Personal statement for master Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Individual proclamation for ace - Essay Example Information on the two standards will direct me in settling on right choices and plan methodologies that will be trailed by the individuals in the organization. I accept that these two capacities in the organization ought to be treated with cooperative exertion and as a group to make a culture of concordance in the business. Promoting methodologies are the endeavors done to make consideration, intrigue, want and activity of customers while the executives gives account and managerial help in doing the procedures. I had a short spell of dealing with a business on the grounds that my folks own a strip mall, a market and building rentals in my old neighborhood. My folks allocated to me the buying of crude materials and supplies required for the assembling of the items required by our customers. I have taken during the time spent sourcing through the web, through exchange affiliations and referrals. From here, I have assembled the essential abilities of valuing, examination, rivalry and quality control. There were occurrences that a cost of a similar crude material will be contrastingly offered by a few providers. As a result of this error, I got keen on finding the causes why costs carry on that way, a tad bit of Economics. Along these lines, we have practiced cost effectiveness in sourcing of crude materials. In the board of the organization, I have figured out how to satisfy clients by keeping up great client relations, similarly; I have drilled conduct control of representatives working for u s. This little information, I expectation could be helpful in my investigations of Business Management. I am certain that the instruction that I will gain from this college will assume a significant job in planning my future in the vocation way that I have made for my life. This early, I intend to be an effective business visionary sometime or just after I have completed my investigations and apply what I realize in school. With appropriate instructive direction, I realize I won't turn out badly in choices and techniques

Ideas for Engineering Science Fair Projects

Thoughts for Engineering Science Fair Projects Designing science reasonable undertakings can include planning, building, examining, displaying, or improving a gadget. You can likewise test or make materials. Here are some particular thoughts for designing science reasonable activities. What is the best material to placed in a sandbag to square water, for example, during a flood?How tall would you be able to assemble a pinnacle utilizing just a sheet of ​paper? You can cut it, overlay it, fold it, yet just utilize that solitary material. What works best?Compare the qualities of a structure that is made utilizing various materials. You can think about quality, consumption opposition, and versatility. Be imaginative. Try to make certain your estimations are really tantamount to each other.What would you be able to do with a dip top to improve its capacity to diminish haul in water? Would you be able to adjust the shape? Accomplishes one material work generously better than another?Which kind of paper towel assimilates the most water? Which brand assimilates the most oil? It is safe to say that they are the equivalent brand?What contrasts do you note in the capacity of various soils to help a structure?What kind of paper plane flies the farthest and stays up hig h the longest?How would you be able to outline attractive field? Would you be able to build a gadget, utilizing iron filings, that can be reused for field mapping? Develop a Lego building. Presently attempt to make a similar structure on a grade, for example, a 30-degree slant. What changes do you have to make so as to make it stable?How does an adjustment in the development of a parachute influence flight? Boundaries you could look at incorporate size, shape, material, as well as strategy for connection.

Our Daily Bread Essay

Our Daily Bread, as the title proposes this isn't about bread, as I trusted it seemed to be. Or maybe it’s about individuals gaining their bread, their occupation. The term ‘bread’ is gotten from the bigger term ‘bread-winner’ as the person who is the essential supplier of the family unit, and the ‘daily bread’ is basically alluding their day by day employment. As my time spent in the US, I regularly used to think about how the diverse food organizations had the option to create mass measure of food to keep the populace took care of. This film is the appropriate response and the disclosure of how food is created in Europe and the Western side of the equator. The film begins as we get a brief look at day by day sanitation customs being carted away at a meat ranch. The various scenes demonstrate us to transportation of domesticated animals, machine helped watering of plants, and a transport line at a poultry ranch where they separate the gu ys from the female chickens (I know this as I have seen this done before in an alternate setting). The apparatus at poultry ranch shows exactness and proficiency as it sorts the youthful chicks into moving containers. The immunization routine is additionally machine helped which expands productivity and creation for the poultry ranch. Following couple of moments, the youthful chicks have developed and we are indicated the laborer taking care of them. The shot changes into a lunchroom where the specialist is on a fellowship and tea, isolated. Next, we get the scene from a vegetable homestead. A tractor picks the potatoes from the beginning. Next shot, the laborers get ready and wear defensive apparatuses to apply pesticides and composts to the plants. Be that as it may, the greater part of the work is finished by machine help, requiring basically no human mediation. It appears as the vegetables are being developed inside a nursery setting which permits vegetables to be developed throughout the entire year, with no climate limitations. The main human work being done is picking of the aged vegetables. After work, the specialist appear to appreciate a little break, again alone. Presently we see a bull and a dairy animals where it appears to be rearing is in process. A more critical look and we find that the laborers a re really gathering the sperm. We discover the sperm is moved to clinical assessments, I don’t know precisely why however probability could be to productively utilize the sperms to treat each prolific egg they can bear the cost of with no misfortune. What's more, obviously, we see a solid calf being conceived. In any case, it is truly diverting to perceive how the dairy animals was cut open and the calf was pulled out, how could that truly be conceivable? What amount of prescription could the creature be on since it wasn’t moving or making any clamor all things considered? Furthermore, are there any points of interest of this sort of birth for creature? Next, we see a progression of shots of men in tractors who are accomplishing ranch work with machine help. This shows the effectiveness that is earned by machine which assists people with accomplishing more with less time invested and more energy to spend on extravagance, or more work. We return back to the poultry ranch, the egg cultivating space to be definite. The eggs are brought forth and because of the structure, they are helpfully open by the ranchers to pick. A specialist is demonstrated to hold a chicken as he strolls around the egg ranch, conceivably to caution di fferent hens who don’t lay eggs. In real note, he perhaps was checking for chickens which are dead. In the following shot, the laborers are moved to an enormous estate to gather crops becoming under the ground, just time where tractors aren’t utilized. This is perhaps the first run through where machine use is restricted to simply watering the plants. Presently we are demonstrated our way to a pig ranch. They are moved on a line into a machine where they are butchered by a machine. The human work is restricted to keep the line moving and all together. The machines are additionally utilized for the vast majority of the substantial work as heating up the skin and analyzing the pigs open. The human employment is restricted to tidying up whatever else the machines may have forgotten about and isolating inner parts. We are likewise indicated the wonder of present day innovation with a biplane is utilized to prepare the harvests. There are likewise shots of overwhelming apparatus utilization in ranches. At that poi nt we see a moving harvest truck where the outside laborers are picking the vegetables and inside just bundling them. Presently we move to a dairy animals farm. The bovines are drained by machines in a pivoting merry go round. The cows don’t appear to mind such a great amount, as it is by all accounts some portion of their every day schedule. Next, a visit to the profound underground salt mines where machines are utilized to do a large portion of the substantial work, for example, doing the salt here and there and outside the mine itself. A change moves from underground to submerged as we see a fish-ranch where hundreds and several fishes are found in a little region. This likewise makes it simpler for the gigantic channel to suck out the fishes from the water and into the vessel. They are shipped to an industrial facility where people adjust the fishes to take care of into the machines. Obviously the machines haven’t figured out how to recognize the fish head from the tail, yet. The fishes are cut and cleaned by arrangement of machines and afterward moved onto another human where he p uts them on another machine to move them to another area. Here, the laborer appears to be really exhausted of the normal errand he has, maybe feeling like the machine now due to his activity task. Next we see pack of laborers cleaning the fish for conclusive prep before delivery them out. Presently we go to a pig-ranch. The two arrangement of shots appears to be fascinating as the main spoke to insemination of pigs by tube and next shows the piglets conceived in bondage, much the same as ‘The Matrix’. Much the same as in the motion pictures, they grow up and the following shot appears as though the male pigs were being maimed. One can just get why in this way, as they don’t need to overproduce and give out the representatives any rewards. Or then again perhaps not. The following arrangement of shots show how chicken and dairy cattle are set up for utilization; as they are murdered by the machines with close to nothing or less human exertion required all the while. The last shot shows the day's end schedule how everything is cleaned and purified for the following day of work. Regardless of this, the laborers in all spots couldn’t hang tight for their every day bread, their well deserved break from their work. Maybe the standard way of their errands has gotten so natural to them that they don’t appear to mind how their own food is being created. For me, it was somewhat entertaining and stunning to see the states of creatures yet perhaps after a couple of more perspectives, I wouldn’t mind it either. This film shows the substantial utilization of hardware utilized in the creation of food, be it salt, pigs, chicken, vegetables, fish, or pigs. It was likewise diverting, as it were, to perceive how rearing had gone into the following level by logical use to adequately get their outcome monetarily and furthermore in monetary manners to take care of the regularly developing total populace. It appeared as nearly if people were not by any means the only ones estranged from nature, yet in addition the creatures which were by and large misleadingly inseminated and damaged against their wills. The laborers didn’t appear to think about what they were doing either, as long as it made their breads. It appeared as they had been prepared to do this for such a long time that they were utilized to it-like machines with machine hearts and machine minds. In another view, the unnatural size of the bulls in the rearing house appeared as though they were so-much hereditarily built to create the most extreme measure of meat conceivable. Maybe they had blended something in the dry grass that was being blown into their little confines they were placed in. The developing populace likewise has appeared to influence the unnatural procedure by which plants were developed with uses of pesticides and manures. The utilization of nurseries depicts, as it were, the plant’s estrangement from nature as it was currently conceivable to develop all plants in any climate or conditions. The nonappearance of portrayal or captions leaves the film watcher to make their own decision and point of view. The producer, as I comprehend, doesn’t need to change our propensities yet just know about the routes in how the planet is being taken care of. In the event that anything, this ought to be seen by however many individuals as could be expected under the circumstances to make them mindful of the status of food creation and the status of the subjects which are engaged with the food creation for example people, plants and creatures the same. I should state a portion of the scenes in the film hush up upsetting however that is the present status of our populace and food creation required to take care of them.

Love And Sacrifices :: essays research papers

Love and Sacrifices I don't get it's meaning to adore another? To adore someone else intends to feel empathetic towards them, to "feel" what they feel. Thinking about somebody, and what befalls them is likewise an indication of love. Imparting a relationship to somebody implies that you must be mindful what's more, must know that there will be times when things turn out badly. Adoring somebody implies taking these "wrong" things and attempting to fix them. What are a few indications of adoration? Making penances is one indication of dedication to someone else. At the point when you give it a second thought about somebody, you need to give a bit. Everything accompanies life. So as to get something, one must forfeit different things. For instance, if having to settle on a decision between the adoration for your life and heading off to a football match-up, a individual who is really infatuated, and not simply enamored with "being in love" will penance the game so as to be with that individual. What is the best intensity of potential human discourse? (words, language) All people have the ability to speak with different people, connect, and share their thoughts. The intensity of discourse is the thing that makes everything conceivable. Correspondence is the most significant thing in the accomplishment of a relationship, and for somebody to state that they love another is to regard them and their thoughts and to need to impart to them. The most anybody can ever accomplish for you is tune in, and the best way to do that is to convey that you need to be tuned in to and that you are eager to tune in to the one you love. That is the most anybody can do, and it is an endowment of sorts. What is the best thing about human love? Being infatuated gives a feeling of culmination, causes one to feel as though nothing else is required so as to endure. Some of the time, being infatuated can go about as a venturing stone, or an entryway into a world you never knew was out there. It can give you another point of view toward things, transform all that you've at any point known into something you never thought was conceivable. Love can likewise fortify a "tie" or "bond" that you may have with somebody, it might be said that you have substantially more in like manner. What is the best articulation of adoration? Giving up anything is the best articulation of your "love". The most noteworthy penance one would need to make is passing. Kicking the bucket for a friend or family member implies that your affection wasn't a "It", however a "Thou", and kicking the bucket just makes it more

Compare Contrast Performance Enhancing Drugs

Task 4-1-1 Compare and Contrast COMM 120 College Writing Justin Reed Professor Hilton-Ross Performance-Enhancing Drugs: New degree of energy or snappy passing? We routinely know about expert competitors being blamed for â€Å"doping,† or utilization of unlawful execution upgrading drugs. Many do this to be the absolute best at what they do. This is worthwhile for the player, yet additionally for the establishments that acquire the groups. The inquiry that emerges is, if these medications ought to be the new wilderness of sports, or on the off chance that we ought to vigorously screen the players to forestall passing. Taking a gander at this from an impartial point of view, it very well may be anything but difficult to see the two positives and negatives to ingesting such medications. Our general public requests flawlessness, however we likewise expect a degree of diversion that is on par or more noteworthy than the consistently expanding sticker price of the tickets that we purchase for these displays. A large number of the medications that are restricted from sports are because of the reactions that regularly happen. The players have crazy scenes, become expanding antagonistic, and in some cases even demise. Indeed, even with the proof sponsorship this, the medications are as yet utilized. The purpose behind this is fiscal additions. An inquiry rings a bell, OK rather carry on with a long, customary life or an abbreviated, astonishing one? You will be quicker, more grounded, and recuperate more rapidly than you ever have previously. In any case, let’s make the supposition that competitors start to utilize execution improving medications, the costs are higher for tickets,and the measure of time a player will really be equipped for playing at such a significant level is diminished. Who truly wins in this situation? I accept thefans do. Fansget an extremely energizing game, more plays, more activity, and more effect. Things that were impractical become undeniably progressively conceivable. Games are created or improved to make the exhibition all the better. The competitors can now demandmore cash in light of the fact that the groups are more prominent. In turn,the swarm draw implies the establishment can improve the offices and effect the encompassing territories. Indeed, the competitors have a capability of being harmed, however their penance could at last carry bliss to thousands, give them extraordinary wealth,and help the territories organizations. References Donovan, R. J. , Egger, G. , Kapernick, V. , and Mendoza, J. (2002). A Conceptual Framework for Achieving Performance Enhancing Drug Compliance in Sport. _Sports Medicine_, 32(4), 269-284.

How a Buyer (or User) Persona Can Improve Your Business

How a Buyer (or User) Persona Can Improve Your Business Have you ever tried to discuss the latest Mercedes or Range Rover model with your friend who doesn’t give a hoot about cars? What was the conversation like? You probably realized that your friend wasn’t even paying attention to what you were saying, and ended up changing the direction of the conversation to avoid wasting your breath.This is exactly what happens when you try to market your products and services without checking whether your message is relevant to the person you are marketing to. The only difference is that on top of your message being ignored, you are also wasting your marketing budget.To be an effective marketer, one of the first things you need to get right is to figure out who exactly you are marketing to. Knowing who you are marketing to not only helps you to determine if your products and services are relevant to the person you are marketing to, but also to figure out if you are marketing to them in the right way.Instead of trying to convince customers why th ey need a product, you can focus on selling them what they actually want. In order to figure out exactly who you are marketing to and how to market to them in the right way, you need to come up with something known as a buyer persona.WHAT IS A BUYER PERSONA? A buyer persona can be defined as a fictional, generalized representation of your target customers. It is a detailed description of the kind of person who might be interested in buying your products and services. The buyer persona is written as if it is a description of a real person.It should include everything about the ideal customer, including demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity, education, marital status and family size, personal and professional background, goals, challenges and concerns, hobbies and interests, past buying behavior, and so on.The aim of the buyer persona is to help you understand your customers better. It allows you to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and to get a clear picture of every aspect of their daily life. It makes it possible for you to get inside the head of your customers and prospects and figure out how they think and behave, and what their motivations are.Once you understand your customers completely, you can now tailor your messaging, content, products and services to their specific behaviors, needs and concerns.With a buyer persona, there is no chance of getting it wrong, because you are not making guesses or assumptions.You actually KNOW what your customers want and need and the messages they are most likely to respond to.IS A BUYER PERSONA REALLY NECESSARY?Many marketers ignore the buyer persona, and I can certainly understand this.Creating a detailed buyer persona needs some time and effort, and after all, no marketer wants to spend time coming up with a buyer persona if they don’t think it will have a solid ROI.What many do not understand is that lack of a buyer persona actually minimizes the ROI of your other marketing campaigns. Below are som e of the reasons you need to create a buyer persona.Helps You Identify Customers’ Wants and NeedsCustomers don’t purchase products and services simply because they are available in the market. Instead, customers purchase because the product and service fulfills a certain want or need.A buyer persona allows you to figure out your customers’ wants and needs and allows you to delight them with products and services that actually satisfy these needs.Selling becomes easier when you are fulfilling customers’ needs instead of trying to convince them to buy.Makes It Easier to Tailor Your Marketing Message to Your CustomersImagine you are selling ladies’ shoes. Would the message used to sell the shoes to 20 year old ladies work for a 40 year old woman?Probably not, because the two care about different things. Sure, both might buy the same shoe, but their reasons for buying the shoe are different.In order to sell the shoe to each of them, you have to use a message that resonates wit h them and their reasons for buying the shoe.A buyer persona helps you understand the personalities, desires, and buying motivations of your customers, allowing you to tailor your marketing message to appeal to each customer’s specific desires.Helps You Understand How Customer’s Make Purchasing DecisionsDifferent customer groups make their purchasing decisions in different ways.When buying a car, a 25 year old, single guy might go for things like speed and how cool the car looks. A 45 year old father of two, on the other hand, might be more interested in space and fuel economy.Not only does this affect how you market to them, it also affects what extras you can upsell with the car.The 25 year old dude might be more interested in styling and performance upgrades, such as turbos, superchargers and body kits, while the 45 year old dad of two might be interested in child seats for his kid’s safety.The more you understand your customer, the easier it becomes to understand their pur chasing decisions, move them along the sales funnel and increase their lifetime value.Helps You Develop And Improve Products and ServicesThe better you understand your customers, the easier it will become to understand the shortcomings and challenges they face when using your products and services.You can then use this information to improve your offerings or come up with new products and services to eliminate these challenges, thus allowing you to strengthen the relationship with the customers and increase their lifetime value.Helps You Determine Where Your Customers Spend TimeIn order to effectively market your products and services, you have to figure out where your customers like to spend their time, both online and in real life so that you can reach out to them and have conversations with them in those places. If your buyer persona is a senior executive who spends most of their online time on LinkedIn, it won’t make much sense marketing your services on Facebook.If your ideal customers are young ladies who spend their evenings in coffee shops, you won’t have much success promoting your services at the gym. Developing a buyer persona helps you figure out where and how you can reach your customers easily and effectively.Ensure Everyone In The Company Is On The Same PageIf you think a buyer persona is only beneficial for the sales and marketing departments, think again.The product team needs to know exactly who they are developing the product for. Your customer service representatives need to know the personalities, behaviors and desires of your customers in order to keep them happy.Developing a buyer persona ensures that everyone within the company is on the same page on how to please your customers, which in turn helps boost customer satisfaction and retention rates.Helps You Segment Your Marketing EffortsSometimes, a business might have a large target customer group. For instance, let’s consider companies that sell shaving razors. The razors markete d to men are fundamentally the same as those marketed to women. However, if the marketers use a general campaign to market to both audiences, the product will not appeal to either men or women.If they focus on one audience, they stand to lose sales from the other audience. What such companies do is to create buyer personas for the two audiences and then come up with segmented marketing campaigns that appeal to each persona.The companies end up using different colors on the razors, different packaging, and different messages. By segmenting their marketing efforts to each buyer persona, their marketing campaigns become more effective compared to a general marketing approach.Helps You to Pre-Qualify LeadsDeveloping a buyer persona also helps your business to focus on attracting better leads who are more sales- ready. Rather than trying to push your products to customers who are not sure whether they actually need the product, you can focus on leads that actually want the product.Taking the time to develop negative personas (personas representing the type of customers you don’t want) can also make your marketing efforts more effective and lower your customer acquisition costs by weeding out the ‘bad apples’ during your marketing efforts.These are just some of the reasons why you need to create a buyer persona. Not convinced yet? What if I told you that businesses using buyer personas experience a 55% increase in organic search traffic, double the open rates of their email campaigns and increase their email click-through rates 5 times?In addition, 71% of businesses that surpass their lead and revenue goals use buyer personas. Need I say more? The benefits of developing a buyer persona for your business are endless. Question is, how do you come up with a buyer persona?HOW TO CREATE A BUYER PERSONACreating a buyer persona involves collecting information about your target customers. While the type and amount of information gathered will obviously vary depending on your business, there are some questions you need to answer about your ideal customers. These include:1. What is Their Gender?Many products are gender specific. You don’t expect to sell products like wedding dresses, heels, cosmetics and beauty products, handbags, and so on to a predominantly male clientele. Similarly, you don’t expect to sell products like shaving kits, ties, and so on to a predominantly female clientele.Even for products that are not gender specific, such as smartphones, television sets, cars, computers, and so on, the language and message used to sell to men might not work for women, and vice versa.Therefore, it is important to know the gender of your ideal customers so that you can tailor your marketing to suit them.2. What is Their Age?Knowing your ideal customers’ age is crucial in determining the kind of products they might be interested in. If you sell home maintenance products like lawn mowers and wheelbarrows, it might not make a lot of sense marke ting them to 20 year olds who are yet to buy their own homes.On the other hand, if you sell baby products, marketing to 20-30 year olds might be effective since it is at that age that they are getting married and getting their first kids.Age also influences how you market your products. For younger customers, you might focus on the ‘cool factor’ while older folks will be more concerned with the utility of a product.3. Where Do They Live?Your customers’ location also influences your marketing campaign.For instance, if you run an online business and realize that majority of your buyers live in California, you can increase your budget for geographically targeted ads in the region.Knowing the location of your ideal customers also influences the location of your business. For instance, if you want to launch a luxury car dealership, it might not be wise to locate it in a low income area.Finally, your customers’ location also influences the kind of products they prefer. For example , automotive dealers might notice that people who live in rural areas lean towards trucks, whereas urban dwellers might prefer sedans.4. What is Their Level of Education?Your customers’ education level influences the kind of message and information you provide in your marketing material.For instance, if your customers are highly educated, you might provide study results and graphics about your product and leave them to make their own decision.If their education level is low, on the other hand, you might use testimonials and other forms of social proof to influence their decision.5. What is Their Occupation?A person’s occupation might influence the kind of products they buy.For instance, if you sell high end, high performance computers, it might be more effective to market them to designers, animators and video editors rather than social media professionals who only need a device that can connect to the internet.If you provide email marketing services or SEO services, online busi ness owners might be very interested in your services, whereas a nurse or a civil engineer might not care about your services.6. What is Their Income Level?This is another important consideration when coming up with a buyer persona. Remember, your customers will only buy your products if they can afford them, therefore you need to know the income range of the people you are targeting.For example, if you are a car salesperson, you wouldn’t spend your time trying to sell cars to students who don’t have any income. If you sell real estate, you wouldn’t spend your marketing budget advertising to people in entry level jobs since they might not earn enough to spend on a home.7. What are Their Interests and Leisure Pursuits?You might be wondering why you need to know the interests, hobbies and leisure habits of your buyers.This information helps you to better understand their personalities, which in turn makes it easier for you to connect with them. It also allows you to know where t hey hang out, so that you can easily reach out to them.For example, if you realize that majority of your customers go to the gym, you can partner with gyms around your locality to promote your products and services to them.8. What is Their Relationship Status?Are your target customers single or married? Do they have kids? What ages are their kids? This information is very crucial.The wants, needs, preferences and leisure activities of single people are very different from those of married people.Similarly, the wants, needs and preferences of people with toddlers are very different from those of people with teenage children. This information helps you position your products and services in a manner that resonates with your ideal buyer.9. What are Their Goals and Objectives?What are the goals and objectives of your ideal customers? What are they trying to achieve using your product or service?Understanding why customers purchase your product will help you refine your marketing strateg y and promote your products the right way.10. What are Their Challenges?What concerns and objections does your ideal buyer have about purchasing your products and services? Knowing these concerns and objections allows you to address them and convince your ideal buyers why your products are best for them.11. What is Their Purchase History?This information helps you understand what your buyers consider to be important and also helps you further refine their demographic information.For instance, if you notice that most of your customers are buying outdoor home equipment, you can deduce that they are middle class and they live in rural or suburban areas.12. What are Their Social Media Tendencies?How do your customers use social media? Which social media platforms do they prefer? This information helps you to determine the best social media channels to focus on in your marketing and the kind of content that will resonate with them.These are some of the questions you should try to answer when coming up with a buyer persona. Once you find answers to these questions, aggregate the average data for each question and then use it to create your user persona.Finally, come up with a fictional name to go with your buyer persona and choose a photo to go with the name. Doing so makes your buyer persona feel like a real person, rather than a collection of data.Obviously, you might be wondering where the heck you will get all this information. Below are some approaches you can use to get this information:Conduct traditional market research: If you do not have budgetary constraints, conducting market research about your target customers can help you come up with great data for your buyer persona.Conduct surveys: Sending out questionnaires with the above questions to your existing customer base can also provide you with a lot of information for your buyer persona. You can encourage your customers to take part in the survey by offering a small incentive, such as a discount coupon. Check your web and social media analytics: Your web and social media analytics contain a wealth of data about the people currently interacting online with your business or brand. This data can be useful in creating your buyer persona.Talk to your employees: Employees who interact with your customers can also provide you with useful information about your customers. Give them surveys with the above questions and use their responses to come up with a buyer persona.When conducting surveys, especially on customers, it is important to use open ended questions and where possible, follow them up with a ‘why?” Doing so will give you better insights into their behaviors, goals, and challenges.Open ended questions allow people to talk about their true feelings, which is important since you want to completely understand your customers.It’s also good to note that if your customer base is too wide, it is alright to come up with two or three buyer personas. Still, avoid the temptation to co me up with a buyer persona for every possible target customer. Just come up with buyer personas for two or three of your best performing customer groups and you are good to go.SAMPLE BUYER PERSONATo make it easier for you to understand what a buyer persona should look like, let’s take a look at a sample buyer persona from a web design agency that focuses on building and maintaining websites for freelance writers.Persona Name: Freelancer FredGender: MaleAge: 27Location: Remote (lives in an urban area)Relationship status:  Single, no kidsEducation: UndergraduateOccupation: Offers freelance writing services onlineIncome level: $50,000Goals: Build a thriving freelance writing agency that brings in over $200,000 annually.Challenges:Wants a modern website, but does not have a huge budget to spend on building and maintaining the site.Is not very conversant with SEO practices.Social media habits: Spends a lot of time on Twitter and LinkedIn, mostly networking with other freelancers and re aching out to prospective clients.Hobbies and interests:TravelingVolunteeringOnline gamingHOW TO USE YOUR BUYER PERSONAObviously, you are not going to use all this effort to create a buyer persona just to leave it at that. You need to make use of it. Below are some tips on how to make use of the buyer persona you just created.Classify Prospects by PersonaEvery time you get a new prospect, you should classify them by their respective persona. This allows you to tailor any further interaction with the prospect to suit their persona. Come up with a question or series of questions that will help you determine in which persona a prospect fits.You can then use these questions to classify the prospect during your first interaction with them, regardless of whether the interaction happens in person, through a phone call, or on an online opt-in form.Of course, not all prospects will fit neatly into your buyer personas. Just classify the prospect into the closest persona. If you realize that s ome clients are too detached from any of your current personas, you can use their data to create additional personas.Tailor Your Content to Buyer PersonasAddress your buyer personas: Now that you know who you are selling to, customize your messages to address your buyer persona instead of addressing everyone. For example, instead of saying “are you looking for a power suit,” you can now say, “Are you a 35 year old female CEO looking for a power suit?” The second question will resonate and connect better with your customers.Address their problems: Since you now know the specific problems of your buyer persona, you can address them rather than addressing general problems that your ideal customer might not even be experiencing.Appeal to different points of view: Instead of creating general content, create different content that appeals to each of your buyer personas.Serve dynamic persona-based web content: There are tools that allow you to show different content based on the bu yer persona you have placed a prospect in. Whenever they visit your website, they will only be shown content that is relevant to their buyer persona.Place prospects in persona-based drip campaigns: Once you assign a buyer persona to a prospect, you can then place the prospect in a drip email campaign that is customized to suit their persona and their current phase in the buyer’s journey.Find the appropriate marketing channel: Now that you know where your customers spend their time online, you can use the appropriate marketing channels to market to them. Since you know their interests, it becomes easier to determine which influencers your customers are more likely to follow and trust.Track Your PersonasYou should also track information and data about your buyer personas. For instance, is one buyer persona generating more leads than the other? Is one buyer persona spending more money than the other?This information can help determine if you are spending your advertising budget optim ally or if you are using the best methods to reach out to prospects.WRAPPING UPKnowing who your customers are, how they think and behave, and what their problems and concerns are allows you to effectively connect and communicate with them and build engagement, trust and loyalty.By creating a buyer persona and basing your marketing strategies on this persona, you will be able to boost your sales efforts and accelerate your business’ growth.

Agency Costs On The Investment Performance Of Australian Pension Funds Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

In Australia, the superannuation industry has undergone a rapid expansion since the introduction of a compulsory pension system in 1992. Superannuation assets grew from $245 billion to 942 billion in 10 years (Benson et al., 2010). Investors and consumers now have vast choice in their ability to pick a pension fund, ranging from non-profit funds, such as corporate, public sector and industry superannuation funds, and for-profit retail funds. However, there was a dearth of empirical studies which aimed to clarify any systematic differences in the performance of these respective funds. This is an important policy consideration as even small differences in cost and returns can have large remuneration ramifications in the long term. Bateman (2001) identified that a 1% change in costs could lead to a 22% change in returns on retirement. As such, it is crucial to analyse potential differences in returns between fund types and ensure retirees maximise their retirement income sav ings as performance ultimately affects welfare (Clark and Unwin, 2008). Systematically lower net returns will reduce final retirement savings. This can increase reliance upon the public pension system than would have otherwise been required under lower cost and higher return funds. In Coleman et al.s (2006) article, the authors utilised a large cross-sectional database which encapsulated not-for-profit and for-profit funds, elaborating on prior studies which tended to only consider for-profit providers. The article aimed to gain understanding of the performance of the Australian superannuation industry from 1997 to 2002, evaluating in terms of risk, returns and expenses, and what factors in particular were the determinants of investment performance. The core approach to these questions adopted a fund type comparison to enable the authors to ascertain whether the varying characteristics between not-for-profit and for-profit affected fund net return and performance. Despite the adoption of a prudent person approach according to the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993, the driving force behind potential disparities was hypothesised to be agency costs which manifest due to variations in the trustee board structure. In not-for-profit funds, consisting of the corporate, public sector and industry funds, equal representation is required from members of the fund and employers. In contrast, for-profit funds are non-representative and trustee board members are often employees of the professional financial institution who provide and manage the fund. As such retail funds are expected to have much higher agency costs which emerge in various ways. Without member representation, having only employees of the company on a trustee board creates conflicts of interest as the company aims to make a profit from providing superannuation services, whilst simultaneously attempting to maximise their customers retirement savings. Unlike not-for-profit funds which have established customer bases originating from industries of work, retail funds need to create networks and entice employees into their fund, often through commission-based financial planners. Commissions involve more cost for consumers, but more earnings for planners than fee-for-service charges. As retail funds are the only fund type that pays commissions, it creates an incentive for financial planners to advise their clients into retail funds, and encourages purchase of other financial products which is driven by commission, not independent and sage advice. Effective fund choice is further limited by agency costs which generates high exit fees to deter customers transferring their pension to another fund, another result of how retail funds have no established customer base. By dissecting performance through fund type, various features within each fund type could be assessed for any material effect on performance, such as size and economies of scale, returns over time and benefit structure. It is presupposed that for funds with a larger amount of financial assets, any fixed costs involved in administration and management, both of the fund and individual accounts, would be spread out over a greater volume of cash, resulting in lower average costs. Likewise, large funds should be able to negotiate more competitive fees due to the increased influence and bargaining power they can attain due to their size. Using return on assets, volatility on returns and expense ratios as a measure of performance Coleman et al.s (2006) analysis found that not-for-profit funds outperformed for-profit funds, with not-for-profit funds reporting significantly higher risk-adjusted returns. The difference in returns amount to an estimated 228 to 318 basis points per annum (Coleman et al., 2006). Another significant finding was that for-profit retail funds have significantly higher expense ratios than not-for-profit funds, which helped to drive the difference in net returns between the fund types. The higher expenses for retails funds were associated with marketing and networking costs which aim to establish and expand their customer base. Performance across fund types was also assessed in terms of risk-adjusted performance using the Sharpe ratio and Jensen alpha, both of which are measures of the returns received relative to risk taken. In terms of risk-adjusted performance using the Sharpe ratio, retail funds again had a statistically significantly lower performance, with a ratio 20-30% lower than not-for-profit funds. The alternative measure of the Jensen alpha also recorded significant differences between not-for-profit and for-profit funds. The greatest disparity occurred between the industry and public sector funds with the retail funds in the multiple index model with market timing. This suggests industry and public sector funds have more active management of their asset allocation to take advantage of fortuitous market movements. The results wer e concluded to be consistent with the hypothesis that agency costs exist to create differential performance between not-for-profit and for-profit funds (Coleman et al., 2006). The lack of a representative trustee board creates behaviour that fails to minimise expenses, resulting in lower returns for for-profit funds. That fund features such as size and benefit structure were not significant determinants of performance simply allows greater explanatory power to be attributed to agency costs for the stark performance between not-for-profit and for-profit funds. This study expands upon prior studies to provide a quantitative figure on the adverse effect of agency costs upon superannuation funds. Whilst Coleman et al. (2006) published a thoroughly researched articles, there are some methodological issues that emerged. A chronic problem was the underreporting of expenses where external expenses were often deducted from the gross return on assets. Therefore explicit figures of external management costs were often unavailable yet still need to be taken into account for the expense ratio. To remedy this, external costs were estimated using the average management ratio reported in the annual returns of 25 pension funds during 2001 or 2002, which is at least on par with (Rice and McEwin, 2002) or is a conservative estimate (Clare, 2001) compared to other studies. This would be more accurate if the sample taken was representative of the superannuation industry and not skewed towards particular cost functions of any fund type. However, it homogenises costs between fund types, which is far from the truth according to Coleman et als results. Subsidies in corporate funds also posed problems, possibly leading to an underestimated expense cost. This is difficult to correct for as subsidies may not be used uniformly, providing only a caveat for potentially understated corporate expense figures. The articles sample time period from 1997 to 2002 may also detrimentally affec t the results. Its relevance to the current superannuation industry can be questioned due to the introduction of the Superannuation Choice Act No. 82 in 2005. Future research should determine whether member fund choice has affected performance or fees. Fund behaviour may have altered in order to gain competitive advantage, e.g. increased advertisements to attract and retain members. The survey period of 7 years is sufficient to observe several peaks and troughs, however, whether these trends are an accurate estimation of performance throughout a members lifetime is uncertain. In Coleman et al. (2006), the results of the Jensen alpha multiple index model suggested that corporate and public sector funds had more active management which allowed them to reap higher returns throughout the sample period. This contrasts Drew and Stanford (2003), who subscribes to the Efficient Market Hypothesis which states that securities markets are informationally efficient. Hence, profit is already max imised and active management strategies are futile. A longer time frame of study should be adopted in the future in order to ensure the long term trend is captured, particularly since retirement savings is also a long term goal. Whilst Coleman et al. (2006) delivered a thorough analysis of investment performance by fund type, they acknowledged that they the experiment was not completely controlled. Differing allocation strategies can influence investment growth and this would create bias in the results if fund types were correlated with particular asset allocation and growth trends. For example, where retail funds tend towards more conservative asset allocation than not-for-profit funds (Ellis et al., 2008). Evidence of the alignment of asset allocation in the data was displayed by the high correlation between fund performance with a known balanced asset allocation. However, Ellis et al. (2008) improve the analysis further by directly controlling for asset allocation through anal ysing performance by investment option. This controls for the varying risk preferences and financial products utilised by fund members, synchronising fund type analysis. Ellis et al.s (2008) results showed that expenses and taxes were the only significant determinant of investment performance. It confirms Coleman et al.s (2006) findings, where net return relative to a benchmark return for retail funds in a standardised default option significantly underperformed the other fund types. Underperformance and higher costs in retails funds reflect the agency costs associated with for-profit funds as the trustee board struggle between attaining pension fund growth and earning profit. Hence Coleman et al.s (2006) are evidently robust and exposed the varying performances of pension fund types.

A Common Form Of Victimization, Homophobic Name Calling

Introduction: A common form of victimization, homophobic name-calling, has been associated with negative mental outcomes among adolescents. Research has shown the correlating effects of homophobic victimization, in the form of name-calling, to be associated with depression, increased suicide rates, feeling unsafe and insecure, and a developmental continuation of mental health problems into adulthood for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students. According to studies, adolescents have reported several reoccurrences of hearing epithets such as ‘queer’, ‘dyke’, and ‘faggot’ throughout their day. The results of this study may help researchers investigate how homophobic behaviors develop in adolescence so that it may provide adequate information to help prevent the future victimization of LGBT students. Adolescence is a stage where peers tend to have a particularly strong influence on individuals around them. Often times, this is where children first begin to show discrepancies in their ability to resist peer pressure. For this reason, individuals between the ages of 10 and 14 have been shown to fall under the influence of the peer groups they associate themselves with. Previous studies have indicated that masculinity and race have shown to be significant predictors of homophobic behavior. Traditionally, homophobia has been one of the fundamental ideologies related to masculinity. Masculinity researchers have postulated that the reason behind hyper-masculineShow MoreRelatedVerbal Victimization And Mental Health1652 Words   |  7 Pagesdiscusses this common incidence and the connection between homophobic verbal victimization and mental health in teenagers. The article highlights a specific kind of bullying, homophobic name-calling and its connection to the teenager mental health in the Netherlands. They also observe the different parts of gender, gender expression, and sexual preferences in homophobic peer victimization. The verbally victimizing behaviors that are being used by children and teenagers such as name calling tend to emphasizeRead MoreVerbal Victimization And Mental Health1503 Words   |  7 Pagesdiscusses this common incidence and t he connection between homophobic verbal victimization and mental health in teenagers. The article highlights a specific kind of bullying, homophobic name-calling and its connection to the teenager mental health in the Netherlands. They also observe the different parts of gender, gender expression, and sexual preferences in homophobic peer victimization. The verbally victimizing behaviors that are being used by children and teenagers such as name calling tend to emphasizeRead MoreVerbal Victimization And Mental Health1788 Words   |  8 Pagesby Collier, Bos, and Sandfort (2013) discusses this common incidence and the connection between homophobic verbal victimization and mental health in teenagers. The article highlights a specific kind of bullying, homophobic name-calling and its connection to teenager mental health in the Netherlands. They also examine the different parts of gender, gender expression, and sexual preferences in homophobic peer victimization. The verbal victimizati on that is being used by children and teenagers tend toRead MoreBullying Is A Universally Contagious1817 Words   |  8 Pagesdiscusses about its common incidence and the connection between homophobic verbal victimization and mental health in teenagers considering for their sexual preferences and different balanced of gender non-conformity. The article highlights on a specific kind of bullying which is homophobic name-calling and its connection to teenager mental health in the Netherlands. They also examine the different part of gender, gender expression, and sexual preferences in homophobic peer victimization. The verbal victimizationRead MoreThe Effects Of Homophobic Name Calling Among Students And Implications Of Mental Health1872 Words   |  8 PagesThe Effects of Homophobic Name-Calling Among students and implications of Mental Health Introduction Bullying has impacted many secondary school students, making them feel self-conscious, less confident, and more anxious. A study by Collier, Bos, and Sandfort (2013) discusses this common incidence and the connection between homophobic verbal victimization and mental health in teenagers. The article highlights a specific kind of bullying, homophobic name-calling and its connection to teenager mentalRead MoreBullying Is An Old Phenomenon That Only Been The Subject Of More Systematic Research?885 Words   |  4 Pageshand, peer victimization is a broader term defined as ‘‘The experience among children of being a target of the aggressive behaviour of other children, who are not siblings and not necessarily age-mates’’ (Hawker Boulton, 2000, p. 441). Yet, while victimization differs from bullying, many researchers consider children who are targets of peer victimization as ‘being bullied’ (i.e. Olweus, 1991; Whitney and Smith, 1993; Fox Boulton, 2006). Adolescent victimization comes in many forms, such as physicalRead MoreEssay about Bullying and Harassment Among the Lgbtq Youth3521 Words   |  15 Pagessocially â€Å"superior† classmates. Bullying and harassment have become a widespread problem in schools all around the United States and have proved to have serious implications, such as problems in academics for those who are victimized by bullies. Victimization from bullying and harassment can be linked to lowered self-esteem, anxiety, depression, avoidance of school, and suicide (Hawker amp; Boulton, 2000). Unfortunately, one of the most victimized groups of students subjected to bullyingRead MoreBarbie Dolls : A Of A Societal Female Identity Has Been Established And Reinforced Time And Time2159 Words   |  9 Pagesfemale or they may feel that neither label fits them.† (insert citation for definition) In order to express their elected gender, transgender people may transition or change from the gende r they were assigned at birth. These changes may include their names, preference of pronouns, or style of dress. Some transgender people choose a medical transition with the help of counselors and surgeons who will prescribe hormones and or surgery. People that self-identify as transgender are now gaining influenceRead MoreThe Diversity Of The Lgbt Community2339 Words   |  10 Pagesthe education setting. First the most important thing about the LGBT community is knowing what the letters are and that that the letters are growing and forever changing. According to Safe Zone the most recent lettering is LGBTQIA+, which is, a common abbreviation used to identify communities that have their own sexuality or gender differences. To better understand what the letters are and what they mean will give a better understanding to the rest of the information. According to Safe Zone hereRead MoreThe Role Of Disclosure Of Transgender Identity2433 Words   |  10 Pagesidentify as male or female or they may feel that neither label fits them† (Stryker, 2008). In order to express their elected gender, transgender people may transition or change from the gender they were assigned at birth. These changes may include their names, preference of pronouns, or style of dress. Some transgender people choose a medical transition with the help of counselors and surgeons who will prescribe hormones and or surgery (Stryker, 2008). People that self-identify as transgender are now

Warhol And The Pop Art Movement - 2609 Words

Andy Warhol being not simply a Pop artist, but an American artist who was known as the master of Pop Art, and about two of Warhol’s most famous paintings; Coca-Cola and Campbell’s Soup Cans. Andy Warhol was an artist and filmmaker, an initiator for the Pop Art movement in the 1960s. Warhol used mass production techniques to elevate art into the supposed unoriginality of the commercial culture of the United States. Warhol’s early drawings frequently recalls the Anglo-Saxon tradition of nonsense humor, a characteristically childlike exuberance, and the fact that Warhol was successfully earning a living in the advertising industry at the time was sufficient for many to dismiss his entire artistic output during this period as â€Å"commercial art†. Fifty years ago, Pop art captured the spirit of Warhol’s young art, but that basic structure has been (to most people) a revealing profitless movement for years. Pop art was a 1960s movement that focused on e veryday objects, comic books and mediated images — now seems quaint and playful, but not Warhol. In the first part of Andy Warhol’s career he was an iconoclast, in the second, the artist as businessman. In 1960 Warhol’s graphic works underwent a fundamental change in terms of subject matter, accompanied at about the same time by a change in technique. Warhol’s graphic work covers areas not normally associated with the art of the twentieth century, and which might even be considered unique. In Andy Warhol’s paintings and prints ofShow MoreRelatedAndy Warhol s Influence On The Pop Art Movement1608 Words   |  7 PagesAndy Warhol, born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, was one of the most successful artists within the pop art movement. At the age of 8, Warhol was diagnosed with a rare, sometimes fatal, disease named Chorea. Also known as St. Vitus’s dance, a neurological disorder that is characterized by jerky involuntary movements affecting especially the shoulders, hips and face. Warhol, was left bedridden of several months, however during these months was when he found out about his talent for drawing. LaterRead MoreWarhol : A Artist And A Prominent Figure Into The Pop Art Movement1300 Words   |  6 PagesAndy Warhol was a multimedia artist and a prominent figure in the Pop Art Movement. Andrew Warhola was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From 1945 to 1949, Warhola studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1949, he moved and settled in New York and changed his surname to Warhol. He then worked as a Commercial artist. In the earlier years of the 1960’s, Warhol enjoyed experimenting with large mass advertisements, magazines, and other images. In 1962, he started working on the Marilyn MonroeRead MoreAndy Warhol: Influence on the Twentieth Century Pop Art Movement1065 Words   |  5 PagesAs a profound influence on the twentieth century pop art movement, Andy Warhol ascended to become a cornerstone in the modern art world. After taking cues from society in the mid-twentieth century, as well as conversing with Muriel Latow, Warhol did what many artists strived to do but failed. Andy also extracted many of his ideas from other artists and built on them. He put a culture on canvas and revolutionized pop art for a life time. The nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties were periodsRead MoreAndy Warhol the â€Å"Founder and a Major Figure of the Pop Art Movement†799 Words   |  4 PagesAndy Warhol Andrew Warhola is considered to be the â€Å"founder and a major figure of the pop art movement†. He was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in 1928. He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he majored in pictorial design. He worked as an illustrator in many magazines including Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and the New Yorker, but, his big break was in 1949, when he illustrated for Glamour Magazine. Andy Warhol was born with the name Andrew Warhola, he dropped the â€Å"a† when hisRead MoreThe Pop Art Movement Essay1303 Words   |  6 PagesThe Pop Art Movement Pop art got its name from Lawrence Alloway, who was a British art critic in 1950’s. The name â€Å"Pop Art† reflected on the â€Å"familiar imagery of the contemporary urban environment† (kleiner, 981). This art form was popular for its bold and simple looks plus its bright and vibrant colors. An example of this type of art is the oil painting done by Andy Warhol, â€Å"Marilyn Diptych† (Warhol, Marilyn Diptych) in 1962. The Pop art movement became known in the mid-1950 and continued asRead MoreComparison Of Andy Warhol And Roy Lichtenstein797 Words   |  4 Pagescontrast of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein Pop Art was a popular movement that formed in the 1950’s in Britain, and later formed in the united states. When you think about pop art you think about three-dimensional art. Well Pop art is not about the form of the picture. Pop art is like an advertisement, news magazines and comic books that catch the people s eyes. There were many artists like Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, and Robert Rauschenberg, who presented pop art to the worldRead MoreAttention Getter : The American Culture1387 Words   |  6 Pageson our life and how we live vicariously through them. Today I m going to talk about one man that took these concepts into his artistic ability and thereby created a whole new culture in what we see is art today. This man who is considered one of the fathers of pop art goes by the name of Andy Warhol. or When we eat a slice of pizza we tend to wash it down with a bottle of Coke when we re feeling sick we tend to have some Campbell s chicken noodle soup when we think of rock n roll the name ElvisRead MoreThe Movement Of Pop Art991 Words   |  4 Pages The term ‘Pop Arts ‘was innovated in the mid-1950s and early 1960 s. Undoubtedly, the god father of this movement is Andy Warhol – the biggest influence on humanity s fixation on visual art. His performance traverses the connection among aesthetic utterance, culture and commercial. By applying various ways of techniques which included silk screen process (for mass production) and colour settlement, Warhol showed to the world of art his perspectives on media, economics and politics. Thus, thisRead MoreArt Movement : Warhol And Elvis Presley1121 Words   |  5 PagesThe mid-twentieth century brought the arrival of the art movement known as Pop Art. The movement was given this name because its artwork was based on c oncepts of popular culture especially commercialism. One of the most notable artists of this period was Andy Warhol. Warhol did work with comics as Roy Lichtenstein, another prominent artist of the movement, was known for doing, but he ultimately abandoned them in pursuit of other approaches. Warhol is partially known for incorporating celebrities suchRead MoreAnalysis Of Warhol s First Solo New York Exhibit At Eleanor Ward s Stable Gallery1329 Words   |  6 Pageswas one of the many famous quotes uttered by the eccentric yet revolutionary artist, Andy Warhol. At first one might think this quote would be the word of an advertising agent and indeed it is. This very idea, however, is what created the commercialized idea of Pop Art in the 1960s. Andy Warhol’s background as a commercial illustrator provided him with the ability to pioneer a new artistic movement. Warhol highlights the American shift towards consumerism through his work by using the techniques

Criminal Justice Data Quality - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 6 Words: 1662 Downloads: 8 Date added: 2019/02/20 Category Society Essay Level High school Tags: Criminal Justice Essay Did you like this example? Research study has been done on prosecution of child sexual abuse cases from the past few decades. In today’s paper, this research has been studied and provided facts, methods and conclusion with the help of five articles. A meta-analysis of rates of Criminal Justice Decisions. Using coplink to analyze Criminal-Justice Data. Risk-appraisal versus self-report in the prediction of Criminal Justice outcomes: A meta-analysis Prosecution rate and quality of the investigative interview in child sexual abuse cases. Factors associated with delays of days to decades to criminal prosecutions of Child Sexual Abuse. Introduction and Observations: From the first article, it is evident that this study meta-analyzed rates of criminal justice decisions in 21 studies of prosecution of child abuse. Rates of referral to prosecution, filing charges, and incarceration varied considerably. Compared to national data, child abuse was less likely to lead to filing charges and incarceration than most other felonies but more likely to be carried forward without dismissal. Thus, prosecuting child abuse is generally neither feckless nor reckless. Rates can be misleading and cannot be the sole measure of prosecution success. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Criminal Justice Data Quality" essay for you Create order From the second article, the Coplink project, which unites the technical expertise of the University of Arizona’s Artificial Intelligence Lab with the Tucson Police Department’s law enforcement domain knowledge. Coplink serves the community by bridging the gap between conducting research in cutting-edge technologies and solving real-world problems such as helping police officers fight crime. The Coplink project attacks several problems existing in many law enforcement agencies by developing a model integrated system that lets law officers’ access and share information with other agencies. Coplink has the additional goal of developing consistent, intuitive, and easy-to-use interfaces and applications that support specific and often complex law enforcement functions and tasks. From the third article, it has been observed that the risk-appraisal and self-report procedures are divergent methods of data collection, with risk-appraisal procedures relying in part or in whole on historical, chart, and non-self-report information and self-report measures relying exclusively on self-report data. The risk-appraisal/self-report differentiation should not be confused with actuarial and clinical methods of prediction, as both risk-appraisal and self-report methods of data collection can be entered into actuarial decision models or treated clinically. The five risk-appraisal procedures which will be used to for a meta-analysis are: Historical-Clinical-Risk Scales (HCR–20), Lifestyle Criminality Screening Form (LCSF), Level of Service-Inventory (LSI), Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG). more self-report measures will also be included, such as BDHI, etc. From the fourth and fifth article, a brief analysis about the prosecution rate in child sexual abuse cases. From the study, it has been examined that the reason for the low prosecution rate in child sexual abuse cases is the poor quality of the interviews conducted by the interviewers. The relationship between interview quality and prosecution rate has been clearly examined in this research. Interviews with the older children has been of good quality on one hand and when it comes to interviews with young children has been of poor quality on the other hand. There are various reasons behind this poor quality. Analysis: Most of the child sexual abuse cases resulted in many psychological problems especially in younger children. Child sexual abuse can always affect children by causing trauma on the child and resulting in cascading effects in terms of social, sexual, physical and mental problems. This research has been conducted in Sweden and Canada and it has been found that the number of child rape cases have been rapidly increased up to 450% from the year 1987 to 2003. There has been tremendous increase in small abuse cases like sexual harassment about 200% in the same time period. Based on the increasing knowledge of parents and social media effects, people are coming forward and registering cases. These cases have been taken seriously and the convicts who got imprisonment have been increased from 73 to 145 in the same time period. It has been observed that the rate of reporting is higher than the conviction numbers. There are many reasons behind these figures. One of the main reasons for this low-quality prosecution rate is there is no evidence except the child’s statement. There are statements against this saying that due to advanced medical examinations, the convicts can be easily given imprisonment which will be a big evidence to the justice. Justice has been facing problems with the cases of preschoolers than the teenagers. Hence, interviewer has a challenger when interviewing them which results in a bad quality. In Canada, a maximum of 55% CSA cases were filed in the year 2012 and it has been observed that most of the victims are under age 18. These cases have been becoming a challenge to criminal courts not only in Canada but also in most of the American states, Australia, UK, Europe. Below are only the published CSA cases in Canada from 1986 to 2012. There has been increase in the percentage of cases between the years 1991 and 1998. A substantial decrease can be seen in the years 2000 and 2002. Factors associated with delays to Criminal Prosecutions of CSA: There have been a lot of changes in the criminal justice in the past 30 years and there are few factors which are related with the delays in prosecutions of CSA cases. Judicial warnings are no longer mandatory in most jurisdictions. To lessen the trauma of testifying, courtroom modifications are in the form of testimonial supports but they are fully in progress. An attitude that children’s evidence is inherently unreliable. Knowledge of terrifying forensic system is very low in children which always plays an important role in evidence. Methods: In contrast to a traditional literature review, a meta-analysis statistically combines results in an objective manner to summarize and synthesize selected empirical studies (Cooper Hedges, 1994; Lipsey Wilson, 2001). In addition, meta-analysis provides a foundation for future research by identifying what is and what is not known about a particular topic. Rates were calculated for the following decision points in the prosecution of child abuse: referral, filing criminal charges, diversion, carrying cases forward (versus dismissing them), guilty plea, trial, conviction, and incarceration. Comparison data were gathered from 12 national studies of prosecution in urban areas conducted for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) 328 TRAUMA, VIOLENCE, ABUSE / October 2003 from 1977 to 1998. Crime analysts and detectives create knowledge from information daily by analyzing and generalizing current criminal records. In general, building a domain-specific concept space (CS) involves three main steps. First, to locate the sources from which they will derive terms or concepts, developers must identify document collections in a specific subject domain. Second, the terms must be filtered and indexed. At last, a co-occurrence analysis captures the relationships among indexed terms. Data for this meta-analysis were identified in a computerized search of the PsycINFO, National Criminal Justice Reference Service, and Cambridge Scientific Criminal Justice Abstracts databases, followed by several expert opinions. Effect sizes were point-biserial correlations computed between a continuous risk-appraisal or self-report predictor and a dichotomous outcome. Individual Z scores were calculated for each effect size. They carried a research by observing 18 video-taped interviews with children which were provided by the officers. After going through every interview of each child, they finally categorized their analysis in 12 aspects along with the interrater reliabilities which is intraclass correlation with a scale rate of 1 to 5. Table 1. Twelve aspects used to analyze the interviews and the intraclass correlations Aspects of the interview Intraclass correlation The extent to which the interviewer establishes ground rules (i.e. Do you know the difference between telling the truth and a lie? Explaining that it is ok to answer I don’t know; Explaining why the same question may be asked several times) 0.87 The extent to which the interviewer builds rapport with the child 0.65 The extent to which the interviewer use closed-end or open-ended questions (1=only closed end; 5=only open ended) 0.60 The extent to which the interviewer allows the child to tell the story without interrupting 0.73 The extent to which the child seems tormented during the interview 0.92 The extent to which the child verbalizes negative emotions during the abuse 0.92 The extent to which the interview consists of short questions and long answers 0.76 The general quality of the interview (1=very bad; 5=very good) 0.68 The extent to which the interviewer allows the child practice free recall? * 0.00 The extent to which the interviewer encourages the child to tell everything about the abuse†  0.49 The extent to which the interviewer helps the child to report details about one specific event of abuse (when frequent abuse) †  0.45 The extent to which the interviewer uses techniques from the Cognitive Interview* 1.00 The last four aspects were excluded from further analyses. *Aspect was excluded because of no variance. Aspect was excluded because of to low intraclass correlation. Conclusion From the articles, it can be concluded that for the child abuse studies, the Q statistic was statistically significant at p Coplink CS has been successfully deployed at the Tucson Police Department, where crime analysts, officers, detectives, and sergeants from 16 departmental units use the technology voluntarily as part of their daily investigative routine. This cross-section comprises approximately 30 to 40 percent of TPD’s investigative units and includes 90 percent of the crime analysts. Investigative units include adult and child sexual assault, aggravated assault, auto theft, elder abuse, community office, fraud, gangs, homicide, undercover, neighborhood crimes, night detectives, patrol, robbery, and warrants. Although risk-appraisal procedures displayed an advantage over self-report measures in recidivism prediction, the two methods produced comparable results when the meta-analysis was restricted to investigations using content-relevant self-report predictors. Incremental validity analysis of 72 risk-appraisal/self-report contrasts revealed that both sets of measures accounted for criminal justice outcomes beyond the variance attributable to the alternate method.

The Theory Of My Biology Lab At The University Of Miami

Community is an idea that the powers at be in any university, including my own, put extensive effort to instill into their student’s everyday life. At the University of Miami, the sentiment of community can be felt not only in social events sponsored by the university but also in the classroom. A specific classroom where I observed the implementation of community is my HHMI biology lab. My HHMI lab is structured in such a manner that for three hours, twice a week, three separate groups of six conduct our own independently designed research. The goal of the class is for the students to learn without any professor intervention. The only professor input is when they introduce the groups to the general topic of research and when they critique groups that are presenting their information in a formal setting. Consequently, students have free reign to do whatever research we want within the constraints of the topic, and have to learn everything on our own. The structure of my biology lab is laid out in such a way as to increase community amongst the students taking the course, but in doing so, students lose interest with the class. My biology lab focuses on the idea of community but first, what is community? My definition of a community is a group of people that work together, using each individual’s specific skills, for the betterment of the whole. The goal of a community is for every member to coexist in a manner that helps each person more than if they were not part of saidShow MoreRelatedPhysics : The Mysteries Of Nature883 Words   |  4 Pageschose it as my career. Now, I intend to gain the skill to better understand this complexity by matriculating in a doctorate in physics. I began my undergraduate career at Miami Dade College (â€Å"MDC†). Its lemma, â€Å"Opportunity changes everything†, applied cheerfully to me. It began with the opportunity of being accepted to the honors college. 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Bag of Bones CHAPTER NINETEEN Free Essays

string(70) " as I knew the truth about John Shackleford’s childhood friend\." The telephone was ringing. I climbed toward it from a drowning dream where I couldn’t catch my breath, rising into early sunlight, wincing at the pain in the back of my head as I swung my feet out of bed. The phone would quit before I got to it, they almost always do in such situations, and then I’d lie back down and spend a fruitless ten minutes wondering who it had been before getting up for good. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER NINETEEN or any similar topic only for you Order Now Ringgg . . . ringgg . . . ringgg . . . Was that ten? A dozen? I’d lost count. Someone was really dedicated. I hoped it wasn’t trouble, but in my experience people don’t try that hard when the news is good. I touched my fingers gingerly to the back of my head. It hurt plenty, but that deep, sick ache seemed to be gone. And there was no blood on my fingers when I looked at them. I padded down the hall and picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’ ‘Well, you won’t have to worry about testifyin at the kid’s custody hearin anymore, at least.’ ‘Bill?’ ‘Ayuh.’ ‘How did you know . . . ‘ I leaned around the corner and peered at the waggy, annoying cat-clock. Twenty minutes past seven and already sweltering. Hotter’n a bugger, as us TR Martians like to say. ‘How do you know he decided ‘ ‘I don’t know nothing about his business one way or t’other.’ Bill sounded touchy. ‘He never called to ask my advice, and I never called to give him any.’ ‘What’s happened? What’s going on?’ ‘You haven’t had the TV on yet?’ ‘I don’t even have the coffee on yet.’ No apology from Bill; he was a fellow who believed that people who didn’t get up until after six A.M. deserved whatever they got. I was awake now, though. And had a pretty good idea of what was coming. ‘Devore killed himself last night, Mike. Got into a tub of warm water and pulled a plastic bag over his head. Mustn’t have taken long, with his lungs the way they were.’ No, I thought, probably not long. In spite of the humid summer heat that already lay on the house, I shivered. ‘Who found him? The woman?’ ‘Ayuh, sure.’ ‘What time?’ †Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Shortly before midnight,†Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ they said on the Channel 6 news.’ Right around the time I had awakened on the couch and taken myself stiffly off to bed, in other words. ‘Is she implicated?’ ‘Did she play Kevorkian, you mean? The news report I saw didn’t say nothin about that. The gossip-mill down to the Lakeview General will be turnin brisk by now, but I ain’t been down yet for my share of the grain. If she helped him, I don’t think she’ll ever see trouble for it, do you? He was eighty-five and not well.’ ‘Do you know if he’ll be buried on the TR?’ ‘California. She said there’d be services in Palm Springs on Tuesday.’ A sense of surpassing oddness swept over me as I realized the source of Mattie’s problems might be lying in a chapel filled with flowers at the same time The Friends of Kyra Devore were digesting their lunches and getting ready to start throwing the Frisbee around. It’s going to be a celebration, I thought wonderingly. I don’t know how they’re going to handle it in The Little Chapel of the Microchips in Palm Springs, but on Wasp Hill Road they’re going to be dancing and throwing their arms in the sky and hollering Yes, lawd. I’d never been glad to hear of anyone’s death before in my life, but I was glad to hear of Devore’s. I was sorry to feel that way, but I did. The old bastard had dumped me in the lake . . . but before the night was over, he was the one who had drowned. Inside a plastic bag he had drowned, sitting in a tub of tepid water. ‘Any idea how the TV guys got onto it so fast?’ It wasn’t superfast, not with seven hours between the discovery of the body and the seven o’clock news, but TV news people have a tendency to be lazy. ‘Whitmore called em. Had a press conference right there in Warrington’s parlor at two o’clock this morning. Took questions settin on that big maroon plush sofa, the one Jo always used to say should be in a saloon oil paintin with a naked woman lyin on it. Remember?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘I saw a coupla County deputies walkin around in the background, plus a fella I reckonized from Jaquard’s Funeral Home in Motton.’ ‘That’s bizarre,’ I said. ‘Ayuh, body still upstairs, most likely, while Whitmore was runnin her gums . . . but she claimed she was just followin the boss’s orders. Said he left a tape sayin he’d done it on Friday night so as not to affect the cump’ny stock price and wanted Rogette to call in the press right off and assure folks that the cump’ny was solid, that between his son and the Board of Directors, everythin was going to be just acey-deucey. Then she told about the services in Palm Springs.’ ‘He commits suicide, then holds a two A.M. press conference by proxy to soothe the stockholders.’ ‘Ayuh. And it sounds just like him.’ A silence fell between us on the line. I tried to think and couldn’t. All I knew was that I wanted to go upstairs and work, aching head or no aching head. I wanted to rejoin Andy Drake, John Shackleford, and Shackleford’s childhood friend, the awful Ray Garraty. There was madness in my story, but it was a madness I understood. ‘Bill,’ I said at last, ‘are we still friends?’ ‘Christ, yes,’ he said promptly. ‘But if there’s people around who seem a little stand-offy to you, you’ll know why, won’t you?’ Sure I’d know. Many would blame the old man’s death on me. It was crazy, given his physical condition, and it would by no means be a majority opinion, but the idea would gain a certain amount of credence, at least in the short run I knew that as well as I knew the truth about John Shackleford’s childhood friend. You read "Bag of Bones CHAPTER NINETEEN" in category "Essay examples" Kiddies, once upon a time there was a goose that flew back to the little unincorporated township where it had lived as a downy gosling. It began laying lovely golden eggs, and the townsfolk all gathered around to marvel and receive their share. Now, however, that goose was cooked and someone had to take the heat. I’d get some, but Mattie’s kitchen might get a few degrees toastier than mine; she’d had the temerity to fight for her child instead of silently handing Ki over. ‘Keep your head down the next few weeks,’ Bill said. ‘That’d be my idea. In fact, if you had business that took you right out of the TR until all this settles down, that might be for the best.’ ‘I appreciate the sense of what you’re saying, but I can’t. I’m writing a book. If I pick up my shit and move, it’s apt to die on me. It’s happened before, and I don’t want it to happen this time.’ ‘Pretty good yarn, is it?’ ‘Not bad, but that’s not the important thing. It’s . . . well, let’s just say this one’s important to me for other reasons.’ ‘Wouldn’t it travel as far as Derry?’ ‘Are you trying to get rid of me, William?’ ‘I’m tryin to keep an eye out, that’s all caretakin’s my job, y’know. And don’t say you weren’t warned: the hive’s gonna buzz. There’s two stories going around about you, Mike. One is that you’re shacking with Mattie Devore. The other is that you came back to write a hatchet-job on the TR. Pull out all the old skeletons you can find.’ ‘Finish what Jo started, in other words. Who’s been spreading that story, Bill?’ Silence from Bill. We were back on earthquake ground again, and this time that ground felt shakier than ever. ‘The book I’m working on is a novel,’ I said. ‘Set in Florida.’ ‘Oh, ayuh?’ You wouldn’t think three little syllables could have so much relief in them. ‘Think you could kind of pass that around?’ ‘I think I could,’ he said. ‘If you tell Brenda Meserve, it’d get around even faster and go even farther.’ ‘Okay, I will. As far as Mattie goes ‘ ‘Mike, you don’t have to’ ‘I’m not shacking with her. That was never the deal. The deal was like walking down the street, turning the corner, and seeing a big guy beating up a little guy.’ I paused. ‘She and her lawyer are planning a barbecue at her place Tuesday noon. I’m planning to join them. Are people from town going to think we’re dancing on Devore’s grave?’ ‘Some will. Royce Merrill will. Dickie Brooks will. Old ladies in pants, Yvette calls em.’ ‘Well fuck them,’ I said. ‘Every last one.’ ‘I understand how you feel, but tell her not to shove it in folks’ faces,’ he almost pleaded. ‘Do that much, Mike. It wouldn’t kill her to drag her grill around back of her trailer, would it? At least with it there, folks lookin out from the store or the garage wouldn’t see nothing but the smoke.’ ‘I’ll pass on the message. And if I make the party, I’ll put the barbecue around back myself.’ ‘You’d do well to stay away from that girl and her child,’ Bill said. ‘You can tell me it’s none of my business, but I’m talkin to you like a Dutch uncle, tellin you for your own good.’ I had a flash of my dream then. The slick, exquisite tightness as I slipped inside her. The little breasts with their hard nipples. Her voice in the darkness, telling me to do what I wanted. My body responded almost instantly. ‘I know you are,’ I said. ‘All right.’ He sounded relieved that I wasn’t going to scold him take him to school, he would have said. ‘I’ll let you go n have your breakfast.’ ‘I appreciate you calling.’ ‘Almost didn’t. Yvette talked me into it. She said, â€Å"You always liked Mike and Jo Noonan best of all the ones you did for. Don’t you get in bad with him now that he’s back home.† ‘Tell her I appreciate it,’ I said. I hung up the phone and looked at it thoughtfully. We seemed to be on good terms again . . . but I didn’t think we were exactly friends. Certainly not the way we had been. That had changed when I realized Bill was lying to me about some things and holding back about others; it had also changed when I realized what he had almost called Sara and the Red-Tops. You can’t condemn a manor what may only be a figment of your own imagination. True, and I’d try not to do it . . . but I knew what I knew. I went into the living room, snapped on the TV, then snapped it off again. My satellite dish got fifty or sixty different channels, and not a one of them local. There was a portable TV in the kitchen, however, and if I dipped its rabbit-ears toward the lake I’d be able to get WMTW, the ABC affiliate in western Maine. I snatched up Rogette’s note, went into the kitchen, and turned on the little Sony tucked under the cabinets with the coffee-maker. Good Morning America was on, but they would be breaking for the local news soon. In the meantime I scanned the note, this time concentrating on the mode of expression rather than the message, which had taken all of my attention the night before. Hopes to return to California by private jet very soon, she had written. Has business which can be put off no longer, she had written. If you promise to let him rest in peace, she had written. It was a goddam suicide note. ‘You knew,’ I said, rubbing my thumb over the raised letters of her name. ‘You knew when you wrote this, and probably when you were chucking rocks at me. But why?’ Custody has its responsibilities, she had written. Don’t forget he said so. But the custody business was over, right? Not even a judge that was bought and paid for could award custody to a dead man. GMA finally gave way to the local report, where Max Devore’s suicide was the leader. The TV picture was snowy, but I could see the maroon sofa Bill had mentioned, and Rogette Whitmore sitting on it with her hands folded composedly in her lap. I thought one of the deputies in the background was George Footman, although the snow was too heavy for me to be completely sure. Mr. Devore had spoken frequently over the last eight months of ending his life, Whitmore said. He had been very unwell. He had asked her to come out with him the previous evening, and she realized now that he had wanted to look at one final sunset. It had been a glorious one, too, she added. I could have corroborated that; I remembered the sunset very well, having almost drowned by its light. Rogette was reading Devore’s statement when my phone rang again. It was Mattie, and she was crying in hard gusts. ‘The news,’ she said, ‘Mike, did you see . . . do you know . . . ‘ At first that was all she could manage that was coherent. I told her I did know, Bill Dean had called me and then I’d caught some of it on the local news. She tried to reply and couldn’t speak. Guilt, relief, horror, even hilarity I heard all those things in her crying. I asked where Ki was. I could sympathize with how Mattie felt until turning on the news this morning she’d believed old Max Devore was her bitterest enemy but I didn’t like the idea of a three-year-old girl watching her mom fall apart. ‘Out back,’ she managed. ‘She’s had her breakfast. Now she’s having a d-doll p-p-p . . . doll pi-p-pic ‘ ‘Doll picnic. Yes. Good. Let it go, then. All of it. Let it out.’ She cried for two minutes at least, maybe longer. I stood with the telephone pressed to my ear, sweating in the July heat, trying to be patient. I’m going to give you one chance to save your soul, Devore had told me, but this morning he was dead and his soul was wherever it was. He was dead, Mattie was free, I was writing. Life should have felt wonderful, but it didn’t. At last she began to get her control back. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t cried like that really, really cried since Lance died.’ ‘It’s understandable and you’re allowed.’ ‘Come to lunch,’ she said. ‘Come to lunch please, Mike. Ki’s going to spend the afternoon with a friend she met at Vacation Bible School, and we can talk. I need to talk to someone . . . God, my head is spinning. Please say you’ll come.’ ‘I’d love to, but it’s a bad idea. Especially with Ki gone.’ I gave her an edited version of my conversation with Bill Dean. She listened carefully. I thought there might be an angry outburst when I finished, but I’d forgotten one simple fact: Mattie Stanchfield Devore had lived around here all her life. She knew how things worked. ‘I understand that things will heal quicker if I keep my eyes down, my mouth shut, and my knees together,’ she said, ‘and I’ll do my best to go along, but diplomacy only stretches so far. That old man was trying to take my daughter away, don’t they realize that down at the goddam general store?’ ‘I realize it.’ ‘I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’ ‘What if we had an early supper on the Castle Rock common? Same place as Friday? Say five-ish?’ ‘I’d have to bring Ki ‘ ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Bring her. Tell her I know â€Å"Hansel and Gretel† by heart and am willing to share. Will you call John in Philly? Give him the details?’ ‘Yes. I’ll wait another hour or so. God, I’m so happy. I know that’s wrong, but I’m so happy I could burst!’ ‘That makes two of us.’ There was a pause on the other end. I heard a long, watery intake of breath. ‘Mattie? All right?’ ‘Yes, but how do you tell a three-year-old her grandfather died?’ Tell her the old fuck slipped and fell headfirst into a Glad Bag, I thought, then pressed the back of my hand against my mouth to stifle a spate of lunatic cackles. ‘I don’t know, but you’ll have to do it as soon as she comes in.’ ‘I will? Why?’ ‘Because she’s going to see you. She’s going to see your face.’ I lasted exactly two hours in the upstairs study, and then the heat drove me out the thermometer on the stoop read ninety-five degrees at ten o’clock. I guessed it might be five degrees warmer on the second floor. Hoping I wasn’t making a mistake, I unplugged the IBM and carried it downstairs. I was working without a shirt, and as I crossed the living room, the back of the typewriter slipped in the sweat coating my midriff and I almost dropped the outdated sonofabitch on my toes. That made me think of my ankle, the one I’d hurt when I fell into the lake, and I set the typewriter aside to look at it. It was colorful, black and purple and reddish at the edges, but not terribly inflated. I guessed my immersion in the cool water had helped keep the swelling down. I put the typewriter on the deck table, rummaged out an extension cord, plugged in beneath Bunter’s watchful eye, and sat down facing the hazy blue-gray surface of the lake. I waited for one of my old anxiety attacks to hit the clenched stomach, the throbbing eyes, and, worst of all, that sensation of invisible steel bands clamped around my chest, making it impossible to breathe. Nothing like that happened. The words flowed as easily down here as they had upstairs, and my naked upper body was loving the little breeze that puffed in off the lake every now and again. I forgot about Max Devore, Mattie Devore, Kyra Devore. I forgot about Jo Noonan and Sara Tidwell. I forgot about myself. For two hours I was back in Florida. John Shackleford’s execution was nearing. Andy Drake was racing the clock. It was the telephone that brought me back, and for once I didn’t resent interruption. If undisturbed, I might have gone on writing until I simply melted into a sweaty pile of goo on the deck. It was my brother. We talked about Mom in Siddy’s opinion she was now short an entire roof instead of just a few shingles and her sister, Francine, who had broken her hip in June. Sid wanted to know how I was doing, and I told him I was doing all right, I’d had some problems getting going on a new book but now seemed to be back on track (in my family, the only permissible time to discuss trouble is when it’s over). And how was the Sidster? Kickin, he said, which I assumed meant just fine Siddy has a twelve-year-old, and consequently his slang is always up-to-date. The new accounting business was starting to take hold, although he’d been scared for awhile (first I knew of it, of course). He could never thank me enough for the bridge loan I’d made him last November. I replied that it was the least I could do, which was the absolute truth, especially when I considered how much more time both in person and on the phone he spent with our mother than I did. ‘Well, I’ll let you go,’ Siddy told me after a few more pleasantries he never says goodbye or so long when he’s on the phone, it’s always well, I’ll let you go, as if he’s been holding you hostage. ‘You want to keep cool up there, Mike Weather Channel says it’s going to be hotter than hell in New England all weekend.’ ‘There’s always the lake if things get too bad. Hey Sid?’ ‘Hey what?’ Like I’ll let you go, Hey what went back to childhood. It was sort of comforting; it was also sort of spooky. ‘Our folks all came from Prout’s Neck, right? I mean on Daddy’s side.’ Mom came from another world entirely one where the men wear Lacoste polo shirts, the women always wear full slips under their dresses, and everyone knows the second verse of ‘Dixie’ by heart. She had met my dad in Portland while competing in a college cheerleading event. Materfamilias came from Memphis quality, darling, and didn’t let you forget it. ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘Yeah. But don’t go asking me a lot of family-tree questions, Mike I’m still not sure what the difference is between a nephew and a cousin, and I told Jo the same thing.’ ‘Did you?’ Everything inside me had gone very still . . . but I can’t say I was surprised. Not by then. ‘Uh-huh, you bet.’ ‘What did she want to know?’ ‘Everything I knew. Which isn’t much. I could have told her all about Ma’s great-great-grandfather, the one who got killed by the Indians, but Jo didn’t seem to care about any of Ma’s folks.’ ‘When would this have been?’ ‘Does it matter?’ ‘It might.’ ‘Okay, let’s see. I think it was around the time Patrick had his appendectomy. Yeah, I’m sure it was. February of ’94. It might have been March, but I’m pretty sure it was February.’ Six months from the Rite Aid parking lot. Jo moving into the shadow of her own death like a woman stepping beneath the shade of an awning. Not pregnant, though, not yet. Jo making day-trips to the TR. Jo asking questions, some of the sort that made people feel bad, according to Bill Dean . . . but she’d gone on asking just the same. Yeah. Because once she got onto something, Jo was like a terrier with a rag in its jaws. Had she been asking questions of the man in the brown sportcoat? Who was the man in the brown sportcoat? ‘Pat was in the hospital, sure. Dr. Alpert said he was doing fine, but when the phone rang I jumped for it I half-expected it to be him, Alpert, saying Pat had had a relapse or something.’ ‘Where in God’s name did you get this sense of impending doom, Sid?’ ‘I dunno, buddy, but it’s there. Anyway, it’s not Alpert, it’s Johanna. She wants to know if we had any ancestors three, maybe even four generations back who lived there where you are, or in one of the surrounding towns. I told her I didn’t know, but you might. Know, I mean. She said she didn’t want to ask you because it was a surprise. Was it a surprise?’ ‘A big one,’ I said. ‘Daddy was a lobsterman ‘ ‘Bite your tongue, he was an artist ‘a seacoast primitive.’ Ma still calls him that.’ Siddy wasn’t quite laughing. ‘Shit, he sold lobster-pot coffee-tables and lawn-puffins to the tourists when he got too rheumatic to go out on the bay and haul traps.’ ‘I know that, but Ma’s got her marriage edited like a movie for television.’ How true. Our own version of Blanche Du Bois. ‘Dad was a lobster-man in Prout’s Neck. He ‘ Siddy interrupted, singing the first verse of ‘Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone’ in a horrible off key tenor. ‘Come on, this is serious. He had his first boat from his father, right?’ ‘That’s the story,’ Sid agreed. ‘Jack Noonan’s Lazy Betty, original owner Paul Noonan. Also of Prout’s. Boat took a hell of a pasting in Hurricane Donna, back in 1960. I think it was Donna.’ Two years after I was born. ‘And Daddy put it up for sale in ’63.’ ‘Yep. I don’t know whatever became of it, but it was Grampy Paul’s to begin with, all right. Do you remember all the lobster stew we ate when we were kids, Mikey?’ ‘Seacoast meatloaf,’ I said, hardly thinking about it. Like most kids raised on the coast of Maine, I can’t imagine ordering lobster in a restaurant that’s for flatlanders. I was thinking about Grampy Paul, who had been born in the 1890s. Paul Noonan begat Jack Noonan, Jack Noonan begat Mike and Sid Noonan, and that was really all I knew, except the Noonans had all grown up a long way from where I now stood sweating my brains out. They shit in the same pit. Devore had gotten it wrong, that was all when we Noonans weren’t wearing polo shirts and being Memphis quality, we were Prout’s Neckers. It was unlikely that Devore’s great-grandfather and my own would have had anything to do with each other in any case; the old rip had been twice my age, and that meant the generations didn’t match up. But if he had been totally wrong, what had Jo been on about? ‘Mike?’ Sid asked. ‘Are you there?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Are you okay? You don’t sound so great, I have to tell you.’ ‘It’s the heat,’ I said. ‘Not to mention your sense of impending doom. Thanks for calling, Siddy.’ ‘Thanks for being there, brother.’ ‘Kickin,’ I said. I went out to the kitchen to get a glass of cold water. As I was filling it, I heard the magnets on the fridge begin sliding around. I whirled, spilling some of the water on my bare feet and hardly noticing. I was as excited as a kid who thinks he may glimpse Santa Claus before he shoots back up the chimney. I was barely in time to see nine plastic letters drawn into the circle from all points of the compass. CARLADEAN, they spelled . . . but only for a second. Some presence, tremendous but unseen, shot past me. Not a hair on my head stirred, but there was still a strong sense of being buffeted, the way you’re buffeted by the air of a passing express train if you’re standing near the platform yellow-line when the train bolts through. I cried out in surprise and groped my glass of water back onto the counter, spilling it. I no longer felt in need of cold water, because the temperature in the kitchen of Sara Laughs had dropped off the table. I blew out my breath and saw vapor, as you do on a cold day in January. One puff, maybe two, and it was gone but it had been there, all right, and for perhaps five seconds the film of sweat on my body turned to what felt like a slime of ice. CARLADEAN exploded outward in all directions it was like watching an atom being smashed in a cartoon. Magnetized letters, fruits, and vegetables flew off the front of the refrigerator and scattered across the kitchen. For a moment the fury which fuelled that scattering was something I could almost taste, like gunpowder. And something gave way before it, going with a sighing, rueful whisper I had heard before: ‘Oh Mike. Oh Mike.’ It was the voice I’d caught on the Memo-Scriber tape, and although I hadn’t been sure then, I was now it was Jo’s voice. But who was the other one? Why had it scattered the letters? Carla Dean. Not Bill’s wife; that was Yvette. His mother? His grandmother? I walked slowly through the kitchen, collecting fridge-magnets like prizes in a scavenger hunt and sticking them back on the Kenmore by the handful. Nothing snatched them out of my hands; nothing froze the sweat on the back of my neck; Bunter’s bell didn’t ring. Still, I wasn’t alone, and I knew it. CARLADEAN: Jo had wanted me to know. Something else hadn’t. Something else had shot past me like the Wabash Cannonball, trying to scatter the letters before I could read them. Jo was here; a boy who wept in the night was here, too. And what else? What else was sharing my house with me? How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER NINETEEN, Essay examples