The Film Shane Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Film Shane - Essay Example The setting of the film is obviously a very early pioneer community in which there are frequent disagreements about land ownership and use. The first appearance of Shane shows him in the distance on horseback, against a background of impressive hills and wide landscape. This contrasts with the Starrett family’s small log cabin which is enclosed by log fences and a flowing river. The family scenes mostly take place in this small enclosed area, which appears all to have been created out of wood by the peaceful father figure of Joe Starrett. The villains, on the other hand, are pictured in dark saloon settings, with shades of brown and gray, and the key gun battle which resolves the danger to the community takes place in such a small, dark room. The hidden message in the visual camera work is to highlight the broad vista of freedom and justice that Shane represents. In the scene where Shane leaves the community, the camera shows young Joey standing on the porch of his log cabin, watching the figure of Shane retreat into a small speck against craggy mountains, just as in the beginning he was first spotted from afar. The message is that a single American hero can travel the whole wide world and make a difference and he is presented as a hero through the eyes of young Joey. Film-making is a team effort, and it involves many different technical skills contributed by specialists such as the camera operator, the actors, and professionals in areas such as lighting, music, make-up, costumes etc.

Time Delay Disputes in Construction Contracts Assignment

Time Delay Disputes in Construction Contracts - Assignment Example Internal environments usually consist of scheduling issues; i.e. if the construction process was poorly scheduled. Additionally, it may comprise of certain financial problems or changed orders. Exogenous factors largely consist of external elements such poor weather or government laws and regulations. Inputs factors that may lead to delays in construction are largely related to the issue of manpower shortage. (Sweis, 2008) In other words, delays may either be non excusable or excusable. For instance, when a delay is caused by labour disputes, unusual deliveries, and transportation deals that had not been foreseen or other causes that could not be predicted, then the affected party can consider forgiving the offending party. However, in other instances, then delays cannot be excused by the offending party. For example, when delays occurred during ordinary weather or when the subcontractor failed to meet his/her end of the bargain. It is also inexcusable to delay a construction if the project site was poorly coordinated. This may also be a problem when the contractor fails to finance the project properly or when there was poor workmanship, delays in material acquisition among others things. When a delay is caused by any of the latter factors, then it is likely that that person found guilty of the offense will be liable to pay damages. (Fewings & Jones, 2005) The first aspect that is involved in dealing with the disputes is mitigation of its effect. It is likely that the construction process may still be underway. Consequently, the affected parties have to look for ways in which they can minimise the distractions that would lead to further delay or that would cause ultimate project failure. (Kamara, 2002) The next thing that needs to be done is to determine the root cause of the problem. One must be able to determine whether the causes of these delays are actually excusable or not. This is usually done by conducting a detailed evaluation and analysis of the construction site, the contractors, the subcontractor, workers, materials and all other interests groups required to make the project complete. It is usually plausible to break down all the disputes involved in the process little by little. This is because certain events may have caused different delays. Additionally, to effectively solve disputes, it is necessary to assess the overall liability involved and the actual damage caused to the affected party. Thereafter, the two parties in the construction process are usually required to take part in a settlement agreement. This will require legal consultants who will be able to voice the concerns of each of the affected parties. At that time, it may be also be necessary to consider the legal representatives for each party as there is a whole team involved in the dispute resolution mechanisms. The assembly of this team may usually be necessary in mediation cases rather than in settlement arrangements. (Iyer, Chaphalkar & Joshi, 2008) However, in the event that a dispute is quite severe or when the affected parties have failed to reach a compromise, then these two parties will be required to take their case to court. This usually occurs when the dispute has resulted in litigation in the part of the affected party. Usually, judges will listen to their respective cases and then come up with possible explanations about what could have caused

Significance Of The Cultural Homogeneity

Significance Of The Cultural Homogeneity How significant is any process of cultural homogenization to the development of the global hospitality industry is going to be the topic under analyses on this assignment. We will give definitions of culture, homogenization and globalization and what these terms mean. Will follow to analyze to what extent, are people from around the world becoming more similar in their patterns of consumption of products and services from the hospitality/tourism industry. And if so what does this mean to the development of the global hospitality/tourism industry and evidence of the fact that people are becoming the same and how has the industry respond to such demand. Finally we will be showing what the overall evaluation is regarding the topic and a conclusion summarizing all the findings. Customer commodities are turning homogenous all over the world with this fact comes the definition of homogenization. People use the same type of things: from planes and cars, holidays destinations and way of dressing and living. With this goes a strong consumerist way of living and structure of principles that focus on the material world and on substantial comfort. Marx (1977) in his dependency theory saw that the political-territorial boundaries remain intact and will disappear under a future proletarian supremacy. Wallerstein (1974) focus is studies on the economic view of the definition of globalization as an increasing level of interdependence between national systems by way of trade, military Robertson Roland explains globalization in the cultural domain. In is text, Globalization as a Problem in The Globalization Reader says, globalization as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole Cited in Frank Lechner and John Boli (2004) According to Giddens globalization is seen as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa Giddens (1990). These local happenings were said to be influenced by distant events and not just the local events, whi ch all have been influenced by the forces of globalization. Looking at Giddens (1990) and Robertsons (1992) definitions, Giddens believes modernity has come as a result of globalization. For Giddens globalization is said to have started during the sixteenth century onwards and in Europe in particular. However, in Robertsonà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸s opinion, the problem of globalization is not new. He believes the social compression of the world has begun before the sixteenth century as predicted by Giddens. He predicts modernity and the rise of capitalism to be the cause of the rise of globalization. That is for Robertson, modernization has an influence on globalization. Culture with its very broad nature have always been without a precise definition, referred by Geertz (1973) culture is said not to exist in some ones head. That is, when we are born as we grow, through learning from either our parents or schools or the environment we grow, we know culture. Giddens referred culture to be the way of life of the members of the society or of groups within a society Giddens (2002). He believes that culture is inherited and it comprises both intangible aspects of life like the beliefs, ideas and values, which form the content of culture. In addition, the tangible aspects like the objects, symbols or technology, which represents that content. An example of this is the present day American cultures of Americanization and McDonaldization, described by Ritzer as the fast food restaurants Ritzer, (2003). Geert Hofstede views culture as a communal psychological programming of people. The software of the mentality, or how we think, make us different from additional groups. It refers to a shared fact of mutual principles and meanings and we get it from the social environment. We are not born with a public set of morals and attitudes; we discover and gain them as we develop. E. T. Halls wrote about High- and Low-Context Cultures theories with Low-context cultures we count on complicated verbal explanations, transferring more importance to verbal words, communication is straight and open, meaning is uncomplicated with the High-context cultures we highlight nonverbal communication and use communication as a way to support soft, pleasant associations for example in East Asia and Japan; nonverbal signs and body language are often used as they prefer an indirect, polite, face-saving style that shows a shared sagacity, concern and respect for others. Globalization in the tourism context can be thought in several ways which include the following: Americanization through McDonalds , KFC and Starbucks ,McDonalds fast food outlets can now even be found everywhere in the world. Experiencing the diversity of building styles, dishes and cultures was once a main reason to visit cities. Today as one travels around the world one finds that many airports, hotels and cities are more or less the same this takes the fun out of traveling because you know already how your room is going to be like in certain hotel chain. Globalization is felt particularly in less developed countries, many of which see tourism as an important development option. Unfortunately developing tourism can require that poor countries have to take out billion dollar loans to build the necessary infrastructure for tourism development and this can be a problem because they may not be able to pay their debts. International tourists demand international style hotels, food and drinks and hence developing countries have to import this items, this is called leakage because the money leaks out of the local economy and it cant be used to benefit local people. Cross-cultural exchange promotes innovation and creativity. The belief that increased globalization entails cultural homogenization, most commonly in the guise of Americanization, is a popular one. It is a belief enacted by tourists who travel to far-off lands only to stay in Sheraton hotels, eat at the local McDonalds, and watch big Hollywood pictures in the evenings. The gist of such tourist reports, anthropological findings, and American advertisements has been theorized in models of cultural imperialism (Mattelart 1979; Schiller 1976) that contend that Western, and largely American, culture is exported around the world to the effect of global homogenization. As Featherstone (1995) describes the process, capital clears the way for culture. Along these lines, corporate logos become icons of American ideologies for everyone outside of the center. But are these examples a clear process of cultural homogenization? Benjamin Barber (1995) would respond positively with is process of MacW orld is one of soft hegemony, an easy way to export American capitalist ideologies to the world, thereby making the world safe for the free market. Stuart Hall (1991) responds affirmatively to the question of globalization as cultural homogenization, his thoughts on the subject are much more nuanced. Hall defines a new form of globalization in contrast to the earlier globalization of colonization, particularly that of the British empire, and this new globalization is distinctly American with its emphasis on television and film, and by the image, imagery, and styles of mass advertising (1991). In this regard, Halls conception of the globalization process is similar to Barbers. However, where Barber understands MacWorld as a totalizing force intent on Americanizing everyone and everything in its path, Hall sees a very peculiar form of homogenization, a homogenization which does not strive for completeness but rather thrives on particularities. For Hall this new form of globalization h as made it chic to eat fifteen different cuisines in any one week (1991). Hall contends that by presenting a world of neutralized difference, a world of commodified and consumable difference, capitalism is able to maintain its global dominance. As he remarks, It is working to make up a nation in which things are diverse. And that is the enjoyment of it but the differences do not matter. (Featherstone 1990) questions the basic premise of Americanization upon which both Barber and Hall build their theories of global cultural homogenization. To begin with, such theories depend upon a notion of cultures behaving as substances which flow intact and easily dissolve the differences they encounter (1995). Yet beyond this distinction, Featherstone contends that the world can no longer be perceived as extending out from one central point such as the United States but rather from many global centers. Like Hall, he highlights the contestatory, confrontational nature of globalization; however, f or Featherstone, the contestation is external rather than internal, a global field in which differences, power struggles and cultural prestige contests are played out. As such, globalization emphasizes cultural heterogeneity and difference of a massive scale: Globalization makes us aware of the sheer volume, diversity and many-sidedness of culture. Featherstone also dismisses the cultural homogenization thesis as premised on ethnocentric ideas about local cultures. When people move around, they carry with them the things that travel bestcultural traditions with sensory power like music, folktales, food ways, and festival. At the same time, it is the sensory power of these traditions which brings them to market, which incorporates them into multicultural policy work, which allows them to serve as somewhat superficial points of cultural exchange. In some senses, the local is globally homogenized in the same way that American (or western) culture is said to homogenize all other culture s: not only does one find McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and Nike around the world; one also finds Chinese food, African music, and May Day celebrations. As the world grows more interconnected and emergent technologies allow more of us to experience more of this global interconnectedness, the global cultural homogenization thesis may seem like an attractive one. Globalization has both constructive and pessimistic impacts on the hospitality business the positive impacts of globalization are: the contact with different cultures makes the ones taking care of the hospitality business to be gifted to discover about diverse cultures as they obtain the option of mixing with people from various countries; becomes a bigger market and the customer base has increased greatly. Community now move not only for holidays, but commerce, physical condition and different other reasons; increases the economy of the area in question, visitors come in and spend money; improves technology advancement since they want to catch the attention of as many tourists as they can, organizations continuously need to improve and develop their goods and services using quicker and new techniques in hotels to so that the consumer is pleased; promotes creativity as organizations are all the time creating innovative ideas to attract tourists; important more job opportunities are c reated as more visitors come into the country and therefore more natives are needed to serve tourist needs; increases the travel industry, people move around and to make possible this the business needs to develop as well, per last a wide variety of international cuisines is created since there are a lot of diverse guests with different origins, customs, food habits, and languages, the hospitality/tourism industry incorporates recipes and diverse supplementary services and makes them accessible to the locals too. The pessimistic impacts of globalization on the hospitality industry are in this situation more dramatic issues: language barriers, the industry can employ people from diverse countries, they might have problems in communicating with the customers; cultural barriers, as there are people from different cultures whats adequate by one culture may be a insult by another; employment during busy times of the year, a good amount of jobs are available but almost immediately as the clients leave, the jobs vanish jointly with the income; use of tools to communicate due to intercontinental separations, there has been a firm raise in the use of equipment for contact and this removes the human touch; developing countries are not capable to keep up with the expansion in technology and have a propensity to lose out, they always need to work to get better conditions; or else tourists have other areas to choose from; increase in crime with the increase in tourists, crimes raise also; ecological exhau stion: globalization causes an disproportion in the eco system, people regularly throw their rubbish on the floor which could cause sicknesses and loss of cultural and national values to go with along with customer needs. Following critically examining the entire evidences provided can conclude that may be complicated to define even though the fact that studies have stated globalization as a back and forward process of development as business expansion will continue with the search of new markets and cultures will be affluently influence by western part of global economy. Societies will inevitably borrow heavily from these cultures however it doesnt mean that they will be completely transformed. Cultural diversity will have to be protected and defended. In the modern worldwide cultural pluralism may still be less and less physical, even if certain geographical roots of most important cultures will stay. We exist in a multicultural humanity in which citizens live a practice of various experiences, characterized by a diversity of associative groups. Consequently cultures possibly will no longer be local in the conventional sense, but still diverse linked together in a complex network.

Emancipation :: essays research papers

Emancipation has been defined as the pursuit, expansion, and security of freedom. I believe that most people including myself would say successful emancipation has taken place when freedom has been pursued, expanded upon, and secured. What makes peoples views of emancipation different is not its definition, but what is freedom? Freedom shows a lot of faces throughout the times and environments studied in both the Haitian and Jamaican Revolutions. Freedom for myself is a peace of mind. I feel that a person who wakes up with a peace of mind has experienced successful emancipation. Successful emancipation does not mean that everything is perfect and the way it should be. Perfection does not exist in this world; everything has its flaws and downfalls including emancipation, justice, and freedom. I think we all work towards the day we have established who we are and find comfort with our role in society. I also feel it is hard for us to be as thoughtful and passionate about emancipation as the slaves of these times were. Our minds can’t conceive the true feeling of what is like to be treated like something other than a human being. I feel our lifestyles are far beyond a slave’s view of what emancipation is. Slaves in both Haiti and Jamaica did not rebel in order to live a lifestyle we live today. They were willing to settle for far less than we have today. Slaves were willing to die in order to experience what they felt was successful emancipation. Successful emancipation for slaves was not be confounded to land or owned by whites. Slaves simply wanted the opportunity to work their own land, start families, and enjoy life. Although most people in Haiti and Jamaica of African descent were slaves, there was a small minority of free people, which consisted of mulattos and free blacks. Even though these free people witnessed first hand the experienced of slavery the compassion and empathy for it was definitely disappointing. Their understanding of emancipation was totally different than that of slaves. The free people already experienced and had what slaves desired and viewed as emancipation. Free people had their own land to farm, build houses on, and start families. Thus giving them a totally different perspective on emancipation and freedom. Despite free people had their own land, they still were not close to sharing the same rights as the whites.

Assess the view that the positions of men Essay

Over the past few decades the roles of men and women have changed drastically. These changes occur throughout society, within a family or in a relationship. In the past, the most common relationship between the two genders would have been very different, with the men being viewed as more masculine and of higher authority, whereas the women of a society would have been viewed to have a stay at home role, where they would look after children and participate in household chores. During the 1900’s women were seen a minority, where the slightest amount of freedom would have been frowned upon. Nonetheless over the years, as we have developed, so have the different role for both genders, this now consists of sharing jobs equally in a household and around a workplace. The most obvious change within a family would be the amount of work the couple share, both in the household and outside of it. Since the 1960, where the civil rights act was released, it detailed that women were now able to work and should be offered equal opportunities as men, whereas in the past that would have been forbidden. Due to this seismic change, women are now able to provide for themselves, which in the past would have been extremely difficult as they would have essentially been dependent on their partner’s income. Gershuny, a famous sociologist, said that women who work full time would do less of the domestic labour jobs around the house. However statistics show this is incorrect. Women who work full time tend to still do 73% of the household chores, leavening only 27% to the men, who may or may not work full time. An equally significant aspect of this change would be the commercialisation of society today. Commercialisation of society is defined as the new technologies that have been introduced into today’s world in order to allow basic household chores, which would have takes several hours to do, to be completed within a few hours. The commercialisation of basic household necessities means that couples still have time to work and spend time with each other. For women, supermarket food products; means they don’t have to spend hours cooking and preparing food for the family. This would also mean, washing clothes now has become much easier due to the washing machine appliance. Due to this significant improvement, the hours of domestic labour on a woman has decreased a great deal. In spite of this, the commercialisation of products wouldn’t apply to everyone. Working class families or women would be able to afford such expensive items, however this doesn’t quite apply to poorer women; and hence they would suffer with longer hours of household chores. This also doesn’t take into account who uses these appliances; women still load and unload the dishwasher, or wash clothes. Despite having these appliances, it doesn’t necessarily mean these jobs are equally shared; the majority of women still complete them. Consequently, men and women are now becoming more equal when it comes to making decisions as a family. In the past men were off more authority and hence they were the ones that made the more important decisions. Stephen Edgell did a study in 1980 which showed that very important decisions were usually taken by men, important decisions were usually taken jointly however rarely by the wife alone, and lastly less important decisions were usually made by the wife alone. This has changed considerably over the years since the decisions are now shared equally. Pooling (where the couple have access to income and joint responsibility) has increased from 19% to 50%; on the other hand, allowance system (where men give their wives and allowance as a weekly budget) has decreased significantly from 36% to 12%. This shows a clear indication of how the roles have changed, although the increase for pooling was very little, we can judge that eventually role will get even. Moreover, we can see from the past that men and women were given gender scripts. Men were seen to be masculine and of higher standard thus they would work. This was often referred to as the instrumental role, where men were the providers. Women were viewed as having a role solely in the house where they would do household chores. This was often referred to as the expressive role, where women were the homemakers. Nonetheless this can be argued with the concept of homosexual couples. For example within a lesbian couple, they wouldn’t have suited gender scripts and hence would have to negotiate roles equally. Also the idea that now a day’s men aren’t the only providers within a family, women also work and hence can provide for themselves as well as their family. Having considered those points, there are many things to suggest things still need a lot of time in order to improve and become slightly equal. A concept that could argue the progress over the years would be the idea of dual burden which explains the roles women take upon themselves, or in other words are expected to take. Many feminists believe women are now doing two shifts, one at work which is paid work, and eventually returning home to do unpaid work. They believe men benefit from both works, as they receive a steady income as well as a clean house. Some also claim that women do three shifts, also called the triple shift. This is described as emotional work which is role which is usually related to women. Women have an extra unpaid shift where they return home to take care of the rest of the family, also called as the ‘labour of love’. Subsequently, it seems convincing to me that although roles have changed over the years, the change itself is very little because the roles within a family still aren’t as equal. Despite having the same job opportunities, the job of domestic labour in a household are far from equal. Nonetheless I believe roles will eventually change one day where they will be close to equal. However I think roles will never be fully equal.

Faith and Science in the Film Agora Essay

The movie Agora takes place in Alexandria during a time of political conflict between Christians and pagans in 4th century Rome and centers around Hypatia a woman scientists and philosopher. Hypatia has dedicated her life to science and at the beginning of the movie she teaches at the Platonic school. She studies mainly philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics, and makes discoveries about the way the earth and planets move around the sun. Her hypotheses about the earth moving around the sun in an elliptic orbit were far beyond her time. She is respected in â€Å"pagan† society by her male peers and students, while Christians find her work heretical. Even her father respects her work as a teacher and scientist by refusing to set her up for marriage because he knows that it would break her heart if she had to quit teaching and be a wife. In the movie, we see how science is more important to Hypatia than love, as she refuses romantic advances from both Orestes and Davus. She has ch osen to dedicate her life to science and her studies, and eventually gives up her life for science, which is admirable to say the least. This movie illustrates the conflicts between faith and science that existed in 4th century Rome and still exist today to a much lesser degree. In the movie, the Christians, led by Cyril, were trying to gain political power and destroyed anyone who stood in their way including Jews and pagans. The pagans are open and accepting of the fact that Hypatia was a woman and a scientist and were open to her scientific contributions but the Christians refused to accept her teachings and the fact that she would not convert to Christianity. They rejected her, saying asking questions about the way the world works was questioning God and they even labeled her as a witch, murdering her at the end of the movie. As a Christian, this was hard to watch and the conflicts between faith and science that still exist today are disheartening. As Orestes states, â€Å"there is more that unites us than divides us,† which is true and Christians of all people, should be the most understanding of this statement and be the most accepting of all kinds of people, according to Jesus’ teaching. There will always be conflicting ideas between scientists and theologists, but we are united as one people and need to have an open mind about these issues and be willing to listen to all sides of an argument. Science and faith should be able to coexist peacefully and even build off of each other. The Christian’s treatment of Hypatia as a woman was also very different than the pagan’s treatment of her. The pagans respected her regardless of her sex but the Christian’s showed no respect for her and labeled her as a pagan whore and witch. In many conservative Christian sects today, women are still not allowed to hold administrative positions in churches and are expected to sit quietly behind their husbands, while in the field of science, women can make important contributions that are respected by both their male and female peers. The bridge between faith and science has come a long way since Hypatia’s time, but there is still a long way to go, hopefully more bridges will continue to be built and the fact that both science and faith can and should unite us, not divide us, will be realized.

A Typical Strategic Planning Process Essays - Economy, Business

A Typical Strategic Planning Process Essays - Economy, Business A Typical Strategic Planning Process -156210313055 MISSION Why does the organization exist? OBJECTIVES How can the mission be achieved? What are the organization's objectives? THE INTERNAL ENVIRONEMT What are our resources? What is our standing in the market place? How successful are we? What are our capabilities? THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT What are the possible external influences on the organization? What is the likely current and future competition? CORPORATE ANALYSIS What are our strengths and weaknesses? What opportunities and threats are there likely to be? How do we need to improve in reorder to achieve what we would like to achieve? STRATEGIC CHOICE What are our options for strategic development? How do the options compare? Which one is the most suitable? STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION What are the best strategies for design, production, marketing and so on? REVIEW AND CONTROL Assess actual performance in the light of plans Strategic Analysis Strategic Choice Strategic Implementation MISSION Why does the organization exist? OBJECTIVES How can the mission be achieved? What are the organization's objectives? THE INTERNAL ENVIRONEMT What are our resources? What is our standing in the market place? How successful are we? What are our capabilities? THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT What are the possible external influences on the organization? What is the likely current and future competition? CORPORATE ANALYSIS What are our strengths and weaknesses? What opportunities and threats are there likely to be? How do we need to improve in reorder to achieve what we would like to achieve? STRATEGIC CHOICE What are our options for strategic development? How do the options compare? Which one is the most suitable? STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION What are the best strategies for design, production, marketing and so on? REVIEW AND CONTROL Assess actual performance in the light of plans Strategic Analysis Strategic Choice Strategic Implementation

Data Provenance in E-Learning Essays

Data Provenance in E-Learning Essays Data Provenance in E-Learning Essay Data Provenance in E-Learning Essay We live in an information age, where the volume of data processed by humans and organizations increases exponentially by grid middleware and availability of huge storage capacity. So, Data management comprises all the disciplines related to managing data as a valuable resource. The openness of the Web and the ease to combine linked data from different sources creates new challenges. Systems that consume linked data must evaluate quality and trustworthiness of the data.A common approach for data quality assessment is the analysis of provenance information. [1] Data provenance, one kind of Meta data, relate to the transformational workflows of a data products (files, tables and virtual collections) starting from its original sources. Meta Data refers to â€Å"Data about Data†. The workflows can generate huge amount of data with rich Meta data in order to understand and reuse the data. Data provenance techniques used in e for Different provenance Consumers In this they used an example scenario to express different provenance consuming type of users. They took power consumption forecast workflows as their example scenario.In this scenario there are three kind of consuming users: the software architect, the data analyst, and the campus facility operator. So they need different provenance model for each of them. The word â€Å"quality impact†, which indicates how the quality of a process affects the output quality, is then used to guide users on what processes and data objects they need to exercise more quality control upon. 3. 2. 2 An Apropos Presentation view Generally we use two kind classifications of approaches for determine suitable presentation view of the provenance: decomposition approach and clustering approach.Decomposition method is well suited for presence of granularities clearly defined in the provenance model. In each individual activity in the workflow, we identify the most appropriate presentation granularity to satisfy the usage requirement and to meet the user’s interest. When granular levels are not specified clear, clustering approach will be used. This approach incrementally clusters the initial fines for source data are the content of a document used for machine learning, the entries in a database used to answer a query, and the statements in a knowledge base used to entail a new statement. Other artifacts that may be used in a data creation are the creation guidelines, it is used for guiding the execution of the data creation. Examples for creation guidelines are mapping definitions, transformation rules, database queries and entailment rules. The data access centers on data access executions.Data accessors perform data access executions to retrieve data items contained in documents from a provider on the Web. To enable a detailed representation of providers the model describe in paper[12] distinguishes data providing services that process data access requests and send the do cuments over the Web, data publishers who use data providing services to publish their data, and service providers who operate data providing services. Furthermore, the model represents the execution of integrity verifications of artifacts and the results.A system that uses Web data must access this data from a provider on the Web. Information about this process and about the providers is important for a representation of provenance that aims to support the assessment of data qualities. Data published on the Web is embedded in a host artifact, usually a document. Following the terminology of the W3C Technical Architecture Group we call this artifact an information resource. Each information resource has a type, e. g. , it is an RDF document or an HTML document. The data accessor, retrieves information resources from a provider.Their provenance model allows a detailed representation of providers by distinguishing data providing services, data publishers, and service providers. [1] In paper [12] a provenance graph has represented as a tuple (PE; R; type; attr) where, ? PE denotes the set of provenance elements in the graph, ? R [pic] PE X PE X RN denotes the labeled edges in the graph where RN is the set of relationship names as introduced by our provenance model, ? type : PE ; ? (T) is a mapping that associates each provenance element with its types where T is the set of element types as introduced by our provenance model attr : PE ; ? (A X V ) is a mapping that associates each provenance element with additional properties represented by attribute-value pairs where A is a set of available attributes and V is a set of values They didn’t specify the sets A and V any further because the available possible values,attributes, and the meaning of these depend on the use case. However, they introduced an abbreviated notation to refer to the target of an edge in a provenance graph: if (p? 1; p? 2; rn) [pic] R we write p? 1 [pic] = p? 2. 3. 4 Using Data Provenance for Quality AssessmentFor assessment of the quality of data, we need to find out the information types that can be used for evaluating and a methodology for calculating quality attributes. In this research paper they have introduce a provenance model custom-made to the needs for tracing and tracking provenance information about Web data. This model describes about the creation of a data item and the provenance information about who made the data to be accessed through the Web. Most of the existing approaches for information quality assessment are based on the information provided by users.Quantitative approach described in the research paper [12] follows three steps: ? Collecting the quality attributes which are needed for provenance information ? Making decision on the influence of these attributes on the assessment ? Application of a function to compute the quality In this paper author has described information quality as a combined value of multiple quality attributes, such as a ccuracy, completeness, believability, and timeliness. The assessment method described in the paper [12] follows three steps. Those are, 1. Generate a provenance graph for the data item; . Annotate the provenance graph with impact values; 3. Calculate an IQ-score for the data item from the annotated provenance graph. The main idea behind these approach is automatically determining the quality measure for a data item, from impact values, which represent the influence of the elements in a provenance graph on the particular quality of the assessed data item. In order to design a actual assessment method for the above mention general assessment approach we have to make some design decisions. We have to answer few design related question to take design decision.Questions for Step 1: What types of provenance elements are necessary to determine the considered information quality and what level of detail (i. e. granularity) is necessary to describe the provenance elements in the application scenario? and Where and how do we get the provenance information to generate the provenance graph for a data item?. For Step 2: How might each type of provenance element influence the quality of interest? and what kind of impact values are necessary for the application scenario? For Step 3: How do we determine the impact values or where do we get them from? nd How can we represent the considered information quality by a value and what function do we use to calculate such a value from the annotated provenance graph? 3. 5 Using Data Provenance for Measuring the Information Assurance Data Provenance is multidimensional metadata that specifies Information Assurance attributes like Integrity, Confidentiality, Authenticity, Non-Repudiation etc. Each Information Assurance attribute may contain sub-components within like objective and subjective values or application security versus transport security within them.In the paper [11] authors have mentioned about a framework which is based on s ubjective Logic that includes uncertainty by representing values as a triple of . The model discussed in the paper [11] is an information flow model based on complex and simple messages about which objective information assurance attribute values are collected. This model incorporates the capability to roll up data provenance information over a multi-step information flow and/or over a complex message. These aggregation is called as Figures of Merit.Next goal after having the figure of merit and information assurance attribute values is to summarize these information in a simple visual icon which helps those who must act on information quickly to understand how confidential, authentic, and unmodified the data is, therefore it helps to make more clear decision when dealing with the data. 3. 5. 1 Framework for capture data provenance record A single Data Provenance (DP) record is created, each time a message was transmitted between agents, systems or processes. This record can be stor ed or it can be send along in parallel with the message.There are two parts of DP record, one is sender part and the other one is receiver part. Each part has a variant and an invariant section. Routing information to forward the message to the final destination is contained within the variant section, and it may change during the routing process. The invariant section of the DP record remains unchanged, the sender’s invariant section may include the following components: Identity of the Author of the message, Message ID, Timestamp, Message contents and type, References to other message IDs, e. g. attachments, Destination, Security label or classification, Outgoing Information Assurance values, and Hash value of the message contents. The receiver appends his own values to the record, adding Identity of the Receiver of the message, Timestamp, Incoming Information Assurance values, and Hash of the message body as seen by the receiver. The receiver may append a signature or an e ncrypted hash based on both the sender and receiver’s records. 3. 5. 2 Subjective Logic Josang’s Subjective Logic is used for modeling a flexible mechanism to calculate the confidentiality and this mechanism also helps to deal with uncertainty.Josang’s Subjective Logic uses three values b, d, and u, where b = belief, or the belief that the proposition is true d = disbelief, or the belief the proposition is false u = uncertainty, or the amount of uncommitted belief These components satisfy b + d + u =1, and b, d, u [pic] [0,1] 3. 5. 3 Implementation The models of information flow and of the data provenance at each point along that flow is captured in a semantic model. The target representation was the Web Ontology Language (OWL) with a rules layer above to capture domain inferences not implied by the formal models.Controlled English representation called the Semantic Application Design Language (SADL) is used as the authoring environment. SADL is a language that maps directly and unambiguously into OWL and Jena Rules or SWRL. An Eclipse-based SADL-IDE supports the authoring, testing, and version control of the models. Snapshots of the data provenance state of the Message are captured as instances of DPInfo. When a Message is sent by an Agent, a SenderDPInfo (subclass of DPInfo) captures relevant data provenance information.When a Message is received by an Agent, a ReceiverDPInfo (also a sub class of DPInfo) captures the data provenance state at receipt. In this model they have decided to calculate each of IA attributes individually. They have created a visual summary of the IA values, to support in the decision process. The IA values they used are Integrity, Confidentiality, Authenticity, Availability, and Non-repudiation. 3. 6 Issues in Data Provenance There are some open problems exist with data provenance. Those are Information management infrastructure, Provenance analytics and visualization, Interoperability, Connecting database and wo rkflow provenance. 6] Information management infrastructure. With the growing volume of raw data, workflows and provenance information, there is a need for efficient and effective techniques to manage these data. Besides the need to handle large volumes of heterogeneous and distributed data, an important challenge that needs to be addressed is usability: Information management systems are notoriously hard to use. As the need for these systems grows in a wide range of applications, notably in the scientific domain, usability is of paramount importance. The growth in the volume of provenance data also calls for techniques that deal with information overload.Provenance analytics and visualization. The problem of mining and extracting knowledge from provenance data has been largely unexplored. By analyzing and creating insightful visualizations of provenance data, scientists can debug their tasks and obtain a better understanding of their results. Mining this data may also lead to the d iscovery of patterns that can potentially simplify the notoriously hard, time-consuming process of designing and refining scientific workflows. Interoperability. Complex data products may result from long processing chains that require multiples tools (e. . , scientific workflows and visualization tools). In order to provide detailed provenance for such data products, it becomes necessary to integrate provenance derived from different systems and represented using different models. This was the goal of the Second Provenance Challenge, which brought together several research groups with the goal of integrating provenance across their independently developed workflow systems. Although the preliminary results are promising and indicate that such an integration is possible, there needs to be more principled approaches to this problem.One direction currently being investigated is the creation of a standard for representing provenance Connecting database and workflow provenance. In many s cientific applications, database manipulations co-exist with the execution of workflow modules: Data is selected from a database, potentially joined with data from other databases, reformatted, and used in an analysis. The results of the analysis may then be put into a database and potentially used in other analyses. To understand the provenance of a result, it is therefore important to be able to connect provenance information across databases and workflows.Combining these disparate forms of provenance information will require a framework in which database operators and workflow modules can be treated uniformly, and a model in which the interaction between the structure of data and the structure of workflows can be captured. Another issue which in data provenance is Data Citation, Data citation is about citing a component in a digital library that consists of documents and databases. More generally there is no specified way citing. In databases they use key for citing tuples. Docum ent can be cited using Url, universal locator of the document.Most major problem of provenance is invalidated citing due to update of the cited documents. To overcome this problem there are many solution but each with a problem. One way of solution is release successive version of database separately. But it needs large storage. Another way of solution is kept history of database to trace history of the components of database. But it is complex. As a solution of whole, by giving a date to url, at least the person who follows the citation will know whether to question the validity of the citation. 7] 3. 6. 1 DATA PROVENANCE AND FINANCIAL SYSTEMIC RISK Data Provenance is not only important in E-Learning environment but also play vital part in large-scale analytic environment to support financial systemic risk analysis. In financial Sector, Data should be managed as a strategic, enterprise asset. This requires active management of data quality, so that managers or CEOs of the organizat ion understand the quality of the information on which they base their decisions. So Data provenance is needed for make a financial based decision. rovenance information enables analysts to better understand the data and assumptions used for potentially vast numbers of simulation runs. Even though, it is not enough to provide data structures, query mechanisms, and graph renderings for provenance; one also needs a scalable strategy for collecting provenance. 4. Data Provenance and E-Learning Rather than thinking like â€Å"E-Learning is a new education method which uses Internet† , actual norm can be expressed as collaborating different pieces of technologies/products to make learning happens.This gradually leads to the idea of virtual learning environment. In E-Learning most of the resources which are related to the studies are gathered from web. So it is important to make sure that the information gathered from web is trustworthy. Some of the information provided in internet is not considered as proper reference. For example wikipedia. org, wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, for most of the google search result wikipedia will appear in the top of the search result, still it is considered as untrusted source because of the openness of it.There is another problem, some of the information would be truthful but the information is outdated, so referring to that information is incorrect. This is where the data provenance come into play. Data provenance can be used to get information about data creation, and the modification happened to the information. Using these information we can come to a conclusion about trustworthiness of the resource gathered from the web. Most of the researches in data provenance are done under the field of E-Science, but it can be adapted into the E-Learning environment.

Advanced Information Security

Viewing Web pages: For the web pages, the imposter could appeal off a phishing attack, tricking users into thinking that they were accessing their bank's Web site, and hence pull off a man-in-the-middle attack and gather login credentials. Moreover, they are accessing some personal data or putting some personal data on some website and hence pull off a man in the middle attack and collect all the personal details of this user. Why, in practice, are server certificates rarely signed: It appears to be too much trouble to distribute the public keys securely for the certificate authorities in advance and store them in the .ssh/authorized_keys directory of the client machines. The user wants to be sure that he or she has logged in to the machine that she is trying to log in to, especially if the authentication method is to send a password.   Otherwise, an attacker could act as a man-in-the-middle. Rule conflicts is a problem in a firewall rule set. Some rules are created for rejecting all the packets from a particular destination. On the other hand, some rules are established to accept all the packets from a particular destination. If reject and accept destination are same then rule conflicts will be Occur. In this case, some rule conflicts are present which is given bellow: Above table shows that rule 2 allow all the packets from the destination IP address and destination port. Rule 3 indicates that all the packets are rejected from a particular destination where the destination of rule 2 and 3 is same. Therefore, a rule conflict occurs. In this case rule, 13 allow all the packets those are using any protocol. But in rule 14 and 15 shows that the packets are rejected those are using TCP and UDP protocol. Therefore, a rule conflict occurs. The FIRST match policy put on the first rule which match the packet. The BEST match policy put on the rule which is more accurate regarding the network. The LAST match policy put on the rule that is first. Mainly it is bottom to top. Proxy Firewall is one type of network security system which protects a network by filtering the packets. This firewall is used in an application layer. The proxy firewall allows all the network traffic by checking their validity. Proxy firewall is placed in the network gateway.   All incoming packets are checked in the proxy server. If the packets are authorized then, proxy firewall grants the access. If not then proxy firewall destroy this packet.   The transparent firewall acts as a gateway of a network. Mainly it is a routed hop. It is also called layer 2 firewalls which perform as a "bump in the wire" or a "stealth firewall." A transparent firewall has commonly used the firewall. The proxy filter firewall is extremely secure than the transparent firewall. The main difference between the transparent firewall and proxy firewall is proxy firewall use a proxy server in the system, but the transparent firewall is used routed hop firewall. NAT stand for Network Address Translation. NAT is applied in a single device as a network gateway. For an example router. A net enables router connect with the internet and hide the entire private from the public network. In NAT system, it is not necessary to recognize all the internal devices. All the generated request by workstation are sent via the router. NAT help the router to transfer this packets in the internet t destination. The NAT convert the source address of all packets and place its IP address. If security is to provide in to the NAT, the network will be more secure for the attackers. Mainly NAT create a firewall for the security purpose. All servers that are presented to people in the general system (web), including web servers and DNS servers ought to be set in the DMZ. The DMZ is a different subnet situated outside of the association's system, but at the same time secured by a firewall. Movement starting from the organization's system is permitted into the DMZ, however, activity from the DMZ is not allowed into the association's system. This is imperative since ought to a server get to be bargained, and an aggressor cannot access the organization's inside system. Braun, J., Volk, F., Classen, J., Buchmann, J. and Mà ¼hlhà ¤user, M., 2014. CA trust management for the Web PKI. Journal of Computer Security, 22(6), pp.913-959. Bray, R.F., Grzelak, C.P. and Keirstead, J.D., International Business Machines Corporation, 2015. Firewall event reduction for rule use counting. U.S. Patent 9,043,461. Carthern, C., Wilson, W., Bedwell, R. and Rivera, N., 2015. Network Address Translation and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. In Cisco Networks (pp. 255-272). Apress. Francis, P., 2015. Network Address Translation (NAT). ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 45(2), pp.50-50. Ghai, S. and Verma, A., 2015. Network Security Using Divergent Firewall Technologies. IITM Journal of Information Technology, 1, p.29. Kachare, M.S.S. and Deshmukh, P., 2015. Firewall Policy Anomaly Management with Optimizing Rule Order. International Journal of Application or Innovation in Engineering & Management (IJAIEM), 4(2), pp.201-205. Mao, H., Zhu, L. and Li, M., 2012, September. Current State and Future Development Trend of Firewall Technology. In Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing (WiCOM), 2012 8th International Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE. Vratonjic, N., Freudiger, J., Bindschaedler, V. and Hubaux, J.P., 2013. The inconvenient truth about web certificates. In Economics of information security and privacy iii (pp. 79-117). Springer New York.

Congressional Consideration of New Deal Legislation Essay

Congressional Consideration of New Deal Legislation - Essay Example It wasn’t but 50 years ago that America was engulfed in the â€Å"Great Depression†. Political pundits and members of Congress alike compare our current situation as the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. While the times of that era were certainly tough, the strength and enduring spirit of the American people proved to be resolute and we as a country rose from the ashes like a phoenix. While the spirit of the American people has an ethereal reason on why we overcame the Great Depression, any well-versed scholar of American history knows that it was indeed President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s New Deal that catapulted our country out of the economic abyss. â€Å"We have had recessions before and we will have them again; and always, when we do, we can be thankful to the New Deal. For nearly half a century, its innovations in the thirties have helped to keep recession from deepening into depression.†1 The Great Depression lasted from the end of 1929 to the early 1940s, beginning in the United States but slowly spreading to other countries as well, because they had become economically dependent on each other. This era is a widely studied and thoroughly examined time in American history. There are numerous underlying reasons for the Depression, and there are many theories on why it occurred. Some of the seeds that gave root to the Great Depression can be linked to events far before the time of that gloomy era. â€Å"The roots of the Great Depression can be traced back to the world war of 1914-1918 and even beyond. Some authorities describe it as the ultimate collapse of the industrial revolution, with the machine devouring the man†¦..Between 1920 and 1930 economists ceased pondering the question of ‘America’s capacity to produce,’ which had preoccupied them for fifty years and turned belatedly to â€Å"America’s capacity to consume, about which the y

A Framework for the Management of Oil Spillage Risks in Oil Dissertation - 1

A Framework for the Management of Oil Spillage Risks in Oil Exploration Programmes - Dissertation Example The aim of this paper is to develop a framework that will help the companies in order to control their oil spillage risks in oil exploration programs.  The objectives will be to investigate the nature of oil spillage risks; identify and summarize the existing understanding about oil spillage risk management; discover good practices in managing oil spillage risks and to provide a new framework that summarizes the findings and can be used further for managing oil spillage risks. Besides this, the paper has also focused on different methods used to manage the risk of oil spillage.  The oil industry is concerned with a long history of spills on the North Slope and the probability of future spills is high. Indeed, there has been an oil spillage once a day, on average, from the time when gas and oil development began on the North Slope. In order to make the subject worse, ocean currents move the chemicals and oil hundreds of miles. Further, in the Arctic Ocean, cleaning up oil spills w ould lead to enormous challenges. Suppression and recovery at sea hardly ever leads to the removal of more than a comparatively small fraction of a large oil spill, i.e. only 10-15% and often significantly less. Till date, no technology subsists in order to clean up oil in the sea ice circumstances and late-season spills would stay behind until the following year.  Oil spillage refers to an unintentional release of oil in a water body due to human activity and is regarded as form of pollution.  

MGMT670 Week 3 Conf Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

MGMT670 Week 3 Conf - Essay Example I have found the managers of all departments working with full dedication and commitment to meet customers’ demands because they a complete understanding of the company’s vision statement. The top management has designed a very competitive business strategy that aims to gain profit, customer satisfaction, and competitive edge in the software industry of the United States. As employees, we have just one thing in our minds, which is to develop excellent quality products for our customers. I think the vision statement of our company has refined our approach towards work. Every department of the company, such as, quality control department, quality assurance department, human resource department, and customer care department feels the responsibility to move the company towards the top rankings in the field of software manufacturing. Therefore, I would say that vision of a company has direct connection with the overall business strategy, as well as the work approach of all employees and

Hofstede's dimension in Korea Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Hofstede's dimension in Korea - Essay Example Korean is the main and highly used language of the country. The language is used together with Korean and Hangul alphabet. Korea is an export driven country, focusing on the export of electronics and automobile goods and services. Figure 1: Hofstede's Five dimension in Korea There are five dimensions of Korea’s Hofstede, such as Power Distance, Masculinity vs. Femininity, Individualism, Long Term Orientation and Uncertainty Avoidance. If the essay explores the culture of Korea through the Hofstede’s Five Dimension Model lenses, then an effective overview of the deep drive of the country’s culture can be attained relative to the world’s culture. Power Distance This particular dimension deals with the fact that each and every individual in society cannot be equal. Especially, it expresses the cultural attitude of people towards the inequalities among the people in a society. Power distance can be defined as the extent to which limited powerful individuals of an organization or an institution within a society accept and expect that power is not equally distributed. The power distance score of Korea is 60. The people within the societies and communities of Korea always maintain and give value to the people who are in the top of hierarchy. Therefore, regulations and norms take huge account as the people of Korea accept a hierarchical order. Each and every individual within the society has a place that does not need further justification. Hierarchy in an institution or an organization is seen as reflecting intrinsic inequalities. In addition to this, people within the organization follow centralized structure or order. Boss or top management in an organization decides what to do. The subordinates always expected to do what their top management wants in the organization. The employees or subordinates do not raise their voice against the opinion of the boss or the top management. In a single word, people in Korean organizations give high res pect to the authority and the decision making process in business management organization is totally centralized. Individualism The basic issue addressed by this particular dimension is the degree of interdependence that is maintained by a society among its each and every member. This dimension has to deal with whether the self image of people within a society is defined in terms of â€Å"WE† or â€Å"I†. There are two types of dimensions of the society, such as individualist society and collectivist society. According to the concept of individualistic society, people only can look after their direct family and themselves. On the other hand, people of collectivist society can look after or take care of the people who are belonging to the group and exchange loyalty. In terms of individualism, Korea has a score of 18. It means that the people of Korea follow collectivistic social structure and values. People of Korea have close long-term commitment to each and every memb er of the group (Greet-Hofstede, 2012, p.1). Loyalty in the collectivist culture over-rides several societal rules and regulations. In addition to this, this collectivist culture is considered as paramount. A particular society fosters strong relationship where each and every member within a group takes significant responsibility for fellow group members. Koreans always like to follow the collective decision of family (Lee and Boster, 1992, pp. 11-13). The

The Article Religious Groups and Work Values Essay

The Article Religious Groups and Work Values - Essay Example This follows the fact that an employee will feel more motivated to work if the employer identifies with his religion and understands it to the extent of knowing what is allowed, and what is illegal. This is, addition to the surrounding people, for a company, is not only built by the staff but also the community in which is located. Therefore, a company is more likely to be successful by respecting its religion, and religion can only be respected if the employees together with the employers know the pros and cons of the religion. The authors go about this by focusing on the major religions of the world to determine how these specific groups affect the work values. This is after many pieces of research carried out indicating a significant contribution of religion to work values. The authors assert that the importance of this recognition is being influenced by globalization that is on a rapid increase. Therefore, the importance of religion comes in when multinationals want to venture into places that are distant (Parboteeah 58). This means that the places are of different geographical positions as well as cultural differences in terms of core values of the communities, and the religion they hold close to the heart. They also acknowledge the need for understanding this link of religion to work values because the technology has led into a globalised village where different people of different religions search for jobs anywhere that fit their specifications. The authors assert that there are two work values that a re affected by religion, and these are extrinsic and intrinsic values. Therefore given the fact that these values are socially expressed these work values can, thus, be derived from motivation (Parboteeah 55).  The authors, therefore, determine this relationship by relating the religion to principles that enable the living of people which is directly connected to the foundations of human society.  

MGMT670 Week 3 Conf Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

MGMT670 Week 3 Conf - Essay Example I have found the managers of all departments working with full dedication and commitment to meet customers’ demands because they a complete understanding of the company’s vision statement. The top management has designed a very competitive business strategy that aims to gain profit, customer satisfaction, and competitive edge in the software industry of the United States. As employees, we have just one thing in our minds, which is to develop excellent quality products for our customers. I think the vision statement of our company has refined our approach towards work. Every department of the company, such as, quality control department, quality assurance department, human resource department, and customer care department feels the responsibility to move the company towards the top rankings in the field of software manufacturing. Therefore, I would say that vision of a company has direct connection with the overall business strategy, as well as the work approach of all employees and

The Article Religious Groups and Work Values Essay

The Article Religious Groups and Work Values - Essay Example This follows the fact that an employee will feel more motivated to work if the employer identifies with his religion and understands it to the extent of knowing what is allowed, and what is illegal. This is, addition to the surrounding people, for a company, is not only built by the staff but also the community in which is located. Therefore, a company is more likely to be successful by respecting its religion, and religion can only be respected if the employees together with the employers know the pros and cons of the religion. The authors go about this by focusing on the major religions of the world to determine how these specific groups affect the work values. This is after many pieces of research carried out indicating a significant contribution of religion to work values. The authors assert that the importance of this recognition is being influenced by globalization that is on a rapid increase. Therefore, the importance of religion comes in when multinationals want to venture into places that are distant (Parboteeah 58). This means that the places are of different geographical positions as well as cultural differences in terms of core values of the communities, and the religion they hold close to the heart. They also acknowledge the need for understanding this link of religion to work values because the technology has led into a globalised village where different people of different religions search for jobs anywhere that fit their specifications. The authors assert that there are two work values that a re affected by religion, and these are extrinsic and intrinsic values. Therefore given the fact that these values are socially expressed these work values can, thus, be derived from motivation (Parboteeah 55).  The authors, therefore, determine this relationship by relating the religion to principles that enable the living of people which is directly connected to the foundations of human society.  

How Tim OBrien Shows the Negative Side of Vietnam Essay Example for Free

How Tim OBrien Shows the Negative Side of Vietnam Essay In Tim OBriens The Things They Carried, OBrien talks about all the parts of the Vietnam War. It shows all the horrors and negative sides of the war and what it can do to men. Many men lose their lives as well as their best friends and comrades. War also changes the soldiers into something else thats not themselves, something evil. The Things They Carried shows the negative side of war through the imagery of the shitfield, the mental affects of the war, the hatred that can be shown by each person, the way war changes people, and the loss of companions. In the shitfield one sees everything that is bad about the war. Its dirty and mucky and its just depressing all around. While in the field the soldiers are bombarded my artillery fire so they have to sink into the muck to hide themselves. One of the soldiers, Kiowa, gets hit with one of the shells. Norman Bowker tries to pull him out of the muck but he cannot. All the men try to pull him out but they cannot. They lose a friend in Kiowa, who is lost and buried in the field, and it scars all the men for life especially when they try to pull him out of the muck. The loss of a good friend stings for OBrien. OBrien even says that he went down with Kiowa that day and he lost a part of himself in that field. Everyone lost a part of themselves there. OBrien describes what he saw of Kiowa as he was going down under the muck. Kiowa was almost completely under. There was a knee. There was an arm and a gold wristwatch and part of a boot. There were bubbles where Kiowas head shouldve been (OBrien 168). OBrien going down with Kiowa shows that there are other negative effects such as mental ones. The mental effects of the war are also very negative in The Things They Carried. War messes with peoples heads and Tim OBrien shows it in his book. I couldnt sleep; I couldnt lie still (Chen 77). This is a cause of all the blood and gore the soldier has seen. And this doesnt just speak for the one soldier who said it, it speaks for all the soldiers. The first stage is not being able to sleep, the next stage is losing your composure. Then men start to become paranoid during the war and some go crazy. Rat Kiley is a good example of this. He is a medic and he starts to go crazy. He says he hears noises in the night that arent there. He says that he hears the voices of the people dying at night. OBrien thinks its from all the gore and blood he sees day in and day out and its just getting to him but either way he loses it. Rat tells someone he is going to shoot himself so he can get out of there because of an injury. The next morning he shot himself (OBrien 223). Rat Kileys plan works and he gets to leave, but he apologizes to all the men for losing it and in turn they dont rat him out for what he did. Not only does the war mess with peoples heads during the war but also at other times. The mental effects also extend to after the war. The awful memories of war stick with some of the men long after they return home from the war. The post war stress is too much for Norman Bowker. He finds that when he returns home that its not the same to him and he cannot find his place in society. He feels empty inside and ever since the shitfield he feels incomplete. The lingering memory of not being able to pull Kiowa out of the muck sticks with him. He feels that he died there with Kiowa and this causes him to be depressed. He often talks about it with his dad saying that he wishes he could have pulled harder to get Kiowa out but he just couldnt because of the smell. Norman wrote Tim OBrien a letter about his last book. He said it was very good book but that he should have put a chapter in about the shitfield. OBrien finds out that eight months later Norman killed himself. Normans writes OBrien a letter saying there was no letter and he hung himself with a jump rope. Tim OBrien kills a man while hes in Vietnam. He still feels the effects of killing the man and the guilt years later. He remembers it very well when his daughter asks him a question. The question was if he had ever killed someone. OBriens guilt over the man he kills comes from questions his daughter asks him about the war. He feels the sting years later (Martin 2). OBrien also revisits the site of the shitfield with his daughter. He starts to remember all the bad things that happened and it hurts him. OBrien hates the bad memories; he hates a lot of things. Some of the men start to show hatred toward people who usually arent hateful. The men start to turn on each other in stressful situations when they would have never done it before. Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen got into a fistfight. It was about something stupid, a missing jackknife, but even so the fight was vicious. Strunks nose made a sharp snapping sound, like a firecracker (OBrien 62). The men show hatred in the fight and over nothing important at all. In other circumstances it mightve ended there. But this was Vietnam, where guys carried guns, and Dave Jensen started to worry. It was mostly in his head (OBrien 62-63). Dave Jensen starts to get paranoid and he hates Strunk for it. One afternoon he began firing his weapon into the air, yelling Strunks name. late that same night he borrowed a pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and used it like a hammer to break his own nose (OBrien 63). This just shows how hate is a part of Vietnam. OBrien also shows hate toward some of his comrades. In a firefight OBrien gets shot and needs help from the new medic Bobby Jorgenson, but Jorgenson freezes because hes too afraid and forgets to treat OBrien for shock. This causes him much more pain over the months because the wound wasnt treated right and in time. OBrien hates Jorgenson for it. I wanted to hurt Bobby Jorgenson the way hed hurt me (OBrien 200). Months later OBrien and Jorgenson talk. OBrien realizes that Jorgenson is really sorry and he cant bring himself to say how he feels about it and just says its ok. I hated him for making me stop hating him (OBrien 200). This isnt like OBrien to be hateful. He has become something hes not. The war changes the men into bad things, things that arent themselves. OBrien talk about how the war changes himself and his personality at times. Id come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person. Id turned mean inside. Even a little cruel at times. Its a hard thing to admit, even to myself, but I was capable of evil (OBrien 200). OBrien also talks about how one comes over innocent and but one leaves with a different identity. You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterwards its never the same (OBrien 114). Other authors talk about how OBrien shows the physical and mental devastation caused by the war. Nowhere in The Things They Carried does OBrien explain more clearly the psychic devastation wrought by wartime trauma (Neilson 193). One sees the effect of the trauma even if the characters previous personalities arent known. The killing also has a big affect on OBrien. OBrien also talks about how the man he kills changes him because it is such a big deal to take a life. The author describes the soldier he kills. He describes everything from his wounds to his figure. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay at the center of the red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His eye was shut, the other eye was a star shaped hole. I killed him. (OBrien 203). Once OBrien killed this man he was broken in to Vietnam. He no longer was clean, he was now dirty. His first kill hastens his loss of innocence (Herzog 133). The soldiers in the war arent the only ones who were changed by Vietnam. One soldier brings his girlfriend from the states to visit him in Vietnam. He has her flown in through cargo planes and brought to his camp. At first she is glad to see her boyfriend and one can tell they are in love because they spend every minute together. She begins to get curious though and wonders off camp many times to explore. Then one night she goes missing and she is gone for a couple of days. She returns with the Greenies or Green Berets. She tells him not to ask and not to worry about it and acts like she has done nothing wrong. This happens many other times and the soldier can tell that he is beginning to lose her. When she begins disappearing with the greenies and taking part in the night ambushes, she melts into a small, soft shadow' (Chen 90). She becomes something she originally wasnt. Mary Anne starts to become one with Vietnam and she totally forgets about her boyfriend. In the end she is lost forever to Vietnam. It becomes impossible to distinguish between Mary Anne and Vietnam (Chen 91). Her boyfriend loses her and she is lost to Vietnam. Just one of many casualties of the war. But in his final story OBrien moves from his concern with moral corruption and war to one even more universally human: death (OGorman 306). OBrien also loses many things in the war. The worst part of the Vietnam War that OBrien shows is his loss of companions and friends. The author talks many times about his comrades throughout the book. He loses many people close to him personally and physically. There are five deaths in the novel. Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, Kiowa, Linda, and the slim Vietcong soldier (Martin 1). The worst is the loss of his good friend. OBrien loses his good and best friend there, Kiowa, in the shitfield. This death is the most devastating to him because of how it happened in the muck and because he was a good friend. Kiowa was gone. He was under the mud and water, folded in with the war: Kiowas death actually makes him a part of the shitfield (Chen 93). It is also very devastating because all of the men feel guilt about it because they couldnt pull him out in time to possibly save him. Kiowas death is also pointless and has no purpose except to cause pain to his friends. In the story of Kiowas death, we find a combination of senselessness of war with the guilt that must be carried by other (Martin 2). This death affects everyone in the platoon but not all deaths are gruesome and ugly. An accident kills one of the young men, named Curt Lemon, and its described by OBrien as an almost beautiful death. They were just goofing. There was a noise, I supposed, which mustve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight.when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms. (OBrien 70) The two soldiers are just playing a simple game and it all ends so suddenly. He is playing a game with another soldier, a game of toss with a smoke grenade, when he accidentally steps on a landmine (Martin 2). Lemon and OBrien werent as good as friends as him and Kiowa but it was a bothersome death because Lemon was so young. OBrien speaks of him stepping into the light, and then the blast sucks him up into the trees.what bothers OBrien is that Curt Lemon is just a kid (Martin 2). The death isnt all-beautiful. OBrien describes the mess that is made by the accident. The white bone of an arm.pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that mustve been the intestines (OBrien 89). Another casualty happens because of bad luck. Lee Strunk dies in battle during a firefight. OBrien describes the wound that Strunk gets. In October Lee Strunk stepped on a rigged mortar round. It took off his right leg at the knee.then he panicked. He tried to get up and run, but there was nothing left to run on (OBrien 65). Strunk didnt die right away but not all death occur right after the accident happens. Later we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai (OBrien 66). The last death happens because of carelessness. Ted Lavender was always doped up and this in the end leads to his death. While going to the bathroom in the woods Lieutenant Cross is daydreaming and not keeping watch for enemy soldiers. While coming back from his bathroom break Lavender is shot in the head and killed on the spot. Cross never forgives himself for his death because he was daydreaming about girls and one of his men was killed. Several incidents in The Things They Carried reveal moments when the male soldiers cannot communicate with one another (Vernon 171). Death is only a small part of the whole picture. Tim OBrien shows many of the negative sides of the war to the reader in ways that the reader can see how bad war is. He uses the examples of his friends dying, the whole ordeal in the shitfield, how war changes the men including the mental effects, and by showing how hateful one can become because of the stressful situations and the things one sees. OBrien feels that he has to show all the negative sides of the war because he never wanted to go to war in the first place. Men go to war to fight battle that could be worked out peacefully and they fight and die for no reason. He feels that war is a bad thing and wants to show the reader that its a terrible thing and he does this very well. Even today war is a problem. Many young men are dying for no reason and it needs to stop. Works Cited Chen, Tina. Unraveling the Deeper Meaning: Exile and the Embodied poetics of Displacement in Tim OBriens The Things They Carried. Contemporary Literature 29.1 (spring 1998): 77-98. Herzog, Tobey C. Vietnam War Stories Innocence Lost. London: Routledge, 1992. Martin, Paul L. 24 March, 2008. http://plmartinwrite.blogspot.com/2007/11/things-they-carried.html Neilson, Jim. Warring Fictions. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1998 OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990. OGorman, Farrel. The Things They Carried as a Composite Novel. War, Lit, and the Arts. Vernon, Alex. Salvation, Storytelling and Pilgrimage in Tim OBriens the Things They Carried. Mosaic (Winnipeg) 36.4 (2003): 171+. Questia. 19 Mar. 2008 http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=od=5002093009.

Distribution of Foreign Direct Investment in Kazakhstan

Distribution of Foreign Direct Investment in Kazakhstan In his book author (RRRRR), wrote that domestic investors of any particular country who engage in investments activity outside their country of residence and this investments earn them returns which are then repatriated to their domestic country are engaging in foreign direct investment. From the point of view of a country, foreign direct investments are the investment made by non-citizens of that country or investment made by citizens in other foreign countries. Foreign direct investment is attainable where there is a good business relationship between the investing company or parent company and its subsidiary company located abroad. This kind of business relations has led to the emergence of multinationals company that engage in foreign direct investment in many parts of the world. According to (DDDD), a business analyst whose studies refer to only those companies which have a minimum of 10 percent shareholding in foreign subsidiaries as companies that participate in foreign direct investment, also companies which have voting rights in the annual general meeting of foreign subsidiaries engage in foreign direct investments. Types of Foreign direct Investments As by the definition, foreign direct investment can be classified in two categories namely the internal FDI and external FDI, the classification of the two categories is mainly guided by the restrictions that are imposed for these investments and the requirements involved for such investments to take place. External FDI also known as direct investment abroad usually supported by the local government due to the benefits it will bring to the country one among them is foreign exchange that will help the country to have a balance of payments in its international trade. The government offers there support by giving such investments tax incentives that will reduce the cost of doing business and as well as make the investment worthwhile without eroding their income. External investments become unfavorable when companies abroad get special treatment by their local governments which in a way give them competitive advantage over the external FDI by granting them subsidies and covering of their risks. Internal FDI is encouraged by the host country in different manners which include; subsides, elimination of trade or investment barriers that makes doing business for foreign investors hard, lowering of interest on loans granted to them and tax allowances. Other classifications of foreign direct investment are vertical FDI and horizontal FDI. Vertical FDI occurs when a multinational company that owns more than 10 percent of foreign subsidiary, engage with its subsidiary in business activities whereby the foreign subsidiary is the main supplier of raw materials to the multinational company or it uses the goods and serviced produced by the multinational company. Horizontal FDI is when a local multinational company engages in the same business activity in different parts of the world. Motives behind Foreign Direct Investment FDI which are driven by the motive of establishing a strong market presence or venturing into new markets are termed as market-seeking FDI, while FDI which are driven by the motive of tapping into factors of production like labor, human resource which are in foreign countries and are more efficient in operations and cost are termed as resource -seeking FDI. FDI motivated by maximizing the opportunities available and reaping on the benefits of economics of scale are termed as efficiency seeking FDI. Determinants of foreign direct investment The main factors which will determine if a foreign direct investment can take place are the economic prospects of the foreign country and the size of the potential market. If the foreign country has wide market then foreign investors will assume that they will be able to grow their investments rapidly and get big returns of it. The foreign countrys population will also play critical part in making decision on whether to participate in foreign direct investment, because its the size of the population that determines the consumer size available thus a big population will mean a big consumer base. If the foreign country citizens have a reasonably higher per capita income it would mean that they would be ready to spend and to the foreign investor he or she would translate this to potential of good investments. Foreign investors will also be lured into investing in foreign country if the workforce thats available is well qualified and competent enough, who will offer to them big returns on their human capital. The availability of natural resources like gold, oil and diamond will attract foreign investors to these countries, an example is Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and other oil rich countries have all attracted foreign investors into their country to tap into the oil exploration industry thats unlimited and has good future prospects. The level of technological advancement and infrastructure that are available in a country will also influence on foreign direct investments. Recent reports and studies have shown that countries which have properly placed infrastructure facilities have experienced a high amount of foreign direct investment. (PPPPPPPP) studies noted that over the past countries have made tremendous reforms to their economic policies in bid to create conducive environment which can attract more foreign investments and companies that engage in foreign investments have altered their legal framework to make them more transparent and sensitive to their business environment. Advantages of Foreign Direct Investment in Kazakhstan According to statistics released by the Ministry of Economy and Budget planning of Kazakhstan they have shown that the country main benefit from foreign direct investment has being the economic development witnessed in that country, especially since the country was referred to as among those economically developing countries in the 1990s. Foreign direct investment has also being the source of financial assistance for Kazakhstan during times of economic hardships. Kazakhstan has also witnessed technological advancement since foreign investors who allocate a big percentage of their capital towards technology and research in the field that they plan to invest in. The workforce in that country has become more skilled and resourceful because the foreign companies bring in new skills and train their human resource according to their high standards, in addition they have contributed to the education development in that country because of the revenues they pay to the Kazakhstan government in the form of corporate taxes which are channeled to building of schools and technology-focused training institutions. New jobs have being created in the country which can be mainly attributed to FDI that has also led to the rapid development of the manufacturing industry in that country, e employees working in these companies are also paid according to international standards which affords them good lifestyle and increase in the living standards of the countries population. Kazakhstan revenue collection has shot up because now it not only relies on domestic taxes but also taxes that come from these foreign investment made in that country, the increase in revenue collection has played a big role in the growth of the economy. Companies in Kazakhstan that have ventured to foreign markets have being able to increase market for their goods and services thus have being able to earn the country foreign exchange that helps it to attain a balance of payment in the international trade. The Kazakhstan central bank reportedly has lowered it interest rates on loans made out to business ventures which is attributed to the influence of foreign direct investment. Business can now access capital from the local banks at a low interest rate level; the small and medium sized companies have tapped this advantage and have grown their business to a high level. Disadvantages of Foreign Direct Investment in Kazakhstan Operations of the companies, Human resource working for these FDI companies and the distributions of revenues made out of foreign direct investment are the main areas that are prone to suffer from the disadvantages of FDI. The fragile parts of the economy of the host country are also prone to any negative shift in foreign direct investment. Studies done by (GGGGGG) have indicted that negative consequences of foreign direct investment in a host country can be reduced if the government is strict in ensuring that these companies that participate in FDI in their country are engaged in business activities that environment friendly, they abide by the social and legal regulations that the government has established. In Kazakhstan foreign investment has forced the government to make some economic reforms that which have not being received well by the locals, some of the economic policies do not even favor the foreign investors themselves. The geographical location of Kazakhstan and also the fact that it is land locked has made foreign investors view it as an isolated region unfavorable for doing business because of the high transport fee to fly in and out of the country especially when moving goods or capital goods that need to be shipped or transported through the railway. In allowing foreign direct investment Kazakhstan will be placing their local companies at the disadvantage of being taken over by the large multinational companies who are exposed to huge amount of capital to invest. For Kazakhstan local companies which engage in direct investment abroad will be exposing themselves to the danger of nationalized in the foreign country. The government of Kazakhstan aims at making the economy more liberal to attract even more foreign investment into the country, in doing so they loss control of these companies that operate there as subsidiaries fully owned by multinational companies. When the government does not exercise control over these companies the environment and locals interest cant be represented and employees are exposed to potential exploitation by such companies. Some of the companies will even disregard economic policies set by the government. Foreign direct investment wont be of benefit to the Kazakhstan economy if the subsidiaries of multinational companies directly channel their profits to their mother country without making any developments in the country the invest in, there would also be imbalance of payment as more capital will be moving out of the country than capital coming into the country. Foreign Investment in KZ economy The foreign investment turnover in Kazakhstan has shown a continuous growth over the past ten years with an annual growth average of 19.1% with a significant growth being recorded in the years between 1995-2006, the rapid growth that was estimated to have reached more than fifty billion US dollars by August the year 2007 was largely associated with the sharp rise in prices of both oil and gas coupled with the significant increase in oil export volumes. Kazakhstan main partner in trade is still viewed to be Russia who are the country largest importers, the country basically enjoy a large export market in the western countries where there are leading in export of oil and metals that are used by industries there as raw materials. Foreign investment in Kazakhstan economy has increased because investors are attracted to the country by the fact that economy of the country has be experiencing tremendous growth, evidence is shown by figures which show that about eighty percent of all capital inflows that went to the central Asia region were direct towards the countrys economy with the European Union topping the list in terms of source of investments. Author (PPPP), in his studies show that this sharp raises in foreign investment is due to the economic reforms made, stable institutions that have being set up and the development experienced in the banking sector. Foreign investment led to about eighteen Kazakhstan companies being listed in the London Stock Exchange with four being listed at the main market in the period between the years 2005-2007. Foreign direct Investment in Kazakhstan; Sources: Ministry of Economy and Budget Planning of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Foreign Inflow by various countries to Kazakhstan figures according to the year 2009; COUNTRY Japan France US Russia Netherlands China Italy UK Others % 3% 7% 16% 4% 28% 6% 4% 6% 22% Source: Ministry of Economy and Budget Planning of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Movement in the key economic indicators   Key economic indicators 2003   2004 2005 2006 2007 2008   Real GDP growth (%)   9.3   9.6 9.7 10.7   8.9 3.1   Consumer price inflation (av. %)   6.8 6.7 7.5 8.4 10.8 9.5   Exchange rate Tenge:US$ (av)   149.58 136.00     132.88   126.09   122.60   122.55   Exchange rate Tenge:à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ (av)   168.79   169.04   165.42   158.27   167.8   167.75   Budget balance (% of GDP) -1.7   -1.9 SOURCES: Kazakh Statistical Agency, Investors Guide, Nationalbank Kazakhstan  Ã‚  Ã‚   Main exporters and importers Main destinations of exports 2007 % of total   Main origins of imports 2008   % of total   Russia   9.8   Russia   35.5   Italy   16.3   EU   24.5   France   8.3   China   10.7   Switzerland   15.7   US   5.1   China   11.8   Ukraine   4.7   Others   38.1 SOURCES: Kazakh Statistical Agency, Investors Guide, Nationalbank Kazakhstan Main export and imports   Major exports 2007   % of total   Major imports 2007 % of total   Mineral products   69.8   Mineral products   12.8   Chemicals, plastics, rubber   4.1   Chemicals, plastics, rubber   10.7   Non precious materials, its products   17.3   Non precious materials, its products   13.5   Machinery, equipment transport, instruments and apparatus   1.8   Machinery, equipment transport, instruments and apparatus   46.8   Foodstuff   3.9   Foodstuff   6.8   Others   3.1   Others   9.4   SOURCES: Ministry of Energetic and Mineral Resources, Investors Guide, Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Kazakhstan  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Investment Environment in Kazakhstan Kazakhstan located in the central Asia and Europe region is the ninth largest country in the world thats landlocked with a gross national income per capita of more than six thousand and a population of more than fifteen million whom according to reports released by United Nation are averagely in the income group of middle income earners. Kazakhstan currently leads the central Asia in terms of social and economic growth, it has the potential to make the region independent and an economic success, the European Union in the year 2000 elevated the country to the market economy status due to its attraction to international investors and multinational companies who prefer to locate their. The same move was followed by the United States of America who in the year 2002 also elevated the status of Kazakhstan to a market economy up from a non-market economy opening up for their local companies the wider western nations market that includes the US; this conclusion was arrived at after observing economic indicators that showed improvements such as the increase in level of wages for the workforce, convertibility of countrys currency, increase in foreign direct investment, drop in corruption level, control of production, public control and reduction in human rights violation. The transition to market economy is a journey that started 17 years ago from the former soviet economy to a free market economy. After independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the high rate of inflation and economic decline that was witnessed in the early parts of 1990s Kazakhstan engaged itself into a series of political, economic and social reforms. Currently the economic reforms are geared towards diversifying the economy more particular is to remove the economic reliance on natural resources and focus on developing other key sectors of the economy. Kazakhstan investment environment has seen an overall macro- economic stability coupled with economic reforms that are aimed at making the environment more investment friendly. Figures released by the Index of Economic Freedom show that over the past five years the country has witnessed a recommendable economic growth that can be attributed to the increased revenues from the Oil industry. The Kazakhstan high corruption level, unfavorable tax rates and lack of access to funds for investment are the main difficulties experienced in the investment environment that has made doing business even harder this is according to the 2009 reports by Enterprise Surveys. It is important to note that the investment environment in Kazakhstan has shown improvements in these three problematic areas making doing business easier in that country. The most notable improvements were in reduction of costs from 1,431 dollars to 119 dollars which are incurred when applying for construction permits, the other sectors that transformed so as to improve the investment environment was shown by the 10 percent fall in corporate tax, reduction in labor taxes and even compulsory contributions by the Kazakhstans working population was lowered. A new tax code and the Kazakh law were also introduced all aimed at making the country a good investment harbor, the new law mainly focused on ensuring that there was equality in the distribution of investment incentives to both local investors and foreign investors, safeguard the rights of investors and establish procedural system that was free and fair in settling disputes of investors. Some of the measures that the new tax code p ut into considerations included; adjusting the tax code so that it can be in line with the international financial reporting standards, eliminating the advance payments by all but three hundred biggest companies of their corporate tax, extension of loss deferral period to up to ten years, lowering of value added tax from 13% to 12%, gradual introduction of traditional payment scheme for value added tax and the implementation of a common social tax rate of 11% replacing the regressive scale. The drastic changes and economic policy reforms all paid of when the country was voted as the leading country in CIS because of its efforts in creating an investment environment that was conducive for doing business. International rating agency in 2002 rated Kazakhstan highly in terms of investment and due to the fact that Kazakhstan was the first Soviet Union republic to repay all the loan advanced to it by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the year 2000 which was seven years ahead of the repayment schedule, Standard Poors and Fitch confirmed the same in the year 2004 as other surveys and research done by international organizations all showed the same. In particular Fitch analyst pointed out that Kazakhstans finance and economy in general was better placed to deal with pressure from Oil and the ever changing oil prices than any other country in the world. The organization of top forty most industrialized countries (OECD) in the year 2003 put Kazakhstan at position four in terms of export credit rating which was an upward movement from the last rating done by OECD before 2003. The better ratings meant that the country could now enjoy good opportunities for doing trade. According to figures given out by World Bank business experts they show that out of all the foreign direct investment made in central Asia nearly eighty percent of these investments were made in Kazakhstan, the same report also showed that the country is regarded as being among top twenty countries which are most favorable to foreign investors. Recent years have seen research and survey place Kazakhstan in the top spot in foreign direct investment per capita which has being increasing steadily. In the period between 1993 and 2005 FDI was reportedly to have grown to be more than 37 billion US dollars, important point to note is that in the period of 2001 to 2003 there was only 4.5 billion US dollars worth of FDI made while in 2004 there was a drastic increase of up to 8.4 billion US dollars worth of investment made in Kazakhstan which was due to the increase in local companies that had foreign direct investment from 6,579 companies in 2003 to 7070 companies in 2004. Literature Review Regional distribution of foreign direct investment is the allocation of the investment opportunities and resources in economical manner so that every region gets a piece of the cake. When Kazakhstan is making strategic planning, they make a regional distribution plan considering the available FDI. It involves distributing FDI among the much needed projects or sectors of the economy and regions in the country. In the strategic planning decisions are made as to what areas or regions need FDI and what amount of FDI is needed, afterwards a contingency mechanism is established which sets out regions or area that should be given more priority than the others incase FDI is limited Regionally the country enjoys great leadership thanks to its close ties with the Russia, China and the central Asia region also the creation of customs union between the country Russia and Belarus this year has cemented its position as the regional leader. . Major Key sectors that Kazakhstan has mainly focused on improving through the help of foreign direct investment include; agriculture which offer investment opportunity in over twenty million hectares of farmland with more than a hundred and sixty five million hectares of pasture, the government has tried to promote these sector to investors by putting in place infrastructure facilities that offers smooth transport system. The textile industry also offers investment opportunities thats backed up by availability of qualified workforce, availability of processing factories that are already in place the government also make grants to these industry in form of tax holidays, favorable custom tariffs plus there is a wide ready market for textile products in East-Europe region and Russia, close links that exist between neighboring cotton producers like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan make the sector highly capable of big returns. The telecommunication sector has being liberalized to attract more foreign investors enhanced by the growing number of information technology an internet penetration which has resulted to a sharp demand for broadband ISP services. The power generation sector will attract FDI due to high electricity consumption attributed to increased income/quality of life, infrastructure and hydrocarbon projects, recent reports show that a total of twenty two billion US dollars worth of investment are expected by the year 2015 plus the government has set aside thirteen billion US dollars that are to be channeled in the expansion program of power generation capacity a further nine billion US dollars will be invested in distribution and national grid. The other potential area that the Kazakhstan government focuses on distributing FDI to is the Metallurgy sector which produces huge amount of world-class base, precious minerals and metals, the sector has well developed infrastructure that are already in place and the closeness to biggest consumers of metallurgical products makes it worthwhile to channel FDI to. According to National Bank of Kazakhstan, the country is ranked at the 20th position in terms of its oil reserve, 13th position in terms of natural gas reserve and 24th in the world in natural gas production. Recommendation Kazakhstan should take the advantage of its strategic location which put it at a better place to become the centre of business in central Asia with ready markets form Russia and China. To gain competitive advantage over other country Kazakhstan should focus on creating conducive business environment together with political stability and increase the incentive granted their local companies that want to participate in direct investment abroad. All this will be attainable if there will be zero tolerance to corruption cases, improving of the education standards and the logistical infrastructure. Political institution should be strengthen by instituting professional training for government officials, engaging the local government in the developments of clusters, design a process to ensure that the political environment is transparent in its deal and consistent, institute professional civil service with transparent rules and performance based promotion. Zero tolerance to corruption will be achieved if the government institution eliminate the long tendering procedure that are involved with tenders, put in place comprehensive strategy to fight against corruption in national and local government, the other way to eliminate corruption is to ensure maximum punishment for those officials who engage in corrupt deals plus salary increment to government staff. The other recommendation that will see increase in FDI is removal of labor quota on expatriates; promote the transfer of skills as show of commitment to the growth of FDI, promoting the entrance of foreign banks in to the local banking industry, establishing transparent small and medium enterprises lending institutions, reduce the complexity in regulatory procedures that are involved in the licensing and registration process and the involvement of existing multinational companies in setting up private sector IFCs. Privatization of government owned industries and establishing a competition oversight authority that will make the country more attractive for foreign direct investments.