Friday, January 31, 2020

Petroleum Economic and Oil field management 2013-2014 Essay - 1

Petroleum Economic and Oil field management 2013-2014 - Essay Example The above are but some of the few reasons why there has been limited adoption of energy conservation. The huge amounts of income, derived as petro-dollars, do significantly contribute to various state-entities’ economic survival (ElBaradei, 2013). This affects the limited nature of alternative energy resource development taking place globally. The continued rate of global industrialization, which necessitates increased consumption of energy resources, especially oil and natural gas has been a factor of concern because conservation would pose a threat to continued industrialization. Another important factor is that alternative energy resources, though significantly advantageous than the more prominent fossil fuels, are unfortunately very expensive to develop. In addition is the factor of global application and viability, as none of the potential alternatives can at the current contexts, be exploited effectively to warrant a change from oil and natural gas utility (Leggett, 2001). The case scenario above is further impacted by the fact that there is a hold/ control of this sector. This is mainly by global multinationals, which are majorly Western-based and capitalistic in nature. These firms, are powerful actors in the prevailing international relations, and hence contribute to the slow pace of change. This is influenced by the fact that major revenues are gained, not only by these firm-entities, but also by their mother-nations, which are all powerful actors in the global arena. Consumerism, which as a phenomenon has been founded on en masse production of goods and service provision, further fuels the need for oil utility, in the production of various crucial products. The underlying global industrial base is thus, the main driver of fossil fuel consumption; significantly influenced by the global industrial output and human advancement

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Russian Revolution Essay -- Russian History

Russia had been an autocratic government for 300 years under the Romanov Dynasty before the revolution of 1917. When problems started in the early 1900’s most people were serfs that had been freed about 20 years before. In 1914 during World War One, Czar Nicholas II decided to stay in war with Germany despite what the rest of his country thought. Nicholas posed a distraction from the countries problems. His plan was to keep his soldiers minds off of the horrible living conditions of Russia by staying in war with Germany and starting a war with Japan in hope that he would lead his country to a victory; both wars were lost, giving Russian citizens more to be upset about. Russia’s Army was extremely weak, made mainly of peasants, and the cost of war was weighing down on the citizens of Russia. In reality, Nicholas II had no aptitude to be a ruler, and proved himself to be politically incapable of governing a country. Starvation and poor living conditions lined the streets of homeless families. Many people were unemployed, and those who were faced terrible conditions when they were working. Nation-wide discontent for the czar had set in, people begged for him to be dethroned. The country attempted to industrialize, but this just brought more trouble and left the country more distraught than ever, at this point they were behind the rest of the world in every aspect. The war with Germany was over, but Russia was left with a period of economic downfall to deal with. Four groups were later formed against the czar and his form of government, only one group of people, the white Russians, were still loyal to him. Liberals were people who wanted democratic checks on the czar, instead of total dictatorship. The Nationalists wanted greater in... .../srcx/retrieve.do?subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253AFQE%253D%2528su%252CNone%252C18%2529russian%2Brevolution%2524&contentSet=GSRC&sort=Relevance&tabID=T001&sgCurrentPosition=0&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&prodId=SRC-4&searchId=R1 ¤tPosition=5&userGroupName=glen46605&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&sgHitCountType=None&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%. â€Å"The Russian Revolution.† Gale Resource Research Center. Ed. Marie Hacht and Dwayne D. Hayes. N.p., 2008. Web. 25 Dec. 2010. . Wines, Michael. â€Å"1917: Russia’s Year of Revolutions.† New York Times 12 Mar. 2007: n. pag. SIRS Discoverer. Web. 26 Dec. 2010.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Banksy-Graffiti Art Essay

The life of the street artist is, by necessity, one of anonymity. In many of the world’s cities, the most noticeable and breathtaking pieces of art aren’t created by world-renowned talents. They are created by the unknown street artist under cover of darkness. We never see them and they are known only by their tagging pseudonyms. Banksy is a British graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter. It has been said, Banksy â€Å"was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became graffiti artist. Style Banksy began as a freehand graffiti artist in 1990–1994 as one of Bristol’s DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ). He was inspired by local artists and his work was part of the larger Bristol underground scene. From the start he used stencils as elements of his freehand pieces, too. By 2000 he had turned to the art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to complete a piece. He claims he changed to stenciling while he was hiding from the police under a rubbish lorry, when he noticed the stenciled serial number. Banksy’s stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. Subjects often include rats, apes, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly. Asked about his technique, Banksy said: I use whatever it takes. Sometimes that just means drawing a moustache on a girl’s face on some billboard, sometimes that means sweating for days over an intricate drawing. Efficiency is the key. Stencils are traditionally hand drawn or printed onto sheets of acetate or card, before being cut out by hand. Because of the secretive nature of Banksy’s work and identity, it is uncertain what techniques he uses to generate the images in his stencils, though it is assumed he uses computers for some images due to the photocopy nature of much of his work. He mentions in his book, Wall and Piece, that as he was starting to do graffiti, he was always too slow and was either caught or could never finish the art in one sitting. So he devised a series of intricate stencils to minimize time and overlapping of the colour. Banksy once characterised graffiti as a form of underclass â€Å"revenge†, or guerilla warfare that allows an individual to snatch away power, territory and glory from a bigger and better equipped enemy. Banksy sees a social class component to this struggle, remarking â€Å"If you don’t own a train company then you go and paint on one instead. † Banksy’s work has also shown a desire to mock centralized power, hoping that his work will show the public that although power does exist and works against you, that power is not terribly efficient and it can and should be deceived. Banksy’s works have dealt with an array of political and social themes, including anti-War, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, nihilism, and existentialism. Additionally, the components of the human condition that his works commonly critique are greed, poverty, hypocrisy, boredom, despair, absurdity, and alienation. Although Banksy’s works usually rely on visual imagery and iconography to put forth his message, he has made several politically related comments in his various books.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Avoiding Prompt Dependency

A serious problem for special educators can be to create prompt dependence. In the effort to teach new skills we can create new barriers to success and independence by creating prompt dependence, where a student is unable to work without the application of prompting. The Continuum of Prompting Prompting lies on a continuum from Most to Least, or Least to Most. Most prompts are those which are the most invasive, the full physical prompt. From a full physical prompt, prompting progresses to partial physical prompts (tapping an elbow) and then through verbal prompting and gestural prompting. Professionals make decisions about how best to employ prompting, usually judging the ability of the student. Some students, who are able to imitate, should probably be taught a new activity by modeling with a minimum of prompting. Prompts are intended to be faded, or removed, so that the child can perform the new skill independently. Thats why verbal is in the middle of the continuum, since they can often be harder to fade than gestural prompts. In fact, all too often prompt dependence begins with constant verbal directions teachers give children. The opposite problem can happen as well, as children get tired of constant verbal nagging from significant adults. Plan Your Prompting If students have receptive language and have a history of responding to verbal directions, you will want to plan a least to most prompting protocol. You want to teach or model the activity, give the spoken directive, and then attempt a gestural prompt, such as pointing. If that does not elicit the response/behavior that you wanted, you would progress to the next level, which would be gestural and verbal, Pick up the ball (while pointing to the ball.) At the same time, your teaching may be part of a forward or backward chain, depending on the skill and the skill level of your student. Whether you forward chain ​or backward chain will depend as well on whether you anticipate that your student will succeed best at the first or last step. If you are teaching a child to make pancakes in an electric skillet, you may want to backward chain, and make removing the pancake from the pan the first step you teach, since the reinforcement (eating the pancake) is close at hand. In the same way, planning your task analysis and chaining strategy to guarantee success is a great way to avoid prompt dependency. Children with poor or not receptive language, who dont respond, will need to be prompted most to least starting with full physical prompting, such as hand over hand prompting. There is greater danger of creating prompt dependency when you start at this level. It would probably be good to vary activities, so the student does tasks he or she has mastered interspersed with activities that they are learning. In this way, they are completing unprompted activities while at the same time working on new skills. Fading Fading is planned withdrawal of prompting in order to avoid prompt dependency. Once you have seen the child provide a decent approximation of the behavior or activity you want, you should start withdrawing the prompt . . . perhaps moving to a partial physical prompt (touching the childs hand, rather than a full physical, hand over hand prompt) or to a verbal prompt, paired with re-modeling the activity. Quickly pulling back from the most invasive prompting as quickly as possible is probably one of the most important strategies in avoiding prompt dependency. It means accepting an approximation and moving on, rather than spending too much tie on a single repeated activity. The key, then, is to: Plan your prompting.Mix mastered skills with new skills,Accept approximations of the behavior and start withdrawing prompting andFade as soon as you can.