Saturday, April 11, 2020
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Essays - Contortion, Syndromes,
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Ehlers-Danlos sydrome (EDS) is a rare inherited group of connective tissue disorders characterized by defects of the major structural protein in the body (collagen). Collagen is a tough fibrous protein that plays an essential role in binding, holding together, strengthening, and providing elasticity to bodily cells and tissues. There are six major types of EDS that I will discuss, however I will only go into detailed discussion on two of the six types of EDS. The two major types of EDS are Classical EDS and Hypermobile EDS. These two types make up 90% of all EDS cases. I will discuss the general symptoms of these two types along with pathology, then diagnostic factors, and the different treatments for this disorder (Smith). EDS can vary in severity and are transmitted as autosomal recessive, autosomal dominant, or X-linked recessive traits. The primary characteristics are hyperextensible skin and joints (Dia. 1-2, pg.6), tendency to bruise easily (Dia. 3, pg.6), reduced wound healing capability, pseudotumors, and ocular defects. Differences within the six types may reflect inter/intra familial variability or genetic heterogeneity. Each type of EDS is classified symptoms and signs that are resulted (Clarke, D., Skrocki-Czerpak, K., Neumann-Potash, L). There are approximately six types of EDS that have been distinguished but other types exist that are very uncommon. Classical, Hypermobile, Vascular, Kyphoscoliosis, Arthrochalasia, and Dermatosparaxis. Classical and Hypermobile make up over 90% of all reported cases of EDS. With the Classical type of EDS a person would have hyperextensible (stretchy) skin with widened atrophic scars and joint hypermobility. The skin is smooth and velvety with tissue fragility and easy brusability. Also evident are molluscoid pseudotumors (fleshy lesions associated with scars) frequently found over pressure points (e.g. elbows) and subcutaneous spheroids, which are commonly mobile and palpable on the forearms and shins. Complications of joint hypemobility include sprains, dislocation are common in the shoulder, patella and temporomandibular joints Muscle hypotonia and slower gross motor development also can occur It is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner (Clarke, D., Skrocki-Czerpak, K., Neuman n-Potash, L.). In the Hypermobile type of EDS the joints of the body experience Hypermobility, which is the dominant clinical manifestation. General joint hypermobility affects large (elbows, knees) and small (fingers and toes) joints are evident. Skin is hyperextensible, smooth/velvety, and bruising occurs easily as well. Reoccurring joint dislocations are common, and joints such as shoulder, patella, and temporomandibular joint dislocate frequently. Chronic joint and limb pain is a common amongst individuals with Hypermobile type EDS. Skeletal X-ray are normal, however the anatomical distribution is wide and tender points can sometimes be elicited. To this day, researchers have not identified any biochemical collagen finding. The Hypermobile type of EDS is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner. The other four types of EDS that exist are less common, but have the same general symptoms as Classical and Hypermobile types (e.g. skin hyperextensible and the joint hypermobility). However, these typ es EDS have symptoms that occur in other regions of the body, including the general symptoms. Different protein and enzyme (collagen) disorder cause these other types of EDS. These other types are inherited in an autosomal dominant manner and autosomal recessive manner. There are other types which are very rare, and the molecular basis of which remains unknown, however they do know that these rarities are X-linked (Clarke, D., Skrocki-Czerpak, K., Neumann-Potash, L). The diagnosis of EDS is made upon clinical ground first, skin hyperelasticity, easy bruising, dystrophic scarring, and joint hypermobility are the cardinal symptoms, which may be present in different combinations and with variable severity. Diagnosis is often impossible to make in infants and small children as abnormal joints hypermobility and skin elasticity are difficult to recognize, however infants may present as floppy infants. In children, joint hypermobility and hypotonia may cause delayed motor dev., problems with walking, and mild motor disturbances and often thought clumsiness. Other characteristics can be hernias, gastrointestinal diverticula, mitral valve prolapse, rectal prolapse, and easy inversion of the upper eyelid. There are laboratory test, which may confirm, or exclude the diagnosis Classical, Vascular, Arthrochalasia, Dermatosparaxis, and Kyphoscoliosis types of EDS. For Hypermobility type EDS there is no biochemical marker and diagnosis is made on the basis of s ymptoms or family history. Electron microscopic examination of
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Bitwise Operations in VB.NET
Bitwise Operations in VB.NET VB.NET doesnt support bit level operations directly. Framework 1.1 (VB.NET 2003) introduced bit shift operators ( and ), but no general purpose way to manipulate individual bits is available. Bit operations can be very useful. For example, your program might have to interface with another system that requires bit manipulation. But in addition, there are a lot of tricks that can be done using individual bits. This article surveys what can be done with bit manipulation using VB.NET. You need to understand bitwise operators before anything else. In VB.NET, these are: And Or Xor Not Bitwise simply means that the operations can be performed on two binary numbers bit by bit. Microsoft uses truth tables to document bitwise operations. The truth table for And is: 1st Bit   2nd Bit   Result    1      1      1    1      0      0    0      1      0    0      0      0 In my school, they taught Karnaugh maps instead. The Karnaugh map for all four operations are shown in the illustration below. Click Here to display the illustrationClick the Back button on your browser to return Heres a simple example using the And operation with two, four bit binary numbers: The result of 1100 And 1010 is 1000. Thats because 1 And 1 is 1 (the first bit) and the rest are 0. To begin with, lets take a look at the bit operations that are directly supported in VB.NET: bit shifting. Although both left shift and right shift are available, they work the same way so only left shift will be discussed. Bit shifting is most often used in cryptography, image processing and communications. VB.NETs bit shifting operations ... Only work with the four types of integers: Byte, Short, Integer, and Long Are arithmetic shifting operations. That means that bits shifted past the end of the result are thrown away, and the bit positions opened up on the other end are set to zero. The alternative is called circular bit shifting and the bits shifted past one end are simply added to the other. VB.NET doesnt support circular bit shifting directly. If you need it, youll have to code it the old fashioned way: multiplying or dividing by 2. Never generate an overflow exception. VB.NET takes care of any possible problems and Ill show you what that means. As noted, you can code your own bit shifting by multiplying or dividing by 2, but if you use the code your own approach, you have to test for overflow exceptions that can cause your program to crash. A standard bit shifting operation would look something like this: Dim StartingValue As Integer 14913080Dim ValueAfterShifting As IntegerValueAfterShifting StartingValue 50 In words, this operation takes the binary value 0000 0000 1110 0011 1000 1110 0011 1000 (14913080 is the equivalent decimal value - notice that its just a series of 3 0s and 3 1s repeated a few times) and shifts it 50 places left. But since an Integer is only 32 bits long, shifting it 50 places is meaningless. VB.NET solves this problem by masking the shift count with a standard value that matches the data type being used. In this case, ValueAfterShifting is an Integer so the maximum that can be shifted is 32 bits. The standard mask value that works is 31 decimal or 11111. Masking means that the value, in this case 50, is Anded with the mask. This gives the maximum number of bits that can actually be shifted for that data type. In decimal: 50 And 31 is 18 - The maximum number of bits that can be shifted It actually makes more sense in binary. The high order bits that cant be used for the shifting operation are simply stripped away. 110010 And 11111 is 10010 When the code snippet is executed, the result is 954204160 or, in binary, 0011 1000 1110 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000. The 18 bits on the left side of the first binary number are shifted off and the 14 bits on the right side are shifted left. The other big problem with shifting bits is what happens when the number of places to shift is a negative number. Lets use -50 as the number of bits to shift and see what happens. ValueAfterShifting StartingValue -50 When this code snippet is executed, we get -477233152 or 1110 0011 1000 1110 0000 0000 0000 0000 in binary. The number has been shifted 14 places left. Why 14? VB.NET assumes that the number of places is an unsigned integer and does an And operation with the same mask (31 for Integers). 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1100 11100000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001 1111(And)0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 1110 1110 in binary is 14 decimal. Notice that this is the reverse of shifting a positive 50 places. On the next page, we move on to some other bit operations, starting with Xor Encryption! I mentioned that one use of bit operations is encryption. Xor encryption is a popular and simple way to encrypt a file. In my article, Very Simple Encryption using VB.NET, I show you a better way using string manipulation instead. But Xor encryption is so common that it deserves to at least be explained. Encrypting a text string means translating it into another text string that doesnt have an obvious relationship to the first one. You also need a way to decrypt it again. Xor encryption translates the binary ASCII code for each character in the string into another character using the Xor operation. In order to do this translation, you need another number to use in the Xor. This second number is called the key. Xor encryption is called a symmetric algorithm. This means that we can use the encryption key as the decryption key too. Lets use A as the key and encrypt the word Basic. The ASCII code for A is: 0100 0001 (decimal 65) The ASCII code for Basic is: B - 0100 0010a - 0110 0001s - 0111 0011i - 0110 1001c - 0110 0011 The Xor of each of these is: 0000 0011 - decimal 30010 0000 - decimal 320011 0010 - decimal 500010 1000 - decimal 400010 0010 - decimal 34 This little routine does the trick: Xor Encryption Dim i As ShortResultString.Text Dim KeyChar As IntegerKeyChar Asc(EncryptionKey.Text)For i 1 To Len(InputString.Text)   ResultString.Text _      Chr(KeyChar Xor _      Asc(Mid(InputString.Text, i, 1)))Next The result can be seen in this illustration: Click Here to display the illustrationClick the Back button on your browser to return To reverse the encryption, just copy and paste the string from the Result TextBox back into the String TextBox and click the button again. Another example of something you can do with bitwise operators is to swap two Integers without declaring a third variable for temporary storage. This is the kind of thing they used to do in assembly language programs years ago. Its not too useful now, but you might win a bet someday if you can find someone who doesnt believe you can do it. In any case, if you still have questions about how Xor works, working through this should put them to rest. Heres the code: Dim FirstInt As IntegerDim SecondInt As IntegerFirstInt CInt(FirstIntBox.Text)SecondInt CInt(SecondIntBox.Text)FirstInt FirstInt Xor SecondIntSecondInt FirstInt Xor SecondIntFirstInt FirstInt Xor SecondIntResultBox.Text First Integer: _   FirstInt.ToString - _   Second Integer: _   SecondInt.ToString And heres the code in action: Click Here to display the illustrationClick the Back button on your browser to return Figuring out exactly why this works will be left as as an exercise for the student. On the next page, we reach the goal: General Bit Manipulation Although these tricks are fun and educational, theyre still no substitute for general bit manipulation. If you really get down to the level of bits, what you want is a way to examine individual bits, set them, or change them. Thats the real code that is missing from .NET. Perhaps the reason its missing is that its not that hard to write subroutines that accomplish the same thing. A typical reason you might want to do this is to maintain what is sometimes called a flag byte. Some applications, especially those written in low level languages like assembler, will maintain eight boolean flags in a single byte. For example, a 6502 processor chips status register holds this information in a single 8 bit byte: Bit 7. Negative flagBit 6. Overflow flagBit 5. UnusedBit 4. Break flagBit 3. Decimal flagBit 2. Interrupt-disable flagBit 1. Zero flagBit 0. Carry flag (from Wikipedia) If your code has to work with this kind of data, you need general purpose bit manipulation code. This code will do the job! The ClearBit Sub clears the 1 based, nth bit (MyBit) of an integer (MyByte).Sub ClearBit(ByRef MyByte, ByVal MyBit)   Dim BitMask As Int16   Create a bitmask with the 2 to the nth power bit set:   BitMask 2 ^ (MyBit - 1)   Clear the nth Bit:   MyByte MyByte And Not BitMaskEnd Sub The ExamineBit function will return True or False depending on the value of the 1 based, nth bit (MyBit) of an integer (MyByte).Function ExamineBit(ByVal MyByte, ByVal MyBit) As Boolean   Dim BitMask As Int16   BitMask 2 ^ (MyBit - 1)   ExamineBit ((MyByte And BitMask) 0)End Function The SetBit Sub will set the 1 based, nth bit (MyBit) of an integer (MyByte).Sub SetBit(ByRef MyByte, ByVal MyBit)   Dim BitMask As Int16   BitMask 2 ^ (MyBit - 1)   MyByte MyByte Or BitMaskEnd Sub The ToggleBit Sub will change the state of the 1 based, nth bit (MyBit) of an integer (MyByte).Sub ToggleBit(ByRef MyByte, ByV al MyBit)   Dim BitMask As Int16   BitMask 2 ^ (MyBit - 1)   MyByte MyByte Xor BitMaskEnd Sub To demonstrate the code, this routine calls it (parameters not coded on Click Sub): Private Sub ExBitCode_Click( ...   Dim Byte1, Byte2 As Byte   Dim MyByte, MyBit   Dim StatusOfBit As Boolean   Dim SelectedRB As String   StatusLine.Text    SelectedRB GetCheckedRadioButton(Me).Name   Byte1 ByteNum.Text Number to be converted into Bit Flags   Byte2 BitNum.Text Bit to be toggled   The following clears the high-order byte returns only the   low order byte:   MyByte Byte1 And HFF   MyBit Byte2   Select Case SelectedRB      Case ClearBitButton         ClearBit(MyByte, MyBit)         StatusLine.Text New Byte: MyByte      Case ExamineBitButton         StatusOfBit ExamineBit(MyByte, MyBit)         StatusLine.Text Bit MyBit _            is StatusOfBit      Case SetBitButton         SetBit(MyByte, MyBit)         StatusLine.Text New Byte: MyByte      Case ToggleBitButton         ToggleBit(MyByte, MyBit)         StatusLine.Text New Byte: MyByte   End SelectEnd SubPrivate Function GetCheckedRadioButton( _   ByVal Parent As Control) _   As RadioButton   Dim FormControl As Control   Dim RB As RadioButton   For Each FormControl In Parent.Controls      If FormControl.GetType() Is GetType(RadioButton) Then         RB DirectCast(FormControl, RadioButton)         If RB.Checked Then Return RB      End If   Next   Return NothingEnd Function The code in action looks like this: Click Here to display the illustrationClick the Back button on your browser to return
Saturday, February 22, 2020
The 21 st Century Public Company Audit Summary Essay
The 21 st Century Public Company Audit Summary - Essay Example Thus the government authorities passed under the Bush administration to have a strict watch over all the companies and auditing firms formed new standards. These standards require all the auditing firms to abide by the standard procedures defined within their scriptures and have also expanded the horizon of the minimum requirement for an auditor about having the knowledge of operation of its clients and /or companies. These standards include ; The bill passed by president bush is known as the corporate and auditing accountability and transparency act of 2002 also known as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) act. SOX is an effective measure taken towards restoring investors interest in the public limited companies. SOX also made another governing body known as public company accounting oversight board. Within two years this body PCAOB placed three major auditing standards. The question that how well these standards can clear the overall view is still unanswered. However, the introduction of these new standards and policies will surely increase the quality of auditing performed. The one additional thing that matters to the auditors now is the identification of the methodology of implementing these standards in their auditing practices in a foolproof and transparent manner. The introduction chapter gives a brief over view of the concerns of the government and its new policies regarding them. However, to what extent will the policies and standard be successful in making sure that every thing goes legal and legitimate is yet to be determined Chapter 2: Auditing standards have been facing many changes due to the changing business environment. Right from the time of simple book keeping till the time the financial statements are made, the techniques of auditing were being required to adapt to certain changes for the sake of such events. Companies had been growing large; large enough to stop any auditing firm from doing the detailed evaluation of the entire book keeping stuff. Thus, now the emphasis is on monitoring the internal controls of a company. As per the SOX section 404, internal auditing by public limited companies is a common standard procedure carried out by all within as well as outside U.S. The auditing now also includes checking on the inventories declared and the accounts receivables identified in the balance sheet(s). The most significant step was the introduction of audit risk model (ARM). The risk auditing includes completeness, obligations, correct valuation, presentation and disclosure of certain elements. If any de viation is found by the risk test, the internal auditor is supposed to take the required corrective action to bring the level of risk to the tolerable level or considerable range. While performing disclosure of certain events, a couple of evidences are acquired to support each n' every element. EBS is the minimum requirement set to act as a source of evidence. Auditors need to base their assessments on a couple of evidence and standards. Feedback: This chapter is about controlling the risk factor by internal auditing practices and controls. This requires a honest internal auditing department to implement policies avoiding any risks, as implied by regulations. Thus this is easier for the auditing firms to have a
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Interview with a Teaching Professional Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words
Interview with a Teaching Professional - Essay Example I believe the best way to return to the society that had been spoon feeding you the whole life, is to deliver your knowledge and information to other seekers. With this motive in my mind I entered the profession and since then I am contended with my life. I feel as if I have found an inner peace by pursuing teaching. Interviewer: What is the success behind your achievements to date? Teacher: Dedication and sincerity towards my work is the sole reason for where I am standing today. There is no short way of achieving a lasting glory. One needs a lot of energy and hard work to invest and of course unmatchable patience. Interviewer: Coming on to the basics of teaching, what are some examples of typical, quick decisions teachers make on a daily basis? Teacher: Every day is different for a teacher in some way or the other. Although, one of the best practices of a teacher is that s/he is well-planned and organized before entering the class. Yet at times we have to make certain sudden decisi ons not initially planned. For abrupt decision making, the teacher should be capable, confident and decisive about the relevant issues. A change in lesson plan to accommodate with the mood of children and their learning capability is one of the examples. Something effective and interesting needs to be made up instantly to deliver the lesson in a different way as planned earlier. Moreover, a short notice of surprise visit of principal or other professionals to monitor our performance poses a challenge on our decision making ability. We have to modify our plans a little to adjust to the requirement. Sometimes children get ill or injured and deciding quickly as to what to do is an ordeal; whether to treat him/her in the school or call off the day for him/her and send the student home. The teachers are appointed certain duties other then teaching to deal with the other school affairs. If any teacher on duty is absent on that specific day, a change in the schedule cause some difficulties and then the newly appointed teacher has to delay her planned activities. Also here it is a policy that if any teacher is absent, any other teacher needs to take his/her class. In such a case it has to be decided instantly what to teach students. Interviewer: What were the five most difficult school-related decisions you made this week? What made them difficult? Teacher: Just recently we had a load of activity going on in the school, both for teachers and students. I was enrolled in a short course which I had to attend once a week, during week days. This meant that I would be sacrificing my class related plans. Since exams are approaching I had to make certain changes in the lesson plans and shift that one day’s work to other days. This certainly was difficult adjusting as it is recommended not to overload students with work. Then we have a sports day coming up in two weeks time. Preparation for it requires a lot of time which again means sacrificing the teaching-learning sc hedule and making it up for this short fall on other days. We had an unfortunate day in this week when a fire erupted in library wing due to negligence of one of the student. The fire siren created quite a scene with children petrified and struggling to get out of their classes. Organizing them in proper queues, helping them out safely and relaxing them was quite a task. During school break, children often get into fighting with each other while
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Introduction to Personality Essay Example for Free
Introduction to Personality Essay Behavior geneticists assess the question of inheriting personality. Are our genes responsible for our creativity, aggressiveness or confidence? Examining personality traits through a genetic focus is an obscure task. Methods employed by behavior geneticists involve epidemiological studies, such as screening family pedigrees, conducting twin heritability studies, and adoption studies. Personality is best described as what makes up a person, their traits and individual differences that make them unique. There has been much research undertaken as to what actually causes a personality to develop whether it is nature (genetically inherited) or by nurture (the environment) research has shown that it is a combination of both. (Walter, shoda, smith 2003) Human society is complex and this presents researchers with difficulties in measurement of the environmental effect and to define exactly what causes personality. Psychologists and behavior geneticists have tried to estimate contributions made by genetics and the environment to individual differences through heritability. See more: how to start an essay Heritability is when research has been carried out to establish the contributions of genetics and the environment to a population sample. This is based on knowing the birth relationship (genetic relatedness), measuring the trait in question and making comparisons between groups with differing levels of genetic relatedness. The amount of variability in a trait or physical measurement within a population is accounted for to show how much has been inherited (genetically) and the percentage remaining is the environmental contribution. Twins were an excellent source of study since their DNA is identical. Before 1970 there was not much recorded information about twins, however there are now larger information sources and larger samples have become available. In Sweden and Finland the central recording of twins raised together and apart also improvements in the interpretation of statistics and technology enabled larger samples to be examined. Findings from heritability studies have shown that personality traits are associated with genetic influence, however this can vary depending on the trait measured, eg neuroticism shows heritability as 30% but measurements of extraversion/introversion show heritability as 50%. Measurements could be inaccurate as variables have to be considered eg environmental factors twins that have been reared apart may have still lived with a family member and could still be brought up in a similar way. The media stories have focused on successful reunions of twins previously separated, twins separated may spend years getting to know each other before they are researched which would be enough time to adapt their personalities. The time separation aspect could mean different things, eg some twins researched had actually spent some years together. (walter, shoda, smith 2003) Twin studies have often used different measures of a person, therefore the results may be unreliable unless the same measurement is taken each time. Other research in families involved examining differences in relatedness between other family members ie siblings, half-siblings, cousins, parents and children. There have also been adoption studies. Research has shown that nature has a proportion of about a third effect on personality, which would infer the larger effect on a personality derives from the environment. There is continual interaction between an organism and its environment from conception throughout life, environments that are both physical and made up with other people. Individual differences psychologists describe environments as ‘dimensions’ ie whether the child has been raised in a controlled or a relaxed environment, the mothers health and well being and the parents relationship. Personalities can change dependant upon the situation that the person is in. The Stanford Prison Experiment is an example of a social experiment where volunteers undertook new roles. Twenty four were selected after various tests to rule out medical, psychological and other tendencies. They were told that the research was to study the psychological effects on prison life, the experiment took place in a mock prison environment within the university. The experiment was cut short because prisoners became demoralized and showed signs of stress, depression and others lost touch with reality. Guards behaved in authoritarian and aggressive way, some became sadistic. The research here showed that social situations have powerful effects on behavior. Researchers have used various forms of evidence that seem to indicate that personality is developed through an interaction between genetics and the environment therefore it would be wise to conclude that only a portion of a persons personality is inherited. Differing situations should be accounted for when comparing the results, to date it has been difficult to define what the exact ratio of heritability – environment is, research has shown heritability to be approximately 30%. References Introduction to Personality: Toward An Integration, Seventh Edition by Walter Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, and Ronald E. Smith. John Wiley Sons; 7th edition 10 Jul 2003
Monday, January 20, 2020
Personal Freedom and Nonconformity in Kobo Abes Novels :: Kobo Abe Literature Society Freedom Essays
Personal Freedom and Nonconformity in Kobo Abe's Novels â€Å"No man or woman is wooed by theory alone.†(WITD 32) In declaiming the ability to woo by theory, Kobo Abe betrays his desire to do exactly that. Trained as a physician, Abe has a mindset which leans toward the scientific method: one of hypothesis, experiment, result, and conclusion. In this case, the original hypothesis posed that a man could woo by theory alone, the experiment was the attempt of a wooing guided by theoretical principles, the result a failure, and the conclusion drawn is that such a wooing is not possible, disproving the original hypothesis. We see in this procedure not only Abe’s predilection for theory and introspection, but we also are provided a glimpse at the motivations of a man who would initially believe in a theory of wooing, a concept which to many might seem an obvious contradiction. His novels, indeed, is rife with the contradictions that have been Abe’s trademark, and it is in his attempt to unify these various contradictions to prove a common theme of personal freedom and nonconformity that the novels gain the greater part of its power. In The Woman in the Dunes, Abe describes the nature of reality: the individual reality, wherein it ultimately springs forth from the unconscious mind, and the social reality, where the individual reality, at least in terms of its manifestation, can be either suppressed or encouraged by the type of society in which the individual lives and works. It is a complex attempt to unify these two realities, and to reach a sort of accord whereby the individual self can find expression and participate in a meaningful manner in the social reality. In other words, he is attempting to bridge that chasm, the gap that separates the constricting perception of day-to-day social reality from the larger and far less stable absolute reality, of which the day-to-day social reality is but one small part. Abe deals with these themes through the image of the sand. The sand is formless, and yet it becomes a barrier blocking the protagonist’s attempts at escape. It sucks moisture from his body, but also traps it, causes wood to rot, and, in the final pages of the story, becomes a massive water pump. Abe uses sand imagery as a means to convey both the absurdity of the social day-to-day reality as well as a means by which an almost Zen-like meditative state is induced in the protagonist, through which he may achieve a higher level of consciousness.
Sunday, January 12, 2020
Wal-Mart Negotiation Analysis
Although it was several years ago now, in 1988 a 24-year old man was injured at his local Wal-Mart store after tripping over several rocking chairs. The man claims that as he turned the corner of an aisle he tripped over three 1. 5 foot-high children’s rocking chairs, which caused several injuries, some of which were lacerated forehead, several strains and sprains, a jaw injury and even blackout spells (Laska, 2000). This example of a negotiation lawsuit would classify as a distributive negotiation because of several different reasons. First, the only item of value being discussed is settlement money, and in order for the negotiation to be considered an integrative negotiation, the opposing parties typically have additional items of value to discuss for trade. Also, there is no personal relationship between the opposing sides of the negotiation, which in this particular case are the Wal-Mart Corporation and the injured man. Finally, a distributive negotiation is considered to be a win-lose scenario and clearly, either the man or the Wal-Mart Corporation would win the negotiation. Originally, the injured man sued the company for $100,033. 57, and although the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in his favor, the amount was lowered. The jury determined that although his injuries were worth compensation, $73,525. 18 was considered a more appropriate sum. In addition, the plaintiff’s wife was awarded $10,000 for loss of consortium. Even though some people may feel as though an injury due to tripping over a child’s toy is a case that does not hold much water, fortunately for the injured man his case was fairly cut and dry. The store could have prevented the injury if the rocking chairs were properly displayed. Therefore the store was responsible and held liable. This type of negotiation is intended for the benefit of one party and is typically settled out of court because companies try to avoid court appearance when possible. Integrative Article: NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement Although the National Basketball Association will be facing changes to their Collective Bargaining Agreement within the next year, the most recent negotiation, which is held between players and teams, was held in 2005. This negotiation is intended to discuss important terms in the players’ contracts, which include salary amounts, length of contracts, rookie salary terms, and salary caps. On the other end of the negotiation, the teams are interested in discussing factors such as trade rules, the escrow level, and the allowed tax on the teams (Morton, 2010). This article demonstrates an integrative negotiation because it is more of a win-win scenario for the opposing parties, which as previously mentioned, include the players and the teams. Since both parties have much to gain from the agreement, they are willing to put more on the table. Also part of an integrative negotiation, both parties have not only their best interest in mind, but also the interest of the opposing side, primarily because of the relationship established between the two. The players and teams are interested in the well being of each other because both are affected by each other. This demonstrates why distributive negotiations are different from integrative, because there is no relationship between the two parties. Although integrative negotiations are often successful, most negotiations are distributive because most opposing parties are not interested in the other. This type of negotiation technique is intended for a established pair of negotiators. Examples in the Workplace Considering that I work in a childcare center, negotiation strategies are not commonly used. However, a childcare director would have a few different scenarios in which negotiation techniques could be beneficial. Although in society today, distributive negotiations are much more common, integrative negotiations are used more often in childcare, in fact, they are used more often in most workplaces. One example of how integrative negotiations are used is through a request for a pay raise. Just like the article examining the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement, I have used integrative negotiation techniques in the past when I asked for an hourly pay raise. Instead of demanding a raise, which would be more like a distributive negotiation, I discussed how both the center that I work for and myself would benefit from a raise. I explained what I had to offer the company in exchange for the raise, while the benefit to myself is obviously of monetary value. It is similar to the saying, you will catch more bees with honey than vinegar, I will have more success in getting what I am asking for by being professional and polite than by having high expectations and demanding to get what I ask for. Although both types of negotiation techniques can be successful in the appropriate setting, integrative negotiations are more practical for my line of work.
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