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Institution Affiliated to Bharathiar University
G.N.Mills Post, Coimbatore - 641029, Tamil Nadu, INDIA
To be recognized as a centre for excellence in Biochemistry that provides an atmosphere to acquire skills in identifying the link between biological and human resources and transform it to enhance the quality of life.
The Department of Biochemistry (UG) was established in the year 1985. The Department offers a PG Degree in Biochemistry from the academic year 1995 and MPhil and PhD Research Programmes from the year 2000.
The main objective of the Department is to inculcate the basic concepts and applications of Biochemistry in the student and to flourish in the field of research and development. The secret of the success of this Department lies in its academic environment and the close ties between teachers and students. Since its very inception, the Department has produced a number of bright scientists who are now pursuing their careers in India and abroad. Periodical research has been the hallmark of its faculty members. The Department has optimized all the resources to improve the quality of education.
The Department is known for its enviable commitment to the development of the students into well-rounded individuals who can take on leadership roles in the industry, the academic field or in government services. The Department has highly qualified faculty members who specialize in various fields of research. The course curriculum is based on UGC model syllabus. The students of this Department are exposed to most of the emerging areas in this (post) genomic era through the curriculum and also through various field visits, off-campus training and summer programs in reputed institutes. The syllabi are updated to suit the novel developments in the arena of Biochemistry. The curriculum provides opportunities for interdisciplinary research. For MSc students, participation in research is highly encouraged. Students are also provided a Career Oriented Programme in Medical Laboratory Technology sponsored by UGC, a certificate course conducted along with their degree course. It is obligatory for students to do their short-term industrial training programme towards the end of the first year.
The Department has produced University ranks continuously from the year of inception till date. Many of our alumni are our renowned scientists staying in other countries, performing their PDF in reputed universities.
The Biochemistry Department has 3 Laboratories -1 for UG, 1 for PG and 1 for Research, which are equipped with PC- based Double Beam Spectrophotometer, Semi Auto Analyzer (Miracle), Digital Visible Scanning Spectrophotometer Flash Evaporator, Laminar Air Flow Chamber, Muffle Furnace, Orbitory Shaker, Refrigerated High Speed Cooling Centrifuge. Flame Photometer, Ultracentrifuge, Double Distillation Unit, Hot Air Oven, Incubators, Spectrophotometer, Autoclaves, Thermostatic water baths, Transilluminator, Electrophoretic apparatus, Chromatographic units and Digital electronic balances, Distillation apparatus and other basic equipment needed for Biochemistry practical and research work are available in the Department.
The Department carries out MPhil and PhD. programmes with the help of the art facilities which enable it to strive for excellence in research and extension activities. The areas of research include : Cancer Biology, Biochemical Toxicology, Nutritional Biochemistry, Plant Biochemistry, Environmental Biotechnology, Clinical Biochemistry, and Plant Therapeutics.
The research done by the Department also has social and economic implications which are of national importance. Research projects are carried out by many faculty members of the Department.
The Department has a library with an excellent collection of books. There is a well- equipped Instrumentation Room. The Department has computers with Internet facility for the use of its students, research scholars and staff.
Seven students have been awarded PhD. degrees and 43 students have been awarded MPhil degrees. Currently 18 students are working towards their PhD and 9 students are pursuing their MPhil degree. Some of the PhD students are working in other research institutes in collaboration with the University. The Department has organised several symposia/ conference/ seminars sponsored by DST, DBT, CSIR, UGC, ICMR,DRDO, TNSCST etc.
Several research projects have been undertaken by the teaching faculty. The teaching staff members and research scholars regularly participate in national and international conferences/symposia/seminars. Several research papers have been published by teachers and scholars of the Department in national and international scientific journals. Some of the former students are occupying very high positions in India and abroad in academic and administrative fields.
The Department has been receiving financial assistance from various funding agencies like UGC,TNSCST and has successfully completed several research projects.
The Department has been conducting blood grouping campaign for college and school students.
50% of the students are placed in pharmaceutical industries, Organisation of Clinical trials, clinical laboratories, Medical Transcriptionist, Educational Institutions such as Universities and Colleges and in various Government Services.


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Greenport Venlo organized a series of inspirational and informative events. In an interactive, dynamic designed meeting, entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers, students and other stakeholders in the industry of fresh, food, flowers, agriculture and logistics, are brought together. Top level keynote speakers, regional businessmen and participants share knowledge and best practices.
Jan-Jaap helped shape meeting design as well as content. During the actual meeting, he stimulated conversation, using alternating formats.
In Addition, Jan-Jaap acted as 'digital moderator' in the Social Media, to prevent sharing and networking being limited to only four days a year.

subset: commoncrawl


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Custom Designed Shade Structures
At Shadetech in Alice, our custom designed shade structures are manufactured from durable materials. You can choose from quality shade cloth or PVC, which both allow for light to filter through, while offering superior UV protection. Both the structure and the shade panels are available in a variety of colours and can be installed on properties of any size.
There are many benefits to choosing Shadetech in Alice to supply and install your shade structure. We can assist customers with development permits, as well as engineering and building permits where they are required. Our team also offer full customisation and happily make recommendations to ensure you get the most out of your investment.
For a free quote, or to see our range of fabric colours, please contact us today.
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To ensure our Shadetech in Alice shade sails are securely anchored, all posts, footings and shade fixings are installed to engineers' specifications. The shade sails are then connected to the post or roof cleats by high quality stainless steel fittings.
Fabrication & Installation Of All Shade Structures
To ensure the highest standard of quality, Shadetech in Alice undertake all fabrication of posts and roof cleats in Alice Springs. Shade sails are manufactured in Darwin and installed by the qualified and experienced staff at Shadetech in Alice.
We're locally based in Alice Springs, fabricating and erecting shade sails and structures for home and business owners throughout local and remote areas of Central Australia.
Shadetech in Alice shade sails are made in Darwin. All the designing, manufacturing and installation of shade poles and roof cleats is taken care of by Shadetech in Alice. We also install the shade sail when it arrives. We are able to organise any permits necessary for the structure to be compliant with NT government regulations. To protect shade poles from rusting, the base of the poles are painted with bitumen paint before they are installed.
For custom solutions to your shade needs, chat to our team today.


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INS Kalvari – The First Scorpene Class Submarine All Set To Join Indian Navy
INS Kalvari, the first of the six Scorpene-class submarines, manufactured at Mazagaon Docks Limited under technology transfer from France, is all set to be handed over to the Indian Navy next month. As per the report, Kalvari has completed all sea trials including the firing of torpedoes and missiles.
Kalvari, a diesel electric attack submarine is named after a deep-sea tiger shark. Mazagaon Docks is building Six Scorpene submarines under Project-75 with technology transfer from DCNS, a French naval shipbuilder. The second submarine of the class, INS Khanderi is also undergoing sea trials and is expected to join the navy by the year end.
A senior MDSL official said, "Naval authorities will confirm the date of the commissioning ceremony in the next few weeks. All crucial trials, including test-firings of torpedo, have achieved the desired results. Currently, testing of certain on-board systems is on at the dock and it will be over in the next few days."
The Kalvari class is a attack submarine designed with state-of-the-art features like superior stealth and better communication. Kalvari can launch a crippling attack on the enemy with torpedoes and anti ship missiles. It can carry out all types of missions like anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare, intelligence gathering, mine laying, area surveillance, etc.
Also check : Su 30 MKI – The Backbone Of Indian Air Force
Features Of Kalvari Class Submarines
- Superior Stealth Technology
- Precision Guided Weapons To Launch Massive Attack
- All six submarines are being indigenously constructed at Mazgaon Dockyard Limited
- Mechanisms on this submarine have been designed to optimise safety; DRDO is in the process of establishing a system for carrying out structured health monitoring of under development nuclear submarines as well as future conventional Naval submarines
- The submarine can work in all types of environment including the tropics
- Various means and communications are in place to ensure interoperability with various components of the naval task force
- The special steel used for the construction of Kalvari can withstand high yield stress. It can withstand hydrostatic force of high magnitude and dive deeper into the oceans.
- Kalvari has 6 x 533-mm torpedo tubes for 18 whitehead Alenia Sustemi Subacquei Black Shark heavyweight torpedoes or SM.39 Exocet Anti-ship missiles and 30 mines in place of torpedoes.


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It was a long day of fun-filled adventures today! Little India food tripping, board games shopping, board games playing (duh?!) and bridge, and visiting the magical world of Incanto! 🙂
However, at the end of the day, I was super exhausted that I was just begging for a chance to sit on my way home. Unfortunately, as everyone rushes home, the train was super crowded so I had to stand. Hence, I stood in the middle of the carriage, between the rows of seats, in anticipation of someone alighting soon.
Fortunately, a few stops later, a couple in front of me alighted. However, instead of sitting down, I offered it to a 55-year old lady who was carrying a couple of bags. She sheepishly sat and continued to offer me the other seat. I said, "It's okay. Seems like other people are more tired than me anyway." Within a split second, other people simply took the seat.
The lady, then told me and my friend, "Next time you want to buy health supplements, come to my shop at Novena Gardens." She fumbled around for some brochures and continued to explain to us what she sells. In the middle of a crowded train on long tiring weekday, I bet people were judging us and wondering why two young people are talking so loudly with an auntie. Nonetheless, I continued talking to her, engaging her in the conversation. I asked for her name (Ruth) and she asked me mine. I even asked whether she's in the shop everyday so that I can bring my mom to "see-see." It was heart-warming to see her excitedly talking about the products she sells as though it was the beginning of her day and I was her first customer. (Remember, we are still in the middle of the train at 1030pm).
Eventually, she told me, "I don't offer this to everyone but since you have such a good heart and you let me sit, when you come and visit, I give you 15% discount, ok? Actually now got discount but if next time you come, I give you my member discount and points." In addition, she shared to me how she like selling the health products (because she used it previously too) . She said, "now, that I'm 55 (that's how I got her age), I want to help young people especially good-hearted ones like you to take care before it's too late. Before your body pain here there, must take care, ok?"
Isn't that just so touching? It didn't take too much effort for me to offer a seat, neither did it take her too much effort to offer a discount. Yet, the act of charity was exhibited there and then, between two strangers, in the fullest sense of the word.
Then, when we finally reached my destination, I told her, "I have to go now but see you okay? You take care. (big smile)" And, she said, "You too. God bless! (even bigger smile)" <—goosebumps moment right there!!!
Then, as I walk out the train doors, a huge wave of relief and happiness filled me.
Learning from the prayer of Jabez (1 Chronicles 4:10), I have been asking Him to "expand my territory." In other words, I was asking him to send me someone who needs my help every now and then so that I can spread His love and glorify His name.
And, as I walk away, I knew that was my prayer being granted. That was Him blessing me with a "territory." And, looking back, He has been giving me someone to help (or touch their lives) in the simplest smallest ways, every single day this week.
Today, as that woman told me "God bless," I knew that it was God himself blessing me at that point in time. Amen. (:
Photo Credits: cleanheartsyou


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In this chapter, the concept of human resource management (HRM) is defined initially and the various models of HRM are described.
Consideration is then given to its aims and characteristics. The chapter concludes with a review of reservations about HRM and the relationship between HRM and personnel management.
Human resource management is defined as a strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets – the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of its objectives.
John Storey (1989) believes that HRM can be regarded as a 'set of interrelated policies with an ideological and philosophical underpinning'. He suggests four aspects that constitute the meaningful version of HRM:
* a particular constellation of beliefs and assumptions;
* a strategic thrust informing decisions about people management;
* the central involvement of line managers;
* reliance upon a set of 'levers' to shape the employment relationship.
The matching model of HRM
One of the first explicit statements of the HRM concept was made by the Michigan School (Fombrun et al, 1984). They held that HR systems and the organization structure should be managed in a way that is congruent with organizational strategy (hence the name 'matching model'). They further explained that there is a human resource cycle (an adaptation of which is illustrated in Figure 1.1), which consists of four generic processes or functions that are performed in all organizations. These are:
- selection – matching available human resources to jobs;
- appraisal (performance management);
- rewards – 'the reward system is one of the most under-utilized and mishandled managerial tools for driving organizational performance'; it must reward short- as well as long-term achievements, bearing in mind that 'business must perform in the present to succeed in the future';
- development – developing high-quality employees.
The Harvard framework
The other founding fathers of HRM were the Harvard school of Beer et al (1984) who developed what Boxall (1992) calls the 'Harvard framework'. This framework is based on the belief that the problems of historical personnel management can only be solved:
when general managers develop a viewpoint of how they wish to see employees involved in and developed by the enterprise, and of what HRM policies and practices may achieve those goals. Without either a central philosophy or a strategic vision – which can be provided only by general managers – HRM is likely to remain a set of independent activities, each guided by its own practice tradition.
Beer and his colleagues believed that 'today, many pressures are demanding a broader, more comprehensive and more strategic perspective with regard to the organization's human resources'. These pressures have created a need for: 'A longer-term perspective in managing people and consideration of people as potential assets rather than merely a variable cost'. They were the first to underline the HRM tenet that it belongs to line managers. They also stated that: 'human resource management involves all management decisions and action that affect the nature of the relationship between the organization
and its employees – its human resources'.
The Harvard school suggested that HRM had two characteristic features: 1) line managers accept more responsibility for ensuring the alignment of competitive strategy and personnel policies; 2) personnel has the mission of setting policies that govern how personnel activities are developed and implemented in ways that make them more mutually reinforcing. The Harvard framework as modelled by Beer et al is shown in
Figure 1.2.
According to Boxall (1992) the advantages of this model are that it:
- incorporates recognition of a range of stakeholder interests;
- recognizes the importance of 'trade-offs', either explicitly or implicitly, between the interests of owners and those of employees as well as between various interest groups;
- widens the context of HRM to include 'employee influence', the organization of work and the associated question of supervisory style;
- acknowledges a broad range of contextual influences on management's choice of strategy, suggesting a meshing of both product market and sociocultural logics;
- emphasizes strategic choice – it is not driven by situational or environmental determinism.
**********************************************************************the Harvard model has exerted considerable influence over the theory and practice of HRM, particularly in its emphasis on the fact that HRM is the concern of management in general rather than the personnel function in particular.
Figure 1.2 The Harvard model of HRM (from Beer et al, 1984)
The overall purpose of human resource management is to ensure that the organization is able to achieve success through people. As Ulrich and Lake (1990) remark: 'HRM systems can be the source of organizational capabilities that allow firms to learn and capitalize on new opportunities.' Specifically, HRM is concerned with achieving objectives in the areas summarized below.
Organizational effectiveness
'Distinctive human resource practices shape the core competencies that determine how firms compete' (Cappelli and Crocker-Hefter, 1996).
Extensive research (see Chapter 4) has shown that such practices can make a significant impact on firm performance. HRM strategies aim to support programmes for improving organizational effectiveness by developing policies in such areas as knowledge management, talent management and generally creating 'a great place to work'. This is the 'big idea' as described by Purcell et al (2003), which consists of a 'clear vision and a set of integrated values'. More specifically, HR strategies can be concerned with the development of continuous improvement and customer relations policies.
Human capital
the human capital of an organization consists of the people who work there and on whom the success of the business depends. Human capital has been defined by Bontis et al (1999) as follows: 'Human capital represents the human factor in the organization; the combined intelligence, skills and expertise that gives the organization its distinctive character. The human elements of the organization are those that are capable of learning, changing, innovating and providing the creative thrust which if properly motivated can ensure the long-term survival of the organization.'
Human capital can be regarded as the prime asset of an organization, and businesses need to invest in that asset to ensure their survival and growth. HRM aims to ensure that the organization obtains and retains the skilled, committed and well-motivated workforce it needs. This means taking steps to assess and satisfy future people needs and to enhance and develop the inherent capacities of people – their contributions, potential and employability – by providing learning and continuous development opportunities. It involves the operation of 'rigorous recruitment and selection procedures, performance-contingent incentive compensation systems, and management development and training activities linked to the needs of the business' (Becker et al, 1997). It also means engaging in talent management – the process of acquiring and nurturing talent, wherever it is and wherever it is needed, by using a number of interdependent HRM policies and practices in the fields of resourcing, learning and development, performance management and succession planning.
Knowledge management
Knowledge management is 'any process or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organizations' (Scarborough et al 1999). HRM aims to support the development of firm-specific knowledge and skills that are the result of organizational learning processes.
Reward management
HRM aims to enhance motivation, job engagement and commitment by introducing policies and processes that ensure that people are valued and rewarded for what they do and achieve, and for the levels of skill and competence they reach.
Employee relations
The aim is to create a climate in which productive and harmonious relationships can be maintained through partnerships between management and employees and their trade unions.
Meet diverse needs
HRM aims to develop and implement policies that balance and adapt to the needs of its stakeholders and provide for the management of a diverse workforce, taking into account individual and group differences in employment, personal needs, work style and aspirations, and the provision of equal opportunities for all.
Rhetoric and reality
The research conducted by Gratton et al (1999) found that there was generally a wide gap between the sort of rhetoric expressed above and reality. Managements may start with good intentions to do some or all of these things, but the realization of them – 'theory in use' – is often very difficult. This arises because of contextual and process problems: other business priorities, short-termism, lack of support from line managers, an inadequate infrastructure of supporting processes, lack of resources, resistance to change and lack of trust.
The characteristics of the HRM concept as they emerged from the writings of the pioneers and later commentators are that it is:
- diverse;
- strategic, with an emphasis on integration;
- commitment-orientated;
- based on the belief that people should be treated as human capital;
- unitarist rather than pluralist, individual rather than collective, with regard to employee relations;
- a management-driven activity – the delivery of HRM is a line management responsibility;
- focused on business values.
The diversity of HRM
But these characteristic of HRM are by no means universal. There are many models, and practices within different organizations are diverse, often only corresponding to the conceptual version of HRM in a few respects.
Hendry and Pettigrew (1990) play down the prescriptive element of the HRM model and extend the analytical elements. As pointed out by Boxall (1992), such an approach rightly avoids labelling HRM as a single form and advances more slowly by proceeding more analytically. It is argued by Hendry and Pettigrew that 'better descriptions of structures and strategymaking in complex organizations, and of frameworks for understanding them, are an essential underpinning for HRM'.
A distinction was made by Storey (1989) between the 'hard' and 'soft' versions of HRM. The hard version of HRM emphasizes that people are important resources through which organizations achieve competitive advantage. These resources have therefore to be acquired, developed and deployed in ways that will benefit the organization. The focus is on the quantitative, calculative and business-strategic aspects of managing human resources in as 'rational' a way as for any other economic factor. As Guest (1999) comments: 'the drive to adopt HRM is… based on the business case of a need to respond to an external threat from increasing competition. It is a philosophy that appeals to managements who are striving to increase competitive advantage and appreciate that to do this they must invest in human resources as well as new technology.' He also commented that HRM 'reflects a longstanding
capitalist tradition in which the worker is regarded as a commodity'. The emphasis is therefore on the interests of management, integration with business strategy, obtaining added value from people by the processes of human resource development and performance management and the need for a strong corporate culture expressed in mission and value statements and reinforced by communications, training and performance management processes.
The soft version of HRM traces its roots to the human-relations school. It emphasizes communication, motivation and leadership. As described by Storey (1989) it involves 'treating employees as valued assets, a source of competitive advantage through their commitment, adaptability and high quality (of skills, performance and so on)'. It therefore views employees, in the words of Guest (1999), as means rather than objects. The soft approach to HRM stresses the need to gain the commitment – the 'hearts and minds' – of employees through involvement, communications and other methods of developing a high-commitment, high-trust organization. Attention is also drawn to the key role of organizational culture.
In 1998, Karen Legge defined the 'hard' model of HRM as a process emphasizing 'the close integration of human resource policies with business strategy which regards employees as a resource to be managed in the same rational way as any other resource being exploited for maximum return'. In contrast, the soft version of HRM sees employees as 'valued assets and as a source of competitive advantage through their commitment, adaptability and high level of skills and performance'.
It has, however, been observed by Truss (1999) that, 'even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is often hard, with the interests of the organization prevailing over those of the individual'. And research carried out by Gratton et al (1999) found that, in the eight organizations they studied, a mixture of hard and soft HRM approaches was identified. This suggested to the researchers that the distinction between hard and soft HRM was not as precise as some commentators have implied.
The strategic nature of HRM
Perhaps the most significant feature of HRM is the importance attached to strategic integration, which flows from top management's vision and leadership, and which requires the full commitment of people to it.
David Guest (1987, 1989a, 1989b, 1991) believes that a key policy goal for HRM is strategic integration, by which he means the ability of the organization to integrate HRM issues into its strategic plans, to ensure that the various aspects of HRM cohere, and to provide for line managers to incorporate an HRM perspective into their decision making.
Karen Legge (1989) considers that one of the common themes of the typical definitions of HRM is that human resource policies should be integrated with strategic business planning. Keith Sisson (1990) suggests that a feature increasingly associated with HRM is a stress on the integration of HR policies both with one another and with business planning more generally.
John Storey (1989) suggests that: 'the concept locates HRM policy formulation firmly at the strategic level and insists that a characteristic of HRM is its internally coherent approach'.
The commitment-orientated nature of HRM
The importance of commitment and mutuality was emphasized by Walton (1985) as follows: 'The new HRM model is composed of policies that promote mutuality – mutual goals, mutual influence, mutual respect, mutual rewards, mutual responsibility. The theory is that policies of mutuality will elicit commitment which in turn will yield both better economic performance and greater human development.'
David Guest (1987) wrote that one of the HRM policy goals was the achievement of high commitment – 'behavioural commitment to pursue agreed goals, and attitudinal commitment reflected in a strong identification with the enterprise'.
It was noted by Karen Legge (1995) that human resources 'may be tapped most effectively by mutually consistent policies that promote commitment and which, as a consequence, foster a willingness in employees to act flexibly in the interests of the "adaptive organization's" pursuit of excellence'.
But this emphasis on commitment has been criticized from the earliest days of HRM. Guest (1987) asked: 'commitment to what?', and Fowler (1987) has stated:
At the heart of the concept is the complete identification of employees with the aims and values of the business – employee involvement but on the company's terms. Power, in the HRM system, remains very firmly in the hands of the employer. Is it really possible to claim full mutuality when at the end of the day the employer can decide unilaterally to close the company or sell it to someone else?
People as 'human capital'
The notion that people should be regarded as assets rather than variable costs, in other words treated as human capital, was originally advanced by Beer et al (1984). HRM philosophy, as mentioned by Karen Legge (1995), holds that 'human resources are valuable and a source of competitive advantage'. Armstrong and Baron (2002) stated that: 'People and their collective skills, abilities and experience, coupled with their ability to deploy these in the interests of the employing organization, are now recognized as making a significant contribution to organizational success and as constituting a significant source of competitive advantage.'
Unitarist philosophy
The HRM approach to employee relations is unitarist not pluralist – it is believed that employees share the same interests as employers. In the words of Gennard and Judge (1997), organizations are assumed to be 'harmonious and integrated, all employees sharing the organizational goals and working as members of one team'.
Guest (1987, 1989a, 1989b, 1991) considers that HRM values are: unitarist to the extent that they assume no underlying and inevitable differences of interest between management and workers; and individualistic in that they emphasize the individual–organization linkage in preference to operating through group and representative systems.
HRM as a management-driven activity
HRM can be described as a central, senior-management-driven strategic activity, which is developed, owned and delivered by management as a whole to promote the interests of the organization that they serve. John Purcell (1993) thinks that 'the adoption of HRM is both a product of and a cause of a significant concentration of power in the hands of management', while the widespread use 'of the language of HRM, if not its practice, is a combination of its intuitive appeal to managers and, more importantly, a response to the turbulence of product and financial markets'. He asserts that HRM is about the rediscovery of management prerogative. He considers that HRM policies and practices, when applied within a firm as a break from the past, are often associated with words such as 'commitment', 'competence', 'empowerment', 'flexibility', 'culture', 'performance', 'assessment', 'reward', 'teamwork', 'involvement', 'cooperation', 'harmonization', 'quality' and 'learning'. But 'the danger of descriptions of HRM as modern bestmanagement practice is that they stereotype the past and idealize the future'.
Keith Sisson (1990) suggested that: 'The locus of responsibility for personnel management no longer resides with (or is "relegated to")
specialist managers.' More recently, Purcell et al (2003) underlined the importance of line management commitment and capability as the means by which HR policies are brought to life.
Focus on business values
The concept of HRM is largely based on a management- and businessorientated philosophy. It is concerned with the total interests of the organization – the interests of the members of the organization are recognized but subordinated to those of the enterprise. Hence the importance attached to strategic integration and strong cultures, which flow from top management's vision and leadership, and which require people who will be committed to the strategy, who will be adaptable to change and who will fit the culture. By implication, as Guest (1991) says: 'HRM is too important to be left to personnel managers.'
In 1995 Karen Legge noted that HRM policies are adapted to drive business values and are modified in the light of changing business objectives and conditions. She describes this process as 'thinking pragmatism' and suggests that evidence indicates more support for the hard versions of HRM than the soft version.
For some time, HRM was a controversial topic, especially in academic circles. The main reservations have been that HRM promises more than it delivers and that its morality is suspect.
HRM promises more than it can deliver
Noon (1992) has commented that HRM has serious deficiencies as a theory: 'It is built with concepts and propositions, but the associated variables and hypotheses are not made explicit. It is too comprehensive… If HRM is labelled a "theory" it raises expectations about its ability to describe and predict.' Guest (1991) believes that HRM is an 'optimistic but ambiguous concept'; it is all hype and hope.
Mabey et al (1998) follow this up by asserting that 'the heralded outcomes (of HRM) are almost without exception unrealistically high'. To put the concept of HRM into practice involves strategic integration, developing a coherent and consistent set of employment policies, and gaining commitment. This requires high levels of determination and competence at all levels of management and a strong and effective HR function staffed by business-orientated people. It may be difficult to meet these criteria, especially when the proposed HRM culture conflicts with the established corporate culture and traditional managerial attitudes and behaviour.
Gratton et al (1999) are convinced on the basis of their research that there is 'a disjunction between rhetoric and reality in the area of human resource management between HRM theory and HRM practice, between what the HR function says it is doing and that practice as perceived by employers, and between what senior management believes to be the role of the HR function, and the role it actually plays'. In their conclusions they refer to the 'hyperbole and rhetoric of human resource management'.
There is no doubt that many organizations that think they are practising HRM are doing nothing of the kind. It is difficult, and it is best not to expect too much. Most of the managements who hurriedly adopted performancerelated pay as an HRM device that would act as a lever for change have been sorely disappointed.
But the research conducted by Guest and Conway (1997) covering a stratified random sample of 1,000 workers established that a notably high level of HRM was found to be in place. This contradicts the view that management has tended to 'talk up' the adoption of HRM practices. The HRM characteristics covered by the survey included the opportunity to express grievances and raise personal concerns on such matters as opportunities for training and development, communications about business issues, single status, effective systems for dealing with bullying and harassment at work, making jobs interesting and varied, promotion from within, involvement programmes, no compulsory redundancies, performancerelated pay, profit sharing and the use of attitude surveys.
The philosophy of HRM is indeed aspirational, but what is wrong with trying to do better, even if success is hard to obtain? The incessant reference to the rhetoric/reality gap by academics suggests that there is a deeply held and cynical belief amongst them that managements never mean what they say or, if they do mean it, don't do anything about it. This may be so in some cases but it is not a universal characteristic.
Academics often refer to the 'rhetoric' of HR practitioners, but should more accurately have referred to the rhetoric of the HR academics who have been debating what HRM means, how different it is, whether or not it is a good thing and indeed whether or not it exists, endlessly and unproductively. Practitioners have pressed on regardless, in the justified belief that what the academics were writing about had little relevance to their day-today lives as they wrestle with the realities of organizational life. They did not suddenly see the light in the 1980s and change their ways, for better or for worse. The true personnel or HR professionals just kept on doing what they had always done but tried to do it better. They took note of the much wider range of publications about HR practices and the information on socalled 'best practice' provided by management consultants and conference
organizers, and they learnt from the case studies emanating from the research conducted by the burgeoning academic institutions. They also recognized that to succeed in an increasingly competitive world they had to become more professional, and they are encouraged to do so by bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. They took account of new ideas and implemented new practices because they were persuaded that they were appropriate, not because they fitted into any sort of HRM philosophy.
The morality of HRM
HRM is accused by many academics of being manipulative if not positively immoral. Willmott (1993) remarks that HRM operates as a form of insidious 'control by compliance' when it emphasizes the need for employees to be committed to do what the organization wants them to do. It preaches mutuality but the reality is that behind the rhetoric it exploits workers. It is, they say, a wolf in sheep's clothing (Keenoy, 1990a). As Legge (1998) pointed out:
Sadly, in a world of intensified competition and scarce resources, it seems inevitable that, as employees are used as means to an end, there will be some who will lose out. They may even be in the majority. For these people, the soft version of HRM may be an irrelevancy, while the hard version is likely to be an uncomfortable experience.
The accusation that HRM treats employees as means to an end is often made. However, it could be argued that if organizations exist to achieve ends, which they obviously do, and if those ends can only be achieved through people, which is clearly the case, the concern of managements for commitment and performance from those people is not unnatural and is not attributable to the concept of HRM – it existed in the good old days of personnel management before HRM was invented. What matters is how managements treat people as ends and what managements provide in return.
Much of the hostility to HRM expressed by a number of academics is based on the belief that it is hostile to the interests of workers, ie that it is managerialist. However, the Guest and Conway (1997) research established that the reports of workers on outcomes showed that a higher number of HR practices were associated with higher ratings of fairness, trust and management's delivery of their promises. Those experiencing more HR activities also felt more secure in and more satisfied with their jobs. Motivation was significantly higher for those working in organizations where more HR practices were in place. In summary, as commented by Guest (1999), it appears that workers like their experience of HRM. These
findings appear to contradict the 'radical critique' view produced by academics such as Mabey et al (1998) that HRM has been ineffectual, pernicious (ie managerialist) or both. Some of those who adopt this stance tend to dismiss favourable reports from workers about HRM on the grounds that they have been brainwashed by management. But there is no evidence to support this view.
And, as Armstrong (2000) pointed out:
HRM cannot be blamed or given credit for changes that were taking place anyway. For example, it is often alleged to have inspired a move from pluralism to unitarism in industrial relations. But newspaper production was moved from Fleet Street to Wapping by Murdoch, not because he had read a book about HRM but as a means of breaking the print unions' control.
Contradictions in the reservations about HRM
Guest (1999) has suggested that there are two contradictory concerns about HRM. The first as formulated by Legge (1995, 1998) is that while management rhetoric may express concern for workers, the reality is harsher. And Keenoy (1997) complains that: 'The real puzzle about HRMism is how, in the face of such apparently overwhelming critical "refutation", it has secured such influence and institutional presence.' Other writers, however, simply claim that HRM does not work. Scott (1994), for example, finds that both management and workers are captives of their history and find it very difficult to let go of their traditional adversarial orientations.
But these contentions are contradictory. Guest (1999) remarks that 'it is difficult to treat HRM as a major threat (though what it is a threat to is not always made explicit) deserving of serious critical analysis while at the same time claiming that it is not practiced or is ineffective'.
A debate about the differences, if any, between HRM and personnel management went on for some time. It has died down now, especially as the terms HRM and HR are now in general use both in their own right and as synonyms for personnel management, but understanding of the concept of HRM is enhanced by analysing what the differences are and how traditional approaches to personnel management have evolved to become the presentday practices of HRM.
Some commentators (Legge, 1989, 1995; Keenoy, 1990b; Sisson, 1990; Storey, 1993; Hope-Hailey et al, 1998) have highlighted the revolutionary nature of HRM. Others have denied that there is any significant difference in the concepts of personnel management and HRM. Torrington (1989) suggested that: 'Personnel management has grown through assimilating a number of additional emphases to produce an even richer combination of experience… HRM is no revolution but a further dimension to a multifaceted role.'
The conclusion based on interviews with HR and personnel directors reached by Gennard and Kelly (1994) on this issue was that 'it is six of one and half a dozen of the other and it is a sterile debate'. An earlier answer to this question was made by Armstrong (1987):
HRM is regarded by some personnel managers as just a set of initials or old wine in new bottles. It could indeed be no more and no less than another name for personnel management, but as usually perceived, at least it has the virtue of emphasizing the virtue of treating people as a key resource, the management of which is the direct concern of top management as part of the strategic planning processes of the enterprise. Although there is nothing new in the idea, insufficient attention has been paid to it in many organizations.
The similarities and differences between HRM and personnel management are summarized in Table 1.1.
The differences between personnel management and human resource management appear to be substantial but they can be seen as a matter of emphasis and approach rather than one of substance. Or, as Hendry and Pettigrew (1990) put it, HRM can be perceived as a 'perspective on personnel management and not personnel management itself'.


text:
Yet more ramblings, submitted on an occasional basis by our Guest Blogger: Jack Diamond.
Scotland 1 England 3
No, it's not the actual game I want to comment on, but the absurdity of this…
The article on the BBC Sport website refers to the fact that the English F.A. have apologised to the Scottish F.A. because of anti IRA chanting by English fans at the game.
Now, I think we all know that the IRA are/were a terrorist organisation. Yet the English F.A. have taken it upon themselves to apologise for some of their supporters being opposed to terrorist organisations and chanting songs which the IRA might, apparently, find offensive.
It really does beggar belief.
Since when has it been wrong to be opposed to a terrorist organisation? Since when has anyone felt the need to apologise for disliking terrorists? Surely any right minded, normal human being would be anti terrorist?
Apologising in case terrorists have been offended by a football chant? I can only think that it's another example of this crazy, politically correct world we live in.
Political Correctness Gone Mad
Talking about the stupidity of political correctness, take a look at the following article which is carried by a number of newspapers. It concerns a small Primary School in rural England which has been downgraded by Ofsted (Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills in the UK) because it is not 'culturally diverse' enough.
You may have thought this stupidity was a one-off but go back about 5 months and we have almost the exact same story, except it's a school in Devon this time.
The school in Devon are having to send their pupils to meet and stay over with children from a 'culturally diverse' school in Isleworth, near London, at a cost to the parents of £35 per child. Three quarters of the pupils at the Isleworth school are from an ethnic minority background. All this for the Devon school to get an 'outstanding' rating by Ofsted.
As I said, it's a crazy, politically correct world we live in.
(The views expressed in our Guest Blogs are personal opinions only and do not reflect the views of PCGraphics.)
Beat the Bookmakers with Profit Accumulator:


text:
|Dr. Taras recommends Jason's SeaFresh toothpaste and Nature's Gate toothpaste because:
1. It's fluoride free! The trend in the last few years has been to keep the neurotoxin fluoride OUT of toothpaste. Fluoride is good as an active ingredient in rat poison; but it isn't good for people to ingest.
"Throw away that fluoride toothpaste!! Non-fluoride toothpaste can be found in health food stores….."
"Fluoride toothpaste should not be used. Period."
– p.193,
"If you still use fluoride toothpastes, keep them out of the reach of children and never allow children under eight to use them!"
– p.196, The Toxic Dental Office, Dr. Donald Robbins.
2. No sodium lauryl sulfate! Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) is a corrosive foaming agent used in toothpastes and shampoos because it is cheap. SLS dissolves the oil in your skin, drying them out. As SLS denatures skin proteins it causes not only irritation but also allows environmental contaminants easier access to the lower, sensitive layers of the skin.
Perhaps of most concern, once absorbed mimics the hormone Oestrogen and may be responsible for a variety of health problems from PMS and menopausal symptoms to dropping male fertility and increasing female cancers such as breast cancers, where oestrogen is known to be involved.
3. Free from parabens, artificial colors/sweeteners, & sulfates.
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5. Contains no animal ingredients and was not tested on animals.


text:
In this video are shown the Title Pages of the TWO versions of the so-called
Jefferson Bible.
Reading the Title Pages, one can learn much truth not told in the History books.
Always best to go to "original source materials", not accept the "story" of some history book writer who copied some other prior history book writer and thereby duplicated, or compounded the original error.
See for yourself...
And then hear the wonderful wise words of Jefferson sung by the
Wonderful Voices of the Columbia Choral Society!
Friday, February 22, 2008
"I Shall Not Die Without A Hope"
Testament of Freedom - Song 4
sung by Columbia Choral Society
Posted by J R "States" Manship at Friday, February 22, 2008
Labels: Columbia Choral S, History, Jefferson Bible, Thomas Jefferson
No comments:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


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text: LINGUIST List: Vol-19-1774. Tue Jun 03 2008. ISSN: 1068 - 4875. Subject: 19.1774, Review: Morphology: Gibbs & Colston (2007) Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org> Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org> Reviews: Randall Eggert, U of Utah <reviews at linguistlist.org> Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/ The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, and donations from subscribers and publishers. Editor for this issue: Randall Eggert <randy at linguistlist.org> ================================================================ This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. To start a discussion of this book, you can use the Discussion form on the LINGUIST List website. For the subject of the discussion, specify "Book Review" and the issue number of this review. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. ===========================Directory============================== 1) Date: 03-Jun-2008 From: Adel Jebali < jebali.adel at uqam.ca > Subject: Arabic Computational Morphology -------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:11:15 From: Adel Jebali [jebali.adel at uqam.ca] Subject: Arabic Computational Morphology E-mail this message to a friend: http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=19-1774.html&submissionid=180804&topicid=9&msgnumber=1 Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/18/18-3489.html Editors: Soudi, Abdelhadi; van den Bosch, Antal P.; Neumann, Günter Title: Arabic Computational Morphology Subtitle: Knowledge-based and Empirical Methods Series Title: Text, Speech and Language Technology Publisher: Springer Year: 2007 Adel Jebali, Département de Linguistique et de Didactique des Langues, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Canada. SUMMARY This book is a collection of papers that deal with the different methods employed in the field of Arabic computational morphology and the use of these approaches in large scale applications. The two main approaches of this collection are: knowledge-based and empirical. The difference between these methods resides in the manner computational linguists provide the linguistic knowledge used in the analysis. In knowledge-based techniques, the linguist encodes the linguistic knowledge manually, based on a predefined theory of the morphological entities. In the empirical approaches, on another hand, linguistic knowledge is extracted directly from natural language data by employing machine learning techniques. The book preface is written by Richard Sproat, an eminent linguist working on computational morphology. The book itself is divided into four parts, containing fifteen chapters. Part 1 is a three chapter introduction to Arabic computational morphology, and specifically to the two methods used in this field: knowledge-based and empirical. Part 2 contains four chapters and focuses on knowledge-based methods. Part 3 contains four chapters and deals with empirical methods. Finally, Part 4's four chapters deal with the integration of Arabic morphology in two main applications: information retrieval and machine translation. Chapter 1 is written by the editors to offer a brief roadmap of the book. They introduce the two approaches widely used in Arabic computational morphology, the applications related to this field, and Basic Language Resource Kits (BLARK) for Arabic. Chapter 2 focuses on the transliteration scheme adopted in this book to represent Arabic characters. The authors present, as well, guidelines to pronounce Arabic using this scheme. The goal is to have a sort of standard to transliterate Arabic scripts, respected by all the authors in this book. This scheme is proposed as a complete system to be widely adopted by the natural language processing research community working on Arabic, a standard that is currently lacking. Chapter 3 provides a presentation of the main issues facing Arabic morphological analysis. Even if the relation between modern dialects and Modern Standard Arabic is a challenging one, Timothy Buckwalter thinks that the salient issues are orthographic. These include the status of non-standard Arabic characters, the persistent variation in the spelling of some letters, problems related to the tokenization of Arabic input strings and the absence of annotation for lexically-determined features, such as gender, number and humanness. Chapter 4 begins Part 2. It introduces the first of the knowledge-based approaches, called Syllable-Based Morphology (SBM). In this model, morphological realizations are defined in terms of their syllable structure. Cahill shows that this framework accounts for facts from Semitic languages, and particularly Arabic, in the same way it accounts for facts from European ones. The second knowledge-based approach to Arabic morphology is depicted in the fifth chapter. In this approach, which is an inheritance-based one, Al-Najem demonstrates the benefits of using this model to account for Arabic root-and-pattern morphology to capture generalizations, dependencies and syncretisms. He further implements his analysis in DATR, an inheritance network formalism designed for the representation of natural language lexical information. In the sixth chapter, Cavalli-Sforza and Soudi present and use another approach, the Lexeme-Based Morphology of Aronoff (1994) and Beard (1995). In this theory, the priority is given to stems and not to prefixes and suffixes. The authors propose a concatenative method to generate Arabic inflected forms even when the real language-process is not concatenative in nature. They implement this approach in an extension of the MORPHÉ tool developed by Leavitt (1994). The last method in this paradigm is related on the work in two projects: DIINAR.1 and SYSTRAN Arabic-English translator. The approach adopted in those projects is a stem-based Arabic lexicon with grammar and lexis specifications. It is presented in Chapter 7 by Dicky and Farghaly. The authors argue that the most appropriate organization for the storage of information for a language like Arabic is to use stem-grounded lexical databases in conjunction with entries associated with grammar and lexis specifications. The third part of the book focuses on empirical methods and presents four accounts of data-driven processing models of Arabic morphology. Chapter 8, whose authors are Days et al, is a sort of introduction to these methods. The authors present a machine learning approach to the problem of extracting consonantal roots of Arabic words. This approach relies on statistical methods and linguistic constraints as well. The accuracy of the predictions thus obtained is by no means inferior to the quality of human predictions of the accurate roots. The second account in this paradigm is presented in Chapter 9, by Diab et al. These authors provide a Support Vector Machine (SVM) based approach to tokenize, tag and annotate data of Modern Standard Arabic. They apply a method that proved its efficiency when dealing with English data and they obtain high scores working on the Arabic Treebank. Chapters 10 and 11 present two memory-based models whose application data come from the Arabic Treebank. The first of these models is semi-supervised while the second in supervised. In the partially supervised machine learning techniques, largely motivated by first language acquisition, Clark presents a pair of sets of words to the learner, who must align them. The author's focus is on broken plural (a nonconcatenative morphological process). In chapter 11, Van Den Bosh et al use annotated corpora as an application of the memory-based learning to morphological analysis and part-of-speech tagging of written Arabic. Chapter 12 begins Part 4. Larkey et al focus on one possible application for Arabic computational morphology: information retrieval (henceforth IR). They use a method called light-stemming, i.e. stemming without resorting to morphological analysis. They argue that this method is more efficient than several stemmers which are morphological analysis-based. Chapter 13 deals with IR as well. Darwich and Oard present a method to adapt existing Arabic morphological analysis techniques with the aim of making them suitable for the requirements of IR. They present as well a shallow statistical Arabic morphological analyzer called Sebawai and a light-stemmer called Al-Stem. Both were used by the authors in an IR application to produce Arabic index terms. The second application to benefit from morphological analysis is Machine Translation (henceforth MT). In Chapter 14, Habash is mainly concerned with the representations used by different MT-relevant resources (morphological analyzers, dictionaries and treebanks). He discusses the usability of these representations in different MT approaches and argues that the lexeme-and-feature level of representation is motivated. The last chapter focuses on MT as well. Guessoum and Zantout investigate the impact of Arabic Morphological Generation on the quality of MT systems. The one chosen by them is a web-based English to Arabic MT system called Ajeeb. They have translated thousands of sentences using this tool and analyzed these translations. Their analysis reveals that the morphological information captures various linguistic aspects and affects the quality of the translation. EVALUATION I think this collection could indeed be a very good starting point for every researcher who wants to engage in Arabic computational morphology, its challenges, its theories and its applications. The tripartite division provides a clear distinction between the main problems, the theoretical issues and the areas of application. As the editors state with reason, this book is unique in several respects. I know of no other book with a so wide a coverage of both knowledge-based and empirical methods and of applications as well. The book offers a general view of the trends of Arabic computational morphology, but it omits one of the most important approaches. The so-called finite-state morphology of Beesley (1989, 1990), for example, has greatly contributed to the Arabic computational morphology, but no paper is devoted to this knowledge-based approach. The editors mention it in Chapter 1 and present some of its concepts, but I think that this brief presentation does not do justice to such an important theory in the history of computational morphology. Furthermore, redundancy is the main drawback of this book. Each author in each chapter, with the exception of Chapter 12, is concerned with presenting an introduction to Arabic morphology. While this could be useful for someone reading only one paper or some of the papers in isolation, it may be somewhat boring for someone who reads all chapters in the book. It would have been preferable to devote a chapter to introduce Arabic and specifically Arabic morphology. Chapter 3 was meant for that purpose, but Buckwalter focuses mainly on orthographic issues while it is well established that the main issues in Arabic morphology are linguistic (nonconcatenative nature, for example, as stated by (McCarthy, 1981)). Some dialects are mentioned in the papers, such as Egyptian and Levantine Arabic in Chapter 3, which is the only chapter which takes into account the complexity of the data from both Standard Arabic and modern dialects. In the remainder of the book, however, the main focus is on Standard Arabic. While this is a natural choice when dealing with written Arabic, dialects should have been taken into account to propose more precise linguistic analyses. In addition, what some authors call 'Standard Arabic' is not defined in the papers or in the introduction. Cahill states: "The data we will cover in this chapter is from Standard Arabic." (Chapter 4, page 48). He states further: "We will not address bi- and quadriliteral roots, even though the latter do occur in Classical Arabic." (Page 48-49). This means that 'Standard Arabic' includes somehow the variety called 'Classical Arabic', but the data from this one is not to be taken into account. Dichy and Farghaly (chapter 7) state clearly that the variety studied is ''Modern Standard Arabic'' (page 116) which means that data from 'Classical Arabic' are not discussed. Finally, Larkey et al. (chapter 12) declare "The morphological complexity of Arabic (see Chapter 3 of this volume) makes it particularly difficult to develop natural language processing applications for Arabic information retrieval." (Page 222) They make reference to Chapter 3 where Buckwalter takes into account both Standard Arabic and the modern dialects. Nevertheless, their analysis takes only Standard Arabic into account. Apart from these issues, there are some minor considerations I would like to address. I think that a glossary at the end of the book would have been very useful for someone looking for the definition of a specific notion. Besides that, the index is too short and does not contain the authors' names mentioned in the papers. The lists of bibliographic references are formatted according to several standards from one chapter to another. The editors should have put more emphasis on this aspect. Finally, while most authors gloss Arabic examples and give a translation too, some of them translate without glossing (see chapters 6 and 15 for example). REFERENCES Aronoff, M. (1994) _Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes_. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Beard, R. (1995) _Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology: A General Theory of Inflection and Word Formation_. Albany: State University of New York Press. Beesley, K. R. (1989) _Computer Analysis of Arabic Morphology: A Two-Level Approach with Detours. In Third Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics_. Salt Lake City: University of Utah. Published as Beesley, 1991. Beesley, K. R. (1990) Finite-State Description of Arabic Morphology. In _Proceedings of the Second Cambridge Conference on Bilingual Computing in Arabic and English_. No pagination. Leavitt, J.R. (1994) MORPHÉ: A Morphological Rule Compiler. Technical Report, CMU-CMT-94-MEMO. McCarthy, John. (1981) A Prosodic Theory of Nonconcatenative Morphology. _Linguistic Inquiry_, vol. 12, pp. 373-418. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Adel Jebali is currently a lecturer and a PhD student in linguistics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). His researches focus on the implementation of Arabic argument markers within the HPSG framework using the LKB system. He is also interested in computational linguistics and more specifically in Arabic computational morphology and syntax. ----------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-19-1774


text:
Although an excellent fighter, Jem Ward—English champion for most of the period from 1825 to 1831—was the first boxer to be disciplined by a governing body for throwing a fight. Ward turned professional at the age of fifteen with a victory over George Robinson. He remained unbeaten until 1822 when he lost to Bill Abbott, a fighter most observers considered to be far inferior to Ward. After many rounds, Ward shouted to Abbott loud enough that those at ringside could hear, "Now, Bill, look sharp, hit me and I'll go down." When Abbott then hit Ward, he collapsed. The Pugilistic Society conducted an inquiry into the match. Ward confessed that he had been paid one hundred pounds to lose. The Pugilistic Society expelled Ward and barred him from fighting in any ring under its control.
The next year Ward was attending a bout and, when the main event ended quickly, he was called upon to enter the ring against Ned Baldwin, whom he easily defeated. Still unable to clear his name, Ward toured England with other boxers. He defeated Joe Rickens while pretending to be an unschooled farm boy named Sawney Wilson, so as to get better betting odds.
In 1823, the Pugilistic Society reinstated Ward. He lost his next bout to Josh Hudson. In 1825, he challenged the champion Tom Cannon, who was seconded by Hall of Famers Tom Spring and Tom Cribb. On an intensely hot day, Ward won easily. Ward very briefly lost the title when Peter Crawley defeated him in 1827. Crawley retired within days, and Ward reclaimed the championship. He held it until 1831 when he retired.
A fine fighter and powerfully built man, Ward received criticism for refusing to face the younger challenger, James Burke. Ward had some success as an artist, and his paintings were displayed in London and Liverpool. He also enjoyed playing the violin and flute. Among his retirement ventures, he sang in concerts and operated a tavern.
* * *
Excerpted with permission from 'The Boxing Register' by James B. Roberts and Alexander G. Skutt, copyright © 1999 by McBooks Press. All rights reserved.
Born: Dec. 26, 1800
Died: April 3, 1884
Induction: 1995
Jem Ward


text:
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text:
shakespeare wrote:
It bothers me to see celebs consider this woman as a martyr.
In my humble opinion, she wanted to die at the hands of police. There's a traffic stop video where the cops are actually being respectful, but she's screaming about they will have to kill her if they put hands on her and telling her children to fight the police. If the police show up at your door to serve a warrant and you choose to grab a loaded shotgun and get on social media and ignore pleases from your family to surrender...
You invited confrontation with cops. You wanted to die.
These types of cases are too plentiful these days. It seems people can do no wrong now. This fits right in with the "thin blue line" subject. How can you not feel that you need to band together when people start talking like the "experts" in this article.
Anyone that feels the playing feel is still tilted dramatically is just not paying attention. If this interaction can be questioned to this level, how is a policeman supposed to know what it is they should/shouldn't do. A person with a shotgun fires at you and "experts" are telling you how wrong the police were and how it should not have happened that she got shot?
Anyone still want to tell me how they STILL believe the media is conservatively biased. Oh man if you do....and this is the Washington Post, a previously very conservative paper that went middle ground for a while and is now a liberal rag....amazing!!


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"Hundar med färg" from GB 1964
This full color card was issued 51 years ago by GB Glace. This beautiful card is from a set of 25 cards entitled "Hundar med färg" to put in an album that was available at the time. The card was given as a free premium with the purchase of a ice cream. The front of the card shows a photographic type picture of the dog by Åke Wintzell, while the back of the card has a brief description of the breed in Swedish. The card measures 2" x 1 1/2" or 50mm x 40mm.
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Older adults and those with aging parents are faced with challenges as the first of the Baby Boomers are hitting 65. This generation has been termed the "pig in the python", referring to the bulge in statistics created by the high birth rates from 1946 to 1964. Now the pig is starting to show its age. These individuals are faced with the challenges of safely caring for their aging parents and planning for their own long-term care.
Recent news has shown that this may be a far more daunting task than any of them had imagined. Plus two government reports just out indicate that instances of elder abuse are on the rise and that 92% of nursing homes surveyed have hired employees with a criminal background.
Last month, Pennsylvania nursing home workers were caught on hidden camera abusing a 78-year-old woman patient. Lois McCallister had complained to her daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Paul Franch, that she had been hit and slapped by workers. When the home's officials dismissed the complaints as caused by the patient's dementia, Mary and Paul installed a hidden camera in a bedroom clock.
The resulting video showed employees at the Quadrangle senior living facility hitting the woman, pulling at her sensitive ears, poking her eye and refusing to help her put on her shirt. The 12-minute video documents three employees taunting the half-dressed McCallister, preventing her from covering herself up or escaping from their abuse.
"The video depicts criminal activity directed at a senior victim in our county," Delaware County District Attorney Michael Green said. "It's abusive. … It's the humiliation which is most difficult to watch on the video. No senior resident of a facility should be subjected to that kind of behavior, particularly from a health care provider."
In addition to such abuse, seniors are often the victims of crimes. Last month, a New Orleans area nursing home worker, Domenica Thomas, was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing the wedding ring off the finger of a 71-year-old man in her care. After family members inquired about the missing ring, Thomas' theft was caught on surveillance recordings. Thomas has also been accused of stealing from five other residents at the nursing home, said Rick Wood, a spokesman for the St. Tammany Parish District Attorney's Office.
Also last month a 43-year-old employee of a South St. Paul MN nursing home was charged with stealing from two vulnerable seniors in her care. Prosecutors said the financial losses to the two vulnerable adults from March of 2009 to November of 2010 totaled $62,994.80. Most of the losses were in the form of checks written to Blair from the victims' checking accounts, prosecutors said.
These types of incidents aren't surprising to Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, who just issued the March 2011 report on the rate of criminal convictions among nursing home employees. Levinson obtained the names of more than 35,000 nursing home employees and then checked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to see if they had criminal records.
"Our analysis of F.B.I. criminal history records revealed that 92 percent of nursing facilities employed at least one individual with at least one criminal conviction," Mr. Levinson said. "Nearly half of nursing facilities employed five or more individuals with at least one conviction. For example, a nursing facility with a total of 164 employees had 34 employees with at least one conviction each."
Such a report is enough to send shivers up the spines of those who have to make the difficult decision to find a suitable place for Mom and Dad and other family members when they can no longer live safely by themselves. Forced by the recent recession to continue to work, many cannot simply take in their aging parents since they would not be home enough to care for them adequately. Therefore, a nursing home becomes an essential option. What is a person to do in light of such statistics and news reports to keep one's parents safe?
A recent Wall Street journal Market Watch article How to Pick the Right Nursing Home gave some good tips on how to make these decisions and protect your loved ones:
- Lay out your options. Determine which nursing homes in your area are worth at least a look. Start out by casting a wide net. This online tool will locate the nursing homes in any specified area and tell you how they rate on two measures: quality of care and how much time the staff spends with residents. Winnow your list down to only homes with four or five stars on quality of care, and 3.5 to 4.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day, says Larry Minnix, president of LeadingAge, a coalition of more than 5,400 organizations that support older Americans. Next, you can consult for free with a long-term care ombudsman in your area. These advocates for nursing home patients can give you the scoop on local facilities, says Andrew Carle, the founding director of the senior housing administration program at George Mason University.
- Tally the costs. Once you've determined your wish list, check their costs. The national average rate for a private room in a nursing home is $229 per day and for a semi-private room, $205 per day (up from $219 and $198, respectively, in 2009). Also expect to pay more if your parent has a health problem like Alzheimer's that requires extra supervision.
Total cost is just as important as monthly costs. Considering that women in nursing care spend an average of 3.7 years and men spend 2.2 years, the total costs for a woman's care would run $309,000 (or $276,000 for a semi-private room) and $183,000 (or $164,000 for a semi-private room) for a man. These costs generally cover room and board, day-to-day nursing, meals and activities, but expect to pay extra for doctor's visits, prescription drugs and transportation, says Kathy O'Brien, a senior gerontologist with the MetLife Mature Market Institute. And Medicare only covers "medically necessary" nursing home care, and does not cover custodial nursing home care, like help with bathing or dressing. But remember: paying more doesn't necessarily get you better quality care, says Carle.
- Make multiple visits. Armed with your short list of nursing homes you can afford, visit each place more than once and at different times of the day. Make sure you make at least one of those visits in the evening, when staffing tends to be thinner. During each visit, look at how the workers interact with the residents: Do they smile at them? Do they know their names? Do they treat them kindly? You're looking for a staff that considers the residency a "home," not a hospice for sick people, says Evvie Munley, a senior health policy analyst at Leading Age. You should also stop some of the residents and other visitors to ask how they like the staff, food and other services.
- Meet the key players. Ultimately the care your loved one gets is only as good as the staff, so it's important to meet as many employees as you can — especially senior management since they oversee hiring and the day-to-day running of the home. Set up a time to meet these three people: the director of nursing, the facility administrator and the medical director, says Minnix. Ask them for their qualifications, how long they've been working with the elderly, what their typical day at work is like, and what they like and don't like about their jobs.
- Ask the right questions. Now is no time to be docile. Grill management and employees. First up, ask the facility if they do background checks on their employees. Though they won't show you the specifics of each background check, they should tell you if anyone working there has a criminal background. You should also ask for a copy of their latest federal inspection, which will highlight problems the facility has had, including complaints of abuse or neglect.
Equally important to all of these precautions before you choose a nursing home is to be extra vigilant once a family member is settled in. It is normal to wish for the best and minimize complaints since one does not want to switch homes. Often complaining is hard and one fears that a home might start to treat one's parents badly in retaliation for creating problems, but who else will care more for your family members?
Learn from the cases in the news and the government reports. Even a celebrity like Mickey Rooney can fall prey to elder abuse, why not your loved one? Sometimes you will have to take action to protect those you care about, whether contacting authorities or finding legal advocacy to improve a bad situation. Eventually, about 40% of adults over 65 years old will at some point spend time in a nursing home, according to Marc Agronin, a geriatric psychiatrist and the author of "How We Age." So we need to be prepared for this stage of life to be a good one, too.
(c) Copyright 2011 Brett A. Emison
Brett Emison is currently a partner at Langdon & Emison, a firm dedicated to helping injured victims across the country from their primary office near Kansas City. Mainly focusing on catastrophic injury and death cases as well as complex mass tort and dangerous drug cases, Mr. Emison often deals with automotive defects, automobile crashes, railroad crossing accidents (train accidents), trucking accidents, dangerous and defective drugs, defective medical devices.


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|Call Number
|Date Due
|Salle S
|12442-01 / Ecole STF (Browse Shelf)
Bibliogr. p. 187-196. Index
Publisher's description: Analyzing the phase transition from diffusive to localized behavior in a model of directed polymers in a random environment, this volume places particular emphasis on the localization phenomenon. The main questions: What does the path of a random walk look like if rewards and penalties are spatially randomly distributed?This model, which provides a simplified version of stretched elastic chains pinned by random impurities, has attracted much research activity, but it (and its relatives) still holds many secrets, especially in high dimensions. It has non-Gaussian scaling limits and it belongs to the so-called KPZ universality class when the space is one-dimensional. Adopting a Gibbsian approach, using general and powerful tools from probability theory, the discrete model is studied in full generality. Presenting the state-of-the art from different perspectives, and written in the form of a first course on the subject, this monograph is aimed at researchers in probability or statistical physics, but is also accessible to masters and Ph.D. students.
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|Search found 4 matches
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7 comments:
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Came here through suroba's blog:
- February 26, 2010 at 12:36 PM
- Kumudha said...
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- March 1, 2010 at 7:42 PM
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- November 6, 2017 at 1:30 PM
- Aboobacker Sidheeq said...
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Long Engineering, Inc., is a land surveying and civil engineering firm headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. We have been recognized by the Zweig Group and ranked #24 on their 2017 Hot Firm list for the fastest growing Architecture, Engineering, Environmental and Planning consulting firms in the United States. This is the eighth year we have been recognized for our rapid growth. Long Engineering, Inc. provides services in Land Surveying, Land Development, Transportation, Bridge Design, Subsurface Utility Engineering and Construction Engineering and Inspection. We have nearly 100 employees that support our clients throughout the State of Georgia.
What factors lead to Long Engineering, Inc. being an excellent company to work for? Becoming involved in captivating projects, superior benefit and compensation packages, professional and career development opportunities, and an unmatched culture with personable employees focused on meeting our client's needs.
Long Engineering, Inc. offers its employees a competitive benefits package
Health, Wellness, Financial, and Work/Life Benefits:
- Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance programs
- Short term and long term disability
- Paid time off (PTO)
- 401(K) program with options of up to 4% matching
- Education Reimbursement program
- 7 ½ paid holidays annually
- Performance based bonuses
Project Manager – Land Development
Long Engineering, Inc. is seeking a Project Manager for our Atlanta, Georgia office. The Project Manager position requires strong leadership and communication skills, excellent technical knowledge within the land development field, monitors and tracks project progress and schedules, invoices and budget, and is responsible for overall project performance and profitability. The candidate is also responsible for preparing proposals, managing client relationships and plan, direct and monitor all aspects of multiple land development projects. This position requires strong drive, motivation and self-initiative and reports directly to the Senior Project Manager.
The responsibilities of this position include, but are not limited to:
- Performing site design including preparation of site plans, grading and drainage plans, erosion and sediment control plans, storm water management, detailing and permitting
- Supervising and mentoring junior engineers and CAD technicians
- Managing multiple project schedules and budgets simultaneously
- Performing design work accurately and efficiently
- Communicating clearly and positively both internally and externally
- Preparation of proposals
Minimum Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering
- Minimum of 7 years of experience in site design
- Professional Engineer licensure in Georgia is required or ability to obtain within 6 months
- Strong leadership skills – ability to manage and build teams effectively
- Excellent communication skills (verbal and written)
- Highly organized, detail-driven and conscientious
- History of managing projects efficiently and profitably
- Valid Driver's License
- Commitment to detail and quality of work
Preferred Qualifications:
- Thorough knowledge of applicable zoning and development ordinances and approval processes
- Civil 3D software, hydrology, and hydraulic software experience
- GSWCC Level II Design Professional Certification
Please submit all inquiries to Joe Severin @ email@example.com
Project/Design Engineer – Land Development
Long Engineering, Inc. is seeking a Project/Design Engineer for our Atlanta, Georgia office. The Project/Design Engineer is responsible for civil engineering design associated with commercial, institutional, retail, hospitality, and residential projects, primarily in an urban setting. The candidate will have experience in the development of site plans, grading and drainage plans, utility plans, erosion and sediment control plans, and hydrology/hydraulics. The position reports directly to the team Project Manager.
The responsibilities of this position include, but are not limited to:
- Design of land development projects
- Perform hydrologic/hydraulic studies
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- Obtain development permits from local/state agencies
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Minimum Requirements:
- Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from accredited college
- Minimum of 3 years of design experience in site development on a wide variety of projects
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- Engineer-in-Training Registration
- Civil 3D software, hydrology, and hydraulic software experience
- Valid Driver's License
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Preferred Qualifications:
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- Knowledge of local permitting requirements
- Ability to multitask in a fast-paced environment
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- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- GSWCC Level II Certification
Please submit all inquiries to Joe Severin at email@example.com
Survey Party Chief – Land Surveying
Long Engineering, Inc. is seeking a Survey Party Chief for our Atlanta, Georgia office. The Survey Party Chief will be responsible for supervising a survey team in performing topographic and boundary surveys and database surveys. They will also ensure the accuracy of field work, perform field calculations, operate and maintain Leica survey equipment, make proper field notes and sketches, ensure the proper maintenance of crew vehicles, adhere to all applicable safety procedures and other duties as necessary to complete complex survey projects.
The responsibilities of this position include, but are not limited to:
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- Perform roadway database surveys
- Ability to operate robotic total stations with proficiency in GPS, Static, and RTK technology
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- Must be detail oriented and document all survey procedures and results
- Meet specified schedules and budgets
Minimum Requirements:
- High School Diploma or GED
- 5 years of experience as a survey party chief
- Valid Georgia driver's license with a clean driving record
- Good mathematical and communication skills
- Commitment to detail and quality of work
Preferred Qualifications:
- Proficiency of field survey methods
- Desire to further career in surveying
- Desire to work with a highly skilled Registered Land Surveyors to learn advanced survey techniques
- Ability to work overtime and travel throughout the state of Georgia
- Physically able to work outdoors under all conditions
- Ability to handle multiple tasks within the same day
Please submit all inquiries to Mike Thurman at firstname.lastname@example.com
Senior Roadway Construction Inspectors – Construction Inspection & Engineering (CEI)
Long Engineering, Inc. is seeking a Senior Roadway Construction Inspector(s) for our Atlanta, Georgia office. The Senior Roadway Construction Inspector(s) will join our growing Construction Engineering and Inspections Department. Positions are available across the state of Georgia with preference given to local candidates. The candidate will provide quality assurance reviews of roadway and/or bridge projects being constructed to construction is in compliance with the plan and specifications. Individuals must be detail oriented and organized in the documentation of observations.
The responsibilities of this position include, but are not limited to:
- Observe construction and document compliance/non-compliance with contract documents
- Conduct field tests according to established procedures
- Coordinate with other inspectors and supervisors on testing requirements
- Become familiar with project contract documents
- Communicate technical matters to the client in a concise and accurate manner
- Conduct activities in a safe manner
Minimum Requirements:
- 10 years of experience in roadway, bridge and highway inspections
- GSWCC Level I or II certification or WECS certification
- Concrete and Asphalt Testing certification
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in roadway, bridge, or highway inspections
- Possession of certifications in GDOT and/or GSWCC Erosion Control
- Field Concrete Technician and Asphalt QCT
- Roadway Technician Testing Certification
- Valid Georgia driver's license with a clean driving record
Please submit all inquiries to Mike Thurman at firstname.lastname@example.com


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Jolene Gray
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Mumbai: Axis Bank Ltd, India's third largest private sector bank by assets on Tuesday cut its fixed rate home loan interest rate to 10.40% from 11.75% earlier as it seeks to tap the increased demand for homes from middle income households.
The new interest rate which will be fixed for 20 years will be available for loans up to Rs.50 lakh in metro with property value at Rs.65 lakh and is valid till March 2015.
The cut in the fixed rate loan is also the first by any bank since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that an interest rate cut is likely in the first quarter of calendar year 2015, on 2 December.
"There is strong demand from customers to get a fixed rate home loan. We expect demand for this product from suburbs like Virar and Vasai near Mumbai, tier II cities in states like Gujarat and south India and rural India," said Jairam Sridharan, president of retail lending and payments, Axis Bank.
Home loans dominate Axis Bank's retail loan book of Rs.90,277 crore with a 53% share and Sridharan expects it to continue to corner around 50% of the bank's loan book for the rest of the year. Retail loans with 27% to 28% growth have been the fastest growing segment for the bank so far this fiscal year, but home loans have grown just 11-12%.
"This has been a slow year on home loans because big markets like Mumbai and surrounding areas and the national capital region have not grown because homes are not affordable and as borrowers are not confident that builders will finish construction in the given time frame," Sridharan said.
Existing borrowers who pay a floating rate can shift to a fixed rate by paying half a percentage point of the outstanding principal as a one-time fee, while the bank has fixed a 2% pre-payment fee on this loan in case borrowers want to prepay their loans later, Sridharan said.


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Brook Trout Inn provides the comfort and convenience your own home while allowing you to enjoy the natural beauty of Yellowstone Country. Choose from our unique historical cozy cabin, family style home or lodge like properties. This is the ultimate destiny for any who appreciate wildlife, panoramic scenic views, outdoor activities, and historical landmarks. We are neighbors to Hebgen, Henry's and Yellowstone Lakes along with blue ribbon fishing rivers of the Madison, Gallatin, Snake, and Yellowstone. Just outside the door are horseback riding trails, hiking, mountain biking, ATVs, downhill and cross-country skiing, and world class snowmobiling.If you want a getaway from the hectic pace of city life, then come relax and enjoy the serenity of Brook Trout Inn.
Mailing Address
Not AvailableStreet Address1730 Targhee Pass HighwayWest Yellowstone,
Phone: 406-646-4254
Brook Trout Inn is located near West Yellowstone. Coming from the southwest (Idaho) on Highway 20, we are 1.5 miles from the Montana/Idaho border on the right side of the highway with a white vinyl fence bordering Brook Trout Inn. Coming from the town of West Yellowstone, we are 7 miles west on Highway 20 on the left side just before the Super 8 Motel.
All YearHours24 Hours
Cash, Personal Check (In State), Personal Check (Out Of State), Travelers ChecksReservationsLate Cancellation Fee, Reservations Accepted, Walk-Ins Welcome
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