Friday, January 31, 2020

Caring for Cooper City Essay Example for Free

Caring for Cooper City Essay There are many factors affecting the health of this community. I believe lack of health education and access to health care are the primary problems. The problems of pinworms and anemia are most preventable with hygiene education and nutritional education. The high premature births and neonatal death rate can be addressed with pre-natal education and care. The ability for the mothers and care givers to access these services may be impaired because of lack of access to health care related to transportation and economics. A cultural norm in many of Hispanic families is both parents work at minimum pay jobs with no benefits, while a family member takes care of several children. This care giver is often an older person (grand parent or aunt) and often does not understand or speak English or is an adolescent that is not able to drive. Because of the noted issues accessing health care during â€Å"business† hours are impaired. It is difficult for the person that may have access to transportation and one that speaks English to arrange a day off to take the child and/or pregnant woman to their doctor appointments Because a large population of the Hispanics go to the Catholic Church getting the local priest or a trusted community involved may help with accessing the population. Information about the clinic, health education classes, and setting up a clinic in the Catholic Church on the weekend may all be options to improving health care. Health education in the schools is another way to get the message to the public. A school health fair or school projects focused on prevention may be ways to help educate the parents. Education of adolescent about birth control, pre-natal care and support are other methods to improve the health of the community. . The planning group will need to have many members of the community. Having someone from the city council, the local priest and pastor, a representative from the high school, a medical representative such as the local md, or nurse practitioner a cultural community representative and representatives of the local business would be the best task force mix. Having the community leader’s access funds to provide free transportation to the health clinics or having a mobile health clinic to access the outlying population. Another option is to have a clinic at the major employer’s place of business. All of the suggested health options will need the support and commitment of the community. As a community health nurse you can support and encourage that commitment.

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Wireless Speech Recognition -- Essays Papers

Wireless Speech Recognition Introduction In today's ever changing world, full of technology, there are many advances being made in the world of computing. This can be seen a great deal in the area of speech recognition. Machines, computers specifically, are interacting more and more with humans and these interactions can now be driven by human speech. For this technology to be used at its highest potential it will have to be affordable and accessible to all people in all types of machines. This technology will be seen from handheld computers and personal computers to lighting systems and refrigerators in your home(Deroult). This transformation is already occurring as speech recognition technology is making its way into our society in things such as cell phones, luxury cars, and computers. We will see more and more of this in our society until the technology has worked its way completely into our society and is common in many homes and offices. History of Speech Recognition The technology of speech recognition has come a long way and it is filled with many unsuccessful attempts at translating the human voice into something that a machine can understand, translate, and execute a command from accordingly. Many of society's views of speech recognition is a robotic, impersonal view, very similar to HAL in the movie 2001 : A Space Odyssey. We are now in the year 2001 and we are way past HAL in the field of speech recognition. The technology has come a long way from being able to detect only monotone, machine like language on an inconsistent basis. Today's technologies train the machine to learn how the user talks, and detect the speed of the user's speech, detect any accent the user may have, and other aspects that make each... ...rs that are not seen by humans. These computers will be everywhere and will fall into the backdrop of society. As they become more and more important and vital they will become less and less obtrusive and will make our lives easier thanks to speech recognition. Bibliography/Works Cited http://www.zdnet.co.uk/pcmag/supp/1998/speech/ Guide to Speech Recognition, PC Magazine. http://www.advisor.com/Articles.nsf/ID/OA000107.DERO01 The Future of Speech Recognition, Deroult, Anne-Marie. http://www.netbytel.com/literature/e-gram/technical3.htm History of Speech Recognition, NetByTel e-gram Bates, Regis J.. (2000). Voice and Data Communications Handbook. McGraw-Hill, New York, N.Y.. Hapgood, Fred. (2001) Speech interfaces are ready to listen. CIO Lamont, Ian (June 6, 2001) Speech recognition technology will hear you now Network World (June, 2001), pp34-40

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

General Motors Organizational Transition

General Motors Organizational Transition General Motors was founded by William Durant on September 16th, 1908. General Motors (GM) is an American based automobile manufacturing company. From its inception, GM has grown from a small Detroit, Michigan manufacturing plant to one of the top three auto manufacturers in America and the world’s second largest. GM has manufacturing plants in 35 countries and sells in over 200 countries. Throughout the years, recognizable brand names such as Oldsmobile, Opel, Cadillac, Pontiac and Chevrolet have become a part of GM. The company has branched out into the aviation and financial lending fields as well. Recent economic meltdowns have affected GM to point of bankruptcy in 2008. It took an American government bail-out in 2008 to save the company. GM then began an over-haul of its entire organization; including production, manufacturing, management structure and fiscal responsibility practices. The article, GM Organizational Change by Michelle Powers, published March 17, 2009, covers many points of the corporation’s transition from a traditional organizational model to a transformed organizational model. The article identifies how changing the organizational model impacted GM’s workforce, customer base and local communities that GM’s many arms of business were a part of, support systems that were put in place at GM to insure successful transition. Before the transition was put into effect, GM had a traditional hierarchical management structure and viewpoint. At the top of the structure was the president, who was answerable to only the board of directors, senior management and vice-presidents of varied departments were answerable to the president. On down the line there were division managers & supervisors and so on, then your average, regular employees. Having separate entities, such as Buick, Cadillac and other divisions operating differently from each other and the parent company was costly and ineffective in this â€Å"earth is flat† economic and communications era. GM North America President Mark Reuss, stated, â€Å"I could see clear as day that the mix and the structure of people just wasn’t right. These changes were necessary for GM to move faster and win. We need people who are change agents. After the economic troubles of the company, all aspects of how the company was run and directed were researched. Jack Smith GM’s CEO stated, â€Å"I had the opportunity to really structure the business in the way I thought is should be run. † GM has started to move their organization into what is called a transformed organizational model (TOM). A TOM does not have multiple departments, performing sepa rate tasks from others with different goals. It has taken several years to transform GM to an organization with a more centralized organization. The company set up The Automotive Strategy Board, a management committee to ensure that the CEO was informed and knowledgable of the company’s progress, trouble-spots, and over-all health. A monthly meeting is held with all the heads of all the regional departments even Global officials had to attend via phone. With this plan, all of the companies leaders were informed and were able to implement common goals and practices. The separate computer systems bogged down communications and often produced more mis-communication than not. A central software program was developed and implemented. All offices, administration staff, management, and employees were all trained on the new system world-wide. This level of development and training was costly. With the new level of stream-lined communications and universal usage, the system and training proved their worth. In the new Mishawaka, Indiana plant, GM has pioneered a teamwork concept called the Global Manufacturing System (GMS). Teams of workers have designed the jobs that are performed for each stage of the production process. The worker is supported first by his or her own â€Å"team†, a group of four or five workers assigned to perform specific tasks. The team is supported by a team leader. In turn, each group of four or five teams has the support of a group leader. In addition, each person is a member of a team assigned to perform specific tasks. Each team member is cross-trained for each other’s job. â€Å"Inherent in this process is everyone helps everyone. The whole focus, the entire focus, of GMS is to support the operator,† said AM General President and Chief Executive Officer, James Armour. So far, AM General has spent $35 million on more than 177,000 hours of training for employees. The plant(s) implementing the GMS model show more confidence in the workers. On the assembly line there are cords for each station in the event that a worker feels that there is a problem, he or she can stop the line at his or her discretion to correct the problem. The assembly lines are designed more ergonomically. Other plants use the straight-line assembly model where workers have to reach the line either by differing platform heights or outright reaching from the ground. The new plant has the assembly line rolling along for different heights for each portion of the production needed in that placement. Employees have more control over their life on the job. This has been leading to less management/labor disputes . The plant has a three-step grievance system and as of yet, no grievance has gone further than the first step. Not all plant employees who have been offered a transfer to the new GMS model have not been interested in a transfer. For some people the old way is working best for them. If this model continues to be successful, they might not have a choice about it for much longer. I believe that the changes GM has been implementing have improved the company overall. It seems that extensive research showed that getting the people of all levels throughout the company more involved with more aspects has had a positive impact. The use of teams has proved more effective than the solitary worker with a manager or supervisor to report to. Centralizing communications has put everyone on the â€Å"same page† for goal setting, problem solving, and share of information throughout the organization. The more information that is shared, the better for all concerned. The employees are more empowered with the chance to improve their production, implement their ideas, creativity and have more responsibility. The company has showed concern for the worker’s well-being, respect for their jobs and contributions to the company. That type of leadership gives the employees confidence in their leaders and their jobs. The entire over-haul of the company has predominately been concerned with OB. Corporate culture begins with OB. You cannot change a company for the better without taking into account the people who work at all levels for the company is not going to be effective on any level. GM has been recovering from its financial difficulties and these changes have had a major part in it. It has been showing consistent growth and profit for the last year. It has also been making it’s payments for the financial bail-out. I believe they are the only company who has done so. On top of that they have been running ads telling the people of America thank you and acknowledging their employees for their efforts at improving GM.

Monday, January 6, 2020

The Financial Condition And Economic Environment Of...

In this analysis we will investigate the financial condition and economic environment of Amazon.com, Inc., and the online retail goods industry, to assess and assign an appropriate weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for the firm. This analysis will examine each component of capital funding through the lens of multiple models, and consider the validity and sensitivity of each underlying lever. Lastly, this analysis will calculate a risk-appropriate cost of capital to be used in an enterprise firm valuation. Capital Structure Before we look into the costs of the firm’s capital funding, let us first consider the sources and structure under which Amazon operates. On a market value basis, Amazon’s current structure consists of 7.9% debt†¦show more content†¦Cost of Debt Financing As we look into the debt financing Amazon has opted to raise, it is important to separate the long-term bond issues from lease obligations as each requires special attention and in Amazon’s case, assignment of different required rates of return. For the long-term bond issues, we have elected to use a market pricing model – in yield-to-maturity (YTM) terms – as this represents the current market cost of raising debt capital at each given term to maturity. For the capital, financing and operating lease obligations, we chose to assign a risk appropriate market comparable rate. To do this, we took the various credit ratings assigned to Amazon, and applied a composite interest rate based on current market conditions. Using the ratings Baa1 from Moody’s, AA- from Standard and Poors, and BBB+ from Morningstar, we were able to assign composite estimate interest rates of 5.19%, 4.13% and 4.12% respectively. The Baa1 and BBB+ rates were retrieved from the St. Louis Federal Reserve database, while the AA- rating was an averaged rate using the AA (3.99%) and A (4.26%) ratings from Bondsonline.com to fully capture the AA- rating. When selecting the eventual rate to be used in our model, we opted to use the Moody’s rating and Baa1 and composite interest rate of 5.19% for several reasons. First, Amazon has been increasing its relative debt financing allocation