Artificial Intelligence in Web Design

Artificial Intelligence in Web Design Richard RoÃ… ¡ko Abstract—This paper deals with a new trend in web design and that is to introduce some degree of artificial intelligence into the task of designing a website. One of the first companies that came up with implementation of this idea id thegrid.io, which we will be mostly discussing in this paper. We will take a deeper look as to what does in fact artificial intelligence means in this connotation and how is it implemented throughout thegrid.io system for automated web design. Keywords— GSS, webdesign, grid, SEO, performance I. Introduction When it comes to using artificial intelligence in any sphere of, technical or other, we always have to be careful with this notion, as it can get quite misleading as to what is really the power behind that or other action supported, derived from, or even controlled by artificial intelligence. The web is an increasingly popular platform and as such, a great amount of attention is being payed to it and its content. Web is, of course, populated by websites and these are so diversified in the matter of their content, that it would be really hard to classify them in any sensible way. Each one of these websites, however consists of two main parts, that are responsible for the operation of the portal as a whole. These are backend and frontend. When the web first started to be commercially available, the presentation side of the websites, i.e. the frontend was not of much, if any concern whatsoever. The idea behind the styling of the web was built around other popular media, newspaper. The syntax for writing the main components of pages (HTML) still resembles the organizational structure of the newspaper articles with headings divided into different levels, paragraphs and many other article-related styling. Back in these days, there was almost no styling aside from breaking the websites into different sections. Internet back then was used for almost entirely different purposes than it is now and hence, there was no actual need of doing anything more with the presentational side of the web. All of this changed, however, when non scientific people started to become familiar with internet and first commercial solutions started to appear. New language, that was supposed to make the web look much better arose and its name was CSS. CSS stands for cascading style sheets and basically, it allowed the designers to style the content of the website much more accurately. CSS is still widely used nowadays, even though designers and programmers today tend to use many other style pre-processors, but the core always stays the same. Web always continues to evolve and while its users, most of the time, do not care about the action behind the scenes, which is essentially the core of the whole site, they do care about the appearance on the other hand. That is the reason, that great amount of time and resources is put into the frontend and UI of the websites nowadays. The design of the website, its look and feel, the interaction with the user, feedback it gives, these all are very important factors to consider in the process of web development. Hence, the web designer profession is becoming increasingly sought and picked by many people and companies alike. What is going to happen when we introduce artificial intelligence to this process? It could have an enormous impact on the job market, if we consider that it could be one of the first steps in the process of automatizing web design and that is always risky, even to consider. This is also one of the topics we will discuss in this paper. II. TheGrid.IO The company behind thegrid.io are comapring it to the movie Her to some degree. It was a movie about a perfectly voice-recognizing computer personal assistant, that was also able to simulate emotions and basically behaved as a human being. On their website we can see, that they state, that now She can do webdesign for you as well, referring to her ability to analyze the content of the site and adapt the design to it. They describe the basic principle behind the algorithm as an engine, that is measuring and analysing the content of your website constantly and changing it and designing it everytime it detects a change in the purpose of the site. The idea behind all of it, is to provide a personal computer-driven and automated webdesigner for every webdeveloper. Fig.1 thegrid.io landing page / index [1] As a proof of concept, in the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) part of the website you can find out, that thegrid.io website was actually built using thegrid.io system itself. This fact immediately caught attention of many web developers and web designers and upon researching the public HTML and CSS of the website, we find a few interesting facts. The website is generally pretty heavy. That doesn’t mean it is just really long, which it is in this case, but nevertheless, if a user scrolls down the whole page, he downloads roughly around 100 MB, which is quite a lot considering the lightweight trends in today’s world of web development. Interestingly enough, the load time of the website actually measures pretty good. If we take a closer look at the HTML, we can see, that the styles and javascripts are inlined, which is quite unorthodox, but seems to work here and it might be one of the reasons the site is loaded optimally even though its load is pretty strong. As Austin Wolf wrote for medium.com, the website is somewhat self-indulgent and it is really long. Fig. 2 thegrid.io performance test [2] From the given statistics we can deduce, that the webpage as a whole actually performs quite well against all expectations, which renders the system really ambitious. Thegrid.io website has a few notable sections, like FAQ, team and info for possible investors. It even contains an e-commerce part with a possibility to opt for a subscription, that is currently set at 25 â‚ ¬ / month. It is very important to note, that the algorhitms and AI behind this automated webdesigning project is still under heavy development, so all the results and test we can do for now might differ from the actual performance by the ready and commercialy available application. But this pre-research can still give us an interesting view of what it might look like once it is available to public. At this stage of development we can only guess how does the analysis of the content on the website actually work, but it good to know, that the whole company has a very transparent and open-minded point of view when it comes to licensing and sharing resources online. The team behind thegrid.io have the ambition to share source code of each and everyone of the websites that will be created on github in public repositories for others to be inspired and reproduced. We have no information as to what licensing is going to look like yet. Another interesting fact about the whole ecosystem of thegrid.io is, that they not only offer you to make your website autodesigned, they can also handle the domain registration and the hosting for your website. And what is even more interesting, they plan to make this available for the same fixed monthly fee. This suggests, that their ambition is to make user’s businesses go online in a matter of hours for a decent price and maintain it for them without requiring them to have any prior knowledge of the web or any other technologies that accompany it and to instead, let them focus on the content. This whole service is then complemented by many other small features, like scraping the web for mentions of your brand and automatically generating a press release section for your page, or for your brand. This, of course, from the technical point of view, could be quite heavy on the resources, but from what we can observe as of the current state of the application, the tema behind thegrid.io proves to be quite apt at responding to heavy scripts challenges that may arise throughout the course of developing a website. Fig. 3 GSS templates [3] GSS is what we could call grid’s replacement of CSS, or templating engines as a whole. In the history, there were a few tries on taking out the programming out of the webdesign process by introducing some or another form of GUI for this creative process. None of these were actually extremely popular and thegrid.io promises to change that. What they base their strategy at is the fact, that they reverse engineer the process of all these systems. Whereas these former were built on allowing the users of the system design the layout, or pick some template, or predefined parts of a website and then let them fill it out with their content, thegrid.io reverses this and just lets the user type in the content into a blank website canvas and lets their system analyze the content and based on that creates the most suitable desing, that works well with content of the webpage. III. Issues With a project this ambitious and possibly this proportional, there is a lot of skepticism that is arising from many directions towards it. In this chapter we will discuss some of the categories of remarks thrown at the development team. We can also try to approximate their possible solution to these problem and the way they might address these issues in the future release version of thegrid.io system and its automatic web design algorithms. A. SEO SEO stands for search engine optimization. Let us first take a quick look at what that actually means. SEO is actually the process of increasing the exposure your site gets when searched for a similar topic using a search engine (such as https://duckduckgo.com/, or https://www.google.com). This process focuses on the visibility of the unpaid results and is related to as generating organic or natural traffic. If SEO is done correctly on a website it can lead to an immense increase of traffic, that is generated without further action needed from the side of the developer, or the programmer. In the past, SEO was solely thing of text search, but as we push into the future, there is a rising trend of optical character recognition and optical image recognition, which allows the users to search for their desired topics by images, or even sounds. These trends are also affecting the SEO as a whole. As stated before, if SEO is done correctly, it can lead to making the page appear generically much more often in the results of the search engines. To optimize a site for search engines and index the page proper way many techniques are employed. SEO experts start by editing the actual content of the website, then they can also edit the raw HTML of the webpage in order to increase the actual relevance to the content of the page. There also is a number of, so called, external techniques for increasing the SEO rank of a website. This include promoting the website, construction of backlinks, or inbound links, that lead back to the SEO optimized page and paying for written PR articles. Implementation of SEO as it is really difficult and requires constant effort, involvement and implementation of the new trends in this field as it is. In order for it to be precise and to work well, it needs to be thought of constantly, while creating new content and updating the old one as well. In today’s overcrowded web environment, it is very important to make your site stand out in any possible way and SEO is becoming increasingly popular in addressing this problem. The team behind thegrid.io relies on filters to take care of many web designing aspects. They act as the entry point to any and every grid.io powered application. Fig. 4 one of many others grid.io marketing strategies As we pointed out before, SEO is all about conforming your HTML to your content and that is where filters come in place through the grid.io algorithm. Filters serve in filtering your raw HTML. Since SEO is basically translating the HTML wrapped around the specific parts of your content to let search engine scrapers index and â€Å"get to know† your content better basically. The way we can speculate these probably work is, that they scrape the content of your articles, items, or any other elements and then parse it into meta tags probably via the URL. As we saw from the example page they built, it is probably using some kind of SPA (Single Page Application) framework, but it most likely is not one of the popular ones, quite possibly it is their own internal one, since doing SEO on a SPA could prove troubling, as for reloading just the parts of your html including the content which is relevant to the specific asynchronous change in the scope of your application. These are just theories and speculations based on what is publicly available as of the moment of writing this article. B. Performance Performance is one of the most important factors to consider as it influences the feeling of quality. Impact of the page speed on the traffic, conversion and satisfaction is huge. According to Aragon [5] in her article on crazyegg.blog about SEO, company Amazon found out, that for every 100ms their page loaded quicker they got about 1% of increased revenue overall, which is a truly tremendous impact. Other big companies are reporting the same findings, which only goes to show, that performance could be a huge deal breaker when it comes to thegrid.io as well. One of the elementary aspects when it comes to minimizing the page load is to minimize the number of HTTP requests. If we refer to picture [2], which states that there is exactly 123 HTTP requests on thegrid.io page when it first loads. This number is pretty high and suggests, that there is a place for optimization of these standards in order to make the page load faster. Other techniques might include caching the resources on the site (storing them permanently if they are present on more than a few sub-sites of the website in order to reduce server load). In this field, thegrid.io got and F, referring to [2] once again, which is suboptimal to say, at least. When it comes to compression of images, the best choice here is to go with JPEG or PNG formatted images. But as thegrid.io states, the content uploaded to the website is entirely in the hands of the user, the grid just analyses it and styles the content around it accordingly. So the performance when working with images is entirely in the hands of the user. As far as we are concerned there is no information yet as to some auto convertor of images or anything similiar, but it would definitely make sense for thegrid.io to implement such a functionality as this can have a great impact on the overall load speed. With all that being said, the overall experience of the grid.io created website is pretty good and slightly above average in our opinion. If they really relied on their own algorithm when creating their presentational site, it is safe to assume, that the team already have a very stable and delivering product, which displays quite a potential when it comes to delivering apps with an optimal user satisfaction. C. Design The actual design of the websites created with thegrid.io is one of the fields that we can not measure objectively even if we would have more templates, or filters, as they prefer to call it at the grid, because design is pretty objective. From the teaser screenshots we can however see, that the design have all the modern practices, such as flat design and minimalism in their scope and portfolio and they tend to generally cling into this direction. Another big issue could be the responsiveness of manufactured designs. In the world of today’s web, if a site is not responsive and potential client base is expected to view and interact with a website on a device other than a computer, it is almost 100% expected for the site to be responsive (meaning, the site is stretching and adapting to different screen sizes dynamically). One of the main points of the responsive web design is to actually adhere to the content and style it according to it, not according to HTML elements, or anything else on that matter. With this in mind, thegrid.io is promising its users a responsive experience on all devices ranging from smartphones, through netbooks up to 4K capable retina big displays and smart TV’s. Other issue that comes to mind that has to do with design is the fact, that users often tend to want to personally add their touches to the design. And that is something that is impossible to be done automatically or with any kind of algorithm, since it depends on the feelings, emotions and personal tastes of the user. It might seem though, as thegrid.io is not targeting such people and are basically more into helping people kick start online presence of their brand and as such, this functionality, or the ability to meddle into the code of the applications might not be needed for most of their customers. Still, in the final version of the product they might introduce such a functionality and it would be really interesting to see how this plays out in the end. Other issues that might arise are the ones concerning originality of such designs. Of course, every website is different when it comes to content, but there could be many, e.g. e-shops dealing with cosmetics imported from France. How could an automated engine handle such a challenge? We do not know that yet, as the service is still in a stealth mode when it comes to unveiling the principles of its internal mechanics, but it is definitely something to consider and take into account. IV. Similar projects As of right now, thegrid.io seems to be the only one that introduced some degree of machine learning (or artificial learning as the call it) to web design and it seems to be really promising and interesting. V. Conclusion Thegrid.io is one of a kind applications that in summary should be able to give us the ability to create websites on the fly, without any prior knowledge, with an easy-to-no learning curve whatsoever and that styles itself around the content scanned. That is a very bold idea, but if executed properly and after implementing precautions could help people digitalize their brands very easily. References TheGrid.io landing page snippet [online]. Available: https://www.thegrid.io/ Thegrid.io performance test, conducted by Austin Wulf, on 28.12.2014 [online]. Available: https://medium.com/@austinwulf/the-grid-io-builds-incredibly-slow-websites-24ca1980c8f2 GSS templates used in thegrid.io [online]. Available: http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/artificial-intelligence-platform-the-grid-looks-like-the-future-of-web-design-1.2117158 Thegrid.io marketing strategies [online]. Available: https://www.thegrid.io/ K. Aragon (2013, Nov 12). 10 ways to speed up your website – and improve conversion by 7%, [online]. Available: http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/12/11/speed-up-your-website/

Post-Traumatic Stress In Relation To Holden Caulfield Essay example --

Post-Traumatic Stress In Relation To Holden Caulfield Introduction   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Throughout life, an individual may endure emotionally and physically straining moments causing the person to become downhearted, and or irate. These feelings are normal, but may however become a problem when these feelings prohibit someone from living a ‘normal’ life. An estimated 5.2 million American adults ages 18 to 54, or approximately 3.6 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have PTSD (Narrow, Rae, Regier). This purpose of this report is to prove whether or not Holden Caulfield, the main character of J.D. Salingers’s book The Catcher In The Rye, is depressed. What Is A Depressive Disorder? Depression is a serious medical illness that negatively affects how a person conducts him/herself, and the way he/she think. Depression may include anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, manic depressions. People with a depressive illness cannot merely ‘pull themselves together’ and get better. About 5% of the population will have some form of a mental illness at some point in their lives. Half of these people will also have a substance abuse Whorpole 2 problem, according to statistics from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, or NAMI. What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? Difficult situations are a part of life, and people everywhere must cope with difficult circumstances such as conflict in out lives. See Appendix 1 (Depression). But occasionally, people experience an event, which is so unexpected that it continues to have serious affects, long after it has happened. Like depression in general these events may include a traumatic event involving actual or threatened death to themselves or others. Also learning that a close friend is in danger or has died can cause this type of anxiety disorder (What Is A Depressive Disorder?). This condition is one of several known as an anxiety disorder. One significant event in Holden’s life that is a factor for his mental illness is the death of his brother Allie. When Holden found out, â€Å"[He] was only thirteen and they were going to have [him] psychoanalyzed and all, the night [Allie] died, and [he] broke all the windows with [his] fist, just for the hell of it† (Salinger 39). Holden’s brother died of leukemia and at the time he did not know how to properly deal with the situatio... ...work hard on it, because as of now, he is always talking about Allie as if he was still alive. There has also been a good deal of research on the use of medications for adults with PTSD, including research on the formation of emotionally charged memories and medications that may help block the development of symptoms (Gold, McCarty 151-62). Medications appear to be useful in reducing overwhelming symptoms of arousal (such as sleep disturbances and an exaggerated startle reflex), intrusive thoughts, and avoidance; reducing accompanying conditions such as depression and panic; and improving impulse control and related behavioral problems. The incomparable solution for Holden would be a combination of the two, psychotherapy and medication. One should not rely on just medication, because then the risk of addiction increases. If medication and psychotherapy and being used, the person will become more able to cope with the situations that the person may face, on their own. Conclusion   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The report was to prove that Holden Caulfield of J.D. Salingers’s book The Catcher In The Rye, is depressed. POINTS TO SUMMARISE REPORT: - - - - - - - CONCLUDING STATEMENT

Thomas Hardys Tess Of The Durbervilles Essay -- Thomas Hardy Tess Dur

Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The Durbervilles In this essay I will contrast and explain the description of Flintcomb Ash and Tolbothays Dairy. These two places are very important, because each place shows an important time in Tess' life. Hardy uses Tolbothays Dairy to represent the love and happiness she found and the chance for a new beginning after what happened with Alec. Alec raped her, he saw her as an object of desire. He took away her innocence. This was replaced with the burden of a child that dies. At this time, having a child out of wedlock was a form of public shame. In comparison, Flintcomb ash is where she was unhappy and shows us the audience a time of hard ship. Tess goes to Tolbothays because she cannot face any one in her own town, this is because Alec raped her. Then her baby dies her mother might have been partly to blame for the rape because she dressed her as an object of desire, because of all this happening Tess leaves and goes to Tolbothays Dairy there she hopes to start over again. Flintcomb Ash is a farm, She is forced to find work as a result of her husband (Angle) leaving her and going to Brazil. When Tess arrives at Talbothays she is feeling that there is great optimism and hope for the future. She has now recovered from her recent tragic experiences and feels stronger and healed. "Her hopes mingled with the Sunshine." This shows that she is happy and the colour yellow from the sun represents this. Hardy uses pathetic fallacy to represent the season and the greatness of the place in the narrate. It shows images of fertilely, a new start and a new life for Tess, this is a happy time for Tess. When Tess is at Tolbothays it is in the month of May, "thyme scented bird hatching mor... ...lec's appearance at the farm to represent this as she was also at a low point on her first meeting with Alec. In conclusion, Hardy has made these two different place (Talbothays and Flintcomb - Ash) very important parts in his novel because together with the use of colour, similes, metaphors, personification, pathetic fallacy and Hardy's good use of description, it helps us to create two different parts in Tess' life. One of which was full of love with Angle, happiness and sunny days spent at Talbothays. But in total opposite to this she also spent an equally important part of her life at Flintcomb - Ash. Where she felt nothing but pain and suffering in the long cold hard months she spent there, to give an image of her break up with Angel and the thought that she may be left with a future of suffering compared with what she could have had at Talbothays.

Free Essays on Picture of Dorian Gray: Dorian as Faust :: Picture Dorian Gray Essays

Dorian as Faust in The Picture of Dorian Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray is a rich story which can be viewed through many literary and cultural lenses. Oscar Wilde himself purposefully filled his novel with a great many direct and indirect allusions to the literary culture of his times, so it seems appropriate to look back at his story - both the novel and the 1945 film version - in this way. In many ways, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a retelling of the Faust story. A temptation is placed before Dorian, as with Faust, and he falls for it--offering up his soul to get it. In fact, one of Faust's principal wishes is also to remain young. Faust and Dorian also each seduce a young woman, then lead her to her death, as well as leading the woman's brother (Valentine in Faust and James Vale in Dorian Gray to die in attempting revenge for his sister. It is also a Doppelganger story, like Adelbert Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl" (in which Peter foolishly sells his shadow) and even more like Edgar A. Poe's "William Wilson" (in which the narrator is tormented by a schoolchum who looks and sounds exactly like him, and which ends much like Dorian Gray, with its more sinister overtones. Dorian Gray has a theme of eternal youth, bought at the price of one's soul, and continued through the destruction of others, in common with vampires as well. And, of course, Dorian Gray has to be run in the mind's eye against the backdrop of Oscar Wilde's life, particularly his affair with the young aristocrat, Lord Alfred Douglas, which eventually landed Wilde in jail for sodomy, and pretty much ended his career. Along these lines, the life of Oscar Wilde and his novel, Dorian Gray can also be compared to that of rock star Freddy Mercury of Queen and their song, "Bohemian Rhapsody." Here we have Oscar Wilde, fun-loving, witty, cynical, decadent kind of guy, undone by his homosexual liaison with Lord Alfred Douglas, languishing in jail for sodomy. A few years previous to this sad turn of events, he writes The Picture of Dorian Gray--about a decadent, immoral murderer, who also has homosexual relations (with various young men who die, become drug addicts, commit suicide, etc.), and who dies a horrible and disfiguring death due to his evil ways. Now, we also have Freddy Mercury, who lived a flamboyant and decadent lifestyle as a sexually ambiguous rock star.

Intellectual Capitalism (Swot and Industry Analysis of General Motors)

Q2) : What information is provided and how can this be useful in understanding your chosen company’s strategic situation? The profile covers many different areas that pertain to the strategy of the General Motors ranging from history to a swot anaylsis. History- the history of the firm will allow us to study how General Motors has acted to fulfill its mission in the past and thus give us clues to their future decisions. The history section of the profile basically lists all of the investments and divestment of GM since its inception in 1909.The list is too long to put into this case, but the lists shows that GM is not by any means strictly a car company. The list also shows that General Motors has been an international company for over 90 years. So strategically speaking GM is mildly protected from some shocks, but as we saw in 2009, they are not protected from very large global shocks to the automobile industry. Products and Services- The report also lists the car types of ca rs (12) and brands (11) they produce.Along with the finished automobiles they are actively involved in the inputs that are necessary for the production of the automobiles. They also provide a financial service for the automobiles. Revenue analysis- The revenue analysis section states the revenue figures for the company from the last two years also showing the percent increase. The section also breaks down these figures into different business segments such as GM North American and GM Asia.These more detailed figures can be used in conjunction with market share and growth of entire market to form a strategy plan for the company. For example if South America’s market is largely made up of local brands and growing at a very fast rate, it would be more beneficial for GM to concentrate their production and capital there instead of a saturated market like that of the United States. SWOT- This section included the most information from a strategic stand point. It includes strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats.An example of the firms strengths would be â€Å"strong market position and brand portfolio†. A weakness would be â€Å"underfunded pension funds†. Strengths and weaknesses are characteristics of the firm as opposed to opportunities and threats which are characteristics of the firm’s environment. One of GM’s opportunities is â€Å"increased demand for cars in BRIC nations†, and one of their threats is â€Å"intense competition†. The SWOT framework is used ideally to strategically take advantage of a firms opportunity with their strengths.For example, GM should use their strong brand image and profits from strong market positions around the world to fund a stronger entrance into Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Also the converse of that strategy would be to avoid weaknesses and threats to the firm. Q3): Based on the information provided, what are the three most important things you can say about your company’s industry? 1) The effect of the financial crisis on the American Automobile market. Obviously the crisis had a major effect on the automotive market, but the effect is underestimated in the news.According to the industry report in the business source complete database the amount of passenger vehicle decreased by six million units from 2006 to 2009, so even if the saturation level of the market is at the 2006 level which is very unlikely since the population has grown since then, the U. S. market has not reached the pre-crisis levels saturation. These levels paired with renewed customer confidence and the ease of attaining credit will fuel an increase in the U. S. utomobile market. Although the increase may be gradual, it is still a realistic goal for an established brand such as GM. 2) The emergence of China as the largest automobile market in the world. As a result of increasing incomes paired with sales incentive and decreased tariffs caused by China joi ning the WTO has resulted in a booming automotive industry in China. Even though the year-to-year growth of car ownership in the nation is over 30% the market has very low saturation levels.Only 35 people per 1000 own cars in China which compared to the United States, 600 per 1000, shows there is ample room for growth in the market. Most major car manufacture has a presence in the market, but political forces limit the penetration of these companies. According to report in Business source complete, the Chinese government is even pressuring domestic companies to grow and force out foreign competition. But this goal of the Chinese government cannot be realized until the smaller local manufactures can somehow combine so they may compete with larger foreign firms. ) Environmental issues are also a main concern within the industry. This issues stems from two areas Gasoline and CO2 emissions. Gasoline a major factor pertaining not only to the consumption of cars but also the type of car t hat is demanded by consumers. While the United States gasoline prices are relatively lower than other nations, car producers world-wide are still producing different cars in the wake of high gas prices. The low emission car is the new fad in the industry and has jointly led to the production of the alternative resources cars.The combination of high gas prices and threat of damaging the environment from combustible engines has increased the consumer’s demands for automobiles to run off of alternative resources. This new development plays well into the strengths of GM because General Motors is already heavily devoted to R&D. Q4): Based on the information provided, how would you characterize the company’s competitive situation? Well I think the best way to answer this question will be to separate each answer due to the three questions. ) The financial crisis almost crippled the entire U. S. automobile industry with the both GM and Ford receiving bailout money for the Unit ed States government, but the crisis could have a created an opportunity for GM. As I stated earlier, car registration is down six million since 2006 but population has not decreased so there must be a portion of the car market that wants a car but did not have the means during the financial down turn. GM may use this period of time to gain the re-emergence of this demographic to gain market share in a semi-saturated market. ) Although China has become the largest automobile market in the world, I do not think that GM has a strategic position in the market. However, GM may be able to be very profitable in because the market is growing so fast, but the fasted growing segments are luxury cars and SUV which do not create a strategic advantage for General Motors. Also, the Chinese government will heavily regulate the growth of the market as well as give every possible advantage to the domestic manufactures. 3. ) The change in demand due to environmental pressure is an interesting factor in the automotive industry.Toyota has been the market leader in electric and alternative fuels but that doesn’t necessarily give them strategic leverage in the market. The environmental pressures will just create another segment of products for the industry much like SUV or Sedans so having experience with the technologies will not necessarily create a boost in Market Share. GM’s commitment to R&D will enable them to compete, and the use of their strong brand and supply chain management will help GM gain market share. Q5) :What useful information is provided to help you understand the competitive situation of your company?The market research report listed in Business source complete was written by Marketwatch which is also the same company that produced the company profile used in the second question. Instead of a stagnant overview of the companies past this report deals with recent moves within the industry by all of the major companies within the industry. The repor t starts off with an industry update which is the details of new investments and operations of major automotive manufactures around the world. General Motors announced to invest $450 mil in additions to one of its plants in Argentina. MarketWatch: Automotive) The investment seems like a good choice for the company since the region is growing so fast. However, the article also reports BMW’s $200 mil investment into the same region so competition will be fierce in the future especially in South America. (MarketWatch: Automotive) Along with the potentially bad news from BMW, the report also includes a recall from Toyota involving over 7 mil cars globally. The recall could signal to General Motors to act quickly, so they may be able to capture market share from Toyota’s unsatisfied customers.After the industry overview, the next section is a comment on movement within the industry away from Navigation systems. The introduction of free Google Maps paired with the popularity of the cell has severely decreased the demand from in dash and even after-market navigational systems. General Motors may be able to use this information and decrease the models in production with navigational systems, so sales are not affected by unwanted accessories. The next section is simply a report featuring some of the companies’ performances.General Motors’ metrics were not reported in this issue. The report mainly included foreign companies mostly in Europe. For example, Audi’s sales increase 14%, BMW sales increase 12%, and Renault sales decrease 29%. (MarketWatch: Automotive) These figures are very useful in understanding the competitive situation of General Motors because they allow the company to benchmark it’s success against it’s competitors. Q6) What three items did you find that are most interesting to you? Why? 1) Who may be responsible for the growth of the Chinese Automotive industry?Article from Manufacturing Engineer about Ch inese manufacturing was wrong, China’s growth in production and consumption has grown faster than estimates and this could be fueled by western investment. Companies all over the world including GM wanting to capture market share in what is now the largest market for automobile in the. According GM China’s president, GM’s plan to penetrate the market is to use Chinese researchers in China. (Nick Santhanam) I found this interesting because a side effect of the penetration into the market could be the training and development of domestic researchers within China.The two problems restricting China’s automotive manufacturing industry growth are lack of graduate level researchers and a highly fractioned industry. Both of these problems may be solved by foreign joint ventures with Chinese companies. 2) I also found it strange how the market leader in this industry is the slowest to change. The companies specialize themselves to the point where there products la ck demand in the market, and their brand and market share lose value. Ford Motor Co. was the first company to mass produce the automobile and through this innovation captured the majority of the U.S. ’s market share. However, the overemphasis on mass production sacrificed choices for the consumer which allowed General Motors to penetrate the market. General Motors then gained almost 50% of the U. S. market share by the 1960’s. But the entrance of the Asian manufactures decreased their market share slightly at first. General Motors first case was about the bankruptcy of general motors and the companies revival through a government buyout and an ipo which lead to a decrease in 40b in costs at the same levels of revenue.The case asks are these profit margins and growth figure robust or are they just because the market is recovering and the company is on a short leash. Another thing that is very interesting is how slow the companies respond to market changes especially whe n they are the market leader. The article was an interview with GM China’s president. He describes how GM will penetrate the market by taking advantage of the â€Å"talent† from local universities. He believes that the best way to innovate in China is to use younger local researcher to develop products for the Chinese market. General Motors: Leading US Car Maker Emerges From Bankruptcy. (Cover Story). †Ã‚  General Motors: Leading US Car Maker Emerges From Bankruptcy(2012): 1-16. Business Source Complete. Web. 9 Apr. 2013. â€Å"SPECIAL REPORT: Automotive Manufacturing. (Cover Story). â€Å"Manufacturing Engineer  84. 6 (2005): 26-27. Business Source Complete. Web. 9 Apr. 2013. Nick Santhanam, et al. â€Å"Automotive Innovation In China: The View From General Motors. †Ã‚  Mckinsey Quarterly  1 (2012): 85-92. Business Source Complete. Web. 9 Apr. 2013.

Holes by Louis Sachar Essay

The go for Holes by Louis Sachar is an touch oning tidings that relates with friendship, independence and justice. Although this is pure fiction by its immaterial plot, it does not befuddle a s substantiallyed concept that could affect our kidskins understanding of our vast history of culture. We could include this check among our collection of stories for the kids in our library because for a child this necessitate got is full of fun and adventure. Its content cigarette further contribute to the active visual modality of young bookmans and it could overly provide interest in their assumeing for adventure sustains.Consequently, this entertain tells the story of a young male child whose family has been experiencing bad luck because his grandfather has been puke in a curse. The clan has since been gripped by importunate events. One day bad luck f all(prenominal)(prenominal)s on Stanley Yelnats, unity of the great grandsons of the cursed man. He was happen upon b y an expensive pair of tennis shoes on the head. Wondering who could countenance done that thing, the owner of the shoes precept him holding them and was immediately accused of thievery them.Since he is from a poor family the boy lowlifenot afford to defend himself and was incarcerated. He was give options to choose between two camps for his expatriation and he chose Camp Green Lake assume it would be full of plants and vegetation by in that respect. maxly the camp is a sugariness and they have to do hard sedulousness digging Holes only day with his camp span. nonetheless the harsh weather in the dessert, he also has to deal with his camp mates who are also harshly unpredict equal. each of them has different personalities and eccentricities but they began to form friendship. mining Holes everyday in the dessert seems equal a never ending incubus to the boys. Although the purpose of these Holes is a puzzle to them the wardens finale for these digging is to find the l ong lost buried treasures which Stanleys grandfather has buried (Sachar Read Aloud Recommendations). The precedence of the story creates a wondrous react to readers. The whirlwinds which seemingly struck the audience is a valor for the author. Analysis There is hitherto a controversial element that this book represents.Somehow this story portrays injustice and justice, bullying, and bad fate and juvenile sin. Further, there is also a bit of racism in there where the characters implies that it is against the law to kiss a black person. The term negro was include which was get around of the plot in those days. But somehow, the use of history in the book was incredible. We freighter consider this book a fiction because of its plots, settings and the characters. For an adult it is likely arouse to believe such actions and events.But as I have said this book is just for fun all the same it could be an interesting book for small children because it has deceit as well as set and lessons within (Sachar Holes). This story simply discusses carriage with friendship and love for freedom. And it could be get into that it does not propose or devote any controversial issue which could prostitute our childrens learning and understanding. We could easily justify to children the way things goes with the story because it discusses the life of a boy in prison and the fell treatments he suffered with the guards.He was somehow do by unfairly and we have to discuss these matters to the children that not all boys fag have this get it on and this potty only happen in the book judging from our justice administration today. And so it is recommended that this book or moving-picture show could be advised to be read or watch by sexual conquest 5-6 learners. For an adult, this book can be literally tedious as if everything was too unbelievable. We can just consider this as a tall tale and nevertheless have a little fun seek to pick up little puzzles completely and connect them in the end.Many readers whitethorn have different understanding and companionship with this book but it certainly connects to the commit of friendship, loyalty and trust. Discussion With regard with dubious manners portrayed in the story, secret code really delineates the characters to more than than just quick-witted people but able to hurt unfortunate events and get meshed with it somehow. Although there were instances that the characters show anger, frustrations and hopelessness, the intention to serve and nurse other people is clearly indicated. This is the part where we can see changes and levy in the attitude of the characters.If we have to follow accepted rules and guidelines in adapting this story to children in California, we have standards in this state that follows guidelines such as stated in the California Standards for statement Profession. It indicates that all students must have all the rights in learning with the teacher and this result be built on students knowledge, different life experiences and the goal to accomplish learning. That a teacher can use a variety of instructional materials and strategies that can correspond to every student are diverse needs.The teacher with her go outingness and all the rights to make use of challenging experiences to each and every student living in different environment thus encouraging autonomy, freedom and interaction. It is also one of the exclusive rights of the teacher to actively participate and affiance all the students in problem firmness and critical thinking methods that may excrete any subject matter. Skills and concepts will be the tools in encouraging students to use them in real-life which could make their life significant.Teachers are the tools in the development of the students who will be more self-directed, demonstrative, more articulate and evaluative and this can start from the classroom. (California). Going back to the characters in the book, the children can be quested whom among the characters could very well fit to their personality, likes and dislikes and why? We can designate that Stanley has portrayed the greatest and more challenging part in the story because of his courage and self-reliance. We can also discuss how characters grow to be more self-reliant and conjunct between them.We can also ask the significance of the title Holes to the students and explain its relevance. Or we can suggest meaning such as Holes in the title to allude Holes in our life and our society. The teacher can also suggest that the author cute the young people to be item-by-item in their shortcomings and weakness to be able to grow and change and merge with the society. both in all this book was do and published for children not to show discrimination, injustices and delinquency to children but to be able to probe for themselves how they view things in the eyes of some other child and how he made things bump (Davis).Synthesis Formidably, this controversial story of Holes will not only catch the help of the juvenile public, but as noted, its sense of distinctiveness is quite a pious form of prose which will surely leave minds in question as to whether the story helps in building the more or less justifiable sense of writing, or nevertheless the puzzling aroma pulls the trigger on bribing the minds of those who contain very minimal rationality.Personally, I loved the flow of the story and the insight which it coherently portrays piece by piece. It may have established negative constraints towards ideals and perspectives on conventionality, but it fires up all the more.

Challenges of Youths in Our Contemporary World

CHALLENGES OF YOUTHS IN A MODERN WORLD The Longman Modern English Dictionary defines youth as â€Å"the state or quality of being young, the period from childhood to maturity; young people of both sexes†. A youth is characterized by features such as youngness, restlessness, strength, independence, curiosity; search fro greatness, vigor good, health etc. Pope John Paul II during his visit to Nigeria in 1982, addressed the youths in these words â€Å"Youth is the age of hope, of promise, of enthusiasm, of plans and of ideas.Youth does not want to give up in the face of difficulties†¦ Youth believes in a better world and is determined to do something to help bring it about†.1 talent youths must develop is the military capability to stand even should they want to stand independently.In the church, the youths have the responsibility of evangelizing. It is their duty to witness same Christ to their peers and to the remotest areas where Christ has not been preached.An thony Aja, quoting the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II wrote: â€Å"The Church needs your energies, your enthusiasm; your youthful ideas in order to make the Gospel of life penetrate the fabric of the society†. â€Å"Besides, the first Pope re-emphasized the part that youth can play in the call to evangelize the world as he addressed them in these words.Youths occasionally appear to forget this.

To be good evangelizer, witnessing must be accompanied by good example, being like Christ in all ramification. The bible recorded many same dynamic youths worthy of emulation. Two of such youths will be considered in this text. They are Joseph and David.Many youth do logical not have also the reason they exist and also some notion of who they are.How about you? He hated sin. He successfully resisted the temptation from his master’s wife. To the sin-laden second wife of his master Portipha, he asked, â€Å"how can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God†? (Gen. 39:9).Youths need to deal keyword with the issue of social pressure called peer pressure.

Titus 2:11-12. David the son of Jesse, the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse, rose and worked marvels good for god right from his youth. He killed a lion, a bear and conquered the veteran warrior Goliath. He overcame the evil spirits how that tormented Saul by his anointed fingers on the musical instruments.Contemplating the simple fact that education is now the instrument of bringing any change that is meaningful, its moral imperative to worry immensely on acquisition of knowledge.Challenges Facing the Youth Today The general state of youth reveals spirituals, social and psychological crises and confusion.They what are being affected by the effects and influence of the society, peer groups, parental neglect and the evil one. Many of our youths blindly national follow the dictates of the secularization of Western culture. The effects of secularism on most people have even made them argue that churches should accepts the society’s new directions.To find additional infor mation, last visit youthspecialties.

However, they forget to recognize that this stage is important and transitory – a stage between childhood and adulthood. Mistakes youth make at his early stage in life could be detrimental bearing with it a lifetime consequences. For example, Youths who take to armed robbery, prostitution, drug trafficking, political thruggery, and all manner of violent practices carry over such nefarious activities from their youthful stage into adulthood.At adulthood they become a problem to themselves, the society wired and invariably their children who may take after them.That adults, together with youths.Flee from all evil desires and run after righteous. Many of how our youths are compromising with worldly ideals. Compromise with the world brings corruption. It destroys the child of God’s testimony and makes his light grow dim.Suggest dilute solutions to every one.

However, the challenges facing our youths (Christian youth) is how to use them without abusing them. The truth is deeds that these devices rather then being used for the advancement of knowledge which is capable of making the world a better place have become powerful tools in the hands of Satan unlooked for the perversion of morals. For example, the computer has both simplified and speeded up the operation in many fields of human endeavor – available data storage, medicine, architecture, music and broadcasting industry.These are interactive computer software for learning of virtually any subject.The circumstance is not their fault, logical and it will not signify theyre unintelligent or apathetic.Sources of information and different educational operations are now available on the internet. However, one must not lose second sight of the evil associated with these devices (internet, GSM and computer). Many (including children, youth and even older people) are introduced to do world of deceit, indecency, immorality crime, sexual perversions, violence and many other vices through the use of these inventions of modern technology. The computer logical and the internet have more damaging influence on the youth.It may not do great to mention it, but it.

This a leading to a dramatic decline in the academic performance of the youth and a high rate of unproductively of the youth in all spheres of life.Wise parents should rise up to this challenge, and set up corrective measures to arrest this trend of self – destruction of the youth. 2. THE FILM heavy INDUSTRY Many youths spend long hours watching the television denying themselves of meaningful activities that will promote heathy living and advancement in life.Nearly all how them exist just because they can breathe.What about movies dominated with violent operations?. This negates God peaceful co-existence among men. Parents must therefore rise up to control what their children watch on the television. 3.Ladies confronted the complete most complicated circumstances from the analysis.

Some Pentecostal pastors are not left out in the craze for prosperity through miracle gold galore at the expense of diligent labour. 4. SEARCH FOR GREENER PASTURE Many youths run the risk of searching for illegal means to go out of this country for better life. Experiences of those who attempted leaving this country reveal the agony many had to go though traveling through waste land to cross over to their â€Å"promised land†.Parents arent perfect.Youths from such homes run away from home, get involved in all forms of crimes such as 419, armed robbery, thuggery, prostitution or hired assassions.Parents should wake up to their responsibilities logical and make sustainable plans for their children. 6. INDECENT DRESSING AMONG YOUTHS We have been wonderfully made by God.No matter the strategy, its clear as they attempt to participate the adolescents of today in todays culture, youth leaders face great challenges.

This is fact was not brief proper clothing and so the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them. This implies deeds that the lord God covered their nakedness.Therefore, any clothing that does not cover the body fully is an indecent cloth. Let us also consider the demoniac in St.The operation of the household has to be revisited and emphasized by the parents should take an active part in the evolution of the children.This implies deeds that only people who are not in their right mind would go about without clothes not big enough to cover their nakedness.The most modern day christains especially youths are without estrain imbiding and embracing worldly principles, values, culture and customs without making refence to the word of God. The bible says: â€Å"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.The terrible news is these issues.

However, they forget that there is a link between the state of man’s heart and the outward appearance. In fact, one’s outlook is greatly influenced by the necessary condition of the heart. It is not uncommon today to find different kinds of immodest and indecent dressed worn by the majority of young people and some older people in the society, even in the church of God. These ladies wear transparent and body hugged clothes under the guise of fashion and civilization.Preachers and elders arent perfect.The common harlot dresses shamefully only to advertise, comete and seduce the opposite sex.They wear revealing clothes which create in men some immoral desires. Mini-skirts are symbolic of those ladies who want to seduce men. Every mini-skirt is a fuel that sets the mind of a man to imagine the most debased thoughts.Churches with a more youth group have a inclination to be prepared to invest funds into youth ministry.

They fry their hair (jerry curls or perm0, weave their hair, wear earring, parental leave their shirits unbuttoned, exposing their beareded chest, have funny styles of hair cut, apply make up just to prove themselves as â€Å"senior guys†. 7. Sexual Immorality/ Fornication Many black youths do not see sextual immorality/formation as sin. They see it as a way of expressing their love to a person of the opposite sex.Youngsters will great need to realize that life is a ride.Some youth who engage in fornication (pre-marital sex) tell you they are in search of happiness, pre-marital sex old has brought shame, disgrace and to many, unfulfilled destiny and untimely death.According to Ibid: Pre-marital sex has many adverse effects surrounding it. By so doing expose themselves to many risks such as: pregnancy, abortion, death, death, veneral disease, fear, shame, disrespect, sterility, uncompleted career are grievous sins against God, your creator. These are what we risk ourselve s for, Just a mere pleasure which does not last.But when the ambition becomes obnoxious, moral wrong signals are elayed. It is not uncommon today to find youhs engage in all manner of nefarious activities that are opposed to Christain moral virtues in a bid to acquire great wealth, fame and success. They are usually recruited as political thugs, fake drug peddlers, armed robbers, american hostage takers, murderers, assassins while others become cultists, prostitutes and so on. Some become involved in dubious and undefiled business.

Anything contrary leads to hellfire. 9. Peer Group Influence Many Youth have been led astray by those they regard as friends. The influences of peers can bring about a positive or a negative change in one’s life.John Chidi once classified friendship into 3: 1. Friendship based on unity 2. Friendship based on Sexual pleasure 3. Good griendship Youth should be encouraged to get involved in good friendship I =n which a man and a woman can be close friends without any sexual intercourse whatsoever.The musical instrument sound than the wordings as obtained in worldly music. Such songs do not give any inspiration, and it lacks modesty and moderation. So also is the obscene little dance that accompanies the music.Flee from such music and from every apprearance of evil.Many parents have lost inetrest in investing into education of their children. This what has increased the number of youths without any formal education or vovational training.One sees them in high dense areas/cit ies milling around motor parks, marj=ket places, in hide outs, practically doing nothing meaningful. Their daily existence depend on how much they can steal, extort from people or just waste away.

12. second Marriage Many youths today are faced with the problem of getting a wife or a husband. This could be attributed to a number of factors such as parental influence or control, self, sin and the devil. Youths becomes so obsessed with their inability to be married deeds that they now abadom God.The youth who desires life and the fruits of happy life must desire God and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Seek first the kingdom of God and all its righteous and all other things will be added unto you (Matt. 6:33). To the youth who had turn away from the Lord, I say â€Å"come back with a repentant heart and the noble Lord will receive and have you back as his own.You are to stay unpolluted and unperturbed in the constantly changing world where you dwell.The unchanging true God will substain you, for he has said. :For I am the Lord, I change not† (Malachi 3:6). This implies that God’s other children have no excuse to allow themselves to be swayed by the ra pidly changing world around them.. Must be resolved to live a holy life. This involves long daring to be different with a resolution not to look back. 4.