ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Introduction While the scope of EC competition law mainly under Article 82 aims at controlling monopolies and abuse of dominant position, it has been termed as going too far as to restrict the flow of commerce and the right to free enterprise 1 . The article stipulates that “any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the common market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the common market insofar as it may affect trade between Member States” 2 . Based on this provision alone, three conditions arise for a firm to be said to infringe Article 82. These are; first the conduct being considered must be that of a dominant undertaking (s). Secondly, it must fall within the definition of ‘abuse’ and lastly, it must bring about a negative effect on trade. Abuse of dominance seems to be the bane of Competition law and European courts had been very strict on dominant firms to such a level that their right to contract and own property was severely curtailed. The reason for this has been the wide discretion left to the courts to infer the meaning of ‘abuse’. The EC law itself leaves it open while the Community courts have given it a wider scope as was seen in the case of Hoffmann La Roche & Co AG v Commission 3 where it was stated to be “an objective concept relating to the behaviour of an undertaking”. Community courts having being left with sweeping powers to determine what constitutes abuse have formulated the rule that “a course of conduct adopted by a dominant undertaking to exclude a competitor from the market by means other than legitimate competition on the merits may constitute an infringement of Article 82 EC 4 .” When refusal to deal was cited by the ECJ as a component of abuse, the Court opened a floodgate of victimization for dominant firms based on the notion that it was sowing a seed for healthy competition to thrive within the EU market. In this research paper, I shall argue the case against this wide discretion that threatens to take away the rights to contract, the freedom to choose one’s partners in business
Introduction Crime exists everywhere around the world. In the US, the effective work of local police departments caused an impressive decrease in crime rates in the 1990s and kept it on that level throughout the 2000s (Dempsey & Forst, 2016). In no small part, such progress was achieved due to the reformation of the investigation department. Nowadays, detectives and patrol officers work in tandem, rather than separately, to ensure that cases and crimes are investigated as swiftly and efficiently as possible. The detective plays an important role in the process of investigation. This paper is dedicated to studying the specifics of detective work. The Detective Mystique The position of a detective is, perhaps, the most advertised and known one. The image of the detective has been widely popularized by movies and literature. A detective is often portrayed as a sort of an independent anti-hero that works with the system but outside of the system. The rogue attitude, impressive intelligence, a troubled past, and dedication to justice despite the dangers and personal hardships is what makes this role so attractive. As it often happens, the reality is much more prosaic. A detective spends most of his or her time interviewing the victims, witnesses, and filling out reports. They are often thrown at the cases that could not be solved through a primary investigation. Those cases typically remain unsolved due to a lack of witnesses, evidence, or suspects (Dempsey & Forst, 2016). In short, the work of a detective is not as exciting and glamorous as it is portrayed to be, and certainly not as effective as it is showed in the movies. Responsibilities of the Detective. The Difference between a Detective and a Patrol Officer Before the Rand Study conducted in 1975, the detectives were the ones who did most of the work solving crimes. The patrol officers had very little to do – their only task was to file the report and wait for the detective to pick up the case. As a result, precious time was being wasted. The Rand Study reflected on that and concluded that 93% of the work done by the detective department is done pointlessly and does not directly contribute to the result (Dempsey & Forst, 2016). The patrol officer shares some of the duties that detectives used to have in the past. They are the ones to perform the primary investigation, which is conducted upon arriving at the scene of the crime. They have many tasks to perform. Among them is looking for possible suspects on the run, assessing the situation and requesting reinforcements if necessary, identifying and locating all the involved parties, securing the crime scene, and making sure nothing is disturbed, moved, or touched without permission. The actions of the officers are also recorded in the incident report (Dempsey & Forst, 2016). Statistics show that the majority of crimes are solved due to the efforts of the patrol officers during the preliminary investigations. The detective division is charged with solving of the reported crimes. More often than not, those are crimes that could not be cleared based on the contents of
Introduction According to Nourbakhsh and Siegwart mobile robotics is a recent field that has combined technologies from various fields of engineering and science. The essence of mobile robotics is to provide the previously rigid parts of machines with a dexterity rivaling and even exceeding human beings through the complex combination of technologies, such as ‘electrical and electronic engineering, computer engineering and cognitive and social sciences.’[1] Nourbahksh and Siegwart go on to outline that Robots have recently found use in various sectors of the industry and are replacing human beings. They provide the example of ‘manipulators or Robots arms that have the capacity of performing complex and repetitive tasks much easier due to their speed and precision. The speed and precision are particularly mandatory characteristics for most industries that deal with the manufacture of complex and small devices such as laptops and mobile phones. [2] However, as technological advancements took the stage it became observable that there was still a big room for improvement of the robots. These Robots were being controlled from a central position where someone was required to keep a constant look to ensure that the Robots did not overdo certain tasks. For instance, a robot that is programmed to perform spray painting would continue to spray paint even when there were no vehicles to paint unless it was shut down. This limitation was sufficient for technologists to begin thinking of an ‘intelligent Robot’ that would be fed memory and would perform tasks with the same precision and speed, but with minimum human supervision. Furthermore, it was also realized that to manipulate robots’ movements it would be imperative to first understand how they move. Human beings do not control Robots but rather use the motions by the Robots to control movements. Nourbakhsh and Siegwart outline that ‘…humans perform localization and cognitive activities, but relies on the robot control scheme to control the robot’[3] Locomotion A robot is a machine consisting of parts that are immobile on their own. Therefore the question that arises is how a robot achieves the capacity to move freely. Dudek and Jenkin answer this question by outlining that a robot is, a collection of subsystems’ with the capacity to move, perceive, reason, and communicate. The movement helps the robot to explore its environment, the perception helps the robot to respond to changes within its environment and communication provides and interfaces for the exchange of information between the robot and human beings. [4] Among the locomotion methods that have been studied include the wheeled and the legged locomotion methods. The methods are based on the computation of the motions observed in the surrounding fauna. [5]According to Paul Chandana, the morphology of the robot plays an important role in how easily it navigates its environment and responds to instructions. The morphology plays an important role in several factors such as how the sensory and motor aspects of the robot interrelate, the resulting changes, and the comp
Several decades ago, both Best Buy and Circuit City used to belong to the most popular electronic retailers in the USA. However, whereas one of them is still popular and profitable, another had to announce bankruptcy and close all of the stores. The major reason why Best Buy was able to succeed while Circuit City failed is the attitude to change and the desire to adapt to the evolving market conditions. Circuit City was at the peak of its popularity in the 1980s and the 1990s. In 2008, the company filed for bankruptcy, which did not surprise those specializing in economy. According to Hamilton (2008), there were minor causes of the company’s failure, such as reduced consumer spending and poor economy. However, the major reason was that the firm’s management was old-fashioned and had no intention to change. As a result, Circuit City announced a loss of $239 million in September of 2008. At the same time, Best Buy reported a profit of $200 million (Hamilton, 2008). Such statistics indicate that there were indeed considerable differences between the two organization’s management processes that led to favorable outcomes for Best Buy and adverse results for Circuit City. The fatal error made by Circuit City was becoming complacent in the ever-changing environment of the retail-economic industry. As Hamilton (2008) notes, the first step in the direction of bankruptcy was made in the late 1990s, when Circuit City did not take care of securing prime real estate. Since the company’s locations were not convenient for customers, Circuit City started losing loyal buyers. The next wrong move was the cessation of appliance sale (Hamilton, 2008). When the organization failed to enter gaming in an aggressive way its competitors did, it met another challenge. Also, Circuit City did not care about enhancing its online presence, which led to considerable losses and gave the advantage to the competitors (Hamilton, 2008). However, the greatest mistake was neglecting its customers’ needs when the company replaced its highest-paid employees with cheaper workers. All of these and some other issues led to the graduate loss of profit until finally, in November of 2008, Circuit City announced that they were going out of business. Some of the mistakes made by Circuit City served as good lessons for Best Buy. When Circuit City missed the opportunity to compete with thriving firms due to its failure to arrange aggressive gaming politics, it created an opening for Big Buy (Hamilton, 2008). As a result, Best Buy’s management, which was ready to adjust to the new circumstances, allowed the company to become a healthy competitor for such a huge online retailer as Amazon
Stakeholders in ITC’s eChoupla project The eChoupal project stakeholders include the International Business Division (IBD), which is a division in ITC limited, farmers, processors, government and commission agents. IBD is a major shareholder in the project since the eChoupal was initialized by the division’s chief executive (Upton and Fuller 227). IBD is mandated with developing business for ITC limited and streamlining its operations in a profitable manner. In this regard, IBD executives act as the eChoupal project managers. IBD is responsible for streamlining the ITC supply chain by ensuring that it changes the conventional Choupal system to a digital eChoupla system. The soybean processors within the ITC are major shareholders of the new system. The processors access the system to know the current tonnage of produce required for processing (228). In this regard, the processors can make adequate plans on how to handle processing operations, storage and transportation of farm produce into the processing facilities. Farmers are a formidable group of stakeholders who use the eChoupla system. Famers provide input to the eChoupla system (229). Farmers’ knowledge on prices and information that affects the growth of the produce is influenced by the use of eChoupal. Moreover, the eChoupal system is designed to serve the farmers. In fact, the farmer is perceived to be the system’s end user. Farmers access important information regarding the market price of the produce, as well as access soybeans global prices. The eChoupal is a linkage between the farmer and the ITC limited. Commission agents are an important aspect of the ITC supply chain. The agents help ITC in gathering information from the field, as well as buy farm produce on behalf of the company. Commission agents conveniently buy soybeans on behalf of the company at the local markets. This is critical in reducing ITC transportation cost. However, the conversion of commission agents into Samyojak is convenient for eChoupal set up in local villages. The Samjoyak is also mandated to facilitate transactions between ITC and farmers using the eChoupal (236). The Sanchalak is a major stakeholder in operating the eChoupal. The Sanchalak is the leading operator of the eChoupla system in the village and also the linkage between ITC and farmers (234). Classical mistakes by ITC during the eChoupal implementation Prior the implementation of the eChoupal system, ineffective stakeholder management is evidenced in ITC case. The conventional Choupal system allows exploitation of farmers by commission agents. This mistake did not allow communication between ITC and farmers. The negligence of farmers by ITC is risky and cause re
This podcast is about the global impact of tuberculosis and malaria. The changes wrought by HIV on tuberculosis and the outcomes have been discussed. Strategies and challenges in the control of tuberculosis have been elaborated (El-Sadr, 2004). Tuberculosis (TB) has seen 8.2 million new cases in 2003, most of it in high-burden nations. 1.8 million deaths have been noted, 98% of which occurred in the least developed countries. TB and HIV together have contributed to 250,000 deaths. The multi-drug regimen for TB has been established in 63 countries. The world has 1 billion TB cases of which 10 million are found in the US. New TB cases to the tune of 8.8 million were found in 2005 (WHO, 2007). Fifteen thousand of the 8 million new cases are found in the US. Less than a thousand infected people have died in the US out of the 3 million in the world. The incidence is high in Pakistan, the Philippines and many parts of Africa: more than 300 per 100000 population (El-Sadr, 2004). Most parts of Europe and Asia, some parts of Africa and South America have a lesser incidence of 100-300 infections per 100000 population. At one glance at the map of estimated incidence in 2000, it is found that more than 90% of the world has TB, the incidence ranging from more than 300 to 10-50 per 100000 population. People living with HIV/AIDS come to about 34-46 million worldwide and the distribution is pandemic (El-Sadr, 2004). Infection with the tubercle bacillus Following infection with the tubercle bacillus, the risk factors that give rise to illness due to recent infection are HIV infection, fibrotic lesions and silicosis. Infection 7 years ago could give rise to infection if the person has cancers of the head and neck, hemophilia, immunosuppressive treatment, has hemodialysis, is underweight or diabetic, or smokes heavily (El-Sadr, 2004). HIV-positive TB cases are seen maximum in South Africa in the incidence of more than 200 per 100000 population (El-Sadr, 2004). Again the whole of Africa shows the maximum incidence when compared to the rest of the world. The highest incidence rates of malaria are found in Africa at more than 100 per 100000 population. The highest burden is found in Asia. By the year 2000, notification rates of HIV/TB co-infection increased tremendously. It is disheartening to note that the leading cause of death in Africa is HIV/AIDS which accounts for 22.6% of the dead (El-Sadr, 2004). Other causes of death are lower respiratory infections, diarrhoeal disease, measles and ischaemic heart disease. TB has mostly been associated with AIDS-related deaths; one-third of AIDS-related deaths are due to TB. 38% of AIDS patients have TB. Next in priority comes pyogenic pneumonia. The success of treatment in AIDS-related TB has been recorded to be around 80% (El-Sadr, 2004). Treatment problems of TB Resistance to multi-drug regimen was a problem in the treatment of TB. The success rate of treatment in such cases was less than 50%. This was mainly due to the limited availability of second line drugs. Toxicity of these second line drugs is ano
Introduction Walmart is a private limited company that operates within the services sector. Since its establishment in 1962, Walmart has been focused on impacting the lives of consumers positively. It is estimated that the firm serves more than 200 million consumers every week through mobile devices, online and through retail outlets. In an effort to market its products to a large number of customers, the firm has adopted internationalization strategy. Currently, Walmart operates in 27 different countries under 69 banners. Three quarters of its operations in the international market are under different banner other than Walmart. The firm has managed to develop a strong human resource base of 2.2 million worldwide. In 2012, the firm’s sales amounted to $444 (Walmart para. 1). In an effort to attain its profit maximization objective, Walmart deals with a wide range of consumer products such as general merchandise. The firm also deals with provision of a wide range of services. In the international market, Walmart offers a wide range of generic products and household products. The firm has achieved this through incorporation of the concept of product diversification. The wide range of products and services that the firm deals with have significantly contributed towards its financial success. The objective of this paper is to conduct a comprehensive analysis on Walmart’s operations in the international market. This is attained by identifying what motivated the firm to enter into the international market, the challenges faced and the degree of success it has attained. The paper also illustrates a number of recommendations on what the firm could have done differently in order to improve its performance. International market entry Entering the international market is one of the ways through which firms can achieve their profit maximization objective. However, firms face major challenges in their internationalization strategy. One of the major sources of these challenges is associated the business risk in the host country. Consequently, it is paramount for a firm to conduct a comprehensive country analysis in order to determine the degree of market risk. Additionally, the research will play an important role in determining the probability of succeeding. Decision to enter the various international markets was motivated by a number of factors. The first reason that motivated the firm’s management team to consider entering the market is the intense competition in the domestic market. Over the years, the US retail sector has continued to experience an increment in the intensity of competition. This has led to a decline in the sectors’ profitability potential. In an effort to attain its profit maximization objective, Walmart’s management team made a decision to venture into the international market. Walmart’s management team perceived that venturing into the international market would provide an opportunity for the firm to expand its operatio
It goes without saying that as soon as the curriculum has been formed, the obvious necessity of choosing the proper instructional strategies that will help implement the curriculum into practice and will ensure the sequence of delivery of the material and its comprehension by students comes to the fore. Teachers may experience greater challenges in this respect each year because of the growing number of material on the subjects, the list of instructional strategies that are enriched annually, and the methods of material delivery that become more advanced each year with the development of computer technologies. It is also necessary for every teacher to understand that there is no universal procedure for finding appropriate instructional strategies for any particular element of learning due to the fact that they cannot be labeled and a unique situation at the lesson the teacher experiences with each separate group should be taken into consideration (Curriculum: Select Instructional Strategies, 2009). Thus, the ultimate goal of every educator in this context should be finding appropriate strategies that he or she will effectively use in classes and will this way achieve the set of goals stipulated by the curriculum. There has been much work conducted in the sphere of instructional strategies that will aid every teacher to make classes more effective, and as a result, there appeared a list of six strategies that are more or less universal, but always helpful when implemented in a lesson (Instructional Strategies, 2009). They are:  1. Emphasize major concepts. The main implications of this strategy are to organize the material in such a way so that the students grasped major themes within the topic and would be able to use that knowledge in cross-topical studies. This effect can be achieved through efficient generalizing and structuring work and visual representation of the material in a schematic manner, or inclusion of big ideas in the study – they will outline the most important ideas and concepts that should be the indispensable minimum for student’s comprehension (Instructional Strategies, 2009).  2. Give a proper explanation for links and relations. This strategy is essential to ensure students understanding not only of concepts themselves but of the relationships between them and the way they are connected into the coherent scientific entity. The proper effect of this strategy’s implication may be achieved through much verbal explanation and application of schematic visuals that will help students understand the links. Teaching students to apply such techniques as mind mapping and outlining has also proven to be highly successful (Instructional Strategies, 2009).  3. Ensure proper treatment of background knowledge. This strategy is highly important for the teacher to be able to connect the students’ prior knowledge to
Introduction Toyota is one of the most popular companies in the automobile industry. This company started from a very humble beginning, but due to strategic planning, it has managed to achieve its organizational goals. Japan is the company’s headquarter, and this being its parent branch it has played a major role in inspiring the establishment of other branches (Chester, 2004). Now that the company is ranked among the top organizations in the world, there is more work to be done to ensure that the position is retained. This is because there are other companies that are struggling to achieve the same goals. Currently Toyota manufactures a wide range of vehicles including Rav4, Prado, and Pajero among many others (Kendra, 2009). This paper focuses on Toyota’s company, particularly strategic methods and tools that have led to its superior performance. Policies of Toyota Japan Every organization has its own tailor-made policies that all employees must adhere to, and this is meant to guarantee the achievement of organizational goals. Without clear policies, an organization is most likely to divert to other concerns that were not included in the master plan. It is therefore important to employ salient policies that would act as the guidelines when the going gets tough (Johnson & Scholes, 2008). For instance, if a passenger decided to commute to a given destination and it happens that the vehicle breaks down, he/she will look for another mode of transport t