memory chips are still suffering from various memory read-out vulnerabilities [1]. Key management is the mechanism to provide the security in all the levels of the wireless sensor networks. Since sensor nodes in WSNs have constrains in their computational power and memory capability and security. The solutions of traditional networks like computer networks, ad hoc networks, and wired networks are not suitable for WSNs. The goal of key management in WSNs is to solve the problem of creating, distributing and protecting those secret keys. Hence, the feasible and reliable techniques for key management and distribution of these keys are of major importance for the security in WSNs. The trusted server scheme [9] is not suitable for sensor networks because there is no trusted infrastructure in sensor networks. The self-enforcing scheme [10] is also not suitable due to the limited computation and energy resources of sensor nodes often make it undesirable to use public key algorithms, such as Diffie-Hellman key agreement. The third type of key agreement scheme is key pre-distribution. There exist a number of key predistribution schemes which do not depend on a priori deployment knowledge. A naive solution is to let all the nodes carry a master secret key. This scheme does not exhibit desirable network resilience: if one node is compromised, the security of the entire sensor network will be compromised. Another key pre-distribution scheme is to let each sensor carry N − 1 secret pairwise keys [3], each of which is known only to this sensor and one of the other N − 1 sensors (assuming N is the total number of sensors). The resilience of this scheme is per fect. But this scheme is impractical for sensors with an extremely limited amount of memory because N could be large. Moreover, adding new nodes to a pre-existing sensor network is difficult because the existing nodes do not have the new nodes’ keys. Eschenauer and Gligor [7], proposed a random key pre-distribution scheme each sensor node receives a random subset of keys from a large key space pool, to agree on a key for communication, two nodes find one common (shared) key within their subsets and use that key as their shared secret key. The problem with this scheme is that when we pick a large key pool, the connectivity of the sensor networks becomes low. In this paper, we will pick pairwise key pre-distribution scheme as the basic scheme and develop this scheme on the deployment model and show that knowledge regarding the sensor deployment can help us improve the performance of a pairwise key predistribution scheme. 2. Related Work The fundamental work is introduced by Blom, who proposed a KPS allowing any pair of nodes to establish pairwise key directly [12]. The set of keys generated from A.G in Blom’s Scheme as a key-space, Du et al.[13] improved Blom’s scheme using Vandermonde matrix G, and employing multiple key-space KPS. Nodes may be deployed following a pre-defined method in certain situations. In nodes deployment using pairplane [14], for example, sensors nodes are partitioned into a sequence of groups and dropped out of the pairplane sequentially as the airplane flies forward. It is easy to see that sensor groups that are dropped next to each other have a better chance to be close to each other after deployment. By exploiting deployment knowledge in such situations, Du et al. [14] extended Eschenauer-Gligor’s scheme and proposed a key management scheme. Du et al. further extended the scheme in [13] and proposed a new KPS using deployment knowledge [15]. Other relevant works include Eschenauer and Gligor’s random KPS [10], Chan et al.’s q-composite random KPS [11], etc. 3. Our Key Establishment Scheme in HWSNs 3.1. Network Model: There are three types of nodes in our key establishment scheme, namely Base Station (BS), Cluster Header (H-Sensor) and Cluster Member (L-Sensor). Base Station operated completely in secured environment. In the case of H-Sensor and L-Sensor are not operated in the secure area. If the sensor nodes are captured by adversaries, whole material can be accessible. We adopt the maximum energy cluster head (MECH) protocol for our network architecture [1]. As shown in Figure 1, in the MECH architecture, the sensors automatically organized into some clusters and act as two types of nodes in the network: cluster heads and cluster member nodes. In each cluster, one node as a H (H-Sensor) manages the it’s associated cluster and forward the information from member nodes to the base station (BS). MECH constructs clusters according to the radio signal range and the number of cluster nodes. The nodes distribution is more equally in all the clusters in the network. This distribution does not ex ceed a certain threshold. BS: Base Station H: Cluster Head L: Cluster Member Figure 1: Architecture of heterogeneous Sensor Networks 3.2. Assumptions (i) All nodes are static (ii) Each sensor has unique ID assigned by Base Station (iii) If a sensor is compromised, whole material in the node is accessible (iv)The Base Station can communicate with Cluster Heads 3.3. Basic Scheme Our scheme is completely variant form the Blom’s Scheme [12]. This scheme is completely modified in the way of usage and generating matrices. 3.3.1. System Setup There are N sensor nodes to be deployed in the network including Cluster Heads and Base Station, and ÃŽ » be the security parameter. Base Station selects N distinct key seeds s1,s2,†¦..,sN from the Finite Field GFq, where q is the prime number. Every seed si mapped with a identifier idi. Base Station generates a secret (ÃŽ »+1)Ãâ€"N matrix G G is a secret matrix in our scheme. It is compressed with selected seed from the Finite Field GFq. 3.3.2. Key pre-distribution (i) Base Station generates the secret symmetric matrix (ÃŽ »+1)Ãâ€"(ÃŽ »+1) form GFq, and Computes the public matrix A=(D.G) ­Ã‚ ­T. (ii) Base Station pre loads each key seed si and its identifier idi to the ith sensor node including Cluster Heads and also stores ith row from the matrix A. 3.3.3. Pairwise Key Establishment After deployment, each sensor node broadcast its key seed identifier idi to its neighbors. Any two neighbor nodes can establish pairwise keys directly. Let the ith node and the jth node want to establish a pairwise key to secure the communication channel. Calculation at ith node: The ith column of matrix G using its key seed si: (si,si2,†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.,siÃŽ »+1) And (aj1,aj2,†¦..,aj(ÃŽ »+1)) be the jth row of the matrix A, which loaded before deployment by BS. The ith node calculates the pairwise key with jth node denoted as kji. kij=(aj1,aj2,†¦..,aj(ÃŽ »+1)). (si,si2,†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.,siÃŽ »+1) kij= Calculation at jth node: The jth sensor node calculate the jth column of matrix G using its key seed sj: (sj,sj2,sj3,†¦..,sjÃŽ »+1) And (ai1,ai2,†¦..,ai(ÃŽ »+1)) be the ith row of matrix A, loaded by the BS. The jth node calculate the pairwise key kij as kij= It remains to show that kij=kij, because the matrix k=A.G is a symmetric matrix. i.e kij calculated by the cluster member i is same as kij calculated by cluster member j. The same process is applied for cluster heads to establish pairwise key between them to establish secure communication. 4. Implementation 4.1. Setup Phase Let the number of nodes in the network be 6(N=6), Secure Property ÃŽ »=3, prime number q=29 and 6 distinct key seeds {5, 8, 15, 4, 2, 17} 4.2. Key pre-distribution Secret Symmetric matrix (D), Secretly stored in the Base Station (BS). A=(D.G)T mod 29 A= Once Matrix A is calculated, Base Station pre loads key seed and a row from the matrix A into sensor node based on its identifier. The rows of matrix A represent the private keys of each node. 4.3. Key Generation Suppose consider two nodes, node 1 and node 5 wish to communicate with each other. Then node 1 and 4 need to calculate the shared secret key(pairwise key). In order to calculate the pairwise key, node 1 will multiply the assigned row A(1) which is from A and column G(4) which is calculated from the seed key value of node 4. The seed key values is broadcasted each other during shared key generation. Similarly node 4 multiplies its row A(4) with the seed key value of node 1. K1,4=2596 mod 29 =15 K4,1=156905 mod 29=15 It is observed that both nodes generate a common key and further communication between them will make use of the pairwise key. The matrix K represents as shown below has the symmetric nature, because of the matrix D. Hence any pair of nodes can have the common key such that Ki,j=Kj,i. K=(A.G) mod 29 5. Analysis 5.1. Local Connectivity Local connectivity addresses the size of key space between any neighbors. In our scheme, any pair of nodes can directly establish the shared key, under assumptions noted in the proposed scheme. Our scheme local connectivity is 1. 5.2. Resilience against node capture attacks Our scheme is providing ÃŽ »-security property to the network. If more than ÃŽ » nodes are compromised then only it is possible to calculate the keys of others, which means that to find the k symmetric matrix. Even ÃŽ »-1 nodes compromised, it not possible to predicate the other node key seed values. Our scheme achieves a high level of resilience against node capture attacks. 5.3. Computation Complexity Our scheme needs 2ÃŽ »+1 multiplication operations in the field of GFq: ÃŽ » multiplications to calculate a column of G matrix with given key seed and ÃŽ »+1 multiplication to calculate the inner product of corresponding row-column pairs. Pairwise key establishment between neighbor nodes requires 2ÃŽ »+1 multiplication operations. If the ÃŽ » value is large to protect the network, it increases the computational complexity. We have made analysis between our scheme and Blom’s scheme on the computations complexity. From Fig. 2 we can see computations effort for 6 nodes under different Finite Field (FGq) ranging from 0-50, 0-100, 0-150, 0-200, 0-250, 0-300, 0-350. The analysis carried out with the network size of 6 nodes and security property (ÃŽ ») 3. Figure 2. Computational Complexity for a Network with 6 nodes 5.4. Communication Complexity In pairwise key establishment phase, sensor nodes need to broadcast a key seed identifier idi. All the materials required to generate pairwise key are loaded in the sensor node before deployment. But other key establishment schemes should perform other phases to generate a shared key between neighbors like path key establishment, rekeying, and broadcasting row values from the public matrix A. It leads to more communication overhead. But in case of our scheme has very low communication overhead. Compare to space complexity, our scheme consuming little more space than other schemes [5,6]. The space complexity depends on the value of ÃŽ », if the ÃŽ » value is reasonably small, then space complexity is very similar to the other schemes. 6. Conclusion This paper presents the new pairwise key establishment scheme for heterogeneous wireless sensor network using the symmetric propriety of matrices. Our scheme achieves very light communication and computation complexity. The nature of heterogeneity made reasonable results in the analysis. 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