Ipl Scandals

————————————————- The  Indian Premier League  (IPL) is a professional league for  Twenty20  cricket  championship in  India. It was initiated by the  Board of Control for Cricket in India  (BCCI), headquartered in  Mumbai,Maharashtra[3][4]  and is supervised by  BCCI  Vice President  Rajeev Shukla,[5]  who serves as the league's Chairman and  Commissioner. It is currently contested by nine teams, consisting of players from around the cricketing world. ————————————————-However, the league has been engulfed byseries of corruption scandals. ————————————————- Controversies involving the Indian Premier League From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The  Board of Control for Cricket in India  (BCCI) has found itself in the middle of many conflicts with various cricket boards around the world as a result of the  Indian Premier League  (IPL). The main point of contention was that signed players should always be available to their country for international tours, even if it overlaps with the IPL season.To address this, the BCCI officially requested that the  International Cricket Council  (ICC) to institute a time period in the International Future Tours Program, solely for the IPL season. This request was not granted at a subsequent meeting held by the ICC. [1] Contents  Ã‚  [hide]   * 1  Conflicts with the England and Wales Cricket Board * 2  Media restrictions * 3  Conflict with Cricket Club of India * 4  Suspension of Lalit Modi * 5  Chirayu Amin named IPL interim chairman * 6  Termination of the Kochi franchise * 7  2012 spot fixing case * 8  References| ——â€⠀Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€- edit]Conflicts with the England and Wales Cricket Board Because the inaugural IPL season coincided with the  County Championship  season as well as  New Zealand's  tour of  England, the  ECB  and county cricket clubs raised their concerns to the BCCI over players. The ECB made it abundantly clear that they would not sign No Objection Certificates for players—a prerequisite for playing in the IPL. Chairmen of the county clubs also made it clear that players contracted to them were required to ulfill their commitment to their county. As a result of this,  Dimitri Mascarenhas  was the only English player to have signed with the IPL for the 2008 season. [2] A result of the ECB's concerns about players joining the IPL, was a proposed radical response of creating their own Twenty20 tournament that would be similar in structure to the IPL. The league — titled the  Twenty20 English Premier League  Ã¢â‚¬â€ would feature 21 teams in three groups of seven and would occur towards the end of the summer season. 3]  The ECB enlisted the aid of  Texas  billionaire  Allen Stanford  to launch the proposed league. [4]  Stanford was the brains behind the successful  Stanford 20/20, a tournament that has run twice in the  West Indies. On 17 February 2009, when news of the fraud investigation against Stanford became public, the ECB and  WICB  withdrew from talks with Stanford on sponsorship. [5][6]  On February 20 the ECB announced it has severed its ties with Stanford and cancelled all contracts with him. [7] ————————————————- [edit]Media restrictionsInitially the IPL enforced strict guidelines to media covering matches, consistent with their desire to use the same model sports leagues in North America use in regards to media coverage. Notable guidelines imposed included the restriction to use images taken during the event unless purchased from  cricket. com, owned by Live Current Media Inc (who won the rights to such images) and the prohibition of live coverage from the cricket grounds. Media agencies also had to agree to upload all images taken at IPL matches to the official website. This was deemed unacceptable by print media around the world.Upon the threat of boycott, the IPL eased up on several of the restrictions. [8]  On 15 April 2008 a revised set of guidelines offering major concessions to the print media and agencies was issued by the IPL and accepted by the  Indian Newspaper Society. [9] ————————————————- [edit]Conflict with Cricket Club of India As per IPL rules, the winner of the previous competition decides the venue for the finals. [10]  In 2009, the reigning Champions,  Deccan Chargerschose the  Brabourne Stadium  in  Mumbai. [10]  However, a dispute regarding use of the avilion meant that no IPL matches could be held there. The members of the  Cricket Club of India  that owns the stadium have the sole right to the pavilion on match days, whereas the IPL required the pavilion for its sponsors. [11]  The members were offered free seats in the stands, however the club rejected the offer, stating that members could not be moved out of the pavilion. [10][12][13] ————————————————- [edit]Suspension of Lalit Modi On 25 April 2010, the BCCI suspended  Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman, for â€Å"alleged acts of individual misdemeanours†.The suspension notice was served on him by Rajeev Shukla, BCCI vice-president, and N Srinivasan, the board secretary, sending an e-mail to the same effect. It followed a da y of negotiations with interlocutors attempting to persuade Modi to resign but pre-empted a potentially flashpoint at a scheduled IPL governing council meeting, which Modi had said he would attend. Modi was officially barred from participating in the affairs of the Board, the IPL and any other committee of the BCCI. [14] ————————————————- edit]Chirayu Amin named IPL interim chairman Chirayu Amin, an industrialist and head of the  Baroda Cricket Association, was named interim chairman of the IPL by the BCCI, following Lalit Modi's suspension. [15]  According to BCCI, many important documents were missing from the IPL and BCCI offices. â€Å"Many of the records are missing. The IT is asking for documents. We don't have them. We have asked BCCI CAO Prof Ratnakar Shetty to look into the missing records and papers,† said BCCI President Shashank Manohar. [16] — ———————————————- edit]Termination of the Kochi franchise On September 19, 2011, the newly elected BCCI president N Srinivasan, after the annual general meeting in Mumbai, announced that the Kochi Tuskers Kerala IPL franchise was terminated by the BCCI for breaching its terms of agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, each franchise has to submit a bank guarantee every year that covers the fee payable to the BCCI. The 2010-founded team was bought for Rs 1,550 crore and the consortium has to pay a bank guarantee of  156 crore every year till 2020. 17]  The consortium that owns Kochi is reported to have defaulted on an annual payment of  156 crores as a bank guarantee. In April 2010, the BCCI's working committee had rejected demands from Kochi and Pune Warriors for a reduction in their franchisee fees. The two new franchises, which made their debuts in 2011, had sought a 25% waiver on the grounds that the BCCI had stated in the bidding document that each team would play 18 league matches in a season. The schedule was later reduced to 14 matches per team. ————————————————- edit]2012 spot fixing case Main article:  2012 Indian Premier League spot fixing case On 14 May 2012, an Indian news channel  India TV  aired a  sting operation  which accused 5 players involved in  spot fixing. Reacting to the news, Indian Premier League president  Rajiv Shukla  immediately suspended the 5 uncapped players. The five players were,  TP Sudhindra  (Deccan Chargers),  Mohnish Mishra  (Pune Warriors), Amit Yadav,  Shalabh Srivastava  (Kings XI Punjab) and  Abhinav Bali, Delhi cricketer . [18]  However, the report went on to claim that none of the famous cricketers were found guilty.On the reliability of the report,  Rajat Sha rma, the  editor-in-chief  of news channel  India TV  quoted that the channel had no doubts about the authenticity of the sting operation and prepared to go to court. [19] Mohnish Mishra who was part of  Pune Warriors India  team for the season, admitted to have said that franchises pay black money, in a sting operation. Mishra was caught on tape saying that franchisees paid them black money and that he had received  1. 5  crore  (US$273,000)  from the later, among which  1. 2  crore  (US$218,400)  was black money. [20]  He was also suspended from his team. [21]

Opposing Viewpoints: Jefferson and the Lousiana Purchase

Jefferson Goes Against His Own Philosophy: Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana. The Louisiana territory encompassed all or part of 15 current U. S. states and two Canadian provinces. At the time, the purchase faced domestic opposition because it was thought to be unconstitutional. Although Thomas Jefferson agreed that the U. S.Constitution did not contain provisions for acquiring territory, he decided to go right ahead with the purchase anyway in order to remove France's presence in the region and to protect both U. S. trade access to the port of New Orleans and free passage on the Mississippi River. Thomas Jefferson was strongly anti-federalist. While he might have written the Declaration of Independence, he definitely did not author the Constitution. Instead, that document was mainly written by James Madison. Jefferson spoke against a strong fede ral government and instead advocated states' rights.He feared tyranny of any kind and only recognized the need for a strong, central government in terms of foreign affairs. He felt that all powers given to the National Government were enumerated. If they were not expressly mentioned in the Constitution then they were reserved to the states. By completing this purchase, Jefferson had to put aside his principles because the allowance for this type of transaction was not expressly listed in the Constitution. Jefferson's philosophical consistency was in question because of his strict interpretation of the Constitution.Many people believed Jefferson were being hypocritical by doing something they surely would have argued against with Alexander Hamilton. There were several effects of Jefferson's decision to go against his own philosophy. It can be argued that his taking liberties with the Constitution in the name of need would lead to future Presidents feeling justified with a continual i ncrease in the elasticity of the Constitution. Jefferson should rightly be remembered for the great deed of purchasing this enormous tract of land, but one wonders if he might regret the means in which he earned this fameNecessary and Beneficial Westward Expansion: Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase was one of the largest land deals in history. In 1803, the United States paid approximately $15 million dollars for over 800,000 square miles of land. The purchase spurred along the beginning of America's fascination with exploring the west. With the purchase of this new territory, the land area of America nearly doubled. This land deal was arguably the greatest achievement of Thomas Jefferson's presidency, but also posed a major philosophical problem for Jefferson.As a strong Republican, Jefferson did not believe in straying from the exact words of the Constitution. With the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson had clearly not followed his own strict interpretation of the Constitution. Federalist critics howled that the Constitution nowhere permitted the federal government to purchase new land. Jefferson was troubled by the inconsistency, but in the end decided that the Constitution's treaty-making provisions allowed him room to act. As a president, he wisely allowed for his own views to bend in order to better the nation as a whole.Although Jefferson’s view of strict-interpretation did not allow for the purchase, Jefferson’s actions were justified. Waiting for a Constitutional amendment might cause the deal to fall through. In 1801, Spain and France signed a secret treaty ceding Louisiana to France. France suddenly posed a potential threat to America. There was a fear that if America did not purchase New Orleans from France, it could lead to war. The change of ownership of this key port resulted in its closing to Americans. Therefore, Jefferson sent envoys to France to try and secure its purchase.With increased pressure, Jefferson decided to go thro ugh with the purchase. Luckily, the people of the United States basically agreed that this was an excellent move. The Louisiana Purchase demonstrates Jefferson's ability to make pragmatic political decisions. Although contrary to some of his central principles, guaranteeing western expansion was so important to Jefferson's overall vision that he took bold action. Increased resources, westward expansion, and a growing sense of national pride all resulted from the purchase. The gains were dramatic, as the territory acquired would in time add 13 new states to the union.

Work in partnership

Work in partnership in health and social care or children and young peoples settings. Explain the Importance of partnership working with: Colleagues Other professionals Others Working in partnership with other colleagues and professionals is detrimental in being able to provide a service fit for need as It helps promote team working which I believe motivates a team to work well and excel them. It also helps every person involved in providing the service aware of all obstacles that could arise and any outcomes to achieve or have been achieved.Within a children's setting it can also elf build positive environments for children to be in and this would help a child or young person settle better into a new environment so that you are able to assess a person or child and manage tasks efficiently. It helps creates a safe environment to share Information as nearly all professionals update themselves with technology, information can now be sent password protected Vela a encrypted system which deters others from being able to access a person's private information by a secure connection.Sharing information about a person can help the smooth running of a arrive as it enables all involved to be fully aware of each person's position and remit and allows others to know who to approach for feedback or guidance. Working In partnership with others I. E. Family members or careers helps with the smooth running of a service, as family members hold a lot of Information past and present about a person which can be used to build a care plan. Family are often keen to assist with service provision for a person and by working in partnership with them it creates positives relationships.You can put a person's mind at ease with regard to the level of support a person may need. If it is a child or young person a parent or guardian would need much reassurance to know that they are leaving the child In safe capable hands therefore It Is Imperative that pre assessments are carried out. We have in the past used an informal interview process for new services for a person who may have either complex or long term needs I. E. A waking night service. We would before the service is due to start we would set up an informal meeting at the clients home and arrange for 3-4 people to go and meet the client their family or NOOK.This would allow them to put any questions forward and explain specific tasks ND how they should be carried out. It also helps as when the service does start the person coming to assist Is not a stranger. This In turn helps a nook, guardian, parent or family member enjoy their respite without fear of the person not being able to manage. This has worked well on many occasions and this is something we intend to keep as a way of matching the correct care support assistant to the person who needs support.Partnership working can help to deliver better outcomes for all health and social care professionals from a commissioning, performance management, service delivery and arrive improvement purpose. As we move forward with new legislation and processes it is important to deliver person centered care. This means we need range of expertise, knowledge and experience in order to deliver the best possible service for an individual. From the outset we are able to use the information gathered from social worker assessment, hospital discharge letters care plans and risk assessment to produce a plan tailored for a specific person.For example we currently have client who requires support from a team of Care Support Assistants, District Nurse Teams and mental health community team. By working in partnership we are able to get up to date information and guidance on the person's condition and how to manage it from a professional point of view. We work well with arranging our service delivery around the schedule for the District Nurse's therefore we book out daily visits either before or after their due to attend for two reasons.We found that when we attended for a review meeting and there were too many people in the property this caused panic and distress to the service user it was agreed by all that any visits would be made by appointment only and by 2 people maximum, also due to the high demand ND limited resources District Nurse teams have, it worked well by planning our visits to a different time to their arrival so that they were not kept longer than they needed to be and vice versa for our staff.There is a Joint log book left in the property for any concerns or follow up actions to be taken and this is signed once the action has been acknowledged or completed. We worked with the service user to make this plan to minimize disruption and undue distress to him as by not following this plan could lead to a setback in his recovery which in turn would mean outcomes would not be met. Therefore in this instance and for most it shows that partnership working is how we proceed to working to ensure that outcomes are met efficiently and if t his cannot be achieved how we change our methods to enable achieved outcomes.Explain how to overcome barriers to partnership working. There can be many barriers to partnership working and most commonly arise due to a lack of experience, lack of time and a disregard for importance. Others include a lack of trust especially when it comes to children. There are many parents who initially will put a barrier up to professionals as they tend to feel that strangers are miming in to their home to tell them how to be a parent or how to look after their child. A good way of overcoming this barrier is to build a relationship with the family first, listen to the incidents, issues or concerns they have.By supporting them through the crisis/difficult time will build trust within the circle and helps them to make informed choices in a relaxed environment. Acknowledging each other's expertise for example a parent will feel they know their child better than any other person which is correct however a professional will have seen a child similar to the en they have been allocated to many times therefore with their Joint expertise this family unit not to criticism them and this can lead to positives outcomes and overcome barriers in partnership working.For adults it can be easier to break through these barriers especially if it is to support a person who has capacity. By speaking to them to conduct assessments you get to build a good idea of a person's character, need and attitude toward a service. It allows you to build a rapport with someone share stories and common interests if any. This can be relationship building. I recently had this experience with a service. I was contacted privately by a husband and wife who have physical disabilities, they are wheelchair and housebound without assistance.Upon speaking to Mrs. x it was clear she had some bad experiences with other providers. I decided to visit them in their home to get a broader picture of the service they wanted and pro blems they had in the past to try and work out how improve their opinions of care providers. Upon speaking to them it was clear that although they both have medical conditions that reduce their ability to be fully independent they were not totally incapacitated. They wanted to be treated s adults not children or elderly people who were not able to fend for themselves.They had social needs Just the same as those who are fully independent for example going to the cinema and shopping. Mr. x is a keen football fan and liked talking about sports. I believed I had gained some thrust and set about finding the ideal person to provide their service. We have had the service for approximately 1 year and in that time we have had to make changes to care workers who did not work out but the current Care Support Assistant has been with since February 2014 and all communication with Mr. and Mrs. is positive.It is in agreement that planned absences require a second and third person to cover their se rvice and shadowing the regular Care Support Assistant always takes place. By working together closely for those 3 months and investing my time in to rebuilding their opinion I feel I have worked in partnership with them and succeeded in overcoming the initial barriers that were there. Explain own role and responsibilities in working with colleagues. My role as the Service Team Leader/ Registered Manager firstly has a legal responsibility to ensure that everyone who is in receipt of a service is kept safe from risk, harm and abuse.It is my Job to ensure that all staff are fully equipped with knowledge and training to go into the field and demonstrate that they are able and suitable for the role they have been appointed to. It is my role to supervise the office staff to give guidance and support where necessary. Set tasks on week by week basis according to the needs of the business. I take the lead on any complaint or safeguarding referral we may receive and investigate. I am respons ible for the petty cash kept on site and to provide our accounts team each month of the breakdown of money spent.It is my duty to complete supervisions and appraisals for office and lied staff, maintain a good working relationship with local authorities. Providing my seniors with a monthly KIP report. Keep a professional boundary with all staff and service users. These are an example of what is expected of me in my role however I out of hours service on a Rota basis, provide all induction training for new applicants as well as refresher training for existing members of staff. Evaluate own working relationship with colleagues.To evaluate my own work I need to be able to request positive or negative criticism as to how I may have handled a situation so that I can learn from the experience and improve for next time. I need to be able to self evaluate and not Just rely solely on another persons opinion. By doing a self analysis I am able to pick up what my strengths and weaknesses are t o be improved. This can also help with the quality of my work and setting myself targets to achieve to feel a great sense of completion helps motivate me which in turn passes on a positive working environment on to my team to help all of us excel.I feel presently as I am very open and honest with all my staff and my approachable manor I feel that I am able to communicate well my expectations of how I believe the service should be run and this is passed on to field Taft and rarely do I feel I need to display any negative comments on to the team. We communicate by text and email with our field staff and I often send out messages of gratitude to those have worked well over weekends as there are many issues that could prevent a service running smoothly.I feel that by appreciating my staff at any level I have formed good working relationships however there is always a need for improvement. Explain own role and responsibility in working with other professionals. It is my role to build rel ationships with outside organizations such as local authorities, district nurse teams, hospital teams and social work teams. I take the lead with all safeguarding investigations and work with the professionals involved in resolving the issues raised.Although it is my duty to take the lead I expect my office to be able to share the responsibility to an extent for example if I am away from the office for any reason I. E. Annual leave or sickness, I expect the rest of the team to be able to conduct an initial investigation to gather facts and provide a summary of the incident or concern raised so that I can take over on return. I feel that this does not emit the office to one way of working or delay important tasks. It can also help promote personal development to enable a Junior member of staff to gain experience in order to progress either within or outside of our organization.It is my role to attend all contract meetings to discuss possible issues within our service or for feedback to passed back to our staff to give thanks appreciation for something we did well. Evaluate procedures for working with professionals. The procedure for working with other professionals remains the same across the board. Every person is expected to treat all they come into contact with, with respect, e adhered to at all times and personal information is not being discussed with those outside of the professional circle. Information relating to a person or child should be shared on a need to know basis and as agreed.Each professional is responsible for their own department and are expected to deal with matters as they arise within agreed timescales. Professionals are expected to work together to obtain the best possible outcomes in the safest way. Each person has a duty of care to protect those they care for from being subjected to any form of harm or abuse and to port any concerns to a senior person or to a care management team within a local authority. Professional opinions should b e sought from specialist teams before partaking in any task that could potentially cause concern.For example the procedure for reporting any concern or information regarding one of our clients from the local authority is to write a detailed email containing all the facts we have at hand. We then send this to the placements and brokerage email who are regarded as our contact team within this borough. This is sent via a secure website with password protection. They will then forward on to the relevant social work team in order for this to be either recorded or dealt with. We then if need be wait for a response and a resolution to the query and work together to reach an outcome.Analyses the importance of working in partnership with others. It is extremely important to work in partnership with others as every person wants the best level and quality of care for the person they are dealing with, acting on behalf of or have a personal relationship I. E. Parent, child, guardian NOOK. I feel the best outcome sought by all is the wellbeing, safety and happiness of the person or child who requires support. There is also a level of consistency for not only you but for the person or child you are supporting.Children need consistency especially if you are supporting a child who has autism. Children who live with this condition require a huge amount of support. They do not adapt well to change and require routine to help them have a good quality of life and experience. By not working in partnership with others it would not be possible to build and establish relationships, improve service delivery and help the child transition well to an adult. For an elderly person working in partnership helps them have a better quality of life by having a nit of support who know their needs and are familiar to them.By working in partnership it allows every person you support to access to different activities and support. It is also good to surround yourself and your settings with profession als from all backgrounds and groups and to create relationships so you can use, learn and share resources and experience to achieve outcomes. Evaluate procedures for working with others. Professionals. The main requirement is be honest, communicative and detailed in every aspect. It is important to seek consent and permission from the person or a hill guardian, parent or NOOK you are supporting before any tasks procedure or assessment takes place.It is important that you involve others in the care planning process in order to achieve the outcomes as they know themselves or their loved one best to know their strengths, weaknesses and desires to a service delivery. You are expected to treat others with respect and dignity. As part of our pre-employment paperwork all staff office and field base are expected to sign and adhered to the dignity promise. Continued regular monitoring and supervision ensures that others are adhering and receiving all aspects of the dignity promise.That any c oncern raised will be dealt with efficiently and professionally. It is more common for others to become upset and angry and may fall from treating people with respect. However this does not absolve a professional from completing their task, but it does mean that an increased sense of awareness needs to be adopted so that all can remain safe. We previously had a service user that all we was required to do was support him in taking his medication. Unfortunately his wife suffered with Dementia and she would often try and attack staff and make accusation that they were trying make her husband ill.After working with family the service user himself and other professionals it was decided that this call would be attended by two care workers. Although it did not require 2 care workers to support him to take the medication, the second care worker was sent in to distract his wife so that the first care worker could safely support him. This was due to all involved wanting the outcome to be safe . Mr. x was less anxious about the distress it caused upsetting his wife and being concerned for his own health if he did not receive his medication. We continued to monitor this new approach and all feedback was positive.

Cloud Computing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Cloud Computing - Essay Example The flipside of the application lies in its precarious state of security. Being accessible to a number of users and within any locality, cloud computing is highly insecure and the fear of interception, loss or unauthorized access of data exists. A SWOT analysis reveals the advantages that cloud computing offers to institutions and businesses organizations keen in embracing convenient and fast methods of data storage and accessibility while at the same time showing the mundane flaws involved. Chief among the strengths of cloud computing is the ability to integrate a number of applications into one system and offer the user a single product able to offer various services. This could be equated to an omnibus that carries various passengers and conveniently drops each one at his destination. The technology substantially reduces the costs incurred in investment. While the technology demands that the university pay close to seven thousand dollars, the other option of self investment would cost universities about three hundred thousand dollars. Other strengths are the mobility which essentially allows access of the data from any locality and the expanded memory capacity as its RAM is larger. This boils down to the availability of more space for institutions to store their ever increasing data (Beard). Cloud computing comes with inherent weaknesses. Ideally, any organization that decides to adopt cloud computing technology must inevitably adjust their models. A business organization for instance must adjust the business model in tandem with the cloud computing technology. This is synonymous to an overhaul and could be expensive especially for large organizations which already have established cultures. The biggest weakness in cloud computing, however, lies in the security of the technology. The technology being an amalgamation of various institutional applications in a remote

Innovation and Change Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Innovation and Change - Essay Example Innovation and commercialisation differ considerably from each other. Different types, sizes and markets of innovation have been clearly depicted in the paper. Several factors such as culture, organisational structure, its core competence and environmental scanning that play a vital part in innovation strategy have been mentioned in detail. Various issues and factors that make an organisation innovative have been discussed by citing examples. 2.0 What Is Innovation and Why Is It Important? Definition Innovation refers to an application of improved or new ideas to products, process, marketing or various other activities of a firm in order to increase its ‘value’. Value represents a wider approach to incorporate higher value added to the firm, benefits to consumers or other firms (Princeton University Press, n.d.). Innovation implies the process by which different degrees of quantifiable value improvement is planned as well as achieved in commercial activity. The processes by which innovation can be achieved are introducing new or improved products and services, executing improved operational process and implementing new managerial process (Business.Gov.in, n.d.). Importance In the present scenario, innovation is a key factor to maintain long run of business and organisation. Innovation facilitates to achieve competitive advantage over others. An organisation is involved in various innovative activities in manufacturing procedures, brand building, product improvement and others. Innovation facilitates to structure corporate life and also helps a company to develop various strategies. Various other significances of innovation in the industry encompass decrease in total cost of production, increase in income opportunity and maintenance of well-organised operating system. It also enables to observe probable acquisitions on the basis of cost as well as accelerating profitable top-line revenue growth along with increasing capabilities. The research and de velopment of the country can be expanded by innovation by means of most up-to-date technology in the country (Business.Gov.in, n.d.). Difference between Commercialisation and Innovation Innovation implies improvement with innovative technologies in various sectors in an organisation. Innovation process varies considerably depending on different industries and their product lines. In certain industries, such as pharmaceuticals, innovation depends greatly on scientific breakthroughs, while in electronics industry innovation develops from product and process design. Innovation takes on several characteristics during product as well as industry life cycles (Princeton University, 1995). Commercialisation refers to increase in profit from innovation in an organisation by integrating new technologies into processes, products and services and then selling them in marketplace. Commercialisation is contingent in industries of pharmaceuticals along with aircraft while receiving sanction of pro ducts from suitable organisations. Commercial success depends on the ability and skill of firms to develop and protect a proprietary benefit in the marketplace as it does on their capability to produce new scientific and technical advances (Princeton University, 1995). Several innovations are developed to the prototype stage and are produced in lesser amount, but it is not totally commercialised because the financial

Discuss and evaluate how teams function Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Discuss and evaluate how teams function - Essay Example Secondly, team members are interdependent which signifies their reliance on each other, which is the hallmark of teamwork (Thompson, 2008, p. 2). Thirdly, team members are bounded to each other and are relatively stable over a period of time. By boundedness is meant a finite and identifiable membership the composition of which is known to all members as well as outsiders; by stability is meant that there is tenure of membership. Fourthly, team members are empowered to manage their own work and exercise their discretion over the internal processes. They do not need constant permission or approval from the team leader or manager. Finally, teams operate within the context of a larger social system. Teams work alongside other teams and draw upon resources outside their team, from the larger social system (Thompson, 2008, p 3). Team characteristics may be summarized as follows (Zayed & Kamel, 2005, p.2): A team can involve as few as two people. A team is not a mere aggregate of individual s. More than that, it is an integrated unit that functions in a coordinated and complementary manner. A team’s success depends on the interdependent and collective efforts of various team members, not just a few individuals; each member makes a significant contribution to the team effort. Team members are likely to have significant impacts on one another as they work together. When tasks require multiple skills, experience and sound judgment, teams usually outperform the sum total of the work of separate individuals. Teams are found to be more flexible and responsive to changes in the environment and other unexpected events, compared to traditional organizational hierarchical structures or other forms of permanent groupings (Zayed & Kamel, 2005, p.1; Thompson, 2008, p. 6). Factors that make a team work Zayed & Kamel (2005, p.3) specify four requirements for teams to function well: (1) Team members must have an interdependent relationship with each other in the performance of their team activities. (2) This interdependence dictates that group members must interact through conversation or work activities. (3) A team is characterized by a condition of mutual influence between team members. (4) Teams have a common purpose such as accomplishing work, completing a project, or preparing a report. Aside from internal factors possessed by the effective team, there are external factors that have made the development of the self-managed team not only apropos but necessary. The first of these is the degree of specialization required in addressing an increasingly globalized environment. The globalization of the economy enables more organizations to form and, with the increasing complexity of productive activity, assume more specialized functions. This gives rise to a need for specialists in many fields, experts with indepth knowledge and training who are particularly equipped to assess and render competent decisions within their fields of expertise, more than a gene ral manager or team leader (Dyer & Dyer, 2010). The second factor is competition, where the global market is increasingly dominated by a few large firms who enjoy economies of scale and large profits. For these firms, teamwork is becomes a source of competitive advantage in coordinating the activities of the

The Neutron Electric Dipole Moment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

The Neutron Electric Dipole Moment - Essay Example A concise introduction and explanation of the different experimental techniques used in the study of neutron EDM are provided in this research work. These techniques include the room-temperature experiment, Ramsey’s technique, and the mercury magnetometer. A brief discussion of the prevailing systematic uncertainties such as the geometric phase effect is also included. A recent neutron EDM experiment, which is more sensitive and still in progress is also incorporated and detailed in this study. For over 50 years, the quest for an electric dipole moment (EDM) of a neutron has been a great endeavor in the field of physics.3 4 5 Ramsay’s search for a permanent EDM in the 1950’s leads the way to what seems to be an endless pursuit. Experimental sensitivity has increased significantly; in fact, it improved by more than 106 factor.6 An impressive breakthrough in improving the experimental sensitivity, accountable for every eight years or so, is shown in Figure 1.7 Despite such remarkable accomplishment, there was no EDM ever observed. The reason for this apparently obsessive behavior by a small group of dedicated physicists is that the observation of a nonzero neutron EDM would be evidence of time reversal violation and for physics beyond the so-called standard model of electroweak interactions. An essential point is that the standard model predictions of the magnitude of time reversal violation are inconsistent with our ideas of the formation of the universe; namely, the production of the presently observed matter-antimatter asymmetry requires time reversal violation many orders of magnitude greater than that predicted by the standard model. According to Steven Weinberg, the electric dipole moments may offer one of the most thrilling prospects for progress in particle physics; a bright future awaits prospective experiments because calculating electric dipole moments have been progressive recently.

ABSTRACT AND CONCLUSION for my critical communication event in recent Essay

ABSTRACT AND CONCLUSION for my critical communication event in recent history - Essay Example Critical communication encompasses several avenues, taking the simplest avenue at one point, and a complex one at another. These avenues include: the press, film, radio, television, internet and wireless communication. This paper will focus on individual critical communication avenues, and further define the interrelationship between and among these avenues in the context of an event in recent history. Emery Orto, a 6-foot 350-pounds suburban Chicago man, was denied flying with Southwest Airlines from Las Vegas to Midway because of his size (Netter, 2009; eTurboNews Inc., 2010). He was not ready to buy a second ticket nor did he communicate with the Airlines personnel properly so that they could see he was right by letting him board the plane and seeing for themselves (Monson, 2011). After the incident happened, there were a lot of people who were of the point of view that Orto should have been allowed to fly (Texas, 2009). But critically analyzing the situation, one comes to know that the Airlines personnel was only doing its duty by questioning Orto as by boarding him with only one seat booked would not only have made him uncomfortable but the comfort of other passengers sitting next to him was also at stake. The customer of size policy of South West Airlines (2011) states that, â€Å"Customers who are unable to lower both armrests and/or who compromise any portion of adjacent seating should proactively book the number of seats needed prior to travel†. This incident got media’s attention and became a hot topic just because of Orto’s ego and unwillingness to communicate with the Airlines personnel. I believe that Orto should have kept his ego aside. The personnel reports that Orto was offered to board the plane to show that he could fit in one seat without disturbing his seatmates, but he refused which shows irrational behavior and reluctance to

Compare Three Stocks Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Compare Three Stocks - Research Paper Example Its drug portfolio contains medicine of almost every discovered disease present on this earth. It is a renowned player in the drug industry and a benchmark for its practices as well. Abbot primarily serves retailers, wholesalers, hospitals and health care facilitators. As to date, Abbot’s market capitalization is 84.26B and its Enterprise Value is 93.96B. On December 31st, 2010 Abbot reported revenues of 38.44B and net income of 4.55B. It has 1.56B shares outstanding with a market price of $54.09/share. The quarterly growth of revenue calculated on a year-on-year basis is 13.20%. Amazon.com Inc is a service sector firm and belongs to catalog & mail order industry. The company was founded in 1994 and it is located in United States. The company is works as an online retailer in North America as well as internationally. The company focuses on selection, price and convenience of customers through its website. Moreover, it enables its customers to sell their product through Amazon and gives product developers a platform to market their products. As to date, Amazon.com’s market capitalization is 86.22B and its Enterprise Value is 85.50B. On December 31st, 2010 Amazon.com reported revenues of 43.59B and net income of 870.00 M. It has 454.75M shares outstanding with share price of $189.59/share. ... As to date, 3M Co.’s market capitalization is 56.34B and its Enterprise Value is 59.04B. On December 31st, 2010 Amazon.com reported revenues of 29.23B and net income of 4.26B. It has 700.84M shares outstanding with share price of $80.39/share. The quarterly growth of revenue calculated on a year-on-year basis is 9.60%. b. Calculate the average annual return for each stock. = Price at December 1st, 2010 = Price at December 1st, 2011 Abbot Laboratories (ABT): Amazon.com: 3M Co.: c. Which is the riskiest security and which is the least risky based on the SD? (Remember higher the standard deviation the riskier the stock will be). Standard deviation for the stock is calculated by taking stock price from Jan 1st,2011 to Dec 31st,2011. 3M Co.’s standard deviation is 6.61 Amazon.com’s standard deviation is 19.41 Abbot Laboratory’s standard deviation is 2.771 The riskiest security in terms of standard deviation is Amazon.com with 19.41. The stock price ranged from as low as $160.59 to as high as 246.71. The least risky security is Abbot Laboratory with more or less stable prices. The highest in year 2011 was price was $55.61 and lowest price was $45.07. 3M Co.’s stock had standard deviation of 6.61 with highest price of $98.19 and lowest price of 68.63. d. Please comment on the best performing stock and the worst performing stock and provide some justification. The best performing stock for a risk adverse investor would be Abbot Laboratories. The earnings have been stable over the year. However, for a risk taker it would be Amazon.com with quarterly revenue growth year-on-year of 43.90%. The standard deviation is high and the return associated with it is also high. For an investor who has held the stock for the whole year would enjoy a return of 10.58%.

Kevin's Dismissal Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Kevin's Dismissal - Case Study Example Davis' company rules define such conduct as gross misconduct with the result that the employee in question is subject to summary dismissal. This kind of conduct is considered gross conduct since the employer considers that machinery should be operated by a specific number of employees. The first issue is therefore whether or not such a standard and rule by Davis is fair and reasonable. Having regard to onerous duty placed upon the employee by virtue of Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, such a standard and rule is fair and reasonable in the circumstances. Section 2(2) provides as follows: "...the matters to which that duty extends include, in particular - the provision and maintenance of plant and systems of work that are, so far as is reasonably practicable, safe and without risks to health; the provision of such information, instruction, training and supervision as is necessary to ensure, so employees that is, so far as is reasonably practicable, safe, without risks to health, and adequate as regards facilities and arrangements for their welfare at work."1 This statutory duty on the part of the employer was preceded by a common law duty to provide for the health and safety of all employees.2 The House of Lords held in Wilsons & Clyde Coal Co. Ltd v English [1937] 3 All ER 628 that the duty was "personal to the employer."3 The duty to provide a safe place of work is for the safety of all employees and the nature of both the statutory and common law duty is such that it gives rise to what might be a strict liability. Having regard to the consequences of a breach of such duty it is not unfair nor is it unreasonable for Davis to have in place rules that require a designated number of employees to operate its machinery. It is assumed that should the machinery be under operated it could render the machinery unsafe with the result that Davis is liable for any resulting harm to its employees. Moreover in 1993 the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992 were implemented and fortified the nature of the employer's duty to provide a safe and healthy workplace. Upon a broad interpretation of the 1992 Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations that duty is unquestionably a strict duty. The 1992 regulations imposes upon the employer a continuing duty to ensure that all health risks are eliminated or at the very least minimized. This continuing duty is necessary: "...for the purpose of identifying the measures he needs to take to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed on him by or under the relevant statutory provisions."4 It therefore follows that the rule implemented by Davis to ensure that a specific number of employees operate machinery is fair and reasonable having regard to the statutory and common law duty to guard against risks to its employee's safety. Certainly Davis is entitled to take steps to ensure that the risk of harm associated with under manning the machinery is alleviated. In Walker v Northumberland County Council [1995] IRLR 35 it was held that once an employer becomes aware of the risk to employees' health, the employer is duty bound to take steps to alleviate that risk.5 Obviously, Davis has decided to alleviate the risk of harm by designating wilful failure to report to the

There are five questions with different marks so question with 15 Essay

There are five questions with different marks so question with 15 marks have more word count ...even the answers should be suppo - Essay Example The world trade organisation (WTO) is one such body which is a contract enforcing governments to maintain their trade policies within the agreed upon rules. The core objectives are to set and enforce rules for global trade, to offer a forum for negotiating and scrutinizing further trade liberalization and to settle trade disputes. In addition, WTO seeks to enhance transparency in decision making process, assist developing nations gain fully from global trading system and cooperate with other global economic organisations. These objectives are similar to those of GATT, but WTO pursues these goals more comprehensively.1 The new Australian government is taking severe steps in its bid to uphold the Absolute Protection for Wild Whales Act 2013. In addition, the government of Australia seeks to ban entirely the importation, distribution and sale of whale and whale products within its borders. The government gives reasons that Japan and other governments have been weak in upholding the laws stipulated in the international whaling commission. The international whaling commission was set to introduce zero catching limits for profitable whaling as well as keeping whale catch limits under scrutiny. All this was in a bid to enhance and foster the recovery of depleted whale populations. The ban applies to the vending of domestic products and products from foreign countries. This includes goods that Australian travellers bring into the country from abroad. Article I: 1 Article I: 1 of the GATT 1947 prohibits discrimination among like products coming from or destined for different countries. In the Canada-autos case, the measure at issue was Canada’s duty exemption for imports by certain manufacturers in partnership with Canadian value added. Automobile imports and imported automobiles materials were the product at issue. The appellate body/ key panel upheld that duty exemption was inconsistent to the article I:1 on the grounds that the article covers de jure and de fa cto unfairness. Moreover, the duty exemption at issue in verity was given only to imports from a smaller number of countries in which the exporter was associated with suitable Canadian manufacturers. Canada’s defence was abandoned on grounds that duty exemption was given to certain countries other than all manufacturers from all countries. In relation to Australian current issue, the country has not violated article I: 1 since the ban is not discriminatory in nature. The ban covers all aspects of whale products from foreign countries. Further, Australia is not discriminatory since it also bans whale products that Australian travellers bring into the country. One may argue that products brought by tourists do not constitute trade goods and thus this is discrimination. However, the country seals this loophole as people may exploit it to continue the usage and sale of whale products. Article III: 4 Article III: 4 were set in the case of Korea –various measures on beef; th e appellate body established three components that have to be fulfilled for the violation to arise. One, the traded in and national products at issue are â€Å"like products† that the determination is the issue at â€Å"law, directive, or obligation affecting their domestic sale, offering for sale, purchase, transport, delivery or sale†. The final component is that imported goods are given â€Å"less favourable† dealing than that given to like domestic products. In relations to article

Fast Food Essay Example for Free

Fast Food Essay The fast food industry has been growing more and more every year. There is a fast food restaurant in every corner. Since fast food is becoming so popular more and more people chose to go to a fast food restaurant daily. Fast food is a continuing growth industry in our country. Fast food restaurants continue to increase their popularity by lowering their prices and providing faster service for their customers. There is a huge competition between fast food restaurants and how they advertise can effect the business. There are many reasons as to why fast food has become so popular. One of the main causes is the simplest of them all, laziness. One of the main causes for the popularity of fast food is advertisement. There are fast food restaurants being advertised of billboards, at some schools, on the internet, and on television. Most fast food advertisements are directed to young people because they are easily persuaded. According to Haugen, young people in America are bombarded with advertising every day. A young person does not usually think of their health or other important factors that could become of eating fast food constantly, they just think that it’s what they want because they saw it on the television. Haugen states, â€Å"Marketers reach them through commercials on television and also through ads in magazines, on billboards, on the internet and even in the bathroom stalls at school† (Haugen 2008). It seems that there is no escape from fast food marketing for children. It is everywhere they turn. It is sad that advertisement companies have found so many ways to get to children to make them want to consume their product because for most of them it results in obesity. One of the most successful advertisement products comes with the kid’s meal, the toy. Many children insist on their parents buying them that meal, from that particular fast food restaurant, because they want the toy that comes with the kid’s meal. Since fast food has become so popular it has resulted in obesity for many children. The children are drawn to the fast food because of the toys that come with the meal and how it is advertised to be more appealing to children. Since the effect of fast food on children has been so drastic many fast food restaurants now have healthy choice kid meals that come with a toy as well. This could be a great alternative to help children eat healthy. Since many people have such demanding schedules they resort to fast food. According to Simplicity of Thinking, the main cause for the current expanding of fast food restaurants is that they fit with the needed speed of living everywhere (SOT 2011). This means that with an individuals busy schedule they do not have enough time to prepare a meal in the morning so they resort to fast food. An example given states that throughout the day an individual may sometimes resort to fast food more than once in order to make their life easier. Fast food makes it possible to eat on the go and live life uninterrupted. According to Think Free, since the popularity of fast food has grown people have become addicted to fast food. Eating fast food develops the habit and addiction to this kind of food (Rokotmivo 2009). the secret recipes of fast food restaurants have hidden components, regardless if they are healthy of not, they are always included in the meal. This is what makes each fast food restaurant distinct from another and makes you want to return to that same one to get that same taste that you have become addicted to. For example, getting a cheeseburger from Burger King will taste different than ordering a cheeseburger from Carls Jr. even if it is ordered with the exact same condiments. This is because of the secret ingredient that each burger has that sets it apart from other fast food restaurants. When people are addicted to fast food they will find natural and typical food less delicious and no longer satisfies their needs. Having fast food be an easy resort to cooking a meal and taking someones time away from them it has caused it to become more popular and has still effected many people in having a poor diet. Fast food is not just convenient it is also inexpensive. According to Food for Thought, a new national study of eating out and income shows that fast food dining has become more popular with lower income families (FFT 2002). Fast food has become more popular with those of lower income families. With the specials and the great deals like the dollar menu it is less expensive than preparing a meal for some families. This results in more people going to fast food restaurants. If some fruit at a grocery store costs a dollar or sometimes maybe more, people would rather go to a fast food restaurant and get something more filling like a cheeseburger off of the dollar menu. With the economy so bad it is easy to see why many people resort to fast food over going to the grocery store. It is not only easier but in some cases it is less expensive. One of the main causes for the popularity of fast food is that people are simply lazy. It is true that many people havve the time and the means to cook a decent meal for themselves or their family but they resort to fast food simply because it is an easy alternative. Why is there a need to cook when it would be faster to just go to a fast food restaurant since there is one at almost every corner and order something. The lazy factor of many people has resulted in obesity. Fast food also makes a persons body want to be less inactive. After eating something from McDonald’s an individual would most likely want to take a nap or just relax and watch a movie. The effect that fast food has on the body is never good, whether its laziness or obesity. In conclusion, the cause of the popularity of fast food is great advertisement, its easy and fast, and people are lazy. The effects of fast food has resulted in it being everywhere, whether its advertised on television, on billboards, or in schools, and found on every corner. Fast food has led to many people being obese and addicted to the unhealthy choices they offer. The more popular fast food has gotten the more fast food restaurants are being built to reach the demands of society. Fast food for some people can rule their lives.

The UK Construction Industry: Impact of the Recession

The UK Construction Industry: Impact of the Recession INTRODUCTION Chapter 1: Background Information According to the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), the UK construction industry has 250,000 firms employing 2.1 million people, and contributes 8.2 percent of the nations Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Construction companies provide employment for every skill level from labourers to architects as well as the opportunity to work for every size of firm from family run businesses, to major contractors. Its efficient operation and competitiveness is also essential to the fulfilment of the Governments commitment to improve public services and infrastructure. The delivery of new schools, hospitals, affordable housing, eco homes, all depend on the success of the construction sector to deliver. Key issues the construction industry is facing in 2009 With cut-backs, uncertainty and more red tape it looks as if 2009 will be a challenge. To say the year has been one of turmoil and change is an understatement. The reeling financial markets and the swelling sense of gloom overshadowing the general economic outlook have, naturally, a corollary in the construction industry always a lag barometer for the economic climate. And the uncertainty is far from over. If some experts are correct, we may be witnessing just the initial battering of the storm. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, has admitted it is likely that the country is heading for a â€Å"prolonged and painful recession†. In the last twelve months, the national and global situation has worsened. So in this light, below are the authors predictions for the biggest issues that UK construction will face. Skills The recession is forcing employers to look at restructuring and, ultimately, redundancies. For an industry that has enjoyed a boom for years, this is going to be a massive change of mindset employers need to be very careful they manage any redundancies properly or we will see an increase in litigation in this area. However, and perhaps perversely, the industry will continue to suffer major skills shortages, particularly in the South-east, where 2012 is a tremendous opportunity, but one which casts a skills shadow. This time, project management skills will be in short supply, due to lack of training facilities or lack of investment in education sponsoring from construction companies, rather than labour, where the situation regarding migrant workers who may be returning to their native countries will continue to remain unclear into 2009. Sectors like caring, which still needs a lot of people will attract all the labour force. Temporary workers Agency workers are soon to be given similar rights to permanent staff. It is proposed that the law will change in 2010. The new law will mean that after 12 weeks on assignment, an agency worker will be entitled to ‘equal treatment meaning the same basic working and employment conditions as a comparable permanent employee, including equal pay, notice and holiday entitlement. For an industry that employs a large volume of temporary workers, this is going to be an administrative and financial challenge that will really make itself felt in 2009. Health and safety The recent downward trend in construction-related injuries may well be over, and 2009 could see a significant increase since contractors will be looking to cut down costs on training and overlooking basic safety measures. There are suggestions that considerably different levels of adherence to health and safety rules are due to the rapid influx of migrant workers. Different people behave and act in different ways although all working for UK construction companies. There are some people who are very meticulous about their work and adhere to each and every smallest safety precautions while there are others who can consider petty measures as time wasting. If evidence of this emerges in 2009, we could expect the industry to experience a crackdown from the HSE. We expect to see increasing postponement of Local Authority maintenance work, which will hit small contractors and subcontractors the hardest. The Government is talking about major investment in new schemes. The consequence is that, even allowing for more lending, spend will have to be clawed back from somewhere. It seems inevitable that this will be from maintenance. This will be counter-productive, as maintenance work which puts money into the pockets of smaller contractors, quickly is usually the fastest way to stimulate the economy. House building For what seems like forever, the Government has been hugely vocal about its target for three million new homes by 2020 and 10 ecotowns by 2020. As Construction News reported, housing minister Margaret Beckett is already re-articulating these as â€Å"ambitions† and â€Å"hopes†, rather than firm commitments. (from www.cnplus.co.uk/story.aspx) It would seem inevitable that â€Å"ambitions† might be downplayed further and become â€Å"future aspirations† before long. This will provide more worry for subcontractors who rely on the house-building sector for some of their work. The fact that the UK is still suffering a major shortage of housing particularly affordable housing, regardless of falling house prices does mean, however, that this semantic juggling will only be a 2009 phenomenon. Top 20 Construction Companies Q2 2009 The Top 20 construction companies league table, by construction news, ranks the UKs 20 biggest construction companies by turnover and profit, as follows. The table is updated quarterly, and was last updated inJune 2009. New Infrastructure New infrastructure output in the 12 months to the first quarter of 2009 was 7 per cent higher compared with the previous 12 months and the first quarter of 2009 was 2 per cent higher compared with the previous quarter. The outlook is becoming increasingly gloomy as the worsening economy hits the capital. London escaped the worst of the construction slowdown for much of 2008. Indeed, the value of underlying work starting on site fell by just 3 per cent in 2008. But construction starts in London fell sharply in the fourth quarter of 2008 as the worsening economic conditions took hold. The value of underlying construction starts has continued to slide during the opening months of 2009, with starts during the three months to February 35 per cent down on a year earlier. With financial and property related firms reducing their workforces, many developers have put planned construction projects on hold. The value of underlying office starts, which accounted for about a quarter of the value of underlying construction starts during 2007, fell 21 per cent last year. That said, some developers are still pressing forward with major office projects. Tighter mortgage conditions and sustained pessimism in the residential housing market are now severely impacting private housing construction in London. Having held up well during the first half of 2008, sector starts in the capital are now following a similar trend to the rest of the country. The value of underlying construction starts was  £150 million in the fourth quarter 2008, down 73 per cent on a year earlier. Construction prospects in London are becoming increasingly gloomy. The value of projects in the pre-construction pipeline has fallen away sharply, with underlying planning approvals falling by 36 per cent in value during the fourth quarter of 2008. Large projects are a significant feature of construction activity in London. At first glance the preconstruction pipeline for large projects looks promising. However, given the current economic climate, there is likely to be a higher than normal proportion of planned large projects to be either delayed or abandoned. This is due to the fact that the government is planning to spread its restricted allowable budget across several other vital sectors such as education and health. Nonetheless we should breathe a sign of relief when looking at big projects such Cross rail where preliminary works have begun this year and construction starting in 2010. We should also be looking at temporary relief projects such as the Olympics which need to be completed by mid 2012. These important projects are acting like a lifeline for major construction companies, while waiting for the bad economic climate to change a bit. Overall, construction starts has significantly deteriorated in 2009, which has affe cted small contractors a lot but there is still a glimmer of hope for major firms with very few massive projects. Chapter 2: History of recession The word recession has several meanings. The simplest one could be, a recession happens when our neighbour losses his or her job, and it is a depression when we are made redundant. Economic textbooks tell that a recession is what happens when the economy shrinks for six months on the trot. GDP is used to measure the size of the economy, and when the figures go negative for two successive three months periods (or quarters) the technical definition is met (from http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5753844.ece). When recessions are prolonged past several months, they become depressions. Unlike recession there is no widely accepted textbook definition of a depression, although some say it comes when GDP shrinks by a total of 10 per cent. It will feel distinctly like a depression if a recession goes on for more than a year. After two years, talk of recessions is sure to be replaced by ultra-glum references to depression. Credit crunch timetable Year 2007 In February HSBC gives an early sign of the crisis to come when it warns of higher than expected mortgage defaults in its US business. In August BNP Paribas suspends three funds exposed to sub-prime mortgages. European Central Bank pumps â‚ ¬95 billion into the markets. In September Northern Rock seeks emergency funding. First run on a UK bank for more than 140 years. In October UBS, of Switzerland, is the worlds first major bank to announce losses from sub-prime-related investments, totalling $3.4 billion. Year 2008 In February Northern Rock is nationalised. In March Bear Stearns, the US investment bank, seeks emergency funding and is sold to JP Morgan in a cut-price deal, sparking week of turmoil in stock markets. In April Nationwide records first annual house price fall for 12 years. In September Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank, goes bust. Bradford Bingley is nationalised. In October The Icelandic banking system collapses. Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS are partly nationalised. Year 2009 In January UK officially enters recession. In March Base rate cut to 0.5 per cent. The credit crunch refers to a sudden shortage of funds for lending, leading to a resulting decline in loans available. A Credit Crunch can occur for various reasons: Sudden increase in interest rates (e.g. in 1992, UK government increased rates to 15%) Direct money controls by the government (rarely used by Western Governments these days) A lack of liquidity in the capital markets The recent credit crunch was driven by a sharp rise in defaults on subprime mortgages. These mortgages were mainly in America but the resulting shortage of funds spread throughout the rest of the world. Steps to 2007 / 08 Credit Crunch US mortgage lenders sell many inappropriate mortgages to customers with low income and poor credit. It is hoped with a booming housing market, the mortgages will remain affordable. Often there was lack of controls in the sale of mortgage products. Mortgage brokers got paid for selling a mortgage, so there was an incentive to sell mortgages even if they were too expensive and high chance of default. To sell more profitable subprime mortgages, mortgage companies bundled the debt into consolidation packages and sold the debt on to other finance companies. In other words, mortgage companies borrowed to be able to lend mortgages. The lending was not financed out of saving accounts, for example. These mortgage debts were bought by financial intermediaries. The idea was to spread the risk, but, actually it just spread the problem. Usually subprime mortgages would have a high risk assessment rating. But, when the mortgage bundles got passed onto other lenders, rating agencies gave these risky subprime mortgages a low risk rating. Therefore, the financial system denied the extent of risk in their balance sheets. Many of these mortgages had an introductory period of 1-2 years of very low interest rates. At the end of this period, interest rates increased. In 2007, the US had to increase interest rates because of inflation. This made mortgage payments more expensive. Furthermore, many homeowners who had taken out mortgages 2 years earlier now faced ballooning mortgage payments as their introductory period ended. Homeowners also faced lower disposable income because of rising health care costs, rising petrol prices and rising food prices. This caused a rise in mortgage defaults, as many new homeowners could not afford mortgage payments. These defaults also signalled the end of the US housing boom. US house prices started to fall and this caused more mortgage problems. For example, people with 100% mortgages now faced negative equity. It also meant that the loans were no longer secured. If people did default, the bank couldnt guarantee to recoup the initial loan. The number of defaults caused many medium sized US mortgage companies to go bankrupt. However, the losses werent confined to mortgage lenders, many banks also lost billions of pounds in the bad mortgage debt they had bought off US mortgage companies. Banks had to write off large losses and this made them reluctant to make any further lending, especially in the now dangerous subprime sector. The result was that all around the world, it became very difficult to raise funds and borrow money. The cost of interbank lending has increased significantly. Often it was very difficult to borrow any money at all. The markets dried up. This affected many firms who had been exposed to the subprime lending. It also affected a wide variety of firms who now have difficulty borrowing money. For example, biotech companies rely on ‘high risk investment and are now struggling to get enough funds. The slow down in borrowing has contributed to a slowing economy with the possibility of recession in the US a real problem. Credit Crunch in the UK UK mortgage lenders did not lend so many bad mortgages. Although mortgage lending became more relaxed in the past few years, it still had more controls in place than the US. However, it caused very serious problems for Northern Rock. Northern rock had a high percentage of risky loans, but, also had the highest percentage of loans financed through reselling in the capital markets. When the subprime crisis hit, Northern Rock could no longer raise enough funds in the usual capital market. It was left with a shortfall and eventually had to make the humiliating step to asking the Bank of England for emergency funds. Because the Bank asked for emergency funds, this caused its customers to worry and start to withdraw savings (even though savings werent directly affected) As a result of the credit crunch, the UK has seen a change in the mortgage market. Mortgages have become more expensive. Risky mortgage products- like 125% mortgages have been removed from the market. UK Banks continue to face problems. HBOS (Owner of Halifax) struggled to finance its balance sheet. Like Northern Rock, it financed an expansion of lending by borrowing. Now money markets have frozen up, they couldnt raise enough money to maintain liquidity. Falling House prices. Now that mortgages are difficult to get, demand for houses has slumped. Therefore, house prices have fallen. Lower house prices mean many face negative equity. Therefore, mortgage defaults now cost banks even more (because they cant get back the initial loan. Bradford Bingley was nationalised because it couldnt raise enough finance. The BB had specialised in buy to let loans, which are particularly susceptible to falling house prices. How long will the Credit Crunch Last? The credit crunch could last a long time. This is because: House prices are still falling in the US, reducing the value of mortgage loans Many homeowners still face rising interest rates, when their introductory periods come to an end It can be difficult to regain confidence in the financial markets A recession in the US and global downturn could cause a further rise in bad loans The cheerfully named Profile of Depression shows the fall in UK economic growth, as measured by GDP, following some ofthe key slumps of the past century. It compares these to todays crisis. It illustrates the level of fear among experts about the financial hurricane that has disabled Britain -the ‘Noughties bust had, until very recently, actually been worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s (although it was less ‘Great in Britain than it was in the US, where GDP shrank by more than 25%). LITERATURE REVIEW Chapter 3: Effects of recession on UK construction Industry First of all, some uncomfortable facts and figures: 4,500,000 people on council house waiting lists 300,000 construction jobs in danger across the sector 90,000 predicted job losses for Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) builders 71 percent fall in workload for the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) private house builders 61 percent FMB companies expecting lower workloads in 2009 quarter one 60 percent FMB companies reporting fall in workloads for fourth consecutive quarter 52 percent FMB builders warning they will be making staff cuts over the coming months 16 percent house price fall to date 8 construction companies going into insolvency every day 7.5 percent fall in building prices in the last quarter of 2008. The construction industry has been particularly badly hit as a result of the credit crunch and the down turn in the housing market. The industry is facing its biggest challenge for many years. The indicators are that many will struggle to survive in the current market, with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) predicting the loss of over 300,000 jobs within the industry and with 52 percent of FMB members warning that they will be making staff redundant over the coming months. There is currently a crisis in the housing market with many first time buyers unable to get a mortgage let alone afford a first home. Alongside this there are more than 90,000 families living in temporary accommodation and 1.6 million families on council house waiting lists; the case for building new homes is therefore very clear. However, news from the National House Building Council shows new home starts being at their lowest level since 1924. The authors feel that current proposals to deal with this desperate situation dont go far enough in tackling the real problems affecting the UK construction industry and the wider housing sector. If the UK construction industry is to have any realistic chance of surviving this recession, these 10 key issues need to be addressed to kick start the building industry. The effects of the recession are affecting all aspects of the UK national economy. In December 2008, the construction sector shrank at its fastest pace since records began. The most considerable decline was registered in house building, while the civil engineering and commercial sub-sectors also fell at record rates during that month. As well as the decline in the housing construction sector, the housing market has also slumped. According to the Halifax, house prices fell 16.2% in 2008, the biggest annual decline since it began keeping records in 1983. This has made buying a home more affordable when set against earnings than at any time since April 2003. However, getting a mortgage is difficult for many. Data from the Bank of England showed the number of mortgage approvals fell to 27,000 in November 2008, representing at least a nine-year low (from BBC News, 2 January 2009, www.news.bbc.co.uk). Roy Ayliffe, Director of Professional Practice at the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, said: Once again, the housing sector bore the brunt of the crisis as purchasing managers reported significant reductions in new business. Amidst a climate of doom and gloom, firms were forced to axe more jobs in preparation for what is set to be another year of trouble and turmoil. (from Times Online, 5 January 2009, www.timesonline.co.uk) The UK government has plans for public spending and it is hoped that these will include major construction projects, such as roads, schools and other public buildings. This would help the construction industry and those companies that supply the construction industry to ensure continued employment for many. Businesses in the construction industry therefore need to ensure they remain competitive during this difficult economic climate. At the same time, they need to prepare the business to be able to take advantage of any future upturn in the market. Everyone knows the downturn has hit the industry badly. But research commissioned by The Construction News from Emap Glenigan shows the true extent of the contraction, how it breaks down by sector and region, and what the likely outcome for the rest of the year will be. Parts of the industry private housing, offices and industrial are badly affected by the deteriorating economic conditions and the credit crunch. The situation is brighter for those with jobs in infrastructure and the Olympics, although neither of these will be enough to sustain overall industry activity. Historically, economic growth below two per cent has been associated with falls in construction output. Last month, GDP growth for the second quarter was revised down to zero. Consensus forecasts suggest prospects for growth will slow even further in 2009. The gloomy economic conditions have led to a sharp fall in the flow of new projects in the pre-construction pipeline. Glenigan expects construction starts in the UK will fall by five per cent in value during 2009. Private housing has been most affected by the credit crunch. The reappraisal of risk by the banking sector has arguably led to more appropriate criteria for accessing credit. However, as a result the asset price bubble in the housing market has burst. This is causing a long-term contraction in demand since prospective buyers can no longer borrow as much to finance house purchases. Inevitably, those in private housing construction will have to find a way to either cut per unit costs or, more likely, adjust to a new, much lower, level of housing demand. The impact of the credit crunch on other private sector parts of construction industrial, offices, retail and hotels is different. These sectors have not suffered from the asset price bubble evident in private housing. However, investment in each of these sectors is affected by the prevailing economic conditions. As such, the immediate outlook is bleak but, with the Olympics on the horizon, construction prospects for the sector should start to improve in the latter half of 2009, when all major works will need to be started in order to be ready for 2012. The Government has had an ambitious construction-related spending programme across a number of sectors. Education and health in particular will benefit from an increase in the value of construction projects this year. But the Government is not immune to the economic slowdown. The absorption of Northern Rock has already put the Governments finances under pressure. Falling retail sales, rising unemployment and a decline in the profitability of UK firms will reduce tax receipts and add to its difficulties. Looking forward, the poor state of Government finances may jeopardise some of its proposed construction schemes. Major infrastructure projects will continue to help buoy the UK construction industry. Projects such as the widening of the M25 motorway and Crossrail are set to provide a boost to the sector. Ongoing projects such as Thameslink and the Edinburgh tram line will continue to contribute to the sectors workload for some time yet. Outside transport, the sector should also benefit from increased capital expenditure by water and electricity utilities. At present, the macroeconomic and sector-specific conditions are having a much bigger impact on the UK construction outlook than regional factors. Regional variations Differences in the composition of construction sectors within each region explain much of the variation in the regions respective prospects. For instance, regions where industrial construction is relatively significant, such as the West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside, will see the value of construction starts contract this year. The North-east, which has relatively less exposure to private housing than other regions, is faring better. Construction orders down 9% as property market slumps New orders in the British construction industry have continued to plunge as building firms are battered by the credit crunch. The Office for National Statistics said that orders fell by 9% in the three months to November, compared with the previous three months. They were 27% down on a year-on-year basis. The figures showed that new construction orders were particularly weak in November itself, diving 38.6% year-on-year. The private housing sector was a major casualty, with new orders down by 55% compared with a year ago. All the UK house builders have dramatically reined in their activity and cut jobs as the housing market has slumped. Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, said the data showed that the construction sectors recession deepened markedly in the fourth quarter of 2008. He sees little prospect of conditions improving soon. â€Å"With housing market activity and prices likely to remain depressed for some considerable time to come and the commercial property sector in dire straits, the construction sector looks set for extended weakness, despite some support from the government bringing forward some public construction activity and infrastructure spending as part of its fiscal stimulus package,† Archer said. Accountants Grant Thornton said that the construction and property sector was set to be the worst casualty of the economic downturn in 2009, plummeting by 75% in profitability and 71% in turnover from the same period last year. Clare Hartnell, head of property and construction at Grant Thornton, said: â€Å"Profitability and turnover within the construction and property sector are significantly driven by sales and market value; 2008 was a turbulent year as credit dried up and confidence plummeted, causing house prices and the number of properties sold to fall sharply. The decline in the residential market consequently has had a knock-on-effect on the construction sector, where problems have been exacerbated by huge debts as many proposed developments have been put on hold.† http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tnuPqsRPvjute_-qBacPptQoid=4output=image The year 2009 is set to be a trying year to say the least. Part of the reason for this is the current state of the economy. Lack of available credit will have an adverse effect on the ailing construction and property sector. http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tnuPqsRPvjute_-qBacPptQoid=6output=image The June Glenigan Index reveals that promised government funding has finally begun to filtering through to project starts. In particular a rise in educational, health and social housing projects starting on site have helped steady the Index, cutting the year-on-year decline to 20%. Workload trends: Infrastructure Infrastructure saw the value of underlying planning approvals (covering schemes under  £100M) fall sharply last year. Whilst the fall appears to have dampened the flow of project starts, with the value of underlying project starts during the first five months of 2009, 13% down on a year earlier, the overall prospects for the sector are bright. With the help of the new infrastructure planning commission, it is hoped that new planning consents for key projects can be accelerated. Impact of the recession on supply chain The construction industry has got the largest supply chain, compared with other industries. It ranges from mere nails to large modular constructions. It has been a major contributor since the dawn of this industry and has risen in vigour and strength over the years. Its integration with our industry has created a revolution that triggered the rise of new technologies powered by their contribution. This general introduction, gives us a fair knowledge of the value of supply chain to the construction industry. When this unexpected recession struck the markets with tremendous force, the construction industry felt the tremor, and its repercussions were felt throughout its branches. As the properties and developments went down, demand dropped, which in-turn left the developers with no option but to suspend majority of their works. The great â€Å"feeders† supply chain took its toll. Demand for their products vanished. Then the only rule of law that applies is â€Å"Survival of the fittest†, i.e. the one who could bring best deals could survive (both in price and Quality) and others would go bust. By and large the prices soured. Illustration with an example would clearly explain what the authors are trying to convey. Major components of our industry are cement, ready-mix, rebar and structural steel. Their price variation could indicate the trail recession took. http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tnuPqsRPvjute_-qBacPptQoid=2output=image All major supply resources have dropped in price dramatically one or the other time, to merely survive this recession rather than making profit. One of the major suppliers, now are for the ODA. Even they are experiencing the crunch. All the pre-allocated works, which assured definite return, are re-examined to align with the new prices. This has created friction, and even few of them moved on for adjudication. ODA has awarded contracts to around 1036 suppliers, most of which are small to medium sized businesses. This is a government initiative to prop up the middle class players, and there-by securing best deal contracts. Similar public investments could be seen in the health and education sectors, which form large part of the construction order-book and keep the pressure off. The main issue here is the growing trend of irresponsible pricing to win the scarce bids. That is, pricing below the cost. Many experts have warned of the return of industrial dispute culture of the 1980. This could ruin the objective. Recessionary impact was clearly felt when private investments dried up and forced the government twice to dip into the contingency budget. Due to this ill demand, there has been deterioration in construction product manufacturing. All heavy side manufacturers and 91% of light side manufacturers reported that sales had fallen; unprecedented results have been collected, research shows

Effect of Tissue Culture Plastic Surfaces

Effect of Tissue Culture Plastic Surfaces Summary: The design of this experiment was conducted in order to analyse the effect of tissue culture plastic surface and establish the optimal tissue culture plastic surface for growing the Human Fibrosarcoma HT 1080 cell line, which is still lacking even this human cell line is commonly used in vitro studies and it is strongly recommended as a gold standard for the Lentivirus titration. In this context it appears especially interesting to which extent the HT1080 cell line proliferation depends on which type of tissue culture plastic plates were used in any experiment. In this study we optimized the growth and the proliferation of the HT1080 cell line by growing them in three different 96 wells tissue culture plates including Falcon, Corning and Greiner, and study the cells proliferation using XTT assay Roche based. Thus we considered the HT 1080 cell line proliferation curve obtained on 2 weeks time and we investigated the proliferation influence of this cell line seeded in 3 diffe rent plastic plates. We found that falcon tissue culture plastic were could be more widely considered as a potential plastic ware tool for growing HT 1080 cell line from proliferation curves obtained under 3 different experimental plastic plates, Falcon 96 well tissue culture plate was more likely suitable plastic plate to be used in seeding the HT 1080 cell line. Introduction Cell culture known to be a complex process by removal of tissue or cells from plants, animals, microbes (such as bacteria and viruses), and fungi process them by growing them in specific conditions and atmospheres. In the 19th century scientist discovered the way of maintaining live cell lines taken from the animals tissue [1]. Principle of tissue culture was established by Wilhelm Roux In 1885, he removed a part of the medulla oblongataHYPERLINK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medullary_plate dish of an embryonic chicken and preserved it in a warm saline for some days2[2]. The methodology of tissue culture was established by Ross Granville Harrison, while he was published results of his research work from 1907-19103[3]. In 1950s Cell culture techniques were progressed significantly in virology research, which helped in manufacture of vaccines. Development of antibiotics helped tissue culturing to be success, as it made it easy to avoid tissue culture contaminations[4]. Types of tissue culture There are two types of tissue culture used for growing cells, adherent and suspension cultures. Adherent cells are known to be anchorage-dependent and attachment to a solid surface is a requirement for proliferation. Generally, the cells grow as an adherent monolayer and discontinue dividing when they reach a density that they touch each other. The majority of cells are adherent as they derived from solid tissues[5]. Cells cultured from bone marrow, spleen or blood adhere poorly if at all to the culture dishes. These cells in the body naturally live in suspension or they are loosely adherent. Adherent cells need a solid phase like tissue culture plastic, which might be layered with extracellular matrix components to raise adhesion properties and supply other signal required for differentiation and growth. Suspension cultures are easier to spread, since subculture requires only dilution with medium. Moreover, cultures with cells growing attached to each other or to a solid phase have to be treated by a protease to break the bond between the cells and solid surface. Trypsin is the most commonly enzyme used. Obviously, freely suspended cultures do not require trypsinization. Thus, they are easier to harvest. Maintain cells in culture Different cell types need different environments to survive in the culture. Environment means is to allow the cells to increase in number by mitosis (cell division). To achieve that, suitable temperature ( 37oC) is required as cells need it to grow happily and that can be achieved by proper calibration, frequent checking, and good maintained incubators. Second, good quality substrate (Glass and Plastic) for better attachment by using attachment factors (collagen, lamnin, and fibronectin) and excellent cell growth. Finally, proper culture media and maintained incubator for accurate pH and osmolality[10]. Cell culture medium The culture medium should got the proper nutrition of the cells requirement, growth factors, control the osmolality and pH, and present vital O2 and CO2 gases [11]. The culture medium provides necessary nutrients that are included into dividing cells, such as fatty acids, amino acids, sugars, vitamins and carbohydrates and all of these help to provide the necessary energy to build a new proteins and metabolism. The pH of the medium can be control by buffer which is usually a CO2 based or an organic buffer (e.g HEPES) to maintain the pH level in suitable range 7.0 7.4. Sodium Bicarbonate usually used in most cultures media as a standard buffer. Furthermore, Phenol Red is usually added as pH indicator in media, which change when if pH 7.4 decreased. The osmotic pressure adjust the regulation of the substances flow inside and outside of the cell, which is managed by adding salt to the medium. Supplement such as fetal serum enhance the cells growth when it is added to media as it consis t of high growth factor concentration and low antibiotics concentration. In addition, serum protein when added to media it acts as nutrition and it undertakes transporter function via cell membrane and combines toxic metabolic products. Antibiotics and antimycotics must be added to the culture media as it suppress the bacterial and fungus growth. Contamination and cell culture contamination consider to be a serious problem as it can end an experiment to misidentified or lead to wrong outcome. Recent, studies propose 15-20% of the time researchers been a victim of contamination[9]. There are two types of cell culture contamination, biological and chemicals. Biological contamination caused by fast growing yeast, bacteria and fungi. This type of contamination changes the turbidity of the medium and have observable effects on the cell culture. On the other hand, there are other types of biological contamination which are very difficult to detect such as; mycoplasmas and viruses. Chemical contamination caused by many different agents involve metal irons, plasticizers and Endotoxins[1]. Different plastic wares used in cell culture The use of disposable plastic materials for tissue culture has become popular, and in many laboratories plastic cell culture vessels have completely replaced glassware. For example, multiwell plastic plates are used for comparing different growth conditions, plastic wares, media, growth factor, sera and cytotoxines. Untreated plastic surfaces (usually made of polystyrene) are generally unsuitable for the culture of vertebrate cells, because they do not permit ready attachment and spreading of cells(19). Thus the polystyrene must be subjected to a surface treatment to make the plastic surface suitable for cell attachment(21).Chemical methods, such as sulfuric acid-sodium carbonate rinses (4) and alcohol rinses (5), have been proposed to modify plastic surfaces so that cell attachment occurs. Cell viability and proliferation The quantification of cellular growth, including viability and proliferation and, is essential to optimize the cell culture conditions. Measurements of cell viability assess the number of healthy living cells and dead cells, whereas measurement of cells proliferation is used to assess the response of cells to a specific stimulus or toxin quantitantion of culture growth. Cells proliferation is significant in steering maintenance as it is an essential element for controlling the stability of the culture and identifying the superlative time for the optimum dilution, sub culturing, and the estimated platting competence at various cell densities. Proliferation rate is a key quantitative parameter to be estimated when studying the dynamic behaviour of a cell population, measure of cells growth and obtain the cells growth curve. Fibrosarcoma cell line (HT1080) HT-1080 cell line is mainly human fibrosarcoma adherent cell line (15). It was instigated from a biopsy of a fibrosarcoma obtained from the acetablum of a 35 year old male in July 1972 the patient had never received radiation or chemotherapy therapy. A fine piece of the tumor tissue was cultured into plastic flasks and dishes were sheltered with Eagles minimum essential medium with 10% fetal bovine serum and antibiotics . Quick trypsinization and picking procedures were used to reduce fibroblasts from the cultures(16). The human fibrosarcoma cell line HT1080 is strongly recommend as the gold standard for reproducibly titrating Lentivirus. Lentiviruses belong to Retooviridae Family, which are the most multitalented of retroviruses since they are capable to infect, transduce and maintain expression in approximately any mammalian cell. Lentiviral vectors obtained from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) have become main apparatus in mammalian cells for gene delivery. The beneficial characteristic of Lentiviral vectors is the capability to mediate competent transduction, mixing and long-term expression into non-dividing and dividing cells both in vivo and in vitro. The most commonly used cell lines for titrating are adherent cells which show a replication time in the range of 18-25 hours. The human fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line is able to give more accurate viral titres because these cells are easily transduced and very efficiently by recombinant Lentiviruses . To produce reliable transduction res ults using a known multiplicity of infection (MOI), it is essential to titrate Lentivirus stocks, and that can be determined by infecting HT1080 cells with serially diluted supernatants produced using control vector containing an easily detectable receptor gene (e.g. Lac Z and fluorescent protein). Furthermore, titration values will depend heavily on the cell type and method used for titration, so there may be significant differences between titres determined in cells typically used for titration and the number of target cells that are ultimately transduced. However titrations are important for determining the relative virus content of stocks prepared from different vectors , Confirming the viability of virus stocks, Determining the optimal transduction conditions, Adjusting the MOI to control the viral copy number of transduced cells, Determining the maximum number of cells that can be infected by a virus stock. Additionally, the human fibrosarcoma cell line HT-1080 has been used widely to study the consequence of anti-inflammatory agents such as glycocortiodis on the gene expression of inflammatory mediator(17) and in the study of the extracellular matrix proteins involved in attachment, invasion and metastasis. It is also has been involved in assessment the function of the Ras-oncogenes in the altered phenotype and the function of the expression of the rentiblastoma gene product in the cellular response to therapy(18). In most studies that used the Human Fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line in their studies there is inconsistencies regarding the growth of this cell line with different media, different serum and different tissue culture plastic surface. Thus, it remains mainly descriptive and not quantify the relative influence of the underlying type of media, serum or plastic surface on cell growth and proliferation. Aim of this study In order to find the optimal plastic tissue culture plates for this cell line, I aimed to optimize the growth and the proliferation of the Human Fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line by growing them in different tissue culture plastic plates including Falcon, Greiner and Corning plates and study their proliferation using colorimetric assay(XTT based, Roche). Materials and methods Tissue culture (pre-experiment to obtain growth curve of HT1080 cell) Tissue culture of HT1080 cell line Experiment was performed using Human fibrosarcoma cell line HT1080 (ATCCCCL121) epithelial cells. This cell line was obtained from ECACC European collection of animal cell cultures. Cells were grown in HPA culture collections facilities (catalogue number :85111505). Routinely, cells were grown in complete medium composed of Dulbeccos Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM supplemented with high glucose liquid without phenol red, without L-Glutamine + 1% Non Essential Amino Acids (NEAA) + 10% Foetal Bovine Serum (FBS) (all were purchased from PAA). The bench surface were cleaned before starting tissue culture, to avoid any contamination The cells were Cultured and grown in 75 cm2 falcon flask which was kept in a humidified atmosphere with 5% CO2 at 37oC for 24 hours to obtain the optimum growth condition. The cells were subculture every 3 days which helped to achieve 0.45-1.0X 106 cells/ml. all the culturing and sub-culturing procedure were done in class II safety cabinet. Cell count The cells were twice a week checked for any contamination before cell count done, the media should be in a good condition, and healthy clear yellow color should be observed. HT1080 cells were counted by using counting chamber (haemocytometer) as it shown below. (A, B, D, and C) as shown above contain 16 small squares of volume 0.1mm3 or 10-4 cm3 which means (length x width x height). 10ul of HT1080 cells were placed between the counting chamber and cover slips. After cells settle the haemocytometer were fixed under light microscope with X40 magnification. The cells were counted and equation was used to find out the total cells number and then it was divided by 4 to obtain an average X104 cells/ml. Cells can be sub-cultured in fresh supplemented media. Actual concentration = Dilution factor required Desired concentration Sub- Culture of HT1080 All cells were detached by using tryptirization by trypsine/EDTA (0.1% /0.02%) solution, average of 60X104 cells/ml of HT 1080 cells were reseed into new labeled flask (75 cm2). Then 20 ml of media was added to the same flask. Finally it were kept in the incubator for 24 hour at 37oC in 5% CO2 atmosphere. obtain growth curve of HT1080 cell Briefly, 1ml from the cell suspension were mixed with 480ul of MEM media (PAA). Then 100ul of the tissue culture medium equally distributed to all wells of 96 tissue culture plastic multiwells plate except the first row as 200ul of the cell suspension mixture was added to whole first row. Then Serial dilution was performed by taking 100ul from the first row of 96 wells and transferred to the second row wells (shown in the figure below). The last 100ul were discarded after doing serial dilution in the sixth well (each dilution included four wells) Finally the 96 wells tissue culture micro plate were kept for incubation (at 37Co, 5% CO2) for 24 hours. Proliferation assay The cells proliferation was studied by using XTT proliferation assay (Cat. No. 11465015001) by Roche. First, the XXT solution was prepared by thawing the XTT labeling reagent and the electron-coupling reagent, respectively in a water bath at 37oC. Mix each vial thoroughly to obtain a clear solution. Then XTT labeling mixture was prepared by mixing 4ml of XTT labeling reagent with 80ul of electron-coupling reagent, to prepare the XTT labeling mixture. Finally, 50ul of the XTT prepared mixture was added to all wells of 96 wells tissue culture plates wells after the incubation period of 24 hours and the plate was incubated in the incubator in humidified atmosphere with 5% CO2 at 37oC for 6 hours . Reading the tissue culture multiwell plate After 6 hours of the incubation period, the plate was kept in the ELISA spectrophotometer reader (Tecan sunrise colorimeter) to measure the absorbance of HT1080 cells at 450nm and obtain the cells growth curve. Tissue culture of HT1080 cell line (Actual experiment) Growing the HT1080 cell line in 3 different tissue culture plastic 96 wells plate including Greiner, Falcon and Corning.this experiment conducted within two weeks. From the previous obtained graph of growth curve of HT1080 cell line the seeding density of all our future subculture fixed to 60X104 cells/ml. First of all, the tissue cultured flask checked under the microscope to check the cell growth confluence. Then cell counting was performed to seed all the 3 different 96 wells tissue culture plastic plates at cell density of 60X104 cells/ml and that was possible after finding out the dilution factor by applying an equation (see below). Usually we used dilution factor 1:19. Actual concentration = Dilution factor required Desired concentration After preparing the correct dilution of HT1080 cell line, plates were seeded with 60X104 cells/ml ,100ul/well. Each plates was divided to four parts for four days to run the experiment, for example the first part was labeled as day 1, second part day 2, third part day 3 and the last part day 4 with 6 wells for each day along with 2 blank, total of 8 wells daily. Then the tissue culture plates were incubated in humidified atmosphere with 5% CO2 at 37Â °C for 24 hours. ( see figure 2). Day4 Day3b Day2 Day 1 Figure 2: Cells suspension +proliferation reagent Blank: media only Cells proliferation assay After the incubation period of 24 hours, the XTT solutions were prepared as explained previously and added to the first part of each different tissue culture plates each part was included 6 wells. Then the tissue culture plates were incubated again in the incubator at 37Â °C in 5% CO2 for 24 hours. After 6 hours of the incubation period, the platse were kept in the ELISA spectrophotometer reader (Tecan sunrise colorimeter) to measure the absorbance of HT1080 cells at 450nm. Then the plates were returned to the same incubator and used for the rest of days. The same procedure of preparing proliferation reagent and reading the plates was performed to obtain the results and check the cells proliferation for the rest of days . Results This investigation was done to rule out the growth density of the Human Fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line to be seeded in three different 96 wells plastic tissue culture plates to study the growth and the proliferation of this cell line. HT1080 cells were seeded as described in 96 wells plastic plates and incubated for 24 hours in media. For cell proliferation, XTT mixture reagent was added after the incubation period . Briefly, 96 well plates of from each different plastics plates used were seeded with HT1080 cells(6X103 cells/ml, 100 ul/well) and incubated for 24 hours in media. After 6 hours of incubation, the HT1080 cell line proliferation rate were measured by using Tecan sunrise colorimeter at 450nm and the following growth curve was being obtained. Figure 1: shows a growth curve of the human fibrosarcoma HT 1080 cell line by using XTT assay. Measurement of the HT 1080 cell line proliferation incubated in the 96 well plate on culture medium alone for 24 hours and allowed to adhere. After adding XTT reagent cells were incubated for 6 hours. Then the cells proliferation was analyzed by Tecan sunrise colorimeter at 450 nm, the log phase were determined as 6X103. From the obtaining HT 1080 cell line growth curve (figure 1) the initial Lag phase where the cells were growing very slow started from 1562 cells /ml to approximately 6000 cells/ml. then the HT1080 cell growth starts to accelerate into the exponential phase which represents the period when the cells are growing most rapidly. This phase continued till the number of cells reached 25000 cells/ml which may due one or more nutrients became limited, oxygen became depleted and or metabolic by products accumulate to toxic level. After that the cells were Decelerated (Declined). This was followed by a Stationary phase, during which there was no discernible change in cell concretion. Finally if the cells were kept more time we may observe of cell death and lysis which results in a decrease of cells number. The cell growth density was determined by observing the ht1080 cell line growth proliferation curve and it was decided to be 6000 cells/ml as our standard density for this experiment. This investigation was designed to study the proliferation of Human Fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line in 3 different 96 well plastic tissue culture plates including Falcon, Corning and Greiner. Briefly, 96 well plates from each different plastics plates used were seeded with HT1080 cells(6X103 cells/ml, 100 ul/well) and incubated for 24 hours in media. For each investigation sample were set up in 6 wells. After incubation, the HT1080 cell line proliferation rate were measured by using Tecan sunrise colorimeter at 450nm and the following result were being obtained. n = 2 Figure 2: Determine comparison of the HT1080 cells proliferation by growing them in three different 96 wells plastic microplates (Falcon, Greiner and Corning) by using XTT assay for 5 days in MEM media . Each experiment includes 6 duplicate reading . The graph represent the average of three independent experiments data mean, while the errors bars represent the standard deviation of the data. The results that obtained from this experiment revealed that, the Human fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line showed different growth proliferation rate depends on the plastic wares including Falcon, Greiner and Corning that have been used in this study (figure 2). The same cells seeding density that was obtained previously from the HT1080 cells growing curve(6X103) were applied to all the 96 wells plastic tissue culture plates. Falcon, Greiner and corning plastic plates showed varies proliferation in the mean (ÂÂ ±SD) number of HT1080 cells. From our graph the cells that were grown in Greiner plate proliferate at slower rate in comparison to the other two types of plastic plates were used. On the other hand, the cells showed good proliferation in Corning plate with double increased in the mean (ÂÂ ±SD) number of HT1080 cells compared to the proliferation which was obtained in Greiner plate. In contrast the cells, which were seeded in Falcon plate showed the best proliferation of H T1080 cells from the first day of the experiment till the last day and reached a peak at day 4. Moreover, from the obtained data it was clear that we can see HT 1080 cell that were seeded in Falcon plate were proliferating two times more than the mean (ÂÂ ±SD) number of HT1080 cells in Corning plate and three times more than the mean (ÂÂ ±SD) number of HT1080 cells in Greiner this continued with same significant proliferation rate till the last day of our experiment . Discussion Our results confirm that the plastic wares have a major influence on the Human Fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line adherence, growth and proliferation. It was very clear from our obtained data that Falcon tissue culture plastic plates shown to be the best plastic ware to optimize the growth and the proliferation of the Human Fibrosarcoma HT 1080 cell line between the other two plastic Corning and Greiner that were used in this experiment. Although the three types of plastic surface treatment almost the same but these cells were growing with different proliferation rate on these plastic wares surface. The human fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line are extensively accepted as the standard target cell for titrating Lentivirus because these cells are transduced very efficiently by recombinant Lentiviruses. The health of HT1080 cells at the time of transfection has a significant effect on the success of Lentivirus production. Use of unhealthy cells will negatively affect the transfection efficiency, resulting in production of a low titre Lentiviral stock. For optimal Lentivirus production (i.e. producing Lentiviral stocks with the expected titers) the cells should be healthy and greater than 90% viable. Furthermore, the growth characteristics of this cell line HT1080 changes depending on media formulations, plastic ware used and sources of serum used. Generally, cell attachment, growth, and cell-to-cell contacts on a surface or extracellular matrix substrate are extremely complex proceedings involving cell adhesion molecules. An additional factor leading the growth of cells is the composition of the culture medium, especially serum which supplies the essential nutrients for cells and influences the cell attachment. As it contains numerous extracellular matrix proteins . However, there are known limitations to serum in culture medium. Apart from being expensive, it can interfere with specific assays and introduce variability due to inconsistencies and the presence of indeterminate components. When growing any cells, one of the first thing is to optimize all culture conditions. Generally people know about Media, FCS/FBS, CO2 concentration, split ratios etc, but very few ever think about TC Plastic.corning, costar, nunc, greiner, falcon, tpp etc will all support cell growth, but optimizing your conditions can save time and money in the long run. Culture environmental conditions influence the proliferative characteristics of cells, while this environment is not fully controlled. Plastic is one of the most important things to know about and understand. It can have a major influence on cell adherence and growth and can therefore ultimately influence the experimental results. Most of studies devoted to the analysis of HT1080 cell line growth relies on using different types of tissue culture plastic surface leading to inconsistencies regarding the growth of HT1080 in different plastic . Thus, optimal plastic surface for HT1080 cell line long term growth is usually unknown. For example, a study has been conducted by shalinsky et al for the modulation of dipyridamole (DPM) to act synerglstically with vinblastine (VBL) in the HT 1080 cell line, they have used corning plastic micro-plates to seed the cells and ran their experiment. The Human Fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line used in the studies of the extracellular matrix proteins involved in attachment, invasion and metastasis as the HT1080 cells must attach to and spread underlying matrix in order to carry out normal metabolism, proliferation and differentiation. One of these studies is done by Miyake and colleges same corning 96 well micro-plates were used but it was coated with ECM and they found that HT1080 h ad better proliferation while cultured with coated microplate rather than uncoated and that can be explained due to capability of extracellular matrix (ECM) to hold the HT1080 cells and provide a highly organized lattice within cells can migrate and interact with each other. In addition, they found that HT 1080 cell line secret a large amount of extracellular matrix on the microplate surface, then HT1080 cell attach rapidly and they leave the underlying ECM intact and firmly attached to the plastic. Additionally, Ohizumai et al, have another choice of the plastic ware in their experiment as they have used falcon 96 well microplate to grow HT1080 cells and processed their study. In other study was done by Markus and Richard they have seeded the HT 1080 cell line in standard treated uncoated Falcon 24 well microplate and they have found that the HT1080 cell migration increased compared to other cell line such as HT29 and MCF7 cell lines, which confirms that different cell needs different types of plastic microplates to get the optimum growth and proliferation. Another study where HT1080 cells have been grown on different plastic ware type done by Simpson et al, in their study (combination of afusogenic Glycoprotein, producing Activation and oncolytic Herpes Simplex virus for Enhanced local tumor control). They have used coated Greiner plastic ware with lamim and they are of thousands of researchers who prefer to use coated plastic ware as its more effective and more significant while using plastic ware that are coated with ECM. In this context, the study of HT1080 cell line proliferation by growing the cells in different tissue culture plastics plates appears necessary for cell proliferation performance within different tissue culture plastic surfaces as well as cell response to such environmental changes In this study we have optimized the growth and the proliferation of the Human Fibrosarcoma HT1080 cells by growing them in different plastic ware including Falcon, Greiner and Corning plastic wares and study their proliferation using colorimetric assay(XTT based, Roche). The XTT assay method is based on the reduction of the tetrazolium salt XTT by viable cells in the presence of an electron coupling reagent. The reaction produces a soluble formazan salt. The XTT assay is sensitive, quantitative, reliable and automated methods led to the development of standard assays. Cell proliferation and viability assays are of particular importance for routine applications. Tetrazolium salts MTT and XTT are especially useful for assaying the quantification of viable cells. In this case variability of proliferation rates would more likely reflect plastic surface variability than real variations of inherent cell proliferation capabilities. Moreover, Measurement of HT1080 cell proliferation rates is used to determine the response of the cells growth as it is a significant element for monitoring the consistency of the culture and knowing the best time to subculture the optimum dilution, and the estimated platting efficiency at different HT1080 cell densities. Testing medium, serum, new culture vessels or substrate, and so forth, all require quantitative assessment. One of the difficulties in growing cells in vitro using conservative tissue culture techniques is that the cells rest on plastic rather than on their natural biological support and can only be nourished with media from their apical side. To explain my results it is important to know the plastic surface treatment of each type of plastic used in this study. Normal TC plastic has a net negative charge. TC treatment cross links carboxyl and amine groups and gives the plastic its net negative charge. TC surface modification is usually done by ionizing radiation or other physio-chemical methods ( F. Grinnell 1978 Int. Rev.Cytol 43. p.65 ). Falcon plastic ware showed better growth and proliferation of this cell line more than greiner and corning. The HT1080 cells were proliferating with Falcon plastic tissue culture plate two times more than with Greiner plastic plate and double its proliferation with Corning plastic plate. Falcon surface treatment is more advanced than Greiner plastic ware as Falcon Standard Tissue Culture (TC) surfaces exposed to vacuum-gas plasma or corona discharge treatment that create a number of negatively charged functional groups on the polystyrene surface and make it hydrophilic. Falcon company is believed to facilitate direct cell attachment and indirectly support attachment, spreading, and growth by binding serum proteins to the plastic surface. Each lot of Falcon plastic products is gamma irradiated to produce a sterile product and from the obtained results it was proved that Falcon is the best plastic substrate for the Human Fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell line growth and proliferation as the cel ls were proliferating increasingly till the last day. In contrast the HT1080 cells with Corning were growing and proliferating with gradual increase from the first day till the last day of experiment but their proliferation lower than the cells proliferation with Falcon. Although the Standard Corning polystyrene cell culture plastic wares have the same treatment of Falcon surface treatment. In addition from the results that we have obtained it seems to be that HT1080 cells were growing and proliferating more than when comparing their growth and proliferation with Greiner microplate. On the other hand, Greiner plastic ware are using different method to treat their tissue culture plastic wares, they are using a physical modification to make their TC-treated plates rather than chem