The Man-Made Disaster: Chernobyl

Gulin Langbroek 11. 1 THE MAN-MADE DISASTER: CHERNOBYL â€Å"It is one of histories ironies that the worst nuclear accident began as a test to improve safety. †, states Snell (1988). The Soviets wanted to find out how the Chernobyl power plant would cope with a sudden power loss, therefore the experiment tested how long a spinning turbine could provide electric power to certain systems in the plant. Like many accidents, the Chernobyl accident resulted from a combination of human error and weaknesses in the design of the plant.The man-made disaster occured at Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Ukranian Republic belonging to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and near the borders of Belarus and the Russian Federation. Following a short explanation of the health and social impacts of the accident, this essay will discuss the errors in judgment and biases that went on while running the Chernobyl power plant. As a result of the accident, tons of radioact ive material was released to the air, still posing a threat to living beings in that region.The radioactive doses caused long term health effects ranging from thyroid cancer to leukemia. The Chernobyl area was also connected directly with the river systems of the Ukranian Republic, causing destruction of biological life in rivers and also deaths of people who had consumed river water. It is also a fact that cleaning the area was just as dangerous to those people who had to do it as they were exposed to higher doses of radiation. Agricultural regions near Chernobyl had caused the production of foods such as milk and vegetables with radioactive material contamination.Lots of people were forced to migrate from contaminated areas to uncontaminated areas, creating social problems such as loss of staff, no job availability and many more difficulties which made everyday life miserable. Overall, the Chernobyl accident has caused great distress and casualties in the USSR and European countri es. 1 There were some errors which should be mentioned before going into details on the errors in judgment. One error which might have caused the accident was that it was a rushed experiment.The test was scheduled to be carried out just before a reactor shutdown which only occurred once a year, so the operators felt under pressure to complete it promptly so that another year wouldn't have to be waited. This probably didn't trigger the accident directly but perhaps was one of the factors causing the necessary measures and precautions to not be taken. The test was thought to be an electrical test only, so instead of the reactor specialists, turbine manufacturers were the ones who were observing it. Thus, the effects on the reactor was not weighed fully.Finally, the Chernobyl plant was one of the most developed and highly technologic power plants ever constructed, therefore the operators running it felt as if they were an exclusive and elite crew and had built too much overconfidence, not realising possible disasters. To be specific, some biases could be named and analyzed further. Perhaps the most crucial bias which should be looked at in all man-made disasters is the neglect of probability which is the tendency to omit the probability of failure when making a decision.This also ties in with the overconfidence bias since if the managers had doubted the reactor in the first place, more precautions would have been taken. In this case, such a massive disaster had never happened before among Russia, and since the power plant as stated before was assumed to be very reputable and exceptional, the managers of the plant had neglected any probability of the experiment going wrong. According to Kletz (2001)â€Å"The managers do not seem to have asked themselves what would occur if the experiment was unsuccessful.Before every experiment we should list all possible outcomes and their effects and decide how they will be handled. † 2 The second biggest bias of the owne rs and constructors of the plant which caused the accident was the functional fixedness bias. As it is stated in Wikipedia (â€Å"List of Cognitive Biases 2012) â€Å"This bias limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used†. The reactor was operated in a rule-based behaviour, meaning that the operators were informed on what tasks they should complete but not told why it was so important to complete them.This had caused them to operate the plant in a way which Kletz (2001) states as â€Å"process feel rather than theoretical knowledge†. Before the Chernobyl accident, all reactors were designed and relied on the fact that rules would be obeyed and instructions would be followed so there was no need to set up extra protective facilities. This of course could have been the worst approach to building a nuclear plant, considering the fact that the workers were not trained to their best abilities.Instead of relying on the traditional method of a ssuming operators would follow the rules, the reactor should have been built in a way that the rules could not be ignored. That way the workers would not have been limited to using their insufficient information on how to run a power plant and technology would have done this job instead of them. In short, the traditional way of relying on man-made decisions should have been abandoned and relying on automatic equipment should have been adapted. Assuming operators would obey rules brings another issue to light, the projection bias.The projection bias is defined as unconsciously assuming that one's personal emotions, thoughts and values are shared by others. The lack of communication between the managers of the power plant and the operators in how seriously safety measures should have been taken is among the biggest causes of the disaster. According to Kletz (2012), the managers of Chernobyl had â€Å"talked about getting things done without any mention of safety, leaving the operator s with the impression that safety is less important.Managers should remember, when giving instructions, that what you don't say is as important as what you do say. † 3 Last but not least, the biggest error in judgment the operators could have had was caused by the ostrich effect. This bias is the act of ignoring an obvious negative sitution. The big question is, why should any operator ignore situations which could cause the death of many people including their own? The answer lies in how the management system was established.Because the reactor relied on decisions of the higher authorities and not on protective safety equipments, every little detail of the power plant had to be consulted with the managers. As Kletz states (2012), â€Å"Everything had to be referred to the top so it was necessary to break the rules in order to get anything done†. Running a power plant should have not relied on this kind of system since operators were more likely to take shortcuts, not i nform the managers or simply ignore problems so that they could get things done quickly. Had these biases and errors in judgment not occured, the accident would perhaps never have happened.In operating such intricate systems such as a power plant, one must keep in mind two crucial things: Always having protective equipment installed and never letting workers neglect safety rules. Unfortunately as humans, only after this disaster have we began to take these precautions, making us victims of the normalcy bias. In any case, we must always look out for human errors that might lead to irreversible damage. 4 RESOURCES Marples, D. R. , & Snell, V. G. (1988). The social impact of the chernobyl disaster. London: The Macmillan Press Kletz, T. (2001). Learning from accidents.Retrieved from ftp://193. 218. 136. 74/pub/anon/ELSEVIER-Referex/1-Chemical%20Petrochemical%20and%20Process%20Collection/CD1/KLETZ,%20T. %20A. %20(2001). %20Learning%20from%20Accidents%20(3rd%20ed. )/Learning_from_Accident s_3E. pdf European Commision, International Atomic Energy Agency & World Health Organization. (1996). One decade after chernobyl: Summing up the consequences of the accident. Austria: IAEA List of Cognitive Biases. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved November 16, 2012, from http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/List_of_biases_in_judgment_and_decision_making 5

Laptops in School Essay

Power on the new paper of the future. Students should be able to have a laptop for schoolwork instead of carrying a binder and using paper for everything they are assigned to do. First of all, homework would be more fun to do on a laptop. Students would be able to put more detail into their work as well as show their personality because of all the features and applications within a computer. Paper assignments on worksheets and bookwork don’t provide this opportunity. This would be fun as students would to be able to create, answer questions, and study if students had the access a computer brings. Secondly, students will find that turning in homework on time is easier with a laptop than traditional paper assignments. A college student said,† Using laptops will help students with their grades. † Once a student completes the assignment, he or she can simply email it to the teacher. Students will not have the excuse of losing the assignment, forgetting it or having a dog eat the homework. Using paper means cutting down trees. Laptops should be a student’s friend. Statistics prove a third point. Statistics show that using laptops in school increases students’ grades. Going more in depth in assignments is what students will do if they have laptops. Also, students have a better chance of turning in their work and therefore grades will improve. Teachers and parents continue to complain that grades drop because students are lazy and don’t remember to turn in homework when it is due. Statistics also show that today’s teens are so involved in every aspect of technology, they would embrace the opportunity to simply use their skills with computers and homework. A student at Brigham Young University who uses his laptop daily, said, â€Å" Laptops are required in college. When using laptops, assignments can be graded quickly because of automated grading done by the computer. Turning in homework through a computer would allow quicker feedback to students. The quick feedback would allow a teacher to see what students are struggling with. Plus, a laptop is better than using paper. Paper is a waste of trees. † About 144,000 trees get cut down each day. Cutting down trees is what is done to get paper. The less trees we have, the less oxygen we have. Finally, laptops will reduce that cutting down of trees in the future predicting a longer life for the earth. In college it is required for students to have laptops. So why not start using laptops now? Most of the work we do in middle school and high school is for college and life after college. The laptop will become a student’s best friend, mentor, helper, and environment saver.

The Things They Carried – Dialogue and Materials

Themes and Dialogue of O’Brien in The Things They Carried War has done many horrible things to many people throughout time all over the world. War experience filled with death, suspense, and constant fear has swept through millions and millions of people who are still scared by the horrific experience. To some so horrific that a normal life, post war, was almost unbearable. But some were able to take the experience and share it to the world.Tim O’Brien is a perfect example of this. O’Brien was born in 1946 in the Midwest, but once of age was drafted into the Vietnam War. O’Brien only served for one year from 1969 to 1970, but nevertheless, the memories gathered in that year lasted him a lifetime. (Herzog) These memories, though some held them in, O’Brien used them to transform his writings to some of the most accurate and touching pieces about war in our generation. They established O’Brien as on of the most important soldier-authors of the V ietnam generation; furthermore, they establish his reputation as one of America’s most notable postmodernist writers – not only for his themes but also for the structure of his books and his exploration from multiple perspectives of problematic nature of truth and reality† (Herzog, 78). O’Brien was a man who had an objective to be original and construct all of his memories to others the best way he could. And the only way to do that was his way.In an interview of O’Brien, Herzog quotes from him â€Å"In this new book [The Things They Carried] I forced myself to try and invent a form. I had never invented form before. † His writings are unique and compared to the normal dialogue of introducing characters; O’Brien takes a different approach and makes his own style. In the book The Things They Carried, O’Brien uses materialistic belongings to show his experiences from a different perspective on war and the people in it without the immediate use of dialogue. O’Brien’s story The Things They Carried is a story of company of men that are in the Vietnam War.These men are normal people, called into duty of war by draft. Though each person is not introduced by age, and what their history was, they way they are introduced is by what they carry in their endless walk through unknown jungles. But though they are introduced by only what their position and what they carry, the personal level of knowing a character is better than ever. The first man introduced is First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. He is the leader of all the men and whom everyone answers to. But for a man that is the one in charge his mind is everywhere but on the war.He carries letters and two photos from a girl named Martha from home and keeps a pebble in his mouth that she sent him. He is madly in love with her but all of her letters are not love letters from a significant other but just friendly letters. â€Å"They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack† (LaPlante, 79). He wants to be focused on the war but his loving thoughts of her haunts him and takes him away from the reality of war he is in. It took him as much as a fellow soldier getting shot in the head before he knew how much a problem he had.The machine gunner was a man by the name of Henry Dobbins. Being the machine gunner he had to carry a twenty-three pound gun unloaded, but it was always loaded, and fifteen pounds worth of ammunition strapped around his chest and shoulders. Personally he was introduced as a big man that carried Black Flag insecticide, and extra food rations. Though not a huge introduction, he can still be known as a person but also with some mystery of who he is. From his belongings, Sanders can be seen as a big man that would be a brute force character in the company, but also a vital part to the company.His responsibility as the machine gunner with all the weight and his importance in battle puts him as a leader and a trusted man that people can rely to. His character and personality as a strong man, who can be there when he is needed, and do whatever needs to be done can be seen alone from O’Brien’s writings without any dialogue needed. Just from his position and his responsibilities his character even personality can be understood and noticed. The RTO or the man who had to carry the radio was named Mitchell Sanders. The radio he had to carry was twenty-six pounds with its battery.He also carries condoms and starched tiger fatigues for special occasions. He is an important man to the crew but he also can be seen as a light guy, more some of the others. He carries condoms even with no need for them at all and Norman Bowker, one of the other soldiers, carries a thumb that Sanders had cut off of a Vietnamese kid only fifteen or sixteen. So Sanders can be seen as not as much of a serious guy but still responsible enough to have the responsibilities of the holding on the their only way of communication.Dave Jensen was introduced with being all about personal hygiene. He carried a toothbrush, dental floss, several bars of soap taken from hotels, three extra pairs of socks, and Dr. Scholl’s foot powder for trench foot, earplugs, and extra sand bags for extra protection at night, and for superstitious reasons a rabbit’s foot. His position in the company is never mentioned but immediately by looking at all of the things he carries, it is seen he carries almost twice as much as anyone else. Through his items his personality of being over cautious stands out.He is not a very big character in the story but because of how O’Brien clearly shows how cautious and scared he is to make him a bigger character. Everyone is important in the company and when O’Brien talks about Jensen, he is referring to a quarter of the soldiers that were in war that were just like him. Though these are just a few to the many he introduces to the reader, all from O’Brien’s different writing style can be experienced and enjoyed more. O’Brien with his writings uses materials of what the soldiers carry to almost control the reader about how to feel about the character, and used this writing style in other books of his.His writing style can take you inside of the different soldiers heart and mind and with the different stories in The Things They Carried other detail are added to the story so nobody can know if his stories are real or true. This gives readers more freedom to have personal opinions. â€Å"The element of perception has to do with uncertainty†¦. The whole stew of variables determines what we perceive and what call real† (Herzog, Interview). O’Brien’s writing style all has a purpose with its creativity.The Things that they carry are not only the materialistic things that the soldiers personally have but it could be anything. à ¢â‚¬Å"Things is framed around the burdens we carry, not just war, not just physical, but spiritual as well† (Herzog, Interview). Just telling a story wasn’t enough; O’Brien wanted the reader to live it, to experience it like he did with his writing style. He wanted to tell you the story but leave mystery, his writing style was an attempt to expand readers mind further than ever before. O’Brien said, â€Å"A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions.Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather descried and expand upon those mysteries† (LaPlante, 587) Sources 1. Herzog, Tobey C. Tim O'Brien. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers, 1997. Print. 2. Egri, Lajos. The art of dramatic writing. Touchstone, 1960. Print. 3. LaPlante, Alice. Method and Madness. W W Norton ; Co In c, 2009. Print. 4. Herzog, Tobey C. Unpublished interview with Tim Obrien. Cambridge, Mass. , 11-12 July 1995

Strategic Management Case Study Write up Schon Klinik-Eating Disorder Assignment

Strategic Management Case Study Write up Schon Klinik-Eating Disorder - Assignment Example During the last 11 years, it was able to add 8 more hospitals from 7 and its annual revenue rapidly tripled. The level of occupancy rates has been maintained by the means of expertise in particular conditions and brand recognition in Schon Hospital. The Schà ¶n Klinik patients in 2012, about 20% had private health insurance where the typical German hospital had only 10%.(Porter, Stanton & Howman, 2013). The introduction of a culture by Fechner’s slogan †Measurable Tangible Better† has become an ideal prospect for Schà ¶n Klinik.As a result of poor established therapy in eating disorders, Schà ¶n Klink’s validated a systematic approaches on treatment and improvements in patient support. The hospital has been able to implement on outcome measurement where every clinician is required to measure results. The patient-reported experience measures implemented, where all patients admitted to Schà ¶n Klinik are required to complete a survey on arrangement of care, how they are treated by staff, hospital ambience, meals and information provided, resulting in a substantial rate of reviews from the patients (Porter, Stanton & Howman, 2013). The reviews from various sites of the hospital has helped the management to identify areas of weaker performance and proposing ideas on effective procedures giving the clinic a competitive advantage. Schon uses the outcome information with other stakeholders to evaluate care processes and new treatments in terms of their cost and clinical impact by suggesting approaches for improvement. Thus, ensuring the adoption of clinicians’ responsibility in their respective areas in the hospitals. The Schon’s model for delivering care for eating disorders consists of a baseline set of surveys which are done instantly following admission and the other set one week prior to discharge. The patients undergo a structured interview of Anorexic and Bulimic Syndromes (SIAB-S). Further, every day a patient’s BMI and weight are recorded and

This research can focus on any historical topic related to the Essay - 1

This research can focus on any historical topic related to the course.that is, on any topic covered in class or in your dossie - Essay Example The second section will focus on how 1930s cinema, pre-code, portrayed women as having to choose between a career and love. Section 3 will look at the role of women in 1930s film and theorise that some women, notably Norma Shearer, could transcend stereotypes. Finally, I will explore how women’s roles in the cinema evolved from the beginning to the end of the Depression, and section 4 will examine criticisms of women in 1930s cinema and Section 5 will be a conclusion. Annotated Bibliography Berry, S. (2000). Screen style: Consumer fashion and femininity in 1930s Hollywood. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press New. This book will be useful in assessing impact of the 1930s films as it details how Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich influenced women filmgoers as role models of self-determination, and shows why the public is fascinated with these strong-willed women and others. Dawson, J. E. (1995). Hollywood’s image of the working woman. Las Vegas: Univer sity of Nevada. This dissertation will facilitate to explore the roles, which women have taken on the silver screen, how women are portrayed, and psychological aspects and influence of films to women. Feuer, J. (1993). The Hollywood musical. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. This book will assist in understanding of the origin and evolution of the Hollywood musical, as well as how it has affected society over the years, especially the chapter ‘Dream worlds and dream stages’, which details how Hollywood musical provided audience with escapist entertainment from the difficulties of war and depression faced in 1930s. Kolbjornsen, T. K. (1998). ‘Dansingi Hollywood: punktnedslagi film-musikalenshistorie’, dissertation, Villanova University, Philadelphia, PA. This dissertation explores musical film aesthetically and how spectators are transformed by the experience of watching these Hollywood musicals such as Busby Berkeley shows in the 1930s, and an explorat ion of dance as an aesthetic sign and discussion on how women are transformed into kinetic ornaments. Lovasz, K. (2007). Technologies of self-presentation: Women’s engagement with mediated representation from the era of silent film to the Internet age. dissertation, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. In this dissertation, Lovasz explores identity theory, which explains how women relate to patriarchal culture, by exploring a woman’s imagined and virtual cultural experiences, including those of film. Davies, C. (1988). New women, new culture: The Women’s Weekly and Hollywood in Australia in the early 1930s. Dissertation Brisbane: Griffith University Press. This book is very important in this research as it explores how the new woman, from the period after the censorship policy came into play, came to be and how she affected culture, including how women were portrayed on the silver screen, and it examines how the Hollywood portrayal of women in the 1930s affected women in Australia. Siegel, M. B. (2009). ‘Busby Berkeley and the projected stage’, Hudson Review, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 106–114. In this article, Siegel discusses some of the films of Busby Berkeley, a filmmaker of the 1930s who pioneered dance movies, which reveals his projected dance dreams; therefore, it will assist in assessing 1930 films. Streb, J. L. (2004). Minna Citron: A socio-historical study of an artist’s feminist social realism in the 1930s. University Park: Pennsylvania State University. This dissertation

Accidental Heroes Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Accidental Heroes - Essay Example They decided to break the rules for a noble purpose and emerged as heroes. This paper shall look into several movies where heroes are made by their deliberate decisions to violate the rules established by the society they live in, their government or their superiors. These movies are The Island, The Matrix, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and Ironman 2. The theme about violating established rules and emerging as a hero at the end is apparently not only common but widely accepted among both filmmakers and moviegoers. The Island The 2005 movie The Island is a futuristic movie set in the year 2019 where a company has perfected the science of human cloning. They then capitalized on this technology by selling very expensive health insurance policies to the wealthy people who want to live forever. The clients were told that the company is keeping a stock of cloned body parts which they will use for perfectly compatible organ transplants. The clients are unaware that w hat the company has at their facility is a community of clones who are then killed in order to harvest the needed human organs. The accidental hero in the person of Lincoln Six-Echo is one of the clones living in the highly secluded and closely-monitored facility. They were not allowed to interact with one another. They were made to believe that they were the last survivors of the human race and they vied for a spot in â€Å"The Island† which is supposedly the last frontier of the earth. Their every move is being monitored and there are rules for everything. If curiosity killed the cat, Lincoln Six-Echo’s inquisitive nature saved him and the others. He had a lot of questions about the things around him and about what they are told to believe. And he searched for answers. When he asked his friends and the authorities at the facility, he does not get straight answers so he decided to take the risk of violating the facility’s rules and find the answers himself. The movie went on to reveal the truth and narrates the adventures of Lincoln Six-Echo outside the facility where he finally found out that the people in the facility are â€Å"copies of people out here in the world† (The Island). If he did not take the risk of violating the rules which was strictly and oppressively implemented inside the facility, Lincoln Six-Echo would not know about who and what he really was. Moreover, he would not be able to save himself and his friend, Jordan Two-Delta, who had already won her ticket to â€Å"The Island†. If he did not violate the rules in his confined world, the insurance company’s sinister business would not be exposed into the open and its clients would remain oblivious to the fact that someone identical to them had to die in order for them to live. The Matrix The matrix is by far the most intellectual and thought-provoking film I have ever seen. Admittedly, I had to watch it a second time to listen and fully absorb the dia logues, and a third time to fully and completely comprehend what the movie is all about. Although this movie is packed with action sequences and dazzling special effects, one can only fully understand the true meaning and message of the movie by absorbing every word in its limited dialogues. The Matrix tells about a post-apocalypse earth where humans are controlled by machines. Humans lay asleep in pods while their minds are inside a virtual reality program called the matrix. Inside the matrix, the minds of sleeping bodies live â€Å"normal† lives where they work, eat, sleep and die. However, in the real world, that is, outside of the matrix system, people are unconscious in a honeycomb of pods with tubes attached to their bodies and where â€Å"the machines liquefy the dead to feed the living†

Success in Social Commerce Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Success in Social Commerce - Research Paper Example As the result, Google Analytics and Facebook Connect (Tonkin, Whitmore, & Cutroni, 2011) have now come up with tools and strategies that are showing positive ROI to marketers. In addition, a number of market research companies have carried out researches to understand the relationship of social media experience with consumers’ purchasing decisions. The results indicated that ‘like’ button acts as a significant factor that influences users to purchase a product/service from a specific retailer. In this regard, marketers are now looking at different ways of transforming experiences into measurable returns that will allow a rapid evolution of social commerce (Blanchard, 2011).While the paper is focusing primarily on ‘return on investment’, it is imperative to understand that ‘return on investment’ is usually considered as metrics that is not the case. ROI itself requires metrics for measurement of its business value, and business experts hav e come up with the following equation to calculate return on investment of something:ROI = Benefits - Costs x 100 = Percentage Return on the InvestmentThe equation of ROI is self-explanatory; however, the paper will now include an example that will clarify the applicability of ROI in social commerce largely. Sea World San Antonio is a venture of SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment (2013). The company created different content based on interests and attitudes of these roller coaster fans.... This paper is an attempt to understand different aspects of social commerce that will allow a comprehensive understanding of complexities that revolve around success of the notion. Discussion While social commerce presents an interactive shopping platform to consumers, it is imperative to see the potential of social commerce from businesses’ perspective. From retailers’ point of view, it has been an understanding that the social commerce has been successful in providing opportunities to retailers to engage people in exploration of their products by creating viral experiences (Ickler, Schulke, Wilfling, & Baumol, 2009). In addition, social commerce enables retailers to bring their products to a place where people interact with each other that is contrary to traditional shopping trend where people have to reach to the place to buy something. Another distinction from traditional commerce is that social commerce focuses on socially enriched relationships rather than one-to- one relationships that usually exist in traditional commerce settings. Rather, social commerce promotes dependence on interaction and experience of users with users; in other words, consumer-to-consumer communication that results in buying or selling of any product or service. The reason this paper is including detailed discussion on distinction of social commerce from other traditional types of commerce is the need for realizing the complexity that exist in social commerce, which will only enable its critical understanding that is essential for understanding different aspects of its success. For instance, as discussed earlier, ‘return on investment’ (Marsden, 2010) is the metric that business organizations usually use in traditional commerce setting, and