Strategy and Management of Change Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Strategy and Management of Change - Case Study Example The company was inspired mainly by the international brand McDonalds. Preempting the entry of McDonalds in the Philippines, our organization reinvented and differentiated itself by concentrating on Filipino way of doing the business. What pushed our organization during its earlier period are its internal strengths. Stores were structured to suit the ambiance fitted to customers, services were transformed into a full service fast food operations and equipments were updated to enhance effectivity and efficiency. Jollibee was able to enter the ranks lists of top 500 Philippine corporations in 1984 by reaching the P500 million sales mark. Barely 10 years in the business, our organization joined the ranks of the top 100 Philippine corporations. It made a record when it became the first Philippine fast food chain to break the P1 billion sales mark in 1989. In addition, it became the first Philippine food service company to be listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange in 1993. This was the strategy that helped our organization broaden its capitalization and lay the groundwork for sustained expansion of business operations both domestically and internationally (www.jollibee.com.ph). Pursuant to its long-term goal to dominate the local food service industry, our organization has expanded its market coverage. It acquired Greenwich Pizza in 1994, which by then has established a strong presence in the food service industry, to penetrate the pasta segment. The franchise of Delifrance was acquired in the succeeding year and paved the way for further penetration in the food segment particularly French caf-bakery which is a growing segment in the Philippine food market. With the strategic acquisition of Chowking, our organization has solidified its position as the dominant leader and made it a leader in the Oriental quick service restaurant segment. As a result of its success domestically, the extent of its business operations have grown exponentially. It now even owns a Chinese fast food chain operating in mainland China and a popular teahouse chain doing business in Taiwan. Jollibee is now an international brand with phenomenal expansion of business operations. From an ice cream parlor a few years back, it was able to put up over 570 stores in the Philippines and 27 international stores in countries like the United States and Hong Kong. The company had been earning laurels from the corporate world for many years now. In 2001, The Far Eastern Economic Review named it the top corporation in the Philippines and the sixth leading corporation in Asia. Jollibee had also won recognition for its contribution to the economy of the Philippines and the success of its strategies by the Asian Business Review, leading management consultants Hewitt Associates, and many Filipino corporate bodies. Jollibee had the distinction of being one of the very few companies that had been able to give multinational fast-food giants such as McDonald's and Burger King a run for their money. While Jollibee had a market share of over 60%, its closest rival, McDonald's had less than half of that. CATALYSTS FOR CHANGE Competition is a great factor for the survival in any kind of business endeavor (Robbins and Coulter, 2002). To be able to stay on top and gain advantage over myriad companies within the same industry, the organization

Produce a fully functional Essay Example for Free

Produce a fully functional Essay The company sells to small corner shops in the east midlands. All the sales to shops are currently recorded on an order form that will be processed in the companys main office. They use calculators to find out the total cost. They have a total of four company reps that they use to deliver orders and take new orders if required. Each of the rep carries a number of documents including order forms and a catalogue including a price list. The current system used to take orders can no longer handle the increasing quantity of trade and a new system is required. The company decided to solve this problem by giving each rep a laptop computer. A package will be installed into the laptops to process the data. The company will require the following features in the package:   An automated order form to replace the current one. A database containing each item of stock.   A facility to update the sales sheet.   A summary sheet to raise the stock order from the warehouse so they can be delivered on the next round.   A total sales sheet so it is possible to view any commission earned by the rep. A home page that can be used to navigate to the other pages.   An option to print so there is hard evidence of the documents. CURRENT METHODS USED   All of the sales to the shops are manually recorded on an order form that is processed in the main office.   The reps use calculators to calculate the costs.   The reps carry catalogues containing all the products available along with price lists.   The order forms are separate sheets.   The reps visit the shops about once a week and they make new orders if necessary   The reps receive 2% commission for any order over   1000. WORKING SPECIFICATION Front Page This sheet will link up with the rest of the sheets in the spreadsheet so users can search it easily. Order form. This sheet will be used when customers want to order products from the company. Information to go into the order form will include:   Date of order   Time of order   Sales persons name   Customer name and Address   Customer contact numbers   Name of product   Description   Price   Stock number   Quantity   Total cost Print out form This sheet will be identical to the order form and will show what the customers have ordered. There will be a print option so the customers have a receipt for what they have bought. Stock and price list This sheet will show all the products available from the company along with a price list. Address Sheet. This will include contact details for all the customers. DATA CAPTURE METHODS There are many of methods used to input data into a cell. Some are listed below.   Manually keying in information.   Selecting data from drop down lists   Macro programming   Hot keys Below I have drawn a table to show how the information will be captured. Typing into cells Selecting data from a list Automatic Hot keys Customer name Rep name Date Print Address Stock description Time Saving work done Contact numbers Stock model no. Total cost Quantity Total quote cost Below is a table to show what processing needs to be done to achieve the required output. Stock Code Lookup information within a database. Display stock in a cell. Rep Name Process index number from the rep table. Display the data in a cell. Customer Information Lookup information within the database. Display stock in a cell. Time and Date Process the system date and time. Display time and date in the cell chosen. Commission Finds out a total if over i 1000, and works out 2% of it. Displays commission total in a cell chosen. For a spreadsheet database to be successful, it should be as error free as possible. Information should be easily entered. An excel spreadsheet can provide the following functions. Tips and Help, to make it easier to use. Formatting of cells.   Labels and titles.   Highlighting and background colours   Drop down lists Validation and verification DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT By designing the spreadsheet first, it will be easy to put it together. I will provide ways of easily entering data into the spreadsheet. These will include   Data entry forms   Form like sheets I am going to enter some tips to help the user use the database. These will include.   Data entry messages   Validation messages Marcos will play a big roll in the design of the spreadsheet. I will use it to make the spreadsheet user-friendlier. It will be used to   Simplify data input.   Produce printed reports I will use more complex spreadsheet facilities to make it even easier to use.   Drop down lists- so data can be selected from a choice and not typed in every time.   Named cells- some of the cells will be named so it will be easy to use when carrying out formulae. Validation- this will restrict what data can be put into certain areas so it is easier for the users.   Lists and tables- these will be used to sort the data so it can be looked up. The Front Page I will place a variety of links and macro buttons on this page so that users can search the spreadsheet easily. The buttons will all be placed on the page. I will include a company to show the user that they are on the right program. I may colour code it to make it user friendly. The order form The order form will contain many formulas. I will use a combo box to create an area where the customer information goes. When the user selects their name in this box, the rest of the information will be shown. I will use V-lookup to do this. V-lookup will also be used to find products that the user wishes to order. When the stock code is typed in, information on that product will be shown. The column headings will be stock code, stock and model number, description, and price. I may colour code the different columns to make it more user friendly. In order to find the total cost for the products the customer wishes to buy, I must multiply the cost of the product by the quantity. Calculation Sheet This sheet is private and can only be viewed by the sales representatives. All calculations the reps need to make will be done on this page. For example they can mark up prices on this page. As this page is private I will insert a lock function with a password so customers cannot enter it. Commission form The function of this page is to calculate the amount of commission. The formula to calculate this will be: . This means that the rep will only get commission is a sale is over i 1000. ORDER FORM DEVELOPMENT This order form includes all the relevant information needed. I have neatly lined up the buttons next to the customer details box. However there are a few problems with it. It looks very bland. None of it is emboldened so important parts dont stand out. There is no title to show what the sheet is for. I will include these improvements in my next design. Certain important words have been emboldened. This makes it much easier to read and looks more professional. I have placed Order Form at the top so the user can see what the page is for. The buttons are in an odd position and should be rearranged to get a better balance. The form should include Online Direct Computers address in case the used needs it. Also an option should be added to show the sales person. Also it currently shows the price without VAT. Another calculation must be added to show the price with VAT added. It is still very dull so some colour needs to be added to make it more attractive and more user friendly. By adding colour and rearranging the buttons has improved the image and it now looks finished. The sales person name can now be added from a drop down list box. I will maintain this image throughout the program. TESTING I carried out a number of tests in order to check that the spreadsheet is running correctly and to check whether it matches up with the specification. There were four tests that I carried out: Continuous Testing   Testing Data   Invalid Data Testing   Specification test Continuous Testing- I will test all the formulas that I have put into the database including all the combo boxes and buttons. Testing Data- I am going to test data in the spreadsheet to see if it all works properly. I will test: Product information   Customer details   Sales representative names Invalid Data Testing-I will deliberately input some invalid data into some of the cells to see whether the error messages, that I created, appear. Specification test- I will compare my original specification to with my finished package. This will tell me whether the package will be able to do the job the user requires.E-Mail [emailprotected] com Invalid Data If I enter a stock code that isnt between 1000 and 1047 an error message will appear because there is no stock out side of this. If letters are typed in by accident an error message with appear. Specification Test Original Specification Comments Target Met Front Page This sheet will link up with the rest of the sheets in the spreadsheet so users can search it easily. I have created a front page that links up all of the pages in the database. Order form This sheet will be used when customers want to order products from the company. Information to go into the order form will include: Date of order   Time of order Sales persons name Customer name and Address   Customer contact numbers   Name of product   Description   Price   Stock number   Quantity   Total cost Date and time of order have been added into order form using the formula =NOW() The sales person names have been inserted into a drop down list that can be selected. There is space in a box at the top of the form for the customer name. This automatically there address and contact numbers. There is a box on the order form for stock codes to be typed in. This automatically brings up details including a total cost. Print out form. This sheet will be identical to the order form and will show what the customers have ordered. There will be a print option so the customers have a receipt for what they have bought. I have included an option on the order form to print so customers will have a receipt of what they have bought. Stock and price list This sheet will show all the products available from the company along with a price list I have produced a list of all the products available from online direct computers Address Sheet This will include contact details for all the customers I have produced a list of all the customers and there contact details. Examples of the sheets.

A nature and sources of data

A nature and sources of data Methodology Nature and sources of data The specific data required for this study were from primary and secondary sources. Secondary data were obtained from the Ibadan North Local Government Authority and Ibadan Waste Management Board. Analogue map of the study area was obtained from the Local Government headquarters. Land use map (1995), road map, elevation data, rail line data were made available from Ibadan Waste Management Board. A field visit was paid in order to determine the names of features on the analogue map in the attribute field of the digitised copy. GPS was used to capture points on ground for analysis. Hardware and Software The hardware used in this study included PC Pentium IV (RAM 250 MB, HD 2 GB), HP DeskJet 1220C color printer, HP Scanjet 2400, Logic Trace digitiser, Sony digital camera (8mp) and Garmin E trex 12 channels GPS receiver. The software used in preparing and analysis of the data included MS Excel, ArcView 3.3 with Network Analyst and Super decision for the AHP aspect. Digitising The base map was transformed into digital map for use in GIS by digitising using the platform of ArcView 3.3 GIS software. Digitising a map means converting an analogue map into a digital form by encoding the spatial coordinates of features on the map through the process of on-screen digitising. A digital map that is recognised by the computer in a GIS environment is the end-product of this exercise. Data analysis Five major GIS spatial operations were performed to achieve the set of objective for this project. These are, buffering, overlay, query, network analysis and nearest neighbourhood analysis Buffering It is a spatial analysis known as proximity analysis, generating zones of a given distance around a feature theme. It forms a polygon around a point, line or polygon theme by locating its boundaries at a specified distance. GIS can create buffer zones around selected features. The roads and rails were buffered at a radius of 100m (Javaheri 2006) while the streets were buffered at a radius of 30m. Overlay Overlay was performed to identify areas that meet all the set criteria and to show areas that do not meet the criteria. GIS can overlay different pieces of information. It helps in understanding the association between network analysis and specific geographic features. Ibadan North map and other data were overlaid to get possible sites. Query This command is used to answer the question of ‘what is and where is in GIS. The land use was queried to get the open space while the elevation was queried to get the suitable elevation. Network analysis Arc view Network Analyst is a powerful extension that provides network-based spatial analysis including routing, travel directions, closest facility, etc. This was made use of in this study to show the possible routes of connection from the transfer stations to the disposal site. Nearest Neighbour Analysis The nearest neighbour analysis helps to determine the nature of the distribution of the features which can be clustered or scattered. It is employed in this study to determine the pattern of skip distribution. If the index is less than 1, the pattern exhibits clustering and if greater than 1, the trend is toward dispersion. Cartographic model ‘The cartographic model is simply a graphical representation of data and procedures used in a study (Eastman 1995). It is a set of interacting ordered map operations that act on raw data as well as derive intermediate data to simulate a spatial decision making process (Tomlin, 1990). It shows all the layers of information starting with the base maps on the left and ending with the end product on the right. Its purposes are to help the analyst organise and structure the procedures that the analysis to be performed in a study will require and to identify the data needed to complete them. LU= Land-use The above cartographic model was constructed based on the following parameters: The land use maps was queried because site location must fall outside the land use areas so that settlement will not be polluted by the exhume/stench from the waste. The roads and rail were buffered at a distance of 100m and the streets were buffered at a distance of 30meters to create a good distance between them and the landfill site. The elevation was queried to get an elevation greater than or equal to 222meters so that it will not be located in an area that is too low because of water flow. Questionnaire Questionnaires were designed to seek public opinion as they include part of decision-making in a study such as this. 720 questionnaires were distributed among the various stakeholders, which include the public, planners and officials of Ibadan Municipal Government and Waste Management Board. In order to identify the criteria for siting, opinions from planners were required. Questionnaires were given out to 10 experts as part of public participation. Questionnaires were also distributed among the people living in the major areas where skips were to be allocated. These areas include, Oje market, Gbenla, Adeoyo, Danadaru, Premier Hotel, Jemebewon, Poly road, Cultural Centre, Bodija, Ikolaba, Oyo Secretariat. 60% of the questionnaires were distributed around the southern part as it was observed during field visit that most illegal dumpsites are around that area. Criteria for selection To arrive at the selection criteria for choosing a site for landfill, relevant literature and decision makers opinion were sought. Site must be close to at least a street with a buffer of 30m (Decision makers preference) Site must not be too far from a transfer station (Decision makers preference) Site must be 3km from residential areas, with the exception of areas with barriers (trees, hills, etc.) (Banar et al. 2007). There should be a minimum distance of 100m between site and roads (Decision makers preference, Javaheri et al. 2006) Site must be on a suitable soil. Site should be constructed in areas which do not have an important economic or ecological value (Lober 1995, Siddiqui et al. 1996). The AHP component Finally, in the second step, a decision hierarchical structure using the AHP was developed and implemented to rank the two suitable sites according to their suitability for landfill siting. The AHP can assist in identifying and weighting selection of criteria and expediting the process of decision making (Sener 2010). Preferences of decision makers can be included in a planning problem within an AHP. The problems then structured in a hierarchical form to allow for weighting of the preferences by pairwise comparisons (Phua and Minowa 2005). The AHP typically involves establishing a graphical representation of problem as a hierarchy, weighting the elements at each level of the hierarchy and calculating the weights (Phua and Minowa 2005). The AHP methodology compares criteria or alternatives with respect to a criterion, in a natural, pairwise mode. To achieve this, the AHP uses a fundamental scale of absolute numbers (Table 3.2) that has been tested in practice and validated by physical and decision problem experiments. It is perhaps the most widely used decision making approach today. The AHP is generally used to support other methodologies such as in deciding how many servers to employ in a queuing situation taking into account factors like costs, waiting times and human frustration. Several other applications include resource allocation, forecasting, etc. The Super Decisions software (Saaty 2003) was used in developing the AHP model. A Super Decisions model generally comprises clusters of elements rather than elements arranged in levels. Clusters contain node which represent the elements in them. For example, the criteria for siting a landfill may include proximity to transportation networks, proximity to waste collection centres, etc. These represent the nodes in the ‘Criteria cluster. When a line joins a cluster with another cluster, it means the nodes in both clusters are connected together. The main aim of using the AHP is to assign weights to criteria and come out with the best alternative.

africa Essay -- essays research papers

African Cultures   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Africa has more than 800 languages native to its continent. African cultures are so diverse that they are different from any other culture of the world. African cultures contain many different languages. African languages range from common French to languages unheard of to most people such as Swahili. African arts are much different than American arts. Their art involves much more creative pottery, masks, and paintings. Africa has a very interesting culture. Reasons being the people are very creative and like to express their individuality. The most diverse cultures in the world belong to Africa. There are more than 800 languages spoken in the continent of Africa. Most Africans speak two or three languages, their primary language, or â€Å"mother-tongue†, and a second or third language to communicate with people from other close by areas (Fetzer A-102). African languages are broken up into four individual categories: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, and Khosian. The most commonly heard two categories are Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. Both of these groups can modify the meanings of words by the tone of the speakers’ voice. Niger-Congo languages are spoken of the people in West Africa, below the Sahara desert, Southern and Central Africa. Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken mainly in Central Africa. Afro-Asiatic languages are mainly spoken in Northern and Northeastern Africa. This group includes Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, and Arabic. Khoisan languages are spoken mostly in Southern Africa by Bushmen, members of traditionally roaming hunting people, and Hottentots, members of pastoral people of Namibia and South Africa. Khoisan languages are communicative through clicking sounds (Fetzer A-102). Some South Africans speak Afrikaans, a language that was developed from Dutch. Europeans in African speak Portuguese, French, and English (Fetzer A-102). English is becoming very recognized in the countries of Africa. The 1991 South African Census concluded that 45% of the people in South Africa have a speaking knowledge of English. It also concluded that 10% refer to English as their â€Å"mother-tongue†. The most common languages in South Africa are Xhosa, Tswana, Zulu, and Swahili (African Languages). Zulu is one of nine Bantu languages spoken in East Southern Africa. Approximately 8.8 million people speak t... ... language of Africans (African Individuality).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ceremonies are held when someone changes their social status and social relationship with those in the community. There are about six ceremonies in ones life. The first is their birth, the second is their maturity, third is their marriage, fourth is their child bearing, fifth is their elderliness, sixth is their death. Ceremonies are simply socially approved methods of participating in pleasurable events (African Individuality).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Africans view body modifications as beauty. Body modifications, such as piercing, have been practiced in Africa for centuries. People there believe that one is not fully human and cannot be distinguished from animals if not pierced. Piercing is brought with royalty and portrays courage of a person (African Cultures Piercing). African cultures are different from any other culture in the world. The languages of Africa are unique in their own way. The arts of Africa are beautiful and different from any other arts in the world. African people are creative and like to express their individuality. Africa is a very original continent with lots of culture. africa Essay -- essays research papers African Cultures   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Africa has more than 800 languages native to its continent. African cultures are so diverse that they are different from any other culture of the world. African cultures contain many different languages. African languages range from common French to languages unheard of to most people such as Swahili. African arts are much different than American arts. Their art involves much more creative pottery, masks, and paintings. Africa has a very interesting culture. Reasons being the people are very creative and like to express their individuality. The most diverse cultures in the world belong to Africa. There are more than 800 languages spoken in the continent of Africa. Most Africans speak two or three languages, their primary language, or â€Å"mother-tongue†, and a second or third language to communicate with people from other close by areas (Fetzer A-102). African languages are broken up into four individual categories: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, and Khosian. The most commonly heard two categories are Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. Both of these groups can modify the meanings of words by the tone of the speakers’ voice. Niger-Congo languages are spoken of the people in West Africa, below the Sahara desert, Southern and Central Africa. Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken mainly in Central Africa. Afro-Asiatic languages are mainly spoken in Northern and Northeastern Africa. This group includes Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, and Arabic. Khoisan languages are spoken mostly in Southern Africa by Bushmen, members of traditionally roaming hunting people, and Hottentots, members of pastoral people of Namibia and South Africa. Khoisan languages are communicative through clicking sounds (Fetzer A-102). Some South Africans speak Afrikaans, a language that was developed from Dutch. Europeans in African speak Portuguese, French, and English (Fetzer A-102). English is becoming very recognized in the countries of Africa. The 1991 South African Census concluded that 45% of the people in South Africa have a speaking knowledge of English. It also concluded that 10% refer to English as their â€Å"mother-tongue†. The most common languages in South Africa are Xhosa, Tswana, Zulu, and Swahili (African Languages). Zulu is one of nine Bantu languages spoken in East Southern Africa. Approximately 8.8 million people speak t... ... language of Africans (African Individuality).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ceremonies are held when someone changes their social status and social relationship with those in the community. There are about six ceremonies in ones life. The first is their birth, the second is their maturity, third is their marriage, fourth is their child bearing, fifth is their elderliness, sixth is their death. Ceremonies are simply socially approved methods of participating in pleasurable events (African Individuality).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Africans view body modifications as beauty. Body modifications, such as piercing, have been practiced in Africa for centuries. People there believe that one is not fully human and cannot be distinguished from animals if not pierced. Piercing is brought with royalty and portrays courage of a person (African Cultures Piercing). African cultures are different from any other culture in the world. The languages of Africa are unique in their own way. The arts of Africa are beautiful and different from any other arts in the world. African people are creative and like to express their individuality. Africa is a very original continent with lots of culture.

Flowers for Algernon †Qualities That Surpass Intelligence Essay

Flowers for Algernon, is a classic novel written by Daniel Keyes a young mentally challenged man named Charlie Gordon. This book chronicles, from a first person point of view, Charlie’s mental and physical struggles and achievements after undergoing a breakthrough procedure that is hoped to render him intelligent. Throughout the book, much of the focus is on Charlie’s academic progress while his emotional and personal development is not much of a concern. This becomes a problem because Charlie realizes that it is important to demonstrate qualities other than intelligence to lead a life that is oth happy and successful. Qualities shown to be more important than intelligence in Flowers for Algernon are: patience, kindness and respect. Throughout Flowers for Algernon, patience is often shown to be a more important quality in character than intelligence. Starting from the beginning when Charlie was still mentally challenged, people never seemed to be patient with him. If they had taken the time to get to know and understand him they would have seen that he had a good heart and genuine personality. This also applies to our everyday life. We must be patient and try to understand others before we begin to judge them. Charlie also demonstrated the negative consequences of a lack of patience when his intelligence began to surpass that of those around him, â€Å"I was afraid it would come to this, but I have no patience with her now. I’m jealous of every moment away from the work- impatient with anyone†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Keyes 295). You can clearly see that due to his lack of patience with anyone around him, he is in a state of upset and distress. That is how patience is shown to be more important than ntelligence in this novel. Kindness is another quality shown to surpass intelligence in order of importance in Flowers for Algernon. Simply being kind to others can get you far in life and change others views and opinions of you in a positive way. This is shown when Alice tells Charlie what made him such a great person before he had the operation, â€Å"There was something in you before. I don’t know†¦ a warmth, an openness, a kindness that made everyone like you and like to have you around. † (Keyes 122). Being kind makes both yourself and others feels good. While everyone may not be able to solve an algebraic equation or understand Shakespeare, we can all interpret, accept and appreciate kindness in all its forms. This is why kindness is shown to be a more valuable quality than intelligence in Flowers for Algernon. A third quality shown to be more important than intelligence in Flowers for Algernon is respect. Everyone wants to be valued and respected and when you behave in this way towards others, it is often reciprocated. Everyone should learn to respect each other for who they are and not try to change them. Each person is an individual with their own thoughts and feelings and we can not change them. In the novel, a bakery employee stresses the importance of respect when the other workers make fun of Charlie, â€Å"He can’t help what he is†¦ but for God’s sake, have some respect! He’s a human being! † (Keyes 199). Charlie also often feels that he is not being respected as a human being and that he is just being treated as an experiment. This has a negative impact on him and also demonstrates the importance of respect. Those are the ways that respect is shown to be a ore valuable quality than intelligence in this novel. If one looks between the lines in the novel Flowers for Algernon, they will interpret many messages and take away valuable lessons from it. One of which is that there are qualities that are much more valuable and important than intelligence. The qualities that are shown to be more important than intelligence in Flowers for Algernon are patience, kindness and respect. By possessing and utilizing these qualities a person can lead both a happy and successful life and better the lives of those around them.

Different Country, Different Culture Essay

A country is just like an onion; the innermost skin is Culture. Culture is like the soul of a country. All countries have their own unique cultures to live by, which means that people who have grown up in different places will have different ways of behaving, different ways of thinking about things and different ways of expressing themselves. Each country has its own culture, and there are many differences between different countries in culture. Those differences make our world a more colorful and exciting place to live. We can have a better understanding of it if we compare the big cultural differences between America and China. According to my two years of study in America and Intercultural Communication Stumbling Blocks by LaRay M. Barna, which talked about the difference between different cultures, I find two big differences in friendship and education. First difference is friendship. Time is often the best way to test friendship and friends. For the Chinese, to know each other for a long time, the communication needs to be at a certain depth, finding out each other’s habits, temperament, similar interests and the common experience of â€Å"suffering†. Then they will make the recognition of each other as a friend in the heart, and they will value this friendship. Once friendship is established, it will be lifelong, and hard to break. Chinese can share almost everything with their friends, for example, when you are in China, at restaurant, you can actually see people fight for the bill. It’s not about showing off to their friends or someone else. It’s just because they want to show their appreciation for their friendship. On the other hand, for most Chinese, we think Americans are â€Å"superficial,† like what Barna said â€Å"They talk and smile too much† (67) and â€Å"Their friendship are, most of the time, so ephemeral compared to the friendship we have at home. Americans make friends very easily and leave their friends almost as quickly† (67). For Americans, in general it seems to them that Chinese and some other people from different countries are â€Å"not necessarily snobs but are very unfriendly,† (67) Because we don’t talk and smile a lot. The reason why Chinese and Americans have a different opinion on friendship is because  our cultures are different. We can’t tell which kind of friendship is right or wrong because there is no such a thing as wrong culture. There are all just different cultures. The second difference is in education.† What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country.† says a Chinese proverb. As we all know, American and Chinese education systems are different, which creates different culture in turn. American education focuses on the students’ creativity and practical ability. In their classes, the teachers just play a role as leaders. Students do lab homework, group work to find out the answer by themselves. However in China, the school is more like a concert hall. This means that students are completely listeners. Students all focus on the textbook, try to memorize everything from the book, and then get a good score. They hardly come up with their own ideas. That’s why Barna says, â€Å"U.S. students often complain that the international members of a discussion or project seem uncooperative or uninterested†. (66) But both of those two educations’ intentions are good. In my view, we should learn the academic knowledge well, but we should also take part in the school activities, improve our interpersonal skills, and creative thinking, so that, we can prepare well for the future challenges. In one word, each country has its own culture. Although there are many differences between different countries, we should respect them and learn from each other. Especially, in the modern century, each country has to communicate with other countries more than ever. So, we must understand the differences in different countries’ culture well, only in this way, we can get along with each other in peace.

Stress and Accent Marks in Spanish

Stress and Accent Marks in Spanish Knowing how letters are pronounced is only one aspect of learning Spanish pronunciation. Another key aspect is knowing which syllable should be stressed, that is, the one that gets the most vocal emphasis. Fortunately, Spanish has only three basic rules of stress, and there are very few exceptions. Rules for Spanish Stress and Accent Marks Spanish uses the acute accent mark (one that rises from left to right) to indicate stress in certain words. The grave and circumflex accent marks are not used. Essentially, the accent mark is used if following the first two rules below dont correctly indicate which syllable is getting the stress: If a word without an accent mark ends in a vowel, n, or s, the stress is on the penultimate (next to last) syllable. For example, toro, computadora, joven. and zapatos all have their accent on the next-to-last syllable. Most words fit this category.A word without an accent mark that ends in other letters has the stress on the last syllable. For example, hotel, hablar, matador, and virtud all have the accent on the final syllable.If a word isnt pronounced according to the above two rules, an accent is placed over the vowel of the syllable that gets the stress. For example, comà ºn, lpiz, mà ©dico, inglà ©s, and ojal all have the stress on the indicated syllable. The only exceptions to the above are some words of foreign origin, generally, words adopted from English, that retain their original spelling and often their pronunciation. For example, sandwich is usually spelled without an accent over the initial a, even though the stress is as in English. Similarly, personal names and place names of foreign origin usually are written without accents (unless accents are used in the originating language). Note also that some publications and signs do not use accent marks over capital letters, although for clarity it is better to use them when possible. How Making a Word Plural Can Change the Accent Mark Because words ending in s or n have an accent on the next-to-last syllable, and an -es sometimes is used to make singular words plural, making a word singular or plural can affect the accent mark. This can affect both nouns and adjectives. If a word with two or more syllables and without an accent mark ends in an n, adding -es to the word will require an accent mark to be added. (Nouns and adjective ending in an unstressed vowel followed by s have identical singular and plural forms.) Words in this category are infrequent. joven (singular, youth or young), jà ³venes (plural)crimen (singular, crime), crà ­menes (plural)canon (singular, rule), canà ³nes (rules)aborigen (singular, indigenous), aborà ­genes (plural) More common are singular words that end in n or s and have an accent on the final syllable. When such words or two or more syllables are made plural by adding -es, the accent mark is no longer needed. almacà ©n (singular, warehouse), almacenes (plural)talismn (singular, lucky charm), talismanes (plural)afiliacià ³n (singular, affiliation), afiliciones (plural)comà ºn (singular, common), comunes (plural) Orthographic Accent Marks Sometimes accent marks are used only to distinguish two similar words, and they dont affect pronunciation because the marks are already on a syllable that is being stressed. For example, el (the) and à ©l (he) are both pronounced the same way, even though they have quite different meanings. Similarly, some words, quien or quià ©n, use accent marks when they appear in questions, but usually not otherwise. Accents that dont affect pronunciation are known as orthographic accents. Here are some of the common words that are affected by an orthographic accent: aun (including), aà ºn (still, yet)como (as, I eat), cà ³mo (how)de (of), dà © (form of dar)que (that), quà © (what)se (reflexive pronoun), sà © (form of saber)si (if), sà ­ (yes) Key Takeaways Spanish words without written accent marks have the stress on the last syllable unless the word ends in s or n, in which case the accent goes on the next-to-last syllable.An accent mark is used to indicate that the stress goes on that syllable where the pattern above isnt followed.Sometimes, an accent mark is used to distinguish meanings between two words that are otherwise spelled alike.

Scotch

Scotch Scotch Scotch By Simon Kewin The word Scotch has several meanings, but it should never be used as an adjective to refer to a person or object from Scotland. The only exception is that the word is acceptable as part of certain compound names, such as Scotch whisky, Scotch mist or Scotch broth. Words such as Scotchman or Scotchwoman are obsolete and frowned upon by people from Scotland. The correct words to use are Scottish or Scots. It would be wrong, for example, to say â€Å"The Scotch weather is frequently atrocious† but it would be quite correct to say â€Å"The Scottish weather is frequently atrocious†. Similarly, the Scottish newspaper is The Scotsman, not The Scotchman. The word Scotch on its own is (as well as being a registered trade name) often used as a shortened form of â€Å"Scotch whisky†. Therefore, it is just about permissible to say â€Å"Scotch man†, as in â€Å"I’m a Scotch man, myself†, but that would mean someone who enjoys or prefers to drink Scotch whisky rather than someone from Scotland. Footnote : Whisky and whiskey are often used interchangeably, but the two spellings identify the origin of the spirit. In the UK, â€Å"whisky† means the drink from Scotland, whereas â€Å"whiskey† is used when the source is Ireland. More widely, â€Å"whisky† is also used when referring to the Canadian and Japanese drinks and â€Å"whiskey† is generally used to refer to the drink when it is from the USA. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Great Opening Lines to Inspire the Start of Your Story15 Words for Household Rooms, and Their SynonymsPunctuation Is Powerful

Final Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Final - Essay Example The physical environment includes topography of the country, climate and the amount of rainfall. Presence of the forest and valleys helps in formation of rainfall which in turn improves the climate of the Amazon and is environs. The relationship between these physical elements it to be should all point towards a healthy environment. The trends manifested are that demand for land is increasing with the ever increasing population and unemployment thus leading to deforestation. Also, in most of the rich countries the pressure on forest has subsidized due to manageable population levels (The Economist, 2010a). As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pointed out, â€Å"Tackling climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and addressing shifting demographic and consumption patterns, will require bold new approaches.† (Ki-moon, 2011: 5) Q2: The social domain in deforestation is that people are to exercise self responsibility in the preservation of forests and the organisms that dwell in there. This is because forests are being cleared for agricultural purposes. There are campaigns by NGOs, vigils and FAO who are in the front line to protect the survival of the rainforests. According to a recent report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, it showed that illegal logging has been greatly reduced in Brazil, Indonesia and Cameroon. In the DR Congo the forests have not been greatly affected but the recent trends show that with ever increasing population the forest is bound to clearance and other illegal logging activities. Most tropical deforestation is due to the ever expanding commercial ranching and agriculture propelled by the rocketing domestic and global demand for food, biofuel and fiber. Therefore, foreign governments and investors are scouting to buy cheap and well watered tropical land( The Economist, 2010b) Q3: The government of Brazil has formed a committee involving 14 ministries to design and execute plan for red ucing Amazon deforestation. Monitoring and controlling of illegal logging have been stepped up. Moreover, Brazil has installed advanced and transparent remote sensing systems for monitoring deforestation, relaying monthly and yearly estimates which are then posted to the internet. Also, in the pipeline is system for detecting illegal logging (DETEX) which is being developed. By Brazil advocating for lower prices for soya beans in the international community market brings down the levels of deforestation by 52% since 2004. In addition, due to the difficulties in attaching property rights to tree species, the Brazilian government has liaised with other NGOs and the international community on legal protection of tree species( The Economist 2010c) Q4: With the ever increasing population the Brazilian Government faces the challenge of overpopulation, debilitating poverty and scarce job opportunities experienced in the country. Before the global crisis the economy was robust and it averag ed to about 4.4% yearly from 2004-2007 and 6.4% for the first three quarters of 2008. The global recession hit the economy hard leading to jobs being lost and collapse of industries. Between November 2009 and March2010 almost 500 thousand jobs were lost in Brazil. The government in its bid to boost the economy it increased wages, social transfers and made

Balance sheet Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Balance sheet - Essay Example It can also help managers to establish policies and strategies for the future. This paper provides information about the importance of balance sheet and its uses for investors and management. It also provides an insight into the ratio analysis that could be done on the basis of information obtained from balance sheet. The paper shows calculation and analysis of ratios from the balance sheet of Palaron Plc so as to understand the usefulness of information presented in the balance sheet for investors. Balance sheet plays a vital role in depicting the financial position of a company. It further shows whether an investor should invest in a particular company or not. A company's balance sheet also shows the strengths and weaknesses of a company. A company through its balance sheet portrays its financial position to the investors that it is a reliable company that possesses prosperous prospect and chances to grow. It also reflects whatever the goals have been set by the company will definitely be accomplished and delivered to the investors in the shape of cash or stock dividends. Birts also says that "the company must demonstrate its ability to trade for some time into future so that customers have confidence that it will be able to meet its commitments to them" (2001, p36). Investors would learn from the balance sheet a company's long-term investments, capital structure, liquidity and gearing position so as to analyse if the company would be able to remain in business for a longer p eriod of time. The balance sheet at the end of the year demonstrates the total assets and liabilities made by the company. There are two types of assets; current assets and fixed assets. Current assets include all the assets that are for less than one year i.e. cash, accounts receivable (with deduction of bad debts expenses), notes receivable, prepaid expenses incurred and merchandise inventory where as fixed assets include all those fixed assets which can transcend for more than one year i.e. machinery, equipment, land, building and plant assets etc. The depreciation and amortization are deducted from these fixed assets. Liabilities are also of two types; current liabilities and non current liabilities. Current liabilities include debt which is payable in year i.e. accounts payable, notes payable, accrued expenses and insurance premium etc while long term liabilities includes bonds payable etc. These are not enough because for a complete balance sheet it also includes owner's equity which include s total invested capital and retained earnings. The balance sheet is not only essential for the investors but also to large extent to the company itself. It gives the financial conditions of a company that where it stands at a particular time and show the real minus and plus points. In order to get the things on credit or need some credit to invest in the business to earn amplify potential gains, balance sheet items i.e. powerful fixed and current assets would help in getting the credit (Birts, 2001). With the help of balance sheet it becomes easier for a company to make decisions and prepare the plans for future and it can also know about the reason of being unsuccessful in the business, it further gives a complete outlook of the company progress which helps a company to get rid of barriers and obstacles in the way of

What is peak oil Is there any evidence that cities in the developing Essay

What is peak oil Is there any evidence that cities in the developing world are taking the issue seriously in their planning If there is little or no evidence, why is this the case - Essay Example st of the potentially oil rich regions have already been explored, and also due to legislation concerning the preservation of land with natural beauty or heritage value. The irreversible decline in oil production will cause adverse impacts in the global economy, â€Å"recession, food shortages and wars and conflicts over the remaining oil supplies† (Huddart and Stott 873). By the year 2030, it is predicted that while city dwellers in developed countries would have increased by 20%, the urban population in developing countries would have more than doubled to around 4 billion people, leading to overcrowding in several cities. In contemporary society there is a heavy dependence on oil for transportation, in industry, and in other requirements for liquid fossil fuels. â€Å"China, India and other countries are rapidly increasing their consumption while production from known oil fields is peaking† (Wissler 80). Kenneth S. Deffeyes (23) raises a controversial perspective based on geology and mathematics; he considers it improbable that additional major oilfields now remain undiscovered, and predicts increasingly difficult economic, social and political conditions particularly for regions most dependent on oil, specifically imported oil. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other exporters of oil will be able to charge high rates to fulfill the demands for the commodity, resulting in steep oil price hikes followed by greater chaos than similar occurrences in 1973 and 1979. The problem of ‘peak oil’ is also related to the issue of global warming. When oil production peaks and starts declining, it will be necessary to use other substitutes besides renewable resources examined above, such as coal. This will be necessary to power electric and hybrid vehicles and as the material converted into diesel fuel. These processes producing carbon dioxide will increase air and water pollution, and adversely affect climate change. â€Å"Therefore, a potential effect of climate change is increased

Teachers Education in Pakistan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Teachers Education in Pakistan - Essay Example Politics between staff members is a major concern; the social background of teachers is not taken into consideration since in a city like Karachi, the population is made of people from varying social backgrounds Time and again, the article refers to its concept framework and the advantages of its implementation, but it fails to go into further depths of the matter. In a progressive countr...y like Pakistan, there are more complex situations at the core of an educational system. Tensions in Teacher Training for School Effectiveness: The Case of PakistanLynn Davies &ZafarIqbal (July 1997) School Effective Research (SER) has emerged from virtual total obscurity to a now central position in the educational discourse that is taking place within countries (Teddies and Reynolds, 2000). In the light of this discourse, the article considered whether efficiency of schools is implicated by the influence of teacher training. Pakistan’s case study is exceptional since it continues teacher training, while increasing the autonomy of institutions. However, the inclusion may create strain and conflict to the research. The research is based on questionnaires answered by pre-service and in-service students and their tutors in a co-educational teacher training college. However, it shows that there were irregularities in the findings. The answers filled by the tutors did not match with those of the students. The problems highlighted were specific to the ones faced by the trainee in order to establish the relationship between the inefficiency of teachers’ training, and the mediocre performance of the trainee at work. It purposes to explain how teachers themselves are not 'autonomous learners' or 'reflective practitioners', and this particular attitude will trickle down to their students. Therefore, there is little or none evaluation of the current educational system and few propose to change it. The point that one particular case of training college cannot generalize t he effectiveness in other parts of Pakistan is good evaluation. If we understood how those effective teachers teach, and how they came to learn to

Strategic management of global company Research Paper

Strategic management of global company - Research Paper Example 22). The success of the company in both the Japanese as well as international market is the result of its aspiration to manufacture high quality products. Toyota enhanced its operations considerably in quality to go well with the domestic environment, and as a result has made a triumphal turnaround within US market. In addition, the increase in oil price surprisingly improved the demand for Toyota’s vehicles due to their light and fuel-efficient features. Form that time, global exporting business of Toyota had seen a stable development. With the intention of avoiding import challenges, for instance, directives and import allowances, Toyota launched a 50/50 joint venture with General Motor during 1983 in US, and a completely owned production units in UK during 1989 and another in France during 1997, and a â€Å"50/50 joint venture with French automaker Peugeot in Czech Republic in 2002† (Christensen, 2013, p. 52). Aggressive steps have as well been taken in China, now th e world’s rapidly developing car market. Toyota started its operations during the year 1954, with its head office situated in Tokyo, Japan. It was the hub of designing activities, scheduling, manufacturing of prototypes and assessment of automobiles. It was in charge for each and every function, together with development, designing and assessing cars. Besides, the center is as well responsible of safety technologies, energy management and environmental fortification. During the year 1973, Toyota started the design center at Newport Beach, California. The businesses formed the European center for design to have improved knowledge of local pressures and inclinations of existing and prospective customers. At this point, the group has made successful models such as â€Å"Yaris, Corolla, Corolla Verso, Avensis and Land Cruiser† (Rivenburgh, 2013, p. 92). Global Strategy of Toyota Any business that tryst to enter the foreign market primarily plans to get advantages of Ã¢â‚¬Ë œeconomies of scale’ as well as location and knowledge-gaining result which could be realized by and increase product and service consistency. On the other hand, at this point challenges of localization arise inevitably because of demand for response by the company to local setting such as taste and inclination of buyer, local government policies and cultural features. In the global business strategy matrix, â€Å"along two aspects of stress for cost cutback and stress for local reaction, transnational strategy has the maximum level along both dimensions† (Rivenburgh, 2013, p. 113). Among the four classic global business strategies, Toyota selects transnational Strategy. The best way to execute a transnational strategy is among the most difficult issues that big organizations are coping with these days. The necessity to compete with global rivals such as General Motors and Ford compelled Toyota to try to find better cost economies. Nonetheless, deviations in customers taste preference and government directives across countries indicate that Toyota as well has to be receptive to local demands. As a result, Toyota deals with considerable stress for cost decline as well as for local awareness. To decrease cost by standardizing, Toyota has been speeding up the process of going toward smaller number of automobile platforms, with objective of developing a broad range of models on a restricted range of platforms that have

SWOT Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

SWOT Analysis - Essay Example It advances chess in the American culture through the hosting of the United States Championships. The performance of children and their character are improving. This is considered as strength. According to the mission states of the association, it aims at strengthening the character and the mind of the young scholars. This result is a clear indication that the foundation is realizing its mission statement. This strength is distinctive as the change can be felt in the entire nation. Strengthening the mind of children improves their academic performance. Also, the children affected will impact others and this guarantees the future of a nation. This shows that the organization is beneficial to the nation (Allison et al., 2005). Since the organization is a nonprofit organization which is still achieving its goals, then its volunteers feel motivated. With motivated volunteers, there is the assurance of quality delivery from them. This will also attract more volunteers who will want to work for the organization. With a large number of volunteers, it means that the organization is saving quite an amount of money that could be utilized to meet its goals. Thus the organization will continue being a success, as good work force is vital for success (Allison et al., 2005). The nonprofit organization faces deficit of funds to cover its expenses. It cannot match the salaries of its for-profit competitors. The staff therefore, may not be motivated by the amount of money they earn and the founders, by the profits that they make. This lowers their compensation and diverts their focus on the satisfaction they get from their work. Since the foundation is realizing its goals and making an impact in the entire nation, this should motivate the founders and the staff. The organization’s stakeholders should try to involve donors who provide funds and engage in activities that can raise funds for

Teachers Education in Pakistan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Teachers Education in Pakistan - Essay Example Politics between staff members is a major concern; the social background of teachers is not taken into consideration since in a city like Karachi, the population is made of people from varying social backgrounds Time and again, the article refers to its concept framework and the advantages of its implementation, but it fails to go into further depths of the matter. In a progressive countr...y like Pakistan, there are more complex situations at the core of an educational system. Tensions in Teacher Training for School Effectiveness: The Case of PakistanLynn Davies &ZafarIqbal (July 1997) School Effective Research (SER) has emerged from virtual total obscurity to a now central position in the educational discourse that is taking place within countries (Teddies and Reynolds, 2000). In the light of this discourse, the article considered whether efficiency of schools is implicated by the influence of teacher training. Pakistan’s case study is exceptional since it continues teacher training, while increasing the autonomy of institutions. However, the inclusion may create strain and conflict to the research. The research is based on questionnaires answered by pre-service and in-service students and their tutors in a co-educational teacher training college. However, it shows that there were irregularities in the findings. The answers filled by the tutors did not match with those of the students. The problems highlighted were specific to the ones faced by the trainee in order to establish the relationship between the inefficiency of teachers’ training, and the mediocre performance of the trainee at work. It purposes to explain how teachers themselves are not 'autonomous learners' or 'reflective practitioners', and this particular attitude will trickle down to their students. Therefore, there is little or none evaluation of the current educational system and few propose to change it. The point that one particular case of training college cannot generalize t he effectiveness in other parts of Pakistan is good evaluation. If we understood how those effective teachers teach, and how they came to learn to

SWOT Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

SWOT Analysis - Essay Example It advances chess in the American culture through the hosting of the United States Championships. The performance of children and their character are improving. This is considered as strength. According to the mission states of the association, it aims at strengthening the character and the mind of the young scholars. This result is a clear indication that the foundation is realizing its mission statement. This strength is distinctive as the change can be felt in the entire nation. Strengthening the mind of children improves their academic performance. Also, the children affected will impact others and this guarantees the future of a nation. This shows that the organization is beneficial to the nation (Allison et al., 2005). Since the organization is a nonprofit organization which is still achieving its goals, then its volunteers feel motivated. With motivated volunteers, there is the assurance of quality delivery from them. This will also attract more volunteers who will want to work for the organization. With a large number of volunteers, it means that the organization is saving quite an amount of money that could be utilized to meet its goals. Thus the organization will continue being a success, as good work force is vital for success (Allison et al., 2005). The nonprofit organization faces deficit of funds to cover its expenses. It cannot match the salaries of its for-profit competitors. The staff therefore, may not be motivated by the amount of money they earn and the founders, by the profits that they make. This lowers their compensation and diverts their focus on the satisfaction they get from their work. Since the foundation is realizing its goals and making an impact in the entire nation, this should motivate the founders and the staff. The organization’s stakeholders should try to involve donors who provide funds and engage in activities that can raise funds for

International Rugby Board and Rugby Football Essay Example for Free

International Rugby Board and Rugby Football Essay Rugby football (also known as rugby) is either of two current sports, either rugby league or rugby union, or any of a number of sports through history descended from a common form of football developed in different areas of the United Kingdom. Rugby union, or simply Rugby, is a full contact team sport, a form of football which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. It is played with an oval-shaped ball, outdoors on a level field, usually with a grass surface, up to 100 metres (330 ft) long and 70 metres (230 ft) wide. On each goal line are H-shaped goal posts. The origin of rugby football is reputed to be an incident during a game of English school football at Rugby School in 1823 when William Webb-Ellis is said to have picked up the ball and run with it. Although this tale is apocryphal, the Rugby World Cup trophy is named after him. Rugby football stems from the form of game played at Rugby School, which old pupils initially took to university; Old Rugbeian Albert Pell, a student at Cambridge, is credited with having formed the first football team. During this early period different schools used different rules, with former pupils from Rugby and Eton attempting to carry their preferred rules through to their universities. Significant events in the early development of rugby football were the production of the first set of written laws at Rugby School in 1845, the Blackheath Clubs decision to leave the Football Association in 1863 and the formation of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. The code was originally known simply as rugby football; it was not until after a schism in 1895, which resulted in the separate code of rugby league, that the name rugby union came to be used for the game itself. Supporters of both codes will frequently refer to theirs as merely rugby or rugby football, unless they are differentiating between the two. The first rugby football international took place on 27 March 1871, played between England and Scotland. By 1881 both Ireland and Wales had representative teams, and in 1883 the first international competition, the Home Nations Championship had begun. 1883 also saw the first rugby sevens tournament at Melrose called the Melrose Sevens, which is still held annually. Five years later two important overseas tours took place; a British Isles team visited Australia and New Zealand—although a private venture, it laid the foundations for future British and Irish Lions tours; and the 1888 New Zealand Native team brought the first overseas team to British spectators. From 1905 through to 1907, all three major Southern Hemisphere rugby countries sent their first touring teams to the Northern Hemisphere; Dave Gallahers New Zealand in 1905, followed by Paul Roos South Africa in 1906 and then Herbert Morans Australia. All three teams brought new styles of play, fitness levels and tactics, and were far more successful than critics at first believed. 1905 also saw the first French internationals. The years during the First World War saw an end of international rugby union games and union-sponsored club matches, but competitions continued with service teams such as the New Zealand Army team. The Second World War saw an end of international matches from most countries, though Italy, Germany and Romania played a limited number of games, and Cambridge and Oxford continued their annual University Match. In 1973 the first officially sanctioned international sevens tournament took place at Murrayfield, as part of the Scottish Rugby Union centenary celebrations. In 1987 the first Rugby World Cup was held in New Zealand and Australia, and the inaugural winners were New Zealand. The first World Cup Sevens tournament was held at Murrayfield in 1993. Rugby union was an amateur sport until the IRB declared the game open in 1995, removing restrictions on payments to players. However, the pre-1995 period of rugby union was marked by frequent accusations of shamateurism, including an investigation in Britain by a House of Commons Select committee. [pic] The only known portrait of William Webb Ellis Rugby union differs from association football (soccer) in that the hands can be employed to move the ball. However, a player can only pass the ball backwards or laterally (i. e. not forward) to another player, or kick it. This means that the majority of progress made by an attacking team occurs through a leap frog cycle of passing the ball, running to make ground, being tackled and repeating this process. Each of these cycles (greatly simplified) is called a phase of play. Rugby union includes the concept of advantage (not to be confused with the advantage line). If one team commits an infraction of the Laws, the referee will not stop play if the opposing team is in a position to gain a territorial or tactical advantage from the mistake. Instead, he calls advantage and allows play to continue until he judges that adequate advantage has accrued, when he calls advantage over, and play continues as if the original infraction had not occurred. If he deems that no advantage can accrue, the referee will stop play and award a scrum, free kick or penalty, as appropriate, at the site of the original infraction. The question of what is advantage and how long play should be allowed to continue to see if any advantage is gained, is a moot point: the referee is the sole judge of what constitutes advantage and different referees can and do take different approaches to this question. But in general, if in subsequent advantage play a team has the chance to do what they could have done if the referee had stopped play for the infraction, then advantage has been gained and the referee will call advantage over. So, for instance, suppose a team commits an infraction that would result in their opponents being awarded a scrum. If their opponents are able to take clean possession of the ball and advance it following the infraction, then they have done what they would have been able to do from a scrum — advantage is thus over. If on the other hand their possession is messy or closely contested then there is no advantage, and the referee will (or should) award the original scrum. Advantage play automatically ends if the team seeking advantage commits an infringement itself: normally, they would then be awarded the consequences of the original infringement, but if they commit an act of foul play, then they will (or should) be penalised directly themselves.

Automatic Encoding Detection And Unicode Conversion Engine Computer Science Essay

Automatic Encoding Detection And Unicode Conversion Engine Computer Science Essay In computers, characters are represented using numbers. Initially the encoding schemes were designed to support the English alphabet, which has a limited number of symbols. Later the requirement for a worldwide character encoding scheme to support multi lingual computing was identified. The solution was to come up with a 16 encoding scheme to represent a character so that it can support up to large character set. The current Unicode version contains 107,000 characters covering 90 scripts. In the current context operating systems such as Windows 7, UNIX based operating systems applications such as word processors and data exchange technologies do support this standard enabling internationalization in the IT industry. Even though this standard has been the de facto standard, still there can be seen certain applications using proprietary encoding schemes to represent the data. As an example, famous Sinhala news sites still do not adapt Unicode standard based fonts to represent the conte nt. This causes issues such as the requirement of downloading proprietary fonts, browser dependencies making the efforts of Unicode standard in vain. In addition to the web site content itself there are collections of information included in documents such as PDFs in non Unicode fonts making it difficult to search through search engines unless the search term is entered in that particular font encoding. This has given the requirement of automatically detecting the encoding and transforming into the Unicode encoding in the corresponding language, so that it avoids the problems mentioned. In case of web sites, a browser plug-in implementation to support the automatic non-Unicode to Unicode conversion would eliminate the requirement of downloading legacy fonts, which uses proprietary character encodings. Although some web sites provide the source font information, there are certain web applications, which do not give this information, making the auto detection process more difficult. Hence it is required to detect the encoding first, before it has been fed to the transformation process. This has given the rise to a research area of auto detecting the language encoding for a given text based on language characteristics. This problem will be addressed based on a statistical language encoding detection mechanism. The technique would be demonstrated with the support for all the Sinhala Non Unicode encodings. The implementation for the demonstration will make sure that it is an extendible solution for other languages making it support for any given language based on a future requirement. Since the beginning of the computer age, many encoding schemes have been created to represent various writing scripts/characters for computerized data. With the advent of globalization and the development of the Internet, information exchanges crossing both language and regional boundaries are becoming ever more important. However, the existence of multiple coding schemes presents a significant barrier. The Unicode has provided a universal coding scheme, but it has not so far replaced existing regional coding schemes for a variety of reasons. Thus, todays global software applications are required to handle multiple encodings in addition to supporting Unicode. In computers, characters are encoded as numbers. A typeface is the scheme of letterforms and the font is the computer file or program which physically embodies the typeface. Legacy fonts use different encoding systems for assigning the numbers for characters. This leads to the fact that two legacy font encodings defining different numbers for the same character. This may lead to conflicts with how the characters are encoded in different systems and will require maintaining multiple encoding fonts. The requirement of having a standard to unique character identification was satisfied with the introduction of Unicode. Unicode enables a single software product or a single website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. Unicode Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. The latest Unicode has more than 107,000 characters covering 90 scripts, which consists of a set of code charts. The Unicode Consortium co-ordinates Unicodes development and the goal is to eventually replace existing character encoding schemes with Unicode and its standard Unicode Transformation Format (UTF) schemes. This standard is being supported in many recent technologies including Programming Languages and modern operating systems. All W3C recommendations have used Unicode as their document character set since HTML 4.0. Web browsers have supported Unicode, especially UTF-8, for many years [4], [5]. Sinhala Legacy Font Conversion Requirement for Web Content Sinhala language usage in computer technology has been present since 1980s but the lack of standards in character representation system resulted in proprietary fonts. Sinhala was added to Unicode in 1998 with the intention of overcoming the limitations in proprietary character encodings. Dinamina, DinaminaUniWeb, Iskoola Pota, KandyUnicode, KaputaUnicode, Malithi Web, Potha are some Sinhala Unicode fonts which were developed so that the numbers assigned with the characters are the same. Still some major news sites which display Sinhala character contents have not adapted the Unicode standards. The Legacy Fonts encoding schemes are used instead causing the conflicts in content representation. In order to minimize the problems, font families were created where the shape of characters only differs but the encoding remains the same. FM Font Family, DL Font Family are some examples where a font family concept is used as a grouping of Sinhala fonts with similar encodings [1], [2]. Adaptation of non Unicode encodings causes a lot of compatibility issues when viewed in different browsers and operating systems. Operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows7 come with Sinhala Unicode support and do not require external fonts to be installed to read Sinhalese script. Variations of GNU/Linux distributions such as Dabian or Ubuntu also provide Sinhala Unicode support. Enabling non Unicode applications especially web contents with the support for Unicode fonts will allow the users to view contents without installing the legacy fonts. Non Unicode PDF Documents In addition to the contents in the web, there exists a whole lot of government documents which are in PDF format but their contents are encoded with legacy fonts. Those documents would not be searchable through search engines by entering the search terms in Unicode. In order to overcome the problem it is important to convert such documents in to a Unicode font so that they are searchable and its data can be used by other applications consistently, irrespective of the font. As another part of the project this problem would be addressed through a converter tool, which creates the Unicode version of existing PDF document which are currently in legacy font. The Problem Sections 1.3, 1.4 describe two domains in which the Non Unicode to Unicode conversion is required. The conversion involves identification of non-Unicode contents and replacing it with the corresponding Unicode contents. The content replacement requires a Mapping engine, which would do the proper segmentation of the input text and map it with the corresponding Unicode code. The mapping engine can perform the mapping task only if it knows what is the source text encoding. In general, the encoding is specified along with the content so that the mapping engine could feed it directly. However, in certain cases the encoding is not specified along with the content. Hence detecting the encoding through an encoding the detection engine provides a research area, especially with the non-Unicode content. In addition to that, incorporating the detection engine along with a conversion engine would be another part of the problem, to solve the application areas in 1.3, 1.4. Project Scope The system will be initially targeted for Sinhala fonts used by local sites. Later the same mechanism will be extended to support other languages and scripts (Tamil, Devanagaree). Deliverables and outcomes Web Service/Plug-in to Local Language web site Font Conversion which automatically converts website contents from legacy fonts to Unicode. PDF document conversion tool to convert legacy fonts to Unicode In both implementations, the language encoding detection would use the proposed encoding detection mechanism. It can be considered as the core for the implementations in addition to the translation engine which performs the Non Unicode to Unicode mapping. Literature Review Character Encodings Character Encoding Schemes Encoding refers to the process of representing information in some form. Human language is an encoding system by which information is represented in terms of sequences of lexical units, and those in terms of sound or gesture sequences. Written language is a derivative system of encoding by which those sequences of lexical units, sounds or gestures are represented in terms of the graphical symbols that make up some writing system. A character encoding is an algorithm for presenting characters in digital form as sequences of octets. There are hundreds of encodings, and many of them have different names. There is a standardized procedure for registering an encoding. A primary name is assigned to an encoding, and possibly some alias names. For example, ASCII, US-ASCII, ANSI_X3.4-1986, and ISO646-US are different names for an encoding. There are also many unregistered encodings and names that are used widely. The character encoding names are not case sensitive and hence ASCII and Ascii are equivalent [25]. Figure 2.1 Character encoding Example Single Octet Encodings When character repertoire that contains at most 256 characters, assigning a number in the range 0255 to each character and use an octet with that value to represent that character is the most simplest and obvious way. Such encodings, called single-octet or 8-bit encodings, are widely used and will remain important [22]. Multi-Octet Encodings In multi octet encodings more than one octet is used to represent a single character. A simple two-octet encoding is sufficient for a character repertoire that contains at most 65,536 characters. Two octet schemes are uneconomical if the text mostly consists of characters that could be presented in a single-octet encoding. On the other hand, the objective of supporting Universal character set is not achievable with just 65,536 unique codes. Thus, encodings that use a variable number of octets per character are more common. The most widely used among such encodings is UTF-8 (UTF stands for Unicode Transformation Format), which uses one to four octets per character. Principles of Unicode Standard Unicode has used as the universal encoding standard to encode characters in all living languages. To the end, is follows a set of fundamental principles. The Unicode standard is simple and consistent. It does not depend on states or modes for encoding special characters. The Unicode standard incorporates the character sets of many existing standards: For example, it includes Latin-I, character set as its first 256 characters. It includes repertoire of characters from numerous other corporate, national and international standards as well. In modern businesses needs handle characters from a wide variety of languages at the same time. With Unicode, a single internationalization process can produce code that handles the requirements of all the world markets at the same time. The data corruption problems do not occur since Unicode has a single definition for each character. Since it handles the characters for all the world markets in a uniform way, it avoids the complexities of different character code architectures. All of the modern operating systems, from PCs to mainframes, support Unicode now, or are actively developing support for it. The same is true of databases, as well.There are 10 design principles associated with Unicode. Universility The Unicode is designed to be Universal. The repertoire must be large enough to encompass all characters that are likely to be used in general text interchange. Unicode needs to encompass a variety of essentially different collections of characters and writing systems. For example, it cannot postulate that all text is written left to right, or that all letters have uppercase and lowercase forms, or that text can be divided into words separated by spaces or other whitespace. Efficient Software does not have to maintain state or look for special escape sequences, and character synchronization from any point in a character stream is quick and unambiguous. A fixed character code allows for efficient sorting, searching, display, and editing of text. But with Unicode efficiency there exist certain tradeoffs made specially with the storage requirements needing four octets for each character. Certain representation forms such as UTF-8 format requiring linear processing of the data stream in order to identify characters. Unicode contains a large amount of characters and features that have been included only for compatibility with other standards. This may require preprocessing that deals with compatibility characters and with different Unicode representations of the same character (e.g., letter à © as a single character or as two characters). Characters, not glyphs Unicode assigns code points to characters as abstractions, not to visual appearances. A character in Unicode represents an abstract concept rather than the manifestation as a particular form or glyph. As shown in Figure 2.2, the glyphs of many fonts that render the Latin character A all correspond to the same abstract character a. Figure 2.2: Abstract Latin Letter a and Style Variants Another example is the Arabic presentation form. An Arabic character may be written in up to four different shapes. Figure 2.3 shows an Arabic character written in its isolated form, and at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a word. According to the design principle of encoding abstract characters, these presentation variants are all represented by one Unicode character. Figure 2.3: Arabic character with four representations The relationship between characters and glyphs is rather simple for languages like English: mostly each character is presented by one glyph, taken from a font that has been chosen. For other languages, the relationship can be much more complex routinely combining several characters into one glyph. Semantics Characters have well-defined meanings. When the Unicode standard refers to semantics, it often means the properties of characters, such spacing, combinability, and directionality, rather than what the character really means. Plain text Unicode deals with plain texti.e., strings of characters without formatting or structuring information (except for things like line breaks). Logical order The default representation of Unicode data uses logical order of data, as opposed to approaches that handle writing direction by changing the order of characters. Unification The principle of uniqueness was also applied to decide that certain characters should not be encoded separately. Unicode encodes duplicates of a character as a single code point, if they belong to the same script but different languages. For example, the letter à ¼ denoting a particular vowel in German is treated as the same as the letter à ¼ in Spanish. The Unicode standard uses Han unification to consolidate Chinese, Korean, and Japanese ideographs. Han unification is the process of assigning the same code point to characters historically perceived as being the same character but represented as unique in more than one East Asian ideographic character standard. These results in a group of ideographs shared by several cultures and significantly reduces the number of code points needed to encode them. The Unicode Consortium chose to represent shared ideographs only once because the goal of the Unicode standard was to encode characters independent of the languages that use them. Unicode makes no distinctions based on pronunciation or meaning; higher-level operating systems and applications must take that responsibility. Through Han unification, Unicode assigned about 21,000 code points to ideographic characters instead of the 120,000 that would be required if the Asian languages were treated separately. It is true that the same charact er might look slightly different in Chinese than in Japanese, but that difference in appearance is a font issue, not a uniqueness issue. Figure 2.4: Han Unification example The Unicode standard allows for character composition in creating marked characters. It encodes each character and diacritic or vowel mark separately, and allows the characters to be combined to create a marked character. It provides single codes for marked characters when necessary to comply with preexisting character standard. Dynamic composition Characters with diacritic marks can be composed dynamically, using characters designated as combining marks. Equivalent sequences Unicode has a large number of characters that are precomposed forms, such as à ©. They have decompositions that are declared as equivalent to the precomposed form. An application may still treat the precomposed form and the decomposition differently, since as strings of encoded characters, they are distinct. Convertibility Character data can be accurately converted between Unicode and other character standards and specifications. South Asian Scripts The scripts of South Asia share so many common features that a side-by-side comparison of a few will often reveal structural similarities even in the modern letterforms. With minor historical exceptions, they are written from left to right. They are all abugidas in which most symbols stand for a consonant plus an inherent vowel (usually the sound /a/). Word-initial vowels in many of these scripts have distinct symbols, and word-internal vowels are usually written by juxtaposing a vowel sign in the vicinity of the affected consonant. Absence of the inherent vowel, when that occurs, is frequently marked with a special sign [17]. Another designation is preferred in some languages. As an example in Hindi, the word hal refers to the character itself, and halant refers to the consonant that has its inherent vowel suppressed. The virama sign nominally serves to suppress the inherent vowel of the consonant to which it is applied; it is a combining character, with its shape varying from script to script. Most of the scripts of South Asia, from north of the Himalayas to Sri Lanka in the south, from Pakistan in the west to the easternmost islands of Indonesia, are derived from the ancient Brahmi script. The oldest lengthy inscriptions of India, the edicts of Ashoka from the third century BCE, were written in two scripts, Kharoshthi and Brahmi. These are both ultimately of Semitic origin, probably deriving from Aramaic, which was an important administrative language of the Middle East at that time. Kharoshthi, written from right to left, was supplanted by Brahmi and its derivatives. The descendants of Brahmi spread with myriad changes throughout the subcontinent and outlying islands. There are said to be some 200 different scripts deriving from it. By the eleventh century, the modern script known as Devanagari was in ascendancy in India proper as the major script of Sanskrit literature. The North Indian branch of scripts was, like Brahmi itself, chiefly used to write Indo-European languages such as Pali and Sanskrit, and eventually the Hindi, Bengali, and Gujarati languages, though it was also the source for scripts for non-Indo-European languages such as Tibetan, Mongolian, and Lepcha. The South Indian scripts are also derived from Brahmi and, therefore, share many structural characteristics. These scripts were first used to write Pali and Sanskrit but were later adapted for use in writing non-Indo-European languages including Dravidian family of southern India and Sri Lanka. Sinhala Language Characteristics of Sinhala The Sinhala script, also known as Sinhalese, is used to write the Sinhala language, by the majority language of Sri Lanka. It is also used to write the Pali and Sanskrit languages. The script is a descendant of Brahmi and resembles the scripts of South India in form and structure. Sinhala differs from other languages of the region in that it has a series of prenasalized stops that are distinguished from the combination of a nasal followed by a stop. In other words, both forms occur and are written differently [23]. Figure 2.5: Example for prenasalized stop in Sinhala In addition, Sinhala has separate distinct signs for both a short and a long low front vowel sounding similar to the initial vowel of the English word apple, usually represented in IPA as U+00E6 à ¦ latin small letter ae (ash). The independent forms of these vowels are encoded at U+0D87 and U+0D88. Because of these extra letters, the encoding for Sinhala does not precisely follow the pattern established for the other Indic scripts (for example, Devanagari). It does use the same general structure, making use of phonetic order, matra reordering, and use of the virama (U+0DCA sinhala sign al-lakuna) to indicate conjunct consonant clusters. Sinhala does not use half-forms in the Devanagari manner, but does use many ligatures. Sinhala Writing System The Sinhala writing system can be called an abugida, as each consonant has an inherent vowel (/a/), which can be changed with the different vowel signs. Thus, for example, the basic form of the letter k is à  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡ ka. For ki, a small arch is placed over the à  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡: à  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬â„¢. This replaces the inherent /a/ by /i/. It is also possible to have no vowel following a consonant. In order to produce such a pure consonant, a special marker, the hal kirÄ «ma has to be added: à  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…   . This marker suppresses the inherent vowel. Figure 2.6: Character associative Symbols in Sinhala Historical Symbols. Neither U+0DF4 sinhala punctuation kunddaliya nor the Sinhala numerals are in general use today, having been replaced by Western-style punctuation and Western digits. The kunddaliya was formerly used as a full stop or period. It is included for scholarly use. The Sinhala numerals are not presently encoded. Sinhala and Unicode In 1997, Sri Lanka submitted a proposal for the Sinhala character code at the Unicode working group meeting in Crete, Greece. This proposal competed with proposals from UK, Ireland and the USA. The Sri Lankan draft was finally accepted with slight modifications. This was ratified at the 1998 meeting of the working group held at Seattle, USA and the Sinhala Code Chart was included in Unicode Version 3.0 [2]. It has been suggested by the Unicode consortium that ZWJ and ZWNJ should be introduced in Orthographic languages like Sinhala to achieve the following: 1. ZWJ joins two or more consonants to form a single unit (conjunct consonants). 2. ZWJ can also alter shape of preceding consonants (cursiveness of the consonant). 3. ZWNJ can be used to disjoin a single ligature into two or more units. Encoding auto Detection Browser and auto-detection In designing auto detection algorithms to auto detect encodings in web pages it needs to depend on the following assumptions on input data [24]. Input text is composed of words/sentences readable to readers of a particular language. Input text is from typical web pages on the Internet which is not an ancient dead language. The input text may contain extraneous noises which have no relation to its encoding, e.g. HTML tags, non-native words (e.g. English words in Chinese documents), space and other format/control characters. Methods of auto detection The paper[24] discusses about 3 different methods for detecting the encoding of text data. Coding Scheme Method In any of the multi-byte encoding coding schemes, not all possible code points are used. If an illegal byte or byte sequence (i.e. unused code point) is encountered when verifying a certain encoding, it is possible to immediately conclude that this is not the right guess. Efficient algorithm to detecting character set using coding scheme through a parallel state machine is discussed in the paper [24]. For each coding scheme, a state machine is implemented to verify a byte sequence for this particular encoding. For each byte the detector receives, it will feed that byte to every active state machine available, one byte at a time. The state machine changes its state based on its previous state and the byte it receives. In a typical example, one state machine will eventually provide a positive answer and all others will provide a negative answer. Character Distribution Method In any given language, some characters are used more often than other characters. This fact can be used to devise a data model for each language script. This is particularly useful for languages with a large number of characters such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The tests were carried out with the data for simplified Chinese encoded in GB2312, traditional Chinese encoded in Big, Japanese and Korean. It was observed that a rather small set of coding points covers a significant percentage of characters used. Parameter called Distribution Ration was defined and used for the purpose separating the two encodings. Distribution Ratio = the Number of occurrences of the 512 most frequently used characters divided by the Number of occurrences of the rest of the characters. . Two-Char Sequence Distribution Method In languages that only use a small number of characters, we need to go further than counting the occurrences of each single character. Combination of characters reveals more language-characteristic information. 2-Char Sequence as 2 characters appearing immediately one after another in input text, and the order is significant in this case. Just as not all characters are used equally frequently in a language, 2-Char Sequence distribution also turns out to be extremely language/encoding dependent. Current Approaches to Solve Encoding Problems Siyabas Script The SiyabasScript is as an attempt to develop a browser plugin, which solves the problem using legacy font in Sinhala news sites [6]. It is an extension to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers. This solution was specifically designed for a limited number of target web sites, which were having the specific fonts. The solution had the limitation of having to reengineer the plug-in, if a new version of the browser is released. The solution was not global since that id did not have the ability to support a new site which is using a Sinhala legacy font. In order to overcome that, the proposed solution will identify the font and encodings based on the content but not on site. There is a chance that the solution might not work if the site decided to adapt another legacy font, as it cannot detect the encoding scheme changes. There is a significant delay in the conversion process. The user would notice the display of the content with characters which are in legacy font before they g et converted to the Unicode. This performance delay can be also identified as an area to improve in the solution. The conversion process does not provide the exact conversion specially when the characters need to be combined in Unicode. à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ´Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã‚ = à  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬ ºÃƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¯Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ º à  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â€ž ¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  .à  Ã‚ ¶Ã¢â‚¬â„¢.à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ´Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬Å". à  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â€ž ¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¸Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ » à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¸Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ­Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã‚ , à  Ã‚ ¶Ã…“à  Ã‚ ·Ã‹Å"à  Ã‚ ·Ã‹Å"à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ´Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…   à  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ´Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ­Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…   à  Ã‚ ¶Ã¢â‚¬ ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ©Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã‹Å"à  Ã‚ ·Ã‹Å" à  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â€ž ¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã†â€™Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ »Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ º, à  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡ à  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ »Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…   , à  Ã‚ ¶Ã¢â‚¬ ¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã†â€™Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã… ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ »Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ½Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ºÃƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬  , à  Ã‚ ¶Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã‚ +à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ »Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ºÃƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…   à  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ± à  Ã‚ ·Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬Å"à  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ » ,à  Ã‚ ¶Ã… ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬Å"à  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ »Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ©Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã‚ Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã…“à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ «Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ºÃƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã… ¡Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¯Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬Å" ,à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¯`à  Ã‚ ¶Ã…“ à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ´Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ¯Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â‚¬  à  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ºÃƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã¢â€š ¬Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…  Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ¶Ã‚ ±Ãƒ  Ã‚ ·Ã…   can be mentioned as the examples of words of such conversion issues. The plug-in supports the Sinhala Unicode conversion for the sites www.lankadeepa.lk, www.lankaenews.com and www.lankascreen.com. But the other websites mentioned in the paper does not get properly converted to Sinhala with Firefox version 3.5.17. Aksharamukha Asian Script Converter Aksharamukha is a South: South-East-Asian script convertor tool. It supports transliteration between Brahmi derived Asian scripts. It also has the functionality to transliterate web pages from Indic Scripts to other scripts. The Convertor scrapes the HTML page, then transliterates the Indic Scripts and displays the HTML. There are certain issues in the tool when it comes to alignment with the original web page. Misalignments and missing images, unconverted hyperlinks are some of them. Figure 2.7: Aksharamukha Asian Script Converter Corpus-based Sinhala Lexicon The Lexicon of a language is its vocabulary including higher order constructs such as words and expressions. In order to detect the encoding of a given text this can be used as a supporting tool. Corpus based Sinhala lexicon has nearly 35000 entries based on a corpus consisting of 10 million words from diverse genres such as technical writing, creative writing and news reportage [7], [9]. The text distribution across genres is given in table 1. Table 2.1: Distribution of Words across Genres [7] Genre Number of words Percentage of words Creative Writing 2340999 23% Technical Writing 4357680 43% News Reportage 3433772 34% N-gram-based language, script, and encoding scheme-detection N-Gram refers to N character sequences and is used as a well-established technique used in classifying language of text documents. The method detects language, script, and encoding schemes using a target text document encoded by computer by checking how many byte sequences of the target match the byte sequences that can appear in the texts belonging to a language, script, and encoding scheme. N-grams are extracted from a string, or a document, by a sliding window that shifts one character at a time. Sinhala Enabled Mobile Browser for J2ME Phones Mobile phone usage is rapidly increasing throughout the world as well as in Sri Lanka. It has become the most ubiquitous communication device. Accessing internet through the mobile phone has become a common activity of people especially for messaging and news items. In J2ME enabled phones Sinhala Unicode support yet to be developed. They do not allow installation of fonts outside. Hence those devices will not be able to display Unicode contents, especially on the web, until Unicode is supported by the platform. Integrating the Unicode viewing support will provide a good opportunity to carry the technology to remote areas if it can be presented in the native language. If this is facilitated, in addition to the urban crowd, people from rural areas will be able to subscribe to a daily newspaper with their mobile. One major advantage of such an application is that it will provide a phone model independent solution which supports any Java enabled phone. Cillion is a Mini browser software which shows Unicode contents in J2ME phones. This software is an application developed with the fonts integrated wh