Friday, January 24, 2020

Global Warming and the Kyoto Protocol Essay -- environmental pollution

Global Warming and the Kyoto Protocol   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In the world today there are talks about why and how the people of this planet are polluting the rivers, lakes, soil, and even air. With these talks countries are coming up with great ways to reduce this problem. They see the effects and they are happy and life goes on but there is another problem, the one the everyday people just can’t solve with their own hands, that problem is the theory of global warming. During December of 1997, a meeting in Kyoto, Japan, started a huge trend to try to improve the world’s greenhouse gas releasing which could cause an unnatural shift in climate throughout the world. This meeting was called the Kyoto Protocol and about thirty- eight industrialized countries agreed to lower their emissions of major greenhouse gases below 1990 levels. (Rowntree) In this research we are trying to find how the Kyoto Protocol is an example of globalization.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Globalization is the integration of world economies. Globalization affects productivity, imports and exports, technology, and growth rates. (Questia) Some of the trends in globalization are an increase in international trade, the use of global telecommunications, an increase in immigration, development of global financial systems, and the development of global business standards. In this case of the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union is one of the strongest advocates of regulations. With this the European Union today is lower than what it was in the ...

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Strategy and Serendipity: A Billion †Dollar Bonanza management case study

Mini Case 2: Strategy and Serendipity: A Billion – Dollar Bonanza Key Issue / Problem – Serendipity on how two modern drugs were discovered. – Realising a strategy turnout from a serendipity.Analysis – Researcher develop a new drug for the heart disease, as the drug were a cure for MED, the manager in Pfizer strategise this and make a this unintended results to into a blockbuster drug.Alternatives – Smart planning of changing a failure of a research into an alternative of curing another disease.Key decision to make – Although a drug discovered to treat drug disease became a failure, and turn out to solve MED problem, thus a new strategy to utilise it have to be made Capabilities – An unintended strategy, which were to cure the heart disease, turn out as s serendipity of curing a another dysfunction, and able to generate income of $3 billion dollar per year. Decision Criteria– The strategy of the unintended plan turn out to be a huge sum of turnover. Stakeholders – The investors, researchers, patients.Resources – The managers of Pfizer, reseachers, Implementation plan – To always have a alternative for a strategy which is still under testing. Vision / Mission / Objectives – To create a drug to overcome heart disease – To overcome a mistake, and make a seredipity out of it.Assumption – The smart team on how they able to strategise the need to the new drug for the MED and generate cash flow stream out of it. Discussion QuestionQuestion 1Serendipity is random from my point of view. Occurrence of this is not predicted or there might be not any proven statistic of the occurrence figure. Serendipity means a â€Å"happy accident† or â€Å"pleasant surprise†; a fortunate mistake. Specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it.Question 2Strategic initiative is any activity a pursues to explore and develop a new product and process into new markets. In this case, it has been said to be an unrealised strategy for both Viagra and Cialis. The management initiated their new venture into a drug to overcome a heart disease, and it turn to be a cure for ME, where they have the same market, which is the medical drug supply, but for a different purpose. With its huge demand around the globe, these occurrences have become a serendipity for them.Question 3The model that explains Viagra/Cialis story is scenario planning. In this model, the managers envisions different what if scenario. In the analysis stage, they will be able to brainstorm and identify the possible future scenarios to anticipate plausible futures. This is what shows in the case study above, as the turnout from a strategy of marketing a heart disease drug was a failure, they turned it into a alternative for MED cure disease. The serendipity there is because the drug was able to use for MED. IF, the drug was a failure, then they ha ve must have already planned or strategize something to overcome the losses.Question 4No, the story of Viagra/Cialis will not inspire me to design a strategic management process. I will not be hoping for serendipity happens if my strategy fails, and the utilising the failure as an alternative. I will only plan for a strategy which is practical on that moment and prepare for possible future scenario using different simulations. If something happens as this case, then I would use this opportunity to make use of it and cover the loss for my failure, in a simple way saying it to hedge my position.

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

The Domestication History of Chickpeas

Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum or garbanzo beans) are large roundish legumes, that look rather like a large round pea with an interesting bumpy surface. A staple of Middle Eastern, African and Indian cuisines, the chickpea is the worlds second most widely grown legume after the soybean, and one of the eight founder crops of the origins of agriculture on our planet. Chickpeas store really well  and are high in nutritive value, although they are not very disease resistant, compared to other legumes. The wild version of chickpeas (Cicer reticulatum) is only found in parts of what is today southeastern Turkey and adjacent Syria, and it is likely that it was first domesticated there, about 11,000 years ago. Chickpeas were part of the culture that first developed farming on our planet, called the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period. Varieties Domesticated chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans) come in two main groups called desi and kabuli  but you can also find varieties in 21 different colors and several shapes. Scholars believe that the oldest variety of chickpea is the desi form;  Ã‚   desi are small, angular, and variegated in color. The desi likely originated in Turkey and was subsequently introduced into India where kabuli, the most common form of chickpea today, was developed. Kabuli have large beige beaked seeds, which are more rounded than desi. Domesticating Chickpeas The chickpea gained several very useful features from the domestication process. For example, the wild form of chickpea ripens only in the winter, while the domesticated form can be sown during the spring for summer harvest. Domestic chickpeas still grow best in winter when there is adequate water available; but during the winters they are susceptible to Ascochyta blight, a devastating disease which has been known to wipe out entire crops. The creation of chickpeas that could be grown in summer decreased the riskiness of relying on the crop. In addition, the domesticated form of chickpea contains nearly twice the tryptophan of the wild form, an amino acid that has been connected with higher brain serotonin concentrations and higher birth rates and accelerated growth in humans and animals. See Kerem et al. for additional information. Genome Sequencing The first draft whole genome shotgun sequence of both desi and kabuli breeding lines was published in 2013. Varshney et al. discovered that genetic diversity was slightly higher in the desi, compared to kabuli, supporting earlier contentions that desi is the older of the two forms. The scholars identified 187 disease resistance genes homologies, considerably fewer than other legume species. They hope that others will be able to use the information collected to develop superior varieties with improved crop productivity and less susceptibility to disease. Archaeological Sites Domesticated chickpeas have been found at several early archaeological sites, including the Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites of Tell el-Kerkh (ca. 8,000 BC) and Djade (11,000-10,300 calendar years ago cal BP, or about 9,000 BC) in Syria, Cayà ¶nà ¼ (7250-6750 BC), Hacilar (ca 6700 BC), and Akarà §ay Tepe (7280-8700 BP) in Turkey; and Jericho (8350 BC to 7370 BC) in the West Bank. Sources Abbo S, Zezak I, Schwartz E, Lev-Yadun S, Kerem Z, and Gopher A. 2008. Wild lentil and chickpea harvest in Israel: bearing on the origins of Near Eastern farming. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(12):3172-3177. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2008.07.004 Dà ¶nmez E, and Belli O. 2007. Urartian plant cultivation at Yoncatepe (Van), eastern Turkey. Economic Botany 61(3):290-298. doi:10.1663/0013-0001(2007)61[290:upcayv]2.0.co;2 Kerem Z, Lev-Yadun S, Gopher A, Weinberg P, and Abbo S. 2007. Chickpea domestication in the Neolithic Levant through the nutritional perspective. Journal of Archaeological Science 34(8):1289-1293. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2006.10.025 Simon CJ, and Muehlbauer FJ. 1997. Construction of a Chickpea Linkage Map and Its Comparison With Maps of Pea and Lentil. Journal of Heredity 38:115-119. Singh KB. 1997. Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Field Crops Research 53:161-170. Varshney RK, Song C, Saxena RK, Azam S, Yu S, Sharpe AG, Cannon S, Baek J, Rosen BD, Taran B et al. 2013. Draft genome sequence of chickpea (Cicer arietinum) provides a resource for trait improvement. Nature Biotechnology 31(3):240-246. Willcox G, Buxo R, and Herveux L. 2009. Late Pleistocene and early Holocene climate and the beginnings of cultivation in northern Syria. The Holocene 19(1):151-158.