Factchecking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Factchecking - Essay Example He said he would but that law does not exist and that he had been clear that he supports exceptions for abortion in cases of rape, abortion and to save the life of the mother. Romney also employed deception in his attack with Obama with his ad that Obama will raise taxes by $4,000 on American middle class. This was an outright fabrication because Obama is not planning to raise taxes on the middle class to service the debt. The articles in Factcheck.org and politiFact.org also reveal how politicians use false information to make accusations. We can use as an example the most common issue of sequestration which is the spending cuts to arrest the deficit. Republics blamed Obama in FastCheck.org in the article The Obamaquester that it will specifically target certain sectors in society. When it was verified in with PoliticalFact.org, this accusation was in fact false because the sequester does not make distinction quoting Obama saying as it â€Å"won’t consider whether we’re cutting some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness, or a vital service that Americans depend on every single day. It doesn’t make those

Revlon website Essay Example for Free

Revlon website Essay Csikszentmihalyi (1975, p. 36 cited in Rettie, 2001) states that flow is the holistic experience that people feel when they act with total involvement. Further, Hoffman and Novak (1996, p. 57 cited in Rettie, 2001) believes that flow is something which can stick you through. Further, it is said that flow can be attributed towards repeat usage. Which means, if a consumer is provided something exciting on the website, then probability of consumer visiting website again is very high? In context of Revlon, a consumer visiting website wants to see something different, he wants to have an experience and if that does not happen, them the consumer will not visit the site again. Now, the question is, what Revlon is offering to the audience is very much same as any other website is offering. Revlon is offering a make up look which is not even personalized. This will not increase the traffic on the website and will not lead to consumer satisfaction. Currently, Revlon website is offering very minimal services. The site is not very flashy as it is one of the glamorous companies. Its competitors LOreal has flashy sites with lots of features (Loreal. com) which are missing in Revlon. In a survey done by Csikszentmihalyi (cited in Rettie, 2001) the research involves finding the flow of information was that older woman prefer that if there is interactivity on the site (i. e. if there is lots of things to do on the site they will prefer to go on that site again and again. But if there is no interactivity on the site it does not interest the consumer). Revlon website offers very limited interactivity to the customers, which wont help Revlon to attract new customers and provide satisfaction to old customers. Currently, Revlon site is offering e-mails to consumers. But do Consumers really bother about these e-mails. Hoffman and Novak, 1997, Rettie, 2001, Smith and Shivkumar, 2004 (cited in Chaffey et al, 2006) believes that flow of information is important for site usability. Further, Chaffey et al,(2006) believes that flow for online marketing can be defined as information or experience, which consumer has when he moves from one page to another and also includes interactions like filling forms etc. When this theory was applied to Revlon website, it showed that navigating from one page to other is not difficult and is quite easy. But when it comes to interactivity Revlon cannot compete with LOreal as LOreal offers more tools for interactivity then Revlon. Strauss and Frost (1999) suggest that customers want speed, convenience on top variety when they get from one page to another. Consumer does not want to spend their time on giving password on the net rather; they prefer to have user friendly method on the internet. This is important for the flow of information through the website. The more the website saves time and efforts of the consumer the more likely it is for the consumer to visit the site gain. This will help to increase the customer satisfaction and enhance interactivity on the COMPETITIOR ANALYSIS Revlon is beauty care Product Company for woman. Its main direct competitors are LOreal, Maybelline. According to Chaffey et al (2006) benchmarking competitors website should be based on companies marketing performance, financial performance, marketing communication techniques and services offered. In context of interactivity, marketing communications techniques and services offered should be taken into account for competitors analysis. Based on the above analysis, the recommendations are made for Revlon to come up to its competitors. Revlons competitors have strong interactivity on the website which Revlon is lacking, therefore, future recommendations are set so that Revlon also increases its interactivity on the website and increases the customer satisfaction and interaction. RECOMMENDATIONS After analyzing Revlon website and the competitors. The following recommendations are made which will help Revlon to understand its customer needs and leads to customer satisfaction through interactive media. In view of Avery, Calder and Iacobucci (1998), interactive media has enormous growth. It is used to identify customer needs, sharing of information and creating an experience for the customer. According to Borges, Couto, Natario and Braga (2007), the range of online communication tool is growing with way of support and involving customers and communicating between one to many. In view of Hoffman, Novak, Schlosser, 2000 and Constantinides (2002 cited in Borges et al,2007) internet is not only a place which represents companys image. The main aim of the internet is to attract more customers and changing occasional visitors to prospective customers. With the support of above theories, the below are some of the recommendation to Revlon in order to increase their interactivity on the website, thus it will help to satisfy customers and will help to identify prospective clients as well. 1 ONLINE FORUMS Revlon presently, has no forums (imediacommunication, 2004). Revlon should develop forums which will help customers to interact with each other and with organization also. Chaffey et al(2006) suggests that forums are the means to promote the services of the website. It is a way of connecting to the community. According to Howard (2000) it is essential for a company to innovate on the internet by hosting on line forums, stage on line contest, live messages etc. Loreal, which is the direct competitor of Revlon, has forum, where customer can post their comments, chat with each other, participate in polls, LOreal has online live discussion forum as well (LOreal. com). According to Siegel (2006), forums are an effective way of communicate online and sharing information with people. He has provided an example of Kraft Foods interactive Kitchen where consumers share recipes and email their comments on the site. The best example for forums is YouTube, where customer can leave their comment, can discuss videos with members. Revlon should start opinion poll service, live discussion, sharing of videos on their website. Even though Revlon has certain blogs on search engines but they do not belong to the website. Customers will not find blogs in search engines to post comment, they will visit website to do so. 2 Blogs One of the most common tools for interactive communication is blogging. Blogs can be defined as webpages which are developed or used online for publishing web pages. These Blogs have comments and feedback form which makes consumer feel good. Blogs are also gets comments from other sites as well. These have been successful in media environment (Chaffey et al, 2006). According to Business Blog Consulting customers feel that Revlon should come with blogs where women can discuss their product research, can share good piece of information with other women and even develop online community. Revlon website should start Blog for its customers where they feel that they are involved in company. They can share information about recent style, trends across the world. In view of Russo (2007) where the power of blog can be known is from Perez Hiltons celebrity gossip blogger where he has created a blog which he constantly updates, makes his readers involved by publishing gossips, pictures. Revlon should form a blog which should focus on beauty and cosmetic tips given by its celebrity endorser and consumer can ask questions, post comments about beauty and cosmetics and to create positive effect of their services through these blogs. Revlon should also start competition games for beauty and cosmetic quiz type and then reward the audiences according to some points.

HEC-HMS Evaluation

HEC-HMS Evaluation HEC-HMS is a hydrological model that can be used to check the effect of a storm based event on a watershed or a continuous simulation. HEC-HMS is distributed model but it deals with a watershed as a conceptual model which consist of sub-basin and reach. HEC-HMS is very powerful as it has many options for hydrological calculations and a user-defined is one of the options. One of the uses of the HEC-HMS is to predict the future urbanization that can happen in a watershed and the corresponding flood that could happen. HEC-HMS alone cannot get the places of the flooded area but the hydrograph extracted from the HEC-HMS can be used in HEC-RAS and RAS-mapper to get the inundated map of the city due to a certain storm event. In this lab, a simple simulation will be used to simulate the hydrograph of Tifton watershed.   In order to build a HEC-HMS project, there are components should be added first. The main components that the HEC-HMS require is the basin component which contains the basin properties such as sub-basins, reaches and junctions, the metrological component which contains the rain gages that will be used for precipitation, the control component which contains the simulation time period and the time series component which contains any time series data such as the hyetograph or hydrograph. HEC-HMS has four main windows which are the component window, view window, editor window and message log window. The component window contains all the created components so that we can toggle between them. In order to edit any of the components chosen from the component window, the editor window is used and it contains tab but for global data entry or edit the component menu is used. The view window shows the selected basin, result or table. The log message shows if there is error or the model has found no problem as for example as shown in Figure 1 the log message says, Note 10008: Finish opening projectà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦. Which means that the project was opened successfully with no errors found. Figure 1 Log message of HEC-HMS Basin component As mention before that the HEC-HMS is conceptualizing the watershed, so we will import the watershed image as a background as shown in Figure 2 and draw on it the corresponding component. This is a simple watershed that contains only one sub-basin and one outlet. the sub-basin is named 74006 and the outlet is junction in HEC-HMS and there is no reach used for flow channel routing. Figure 2 HEC-HMS desktop view The sub-basin properties should be entered for HEC-HMS to use in calculations. The main property is the catchment area as the HEC-HMS is using all the catchment symbolled in one point (sub-basin 74006). The other properties that should be entered are the hydrological calculations that the HEC-HMS will use to calculate the hydrograph at the outlet of the sub-basin as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3 Sub-Basin hydrological calculation methods Canopy is the method used to calculate the water intercepted on the tree that avoid the water to reach the ground. The percentage of vegetation obtained from remote sensing is used to determine the canopy. In this lab, simple canopy method is used which need only the initial water storage in the tree and the maximum storage that the plant can hold. In order to indicate the surface storage that can happen in the watershed there are different methods, in this lab a simple surface is used. The simple surface method is mainly saying how much is the initial storage and the maximum storage. The maximum storage provide in this lab is zero which is useless as the surface method can be selected as none instead. To get the parameters of the initial storage and maximum storage a site investigation can be done or throughout satellite maps and DEM the surface depletions and storage area can be calculated roughly. Infiltration losses is indicated here as the loss method. The loss method that is widely used is the Horton equation but in this lab the soil moisture loss is used. The soil moisture loss method mainly works as the soil moisture content and the maximum infiltration rate of the vadous zone of the soil as well as the groundwater beneath the vadous zone depth and the percolation rate from vadous zone to the groundwater and if the groundwater is into two different soil type provide the data to each soil type. In order to get the data for this method a soil surveying is required or from a previous defined data as the FAO maps or Canada CIRUS maps. The unit hydrograph for the basin is not known so a synthetic hydrograph will be used. There are different synthetic hydrograph methods in HEC-HMS, in this lab Clark (1945) Hydrograph is used. The Clark Unit Hydrograph is divided into translation based on synthetic time area curve and time of concentration as well as a reduction of discharge as excess rainfall is stored in watershed. Clark Unit Hydrograph is modeled with linear reservoir for baseflow. The parameters for the Clark Unit Hydrograph is the time of concentration and the storage coefficient. Time of concentration can be calculated using watershed properties or from previous observations but the storage coefficient most likely will be calibrated. The linear reservoir is used for baseflow separation. Baseflow is linearly related to average storage of each time interval similar to the Clark unit Hydrograph. The linear reservoir also is used with the soil moisture content as it depends of the water in the groundwater and how it returns back to be a contributed to the hydrograph as a baseflow. The parameters of the baseflow is hard to measure so it will be most likely calibrated. Time series component In the time series component, a rainfall hyetograph is entered in the rain gages using the Tifton DSS file provided with the project. After entering the hyetograph, the graph can be shown as shown in Figure 4. The hyetograph will then be assigned to the basin in the metrological compenent. Figure 4 Tifton Hyetograph In the time series component, also the observed outflow hydrograph of the catchment is entered using the Tifton DSS file. After entering the DSS file the hydrograph is shown as in Figure 5. The hydrograph should be used for model calibration of the unknown parameters. Figure 5 Tifton observed hydrograph Meteorological component In the meteorological component, the hyetograph is assigned to the sub-basin and if there are more than one rain fall gage a weighted average can be assigned to each sub-basin. Also in the meteorological component, the evapotranspiration is entered. In this lab, monthly average is used which gives a constant value for each month and corresponding coefficient. Control component Finally, the control component is used to define the simulation period and time interval. In the lab, according to my group number which is 15 the corresponding simulation time is used which is from the first of January 1970 to the thirties of June 1970. After finishing all the data entry, a simulation manager is used to create a simulation which is defined by selecting the basin, meteorological and control data to be computed. After creating the simulation, compute is chosen and a message of successful appear in the message log -if there is any error or warning will appear in the message log too-. From the results tab, a global summary can be viewed as shown in Figure 6. The global summary gives the drainage area contributing to each sub-basin and each junction and the time to peak and the corresponding peak discharge as well as the total volume of excess rainfall. In this lab, there is only one sub-basin so the sub-basin and junction will have the same properties. The peak discharge is 873 CFS and happened in the thirty-first of March 1970 at 1:00 PM. The total excess volume is 16.36 in. Figure 6 Global Summary The graph of the sub-basin 74006 shown in Figure 7 show the hyetograph in the top part which consists of red and blue. The red part shows the infiltrated depth while the blue line shows the excess rainfall depth. The bottom part of the graph shows the hydrograph which consists of the baseflow and the excess hydrograph. The blue solid line shows the hydrograph while the dotted red line shows the baseflow. As we can see that in January all the rainfall is almost infiltrated and there is no excess and that is reflected in the hydrograph as there is no excess hydrograph only baseflow. The peak rainfall events happened at the end of March and May and as we can see that there is a lag time between the peak of the hyetograph and the hydrograph which represent the time of the water to route though the watershed to the outlet of the catchment. Even both event in March and May has the same rainfall but the peak was higher in March due to the infiltration difference. The infiltiration that happ ened in May was larger than March as the soil moisture content in March was high due to event happened just before the peak event while before May peak event it was dry for almost two months. Figure 7 Hyetograph/Hydrograph of Sub-basin 74006 The hydrograph of the junction shown in Figure 7 shows the hydrograph coming from each sub-basin the blue dashed line and the total summation of all the hydrographs at the junction the blue line and the observed data the black dotted line. The dashed blue line and the solid blue line are coinciding because there is only on sub-basin that contribute to the junction. As shown in Figure 7, the observation and the hydrograph at the junction as almost the same which means that the parameters and methods used in the HEC-HMS are representing the reality quite well. Figure 8 Hydrograph of Junction HEC-HMS can simulate storm event to get the flow hydrograph of the catchment. It is important to use the adequate method based on the data availability. The model should be calibrated using the observed data. HEC-HMS can gives how each sub-basin can contribute to the basin outflow and what changes will happen if any of the sub-basin changes. Hydrologic Engineering Center (2010). Hydrologic Modeling System HEC-HMS, Quick Start Guide, US Army Corps of Engineers, Davis, USA

Improving Our Ability to Make Decisions Essay -- Decision Making Proce

Decision-Making Process: Improving Our Ability to Make Decision Facing a situation, you have to decide. For example, the fire surrounds you: What do you do? Jump through the windows and risk to kill yourself or to wait the firemen and risk to be burned to death if they come to late? Every decision that we make or don’t make shapes our future. Everyone tries to make good decisions. However, it is easy to overlook an important factor, miss a desirable option, or base the decision on unreliable information. In addition, fear of making a wrong choice can cause someone to postpone decisions, leading to miss opportunities. A businessperson must have the ability to make decisions under the pressure of time and circumstances. This ability needs a good knowledge of the decision making process. From a practical point-of-view, of the most important human skills is decision-making. Both at a personal level and in context of organizations, decision-making skill strongly affects the quality of life and success. Decision-making is the process by which a person or group recognizes a choice, gathers information, analyzes the data, and determines the best option to choose. The decision-making process employs high levels of critical thinking skills and problem-solving techniques. Decisions are guided by several factors, primarily the significance of the issue, the impact the decision may have, and the person's or group's morals and cultural norms. For less significant decisions that have little impact, people might not invoke the higher thinking skills that theorists expect (Decision-Making 2015). Flipping a coin, hoping for a miraculous sign, following the crowd, or by passing the responsibility to someone else are all means of making decisions. For more important decisions with gr eater impact, people often employ more advanced thought processes like those demonstrated in decision-making models by social psychologists and behaviorists. Most theories accept the idea that decision-making consists of a number of steps or stages such as improving creativity, critical thinking skills, and problem solving techniques. It is well recognized that routine cognitive processes such as memory, reasoning, and concept formation play a primary role in decision-making (Decision-Making 2015). Leaders know in their gut that creativity and innovation are the life blood of their o... ...d are seldom subject to critical review. As a result, managers frequently have a difficult time improving their decision-making capacity. Good business decisions are the heart of a successful organization. Without a process decisions may be made by the most powerful or influential person in the group or not made at all. Good decision-making is a balance between getting the most of what we want with as little risk as possible. It means that we include the right people and use a process that encourages participation while keeping or focus clearly on the decision at hand. This allows people to make the decision with a high degree of confidence and efficiency. Works Cited:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Critical Thinking Skills. (2015). Web. March 7, 2015 http://www.everesttraining.com Decision-Making. (2015). Web. March 7, 2015 http://tip.psychology.org/decision Problem Solving and Decision Making. (2015). Web. March 8, 2015 http://www.cob.tamucc.edu/rallen/ Tubbs, S.L. (2004) A Systems Approach to Small Group Interaction. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Corporation. Welch, D. (2001). Decisions, Decisions: The Art of Effective Decision Making New York State. Prometheus Books.

China Unbalanced Write-up Essay

In 2001 China became a member of the World Trade Organization. China’s accession into this organization had many advantages and disadvantages for the country. Some of the advantages of being a member of the WTO for China was the strong increase in GDP growth rate which the country experienced as a result of the facilitation of trade and the increase in imports/exports. Some of the disadvantages of the membership to the WTO were the negative effects in health care, inequalities in income distribution, and inefficient pension funds. Prior to 2001 China had a robust economy which was growing at an astonishing rate. When China ascended into the WTO the country reformed the foreign trade policies which were the foundations of the economic success which the country had experienced. As a result of the reforms foreign enterprise was facilitated, there was more transparency of China’s laws, and free trade was promoted. Despite the growth that China experienced prior to 2001, during annual reviews of the country several human rights issues were exposed which could potentially erode the economy. China’s conformation to the standards which the WTO established would facilitate foreign relations and remedy these human rights issues. China’s membership in the WTO eased some of the restrictions on increased foreign trade regulations which made China more attractive to foreign investors. For foreign-invested firm’s distribution, retiling, and franchising had been significantly restricted prior to 2001. Under the WTO China promised full trading and distribution rights for foreign-invested firms. Tariffs were significantly lowered from 31% to less than 14% and China became committed to treating imported goods comparably to domestic goods in trading agreements. Transparency is a basic principal of the WTO and China’s legal system had to inculcate this principal into their system. Foreign firms had been easily manipulated by the Chinese government and there were several occurrences of theft of foreign intellectual property. The WTO required that China tighten up their legal frameworks and design their legal system to be more transparent for foreign firms which would improve foreign relations. The consequences of the reformed trade agreements were that exports grew by 27% annually and China’s economy grew substantially in subsequent years. The real GDP growth rate increased from 10%- 11% annually. China’s economy had steadily been growing since the late 1970’s as a result of the government’s economic strategies. The strategy which the government subscribed to was an export-led growth strategy. China strengthened its domestic markets and improved its relationships with countries to foster this export-led growth which attributed to the strong GDP growth rate in consecutive years since 1970. Productivity drastically increased in China as a result of the reallocation of capital and labor to more productive uses. There was also a migration of people from rural to coastal regions where there were more resources and opportunities for growth. The labor productivity in China outpaced every other country in the world and the country averaged a 9.5% annual productivity rate between 1997 and 2010. The export-led growth strategy and the increased labor productivity rate were some of the key elements which impacted the strong GDP growth rate. There were some domestic problems which China experienced as a result of the rapid growth in China. Some of these problems were the dismantling of the provisions of the â€Å"iron-rice bowl†. With the influx of private-owned enterprises as a result of the amended foreign relation policies many entities in the public sector ceased to exist or became defunct. There were many provisions which the public sector formerly offered such as adequate health care and robust pensions. Many of the hospitals which were still apart of the public sector operated as if they were privately owned and they catered to the demands of becoming profitable. The ramification of this to the Chinese population was that health care was no longer affordable and accessible to the masses. Many Chinese people were without adequate health care and the pensions which they once had were taken from them because most of the pensions were apart of programs implemented by the public sector which were no longer in existence. Despite the stellar GDP growth rate which China experienced the unemployment rate remained high in China throughout this prosperous economic period. The reason for this is that the majority of the jobs which were created were in the coastal regions. The implications of this are that those people who lived in-land did not have access to as many jobs. Many of the salaries of people who lived on the coast were significantly higher than those people who lived in-land. So there became an inequality of income distribution throughout China as a result of the increase in GDP growth as a result of foreign trade and investments in coastal regions.

The Problem of Opium in Persia essays

The Problem of Opium in Persia essays The League of Nations has among its many functions, to take over the supervision of international agreements such as the Hague Convention. . At the League's first meeting, an advisory committee on opium and other drugs was set up, with two functions; to collect and analyse information on the drug traffic, and to try to persuade member States to keep the regulations laid down to control it. The information collected, when analysed, revealed that La Motte's strictures had been justified. The Hague Convention was revealed as no more than a string of aspirations. That happend because the League can not have the pretention of creating restraining rules to countries and wait to see how the countries will handle those rules, some nations, for example, had pledged themselves to control the output of raw and prepared opium; but they had been careful not to say how, or when, mostly because they dont have the interest of doing such thing. India believes that opium is something that needs to be regulated, but dont understand what means can be taken to achieve such thing. A fair dabate will be the only way to find answers to this problem, that will not be resolved in the short term. Opium its a important economic factor in countries like China, India and Persia. As we all know, it will be an utopic way of thinking to just abolish opium. We know thats not what the League is proposing but we are afraid that this will be the solution. Besides all of the enconomic and social factors, Indian opium could produce admirable morphine and its decided that we are going to produce much of it to the consumption of the great British Empire and its colonies. Even though India is willing to fight the drug prodution and exportation of the illegal opium. ...