In The Mix Smoking The Truth Unfiltered essays

In The Mix Smoking The Truth Unfiltered expositions For something that looks as though it originated from your downpour drain, bidis have seen a flood in fame among the American youth. Past the chest beating about the wellbeing dangers of bidis, customary tobacco specialists wind up shaking their heads and asking why anybody would need to start up such a worn out and delay smoke. For what reason would individuals need to wear inconvenient stage shoes? Its style. I dont know why anybody would smoke them, actually, says Greg Jones, administrator of Creager Mercantile, a Denver based tobacco distributer. Its likely simply the manner in which they look. As of not long ago hardly any individuals realized what they were, yet as of late bidis have stood out as truly newsworthy. State lawyers general, including Colorados Ken Salazar, have asked government authorities to limit their importation since they have gotten so well known with the underage youth. As of late, Durango tobacco retailer Don Hall quit selling bidis at his store after specialists got him in a sting activity that focused Internet organizations offering to minors. Bidis, which minors cant lawfully purchase in Colorado, look in no way like conventional American-made cigarettes. Some even come in kid well disposed flavors, for example, chocolate and strawberry, a reality that wellbeing specialists find especially vexing. The national Campaign for Tobacco - Free Kids keeps up that the enhancing is included explicitly for the American youth advertise. They highlight a sprinkling of completely dry, lower grade tobacco moved up in a green tendu leaf, a plant identified with the eucalyptus, and bound at the yet end with a bit of string that is about the check of dental floss. Bidis are marginally tightened, and look similar to smaller than normal renditions of the torpedo stogie style. Fire one up, and the debris is at risk to embellish your lap like snowflakes. What's more, since they are inexactly wrapped, they are difficult to keep lit and require ... <!

Philosophy, Hume An Enquiry Concerning The Principles Of Morals What I

Theory, Hume An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals What is a good? This is an inquiry that has tormented savants for a long time. Is it conceivable to have a lot of general ethics? There are numerous inquiries that encompass the secret of ethics. They appear to drive all our activities. We base our choices on what is correct and what's going on. In any case, would could it be that really figures out what is correct and what's up? Is it our feeling of reason? Is it our feeling of opinion? This is an inquiry that David Hume went through a lot of his time on earth contemplating. What precisely is it that drives our activities? Truly, ethics drive them, yet what figures out what our ethics are? Would could it be that at last drives our activities; our emotions or our brains? Hume would state that it is our conclusion that at last drives our activities. As indicated by Hume, reason is unequipped for propelling an activity. As indicated by Hume, reason can't fuel an activity and i n this manner can't inspire it. Hume feel that all activities are inspired by our slant. For instance, on page 84 Appendix I, he gives the case of a crook. It dwells in the brain of the individual, who is thankless. He should, along these lines, feel it, and be aware of it. Here, it is clear that Hume is stating that except if the individual, or criminal for this situation, earnestly puts stock in what he needs to do, he won't have the option to propel the activity. As it were, except if the opinion is there, the activity can't be willed into being. Subsequently, the notion is the main thrust behind the activity. Hume doesn't anyway say that reason is unequipped for deciding wether an activity is ethical or horrible (good or improper), however rather he attempts to state that the purpose behind the profound quality of an activity doesn't direct the execution or corruption of a demonstration so far as assurance of wether the activity is executed or not. In less difficult terms, reaso n has it's place in deciding ethical quality, yet it isn't in the inspiration of an activity. Inspiration must originate from the heart, or even better, from inside the individual; from their convictions. Reason just permits the individual to make moral differentiations. Without reason, there would be no profound quality. Without reason, one good statement would not be differentiable from another. In other words that beneath all ethics, there must be some hidden truth since Truth is debatable; not taste (p.14). On the off chance that reality were not debatable, there would be no real way to demonstrate that a fact was only that... a reality. To make a similarity to science, truth is a component of reason, while taste is an element of estimation. Notion is an element of the individual while reason is a component of the universe. The universe overall must follow reason, however the catch is that every individual's universe is marginally unique in that every individual sees their unive rse in an unexpected way. What each man feels inside himself is the standard of opinion. (p.14) That is to state every's individual universe has realities. These facts depend on reason. These facts/reasons are what help to decide the individual's conclusion. In any case, it ought to be noticed that in light of the fact that the reasons are NOT really the individual's assumptions, they don't persuade activities. One other motivation behind why reason doesn't incite activity is on the grounds that reason depends on facts. Facts are rarely changing while assumptions are dynamic and are in a consistent difference in motion. At one second, the criminal could feel compassion toward his casualties and choose to save a real existence, and the following, a similar criminal could get irritated at the pimple on a prisoner's brow and shoot him. Obviously these are extraordinary cases, yet the fact is clear. Reason would direct that lone the primary activity would be good. On the off chance that reason drove activities, at that point moral conduct would win and there would be no shameless activities and consequently there would be no violations. This shows how slants can change as the person's impression of the universe changes. Clearly, the main thrust behind the criminal shooting the casualty as a result of a skin flaw is

My Favorite Books about the Writing Life

My Favorite Books about the Writing Life As a writer, I love reading books about writing and writers which Ive written about here. But what about the actual writing life? I mean the hours spent, butt-in-chair, staring at a screen while your insides are being eaten up with anxiety over finances, organizing articles, assignment deadlines, and (self-imposed) pressure? What about the effect your writing might have on friends and family, and what that means? Here are some of my favorite books about the writing life the good, bad, and ugly. Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, edited by Manjula Martin. I LOVED this book. With contributors like Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Meaghan OConnell, and Emily Gould, I read through this in one sitting. By now it should be obvious that no one goes into writing for the money, and these essays take a frank and honest look at how writers actually make a living, and the role money plays (or doesnt) in our lives. The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey, edited by Linda Joy Myers and Brooke Warner. For me, this is not so much a craft book as a book on the life of a memoir writer. Essays, interspersed with interviews (Mary Karr! Margo Jefferson! Azar Nafisi!), show not only the process of writing a memoir, but how it fits into the larger life of a writer. I find myself returning to this book again and again, like Im picking up a conversation after a lull. Mentor: A Memoir, by Tom Grimes. Oh, this is one of my all-time favorites. So much goodness here: Iowa Writers Workshop, family dynamics, a mentorship with an established writer, and the grind of writing. This is a book that, at its heart, is about connection, and isnt that what writing is really all about? We Wanted to be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers Workshop, edited by Eric Olsen and Glenn Schaeffer. Another one of my favorites (and no, I did not go to Iowa), I picked this up from the bookstore on my last day of work there before I left to move North to start my MFA. I took it as a good sign that the book had just arrived to the store. Its full of stories about the famed Writers Workshop, tips for writing, lists of what books are stacked on the bedside table, and everyday life as both a writing student and a working (or not) writer. I read this at least once a year. What books give you a peek into the writing life?

How Teamwork Can Improve Organizational Performance And...

Teamwork is one of the most common policies in businesses; it is one of the ways to be able to effectively do work, delegate it and efficient work together. The meaning of teamwork is that it is the process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal faster or more efficiently. In this essay, the importance of teamwork will be shown by explaining how teamwork can be used as a means of improving organisational performance and sustaining competitive advantage of the company. For this reason, this essay will discuss the trend development of teamwork and what is needed in a team for it to have an effective impact on the productivity of a company. It will also show what the benefits that are gained from teamwork are and whether it can improve the business. However, give some example for sharing the information and knowledge in the team with teammates. And how the concept of teamwork is underpins the chain for whole company. On the other hand, the essay wil l give an example how the business using teamwork correctly to meet organisational objectives. How the teamwork solve the problems and willing to share decision making. So in the following essay will be shown all idea of teamwork and found some example of it. Firstly, the aim of teamwork is for a group of people in the same company or maybe not in the same company that are grouped together by the organisation to work together for a mutual benefit or goal, there are two or more people who need toShow MoreRelatedHuman Resource Management Practice Strategies1770 Words   |  7 PagesPractice Certain combinations of human resource management practices lead to superior outcomes for organizations. The HR combination department is at the heart of organizational performance, productivity, turnover, profits, and market value outcomes. Employees are considered a source of non-duplicable and sustainable competitive advantage. 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It236 Week 2 Free Essays

Web site plan part one. * Tittle: Cocibolca Money Transfer web site. This site will be design for a small money transfer business, in need of a web site to promote their services and to try to enhance their business success. We will write a custom essay sample on It236 Week 2 or any similar topic only for you Order Now * Site purpose- The purpose of my site is to promote and informed customers about the products and services offered by this small business services. In which customers will be able to see and understand the different products and services in detail; such as pricing on every product and services. By creating and maintaining this site the company, is hoping to gain more customers to use their services. This site will help the company to keep up with today’s business standards. * Key points of this web site- This web site will be focused in providing a customer service and successful customer experience. 1. Detail information- when customers go online, they do not want to make a phone call or email a company to obtain the information that they need about products and services. The goal is to provide ensure that, when a customer goes into this web site easily find answers to any questions. 2. Services- On this site the services offered by this company, will be describe in detail using a good visual design. Having this in mind it is important to have clean and simple design that will stand out from competitors. A great visual design will catch the attention of everyone that logs in; the first impression it is crucial. 3. Contact information- It is essential to provide contact information that a potential customer can use easily. It is ideal to provide more than one contact method, such and email address and also a contact form. 4. Search field- Having a search field will be very beneficial; it can be very frustrating having to go over a few pages of site before obtaining information of a specific service or content. * Target Audience-The target audience will be the Hispanic community that uses the products and services of money transfer business. The local Hispanic community of Miami Dade County especially those from south and Central America that are known to use money transfer services very often. * Pages transition- In this site I am planning to create a uniform look among each page and sections of the site. By reinforcing and identifying elements of the site and create smooth transitions from one page to another by repeating colors and fonts and by using a page layout that allows hierarchical levels. On this site I also think that it is imperative to use all the blank spaces of every pages and section on the site. With the use of every white space on this web site, will guide the readers and it will define each area of the site. * Slogan- Good service is our expertise!!!!! — This slogan will induce the target audience to use the business services, and the slogan drive the site content, because it represent everything that will be presented on the web site. Every service available to help every customer in their needs and also to demonstrate the expertise of the business in servicing customers is presented on this slogan. Sources: (Sklar) How to cite It236 Week 2, Papers

The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy free essay sample

One of the central issues of corporate finance has been the dividend decision of a firm, which has always been studied in relation to a firm’s financing and investment decisions. The association amongst these two decisions has posed various questions. How much should a firm pay as dividend? How does a dividend payout policy influence the valuation of a firm? Does a firm’s decision to distribute cash correspond to its financing and investing decisions? What is the outcome of changes in the dividend policy assuming steady financing and investment decisions of a firm? Research has attempted to provide answers to these questions and many more but mystery still shrouds the dividend decision. Lintner (1956) argues that firms of developed markets target their dividend payout ratio with the help of current earnings and past dividends. In order to reach such target, various adjustments are made in the dividend policy of a firm and therefore firms should have stable dividend policies. We will write a custom essay sample on The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Miller and Modigliani (1961) on the other hand feel that dividend policy is irrelevant in measuring the current worth of shares considering the irrational assumptions of market perfections, zero transaction costs, perfect certainty and indifferent behaviour of investors. However, Miller and Scholes (1982) argue that in the real world, dividend decision is inspired more by high taxes on dividends than capital gains and market imperfections. Alli, Khan and Ramirez (1993) observe that a change in the payout policy provides information about future earnings and a further change in the value of share price. This indeed shows a strong signaling effect of the dividend decision of a firm. It is evident that over the years, no Dr. Amitabh Gupta, Associate Professor, Department of Financial Studies, University of Delhi Ms. Charu Banga, Research Scholar, Department of Financial Studies, University of Delhi Decision, Vol. 37, No. 2, August, 2010 The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy 64 single viewpoint has emerged which explains the dividend policy of a firm. In India too, modest research has been carried out on various aspects of the dividend decision. The present study re-examines the impact of various factors on the dividend decision of Indian companies taking a large and latest data set. Our study contributes to the existing literature by examining as many as fifteen financial variables. No prior Indian study has examined so many variables in the context of dividend decision using both factor analysis and regression. The remaining paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the existing literature. Section 3 discusses the hypothesis being tested in the study and also describes the data and the research methodology used in the study. Section 4 discusses the results of the study and section 5 presents the conclusion. Literature Review A large number of financial and non-financial determinants of corporate dividend policy have been discussed in the work of Lintner (1956). This seminal work developed a basic model stating that most of the companies follow dividend adjustment process by applying target dividend payout ratio. Rozeff (1982) investigates the impact of two kinds of costs – transaction costs and agency costs relative to external financing on the dividend decision of a firm. He argues that a balance between transaction costs and agency costs would lead to an optimum dividend policy. Alli, Khan and Ramirez (1993) find that dividends do not convey information regarding a firm’s future cash flows. They report that at beta, firm’s capital expenditure and financial slack are inversely related to the dividend payout. The dividend policy behaviour is also examined by Han, Lee and Suk (1999) by considering institutional ownership under agency cost hypothesis and tax–based hypothesis. They find that tax-based hypothesis is more relevant in the case of institutional investors as they prefer a greater dividend payout. Pandey (2001) looks at the corporate dividend payout behaviour of companies listed on the Kuala Lumpur stock exchange during 1993-2000. He categorizes the sample into six industries for examining the variation in the payout ratio. He also establishes a relationship between current earnings and past dividend rate. He finds that the Malaysian companies (by following Lintner’s model) exhibit unstable dividend behaviour with high adjustments in dividend payments in order to meet the target payout ratio. Myers (2004) finds strong support for earnings, profit margin, institutional ownership and debt-equity ratio on the dividend decision. Eriotis (2005) finds that Greek firms have a long-run constant dividend payout policy. He adjusts the firms’ distributed earnings and size in the Lintner model and reports that an increase in the earnings does not change the dividend distribution pattern of firms. Kania and Bacon (2005) find that variables such as sales growth, expansion and insider ownership have a negative impact on dividend decision but institutional ownership has an inverse relation with dividend payout, which is contrary to the existing literature. Denis and Osobov (2008) find that the tendency for paying dividends declined for countries such as United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan during 1994-2002. They also report that the international evidence does not support the investors’ preference for dividend, the signaling and the clientele interpretations as prominent variables. Rather, they go along with the distribution of free cash flow as the chief element of the dividend decision. Decision, Vol. 37, No. 2, August, 2010 The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy 65 In the Indian context, we found few studies that have analyzed the factors that affect the dividend decision of a firm. For example, Kevin (1992) analyzes the dividend payment behaviour of 650 Indian companies during September 1983 to August 1984 and finds that profitability and earnings of the firms are the two foremost factors determining dividends. He concludes that Indian firms strive for achieving a stable dividend rate. However, keeping in view that the time period of his study was only one year; his results cannot be taken as conclusive. Mahapatra and Sahu (1993) find that cash flows, current earnings and past dividends are prominent factors that have an impact on the dividend decision. Their results are in contrast to Lintner’s model. Bhat and Pandey (1994) find that current year’s earnings, pattern of past dividends, expected future earnings, changes in equity base of the firm have an impact on the dividend decision. Taking a different line of research, Narasimhan and Asha (1997) look at the changes in dividend tax regime proposed in the Indian Union Budget of 1997-98 and analyze the impact of dividend tax on a firm’s dividend decision. They conclude that the burden of tax payment fell in the hands of companies rather than their shareholders. Mohanty (1999) studied more than 200 Indian companies for a period of fifteen years to understand the relationship between bonus-issuing and dividend-paying behaviour of companies. He found that in the Indian context, it is the dividend rate that is an important determinant of dividend policy in comparison to the dividend payout ratio. Reddy (2002) analyzes the trends and determinants of dividend of all Indian companies listed on two major Indian stock exchanges–The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and The National Stock Exchange (NSE) during 1990-2001. He investigates three factors viz. , number of firms paying dividend, average dividend per share and the average payout. His results indicate that only few companies maintain the dividend payout rate and that firms forming a part of small  indices pay higher dividend compared to firms forming a part of broad market indices. Deviations in the tax regime are also examined using the trade-off theory and it is found that this theory does not apply to the Indian corporate sector. He concludes that the omission of dividends have information content i. e. such companies expect lower earnings in the future whereas t he same does not hold true in case of dividend initiations. Anand (2004) analyzes the results of Anand (2002) survey of 81 CFOs to find out the determinants of dividend policy of Indian companies. He finds that Indian companies use dividend policy as a signaling mechanism to convey information about their present and future prospects, therefore, affecting their market value. He also reports that while designing a dividend policy, companies take into consideration the investors’ preference for dividends and the clientele effect. The relationship between corporate governance and dividend payout behaviour of the Indian firms is examined by Kumar (2006) by taking into consideration their financial structure, investment opportunities, dividend history, earnings trend and ownership structure during 1994–2000. He finds a positive association of dividends with earnings and dividend trends but does not find any association between foreign ownership and growth in dividend payout. Recently, Bhayani (2008) has examined the influence of earnings and lagged dividend on dividend policy of companies listed on the BSE. He found that the current year’s earnings is the foremost factor affecting the dividend behaviour of a firm and concludes that Indian Decision, Vol. 37, No. 2, August, 2010 The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy 66 companies follow a stable cash dividend policy. Kanwal and Kapoor (2008) examine the dividend policies of companies in the information technology sector in India. They explore various factors such as profitability, cash flows, corporate tax, sales growth and growth opportunities that have an impact over the dividend policies of such companies. They report that only cash flows indicating liquidity and beta indicating risk are the foremost determinants. Thus over the years different strands of research have emerged in the area of dividend policy both in India and abroad. Data and Research Methodology Data and Sample Selection The necessary data have been sourced from the Prowess database of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)1 The sample companies are drawn from the broad based BSE 500 Index2. The period of the study is seven years from January 1, 2001 to December 31 2007. We only included those companies in the sample that had continuously paid dividend during the study period and have excluded financial institutions/finance companies and government owned companies. Only final cash dividends paid by companies have been considered as usually Indian companies pay only one dividend during a year. We have also ignored stock dividends and stock repurchases by companies and have examined only cash dividend. This process gave us a final sample of 150 companies from 16 industries. Description of Variables Over the years researchers have employed numerous financial variables that have a possible impact on the dividend policy (A list of such variables is provided in Annexure 1). Out of such variables, the present study considers fifteen variables to examine their effect on the dividend decision. The justification for choosing such variables is as follows. Liquidity is an important determinant of dividend decision. Liquidity and dividend payment behaviour of a company have a direct relationship (Benito and Young, 2001). If a company has adequate cash flows, it would like to distribute cash dividend in order to keep its shareholders happy. Moreover, firms have to make their dividend payments in cash therefore they have to be liquid enough to distribute dividends and also to remain solvent. Current ratio (CR) and cash from operations (CFO) are the indicators of the liquidity position of a firm. Thus, CR and CFO become the first and second variable respectively. Another significant factor is leverage. A firm with high leverage means large fixed payments for external financing, which indeed is a substitute for the dividend payments. High leverage increases the transaction costs and the risk of the firm (Rozeff, 1982). Contrarily, higher the earning retention rate, lower the chances for external 1 Prowess is a database containing information about large and medium Indian companies and is commonly used by both the researchers and the industry alike in India 2 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) is one of the largest stock exchanges of Asia. Its broad based index BSE 500 constitutes major blue chip companies in India Decision, Vol. 37, No. 2, August, 2010 The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy 67 borrowing and vice-versa. Hence we take debt-equity ratio (DER) and ratio of retained earnings to equity (REE) as proxies for financial leverage exhibiting a negative relationship with the dividend decision. Hence, DER and REE become the third and fourth variable respectively. Further, the relationship between ownership structure and dividend payment behaviour of a firm is also valuable. The control of the firm may lie with the directors or the promoters (insider owners), institutions (institutional owners) or with foreign investors. The insiders would like to avoid excess payment of dividend whereas institutional owners are usually more dividend demanding (Han, Lee and Suk, 1999). Thus, promoters’ shareholding (PS), institutional shareholding (IS) and foreign institutional investors shareholding (FIIs) represent the fifth, sixth and seventh variables respectively. Profitability has always been considered as the foremost determinant for dividend payment as more profit means more dividends. It becomes essential to consider variables for short-term and long-term profitability of a firm (Myers, 2004). We take net profit ratio (NPR), return on investment (ROI) and ratio  of profit before interest tax to total assets (PTA) as their proxies and therefore, they become the eighth, ninth and tenth variables respectively. In addition, growth opportunities play an important role. Higher the operational growth and growth in profits of a firm, higher shall be the dividend payments by the firm (Kania and Bacon, 2005) . The growth factor is represented by annual sales growth (ASG), return on net worth (RONW) and earnings per share (EPS) growth. The growth rates of ASG, RONW and EPS are taken as the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth variables respectively. Market capitalization (MC) corresponds to the size of the firm and is the fourteenth variable. Tax effect is another significant determinant as the rates of taxation influence the need for dividend by the investors. High tax paying investors would prefer to postpone receiving dividends and thus, would like to retain their earnings with the firm in order to avoid heavy taxes whereas investors in lower tax brackets would prefer higher dividends (tax clientele effect)3. For this purpose we take ratio of corporate tax to profit after tax (T) as a proxy and the fifteenth variable. A detailed definition of these variables is given in Annexure 2. Research Methodology The present study re-examines various factors that have a bearing on the dividend decision of a firm by using a two-step multivariate procedure. We have identified fifteen variables from the extant literature that are considered while framing a dividend policy. In the first step, we perform factor analysis on the data to extract prominent factors from these fifteen variables. In the second step we perform multiple regression on the factors extracted. Results Factor Analysis The technique of factor analysis indicates those factors that explain the correlation among the observed variables. We use principal component analysis (PCA) as the factor extraction method to identify distinct clusters of observed variables (Dillon and Goldstein, 1984; Tryfos, 3 Tax Clientele Effect: See Miller and Modigliani, 1961. Decision, Vol. 37, No. 2, August, 2010 The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy 68 1998). The broad factors are further subjected to equamax orthogonal rotation (Alli, Khan and Ramirez, 1993). Table 1 shows the results of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett’s Test. The KMO measure of sampling adequacy tells us whether we can reduce the variables into broad factors or not. Value of less than 0. 50 indicates that factor analysis would not produce distinct and reliable factors whereas any value close to one would generally indicate that this technique of analysis would be useful with the data. Our results gave a value of 0. 554 indicating that the pattern of correlation amongst the variables is relatively compact and hence, Factor Analysis yields distinct and reliable broad factors (Meyers, Gamst and Guarino, 2006). The Bartlett’s test of Sphericity investigates whether the original correlation matrix is an identity matrix or not. Our results show that Bartlett’s test has a chi-square value of 1. 500E3 which is significant for p 0. 01 confirming that factor analysis is appropriate. Table 1: KMO and Bartlett’s Test Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity .554 Approx. Chi-Square 1. 500E3 Df 105 Sig. .000 Table 2 gives the Rotated Factor Matrix using Equamax Orthogonal Transformation i. e. a matrix of factor loadings for each variable upon each factor. The factor loadings of less than 0. 30 have been suppressed and are not displayed. The institutional shareholding (0.  853) and foreign institutional investors’ shareholding (0. 735) are positively correlated whereas promoters’ shareholding (-0. 824) is negatively correlated to the first factor i. e. ownership structure. The dividend payout tends to bring a decline in the stock value, thus, a conflict of interest for the insiders. A company with high insider ownership proposes for a low ca sh dividend payout. Whereas, institutional owners are keen to influence high payouts in order to enhance control over the management for monitoring their external financing matters (Kumar 2006, Myers, 2004, Han, Lee and Suk, 1999). Our results strongly support the findings in the literature. However, one point worth noting is that the individual shareholdings of promoters, institutions and foreign institutional investors in relation to the total shareholdings of a firm have not been taken into consideration. This can be an area for future research. Factor 2 has high negative loadings for debt-equity ratio (-0. 756), taxation (-0. 704) and earning per share (-. 384) and positive loadings for return on investment (0. 759) and return on net worth (0. 577). We term this factor as leverage. This suggests that firms would like to pay high dividends if they are utilizing their retained earnings (least risk attached) as compared to external financing (equity and debt). In other words, high interest payments (fixed charge) will result in lower dividend payment (Alli, Khan and Ramirez, 1993 and Rozeff, 1982). Therefore, results indicate that there exists an inverse relationship between dividend rate and leverage. Decision, Vol. 37, No. 2, August, 2010 The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy 69 The third broad factor is expressed as Profitability. It includes net profit ratio (0.932), ratio of profit to total assets (0. 932) and current ratio (0. 546). This factor indicates that greater the profit of a firm, higher will be the dividend payout. Therefore, profitability is positively related to dividend decision (Denis and Osobov 2008, Myers 2004). Our results confirm the same. The fourth factor incorporates high positive loadings for cash from operations (0. 809) and mar ket capitalization (0. 789). We coin this factor as liquidity. A firm with high external financing would require availability of cash flows i. e. strong liquidity position to meet its financial obligations. Therefore, in order to increase liquidity, the firm shall lower its dividend payout. On the other hand, the larger the size of the firm, the greater the availability of free cash flows and the greater will be the dividend payout. A firm with large number of shareholders is expected to pay higher dividends in order to keep their shareholders happy. It has been found that high retained earnings to equity ratio (indicating propensity to pay dividend) would ensure availability of free cash flows or residual cash flows within the firm (Benito and Young, 2001). One would, therefore, expect a direct relation between liquidity and dividend payout. The fifth factor is termed as Growth. It includes annual sales growth (0. 816), return on net worth (0. 530) and ratio of retained earnings to equity (0. 485) implying that growth in sales and profit is an important determinant for the payment of dividends. Our results support the findings of Myers (2004) who suggests that firms with high growth rate distribute high dividends in order to keep their shareholders happy. Table 2: Rotated Component Matrix Components IS PS FIIs ROI DER T RONW EPS PTA NPR CR CFO MC ASG REE Ownership Structure .843 -. 824 .735 Leverage Profitability Liquidity Growth .385 .759 -. 756 -. 704 .577 -. 384 Decision, Vol. 37, No. 2, August, 2010 .412 .415 .932 .932 .546 .530 -. 431 .809 .789 .816 .485 The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy 70 Regression Results In the second step, multiple regression is carried out to examine the impact of the five independent variables on the dividend rate. The dividend rate is a dependent variable constituting the dividend decision and the five factors extracted from factor analysis viz. leverage, liquidity, profitability, growth, and ownership structure are taken as the independent variables. Since the factors used in the regression model are derived through the orthogonal transformations, they are free from multi-collinearity problems (Ali, Khan and Ramirez, 1993). Further tests for normality, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation show that data is normally distributed and there are no related problems. Table 3 gives the results of the regression model. The R-square is 0. 244 i. e. around 25 per cent of the variability in dividend rate is explained by the independent variables tested. The FStatistic of 9. 320 is significant at 1% level of significance. The Durbin-Watson statistic of 2. 079 signifies that autocorrelation is not present among independent variables. Table 3: Regression Model Summary R-Square 0. 244 F 9. 320 Durbin-Watson 2. 079 Table 4 gives the results of the regression. Out of the five factors analyzed, four factors viz. , leverage, liquidity, ownership structure and growth have expected relationships with the dividend payout. Whereas profitability, shows a sign contrary to what was expected. In line with literature, our results show that the leverage position of a firm has a negative relation with the dividend rate (-0.239), which is significant at 5% level of significance. Higher the exposure of the firm to external financing, higher will be the risk of the firm and therefore, lower would be the dividend payout. Table 4: Regression results Variables Dividend Rate (Constant) Expected sign Standardized Co-efficients Beta Dependent variable T Sig. 3. 840 .000 Leverage Negative -. 239 -3. 013 .003 Liquidity Positive . 341 4. 138 .000 Profitability Positive -. 007 -0. 086 .932 Ownership Structure Positive .091 1. 113 .286 Growth Positive .041 .541 .589 Decision, Vol. 37, No. 2, August, 2010 The Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy 71 Similarly, liquidity (. 341) shows a positive relation with the dividend rate at 1 % level of significance. The ownership structure of a firm representing institutional owners has a positive coefficient (0. 091) but is statistically not significant. Growth (. 041) also shows a positive coefficient, which is not significant. Contrary to what was predicted, profitability shows a negative coefficient (-. 007) but is statistically not significant. Thus, the results of our study indicate that there are two main determinants of dividend decision viz.leverage and liquidity. Conclusion Despite few decades of active research on a number of theories discussing determinants of corporate dividend policy, no significant judgment can be drawn. The present study reexamines the determinants of corporate dividend decision of Indian companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange during the period January 1, 2001–December 31, 2007. The study uses P rincipal Component Analysis for analyzing fifteen variables that have an impact on the dividend decision of a firm. The results gave five broad factors viz. , leverage, liquidity, profitability, ownership structure and growth. These factors were then subjected to multiple regression with dividend rate as the dependent variable. The results of the regression show that leverage, liquidity, ownership structure and growth showed expected signs whereas profitability did not show the expected sign. Two factors viz. , leverage and liquidity were found to have a strong relationship with dividend rates of Indian companies. While leverage was found to be negatively associated, liquidity was positively related. One point worth mentioning here is that our results are drawn only from the analysis of financial factors affecting the dividend policy of an Indian company. In practice some non-financial factors such as foreign collaborators’ shareholding, attitude and behaviour of management, company policies, etc may also have a bearing on the dividend decision of a firm. References Alli, K. L, Khan, A. Q. and Ramirez, G. G. 1993. Determinants of Corporate Dividend Policy: A Factorial Analysis. The Financial Review, 28(4): 523–547. Anand, M. 2002. Corporate Finance Practices in India: A Survey. Vikalpa, 27(4): 29 – 56. Anand, M. 2004. Factors Influencing Dividend Policy Decisions of Corporate India. The ICFAI Journal of Applied Finance, 2(10): 5 – 16.

Abortion Essays (835 words) - Law, Reproductive Rights,

Abortion Abortion - Right To Choose Many people believe abortion is a moral issue, but it is also a constitutional issue. It is a woman's right to choose what she does with her body, and it should not be altered or influenced by anyone else. This right is guaranteed by the ninth amendment, which contains the right to privacy. The ninth amendment states: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. This right guarantees the right to women, if they so choose, to have an abortion, up to the end of the first trimester. Regardless of the fact of morals, a woman has the right to privacy and choice to abort her fetus. The people that hold a pro-life view argue that a woman who has an abortion is killing a child. The pro-choice perspective holds this is not the case. A fetus is not yet a baby. It does not posess the criteria derived from our understanding of living human beings. In a notable defense of this position, philosopher Mary Anne Warren has proposed the following criteria for person-hood: 1) consciousness (of objects and events external and or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain. 2) reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems) 3) self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control) 4) the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of possible contents, but on indefinltely many possible topics. 5) the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or social, or both. (Taking Sides -Volume 3). Several cases have been fought for the right to choose. Many of these have been hard cases with very personal feelings, but the perserverance showed through and gives us the rights we have today. Here are some important cases: 1965 - Griswold v. Connecticut - upheld the right to privacy and ended the ban on birth control. Eight years later, the Supreme Court ruled the right to privacy included abortions. Roe v. Wade was based upon this case. 1973 - Roe v. Wade: - The state of Texas had outlawed abortions. The Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional, but refused to order an injunction against the state. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court voted the right to privacy included abortions. In 1976, Planned Parenthood v. Danforth (Missouri) ruled that requiring consent by the husband and the consent from a parent if a person was under 18 was unconstitutional. This case supported a woman's control over her own body and reproductive system. Justice William Brennan stated: If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwanted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision to bear or beget a child. Abortion is one of the most controversial issues in the world today. Everyone has their own individual opinion. A woman's body is hers and hers alone. Nobody has the right to make her do something that she does not want to. The Supreme Court has stated it is the women's right to have an abortion, if she so chooses, according to Roe v. Wade. In later cases however, the Court has upheld Roe in Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992). In the same ruling, though, the Court gave states new powers to restrict access to abortions. (Hardy, pg. 189). Abortion deals with one's private life and should have nothing to do with the government. However, abortion should not be used as a means of birth control, but if a fetus will be unwanted, it is better to be aborted than to be abused or neglected. Many people try to force their beliefs on others and judge them for their actions. These people need to judge themselves before they start to judge others. The bottom line is no matter what anyone thinks the laws speak for themselves. It is a woman's right to privacy to control her reproductive system guaranteed by the constitution. Although there are some restrictions on abortion, due to the states' rights, it is

Free Essays on Iroquios Indians

are directly related but are not interchangeable. The Iroquois Confederacy (or "League of the Iroquois" according to the whites) was thought to have been founded in the 1500’s by the great Mohawk chief, Hiawatha. The confederacy was first made up of five tribes, the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga and Seneca. This gave them the dubbed name of Five Nations. In 1722, the Tuscarora were added to the confederacy and they were then known and the Six Nations. The Five Nations occupied an area in the present day New York, just south of Lake Ontario. The Five Nations numbered about 5,500 native Americans in their confederacy. In order to organize the affairs of the Nations the "Great Binding Law" was created. The "Great Binding Law" was the confederacy’s constitution. According to one website (ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/DatingIC.html) the confederacy is one of the oldest democracies in the world. The confederacy was thought to be a democracy because, although each tribe was allowed to ... Free Essays on Iroquios Indians Free Essays on Iroquios Indians According to the New Webster’s Dictionary the definition of civilization is "a making or becoming civilized; the state of being civilized; the sum or qualities of a particular civilized society" and the definition of culture is "the social and religious structures and intellectual and artistic manifestations etc. that characterize a society." I find these definitions to be easily arguable. The only common word in those two definitions is society, but they are in no way related. I find the two words to be connected but not interchangeable. If I was to write the definitions, I would make the two words more closely related. My definition of civilization would be a community of people who settled in an area whom has also developed a common culture. My definition of culture would be the way a certain society acted and the rituals they performed (i.e. religion, holidays that are observed, language, literature, etc.). Therefore the two words are directly related but are not interchan geable. The Iroquois Confederacy (or "League of the Iroquois" according to the whites) was thought to have been founded in the 1500’s by the great Mohawk chief, Hiawatha. The confederacy was first made up of five tribes, the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga and Seneca. This gave them the dubbed name of Five Nations. In 1722, the Tuscarora were added to the confederacy and they were then known and the Six Nations. The Five Nations occupied an area in the present day New York, just south of Lake Ontario. The Five Nations numbered about 5,500 native Americans in their confederacy. In order to organize the affairs of the Nations the "Great Binding Law" was created. The "Great Binding Law" was the confederacy’s constitution. According to one website (ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/DatingIC.html) the confederacy is one of the oldest democracies in the world. The confederacy was thought to be a democracy because, although each tribe was allowed to ...

Management by walking around Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Management by walking around - Essay Example However, managers involve in this exercise to further keep a finger on the operation of the organization. To enhance proper connection and communication purposes within an organization, the manager has to walk around and talk to the team, ask them several questions, work alongside them and be available to help in case need arises. Therefore, this paper elaborately brings out the discussions based on management by walking around. Practicing management by walking around can lead to the achievement of the following; Approachability; when the staff members see the manager just as an individual and not as a boss, the rate of transparency increases. The staff members become more open to explain the problems within the organization (Frase and Hertzel 11). The manager gets to know the issues before they build up to be problems. Accountability; the completion of the agreement is very easy as a result of interaction between manager and the staff team. Motivation among every member builds up since there is daily interaction (Frase and Hertzel 29). T. Productivity; creativity develops due to interaction and casual exchanges. Management by walking around facilitates informal discussions, and this compels people to come up with the new innovative ideas. As a result of interaction, people become excited when they can be heard; this leads to increase in their morale. More trust develops and buildup of business knowledge (F rase and Hertzel 49) Implementation of management by walking around involves relaxation, listening and making good observation more than the rate of talking. The manager ought to make active listening with the staff at large. Asking for feedback and ideas is the best policy (Frase and Hertzel 101). T. The implementation of this is completed by installing the ideas into everyone. Wandering around should be done proportionally by the manager regardless of job title of the staff. Moreover, questions have to be answered openly and with honesty and maintaining

Research project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words - 1

Research project - Essay Example There are some organizational structures which propagate discrimination in workplaces and employees at lower status positions suffer the most from this social problem. From the 2008 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EEOC statistics, the US posted a 15% increase in complaints related to workplace discrimination (Hammond, Gillen & Yen, 2010). Even so, these figures are much lower than the exact occurrences because minority group members always minimize such experiences and would be reluctant to file formal complaints. Therefore, workplace discrimination is a rampant social problem that needs critical understanding so as to determine effective solutions. America has a poor historical background on discrimination at workplace. As late as 1865, businesspeople were allowed to have slaves that they would use to run their business ventures, this being the period around the Industrial Revolution. As late as the mid twentieth century, no laws were in force to deter prejudice and harassment in workplace (National Archives, 2015). However, 1964 saw the turning point to such treatment with the civil rights legislation which required that workplaces be open to all their employees regardless of their race. This gave birth to the regulation of all the other forms of discriminations at workplace. With the changes on laws against discrimination at workplace, the discrimination practice in workplace has arguably dropped than it was during the Industrial Revolution. According to the National Archives (2015), the Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241) passed by the Congress in 1964 prohibited discrimination at workplace based on race and sex. This was later expanded to include color, religion and national origin. In Title VII of this Civil Rights Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created to realize the law. The role of EEOC was subsequently expanded and now includes enforcement of federal statutes which prohibit all discriminatory practices at

Pentium Memory Management Unit Computer Science Essay

Pentium Memory Management Unit Computer Science Essay The main aim of the research paper is to analyze Pentium Memory Management Unit. Here, certain key features associated with a memory management unit like segmentation, paging, their protection, cache associated with MMU in form of translation look aside buffer, how to optimize microprocessors performance after implementing those features etc. have been discussed. Some problems and their respective solutions related to Pentium memory management unit are also covered. Also, the current and future research work done in the field of memory management is covered too. The main challenge is to get accustomed with the Pentium memory management unit and analyze the crucial factors related. Introduction A hardware component liable in handling different accesses to memory requested by CPU is known as memory management unit (MMU), which is also termed as paged memory management unit (PMMU). The main functions of MMU can be categorized as follows:-[1] Translation of virtual addresses to physical addresses which is also known as virtual memory management (VMM). Memory protection Cache Control Bus Arbitration Bank switching The memory system for Pentium microprocessor is 4G bytes in size just as in 80386DX and 80486 microprocessors. Pentium uses a 64-bit data bus to address memory organized in eight banks that each contains 512M bytes of data. Most microprocessors including Pentium also supports virtual memory concept with the help of memory management unit. Virtual memory is used to manage the resource of physical memory. It gives an application the illusion of a very large amount of memory, typically much larger than what is actually available. It supports the execution of processes partially resident in memory. Only the most recently used portions of a processs address space actually occupy physical memory-the rest of the address space is stored on disk until needed. The Intel Pentium microprocessor supports both segmentation and segmentation with paging. Another important feature supported by Pentium processors is the memory protection. This mechanism helps in limiting access to certain segments or pages based on privilege levels and thus protect critical data if kept in a privilege level with highest priority from different attacks. Intels Pentium processor also supports cache, translation look aside buffers, (TLBs), and a store buffer for temporary on-chip (and external) storage of instructions and data. Another major issue resolved by MMU is the fragmentation of memory. Sometimes, the size of largest contiguous free memory is much smaller than the total available memory because of the fragmentation issue. With virtual memory, a contiguous range of virtual addresses can be mapped to several non-contiguous blocks of physical memory. [1] This research paper basically revolves around different functions associated with a memory management unit of Pentium processors. This includes features like virtual memory management, memory protection, and cache control and so on. Pentiums memory management unit has some problems associated with it and some benefits as well which will be covered in detail in the later part. The above mentioned features help in solving major performance issues and has given a boom to the microprocessor world. History In some early microprocessor designs, memory management was performed by a separate integrated circuit such as the VLSI VI475 or the Motorola 68851 used with the Motorola 68020 CPU in the Macintosh II or the Z8015 used with the Zilog Z80 family of processors. Later microprocessors such as the Motorola 68030 and the ZILOG Z280 placed the MMU together with the CPU on the same integrated circuit, as did the Intel 80286 and later x86 microprocessors. The first memory management unit came into existence with the release of 80286 microprocessor chip in 1982. For the first time, 80286 offered on-chip memory management which makes it suitable for multitasking operations. On many machines, cache access time limits the clock cycle rate and in turn it affects more than the average memory access time. Therefore, to achieve fast access times, fitting the cache on chip was very important and this on-chip memory management paved the way. The major functionalities associated with a memory management are segmentation and paging. Segmentation unit was found first and foremost on 8086 processor which had only one purpose of serving as a gateway for 1MB physical address space. To allow easy porting from old applications to the new environment, it was decided by Intel to keep the segmentation unit alive under protected-mode. Protected mode does not have fixed sized memory blocks in memory, but instead, the size and location of each segment is set in an associated data structure called a Segment Descriptor. All memory references are accessed relative to the base address of their corresponding segment so as to allow relocation of program modules fairly easy and also avoid operating system to perform code fix-ups when it loads applications into memory. [2] With paging enabled, the processor adds an extra level of indirection to the memory translation process. Instead of serving as a physical address, an application-generated address is used by the processor to index one of its look-up tables. The corresponding entry in the table contains the actual physical address which is sent to the processor address bus. Through the use of paging, operating systems can create distinct address spaces for each running application thus simplifying memory access and preventing potential conflicts. Virtual-memory allows applications to allocate more memory than is physically available. This is done by keeping memory pages partially in RAM and partially on disk. When a program tries to access an on-disk page, an  Exception  is generated and the operating system reloads the page to allow the faulting application resume its execution. [2] The Pentium 4 was Intels final endeavor in the realm of single-core CPUs. The Pentium 4 had an on-die cache memory of 8 to 16 KB. The Pentium 4 memory cache is a memory location on the CPU used to store instructions to be processed. The Pentium 4 on-die memory cache is an extremely fast memory location which stored and decoded instructions known as microcode that were about to be executed by the CPU. [3] By todays standards, the Pentium 4 cache size is very lacking in capacity. This lack of cache memory means the CPU must make more calls to RAM for operating instructions. These calls to RAM are performance reducing, as the latency involved in transferring data from RAM is much higher than from the on-die cache. Often overlooked, the cache size of any CPU is of vast importance to predicting the performance of a  computer  processor. While the Pentium 4s level one cache was very limited by todays standards, it was at the time of its release more than adequate for the majority of computer applications. [4] Likely Pentium Pros most noticeable addition was its on-package L2 cache, which ranged from 256 KB at introduction to 1 MB in 1997. Intel placed the L2 die(s) separately in the package which still allowed it to run at the same clock speed as the CPU core. Additionally, unlike most motherboard-based cache schemes that shared the main system bus with the CPU, the Pentium Pros cache had its own back-side bus. Because of this, the CPU could read main memory and cache concurrently, greatly reducing a traditional bottleneck. The cache was also non-blocking, meaning that the processor could issue more than one cache request at a time (up to 4), reducing cache-miss penalties. These properties combined to produce an L2 cache that was immensely faster than the motherboard-based caches of older processors. This cache alone gave the CPU an advantage in input/output performance over older x86 CPUs. In multiprocessor configurations, Pentium Pros integrated cache skyrocketed performance in comparis on to architectures which had each CPU sharing a central cache. [4]However, this far faster L2 cache did come with some complications. The processor and the cache were on separate dies in the same package and connected closely by a full-speed bus. The two or three dies had to be bonded together early in the production process, before testing was possible. This meant that a single, tiny flaw in either die made it necessary to discard the entire assembly. [5] Technical Aspects of Pentiums Memory Management Unit Virtual Memory Management in Pentium The memory management unit in Pentium is upward compatible with the 80386 and 80486 microprocessors. The linear address space for Pentium microprocessor is 4G bytes that means from 0 to (232 1). MMU translates the Virtual Address to Physical address in less than a single clock cycle for a HIT and also it minimizes the cache fetch time for a MISS. CPU generates logical address which are given to segmentation unit which produces linear address which are then given to paging unit and thus paging unit generates physical address in main memory. Hence, paging and segmentation units are sub forms of MMUs. Figure 3.1 Logical to Physical Address Translation in Pentium Pentium can run in both modes i.e. real or protected. Real mode does not allow multi-tasking as there is no protection for one process to interfere with another whereas in protected mode, each process runs in a separate code segment. Segments have different privilege levels preventing the lower privilege process (such as an application) to run a higher privilege one (e.g. Operating system). Pentium running in Protected mode supports both segmentation and segmentation with paging. Segmentation: Pentium This process helps in dividing programs into logical blocks and then placing them in different memory areas. This makes it possible to regulate access to critical sections of the application and help identify bugs during the development process. It includes several features like to define the exact location and size of each segment in memory and set a specific privilege level to a segment which protects its content from unauthorized access. [6] Segment registers are now called  segment selectors  because they do not map directly to a physical address but point to an entry of the descriptor table. Pentium CPU has six 16 bit segment registers called SELECTORS. The logical address consists of 16 bit of segment size and 32 bit offset. The below figure shows a multi-segment model which uses the full capabilities of the segmentation mechanism to provide hardware enforced protection of code, data structures, and programs and tasks. This is supported by IA-32 architecture. Here, each program is given its own table of segment descriptors and its own segments. Figure 3.1.1.1 Multi-Dimensional Model When the processor needs to translate a memory location SEGMENT: OFFSET to its corresponding physical address à Ã¢â‚¬  , it takes the following steps: [7] Step 1: Find the start of the descriptor table (GDTR register) The below figure shows CPU selectors provide index (pointer) to Segment Descriptors stored in RAM in the form of memory structures called Descriptor Tables. Then, that address is combined with the offset to locate a specific linear address. Figure 3.1.1.2 Selector to Descriptor and then to finally linear address in Pentium MMU Step 2: Find the Segment  entry of the table; this is the segment descriptor corresponding to the segment. There are two types of Descriptor tables: Global Descriptor Table and Local Descriptor table. Global Descriptor Table: It consists of segment definitions that apply to all programs like the code belonging to operating system segments created by OS before CPU switched to protected mode. Local Descriptor Table: These tables are unique to an application. This figure finds the entry of the segment table and then a segment descriptor is chosen corresponding to the segment. [7] Figure 3.1.1.3 Global and Local Descriptor Table Pentium has a 32 bit base address which allows segments to begin at any location in its 4G bytes of memory. The below figure shows the format of a descriptor of a Pentium processor: [7] Figure 3.1.1.4 Pentium Descriptor Format Step 3: Find the base physical address à Ã‹â€  of the segment Step 4: Compute à Ã¢â‚¬   = à Ã‹â€  + OFFSET [7] Paging Unit Paging is an address translation from linear to physical address. The linear address is divided into fixed length pages and similarly the physical address space is divided into same fixed length frames. Within their respective address spaces pages and frames are numbered sequentially. The pages that have no frames assigned to them are stored on the disk. When the CPU needs to run the code on any non-assigned page, it generates a page fault exception, upon which the operating system reassigns a currently non-used frame to that page and copies the code from that page on the disk to the newly assigned RAM frame. [9] Pentium MMU uses the two-level page table to translate a virtual address to a physical address. The page directory contains 1024 32-bit page directory entries (PDEs), each of which points to one of 1024 level-2 page tables. Each page table contains 1024 32-bit page table entries (PTEs), each of which points to a page in physical memory or on disk. The page directory base register (PDBR) points to the beginning of the page directory. Figure 3.1.2.1 Pentium multi-level page table [8] For 4KB pages, Pentium uses a two level paging scheme in which division of the 32 bit linear address as: Figure 3.1.2.2 Division of 32 bit linear address The below figure shows the complete address translation process in Pentium i.e. from CPUs virtual address to main memorys physical address. Figure 3.1.2.3 Summary of Pentium address translation [8] The size of a paging table is dynamic and can become large in a system that contains large memory. In Pentium, due to the 4M byte paging feature, there is just a single page directory and no page tables. Basically, this mechanism helps operating system to create VIRTUAL (faked) address space by swapping code between disk and RAM. This procedure is known as virtual memory support. [9] The paging mechanism in Pentium functions with 4K byte memory pages or with a new extension available to the Pentium with 4M byte memory pages. The 20-bit VPN is partitioned into two 10-bit chunks. VPN1 indexes a PDE in the page directory pointed at by the PDBR. The address in the PDE points to the base of some page table that is indexed by VPN2. The PPN in the PTE indexed by VPN2 is concatenated with the VPO to form the physical address. [8] Figure 3.1.2.4 Pentium Page table Translation [8] Segmentation with Paging: Pentium Pentium supports both pure segmentation and segmentation with paging. To select a segment, program loads a selector for that segment into one of six segment registers. For e.g. CS register is a selector for code segment and DS register is a selector for data segment. Selector can specify whether segment table is Local to the process or Global to the machine. Format of a selector used in Pentium is as follows: C:Bb4JPGfoo4-43.jpg Figure 3.1.3.1 Selector Format The steps required to achieve this methodology are as follows:- Step 1: Use the Selector to convert the 32 bit virtual offset address to a 32 bit linear address. Step 2: Convert the 32 bit linear address to a physical address using a two-stage page table. Figure 3.1.3.2 mapping of a linear address onto a physical address [9] The below figures shows the complete process of segmentation along with paging which is one of the important functionalities of Pentiums memory management unit. [9] Figure 3.1.3.3 Segmentation with paging Some modern processors allow usage of both, segmentation and paging alone or in a combination (Motorola 8030 and later, Intel 80386, 80486, and Pentium) the OS designers have a choice which is cgiven in the below table. [9] Segmentation Paging No No Small (embedded) systems, low overhead, high performance No Yes Linear address space BSD UNIX, Windows NT Yes No Better controlled protection and sharing. ST can be kept on chip predictable access times (Intel 8086) Yes Yes Controlled protection/sharing Better memory management. UNIX Sys. V, OS/2. Figure 3.1.3.4 Usage of segmentation and paging in different processors Intel 80386, 486 and Pentium support the following MM scheme which is used in IBM OS/2. The diagram is shown below: Figure 3.1.3.5 Intels Memory Management scheme implemented in IBM OS/2 3.1.4 Optimizing Address Translation in Pentium processors The main goal of memory management for address translation is to have all translations in less than a single clock cycle for a HIT and minimize cache fetch time for a MISS. On page fault, the page must be fetched from disk and it takes millions of clock cycles which are handled by OS code. To minimize page fault rate, two methods used are:- 1. Smart replacement algorithms: To reduce page fault rate, the most preferred replacement algorithm is least-recently used (LRU). In this, a reference bit is set to 1 in page table entry to each page and is periodically cleared to 0 by OS. A page with reference bit equal to 0 has not been used recently. [10] 2. Fast translation using Translation Look aside Buffer: Address translation would appear to require extra memory references i.e. one to access the Page table entry and then the other for actual memory access. But access to page tables has good locality and thus use a fast cache of PTEs within the CPU called a Translation Look-aside Buffer (TLB) where the typical rate in Pentium is 16-512 PTEs, 0.5-1 cycle for hit, 10-100 cycles for miss, 0.01%-1% miss rate. [11] Page size 4KB -64 KB Hit Time 50-100 CPU clock cycles Miss Penalty Access time Transfer time 106 107 clock cycles 0.8 x 106 -0.8 x 107 clock cycles 0.2 x 106 -0.2 x 107 clock cycles Miss rate 0.00001% 0.001% Virtual address space size GB -16 x 1018 byte Figure 3.1.4.1 TLB rates Using the below mentioned two methods, TLB misses are handled (hardware or software) The page is in memory, but its physical address is missing. A new TLB entry must be created. The page is not in memory and the control is transferred to the operating system to deal with a page fault where it is handled by causing exception (interrupt): using EPC and Cause register. There are two ways of handling them:- Instruction page fault: Store the state of the process Look up the page table to find the disk address of the referenced page Choose a physical page to replace Start a read from disk for the referenced page Execute another process until the read completes Restart the instruction which caused the fault [12] Data access page fault: Occurs in the middle of an instruction. MIPS instructions are restartable: prevent the instruction from completing and restart it from the beginning. More complex machines: interrupting instructions (saving the state of CPU) 3. The other method used to reduce the HIT time is to avoid address translation during indexing. The CPU uses virtual addresses that must be mapped to a physical address. A cache that indexes by virtual addresses is called a virtual cache, as opposed to a physical cache. A virtual cache reduces hit time since a translation from a virtual address to a physical address is not necessary on hits. Also, address translation can be done in parallel with cache access, so penalties for misses are reduced as well. Although some difficulties are associated with Virtual cache technique i.e. process switches require cache purging. In virtual caches, different processes share the same virtual addresses even though they map to different physical addresses. When a process is swapped out, the cache must be purged of all entries to make sure that the new process gets the correct data. [13] Different solutions to overcome this problem are:- PID tags: Increase the width of the cache address tags to include a process ID (instead of purging the cache.) The current process PID is specified by a register. If the PID does not match, it is not a hit even if the address matches. Anti-aliasing hardware: A hardware solution called anti-aliasing guarantees every cache block a unique physical address. Every virtual address maps to the same location in the cache. Page coloring: This software technique forces aliases to share some address bits. Therefore, the virtual address and physical address match over these bits. Using the page offset: An alternative to get the best of both virtual and physical caches. If we use the page offset to index the cache, then we can overlap the virtual address translation process with the time required to read the tags. Note that the page offset is unaffected by address translation. However, this restriction forces the cache size to be smaller than the page size. Pipelined cache access: Another method to improve cache is to divide cache access into stages. This will lead to the following result: Pentium: 1 clock cycle per hit Pentium II and III: 2 clock cycles per hit Pentium 4: 4 clock cycles per hit It helps in allowing faster clock, while still producing one cache hit per clock. But the problem is that it has higher branch penalty, higher load delay. [13] Trace caches: A trace cache is a specialized instruction cache containing instruction traces; that is, sequences of instructions that are likely to be executed. It is found on Pentium 4 (NetBurst microarchitecture). It is used instead of conventional instruction cache. Cache blocks contain micro-operations, rather than raw memory and contain branches and continue at branch target, thus incorporating branch prediction. Cache hit requires correct branch prediction. The major advantage is that it makes sure instructions are available to supply the pipeline, by avoiding cache misses that result from branches and the disadvantage is that the cache may hold the same instruction several times and it has more complex control. [13] System Memory Management Mode The system memory management mode (SMM) is on the same level as protected mode, real mode and virtual mode, but it is provided to function as a manager. The SMM is not intended to be used as an application or a system level feature. It is intended for high-level system functions such as power management and security, which most Pentiums use during operation, but that are controlled by the operating system. Access to the SMM is accomplished via a new external hardware interrupt applied to the SMI# pin on the Pentium. When the SMM interrupt is activated, the processor begins executing system-level software in an area of memory called the system management RAM, or SMMRAM, called the SMM state dump record. The SMI# interrupt disables all other interrupts that are normally handled by user applications and the operating system. A return from the SMM interrupt is accomplished with a new instruction called RSM. RSM returns from the memory management mode interrupt and returns to the interrupted program at the point of the interruption. SMM allows the Pentium to treat the memory system as a flat 4G byte system, instead of being able to address the first 1M of memory. SMM helps in executing the software initially stored at a memory location 38000H. SMM also stores the state of the Pentium in what is called a dump record. The dump record is stored at memory locations 3FFA8H through 3FFFFH. The dump record allows a Pentium based system to enter a sleep mode and reactivate at the point of program interruption. This requires that the SMMRAM be powered during the sleep period. The Halt auto restart and I/O trap restarts are used when the SMM mode is exited by the RSM instruction. These data allow the RSM instruction to return to the halt state or return to the interrupt I/O instruction. If neither a halt nor an I/O operation is in effect upon entering the SMM mode, the RSM instruction reloads the state of the machine from the state dump and returns to the point of interruption. [14] Memory protection in Pentium In protected mode, the Intel 64 and IA-32 architectures provide a protection mechanism that operates at both the segment level and the page level. This protection mechanism provides the ability to limit access to certain segments or pages based on privilege levels. The Pentium 4 also supports four protection levels, with level 0 being the most privileged and level 3 the least. Segment and page protection is incorporated in localizing and detecting design problems and bugs. It can also be implemented into end-products to offer added robustness to operating systems, utilities software, and applications software. This protection mechanism is used to verify certain protection checks before actual memory cycle gets started such as Limit checks, type checks, privilege level checks, restriction of addressable domains and so on. The figure shows how these levels of privilege are interpreted as rings of protection. Here, the center (reserved for the most privileged code, data, and stacks) is used for the segments containing the critical software, usually the kernel of an operating system. Outer rings are used for less critical software. At each instant, a running program is at a certain level, indicated by a 2-bit field in its PSW (Program Status Word). Each segment also belongs to a certain level. Figure 3.3.1 Protection on Pentium II Memory protection implemented by associating protection bit with each frame valid-invalid bit attached to each entry in the page table: Valid indicates that the associated page is in the process logical address space, and is thus a legal page. Invalid indicates that the page is not in the process logical address space. As long as a program restricts itself to using segments at its own level, everything works fine. Attempts to access data at a higher level are permitted. Attempts to access data at a lower level are illegal and cause traps. 3.4 Cache in Pentium Processors Cache control is one of the most common techniques for improving performance in computer systems (both hardware and software) is to utilize caching for frequently accessed information. This lowers the average cost of accessing the information, providing greater performance for the overall system. This applies in processor design, and in the Intel Pentium 4 Processor architecture, caching is a critical component of the systems performance. The Pentium 4 Processor Architecture includes multiple types and levels of caching: Level 3 Cache This type of caching is only available on some versions of the Pentium 4 Processor (notably the Pentium 4 Xeon processors). This provides a large on-processor tertiary memory storage area that the processor uses for keeping information nearby. Thus, the contents of the Level 3 cache are faster to access. Level 2 Cache this type of cache is available in all versions of the Pentium 4 Processor. It is normally smaller than the Level 3 cache and is used for caching both data and code that is being used by the processor. Level 1 Cache this type of cache is used only for caching data. It is smaller than the Level 2 Cache and generally is used for the most frequently accessed information for the processor. Trace Cache this type of cache is used only for caching decoded instructions. Specifically, the processor has already broken down the normal processor instructions into micro operations and it is these micro ops that are cached by the P4 in the Trace Cache. Translation Look aside Buffer (TLB) this type of cache is used for storing virtual-to-physical memory translation information. It is an associative cache and consists of an instruction TLB and data TLB. Store Buffer this type of cache is used for taking arbitrary write operations and caching them so they may be written back to memory without blocking the current processor operations. This decreases contention between the processor and other parts of the system that are accessing main memory. There are 24 entries in the Pentium 4. Write Combining Buffer this is similar to the Store Buffer, except that it is specifically optimized for burst write operations to a memory region. Thus, multiple write operations can be combined into a single write back operation. There are 6 entries in the Pentium 4. The disadvantage of caching is handling the situation when the original copy is modified, thus making the cached information incorrect (or stale). A significant amount of the work done within the processor is ensuring the consistency of the cache, both for physical memory as well as for the TLBs. In the Pentium 4, physical memory caching remains coherent because the processor uses the MESI protocol. MESI defines the state of each unique cached piece of memory, called a cache line. In the Pentium 4, a cache line is 64 bytes. Thus, with the MESI protocol, each cache line is in one of four states: Modified the cache line is owned by this processor and there are modifications to that cache line stored within the processor cache. No other part of the system may access the main memory for that cache line as this will obtain stale information. Exclusive the cache line is owned by this processor. No other part of the system may access the main memory for that cache line. Shared the cache line is owned by this processor. Other parts of the system may acquire shared access to the cache line and may read that particular cache line. None of the shared owners may modify the cache line. Invalid the cache line is in an indeterminate state for this processor. Other parts of the system may own this cache line, or it is possible that no other part of the system owns the cache line. This processor may not access the memory and it is not cached. [15] Current Problems and Solution associated with them When you run multiple programs (especially MS-DOS-based programs) on a Windows-based computer that has insufficient system memory (RAM) and contains an Intel Pentium Pro or Pentium II processor, information in memory may become unavailable or damaged, leading to unpredictable results. For example, copy and compare operations may not work consistently.   This behavior is an indirect result of certain performance optimizations in the Intel Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors. These optimizations affect how the Windows 95 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) performs certain memory operations, such as determining which sections of memory are not in use and can be safely freed. As a result, the Virtual Machine Manager may free the wrong pages in memory, leading to the symptoms described earlier. This problem no longer occurs in Windows 98. To resolve this problem, install the current version of Windows. [16] There is a little problem with sharing in

Deception Point Page 108

Exhausted, Tolland looked up at the underbelly of the thundering tilt-rotor airplane. Deafening gusts pounded down off its horizontal propellers. As Rachel rose on a cable, numerous sets of hands pulled her into the fuselage. As Tolland watched her dragged to safety, his eyes spotted a familiar man crouched half-naked in the doorway. Corky? Tolland's heart soared. You're alive! Immediately, the harness fell from the sky again. It landed ten feet away. Tolland wanted to swim for it, but he could already feel the sucking sensation of the plume. The relentless grip of the sea wrapped around him, refusing to let go. The current pulled him under. He fought toward the surface, but the exhaustion was overwhelming. You're a survivor, someone was saying. He kicked his legs, clawing toward the surface. When he broke through into the pounding wind, the harness was still out of reach. The current strained to drag him under. Looking up into the torrent of swirling wind and noise, Tolland saw Rachel. She was staring down, her eyes willing him up toward her. It took Tolland four powerful strokes to reach the harness. With his last ounce of strength, he slid his arm and head up into the loop and collapsed. All at once the ocean was falling away beneath him. Tolland looked down just as the gaping vortex opened. The megaplume had finally reached the surface. William Pickering stood on the bridge of the Goya and watched in dumbstruck awe as the spectacle unfolded all around him. Off the starboard of the Goya's stern, a huge basinlike depression was forming on the surface of the sea. The whirlpool was hundreds of yards across and expanding fast. The ocean spiraled into it, racing with an eerie smoothness over the lip. All around him now, a guttural moan reverberated out of the depths. Pickering's mind was blank as he watched the hole expanding toward him like the gaping mouth of some epic god hungry for sacrifice. I'm dreaming, Pickering thought. Suddenly, with an explosive hiss that shattered the windows of the Goya's bridge, a towering plume of steam erupted skyward out of the vortex. A colossal geyser climbed overhead, thundering, its apex disappearing into the darkened sky. Instantly, the funnel walls steepened, the perimeter expanding faster now, chewing across the ocean toward him. The stern of the Goya swung hard toward the expanding cavity. Pickering lost his balance and fell to his knees. Like a child before God, he gazed downward into the growing abyss. His final thoughts were for his daughter, Diana. He prayed she had not known fear like this when she died. The concussion wave from the escaping steam hurled the Osprey sideways. Tolland and Rachel held each other as the pilots recovered, banking low over the doomed Goya. Looking out, they could see William Pickering-the Quaker-kneeling in his black coat and tie at the upper railing of the doomed ship. As the stern fishtailed out over the brink of the massive twister, the anchor cable finally snapped. With its bow proudly in the air, the Goya slipped backward over the watery ledge, sucked down the steep spiraling wall of water. Her lights were still glowing as she disappeared beneath the sea. 131 The Washington morning was clear and crisp. A breeze sent eddies of leaves skittering around the base of the Washington Monument. The world's largest obelisk usually awoke to its own peaceful image in the reflecting pool, but today the morning brought with it a chaos of jostling reporters, all crowding around the monument's base in anticipation. Senator Sedgewick Sexton felt larger than Washington itself as he stepped from his limousine and strode like a lion toward the press area awaiting him at the base of the monument. He had invited the nation's ten largest media networks here and promised them the scandal of the decade. Nothing brings out the vultures like the smell of death, Sexton thought. In his hand, Sexton clutched the stack of white linen envelopes, each elegantly wax-embossed with his monogrammed seal. If information was power, then Sexton was carrying a nuclear warhead. He felt intoxicated as he approached the podium, pleased to see his improvised stage included two â€Å"fameframes†-large, free-standing partitions that flanked his podium like navy-blue curtains-an old Ronald Reagan trick to ensure he stood out against any backdrop. Sexton entered stage right, striding out from behind the partition like an actor out of the wings. The reporters quickly took their seats in the several rows of folding chairs facing his podium. To the east, the sun was just breaking over the Capitol dome, shooting rays of pink and gold down on Sexton like rays from heaven. A perfect day to become the most powerful man in the world. â€Å"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,† Sexton said, laying the envelopes on the lectern before him. â€Å"I will make this as short and painless as possible. The information I am about to share with you is, frankly, quite disturbing. These envelopes contain proof of a deceit at the highest levels of government. I am ashamed to say that the President called me half an hour ago and begged me-yes, begged me-not to go public with this evidence.† He shook his head with dismay. â€Å"And yet, I am a man who believes in the truth. No matter how painful.† Sexton paused, holding up the envelopes, tempting the seated crowd. The reporters' eyes followed the envelopes back and forth, a pack of dogs salivating over some unknown delicacy. The President had called Sexton a half hour ago and explained everything. Herney had talked to Rachel, who was safely aboard a plane somewhere. Incredibly, it seemed the White House and NASA were innocent bystanders in this fiasco, a plot masterminded by William Pickering. Not that it matters, Sexton thought. Zach Herney is still going down hard. Sexton wished he could be a fly on the wall of the White House right now to see the President's face when he realized Sexton was going public. Sexton had agreed to meet Herney at the White House right now to discuss how best to tell the nation the truth about the meteorite. Herney was probably standing in front of a television at this very moment in dumbfounded shock, realizing that there was nothing the White House could do to stop the hand of fate. â€Å"My friends,† Sexton said, letting his eyes connect with the crowd. â€Å"I have weighed this heavily. I have considered honoring the President's desire to keep this data secret, but I must do what is in my heart.† Sexton sighed, hanging his head like a man trapped by history. â€Å"The truth is the truth. I will not presume to color your interpretation of these facts in any way. I will simply give you the data at face value.† In the distance, Sexton heard the beating of huge helicopter rotors. For a moment, he wondered if maybe the President were flying over from the White House in a panic, hoping to halt the press conference. That would be the icing on the cake, Sexton thought mirthfully. How guilty would Herney appear THEN? â€Å"I do not take pleasure in doing this,† Sexton continued, sensing his timing was perfect. â€Å"But I feel it is my duty to let the American people know they have been lied to.† The aircraft thundered in, touching down on the esplanade to their right. When Sexton glanced over, he was surprised to see it was not the presidential helicopter after all, but rather a large Osprey tilt-rotor airplane. The fuselage read: United States Coast Guard Baffled, Sexton watched as the cabin door opened and a woman emerged. She wore an orange Coast Guard parka and looked disheveled, like she'd been through a war. She strode toward the press area. For a moment, Sexton didn't recognize her. Then it hit him. Rachel? He gaped in shock. What the hell is SHE doing here? A murmur of confusion went through the crowd. Pasting a broad smile on his face, Sexton turned back to the press and raised an apologetic finger. â€Å"If you could give me just one minute? I'm terribly sorry.† He heaved the weary, good-natured sigh. â€Å"Family first.†

Comparison Between Beowulf the Epic and Beowulf the Film Essay

Contrast and Similarities between Beowulf and â€Å"Beowulf† Beowulf, an epic written down in the year 1060 by the Beowulf Poet, is the epitome of what true writing is, defining the standard of the epic itself. The more modern film of â€Å"Beowulf†, produced in 2007, is an attempt to do justice to the Beowulf Poet’s masterpiece. The poem and film have several key similarities and differences which influence the reader/viewer. Important similarities between the two include the heroic characteristics of Beowulf and the severing of Grendel’s arm; however, the movie does have some drastic differences from the text such as Beowulf’s seduction by Grendel’s mother, and how the product of this sin is his son the dragon, while in the text this beast is regarded as a rogue monster. Similarities between the text and the movie are established to stay true to the theme of Beowulf, a theme in which a hero conquers great odds and shows what the epitome of humanity can achieve; this theme is essential to the development of any true epic. The most prominent similarity between the two is the characteristics granted to Beowulf, the key trait being arrogance. Arrogance is an important trait of any epic hero, in the film this arrogance is established in Beowulf’s tale of swimming in the ocean during which he states he slew several sea monsters, however in the background his followers can be seen stating that the original number was much smaller than Beowulf has stated. This arrogance is mirrored in the text when Beowulf is proclaimed as â€Å"†¦the strongest of the Geats – greater and stronger than anyone anywhere in this world† (Beowulf Poet 110-111), while in truth it is unlikely that he was the greatest warrior of the time, making this a very boastful statement. This arrogance is again mirrored when Beowulf refuses to fight Grendel with any weapons or armor, in the film he simply strips before sleeping and in the text he states that â€Å"†¦My Lord Higlac might think less of me if I let my sword go where my feet were afraid to, if I hid behind some broad linden shield: my hands alone shall fight for me, struggle for life against the monster.† (Beowulf Poet 169-174). This arrogance is persevered in the film to demonstrate the characteristics of a hero. At the time heroes were people who had such a boastful attitude, thus the film writers made sure to impart this narcissism onto the viewer to show Beowulf’s strength of attitude. The film establishes a second similarity to the text by  illustrating Beowulf’s fight with Grendel. Beowulf is displayed grappling around with Grendel and eventually removing his arm, claiming it as a sign of â€Å"The Victory, for the proof, hanging high from the rafters where Beowulf had hung it, was the monster’s Arm, claw and shoulder and all† (Beowulf Poet 356-358). This â€Å"prize† is an important object that is established in both the text and the film to display both the epic struggle between Beowulf and once more show how strong Beowulf truly was, further establishing him as an epic hero. During the course of the film, there are some artistic liberties taken which change the plot from that of the text; these changes were made to display a more unified tale between that of the younger Beowulf and the older Beowulf. These differences begin immediately following the death of Grendel, coming to head when Beowulf confronts Grendel’s mother. In the text, Beowulf is seen to fight with Grendel’s mother until â€Å"Her body fell to the floor, lifeless, the sword was wet with her blood† (Beowulf 523-524). This is a drastic difference from the film, where Grendel’s Mother is shown seducing Beowulf promising him a long life and a successful reign if he gives her a son along with the golden horn he received for killing Grendel. This change was made to make a smooth transition between the two parts of the epic, the first concerning Grendel, the second concerning the dragon. It is at the end that the second change, and the product of the transition, is sh own. This product is the dragon, who is shown to be the son of Beowulf and Grendel’s Mother. This further differs from the text where Beowulf fights a â€Å"dragon hiding in his tower† (Beowulf 610) that has been terrorizing the country side, not his own offspring. These changes are made to make a connection between the two parts of the epic tale of Beowulf. In the text, the tales of the dragon and Grendel are completely unrelated thus may be viewed with some confusion by the reader. However, when the dragon is shown to be Beowulf’s son who comes back for revenge, the death of Beowulf is that much more conclusive showing him wrapping up the mistakes of his life and fully concluding his tale. The differences and similarities between Beowulf and â€Å"Beowulf† are precisely placed in order to retain what makes Beowulf an epic tale, while the  differences help to establish a smoother transition and backstory between Beowulf and his fight with the dragon. Similarities between the two include Beowulf’s epic characteristics and his fight with Grendel; while the key differences are Beowulf’s failure to slay Grendel’s Mother and his fight with his own son, the dragon. In the end, the stories effectively conclude the tale of Beowulf and demonstrate how effective both similarities and differences can be at changing ones viewpoint.