Examine the relative role of institutions in the rise of Europe Essay

Examine the relative role of institutions in the rise of Europe - Essay Example These formal institutions include such diverse tools as constitutions, laws and property rights. Institutions have always been created by human beings throughout history to create order in their various societies and reduce uncertainty in trade. Taken together with the standard constraints imposed by economic logic, institutions define the set of available choices in economic interactions. This has an effect of directly influencing economic behaviour and hence, economic outcomes in any given society (Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson, 2005). Institutions evolve incrementally over time meaning that the economic history of any society has to be comprehended in the context of the evolution of its institutions. The fundamental role played by institutions is that they provide the incentive structure for the given economy. As such, the direction of evolution of this structure in time determines the direction of movement of an economy whether towards growth, stagnation or decline (North 1991). A constantly evolving system of organisation and exchange in medieval Europe’s long-distance trade between the 11th and the 16th centuries eventually led to the rise of Europe as the dominant world power (North, 1991). The first significant institutional change was the innovation of systems and tools that lowered transaction costs in exchange. The transaction cost of any exchange is defined as the cost, other than the cost of the product or service being exchanged; that is incurred in executing the transaction. This cost consists of various components such as the cost incurred in the search for information about the sellers and their product, the cost of negotiating and closing down on the contract, the cost of enforcing the contract, etc. (North 1991) The organisational changes, tools and various techniques of exchange that lowered transaction costs for medieval Europe’s long-distance trade included: Among the

Workplace related issues Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Workplace related issues - Research Paper Example Many factors affect workers at the work place. With the growing business world, more opportunities are presented for employees to venture into; hence, the management is left with no choice but to find means of making sure that the employees are satisfied with the working conditions. These issues at a glance appear minor, but in the actual projection, they determine a great deal the motivation and efficiency of the worker (Hancock & Szalma, 2008). These issues range from the office design, office layout, the furniture in the office and the lighting systems. The services provided to the employees, such as refreshments, recreation facilities, health care plans and the rules and regulations as well as the policies of the organization (Hancock & Szalma, 2008). The level of interaction with the management and the influence of technology on the employees are also major issues. The employers are thus in the run to provide quality environment and services to the employees in order to be able to keep them for tomorrow. The ego of the employees determines a lot their motivation, and since the worker spends most of his or her lifetime at work, it is true that the quality of the place of work will affect the employee’s ego. A well-designed office, well built, partitioned and painted is a key motivator to a person’s attitude towards the work (Hancock & Szalma, 2008). For instance, if the work designated requires privacy for the employee, and the office does not provide such, the worker may feel an easy while executing their duty hence underperforming. A good design of building attracts and motivates the employee to stay around and provides essential factor for enhancing the creativity and innovative skills of an employee. The human mind is such that it makes preferences over color, and this generally affects the attitude of an individual towards a place. If the office is painted in such colors that the worker does not like, this will cause them to be de-motivat ed to stay in the office. Thus, it is important for the office to be painted in standard colors. The lighting system also matters a lot. A dimly lit room will cause low mood and negative attitude to the worker, toward the work. A moderately brightly lit office provides a serene working atmosphere hence motivating the employee to work. The arrangement of the office equipment and furniture is another key determinant factor to the attitude of the employee towards the office (Burke & Witt, 2002). A shabbily organized office will represent a job that is not taken seriously. The workers will tend to dislike the office hence this will affect his or her concentration in work, resulting to poor results. The furnishing of the office also affects the attitude of the worker towards their job. An office with old and shaggy looking office furniture will discourage the worker. For instance if the furniture is old and rugged, the employee who is expected to sit on them for most of the hours of his day will definitely not look forward to a new day at work. They as a result will just come to work for the pay but not to give quality work as is expected of them (Hancock & Szalma, 2008). The worker will do a job that is as good as the environment allows him or her to do. However, if the furniture is of quality, every worker will enjoy being at their workstation. In addition, they will be motivated to put in their best efforts and skills to work, since the setting is comfortable. A healthy health is essential for an individual to deliver quality service in all areas of life. An ailing person is not in a good state of mind

Standardisation Is Motivated In The First Place English Language Essay

Standardisation Is Motivated In The First Place English Language Essay Many people regard having a standard language to contain numerous benefits for society because it enables different people from far distant locations to be able to communicate and understand each other, however, this would not be case if one were communicating in his own regional dialect. Even nowadays fluent English speakers would struggle to understand someone who speaks with the Geordie variety. Standard language has been defined as one that shows maximal variation in function and minimal variation in form. Maximal variation of function means that a language community uses its language for all purposes, both locally and nationwide. (Nevalainen 2006:29). During the late Middle Ages in England, English was restricted to local use and at home not across the country as England was ruled in French and Latin, as they were seen as the prestige varieties. Terttu Nevalainen (2006) comments on the situation in English during the Middle Ages and states that in sociolinguistic terms the situa tion was one of diglossia: co-occurring languages served different functions in the community. (p.29) But what is exactly meant by standardisation? Standardisation is the process leading to the emergence of a standard language, and involves the reduction in variability in terms of the grammatical and vocabulary choices that can be made. (Culpeper et al. 2009:224). For instance, previously in Old English multiple negations were frequent, however in SE only a single negation is used. The American linguist Einar Haugen (1972) outlined four stages in the development of a standard language: selection, elaboration, codification and implementation (also referred to as acceptance). These are the four main processes involved in standardising any language. Selection involves the selection of a particular variety within the language to be used as the standard throughout the country. For a number of reasons the London-based variety which had a Midlands basis was selected. London was the capital, centre for court, administration and trade. It was the largest population surpassing its European neighbours. (Culpeper et al. 2009:237). Also in 1476, Caxton established the first printing press in England at Westminster and he modelled what he produced from the variety in London. Thus the books which were printed were published throughout the entire country. In addition, the first English Bible was William Tyndales New Testament translation which printed became available everywhe re. (Crystal 2004:271). However others such as Wales (2002) have argued that the language of Northern England had a far greater importance both historically and in contemporary society, as this was the region in which Industrial Revolution flourished and where the writing of literature in dialect had continued for over 150. (cited in Culpeper et al, 2009:235). Elaboration, meanwhile, means ensuring that the selected variety to be standardised is capable of fulfilling its necessary requirements. Historically, until 1380 English was very much competing with French for official affairs of state. The 1362 Statute of Pleading ensured that court proceedings would be conducted in English. (Baugh and Cable 1993:145). Also, Latin not English was the main language of science. However, when English was no longer competing with other languages it needed a vast expansion of the vocabulary, which was mainly achieved through adopting Latin and Greek words, and an expansion in the range of styles, especially written. (Culpeper et al. 2009:237). Codification refers to writing down all the rules and vocabulary which govern the selected variety. Discussions on codifying English first took place in the seventeenth century were attempts were made to regulate English in the same way as the Academie Francaise was doing for French, however nothing was really established. Also, English did not really possess a dictionary until 1755, when Samuel Johnson published his A Dictionary of the English Language. In addition words and their usages appeared according to their occurrence in what he considered the best authors -thereby confirming the standard as a language of literacy and high culture. Descriptive grammers were more limited, with the exception of Joseph Priestleys 1761 The Rudiments of English Grammer, the grammars recorded were prescriptive i.e. stating that which should and not be said and written. (Culpeper 2009:238) Implementation the forth process involved in standardisation, involves the general acceptability of the population of the norms of the variety selected over other such present varieties. This is through the spread and enforcement of such norms. Also it is aided through various institutions, schools, government and religious institutions. For example, the establishment of the printing press in London spread this particular variety across the country by making the books and literature available. Thus this made it easy to standardise at least the written language. Therefore, Wiliams 2007 asserts the status of SE with its eighteenth-century prescriptive additions, remained unchallenged during the nineteenth century with 1870 Education Act promoting the teaching of SE, as did official educational policy in England throughout the twentieth century and up until today (cited in Culpeper 2009:238). The rise of the standard language in the fifteenth century meant that it quickly became equated with correct speech, whereas dialect came to be associated with uneducated and incorrect usage. The printing presses soon ironed out the remaining local differences in written English, as was only to be expected in view of the fact that 98 per cent of all English books were printed in London. (Gorlach 1991:13). The EModE period was a time of tremendous political, economic, technological and social change in Britain that was to change the size, shape and functioning of the world and with it the English language. (Fennell 2001:136). The reconstruction of any language before 1900 must, in the first phase at least, be that of the written language, which may vary to a greater or lesser extent from the spoken. Direct evidence of the spoken English of the time is very scarce, as is pointed out by Barber (1976:48-56). Whether in allegedly literal protocols or court proceedings, popular dramatic scenes (Kings 1941) or texts representing Early Modern English (EModE) dialects the standardising effect of editing must always be reckoned with sermons and speeches, which are still extant in great numbers and which were written down for oral delivery diverge from spoken English on the rhetorical level. Also, the spoken and written forms of a language also differ in modern times as a consequence of the requirements of different types of communicative situations, despite the fact that most native speakers are also writers of the language and that users frequently have occasion both to speak and to write on the same topic. Sinc e in EModE times competence in written English was not as common as it is today, and the need to switch from the spoken to the written language and back again was less frequent, it may be assumed that the two subsystems were further apart then than they are in modern speech communities. Furthermore, Gorlalch (1991) highlights that now written language was more superregional and homogenous but also more dependent on style and literary traditions. Two counter-directional developments occurred within EModE, affecting the interrelationship of the two subsystems: The increasing influence of the schools brought spelling and pronunciation closer together, the spelling most often affecting the pronunciation of a particular word. Increasing use of the written form as a consequence of changing communicative needs and conventions and its improvements in accordance with Latin models meant that the written language diverged from spoken English , in the particular at the level of syntax. (p12) In neither Germany nor Italy was the standardisation of the written language associated with the establishment of a strong central language administration. In both it was largely commercial, although it did mark the emergence of a sense of nationhood. In Germany the centralized power of the Emperor began to disintegrate in the thirteenth century , and some of the earliest documents in German are the 2500 Urkunden from before 1299 (2200 of them are from the High German area), documents that arbitrated differences between the newly independent dukes and counts. These were all in regional dialects. In the meantime, the cities of the Hanseatic League created a Low German commercial language, not unlike Dutch, from which a large body of contracts and commercial correspondence survives. But as power moved to central Germany, the influence of the Hanseatic koine died. Standard written High German evolved from its three successive Imperial chancelleries. P77 In essence it is clear that European languages were standardised first in writng and only later in speech. Second, standard written forms appeared first in official government and business documents. (Fisher 1996:81). Hence this served as the basis for the usage of scribes and printers and eventually of handbooks and dictionaries created for teaching the standard written language. Every enduring civilisation has had a writing system and archives. Like those of the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe, the writing systems of all of the ancient civilisations were the products of official secretariats striving for uniformity and continuity. For instance with the support of Andrew Carnegies $250,000, the Simplified Spelling Board in the early 1900s undertook to revise English spelling. However no change came into fruition. Thus the standard language is nothing other than official language of government , the judiciary, and business. It is still anchored as firmly in the seats of power as it has been since the dawn of writing. (Fisher 1996:82). When there have been attempts of spelling and lexical reforms, there were institutions set up and sponsored by governments to carry out such reforms like in Italy and Spain, and almost so in England in EModE period. In light of the statement of Milroy and Milroy (1999) an absolute standardisation of a spoken language is almost impossible. Historically written language has always differed from the spoken language. However, after they have been codified, written languages have more influence upon the structure and pronunciation of the spoken than do the spoken on the structure and orthography of the written. .As the written form has over the years become more standardised due mainly to the influence of education. Despite this has had little impact on the spoken stratum. 83 In conclusion, although many may consider SE to be the variety which is pushed in society it does contain flaws. Standard English is in many ways a social class dialect used by middle-class speakers. Studies have repeatedly shown that it is difficult for some children from working class backgrounds to acquire written Standard English.

A Neural Network Primer :: Neural Network Primer Essays

A Neural Network Primer This paper gives the basics of the subject of neural networks. It is recommended for those new to the subject of neural networks and only assumes that the reader has a knowledge of basic algebra. Please feel free to distribute this paper as you wish but please distribute the entire paper without deletions and limit your corrections and additions to the space below the bottom line after the last paragraph of the original text. If you wish for your correction or modification to be changed in the body of the original text, please send your recommendation to one of my computer addresses above. A function is a mysterious black box with inputs and an output. ---------- X --->| | | Function |---> Z Y---->| | ---------- The above function has 2 inputs, X and Y, and one output, Z. Mysterious black boxes that take in inputs and produce an output are called "functions". Sometimes we don't know what goes on inside the function to produce the output from the inputs so that's why we call them "black boxes". X Y | Z ----------- 0 0 | 0 0 1 | 1 1 0 | 1 1 1 | 1 The above table maps out a possible function. It is called the "Or" function. Note that Z is zero when X and Y are both zero and Z is one whenever X "or" Y is a one. Mapping out a function in a table as is shown above is known as creating a "truth-table". X Y | Z ----------- 0 0 | 0 0 1 | 0 1 0 | 0 1 1 | 1 The function mapped out in the truth-table above is known as the "And" function. Note that Z equals 1 only when X "and" Y both equal 1. Note that the numerical values we have used so far for X, Y, and Z have been limited to only "0" and "1". When you only use two values like this you are using a "binary" or "boolean" number system. "Binary" and "boolean" basically mean "two values".

Explain why women failed to gain the right to vote between 1900 and 1914?

At the beginning of the twentieth century British women were seen as second-class citizens. This started to change in 1900, as women desired the right to vote and they were prepared to do anything it required to obtain it. Their goal was prolonged because of the many hurdles along the way and they didn't get the vote for many years. Many of the hurdles they faced were cultural. It was believed that women couldn't have their own views; they would only do as their husbands told them. Most people thought that women couldn't make political decisions as they weren't intelligent enough and they shouldn't because politics was ‘a man's game'. Another cultural barrier was the roles women played in the society. One on hand, due to poor education and limited opportunities working-class women had low status, low paid jobs. They had long working hours and didn't have sufficient time to get involved in the struggle for the vote. On the other hand, most middle and upper-class women felt that their duty was at home, and didn't want to get implicated. A reason why women didn't get the vote was ‘their own fault'. The women who wanted the vote were united in their aim but divided in approach. The main women's society groups had very different methods of getting what they wanted. Most people thought that if the women couldn't agree then perhaps they didn't deserve the vote. The Suffragists were a peaceful group who believed that protests should be carried out without violence. They thought that the vote would come in due time, after all New Zealand had already given the vote to women who had used their techniques. The second group, the Women's Freedom League accepted breaking the law as long as protests didn't become violent. A protest they organised was refusing to participate in a census. The final group, the Suffragettes, believed in law breaking and violent protests. An infamous protest they organised was when all members produced bricks and hammers from their handbags and broke windows in Oxford Street. It is often said that the Suffragettes were a main obstacle in getting the vote as the government refused to be perceived as succumbing to violence. Many other hurdles in the path of success were the political situations. The conservative government came into power in 1900 and this was a major setback for the women's suffrage movement. This government was steadfast in its conviction that women should never get the vote. 1906 saw the liberal government come into power as the conservatives became old-fashioned. The contemporary government was in favour of women getting the vote but was reluctant to make this possible in case upper-class women voted conservative. There were more pressing political issues to resolve than the issue of women's suffrage. The arms race with Germany was at its peak from 1908-1911 and the government had to make sure that Britain stayed ahead. The state of affairs in Ireland was a main concern; Ireland was on the rink of civil war. The government was in the process of laying down the foundations of the welfare state, this included benefits like old age pensions and national insurance. The House of Lords could block any laws that it did not want, this needed to be changed before women's vote bill was put through as the conservative majority would veto it. In the 1911 Parliament Act the House of Lord's blocking power was stopped and they were permitted to delay laws by a maximum of two years. The House of Lords still managed to use the new law to their advantage and managed to delay the votes for women bill from 1912 to 1914. In conclusion, there were many factors preventing women from getting the vote whether political or cultural. The most influential factors were the political as they prolonged the struggle for the vote for many years. But even though the political reasons were the most important, no individual factor could have caused women to abstain from receiving the vote without the others. Explain why women failed to gain the right to vote between 1900 and 1914 Women was trying to get the vote many years before 1900. At this period of time women lived in a male dominated society. It was thought by the men that, women would vote for who their friends were voting for, and vote for irelivent issues. Many thought that women didn't have a political mind to vote. Also many men thought there wasn't enough women to vote to make a difference to the result. Rich men could influence the female family members into voting in the way of their opinion. They got more votes than normal people. The law had been changing slowly, in womens favour. The law kept changing, until women could own their own property. But only if the women where married. After 1900, there was a more active period of campaigning by the National Union of Women's Sufferage Societies. These societies were created by Millicent Fawcett in 1887. Many women wanted action earlier than later, so the suffragette movement was born. Also with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) by Emmeline Pankhurst, and her two daughters Christabel and Sylvia. These women was not happy with the cautious approach that the National Union took. Women protests didn't change anything. Some politics had changed in women's favour, but this was nothing major. The protests never changed the goverments mind. As the goverment did nothing the suffergettes started using criminal acts as sign of protest. This started as petty as breaking windows, then got serious as arson and creating explosions. Herbert Asquith, the current prime minister at that time wasn't a supporter of women getting the vote. He said that â€Å"I do not think you will bring this change about until you have satisfied the country that the majority of women are in favour of it†. His position made a difference as whatever he said went. To prevent a the law going through, he called a general election. So whatever the suffragettes did had go through the goverment again. The acts of the suffergettes were peaceful. Many of them being of criminal nature. Emily davison, being one of the most famous sufferegettes, by throwing herself under the king's horse at the derby, in 1913. She died four days later. Many of the criminal acts were ploted at meetings through out the country. When some of the sufferegettes were sent to prison, they went on hunger strike. So they where able to be released from prison. Eventhough in some prisons many wome where subjected to torture, through force feeding. The women had no other ideas to get the vote. None of the acedemic writings had not worked for 150 years. This changed at the outbreak of world war one. Many women had to work, and they showed patratism for their country. These were dramatic changes in the attitudes and rights by 1918.

Coffee Drinking Habits Essay

Kantar Media’s Global TGI research (www. globaltgi. com) has explored coffee consumption in different countries, as branches of global coffee house chains become a permanent fixture in even the most far-flung corners of the world. Perhaps surprisingly for a nation once renowned for its tea-drinking, consumers in Great Britain are some of the most likely to visit a cafe for their caffeine fix, report researchers. They share this position with Italians and, among the eight countries analysed, are beaten only by people in Israel, where 75% of respondents visit coffee shops, reports Kantar. The research also reveals the ongoing debate as to the virtues of instant versus filter coffee is alive and well. Whereas 86% of Italians drink ‘proper’ coffee, only 6% of them will consider using instant. Israelis are the highest consumers of instant coffee at 80%, followed by Russians at 72%. Great Britain and Turkey scored low on the ground coffee scale, with 19% and 15% respectively. This research confirms in GB people tend to go to coffee shops for the ‘real deal’ and are generally content with instant coffee at home, said Kantar. Drinking coffee, whether at home or in a cafe, instant or filter, is a global pastime,† said Tracy Allnutt, head of commercial development at Global TGI. â€Å"Global TGI provides brand owners with a flavour for how their marketing strategies should differ by country in order that they reflect the needs of the target market. † The research is the first in a series of ‘Factoids’ produced by Kantar Media’s Global TGI. Scheduled bi-monthly and covering topical issues, they will provide bite-size pieces of information for brand managers in between the more in-depth Dispatches reports undertaken by the company.