Leadership and employee relations Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Leadership and employee relations - Article Example The leaders and Mangers apply different conceptualizations and approaches to work and exercise different ways of problem solving; undertake different functions in the organizations. They are exhibit different behaviors owing to their different intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. (Ofori, Toor. 2008). In an organization there is no distinct leader there are only managers. The Manager will be acting in both the capacity of leader and manager. A successful manager has both the quality of manager and leader who make use of the qualities discretely. The manager ship and leadership are the tools, through which the manager can influence the behavior of the employees and attain the organizational goals. The Manager and employee relationship in an organization is a delicate one. A good leader and manager can be able to handle and maintain a good relationship with his employees. In the organizations the employees are working towards the attainment of goals where the leaders, who could be instrumental in guiding the efforts of group of employees. The successful performance of leadership role is essential for the survival of an organization.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Essay Example for Free

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Essay On April 20, 2010 a catastrophic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon off shore drilling platform caused the largest single release to the environment due to oil drilling. This explosion killed 11 workers and injured 17. This oil spill is very controversial because it can be questioned if this spill could have been prevented and what exactly went wrong. There is much debate on who is to blame, what could have been done to prevent it and who is going to pay for all the damage. Many are not happy with the settlement BP is signing that will keep them from further criminal prosecution if they agree to pay the settlement amount. Paying retribution is fine, but what about the future damaging effects that we have no way of even knowing about now. Who will take care of that? These are some of the basic questions people are asking about this case and my responses. What can this accident teach us? This accident should teach us all that there is a great responsibility taken on when you go into the earth and try to harvest chemical products that have potential for negative effects on human welfare and health. The government needs to be in charge of regulating these activities to preserve the future of our environment. Had you been in charge of granting permit for this, what measures would you have prescribed to prevent or mitigate the impacts of such an accident? Policies need to be in place that ensures that properly trained personnel are on site at all times to ensure the safety of the drilling process. Only experienced personnel could properly react to an emergency and possibly be able to mitigate further damage. Knowledge and experience are required to recognize potential hazards in time and prevent even bigger negative effects. BP engineers were supposedly aware of variations in the pressure prior to the explosion. These engineers probably did not have the authority to request work be stopped so further inspections could be made. Politics involved with the money at stake sometimes lead to dangerous decisions. If someone with the knowledge and authority to make an executive decision was there, this tragedy could possibly have been avoided. If you were in a policy making forum, what national or international policy measures would you recommend for reducing long term risk from off-shore drilling. I think the policies on long term risk from off-shore drilling accidents could be addressed by building some kind of boundary wall to contain the drill site, even if there was not a spill. Just the act of drilling is releasing some form of contamination and if that contamination could be contained before it gets incorporated into the entire different city/ country’s water supply it would be a great benefit to prevent long term effects of oil contamination. International policies need to be in effect that maintain the same standards across the board. If one country has low standards and takes in the contaminated water†¦ they will then be releasing it into the environment and the contamination will still affect neighboring countries/cities that may have stricter standards. If I was involved in any type of policymaking forum, I would try to get policy passed that had strict policies regarding quality control practices regarding the technology being used to drill for the oil and the equipment maintenance. Increased testing of drilling equipment during and between drilling process, not just at the start stage. Sometimes equipment fails during use and quality measures need to be in place to make frequent inspections. What changes would you require in terms of ethical conduct by regulators? Regulators need to not be financially involved with projects the are legislating. This is a huge ethical problem because kickbacks and donations often lead to favorable legislations in favor of the party standing to gain and not for the best interest of the public. To what degree may politics have clouded judgment and influenced decisions that where made? Relaxed government regulation was probably made because the government in efforts to promote business, made acquisitions that were dangerous and costly to the environment in the long run.

Love in If Thou Must Love Me, Let it be for Naught, To His Lady, and The Taxi :: To His Lady The Taxi poems

Love in "If Thou Must Love Me, Let it be for Naught", "To His Lady", and "The Taxi" "when a man loves a woman he'd give up all his comfort, sleep out in the rain, if she said that's the way it ought to be" (Percy Sledge). No truer words have ever been spoken when it comes to relationships between man and woman. For when a man and a woman come together for a relationship it should be for the right reason, and that reason is love. Love is much more than just a word though, it is a feeling and emotion that cannot be duplicated, imitated, or simulated. Love is, as described in "If Thou Must Love Me, Let it be for Naught", "To His Lady", and "The Taxi", the emotions of joy, happiness, caring, passion, commitment, pleasure, and even pain all rolled into one, which is shared between two people. The only love is true love. This means that when one loves another, the love that they are feeling should encompass all attributes of the person they are loving. If one were to say that they loved another for their beautiful eyes, this would not be true love. In order for it to be love, one would not just see the beautiful eyes, they would see everything about that person as beautiful. Elizabeth Barrett Browning agrees when she says to not love for a smile or a look, instead one should love for loves sake. ?Thou mayst love on, through love?s eternity? (206 14). True love is also a love that is eternal; true love is never ending. Henry Howard also believed that love should be everlasting. Wedding vows have become, to a certain extent, things of the past. People are getting married only to be divorced with in the first couple years of marriage. Till death do us part no longerholds meaning in the holy union of two souls. This is not true love. Luckily Howard helps us to see what true love is when he paints us a picture in words in ?To "His Lady?. ?In the long night, or in the shortest day/ In lofty youth, or when my hairs gray/ Set me in earth, in heaven, or yet in hell/ Sick, or in health, in ill fame, or in good/ Yours will I be? (277 lines 6, 8-9, 11-12). Through thick and thin, no matter what happens the man in this poem will stick by his lady.

french revolution :: essays research papers

French Revolution Questions The Outbreak of the Revolution: 1) French society around 1789 was split into three groups of people or the Three Estates. The First Estate consisted of the clergy or the leaders of the church. The Second Estate were the nobles who were highly privileged. The Third and final estate consisted of peasants, city workers, and the middle class, all of which were taxes heavily and underprivileged. 2) The complains of the Third Estate were they were being taxed to heavily, they had land too small to support their families, and they lived in poverty compared to the other classes. The only complaints that the Second and First Estates had were that they would not pay taxes and that the Third Estate complained too much. 3) In 1789 under the reign on Louis XVI France faced an inefficient government, which was nearly bankrupt. There was a shortage of food and the food they had was incredibly expensive. 4) A meeting of the Estates General was called in May of 1789 because the nobles refused to be taxed and Louis XVI hoped they would approve of a new tax plan. The problem they had was they were not able to decide on a method of voting. 5) The bourgeoisie wanted all the Estates to meet together with each delegate having one vote. Seeing as they had about half of the delegates represented there they would have a better chance to bring about change. 6) On June 17, 1789 the Third Estate’s delegates decided to force the other Estates to meet as one body so they created the National Assembly and invited the others to join. 7) The â€Å"Tennis Court Oath† was an oath in which the people took demanding a constitution for France and they swore not to leave until this was done. The king responded by giving in after a week and he ordered all the nobility and clergy to join the National Assembly. 8) The people of Paris stormed the Bastille on July 14th, 1789 because they were angry about food shortages and high prices, as well they feared the king’s soldiers would crush the National Assembly and plunder the city. 9) The effect of the â€Å"storming of the Bastille† on the revolutionary moment was it caused the king to pull back his troops and it saved the National Assembly. This caused a rebellious spirit to move across the county.

History 17-a American history Essay

Known as the American experiment in liberty and equality, the Civil War of America is supposed to be a major turning point in American history. Originated due to slavery, this war was first revoke from American citizens to acquire the right of liberty and equality. By the war, slavery was extinguished in America. Beginning of nineteenth century was much different from the eighteenth century; this was a revolutionary era in which industrialism was rising against agriculture, nationalization against state particularization and desire of freedom was heading against slavery. However, this moral idealism is not believed as an appropriate reason for the war. In accordance with some historians, it is also called as the war of power and economical affluence. It is said that South was economically abundant than the North. It was making good money in trade and commerce in comparison of North. North was not ready to accept this fact and this resulted as the Civil War. By the time of war, South occupied an area as large as Western Europe and ‘North’ has a strategic assignment to invade and conquer the southern confederation. In this war, southerners were fighting for independence, self-determination, self-government and preservation of life. Nevertheless, results of this war became the decision points for American history as the war grown the offspring of Nationality in Northerners. Southerners wanted to be separated from the American Union and Northerners were not is the support of that. In the battle against southerners, few incidents worked as the turning points of Civil War and American History as well. As instance, Northern Unions hold on Kentucky and Border States in considered as the first turning point of American civil war. This was of a great importance for Northerners. Even president of the nation, Abraham Lincoln said that ‘I can’t think of loosing Kentucky’, Kentucky was a southern state. Considered as the first modern war, the civil war of America made the nation, which is known as ‘United States of America’. During this war, Abraham Lincoln was mainly focused on Border States. He was not in favor of self-government in these states. Border States were extremely crucial for Northerners, as these states were physically separating Northern Union and Southern Confederacy. Bull Run is taken as another major defining moment in the history of Civil War. This was a land battle. This battle was full of anticipations and both sides were sure about their victory. However, Northerners managed to win this was a Herculean task for them and it was an end of southern hopes to set the self-government. Union capture on Mississippi, Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862 is also considered as the major turning point in Civil War. It was first significant victory of union. Victories in Battle of Anteitam and Battle of Gettysburg made unions to move more rapidly in the direction of uniting American states. A defeat of Confederacy in the Battle of Chattanooga is taken as one of the most prominent turning point of Civil War. In this war Union reduced Confederacy to the Atlantic coast. This opened the way for Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. Two incidents that took place in 1864 are taken as the last nail in the coffin of southern confederacy’s desire of self-government, independence and self-determination. These two incidents were Union capture on Atlanta and reelection of Abraham Lincoln. Both incidents respectively took place in September 1864 and November 1864. Civil War: the First Modern War American Civil War is taken as the first modern warfare. Confronted with various viewpoints and issues, this war is marked as the well mobilized war of the modern age. In accordance with historians, it deserves to be the first modern war due to its two important reasons. First reason is its technological advancements and another is a great change in the logistics and tactics applied in the battlefield. Northern generals Ulysses S.  Grant and his sub-ordinates applied strategies those were far ahead from the war approaches applied by the time. The morality war of Northern Americans against Southerners also resulted in many mesmerizing innovations, those helped in nation moving at the forefront from rest of the world. Cannons, rapid fire guns, Gatling gun, telegraphs and aerial warfare are considered as some of the stirring innovations of Civil War period. The civil war also worked as the rapid fire in the growth of American economy. It is also said that this was the beginning of American supremacy. This war was the first war in which army was not involved in killing on one-to-one manner. It was entirely technical. Both Unions and Confederacy army troops were relying on technical weapons instead of traditional ones. This was the first time when air warfare and sea warfare modes were also used. This war was the first war when a strategy of destruction was used and it also boosted he idea of unconditional surrender in the battle-field. In this was Union troops used telescopes and air-balloons to locate the position of enemy. Civil War of American History is known as first war due to it’s a completely foreign planning in accord with the world of nineteenth century. Following reasons the major basis of knowing this was as the first modern war- Railroads: Invention of railroad played a very important role in supplying armies with food, bullets, and soldiers. These cars were armed with weaponry. Hospitals: This was the first time when hospitals were set in battle field. Women s uch as Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix worked in these hospitals to give medical treatments to inured soldiers. Nevertheless, by the time medical knowledge was not advanced as today and mortality rate of soldiers due to disease was greater than their death in battle field. This was the first time in the context of using dogs as armor. Photography and Telegraph- by the time ‘Photography’ and ‘Telegraphy’ science had been introduced. Army troops used the science of photography is taking pictures of enemy position and Telegraph helped them in sending urgent messages. This is considered as a boon created from the devastation of Civil War. Secret Service: Both sides employed highly structured spy service to gain knowledge of army movements. Women and slaves played major role in this. Personnel: Numbers of African Americans fought in the Civil War was not less, most of them participated in the war from the side of Union army. They often fought in regiments those were separated out regiments. This was the first time when they had an identity of soldiers other than slaves. An ambitious win for Abraham Lincoln, civil War was the first time when rights of equality were believed to be a reason of war.

Business Ethics Concepts

Business Ethics Concepts Business ethics is a concept taking its base primarily in general human ethics and applying those rules and guidelines in a business environment. Ethics is a set of moral principles and laws that govern a just and civilized society (Bradburn, 2001). Business ethic refers to how people’s morals and fairness are used in agreements and decisions between companies and organizations worldwide.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Business Ethics Concepts specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The main idea of business ethics is that it closely correlates with the laws of a society and the kindness of people who make it up and in order for the companies and organizations to flourish, ethics should be a guideline never dismissed from business.  Ethics but more importantly the laws that are based on ethical behaviors are needed to regulate the actions of a business to prevent illegal issues and chaos of anarchy. If a company i s not limited in the way it earns its profits, the selfishness of the financial greed will cause to focus on making the most money the fastest without considering a sensitive balance between nature and ways that humans exploit it for personal gain.  It is a known fact that very often people excuse their harmful actions hoping that their detrimental carelessness will not have any effect on the future of the planet and generations of people to follow. Considering the production or manufacturing of products, companies almost always keep secrets or â€Å"know-how†. This goes in line with defects that must be disclosed but this is not the usual case. Companies base their profits on the amounts of customers and sales, so it would be unwise for them to attribute any negativity to own products or services. The key goal of business ethics is to regulate the actions of corporations in relation to the surrounding natural environment, people and society’s laws and rules. Another reason why ethics is the right direction for any business is that honesty will be rewarded and the benefits gained from kindness will be much greater than those of lies and deceit. But very often, rules and laws are helpless in controlling the ever reaching negative actions of a business. The laws are meant to better the society and conduction of businesses, representing the interest of the population in order to keep it from harm both physical and mental. But commonly, there are loopholes that could be found and thus, the law is avoided allowing for the continuance of the deception, pollution and damage to the environment. The goal of law makers and society is to develop laws as comprehensive as possible, touching upon every outcome by constant revision and investigation of the factors involved in such a delicate matter. The lying and deception have become commonplace, as businesses are trying to make even greater profit. The laws exist but often, prove to be helpless in an intric ate business world.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More There are a number of possibilities that would conceal the businesses’ infringements without leaving any proof (Jennings, 2010).  Business ethics are as important as any other kind of ethics. It creates a line between honesty, humanity, kindness and evil based on lies and personal gain. Businesses spread their influence to the farthest corners of the planet and that is why the governing bodies of the corporations and society should make sure that there are always laws and regulations that preserve and protect nature and people. References Bradburn, R. (2001). Understanding Business Ethics, London: Thomson Learning. Jennings, M. (2010). Environment Business: Its Legal, Ethical, and Global Environment, Connecticut: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Free Essays on Road To Wigan Pier

In The Road To Wigan Pier, Orwell has described the lives of the coal miners in the 1930’s. In reading another assigned book, Hiroshima by John Hershey, a much greater compassion for the people of Hiroshima immerged in the reader. Both books communicate the lives and conditions the people of these two towns were subjected to and how they survived their surroundings. Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier is full of facts and accounts but nothing compared to the feelings brought forth in the visual image story telling style of Hershey’s Hiroshima. Orwell is very factual in his account of the conditions and lives of the coal mining community and its people while Hershey tells of the lives, the pain and the desensitizing of an entire town when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Orwell discusses the wages, living conditions, working conditions and how they survived on the food that they could afford. He seems very unattached to his entire surroundings and is only writing the facts as he sees them. As any person reading this book, feelings of sadness can arise for the people of Wigan Pier as well as any other coal mining town. In Hershey’s book he paints a picture of the people of Hiroshima who were left with nothing and wandered the town passing people they could not help and knew would die. This line of story telling draws the attention of the reader and makes a point at the same time. The points made in both books are the same, despair and helplessness but also of pride. The coal miners in Orwell’s book are in a helpless situation, the same as the people of Hiroshima. Pride was the source of strength in both books that seemed to be overlooked by Orwell in his depiction of the times and lives of the people. Orwell was much more passionate in the second part of his book discussing Socialism and Fascism, then he was for the people of Wigan Pier. Hershey’s vivid characterization brought a human face to the destruction caused... Free Essays on Road To Wigan Pier Free Essays on Road To Wigan Pier In The Road To Wigan Pier, Orwell has described the lives of the coal miners in the 1930’s. In reading another assigned book, Hiroshima by John Hershey, a much greater compassion for the people of Hiroshima immerged in the reader. Both books communicate the lives and conditions the people of these two towns were subjected to and how they survived their surroundings. Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier is full of facts and accounts but nothing compared to the feelings brought forth in the visual image story telling style of Hershey’s Hiroshima. Orwell is very factual in his account of the conditions and lives of the coal mining community and its people while Hershey tells of the lives, the pain and the desensitizing of an entire town when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Orwell discusses the wages, living conditions, working conditions and how they survived on the food that they could afford. He seems very unattached to his entire surroundings and is only writing the facts as he sees them. As any person reading this book, feelings of sadness can arise for the people of Wigan Pier as well as any other coal mining town. In Hershey’s book he paints a picture of the people of Hiroshima who were left with nothing and wandered the town passing people they could not help and knew would die. This line of story telling draws the attention of the reader and makes a point at the same time. The points made in both books are the same, despair and helplessness but also of pride. The coal miners in Orwell’s book are in a helpless situation, the same as the people of Hiroshima. Pride was the source of strength in both books that seemed to be overlooked by Orwell in his depiction of the times and lives of the people. Orwell was much more passionate in the second part of his book discussing Socialism and Fascism, then he was for the people of Wigan Pier. Hershey’s vivid characterization brought a human face to the destruction caused...

What is the Best Service for Print on Demand Books

What is the Best Service for Print on Demand Books What is the Best Service for Print on Demand Books? When it comes to determining what how best to print your self-published book, there's no easy answer. Most indie authors will prefer the flexibility of print-on-demand solutions over the upfront cost of offset printing, but even then there are lots of other factors to consider: the type of book you’re printing, your budget, your plans for online distribution,  which distributor(s) you'll actually go through, and the quality of the printers.At Reedsy, we wanted to know how the major POD providers out there stack up along these lines. To find out once and for all, we printed a book using four of today's most popular services - and we're revealing the results in this post. What are the top print on demand services?To ensure we got the real indie author experience, we printed a copy of Not the Faintest Trace - a novel by Reedsy author Wendy M. Wilson, formatted through the Reedsy Book Editor, and designed by Patrick Knowles - from the four print-on-demand companies. We then had each copy delivered to BookTuber Mandi Lynn so that she could give us her indie author input. View her honest feedback in the above video. (The video was filmed before Draft2Digital released their printing services, so they are not included in the review).We also had each copy delivered to Reedsy HQ so that we could review the quality, look, and feel of each proof. Here's our review of each platform.1. BookBaby is a self-publishing platform that offers lots of support to self-publishing authors, including POD, ebook, book editing services, design, marketing, and distribution services.User friendliness: Easy, little to no learning curve.Pros of BookBaby: If you want a user-friendly, handheld process, BookBaby could be the choice for you.Cons of BookBaby: It’s expensive to distribute your book via BookBaby - and because you are actually accessing their distribution options via Ingram Book Group, you’re charged an extra middleman fee. (More on this later).For a tutorial and extensive review of BookBaby, check out this post! ðŸ“â€"👠¶4.  Blurb#gallery-8 Planning to focus most of your sales efforts on Amazon? Go with KDP Print and opt out of their expanded distribution option to earn the highest royalty.Planning to focus on sales outside of Amazon - and hoping to get stocked in physical bookstores? Go with IngramSpark for direct access to the largest variety of retailers and wholesale networks.Want sales on both Amazon and non-Amazon stores? You got it: go with both IngramSpark and KDP Print! Variety is the spice of life, why not benefit from the royalty potential of both services? If you want to maximize the benefits of both of these printers, ensure that you do it this way: distribute to Amazon via KDP Print  and opt out of their expanded distribution, then use IngramSpark to distribute everywhere else except for Amazon. If you use both to distribute everywhere without opting out, you’ll end up with doubles on each retailer - which you don’t want.Does your book have many visual components that differ from a tradit ional novel format? Blurb’s specialized formatting tools and printers will be your friend. Blurb should be used by authors who are printing illustrated/highly visual books, or when you need to place bulk orders - as they offer good discounts for volume purchases.Is support your #1 concern - above budgetary restrictions and earning the best royalty per sale? BookBaby’s support team is top notch, and they offer self-publishing services that authors who want the most streamlined experience as possible might enjoy. Most of all, don't let the overwhelming options deter you from printing your book on demand - especially since it can really pay dividends!  Whichever POD service you choose, you'll get beautiful hard copies of your book that you can admire for years to come... and that might just lead you to publishing success.Have you used any of the above companies for print on demand books? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below!

Soviets Side and View of the Cold war Research Paper - 1

Soviets Side and View of the Cold war - Research Paper Example The revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin asserted that Russia was encompassed by a ‘hostile capitalist encirclement’ (Gaddis 1997). This laid the groundwork for what was to follow, i.e. years of hostility and isolation between differing ideological camps. The culmination of the conflict came after the end of the temporary alliance formed between the USSR and US aiming to topple Germany into defeat. The difference in lifestyles and beliefs was so significant that the two nations were at loggerheads over ideological reasons as soon as their alliance ended (Mcmahon 2003). The arms race that supplemented the cold war resulted in dire consequences for several nations after the dissemination of the USSR. The weapons are still used by terrorist and rebel movements all across the world as both the USA and USSR aim to liquidate their excess artillery in the search of economic returns. Joseph Stalin, the revolutionary communist leader of the USSR, considered the world to be divided into two ideological parts: the capitalist and imperialist regimes and the ‘progressive’ and communist world. The soviet leader believed that the concept of communism was widely acceptable and good for all considering that it followed a utilitarian philosophy of good for the greater number. Non ideological disputes arose between the soviet nation and western democracies post world war II over the soviet occupation of eastern European states. These states were later called soviet republic states and formed the eastern block of nations that would ‘endorse’ soviet communism and adopt the economic methodologies of the soviets. The united states, which had no business in the region according to soviets, warned that an ‘iron curtain’ was being brought down over Europe (Archives 2010). Joseph Stalin later emphasized that the cold war was a consequence of capitalist and

The impact of Brand Extension on Brand Personality. Caterpillar and Dissertation

The impact of Brand Extension on Brand Personality. Caterpillar and Burger King - Dissertation Example of Brand Extension of Burger King 34 Table 2: Success of Brand Extension of Caterpillar 35 Table 3: Model Summary of Burger King 36 Table 4: ANOVA and Coefficient Table of Burger King 36 Table 5: Model Summary of Caterpillar 37 Table 6: ANOVA and Coefficient Table of Caterpillar 38 Table 7: T-Test Table 39 Abstract This research investigates the impact of brand extension on the personality of a brand and for this purpose; two companies are selected to conduct this report. One of the companies is Caterpillar and the other is Burger King. This Impact of brand extension can be either negative or positive and this research test out the positive impact or negative impact of the brand extension of these two brands on their brand personality. The main objective of this research is to find the brand extension impact on the brand personality of Caterpillar and Burger King in such a way that each dimension of brand personality compared with the variable of brand extension. The approach that us ed in this research is Quantitative Approach and data is collected with the help of the Survey Questionnaire. The sample size of the research is 50 and respondents are selected from two areas of London that are Edgere and Wembley. The results are tested with the help of SPSS and Regression analysis. It is concluded from the result that the brand extension has a positive impact on the overall brand personality of the any company. The two companies taken in this research have a positive impact on their brand personality due to their brand extension. Chapter One: Introduction 1.1 Background The strategy in which companies bring in products to the marketplace, with which they can make use of an existing brand name, is called brand extension. Brand extension of an existing brand has possible... The paper tells that the strategy in which companies bring in products to the marketplace, with which they can make use of an existing brand name, is called brand extension. Brand extension of an existing brand has possible advantages based on customer awareness and opinions concerning the existing product that is sell under that particular brand name as evaluated to introduce a new brand name. Brand extension is a very important brand approach to make the most of the value of brand influence. Brand extensions and brand personalities have become the most essential research areas since 1990 in the field of brand management. We try to tell the effect of the interaction between brand personality and similarity on brand extension evaluations. The customer’s evaluation for the brand determines the success of that brand. The success of the brand is very unsure and unsuccessful brand extensions can harm the parent brand that results in the significant loss of brand equity. The use of well-known brand names for launching the new product is one of the most commonly in use brand strategies. The brand extensions that are successful, depends on the customers perception of fit or similarity between the new extension and the parent brand. The studies reveal the relations between the parent brands and the extension groups: factors that affect the parent brand will affect the extension as well. Similarly, factors that control the extension group will affect the parent brand. Customers-evaluating brand extensions may modify their core values about parent brands, which may lead to a stronger or weaker brand positioning

Quantitative market research report carried out on a professional Paper

Quantitative market report carried out on a professional photo service by Marketest (marketing company) - Research Paper Example In addition, although the main aim of taking photos is for memory purposes, many people have gone beyond this tradition belief, and incorporated other aspects such as taking photos for fun, marketing strategies for business among other aspects (Davis 11). In this regard, most people in the UK have decided to seek professional help in matters pertaining to photography services. This is because professional photographer may have a variety of services such as editing photos, adding literature in them and even blending them to bring out the desired purpose of the customer (Allen 7). On the other hand, it is apparent that there a great need to have professional photo services for such purposes. 2. Literature review Importance of using professional photo services for business Due to high competition in the current markets, businesses have decided to spice their marketing strategies in order to develop and maintain competitive advantage that would enable them thrive in a highly competitive market. In this regard, professional photo services play a critical role in informing customers of new and exciting products (Adrian 49). For instance, a hotel may decide to use professional photo services to display some of their new foods. ... In hotel business, entrances and table menus acts as the best places to place advertisement pictures. In addition, they are in a better position to advise the business owner of additional materials to incorporate on the picture (Obermeier and Padova 74). For businesses advertising on the internet and especially via their websites, professional photo services could decide of the best photos to be placed on the website in line with the target market and the line of business (Folsom and Goodridge 12). A good example of a professional photo services is McDonalds. Although there has been heated debate on the dietary and unhealthy effects of fast foods, McDonalds has managed to maintain a considerable number of customers due to its use of professional photo services, which are well displayed on its website and its outlets across the globe. Company vehicles are well branded with photos of different fast foods such as styled hamburger, which entices people even those that clearly know about the effects of fast foods. Studies have documented that quality photos can be used to sell a product or hurt the business greatly. A poor photo can display a negative image of business products thus affecting business performance. For instance, a poorly taken or displayed photo can translate to poor quality products, and this can shun away customers (Johnson 298). A good and quality photo can attract new customers as well as maintain the already existing ones (Malhotra and Birks 24). In this regard, professional photo services can determine the best photos to entice customers, and which; can impress them on their first encounter with them. Studies have also documented that photos can be used to put across several meanings

History and architecture. Smolny Cathedral Essay

History and architecture. Smolny Cathedral - Essay Example The emperor Peter the Great had a weakness for western architecture. Hence he invited Rastelli’s father to Russia to construct the winter palace as well as the Tsarskoe Selo Palace. After his death, Rastelli took over as architect. The Smolny convent and cathedral is a land mark that Rastelli left unfinished due to insufficient funding before its completion. The construction of the Smolny Convent and Cathedral took place between 1748 and 1764. This was during the reign of the empress Elizabeth Petrovna. There is rich history of Russia during this time. The Smolny cathedral original purpose was housing Elizabeth. The marriage between her mother and the emperor Peter the great remained unrecognized publicly. Hence her opponents used this as an excuse to deny her right to the throne. After her right to the thrown was taken and given to Anna Leopodovna, Elizabeth opted to become a nun. Hence the construction of the Smolny Convent began. It was meant to house her during her monastery life. However, this was never meant to be. Anna Leopodovna favored Germans and allowed them to dominate the Russian politics and culture. Due to the dissatisfaction of the Russians (and especially the Russian royal guards) they decided to overthrow her in a coup. This provided a chance for Elizabeth to reign as empress. Therefore, Elizabeth threw away the idea to become a nun and decided to become an empress. A lot happened during her reign which was in juxtaposition with the construction of the Smonly Cathedral. The reign of Elizabeth as empress started as the construction of the Smolny started. However, Elizabeth passed on before the completion of the Smolny Cathedral. The empress, Catherine thought that it was a waste of funds and hence stopped its construction. It was only completed between 1832 and 1835 by Vasily Stavos. The Cathedral is a combination of baroque architecture and neo-classical architecture. This is due to the disparity of time in which it was started and completed. Rastelli built in Baroque, Vasily used neo-classical architecture fashionable during his time. During the construction of the Smolny Cathedral, the empress Elizabeth encouraged the development of education and arts. Her plan was to dedicate part of the Smolny cathedral to girl’s education. Elizabeth developed enlightenment by introducing the first academy of sciences, St Petersburg, in 1747. It was during her reign that the first university in Russia was founded in 1757. In 1756 and 1758 the first public theater and the first fine arts academy were opened. Numerous schools were opened across Russia and Elizabeth ensured all children of all social classes’ accessed education. Since Anna had previously encouraged the use of German in studying, Elizabeth changed the system to French. This was especially because she had studied French. Elizabeth implemented pro-Russian policies. She encouraged the participation of Russians in politics and the economy. Elizabeth hated bloodshed. No blood was shed during the coup when she overthrew Anna. She promised that bloodshed would be minimal during her reign. Hence she never executed anyone during her time as empress. However, she led Russia through two wars. Elizabeth sent out 100 thousand army men against Prussia. This was as a result of joining forces with Austria as the rest of the world went to war. Elizabeth felt the Russian empi re was threatened by the British and Russian alliance. Hence she joined forces with Austria to defeat Frederick the second. This achievement was celebrated because Frederick was considered an extremely skilled European warrior. Prussia failed to surrender completely in the next two years. However, Fredrick was ready to surrender in 1762.

How does stress affect the characters' s in The Descendants by Kaui Essay

How does stress affect the characters' s in The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings in a few ways - Essay Example Causes of stress are not universal to everyone. What stresses one may not stress another (Kopolow 17). Therefore, stress can be defined as responding to body demands that are not specific. The basic way to respond to stress involves three stages, which includes sensitization, resistance, and lastly exhaustion. To apply this it takes self effort to manage stress. This can be done through physical practices to ease your nerves and release pressure through exercise like running. It can also be done by sharing with friends, understanding your limits, taking good care of yourself, setting aside time just to have fun as it is important as doing work, participating in various activities to avoid boredom, assigning tasks to avoid being overworked, accepting correction, and sometimes crying if it is necessary to release your stress (Hemmings 45). The effect of stress have been demonstrated in the novel The Descendants through the various characters in the book. This is clear in the main chara cter of the book, Matt, who is majorly faced by family stress. From the book, it is evident that stress has had adverse effects to most of characters including Matt himself, however, in the end it turns out to transform Matt into a likable character (Kopolow 17). The Descendants is a book that talks of a story in the palace. Matt King a land owner in Hawaii from the royalty of Hawaii. He faces stress from the accident of her wife in a boat race and later on he realizes that her wife, Joanie, has been having extramarital affairs with Brian in the process of providing a chance for friends to bid Joanie goodbye. Joanie had been responsible of the kids and after her demise, Matt is faced with the challenge of handling his children, Alex and Scottie, as a single father. The two daughters are sturbon in their own way, one is a drug addict and the other a sturbon girl that displays unpleasant messages to her friends. Despite all this causes of stress to Matt, he still manages to be dillige nt with his business and career, as well as managing and rebuilding his family. The story starts with stressing events that touch most of the characters. However, towards the end, the story manages to have a happy ending as we see the family of Matt uniting together especially after the death of Joanie, the wife to Matt and the mother to Alex and Scottie. Kaui Hemmings begins the book by introducing Matt king who narrates the entire story. He is in a hospital where his wife, Joanie, lies in a coma. She is described to be once enthusiastic, and ecstasy-seeking is in a coma at the hospital after an accident in a boat race accident. This is one of the causes of stress to Matt as it gives him worry about the health of his wife (Hemmings 45). Matt is also faced from other stresses arising from his family. Another cause of stress to Matt is his discovering that his wife had extra-marital affairs outside their wedlock. He learns that his wife was not faithful to their marriage. This makes him seek to find out the details of the mysterious lover of his wife. He seeks a solution to this family stress by sharing it with his friends as he look for the man he believes his wife loved. He does this to give the lover to his wife a chance to bid farewell to Joanie because Matt believes she will die soon. Matt is also faced with another family stress of dealing with his daughters after Joanie is dead. He poses, â€Å"Once I think I know the pattern with these girls -- fun, intimacy, fight,

History and architecture. Smolny Cathedral Essay

History and architecture. Smolny Cathedral - Essay Example The emperor Peter the Great had a weakness for western architecture. Hence he invited Rastelli’s father to Russia to construct the winter palace as well as the Tsarskoe Selo Palace. After his death, Rastelli took over as architect. The Smolny convent and cathedral is a land mark that Rastelli left unfinished due to insufficient funding before its completion. The construction of the Smolny Convent and Cathedral took place between 1748 and 1764. This was during the reign of the empress Elizabeth Petrovna. There is rich history of Russia during this time. The Smolny cathedral original purpose was housing Elizabeth. The marriage between her mother and the emperor Peter the great remained unrecognized publicly. Hence her opponents used this as an excuse to deny her right to the throne. After her right to the thrown was taken and given to Anna Leopodovna, Elizabeth opted to become a nun. Hence the construction of the Smolny Convent began. It was meant to house her during her monastery life. However, this was never meant to be. Anna Leopodovna favored Germans and allowed them to dominate the Russian politics and culture. Due to the dissatisfaction of the Russians (and especially the Russian royal guards) they decided to overthrow her in a coup. This provided a chance for Elizabeth to reign as empress. Therefore, Elizabeth threw away the idea to become a nun and decided to become an empress. A lot happened during her reign which was in juxtaposition with the construction of the Smonly Cathedral. The reign of Elizabeth as empress started as the construction of the Smolny started. However, Elizabeth passed on before the completion of the Smolny Cathedral. The empress, Catherine thought that it was a waste of funds and hence stopped its construction. It was only completed between 1832 and 1835 by Vasily Stavos. The Cathedral is a combination of baroque architecture and neo-classical architecture. This is due to the disparity of time in which it was started and completed. Rastelli built in Baroque, Vasily used neo-classical architecture fashionable during his time. During the construction of the Smolny Cathedral, the empress Elizabeth encouraged the development of education and arts. Her plan was to dedicate part of the Smolny cathedral to girl’s education. Elizabeth developed enlightenment by introducing the first academy of sciences, St Petersburg, in 1747. It was during her reign that the first university in Russia was founded in 1757. In 1756 and 1758 the first public theater and the first fine arts academy were opened. Numerous schools were opened across Russia and Elizabeth ensured all children of all social classes’ accessed education. Since Anna had previously encouraged the use of German in studying, Elizabeth changed the system to French. This was especially because she had studied French. Elizabeth implemented pro-Russian policies. She encouraged the participation of Russians in politics and the economy. Elizabeth hated bloodshed. No blood was shed during the coup when she overthrew Anna. She promised that bloodshed would be minimal during her reign. Hence she never executed anyone during her time as empress. However, she led Russia through two wars. Elizabeth sent out 100 thousand army men against Prussia. This was as a result of joining forces with Austria as the rest of the world went to war. Elizabeth felt the Russian empi re was threatened by the British and Russian alliance. Hence she joined forces with Austria to defeat Frederick the second. This achievement was celebrated because Frederick was considered an extremely skilled European warrior. Prussia failed to surrender completely in the next two years. However, Fredrick was ready to surrender in 1762.

Catwalk Versus Visual Fashion Shows Dissertation

Catwalk Versus Visual Fashion Shows - Dissertation Example The paper "Catwalk Versus Visual Fashion Shows" discovers Young Designers Preference and fashion shows. The research is done by considering choices of young fashion designers from UK and Korea. In the introductory portion, the content, aims and objectives of this study and limitations faced while conducting the research work are clearly stated. Literature review comes next where all aspects related to visual fashion shows are dealt in details including current trends, influencing factors, recent shows, etc. Next is methodology, where the procedure, which was followed while doing this research work, is outlined. Research approaches, philosophies, data collection process, sampling etc, with every details are depicted in this section. Several people were interviewed. Continue with ‘findings’, summarizes the answers given by the respondents. Carry on with ‘discussion’, the answers of the respondents were interpreted, analyzed and compared. The views that came up through their answers were related with trends, practices and concepts referred to in ‘findings’. In the final section, a brief conclusion is provided to the whole study from point of view of the researcher. Along with a justification is also provided for young designer’s preference for visual fashion shows over live catwalk shows. Visual fashion shows are gradually taking over live fashion shows in recent times. Unlike the traditional fashion shows where the model catwalks down the ramp, visual fashion shows present digitalized images.... Unlike the traditional fashion shows where the model catwalks down the ramp, visual fashion shows present digitalized images of the same but, projected on a screen. Thus, on one hand the people fail to perceive the liveliness, but on the other hand designers could easily showcase their creations. For this reason, one could find an increasing popularity of visual fashion shows among designers, especially among the young the young fashion designers. Content In the present times, the fashion world is experiencing a new type of fashion show- the visual fashion show, which involves digitalized images of models decked up in fashion items. Contrary to conventional catwalk shows, visual fashion shows saves time, energy, organization, and are flexible in nature. At the same time, the visual fashion shows are also cost effective and interactive. This is the reason why many young designers in present are choosing visual fashion shows over the traditional ones (Menkes, 2010). Aims This study aim s at finding out whether the young fashion designers from UK and Korea prefer live catwalks on ramps or visual fashion shows. Objectives 1. To find out the choice and preferences of young designers from UK and Korea. 2. To explore what factors have affected their choice. 3. To examine relevance and effectiveness of visual fashion shows in contemporary fashion industry. 4. To analyze success of visual fashion shows in terms of marketing, promotion and popularity. Methodology For this paper, both primary and secondary sources will be used data collected by interviewing some people as well as those collected from books, journals, and reviews and articles from fashion magazines will be interpreted and analyzed. Findings It was found out that the new concept of

Alcohol and Family Violence Essay Example for Free

Alcohol and Family Violence Essay Alcohol and family Violence has been an issues with families for many years, these are two demons that some just can’t break, families have been experiencing the traumatic of one’s physical uncontrollable actions. Alcohol has become one’s stress reliever in all views that it began to take over one’s way of thinking and reaction, this is ways individuals express their evil thoughts and the sad thing it that the abuse of alcohol has a domino effect on their children’s as they become adults and parents later in life. If community members understand violence differently, their responses may be inconsistent and even harmful to victims. (Advocate. Minnesota, (2003)). Almost 6,500 children across the world have been a victim of family violence which leads up to being in a single parent home, One in three children globally (30%) said as leader of their country; they would tackle violence by improving law and order. For children in developing countries, improving education (17%) was the next priority (compared with just 6% of children in developed countries). (2003). Child Fund.) Finally, a 1991 study in the United States found that the average amount of alcohol consumed prior to the use of violence was only a few drinks, which â€Å"suggests that the act of drinking may be more related to woman abuse than the effect of alcohol.† Two other studies indicate that drug use is more strongly correlated to domestic violence than is alcohol. (2003). Child Fund.) Improving their self-esteem, they abuse the victim physically, emotionally, and sometimes, sexually. Another key factor in wife abuse is alcohol. When the man is stressed, he turns to alcohol to relieve it. Little does he know that the alcohol makes him more irritable? He started really drinking excessively and that is when the abuse started. He had been drinking I sat down to read the paper and he wanted his supper . . . he kicked the c at to the ceiling, he started slapping my face with both hands, (Berger, 1990, pg. 42). So, if youre in an abusive relationship what is the best way to get out and stop of the battering abuse? After notorious acts of abuse, usually, the woman will finally realize that the situation will never get better. Basically there  are three basic reasons why women leave a violent relationship: Educated themselves about the necessary available help, being faced with the impact on their children (mentally, physical, sexually and courage to know when enough is enough) and women having a tolerance level of abuse. (Berger, 1990, pg. 48). Family Violence is Willfully or knowingly placing, or attempting to place, a family member in fear of hurt, causing hurt, wrongful confinement or restraint against the family member’s will or continual harassment which causes anguish.. A family member can be your spouse or ex-spouse, child (including adopted and step child), sibling, parent or in-law. Now there are many factors that contribute to family violence, the most commonly seen are th e characteristics of the abused and the abuser. There is no one specific country or culture that is more abusive than another, abuse is spread across countries, cultures, socio-economic statuses, races, religion and ethnic groups (Goldman, Salus, Wolcott Kennedy, 2009). For example, one may be very educated and well-kept but if unable to control behavior caused by emotions, he may be abusive. While if one may be poor and lowly educated, if he is well controlled in his behaviors and emotions, he will then not be abusive. More often, in cases of child abuse, the abuser usually a parent, father or mother, could be one who may be in situations of stress or someone who simply cannot control their emotions, anger. In a paper written by Professor Harry J. Gaynor (1998), in 1,356 cases of child abuse reported by National Burn Victim Foundation, there were 176 spontaneous cases, of which 97% of them are parents that are known to have aggressive response behavior. There are two kinds of aggressive response, active and passive. Active aggressive behaviors do not have concern over the impact that anger will have to the abused, this translates to actions of hurting the abused verbally, could be hurling hurtful words, humiliating, and physically, hitting the abused. While the passive aggressive response behaviors are those that have cooped up, suppressing negative emotions of a length of time and a blow up or breakdown can be expected, this translates to behavior of neglect and not paying attention to the abused (Gaynor, 1998). Children are victims of adult’s uncontrollable behavior of anger. As much as we blame abusers, and we should look at their background and past, that when they were children were tormented as well. Baltimore County, Maryland Police Department (2012),  shared some facts about child abusing inmates, that 84% of them were abused as children, families with more than four children have higher rates of abused and neglect, more than 80% of the abusers are parent or someone the child is close to and parents on drugs is physically abused regularly. There are parental histories and the cycle of abuse that we have to factor into the characteristics of the abuser. Many of these individuals who are maltreating their own children were victims of abuse and neglect themselves. (Goldman et al., 2003). There is no major difference in percentage of perpetrators being female or male. An apparent close percentage of 50% and 58% of mothers and fathers are found to abuse their own children. However, while single mothers are accused of child neglect, many fathers who abandon the child are almost never considered in the neglect (Newton, 2001). Abuse often happen in environment or family situation where it is overcrowded, usually happens with families with more than four children. If the living conditions are cramped and isolated and parents do not hold proper stable jobs, the chances of abuse in those families, whether parent-child or sibling abuse may occur (Baltimore County, Maryland Police Department, 2012). From the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders (n.d.), some causes of abuse at times are simply due to parent’s ignorance of developmental stages. This ignorance can lead to frustration and eventually aggressive behaviors. They are under stress because their child has issues with toilet training or not meeting their expectations. Understanding developmental stages can help parents to understand their child’s learning curve better and they will learn to cope with their expectation. Another cause is mental disorders, parent with depression, personality disorders or anxiety disorder etc., can affect their ability to care for their children. The abused, children as the focus, can contribute toward family violence toward themselves and they may never know it. Disabled children, children with mental disorders, children with development disorders, hyperactive children are all at a higher risk compared to a healthy child in receiving abuse. These children have needs that are special, if they do not attain required needs, manner of communication from them can be highly distressing. According to Sullivan (1996) from the Boys Town National Research Hospital, children with disabilities are found to be at greater risk of abuse and neglect compared to children without disabilities (Official Journal of the American Academy  of Pediatrics, 2001). Children with disabilities of any form may be unable to retort, have no understanding that they are abused or cannot communicate the happenings of the abuse may have issues because adults know that they can get away with it because their abuses will not be reported. Knowing one can get away with it makes it easier to push through the abuse compared to risking the child complaining to others about the abuse. Children although still the ultimate victims whether or not they are the cause of the abuse and abused children and the abuser may have much effect in the society. There are long term effects surrounding family violence and any forms of family violence have effects to both the abused and the abuser. Some of the effects are physical and neurobiological, cognitive and emotional and social and educational. First, physical and neurological damages are the visible effects on a child, direct trauma from physical abuse can cause ruptured organs and even possible brain deformity or retardation. Neglect will cause the child to be underfed and/or nutritional deficit, the child will have slow growth rate and development of the physical and brain would be unhealthy. This makes deficient in mental growth as well. Repeated trauma produces changes in the neurochemistry of the brain that affects memory formation. This causes the person to will time to time continually getting flashbacks of fragmented memories of emotions throughout their life. Cognitive and emotional damages are relative unseen. Some children resort into extreme methods to deal with the trauma tic experiences. Some lash out at people around them and themselves. Some become depressed and do things that make them feel better, example by taking drugs and alcohol, some even go to the extent of attempting suicide. Bonding and attachments with their parents or people in general may cease and understanding of the abusing behavior might become permanent if assistance does not come. Children that have been abused also show no concern when someone else is under distress, they may even result to behave in ways like hitting the other child the same way their abuser did to them (Sigelman Rider, (2012). A social and educational effect becomes obvious when the child become less sociable or not sociable at all, isolating himself. The child may also become distrustful toward people in general making them unable to properly have a normal relationship. Due to this, the child will grow up having issues with self-esteem, have low level of confidence. Behaviorally, some children may  grow up to become abusive or they become isolated (Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders, n.d.). Some of the children who do not seek and have support to recovery may consider what they have been through has normal and appropriate. This is how the cycle of abuse goes on. Abused children are often emotionally and physically in pain at school; hence they are unable to concentrate at what they have to do, leading to them falling behind their grades. They find it hard to make friends and hence either become a bully or get bullied at school as well. Because of this, teachers at school might see them as a problematic child if they are not aware of the happenings that are going on at home. With society (school) labeling them as problematic and being abused at home by parents they are likely to feel rejected by everyone. Intervention as a Human Services Professional I would suggest that all family members seek counseling to express all issues and get to the root cause of the problem. When children are involved seeing a therapist with the family and without the parents would be one of my intervention to help their family, I would also have the parents go to parenting classes. Resource: Advocate. Minnesota, (2003).Alcohol and Domestic Violence. www.umn.edu/hutments/svaw/ domestic/link/alcohol.htm Attorney-General’s Chambers (31 October 2009). Interpretation of this Part. In Women’s Charter (Chapter 353, Section 64). Retrieved from http://statutes.agc.gov.sg Baltimore County, Maryland. (2 January 2013). Facts About Child Abuse. Retrieved from http://www.baltimorecountymd.gov/Agencies/police/community/abuse.html (2003). Child Fund. www.childfund.org.av/publication/new-childfund-survey-fines-assive-kids-blame-alcohol-number-one-cause-violence Gaynor, H. J. (1998). The Root of Child Abuse: Anger. Retrieved from http://www.aaets.org/article63.htm Goldman, J., Salus, M. K., Wolcott, D., Kennedy, K. Y. (2003). A Coordinated Response to Child Abuse and Neglect: The Foundation for Practice. Retrieved from https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/foundation/foundatione.cfm

Titration of Amino Acids and Peptides

Titration of Amino Acids and Peptides Titration is the process used to analyze the acid-base behaviour of amino acids and peptides. A 0.25 g sample of unknown amino acid and aspartame were transferred quantitatively to separate 250-ml Erlenmeyer flask. 20.0 ml of distilled water was added to each flask using a volumetric pipette then the flask was swirled to dissolve the samples. Small increments of 0.200 M HCl were added to both samples to produce an acidic solution and then each sample was titrated by adding 0.200 ml of 0.200 M NaOH. The pH of the acidic solutions was measured from 1.5 until it reaches pH 11 and it was recorded in every addition of the base. On the Aspartame, the total volume of the base added was 8.0 ml and 29.6 ml on the unknown amino acid. Titration curves were constructed based on the pH values and volume added. The identity of the unknown amino acid was revealed to be Aspartic acid. A titrimetric profile of the amino acid and aspartame were drawn. INTRODUCTION Proteins are the most important class of biochemical molecules, next are carbohydrates and lipids. Proteins are the basis for the major structural components of animal and human tissue. Proteins are also the indispensable agents of biological function and amino acids are the building block of proteins. Amino acid is an organic compound containing an amino group (-NH2) and a carboxyl group (-COOH). Since amino acids contain both an acidic and a basic group, they undergo an intra molecular acid-base reaction and exist primarily in the form of a dipolar ion, or zwitterions. Amino acids are also amphoteric, meaning, they can react either as acid or base depending on the circumstances. There are basically 20 primary amino acids that serve as the backbone of most proteins. Peptide is a molecule that consists of two or more amino acid linked together by bonds between the amino group and the carboxyl group. Although their structures are less complex than the larger protein molecules, peptides have significant biological activities. Titration is a useful tool in determining the reactivity of amino acid side chains. Since amino acids contain an ionisable group, the predominant ionic form of these molecules in solution depends on pH. Titration of amino acid shows the effect of pH on amino acid structure. Titration is also useful in determining the isoelectric pH of the sample. MATERIAL AND METHODS A 0.250 g sample of unknown amino acid powder was placed on a 250 ml beaker using an analytical balance. 20.0 ml of distilled water was added to each flask using volumetric pipette and then the flask was swirled to dissolve the sample. Small increments of 0.200 M HCl were added to the dissolved sample using a syringe until the pH value is 1.50. Both acidified solutions were titrated by adding 0.20 ml of 0.200 M NaOH. The pH was measured and recorded at each amount of base that was added. The procedure was repeated until the pH of the solution reached 11.0. Same process was done using commercial aspartame. Titration curves of the unknown sample and that of aspartame were constructed using MS Excel. The unknown sample of amino acid was identified based on the pKa values and pI that were seen in the constructed titration curves. Titrimetric profiles of aspartame and the identified amino acid were drawn. Then the total percentage errors of the pKa and pI were calculated. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The unknown amino acid was recognized by comparing its experimental value to 20 amino acids. In able to do that, a titration curve must be drawn. The unknown amino acid was recognized as glutamic acid and it was determined based on its pKa and pI value from the graph. In the titration curve of the unknown amino acid, it can be observed that at the pH reading of 2.16, 10.3 and 4.4 the graph shows an inflection curve making it the pKa values of the unknown sample. These reading were compared with the pKa values the 20 amino acids and it was observed that the experimental pKa values were close to the pKa values of glutamic acid. Identity of Unknown Amino Acid: Glutamic Acid Percentage errors between the experimental and theoretical pKa values of the Unknown amino acid were computed and the results were 4.11 %, 6.51 % and 3.53 % and the percentage error between the pI values of experimental and theoretical is 6.32%. The possible sources of errors were probably the inaccurate weighing of the sample and the measurement in adding HCl/NaOH. During titration, the prototrophic groups lose H+ successively as the pH reach their respective pKa values. The net charge of glutamic acid at the start of the titration is +1 and as each group loses H+ the net charge will decrease by one unit. The acidified Aspartame solution was titrated using 0.200 M of NaOH. The titration curve above shows the inflection points. These points are 2.5, 10.5 and 3.4. The possible sources of errors were the inaccurate weighing of the sample and the measurement in adding HCl/NaOH is not precise. During titration, the prototrophic groups lose H+ successively as the pH reach their respective pKa values. The net charge of aspartame at the start of the titration is +1 and as each group loses H+ the net charge will decrease by one unit. Other possible source of errors on the experiment was the inaccurate plotting of pKa values on the titration curve. Wrong pKa will cause the identity of the unknown sample to be incorrect. The buffering zones of glutamic acid are at 2.16 and at 10.3. In aspartame, the buffering zones are at 10.5 and at 3.4. Both are suitable as buffers on acidic pH. Aspartame has a taste that is close to sugar. It enhances the flavour and does not cause the teeth to decay. There is a scientific study that shows that aspartame is beneficial in weight control and it is helpful for individuals with diabetes because it allows them to please their taste for sweets without affecting their blood sugar level. Aspartame can also result in fewer calories, which helps people with diabetes, manage their weight. Aspartame hydrolyzes into its respective amino acid when heated. There are also unpleasant side effects of aspartame utilization which includes loss of memory, seizures, headache, blindness, protruding eyes, palpitation, depression, insomnia, diarrhea and skin rashes. Aspartame blocks and lowers the levels of serotonin, tyrosine, dopamine, nor epinephrine and adrenaline. As a result, it is typical that aspartame symptoms cannot be detected in laboratory tests and on x-rays.

Monitoring Patients Through Telehealth Essay -- Health Care

Introduction Telehealth is the monitoring via remote exchange of physiological data between a patient at home and health care professionals at hospitals or clinics to assist with diagnosis and treatment. As our society ages and health care costs increase, government and private insurance payers are seeking technological interventions. Technological solutions may provide high quality healthcare services at a distance, utilize professional resources more effectively, and enable elderly and ill patients to remain in their own homes. Patients may experience decreased hospitalization and urgent care settings, and out of home care may not be required as the patient is monitored at home. However, no study has been able to prove telehealth benefits conclusively. This change in health care delivery presents new ethical concerns, and new relationship boundaries between health care professionals, patients, and family members. This paper will discuss telehealth benefits in specific patient populations , costs benefits of using telehealth, and concerns of using telehealth. Literature Review Telehealth has shown benefits in monitoring patients with chronic health conditions, decreasing hospital admissions and emergency room visits, and improving treatment regimen compliance at home. Zimmerman & Barnason (2007) investigated the use of telehealth devices with cardiac surgical patients. Health Buddy devices can deliver information, education, and professional support for post-operative cardiac patients. The patient’s responses triggered different algorithms to further individualize post-operative interventions (Zimmerman & Barnason, 2006). Health care professionals were able to monitor recovery at home, progress following cardiac s... ...rsing education. Teaching with Technology, 32(3), 189-194. Mackenzie, R., & Sakel, M. (2011, April/May). Teleneurology: Ethics of devolving responsibilities from clinicians to families and/or carers. British Journal of Neuroscience Nursing, 7(2), 490-493. Rothwell, E., Ellington, L., Planalp, S., & Crouch, B. (2011, August 25). Exploring challenges to telehealth communication by specialist in poison information. Qualitative Health Research, 22(1), 67-75. doi:10.1177/1049732311420446 Shore, J. H., Brooks, E., Savin, D. M., Manson, S. M., & Libby, A. M. (2007, June). An economic evaluation of telehealth data collection with rural populations. Psychiatic Services, 58(6), 830-835. Zimmerman, L., & Barnason, S. (2006). Use of a telehealth device to deliver a symptom management intervention to cardiac surgical patients. Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 22(1), 32-37.

effects of depression :: essays research papers

Effects Of Depression   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  John had a decision to make and he had to make it now, he had to decide if he would go to see his doctor or if he should just ignore the symptoms. Many people would say if John needed to go to the doctors because he was sick, than he should just go because that is what you would do if you where sick. What you don’t know about Johns symptoms is that he is depressed. There are many reasons why a person can get depressed, however this subject is not talked about in public very often. However, many people go through life having been depressed at one time or another.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Depression can be especially cruel in that it doesn't affect just the depressed person, but everyone around them, too. Someone who is depressed can be very difficult to deal with. What makes this so cruel is, that as a relationship with the depressed person become strained to the point where others avoid having anything to do with them, this further contributes to a deeper depression and makes the person feel even more isolated which might intensify the depression.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Being depressed can affect three major areas in a persons life, in the first area it can affect your workplace. Your fellow workers might look at it as though you are a moody person, that goes through mood swings at the drop of a hat. Your boss may look at it as though you have an attitude about your job and that your production level is down and that you just don’t care about work anymore. Your customers may look at it as 2 though you don’t want to deal with them anymore or don’t want their business, these are a few ways that your depression can affect your job because of a misunderstanding and misdiagnosed symptoms.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Depression may cause you to lose your job without the right diagnose and treatment. It can also affect your family and loved ones also with them pulling away from you, because your mood swings and temper is just to much for them to handle, as the relationship with the depressed person become strained to the point where others avoid having anything to do with them. Life has become unbearable with you around them, so the tend to avoid you. As you go deeper into a depressed illness everything and everyone around you just don’t seem important anymore.

Advertising and Advertisement Contributes Essay

A story of mine come immediately to my mind. once I wanted a pair of slipper, but after entering the supermarket, I was shocked for there were thousands of brands of slippers. eventually, I chose LULU which was the only brand I’d ever seen on the television. according to a well known sociologist, and I paraphrase, without advertisement, consumers and merchants both lose something, which is to say that consumers lose the opportunity to obtain the one suit them most and merchants may lose their potential customers. aturally, it is significant to advertise for the firms. meanwhile a recent survey conducted by sina. com will make this point valid and convincible. the sales volume of a certain product doubles since its manufacturer advertise on a TV program. for most of time consumers don’t know their real requirement at all, so their needs to a certain kind of product is influenced greatly by the advertisements. for instance, my mother went shopping one day in order to buy some milk and vegetables, nevertheless she came back home with a pair of trousers†¦ n her words, just because she ever saw it on a magazine. in addition, one of my classmates used to buy whatever he is interested in on. EBAY. com for about 2 times a week. considering the enormous advantages for manufacturers, advertisement has the necessity to remain. each coin, however, has its two sides. rare as the drawbacks of advertisement are, they do exist. some small companies completely rely on the boasting advertisement to attract consumers. in order to make the advertisement to be credible, they invite he celebrities, make special good effect, and even film to publicize their production. unfortunately, consumers are always wise enough to distinguish a fair publicity from one with exaggeration. Hence, those companies are bound to suffer the tremendous cost of advertising without benefiting from it. to sum up, the merits of advertisement for corporations far outweigh its defects. thus, i strongly advocate that advertisement contributes to the amplification of the profit of enterprises and should be retained.

Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 37

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN A Whaley Death Nate was five more days alone in the apartment before they came for him. It started at dawn on the sixth day, when he noticed a group of whaley boys gathering around below his window. There had been humans out on the streets since the day he'd told Cielle about the Colonel's plan, but Gooville hadn't quite returned to normal (given that normal in Gooville was still extraordinarily weird to begin with). He could tell that the humans and whaley boys alike were on edge. Today there were no humans in the streets, and all the whaley boys were emitting a shrill call that he was sure he'd heard before, but strangely enough it hadn't been in the city under the sea. Hearing the hunting call in these circumstances made him shudder. He watch them gather, rubbing up against one another as if to strengthen the bond among them, milling around in small walking pods as if working off nervous energy, each of them raising his head occasionally and letting go the hunting call – flashing teeth, jaws snapping like bear traps. He knew they were coming. Nate was dressed and waiting for them when they came through the door. Four of them took him, lifted him in the air by his legs and shoulders, and carried him over their heads down the stairs to the street, then on into the passageways. The whole crowd moved into the passageways, their calls becoming more frequent and deafeningly shrill in the smaller confines. Even as his captors' long fingers dug into his flesh, a calm resolve came over Nate – an almost trancelike state, the acceptance that it was all going to be over soon. He looked to either side, only to have mouthfuls of teeth snarl at him, and even among the frenzy, here and there he heard the characteristic hissing snicker of a whaley-boy laugh. Well, they do know how to have a good time, he thought. He soon recognized the path they were taking him down. He could hear the calls of hundreds of them echoing through the caverns from the mother-of-pearl amphitheater. Maybe the entire whaley-boy population was waiting there. As they entered the amphitheater and the calls reached a crescendo, Nate stretched his neck and saw two big killer-whale-colored females holding the Colonel in the middle of the floor. The whaley boys holding Nate lowered him to his feet, and then two of them pulled him back against the benches to watch with the others. One of the big females holding the Colonel shrieked a long, high call, and the crowd calmed down, not quite silent, but the hunting calls stopped. The Colonel's eyes were wide, and Nate wouldn't have been surprised if the old man had started to bark and foam at the mouth. When things quieted down enough for him to be heard, he started shouting. The big female who was holding him clamped a hand over his mouth. Nate could see the Colonel fighting for breath, and he struggled against his own captors in empathy. Then the female started to speak – in their whistling, clicking language – and the crowd stopped even snickering. Their eyes bulged, and they turned their heads to the side to better hear her. Nate couldn't understand much of what she was saying, but you didn't have to know the language to understand what she was doing. She was listing the Colonel's crimes and pronouncing a sentence. It was no small irony, Nate thought, that the whaley boys who saw to justice were colored like the killer whales, the most intelligent, most organized, most glorious and horrible of all the marine mammals. The only animal other than man that had exhibited both cruelty and mercy, for one was not possible without potential for the other. Maybe memes were triumphing over genes after all. When she finished speaking, she handed the Colonel's arm to the other female, so that he was bent over forward, his hands held together high behind him. Then the female let out another extended shrill call, and the whole ceiling of the amphitheater dimmed until it was completely dark. When she finished her call, the light came back up again. The Colonel was screaming at the top of his lungs, random curses and mad pronouncements – calling the whaley boys abominations, monsters, freaks, railing like some mad prophet, his brain fried by God's fingerprint. But when the light was full again, he caught Nate's eye, just for a second, and he was quiet. There was something there, the depth and wisdom that Nate had once known the man to possess, or maybe it was just sadness, but before Nate could decide, the big female bent over and bit off the Colonel's head. Nate felt himself start to pass out. His vision tunneled down to a pinpoint and he fought to stay conscious, to concentrate on his breathing, which he realized had stopped momentarily. His vision came back, as did his breath, harsh and panicked through his gritted teeth as he watched. The killer spit the head across the amphitheater to a group of whaley kids, who picked it up and tore at it with their teeth. Then the female started tearing great chunks of meat out of the Colonel's body with her teeth, even as it twitched in the hands of her cohort – throwing the chunks to the crowd, who shrilled the hunting calls even more frantically than before. Nate couldn't tell how long it went on, but when it was finally done, and the Colonel was gone, there was a large red circle in the middle of the amphitheater floor, and all around him he saw bloody teeth flashing in whaley grins. Even the two whaley boys who held Nate's arms had partaken in the communion, grabbing chunks of meat and eating them with their free hands. One had hissed and sprayed blood in Nate's face. Then they dragged Nate to the middle of the amphitheater. He felt faint, the pulse banging away in his ears, drowning out all other sound. Everywhere he looked, he saw bloody teeth and bulging eyes, but he felt strangely detached. As the big female began another oration, he remembered a thought he'd had right after the humpback whale had eaten him. It came through to him like a malicious d? ¦j? ¤ vu: What an incredibly stupid way to die. Then there was another long, whistling call and Nate closed his eyes, waiting for the death blow, but it didn't come. The crowd had gone quiet again. He squinted through one eyelid, almost regretful that the moment had been delayed, and he saw teeth before him, but not the bloody teeth of the killers. The shrill whistle went on and on, made by the mottled blue whaley-boy female that had come out of the passageway and was striding across the amphitheater toward Nate. At her side was a very determined, petite brunette with unnatural maroon highlights, wearing hiking shorts and a tank top. The whaley boys holding Nate seemed confused. The female who had killed the Colonel was looking for some sort of guidance from the one holding Nate when Amy pulled the stun gun from her pocket and blasted her in the chest, knocking her back five feet to convulse on the bloody floor. â€Å"Let him go,† Amy commanded the one who was holding Nate, and for some reason, maybe just because it sounded so definitive, she let go of Nate's arms, and he fell, at which time Amy pulled up a second stun gun and pressed it to the big killer's chest, knocking her to the floor to twitch with her companion. Through it all, Emily 7 had continued to whistle. â€Å"You okay?† Amy asked Nate. He looked around at the situation, not sure at all if he was okay, but he nodded. â€Å"Okay, Em,† Amy said, and Emily stopped whistling. Before the crowd could react or a murmur of whaleyspeak start, Amy shouted, â€Å"Hey, shut up!† And they did. â€Å"Nate didn't do anything,† she continued. â€Å"The whole thing was the Colonel's idea, and none of us knew anything about it. He brought Nate here to help him destroy our city, and Nate said no. That's all you need to know. You all know me. This is my home, too. You know me. I wouldn't lie to you.† Just then the first big female started to recover, and Amy leaped in front of Nate to stand over the killer. â€Å"You get up, bitch, I'll knock you on your ass again. Your choice.† The female froze. â€Å"Oh, fuck it,† Amy said, and she zapped the big female on the nose with both stun guns at once, then wheeled on the other one, who was getting up but quickly dropped and played dead under Amy's gaze. â€Å"Good,† Amy said. â€Å"So we clear?† Amy shouted to the crowd. There was whaleyspeak murmuring, and Amy screamed, â€Å"Are we fucking clear, people?† â€Å"Yeah, clear,† came a dozen little mashed-elf voices in English. â€Å"Sure, sure, sure, you know it,† said one little voice. â€Å"Clear as a window,† came another. â€Å"Just kidding,† said an elf-on-helium voice. â€Å"Good,† Amy said. â€Å"Let's go, Nate.† Nate was still trying to find his feet. His knees had gone a little rubbery when he thought his head was going to be bitten off. Emily 7 caught him by the arm and steadied him. Amy started to lead them out of the amphitheater, then stopped. â€Å"Just a second.† She went back to where the lead killer female was just climbing to her feet and zapped her in the chest with the stun gun, which knocked her flat on her back again. As Amy strutted past Nate and Emily 7, she said, â€Å"Okay, now we can go.† â€Å"Where are we going?† Nate asked. â€Å"Em says you slept with her.† Nate looked at Emily 7, who grinned, big and toothy, and snickered. â€Å"Yeah, slept. Just slept. That's all. Tell her, Emily.† Emily whistled, actually a tune this time, and rolled her eyes. â€Å"Really,† Nate said. â€Å"I know,† Amy said. â€Å"Oh.† Nate heard squeaks coming from behind them in the corridor. â€Å"Wasn't that a little risky, taking on a thousand whaley boys with a couple of stun guns?† â€Å"I love these things,† Amy said, clicking the buttons to make miniature blue lightning arc across the contacts. â€Å"No, I didn't take on a thousand whaley boys, I took on one – an alpha female. Know what that makes me?† She smiled and then, without even breaking stride, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. â€Å"And never forget it.† â€Å"I won't.† Then that last week's anxiety about losing her came tumbling back over him. â€Å"Hey, where did you go? I thought the Colonel had taken you.† â€Å"I went out on my mother's ship to send a message.† â€Å"What message?† â€Å"I was calling our ride. All the whaley boys had been put on notice: No pilot was going to take his ship out of here with you on board, still won't. But I could go, so I went out with my mother to pick up some supplies. And I called a ride.† â€Å"What, Emily 7 can't pilot a ship?† â€Å"Uh-uh,† squeaked Emily 7. â€Å"Only pilots can pilot a ship, duh. Anyway† – Amy checked her watch – â€Å"your ride should be in the harbor soon. I have to go by my place and grab something I want to take.† An hour later they stood at the water's edge in the harbor, and Amy was checking her watch again. â€Å"I am so pissed,† she said, tapping her foot frantically. It seemed as if every thirty seconds they had been cornered by some human resident of Gooville, and Amy had to tell the story again. Emily 7 was the only one of the whaley boys, other than the crew of Amy's mother's ship, that was still in the grotto. â€Å"You think they'll revolt, hurt humans?† Nate asked. â€Å"No, they'll be fine. That was a first. It's not every day you find out that your messiah is plotting to kill you. Give 'em a day or two to get over the embarrassment – everything will be back to normal.† â€Å"I guess it's just as well that we're getting out of here. You don't want to face those two females you zapped.† â€Å"Bring it on,† Amy said, patting the pockets of her shorts. â€Å"Besides, I'm sort of special here, Nate. I don't want to sound egotistical, but they really all do know me, know who I am, what I am. No one will bother me.† Just then Nate spotted a light coming from deep in the mirror-calm water. â€Å"That's him,† Amy said. â€Å"Him?† â€Å"Clay, coming to take you home.† â€Å"Me? You mean us.† â€Å"Em, can I get a minute?† Amy said. † ‘Kay,† said Emily 7, skulking away from the shore toward town. When Emily was out of hearing range, Amy put her arms around Nate and leaned back to look at him. â€Å"I can't go with you, Nate. I'm staying.† â€Å"What do you mean? Why?† â€Å"I can't go. There's something about me you don't know. Something I should have told you before, but I thought you wouldn't†¦ well, you know – I thought you wouldn't love me.† â€Å"Please, Amy, please don't tell me you're a lesbian. Because I've been through that once, and I don't think I could survive it again. Please.† â€Å"No, nothing like that. It's about my parents†¦ well, my father really.† â€Å"The navigator?† â€Å"Uh, no, not really. Actually, Nate, this is my father. She pulled a small specimen jar out of her pocket and held it up. There was a pink, jellylike substance in it. â€Å"That looks like – ; â€Å"It is, Nate. It's the Goo. My mother was never intimate with her navigator, or with anyone in the first three years she was here, but one morning she woke up pregnant.† â€Å"And you're sure it was the Goo, not just that she had way too many mai-tais at the Gooville cabana club?† â€Å"She knows it, and I know it, Nate. I'm sort of not normal.† â€Å"You feel normal.† He pulled her closer. â€Å"I'm not. For one thing, I don't just look a lot younger than I really am, but I'm also a lot stronger than I look, especially as a swimmer. Remember that day I found the humpback ship by sound? I really can hear directional sound underwater. And my muscle tissue is different. It stores oxygen the way a whale's tissue does, I can stay underwater without breathing for over an hour, longer if I don't exert myself. I'm the only one like me, Nate. I'm not really, you know†¦ human.† Nate listened, trying to weigh what it really meant in the bigger picture, but he couldn't think of anything except that he wanted her to go with him, wanted her to be with him, no matter what she said she was. â€Å"I don't care, Amy. It doesn't matter. Look, I got over all this† – he gestured to all that – â€Å"and the fact that you're sixty-four years old and your mother is a famous dead aviatrix. As long as you don't start liking girls, I'll be fine.† â€Å"That's not the point, Nate. I can't leave here, not for long anyway. None of us can. Even the ones who weren't born here. The Goo becomes part of you. It takes care of you, but you become attached to it, almost literally. Like an addiction. It gets in your tissues by contact. That's how my mother had me. I've been gone a lot already this year. If I left now, or if I left for longer that a few months at a time, I'd get sick. I'd probably die.† At that moment a yellow research submersible bubbled up to the surface of the lagoon, a dozen headlights blazing into the grotto around a great Plexiglas bubble in the front. â€Å"That's it, then. I'll stay. I don't mind, Amy. I'll stay here. We can live here. I could spend a lifetime learning about this place, the Goo.† â€Å"You can't do that either. It will become part of you, too. If you stay too long, you won't be able to leave either. You had to have noticed that first night we got drunk together, how fast you recovered from the hangover.† Nate thought about how quickly his wounds had healed, too – weeks, maybe months of healing overnight. There was no other explanation. He thought about spending his life with only fleeting glimpses of sunlight, and he said, â€Å"I don't care. I'll stay.† â€Å"No you won't. I won't let you. You have things to do.† She shoved the specimen jar in his pocket, then kissed him hard. He kissed her back, for a long time. The hatch at the top of the dry exit tower on the sub opened, and Clay popped up to see Nate and Amy for the first time since they'd both disappeared. â€Å"Well, that's unprofessional,† Clay said. Amy broke the kiss and whispered, â€Å"You go. Take that with you.† She patted his pocket. Then she turned to Clay as she checked her watch again. â€Å"You're late!† â€Å"Hey, missy, I set a time when I'd be at the coordinates you sent – six hundred and twenty-three feet below sea level – and I was there. You didn't mention that I had another mile of submarine cave with some of the scariest-looking rock formations I've ever seen.† He glanced at Nate. â€Å"They looked alive.† â€Å"They are alive,† Amy said. â€Å"Are we close to the surface? The pressure is –  » â€Å"I'll explain on the way,† Nate said. â€Å"We'd better go.† Nate stepped onto the sub as Clay slipped down inside the hatch to allow him to pass. Nate crawled into the hatch and looked back to Amy before he closed it. â€Å"I'll stay, Amy. I don't care. For you I'll stay. I love you. You know that, right?† She nodded and brushed tears out of her eyes. â€Å"Yeah,† she said, Then she spun around quickly and started walking away. â€Å"You take care of yourself, Nathan Quinn,† she shouted over her shoulder, and Nate heard her voice break when she said his name. He climbed down into the sub and secured the hatch above him. Clay had watched Amy walk away from the big, half-submerged Plexiglas bubble in the front of the sub. â€Å"Where's Amy going?† â€Å"She can't come home, Clay.† â€Å"She's okay, though?† â€Å"She's okay.† â€Å"You okay?† â€Å"I've been better.† They were quiet for the long ride through the pressure locks to the outside ocean, just the sound of the electric motors and the low hum of instruments all around them. The lights of the sub barely reached out to the walls of the cave, but every hundred yards or so they would come to a large, pink disk of living tissue, like a giant sea anemone, which would fold back to let them pass, then expand to fill the passageway once they had gone through. Nate watched the pressure gauge rise one atmosphere every time they passed through one of the gates, and it was then that he realized he wasn't escaping at all. The Goo knew exactly where and what they were, and it was letting him go. â€Å"You're going to explain what all this is, right?† Clay said, not even looking away from the controls. Nate was startled out of his reverie. â€Å"Clay, I can't believe – I mean, I believe it, but – Thanks for coming to get me.† â€Å"I never told you, you know – it's not really appropriate or anything – but I have pretty strong feelings about loyalty.† â€Å"Well, I respect that, Clay, and I appreciate it.† â€Å"Yeah, well, don't mention it.† Then they were both a bit embarrassed and both pretended that something was irritating their throats and they had to cough and pay attention to their breathing for a while, even though the air in the little submarine was filtered and humidified and perfectly clean. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Pirates Nate was standing with Clay on the flying bridge of the Clair as she steamed into the Au'au Channel. â€Å"You'd better put on some sunscreen, Nate.† Nate looked down at his forearms. He'd lost most of his color while in Gooville, and he could feel the sun cooking him, even through his T-shirt. â€Å"Yeah.† He looked off toward Lahaina, the harbor he'd piloted into a thousand times. They'd have to anchor far outside the breakwater with a ship this size, but it still had the feeling of coming home. The wind was warm and sweet, the water the heartbreak blue of a newborn's eyes. A humpback fluked about eight hundred yards to the north of them, its tail glistening in the sun as if it were covered with sequins. â€Å"There's still a month left of the season,† Clay said. â€Å"We can still get some work done.† â€Å"Clay, I've been thinking. Maybe we can be a little more purposeful in what we're doing. Maybe a little more active, conservation-wise.† â€Å"I could go for that. I like whales.† â€Å"I mean, we have the resources now, and even if I could prove the meaning of the song – somehow decipher the vocabulary of it – I could never prove the purpose. You know, without compromising Gooville.† â€Å"Not a good idea.† During the trip home Nate had explained it all. â€Å"I mean, there's no reason we can't do good science and still, you know – ; â€Å"Kick some ass.† â€Å"Well, yeah.† Clay affected an exaggerated Greek accent. â€Å"Sometimes, boss, you just got to unbuckle your pants and go looking for trouble.† â€Å"Zorba?† â€Å"Yeah.† Clay grinned. â€Å"Great book,† Nate said. â€Å"Is that the Always Confused?† Clay pulled up a pair of binoculars and focused on a speedboat that was rounding the Lahaina breakwater, showing more wake than she should in the harbor. Kona was driving the Always Confused. â€Å"My boat,† Clay said, somewhat distressed. â€Å"You need to get over that, Clay.† The speedboat came around to a parallel course with the Clair as the ship cut her engines in preparation to drop anchor. Kona was waving and screaming like a madman. â€Å"Irie, Bwana Nate! Irie! The lion come home! Praise Jah's mercy. Irie!† Nate came down the steps from the flying bridge to the deck. Whatever resentment he might have had for the surfer at one time was gone. Whatever threat he might have felt from the boy had melted away. Whatever irrelevancy Kona's youth and strength might have underscored in his own character was irrelevant. Maybe it was time to be an example instead of a competitor. Besides, he was genuinely glad to see the kid. â€Å"Hey, kid, how you doing?† â€Å"Jammin' now, don't you know.† â€Å"That's good. How'd you like to go be a pirate?† Because the Navy didn't maintain permanent offices on Maui, Captain L. J. Tarwater had been given a small office that the navy sublet for him in the Coast Guard building, which meant that, unlike on a naval base, here the public could pretty much come and go as they wished. So Tarwater wasn't that surprised to see someone come strolling through his office door. What he was surprised by was that it was Nathan Quinn, whom he thought quite drowned, and who was carrying a four-gallon glass jar full of some clear liquid. â€Å"Quinn, I thought you were lost at sea.† â€Å"I was. I'm found now. We need to have a chat.† He set the jar on Tarwater's desk, leaving a wet ring on some papers there, then went back and shut the door to the outer offices. â€Å"Look, Quinn, if this is some kind of stunt, like spray-painting fur, you're wasting your time. You guys act like the military is the great Satan. I'm here to study these animals. I grew up in the same generation you did, and so did most of the people in the navy who do what I do. We don't want to hurt these animals.† â€Å"Okay,† Nate said. â€Å"We only have two things to talk about here. Then I'll show you something.† â€Å"What's in the jar? That better not be kerosene or anything.† â€Å"It's seawater. I got it at the beach about ten minutes ago. Don't worry about it. Look, first you're going to finish your study and you're going to strongly recommend that the navy's torpedo range not be moved into the sanctuary. You will not let that happen. The animals do dive to depths where they can be hurt by the explosions, and they will be hurt by the explosions, which you'll be setting off not to defend the country but just so you guys can practice.† â€Å"There's no evidence that they ever dive deeper than two hundred feet.† â€Å"There will be. I've got data tags coming in from the mainland, I'll have data in a month.† â€Å"Still†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Shut up,† Nate said, then thought better of it and added, â€Å"Please.† Then he continued. â€Å"Second, you need to do everything in your power to back off of testing low-frequency active sonar. We know that it kills deepwater hunters like beaked whales, and there's probably some chance that it also injures the humpbacks, and under no circumstances do you want to do that.† â€Å"And why would that be?† â€Å"You know what my work has been for the last twenty-five years, right?† â€Å"You've been studying the humpback song. What, trying to figure its purpose?† â€Å"I found it, Tarwater. It's a prayer. The singers are praying.† â€Å"That's preposterous. There's no way you could know that.† â€Å"I'm positive of it. Absolutely positive. I know it's a prayer, and that the torpedo base and LFA will harm a God-fearing animal.† Nate paused to let it sink in, but Tarwater just looked at him like he was an annoying rodent that had crawled in from the cane fields. â€Å"How could you possibly know that, Quinn?† â€Å"Because their prayers are answered.† Nate took a portable tape recorder out of his shirt pocket and set it on the desk next to the seawater, into which he'd already mixed part of the Goo that Amy had given him. He pushed the ;play; button, and the sound of humpback-whale song filled the office. â€Å"This is ridiculous,† Tarwater said. â€Å"Watch,† Nate said, pointing to the water, which began to swirl, a tiny pink vortex forming in the middle. â€Å"Get out of here. I'm not impressed with your Mr. Wizard tricks, Quinn.† â€Å"Watch,† Nate said again. As they watched, the pink vortex expanded while the whale song played, until half the jar was filled with a moving pink stain. Then Nate turned off the tape. â€Å"So what?† Tarwater said. â€Å"Look more closely.† Nate opened the jar, reached in, strained out some of the pink, and threw it on Tarwater's desk. Tiny shrimp – each only an inch long – flipped about on the blotter. â€Å"Krill,† Nate said. Tarwater didn't say anything. He just looked at the krill, then scraped a couple into his hand and examined them more closely. â€Å"They are krill.† â€Å"Uh-huh.† â€Å"What, it's like Sea Monkees, right? You had brine-shrimp eggs in there.† â€Å"No, Captain Tarwater, I did not. The humpbacks are praying, and God is answering them, giving them food. We could run this little experiment a hundred times, and that water would be clear when we started and full of krill when we ended. Trust me, I've done it.† And he had. The little bit of Goo in the water created the krill out of the other life in there, the ubiquitous SAR-11 bacteria that existed in every liter of seawater on the planet. Tarwater held up the krill. â€Å"But I thought they didn't eat when they were here.† â€Å"You're thinking on too small a scale. They don't feed for four months, and then they do nothing but feed. They're thinking in advance – the way you might think about breakfast before you go to bed at night. Doesn't matter, really. What you need to do, Captain, is everything in your power and influence to stop the range and the LFA testing.† Tarwater looked stunned now. â€Å"I'm just a captain.† â€Å"But you're an ambitious captain. I can have a jar of seawater on the secretary of the navy's desk in ten hours. Do you really want to be the one to explain to this administration that you're hurting an animal that prays to God? Particularly this administration?† â€Å"No, sir, I do not,† said Tarwater, looking decidedly more frightened than he had been just a second before. â€Å"I thought you were an intelligent man. I trust you'll handle this, and this will be the last anyone will hear of my jar.† â€Å"Yes, sir,† Tarwater said, more out of habit than respect. Nate took his tape recorder and his jar and walked out, grinning to himself, thinking about the praying humpbacks. Of course, it's not your particular God, he thought, but they do pray, and their god does feed them. He headed back to Papa Lani to make the calls and write the paper that would torpedo any hope of Jon Thomas Fuller's ever building a captive dolphin petting zoo on Maui. A pirate's work is never done. Three months later the Clair cruised into the cold coastal waters off Chile on her way to Antarctica to intercept, stop, harass, and generally make business difficult for the Japanese whaling ship Kyo Maru. Clay was at the helm, and when the ship reached a precise point on the GPS receiver, he ordered the engines cut. It was a sunny day, unusually calm for this part of the Pacific. The water was so dark blue it almost appeared black. Clair was below in their cabin. She'd been seasick for most of the voyage, but she had insisted on coming along despite the nausea, using her saber-edged persuasive skills on the captain. (â€Å"Who's got the pirate booty? All right, then, help me pack.†) Nate stood on the deck at the bow, his arm around Elizabeth Robinson. Above them swung an eighteen-foot rigid-hull Zodiac on a crane, ready to drop into the water whenever it was needed. There was another one on the stern, where once the submarine had been stowed. Up on the flying bridge, Kona scanned the sea around them with a pair of ;big-eye; binoculars on a heavy iron mount that was welded to the railing. â€Å"There's one, a thousand yards.† Clay came out onto the walkway beside Kona. They all looked to starboard, where the residual cloud of a whale blow was hanging over the calm water. â€Å"Another one!† Clay shouted, pointing to a second blow closer to the ship off the port bow. Then they started firing into the air as if triggered by a chained fuse: whale blows of different shapes, heights, and angles – great explosions of spray erupting so close to the ship now that the decks started to glisten with the moisture. Then the backs of the great whales rolled in the water around them, gray and black and blue, hills of slick flesh on all sides, moving slowly, then lying in the water. Nate and Elizabeth moved up to the bow railing and watched a group of sperm whales lolling in the water like logs just a few feet off the bow. Next to them a wide right whale floated, bobbing gently in the swell, only a slow wave of the tail revealing that the creature was alive. It rolled to one side, and its eye bulged as it looked at them. â€Å"You okay?† Nate asked Elizabeth, squeezing her shoulder. This was the first time she'd been out on the water in over forty years. In her hands she clutched a brown paper lunch bag. â€Å"They're still amazing up close. I'd forgotten.† â€Å"Just wait.† There were probably a hundred animals of different species around the ship now, most rolled on their side, one eye bulged out to focus in the air. Their blows settled into a syncopated rhythm, like cylinders of some great engine firing in succession. Kona jumped up and down next to Clay, praising Jah and laughing as each animal breathed or flicked a tail. â€Å"Irie, my whaley friends!† he shouted, waving to the animals close to the boat. Clay desperately resisted the urge to grab up cameras and start blasting film or digital video. It felt like he had to pee, really badly, from his eyes. â€Å"Nate,† Clay called, and he pointed to a bubble net forming just outside the ring of floating whales. They'd seen them dozens of times in Alaska and Canada, one humpback circling and releasing a stream of bubbles to corral a school of fish while others plunged up through the middle to catch them. The circle of bubbles became more pronounced on the surface, as if the water were boiling, and then a single humpback breached through the ring, cleared the water completely, and landed on its side in white crater of splash and spray. â€Å"Oh, my goodness!† Elizabeth said. Flustered, she pressed her face into Nate's jacket, then looked back quickly, lest she miss something. â€Å"They're showing off,† Clay said. The lolling whales lazily paddled out of the way, opening a corridor to the ship. The humpback motorboated toward the bow, its knobby face riding on top of the water. When it was only ten yards from the bow, the animal rose up in the water and opened its mouth. Amy stood up, and next to her stood James Poynter Robinson. â€Å"Hey, can we get a ladder down here?† Amy shouted. â€Å"Praise Jah's mercy,† Kona said, â€Å"the Snowy Biscuit has come home.† Nate threw a cargo net over the side, then climbed halfway down and pulled Amy up onto the net. He held her there as the ship moved in the swell, and she tried to kiss him and nearly chipped a tooth. â€Å"Help me with Elizabeth,† Nate said. Together they got the Old Broad down the cargo net and handed her to her husband, who stood on the tongue of a whale and hugged his bride after not seeing her for four decades. â€Å"You look so young,† Elizabeth said. â€Å"We can fix that,† he said. â€Å"You'll get old?† â€Å"Nope.† He looked back to Nate and saluted. Nate could hear whaley-boy pilots snickering inside the whale. â€Å"I brought you a pastrami on rye,† she said. Poynter took the paper bag from her as if he were accepting the Holy Grail. Nate and Amy scrambled up the cargo net and stood at the bow as the whale drifted away from the bow. â€Å"Thank you, Nate,† the Old Broad said, waving. â€Å"Thank you, Clay.† Nate smiled. â€Å"We'll see you soon, Elizabeth.† â€Å"We will, you know,† Amy said as the whale ship closed and sank back into the waves. â€Å"I know.† â€Å"I have to come back here every few months, you know.† â€Å"I know.† â€Å"Forever.† â€Å"Yeah, I know.† â€Å"I'm the new colonel now. I'm sort of in charge down there, you know, since I'm sort of the daughter of their god. So we'll have to spend time down there.† â€Å"Do I have to call you ‘Colonel'?† â€Å"What, you have a problem with that?† â€Å"No, I'm okay with that.† â€Å"You realize that the Goo really could decide to wipe out the human species at any minute.† â€Å"Yep. Same as it's always been.† â€Å"And you know if I live out here, I'm not always going to, you know, look like this?† â€Å"I know.† â€Å"But I will always be luscious, and you – you will always be a hopeless nerd.† â€Å"Action nerd,† Nate corrected. â€Å"Ha!† Amy said. AUTHOR NOTES Science and Magic â€Å"The science you don't know looks like magic,† Kona says in Chapter 30. I have generally come down on the side of magic, simply because it involves less math, but with Fluke it was necessary to learn a little science. Because so much of Fluke does fall into the realm of magic, though, I thought it only fair to give you, gentle reader, some idea of what's fact and what's not. The body of knowledge on cetacean biology, especially as it relates to behavior, is growing at such a staggering rate that it's hard to be sure of what you know from one day to the next. (This happens to be exactly the way I live my life, so that worked out nicely.) Scientists have been studying humpback song for fewer than forty years, and it's only in the last decade that studies have been undertaken to try to relate the song to social behavior and interaction. (And a challenging question there: What constitutes interaction in an animal whose voice can carry a thousand miles?) As I write this, September 2002, much about the humpback song is still unknown. (Although scientists do know that it tends to be found in the New Age music section, as well as in tropical waters. There is no reasonable explanation for this, but as of yet no tagged humpbacks have been tracked to the New Age section at Sam Goody's.) At this point no one has ever seen or filmed the mating of humpbacks, so while it would appear that the song has something to do with mating, because it is performed only by males and because it is sung only during the mating season, no one has drawn a direct correlation between the song and mating. Theories abound: The males are marking territory sonically, they are showing their fitness and size by singing, they are calling mates, they are just saying ;howdy; – all of the above, none of the above. The fact remains that, regardless of its purpose, the humpback-whale song is the most complex piece of nonhuman composition on earth. Whether it's art, prayer, or a booty call, the humpback song is an amazing thing to experience firsthand, and I suspect that even once the science of it is put to bed, it will remain, as long as they sing, magic. Beyond the song, much of the whale behavior and biology described in Fluke is accurate, or as accurate as I could keep it and not overburden the story. (Excepting the whale ships, the whaley boys, and every killer whale's being named Kevin, all of which I made up. Killer whales are actually all named Sam. Duh.) The acoustic data, and the analysis thereof, is generally balderdash. While scientists do indeed collect data in the manner described, much of the analysis process came from my imagination. For the record, though, low-frequency whale calls can and do travel thousands of miles under the sea. While the Lahaina Harbor is indeed inundated with whale researchers every winter, and while there are indeed lectures given periodically at the Whale Sanctuary visitor center, the acrimony, competition, and tension described among the researchers is completely of my own creation, as are the individual descriptions and personalities of the characters. Tension among a bunch of neurotics is just more interesting for a story than is a description of dedicated professionals doing their work and getting along, which is the case in reality. When in doubt, assume I made it up. CONSERVATION The reason we shouldn't kill whales is because they fire the imagination. – JAMES DARLING, PH.D. Hey, I thought they were saved already! No one likes the â€Å"We're glad you enjoyed this story about the rainforest with all its cute little animals and charming native people, BECAUSE IT WILL ALL BE A CHARRED DESERT NEXT WEEK!† approach, and I hate to do it to you, but you should know that much of the conservation information in Fluke is accurate. They aren't quite saved. The Japanese and the Norwegians continue to practice whaling, each taking up to five hundred minke whales a year under â€Å"scientific research† permits (the meat ends up in markets in Europe and Asia). Despite â€Å"free market† arguments to the contrary, whaling is not a profitable business in Japan. It is subsidized by the government, and, to bolster consumer demand, they have introduced whale meat into the school lunch program so children will develop a taste for it. (Good thinking there. Don't we all crave the cafeteria cuisine of our youth? Mmmm, mashed peas.) Biologists working undercover in Japanese markets (spy nerds), by running DNA tests, have found endangered whale species (including blue whale) in cans of whale meat labeled as â€Å"minke whale meat.† (So someone is still killing them.) Except for scientific whaling, the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on hunting great whales is still in effect, but several whaling nations are rallying hard to have the moratorium lifted and finance survey studies to prove that great-whale populations, including humpbacks and grays, have recovered enough for them to resume hunting. The U.S. antiwhaling position in the IWC is severely compromised by the fact that they support aboriginal whaling – that is, subsistence hunting by indigenous people. The argument for aboriginal whaling by the actual indigenous people is seldom made on a basis of subsistence, but more often because hunting whales is a â€Å"cultural tradition of their people that must be preserved.† This, of course, is utter bullshit. It's a tradition of Americans of European descent to commit genocide on indigenous people, but that doesn't mean we ought to start doing it again. Even some old ideas are still bad ideas. While it is true that many whale species seem to be recovering, like the gray and the humpback, other populations still struggle, and some, like the North Atlantic right whale, may yet disappear from the planet. (Not due to hunting, but as one researcher, whom I won't name, said, â€Å"because they're stupid as shit and won't get out of the way when they hear a ship coming.† Hell, I almost wreck when a squirrel runs in front of my car, and there're millions of them. I can't imagine trying to keep a supertanker from going in the ditch while swerving to avoid one of the last remaining right whales.) Recent surveys estimate (and they can only estimate, because scientists can't find enough of the animals to actually count – I guess when you find one, you just have to count the bejeezus out of him, then extrapolate with algorithms and computer projections) that there may be fewer than three hundred North Atlantic right whales left in the world. But on a happier note, some of the populations are recovering, and although the Japanese government appears to be a bunch of nimrods (and who are we to talk?), the Japanese people seem more interested in watching whales than eating them, so the pressure to extend the hunt may relent. The kicker to all this is probably that habitat loss and pollution, not hunting, present the greatest threat to marine mammals. (Wha†¦? Habitat loss, don't they have the whole ocean?) For the most part our oceans are great, wet deserts, with millions of square miles in which life is very sparse. Predictably, human populations have started to compete with marine mammals for the food sources, and, under increased demand and improved fishing methods, many once rich fishing grounds are becoming as barren as a clear-cut forest. Hydroelectric dams that restrict the migration of salmon and other species to their freshwater breeding grounds are already having an impact on the populations of marine mammals that feed on the adult salmon. As industrial pollution and agricultural runoff take toxic chemicals to the ocean, it would seem that the enormous volume of seawater would dilute these chemicals to harmless levels, and that's what happens until the chemicals are gathered up by a mechanism called the food chain. Recent studies of tissue samples of some toothed whales (killer whales and dolphins, who feed fairly high up on the food chain) show levels of man-made toxins so high that the animal's blubber actually qualifies as toxic waste. Studies are now going on to determine if declining marine mammal populations on the west coast of North America may not be caused by the lower birth rates and the compromised immune systems of animals who feed on toxic fish. (Oh yeah, guess who else is at the top of the seafood chain?) You want to help? Pay attention. Caring about the condition of our oceans does not make you a psycho, tree-hugging, bleeding-heart liberal, it just makes you smart. The health of all life on this planet depends on the health of the oceans. It's just good business. (Even a supply-sider has to admit that if you fish a population to extinction, there will be no supply, so there will be no demand. It's bad economics from the right or the left.) So watch what you eat, and don't eat fish that are being over-fished (like Chilean sea bass, for instance). And don't pour the used oil from your oil change down the storm drain unless you want your next shrimp platter to taste like Quaker State and you sort of like the idea of having your own children born with flippers. And go look at some whales. Not captive ones, wild ones. It all comes down to economics, and as long as it's more profitable to have whales around to look at, we'll have them around to look at. If you don't live near water and can't get to any, rent a whale video. It all comes around. Barring that, just yell at people randomly to stop killing whales. It could catch on. Really. (â€Å"Would you like fries with that?† â€Å"Shut up and stop killing whales!† â€Å"Thank you. Drive through, please.†) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, my thanks to the home team: to Charlie Rodgers, as usual, for thoughtful reads and cogent comments; to my editor, Jennifer Brehl; and to my agent, Nicholas Ellison, who a couple of years ago said, â€Å"Hey, how about a book about whale song? I don't know – like there's meaning in it or something. You figure it out.† Blame or credit goes to Nick for that. As always, thanks to Dee Dee Leichtfuss for being my â€Å"reader without an agenda.† Thanks, too, to Galen and Lynn Rathbun, for taking time away from studying the hose-nose shrew to fill me in on the home life of the field biologist and for putting me in touch with the people at NOAA. My thanks also to Kurt Preston for geological information, to Dr. David Kirkpatrick for information on genetics, to Mark Joseph for my â€Å"Introduction to Sonar† phone lecture, and to Bret Huffman for Rasta-Pidgin tutoring. Much of the background on genes, evolution, and memes came from the work of Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, The Extended Phenotype, and others; also from Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea and from Susan Blakemore's excellent book The Meme Machine. I recommend them all for further reading, but when you're finished, you may have to read several of my books and watch a lot of TV just to get stupid enough again to function in the modern world again. Fortunately I am gifted in this respect and have recovered nicely, thank you. The laser-measurement algorithm described in Chapter 1 was formulated by Dr. John Calambokidis of the Cascadia Research Collective. He should get credit for that as well as for many other contributions to the field. Many of the research anecdotes I used in Fluke were fashioned out of stories told to me by the researchers themselves. The story of the Japanese whalers being affected by seeing a mother sperm whale and her calf (Chapter 30) was told to me by Bob Pittman of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center. The story of the Pacific Biological Research Project, where the military funded a feasibility study to use seabirds as a biological-warfare vector, was told to me by Lisa Ballance, Bob's wife, who also works at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center. Thanks, too, to Dr. Wayne Ferryman, also from NOAA, who shared many hours of stories, providing me with information about the lifestyles of researchers. My thanks to Dr. Ferryman as well for inviting me to observe the California gray whale survey in person and not insisting that I always bring the pizza. Thanks to Jay Barlow from NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center for information on navy research projects and the relationship between researchers and the navy. Much of which I blew off so I could put Captain Tarwater in Maui, but still, thanks, Jay. My thanks, too, to Carol DeLancey of Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Program, who told me the great story of the female right whale using a researcher's Zodiac as a diaphragm while the researchers were assaulted by a pair of prehensile whale willies (Chapter 8) – something that happened directly to Dr. Bruce Mate, but which I embellished in that I don't believe that the whales ejaculated in the boat, and Dr. Mate did not become a lesbian. For information on underwater acoustics and the nature and range of blue-whale calls, much of which I totally ignored, many thanks to Dr. Christopher G. Fox of the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon. It was Chris's description of an unidentified, persistent throbbing noise coming from deep under the Pacific Ocean, somewhere off the coast of Chile, that first inspired the undersea city of Gooville. For the inside story on harbor life in Lahaina and the dating life of the female researcher, my thanks to Rachel Cartwright and Captain Amy Miller, who study humpback cow/calf behavior and biology in Maui in the winter and Alaska in the summer. My thanks, too, to Kevin Keyes for whale and dolphin stories, as well as for his infinite patience in teaching me ocean kayaking and providing the â€Å"cold-water discipline† safety training that probably kept me from drowning while trying to get out among the animals. Finally, my deepest thanks to Dr. Jim Darling, Flip Nicklin, and Meagan Jones, who for two seasons allowed me to ride along and observe their research in Maui, as well as for giving generously of their time to answer my questions both in person and by e-mail. While most of the information about humpbacks and humpback song in Fluke came out of these trips, the inaccuracies and liberties taken with the information are my own. The anecdotes and science I learned from these folks, all of whom have spent their lives working in the field, were enough to fill two books, and were certainly too voluminous to list here. Simply put, this book would not have been possible without their help. Kinder, more intelligent, more dedicated people than these do not the face of this earth walk. To support their ongoing research on humpback song and behavior, send your tax-deductible donations to: Whale Trust 300 Paani Place Paia, HI 96779