Author: chris

In light of state and federal government’s recent attempts to mandate certain health measures, what are your personal feelings about the truth of this statement?

This is a preliminary review of possible sources to help you to establish the context and more precise focus of your enquiry.
Literature search:Evaluating existing knowledge.
1. Title: (the area or issue you are exploring).
2. Introduction:Explain what you are aiming to find out.(approx. 200 words).
3. Results of the literature search:
Choose 6-8 sources you have located and assess how they contribute to understanding your particular area. This must include at least 3 articles from peer-reviewed journals and 2 academic book sources.
This is the main part of the assignment and it should be 1,500-2,000 words long. Use critical thinking to help you evaluate your sources. Be precise, but succinct, about what the sources reveal. You may deal with the sources one after another, but do also consider arranging them in groups/order to help with the development towards your concluding section.
4. Preliminary conclusions(approx 300 words): Summarise what you have concluded from the sources you have consulted so far. What are the implications of the insights/understandings you have gained as you take this project further. For example , you may consider:
* What further sources in terms of content would be helpful?
* What further sources in terms of method would be helpful?
* What would make a feasible research question for this area/issue?
5. List of references-set out following Harvard guidance. Total word count -2-2500 words not including list of references.

Project description
IBM is one of the most staid, corporate images and brands in America. Three simple capital letters in a block font, conjures images of traditional corporate America. Please view the following PowerPoint presentation on the history behind the logo.

IBM Logo History

Over the last few years, IBM has embarked on a series of virtual brainstorming sessions with its employees. Using their “Jam” technology, these online discussions resulted in the re-development of the company value statement. Reflecting the needs of business, marketplace, and employee, the values are:

“Dedication to every client’s success”
“Innovation that matters – for our company and for the world”
“Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships”

Search the IBM website (http://www.ibm.com) for more information on the values and mission of the organization.

Your assignment is to re-create the brand image for IBM by redoing the visual identity concept (logo) for old-school IBM.

This assignment has four parts:

You will need to completely re-design the IBM logo. This is your chance to be creative. Use Word, PowerPoint, or any other application with which you are familiar (and supports text and/or images) to design the new logo. The logo should represent the values of the organization.
Using PowerPoint create a presentation to “sell” your logo. It will be 3-5 slides long.
1.The first slide describes the features of the new logo. Include the logo itself, along with text describing the color selection, font choice, image choice (if used), etc.
2.For the second slide create a one-page ad that combines images, words, and the logo itself, that introduces the “new” IBM to the employees, customers, and shareholders.
3.For the last few slides, develop a written rationale as to how your design addresses the values of the organization and how the new logo would be perceived by the employees, customers, and shareholders. These three, very different audiences may perceive the logo in very different ways.

Develop an envisioned methodology and design for the research topic (Housing and Urban Development’s Connect Home Program) based on identified research problems, purpose, and previous research which exists, and then write a research paper to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the envisioned method and design. In your paper, justify why the chosen method and design would be most appropriate for your research questions. In justifying your chosen method and design, discuss why alternative methods/designs would be less desirable for your study. Please corroborate your assertions with scholarly research.

One-Way Analysis of Variance with SPSS
As you work through this SPSS exercise, consider the application of the one-way ANOVA test to your research topic. Is it an appropriate test for your research?
To prepare for this Application:
Review Lessons 25 and 27 in the course text Using SPSS for Windows and Macintosh: Analyzing and Understanding Data.
Read the ANOVA/MANOVA section of the StatSoft Electronic Textbook at http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/.
Access the gss04student_corrected dataset in the Course Information area of the classroom to use for this Application
The assignment:
My Research project is: The impact of Abdominoplasty Psychosocially on female obese patients age 35-50.
Craft up to a one page double-spaced write up of the statistical results (include any additional pages needed for any APA tables or graphs and the SPSS syntax and output) in which you do the following:
State the statistical assumptions of this test.
Select an independent variable with three or more levels and a dependent variable.
Develop the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis for main effects.
Using SPSS, calculate an ANOVA. Include a post hoc test.
Report on the p value and the confidence interval.
Interpret the confidence interval.
Decide whether to reject or retain the null hypothesis based on main effects and/or post-hoc statistical tests.
Generate syntax and output files in SPSS. You will need to copy and paste these into your Application document.
Based on your SPSS analysis, report the results using correct APA format. Include results for post hoc tests where appropriate. Your report should include the following:
SPSS syntax and output files
ANOVA table

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:
– Job Qualifications and DescriptionState Judges: Using research, create a job description for state judges.
– Job Qualifications and DescriptionFederal Judges: Using research, create a job description for federal judges.
– Opinion: Assess the relative difficulty and caseloads of state and federal judges. Who do you think has a more difficult job? Why? Consider in your answer
the caseload and types of cases that state and federal courts handle, and the amount of public and media scrutiny state and federal judges receive.
Guidelines for Submission: Your short paper must be submitted as a one- to two-page Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New
Roman font, one-inch margins, and at least three sources cited in APA format.
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You have just been hired as the director of process improvement, a new position, by the VP of Operations for the ABC Manufacturing Company. ABC has been plagued by both internal and external vendor issues; the vendor issues involved repeated late deliveries and poor quality, while internally poor deliveries to customers resulted from both vendor issues, as well as quality and scheduling issues. The CEO’s instinct is that the factory could benefit from some wide-reaching process improvements.

The VP of Operations has decided that a far greater focus on vendor quality and internal process improvements must be taken. The VP of Procurement, prior to your coming on board, had already met with the CEO’s of ABC’s 4 major vendors and alerted them that he expected them to begin turning around their quality performance. About a month prior, he had sent each a letter suggesting several formal overall quality programs that they may embark upon, which included the following:

• TQM
• Juran’s Trilogy
• Crosby’s program
• Deming’s program
• Six Sigma

Part One:

The VP has already received the following responses from each of the main vendors, and he asked you, in coming months, to work with each vendor as they implement their quality initiatives.

• Company A had written back that it was planning to implement the Juran program but had not yet begun.
• Company B had written back that it was planning to implement the Crosby program but had not yet begun.
• Company C had written back that it was planning to implement the Deming program but had not yet begun.
• Company D had written back that it was planning to implement a TQM program but had not yet begun.
• Company E had written back that it was planning to implement the Six Sigma program but had not yet begun.

While all Companies note plans without and current action, your task is to provide each company clarification of each respective quality initiative in terms of overall concept, methodology, pros, and cons. You are to consolidate your findings into a single report for the VP prior to communicating these to each company individually.

Part Two:

In addition, you know that as far as internal processes and overall supply chain management goes, that there may be opportunities for improvement. Currently, the following internal opportunities exist for possible process improvement:

•  Supply Chain Management
  • The company communicates separately with each vendor; usually when a forecast or production change is made, not every vendor finds out the same day. This leads to confusion, excess inventories, and stock outs.
• Demand Planning
  • The primary method to establish the master production schedule is to use a forecast that is created prior to the beginning of the year and updated monthly using salesmen’s inputs. Invariably, the company ends up producing too much of the wrong items (not demanded) and too few of what is in demand (real customer orders).
• Multistage Inventory
  • To create ABC’s final finished product requires a multiple-step supply chain, which looks something like the following:
    • Raw material to vendors factory
    • Vendor processes raw materials to make their parts
    • Those parts are shipped to ABC’s factory
    • ABC processes purchased parts through a succession of departments, each one adding more and more vale
    • Finally, all finished components are assembled into a finished product.
  • Currently, every step in this entire supply chain is scheduled, monitored through some kind of MRP system, reported throughout the day, and seems to take an inordinate amount of system updating.
• Transportation Planning
  • ABC continues to use its own fleet to deliver finished goods all over the country and to have common carriers deliver parts from its vendors, also located all over the country.
• Process Control, Performance, and Variability
  • ABC’s own internal process seem to all of a sudden go in and out of quality specifications; the company always seems to find out too late to avoid massive amounts of scrap, rejected parts, or labor costs to rework parts.
• Negative and Positive Cash Flow
  • The company goes through frequent swings from positive to negative cash flows as inventory purchases for large lots create negative cash flows, but then using up these materials occur at a slower rate, and with less outgoing, cash flow becomes positive. The CFO really struggles with managing these cash flow swings.

Before you begin to put together a vendor visitation schedule, your boss, the VP of Procurement, advised you that the CEO expects a comprehensive report, in about a month, covering the opportunities for improvement on the above topics.

Part Three:

• The key characteristics and requirements and the pros and cons of each of the following overarching quality programs. The chart should have columns for an overall 1-sentence description of each program, its pros, and its cons.
  • TQM
  • Juran’s Trilogy
  • Deming
  • Crosby
  • Six Sigma
• Provide your view on how a formal process improvement program could help at both vendor locations and inside ABC’s own factory.
• Specifically, in the areas of vendor quality and delivery performance, what are the benefits of creating a vendor certification program, and what does it involve?
• Specifically, in the area of ABC’s own internal workings, what opportunities for continuous improvement exist, and what exactly would you do?
• How do you get ABC itself to adopt a more continuous improvement mentality?

Finally, and most importantly, all these operational improvements could create a strategic advantage for ABC because most of its competitors have similar internal and vendor quality challenges, as well as internal operational challenges.

Each Discussion should be at least 550 words.

Mix it Up Discussion 1

Advertising is everywhere. Americans have become so accustom to seeing ads that they barely pay attention to them anymore. So much advertisement appears every day and so much technology is used to push ads into people’s consciousness that ads are simply part of the social expectation. Every moment of every day someone is trying to sell something, shape and opinion, or create a desire in others through the use of advertising. In the days of radio and TV, ads spoke to us and got lodged in our heads. Today digital advertising comes at us visually from the moment we turn on our electronic devices, as we walk down the street, or ride a bus. Yet, most people feel that advertisements today fail to attain the emotional impact they once had, most believe they just ignore advertisements.

Not so fast, we can easily recall the most memorable marketing slogans of our youth — “Just do it,” “Got milk,” “Where’s the beef?” “Mikey likes it,” “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,”— “Good advertising makes food taste better, it makes cars run better,” says George Lois, a one-time art director for Esquire magazine who later catapulted MTV, ESPN and Tommy Hilfiger from nobodies to world influencers. Advertising changes everything. Ads create desire.

Art & Copy provides a fascinating look at an industry built around selling not just products, but emotions, ideas and lifestyles.

After watching Art and Copy, and reading chapters 2 and 3 in Grazian, develop an answer to one of the following questions. Make sure that you address both the reading and the film in your answer; the idea is to connect the theory you read with the documentary–the social practice–you see). Please try to answer different questions so that all questions get covered and we have an exciting dialog with lots of ideas to discuss. After answering your question please engage in a dialog with at least two other students around their posted answers. (Do not repeat what someone else says — your post must be unique. If you are posting later in the discussion you are responsible for making sure you are not repeating what someone has already said).

1. How does contemporary popular culture and advertising help us reflect on the human condition, please address this question from both the Structural Functionalist and the Conflict Theory perspectives?
2. Explain the concept of cultural hegemony and show how advertising and other forms of popular culture help create a cultural hegemony either in the U.S. or abroad.
3. Provide an example of a cultural object that seems to be saturated with meaning and one that seem to be meaningless. How could both be part of the same culture?

Discussion 2:

After reading the chapters in The Culture Code choose one of the discussion prompts on which to write.

1. Describe and discuss how social contexts affect Cultural Unconscious and its five guiding principles for Love, Seduction, and Sex. (provide your own example not one from the reading).
2. Describe and discuss how social factors shape the Codes for Beauty and Fat in American society (provide your own example not one from the reading).
3. Explain how being part of an interpretive community facilitates the development of culture codes (provide your own example not one from the reading)?

If you wish to present a popular culture item for analysis you may use the attachment function. Have fun with this question as you stretch your Sociological Imagination.

Dicussion 3

Thinking ahead to the Final Course Paper

Here students should discuss possible paper topics for the final course paper (please see assignment in week 4). In addition to a topic, you must choose a popular culture object that you are captivated by, obsessed with, or otherwise intrigued by. It can be a music genre, a toy, gossip magazines, romance novels, blogging, a celebrity past or present, a fashion, a film, a TV sit-com or drama, reality TV, a video game, home shopping, mall or outlet shopping, a sports team, a phenomenon like Bum Fights, etc… (please refer back to Grazian, chapter 1). The goal of the paper is to demonstrate what you have learned from the study of culture and socialization by interpreting a piece of popular culture. Key to this paper is that you have a popular culture object to analyze (please see week 1 reading–journal articles). What popular culture object might you be interested in studying? Students can often help one another by asking pertinent and probing questions, suggesting sources, or adding ideas in the project formation stage. The academic enterprise is a collaborative one so help work with one another.

Two questiins thst need to be answered in this format

Question  There are 4 legal reasons why an agreement would lack consideration. Your assignment is to list each of the four legal reasons.  Provide a factual example for each of the four legal reasons. The factual example can be from the textbook, an actual case that you know about or you can make it up.

a) An agreement would lack consideration if  ___________

factual example: X and Y . . . .

b) An agreement would lack consideration if  ___________

factual example: X and Y . . .

c) An agreement would lack consideration if ___________

factual example: X and Y . . .

d) An agreement would lack consideration if ___________

factual example: X and Y . . .

Question There exist legal theories in contract law that would allow a party to enforce a promise and/or agreement even though consideration was lacking.  List each of the legal theories that would allow a party to enforce an agreement or promise even though consideration was lacking. Provide a factual example for each of the legal theories. The factual example can be from the textbook, an actual case that you know about or you can make it up.

a) A Contract that lacked consideration could still be enforced by using the legal theory that . . . . .

factual example: X and Y . . . .

b) A Contract that lacked consideration could still be enforced by using the legal theory that . . . . .

factual example: X and Y . . .

c) A Contract that lacked consideration could still be enforced by using the legal theory that . . . . .

factual example: X and Y . . .

d) A Contract that lacked consideration could still be enforced by using the legal theory that . . . . .

factual example: X and Y . . .