The Joy of American Sign Language Essay Example For Students

The Joy of American Sign Language Essay J. P. Morgan once remarked that A man has two reasons for what he does- a good one, and a real one. These words reflect upon the stark difference between appearance and reality. The play, A Dolls House by Henrik Ibsen illustrates this difference greatly. Set in Norway in the nineteenth century, the play revolves around a middle class woman, Nora, and her struggle with identity and independence. Besides Nora, two other characters exemplify the theme of appearance versus reality in A Dolls House. Noras husband, Torvald, and their family friend, Dr.Rank, both are not all that meets the eye. Chief among these characters, however, is Nora. The wife of Torvald Helmer, Nora has her life made for her. She has more than enough money due to her husbands appointment to a high level banking position. We will write a custom essay on The Joy of American Sign Language specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now She has three lovely children that, in the Victorian spirit, she rarely sees. She has a beautiful house, complete with maid and nanny, and she has a secret. Though Nora seems to be the perfect Victorian wife- dependant upon Torvald for everything to the point that her definition of freedom becomes To be free, absolutely free. To spend time playing with the children. To have a clean, beautiful house, the way Torvald likes it. (Ibsen 977) Nora goes as far as to include Torvalds will into her definition of freedom. The reality of the situation, as it unfolds with the play, is quite contrary. In the moments before Nora walks out on Torvald, it is revealed that she has become an independent woman, able to think and act for herself. Torvald tries to reason with her, telling her that she is a wife and a mother, but she responds, saying that believe in that anymore.

Barbaric vs. Barbarous

Barbaric vs. Barbarous Barbaric vs. Barbarous Barbaric vs. Barbarous By Mark Nichol What’s the difference between barbaric and barbarous? The terms are nearly interchangeable, though for two connotations, one term is preferred over the other. Barbaric or barbarous behavior or other characteristics are those that suggest a cultural attainment between savagery and civilization. These adjectives also refer to unrestrained actions or those a civilized person would consider primitive, strange, or uncouth. Barbaric, however, is more appropriate in the sense of cruelty or harshness, while barbarous more strongly implies unsophisticated behavior. Barbarian, the noun form, is also used as an adjective. The origin of these terms is the Latin word barbaria, meaning â€Å"foreign country†; this meaning derives from the Greek term barbaros, meaning â€Å"foreign† or â€Å"strange.† Ultimately, it likely stems from the idea that utterances in unfamiliar languages sound like meaningless babble and can be recorded as something close to â€Å"bar-bar.† (Babble and blabber may be related to barbarian.) Latin usage referred to anyone outside the cultural influence of the Roman Empire, and later connotation of barbarian implied someone who does not speak one’s language; these senses, still later, extended to identify any ill-mannered person. The name Barbara shares this etymology, with the appealing sense of â€Å"exotic† rather than the unattractive one of â€Å"strange†; a saint by that name prompted its popularity among Christians. The root of the proper noun Barbary, which referred to the lands along the north coast of Africa, is of disputed origin. It derives from Berber, an Arabic term for the inhabitants of North Africa outside Egypt, which might have a local origin, might stem from Arabic (with the same sense of â€Å"babbler†), or might be borrowed from Greek. Barber is unrelated to these words and names; it stems from the Latin term barba, meaning â€Å"beard.† That word itself is probably cognate with barber through a common ancestor word. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Types of RhymeConfusing "Passed" with "Past"Drama vs. Melodrama

Active contours

Active contours Active contours are one category of variational methods that have been used widely within image segmentation applications. An energy functional is defined with arguments as the image parameters and a closed curve that partitions the objects in the image. There are two main methods of representing the curves such as (a) extrinsic and (b) intrinsic. Extrinsic representation keeps function values at boundary points. Intrinsic lets use of functions that are defined on all the point of the image and are more desirable. Intrinsic representation of a planar curve C using an auxiliary function is denoted as C = f(x; y) j (x; y) = 0g (22) where (x; y) is called level set function of curve C and the zero level of (x; y) is taken as the contour. Curvature  of the closed curve C with level set function  is given by  = div( 5 k5k ) (23) The deformation of the contour is reprsented in a numerical form as a partial differential equation @(x;y) @t =j 5(x; y) j ( + ((x; y))) (24) where  is a constant speed term to push or pull the contour. Mean curvature of the level set function is defined as: ((x; y)) = xx2 yà ´Ã‚€Â€Â€2xyxy+yy2 x (2 x+2 y)3=2 (25) where x is the first derivative with respect to x and xx is the second derivative with respect to x. The role of the curvature term is to control the regularity of the contour and  controls the balance between the regularity and robustness of the contour. Chan Vese formulated the energy function F in terms of an internal force Eint and an external force Eext F(C) = R 1 0 [Eint(C(S)) + Eext(C(S))]ds (26) Eint = length(C) + Area(Cin) (27) Eext = R Cin j I(x; y) à ´Ã‚€Â€Â€ I1 j2 + R Cout j I(x; y) à ´Ã‚€Â€Â€ I2 j2 (28) where  and  are positive fixed parameters which help to smoothen the growing contour. I(x; y) is intensity value of image region and I1 and I2 are average intensity value inside and outside the object region, respectively. IV. IMPLEMENTATION AND ANALYSIS All qualitative and quantitative outcome of the algorithm were recorded by running the Matlab programs with Intel(R) Core (TM) i7 CPU, 3.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM with Matlab 14 (a) on Windows 8. A. Description of Test Data The dataset used in the proposed algorithm consists of scanned images of stained breast biopsy slides from MITOS dataset [35]. Each set is composed of 96 high power field (HPF) images of breast tissue scanned at 40X magnification using two different scanners, Aperio (AP) and Hamamatsu (HM), with a resolution of 0.23-0.24 m:. All the images are 1376  1539  3 size. B. Experimental Strategies This paper qualitatively and quantitatively compares the KHO based optimal nuclei detection performance with the watershed based detection done by S. Ali et al. [8] and blue ratio image based detection done by Irshad et al. [21]. The segmentation performance is compared with local threshold method done by Cheng Lu et al. [22]. 1) Experiment 1: Evaluating the optimal threshold value: Goal of this experiment was to prove the power of KHO based optimal thresholding to detect the exact nuclei regions in histology images. It also compares the optimum value of the threshold obtained by KHO in breast histopathology images with GA, HSA and BFA. 2) Experiment 2: Comparison of Detection Accuracy: Aim of this work is to validate the detection performance of the proposed technique against the watershed and blue ratio techniques in terms of detection sensitivity and precision. 3) Experiment 3: Comparison of Segmentation Accuracy: This evaluates the performance of the detection algorithm in ACM segmentation and compare the results against two state-of-the-art techniques in terms of boundary based distance measures. This experiment also measure the strength of the algorithm to resolve the touching nuclei in terms of touching nuclei resolution.1) Evaluation of Detection Performance: This paper qualitatively and quantitatively evaluates the application of optimal thresholding in nuclei detection performance. The mean objective value and standard deviation express the consistency and stability of the algorithms. The results obtained by KHO are compared with GA, HSA and BFA. The parameters used in these algorithms are given in Table II.The quantitative evaluation of detection performance is carried out by locating the centroid of detected nuclear regions. The measures used to assess the nuclei detection comprise of: 1) Sensitivity (SD); 2) Positive Predictive value or Precision (PD); and 3) F-measure (FD) as given in eq. (26), (27), and (28), respectively. The results obtained are compared with manual detection results by an expert pathologist. The SD and PD values are computed from the number of truepositives (number of correctly detected nuclei, Ntp) , falsepositives (number of wrongly identified nuclei, Nfp) and false negatives(number of nuclei not detected by the algorithm, Nfn). The detected object is considered as true positive if its centroid is within 10 pixels range of manually determined centroid location. If no centroid was manually located within

Vodafone's sale of ownership of joint venture to Verizon Assignment

Vodafone's sale of ownership of joint venture to Verizon - Assignment Example It is expected that if the deal goes through successfully then it will be one of the biggest in the history of Merger and Acquisition (Financial Times, 2013). History of Joint Venture In 2004, Vodafone was close to sell their shares to Verizon Wireless but their initiative did not materialize then primarily due to Vodafone’s failure to bid for AT&T Wireless. The Chief Executive officer of Vodafone at that time, Arun Sarin, stated that both Verizon and Vodafone were interested in bigger stakes in their joint venture and both were unwilling to forego majority ownership (Yahoo, 2013). Vodafone entered the United States market in the year 1999 through a series of deals that ultimately resulted in the formation of Verizon Wireless in the year 2000, with Verizon Communications holding majority 55% stake and Vodafone the rest. ... Arun Sarin, who led Vodafone from 2003 to 2008, and the current CEO of Vodafone Vittorio Colao, has resisted the move by Verizon. The resistance of Vodafone was often made in the face of investor that demands for sale. Verizon Wireless became the largest telecom operator in the United States, a growing market that boasts higher prices and margins compared to Europe (BBC, 2013). The subsequent CEO of Vodafone Plc, Vittorio Colao, clearly stated that the company was still interested to sell the stake of Vodafone and dilute ownership but only when they get the right price in the sense that odds seeming favourable to owners of Vodafone Plc. Since then five years have gone by and it seems that Vodafone’s definition of the right time appears to be at present as evident from the official announcement made on the 29th of August 2013. The company has publicly announced that Vodafone Group Plc was officially negotiating with Verizon Communications to sell its stake in Verizon Wireless. In the past when Verizon initially offered to buyout Vodafone through Joint Venture, the company was valued at $ 100 billion. But the deal failed since Vodafone’s offer to sale its stake was valuing the entity at approximately a little over $130 billion. A popular article in The Wall Street Journal stated that Verizon Communications Inc. had lost a golden chance to get full control of one of the most active telecom companies in the world and its wireless joint venture. The company agreed to shell out billions more than it had to if the company had decided to buyout its partner in the past. As Verizon Wireless resumed dividend payouts, Vodafone has received $ 11.5 billion (? 7.34 billion) from the

Discuss and draw comparsions between the common themes in 'South Coursework

Discuss and draw comparsions between the common themes in 'South Downs' and 'The Browning Version' - Coursework Example He detects failure in his career. Due to his deteriorating health, Andrew resigns with not much to show. Not even his students or his colleagues were grateful for his dedicated service. Jean Kent takes the role of Millie, (Andrew’s wife) and it is evident that their marriage is at the edge. Millie is going out with a chemistry teacher, and she does not have the dignity to hide her infidelity from her husband. Millie’s new hook is known as Frank Hunter, a character well brought out by Nigel Patrick. Millie is breaking up with Andrew because he is unromantic. Taplow, a student at Andrew work place is highly sensitive, and this makes him break into Andrew’s confidential British exterior. 1The student offers Andrew an Agamemnon translation which makes him to breakdown with emotions. During the graduation ceremony, Andrew surprises everybody by giving an emotional speech. He mainly apologizes for letting people around him down. Andrew feels belittled by his wife who r idicules him. Adding salt to injury, his students keep on making fun of him. The school betrays him too even though he had been working for it faithfully. He has to accept the fact that nobody loves him and should see himself as other people think of him. He also has to accept that he is a failure due to the loss of his marriage, job and health. When Taplow presents him the Agamemnon play, he realizes he was insufficient in his work. His school denied him a pension after he retired and even his final speech was almost denied by his headmaster (Andrew Woodall). Andrew is devastated when he learns his nick name â€Å"the Himmler of the lower fifth†. He still keeps his head high and is composed even though he knows that he is dying inside with insults and rejection. 2He accepts his position as the society places him but keeps his dignity as a gentleman and an outstanding teacher proficient in English. Summary of South Downs Hare is smart in developing a play which has been inspi red by a classic done by Terrence Rattigan. Most of The David Hare's works have been rated as intellectual. Although South Downs was tremendously inspired by Terrence, most of David’s life was characterized by sadness when he was still at a school going age. Blakemore as a character in South Down clearly narrates how his life was. Blakemore is only 14 years, intelligent and understands the pope’s poetry. The school setting in South Downs is the same as the one in browning version. Blakemore is a delightful boy that is earnest, and lonely. He is highly suspected by other boys. Among the few friends he has one of their mothers offers Blakemore tea, cake and advice. She shows him sympathy and with this, Blakemore (Alex Lawther) eases up. John Blakemore has a distinctive character and personality. He is afraid of nuclear bombs and wants to be given permission to wear a badge that is against the bombs at school. His father being a sailor, they are not financially establishe d, and they live in a semidetached house. He is currently in school because of a scholarship. All the other boys can afford a decent life since they come from well to do families. Because he comes from such an environment, he is curious to understand his new environment and this makes him be counted as an odd one out. His current world (school) is full of showing off and

Coffee and Starbucks Essay Example for Free

Coffee and Starbucks Essay In 1971, Starbucks was founded on a love for coffee and 42 years later you can still go in and expect the same delicious cup of steaming hot coffee from your local store, served to you from a friendly face. Starbucks mission is â€Å"to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Today, with more than 18,000 stores in 62 countries, Starbucks is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world. And with every cup, we strive to bring both our heritage and an exceptional experience to life. † (http://www. starbucks. com/about-us/our-heritage). They offer the best roasted coffee, handcrafted beverages; coffee experience products, excellence service and innovation, plus they are dedicated to produce a great coffee experience to customers. (Starbucks, 2011) The purpose of this paper is to discuss and analyze Starbucks’ organizational structure and the best form of organizational structure that best fits Starbucks with an emphasis on Job description and Job Specification for a Starbucks employee. I will also try to determine the form of departmentalization that should be used, as well as whether centralization or decentralization of power should be used in light of the recent financial struggles they’ve had. Lastly, I will attempt to determine which organizational configuration best fits Starbucks. Job description is defined as â€Å"a formal lists of tasks and duties† and Job specification is defined as â€Å"a list of eligibility requirements or qualifications needed to perform a job† (Reilly, Minnick Baack. 2011). These definitions will be used in creating a position for a new employee. Job Description: If you love coffee and helping people than you just might be perfect for this job! At Starbucks, we strive to provide a much needed service in today’s busy world. At Starbucks you can learn all about different coffee beans from all over the world and help in developing a great working team. You will be trained in what it means to thoroughly enjoy your job, the people you work with in a clean and safe environment and to enjoy working with the best coffee you can imagine. Job Specification: Develop a working knowledge of all products we offer. Maintain a clean and friendly store. Maintain a professional attitude and your composure should the store become busier than usual. Anticipates customer and store needs. Be Flexible with shifts and days that you can work. Starbucks should be using is departmentalization by geographic region. Starbuck locations are all over the United States. Starbucks uses a matrix configuration by combining divisional and functional structures. Divisional structure is used in multi-product or multi-market operations. Starbucks fall into this structure by having so many different beverages and items on the menu. When putting out so many different items one has to specialize in those items. Starbucks trains their employees to know every item inside and out. You cannot have one person who can make one drink and nit another. They use functional structure to stay organized activities such as coordination, supervision and task allocation. With 18,000 stores it takes many teams to stay updated of everything that is going on in the market. Starbucks hires people who specialize in marketing strategy to keep them on top of the market. The form should be changed in the stores that serve lunch because the structure of the work changes. It becomes more of a machine bureaucracy in that it is highly routine in making drinks as well as sandwiches and salads. When you have to repeat something many times you are working like a machine. Starbucks has decentralized authority because they created decision-making for each manager. There are also lots of stores around the world and each store has different from the authority, managers, and customers. This also allows for employees to be able to give their thoughts, opinions, and ideas. If the company uses their ideas they are rewarded. It also allows for the lines of communication to stay open between employees and managers which allows for a friendly working environment. Starbucks is making sure that it is here to stay. By surrounding itself and its team members with the best training and communication they stand out against all competitors. Yes, other will try to stand up against the designer coffee label but when it comes down to it Starbucks is finding new ways to stay at the top. With being in different regions they have created an evening atmosphere where you can drop in after work, with friends, after yoga, by yourself, after a long day or after a great day. The food is amazing. The wine selection is simple and smart (www. starbucks. com/coffeehouse/starbucks-stores/starbucks-evenings). Starbucks will change the structure of the business as many times as it takes to make it work for them. You never know they may create things that work for them that do not work for other coffee shops. REFERENCES Reilly, M. , Minnick, C. , Baack, D. (2011). The five functions of effective management. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. https://starbucks. com https://starbucks. com/about-us/out-heritage.

Noah Webster, A Man Who Loved Words by Elaine Cunningham :: Book Review Summary Report

The book I read was "Noah Webster, A Man Who Loved Words." It was written by Elaine Cunningham. The book has twelve chapters. The book has 176 pages in it. This book is a very good book. I would recommend it to anyone my age. The book was kind of sad also. In the beginning of the story, Noah is five. He was always eager to learn. Noah could not wait to learn. When he could go to school, he was so excited. One thing that was upsetting to Noah was that the older boys could only go to school during the cold seasons. On the first day of school, Noah was expecting to learn to read. They didn't, so Noah was upset. Once Noah was ten, he had to work on the farm. By then, Noah knew how to read and write. Noah read the books he borrowed from the priests. When Noah was fifteen, he went to college. He was really excited because there were teachers to meet, books to read, and lessons to learn. Noah was going to go to Yale University. The day he finally left, Noah was sad about leaving his family. His father helped him unpack. Noah's roommate was Oliver Walcott. In June of 1776, Noah got a letter from his father saying that there was going to be declaration of independence for the country from Great Britain. The letter also said there was going to be war. For the second year of college everyone was talking about the war. Noah wanted to help fight the British. A few days later, Noah got really sick. Noah had smallpox. Luckily, Noah got better really soon. In 1778, 21 year-old Noah graduated from college. Noah wanted to be a lawyer but he had no money or a job. Finally, Noah applied to be a teacher for the winter terms. His students loved him dearly. He enjoyed teaching. Noah promised a spelling book for his students. Still the students worked hard to please their school master. By 1781 Noah was a junior esquire attorney at law. He studied and studied. All that studying helped Noah. He mastered all the law books in his friend's library.