The House Party Essay Example

The House Party Essay This book was very interesting, I was very intrigued. I like it because it really related, and it did teach me stuff. It showed me that I shouldn’t give in to peer-pressure. Just because your friends say you should do something, doesn’t mean it’s always right. Maybe they are telling you to do it, so they don’t have to? I suggest that teenagers from grades 8-9 should read this book, it could teach them a lot for future experiences. In this book there were to main characters, to teenage girls.They were best friends and the book started off with them hanging out, at one of the girl’s house. The mom and dad were going away on a vacation, and wanted the girl to come with them. She ended up saying she couldn’t because she had a lot of homework to finish, and she couldn’t miss out on any more school. She said she would stay at her friend’s house while they were gone. Instead of doing that, her friend had pushed her into throwing a part y for a few people. When the party had begun, more and more people started to show up.Eventually the street was filled, and the entire house. Things were getting spilled, broken, and stolen. Her friend had gotten alcohol poisoning, and the police ended up coming. Her friend’s mom had helped them clean up afterward, but things were still broken and stolen. Windows were even broken. The theme of this story is to not give into peer pressure. If you know it’s wrong, or have a feeling it could be wrong, simply don’t do it. Chances are you will get a consequence.

The First Shopping Mall in America

The First Shopping Mall in America Malls are collections of independent retail stores and services conceived, constructed and maintained by a management firm. Occupants can include restaurants, banks, theaters, professional offices and even service stations. The Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota became the first enclosed mall to open in 1956 and several more innovations have come about since to make shopping easier and more efficient for both store owners and customers.   The First Department Stores   Bloomingdales was founded in 1872 by two brothers named Lyman and Joseph Bloomingdale. The store rode the popularity of the hoop skirt to great success and practically invented the department store concept at the beginning of the 20th century. John Wanamaker follwed soon after with the  opening of The Grand Depot, a six-story round department store in Philadelphia in 1877. While Wanamaker modestly declined taking credit for inventing the department store, his store was definitely cutting edge. His innovations included the first white sale, modern price tags and the first in-store restaurant. He pioneered the use of money-back guarantees and newspaper ads to advertise his retail goods.   But before Bloomingdales and The Grand Depot, Mormon leader Brigham Young founded Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution  in Salt Lake City in 1868. Familiarly known as  ZMCI, some historians credit Youngs shop with being the first department store,  though most give the credit to John Wanamaker. ZCMI sold clothing, dry goods, drugs, groceries, produce, shoes, trunks, sewing machines, wagons and machinery sold and organized in all types of â€Å"departments.† Mail Order Catalogs Arrive Aaron Montgomery Ward sent out the first mail order catalog in 1872 for his Montgomery Ward business. Ward first worked for the department store Marshall Field as both a store clerk and a traveling salesman. As a traveling salesman, he  realized that his rural customers would be better served by mail order, which turned out to be a revolutionary idea. He started Montgomery Ward with only $2,400 in capital.  The first catalog was a single sheet of paper with a price list that advertised  the merchandise for sale along with ordering instructions. From this humble beginning, it grew and became more heavily illustrated and chock full of goods, earning the nickname dream book. Montgomery Ward  was a mail-order-only business until 1926 when the first retail store opened in Plymouth, Indiana. The First Shopping Carts Sylvan Goldman invented the first shopping cart in 1936. He owned a chain of  Oklahoma City grocery stores called Standard/Piggly-Wiggly. He created his first cart by adding two wire baskets and wheels to a folding chair. Together with his mechanic Fred Young, Goldman later designed a dedicated shopping cart in 1947 and formed the Folding Carrier Company to manufacture them. Orla Watson  of Kansas City, Missouri is credited with inventing the telescoping shopping cart in 1946. Using hinged baskets, each shopping cart was fitted into the shopping cart ahead of it for compact storage. These telescoping shopping carts were first used at Floyd Days Super Market in 1947. Silicon Valley inventor George Cokely, who also invented  the Pet Rock, came up with a modern solution to one of the supermarket industrys oldest problems: stolen shopping carts. Its called Stop Z-Cart. The wheel of the shopping cart holds the device which contains a chip and some electronics. When a cart is rolled a certain distance away from the store, the store knows about it. The First Cash Registers James Ritty invented the incorruptible cashier in 1884 after receiving a patent in 1883. It was  the first working, mechanical cash register.  His invention came with that familiar ringing  sound referred to in advertising as the bell heard round the world.† The cash register was initially sold by the National Manufacturing Company. After reading a description of it, John H. Patterson immediately decided to buy both the company and the patent. He renamed the company the National Cash Register Company in 1884. Patterson improved the register by adding a paper roll to record sales transactions. Charles F. Kettering later designed a cash register with an electric motor in 1906 while he was working at the National Cash Register Company.   Shopping Goes High Tech A Philadelphia pharmacist named Asa Candler invented the coupon in 1895. Candler bought  Coca-Cola  from original inventor Dr. John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist. Candler placed coupons in newspapers for free Cokes from any fountain to help promote the new soft drink. Several years later, the patent for the  bar code  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ U.S. Patent #2,612,994 – was issued to inventors Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver on October 7, 1952.   All this would be for naught, whoever, if people couldnt get inside to shop. So credit goes to Horton Automatics co-founders Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt for inventing the automatic sliding door in 1954. The company developed and sold the door in America in 1960. These automatic doors used mat actuators. AS Horton Automatics explains on its website: The idea came to Lew Hewitt and Dee Horton to build an automatic sliding door back in the mid-1950s when they saw that existing swing doors had difficulty operating  in Corpus Christis winds. So the two men went to work inventing an automatic sliding door that would circumvent the problem of high winds and their damaging effect.  Horton Automatics Inc. was formed in 1960, placing the first commercial automatic sliding door on the market and literally establishing a brand new industry.   Their first automatic sliding door in operation was a unit donated to the City of Corpus Christi for its Shoreline Drive utilities department. The first one sold was installed at the old Driscoll Hotel for its Torch Restaurant. All this would set the stage for megamalls. Giant megamalls werent developed until the 1980s when the West Edmonton Mall opened in Alberta, Canada with more than 800 stores. It was open to the public  in 1981  and featured a hotel, amusement park, miniature golf course, a church, a water park for sunbathing and surfing, a zoo and a 438-foot lake.

Thomas Edison, American Inventor and Showman

Thomas Edison, American Inventor and Showman Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847–October 18, 1931) was an inventor, but more than that he was a showman, a celebrity who made the process of inventing a fascination for the American public. His contributions to many different inventions were by and large joint discoveries, based on generations of previous work, as well as the work of his gifted assistants and accomplished competitors. He was the face of the future, technology, and progress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fast Facts: Thomas Edison Known For: Inventor, patent holder, celebrityBorn: February 11, 1847 in Milan, OhioParents: Sam Edison Jr. and Nancy Elliott EdisonDied: October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New JerseyEducation: Three months of formal education, homeschooled until age 12Published Works: Quadruplex telegraph, phonograph, unbreakable cylinder record called the Blue Ambersol, electric pen, a version of the incandescent lightbulb and an integrated system to run it, motion picture camera called a kinetographSpouse(s): Mary Stilwell, Mina MillerChildren: Marion Estelle, Thomas Jr., William Leslie by Mary Stilwell; and Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore Miller by Mina Miller Early Life Thomas Alva Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, the son of a Canadian refugee and his schoolteacher wife. Edisons mother Nancy Elliott was originally from New York until her family moved to Vienna, Canada, where she met Sam Edison, Jr., whom she later married. Sam was the descendant of British loyalists who fled to Canada at the end of the American revolution, but when he became involved in an unsuccessful revolt in Ontario in the 1830s he was forced to flee to the United States. They made their home in Ohio in 1839. The family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854, where Sam worked in the lumber business. Education and First Job Known as Al in his youth, Edison was the youngest of seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood, and all of them were in their teens when Edison was born. Edison tended to be in poor health when he was young and was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called Edison addled, or slow, his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Edison said many years later, My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint. At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and chemical experiments. In 1859 at the age of 12, Edison took a job selling newspapers and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad to Detroit. He started two businesses in Port Huron, a newsstand and a fresh produce stand, and finagled free or very low-cost trade and transport in the train. In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments and a printing press, where he started the Grand Trunk Herald, the first newspaper published on a train. An accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board. Loss of Hearing Around the age of 12, Edison lost almost all of his hearing. There are several theories as to what caused this. Some attribute it to the aftereffects of scarlet fever, which he had as a child. Others blame it on a train conductor boxing his ears after Edison caused a fire in the baggage car, an incident Edison claimed never happened. Edison himself blamed it on an incident in which he was grabbed by his ears and lifted to a train. He did not let his disability discourage him, however, and often treated it as an asset since it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research. Undoubtedly, though, his deafness made him more solitary and shy in dealing with others. Telegraph Operator In 1862, Edison rescued a 3-year-old from a track where a boxcar was about to roll into him. The grateful father, J.U. MacKenzie, taught Edison railroad telegraphy as a reward. That winter, he took a job as a telegraph operator in Port Huron. In the meantime, he continued his scientific experiments on the side. Between 1863 and 1867, Edison migrated from city to city in the United States, taking available telegraph jobs. Love of Invention In 1868, Edison moved to Boston where he worked in the Western Union office and worked even more on inventing things. In January 1869 Edison resigned from his job, intending to devote himself full time to inventing things. His first invention to receive a patent was the electric vote recorder, in June 1869. Daunted by politicians reluctance to use the machine, he decided that in the future he would not waste time inventing things that no one wanted. Edison moved to New York City in the middle of 1869. A friend, Franklin L. Pope, allowed Edison to sleep in a room where he worked, Samuel Laws Gold Indicator Company. When Edison managed to fix a broken machine there, he was hired to maintain and improve the printer machines. During the next period of his life, Edison became involved in multiple projects and partnerships dealing with the telegraph. In October 1869, Edison joined with Franklin L. Pope and James Ashley to form the organization Pope, Edison and Co. They advertised themselves as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. Edison received several patents for improvements to the telegraph. The partnership merged with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. in 1870. American Telegraph Works Edison also established the Newark Telegraph Works in Newark, New Jersey, with William Unger to manufacture stock printers. He formed the American Telegraph Works to work on developing an automatic telegraph later in the year. In 1874 he began to work on a multiplex telegraphic system for Western Union, ultimately developing a quadruplex telegraph, which could send two messages simultaneously in both directions. When Edison sold his patent rights to the quadruplex to the rival Atlantic Pacific Telegraph Co., a series of court battles followed- which Western Union won. Besides other telegraph inventions, he also developed an electric pen in 1875. Marriage and Family His personal life during this period also brought much change. Edisons mother died in 1871, and he married his former employee Mary Stilwell on Christmas Day that same year. While Edison loved his wife, their relationship was fraught with difficulties, primarily his preoccupation with work and her constant illnesses. Edison would often sleep in the lab and spent much of his time with his male colleagues. Nevertheless, their first child Marion was born in February 1873, followed by a son, Thomas, Jr., in January 1876. Edison nicknamed the two Dot and Dash, referring to telegraphic terms. A third child, William Leslie, was born in October 1878. Mary died in 1884, perhaps of cancer or the morphine prescribed to her to treat it. Edison married again: his second wife was Mina Miller, the daughter of Ohio industrialist Lewis Miller, who founded the Chautauqua Foundation. They married on February 24, 1886, and had three children, Madeleine (born 1888), Charles (1890), and Theodore Miller Edison (1898). Menlo Park Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. This site later become known as an invention factory, since they worked on several different inventions at any given time there. Edison would conduct numerous experiments to find answers to problems. He said, I never quit until I get what Im after. Negative results are just what Im after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results. Edison liked to work long hours and expected much from his employees. In 1879, after considerable experimentation and based on 70 years work of several other inventors, Edison invented a carbon filament that would burn for 40 hours- the first practical incandescent lightbulb. While Edison had neglected further work on the phonograph, others had moved forward to improve it. In particular, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter developed an improved machine that used a wax cylinder and a floating stylus, which they called a graphophone. They sent representatives to Edison to discuss a possible partnership on the machine, but Edison refused to collaborate with them, feeling that the phonograph was his invention alone. With this competition, Edison was stirred into action and resumed his work on the phonograph in 1887. Edison eventually adopted methods similar to Bell and Tainters in his phonograph. Phonograph Companies The phonograph was initially marketed as a business dictation machine. Entrepreneur Jesse H. Lippincott acquired control of most of the phonograph companies, including Edisons, and set up the North American Phonograph Co. in 1888. The business did not prove profitable, and when Lippincott fell ill, Edison took over the management. In 1894, the North American Phonograph Co. went into bankruptcy, a move which allowed Edison to buy back the rights to his invention. In 1896, Edison started the National Phonograph Co. with the intent of making phonographs for home amusement. Over the years, Edison made improvements to the phonograph and to the cylinders which were played on them, the early ones being made of wax. Edison introduced an unbreakable cylinder record, named the Blue Amberol, at roughly the same time he entered the disc phonograph market in 1912. The introduction of an Edison disc was in reaction to the overwhelming popularity of discs on the market in contrast to cylinders. Touted as being superior to the competitions records, the Edison discs were designed to be played only on Edison phonographs and were cut laterally as opposed to vertically. The success of the Edison phonograph business, though, was always hampered by the companys reputation of choosing lower-quality recording acts. In the 1920s, competition from radio caused the business to sour, and the Edison disc business ceased production in 1929. Ore-Milling and Cement Another Edison interest was an ore milling process that would extract various metals from ore. In 1881, he formed the Edison Ore-Milling Co., but the venture proved fruitless as there was no market for it. He returned to the project in 1887, thinking that his process could help the mostly depleted Eastern mines compete with the Western ones. In 1889, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Works was formed, and Edison became absorbed by its operations and began to spend much time away from home at the mines in Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Although he invested much money and time into this project, it proved unsuccessful when the market went down, and additional sources of ore in the Midwest were found. Edison also became involved in promoting the use of cement and formed the Edison Portland Cement Co. in 1899. He tried to promote the widespread use of cement for the construction of low-cost homes and envisioned alternative uses for concrete in the manufacture of phonographs, furniture, refrigerators, and pianos. Unfortunately, Edison was ahead of his time with these ideas, as the widespread use of concrete proved economically unfeasible at that time. Motion Pictures In 1888, Edison met Eadweard Muybridge at West Orange and viewed Muybridges Zoopraxiscope. This machine used a circular disc with still photographs of the successive phases of movement around the circumference to recreate the illusion of movement. Edison declined to work with Muybridge on the device and decided to work on his motion picture camera at his laboratory. As Edison put it in a caveat written the same year, I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear. The task of inventing the machine fell to Edisons associate William K. L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device for recording images, before turning to a celluloid strip. In October 1889, Dickson greeted Edisons return from Paris with a new device that projected pictures and contained sound. After more work, patent applications were made in 1891 for a motion picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion picture peephole viewer. Kinetoscope parlors opened in New York and soon spread to other major cities during 1894. In 1893, a motion picture studio, later dubbed the Black Maria (the slang name for a police paddy wagon which the studio resembled), was opened at the West Orange complex. Short films were produced using a variety of acts of the day. Edison was reluctant to develop a motion picture projector, feeling that more profit was to be made with the peephole viewers. When Dickson assisted competitors on developing another peephole motion picture device and the eidoscope projection system, later to develop into the Mutoscope, he was fired. Dickson went on to form the American Mutoscope Co. along with Harry Marvin, Herman Casler, and Elias Koopman. Edison subsequently adopted a projector developed by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins and renamed it the Vitascope and marketed it under his name. The Vitascope premiered on April 23, 1896, to great acclaim. Patent Battles Competition from other motion picture companies soon created heated legal battles between them and Edison over patents. Edison sued many companies for infringement. In 1909, the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Co. brought a degree of cooperation to the various companies who were given licenses in 1909, but in 1915, the courts found the company to be an unfair monopoly. In 1913, Edison experimented with synchronizing sound to film. A Kinetophone was developed by his laboratory and synchronized sound on a phonograph cylinder to the picture on a screen. Although this initially brought interest, the system was far from perfect and disappeared by 1915. By 1918, Edison ended his involvement in the motion picture field. In 1911, Edisons companies were re-organized into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. As the organization became more diversified and structured, Edison became less involved in the day-to-day operations, although he still had some decision-making authority. The goals of the organization became more to maintain market viability than to produce new inventions frequently. A fire broke out at the West Orange laboratory in 1914, destroying 13 buildings. Although the loss was great, Edison spearheaded the rebuilding of the lot. World War I When Europe became involved in World War I, Edison advised preparedness and felt that technology would be the future of war. He was named the head of the Naval Consulting Board in 1915, an attempt by the government to bring science into its defense program. Although mainly an advisory board, it was instrumental in the formation of a laboratory for the Navy that opened in 1923. During the war, Edison spent much of his time doing naval research, particularly on submarine detection, but he felt the Navy was not receptive to many of his inventions and suggestions. Health Issues In the 1920s, Edisons health became worse and he began to spend more time at home with his wife. His relationship with his children was distant, although Charles was president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. While Edison continued to experiment at home, he could not perform some experiments that he wanted to at his West Orange laboratory because the board would not approve them. One project that held his fascination during this period was the search for an alternative to rubber. Death and Legacy Henry Ford, an admirer and a friend of Edisons, reconstructed Edisons invention factory as a museum at Greenfield Village, Michigan, which opened during the 50th anniversary of Edisons electric light in 1929. The main celebration of Lights Golden Jubilee, co-hosted by Ford and General Electric, took place in Dearborn along with a huge celebratory dinner in Edisons honor attended by notables such as President Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., George Eastman, Marie Curie, and Orville Wright. Edisons health, however, had declined to the point that he could not stay for the entire ceremony. During the last two years of his life, a series of ailments caused his health to decline even more until he lapsed into a coma on October 14, 1931. He died on October 18, 1931, at his estate, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey. Sources Israel, Paul. Edison: A Life of Invention. New York, Wiley, 2000.Josephson, Matthew. Edison: A Biography. New York, Wiley, 1992.Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007.

Observation Report. Observation of a group Essay

Observation Report. Observation of a group - Essay Example 1990; Little, 1990; Ponticell, 1995; Guskey, 1994: Dufour & Eaker, 1998; Guskey, 2000). The isolationist learning model, implying that students have to work on their own and not in collaboration with their peers, is imposed upon learners by teachers and educational institutions from the inception of their educational journey to its conclusion. Predicated on the assumption that collaboration could lead to collusion, the unfair distribution of work responsibilities and, learner dependence on others, culminating in his/her resignation of learning/studying responsibilities, the isolationist learning model tends to discourage cooperative learning (Hargreaves & Dawe. 1990; Little, 1990; Ponticell, 1995; Guskey, 1994: Dufour & Eaker, 1998; Guskey, 2000). To the extent that this assignment was about the formation of a study group and could only be completed through learner collaboration, it was a significant learning experience. Murphy and Lick (2001) maintain that group size is an important predictor of the capacity of a group to satisfy its objectives, insofar as size directly impinges upon manageability. As such, they advise that group sizes range between two to six members. As noted in the introductory paragraph, our group was comprised of four members, implying adherence to the aforementioned advise and, supposedly, an enhanced capacity for the quality completion of the set assignment. The assigned task was simple enough in itself. Group members were required to watch a film, following from which they were expected to collaborate on the composition of a report on that which the film had to say about group dynamics and on the completion of a number of other learning tasks. The film in question was Alive. The group assumed an online form, whereby collaboration was limited to group discussions via WebCT. While this was, in some ways, easier than

Business - Corporate Accountability Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Business - Corporate Accountability - Essay Example In simple terms, corporate accountability is the ability of individuals affected by a corporation to take charge of the actions of the enterprise. It involves changes in the legal framework of how a company operates within social and environmental parameters. Corporate accountability ensures that the legal framework within which a corporation operates is enforceable. This means that the corporation can be held accountable if it fails to meet the set requirements. It offers legal rights over the relevant stakeholders to seek compensation incase they suffer from the company’s operation (Friends of Earth, 2005). Corporate accountability ensures corporations operate with the view of minimizing and avoiding social or environmental risk and harm. The concept of corporate accountability has brought various enlightened sectors of the corporate world together. Environmental organizations, trade unions, consumers, human rights and governments have all united behind the concept of corpor ate accountability (Friends of Earth, 2010). Corporations regularly may exploit weak regulatory systems in poor and developing countries making citizens in such countries vulnerable to corporate human rights abuse. Corporations also exploit such weak domestic regulatory systems due to the lack of international corporate accountability. ... As companies expand internationally, regulation measures have not been put in place to ensure compensation for individuals whose human rights become violated. Large and multinational companies have an obligation to protect human rights within their operations. Corporate accountability provides corporations with an opportunity to have a look at its operations and impact on people as well as the environment (Isaleem, 2010). This paper will focus on a case study on corporate response of the Shell oil company towards corporate accountability resulting from consumer and political pressure. CASE STUDY: SHELL OIL COMPANY Shell Oil Company is the fifth largest company in the world according to Forbes magazine. It is a global oil and gas company. The company’s registered office is in London while its headquarters are located at The Hague, Netherlands. The company’s primary business involves oil exploration, harvesting, transportation and trade. In its oil operations, the company has come under severe scrutiny regarding to its role in environmental pollution and human rights abuses in several countries. It has become particularly criticized over the effects of its operations in Africa which has led to several protests against the company. Its operations in the Niger-delta located in Nigeria have resulted to extreme environmental issues (Amnesty International, 2005). Oil spills resulting from old and corroded pipelines has contributed to the death of vegetation, fish and general environmental degradation in the Niger-delta. This has led to mass protests against Shell by the local population in Niger-delta and particularly Amnesty international. The environmental pollution has also led to calls to

Microelectronic Pill Essay Example for Free

Microelectronic Pill Essay 1: ABSTRACT The invention of transistor enabled the first use of radiometry capsules, which used simple circuits for the internal study of the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract. They couldnt be used as they could transmit only from a single channel and also due to the size of the components. They also suffered from poor reliability, low sensitivity and short lifetimes of the devices. This led to the application of single-channel telemetry capsules for the detection of disease and abnormalities in the GI tract where restricted area prevented the use of traditional endoscopy. They were later modified as they had the disadvantage of using laboratory type sensors such as the glass pH electrodes, resistance thermometers, etc. They were also of very large size. The later modification is similar to the above instrument but is smaller in size due to the application of existing semiconductor fabrication technologies. These technologies led to the formation of MICROELECTRONIC PILL. Microelectronic pill is basically a multichannel sensor used for remote biomedical measurements using micro technology. This is used for the real-time measurement parameters such as temperature, pH, conductivity and dissolved oxygen. The sensors are fabricated using electron beam and photolithographic pattern integration and were controlled by an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). 2: INTRODUCTION When Microelectronic pill is swallowed, then it will travel through the Gastro Intestinal Tract simultaneously perform multi parameter in situ physiological analysis After completing its mission it will come out of the body by normal bowel movement The pill is 16mm in diameter 55mm long weighing around 5 gram It records parameters like temperature, pH, Conductivity, Dissolved Oxygen in real time. It measures the body core temperature. Also compensates with the temperature induced signal changes in other sensors. It also identifies local changes associated with TISSUE INFLAMMATION ULCERS. 3:TECHNOLOGY USED IN MICROELECTRONIC PILL ION-SELECTIVE FIELD EFFECT TRANSISTOR(ISFET) The ISFET measures pH. It can reveal pathological conditions associated with abnormal pH levels These abnormalities include : Pancreatic disease Hypertension Inflammatory bowel disease The activity of fermenting bacteria The level of acid excretion Reflux of oesophagus Effect of GI specific drugs on target organs. The pair of direct contact Gold electrodes measures conductivity, by measuring the contents of water salt absorption, bile secretion the breakdown of organic components into charged colloids etc. in the GI tract. Since the gold has best conductivity among all the elements, Therefore it gives true value of conductivity as measured. Â  DIRECT CONTACT GOLD ELECTRODE The three electrode electrochemical cell detects the level of dissolved oxygen in solution. It measures the oxygen gradient from the proximal to the distal GI Tract It investigates : Growth of aerobic or bacterial infection Formation of radicals causing cellular injury pathophysiological conditions like inflammation Gastric ulceration. It develops generation enzymes linked with amperometric biosensors. ASIC The ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is the control unit that connects together other components of the micro system. It contains an analogue signal –conditioning module operating the sensors, 10-bit analogue to digital (ADC) digital to analogue (DAC) converters, digital data processing module The temperature circuitry bias the diode at constant current so that change in temperature reflects a corresponding change in in diode voltage. The pH ISFET sensor is biased as a simple source at constant current with the source voltage changing with threshold voltage pH. The conductivity circuit operates at D.C. It measures the resistance across the electrode pair as an inverse function of solution conductivity. An incorporated potentiostat circuit operates the O 2 sensor with a 10 bit DAC controlling the working electrode potential w.r.t the reference Analogue signals are sequenced through a multiplexer before being digitized by ADC. ASIC sensors consume 5.3 mW power corresponding to 1.7 mA of current. CONTROL CHIP Size of transmitter = 8 ? 5 ? 3 mm Modulation Scheme = Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) Data Transfer Rate = 1 kbps Frequency = 40.01 MHz at 20 Â °C Bandwidth of the signal generated 10 KHz It consumes 6.8 mW power at 2.2 mA of current. RADIO TRANSMITTOR 4:Experimental The electronic pill comprise a biocompatible capsule, which consists of a chemically resistant polyether-terketone (PEEK) coating, the four microfabricated sensors, the ASIC control chip and a discrete component radio transmitter (Fig. 1). The unit I powered by two SR44 Ag2O batteries (3.1 V), which provides an operating time of 35 hours at the rated power consumption of 15 mW. The sensors were fabricated on two separate 55 mm2 silicon chips located at the front end of the capsule. The temperature sensor is embedded in the substrate, whereas the conductivity sensor is directly exposed to the surroundings. The pH and oxygen sensors were enclosed in two separate 8 nL electrolyte chambers containing a 0.1M KOH solution retained in a 0.2 % calcium alginate gel. The electrolyte maintains a stable potential of the integrated Ag/AgCl reference electrodes used by the two sensors. The oxygen and pH sensor are covered by a 12 ?m thick film of teflon and nafion respectively, and protected by a 15 ?m thick dialysis membrane of polycarbonate. The signals were conditioned by the ASIC and then transmitted to a local receiver (base station) at 40.01 MHz prior to data acquisition on a PC. The applied simplex communication link, based on a direct sequence spread spectrum communication system, can handle data from several pills at the same time. 4: APPLICATION It is used in the medical diagnosis of gestro-intestial tract disease. 5: CONCLUSION: The electronic pill will be further miniaturised for human ingestion by the incorporation of the transmitter on silicon and a reduction in power consumption by the implementation of a standby modus and serial bitstream data compression. The integration of radiation sensors and the application of indirect imaging technologies such as ultrasound and impedance tomography will improve the detection of tissue abnormalities and radiology treatment associated with cancer and chronic inflammation. 6: REFERENCES: [1] www.wikipedia.com [2] www.seminar-only.com [3] Cane, C., I. Gracia, and A. Merlos, Microelectronics Journal.

Spring 2005 :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the first section of essays the authors discuss how and why feminist scholars do research is grappled with in each selection. The authors/feminist scholars discuss the importance of research and methodology.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Sandra Harding asserts in her essay, â€Å"Is There a Feminist Method?† Harding argues that it is â€Å"difficult to define a distinct feminist method because method and methodology have been intertwined with each other and with epistemological issues.†(2) Moreover, it is, she argues difficult and potentially dangerous to identify anything as a distinctive method—her argument is that â€Å" it is not by looking at research methods that one will be able to identify distinctive features of the best feminist research methods.† In other words it is dangerous to mystify feminist research because it locks researchers, students, scholars and critics into rules and ideas that don’t necessarily encompass all facets of feminist scholarship and the efforts that are made to understand it.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The idea of there being a single â€Å"feminist method† assumes that there is a single thing, or several concrete things/ideas feminist scholars must be searching for. Harding’s argument is supported by author’s Greene, Khan in â€Å"Feminist scholarship and the social construction of women†. Greene/Khan assert—that â€Å"feminist scholarship undertakes the dual task of deconstructing predominately male cultural paradigms and reconstructing a female perspective and experience in an effort to change the tradition that has silenced and marginalized us†¦feminist scholars work to expose and the collusion between ideology and cultural practices.† (1) She asserts that there are two premises about gender, the first is, â€Å"the inequality of the sexes is neither a biological given nor a divine mandate, but a cultural construct,† and the second is, â€Å"the male perspective has dominated fields of knowledge shaping their paradigms and methods.† Here the authors are illustrating the constraints ideology and methodology place on feminist research and substantiating the claim that ideology and methodology are emblems of constraint in the feminist discipline because of their universal assumptions and dependence on the paradigm for the purposes of legitimizing their claims. The authors, Greene, Khan, Harding, and Cannon all deal with the issue of being tied down to methodology and method that would define feminist work, and solidify its direction while at the same time not allowing it to be fluid enough to evolve as a legitimate academic discipline.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As it the issue is raised in â€Å"Race and Class Bias in