ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Clay Tokens and the Origin of Numeracy Tokens were minute arithmetical clay items (cylinders, tetrahedrons, cones, spheres, etc.) that were used before the invention and adoption of writing. Clay tokens, therefore, were three-dimensional shapes that dated back to around 8000 BCE and varied in shapes and sizes. The two commonly used types of tokens were plain and complex. The plain ones existed earlier than the complex variant. Unlike the complex variants that were decorated, plain tokens were simple shapes without decorations. In those days, the widespread use of tokens was mainly for trade as a medium of exchange since they were a precise representation of the items being traded. Their different shapes represented a variety of items like a bag of wheat or sheep. When the tokens being exchanged were many, they were placed in a clay jar or ball and given to the seller, who opened the ball to verify the number of tokens. Due to social and economic advancement, the complex tokens were modified with impressions and incisions with varying significance. People also made impressions (before the clay dried) on the outer part according to the number of tokens inside. This was meant to serve as a reference in case of a dispute since the ball could not be broken to show the tokens inside. This practice marked the beginning of writing on clay tablets. The complex tokens were used to keep records of produced goods as their complex, and standard nature made them more useful than twigs and pebbles. These tokens were then kept in clay envelopes or on strings for security. Several tokens represented cuneiform signs. Scribes made several incisions on the tokens to show the number of products it represented as well as diagrams symbolizing the item being exchanged (such as a symbol of a goat or sheep). This marked the onset of numerac
Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen, who sold the earliest PC lingo program to MITS Computer as Microsoft, formed Microsoft Corporation in the year 1975. The firm’s core business is formulating software products. These include operating systems, as well as server applications for both commercial and individual consumers. They also produce software development equipment and internet software tools. Earning over $32 billion in revenues annually, Bill Gates is slated to be one of the richest persons in the world today. Virtually all personal computers in the world have used or are using at least one product from Microsoft. Microsoft has succeeded in setting a fast pace in the computer software industry and in creating markets in the process. Five years after its birth, Microsoft had a sales branch based in Japan, and the firm was earning $1 million in terms of proceeds. IBM provided Microsoft with its first significant break when IBM operated MS-DOS as its operating system. Under the agreement, Microsoft had an advantage as it could sell MS-DOS to other consumers, both corporate and retail. The firm came up with the innovative product – Microsoft Office. This was in 1989. The program took over the market, and it topped the charts in Microsoft products. It was their darling project. It was initially a discounted or low priced product until the later versions incorporated the majority of the programs such as Word, Power Point, and Excel, as well as e-mail and the Office professional version that incorporated the Access d-base management program. This was all-inclusive in the standard, shared aspects. Before the year 1990, Microsoft was first and foremost a broker to hardware makers. This changed after 1990, when the company’s sales volumes came from direct client sales. In the same year, Microsoft hit the $ billion mark in revenues, and the number of employees was over 5,000 Microsoft programming products include BASIC, FORTRAN, and COBOL. In 1983, Word was launched, but it only became a success in 1986. Excel, the spreadsheet program, was developed in 1986, and was able to bring in huge revenues in billions of dollars throughout its history; Microsoft has had a reputation of releasing products that are perceived to be inferior compared to others in the market. Even when criticized heavily, Gates would doggedly hang on and work on improving the product until it became a hit. Microsoft’s principal divisions include Client; Server & Tools; Information Worker; Business Solutions; MSN; Mobile
Introduction In the late 19 th and early 20 th century, the larger cities in the United States were governed according to the principles of political machines politics. This unofficial system of a political organization is based on patronage. The latter implies the ability to do favors when holding public office. Political machines often had bosses. The rapid urbanization brought changes that the boss and his/her machine should have coped with. Especially it is true concerning the problems that the official city government could not solve. Still, there is a view according to which the political machines were parallel governments. Their function was to meet the needs of the public and the public, in its turn, offered its allegiance and votes (Urban Bosses and Machine Politics). Sometimes the system of something for something was supplemented by threats of various kinds towards those who attempted to step outside it. Main body One of the functions of political machines was serving immigrants to the USA. For the immigrants, the machines were vehicles for political enfranchisement. The immigrants did not have a sense of civic duty and traded votes for power. Irish immigrants were the brightest example of how immigrants could benefit from the machines. Still, the party machines’ care of immigrants was not permanent, as machines were simply interested in maintaining a minimally winning amount of support. When this support was acquired there was no necessity any longer to recruit new members. The constant corruption that was the basis for the political machines gave rise to many reform movements. American citizens were ready to tolerate some “reasonable” level of corruption, but when the level appeared to be too high, they balked it. Observing this pattern urban reformers had more power to succeed in seizing the power from the machines. They used to cost as a trigger for their reforms. But even successful reform movements did not always lead to efficient and less expensive government. During the Progressive Era, for instance, inflation led to costs that resulted in higher taxes (Urban Bosses and Machine Politics). Still, reformers had other goals apart from the establishment of a less expensive government. The morale of the community was also a point of their concern. The reforms that they advocated were directed at prostitution, drinking, commercial issues, and leisure activities. The reform movement supported a set of social reforms such as factory safety laws, minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws, and protective legislation for women and children (Urban Bosses and Machine Politics). Conclusion In general, the changes that the political machines and the reformists advocated were rather similar. Though the machines cared less about the citizens’ morality than the reformists did, both systems of the political organization brought about improving the quality of urban life as it guaranteed them community support during elections. There was never a sharp line between the machines and the reformers that contributed to their long existence up to the twentieth century. Works Cited “Urban Bosses
Introduction I took an assessment of my leadership practices using the online Leadership Practices Inventory developed by Kouzes and Posner and received a feedback report. The report included an analysis of the responses from each of the people who participated and provided a comparison with my leadership practices assessment. As George, McLean, and Craig (2008) point out, “One of the hardest things for all of us is to see ourselves as others see us” (p.53). This paper discusses the findings from the report. The LPI analysis requires feedback from three categories of people to provide “360-degree feedback”. In this report, the terms “superiors”, “peers”, and “juniors” represent the three categories. “Superiors” refer to immediate bosses such as the supervisor to whom an individual reports. “Peers” refer to people at the same level of authority. The influence exerted on peers is majorly a persuasive one, since neither the individual nor their peers report to one another. Finally, “juniors” refer to the people who report to the person under assessment. They provide the best indication of one’s ability to inspire others. However, they may provide a flattering response if they think that it will affect their relationship with their superior. LPI Participants My LPI assessment involved 12 respondents. In the “superior” category, I received feedback from my immediate boss, who is also my uncle. He is the head of the finance and marketing department of a business conglomerate in Saudi Arabia that has interests in real estate, gas stations, and supermarkets. I chose to include him in the LPI process because he knows me, and has been a role model to me. He carries a lot of influence over me. Five of the respondents were my peers. They are people who were in charge of specific areas but we did not report to one other. They are my brothers and cousins. They have interacted with me in formal and informal settings. This interaction makes them uniquely suitable for the exercise since they know me well. The third category is for people who worked under me. Six of them participated in the exercise. These were mainly close friends. I chose these friends because I was sure they would not be afraid to mention my weaknesses. Report General Findings The LPI report clustered the responses into five leadership practice areas. Six questions were addressing each area. The best score I received was on the practice dubbed, “Enable”, on which I had an average score of 46.8. The questions under this practice related to my ability to help others to do their job. The second highest score came from the practice labeled, “Encourage”. It referred to the act of encouraging others. The average score was 44.5. The practices labeled “Challenge” and “Model” received the same average scores, at 42.2. These two related to my ability to contest the efficacy of processes and the degree to which I provided an example to others. The lowest score came from the practice labeled, “Inspire”, which received a mean s
Introduction In today’s competitive business environment, it is especially important for organizations to develop and implement strategies that enhance their competitive advantage in the marketplace. Organizational sustainability through the development of core competencies and reassessment of management strategies must rank high on the agenda of management to achieve performance improvement and success in the business arena. Through a critical analysis of the article ‘ Globalizing Volkswagen: Creating Excellence on All Fronts ,’ this paper purposes to demonstrate how transformation in VWs organizational structure, systems, HR policies, and corporate culture ensured successful implementation of its strategies. Organizational Structure From the article, it is clear that one of the reasons why Volkswagen (VW) financial performance was deteriorating prior to the arrival in 1993 of Ferdinand Piech was an organizational structure that was unresponsive to the needs of competitive business environment. For instance, although VW manufactured 30 vehicle models on 16 platforms, there was minimal integration among the brands, resulting in wastage of human and physical resources (Radler 6). VW Group had acquired other brand names, including Skoda, Seat, Bentley, and Bugatti, and owned a minority stake in Scania (Radler 7). In total, the Group ran seven brand names, which was rather complicated than previously thought. Piech structured the Group’s operations in such a way that Board members were put in charge of particular brand names, and it worked (Radler 16) Piech saw opportunities in such an expansive organizational structure. Despite the challenges occasioned by the economies of scale, VW emphasized on keeping the brand names distinct to have the capacity to serve all important car markets with outstanding brands (Radler 11). In essence, the ‘full product range’ approach bore fruits for VW in terms of successful implementation of its strategies. In the 1990s, VW embraced physical differentiation of its range of products due to the twin reasons of increased price differentiation between products and increased fragmentation of markets (Radler 12). Again, VW’s huge organizational structure allowed an enabling environment for the physical differentiation, especially in its VW and Audi dealerships, inarguably placing the Group ahead of competition. The differentiation, more than anything else, assisted in arranging and formalizing the many compon
Introduction The business environment today is increasingly becoming challenging as new firms continue to come up targeting the same markets and emerging trends bring about the need to constantly change operational strategies. Firms are keen on protecting their market share, and that means that they have to produce quality products at competitive prices. In such a challenging business environment, project management is becoming a popular tool for managing competition. Instead of having a continuous production as used to be the case traditionally, firms are now breaking their operational activities into specific projects with clear timeline and goals. In each project, the top management is interested in ensuring that the desired goal is achieved in the best way possible. That is why the project life cycle and schedule delay analysis have become relevant in the modern business environment. In this paper, the researcher seeks to explain different project life cycles and schedule delay analysis. Project Life Cycle Understanding the Concept of a Project According to Shermon and Gilmour (2017), the term project refers to “a piece of planned activities that should be completed within a specified period at a given budget, and meant to achieve a specific goal.” A project brings together individuals who share skills to pool their effort in achieving the desired objective within an organization. The project manager is expected to supervise such activities and to make sure that the materials needed are made available as may be desirable (Shermon & Gilmour (2017). Application of Different Project Life Cycles Project life cycle refers to different phases that a project always goes through, from the time of its initiation to the time of its completion (Syed, 2012). Different projects m
Introduction Close attention to women in entrepreneurship has emerged from the recognition of the fact that women have become increasingly interested in starting up their own business. Global trends of women in private spheres of business witness the overwhelming percentage of women coming into business; the statistical data shows the female dominance in initiating business over the male entrepreneurship activity. As noted by Dyson (2003), the 2002 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor showed that 38% of New Zealand entrepreneurs are women. This data supports the prior findings of McGregor and Tweed (2000) that twenty women started up enterprises a day in 2000, representing 40% of all entrepreneurs of the country, as compared to 35% of Canada’s entrepreneurship. Though the UK tendencies show a steady decline in women’s participation in the private business sector, the late 1990s’ data showed that they used to comprise nearly a half of all private businesses (Fielden, Davidson, Dawe, & Makin, 2003). These facts the literature methodology employed in the present work: identifying the recurrent topics in national and international research on female entrepreneurship, referring the conclusions and generalizations to New Zealand situation. This statistical information serves as obvious evidence of the growing motivation women have to start up their own business. However, there have emerged a number of discrepancies in entrepreneurship area because of the specificity of female entrepreneurship. The claims that private business research is male-biased have also undermined the viability of traditional approaches to research. Thus, a new methodological perspective is required for studying the dominant tendencies in female entrepreneurship; the most important fields demanding specific, female-focused attention, include the variety of barriers existing for female entrepreneurs at all stages of business management, the specificity of female motivation in b
Analysis Looking at the Spiritual Needs Assessment, it should be mentioned that the questions were asked to a child, a girl of 14 years, therefore, some answers seem rather contestable, however, it is clear that religion plays important role in her life. Additionally, she is skeptically directed at medical service as she is sure that if people suffer they are punished by God. However, she does not think about such facts as ecology, various diseases which have been provoked by food and the surrounding environment, unhealthy behavior, and other supportive factors. Having conducted this assessment, it becomes obvious that a girl has much devotion to religion, however, the difference in her spiritual consideration with the religious views of her parents may be the specific period in her life when growing up adolescents want to make everything different from their parents being sure that they know what they do and it is much better. Considering the very assessment and the way it was conducted, I would like to say that I am satisfied with it. The assessment of spirituality is the assessment of the religious considerations and beliefs (Skalla, & McCoy, 2006). The questions were properly formulated and the answers to them were given with ease, without particular pressure. However, I still have some particular aspects which seem problematic and I would pay more attention to them in the future. I am sure that the staff is to be interested in asking the questions and in this case, patients would answer them with greater desire (Griffin, & Yancey, 2009). I have not noticed much interest in answering questions as the interviewer was not really interested in asking them. I definitely agree with Oakley, Katz, Sauer, Dent, and Millar (2010) who are sure that “the impact of spirituality and its role in patient care” (p.46). Still, I failed to understand how religious life affects a patient in detail. I could not get whether the support of a pastor is important for a child or staying in a hospital she needs to be alone and to think about her personal problems. I face several barriers while conducting this assessment. It is difficult for me to communicate with children about religion. I am a religious person and I know what my considerations are. Speaking with a girl I felt that I cannot understand her due to differences in religious views. I
Introduction Human factors are an important point when considering risk management in marine navigation. One of the problems associated with human factors in marine navigation is fatigue among bridge team members. Researchers who reviewed thousands of cases of accidents in marine navigation concluded that fatigue was “the direct cause of the accident or a factor contributing thereto” due to “the falling asleep of the watch officer or a decrease in alertness due to fatigue” (Finland 2008, p. 5). According to John et al. (2013), fatigue is not an infrequent phenomenon among the personnel employed in marine navigation, and this is especially the case for bridge team members, due to the peculiarities of the maritime profession and the increased and sometimes uncontrolled workloads they often face. Seafarer fatigue throughout the shipping industry has currently become a global concern, due to its potential economic and environmental costs. The following project aims at researching the causes of the problem of fatigue in bridge team members, and offering the solution for this problem, along with the significance and challenges of implementing this solution. Human Physiology and Anthropometry The probability of fatigue in maritime occupations is considerably increased, due to the influence of factors specific to this field of industry. Adaptation and the ceiling effect are the most influential of these factors (Smith & Allen 2012, p.16). According to Smith and Allen (2012), another contributing factor is the fact that “Excessive working hours are a problem in the seafaring industry, hidden by the fact that a concerning number of crew falsify audited records” (p. 16). Remarkably, these researchers have also found that the workers who repeatedly work even a couple of hours more are subjected to a greater risk of fatigue (Smith & Allen 2012). According to Smith (2015), “fatigue is a leading cause or contributing factor in, maritime accidents, collisions, and groundings” (p. 1). Increased fatigue in crew members onboard results not only in accidents
Introduction Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a crucial role in world politics and social development of the nations. Nongovernmental organizations, such as transnational corporations and environmental interest groups, are major actors in global environmental politics. The relationship between these two sets of institutions and the Third World is generally reflective of the global economic power structure. Public–private partnerships exist beyond the nation-state as well as within it, with intergovernmental organizations contracting with think-tanks for policy advice, and with NGOs for the delivery of services. At one end of our spectrum lie companies and organizations the activities of which meet with full approval and support from one or more national governments; at the other groups and movements seen by the governments of most territories in which they seek to operate as threats to established order (Bennett, p. 74). Even here there are intermediate categories, with states sponsoring subversive groups (including ‘state-sponsored terrorism’) to undermine other governments. The aim of the paper is to discuss and analyze the role and impact of NGOs and their main activities in the Third world countries. Role of NGOs on the Global Scale It is known that the parallel development in transnational elite networks, advocacy groups and social movements partly reflected the impact of technological development: in raising new issues of nuclear safety, ethics or environmental degradation; and in creating new opportunities for transnational networking through the spread of new means of communication and transportation. It also partly reflected, in its turn, the loss of faith in state direction and state action throughout the advanced industrial democracies – and to some extent beyond (Bennett 66). First, there are the quintessential NGOs themselves, groups of liberal and cosmopolitan intent, who have, from the l960s onwards, come to occupy an increasingly important international role: OXFAM, Amnesty International, Greenpeace and other groups concerned with ‘good’ causes – development, human rights, women’s rights, anti-racism and so forth. Some are explicitly organized transnationally, some are located within specific national polities but have clear transnational agendas. All seek, be it noted, not to supplant states, but to influence their activities (Bebbington, p. 25). Such relational, morally compelling, and even openly religious help is not the province of government’s own programs. It is, however, the natural mode of operation of nongovernmental groups, from nonprofit organizations and neighborhood clubs to congregations and ethnic associations. Thus the search is on to find ways to expand the role of nong