Humanitarian Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Humanitarian Ethics - Essay Example In this meaning, the antonym is "amoral", indicating an inability to distinguish between right and wrong. The second denotes the active practice of those values. In this sense, the antonym is "immoral", referring to actions that violate ethical principles. Personal ethics signifies a moral code applicable to individuals, while social ethics means moral theory applied to groups. Social ethics can be synonymous with social and political philosophy, in as much as it is the foundation of a good society or state. This moral power in man involving the exercise of man’s greatest endowments of freedom, rights and duties, is a most distinctive feature of the human personality. Much as the spirit, the soul giverns and permeates the whole human body in a human person, so this moral prerogative of man prevails over, permeates and pervades the whole totality of human activity. While all other aspects of human life may be confined and categorized into separate compartments, this moral characteristic of man transcends, penetrates and invades all compartments of human living, all phases of human endeavor. For man is principally and primarily a human person whose highest faculty is his moral power, his willpower, his freedom. Hence, there cannot be, for instance, in the practical world of human affairs such a thing as purely economic matter, a purely political problem or question, a pure artistic undertaking, and the like – entirely apart from and independent of all moral connections and considerations. Much of the present day problems rising from conflicting claims of authority and powers, when seen in the light of the explained postulate of the primacy of the spirit and morality disappear or point to their own solutions. Unfortunately, because of the crassly materialistic temper and tenor of our times, the moral angle is often overlooked, moral authority is often bypassed or

Developing Humanoid Robot Animations in Motion Capture

Developing Humanoid Robot Animations in Motion Capture Introduction (Chapter 1) This research describes the framework in which the different human movements have been taken from motion capture and that information is animated which sets the direction to study the digital character models and its locomotion in the virtual environment. It also gives feasible approach in understanding of walking gait patterns in that environment. This framework also leads to the study issues related to safety engineering. Overview Analysis of human locomotion and its research area have changed since it began form the cave drawings of the Paleolithic Era. The motive for human locomotion studies at early stages were driven by the need to carry on by resourcefully moving from place to place, dodging from predators and hunting for food (Alexander, 2000). Modern-day human locomotion studies have added to a wide range of applications ranging from military use, sport, ergonomics, and health care. In locomotion studies, according to (Hall, 1991) the term biomechanicsbecame accepted during the early 1970s as the internationally recognized descriptor of the field of area concerned with the mechanical study of living organism. In sport, human locomotion studies are made to extend the restrictions of an athlete when even the minimum improvement in performance is pursued eagerly (J. A. , 1984). However, the development of human locomotion studies remains reliant on the improvement of new tools for observation. According to (Alexander, 2000) lately, instrumentation and computer technology have grant opportunities for the improvement of the study of human locomotion. (J. A. , 1984). Illustrate frequent techniques for measuring motion and mentioned the co-ordinate analyzer (motion capture device) as a major advance in movement study. According to (Furniss, 2000) Motion capture or mocap was initially created for military use earlier than it was modified into the entertainment industry since the mid 1980.s. (Dyer, 1995) define motion capture as measuring an objects location and direction in physical space, then recording that sequence into a computer usable form. According to(Micheal, 2003) ; (Suddha Basu, 2005) motion capture is the fastest way to produce rich, realistic animation data. (James F OBrien, 2000) illustrate that Mocap can also be useful in several additional fields such as music, fine art dance, sign language, motion recognition, rehabilitation with medicine, biomechanics, special effects for live-action films and computer animation of all types as well as in defense and athletic analysis/training. There are basically three types of motion capture sys tems accessible such as mechanical, electromagnetic and optical based system. All three systems go through the same basic process shown in figure. The first step is the input where the movement of live actors either human or animal is recorded using various method depending on the type of the motion capture system used. Next, the information is processed to identify the corresponding markers of the live actor and then transferred into virtual space using specialized computer software. Finally the output is where the information is translated into a 3D trajectory computer data that contains translation and rotation information known as motion capture file. Motivation Producing realistic character animation remains one of the great challenges in computer graphics. At present, there are three methods by which this animation can be produced. The first one is key framing, in which the animator gives important key poses for the character at specific frames. A second one uses physical simulation to drive the characters motion its results are good, due to lack of control its difficult to use and its costly and with characters its not much successful. The last one is motion capture, has been widely used to animate characters. It uses sensors placed on person and collects the data that describes their motion however they are performing the desired motion. As the technology for motion capture has improved and the cost decreased, the interest in using this approach for character animation has also increased. The main challenge that an animator is confronted with is to generate character animation with a realistic appearance. As humanoid robot renovation is a popular research area since it can be used in various applications to understand the emerging field of robotics and other digital animation fields. Currently most of the methods work for controlled environments and human pose reconstruction to recognize humanoid robots is a popular research area since it can be used in various applications. Motion capture and motion synthesis are expensive and time consuming tasks for articulated figures, such as humans. Human pose view based on computer vision principles is inexpensive and widely applicable approach. In computer vision literature the term human motion capture is usually used in connection with large scale body analysis ignoring the fingers, hands and the facial muscles, which is the case in this research. The motion capture is fairly involved to calculate a 3D skeletal representation of the motion of satisfactory value to be functional for animation. The animation generation is an application of motion capture where the required accuracy is not as high as in some other applications, such as medicine (Ferrier, June 2002) Problem Context 1) Even though motion capture is applied into so many fields by creating physically perfect motions, it has a few significant weaknesses. According to (Lee, MCML: Mocap, 2004) firstly, it has low flexibility, secondly the captured data can have different data formats depending on the motion capture system which was employed and thirdly, commercially available motion capture libraries are difficult to use as they often include hundreds of examples. (Shih-Pin Chao, 2003) States that motion capture sessions are not only costly but also a labor intensive process thus, promotes the usability of the motion data. 2) In the field of animation and gaming industry, it is common that motion information are captured to be used for a particular project or stored in a mocapdata. This data can either be used as the whole range of motion sequence or as part of a motion synthesis. In sport science, mocap data is used for analyzing and perfecting the sequencing mechanics of premier athletes, as well as monitoring the recovery progress of physical therapies. This simply means that a vast collection of motion capture data models are limited for different sets. Currently, motion data are often stored in small clips to allow for easy hand sequencing for describing the behavior (Jernej Barbic, 2004) (Tanco L. M., 2000). However, according to (Lee, MCML: Mocap, 2004) (Morales, 2001) (Tanco L. M., 2000) a motion capturedata models lack interoperability. This calls for an immediate need for tools that synchronize these datasets (Feng Liu, 2003). 3) In light of the recent course of interest in virtual environment applications, much research has been devoted to solving the problems of manipulating humans in 3-D simulated worlds, and especially to human locomotion. However, most of the animation approaches based on these studies can only generate limited approach lacking the locomotion capabilities for example walking their application in virtual environments are inevitably limited. Project Objective The objective of this project is to create a framework taken from motion capture data techniques which can set the direction to study 3D articulated figures and the humanoid robot locomotion in the virtual environment by understanding walking gait patterns in human. This framework also leads to the study issues related to safety engineering. The other objective of this project is to capture, process, and examine the locomotion feasibility in virtual environment and analyze different tasks in virtual environment. In system overview diagram all the different steps has been described it starts from mocaop suit that is on the subject and then its data of random movement has been taken into computer and motion analysis is done. After motion analysis its been retargeted and with avatar model the final output scene has been created. Then with software development kit feasible program has been created to deal with different information of that scene. Project Scope To capture the human motion from the motion capture technology and using the captured data to animate the different motions and then refining the animated data. By using the technology called motion builder we can simulate and study the effects of walk and fall in the virtual environment.   After mapping the captured data in the animated character which is called digital humanoid robot an application is build to study the nature of the animated scene which is called an enhanced framework. The other technology is used is called mathematica which is used for studying the factors in mathematical terms because the human motion builder is a simulation technology and mathematica is a dynamic solver engine. So it will lead towards the study of digital humanoid robot of walking and falling in virtual environments on some assumptions. Outline This part outlines the in general structure of the thesis, and a short explanation for each chapter: Chapter 1: deals with Introduction, scope and objective with problem context. Chapter 2: Introduces human motion capture techniques and different work in animation of human walking in virtual environment and gives a summary of the related work in this area. Chapter 3: deals with the system structure which describes the hardware and the software technologies involved in the research and also illustrate the frame work model and this model help exploit the behavior of humanoid which sets up the framework. Chapter 4: describes the framework analysis based on the study of articulated animation models in virtual environment and walking gait patters with Bezier curve algorithm. Chapter 5: mention all the techniques that have been extracted from different softwares and how its used to set up the whole framework and evaluates results which are categorized in three phases the application which represents coordinate system and structure, walking gait patters by using Bezier curve and the falling effect by visual aid. Chapter 6: is the conclusion that summarizes the outcome of the project, and discusses the future works. Conclusion This chapter describes the introduction of motion capture and how it will be utilized to improve the study of human locomotion. The project scope and objectives are elaborated and listed down in this chapter. Literature Review (Chapter 2) Motion capture system   Motion capture is an attractive way of creating the motion parameters for computer animation. It can provide the realistic motion parameters. It permits an actor and a director to work together to create a desired pose, that may be difficult to describe with enough specificity to have an animator recreate manually (Ferrier, June 2002). The application areas of motion capture techniques can be summarized as follows (Perales, 2001): Virtual reality: interactive virtual environments, games, virtual studios, character animation, film, advertising Smart surveillance systems: access control, parking lots, supermarkets, vending machines, traffic. Advanced user interfaces: advanced user interfaces. Motion analysis and synthesis: annotations of videos, personalized training, clinical studies of medicine. Understanding the working of humanoid robot has been always on study of human locomotion.   This literature review discusses human motion control techniques, motion capture techniques in general and advance, non-vision based motion capture techniques, vision-based motion capture techniques with and without markers and other enhanced techniques which are covered in details for which the framework can be understood easily. Properties of Tracking Systems This section lists properties of tracking systems and discusses the relationships between the various properties. Accuracy Accuracy can be defined as the agreement between the measured results from tracking technologies and the actual position of the object, and because the true value is unknown the tracking technologies can only be evaluated with relative accuracy. For one tracking system, the accuracy is limited by the principle and affected by the noise/interferences from the environment. The sources of noises are depending on the tracking technology we use. For different tracking principles, the influencing factors are different. For example, for optical motion tracking, the interference is lighting and AC current; for magnetic, ferrous objects distort the magnetic field and cause errors. If the model or the mechanism of the noise is quantitatively known, it is a systematic error and can be compensated by post-treatment after tracking or eliminated by pre-filtering before tracking. Robustness Robustness defines the systems ability to continue to function in adverse conditions or with missing or incorrect measurements. Some systems make assumptions about the surrounding environment during operation. Also, a system may be unable to take a measurement at a particular time. Related to the robustness is repeatability in the reported data. If the reported values are consistent over time and over operating conditions and environment, then measuring the accuracy (or the lack thereof) is possible, and corrective algorithms can be applied. Tracking range The range is the space in which the system can measure sufficient and accurate data for the application. For some systems, the range can be reduced by noises from the environment or be limited by the hardware of the system itself. For example, magnetic system cannot track accurate data when the tracked object is at the margin of the magnetic field due to the inhomogeneous distribution of the field. Tracking speed Tracking speed is the frequency at which the measurement system can obtain the updated tracking data. There are two significant numbers for the system, one is update rate and the other one is latency. Update rate is the frequency at which the tracking system generates the tracking data; latency describes the delay between tracking data has been generated and the host computer receives the data in real-time mode. Hardware The hardware means the physical realization of the components of the tracking system. It includes the number of components, and the size and weight of those components, especially those that the user is required to carry (or wear). Some systems may have a significant amount of hardware that must be set up in the environment, although it may need no further attention from the user once in position. Ideally, the application would like to give the user complete freedom of movement. Some devices tether the user to a fixed object. Some systems may have a heavy or unwieldy device which the user must manipulate in order to move. Some devices have a tendency to pull the user back to a â€Å"resting position† for the device. The hardware also determines the biggest part of the costs and therefore is very often a decisive factor for the choice of the applied motion tracking system Non-vision Based Motion Capture In non-vision based systems, sensors are attached to the human body to collect movement information. Some of them have a small sensing footprint that they can detect small changes such as finger or toe movement (Hu, A survey human movement tracking and stroke rehabilitation, 1996). Each kind of sensor has advantages and limitations (Hu, A survey human movement tracking and stroke rehabilitation, 1997). Advantages of magnetic trackers: real-time data output can provide immediate feedback no post processing is required they are less expensive than optical systems no occlusion problem is observed multiple performers are possible Disadvantages of magnetic trackers: the trackers are sensitivity to metal objects cables restricts the performers they provide lower sampling rate than some optical systems the marker configurations are difficult to change Advantages of electromechanical body suits: they are less expensive than optical and magnetic systems real-time data is possible no occlusion problem is observed multiple performers are possible Disadvantages of electromechanical body suits: they provide lower sampling rate they are difficult to use due to the amount of hardware configuration of sensors is fixed Vision-Based Motion Capture with Markers In 1973, Johansson explored his famous Moving Light Display (MLD) psychological experiment to perceive biological motion (Johansson). In the experiment, small reflective markers are attached to the joints of the human performers. When the patterns of the movements are observed, the integration of the signals coming from the markers resulted in recognition of actions. Although the method faces the challenges such as errors, non-robustness and expensive computation due to environmental constraints, mutual occlusion and complicated processing, many marker based tracking systems are available in the market. This is a technique that uses optical sensors, e.g. cameras, to track human movements, which are captured by placing markers upon the human body. Human skeleton is a highly articulated structure and moves in three-dimension. For this reason, each body part continuously moves in and out of occlusion from the view of the cameras, resulting in inconsistent and unreliable motion data of t he human body. One major drawback of using optical sensors and markers, they cannot sense joint rotation accurately. This is a major drawback in representing a real 3D model (Hu, A survey human movement tracking and stroke rehabilitation, 1997). Optical systems have advantages and limitations (Perales, 2001). Advantages of optical systems are as follows: they are more accurate larger number of markers are possible no cables restricts the performers they produces more samples per second Disadvantages of optical systems: they require post-processing they are expensive (between 100, 000 and 250, 000) occlusion is a problem in these systems environment of the capturing must be away from yellow light and reflective noise Vision-Based Motion Capture without Markers As a less restrictive motion capture technique, markerless-based systems are capable of overcoming the mutual occlusion problem as they are only concerned about boundaries or features on human bodies. This is an active and promising but also challenging research area in the last decade. The research with respect to this area is still ongoing (Hu, A survey human movement tracking and stroke rehabilitation, 1996). The markerless-based motion capture technique exploits external sensors like cameras to track the movement of the human body. A camera can be of a resolution of a million pixels. This is one of the main reasons that optical sensors attracted peoples attention. However, such vision-based techniques require intensive computational power (Bryson, 1993). As a commonly used framework, 2D motion tracking only concerns the human movement in an image plane, although sometimes people intend to project a 3D structure into its image plane for processing purposes. This approach can be c atalogued with and without explicit shape models (Hu, A survey human movement tracking and stroke rehabilitation, 1996). The creation of motion capture data from a single video stream seems like a plausible idea. People are able to watch a video and understand the motion, but clearly, the computing the human motion parameters from a video stream are a challenging task (Ferrier, June 2002). Vision-based motion capture techniques usually include initialization and tracking steps. Initialization A system starts its operation with correct interpretation of the current scene. The initialization requires camera calibration, adaptation to scene characteristics and model initialization. Camera calibration is defined as parameters that are required for translating a point in a 3D scene to its position in the image. Some systems find initial pose and increment it from frame to frame whereas in other systems the user specifies the pose in every single frame. Some systems have special initialization phase where the start pose is found automatically whereas in others the same algorithm is used both for initialization and pose estimation (Granum, 2001). Tracking Tracking phase extracts specific information, either low level, such as edges, or high level, such as head and hands. Tracking consists of three parts (Granum, 2001): Figure-ground segmentation: the human figure is extracted from the rest of the image. Representation: segmented images are converted to another presentation to reduce the amount of information. Tracking over time: how the subject should be tracked from frame to frame. Mechanical Mechanical measurement is the oldest form of location; rulers and tape measures provide a simple method of locating one item with reference to another. More sophisticated mechanical techniques have been developed. Nowadays measurements of the angles of the body joints with potentiometers or shaft encoders combined with knowledge of the dimensions of the rigid components allow accurate calculations of the position of different body parts.(Beresford, 2005) Today mechanical position tracking devices can be separated into body-based and ground-based systems. Body based systems are those which are mounted on, or carried on, the body of the user and are used to sense either the relative positions of various parts of the users body or the position of an instrument relative to a fixed point on the users body. Body-based systems are typically used to determine either the users joint angles for reproduction of their body in the synthetic environment, or to determine the position of the users hand or foot, relative to some point on the users body. Since the body based systems are used to determine the relative position between two of the users body parts, the devices must somehow be attached to the users body. This particular issue has raised many questions: How is the device attached to the body in a way which will minimize relative motion between the attachment and the soft body part? How are the joints of the device aligned with the users joints to minimize the difference in the centers of rotation? Some other problems associated with body-b ased tracking systems are specifically caused by the device being attached to the users body. These systems are typically very obtrusive and encumbering and therefore do not allow the user complete freedom of movement. Body-based systems are, however, quite accurate and do not experience problems like measurement drift (the tendency of the devices output to change over time with no change in the sensed quantity), interference from external electromagnetic signals or metallic devices in the vicinity, or shadowing (loss of sight of the tracked object due to physical interference of another object)(Frey, 1996). Ground based systems are not carried by the user but are mounted on some fixed surface (i.e. the users desk or the floor) and are used to sense the position of an implement relative to that fixed surface. Ground-based systems are typically used to determine the position and orientation of an implement manipulated by the user relative to some fixed point which is not on the users body. Like body-based mechanical systems, they are very accurate and are not plagued by measurement drift errors, interference or shadowing. Ground-based systems do suffer from one thing which the body-based systems do not: They confine the user to work within the space allowed by the device. Usually this means that the user is confined to work in a space the size of a large desk. If the application does not require the user to move around much throughout the task (i.e. the user remains seated), this is not considered as a problem. Mechanical tracking systems are the best choice for force-feedback (haptic) devices since they are rigidly mounted to either the user or a fixed object. Haptic devices are used to allow the user a sense of touch. The user can feel surfaces in the synthetic environment or feel the weight of an object. The device can apply forces to the users body so that the user can experience a sense of exertion. Mechanical tracking systems also typically have low latencies (the time required to receive useful information about a sensed quantity) and high update rates (the rate at which the system can provide useful information). Therefore these systems have found good commercial niche as measurement devices and hand tracking systems. Advantages high update rate low latency accurate No blocking problem, no interference from environment  · best choice for force feedback Disadvantages Restricted movement from mounted device Acoustic Acoustic tracking systems utilize high frequency sound waves to track objects by either the triangulation of several receivers (time-of-flight method) or by measuring the signals phase difference between transmitter and receiver (phase-coherence method). Generally the user carries the transmitter, and a series of sensors around the room determine the linear distance to the transmitter. Some systems have the user carry a receiver and listen to a series of transmitters positioned around the volume. The time-of-flight method of acoustic tracking uses the speed of sound through air to calculate the distance between the transmitter of an acoustic pulse and the receiver of that pulse. The use of one transmitter on a tracked object and a minimum of three receivers at stationary positions in the vicinity allow an acoustic system to determine the relative position of the object via triangulation. This method limits the number of objects tracked by the system to one. An alternative method has been devised in which several transmitters are mounted at stationary positions in the room and each object being tracked is fitted with a receiver. Using this method, the positions of numerous objects may be determined simultaneously. Note that the use of one transmitter (or one receiver) attached to an object can resolve only position. The use of two transmitter (receiver) sets with the same object can be used to determine the position and orientation (6 DOF) of the object. The desire to track mo re than just the position of an object suggests that the second method (multiple stationary transmitters with body mounted receivers) may be preferable. The other method of acoustic tracking is the phase-coherent tracking. It may be used to achieve better accuracies than the time-of-flight method. The system does this by sensing the signal phase difference between the signal sent by the transmitter and that detected by the receiver. If the object being tracked moves farther than one-half of the signal wavelength in any direction during the period of one update, errors will result in the position determination. Since phase coherent tracking is an incremental form of position determination, small errors in position determination will result in larger errors over time (drift errors), which may be the reason why only few phase-coherent systems have been implemented successfully. Some problems associated with both acoustic tracking methods result from the line-of-sight required between transmitter and receiver. This line of sight requirement obviously plagues the devices with shadowing problems. It also limits their effective tracking range, although they have better tracking ranges than electromagnetic systems. Unlike electromagnetic systems, they do not suffer from metallic interference, but they are susceptible to interference caused by ambient noise sources, by reflections of the acoustic signals from hard surfaces, and environmental interference (e.g. temperature variations). Advantages Very high freedom of movement Cheap Disadvantages Line-of-sight problems Either high range or high accuracy (not both!) Environmental interference (e.g. temperature variations, other noise sources) Drift errors (phase-coherent) High latency, low update rates Magnetic Electromagnetic tracking systems are currently the most widely used systems for human body tracking applications. They employ the use of artificially-generated electromagnetic fields to induce voltages in detectors attached to the tracked object. A fixed transmitter and the sensors consist of three coils mounted in mutually orthogonal directions. The sensors range in size, but tend to be around a few cubic centimeters. The transmitters range in size with the power of the field they are expected to generate, and range from several cubic inches to a cubic foot. There are four magnetic fields that have to be measured: the environmental field (including the Earths magnetic field), and three orthogonal fields in the transmitters coordinate directions in figure. Each of these fields is measured in the sensors three coordinate dimensions for a total of twelve measurements of each sensor. From this information, the position and orientation of the sensor with respect to the transmitter can be computed. These tracking systems are robust, fast, and fairly inexpensive and can be used to track numerous objects (body parts) with acceptable position and orientation accuracies (on the order of 0.1 inches and 0.5 degrees). Unlike electric fields, magnetic fields are unaffected by the presence or absence of human bodies and other non-metallic objects in the environment. This offers a tremendous opportunity, because it enables magnetic trackers to overcome the line-of-sight requirement that plagues acoustic, optical, and externally connected mechanical tracking systems. On the other hand, the magnetic systems suffer from sensitivity to background magnetic fields and interference caused by ferrous metal devices in the vicinity, and therefore is inaccurate in practical environments. Due to this and the limited range of the generated magnetic field, the magnetic tracking systems are restricted to a small special area. Advantages High update rates Very low latency High robustness No shadowing Rather cheap Acceptable accuracy in artificial environment Disadvantages High sensitivity to background magnetic fields Inaccurate in practical environments due to interference caused by ferrous metal devices Low range of the magnetic field and Tracking scope is low due to cable Inertial An internal sensor contains three gyroscopes, to determine the angular rate, and three accelerometers, to determine linear acceleration. Originally, they were mounted to orthogonal axes on a gimbaled platform, as it can be seen in figure. After removing the effect of gravity from the vertical accelerometer, the data has to be double-integrated to provide a measure of the offset between initialization and the current position. In fact, this combination of sensors has been used successfully for inertial navigatio

Scientology Essay example -- essays research papers

Scientology is a fairly new religion. Founded in the twentieth-century by a man by the name of L. Ron Hubbard. He began his studies long ago and wrote a book in 1950 called Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. He claimed that this book was one of the first tools used to solve the problems of the mind. This book focused on irrational mind, war, crime, and insanity. Mr. Hubbard designed this book so that anyone can use it to improve oneself. He did not stop at Dianetics, however, he felt that there were still some issues that had to be addressed. He was now going to try to figure out the nature of the human being, what makes up our â€Å"being.† Mr. Hubbard combined religion, philosophy, and his theory of dianetics and came up with Scientology. Mr. Hubbard had a unique life. He was born in Tilden, Nebraska, the son of a naval commander Harry Ross Hubbard and Ledora May Hubbard. L. Ron Hubbard was born on March 13, 1911. When he was about two his family moved to Montana where he learned to be a rough western cowboy. His mother was thoroughly educated woman. She taught him how to read and write at an early age. L. Ron Hubbard was said to have an avid interest in life at an early age. When his father’s naval career required that they move away from Montana, his mother was responsible to teach him the schooling he missed. When Ron was twelve the family moved to Seattle, Washington. Ron got the liberty to be associated with many different types of people such as the Blackfoot Indians, Beijing magician, Chinese magicians, and studying Buddhists. He enrolled at George Washington University, his father put him into mathematics and engineering. Now he learned how to take the scientific approach to solving problems. He became more and more interested in the way the mind works. He would ask the professors at George Washington University and they could not give him an answer, so he came up with the idea that the western culture did not understand a thing about the mind. He believed that it was his duty to explore the mind and to tell the western world how it works. This is when he came up with dianetics and then eventually the religion of scientology. Scientology consists of eight dynamics. With these dynamics, a person realizes that his life extends beyond himself. The first dynamic is â€Å"self.† This teaches you to survive as an individual. Taking care of such thi... ... deal with life here on earth and teaches people how to become better people. Improving conditions here on earth is the foremost important thing to fix. Scientology seems to address this issue with full force. It uses modern technology, and knowledge of how human relations to improve the quality of life of people who chose to follow Scientology. In the description of L. Ron Hubbard, I was disgusted. They made it sound like he was this extremely smart guy. When he started studying the mind and the way it works, he noticed that the western society knew nothing about it. He sounded pompous when he said â€Å"it was very obvious that I was dealing with and living in a culture which knew less about the mind than the lowest primitive tribe I had ever come in contact with†¦Ã¢â‚¬  I did not like this at all. He sounds like a very arrogant man. Arrogant in a cocky way. In doing research I noticed that all of his followers seem to have the same attitude. I find that it is funny that they are so dedicated to following a man who was born in the twentieth-century. He is an ordinary man who happened to be exceptionally smart. He is a business man who is good at persuading people and wants to make money.

Economics Commentary †Russian Quota on US Pork and Indian Government Tax on cars Essay

A quota is a physical limit on the number or value of goods that can be imported into a country. This is one of the few protectionist measures that countries in order to protect their own domestic industries and is a measure that has been taken up by Russia, as seen in the article. Russia has reduced its quota for American pork from 750,000 tonnes to 600,000 tonnes. This is because Russia wishes to become more self-sufficient in producing pork and thus improve their pork industry. As said in the article, this will be a big blow to the American producers of pork who already trying to recover from poor demand and prices, as well as high input costs. The effect of this reduced quota can be seen in Fig.1 below. As can be seen, the quota has been decreased from QD2-QS2 at a value of 750,000 tonnes to QD3-QS3 at a value of 600,000 tonnes. The deadweight loss (represented by the shaded area) has, as a result, increased from ABC to EBD and this is partly where the problem of quotas lies. The shaded area represents the inefficiency of the domestic producers and by decreasing the number of US exports coming in, they are increasing the reliance on domestic producers who may be more inefficient in comparison to the American producers. What could be potentially seen is an increased loss of world efficiency as the domestic producers would produce pork for higher minimum revenue than the American producers. Furthermore, QD3-QD2 tonnes of pork are not now consumed (150,000 tonnes) and this is a reduction in the consumer surplus, which is the extra utility gained by consumers from paying a price that is lower than that which they are prepared to pay. However, there are advantages to the quota for domestic producers. The initial quota allowed domestic producers to supply 0-QS1 and QS2-QD2 tonnes of pork at a price of WP+Quota. This quota meant that their revenue had increased but they will see their revenue increased further with the implementation of the lower quota. This is because they will be able to supply 0-QS1, QS2-QD2 and QS3-QD3 at a price of WP+ Decreased Quota. Foreign producers will now supply their quota of QS1-QS2 and receive a price of WP+ Decreased Quota. This should usually result in a fall in income, which would be detrimental to the American producers who are already suffering economic difficulties, but in theory this does not have to be. An alternative option that could be used by the Russian government is a tariff. This is a tax that is charged on imported goods would cause the world supply curve to shift upwards because it would be placed on the American producers as opposed to the Russia producers. The effect of a tariff can be seen below. The advantage of a tariff is that whilst the deadweight loss (shaded in red) of caused by the tariff would be the same as the one caused by a quota, the Russian government would receive a revenue equal to C. Furthermore, the revenue of domestic, Russian producers would increase by A+B+C, though the revenue of foreign, American producers will fall by C. However, there will be a fall in consumer surplus by D, due to the extra pork that will not be purchased resulting in a deadweight loss of welfare. However, as stated before, this would be the same if a quota is used. Furthermore, the implementation of a tariff is less likely to lead to the creation of a black market. This is because with an import quota there is a chance that there will be massive shortages of pork. Therefore, criminal organisations would see smuggling pork as a lucrative business opportunity. However, with a tariff such shortages are unlikely as it does not set a limit on the number of products imported. That being said, if a tariff is set at an unreasonably high rate then there is still a chance that a black market will open up. Nevertheless either form of protectionism has its disadvantages. Firstly, it leads to less choice for consumers and the lowered competition will see domestic firms become inefficient without any incentive to minimise costs. Moreover, protectionism distorts comparative advantage and this leads to the inefficient use of resources thus leading to reduced specialisation and a reduced potential level of the world’s output. Indeed protectionism could potentially damage economic growth. INDIAN CAR TAX Externalities occur when the consumption or production of a good or service has a spill over effect on a third party. If an externality is negative, then this spill over effect is in some way harmful. Therefore there has to be an external cost i.e. one that is borne by a third party, to add to the private costs of the producer or consumer in order to calculate the full cost to society. In the article, the negative externalities which are occurring in New Delhi, India stem from traffic congestion and air pollution. Fig.1 below shows the external costs of using cars. As seen in Fig.1, consumers will enjoy some of the private benefits of car travel but there will be external costs in the form of air pollution and traffic congestion. Consumers maximise their private utility and consume at the level where MPC=MSC=MPB thus leading to over-consumption of vehicle travel by driving Q25, 000 vehicles at a price of 25,000 rupees. As can be seen in Fig.1, the socially efficient output, i.e. when the full opportunity cost of an extra unit is equal to the value placed by society on its consumption or production, is Q*, as a result there is over-consumption of Q25, 000 to Q*. Furthermore, as a result of MSC being greater than MSB, there is a welfare loss to society. This is an example of market failure. In order to combat the effects of the vehicle use, the Indian government is charging citizens in New Delhi who own more than one car and are implementing a congestion fee. Two-wheelers that cost above 25,000 rupees will be taxed at a rate of four per cent whilst cars priced up to 6 lakh (600,000 rupees) will be increased to the same rate. Those costing between 6 and 10 lakh will be charged seven per cent tax. The effect that the increased tax should have on the use of two-wheeled vehicles is seen in Fig.2. As seen in Fig.2, the implementation of a tax will see the MPC curve move upwards to MPC + tax = MSC + tax. This will reduce consumption to the socially efficient output of Q* but the price will increase to 25,000 rupees plus tax. Therefore the government should receive more revenue which could be then used to further tackle the externalities. However, a problem that the Indian government will face is the fact that the demand for vehicle travel may be price inelastic. Therefore, the amount of people who will forgo vehicle travel will be insignificant and the quantity demanded will not fall to the socially efficient level. There are alternatives to congestion fees and taxes, with advertising being an example. The Indian government could fund positive advertising for substitute goods such as public transport or bicycles thus decreasing the consumption of vehicle travel. One of the problems with this solution is that the costs may be high and so taxes would have to be in place. Moreover, people may not care about the effects of vehicle travel and will therefore continue with their current mode of travel. Another solution could be for the government to restrict the number of driving licences. This is effectively a quota that would essentially see a decrease in the number of cars on the road. However, the problem of who to allocate these licences to arise and this could prove unpopular. Another alternative solution could be to heavily advertise public transport. This may reduce the number of cars on the road and would therefore see a reduction in the negative externalities created. However, for this to work, people would have to heed the advertisements advice and as it would not be compulsory, people may neither listen nor care to change their method of transportation. Overall, it looks like the Indian government’s decision to implement a car tax and congestion fee is the most viable solution because it is less likely to alienate the citizens of New Delhi when compared to curfews and is also more likely to see a decrease in consumption when compared to advertising.

Normalisation Problem Essay

The adult education class needs a new database as running the courses with books proves a problem. There is a selection of books with each set of data in. This data can become damaged and the staff can forget to update each book. Also as there are a few books, staff has to update each one with the new data, this can become tenuous and annoying. Another point is that there are many different subjects, rooms and tutors that need to be linked together. This can be a problem as some classes can be in different rooms each day of the week. With a book this can be a problem, as the design may not have a feature for this. The new database will put all the data into separate tables and link them all together. This will enable all the tables to function together allowing the user to change the data in one and it will be changed in them all. The user will also be able to run queries asking the database questions. This will enable the user to gather information without having to search through all the data. This can save a lot of time and improve accuracy as human error may be nearly deleted. The database is going to have to incorporate the student’s personnel data, the class times and the tutors. The database will be assessable to all the teachers and admin staff so, with little training everyone will be able to finds out important information. With a book system only the admin staff would know how to use it and if the teachers tried then they may not do it correctly. This could be a problem as the information could get confused and then people are sent to the wrong lesson, room or the teachers may not turn up. Another good point of the database is that it I more professional to use a computer then a book. This may rub of on the company’s image especially if running an ICT course. If a prospective customer/student sees that they are running it with a book system then they may not be impressed and choose not to do the course. Normalisation Normalisation is a process used to come up with the best possible design for a related database. Tables should be organised in such a way that; * No data is unnecessarily duplicated * Data is consistent throughout the database * The structure of each table is flexible enough to allow you to enter as many or as few times * The structure should enable a user to make all kinds of different queries relating from different tables. Unormalised First name, surname, title, street, town, county, country, postcode, telephone no., D.O.B, occupation, date of first class, fee payable, type of payment, classes taken (subjects), tutors, date of classes, time of classes, room no. First normalised form This would not work as each student can take more then one class. To get it to work you would have to use a second normalised form, which would include a selection table in the middle like this; Second normalised form This selection table would enable students to do more then one course on the database. Third normalised form. You then have to link the tutors in with the courses. To do this you will create a totally different table but link the primary key in with the course table. Original Table Design > Student number – I will require this so I can link the tables together, as this will be my primary key. This will be of the Auto Number format so each student has a unique number they can be identified by. > Title – The title field will be of the text format and will be up to 5 characters long. This will have a validation rule of â€Å"Mr, Mrs, Miss, Dr, Mastr, Other† > Surname – This will be of the text format and be up to 25 characters long. > Forenames – This will also be of the text format and will be up to 20 characters long. > House number/name – This will be of the memo format as it can include numbers and letters. Also as the house names can be long it gives plenty of space. > Street – This is a text field, there is a maximum of 15 characters in this field. > Town – This is also a text field as most are. This has got a maximum of 20 characters as some towns can have long names. > County – Again this is a text field, there is a maximum of 20 characters as again some counties have a long name sometimes up to 20 characters. > Country – Another text field, and again 20 characters. I decided to add country as people may be learning English in this class and may still live abroad. > Postcode – This is a memo field as there are both letters and numbers in the postcodes. > Telephone Number – This field is surprisingly a text field as the phone number has a space between the area code and the number. > Mobile Number – This again will be a text field as there is a space after the first 5 numbers. > Date of birth (DOB) – This is a Date/Time field as you can set a date such as 10/02/77. This looks good and is also easy to read and easy to input. This will have an input mask of dd/mm/yy. 1st Amended Table Design > Student number – No Amendments > Title – No Amendments > Surname – No Amendments > Forenames – No Amendments > House number/name – No Amendments > Street – No Amendments > Town – No Amendments > County – No Amendments > Country – The Default value of this field is set as â€Å"England†. This is because if a student is of a different nationality trying to gain English qualifications, then to be contacted they will have to have an English address. > Postcode – I was going to add an input mask into this field, but realised that different parts of the country have different postcodes with different amounts of letters/numbers. > Telephone Number – I have added an input mask into this field to aid the accuracy of phone numbers. If a number is wrongly inputted then the student cannot be contacted in short notice. The input mask looks like this : !00000-000000. For example 01603-7456474. No more numbers can be added or none lost. > Mobile Number – This also has an input mask so no mistakes are made. This one will look like !00000-000000. For example 07763-369961 > Date of birth (DOB) – No Amendments. This will also have an input mask, which I have already stated. The system I will be using The system at school My system at home Pentium 2 350MHz AMD Athlon 600MHz 64 MB 128 MB 6.4 Gig Memory 27 Gig Memory 14†³ SVGA Monitor 17†³ SVGA Monitor Microsoft office 97 Microsoft office 97 + Microsoft word 2000 Microsoft Windows 98 Microsoft Windows 98 8MB HND Graphics Card TNT 2 Graphics card Constraints and limitations As I will be doing work at home and at 6th form I may experience a few constraints. For example at home I have Microsoft word 2000 whereas at 6th form they have the 97 edition. This can prove to be a problem, as I cannot take work to and from 6th form to complete at home. This means that I will have to complete all word documents either at home or at 6th form. This is only a minor problem which I can overcome by selecting work to take home as I have access 97 the same as the 6th form. If I know I have to do a word document and I may have to take it home I will do it at 6th form rather than other work which I can take home. I will have to manage my time. My second slight limitation is that other classes in the school often book the computer rooms at 6th form. This can mean that I am not able to work on a computer at certain times. This can be a problem but I can over come this by writing it up on paper in a study room and then type it up at a later date. This can be frustrating by something that you cannot do anything about so you have to live with it. Also if a student is away in another class then there may be the odd spare computer I can work on. Apart from these there are not many other problems that I think I will encounter. Also these can be overcome with ease. My ICT skills I have studied ICT at GCSE level and gained a level ‘B’ at the subject. This helps as I have done pervious work with the programs at a high level. I also work on my home computer regularly and pick up skills. Screenshots of my database Screenshot 1: Bookings Table Screenshot 2: Courses Table Screenshot 3: Members table Screenshot 4: Tutors table Screenshot 5: Front page Screenshot 6: Student link from front page Screenshot 7: Tutors link from front page Screenshot 8: Bookings link from front page Screenshot 9: Application from for new members Screenshot 11: Add new tutor form linked from tutor’s page Screenshot 12: Change tutor details linked from tutor’s main page Screenshot 13: New bookings linked from bookings main page Screenshot 14: Delete booking linked from bookings main page Screenshot 15: Check bookings query, linked from ‘check bookings for course’ button Screenshot 16: Result of running query shown above Screenshot 17: Macro needed for ‘add new member’ Screenshot 18: Macro needed for ‘add new tutor’ Screenshot 19: Macro needed for ‘new bookings’ Screenshot 20: Design of query for course query Screenshot 21: Main relationship Evaluation * Data can be viewed, recalled and saved easily. I have met this requirement as I can view and recall data through queries and forms and save data through my forms using macros. If I had a criticism it would be that more queries are needed to access all data easier than now. All records can be viewed using forms based off information tables. This means that I have all the information there is and that it is in a format which is easy to use and view. Also I can use my action and navigation buttons to move around easily. * Data can be easily updated or changed, changing all data in database. For example a booking change in a members records would change a booking in the tutors records, with only putting the data in once. I have fulfilled this requirement as I can do this. This is because I have my relationships between all tables, linking them so if I change a piece of information in one form then it will automatically changed in all other concerning the matter. * Mistakes will be easily to spot, with database flagging up any un-normal inputted data. I have tried to reduce the possibility of human error when imputing data or changing data. I have done this with input masks. I have added input masks to most date, time and telephone number fields in my forms so if it dopes not meet a certain criteria then it will flag it up and not accept it. An example of a input mask when ‘wrong’ data has been inputted. * Must be able to print out which course tutors teach and when they are. My query will help with this once you have searched for a course, it takes you to a screen which allows you to print out the data. I did add a query and from combo in which once the data is searched for it automatically prints the data. Once I had this in place realised that it may be a nuisance to the end user, as they may not want a print out all the time so I thought that I would leave it up to the. If it printed out automatically it may waste paper and ink therefore cost the business money. User guide Introduction The database will open on the front page. When you want to do something the first place you need to go is the main page. This has access to all you will need to do. As you will see there are three buttons, ‘Students’, ‘Tutors’ and ‘Bookings’. Each will link you to the part of the database you need. For example if you wanted to make a booking then you will need to click on the bookings button. Once you have clicked on anyone of these you will then get a specialised menu for each section. For example if I clicked on bookings I would get a list of options for bookings like this: You then have a list for what you may want to do. When you click on these you will be linked to a form which will allow you to input or browse information easily. For example if I clicked on ‘New Booking’ in the bookings section I would get a form which allows you to input new information for a new booking. This is what it would look like; That’s the basics I will now show you how to do some of the most common tasks. 1) Adding a new student or tutor: Open the database, as members are under the student section click on students, if you want to add a new tutor then just click on tutors. Both are the same, below are instructions for adding a new student but adding a new tutor is exactly the same so just follow the same instructions but just with ‘tutors’. You will then need to click on the ‘New Student button’ this will link you to a form which will allow you to put in information so a new member is added. The from has a macro linked to it so you will always get a blank form when you click this button. If you want to browse other details then click on the 2 buttons, ‘Previous record’ or ‘Next record’. The page you get will look like this; Once you have inputted all the information you want just click on ‘Save record’ and the information will be saved. Then click on close form and you will go back to the students menu, if you do not want to be here either then click on ‘Back to the main screen’ which is on every selection screen. This links you back to the main menu so you can choose what you want to do next. 2) To change details of students or tutors: Again changing students or tutors details are done is the same way. Below are a list of instructions for changing tutors details but again, if you want students then you will have to follow the same instructions but just with ‘Students’. Click on the ‘Tutors’ button on the main page, this will link you to a tutors menu just like the ‘students’ one. Here you can add a new tutor or change a existing tutors details. To change details just click on the ‘Change Tutor Details’ button as shown below.