Essay --

Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Review of the effects of Chinese Herbal medicine in NSCLC treatment By: Jay Shah December 11, 2013 Pharmacology 5600 Herbal medicine, like any alternative forms of medicine and therapy has its share of critics, but like most herbal medicine, it has been developed and practiced for millennia. The first known record of Chinese herbal medicine was found in the â€Å"Wushier Bingfang† (prescriptions for fifty-two ailments) silk manuscript from the Han Dynasty around 206 BCE (Zhang et al, 2012). It contains two hundred and fifty herbal cures to issues such as hemorrhoids, arthritis, inflammation, seizures, warts and many others (Zhang et al, 2012). Historical records of Chinese herbs include over a hundred thousand medicinal recipes to thousands of issues, mostly consisting of plant extracts (Chen et al, 1999). The understanding behind Chinese herbs is an elemental approach that looks as humans as a component of nature and hence can be cured of ailments through natural elements (Chen et al, 1999). Image 1 depicts various Chinese herbs including, ginseng, Astragalus, lilyturf and others. With the development of allopathic medicine from the western world, herbal medicine from around the world has been castigated out of the mind for the majority of the world due to its lack of proper scientific evidence. Recently however, herbal medicine, especially Chinese and Indian has seen somewhat of a resurgence on the global scale in terms of credibility thanks to new research and data from around the world. The National Institute of Health recognizes Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as a viable source of alternative treatment for various ailments and says that over a million people as of 2004 regu... ..., Zhang L, et al. (2011) Effect s of chemotherapy combined with Chinese herbal medicine Kangliu Zengxiao decoction on tumor markers of patient s with advanced non-small cell lung cancer: a randomized, controlled trial. J Chin Integr Med 9: 525–530. 11. Li G, Shu-Ping B, Ling Z, Xiao-Hong W (2009). Astragalus polysaccharide injection integrated with vinorelbine and cisplatin for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer: effects on quality of life and survival. Journal of Medical Oncology s12032-011-0068-9. 12. Liu QY, Yao YM, Zhang SW, et al. Astragalus polysaccharides regulate T cell-mediated immunity via CD11c (high) CD45RB (low) DCs in vitro. J Ethnopharmacol. 2011; 136(3):457–64. 13. Clement-Kruzel S, Hwang SA, Kruzel MC, et al. Immune modulation of macrophage pro-inflammatory response by goldenseal and Astragalus extracts. J Med Food. 2008; 11(3):493–8.

Assignment; Bias, Rhetorical Devices, Argumentation

An example of bias within this speech would be: â€Å"to point out and make public the dishonesty, the downright villainy, of Boss Jim W. Gettys' political machine — now in complete control of the government of this state! One example of fallacies that I found in this speech was; â€Å"Now, however, I have something more than a hope. And Jim Gettys — Jim Gettys has something less than a chance. Every straw vote, every independent poll shows that I'll be elected. Now I can afford to make some promises! † Some rhetorical devices found in this speech were: †¢Alliteration: â€Å"Now, however, I have something more than a hope. And Jim Gettys — Jim Gettys has something less than a chance. Every straw vote, every independent poll shows that I'll be elected. Now I can afford to make some promises! † †¢Alliteration: †The working man — The working man and the slum child know they can expect my best efforts in their interests. The decent, ordinary citizens know that I'll do everything in my power to protect the underprivileged, the underpaid, and the the underfed! † †¢Alliteration: â€Å"Here's one promise I'll make, and boss Jim Gettys knows I'll keep it:†¦Ã¢â‚¬  †¢Hyperbole: â€Å"with one purpose only: to point out and make public the dishonesty, the downright villainy, of Boss Jim W. Gettys' political machine — now in complete control of the government of this State! † †¢Paradox: â€Å"Well, I'd make my promises now if I weren't too busy arranging to keep them. † The speaker addressed arguments in the first paragraph of the speech by stating that because of Jim Gettys â€Å"control† he had no hope of being elected. In the second paragraph however, he reinforces that he is being elected by stating, â€Å" Now I can afford to make promises! † By doing this, he is preparing to address any potential counterarguments by shaping his speech to combat what the opposition might say.

Zara Case Essay Example

Zara Case Essay Example Zara Case Essay Zara Case Essay Q1a. Should the company upgrade the POS terminals to a modern operating system? It might not be in the retailer’s best interest to perform such upgrade, as the new system will replace three of the existing legacy systems in terms of ordering and fulfillment. The IS department will perceive such upgrade as a radical move and is expected to show high resistance in response to it. Even though Zara has a decentralized decision making process, the retailer’s IS department exercises absolute autonomy on the IT infrastructure and design. The fact that â€Å"only one person had left the department† in the past 10 years further confirms that the retailer is suffering from cognitive and action inertia, and thus creating a huge barrier for such upgrade. Nevertheless, Zara should still perform such upgrade in the long run. Q1b. Should the company build in-store networks? Yes, it will remove some redundancies in daily operations. For instance, employees no longer have to collect data physically from each POS terminal in order to obtain daily sales totals. In-store network will also enable store managers to have a more comprehensive understanding of sales activities on both a consolidated level and section (Men, Women, or Children) level. Q1c. Should the company give employees the ability to look up inventory balances for items in their own stores? Yes, this will result in a more efficient and systematic stock auditing and ordering process. In specific, it will not only provide store managers with updated inventory balances, it also helps them when reviewing the latest offer from La Coruna and preparing â€Å"the order† in the face of the narrow 24-hour order window. On the other hand, the store product managers can now retrieve more reliable and updated sales figures from each store. This enables the managers to be more effective when making store-to-store transfers. The commercials responsible for matching aggregate supply with demand from each store will demonstrate higher quality of decision making, especially when allocating inventory amongst stores in times of shortage of an SKU. Last but not least, the improved inventory figures will result in a better production schedule and planning that reflect the constantly changing customer demand for different SKUs. Q1d. Should the company give employees the ability to look up inventory balances for items in other stores? If employees have the ability to look up inventory balances of their own stores, granting employee access to inventory balances for items in other stores is icing on the cake. The is because store managers can have better inventory control, and will be in a better position respond quickly to unexpected surge of demand for a particular item. In the event that commercials at La Coruna didn’t deliver the full amount of a specific item that the store ordered, the store manager can immediately seek for â€Å"help† from stores that have extra inventory and thus capturing sales that might otherwise be lost. Q2. What is the Zara â€Å"business model†? How is it different from the business model of other large clothing retailers? What weaknesses, if any, do you see within this business model? Is it scalable? What information does Zara need to operate its business model? Zara â€Å"business model† The Zara business model is to link customer demand to manufacturing and link manufacturing to distribution. Terefore, Zara needs to respond very quickly to the demand of target customers, who are young, fashion conscious city dwellers with fast changing tastes. Differences between Zara and other large clothing retailers The business model is different from other large clothing retailers in the followings: -Zara does not rely on advertising and marketing to drive their business. It only spent 0. 3% of its revenue in marketing, as compared to 3% to 4% in other large clothing retailers. -The lifespan of the clothes is short. On average, 75% of its merchandise are sold within 3 to 4 weeks. -The decision making in Zara is decentralized. The employees in Zara are empowered to decide what garments to be put in the stores. The â€Å"commercials† at La Coruna have great discretion in deciding what clothes would be designed and produced, unlike other companies which use a small elite team for design and production. Weaknesses within Zara Business Model -Since Zara has a short lead time for delivering products, it keeps no buffer stock and most, if not all, logistics arrangements were centralized at the head office in La Coruna. This makes Zara very vulnerable to accidental incidents. -As the store managers are empowered to decide what products to be put in the store, their business sense are crucial. However, since the store managers are not expertise in this area, they may not be able to pick hot items and certain sales opportunities may be lost. Information needed to operate in this business model -To operate this business model, the store managers should have the access to accurate and updated sales and inventory data for them to decide what to order and what not to order. In addition, they should know the availability of the products they would like to order eg. by having access to the inventory level of other stores. -With the tight order deadline with La Coruna, the store managers need on-time inventory balance to plan for the re-order point and optimal order quantity. Q3. What current or potential weaknesses do you see in Zara’s IT infrastructure and IT strategy? IT infrastructure -Critical core services are relying on out-dated O/S (Operating System) and Hardware Technology, where failure of the services could heavily impact normal operations. As the Zara in-house POS system is implemented on an O/S which the vendor has dropped support, no official fix will be prepared once system or software bugs are identified which might lead to unstable system behavior or security leakage. -Running critical services on out-dated O/S will also limit the compatibility and extensibility with the improving software and hardware. This will prevent Zara from sustaining business growth by further improving scalability of services using enhanced hardware architecture or enhanced networking capabilities with other IT software/inventory systems. Moreover, as IT hardware is improving in a rapid pace, legacy hardware components might not be available in the market for Zaras purchase. Zara might face difficulties in purchasing commercial license for O/S that vendor has dropped support. -Unconnected terminals between headquarters and POSs might implied out-sync or inconsistent information sharing in time-critical information such as inventory. Bottl eneck in information sharing or slow responsiveness from customers query are fatal to real time sales, especially Zara is focusing on Fast Fashion Business and place Inventory Management as their competitive advantage. IT strategy -Zara fails to identify how IT can further improve and achieve the companys competitive advantage. For example, while Zaras success based heavily on competitive Inventory Management, the company fails to further improve it by enhancing communications of instant inventory data delivery to front line sales. -Zara fails to recognize the dependency on IT to achieve competitive advantage and it does not perform continuous improvement (or innovation). This will make Zara moving from Strategic Mode to Factory Mode especially when other companies are catching up Zara with similar strategy. Zara does not have dedicated planning, decision making or leading role for IT operations and strategic planning. While the General management core could share these responsibilities, they cannot concentrate their focus on IT incident management (upon system failure) and they do not have up-to-date knowledge and technical exposure for strategic planning, expansion and upgrade decision. For insta nce, Global CIO (Chief Information Officer) and/or Chief Operations Officer) should be employed for Global directions/planning and local CIO/COO (per region) should be assigned for local incident management and business process improvement. Zara does not have solid planning on ever greening of IT services. Ever greening of IT services will ensure the Company placing their IT assets on compatible and up-to-date O/S and hardware where vendor support or human expertise can be located promptly and efficiently for resolution against service failure or consultancy on service improvement. There is no regular strategic alignment with Company’s goal. Regular strategic alignment can help adjusting Zaras IT direction. -There is no constant operational improvement. Constant operational improvement is important for the optimization of IT work flow. It can reduce unnecessary IT overhead and improve service responsiveness. Also, Zara should reshuffle hardware resources after constant review of system usage. This will improve hardware utilization, which in turn improves Zaras ROA (Return on Assets). -There is no strategy to enhance extensibility which is the key to information sharing success. Great flexibility and readiness to interface with different data sources will improve Zara’s ability to perform data analysis or forecasting and to achieve fast responsiveness to fashion change or new source of marketing statistics.

Best Friend essays

Best Friend essays Do you have a true best friend? I sure do. _____ is truly my best friend. She is always there for me. She knows everything about me; even my secrets. I cant keep anything from her! She is the person who will help me when I am down, turn my frown upside-down, and make me feel better about myself. I cant imagine any better of a friend. I love her more than anything and I would die for her. Megan and I are always together; no matter where we are! We go to places like the mall and movies, to the mountains and lakes! Together we go most everywhere! A few days ago we got Pose pictures together! We always go shopping together and she helps me pick out what and what not to buy! Together we are unstoppable! We also help each other with schoolwork, and family and friends problems. She helps me through my toughest times, and is there for my best times. Its hard to find a friend like that. You may just have good friends that you can count on sometimes, but to be dependable on a person and knowing they will be there for you, its hard to find someone like that. Without her I would not be as happy as I am now. We have so many inside jokes that nobody would understand unless they were there, or if they were just us! Not everyone gets our stupid jokes, and they might think that there immature and childish, but together we make them funny and get a good laugh out of it! Shes the kind of person that I could never lie to. Even if I did try to lie to her, she knows me so well; she could tell I was lying. Megan can tell if Im lying even if I am keeping a straight face! I dont know how she does it! We think so alike and its like were communicating with our minds! At the same time were always thinking the same thing or have the same idea. She also knows all my expressions and how I sound when Im hyper, frustrated, depressed, annoyed, or happy. Shes a friend that I could and will neve ...

Textual Analysis on the book of The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Research Paper - 1

Textual Analysis on the book of The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - Research Paper Example Many critics claim that dystopian novels set in the future are not really about the author’s idea of the future, but instead are deliberately exaggerated stories about what the author thinks is wrong with the world of his or her present. With this in mind, it is easy to see that Butler was writing not about the year 2024, but about the year 1993. In The Parable of the Sower, it’s easy to see the fears and problems represented that were prevalent in American society in the early 1990s. Huge corporations exploiting increasingly powerless workers, an epidemic of crack addiction among the inner-city poor, race riots triggered by police brutality, and a new public discourse about rape dominated the news of the day. Crime—particularly violent inner-city crime and gang-related crime—had been extremely high in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The change that the main character, Lauren, preaches about is really the change that Octavia Butler wished to see in her own society. The basis for the Earthseed philosophy that Lauren tries to spread is that the only god is change, and people can create the change they want to see if they understand that they are able to do it. The people who don’t know they can create change, or those who fear change, will eventually become victims of it. In Lauren’s world, the problems of the late twentieth century United States have grown so severe that they make life essentially unlivable for impoverished people. Problems that were once thought of as only urban issues have moved out into rural areas. It’s the extreme nature of these problems that forces the change to happen. If Lauren had lived in a slightly safer or more stable situation; if she had been able to stay safely in her home, or if she’d had a loving family alive to keep her there, she would never have tried to travel north and gather followers for her new religion. Instead she might have lived quietly and never shared her ideas with

Performance Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Performance Management - Essay Example The analysis and better decision making can be done by discussing the components of cost and their effects on the overall cost and final decision to be taken. All the costs that can affect the decision, rather all the relevant costs should be considered in this case. It is important to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant costs for the decision making purposes as it allows better decision making for cost reduction and cost maximization. Additionally overheads allocation should also be done on fairer and activity driven basis so that better decisions can be taken. (DRURY, C. 2008; HANSEN, MOWEN, & HANSEN.2006) The company shall lay150 meters of pipe each week in-house to utilize its labour and machine, however decision has to be taken for the remaining 750 meters for small pipe and 300 meters of large pipe to be laid in-house or subcontracted. Direct Material Cost: The company has an option to subcontract the project where the material cost will be borne by subcontractor, charg ed by UGC in the price quoted. On the other hand the company if undertakes the project in-house the direct material cost will be ?45/per meter on small pipe and ?55/meter on large pipe. Direct Labour Cost: Company can use in-house labour by shifting labour from other departments, there will be no opportunity cost involved as the company has substitute labour to be used in other department on the same rate. The crucial think here will be to decide if it is cost effective to use in-house labor if they are paid on overtime basis or would it be beneficial to subcontract. Also which of the pipes, small or large should be laid by the limited labour provided. (PROCTOR, R. 2009) Variable Overheads: With increasing automation the labour hours and costs have decreased and companies have lost the traditional measure of allocating overheads and therefore activity based costing, that is assigning costs to cost drivers are now used. If company decides to complete the project in-house it will incu r variable overheads on per meter of pipe laid. Small pipe will incur ?5 while large pipe will incur ?10 on each meter of pipe laid. The variable overheads are allocated on the basis of meter, which is on the basis of activity rather than direct labour hours that is overheads are allocated on cost drivers basis. (KAPLAN & ANDERSON. 2007; HANSEN, MOWEN & GUAN, L. 2009) Fixed Overheads: Fixed overheads are irrelevant for decision making purposes and become unchanged regardless of the activity. In the scenario lease rentals are the fixed cost. These will be incurred by the company whatever decision might be taken and are irrelevant to the decision. If UGC subcontracts or undertakes the project in-house, in both the cases it has to pay the lease rentals for the machines. (WEYGANDT, KIESO & KIMME.2009; HANSEN, MOWEN, & HANSEN.2006) Detailed Analysis: UGC has decided to lay 150 meters of each type of pipe using the in-house facility. The remaining will be either subcontracted or will be d one in-house depending on the cost and availability of labour. Direct labour is the limited resource in the project and company has to take its decision subject to availability. After laying 150 meters of each type of pipe which it plans to do, UGC will be left with 72.5 hours of direct labour on normal rate and 100 hours on overtime rate of Machine E and 30 hours on normal rate and 90 hours on overtime rate of Machine J. UGC now has to decide whether to lay small pipe or large pipe in this remaining capacity. For this it shall consider the cost it will incur to outsource the pipes and the cost of utilization of labour on normal and overtime rates. It will cost UGC ?56.83/meter of small pipe and ?89.16/ meter of large pipe using the normal labour. UGC has to incur ?60.83/meter to lay small pi

Acquisition Strategy Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Acquisition Strategy Analysis - Essay Example This paper will mention two organizations that are under a different industry operation but make use of acquisition strategies in order to make their positions stronger in today’s competitive business world (Chan, 2003). Advantage presented by a merger or acquisition to either two or even more organizations is an option of strategic positions that are attractive for the ability to achieve operating economies, thus strengthening the effects of the organization’s competitiveness and competencies, resulting to new avenues that allow more innovative market opportunities. An acquisition can be referred to as a combination between two or even more organizations or companies whereby, one of them thoroughly buys and assumes all the operations or processes of the other one. These strategies, if properly researched and handled, can result to generation of an enormous amount of profit to the organization; however, not every single company that makes use of mergers or acquisitions can be termed as successful. Most companies are yet to meet their goals or expectations as a result of acquisitions performance. In fact, a handful of the organizations have epically failed (Gamble & Thompson, 2011). ... Sixteen years ago after its publicity, its market capitalization was approximately 120 billion dollars, which is vastly larger than that of Xerox, Apple, and Dell combined. Cisco has managed to sail through whereas several because of its expertise in professionalizing processes which most firms occasionally embark on when they need them or when they are greedy to make more profits. The Airspace former CEO once said that most of the companies he had interacted with rarely use acquisition strategies and in fact, integration is their job at night. He went ahead to say that, unlike the others, Cisco consists of individuals whose initiative is to strategize both during the day and night. Acquisition therefore, to him, is the company’s core function (Gamble, 2011). According to experts, Cisco is a highly successful company in terms of identification of new technologies in the market and taking calculated corporate risks mainly in markets that are new. However, the main point to note is that the firm’s acquisition and merger operation strength lies elsewhere. The firm noticed that technology acquisition cannot only lie on technology but the people as well. Hooper, the CEO, said that the firm’s most strategic and useful asset is the people. The people in this case mean the firm’s expertise. He says that once the firm loses product managers and technologists who may have created, say, a router to a link after an acquisition, then it may be said to have lost an immense deal of products which might have only existed in the heads of those employees. The core nucleus to the firm’s acquisition machine may be said to be its development group. It comprises of 40 individuals securely tucked to a cubicle firm that is