Beowulf And Achilles Essays - Beowulf, Geats, English-language Films

Beowulf And Achilles Beowulf is a story about a man named Beowulf who desired fame and fortune in life. The Iliad had a character named Achilles who is similar to Beowulf because he also desired glory. But they are two completely different stories written at different times and different places by different people. Both stories have unique qualities such as dragons in one and multi-gods in the other and that is what makes fictitious stories like these classics. Since achieving fame is a goal of these two characters, and since these are great works of literature, people can relate to wanting to be famous in life. So this essay is about Beowulf and Achilles and what they went through to be famous and also what they went through to keep their fame. The Iliad, written by Homer, is about a few weeks of a ten-year war between the Trojans and the Acheans. Achilles is one of the main characters of The Iliad and he is a great man. All he wants is blood. His friend Patroclus was killed and he fights to avenge his friend and earn glory in the process. He would not have achieved glory if his friend hadnt died though because Achilles knew that when he fought he would die (Iliad, p. 117). His friends death is what led Achilles to the fame and glory he received even though he couldnt really enjoy it since Achilles died in the war. Achilles key to fame was not only in killing hordes of Trojans but also killing one of their beloved icons Hector. ...Brilliant Achilles drove his spear and the point went stabbing clean through the tender neck... (The Iliad, ln 385 386, p 195). He killed Hector as revenge for Hector killing Patroclus. Hector was the first Trojan icon to go down in The Iliad although the next ones went down later on in the war, perhaps not in The Iliad but in the Aenid. Aeneas speaks of the war in Aenid and he describes how Hectors father, Priam, met his death. After Hectors death, Achilles would drag the body every morning around his army base three times to show the accomplishment he had made in the war. The gods didnt really agree with him though because they kept healing Hectors body (not back to life though). ...All his wounds sealed shut, wherever they struck... and many drove their bronze blades through his body (The Iliad, ln 496-497, p 209). Eventually, Priam (with help of gods) got Achilles to sell Hectors body back for a bunch of priceless goods. Give (Hector) back to me, now, no more delay I must see my son with my own eyes (The Iliad, ln 650 651, p 212). Being begged by a king increases his fame just because a king doesnt usually do that, especially in this case. Priam gets the body and buries it and thats the end of The Iliad. Whereas in Beowulf, written by an anonymous poet, is about a man who is very strong. He travels to a distant land to kill a couple monsters and earn glory for himself. The quest begins when Beowulf heads to the Danish castle. He is a Geat by the way. His king is Higlac and Beowulf asked him if he could travel the seas to earn glory for himself by helping out the Danish and their king, Hrothgar. When Beowulf finally got to Hrothgar, Hrothgar was glad to see him; he seemed to have a lot of faith in Beowulf. Our Holy Father has sent him as a sign of His grace, a mark of His favor, to help us defeat Grendel and end that terror (Beowulf, ln 381 384). The monster, Grendel, had already killed around 30 good men and what would be another man to him (the king doubts), even though the man was the strongest in the world? Oh, by the way, Unferth (who sat at Hrothgars feet) questioned and disliked Beowulf claiming he was not as strong as he makes himself out to be. After Beowulf proved him wrong, he went on his way to earn his fame. That night, Hrothgar left the hall and when the monster

Challenges for Coke Cola Essay Example

Challenges for Coke Cola Essay Example Challenges for Coke Cola Essay Challenges for Coke Cola Essay Among the vastly growing diversity challenges Coca Cola continued to face statewide and globally to preparing their workforce, understanding the culture and overcoming major crisis in Belgium was one of the most challenging. After a mass recall in mid 1999, in which, Children at six schools in Belgium had complained of headache, nausea, vomiting and shivering after drinking Coca-Colas beverages, leading to their hospitalizations. Most of them reported an unusual odor and an off-taste in the drink. Coca-Cola had to recall about 30 million cans and bottles, the largest ever product recall in its 113-year history. For the first time, the entire inventory of Coca-Colas products in Belgium was banned from sale. Coca-Cola sales did drop that year but with their valued effort to regain the public’s trust, measures had to be put in place. Coke’s workforce had to be better prepared, re-trained, and safety precautions were put in place so that things like this would not happen again. The expectations and desired outcomes were directed at upper management to find better ways to connect with the employees and launch new initiatives in the ever-fast changing market. Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) faced strong competition from other beverage companies and needed a way to work more effectively with its customers and partners. This required innovation and a new way of communicating within the corporation. In 2008, CCE acknowledged that the current communications platforms were no longer enabling the innovation and collaboration required to take it to the next level and compete in an increasingly demanding economic environment. The increasing presence of competition were resulting the declining revenues. CCE decided to implement a Microsoft-based hosted worldwide intranet with messaging and collaboration tools, which are accessible to all employees from any device, enabling employees to boost productivity and time with customers. These efforts were lead by the employee leadership head of the company and proved to be another step in the right direction. In a continued effort to prepare their workforce the employees had to take cultural diversity classes in order to learn and understand a different way of life in Belgium. Maximize Benefits CCE, Inc. needed a software system that would evolve as technology changed to help it remain a beverage-industry leader. The company also wanted to deliver merchandising solutions that reflect the differences across stores, as well as implement and maintain controlled quality checks on store-level Plano grams. Additionally, this beverage giant wanted to increase its productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in its Plano gram process. CCE Inc. aximized each benefit by streamlined planning and execution, optimized space and category performance, Increased category sales and profits through more intelligent decision making, delivered store-specific Plano grams that were grounded in shopper insights and store-specific data, Improved Plano gram consistency and accuracy, and Increased category optimization. Minimizing the Challenges Though there were many challenges to deal with and future challenges ahead, the present problems of dealing with water conservation, racial extortionist, were the major issues ahead. Water is the main ingredient in nearly every beverage that they make and without access to safe water supply their business simply cannot exist. Because of the critical importance of water not just to their business, but also to ecosystems, human health, progress and development, The Coca-Cola Company is focusing on conserving and protecting water for people, species and ecosystems throughout the world. Another challenge is deal with frivolous lawsuit from extortionist trying to cash in on the Mega Giant. In November 2000 Coca Cola became the second U. S. Corporation to cave in to racial extortion demands by disgruntled minority employees who only had to allege racial discrimination. For their efforts, they extorted at least $475,200,000 from Coke. Protecting themselves from litigious claims is still a challenge all major companies have to safe guard and the only way to truly protect their assets is through proper management quarterly training, policies and procedures acknowledgements, and safe working environments.

Business Improvement Districts from public finance perspective and its Research Paper

Business Improvement Districts from public finance perspective and its case study - Research Paper Example There is another type of district similar to Business Improvement District. It is called the Community Benefit District. It is pretty much like Business Improvement District only that property owners have to pay any additional taxes. Business owners do not vote to pay any additional taxes in Community Benefit Districts. In a gist, Business Improvement Districts are very lucrative. They offer services such as cleaning and cleansing of streets, provision of security, capital improvements, streetscape enhancement, pedestrian construction and marketing the area. All aforementioned services are offered to ensure that the district retains its attractiveness. These services are supplemental to those already offered by the municipality. The paper will be a rationale paper discussing Business Improvement Districts in the context of New York city. It will discuss various financing tools and the economic impact created by business districts. Why they are important? Why do they attract attention? Why kind of economic advantage do they bring with them? All these questions will be answered in the context of BIDs of New York. More-over there will be some more insight into un-even service delivery outside the district and eventually there will be a discussion on one district within NYC. That district will be thoroughly district in terms of ways in which it raises money and the services provided by that district. That district will be used as a case in New York City. The economist Magazine projected Business Improvement Districts as â€Å" the best hope for getting parts of America’s cash strapped cities working again† . These districts if properly identified and worked upon give that vicinity a new lease of life and face all together. Business Improvement Districts have attracted tremendous amount of interest. They have triggered a great deal of excitement amongst city governments and urban policy makers world over. They have started looking into Business

DNA Retention for Criminal Investigation Assignment

DNA Retention for Criminal Investigation - Assignment Example The present paper has identified that in 2003, the law was altered to collect DNA on the arrest of a recordable crime rather than just a point of charge. This principle of maintaining the DNA of anyone arrested highlighted countless innocent people including children who had never been convicted but have their DNA retained in the Database forever. Because of this, the DNA database is considered extremely discriminatory. In the year 2008, this issue was brought up by the European Court of Human Rights in S and Marper v UK case and concluded that this policy violates the rights to privacy of innocent people under the European Convention of Human Rights. Then in 2010, in answer to this issue, the law was passed which restricts the DNA retention of innocent people. Six years was confirmed for the adults and three years for children. (Michael Lwin, 2010) Still, this policy continued to create discrimination and stayed arguable among many regions. In 2010, the Government was again compelle d to modify the law and shift to the ‘Scottish model’ which defines the right to destroy DNA of anyone arrested but not charged or charged but later found not guilty for most offenses. It also explains the policy of limited time DNA retention for people who were charged with serious wrongdoings like sexual assault or violence (Bruce Barbour; NSW Ombudsman.; New South Wales. Office of the Ombudsman, 2006). The collection of DNA samples are still a major subject of discrimination among many innocent people. It has given a significant boom to social and ethical issues which are because most arrestees were found innocent of the crime but their DNA was kept for an indefinite time. Moreover, if innocent people’s DNA is kept in a police database, it is possible that the DNA might match or partially match the DNA found at the locations of crime. This can create a big problem for a person who has been once arrested but never convicted or anyone who is totally innocent. Th is issue is ethically and socially correct as innocent people would be suspected of criminal activities at the crime scene where their DNA is even slightly similar. A DNA sample illustrates sensitive information about an individual’s genetics, for instance, family relations and diseases vulnerability. Naturally, no one likes his or her personal information to be accessible. Police, forensic science department and researchers using this sensitive information without the consent of the DNA beholder have offended any innocent people who have given their DNA. They see it as a violation of their civil liberties and interference in the personal privacy of an individual (  Andromachi Tseloni; Ken Pease, 2011). It has been observed in the United Kingdom’s criminal DNA database that racial minorities are overrepresented in the number of arrestees. Now this gives rise to racial differences and institutionalized racial biases in the criminal justice department. When a large num ber of minorities are populating the DNA database, police would be likely to suspect one from the minorities rather than the actual criminal. This way an innocent individual would be convicted only because of the race he falls in. DNA retention for the Criminal Investigation Department has raised several concerns among many innocent people but we must not overlook the good it does for the criminals who should be actually punished. DNA retention serves the police department in many ways too. Likewise, it is observed that the majority of the crimes are committed by the people who have been already arrested for other offenses. If the DNA database already has the DNA bank, it could become very easy for the police to identify the suspect or criminal.  

Mexican culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Mexican culture - Essay Example Scholars mention that â€Å"gender roles of men and women are reflected in spatial distinctions of la calle (the street) and la casa (the home)† (Knapp, Muller and Quiros, 2009). This differentiation reflects on Mexican people since their childhood. Boys are in need to leave home for the sake of earning money and maintaining a family in future (Vlassoff, 2007). As for the girls they are responsible to stay at home and to take care about its comfort and coziness (Vlassoff, 2007). Such tradition has been strictly laid into the minds of Mexican people. Concerning the present day situation and modern social norms it should be admitted that male and female roles undergo changes. With the tendency of globalization and increase of migration gender roles transform (Knapp, Muller and Quiros, 2009). Women started to get more freedom and ability to make an independent choice in accordance to their life values and personal desires (Mount-Cors, 2014). Such process in considered to be natural and logical for the system of modern society. It is worse to mention that American culture provide a significant influence to this process (Knapp, Muller and Quiros,

Siemens AG Global Development Strategy

Siemens AG Global Development Strategy In order to understand Siemens International RD current situation and thoroughly come up with alternatives and recommendations to solve possible issues that may arise, it is first crucial to analyze the companys strategy and rationale for International RD. There are several factors and reasons that led Siemens to pursue and International RD strategy, opposed to a domestic one. The first one is the obvious labor shortages that would take place was Siemens to perform its research and development in its Munich headquarters. It is quite obvious that centralizing all RD activities in Munich would result in a critical shortage of the ICNs 1500 employees allocated to the headquarters. Secondly, customers in the telecommunications industry usually require extremely customized solutions for their businesses. Thus, it is of the utmost importance that product customization is performed with the quickest response to customer needs possible. Thus, the regional allocation of engineers, technicians, etc., into Regional Development Centers (RDCs) plays a crucial role in the fulfillment of this task. Finally, the global spread of RD units would theoretically provide the company the possibility of taking advantage of exploiting time zone differences, and thus perform an around-the-clock development strategy. However, this concept has proven to be utopian due the interdependence between overseas counterparts consequent of the extremely high coordination needed for the development of this type of leading edge technologies. 1.2. STRUCTURE OF RDCs At the date of the case, Siemens ICN had 6 major overseas RDCs in the following countries: Austria, India, USA, Belgium, Slovenia and Portugal. These centers are related to the Munich headquarters through a HUB-Model, in which RD activities are mostly concentrated in and controlled by the Headquarters, whereas product customization takes place in RDCs. Firstly, the number of person-years and capital invested are two strictly correlated variables in the companys development effort. This is trivial since the amount cash spent in a certain projects is an increasing function of the working years invested by the employees in the development of these projects (salary vs. work). Secondly, labor cost advantage is also a crucial matter in any business. Thus, as can be seen in the table above, the U.S. employees take the first place as most expensive wage earners, whereas the Indian take the place as the cheapest. In this specific case, India presents a great advantage for Siemens ICN or any other technology development company, since there is a good tradeoff between low cost and high expertise in this field. Thirdly, employee turnover is an issue the company sometimes has to deal with. The ambition (and sometimes greed combined with low company loyalty) of employees makes them often migrate to other companies where better salary conditions are offered. This results in a very high employee turnover and difficult allocation of workers to medium/long-term projects. Finally, coordination costs between the Headquarters and RDCs are also of the highest relevance. Since we are talking about countries many times geographically separated by dozens of thousands of kilometers, it becomes extremely hard to articulate and coordinate work between the counterparts. However, not only the geographic and time zone distance influence increase these costs, but also the cultural distance between them, since this implies more time and money spent in trying to reduce it through frequent trips, workshops, etc. 1.3. BOCA RATON RDC In Boca Raton, Florida, U.S.A., is located Siemens second largest overseas RDC. This facility is majorly centered in the development of the Electronic Switching System Digital (EWSD), and functions as many of the companys other RDCs: Munich Headquarters provide the project-base for each EWSD release to Boca Raton, which customizes it to the U.S. markets unique industry standards. Moreover, this RDC benefitted from the accumulation of enough knowledge to acquire the increasing independency from the Headquarters to manage more complex system projects the development of the U.S. customer-required Remote Switching Unit (RSU) is a good example of this. However, despite strong bonds and mutual admiration were developed amidst the counterparts during the development of the RSU, still some critical issues concerning working culture arose: the German culture of building road maps to guide the project development (think first, act later) was completely the opposite of what Americans used to do (act first, think later). Despite there is the rationale of keeping up to competitor technological developments and customer need adaptation for the Americans to perform their work in such a way which would denote a certain degree of home-base augmentation there is an obvious lack of home-base exploitation from the company, since the Germans are not effectively embedding their working culture in their American subsidiary. 1.4. INDIA RDC One of the major problems prevailing in Siemenss international RD process is the different working styles and culture clashes between its local and overseas developers. The contrast is most evident in Bangalore RD center where the Indians are working with their senior partners from Germany. While the Germans expect the Indians in Bangalore to show more interest in working with vast machines rather than to pursue entrepreneurial jobs during the process, the Indians hope the Germans could cancel some of their pre-arranged vacations and give them a hand in some critical points of time. Moreover, as with the Germans feeling uncomfortable about discussing wages issues in public, which is often the conversational topic of the Indian employees, the Indians regard it as being impolite to say No or speak up ones mind in a big meeting, which is required by the German seniors to necessitate the decision making process. This fact is dangerous in a sense that the Germans do not really know whether the Indians developers would be able to perform a specific task as they never say No to the Germans request. In the end, the Indians may end up wasting their time and resources as the tasks are beyond their capabilities. More adversely, miscommunication between Munich and Bangalore and between Germans and Indians, in a smaller scale, often occurs due to the Indian personnels avoidance of blunt request for further clarification in the first place. As a result, the Germans always find it necessary to have face-to-face interaction with Indian engineers in order to re-confirm everything is on the right track. Overall, most of the issues mentioned above stem from the difference in personalities of people from different nationalities. If no action is made to alleviate such discrepancy and to seek the most basic understanding ground among cross-cultural employees, Siemens would continue to incur unnecessary management costs. With this remaining cultural and communicational problems, headquarter in Munich played mainly an administration role. As the customers of Siemens ICN are most of the time Germans or least westerner, RDC in India had a position as an RDC for exporting, which means they follow the directions what is given from headquarter. RDC in India had limited chances to communicate with their customer directly. On Munich side, they had to explain, and had to give the specification to Bangalore. However, they couldnt have enough communication for subtle changes from customers or organization matters such as budget cuts, changes of managers in Germany. Should some changes from Germany, the managers in Munich correspond between India and Germany. It increased the possibilities of missing out on some specifications or misunderstanding between customer and RDC. RD center in India had to sometimes postpone their work due to those confusions. Although the actually RD site is in Bangalore, Munich took the role to integrate and test the entire system which is based on the subprojects developed by Indians. They soon faced difficulties to do that job because they didnt actually perform RD but the developers in Bangalore. Furthermore the subprojects are far more independent than they expected. It causes high inefficiency level that the RDC in India should work again and to find the problems for the system. As these RDC and headquarter are thousand kilometers far away to each other, they need additional care for cooperation and communication. As they should work together across Bangalore and Munich for After-service of their products, the remaining inefficiency of headquarter and RDC in India need sufficient attention. In addition to, gradual loss of cost advantages in international labor force was another problem and India was the standout country. Firstly, high turnover rate among Indian programmers caused high costs to Siemens. For instance, Bangalore programmers were even asking salary information of the German workers. Secondly, time to train a new recruit was long while the employment turnover rate was increasing. One reason was that Indian programmers were trained on inexpensive personal computers so that they relied heavily on German guidance for working on large systems. Thirdly, other competitors were emerging as first choice for local labor force in India. Siemens was considered as one of the best employers to work for in Bangalore in the past but other competitors such as Cisco and Lucent showed up and the competition to hire talented workers made Siemens to slipped from front-runner status to a middle-ranking. Lastly, wage increasing trend in Bangalore had undermined the cost advantage of this RD center to Siemens. The wage for developers in Bangalore increased roughly 25% every year. Siemens had lack of separate team to handle customers complicated technique request. Hard problems were often had to be referred to major RD centers, by which the personnel would be pulled from the RD team and away from their current projects just to solve the problem lead to delay in product release and inefficiency. In addition, there was a strong threat by internet industry. By the mid-1990s, voice transmission via Internet is faster and cheaper. If the internet companies can improve its reliability and quality for phone making, they would dominate the entire communication industry. Furthermore, Siemens had some difficulties in maintaining quality and workforce motivation at its American RDC as the company had experimented with the use of strongly defined project teams for each release of a product. We did a personal analysis for Siemens comparing with competitors and found out that Siemens was spending too little money for the RD during 1995 to 1999 compare to major competitors and industry average which is TELEPHONE TELEGRAPH APPARATUS. As you can refer to the figure3, Siemens RD intensity was 0.0078 that was not only lower than Nokia and Ericsson but also way below the industry average level which was 0.73. 2. RECOMMENDATIONS 2.1. INCREASE OF AUTONOMY The lack of autonomy granted by Munich to overseas RD centers, in general, and Bangalore center, in particular, largely contributed to the inefficient coordination and worsened the existing culture clash in Siemens. To make corrective actions, Munich should give more empowerment to their international RD centers in regard to such downstream activities as interaction with customers. In specific, by directly talking to customers, the Indian team would have a better understanding of customers specification requirement and expectation as well as an increased sense of belonging to the job they are performing. It is prudent enough if small customers are first assigned to Bangalore center in order to test and evaluate its ability to simultaneously produce and handle with customers. This is also opportunities for Indian developers to accumulate their experience so that they can deal with bigger projects on their own in the future without much of Munichs scrutiny. For instance, Siemens could consider developing RDC in India as their Asian RD center, so that the Indian developers can read the Asian customers needs with their geographical advantages to Asia and at the same time, they can perform their requirements independently from headquarter in Germany. In addition, it is advisable for Munich to integrate and test the system in the place the subsystems are originally generated. For example, German supervisor from Munich should travel to Bangalore to conduct the integration and testing rather than send the sub-products back to and fly Indian developers to Munich. The reason is that in Bangalore, German managers can easily get their needed information from the Indian staffs, who directly participated in the task performance, in case there are any problems during the integration and test process. This practice helps eliminate the need for and cost of long-distance communication, let alone miscommunication which may arise due to language differences. More importantly, by conducting the product integration and testing in Bangalore, the Indian staff would have a feeling that their contribution is worthwhile as they can keep track of their spiritual product until it is completed and delivered to customers flawlessly. As a result, it would not hurt the Indians self-esteem while improving their sense of responsibility and belonging toward the company as they take control of what they produce. Moreover, adoption of Delphi approach in important board meetings among multicultural staffs would preclude their shyness and encourage all people to speak up their minds in an acceptable way to all the cultures. Even though the Delphi approach is time consuming and require everyone to meet face-to-face, it proves as the good solution in short term while Indian heads felt it wrong to reject other peoples ideas in a big meeting. In the long run, so as to bridge the cultural gap, Siemens should take on more approaches. In terms of communication matter, if the managers from Germany are qualified as international experts especially for Indian culture, they could deeply understand Indians communicational way. This can efficiently deliver customers need to Bangalore and also maximize the performance in India. Such an international cross over can also implemented other way around. For instance, Indians who have experience with Germans or least Westerner could understand their supervisors and customers need more exactly. These Indian international experts could bring also the ideas and project status in sense what their western-customers and co-worker need. This autonomy grant to Siemens Bangalore RD unit or, if necessary and proven to be a successful measure, to other units would possibly result, in the long-term, in a change of the companys structure from a HUB Model to a Network Model, in which the global control of RD activities would be split between the companys global competence centers, both at home and host countries, with a bi-directional technological knowledge flow. 2.2. IMPLEMENTATION TO REDUCE CULTURAL DISTANCE In order to improve their cross cultural understanding, here are some recommendations to get them having the idea of how their counterpart functions. Firstly, to have cultural workshops by international experts or even their co-workers from India, so that they can understand and know each others culture better, leads to lower possibility of occurrence of misunderstanding and miscommunication between Indian and German workers. Secondly, Siemens could provide Global sporting activities or family gathering in different countries. By having gathering events, employees can easily develop team spirits and become friends, reduce their cultural distance to each other after all. For instance, Hyundai Motor Company first had difficulties with managing and controlling the multicultural employees within the company because there was huge cultural distance between them. To deal with this problem, for instance, they started a global 33 basketball tournament across their local offices and it increases their profitability by having good relationship with each other (Korean and foreign counterparts) beyond the cultural backgrounds. During the matches, employees could feel that they share the same goal and they can well co-operate each other, regardless of their different nationality. 2.4. REDUCTION OF EMPLOYEE TURNOVER RATE Even though India had one of the worlds three largest engineering workforces, companies still engaged in a fight for talent. It was so, because the labor market is a global one, so a lot of companies would recruit software engineers to both work in their Indian units, but also to work elsewhere, as Indian talent was highly regarded in this field. Also, both national and international companies had substantial operations in Bangalore, Indias computational technology center, to benefit from the talent pool and the low cost labor, so companies often adopted aggressive strategies to attract the best and the brightest. Siemens had long established in India and was had a formidable reputation, being regarded as one the best employers to work for by young Indians. However, this was changing with the increasing competition for engineers by companies such as Lucent and Cisco, and as Siemens provide a great experience and learning curve, recruiters would often go after the companys engineers, and would pay a premium to have them switch companies, making the annual turnover rate in India, 35%, the highest in the company. Also, there was culture clash between the Germans and the Indians in Siemens, as Indians showed to be somewhat impatient and looking to move projects more often than what was planned by the German management. Also, Indians preferred leading-edge projects in the fields of mobile telecommunications and internet protocols, rather than what was being assigned to them, which was quality testing and integration tasks, which were more repetitive and less stimulating. The Germans also showed lac k of knowledge with regards to the Indian way of working, because the Indian output was not always reliable, as they kept changing approaches and they would rather fix problems right on the spot and not document them for future knowledge and improvement, and this was against the German mindset. All these issues helped keep the turnover rate high, and Siemens had to look for solutions to this problem. It seems that, to keep engineers happy, and as they were to open to discuss wages everywhere, Siemens would have to offer better wages, at least to their most talented employees. Perhaps the best way to do so, and to keep the incentive of increasing performance whenever possible, would be to keep the base salary where it is and offer performance based bonuses and also, stock options plans. There could be a 2 tier performance based bonus scheme, with both a short term component to it, and a longer term one that would only be awarded if the employee stayed in the company for a certain number of years and kept his/her performance level, to ensure that the motivation was always high and that the proper incentive mechanisms were in place. Regarding the stock options, this would also ensure the long term loyalty to the company and the incentive to adopt both a short and long term approach on a daily basis. These suggestions bring up the need to have measure of performance, as objective as possible. Working hours are not the best measure of productivity as anyone can stay longer and that could promote inefficiency, poor time management and a decrease in output. Criteria such as on time delivery of projects, inexistence of errors, reliability and integration of systems, after sales service and overall customer satisfaction (measured by both formal and informal feedback on all levels of interaction) could provide better ways to reward performance. Also, employees with out-of-the-box thinking, extraordinary contribution to projects, engineers that developed innovative systems and ways to overcome issues and provide a better and more efficient services to the customer, could be rewarded, both financially and non-financially. To boost motivation, and in lign with the previous recommendation, top performers could be given a certain amount of time on a daily or weekly basis to develop side projects for the company on their initiative, in order to feel more stimulated and rea lly adding value to the company and the clients. Also, besides the health, housing and vehicle benefits already in place, there could be an effort to transform the offices into more friendly working environments, in an attempt to adopt some of Googles employee motivation strategies, so that employees feel more motivation, loyalty and corporate citizenship that will ultimately lead to better output and satisfied clients. 3. FURTHER MANAGERIAL ISSUES Despite we hope and expect the recommendations given to have a positive impact in the Siemens International RD operations, there are some issues that may arise from these measures, though. If we think about the increase in autonomy granted to the Indian RDC, for instance, there is a dangerous threat in which the company may incur, is this measure to be taken. It is quite obvious that the more autonomous a person or an entity becomes from an upper body, the more tendency it has to deal with any different situation in its own way, either it is solving organizational problems, negotiating with suppliers or dealing with customers. Thus, due to the cultural differences that are felt between Indians and Germans, this is a situation very likely to happen. Consequently, and without wanting to state this is what would eventually happen for sure, this autonomy grant might result in a deviation from the companys way of operating from the Indians. The final outcome of such a deviation could be catastrophic for Siemens, since it could jeopardize a whole corporate culture and way of doing business, blurring the companys image to stakeholders eyes. Thus, as it was stated before, this process should be gradual and always under headquarters supervision. Finally, another issue that might arise from our recommendations is the loss of labor cost-advantage in India. Even though we are perfectly aware that, in one way or another, wage levels will necessarily increase in India in the next years especially in the technological field, due to the increasing demand for expertise in this area, as well as for the countrys overall economic development it is undeniable that this incentive program would increase Siemens expenditure in workforce and, consequently, mean the loss of the cost-advantage the company had by employing experts in the field at a lower price.

Ephedra (Ma Huang) :: Botany

Ephedra (Ma Huang) Ephedras species are an evergreen shrub, native to North China and Inner Mongolia. It's yellow/green branching shrub growing to an average of 20 inches (50cm) with long narrow, sprawling stems and tiny leaves, can be found in desert or arid regions throughout the world. Its color can be green, gray, or red, depending on the species. The plant has small greenish yellow flowers and tiny nodes (joints) on the stalks (2). Ephedra is propagated from seed or by root division in autumn and demands well drained soil. It usually grows on dry, rocky or sandy slopes, and loves full sun. It matures very slowly and is very challenging to grow (1). General Information Ephedra (common name) comes from the family Ephedraceae. It has several scientific names that depend upon the plants founding location; Ephedra major (American), Ephedra trifurca (American), Ephedra nevadensis (American) are found in North America; and Ephedra sinica (Chinese- Ma Huang) is found in Asia. Other varieties of Ephedra can be found in Europe, India, and Pakistan. Ephedra was initially found in a Neolithic grave in the Middle East. This evidence may indicate that Ephedra was used as a medicine more than 60,000 year ago. In China, Ephedra was the first herbal remedy to yield an active constituent, in this case ephedrine. The first isolation of ephedrine was in 1887, by a Japanese chemist, N. Nagai (2,5). Folk and Historic Traditions The Zen Monks used Ephedra to encourage calm concentration during meditation. According to a legend, a tea containing Ephedra was given to the bodyguards of Genguis Khan, to keep them from falling asleep on sentry duty. Mormon Tea, one of Ephedra's folk names, stems from the use of the tea by Mormons; it was used as a replacement stimulant for the coffee and black tea the Mormons couldn't drink. In the 1800's Ephedra tea was served in Brothels, claiming to cure gonorrhea and syphilis. Ephedra tea today is not used as a cure; it will not cure these STD's (2). Medicinal Values The Medicinal use of Ephedra in China dates from approximately 2800B.C. In 1923 the practitioners of Western Medicine began their interest in Ephedra. Soon after, ephedrine became widely used as a nasal decongestant, a central nervous system stimulant, and a treatment for asthma in America. The isolated alkaloid originally obtained from Ephedra species, have been used in a substantial amount of prescription drugs and over-the-counter decongestants and allergy medications (2,4).