Cover letter &Resume Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Cover letter &Resume - Essay Example Likewise, I have already established an education and design company in China, which gives me a competitive advantage through the experiences encountered in start-up and in operating a business endeavor. I came to the United States to earn a degree in Economics, which is a field of discipline I consider of crucial importance to contemporary global organizations. I plan to eventually venture in the international market and my gaining a degree in Economics in a prestigious university in the United States would give me significant advantage to succeed. the identified software programs; as well as navigate the Internet for research and other social activities with exemplary skills. I am also a good team player; I am highly motivated and flexible; as well as manifest the ability to efficiently handle multiple tasks, as required. I am hereby attaching my resume for your perusal. I could be reached at any of the contact numbers indicated therein. I would also be available for scheduled interviews at any of your most convenient time. Rest assured that when considered for the position, our professional relationship would definitely be mutually beneficial. I would be looking forward to hearing from you soon. Objective: My professional goal is to become part of a global organization and to apply the theoretical frameworks gained in the field of economics. As a highly motivated and immensely driven individual, I plan to be an instrumental contributor to future organizations through the application of developed skills in economic policy design, international business and global management, as well as in evaluating micro- and macro-perspectives affecting the organizations’ operations. "Spring 2014 Internship, Economic Security Washington D.C." 2014. The EastWest Institute.

Alcohol Assignment 14 Essay Example for Free

Alcohol Assignment 14 Essay Alcohol as a drug is consumed in many societies across the globe by people of many ages. As such, it is important to cover this drug because it has a huge impact in the society. ALCOHOL 2 Alcohol abuse is very common especially among teenagers. It is sad that most people do not know the dangers that are associated with binge drinking. This paper aims to discuss different aspects of alcohol ranging from its classification, it side effects, and the psychological effects it has on the brain and the specific parts of the brain that it affects. Classification of Alcohol. Alcohol can be objectively classified into two classes. It can be classifies as a depressant as well as a stimulant. Alcohol classification as a depressant is related to the effect of its tendency to slow down some crucial functions of the human body such as speech resulting to slur of speech, slow response, and loss of stability. Alcohol is also classified as a stimulant because it does not always result to depression effects depending on the amount of it taken (Mongan, Reynolds , Fanagan and Long, 2007). When consumed in low quantities, it acts a stimulant the case being that of people who opt to take some small amounts of beer or wine so as to â€Å"cheer up’’. The point to stress at this point is that alcohol ceases to be a depressant if an individual consumes that amount which his/her body can easily handle. Psychological Effects of Alcohol on the Brain The consumption of alcohol is associated with various negative effects on the brain resulting to psychological problems. Suicide has been mentioned as the most common psychological effect of alcohol where it has been proven that majority of alcoholics commit suicide. Alcohol also has effects on the liver, which results to reduced capacity of the brain to function as a result of increased poison level on the blood that is supplied to the brain (Mongan, Raynolds, Fanagan Long, 2007). An alcohol abuser will experience a change in sleep patterns that may range from being sleepy or total lack of sleeps. Aspects of depression as well as high ALCOHOL 3 level of anxiety are bone out of the same. There is also the inability to remain attentive for a considerable span of time. It also causes unexpected change of moods, personality of the affected  individual, and hallucinations (Mongan et all, 2007) The Comon side Effects of Alcohol The various side effects of alcohol consumption are both long term and short term effects. The short term effects are the most common ones since they are easily observable. These effects cut through all the members of the societies from adolescents, men, women, and the elderly in the society. The most common effects of alcohol mostly manifested in adolescents are behaviors that are anti-social in nature such that can range from stealing and use of abusive language (Spear, 2002). The adolescents will also tent to be very violent (Korhonen, 2004). This violence does not only apply to adolescents alone. Other effects that are in a majority of alcohol takers are accidents associated with fires, car crashing, and collisions and generally accidental falls in places such as bath rooms. This is especially the case among the elderly persons whose ability to handle alcohol is very minimal. Irresponsible sexually behavior among the adolescents and women is another common effect of alcoholism the result of which is increased exposure to unwanted pregnancies as well as exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. Other effects are inability to maintain good relationships with other members of the society. As mentioned before, alcohol also results to depressed speech, loss of stability and some mental problems resulting to increased stress levels (Mongan et all, 2007) Brain Target and Alcohol Effect on Neurotransmitter Glycine receptors of the brain are the common target of the brain. This is supported by the evidence that alcohol has much profound effects on the thinking capacity of an individual, ALCOHOL 4 moods, and generally his/her behavior. These functions are only achieved when there is a proper balance between of chemical types that are identifies as neurotransmitters (Berman, Marinkovic, 2003). Whenever there is an imbalance in this chemical as a result of high toxic level of the blood supplied to the brain the ability to think is affected as well as a shift in moods and the individual behavior. Alcohol is both an antagonist and agonist. As an antagonist alcohol reduces some effects of the neurotransmitters while as an agonist it increases the effect of some neurotransmitters (Berman, Marinkovic, 2003). As an antagonist alcohol reduces the effects of glutamate which results to effects such as slur in speech, loss of memory and slackness in walking. Agonist effects are seen in instances where alcohol acts as painkillers, increased feeling of relaxation and generally feeling drowsy. Conclusion It is evident from the discussion that alcohol is a depressant and stimulant drug depending on the amount consumed on desired aspect on an individual. Alcohol affects different people in the society from young people to the adults. Furthermore, it has been established that alcohol has both psychological and physical effects, the physical effects mostly easily identified. Alcohol affects the functioning of the liver and as such the effect is transmitted to the brain and mostly affects the glycine receptors of the brain. This results to the imbalance in the neurotransmitter chemicals. The effects of the imbalance are increase or decrease in some activities of the neurotransmitters and as such alcohol functions as agonist and antagonist. ALCOHOL 5 References Berman, M. O. , Marinkovic, K. (2003). Alcoholism and the Brain: An Overview. Alcohol Research Health. Retrieved http://www. google. com/url? sa=trct=jq=esrc=ssource=webcd=1cad=rjauact=8ved=0CB0QFjAAurl= ALCOHOL 6 http%3A%2F%2Fpubs. niaaa. nih. gov%2Fpublications%2Farh27-2%2F125- 133. pdfei=rFbXVJWjA6ngywO_tYC4DAusg=AFQjCNFlNFUfhR8vWsTJZUZ1iKg AbNmXvQsig2=mKMv-_x18PNx-8ffk5kUZQbvm=bv. 85464276,d. bGQ Korhonen, M. (2004). Alcohol problems and approaches: Theories, Evidence and Northern Practices, NAHO, Ontario retrieved from http://www. naho. ca/documents/naho/english/pdf/alcohol_problems_approaches. pdf. Mongan D, Reynolds S, Fanagan S and Long J (2007) Health-related consequences of problem alcohol use. Overview 6. Dublin: Health Research Board retrieved from http://www. google. com/url? sa=trct=jq=esrc=ssource=webcd=1ved=0CB8QFjAAurl=http%3A%2F %2Fwww. hrb. ie%2Fuploads%2Ftx_hrbpublications %2FOverview6. pdfei=M0vXVL2FIeXD7gajoIEwusg=AFQjCNFi-kSYd63zLNuqIu- ppTWVvT9O3wsig2=wdKRzW_-rDin4vwkuf8wTwbvm=bv. 85464276,d. ZGU Spear , P. (2002). Alcohol Effects on Adolescents. Retrieved from http://citeseerx. ist. psu. edu/viewdoc/download? doi=10. 1. 1. 129. 8819rep=rep1type=pdf.

Prison Overcrowding in California Essay -- proliferation, penal codes,

Introduction The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops opportunities for paroles to prevent their return to prison. The following context will examine and discuss the different approaches to reduce the population of state prisons in California in order to avoid prison overcrowding. Defining the Problem The problem is that regardless of different methods and approaches to prevent prison overcrowding, California still have one, if not, the largest prison population when compared to other states in the nation (ALEC, 2010). Prison overcrowding, defined by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or CDCR, is when the prison housing capacity is exceeded, creating less spatial room to accommodate inmates (CDCR, 2008). California’s 33 state prisons currently accommodate at least 140,000 inmates. California’s 33 state prisons are so crowded that it has put at serious risks the lives of inmates, prison staffs, and employees. Even with several mental and drug treatment rehabilitation facilities available, California state prisons still have t... ...Prison Overcrowding: California." ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council. American Legislative Exchange Council. Retrieved October 13, 2013 from Organization of CDCR Executive Staff website: http://www.alec.org/initiatives/prisonovercrowding "Realignment AB 109 in California." Realignment (AB 109) in California. Retrieved October 13, 2013 from Shouse Law website: http://www.shouselaw.com/realignment.html Zhang, Sheldon. "Preventing Parolee Crime Program." Program: Preventing Parolee Crime Program (PPCP). National Institute of Justice, 15 June 2007. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. http://www.crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=72 "The Cornerstone of California’s Solution to Reduce Overcrowding, Costs, and Recidivism."California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Retrieved October 13, 2013 from CDCR website: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/realignment/

Negative Impact of Advertisement Essay

Advertising is a tool widely used by businesses and the media to promote their products. Unfortunately, advertising is pushing America more and more into a quick downward spiral. Advertisement acts like a fish hook for consumers. They have baits about the interest and wants of their consumers. Then when consumers grab a hold of it, advertisers reel them in on buying the products. The majority of advertisements are alarmingly misleading. They also convey an unrealistic view of certain products. Companies pay millions of dollars a year on advertising and go beyond the limit to persuade their customers. Little do consumers know they are indulging in this unnecessary luxury with nothing to gain. Advertising is unethical due to its negative impact on children, false images, and unrealistic expectations; however, advertisements do perform an important role on providing services to society. Without a doubt children are affected the most by advertising. At a young age, a child allows their mind to be molded and constructed. They don’t have much understanding of all the negative effects of the media and its advertisements. Children grow up to be everything they are surrounded by, as they are very susceptible to all outside influences. In many cases, children are most likely tended to misinterpret the messages conveyed through the advertisement. They end up having misinformed beliefs about many issues, which creates a desire to own a particular product being advertised. Joseph McLaughlin, a researcher from Fordham University, stated that â€Å"Children younger than 6 are especially susceptible to television advertising because many of them can’t tell the difference between a commercial and a program.† Because they are not able to distinguish the difference, glossy images in magazines, billboards, or flashy advertisement on television only create the im pulse for excessive desire to buy. Eric Schlosseris a well-known journalist that wrote the article â€Å"Kids Kustomers†. Along with McLaughlin, Schlosser shares a similar statement about advertising toward children. He  says, â€Å"The aim of most children’s advertising is straight forward: get kids to nag their parents and nag them well† (521). This means that advertisers are trying to focus their attention to make kids want their products and nag their parents until they get it for them. Children are the future, and an important part of the present as well. With these kinds of effects of advertising on them, this only creates a very wrong impression on their young minds about living without the needs of materialistic joys. Above all else, advertising is unethical. It creates an unrealistic image that urges people to buy in on the product. It gives them a natural high from the initial â€Å"new† or â€Å"delicious† feeling and leaving them unsatisfied after the feeling has worn off. Fast food advertisements are well known for exaggerating their products. Katie Robbins from Delish, wrote an article called â€Å"Fast Food: Truth behind Advertising†. In the article she says, â€Å"It looked so juicy and hearty, piled high with crunchy pickles and onions and resting on a soft, pillowy bed of a bun. But the actual sandwich that greeted when we ordered it at the Golden Arches didn’t look quite like the images we’d been seeing on billboard. Tired and limp, it was the anemic younger brother of the plucky McRib of our dreams† (Robbins). This means that people invest in a product they believe they saw in the advertisement but in reality, it’s just a pathetic excuse for fast food joints to make money. False beauty in advertising and pressure to look good caused many women to strive for the ideal perfection. Like Robbins, Jo Swinson, a writer from CNNopinion also wrote an article about how advertising contains false images. She stated: For some, the desire to look as perfect as these models can become all-consuming, and a wealth of evidence suggests that people in the UK are experiencing serious body image problems — a trend undoubtedly replicated around the globe. People unhappy about their bodies can develop eating disorders, turn to diet pills or steroids, or try cosmetic surgery and Botox injections. This means that women everywhere are willing to starve themselves or go beyond the limit to get the perfect body, to make them look like their favorite celebrities even. Advertising create unrealistic expectations. Ads for prescription drugs aimed directly toward consumer have resulted in unrealistic expectations  about the effectiveness of the drugs and its side-effects. In these kinds of advertisements, the visual images only show healthy, happy people. It never truly shows the actual downside effects of the drugs. Beauty and health products share a similar component by not living up to their promises; therefore, resulting in wasting consumer’s money once again. Herman CP, a psychologist from PubMed stated, â€Å"The false-hope syndrome suggests that unrealistic expectations in advertising about dieting set dieters up for failure.† This shows that fitness and health ads set consumers up to failure when they don’t see a change in their body, thus lead them to lose hope and give up. Gina-Marie Cheeseman from TriplePundit, shares a similar argument with Herman about unrealistic expectations. She says, â€Å"One of the implicati ons is that is creates an unrealistic expectation about the product that the company is advertising. Airbrushing sure does create unrealistic expectations, and U.S. women are shelling out money to meet those expectations.† This means that women everywhere are spending money on products to enhance their beauty to look like the one they see in the advertisements. Little did they know, advertisers used Photoshop and airbrushing to enhance the look of their models. Advertising however, still plays an important role on providing services to society. It offers social benefits. Along with that, advertising can be used to promote free speech since it is free speech: â€Å"This is especially true in countries where free speech has been suppressed. Advertising there, especially when it comes from the Western world where free speech is embraced, can encourage the idea that free speech is important,† says by Miranda Morley, a writer from SmallBusiness. This shows that advertising can be influential to foreign country that doesn’t allow freedom of speech. Like Morley, John E. Calfee also talks about how advertising is useful. He says, â€Å"But advertising does much more. It routinely provides immense amounts of information that benefits primarily parties other than the advertiser. This may sound odd, but it is a logical result of market forces and the nature of information itself† (98). Through providing information, it gives it a reason for research, and that research is backed-up by a firm sponsor thus creates credibility through its products. Although advertising plays an important role in society, unfortunately it is one of the major reasons why America is spinning into a downward spiral, doing major harm with little positive intention. Murray Lunn, a writer from Helium says, â€Å" Deceitful advertising, over the years, have caused consumers to associated the majority of advertising as a â€Å"sleazy† attempt to make them buy a product or service; participating in these types of advertising methods can cause a â€Å"black eye† on a business to the marketplace.† This means that businesses may put themselves in danger in the marketplace if they participate in these deceitful advertising. An article written by Shelly Frost, a writer from SmallBusiness, talks about how advertising affects businesses. She stated, â€Å"The Company is sometimes charged a fine for both current false advertising and any future incidents of deceptive advertising. If the company is sued, additional expenses come in the form of legal fees and money that must be paid to consumers who filed the suit.† Companies could lose more many than what they spend on making the advertisements if they’re caught false advertising. Advertising has long been seen as a way to convince consumers to spend their dollars on products or services they may not truly need. It is unethical. Women, who would see beauty ads, would want to emulate the thinness and beauty of such models. Today’s society has become cultures of consumerisms, and it is teaching children the false sense of self-worth. Also those consumers that were given the false impression about a product through various forms of media tend to suffer the most from society’s portrayal of the perfect body. Advertising is unethical and if not monitor carefully, it can affect and individual more negatively than for the better. Works Cited Calfe, John. â€Å"How Advertising Informs to Our Benefits.† Common Culture: Reading and Writing about American Popular Culture. 4th Edition. Ed. Micheal Petracca and Madeleine Sorapure. Upper Saddle River, NJ. 2004. 97-109. Print. Lunn, Murray. â€Å"The Negative Effects of Advertising.† Helium. N.p., 03 Feb. 2011. Web. 04 Apr. 2013. Frost, Shelley. â€Å"Negative Effects of False Advertising.† Small Business. Chron, 05 June 2010. Web. 02 Apr. 2013. McLaughlin, Joseph. â€Å"Researcher Shows Negative Effects of Advertising on Children.†Fordhamn.edu. Fordham University College, 17 May 2010. Web. 08 Apr. 2013. Morley, Miranda. â€Å"The Positive Effects of Advertising.† Small Business. Chron. N.p., 11 June 2010. Web. 15 Apr. 2013. Robins, Kate. â€Å"Food in the News.Fast Food: Truth in Advertising?† Delish. N.p., 16 Nov. 2010. Web. 02. Apr. 2013. Swinson, Jo. â€Å"False Beauty in Advertising and the Pressure to Look ‘good'† CNN. Cable News Network. 10.Aug. 2011. Web. 01 Apr. 2013. CP, Herman. â€Å"Effects of expose to unrealistic promises about dieting.† PubMed. National Center for Biotechnology Information, 25 Mar. 2009. Web. 08 Apr. 2013. Cheeseman, Gina-Marie. â€Å"British Regulatory Agency Bans Christian Dior Mascara Ad.†TriplePundit. N.p., 25 Oct. 2012. Web. 08 Apr. 2013. Schlosser, Eric. â€Å"Kid Kustomer.† From Inquiry to Academic Writing A Text and Reader. 2nd Edition. Ed. Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012. 519-526. Print.

Management Information Systems 12th Edition

1. What are reasons behind Collection services in your library (Pl. put ‘ ‘ on appropriate number) 1. Book Acquisition/ Collection Development 6. 1. 1. Quick response from suppliers [pic] 6. 1. 2. To save money and time of library [pic] 6. 1. 3. To reduce procedure and workflow to get books [pic] 4. To achieve greater efficiency [pic] 5. To get much discount [pic] 4% says yes for the quack response from the supplier and 64% says that it is save the time and money of the library and 71% says that it is also reduce the workflow of the gets books to the library and get more discount for the purchases the book for the library and 86% says the achieve greater efficiency for the book acquisition or collection development. 1. Books Processing Related Function 6. 2. 1.To get books in Ready-To-Shelf position [pic] 6. 2. 2. To reduce time in book processing tasks [pic] 6. 2. 3. TO concentrate on core services/function(Core means LIS education is required to understand the service/f unction) of library [pic] 4. Lack of staff with library [pic] 5. Lack of time with Library staff [pic] 6. To allow users to get book issued from library within sort span of time [pic]Book processing related function means To get books in Ready-To-Shelf position is 57% yes and other says no, To reduce time in book processing tasks is 64% says yes , TO concentrate on core services/function(Core means LIS education is required to understand the service/function) of library is says 43% yes and other 57% says no, Lack of staff with library is 43% yes and, Lack of time with Library staff is says 79% yes, To allow users to get book issued from library within sort span of time is says 71% yes and remain no. 2. Books arrangement and maintenance 6. 3. 1. Lack of Library staff [pic] 6. 3. 2.Concentration on core services/ function of library [pic] Book arrangement and maintenance have to problems one is lace of library staff and other is concentration on core services79% library staff says tha t the library staff is required more for the arrangement and 79% says no for the concentrate on the core services of the library. In the library the staff is not available for the arrangement of books and other core services . 3. Book Preservation and Conservation 6. 4. 1. No expertise with library staff in preservation and conservation tasks [pic] 6. 4. 2. Rare materials needed special care to preserve [pic] 6. 4. 3.Photocopying, digitization, binding, deacidification etc are considered technical jobs [pic] The book Preservation and Conservation is consider 79% yes for No expertise with library staff in preservation and conservation tasks, 71% yes Rare materials needed special care to preserve and 71% no for Photocopying, digitization, binding, deacidification etc are considered technical jobs. 4. Circulation 6. 5. 1. Lack of library staff to performed this task [pic] 6. 5. 2. To run library for late hours [pic] 6. 5. 3. To concentrate on core services/function [pic] Circulation is most important function of the library it is says that 71. 9% says yes for the lack of the staff perform the task of the circulation, 71% no for the run library for the long period of the time means late time and 50% for the concentrate the core services of the library. 5. Classification/Re-classification 6. 6. 1. Reclassification from one classification system to another [pic] 6. 6. 2. To complete the backlog [pic] 6. 6. 3. For completing the classification task within stipulated time [pic] 4. Lack of staff [pic] 5. Lack of time [pic] 6. Cateloguing /Re-cataloguing 6. 7. 1. For Completing of backlog [pic] 6. 7. 2. For completing the cataloging within stipulated time [pic] 6. 7. 3.For cataloging of foreign language materials [pic] 4. Lack of staff [pic] 5. Lack of time [pic] 6. Reducing cost in cataloging [pic] 7. Periodical subscription 6. 8. 1. Lack of time with library staff [pic] 6. 8. 2. To reduce burden on periodical subscription and follow-ups tasks [pic] 6. 8. 3. To concent rate on core services/functions [pic] 8. Reference/e-reference Services 6. 9. 1. Due to increasing of inquiries from users of library [pic] 6. 9. 2. Due to opening Distance education centres [pic] 6. 9. 3. TO increase number of working hours (late evening and early morning) [pic] 4. Lack of professional staff in library [pic] 5.Due to increasing research projects in institute [pic] 6. 10. Indexing 1. Lack of staff to perform the task [pic] 2. To complete backlog of periodical articles indexing within stipulated time [pic] 3. TO uses standard terminology while indexing of periodical articles. [pic] 4. TO concentrate on core services/functions of library [pic] 10. Translation Service 1. Lack of translator in library [pic] 2. Due to increasing demand of translation among library user [pic] 3. Lack of translating skilled and subject’s knowledge in library staff [pic] 4. Translation job is non-library activity and it should be performed by translator pic] 11. Photocopying 1. Due t o increasing price of photocopier machine [pic] 2. To reduce burden of maintenance [pic] 3. To reduce risk of technology that becomes obsolete [pic] 4. Lack of quality if it performed in-house by library staff [pic] 5. To reduce operational and capital cost [pic] 12. Stock verification 1. It is labourious and non-routine (once a year)job. [pic] 2. Library does not want to use its staff in this job [pic] 3. TO avoid burden of staff recruitment for this job [pic] 13. Computer Desktop related functions 1. Lack of skill or knowledge of computing functions [pic] 2.Lack of computers, equipments, softwares and hardware in library [pic] 3. To concentrate on core areas of library [pic] 4. Lack of staff [pic] 14. Automation 1. Lack of expertise on this area in library staff [pic] 2. Lack of time [pic] 3. Lack of library staff [pic] 4. Lack of resources, equipments and technology in library [pic] 5. Concentration on core services/functions of library [pic] 6. Increasing efficiency in library s taff [pic] 15. Digitization 1. To get good qualities in digitized work [pic] 2. Lack of knowledge/expertise in digitization work [pic] 3. To complete digitization in stipulate time pic] 4. To complete the backlog [pic] 5. Lack of knowledge of standard of digitization [pic] 6. Lack of software, Hardware and other equipments with library [pic] 7. To concentrate on core services/functions of library [pic] 16. Retrospective Conversion of Records 1. To convert the data (backlog) from one system to another (e. g. Libsys to KOHA) [pic] 2. Lack of manpower [pic] 3. Lack of knowledge of concern software/system [pic] 4. Lack time with library staff to convert data form one system to another [pic] 17. OPAC/Bar Coding/RFID 1. To resolve trouble shooting in library software [pic] . Barcoding, labeling etc are laborious jobs [pic] 3. Library staff has not enough knowledge to maintain RFID [pic] 4. To make stock verification (automatic) process fast [pic] 18. Webpage Designing/Library Portal Creat ion 1. Lack of knowledge in webpage designing with library staff [pic] 2. To give professional touch to the library portal [pic] 3. To concentrate on core service services/functions of library [pic] 19. Data Server/Data Storage 1. To reduce risk of the software, hardware that become obsolescence [pic] 2. Lack of skilled or expert persons in Library [pic] 3.To gain benefits of resources, investment and expertise of agency [pic] 20. Digital Archival Management/Institutional Repository 1. Lack of knowledge of software among library staff [pic] 2. Lack of time to create digital library [pic] 3. To reduce risk of media, hardware, software become obsolescence [pic] 4. Lack of knowledge of international standards to create metadata [pic] 21. Entire Library/Library Management 1. To reduce responsibility of administration works [pic] 2. To concentrate on core services/functions of library [pic] 3. To reduce burden of employee related issues [pic]

All About the Empire State Building

All About the Empire State Building The Empire State Building is one of the most famous buildings in the world. It was the tallest building in the world when it was built in 1931 and kept that title for nearly 40 years. In 2017, it was ranked as the fifth tallest building in the United States, topping out at 1,250 feet. The total height, including the lightning rod, is 1,454 feet, but this number is not used for ranking. It is located at 350 Fifth Avenue (between 33rd and 34th streets) in New York City. The Empire State Building is open every day from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m., making possible romantic late-night visits to the observation decks. The Building of the Empire State Building Construction began in March 1930, and it was officially opened on May 1, 1931, when then-President Herbert Hoover pushed a button in Washington and turned on the lights.The ESB was designed by the architects Shreve, Lamb Harmon Associates and built by Starrett Bros. Eken. The building cost $24,718,000 to build, which was nearly half the expected cost because of the effects of the  Great Depression.   Though rumors of hundreds of people dying on the work site circulated during the time of its construction, official records say that only five workers died. One worker was struck by a truck; a second fell down an elevator shaft; a third was hit by a hoist; a fourth was in a blast area;  a fifth fell off a scaffold. Inside the Empire State Building The first thing you encounter as you enter the Empire State Building is the lobby - and what a lobby this is. It was restored in 2009 to its authentic art deco design that includes ceiling murals in 24-karat gold and aluminum leaf. On the wall is an iconic  image of the building with light flowing from its mast. The ESB has two observation decks. The one on the 86th floor, the main deck, is the highest open-air deck in New York.  This is the deck thats been made famous in countless movies; two iconic ones are An Affair to Remember and Sleepless in Seattle. From this deck, which wraps around the spire of the ESB, you get a 360-degree view of New York that includes the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Times Square and the Hudson and East rivers. The top deck of the building, on the 102nd floor, gives you the most stunning view possible of New York and a birds-eye view of the street grid, impossible to see from a lower level. On a clear day you can see for 80 miles, says the ESB website. The Empire State Building also houses shops and restaurants that include the State Bar and Grill, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner in an art deco setting. Its off the 33rd Street lobby. Besides all these touristy attractions, the Empire State Building is home to rentable space for businesses. The ESB has 102 floors, and if youre in good shape and want to walk from street level to the 102nd floor, you will climb 1,860 steps. Natural light shines through 6,500 windows, which also afford spectacular views of Midtown Manhattan. Empire State Building Lights Since 1976 the ESB has been lit up to mark celebrations and events. In 2012, LED lights were installed - they can display 16 million colors that can be changed in an instant. To find out the lights schedule, check the Empire State Building website, linked above.

Womens Suffrage and the Seneca Falls Convention

Womens Suffrage and the Seneca Falls Convention The Seneca Falls Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Many individuals cite this convention as  the beginning of the womens movement in America. However, the idea for the convention came about at another protest meeting: the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention  held in London. At that convention, the female delegates were not allowed to participate in the debates. Lucretia Mott wrote in her diary that even though the convention was titled a World convention, that was mere poetical license. She had accompanied her husband to London, but had to sit behind a partition with other ladies such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They took a dim view of their treatment, or rather mistreatment, and the idea of a womens convention was born. The Declaration of Sentiments In the interim between the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention and the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton composed the Declaration of Sentiments, a document declaring the rights of women modeled on the Declaration of Independence. It is worth noting that upon showing her Declaration to her husband, Mr. Stanton was less than pleased. He stated that if she read the Declaration at the Seneca Falls Convention, he would leave town. The Declaration of Sentiments contained several resolutions including ones that stated a man should not withhold a womans rights, take her property, or refuse to allow her to vote. The 300 participants spent July 19th and 20th arguing, refining and voting on the Declaration. Most of the resolutions received unanimous support. However, the right to vote had many dissenters including one very prominent figure, Lucretia Mott. Reaction to the Convention The convention was treated with scorn from all corners. The press and religious leaders denounced the happenings at Seneca Falls. However, a positive report was printed at the office of The North Star, Frederick Douglass newspaper. As the article in that newspaper stated, [T]here can be no reason in the world for denying to woman the exercise of the elective franchise....   Many leaders of the Womens Movement were also leaders in the Abolitionist Movement and vice-versa. However, the two movements while occurring at approximately the same time were in fact very different. While the abolitionist movement was fighting a tradition of tyranny against the African-American, the womens movement was fighting a tradition of protection. Many men and women felt that each sex had its own place in the world. Women were to be protected from such things as voting and politics. The difference between the two movements is emphasized by the fact that it took women 50 more years to achieve suffrage than it did African-American men.

James Clerk Maxwell, Master of Electromagnetism

James Clerk Maxwell, Master of Electromagnetism James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physicist best known for combining the fields of electricity and magnetism to create a theory of the electromagnetic field. Early Life and Studies James Clerk Maxwell was born- into a family of strong financial means- in Edinburgh on June 13, 1831. However, he spent most of his childhood at Glenlair, a family estate designed by Walter Newall for Maxwell’s father. The young Maxwell’s studies took him first to the Edinburgh Academy (where, at the astounding age of 14, he published his first academic paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh) and later to the University of Edinburgh and the University of Cambridge. As a professor, Maxwell began by filling in the vacant Chair of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen’s Marischal College in 1856. He would continue in this post until 1860​ when Aberdeen combined its two colleges into one university (leaving room for only one Natural Philosophy professorship, which went to David Thomson). This forced removal proved rewarding: Maxwell quickly earned the title of Professor of Physics and Astronomy at King’s College, London, an appointment that would form the foundation of some of the most influential theory of his lifetime. Electromagnetism His paper On Physical Lines of Force- written over the course of two years (1861-1862) and ultimately published in several parts- introduced his pivotal theory of electromagnetism. Among the tenets of his theory were (1) that electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light, and (2) that light exists in the same medium as electric and magnetic phenomena. In 1865, Maxwell resigned from King’s College and proceeded to continue writing: A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field during the year of his resignation; On reciprocal figures, frames and diagrams of forces in 1870; Theory of Heat in 1871; and Matter and Motion in 1876. In 1871, Maxwell became the Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge, a position that put him in charge of the work conducted in the Cavendish Laboratory. The 1873 publication of A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, meanwhile, produced the fullest explanation yet of Maxwell’s four partial different equations, which would go on to be a major influence on Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. On November 5, 1879, after a period of sustained illness, Maxwell died- at the age of 48- from abdominal cancer. Considered one of the greatest scientific minds the world has ever seen- on the order of Einstein and Isaac Newton- Maxwell and his contributions extend beyond the realm of electromagnetic theory to include: an acclaimed study of the dynamics of Saturn’s rings; the somewhat accidental, although still important, capturing of the first color photograph; and his kinetic theory of gases, which led to a law relating to the distribution of molecular velocities. Still, the most crucial findings of his electromagnetic theory- that light is an electromagnetic wave, that electric and magnetic fields travel in the form of waves at the speed of light, that ​radio waves can travel through space- constitute his most important legacy. Nothing sums up the monumental achievement of Maxwell’s life work as well as these words from Einstein himself: â€Å"This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.†

Barnsieydale Sales-Related Data for 2004 and 2005 Report Research Paper

Barnsieydale Sales-Related Data for 2004 and 2005 Report - Research Paper Example There are various ways of adding and counting data (Microsoft Corporation 2006), the most appropriate are a simple addition and addition with one or more criteria. Subtotals by quarter for all persons are shown in the Sales Summary for 2005 in(000's) in Table 1. For example, Subtotal 815 means that all salespersons together have sold office furniture on 815,000 in the first quarter in the Commercial sector. Then, Sector subtotals (sales volumes by sector) are added. For example, Sector subtotal 3429 means that all salespersons together have sold office furniture on 3,429,000 in the Commercial sector in 2005. Then, 6,555,000 is annual sales result in 2005. Then formatting should be applied to the report to make it easy to read and understand. There are many basic formatting options available at the cell and worksheet level. Most are available on the Format Menu located on the Standard Excel toolbar. (Sandhills Publishing Company 2005) Pie charts and bar charts are very useful for analysis and easy to interpret. Peltier (2006) concludes that pie charts are good when you are showing the relative proportion of numbers that add up to a total, for a single series of data and when there are not too many wedges, particularly too many small ones. They show a good qualitative view of the data. Bar charts are good for quantitative displays, at showing progress toward a goal, especially if you've exceeded that goal (for this you should use a bar chart with a horizontal line at the goal). Sales by sector chart (Figure 1) shows the dynamic of sales of office furniture by a quarter in each sector. It shows that sales in Commercial sector are  £815 ,000 in the 1st quarter, then they grow to  £849,000 in the 2nd quarter, then they decline to  £799,000 in the 3rd quarter, and then they grow again to  £966,000 in the 4th quarter. Sales in the Commercial sector are higher than sales in other sectors in each quarter.

How does a study of popular culture help researchers understand how Essay

How does a study of popular culture help researchers understand how financial reporting information is valued by society - Essay Example Financial reports are then prepared to mirror the popular culture that prevails in monetary terms. Thus, ideally these reports should replicate the popular culture and should tell if that suits the well being of a country or not. Critical theory encompasses the idea of popular culture. It involves the examination and analysis of a society and its culture. Recently, Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions have been used to describe national or, better put, popular cultures. Hofstede’s ideas are based on a large scale research project to bridge cultural differences globally and to come up with a global popular culture! It uses data obtained from sixty-four countries. These studies identify five dimensions. These dimensions can be used to analyze how similar or different countries are. Based on these, their financial reports should mirror the popular trends that prevail and should compare the financial status of the countries in a considerable time period. The first dimension is of power distance, second one being individualism, third masculinity, fourth uncertainty avoidance and last one being long term orientation( Hofstede, Geert). Power distance index is used to measure the degree to which author ity is distributed lopsidedly within an association or an institution (and even in families). It also implies that a society’s degree of disparity is authorized by the supporters as much as by the leaders. The analysis of power distance shows significant differences amongst countries, Germany has a power distance index of 35 while Arab countries have a power index of 80. The second dimension of assessing the popular culture according to Hofstede is individualism. In this, it is compared whether the citizens prefer to look after themselves only, i.e. if they prefer individualism or if they prefer collectivism and like to help others. On the individualistic side, we find societies in which the ties between individuals are loose. Everyone takes care of himself

How was social media influenced Zara market Dissertation

How was social media influenced Zara market - Dissertation Example ZARA, the brand of Inditex group, has skyrocketed for success despite its contrasting model of business than typical fashion brands. The primary and secondary research based was conducted to assess the performance of successful ZARA in social media. The results revealed that customers value social sites of ZARA at a higher rate than competitor’s brand. The dominant reasons for this following remained the value attributed to customer driven fashion which in turn results in increased customers’ love for brand. The results have also revealed the potential of another inch of success for ZARA. This can be gained by moving a mile towards sales generation impulse at social media sites. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 1. INTRODUCTION 3 1.1. BACKGROUND 3 1.2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 8 1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS 8 1.4. METHODOLOGY 9 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 10 2.1. SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS ROLE IN THE BUSINESS 10 2.2. CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA 14 2.3. IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CUSTOMER 15 2.4. MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY OF ZARA 16 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 20 4. DATA ANALYSIS 22 6. LIST OF REFERENCES 36 7. APPENDIX 40 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. BACKGROUND Within the technological development and its intervention in businesses, the move of social media is being defined as driver of strategic imperative. Social media has resulted in massive wipe out of distance barrier across the world. Different social mediums have been developed for different purpose such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Plus, and so on. Each social medium is targeting different and overlapping set of user base. The core of wide range of benefits from social media remains in the increased power of customers towards business. Therefore, businesses also have to expand their presence to almost all social mediums in order to expand reach to the customers on the virtual world. Among different organizations that have received impact from the social media, the ZARA is also one o f them. ZARA is fast fashion brand of the Spanish group Inditex. ZARA contributes nearly 66.11% o the total revenue of Inditex (Inditex, 2012). ZARA foothold in different market is as follows: DIVISION MARKETS NO. OF STORE AMERICA 18 219 EUROPE 43 1296 ASIA AND REST OF WORLD 25 410 (Inditex, 2012) Other highlights about ZARA are as follows: (Inditex, 2012) ZARA has set an example for businesses as it has become multibillion dollar brand without massive advertisement like other competitors (Parekh, 2013). ZARA only employees 0.3% of its revenue on advertisement and generates its success from word of mouth (Bhagwat, 2011). This word of mouth is generated from the highly fashion sensitive customer base of ZARA which constitute following age group and characteristics: (Sardar, 2013) This word of mouth and customer reviews from the business model of ZARA in contrast to the traditional model as follows: (Sardar, 2013) The social media has also impacted ZARA like other brands in the fashio n industry. However, as a matter of fact that fashion retailer ZARA has always been in deviation to the typical trend of fashion retailer and have managed to won the game of competition, the social media standing of ZARA is also different and light than other brand (Bulman, 2010). According to the Akahoshi (2012) ZARA is a social brand for the reason that it has applied information from the social media to refine and update innovation and art in its products. The distribution of fans for ZARA for the last six months for

Wage Earnings in Canada Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Wage Earnings in Canada - Research Paper Example Nevertheless, the paper will discuss issues related to wages earnings in Canada. There was legislation as a form of government intervention in the labor market, whereby in Canada the minimum wage laws focused on women, who were in certain types of employment. The scope of the legislation was later spread to cater for the workers and men. In fact, by 1960, numerous workers had been covered with the laws of minimum wages (Fisher & Hostland, 2002). During that time, women and children were the prime focus of the legislation since they were subjects of exploitation by employers due to their vulnerability. In addition, the legislation was focused on imposing the minimum standards conditions of employment in order to introduce a health-working environment or the workers. The minimum wage legislation had a key objective that concerning guaranteeing the workers a decent and fair wage in all sectors, and this legislation has other intended and unintended impact on the labor market. There were unfavorable effects on employment due to principles of minimum wage legislation; hence, it was justified only on the grounds of offering incentives for leaving income maintenance programs in the form of welfare. Moreover, in the case where monetary returns to work are high, there are incentives of engagement in the labor market were opposed through an income maintenance programs. Moreover, this is considered to be saving to taxpayers, and it was preferred by transfer receipts, since workers prefer to work if the wages are sufficient. There has been a lower real life time earnings in the resent worker compared to the previous workers, whereby the tenure are not higher compared to those of preceding cohorts. Therefore, the patterns are related to effect of approximately 35percent of the Canadian workforce has workers are experiencing stagnation or reduction of wages (Baker & Stanger, 2008). Consequently, there has been a decline of society tolerance, due to the problems experienced b y low skilled workers, and this is transmitted through political economy effects. Canadian workers, despite the job tenure has median real hourly earnings with an overall decline in the real median wage that was 12percent and for the new entrants, the median real hourly wage plummeted in the recession experienced during 1980s. There was a recovery through an economic boom during the late 1980s, though this was succeeded by another recession in early 1990s. Median hourly earnings were less than 26percent in 1997 compared with 1981, due to the increase of the wages entrants. Hourly wage did not change much though it increased by 2007, whereby there was a 15percent below the value in 1981. There has been a similar pattern of wages for a worker in a period of five years, due to the entrants and a decline with a smaller magnitude. Median income of fulltime worker in Canada, during 2008 experienced an increase of $53, from $41,348 in 1980 and $41,401 in 2005, while entire economy labor yi eld during the same period was 37.4 percent (Larson, 2012). There were issue that were identified in the same year, which include; inequality in earnings, reducing terms of trade of labor measurement issues and a reduction in the labor share. Currently, the minimum wage earners various Canadian provinces has been rising over five percent and Labor Relations and Workplace Safety Minister Don Morgan made has recently made an announcement of a rise in

Annotated bibliography Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Annotated bibliography - Essay Example These criteria were useful in selecting entries in the bibliography list. Amoako-Gyampah, K. and Salam, A., 2004. An extension of the technology acceptance model in an ERP implementation environment. Information and Management, 41(3), pp. 731-745. Amoako-Gyampah and Salam (2003) intended on establishing the relationship between belief systems, usefulness of technology and subsequent use of the ERP system. The authors collected data from over one thousand workers in their country .They used the TAM (technology acceptance model) model to establish hypotheses for their paper. Amoako-Gyampah and Salam found that communication and training affect belief systems. This paper will be quite useful in assessment 3 because management is yet to approve the ERP project. They need reassurance that the plan will elicit support from members of the organisation. This paper will provide insights on how the company can achieve high usage rates. The major advantage of such an article is that it is theor etically founded on a pre-existing model. Furthermore, it uses empirical research to support its assertions, so Peet’s can rely on it. The paper addresses nontechnical factors that alter ERP usage, which is quite useful in the analysis. Fui-Hoon, N., Zuckweiler, K. and Lau, J., 2003. ERP implementation: Chief information Officer’s perceptions of critical success factors. ... This means that reengineering ought to focus on tailoring the business processes to fit ERP software. They also add that errors in adoption occur when enterprises fail to use capabilities within the ERP system. Organisations have sometimes made too many customisations before understanding their business practices. This paper is insightful because it relies on views of CIOs who have succeeded in implementing ERP systems. Subjects are thus speaking with authority on the matter. The article is relevant to the assignment because it extols the merits of buying one’s ERP system and taking advantage of its capabilities. Gattiker, T. And Goodhue, D., 2005. What happens after ERP implementation: Understanding the impact of interdependence and differentiation on plant level outcomes. MIS Quarterly, 29(3), 559-587. In the paper, the writers assess implications of certain organisational qualities in the performance of the ERP system. They found that organisational models must have low lev els of differentiation and high interdependence for them to experience ERP impact. Data integration works well when interdependence between subunits is high. Furthermore, ERP coordination improvements will be minimised when units in a company depend on each other. The article will be useful in this assessment because it addresses some of the potential glitches that could minimise these outcomes. Findings could be used to convince management about the usefulness of an ERP project as Peet’s already has highly interdependent business functions. Additionally, customisation will moderate effects of differentiation in the organisation. For the business report to garner support from management, it must acknowledge potential barriers and identify ways of overcoming them. This is what the

Wage Earnings in Canada Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Wage Earnings in Canada - Research Paper Example Nevertheless, the paper will discuss issues related to wages earnings in Canada. There was legislation as a form of government intervention in the labor market, whereby in Canada the minimum wage laws focused on women, who were in certain types of employment. The scope of the legislation was later spread to cater for the workers and men. In fact, by 1960, numerous workers had been covered with the laws of minimum wages (Fisher & Hostland, 2002). During that time, women and children were the prime focus of the legislation since they were subjects of exploitation by employers due to their vulnerability. In addition, the legislation was focused on imposing the minimum standards conditions of employment in order to introduce a health-working environment or the workers. The minimum wage legislation had a key objective that concerning guaranteeing the workers a decent and fair wage in all sectors, and this legislation has other intended and unintended impact on the labor market. There were unfavorable effects on employment due to principles of minimum wage legislation; hence, it was justified only on the grounds of offering incentives for leaving income maintenance programs in the form of welfare. Moreover, in the case where monetary returns to work are high, there are incentives of engagement in the labor market were opposed through an income maintenance programs. Moreover, this is considered to be saving to taxpayers, and it was preferred by transfer receipts, since workers prefer to work if the wages are sufficient. There has been a lower real life time earnings in the resent worker compared to the previous workers, whereby the tenure are not higher compared to those of preceding cohorts. Therefore, the patterns are related to effect of approximately 35percent of the Canadian workforce has workers are experiencing stagnation or reduction of wages (Baker & Stanger, 2008). Consequently, there has been a decline of society tolerance, due to the problems experienced b y low skilled workers, and this is transmitted through political economy effects. Canadian workers, despite the job tenure has median real hourly earnings with an overall decline in the real median wage that was 12percent and for the new entrants, the median real hourly wage plummeted in the recession experienced during 1980s. There was a recovery through an economic boom during the late 1980s, though this was succeeded by another recession in early 1990s. Median hourly earnings were less than 26percent in 1997 compared with 1981, due to the increase of the wages entrants. Hourly wage did not change much though it increased by 2007, whereby there was a 15percent below the value in 1981. There has been a similar pattern of wages for a worker in a period of five years, due to the entrants and a decline with a smaller magnitude. Median income of fulltime worker in Canada, during 2008 experienced an increase of $53, from $41,348 in 1980 and $41,401 in 2005, while entire economy labor yi eld during the same period was 37.4 percent (Larson, 2012). There were issue that were identified in the same year, which include; inequality in earnings, reducing terms of trade of labor measurement issues and a reduction in the labor share. Currently, the minimum wage earners various Canadian provinces has been rising over five percent and Labor Relations and Workplace Safety Minister Don Morgan made has recently made an announcement of a rise in

Cities and Social Difference Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Cities and Social Difference - Term Paper Example The concept of culture landscape today suffers a series of more enrichment and transformations, thus we find the acquired character of culture and the process of production as well as attribution which culture is an instrument in the entire study and analysis of the complexity of the social contemporary societies (Gower, 1990, p. 45). Therefore, in this paper, I will engage with the large body of mainstream sociological research which views landscape as being divided, segregated and patterned by inequalities in a measurable way and objectively defined way such as quantitative rate of urban residential segregation as well as inevitable boundaries that separate poor neighborhoods from gentrifying area. The next section of the paper is to analyze the landscape, economics, and politics identities. I also turn to look at the city street as a site for the micro-social interaction patterned with structural relationships of social difference and inequalities, Then finally I present a more su bjectivist perspective, which highlight the role of space in the social production of inequalities, at this point, the neighborhood is shown to act as both a cultural and a special form. The habitues of many residents in impoverished neighborhoods is seen as both a mechanism and a product for reproduction of isolation and poverty from mainstream society. Analytical review of city landscape: Throughout time, social culture differences that have been stimulated by a series of major events are identified as being essential in the process of evolution and shaping of spaces that exists today. In this context of two major forces of globalization and new economy, Los Angeles city has found a new way to survive and collaborate through creativity and technology. This particular revolution is referred to as social cultural moment, whereby, the past paradigms of social developments are replaced with new culture development, diversity and fragmentation. To find out the acquired character as wel l as present culture, we carried out a field work analysis of the complexity culture and material concept of landscape in LA. Therefore, this paper shall discus the social differences expressed in the landscapes of contemporary Los Angeles. One of America’s iconic landscape, Los Angeles strip stretches from the south of Hollywood Hills, down town LA, all the way to the Pacific Ocean 18 miles in length. It cuts across different landscapes, residential areas, and commercial and entertainment amenities; making it the diverse city that it is today. Without a doubt, a ride from Bell Air to downtown LA reveals the diverse physical landscape that clearly separates the various social segments from one part of the town to another. As the bus approached towards Beverly Hills, I could see the change in street signs and signal structures. From Blue shabby signs to white crisp indicators, I was beginning to feel the contrast from campus already. The aligned green trees welcomed us as we t raversed into the residential areas. The huge houses, mansion to be exact, evidently said something about the people that resided within. With manicured lawns and polished driveways, these starters offered an exotic menu for the eyes. The aesthetic value attributable by these trees not only acts as beautiful scenery, but also as a natural heritage as well as for environmental nourishment as they make the climate to be cool and conducive for the residents as well as

Background to the French new wave cinema Essay Example for Free

Background to the French new wave cinema Essay The New Wave (French: LA Nouvelle Vague was a term coined by critics for a group of French Filmmakers that existed in the late 1950s and 1960s. these set of filmmakers were actually influenced by Italian Neorealism, (New form realism). Although, this group of people was not well organized filmmakers, they were however connected through their self conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm. Many of them never had the social and political upheavals of that period separated from their work. Their experience which came up in a radical movement experimented with editing/visual style, and narrative part as a way of breaking from the old tradition of conservation. So many filmmakers were actually involved in this movement; however, the most prominent pioneers among them include Jean – Luc Goddard, Fancois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Claude Charbroil, and Jacques Rivelte among others. Through criticism and editorialization, they laid the groundwork for a surge of concepts which was later termed as the auteur theory, the French version of which is â€Å"La Politique des auteurs† meaning (â€Å"the policy of authors†). This policy holds that the director is the author of his movies, with a personal signature which must be seen from film to film. The beginning of New Wave was an exercise by the cahiers writers in applying his philosophy to the world by directing movies themselves. Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge (1958) is seen as the first New Wave feature. Truffaut achieved great success in the 400 Blows (1959) and Godard, with Breathless in 1960. The movement flourished immensely due to the success it recorded in the area of criticism and financing. This turned the world’s attention to the innovation of the New Wave and enabled the movement to flourish the more. New Wave Cinema is a common term in Film studies as a way of bringing together series of films and personnel that represent a change of direction or a break with the past. It is important to note that New Wave is an era usually referred to as a historical moment within a National Cinema. The most popular example of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague); essentially a group of young critics who broke away from the earlier or olden tradition and resorted to producing films that are highly exciting, experimental and innovating. The question then, is what the nature of French Cinema before this innovation was. The French were the pioneers of early Cinema through the silent films of Auguste and Louis Lumiere and Georges Melies. These filmmakers represent the polar opposites of cinematography; a realistic documentary approach for the Lumiere brothers. During the late 30s, France experience a period of increased political awareness that encouraged the development of poetic realism (i. e. realisme poetique) which characterized French Cinema during this period. The intended effect of poetic realism was to project an ambivalent image, a romanticized vision of the world, as well as an atmosphere of fatalism reflecting the spirit of time. French Cinema was seriously affected by the Second World War during the Nazy German occupation which also dominated the world of film making. Even though the Cinema industry was ruined, the French people needed entertainment and as the result and in the early fifties, French production started thriving again. The films were marked by distinctive features that were considered very quality oriented. (LA tradition de qualite). At the origin of the New Wave was a Cinema journal called Cahiers du Cinema and the development of a critical notion La Politique des auteurs, which both grew increasingly influential in the 1950s as a reaction to the mainstream quality tradition on the one hand, and to enthusiastic cinephilic interest in a few distinctive directors working in Hollywood on the other. Even though it has been permanently established today, the French New Wave was not originally conceived as a Cinema movement or a school, but rather was the result of specific socio-cultural circumstances. A number of important technical developments for example, (New lighter cameras; faster, more light sensitive film; synchronous sound equipment and the advent of television) took place in the second half of the 1950s which coincided with the emergence of a new generation of critics, actors and directors. The group of new young directors who were included under the umbrella phrase of the New Wave (Jean – Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Alain Resnais, Claude Charbol and Francois Truffant) brought in new ideas, the enthusiasm of youth and a sense of freedom into French Cinema. Goddard was the intellectual of the group interested in formal experiment, and later became politically involved; Truffaut’s film combined humanism, emotion and sensitivity; New Wave directors work together, exchange ideas, screenplays, technicians and even actors. This collaboration certainly helps explain some common characteristics in the films that were, and still are, associated with the New Wave. These and many more are the crux of the New Wave. A FOCUS ON FRANCOIUS TRUFFAUT Francois Truffaut was born in Paris on the 6th February, 1932. He attended Lycee Rollin, Paris. He was later enlisted into the army, but later escaped on the eve of departure for Indochina. He was later released for character instability. Francois was married to Madeleine Morgenstern and got divorced around 1957; he actually had two daughters from her. He was the founder of Cine – club in Paris; he was jailed at a point due to his inability to pay his debt and was later released. He was briefly employed by the service of Cinematographique of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1953. He became a writer on film for Cahiers du Cinema, arts from 1953, including seminal article, â€Å"Une certain Tendance du Cinema Francois† in 1954; he directed his first – feature, Les Quatre Cents Coups, and wrote script for Godard’s â€Å"A bout de souffle. He had won so many awards; these include Best Director, Cannes Festival, for Les Quatres Cents Coup, 1959; Prix Louis Delhic, and Best Director, New York Film Criticism and British Academy Award for Best Direction, for Day for Night, 1973. He died of cancer in Paris on the 21st October, 1984. However, before his death, he achieved great fit in the world of Cinema in France. He was one of the five young French film critics, writing for Andre Bazin’s Cahiers du Cinema in the early 1950s. He was the one that first formulated the politique des auteurs, a view of film history and film art that defended those directors who were â€Å"true men of the Cinema. These include Renoir, Vigo, and Tati in France; Hawks, Ford, and Welles in America – rather than those more literary, script – oriented film directors and writers associated with the French â€Å"tradition of quality†. In his first feature in 1959 of Les Quatre Cent Coups, he put his ideas of Cinema spontaneity into practice with the study of an adolescent, Antoine Doinel, who breaks free from the constrictions of French society to face an uncertain but open future. Since this debut, Truffaut’s career has been dominated by an exploration of the Doinel character’s future. In Truffaut’s 25 years of making films, the director, the Doinel character, and Leaud all grew up together. THE FILM, LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS (THE FOUR HUNDRED BLOWS) BY FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT The rebellious teenager of Less quatre cent coups becomes a tentative, shy, sexually clumsy suitor in â€Å"Antoine et Colette† episode of Love Love at Twenty. In Baisers Voles, Antoine is older but not much wiser at either love or money making. In Domicile conjugal, Antoine has married but is still on the run toward something else – the exotic lure of other sexual adventures. And in L’ Amour en fuite, Antoine is still running sequence that concludes Les Quatre Cent Coups. Although Antoine is divorced, the novel which he has finally completed has made his literary reputation. That novel, it turns out, is his life itself, the entire Doinel Saga as filmed by Truffaut, and Truffaut deliberately collapses the distinction between written fiction and filmed fiction, between the real life of humans and the fictional life of characters. The collapse seems warranted by the personal and professional connections between Truffaut the director, Doinel the character, and Leaud the actor. Truffaut in his film making remained consistently committed to his highly formal themes of art and life as can be seen in the â€Å"Four Hundred Blows†. He also concentrated on film and fiction and youth education, rather than venturing into radical politics as was the case with Jean – Luc Godard. While stating his position in Le Dermer Metro, one of his most political film, which examines a theatre troupe in Nazified Paris. The film director appeared to confess that, like those actors in that period, he could only continue to make art the way he knew how, that his commitment to formal artistic excellence would eventually serve the political purposes that powerful art always serves, and that for him to betray his own artistic powers for political, lead to his making bad art, and load political statements. In this rededication to artistic form, Truffaut was probably restating his affinity with Jean Renoir. He wrote about for Cahiers du Cinema. Renoir like Truffaut, progressed from making more rebellious black-and-white films in his youth to more accepting colour films in his adult age; he played major roles in most of his own films as was the case with Renoir. FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT AND FILM THEORY THE AUTEUR THEORY According to Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, in film criticism, the auteur theory of 1950s holds that a director’s films reflect his personal creative vision, as if they were the primary â€Å"auteur† (the French word for â€Å"auteur†). In some cases, film producers are considered to have a similar â€Å"auteur† role for the films that they have produced. In law the auteur is the creator of a film as a work of art and is the original copyright holder. Under the European Union law, the film director shall always be considered the author or one of the authors of a film. Auteur theory by Francois Truffaut has had a major impact on film criticism ever since it was advocated in 1954 by the same Francois. â€Å"Auteurism† is the method of analyzing films based on this theory, or, alternatively, the characteristics of a director’s work that makes her or him an auteur. Either the auteur theory or, alternatively, the characteristics of a director’s work that makes him an auteur (author) Both the auteur theory and the Auteurism method of film analysis are closely tied to the French New Wave and the film critics who wrote for the influential French film review periodical â€Å"Cahiers du Cinema. † Auteur theory draws on the work of Andre’ Bazin, co-founder of the Cahiers du Cinema, who argued that films should reflect a director’s personal vision. Bazin championed film makers such as Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir. Although Bazin provided a forum for Auteurism to flourish, he remained wary of its excesses. Another person who this theory can be traced to is Alexandre Astrucx, who notion of the camera – stylo or â€Å"Camera pen† and the idea that directors should wield their cameras like writing use their pens and that they should not be prevented by any form of traditional storytelling. Traffaut and the other members of the Cahiers recognized that moviemaking was an industrial process. To this end, they proposed an ideal to strive for; thus, the director should use the commercial apparatus the way a writer uses pen and, through the mise en scene, imprint their vision on the work. What this means is that the role of screen writer was minimized in their eyes. They also understood and realized that not many directors could reach this ideal; they however value those that attempt to draw close to the ideal. In his further explanation on his theory, Truffant asserts that there are no good or bad films or movies, rather only good or bad directors exist. Invariably, he tends to say that a director makes the film and not the story line or the script per – say. This is the more reason why the director of a film should be the writer of the script. Much of Truffaunt’s writing of this period and his colleagues at the film criticism magazine cahiers du Cinema, was specially designed to ridicule or criticize post-war French Cinema, especially the big production films of the Cinema de qualite (â€Å"Quality films†) Truffaunt in his theory referred to these films with disdain or sterile, old fashion or archaic. The theory essentially maintains that all good directors and many bad ones have such a distinctive style or consistent theme that their influence is unmistakable in the body of their work. Traffaunt was equally appreciative of both directors with a marked visual style such as Alfred Hitchcock, and those whose visual style was less pronounced but who had nevertheless consistent in their theme, throughout their movies such as Jean Renoir’s humanism. The auteur theory has created a lot of impact on directors of the New Wave Movement of French Cinema in the 1960s; many of such were the critics of the Cahiers du Cinema. One of the ironies of the auteur theory is that when Truffant was writing, the break-up of the Hollywood Studio System during the 1950s was ushering in a period of uncertainty and conservation in American Cinema, with the result that very few films of Truffant admiration were actually being made. The impact of the theory did not just stop in France. It was adopted in English – Language film criticism in the 1960s. In the UK, movie adopted Auteurism, while in the US; Andrew Sarris introduced it in the essay, â€Å"Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962. † This essay is where the Half-French, Half-English term, â€Å"auteur theory†, originated. To be classified as an â€Å"auteur†; according to Sarris, a director must accomplish technical competence in their technique, personal style in terms of how the movie looks and feels the interior meaning. Later in the decade, Sarris published American Cinema; Directors and Directions, 1929-1968, which without delay turned out to be the unofficial Bible of Auteurism. A FOCUS ON A BOUT DE SOUFFLE BY JEAN – PAAL BELMONDO; AN ANALYSIS WITH PARTICULAR FOCUS ON VISUAL ELEMENTS USED IN THE MAKING OF THE FILM In our analysis, we shall see how Godard created the New Wave style by using production techniques to achieve some visual show. These techniques include location shooting, hand-held camera, natural lighting, casual acting and subversion of rules of classical editing. All these techniques cannot be found in tradition of quality, turn the film into spontaneous and improvised performances, rather than being the mere representation of the script, which exists before the film – making process begins. About de Souffle begins with Michael Pioccard (Jean – Paul Belmondo) stealing a car to drive him to Paris. However, two Policemen on motorcycles chase him. He turns off the road, but is followed by one of the Policemen. Michael shoots the Policeman and runs off. What makes this part of the film unusual and innovative is the way it is filmed. There is therefore every need to analyze the film based on the shots; it is only with that that a vivid understanding of the visual elements can be clearly understood. The first 17 shots last just 44 seconds, which makes an average a change of shot every 2. 6 seconds. (The first shot lasts 14 seconds). All the innovative production techniques mentioned above are apparent in this series of shots. The scene is shot on location, on the highway. The rest of the scene is also shot on location patricianly on the street of Paris. The camera is very mobile and shaky. The pans in shot 3 and 4 are very quick, creating blurred images. The Lighting is natural in shot 7, the sun shines directly into the lens, creating a bloomer. Belmondo is renowned and often initiated for his casual acting style in this film. He seems to improvise most of the time. Finally, this series of shots subvert the rules of continuity editing. The cut from shot 3 to shot 4 is less than 30 degrees and, therefore creates a Jump cut. In shot fire, Michael’s car is traveling from screen left to screen right. But in shot 6, the Police are shown traveling in different or opposite direction, from screen right to left. The Cameraman has crossed the road after filming the car to film the motorcycles. Such a swift change of direction creates a confusion of screen space. Almost in the same vein, when Michael stops the car, he looks screen left at the Police passing by. But after he picked up the gun, he looks screen right at the Policeman, instead of screen left, as the viewers screen left, as the viewers would expect. The cut from 15 to 16, the shot of Michael’s hand to the shot of the gun, created another jump, because there is very little difference between the two shots. The use of shaky, hand-held camera, together with the use of location shooting and natural lighting, jump cuts and discontinuous editing, do not aim to show the action clearly; instead, it offers a fragmentary and partial vision of the scene. These â€Å"imperfect† techniques represent the auteur’s presence and serve as a clear mark of the way he or she writes his or individual vision into the film. The effect these production techniques create is one of spontaneity and improvisation. However, what is interesting is the use of these techniques to give the film a documentary feel. The blurred pans, the shaky camera movements and abrupt editing testify to the difficulty the camera man faces in the situation which he found himself and his physical interaction with the event. It is imperative to note that the stylistic choices made by French New Wave directors were not simply determined by aesthetic considerations, but also y economics. The French New Wave is a low budget film making practice. Filming on location with natural lighting decreases production costs, just as the emphasis on spontaneity defrays pre-production cost such as script writing. Nevertheless, far from being deponent by the lack of finance, the French Wave directors identified low production costs with artistic freedom. They saw that a close relationship exist between the size of the budget and artistic freedom for visual creation and effect. Hence, they believed that the higher the budget, the lower the artistic freedom as one may not be allowed to improvise since every technicality would be in place. This is not the case in the Hollywood Film making. The direct opposite is the case here. To this end, a sharp contrast is noticeable while comparing the Hollywood Wave Film making with the French New Wave. FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA AND HOLLYWOOD FILM MAKING: JUXTAPOSITION Contrary to what we saw in the French New Wave Cinema, the Hollywood film making has taken a different dimension. Many of the initial conventions of the French Wave are beginning to go into extinction today. Jump cuts were used so much to cover mistakes as they were an artistic convention. Jean – Luc Godard certainly appreciated the dislocating feel a jump cut conveyed. The use of location shooting, natural lighting and improvisational acting by Midvale Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut as well as Jean – Luc Godard has been visited with an innovation with the emergence of Hollywood and its dominance in the film making in the world; as accurate and appropriate measures are often taken to curb any attitude of copying the incomplete and quick production of the French Wave Cinema. It is against this background that it has become necessary to say that since the advent of commercial Cinema of a century ago, the costs and complexity of film making have encouraged producers to develop a factory-oriented approach to production. This is the case of the Hollywood film making. The benefit of such approach includes the centralization of both production and management; the division and detailed subdivision of labor. This is not the case with the French New Wave Cinema as they upheld the director as the only competent artist without any form of division of labor. Contrary to the French New Wave Cinema, where standardized production is often questionable, Hollywood film production often yearns for standard. This, they do through putting all they can to ensure that the production is of standard. This stern from film style, product type, cost efficiencies derived from economies of scale, consistent production values; and the cultivation of a brand name in the movie market place. This was not the case in the French New Wave Cinema. Their major target was artistic freedom which should not be restricted by high budget. But in the case of Hollywood, artistic freedom is not emphasized, what is emphasized is the quality of the film to be produced which is often encouraged or motivated through huge budgeting and division of labour. The idea of proper film making set into Hollywood in 1910 in California; when the locale became the centre of commercial film production in the United States. The dominant firms referred to their facilities as â€Å"studios†, which invoke the more artistic aspects of film making, although operations on the kind of model that Henry Ford (1963-1947) was introducing to the auto industry at the time. In the larger global context, Hollywood has been the dominant force throughout motion future history due to the studio’s collective control of distribution as well as production. This control diminished considerably in post war era. This was due to the rise in independent production and freelance talent as well as the threat of television and other new media. Yet, the Hollywood studios are the strongest shaping forces in movie industry, and their operation today is the fundamental extension of the system that they established at their inception. It is against this background that it has become obvious that the current trend in the Hollywood film making is better off than the French New Wave Cinema and that is why some of the French New Wave Directors realized themselves that the Hollywood Cinema is something to write home about. To buttress our point and to clearly back up this juxtaposition without any form of prejudice, a cursory examination of some prominent Hollywood film makers such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Ray would be taken into consideration. JOHN FORD AND THE HOLLYWOOD FILM MAKING There is nobody after having gone through his profile would doubt his greatness in the American movie making. Even among great film makers, the greatness of John Ford is often observed. This is why Welles much quoted Matra was â€Å"John Ford, John Ford and John Ford†. The road to Citizen Kane and Xanadu. A John Ford film was a visual gratification; this was not the case during the French New Wave Cinema. His method of shooting was characterized with clarity and apparent simplicity. Frank Capra called Ford â€Å"pure great† and Elian Kazan confessed that, even after half-a-dozen films, he studied Ford’s oeuvre to learn how to become more cinematic. She says ‘Ford taught me to tell it in pictures. . . Jack taught me to trust long shots. This is a clear indication that Ford as a filmmaker of the Hollywood believed and upheld the issue of technicality and visual elements in the making of his films. This is contrary to what was in vogue during the New Wave of French Cinema. Ford’s greatness in the Hollywood film making manifests again when Fredrick Fellini says â€Å"When I think of Ford, I sense the smell of barracks of horses, of gunpowder, . . The amending trips of his heroes. But, above all, I feel a man who liked motion picture, who lived for the Cinema, who has made out of motion pictures a fairly tale to be told to everyone, but in the first place a fairly tale to be lived himself . . . For all this, I esteem him, I admire him and I love him. † Ford made more than 60 silent films, about 130 movies in all. John Ford has to a great extent contributed immensely to the development of film in the world. Nicholas Ray was born on August 7th 1911 and died June 16 1979. Coming from a radio background, Ray directed his first and only Broadway production, the Duke Ellington Musical Beggar’s Holiday, in 1946. After a year he went into directing films, and he directed his first film, The Live by Night. This film though was visited with a lot of criticism, for its extreme empathy, The New York Times gave the film a positive review and acclaimed Ray for â€Å"good, realistic production and sharp direction. Ray has an eye for action details. His staging of the robbery of a bank, all seen by the lad in the pick-up car, makes a fine clip of agitating film. One of his prominent films ‘Rebel Without a Cause† distilled much of the essence of Rays Cinematic vision; expressionistic use of colour, dramatic use of architecture and empathy for those who struggle to fit in to mainstream society. Ray had been praised by most French New Wave Cinema, such as Jean – Luc Godard who referred to him as the Cinema. Thus he says â€Å"The Cinema is Nicholas Ray†. This at attests to the fact that Ray has contributed greatly to the field of Cinema. Having studied and researched in Hollywood Studio directors as can be seen above, it is important to juxtapose the French New Wave Cinema with their works in the field of film making. The way the films of the French New Wave were made reflected and interest in questioning Cinema itself, by drawing attention to the conventions used in film making. In this manner, the French New Wave directors strove to present an alternative to Hollywood by consciously breaking its conventions, while at the same time paying homage to what they regarded as good in Hollywood Cinema. French New Wave films had a free editing style and did not conform to the editing rules of Hollywood films. The editing often drew attention to itself by being discontinuous, reminding the audience that they were watching a film for example by using jump cuts or the insertion of material extraneous to the story (non-dugetic material). Godard in particular, favored the use of the jump cut, where two shots of the same subject are cut together with a noticeable jump on the screen. In a Hollywood film, this would be avoided by either using a sot/reverse shot edit or cutting to a shot from a camera in a position over 300 from the preceding shot. In Godard’s first full length film A Bout de Souffle, jump cuts were used during a lengthy conversation. Irrelevant shots were sometimes inserted for ironic or comic effect. The acting in the French New Wave Cinema was a marked departure from much that had gone before. They were encouraged to improvise their lines, or talk over each others lines as would happen in real life. In A Bout de Souffle, this leads to lengthy scenes of inconsequential dialogue, in opposition to the staged speeches of much traditional film acting as the case of Hollywood. Women were often given strong parts that did not conform to the archetypal roles seen in most Hollywood Cinema, for example Jeanne Moreau in Truffaut’s Jules ET Jim (1962) To this end, the reason why the French New Wave filmmakers praised a style so very different from their own has been obviously established and in this regard, one now understands that the excellent and perfect production of the Hollywood Cinema cannot in anyway be overemphasized. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1) http:/en. wikipedia. org/cinematic New Wave 2) Gerald Mast http://www/filmreference. com/Directors-st-ve/Truffaut-Franois. html

First-principles Calculations of Rare Earth Diffusivities

First-principles Calculations of Rare Earth Diffusivities First-principles calculations of rare earth (Y, La and Ce) diffusivities in bcc Fe ABSTRACT: The impurity diffusivities of rare earth elements, Y, La and Ce, in bcc Fe have been investigated by the first-principles calculations within nine-frequency model and semi-empirical corrections for magnetization. The microscopic parameters in the pre-factor and activation energy have been calculated. For the three elements, the solute-vacancy interactions are all attractive, and Y and La solute atoms more favorably bond to the vacancy. The solute-vacancy binding energy can be explained in terms of the combination of the distortion binding energy and the electronic binding energy, and the strain-relief effects accounts for larger portion of the binding energy for Y and La than that for Ce. The diffusion coefficients for Y and La are comparable, and predicted to be larger than that for Fe self-diffusion. Compared with Y and La, Ce shows large migration energy and weak solute-vacancy attractive interaction, which accounts for the lowest diffusivity of this element. Keywords: Diffusion; Rare earth; Bcc Fe; First-principles calculations 1. Introduction In the past years, the addition of rare earth (RE) elements has been regarded promising in steels [1-3]. A series of beneficial research for the development of Rare earth Addition have been focused on the purification and modification of inclusion, since RE elements are characterized by significant negative free energy changes for compound formations. RE doping also improve the high-temperature oxidation resistance of steels due to the reactive-element effect (REE) [4,5].In addition, the phase transformations, recrystallization behavior, and the corrosion resistance of steel can be improved by adding RE [6, 7]. Knowledge of all of these is essential to understand the influence of RE additions on the physical, chemical and various properties of steels. In spite of the progress so far in RE application, it is apparent that many questions still remain rather controversial. Data for the effects of rare earths on the surface and interfacial properties, surface tension, contact angle, etc., of steels, are unanswered, for the sake of precise solubilities of rare earths in iron and steels are still not available. Furthermore, accurate thermodynamic data are still unsatisfactory, to accurately predict these characteristics. Kinetic properties, in particular diffusion coefficients for RE, are necessary in understanding the underlying mechanism of RE’s above effects [8]. Therefore, the investigation of the diffusivity for these RE elements is expected to be useful in the context of developing RE steels. Although for diffusion in bcc Fe many data are available, nevertheless there is little experimental or calculated data for RE. For the three commonly used RE elements, Y, La and Ce, only the diffusion coefficient of Y has been reported [9].The purpose of the present work is to investigate the impurity diffusivities of rare earth elements, Y, La and Ce, in bcc Fe by the first-principles calculations within nine-frequency model and semi-empirical corrections for magnetization[10,11], calculate the associated solute-vacancy binding energies, migration energies, pre-factors and activation energies for these impurity diffusivities, as well as the self-diffusion coefficient of Fe, thus discuss the related factors of the diffusion coefficients. 2. Methodology The temperature dependence of diffusion coefficient D is expressed in the Arrhenius form D=D0exp(-Q/kBT). For bcc Fe, the Arrhenius plot of self-diffusion and solute diffusion in iron of the ferromagnetic state deviates downwards from the Arrhenius relationship extrapolated from the paramagnetic state [12]. This effect is attributed to the change of magnetization which affects the diffusion activation energy. The temperature dependent magnetization on the diffusion activation energy is well described by the following form [13]: QF(T)=QP[1+ÃŽ ±s(T)2] (1) where QF(T) and QP are the activation energies in the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic state, respectively; s(T) is the ratio of the magnetization of pure iron at a given temperature T to that at 0K, and has been experimentally measured [14,15]; the constant ÃŽ ± quantifies the extent of the influence of magnetic on activation energy. The measured value of ÃŽ ± for Fe self-diffusion is 0.074, in the case of the solute species investigated in this context that have no measured ÃŽ ± values available, the values can be estimated from a semi-empirical linear relationship with the induced change in local magnetization on Fe atoms in the first and second neighbor shells of a solute atom [16]. The first-principles calculations give direct access to the magnitude of the activation energy in the fully ordered ferromagnetic state (T=0K). Given the values of ÃŽ ± and s(T), we can compute QP through the relation , and QF(T) from Eq. (1). We based the diffusion calculations on the assumption that the mechanism of diffusion is primarily monovacancy mediated. For self-diffusion and solute diffusion on a bcc lattice, the diffusion coefficient can be expressed as following [10,17]: Dself=a2f0Cvw0 (2) Dsolute=a2f2Cvw2(-ΔGb/kBT) (3) where a is the bcc lattice constant, f0=0.727 is the self-diffusion correlation factor, f2 is the correlation factor for solute diffusion which depends on the relative jump rates for a vacancy to different sites neighboring the solute atom. Cv denotes the equilibrium vacancy concentration, can be written as Cv=exp(ΔSf /kB)exp(-ΔHf /kBT), where ΔSf and ΔHf are the vacancy formation enthalpy and entropy, respectively, the harmonic approximation makes these two become temperature-independent constants. and kB is Boltzmann’s constant. w0 and w2 are the vacancy hopping frequencies for Fe and solute atoms to exchange with a nearest-neighbor vacancy, respectively. Based on transition state theory (TST), the vacancy hopping frequency w is written as , where and are the phonon frequencies in the initial state and transition state, and the product in the denominator ignores the unstable mode; ΔHmig is the migration energy, gives the energy difference for the diffus ing atom located at its initial equilibrium lattice position and the saddle-point position. The solute-vacancy binding free energy ΔGb can be expressed as ΔGb =ΔHbTΔSb, where ΔHb and ΔSb are the binding enthalpy and entropy, respectively. The correlation factor f2 can be calculated using the nine-frequency model developed by Le Claire [11] which involves different jump frequencies of vacancies to their first neighbor position in the presence of the solute atoms, as illustrated in Fig. 1. In this model, the interaction of solute-vacancy is assumed up to second neighbor distance. The nine frequencies shown in Fig. 1 correspond to all of the distinct vacancy jumps, including the host Fe atom jump w0 without impurity. The detailed calculation procedures could be found in Ref. [10]. Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the nine-frequency model for the bcc Fe crystalline with a solute atom. The arrows indicate the direction of the vacancy jumps. The numbers in the circle represent the neighboring site of the solute atom. For convenience, we can represent the self- and solute diffusion equations (Eqs.(2) and (3)) in Arrhenius form to obtain the pre-factor and activation energy of diffusion. By combining the above Eqs., the diffusion coefficient for Fe self-diffusion and solute diffusion can be expressed as: (4) For self-diffusion, the pre-factor is, and the activation energy in the fully ordered ferromagnetic state given as . Also, the solute diffusion coefficient can be expressed in an Arrhenius form with the pre-factor is, and. The first-principles calculations presented here are carried out using the Vienna Ab Initio Simulation Package(VASP) with the projector augmented wave(PAW) method and the generalized gradient approximation of Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof functional(GGA-PBE) [18]. The computations performed within a 4à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ´4à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ´4 supercell including 128 atoms. The binding, vacancy formation and migration energies were calculated with 300eV plane-wave cutoff and 12à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ´12à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ´12 k-point meshes. All calculations were performed spin polarized, with a ferromagnetic ordering of the Fe moments. The residual atomic forces in the relaxed configurations were lower than 0.01eV/Ã…. The transition states with the saddle point along the minimum energy diffusion path for vacancy migration were determined using nudged elastic band (NEB) method [19] as implemented in VASP. We adopt the harmonic approximation (HA) to consider the contribution of normal phonon frequencies to free en ergy. The normal phonon frequencies were calculated using the direct force-constant approach as implemented in the Alloy Theoretic Automated Toolkit (ATAT) [20] package. Similar cutoff energy, k-point mesh size and supercell size used for the total energies were used for the vibrational calculations. 3. Result and discussion Table 1 illustrates our calculated vacancy formation, migration and binding energies, as well as the constant ÃŽ ± for solute species, the associated activation energies for self- and solute-diffusion in the paramagnetic and fully ordered ferromagnetic state. For pure bcc Fe, the vacancy formation energy and migration energy obtained here are consistent with the reported range of values, ΔHf=2.16-2.23 eV and ΔHmig=0.55-0.64 eV [10,21,22]. For Y impurity in bcc Fe, the calculated vacancy binding energy and activation energy in full ordered ferromagnetic state also compare well with the previous first principles work [9,23], in which ΔHb=-0.73 eV and =2.26 eV. It can be seen that Y and La have smaller activation energy than that for Fe self-diffusion, while Ce is predicted to have a lager value of activation energy than that for Fe self-diffusion, in both the ordered ferromagnetic and paramagnetic state. Table 1 Vacancy formation energy ΔHf , solute-vacancy binding energy ΔHb, migration energy ΔHmig, the ferromagnetic activation energy and the paramagnetic activation energy QP; the variable dependence parameter of activation energy on magnetization ÃŽ ± (the value for Fe is taken from experimental measurements, while the values for Y, La and Ce have been estimated from first-principles calculations). Solute-vacancy binding energy plays a crucial role in understanding solute diffusion kinetics. From Table 1 it can be seen that referring to the nearest-neighbor solute-vacancy pairs, the binding energies are all negative, which implies the solute-vacancy pairs are favorable. Specifically, Y and La impurities are computed to have higher values of solute-vacancy binding energies -0.69 eV and -0.66 eV, respectively, while that for Ce is -0.43 eV. To obtain information on the origin of these attractive behaviors, we decompose the total binding energy into the distortion binding energyand the electronic binding energy as [24] . The distortion binding energy is the energy that can be gained by reducing the distortion in the bcc Fe matrix when a solute atom and a vacancy combine to form a solute-vacancy pair, and can be expressed as: (5) where and can be calculated as follows: after the supercell containing a solute-vacancy pair (or a substitutional atom) has been fully relaxed, the solute-vacancy pair (or the substitutional atom) is removed from the system, then the total energy can be calculated. denotes the total energy of pure bcc Fe supercell, and is the total energy of the supercell containing a vacancy. Then can be calculated from . The calculated energy decomposition for solute-vacancy binding is shown in Table 2. The distortion energies (-0.31 to -0.65 eV) for all solute elements(Y, La and Ce) are negative, and much bigger than their corresponding electronic binding energies (-0.04 to -0.12 eV). This implies that the distortion energy is the major part of the total binding energy, i.e. the strain relief effect contribute significantly to the interaction between the impurity atom and the vacancy, especially for the solute Y and La, which accounted for 94.2% and 97.0% of the total binding energy, respecti vely. Table 2 Decomposition of the total solute-vacancy binding energy into distortion binding energy and electronic binding energy. The correlation factor f2 is related to the probability of the reverse jump of a solute atom to its previous position [25]. Table 3 lists the calculated values of correlation factors for Y, La and Ce at representative temperatures of 850, 1000 and 1150K. The correlation factors for Ce is nearly a constant close to 1, while the Y and La diffusion correlation factors decrease with increasing temperature, corresponding to the weak solute-vacancy binding for Ce and the strong solute-vacancy binding for Y and La. Therefore, the Ce atom is the most difficult to return back to its original position in the temperature range of our investigation. Including the smallest binding energy, highest migration energy and correlation factor, provides an explanation for the low diffusivity of Ce atom. Table 3 Correlation factors (f2) for Y, La and Ce solute-diffusion at representative temperatures of 850, 1000 and 1150K. Table 4 lists the calculated diffusion activation energies and pre-factors for Fe self-diffusion and Y, La and Ce impurity diffusion. For pure bcc Fe, we find our calculated results are in good agreement with the published values. For Y impurity in bcc Fe, the calculated activation energy in full ordered ferromagnetic state also compare well with the previous first principles work, while the pre-factor is as much as two orders of magnitude lager than the reported value. The experimental or calculated diffusion coefficients of La and Ce are not available to the best of our knowledge. Fig. 2 presents a direct comparison between the calculated and published temperature dependent diffusion coefficients for Fe self-diffusion and Y solute diffusion. For Fe self-diffusion, the calculated values are in good agreement with Huang et al. [10] and Nitta et al.[24], but smaller than the measured data of Seeger [25], this discrepancy may be due to the impurity, defects and grain sizes of the testing materials, and instrumental accuracy. For Y solute diffusion, the diffusion coefficient values are higher by a factor of 4-5 than those due to Murali et al. [9], this discrepancy can be attributed to the harmonic vibration and the influence of the bulk magnetization on the activation energy. The temperature dependence of the solute diffusion coefficients for Y, La and Ce in bcc Fe matrix are plotted in Fig. 3, where the Fe self-diffusion coefficient is also included. It can be clearly seen that the diffusion coefficients for Y and La are higher than the self-diffusion in pure bcc Fe, while the diffusion coefficients for Ce are lower than that of Fe self-diffusion, over the entire temperature range below the ÃŽ ±-ÃŽ ³ phase transition. For the case of Ce solute diffusivity, the lowest value of diffusion coefficient originates from the largest migration energy and the smallest solute-vacancy binding energy. For the two faster diffusers, Y and Ce, which have the comparable diffusion coefficients, we can observe that the diffusion rate of La is higher than that of Y at temperatures below 930 K, but this relation reverses with temperature rising above 930 K. This is attributed to the effects of the diffusion pre-factors of these two elements. Therefore, the investigation for diffusion should also be based on detailed considerations of the diffusion pre-factor, including the contribution of the correlation factor, rather than the vacancy formation energy and migration energy. The diffusion properties of solute elements (Y, La and Ce) in bcc Fe matrix have been studied using DFT calculations in conjunction with the Le Claire nine-frequency model. Of the three impurities that we investigated, the diffusion coefficients for Y and La are comparable, and predicted to be larger than the Fe self-diffusion. In contrast, the calculated results indicate that Ce diffuse slower than Fe self-diffusion. The slowest diffusion rate of Ce originates from that the solute-vacancy binding energy for this element is lower than that of Y and La, and the former has higher migration energy as well. In the case of Y and La, the small direction deviation between the trends of the diffusion coefficients of these two impurities, mainly comes from the contribution of the diffusion correlation factor. The authors are grateful for the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51101083) and the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia (No.2013MS0813). References [1] M.F. Yan, C.S. Zhang, Z. Sun, Appl. Surf. Sci. 289 (2014) 370. [2] W. Hao, W.T. Geng, Nucl. Instrum. Meth. Phys. Res. B 280 (2012) 22. [3] Y.H. Yoo, Y.S. Choi, J.G Kim, Y.S. Park, Corros. Sci. 52 (2010) 1123. [4] S.K. Samanta, S.K. Mitra, T.K. Pal, Mater. Sci. Eng. A 430 (2006) 242. [5] R. Thanneeru,S. Patil,S. Deshpande,S. Seal, Acta Mater. 55 (2007) 3457. [6] S.T. Kim, S.H. Jeon, I.S. Lee, Y.S. 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