Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Rosencrantz Guildenstern Are Dead, A Satirical Piece...
The purpose of satire is to point out human flaws in a humorous way in order to instruct and possibly change humanity. A parody is a literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic styles of an author or a work for comic affect or ridicule. Rosencrantz Guildenstern Are Dead is a satirical piece of work that parodies Hamlet, especially in terms of death, a common theme in both. These two plays take different views on death portrayed by the protagonists of each: either Hamlet or Rosencrantz Guildenstern. Hamlet is a tragedy with comedy elements in it. It is about a prince who seeks revenge for his fatherââ¬â¢s assassination, but in the end, he dies. Throughout the entire play, Hamlet is in constant conflict within hisâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦The audience sees this when Hamlet attends Opheliaââ¬â¢s funeral; it is a serious matter and one that upsets him. In addition, he refuses to kill Claudius while he is praying because he thinks he will go directly to heaven. Once again, Hamlet is choosing when to kill Claudius. He knows death can come whenever. It is not up to fate to take someone; Hamlet can use his free will to kill Claudius whenever he wants. In Rosencrantz Guildenstern Are Dead, death is viewed as a less serious matter; one that is not fussed about because it is will come no matter what and is determined by fate. Black humor is used in this play to highlight the absurdist nature of the play. Rosencrantz Guildenstern can never remember where they are and why they are there. In a world of confusion, that is their internal conflict: they are trying to figure out who they are and their purpose in life. They know they are trying to cheer up Hamlet, but they donââ¬â¢t know why. In fact, they didnââ¬â¢t even know they were his friends before the queen told them. Rosencrantz Guildenstern have to constantly remind themselves of their journey thus far. They represent the lay person. Just like them, many people a re or feel powerless in the world. They have an external locus of control and believe they have no control over their fate. This is the opposite of Hamlet. Hamlet chose his fate; he chose revenge. Rosencrantz Guildenstern are mere pawns that go with the flow and follow
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Commodity Chain of the Organic Avocado Essay - 1984 Words
A Commodity Chain Assignment: The Economic Geographical Processes of The Organic Avocado Introduction The Michoacan state in Mexico has become the worldââ¬â¢s largest producer of avocadoes. Although this vegetable is grown on farms throughout this state, it is also tied to an integral network of trade and export to countries across the globe. In this essay, I will argue that like any commodity chain study, the production of the organic Hass avocado has an intricate production process, which for my commodity chain study begins in Uruapan, Mexico a town in the state of Michoacan. This analysis has indicated the crucial underlying links to trade, labour, and demand that the export of this vegetable has created throughout North Americaâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦This company, the Frutas Y Hortalizas Organicas De Michoacan, grows organic avocadoes in Michoacan, the largest avocado-growing state in Mexico. The owners (The Tungui family) run the day-to-day logistics of the family business and are also active in a larger association of organic avocado growers. This method of organi c farming was expensive and costly because the company lost 30% of its produce, but now the Frutas Y Hortalizas Organicas produces a higher quality and better tasting crop that is grown without any chemicals. This chain of production for the organic avocado continues as I determined that these avocadoes are packaged and distributed in Uruapan by a central distribution centre that was created with help through American investment into the region. After packaging, the organic Hass avocadoes I studied are shipped by truck across the border to another distribution centre operated by New Harvest Organics in Rio Rico, Arizona. New Harvest Organics then ships these avocadoes throughout North America, and in my commodity chainââ¬â¢s case, ships them north, again via truck, to Burnaby, British Columbia to another supplying company known as Pro Organics Distributors. Finally, from ProShow MoreRelatedCase Study3382 Words à |à 14 PagesWinning Global Taste Buds: vï ¶ Levendary Cafà © vï ¶ Hillary Tzeng vï ¶ Table of Contents vï ¶ Executive Brief 3 Decision Tree 4 Company Overview Product Mix Global Presence Current Business Model Value Chain Competitive Advantages Growth Imperative 5 6 7 8 9 Country Analysis ââ¬â China Economic Overview CAGE Analysis Target Consumers Institutional Voids 10 11 12 13 Industry Analysis ââ¬â Multi-Unit Restaurants Porterââ¬â¢s Five Forces Market Attractiveness Read MoreAn Essay on Jamba Juice10168 Words à |à 41 PagesIntroduction Our product is Jamba Juice and our target country is Spain. We chose this product because it has grown to become one of the nationââ¬â¢s best-known smoothie chains, emphasizing the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and because the company is looking for international expansion opportunities. We chose Spain as our target country for expansion of our product due to its current economic status and economic growth forecasts for the future. This combination provides the firm with an opportunityRead MoreNespresso Co. Analysis15084 Words à |à 61 Pagesthe technical innovation that reduces the processing time. Also, with the advance of telecommunication, the distributors also get benefit from buying quantities on a ââ¬Å"just in timeâ⬠basis. From a traditional point of view, coffee is considered as a commodity in many developing countries, especially in Latin America. Unlike developed countries where coffee drinking and cafe places are growing rapidly in high demand, the coffee drinking habits in Mexico grow relatively slowly due, in particular, to theRead MoreDeveloping Management Skills404131 Words à |à 1617 PagesInterpersonal Conflict 405 Educational Pension Investments 405 SKILL PRACTICE 410 Exercise for Diagnosing Sources of Conflict 410 SSS Software Management Problems 410 Exercises for Selecting an Appropriate Conflict Management Strategy Bradleyââ¬â¢s Barn 419 Avocado Computers 419 Phelps, Inc. 420 Exercises for Resolving Interpersonal Disputes 420 Freida Mae Jones 421 Can Larry Fit In? 423 Meeting at Hartford Manufacturing Company 424 SKILL APPLICATION 431 Activities for Improving Managing Conflict Skills Suggested
Monday, December 9, 2019
Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Biotron Limited
Question: Discuss about the Pharmaceutical Biotechnology for Biotron Limited. Answer: Inroduction: Biotron Limited (Biotron) is a pharmaceutical biotechnology company based in Australia. It is developing new therapeutic drugs targeting Hepatitis C and HIV AIDS through cutting edge research. Its most popular drug is the BIT 225 which is being developed clinically for treatment of both Hepatitis C and HIV AIDS. It is also in the process of developing oral direct-acting antiviral drugs for use against the Hepatitis C virus. (Biotron, 2016) The Chief Financial Officer, Peter James Nightingale, who is also the secretary, is responsible for the budget planning and book-keeping of the company, while also being accountable for his chief deliverable of managing the financial risk of the company. The timely and accurate release of the corporations financial reports also fall under his purview. He is involved in top-level decision making, both strategic and tactical, working closely with the Chief Operating Officer and the Chairman, Dr. Michael J. Hoy. Dr. Hoy is a decorated executive with more than 30 years of corporate experience in Australia, US, UK and Asia. The following are the general areas of responsibility of a Chief Financial Officer: Forecasting and Planning: A CFO should be able to share his views and critically analyze the department-wise performance of his company. Being an important part of the strategy team of the company, his job is to identify, appreciate and consolidate the high performing assets for strengthening capitalization, while keeping a close watch on the low-performing assets for necessary actions. Forecasting through financial modelling is a major part of his job description. Long-term sustainability of the companys profits is his ultimate goal. Contingency planning through scenario analysis, considering all the possibilities the company can face, also constitutes a major part of time. The Hepatitis C drug market has been forecasted to grow in value to $19 billion by 2017 with more than 3% of the world population predicted to be infected. Biotron should take the right steps to capture a greater share of this increased market potential. Auditor and Controller: Assessment of company performance and translation into financially measurable metrics is the responsibility of the Chief Financial Officer. The timely release of quarter-end results and other financial reports and information which is useful to all stakeholders shareholders, employees and management is solely the responsibility of his finance team. The accuracy and precision of these reports is critical as it drives many strategic decisions. Converting the operational metrics to financial ones is a task made easy by use of tools like ratio analysis and balanced scorecard. Treasurer: The companys financial risk is managed solely by the CFO. Investment of pension funds and other funds needs the final approval of the CFO. The risk, return and liquidity of the investment options drive his investment decisions. According to the efficient market hypothesis, the only possible way to get higher returns than the market is by increasing the risk of the portfolio. This is based in the conjecture that the share prices always represent the true value of the stock, representing the sentiment, trading at very close to its fair value. Therefore, betting long on undervalued stocks or shorting the overvalued ones is impossible because it is very difficult to locate such stocks. However, this theory is always under scrutiny and much debated in financial circles. Accumulation of well-above average returns by investor like Warren Buffet by investing in portfolios clearly questions this theory. It is further contradicted by sustained bull and bear runs of the market. That being said, according to academic research, it is theoretically impossible to beat the market for long periods of time. Although very rare, one still might earn higher returns through careful stock selection. Therefore, it is always better to invest in portfolios directly indexed to the market as they are low cost and guarantee average market returns. This kind of an investment is also known as passive investment. A CFO, being responsible for the management of pension funds, has to ensure that the pension funds operates sustainably and effectively for a long duration. The risk window that the manager can manipulate is very narrow, since the fund contains life-long savings of a large number of people and has to provide guaranteed benefits after retirements. Since the governments is gradually shifting the responsibility of social security from itself to the individuals and corporations, pension fund management has become very popular. The pension fund may directly be managed by an in-house team employed by the CFO. There are also consultancies and fund-management service companies which provide these services and manage the pension fund on behalf of the corporation. Alternatively, there are also government pension schemes available which can be availed and numerous insurance schemes which provide retirement benefits to customers. Besides investments, the capital structure of the corporation is also in the hands of the CFO. Both debt and equity fund raising has to be arranged by the CFO and the debt/equity ratio needs to be appropriately maintained. Any scrutiny by the stakeholders about the debt and equity and the reasons for his decision making has to be dealt with by the CFO. Bitron recently completed an A$8 million fundraising drive, underlining the positive market sentiment that Biotron has significant upside and that its drugs are undervalued as compared to other HCV drugs.(Proactive Investors, 2016) The objectives of the corporation and its drive towards its achievement are impacted by the CFO in a major way. Measurable and time-bound performance objectives are established by him along with the other C-level executives. These objectives also depend on the position of the company in its life-cycle. For example, while an established FMCG major might be interested in improving its gross margins by 20% in a quarter, an apparel start-up might prioritize increasing its Gross Merchandise Volume by 100%. Realistic and achievable targets are set b CFO by critically analyzing the past financial performance reports and other resources. Monitoring and achievement of desired objectives after they have been accurately defined is the responsibility of the CFO. Proper KPI have to be outlined to quantify the various performance objectives. Continuous tracking of these KPIs and feedback to the management have to be provided by the CFO. Financial insights are translated into operating procedures by his team which are then followed by the workforce in the organization. Collaboration with the various operating groups in the company is necessary. The companys performance is impacted in a significant way if the CFO is unable to fulfill his responsibilities. Any funding needs of the company should be readily fulfilled by the CFO. Lack of availability of funds can significantly set the company back in the achievement of its goals. Pharmaceutical companies require heavy investment in RD and may take 4-5 or even 10-15 years in some cases in recuperating back the investment. The clinical development of the BIT225, the flagship drug of Biotron targeting both HCV and HIV requires strong financial backing. To provide the company enough cash for its operational day-to-day expenses, the CFO has to keep the company appropriately leveraged, along with managing the risks in the process of building strong fundamentals. Smooth functioning of the business is ensured by guaranteeing the availability of liquidity so that the business can remain afloat. The CFOs job profile has risen meteorically from a book-keeping accountant to a strategy consultant. A lot of trust is bestowed on him by the senior leadership. He has become more of a business partner rather than a transactional employee. He has risen in the ranks to reach the position of a thought leader from a micromanager, from a doer to a strategizer, from a reserved personality to an outspoken one. He is now skilled at communicating the company perspective to the shareholders and the board of directors. The CFO ensures that the financial foundation of the corporation remains intact in this turbulent global economic environment. Many CEOs in todays big corporations are the first in-line to be the next CEOs. Biotron has consistently been featured in the Americas AIDS magazine and other media because of the cutting edge research it is currently pursuing. Its share price saw a spike after its drugs were found to be effective against the Zika virus. Biotron had recently sent a several drugs from its library to an independent facility for testing against the Zika virus, one of which showed significantly positive results. The US Senate has pledged a whopping $662.1 million investment in order to curb the spread of the Zika virus. This would be large valuation impact for Biotron if the drug shows positive results in clinical trials. (Proative Investors, n.d.)In addition to the BIT 225, it has other program for developing targets targeting Dengue. Such projects are still in their early stage. It has also identified a new class of viral proteins as targets for potential intervention. If these efforts are to fructify and show strong returns, Biotron will need better support both strategically and financially from its CFO. Considering the excellent track record of Biotron in the past, the shareholders should not be worried at all about its future performance. Efficient market Hypothesis (EMH) states that stock prices truly reflect the sentiment for that stock in the market and it is impossible to make more than average returns from the markets. According to EMH, prices truly reflect all information. However, the efficiency may be weak or strong depending on whether the prices reflect both public and private information or not. Privileged information includes market knowledge and insider information available only to the management. It also includes the proprietary information compiled by various investment managers of fund-management firms. Efficient Market Hypothesis has been hotly debated ever since its inception. Empirical studies have been conducted on various stock markets to prove its relevance. Market- makers and corporate managers have made abnormal profits based on the insider information available to them (although it is illegal to do so). Therefore, it is clear that abnormal profits can be easily made in weakly efficient markets with some privileged information. Besides that, there have been countless practical examples where investors such as Warren Buffet have made very strong profits by selectively investing in the market. Such investors exploit the violations inherent in the Efficient Market Hypothesis. One of the popular significant violation is that markets respond very slowly to surprising events like extremely good/bad earning announcements. Such stocks have been observed to be earning significant excess returns over and above the market portfolio. (ET Beaureu, 2011) There have been other historically popular violations that have been exploited by investment firms. One such was pairs trading which was exploited by Morgan Stanley in the 80s. It basically is a market-neutral trading strategy which takes both long and short position in highly correlated entities like two stocks, currencies, commodities etc. Then there were also strategies like fixed income arbitrage which was exploited by Salomon Brothers. However, it is very difficult to make excess returns from such techniques today as they are now so widely known that books have been written on them. The boom in hedge funds also does not substantiate the violations in efficient market hypothesis. EMH has led to the establishment of passively-managed portfolios and indexed portfolios which have no hassle, no fees and very low transaction costs. Today many index funds daily outperform the actively-managed funds. Investors are today generally advised to accept the EMH today as the violations that generate significant excess returns are either rare, illegal or not advertised to the retail investor or the general public. (Kumar, 2012) Pension funds typically have large sums of money invested as they contain the life-long savings of the employees of a corporation or multiple corporations. A pension fund manager has very little leeway when it comes to playing with risk to generate higher than average returns. Given EMH, the pension fund management process should thus not focus on getting above-average returns, as they are impossible. Rather, it should focus on minimizing the risk while maintaining the average market returns. The pension fund manager should focus on reducing the investment cost- transaction cost, interest cost, capital cost etc. References Anderson, C., 2016. What Are the Top Ten CFO Responsibilities. Retrieved September 15, 2016 from https://www.bizmanualz.com/be-a-better-boss/what-are-the-top-ten-cfo-responsibilities.html Biery, M. E., 2015. 4 Key Functions of a Chief Financial Officer. Retrieved September 15, 2016 from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242001 Biotron, 2016. Biotron. Retrieved September 15, 2016 from https://www.biotron.com.au/ ET Bureau, 2011. Efficient market hypothesis maintains financial markets are information efficient. Economic Times. Retrieved September 15, 2016 from. https://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-09-15/news/30160087_1_index-funds-fund-managers-efficient-market-hypothesis Investopedia Staff, 2015. What does a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) do. Investopedia. Retrieved September 15, 2016 from https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/04/042204.asp Kumar, S., 2012. If Markets Were Efficient, Why are there Winners and Losers?.. Retrieved September 15, 2016 from https://valuestockguide.com/all/wall-streets-achilles-heel-efficient-market-hypothesis-doesnt-always-work/ Proactive Investors, 2016. Biotron Limited cashes up as research refines Hepatitis C therapy. Proactive Investors Australia. Retrieved September 15, 2016 from https://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/64934/biotron-limited-cashes-up-as-research-refines-hepatitis-c-therapy--64934.html Proative Investors, n.d. Biotron Ltd shares rise after drug compounds show promise against Zika virus. Proactive Investors, Australia. Retrieved September 15, 2016 from https://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/68773/biotron-ltd-shares-rise-after-drug-compounds-show-promise-against-zika-virus-68773.html.
Sunday, December 1, 2019
The Copperhead Cure for Cancer free essay sample
The copperhead is found within the eastern coast of North America and the mid-southern states, along the Mississippi River, produce harmful venom when bitten; this can be used to stop the spread of cancer. Contortrostatin is a peptide that comes from the venom of the copperhead snake. In general the venom of the southern copperhead is used by the snake to immobilize prey, keeping blood fluid so that other damaging proteins can spread through the body but when it is purified and used as contortrostatin, it can inhibit the development of new blood vessels to nourish the tumor and by putting the tumor cells into a paused state. Remarkably, this drug could help stop breast cancer from spreadging to other organs. Also in a study that was done by Professor Frank Markland of the University of Southern California, this drug not only inhibits the growth of the primary cancer that is already in the breast up to 70-80%. We will write a custom essay sample on The Copperhead Cure for Cancer or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It also inhibits the cancer from spreading to the lungs as well as other organs. Because contortrostatin doesnt kill the cancer cells directly like chemotherapy or radiation, it has none of the harsh side effects. Certifying this medication is going to be a long process. Lastly, the use of snake venom to treat breast cancer is controversial, and venom that has not been purified can be dangerous. Before this drug can be administered to anyone the FDA has to put its seal of approval on it, and at this point the FDA hasnt given any word on the subject. Down the line the FDA does help in a lot of ways with approving other medications, but when it comes to the subject of using snake venom to treat various illnesses they have thwarted researchers in the process.
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