Fly in the ointment Essay Example

Fly in the ointment Essay The fly in the ointment 1 . Explore the condition of the Factory and of the father as the son arrives The condition of the father and the factory when the son arrives where regrettable, It was hardly for the son to recognize the factory, as there was nothing inside it. As seen in this lines: â€Å"this had been the machine- room, before the machines where gone. Moreover through the factory are empty shells, the sign outside the entrance to the factory is freshly painted and the brass plaque outside the office is shining. The father was acting in a melancholic way, acting shyly nervous and very polite with his on. In Dalton he acts as If nothing has happened, as if everything was fine. As seen In the following lines things are fine, I feel they are fine, I know they are fine† 2. Explore the particular relationship of tension between father and son The relationship between Harold and his father isn’t the best, when they are together we can almost get the visual image of the tension that both generates as they talk to each other. This could be for many reasons. In my opinion it seems that Harold ‘s father was absent as he spent thirty years of his life in the business and marred the legislation as he Is obsessed with money, Instead of being a family man. We will write a custom essay sample on Fly in the ointment specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Fly in the ointment specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Fly in the ointment specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer As seen In the following lines: † It was his father last day at his factory, the last day of thirty years†. This leads Harold to feel resentful of his father, but at the same time he tries to get closer, looking for a father figure, â€Å"I must see him†. But later, when he arrives the atmosphere becomes uncomfortable and their behaviors with each other are quite formal, as to business man talking not as father and son. As we can see in this lines â€Å"have a cup† â€Å"no thanks- said the son â€Å"l Just had tea†. They are very polite teen each other; this shows us that they are very distant. In Dalton we can notice that they don’t know very well each other, while in this conversation Harold discover lots of things about his father. As shown in this lines â€Å"The old man turned his head way. He actually wiped a tear from his eye. A glow of sympathy transported the younger man. He felt as though a sun had risen†. The author use the image of the sun to show us that the father had never showed emotions to his son, and this revelation Illuminates the son and he feels that there is hope for their relation now that his father Is available. But later when he offers his father money, he completely changes, showing other side of him, with anger, and this take completely the hope of Harold again. As seen in these lines â€Å"his warm voice going dead and rancorous and his nostrils fidgeting 3. Analyze what the son notices about the two faces of the father and what do you get to know about the nature of the father at the end of the story? Harold father shows throw the story that he is doubled faces, he shows one face at first and then other. Harold could notice this for the first time as he goes and visit his father to help him. As seen In this lines â€Å"the son noticed for the first time that as all big- faced men his father had two faces and inner face and an outer face. The outer face like a soft warm and careless daub of innocent sealing-wax and inside it, as if thumbed there by a seal, was a much smaller one, babyish, shrewd, scared and hard. He changes personalities lots of times in the story, and his sons become aware of it, He looked decided and experienced like a man of forty, but now he softened to sixty greets his son shyly as if not having the courage to face his son. As this lines shows â€Å"Hullo, old chap. This is very nice of you, Harold†. Said the old man shyly, stepping back to let his son in, and lowering his pleased, blue eyes for a seconds modesty. The father’s two faces are evident when he acts as if nothing had happened and that his bankruptcy was nothing as compared with the other businesses that had gone bankrupt. As seen in the following lines: â€Å"Worrying? You keep on using that word. I’m not worrying. Things are fine,† said the old man. Smiling aggressively. ‘l feel they’re fine. I know they’re fine. ‘ we can notice that he is very arrogant and challenging. Then he starts regretting for the mistakes he have done all his life and sounds like a man ho has probably recognized his faults. Also he mentioned that he would like to live in a nice little cottage by the sea and enjoy his life. This shows humility. He starts saying that money wasn’t everything in life, comparing himself with the children of Israel; this was very ironic and ridiculous. He put up a face without being mean and as radiant as a harvest moon. Although he tries to show that face, this face drops as soon as the son offers to try and raise money for him. Here comes to the surface the face of business men who cares about money, and wants money as quickly as Seibel, although he has to humiliate himself. The father’s sailing eyes came down and looked at his son’s nervous, frowning face and slowly the dreaming look went from the father’s face. Slowly the harvest moon came down from its rosy voyage. The little face suddenly became dominant within the outer folds of skin like a fox looking out of a hole of clay. He leaned forward brusquely on the table and somehow a silver- topped pencil was in his hand preparing to note something briskly on a writing -pad. Raise it? Said the old man sharply. Why didn’t you tell me before you could raise money? How can you raise it? Where? By When? ‘. At the end of the story by saying this he clearly show that what he said at the begging were bullwhip, that he doesn’t change at all, he would be always obsessed with money and business . It shows that although he tries to change, he couldn’t that his obsession wins him, costing a lot, a relation with his son. 4. What does the fly represents at the moment in which it appear. The fly represents the â€Å"dirty† part of the relationship between father and son. It shows that although they are trying to cure all the injuries, there is always something that prevents it. In his case is the fly that while they are talking the father interrupts the whole conversation to kill the fly. As seen in the following lines â€Å"forgive this interruption. I can’t sit in a room with a fly in it†. It is use as a symbolic way to show that there are many things that spoil the relationship. Also, I think as he tries to kill the fly he also is trying to kill all the mistakes he have done throw his life, but he didn’t succeed. The fly also remark him that he is weak and old and this make Harold feel worried. As this lines show â€Å"suddenly he looked tired and old, his body began to sag and a look of weaknesses came into his face†

The eNotes Blog 5 Mary Oliver Poems to Use in theClassroom

5 Mary Oliver Poems to Use in theClassroom Do you have a hard time getting students excited about poetry? The work of Mary Oliver has long been celebrated for its simplicity, beauty, and clarity. Her rich, sensory language, exploration of the line between human and non-human worlds, and the frank philosophy that accompanies them, make Oliver’s poems fast favorites with students and teachers alike. In honor of her memory, lets look at five illuminating pieces to weave into your lesson plans today: 1. The Summer Day Why its a great pick: Arguably Oliver’s most famous poem, The Summer Day is as simple and accessible as it is wondrous and profound. The poem combines metaphysical questions (â€Å"Who made the world? / Who made the swan, and the black bear?†) with the distilled image of a grasshopper in the speaker’s hand. But its the poems final lines that adorn t-shirts, coffee mugs, and the walls of countless college dorms: â€Å"Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?† Teaching points: Study how Oliver uses sensory language to characterize the grasshopper. When the speaker describes the grasshoppers â€Å"enormous and complicated eyes,† the grasshopper’s curious gaze is personified to mimic the philosophical inquiries of the speaker. Pairs well with: To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, or The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. 2. Wild Geese Why its a great pick: In Wild Geese, Oliver uses her iconic natural imagery to address one of life’s most challenging and common experiences: loneliness. As the speaker considers a flock of wild geese flying overhead, she describes all the events on earth that occur in the meantime. Ultimately, the poem offers solace to even the most solitary reader: â€Å"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination. Teaching points: Discuss the way Oliver uses anaphora- the repetition of a word or phrase at the start of sequential lines- to distinguish between the three phases of the poem. The first five lines begin with â€Å"You,† with the final â€Å"yours† falling mid-line to signal the upcoming shift. Lines 6 through 12 use â€Å"Meanwhile,† emphasizing the multitude of concurrent events. The final five lines avoid anaphora altogether, signaling that the poem has reached its thematic resolution. Pairs well with:  The Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, or The Outsiders. 3. The Shark Why its a great pick: The Shark is an exciting poem with a Jaws-like plot great for attracting the attention of students who are intimidated by poetry. Oliver asks the reader to consider the essence of humanity. What is it that causes humans to hold themselves above all other animals? â€Å"Speech,† the poem answers. â€Å"The wilderness of our wit.† Teaching points: A poem with a plot provides a unique opportunity to study line breaks. After you’ve read the poem as published, present it to students in paragraph form. Then, ask students to consider how line breaks alter the reading experience and create meaning within the poem. Pairs well with: Moby-Dick, The Old Man and the Sea, Silent Spring, or The Odyssey 4. Singapore Why its a great pick: In Singapore, Oliver turns her keen powers of observation indoors, focusing them on a working-class woman scrubbing an ashtray in a toilet stall. With the same reverence Oliver uses to describe her iconic grasshopper and wild geese, the speaker in this poem studies and respects the laborer as she works. For students, Singapore illustrates a poem’s ability to imbue even dark, dingy moments of the human experience with meaning. Teaching points: Use this poem as an opportunity to study symbolism. The â€Å"bird† appears at least three times in this poem, taking on a different connotative resonance with each appearance. Ask students to consider how the meaning of the bird changes over the course of the poem, and how these shifts affect students’ understanding of the poem. Pairs well with: The Grapes of Wrath, The Color Purple, or Tess of the d’Urbervilles 5. In Blackwater Woods Why its a great pick: In Blackwater Woods reveals poetry’s capacity to philosophize, making explicit truths that readers can use to navigate the difficult experiences of life: â€Å"To live in this world / you must be able // to do three things:// To love what is mortal; / to hold it against your bones / knowing your own life depends on it; / and, when the time comes to let it go, // to let it go.† Teaching points: Use this poem to distinguish between personification and anthropomorphism. Personification gives non-human entities the thoughts and feelings of a human. Anthropomorphism gives non-human entities the form of the physical human body. For example, â€Å"the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light† and â€Å"the blue shoulders / of the ponds.† While the trees and pond aren’t fully characterized, the reader is nevertheless prepared for the fleetingness of nature to be linked with the fleetingness of human life by the poem’s end. Pairs well with: The Stranger, Walden, or A Tale of Two Cities

Personal Mission Statement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Personal Mission Statement - Essay Example My goals and objectives in life are multifaceted and I believe I can achieve them all. The goal is to be successful in my personal life, professional life and become a better person in general. I am a single mother of a wonderful nine year old kid and I would like to be the best mother to my son. My son is my source of my personal happiness and I would like to provide him not only his material needs but also the love and support that would make him the best person he can be. I could not be more than happier to see that my son well taken-cared of and loved. I make sure that I spend quality time with him no matter how busy I am. Professionally, I would like to have a career in the future that is not only financially rewarding but also personally fulfilling as well. I would like to have a career in the future that touches people’s lives and that makes a difference in the community (no matter how small) that I am in. I also would like to have a career in the future that allows me to balance work with my personal life so that I will also have the time and energy to attend to my son. I also would like to contribute something to my community like engaging in some volunteer work to have the personal satisfaction that I made a difference. I believe that these goals can be achieved by following the guidelines set by Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. These habits include being proactive, begin the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seeking first to understand, then to be understood, synergize and sharpen the saw. These are simple rules or guidelines that enable an individual to become effective in the things that he or she does that would ultimately make him or her successful in whatever undertaking an individual may chose. Being proactive in the Seven Habits simply meant making the right decisions to become effective. In my case, to

Describe the impact of a risk event on business relationships Assignment

Describe the impact of a risk event on business relationships - Assignment Example They are strategic risks that are inadvertently linked with the nature of operations and administrative procedures of any particular industry. Other multilateral dependencies that can impact business partners or link in a business chain include accidents between cars in the importing procedures, fire, theft, and vandalism and water damages (Jolly, 2003). Being a transporter with a reputation of delivering on time and within budget, traffic can be a considerable hindrance to the performance of duties. Such a reputation is highly dependent on the status of traffic unless the transporter has a dedicated means of business that is not shared by others in the same business. Depending on the embedded culture of business continuity, a business organization can be categorized as risk taking or having zero tolerance. It is from such cultures that a business’ continuity is ensured and the impacts of accidents, such as those arising from transport procedures, can be

Comparison Buying a Home vs. Renting an Apartment Research Paper

Comparison Buying a Home vs. Renting an Apartment - Research Paper Example Renting is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good or property owned by another person or company (Answers, 2009). Renting agreement are very popular in the United States because they are a cheaper way to obtain a home or apartment. A person that rents does not have to pay any property taxes since they are not the owners of the home. Lease agreements for apartments or homes typically are signed for a time span of one year. A person that rents an apartment benefits in others such as having great flexibility. If a person does not like the place, they can move out into another rented apartment after the term of the lease expires. Another advantage of renting is that a person does not have to have good credit in order to qualify for the lease. Credit scores and standing are rarely a part of the renting agreement process. We are living in some tough economic times. The unemployment rate in the United States has reached a whopping 9.5% (Bls, 2009). When people lose their jobs sometimes it is hard to pay a mortgage. A person that leases can maneuver better during hard economic times. A person that leases has the option of leaving the place and moving in with relatives until they get back on their feet. A rental agreement is short term commitment, thus it gives a person more flexibility as far as being able to relocate easier. Despite the many advantages of leasing, there are also major cons associated with renting. A person that pays rent is always giving money to someone else without the benefit of getting any financial rewards in return. When a person rents they are basically paying another bill, thus renting could be categorized as a type of expense. Buying a home is a completely different proposition. Â  

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) INTRODUCTION 1.1. Optical Character Recognition: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the mechanical or electronic interpretation, reading of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner or tablet) into machine-editable text. OCR is a playing field of research in pattern identification, artificial intelligence and machine vision. An OCR system enables you to take a book or a magazine article, feed it directly into an electronic computer file, and then edit the file using a word processor. All OCR systems include an optical scanner for reading text, and suave software for analyzing images. Most OCR systems use a mishmash of hardware (specialized circuit boards) and software to recognize characters, although some economical systems do it entirely through software. Advanced roman OCR systems can read text in large variety of fonts, but they still have difficulty with handwritten text. 1.2. History Of Optical Character Recognition: To comprehend the phenomena described in the above section, we have to look at the history of OCR [3, 4, 6], its improvement, recognition methods, computer technologies, and the differences between humans and machines [1, 2, 5, 7, 8]. It is always intriguing to be able to find ways of enabling a computer to ape human functions, like the ability to read, to write, to see things, and so on. OCR research and development can be traced back to the early 1950s, when scientists tried to confine the images of characters and texts, first by mechanical and optical means of rotating disks and photomultiplier, flying spot scanner with a cathode ray tube lens, followed by photocells and arrays of them. At first, the scanning operation was dawdling and one line of characters could be digitized at a time by moving the scanner or the paper medium. Subsequently, the contraptions of drum and flatbed scanners arrived, which extended scanning to the full page. Then, advances in digital-integrated circui ts brought photo arrays with higher solidity, faster transports for documents and higher speed in scanning and digital conversions. These vital improvements greatly accelerated the speed of character recognition and abridged the cost, and opened up the possibilities of processing a great range of forms and documents. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, new OCR applications sprang up in retail businesses, banks, hospitals, post offices; insurance, railroad, and aircraft companies; newspaper publishers, and many other industries [3, 4].In parallel with these advances in hardware development, rigorous research on character recognition was taking place in the research laboratories of both academic and industrial sectors [6, 7]. Although both recognition techniques and computers were not that powerful in the in the early hours (1960s), OCR machines tended to make masses of errors when the print quality was poor, caused either by wide disparity in type fonts and roughness of the surface of the paper or by the cotton ribbons of the typewriters [5]. To make OCR work proficiently and economically, there was a big ram from OCR manufacturers and suppliers toward the standardization of print fonts, paper, and ink qualities for OCR applications. New fonts such as OCRA and OCRB were designed in the 1970s by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), respectively. These special fonts were quickly approved by the International Standards Organization (ISO) to facilitate the recognition process [3, 4, 6, 7]. As an upshot, very high identification rates became achievable at high speed and at reasonable costs. Such accomplishments also brought better printing traits of data and paper for practical applications. Actually, they completely revolutionize the data input industry [6] and eliminated the jobs of thousands of keypunch operators who were doing the really mundane work of keying data into the computer. 1.3. Common Steps Of OCR Processing: The method of converting documents into electronic forms, which is usually referred to as digitization is undertaken in different steps. The process of scanning a document and representing the scanned image for further processing is called the pre-processing or imaging stage. The process of manipulating the scanned image of a document to produce a searchable text is called the OCR processing stage. 1.3.1. The Imaging Stage: The imaging procedure involves scanning the document and storing it as an image. The most popular image format used for this purpose is called Tagged-Image File Format (TIFF). The resolution (number of dots per inch dpi) determines the accurateness rate of the OCR process. 1.3.2. The OCR Process: The major steps of the OCR processing stage are shown below. 1.3.3. Distinguishing Between Text And Images Segmentation: In this step, the process of recognizing the text and image blocks of the scanned image is undertaken. The boundaries of each image are analyzed in order to identify the text. 1.3.4. Character Recognition Feature Extraction: This step involves recognizing a character using a process known as feature extraction. OCR tools stockpiles rules about the characters of a given script using a method known as the learning course. A character is then identified by analyzing its shape and comparing its features adjacent to a set of rules stored on the OCR engine that distinguishes each character. 1.3.5. Recognition Of Character: Following the character identification process, character detection process is performed by comparing the string of characters against an existing dictionary of words. Additional processes such as spell-checking are performed under this step. 1.3.6. Output Formatting: The finishing step involves storing the output in one of the industry standard formats such as RTF, PDF, WORD and plain UNICODE text. 1.4. Pattern Recognition: Pattern recognition (also known as classification or pattern classification) is a field within the vicinity of artificial intelligence and can be defined as the act of taking in raw data and taking an action based on the category of the data. It uses methods from statistics, machine learning and other vicinities. Typical applications of pattern recognition are: Automatic speech identification. Classification of text into numerous categories (e.g. spam/non-spam email messages). The automatic identification of handwritten postal codes on postal envelopes. The automatic identification of images of human faces etc. The preceding three examples form the subtopicimage analysis of pattern recognition that pact with digital images as input to pattern recognition systems. Some trendy techniques for pattern recognition include: Neural Networks(NN) Hidden Markov Models(HMM) Bayesian networks (BN) The application domains of pattern identification include: Computer Vision Machine Vision Medical Image Analysis Optical Character Recognition Credit Scoring. 1.5. Applications Of The Pattern Recognition: Pattern recognition has many useful applications. Some of them are outlined below. Utilizes as a telecommunication aid for deaf, in airline reservation, in postal department for postal address reading (both handwritten and printed postal codes/addresses) and for medical diagnosis. For use in customer billing as in telephone exchange billing system, order data logging, and automatic finger print identification, as an automatic inspection system. In automated cartography, metallurgical industries, computer assisted forensic linguist system, electronic mail, information units and libraries and for facsimile. For direct processing of documents as a multipurpose document reader for large scale data processing, as a micro-film reader data input system, for high speed data entry, for changing text/graphics into a computer readable form, as electronic page reader to handle large volume of mail. 1.6. Scope Of This Work: The Project is designed to classify and identify a scanned image containing Arabic characters using two pace approaches. In the first pace the Arabic text image is preprocessed. And in the second pace it features are extracted. During the itinerary of work it is assumed that there is no noise in the image and the image is flawlessly scanned with no deviation from its original angle no skewing. 1.7. Objectives And Applications Of This Work: Arabic Optical Character Recognition can open a novel way of realizing the dream of the natural mode of communication amid man and machine in this part of the world. It will inflate and multiply already available knowledge to new horizons. Centurys aged rare script in Arabic, Urdu and Persian will become available to common man. The ultimate goal of character recognition is to conjure up the human reading capabilities. Character recognition systems can contribute immensely to the advancement of the automation process and can improve the interaction among man and machine in many applications, including office automation, check verification and a large variety of banking, business and data entry applications, library archives, documents identifications, e-books producing, invoice and shipping receipt processing, subscription collections, questionnaires processing, exam papers processing and many other applications[9], beside online address and signboard reading. 1.8. Thesis Organization: The remaining part of this thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter 2 describes review of literature. Chapter 3 describes Arabic script, its peculiarities and problems. Chapter 4 is regarding the development of Arabic Character identification and chapter 5 is about conclusions and future directions respectively. Chapter 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1. Optical Character Recognition: Since the beginning of writing as a form of communication, paper prevailed as the medium for writing. Electronic media is replacing paper with time. Because it preserves space and is fast to access, electronic media are constantly gaining esteem. The convenience of paper, its pervasive used for communication and archiving, and the quantity of information already on paper, press for quick and accurate methods to automatically read that information and adapt it into electronic form [Albadr95]. The latent application areas of automatic reading machines are numerous. One of the earliest, and most thriving, applications is sorting checks in banks, as the volume of checks that circulates daily has proven to be too huge for manual entry. Other applications are detailed in the next section [Govindan90, Mantas86]. The machine imitation of human reading (i.e. optical character recognition) has been the subject of widespread research for more than five decades. Character identification is pattern recognition application with a crucial aim of simulating the human reading capabilities of both machine printed and handwritten cursive text. The currently available systems may interpret faster than humans, but cannot reliably read such a wide diversity of text nor consider context. One can say that a great quantity of further effort is required to, at least, narrow the gap between humans reading and machines reading capabilities. The practical significance of OCR applications, as well as the interesting nature of the OCR problem, has lead to great research interest and assessable advances in this field. Now, commercial OCR systems for Latin characters are commonly accessible on personal computers achieving recognition rates above 99% [McClelland91, Welch93]. Further, systems on the market can now inte rpret a variety of writing styles (e.g., hand-written, printed Omni-font), and character sets including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic, and Arabic. Since the 50s, researchers have carried out far-reaching work and published many papers on character recognition. Nearly all of the published work on OCR has been on Latin, Japanese or Chinese characters. This has started since the median 40s for Latin, the middle of the 1960s for Chinese and Japanese. The following are positive surveys and reviews on Latin character recognition. Reference may be made to [Mori92] for historical appraisal of OCR research and development. The survey of [Govindan90] includes surveys of other languages; [Mantas86] has an overview of character identification methodologies, [Impedovo91] on commercial OCR systems, [Tian91] on machine-printed OCR, [Tappert90, Wakahara92] for on-line handwriting identification. [Suen80] has a survey on automatic identification of hand printed characters (viz. numerals, alphanumeric, FORTRAN, and Katakana), while [Nouboud90] produced a review of the recognition of hand-printed (non-cursive) characters and conducted beta tests on a business system. [Bozinovic89, Simon92] surveyed off-line cursive word recognition, Jain et al [Jain2000] reviewed statistical pattern recognition methods, and [Plamondon2000] comprehensive survey of online and offline handwriting identification. Two bibliographies of the fields of OCR and document scrutiny appeared in [Jenkins93, Kasturi92]. [Stallings76, Mori84], produced surveys on identification of Chinese machine- and hand-printed characters, respectively, and Liu et al [Liu2004] addressed the state of the art of online identification of Chinese characters. 2.2. General Review Of Arabic Character Recognition: Although almost one billion people world-wide, in several diverse languages, use Arabic characters for writing (Arabic, Persian, and Urdu are the most noted examples), Arabic character identification has not been researched as thoroughly as Latin, Japanese, or Chinese. The first published work on Arabic character acknowledgment may be traced back to 1975 by Nazif [Nazif75] in his masters thesis. In his thesis a system for the identification of printed Arabic characters was developed based on extracting strokes that he called radicals (20 radicals are used) and their positions. He used correlation between the templates of the deep-seated and the character image. A segmentation phase was included to segment the cursive text. Years later Badi and Shimura [Badi78, Badi80] and Noah [Nouh80] toiled on printed Arabic characters and Amin [Amin80] on hand-written Arabic characters. Surveys on AOTR may be referred in [Amin85a, Amin98, Shoukry89, Jambi91, Albadr95, Nabawi2000, Ahmed94]. On-line systems are restricted to recognizing hand-written text. Some systems recognize remote characters [Ali89, Amin80, Amin85b, Amin87, ElSheikh89, ElSheikh90b, ElWakil87, ElWakil89, Saadallah85] and hand-written mathematical formulas [ElSheikh90c, Amin91b], while others recognize cursive words [Badi78, Badi80, Badi82, Amin82a, Amin82b, Shaheen90, AlEmami90]. Since the segmentation problem in Arabic is non-trivial the concluding systems deal with a much harder problem. While several off-line systems use video cameras to digitize pages of text (e.g., [Abbas86, Goraine92, Amin86, HajHassan85, HajHassan90, Nouh80, Nouh87, Nouh89, Sarfraz2003, Sarfraz2004]), the inclination now is to use scanners with resolutions ranging from 200 to 400 dots per- inch (e.g., [AbdelAzim89c, AbdelAzim90a, AlYousefi88, Amin91a, Bouhlila89, ElDabi90, ElSheikh88a, Ramsis88, Sarfraz2003a, Sarfraz2003b, Zidouri2002, Zidouri2005]). Scanners set up less noise to an image, are less pricey, and more convenient to use for character recognition, especially when coupled with automatic document feeders, automatic Binarization, and image enhancement. Among the off-line systems that identify hand-written isolated characters are [Abuhaiba90, AlYousefi90, AlTikriti85, ElDesouky92, Hyder88]. [Abbas86, AbdelAzim89b, Goneid92] identify hand-written Arabic (Hindi) numerals, and [Badi80, Badi82, Goraine92, Jambi92, Zahour91] distinguish hand-written words. The majority of off-line systems distinguish typewritten cursive words [AbdelAzim89c, AbdelAzim90a, Bouhlila89, ElDabi90, Amin86, ElKhaly90, ElSheikh88b, Goraine89, Khella92, Margner92, Nazif75, Nouh87, Ramsis88, Tolba89, Tolba90, ElRamly89c, HajHassan90, HajHassan91], while [ElShiekh88a, Mahdi89, Mahmoud94, Nouh80, Nouh89, NurulUla88, Fayek92, Sarfraz2005d, Zidouri2005] identify only typewritten isolated characters. The systems of [Abdelazim90b, AlBadr92, ElGowely90, Kurdy92, Fakir93] are intended to recognize typeset words. One of the systems [Abdelazim89a] recognizes bilingual (Arabic/Latin) typewritten words. Examples of systems for detection of other languages that use Arabic scri pt are [Parhami81, Yalabik88, Hyder88], which are designed for the identification of Persian, Ottoman (Old Turkish), and Urdu, respectively. 2.3. Applications Of Optical Character Recognition: Optical character recognition technology has many practical applications that are independent of the treated language. The following are some of these applications: Financial Business Applications: For cataloging bank checks since the number of checks per day has been far too large for manual arrangement. Commercial Data Processing: For inflowing data into commercial data processing files, for example inflowing the names and addresses of mail order customers into a database. In addition, it can be worn as a work sheet reader for payroll accounting. In Postal Department: For postal address reading, cataloging and as a reader for handwritten and printed postal codes. In Newspaper Industry: Premium typescript may be read by recognition equipment into a computer typesetting system to keep away from typing errors that would be introduced by keypunching the text on computer peripheral equipment. Use By Blind: It is used as a reading abet using photo sensor and tactile simulators, and as a sensory aid with sound output. Additionally, it can be worn for reading text sheets and reproduction of Braille originals. In Facsimile Transmission: This procedure involves transmission of pictorial data over communications channels. In practice, the pictorial data is mainly text. Instead of transmitting characters in their pictorial representation, a character identification system could be used to recognize each character then transmit its text code. Finally, it is worth to say that the major potential application for automatic character identification is as a general data entry for the automation of the work of an ordinary office typist. 2.4. Development Of New OCR Techniques: As OCR research and development advanced, demands on handwriting identification also increased because a lot of data (such as addresses written on envelopes; sums written on checks; names, addresses, identity numbers, and dollar values written on invoices and forms) were written by hand and they had to be pierced into the computer for processing. But early OCR techniques were based generally on template matching, simple line and geometric features, stroke detection, and the extraction of their derivatives. Such techniques were not classy enough for practical identification of data handwritten on forms or documents. To cope with this, the Standards Committees in the United States, Canada, Japan, and some countries in Europe designed some handprint models in the 1970s and 1980s for people to write them in boxes [7]. Hence, characters written in such specified shapes did not diverge too much in styles, and they could be recognized more easily by OCR machines, especially when the data were pierced by controlled groups of people, for example, employees of the same company were asked to write their data like the advocated models. Sometimes writers were asked to follow certain bonus instructions to enhance the quality of their samples, for example, write big, close the loops, use simple shapes, do not link characters, and so on. With such constraints, OCR detection of handprints was able to flourish for a number of years. 2.5. Recent Trends And Movements: As the years of exhaustive research and development went by, and with the birth of several new conferences and workshops such as IWFHR (International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition), 1 ICDAR (International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition), 2 and others [13], identification techniques advanced rapidly. Moreover, computers became much more authoritative than before. People could write the way they normally did, and characters need not have to be written like specified models, and the subject of unimpeded handwriting recognition gained considerable momentum and grew swiftly. As of now, many new algorithms and techniques in pre-processing, feature extraction, and powerful classification methods have been urbanized [8, 9]. Chapter 3 ARABIC A CURSIVE SCRIPT 3.1. Arabic: Arabic is a semantic language used as principal language in most countries. Arabic is vocalized by 234 million people [9] and essential in the culture of many more. While spoken Arabic varies across region, written Arabic, sometimes called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), is a uniform version used for official communication across the Arab world [9]. The characters of Arabic script and similar character are used by a much higher entitlement of the worlds population to write language such as Arabic, Farsi, Persian and Urdu. Thus the ability to automate the understanding of written Arabic would have wide spread benefits. Arabic is normally written in the calligraphic Nastaliq script, whereas Naskh is more commonly used. Usually, bare transliterations of Arabic into Roman letters exclude many phonemic elements that have no counterpart in English or other languages commonly written in the Roman alphabet. National Language Authority of Pakistan has developed numeral systems with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but these can only be appropriately read by someone already familiar with Urdu, Persian, or Arabic for letters such as ? ? ? ? or ? and Hindi for letters. Most of Arabic characters when pooled form a degree of about 45 to the horizontal line because of which Arabic script reading is faster than roman script but on the other hand it makes it harder for the greenhorn readers and the machines to identify the word or segment one character from the rest. Unlike the English script there is no capital or small characters in Urdu, but the last character of a word can be measured as a capital character as in many cases it presents the full form of the character and the characters at early and middle positions are considered as small. Every character has an impartial shape besides different joining forms, but some of the alphabet like the characters making the word Urdu (? ? ? ?) or of the similar category are not joinable or cannot be connected. Arabic alphabet utilizes consonant letters, vowels, diacritic marks, numerals, punctuations and a few superscripts signs. The graphical representation of each alphabet has surplus one form depending on its position and context in the word. In general each letter has four forms that is beginning, middle, final and standalone as shown in table 3.1. 3.2. Arabic Letters: The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Each has between two and four shapes and the choice of which shape to use depends on the situation of the letter within its word or sub word. The shape correspond to the four positions: beginning of a (sub) word, middle of a (sub) word. End of a (sub) word and in isolation. Table 3.1 shows each shape for each letter. Letters without initial shapes are purely their isolated shapes, and their medial shapes are their final shapes. Some letters have descanters or ascenders which are position that extend below the primary line on which the letters sit or above the stature of most letters. Theres no upper or lower case, but only one case. Arabic script is written from right to left, and Letters within a word are usually joined even in machine print. Letter shapes and whether or not to connect depend on the letter and its neighbors. Letters are connected at the same virtual height. The baseline is the line at the height at which letters are allied, and it is akin to the line on which some an English word sits. Letters are wholly above it except for decanters and some markings. Theres no association between separate words. So word boundaries are always represented by a breathing space. Six letters, however, can be allied only on one side. When they occur in the middle of a word, the word is divided into manifold sub-words separated by space. A ligature is a word shaped by combining two or more letters in an accepted manner. Arabic has numerous standard ligatures, which are exception to the above rules for joining letters. Most common is laam- alif, the combination of laam and alif and other include yaa-meem. 3.3. Problems Of Arabic Script: Despite a huge character set Arabic has a small set of characters which are easily discernible from one another. The remaining character fluctuates from these character using dots or symbols above or below these shapes [19]. The table 3.2 shows group of similar characters and their derived forms. As shown above table 3.2, only 21 different groups exits out of 32 character set. It will complicate the identification phase of Arabic characters. Further study of other forms ( initial, middle and final ) of these character divulges that ein( ) is analogous to hamza(?), wow (?) might be perplexing with (?) , ze (?) resembles noon () and mem(?) can be baffled with middle form of ein () and with stand alone goal-he (?). A key distinction between Latin scripts and Arabic script is the fact that many letters only differ by a dot(s) but the primary stroke is exactly the same. [19] 3.4. Others Problems In Arabic OCR: All Muslims (almost  ¼ of the people on the earth) can read Arabic because it is the language of Al-Quran, the holy book of Muslims. Even though, Arabic script identification has not received enough welfare by the researchers. Little research progress has been accomplished comparing to the one done on the Latin and Chinese. The elucidations available in the market are still far from being perfect [11, 14]. There are few raison dà ªtres led to this result. Require of financial support and platform accessible from any government (official language of countries). lack of ample support in terms of journals, books etc. and lack of interaction between researchers in this playing field; lack of broad-spectrum support utilities like Arabic text databases, dictionaries, programming tools, and supporting staff; belatedly start of Arabic text identification (first publication in 1975 compared with the 1940s in the case of Latin character recognition); The research carried out on Arabic language is typically scattered and outside from the Arab world. There are no specialized conferences or symposium demeanor so far. Algorithms developed for other language scripts are not pertinent on Arabic. 3.5. Characteristics Of Arabic Characters: The calligraphic nature of the Arabic set is eminent from other languages in several ways. For example, Arabic text is written from right to left. No upper or lower cases subsist in Arabic, but sometimes the last character of a word is considered as upper case because its always remains in its full form. Arabic has 28 fundamental characters, of which 16 have from one to three dots. Those dots discriminate between the otherwise similar characters. Additionally, three characters can have a meander like stroke. The dots are called secondaries and they are located above the character primary part as in ALEF (?), or below like BAA (?), or in the middle like JEEM (?). Written Arabic text is cursive mutually in machine-printed and hand-written text. Within a word, some characters unite to the preceding and/or following characters, and some do not connect. The connectivity of characters consequences in a word having one or more connected components. We will refer to each connected piece of a word as a sub-word. The shape of an Arabic character depends on its location in the word; a character might have up to four different shapes depending on it being isolated, connected from the right (beginning form), connected from the left (ending form), or connected from both sides (middle form). A distinguishing feature of Arabic writing is the presence of a base-line. The baseline is a level line that runs through the connected portions of text (i.e. where the characters connection segments are located). The baseline has the highest number of text pixels. (See figure 3.2.) Characters in a word may overlie vertically (even without touching). Arabic characters do not have permanent size (height and width). The character size varies according to its pose in the word, Characters in a word can have diacritics. These diacritics are written as strokes, placed either on top of, or below, the characters. Poles apart diacritic on a character may change the meaning of a word. Readers of Arabic are accustomed to reading un-diacritical text by deducing the meaning from context. Numerous characters can combine vertically to form a ligature, especially in typeset and handwritten text. Arabic words may perhaps consist of one or more sub-words. Each sub-word may have one or more characters, because some Arabic characters are not joinable to others from the left side. As an example, the word Ketab ( ) consists of two sub-words: Keta ( ) which consists of three characters and BAA( ?) which is a single character. There are merely three characters that represent vowels, ? , ? or ? . However, there are other shorter vowels represented by diacritics in the form of over scores or underscores but practice of over score and underscore in Arabic is less Dots may materialize as two separated dots, touched dots, hat or as a stroke. Another style of Arabic handwriting is the arty or decorative calligraphy which is usually full of overlapping making the identification process even more difficult by human being rather than by computers. 3.6. Summary: Arabic script includes its cursive nature of writings, right to left style of writing and change of form and shape when a character is placed at different locations of a word, loops, half closed characters and dots on above or below a character. National Language Authority defined 32 characters set but it has 21 working characters beside numeral and diacritics. Chapter 4 ARABIC CHARACTER RECOGNITION 4.1. Phases Of Arabic Character Recognition: In an offline character identification system, the user scans a particular script, runs the OCR and gets the documents saved in a file format of his choice. The alteration of the text from the scanning phase to the final document involves a number of phases that are transparent to the user. The proposed system can be implemented in the following steps: Image Acquisition; Digitization; Preprocessing; Feature extraction; Recognition. Figure 4.1 shows the componen

Cultural Background Summary Essay

My family comes from different cultural background which has been molded by assimilation, climate of pluralism and acculturation. I am a Filipino and I grew up in Oahu in Hawaii, whereby people in Hawaii have modest-economic status, low income and little education hence less satisfaction to their needs. I never had enormous understanding of cultural diversity and my culture as Filipino as I grew up because I had a combination of native Austronesia civilization which influenced the Hispanics and American cultures (Ciria-Cruz, 1994, p. 16). This affected my cultural background a lot. As argued by Gramann and Sandra, 1998 people of my culture have differences in their language, traditions and mode of dressing which contributes towards cultural diversity. There is difference in moral and religious conceptualization among the people and differences on how each person interacts with the environment within the community (Gramann and Sandra, 1998, p. 57). My cultural identity is characterized by my race mainly skin color and other physical characteristics according to social class and ethnicity. Ethnicity is classified according to behavior, cultural knowledge and my cultural identity. Cultural backgrounds come out as a result of different reasons. My cultural identity have been shaped by my cultural backgrounds which have influenced how I interpret the world around me, perceive myself and relate with other people. The information I have concerning my cultural background has increased my cultural knowledge and gave me an overview of cultural issues and characteristics. I usually identify my needs and preferences and always remember that I cannot reduce to set cultural norms. My cultural backgrounds vary with that of other people due to migration and time of arrival at that particular destination, socio-economic background, and period of settlement, education level, cultural and religious background, rural and urban residence, different life experiences with migration experience (Feagin and Feagin, 1993, p. 42). According to Feagin and Feagin, 1993 my identity has been molded by assimilation, acculturation and climate of pluralism. My cultural identity faces racial discrimination with. Ciria-Cruz, 1994 argued that, different books have racial composition, culture and demographic information of Filipino people. As argued by Feagin and Feagin, 1993 my cultural identity face substantial prejudice, discrimination and stereotype and people of my cultural background mainly struggle to maintain and preserve their culture and identity. Even speaking their own language result to severe sanction such as, losing their jobs and being made fun of by other communities. This cultural diversity within the communities has a significant challenge to multiculturalism and it threatens the survival of my community. Race influence relates to my community and interaction of people within my community has been racialized negatively and positively. Pluralism can help in solving this by enriching experiences for my cultural background (Feagin and Feagin, 1993, p. 54). Diversity in my cultural background is due to ignorance of cultural background language which is extensive. Lack of basic cultural background hinders people from comprehending language. Religious culture has assimilated me on various behaviors of human beings. Regional culture has been shaped by geographical environment and natural conditions. Acculturation has impacted on my cultural background in which people has anticipated on changing their behavior through influence on different aspect such as age, gender occupation recency of arrival, socioeconomic status, and education (Ciria-Cruz, 1994, p. 18). Cultural characteristics suggest the influence of acculturation across generations. Through assimilation people avoid interacting with dominant cultures with the degree in which people maintain and relinquish attributes of their native cultures. Through assimilation people desires meets with dominant cultures which is not necessary in maintaining an identity of their native culture. Some people don’t like being assimilated but the degrees to which people may agree to be assimilated vary as a result of cultural diversity (Gramann and Sandra, 1998, p. 61). Assimilation has molded my cultural background through economic, social and political integration. This has been possible since my ethnic group changed to that of the host society. Cultural assimilation has given rise to different economic development patterns reducing cultural diversity by standardizing socio-cultural traits like ethics, beliefs, norms and codes of conducts. The climate of pluralism identifies what people in my culture share in common. This helps in maintaining ethnic identity and cultural identity. Acceptance of pluralism affects people’s feelings of cultural identity with effect of interaction being posited between ethnic and cultural identity. The diverse attitudes towards my cultural background can be viewed as positive forces with compatibility on learning second language. Language is the key to identification and if I want to change my cultural identity I have to change my linguistic identification. Conclusion My cultural background marks my cultural identity in which various factors have contributed to cultural diversity. Factors like assimilation, pluralism and acculturation. My cultural backgrounds vary because of migration and time of arrival at that particular destination, socio-economic background, and period of settlement, education level, cultural and religious background, rural and urban residence, different life experiences with migration experience. Diversity in my cultural background is due to ignorance of cultural background language. List of References Ciria-Cruz, R. (1994), â€Å"How far have we come,† Filipinas, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 16-18 Feagin, J. & Feagin C. (1993), Cultural Diversity, 4th Ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall Gramann, H. , & Sandra, L, (1998), â€Å"The effect of cultural assimilation on the importance of family-related and nature-related recreation among Hispanic Americans,† Journal of leisure research, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 57-68

Plant Biotechnology

Define plant biotechnology. Using examples discuss how it is different from traditional / conventional methods plant breeding. Plant biotechnology has been defined as the integrated use of biochemistry, microbiology and engineering sciences in-order to achieve technological application of micro-organisms and cultured tissue cells in the transfer of genetic traits from one crop species to another to obtain transgenic plants that are of beneficial use to human kind (Lawrence . W; 1968).Heldt H and Heldt F (2005) defines plant biotechnology as the art and science to produce a genetically modified plant by removing genetic information from an organism, manipulating it in a laboratory and then transferring it into a plant to change certain of its characteristics. . Plant breeding is the science and art of improving crop plants through the study and application of genetics, agronomy, statistics, plant pathology, entomology, and related sciences (Kuckuck et al; 1991).Increased crop yield is the primary aim of most plant-breeding programs; advantages of the hybrids and new varieties developed include adaptation to new agricultural areas, greater resistance to disease and insects, greater yield of useful parts, better nutritional content of edible parts, and greater physiological efficiency. Humans have been improving crops for yield and other characteristics since the advent of agriculture. Plant biotechnology involves processes such as genetic engineering which involves the direct addition of foreign gene/genes to the genome of an organism.It is a type of genetic modification. Traditional plant breeding also modifies the genetic composition of plants. It involves techniques such as crossing and selection of new superior genotype combinations. Firstly traditional methods tend to breed plants that can sexually mate with each other. This limits the new traits that can be added to those that already exist in that species. Secondly when plants are crossed, many traits are transformed along with the trait of interest. Whereas genetic engineering, on the other hand, is not bound by these limitations.It involves the removal of a specific fragment of DNA from one plant or organism and transferring the genes for one of a few traits into another. No crossing is required hence the sexual barrier between species is overcome. It is more specific in that a single trait can be added to a plant (Bajaj . Y; 2001). According to Rost . T. I et al (2006), another difference between traditional plant breeding and plant biotechnology is the number of genes transferred to the offspring in each case. Plants contain approximately 80 000 genes which recombine during sexual hybridization.The offspring may therefore inherit around 1000 new genes as a result of this recombination. This is equivalent to a 0. 0125 % change in the genome. By contrast when a specific gene is transferred into a plant, there is a 0. 0025% change in the genetic information of the plant, it is argue d that plant biotechnology provides a more precise approach to crop improvements than sexual hybridization. Plant biotechnology through genetic engineering can cause harmful toxins to be produced by transformed plants, though it is still unclear whether it is due to the technique itself on the nature of the foreign gene.The introduction of a gene that it is known to encode a toxin in one organism will induce a similar effect when introduced into a different organism (Raven P. H et al; 1992). There has been a case where a transgenic soybean containing a gene from Brazil nuts elicited an allergic reaction in some people. The gene from Brazil nuts had been well characterized and its product known to cause an allergy, hence extensive laboratory tests. This illustrates why rigorous characterization of a gene is required before permitting its introduction into a novel species.However there is also the potential of toxic product being produced as a result of conventional methods of crop im provements. For example, in sweet potatoes where vegetative propagation is done, potato varieties with increased pest resistance have continually been selected as giving a higher crop variety. Those varieties contain high levels of natural pesticides, called glucoalkaloids. However these compounds are toxic to animals, so could have harmful effects when eaten.This demonstrates that the nature of the novel feature should be open to debate rather than the method by which it is introduced (Lawrence . W; 1968). The traditional methods of crop improvements are limited by the sexual compatibility of the plants involved; whereas with plant biotechnology through genetic engineering any characteristic from any organism of any species can be introduced into a plant. Plant breeders therefore have access to a much wider gene pool than they have using traditional crossing methods to develop a new variety.For example a rice gene responsible for defense against a disease causing fungus can be tran sferred to a banana susceptible to that disease. The intent is to protect the genetically modified banana from that disease and thereby reduce yield loss and number of fungicide applications. Another example is that genes introduced into plants to provide a resistance to the herbicide Round Up was isolated from bacteria. An insecticidal toxin used as a crop spray was also extracted from bacteria. Genetically modified maize is been grown which expresses this type of proteins.One major difference between traditional plant breeding and plant biotechnology; genetic engineering/ modification is that, while extensive restrictions are in place to limit the development and release of genetically modified varieties, those developed by sexual hybridization and mutagenesis are under no restrictions (Raven P. H et al; 1992). A major concern surrounding the cultivation of genetically modified crops is the possibility of cross pollination between transgenic and related crops.While this is clearly possible for some species, but not all crop species have native wild relatives with which they are sexually compatible meaning that the possibility of the production of â€Å"super weeds† is not possible. Plants such as carrots are allowed only to flower for seed production meaning that cross-pollination during normal commercial cultivation is unlikely. In plant biotechnology plants can be grown in artificial medium requiring less land mass to produce large amounts of crops in less time. Although it seems like a great alternative to the earlier methods, it can also be devastating.By growing plants at a faster rate there is a possibility of losing the essential vitamins and nutrients that are important for us. Transgenic plants are still a relatively new field and no concrete evidence for any of this existing but it is growing concern (Bajaj . Y; 2001). Heldt . H and Heldt . F (2005) says, the techniques of traditional breeding are very time-consuming. By making crosses, also a large number of undesired genes are introduced into the genome of the plant. The undesired genes have to be â€Å"sorted out† by back-crossing.Using plant biotechnology which involves the use of Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism it greatly facilitates/substitutes conventional plant breeding, because one can progress through a breeding program much faster, with smaller populations and without relying entirely on testing for the desired phenotype. RFLP makes use of restriction endonucleases enzymes which recognize and cut specific nucleotide sequence in DNA. The cut fragments are separated according to size by gel electrophoresis and made visible by hybridizing the plant DNA fragments with labeled DNA probes.The closer two organisms are related, the more pattern of bands overlap. With conventional breeding, the pool of available genes and the traits they code for is limited due to sexual incompatibility to other lines of the crop in question and to their wild relative s. This restriction can be overcome by using the methods of genetic engineering, which in principle allow introducing valuable traits coded for by specific genes of any organism (other plants, bacteria, fungi, animals, viruses) into the genome of any plant. According to Rost . T. I et al (1992), transgenes are inserted into the nuclear genome of a plant cell.Recently it has become possible to introduce genes into the genome of chloroplasts and plastids. Transgenic plants have been generated using methods such as agrobacterium-mediated DNA transfer, direct DNA transfer, particle bombardment and electroporation. References 1. Bajaj . Y. (2001). Transgenic Crops. Berlin. Springer. 2. Heldt . H and Heldt . F. (2005). Plant Biochemistry. 3rd edition. California. Elsevier. 3. Kuckuck . H; Kobabe G. and Wenzel G. (1991). Fundamentals of plant breeding. New York. Springer-Verlag. 4. Lawrence . W. (1968). Plant breeding. London. Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd. 5. Raven P.H, Evert . R. F and Ei chron . S. E. (1992). Biology of Plants. 5th edition. New York. Van Hoffman Press Inc. 6. Rost . T. l. , Barbour . M. G. , Stocking . R. C. and Murphy . T. M. (2006). Plant Biology. 2nd edition. California. Thomson Brooks/Cole. CHINHOYI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY NAME: Tanyaradzwa R Ngara REG NUMBER: C1110934J COURSE:Plant Biotechnology COURSE CODE: CUBT 207 PROGRAM:BSBIO Assignment: Define plant biotechnology. Using examples discuss how it is different from traditional / conventional methods plant breeding [25marks].

Leader Research Paper Sir Richard Branson

Leader Research Paper Sir Richard Branson Introduction Strong leadership is necessary if an organization is to achieve its goal of higher performance and increased productivity. For this reason, effective leadership is rightfully regarded as a critical factor in the success of all organizations.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Leader Research Paper: Sir Richard Branson specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More There exist many leadership styles and their effectiveness depends on the particular business environment as well as the personal traits and values of the individual leader (Bartlett Goshal, 2000). One individual who has emerged as a successful leader is the Virgin groups CEO, Richard Branson. He has built himself a reputation by being a successful entrepreneur who has founded many profitable groups of companies. This paper will set out to review the leadership styles used by Branson. Specifically, the paper will analyze his dominant leadership styles and cite specific behaviors that have been critical to the success of Branson. Specific behavior by Branson that would ensure a students future life success will be highlighted. A review of behaviors from Branson that leaders should avoid will also be made. A brief biography on Richard Branson Richard Branson is an English business entrepreneur who is most renowned for founding the Virgin Group of companies. He was born in 1950 and although an underachiever in school, he had great practical intelligence and possessed numerous creative abilities. Richard Branson began his business career while studying at Stowe, an exclusive private boys school. His first venture which was a magazine called Student which became a success.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More This motivated Branson to abandon school and pursue his business interests in 1968. His magazine attracted significant rea dership due to its elective style and its venture into subjects that were not addressed by the well established magazines. The next venture undertaken by Branson was mail order records and this venture was chosen since it required no up-front investment and no working capital which made it ideal for Branson who had little money at his disposal. The name Virgin Records was chosen for this commercial entity. The success of the retail store led to expansion into record publishing with great financial success for the company. A fundamental notion held by Branson is that small is beautiful and as such, when a unit grows too large it is split apart. Virgin Atlantic Airways which is Bransons grand jewel was founded in 1984 following a proposal by a Californian lawyer for Branson to start an intercontinental cut-price airline. Unlike the previous ventures, the airline business required a lot of capital and by 1985, the financial needs of the airline were creating a cash squeeze for Virgin ( Kets de Vries, 1998). This led to the Virgin Group going public so as to gain the needed capital. However, Branson was unhappy with the public status of his company and in 1987; he bought out external shareholders and therefore made Virgin a private company again.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Leader Research Paper: Sir Richard Branson specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More By the early 1990s, the airline had become the centerpiece of Bransons interests and the capital needs of the airline made it necessary for him to acquire more capital. The capital was to be acquired by selective divestment. Specifically, Branson sold Virgin Music (which was his most profitable business) for close to $1 billion and then used the money to support new business ventures and also to expand the airline. Virgin Atlantic gained a competitive edge over the more established airlines because of its reduced prices and the superior and innovativ e customer services. Kets de Vries (1998) notes that the airline was able to offer its business class travelers amenities that exceeded those offered to first class passengers by its competitors therefore making it appealing to many travelers. Virgin airline showed innovation in customer service and for this, the airline has won numerous awards and experienced significant success on the global market. Even so, the Airline has had to constantly compete with major airlines most notably of which are British Airways. The company has relied on Bransons innovativeness to remain profitable in the tough airline industry and therefore defend its strategic position.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Branson’s Dominant Leadership Style Transformational Leader Richard Branson engages in transformational leadership where the leader â€Å"looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower (Burns 1978, p.173). The most distinctive attribute of transformational leaders is that they demonstrate significant consideration of follower’s needs. Branson strongly believes in the importance of his staff as is elaborated by his maxim staff first, customers second, and shareholders third†. Kets de Vries (1998) reveals that Branson strongly believes in this concept and to him, people are the greatest asset that his business empire has. In an interview with CNBC Business (2007), Branson reveals that his leadership approach entails motivating people and looking for the best in them while at the same time keeping criticism at a minimal. Branson demonstrates his transformational style by granting his employees op portunities to exhibit great personal and professional growth. For example, when a company becomes too big, he splits it up and promotes the assistant managers of the original company into becoming heads of the new company. All employees are therefore motivated to set aside their own self-interest and work collectively to achieve organizational goals since this will help them to achieve even higher goals (London, 2002). Such a policy gives employees an opportunity to experience professional growth and it also makes the employees work harder in the hope that they will get the opportunity to be promoted or even head their own company. Branson expects his followers to achieve more than their initial personal goals and empowers them to be successful. When speaking about his staff, Branson states that Virgin staff are not mere hired hands; they are not managerial pawns in some gigantic chess game. They are entrepreneurs in their own right (Dearlove, 2010, p.104).considering the current e conomic environment, his statement addresses one of the most fundamental issues, which is success. A common goal which Branson has set for his employees is that they should aim to expand into bigger markets and gain higher loyalty among customers. Dearlove (2010) reveals that these goals are well articulated to all employees and everybody involved is expected to provide the best services to the customers and look for opportunities to expand the business. This approach works and Virgin workers are constantly coming up with proposals which Branson reviews and then follows up on if they have merit. Charismatic Leader Branson has also set himself apart as a charismatic leader. Kunstler (2008) suggests that Branson has been successful in his role as the figurehead of Virgin group, that he has grown to be more important than the brand itself. This thought is further supported by Dearlove (2010) who declares that a charismatic leader should have ample ability to sell a vision of trust, tra nquilly and dedication to a prescribed cause to all employees. Through his character, Branson has not only proved to his employees that integrity and dedication lead to success, but also, a sense of belonging and purpose. Such, virtues promote commitment, all the while propelling the belief that as employees, people have it in them to make a significant difference. A charismatic leader creates an environment that is conducive for the followers to exercise creativity and take some risks without fear of consequences. Branson encourages his staff to be innovative and creativity is rewarded in the organization, which makes the employees more likely to innovate and try new approaches. The business consultant Don Cruickshank deduced that Virgin is structured around its energetic chairman whose enthusiasm has led to the continued success of the company (Dearlove, 2010). Branson is charismatic since he shows a lot of enthusiasm and self-confidence which makes it possible for him to influenc e his followers. He is therefore able to motivate his followers to do more than they normally do and make personal sacrifices for the good of the organization. The charismatic leaders is also a visionary who is willing to take risks in order to achieve his vision while at the same time remaining sensitive to how the vision meets followers needs. The success of Virgin Airlines and Virgin mobile is largely attributed to the charisma exuded by Richard Branson. Dyck and Neubert (2008) assert that Branson used his power of personality and ability to communicate a compelling vision in order to lead his followers to take risks and achieve great success in the airline and wireless industries. Branson is the reason why Virgin is one of the worlds most recognized brands. It is as a result of his charisma that he is able to attract investors who supply the majority of the capital for his new ventures. Dearlove (2010) admits that over the years, Bransons personal reputation has been the most ef fective tool of recruiting the best staff for Virgin group. He states that many of the companys most able managers were drawn by what they had seen and heard about the way Branson runs his business. Branson is really good at motivating others and passing on his confidence and belief that every new project will succeed and by doing this, he acts as a catalyst for the development and success of new business ventures. When he set up Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Branson was going head to head with big airlines such as British Airways which held a huge market share (Kets de Vries, 1998). However, he was able to convince his staff that they could compete favorably against these giants and emerge victorious. Based on his personal convictions that they would succeed, he was able to inspire his followers to work hard and realize his high expectations. Specific Behavior that is Important to Branson’s Success Branson is well known for his risk taking attitude and his believe that one can s ucceed even in the face of numerous odds. This quality has been the reason behind the numerous success experienced by the Virgin group. One of the riskiest business ventures Branson undertook was by entering into the railway business in the late 1990s. He took over some segments of Britains railway network which was old and inefficient. By making use of technological advances, Branson was able to increase the efficiency of the railway network and hence make the railway more appealing to customers. While Virgin Trains has not achieved the monumental success that Virgin Atlantic has, it has made some progress in spite of the negative outcomes that many analysts predicted (Dearlove, 2010). The visibility of Virgin Groups products is greatly enhanced by Bransons genius at promoting his company. He does this through daring personal exploits which help him to get the attention of extensive media coverage. For example, Shavinina (2006) records that Branson has broken a number of world reco rds by crossing the Atlantic in a hot air balloon and also by boat. His latest exploit has been in successfully kite-surfing across the English Channel and therefore becoming the oldest person to do so. His flamboyant nature also generates a lot of free publicity for his companies. For example, to avoid incurring the huge costs required to advertise the new airline in the mainstream media in 1984, Branson appeared in a World War 1 flying outfit to celebrate the first flight of the newly formed Virgin Atlantic. Branson takes advantage of investment opportunities even when the competition seems high. He has also shown that one should not be intimidated by the bigger players in the market and he has proved that one can succeed â€Å"despite the odds†. For example, Branson has launched products such as Virgin Cola in a market that is dominated by the two major soft drink giants; Coca Cola and Pepsi (Dearlove, 2010). Another behavior that has led to Bransons success is that he alw ays stays in touch with Virgin customers and employees. He is therefore aware of their perception of the current commodities offered by Virgin and can gain valuable information on new needs. Sosik and Dinger (2007) state that Branson spends significant amount of time looking into complaints made by customers as well as reading and responding to suggestions made by his employees. Which behavior described, would ensure student’s future life success? Branson emphasizes on the importance of innovation among his followers. This is a behavior that can be beneficial in my future since for an organization to survive in today’s business environment, one has to expand the horizon beyond personal goals and focus more on progression, which can only be accomplished by innovation (Katsioloudes Hadjidakis, 2007). A leader should therefore foster creativity and innovation among his followers instead of having followers who only follow orders. Branson’s view in this case is ind icative of a dominant leadership style, which demands for strategic empowerment in a bid to improve self-worth among employees. Branson also demonstrates concern for the welfare of his employees and he constantly states that they are the most important asset of the organization. Alimo-Metcalfe ALban-Metcalfe (2001) reveal that the transformational leader gives priority to his followers needs which leads to the followers having a lot of respect and admiration for their leader. Delegation is another behavior by Branson that can ensure a student’s future life success. Branson takes a back seat in the running of Virgin and lets his employees engage in the day to day running of the company with little interruption. He declares that he finds the most talented people and then gives them the space to do their job. Virgin Atlantic Airways is the exception in Bransons hands off approach and he devotes a lot of time and attention to the airline. Dearlove (2010) states that such an appr oach is necessary when one is heading as many companies as Branson does since it would be unrealistic for him to involve himself in the operations of all the companies. As a student, I would want to emulate this behavior by entrusting some tasks to my followers. An effective leader should be skilled at allocating tasks and responsibilities to different followers based on their strengths. In some instances, delegation will require more than simply giving up some of the responsibilities; it may entail relinquishing of power to others. Behaviors from Richard Branson that leaders should avoid A behavior from Branson that leaders should avoid is taking too much risk in a bid to achieve goals and assuming that positive attitude and enthusiasm will lead to success. Dearlove (2010) notes that Branson rarely makes use of market research when taking up a venture; instead, he relies on his instincts as to what the customers want. He believes in risking it all to achieve his goals and maintains a positive attitude to each project he undertakes (Dyck Neubert, 2008) state that. Branson is known for making major risks in a bid to achieve his goals. This risk taking has led to some significant failures by Branson. For example, a number of his online retailing companies that were established during the dot.com bubble were failures making it necessary for the ventures to be abandoned. His venture in vodka and computers were also failures. While the Virgin Group of companies can afford to make a few unsuccessful ventures without dire repercussions, most leaders do not have the same luxury and one failure may break the company. Leaders should therefore avoid unnecessary risks in order to ensure the survivability and future success of their organizations. Branson has a reputation of acting at record-breaking speed when a new opportunity presents itself. He disregards bureaucracy and does not use time consulting with middle managers about the feasibility of his latest ideas. This impulsive approach to new ventures may be detrimental to the well being of a small or middle sized organization. Another behavior that leaders should avoid is overemphasizing personal charisma. As it is, Virgin is heavily reliant on Branson as the charismatic leader. Branson has grown to be more important than the brand and there is concern as to the future of the group since it will be very hard to find a worthwhile successor to him. Den Hartog et al. (1999) warn that charismatic leaders may have a negative impact on the future of a company as is the case with Virgin. Leaders should therefore ensure that they put they do not jeopardize the future prospects of the company. Conclusion This paper set out to review the Bransons dominant leadership styles and access the manner in which his behavior can ensure a students future life success. It has been noted that Branson began utilizing his entrepreneurial capabilities at the early age of 17 and has continued to develop many companies w ith great success. The paper has noted that Branson’s dominant leadership styles are transformational and charismatic. It has been articulated that Branson creates a challenging and exciting environment in which his followers can exercise their creativity and innovation instead of following him blindly wherever he leaders. The paper has also underscored the fact that creativity is a major driving force behind all operations by Branson and he seeks to impart the same spirit to his followers. The empowering attitude that Branson emphasizes leads to greater performance being obtained from his staff and this causes the organization to excel. This paper has come out with a number of lessons that can be learnt from Branson’s leadership styles. By putting these lessons into practice, one can become an effective leader and therefore become an asset to the organization. References Alimo-Metcalfe, B. ALban-Metcalfe, R. (2001). The Development of a new transformational Leadershi p questionnaire. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74, 1-27, 2001. Bartlett, C.A. Goshal, S. (2000). Going global lesson from late movers. Harvard Business Review 78 (2):132-142. CNBC Business (2007). Richard Branson: Simon Hobbs meets the Virgin Group founder. Web. Dearlove, D. (2010). The Unauthorized Guide to Doing Business the Richard Branson Way: 10 Secrets of the Worlds Greatest Brand Builder. NY: John Wiley Sons. Den Hartog, D. N., House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Ruiz-Quintanilla, S. A., Dorfman, P.W., Abdalla, I. A., et al. (1999). Culture specific and cross-culturally generalizable implicit leadership theories: Are attributes of charismatic/transformational leadership universally endorsed? Leadership Quarterly, 10(1), 219-256. Dyck, B. Neubert, M. (2008). Management: Current Practices and New Directions. Boston: Cengage Learning. Katsioloudes, M.I. Hadjidakis, S. (2007) International business: a global perspective, NY: Butterworth-Heinemann. Kets de Vr ies, M. F. R. (1998). Charisma in action: The transformational abilities of Virgins Richard Branson and AABs Percy Barnevik. Organizational Dynamics, 26 (2), 6-21. Kunstler, B. (2008). Leadership in the Era of the Human Singularity: New Demands, New Skills, New Response. The Proteus Monograph Series, 2(4), 1-93. London, M. (2002). Leadership Development: Paths to Self-Insight and Professional Growth. NY: Routledge. Shavinina, L. V. (2006). Micro-social factors in the development of entrepreneurial giftedness: the case of Richard Branson, High Ability Studies, 17 (2), 225–235. Sosik, J.J. Dinger, S.L. (2007). Relationships between leadership style and vision content: The moderating role of need for social approval, self-monitoring, and need for social power. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(1), 134–153.

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