The Tragedy of the Vietnam War essays

The Tragedy of the Vietnam War essays The Vietnam War is considered by most to be a mistake for many reasons. Many victims emerged from the war and especially for the soldiers who participated in it, it was simply wrong. Many of the soldiers who fought in Vietnam entered Vietnam with unclear directives and returned from Vietnam transformed and displaced. Many individuals have chosen to express how the Vietnam War was a tragedy from many angles. Through books, images, and movies, the memories of Vietnam are filled with pain and regret. These expressions are beneficial because they create within us a sense of understanding for what is often termed indescribable. One of the most powerful tools for expression is writing. Tim O'Brien, author of the book, The Things They Carried, vividly recounts what Vietnam did to him and those with whom he served. His stories about the transformations he witnessed offer proof that the war was indeed a mistake. For example, he tells us about how Norman Bowker was a gentle person, but as a soldier, he carried with him the thumb of a dead Vietcong boy. Another example of how the war changed individuals is when Rat Kiley shot the baby buffalo. We are told that Kiley stroked the buffalo's nose and then shot at it repeatedly. He shot it in the knee, its back and legs; he shot off an ear. "It wasn't to kill; it was to hurt," O'Brien tells us. (O'Brien 78) Kiley was reacting to losing his best friend, Curt, who stepped on a land mine and died. In the unknown land of Vietnam, Kiley found no other way to express his feelings. We can understand the extreme pressure the soldier was under when O'Brien tells us that "Rat Kiley was crying. He tried to say something, but then cradled his rifle and went off by himself" (79). O'Brien is able capture moments of emotional collapse that result from extreme conditions. O'Brien writes of what he saw, "We had witnessed something essential, som...

Learn How to Properly Apply Gel Coat

Learn How to Properly Apply Gel Coat Applying gel coat correctly is of utmost importance to making aesthetically pleasing and long-lasting end products. If gel coat is not applied properly it ultimately can increase the cost of the product made, as often is the case, cutting corners in this process will not prove to be worth it. How Do Improperly Applied Gel Coats Increase Cost? It depends on a number of parts that get rejected and the work required to fix them. The amount of work and material saved by investing in a proper gel coat application process will pay off in the end. Proper gel coat application includes: Material preparationEquipment calibrationUse of trained spray operatorsAppropriate spray methods Gel coats should be sprayed and not brushed. The equipment used for spraying must be selected carefully and maintained well. Catalyst levels are important to the curing of the gel coat and dependent upon shop conditions. Most gel coats’ ideal catalyst level is 1.8 percent at 77Â °F (25Â °C), however, specific shop conditions may require this number to vary between 1.2 and 3 percent. Environmental factors that may require an adjustment in catalyst levels are: TemperatureHumidityMaterial ageCatalyst brand or type A catalyst level below 1.2 percent or above 3 percent should not be used because the cure of the gel coated can be affected permanently. Product data sheets can give specific catalyst recommendations. There are many catalysts for use in resins and gel coats. Proper catalyst selection is vital. In gel coats, only MEKP-based catalysts should be used. The three active ingredients in a MEKP-based catalyst are: Hydrogen peroxideMEKP monomerMEKP dimmer Each component helps the curing of unsaturated polyesters. The following is each chemical’s specific role: Hydrogen peroxide: starts gelation phase, though does little for a cureMEKP monomer: plays roles in initial cure and overall cureMEKP dimer: active during file cure stage of polymerization, high MEKP dimer typically causes porosity (air entrapping) in gel coats Achieving the correct thickness of a gel coat is imperative as well. A gel coat should be sprayed in three passes for a total wet film thickness of 18 /- 2 mils thickness. Too thin a coating can result in undercure of the gel coat. Too thick a coat can crack when flexed. Spraying gel coat onto vertical surfaces will not cause sag because of its’ thixotropic characteristics. Gel coats will also not entrap air when applied according to instructions. Lamination With all other factors normal, gel coats are ready for laminating within 45 to 60 minutes after catalyzation. The time is dependent upon: TemperatureHumidityCatalyst typeCatalyst concentrationAir movement A slowing of gel and cure occurs with low temperatures, low catalyst concentrations, and high humidity. To test whether a gel coat is ready for lamination touch the film at the lowest part of the mold. It is ready if no material transfers. Always monitor equipment and application procedures to ensure proper application and cure of the gel coat. Material Preparation Gel coat materials come as complete products and not other materials other than catalysts should be added. For product consistency, gel coats should be mixed for 10 minutes before use. Agitation should be enough to allow the product to move all the way to the container walls while preventing as much turbulence as possible. It is imperative not to over-mix. This can decrease thixotropy, which increases sag. Overmixing may also result in styrene loss that can add to porosity. Air bubbling for mixing is not advised. It is ineffective and adds for potential water or oil contamination.

Tableau de bord Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Tableau de bord - Essay Example The study has selected Balance Score Card over other performance measurement due to its popularity. Detailed analysis of all the four perspectives of balance scorecard will be important part of the study. In the second part, the study will try to identify key performance driver for both the models and recommend â€Å"best practice† to organizations. The study will try to analyze usefulness of balance scorecard from the view point of supply chain management. Analyzing shortfalls of Tableau de Bord will be an important part of the study. The study will try to address strategic issues regarding the Tableau de Bord. In the last section, the study will try to recommend a neo classical model of balance scorecard for both profit and non profit organizations; the model will describe performance measurement in terms of corporate culture, managerial system, operational system, marketing activities and resource capabilities. Table of Contents Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 Main Findi ngs 4 Balanced Scorecard 4 Customers 5 Financial Perspective 5 Internal Business Process 7 Learning and Growth 8 Tableau de bord 8 Key Performance Criteria 10 Conclusion 12 Recommendation 12 Reference 13 Introduction It has been observed that companies planning to measure performance of the internal and external stakeholders opt for Balance Scorecard model proposed by Kaplan and Norton although there are plenty of performance measurement tools available such as Performance Prism, Key performance indicator and little known â€Å"Tableau de bord†. Othman (2008) has pointed out that Balance Scorecard is extended version of â€Å"Tableau de bord† while other research have nullified this assumption. â€Å"Tableau de bord† is widely used in countries like France as an effective performance measurement tool while the model has very little applicability in other countries. Flamholtz (2003) has pointed out that balance scorecard is the best performance measurement tool a vailable for managers. Various research scholars such as Epstein and Manzoni (2010) have tried to create a connecting bridge between Balance Scorecard and â€Å"Tableau de bord† while others have criticized the French model for its limitations. Main Findings Balanced Scorecard Research scholars have described balanced scorecard as a strategic option for organizations which helps them to assess performance of different non financial and financial elements. It provides the strategic framework to companies to measure performance variables. Survey conducted by fortune magazine states that more than half of top 500 companies in the globe are using balanced scorecard as a performance measurement technique. Moreover, Harvard business Review has identified balanced scorecard as the most important performance management tool developed in the last forty years. Balance scorecard is complemented with four elements such as Business Process Perspective, Learning & Growth Perspective, Finan cial Perspective and Customer Perspective. The model measures performance on the basis of above mentioned four perspectives and these performance criterions can be explained in the following manner. Customers The model measures performance gap in terms of customer profitability, customer retention rate, churn rate, customer satisfaction level. Organizations select market segment to offer products in order to achieve profitability and business growth hence mangers need to translate marketing strategy according to demand of particular segment. It has been observed that in many cases companies fail to maintain relationship with internal and external stakeholders. In such situation balance scorecard can be a useful tool for companies to adopt a customer relationship strategy. Balance scorecards use generic

The north and south labour systems and effect on American Civil War Essay

The north and south labour systems and effect on American Civil War - Essay Example According to Levine (2005), southern secession happened because they wanted to fight for the maintenance of the slavery institution in the United States of America. This is because their economy largely depended on the labor that was provided mainly by slaves. The northern part had grown economically because of the increased immigration from Europe. Therefore, they had enough labor for their production activities. There were many industries in the north and people enjoyed liberty and freedom that was characterized by the availability of land for everyone. On the other hand, the south depended on bonded labor for production. Few people owned large parcels of land in the south with many people owning small pieces of land. Many others were slaves and had to work on the large farms owned by few. In the years before the start of the civil war, Americans in the North and Northern west had different economic interests with the Americans living in the South and Southwest America. Despite the fact that the civil war in America was caused by a combination of other factors, the divergent economic interests contributed to the animosity that existed between the North and the South. They contributed to the establishment of the confederacy and the victory achieved by the union. The United States of America was an agricultural hub before, during and just after the civil war. Three quarters of the population in America lived in rural areas. The rural areas comprised of farms and small towns. Despite the fact that factories were established in the North and South, the establishment of industries and industrial manufacturing activities took place in the North. In 1860, the South had an estimated 25 percent of free population but only accounted for 10 percent of the capital of the country. The development of industries in the North was five times more that of the South. The number of factory workers in the North exceeded that of the South by ten times. Ninety percent of the skilled labor in the United States of America was in the North (Levine, 2005). The above information shows that the labor characteristics in the North and South were remarkably different. Labor in the North was expensive and laborers were not tied to a particular station. Workers were very active and mobile. The competition in the labor market was intensified by the immigration from Europe and Asia. This influenced the rising of wages in the sense that wages remained relatively constant (Levine, 2005). The economy of the south was founded on the labor provided by African Americans who worked as slaves. They were exploited, oppressed and forced to provide cheap labor. Mo st white families did not own slaves. Out of 1.6 million families, about 384,000 owned slaves. Most of the families who owned slaves had about 20 slaves or less. However, those who owned many slaves were about 10,000 and owned large plantations. When Eli Whitney invented cotton gin, southern planters and farmers

Strange pulsing pain Essay Example for Free

Strange pulsing pain Essay Emily Finkle, age 14: I got very used to the jingle of chains every time I walked out of the mines to have a breath of fresh air. The mines were not as friendly to breathing as the air outside. My reflection on the polished surfaces of the water canteens often looked like an inverted skull with my nose blackened by coal dust. We all work together here in a mine in the West of Wales; boys my age toting bags of coal from inside the mine passing us, young girls bashing away at the hard rock walls to get to the coal beneath. We all wore the same clothes, whether girl or boy; trousers soiled by the black gold that we were drawing for people who sat on cushioned chairs smoking cigars, driving their fancy automobiles and eating cheeses of different kinds. The only food we had to eat most of the time was cold porridge and a few pieces of rotten fruit – fruit rots faster in the mines where the heat is trapped by the small openings and the packet of dense air hovering at every cavern opening. The sound of chains jingling as others passed us seemed like hypnotic chimes beating in tune with each strike of the pick. I barely see the sun. I am in the mine before the sun rises and out of the mine when the sun has long gone down into the horizon. I have accustomed my eyes to the flicker of the lamps we carry into the mines; lamps that cast eerie shadows with every movement we all make. The older children always told me to never sing in the mines or I would die. I wore a piece of cloth over my face all of the time to keep me from singing even when I was happy that my mama had recovered from the flu. Edna, the girl my age who picked at the mine walls just beside me sang once. She didn’t come back the following morning. Perhaps the older children were right about singing in the mines. Edna never came back to the mines again. I heard she had become thin and sickly and spat blood. Word had gone out that Edna came down with coal fever and died only a few months after singing in the mines. There are dark spirits in the mines they say – spirits that hate the sound of children’s singing voices. So, nobody ever sings in the mines. I’ve never worn a nice dress since I began working in the mine. I don’t know what hide and seek is. I do know what hide is though – this is what we do in the mines when the big brutes come running in with large leather whips. The often use the whips on the boys – we aren’t allowed to cry, lest the dark spirits get into our open mouths. We whimper, but we try to keep our mouths closed when we get our share of whipping. There’s no point in opening our mouths to the lashes; better to shrivel in pain than to die altogether. My canvass shoes are worn at the soles from walking up to the mine entrances every day. I cannot complain or I would get a heavy lashing. If we complain we do not get our porridge, or worse, our rest. Sometimes I don’t know where I am bleeding from. My fingers often bleed when shards of rock shatter from picking piercing the young skin on my knuckles. Sometimes the beige dust on the cavern floors turns brown under my feet from the blisters on my soles. I can’t feel the pain that much. I have become so used to the pain that I can tolerate it quite successfully, like I tolerate the whips or the pangs from not having anything to eat sometimes. I often think about leaving the mine, especially at nights when I am on my back staring at the stars. The stars always stare at me and sometimes they shed a tear or two. Maybe the stars are also tired from being hung up high in the night. I wonder – are the stars chained to the heavens too? Do they also spend eternities picking away at the blackness of night to draw out more of whatever it is they need to draw? I wonder. Today the mines are still where I am headed. The steep slopes have become more challenging today because of a strange pulsing pain in my belly. I don’t know is wrong with me, but I cannot complain, I cannot get lashed by the big brutes. I find it hard to drag my chained feet up the sides of the slope with my footwear almost clear of its fabric soles. The pain in my soles is not a matter of concern; I have become so used to it; but the pain in my belly is strange, I don’t know what is wrong with me and what I need to do to make it go away. I must find a way and ward the pain away before we enter the mines. I have to take a quick drink. I cannot though, there is only enough water for five drinks – one when we get to the mines, two at luncheon, another at dinnertime, and a last gulp before going to sleep in the camps. If I drink now, I will have nothing to drink at these times. I cannot – must not drink. The pain will go away. I will have to make it go away by thinking about the stars; how long they have been up there and the pains they must endure just to shine night after night after night. The stars are used to their pain, I have to get used to this pain like the way I am used to the other pains I have – the blisters on my soles, the fresh wounds on my knuckles, the nagging ache at my temples. These are just pains – I have to draw coal even when I often forget where on me does the coal mine draw blood. I have to pick and pick more, draw and draw more even with the pain in my belly. I must not open my mouth and groan or the dark spirits might enter my mouth like they did with Edna. I must not sing. I must work. I must not complain. Just before noon, I felt a warm viscous fluid trickle down my thighs underneath my trousers. This is the first time I felt something like this – I was scared the spirits might have found a way into me. I gazed down at my trousers in the flicker of the mine lamps. I can see a dark trail on my trousers – blood. I don’t know where this came from, but it was blood.

Nineteenth Century Insane Asylums Essay example -- Exploratory Researc

Nineteenth Century Insane Asylums No matter where they were, mad houses, or insane asylums, have the same basic features and functions. The views of asylum life changed drastically over the course of the nineteenth century. The growth of the number of mad houses during the nineteenth century is quite remarkable. Before 1810, only a few states had insane asylums. By 1850, most of the Northeastern and Midwestern states' legislatures supported having asylums. As early as 1860, 23 of the 33 existing states had some sort of public institution for the insane. (Perrucci, p.11) The view of what caused insanity was widely disputed during this time period. Some physicians viewed insanity as being caused by a disease of the brain resulting in lesions. The opposing view, held by many Europeans, was that insanity was caused by civilization or society as a whole. (Perrucci, p.12) Classification played a significant role in the asylums and how they were run. First there is the classification between sane and insane. This division has continually been the center of study and discussion. Perhaps those that are considered insane aren't really. "Nineteenth century records make it clear that those alone, whether single, divorced, or widowed, were particularly vulnerable to institutionalization." (Dwyer, p.106) The next classification distinction is whether a person is temporarily insane or chronically insane. In many places, the need for a separate institution for the chronically insane was discussed. When a New York state asylum was considering a separate location, superintendent John Gray "opposed the idea of a separate institution for the chronically insane." (Dwyer, p.46) This idea was discredited throughout America and Europe. (... ...bility for Poe's story does exist. Mad houses were hardly present at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They quickly sprouted up throughout Europe and the United States. For the most part, they were run by a powerful, authoritative hierarchy. Towards the end of the century, people realized the major problems of asylums, and reform swept both Europe and the States. Bibliography Beaver, Harold, Ed. The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Penguin Books. London: 1976. Dwyer, Ellen. Homes for the Mad: Life Inside Two Nineteenth Century Asylums. Rutgers University Press. New Brunswick: 1987. Perrucci, Robert. Circle of Madness: On Being Insane and Institutionalized in America. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1974. Porter, Roy. A Social History of Madness: The World Through the Eyes of the Insane. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. New York: 1987.

Life Cycle of Bacteriophage

Life Cycle of Bacteriophage. Bacteriophage: Bacteria eating virus is called bacteriophage. Life Cycles: There are 2 types of lifecycles that occur in the bacteriophage: 1) Lytic Cycle 2) Lysogenic Cycle 1) Lytic Cycle: In lytic cycle, virus that is the bacteriophage causes lysis of the host cell. It is virulent phage. 2) Lysogenic Cycle: In lysogenic cycle, the bacteriophage does not cause lysis of host’s cell. It is avirulent phage. Lytic Cycle. Landing, Penetration and AttachmentTo infect a cell, a virus must first enter the cell through the plasma membrane and (if present) the cell wall. Viruses do so by either attaching to a receptor on the cell's surface or by simple mechanical force using tail fibers. Attachment is done with the help of receptors. Control The virus then releases its genetic material (either single- or double-stranded RNA or DNA) into the cell. In doing this, the cell is infected and can also be targeted by the immune system. This relation is called maste r-slave relation.Biosynthesis The virus' nucleic acid uses the host cell’s machinery to make large amounts of viral components. For DNA viruses, the DNA transcribes itself into messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules which are afterwards used to control the cell's ribosomes. The first polypeptides that are translated destroy the host's DNA. In retroviruses , an enzyme called reverse transcriptase translates the viral RNA into DNA, which is then translated again into RNA. Assembly New viruses are formed by the assembly of the different parts of the virus.After approximately 25 minutes, 200 new viruses are formed. Release Bacterial cell burst and the newly formed viruses are released from the host cell. Now, they are ready to attack new bacteria. Lysogenic Cycle. Landing The first step of lysogenic cycle is landing of the virus on the host’s cell. This is done by tail fibers. Attachment It is done with the help of receptors present on the surface of the bacterial cell wall. Penet ration For the penetration the tail fibers of the bacteriophage secrete special enzymes for the lysis of bacterial cell wall called, â€Å"lysozyme. Then by the contraction of tail fibers and sheath viral DNA is injected into bacterial cell. Incorporation Viral DNA after penetration becomes incorporated (inserted) into bacterial DNA. This state is called prophage and this relation is called â€Å"host-guest† relation. Bacterial Division Bacteria divides and the daughter bacterial cell receives the viral DNA. These bacterial cells having viral DNA are resistant to viral attack. Induction During lysogenic cycle when viral DNA detaches from bacterial DNA, and take control over bacterial DNA. Now, lytic cycle begins.