Regional Geography Essay Example for Free

Regional Geography Essay The reaction has been disjointed and slow, and results seen are even harder to find. Hillstrom and Hillstrom agree that â€Å" Pollution is a particularly insidious form of habitat degradation, fundamentally impacting fragile ecosystems in myriad ways, some of which are invisible to the naked eye† (17), mentioning specifically acid rain, and farm pesticide use as a couple of the not so quickly identifiable sources of habitat degradation. The authors of World Regional Geography point out that Environmental degradation in one place is often the result of demands for resources or goods in other places, and air and water pollution can flow across borders(18). The authors also note that Small farms are now being replaced by corporate farms and high tech operations such as shrimp farms, most of which, ironically cause environmental degradation and yet receive government assistance(19). Degradation also results when the vast expanses of concrete, in highly developed areas of urban sprawl, during heavy rains, sends tumultuous, unrestricted flow of groundwater to run amok. The water washes soil and impurities along with the run off, salts from road maintenance, as well as chemicals used by various processing plants. It is a vicious cycle, As economic prosperity expands, peoples consumption of goods and resources increases, and environmental degradation is usually the result, even when aware, to make the dollar, degradation processes are too often ignored as long as possible (20). Degradation can involve loss of plant life, and biodiversity, as well as pollution of soil and water sources. We need to become more active in defense of animal habitats, because realistically we too are animals, and the biodiversity that is important to wildlife, is equally important to humans. (17) Hillstrom Kevin, Hillstrom Laurie Collier. North America: A Continental Overview of Environmental Issues. Edition: illustrated, Published by ABC-CLIO, 2003. P. 43. (18) Hapke Holly M, Goodwin Conrad Mac, Pulsipher Lydia Mihelic, Pulsipher Alex. World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives. Edition: 3, illustrated, Published by Macmillan, 2005. p. 13. (19) Ibid. p. 169. (20). Ibid. P. 455. 7 Johnson and Klemens warn us that Sprawl is leading to the loss of rare and common species and possible species extinction. It is also leading directly to the loss of our natural environment, of ecosystem functioning(21). The ecosystem is a delicate balance, and we can not continue to disregard the warnings. If the ecosystem were to stop functioning the world could become a science fiction movie stage. Imagine a world without birds and bees, our major natural pollinators, and the resulting plant species extinctions that would follow. Plant extinctions would be soon followed by animal extinctions, right on down the food chain. This stark truth could very well come true in the not so distant future, if humans do not make changes to accommodate the animals we share the earth with. One of the biggest changes that could occur, that would help slow the detrimental progress of urban sprawl, would be to adopt more compact development planning. Instead of subdivisions spread across hundreds of acres, connected by a network of roads to the strip malls a few miles in one direction, and the factories a few miles in the opposite direction, plan more considerately, keep the sprawl to a minimum. Also when in the planning process, demand developers leave larger buffer zones, as well as intact habitat corridors to allow wildlife unrestricted movement between the islands of adequate habitat. Stricter oversight, and regulation of corporations discharging waste into the environment is a must, for wildlife and their habitat, and for humans as well. It is a shame that in this age of technology, the scientific community seems to have thought of everything geared towards production and convenience, and yet neglected to foresee the destruction of our environment that has resulted. Works Cited: Emel Jody, Wolch Jennifer. Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-culture Borderlands, Edition: illustrated, Published by Verso, 1998. Hapke Holly M, Goodwin Conrad Mac, Pulsipher Lydia Mihelic, Pulsipher Alex. World Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives. Edition: 3, illustrated, Published by Macmillan, 2005. Hillstrom Kevin, Hillstrom Laurie Collier. North America: A Continental Overview of Environmental Issues. Edition: illustrated, Published by ABC-CLIO, 2003.

The Color Purple Essay -- essays research papers fc

The Results of Celie’s Physical and Mental Abuse   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1982 Alice Walker titled her Pulitzer Prize Winning novel, The Color Purple, which is symbolically meant to reflect radiance and majesty (Columbia). It is a story, entirely conveyed through letters, of one young black girl’s struggle to escape the brutal and degrading treatment by men, which had become a constant part of her life. Instead of focusing on race throughout the novel Walker accords â€Å"greater importance to power, the power to be, to concretize one’s self, as to mold others† (Dieke 102). This completely unbalanced power ultimately leaves Celie feeling alone and controlled, which affects her relationships with men and influences her relationship with women, mainly Shug Avery. The horrifying effects of rape and what Celie thought was incest so greatly scarred her for the rest of her life that she lost the ability to love, became confused about her sexuality, and subconsciously denied her right to an identity.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For a considerable amount of time Celie blindly accepted the fact that she would be treated like a slave in her own home. As a result, Celie demonstrated intense fear and a complete lack of love toward her husband. Because Mr. _____ had originally wanted to marry Celie’s older sister Nettie he felt that in settling for Celie he had the right to treat her as his property. Celie was completely aware of these arrangements â€Å"Mr. _____ marry me to take care of his children. I marry him cause my daddy made me. I don’t love Mr. _____ and he don’t love me† (Walker 57). As opposed to most marriages being based on trust, love, and commitment, their bond was based on authority, obedience, and service. Mr. _____ immediately brings Shug Avery into his home when he heard that she was sick so that Celie could take care of her along with his children from a previous marriage. After a short period of time Celie learns about their past and about Mr. _____’s current feelings for Shug. Celie’s blatant disregard to Mr. _____ sleeping with Shug again displays complete apathy toward her husband. Mr. _____’s aggressively dominant role does not denote the conventional husband/wife relationship it seems to more closely represent a master/slave relationship. Mr. _____’s constant oppressive presence causes Celie to live in continuous fear. Celie explains that M... ...novel Celie’s traumatic experiences have had a great impact on the entirety of her life. Once married she constantly lived in fear being incapable of love and unable to control her misguided sexual emotions.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Bibliography Bradley, David. â€Å"Novelist Alice Walker: Telling the Black Woman’s Story.† New York Times Magazine 8 Jan. 1984: 24-37. Dieke, Ikenna. Critical Essays on Alice Walker. Westport:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Greenwood Press,1999. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. and K.A. Appiah. Alice Walker   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Critical Perspectives Past and Present. NewYork:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Amistad Press Inc, 1993. http://www.Womenshistroy.about.com â€Å"Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple† African American   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Review 29 #1 Spring 1995:67-82. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright 2001   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Columbia University Press. Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Orlando: Harcourt Brace   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jovanovich Publishers 1982. Walsh, Margaret. â€Å"The Enchanted World of the Color Purple.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Southern Quarterly 25 (1987): 89-101.

North South Airlines Essay

BACKGROUND OF THE COMPANY Northern Airlines merged with Southeast Airlines to create the fourth largest U.S. carrier in January 2008. The new North–South Airline inherited both an aging fleet of Boeing 727-300 aircraft and Stephen Ruth. Stephen was a tough former Secretary of the Navy who stepped in as new president and chairman of the board. Peg Jones on the other hand is the vice president for operations and maintenance. DEFINE THE PROBLEM Stephen’s objective is to gear the company’s financial performance towards stability and continuous growth. This made him concern that the aging fleet of Boeing 727-300 aircraft’s maintenance cost may impede realization of this goal. The significant difference in the reported B727-300 maintenance costs (from ATA Form 41s) both in the airframe and engine areas between Northern Airlines and Southeast Airlines made him to probe through Peg Jones’ assistance on determining the quantitative and graphical report of the following : Correlation of the average fleet age to direct airframe maintenance costs Linear relationship between the average fleet age and direct engine maintenance costs CASE FACTS AND INFORMATION (INCLUDING LIMITATIONS & CONSTRAINTS) In addition to the aging formulas below, Peg constructed the average age of Northern and Southeast B727-300 fleets by quarter since the introduction of that aircraft to service by each airline in late 1993 and early 1994 respectively. TOTAL FLEET HOURS = TOTAL DAYS IN SERVICE X AVERAGE DAILY UTILIZATION AVERAGE AGE OF EACH FLEET = TOTAL FLEET HOURS FLOWN # OF AIRCRAFT IN SERVICE AVERAGE DAILY UTILIZATION = TOTAL FLEET HOURS FLOWN TOTAL DAYS IN SERVICE In getting the average utilization, Peg used the actual fleet hours flown on September 30, 2007 from Northern and Southeast data, and dividing by the total days in service for all aircraft at that time. The average utilization for Southeast and Northern were 8.3 and 8.7 hours per day respectively. In addition, available cost data including the average fleet age were calculated for each yearly period ending at the end of first quarter. Business asset depreciation depends on the cost of asset and its useful life. What is distinct about aircraft depreciation is that each component of an airplane is depreciated at different rates and depreciation methods. The North-South Airline problem for this instance may also be resolved by using depreciation methods as follows: straight line with salvage value method = Asset Cost/ Useful Life The advantage of using the straight line method involves the ease of calculating the annual depreciation amount. The disadvantage of using the straight line method is that this method does not consider the rate the asset will actually depreciate in value. Declining balance method = Remaining Asset Value x Depreciation Rate The advantage of using this method is that it accelerates the depreciation recorded early in the asset’s life and thus reduces the taxable income and the taxes owed during the early years. The disadvantage is that the method can be applied only when there is a residual value of the asset. quantitative method/s employed and the solution to the problem Northern Airlines Data AIRFRAME ENGINE Southern Airlines Data AIRFRAME Southeast Airline—airframe maintenance cost: Cost = 4.60 + 0 (airframe age) = 4.60 Coefficient of determination = 0.39 Coefficient of correlation = 0.62 ENGINE Northern Airline—airframe maintenance cost: Cost _ 36.10 _ 0.0025 (airframe age) Coefficient of determination _ 0.7694 Coefficient of correlation _ 0.8771 Northern Airline—engine maintenance cost: Cost _ 20.57 _ 0.0026 (airframe age) Coefficient of determination _ 0.6124 Coefficient of correlation _ 0.7825 Southeast Airline—engine maintenance cost: Cost __0.671 _ 0.0041 (airframe age) Coefficient of determination _ 0.4599 Coefficient of correlation _ 0.6782 ethical considerations DEPRECIATION USED = SAFETY The units of production method involves determining the cost to depreciate and dividing that amount by the estimated production units the company expects to manufacture over the life of the asset. The advantages of using the units of production method include the ease of calculating the annual depreciation amount and that the depreciation is matched to the production quantity. The disadvantage of using the units of production method is that this method assumes the asset will depreciate evenly over its productive life. The graphs below portray both the actual data and the regression lines for airframe and engine maintenance costs for both airlines.Note that the two graphs have been drawn to the same scale to facilitate comparisons between the two airlines. Northern Airline: There seem to be modest correlations between maintenance costs and airframe age for Northern Airline. There is certainly reason to conclude, however, that airframe age is not the only important factor. Southeast Airline: The relationships between maintenance costs and airframe age for Southeast Airline are much less well defined. It is even more obvious that airframe age is not the only important factor—perhaps not even the most important factor. Overall conclusion Overall, it would seem that: 1. Northern Airline has the smallest variance in maintenance costs, indicating that the day-to-day management of maintenance is working pretty well. 2. Maintenance costs seem to be more a function of airline than of airframe age. 3. The airframe and engine maintenance costs for Southeast Airline are not only lower but more nearly similar than those for Northern Airline, but, from the graphs at least, appear to be rising more sharply with age. 4. From an overall perspective, it appears that Southeast Airline may perform more efficiently on sporadic or emergency repairs, and Northern Airline may place more emphasis on preventive maintenance. Ms. Young’s report should conclude that: 1. There is evidence to suggest that maintenance costs could be made to be a function of airframe age by implementing more effective management practices. 2. The difference between maintenance procedures of the two airlines should be investigated. 3. The data with which she is presently working do not provide conclusive results.

Why Should Ebay Be Legal Action - 1197 Words

Remedial Actions Straight after the incident taking place, Ebay didn’t notify their customers of what had happened. Instead the news had leaked out that the company had been under attack from hacktivists. The actions that the company took to patch up the compromise was by investing more money into securing their own servers. This should have been done formally before the incident, however Ebay’s excuse was their IT infrastructure was too big. Ebay carried out additional and through testing after the breach to check if there has been any unauthorised access, but results had shown that there had not been any evidence of unauthorised access (LLP, 2014). Ebay is also looking at different forensic tools and methods to protect their customers†¦show more content†¦This is to deal with the amount of members that are coming to their e-commerce service (Richard, 2014). Other Relevant Information When Ebay primarily started with the ‘Aution Web’ their structural design of the website was fairly simple. Back then they were using the PERL and no databases to connect to. Instead they used plain text files. Since the distribution of members started to increase had to create another version. This meant from transferring from one programming language to another; PERL and C++. A database structure has to be implemented where they used the master-slave method. Meanwhile, on the front-end users they were running XSLT. Since further expansion in 1998 and website improvement, Ebay had to move to version 3. Version 3 consisted of solely Java with a C++ based search engine. They additionally innovated a method for calls, but discarded it due to image elements on the page running slowly. The Version 4 which came available in 2006 consisted of everything being Java, this meant previous code had to transform to classes and methods in Java such as Links, Images, JavaScript and C ontent. The Version 4 also included Ajax Technologies (Anonymous, 2008). Now Ebay website deals with â€Å"26 billion SQL queries and keep tab on 100 million items available for purchasing† (Anonymous, 2008). This means that the Oracle database is prone to SQL injections and Ebay need to block out any intruder that might want access to the