Pollution by CO2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Pollution by CO2 - Essay Example Therefore, concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is being monitored closely in order to prevent effects of global warming (Ramseur & Parker2008, p.27). The need to curb the effects of global warming due to increased greenhouse gases has led to the development of novel devices, which can monitor air pollution by CO2. However, it is worth to mention that some of the methods in use for the monitoring of CO2 tend to be highly sophisticated, and can only be used under exceptional circumstances. Today, majority of the devices that are in use for monitoring of atmospheric CO2 are constructed using Non-Dispersive Infrared gas analyzers. However, there are several other techniques, which use chromatographic and spectrum techniques. It is necessary to note that there is an internationally accepted calibration system that helps in giving a global standard for CO2 measurements (Nowakb & King 2002, p.246). Devices for measuring CO2 pollution Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) This is one of the methods widely used for monitoring atmospheric pollution by CO2. This technique has been in use for decades, and its working principle is based on the identification of the absorption spectrum for different gases. Therefore, FTIR operates by monitoring the whole infrared spectrum in order to identify the different absorption spectrums for gases present. Infrared spectrums produce absorption spectrums for samples that have absorption peaks that correspond to frequencies of bond vibrations within an atom. Every material has a unique combination of atoms, hence the uniqueness in the infrared spectrum produced. Therefore, the use of infrared spectroscopy can help in the quantitative analysis of a material (Xinyi 2012, p. 225). The size of peaks produced by infrared spectrums provides a direct measurement for the quantity of substance present within the test sample, which goes to extents of 10% of CO2 concentrations in the sample. The use of software algorithms has made use o f the infrared spectrum a vital tool for quantitative analysis. The use of FTIR has a number of advantages over other techniques that were in use earlier. These advantages include its nondestructive nature; it also gives precise measurements that do not need any external calibration, has a high operating speed and is of a high sensitivity. Other advantages include its high optical throughput, and its mechanical simplicity.With the help of an interferometer, FTIR measures different infrared frequencies simultaneously. Therefore, this technique is reliable for the identification of air pollution by CO2 based on its unique absorption spectrum (Griffith &Stephen 2000, p.218). Advantages FTIR provides the advantage of measuring up to 50 determinants. The other advantagesincludethe reduced number of interferences, lack of frequent calibration, and a typical range of 2.5-25Â µm. Disadvantages The main disadvantage associated with the use of FTIR is its potential to generate a large amount of data from inferograms, which makes data analysis process cumbersome. The other disadvantage relates to difficulties in obtaining a representative background. Gas chromatography This is an analytic technique that is used in the analysis of a number of gaseous substances. Analysis of gases using gas chromatography requires the gaseous compounds under analysis to have thermal stability and sufficiently

Unethical Business Research Conduct Essay Example for Free

Unethical Business Research Conduct Essay Ethics and the behaviors associated with them have the highest significance for different reasons within a business organization. Companies must ensure they follow all levels of ethical behavior when any activity is performed at their premises; especially activities related to business research. Business research is the systematic inquisition that provides information to direct managerial decisions (Cooper Schindler, 2011). Its purpose is to allow companies access to valuable information on company policies, customer service and consumer buying habits. Business owners can use this information to discover which products and services are important to the public, worker morale and behaviors, as well as what they can do to set themselves apart from the competition. However, wrong methods and/or unethical research conduct can obscure results and lead to the damage of a companies’ process, financial statue and image. An example of unethical business research can be found in the 2004 discrimination lawsuit against the restaurant Cracker Barrel. A number of bad research methods contributed to the courts’ order to convict and discipline the retailer for a number of consumer accusations. The leading cause of the court’s decision was the companies’ bad research and investigations into the basic problems and the flawed information that was turned into the Department of Justice following said investigation. Cracker Barrel Restaurant and Old Country Store, a nationwide retail chain, underwent random testing of its facilities and stores to monitor the possibility of racial bias in customer service. This research and observation was not only to screen for the possibility of racism, but to expand culture and diversity training to employees as part of a settlement with the Department of Justice on May 3, 2004. This agreement was made after a number of African Americans (and other minority groups) customers of the establishment came forward with complaints through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP, stating â€Å" they were made to wait longer for tables, were seated away from white patrons, received inferior service and wer e otherwise discriminated against at Cracker Barrel restaurants† (Fears, 2004). As part of a court agreement, Cracker Barrel conducted its own corporate research into the accusations against its company. They concluded that no wrongdoings were committed, asserting that its company has always maintained anti-discrimination policies to all consumer no matter what gender, race and sexuality they are. Upon the reception of Cracker Barrel’s results, the Justice Department decided to hire an independent auditor to check their claims. The Justice Departments investigation included interviews with approximately 150 persons, [of which consisted] mostly [of] former Cracker Barrel employees; and found that 80 percent stated that they experienced or witnessed discriminatory treatment of customers at a Cracker Barrel restaurant,† according to R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. The conclusion suggested that some managers directed, participated in, and/or encouraged stereotyping and discrim inatory behaviors from employee, Acostas added (Schmit Copeland, 2004). Though this suit ended with the court’s judgment for Cracker Barrel to pay fines and damages to a number of customers and their attorneys, the company’s reputation for discrimination is continuously being investigated a number of private and federal groups, including the Department of Justice, NAACP, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or EEOC. The first issue with the company began with management not taking customer complaints seriously, however, the major issue is how the company went about resolving the issue. Had they taken the time to actually brainstorm and come up with a logical way to resolve the issue, the accusations probably wouldn’t have turned into a class-action lawsuit. And when the Department of Justice demanded the company conduct a private, internal investigation, they should have gone about doing it the right way. However the company and managerial lack of interest in proper investigation and research skills lead them to produce questionable results of value to the case. With this, the Department of Justice chose to proceed with its own investigation to prove or disprove the case and integrity of the company. Reference Cooper, D., Schindler, P. (2011). Business research methods (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw- Hill/Irwin. Retrieved from the University of Phoenix eBook website: https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/content/eBookLibrary2/content/TOC.aspx?assetid=8e4d9544-fa8b-4402-8f2d- 624db889e46dassetmetaid=179f7507-93d0-431c-826f-d663a33b6057 Fears, D. (2004). Crackle Barrel, Government Settles Discrimination Suit. The Washington Post Company. Retrieved January 21, 2012 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/articles/A639242004 Schmit, J. Copeland, L. (2004). Cracker Barrel customer says bias was flagrant. USA Today. Retrieved January 20, 2012 from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2004-05-07-cracker- barrel_x.htm

The Braden Scale :: The Braden Scale

The Braden Scale is a clinically valued tool that is used to predict pressure ulcers. The scale is broken down into six sub-scales; these subscales determine the risk factors associated with skin break down. Multiple aspects of a patients condition are examined, (sensory perception, moisture, activity, mobility, nutrition, friction and shear), to limit the patients susceptibility for skin break down. Since pressure ulcers are a financial burden and a cause for patient discomfort and possible infection, predicting and assessing risk has enormous benefit and significance. This study was conducted to determine the validity of the mobility subscale of the Braden scale. The subscale of mobility is defined as the patients ability to change and control body positions. The research was conducted in a veteran hospital, and participants ranged in age from 45-95 years. The tools that were used were the Braden scale and actigraphy which measures movement. It was placed on the patient’s non-dominant ankle in order to observe the larger movements of the patient. The researcher defined each score in relation to movement. They hypothesized that the increase in movement would cause an increase in score of the mobility subscale. As predicted, the mobility subscale scores increased as movement increased. A similar study to predict risk of ulcers in pediatric patients was conducted to test the validity of using the Braden Q scale. A modified version of the Braden Scale, only containing three subscales, was used to utilize a shorter comparable tool. The Braden Q Scale is a revision of the Braden scale that is applicable in pediatrics. The two tools that were used were: the Braden Q Scale and skin assessments. The sample study consisted of 322 patients who were on bed rest for at least 24 hours. The patients were observed three times per week, for two weeks, and then weekly until discharge, which totaled 887 individual assessments. It was determined that both the Braden Q, as well as the modified Braden Scale was adequate tools to measure skin breakdown. Both studies modified the original Braden Scale to test the validity of their modifications. The first study was based solely on the mobility scale of the Braden scale, while the second study used three of the original sub-scales to prove comparable results to the overall scale. Both studies were designed to simplify the Braden scale in order to determine the effectiveness of the subscales alone.

The Gamma Knife Improves Treatment of Brain Disorders Essay -- Explora

The Gamma Knife Improves Treatment of Brain Disorders Advanced treatment for brain tumors and brain disorders, the Gamma Knife is a tool being utilized to treat thousands of functional brain disorders every year without the danger involved in invasive procedures. Not many people can say they were up and about the same day after treatment of a brain tumor. This is now possible with the Gamma Knife, a technology utilizing gamma rays to treat brain disorders successfully and with no incision. These requirements are essential when trying to treat the disorders in a sensitive organ as the brain, where millimeters may mean the difference between life or death or brain damage. Developed in 1968 by Swedish neurosurgeon Lars Leksell, the Gamma Knife was not used until many years later when advanced diagnostic methods were developed. With the advent of technology such as the MRI and CT scan, the Gamma Knife's full capabilities are finally being realized. Conditions often treated with the technology are arteriovenus malformations, acoustic neuromas, meningiomas, pituitary adenomas, and brain metastases. The risk of surgical complications is non-existent since the procedure is performed without an incision. It is also almost painless; patients usually opt for just local anesthesia and a mild sedative. The patient's head does not even need to be shaved for the procedure. During invasive procedures, surgeons are forced to actually penetrate the brain and work with MRI and CAT scan pictures to locate tumors and remove them. This is often an inaccurate procedure that may leave portions of the tumor still in the brain and require another operation. Another downside to invasive procedure is that tumo... ...Knife is also cost-effective. With no need for long hospital stays or rehabilitation, the procedure is obviously highly recommended by medical-insurance providers. The Gamma Knife is revolutionizing the treatment of brain disorders. Before, when a cancer spread to the brain, it was considered a terminal illness. Now, a patient is able to walk in and be treated in just a half hour. There have not even been any reported deaths or complications resulting from the procedure. It is being bought for use in many hospitals around the world and may be, in the not too distant future, as common as any other surgical procedure performed today. Bibliography http://www.chw.edu/mha/Gamma/gamma.html http://www.chw.edu/mha/Gamma/Q&A.html http://gammaknife.org/technical.html "Magnetic Resonance Imaging", Encarta. Microsoft Corporation, 1997.

Domestic and Global Security Threats

Current domestic and global security threats: The impact on The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed to cope with the challenges of a bipolar world. However, today’s global environment faces multi-polar challenges from non-state actors such as terrorists. Threats once considered domestic concerns now affect the world, like global warming and the need to rebuild the infrastructure of unstable states such as Afghanistan and Bosnia.The globalization of modern society has meant the globalization of modern technological threats, including cyberterrorism, as well as increased international competition for scarce energy resources. All of these problems affect NATO members but cannot be addressed with a regionally specific focus. To create a more secure world â€Å"NATO will need to start working in partnership with other multilateral organizations, like the UN, if it hopes to find effective permanent solutions to the secu rity challenges facing the world.Although NATOs presence is often a condition of success, it is increasingly insufficient† by itself when dealing with global security (Goldschmidt 2009). Domestic state concerns, such as internal instability and a lack of resources can have global repercussions. Domestic concerns: Domestic peacekeeping in Afghanistan and global warming Because of the terrorist threat posed to NATO nations by terrorist non-state actors harbored in Afghanistan, NATO cannot shirk the critical role it must play in creating a more stable government, despite Afghanistan’s non-European location.In Afghanistan, â€Å"there is a need for a coordinated effort with development and reconstruction agencies. NATO currently must play both a security and nation-building role. It was not designed for the latter, and cannot hope to create the conditions for military withdrawal without a concerted development effort† with other regional and international organizatio ns such as the United Nations (Goldschmidt 2009).Recently, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stated that while Afghanistan security and internal integrity is still challenging and â€Å"Afghanistan will likely face security threats for years to come,† NATO alliance forces within the nation have begun â€Å"transferring security responsibilities to the Afghan government† and can begin a slow withdrawal (Fedynsky 2010). Afghanistan security will remain of grave concern for the Alliance, but the approach taken by NATO has been seen as a useful template for its future 21st century fforts. Said Secretary General Rasmussen: â€Å"It will not be a run for the exit†¦What will happen is that we hand over lead responsibility to the Afghans, and our soldiers will then move into a more supportive role. But I foresee that the Afghan security forces will need our supportive assistance for quite some time† (Fedynsky 2010). NATO will increasingly assume the role , suggests Rasmussen, of a peacekeeping force—keeping the domestic peace for Afghanistan in the interests of global peace.Global warming is of grave concern for all of NATO members, given that wars for the earth’s scarce energy resources can become a fertile source of interstate conflict. Nations with historical animosity to NATO members, such as those in the Persian Gulf, often harbor the greatest reserves of the world’s fossil fuels. Climate change can also result in critical reductions in the food supply and politically destabilizing natural disasters. Global warming has even intensified competition for territory: â€Å"Russia, the US, Canada, Norway and Denmark have all been attracted to the energy supply in the Arctic.Relations between these states has intensified after evidence revealed that global warming was melting the polar ice making, access to the energy supplies easier as jurisdiction over the region is still under dispute† (â€Å"Russia,â⠂¬  Press TV, 2009). â€Å"Climate change could confront us with a whole range of unpleasant developments — developments which no single nation state has the power to contain†¦. dwindling water and food supplies, global warming, and mass migration cause international tensions. [Climate change will] sharpen the competition over resources, notably water.It will increase the risks to coastal regions. It will provoke disputes over territory and farming land. It will spur migration and it will make fragile states even more fragile† warned NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (Waterfield 2008). Unspoken by Scheffer was the fact that Russia â€Å"aims to be among the world's top five economies in medium term† and has a strong â€Å"reliance on natural energy supplies such as oil and gas† and a strong interest in expanding its reserves (â€Å"Russia,† Press TV, 2009).Global concerns: Russia, missile shields and cyberterrorism Thus domestic co ncerns such as internal instability and even energy scarcity have global repercussions that affect NATO nations. That is why, despite the end of the Cold War, tensions between NATO member and non-member nations remain bubbling so close to the surface. It has not been forgotten by the Russian leadership that NATO was founded to address the security concerns raised by the now-defunct institutions of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.Fears of ‘Star Wars’ shield defense systems were reignited in March when Secretary General Rasmussen, warning of the â€Å"looming threat of weapons of mass destruction,† made a case for a missile shield system for all NATO alliance states against â€Å"unconventional weapons and the missiles that [they] could carry†¦Should Iran produce intermediate- and intercontinental-range missiles†¦the whole of the European continent, as well as all of Russia would be in range,† he stated (Brunnstrom 2010).Rasmussen’s del iberate mention of Russia as a potential target for rogue states and terrorist organizations did little to allay the Russia’s fears that a NATO missile shield system would pose a threat to its security. In 2009, before the US announced its abandonment of a missile defense system in the Czech Republic, â€Å"a national security document released by Moscow describe[d] the US and NATO as major threats to the security of the world and Russia† (â€Å"Russia,† Press TV, 2009). Along with its disputes with Russia, cyberterrorism and terrorism have been pressing concerns in framing NATO’s global agenda for the future.The most visible aspect of NATO’s anti-terrorist campaign has been in terms of its military capacity through efforts such as Operation Active Endeavour (OAE), â€Å"a maritime surveillance operation led by NATO’s naval forces to undertake anti-terrorist patrol, escort and compliant boarding in the Mediterranean,† as well as NATO policing assistance protecting the public during high-profile events such as the Olympics and other international sporting events (â€Å"Topic: Terrorism,† NATO, 2010).NATO has also made every effort to deploy new technology in its efforts to subvert terrorist threats such as its Defense Against Terrorism Program of Work (DAT POW) which created the precision air-drop technology currently used in Afghanistan. Since 2007 cyber attacks in Estonia swamped government websites shortly after the Estonian government challenged the Russian government regarding the possession of a national monument, NATO’s awareness has been heightened about the security risks posed by cyberterrorism. The protection of NATO's key information systems in general, and cyber defense in particular, are integral parts of the functions of the Alliance† (â€Å"Topic: Terrorism,† NATO, 2010). In addition to specifically-coordinated military efforts, NATO has attempted to promote information sharing between member nations regarding terrorist threats and counter-terrorist efforts.However, the maintenance of hostilities between NATO and Russia continues to be of concern, given Russia’s fears of NATO missile defense systems, Russia’s desire to expand its territorial outreach for energy reserves, and Russia’s lack of willingness to engage in information exchanges with the Alliance. Russia is a critical partner in fighting global warming and terrorism, particularly because of its size, resources, and the fact that many cyber attacks have been traced to Russia.Building stronger relationships with Russia without compromising NATO’s domestic and global agenda will be a critical challenge for the Alliance in the 21st century.Works CitedBrunnstrom, David. â€Å"Missile Defense Needed Against Growing Threat, NATO Chief Says. † Reuters. March 26, 2009. May 14, 2010. http://www. globalsecuritynewswire. org/gsn/nw_20100326_9638. php Fedynsky, Peter. â€Å"NATO to Transfer Security Tasks to Afghan Government. Global Security. April 23, 2010. May 14, 2010. http://www. globalsecurity. org/military/library/news/2010/04/mil-100423-voa01. htm Goldschmidt, Pierre. Garry Hindle, R. Andreas Kraemer, Fabrice Pothier, Jamie Shea, Michael Stopford , Ashley J. Tellis & Brooks Tigner. â€Å"The Next Generation of Security Threats: Reprogramming NATO? † Carnegie Mellon: Europe. February 24, 2009. May 14, 2010. http://carnegieeurope. eu/events/? fa=1255 Russia: US, NATO main threats to global security. † Press TV. May 13, 2009. May 14, 2010. http://www. presstv. ir/detail. aspx? id=94616 §ionid=351020602 â€Å"Topic: Terrorism† NATO. 2001. May 14, 2010. http://www. nato. int/cps/en/natolive/topics_48801. htm Waterfield, Bruno. â€Å"NATO Chief warns of climate change developments. † The Daily Telegraph. 2008. May 14, 2010. http://www. nysun. com/foreign/nato-chief-warns-of-climate-change-developments/79215/

Complete Guide to Fractions and Ratios on SAT Math

Complete Guide to Fractions and Ratios on SAT Math SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips You likely had your first taste of working with fractions sometime in elementary school, though it's probably been a while since you've had to deal with how they shift, change, and interact with one another. To refresh, fractions and ratios are both used to represent pieces of a whole. Fractions tell you how many pieces you have compared to a potential whole amount (3 red marbles in a bag of 5, for example), while ratios compare pieces to each other (3 red marbles to 2 blue marbles) or, more rarely, pieces to the whole amount (again, 3 red marbles in 5 total). If this sounds complicated to you right now, don’t worry! We will go through all the principles behind fractions and ratios in this guide. If this seems easy to you right now, definitely check out the practice problems at the end of the guide to make sure you have mastered all the different kinds of fraction and ratio problems you’ll see on the test. The SAT likes to present familiar concepts in unfamiliar ways, so don’t let your mastery of fractions lead you to make assumptions about how you’ll see fractions and ratios on the test. No matter how comfortable you are (or are not) with fractions and ratios right now, this guide is for you. Here, we will go through the complete breakdown of fractions and ratios on the SAT- what they mean, how to manipulate them, and how to answer the most difficult fraction and ratio problems on the SAT. This Guide This guide is seperated into two distinct categories- everything you need to know about fractions and everything you need to know about ratios. For each section, we will go through the ins and outs of what fractions and ratios mean as well as how to manipulate and solve the different kinds of fraction and ratio problems you'll see on the SAT. We will also breakdown how you can tell when an SAT problem requires a ratio or a fraction and how to set up your approach these kinds of problems. At the end, you will be able to test your knowledge on real SAT math questions. The more you prep for the SAT, the more your brain can be Swiss-army-knife-ready for any question the test can throw at you. What are Fractions? $${\a \piece}/{\the \whole}$$ Fractions are pieces of a whole. They are expressed as the amount you have (the numerator) over the whole (the denominator). A pizza is divided into 8 pieces. Kyle ate 3 pieces. What fraction of the pizza did he eat? He ate $3/8$ths of the pizza. 3 is the numerator (top number) because he ate that many pieces of the whole, and 8 is the denominator (bottom number) because there are 8 pieces total (the whole). Math is always more fun when it's delicious. Special Fractions A number over itself equals 1 $3/3=1$ $10/10=1$ $(a+b)/(a+b)=1$ A whole number can be expressed as itself over 1 $5=5/1$ $22/1=22$ $(a+b)/1=a+b$ 0 divided by any number is 0 $0/17=0$ $0/(a+b)=0$ There is one exception to this rule: $0/0=\undefined$. The reason for this lies in the next rule. Any number divided by 0 is undefined Zero cannot act as a denominator. For more information on this check out our guide to advanced integers. But for now all that matters is that you know that 0 cannot act as a denominator. Reducing Fractions If both the numerator and the denominator have a common factor (a number they can both be divided by), then the fraction can be reduced. For the purposes of the SAT, you will need to reduce your fractions to get to your final answer. To reduce a fraction, you must divide both the numerator and the denominator by the same amount. This keeps the fraction consistent and maintains the proper relationship between numerator and denominator. If your fraction is $3/12$, then it can be written as $1/4$. Why? Because both 3 and 12 are divisible by 3. $3/3=1$ and $12/3=4$. So your final fraction is $1/4$ Now let's figure out how to perform the four basic math functions on fractions. Adding or Subtracting Fractions You can add or subtract fractions as long as their denominators are the same. To do so, you keep the denominator consistent and simply add the numerators. $4/15+2/15=6/15$ But you CANNOT add or subtract fractions if your denominators are unequal. $4/15+2/5=?$ So what can you do when your denominators are unequal? You must make them equal by finding a common multiple (number they can both multiply evenly into) of their denominators. In the case of $4/15+2/5$, a common multiple of the denominators 15 5 is 15. When you find a common multiple of the denominators, you must multiply both the numerator and the denominator by the amount it took to achieve that number. Again, this keeps the fraction (the relationship between numerator and denominator) consistent. Think of it as the opposite of reducing a fraction. To get to the common denominator of 15, $4/15$ must be multiplied by $1/1$ Why? Because 15*1=15. $(4/15)(1/1)=4/15$. The fraction remains unchanged. To get to the common denominator of 15, $2/5$ must be multiplied by $3/3$. Why? Because 5*3=15. $(2/5)(3/5)=6/15$. Now we can add them, as they have the same denominator. $4/15+6/15=10/15$ We can further reduce $10/15$ into $2/3$ because both 10 and 15 are divisible by 5. So our final answer is $2/3$. Multiplying Fractions Multiplying fractions is a bit simpler than adding or dividing fractions. There is no need to find a common denominator- you can just multiply the fractions straight across. To multiply a fraction, first multiply the numerators. This product becomes your new numerator. Next, multiply your two denominators. This product becomes your new denominator. $1/4*2/3=(1*2)/(4*3)=2/12$ And again, we reduce our fraction. Both the numerator and the denominator are divisible by 2, so our final answer becomes: $1/6$ Special note: you can speed up the multiplication and reduction process by finding a common factor of your cross multiples before you multiply. $1/4*2/3$ = $1/2*1/3$. Why? Because both 4 and 2 are divisible by 2, we were able to reduce the cross multiples before we even began. This saved us time in reducing the final fraction at the end. So now we can simply say: $1/2*1/3=1/6$. No need to further reduce- our answer is complete. Take note that reducing cross multiples can only be done when multiplying fractions, never while adding or subtracting them! It is also a completely optional step, so do not feel obligated to reduce your cross multiples- you can simply reduce your fraction at the end. Dividing Fractions In order to divide fractions, we must first take the reciprocal (the reversal) of one of the fractions. Afterwards, we simply multiply the two fractions together. Why do we do this? Because division is the opposite of multiplication, so we must reverse one of the fractions to turn it back into a multiplication question. ${2/3}à ·{3/4}$ = $2/3*4/3$ (we took the reciprocal of $3/4$, which means we flipped the fraction upside down to become $4/3$) $2/3*4/3=8/9$ But what happens if you need to divide a fraction by a whole number? If a cake is cut into thirds and each third is cut into fourths, how many pieces of cake are there? *** We start out with $1/3$ of a cake and we need to divide each third 4 more times. Because 4 is a whole number, it can be written as $4/1$. This means that its reciprocal is $1/4$. $1/3à ·4$ = $1/3*1/4=1/12$ Our denominator (the whole) is 12. This means there will be 12 pieces total in the cake. Decimal Points Because fractions are pieces of a whole, you can also express fractions as either a decimal point or a percentage. To convert a fraction into a decimal, simply divide the numerator by the denominator. (The / symbol also acts as a division sign.) $4/5$ = 4/5 = 0.8 Sometimes it is easier to convert a fraction to a decimal in order to work through a problem. This can save you time and effort trying to figure out how to divide or multiply fractions. If $j/k=32$ and $k=3/2$, what is the value of $1/2j$ ? *** As you can see, there are two ways to approach this problem- using fractions and using decimals. We’ll look at both ways. If you were to use fractions, you would set up the problem as a fraction division problem. $k=3/2$ So $j/k=j/{3/2}$ $j/{3/2}$ = $j*2/3$ (remember, we take the reciprocal when we divide) So our full problem looks like this: $2/3*j=32$ Now we must divide 32 by $2/3$ in order to bring it over to the other side and isolate j. This means we need to take the reciprocal yet again. So ${32}/{2/3}$ = $32*3/2=96/2=48$ $j=48$ Now, for the final step, we must take $1/2$ of j. (Note: to "take $1/2$" is the same thing as multiplying by $1/2$.) $48*{1/2}=48/2=24$ Our final answer is 24. Alternatively, we could save ourselves the headache of using fractions and reciprocals and simply use decimals instead. We know that $k=3/2$. Instead of keeping the fraction, let us convert it into a decimal. $3à ·2=1.5$ So $k=1.5$ $j/k=32$ $j/1.5=32$ When you multiply both sides by 1.5, you get: $j=(32)(1.5)=48$ $j=48$ And ${1/2}j={1/2}(48)=24$ So again, our final answer is 24. Percentages After you convert your fraction to a decimal, you can also turn it into a percentage (if needed). So 0.8 from can also be written as 80%, because 0.8*100=80. A pie chart is a useful way of showing relative sizes of fractions and percentages. This shows just how large a fraction $7/10$ (or 70%) truly is. Mixed Fractions Sometimes you may be given a mixed fraction on the SAT. A mixed fraction is a combination of a whole number and a fraction. For example, 7$3/4$ is a mixed fraction. We have a whole number, 7, and a fraction, $3/4$. You can turn a mixed fraction into an ordinary fraction by multiplying the whole number by the denominator and then adding that product to the numerator. The final answer will be ${\the \new \numerator}/{\the \original \denominator}$. 7$3/4$ (7)(4)=28 28+3=31 So your final answer = $31/4$ You must convert mixed fractions into fractions in order to multiply, divide, add, or subtract them with other fractions. In this problem, we began with 5 gallons of water and we ended with 2$1/3$. We must figure out how many gallons we used. 5−2 $5-2{1/3}$ First, let’s get our mixed fraction into a regular fraction. 2$1/3$ = ${[(2*3)+1]}/3={7/3}$ $5/1-7/3$ Now, we need to give each fraction the same denominator. We'll do this by converting $5/1$ into a new fraction with a denominator of 3. $5/1*3/3=15/3$ Finally, we can find the difference between the amounts. $15/3-7/3=8/3$ So we have used up $8/3$rds of the water. Now let’s count how many times the pail was emptied to use up that $8/3$rds of the total water. If you count the dots, the pail was emptied 8 times (the first dot does not count as a time it was emptied- that is merely our starting point). Because the same amount of water was removed each time, we must divide our emptied water by 8. ${8/3}à ·{8/1}$ = $8/3*1/8$ We can now either reduce the cross-multiples (because this is a multiplication problem), which would give us: $8/3*1/8$ = $1/3*1/1$ $1/3*1/1=1/3$ Or we can multiply through and then reduce afterwards: $8/3*1/8=8/24$ $8/12=1/3$ Either way, our final answer is $1/3$; each trip removed $1/3$ of a gallon of water from the tank. Now that we've broken down all there is to know about SAT fractions, let's take a look at their close cousin- the ratio. This shape is called the "golden ratio" and has been studied for thousands of years. It has applications in geometry, nature, and architecture. What are Ratios? Ratios are used as a way to compare one thing to another (or multiple things to one another). If Leslie has 5 white socks and 2 red socks, the white socks and the red socks have a ratio of 5 to 2. Expressing Ratios Ratios can be written in three different ways: A â€Å'to â€Å'B A:B $A/B$ No matter which way you write them, these are all ratios comparing A to B. Different Types of Ratios Just as a fraction represents a part of something out of a whole (written as: ${\a \part}/{\the \whole}$), a ratio can be expressed as either: aâ€Å'part:a â€Å'different â€Å'part OR aâ€Å'part:theâ€Å' whole Because ratios compare values, they can either compare individual pieces to one another or an individual piece to the whole. If Leslie has only 5 white socks and 2 red socks in a drawer, the ratio of white socks to all the socks in the drawer is 5 to 7. (Why 7? Because there are 5 white and 2 red socks, so together they make 5+2=7 socks total.) Some of the many uses of ratios in action (in this case, the ratios are- a part: a different part). Reducing Ratios Just as fractions can be reduced, so too can ratios. Kyle has a stamp collection. 45 of them have pictures of daisies and 30 of them have pictures of roses. What is the ratio of daisy stamps to rose stamps in his collection? *** Right now, the ratio is $45:30$. But they have a common denominator of 15, so this ratio can be reduced. $45/15=3$ $30/15=2$ So the stamps have a ratio of $3:2$ Increasing Ratios Because you can reduce ratios, you can also do the opposite and increase them. In order to do so, you must multiply each piece of the ratio by the same amount (just as you had to divide by the same amount on each side to reduce the ratio). So the ratio of 4:3 can also be $4(2):3(2)=8:6$ $4(3):3(3)=12:9$ And so on. Marbles are to be removed from a jar that contains 12 red marbles and 12 black marbles. What is the least number of marbles that could be removed so that the ratio of red marbles to black marbles left in the jar will be 4 to 3? *** Right now, there are an equal amount of marbles, so the ratio is 12:12 (or 1:1) We know that we have an end ratio of 4:3 that we want to achieve and that each side of the ratio has to be multiplied (or divided) by the same amount to keep the ratio consistent. We want to remove as few marbles as possible, so let us imagine that 4:3 is a reduced ratio. That means we need to see how many total marbles the reduced ratio of 4:3 could possibly be. So both 4 and 3 have to be multiplied by the same amount to maintain their ratio and yet achieve a higher number of total marbles than just their 7 (4+3=7). We can see that 12 is divisible by 4, so the red marbles could conceivably remain unchanged in order to get a new ratio of 4:3. $12/4=3$ Because 4 can go evenly into 12, this will give us the fewest amount of marbles taken away. Because the 4 is multiplied 3 times to get 12, we know that both 4 and 3 must be multiplied by 3 to keep a new ratio of 4:3 consistent. To find the new number of black marbles, we take 3*3=9. The new amount of black marbles has to be 9. And because our red marbles remain the same (12), we must take only 3 marbles away from the total number of marbles (Why? Because 12â€Å' blackâ€Å' marbles−3 â€Å'blackâ€Å' marbles=9â€Å' blackâ€Å' marbles) So our final answer is 3, we must take 3 black marbles away to get a new ratio of 4:3 of red marbles to black marbles. Finding the Whole If you are given a ratio comparing two parts (piece:anotherâ€Å'piece), and you are told to find the whole amount, simply add all the pieces together. It may help you to think of this like an algebra problem wherein each side of the ratio is a certain multiple of x. Because each side of the ratio must always be divided or multiplied by the same amount to keep the ratio consistent, we can think of each side as having the same variable attached to it. For example, a ratio of 4:5 can be: $4(1):5(1)=4:5$ $4(2):5(2)=8:10$ And so on, just as we did above. But this means we could also represent 4:5 as: $4x:5x$ Why? Because each side must change at the same rate. And in this case, our rate is $x$. So if you were asked to find the total amount, you would add the pieces together. $4x+5x=9x$. The total amount is 9x. In this case, we don’t have any more information, but we know that the total must be divisible by 9. So let’s take a look at another problem. Teyvon has a basket of eggs that he is going to sell. There are two different kinds of eggs in the basket- white and brown. The brown eggs are in a ratio of 2:3 to the white eggs. What is NOT a possible number of eggs that Teyvon can have in the basket? A) 5 B 10 C) 12 D) 30 E) 60 *** In order to find out how many eggs he has total, we must add the two pieces together. So 2+3=5 This means that the total number of eggs in the basket has to either be 5 or any multiple of 5. Why? Because 2:3 is the most reduced form of the ratio of eggs in the basket. This means he could have: $2(2):3(2)=4:6$ eggs in the basket (10 eggs total) $2(3):3(3)=6:9$ eggs in the basket (15 eggs total) And so forth. We don’t know exactly how many eggs he has, but we know that it must be a multiple of 5. This means our answer is C, 12. There is no possible way that he can have 12 eggs in the basket. Now that we are armed with knowledge of fractions and ratios, we must follow the right steps to solve our problems. How to Solve Fraction, Ratio, and Rational Number Questions Now that we have discussed how fractions and ratios work indivisually, let's look at how you'll see them on the test. When you are presented with a fraction or ratio problem, take note of these steps to find your solution: #1: Identify whether the problem involves fractions or ratios A fraction will involve the comparison of a $\piece/\whole$. A ratio will almost always involve the comparison of a piece:piece (or, very rarely, a piece:whole). You can tell when the problem is ratio specific as the question text will do one of three things: Use the : symbol, Use the phrase "___ to ___† Explicitly use the word "ratio† in the text. If the questions wants you to give an answer as a ratio comparing two pieces, make sure you don’t confuse it with a fraction comparing a piece to the whole! #2: If a ratio question asks you to change or identify values, first find the sum of your pieces In order to determine your total amount (or the non-reduced amount of your individual pieces), you must add all the parts of your ratio together. This sum will either be your complete whole or will be a factor of your whole, if your ratio has been reduced. A total of 120,000 votes were cast for 2 opposing candidates, Garcia and Pà ©rez. If Garcia won by a ratio of 5 to 3, what was the number of votes cast for Pà ©rez? (A) 15,000 (B) 30,000 (C) 45,000 D) 75,000 (E) 80,000 *** As you can see, our ratio of 5 to 3 has been greatly reduced (neither of those numbers is in the tens of thousands). We know that there are a total of 120,000 votes, so we need to determine the number of votes for each candidate. Let’s first add our ratio pieces together. 5:3 = 5+3=8 Because 8 is much (much) smaller than 120,000, we know that 8 is not our whole. But 8 is the factor of our whole. ${120,000}/8=15,000$ So if we think of 15,000 as one component (a replacement for our variable, $x$), and Garcia and Pà ©rez have a ratio of 5 components to 3 components, then we can find the total number of votes per candidate. G:P=5:3 = $5x:3x$ 5*15,000=75,000 3*15,000=45,000 So Garcia earned 75,000 votes and Pà ©rez earned 45,000 votes. (You can even confirm that this must be the correct number of votes each by making sure they add up to 120,000. 75,000+45,000=120,000. Success!) So our final answer is C, Pà ©rez earned 45,000 votes. #3: When in doubt, try to use decimals Decimals can make it much easier to work out problems (as opposed to using fractions). So do not be afraid to convert your fractions into decimals to make life easier. #4: Remember your special fractions Always remember that a number over 1 is the same thing as the original number, and that a number over itself = 1. If $h$ and $k$ are positive numbers and $h+k=7$ then ${7-k}/h=$ (A) 1 (B) 0 (C) -1 (D) $h$ (E) $k-1$ *** Here we have two equations: $h+k=7$ and ${7-k}/h$ So let us manipulate the first. $h+k=7$ can be re-written as: $h=7−k$ (Why? We simply subtracted $k$ from either side) So now we can replace the $(7−k)$ from the second equation with $h$, as the two terms are equal. This leaves us with: $h/h$ And we know that any number over itself = 1. So our final answer is A, 1. Now, let's put your knowledge to the test! Test Your Knowledge #1: Flour, water, and salt are mixed by weight in the ratio of 5:4:1, respectively, to produce a certain type of dough. In order to make 5 pounds of this dough, what weight of salt, in pounds, is required? (A) $1/4$ (B) $1/2$ (C) $3/4$ (D) 1 (E) 2 #2: #3: Which of the following answer choices presents the fractions $5/4$, $4/3$, $19/17$, $13/12$, and $7/6$ in order from least to greatest? (A) $19/17$, $7/6$, $13/12$, $4/3$, $7/6$, $5/4$ (B) $4/3$, $5/4$, $7/6$, $19/17$, $13/12$ (C) $13/12$, $7/6$, $19/17$, $5/4$, $4/3$ (D) $19/17$, $13/12$, $5/4$, $7/6$, $4/3$ (E) $13/12$, $19/17$, $7/6$, $5/4$, $4/3$ Answers: B, D, E Answer Explanations: #1: This question is a perfect example of when to find the whole of the pieces of the ratio. Flour, water, and salt are in a ratio of 5:4:1, which means that the whole is: $5x+4x+1x=10x$ So $10x$ is our whole. We want 5 pounds of the recipe, so we must convert $10x$ to 5. $10x=5$ $x=1/2$ Our variable is $1/2$ . Now, we are looking for the amount of salt to use when we started out with $1x$. So let us replace our $x$ with the value we found for it. $1x$ $1(1/2)$ $1/2$ This means we need $1/2$ a pound of salt to make 5 pounds of the mixture. Our final answer is B, $1/2#. #2: For this question, we must find a non-zero integer for t in which $x+{1/x}=t$, where $x$ is also an integer. We know, based on our special fractions, that the only possible way to get a whole number in fraction form is to have our demoninator equal 1 or -1. This means that x cannot possibly be anything other than 1 or negative 1. (Why? If x were anything else but 1, we would end up with a mixed fraction. For example, if x=2, then we would have: $2+{1/2}$. If $x=3$, we would have: $3+{1/3}. And so on. The only way to get an integer value for $t$ is when $x=1$.) So let us try replacing our $x$ value with 1. $x+{1/x}=t$ $1+{1/1}=2$ $t=2$ Well, $t$ could possibly equal 2, but this is not one of our answer choices. So now let us replace $x$ with -1 instead. $x+{1/x}=t$ $-1+{1/-1}=-2$ t=−2 Success! We have found a value for $t$ that matches one of our answer choices. Our final answer is D, $t=−2$ #3: For a problem like this (one that has you order fractions by size), it is usually a good idea to break out the decimals. But we will go through how to solve it using both methods of fractions and decimals. Solving with decimals: To solve with decimals, simply divide each numerator by its denominator to get the decimal. Then, order them in ascending order (as we are told). $5/4=1.25$ $4/3=1.333$ $19/17=1.12$ $13/12=1.08$ $7/6=1.16$ We can see here that the order from least to greatest is: 1.08, 1.12, 1.16, 1.25, 1.33 Which, converted back to their fraction form is: $13/12$, $19/17$, $7/6$, $5/4$, $4/3$ So our final answer is E. Alternatively, we can solve using fractions. Solve using fractions: Let us find a common denominator between all the numerators. A quick way to do this is by multiplying the two largest numerators together. (It may not be the least common denominator, but it'll do for our purposes.) $17*12=204$ Now let's make sure that the other denominators can go evenly into 204 as well. $204/6=34$ $204/4=51$ $204/3=68$ Perfect! Now let us convert all of our fractions. $5/4={5(51)}/{4(51)}=255/204$ $4/3={4(68)}/{3(68)}=272/204$ $19/17={19(12)}/{17(12)}=228/204$ $13/12={13(17)}/{12(17)}=221/204$ $7/6={7(34)}/{6(34)}$ Now that they all share a common denominator, we can compare and order their numerators. So, in ascending order, they would be: $221/204$, $228/204$, $238/204$, $255/204$, $272/204$ Which, when converted back to their original form, is: $13/12$, $19/17$, $7/6$, $5/4$, $4/3$ So again, our final answer is E. I think a nap is in order- don't you? Take-Aways Fractions and ratios may look tricky, but they are merely ways to represent the relationships between pieces of a whole and the whole itself. Once you know what they mean and how they can be manipulated, you’ll find that you can tackle most any fraction or ratio problem the SAT can throw at you. But always remember- though ratios and fractions are related, do not get them mixed up on the SAT! The vast majority of the time, the ratios they give you will compare parts to parts and the fractions will compare parts to the whole. It can be easy to make a mistake during the test, so don’t let yourself lose a point due to careless error. What’s Next? You've conquered fractions and you've decimated ratios and now you're eager for more, right? Well look no further! We have guides aplenty for the many math topics covered on the SAT, including probability, integers, and solid geometry. Feel like you're running out of time on the SAT? Check out our article on how to finish your math sections before time's up. Don't know what score to aim for? Make sure you have a good grasp of what kind of score would best suit your goals and current skill level, and how to improve it from there. Angling to get an 800 on SAT Math? Look to our guide on how to get a perfect score, written by a perfect SAT scorer. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? Check out our best-in-class online SAT prep program. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your SAT score by 160 points or more. Our program is entirely online, and it customizes what you study to your strengths and weaknesses. If you liked this Math strategy guide, you'll love our program. Along with more detailed lessons, you'll get thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Check out our 5-day free trial:

Quotes From William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet

Quotes From William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet,  one of Shakespeares iconic tragedies,  is a play about star-crossed lovers, their romance doomed from the start. It is one of the most famous plays of the English Renaissance, consistently taught and staged at high schools and colleges. As their families feud to the death, Romeo and Juliet, the two young lovers, are caught between disparate worlds. The unforgettable play is filled with fights, secret marriages, and untimely deaths–along with some of Shakespeares most famous lines. Love and Passion The romance of Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the most famous in all of literature. The young lovers, despite their families objections, will do anything to be together, even if they must meet in secret. During their private rendezvous, the characters give voice to some of Shakespeares most romantic speeches. What sadness lengthens Romeos hours? / Not having that, which, having, makes them short. / In love? / Out / Of love? Out of her favor, where I am in love. [Act 1, Scene 1] One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun / Neer  saw her match since first the world begun. [Act 1, Scene 2] Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! / For I neer saw true beauty till this night. [Act 1, Scene 5] My bounty is as boundless as the sea / My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite. [Act 2, Scene 2] Good Night, Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it  be  morrow. [Act 2, Scene 2] See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! /  O that I  were  a glove upon that hand, /  that I might touch that cheek! [Act 2, Scene 2] These violent delights have violent ends / And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, / Which as they kiss consume. [Act 2, Scene 3] Family and Loyalty Shakespeares young lovers come from two families–the Montagues and the Capulets–that are sworn enemies of each other. The clans  have kept alive their ancient grudge for years. In their love for each other, Romeo and Juliet have each betrayed their family name. Their story shows what happens when this sacred bond is broken. What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word, / As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. [Act 1, Scene 1] O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? / Deny thy father and refuse thy name. / Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love / And Ill no longer be a Capulet. [Act 2, Scene 2] â€Å"Whats in a name? that which we call a rose  /  By any other name would smell as sweet.†Ã‚  [Act 2, Scene 2] A plague o both your houses! [Act 3, Scene 1] Fate From the very beginning of the play, Shakespeare announces Romeo and Juliet as a story of destiny and fate. The young lovers are star-crossed, doomed to ill fortune, and their romance can only end in tragedy. The play unfolds with an inevitability reminiscent of Greek tragedy, as forces in motion slowly crush the young innocents who try to defy them. Two households, both alike in dignity  /  In fair Verona, where we lay our scene  /  From ancient grudge break to new mutiny  /  Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.  /  From forth the fatal loins of these two foes  /  A pair of star-crossd lovers take their life  /  Whose misadventured piteous overthrows  /  Do with their death bury their parents strife.†Ã‚  [Prologue] This days black fate on more days doth depend: / This but begins the woe others must end. [Act 3, Scene 1] â€Å"Oh, I am fortunes fool!†Ã‚  [Act 3, Scene 1]

Free Essays on Dell

Dell Computer Corporation SYNOPSIS In this report an examination will be made of the production and logistics system of Dell Computer Corporation. The important aspects of Dell’sEmphasis will be placed on the following: How effective is the firms resource planning procedures? product/ service The key difficulties - potentialDells internal and external logistics process How technologies are beingpoints of failure in the Dell’s logistics process used or can be used to make the logistics function more efficient/effective? What is Dell Computers all about? Michael Dell founded Dell Computer Corporation in 1984 having only $1000 start-up capital. To date, his business has grown to become the second largest computer systems producer in the world, with average daily sales of more than $5 million. The ‘hub’ of Dells production system is based in the U.S (Round rock, Texas), while other factories are located in Nashville, Tennessee, Limerick, (Ireland), Penang, Malaysia, Xiamen, Chin a and Eldorado do Sul, Brazil. Dell has offices in thirty-four countries around the world and sells its products and services in more than one hundred and seventy countries. The table below provides a break down of Dells global market growth and position. Monetary values are quoted in US$ in millions. Continent Market Position Net Revenue as at January 28/2000 Annual Growth Rate Dell Americas Dell Europe/Middle East/Africa Dell Asia Pacific and Japan 1 2 7 17879 5590 1796 48% 24% 52% According to Dells forecast it is estimated that total revenue will amount to US$33 billion this year, where US$20 billion will be as a result of online transactions. (1) In the Appendix of this report, a consolidated statement of income on Dells financial position for the year ending 28/1/00 is presented. The important aspects of Dells Product and Service Dells core competency lies in customising its product – computer hardwar... Free Essays on Dell Free Essays on Dell Dell Computer Corporation SYNOPSIS In this report an examination will be made of the production and logistics system of Dell Computer Corporation. The important aspects of Dell’sEmphasis will be placed on the following: How effective is the firms resource planning procedures? product/ service The key difficulties - potentialDells internal and external logistics process How technologies are beingpoints of failure in the Dell’s logistics process used or can be used to make the logistics function more efficient/effective? What is Dell Computers all about? Michael Dell founded Dell Computer Corporation in 1984 having only $1000 start-up capital. To date, his business has grown to become the second largest computer systems producer in the world, with average daily sales of more than $5 million. The ‘hub’ of Dells production system is based in the U.S (Round rock, Texas), while other factories are located in Nashville, Tennessee, Limerick, (Ireland), Penang, Malaysia, Xiamen, Chin a and Eldorado do Sul, Brazil. Dell has offices in thirty-four countries around the world and sells its products and services in more than one hundred and seventy countries. The table below provides a break down of Dells global market growth and position. Monetary values are quoted in US$ in millions. Continent Market Position Net Revenue as at January 28/2000 Annual Growth Rate Dell Americas Dell Europe/Middle East/Africa Dell Asia Pacific and Japan 1 2 7 17879 5590 1796 48% 24% 52% According to Dells forecast it is estimated that total revenue will amount to US$33 billion this year, where US$20 billion will be as a result of online transactions. (1) In the Appendix of this report, a consolidated statement of income on Dells financial position for the year ending 28/1/00 is presented. The important aspects of Dells Product and Service Dells core competency lies in customising its product – computer hardwar... Free Essays on Dell The computer industry has enjoyed a tremendous growth in the 80’s and 90’s. The introduction of the Internet to the public had a major impact on this growth. First, the Internet created a new environment to conduct business online. The Internet gave a way to new start-up companies to do business online, therefore increasing the demand for network of computers. Second, public dependency to the Internet increased while they found a convenient way of shopping online. Public dependency on computers to gain access to the Internet also increased the demand for computers. Except for the relatively few companies that have been somewhat successful in managing their businesses reasonably well, the first few years in the 2000’s have been a struggle for most companies in the industry due to unstable market, fierce competition and over saturation of the market. As PC sales slow worldwide, computer companies have embarked on a broad campaign to gain market share- by cutting prices, introducing new product lines, and forming alliances with companies that can help them broaden their capabilities. Among those who seem to be surviving and planning to take advantage of the economical situation, include Dell Computer Corporation, IBM, Gateway and the Apple Computer Company. The paper will study Dell Computer Corporation and its business model, including many aspects of direct marketing introduced by Dell Computers will be analyzed. Market segmentation, competition, and business opportunities will also be analyzed along with recommendations for business expansion. E-Commerce Electronic commerce is defined as the delivery of goods, services, information, or payments over computer networks or by any other electronic means (e-business, 2002) The e-commerce isn’t just for tech-savvy shoppers anymore, having broadened its appeal to a majority of the population, the average online customer now expects more and is a harder sell, much like the...

Analysis of Article about Aspects of the Media Essay

Analysis of Article about Aspects of the Media - Essay Example The two articles argue that in most cases, the content that is produced by the media is bias. This is the main point that the two articles seek to make. The claims that are made in the articles are however very different. Feldman is of the opinion that media bias has come up in recent years and as such, the consumer is now exposed to biased content as opposed to earlier years when the media had a tradition of ensuring objectivity in their reporting. Bias is, therefore, a product of contemporary media. Boring, however, is of the opinion that the media has never at any point tried to avoid bias, and has indeed always promoted it. According to him, bias is in the nature of media from the beginning. The two writers do agree that there is a presence of bias in the media. However, the article by Feldman asserts that the bias that is in the media news and reports is over and that the audience that is the consumer of this news is more likely to perceive host bias as well as story bias in the opinionated news of the media that they perceive in the non-opinionated news. The article by Boreing, on the other hand, promotes the opinion that the bias in the content of the media is in such a way that the consumer does not notice it as it is geared towards influencing his thoughts and actions. The two writers disagree on different points. The main point of disagreement is on when biased reporting in the media began. Boreing asserts that right from the beginning; the media has always been biased and has never actually made any attempts at objectivity. Feldman, on the other hand, suggests that bias in the media has come up in recent times as a result of changes in the presentation style of the cable news that has seen the news depart from the tradition of being objective. Lack of objectivity in the media is, therefore, a recent phenomenon according to Feldman. The lack of objectivity in the media according to Feldman has been promoted by the use of the cable news. This has seen the rise in the expression of explicit personal opinions and bias in the news coverage.  

Strategic plan for one of the companies listed on Forbes International Essay

Strategic plan for one of the companies listed on Forbes International Top Ten list - Essay Example In today’s modern era, every company strives to dominate its market. In order to gain any market segment, a company must have a business strategic plan implemented to achieve its goals. Each year Forbes.com comes with a list of top corporations that are excelling in their market. One of the firms that have made a dramatic impact in its industry is Toyota. Toyota is one of the few companies that has the honor to claim itself as â€Å"not only the best automaker in the world, but also maybe the best corporation†. This paper will discuss the strategic management of Toyota and its quest to become the market leader in its industry. One of the most unique strategic planning that Toyota has implemented is to employee top management positions from Japan. Although this move might not work for every corporation, Toyota has the reputation to preserve its brand reputation. From design to corporate decisions, all operations take place in Tokyo[2]. The reason for this is clearly expl ained by John Paul MacDuffee, a professor at local university as he states, â€Å"This is about a greater maturity about globalizing and transferring knowledge that Toyota certainly has at this point.†[2]. In addition, these executives decided to ask their suppliers to reduce their cost by 30%. Management understood that every little step taken by them will influence the company in the long-run. By building a solid environment of knowledge and design, Toyota is able to utilize mass production methods[1]. How is this achieved? Well, the company is a firm believer in the Just-in-time â€Å"lean production.† Toyota’s lean manufacturing system is a critical for its strategic planning by enhancing the flow of work [1]. In addition, it focuses to reduce the organization’s waste, which dramatically increases customer value. Moreover, it levels of production level which eliminates unevenness in its manufacturing system. Just-in-time improves organization's return on investment, quality, and efficiency[1]. Undoubtedly, much of the success that Toyota has enjoyed is due to this model that is collaborated and implemented through planning and executive models. The current strategic planning for Toyota is to introduce a new line of hybrid cars. As humanity progresses to the 21st century, society has becoming more environmental friendly. Hence, Toyota saw this as an opportunity to expand its line of cars. Hence, it decided to invest heavily in research and development in order to build hybrid-electric vehicles [3]. Toyota’s ability to fund in development was critical as it poured millions of dollars without hurting its capital budget. After years of researching, Toyota decided to aggressively showcase its new hybrid Camry and Highlander, two cars that are known for quality and durability [3]. However, it was met by a tough rival as Ford introduced its newest S.U.V at the same time where Toyota showcased its news Prius. While other companyà ¢â‚¬â„¢s struggled to design hybrid cars that produced revenue, Toyota was already enjoying decent profits. Interestingly enough, the company never attempts to make any bold of false promises as other companies. Toyota executives acknowledged the fact that gas prices will continue to rise as oil becomes scarce. Furthermore, it was clear that creating an automobile that was â€Å"environmental friendly† is clearly going to be the future of the industry[3]. Hence, by carefully forecasting the

Crime Analysis Why Does Detroit Have Such a High National Murder Rate Assignment

Crime Analysis Why Does Detroit Have Such a High National Murder Rate - Assignment Example In addition, the media placed Detroit as the 2nd city in terms of murder cases in the entire U.S (Fisher, 2013). However, in 2013 the city’s rate abridged significantly though this still equaled with New York statistics whose population is far beyond that of Detroit by 11 times (Crime statistics, 2013). Hence, has become Murder City having 333 homicides of all kinds in 2013 despite analysts contending that was the lowest figure compared to other studies (The Washington, 2014). Most murders occurred between acquaintances, with people involved either in criminal activities or in domestic violence as evidenced by statistics from previous years. Based on already compiled data, reports cite it is a common scenario for gang members to turn on each other. Drug deals going bad were another reason for murders between people who knew each other. For instance, two teenagers were shot and found dead lying on a field facedown after having purchased marijuana from their local supplier. There were reports of domestic violence whereby spouses killed each other, parents killing their children or children terminating lives of their parents. Logan, a police chief in Detroit, gave an example of a woman who stabbed her eight-year-old girl and cited it as a typical scenario experienced in 2012 (Fisher, 2013). Logan further contended America currently experiences increased cases related to gun shootings but Detroit is the epicenter. Gun violence is something very ordinary in Detroit as most people own guns either legally or illegally. According to FBI reports, gun assault increased tremendously over the past years whereby 532 armed crimes were reported for every 100, 000 residents in 2010. The city’s respective authority went ahead to devise a policy whereby people were to hand over their guns at a fee, no questions asked. Its purpose was to reduce the number of guns in Detroit. It was a great failure as gun-related crimes are still a big problem in the

Politics and war in Afghanistan during the novel Kite Runner Essay

Politics and war in Afghanistan during the novel Kite Runner - Essay Example Touted as the first Afghan novel written in English, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner makes up part of the growing branch of Muslim American immigrant literature (along with Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent and Laila Halaby's West of the Jordan , both published in 2003). Loosely autobiographical, The Kite Runner begins in the same well-off Kabul neighborhood in which the author grew up with his diplomat father and schoolteacher mother. The action then shifts to California, where the family resettled in the early 1980's after fleeing Afghanistan. Hosseini, a practicing physician, began the novel in March, 2001, and, working in the early morning hours, had it half-completed by September 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks which occurred on that day left him and other Muslim Americans feeling anxious about their safety and also turned his unfinished novel into a hot property. After making a successful preemptive bid, Riverhead Books asked Hosseini to revise the manuscript (rather extensively, it turned out) in just four weeks in late 2002, in order to capitalize on interest in Afghanistan during the United States' military action against the Taliban. The well-publicized novel appeared in the summer of 2003, just after American and world interest had shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq. Employing a simple but effective three-part structure, framed by chapters set in December, 2001, The Kite Runner begins where Arundhati Roy's Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) ends, with an act of betrayal. Part 1 focuses on the formative years of its narrator-protagonist, especially his relationship with Hassan, who is at once his servant and friend. The two boys are linked in several important ways: Born just a year apart, they live in the same household and have nursed at the same breast (following Amir's mother's death in childbirth and Hassan's mother's having run away). The two are also divided-by physical ability, by temperament, by class, and most deeply by ethnicity, one a member of the majority Pashtuns, the other a despised Hazara. Hassan's devotion to Amir is both a sign of his sweet disposition and, more troubling, the result of an ingrained servant-class mentality. Amir is, if not quite devoted to his playmate then certainly attached (including in a way that Amir could never have imagined, for Hassan turns out to be his half brother). Amir's relatively privileged life, however, coupled with Hassan's self-sacrificing devotion, makes Amir cruel, albeit in petty, even passive ways. Amir's cruelty and weakness of character are thrown into higher relief when a third boy, Assef, arrives on the scene. "On the surface, he was the embodiment of every parent's dream but his eyes betrayed him. Beyond the faade, madness." Beyond Amir's facade there is neither madness nor maliciousness, only anxiety that derives, in large measure, from his not being manly enough to earn the love of his father, Baba, a successful, decidedly secular businessman highly respected for his business savvy, physical prowess, and charitable acts. Amir's character is a typical Afghani character of the contemporary society. His character has been delineated by the writer very carefully and according to the norms and standing customs and conventions of Afghan society of that time. The crisis,

Single-sex schools Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Single-sex schools - Essay Example A generation of coed schools and dorms and workplaces has produced more equality between men and women, not less. We are less likely to see each other as "other," less likely to separate our work and personal lives†¦to rewire the small society called school. This school world is, after all, a mirror image of the larger world. (Goodman) Single sex schools do have educational benefits. Without the constant distraction of the opposite sex, tests scores do improve (Cooper). Single sex schools have the advantage of teaching to a gender’s strengths. Boys and girls do learn differently. Some scholars suggest that higher test scores are the result, but others refute these findings (Goodman). The education benefits still do not address the social issues. Single sex schools can lead to gender and sexual confusion. Gender confusion can be caused by males and females having to pick up roles reserved for the opposite sex, like a boy having to sweep the floor or a girl having to move a heavy object in the class. Sexual confusion would occur in puberty. Teenagers become very sexual at that age. Without the opposite sex to experiment with, many teens will experiment with the same sex. Then the confusion of being hetro, homo, or bi- sexual becomes a problem. Gender and sexual confusion can happen in a coed school, but are more likely in a single sex school. The final social reason that single sex schools could be harmful is segregation usually means unequal. The Civil Rights Era proved the segregation is never equal. As a result, schools not only integrated different races, but the genders as well. One article explains â€Å"Fearing that separate meant unequal, and seeking to break down sexual stereotypes, they decided to mix the sexes together at the earliest possible age† (Gilbert). This is a norm in American society. Segregation is wrong, no matter if for race or gender. Single sex schools are not a beneficial alternative

Politics and war in Afghanistan during the novel Kite Runner Essay

Politics and war in Afghanistan during the novel Kite Runner - Essay Example Touted as the first Afghan novel written in English, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner makes up part of the growing branch of Muslim American immigrant literature (along with Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent and Laila Halaby's West of the Jordan , both published in 2003). Loosely autobiographical, The Kite Runner begins in the same well-off Kabul neighborhood in which the author grew up with his diplomat father and schoolteacher mother. The action then shifts to California, where the family resettled in the early 1980's after fleeing Afghanistan. Hosseini, a practicing physician, began the novel in March, 2001, and, working in the early morning hours, had it half-completed by September 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks which occurred on that day left him and other Muslim Americans feeling anxious about their safety and also turned his unfinished novel into a hot property. After making a successful preemptive bid, Riverhead Books asked Hosseini to revise the manuscript (rather extensively, it turned out) in just four weeks in late 2002, in order to capitalize on interest in Afghanistan during the United States' military action against the Taliban. The well-publicized novel appeared in the summer of 2003, just after American and world interest had shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq. Employing a simple but effective three-part structure, framed by chapters set in December, 2001, The Kite Runner begins where Arundhati Roy's Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) ends, with an act of betrayal. Part 1 focuses on the formative years of its narrator-protagonist, especially his relationship with Hassan, who is at once his servant and friend. The two boys are linked in several important ways: Born just a year apart, they live in the same household and have nursed at the same breast (following Amir's mother's death in childbirth and Hassan's mother's having run away). The two are also divided-by physical ability, by temperament, by class, and most deeply by ethnicity, one a member of the majority Pashtuns, the other a despised Hazara. Hassan's devotion to Amir is both a sign of his sweet disposition and, more troubling, the result of an ingrained servant-class mentality. Amir is, if not quite devoted to his playmate then certainly attached (including in a way that Amir could never have imagined, for Hassan turns out to be his half brother). Amir's relatively privileged life, however, coupled with Hassan's self-sacrificing devotion, makes Amir cruel, albeit in petty, even passive ways. Amir's cruelty and weakness of character are thrown into higher relief when a third boy, Assef, arrives on the scene. "On the surface, he was the embodiment of every parent's dream but his eyes betrayed him. Beyond the faade, madness." Beyond Amir's facade there is neither madness nor maliciousness, only anxiety that derives, in large measure, from his not being manly enough to earn the love of his father, Baba, a successful, decidedly secular businessman highly respected for his business savvy, physical prowess, and charitable acts. Amir's character is a typical Afghani character of the contemporary society. His character has been delineated by the writer very carefully and according to the norms and standing customs and conventions of Afghan society of that time. The crisis,

The Federal Reserve Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Federal Reserve - Essay Example An important policy that has been implemented by the FED is the easy money policy. The easy money policy is important to allow money to flow through the economy at a lowered interest rate. The lowered interest rate allows money to be lent at a rate that is more appealing. The FED likely issued the easy money policy to increase investing and spending. Being able to achieve loans at a lower rate allows consumers to obtain loans. The banks giving the loans also benefit. The bank’s ability to offer the loans at a lowered rate increases the amount of loans that the bank is able to issue. This type of policy reduces the amount of money that is held in the Federal Reserve’s. Allowing for more money to circulate and better lending rates can be a good thing in an attempt to boost a struggling economy. Allowing more money to circulate and spending to happen seem to be nothing but great news. This is not always so. The free flowing money and spending can lead to inflation. Inflati on leads to higher prices. This is so because the dollar becomes worth less. The dollar being worth less means that it will costs more for an item. An example of this is purchasing a loaf of bread. In a stable economy were inflation is not an issue, a loaf of bread can be bought for around $3.00. When inflation sets in, the same loaf of bread can be worth $4.00 or $5.00. ... Â   Â   Â   Â   Â   Â   Â   Â   Â   2010 Â   2.63% Â   2.14% Â   2.31% Â   2.24% Â   2.02% Â   1.05% Â   1.24% Â   1.15% Â   1.14% Â   1.17% Â   1.14% Â   1.50% Â   1.64% Â   2009 Â   0.03% Â   0.24% Â   -0.38% Â   -0.74% Â   -1.28% Â   -1.43% Â   -2.10% Â   -1.48% Â   -1.29% Â   -0.18% Â   1.84% Â   2.72% Â   -0.34% Â   2008 Â   4.28% Â   4.03% Â   3.98% Â   3.94% Â   4.18% Â   5.02% Â   5.60% Â   5.37% Â   4.94% Â   3.66% Â   1.07% Â   0.09% Â   3.85% Â   2007 Â   2.08% Â   2.42% Â   2.78% Â   2.57% Â   2.69% Â   2.69% Â   2.36% Â   1.97% Â   2.76% Â   3.54% Â   4.31% Â   4.08% Â   2.85% Â   2006 Â   3.99% Â   3.60% Â   3.36% Â   3.55% Â   4.17% Â   4.32% Â   4.15% Â   3.82% Â   2.06% Â   1.31% Â   1.97% Â   2.54% Â   3.24% Â   2005 Â   2.97% Â   3.01% Â   3.15% Â   3.51% Â   2.80% Â   2.53% Â   3.17% Â   3.64% Â   4.69% Â   4.35% Â   3.46% Â   3.42% Â   3.39% Â   2004 Â   1.93% Â   1.69% Â   1.74% Â   2.29% Â   3.05% Â   3.27% Â   2.99% Â   2.65% Â   2.54% Â   3.19% Â   3.52% Â   3.26% Â   2.68% Â   2003 Â   2.60% Â   2.98% Â   3.02% Â   2.22% Â   2.06% Â   2.11% Â   2.11% Â   2.16% Â   2.32% Â   2.04% Â   1.77% Â   1.88% Â   2.27% Â   2002 Â   1.14% Â   1.14% Â   1.48% Â   1.64% Â   1.18% Â   1.07% Â   1.46% Â   1.80% Â   1.51% Â   2.03% Â   2.20% Â   2.38% Â   1.59% Â   2001 Â   3.73% Â   3.53% Â   2.92% Â   3.27% Â   3.62% Â   3.25% Â   2.72% Â   2.72% Â   2.65% Â   2.13% Â   1.90% Â   1.55% Â   2.83% Â   2000 Â   2.74% Â   3.22% Â   3.76% Â   3.07% Â   3.19% Â   3.73% Â   3.66% Â   3.41% Â   3.45% Â   3.45% Â   3.45% Â   3.39% Â   3.38% It is important for the FED to make sure there is enough money in the Federal Reserve System to balance out the money that is floating around throughout the American economy. A monetary policy is put into affect for an important reason. A monetary policy allows f or the government to control certain different aspects of the economy. Some of the aspects that are controlled are the Federal

Tips About Writing About Yourself Essay Example for Free

Tips About Writing About Yourself Essay First you should gather all of your ideas.Writing is a process that involves at least four distinct steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. It is known as a recursive process. While you are revising, you might have to return to the prewriting step to develop and expand your ideas. Prewriting is anything you do before you write a draft of your document. It includes thinking, taking notes, talking to others, brainstorming, outlining, and gathering information Although prewriting is the first activity you engage in, generating ideas is an activity that occurs throughout the writing process. Drafting Drafting occurs when you put your ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Here you concentrate upon explaining and supporting your ideas fully. Here you also begin to connect your ideas. Regardless of how much thinking and planning you do, the process of putting your ideas in words changes them; often the very words you select evoke additional ideas or implications. Dont pay attention to such things as spelling at this stage. This draft tends to be writer-centered: it is you telling yourself what you know and think about the topic. Revising Revision is the key to effective documents. Here you think more deeply about your readers needs and expectations. The document becomes reader-centered. How much support will each idea need to convince your readers? Which terms should be defined for these particular readers? Is your organization effective? Do readers need to know X before they can understand Y? At this stage you also refine your prose, making each sentence as concise and accurate as possible. Make connections between ideas explicit and clear. Editing Check for such things as grammar, mechanics, and spelling. The last thing you should do before printing your document is to spell check it. Dont edit your writing until the other steps in the writing process are complete.

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle * This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the â€Å"Baltic World† Since the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insignia. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms w ith which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1 Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the political fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on T[otilde]nismgi in central Tallinn—a post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, whic h quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era; its  current leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the T[otilde]nismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism. For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet period. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions: local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the mo st part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This provision was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers. Issues of past or memory politics2 have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003; Budryte 2005; Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues: as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnica lly Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia. The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 199 1.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5 Past politics and post-communism The dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scales—national, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex †¦ power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graha m et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6 Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid; silence observed; political rallies enacted; pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity: collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent: what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as s ignificant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible. Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily f rame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politics—the relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands—discerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006). In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Budryte 2005; Kelley 2004; Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessar ily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a; Budryte 2005). A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined. As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermath of independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level. In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning: a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian pe riphery that is Narva? Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9 Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europe—or, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997; Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10 It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmental challenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three dates—the birthday of Gustav Vasa; the birthday of the present King; and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Lepp—then Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm—suggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population. Narva: Eastern, Western or in-between? The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortresses—one German, one Russian—on the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16 For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet cont ext, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992. The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildings—notably the castle and the town hall—were restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabit ants. As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704. As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence; yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand o f the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993: with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b). At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda: the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to ass ert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West. Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002; Budryte 2005; Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon. The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005—a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politics—were far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wid er Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20 In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemorating—inter alia—the victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. Yet the post-1993 political e Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle * This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the â€Å"Baltic World† Since the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insignia. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms w ith which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1 Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the political fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on T[otilde]nismgi in central Tallinn—a post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, whic h quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era; its  current leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the T[otilde]nismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism. For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet period. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions: local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the mo st part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This provision was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers. Issues of past or memory politics2 have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003; Budryte 2005; Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues: as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnica lly Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia. The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 199 1.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5 Past politics and post-communism The dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scales—national, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex †¦ power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graha m et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6 Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid; silence observed; political rallies enacted; pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity: collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent: what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as s ignificant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible. Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily f rame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politics—the relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands—discerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006). In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Budryte 2005; Kelley 2004; Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessar ily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a; Budryte 2005). A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined. As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermath of independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level. In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning: a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian pe riphery that is Narva? Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9 Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europe—or, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997; Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10 It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmental challenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three dates—the birthday of Gustav Vasa; the birthday of the present King; and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Lepp—then Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm—suggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population. Narva: Eastern, Western or in-between? The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortresses—one German, one Russian—on the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16 For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet cont ext, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992. The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildings—notably the castle and the town hall—were restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabit ants. As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704. As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence; yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand o f the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993: with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b). At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda: the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to ass ert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West. Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002; Budryte 2005; Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon. The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005—a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politics—were far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wid er Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20 In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemorating—inter alia—the victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. Yet the post-1993 political e