ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Abstract The current COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world’s economy significantly because of social distancing policies that prevent many companies from working effectively. However, it is likely to have a particularly significant impact on airlines, which have lost a significant portion of traffic due to travel bans. Moreover, the industry is already known for its high rates of closures, mergers, and acquisitions as a result of the intense competition that takes place in it. This study conducts a literature review that explores the impact that COVID-19 has had on the airlines sector so far and the likely outcome of the crisis. Introduction The aviation industry generally struggles to resist external shocks because of its specific properties. Viral epidemics are particularly dangerous in this regard, as airlines enable rapid transit across the world, which enables infected people to arrive in new locations before the systems there are ready to respond. As a result, the current COVID-19 pandemic affects aviation particularly strongly, with many countries minimizing air traffic or banning it entirely. The number of customers has dropped sharply for most airlines, and the canceled flights require refunds to be conducted. Many companies may have to adopt extreme measures to survive the pandemic, and numerous others will likely close. This paper will attempt to discuss the weaknesses of the airlines sector concerning epidemics and explain the impact that COVID-19 has had on them. Methodology The descriptive approach is appropriate because the research attempts to obtain an overview of the situation. The study will use a qualitative approach and conduct an extensive literature review and analysis. It is likely too early to attempt to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on the industry because the situation is still developing and will likely cause further damage. In line with this reasoning, the study will take on an exploratory design. The sources used in the paper will include scholarly articles, books, and reports from non-commercial organizations. The criterion for their selection is relevance based on topics such as COVID-19, airlines, and epidemics, in general. Databases such as JSTOR and Google Scholar have been used to look for articles and reports. Google Books were used to find books that would be relevant to the topic, which the author would then procure in their entirety if available. Content analysis will be used to derive information from the gathered literature. Results The airline industry is currently in a volatile state due to its continued transition to a new model that follows deregulation. As Budd and Ison (2016) claim, following deregulation, low-cost carriers emerged and began taking the market share of traditional high-cost providers away with their superior prices. Their efforts succeeded, but then, these companies began competing with each other, and, in the absence of significant differentiating factors, they began lowering thei
The question over whether a robot can honestly feel human emotions remains a theme throughout science fiction literature as being among the principle characteristics separating humans from machines provided with any sort of artificial intelligence or simulation of life. For some, the concept of a ‘perfect’ human leads its way to the creation of a perfect technologically utopian society. Technologically utopian societies “are set in the future, when it is believed that advanced science and technology will allow utopian living standards; for example, the absence of death and suffering; changes in human nature and the human condition. These utopian societies tend to change what ‘human’ is all about. Technology has affected the way humans have lived to such an extent that normal functions, like sleep, eating or even reproduction, has been replaced by an artificial means” (“Utopia”, 2006). In this view, the robots are nearly indistinguishable from humans in the way they function and in their ability to respond in much the way humans might, with only slight differences circulating around the ability to feel emotion. This question of whether or to what degree a man-made creation can feel human emotions plays a large role in the interpretation of how this society develops as well as the development of the creations themselves. The judgment call is generally made on the quality of life of the humans, with little to no regard for the lifestyle and options available to the robots who have achieved a higher level of existence. Several films have been created to illustrate these viewpoints, such as I Robot starring Will Smith in which a robot must convince a skeptic that he is able to feel. At the beginning of this film, it becomes clear that society has become dependent upon server robots. One robot, though, has been provided with a higher form of programming that is intended not only to simulate life, but to also possess the ability to learn, feel and express emotion, blurring the boundaries between life and not-life. Although most people tend to appreciate the robots for the comforts the machinery provides, it is their inability to understand human capabilities and emotions that has Detective Del Spooner frustrated. This is made clear when Spooner remembers what happened to his arm, forcing it to be replaced with an artificial one and officially making him a cyborg. In this flashback, it is learned that Spooner was involved in a car accident in which his car and another car were swept into some water. He could see a little girl in the other car trying to get out, but the rescue robot was only capable of calculating probability of survival and Spooner was the better bet. Spooner’s skepticism regarding human kind’s dependency on robots is realized within the action of the remainder of the film as the utopia of the opening changes into dystopia when the robots stage their coup. “A dystopia is usually characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government, or some other
The discount window is a monetary policy tool (managed by central banks) that permits genuine institutions to scrounge money from the central bank, mostly on the basis of short-term, in order to obtain fleeting paucities of liquidity, which may be caused by either internal or external intervals. The interest that is charged by the central bank is known as the base rate, discount rate or repo rate. However, the borrower must provide collateral on such loan (Federal Reserve 1). The main idea behind the discount window is to give banks liquidity whenever they necessitate it without making them much dependent upon it. In 2007, the Federal Reserve successfully did this by decreasing or increasing the discount rate. This means that by decreasing the discount rate, the Federal Reserve is attempting to enhance the development by making liquidity easier to be obtained, and by increasing, it indicates that Federal Reserve is worried about inflationary on the economy and that is why it is endeavoring to decrease the amount of money in the economy (Bogle 12). What Was Happening to the Banks at That Time? The financial crisis of 2007 was stimulated by the shortfall of liquidity in the US banking system. This caused large financial institutions in US to get themselves into hot water and even some collapsing. The financial sector was impacted by the world crisis in February, 2007. The financial crisis was caused by the major loss which had been reported by the world’s largest bank (HSBC). The bank had lost holdings by $10.5 billion. This led to the crisis which had been compared with the Great Depression. For about 100 mortgage companies had to report about selling their activities or about their shut down throughout 2007. As crisis continued to dig out, other financial institutions decided to merge or announce to look for merger partners. The top managers (such CEO’s) who could not bear the situation, made a decision of relinquishing their jobs, a good example is the CEO’s of Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, who relinquish within two weeks (Dozark-Frideres 1). Moreover, this financial crisis of 2007 caused huge panic in financial markets and as a result, a lot of investors were totally discourage, hence they began taking away their money from shrinking mortgage bonds and equities and invest it in other secure ways, such as commodities as “store of value.” However, due to overwhelming number of investors in commodities following the collapse of financial firms, the speculation of commodity has resulted to food crisis and an increase of oil prices, because of commodity super-cycle. In addition, the financial investors who are looking for fast returns have taken away trillions of money from the risky mortgage bonds and equities, making some to invest in raw materials and food (Bogle 45). In 2006, provisions for prospect defaults and mortgage defaults influenced the income at the 8533 depository institutions of the United States. These defaults caused the decrease from $35.2 billion to $646 million by the FDIC. This re
Introduction Communication is a complex process that involves encoding and decoding of information. Listening, which is one of the communication elements, determines how effective the communication process is. Most people do not know how they can improve their listening skills in order to perfect communication. The process of improving listening requires one to develop a specific point of view to use in evaluating a message’s content. Among all communication skills, the art of listening is less emphasized. In most cases when dealing with communication skills problems, most people overlook listening (McKelvie, 2009). It is however important for communicators to understand that listening promotes good communication. As a good listener, one is required to differentiate the speaker’s emotional and delivery elements from the substance and content of the message (McKelvie, 2009). Most people are unable to overcome the distraction associated with the speaker’s emotional elements and thus end up receiving the wrong information. Main Part To avoid being distracted by delivery and emotional elements which tend to cover the message’s content, it is important for a listener to learn how to differentiate facts and ideas. Generally, a listener should understand that listening entails more than message delivery. When listening, a listener should be keen to identify the core information. To avoid emotional element distraction, it’s important for a listener to bear in mind that emotional and delivery elements are not included in the message as elements for emphasizing the substance of the message, but rather as elements to help one in identifying the main substance of the message. According to McKelvie, (2009), a listener should try to identify the content of message rather than dwelling on how the message is delivered. To avoid distraction by the delivery and emotional elements a listener should develop a habit of developing responses about the issues being discussed from the speaker’s messages. In addition, to be more focused on the message’s content and substance rather than its emotional elements, a listener should always try to find the answers for any questions arising from the speech. Another way through which a listener can learn how to improve communication is by trying to analyse the message or speech’s content from someone else’s point of view (McKelvie, 2009). Analysing the message using a different person’s point of view increases the listener’s horizon which enables him to have a better understanding of the specific topic. In order to avoid distractions when listening and improve on identifying the message content, a listener should learn when and how to focus on facts. Listeners should always bear in mind that facts are generated from ideas (McKelvie, 2009). Since the process of identifying facts is a complex one, listeners need to learn how to give the speaker undivided attention. Making notes while listening can help a listener improve his listening skills (McKelvie, 2009). Concl
From the time a human being is conceived, there is an urge to discover self identity in the social world. As a result, one is able to acquire and relate information about themselves in such a manner that allows self discovery and definition. This information allows them to have a better understanding of their immediate social surroundings and how they relate to it. Thus, a developmental process that promotes learning, identification of goals, affective and cognitive skills, social skills, and psychological relations (Myers 2010). Therefore, the concept of self can be defined as a process where one is able to gather relevant knowledge in the respect of abilities, societal role, belief in personality, and generally how they feel about themselves. Simply, it is a way in which a person can define himself or herself according to self knowledge and how other people regard the person. Hence, levels of identity differ as the person grows due to information gathered with time. As a young child the idea of self is more centralized to knowledge of skill, possession, and physical prowess. During middle childhood the child develops a psychological approach and begins to socially compare himself with the immediate surrounding. For example, one can say that he has blue eyes, I am tall, and I like crying. Another example about self is ‘I want to be a doctor because I perform well in sciences’. About the social surrounding a person can learn that ‘people say that I am very gullible’ or ‘people think I do not like jokes’. Concept of self is focused, learned with time, and organized in a dynamic perspective that infers an innate expression of a person (Omrod 2006). When I began to wonder about my inner self, sometimes I was sure to understand the real me and have a divided definition of who I am. Amazingly there were close connections to my immediate surroundings and this helped me have a vivid identity. The foremost things in my mind gave me a brief definition of who I am. This is related to my university friends, my favorite games, and the focus on being an upright person. The reality of self gives a yearning to have self esteem. The importance of self is that I always learn in a deeper sense when I get angry and ashamed about various happenings. Certain pressing features like social identity and self ego really improve my personal, self, and spiritual growth. This all culminate in my day to day authentic life experience. The ideas that I regularly receive from myself and a few from friends dictates my life experience. I came to learn about three reasons why self identity dictates my life experiences and its relation in developing my self esteem and self efficacy. The self definitions that I had about myself were sometimes irrational. The ego of what ‘I thought I am’ came to give me the realization that ‘I am not always what I think I am’. There was always something larger in the mere description of myself. A deeper reality of me was being revealed at a greater depth than what I identified myself with. For exam
The famous motto of the European expansion defined centuries of conquests and explorations of uncharted lands. However, the phrase itself seems to be rather vague, especially for modern audiences. In eh specified context, “God” may refer to the erroneous idea that the European race was destined for great accomplishments by the divine power and, therefore, was entitled to other lands for the same reason. The specified misjudgment affected multiple ethnic minorities that were conquered and forced to follow the rules established by European colonists. In turn, “gold” as an important impetus for colonists to follow through with their undertaking implied the supposed financial reward that the specified actions were expected to entail. The feeling of entitlement that fuelled the colonists’ actions defined their intentions to a significant degree. Finally, the concept of glory as the title of conquerors was also seen as an important factor in pursuing the colonist ideas (Lewis 12). Thus, without the reformation that redefined European values and their vision of themselves, the conquest would have been impossible. The Meaning of Being Discovered The idea of discovery as applied to geographic exploration, and especially the study of the areas that have already been inhabited, seems to be a deeply flawed concept. Specifically, the concept of discovery tends to describe solely the experience of colonists and, thus, defines a particular area or country in relation to them as opposed to the people that live in it. As a result, the feelings and needs of indigenous populations tend to be disregarded, as a brief overview of key historical events shows. Namely, indigenous people inhabiting a particular area are unlikely to view the process of colonists invading their land as a discovery; nor they are willing to define themselves and their land based on the idea of geographic expansion by colonists, which must be how the inhabitants of Hispaniola felt when Columbus arrived (Lewis 17). Furthermore, the effects of the specified perspective can be found in present-day phenomena, such as gentrification, which can be seen as an attempt at expanding at the expense of the lower class. Work Cited ​Lewis, Gavin. ​ WCIV Volume II. ​Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2012.
Statement of the legal issue Sally is used motorbike seller. She intends to sell a Cadell Evans ‘GF’ refurbished bike, and thus invites offers through online advertisement. Two buyers Peter and Burt show interest and are willing to buy the bike at a reduced price. Sally rejects Burt’s offer of $5000, leading to Burt’s withdrawals. However, Sally needs to sell the bike urgently and is forced to accept Peter’s offer of $4000. She communicates to peter in a timely manner, through email. Peter initially rejects the offer which infuriates Sally. The rule of law The principal issue is whether the element of agreement in this case permits a legally binding contract. The Australian law provides specific elements through which a contract is formed. These include agreement, consideration and “intent to create legal relations” (Thorpe, Thorpe and Bailey 1999, 42). In this case, it is evident that intent and consideration do exist. However, the legal enforceability of the agreement needs to be established. In forming an agreement, an offer has to be made. A valid offer includes specific terms for the offer, and is different from an invitation to treat. An invitation to treat is a call to others to submit offers. Advertisements are treated as invitations to treat. According to Thorpe, Thorpe and Bailey (1999, 44), acceptance to an offer is deemed to exist only if it corresponds with the offer value. In this case, a counter offer makes the previous offer null and void. If the offeror and the offeree fail to establish a “meeting of minds” with regards to the new offer, then any of the party is free to withdraw, without incurring any legal consequences. Helewitz (2010, 23) asserts that acceptance of an offer ought to be effectively communicated to the offeror. Improvements in communication technology have altered business communication, and as such communication through emails, faxes and other forms of modern communication is deemed appropriate (O’Shea and Skeahan n.d., 2). In the case of Reese Bros Plastics Ltd v Hamon-Sobelco Australia Pty Ltd (1988) 5 BPR 97325; 15-305 , Reese Bros Plastics Ltd contested the use fax as a means of accepting an offer made. In its ruling, the court acknowledged that any mode of communication similar to mail may be used to communicate acceptance. However, this rule does not apply to instantaneous communication. There are controversies with
The waves of Puerto Rican migration can be classified into three distinct periods. These periods provide an illustration of the historical context and the reasons why the Puerto Ricans left the island. For instance, both the economic and political relationships prompted the movement. The Puerto Ricans started migrating during the period between 1900 and 1945. The movement was mainly due to political and social economical reasons. During this time, many workers were greatly affected in addition to the fact that economic infrastructure was deteriorating. The collapse in infrastructure was attributed to the poor performance of sugarcane industry. The San Ciriaco Hurricane witnessed in the year 1899 led to the death of many workers deployed in the sugarcane industry since most of the workers in this industry were Puerto Ricans. Their migration was also triggered by their desire to work in foreign establishments. The early migrants commonly referred to as ”Pioneros” settled in the new York City and immediately formed Puerto Rican communities that were bonded by common geographical and historical past, customs, language, traditions, and social lifestyles (Torres-Padilla and Rivera 2). Relationships and struggles After their migration, the lifestyle of the Puerto Ricans in the New York City proved to be very difficult. During the early 1920s, the Puerto Rican community settled on the eastern side along the second and third avenues. After a while, the house industry realized a substantial growth whereby it was possible to include grocery stores and barbershops. In addition, there was entertainment in homes which accommodated birthday parties, wedding ceremonies and holidays (Whalen and Vázquez-Hernández 70). The Puerto Ricans experienced lot of challenges as they struggled to sustain themselves. Due to their unskilled labor force, the Puerto Ricans were exposed to hard tasks while being offered little pay. For instance, one of the jobs offered to them by the industrialists was removing glued labels from bottles. This process required them to put their hands in cold water to prevent them from making scratches on the bottles when removing the labels. Those working during the night shift were exposed to lot of cold since they could not afford coats or hand gloves to keep them warm during the winter season (Whalen and Vázquez-Hernández 72). Some workers also complained that at times they were required to do extra work like washing dishes, clearing the snow sidewalk and trashing. They were not allowed to make any complains and whoever could be spotted complaining risked being tossed unceremoniously and would not get access to the wages that he/she had wor