ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
“ Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ~ Lord Acton. Introduction As its name signifies, the European Union is a union of 27 European countries. After World War II the European countries became very poor. They realized that fighting with each other will never make any European countries to be super power again. The concept of unifying economical and social forces became very appealing. Therefore three countries came up with a great idea which to be a union in the Europe. France, Luxemburg and Holland decided to get together to establish a small union, it was the first root of the European Union. After a few years in 1957, the Council of Europe was decided to advance political and social union in Europe. So on January 01, 1991, eleven countries signed an agreement to establish the European Union. There were England, Germany, France, Holland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxemburg, Austria and Belgium (European Commission). The Union has been growing in the Europe day by day. This union has brought many advantages to its members such as, the introduction of a single trade market, free movement of citizens, protection of environment, great equality and social inclusion, more jobs, a single currency system, a louder international voice, and great protection for worker, and equal tariff rates. It is the unification of these countries to create a “political and economic community throughout Europe” 1 . The leaders wanted to join their countries to achieve political, economic, and social stability. They also wanted to promote the idea of a “free trade economy,” which became the area of attention during the 1990s. Recently, EU and its member countries have introduced numerous other programs and agendas to go beyond their initial targets and create a much better “European World” for generations to come. Apart from free trade, the EU has decided to work on “free travel, single European Currency, safer food, greener environment, joint actions on crime and terror, academic opportunities, and improving standards of living” 2 . Positive Effects of EU The Single Market of the EU has meant that companies going about their business in EU member states have been forced to lower the prices of their products to become more competitive. The single market benefits companies by making it easier and cheaper to do business in other EU countries. No customs tax is charged on goods that are sold or transported between member states. The EU also tries to make each market as similar as possible to ensure fair competition across national borders. Other countries have to compete with price difference between countries to countries. The single market system provides to control to internal market by the treat of European Union. It protects all consumers and producers to trade within European Union without concerning tax rate and quotes for goods and services. It is all under signed by European council to establish every c
Introduction and Overview McGraw-Hill is a global firm that diversifies in many activities, though it majorly engages in publication of educational materials. The headquarters of the company is in New York City. McGraw-Hill is restructuring, following the sale of its TV unit and Business Week operations. The restructuring is likely to cause the divestiture of some of McGraw-Hill’s units. The company has four Strategic Business Units (SBUs): McGraw-Hill Information and Media, McGraw-Hill Education, McGraw-Hill Financial, and Standard and Poor. The McGraw-Hill is in the growth stage of the organizational lifecycle. This is because the company is in the process making adjustments and devising better ways of running its activities. Mission, Goals and Current Strategies The mission of McGraw-Hill involves the provision of vital information and knowledge that assists societies, market, and individuals in producing excellent outcomes. McGraw-Hill’s goal is to meet three needs: capital, business information and transparency, and knowledge, education and training. The strategies of McGraw-Hill involve responsible operation of business and improvement of environmental, social, and economic well-being of the communities. Internal Analysis The IFEM score for McGraw-Hill is 2.6. Most of the company’s factors are favorable. There are some weaknesses within the management that the company should address in order to achieve its goals. Management   * A major strength is the ability to adjust quickly to the changing economic conditions. This weighs.04. The four SBUs have effective structures that meet the different goals of the company.   * A minor weakness is the complexity of contact with higher management. This weighs.06. There is a likelihood of internal tension because of complex access to external and internal sources of funding. Finance   * Finance is a minor strength, with a weight of.05. The management needs to take steps to ensure that the company’s finance is more sustainable and healthier.   * Current Ratio (2010): Total Current Assets (Balance Sheet) divided by Total Current Liabilities (Balance Sheet): $3,294,611/$2,680,874= 1.2. This shows that the company’s liabilities are relatively equal to assets. The company is capable of settling its short term debts. It cannot totally become liquid in a rapid way.   * Return on Assets Ratio (2010): Net Income (Income Statement) divided by Total Assets (Balance Sheet): $851,869/$7,046,561=0.1. The low return on
Introduction Tucker and Zarowin (2006) investigate the influence of the smoothing the earnings in the financial reports on the accounting informativeness. There are two significant aspects of this issue. Firstly, in the cases when managers apply judgment and discretion abilities to anticipate the future earnings in their reports, the informative component improves. It is an example of beneficial earnings management when restructuring the financial information and smoothing the earnings serve the purpose of the informativeness. On the other hand, there are cases of the deliberate misrepresentation and distortion of the financial information. There is a thin line between using judgment to improve the cohesiveness of the presentation and to the intentional altering of the information. The study of Tucker and Zarowin (2006) tries to provide the empirical basis for the representation of those two types of earnings smoothing in amongst the practicing companies. Smoothing of the earnings is the practice that has its antecedents and motivations in several psychological and financial factors. First of all, the positive numbers and figures in the report have overall better reception amongst the outsider audiences, including analysts, customers, and standard setters. The main proposition is that earnings smoothing enables the managers to make more use of representing informatively past and current earnings in their reports and providing judgment about the future earnings and the level of cash flow (Schipper 92). Thus, it presupposes that there is a correlation between the current-year stock and anticipated
Summary The ability of the police to identify fugitives and arrest serious offenders will soon be made easier with the transformation of web services. This will not only provide law enforcers access to the criminal database but also those cases under the FBI. It is expected that this initiative will solve the County’s challenges of integration and the expansion goals related to the enhancement of county processes with technology, improving management of IT resources, and simplifying and standardizing the IT environment and expansion of e-government services. The development of the integrated system that take into consideration the county’s myriad mainframe systems will form the strategy in achieving this goal. Developing the mainframe forms the benchmark for this initiative but the police must have the technical capacity to access the criminal records database in the mainframe. The old that had a number of limitations must therefore be overhauled and bring in the element of a justice system capable of accessing multiple systems to cross-reference county, state and federal databases. The integration of the old legacy application and the web based front must be done through web services for a reliable and efficient connection between these two points. The developers report no technological drawbacks and plan to have the project run smooth and successful. With a budget of $ 400,000 from the police department database access-project budget and existing training and consulting budgets, the project is estimated to have the needed tools put in place before the end of the year. The extraction of criminal information from the mainframe is beneficial to the Miami Dade County in a number of ways because the process involves a number of business processes in the legacy systems. Statement of the Problem Efficiently dealing with the problem of identification of fugitives still remains with the sector of law enforcement. This is complicated further by the lack of adequate technology that is able to provide criminal database at local, state, federal, and FBI to police officers on patrol. “Success in understanding and developing Web services can mean the difference between keeping and losing your IT job and the good news is that there are successful, time-tested models of development practices that can help developers create enhanced Web service applications and plan for their long-term success and maintenance.” (Devx, 2009)This calls for an integration of all these legacy systems into a single mainframe database. The main problem of achieving the goal of integration is the enormous cost involved since activities of crime monitoring was done in a point to point fashion. Proposing a Solution A lot of effort, time, and huge expense had been spent by the County on the search for an integrated system and limitations of the old applications that must be overhauled points to the fact on the need to find a solution to the challenge. Furthermore, the stability and capacity of the mainframe forms a fundamental part of the County’s technological infrastructure. “Overcoming the state of disintegration is the key first step for an organization, not just as the
Visual Floor Plan Introduction The age group, setting, location This program is designed for prekindergarten learners who are below five years. The setting is a special home in the community where parents can take their children in the morning and come for them in the afternoon. It should be located at the center of the community where parents or guardians may find it easy dropping and picking their children. It should be away from an industrial area or a major highway where noise is very common. The facility should be connected to the national grid, and it should also have running water. Other than the classroom setting that has been provided above, the facility should have a secure compound and a well-maintained playing ground where learners can play after a given period of learning. There should be security apparatus within or near this facility, especially the firefighters and law enforcement officers. It should be easy for the parents and guardians to easily monitor the activities going in the facility as a way of getting an assurance that their young children are in safe hands. Values It is important to define the values that these children will be taught while they are in the facility. As noted before, this institution is a prekindergarten facility where children are brought to interact with the environment and members of society. The most important value that these children will be taught is teamwork and appreciation for diversity. At this stage, children get to learn a lot about their environment. It is at this stage that they should learn about the need to work as a team (Foley & Leverett, 2010). This value will be imparted to them through a play-based curriculum strategy. The interactive walls will enable these children to play different games as a group. When they get out of their classes, they will also play as groups. This way, they get to value the power of unity and the need to support one another in order to achieve success as a team. This value will help them in their later stages of academic and social lives. The researcher chose this approach to ensure that children understand the value of teamwork, positive social interactions, and the need to ask for help whenever they are faced with tasks or scenarios which are beyond their understanding. According to Jones and Welch (2010), it is important for children to start appreciating the existence of diversity at the very early stages of their lives. The United States of America is one of the most culturally and racially diversified countries in the world. The issue of racial intolerance has affected the ability of American society to get integrated and to address social and political problems as one unified group. This setting will help in creating a new generation that does not consider race, religion, or gender as a reason why one should be considered special over others. At this early stage of life, children may have problems understanding why they have different skin color, hair, or eye color from that of their peers. This learning environment should explain this variation in their physical appearan
Robust trade is the lifeline for any nation’s economy. In this era of globalization, aspects of national trade and economy are intricately connected with the trade practices of other countries in the world. To ensure that all signatory nations have equal opportunities to prosper economically and trade their goods and produce fairly, the World Trade Organization has through its statutory body, promulgated trade dispute mechanisms. All nations look at their own national interests and try and leverage bilateral, multilateral and international mechanisms to their best advantage. Not surprisingly, clash of interest occurs and one such clash of interest between the world’s only superpower, the US and an emerging economic power, Brazil has been over the levying of significant tariff on Brazilian ethanol imported into the United States. Brazil has had successfully used the dispute settlement mechanisms of the WTO in its previous trade disputes with the United States and the present impasse over the ethanol import tariff is being viewed by the Brazilians as yet another issue which may require resolution through the WTO. This essay focuses on the pros and cons of Brazil adopting the WTO trade dispute mechanism for resolving its imported ethanol tariff trade dispute with the United States. The US and Brazil account for over 75 percent of gross world ethanol production; the United States produces 7.4 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol and Brazil produces more than 6 billion gallons of sugarcane-based ethanol per year 1 . Grain based ethanol costs some 50% more to produce in the United States than in Brazil which produces cane based ethanol 2 . Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol is the only bio-fuel that is consistently priced below its fossil-fuel equivalent. Also, sugarcane-based ethanol is far more efficient than corn based ethanol (see graphic at Appendix).Thus it comes as no surprise that American farmers of corn based ethanol fear getting wiped out by the competition. To further encourage domestic production, Ethanol producers in the US are given generous financial incentives, “including a $0.51 of tax exemption on federal excise tax per gallon of ethanol blended with gasoline, a $.10/gal tax credit for “small” producers making less than 60 million gallons, and a $0.54/gal import tariff on ethanol” 3 . The new US Law,- Food, Conservation and Energy Act 2008 continues to levy the tariffs on ethanol imports but have markedly reduced fuel blending subsidies to US ethanol blenders. This has been objected by Brazil who say that the “difference will create distortive trade effects that will increase the use of domestic ethanol over imported ethanol 4 . The World Trade Organization itself has sympathies for Brazil as is evident from their Public Forum report that states that “Brazil – the world’s premier bio-fuel producer in terms of efficiency and quality (in terms of GHG emissions) – is locked out of the markets of the US, EU and Australian markets due to high tariffs 5 . The WTO also observes that such tariffs lead to higher food prices that exacerbate global
In the post-Suharto era, Indonesia has been faced with two security challenges, one of them being secessionist threats and the other one is ideological challenge, which is posed by the radical Islamic group. In fact, there has been a perceived change in the political culture of Indonesia since Suharto was forced to quit power. Currently, emphasis is placed on civil society and existence of multiparty democracy. However, the changes have destabilized the security of the country in a number of ways. After the independence of East Timor, separatist movements have resurfaced in Indonesia to claim independence. On the other hand, Islamic organizations have taken the opportunity to extend extremist ideas, including perpetuation of terrorism (Assyaukanie 2007, p. 90). Radical Islamic leaders, such as Hamzah Haz, have come out strongly to suggest that Shariah law should be applied in the country. Islamic extremist groups, particularly Jemaah Islamiah, are in support of the establishment of Islamic state. This definitely threatens the national security of the country. The government has failed to control the emergence of separatist groups due to the activities talking place in East Timor. Some militant groups, such as Jemaah Islamiah and Laskar Jihad, have vowed to use force to ensure that the state is converted into an Islamic state (Hefner 2005, p. 67). Jemaah Islamiah is a terrorist network in the Southeast Asia that has been associated with a number of bombings, including Bali bombing and the recent attack on the Australian Embassy on 9 September 2004. It is perceived to be the region’s supreme transnational jihadist movement. Indonesia is the main operational base for the group, though it also operates in Singapore and Philippines. The 2002 Bali bombing was considered the main terrorist’s capability. It was the first time that radical groups were using suicide bombers (Singh 2004, p. 68). After the Bali attack, the Indonesian government launched a crackdown on members of the terrorist group, but the group still poses a threat to national security in Indonesia. Since the Bali bombings, the government of Indonesia has been forced to change its policies on terrorism. Before 2002, the post-Suharto governments never thought that terrorism was a serious issue that had to be addressed with urgency. For instance, Megawati government entered into an agreement with Australian security agencies to launch joint crackdowns on members of Jemaah Islamiah (Hillman 2006, p. 58). Even though the government has always tried to prevent terrorism, the political class has never explained to the public the magnitude of terrorism in the country. This shows that there is no good will from the political class. Moreover, the government has been reluctant to proscribe the group. This shows that some individuals with enormous influence in government control radical groups such as Jemaah Islamiah. The immediate post-Suharto years were characterized by the resurgence of
The following is an analysis of the book written by Ben Shahar on how we can attain high degrees of happiness and fulfilment in life. Creating Rituals So as to improve my well-being, I have decided to follow a number of ritualistic activities. For the benefit of my physical health, I will be attending a gym for at least three hours, every week. Spending at least four hours per week with my family will also be among my rituals. Besides, I will be spending at least four hours a day for academic research and reading. Moreover, I will be spending at least four hours in a week for personal entertainment, by watching movies or going out with friends. Finally, I will be giving at least twenty minutes of my daily activities to relaxation and meditation (Shahar 8). Expressing Gratitude Among the many things in my life that I remain grateful for, my family ranks high. All of my siblings have been a great blessing in my life. Likewise, I have many great and helpful friends that have always guided and helped me on many occasions. Importantly, it is pleasing to know that I do not have chronic diseases, or other health conditions, that could otherwise have deterred my health. Besides, I am highly appreciative of the academic learning that I have been able to attain so far. My belief in God has also given me a direction in life; thus, endowing me with many capabilities (Shahar 10). The four Quadrants Rat-racer With the high expectation of academic performance that I had been ingrained with, by my parents, I lived as a rat -racer during my high school years. My intention was to painfully work hard so that I could attain better grades; thus, be able to pursue a good career in college; hence, a good income and a happy life in the future. The excruciating and laborious hours of immersing in reading and research were countered by the promise of a happier life in the future. The results of rat-racer behaviour at the time made me feel tired and uninterested but determined (Shahar 27). Hedonist Among the many moments in my life that I have lived as a hedonist includes periods during the holidays that normally follow the clearing of college examinations. Here, and for long hours, I often indulge in entertaining activities like watching movies, reading novels and going out with friends. As it is often the case, although I initially enjoy such self indulging activities for a while, I often end Nihilist Moments following a break-up with a former girlfriend that I had, I felt as a nihilist. Here, nothing seemed to be of importance to me. It was a depressing moment where I spent most of my time in bed sleeping. I had lost my appetite and could not develop an interest in anything. Since I was focusing on things that had happened in the past, I lost interest in many things and could not enjoy a number of great things that I normally take notice of (Shahar 50). Happy Finally, among the moments in my life that I have lived happily was during my partnership period as a