Late Childhood Essays - Speech Impediments, Language Acquisition

Arch Dis Child 2009; 94:42-46 doi:10.1136/adc.2007.134114 ?Original article ?The effects of bilingualism on stuttering during late childhood + Author Affiliations 1.1 Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, UK 2.2 Department of Language and Communication Science, City University, London, UK 1.Peter Howell, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK; [emailprotected] ?Accepted 24 June 2008 ?Published Online First 9 September 2008 Abstract Objectives: To examine stuttering by children speaking an alternative language exclusively (LE) or with English (BIL) and to study onset of stuttering, school performance and recovery rate relative to monolingual speakers who stutter (MONO). Design: Clinical referral sample with supplementary data obtained from speech recordings and interviews. Setting: South-East England, 1999?2007. Participants: Children aged 8?12 plus who stuttered (monolingual and bilingual) and fluent bilingual controls (FB). Main outcome measures: Participants? stuttering history, SATS scores, measures of recovery or persistence of stuttering. Results: 69 (21.8%) of 317 children were bilingual. Of 38 children who used a language other than English at home, 36 (94.7%) stuttered in both languages. Fewer LE (15/38, 39.5%) than BIL (23/38, 60.5%) children stuttered at first referral to clinic, but more children in the fluent control sample were LE (28/38, 73.7%) than BIL (10/38, 26.3%). The association between stuttering and bilingual group (LE/BIL) was significant by 2 test; BIL speakers have more chance of stuttering than LE speakers. Ages at stuttering onset and male/female ratio for LE, BIL and MONO speakers were similar (4 years 9 months, 4 years 10 months and 4 years 3 months, and 4.1:1, 4.75:1 and 4.43:1, respectively). Educational achievement was not affected by bilingualism relative to the MONO and FB groups. The recovery rate for the LE and MONO controls together (55%) was significantly higher by 2 test than for the BIL group (25%). Conclusions: BIL children had an increased risk of stuttering and a lower chance of recovery from stuttering than LE and MONO speakers. Bilingualism has been regarded as a risk factor for stuttering.1 2 However, there is little information about how a second language affects the chances of stuttering onset and of recovery. Consequently, a study was conducted on all referrals for stuttering for children first seen when they were between 8 and 10 years of age who attended clinics that specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of stuttering. Children who used a second language in the pre-school years either (a) exclusively (these learned English at school, termed LE) or (b) along with English in the home (bilingual from birth, termed BIL) were selected. The majority of the children were seen again when they were aged 12 plus. Prevalence rates of stuttering for LE and BIL children as compared with all referrals were examined to determine if a disproportionate number of speakers of a language other than English is referred to stuttering clinics. Checks were made to verify that the LE and BIL children were stuttering by c omparing age at stuttering onset and gender ratio for these speaker groups against monolingual speakers from a referral sample who stuttered (MONO). Early school performance of LE and BIL children who stuttered was compared with that of a MONO group and bilingual children who were fluent (the fluent bilingual group, termed FB). The patterns of onset and recovery in the LE, BIL and MONO groups were compared. METHODS Participants and sub-groups A total of 317 children who stuttered participated. They all (a) started school in the UK at age 4 or 5, (b) first presented at a clinic when aged between 8 and 10 years and (c) lived in the greater London area. Stuttering was confirmed by a specialist speech-language therapist at the clinic. Reported onset of stuttering usually occurs before age 6. The attendance at clinic 2 or more years later is partly due to the time needed to process children in the health system; these are secondary referrals to the specialist clinic and devolved budgets to local area health authorities can cause delay. Recordings were taken to estimate the percentage of stuttered syllables and to allow the stuttering severity instrument measure SSI-33 to be applied (see below for details of how SSI-3 was calculated). When each child was seen initially, all 317 caregivers were asked whether they used a language

Hamlet Essays (732 words) - Characters In Hamlet, Free Essays

Hamlet Essays (732 words) - Characters In Hamlet, Free Essays Hamlet Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father's death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius and Gertrude worry about the prince's erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They employ a pair of Hamlet's friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes to ban marriages. A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncle's guilt. He will have the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet imagines his uncle to have murdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When the moment of the murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius but finds him praying. Since he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius's soul to heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened of Hamlet's madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once. Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs through the fabric, killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, Claudius's plan for Hamlet includes more than banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of England demanding that Hamlet be put to death. In the aftermath of her father's death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river. Polonius's son, Laertes, who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for his father's and sister's deaths. When Horatio and the king receive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his ship en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes' desire for revenge to secure Hamlet's death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will poison Laertes' blade so that if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to poison a goblet, which he will give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the first or second hits of the match. Hamlet returns to the vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelia's funeral is taking place. Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares that he had in fact always loved Ophelia. Back at the castle, he te lls Horatio that he believes one must be prepared to die, since death can come at any moment. A foolish courtier named Osric arrives on Claudius's orders to arrange the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes. The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to drink from the king's proffered goblet. Instead, Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the poison. Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, though Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately. First, Laertes is cut by his own sword's blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queen's death, he dies from the blade's poison. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and Hamlet dies immediately after achieving his revenge. At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who has led an army to Denmark and attacked Poland earlier in the play, enters with ambassadors from England, who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entire royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves

Intangible Assets, IAS 38 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Intangible Assets, IAS 38 - Essay Example Another criterion of identifying these assets is from contractual or other legal rights. Examples of these intangible assets would include patents, customer lists, copyrights and computer software. Some of these can be included in the financial statements of a given firm. The sale of computer software would indeed be included in a financial statement. Computer software is a person’s intelligence converted into programs acceptable to the computer platform. Intelligence is an asset that one would not see, touch or physically measure yet the products developed from the same are of great value (Alexander, Britton, & Jorissen, 2010). Looking at these intangible assets in this perspective, that they can be converted onto tangible assets then one would rightly argue that they should be included in the financial statements of the company. Internally generated brands are those products that are unique to a given firm only. The uniqueness comes into play owing to the fact that they are generated right within the company. They are not bought from outside then sold from the firm but are those generated from within the company (ibid). They are born of the intangible assets within the firm. Software manufacturing companies are most commonly known for this. Examples of these are Avast, Kaspersky, as well as Avira. These are software manufactured by different companies thus the difference in uniqueness. Lots of debates have been put forward criticizing the inclusion of these internally generated brands into the financial statements. Whichever way one decides to look at it, their inclusion would have advantages and disadvantages which are discussed in the following discourse. The main advantage lies on the fact that not a lot of monetary resources would be used in their creation. The normal monthly salary of the employee is all it takes to make an employee working in a given firm employ the best of his/her intelligence to the firm. The resulting products from an

Howard Street Jewelers Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Howard Street Jewelers - Case Study Example This gave her a good chance of covering up her fraudulent actions. Many frauds of this nature are made possible by ignorance of owners when it comes to studying books of accounts and awarding of a lot of trust to employees which is dangerous. The fraud was detected due to the receipts from the shop that showed high costs for such a small business. Studying of the account books by Alvin more often also allowed them to detect the fraud. The Levi’s should have paid attention to Betty’s lifestyle as it was changing inconcurently with her earnings. The increase in costs of operation for the shop should have also been a sufficient heads up. The ratios of costs of operation and the size of the business are the ones that raised an alarm to the accountant. In addition, the shop was facing downward movement in terms of profits and earnings. The business was going downhill. The cash shortages were not directly related to the fraud. The reason why businesses have cash shortages even if there is no theft of cash is because of the exaggerated receipts that show high operational costs. The accountant does not bear any responsibility because he is an external accountant and doing an audit for a private business is not one of his legal duties. He is only expected to do it if contracted by the owners of the private business (Petrucelli

Intellectual Property Rights And The Fashion Industry Cultural Studies Essay

Intellectual Property Rights And The Fashion Industry Cultural Studies Essay With a gross annual turnover of $750 billion per year the fashion industry is at the forefront of the worlds economy. Unlike most other goods, people demand fashion not for the added value or feature that a new item brings but for its own sake. People (mostly females) of all ages pour over magazines showing the latest celebrity fashions and then go out to retail fashion shows or browse online in search of something similar. This demand for the latest style of the rich and famous has transpired into a business network with an influence across the globe. This global business has brought with it many legal issues. Particularly important is the copying of the celebrity fashion that the masses seem to want. This essay will be broken into three parts. The first part will examine the current state of the law both in Australia and other jurisdictions. The second part will ask how the law can be changed in Australia to give greater protection to the fashion industry and the third part will lo ok at whether or not this change is necessary for the industry to grow. I will argue that the law needs to be reformed in such a way that copying is prohibited but flocking (following celebrity styles) isnt. IP law the reasons for its existence. The standard argument for the existence of intellectual property rights is that without them copyists will free ride on the creative efforts of others. Since most creative efforts are sold for economic gain absent any intellectual property rights the creators will see no incentive in creating when others can copy their designs and profit from it. The market for books, movies and music is protected from industrial copying in Australia by the Copyright Act. This act prevents the mass scale production of these creative works without licence or prior approval (with certain exceptions). This protection, gives the industry the comfort of knowing that its protected from the free-riding act of copyists. Albeit a creative work, the fashion industry remains vastly unprotected in many parts of the world. In Australia the Designs act of 2003 (which replaced the designs act of 1906) is the primary form of protection of designs for the industry. It is helpful to note at this point that the sketche s of designs are protected by the Copyright Act. Similarly, a new invention in clothing for example a new material that can keep one warm in winter and cold in summer would be protected by the Patents Act. This essay however is not concerned with those acts and their advantages or limitations. This essay is concerned with the protection of designs designs, researched and manufactured by the big designer houses and then copied by the high street for the masses. In a bid to regulate themselves from copying because of the absence of any laws to protect them the Fashion Originators Guild of America started self regulating the industry as early as the 1930s. Their method of regulation was to have designs registered with the Guild and any other firm copying these designs d be boycotted by members of the guild. The guilds activities were ruled as a violation of U.S. antitrust laws by virtue of a decision of the U.S. Supreme court in 1941. What concern us though are not the contents of that case, but rather whether the Guilds efforts in protecting intellectual property caused an increase in innovation and more frequent designs. Randal Picker suggests that the guilds efforts go to show that there was a need by the high end designers for this type of protection. He goes on to argue that the very theory of fashion means that the high end designers would only thrive in a market which was heavily regulated. This is because they market goods to a niche of customers who want to have what no one else has. These designers offer their customers unique one of a kind products and their customers purchase these because of the snob appeal these customers want only what others dont have. If there is no protection for their designs these designs would be copied by the high street stores and then the snob appeal of these goods will be lost. This means that these customers will not be willing to pay such high prices for these goods as they do not see a differential value in them. Although this copying has been around for almost a century and a half the problem is worsening due to improvements in information technology. The internet provides simultaneous access to fashions worldwide especially the European fashion weeks where big designers usually display their stuff and these are copied almost immediately. The poor quality of these copies means that some of these producers can get the products out to the market faster than the original desig ners. This means that once the designers products hit the market they have already lost their unique appeal. Further, since this fast fashion run-offs have become more highly sophisticated; the copyists can wait to even see which of the products seem to sell the most before they decide what to produce and they can then produce these trend setting items without having to take on the risk that their investment might not pay off. The basic theory of intellectual property would find this appalling. The big design houses spend millions of dollars on salaries for designers, researching market trends and organising expensive processes and fashion shows. Copyists however free ride on this work and produce cheaper substitutes. According to the traditional theory of IP this should lead to an economic disincentive on the part of the big fashion houses causing them to research and produce less. However the converse is true. We see that the bigger fashion houses continue to produce new creations every single year and the glamour of their products only increase. In order to understand why the standard disincentive is not in place we will need to look at the theory of fashion. The Theory of fashion Fashion theory dates back several hundred years. The Haute Couture stores of France were the powerhouses of fashion. No sooner was an item launched was it copied in America and sold to a larger market for much cheaper. It is important to make the distinction between close copying on the one hand (making replicas) and participating in trends on the other. Fashion changes often with some styles emerging as trends only to be soon replaced by other styles rising quickly to take its place. The demand for fashion is not merely a physical need although some people will wish to buy a new coast when their old one tears or a new cardigan because their old one looks worn. Fashion is more accurately a cultural expression. According to the fashion theory the theory of the leisure class fashion is usually adopted by elites with the purpose of being different from the masses. The masses then admire and demands goods that will emulate the elites. Consequently the elites abandon the older fashion, which has now been copied by the masses in favour of newer items that will distinguish them from the masses. This first theory of fashion suggests that fashion is driven by a an aspiration of social mobility on one hand (the masses trying to emulate the elite) and social stratification on the other (the elite trying to distinguish themselves from the masses) The other major theory is that of collective selection whereby fashion evolves through the collective process where many people, through their individual choices come to form the collective trend in society. The process of trend formation begins vaguely with a few people buying something of a unique design in the emulation of a celebrity and others copying it until a trend is formed. This theory is not purely about copying the elite, rather it is people following fashion because they desire to be in fashion and associate themselves with the latest styles and trends. This theory also called the Zeitgeist theory works through a matter of individual choice and collective social tastes. Whatever the theory prevalent in society one thing is certain and that is that the masses cannot afford the styles of the elite. Very few people in our society can afford t shirts from Armani and jackets from Polo Ralph Lauren. These large fashion house brands retail items at several hundred dollars apiece making it unaffordable to the masses. Fast fashion copying is the solution. The fast fashion outlets like Zara and Forever 21 provide these trend setting items at a fraction of the cost of the designer houses. One must not be mistaken here that they make exact copies of these items, because they dont. Rather their in house designers make inspirational pieces following the same trend but different. The items are visually similar to the ones of the high fashion houses and this is what many times has come before the courts under the Designs Act 2003 (Australia). Many of these fast fashion firms have shops on large high streets and have built themselves into a business empire. State of the law in Australia In Australia until the 17th June 2004 designs were protected by the Designs Act of 1906. According to the older legislation in order to register the design the design had to be: Features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation applicable to an article, being features that, in the finished article, can be judged by the eye, but does not include a method or principle of construction This legislation did not strike a balance between what are considered ideal objectives of design legislation; to protect designs form free riding competitors but yet at the same time not stifle competition too much because innovation is usually a development on a previous design. The older legislation was also impractical for the fashion industry because of the nature of the law itself. According to the old law the applicant had to file a separate design registration for each variation to the similar product. This is impractical as many items of fashion come in different colours and sizes. Further the design application needed to be examined by the designs office before registration was granted. This meant that designs had to be submitted before they could be registered. This too was impractical to the fashion industry for a number of reasons. Firstly, by the time the process of submitting the design and registration was complete the item would already have gone out of fashion given the relatively fast lifecycle of fast fashion. Further submitting the designs would mean the designs would have to be completed earlier. Usually designers work on their designs until the last minute before the official launch working on extras until hours before the design goes public. The old designs regulation was clearly impractical for fashion and the replacement legislation in the form of the Designs Act of 2003 hoped to iron out some of the problems. Under this act the fashion industry benefitted heavily as protection was obtainable for more than one design (colour or size) of the same product. . However the official government fees for this is a drawback to the registration of more than one design of the same product. Under the new act the fees for the first design is $200 and for every variation of that design a further $200. This heavy cost especially for the mid budget fashion houses is disadvantageous. Further the new legislation permits the design to be registered even before a full examination of the product is undertaken. This gives time for the producers to tweak the designs even until the last minute before they are released. However, the examination whilst not compulsory needs to take place before the owner can take action against anyone who infringes on this design. Getting this inspection carried out is costly, costing $360 per variation of a design, and requires a lot of paper work; in the form of photographs and a Statement of Newness and Distinctiveness explaining how this design is new and distinctive from any others on the market (without which the registrar might not be satisfied that the product is new and distinctive). The courts have taken an interesting approach to the question of designs in the fashion industry. The first decision to be handed down after the enactment of the Designs Act 2003 was the Federal Court of Australias decision in Review v Innovative Lifestyle Investments Pty Ltd and concerned a dress produced by Review and registered of which Innovative Lifestyle Investments produced an identical design. Justice Jessup found that the striking visual similarity between the designs and the time period in which they were produced (the ILI dress coming out only a few months after Reviews) was an indication that the registered design was breached. However, calculating damages was difficult because Review did not wish to submit its sales figures to the court. Thus Justice Jessup awarded Review $7500 in damages due to minor loss of reputation as not being a brand of originality and another $10,000 for ILI continuing the sale of the dresses after finding out about Reviews registration. ILI plan s on appealing the decision so it will be interesting to see what decision the appellate court hands down. This case shows that whilst there is sufficient legal protection in Australia for the protection of designs there are several limits to the protection. One such limitation is time. It took about seven months for the Review design to be registered. Items which are not timeless items like Reviews dress would have the long passed their fashion expiry before the registration of these items were completed. Since action cannot be taken until registration is completed this would mean that many designers would potentially not be willing to take action as the product would no longer be an item in stock. Further the need by the judges to assess the loss in sales would require firms to furnish in court their sales and projected sales figures. This might be highly sensitive information that they would not want competitors, in the highly competitive market, to know. Finally the value of dam ages awarded in this case was not high against ILI. If this case is anything to go by the exemplary damages are arguably not sufficient to deter copying. Rather many copyists would see this as merely the cost of doing business. Copying of items in the fashion industry can also be protected by copyright law. The copyright law provisions are used when there is an artistic or craftsmanship appeal to the garment. Protection under this provision was brought before the courts in 2008 by Elwood a manufacturer of trendy youth clothes. Elwood alleged that Cotton On had violated its copyright for two computer generated drawings; the New Deal tshirt and the swing tags attached to these garments. They alleged that Cotton On had sold several hundred tshirts which were visually similar to the New Deal tshirts. Cotton On conceded that the only difference was the wording but otherwise they had copied the design drawings. The first question the court had to answer was whether the designs drawings were drawings and thus entitled to protection under the act (as artistic works). The key to answering this question was whether the wording was to be read as text or whether they were for pictorial purposes. The court found that th ey were a pictorial which was designed to bring recognition to the Elwood brand. Accordingly the design drawings were the subject of the Copyrights Act. After determining that the designs were copyright works, the judge had to determine whether they were original Elwood drawings. The judge found on the evidence that this was an original drawing as Elwood had spent several weeks and a lot of effort creating them and thus they satisfied the originality criteria. That being assessed the judge had to then work out whether what Cotton on had copied amounted to a substantial part. In his honours opinion Cotton On had copied only the shape and the form of the item and not the wording or symbols of the design and thus did not create a visual similarity with Elwoods design. His honour said that the degree of copying was in keeping with Cotton Ons theme, same but different. We see here that even through copyright law it is hard for the copyright holders to have protection for their designs. The problem of free riding occurs when larger companies like Elwood carry out research and spend both time and money creating the brand and fashion statement. The copyists then free ride on this and tweak the designs slightly so that they can get around the law and as such they benefit from the hard work and risk taking of other firms. The Design/Copyright Overlap Whereas copyright law must encompass an element of artistic craftsmanship (such as the digital designs of both the tshirt and the tag in the Elwood case) or used to protect one off designs such as individual garments or pieces of jewellery; garments which are commercially marketed need to be protected by the Designs Act. For many years governments have been trying hard to emphasise this distinction. Their rationale suggests that when it comes to the shape and appearance of designs the Designs Act is more appropriate and people wanting their items to be mass produced for commercial sales should register their designs. To give effect to this policy the government has included provisions in the copyright act to close the loopholes that existed in previous legislation. Some of the provisions intend that purely two dimensional designs will have dual protection under the copyright and designs act. The other main change is that people creating works of artistic craftsmanship can choose whet her or not to register the design (but registering will generally result in a loss of copyright). It follows that the design copyright overlap has been made clearer as a result of the amended designs act and changes to the Copyrights Act. This has been the governments attempt to make the laws clearer and friendlier to give designers a more protected environment in which to carry out their work. It can be seen however, that the cost of registering the designs as well as the cost of enforcement of the registered design (litigation and related costs) are high in comparison to the damages receivable especially if the original designer is hesitant to make too many figures known to the court. Further, especially for claims under the Copyrights Act, the burden of proof is very high. The courts have been very careful to interpret the word substantial and as was seen in the Elwood case, although the copyright was found in favour of Elwood the court held the outcome in favour of Cotton On because they said that the visual appearance was not substantially similar to the Elwood design. This decision begs the question as to whether items can be copied so long as the colour and wording has changed. Whilst this might be perfectly acceptable in other industries, judges fail to understand the uniqueness of fashion, where it is not the item itself that matters but the advertising, marketing and style promotion than creates the trend for the item. It is arguable then that when considering designs and copyright protection the court should look deeply into merely just the design or drawing and focus on the value of the design or drawing in creating the trend fashion. That said, it is difficult to assess where exactly the trend originated. Some argue that the trend originates with the celebrities in Hollywood and others argue that the trends originate from the catwalks of Europe. These claims are however disputable as there are new and emerging fashion design centres around the world especially in Australia where the seasons are opposite to those of the countries in the Northern hemisphere making it impractical to follow their trends. Thus the onus of proving who started a trend might eventually mean that there is no protection for any designer since all fast fashion designs are usually a variation of some trend or item. Reforms: The US lacks fashion copyright protection completely and this has given rise to an entire industry that copies and tweaks. Fashion industry specialists call this blatant piracy looking great for cheap. One fashion expert reports that a high street fashion brand like Forecer 21 copies and retails a $2000 dress for $80 and even shoes by the renowned designer Balenciaga worth over $600 dollars is copied and sold by Steve Madden for $60. The lack of adequate safeguards in the US as opposed to Australia is the cause of this. Experts say that the up and coming designers are those at the biggest risk because they can ill afford the legislation needed to fight back. The Australian law can perhaps take some ideas for reform from the amendments suggested by the US Copyrights office. The first as a part of several suggestions is that the protection time frame be reduced from 10 years to 3 years. This is because the haute couture fashion where items retail for several hundred dollars a piece will usually have lost their exclusivity or reached the end of their fashion peak well within the three years. Although designs change fast a reason for the longer period of three years is to also include classic fashion items like the Guy suit by Hugo Boss. Another reform that has been suggested that we might adopt in Australia is that registration must be completed and take place within three months from the date that it goes public. This means that once a design is registered the designer has upto three months to organise for the inspection to be carried out for the item. This gives the designer more flexibility to decide which designs are profitable and then decide which ones he wants to register thus saving on the costs of statutory fees and paperwork. Finally they suggest that there be a special fashion board set up to deal with the fashion industry where a group of experts independently asses the item such that they can better understand the subtleties of a new design as opposed to an old one and thus the granting of registration will be fairer. Along with this Ralph Brown suggests that in order to make the enforcing more affordable this board be also given the power to handle conflicts. He argues that this be the first instance board that reviews the complaints that designers have if they feel that their designs have been breached. This board should be entrusted with the power to make a non binding directive (after analysing the evidence) in favour of or against the claimant. He argues that because this board will be made up of fashion experts they will be in a better position to analyse the breaches. If Australia had a system like this, then the Elwood decision might not have been decided the way it was. This board would have b een able to realise the subtleties of the trend style which His Honour in that case failed to see. In other words they will interpret the law in the context of the industry and not on the black letter analysis of the law. He concedes that the court is the ultimate arbitrator and he argues that if one or both parties are not willing to settle based on the boards directive then they could appeal the decision to court. The rationale for this approach is that to save costs and reputation most firms will settle out of court. What is important in any reform is having a balance between protecting the designs of those whose spend time, skill and money developing the latest fashions against the interests of the masses who want to be in fashion and who are willing to buy the cheaper counterfeits. The recommendations mentioned above would definitely allow designers to make the most of protecting their designs and their investments. In keeping with the standard theory of intellectual property i t is likely to increase investment in the industry. The large fashion houses might be willing to come up with more designs, and varieties of designs because they feel that there is an inexpensive way of enforcing their intellectual property rights. At the same time younger designers will be willing to release more designs into the market because they feel that they are better protected and can enforce their intellectual property system in a way that is understandable and cost effective to them. On the other hand the method proposed above would benefit the high street fast fashion firms as a trained eye in the board is likely to be able to spot the difference between blatant copying and trends. Zara for example will be able to produce in the confidence that when they produce dresses a trained eye in the design board will be able to easily tell that theirs is not an imitation of an original dress but rather a variation in style but within the scope of trends. This is something that the judges find hard to understand because as Susan Scaffidi (one of the most prolific fashion law writers) put it it is hard to have a sixty seventy year old white man look at an item of chic ladies fashion and decide whether or not copyright has been breached. Another proposed reform is that the costs of applying for design can be reduced by the government. The UWA faculty of law expert has written that making the registration process cheaper might be possible by maintaining an online database of all the designs. He argues that if design registration is cheaper more designers are going to seek it and this will be better for the intellectual property regime. The bigger fashion houses also argue that their selling point is that their styles are unique and those who purchase from them pay so much because of the snob appeal of the item. They argue that with so much copying their unique designs become less unique and as such they have to keep designing more items to keep up the unique appeal. Alain Wertheimer , Chairman of Chanel when asked about this in an interview to the Newsweek said that because of the vast amount of copying going on in the industry people are willing to pay less and less for designer clothes as they see no snob appeal in them. She says that as a result the bigger fashion houses are finding it hard to survive and that her brand too has had to undergo diversification to survive. Donatella Versace arguing on the same point says that Versace has had to diversify into manufacturing lifestyle items and dinner sets too because of insufficient protection by the government. Raustiala and Sprigman, in their article the Piracy Paradox argue very strongly that a strong intellectual property regime will not change anything. They argue that people keep demanding the latest trends and as long as the demand is there the suppliers will continue to provide for it. They also argue that the market will not change by much because the masses will not be able to afford the original designs anyway. They rationalise this theory to a fixed amount that people are willing to pay for items even if they were Zeitegists. This is because after a point fashion becomes a luxury good and the demand is therefore inelastic. People, they argue, after a point are not willing to sacrifice necessities for luxury goods and will do one of two things, either do without it or be content with older collections. They further argue in direct rebuttal to the claims of Alain Wertheimer and Donatella Versace that as a result of the big fashion house designs being copied and reproduced people who demand the unique style that comes with these designer products will keep purchasing more and it is good for their business. Their rebuttal to this is found in their theory of induced obsolescence. They argue that because clothing is about perception the demand for the goods is because the highly fashionable people have them and to not have them means that one is unfashionable. They also argue that in line with the theory of the leisure class that once more people have it those who demand unique products will want something else for the snob appeal. They argue that this causes the cycle all over again. Thus we can see that as more items are copied this puts pressure on the fashion houses to produce newer and more distinctive items. As such they can produce more often and their profits increase. Logically , it then flows that copying whilst being a part of the business of the copyist firms is also beneficial to the large fashion houses because the elite will keep demanding newer styles and this increases their business. This is called induced obsolescence by copying. They further argue that by the masses flocking to buy the latest styles there is an automatic trend created and as such the large fashion houses benefit because those on the marginal income lines will tend to purchase the fashion house brands so that they can be a part of the trend. It is also arguable that because the trends are so short lived for most of the casual wear collections (an average style time for the Armani Tees is seven months) even if there are tougher intellectual property law few firms would go through the trouble of registering all but their most classic designs. Conclusion In this essay we have looked at the reasons for the existence of intellectual property generally. We have then identified the theories of fashion and seen how people demand in style products so the copyists employ designers not to make an exact replica of the item but to make an item similar such that the item is a part of the trend. We have then considered the law in Australia. We have looked at how the Designs Act and the Copyright Act play an important role in protecting the designs and drawings of the designers. We have identified that the courts have had a mixed approach to enforcing right under the act. We saw in the Review decision the impracticality of taking an action to Court under the Designs Act. We saw that this impracticality was because the claimant needs to submit highly sensitive figures for the courts to make a decision. Further, we saw that the Elwood decision in which it is probable that the judge misunderstood that what Elwood was doing was setting a trend for pr inted tees. We then argued that it is impossible for courts to find the difference between trends and styles and argued that perhaps we do not want them to rule against style. This paper also suggested possible reforms to the law and to the method in which the law should be administered. These reforms flow from our previous analysis of the method of administration of the law being impractical. It was proposed that the proposed methods would help the administration of the system as well as make a more streamlined an easier system for designers to enforce their rights. However, when we consider the theories of fashion as a whole and when we consider the article by Raustiala and Sprigman, we see that reform really isnt necessary. Reform will not dynamically change the face of the industry because most designers will not go through the trouble of registering their designs as the design life cycles are very short and the trouble taken to register designs is not worth their while. We also see that reform is not necessary because copying (otherwise referred to as trend setting) is helpful to the big fashion houses. It stimulates designs for their products and increases their sales. We started off by saying that the industry is worth $750 billion a year. There seems to be enough money to go around. Any changes which impose tighter control will only reduce the value of the industry and push many out of business.

Child Abuse and Neglect Essay -- Violence Against Children

When thinking about statistics on child abuse, it’s very helpful to know that the idea of â€Å"child abuse† is very controversial. Recently, in particular homes and cultures, child abuse has come to be seen as a major social problem and a main cause of many people’s suffering and personal problems. Some believe that we are beginning to face the true prevalence and significance of child abuse. There is more to child abuse than just the physical scars; children are affected socially, mentally, and emotionally. According to the American National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, in 1997, neglect represented 54% of confirmed cases of child abuse, physical abuse 22%, sexual abuse 8%, emotional maltreatment 4%, and other forms of maltreatment 12%. Physical abuse is defined as physical aggression directed at a child by an adult. It can involve kicking, striking, shoving, slapping, burning, bruising, pulling ears or hair, stabbing choking or shaking a child. Child neglect is when the responsible adult fails to provide adequately for various needs. These may include; physical, mental, educational, and medical. Out of all the possible forms of abuse, emotional abuse is the hardest to define. It could include; name-calling, ridicule and degradation, destruction of personal belongings, torture or destruction of a pet, excessive criticism, inappropriate or excessive demands, withholding information, and routine labeling and humiliation. Most abused and neglected children never come to the attention of government authorities. This is true for neglected and sexually abused children, who may have no signs of harm. In the case of sexual abuse, secrecy and intense feelings of shame may prevent children, and adults aware of the abuse the c hild undergoe... ...and destroyed newly-formed neurons. The areas of their brains responsible for the "management" of their emotions were 20% to 30% smaller than in other children of the same age. It would be logical to conclude that this damage can result in any child (not only Romanian) who suffers such abandonment and maltreatment (Dr. Alice Miller, 1998). Works Cited †¢ Dr. Alice Miller, Childhood Trauma, presented as a lecture to the YWHA, New York City, 1998 †¢ Jim Hopper, Ph.D. â€Å"Child Abuse: Statistics, Research, and Resources for Recovery." 1996 †¢ Lowenthal, 1996, p. 22 †¢ Nelson, D., G. Higginson, and J. Grant-Worley. "Physical Child Abuse Effects." Child Abuse: Effects, Statistics, Types and Stories of Abuse. Nov. 1995 †¢ "Scientists at University College Target Child Abuse." Pediatrics Week 5 Feb. 2011: 324. Health Reference Center Academic. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.

Josef Mengele †the Angel of Death Essay

After the war many Nazi doctors were tried at Nuremberg, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet the man who became the most infamous Nazi doctor — although Hitler himself may never heard of him — fled to South America and escaped prosecution. He was never caught and convicted, though he lived for decades thereafter. Mengele, called ‘Uncle’ by the countless children he subjected to gruesome experiments and unthinkable torture, and known as the â€Å"Angel of Death† in the concentration camps, was responsible for the torture and deaths of 400,000 people, and the torment of thousands more. The most important thing to note about Mengele is that he was not an isolated example of an evil maniac gone berserk. He was simply part of a system and a much wider network of Nazi doctors. His work may have been different from those of the other doctors only in quantitative terms not qualitative terms. Today, the Auschwitz experiments of Josef Mengele remain the most egregious example of the collaboration of unscrupulous researchers with equally unscrupulous senior scientists and prestigious scientific institutions – which is a phenomenon that could be happening on a wide scale in our own times, especially in matters of drug trials of giant pharmaceutical corporations. In 1947, the world learned of what is now the most infamous scandal in medical research: medical experiments conducted by Nazi doctors. Nazi doctors performed a variety of extremely disturbing experiments on prisoners in concentration camps. Some experiments were designed to further the war effort. For example, to study gunshot wounds, Nazi doctors shot inmates and examined their wounds. To study diseases such as typhus, Nazi doctors intentionally infected inmates with disease. To study human capacity to withstand exposure to cold, Nazi doctors stripped inmates and exposed them to icy water or blizzards. However, the majority of experiments had less to do with winning the war and more to do with promoting or substantiating Nazi ideology. Doctors were interested in sterilizing undesirables, â€Å"curing† homosexuality, and establishing anthropological differences between races. To find an effective means of mass sterilization, Nazi doctors injected hundreds of women with a caustic substance in the hope of obstructing their fallopian tubes, and inflicted severe burns and infections on both male and female prisoners by exposing them to high doses of radiation. To â€Å"cure† homosexuality, Nazi doctors injected hormones into inmates suspected of being homosexual. To catalog physical differences in race, Nazi doctors killed a number of prisoners, stripped the flesh off their bones, and saved their skeletons for an anthropological museum. Dr. Mengele is among the best known SS physicians at Auschwitz, and was responsible along with other SS doctors for â€Å"selections† and medical experiments that used prisoners as guinea pigs. Mengele could never have thought of himself as a monstrous psychopath, though, but only as a â€Å"biomedical scientist† participating in a broad program of racial research. During the Holocaust Mengele and many other Nazi physicians used thousands of camp inmates, especially those with disabilities and â€Å"deformities† as subjects for their biomedical racial â€Å"research. â€Å" Born in the Swabian section of Bavaria in 1911 into an upper middle-class family, Mengele eventually earned two doctorates. The first doctorate was in physical anthropology at Munich under Theodor Mollison in 1935 and the second was in medicine at Frankfurt under Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer in 1938. He received his license to practice medicine in late 1937 but apparently did not pursue certification in a specialty. Instead, he opted for research. As a student of anthropology, he had studied under the leading exponents of the â€Å"life unworthy of living† theory and it greatly influenced his thinking and behavior. The notion that some lives were not worth living was rapidly becoming academically acceptable. His two dissertation supervisors were eugenicists, and his dissertations in anthropology at Munich and in medicine at Frankfurt both dealt with research in racial hygiene. After finishing his second doctorate, Mengele continued his research in Verschuer’s Frankfurt Institute for Hereditary Biology and Race Hygiene. As principal investigator, Verschuer supervised the research of numerous assistants under a variety of DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – German Research Foundation) research grants. Verschuer’s 1938 report to the DFG on this sponsored research, focusing on the genetic study of twins and families, lists the work and publications of his assistant Mengele. Although Mengele did not join the Nazi party until 1938, he belonged to the brown-shirt storm troopers, the SA, during 1933-34 and in 1938 joined the SS. As an SS member, he was drafted during the war into the Waffen SS instead of the Wehrmacht, advancing by 1943 to the rank of captain (Hauptstrumfuhrer). He served as an SS physician to the Eastern front until he was wounded and therefore posted to the concentration camp death head units in the rear. He functioned during 1943-1944 as one of the SS physicians at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. In his new post, Mengele performed the usual duties of a concentration camp SS physician as well as the special Auschwitz assignment of directing selections for the gas chamber. In addition, Auschwitz opened up unlimited opportunities for the ambitious researcher. Research subjects were available in large numbers, and the restraints of medical ethics did not apply. Further, Mengele could compel highly skilled inmate physicians to design and conduct research, perform tests and autopsies, and produce research papers, without the need to share credit with them. It is therefore not surprising that Mengele used Auschwitz as a research laboratory. Otmar von Verschuer, Mengele’s mentor who was himself a protege of Eugen Fischer, had left Frankfurt for Berlin in 1942 to succeed Fischer as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology. Mengele had worked at the institute during SS assignments to Berlin and thus continued to contribute to Verschuer’s research projects (Cefrey 62). When Mengele went to Auschwitz, Vershuer realized the potential of this posting, and as principal investigator, he carried Mengele’s Auschwitz experiments on his DFG grants. Therefore, Mengele’s experiments — that often necessitated the killing of children, thousands of them (especially twins) — were part of the official program and in pursuing his shockingly macabre â€Å"research† he was only following the broad lines of Nazi research agenda. Driven by the desire to advance his medical career by scientific publications, Dr Mengele began to conduct all kinds of utterly atrocious medical experiments on living Jews, children, twins, disabled people, and all those who fell into the Nazi category of ‘Untermenschen’ – all of whom he took from the barracks of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, or ‘selected’ right away on their arrival, and brought to his hospital block. Mengele used the pretext of medical treatment to kill thousands upon thousands of prisoners, personally administering the horrific torture procedures, for example as by injecting them with phenol, petrol, chloroform, or by ordering SS medical orderlies to do so. From the moment of his arrival at Auschwitz, Mengele joined the other SS officers and SS doctors, among them Dr Clauberg and Dr Kremer, in the ‘selection’ of Jews reaching the Auschwitz railway junction from all over Europe. With a movement of the hand or the wave of a stick, he indicated as ‘unfit for work’, and thus destined for immediate death in the gas chambers, all children, old people, sick, crippled and weak Jews, and all pregnant women. Between May 1943 and November 1944 Mengele conducted, also along with Dr. Heinz Thilo, scores of such selections. Mengele was especially on the lookout for twins and other promising research subjects (Lifton 165). He also took an equally decisive part in several selections in the camp infirmary, pointing out for death by shooting, injection or gassing those Jews whose strength had been sapped by starvation, force labor, untreated illness or ill-treatment by the guards. On May 26, 1943, only two days after he arrived at Aushwitz, Mengele committed his first mass murder. There was a typhoid epidemic in the barracks of over a thousand Gypsies who had been brought to the camp two months earlier. For Dr Mengele, typhoid was not an illness to be cured, but one to be eliminated; that day, all the Gypsies were dragged out of their barracks and driven to the gas chambers. Against their names in the camp register were put the letters ‘SB’ – ‘Sondebehandlung’, Special Treatment. This was just a sign of much worse things to come. In perpetrating a host of such ghastly â€Å"medical and scientific experiments,† Mengele was of course being an independent member of a larger cohort of wanton butchers. These Nazi doctors most brazenly forsook their Hippocratic Oath and armed themselves with scalpels, forceps, and needles in inflicting immeasurable pain and torture on hundreds of thousands of innocent people, a significant portion of them being children. Mengele regularly mailed the results of his research on twins to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. There scientists analyzed the samples of blood obtained before death and the organs obtained after dissection. It was a systematic, organized and purposeful enterprise. Though few of these doctors collected scientifically valid data and many of the experiments were expressions of pure pathological sadism, the Nazi doctors justified their acts of torture and inhumanity as attempts to improve German medicine and advance science. Mengele himself, through his research on twins, dreamed of being able to genetically engineer a flawless race. The ultimate goal was to produce an ideal race of Aryan men and women endowed with only the finest genetic traits, who would rapidly multiply and rule the world. (Lagnado, Dekel 61) Of the approximately 350 doctors who are estimated to have committed medical crimes, only about 20 doctors and 3 assistants were brought to justice in Nuremberg (Spitz 50). Some others were tried, and sentenced to in American military trials at Dachau. Still many doctors escaped, including one who would become the most infamous of them all, Dr. Josef Mengele. Human experimentation neither arose with the Nazis, nor ended with them; however, the history of human experimentation in the West is usually divided into two eras: before the Nazis and after. Mengele is by no means such a grotesque aberration as he may appear to be at first. Nazi doctors perpetrated some of the most horrendous actions during the Third Reich, but the shadows of Auschwitz and Nuremberg are long. Though Mengele escaped scot-free, we at least know about his evil deeds; there may be many others of his ilk alive today and even working in collaboration with reputed organizations whose work we may never even come to know. Works Cited Cefrey, Holly. â€Å"Doctor Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death† New York : The Rosen Publishing Group, 2001 Lagnado, Lucette Matalon; Dekel, Sheila Cohn. â€Å"Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz. † New York : Penguin Books, 1992 Lifton, Robert Jay. â€Å"The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide† New