Case Assignment: Disney the Happiest Brand on Earth

REPORT 1 CASE ASSIGNMENT: Disney The Happiest Brand on Earth In 2006, Disney’s Pixar released the hit movie Cars, which grossed $462 million worldwide. Since then, Cars merchandise has generated over $2 billion in sales each year. Pixar has since created a series of Cars shorts to be aired on the Disney Channel with a subsequent DVD release. A Cars sequel is in the works for 2011, and an online virtual gaming world is set to release 2009. In 2012, Disney’s California Adventure theme park will open its 12-acre Cars Land attraction.At Disney, the brand is the name of the game, and cross-platform success of the Cars franchise is by no means the exception to the rule. Disney also has the Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, High School Musical, the Disney Princesses, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the list goes on and on. The man behind the magic is Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, who has lead a dramatic revitalization of the Disney brand since succeeding longtime head Michael Eis ner in 2005. When he first took the post, his strategy shifted Disney’s focus around its stable of â€Å"franchises. These franchises are distributed across Disney’s multiple company platforms and divisions, such as Disney’s various television broadcasts platforms (the Disney Channel, ABC, ESPN), its consumer products business, theme parks, Disney’s Hollywood Records music label, and Disney’s publishing arm in Hyperion, just to name a few. Iger’s franchise strategy has been supported by the other major move he made upon first becoming CEO. On his first day on the job, Iger told the board that revitalizing Disney’s animation business was a top priority, which would be improved through the purchase of Pixar.As part of Iger’s franchise strategy the deal made perfect sense, as many of Disney’s latest TV shows, Disneyland rides, and merchandise were based on Pixar characters. Finding a new market to push the Disney franchise became a priority as well. With the Disney brand growing flat, it was becoming evident that Disney had missed some opportunities for broader success due to a narrowing of its target market, which was at the time largely associated with younger children.Iger’s first move was to broaden Disney’s viewership by moving the Disney Channel from premium to basic cable and launching local versions in key global markets. Then, Disney began pushing franchises to capture the rapidly growing tween market. Putting its support behind the Disney channel’s High School Musical and Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers, who were emerging out of Disney’s music label, Disney quickly generated a series of franchise juggernauts in the tween girl market.Though Disney’s focus has remained on family-friendly fair, Iger has shown a new willingness to look to even broader markets if they fit with the Disney brand. Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, the first Disney fi lm with a PG-13 rating, based off the classic theme park ride, played a major role in refocusing the brand, and it also helped expand the Disney appeal to older kids and even adults. The Pirates and Cars franchises also provided preliminary steps for Disney’s latest endeavors to crack the tween boy market, one traditionally difficult for media companies to sustainably capture.Their efforts focus around the new Disney XD channel, which has a broad range of offerings, such as potential new franchises like the science fiction action-adventure show Aaron Stone and showcases of new musical talent. Disney will also be able to leverage ESPN to create original sports- based programming. The channel will be accompanied by a Disney XD Web site, which will promote the channel’s programs, as well as offer games and original videos, social networking, and online community opportunities.As it continues to expand and provide new franchise offerings, Disney looks to have relatively st rong momentum, even in the midst of rising economic challenges. As Steve Jobs, Apple CEO and Disney board member, puts it, â€Å"Family is a renewable resource,† and right now, Disney is making the most of it. SOURCES: Richard Siklos, â€Å"Bob Iger Rocks Disney,† Fortune, January 19, 2009, 80–86; Peter Sanders, â€Å"Disney Focuses on Boys,† The Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2009, available at ttp://online. wsj. com/article/SB123137513996262627. html (accessed January 14, 2009). 1. Do a brief market opportunity analysis for Disney, identifying the major markets that Disney has expanded into. 2. How does Disney’s cross-platform franchising help create sustainable competitive advantage? 3. Describe the marketing mix for one of Disney’s franchises. 4. Describe the major components of Bob Iger’s strategic plan when he first became CEO.

History of American Highways Essay

Highways are very important in every country, in every place. It is often termed as the sign of civilization or development of a place. That is undeniably true because a good highway or road system of a certain place means that the government, may it is local or national, have the resources to put up nice highways and national roads. It also signifies that a place is a place where many people are going. It means that there is something there that needs to have a nice highway. Most people want a very nice highway to drive to. They hate those bumpy roads because they find it annoying. That is why the government of every country makes the construction of highways as one of their priorities. Good highways are also beneficial for trade and industry because it attracts investors. There is development in the economy if the highways or roads are well furnished. People, especially investors always look at the means of access to a specific place. So it is a big factor if the highways are good and not. Through the years highways in almost every country serve as the cultivator of culture and development. There are numerous highways hat became historical because of its contribution to our society. But there are things that should be factored in whenever there is a highway or road that needs to be built. There are the environmental issues because it is a very big factor to consider the locale of the highway. More often than not, people forget the convenience highways could bring. An example is that, like what I have mentioned earlier there could be a boost in the economy because the easy access to a place attracts a lot of investors, not to mention that there will emerge some small businesses that would cater to the needs of the travelers who have traveled very far just to do to wherever their destination is. United States of America is one of the developed countries. It can be seen that the highways in this country is very well put up. In this country, you can find the almost never-ending highways that connect almost every city. The access from one place to another is a bit easy because of the highways. There are songs that were composed which are inspired by the highways. The motorists or travelers find so much fun in traveling that they do not mind the long travelers because in the first place they find comfort in it because they are not faced with bumpy roads. Indeed, through the years, every highway in the US has contributed a lot in the lives of every people and to the country itself. History of the Highway System in United States The US Highway System is considered as the first nationwide network of number system in the world. It is an essential part of the American history in the 20th Century because it inspired a lot of things from different perspective. Is inspired the composition of new songs, shows in the television, and the creation of motels and fast food restaurant. It is also considered as one of the components that US is really a country which innovate to make impossible things possible because it made the access to one State to another easy. It is also a factor in the development of the roads in California to be world class. Through the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1925, the US Highway System was born. It is the answer to the unorganized creation of almost 250 named highways. Through this Act, the road that were considered insignificant before were transformed into roads that would connect every city making a long stretch of highways or roads. But the numbering of highway system has raised a lot of issues because many people disagree on the idea because it will make the highways cold and impersonal. But the government did not stop, they assigned the American Association of State Highway Officials or AASHO which is now AASHTO to handle the system. Highways That Gave Impact to America Highway is a term often used to address major roads which are used for travel by every people going to wherever they would go. Its designs are different and it may have the characteristics of freeways and motorways. It could also be characterized with two-lane, shoulder less road. It is the US which has the biggest network of national highways that include Interstate Highways and the Numbered Highways. It is present in all State which also connects almost all cities. There are different terms that denote highways such as but not limited to autobahn, auto route, expressway, freeway, and motorway. But these terms are different depending on the country or region. The term highway could have a lot of meaning. In US highway could be characterized by an important high-speed with limited-access road that is a connector of major cities, or it could be any road. The Pan-American Highway is considered as the longest international highway, and the largest national highway system can be found in the US as well as the widest highway which is in Houston Texas, the Katy Freeway a part of Interstate 10. Other highways that gave a lot of impact to America are Route 66, National Road, Lincoln Highway, and Highway 41. The Lincoln Highway is considered as one of the roads or highways that contributed in the development of the Interstate Highways. It is the first transcontinental highway and also considered as the ancestor and model of other numbered highways. It is symbolized by ‘Good Roads’ which is the basis for the rallyists then to fight for the highway system. It is considered as the first successful highway that can be rallied on at any weather from coasts to coasts. It is the subject that fuelled the awareness of American people that the government should build highways and they should fund the development. In 1920, the Lincoln Highway just became another road because there are other transcontinental highways that were built. The funding from the government became easily granted as well. But the fact will never be forgotten – the Lincoln Highway was the venue for the celebrated caravan of the Army in 1919, it is were cross-country racers achieved their records that made them famous, there were songs and poems written pertaining to the road, at the end of the highway there you can find the banners of every hotels, restaurants, and the like. Other highway that impacted America is the US Route 66 which is also called Route 66, The Main Street of America, The Mother Road, Will Rogers Highway among others. It is part of the US Highway System which connects Chicago, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. It is the main path of every migrant who were going to the west especially during the height of Dust Bowl in 1930s. The highway attained much popularity that people have fought for its preservation. But in 1956 it has reached its end because of the then President Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway Act. One of the remaining parts of Route 66 is the Veterans Parkway.

Bank Failures over Last 25 Years Essay

The banks began to fail because of misappropriation of funds and loose lending practices to the majority of the US citizens living above their means. The government estimated 2,657 closures from bank failures from 1987 to 2012 (http://bankvibe. com). Currently, there is a total 7,074 FDIC insured banks (http://www. mybankertracker. com/banks). This caused was from credit stipulations were lowered to allow the subpar credit working Americans to obtain personal loans, car, homes or other amenities. Most banks were very stable but were not prepared for the financial bubble to burst in the distance near future. Moreover, in my experience with working for a few financial institutions, I observed the credit parameters amended to fit a customer’s financial state. These loans stipulations were as follows: no documentation, no income, no assets, or no verification job; underwriting went only off credit score in some cases. The small, mid-size, and corporate banks are all competing for the public’s business which caused disarray of bad banking decisions. Hence, the banks that failed from 1987 until present time in researching last 25 years; we don’t read much about these failures in our daily newspapers, simply just; there is an over abundant of banks failures every day and this has become very common (www. davemanuel. com/history-of-bank-failures-in-the-united-states. php) Nevertheless, these banking behaviors caused a massive failure of mortgage banks and commercial banks. This caused the government to become very involved when Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were affected by these lending behaviors (Johnson, 2010, p. 4-28). My research will display the trend of failing banks over the last 25 years and data will give insight on the numbers of banks. The Federal Reserve had centralized banking responsibility to save the banks, they deemed too big to fail. The depositors decide to simultaneously withdraw their funds from banks, which resulted in a bank panic. If several banks experience these actions at same time, this throws the banks into a bank panic. The Feds loan the banks money at a discounted rate to sustain these indiscretions (Hubbard & O’brien, 2010, p. 37). Consequently, the US Congress started holding hearings, and questioning these huge corporate banks whose bonuses, incentives, and other loose business practices. These banks closed, sold, or merged with other banks to survive inevitable reality of failing (NAOAKI, 2011, p29). The investment banks were also involved in the buying and selling of bundled mortgages, investments, or other banking products to raise their capital. Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Countrywide were guilty of such practices as seen all over the TV national news. These companies have been either sold or closed down after the hearings on Capitol Hill. Currently, In order to resolve this crisis, banks have drastically changed their lending practice and the closure of failing banks has slowed down. Corporate banks were also beginning to receive stimulus funds to save them from failing. The government found themselves in a position of using the Feds to prevent catastrophic melt down of financial industry. The 12 districts are replenished to keep the general public getting loans; thus, keeping money in circulation (Hubbard & O’brien, 2010, p. 438). All banks did not take the stimulus funds, but devised a plan to prevent failure. Therefore, banks had to pay back the loans in the billions, but were not charged interest if they paid the funds back early. The small to mid-size banks were left to fail, because they were not too big to fail. A double standard was shown to small businesses the backbone of America (http://economics. bout. com/). A bank of ineffective practices has shown small mom and pop banks they should not try to compete with Corporate Banking in America. They are not going to be bailed out, and allowed to fail. These small or mid-size banks are microeconomics not in macroeconomics equation of America big businesses. In conclusion, the bank failures are significant to our economy tremendously regardless the size, from the housing market, investments, or checking/savings accounts. The Feds saved the banks worth saving to boost the economy and slow down inflation. Perhaps, further research conducted to answer the following questions, and ask the questions: Do you think if people were given the stimulus funds instead of the banking institutions? What kind of economic boost would banks have, if the citizens were given stimulus funds? How does the government determine who receives funds to survive a financial set back? Why are parts of corporate America deemed too big to fail?

Teaching Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Teaching - Assignment Example Intuitive-Feeling SELF-EXPRESSIVE Sensing-Feeling INTERPERSONAL Prefers to Learn by: -Seeing tangible results -practicing what he has learned -following directions one step at a time -being active rather than passive -knowing exactly what is expected of her, how well the task must be done and why Studying about ideas and how things are related Planning and carrying out a project of his own making and interest Arguing or debating a point based on logical analysis Problem solving that requires collecting, organizing, and evaluating data Studying about things that directly affect people's lives rather tha impersonal facts and theories Receiving personal attention and encouragement from his teachers Being part of a team-collaborating with other students Activities that help her learn about herself and how she feels about things Being creative and using his imagination Planning and organizing her work in her own creative ways Working on a number of things at one time' Searching for alternative solutions to problems beyond those normally considered Discussing real problems and looking for real solutions Learns Best From: Drill demonstration Practice Hand-on experience Lectures Reading Logical discussions and debates Group experiences and projects Loving attention Personal expression and personal encounters Role playing Creative and artistic activities Open-ended discussions of personal and social values Activities that enlighten and enhance-myths, human achievement, dramas,etc. Likes Doing things that have immediate, practical use Being acknowledged for thoroughness and detail Praise for prompt and complete work Immediate feedback(rewards, priviledges,etc) Time to plan and organize her work Working independently or with other intuitive- Working with ideas and...To write down the steps of baking in order is one thing and to bake it is another thing. The scheme of work is challenging enough for those talented individuals or those in the Intuitive-feeling (self-expressive) and Sensing-Feeling (interpersonal) style of disposition. While for those gifted or those in the Sensing-Thinking (mastery) and Intuitive Thinker (understanding) style of disposition, this is too challenging. The scheme of work for the year 8 is more on practical works, rather than thinking. The talented individuals are being prioritized; the course offers them the expressions of their ideas, kinesthetically, while the gifted individual's abilities are not well exercised. There should be additional measuring criteria involving them in fair percentage and ratings. c) Having 12 visual, 9 kinesthetic, 3 auditory students, is a difficult thing to assess inside the classroom, this is where you need to give special attention to the following students, not only for the dominant number but those who are left aside. The visuals deal with the spatial intelligence and are in favor of the lesson, since they can see most of the time the process of how to bake.

Border control for imigration Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Border control for imigration - Essay Example Strict border control laws are a need for today’s American society as such laws will provide protection to current workforce of America and to protect taxpayers right to access welfare. Body During the period of 1814, Francis Scott Key stated that the land of America is free and houses the bravest of all and today American society comprises of people belonging from different ethnic background (Hart 36). To a certain extend this has proven to be quite advantageous for the American society and its members, but now it is proving to hurt the already existing citizens of America. One of the reasons due to which the notion promoted by Francis Scott Key and poor border control policies has hurt the Americans is that due to increase in illegal immigration, the existing nationals of America face a higher fear of remaining unemployed. When illegal immigrants make to the American nation, they tend to take up jobs that do not require much skill set and the current citizens of US who are l ack skills to work in high paying jobs end up being jobless. According the census bureau of the nation under discussion, during the period of 2009, there were a total of more than 61k high school graduates belonging to different races and both male as well as female gender (United States Census Bureau 1). These fresh high school graduates lack skills and abilities as compared to the skills and abilities of college and bachelor level students and they are more likely to pursue careers in low paying jobs. If border control laws are not tightened then these high school students would fail to secure a careers and will fail to meet the needs of their own and their family members. Those who believe that strict border control is not essential defend their stance by stating that illegal immigration does not decrease employment opportunities for natives of US as the immigrants are not capable of speaking good English. For example: Peri states that although increase in immigrant population cr eate competition in areas of work where physical skills are required, but they cannot compete in areas where both physical and communication skills are required, thus native Americans have a competitive advantage over immigrants as they are well rehearsed with English speaking skills (Peri 165). Another issue with relaxed border control laws is that, these laws make the American taxpayers vulnerable and threatens their welfare. The United States have created a system through which it reimburses individuals for staying idle or they help those who are unemployed. This and several other benefits provided by the US for its citizens seem quite lucrative to people living in those nations where government does not contribute to the wellbeing of their citizens. In order to capitalize on such benefits, immigrants tend to move to United States from the host nations. Due to this, the tax payers who have tremendously added to the treasury of the United States for so many years end up being limi ted from their right of attaining welfare receipts as the welfare system even aids those who are not legally living in US. Those who contradict strict border laws state that the illegal immigrants add instead of eating the subsidy provided by the government. For example:

Art Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 5

Art - Assignment Example This is just one detail that illustrates the more rugged lifestyle that he lives. His clothing also shows that he is not a well-dressed, civilized man of the eastern states, but instead wears leather and rough cloth as well as a beaten hat in a mixture of white man’s fashion with more Indian-style garb. He is not dressed for comfort or good looks, but rather for utility and difficult terrain and weather. The emotion in the picture has two polar ends. The rider is relaxed and wears an expression of serene dismay and his gaze is drawn to some object of concern. His horse, in contrast, is in a position of motion and exhaustion. The horse’s visible eye is bloodshot and wide-open, and also focused on something to the left that seems to be alarming. To add to the scenario, the rider clutches a rifle in his right hand. The overall idea seems to be that his life is a struggle, and that he lives dangerously. The painting is not so much detailed as blurred, and again suggests motion rather than stillness. Thus, Deas conveys an image of a man who lives on the go and is constantly looking over his shoulder while armed, representing the man of the Rocky Mountains and his daily

Management 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Management 2 - Essay Example Following Burns (2001) "entrepreneurs have become the staff of legends, "economic heroes" (Cannon 1991) increasing held in high esteem and held up as role models to be emulated" (6). The case of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs show that the main personal features of entrepreneurs are innovative ideas and creativity. For both men, new approaches to IT were innovative and resulted in economic value. Following Kamalanabhan et al (2006): "in comparison to the rest of the population, entrepreneurs tend to be more innovative in their attitude, but do not seem to have greater faith in the internal locus of control" (49). Thus, the innovations and changes have created new opportunities for Gates and Jobs, while creating challenges and threats to other companies. The established companies, Microsoft -IBM and Macintosh -Apple, have an entrepreneurial mindset based on knowledge and low cost solutions. For both companies, the real focus was on the innovation, being innovative, and the drive for indepe ndence. Their entrepreneurship was much more internally oriented in focus than marketing. All the aspects of the venture came together in order for a successful launch to occur. This aspect, as well as the other commonalities and differences, was often affected when external financing is involved. Microsoft relies on innovations when introduced new products with top priority to its standards-settings while "the history of I.B.M. is a history of failed attempts to impose standards by fiat" (Gates: Innovation, not greed, drives Internet 1998). Many entrepreneurs are afraid to obtain market input on their innovation due to their concern that the idea will be stolen and produced by someone else. Although this is indeed possible, since it rarely occurs it is much more important to assume any risks involved and interact with consumers obtaining valuable feedback throughout the new venture creation process. Similarly, smaller companies tend to have more direct interface with their customer s and potential customers than larger ones. This, in part, reflects the organizational structure and size. Small firms place more emphasis on their relationship with their customers, particularly when only a few customers account for 80 percent or more of their sales, which is frequently the case (Burns 45-46). Steve Jobs explains his life philosophy as: "too many obstacles come up in front of "ideas" that kill progress, perseverance/passion is the bridge that overcomes obstacles and brings ideas to life" (Perseverance = Entrepreneurship 2007). Great enthusiasm and energy of Gates and Jobs inspire their subordinates to introduce new changes and create innovative solutions. Their power is based on the subordinate's perception of the leader as some one who is competent and who has some special knowledge and expertise in a given area. The examples of Jobs and Gates show that entrepreneurship is usually based on customer orientation - the customer should be the focal point. Entrepreneurship has a "deal" mentality, the deal being a central factor in conceiving and developing a new venture for the entrepreneur and closing a sale for the marketing manager. Entrepreneurship involves the

Jordanian cuisine Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Jordanian cuisine - Essay Example Lamb and chicken meat is the most preferred choice of meat. Men and women do not dine together and eating with the right hand is the preferred method. The flavors include grains, cheese, herbs, fresh and dried fruits, yoghurt and spices. A team of professional chefs and local women camp at Petra kitchen in Petra to offer cookery lessons in making traditional Jordanian cuisine. Though the menu varies with seasons, a wide range of delicious dishes, mezze plates, a main dish, dessert or fresh fruits, bread (Shrak), and coffee dominates a Jordanian cuisine. The staple food of Jordan is Mansaf that takes hours in preparing and feasting. It consists of a lamb cooked in yoghurt, lightly spiced, seasoned with aromatic herbs, and served with rice. They reserved Mensef that is a Bedouin feast and the pride of Jordanian cuisine for special occasions like weddings. The preparation of Mensef entails the roasting of a whole sheep, serving huge chunks of the roasted meat with rice, yoghurt, and fried nuts on a huge plate. They also reserved a delicacy of softly cooked eyes for the guests of honor. Stuffed baby Lamb is also a popular dish in the traditional Jordan enjoyed as a main meal. It comprises a roasted lamb, nuts, rice, raisins, and chopped onions (The Hashemite kingdom of Jordan Web). There is a variety of kebabs in the Jordanian cuisine. Knafeh is the main dessert in a Jordanian cuisine and comprises of white cheese covered with sweet syrup and gooey. Jordanian wine is also acceptable in a Jordanian cuisine (Responsible travel Web). Cooking a Jordanian Cuisine is however easy and fun and requires no special equipment. Due to its delicious nature and simplicity in cooking, the Jordanian Cuisine has spread in Europe as well as maintaining its traditional aspects in

Marketing Communications Proposal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Marketing Communications Proposal - Essay Example From business context, the organization seeks to create new job opportunities in order to increase its workforce. At the same time, the existing employees will be motivated by offering them bonuses and job security. The plan revolves around increasing and expanding the regional network and increasing additional employees, which would allow the organization to build relations with the regional businesses. The banking industry is fiercely competitive ( Bettelley, 105, 2006). However, Alliance and Leicester offers new job opportunities, job security and bonuses as compared to its competitors. In the year 2006, Alliance and Leicester has introduced the â€Å"the first UK high street bank to offer user-to-site, site-to-user authentication for all of its online customers† (A&L Targets Small Businesses, p. 5, 2009). At the same time, â€Å"The solution, provided by Alliance and Leicester allows customers to log in to their online accounts in a simple and secure way† (A&L Targets Small Businesses, p. 7, 2009). Keeping these two points in mind, marketing experts and professionals have been hired in order to increase more than half million users in the next six months. The stakeholders of Alliance and Leicester include local networks, international networks, regular clients, etc. the present employees of Alliance and Leicester represent the entire organization and therefore it is essential to create awareness of its online banking services among its customers. The organization wishes to implement â€Å"risk based, behind the scenes authentication† (Bennett, 106, 2003) in order to ensure that the user becomes familiar with the entire process, when using his or her online banking account. At the same time, Alliance and Leicester is the first bank, which would assist the customers to identify it, when they use its online banking services (Cope, p. 22, 2006). The employees will ensure that the

Culture and purchase intention for luxury consumption Literature review

Culture and purchase intention for luxury consumption - Literature review Example ect of culture has become more relevant in the globalized world where organizations are targeting the international market in a strategy to increase their revenue. Cultural aspects such as attitude, religions, behavior and information-access influence the consumer decision making process. The hospitality and tourism industry have faced a big challenge while targeting this portion of the customer profile as they enter new markets (Truong, McColl & Kitchen, 2009). Understanding the intention of consumers as they buy luxury products is a priority if such companies have to suit the needs of their target market. The purpose of this review is to establish cultural influence within the luxury market and how this may impact a tourism and hospitality industry. While there is a concession that different countries have different luxury consumption patterns, the influence of culture in this market still remains a contentious issue (Blevis et al., 2007). Secondly, the review seeks to analyze the customer intention and the way culture impacts on this intention within the luxury market. The priority of any managers is to satisfy customers, which can only be accomplished when companies understand customers’ purchase intentions. Through a critical review, the article will analyze the impact of culture and customer intention in the purchase of luxury brands and provide conclusions and implications for the analysis. Therefore, the article will provide a platform through which luxury companies can launch successful brands that satisfy the global luxury market. The luxury market has become one of the potential investment markets in the 21 century. Currently, the luxury market is estimated to have a value of over 300 billion Euros and statistic projections shows that the market is rapidly growing. The luxury market is expected to grow by more than 7% percent each year, which promises high revenue in the future of the market. Besides, countries such as Middle East that have shown

Of Mice and Men Essay Example for Free

Of Mice and Men Essay From reading Of Mice and Men sections one and two we know that George and Lennie’s relationship is a bit confusing as George mainly covers Lennie’s back. We also see that George can put Lennie down at times when George is annoyed at Lennie. Although from reading section three I can tell that their relationship is slowly becoming closer and a kinder one. Firstly, George is starting to make Lennie seem a little happier and to show him that he is not all bad at things. We can see this on page 43, line 4, ‘he’s sure of a good worker. Strong as a bull.’ This shows that George is at least trying to make Lennie feel good about himself. Another example of this can be seen again on page 43, line 11,’ he can do anything you tell him, said George. He’s a good skinner.’ This quote could mean that George really does deep down love Lennie as a friend. Secondly, the other hand George can be harsh to Lennie on the odd occasion where George is trying to be funny. A quote for this can be found on page 45, line 5,’ I wasn’t kicked in the head with no horse, was I, George? Be a darn good thing if you was, George said viciously. Save ever’ body or hell of a lot of trouble.’ We can tell from this that George tries to make himself laugh by saying bad things about Lennie. Thirdly, Lennie seems that he does not really seem to make a matter of that he is being treated badly by George sometimes. We can see this on page 43, line 7, ‘George scowled at him, and Lennie dropped his head in shame.’ This shows that he is upset by how he drops his head but doesn’t say anything back to try and defend himself. Shows that he is getting bullied by George a bit. Fourthly and finally another way their relationship builds up is how they always dream of the future and how they both want the best for each other also how they sort of know that it will be all good. I’m guessing that they will talk about the future a couple more times later on in the book. So from reading section 3 we can see that their relationship is very slowly getting better and their bond is getting tighter but George sometimes slows the relationship down, but can say good and positive things about Lennie on the odd occasion.

1950s America Speech Essay Example for Free

1950s America Speech Essay 1950s America Speech The 1950s were a remarkable time in the history of the United States of America. Many of the events that occurred during this time inspired and molded the future of an entire generation. The economy was booming, bringing millions of Americans into the middle class. Government, Business, and Unions worked together to keep the economy going, but I believed the biggest force in the economy in the 1950s decade is the consumers. â€Å"Consumer Culture† is a culture where consuming goods become a marker of social states and a way of creating meaning in the people’s lives. The demand of the consumers created many jobs for people. As a result there were millions of things the United States produced, and abundance of things to buy. America had the newest, coolest, popular car out like the Chevrolet Corvette and the Ford Thunderbird. America also produced the wristwatch, TVs, and the famous, girly toy in the world-the Barbie Doll. The best part was credit cards were invented around this time allowing consumers to buy now, and pay off later. Now with the economy going so great, there was a high cost in demand allowing jobs to be formed. Blue Color Jobs were people who are plumbers, bus-drivers, cab-drivers, warehouse workers and construction workers. White Color Jobs were people who are accountants, sales representatives and mid-management positions. In the 1950s women were the housewife and mostly stayed at home. However, in the late 50s women started to have jobs mostly like being teachers, nurses, stewardess, and secretaries. In 1950 the gross national product (also known as GNP) had $284. 6 billion dollars; the US was by far the largest economy in the world! By the end of the decade the GNP stood at $482. 7 billion dollars. The 1950s played a huge role in segregation. â€Å"Separate but equal† was a famous quote to allow segregation seem okay. In truth, African Americans were always separate but never equal. However, in 1948 armed services were officially desegregation. Schools weren’t desegregated yet. An African-American girl had to walk 2 miles get to a black school when a white school was only 6 blocks away. On May 17, 1954 with its Brown v. Board of Education decision, the U. S. Supreme Court ends segregation in public schools. This is the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. Just like today, Americans were sports crazy in the 1950s. Basketball, football, boxing were all typical sports that Americans loved, but one sport stood out of all of them. You guessed it; baseball. All these sports expanded in popularity due by technology and mass media such as television, magazines, and radio. Integration was spreading to sports allowing the famous, â€Å"Rookie of the Year†- Jackie Robinson to play baseball. Baseball remained the most popular of American sports mainly because the New York Yankees winning 7 out of 9 World Series. LEGOs building bricks were the most popular activity to do. It required imagination allowing the creator to build anything she/he wants to build. These LEGOs building bricks were for mainly children around 7 to 12 years of age. Skateboarding was a very popular activity for teenager during the 1950s. Fashion changes all the time. What’s interesting about the 1950s fashion is that it’s still acceptable nowadays. The teenage boys would were blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket. To form a â€Å"cool† look. The hair style has longer than usual hair allowing longer sideburns for guys. This fashion was mainly influenced by Elvis Plessey. Grown up men would wear suits, a tie, and a hat to top it off. Most of the men would carry a suitcase. This fashion is known as the business man. Fashion for teenage girls is more sophisticated. What was in† during the 1950s were the tight sweater for a top, poodle skirt (a long, full skirt with the image of a poodle on it), bobby socks (ankle-high socks) and saddle shoes (sturdy shoes with a contrasting band of color). Teenage girls wore their hair up in a ponytail and wore a lot of Make-up. The only difference in clothes between teen age girls and women is women didn’t wear the poodle skirt. Most women would wear a full-length dress and carry a purse. Music is everywhere; it’s only annoying when it’s stuck in your head and you hear it repeat over and over through-out the whole day. But something special happen in the 1950s; this was the decade Rock n’ Roll was introduced by â€Å"The King†-Elvis Plessey. Some of his famous songs include: Thats All Right Mama, Heartbreak Hotel, Viva Las Vegas and the one I have stuck in my head right now, You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog. Not only does Elvis introduce a new type of music, but also Influence teens such as appearance in fashion, and behavior. He also influenced future musicians such as the Beatles. Elvis Plessey is one of the most famous musician/ actor in the 1950s. Let the Rock n’ Roll rule forever. Booooom! The baby boom started in 1946 and stop in 1964. A baby boom is when any period marked by a greatly increased birth rate. The term baby boom most often refers to the dramatic post–World War II baby boom (1946–1964). There are an estimated 78. 3 million Americans who were born during this demographic boom in births. Reasons why people started to have babies all around the same time because: WW2 ended, people started to marry at a young, around the age of 20 was average and were ready to start a family. Science began to take off. In the 1950s Francis Crick and James Watson discover the double-helix structure of DNA. An immunization vaccine is produced for polio. The first successful ultrasound test of the heart activity was in the 1950s. The CERN is established. (European Organization for Nuclear Research) The worlds first nuclear power plant is opened in Obninsk near Moscow. NASA is organized. (Later on we have a â€Å"Space Race† with the Soviet). President Harry S. Truman inaugurated transcontinental television service on September 4, 1951 when he made a speech to the nation. ATT carried his address from San Francisco and it was viewed from the west coast to the east coast at the same time. One of the most popular cars in the 1950s was a Cadillac. If you owned one you would symbolize wealth, power, and success. Elvis Pressley owned a Cadillac and so did captains of their own, individual industry. Even Hollywood big-shots and the common worker who saved enough owned a Cadillac. For most people, the name Cadillac evokes images of the finned, chromed, and gadget-laden â€Å"Fabulous Fifties† models. These Cadillacs proved that America was emerging unscathed from the war and to the contrary, demonstrated a new-found prosperity which found expression in cars. For four decades starting from 1950, Cadillac had no series competition in the US market. The 1950s were â€Å"The Golden Age of Television†. Television was introduced to Americana in 1939 and began to gain a foothold after WW2. In the 1950s TV were and still are American’s source of entertainment. In the year of 1950, 5 million TVs were sold! In 1950, just fewer than 20% of American homes contained a TV set. Ten years later, nearly 90% of homes contained a TV-and some even had color TVs. The three major networks: NBC, CBS, ABC. Some of the top favorite TV shows: The Texaco Star Theater, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, I Love Lucy, The $64,000 Question, and Gunsmoke. Gradually, by the mid-fifties, there came electronic color television, which was followed by launching of remote control and transistorized television sets towards 1959. Thus, we can conclude that television in the 1950s brought an element of reality, news and fun for the people and also helped create a sense of awareness against all the social ills. The availability of movies and movie-related shows, reality shows, daily soaps and of course the news programs have made it the prime media of entertainment in every household. The 1950s truly were the decade of the TV. TVs allowed families to bond in the newly created suburbs. TVs also allowed advertisement. So in a way you’re communicating and discovering new products and news about what’s going on in the world. A women’s best friend is TV because around the 1950s women usually stayed at home and watched TV shows. The 1950s really had events and importance; also it isn’t much different from our lives today. Many of the events that occurred during this time inspired and molded the future of an entire generation.

Compression Techniques used for Medical Image

Compression Techniques used for Medical Image 1.1 Introduction Image compression is an important research issue over the last years. A several techniques and methods have been presented to achieve common goals to alter the representation of information of the image sufficiently well with less data size and high compression rates. These techniques can be classified into two categories, lossless and lossy compression techniques. Lossless techniques are applied when data are critical and loss of information is not acceptable such as Huffman encoding, Run Length Encoding (RLE), Lempel-Ziv-Welch coding (LZW) and Area coding. Hence, many medical images should be compressed by lossless techniques. On the other hand, Lossy compression techniques such as Predictive Coding (PC), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and Vector Quantization (VQ) more efficient in terms of storage and transmission needs but there is no warranty that they can preserve the characteristics needed in medical image processing and diagnosis [1-2]. Data compression is the process that transform data files into smaller ones this process is effective for storage and transmission. It presents the information in a digital form as binary sequences which hold spatial and statistical redundancy. The relatively high cost of storage and transmission makes data compression worthy. Compression is considered necessary and essential key for creating image files with manageable and transmittable sizes [3]. The basic goal of image compression is to reduce the bit rate of an image to decrease the capacity of the channel or digital storage memory requirements; while maintaining the important information in the image [4]. The bit rate is measured in bits per pixel (bpp). Almost all methods of image compression are based on two fundamental principles: The first principle is to remove the redundancy or the duplication from the image. This approach is called redundancy reduction. The second principle is to remove parts or details of the image that will not be noticed by the user. This approach is called irrelevancy reduction. Image compression methods are based on either redundancy reduction or irrelevancy reduction separately while most compression methods exploit both. While in other methods they cannot be easily separated [2]. Several image compression techniques encode transformed image data instead of the original images [5]-[6]. In this thesis, an approach is developed to enhance the performance of Huffman compression coding a new hybrid lossless image compression technique that combines between lossless and lossy compression which named LPC-DWT-Huffman (LPCDH) technique is proposed to maximize compression so that threefold compression can be obtained. The image firstly passed through the LPC transformation. The waveform transformation is then applied to the LPC output. Finally, the wavelet coefficients are encoded by the Huffman coding. Compared with both Huffman, LPC- Huffman and DWT-Huffman (DH) techniques; our new model is as maximum compression ratio as that before. However, this is still needed for more work especially with the advancement of medical imaging systems offering high resolution and video recording. Medical images come in the front of diagnostic, treatment and fellow up of different diseases. Therefore, nowadays, many hospitals around the world are routinely using medical image processing a nd compression tools. 1.1.1 Motivations Most hospitals store medical image data in digital form using picture archiving and communication systems due to extensive digitization of data and increasing telemedicine use. However, the need for data storage capacity and transmission bandwidth continues to exceed the capability of available technologies. Medical image processing and compression have become an important tool for diagnosis and treatment of many diseases so we need a hybrid technique to compress medical image without any loss in image information which important for medical diagnosis. 1.1.2 Contributions Image compression plays a critical role in telemedicine. It is desired that either single images or sequences of images be transmitted over computer networks at large distances that they could be used in a multitude of purposes. The main contribution of the research is aim to compress medical image to be small size, reliable, improved and fast to facilitate medical diagnosis performed by many medical centers. 1.2 Thesis Organization The thesis is organized into six chapters, as following: Chapter 2 Describes the basic background on the image compression technique including lossless and lossy methods and describes the types of medical images Chapter 3 Provides a literature survey for medical image compression. Chapter 4 Describes LPC-DWT-Huffman (proposed methods) algorithm implementation. The objective is to achieve a reasonable compression ratio as well as better quality of reproduction of image with a low power consumption. Chapter 5 Provides simulation results of compression of several medical images and compare it with other methods using several metrics. Chapter 6 Provides some drawn conclusions about this work and some suggestions for the future work. Appendix A Provides Huffman example and comparison between the methods for the last years. Appendix B Provides the Matlab Codes Appendix C Provides various medical image compression using LPCDH. 1.3 Introduction Image compression is the process of obtaining a compact representation of an image while maintaining all the necessary information important for medical diagnosis. The target of the Image compression is to reduce the image size in bytes without effects on the quality of the image. The decrease in image size permits images to save memory space. The image compression methods are generally categorized into two central types: Lossless and Lossy methods. The major objective of each type is to rebuild the original image from the compressed one without affecting any of its numerical or physical values [7]. Lossless compression also called noiseless coding that the original image can perfectly recover each individual pixel value from the compressed (encoded) image but have low compression rate. Lossless compression methods are often based on redundancy reduction which uses statistical decomposition techniques to eliminate or remove the redundancy (duplication) in the original image. Lossless Image coding is also important in applications where no information loss is allowed during compression. Due to the cost, it is used only for a few applications with stringent requirements such as medical imaging [8-9]. In lossy compression techniques there are a slight loss of data but high compression ratio. The original and reconstructed images are not perfectly matched. However, practically near to each other, this difference is represented as a noise. Data loss may be unacceptable in many applications so that it must be lossless. In medical images compression that use lossless techniques do not give enough advantages in transmission and storage and the compression that use lossy techniques may lose critical data required for diagnosis [10]. This thesis presents a combination of lossy and lossless compression to get high compressed image without data loss. 1.4 Lossless Compression If the data have been lossless compressed, the original data can be exactly reconstructed from the compressed data. This is generally used for many applications that cannot allow any variations between the original and reconstructed data. The types of lossless compression can be analyzed in Figure 2.1. Figure 2.1: lossless compression Run Length Encoding Run length encoding, also called recurrence coding, is one of the simplest lossless data compression algorithms. It is based on the idea of encoding a consecutive occurrence of the same symbol. It is effective for data sets that are consist of long sequences of a single repeated character [50]. This is performed by replacing a series of repeated symbols with a count and the symbol. That is, RLE finds the number of repeated symbols in the input image and replaces them with two-byte code. The first byte for the number and the second one is for the symbol. For a simple illustrative example, the string AAAAAABBBBCCCCC is encoded as A6B4C5; that saves nine bytes (i.e. compression ratio =15/6=5/2). However in some cases there is no much consecutive repeation which reduces the compression ratio. An illustrative example, the original data 12000131415000000900, the RLE encodes it to 120313141506902 (i.e. compression ratio =20/15=4/3). Moreover if the data is random the RLE may fail to achieve any compression ratio [30]-[49]. Huffman encoding It is the most popular lossless compression technique for removing coding redundancy. The Huffman encoding starts with computing the probability of each symbol in the image. These symbols probabilities are sorted in a descending order creating leaf nodes of a tree. The Huffman code is designed by merging the lowest probable symbols producing a new probable, this process is continued until only two probabilities of two last symbols are left. The code tree is obtained and Huffman codes are formed from labelling the tree branch with 0 and 1 [9]. The Huffman codes for each symbol is obtained by reading the branch digits sequentially from the root node to the leaf. Huffman code procedure is based on the following three observations: 1) More frequently(higher probability) occurred symbols will have shorter code words than symbol that occur less frequently. 2) The two symbols that occur least frequently will have the same length code. 3) The Huffman codes are variable length code and prefix code. For more indication Huffman example is presented in details in Appendix (A-I). The entropy (H) describes the possible compression for the image in bit per pixel. It must be noted that, there arent any possible compression ratio smaller than entropy. The entropy of any image is calculated as the average information probability [12]. (2.1) Where Pk is the probability of symbols, k is the intensity value, and L is the number of intensity values used to present image. The average code length is given by the sum of product of probability of the symbol and number of bits used to encode it. More information can be founded in [13-14] and the Huffman code efficiency is calculated as (2.2) LZW coding LZW (Lempel- Ziv Welch) is given by J. Ziv and A. Lempel in 1977 [51].T. Welchs refinements to the algorithm were published in 1984 [52]. LZW compression replaces strings of characters with single codes. It does not do any analysis of the input text. But, it adds every new string of characters to a table of strings. Compression occurs when the output is a single code instead of a string of characters. LZW is a dictionary based coding which can be static or dynamic. In static coding, dictionary is fixed during the encoding and decoding processes. In dynamic coding, the dictionary is updated. LZW is widely used in computer industry and it is implemented as compress command on UNIX [30]. The output code of that the LZW algorithm can be any arbitrary length, but it must have more bits than a single character. The first 256 codes are by default assigned to the standard character set. The remaining codes are assigned to strings as the algorithm proceeds. There are three best-known applications of LZW: UNIX compress (file compression), GIF image compression, and V.42 bits (compression over Modems) [50]. Area coding Area coding is an enhanced form of RLE. This is more advance than the other lossless methods. The algorithms of area coding find rectangular regions with the same properties. These regions are coded into a specific form as an element with two points and a certain structure. This coding can be highly effective but it has the problem of a nonlinear method, which cannot be designed in hardware [9]. 1.5 Lossy Compression Lossy Compression techniques deliver greater compression percentages than lossless ones. But there are some loss of information, and the data cannot be reconstructed exactly. In some applications, exact reconstruction is not necessary. The lossy compression methods are given in Figure 2.2. In the following subsections, several Lossy compression techniques are reviewed: Figure 2.2: lossy compression Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) Wavelet analysis have been known as an efficient approach to representing data (signal or image). The Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) depends on filtering the image with high-pass filter and low-pass filter.in the first stage The image is filtered row by row (horizontal direction) with two filters and and down sampling (keep the even indexed column) every samples at the filter outputs. This produces two DWT coefficients each of size N ÃÆ'-N/2. In the second stage, the DWT coefficients of the filter are filtered column by column (vertical direction) with the same two filters and keep the even indexed row and subsampled to give two other sets of DWT coefficients of each size N/2ÃÆ'-N/2. The output is defined by approximation and detailed coefficients as shown in Figure 2.3. Figure 2.3: filter stage in 2D DWT [15]. LL coefficients: low-pass in the horizontal direction and lowpass in the vertical direction. HL coefficients: high-pass in the horizontal direction and lowpass in the vertical direction, thus follow horizontal edges more than vertical edges. LH coefficients: high-pass in the vertical direction and low-pass in the horizontal direction, thus follow vertical edges than horizontal edges. HH coefficients: high-pass in the horizontal direction and high-pass in the vertical direction, thus preserve diagonal edges. Figure 2.4 show the LL, HL, LH, and HH when one level wavelet is applied to brain image. It is noticed that The LL contains, furthermore all information about the image while the size is quarter of original image size if we disregard the HL, LH, and HH three detailed coefficients shows horizontal, vertical and diagonal details. The Compression ratio increases when the number of wavelet coefficients that are equal zeroes increase. This implies that one level wavelet can provide compression ratio of four [16]. Figure 2.4: Wavelet Decomposition applied on a brain image. The Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) of a sequence consists of two series expansions, one is to the approximation and the other to the details of the sequence. The formal definition of DWT of an N-point sequence x [n], 0 à ¢Ã¢â‚¬ °Ã‚ ¤ n à ¢Ã¢â‚¬ °Ã‚ ¤ N à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ 1 is given by [17]: (2.3) (2.4) (2.5) Where Q (n1 ,n2) is approximated signal, E(n1 ,n2) is an image, WQ (j,k1,k2) is the approximation DWT and W µ (j,k1,k2) is the detailed DWT where i represent the direction index (vertical V, horizontal H, diagonal D) [18]. To reconstruct back the original image from the LL (cA), HL (cD(h)), LH (cD(v)), and HH (cD(d)) coefficients, the inverse 2D DWT (IDWT) is applied as shown in Figure 2.5. Figure 2.5: one level inverse 2D-DWT [19]. The equation of IDWT that reconstruct the image E () is given by [18]: (2.6) DWT has different families such as Haar and Daupachies (db) the compression ratio can vary from wavelet type to another depending which one can represented the signal in fewer number coefficients. Predictive Coding (PC) The main component of the predictive coding method is the Predictor which exists in both encoder and decoder. The encoder computes the predicted value for a pixel, denote xˆ (n), based on the known pixel values of its neighboring pixels. The residual error, which is the difference value between the actual value of the current pixel x (n) and x ˆ (n) the predicted one. This is computed for all pixels. The residual errors are then encoded by any encoding scheme to generate a compressed data stream [21]. The residual errors must be small to achieve high compression ratio. e (n) = x (n) xˆ (n)(2.7) e (n) =x(n) (2.8) Where k is the pixel order and ÃŽÂ ± is a value between 0 and 1 [20]. The decoder also computes the predicted value of the current pixel xˆ  (n) based on the previously decoded color values of neighboring pixels using the same method as the encoder. The decoder decodes the residual error for the current pixel and performs the inverse operation to restore the value of the current pixel [21]. x (n) = e (n) + xˆ  (n)(2.9) Linear predictive coding (LPC) The techniques of linear prediction have been applied with great success in many problems of speech processing. The success in processing speech signals suggests that similar techniques might be useful in modelling and coding of 2-D image signals. Due to the extensive computation required for its implementation in two dimensions, only the simplest forms of linear prediction have received much attention in image coding [22]. The schemes of one dimensional predictors make predictions based only on the value of the previous pixel on the current line as shown in equation. Z = X D(2.10) Where Z denotes as output of predictor and X is the current pixel and D is the adjacent pixel. The two dimensional prediction scheme based on the values of previous pixels in a left-to-right, top-to-bottom scan of an image. In Figure 2.6 X denotes the current pixel and A, B, C and D are the adjacent pixels. If the current pixel is the top leftmost one, then there is no prediction since there are no adjacent pixels and no prior information for prediction [21]. Figure 2.6: Neighbor pixels for predicting Z = x (B + D)(2.11) Then, the residual error (E), which is the difference between the actual value of the current pixel (X) and the predicted one (Z) is given by the following equation. E = X Z(2.12) Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) was first proposed by N. Ahmed [57]. It has been more and more important in recent years [55]. The DCT is similar to the discrete Fourier transform that transforms a signal or image from the spatial domain to the frequency domain as shown in Figure 2.7. Figure 2.7: Image transformation from the spatial domain to the frequency domain [55]. DCT represents a finite series of data points as a sum of harmonics cosine functions. DCTs representation have been used for numerous data processing applications, such as lossy coding of audio signal and images. It has been found that small number of DCT coefficients are capable of representing large sequence of raw data. This transform has been widely used in signal processing of image data, especially in coding for compression for its near-optimal performance. The discrete cosine transform helps to separate the image into spectral sub-bands of differing importance with respect to the images visual quality [55]. The use of cosine is much more efficient than sine functions in image compression since this cosine function is capable of representing edges and boundary. As described below, fewer coefficients are needed to approximate and represent a typical signal. The Two-dimensional DCT is useful in the analysis of two-dimensional (2D) signals such as images. We say that the 2D DCT is separable in the two dimensions. It is computed in a simple way: The 1D DCT is applied to each row of an image, s, and then to each column of the result. Thus, the transform of the image s(x, y) is given by [55], (2.13) where. (n x m) is the size of the block that the DCT is applied on. Equation (2.3) calculates one entry (u, v) of the transformed image from the pixel values of the original image matrix [55]. Where u and v are the sample in the frequency domain. DCT is widely used especially for image compression for encoding and decoding, at encoding process image divided into N x N blocks after that DCT performed to each block. In practice JPEG compression uses DCT with a block of 88. Quantization applied to DCT coefficient to compress the blocks so selecting any quantization method effect on compression value. Compressed blocks are saved in a storage memory with significantly space reduction. In decoding process, compressed blocks are loaded which de-quantized with reverse the quantization process. Inverse DCT was applied on each block and merging blocks into an image which is similar to original one [56]. Vector Quantization Vector Quantization (VQ) is a lossy compression method. It uses a codebook containing pixel patterns with corresponding indexes on each of them. The main idea of VQ is to represent arrays of pixels by an index in the codebook. In this way, compression is achieved because the size of the index is usually a small fraction of that of the block of pixels. The image is subdivided into blocks, typically of a fixed size of nÃÆ'-n pixels. For each block, the nearest codebook entry under the distance metric is found and the ordinal number of the entry is transmitted. On reconstruction, the same codebook is used and a simple look-up operation is performed to produce the reconstructed image [53]. The main advantages of VQ are the simplicity of its idea and the possible efficient implementation of the decoder. Moreover, VQ is theoretically an efficient method for image compression, and superior performance will be gained for large vectors. However, in order to use large vectors, VQ becomes complex and requires many computational resources (e.g. memory, computations per pixel) in order to efficiently construct and search a codebook. More research on reducing this complexity has to be done in order to make VQ a practical image compression method with superior quality [50]. Learning Vector Quantization is a supervised learning algorithm which can be used to modify the codebook if a set of labeled training data is available [13]. For an input vector x, let the nearest code-word index be i and let j be the class label for the input vector. The learning-rate parameter is initialized to 0.1 and then decreases monotonically with each iteration. After a suitable number of iterations, the codebook typically converges and the training is terminated. The main drawback of the conventional VQ coding is the computational load needed during the encoding stage as an exhaustive search is required through the entire codebook for each input vector. An alternative approach is to cascade a number of encoders in a hierarchical manner that trades off accuracy and speed of encoding [14], [54]. 1.6 Medical Image Types Medical imaging techniques allow doctors and researchers to view activities or problems within the human body, without invasive neurosurgery. There are a number of accepted and safe imaging techniques such as X-rays, Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Computed tomography (CT), Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Electroencephalography (EEG) [23-24]. 1.7 Conclusion In this chapter many compression techniques used for medical image have discussed. There are several types of medical images such as X-rays, Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Computed tomography (CT), Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Electroencephalography (EEG). Image compression has two categories lossy and lossless compression. Lossless compression such as Run Length Encoding, Huffman Encoding Lempel-Ziv-Welch, and Area Coding. Lossy compression such as Predictive Coding (PC), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), and Vector Quantization (VQ).Several compression techniques already present a better techniques which are faster, more accurate, more memory efficient and simpler to use. These methods will be discussed in the next chapter.

three :: essays research papers

The Macquire Pocket Dictionary states that the word â€Å"revolution† is â€Å"a complete or marked change in something†, this is exactly what happened during the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power and ousting of the Guomindang. The CCP overthrew the GMD and took over control. One of the main reasons the CCP won was because they had the Peasants on their side. During the GMD rule, the Chinese peasants were poor and slow at their work. When the CCP formed, they offered to help the peasants with their crops and farm, this gained the trust of the peasants and they joined the CCP. The communists said that in their rule, everyone would be equal and that everyone was on the same level of society. The CCP managed to get the peasants to fight with them in their army to overthrow the Guomindang. The loyalty the leader of the CCP had to the people is shown in this quote, â€Å"The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.† There were many quotes just like this one and they gained the peasants trust even more. The CCP, were a small minority that favored the peasants of China. They wanted to give the Chinese peasants more power and more rights, instead of being overlooked the peasants actually mattered to the CCP, as shown in this quote, â€Å"people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.† This is why the Red Army that eventually rose to crush the GMD was mainly made up of peasants. The CCP did not believe that one person should own all the wealth or own all the land; they believed that everyone should have the same opportunity. This was a total contrast to the GMD and its policies, and this is why the CCP appealed so widely to the common worker, they promised immediate changes. The GMD favored the rich population of China, this only made up around 5% of the total two billion.

The Effects of Creatine on Athletes Bodies Essay -- Drugs Steroids Sp

The Effects of Creatine on Athletes' Bodies From a very early age sports are introduced upon both young boys and girls. Although it begins with sportsmanship and teamwork, it begins to evolve into new objectives when these young athletes enter high school. In fact, high school sports are vastly different. Your mind is trained to obliterate the opponent and win at all costs. This mentality can often lead many young athletes to turn to supplements to assist in muscle building. The most common supplement in use currently is Creatine. While athletic departments and sports nutrition stores claim that it is harmless, why do so many high school athletes end up with severe muscular and pulmonary damage? The answer has yet to be clearly defined, but we do know of some side effects which can lead to both positive and negative results in the continued use of this supplement. In order to understand what effects could result of creatine use, we must first explore what exactly creatine does in our body. Creatine is an amino acid which acts as a building block in the construction of proteins in the body. Muscle cells take the creatine and store it as energy for future use in the body. During intense exercise, phosphocreatine is broken down to creatine and phosphate, which is used to regenerate ATP. The remaining creatine in storage in the muscle cells may also increase the regeneration rate of energy after intense exercise. This serves as an extra boost of energy for young athletes. Currently, scientific studies indicate that creatine will boost an athletes maximum performance level by 5-8%. There is also evidence that leads sports nutritionists to believe that creatine can boost total energy output by 5-15%. At this point, it seems... ...ct, but I have yet to hear of any drug that can add almost forty pounds of muscle in a month without posing severe health risks. Currently, there are not any proven clinical studies that show side effects as drastic as what I have personally witnessed. According to the American College Of Sports Science, the only proven side effect of creatine is future weight gain of a substantial amount after an athlete has stopped using the supplement. Unfortunately, the true negative effects will not be fully understood until many years on down the road. In the meantime, parents and athletes alike need to take a stance against the use of dietary supplements at the high school level. Sources 1. Kreider, Richard P. (PhD), Creatine, the next ergogenic supplement? www.sportsci.org 2. American College Of Sports Medicine, Summary on Creatine supplement. www.iahsaa.org

Health Care :: social issues

Health Care Within the health care arena there is a growing concern about the needs of the elderly. Families wonder if their loved ones are getting the proper care that they need With the growing costs of health care and the decreasing resources of primary care physicians it is feared that only the physical needs of the patient are met. Concerns rise about the social psychological and environmental needs or the elderly. A study by Barbara Berkman and associates tries to provide some answers to people concerned with this issue According to the study many people are not aware of the social services they may have available to them. Because of this, many elderly people are not getting the care they need outside of the physical care necessary to "live." It is felt that screening a patient for social or emotional needs is becoming increasingly important. The focus of this study was to devise a questionnaire to identify the psychological, social and environmental needs of elderly patients. Three hospitals from different geographic locations were chosen for this study. At each hospital a care coordinator was chosen to be responsible for questionnaire review, communication with physicians, and further assessment and intervention when deemed necessary. Lists of patients 65 and older were generated from the caseloads of primary care physicians from the three hospital sites. The questionnaires were mailed out with physicians cover letters and consent forms in the summer of 1993. In the questionnaire patients were asked to assess their self-percieved notions of there medical and psychosocial needs, as well as the level of their functioning. Upon reciept of the completed questionnaires the care coordinators from each hospital assess the results of the survey. Those patients assessed as being high risk received follow up phone calls. Depending on the situation, high risk patients were given information only, indirect referrals, or direct referrals. The findings for the study indicate that approximately 56% of all people surveyed were in need of intervention. The three highest relative risks for all three sights were: difficulty with food preparation, difficulty in doing house work, and difficulty getting around the home. All three hospital settings agree that patients who reported having problems in the survey were judged to need intervention more than those who did not report having problems. Although the study had good intentions, I feel the study was unclear in its objectives. The study was to design an assessment tool that would identify the psychosocial and environmental needs of elderly patients.

R.L Stevenson shows many opposites in the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Essay

In the book Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde the two main characters are complete opposites. Dr Jekyll is a kind person however when he changes into Mr Hyde his attitude changes into a nasty, evil person. R.L Stevenson carries on the ‘opposites’ through the book keeping the readers guessing. The two doors to Jekyll’s house seem to be complete opposites. One is shabby and in a dark corner of a building which is described as a ‘sinister block’. By saying ‘it showed no window’ suggests that its dark and secrecy; maybe they have something to hide. The wall is described as discoloured and suffering negligence – lack of care and maintenance making it sound unattractive. On the door, the fact that there is no knocker or bell gives an unwelcoming feel and being described as blistered and distained would also make it appear uninviting. However the street, which the door lies on, is a contrast to what has just been described. The buildings in the street are described as ‘freshly painted shutters and well polished brasses’ making the whole street sound like it has an air of general cleanliness. In the First chapter, also ‘The Story of the door’ there is another opposite. This is between Mr Hyde and the young girl. It says ‘one little man .. stumping along at a good walk’ and ‘a girl of maybe eight or ten .. running as hard as she was able’ this is opposing because there are two different genders, ages and paces. In the chapter ‘Dr. Jekyll was quite at ease’ R.L Stevenson describes another opposite with Mr Utterson and the other people that had been to Dr Jekyll’s dinner. ‘In the man’s rich silence, after the expense and the strain of gaiety.’ This tells us that Mr Utterson is happy to be quiet, as the other guests that have left were quite loud and talked to him a lot. Also in this chapter and the following chapter, another opposite is the reaction and personality of Dr Jekyll. Speaking with Utterson, Dr Jekyll is put across as ‘every mark of capacity and kindness’, which makes him warm and loving, then in the incident of the letter he is rather shifty and reacts differently to Utterson that he did before. In the ‘Search for Mr Hyde’ there are two different characters in contrast, Dr Lanyon and Mr Utterson. For example it says ‘received his crowding patients’ referring to Dr Lanyon. This puts across to the reader that Dr Lanyon is a very open, friendly person, where as, as we can tell from the ‘Dr Jekyll was quite at ease’ chapter Mr Utterson is different, he is much quieter and would prefer to be on his own. Another opposite that R.L Stevenson puts in the book is in the chapter ‘The Carew murder case’. At the beginning of the chapter the setting is peaceful. ‘The details were few and startling’ this portrays that it was a very still, open night with only beautiful features. It describes a maid looking out of her window into the pretty night. Her views on the night we’re very optimistic and loving. ‘ She was romantically given’ by saying this it puts across to the reader that the night is quiet which would make it easy to think and by saying ‘romantically given’ puts across that she has romantic view on life. The scene then changes drastically. Before the night was calm but all of a sudden it transforms, much like the transformation of Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde. The night turns dark when Mr Hyde enters the scene. It was like a presence of evil had come into the lane. ‘The horror of these sights and sounds’ this describes what the maid saw Mr Hyde doing to the old man. R.L Stevenson shows many opposites in the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. These help to keep the reader thinking and to surprise the reader.

The Period in American History from 1781 to 1789

The period in American History from 1781 to 1789, when the United States was organized under the Articles of Confederation, was not characterized by a strong and effective government, but instead provided the framework upon which a more effective government could be built. The Articles of Confederation, since they prevented a strong central government from having power over states' rights, tended to create problems for a government that wished to rule with any amount of authority.This was particularly evident in the areas of foreign relations, internal discontent over tariffs, and political party struggles. While the United States was attempting to establish itself in diplomatic affairs, this became increasingly difficult to do since the federal government had little power when it came to tariffs and import duties, and also because it had no way of enforcing any agreement which it made with other countries. John Jay's Treaty with Great Britain proposed measures which would improve re lations between Great Britain and the U.S. , but because the U. S. was not a strong military power, it lacked the means to enforce the agreements of Jay's Treaty. A similar type of situation occurred when the U. S. tried to negotiate with Spain over the right to navigate on the Mississippi River. Because of the weakness of the government under the Articles of Confederation, the United States did not reach a peaceful settlement concerning the Mississippi River until the Pinckney Treaty of the 1790's.Political party struggles (or struggles between the beginnings of political parties) also tended to bring about disunity in the early government, thereby weakening its effectiveness. Rawlin Lowndes reflected the attitudes of the pre-Constitutional era in his speech to the South Carolina House of Representatives, when he stated that, rather than tear down the existing government and adopt a constitution, attempts should be made to improve the existing structure.Further conflicts over the n ature of the Constitution occurred between federalists, who supported a Constitution with provisions for a strong central government, and anti-federalists, who favored supremacy of states' rights. These conflicts added to the existing troubles of the government under the Articles of Confederation, thus making it even more difficult to rule effectively. Internal problems also existed in the area of land distribution, although these were solved fairly effectively by the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.The manner in which new lands acquired from Great Britain had been redistributed also caused an increase in the faith of the government between 1781 and 1789. However, internal struggles continued to exist. Tariffs that were passed between states caused internal friction for the new country and the lack of a unified monetary system brought additional problems. Since the government under the Articles was not given power to set up a sound currency system, or to e stablish a national bank, even greater disorganization prevailed.The founding fathers realized this need for a stronger central government and eventually organized at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to discuss the problem. Although they recognized the present government's weaknesses, they also saw that the basic structure of it was based on a sound principle and should not be done away with completely. Although problems continued to exist over questions like whether to have a national bank, the Founding Fathers eventually agreed that a Constitution and a strong central government would be needed if the government of the U. S. was to rule effectively.

Management and Group Essay

Reliable, Planning and organizing, resourceful, capable of making sound decisions with her job, not widely affected by emotions †¢How can understanding stages of group development and group properties help employees in a work group function more effectively? As a manager, how would you help employees come to that understanding? Understanding the stages of group development is very important to anyone involved in a group or organization. Understanding the stages can make for a healthy group because in order to perform well you need to have accomplished the prior stages before moving on. Understanding the stages of group development enables employees to work more effectively since results in a clear plan. The stages enable employees to work together as a group to finish the assignments that the company has. As a manager, I would sit down the employees and give them to bottom line. Typically when groups have an idea of the main goal or plan, the individuals come together to work towards that goal. †¢Although the optimal level of conflict can be functional, no conflict or too much conflict can be dysfunctional. What steps would you as a manager take to stimulate some degree of conflict when appropriate and reduce conflict when it is excessive? I would ask tough hard questions to stimulate a degree of conflict when it is appropriate. I would also use conflict in problem solving type training just to see how the employees react. Knowing how your employees react during stressful times is a great thing for managers to know. †¢What is the difference between a group and a team? Would your strategy be different for putting together a group than creating a team? Explain your answer. A group is a collection of individuals who coordinate their individual efforts. On the other hand, a team is a group of people who share a common team purpose and a number of challenging goals. Members of the team are mutually committed to the goals and to each other. This mutual commitment also creates joint accountability which creates a strong bond and a strong motivation to perform. Yes, my strategy would be different. I would have to try to get the group to work towards the same goal whereas a team is already doing just that. †¢In the article, â€Å"Conflict in Work Teams†, the author discusses several strategies for resolving group or team conflict. Which type of strategies seems to fit you best? Compromise is the type of strategy that best fits me. What criteria should you consider when determining the best conflict resolution strategy? I would get the employees to turn their anger around to interact peacefully and productively with their peers. Leaders learn how to conduct presentations, guide discussions, and help participants understand the purposes and pitfalls of anger and how to channel it into constructive and useful actions

Anthropology-African Religions

The roots of modern day Islam were sown a couple of centuries ago when the once proud Muslim empire began to be overwhelmed by expansionist movements dominated by European colonialists.This has led to a cultural turmoil in Muslim world who once used to live at the pinnacle of glory saw its silent burial with the meek subjugation of the Islamic Caliphate at the hands of mighty British army in early twentieth century. While a sizable section of the Muslims chose to follow the path shown by great statesman like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, many continued to be festered by the wounds of humiliation.Now Muslims in many countries are looking to reassert themselves after a long period of humiliation and oppression, sometimes at the hands of foreigners and sometimes at the hands of their own leaders. Contrary to popular belief, Muslims are not a monolithic group, nor there is any centralized authority within Islam.The Islamic civilization from its birth has gone through debates and counter debates . Except for the Shahadah (God is one and Mohammad is his messenger) and the five mandatory duties (Hajj, Zakat, Roza, Namaz and Shahadah) everything else in Islam has been subjected to deep scrutiny and analysis with the result that many schools of thoughts kept appearing and disappearing.That is why contradictions are evident to people both inside and outside the Muslim community. The orientalists, the conventional authorities on Islam, have been accused of being essentialist and insensitive to the change, negotiation, development, and diversity that characterizes lived Islam.Some scholars, primarily anthropologists, have responded to the tendency to essentialize by giving up the idea of conceptualizing one â€Å"Islam† and instead have focused their inquiry on what they call various â€Å"local Islams.† Others have focused on sociological or political-economic approaches in explaining the modern forms of political and social activism among Muslims to the exclusion o f â€Å"scriptural† Islam from their analysis. (Anjum O., 2007)Islam was brought to Sub-Saharan Africa in the first place via the trade routes from the Arab countries and North Africa. The African Muslims have always maintained quite close links with the Arab world, from which a number of reformers came.But Islamisation was essentially carried out by Africans themselves, who shared the same life, spoke the same language, lived in the same cultural world entirely. There is no doubt that, for African Muslims,  «Africanicity » and Islam are in no way opposed. For them Islam is not an imported religion.For many, abandoning the Muslim religion is equivalent to the rejection of all their family and tribal traditions, so intermingled are the two socio-religious universes. One must conclude that Islam, in its traditional African form, is entirely a part of the African cultural heritage and thus an African reality. The long cohabitation of Islam with traditional African religion h as also had an effect at the cultural level.The African languages are in general languages with a concrete vocabulary, rather limited in the expression of more abstract realities or more developed reflections. With the Arabic language Islam has been able to fill a gap. Many African peoples, some scarcely touched by Islam, have borrowed a complete abstract, and especially religious, vocabulary from Arabic, with no more than the changes proper to the structure of each language.The relative success of Islam may be related to its compatibility with many aspects of African culture–for example, plural marriage for men, which was opposed by Christian missionaries. Nonetheless, Islam was also embraced because it provided symbolic identification with successful traders and travelers throughout the world, and it was seen as an alternative to European religion.Its agents were black, and it preached on behalf of those who lacked the trappings of Western civilization. These adaptations of local practices by the Islamists is not only unique in Cà ´te d'Ivoire, it has happened world over and plays an important role in shaping the thoughts and mind processes of the Muslims.

Calamitatum Of The Individual

Calamitatum Of The Individual Essay In the realm of critical thinking, Abelard undoubtedly ranked highly in his day. He was an expert dialectician, philosopher and theologian, and as a result led a movement towards individual thinking. He traveled a lonely path of individuality, and when his ideas were suppressed, he found different ways to express his individuality. The beginning of his life was marked by extreme personal freedom. As his journey through life continued, he found himself compounded with innumerable restrictions. The role of monk could not change Abelard, and his individuality brought him even greater misfortune. He may forewarn others against the risks of such extreme individualism, but his life clearly shows that Abelard thought his individuality was a natural part of him, a part that was as inseparable as his faith. From the beginning of Abelards Story of my Calamities he portrays himself as an individual. The as oldest child in his family his life was intended for a military career, but as he tells us, he abandoned Mars for Minerva, denouncing the popular and glorious profession of arms for that of learning. In writing this he shows his clever and distinct way of thinking by referring to dialectic, the art of examining options or ideas logically, as a weapon of war. I chose the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these I chose the conflicts of disputation instead of the trophies of war. (p. 58, ll. 7-9). This is remarkable for the son of a soldier to make such a choice even renouncing his inheritance and pursue only intellectual advancement. Leaving home, he traveled off to school in Paris. He was welcomed for a short while, but soon found disfavor with his teacher Champeaux, the grand master of dialectic at the time, by refuting his arguments and proving himself several times to be the superior in debate. This shows Abelards superior intellect at a very early age. This is no doubt a major reason for his individuality. One of his intellectual rank finds it hard to conform to others standards, and naturally becomes a spectacle when showing his skills. This early conflict caused Abelard to leave and start his own school. Unfortunately, he could not maintain it and had to return home. Years later he was teaching in Paris again, he tells us how pupils flocked to him from every country in Europe, a statement which is more than corroborated by the authority of his contemporaries. He was, In fact, the idol of Paris, eloquent, vivacious, handsome, full of confidence in his own power to please. As he tells us, the whole world at his feet. In the Story of My Calamities, he confesses that at that period of his life he was filled with vanity and pride. I began to think myself the only philosopher in the world, with nothing to fear from anyone, and so I yielded to the lusts of the flesh. (p.65, ll.13-15). The first part of this statement is a window into what made Abelard an individual. He felt that he did not have to follow the same rules that other people did because he was superior to them. The result was a man that did things differently, for better or for worse. The second part of that statement lead Abelard down his next path of individuality, the first to cause him physical pain. To these faults he attributes his downfall, which was as swift and tragic as was everything, seemingly, in his dazzling career. He tells us in graphic language the tale of how he fell in love with Heloise, niece of Canon Fulbert. READ: Daedalus Myth And Portrait Of The Artist EssayIn the midst of his exploits he met Heloise, and in the first time writing about her in The Story of My Calamities he describes her individuality. in the extent of her learning she stood supreme. A gift for letters is so rare in women that it added greatly to her charm and had won her renown throughout the realm. (p.66 ll.15-17). This shows that Abelard valued individuality highly in others as well as in himself. He arranged an agreement with Heloises uncle to educate her, and gained access to Heloise. Their relationship encompassed the maximum in personal freedom and experimentation. They had a premarital sexual affair of unparalleled proportion. The whole affair was entirely against the rules of society at the time, and was the culmination of the progressive pattern of freedoms, turned into the abuse of opportunity. Soon after Abelards individuality and superiority caught up to him. Heloise became pregnant, and Abelard could not successfully sidestep the ethics of society again. To appease her uncle, Abelard offered him satisfaction in a form he could never have hoped for: I would marry the girl I had wronged. (p.70, ll.6-7). In this offer, Abelard showed that he was out of touch, because to marry in secret was really just an insult, and he considered it a complement of the highest magnitude. As a result of this final insult, the uncle could not contain his rage any longer, and had Abelard castrated. This very profoundly caused him pain for the rest of his life. Then Abelard embarked down his last path, but still as an individual. He made the decision to become a monk. About this decision he writes, I admit that it was shame and confusion in my remorse and misery that rather than any devout wish for conversion which brought me to seek shelter a monastery cloister. (p.76, ll.15-17). Abelard is distinguishing himself from others by demonstration that while he made a choice that others had also made, he made the choice for special reasons, reasons that are different from anyone elses. Of course, as soon as he was positioned in this monastery, he started making waves with the head of the monastery, and doing things not expected of a monk: I applied myself mainly to the study of the Scriptures as being more suitable to my present calling, but I did not wholly abandon the instruction of the profane arts in which I was better practiced. (P. 77, l.31) This aroused the envy and hatred of the other heads of school against me. (P.78, l.5) It would seem that Abelards extreme individuality led him into trouble no matter where he turned, or what endeavour he undertook. When he did apply himself to religion, he got himself into more trouble than even he expected. In his most unpopular argument he says that even though there is only one God, God did not beget Himself, even though there is the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost. This sets off a multitude of enemies against Abelard, and is the beginning of a very bad reputation for him. He refuses to recant anything he has said, and is forced to his own book burned. This attack on his pride was the one to cause him the most pain. Abelard is harassed at every step by enemies, and eventually he moved to the wilderness. Abelard lived there in an oratory of weeds and thatch (p.88, l. 22), while other his peers surely would have thought of him as uncivil. This shows that Abelard really just doesnt even care what anyone thinks. Soon, many eager student appeared at the wilderness spot, and a school was eventually created. Being an irrepressible individual, Abelard titles the school controversial name of Paraclete as a way of reemphasizing his beliefs about God, causing enemies to attack him. He is again forced to leave for fear of injury or death. READ: Art Of Poets EssayHis refusal to conform to the certain norms of society was consistent even when his life was endangered. It comes to the point where he states, But now Satan has put so many obstacles in my path that I can find nowhere to rest, or even to live; a fugitive and wanderer, I carry every where the curse of Cain (p.102, ll.15-17). With standing all adversity Abelard proves himself definitely a true individual Through good times and bad, that is maybe his only constant. Even though in closing Abelard says, This is my experience all the time; a poor monk raised to be an abbot, the more wretched as I have become more wealthy, in order that my example may curb the ambition of those who have deliberately chosen a similar course. (p.104, ll. 18-21), it is painfully clear that the lone path of individuality was the only route for him.

Investment Apprisl Techniques Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Investment Apprisl Techniques - Essay Example I will prticulrly provide literture review of few contemporry theoreticl pproches to the issue. Recent reserch (Steier & Greenwood, 2005) hs shown tht the due diligence process is n itertive one, where the first step is to ssess whether proposl meets the investment criteri of the venture fund (e.g., with respect to the investment stge, sector, or mgnitude of the investment proposl) nd whether the proposl is vible t first sight. forml vlution of compny will only be performed when the proposl psses this initil test. Other economic gents hve to vlue compnies in other settings; e.g., investment bnkers hve to determine the introduction price of new compny on stock mrket or they hve to pprise tke-over cndidte. Finncil nlysts hve to ssess whether the stock mrket vlue of compny is significntly higher or lower thn its 'true' economic vlue, in order to decide when to sell or buy stocks. The venture cpitlist's vlution process, however, is likely to differ from the ones used for these purposes, becuse of the very different nture of the compnies they hve to vlue. Investment proposls, recei ved by venture cpitl funds, re often very risky, due to the erly stge of development of the compny, the lck of trck record of the compny, or the degree of innovtion of products or mrkets. Moreover, the compnies re not quoted on stock mrket, so publicly vilble informtion is limited. The present study sheds light on this neglected re through n exmintion of how Europen venture cpitlists proceed in this difficult tsk. The vlution of investment proposls is importnt for venture cpitlists becuse the vlue of the compny determines the proportion of shres they receive in return for their investment nd thus their ultimte return. It is importnt for entrepreneurs, too, becuse vlution tht is too low will led to n excessive dilution of their shre in the compny. Moreover, when entrepreneurs know how venture cpitlists vlue investment proposls, they re better prepred to dpt their business pln to the needs of investors. They will be ble to produce the required informtion nd to understnd the wy venture cpitlists use the informtion. The vlution process consists of three sequentil steps. First, informtion is gthered on the venture, its mngement tem, nd its future prospects. Second, this informtion is used to pprise the risk of the venture nd hence the required return on the investment, nd to estimte the (future) csh flows nd profit potentil. Finlly, one or more vlution method is used, which combines the elements of risk, return, nd profits or csh flows in order to compute the vlue of the compny. Becuse non-public compnies hve few legl informtion requirements, the gthering of informtion is more difficult thn with public compnies. Due to dverse selection nd informtion symmetry problems, this is nonetheless one of the most crucil phses in coming to decision. One of the most importnt sources of informtion is the business pln, which projects the future of the compny, together with historic ccounting dt (especilly the blnce sheet nd profit nd loss sttement), nd future ccounting dt (especilly csh flow forecsts). mit et l. (2003) point to the fct tht the mngeril trck record of the entrepreneur nd his or her fmilirity with the product nd the sector my provide some hints s to the future success of the venture. However, venture cpitlists fce importnt informtion symmetries with respect to compny-specific dt, since the entrepreneurs my disclose only wht they deem necessry in