ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Pre-Contract Award Description The report by the Auditor General of Western Australia presents the findings of an audit that focused on the WA Schools Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Project. The project began in 2015 when the WA government signed a contract with EduWest “to design, build, finance and maintain 8 schools until 2047.” 1 . Under this project, primary schools are built in one stage, whereas secondary schools are constructed in two phases. There were two central issues investigated in the report. The first issue was project efficiency and the fulfilment of contract standards and school needs. 2 . The second issue was the effectiveness of project management and monitoring of contract performance and risks. The findings of the audit confirmed that the project was on track as of June 2018. The project was also well-supported by analysis and followed a strong tender, allowing to cut down on financing 3 . However, there were some contract management issues that came to light when school operations began. First of all, the private company fulfilling the contract was under-resourced, and there were delays in maintenance staff recruitment. Secondly, EduWest’s electronic system for recording and measuring school jobs did not respond to project needs effectively. Thirdly, there were issues in the timing of staff recruitment, which affected school functioning in the first weeks of operations. Analysis The recommendations provided in the report could be useful for future public-private partnerships at the pre-award stage. In particular, the Auditor General recommends developing a contract management plan to ensure that operations run smoothly on all project stages. According to Yescombe and Farquharson, preparing a contract management plan is essential for public-private partnerships because it allows each party to understand its responsibilities and supports the smooth implementation. 4 . Although this recommendation is primarily for the Department of Education, it would be useful for potential private partners to design and present their vision of the contract management plan at the pre-award stage. Another recommendation relevant for public-private partnerships at the initial stage is for EduWest to develop a comprehensive performance monitoring program and a risk-based audit and inspection program. This recommendation could also be applied by other companies willing to enter a public-private partnership. Research supports that performance is usually the critical indicator of success in public-private partnerships. 5 . Creating a detailed plan for performance monitoring, audit, and inspections would help private companies during the pre-contract award stage to draw the attention o
Abstract The United Arab Emirates has a significant potential of enabling investors to generate high returns on their investments if they plan their work properly. Even though, this region is predominantly an oil exploration and drilling zone other businesses have been established here to facilitate these activities. Liwa Chemicals is one of these companies that have enabled domestic and foreign workers to access oil exploration and equipment supply services in Abu Dhabi. This discussion will outline a brief history about this company, how it has managed to remain relevant despite stiff competition from other companies and present recommendations to improve its practices. Liwa Chemicals Introduction Liwa Chemicals is one of the new entrants in the oil drilling industry and this means that it faces stiff competition from old companies. It is important to explain that this company was established to offer oil exploration and drilling services but it later expanded its operations to include supplying materials and equipment for other oil companies. However, things have not been easy especially due to the following three main reasons (Mohan 2009). This discussion will explore these challenges and present recommendations that may alleviate them. Company History Liwa Company was established in 1939 as a petroleum company to make use of the available oil resources. By 1950, it had expanded its operations and acquired huge oil fields that enabled it to generate a lot of profits and invest in other similar operations (Rehman 2007). In 1990, Mr. Salah Salem AL-Shamsi established the famous Liwa Chemicals that enabled the company to venture into other activities including trading, supplying and providing technology, engineering, and high grade chemicals. In addition, it also offers shipping, oil, gas, water and hydrocarbon products and services. In 2005, it formed partnership with Occidental Petroleum (an American company) and this became a major boost in the operations of these companies. This partnership enabled them to win almost all exploration areas during the EPSA-4 Auction; therefore, making them the first international companies to take advantage of the lifted Libyan Embargo (Usa 2009). This company boasts of a state of modern technology and skills used in the oil, water, gas and energy sectors and continue to control the activities of other major companies like the ADNOC. Today, it has become an international company and formed partnerships with others to ensure it offers quality services and products to its clients. It has employed more than 20,000 workers in its operations and has more than 50,000 indirect employees. Literature Review 10 Most Priced US Stocks- UBNT, VRA and LIWA by Sverrir Sverrisson Sverrir Sverrisson is an American-based financial analyst working with a consultancy firm that manages various issues about equities, brokerage, stocks, food, beverage and tobacco products and services. In 20
Introduction This paper seeks to create energy profiles for two companies namely, Tenaska Energy and NRG Energy. The two firms are fortune 500 organizations and industry leaders in the US energy market. The core activities of both companies include generating and distributing of electricity. They mainly use nonrenewable sources of energy to generate electricity. Tenaska Energy Nonrenewable Sources of Energy and their Effects on the Environment The nonrenewable sources of energy that are used by the company include coal, natural gas and oil. Coal is a type of fossil fuel that exists in solid form. Atmospheric pollution is the main short-term effect of using coal. When burnt, “coal produces toxic gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and heavy metals”. Its long-term effects include soil erosion and destruction of habitats due to mining activities. The gases produced during its use cause global warming. Oil is a “fossil fuel that exists in liquid form”. Its use is associated with the production of harmful gases which include carbon monoxide and this leads to air pollution in the short-term. The long-term effect includes destruction of habitats and marine organisms due to oil spills. Natural gas consists of other gases which include methane and propane. It is considered to be a clean fossil fuel thus it does not have negative effects on the environment. Vision for Power Production The company’s vision is to increase its production capacity in the US market. It aims at achieving this objective by investing in power production using coal. The company also intends to invest in modern production technology in order to reduce environmental pollution. In the overseas markets, the company seeks to increase its output by investing in an “integrated gasification and combined cycle technology” in Lebanon. Fuel Mix The company’s fuel mix consists of both nonrenewable and renewable sources of energy such as hydropower. The nonrenewable sources of energy do not produce electricity directly. They are used to facilitate the process of generating electricity and this can be explained as follows. They are used to produce heat through a chemical process called combustion. The produced heat is used to heat water in order to produce the steam that is used to “turn large magnetized rotor inside a generator”. Electricity is then generated as the rotor turns. Customer Base The company serves three categories of customers namely, utilities, industrials and independent power producers. The independent power producers account for 42% of sales while the utilities and industrials account for 30% and 28% respectively. In order to meet the customers’ demand, the company manages 17500 MW of electricity. Electricity reserve is the generation capacity that is maintained and used to generate power in the event that the normal supply syst
Introduction Children require positive experiences as they grow in order to enhance their self esteem, health and transition into adulthood. Child rearing practices differ substantially across families in North America especially because a vast number of parents are immigrants. It is crucial to analyze child rearing values and approaches in these minority groups because it would provide a basis for carrying out social work interventions especially in line with health needs. If cultural influences will have been considered prior to program interventions then greater success can be realized. Parenting values in immigrant communities There is no doubt that culture has a great effect on child rearing but one must ensure that proper and accurate conclusions are made about parenting in immigrant families. Previous researches have mostly focused on deficit models that tend to emphasize risk factors associated with child rearing in immigrant families. Medora et al (2001) carried out such a research and affirmed that immigrant children tend to be more susceptible to abuse than non immigrant children. However, other researchers have shown that the converse is true. Parents across all racial divides believe that no form of child abuse should be permitted (Maiter et. al. 2004). It is therefore critical to understand what immigrant parents understand as unacceptable and acceptable behavior in child rearing. This knowledge can be critical in preparation of parenting messages that would accommodate values and beliefs of the concerned parents. Understanding these differences can be such an informative and constructive endeavor in human service program preparation. Many immigrant families tend to define acceptable behavior in more or less the same ways that local families do. For instance, many immigrant parents will state that obedience is an important quality in their children. They also value respect and the ability to do well in school. Most do not like it when children talked back to them or three tantrums. Many immigrant families also felt that engaging fights were unacceptable for their children. They also believed that it is crucial to express affection to one’s children. These sentiments reflect values that spread across cultural lines as they are accepted by almost all people in the country. All immigrant groups tend to use verbal reprimands and many of them do yell at their children. Although this is a negative practice, it was not particularly a big threat to children because parents appeared to understand the thin line between talking loudly and humiliating and bullying them. They know the importance of developing a child’s self esteem and were not ready to compromise on it in any way. They also realize that using punitive options was often the last resort to dealing with a child’s indiscipline (Singer et. al., 2008). Nonetheless, some differences do exist in terms of desirable traits as well. It has been shown that religion is an important factor in child
In her novel Bone, Fae Myenne Ng discusses life stories of people inhabiting San Francisco’s Chinatown. She pays a special attention to the way people are affected by the place they live in, and on the contrary, the way people inhabiting this place affect it. In the following paper, Ng’s novel will be addressed in terms of the effect of specific circumstances such as historical, economic, and cultural ones on the lives of the main characters. Overall, after the evaluation of the events, that are described in Bone, it can be said that San Francisco’s Chinatown makes its inhabitants desperate workaholics and forces them gradually reject their spiritual and cultural values, but still this place also becomes a green house, where Chinese immigrants manage to maintain the major peculiarities of their mentality and to consign them to their children; contrariwise, this place is also affected by its inhabitants in a variety of ways including economical growth, which becomes possible due to Chinese hard working mindset; and maintaining certain cultural atmosphere, detached from general American culture, and greatly affected by Chinese cultural and religious values. Ng shapes San Francisco’s Chinatown in this way because she strives to show to her audience the difficulties that are connected with the process of Chinese assimilation in the United States and to turn their attention to the social problems, which outflow from these difficulties. Generally, San Francisco’s Chinatown functions in the lives of the book’s characters as one of the main sources of control over them. This control is both cultural and economical one. Ng’s novel is full of examples of how cultural disorientation of may affect immigrants’ lives. The examples of its heroes show that sometimes it may be ruinous. Among the characters, who appeared to be unable to adapt to the life in American Chinatown are Ona and her mother Mah. Under the pressure of emotional discomfort, Ona commits suicide by jumping of an unfinished residential unit. All the members of Ona’s family consider themselves guilty in her death as they believe it is a punishment from spirits that it caused by their irrelevant conduct in the United States. Through the whole story, the readers may see that under the pressure of life in Chinatown, and especially under the pressure of financial struggles, the members of Ona’s family engage in practices that are disapproved by the Chinese tradition and religion. Nevertheless, the real reason of the girl’s death does not seem to be in the fact that her family members reject the traditions of ancestors. On the contrary, Ona fell a victim to cultural contradictions because she strived to please her parents, but it was impossible in the conditions of life in the new reality of America. Whereas her two sisters, Leila and Nina, manage to escape the sad fate by fleeing from Chinatown (Leila marries a local man, and Nina moves to New York), Ona stays with her parents, trying
Introduction Aneroxia nervosa (AN) refers to a condition whereby a person is fearful of food intake occasioned by the need to achieve a slender body size because they are fearful of increased body fat which they attribute to these two factors (Hoermann, 2009). Anorexia nervosa is described as a psychological disorder because it is largely a factor of self image which makes a person to have biased perception regarding food intake and own body image. Psychological disorder is a common term mostly used by psychologists that refers to all types of disease conditions among persons that are known to emanate from the mental dysfunctions of an individual. Anorexia nervosa, like any type of psychological disorders is regarded as a mental illnesses which predisposes a person to act in an irrational manner which is not characteristics of normal development process, or in that case according to the society expectations. Aneroxia nervosa is a serious eating disorder and is one of the psychological disorders with the highest mortality rate as well as co-morbidity incidence (Hoek and Van Hoeken, 2003). The National Institute of Mental Health (NINH) which is an organization based in US estimates that more than 4% of the population is predisposed to suffer from anorexia nervosa at one point in their life, majority of them being females at 95% (Chamberin, 2010). More specifically, aneroxia nervosa is defined as a type of eating disorders; this refers to abnormal eating characteristics caused by mental attitudes regarding food intake (Chamberin, 2010). As such, an individual is predisposed to excessive intake of food, in which case the condition is described as bulimia or binge eating, or likely to engage in hunger strikes episodes with intentions to minimize food intake as is the case with aneroxia nervosa (Gershon, 2007). Many studies have been able to determine the existence of causal relationship between eating disorders and other types of psychological disorders. The major causes of eating disorders, like all other disorders cannot be accurately determined, however what is clear is that lifestyle and social factors contributes significantly to this type of disorders. Because eating disorders, notably aneroxia nervosa has very high co-modity with DSM-IV cluster B disorders, they are most often also categorized as personality disorders. This is because personality disorders is used to describe conditions where individuals pattern of actions is influenced in unnatural way by their nature of thoughts, habits and behaviors which together combine to form the personality (Eysenck and Keane, 2005). This also appears to be the case among persons suffering from anero
Introduction The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are two international organizations created in the mid-twentieth century. The goals of these organizations are ultimately similar as both aim at the increase of the well-being of the countries throughout the world, either by reducing poverty and granting financial support in the case of World Bank or the increased financial stability, promotion of international trade, and stable economic growth in the case of IMF. As a result, the organizations have followed similar evolutionary paths, with some notable exceptions such as the structural adjustments conducted by the World Bank in the 1980s. Analysis The World Bank was conceived at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. The initial goal was to create an organization that would help the countries in need, resulting from the devastating World War II, to cope with the disrupted economy. Initially, the World Bank was focused on European countries. Fiscal conservatism was chosen as the preferred political-economic philosophy, which guaranteed the lower debt and more liberal conditions for loans, but meant stricter conditions had to be met by the countries applying for a loan. This effect was illustrated in three years when the first loan was approved to be issued to France for it to rebuild its infrastructure. The loan was twice lower than the desired sum, and France had to comply with the strict conditions. First, the French government had to be restructured in order to exclude all the members of the Communist coalition. Besides, France had to demonstrate a solid budget that prioritized debt repayment. To ensure this, the World Bank established offices in France and closely monitored the process throughout its implementation. The same year, however, the first major change occurred in the organization’s policy. With the emergence of other entities that offered similar services as a result of the Marshall plan, the World Bank had to turn to the non-European countries to deal with growing competition (SUNY 2). This defined its specialization for years to come, starting the very next year with the assistance in building the infrastructure on the Damodar river in India. The resources were provided mostly for building irrigation and power plants, as they guarantee the growing income that would eventually allow the repayment of the loan, a common practice up to the late seventies. Meanwhile, as the new target group was much less sustainable in economic terms, the organization had to rethink its strict demands for loans. As a result, in 1960 a new institution, the International Development Association, was formed as a member of the World Bank Group. This entity focused on loans to the countries with the lowest gross national income. The next decade saw several important key events. The World Bank’s capital was substantially increased using the global bond market. This increase allowed the organization to broaden the scope
Introduction The extent to which tourists search for authentic experiences in visiting new places and peoples has aroused much interest among tourism researchers and practitioners (Alberts & Hazen 2010; Leonard 2011). Indeed, the search for authenticity has become a predominant trend powering tourism because contemporary tourists are looking for experiences that are not only unique as part of their pulsating and diverse world (Canadatourism.com 2006), but symbolize a break from the normal routines of everyday life (Leonard 2011). Today, more than ever, a significant number of tourists are visiting historically significant sites, also known as cultural tourism sites, to expose themselves to novel information and experiences that satisfy their cultural needs (Landorf 2009). It has been demonstrated in the literature that most tourists visit these sites due to their authentic experiences and integrity (Ivanovic 2008). However, with the concept of authenticity receiving wide-ranging following among this group of tourists, its ambiguity, limitations and lack of conceptual clarity continue to be increasingly exposed (Kelner 2006). As acknowledged by Wang (1999), critics are increasingly questioning its value and validity, citing the reason that the motivating agents for tourists’ experiences cannot be fully extrapolated in the realms of the conventional paradigm of authenticity. This paper explores the concept of authenticity as it relates to cultural tourism sites. The aim is to provide a critical understanding of whether it is important for cultural tourism sites to be authentic. Most important, the paper will attempt to add some new insights on the value of authenticity to cultural tourism sites. The paper will sample some cultural tourism sites to seek a deeper understanding of the concept of authenticity as it relates to these sites. Understanding the Concept of Authenticity Hillman (n.d.) notes that the concept of authenticity has evolved to become a guiding principle in tourism studies ever since it was brought into the limelight by Dean MacCannell. However, as noted in literature, authenticity is an ambiguous term that continues to resist definition (Kelner 2006), owing to both the vagueness of the concept and the cultural suppositions embedded in it (Alberts & Hazen 2010). Despite the shortcomings in definition and conceptualization, available literature demonstrates the centrality and dominance of the concept not only in tourism development and research but also in affording unique experiences to tourists who wish to sample what other cultures have to offer (Ivanovic 2008). MacCannell (1976) cited in Alberts & Hazen (2010) suggested that tourists have become increasingly disenchanted by the homogenization and contamination of tourist experiences and enthusiastically search for ‘authentic’ others who can afford real and unadulterated connections to the sites being visited. MacCannell’s suggestion fails to illuminate the real meaning of authenticity or authentic experiences, but it definitely bolds the growing desire of contemporary tourists to seek experiences