Flexible Budgets Free Essays

A flexible budget is a budget statement that shows what the expected costs should have been for any level of output, so that the actual costs can be compared to planned costs for the output that was actually generated. In a flexible budget, the costs are separated into variable and fixed costs. The more information that is provided to explain variances in budgeted and actual amounts, the easier it is for management to make successful decisions about costs and expenses. We will write a custom essay sample on Flexible Budgets or any similar topic only for you Order Now A flexible budget classifies budget requests by activity and estimates the benefits arising from each activity. It presents a statement of expectations for a period of time but does not present a firm commitment. It also presents the plan for only one level of activity and does not adjust to changes in the level of activity. However it presents the plan for a range of activity so that the plan can be adjusted for changes in activity levels. Flexible budgets are one way companies deal with different levels of activity. A flexible budget provides budgeted data for different levels of activity. Another way of thinking of a flexible budget is a number of static budgets. The information is used for planning and control purposes. The flexible budget responds to changes in activity, and performance evaluation. The flexible budget uses the same selling price and cost assumptions as the original budget. Variable and fixed costs do not change categories. The variable amounts are recalculated using the actual level of activity, which in the case of the income statement are sales units. Each flexible budget line will be discussed separately. In conclusion budgets are complicated and complex tools. Within a budget there are many specific budgets which have to be examined separately. Flexible budgets helps companies set up strategy to assist in predicting positive outcomes for the business. How to cite Flexible Budgets, Papers

Flexible Budgets Free Essays

A flexible budget is a budget statement that shows what the expected costs should have been for any level of output, so that the actual costs can be compared to planned costs for the output that was actually generated. In a flexible budget, the costs are separated into variable and fixed costs. The more information that is provided to explain variances in budgeted and actual amounts, the easier it is for management to make successful decisions about costs and expenses. We will write a custom essay sample on Flexible Budgets or any similar topic only for you Order Now A flexible budget classifies budget requests by activity and estimates the benefits arising from each activity. It presents a statement of expectations for a period of time but does not present a firm commitment. It also presents the plan for only one level of activity and does not adjust to changes in the level of activity. However it presents the plan for a range of activity so that the plan can be adjusted for changes in activity levels. Flexible budgets are one way companies deal with different levels of activity. A flexible budget provides budgeted data for different levels of activity. Another way of thinking of a flexible budget is a number of static budgets. The information is used for planning and control purposes. The flexible budget responds to changes in activity, and performance evaluation. The flexible budget uses the same selling price and cost assumptions as the original budget. Variable and fixed costs do not change categories. The variable amounts are recalculated using the actual level of activity, which in the case of the income statement are sales units. Each flexible budget line will be discussed separately. In conclusion budgets are complicated and complex tools. Within a budget there are many specific budgets which have to be examined separately. Flexible budgets helps companies set up strategy to assist in predicting positive outcomes for the business. How to cite Flexible Budgets, Papers

Theodore Roosevelt Essays (4764 words) - , Term Papers

Theodore Roosevelt Outline Thesis: Theodore Roosevelt's political presence altered the course of the United States, transforming it into a superpower fully ready to handle the challenges of any opposition, and changed the role of the president and executive branch of US government, making it a force to be reckoned with. I. Introduction II. Before Roosevelt A. Post-Reconstructionist Views B. The Industrial Revolution C. The Gilded Age 1. Railroads 2. Robber Barons 3. Immigration 4. Standard Question D. McKinley III. The Roosevelt Era A. Early Life 1. Influence of Parents 2. Invalidism B. Early Political Career 1. Ending Corruption/Enforcing Laws 2. Political Bosses 3. Governorship C. Presidential Era 1. Vice Presidential Race 2. Manipulation of the Press 3. Federal Regulatory Laws 4. Foreign Policy 5. Strong Executive Branch D. Post-Presidential Era 1. Taft 2. The Progressive Party IV. Post-Rooseveltian America A. Wilson 1. Continued Progressivism 2. World War I a. Inactivity b. Activity B. Life After Wilson 1. Implementation of Roosevelt's Reforms 2. Roosevelt's Influence Today 3. Influences in the Future V. Conclusion Theodore Roosevelt: The Founder of an Era The turn of the century has always been a big deal for modern civilizations. One hundred years of life is quite large compared with the average 70 or so given to most. Because of that, people tend to look in trends of decades, rather than centuries or millennia. When it does come time for a new century, when that second digit rotates, as it does so seldom, people tend to look for change. Events tend to fall before or after the century, not on top of it, and United States history, particularly, has had a tendency for sudden change at the century marks. Columbus' accidental discovery of the West Indies in 1492 brought on the exploration age in the 1500s. Jamestown colony, founded in 1607, was England's first foothold on the New World. A massive population surge, brought on in part by the import of Africans, marks entry into the 18th century. Thomas Jefferson's presidency, beginning in 1800, changed the face of American politics. 1900 was a ripe year for change, but needed someone to help the change arrive. That someone was Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt's political presence altered the course of the United States, transforming it into a superpower fully ready to handle the challenges of any opposition, and changed the role of the president and executive branch of US government, making it a force with which to be reckoned. As the first president with progressive views, Roosevelt enacted the first regulatory laws and prosecuted big businesses who had been violating them and others for years. Roosevelt also initiated the United States' active interests in other countries, and began to spread the benefits of democracy throughout the world. Before Roosevelt, the United States was an inward-looking country, largely xenophobic to the calls of the rest of the world, and chiefly concerned with bettering itself. As one critic put it, "Roosevelt was the first modern president"(Knoll). After Roosevelt, the United States would remain a superpower, chiefly interested in all the world's affairs for at least a century (Barck 1). It would be foolish to assume that Roosevelt was a fantastically powerful individual who was able to change the course of the United States as easily as Superman might change the course of a river. It would be more accurate to say Roosevelt was the right person in the right place at the right time. It is necessary, though, to show how the United States was progressing, and how Roosevelt's presence merely helped to catalyze the progression. It has been said that when John Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln, he "extinguished the light of the republic" (Cashman 1). While this is a small hyperbole, it serves as an example of the general mood that pervaded the period from 1865 to 1901. The early dominating factor was, of course, Reconstruction. Reconstruction was a dirty game, and nobody liked it. Johnson fought with congress and the end result proved very little had changed. The South was still largely agrarian, and the North was commercial. Most importantly, the Southerners and the Northerners still felt they had as little to do with each other as a fish does with a bicycle. To the young "Teedie" Roosevelt, this must have made itself apparent. He was born in a mixed household, where "Theodore Roosevelt (Sr.) was as profoundly...for the North as Martha Roosevelt was for the south" (Hagedorn 10). The fact that the family was able to live, from all accounts, very harmoniously, is

How Velociraptor Was Discovered

How Velociraptor Was Discovered Of all the dinosaurs that have been discovered over the last 200 years, Velociraptor comes closest to the romantic ideal of rugged paleontologists trekking across dangerous, windswept terrain in search of ancient fossils. Ironically, though, this dinosaur was nowhere near as smart and vicious as it has subsequently been depicted in movies, the main culprit being Jurassic Parks pack-hunting, quick-thinking, doorknob-turning Velociraptors (which were actually played by individuals of the closely related raptor genus Deinonychus, and even then not all that accurately). The Velociraptors of the Gobi Desert In the early 1920s, Mongolia (located in central Asia) was one of the most remote places on the face of the earth, inaccessible by train, plane, or pretty much anything else except a well-stocked caravan of well-oiled automobiles and sturdy horses. That is exactly what New Yorks American Museum of Natural History dispatched to outer Mongolia, by way of western China, in a series of fossil-hunting expeditions led by the famous paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews. Although Andrews personally discovered and named many Mongolian dinosaurs in the early 1920s- including Oviraptor and Protoceratops- the honor of unearthing Velociraptor went to one of his associates, Peter Kaisen, who stumbled upon a crushed skull and toe claw at a dig site in the Gobi Desert. Unfortunately for Kaisen, the honor of naming Velociraptor didnt go to him, or even to Andrews, but to Henry Fairfield Osborn, the president of the American Museum of Natural History (who, after all, wrote all the checks). Osborn referred to this dinosaur as Ovoraptor in a popular magazine article; fortunately for generations of schoolkids (can you imagine having to distinguish between Ovoraptor and Oviraptor?) he settled on Velociraptor mongoliensis (speedy thief from Mongolia) for his scientific paper. Velociraptor Behind the Iron Curtain It was difficult enough to send an American expedition to the Gobi Desert in the early 1920s; that became a political impossibility only a few years later, as the Mongolian government was toppled by a Communist revolution and the Soviet Union exerted its hegemony over Mongolian science. (The Peoples Republic of China didnt come into existence until 1949, giving the USSR a crucial head start in a Mongolian nation that, today, is dominated by China rather than Russia.) The upshot was that, for over 50 years, the American Museum of Natural History was excluded from any further Velociraptor-hunting expeditions. After World War II, Mongolian scientists, aided by colleagues from the USSR and Poland, returned repeatedly to the Flaming Cliffs fossil site where the original Velociraptor specimens had been unearthed. The most famous discovery- of a near-complete Velociraptor caught in the act of grappling with an equally well-preserved Protoceratops- was announced in 1971. In the late 1980s, following the crumbling of the Soviet Union and its satellites, western scientists were again able to travel in Mongolia. This was when a joint Chinese and Canadian team discovered Velociraptor specimens in northern China, and a joint Mongolian and American team unearthed additional Velociraptors at the Flaming Cliffs site. (One of the specimens discovered on this latter expedition was informally named Ichabodcraniosaurus, after Nathaniel Hawthornes headless horseman because it was missing its skull.) Later, in 2007, paleontologists discovered a Velociraptor forearm bearing the unmistakable imprint of quills- the first definite proof that (as had long been suspected) Velociraptor sported feathers rather than reptilian scales. The Feathered Theropods of Central Asia As famous as it is, Velociraptor was far from the only feathered, meat-eating dinosaur of late Cretaceous central Asia. The ground was thick with dino-birds closely related to the North American Troodon, including Saurornithoides, Linhevenator, Byronosaurus, and the wonderfully named Zanabazar; feathered dinosaurs closely related to Oviraptor, including Heyuannia, Citipati, Conchoraptor, and the (also) wonderfully named Khaan; and a vast assortment of associated raptors. Most of these dinosaurs were discovered in the late 20th century, under the auspices of a talented generation of Chinese paleontologists. What was it about the windswept Mongolian plains that favored this brand of dinosaur diversity? Clearly, conditions in late Cretaceous central Asia  favored small, skittery animals that could nimbly pursue smaller prey or speedily escape from the clutches of slightly bigger dino-birds. In fact, the profusion of central Asian feathered dinosaurs points to the most likely explanation for the evolution of flight: originally evolved for the purposes of insulation and display, feathers gave dinosaurs a certain amount of lift while they were running, and were thus increasingly favored by natural selection until one lucky reptile achieved actual lift-off!

A Definition of the Nguni Word Ubuntu

A Definition of the Nguni Word Ubuntu Ubuntu is a complex word from the Nguni language with several definitions, all of them difficult to translate into English. At the heart of each definition, though, is the connectedness that exists or should exist between people. Ubuntu is best known outside of Africa as a humanist philosophy associated with Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Curiosity about the name may also come from it being used for the open source operating system called Ubuntu. Meanings of Ubuntu One meaning of Ubuntu is correct behavior, but correct in this sense is defined by a persons relations with other people. Ubuntu refers to behaving well towards others or acting in ways that benefit the community. Such acts could be as simple as helping a stranger in need, or much more complex ways of relating with others. A person who behaves in these ways has ubuntu. He or she is a full person. For some, Ubuntu is something akin to a soul force - an actual metaphysical connection shared between people and which helps us connect to each other. Ubuntu will push one toward selfless acts. There are related words in many sub-Saharan African cultures and languages, and the word Ubuntu is now widely known and used outside of South Africa. Philosophy of Ubuntu During the era of decolonization, ubuntu was increasingly described as an African, humanist philosophy,  Ubuntu in this sense is a way of thinking about what it means to be human, and how we, as humans, should behave towards others. Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously described ubuntu as meaning My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.1 In the 1960s and early 70s, several intellectuals and nationalists referred to ubuntu when they argued that an Africanization of politics and society would mean a greater sense of communalism and socialism. Ubuntu and the End of Apartheid In the 1990s, people began to describe Ubuntu increasingly in terms of the Nguni proverb translated as a person is a person through other persons.2 Christian Gade has speculated that the sense of connectedness appealed to South Africans as they turned away from the separation of Apartheid. Ubuntu also referred to the need for forgiveness and reconciliation rather than vengeance. It was an underlying concept in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the writings of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu raised awareness of the term outside of Africa. President Barack Obama included mention of Ubuntu in his memorial to Nelson Mandela, saying it was a concept that Mandela embodied and taught to millions. Endnotes 1 Desmond Tutu: A Personal Overview of South Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission No Future Without Forgiveness,  Ã‚ © 2000.2 Christian B.N. Gade, What is Ubuntu? Different Interpretations among South Africans of African Descent. South African Journal Of Philosophy 31, no. 3 (August 2012), 487. Sources Metz, Thaddeus, and Joseph B. R. Gaie. The African ethic of Ubuntu/Botho: implications for research on morality. Journal Of Moral Education 39, no. 3 (September 2010): 273-290. This article expands upon the definition of Ubuntu published by Alistair Boddy-Evans

Henrys Law Constant Of Glyoxal Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Henrys Law Constant Of Glyoxal - Research Paper Example The enhancement of KH was linked to the sulfate: carbonyl molar ratio rather than the absolute concentration of sulfate ions in bulk solution. The profound sulfate effect was only observed in glyoxal and formaldehyde, but not methylglyoxal. Chemical analysis suggested that this sulfate mediated reaction was reversible. Meanwhile, Time of Flight-MS (TOF-MS), NMR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD) suggested the unknown product was sulfate containing product. For ionic strength effect, KH of formaldehyde, methylglyoxal and glyoxal were investigated in NaCl solution with concentrations ranging from 25mM to 4M. Our observation suggested that the formation of hydrogen bonding between chloride ions and diol groups of the hydrated carbonyls lead to "salting-in" effects in concentrated NaCl solution. The partitioning process of these small, reactive carbonyls was not sensitive to the ionic strength of wet aerosols and the profound effects of sulfate on glyoxal KH supported the hypothesi s that sulfate play an important role in glyoxal gas/aqueous phase partitioning. The Henry law constant KH is a key parameter that aids in the... 2.2 Experimentation Methods 6 3.0 Results and Discussion 7 3.1 Formaldehyde 7 Product Identification 9 3.2 Glyoxal 10 3.3 Methylglyoxal 13 4.0 Conclusion 14 Work cited 16 Appendix 25 1.0 Introduction The Henry law constant KH is a key parameter that aids in the determination of the magnitude, rate and flux direction between the aqueous and the gas solution. Due to the insufficient thermodynamic data and poor understanding in gas/particle partitioning behaviors of glyoxal and other oxidation products from both anthropogenic and biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs), discrepancies between field measurements and SOA models were large (Volkamer et al., 2006). In particular, the partitioning process of C2, C3-bifunctional species, formed in significant yields from the photo-oxidation of aromatic hydrocarbons, isoprene, terepene, alkenes as well as alkynes, remain unclear [Yu et al., 1995; Yu et al., 1997; Yu et al., 1998; Yu et al., 1999; Warneck, 2003]. Field measurements have revealed that these low molecular weight, bi-functional species are important precursors for SOA in cloud-processing [Blando and Turpin, 2000; Warneck, 2003]. Laboratory evidence suggests that, the rate-limiting step in SOA formation of isoprene photo-oxidation was the oxidation of first-generation reaction products which leads to the formation of up to four functional groups of the carbon skeleton. Therefore, the partitioning of chemical species containing multifunction groups could be more likely a critical step for formation of SOA in other systems as well (Kroll et al, 2006). Recently, glyoxal was used as an activity indicator for photo-oxidation attributed to its high abundance after onset of sunlight and short lifetime, while formaldehyde worked

Prevention of mother to child Hiv transmission Essay

Prevention of mother to child Hiv transmission - Essay Example Quantitative research is the methodical scientific assessment of observable phenomena through computational, mathematical, or statistical methods. For example, the observable phenomena in health and social care may include HIV prevalence in expectant mothers, rate of mother to child HIV transmission, and infant deaths resulting from mother to child HIV transmission. Quantitative uses a systematic approach through actual data collection and analysis rather than making assumptions on describable phenomena. The purpose of the quantitative approach is to develop hypothesis about the observable phenomena. The research technique goes a long way in testing the hypotheses or theories so developed in order to ascertain their veracity or otherwise. In social and nursing care, scholars may use quantitative research to develop hypotheses around mother to child HIV transmission. The testing and proof of such hypothesis can bring significant benefit to the nursing fraternity (Daly, Speedy, & Jacks on 2009, pp. 135-140). Health and social care demands evidence-based practice, which quantitative research provides in hard data. In essence, evidence-based practice (EBP) or Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the point at which the patient values & preferences, best research evidence, and clinical expertise converge. Evidence-based practice (EBP) involves the prudent utilization of the most reliable contemporary evidence in making critical decisions about the health of patients.