Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Romeo and Juliet 5 Paragraph Essay

In many literary works, there are methods that authors use to make a story better. In The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, dramatic irony is the driving method. Dramatic irony is something in which characters do not know something, but the reader or audience knows what the true reality is. According to some researchers, â€Å"A staple of Elizabethan and Shakespearean drama was dramatic irony† (Halio 25). Furthermore some researchers also belive that dramatic irony is very prominent in the play, â€Å" One of the more prominent literary devices in the play is irony† (Sauer 673).Romeo and Juliet, and also their friends and families face a lot of instances of dramatic irony in the story. Dramatic irony creates suspense and adds to the conflict that exists between the Capulets and the Montagues in Shakespeare’s, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Dramatic irony in Romeo and Juliet occurs when Juliet and Romeo fall in love with each other at first sig ht, when Romeo’s friends don’t know that Romeo and Juliet have fallen in love with each other, and when Lady Capulet thinks that Juliet is crying about Paris, not Romeo. Romeo in the beginning of the play had been crying about how he could not get Rosaline, a Capulet.After all of the crying and weeping, Benvolio and Mercutio try to get Romeo to go to a party at the Capulet house. Romeo only agrees so that he might be able to catch a glimpse of Rosaline. When he goes to the party, rather than falling for Rosaline, he sees another beautiful girl that he instantly falls in love with. This girl is Juliet, the cousin of Rosaline, and she also falls in love with Romeo at first sight as well. Romeo and Juliet meet, they dance, but still do not know who each other are. Romeo before leaving the party asks the nurse who that girl (Juliet) is and she replies by saying that Juliet is the daughter of Lady Capulet.Romeo is taken away completely by this and says, â€Å"O dear accoun t! My life is my foe’s debt† (Romeo and Juliet 1. 5. 118). Juliet also asks the nurse and the nurse responds by saying that Romeo is a Montague, and like just like Romeo, she is also taken away. The dramatic irony of this is the fact that Romeo’s (Montague) and Juliet (Capulet) families are very high profile enemies to each other. The fact that they have fallen in love with each other is a very ironic, as now if they continue their love to one another, they are sure to face major problems down the line.After both Romeo and Juliet have fallen in love with each other, nobody in all of Verona and beyond knows about it, not a single person except Romeo and Juliet. Many people still believe that Romeo is still falling for Rosaline. In fact, at one point Mercutio exclaimed, â€Å"Why that same pale hearted wench, that Rosaline torments him, so that he will sure run mad† (Romeo and Juliet 2. 4. 4-5). Even until after their marriage, both Romeo and Juliet are pret ty secretive about the love or the marriage, except for Juliet expressing her feeling to the nurse.Juliet only told the nurse because she loves the nurse and trusted her as well, and needed the help of the nurse to get married to Romeo. The first time that the majority of people would know about the marriage or love would be when Friar Lawrence would publicly announce it to Verona. The dramatic irony in all of this is the fact that after all of the major events (fights, family brawls, and the murder of Mercutio and Tybalt), no one knows that one of the Capulets is married to one of the Montagues. Something like this at the time period would be extremely unacceptable, and even in the time period would be ironic.After news of the murder of Tybalt and Mercutio is delivered to Juliet through the Nurse, Juliet is devastated. Due to the nurse being so unclear, Juliet thinks that both Romeo and Tybalt both have died. Once things clear up, Juliet figures out that Romeo has killed Tybalt, an d her first reaction to this is anger toward Romeo. After things cool down, she feels bad that she has said this, and she takes her words back. Once Juliet learns about the punishment Romeo gets she feels the worst she has ever felt. Romeo was given the sentence of exile, which in the time period meant no connection to people, whatsoever.Due to this Juliet knows that she might never ever see the love of her life, at all. To Juliet this meant that there would be no more Romeo, â€Å"Juliet feels that Romeo is no longer her lover, and she can’t have him again† (Moffat 139). She started crying a lot after this, so much that her parents had to come to her room and see what was going on. When Lady Capulet inquired as to why Juliet was crying, Juliet right away said that she was crying about the horrible death of Tybalt. Lady Capulet responds to this by saying, â€Å"Well, girl thou weep’st not so much for his death, as that the villain lives which slaughtered himâ⠂¬  (Romeo and Juliet 3. . 65-66). Juliet had just tricked her mother into thinking that she wasn't crying for Romeo, but rather Tybalt. The dramatic irony in this case is that the reader knows that Juliet is lying to her mother, but Lady Capulet actually believes this, and goes along with it. Dramatic irony was a driving method of keeping things fresh in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. One of the most prominent instances of dramatic irony in the play was when Romeo and Juliet fall in love with each other, causing for great irony in the fact that they did not know.Another instance of dramatic irony is when nobody but Romeo and Juliet know about the love that they share, making great irony because a lot of events occur after their marriage. And finally another instance of dramatic irony is when Juliet tricks her mother into thinking that she is crying to Tybalt rather than Romeo. If in any of these examples, Romeo and Juliet were to know what was going to happe n, there really would be no story. It was important that Shakespeare implemented dramatic irony into the play, as without it, the story would be quite plain and boring.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Reaction Paper Self Concept

Angela Foster Reaction Paper Communications 11/26/2010 â€Å"Self – concept is such a powerful force on the personality that it not only determines how you see youself in the present but also can influence you future behavior and that of others. Such occurences come about through a phenomenon called the self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when a person’s expectations of an event, and his or her subsequent behavior based on those expectations, make the event more likely to occur than would otherwise be true† (57).Self-fulfilling prophecy is a very powerful source on your personality. For me this is basically just positive thinking, and if you think you will do well then you will. For example, when I first started school, I really didn’t know how to study, and for my first psychology test I went in totally unprepared. I lacked confidence because I was unprepared and nervous because I hadn’t studied much, and when I went in to t ake the test I just knew that I would not do very well. It was no surprise to me when I got my test back that I had failed it.I knew that I was going to have to get it together if I was going to pass my classes and the first step was to learn how to study. I found ways to study that worked for me, and when I went in for my next test I was more confident. I had an optimistic attitude, and confidence that I would do well on the test, so it was no surprise when I got my test back I had made an A. There are two types of self-fulfilling prophecy, self- imposed prophecies and when someone’s expectations govern another’s actions. â€Å"Self-imposed prophecies occur when you own expectations influence your behavior† (57).If you think you can, and set your mind to doing something the results can be great. It isn’t just the observer’s beliefs that causes one to do well, â€Å"the observer must communicate that belief† (58). For example if a teacher ha s hopes for a child but does not encourage them or push them to the next level, then the child may not use their full potential. â€Å"The effects of teacher attitudes, beliefs, and values, their expectations have been tested repeatedly† (Wilkins). Another example of other’s expectations influencing one’s behavior is that of a parent towards a child.If a parent has faith in a child they must let them know or a child may not have the confidence they to need to blossom. Positive results do not just happen because of a positive attitude though. Just like the saying â€Å"Faith without Works† is very true. People cannot just lie around and expect good things to happen. You must take action and put footwork behind what you are working on and plan to accomplish. So with the combination of some knowledge and a positive attitude, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Founding Brothers Essay

The novel, Founding Brothers, written by Joseph Ellis is a thought provoking novel on the intertwined lives of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Ben Franklin. Ellis calls the 1790’s the most decisive decade in our country. The author exemplifies three major points in our nation’s history: George Washington and his prominent legacy; the collaborative yet antagonistic relationship between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams; and the many problems of the young union during its revolutionary era. George Washington was a monumental character and played a vital role in the molding of our country. Although, his reputation was nearly impeccable, he was great in stature, standing at six foot four. The farewell address was a key element to Washington’s legacy. In this he displayed how grateful he was to have such a remarkable opportunity to serve his country, although this only was the beginning part of his speech. Secondly he decided to stress the importance of the union. But it started in 1776 when Washington was being described as â€Å"Father of our Country† prematurely. Even Ben Franklin acknowledged Washington’s supremacy. In the 1790’s Washington was well known, he was the presiding officer at the Constitutional Convention and the chief executive of the federal government. â€Å"Washington was the core of gravity that prevented the American Revolution from flying off into random orbits, the stable center around which the revolutionary energies formed† (Ellis 121). He impacted the government tremendously with his way of thinking and his attitude toward the need for national unity. He talked about independence from foreign nations; he devoted several paragraphs to this in his in his address. Washington always made the well- being of the country first. For example, when Continental Congress wanted help the French with an invasion of Canada, Washington opposed. He feared that that putting the France in possession of that capital that they would become greedy, and doubted that they would withdraw once they were ensconced in Canada. I think that he may have felt that also, America was young and still growing as a country. He was criticized for this decision. In closing on Washington’s legacy, I feel that there were many reasons why he retired. In short, he was just getting old and probably couldn’t take the political pressure. He was also going through a physical decline. Washington intended for his farewell address to be advice to his countrymen. He wanted them to sustain without, and without a king. Adams and Jefferson were indeed friends but had different agendas on how the country should be run. Their relationship was unique; they were great friends but even better competitors. The presidency drove them apart. Adams was a federalist, and Jefferson was a democratic republican so to speak. Through the Continental congress and diplomatic missions they became close friends. As they worked more together Adams developed more respect Jefferson, although he was less effusive. The low point of their relationship was definitely after the election in 1800. After this their relationship became more antagonistic. As politicians and colleagues they went through many phases. After the election they did not speak for a long 12 years. Adams felt that Jefferson had betrayed their friendship. After the death of Jefferson daughter, Abigail Adams began to exchange letters of condolences. Jefferson confused it as an invitation to reconcile with Adams family. The two disputed briefly, John didn’t find out until several months later. Finally in January of 1812, Adams sent a letter from Quincy to Monticello. â€Å"Why then, did Adams take the fateful step, which led to a fourteen year exchange of 158 letters, a correspondence that is generally regarded as the intellectual capstone to the revolutionary generation and the most impressive correspondence between prominent states in all of American history† (Ellis 223)? For the last 15 years of their lives they contacted each other through letters and rebuilt their friendship. On the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of the Independence, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of each other. They will never be forgotten for the inevitable and timely contributions to our young country. In the introduction Ellis describes the American Revolution perfectly with the statement â€Å"No event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed as inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution†. America’s victory seemed beyond improbable seeing as how England had the greatest army of the Revolutionary era. The young colonists chose to seek out alliances with the French, Dutch, and Spanish due to their lack of monetary resources, experience or even the pure man power. British beforehand, even tried attacking the colonists politically which had their in leading to an inevitable rebellion. They initiated taxes, and other events such as the Boston Massacre took place that ignited the young colonists to take stand against Great Britain. Though faith, inspiration and prosperity the Americans shocked the world, defeated the odds and took the victory in 1783, securing their new independent world. This victory inspired countries worldwide to rebel against the tyrannical empires that were controlling them. This victory is evident in today’s society as America thrives as country that influences others and still is, independent. Founding Brothers truly exposes a much more personal point of view of our founding fathers and their irrefutable destiny. Joseph Ellis targets critical elements of their and what they thought was best for the young country of America. They molded something bigger than themselves during this revolutionary era. The author really brings to life the intricate detail of Washington’s legacy and the partnership between two great leaders Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Joseph Ellis’ statement was more than valid; it justifies American in a few short words.

Structure And Anarchy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Structure And Anarchy - Essay Example Any organization has a structure and leadership. It is also recognized that an organization is primarily its people. In theoretical discussions it is widely agreed that social movements are not organizations. As Freeman (1978) says," Granted, most movements are not organizations and thus not able to make conscious decisions about their direction. Usually they consist of numerous core groups and a large penumbra of sympathizers. Nonetheless, these core groups serve as the foci of a movement's values and activities and determine much of its deliberate policy". It is here that the crux issue rises. Lacking a resolute structure a social movement always faces instability and the conflict between group maintenance needs and goal achievement needs. The core values of the movement can have a constellation of other values supported by differing groups. These values can be parallel or opposed to core values. The opposing values and their support groups can be in a consensus and form a noticeab le opposition. So long as the leadership and the majority that support leadership and movement's core values are able to outnumber and control opposing opinions and groups structure prevails and the movement sails along smoothly with foci values. The instability of movements and opposite values and opinions are particularly strong in movements with democratic values, where the structure is deliberately loosely defined and monitored as too much structure can suppress participation and inhibit eagerness.(Lenin,1901) So social movements offer incentives for order maintenance and also to increase membership. Wilson (1973) identifies four major categories of incentives that an organization can deploy in order to maintain its membership. These are material incentives (money, goods, and other tangible rewards); specific solidarity incentives (status, power, and other intangible benefits that are scarce); collective solidarity incentives (prestige, friendship, fun, and other rewards from be ing part of a group); and purposive incentives (value fulfillment, or the sense of satisfaction from contributing to a worthwhile cause).Maintenance of consensus becomes a major task of the movement leadership so as to remain on course to foci values.Graeber(2002) defines the consensus process as ," The basic idea of consensus process is that, rather than voting, you try to come up with proposals acceptable to everyone-or at least, not highly objectionable to anyone: first state the proposal, then ask for 'concerns' and try to address them". Anarchy When opposition in a movement becomes splintered with no conclusive or majority based foci value then chaos prevails. "Anarchy means without government, which is different forms of vertically organized, i.e. chaotic included, economic and/or political-administrative

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Communication Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 4

Communication - Essay Example Here, the authors provide detailed information about how effectively communication can be used in strengthening a healthier interpersonal communication. I would like to concur with the argument that effective interpersonal communication is a very important skill which everyone should possess. As they explain, it can be of a great benefit in determining how conducive an environment is. In conclusion, Steven and Susan are very accurate in the manner they discuss about communication. The whole chapter is equipped with viable information which can be of great importance when understanding exactly what communication is. As the authors emphasize, it is crucial for everyone to have listening skills. In fact, this is the most fundamental skill which everyone should have. Once they can learn to listen to one another, it will be much possible for them to understand one another and be able to speak in one voice as they strive to accomplish a common

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Accounting (International Financial Reporting) Research Paper

Accounting (International Financial Reporting) - Research Paper Example Up to three members may be part time members. After 2 July 2009, IASB members are appointed for an initial term of five years, renewable for further three years.† (IFRSs in your pocket, 2010) Business firm can present its financial statement in the same format as their counterparts in other countries. It makes comparisons easier. This is especially useful for the investors to make investment decisions. The basic difference between GAAP and IFRS is that GAAP is a rule based accounting system and on the other sense IFRS is principle based system. In rule based accounting like GAAP, one needs to follow the rules specified for each of the business transaction while recording the transaction in accounts. Sometimes, the accountant foresees the effects of the accounting transaction on the end result and tends to interpret the rules with the objective of presenting good numbers to the public. Many scandals including Enron depict the loopholes in the present GAAP system which lacks a transparent system. In IFRS, a principle based accounting systems, which records the transaction in a transparent manner, which shows the true nature of each transaction. Also the consolidation of accounting concepts like IFRS makes the comparison of financial reports easier for the investor community. The transparency provided by IFRS help will them to make wise investment decisions. Mirza, A., Holt, G., & Orrel, M (2010). International Financial Reporting Standers (IFRS) Work Book. John wely and sons. Retrieved November 30, 2010, from

Friday, July 26, 2019

Review of the Book Economics in One Lesson Essay

Review of the Book Economics in One Lesson - Essay Example Unfortunately, most of the time this fact is always hidden because bad loans made by the government are hidden in most federal spending. On the other hand, when banks collapse due to bad loans, it is announced all over the news. Political considerations further hide the bad loans as a result of government lending. This does not happen in the private sector unless the firm in question is affected by a politically motivated legislation. The community reinforcement act is an example of a legislation that advocates for loans to individuals who do not qualify. The book cites the Bush administration endeavors to ensure that banks lend more money. Based on the current times, Hazlitt argues that tariffs such as NAFTA are harming the economy. Hazlitt states that both consumers and producers are hurt by the tariffs. His argument is the opposite of the common notion that tariff affects consumers only. He explains that tariff forces consumers to pay much higher than they could have had to pay wi thout it. This means the extra dollar spent due to the tariff could have been used elsewhere. Therefore, this denies producers of other goods and services that dollar. Tariffs are aimed at protecting local industries against competition from foreign goods. On the other hand, imports are good because they provide other countries with local currency necessary for buying domestic goods Hazlitt addresses the economic impact of government actions and remains silent on protectionism due to national security. He states that the real gain from foreign trade for any country lies in its imports and not its exports (Tom the Redhunter para 11). He supports his statement by arguing that businessmen imports products because they are cheaper for the consumers compared to domestic products.... This paper offers a comprehensive review of the book Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. The book introduces the common man to simple and clear economic thought. The author does not object public program spending but rejects the use of public projects as a plan of injecting money into the economy. He argues that public projects should be justified based on their importance to the economy. Based on the current times, Hazlitt argues that tariffs such as NAFTA are harming the economy. Hazlitt states that both consumers and producers are hurt by the tariffs. His argument is the opposite of the common notion that tariff affects consumers only. He explains that tariff forces consumers to pay much higher than they could have had to pay without it. Hazlitt addresses the economic impact of government actions and remains silent on protectionism due to national security. He states that the real gain from foreign trade for any country lies in its imports and not its exports. The book also addresses the fallacy that cost of production determines the market prices. Hazlitt argues that demand and supply determines the market price. Bailouts are necessary to save collapsing industries. The book lays emphasis on the importance of extensive analysis of both primary and secondary consequences of proposed policies. The free economy needs to be revived by removing unnecessary government intervention but still maintain important interventionism. The government needs to learn from past mistakes so as to make better informed decisions later.

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Environmental scienence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Environmental scienence - Essay Example Mentioning a single striking revelation would be injustice to the many that are made in the film. The way chickens are raised, the way corn is fed to cattle, the way regulatory agencies are influenced by the very industry they are meant to regulate. But for me, the biggest revelation was how today only a few large companies control the entire food line from farm to market. The size of companies like Cargill, Monsanto etc. with their deep pockets and legal protection are able to actually decide what we eat every day. The most â€Å"specious† argument I found was what was presented by Troy Roush, the farmer who talks about how Monsanto has taken control over the seeds market. I don’t agree when he suggests that Monsanto took control through a brute force method and if anyone seems to challenge their hegemony, they strike at the bigger farmer and set him as an example for others. He also goes on to say that the courts and justice system seems to be tilted in favor of these large corporations (see his quote below). In my opinion, Monsanto could take over simply because of farmer’s greed to earn more money, followed by competition, followed by fear of being left out. It was only after this cycle of greed, competition and insecurity that farmers found themselves locked into the patented seed problem. Also, the courts would hand out verdicts according to existing laws and the laws are made by the Congress. If the farmers don’t win enough in courts, it is because of the existing laws and government deregulation and not just because somebody could lie or put up more money. I think that the frustration is directed to the wrong target in Roush’s case. He, like Barbara Kowalcyk, could take the battle to the right place: the law makers. Of course, it is easier said than done but I do feel that concerted consumer action and pressure on the lawmakers is perhaps the only way forward. Roush’s comments:

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Mythology King Aurther Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Mythology King Aurther - Research Paper Example He was one of the great rulers of Britain. He killed giants, monsters, and witches and also drove on horses on many audacious marvels. King Arthur is famous for Knights of the Round Table and also for reuniting all the people of his land. The end of King Arthur was one of a catastrophic one but despite of that, he is celebrated and known by people all around the globe even today. The British Parliament hosts his story on its walls (Siivola). Joseph Campbell’s four functions of myth go in accordance with King Arthur’s mythology. The life of Arthur starts with his father, Uther Pendragon. Pendragon is obsessed by Igraine who is the wife of Duke of Cornwall. Now, Pendragon dresses up like Duke of Cornwall and sneaked into their bed with Igraine and that is when Igrain conceived Arthur. Seeing this despiteful behavior of Arthur’s parents, the wizard takes him away from his parents. The wizard, named Merlin, was the one who put up a huge Round Table for Arthur’s father where one hundred and fifty knights could sit at one time. When Uther died, the knights have no clue as to who should precede him. Merlin came up with a solution to this problem. He said that anyone who can take out a sword from a stone will become the next king (PBS). Many people tried to find the sword. But fortune was in King Arthur’s favor as described in Joseph Campbell’s Pedagogical function. King Arthur was a hero in his life who defined his own mythology. When Arthur came to visit his foster brother called Sir Kay; Kay sent him to find a sword as a replacement of his broken one. He came across the mysterious sword Excalibur which was dig into the stone and took it out. He did not know that it was any prophecy associated with it. He had no intention of becoming the king or finding the sword, so he found it out as his fortune (Siivola). He took his gender role into account as he accomplished the Social function of myth as described by Joseph Campbell. He united the Britain and also invaded the Saxons. As a king, Arthur was a well-liked and merciful king as he took the Campbell’s social factor into account. His period of influence is celebrated with romance of chivalric nature and of heroic factors. The biggest expeditio n of Arthur along with his Knights was the expedition for the Holy Grail, the mythical Holy Grail. It is the cup with which Jesus Christ drank at his Last Supper. King Arthur never found the Holy Grail but his Knight Sir Galahad did because of his virtue and pure heart. King Arthur was married to the daughter of King of Scotland, called Guinevere. The wizard Merlin warned King Arthur not to marry her as she loved one of his knights, Sir Lancelot. When Arthur found out that Sir Lancelot and his wife, Guinevere, were having an affair, his knight flew to France but Arthur follows him. As Arthur was off to France, his nephew, Mordred came into power. Arthur then went back to Britain to find out this terrible news. Obviously, complying with Campbell’s myth function, Pedagogical, King Arthur fought a terrible combat with his nephew in which many of his knights died and he was brutally wounded. He throws his magical Excalibur into a lake, and finds a boat to go to the magical Isle o f Avalon. At this place, he hoped to get better so that he can go back to his people and lead then. This is the very reason Arthur is known as â€Å"once and future king† (PBS). Mystical metaphysical factor of Campbell’s factors of myth say that there is a God and in King Arthur’s time, people believed him to be a God. He was a hero; a hero who came into an ordinary world for the people. This new world is not known to the hero but he has to accomplish his tasks and show him the mundane world. The special world is the area of

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

The Main Causes of Global Warming Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Main Causes of Global Warming - Essay Example Greenhouse gases are increasing in percentage in the atmosphere. A release of methane gas from the wetlands and the arctic tundra is a cause of global warming (. Methane gas traps heat in the atmosphere of the earth. Methane is also released from agriculture and landfills, as well as from the grazing animals’ digestive systems. Fertilizers release nitrous oxide which is also a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is another gas that is responsible for global warming and its percentage in the atmosphere is rapidly increasing as a result of deforestation. These are very powerful gases as causes of global warming. â€Å"A molecule of methane produces more than 20 times the warming of a molecule of CO2. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more powerful than CO2† (â€Å"Causes of Global†). Lack of sufficient or efficient recycling is another cause of global warming. Since more material gets wasted than is recycled, the deficiency thus produced is addressed by extracting new minerals, metals, and materials from the earth through operations and processes, that not only result in a depletion of the natural resources in the earth, but also generate tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (â€Å"Recycling†). Lack of sufficient recycling is thus an indirect cause of global warming. If proper channels and laws are established to thrive in the practice of recycling, there can be brought a considerable reduction in demand as well as global warming. Another cause of global warming is the carbon released into the atmosphere as a result of the burning of fuel. Ever since man-made vehicles and started driving them with the combustion of fuel, carbons have been released into the atmosphere.

Call of the Wild Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Call of the Wild - Movie Review Example Overview Call of the wild takes place in suburban America. While reviewers praise the plot of the stories, many people have had different reviews of the influence it may have on the world situation today, be it among the young or adults. The perception this movie creates is one that leaves different emotions in the minds of the audience. The movies may be considered for the young and the old, where all would enjoy it. It does not have any negative influence to children, adolescents or adults and still maintains a spark that interests all in the audience. Certain contemporary movies give a face for controversy since they provide especially young audience with negative influences that are harmful. For instance, many movies will have characters cursing, smoking or even having nude scenes. This is however not the case with Call of the Wild. Despite not having negative influences on people, it contains certain emotionally strong scenes that some may consider inappropriate to their childre n. For instance, there is a scene with a grandfather who was angry with his daughter, bullying taking place, a dog being mishandled by his owners and many more. However, all these are scenes that the director and the writer want to develop the heightened themes present in that era of mediocrity. Plot The movie depicts a scene where a dog living in greatness and wealth is stolen by a gambling insensitive housekeeper and sold in the city. He faces many challenges from his new owners where he is not given food, locked in small room. Luckily, he gets chance of redemption and fights for freedom and better living. His efforts go unrewarded and quite he later goes through endless instances of being tormented by his owner. Later, he finds new owner dispatchers where he gains experience of surviving harsh weather conditions of the winter. On one particular instance after a long journey, he is able to redeem himself in the wild and leads his way to another pack of wild dogs and sometimes ends in rivalry with some members of the pack. The dog, Buck, is later able to become head of the pack and leads the rest through the thick cold forests. Afterwards, Buck finds himself in the postal delivery service where he also finds the difficulty of having to carry heavy loads filled with letters and parcels with other dogs. Buck then move on to a trio of owners, who have minimal experience in controlling, feeding or treating sled dogs. He is able to survive the inexperience of the three owners and after a dangerous experience with the owners and members of the sled. Some drown while Buck survives the experience and finds himself in the hands of Thornton; another owner. Thornton treats him well and is experienced to work with dog having realized that Buck was a remarkable dog. Through his quest in search of gold, Buck helps him a lot and sometime wins him bets in return for money. Buck is a strong dog. He forms a great bond with his owner and a wolf. One night after Buck and the wol f go running, they come back and find Thornton and the rest of the villagers killed by rival Indians. He is disappointed and in turn resorts to avenging on behalf of Thornton. Every year, Bucks returns to the site of the village to mourn his friend’s demise. Themes in Call of the Wild The movie consists of an evident theme an outreach for oneness.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Domestication of Dangerous Dog Breeds Essay Example for Free

Domestication of Dangerous Dog Breeds Essay Since the beginning of earliest civilisation, man has relied on and surrounded himself with animals, for both assistance with labour and companionship. The phrase ‘man’s best friends’ is often used to described one of the most loyal and popular of these animals, the dog. Yet, in recent years, under the continued influence of rising dog attack numbers and societal pressure, new legislation has been introduced, collectively known as ‘Breed-Specific Legislation’. Under these new laws, certain breeds of animal are restricted or deemed dangerous, simply because of stereotypes associated with temperament and aggression. While many believe that this legislation is the most suitable response to a rapidly accelerating concern, further anaylsis into both the legal and social aspects of the issue reveal that ‘Breed-Specific Legislation’ may not be the most effective solution to the issues surrounding the ownership and domestication of restricted dog breeds. The relevant legal proceedings for this issue is directly related to the structural legislative balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the collective. Under Australia’s current laws, our views on this matter lean more favourably towards the rights of the collective community, preferring to cater for society as a whole, rather than to a select number of individuals. Under the QLD Animal Management (Cats Dog) Act 2008, a prohibited dog is defined as ‘A restricted dog is a dog of a breed prohibited from importation into Australia under the Customs Act 1901’, which is then further defined as the following breeds. The American Pit-Bull Terrier, Dogo Argentino (The Argentine Mastiff), the Fila Brasileiro, the Japanese Tosa and the Presa Canario. Under this Act, anyone who is found to be in possession of, or declared the owner of, a dog determined by an authorised official to be of a restricted breed, is liable to severe legal implications and as a matter of course the dog is destroyed. However, there are no laws or recommendations in place, at least none accessible to the public, to determine what legal implications should occur. Any consequences are determined by precedent and circumstance, and often require mandatory legal representation in order to be settled effectively. This is predominately due to the provision under the Customs Act 1901, stating that it is the responsibility of the local governments to dictate the prohibition of certain breeds (or cross breeds) of dogs in their jurisdictions. These decisions are at the discretion of each local government’s law, and higher hierarchical authorities, such as the state government, have limited powers to intervene with these laws. This ambiguity means that there is no definitive response to be taken under criminal law, in the event of a breach. The responsibility falls to the local government to conduct the judicial proceedings and execute the consequences. As such, it is impossible to fairly and equally apply the current laws, when major decisions are left to the discretion of many individual stakeholders. The current breed-specific legislation also proves a difficult task to enforce. While there are set guidelines in determining a dog’s breed based on physical characteristics, according to the Australian Veterinarian Association ‘it is not possible to precisely determine the breed of the types of dogs targeted by breed-specific legislation by appearance or by DNA analysis. ’ As such, while an animal may contain genetic traces of restricted breeds, it can often be indistinguishable from other traits. In the same manner, however, animals completely free of restricted heritage traits may be mistaken for an illegal breed and destroyed, without reason. In the recent case, CHIVERS Vs Gold Coast City Council, 2010, the inability to definitively determine the difference between an American Staffordshire terrier and an American Pit Bull terrier, led to the erroneous decision stating they were ‘one and the same breed’. However, in September 2010, after further investigation into the matter, it was revealed that the two breeds can be distinguished and therefore, the Staffordshire terrier was not restricted under the legislation. This case study clearly highlights the ambiguity surrounding the defining of certain dog breeds, and explicitly emphasizes the inability of the legislation to make clear and accurate judging. Therefore, the current legislation cannot be considered an effective law, as it has been deemed ambiguous, unequally applied and incorrectly enforced. However, while the owner is liable to the majority of the consequences in the event of a breach, the current breed specific legislation only places restrictions on the certain dog breeds, rather than on the owners. A study conducted in Germany in 2008 investigating the concept of inherent aggression showed that 95% of test subjects had no evidence to show that agression was a result of ingrained breed-specific characteristics. It also proved that the inherent temperament of the restricted dog breeds, was similar and in some cases identical to the unrestrcited breeds. It then went on to summarise that the treatment and training of an animal in the early years of its life, far outways any ingrained tenacity for aggression. In the opinion of The American Kennel Club a national canine club dedicated to furthering the study, breeding and exhibiting of dogs. â€Å"If specific breeds are banned, owners of these breeds intent on using their dogs for malicious or illegal purposes will simply change to another breed of dog and continue to jeopardize public safety. As such, a qualified and competent owner cannot, under the legislaiton, own a restricted dog breed, regardless of their ability to control, train and rectify any behavioural instincts or tendencies. Whereas an owner, with no recognised skill or qualification in animal care or ownership may purchase an unrestricted dog, and either through lack of care, or deliberate conditioning, train it to exhibit behaviour and attitudes that are classifed dangerous. Upon analysis of Figure 1 (see appendix) , it can be seen that after the introduction of breed-specific legislation in 2005, while the number of attacks immediately fell approximately 40%, after less than a year the percentage of dog attacks had doubled and continued to rise over the next five years until attacks were occuring 6-7 times more frequently than before the legislation was introduced. While these statistics do not confirm that the legislation caused the increase in attacks, it does prove that breed-specific laws have had no long term positive effect on the total number of dog attacks since being introduced. There are two prominent stakeholders within the issue of animal restrictions. The owners, who should have the right to own a dog of their choosing, regardless of breed stereotypes, providing they can care for it properly, and the civic society, who have the right to live and interact within the community, without fear of attacks from dangerous animals. The main conflict of interest between these two stakeholders is the issue of legal balance whether the rights of the individual are balanced with the rights of the collective community. If an animal of any kind escapes control and is loose within the community, it is no longer only an individual concern. If the animal then attacks or frightens a member of the community, it becomes a threat to the collective society as a whole and therefore the issue of dangerous animals is both an individual and collective dispute and and must be dealt with as such. However, while it is conceded that dangerous dogs do pose a potential threat to community members, the restricted dogs highlighted in the Animal Management (Cats Dog) Act, as explained above, have been proven by both scientific and survey evidence, to not be dangerous or aggressive by nature. As such, they should no longer be separated from other canine species based solely on the breed-specific legislation. Therefore, until such a time as they are deemed individually dangerous, restricted dogs should remain an individual’s concern. Upon closer review many minor stakeholders also come to light. Dog breeders face limitations on the number of restricted animals they are allowed to breed, which causes a lose of income. Those specialising in the breeding and training of these restricted animals are unable to employ their qualifications to the best of their ability due to stereotypical restrictions. Also, if at anytime, the heritage of a litter is determined to contain traces, whether intentionally or unknowingly, of any of these restricted breeds, no matter how small, all animals from the lineage are seized and most often destroyed, tarnishing the good reputation of the breeders concerned. The local councils responsible for the regulation and specific restrictions surrounding this issue are also heavily involved stakeholders. The council, while considering the effectiveness of any agenda, will be primarily looking for the solution executed with the most ease, as animal management is not a high priority in comparison to other issues. While employing the idea that ‘segregation is better than rehabilitation’ may be the easiest solution, as discussed above, it is certainly not the most effective. Another group of stakeholders, though often overlooked, are the animal activists and veterinarians involved in these issues. They have conducted experiments and collected survey data and are in possession of scientifically provable and viable evidence, such as the information presented above, to explictly show that breed specific tendancies of animals are only one of many factors that make up an animals characteristics and behaviour. These lobby groups and experts could dedicate their time to more pressing scientific or social issues, but are instead having to fight legislation which has no basis in scientific or civic fact. If the restrictions are revoked and breed-specific regulations are reviewed, then viable alternatives must be proposed and considered in order to effectively control what would still be a delicate situation. One possible alternative is categorizing animals based on individual character and aggression tests. It is already mandated that animals are checked by a certified veterinarian before registration and during regular points throughout the animals life, so, if introduced, these aptitiude tests could be amalgamated into this process and thereby, introduced effectively and without additional labour or due process. Another possible alternative is to direct the responsibility onto the potential owners themselves. Regardless of whether or not a breed is considered ‘dangerous’, it falls to the owner of the dog to educate and train it in such a way that it acts in an acceptable manner. Restriction is thereby determined not by the ownership of certain dog breeds, but by the behaviour or potential behaviour of both the owner and the individual animal in question. A legislative amendment, stating that any attack by a domesticated animal, specifically dog/s, would incur both a criminal and civil liabilty to fall upon the owner, will add a significant amount of risk to the purchase of said animal breeds. In this way, with the legislation focusing primarily on irresponsible or unqualified dog owners, the element of risk would ensure that only animal owners who are proficient in the training and keeping of dangerous dogs would consider the purchase, thereby reducing the number of dogs becoming conditioned to attack others. â€Å"If we want to prevent all bites, there is only one sure way and that is to ban all dogs. That is of course as unrealistic as trying to prevent bites by enacting breed-specific legislation. † (Bandow, 1996) It is the authors opinion, that this statement is the most effective summary of the current breed-specific legislation laws. As long as society continues to accept and welcome dogs as companions, there will continue to be issues regarding, what is in essence, a wild animal. However, the studies and analysis continue to show that there is little, if any proof that the breeds currently listed as restricted have any inherent tendacies affecting aggression or behaviour, and thereby distinguishing them from other breeds. As such they have no place being banned from our society simply due to the ill-informed stereotypes, generated by breed-specific legislation. Therefore, based on the evidence and analysis at hand, the proposed alternatives would prove a far more effective solution in the effort to solve the issues surrounding the ownership and domestication of restricted dog breeds. APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHY Bibliography 2008 Act No. 74. (2008). Animal Management (Cats and Dogs) Act 2008, 142. QLD, Australia. CHIVERS Vs Gold Coast City Council (The Supreme Court March 2010). American Kennel Club. (2011). Brisbane City Council. (2013, January 17). Dangerous, Menacing and Restricted dogs. Retrieved January 17, 2013, from Brisbane City Council: http://www. brisbane. qld. gov. au/laws-permits/laws-and-permits-for-residents/animals-and-pets/cats-dogs/dangerous-menacing-restricted-dogs/index. htm Hall, A. (2012, August 15). Vets call to end dangerous dog breed bans. ABC NEWS. Marinucci, E. (2012 . 2013, September 12). Aritcles: Examples of Typical Situations of Injuries Caused by Dogs. Beger Co. Lawyers. The Australian Veterinary Association Ltd. (2012, August). Dangerous Dogs – A Sensible Solution: Policy and Model Legislative Framework. Australia. Van den Burg, L. (2011, December 12). Dangerous Dog Breed Bans Wont Stop Bites Say Health Professionals. Herald Sun.

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Reducing Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections

Reducing Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections Literature Review: Reducing Incidences of Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections A bundle is a group of interventions related to a disease process, that when executed together, produce better outcomes than when implemented individually. Numerous studies done in the developed countries have shown that proper implementation of evidence based practices grouped together as central venous catheter bundle had brought a dramatic reduction in the incidence of CLABSI. Studies in developing countries had also shown high incidence of CLABSI and reduction in CLABSI rate albeit lesser than that of developed countries. Studies from India have a shown a higher incidence of CLABSI and poor adherence to central line catheter bundle. Morbidity and mortality due to CLABSI is considerably high despite underreporting of such events. The development and publication of guidelines often does not lead to changes in clinical behavior and guidelines are rarely if ever, integrated into bedside practice in a timely fashion. The most effective means for achieving knowledge transfer remains an unanswered question across all medical disciplines. Our study aims to determine the compliance with CVC bundle in management of patients in medicine wards and ICU at All India Institute of Medical Sciences New Delhi and the impact of intervention in the form of periodic physician education and feedback in compliance with CVC bundle and central line catheter related complications. Review of literature Ever since the introduction of central venous catheters in the early 1950s, it had varied uses and later numerous studies revealed that it was associated with a varied number of complications. Although mechanical complications were common in the early years of CVC use CLABSIs quickly became recognized as a serious complication associated with their usage. Central venous catheter is defined as a catheter whose tip terminates in the great vessels. The great vessels are the aorta, pulmonary artery, superior vena cava,inferior vena cava, brachiocephalic veins, internal jugular veins,subclavian veins, external iliac veins, common iliac veins,femoral veins, and, in neonates, the umbilical artery/vein. Types : Common types of central venous catheters are Non tunneled catheters, Tunneled catheters, Implantable ports, PICC. A peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) is peripherally placed, but is considered a central catheter because its tip terminates in the central circulation. These venous catheters can also have single, double or triple lumens although single lumens are frequently used and are for intermediate to long term therapy for blood draws or infusions. Complications of CVC: Mechanical complications(4,9)include Pneumothorax is a common complication with subclavian and IJV cannulations without the use of ultrasound. The use of real time ultrasound reduces the number of attempts and associated with a significantly lower failure rate with internal jugular vein ( Relative risk 0.14, 95% confidence interval 0.06 to 0.33). Limited evidence also exists for sublclavian and femoral routes in this metanalysis. Thus the chances of pneumothorax will be greatly reduced. Pneumothorax is usually apparent immediately on Chest X rays and management may vary from simple observation to ICD placement with needle drainage needed for tension pneumothorax as emergency(11). Delayed pneumothorax is also known to occur with an incidence of 0.4%, more common with subclavian and with multiple attempts(12). Bedside ultrasonography allows diagnosis of pneumothorax to be made immediately with high sensitivity by clinician but is operator dependent(13). Misplacement of catheters occur commonly such as tip malposition or rarely such as within artery. It is common practice to assess tip position lying above carina for right sided catheters assuming pericardial reflection below carina and below carina for left sided catheters in view of acute angulation to superior venacava(14). Management varies depending on the complication such as repositioning of tip for tip malposition lying below carina or when lying with an artery, interventional radiologist or vascular surgeon opinion is sought and removed accordingly(15). Arterial injuries are more common with femoral and internal jugular rather than subclavian approach. A systematic review of complications of central venous catheters revealed significantly more arterial punctures (3.0% vs 0.5%) and less malpositions(5.3% vs 9.3%) with jugular access(16). It leads to hematoma in approximately 40% of patients. The best way to prevent arterial injury is by ultrasound assistance during cannulation(17). Other rarer complications are local hematomas,cerebrovascular accidents mostly seen with arterial injuries via internal jugular access, arrhythmias, perforation of the vein or right atrium, chylothorax, pseudo aneurysm, AV fistulas, cardiac tamponade, guidewire loss and catheter embolisation etc. have been reported. These complications largely depend on the site of insertion and on operator experience. Such complications can be prevented by ultrasound guidance and proper techniques. Infectious complications are most dreaded as it is associated with mortality rates upto 25% and in developing countries even up to 60% and prolong the duration of hospital stay and are largely preventable. Evidence based guidelines have been developed as the central venous catheter bundle which significantly decreases the incidence of infections as shown in below studies.CVC use in non ICU settings is associated with at least a 2 fold rise in infection rate than in ICU settings. However studies are very limited on the infection rates as well as on the preventive measures in non ICU settings. Thrombotic complications range from 1.2 to 3 % in subclavian veins to up to 8 to 34% in femoral cannulations. Merrer et al in a randomized control trial found significantly increased incidence of thrombotic complications(21.5% vs1.9%,p

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Mesos and Kubernetes : A Comparative Analysis

Mesos and Kubernetes : A Comparative Analysis Abstract Containers and application containerization have fast gained traction as the most promising aspects of Cloud Computing. A massive increase in the number and variety of applications has created a need for smooth integration between developer and live environments with quick service time. The amount of user data being handled by todays applications requires heavy computing resources which further require large clusters of hosts. Management of these large clusters is very challenging and containers provide a viable solution. Containers provide an operating system level virtualization for deploying and running applications in a distributed node topology, eliminating the need for configuration of a complete VM per application. Open source technologies like Docker have developed a method that provides better portability for containers. This paper presents a proposal for performance evaluation of two of the most widely used open source orchestration systems Kubernetes and Mesos for cloud native applications. We also provide a brief overview of the importance of choosing the right container orchestration tool to deploy and manage cloud-native applications. Keywords: Kubernetes, Mesos, Cloud native applications, Locust, GCE. With the fast spread of internet hegemony, the conventional and niche web applications are increasing in number. Deployment and maintenance of each of such applications requires a myriad of hardware and associated software designed to perform several generic activities. Rapid progress of cloud computing technologies have aided in decentralizing the implementations, leading to distributed systems. Docker technology provides containers for easy deployment and management of applications. Carefully managed by cluster management tools like Kubernetes and Mesos, replication, failovers, as well as APIs can automate integration and lead to a seamless deployment over clusters of host machines, thereby eliminating disruption of service caused by inherent downtime. Kubernetes: Kubernetes is an open source cluster manager project that integrates cluster management capabilities into a system of virtual machines. It is a lightweight, portable, modular, responsive and fault-tolerant orchestration tool that is written in Go and comes with built-in service discovery and replication utilities. Fig 1.1 shows the architecture and important concepts of Kubernetes. Fig 1 Kubernetes Architecture Important components of kubernetes are : Pods : Pod is the building block for schedul- ing, deployment, horizontal scaling and replication. It is a group of tightly coupled containers that are located on the same host and sharing the same IP address, ports, resources and the same localhost.[7] Kubelet is the agent that runs on the worker nodes that manages Pods, their containers, container images and the volumes if any. Replication Controllers : They control and monitor the number of running pods for a service, and provide fault tolerance.It is the high availability solution of Kubernetes. Kubectl : The command to control the kubernetes cluster once its running. Kubectl runs on the master node. Kubernetes has a policy driven scheduler (Kube-scheduler) which considers availability, performance and capacity constraints,quality of service requirements, and workload. kubernetes can also work with multiple schedulers. Users can add their own schedulers if other constraints are required.[7] Mesos: Apache Mesos is an open-source cluster manager, developed by Benjamin Hindman, Andy Konwinski, and Matei Zaharia at the University of California, Berkeley as a research project along with professor Ion Stoica. Its designed to scale to very large clusters involving hundreds or thousands of hosts such as hadoop tasks, cloud native applications, etc. It enables resource sharing in a fine-grained manner thus improving cluster utilization.To deploy and manage applications in large-scale clustered environments more efficiently, Mesos plays role between the application layer and the operating system and makes it easier. It can run many applications on a dynamically shared pool of nodes. The major components in a Mesos cluster are: Fig 2 Mesos Architecture [6] Mesos follows 2 level scheduling. Each framework asks Mesos for a certain amount of resources it requires, in response Mesos offers a set of resources. Framework scheduler evaluates the offered resources based on its own criteria and accepts or refuses.[7] Apache ZooKeeper acts as a central coordination service to achieve high availability. The design comprises multiple masters, where one is an active leader and ZooKeeper handles the leader election. For high availability setting, a minimum of 3 master nodes is needed. Marathon is a framework that is designed to launch long-running applications, and serves as a replacement for a traditional init system. It provides many features such as high availability, application health checks, node constraints, fault -tolerance and an easy to use web UI for long running application. Marathon Framework is composed of executor and scheduler. The UI of marathon provides an option to start, stop and scale the long running applications. Kubernetes and Mesos makes the process of setting up multiple virtual clusters simpler, allowing for stack management to shed unwanted layers of software which bog down systems. Using Kubernetes and Mesos for cluster management allows for high-level task monitoring, resource allocation and application scaling, whilst offering the control needed to ensure applications run smoothly. Setting up of either Mesos or Kubernetes on Windows means developers and organizations that work between Linux and Windows platforms may use their own tools without requiring heavy resource management. A. Container Orchestration tools and its importance: With the usage of containers, running cloud-native applications on physical or virtual infrastructure is made easy. Containers facilitate easier application management to dynamically adapt to the changing needs of service. It also enables seamless migration of application instances to different environments. Multiple containers need effective management utilities that manage the resources and enable running of containers on different environments, over multiple hosts. Orchestration tools manage applications of different complexities that are distributed for computing over cluster of machines. These tools abstract the cluster systems as a single entity for deployment of application and managing the resources. Orchestrations tools can handle configuration, scheduling and deploying of applications, along with maintenance and support for automatic failovers and scaling. Kubernetes acts primarily as a container orchestration tool whereas Mesos provides a platform to run orchestration frameworks like Marathon or Aurora to manage applications, which may or may not be containerized. Comparing the stand alone Kubernetes orchestration and Marathon with Mesos is effective in understanding the right choice for implementation. B. Proposed solution on Google Compute Engine: There are no synthetic benchmarks that exist to evaluate the performance of Kubernetes and Mesos. This paper aims at evaluating orchestration methods on Google Compute Engine (GCE) for hosted cluster installation and management. A single cluster in GCE for all purposes will have a master VM and four worker VMs. Setting a baseline comparison through a simple cloud application deployment . This is the first proposed benchmark which analyses user experience with minimal containers on Kubernetes cluster and Mesos . Having a Google Cloud Platform account and installing Google Cloud SDK is the first step for this. Cloud application is then deployed on the created cluster to compare their respective processes of deployment. Streaming Engine using Docker clusters on GCE to check the delivery speed , scheduling , and scalability of container orchestrations. This is also to test the feature of pods on Kubernetes where all containers in a pod have single networking point. Standalone analysis using existing tools to test performance and known limitations of both these systems. cAdvisor that collects data about running containers, Heapster which gives the basic resource utilization metrics on Kubernetes and marathon-lb tools on Mesos marathon. This paper aims to provide qualitative as well quantitative metrics to compare and contrast the working of Kubernetes and Mesos. The objective is to compile a substantive list of criteria analysing the performance of both the orchestration tools. The study intends to bring to light comparative results that hitherto do not exist in related literature and also to build upon the existing knowledge through the results of the experiments in this paper. Some of the comparative points are:Load balancing, Scalability, User experience . Kubernetes Mesos Distinctive features Offers a combination of pods which are controlled by replications controllers . IPC between pods systemv semaphores or posix shared memory . Do not support colocation of multiple containers on same mesos. Application distribution Supports master-worker nodes , where the applications are deployed on pods on worker nodes. Supports master-agent nodes , and applications are deployed on different agent nodes. Resource schedulers Has a policy driven scheduler (Kube-Scheduler) Has a 2 levels scheduling approach. Scalability Kubernetes 1.3 supports 2000 node clusters Mesos has been simulated to scale up to 50,000 nodes [9] Load Balancing Supports both internal and external load balancing.. Mesos DNS (rudimentary load balancer), Marathon-lb (haproxy based load balancer for Mesos marathon) Monitoring tools Heapster, cAdvisor and Google Cloud Monitoring .InfluxDB and Grafana as backend tools for visualization. Sysdig and Sysdig Cloud (full metrics and metadata support for Apache Mesos and Mesosphere Marathon framework) The implementation was done on Google cloud platform, using the Google Compute Engine (GCE). Under the scope of the account setup for implementation, following are the details of the resources available. For this implementation, two of the available 4 machines have been used. Resource Machine Names n1-standard-1 n1-standard-2 Virtual CPU 1 2 Memory (GB) 3.75 7.50 Max No of Persistent Disks (PD) 16 16 Max PD Size (TB) 64 64 A. Kubernetes ecosystem Kubernetes ecosystem is spread over two setups as shown below. Two Node Setup Four Node setup Master node VMs 1 1 CPU 1 1 Machine type N1-standard-1 N1-standard-1 Worker nodes VMs 1 3 CPU 2 each 2 each Machine type N1-standard-1 N1-standard-1 Table 3 Kubernetes ecosystem Production grade kubernetes is available open source and can be installed from its official page [10]. After the installation of kubernetes , start up script kube-up.sh can be used to spin up a cluster. A cluster consists of a single master instance and a set of worker nodes each of which is a Computer engine virtual machine.This process takes about ten minutes to bring up a cluster and once the cluster is running , IP addresses of all the nodes can be obtained from the computer engine. Cluster specifications can be specified using environment variables like NUM_NODES , MASTER_SIZE, NODE_SIZE or can also be specified in config_default.sh. kubectl is the command line interface for kubernetes clusters. It supports command types like create, apply, attach , config, get, describe, and delete and resource types like pods, deployment, and services. B. Mesos ecosystem Different approaches were used to implement a Mesos cluster system as per the available resources. The procedure followed for each implementation and the associated complexities are described briefly. The third implementation method, which was incorporated into this project, is described in detail. Single master Single Slave In the first method that was tried for setup, the system was formulated as a single node cluster consisting of zookeeper, marathon, a single master and a single agent processes. The images for these were pulled from the Docker hub, using Docker installed on the GCE shell. Four containers, one each for the process listed were started. The Mesos master UI was accessible through the browser on its designated IP address, at port 5050. Marathon UI was accessed through its external IP address at port 8080. This implementation posed two constraints for successful implementation. The set up used up all the available CPU and a multinode configuration could not be implemented. Further, a public Docker image poses trust issues for a system implementation. It was, therefore, decided to explore other options. Datacenter / Operating System (DC/OS) DCOS is a product of a company called Mesosphere which makes applications and solutions based on Apache Mesos. DCOS is designed as a distributed operating system with Apache Mesos serving as its kernel. The intent is to abstract the different functionalities of multiple machines so as to club them as a single computing resource. DCOS can offer container orchestration as it has Marathon scheduler built into its design at the backend. [11] Installation of DCOS on the Google Compute Engine requires the setting up of a primary bootstrap node on which the GCE scripts shall be run to create the cluster nodes. A yaml format installation file is to be run via Ansible playbook to create and configure the cluster nodes with DCOS running on them. Several environment variables have to be customized such as setting up RSA public/private key pairs that shall allow for a SSH based login into the cluster nodes. The team was unsuccessful in setting up a DCOS running cluster on GCE. The support community for DCOS is not very mature and the installation issues faced by the team could not be resolved. Exploring the services of DCOS has been included as one the future work possibilities in this paper as DCOS promises great potential in terms of effective container orchestration. Installing VMs on GCE In this method, Mesos ecosystem implementation is over 6 virtual machines, using four n1-standard-1 and two n1-standard-2 machine types. The system consists of 3 master nodes and 3 agents, with the Marathon and Zookeeper processes running on VMs 1, 2 and 3, as shown in the figure below. The VMs with two CPUs indicates n1-standard-2 machines. Fig 3 Mesos Implementation Diagram The following processes are run on each of these VMs to establish a self sufficient ecosystem. Marathon Marathon runs as a scheduling framework on Mesos and is deployed over VM1. Zookeeper Zookeeper is a process that manages which master process to run as active and which to keep as standby. Zookeeper processes are run on VM1, VM2 and VM3, to keep a backup zookeeper process running to facilitate automatic failover of a master process. Mesos Master Three mesos master processes are run, each in VM1, VM2 and VM3. The quorum associated with Zookeeper selects one of these three masters to be active and the rest to be standby. Mesos Agents Mesos Agents processes run on VM4, VM5 and VM6. Mesos agent on VM6 runs on an n1-standard-1 machine, as compared to agents on VMs 4 and 5. The Kubernetes and Mesos Cluster systems were set up as described in the implementation section. Each ecosystem was evaluated in different scenarios and the behaviour of the systems were analysed for each of the scenarios in terms of scalability, load balancing and failover capabilities. Kubernetes System: Creating and deploying the application on kubernetes is primarily carried out by the specifications on pod.yaml , deployment.yaml , and service.yaml files. pod.yaml deployment.yaml service.yaml Operations Group of containers tied together for networking Used to schedule the creation of pods and check their health. To expose the created deployment to the outside of clusters. arguments specified -docker image -shared volumes -CPU restrictions on single pod -LivenessProbe -ReadinessProbe -replicas : to ensure the minimum number of pods that needs to be running at all times. -loadbalancer -clusterIP Table 4 Kubernetes :application deployment components Kubernetes Scalability : Setup used for understanding scalability in kubernetes is described in the kubernetes ecosystem section. This process is aimed at gauging kubernetes scalability against the CPU resource utilization of clusters, auto scaling of pods , and API responsiveness. Web based WordPress application was chosen for this purpose. Scaling in kubernetes is achieved by horizontal auto scaling of pods .It dynamically adjusts the number of pods in deployment to meet the load/traffic. Horizontal Pod Autoscaler(HPA) can be created via the kubectl command kubectl autoscale deployment wordpress cpu-percent=14 min=1 -max=10 . This means that the horizontal autoscaler will increase and decrease the number of pods to maintain an average CPU utilization of 14% across all Pods. It also facilitates automatic failover of pods. Locust was used for creating load on WordPress application. Locust is an easy-to-use python based load testing tool which is used to find out how many concurrent users a system can handle . It swarms the web applications with a number of users which is specified by using the web UI. Once the application was hosted by kubernetes , load was initiated to its load balancer ingress IP using locust .The intention was to learn how the auto scalers react on the load as generated by locust. The results of the experiment can be better explained using the tabular format as below. The parameters like minimum and maximum number of pods , target CPU utilization were kept similar to both the setups. Number of requests in the table suggests the total number of users created by locust. Two node setup (Total 7 CPUs) Number of Pods 10 50 150 Target CPU 14 14 8 Max Number of requests 575 966 3158 Failure % 23% 23% 41% Table 5 Kubernetes: Scalability in two node system Four Node setup (Total 3 CPUs) Number of Pods 10 50 150 Target CPU 14 14 8 Max Number of requests 611 1433 7513 Failure % 24% 20% 2% Table 6 Kubernetes: Scalability in four node system Observations from the above tabulated results : The number of pods from 1-10 did not have any significant impact on the failure percentage . The significant difference in the results were spotted as the number of pods were increased. As number of requests increased , the increase in the number of pods was witnessed. And with the load going down pods were downsized automatically. Fig 4 Kubernetes pods in running and terminating states The failure percentage was drastically reduced between the two setups with high load and higher number of pods . The failure percentage is almost similar between the two setups with less load. Setup was benchmarked at 150 for maximum number of pods. It was observed that going beyond this value left many pods in pending state for longer than seven minutes. Starting a pod takes lesser than four seconds in other cases . More number of pods will be created when the target CPU percentage specified in the horizontal auto scaler command is less. CPU resource utilization of four node cluster is as shown below .This shows that the newly created pods were allocated equally across the worker nodes.The below graph is as seen from stackdriver utility. Fig 5 CPU usage of a Kubernetes cluster Fig 6 Load distribution over the worker nodes. Mesos System: Application scalability, in terms of Mesos using Marathon is represented as number of instances that are created and successfully run on the active agent nodes. Marathon provides an option to simulate application instances to be distributed over the agent nodes through the Scale option in the User Interface Dashboard. Applications are specified as JSON files, either through the Create Application option of the Marathon UI or through a JSON file in Git which is imported, built and deployed over Marathon for distribution and scheduling, through the use of continuous integration tool called Jenkins. Deploying an application: Mesos using Marathon forms an orchestration tool for managing application instances on the different active agent nodes. These nodes are managed by a master instance, which is effectively managed by the Zookeeper processes. Distribution of application instances on agent nodes depends on the resources allocated to each of the agents. For this implementation, we consider an application that is not CPU intensive. This application abstracts any data intensive application, that is based on a request response model. Following table summarizes the different scenarios simulated to test scalability of the application, each with the different configurations employed. Cluster configuration represents number of active agent nodes, as number of masters remain at 3. Sl No Cluster Configuration Effective CPUs available CPU Usage per instance (%) Memory usage per application instance (MB) Maximum instances scaled for the CPU available 1 2 Agents 4 10 32 40 2 3 Agents 5 10 32 50 3 2 Agents 4 2 10 200 4 3 Agents 5 2 10 250 Table 7: Scalability analysis with a Data Intensive application The tabulated results indicate the effective operation of Mesos cluster with Marathon scheduling framework, which suggest the easy scalable property of a Mesos cluster system. When there are more number of instances of application that need servicing, a mesos cluster starts new agent process and effectively distributes the application load over the running agents. Load Balancing Increase in number of application instances require more number of agent nodes running to service all the requests. However, the request handling is not efficient, if all of the requests are directed to a single agent. The workload is distributed effectively among all the agent nodes. For the scaling test scenarios described in the previous section, CPU usage was monitored using Google Stack Driver utility. The graph below shows CPU usage at different timelines. The rapid rise or fall of the usage attributes to the increasing/decreasing number of application instances that need servicing. Fig 7 CPU usage of a Mesos cluster with changes in application instances The distribution of workload on all the processes is tabulated, using the Stack Driver utility, as illustrated by the figure below. Fig 8 Load distribution over the six processes There is a significant workload over master node 3, as the marathon process utilizes the core of VM3, even though the process is run on VM1. Master nodes have least CPU usage, owing to the fact that the only operation performed by the nodes is distribution of application tasks over the agents. The agents are represented as three processes named mesos-slave-1, mesos-slave-2 and mesos-slave-3. The workload distributed on these appear even. However, the agent-3 runs only on a single core and it uses 22.9% of the total allocated core. This summarizes the effective load balancing that a Mesos system incorporates. Failover Mesos Cluster system runs additional master processes as standby to facilitate automatic failover of the system. In this experiment, as an initial condition, the quorum of Zookeepers elected Mesos-master-2 to be primary and Mesos-Master-1 and Mesos-Master-3 as secondary. Application deployment was initiated as per the previous procedure, using a JSON file through Marathon. The active tasks on Mesos-master-2 were checked at port 5050 of the master-2 external IP address to check the delegation of tasks to the active agent nodes. To test failover, the mesos-master-2 process was killed. It was observed that the presence of Zookeeper effectively switched the application deployments over the agents through mesos-master-1. The delegation of tasks to slave was now observed through the browser on the external IP address of mesos-master-1 at port 5050. With this project, the implementation and experimentation enabled a better understanding of the concepts related to orchestration, containerization, scalability and load balancing properties of a cluster based environment. This will ease the initial understanding of deployment and management of cloud native applications, and to better setup and environment that houses them. With the help of this documentation, along with the link provided through github, it would be easier to setup an orchestration environment, as the team has tried to collate the steps involved in implementing a cluster with orchestration tools. Through research and experimentation, the team was able to put together enough literature to understand, compare, contrast and conclude on various aspects of orchestration systems and understand the major difference between Kubernetes and Mesos based systems. Lack of resources for implementation of Mesos based systems, and equivocal distinction among the several example implementation required for a better compilation of materials, which was achieved through this project work. In a survey conducted by P Heidari et al [7] on some of the well known orchestration tools with a primary focus on QoS capabilities, the authors have concluded that not all of the solution tools provide a guaranteed healthy running replicas to effectively maintain the quality of service. They have cited that tools like Marathon and Fleet tend to go into a state of unprecedented wait due to the need for appropriate resources. There is a need of an elasticity e

Hiroshima :: essays research papers

Hiroshima   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Would you be afraid of an atomic bomb dropping on your city? In August 1945, World War II was finally dying down. The United States, including her allies, had already defeated Germany by this time and had reclaimed land that had been taken over by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Now that the United States and her allies had defeated the Nazis all the attention was pointed towards Japan. Japan was a city that would fight to the very end, and if needed fight to the very last man. The people of Japan did not believe in surrendering to anyone. Do you think that the people of Japan were afraid of the bomb that the United States’ best physicists had created? (Claypool 1)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The people of Japan did not know the power of the atomic bomb and so they were not afraid of the United States. An hour before the United States dropped the bomb, Japan had detected the approach of some American aircraft heading towards the southern part of Japan. (The Manhattan Engineer District) The Japanese were in fear of a huge B-29 raid that could occur. At 8:00 a.m. the radar operator in Hiroshima determined that the number of planes coming was only a couple and probably not more than three. Basically, the Japanese were pretty clueless of what was coming. What was coming? There were a total of 7 B-29s flying towards the city of Hiroshima. One plane was a stand-by plane; three of them were weather planes, two of the planes carried scientific equipment and observers. The final B-29, the â€Å"Enola Gay,† carried the first atomic bomb Nelson 2 that would be dropped on Hiroshima. In less than three hours, sixty percent of Hiroshima would be erased. (Hersey 35) Hiroshima was located on a flat delta off the Ota River. The Ota River had 7 channels that divide the city into 6 islands. The city of Hiroshima was slightly above sea level and was almost entirely flat. It consisted of 26 square miles, and out of the 26, only 6 square miles were built-up. Seventy-five percent of the people had lived in the center of Hiroshima. (The Manhattan Engineer District)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There was no separation between commercial, industrial, and residential zones. The houses and industrial buildings were made of wood. Also, the outskirts of the center of the city had an area of close small wooden workshops that were scattered between the Japanese houses.

Friday, July 19, 2019

Salmonella :: essays research papers fc

Description Salmonella is an intestinal infection caused by Salmonella enterica bacteria. You can become infected by eating foods contaminated with Salmonella or by touching infected pets. In rarer cases, Salmonella infection can also be carried in medical products that were derived from contaminated animals. Before a Salmonella infection can begin, somewhere between 100,000 and 100,000,000 Salmonella enterica bacteria must actually be swallowed. Salmonella bacteria invade the intestinal wall, where they trigger inflammation. They also produce irritating intestinal poisons. In some rare cases, Salmonella bacteria may enter the bloodstream and settle in tissues and organs far away from the intestines. This spread of Salmonella infection is most common in infants, in the elderly, and in patients whose immune defenses are weakened. Symptoms After someone has eaten food contaminated with Salmonella bacteria, it usually takes 8 to 48 hours for symptoms to begin. Symptoms of Salmonella include fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and muscle aches. Prevention You can prevent Salmonella by thoroughly cooking all meats, ground beef, poultry and eggs, and by promptly refrigerating all leftovers. Whenever silverware has touched raw meat, wash these items thoroughly with soap and water. Also, avoid eating eggs that are raw or partially cooked. Frequent hand washing is particularly important, especially after using the rest room. Treatment Doctors do not usually prescribe antibiotics, since patients typically recover on their own in a few days. Since many strains of Salmonella are resistant to one or more antibiotics, a patient may be treated initially with one antibiotic, then switched to a second antibiotic if it doesn’t work. Prognosis Most patients with Salmonella recover within 5 to 10 days; however, they may continue to pass Salmonella bacteria in their stool for up to 2 months. Salmonella :: essays research papers fc Description Salmonella is an intestinal infection caused by Salmonella enterica bacteria. You can become infected by eating foods contaminated with Salmonella or by touching infected pets. In rarer cases, Salmonella infection can also be carried in medical products that were derived from contaminated animals. Before a Salmonella infection can begin, somewhere between 100,000 and 100,000,000 Salmonella enterica bacteria must actually be swallowed. Salmonella bacteria invade the intestinal wall, where they trigger inflammation. They also produce irritating intestinal poisons. In some rare cases, Salmonella bacteria may enter the bloodstream and settle in tissues and organs far away from the intestines. This spread of Salmonella infection is most common in infants, in the elderly, and in patients whose immune defenses are weakened. Symptoms After someone has eaten food contaminated with Salmonella bacteria, it usually takes 8 to 48 hours for symptoms to begin. Symptoms of Salmonella include fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and muscle aches. Prevention You can prevent Salmonella by thoroughly cooking all meats, ground beef, poultry and eggs, and by promptly refrigerating all leftovers. Whenever silverware has touched raw meat, wash these items thoroughly with soap and water. Also, avoid eating eggs that are raw or partially cooked. Frequent hand washing is particularly important, especially after using the rest room. Treatment Doctors do not usually prescribe antibiotics, since patients typically recover on their own in a few days. Since many strains of Salmonella are resistant to one or more antibiotics, a patient may be treated initially with one antibiotic, then switched to a second antibiotic if it doesn’t work. Prognosis Most patients with Salmonella recover within 5 to 10 days; however, they may continue to pass Salmonella bacteria in their stool for up to 2 months.

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Critical Analysis of the India Sri Lanka Fta

INDIA – SRI LANKA BILATERAL FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: Critical Analysis INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAW PROJECT REPORT LLB 404 Submitted to: Asst. Professor MANISH SHARMA Submitted by: ADITYA VASHISTH 13510303809 (VIII Semester) May, 2013 Amity Law School, New Delhi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 3 2. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 5 3. CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE ISFTA†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 8 4. CHARACHTERESTICS OF THE ISFTA†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. 10 5. ASSESSMENT OF TRADE UNDER THE ISFTA†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦13 6. LOOKING BEYOND FTA: CEPA†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 17 7. CONCLUSION†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦19 8.BIBLIOGRAPHY†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦20 INTRODUCTION The growth of regional trade blocs has been one of the major developments in international relations in recent years. During the 1990s, regionalism was conceived as a developmental option in itself that would promote competitiveness of trade bloc members and help their fast integration into the international economy. As per the World Bank report on Global Economic Prospects (2005) the number of the Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs ) has more than quadrupled since 1990 rising to around 230 by late 2004 and the trade between RTA partners now constitutes nearly 40% of total global trade.Quoting, World Trade Organisation (WTO) this report estimates another 60 agreements at various stages of negotiations. The World Bank report points out that the boom in Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) reflects changes in certain countries trade policy objectives, the changing perceptions of the multilateral liberalization process, and the reintegration into the global economy of countries in transition from socialism. Regional agreements vary widely, but all have the objective of reducing barriers to trade between member countries which implies discrimination against trade with other countries.At their simplest, these agreements merely remove tariffs on intra bloc trade in goods, but many go beyond that to cover non-tariff barriers and to extend liberalization to investment and other policies. At their deepest, they have the goa l of economic union and involve the construction of shared executive, judicial, and legislative institutions. [1] Among the seven member countries of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), India and Sri Lanka accounts for the largest bilateral trade flow in the region.Thanks to the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISFTA) that was signed between the two countries in December 1998 and operationalized in March 2000. However, almost at the same time in 1993 the agreement on South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA) was signed among the seven member countries of SAARC. The objective was to promote and sustain trade and economic cooperation within the SAARC region through the exchange of concessions. This pushed the agenda for promoting bilateral trade between India and Sri Lanka to the background.However, the negotiations under SAPTA progressed at a very slow pace and became a time consuming process. The failure of SAPTA brought about the desire for a free trade agreement with India to the forefront from the Sri Lankan side. It was felt that such an agreement would give the much needed market access to the exporters from Sri Lanka. India was also keen to acquire the South Asian markets and expressed its willingness to consider bilateral free trade agreements with its South Asian neighbours.Accordingly, the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISFTA) was signed between the two countries on 28 December, 1998 in New Delhi, India and came into operation on 1 March, 2000. India and Sri Lanka look upon regional/bilateral FTAs as a complement to the multilateral trading system by ensuring the compatibility of the FTAs with the rules laid down by the WTO. Also, both countries are members of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) which envisaged the formation of a South Asian Free Trading Arrangement (SAFTA) through successive rounds of tariff concessions between member countries.However, the efforts of member co untries have not yielded the expected results. [2] A Joint Study Group with representatives from both countries was set up which submitted its report in October 2003 that paved the way for negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). In the present context of Indo-Sri Lanka trade, the services agreement aims to remove/reduce market access and national treatment barriers, and promote co-operation between the services sectors of the two countries. [3] HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Trade relations between Sri Lanka and India date back to pre-colonial times.Under British rule, trade between the two countries was geared to fulfill the needs of the colonial power in the occupying territory, and was dominated by imports and exports in food-related items. After independence in 1947 and 1948 for India and Sri Lanka respectively, both national governments adopted inward-looking policies centered on the concepts of â€Å"self-reliance† and import substitution industria lization. Consequentially, a very modest level of trading took place between what became two virtually closed economies. In 1977, Sri Lanka became the first South Asian country to liberalize its economy, opening it up to the rest of the world.However, substandard products from India – the result of excessive inward-looking policies were not competitive against the goods from East Asia that flooded the Sri Lankan market. With partial liberalization of the Indian economy during the 1980s and further liberalization in 1991, trade began to pick up, particularly in favour of India. Between 1993 and 1996, there was a doubling of two-way trade, and between 1990 and 1996 imports of Indian goods to Sri Lanka grew by 556 per cent. In 1995, India replaced Japan as the largest source of imports to Sri Lanka, accounting for 8-9 per cent of total imports.For Sri Lanka, it became evident that trade with the SAARC region ultimately amounted to trade with India owing to the sheer size of the latter’s rapidly emerging economy and expanding middle-class population. Hence, the perceived mutual benefits of free trade between the two countries became increasingly clear. Sri Lanka’s private sector – frustrated by the slow progress of the SAPTA[4] to boost regional trade – pressurized the government to enter into a free trade agreement (FTA) with the Indian government that would increase market access for Sri Lankan exporters. [5]Birth of the ISFTA (India – Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement)[6] Politics was ultimately the major player in the move towards free trade. Sri Lanka entertained the hope of clearing away the political tensions of the 1980s and engaging India’s assistance once more in solving the North/East conflict of the country. India was propelled by an immediate need to acquire South Asian markets following economic sanctions imposed on the country for the nuclear tests conducted in May 1998. Among other factors, these politi cal forces led to the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Bilateral Free Trade Agreement (ILBFTA) on December 28, 1998.The Commerce Secretary of India and Finance Secretary of Sri Lanka exchanged letters that operationalise the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISFTA) between India and Sri Lanka signed in New Delhi on 28 December 1998 by H. E. the President of Sri Lanka and the Honorable Prime Minister of India with effect from 1st March 2000. [7] The economic objectives of Sri Lanka were to increase Trade ties with South Asia’s dominant economic power, to induce the transformation of Sri Lanka’s exports from low-value added goods to high value-added goods aimed at niche markets, and to provide low-income groups with cheap consumer imports from India.Moreover, Sri Lanka hoped to attract more export-oriented foreign direct investment (FDI) from third countries by promoting itself as an effective entry point into the Indian market. With the Board of Investment (BOI) being made a â€Å"one stop shop† in the early 1990s, Sri Lanka has long been a relatively appealing location for foreign investors compared to its more bureaucratized South Asian neighbours. [8] Thus, the agreement with effect from 1st March 2000, aimed to provide duty free as well as duty preference access for the goods manufactured in the two countries.Both the countries had listed products for immediate duty free entry into each other's territories. India having agreed to phase out its tariffs on a large number of items within a period of three years. Sri Lanka, likewise to do so in eight years. Both the countries had drawn up ‘Negative Lists’ in respect of which no duty concessions will apply. These Lists would include items on which protection to local industry had been considered essential. Both the countries intended to reduce the items in the Negative List through periodic consultations. [9] The Agreement sets out the ‘Rules of Origin’ criteria fo r eligibility for preferential access.Products having domestic value addition of 35% will qualify for preferential market access. Sri Lanka’s exports with a domestic value addition content of 25% will also qualify for entry to the Indian market if they have a minimum of 10% Indian content. [10] CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE ISFTA The conceptualization phase of the ISFTA occurred between December 1998 and March 2000, and was based on several previous studies and recommendations. [11] The agreement was intended to supersede the existing economic partnership under the SAARC, viz. , SAPTA. Bilateral free trade greements are traditionally formulated using the â€Å"positive list† approach, whereby each participating country catalogues the individual commodities for which it would grant preferences to the other. Nonetheless, owing to the time-consuming nature of such a method, the ISFTA was formulated on the â€Å"negative list† approach; each country extending concessions / preferences to all commodities except those indicated in its â€Å"negative† list, namely items of a sensitive nature with regard to protecting national interests. The two countries agreed for preferential treatment on 5112 tariff lines (by 6-digit HS Code).An 8-year time table was devised for phasing out tariffs. Non-tariff barriers, such as Indian State taxes and customs- level procedures (e. g. , landing tax), were to be gradually removed as well. [12] Taking into account the asymmetry between the two countries, Sri Lanka was accorded special and differential treatment; the immediate duty- free list (319 items) and 50 per cent preferential duty list (889 items) were considerably smaller than those offered by India (1,351 items and 2,799 items, respectively), while the Sri Lankan negative list (1,180 items) was considerably larger than India’s (196 items).Among others, the agricultural sector of Sri Lanka was not subject to liberalization and was included in the ne gative list. The majority of Indian exports were initially granted only a 35 per cent duty concession with an 8-year tariff reduction period, while Sri Lankan exports were granted a 50 per cent concession with a 3-year tariff reduction period. Moreover, Sri Lanka was granted the freedom to reduce its negative list at her comfort level, instead of a pre-determined formula. Rules of origin (ROO) criteria were also relaxed in Sri Lanka’s favour.Preferential treatment requires a minimum of 35 per cent domestic value addition, or 25 per cent when Indian inputs comprise 10 per cent. In addition, although the agreement does not feature revenue compensation, Sri Lanka maintained that tariff concessions would not be granted for high-duty imports such as automobiles; import duties are an important source of government revenue and comprise 2 per cent of Sri Lankan GDP. Some aspects of the agreement were deferred for subsequent negotiation; these include the number of entry ports, Indian state-level taxes, customs procedures, and the specifics of phasing out non-tariff barriers. 13] The agreement included mechanisms for review and consultation, as well as settlement of disputes above and beyond the protection afforded to both countries under the safeguards clause. CHARACHTERESTICS OF THE ISFTA The ILFTA between India and Sri Lanka is a landmark in the bilateral relations between the two countries. It is expected to bring about enhanced trade between the two countries as well as to expanded and diversified cooperation in a range of economic spheres, including investments. This is the first such Agreement in the South Asian region which could serve as a model for similar bilateral Agreements in the region.It has an institutional framework in the form of the Indo-Lanka Joint Commission, a dispute settlement mechanism, and so forth. Its significance further lies in that it can be implemented more expeditiously and also more flexibly, unlike the protracted nature of neg otiations generally associated with multilateral arrangements. [14] These following features characterize Indo-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement: Elimination of Tariffs: 1. By India †¢ Zero duty on items upon entering into force of the Agreement – the list is to be finalized within 60 days of signing of the Agreement. E): 1351 products. †¢ Concessions on Textile items restricted to 25% on Chapters 51-56, 58-60, & 63. Four Chapters under the Textile sector retained in the negative list (Chapters 50, 57, 61 and 62) (TEX): 528 products. †¢ Garments covering Chapters 61&62 while remaining in the negative list, will be given 50% tariff concessions on a fixed basis, subject to an annual restriction of eight million pieces, of which six million shall be extended the concession only if made of Indian fabric, provided that no category of garments shall exceed one and half million ieces per annum (GAM). †¢ 50% tariff preference on five tea items, subject to a quota of 15 million Kg. Per year (TEA): 5 products. †¢ 50% margin of preference upon coming into force of this Agreement on all items, except for those on the negative list. To be phased out to zero duty in three years (IR): 2799 products. †¢ A negative list of 429 items to be retained (D I): 429 products 2. By Sri Lanka †¢ Zero duty on about 319 items upon entering into force of the Agreement (F I): 319 products. Phasing out of tariffs on items with 50% margin of preference on 889 products upon coming into force of the Agreement, with up to 70% at the end of the 1st year, up to 90% at the end of the 2nd year and 100% at the end of 3rd year (F II): 889 products. †¢ For the remaining items, (except for those on the negative list), which is the Residual List, preference would be not less than 35% before the expiry of three years, 70% before the expiry of six years and 100% before the expiry of eighth year. (SLR): 2724 products. A negative list of 1180 items (DII): 1180 prod ucts. OBJECTIVES: The Objectives adopted are: †¢ Analyze how much of the bilateral trade – both imports and exports are covered under different categories of concessions offered and received by India and Sri Lanka over the past five years, viz. 1996-97 to 2000-01. †¢ To analyze, in terms of 21 HS Sections, the distribution of trade under each category. †¢ To analyze the top products in terms of 8-digit HS Classification for India and 6-digit classification for Sri Lanka under each category to identify the success stories. To ascertain the trade potential between the two countries and assess the same in terms of products offered concessions under different categories. This exercise is based on the last year of data availability. The concessions offered by the Contracting States have been at 6-digit HS classification. In order to attain the aforementioned objectives, the bilateral trade data[15] is analyzed at the highest level of desegregation for India, viz. 8- digit HS classification by disaggregating all concessions at 6-digit classification to 8-digit levels. ASSESSMENT OF TRADE UNDER THE ISFTAThe India Sri Lanka FTA was signed in 1998 and became operational in March 2000. Mutual phased tariff concessions on different products on 6 digit Harmonized Classification (HS Code) basis have been granted by both the partners. Each side is having its negative lists[16] (no concessions), positive list (immediate full concessions) and a residual list5 (phased tariff reductions) as per the framework of ISLFTA. The preferential trade under the FTA is governed by Rules of Origin, which specify the criteria for a product to qualify for tariff concessions from the importing member.After signing of ISFTA, trade between India and Sri Lanka has increased manifold. India‘s import from Sri Lanka was US$ 45 million (0. 10% of total imports) in 1999, which increased to US$ 499 million (0. 29%) in 2006; India‘s export to Sri Lanka was US$ 482 milli on (1. 4% of total exports), which became US$ 2110 (1. 74%) in 2006. Similarly, Sri Lanka‘s import form India in 1998 was 538 million (9. 49%), which increased to US$ 1804 million (18. 46% rank 1) in 2006. Sri Lanka‘s exports to India has grown from US$ 35 million (0. 5%) in 1998 to US$ 490 million (7. 26%, rank 3) in the year 2006. In this way India became the major trading partner for Sri Lanka after the signing of the Agreement. The number of Sri Lanka‘s export items to India increased from 505 in 1996 to 1,062 in 2006 items on 6 digits of HS classification. There is a visible shift in Sri Lanka‘s exports from agricultural products to manufacturing goods The major products exported by Sri Lanka to India in 2006 included – Fats and Oils (22. 3%), Copper and Articles of Copper (8. 6%), Electrical Machinery (8. %) and Spices, Coffee, Tea (6. 2%). Similarly, India exported Mineral Fuel, Oil (22. 44%), Vehicles (18. 08%), Iron and Steel (4. 54%), Machine ry, Reactors, Boilers (4. 22%) and Pharmaceutical Products (4. 13%) to Sri Lanka. There has been an increase in total share of import of Sri Lankan goods from 0. 10% in 1999 to 0. 29% in 2006. The import from Sri Lanka has also increased in the items on the residual list from 0. 2% in 1996 to 0. 47% in 2006. It is noteworthy that there has been an increase in the imports even in the negative list items from 0. % in 2001 to 1. 19 % in 2006. This could be mainly due to the increased awareness to partners market, smoothening of customs issues and improved access to ports of entry due to the increased engagement of partner countries on products having preferential tariffs on residual list, the so called border effects. By 2008, the ISFTA entered into full force. Both governments were pleased with the results achieved through the Free Trade Agreement and proclaim that it had facilitated the expansion of two-way trade between India and Sri Lanka.India, which was once the second largest ex porter to Sri Lanka pre-ISLFTA, has now become the island‘s largest source of imports. Meanwhile India has become the third largest export destination for Sri Lankan products (after the United States of America and the European Union). The argument is that, given the asymmetrical proportions of the economies of the two countries, if not for the ISLFTA, Sri Lankan exports would not have been able to achieve their current level of market penetration. The bilateral import-export ratio that had been 10. :1 in 2000 had improved in Sri Lanka‘s favour to 5. 3:1 by 2007. According to the then Indian High Commissioner to Colombo, the ratio may have been as skewed as 40:1 (in India‘s advantage, of course) had the ISLFTA not been in operation. [17] Over the ten years in which the ISLFTA has been in operation, Indian foreign direct investment in Sri Lanka has also expanded exponentially, most recently in telecommunications (Bharti Airtel) and glass-manufacturing (Piramal Glass ), and biscuits and sweets (Britannia).In 2009, India was the island‘s third largest foreign investor (after China and the United Kingdom) with inflows of US$78 million and largely attracted to the telecommunications, energy and power sectors (Central Bank of Sri Lanka 2010: 114). The Institute of Policy Studies (2008: 47-48) has estimated that Indian foreign direct investment has expanded from a cumulative total of LKR165 million in 1998 (1. 3 percent of total FDI) to LKR19. 5 billion in 2005 (8. 3 percent of total FDI). However, the causal connection between the commencement of the ISLFTA and the spiral in inward foreign direct nvestment from India is asserted rather than demonstrated, and may have more to do with aggressive Indian investment strategies since that country‘s economic boom, than the existence of the Free Trade Agreement. [18] IMPACT OF THE FTA Despite its importance in the South Asian region, not many empirical studies have been conducted to access the i mpact of ISFTA. One study that attempted to analyze the impact of this FTA was conducted by Kelegema and Mukherjee in February 2007[19]. Their study is based on the bilateral trade flows under different categories of products.Sector wise imports and exports figures are compared before and after the FTA. They have concluded that the two countries have displayed political will to forge ahead towards economic integration and the considerable size disparity between the two economies does not hinder bilateral free trade when appropriate special and differential treatment is accorded to the smaller country. Some new goods from Sri Lanka have found entry into the Indian market following the exchange of preferences.Finally, they have concluded that the economic benefits of free trade can and do override political problems. [20] Another report on evaluating economic performance of the FTA is ? Joint Study Group on India –Sri Lanka Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement constitut ed by the partner Governments (JSG report, 2003)[21]. JSG (2003) has concluded that ISLFTA promoted a 48% increase in bilateral trade between 2001 and 2002, and at present India is the largest source of imports into Sri Lanka, accounting for 14% of Sri Lanka‘s global imports.India is the fifth largest export destination for Sri Lankan goods accounting for 3. 6% of Sri Lanka‘s global exports. [22] Based on the success of ISFTA, the JSG has recommended that the two countries enter into a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) covering trade in services and investment and to build upon the ISLFTA by deepening and widening the coverage and binding of trade in goods. LOOKING BEYOND FTA: CEPA The decision to work towards a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) was taken in June 2002.During the visit of the Sri Lankan Prime Minister to India in June 2002, the Prime Ministers of India and Sri Lanka discussed the profound changes in the international ec onomic and political arena that have been generated by the process of globalization, on the one hand, and emergence of closer regional economic associations, on the other. They agreed on the need to widen the ambit of the ISLFTA to go beyond trade in goods to include services and to facilitate greater investment flow between the two countries.Accordingly, a Joint Study Group (JSG) was set up to make recommendations on how to take the two economies beyond trade towards greater integration and to impart renewed impetus and synergy to the bilateral economic interaction, through the conclusion of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). [23] Both sides have committed to an agreement consistent with the rules of the WTO. While the numerous shortcomings of the existing FTA must be remedied, its evident achievements can be built upon with relative ease to formulate the new agreement.The required institutional support is already in place with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Ceylon Chamber Commerce, which function as the focal points for economic cooperation, as well as the Indo-Lanka Joint Commission and the FTA’s Working Group on Customs. The first round of technical-level negotiations (TLNs) on the CEPA commenced in February 2005, somewhat delayed after changes in government in both countries. Seven rounds of negotiations have been completed by 2006. The CEPA is to cover trade in goods and services, investment liberalization, and economic cooperation.The negotiations on goods focus primarily on reducing the ISFTA’s negative lists, relaxing ROO criteria, signing mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) on product standards and certification procedures, and concluding the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on consumer protection and legal metrology. Particular attention will be given to developing the supply side of the Sri Lankan economy. The CEPA will be notified under the GATT’s Article XXIV[2 4], which covers substantial trade instead of under the â€Å"Enabling Clause† which provides more flexibility to etermine the trade coverage between developing countries. In a nutshell, the main objectives of the CEPA are to: 1. Deepen existing preferential trade between the two countries 2. Reduce the negative lists of the ILBFTA 3. Relax ROO criteria 4. Liberalize the services sector beyond the coverage of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 5. Liberalize investment 6. Facilitate economic cooperation as an impetus for liberalization of the services and investment sectors, with the Indian Line of Credit to play a crucial role. [25] CONCLUSIONThe operationalisation of the ISFTA in 2000 was an important step taken by the two countries to harness the economic complementarities between them. As expected, post  ­ISFTA bilateral trade performance between India and Sri Lanka indicates that exports and imports have grown considerably, accompanied by significant prod uct diversification. Despite the fact that the ISFTA was confined to trade in goods, increases in trade links between India and Sri Lanka have been further triggered by large investment flows as well as services integration between two countries over time.Nevertheless, investment flows have been mostly one sided as would be expected, flowing from India to Sri Lanka, where the bulk of Indian investment in manufacturing in the post  ­ ISFTA phase has come from Indian investors keen to take advantage of preferential duty access to the Indian market in key sectors such as Vanaspathi and copper. Nevertheless, the potential for greater linkages in investment and services has been fairly obvious based on recent performance, and in part has encouraged both countries to further deepen integration in these areas under the CEPA framework.It is evident from detailed analysis of post ­ISFTA trade flows that Sri Lanka’s exports to India have expanded significantly. However, it is also clear that the overwhelming share of the increase has originated in a few commodities, raising concerns about the sustainability of the growth momentum in the long term. The bulk of the exports have been concentrated in two items, namely the vegetable fats and oils and copper and articles of copper, which are not considered to be sustainable in the long run.It is by resolving these issues that the movement towards CEPA could be put on fast track to make it a reality. CEPA has the potential to break new ground in South Asia’s forward movement towards economic prosperity. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Mukherjee, I. N. , T. Jayawardena and S. Kelegama (2002), ‘India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement: An Assessment of Potential and Impact’, SANEI completed study (www. saneinetwork. net ). 2. The Graduate Institute Geneva, HEID Working Paper No: 04/2010: An Econometric Analysis of the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement. 3. Kelegama, S. nd Mukherji I. N. (2007), India-Sri Lanka Bilat eral Free Trade Agreement: Six Years Performance and Beyond, RIS DP# 119, February 2007, Research and Information System for Developing Countries, New Delhi. 4. JSG (2003), India-Sri Lanka Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, Joint Study Group, October 2003, http://www. ips. lk/publications/etc/cepa_reprot/islcepa. pdf 5. Jayawardena, L. et al. (1993), Indo-Sri Lanka Economic Cooperation: Facilitating Trade Expansion through a Reciprocal Preference Scheme, The United Nations University, WIDER, Helsinki. 6. An Act of Faith? † ten years of the India-Sri Lanka FTA, Law & Society Trust, Sri Lanka, March 2010 (PDF File) 7. â€Å"India – Sri Lanka FTA: Lessons for SAFTA†, CUTS International, Dushni Weerakoon, Jayanthi Thennakoon. (PDF File) 8. Panchamukhi, V. R. et al. (1992), Indo-Sri Lanka Economic Cooperation: An Operational Programme, the United Nations University, WIDER, Helsinki. 9. Taneja, N. , A. Mukherjee, S. Jayanetti, and T. Jayawardena (2004), â₠¬ËœIndo-Sri Lanka Trade in Services: FTA II and Beyond’, SANEI completed study (www. saneinetwork. net ). ———————– 1] An Econometric Analysis of India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement, HEID Working Paper No: 04/2010 [2] See Shome (2001); Harilal and Joseph (1999); Taneja (2001). [3] Several Free Trade Agreements related to goods trade are more of Preferential Trade Agreements rather than Free Trade Agreements. In the case of Indo-Sri Lanka, the terms CEPA and FTA are interchangeable. [4] The SAARC Preferential Trading Agreement (SAPTA) was signed in April 1993 and came into operation in December 1995. [5] RIS-DP # 119: India-Sri Lanka Bilateral Free trade Agreement, Saman Kelegama & Indra Nath Mukherjee. 6] Available on the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka website, http://www. boi. lk [7] Supra, note 5. [8] Supra note 5. [9] Indo-Sri Lanka FTA: An Assessment of Potential and Impact, Saman Kelegama & Indra Nath Mukherjee. [ 10] Supra note 9. [11] See Jayawardena, L. et al. (1993) and Panchamukhi, V. R. et al. (1992). [12] Supra note 5. [13] India had committed to the WTO that it would remove non-tariff barriers by 2004. [14] Supra note 9. [15] The data has been obtained from the Ministry of Commerce (India) electronic database over the period of 1996-97 to 2000-01. 16] Items, which are considered sensitive to the domestic industry by each partner to FTA, are included in the respective negative list. The items in negative list of Sri Lanka are not entitled for any duty concessions for imports from India. The same rule applies in case of India‘s negative list for Sri Lan kan products. [17] â€Å"An Act of Faith? † ten years of the India-Sri Lanka FTA, Law & Society Trust, Sri Lanka, March 2010. [18] Supra note 17. [19] Supra note 9. [20] Supra note 1. [21] Joint Study Group Report on India-Sri Lanka Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (JSG, 2003), can be found at : http://www. ps. l k/news/newsarchive/2003/20102003_islcepa_final/islcepa. pdf#search='India%20Sri%20Lanka%20Trade%20Study' [22] Supra note 1. [23] Supra note 21. [24] GATT– General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. [25] The Indian Line of Credit is a credit facility granted by India to other developing countries to purchase goods and services from India, usually with a long re-payment period. Since January 2001, Sri Lanka has borrowed a total of US $281 million for the purchase of food, petroleum, buses, roofing sheets, and consulting services.