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Introduction The purpose of this report is to examine four specific texts - consisting of movie advertisement posters for the film The Devil Wears Prada- using a semiotic lens. Semiotics is understood as follows: Linguistic and Cultural Semiotics is a branch of communication theory that investigates sign systems and the modes of representation that humans use to convey feelings, thoughts, ideas, and ideologies. Semiotic analysis is rarely considered a field of study in its own right, but is used in a broad range of disciplines, including art, literature, anthropology, sociology, and the mass media. Semiotic analysis looks for the cultural and psychological patterns that underlie language, art and other cultural expressions. ....Whether used as a tool for representing phenomena or for interpreting it, the value of semiotic analysis becomes most pronounced in highly mediated, postmodern environments where encounters with manufactured reality shift our grounding s

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Conflict resolution is a process of resolving disputes or disagreements between individuals, groups, or nations. Despite their often being used interchangeably, there are distinctions among conflict styles, strategies, and tactics. A conflict resolution style is the individual manner in which an individual approaches conflicts or disagreements. Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann theorized that people exhibit five primary "styles" of behavior when dealing with conflict that differ where levels of cooperativeness and assertiveness are concerned (Styles 1). These fives styles of conflict resolution are: (1) competitive; (2) collaborative; (3) compromising;

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In "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," Walt Whitman uses the image of death to represent the transition from childhood innocence and individualism to emotional maturity and universalism. The young boy listens to the sad song of a bird calling for his female mate who never returns. In the midst of the bird's great anguish, the boy demands to know from nature "A word...superior to all," and nature replies in swirls in the sea, "the low and delicious word DEATH; and again Death-ever Death, Death, Death" (Whitman 1). This analysis will explore the meaning of this image provided by Whitman in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." The young boy is moved to tears by the pain an anguish of a male bird whose plaintive calls for his mate go unreturned. The boy experiences emotional development in his relationship with the bird and, ultimately, nature. The boy must come to confront death before he can become emotionally mature as an adult. When he confronts death or loss the boy is able to go beyond thinking

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Historically, the process of adoption is one that has played out in a cloud of secrecy. The National Council for Adoption (NCA), one of the strongest advocates of confidentiality in the adoption process, has "long championed the important of confidentiality in adoption" and argues open adoptions "prove harmful to all those involved in the adoption cycle" (Weeks 6). Despite this staunch viewpoint, the "closed" condition of many adoptions has significantly begun to change to a more "open" process of adoption that has not wrought the harm predicted by the NCA. As Weeks (6) reports, "It is clear that the secrecy that has been the hallmark of adoption throughout its history is giving way to a new openness." While research tracking the effects of open adoption is in its nascent phase, completed research is showing evidence of "substantial benefits" of open adoption on children, birth mothers and birth families, and adoptive parents compared to closed adoptions (Weeks 6). Desp

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The purpose of this essay is to describe and to evaluate the effects of the process of globalization on countries that are located in the Middle East. When such a study purpose is advanced by most members of developed economies outside of the Middle East region, there typically are two unstated, biased assumptions that underlie the study focus. The first of these usually unstated assumptions is that the process of globalization is a phenomenon of relatively recent origin. The second usually unstated assumption is that countries in the Middle East will undergo changes by adopting practices, values, behaviors, and so forth that are prevalent in the developed economies that are located outside of the Middle East. The first of these assumptions is incorrect. The second assumption may or may be correct in relation to each specific country that is located in the Middle East; however, there is no compelling justification for an assumption that it must be correct. Lewis and Har

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According to John Schilb in Making Literature Matter, there are seven elements of fiction that not only serve to add impact to a story but also serve as a useful framework for critical analysis. These are (1) plot and structure; (2) point of view; (3) characters/characterization; (4) setting; (5) imagery; (6) language; and (7) theme. In Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the author employs these elements to tell the story or chronicle the events of a murder that occurred when he was a young man in his native Caribbean town. One night as Garcia Marquez was generally enjoying a night of debauchery, his friend Santiago Nasar was murdered, a murder the entire town knew would occur. Mature now, Garcia is the narrator-detective who vows to solve the mystery that surrounds the murder by interviewing people who remember the murder, reviewing court documents, and searching his own memories. As Michaels (G1) notes, "He accumulates many kinds of data - dre

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Introduction Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the most famous and controversial figures in the contemporary art world. His photographs were often praised for their beauty, and were often condemned for their explicit sexuality. Mapplethorpe was, ultimately, to choose a homosexual lifestyle, though he has intense sexual relationships with rock stars like Patti Smith, the first subject of his first series of portraits (Biography, 2007). One aspect of Mapplethorpe's large body of work included his fascination with the use of ethnic males as central figures. This analysis will use three images of ethnic males photographer by Mapplethorpe to show how the style of his work related to the period in which it was created. Body Mapplethorpe became enmeshed in the throes of what he himself called "black fever" in 1980, when he began to claim that white males no longer interested him sexually (Morrisroe, 1995, p. 233). Mapplethorpe's decision t

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Shari'a is the body of law inspired by the Koran, the Sunna, older Arabic law systems, and the work of Muslim scholars over the first two centuries of Islam (Kjeilen 1). While Shari's is often called "Islamic law," this is wrong because only a small portion of it is "irrefutably based upon the core Islamic text, the Koran" (Kjeilen 1). A more correct term for Shari'a would be "Muslim law" or even the "law system of Muslims," but since Shari'a is perceived as based upon the Koran, it is considered by Muslims to be the "will of God" (Kjeilen 1). While Shari'a is often referred to as Muslim law, in reality that term can also be deceptive in that Shari'a encompasses more than just the law. Sharia represents the "totality of religious, political, social, domestic and private life" of Muslim society (Kjeilen 1). While Shari'a is aimed primarily at Muslims, it can also apply to non-Muslims living in Muslim communities. Shari'a is not binding on Muslims who live outside the Muslim world, but Shari'a is considered something that no human intellect can disprove. In this sense, Shari'a is to be accepted without resistance, since it is se

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Peter F. Drucker's article, "The Theory of the Business," starts by describing what he means by that term(the assumptions that an organization is built on. He then recounts the surprising downturns of fortune in two of industry's most successful companies(GM and IBM(that occurred after their theory of the business "no longer fit reality" (Drucker, 1994, p. 95). IBM, for example, had long been highly successful in the mainframe business. When the PC came al

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Hecht's "The Dover Bitch" interpenetrates the poetic intent of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach." Arnold makes a project of articulating a crisis of faith, though his immediate object of address is his lover; Hecht turns that project on its head, articulating a highly personal experience of the world, with both world and lover incidental to the poet's response. In other words, Arnold takes the universe as a manifest subject, and Hecht parodies that by focusing on the poor dear who

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Is buying products that are the result of labor exploitation ever ethically viable? The question most central to this discussion is whether or not labor exploitation is a relative or absolute evil. And as with most things in life, the answer is not the same for each situation. The best way to achieve the golden mean in this area of life is to know what forms of labor exploitation are practiced and to determine which ones are ethnocentric judgments and which are truly human tragedies. One argument about labor exploitation is that the concept was developed by the labor movement. Through a combination of lobbying, strikes, and public awareness the "developed countries" instituted laws that set working conditions. Because these obviously make workers lives better, and since most people are workers at one time or another, these initiatives were beneficial to society. However, they are only possible because the countries that set the laws have reached a minimum level of economic development. What we see as worker exploitation may in fact be the maturing of an economic system. Take for example minimum wage. This is a legal protection for the least educated and most vulner

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Many people mistake Shamanism as a religion but it is a term that embraces a diverse number of beliefs and practices that are mainly aimed at helping the living communicate with the spirit world. As with so many other religious or philosophical belief systems, the practice and interpretation of Shamanism is unique in cultures around the globe. Others view Shamanism as forming the root of Ancient Oriental medicine, as Shamans are considered to be healers who can cure the sick. According to Eppich (1), a Shaman is "a man or a woman who is able to enter into an altered state of consciousness for the purpose of embarking upon a spirit journey into alternate dimensions and realities in order to access hidden knowledge or power to help others." The main goal of this journey is for the Shaman to get in contact with "spirit helpers" that lend him or her divine powers (Eppich 1). Developed in ancient cultures, Shamanism is often practiced in contemporary times and is incre

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The Zulu are an African tribe now subsumed within the State of South Africa, which traces its roots to the kingdom founded by King Shaka in the early decades of the nineteenth century (Laband ix). That kingdom lasted only a little over six decades before being overthrown in war, broken into pieces, and dispersed. In that brief period, however, the Zulu exerted enormous influence over events in the region and wielded great military power. This analysis will discuss various aspects of Zulu government, society, and culture. Society was organized around pastoral pursuits with the Zulu maintaining strong ties to the land. Cohen (10) maintains that the Zulu were initially a small branch (numbering no more than 1,500 at the end of the eighteenth century) of the "Nguni-speaking" segment of the Bantu. Zulu "kraals" or compounds were scattered in a small area in what is now part of South Africa, and the Zulu (whose name came from a king and translates as "People of the Hea

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Introduction The reign of Queen Victoria endured for almost sixty-four years from 1837 to 1901, longer than any other British monarch in history. When Victoria ascended to the throne, the United Kingdom of Britain already had a constitutional monarchy in place that significantly limited the political power of the ruler. However, during her reign that would come to be known as the "Victorian era," Victoria served as a powerful figurehead of the U.K. during a period of massive growth due to the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the British Empire (Munich 265). Victoria became the presumptive heiress to the throne when her uncle William IV died without leaving any legitimate heirs to the throne. Victoria was nine so her mother, the Duchess of Kent and Straithearn, served as Regent until she assumed full command of the throne at eighteen. Family values, Victoria as mother figure, and morality were highly significant during Queen Victoria

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Introduction The purpose of this section of the study is to provide a review of relevant literature that focuses on questions related to teenage pregnancy. The Introduction to this study offered an overview of the extent of the problem, its effects and outcomes, and a conceptual framework in which it was asserted that peer pressure to begin sexual activity coupled with low self-esteem may very well be instrumental in placing some young girls at risk for pregnancy during adolescence (Santor, Messervey, & Kusmakar, 2000). Presented below will be a discussion of first, the extent of teen pregnancy in the United States and secondly, a description of some of the outcomes, effects, and impacts of teenage pregnancy and childbirth on teenagers and their offspring. The review will conclude with a description of some of the interventions that have been developed to reduce what has been characterized as a major public health problem in the United States (Sawhill, 2006). Extent of th

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Introduction This paper presents a discussion of the steam engine. A history of the steam engine, how a steam engine functions, thermodynamics principles that make up the steam engine, a comparison of steam engine efficiency to the efficiency of the Carnot engine, and modern applications of the steam engine such as the steam turbine. This is followed by summary and conclusions. History of Steam Engine History is Controversial The history of the steam engine and its development appears to be somewhat controversial. For example, Valenti (1996) reported that the British Royal Society to include Isaac Newton prevented the industrial and naval applications of steam power for 100 years. The Royal Society buried Denis Papin's 1690 invention of the paddle-wheel steamship that was developed with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Valenti stated further that the Royal Society stole this work and crated a mythical story about how Newcomen invented the steam engine to raise wat

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Essay One The political settings of China and Japan are distinct and related to the current status of the economies in each nation. Having shed communism in all but the name of its ruling party, China's government maintains a monopolistic hold on power. The transition from a centrally planned economy to a socialist market economy has fueled economic growth but also created conflict among farmers and officials who continue to acquire land. The government monopoly on power often undermines law and justice, with corruption difficult to control. The government continues to impede progress because of the slow reform of State Owned Enterprises (SOE) that continued to be propped up by zero interest loans in order to offset massive job losses. While most of the challenges of transitioning to a market economy have been overcome, the government must now focus on reforms aimed at development. Naughton (2007) maintains the government must focus on "the need to invest in human skil

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Wal-Mart is the single largest retail chain in the world with $374.5 billion in sales (2008 Annual Report). Through its chains Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, it sells an incredible array of products, from gasoline to oranges to towels to power saws. It success is based on building new stores and bargaining for the highest possible profit on the lowest cost goods, usually buying products produced in poorer countries than where they are sold. Wal-mart's central competitive advantage is its size. According to the 2008 annual statement, Sam's club offers its customers "treasure finds". These are items that are not usually offered in the store. Because of its huge buying power, Wal-Mart could go to a book publisher and buy, say, 5% of a production run at a lower price than is offered to anyone else. It cannot carry the product all of the time at that rate, but it can gain a short-term discount for its customers. Wal-mart stores work under a similar philosophy. Items for sale at Wal-Mart

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The issue to be discussed in this report is teamwork and how it can benefit GlaxoSmithKline (2008), a research-based pharmaceutical company employing about 100,000 people in over 100 countries and producing almost four billion packs of medicine and health care products every year. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) (2008) has developed a strategy of striving for excellence by optimizing the performance of key products, delivering the product pipeline for patients, being the best place for the best people to do their best work, improving access to medicine, and maximizing total shareholder returns. It is a company that can certainly benefit from teamwork which is understood herein as the development of work groups that are meant to address a specific task or problem by drawing upon the skills, knowledge, and capacities of individual members who are brought together from different units within a business organization (Ivancevich, 1998). The process of teamwork as described by Ivancevich (1998

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The "center of gravity" as understood in military terms refers to: "the characteristics, capabilities, or locations from which a military force derives its freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight. In the strategic level, a center of gravity might include a military force, an alliance, a set of critical capabilities or functions, or national strategy itself" (Strange 1). As developed by Von Clausewitz, the term also encompasses the recognition that in military confrontations, each combatant has a "hub of all power and movement" (Strange 2). In the Peloponnesian War, in which Athens and Sparta vied for hegemonic dominance in the Greek mainland, the center of gravity shifted along with the movement of Sparta's massive infantry and Athens' equally massive and impress

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Kathleen Vail notes in an article published by the American School Board Journal that vocational or technical schools were once considered to be appropriate only for high school students that were not academically proficient. Today, career academies or career and technical education programs in high school have an entirely different image among students and parents. One of Vail's main arguments is that these programs were once considered to be a dumping ground for slow students, and are now considered to be highly desirable by parents and students. Vail provides as background information about how the current high school technical education programs no longer use a one-size-fits-all approach. These programs can take various forms based on the needs of school districts, communities, local employers, and students. The most common types of career and technical schools in the United States are career academies. Vail takes time to define a career academy is a small learning

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According to an essay published online on the Teaching American History website, on July 5, 1852 at the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society, Frederick Douglass gave a speech in which he reminded the audience that the Fourth of July, during which the nation celebrated freedom and liberty, was not a day for celebration for slaves. The United States that Frederick Douglass knew was a nation of contradictions. There were people opposed to slavery, but the position of the United States government was that slaves were property rather than people. The speech given by Douglas was used reminded his audience that the notion of liberty has not extended to enslaved blacks across America (Douglass). Slaves were considered to be an important component of the economic system in the United States. The cultivation of crops, including tobacco and cotton, required a tremendous amount of manual labor and the use of slave labor permitted wealthy landowners to maintain their standard of liv

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To determine if Immanuel Kant's purely retributive view of capital punishment is consistent with his view of regarding persons as ends in themselves, a discussion of Kant's moral philosophy must be provided. Moral law is formulated by Kant as based upon the "categorical imperative" (Solomon and Higgins 212). This represents a singular command that applies across the entire range of human behavior. The categorical imperative, according to the best-known formulation, asserts that "one should only act on a maxim that one can will to be universal law" (Solomon and Higgins 212). The moral law, then, is summarized as follows: One always ought to act so as to treat humanity, in oneself and another, as an end in itself, and not as a mere means. In this sense, capital punishment would seem to use an individual as some form of means for achieving the end of exacting justice. Despite this view, Kant believes in an eye-for-an-eye type of morality with respect to use of capit

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Abstract Ruth Purtilo's (2005) text, Ethical dimensions in the health professions, presents a comprehensive analysis of the key ethical challenges in the health professions. Purtilo (2005) segments her analysis of ethical issues impacting upon health care providers into five areas: the nature of morality and ethics, the ethical dimensions of professional roles, ethical dimensions of the patient-caregiver relationship, ethical issues related to en-of-life care, and ethical issues in the social context of health care. Using a combination of theoretical analysis and case studies, Purtilo (2005) argues that an "ethic of care" must necessarily permeate all actions undertaken by health care providers. The goal of the text is to delineate the major issues in the field and the most appropriate responses to those issues; central to the argument made by Purtilo (2005) is the field's emphasis on doing no harm and employing high ethical standards for professional conduct in all instances.

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Hip hop music is characterized as a "genre of music typically consisting of a rhythmic style of speaking called rap over backing beats" ("Hip Hop Music," 1). Generally, hip hop is the term given to the culture in which rap music, fostered in part by individual artists and driven early on and throughout its evolution by DJs who speak over music, has developed. It is said to have been developed in New York City in the 1970s predominantly among African-Americans, Jamaicans, and Latinos (Urban Dictionary, 2008). The origin of the term is somewhat unclear, though it is often attributed to a Jamaican named DJ Kool Herc. Alternatively, a rival DJ named DJ Afrika Bambaataa may have invented the term to describe the culture it subsumes. DJ Kool Herc is credited as being a pioneer of hip hop during the 1970s and much of his work centered on the Bronx section of New York City where this musical genre attracted many adherents (Urban Dictionary, 2). Hip hop draws upon the rhythms and beats of the Jamaican musical genres as well as the technological capacities of sound sys

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