In closely held corporations, it is general business culture that the office of Chief Executive Officer, CEO, is also the chairman of the board. Specifically, one person often shares the chairman and CEO titles while another person takes the presidency or may become chief operating officer (COO). However, the term president is from the U.S. and in the UK COO is favored. Underneath that comes the Executive Vice President (U.S.) or Executive Director (UK). In publicly held corporations, the CEO and chairman positions can be separated but there are implications in corporate governance by doing so.
In some European Union countries, there are two separate boards, one executive board for the day-to-day business and one supervisory board for control purposes (elected by the shareholders). In these countries, the chief executive officer presides over the executive board and the chairman presides over the supervisory board and these two roles will always be held by different people. This ensures a distinction between management by the executive board and governance by the supervisory board. This allows for clear lines of authority. The aim is to prevent a conflict of interest and too much power being concentrated in the hands of one person. There is a strong parallel here with the structure of governments, which tend to separate the political cabinet from the management civil service.
In rare circumstances an Executive Chairperson can be appointed but this is either illegal in many jurisdictions or frowned upon by Regulators.
In the United Kingdom many Charities and Government Agencies are headed by a Chief Executive who is answerable to a Board of Trustees or Board of Directors. In the UK, the Chairman (of the Board) in public companies is more senior than the Chief Executive. Most public companies now split the role of Chairman and Chief Executive.
Typically, a CEO has a cadre of subordinate executives, each of which has specific functional responsibilities. These direct reporting relationships most often include: Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief Information Officer. Although not an Executive, the Director of Human Resources plays a vital role within any corporation.
However, depending on the industry in which the company operates and/or the organizational structure the company has employed, various other functional areas may be highlighted through the CEO's direct span of control. Some of these less common monikers include: Chief (Business) Development Officer, Chief Knowledge Officer/Chief Learning Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Risk Officer, and Chief Credit Officer.
According to Don Schmincke, to be a strong executive, "one cannot act in business differently from how he acts in family life or society". Meaning being a successful executive requires a man’s conduct to be “correct in all points”, his actions must follow his words at all times.
Exalead
Exalead [eg'zæli:d] is a French search engine involved in the Apple Inc. project, introducing new search techniques.
Exalead provides thumbnails previews of the target pages along with results, and allows usual advanced refining on the results page (language, geographic location, file type, categories) but also innovative refining such as rich content (audio, video, RSS) and related terms, allowing users to browse the web by serendipity.
The company is a société anonyme based in Paris and founded in 2000 by Francois Bourdoncle. Its name comes from the association between
Exalead tries to integrate research functions in one piece of software, combining Internet, desktop and enterprise functionality.
Exalead employs approximately 60 people in 3 countries (Paris in France, Milano in Italy and New York and San Francisco in the United States of America).
Exalead attempts to add value to search results by displaying statistics and information about the results along the left-hand side of the page. This includes categorical and geographical information. Exalead's features include:
Exalead allows search with regular expressions, which can be used to solve crosswords and used in IR algorithms.
On 2 March 2006, exalead.com indexed more than 4 billion pages. The interface is available in four languages (English, French, German and Chinese).
On 2 August 2006, Exalead launched the beta of its new interface, which is the default interface since the middle of October. The Chinese language has been removed again, Spanish and Italian were added instead - more languages will come soon.
The index size is 8 billion pages (8,079,622,557 pages at 10 October 2006, 15:54 GMT).
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is a hobby for people who like to talk using radio transmitters. Many people enjoy using amateur radio to talk to other amateur radio hobbyists in other countries. Amateur radio hobbyists also use their radio transmitters to get help in emergencies. Amateur radio is often called "Ham Radio". Many people use their amateur radios for fun. People who use Amateur radio are often called "amateur radio operators", "hams" or "amateurs".
During a disaster or emergency, amateur radio can be used to get help. When telephones do not work, it may be the only way to communicate. Some radio hobbyists volunteer to listen to emergency band frequencies in case there are distress calls. If the volunteers hear a distress call, they notify the appropriate authorities (for example the police or the Coast Guard).
People must have a license to use Amateur radio. In most countries users must pass a test to get a license. In some countries there is more than one license grade. In some countries, people can use Amateur radio if they have a license from their home country.
There are many clubs for Amateur radio in many countries. These clubs do many things as a group and help people get their Amateur radio license.
Amateur radio operators talk to each other in many ways. Some people talk with their voice, others use computers, television, or Morse code. They use many ways to get their signals to others. Most use shortwave radio signals that bounce off the sky. Some bounce off the moon or a satellite. Amateur radio operators have many ways to talk using the radio. Amateur radio satellites are called OSCAR's - Orbital Satellites Carrying Amateur Radio. Hams can also talk to astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
There are many ways to have fun with amateur radio. There are many games and contests. Amateur radio operators try to talk with as many others as possible. They then mail each other postcards called "QSL cards" to confirm the contact. Contesters may try to see how far they can talk, or to how many different people they can talk.
Some hide a transmitter which sends out a signal and others try to find it using receivers. This is called "Radio direction finding", "fox hunting" or "Radio sport". Sometimes the event is done with cars, or as a foot race.
Amateur radio is practised by over 15,000 licensed users in India. The first amateur radio operator was licensed in 1921. By the mid 1930s, there were around 20 amateur radio operators in India. Amateur radio operators have played an important part in the Indian independence movement with the setting up of pro-independence radio stations in the 1940s.
Humanities
The humanities include languages, literature, music, philosophy, politics, history, media, the classics, religion, and the visual and performing arts. Additional subjects sometimes included in the humanities are anthropology, area studies, communications and cultural studies, although these are often regarded as social sciences. It was popular in the Renaissance ages.