Social Media Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Social Media Paper - Essay Example In the business context, social media continues to be the most used tool especially in the recent past (Lefebvre and Flora 1988, p.301). Some of the areas in business using social media as a platform to achieve goals and objectives are advertising, public relations and marketing. This is essentially because these are the very branches of the corporate world that need to come into close contact with the masses of people Research indicates that the corporate world spends billions of dollars on the social media to advertise and market their products. For example, in United States of America, the corporate world spent close to four billion dollars on the social media marketing (Hamill 1997, p. 300-323). The trend has continually changed, with exponential growth in the amount of money spent every year. Some of the social networks, for example LinkedIn, concentrate mainly on the corporate world (Ibrahim 2010, p.3-10). Here, networks are created between various business persons and firms. O ther business firms chose to use the platform for public relations by posting the videos of their CEOs giving insights about them. This means that social media is intertwined with the business world and its impact cannot be wished away. Social media brings in a shift in the concepts of reaching out to the consumers and selling the products to them. The traditional way of communication, say for example through posters, newspapers and televisions are slowly being replaced by the use of the social media (Xia 2009, p. 469 – 478). The implication to both the corporate world and the consumers is the change in the way the concepts of marketing and advertising are viewed. It is in this regard that I look at how the concepts of marketing, the consumers and the audiences have changed with the use of social media. Change in the Conceptions of Marketing, Consumers and Audiences The historical concept of marketing was that the consumers were provided with the manufacturer’s good, w hether good or bad (Zwick and Dholakia 2008, p. 318-325). However, with the social networking, it is not easy to penetrate into the market with this kind of an approach. The concept of marketing has broadened to include the processes of developing the product to its distribution. It also works closely with the research and development departments to learn on the necessary innovation on their products (Ibrahim 2010, p.3-10). The social media has therefore brought the need to have a comprehensive look at marketing. Its definition has changed to; the processes of planning and implementation of the concepts in the production chain to meet the demands of the consumer. With the understanding of how important social media is, the marketing strategies have taken a different turn (Mangold and Faulds 2009, p.357 – 365). Most of the marketers have moved to integrate marketing mix with the social media. The marketing mix includes the product, place, price and promotion. Looking into thes e four key aspects of marketing, one realizes that the concept has totally changed. For example, the products are varied and numerous. The tangible products have been modified to include the personal needs of different groups of people. The products vary in characteristics even as the characteristics of the consumers vary. In the second aspect of the marketing mix, the place, the location is now very flexible (Ibrahim 2010, p.3-10). A consumer may not have to be in a specific place as it was before. It

Internship report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 10000 words

Internship report - Essay Example The intern was also able to participate in market campaigns for the different products sold by Unilever. The intern performed duties such as communicating with agents and following up their progress in the market, emailing customers and sales agents, and helping in the daily activities of the department. The purpose of the internship was to expose the student to real life situations where one would be able to apply the theoretical principles learned in class. They were also expected to be creative and innovative and help the marketing department in designing market research and product promotion techniques. An intern was also supposed to apply reasoning and show high sense of responsibility. Marketing is both a theoretical and practical skill. After getting the theoretical concepts related to marketing and the market, it is important that someone gets access to a real market and apply the skills learned in class. This is very important and helps one to develop decision-making skills and get to know the challenges in marketing. This report covers the activities conducted by an intern during the internship period at Unilever Company. It covers what was accomplished during the internship period and the learning outcomes that were met during the internship period. This report also gives recommendations on what the company can implement to increase its sales and operations. It also gives tips that the company can adopt to give better internship to future interns. The report is basically based on the marketing of Dove and the related challenges as seen in the market. It gives the strategies used by Unilever to ensure high sales volume in their products. It also covers the str ategies used by Unilever to ensure that they compete favorably in the market. A number of marketing campaigns have been highlighted to show the activities the intern participated to boost sales and track

Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan Essay Example for Free

Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan Essay Why Did The Soviet Union Invade Afghanistan In 1979? YourFirstName YourLastName University title Why Did the Soviet Union Invade Afghanistan in 1979? The Afghanistan cold war leading up to a decade invasion of the country by the Soviet Union is a quite a debatable event. This paper will seek to provide answers to many unanswered question such as the rationale used in recommending the Soviet Unions military involvement in Afghanistans internal political wrangles, the presumed benefits as a result of this invasion, as well as the fact that other alternatives than military action were not given enough consideration. Afghanistan as more peaceful under its leadership style of a King as the head of state supported by the Prime Minister, but things started going sour during the reign of King Mohammed Zahir Shah and his cousin Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud Khan (Daryl, 2010). There was a misunderstanding between those directly in power and those indirectly in power. The political party in power at that time which was based on Marxism ideologies, Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistans (PDPA), was faced with internal bickering among its leaders. This eventually lead to a division in the party into two rivaling factions, with one faction calling itself Khalq under the eadership of Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin while the second faction was lead by Babrak Karmal and Najibulallan and reterred to itselt as Flag which in Islamic is Parcham. The actions of the Soviet Union were thought, by the initiators, to be supported by the people, especially the supporters of Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistans. However, it turned out the opposite was true, in that the people were not happy as evidenced throughout the various demonstrations that were held in the country, especially in Kabul, the capital. The demonstrations continued for quite ome time until the authorities, President Dauods government, felt threatened and started employing unorthodox means to do away with the demonstrations. Repressions were imposed on the supporters of Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistans with some of its key member s such as Mir Khyber being killed. This infuriated the demonstrators and gave them reason to push on with their demands thorough street demonstrations rebuking the Dauods regime. This further gave a more threatened government room to expunge its long arm of the law towards the culprits by arresting them. The peoples power had its way in mid 1978 when President Dauod, together with his family members, was overthrown and executed. This event gave an opportunity to the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistans Masses faction lead by Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin to ascend to power as President and Deputy President of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The period when these events took place is referred to as the Saur Revolution. The internal conflicts inside the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistans intensified between the two splitter faction. One was now in power, the other faction found it difficult to remain relevant as the script was repeated, as was in Dauodss case, here the members of the opposition were forced into exile and some were executed. The new government was supported by the Soviet Union as evidenced in the new reforms introduced which were a replica of the soviet style. Some of the changes introduced were marriage laws and reforms in the land sector, which sparked further controversy given the country was traditionaly Islamic and that a majority of the wealthy class was opposed to the land reforms. This was the genesis of the operation Taraki Out TO. The rebellion was uncontrollable and grew more powerful, hence, instability in government began to arise. In the end, as result of this, followed the demise of President Taraki following a shootout between the government forces and the Rebels in the palace, the presidents official residence. The deputy president took over power thereafter and was also faced with the same challenges (Daryl, 2010). Before turning to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, many questions are lingering than answers. What was the rationale used in recommending the Soviet Unions military involvement in Afghanistans internal political wrangles? What were the presumed benefits as a result of this invasion? Could there have been another alternative other than military that was probably ignored? If yes, then what was the alternative? What were the reasons for not perusing the alternative? Who were the chief architects of the military option? Who authorized the military invasion? And most importantly, why did the union invade Afghanistan? To begin with, Just as a tradition in any superpower, it is mostly likely that the Soviet Union sent its troops into Afghanistan without having exhausted all the other avenues at their disposal. One remains to wonder why did the USSR decide with such speed and in a very short time period, to enter with full orce by dispatching its top notch security men and women, including the Guards Airborne Division and the 40th Army into a country facing internal political challenges. Was this a punishment to Amins government, a communist in the making? Yes, this could be a reaction to Amins interaction with the United States (Galeotti, 2012). The Red Army was all over the place. In one day, as approximated, about fifty thousand Soviet soldiers had taken cover on Afghanistans soil. This was an intervention meant to quell the growing hostility between the government and the pposition and the basis for this was a mere treaty signed allowing the Union to offers military support. Again, the question here is, was the military support sought, and if yes over what? Was this a genuine intervention or was the decision to deploy troops made out of fear for the unknown? It is hard to believe that this was a mere intervention to assist the Afghan regime due to the instance of trying to kill President Amin by poisoning him. It is said the USSR had good relations with Afghanistan as was evident during the forty year reign of King Zahir Shah from 1933 to 1973, four decades uninterrupted. The invader to be is believed to have provided military assistance including training of the Afghan soldiers and issuance of loans, so the fact that the Soviet Union felt invested in the nation is clear. A strong possibility is that the USSR could have felt uneasy with the country shifting allegiance to America, and thus saw a threat to her interests in Afghanistan. After killing Amin it was Karmal Babrak who was installed. This is reason enough to cement the school of thought that the USSR had other hidden agendas in their deployment of the army, outside of suppressing resistance to the government in power. Another reason to believe the existence of a hidden mission in the invasion is that, as traditionally practiced, the commander of the USSR, Brezhnev was conspicuously missing in action as he was thought to be ailing. Those who acted, especially the Troika comprised of Yuri Vladimirovich as the leader of KGB, Fyodorovich Ustinov who was the then Defense Minister, and Andrei Gromkyo who was in charge of the foreign affairs docket, were against the move. Though the trio is believed to have requested the army intervention, leaked government information absolve them of any blame as it is claimed they opposed it. One Andropov is quated to have Sayed, Comrades, I have considered all these issues in depth and arrived at the conclusion that we must consider very very seriously the question of whose cause we will be supporting if we deploy forces into Afghanistan. Therefore I believe that we can suppress a revolution in Afghanistan only with the aid of our bayonet, and that is for us entirely inadmissible. We cannot take such a risk. (Sullivan, 2011). Firstly, one major reason for USSR invasion was the U. S military presence in the Persian Gulf. Although it was as a result of U. Ss diplomats being taken hostage, thus forcing for rescue mission, he impression was made to the Kremlin administration that Washington was positioning itself to take over Afghanistan, hence need to for a quick capture of the country by the Soviet Union arose (Sullivan, 2011). Secondly, the cause for invasion was the vague interpretation of the Iranian political happenings, or revolution, where its leader had been overthrown and subsequently replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, who was a radical Muslim, a faction the Kremlin government feared to its last tooth. This meant a quick action to avert the religious conflict spreading into Afghanistan, their territory. Thirdly, the Kremlin invaded Kabul due to the belief in the pro socialism Brezhnev doctrines which stated that socialism, once on the verge to take root anywhere, could not fail. Thus Afghanistan was no different. There was need to protect socialism from failing in a friendly nation. This explains the geopolitical angle of the move. Fourthly, there is the treaty of cooperation and good neighborliness between the USSR and Afghanistan, which allowed the Soviet Union to enter the country at a time of war. The invasion resulted in deaths of persons, including the countrys leaders, citizens, and soldiers in huge number. The invasion also resulted in creating more instability, and a decade long war. By USSR invading Kabul, it meant capture of another territory of great importance. A country where socialism would take place and the capture of the water catchment area of Persian Gulf which had been a target of USSR for a long time (Amstatz, 2012). As a result of the invasion the Politburos importance was revealed, in regard to decision making and an individual accountability. Different player have come out to claim they were the ones behind the military invasion, given the head commander at that time was ill. The war caused loss of property and other valuable belongings, for instance, the palace was destroyed and converted into the headquarters of 40th army. This meant a new region had to spend a lot of money in building the presidents residence (Daryl, 2010). The Soviet-Afghan war lead to the rise of the worlds largest group of refugees as scores of people were displaced with other moving into neighboring countries like Pakistan and Iran. Another impact was employment opportunity for Soviet citizens, as they were taken into Afghanistan to teach in the new universities and polytechnics hat were built. The construction industry was also boosted. Finally the war had impact on the USSRs military budget. This is because a lot of money was used during the entire period in buying more arsenals as the Soviet Union was alone fighting a combination of US and China supported rebels. There were challenges encountered throughout the ten year period. They included harsh rebellion from the local rebels, the MuhiJiran, who were backed by the US and China. They killed large numbers of Soviet soldiers. Also, the Soviet Army had a hard time penetrating into Afghanistan and selling the policies. Communist ideas did not always sit well with Muslims, whom did not want certain traditions changed. There was also the problem of route location for Soviet forces. The displaced persons found it troublesome moving from one place to the next during that difficult period (Galeotti, 2012). The exact reasons for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan are not clear but several important facts clearly played a role in the decision making that took place. Afghanistan had a long lasting relationship with the USSR and the Soviet Union most likely felt like they were protecting an investment. The regime change that was occurring within the nation may not have been the most popular with the populace but it was a communist party taking the reigns, thus according to the Brezhnev Doctrine could not be allowed to fail. The invasion was also made easier by the existence of a cooperation treaty between the two nations which allowed the Soviet Union to move its troops into the region if Afghanistan required assistance in a war. With major fghting breaking out in regions across the country, this could be easily used by the USSR as an excuse to move into the area and assert the type of regime they approved of.

Natural Language Processing Scope English Language Essay

Natural Language Processing Scope English Language Essay Abstract: The challenging sphere of natural language processing has been a major concern in the field of computer science and artificial intelligence since the late 40s. It encompasses the next strive forward in artificial intelligence to make computers and human interface more flexible and human understandable. Various methods were adopted since its inscription like machine translation, speech recognition, e-teaching, auto tutor etc. Researchers saw it as a likely bridge between human spoken language and computers which used programming languages and binary codes. As mentioned earlier, it is still a challenging task of making a computer to understand human natural language as such. Hence, further enhancements and techniques will foster the demanding yet fruitful and futuristic computational trends. Keywords: NLP Natural Language Processing, Semantic, Syntactic, Lexical, Phonology, MT Machine Translation Introduction: The computational scheme has evolved from basic set of instructions in the form of binary codes to mnemonic instruction codes to programming languages that have prevailed intensively during the later part of twentieth century. Along that evolution came the inspirational research on making the computer understand natural human language and interact with the humans in short applying natural language processing to normal computer usage and beyond. Natural language processing can be defined as a theoretical approach enclosing analysis and manipulation of natural language texts usually spoken by humans. This is done at various levels of linguistic analysis in order to attain a human-like approach to processing of tasks and other problems. It must be noted that NLP is not a single defined standard system but a collection of numerous language processing techniques and methods. Also, in view of facilitating the user and standing true to the name, texts must be of natural language usage and not a set of selected texts that could be used for processing. Because, the later approach would certainly forgo the real meaning of natural language processing. In any NLP system, various levels of linguistic analysis of the text are performed. This is done because humans usually breakup linguistic texts into various levels and then process or understand the language. Human-like approach and processing in the NLP systems are considered as an integral part of AI. The applications of NLP are versatile and are currently being researched and implemented in fields like military science, security systems, virtual reality simulation, medicine and regular computer science and artificial intelligence. The techniques and approaches that have been used or researched so far form the basic platform of NLP. Some of them are based on classification of natural linguistic phonology, morphology, lexical variations, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic levels. Some of the notable works done in this field are: Machine Translation Weaver and Booth (1946) Syntactic Structures Chomsky (1957) Case grammar Fillmore Semantic Networks Quillain Conceptual Dependency Schank Augmented Transition Networks Woods Functional Grammar Kay Also that there have been famous prototypes developed to highlight the impact of particular techniques and principles. They are: ELIZA Weizenbaum SHRDLU Winograd PARRY LUNAR Woods The scope of the article revolves around the evolution of NLP and its implementation in security systems. Methods: Strata of natural language processing: The optimal descriptive way of putting forward the actions that are going on in natural language processing system is through the strata of natural language processing. During the early days of natural language processing, it was held that the different data of natural language processing followed a sequential pattern. But current Psycholinguistic researches have revealed that the system follows rather a synchronic pattern. This is because humans use all of the strata of language processing and they dont follow a sequential pattern. For this reason, in order to achieve high efficiency of NLP system more strata of language processing must be adopted. This stratum deals with the interpretation of speech sounds within and across words. There are three types of rules that are typically used: 1) Phonetic rules for sounds within words 2) Phonemic rules for variations of pronunciation when words are spoken together 3) Prosodic rules for fluctuation in stress and intonation across a sentence. Morphology This strata deal with the componential nature of words, which are composed of morphemes the smallest units of meaning. For example, the word postproduction can be morphologically analyzed into three separate morphemes: the prefix post, the root product and the suffix tion. Since the meaning of each morpheme remains the same across words, humans break down an unknown word into its constituent morphemes in order to understand its meaning. In the same way, an NLP system recognizes the meaning given by each morpheme in order to achieve and interpret meaning. Lexical Both the humans and NLP systems at this stratum, interpret the meaning of individual words. Several types of processing contribute to word-level understanding the first of these being assignment of a single part-of-speech tag to each word. In this processing, words that can function as more than one part-of-speech are assigned the most probable part-of speech tag based on the context in which they occur. Moreover at the lexical stratum, those words that have only one possible sense or meaning can be replaced by a semantic representation of that meaning. The nature of the representation varies according to the semantic theory utilized in the NLP system. One can notice that, a single lexical unit is split into its more basic properties. If there is a set of semantic primitives used across all words, these simplified lexical representations make it possible to unify meaning across words and to produce complex interpretations, much the same as humans do. Syntactic The concept of analysing the sentence by looking into the grammatical composition of a sentence and its dependency is used here. This needs both grammar and a parser. The output achieved here is a representation of the sentence that gives the structural dependency relationships between the words. The efficiency of a parser depends on the different grammars used. Not all NLP applications require a full parse of sentences, therefore the remaining challenges in parsing of prepositional phrase attachment and conjunction scoping no longer stymie those applications for which phrasal and clausal dependencies are sufficient. Syntax conveys meaning in most languages because order and dependency contribute to meaning. For example the two sentences: I smoked a cigarette. and The cigarette smoked me. differ only in terms of syntax, but convey contrasting meanings. Semantic This is the strata at which most people think meaning is determined, however, as we can see in the above defining of the stratum, it is all the levels that contribute to meaning. Semantic processing determines the possible meanings of a sentence by focusing on the interactions among word-level meanings in the sentence. This level of processing can include the semantic disambiguation of words with multiple senses; in an analogous way to how syntactic disambiguation of words that can function as multiple parts-of-speech is accomplished at the syntactic level. Semantic disambiguation permits one and only one sense of polysemous words to be selected and included in the semantic representation of the sentence. For example, amongst other meanings, file as a noun can mean either a folder for storing papers, or a tool to shape ones fingernails, or a line of individuals in a queue. If information from the rest of the sentence were required for the disambiguation, the semantic, not the lexical level, would do the disambiguation. A wide range of methods can be implemented to accomplish the disambiguation, some which require information as to the frequency with which each sense occurs in a particular corpus of interest, or in general usage, some which require consideration of the local context, and others which utilize pragmatic knowledge of the domain of the document. Discourse While syntax and semantics work with sentence-length units, the discourse level of NLP works with units of text longer than a sentence. That is, it does not interpret multisentence texts as just concatenated sentences, each of which can be interpreted singly. Rather, discourse focuses on the properties of the text as a whole that convey meaning by making connections between component sentences. Several types of discourse processing can occur at this level, two of the most common being anaphora resolution and discourse/text structure recognition. Anaphora resolution is the replacing of words such as pronouns, which are semantically vacant, with the appropriate entity to which they refer (30). Discourse/text structure recognition determines the functions of sentences in the text, which, in turn, adds to the meaningful representation of the text. For example, newspaper articles can be deconstructed into discourse components such as: Lead, Main Story, Previous Events, Evaluation, Attributed Quotes, and Expectation. Pragmatic This level is concerned with the purposeful use of language in situations and utilizes context over and above the contents of the text for understanding The goal is to explain how extra meaning is read into texts without actually being encoded in them. This requires much world knowledge, including the understanding of intentions, plans, and goals. Some NLP applications may utilize knowledge bases and inferencing modules. For example, the following two sentences require resolution of the anaphoric term they, but this resolution requires pragmatic or world knowledge. Natural Language processing in textual information retrieval As the reader has probably already deduced, the complexity associated with natural language is especially key when retrieving textual information [Baeza-Yates, 1999] to satisfy a users information needs. This is why in Textual Information Retrieval, NLP techniques are often used [Allan, 2000] both for facilitating descriptions of document content and for presenting the users query, all with the aim of comparing both descriptions and presenting the user the documents that best satisfy their information needs. In other words, a textual information retrieval system carries out the following tasks in response to a users query: Indexing the collection of documents: in this phase, NLP techniques are applied to generate an index containing document descriptions. Normally each document is described through a set of terms that, in theory, best represents its content. When a user formulates a query, the system analyses it, and if necessary, transforms it with the hope of representing the users information needs in the same way as the document content is represented. The system compares the description of each document with that of the query, and presents the user with those documents whose descriptions are closest to the query description. The results are usually listed in order of relevancy, that is, by the level of similarity between the document and query descriptions. C:UsershpDesktopUntitled.bmp The architecture of an information retrieval system As of now there are no NLP techniques that allow us to extract a documents or querys meaning without any mistakes. In fact, the scientific community is divided on the procedure to follow in reaching this goal. In the following section we will explain the functions and peculiarities of the two key approaches to natural language processing: a statistical approach and a linguistic focus. Both proposals differ considerably, even though in practice natural language processing systems use a mixed approach, combining techniques from both focuses. CONCLUSION: Despite the useful universal aspect of programming languages, these languages are still understood only by very few people, unlike the natural languages which are understood by all. The ability to turn natural into programming languages will eventually decrease the gap between very few and all, and open the benefits of computer programming to a larger number of users. In this paper, we showed how current state of-the-art techniques in natural language processing can allow us to devise a system for natural language programming that addresses both the descriptive and procedural programming paradigms. The output of the system consists of automatically generated program skeletons, which were shown to help non-expert programmers in their task of describing algorithms in a programmatic way. As it turns out, advances in natural language processing helped the task of natural language programming. But we believe that natural language processing could also benefit from natural language programming. The process of deriving computer programs starting with a natural language text implies a plethora of sophisticated language processing tools such as syntactic parsers, clause detectors, argument structure identifiers, semantic analyzers, methods for co reference resolution, and so forth which can be effectively put at work and evaluated within the framework of natural language programming. We thus see natural language programming as a potential large scale end-user (or rather, end computer) application of text processing tools, which puts forward challenges for the natural language processing community and could eventually trigger advances in this field.

Impact of foreign aid on the economic growth of Nigeria

Impact of foreign aid on the economic growth of Nigeria Foreign aid can be simply put to be a flow of assistance which can take the form of funds, infrastructure, trade openness from high income countries to low income countries. The debate till date has been centred around the significance of this aid on the economic growth of these countries. To a large extent, several researches have shown a positive impact of foreign aid on the economic growth of LDCs with the exception of a few factors which may affect this positive impact on growth, while some others have shown a negative impact on economic growth of these LDCs. According to Burnside and Dollar (1997), the positive impact of foreign aid on growth in LDCs is subject to the country having good fiscal, monetary and trade policies, thus, the introduction of economic policies into their economic equation. This was included, to see if aid was allocated to these countries in favour of good policies. Durbarry et al (1998) argue that an important limitation of much of this literature is the incompleteness of the underlying growth models, according to them, irrespective of the fact that Burnside and Dollar were among the first to take into account economic policies, they have not been able to examine the impact of aid in general including only aggregate savings and investment variables. Most of these researches have based the framework of their research on the neoclassical growth model such as the Solow growth model and the Ramsey-cass-koopmans growth model which suggests that poor countries should have a high return to capital and a fast growth rate in transition to the steady state ( Burnside and Dollar, 1997). According to Chenery and Strout (1966), in the case of a country seeking a transformation of its existing economy and hoping not to rely on more advanced countries (i.e. foreign aid), such a country must be able to meet the necessary demands for her rapid growth from either her own resources or from her net exports. The case of foreign aid and economic growth has proven to be a continuous learning process, in that, while some studies base their findings on macroeconomic factors such as economic policies, others have recommended the use of human well being factors such as infant mortality, literacy, life expectancy and employment level ( Burnside and Dollar 1997; Fayissa and El-Kaissy 1999). While the results of Durbarry et al (1998) supports the results of Burnside and Dollar (1997) which shows foreign aid to have a positive impact on growth where there is a good macroeconomic policy environment, but with some exceptions which were based on income level, levels of aid allocation and geographical location. According to him, aid has been tested econometrically based on a macro and micro level, the results of some these tests by some researchers show that aid works at the micro level while at the macro level the results as ambiguous ( Durbarry et al, 1998). So far, most research have dwelt on macroeconomic factors as well as physical factors which in their opinions either shows that growth is fostered positively by aid or negatively by aid. One interesting contribution to the subject matter in question is the contribution by Douglas C. Dacy, which looked at foreign aid and economic growth from a totally different point of view, his paper aimed showing the possibility of an aid receiving country having its post-aid growth rate to be lower than it would have been in a situation of not receiving aid under certain conditions. According to Dacy (1975), his paper viewed the subject of foreign aid and economic growth with respect to consumption on the side of the government as well as domestic savings. Contrary to other researches, Dacy in his paper viewed foreign aid as a substitute for domestic savings, saying that there would not be an increase in total savings by the full amount of foreign savings. Thus, LDCs will increase consumption as well as investment if foreign aid is made available. Papanek (1973) in his paper, studied the relationship between aid, savings, foreign investment and growth in thirty-four LDCs for the 1950s and fifty-one LDCs for the 1960s, applying cross-country regression analysis. Treating each of these components as separate explanatory variables, he found out that over a third of GDP growth is explained b y domestic savings and foreign inflows. Also the effect foreign aid has relative to other variables is considerably higher, his results also suggests no inverse relationship between aid and foreign private investment as well as showing a non-correlation between growth and factors such as; exports, education, country size or per capita income. Unlike Chenery and Strouts result which showed that Countrys size and per capita income has a positive relationship with growth, Papaneks result did not show such positive relationship as said earlier. This is because Papaneks work had savings as one of the independent variables and this was seen to be si gnificantly correlated with per capita income. Concluding his paper, Papanek (1973), suggests from his results that foreign aid is distributed disproportionately to LDCs experiencing low savings rates as well as severe balance of payments problems. And that this disproportionate aid has a more positive effect on growth than domestic savings and other sources of foreign inflows. Chenery and Strouts results are criticised by Papanek as not being very stable and also in his results, foreign source of inflows are not disaggregated compared to the results of Papanek. Papanek (1973) and Burnside Dollar (2000) share similar opinions on the allocation of foreign aid to low income countries. As Papanek is of the view that foreign aid is disproportionately distributed to low income countries who are experiencing low savings rate. While Burnside and Dollar is of the view that though this is allocated to low income countries, it is also influenced by population, i.e. aid donors tend to allocate more aid to smaller countries in size within the Low Income Countries, and also there are variables that reflect their own strategies. Generally speaking, from researches done so far, it is evident that foreign aid has a positive relationship (or impact) on economic growth in LDCs. But this could show a different result when the countries are sampled individually, such that, though aid may be positively related to economic growth based on some macroeconomic factors, it may also a negative relationship influenced by some other factors. According to Levy (1988), his paper aimed at showing some level of quantitative evidence on the impact of foreign aid on economic growth. This he showed using a sample of 22 Low Income Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with the exception of a few African countries which to him had their level of development similar to that of middle income countries. Using time series data for his analysis, Levy found two important things; which is a positively significant relationship between aid, investment and economic growth in Africa. The second important finding is that there is a significant contribution by fixed capital formation to the rate of economic growth. Although the exclusion of some African countries which he classified as similar to middle income countries from his analysis seems questionable, Levys contribution to the subject matter is very significant. According to Burnside and Dollar (1997), most researches such as that of Levy (1988) and a few others who made an attempt to measure the impact of aid on domestic savings, investment and growth in developing countries, have had results which faced several econometric difficulties. Taking another close look at the work of Dacy (1975) which questioned the desirability of aid, according to him, even if aid is used in a way that contributes to a decline in the long term growth rate, it will almost always be true that the capital stock income and consumption will be higher at the end of the period of aid, and for a number of years afterward, than it would have been without aid. To this end he agrees with Papanek (1973) view which argues that the inverse relationship shown in most statistical research between domestic savings and foreign aid might be greatly misleading. This view is due to Papaneks objections from his observations from previous studies, thus, Papaneks results which show that there is a positive relationship between aid and economic growth as well as aid having an inverse relationship with domestic savings is largely accepted by Dacy. Durbarry et al (1998) in their paper made reference to the work of Hadjimicheal et al (1995) as being a more advanced piece of research compared to most of the researches before it. This is because of their effort to show the potential secondary effect of foreign aid such as the Dutch Disease as well as other policy related variables that are speculated to have an effect on growth. Ekanayake and chatrna (2010) in their paper, criticised the work of Karras (2006) which concluded that there is a positive statistically significant and permanent impact of foreign aid on economic growth. In which they gave a statistical analysis by per person result as well as the growth rate of real GDP per capita, but in all this, they did not take into consideration the effect of policies. According to the research carried out by Ekanayake and Chatrna (2010), their results showed mixed effects of foreign aid on economic growth in LDCs, their research was carried out using annual data on a group of 85 developing countries cutting across continents. The models that were specified in their work were estimated using panel least squares estimation method. Malik (2008) described the poverty of people in the poorest African Countries to be on the increase despite the many years of development assistance. According to him, there has remained a stagnant or declining real per capita income since the 1960s, thus the disturbing question is why could these countries not break the poverty trap despite receiving large inflows of foreign aid?. This question he sought to answer using the co-integration analysis for six poorest African Countries, the results from this analysis showed the existence of a long run relationship between real GDP, aid and investment as a percentage of GP and trade openness. But showing the effect of foreign aid on growth, the result indicated a long run negative relationship for most of these countries. Easterly (2003) went ahead in his paper to discuss the historical research on the relationship between foreign aid and Economic growth. This he did, citing the work of Burnside and Dollar as being an early research that was widely accepted by the World Bank and economies of the world, and thus, created the platform for further research. According to Easterly (2003), data availability was one of the main limitations to having a conclusive and reasonable literature on the subject matter i.e. foreign aid and economic growth in the 1960s and onwards, as well as the reasonable arguments on the specific factors and ways through which foreign aid can affect growth. In his paper, Easterly (2003) cited the paper by Boone (1996) as being noted for its aim to address the issues of reverse causality through the introduction of political factors that determine aid, and thus, using them as instruments in addressing these problems. He also discussed the paper by Burnside and Dollar (2000) as being well known for addressing the disbelief shown by Boone and also the lack of agreement from previous studies. In another paper by Papanek (1972) titled The Effect of Aid and other Resource Transfers on Savings and Growth in Less Developed Countries, he analysed the recent challenge to past assumptions with respect to aid, savings and growth, where he termed some past literatures as Revisionists. His concern is based on their argument that the contribution to economic growth by foreign aid is little or insignificant, in which a number of factors were taken into consideration to support this claim. He went further to expand their argument saying Aid may ease the lot of the recipient countrys citizens by permitting higher consumption which is considered desirable if the analysts humanitarian instincts outweigh his Calvinist conviction that people should struggle for their economic salvation, but does little for growth (Papanek, 1972). Amongst these, are other literatures done by several researchers in which different methods were implemented such as the Autoregressive Distributed lag (ARDL) model used by Gounder (2001), in which his results showed a positive relationship between foreign aid and economic growth in Fiji. There has been other literatures that have also tried to show this relationship in individual countries, some have found a positive relationship but a long- run negative relationship using the Co-integration and error correction analysis, while others found a co-integration between saving rate, real gross domestic product and aid therefore showing a long-run positive effects (Murty et al, 1994; Nyoni, 1998). Taking a closer look at the problem of causality which Boone tried to address, Dacy (1975) concurs that the issue of causality is a tough knot to tie. He also suggests that the debate on if foreign aid contributes largely to economic growth is one that cannot be fully decided, as there would be a need to take into consideration the response of individuals as well as groups. Such consideration includes checking if these individuals or groups behave in a certain way where there is an increase in aid compared to where there is no aid. From the above literatures and many more, it is obvious that the issue of foreign aid and its impact on economic growth is inconclusive and is also a continuous learning process. Depending on the different types of data and methodology used in previous studies, several results have been achieved; some depict positive and significant relationship while others indicate negative long-run relationships based on different factors. This paper in the next section would be using time series data and applying the Ordinary Least Squares method (OLS) as well as the co-integration method to see what impact foreign aid has on the economic growth of Nigeria. Section 3. Data and Methodology In testing for the impact of foreign aid on the economic growth of Nigeria, I am using annual time series data which has its period from 1960 2009 and which is gotten from World Bank World Development Indicators. Thus, the focus of this analysis is on Nigeria as a developing country and a recipient of aid from advanced countries which are known as donors. Due to the limited availability of data with respect to the proposed variables, the observations are 49 running from 1960-2009. The table below shows the variables that are included in this study as well as the source they were gotten from: Table 1: Variable Unit source Gross Domestic product Growth Rate World Bank Foreign Direct Investment Percentage of GDP World Bank Trade(Openness; exports plus imports as a percentage of GDP Percentage of GDP World Bank Population Growth Per Cent (%) World Bank Net ODA per capita Current US$ World Bank Most of my variables were gotten from the work of Ekanayake and Chatrna (2010), where he used things like investment as proxy for growth rate of capital stock and also population growth as proxy for labour force. This study also uses population growth as a proxy for labour force as well as including trade to represent openness which as shown in the table above is made up of exports plus imports as a percentage of GDP. Net ODA per capita is a proxy for aid alongside Foreign Direct Investment, as earlier said, this study would be adopting the use of Ordinary Least Squares method (OLS) for its analysis. To ensure that the study is academically robust, I will also be employing the use of co-integration tests, to check the long run relationship between Foreign aid and Economic growth in Nigeria.

Is Technology Changing Culture? Essay -- Technology

Do it yourself (DIY) is a term used to describe building, modifying, or repairing of something without the aid of experts or professionals. The phrase "do it yourself" came into common usage in the 1950s in reference to home improvement projects which people might choose to complete independently. In recent years, the term DIY has taken on a broader meaning that covers a wide range of skill sets. DIY is associated with the international alternative rock, punk rock, and indie rock music scenes; indymedia networks, pirate radio stations, and the zine community. In this context, DIY is related to the Arts and Crafts movement, in that it offers an alternative to modern consumer culture's emphasis on relying on others to satisfy needs. The abbreviation DIY is also widely used in the military as a way to teach commanders (hence how from this YouTube videoclip) or other types of units to take responsibility, so that they'd be able to do things themselves just as a preparation for their own future.The dynamic association among culture and technology means that technologies furthermore change the cultures that use them regularly. Presumably, this alteration in culture is better for at least the predictable future, or there would be no motive to use the new technology, that constantly d evelops. However, humans have a tendency to concentrate on the short-term benefits without thinking about the long-term penalties. Whether the failure to foresee how technologies will ‘move’ culture is the outcome of a biological inclination to overlook the long term problems or the inability to comprehend and predict all thinkable consequences is arguable. [1] Sometimes technologies result in cultural modifications that become non-efficient in the long run.... ...e and Technology." Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. Web. 11 Apr. 2012. . 3. "Â ." Acton Institute. Web. 11 Apr. 2012. . 4. "UnderstandingSociety." : Technology and Culture. Web. 11 Apr. 2012. . 5. "Technological Determinism." Technological Determinism. Web. 17 May 2012. . 6. "Talcott Parsons." Talcott Parsons. Web. 17 May 2012. . "Terra Nova." : Culture vs Technology. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. . "Home." Gapingvoid. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. .

Seeking a Self Satisfying Career Essay -- Teaching Teachers Education

Seeking a Self Satisfying Career Teachers are not normally viewed as being professionals. I do not believe that the teaching profession receives enough respect. I believe that teachers have one of the most important jobs because they have the future of the world in their hands. Before I decided that I wanted to teach, I knew how important being a teacher really is. Some of the most memorable people that have made a difference in my life were teachers. They listened when I had a problem, they taught me how to be a better person and they helped me through many difficult academic subjects. I hope to have a positive impact on the lives of my future students just like the special teachers I had in my own life. In my opinion, this is why the teaching profession is as important as or more important than any other profession. The purpose of an education is to make one self sufficient, responsible and be able to support themselves in the world. I attend college part time and work full time. There are some days that the stress of having so much to do and not enough time to do everything makes me feel like quitting. Then, I remember the goal that I am working toward and it inspires me to continue, because an education is a very important thing to have. The job that I have now is not self satisfying. It does not challenge me to use the knowledge that I have acquired in my classes. Everyday that I am at work, I think to myself â€Å"I will not be here forever†, that if I keep working hard and keep myself motivated to continue on it will be worth it in the end, one day I will be able to teach. When I become a teacher, there are several things I hope to accomplish. The biggest accomplishment is becoming a teach... ... If they work hard and follow their dreams, they can accomplish anything. When I finish at Concord College and receive my degree, I hope to start teaching as soon as possible. I will probably have to do some substitute teaching before I am lucky enough to receive a full time position. After I receive a full time position, I plan to receive a Master’s Degree. If everything goes as I have planned, I will take night classes during the school year and full time during the summer. I know that the more I better myself through school, the more money I will earn. I do not plan of getting rich from teaching that is not the reason I want to teach. I want to be able to live comfortably, but being a teacher is more important that money. People have always told me if I set my mind to something, I can do it. I hope this is true, because I truly hope to become a teacher.