Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - Essay Example People live in huts known as obis which are built at the center of the compound. Polygamy is also accepted in this community; as one man can marry as many women as he likes because having multiple wives and children is considered to be a source of wealth or that one was rich. Men and women had different roles in the community; men were responsible for growing yams as it was the most important crop in the community while women grew the less important crops like cocoa- yams, beans, cassava e.t.c. The setting also enables us to follow and understand the Igbo way of life. The people of Umuofia have some significant ceremonies like the week of peace that was greatly observed by everyone, and nobody caused any trouble during the celebration as seen (Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. Page 23) Okonkwo is fined for beating his wife during the festival. This was followed by the planting of yams then the new yam feast. Other celebrated activities also include dance, rites of passage and above all proverbs. The people of Umuofia loved their proverbs, and they never missed to us them in all occasions. They even have a proverb that says â€Å"words are the palm-oil with which word are eaten†. Religion is very valuable to the people of Umuofia as the egwugwu are deeply respected and are believed to keep the peace in the land and administer justice. A lot of people was talented in Arts e.g. Okonkwo’s father they were good in music and poetry, thing that according to Okonkwo w ere not manly, and he hated hearted Arts and those who did them. Everyone in the community had something to add to the progression of the community including women and children. Laziness was discouraged and rebuked as in many other African communities. A lot has changed since the time of the setting of this great book; for example, today in my community we do not celebrate agricultural patterns or dance among others. Polygamy is also not practiced in my community, unlike Umuofia. However, we have wedding, dance celebrations, and we also do farming as the main economic activity. The setting of a book is what builds it. It is through setting that we are able to discover the economic activities of the community, its social activities, culture, and location among other factors that build the body of the book. A rural setting is always attractive and very informative compared to other kinds of settings. Question 2 Achebe wrote the novel â€Å"Things Fall Apart† to educate people, and to combat demeaning stereotypes about Africa. However, he does not present the Igbo society as ideal. He criticizes some aspects of the community through his characters. Achebe seems to challenge some traditional beliefs and practices. For example, the killing of Ikemefuna, Okonkwo’s adopted son. He does this through the character Obierika (Okonkwo’s best friend) who refused to join the rest of the village men in the walk to the forest were the boy was to be killed by say that he has better things to do(Chinua Achebe, Things fall Apart, page 32). Obierika also told Okonkwo that his deeds would not please the earth because of the men’s actions. This turns out to be true later, although Okonkwo disagrees with him, but he is later faced with a great misfortune and is exiled from his home for seven years. This shows that Achebe does not agree with the murder of the young boy for he had committed no crime to be killed in that manner. Achebe

Docking With Mir :: essays research papers

Docking With Mir Last year something amazing took place, but it wasn't in a laboratory. It wasn't under the ocean, and it wasn't on the land. It was in space. The docking of the United States's Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Russian Space Station Mir was an important step towards international cooperation in space. This is not the first time the U.S. has been in contact with Russia in space matters. In 1965, an American Apollo capsule and a Russian Soyuz module were locked in orbital tango 245 miles above the earth, both crews tense with the feeling of peace and rivalry at the same time. In the past few years, American astronauts have used the Russian training facility at the Cosmodrome to prepare for work on the Mir space station. We couldn't give up the hope of peace and freedom.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Launch Day had arrived; June 29, 1995. During launch and ascent, there wasn't much to think about except the thrill of the ride. Then the tension rose. In less than thirty-six hours, they would have to close a gap of four thousand miles at an altitude of 245 miles while traveling at 17,500 miles per hour, only to have to move within three inches and two degrees of a quickly moving, very fragile object in space. One small thrust of a poorly aligned engine could cost one of four space-worthy shuttles and the world's first and only long-term space station.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Docking was over with soon, and was followed by the cosmonauts of Mir greeting the astronauts of Atlantis. Gifts of flowers, candy and fruit were given by the Americans, who in return, following a Russian tradition, received gifts of bread and salt. Knowing the importance of the mission, the Russians, as well as the Americans, forced the good nature of the mission to be seen. After an exchange in the crew of Mir, Atlantis disengaged the docking clamps, and returned home.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This mission was important to the future of the conquest of space, for the American scientists need help with the design of the planned International

Tqm – Total Quality Management

Available online at http://www. journalcra. com INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CURRENT RESEARCH International Journal of Current Research Vol. 3, Issue, 3, pp. 149-153, March, 2011 3 ISSN: 0975-833X REVIEW ARTICLE TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN EDUCATION 1Jayakumaran, M. and 2Manoharan, C. 1Department of Management Studies, Kalasalingam University, Virudhunagar (Dt. ) Tamil Nadu, India 2Department of Education, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India ARTICLE INFO Article History: Received 18th December, 2010 Received in revised form 21st January, 2011 Accepted 29th February, 2011 Published online 13th March, 2011ABSTRACT After Second World War the United States of America was forced to improve the production of Quality of goods and services. Total Quality Management (TQM) concept was developed by an American W. EDWARDS DEMING. Still 1980s the Japanese only were concentrating in TQM concept where they dominated in world markets. There is a myth the use of TQM which is applicable o nly in Business and Industry where the production process are being made but the new concept of TQM is also applicable to Academics. Many educators strongly believe that the Deming concept provides guiding principles to make reform in educational system.Also Mr. John Joy Bonstingl, an educationalist out lines the TQM principles. Hence the authors of this paper strongly believe the TQM principles are most relevant to education.  © Copy Right, IJCR, 2011, Academic Journals. All rights reserved. Key words: Business and In Educational system Total Quality Management INTRODUCTION In any organization when the term â€Å"Quality Management principle† first it must focus on its suppliers and customers. In a TQM organization, everyone is both a customer and supplier; this confusing concept emphasizes â€Å"the systematic nature of the work in which all are involved†.In other words, teamwork and collaboration are essential. Traditionally, education has been prone to individual and departmental isolation. However, according to Bostingl, this outdated practice no longer serves us: â€Å"When I close the classroom door, those Kids are mine! † is a notion too narrow to survive in a world in which teamwork and collaboration result in high quality benefits for the greatest number of people. The application of the first pillar of TQM in education emphasizes the synergistic relationship between the â€Å"suppliers† and â€Å"customers†. Corresponding author: [email  protected] com The concept of synergy suggests that performance and production is enhanced by pooling the talent and experience of individuals. In a classroom, teacherstudent teams are the equivalent of industry’s front-line workers. The product of their successful work together is the development of the student’s capabilities, interests, and character. In one sense, the student is the teacher’s customer, as the recipient of educational services provided fo r the student’s growth and improvement.Viewed in this way, the teacher and the school are suppliers of effective learning tools, environments, and systems to the student, who is the school’s primary customer. The school is responsible for providing for the long-term educational welfare of students by teaching them how to learn and communicate in high-quality ways, how to access quality in their own work and in that of others, and how to invest in their own lifelong and life-wide learning processes by maximizing 150 International Journal of Current Research, Vol. 3, Issue 3, pp. 149-153, March, 2011 pportunities for growth in every aspect of daily life. In another sense, the student is also a worker, whose product is essentially his or her own continuous improvement and personal growth. Continuous Improvement and Self Evaluation The second pillar of TQM applied to education is the total dedication to continuous improvement, personally and collectively. Within a Total Qu ality school setting, administrators work collaboratively with their customers: teachers. The foundations of â€Å"Scientific Management† were fear, intimidation, and an adversarial approach to problem-solving.Today it is in our best interest to encourage everyone’s potential by dedicating ourselves to the continual improvement of our own abilities and those of the people with whom we work and live. Total Quality is, essentially, a win-win approach which works to everyone’s ultimate advantage. According to Deming, no human being should ever evaluate another human being. Therefore, TQM emphasizes self-improvement process. In addition, this principle also laminates to the focusing on students’ strengths, individual learning styles, and different types of intelligences.A System of Ongoing Process The third pillar of TQM as applied in education is the recognition of the organization as a system and the work done within the organization must be seen as an ongo ing process. The primary implication of this principle is that individual students and teachers are less to blame for failure than the system in which they work. Quality speaks to working on the system, which must be examined to identify and eliminate the flawed processes that allow its participants to fail.Since systems are made in the quality of those processes largely determine the quality of the resulting product. In the new paradigm of learning , continual improvement of learning outcomes replaces the outdated â€Å"teach and test† mode. Leadership The fourth TQM principle applied to education is that the success of TQM is the responsibility of top management. The school teachers must establish the context in which students can best achieve their potential through the continuous improvement that results from teachers and students working together.Teachers who emphasize content area literacy and principle-centered teaching provide the leadership, framework, and tools nece ssary for continuous improvement in the learning process. Evidences show same Business forms like American Express, ford, IBM, Motorola, Procter & Gamble, and Xerox hired university Graduates who are literate in TQM. They said in an open letter published in 1991 in the Harvard Business Review with bringing total quality to higher education. Contrary to instruction and research practices in the university. TQM is team-based. However, Faculty members, are notorious independents.So students are it’s dog-eat-dog in the classroom. Also, TQM calls for cross-functional thinking, planning, and doing. Faculties and curricula are highly specialized and professors avidly protect their turf. We might add that universities are tradition-bound, whereas TQM trumps for continuous change. Infact, TQM initiatives are appearing here and there in academia. There are a few good reasons why this may continue, though perhaps fitfully. They have to do with opportunities to innovate and explore new i nstructional and research horizons, which have strong appeal for most academics.Business, economics, engineering and related tool disciplines (information systems and mathematics/statistics), plus other professional schools, are particularly affected by total quality management. Business and Economics Colleges of business and economics include specializations in operations management, marketing, business policy and strategy, management accounting, corporate finance, financial accounting and auditing, human resource management, organizational behavior, and economics. TQM offers differing challenges and attractions for each. Operations Management TQM affects nearly all of the operations management agenda.A primary focus on modeling for efficiency gives way under TQM to planning and doing for and with the customer. The customer outlook in turn, calls for major overhauls in the operations management approach to scheduling, equipment selection, facility layout, maintenance, inventory man agement, and quality assurance. Briefly, schedules, equipment, layout, and inventory management must be geared for quick reaction to customer needs, not just to efficiency and utilization and process control must replace breakdown maintenance and delayed inspection.Operations Management professors have a special reason for heading the call of TQM. They had failed to stay abreast of an important operations management movement called Materials Requirement Planning (MRP) that emerged in industry in the 1970s. The MRP juggernaut had become OM’s leading edge in the real world of manufacturing, but for a decade OM text books and journals said little or nothing about it. To catch up and stay caught up, OM professors, in droves , joined the 151 International Journal of Current Research, Vol. 3, Issue 3, pp. 49-153, March, 2011 professional societies, where they could keep an eye on fast –changing developments. And they began publishing heavily in practitioner periodicals, whic h they fought to elevate to tenure-class status. Then, when TQM and related topics made their appearance, Operations Management faculties where not far behind marketing. In TQM thinking, the customer is the object. Which university specialty has charged of customers marketing? TQM concepts load easily into topic outlines in marketing courses and into marketing research hypotheses.In practice, marketers and salespeople have carried the burden of having to cover up for their organizations defects, late completions, and other customer service failings. As TQM kicks in with continuous improvement quality, timeliness, and so on, the burden is lifted somewhat. Each improvement is marketable—in proposals, in advertising, in sales promotions. For example, Ford Motor Company’s slogan, now a decade old is, â€Å"Quality Is Job One†. Putting a more positive face on their function holds appeal for marketing professors and students as well as practicing marketers.Business po licy and strategy system favored filling stockrooms, even with wrong models and substandard quality, to absorb overhead costs. JIT, however, puts the damper on stockroom filling, and total quality shrinks the production of lesserquality goods. Such improvements show up perversely as bad performance(negative cost variances) in monthly cost reports. So ABC comes to the rescue. If done right, ABC will assign less overhead cost (rework, scrap ,stock management, and so on) to products undergoing continuous improvement – especially in cycle time.A few management accounting professors are finding still another challenge to pursue: working out ways of putting the cost of quality into financial statements. I have raised questions on the wisdom of this( Schonberger 1994). Corporate finance A related area ripe for research is how to give quality, responsiveness, flexibility, and customer satisfaction their due in capital budgeting instead of relegating such factors to the last page of t he capital expenditure proposal under the heading â€Å"Intangible†.Financial accounting and auditing Such important TQM-oriented topics as benchmarking, quality function deployement, and customer-centered strategic principles need an academic home. These topics seem general enough to find their way into instruction in several disciplines. However, they deal specifically with matters central to the business policy/strategy area: directing internal resources toward enhanced competitiveness and customer retention. To a certain extent, total quality becomes strategy—and perhaps should be taught that way.Management accounting TQM does not permit cost, efficiency, and resource use to remain as primary operational measures of its performance. Quality in all dimensions dominates. Because management accountants have been the guardians of performance measurement, the challenge of reinventing performance management is largely theirs. Thus, a decade ago leading management account ing professors. Notably Harvard professor Robert Kaplan, began arguing that performance should be measured in non-financial terms, including quality, inventory levels and deliverability.Although some academics in management accounting may not welcome the idea of non-momentary measures, most have been easily caught up in the excitement of activity-based costing(ABC). ABC arose because just-in-time (JIT) production—the quick—response component of TQM—throws conventional costing into a tailspin. The old costing In this TQM era, the financial side of accounting has not generated the same degree of dynamism as the management accounting side. This does not mean there is no awareness of deficiencies. Income statements and balance sheets have not served investors well.Too often yesterday’s buy list becomes tomorrow’s basket cases. The â€Å"financials,† as require by generally accepted accounting principles, simply do not distinguish between the fir m whose quality-related competitiveness is deteriorating and its continuously improving competitor Though many academics, and legions of securities analysts, continually seek better ways of assessing the strength of a business, breakthrough ideas that recognize quality-centered competitiveness are not yet forthcoming. Human Resource Management (HRM) Human resource policies have traditionally favored specialization.Their aim is to narrowly specify jobs through division of labour, then hire people to fill the jobs, give them scant training, and keep them in that specialty for life. HRM has been taught that way and practiced that way. On the other hand, TQM requires cross-training, job improve it, or even communicate about it. Labour, long blamed for protection of work rules, is generally proving no to be the obstacle to their removal. One reason is that cross-training and learning add lines to one’s resume, which is the key to work-life 152 International Journal of Current Rese arch, Vol. 3, Issue 3, pp. 149-153, March, 2011 ecurity, (of greater concern today than mere job security). HR departments in superior companies are making the transition toward TQM-based practices featuring never-ending training and development for all employees. Organizational behavior (OB) At first, the community of OB scholars watched in amazement as TQM and floor distance. However, when TQM hit the back office and then the entire service sector the stampede began. Today, treatises on new TQM related topics have become common in OB academic journals. For example, Organizational Dynamics devoted its entire Spring 1992 issue to the theme.These topics include employee involvement and empowerment , non-hierarchical, non-functional organization structures, and debates about motivating continuous improvement. An additional pursuit is reformulation of conventional OB concepts suchas team building, conflict resolution, and equity theory for use in TQM implementation. Economics In the ea rly years of JIT, Economists thought it an anomaly that inventories kept falling instead of following the economic cycle. Now it is clear that the pattern is broken. Continuous improvement reduces the need for inventory protection, so inventories just go down.Economists have much to do to revise their models. More significantly, economists may need to expand their world view. In conventional economic thought management has no role, economic activity is a function of fiscal and monetary policies of government and business. Tinkering with taxation spending and a few other money-denominated factors explains everything. No more Economists must accept that management can make a difference. Japan’s fixation on quality management is especially convincing, and now the same story repeats itself in other countries.Tool Disciplines Information systems and mathematics/statistics, indispensable tools for the end of aforementioned academic areas are also affected by TQM. Information system s practitioners can play an important role in their employers’ partners-in-quality efforts with customers and suppliers. Cumputer-aided design networks, external bar-coding, point of sale scanning, electronic data interchange, automatic funds transfer and satellite communication with freight haulers are among the IS devices that help link firms with suppliers and ustomers. These expanded uses of IS will naturally interest information systems academics. Mathematics/Statistics Near the core of TQM is a set of tools known as statistical process control(SPC). AT the low end of the SPC methods are the â€Å"seven basic tools† easy to learn and essential in the daily work of every employee. For a time, universities looked the other way while the community colleges nearly 1400 strong in the US and Canada put together training courses in Statistical Process Control for business and industry.Now SPC is fully covered in operations management and industrial engineering textbooks, plus texts in management accounting, marketing and general management. At the high end drawing in the mathematics and statistics academics are advanced statistical methods, especially design of experiments and the related methods of Genichi Taguchi, an eminent statistician. Professional Schools All the professions from engineering to law have a mission to provide quality services. The management of the professions also must have quality as its mission.Engineering Quality control and reliability engineering are traditional teaching and research specialties. Industrial Engineering professors have their hands full propagating the old message (sometimes called little q) as well as expanded, new TQM concepts (big Q). Besides that, every department in the engineering school has the same twofold challenge: (1) teach team design, in which engineers work on project teams with other engineers, customers, suppliers, business functionaries, and the front-line employees who produce the engineer ed roducts; (2) teach the principles of design-for-quality and design-for-manufacture (DFM) and its derivatives. Related fertile research areas include design for safety, disassembly and the environment; quick design-tomarket and elimination of disruptive post-production engineering changes. Some engineering professors and graduate students are already absorbed in these topics. Conclusion Public administration, teachers college, medical school, dental school, veterinary school, library school, and law school in each of the other professional schools, quality is or should be the foremost concern.All of the professional schools in the university can benefit from adding TQM as an instructional and research topic. 153 International Journal of Current Research, Vol. 3, Issue 3, pp. 149-153, March, 2011 What about all the remaining academic areas? The opinion of the late W. Edwards Deming is instructive. Dr. Deming agreed to allow his name to be attached to Columbia university’s De ming center for quality management. However, a condition was that the center should be multi-disciplinary.The project proceeded when the school of engineering and applied science and the department of statistics joined the graduate school of business in the endeavor. Transforming schools through Total Quality Education in Phi Delta Kappan. – Michael J. schmoker, Richard B. Wilson. Total Quality Education: Profiles of Schools that Demonstrate the power of Deming’s Management principles. – Michael J. Schmoker, Richard B. Wilson. REFERENCES Total Quality Management in Education- Edward Sallis. Total Quality Management and the school – Stephen Murgatroyd, Colin Morgan. *******

10 Nickel Element Facts (Atomic Number 28 or Ni)

Nickel (Ni) is element number 28 on the  periodic table, with an atomic mass of  58.69. This metal is found in everyday life in stainless steel, magnets, coins, and batteries. Heres a collection of interesting facts about this important transition element: Nickel Facts Nickel is found in metallic meteorites, so it was used by ancient man. Artifacts dating as early as 5000 BC made from nickel-containing meteoritic metal have been found in Egyptian graves. However, nickel wasnt recognized as a new element until  Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt identified it in 1751 from a new mineral he received from a cobalt mine. He named it an abbreviated version of the word  Kupfernickel. Kupfernickel was the name of the mineral, which roughly translates as meaning goblins copper because copper miners said the ore acted as though it contained imps that prevented them from extracting copper. As it turned out, the reddish ore was nickel arsenide (NiAs), so its unsurprising copper was not extracted from it.Nickel is a hard, malleable, ductile metal. It is a shiny silver metal with a slight gold tinge that takes a high polish and resists corrosion. The element does oxidize, but the oxide layer prevents further activity via passivation  It is a fair conductor of electricity and heat. It has a high melting point (1453  ºC), readily forms alloys, may be deposited via electroplating, and is a useful catalyst. Its compounds are mainly green or blue. There are five isotopes in natural nickel, with another 23 isotopes with known half-lives.Nickel is one of three elements that are ferromagnetic at room temperature. The other two elements, iron and cobalt, are located near nickel on the periodic table. Nickel is less magnetic than iron or cobalt. Before rare earth magnets were known, Alnico magnets made from a nickel alloy were the strongest permanent magnets. Alnico magnets are unusual because they maintain magnetism even when they are heated red-hot.Nickel is the principal metal in Mu-metal, which has the unusual property of shielding magnetic fields. Mu-metal consists of approximately 80% nickel and 20% iron, with traces of molybdenum.The nickel alloy Nitinol exhibits shape memory. When this 1:1 nickel-titanium alloy is heated, be nt into shape, and cooled it can be manipulated and will return to its shape.Nickel can be made in a supernova. Nickel observed in supernova 2007bi was the radioisotope nickel-56, which decayed into cobalt-56, which in turn decayed into iron-56.Nickel is the 5th most abundant element in the Earth, but only the 22nd most abundant element in the crust  (84 parts per million by weight). Scientists believe nickel is the second most abundant element in the earths core, after iron. This would make nickel 100 times more concentrated below the Earths crust than within it. The worlds largest nickel deposit is in Sudbury Basin, Ontario, Canada, which covers an area 37 miles long and 17 miles wide. Some experts believe the deposit was created by a meteorite strike. While nickel does occur free in nature, it is primarily found in the ores pentlandite, pyrrhotite, garnierite, millerite, and niccolite.Nickel and its compounds are carcinogenic. Breathing nickel compounds can cause nasal and lung cancer and chronic bronchitis. Although the element is common in jewelry, 10 to 20 percent of people are sensitive to it and develop dermatitis from wearing it. While humans dont use nickel for any known biochemical reactions, its essential for plants and occurs naturally in fruits, vegetables, and nuts.Most nickel is used to make corrosion-resistant alloys, including stainless steel (65%) and heat-resistant steel and non-ferrous alloys (20%). About 9% of nickel is used for plating. The other 6% is used for batteries, electronics, and coins. The element lends a greenish tint to glass. It is used as a catalyst to hydrogenate vegetable oil.The US five-cent coin called a nickel is actually more copper than nickel. The modern US nickel is 75% copper and only 25% nickel. The Canadian nickel is made primarily of steel. Nickel Element Fast Facts Element Name: Nickel Element Symbol: Ni Atomic Number: 28 Classification: D-block transition metal Appearance: Solid silver-colored metal Discovery: Axel Frederik Cronstedt (1751) Electron Configuration:  [Ar] 3d8  4s2  or  [Ar] 3d9  4s1