Designing Continuous Auditing for a Highly Automated Procure-to-Pay Article

Designing Continuous Auditing for a Highly Automated Procure-to-Pay Process - Article Example f a continuous monitoring system also helps auditors to carry out an independent monitoring and enables them to carry out audit tasks on a continuous basis. There have been changes in business and auditing, which prompts auditors to make use of continuous monitoring system and continuous auditing. The changes in auditing environment have made auditors make use of graphic modeling in auditing financial statements, and this calls for the implementation of continuous auditing and monitoring system (Borthick, 2012). The procure to pay process is a very complex automated process which requires a continuous automated monitoring in order to effectively audit the process, the internal and external control, as well as all other financial records of any company that uses this process. However, it is not certain that the implementation of continuous monitoring system will help the auditors to effectively and efficiently carry out their auditing tasks. This is because implementing a continuous monitoring system on the procure-to pay process presents some impediments to the auditors (Borthick, 2012). Divergence by business practices where they divert from the original system as employees devise workarounds in order to meet exigencies may become an obstruction to the auditors. When employees diverge from the original system, companies end up changing the entire system in order to enable the system to support the employees work. This means that the auditing process will always be subject to continuing system enhancement and this can be a huge challenge for the auditors (Borthick, 2012). It is also true that the reliance on the system development life cycle that is warranted for the operation of system controls can create huge problems to the auditors. In some companies, the continuous monitoring is always based on the assumption that price looks up for pallets by each day are correct in all aspects (Borthick, 2012). This assumption is tenuous given the interaction of changes

America Today Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

America Today - Essay Example Just as before the first round of financial depression, America had just elected a charismatic leader to the White House who promised to fix the problems left by his predecessor. However, he failed to do so and the American people were left to pay the price . I find it quite disturbing that America seems to have a pattern of allowing history to repeat itself. As one will recall from our lessons in this class, America was enjoying one of its longest and largest economic growth spurts before the depression came along. This is a typical scenario that was again played out before the 21st century era of American depression, only this time, both the stock market and banking system collapsed. With more than 15 million Americans out of work, the government chose to pull the country out of the depression era by introducing European style social and economic reforms The New Deal allowed the government to have a more direct hand in the social and economic business of the American people. By adopting a policy of moderate currency inflation the federal government managed to jumpstart the economy and offer relief to some debtors by creating credit facilities that dealt with industry and agriculture. Banks were severely monitored and controlled so that they would not make the mistake of increasing their already existing bad loans. While The New Deal ushered in a new era of social, political, and economic stability for the government, the events happening overseas in Europe and Asia were slowly beginning to rear its ugly head in relation to the existence of America as a pacifist country. The American economy was at its peak when it became directly involved in the European and Asi an wars of World War II. Although the United States of America managed to survive the economic effects of the war through the act of selling bonds, rationing, and other cost saving measures at home, the country was slowly emerging as the de-facto leader in terms of international relations. The defeat of Hitler during the European War by the Allied Forces allowed their scientists to come and work for the Americans who were still dealing with the war in the Asia Pacific at the time. Since the nuclear bombs were actually a Nazi brain child, these scientists who worked on the project simply handed over their research, results, and expertise to their new masters, who in this case, turned out to be the Americans. We helped them fine tune the weapon of mass destruction without really having a real reason to use it in the Asia Pacific war. 3 There is a historical belief that Japan was actually close to surrendering and had already lost the war by the time the U.S. forces had decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A decision that the government made, according to historical documents, on the fact that by being the first to use a nuclear weapon, the United States will have the upper hand in the nuclear arms race and shall therefore be

Russian Economy in the Late 1990s Essay Example for Free

Russian Economy in the Late 1990s Essay The process of economic transformation in Russia has been marked by a prolonged transitional depression and macroeconomic instability: seven years of continuing decline resulted in a cumulative drop of GDP by more than 40% between 1989 and 1996; in that period there were also several outbursts of near- hyperinflation. The first radical effort to tackle inflation was the IMF-supported stabilization program of 1995. It focused on tight monetary control and nominal exchange rate targets; subsequently, direct central bank financing of the budget was discontinued and the exchange rate was placed under control. In the years that followed, Russia made marked progress towards price and exchange rate stability and this prompted positive expectations in the West and a widespread perception that the country was pursuing the right course of reforms. It is important to point out that the 1995 stabilization effort was not supported by deep structural and institutional reforms. Russia inherited from the past an over-industrialized economy, dominated by highly inefficient heavy industry (including the military-industrial complex). The liberalization of prices and the discontinuation of subsidies resulted de facto in the destruction of a large share of the existing capital stock. Restructuring these industries is a serious policy task: simply closing down the large number of inefficient enterprises would not be socially and politically tolerable, but unfortunately that was the way of Russian development during 1990s. In these circumstances the Russian authorities started speedy, give-away mass privatization program which was carried out during 1992-1994. However, this resulted in most cases in the concentration of effective property rights in the hands of insiders (company managers) who had neither the willing nor the capital to perform the necessary deep restructuring of the enterprises. The newly emerging system of private ownership was not conducive to effective corporate governance and was in fact another obstacle to the process of enterprise restructuring. Moreover, the loopholes in law system seem to have incited a continued stripping of the assets of the privatized enterprises rather than their market-oriented restructuring. Thus, the progress in institutional and legislative reforms in Russia in the 1990s has been modest and the emerging market infrastructure in the country is extremely poor. This is especially so in the areas of commercial and corporate law. The execution of agreements most often relies on the goodwill of the parties, while contract enforcement is often impossible by legal means. Very little was done to reform the functioning of Russian public administration whose lack of transparency is well known. It gave birth to widespread rent seeking which resulted in the de facto concentration of wealth in a relatively small group of oligarchs. This distorted socio-political environment, and the presence of a mistakes in public administration has created a vicious circle which is a major obstacle to reforms and to social justice. One frequent characteristic of the Russian nouveaux-riches is that the wealth of numerous members of the new class was not acquired as a result of entrepreneurial success; it was simply easy money, obtained in some cases from illegal or semi-legal activity. Huge amounts of capital left Russia and were spent on luxury goods or just placed in safe havens instead of being put to productive use within the country. The unprecedentedly rapid stratification of society and the lack of social justice eroded initial public support for the reforms and strengthened the opposition to the reform process. It was in this economic and institutional environment that the Russian government launched the 1995 stabilization program. The climate for productive investment in Russia remained hostile, mostly due to the negative impact of this environment. The persistent lack of investor confidence leaded to further decapitalization of the economy. In real terms, gross fixed investment in 1997 was a quarter of its 1991 level. The prolonged financial pressure on manufactories provoked a credit crunch and the emergence of various monetary surrogates (acting as an alternative to money) and widespread barter (closely related to the diffusion of loss-making activity) which eroded further the tax base. Wage arrears kept mounting not only in the public domain but also in the corporate sector: in 1996 the arrears were, on average, for about 85% of total wage. The escalation of this situation was in May 1998, when doctors, workers and coal miners went on a massive strike over unpaid wages, blocking the Trans-Siberian Railway. After a short recovery in 1997, the economic situation started to getting worse in early 1998. Russia depends heavily on exports of energy resources and other primary commodities which make up 80% of merchandise exports, and the weakening of global demand and the unprecedented fall in their prices in the aftermath of the Asian crisis had a significant negative impact on its economy. There was a sharp fall in export earnings (about 12% in the first half of 1998) and this had a major impact on Russias external and fiscal balances. The fiscal problem There is wide agreement that the Russian fiscal crisis is itself just the expression of the overall crisis of the Russian transformation. Fundamental institutional reform of both taxation and expenditure has been repeatedly set back by political conflicts, such as constitutional crisis in 1993 and the problem of regional separatism. For the first half of 1998, the consolidated budget deficit (federal, regional and local) stood at 4. % of GDP, according to the lowest official figures. The overall position was considerably worse than this, particularly because the major extra-budgetary fund, the Pension Fund, had also a large deficit. These figures must also be seen in the context of wage arrears throughout all sectors of the economy. In the first quarter of 1998 debt service was fully one-third of federal spending. This visible strain was in itself another factor that destibilized confidence in the ability of the government to correct the situation. The growing burden of interest payments was built into the measures taken in 1995: while Russian official figures continue to record the 1995 budget deficit at 3. 0% of GDP, interest payments on the growing stock of GKO (Government Short-Term Commitments) were actually adding nearly the same amount to the financing needs in that year. The first issues of GKOs were available only to residents, and offered very high interest rates. In 1996, and in part as a result of International Monetary Fund insistence, the market was opened to non-residents. This did eventually succeed in lowering the interest rates, but it also clearly meant that the dangerous accumulation of debt could be continued. Until the first major crisis of confidence, this is what, in fact, occurred in 1998. The financial crisis of summer 1998 As part of the efforts to achieve macroeconomic stabilization, the federal government had made increasing use of Government Short-Term Commitments. But the situation remained dangerous: of the government deficit as much as 50% was due to interest payments. As Russias current account deteriorated from a position of surplus in 1997 to a deficit forecast at 1. 5-2% of GDP for 1998 as a whole, the rouble came under pressure and monetary policy was tightened with the result that the interest rates on GKOs reached levels of more than 100%. The consequent decline in the value of government securities led to calls by the foreign creditors of Russian banks for addition a repo loans. Thus, russian banks came under pressure to raise additional funds at just the time when the central bank was draining liquidity from the market as part of its attempt to defend the exchange rate. Due to the falls in the value of government securities, banks efforts to borrow were transferred to the interbank market that eventually couldnt function. These difficulties signaled the liquidity squeeze on Russian banks to international lenders, and increased their fears of becoming a bankrupt. At the same time the government faced increasing difficulties over borrowing to meet the interest obligations on its debt. The package of international loans from the IMF, the World Bank and Japan arranged in July was to provide Russia with funding of $17 billion during the 1998 and 1999. However, the attempt to defend the exchange rate which followed, was eventually abandoned, and a wider band for the rouble/dollar exchange rate was introduced in the third week in August that leaded to a rouble depreciation of more than 25%. On 2 September 1998 the Central Bank of the Russian Federation decided to abandon the floating peg policy and float the ruble freely. By 21 September 1998 the exchange rate had reached 21 rubles for one US dollar, meaning it had lost two thirds of its value of less than a month earlier. The moratorium on government debt caused large losses to foreign banks. For Russian banks the losses associated with the crisis are estimated at 40% of their assets. Despite the small scale of international exposure to Russia, the emergency measures taken by its government were accompanied by significant declines in prices in international financial markets and important downward revisions in forecast of capital inflows to developing and transition economies. Recovery Russia bounced back from the August 1998 financial crash with surprising speed. Much of the reason for the recovery is that world oil prices rapidly rose during 1999–2000 (just as falling energy prices helped to deepen Russias troubles), so that Russia ran a large trade surplus in 1999 and 2000. Another reason is that domestic industries, such as food producing, had benefited from the devaluation, which caused a steep increase in the prices of imported goods. Also, since Russias economy was operating to such a large extent on other non-monetary instruments of exchange, the financial collapse had far less of an impact on many producers. Finally, the economy had been helped by an infusion of cash. As enterprises were able to pay all debts on wages, consumer demand for goods and services produced by the Russian industry began to rise. For the first time in many years, in 2000 unemployment fell as enterprises added workers. Since the 1998 crisis, the Russian government has managed to keep social and political pressures under control, and this has played a essential role in recovery during the early 2000s.

Fault Diagnosis And Troubleshooting Information Technology Essay

Fault Diagnosis And Troubleshooting Information Technology Essay Network management is nothing but the activity which is associated with the network, which is implemented along with the technology to support the activities. Different types of merged communications and the videos are handled by network. A network is an interlinking structure which requires very much attention. It should be planned cautiously. The network devices must be configured without affecting the remaining part of the network. There may be the failures in the network, so they need to be detected and repaired. Reliability and availability are linked with the network. The role of the network manager not only observes the performance and the security of the network, they also predict the problems in the network and exceed the technologies to make that everything will work well. There exist two frameworks i.e. FCAPS and ITIL that can be useful for interpret and demonstrating the network management. In this paper we can see that how they are helpful to think about the management t ools. Now a days many of the UK public sector organizations are using ITIL. Some companies use FCAPS which is layered with TMN, but ITIL is more beneficiary when compared to FCAPS. The main objective of this paper is to provide detailed information about FCAPS and ITIL and to provide their advantages. They are helpful in managing the networks of medium and large organizations. And also compare FCAPS and ITIL, which would be helpful for NMRU for migrating to ITIL. INTRODUCTION: 1 FCAPS International telecommunications union has developed the Fcaps. They have stated it as a model and not as a product. Along with the TMN layering, ITU-T divided the functionalities provided by the management into five areas. The functionality of the FCAPS is performed at various levels of TMN. 1.1 Fault management Fault management is group of operations that performs finding the errors and correcting the defecting the errors. To be a good fault management it needs to acquire the problem, leave the information to the concerned person and observe the problems through trouble ticketing. The aim of this is to find the errors and indicate the errors that have come in the various places of network. In the short latent time the errors must be identified and rectified. It contains the functions given below, Network monitoring The main function of network monitoring is that to check whether the performance of the network is good, to have a look on the actual state of the network and also to modify the state. The fundamental step of this is to know the errors in the network and respond accordingly which occur in the network. The main aim of network monitoring is to refer the functionality of the alarms. Alarms are nothing but the messages which are sent from the network that something has occurred unexpectedly. The unexpected things can be of any kind i.e. it can be from a router that the line card is not working, a sudden change in the quality of the signal in a wireless network and some unauthorized user have entered into the network. An alarm for network is nothing but a fire alarm which occurs unexpectedly. Sometimes the alarm management synonymously acts with the fault management. Alarm management has classified into two different functions. The basic function of the alarm management is that collecting the alarms, maintaining the exact and ongoing list of the alarms and modifies the alarms. The main task is to collect the alarms from network and also create in such a way that nothing is missing which is important. This considers the alarms that are received and store it to the memory so that a human or an applicant can process it further. It also includes the persisting of the alarms, written to a disk or store in a database so that the alarms which have occurred can be built as a record. In most cases, collection of alarms includes addition of alarms, the mechanisms to check that the zero alarms have lost and we can also request for the replay of alarms. In general we will lose the alarms in different ways. For example, the transportation which is from the underground may not be tested so we may lose the information of the alarms when it is going to the application of the management. There may be the other reason for the information to be lost i.e. the network is blocked so that alarms may fail to reach the destination. In the third case, it will reach the destination but it was not collected in order because the functioning of the application or the database was not in the right way. After the collection of the alarms, it is needed to maintain the list of the alarms. The list also communicates with the operator about the current state of the entities and for instance any device is having any problems. It is essential to realise the way the alarms are being submitted to the users. The result of each alarm is entered into the list that contains the information of the alarm. The list can be examined, classified and it can be separated accordingly, such as the alarm type, the type of the network element modified, the time of the occurrence of the alarm etc. The information of the alarms can be visualized in different ways, but the topology maps are the most popular one. In the advanced alarm management, the additional functions are required to manage the alarms. For processing of the alarms the network managers are provided with the great flexibility. For example, with the functioning of the alarm-forwarding the alarms might be sent to the operator to permit for the dispatch, such as the local police will be called automatically for the home intrusion detection. Another function is that the acknowledgment of the alarm can be done by the network operator; it means they confirm that the alarm has occurred and they are under processing. And the third is clearing the alarms; to describe the condition of the alarm an alarm message has been sent. And after some time the second message is sent indicating that the condition of the alarm doesnt exist for the longer period. Two techniques are dealt with the overloading of the information. One is filtering, is it used to remove the information of the event that is unimportant, the receiver will be allowed to concentrate on the applicable event information. The other one is the correlation, it is used to pre-process and collect the data from the events and the alarms. We will discuss about these two techniques in detail. In general filtering is done not only on alarms but also on events. It is essential to hide as many as events that are not important. Filtering can be enabled in two ways; one is allowing the operators to subscribe only the limited events and also the alarms that are applicable to them, as chosen according to the criteria. By doing this the operators will receive the events that matches there criteria. And the other one which is used to filter the alarms is deduplication of alarms. The condition of the alarm might cause in such a way that it may send the same alarm repeatedly. Because the alarm which comes repeatedly doesnt contain any new information so the new instance of the alarm which is received might be removed. The process of removing the extra alarms is named as deduplication. Alarm correlation refers to alarms that must be filtered and the functions that must be pre-processed. All the received alarm messages are stopped, studied and compared with all the alarms which are probably related with each other. For example, the alarm messages might be linked up because they may have the similar problem. The general idea behind the event and alarm correlation is that rather than forwarding and reporting different messages, it is better to send a few that combine and resume the same information from different raw events. By doing in this way, the alarm messages that are reported can be automatically decreased. Fault Diagnosis and troubleshooting Network diagnosis doesnt variant a lot from medical diagnosis. The variation is nothing but the patient. When the network contains a fault then the ability to solve the problem is, immediately finding out the reason for the problem. The process of solving the problem is meant as root cause analysis. Alarm will only alert us about the symptom but not the reason for that problem. Troubleshooting will support diagnosis. Troubleshooting can simply retrieve the data about the device. Essential support is provided for diagnosis for testing a device or a network. Test can be used not only after occurring a problem but it can be used proactively i.e. we can know the problem in before it knows to the user. Avoiding the faults altogether is best for fault management. Proactive Fault Management In fault management most of the functionalities work in such way that they become active after occurring the errors. It is nothing but taking precautions in the network so that any failures cannot occur. It also includes the analysis of the alarms that recognizes the alarms that have caused due to the minor error. Trouble Ticketing There might be ten thousand users who are using a very large network. In this case, there is chance to occur hundreds of problems in one day. In those only few or none of the problem can be solved. There might be many individual users who are experiencing problems which might be serious to them. Trouble ticket doesnt result for every alarm, issuing that many is not possible. 1.2 Configuration Management In this the first step is to configure the network. In this the hardware and also the programming changes, considering the new programs and the equipments and adding them to the previous one, existing systems should be modified and removal of the unused systems and the programs. A list should be kept so that the equipment and the programs are kept and they are regularly updated. Configuring Managed Resources In the beginning of the configuration management, the activities and the operations which are being managed are configured first. It means that it is involved in sending the commands to the network equipment for changing the settings of the configuration. Sometimes it involves in isolating only a single device, such as only one interface of the port will be configured. Synchronization It can be viewed in two ways one is considering the network as the master and the other one is considering the management system as the master. In reconciliation the network is considered to be the master, the information which is in the management system will reflect in the network. Synchronization of the information is performed from network to the management system. In reprovisioning the Management system is considered to be the master of the management information. It flows from management system to the network, resulting the changes in the configuration of the network. Until the management system will receive a report from the network device that the changes has been made it will maintain a flag indicating that it is out of synchronization. In discrepancy reporting the user is being detected and flagged by the discrepancies. It doesnt maintain the direction of the synchronization which is to be taken place. This is to be performed by the user on case by case basis. If he decides that the information should be reflected by the management system it will ask the reconciliation. Backup and Restore The virus can destroy the data that is present in the hard disk. If we have a backup of data then in such cases we can recover the data. In the same it also applies for the network i.e. the backup and restores functionalities. The data of our users will not be in word or excel sheet but it will be the configuration of the network. The data is very important and it needs to be protected, just as we protect the database in a company. If unfortunately the configurations in the network are wiped off then many people will be affected. Then we dont have time to reconfigure the network. The easiest way to bring the things backup is restoring the network till the end of the configurations. Image Management Many network vendors issue the new versions of the software. In such cases you must be able to upgrade the network. The problem is that we are dealing with thousands of pcs which are connected across the same network. We must be have an idea of which devices are being installed with the different softwares, so that we can send the images which are to be updated and installed without disturbing the services of the network. This is nothing but the image management. 1.3 Accounting Management It is nothing but the functions that will provide the organizations to acquire the revenue and for getting the credit for the services they have provided. It needs to be extremely strong, large availability and the reliable standards are applied. 1.4 Performance Management The performance metrics Throughput, the number of communication units performed per unit time. The communication units depend on the type of the layer, network and the services which are provided to the network. Examples, In the network layer, the total number of packets that are sent per second. In the application layer the voice calls or calls which are attempted per hour. Delay, it is measured per unit time. Different kinds of delays can be measured depending on the layer or the network services. In the network layer, the time taken for an ip packet to reach its destination. In the application layer, the time taken to receive a dial tone after we lift the receiver. Quality, it can be measured in different ways depending on the services of the network. In the network layer, the percentage of the number of packets lost. In the application layer, the percentage of the number of calls terminated or the calls that were dropped. 1.5 Security Management The security aspects that are linked with securing the network from the treats, hackers attack, worms and viruses and the intrusion of the malicious attempts. It is distinguished in two ways. Security of Management means that the management is secure. The management applications must be accessed securely. It is generally authorized based on the application management but not on the user basics. Without securing the management application there is no use of securing the interfaces and the network of the management. Management of security means that the network is secured. It involves only in managing network security. Now days we can come across many online treats. The security treats doesnt target on the network it will just target on the devices which are connected to the network i.e. end users. The use of FCAPS in managing the network: It will manage all the kinds of networks i.e. private, public, mobile, narrow and broadband and including all area networks (WAN, MAN, LAN). Cost of implementation is reduced. Transmitting the digital and analog systems. Signalling the systems and the terminals including the transfer points of the signals. Performance problems are located easily. User is made satisfied. Schedules are implemented shortly. The feedback on the design is very effective. Simplified procedure of network operation center. Telecommunication services are provided with the software. 2 ITIL Now days many organizations are more depending on IT because of that ITIL has been developed by the CCTA in UK. It has provided the same framework for different kind of activities which are performed by the IT department. ITIL is managed in different sets, they are defined as the related functions service support, service delivery, and the other operational guidance are managerial, software support, computer operations, security management and environmental. ITIL has been designed to supply a good framework to present a high quality. Actually it is owned by CCTA, but it is observed and evolved by the Office of Government Commerce. 2.1 Service Support The service support focuses on the users. The customers and the users are the starting point to the model. They are involved in Asking for the changes For communication and also the updates Having any difficulties and queries The delivery of the process In most of the organizations it a Network Operations Center (NOC). It is mainly focused on one discipline i.e. whether the users are able to access to the applications what they are required. It focuses on finding the troubles, helping the users and giving the new applications which are completed on the internet. It includes the following Incident Management The main aim of this is to restore the service operation as early as possible, minimizes the effects on the business operations, and verifying that all the levels of quality of the service and the availability are maintained. It can be defined as an event which is not the part of the service operation which may or may not reduce the quality of the service. The reality of this is the normal operations must be restored as soon as possible without effect on the business or on the end user. Configuration Management It helps in representing the logical and the physical functioning of the ICT services which are provided or delivered to the end user. It is nothing but the asset register, because it contains the information about the maintenance and problems which occur during the configuration of the items. Problem management The main aim of this is find out the reasons for the cause of the incidents and to minimise the cause for the incidents and the problems which are caused because of the errors. A problem is nothing but the unknown cause for one or more incidents and the known error is nothing but the problem which is diagnosed successfully. The problem and known errors are defined by the CCTA as given below, Problem is a condition which is often determined as the come out of the multiple incidents that contains the general symptoms. It can also be determined from an individual incident that indicates the single error, the reason is unknown. Known error is an improvement which is identified by the self made diagnosis of the main cause of the problem and the work which is developed around. Change Management The aim of this is to check the way the changes are handled using with the help of methods and procedures. Change is an event that the status of one or more configuring items which are approved by the management. The aim of this includes: Back- out activities are reduced. Change in the utilization of resources. Disruption of the services. The terminology for the change management: Change: the addition, alteration or deletion of CLs. Change Request: the form which is used to store the details which are to be changed and it is sent into the Change Management by using Change Requestor. Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC): it contains a list of all the changes which are going to come. Service Desk The main aim of this includes initiating the incidents and the request, and an interface is initiated for the ITSM processes. Features include: Individual point of contact. Individual point of entry. Individual point of exit. Data integrity. The Service Desk functions include: Incident Control: service request for the life cycle management. Communication: the progress and the advising of the workarounds must be keep on informing to the customers. The Service Desk contains different names: Call Center: it involves managaging of huge amount of telephone based transactions. Help Desk: at primary support level it will conclude the incidents as soon as possible. Service Desk: it not only helps in handling the incidents and solving the problems but also it will provide an interface for various activities such as changing the requests, maintaining the contracts etc. It contains three different types of structures: Central Service Desk: it will handle the organizations which contains in multiple locations. Local Service Desk: it will meet the local business needs. Virtual Service Desk: it will handle the organizations which contains the locations in multiple countries. Release management The software migration team uses it for the purpose of platform-independent and the distribution of the software and hardware. The availability of the licence and the certified version of the software and the hardware ensure the proper control of the software and the hardware. The responsibility of this is to control the quality of the hardware and software during the implementation and development. The goals of this include: Planning the role of the software. Creation and implementation of the process for distributing and to install the changes that occur in the IT. The expectations of the customers are effectively communicated and managed during the planning of the new versions. The changes in the IT systems must be controlled while the distribution and the installation take place. It focus on the protection of the existing environment. It consists of the recent or modified software or the hardware which is required to use the authorized changes. It includes: Leading software which are released and the leading hardware which are updated, this contains the large amount of recent functionalities. Limited software which are released and the limited hardware which are updated, which contains the lesser enhancements and fixes, in which some of them have already issued as the emergency fixes. Emergency software and hardware fixes, which contains the corrections of some known problems. Based on the released unit it is separated into: Delta Release: the changes which have occurred in the software are only released. Full Release: the complete software program is distributed. Packaged Release: it releases the combination of various changes. 2.2 Service Delivery It mainly concentrates on the services which the ICT must be delivered to supply the sufficient support to the business users. It consists of the following processes. Service Level Management It provides for supervising, identification and examining the stages of IT services which are specified in the Service Level Agreements. It involves in assessing the change of the quality of services. To control the activities of the service level management it will join with the operational processes. It is the direct interface to the customer. It is responsible for the following: It will check whether the It services are delivered are not. It will maintain and produce the Service Catalog. It will check that the IT Service Continuity plans subsist to support the business and its requirements. Capacity Management It supports the best and actual cost supply of IT services by providing the organizations match with their business demands. It includes: Size of the application. Workload Management. Demand Management. Modeling. Planning the Capacity. Resource Management. Performance Management. IT Service Continuity Management It Processes succeed an organisations capability to supply the essential aim of service followed by an interruption of service. It is not only reactive measures but also proactive measures. It involves the following steps: By conducting the Business Impact Analysis the activities can be prioritised. The options are evaluated for the purpose of recovery. Contingency plan has been produced. The plan has been tested, reviewed and revised on regular basis. Availability Management The ICT infrastructure capabilities and services are optimized, service outages are minimized by having a support and give continued level of services to business requirements. The ability of IT component has been addressed to perform at a level all over the time. Reliability: the performance of the IT component at a concerned level at an identified condition. Maintainability: the IT component has an ability to remain or regenerate to a functional state. Serviceability: the external supplier has an ability to conserve the availability of the function below the third party. Resilience: the freedom has been measured from the operational failure and the way the services are kept reliable. Redundancy is one of the popular methods for resilience. Security: a service may contain a related data. Security is nothing but the availability of the data. Financial Management It is the process to deal the cost linked to provide the organisation with the services or resources to see the business requirements. It may refer to Managerial Finance: The financial technique has been concerned itself with managerial significance within the branch finance. Corporate Finance: the financial decisions are dealt with the area of the finance. 2.3 Security Management Since several years it has become a prevalent network management. The external treats are justified with the firewalls and the access prevention. The rights and permissions of the configuration management have been included in the security management, so that the end users are not granted with the unauthorized access. 2.4 Infrastructure Management In large organizations, the systems have been designed and the troubleshoot by the teams are different from the team that installs the equipment. Because of this Configuration management is necessary for the success of IT organizations. For installing and configuring of network devices in an organization the infrastructure management is responsible. 2.5 Application Management It is designed to ensure that an application has the correct configuration design to implement in the environment. This can cover different aspects of network management. It is designed to ensure that it is completely enabled to supply the service and delivery to end users. 2.6 Software Asset Management It is considered for managing an organization. The software products and licenses are very expensive. It is designed similar to the configuration management, because it provides the information on each device about the software installation. In large organizations maintaining the software and accounting for the licence is the complex task. Uses of ITIL in an organization The utilization of the resources is improved. Rework is reduced. The submission of project to the client and the time management is improved. The cost of the quality of the service is justified. The central process is integrated. Excess work is decreased. The services are provided in such a way that they meet the customers demand. Know more from the earlier experience. Be more aggressive. Comparision of ITIL and FCAPS: FCAPS mainly focus on the technology management. ITIL focus on the way to run an IT organization efficiently, i.e. on the process and the workflow. One of the limitation of FCAPS, it cannot target operational process which is required to operate a Service Desk. In ITIL framework we have the service desk in service support which provides the operational services to customers or end users. FCAPS on informs about the problem but doesnt gives us the solution to the problem. But ITIL standards provides services to resolve the problem using service delivery and service management. The main task of the FCAPS is that it will help out in managing the objectives of the network. The ITIL is planned to supply the improved framework. The difference between FCAPS and ITIL is that, FCAPS contains only five layers but ITIL contains eleven layers. The incident management and the availability management in the ITIL are similar to the fault management in the FCAPS. The purpose of fault management in FCAPS is finding out the faults in the network and correcting them, but in ITIL if any problem occurs in the management there is no need to rework entire process. The purpose of the incident management is restoring the normal operations and the availability management is associated with the availability of the service to the business at an executable cost. CONCLUSION: Finally the above discussion concludes the use of FCAPS and ITIL in network management. The organizations which implements ITIL will get the good results in the name of the way the services are designed and delivered. The use of any technology is not specified by ITIL, but the implementation on the use of the tools is effective. Main focus of FCAPS begins with technological view. FCAPS has been proved as low risk and logical. For any organization to enhance its performance or to get proper outcome both FCAPS and ITIL has to be associated together.

Differing Carbohydrate Recommendations of the Atkins Diet and Food Pyramid :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Differing Carbohydrate Recommendations of the Atkins Diet and Food Pyramid   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  A review of the carbohydrate intake of the Atkins Diet and the Food Pyramid Guide allow a comparison of their potential health effects relative to each other.   The Atkins Diet and the Food Pyramid Guide propose different levels of carbohydrate intake. The Atkins Diet allows for an extremely limited intake of carbohydrates, as little as one serving which is roughly 20 grams. The Food Pyramid Guide allows about 120-220 grams of carbohydrates a day, which are roughly six to eleven servings. These different levels of carbohydrate intake influence the body’s metabolism because â€Å"carbohydrates are an organic compound that serves as a major energy source for the body† (Dictionary.com). These carbohydrates convert to sugars that trigger insulin production, which our body needs for certain processes, and triggers fat storage (Health-Doc.com). According to the Institute of Medicine, adults should get 45 to 65 percent of their daily calories from carbohydrates. This is roughly seven servings based on a 2000 calorie/day diet.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Atkins Diet, in requiring a significantly smaller amount of carbohydrates than the Institute of Medicine, attempts to realign the dieter’s metabolism.   In the first two weeks of the diet no more than twenty grams of carbohydrates a day are to be eaten. Twenty grams of carbohydrates a day is the equivalent of one slice of bread. After this two-week induction period is over the diet is allowed to slowly increase its carbohydrate increments to about fifty grams of carbohydrates a day, or about two to three servings. The benefit of this low consumption of carbohydrates with the Atkins diet is to â€Å"efficiently switch your body from a carbohydrate-burning metabolism to a primarily fat-burning (your fat!) metabolism.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  [The Atkins Diet is also supposed to] stabilize your blood sugar and abruptly halt a myriad of symptoms indicative of unstable blood sugar, such as fatigue, mood swings, brain fog and an inability to function at your best. This diet also will curb your cravings by stabilizing your blood sugar and break addictions to foods such as sugar, wheat or corn derivatives, alcohol, caffeine, grain or any other food† (Atkins.com). While these claims seem somewhat sweeping, they remain claims that are not supported by scientific information provided by their website, Atkins.com. The lack of supporting information and the grandiose nature of the claims make the science behind this diet seem somewhat suspect.

Environmental Issue Essay -- Air Polution, Forest Destruction

Environmental problems are something which belongs to nature or known as â€Å"Mother Earth† [13]. Nature was created to help people survive from gathering foods until build a house. This phenomenon happens continuously without thinking how much damage that nature has because human’s fault. Nature gradually becomes worse and animal’s life in danger. People who are aware of the importance of nature react. Those people do several ways to save the environment. Although these efforts can return back the environment, these efforts only can be hold temporarily. This problem happens because those people who are aware of the environment only slightly; for remaining, there are people either do not know or do not care about the nature. People’s efforts that have helped to recover the nature become useless. Several ways of teaching about the importance of nature has been done to the people. Unfortunately, environmental problems still occur. There are some countries that experienced greater environmental problem than other countries. One of them is Indonesia. Indonesia is a country that has a large population. Development of science and technology make many Indonesian people use chemicals material or motor vehicles such as cars, motorcycles, and so on in life. Indonesian people mostly do not know knowledge of environment. These people do not know how to banish remainder like the rest of garbage, detergents, and the result of human waste correctly and where the remainder should be thrown away. Some people have banished garbage in river, sea, and another wrong place. As a result of wrong way in banishing and the use of motor vehicles within large quantity causes many environmental problems. There are several environmental problems in Indonesia with... ... Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also has created laws about forest [19]. The law contains a variety of explanations about the rules and how many fines to be given to persons who make the forest become damaged. With the law, persons who have destroyed forests is expected to be realized if the act of destroying forests are not only harming themselves but also other humans. Beside government, people should also realize the importance of forests especially leaders of industry that use the forest and the contents as production materials. From the people themselves, a group of people invent a technology to restore forests that have been damaged [20]. So, there are so many ways done by the government and people in keeping and preserving the forests continuously although the effort is not reached 100% successful either restoration or protection of forests.

From Determinism to Cognitive Theory

From Deterministic Behaviorism to Cognitive Theory: An Evolutionary Trail Alesia G. McDaniel University of the Rockies Abstract The Behaviorist theory, introduced by Pavlov and popularized by Watson and Skinner is discussed based on its roots in the philosophy of determinism which maintains that all behavior is the result of a specific cause. The theory of evolution and the consequential nature-nurture debate following contributes to the search for the meaning of behavior. A relationship to present day behaviorism theory and the rise of cognitive behavioral theory with its branches of cognitive behavior therapy and neuroscience will be explored. An analysis of the similarities and differences between the two constructs in the field of psychology, leads to a discussion of how these theories are used in current psychological practice. Keywords: Determinism, Behaviorism, Cognitive Theory, Cognitive Behavioral Psychology From Determinism to Cognitive Theory: An Evolutionary Trail The history of psychology is informative. It began 100 years ago with an introspective search for mind (Skinner, 1990) that came from philosophy and metaphysics. A philosophical principle called determinism appears to serve as a root for what later became behaviorism. This paper will outline an evolutionary trail. Beginning at the sea of determinism and crossing the plains of evolution, through the jungle of experimental psychology to find the path leading to the oasis of explanation of behaviorism where after a short rest, the trail winds around the curve of cognitive theory ending at a fork in the road. At this point, one path leads to current cognitive therapy practice and the other to current applications of behaviorism. The Sea of Determinism Determinism emerges as the explanation of a principle of physics called cause and effect which asserts that all behavior is the result of some cause (Bargh, 2000). Causation comes as a direct result of purpose or reason. No event is uncaused and all events are of necessity. Philosophy tends to use introspection to flesh out concepts of how the mind interacts with the body. Introspection was rejected by the experimental psychologists. The Plains of Evolution Behaviorism is the idea that all behavior can be traced to specific causes either environmental or reflexive. Thompson (1994) states that behavior of the organism as a whole is the product of three types of variation and selection and that natural selection is the first type. It is responsible for the evolution of the species and hence for species behavior. The Jungle of Experimental Psychology Watson attacked introspection in his behaviorist manifesto of 1913, and for that or other reasons, introspection was essentially abandoned (Bargh, 2000). Behaviorists came out of structuralism and functionalism as a protest of the mentalism that guided the careers of Wundt and Titchener. Experimental psychologists hoped to isolate compounds of images, feelings and sensations in a way that they could measure them and us the measurements to predict the cause of human behavior (Bargh, 2000). It was hoped that these elements could be organized into a type of table as is used in physics. The failure of experimental psychologists to isolate behavior in this manner gave rise to Behaviorist theory. An Oasis: Behaviorism Pavlov’s conditioned reflex formed the basis of Watson’s behaviorism (Thompson, 1994) B. F. Skinner and John Watson developed â€Å"nurture focused† determinism with in two models of behavioral conditioning (Bargh, 2000). B. F. Skinner is known for development of Operant Conditioning which differed from Watson’s version by addition of operation procedures in addition to the CS and the UCS in his S-R model. Operant conditioning addressed the causality of human behavior and as such involved specification of how stimuli, responses, reinforcers, and drive states are woven into relationships that change and sustain an organism’s behavior (Herrnstein, 1977). This method had some limitations that contributed to the rise of cognitive theory as the answer to the question of why humans behave as they do. This process lacked objectivity to sustain its vision and goals. Psychological study without consideration of internal process in unproductive. It is missing a significant variable. Behaviorism came about as a reaction to the subjectivity and unreliability of methods used in experimental psychology and strove to provide a mechanical account of human behavior (Bargh, 2000). It was based on the physiological concept of reflex as a result of external stimulation. The S-R unit was seen as the basic building block of human behavior with no theoretical base. There isn’t any empirical evidence to prove its actual existence. As long as the S-R units of the behaviorist experiments remained contained in labs and boxes, it proved successful, but when taken to higher level processes such as language and social interaction, the S-R unit was no longer plausible. It was thought that what was discovered in the lab with pigeons and rats was transferrable to human behavior outside the lab. The failure of behaviorism’s model to explain higher mental processes of language acquisition, social interaction, memory, and judgment led to cognitive theory to find the missing link (Bargh, 2000). The Curve of Cognitive Theory Behavioral theory exposed the rudimentary or first principles of human behavior from which cognitive therapy evolved. Behaviorism denied internal processing and focusing only on external stimuli leaves much to be desired. The behaviorist held to the idea that the mediating internal constructs and processes hinder achieving the results of the assumption that human behavior can be explained by nurture focused determinism (Bargh, 2000). An integration of cognitive and dynamic psychology to understand all processes that cause behavior is needed. Cognitive theory focuses on the internal processing of external events as the cause of behavior and as such relates to determinism. Perhaps behaviorism failed to completely answer the questions of causality of human behavior because it denied that consciousness plays a role, with consciousness, representing those processes that motivate behavior internally. Perception, interpretation, memory, judgment, evaluation, and goal pursuit all serve to cause behavior. Maybe behaviorists were trying to disprove religious teachings of their time and the belief that God or the Devil had something to do with behavior. They were not willing to deal with what they did not know how to measure. As cognitive science picked up where Behaviorism left off, psychology begins to unravel a process by which an understanding of how the internal processes of the human mind work in combination with individual differences in consciousness and how that influences and directs human behavior. The Fork in the Road: Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Current Behaviorism Applied Cognitive behavior theory and behaviorism theory translated to cognitive-behavioral therapy currently helps practitioners to flesh out the root causality of problematic behavior with their clients. An understanding of why we do, what we do or, what thinking leads to certain behaviors is crucial to eradication of self-destructive behavior as well as restoration and growth after experiencing trauma or victimization. Applications of these theories have contributed to advances in treatment of addiction and trauma. The practices of psychotherapy and medication therapy have also benefited from advances in this area. The End of the Trail? The trail began seeing behavior as the effect of a cause. It continues to evolve from the present path of thinking processes being the cause of behavior. Experimental psychology, behaviorism blazed new trails toward the manifest destiny that is the mind. As new trails are being blazed to understand how thought is related to behavior the evolution continues. . References Bargh, J. A. (2000). Beyond behaviorism: On the automaticity of higher mental processes. Psychological Bulletin,126(6), 925-945. doi:10. 1037/0033-2909. 126. 6. 925. Goodwin, C. (2008). A history of modern psychology, 3rd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Herrnstein, R. J. (1977). The evolution of behaviorism. American Psychologist, 32(8), 593-603. doi:10. 1037/0003-066X. 32. 8. 593 Skinner, B. F. (1990). Can psychology be a science of mind? American Psychologist, 45(11), 1206-1210. doi:10. 1037/0003-066X. 45. 11. 1206 Thompson, R. F. (1994). Behaviorism and neuroscience. Psychological Review, 101(2), 259-265. doi:10. 1037/0033-295X. 101. 2. 259