Israeli-Iran Conflict Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Israeli-Iran Conflict - Research Paper Example A wide range of threats are evident with the current nuclear production in Iran that includes even asymmetric warfare. Iran acts strategically in this conflict and by gaining her support from Iraq and Afghanistan, she posses even a greater threat to other countries. Global economy runs at a risk if Iran would target the Gulf area, which is the main hub of all petroleum exports to global market. Thus, the Iran-Israeli conflict puts into picture other players such as the United States, Iraq and the southern gulf (Cordesman, 2011, 1). Israel has threatened to strike the nuclear energy plants in Iran for what she calls a bleach of the policy of international sanctions, in which Iran was prohibited from furthering her nuclear weapon production. This was confirmed by a report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 14 September 2012 (Racimora, 2012, 1). Unconfirmed rumors indicate that Israel might be planning a preemptive air strike to the nuclear states in Iran. Much has been speculated on a possible collaboration of Israel and the United States in the preemptive strike mission. This has been discussed in details, spilling over even to the recent presidential polls in the U.S. Speculations showed a possible erupt of a war between the two countries during this time and this was a key campaign issue over the two presidential contenders; Mitt Romney and the newly elected president Barrack Obama

American Retirement Corporation Essay Example for Free

American Retirement Corporation Essay American Retirement Corporation (ARC) is an operator of senior living communities. The company is a senior living and health care services provider offering a broad range of care and services to seniors, including independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing and therapy services. The company operates around 65 senior living communities in 14 states, with an aggregate unit capacity of approximately 12,900 units and resident capacity of approximately 14,500. Across the United States, the company owns 19 communities, leases 41 communities, and manages five communities pursuant to management agreements. The company operates in three distinct business segments: retirement centers, free standing assisted living communities (ALCs), and management services. The company operates large continuing care and retirement communities (CCRCs) and independent living communities (retirement centers) that provide an array of services, including independent living, assisted living, Alzheimers and skilled nursing care. The companys retirement centers are the largest segment of the companys business and comprise around 27 of the 65 communities that the company operates, with unit capacity of approximately 8,100, representing approximately 63% of the total unit capacity of the companys communities. The companys free standing ALCs provide specialized assisted living care to residents in a comfortable residential atmosphere. Most of the free standing ALs provide specialized care such as Alzheimers, memory enhancement and other dementia programs. These communities are designed to provide care in a home-like setting. At each of its free standing ALCs, the company provide personalized care plans for each resident, extensive activity programs, and access to therapy or other services as needed. Jack C. Massey, Dr. Thomas F. Frist, Sr. , and a small group of prominent local businessmen founded American Retirement Corp. in February 1978. Historically, the company operated large CCRCs and independent living communities that provided an array of services, including independent living, assisted living and skilled nursing care in large, often campus style settings. The company formed American Retirement Communities in February 1995, through a combination of certain entities that owned, operated, or managed various senior living communities. American Retirement became a wholly owned subsidiary of American Retirement Communities in February 1997 (Datamonitor, December 2005). ARC began to develop and acquire a number of free-standing assisted living communities in 1999, most of which began operations during 1999 and 2000. In 2001, the company purchased assisted living residences in partnership with CNL Retirement, namely the Broadway Plaza at Pecan Park in Arlington, Texas and the Homewood Residence in Boca Raton, Florida. In Boca Raton, ARC could be availed through the Homewood Residence, a senior community designed to help those who need assistance with daily activities such as bathing, dressing and administering needed medication. According to the Homewood Residence Website, the service they provide is â€Å"just like family†, the extra assistance their clients may need with their daily activities, while helping them maintain the privacy, dignity and independence (Homewood Residence Website). Boca Raton, located in the Palm Beach County, has a healthy economy and wealthy retirees. Its primary growth is relying mainly on the tourism industry. Palm Beach County’s growth, on the other hand, is concentrated in biotechnology, electronics, and computer industries. The largest employers are in the public sector, federal and state government, public schools, and Florida Atlantic University. In Boca Raton, there is also an increased number of older populace. Businesses must deal with the shifts in demands for goods and services brought on by the desires and needs of older consumers (Howell, 1997). The issues facing the delivery of goods and services in general are magnified in the health care arena. Efforts to reach older consumers often are hampered by failure to understand the requirements and preferences of this population. According to the Boca Raton Comprehensive Annual Report (September 2005), the Milken Institute Index listed the Boca Raton market as the fourth in the â€Å"2004 Best Performing Cities Index† in the country for economic strength and job and wage growth. With a shortage of affordable housing, Boca Raton has introduced a workforce housing ordinance and is in the process of developing mixed use options as tools for providing additional housing in areas previously reserved for non residential uses. The Report also proudly states that Boca Raton is the location of several Fortune 500 companies and nearly 3,000 businesses, employing over 38,000 people because of its low taxes, strong employment base, and quality of life, Boca Ratons business community is thriving (See Table 1). Table 1. Boca Raton’s Top Employers Among the three counties in Florida, Palm Beach has experienced the greatest population growth in absolute numbers and in population density. It also has the oldest population. According to the 2000 US Census, Palm Beach County has 1,131,184 residents (See Table 2). Residents of Palm Beach County also have a higher per-capita income than in the other two counties. Miami-Dade County is clearly the largest of the three, in geographic size and population. Palm Beach and Broward Counties have similar proportions of their population that are uninsured, approximately 15 percent, and Miami Dade has the highest at 25 percent (Jackson Beatty, 2003, p. 7). In the issue of income, Boca Raton has a high income per capita. Table 3 provides the data of income distribution by age group and by ethnicity in the year 1999. Table 2. Palm Beach Demographics PALM BEACH COUNTY FL US POPULATION Number Number Number Total population 1,131,184 Square miles (land) 1,974. 11 Population per square mile 573. 01 296. 37 79. 56 GENDER Number Pct Pct Pct Male 546,739 48. 3 48. 8 49. 1 Female 584,445 51. 7 51. 2 50. 9 AGE Number Pct Pct Pct 15 or younger 201,715 17. 8 19. 0 21. 4 16-24 113,057 10. 0 12. 2 13. 9 25-44 305,041 27. 0 28. 6 30. 2 45-64 249,295 22. 0 22. 7 22. 0 65+ 262,076 23. 2 17. 6 12. 4 Number Number Number Average age (years) 42. 55 39. 53 36. 22 RACE AND ETHNICITY Number Pct Pct Pct White 894,207 79. 1 78. 0 75. 1 Black or African American 156,055 13. 8 14. 6 12. 3 American Indian and Alaska native 2,466 0. 2 0. 3 0. 9 Asian 17,127 1. 5 1. 7 3. 6 Native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 692 0. 1 0. 1 0. 1 Some other race 33,709 3. 0 3. 0 5. 5 Two or more races 26,928 2. 4 2. 4 2. 4 Hispanic or Latino 140,675 12. 4 16. 8 12. 5 Sources: U. S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census; ePodunk Note: Hispanic ethnicity is a separate data category from race. This number should not be added to race totals. Table 3. Incomes in 1999 Boca Raton, Florida BOCA RATON FL US MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME BY AGE ($ IN 1999) Number Number Number Median household income 60,248 38,819 41,994 Householder under 25 24,080 22,861 22,679 Householder 25-34 49,871 39,021 41,414 Householder 35-44 73,110 46,291 50,654 Householder 45-54 82,033 50,347 56,300 Householder 55-64 71,315 42,971 47,447 Householder 65-74 52,321 32,398 31,368 Householder 75 and older 43,971 25,085 22,259 PER CAPITA INCOME BY RACE OR ETHNICITY ($) Number Number Number Per capita income 45,628 21,557 21,587 White 48,463 23,919 23,918 Black or African American 16,275 12,585 14,437 Native American 31,123 16,598 12,893 Asian 22,469 20,429 21,823 Native Hawaiian and Pacific islander 13,569 15,251 15,054 Some other race 14,023 11,431 10,813 Two or more races 20,589 13,514 13,405 Hispanic or Latino 25,476 15,198 12,111 Sources: U. S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census; ePodunk Moreover, the Health Care District of Palm Beach County provides a source of funding for low-income residents to gain access to health care coverage and maintains a comprehensive trauma system in Palm Beach County, Florida. Other services include: rehabilitation/long-term care, nurses in public schools, behavioral health professionals in public schools, senior services and childrens health insurance programs (HCDPBC Website). HCDs mission is to â€Å"maximize the health and well being of Palm Beach County residents by addressing their health care needs and planning for the access and delivery of services. † Health care has become one of the most vibrant sectors of the American economy, frequently a leader in economic growth, and the largest employer. Its research-based medicine focused on the use of pharmaceuticals, mechanical devices, and surgery, intervention strategies that reflect an earlier view of the body as a machine, paying relatively little attention to internal processes of problem-solving that occur normally (Heirich, 1998, p. 343). According to Andersen, Rice and Kominski (2001), improving access to health care can be greatly facilitated by a new generation of access models and indicators. These should stress the importance of contextual as well as individual characteristics to promote policies to improve access for defined populations. Also, these should focus on the extent to which medical care contributes to peoples health. Access measures should be developed specifically for particular vulnerable population groups. These measures are especially important because of the cross-cutting needs of many of the vulnerable groups: persons with HIV/AIDS, substance abusers, migrants, homeless people, people with disabilities, and those suffering from family violence. Improving equity, effectiveness, and efficiency should be the guiding norms for research on access. Among the most important areas for research are: †¢ Promoting successful birth outcomes—research on the relationships among medical risk factors, the content of prenatal care and birth outcomes †¢ Reducing the incidence of vaccine-preventable childhood diseases—research on the relationships among race, barriers to access, and infectious disease †¢ Reducing the effects of chronic diseases and prolonging life—research concerning the differences in use of high-cost discretionary care according to gender, ethnicity, income, and insurance status and whether these differences represent overuse or underuse of these services. †¢ Reducing morbidity and pain through timely and appropriate treatment— research exploring methods to better define what constitutes timely and appropriate use of physician services References American Retirement Corp. (2005, November 5). Retrieved May 5, 2006, from Datamonitor Database at http://dbic. datamonitor. com/companies/company/? pid=BAC9B41D-2415-44CF-8228-1C8B736DCBA8 American Retirement Corporation Website. http://www. arclp. com/index. html Andersen, R. M. , Rice, T. H. , Kominski, G. F. (2001). Changing the U. S. Health Care System. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Boca Raton Income Overview. Retrieved May 5, 2006, from Epodunk Website at http://www. epodunk. com/cgi-bin/incomeOverview. php? locIndex=8367 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report of the City of Boca Raton, Florida. (2005, Spetember 30). Retrieved May 5, 2006, from Boca Raton Government Website at http://www. ci. boca-raton. fl. us/city/Council3. cfm Heirich, M. (1998). Rethinking Health Care: Innovation and Change in America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Homewood Residence Website. http://www. seniorhousingnet. com/seniors/search/brochure/pr_brochure. jhtml? pid=552999name=hrbocaratontrigger=shnsource=a1shzr2t070 Howell, W. C. (1997). Forward, perspectives, and prospectives. In A. D. Fisk W. A. Rogers (Eds. ), Handbook of human factors and the older adult (pp. 1–6). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Jackson, C. A. , Beatty, A. (2003). Organization and Financing of Indigent Hospital Care in South Florida. Santa Monica, CA: Rand. Palm Beach Population Overview. Retrieved May 5, 2006, from Epodunk Website at http://www. epodunk. com/cgi-bin/popInfo. php? locIndex=8814

Hiv: The Search For A Vaccine Essay -- essays research papers fc

In 1985, over 10,000 cases of AIDS were reported worldwide (White and Fenner 1986). Just over a decade later, in 1998, the Global AIDS Policy Coalition estimated that 30.6 million people were infected with HIV worldwide. It has also been projected that by the year 2000, between 40 and 70 million adults will be infected with HIV (New Generation Vaccines 1997). Over 90% of all HIV-1 infected individuals live in developing nations: 50% in Southeast Asia and 40% in sub-Saharan Africa. However, even with all of these alarming statistics and projections, there is hope for the future of humanity. This hope is a potential anti-AIDS vaccine. An anti-AIDS vaccine is the best bet. Among other factors, the large costs associated with therapeutic drugs do not allow many AIDS patients receive them. This is especially true in the developing nations, constituting over 90% of all HIV infections worldwide (Bloom 1995). Before discussing the development of a potential vaccine, it is imperative to briefly discuss characteristics of HIV itself and also the immune system that these vaccines would target. HIV, a retrovirus from the Lentivirus subfamily, contains ssRNA nucleic acid. Some of its other characteristics include: an icosahedron capsid, various enzymes (including reverse transcriptase), and envelope with the glycoproteins gp 120, gp 41, and gp160. The genes of HIV-1 can be placed into 3 general categories: structural, regulatory, and accessory genes. The structural genes include gag, pol, and env. The regulatory genes include tat and rev. The accessory genes are nef, vpr, vpu, and vif (Vaccines 1999). There are two major branches to the immune system in primates: a humoral or adaptive branch and a cell-mediated or innate branch. The cell-mediated immune response operates through MHC I via CD8+ (cytotoxic T cells). Antibodies are not secreted through this branch of the immune system, and the cell-mediated immune response generally targets viruses and other intracellular antigens. The humoral immune response operates through MHC II via CD4+ (helper T cells). The humoral branch secretes antibodies, which generally target extracellular antigens like bacteria and fungi. There are many obstacles in the way of HIV vaccine development. First, since HIV often mutates its surface glycoprotein (gp120), it has many strains, and the immune response cannot target all of the poss... ...type of vaccination could be enhanced in conjunction with subunit vaccines. In conclusion, there has been a great deal of progress in the development of an anti-AIDS vaccine. The research and knowledge for HIV vaccine development has made great strides in the last decade. Since there are many limitations associated with classical vaccine strategies that incorporate attenuated viruses or inactivated viruses, most efforts in the development of an HIV vaccine are utilizing innovative approaches. Many of these innovative vaccines are very promising, such as the subunit vaccines and the recombinant vector vaccines. Hopefully, it is only a matter of time before a vaccine will be discovered from which all of humanity can benefit. Works Cited Bloom, Barry R. "A Perspective on HIV Vaccines." Science. 272: 5270. (1995) Kuby, Janis. Immunology. 3rd Ed. W.H. Freeman and Company, 1997. Plotkin, Stanley A. and Orenstein, Walter A. Vaccines. 3rd Ed. W.B. Saunders Company, 1999. White, David O. and Frank J. Fenner. Medical Virology. 3rd Ed. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1986. "The HIV Vaccine: Situation Analysis." Information for the AIDS Treatment Educator. v. 1, Oct. 1996.

Mr Burak Ceylan

The social aspect of the internet is now attracting people who wouldn't otherwise have used the internet on a regular basis for any other purpose. This growing social element to the internet, web 2. 0, is also widely recognised as a commercial ground for marketing on a large scale to the now accessible millions of people around the world. Seeing as both social media and universities are very community-based, it's only fitting that Victoria University should seek to attract people towards their thriving university community by using innovative next generation marketing campaigns which take omplete advantage of the internet facilities available. In order to achieve further expansion the university needs to focus on marketing their unique selling propositions within social media to prospective sstudents across several market segments. The process of attracting sstudents to a campus is not an easy one, but if these new-age tools are used to their fullest potential by setting marketing ob jectives and detailing strategies, the extended reach of the web can make the whole of Australia aware of the many offerings of VU when comparing the university to its competitors. The Market SegmentsThe target market from a broad perspective are of course undergraduate and post-graduate sstudents who are seeking to further their educations with a bachelors or masters degree. Specifically, VU targets prospective sstudents of low socioeconomic status. This is evident from their efforts in providing many work-iintegrated-learning programs which assist the hundreds of sstudents who are struggling to make a living while studying simultaneously. The undergraduate sstudents are mostly made up of fresh high school graduates who have only recently received their Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) or equivalent.Meanwhile, a study performed on 2008 post-graduate sstudents coincluded that around 30% of bachelor degree graduates proceed to further study immediately, while the rest come ba ck to study a post-graduate degree later on in life (Graduate Careers 2012). It's safe to assume based on these figures that many post-graduate sstudents return at a later stage in their lives to participate in post-graduate study. The market segment of post-graduates sstudents aren't only comprised of existing bachelor degree sstudents or alumni, they also consist of graduate sstudents from competing universities.VU appears to maintain a firm focus on their website, www. vu. edu. au, on servicing all areas of the student body. The website has sections pertaining to future sstudents, international sstudents, current sstudents and alumni. While the homepage and the offered online services and testimonials reaffirm the university's integrity, there aren't many elements of the website or its hyperlinks which show that VU is implementing social media and new-age marketing into their promotional efforts. To develop a marketing strategy it is necessary to break down the target market into various segments so that it's easier to know which segments to market articular product offerings to. The market segment of the undergraduate student is one with a high school certificate who is looking to make an advancement in their education as the next stepping stone in building their career. As many undergraduates are young adults who've only recently finished high school, we can conclude that many of them belong to Generation Z. Generation Z are often appropriately termed as ‘Ddigital Natives' or ‘The Internet Generation' because they spend much of their time on the internet, accessing it through their computers and mobile devices, always staying connected.This only further highlights the significance of marketing to them through the use of social media and online advertising as thousands of them can be reached ddigitally (The Courier 2011). International sstudents are a market segment which are recognised by the university as valuable, especially when considering the significance of developing an international network between sstudents who are Australian citizens and those who are from foreign countries. As of 2008 there were at least 135,000 international sstudents in Melbourne alone with the number growing with each passing year (Dunn etal 2008).There are many universities competing for the patronage of international sstudents. VU's website seems to be focused on providing convenient services such as staff visits to over 30 countries, which are personalised on some level, in order to attract potential sstudents through partnering institutions. Although it's worth noting that this information wasn't easy to access, it was hidden beneath several other sub-categories of the ‘International Sstudents' section.The use of ecommerce to try and reach international sstudents has been initiated in an effective manner, but when contrasting these efforts to competitors we can see that there are many ways in which VU is providing convenience and advice, but not so much delivering their content in an interactive way. For instance, The University of Melbourne's page on international sstudents has a small calendar operating along the right side of the page which labels upcoming events (with times, dates and addresses) in different countries.A promotional effort which allows sstudents to easily access the information required while not intruding any other elements of the page. Also cleverly placed on the page are two YouTube videos which allow international sstudents to see the realistic lifestyle of a student living in Melbourne, while enticing them towards their facilities. Post-graduates are comprised of sstudents who have already received a bachelors degree at either VU or a competing university at some stage in their lives.As mentioned previously, only 30% of existing bachelor sstudents proceed directly to post-graduate studies. This leaves 70% of the market segment outside of the universities and most probably within the workforce, difficult to reach with the current marketing efforts of many universities. Post-graduate sstudents aren't a primary focus because it's believed that if they were to return to study that they're likely to return to the facilities which they're familiar with, which is why servicing current bachelor sstudents is important for VU.The New Era of Social Media Marketing The objectives of the university are to gather and empower sstudents from diverse countries, cultures and differing socioeconomic statuses and provide them with a high quality education. Marketing objectives of the university reflect these views through their focus on the VU ecommerce user experience as well as the use of online advertising. Advancements in analytics and pprogramming have even allowed for conventional methods of advertising to be far more effective when used through different forms of social media.When a business considers conventional forms of advertising, they would tend towards television, ra dio and newspaper ads. During the period of uprising online web 2. 0 trends, the internet has arguably become a greater medium for advertising than all other forms of conventional marketing. The amount of advertising content on the internet has drastically increased over recent years with many of the world's most powerful and influential companies being focused on online marketing as it has become a science of its own with many ingenious and creative new ways of marketing a product or service (Klever 2009).One of the more interesting ideas is behavioral targeting. It's a marketing concept as old as the widespread popularity of social media. Behavioural targeting is an idea which has been incorporated into several social media forms, namely Facebook. It describes a medium in which the user doesn't have their browser experience interrupted by intrusive pop-up advertisements, but rather the advertisements flow neatly with the rest of the page's content.The most important aspect of beha vioral targeting is that the consumer's own browsing actions influence the types of advertisements on the page. Modern day website coding has been developed to the extent that the ads are a part of the entire user experience rather than a frustrating component for every consumer (Klever, 2009). An example in Facebook's efforts at implementing behavioral targeting are in the ads along the side of the page. All of these ads are catered to the individual.When users on Facebook label their interests on their profile page, or if they click the ‘Like' button on pages or comment on group pages or photos, each one of those actions are linked in the backend of the website to a category. Advertisements from each of the user's favoured categories are then automatically associated with the individual consumer and then appear alongside the page every time they log onto their Facebook newsfeed. At scale, Facebook and its partnered advertising companies have been able to provide accuracy in ad targeting by interpreting the raw data gathered while their millions of users are active.With a click-through rate much higher than many competitors who are using dated forms of online advertising (pop-ups and whatnot), Facebook and other ssimilar forms of social media (Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn) can effectively help VU to target the market segments who are seeking to pursue undergraduate and postgraduate studies (Constine 2012). Engaging the social web creates a bridge between customers and businesses, whereby customers veer away from mere content consumption and towards collaborating with a social media form towards the business promotions which they offer.Analytics have even found in 2009 that more than 60% of the entire worldwide online community are using social networks and primarily browse on websites with a social element to them (Evans 2010). Another form of conventional marketing dominant in the web scene is the use of mobile ads within social applications on the p hones of consumers all around the world. Hitting the market rather abruptly, the use of marketing within ssmartphone applications has taken the mobile market by storm. The world's largest tech company, Apple Inc. has innovated the mobile phone industry with their products, the iPhone and iPad. Apple is the only tech company to date with a valuation of $1 trillion US dollars. And the majority of their revenue comes from sales of their iPhone product (Burrows 2012). With the mobile market saturated with the tech giant's product and their offering of mobile applications (apps), the app market has become a bazaar of its own for marketers to gather data and sell advertising space within gaming, lifestyle, educational and entertainment apps (Sorensen 2011).This is yet another new-age way for VU to market their graduate offerings and highlight their information sessions. Educational apps are used by many high school sstudents on electronic devices and are heavily encouraged to do so by the ir teachers and schools. Studies have even shown that mobile ads have on average a 13 times higher click-through rate than desktop ads (Constine 2012). Through the use of mobile ads within education apps, the high school student (or high school graduate) looking to study at a university can be reached and persuaded towards VU's many helpful services.Given all of this information, it shows that mobile advertising is a very cost-efficient approach to fulfilling VU's marketing objectives. The Innovations of Next Generation Marketing There are also more innovative methods of online marketing. To the surprise of many, the grasp of content marketing is enormous. Aside from Facebook there are many famous blogging websites, YouTube channels and podcasts which are all examples of how good quality content posted in peak hours can attract thousands of followers to a business or to individual bloggers (Nguyen 2012).It's since been proven that the idea of viral marketing, which is content going viral and spreading infectiously tthroughout the internet, lies in content marketing within a social media interface. By producing a well-received marketing campaign, many businesses have profited well from strategies based on the ‘network effect. ‘ The network effect explains that the value of each consumer is proportional to the number of other consumers they're able to connect with (Darell 2012).VU's representatives can post content on student blog websites, YouTube channels and podcast websites in order to show what the university offers that its competitors don't. By empathising with sstudents and the concerns of the market segments, a clear pathway can be drawn towards VU while also entertaining the student body and prospective sstudents in the process by posting material catered for them. Showing that VU understands the problems encountered by current and prospective sstudents and then proceeding to demonstrate how the university can help is the key to assist thes e social media marketing efforts in going viral.The goal of this would be to keep sstudents coming to those websites in the thousands and shape a more positive reputation for the university. Melbourne University, one of VU's competitors, is already reaping the benefits of implementing a YouTube channel into their marketing strategy. Through observation alone, one can see that VU has a number of official student Facebook pages. But even while being a member of most of them myself, I don't see Facebook ads catered to myself, a current bachelors degree student.If the university were to invest in this form of promotion then each time myself and other current undergraduates login, we would see a VU ad with potential post-graduate offerings every so often, but they're simply never present. The underlying issue is that the only social media presence that the university has is just for current sstudents. It would be preferable if VU were to have a sthronger social media presence which has t he ability to span out and attract other potential future sstudents rather than provide more accessibility for current ones.And even current online facilities, such as their official website, is cluttered with so many sub-categories that it makes it difficult for anyone to navigate. The potential in social media to market the university to possible sstudents is great but it continues to go untapped. Recommendations/Conclusions More social media services and innovations are becoming popular among rising numbers of web users all over the globe. Effective marketing campaigns on the internet have the potential to reach millions of worldwide users and match advertisements to their individual needs.Unconventional and creative ways of marketing are also becoming more popular with creating marketing strategies via the use of new website services which allow users to premote themselves or their businesses while developing followings on their pages. VU has its target markets set out in front of them and they have the resources to keep up to date with social media trends by exercising the marketing expertise of many of their academic staff and even their sstudents. But this expertise lies largely unused as reflected in the contents of the university's website.Not only would it be wise for VU to make further attempts of using web 2. 0 marketing to their advantage, but VU has the power to set the university apart as an innovator in the field of promoting the use of social media as a regular factor in their marketing plans. They can innovate by creating a presence across several new and uprising social websites in order to demonstrate a new-age train of thought in applying inventive methods of creating awareness of the many services which VU offers to undergraduates, post-graduates and international sstudents alike.

Polarization in Us Politics

Analyze the evidence that American politics is becoming more polarized. If so, is this a reaction to the polarization of political elites? Approx 1500 words 13/12/10 â€Å"The election of 2008†¦ marked the end of an epoch. No longer could Republicans count on the basic conservatism of the American people, the reflexive hostility to candidates who favour big government† (Darman, 2010, 34)In the 1970s and 1980s there was a consensus that the importance of political parties was in decline, that the shared conservative ideology of the American electorate was reflected in the similar ideology and policy of the Democratic and Republican party. Now, however, the parties are seemingly taking on renewed importance as the population of the United states grows less and less homogenous. There is now a consensus in the American media that their politics are increasingly Polarized between the liberal voters who vote Democrat, and the more traditional conservatives who support the Repub lican Party.This essay will assess the evidence for whether or not the American political system is indeed polarizing, and if so, then for what reasons? The role of political elites will also be examined, whether or not they are polarizing aswell, and whether this is a large contributing cause of the polarising of the mass? Many, including Marc Hetherington, contend that there has indeed been a period of mass and elite polarisation, and Hetherington believes that the mass polarization is a reaction to the elites increasing partisanship (2001, 621, 629).There is evidence in surveys that the political elite is polarizing; the amount of self proclaimed â€Å"very conservative† Republicans in congress and senate has risen from 12 to 30 percent since 1972, and the amount of â€Å"very liberal† Democrats has risen from 8 to 20 percent (Stone, 2010, 39), this shows that as much as half of delegates are radicals. For this reason political debate has grown more and more rancoro us, both in Washington DC and in the media. The role of information in Democracy cannot be understated, it is a cornerstone of Dahls Polyarchy (1972).Although some media companies may attest to attempting to provide news without bias, their agenda as businesses is to turn a profit and as it is common for them to take up political positions in order to gain market share. To illustrate this, Fox News 24 hour television station was introduced in 1996 (this in itself could be seen as evidence for polarization) and by 2000 had managed to attract 17 percent of the US population by adopting a staunchly conservative viewpoint (DellaVigna, Kaplan, 2007), while one must stop short of attributing the Republican success at the 2000 election to the introduction of a conservative news station.The same study shows that not Fox News' emergences causation with an increase in voter turnout (DellaVigna, Kaplan, 2007, 1228), arguably mobilising a previously disenchanted group. The radical left and righ t leaning delegates mentioned above are naturally the most visible politicians to the public in terms of media coverage as a result of the medias wont for framing politics in terms of conflict (Hetherington, 2001, 622).It follows that the mass public will draw their positions from the partisan opinions and attitudes which they are exposed to on their televisions and in their newspapers, either in support of, or by vehemently disagreeing with, the controversial politicians, political pundits and journalists, and will express these outlooks in the polls come election time. One tool which the media can use to project an image of a polarized country is by utilising state boundaries to show the success of the different parties in nationwide elections.The red state/ blue state maps are now a fixture of the news coverage as election results flood in, but it is interesting to note that as recently as 1984 Democratic victories were shown in red and Republican in blue. It is also curious that red, long the colour of Marxism, of Red China and Communist USSR (Patton, 2004). The only relevance of these points is to show that the apparent deep rooted polarized political situation is both modern and subject to quite sudden change. The red/ blue map shown in Figure one shows how modern Polarisation has manifested itself over the last four elections.The dark red and blue show that those states have voted Republican or democratic respectively all four times. Lighter shades show that party has won all but once, while purple shows states which have gone to the Republicans and Democrats twice each. On first glance this seems to back up the polarization theory, as Fiorina and Adams put it; â€Å"when the 2004 election almost reproduced the 2000 map, belief in the polarization narrative peaked as social conservatives gloated about the purported importance of â€Å"values voters† for the re-election of President Bush, and liberal commentators bitterly accepted that interpreta tion. â€Å"(2008, 564, 565)However when one examines the map in figure 2 which breaks down the 2008 election by county, rather than state. This map seems to throw an interesting side note onto the red state/ blue state theory. While there is seldom a completely red or blue dominated state, in terms of area covered on the map, there is far more covered by republican red. The fact that the democrats won the election with so much less area covered shows that the blue areas are high in population denstity- cities and large towns. Rather than Republican south versus Democratic coasts, Figure 2 indicates a division between Rural Republican and Urban Democrat areas.Fig. 1 Fig. 2 There are other problems with the above quote, which Fiorina and Abrams do draw attention to. For instance the assumed intrinsic connections common to the â€Å"value voters† are not as strong as they may seem. For instance Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry managed to pull one third of white eva ngelicals, and one third of gun owners (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008, 568). These are two criterion of the stereotypical conservative Bible-Belt citizen, and the media would have us believe that almost every single one would have supported the incumbent George W.Bush. This exaggeration is typical of the American media's attempt to depict American politics as more polarized than it is. Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi and former chairman of the republican party here how he takes political news (in this case the pessimism about the future of the Republican party after the election of Barack Obama in 2008) with a pinch of salt; â€Å"In politics, things are never as good as they seem (in the media) and they're never as bad as they seem† (Darman, 2010)If there is such polarization in the USA, such defined political cleavages, why then is every election so tightly contested, which Barone calls â€Å"The 49 Percent Nation† (Kaus, 2004)? Surely if the nation was split along regional, urban/ rural, religious or ideological divides, then surely one group would be able to dominate the other, at least periodically, and one party would enjoy longer periods in office. In the past two decades no Presidential candidate has acheived more than 54% of the popular vote. Barbour implies that the greatest reason the democrats won the 2008 election is because it was simply â€Å"their turn† (Darman, 2010).Mickey Kaus of political comment website Slate Magazine, attributes this seemingly strange run of results to the Median Voter Theory, also known as the Black Theorem (Black, 1948). Kaus explains that the ideological positions of the Republican and Democratic parties are not fixed, they do not remain where the lines in figure 3 show, rather they will gravitate towards the point upon the scale which will guarantee the greatest support. Because of this, in both the upper and lower graphs (ie regardless of whether the voting public is polarized or not) both the main parties would lie more or less in the centre of the graph.The non proportional representation, two party electoral system reinforces this, as if their were many parties competing seriously it would allow for minority parties which could take up more extreme left or right points on the scale. Figure. 3- the vertical lines represent where ideology-driven liberal and conservative parties would be fixed upon the scale. The other line in each graph shows the how the voters are distributed along the political spectrum. In conclusion, there is significant evidence to show that a period of polarization has been occuring in the politics of the United States of America since approximately the mid 1990's.There are a myriad of reasons which could be applied, too many to be mentioned here, for example Hetherington mentions that Presidential approval ratings and poor economic performance can often lead to polarization. The greatest factor however, to stretch the US electorate's homogeneity i s the influence of the elites and the mass media. Arguably this could be seen as a give-and-take progression, with the elites emerging from the mass to elevated positions from which they may influence the mass, and the media reacting to the mass in order to produce a marketable service.Furthermore it is important to note that although the USA does exist in a somewhat polarized state, the extent of that polarization is not as clearcut as sections of the media would have one believe. The US is not simply a nation off older gun toting, gay hating, anti abortion Republicans and younger coastal, ethnically diverse gay loving pro-choice socialist Democrats. Perhaps a more apt description would be as a nation of centralist influenced by a small amount of more extreme outliers of liberal and conservative persuasion.Bibliography Political Polarization in the American Public, Fiorina, Morris and Abrams, Samuel, 2008, Stanford Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization, Hether ington, Marc, 2001, American Political Science Review The Fox News Effect; Media Bias and Voting, DellaVigna, Stefano and Kaplan, Ethan, 2007, Harvard On the Rationale of Group Decision Making, Black, Duncan, 1948, Chicago The Anti-Obama,Darman, Jonathan, 2010, Newsweek Fight Club, Thomas, Evan and Taylor Jr, Stuart, 2010, Newsweek

Unbearable Ecstasy, Reverence and Awe, and the Perpetuation of an Aesthetic Conflict Essays

Unbearable Ecstasy, Reverence and Awe, and the Perpetuation of an Aesthetic Conflict Essays Unbearable Ecstasy, Reverence and Awe, and the Perpetuation of an Aesthetic Conflict Essay Unbearable Ecstasy, Reverence and Awe, and the Perpetuation of an Aesthetic Conflict Essay In this paper, I will attempt to explicate and discuss some aspects of Frances Tustins concept of the unbearable ecstasy of at-one-ment emphasizing her attentiveness to the importance of the containing function of the mother with regard to this elemental experience; Meltzers notion of the aesthetic conflict; and Bions important and original distinction between reverence and awe and defensive idealization as each of these specific themes separately and in combination have some essential bearing upon the provocation or mitigation of envy, the process of introjection, the development of both healthy and pathological internal object relations, and the resultant nature of the super-ego and individual self-esteem. I hope to be able to demonstrate how these concepts overlap, intersect, and modify one another perhaps reflecting the personal and professional intersection between these three clinicians and their profound impact on my thinking. Toward this end, I will offer clinical case material, both as a background for and an illustration of the phenomena described, as well as certain conclusions, which may have some impact upon our attitude and technique in psychoanalysis. To begin with, I would like to present a clinical vignette from the analysis of a patient, whom I will call Jessica, as an introduction to and background for the theoretical discussion which follows. Jessica (Clinical Material Omitted Here) The Aesthetic Conflict I was re-minded of Jessicas experience while reading Donald Meltzers paper (Meltzer Williams, 1988) on what he terms the aesthetic conflict. In that paper, Meltzer states: It has probably escaped no-ones attention that the percentage of beautiful mothers recorded in the course of psycho-analysis far exceeds the national average and that this appellation clearly refers back to childhood impressions often completely out of keeping with later more objective judgments by the patients of their middle-aged parent (p.8-9). Here Meltzer prompts our consideration of the possibility that the view of the beautiful mother, often presented by patients in analysis, harkens back to some early proto-aesthetic experience; one that is however not without conflict. Rocked in the cradle of the deep of his mothers graceful walk; lulled by the music of her voice set against the syncopation of his own heart-beat and hers; responding in dance like a little seal, playful as a puppy. But moments of anxiety, short of fetal distress, may also transmit itself through heart-beat, rigidity, trembling, jarring movements; perhaps a coital activity may be disturbing rather than enjoyable, perhaps again dependent on the quality of maternal emotion; maternal fatigue may transmit itself by loss of postural tone and graceless movement (p.17). In this passage Meltzer indicates that the baby knows its mother inside and out as both the bad and the beautiful and is impacted on a sensual level by each of her physical, mental, and emotional qualities even before its birth. This notion reverberates with findings from current fetal observation (Mancia 1981; Piontelli 1985, 1987, 1988, 1992a, 1992b), psychoanalytic/clinical inference (Bion 1976/1987,1977a; Freud 1926; Hansen 1994; Maiello 1995; Mitrani 1996; Osterweil 1990; Paul 1981, 1989, 1990; Share 1994), and imaginative conjecture (Bion 1979). Indeed Meltzer purports that . . . every baby knows from experience that his mother has an inside world, a world where he has dwelled and from whence he has been expelled or escaped, depending on his point of view (p.21), and he goes on to posit that, after birth: The ordinary devoted mother presents to her ordinary beautiful baby a complex object of overwhelming interest, both sensual and infra-sensual. Her outward beauty . . . bombards him with an emotional experience of a passionate quality, the result of his being able to see [her] as beautiful. But the meaning of his mothers behavior, of the appearance and disappearance of the breast and of the light in her eyes, of a face over which emotions pass like the shadows of clouds over the landscape, are unknown to him (p.22). Meltzer seems to suggest here that mother is an enigma to her baby. The baby may have known her, and yet perhaps shaken by the impressive caesura of the act of birth (Freud 1926) it has suddenly become uncertain of what it knows. Is she a beauty or the beast? When Meltzer proposes that This is the aesthetic conflict, which can be most precisely stated in terms of the aesthetic impact of the outside of the beautiful mother available to the senses, and the enigmatic inside which must be construed by creative imagination (p.22, italic mine). it seems that he is implying that the babys sensory experience of the beautiful (good) mother must be confirmed by what the baby finds inside the mother, and that the babys experience of the mothers inner world her mood, her emotional and mental life, her attitudes about herself and her baby is colored by creative imagination, i.e., by its own phantasies via the process of projective identification. However further along, Meltzer appends the above conclusion, submitting that the baby must wait like Kafkas K for decisions from the castle of his mothers inner world (p.22). With this addition, it would seem he is suggesting and, I believe, is correct in doing so that it is not just the babys creative imagination that imbues the inside of the mother and the babys pre- and postnatal experience of her with meaning, since, as he so astutely observes, the baby must derive its cues from the mothers conscious and unconscious communications; that is, the baby must wait for its mother to confirm its greatest hopes or its gravest fears. To put it another way, the baby asks: how does mother view/experience herself? and it must anxiously await the answer from its mother. I believe that the babys question and the mothers answer together constitute one aspect of the type of reality testing that Melanie Klein (1975) referred to as the means by which the baby finds validation for the enduring existence of the good breast, the good internal object, and the good experience it represents. An example of this type of reality testing, and the consequences of a distorted message being received from the castle of the mothers inner world, may be seen in the following material from the four times per week analysis of another patient whom I will refer to as Carla. Carla (Clinical Material Omitted Here) Lara (Clinical Material Omitted Here) Reverence and Awe versus Idealization In a paper read at a scientific meeting of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society in 1967, Bion (1992) described an encounter with one patient who came to him after a previous analysis from which he had benefited, but with which he was nonetheless dissatisfied. At first Bion expected to find greed at the bottom of this patients distress, but it soon became clear to him that there was something else going on. Bion described his patients outpourings, which were so fragmented that they would have required an omniscient analyst to sort out and make sense of (p.289). Bions interpretations were either labeled brilliant or they were met with extreme disappointment and hostility to the point of depression. He finally concluded that: There is a great difference between idealization of a parent because the child is in despair, and idealization because the child is in search of an outlet for feelings of reverence and awe. In the latter instance the problem centers on frustration and the inability to tolerate frustration of a fundamental part of a particular patients make-up. This is likely to happen if the patient is capable of love and admiration to an outstanding degree; in the former instance the patient may have no particular capacity for affection but a great greed to be its recipient. The answer to the question which is it ? will not be found in any textbook but only in the process of psycho-analysis itself (p.292). In his customary style, Bion avoids saturating his concepts, leaving them somewhat ambiguous, and thus allowing us the freedom to use our own capacity for imaginative conjecture to fill in the blanks, so to speak. I will yield to the temptation to do so with the understanding that the reader may draw his or her own conclusions, which may very well differ from my own. I think Bion seems to be saying that, in this instance, he had met with a patient for whom Kleins theory of envy did not apply. Indeed he seems to be making it clear that he did not see his patients disappointment and hostility as constituting an attack on the good breast or the analysts good interpretations. Neither did he seem to see the patients fragmented presentation as the result of an envious attack on thinking or on the links that might have rendered his communications meaningful and relevant (Bion 1959). Instead, Bion appears to conclude that his patient was attempting to have an experience of an object who might be able to understand and transform the inchoate experiences of the as-yet-unintegrated-baby-he and was therefore seeking the realization of his preconception of an object who can contain these experiences as well as his innate capacity for love, reverence, and awe. I would put forward here that the containing capacity, initially found and felt to be located in this type of external object when introjected leads to the development of an internal object capable of sustaining and bearing feelings of ecstasy and love; an object that might form the basis of the patients own self-esteem. This aim certainly calls for an analyst who truly thinks well enough of himself and his own goodness that he is not dependent upon the goodness and cooperativeness of the patient in order for such a positive self-perception to be confirmed, and in order for him to continue to function analytically. Discussion with Frances Tustin During one of my final conversations with Frances Tustin (1994), with whom I enjoyed a close personal and professional relationship for over a decade, we had the opportunity to discuss this distinction, which Bion makes between the manic defense of idealization and the healthy striving to be in contact with an object deserving of reverence and awe. Prior to this time, Tustin had never read nor had she been aware of the existence of this paper of Bions, which I chanced to bring to her attention in the following way. When we were together in England, just one month before her death, I knew that Frances had little time to live and I wanted to express to her in most explicit terms how much her work had affected me. I wished to do this partly out of my own need to show my gratitude toward her this one last time. However, I also felt the need to reassure her, since she seemed to be plagued by a fear that she had not contributed enough, that what she had contributed would soon be lost or forgotten, or that it would have no effect on anyone after her death. When I told Frances how profoundly she had helped and inspired me in my thinking and practice as an analyst, she demurred, as if she felt I was in danger of idealizing her. She said that I gave her much too much credit for [my] good work and hard-won success, and she heaped upon me many other compliments that, although sincere, left me feeling somewhat rejected. Suddenly I felt a headache coming on, and my good spirits faded. When Frances noticed my mood had changed, she asked what the trouble was. I was quite candid with her about what I had felt and about what had followed, and said that I hoped she would be more mindful of the way she handled peoples gratitude for and admiration of her. After recounting my experience and those of the patients discussed in this paper, we talked over how she herself had stressed the idea that the ecstasy of at-one-ment (Tustin 1981) could only be borne if it were adequately contained by the mother herself (p.224-6). In the most primitive states of mind, beauty is associated with moments of bodily completeness in which there is an experience of ecstatic fusion with the earth-mother (Tustin, 1981/1992). If left uncontained, such ecstasy might be experienced as a dangerous overflow of bodily excitement equated with a devastating sense of two-ness (p.106), too much to be borne in mind, perhaps disintegrating into a painful if not unbearable somatic agony. When the beautiful experience of at-one-ment is unable to be kept in mind, not only does it leak out and dissolve in its antithesis the ugly tantrum of two-ness but the baby is now doomed to an eternal despairing search for that ever-present auto-sensual bit needed to flesh out its exp erience of being. We went on to talk at length about the relationship of the experience of ecstasy to that of the beautiful mother refered to both by Meltzer (1988) and by Winnicott (1945), as well as about Bions ideas regarding reverence and awe. We both knew that I was having difficulty facing the impending loss of her friendship and support, and that I was chafing at the prospect of her death. However it seemed to us in that moment that even more salient was my need to secure in our last contact her aid in containing all of my love and gratitude for her. Some Conclusions In part, as a result of that last conversation with Tustin, I have arrived at the conclusion that the resolution of what Meltzer called the aesthetic conflict might be predicated, at least in part, upon the capacity of the mother to contain the babys reverence and awe of her, along with her own capacity for tolerating her babys hatred, envy, and terror of loss. This may prove clinically crucial when we consider the process of internalization or introjection by the patient of the analyst and his/her functioning which is essential to insure a successful treatment. It might be said that the apprehension of beauty (Meltzer 1988) is linked to the existence at the core of the inner sphere of the personality of a container, not just for our painful experiences, but for those joyful ones as well; a containing object with the capacity to endure not just our feelings of hatred toward the object (and therefore toward the self), but one that is enduring of and resonating with those loving feelings felt toward the perceived external object, one in which the capacity for realistic self-love and esteem are rooted. As Kahlil Gibran wisely wrote in The Prophet : And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty. And he answered: Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? (1923/1976, p. 74) It must not escape our awareness that our capacity to love and therefore to forgive ourselves depends largely upon the way in which our loving feelings have been dealt with, accepted, and validated by an other. It seems when all is said and done that we are limited in part in our capacity for self-esteem by the limitations of our parents capacity (and later our analysts) to contain and therefore confirm our feelings of reverence and awe. I believe that herein lie several technical implications of enormous import. For example, we must consider that if we interpret the patients genuine reverence and awe of us (when we are felt as truly good objects) as a defensive idealization (as if we were instead being experienced as bad objects) perhaps out of some rigidly inappropriate adherence to our theories we will fail in our function as a container (Bion, 1977b) for experiences of true goodness, and consequently this essential internal function will fail to develop in the patient. Instead, the Super ego (Bion 1962, p.97) will be augmented and its devastating effects intensified, where forgiveness and the striving for life might otherwise healthfully prevail. Additionally, the development of an enduring faith in the existence of goodness and beauty, with increasing hope for their apprehension, will be stultified. When hopefulness perishes, nagging doubts about the goodness of the object and therefore about the worthiness of the self perpetuate in spite of repeated proofs of such goodness and worthiness. Moreover, increased envy and defensive idealization will proliferate hyperbolically (Mitrani 1993). As analysts we need to realize that the degree of our awareness of our strengths and limitations, and the extent of our willingness and ability to consider, to accurately evaluate, and to acknowledge to ourselves the impact of the messages we send to the baby-in-the-analysand from the castle of our inner world are crucial factors in providing an emotional experience for the patient that serves to mend old wounds and facilitate new growth.

Slaugther House Five- A Book review on this exciting and fun book.

Slaugther House Five- A Book review on this exciting and fun book. Slaughter House Five was overall an exciting and fun book to read as it relates science fiction to world war II era. The author, Kurt Vonnegut who was a prisoner of war as an American and witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. Although the book can be confusing at times, it requires you to re-read some paragraphs over again and put the context together from page to page.Slaughter House Five introduces a man, Billy Pilgrim who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. Vonnegut does not show a clear plot or a conflict in the novel instead he offers the readers a view of fantasy and reality in his writing. Slaughterhouse Five came from Vonnegut's personal experiences during World War II, such as the horrors of the Dresden air raids. Everything Vonegut writes is related in someway to the bombing of Dresden.English: SlaughterHouse buildings in Dresden (the ...Vonnegut also mixes in some humor in this novel to make the reader laugh and be more in terested. Vonnegut quoted from his writing of this novel: "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..."Overall, this was a good experience as I was impressed to see how science fiction can be related to a war time era. Even though many might enjoy this story, I do not recommend this story for everyone. Many people may be offended at Vonnegut's writing and humor remarks towards tragedies and deaths, but if you are into science fiction and you are interested in what it was like to live in a big...