ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Adobe Photoshop is one of the most actively used programs in order to edit digital images, and these programs are known as graphics editors. Photoshop was developed by Adobe Systems in the 1980s, and its popularity among professional photographers, editors, and designers increases each year. In order to review Adobe Photoshop CC: Classroom in a Book by Andrew Faulkner and Conrad Chavez, which is a detailed guide for working with this graphics editor, it is important to focus on the following aspects: contents of the book, favorite features, and tools, descriptions of some Photoshop techniques that were not covered in the class, and areas for improvement. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the book by Faulkner and Chavez, which explains how to effectively work with Adobe Photoshop. While focusing on the book’s contents, it is necessary to state that this guide covers all possible aspects of working with Adobe Photoshop, starting with the installation of the program and ending with printing photographs after managing them with the help of different filters and instruments. The book provides helpful information on how to start working with the program even if readers have no experience in this field. Thus, a lot of information on the essentials of editing graphics is provided in the first chapters of the book. From this point, the first chapters provide the introduction to the work with Adobe Photoshop with the focus on the editor’s interface, layout, key functions, navigation, tools, and accessories (Faulkner and Chavez 8). The book provides a step-by-step guide on how to work with different formats of images, what tools to apply, what approaches to sharpening photographs to use, how to edit images using basic and advanced tools, how to work with rulers and grids, and how to change colors among other techniques (Faulkner and Chavez 10-18). All the explanations presented in the book can be understood and applied to practice by both professionals and novices. The book also provides a detailed explanation of how
The United States recently saw a significant increase in retail gasoline prices. According to the official data, the previous decline was conditional upon the response to the pandemic, which caused lower demand as well as low crude oil costs combined with critical supply constraints (“The Week in Petroleum”). Therefore, this event positively correlates with the efficiency of measures implemented against COVID-19 and the elimination of travel restrictions. The comparison of indicators before the spread of COVID-19 and over the following year shows the dependency of supply and demand on external factors. Thus, the former shifting indicators were affected by cold weather outages throughout the country, which was followed by rising imports, whereas the latter was determined by the low mobility of citizens (“The Week in Petroleum”). In this way, the environment was the principal aspect, which allowed for predicting changes in this field. At present, the ongoing recovery defines the gas prices in the United States, which are gradually increasing. By now, regular retail rates were reported to be on average 92 cents higher compared to the previous year (“The Week in Petroleum”). This tendency also corresponds to the considerations of evolving supply and demand, which fluctuate depending on seasons or regions (“The Week in Petroleum”). Therefore, the decline in inventories alongside the increasing mobility of people allows for predicting further growth of these indicators. In conclusion, the described trends in gasoline prices are aligned with changes in demand and supply. Due to the pandemic, the presence of large inventories and unfavorable conditions for their realization was combined with travel restrictions. As a result, the retail rates were low, and a dramatic change happened as soon as the latter barriers were lifted. Thus, the consideration of profits alongside the growing needs of people in gasoline confirms new patterns of price formation in the United States in the long run. Work Cited “ The Week in Petroleum. ” The U.S. Energy Information Administration . 2021. Web.
Introduction It is worth mentioning that in contemporary highly developed society with the advanced level of commerce and trade and extremely wide range of various goods that are offered by the manufacturers, advertising has proved to be a highly necessary part of marketing. According to Julian Petley, “advertising is how goods or services are promoted to the public” (4). Consequently, “the advertisements are made to motivate consumers and inculcate right perception for the product among them” (Rajagopal 4). Concerning this statement, special attention should be paid to the word combination “right perception”, which is, unfortunately, not always synonymic to the word combination “truthful perception”. It means that the main aim of an advertisement is to persuade the customer to buy the product at any cost. To achieve this aim, advertising executives resort to some advertising techniques that may lead to “manipulation” of the customer’s reaction. This is why consumers need to possess advertising awareness to avoid being manipulated into buying the advertised product. Main Body To familiarize the audience with the examples of the application of the rhetorical strategies and visual argument in advertising, let us resort to one of the classical cases of successful advertising – the advertisements of Coca-Cola. It is worth mentioning that people in nearly 200 countries drink more than one billion eight-ounce (237 ml) of Coca-Cola products every day. So much Coke has been produced since the first batch in 1886 that if a person put it all into eight-ounce (237 ml) bottles and stacked them up, they would tower 370 miles (595 km) (Bell 4). It can be stated that Coca-Cola may be characterized by a very skillful application of numerous types of advertising: they invent “catch new slogans”, “jingles, songs for advertising campaigns”, involve “famous faces” into the advertising process (Bell 24-25). Despite this variety of advertising means applied, our attention is claimed by printed media advertisements, which will be analyzed based on historical approach, two advertisements printed in different decades (30s, 50s) will be analyzed. The choice of the time is determined by the differences in economic and cultural spheres of the periods chosen. The first example (Appendix 1) was published in 1939 in “National Geographic”. This advertisement is the example of the successful combination of the usage of visual argument and rhetorical strategies. The advertise executives resorted here to such attention-getting technique as the portraying of emotions (Rank unpaged). Messages state that there are “many advertising situations in which photography can readily be dispensed with and the essential point of an ad’s image can be conveyed quite adequately through drawing” (130-131). The advertisement under consideration is such a case. The drawing presents the audience with a man of an amiable look. His facial expression suggests such emotions as joy, happiness and frankness, which are supported by the posture of the man – he is put right in the middle of the picture and his hands ar
According to Levin and Nielsen (2009), nightmares are “vividly and highly emotional dysphonic dreams that awaken the individual from sleep” (p. 84). Similarly, Blangrove, Farmer and Williams (2004) define nightmares as “very disturbing dreams, the events or emotions of which cause the dreamer to wake up” (p. 129). On the other hand, dreams are defined as positively or negatively toned delusions that do not cause the dreamer to wake up (Levin & Nielsen, 2009, p. 84). It is important to mention that nightmares are commonly regarded as sleep disorders. In addition, terror, anger and fear are emotional experiences commonly associated with nightmares. Levin and Nielsen (2009) assert that humans experience nightmares/dreams during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (p. 84). Although both bad dreams and nightmares share some characteristics, it is not yet clear whether both are a single phenomenon or two discrete experiences that occur in varying intensities. Sporadic episodes of bad dreams and nightmares are omnipresent in the general public. According to some epidemiological studies, approximately 80 percent of adults experience nightmares (at least once in a year). In addition, there is a high prevalence of nightmares among adolescents aged 14 years above (Nielsen, Stenstrom & Levin, 2006, p. 145). Nonetheless, the real prevalence rate of nightmares and bad dreams may be higher because clinicians rarely inquire about them during regular health screening. In addition, many people do not consider nightmares as clinical disorders and thus do not seek medical attention. What is more, the prevalence rates of bad dreams and nightmares are considerably underrated in many conservative studies. Several studies have reported the existence of a strong relationship between the waking psychology and the prevalence of nightmares and bad dreams (Levin & Nielsen, 2007, p. 482; Levin & Fireman, 2002, p. 205). Given that these medical disorders are characterized by substantial emotional anguish, their occurrences imply that bad dreams and nightmares are caused by strong emotional distress. In addition, some studies have demonstrated that individuals who undergo stressful life events are susceptible to bad dreams and nightmares. It is worth mentioning that bad dreams and nightmares are closely related to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In other words, an individual exposed to a traumatic event is likely to experience bad dreams and nightmares (Levin & Nielsen, 2009, p. 85). Wood et al. (1992) carried out a prospective study to demonstrate the close relationship between elevated stress and the prevalence of bad dreams and nightmares. Their study sought to determine the prevalence levels of nightmares and bad dreams among inhabitants of San Francisco Bay Area and Arizona after these two regions were hit by an earthquake in 1989. Their findings revealed that the participants from San Francisco Bay-area experienced higher incidences of nightmares compared to their counterparts from Arizona. The difference in the prevalence rates was mainly caused by the proximity to the earthquake epicentre. Thus, the San Francisco Bay area sample repo
Christian missions in Japan in the early modern period In 1549, Francis Xavier, a Navarrese Jesuit, arrived in Kagoshima in the company of a samurai whom he had baptized. Though banal, this episode marked the beginning of the Christianization of Japan, an attempt that had uncertain outcomes and lasted 65 years. In 1614, the Shogunate ordered the expulsion of all the Christian missionaries, and further efforts to reinstate some relationships between religious orders and Japan proved unsuccessful. Ucerler offers a historical report on the Christian colonization, but he does not deepen the reasons for what can be defined as a failure. The Christianization of Japan was a prerogative of the crown of Portugal, which aimed at establishing a profitable trade and at preaching the Christian faith to the native people (Ucerler, 304). The missionaries found a highly advanced civilization, rooted in the Buddhist tradition, and were dominated by different clans fighting each other for supremacy. Through a series of events, Ucerler traces the vicissitudes of the first missionaries, their efforts to establish missions, the persecutions, and the last ban. However, the cultural differences are not highlighted sufficiently, to the extent that it seems that some events were the result of casualness, as in the episode that took place in Kyoto in 1596 (Ucerler, 323). Also, while the importance of Vallignano is correctly underlined (Urceler, 313), the reaction of the European culture to his vision is not clear. A more in-depth analysis of the coeval Japanese civilization and of the blindness of the European reigns towards an advanced peer society would have provided a more comprehensive framework. (Word count: 256) Proto-nationalism in premodern Korea In his work on the rise of national awareness in premodern Korea, Duncan tries to clarify what defines the idea of proto-nationalism, and how it can be applied to the Korean case. The author analyzes the subject through the lenses of four areas: language, ethnicity, religion, and state (Duncan, 201-202). The lack of specific sources, the convulsed history of Korea, and the difficulty of identifying a clear population sample make the task arduous, with no definitive conclusion. Throughout the text, the importance of the elite class of the yangban emerges. The yangban looked at China as a reference point both as regards the language and the religion, speaking classical Chinese and practicing Confucianism (Duncan, 202; Duncan, 210). However, the transnational character of Confucianism and the existence of an elite language suggest that the mainstream of the population could not understand Chinese and other practices were followed besides Confucianism. Moreover, Duncan himself (210) is aware of the difficulty of classifying Confucianism as a traditional religion, making one of the pillars of his reasoning waver. After having analyzed the organizational, educational, and ritual aspects during the Koriǒ and Chǒson dynasties, Duncan suggests that these activities might have raised a sense of identity among the broader community in Korea (Duncan, 221). The scarcity of sources forces the aut
Introduction James Loewen carried out a comprehensive study of American history books. He concluded that most of them were irrelevant to the needs of the students. According to him, the authors have concentrated on writing many books at the expense of covering relevant content. They include information that is not helpful to the students and teachers, making it difficult for them to cover the content within the stipulated period. Therefore, teachers and learners resort to memorization of items that are likely to appear in their exams. However,, the books portray most people that participated in historical events as being abnormally powerful (Loewen 5). Such a portrayal of people makes learners think that what those people achieved is not practical today. The general portrayal of American history implies that America has no problems as the founding fathers solved them all. This paper analyzes the portrayal of the American Revolution by several American authors in light of Loewen’s arguments and confirms that American writers give the wrong picture of American history. An Analysis of the Portrayal of the American Revolution The most evident problem in the writing of American history books is the authors’ deliberate efforts to instill patriotism among their readers. Writers exaggerate most of the events in American history. For example, Mason Locke Weem made George Washington appear superhuman in a biography he wrote about him (Weems 9). Jeff Shaara says: It is regrettably easy for us to take for granted the freedoms we live under without considering who paid the price to secure them. That is only one reason among many that these extraordinary people must be remembered (III). This statement is evidently not objective. The writer has indicated that his intention is not to talk about the American Revolution, but to show readers that they must be grateful to the people who liberated their nation from the British. As Loewen explains, one can decipher the misrepresentation of history from the title of a book. The title of Shaara’s book is The Glorious Cause . It is imperative that the book only depicts the good side of the revolution. Narrating the good side of history at the expense of the bad side passes the wrong information to the students of history. The content of history books written immediately after the revolution is very biased. The facts depended on the side the writer supported during the war. Loyalist wrote books that showed the lack of sense in the ideologies behind the revolution while the patriots wrote in favor of the revolution. Thomas Hutchison wrote a historical account that depicted the revolution as a course that nobody needed (Hutchinson 14). In reaction to Hutchison’s side of the story, David Ramsay wrote a book with the purpose of justifying the rebellion (Ramsay 23). Lea
Introduction Founded by Gates, Microsoft Corporation is renowned as a global company specialized in the manufacture and improvement of software and computer appliances (Business day). It not only produces various software packages but also offer a wide range of computer services. Video games, operating system, personal computers and other computer applications are some of Microsoft’s products. As part of its services, the corporation educates and endorses software developer and also offers consultancy services. 1. Based in Washington, Microsoft is divided into different subdivision i.e. customer, Microsoft commerce, server and tools, online, entertainment and devices (Microsoft Corporation). Matters pertaining to consumers such as complain or comments are handled by the consumer division. Client division ensures that consumers are well handled by carefully addressing their concerns thus maintaining satisfaction. It is responsible for making deliveries of Microsoft products to customers all over the globe. Online division plays a significant role in advertising and providing basic information about the company’s goods and processes. In addition, it links the corporation to its customers, partners and the outside world i.e. by email and web messages. The construction and marketing of hardware and entertainment devices such as video games and zune digital music is produced under entertainment and devices division (Microsoft Corporation). Server and tools sector is specifically responsible for manufacture and endorsement of products and processes. The handling of the overall business problems i.e. by providing overall business elucidation, whether financial or company’s productivity are handled by the business division. 2. In as much as the company is divided in different organizational segments, it also has different parts with their own structures. The parts include manufacture, marketing, finance/accounting and HR. Marketing as part of the company, has different offices to begin with marketing manager followed by three underlying offices i.e. Sales manager, marketing research manager and product manager. The above three offices work alongside committed teams that ensure effectiveness and efficiency of these offices. Finance/accounting as a component of Microsoft, is headed by a finance manager followed by two offices i.e. management accountant and finance accountant in conjunction with a strong workforce. HR and production elements of Microsoft are headed by a HR manger and production manager respectively. The overall company’s structure takes a tree shape thus making it a hierarchical configuration. This is indicated by many level of administration with different offices working under each level. 3. The ultimate decision makers of the company are the directors. The board is made of ten members, approved by shareholders in the company’s yearly common assembly. The team is responsible for making every final approval on actions that impact on the general company. Approvals are divided among different board committees in relation to the kind of activity i.e. auditing committee handles matters pertai
There are distinctions between Belgian and British colonial practices. Chinua Achebe through his book “Things Fall Apart” narrates how the colonial practices of the British affected the people of Igbo in Umuofia village. Furthermore, he illustrates how the British managed to gain control of the state of Nigeria without bloodshed. The distinctions between the two former colonial masters can be compared by analyzing Belgian Congo which was a Belgian colonial territory. The first distinction is the manner in which the British used to gain control of the people of Umuofia, the village of Okonkwo’s village. They sent missionaries to the village to go and preach a new religion of Christianity with the hope that if they are able to convince the Igbo people to believe in their new religion then they can be able to easily govern them. Hence, the missionaries come to Mbanta with a message of hope and peace in their efforts to convince the natives. The people of Mbanta embrace this religion of the white man without heeding the advice of the oracle that had earlier warned that the white man will come to disturb their peace. The natives view this religion as harmless and unable to untie them from their traditional roots and thus they welcome the white man. On the contrary, the Belgian colonial practice was not as kind compared to the British who took time to befriend the people of the Mbanta even though they were masquerading as missionaries. The Belgians took Congo by military force and in the process killing millions of innocent civilians. Another major distinction of the British was that whichever state they colonized, they usually founded schools and hospitals that were to be used to provide medical care to the natives. This is reflected in Mbanta as they establish a missionary center to provide services to the people of Umuofia. On the other hand, the Belgians did not care to establish schools or even hospitals for the natives in their colonies. This is evidenced by the high number of natives who were illiterate in the post-colonial Congo. The main aim of the British was to develop the African states that they colonized. A case in point is the village of Umuofia, when the British came; they established churches, hospitals and even taught the local people how to trade using a common currency (cowries). There is even the establishment of the District Commissioner’s office and the deployment of security officers to maintain law and order. Chinua Achebe explains the maintenance of law and order by narrating how a group of elders from Umuofia who had burned down a local church were detained and made to pay a fine of two hundred cowries for them to be released. On the other hand, the Belgian government does not care about developing the state they colonize as they are not even concerned about proper governance of those states. There are no new schools or hospitals established and the people are not taught to read, write or even trading. The colonial masters are only interested in the wealth of resource
Main objective This market plan focuses on a brief and straight forward plan of extending the already existing Zeep to a lawn mower in the market. This paper provides a straight forward plan of marketing that will be used in order to attain the zeep lawn mower brand extention marketing plan. Brand extention is the process of making use of the benefits derived from an existing brand in the market to bring into the market a new product using the same brand (Taylor 14). After the successful launch and use of zeep in the market, the company wishes to extend it by introducing a lawn mower. With this brand name, it is expected that the large customer bases of the zeep product will stand higher chances of benefiting from this product. It is very important to market this new brand zeep lawn mower given that there is stiff competition in the lawn mower market owing to the fact that even Honda have introduced been able to make lawnmowers. The company therefore intends to use the brand name in order to take advantage of the existing customer base in the market. This product will be available at all our retailing agents’ world wide in order to make it possible for the consumers to access it. Given that our current customers have always been satisfied with our products, we expect them to make use of the zeep lawnmower and even recommend it to others. The benefits from the customers will be a great benefit to both the new product and the existing brand and this can help the business plan for future marketing activities (Sengupta 268). Our main objectives will be to increase our market gross sales and in the process increase our earned profits. As a result of this, we intend to increase our employee number by br