ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
The organization in the focus of this research is Ford Motor Company. Founded in 1903, the company has been a pioneer in global industry (“Our company,” 2018). The company is concerned about making their “cars better, our employees happier and our planet a better place to be” (“Our company,” 2018, para. 2). Since high-quality vehicles are needed all over the world, Ford is actively expanding to the word’s markets. The company builds its work to follow the vision, which is “People working together as a lean, global enterprise to make people’s lives better through automotive and mobility leadership” (“Our company,” 2018, para. 4). Ford is a company that demonstrates a steady increase in revenue throughout the majority of the last ten years. There was a dramatic drop from $143,584 million in 2008 to $115,125 in 2009, but the company overcame the crisis and finished 2011 with $128,122 million revenue (“Ford’s revenue from FY 2008 to FY 2017 (in million U.S. dollars),” 2018). As of 2017, the revenue of the Ford Motor Company was $156,776 million. Still, the company’s focus is not only making profit. Ford Motor Company is demonstrates climate commitment by taking responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through developing hybrid and electric vehicles (“Sustainability report 2017-2018,” 2018). The company is highly concerned by constructing smart vehicles and conduct research about self-driving vehicles, which are important for building a city of tomorrow. The company provides responsible and transparent governance through clear policies and strategies. The most significant aspects for the company are ethical business practices, reduction of carbon footprint and fuel economy, product quality and safety and the resulting customer satisfaction, effective supply chain management, and government regulation and policy. This paper analyses the major aspects of the Ford Motor Company’s performance based on its financial statement, provides pro forma financial statement, conducts a ratio analysis, and evaluates the soundness of the company’s financial policies. Financial Statement Review Financial statement of the Ford Motor Company are presented in its annual report. The company closed 2017 financial year with 2,566 thousand of units sold to retailers in the United States and 4,041 thousand sold in other markets throughout the world (Ford Motor Company, 2018). Total revenues for year 2017 are $156,776 million, which indicates an increase in revenues compared to $151,800 million in 2016. Net income of the company increased significantly from $4,607 million in 2016 to $7,628 million in 2017 (Ford Motor Company, 2018). The major share of income comes from the company’s automotive segment while the financial services segment makes up about one quarter of the company’s net income. Costs and expenses of the company also increased. Thus, cost of sales in 2017 w
Introduction Jerry Lewis is one of the most iconic comedians and showmen of the 20th century. His eccentric charismatic personality and presence in the room which was both subtle but at the same time captivating allowed him to achieve universal appeal and respect. However, his life was difficult, exacerbated by extraordinary fame at a young age and his divisive views. This report will focus on the biography, career, and comedic style of Jerry Lewis. Biography and Filmography Jerry Lewis (real name Joseph Levitch) was born in 1926 in New York to parents who were also performers. He began performing at a young age, participating in a play at a resort at the age of five. Lewis gained prominence in the late 1940s after teaming up with fellow comic Dean Martin, quickly becoming a cultural phenomenon. Their duo became popular with television and nightclub shows as their styles and characters complemented each other. They were hired by Paramount to appear in a range of films starting with My Friend Irma. Eventually, the duo broke apart and for almost a decade Lewis dedicated himself to a music career and doing prominent shows in Las Vegas, New York, and Miami which were the staple of his career. His solo act was recognized as he starred as a guest on several television shows, solo TV specials, and hosting award shows as well as starring and co-producing several films for Paramount such as Rock-A-Bye Baby (1958) and The Geisha Boy (1958) (“Jerry Lewis Biography”). In 1960, having attained such popularity in Hollywood, granting him creative control, Lewis was the director, producer, and star in the film The Bellboy which was largely silent as an homage to Charlie Chaplin. It was a commercial and critical success as Lewis went on to direct more films including The Ladies Man (1961), The Errand Boy (1961), Boeing Boeing (1965) , and Three on Couch (1966). Towards the 1970’s his career began to wane as he appeared on periodic films and shows, mostly revivals and reprisals of his previous works. He continued to appear as a cameo on various shows and films, as well as public speaking and conducting tours. Towards the end of his life, Lewis suffered many health problems, some associated with his physical style of comedy in the past. Lewis was married twice and has 8 children. He died on August 20th, 2017 (Kehr). Style and Technique Jerry Lewis is best known as the essence of American slapstick comedy, known as vaudeville and burlesque. His low-brow comedic approach encompassed extreme antics, physical movements, and an improv-heavy style of interaction. It is described as raw and edgy, sometimes reaching such levels of absurdity and experimentation that it broke the status
Introduction Feedback loops refer to information that is sent back to the system as input and therefore end up affecting the output (Silsbee et al, 1996). With regard to organizations, a feedback loop means the extra endogenous or exogenous input that could affect products or services being produced. This essay shall deal with reinforcing and balancing feedback loops that affect the operations of a profit-oriented organization, Starbucks. A major focus will be on how Starbucks gets affected and the policies developed by the management to reduce negative effects. Reinforcing Loops This happens when an action taken influences the repetition of certain events or actions (Osgood, 2004, p. 1). With regard to Starbucks, the reinforcing loop includes the high-quality coffee and environment that graces patrons. The company expansion and popularity have mainly grown because of this loop, which has resulted in people wanting to go back again and again. This has developed to the phrase “Starbucks experience”. The loop is created as patrons get used to enjoying the high-quality coffee and the Starbucks experience. In the short run, the hype that is created by existing customers leads to many more people wanting to experience what has become popular in the neighborhood. These new patrons could also be brought by their friends who have been spreading the word. For this short-run increase in patrons to be hooked into the customer base, the management must ensure that quality is maintained. First-time patrons expect to get the quality of coffee that has been so popular and the environment that lacks comparison. Having experiences lesser than their expectation would lead to loss of potential long time customers. This short-term effect of great coffee and the experience is the trend that has seen Starbucks keep growing since its entry into markets beyond Washington state. The success has indeed followed Starbucks in virtually the markets it has been participating. The long-term result in the company has been people becoming long-term Starbucks patrons. Since this happens virtually in markets where the company ventures, more customers has meant expanded growth. The management, too, has come to understand customer needs and therefore embark on developing flavors meant for that purpose. The repetition of this trend in virtually all markets has also resulted in the management having an idea of customer flow when starting to operate new locations. It has therefore become more possible to make targets and meet customer needs. Potential customers to be served by a new station also come to be confident in the quality of coffee and environment to be provided at Starbucks. This is well understood b
Introduction Stress can occur in all spheres of our life and derive from different factors nowadays. It can be described as an emotional, mental and physical torture or strain that is associated with anxiety or overwork. The stress that is a result of waiting and anticipation is a kind of stress that can be controlled. One of the most difficult frustrating experiences is to wait. Many thing always make us wait. Most people in the process of waiting lose their patience, become bored, angry, and this eventually leads to anxiety. The feelings of anxiety are influenced by the mood of an individual. Depending on the mood, the time of waiting can be minimized or increased. This is because the amount of time that is wasted during waiting is a perception. For instance, most of the waiting process of the emptying of a cruise ship to get your luggage can certainly be frustrating. Factors that make waiting frustrating One of the factors that make waiting become frustrating is the fact that one is thoroughly aware of time. In most cases, a minute can feel like hours, and this plunges a person into gloom. Most of the time wasted on waiting is a result of mistakes made by someone. For example, some of the patients arrive in hospitals for their appointment like one hour earlier, and then they later complain of the long time they have to wait in the queues. Concerning the stresses associated with sitting in a traffic jam, it is necessary to learn to adopt ways that will reduce the stress. For example, favorite music or turning on a favorite radio station helps in calming the body tension. There are many ways of managing this kind of stress. However, despite a lot of various ways, it is not easy to be prepared to face stress daily. Some of the strategies that might work include taking a book or iPod with you to keep busy with this distraction being absorbed in reading, thus reducing the factors causing a boredom. Controlling daily frustrations Frustration is a typical and convincing expressive reaction to daily obscurities. Some irritation may be part of daily living, but tremendous disappointment has serious penalties. In many cases, frustrations can come up from putting a lot of energy in transforming the things that cannot be changed, or situations that are beyond the control. Everyone is able to minimize the effects of trauma in daily living as it occurs. Anticipation and waiting can undoubtedly be extraordinarily stressful. Almost in everyone’s life, there are cases when one has to wait for something in differen
Introduction Kathryn Stockett explores issues that faced African Americans in the 1960s. Events in Stockett’s book expose bad treatment of black maids in the South. The novel’s setting is in Jackson, Mississippi where three women narrate about their sad workplace experiences. The three women are Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny; this paper will reflect on their experiences. Sense of place The novel develops sense of place in various dimensions. For instance, the whites are seen to fit in their locality. This can be seen in Skeeter who feels a sense of wealth and beauty in her surroundings. She sets her sight on writing, which comes with a sense of place. Firstly, the whites are compatible and legible in their environment. Additionally, they show preference for Jackson as opposed to their black counterparts who feel out of place within the community. Aibileen does not feel a sense of place in Jackson. In fact, Aibileen feels out of place both personally and collectively as African Americans. The repercussions of racism take toil on Aibileen; she works wholeheartedly for her white employer but still find herself sacked. Initially, sense of place is only relevant to the whites like Hunt and Skeeter; however, Aibileen starts to feel a sense of identity when she finds the new job as a writer. Sense of place and Scale The African American house cleaners in the novel have a sense of fear in their places of work as can be observed in Aibileen and Constantine. It can be noted that the whites register high scales, which are consistent with their sense of space. The whites are more connected to Jackson than their black counterparts are. For instance, the whites register higher scores in place scales than blacks based on their feelings and self-esteem. However, it can be noted (later) that Skeeter felt more at home with the African Americans than her white counterparts. Race Race is quite dominant in the novel. The author uses African Americans to bring out plight of blacks in Jackson, Mississippi. The house cleaners and employees in cotton farms are portrayed as African Americans in the novel. On the other hand, employers and university students (represented by Skeeter) are portrayed as whites. There is a notable distinction between whites and blacks in terms of their workplaces. Moreover, social class is also distinct between the two races. However, later on, Skeeter comes on to bridge the gap. Additionally there is evidence of a child born out of wedlock to Celestine but with a white man. The novel develops racial differences in Jackson setting. Additionally, the novel bridges the gap between the two races through Skeeter and Aibileen. Discussion The novel shows great disparities between whites and blacks in Jackson, Mississippi. This disparity is reminiscent of the wide gap that existed between the whites and African Americans in the 1960s. Various human rights are abused in the novel. Celestine’s right to work is abused when she is sacked. Moreover, Minny’s right to speech i
Creating the personal action plan, it is necessary to take into consideration all strengths and weaknesses and to turn the theoretical advice into practice in order to develop their own leadership and action plan. Thereby, an understanding of the individual characteristics will help to establish the most appropriate strategy. According to Daft and Lengel (2008), it is highly essential to develop oneself in order to get more professional success. Self-organizing is the most critical part of the leadership process and movement from fission to fusion. Providing the personal action plan, I concentrate on such capacities as the self-inquiry, facilitation, welcoming, and readiness for changes and cooperation with partners. Those aspects are the most important peculiarities of the personal action plan. It is essential to develop a personal leadership style that will help to be unique and recognizable. The benefits of this issue are clearly seen. For partners, it is more preferable to choose the company or leader which is able to provide a unique strategy and ideas. Moreover, I take into consideration the statement that the leader has to control people for the sake of a goal. Therefore, the leader should be the first person who sees the new perspectives and react to the last tendencies and demands of a particular business area. As a leader, I will use my technical, conceptual, and human skills, composing my action plan. A clear understanding of my strengths and weaknesses will help me to provide the most effective and appropriate strategy. My action plan should provide adequate consideration of managing performance, indicating critical points, and soft skills. Taking into account three levels of collaborative management (Voets, J., De Rynck F., and Van Dooren, 2006, p.1), I will compare my action plan with the concrete situation. There can be an individual level that means those people who manage collaboratively, the organizational level that takes into consideration the organizations that provide the collaborative management, and the third collective level that implies the collaboration itself and its functions in the direction of the particular company. Creating a “public value” within collaborative management, the leader provides a more complete and complex image of the strategy of the company (Agranoff, 2005,p. 23). Therefore, as the leader, I will take into account this issue, providing my action plan. For those managers who want to improve their organization, it is highly important to implement an affirmative action strategy that can guarantee all employers equal rights and opportunities. As a leader, I will pay attention to this issue. Collaborative work within the company is the crucial moment of
One of the most complex issues of the modern design, the assessment of the possibilities within each project offered is a major problem, which means 5hat the design of certain products must be subject to detailed considerations and searching for the probable flaws, as well as seeking the means to eliminate the latter for the customer to be interested in the given product. Hence, the observation of the offered scenarios will provide a sufficient food for thoughts and help to practice the evaluation of certain marketing and production issues. Hence, the analysis of the scenarios offered will provide a sufficient practice for the real-life market situation. Speaking of the first and the second scenarios concerning the public mobile toilets and the cleaning buckets with the inclusive support for the mop, one can claim with certainty that the innovations offered in the given scenarios certainly sound in the most inspiring way and deserve being implemented. However, it must be also admitted that the given innovations presuppose a number of limitations and constraints. To start with, the idea of public portable toilets is considerably restricted by the number of people that can wait in line for their turn. On the one hand, portable public toilets are supposed to be used in a fast way, yet, according to the results of the researches carried out so far, the lines in front of the door to the portable toilets can reach the most enormous length. As Anthony and Dufresne (2007) say, the ordeal of waiting in lines is one of the most common features of using portable public toilets (p.268). Moreover, according to the authors, the usage of the public portable toilets can also trigger certain discrimination issues, namely, the race or gender discrimination; as the writers assert, the cases of the issues in question have been registered and are a part and parcel of the reality: “In addition, today’s transgender population can be at a loss in deciding which public restrooms to use, because they do not fit nearly into either of the existing categories” (p.270). Speaking of the limitations connected with the mops, one must admit that the objects in question, namely, the buckets themselves, provide enough limitations. It is essential to mark that the mops attached to the buckets can cause certain confusion and be quite uncomfortable to handle with in case the mop weighs more than an empty bucket. In terms of the manufacturing processes concerning the issues in question, one should mark that the most reasonable steps to undertake in the course of the manufacturing procedure will be to create a portable toilet that will be lightweight and easy to transport. As Palm (1997) suggests, The main component of the portable toilet is lightweight sheet plastic, such as polyethylen
Substitute heart valves Substitute heart valves used since the early 1990s have resulted in a change of prospects for people with cardiac valvular disease. Bioprosthetic heart valves have been found to be superior to mechanical prostheses (Hwang, 1982). Anticoagulant therapy is unnecessary with the bioprosthetic valves. However major problems are still present with them. Mechanical failure due to calcification of leaflet regions which have flexural stresses during valve opening, high tensile stresses during valve closure and tearing of the cusps even without calcification are common problems (Krucinski, 1993). Apart from calcification other problems noted are the inability to be durable on a long term basis and problems of functional and haemodynamic performance (Sung et al, 1993, p. M532). Chemical treatments of prostheses have brought about some changes but problems have not abated. The problems of the prostheses are related to the cross linking reagents of glutaraldehyde or formaldehyde which are used to fix the bioprostheses. Ideal heart valve The modeling of an active and non-antigenic bioprosthesis free from calcification and fibroblast proliferation induced by both glutaraldehyde treatment and cell remnants is essential (Colomb et al, 1987). The most ideal bioprosthesis must be in addition be free from thrombogenic property, durable, have the potential to grow and have no immunogenic properties that cause rejection (Ikada, 2006, p. 159). Prosthetic heart valves These are not at all ideal. Long term benefits are hard to be elicited from them. The foreign materials used are thromobogenic. Bioprostheses and homografts available commercially have advantages and limitations (Ikada, 2006, p.158). Porcine valves have low resistance to flow, larger diameter and lack of anticoagulation requirement but have a higher rate of inflammatory deterioration with valve failure where tearing occurs even without calcification. Tissue engineered heart valves (TEHV) are made by seeding autologous cells on anatomically shaped porous scaffolds (Ikada, 2006, p. 158). Bioprosthetic heart valves have superior fluid dynamic properties and do not need anti-coagulant therapy. Reduction in the mineralization rate can be achieved with new chemical treatments but mechanical failure still results (Sacks, 1998, p. 899). Bovine Tissue Allogeneic and xenogeneic type I collagen of bovine tissue is a useful scaffold with low antigenecity (Ikada, 2006, p.7). Bovine tissue is used for studies due to its abundance. Extraction of the Type I collagen is through alkaline or enzymatic processes. The telopeptide portions with the antigenic properties are eliminated during extraction. This collagen