Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Constitutional Rights before and after Arrest Research Paper

Constitutional Rights before and after Arrest - Research Paper Example The sixth Amendment done to the Constitution of United States is the part of the Bill of Rights which put forward privileges associated to the prosecutions of the criminals. An arrest causes the withdrawal of an individual’s freedom by a police man or any individual with an officially authorized permission. Usually an arrest takes place when a person is alleged of carrying out a crime and therefore should be taken into custody. â€Å"Because an arrest is in effect a â€Å"seizure† it must conform to the probable cause and warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment†(Otis.H.Stephens). According to the author arrests are frequently made in accordance to warrants build on initial inquiries so it is given out by a judge on apparent grounds. A court permits the investigation of a criminal activity by issuing a court order also known as writ. Therefore any investigation or arrest without a legal warrant is unfair and unconstitutional. A person has the right to demand as to why he is being arrested and the kind of allegation against him. An individual must see the warrant to be certain that his name exists on it and to confirm the charges. Moreover the person has the right to be informed of his constitutional rights also known as â€Å"Miranda rights† before he is interrogated after the arrest. These include the right to remain silent and refuse to cooperate without the consultation of your attorney as the police can utilize those answers against the person seized in the court. If an individual doesn’t meet the expense of a lawyer, he has the privilege to get a public defender without any cost and discuss his case with the attorney before further proceeding with the investigation. A person can also say no to every physical or medical test such as breathalyzer, lie detector etc. he also has the permission to contact any relative or important person to inform them about his arrest and so is allowed to make telephone calls. A person ar rested with no warrant is required to be carried quickly before a court official for a credible hearing of the case. Most of the times suspects defend against arrest therefore the police might use physical force or violence to take them in custody. â€Å"The courts have generally recognized that the fourth amendment permits police to use only such force as is â€Å"reasonable† and â€Å"necessary† in effectuating an arrest† (Otis H.Stephens). Therefore the person being suspected should give in without much resistance and has the right to take legal action against the police if they violate this amendment. The fourth amendment has forbidden unfair investigations and seizures of individuals and their possessions without a legal warrant specifying the place to be explored or the person to be arrested. Now as discussed earlier the Fifth Amendment permits an individual to refuse giving a testimony that might convict himself both in judiciary and in answer to interrog ation by the police. It also contains the clause of â€Å"Double Jeopardy’ in which it is not allowed to condemn a person twice for the same allegation. The sixth amendment however points out rights that are relevant in every criminal trial such as the right to an immediate and open hearing by an neutral panel

Monday, October 28, 2019

Gainesboro Machine Tools Corporation Essay Example for Free

Gainesboro Machine Tools Corporation Essay Kendle International Inc. We looked at the competitive landscape and, based on what was happening, knew we were either going to sell Kendle, grow or disappear. It was May 1997, and Candace Kendle, the chairman and chief executive officer of Kendle International Inc. (Kendle), and her husband Christopher C. Bergen, the president and chief operating officer, were reviewing the strategic options for their Cincinnati, Ohio based company. Kendle, a business they had founded over 15 years previously, conducted clinical trials for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to test the safety and efficacy of their new drugs. The company had grown successfully to $13 million of sales and had attracted significant business from major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Kendle was competing, however, with several larger contract research organizations (CRO), many of which had an international presence that allowed them to do clinical studies outside the United States and gave them an advantage when competing for major projects. To compete more effectively, Candace and Chris had embarked on a plan to grow through acquisition, particularly internationally, and to finance this growth through a public offering of equity. Toward this end, by the spring of 1997 Kendle had lined up two potential European acquisitions—U-Gene, a CRO in the Netherlands with 1996 sales of $12.5 million, and gmi, a Germanbased CRO with $7 million in sales. To finance these acquisitions, Kendle had worked out possible debt financing with Nationsbank and was working with two investment banks on an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that would repay the bank debt if successful and provide the equity base for future acquisitions. It was now time to decide whether to go ahead with the full program of two acquisitions, a large debt financing and an equity issue. Kendle History Candace and Chris met in 1979 while working at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Candace had received her doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Cincinnati, then taught in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Her scientific specialty was virology. At the Children’s Hospital, Candace was serving as the director of pharmacy, working as an investigator on a study of an antiviral drug for the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome. Chris, a Wharton MBA, was a senior administrator at the hospital. Research Associate Indra A. Reinbergs prepared this case under the supervision of Professors Dwight B. Crane and Paul W. Marshall as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright  © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. 1 Looking for something new, Candace and Chris began to discuss the idea of going into business together. One day in early 1981 Candace received an unexpected visit from a new physician, replacing the usual medical monitor for her project with Burroughs Wellcome. This physician was a pioneer in the  contract clinical research business. As he described how his business worked, Candace became more and more intrigued. When he left that day, she immediately called Chris and said, â€Å"I’ve got a business idea!† The concept was to set up a small research consulting firm that would take on outsourced research and development (RD) work on a contract basis from large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Based on the positive response she received from potential clients, Candace left her job at the hospital in June 1981 and Chris left his job in December 1981. Kendle International Inc. was incorporated in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1981, with Candace taking 55% of the shares, and Chris 45%. Candace had strong ties to the Cincinnati area. Her grandfather, a coal miner, had moved there from Appalachia, and the clan had grown to about 140 members, including Candace’s two sons from a previous marriage. By January 1982, Candace and Chris were working from Candace’s parents’ home. Kendle started as a small company with a few contracts, and business grew slowly through referrals from professional colleagues. Kendle suffered the usual bumps of a start-up business, particularly in the late 1980s when it suffered a loss for two years and ran up $1 million in bank debt on a $250,000 line of credit. Afraid that its bank would call the loan, the company went through a bankruptcy scare. Fortunately, Kendle succeeded in attracting business from a new client, the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle Co. (Searle). By the early 1990s, the company was turned around and it generated annual sales of about $2.5 million. Candace and Chris were married in 1991. The Pharmaceutical Lifecycle The clinical research process was influenced by government regulations that required drugs to pass through a series of steps before they could be marketed for public use. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated pharmaceuticals. To receive FDA approval, a drug had to meet safety and efficacy standards for a specific indication (medical diagnosis). A drug for hypertension, for example, would have to lower blood pressure by a certain statistically significant amount without  producing unacceptable side effects. The entire FDA approval process could take from 8 to 15 years and involve several thousand patients.1 After a pharmaceutical company discovered a new drug and completed pre-clinical testing on animals in the laboratory, an Investigational New Drug application was filed with the FDA. The drug then passed through three phases of clinical testing on humans. Before beginning each subsequent phase, the drug company had to submit additional regulatory information to the FDA. Phase I Phase I studies were primarily concerned with assessing the drugs safety. This initial phase of testing in humans was done in a small number of healthy volunteers (20 to 100), such as students, who were usually paid for participation. Phase II Once Phase I testing had proven the drug’s safety, Phase II tested its efficacy in a small number of patients (100 to 300) with the medical diagnosis. It was specifically designed to determine the likely effective dose in patients. Phase III In a Phase III study, the drug was tested on a larger patient population (1,000 to 3,000) at multiple clinical sites. The purpose was to provide a more thorough understanding of the drugs effectiveness, benefits, and the range of possible adverse reactions. Most Phase II and Phase III studies were blinded studies in which some patients received the experimental drug, while control groups received a placebo or an already approved drug. Once a Phase III study was successfully completed, a pharmaceutical company requested FDA approval for marketing the drug by filing a New Drug Application, which averaged about 100,000 pages. †¢ 200-033 Phase IV Post-marketing testing (of at least 300 patients per trial) was sometimes conducted for high-risk drugs to catch serious side effects (liver toxicity) and monitor them for long-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. The pharmaceutical companies traditionally designed and conducted their own clinical trials. They selected the research sites and recruited investigators to conduct the trials of the new drug. Investigators were often medical school professors at teaching hospitals, but they could also be professional investigators who conducted clinical trials at dedicated centers or occasionally regular physicians who ran trials, particularly Phase IV trials, out of their private practices. These investigators then recruited patients, sometimes with the help of the pharmaceutical company, to participate in the study. After patients were recruited, there was a considerable amount of data collection by the investigators, monitoring of the process and data retrieval by the pharmaceutical company, and analysis of the data to determine whether the statistical criteria for safety and efficacy were met. Finally, there was the complicated process of compiling the data and preparing the long report for the FDA. The Contract Research Business In the 1970s, large pharmaceutical concerns in the United States began to look for ways to outsource their clinical testing work as their RD budgets grew. At the beginning, contract research was a small cottage industry and the work was awarded on a piecemeal basis. As Chris recalled, â€Å"For years, there had been companies conducting animal testing and Phase I, but there was no one managing the entire research and development process. The acronym ‘CRO’ (contract research organization) did not exist, pharmaceutical companies gave out only small contracts, and did not have much confidence in for-profit research managers.† The growth of the CRO industry was stimulated by pricing pressures on drug companies that led them to try to transfer the fixed costs of clinical research into a variable cost through outsourcing. As Chris described, The general problem that drug companies face is balancing a variable workload with a fixed workforce. The problem is that you don’t know when the guy in the white lab coat will come running down the hall, beaker in hand, shouting, ‘Eureka, I’ve got it, it’s going to cure disease X’. When he does that, you know your workload is going to spike. Your workload is impacted by the rate of discovery, the number of projects killed in vitro and, subsequent to that, how many studies get cancelled due to safety or efficacy problems in human testing. Pure CROs like Kendle derived their income solely from the outsourced portion of the RD budget of pharmaceutical clients. In theory, any part of the clinical testing process could be outsourced. While most pre-clinical discovery was conducted in-house by drug companies, the trend in the 1990s was for CROs to receive contracts to manage the entire clinical research piece, especially 3 Phases II and III. The whole process was an incredible race against time, as every day for which FDA approval was delayed could cost the pharmaceutical client over $1 million in lost revenues. Pharmaceutical contracts ranged in duration from a few months to several years. For multi-year contracts involving clinical trials, a portion of the contract fee was paid at the time the trial was initiated, with the balance of the contract fee payable in installments over the trial duration, as performance-based milestones (investigator recruitment, patient enrollment, delivery of databases) were completed. Contracts were bid by CROs on a fixed-price basis, and the research was a labor-intensive business. The contract bids depended on careful estimation of the hourly labor rates and the number of hours each activity would take. The estimation process involved statistical algorithms, which took into account the length of the study, frequency and length of site visits, the number of sites involved, the number of patients involved, and the number of pages per report form. A premium would be added for more complicated therapeutic testing. As the chief financial officer Tim Mooney described the business, The way that Kendle makes money is like any professional service firm—We focus on maximizing labor utilization, especially at the operational level. We assume a 65% to 70% utilization rate, so profit margins are higher if we have a higher utilization rate of personnel. We have the same assumed profit margin on all levels of people, but we can charge higher rates for contracts where we have specific therapeutic expertise that is in demand. Margins can also be higher on some large projects when we can share overhead costs across more sites. The business of contract research entailed several types of business risk. With contracts running at an average of $1 million for companies of Kendle’s size, client dependence was a major risk. Project cancellation by the client and â€Å"change orders† to reduce project costs were also increasingly frequent in the CRO industry, as healthcare cost pressures intensified. On the other hand, product liability for medical risks was borne by the pharmaceutical company. Competition in the 1990s By the mid-1990s, contract research had evolved into a full-service industry, recognized by both the pharmaceutical/biotech industries and the financial community. In 1995, worldwide spending on RD by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies was estimated at $35 billion, with $22 billion spent on the type of drug development work that CROs could do. Of the $22 billion, only $4.6 billion was outsourced to CROs in 1995. While RD spending by pharmaceutical companies was growing at 10% a year, CROs were growing at twice that rate.2 Specialized CROs could manage increasingly complex drug trials—in the previous decade, the number of procedures per trial and average number of patients per trial had doubled—far more efficiently than their pharmaceutical clients.3 Kendle participated in this growth in clinical research. Its net revenues grew 425% from $2.5 million in 1992 to $13 million in 1996. From a loss of $495,000 in 1992, its net income rose to $1.1 million by 1996. By 1996, Kendle had conducted clinical trials for 12 of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies. Kendle’s three largest clients were G.D. Searle, Procter Gamble, and Amgen, which generated 48%, 19%, and 13% of Kendles 1996 revenues, respectively. (See Exhibits 1 and 2 for Kendle’s income statements and balance sheets.) 2 J.C. Bradford Co., analyst report, January 15, 1998, pp. 5-6. 3 The Economist, â€Å"Survey of the Pharmaceutical Industry,† February 21, 1998, p. 4.200-033 The contract research industry was very fragmented, with hundreds of CROs worldwide. In the 1990s, in response to the increased outsourcing of pharmaceutical RD, and a demand for global trials, consolidation among the CROs began. A few key players emerged and went public, creating a new industry for Wall Street to watch. Many CRO start-ups were founded by former drug company executives who decided to form their own operations. After a period of internal growth, some of the start-ups began growing through a financial â€Å"roll-up† strategy. An industry publication listed 18 top players in North America, with total contract research revenues of $1.7 billion. The top five public companies, ranked by 1996 revenues, were Quintiles Transnational Corp. ($537.6 million), Covance Inc. ($494.8 million), Pharmaceutical Product Development Inc ($152.3 million), ClinTrials Research Inc. ($93.5 million), and Parexel International Corp. ($88 million).4 (See Exhibit 3 for recent sales and pr ofit data on CROs.) With its talent pool of scientists at the Research Triangle and U.S. headquarters of the pharmaceutical giants Glaxo and Burroughs Wellcome (later merged as Glaxo Wellcome), the state of North Carolina quickly became the center of the burgeoning CRO industry. Two of the â€Å"big five† companies, Quintiles and Pharmaceutical Product Development, were started there by academic colleagues of Candace’s. Quintiles Transnational was considered to be the †gold standard of the industry.† Quintiles was founded in 1982 by Dennis Gillings, a British biostatistician who had worked at Hoechst and was a professor at the University of North Carolina, where Candace completed her postdoctoral work. After raising $39 million in a 1994 IPO, Quintiles went on an acquisition spree, adding other professional service businesses. For example, the firm provided sales and marketing services to support the launch of new drug products. By the end of 1996, Quintiles was the worldâ€⠄¢s largest CRO, with 7,000 employees in 56 offices in 20 countries. A typical clinical study managed by Quintiles was conducted at 160 sites in 12 countries, involving 10,000 patients. Quintiles was more diversified than many of its CRO competitors, with about 65% of revenues derived from the  core CRO business and 35% from other services.5 Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD) was founded in 1989 by Fred Eshelman, a colleague of Candace’s from the postdoctoral program in pharmacy. Like the founder of Quintiles, Eshelman had worked in drug research for several pharmaceutical firms, including Glaxo and Beecham. PPD’s revenues jumped 500% between 1990 and 1994, based on such work as multi-year contracts for AIDS research for the National Institutes of Health. PPD conducted a successful IPO in March 1996, with its stock jumping from $18 per share to $25.50 per share on the first day of trading. PPD bought a U.K. Phase I facility in November 1995, and in September 19 96 merged with another leading CRO. Their combined net revenues exceeded $200 million. Kendle at the Crossroads To Candace and Chris, it was clear that certain competitive capabilities were necessary for companies of Kendle’s size to compete successfully with the major CROs: therapeutic expertise (in specific medical areas) broad range of services (pharmaceutical companies wanted to work with fewer CROs, with each offering a wide range of services across multiple phases of the RD process); integrated clinical data management (the ability to efficiently collect, edit and analyze data from thousands of patients with various clinical conditions from many geographically dispersed sites); 4 â€Å"Annual Report: Leading CROs,† RD Directions, September 1997, pp. 28+. 5 William Blair Co. LLC analyst report, Quintiles Transnational Corp., June 20, 1997, p. 3. international, multi-jurisdictional presence (to speed up drug approval, tests were being launched in several countries at once); With the exception of international presence, Candace and Chris felt comfortable with their ability to meet these criteria. Kendle’s staff had scientific expertise in multiple therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, immunology, oncology, respiratory, skeletal disease and inflammation. The company also had broad capabilities, including management of studies in Phases II through Phase IV. It did not consider the absence of Phase I capabilities to be an issue, since this activity was quite separate. (See Exhibit 4 for a comparison of CRO geographical locations.) To build an integrated clinical data management capability, Chris had directed the development of TrialWare ®, a proprietary software system that allowed global data collection and processing and the integration of clinical data with clients’ in-house data management systems. TrialWare ® consisted of several modules including a database management system that greatly reduced study start-up costs and time by standardizing database design and utilizing scanned image technology to facilitate the design of data entry screens, the point-and-click application of edits from a pre-programmed library, and workflow management (parallel processing). Other modules included a system that coded medical history, medication and adverse event data and a touch-tone telephone system that was used for patient  randomization, just-in-time drug supply and collection of real-time enrollment data. Against the backdrop of a changing industry, Candace and Chris felt the need to develop additional business skills and focus Kendle’s strategy. To clarify their management roles, Candace and Chris switched their existing responsibilities. Chris pointed out, â€Å"Candace became CEO as we realized that her focus was long-range and I took over as Chief Operating Officer to focus on the short-range. In addition, the marketing strength of our competitors was propelling them further and further ahead of Kendle. Candace brought her science background and entrepreneurial skills, while I brought my management. The problem was that we were relatively weak in sales and marketing.† To broaden their skills, Candace went off in 1991 to the Owner/President Management Program (OPM), an executive education program run by Harvard Business School for three weeks a year over three years. Chris followed her to OPM in 1994. After completing the OPM program, Candace assessed the situation, We have to be big enough relative to our competitors to take on large, international projects. When Searle was looking for CROs for international work, all we could do was possibly subcontract it out to small shops. In contrast, Quintiles had six overseas offices of its own. Furthermore, when Searle calls and says, ‘I just got off the phone, Quintiles will cut their price by a million dollars,’ if you’re too small, you’re not going to be able to respond to that. Candace and Chris realized that Kendle could not grow fast enough internally to keep up with its peers and did not have the cash for acquisitions. They entertained the thought of selling Kendle, and were approached several times about a sale. But by nature, they were a competitive, athletic couple. Chris got up to play squash every morning at 7 AM, and Candace was an avid rower, recently winning a gold medal in a Cincinnati regatta. Perhaps not surprisingly, Candace and Chris decided to grow the firm and take it public rather than sell. As Candace described their motivation, â€Å"We were not driven to be a public company as such, but primarily to be bigger, and for this, we  needed public financing to succeed in the new competitive landscape. The whole target was not to let the big guys get too far out ahead of us.† Preparations for Growth By 1994, Kendle had grown to $4.4 million in revenues. Candace, the driving force throughout the IPO process, sought advice from an old college friend, a well-known Cincinnati businessman. He advised her, â€Å"before you go public, practice being a public company.† Candace therefore formulated a plan for Kendle to go public in 1999. Kendle began hiring key managers to build up functional units. Between 1994 and February 1997, new directors of clinical data management, information technology, biostatistics, finance, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory affairs, and human resources were hired. As Chris described, â€Å"the plan was to put this infrastructure in place to look and act like a public company— communications, IT, finance. The idea was hire at the top and they’ll fill in their organization.† Many of these new managers had previously worked together at other companies. To prepare for Wall Street scrutiny, Kendle began issuing internal quarterly fi nancial statements and sharing them with employees in an open-book management style. Candace and Chris tried to make the growing number of employees feel like â€Å"part of the family† in other ways, too. The Kendle â€Å"photo gallery† displayed professional portraits of employees with their favorite hobbies. In 1995 Chris led the development of a corporate mission statement and a document on strategic plans that was shared with all employees. Kendle was organized in a matrix fashion (see Exhibit 5 for organizational chart). Each department was treated as a strategic business unit (SBU) with a director who established standards and carried profit responsibility. At the same time, each research contract was managed by a project manager who assembled a team from across the various SBUs. Clinical trials involved five functional SBUs at Kendle: 1. Regulatory Affairs recruited investigators, helped them with FDA registration forms, and obtained approval from ethics boards. Regulatory Affairs maintained a database of 5,000 investigators. 2. Clinical Monitoring sent clinical research associates (CRA) out to the testing sites (every 4 to 6 weeks) to enforce Good Clinical Practice regulations. The CRAs were typically young, single health care professionals who spent a significant amount of their time on the road. The CRA would collect data from investigators, resolve queries generated by Clinical Data Management, and promote patient enrollment. 3. Clinical Data Management produced a â€Å"locked† database that could be submitted to the FDA. Data from case report forms were input into a computer system and â€Å"cleaned† through a manual review of the forms and an automated check of the databases. The challenge was to lock a database quickly while maintaining data quality. 4. Biostatistics would â€Å"unblind† the locked database and analyze it to determine if the data confirmed that the test results met the criteria for safety and efficacy. Biostatistics also defined the scope of new studies. 5. Medical Writing generated â€Å"the truckload of paper submitted to the FDA† for a New Drug Application, including a statistical analysis, a clinical assessment, preclinical and clinical data, a description of the manufacturing process, and the supporting patient documentation. 1996: The Celebrexâ„ ¢ Study, Filing Preparations, and European acquisitions 1996 was a busy year for Candace, Chris, and Kendle’s new management team. They simultaneously began conducting a major drug study, working with underwriters on IPO preparations, and looking for overseas acquisition targets. In 1996 Kendle managed 62 clinical studies at 4,100 sites involving approximately 20,000 patients. Celebrexâ„ ¢ Study In January 1996, Kendle began working on a major drug called Celebrexâ„ ¢ (celecoxib). Its client Searle was engaged in a neck-and-neck race with Merck, the largest U.S. drug company, to be the first to market a COX-2 inhibitor. A COX-2 inhibitor was a new type of anti-inflammatory drug that promised low incidence of bleeding ulcers in long-term, high-dosage users such as arthritis patients. The Searle-Merck race was closely followed in the business press. Searle awarded the international portion of the Celebrexâ„ ¢ contract to another CRO, since Kendle only had facilities for testing in the United States. However, Kendle did win the contract to conduct all the U.S. Phase II and III trials. The Celebrexâ„ ¢ contract was a â€Å"huge feather in our cap,† recalled the chief financial officer. â€Å"In order to beat Merck, we worked very hard and kept compressing the timelines.† To head the Celebrexâ„ ¢ project, Kendle hired Bill Sietsema, PhD, as assistant director of clinical research. A therapeutic expert in skeletal diseases and inflammation, Sietsema had worked at Proctor Gamble for 12 years. While Sietsema served as overall program director, Chris acted as the operational project manager, meeting with his Searle counterpart in Chicago on a monthly basis. In early 1997, Kendle also set up a new regional office in Chicago, close to Searle headquarters. For Kendle, the Celebrexâ„ ¢ project was a chance to â€Å"show what we could do and to develop a reputation as a leader in the field of skeletal disease and inflammation.† Kendle actively helped investigators recruit arthritis patients, running television advertisements, directing interested volunteers to a call center. Three hundred  investigators enrolled over 10,000 patients, producing over one million pages of case report forms. Most importantly, through close integration of information systems with Searle, Kendle was able to beat an industry standard. Instead of taking the typical six months to one year, the time span between the last patient in Phase II and the first in Phase III, which began in June 1996, was only 22 days. Preparation for SEC Filing By the time the Celebrexâ„ ¢ program rolled around, Candace and Chris felt that they might have to go public earlier than intended because of the competitive landscape. The new chief financial officer, Tim Mooney, took a leading role in the preparations. Prior to joining Kendle in May 1996, Mooney had worked as CFO at The Future Now, Inc., a computer reseller and Hook-SupeRx, a retail drugstore chain. At Kendle, Mooney replaced the controller with an audit manager from Coopers Lybrand to beef up his staff. Mooney also led the building of many of the other financially related departments at Kendle. To act as the lead underwriters on the IPO, in August 1996 Mooney chose two regional investment banks, Chicago-based William Blair Company, L.L.C., which had handled the 1995 IPO of Kendle’s competitor Parexel, and Wessels, Arnold Henderson from Minneapolis. William Blair began putting Kendle through the paces of preparing to file a preliminary prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The process of going public generally took from 60 to 180 days. One of the key steps in the process was the conversion of Kendle from a subchapter corporation to a C corporation at the time of the IPO. (Subchapter S corporations were entities with 35 or fewer shareholders that were treated like partnerships for tax purposes. Corporate income tax was passed through tax-free to the owners who then paid personal income taxes due.) U-Gene In October 1996 Mooney hired Tony Forcellini, a former colleague, as director of mergers and acquisitions (MA). Tony had worked at Arthur Andersen in the tax department, and then as a treasurer at Hook-SupeRx with Mooney. The search for European acquisition targets was mainly conducted by Candace and Tony Forcellini, with back-up support by Tim Mooney and Chris. All the while, Chris and Bill Sietsema were working away on the Celebrexâ„ ¢ program. Forcellini’s first decision was easy—whether to pursue an offering memorandum that landed on his desk shortly after he arrived. The company for sale was U-Gene Research B.V. (U-Gene), a CRO based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. U-Gene was represented by Technomark Consulting Services Ltd. (Technomark), a London-based consulting firm uniquely specializing in the healthcare industry. Technomark had an extensive database on European CROs and was primarily in the business of matching its pharmaceutical company clients’ trial s with appropriate European CROs, but it also had a small investment banking division. U-Gene, a full-service CRO, was an attractive target for Kendle. The venture capitalist owners were actively looking for buyers. With a 38-bed Phase I facility in Utrecht and regional offices in the United Kingdom and Italy, U-Gene could increase both Kendle’s service offering and geographic presence. Since its founding in 1986, U-Gene had served more than 100 clients, including 19 of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies. In 1996, U-Gene participated in 115 studies at approximately 500 sites involving approximately 4,700 patients and recorded net revenues of $12.5 million, a 37% increase over the prior year, and operating profit of $1.3 million, a 47% increase over the prior year. Because of its U.K. and Italian offices, U-Gene viewed itself as on the way to becoming a pan-European CRO.  (See Exhibit 6 for U-Gene financial statements.) With momentum building, in November 1996, Forcellini seized upon U-Gene as Kendle’s possible entry into Europe and submitted a bid, offering cash and private stock. Unfortunately, Kendle lost out on this bid to a competitor, Collaborative Clinical Research, Inc, as U-Gene’s owners either wanted a full cash deal or stock from a public company. Collaborative was a competitor slightly larger than Kendle ($25.7 million in revenues) that had gone public in June 1996 and had established a software partnership with IBM. Although it had access to investigators outside the United States, Collaborative also viewed U-Gene as the establishment of a European presence. On February 12, 1997 Collaborative announced that it had signed a letter of intent to acquire U-Gene in exchange for 1.75 million newly issued shares. While this put Kendle out of the picture, the prospects of a deal were not completely killed. On the same day, February 12, 1997, Collaborative also announced that its first-quarter 1997 earnings would be significantly below expectations. On the next day, on analyst speculation that a major client contract had been lost, their stock fell by 27.3%, closing at $9.00.6 This put Collaborative’s UGene deal in jeopardy. Underwriter Concerns About two weeks after Collaborative’s announcement, on February 25, 1997, another CRO, ClinTrials, also suffered a drop in stock price. ClinTrials’ stock lost more than half its market value,  dropping 59%, to $9.50 per share. The fall began when an analyst from Wessels Arnold downgraded the ClinTrials stock to â€Å"hold† from â€Å"buy,† citing a number of key management departures, and continued after ClinTrials announced that its first-quarter earnings would be half its year-earlier profit. The reason for the unexpected earnings decline was the cancellation of five projects totaling $37 million, with the possibility of even lower earnings due to an unresolved project dispute with a client.7 ClinTrials’ negative performance began to affect other CRO stocks, including that of Quintiles.8 With client concentration an issue in ClinTrials’ stock performance, William Blair developed doubts about the timing of Kendle’s IPO. Although Kendle was close to filing its preliminary prospectus, on the day after ClinTrial’s stock dropped, William Blair analysts had a meeting with Kendle’s management and told them that they had decided to withdraw as lead underwriters in the IPO. Candace was resolved to keep going. She said, â€Å"There’s no way out of the concentration issue. We can’t buy our way out of it, because we can’t do MA deals until we have a public currency, and every day Searle is bringing us more work, we won’t tell them no.† She then asked Mooney to find new investment bankers, and he thought, â€Å"what am I going to do now?† Hoping for a lead, Mooney called up a former security analyst from Wessels Arnold who had gone to work at Lehman Bros. Although Kendle was smaller than Lehman’s usual clients, Lehman agreed to underwrite Kendle’s IPO, with the reassurance that â€Å"we think we can sell through the client concentration issue.† After an agreement with New York-based Lehman was reached, Mooney searched for a regional firm because, as he decided, â€Å"I didn’t want two New York-size egos. J.C. Bradford, based in Nashville, Tennessee, had a good reputation in the industry, and struck us as a nice regional bank. They were more retail-oriented than institutional-oriented, so they wouldn’t directly be competing with Lehman in types of clientele.† Bradford had managed the IPO of the first large CRO to go public (ClinTrials, in 1993) and Lehman had led the IPO of PPD in January 1996. Gmi and U-Gene revisited At the same time, Forcellini was moving ahead on the acquisition search. In January 1997 he tasked Technomark with using its CRO database to generate a list of possible European acquisition targets that met the following criteria: â€Å"ideally a CRO with United Kingdom headquarters; $5 million to $7 million in revenues; no Searle business; certain types of therapeutic expertise; strong in phases II through IV; and certain country locations.† The initial list had 50 European CROs, which Kendle narrowed down to 14 prospects. Technomark then contacted these 14 prospects to sound out their willingness to sell, bringing the number down to five candidates: three CROs in Germany, two in the United Kingdom, and one in the Netherlands (not U-Gene). To assess the prospects, Kendle used information from Technomark on comparable MA deals. Candace and Tony Forcellini then traveled around Europe for a week visiting the five companies. They decided to further pursue two companies: a small, 15-person monitoring organization in the United Kingdom and one in Germany. The U.K. prospect was quickly discarded because of an aggressive asking price and accounting problems. Kendle then moved on to the German target, a company named gmi. Its full name was GMI Gesellschaft fur Angewandte Mathematik und Informatik mbH. Founded in 1983, gmi provided a full range of Phase II to IV services. gmi had conducted trials in Austria, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France, among other countries, and had experience in health economic studies and 7 â€Å"ClinTrials Predicts Sharply Lower Profit: Shares Plunge 59%†, The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 1997, p. B3. 8 David Ranii, â€Å"Investors avoiding Quintiles,† The News Observer, Raleigh, NC, February 27, 1997, p. C8. professional training programs. In 1996, gmi participated in 119 studies at multiple sites and recorded net revenues of $7 million, a 32% increase over the prior year, and operating profit of $1.4 million, a 16% increase over the prior year. At March 31, 1997, gmis backlog was approximately $9.6 million. gmi considered itself to be especially good at Phase III trials. (See Exhibit 7 for gmi financial statements.) While Candace and Forcellini were narrowing down European targets, Mooney was hunting for cash. In February 1997 Kendle met at a special lunch with its existing bankers, Star Bank (later renamed Firstar), in Cincinnati. Mooney recalled the conversation vividly: â€Å"After Candace and Chris described their plans, Star Bank’s CEO made a proposal, ‘If you keep Kendle a private company and avoid the hassles of being public, we’ll lend you the money you need for acquisitions.’† With the financing in hand, Candace and Forcellini visited gmi in Munich. While gmi’s owners were willing to talk, they did not have much interest in selling. As Mooney described it, â€Å"gmi was a classic case of having grown to a certain size, had a comfortable level of income, but weren’t interested in putting in the professional systems to grow beyond that level.† After several conversations in March, it was not clear that Kendle and gmi’s owners w ould be able to reach a mutually agreeable price. At this point in early April 1997, the possibility of U-Gene as an acquisition candidate heated up. After the U-Gene deal with Collaborative Research began to collapse, Kendle had initiated a carefully structured inquiry about U-Gene’s interest in renewed discussions. This inquiry led to further discussions and a request in April for Kendle to meet in Frankfurt to try to reach an agreement. With the gmi deal in doubt, Kendle agreed to try to reach closure with U-Gene. After some discussion, both sides agreed on a price of 30 million Dutch guilders, or about US$15.6 million, $14 million of which would be paid in cash, and the remaining $1.6 million would be in the form of a promissory note payable to the selling shareholders.  U-Gene wanted to complete the transaction within the next several weeks, so it would have to be financed at least initially by borrowings. Even if Kendle went ahead with an IPO, the equity financing would not be completed until the end of the summer. Discussions with gmi continued through this period since Kendle was confident about its ability to obtain financing from Star Bank. Ultimately, Kendle’s team was able to agree upon a price with gmi. The owners were willing to accept a price of 19.5 million Deutsche marks, or about US$12.3 million, with at least $9.5 million in cash. They would accept shares for the remaining $2.8 million, if Kendle successfully completed an IPO. The owners were willing to hold off the deal until the IPO issue was resolved. Closing the Deals and IPO Decision To complete both the U-Gene and gmi deals, Kendle would need to borrow about $25 million to $28 million, so financing became critical. Mooney went back to Star Bank to take the bankers up on their promise. He described their reaction: â€Å"Star Bank said they couldn’t lend $28 million to a company that only has $1 million in equity. Nobody did that. They might be willing to finance one acquisition, with the help of other banks, but there was no way that they would provide $28 million.† Mooney was quite angry, but had no choice but to look for other sources of financing. He first tried to get bridge financing from Lehman and Bradford, but they refused, saying that they had â€Å"gotten killed on such deals in the 1980s.† There was also a possibility of financing from First Chicago Bank, but this did not materialize. Finally, in late April 1997, Mooney contacted NationsBank, N.A., which was headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and provided banking services to the CRO industry. Nationsbank expressed interest, but only in a large deal. Even $28 million was a small amount to Nationsbank. In 11  a few short weeks, Nationsbank ended up structuring a $30 million credit for Kendle, consisting of a $20 million, three-year revolving credit line and $10 million in five-year, subordinated notes. The interest rate on the credit line was tied to a money market base rate plus 0.50% (currently totaling 6.2%), and the subordinated debt carried a 12% rate. †So NationsBank stepped up in a pretty big way. They could have ended up with Kendle as a private company, with $30 million in debt.† Because of the risk, Nationsbank would also take warrants giving the bank the right to purchase 4% of Kendle’s equity, or up to 10% if the IPO was delayed and Kendle had to borrow the full amount to do both acquisitions. Lehman Brothers was confident about an IPO. The underwriters felt Kendle could raise $39 million to $40 million at a price between $12 and $14 per share, and that Candace and Chris could sell some of their shares as well. Premier Research Worldwide Ltd., a CRO with $15.2 million in 1996 revenues, had raised $46.75 million from its recent IPO in February 1997. Kendle felt they had a much better track record than Premier. Kendle now faced some difficult decisions. It could do the full program, including both acquisitions, taking the $30 million Nationsbank deal, and planning for an IPO in late summer. The successful acquisitions of gmi and U-Gene would establish Kendle as the sixth largest CRO in Europe, based on total revenues, and one of only four large CROs able to offer clients the full range of Phase I through Phase IV clinical trials in Europe. The pricing on the two acquisitions of 8 to 10 times EBITDA seemed in line with recent CRO deals (see Exhibit 8). And, once the IPO was completed, Kendle would have both a cash cushion and stock as a currency to help finance future growth and acquisitions. Assuming an IPO of 3 million new shares at a price of $13.00, Kendle would have a cash position of about $14 million and no debt in the capital structure. (See Exhibits 9 and 10 for pro forma  income statements and balance sheets showing the impact of the acquisitions and the IPO.) A related issue was how many of their shares Candace and Chris should sell if an IPO were done. Their current thinking was to sell 600,000 shares. Thus, a total of 3.6 million shares would be for sale at the time of the IPO, including a primary offering of 3 million shares and a secondary offering of 600,000 shares. This sale would reduce holdings controlled by Candace and Chris from 3.65 million shares (83.1% of the shares currently outstanding) to 3.05 million shares (43.4% of the new total outstanding). Doing the full IPO and acquisition program, however, was unprecedented among Kendle’s peers. â€Å"Nobody does this combination all at once—an IPO, senior- and sub-debt financing, and MA deals,† as Mooney described the situation. Furthermore, the stock prices of public CROs had been falling since last February (see Exhibits 11 and 12 for stock market valuation and price information). If Kendle bought into the full program and the market crashed or the IPO was unsuccessful, the company would have almost $30 million of debt on its books with a very modest equity base. Perhaps it would be better to do just the U-Gene acquisition and use Star Bank to finance it. After completing this acquisition, it could then pursue the IPO. This approach was safer, but of course Kendle might miss the IPO window and miss the opportunity to acquire the second company. Indeed, instead of discouraging Kendle from doing an IPO, the fall in CRO stock prices might be taken as a signal tha t Kendle should forge ahead before the window closed completely.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Lord of the Flies :: essays research papers

"It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways." (Buddha) Is man basically good or is man basically evil? In the popular novel, Lord of the Flies, William Goldings shows that man is basically evil, but that man can overcome those instincts if he tries. Simon, Ralph, and Piggy are prime examples of keeping their good character. In each of them there is a desire to do good. They show throughout the novel that it is possible, even when surrounded by evil, to put aside desires and keep good morals. Simon is the morally good boy. His selflessness and goodness comes from within. He is kind to the little boys, and helps the outcasts. For example, when none of the boys want to give Piggy meat from the first pig, Simon steps up and takes him meat. "Simon†¦wiped his mouth and shoved his piece of meat over the rocks to Piggy†¦"(p.74) While everyone else is cruel to the young ones, he helps the "lil'uns" grab meat from the trees when they can't reach. "Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled off the choicest†¦passed them back to the endless, outstretched hands." (p.56) Simon helps those whom no one else is kind to, perhaps remembering that he was looked down upon once. He realizes what it's like to be scorned and to be the "little one", so he tries to make it less miserable for the outcasts by being kind to them. He wants to always help others, so when he discovers the beast is inside of everyone, not external, as they had imagined, he instantly runs down the mountain to tell him. He helps others even to the point of death. Simon is not the only one to demonstrate selflessness in the book. Ralph is the shows his kindness and goodness at the very beginning of the book. As leader, he desires for all of the boys to be safely rescued and for them to be taken care of. "If this isn't an island we might get rescued straight away†¦everyone must stay around here and wait and not go away." (p. 22) He starts out with the best intentions in mind, and wants to have the best for everyone. As the novel continues, and evil intensifies, Ralph won't participate in the wickedness of others. He keeps away from evil by having quiet times by himself and keeping his goal, to be rescued, in front of himself.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Analysis of Adarsh Society Scam Essay

Chavan was the revenue minister between 2001-2003 and had dealt with files pertaining to the ownership of the land. He is alleged to have recommended 40 per cent allotment of flats to civilians in the society, which was meant for war widows and heroes of Kargil war. The exposure of the scam forced the Congress party to seek the resignation of then Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan . Maharashtra environment department had denied giving clearance to the society. The reports make it clear that neither MCZMA nor the state’s department of environment gave any clearance for the high-rise building, The state environment department has denied giving clearance to Adarsh housing society. The state environment department has denied giving clearance to Adarsh housing society. Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society building violated provisions of the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 1991. No CRZ clearance or permission had been sought to construct the building. It concluded that th e no CRZ clearance had been sought for incorporating 2269 sqm of BEST land. This was a condition imposed on the housing society by the state’s department of revenue when additional land was allotted in August 2005. The Adarsh Society has also violated the floor space index permissible in the CRZ-II area of Mumbai. This is prescribed in the Development and Control Regulations of 1967. There are reports that there are other buildings too that have come up,† he accepted, adding that he will go after them after 2010 amendment to the CRZ regulations are passed by Parliament. The high-rise is built on 6,450 sq metres within the Colaba naval area and was cleared on the condition of housing war veterans but now has 104 members, including former service chiefs, senior serving Army officials, a former Environment Minister, legislators and state bureaucrats. Govt. is waiting for the official report from the various ministry, only then they take action against the gulty. MMRDA to revoke occupancy certificate till Ministry of Environment and Forest gives clearance. The prime piece of land in upmarket Colaba given to the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society belonged to the state government and not the Services, he said. The land belongs to the state government, based on the collector’s records. Revenue department granted land to the Society as per GR of 9. 7. 1999,† he said. Certain files were missing from the adarsh community housing society that bearing signatures of important officials, pertain to the decisions taken in the stages before the project was cleared by the government. Tiwari was urban development secretary for over eight years (2000 to 2009). During his tenure, the Adarsh society was given various clearances, including additional floor space index. Raj Bhavan sources confirmed on Tuesday evening that governor K Shankarnarayan received a formal request from the state government recommending him to make reference to the Supreme Court for removal of Tiwari. This will mean that Tiwari will not be able to challenge his removal in any court. Both Defence Minister AK Antony and Army Chief General VK Singh have promised strict action against any serving officer who is found to be guilty in the scam. MoD has also said that it will give prompt permission to CBI to question any serving officer and will have no objection if they are prosecuted. The controversial Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society (ACHS) had plans to undertake another residential project. It had even approached the Maharashtra government for allotment of a 7,500 sq m plot situated near the Spastic Society of India in Colaba   ACHS had proposed to develop the plot to build cheap houses for the ‘‘ weaker sections , defence personnel and other deserving classes’’ . Society was promoted by a few IAS officers; subsequently IPS officers, government servants, MLAs and MLCs joined in and the list went up to 130 members. The society applied for land at Wadala , and the government in principle showed willingness to allot 13,000 sq metres (over 3 acres) in September 2009. This plot was located close to the high tide line, where no construction activity is usually permissible. Arguing that there were at least two other buildings which had previously been permitted to be set up right next to the HTL, Adarsh promoters requested processing of their proposal and even urged the state government to modify the HTL to override CRZ concerns. he society requested the state government to redraw the high tide line (HTL) to clear the project from the ‘‘ CRZ point of view’’ . HTL is the line of intersection of the land with the water surface at the time of high tide. Restrictions are imposed on development activity within 500m of the HTL. Minimal construction activity is permitted in these parts. But since the Adarsh scam was unearthed, the names added to the file will be deleted or the allo tment of land to Indus may be delayed,’’ said sources. All of them got flats in the society in an expensive part of Mumbai at throwaway prices. While ownership of the land was still with the state, it was in the custody of Army for several years. Army had taken custody of the land ever since it was reclaimed because the state government was to give it to the Army in return for Army’s land in Santa Cruz firing range which was taken over by for expanding the Western Expressway. Now, as the auditors go through records, it is clear that the Army neither got the land, nor financial compensation from the state. The society was asked to change the bye-laws by the then Revenue Minister Ashok Chavan. That is on record. He called a meeting and called members of the society and asked them to change the bye-laws and 40 per cent of civilians should be allowed to be members of the society. There it created a lot of problems,† Deshmukh said. the defence ministry has asked to look into issues concerning the issue of a no objection certificate, relinquishment of the land in possession of the army and the extent to which commitments for the welfare of defence ersonnel were complied with, the official added. Among other things, the bureaucrats have been asked about the circumstances under which they became members of Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society and the source of funds for the luxurious flats in the 31-storeyed building, the official said. the authorities cancelled the building’s occupation certificate and snapped off its water and power supplies. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (B MC) has decided to provide all necessary information regarding residential buildings and societies on its website. People can ascertain whether a particular shop or nursing home is licensed or not. RC THAKUR   chief promoter of Adarsh Society, was the military estate officer in Colaba division when he came to know about the prime plot and started getting files moved. His colleagues say that whenever Thakur came up against a hurdle, he would make the person a member of the society. What I think is to demolish that building because it is not following any norms passed by the government. Or we can hand over that building to the navy and army and let them decide what to do. Or we can give the flats to the kargil widows, because that land is for them only. Rest is depend on the government. If any such scams occur in mere future than public must raise their voice in order to protest them, it somehow effect our economy and spoil our society. Mostly the scams are done by the government personnel’s. and nowadays many people are trying to somehow get the government job. If we are not raising our voice now then in future we cant save our country. In India there are so many terriost who are spoiling our country and we are not bothered about them we just focus on the terriosm.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Belief Systems Essay

Belief systems and philosophies have greatly affected the people and societies where they are practiced. They give guidelines on how to live their lives and affect every aspect of their cultures. Two such belief systems and philosophies are Hinduism and Confucianism. Hinduism is a religion with no founder. The people who practice this religion believe in moksha and reincarnation. Moksha is the freedom from earthly desires and a complete understanding of the world. Reincarnation is the belief that people are reborn over and over again until achieving moksha. Whether or not they are born into a good life depends on their previous life’s karma (good or bad deeds). In Hinduism, they also have a caste system. It divides people into four social classes and hardly gives any social mobility at all. People are decided which class they belong to at birth. For example, if a child is born into a family of slaves, that child will be a slave for the rest of his life. Confucianism is a philosophy started by Confucius in China. In Confucianism, the people valued education and believed in filial piety, the respect for elders. They also believed in the spirits of ancestors and created the famous quote, â€Å"do not do unto others, what you would not want them to do unto you.† Hinduism and Confucianism greatly affected the people and societies they were practiced in. In Hinduism, because of the belief in reincarnation and karma, people avoided doing bad deeds. Those who achieved moksha gained a complete understanding of the world and got rid of their desires. However, the caste systems also introduced discrimination. People of different classes were treated differently. In Confucianism, it brought a sophisticated education system and people respected their elders. It also affected the roles of family members. For example, the oldest males were always considered the head the family. Therefore, it is evident that these belief systems had a tremendous impact upon the social standing and family relationships of the societies that practiced them. There are many diverse religions and philosophies that exist around the world. Many of these belief systems have deeply affected both the people and societies where they’re practiced. Two examples of these religions are Buddhism and Hinduism. Hinduism is believed to have been the oldest religion that still exists to this day. There is currently no known founder. It’s a polytheistic religion that has many major beliefs, such as reincarnation and karma. According to Hindi beliefs, what a person does in a lifetime affects what place in society that person will be in his or her next life. The many gods that Hindus believe in are all the faces and personalities of one god. Moksha is a worldly understanding that Hindus strive to attain. However, it’s believed to occur over many lifetimes, and is achieved through reincarnation, or rebirth. Buddhism is a polytheistic religion that is quite similar to Hinduism. It was founded by a man named Siddhartha Gautama, or the Buddha, the Enlightened one. Like Hindus, Buddhists believe in reincarnation and nirvana, a concept similar to moksha. They both deal with the concept of the understanding of life and the end of the cycle of reincarnation. While reaching Enlightenment, or wisdom, the Buddha founded the Four Noble Truths that state in order to achieve happiness and stop all suffering, one must give up all worldly attachments and desires by living a life of poverty. Unlike Hinduism, however, Buddhists reject the idea of the caste system, a division of social classes. Thus, the first followers of Buddhism were essentially people who were low socially, such as laborers and commoners. As Buddhism and Hinduism became harder and harder to follow, there were many changes made. Most Buddhists found it hard to give up all of their wants and desires. Two groups, the Theravada and Mahayana sects, were formed. The latter had provided salvation to all who followed it, and thus it became much more popular. The Theravada sect contained the people who followed the original teachings of the Buddha. In response to the rising popularity of Buddhism, Indian art was majorly affected. Sculptures of Buddha were common to see among merchants. As for Hinduism, despite the laws that forbid the isolation of people of lower class, the caste system still thrives in Indian society. In addition, a trend towards monotheism is currently occurring. In conclusion, the major religions of Buddhism and Hinduism have greatly affected the people and societies of the areas where they’re practiced. Belief systems and philosophies have deeply affected the world people and societies where they are practiced. Two such religions are Buddhism which started in India and Christianity which started in Rome. Buddhism was started by Siddhartha Gautama, also known as Buddha or the â€Å"enlightened one†. Buddhists believe in reincarnation, or re-birth after death. They thought that this was true for all living things; including animals. Buddhists also believe in giving up all self desires to help reach nirvana. This means that one cannot want anything and will then reach a state of perfect understanding and will become enlightened. The Buddhists followed the eight-fold path, or middle-way and the four noble truths. They believed that if you follow the four noble truths and the eight-fold path, you will be born again (reincarnation) and will reach nirvana. Lastly, they also believed in no social classes, so everyone was equal. This religion affected many people in many ways. It caused Buddhists to â€Å"be good† and follow the cold of law. The thought of no social classes also caused many people to convert to Buddhism causing the religion to spread as well as their ideas and practices. Another religion that greatly affected society is Christianity. All Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the only son of God and was born of the Virgin Mary. Also, he was sent to earth to spread the word of God and Christianity. Christians follow their code of law known as the 10 commandments. The 10 commandments tell one how to be a good Christian. Christians also their book the Bible and go to church every Sunday. Lastly, Christianity does not believe in any social classes. They believe that all people are created equal. Christianity provided a way of life, a close, loving, personal relationship with God, and eternal life after death (one goes to heaven; another belief). These three statements caused Christianity to spread and affect almost everyone in the world. Christianity is now the largest religion in the world. Christianity affected the world by spreading its ideas and influencing other religions. Many religions affected or still affect our world today. They may have affected people in their ideas, beliefs, practices, or even how they spread. If it wasn’t for all the different religions, our entire world would be different. Belief systems and philosophies have deeply affected the people and societies where they are practiced. Two such religions are Buddhism and Christianity. Beliefs Religious beliefs and practices have been around for a very long time, affecting societies and ways of life in positive ways. Two religions, that ironically both of their founders were raised to believe in other religions, that display this are Buddhism and Christianity. Starting with Buddhism, it was founded by Siddartha Gautama in India who was actually born Hindu. This is why Hinduism and Buddhism share a few common beliefs. One belief from Buddhism is the eightfold path. This is a guideline of how to live and act in daily life in order to achieve another belief, Nirvana. Nirvana is reached when you are released of all selfishness and worldly possessions. It is a state of understanding and happiness. They also, like Hinduism, believe in Karma which is what goes around comes around. Basically if you are bad it will come back at you. People who practice Buddhism are very peaceful and sometimes meditate. They live with harmony in hopes of achieving Nirvana and being reincarnated into a good next life. Like Buddhism, Christianity’s founder was not born Christian. The founder, Jesus Christ, was born Jewish in Israel. He is believed by all Christians to be the son of God. Christians are monotheistic, they believe in their one god, who is coincidentally named â€Å"God.† They believe in the 10 commandments, which, like the eightfold path, is a guideline for Christians to follow so the will go to the Golden Gate of Heaven. In Christianity, you must confess your sins so that you can be forgiven by God, because he forgives all. Christians live their lives doing good deeds, studying the Bible, and trying their best to follow the commandments. Christianity and Buddhism are actually similar; all religions are. Whether by guideline, language, place of origin, or beliefs they share in common goals. However, every single religion is alike in one way: they believe. Whether in one god or a hundred, they do believe and have faith that there is more than just this one life. Test Essay- Belief Systems Religions were and still are a major issue. Religion allows people to live better lives. It always affects the people or society in one way or another. Two of these major religions are Buddhism and Islam. Buddhism, founded by Siddhartha Guatama (Buddha) has many beliefs. One of them is the Four Noble Truths, which states that the reasons for pain and suffering in the world are people’s selfish desires. One must give up all desires, through the assistance of the Eightfold Path. By following the Eightfold Path, one can achieve nirvana, wisdom and union with the Creator. Some of the aspects are right conduct, views, and concentration. Buddhism rejects the caste system. They believe in reincarnation, life after death. Buddhism definitely affected people. It allows people to be happy, non-violent, and tolerant. Buddhism also created monks and nuns. These people must learn to beg so that they could learn humility. They must live a life of poverty, and can’t marry. Islam was founded by Muhammad. Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last prophet. Their major god and only god is Allah. They also believe in the Five Pillars. This includes complete faith and trust in Allah, fasting, praying five times a day, almsgiving, and pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. The Five Pillars can be compared to the Eightfold Path in the way it provides guidelines to achieve union with the Creator. Their holy book is the Quran, which gives them rules and regulations for moral conduct and behavior. Islam affects the people. Muslims must follow all Five Pillars to live right and go to heaven. They must follow the guidelines of the Quran. They must also celebrate Ramadan and fast. Religion is a major part of people’s lives. There are many different religions in the world today. Our religion basically makes us who we are. Belief systems and philosophies have deeply affected the people and societies where they are practiced. Buddhism and Judaism are only two of such belief systems that have made impacts on people. These religions not only affected the people in the religion, but their entire society. Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama- the Buddha. It is said that he had enlightenment and found out the cause of all suffering. This answer is called the Four Noble Truths. Essentially, Buddha said that the way to end all suffering is to detach from all selfish desires. The way to do this is to follow the Eight-Fold Path and the Middle Way – mid-way between self- denial and selfishness. This way, followers reach nirvana- a state of total understanding. People who follow Buddhism don’t recognize a caste system- so everyone is equal, unlike Hinduism- where Buddhism is derived from – which had people called â€Å"untouchables† who were considered unclean. Buddhism influenced the arts on the Silk Road Trade Routes. Statues of Buddha were placed along the roads and a lot of people learned about Buddhism while on these trade routes. Judaism was founded by Abraham- the father of the Hebrews. They are monotheistic and believe in God- Yahweh. It is written in the Torah- the Jews sacred scripture- that Yahweh directly spoke to Moses and gave a set of laws called the Ten Commandments, which are to guide the Jews to live a good life. Yahweh also established a covenant with his people, He would love and protect them and in return, they will follow his laws. Jews celebrated Passover to commemorate their freedom from slavery in Egypt and when God preserved their first born child. Jews, as a part of their laws, have to eat kosher foods. They can’t eat certain meats or mix certain foods together. Judaism was the first monotheistic religion to be established and laid the foundations for later monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam. Judaism and Buddhism both had impacts on people and society in different ways. Either by laying foundations for future religions or being a place of relief for outcasts, they made a big impact. Belief Systems Throughout history, there have been many belief systems and philosophies. Some have died out, or become unpopular, such as many Greek polytheistic religions in the past. Others, such as Confucianism and Judaism, have lived on and affected the lives of many. Confucianism is a philosophy started by a wise teacher, Confucius, in China. By teaching his theories and ways, this philosophy came to conquer many people’s beliefs. Confucians believe greatly in familial respect, or the respect in families, especially for elders. Education was also greatly valued. They believed education and respect could greatly influence social order. With the social order gained, a strong government can be developed. Judaism, on the other hand, was a religion. It was said to be Abraham who started this religion. Jews believe in the concept of monotheism, or the belief in one God. In this case, their God is a loving god. Through their God, the Ten Commandments were given to them to follow. They based their ways of life on the Torah, in which concepts such as the Sabbath, and kosher foods, were also based on. These two belief systems had a strong worldwide hold on people. Confucianism became a major philosophy among many Asian countries, such as Taiwan and China. Great respect and education is still extremely important in daily life. There is even a Teacher’s Day to honor Confucius. Judaism also had a preserved effect on people. Judaism laid the first foundations for other religions, such as Christianity and Islam. They, too, believe in only one God. Unlike Confucianism, however, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are spread all throughout the world. Now, history has moved on. Many ideas, cultures, and religions have risen and fallen. The concepts of Confucianism and Judaism, on the other hand, are still spreading and affecting the lives of many.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

The Health Benefits of Wine Essay Sample

The Health Benefits of Wine Essay Sample The Significance of Wine Essay Example The Significance of Wine Essay Example Wine represents a distilled drink made from fermented grapes or other fruits. Grapes ferment without the addition of sugars, enzymes, acids, water, or other nutrients owing to the healthy organic equilibrium. Sugar in the grapes is spent by yeast and subsequently transformed into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Diverse ranges of wines are made from an assortment of grapes and strains of yeasts. Intricate connections among the biochemical fruit growth, fermentation reactions, the terroir, and consequent appellation, along with human participation in the whole procedure, constitute to the known differences. Wine boasts of a sequential past that dates to ancient times, and it still is created and consumed by millions of people. Wine Effect People Wine has significant value rising from history. Wine constitutes a culture where it is drunk for various reasons and purposes. Consumption of wine depends on the intention. On a notable front, wine has been discovered to possess medicinal value. The following research has exposed the nutritional value of wine and its contribution to the overall health. One should say that wines match with different meals due to the occasion or other factors as discussed. The significance of wine in society is immense where and it is used for various reasons. In addition, wine has been observed to have an economic impact where it has contributed to the growth of economies. The following research analyzes the factors in detail. The History of Wine French winemakers learned their skill after increasing a flavor for Italian wine. Archeologists found bits of grapes on a stone platform from a location in southern France. These bits suggested that people used the platform for plodding the fruit to make wine (Gelling 14). The wine press provides the earliest molecular proof for wine making in France, and the traces in the amphorae support the idea that local wine making was motivated by trade with Etruscans from Italy. Over the centuries, the skill of wine has creation extended to France and other European countries. By that time, wine had become an important part of the daily diet, and people began to appreciate stronger and heavier wines. During the sixteenth century, wine became esteemed as a better substitute for beer, and as wine products began to expand, people began to value the idea of varying their drinking habits (Gelling 24). Virtues and vices of wine were converted with greater delight than in the preceding centuries. Enhanced production procedures led to the rise of finer qualities of wine, and glass bottle with tops began to be used. The French wine industry took off at the point when the corkscrew was devised (Gelling 28). Traditionally, medium sweet wines were produced in the precipitous areas where, due to weather and soil conditions, late harvest and early winter barrel fermentation conserving the wine (McIntyre 23). Availability of fresh, clean drinking water was a development that moved the wine industry into a new age. For next 150 years, wine creation has been entirely transformed into an art and science. With access to cooling, it has become easy for wineries to control the fermentation procedure temperature. The control of process climate has led to the manufacturing of high-quality wines in hot climates. The introduction of wine garnering machine has permitted winemakers to increase the size of their wineries and make them more efficient. Nowadays, the wine industry faces the test of meeting the demands of an ever-increasing market without losing the distinct character of its wines. Technology has helped to guarantee a continuous supply of quality wines. Modern wine gratitude pays tribute to the timeless art of wine making and demonstrates the importance of wine in the history (Gelling 34). Culture of Wine There is great amount of evidence for the importance of cultural factors in determining both drinking patterns and their magnitudes. Archeologists findings for the cultural roles of wines may have significant associations for policy makers particularly in areas where economic and political meeting could have the major impact on drinking cultures and their related lifestyles (McIntyre 28). Uses of wines in cultural functions and its role in transitional and celebratory rituals rates from the different demonstration, among them are symbolic purposes. Wine was used as a symbolic vehicle for recognizing, describing, constructing, and controlling cultural systems, values, interactive relationships, conduct norms, and prospects (Shaw 78). Choice of wine is hardly a matter of personal taste. At some levels, wines are used to describe the nature of the event. In many western cultures, different wines are tantamount with various festivities, for example, champagne is associated with celebrati ons. The type of wine served defined the nature of the occasion and the cultural relationship between the drinkers. In cultures with the more reputable heritage of traditional practices, views of situational suitability may involve intricate differences. Rules governing the uses of certain wines are tightly observed. For instance, certain wines are served before the meals while others are served after meals (Demossier 28). It is viewed as highly unfitting to serve or drink wine outside these particular situational backgrounds. There is no doubt that drinks have become an emblem of national identity. Ones national beverage can be an influential expression of ones loyalty and cultural identity. The national drink is often the representational emphasis for encouraging, sometimes perfect or glamorized, descriptions of the overall personality, values, and manner of life (Shaw 82). In some cultures, wines signify customary values of purity, generosity, and virility. Therefore, to reject the drink could be perceived as a refusal of these standards. Over the years, wines have encouraged active cultural in teractions, mutuality and sharing in the devoted drinking places. Intimate cultural groups are formed in drinking places where benches surround the tables, which forces physical contact between customers. Small groups find themselves at the same table often making friends with their nationals, and people share wine and jokes, strengthening their cultural ties for the rest of the evening. In cultural views of alcohol and wine, the indication suggests that the drinking venue meets some deep-seated, universal human needs. Culturally, wine has been used for ritual roles (McIntyre 32). Some ritual or celebrations mark almost all event of any importance in people’s lives and nearly all of these rites, in numerous beliefs, presuppose consumption of wines. Transitional rituals for events such as birth, coming-of-age, weddings, and death as well as significant life changes such as attainment or retirement and even far less major changes like the everyday switch from labor to leisure wholly entail ceremonial authorization (Demossier 35). The idea of ‘rites of passage, which are the rituals marking changeover from one position or phase in the lifetime to one more, has long been a principal of the anthropological diet. Rites of passage serve to build, enable, and improve the difficult passage from one social, physical or economic state to the next. Wine, in most cultures, is a crucial element of such rituals. The rites of passage associated with death, like those of birth and marriage, often involve several stages, each marked by drinking, and sometimes distinguished by different patterns of drinking. Nutrition of Wine Wine is known to have nutritive values where in some cases, it brings powerful health benefits, for instance, a glass a day may help reduce the risk of heart ailments and cancer. Wine is known to help in digestion, reduction of stress and even improving one’s skin due to its content of antioxidants. For example, for clear, smooth, and soft skin one can swap wine for the standard toner. One can soak cotton balls in red wine or transfer wine into a mini spray bottle and spray onto the skin. It is useful to massage the skin with fingertips to revive the skin. Studies have shown that the antioxidant phenolic compounds in wine might obstruct the pathological progress of Alzheimers disease. Slowing diabetes progress can be attributed to modest amounts of red wine in men. If spent in moderation as part of a balanced diet, wine should have no effect on the developing diabetes. A modest quantity of wine before sleep time can benefit someone catch slumber extra peacefully. Wine comprise s a great level of melatonin, which can aid an individual wind down added rapidly (Shaw 86). Wines’ antioxidant properties increase levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and protect against artery destruction, thus reducing the risk of heart disease. Wine and Meals Different kinds of wines match various types of meals. In other words, certain food dishes are combined with certain types of wine to improve the feasting experience. Most food and wine specialists believe that the most rudimentary component of diet and wine blend is considering the equilibrium amid the mass of the nourishment and the heaviness of the wine. Diet and wine complement each other because of the competitions and differences they compromise to each other. Nourishment flavors well with wine since wine delivers additional convention of aromas, flavors, and feels that perform as a hindrance to the smells, tastes, and feels of the nourishment being consumed (Plack 21). Some foods work so well with certain wines that the match becomes definitive. Classic food and wine mixtures include Champagne and Oysters, Sauternes and Roquefort Cheese, Red Burgundy and Roast Bee, Red Bordeaux and Lamb, Port and Stilton Cheese. The mixture is the most rudimentary way in which food and wine go together (Marie 18). Society Individuals do trade with wine in Asia. The wine industry is expedited by an even bigger intake of wine among female customers. China’s large market has seen barter trade thrive well where barrels of wine serve even as the standard of exchange. Wine has a spiritual importance in Judaism as it characterizes an essential part of Jewish laws and customs. There exist blessings recited over wine or grape juice to sanctify the Shabbat. It becomes a rabbinic duty for adults to drink wine in the course of the Seder. Christians also distinguish wine in Eucharist. Wine is regularly recommended for various sicknesses by Hippocrates, the forefather of modern medicine, and by many distinguished doctors. Mostly, many southern European states regard wine to be healthy for the nation-making process that wine is defined in a dissimilar class from other alcohol forms. Drinks are used to describe the setting of the event. Wine is used as a condition definer where it is used to projecting the nat ure of the occasion. People get together and celebrate with wine, as it is synonymous with celebration. Wine also describes the communal association between the drinkers. Wine is regarded a suitable supplement to a meal and it is necessary for festive events. The use of wine follows recognized custom of customary practices, for example, in France where there are rules governing the uses of wine. In France, white wine is always served first before red and before meals (Plack 34). Wine is used as a rank gauge. In Poland, wine is considered as a high-status and middle-class drink. Polish campus learners in specific were found to drink extra wine than their American equals, emphasizing their status and specialness as the nations elite. In prehistoric Rome, wine implied not only the elites drink, but its diversity and caliber ability allowed its use as a differentiator as well. Likewise, wine is todays emphasis on articulate choices. Wine is also used as an account of association where an affirmation of involvement in a particular group or any other beliefs is linked with standards, approaches, and views. Wine is used in the north of Europe where it is related to current lifestyles and ideals to distinguish classes (Shaw 92).The extremely educated individuals of northern Europe drink wine while the less educated ones from the south favor customary drinks. Marriage ceremonies in most cultures use wine in their events. In France, the engagement event is often a more prolonged and active development comprising wine intake in every phase. In Poland, rites of passage linked with death, like those of matrimony and birth, involve numerous stages accompanied by wine imbibing. Historically speaking, wine intake has typically manly inferences, with supplementary values associated with virility and diversity from feminine gender. Nevertheless, currently wine is considered a usual mature product. Economic The monetary worth of wine upsurges and falls over time. Wine becomes comparable in this way to the long-standing pillars of product venture. Communal and commercial forces affect wine price slowly; hence, the forecast of changes in wine value is clear than other asset merchandises. A states fiscal circumstances have a firm demeanor on the wine market (Hoemmen, Altman, and Rendleman 51). Wine prices customarily reflect local and universal commercial trends whether for venture or intake. Wine tourism also encourages the possibility of expanding in the near prospect (Carlsen 16). The expansion is done by tourism to the winemaking places, which aside from presenting a chance to see where and how wine is prepared, offers travelers an opportunity to learn about winemaking (Gelling 48). The effect is of high economic value. Economically, the size of wine markets has vital commercial consequences for areas and states for indigenous and global production. Wine production has advanced conside rably in the past decades with countries like China that conventionally did not produce wine. Specifically, wine involves a vast value-added constituent as a capital-intensive and labor-intensive trade, which also creates tourism with its financial multiplier effect around the nation (McIntyre 38). The organizations, workers, and travel expenses signify why wine sales are involved in total commercial influence. In conclusion, wine innovation and evolvement have had a remarkable past when it was developed bracing its way to modernism. Wine creation over the long periods of time has seen a substantial impact on humanity in every aspect. Wine has created a culture where it is used to imply certain factors like gratitude in the form of gifts. Despite wine having some negative effects, the dietary value it retains nonetheless is crucial to overall well-being. Wine has also affected society enormously. As seen in this paper, wine has been used as a business commodity and a celebration tool. The current prevailing religious significance of wine dates to the times when it was first discovered. Economically, wine has facilitated growth with price changes becoming predictable and apparent than other commodities.

Monday, October 21, 2019

The Ups and Downs of Left and Right

The Ups and Downs of Left and Right The Ups and Downs of â€Å"Left† and â€Å"Right† The Ups and Downs of â€Å"Left† and â€Å"Right† By Mark Nichol Left has gotten a bad rap throughout history. Because of overwhelming majority of people are right-handed (most estimates are in the range of 85 to 90 percent), left-handedness has come to be associated with weakness the word left itself is descended from an Old English word meaning â€Å"weak.† Left-handedness was therefore until recently often seen as undesirable, and even well into the twentieth century, parents and teachers often forced left-handed children to use their right hand for writing, eating, and other basic activities. Even now, â€Å"a left-handed compliment† (also described as â€Å"a backhanded compliment†), refers to an ostensibly positive comment that is explicitly or implicitly an insult. Idioms that employ left to describe an undesirable or unusual situation include â€Å"two left feet,† referring to a clumsy dancer, and â€Å"out of left field,† meaning an unexpected comment or idea. (The latter, however, is not necessarily derogatory.) We also use left to refer to something that remains behind as a result of deliberate action or accidental oversight. Another common idiom with a negative connotation, one using this sense of left, is â€Å"left a lot to be desired.† The equivalents of left in other languages have similarly pejorative meanings. Gauche, the French word for left, also means â€Å"tactless, crude, socially inept† in English as well as French. The opposite, droit, is the root word of maladroit, which means â€Å"incompetent, inept, unsuitable.† (English has adopted and adapted that term as adroit literally, â€Å"to the right,† and meaning â€Å"appropriate† as well as maladroit.) Sinister, from the Latin word for â€Å"on the left,† came to be associated with inauspicious or unlucky events, and was borrowed by French and later English to mean â€Å"evil.† In heraldry, it refers to the right-hand side of a coat of arms (the left-hand side from the point of view of the bearer of a shield, from which the coat of arms derived), opposite the dexter, or right, side. From the Latin element dextr-, meaning â€Å"on the right,† borrowed into English as dexter, we also get the adjective dexterous, meaning â€Å"clever, skillful.† Right itself means â€Å"good, correct,† and that’s the originally connotation when referring to the right hand it’s the correct one to use. Among the many idioms suggesting the positive connotation are â€Å"right-hand man† and â€Å"the right stuff.† (The use of right and leftto refer to political ideology, each often capitalized when referring to adherents as a collective, came from the revolutionary era in France: The conservative party in the National Assembly called itself the Droit, the â€Å"right† party. The liberal faction, in opposition, came to be referred to as the â€Å"left.†) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Great Similes from Literature to Inspire YouPeace of Mind and A Piece of One's Mind5 Tips to Understand Hyphenated Words

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Translate Your Own Stories †Perks for the Multilingual Writer

Translate Your Own Stories – Perks for the Multilingual Writer If you are fluent in more than one language, you may want to consider translating your own manuscripts. Here are six reasons why you should give it a try. 1 Practice makes perfect The good news is you dont need to be a professional translator to tackle a translation project. While I happen to hold a degree in translation, I learned that it is something you become good at with practice, just like writing. And being a writer, you already have a solid foundation of knowledge and techniques that will help make the process easier. The trick, of course, is not to make your writing sound like a translation. Otherwise, dont bother sending it to Hope (or most editors, for that matter). I have it on good authority that this will not endear her to your work! 2 Spot and eliminate flaws If your story or article is unpublished, translating it into another language allows you to take a step back from your work and see it from a different perspective. Its an excellent way to pinpoint flaws and weaknesses. For instance, if a sentence does not translate well, theres a very good chance that it is poorly written. Simply rewrite it until it flows smoothly in both languages. As you go along, you will sharpen your editing and revising skills as well. 3 Boost your creativity Translating your own unpublished manuscripts is not as restricting as translating texts that have appeared in print (either yours or someone elses) or which have been requested 4 Double your chances of success 5 Give your stories a second life If a particular piece is already published, check your contract to make sure you have retained the translation rights. If so, you will be free to approach new publishers in your target language. In this instance, you may not have as much creative leeway during the translation process, but you will still be able to strengthen weak words and sentences in the translated text. 6 Get unstuck Finally, if you are stuck for inspiration or suffering from writers block, translating your own stories can help you get back in the flow. You wont have to deal with a dreaded blank page or wrestle your muse for inspiration - but it could lead you to new ideas and opportunities!

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Discussion questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Discussion questions - Essay Example 2007). The above data sources act as indicators of financial outcome of a project in hospital which is meant to improve the services of patients and in the long run increase their financial benefits to continue improving the hospital and even expand their services. These records in various sections of the hospital will serve as an indicator of the financial outcome essential for evaluation. The best evaluation design would be the pretest and posttest design with follow-up. This is because this evaluation design measures the project before it begins and at the end and this provides effective results that act as a baseline for comparison. The comparison is essential to indicate whether the project has achieved its set objectives or not and which objectives have not been achieved which is the basic essence of evaluation. The sampling strategy effective is the quota sampling. The hospital can be divided into quotas which depend on the services (like pharmacy, outpatient, and inpatient) and the evaluation can be carried out on each quota. This would also enable for comparison to be done on the (Melton et al. 2007). In order for an organization to compete successfully in the market, the quality of its goods and services must increase and this will require organizational structure of that organization to act. There may be more role allocation and role specificity in a bid to ensure that employees are producing their best in terms of goods or services production. In hospital for example, the nurses may be required to work in specific wards or handle specific cases to ensure increase in quality and standards of treatment and overall care for their patients (Borkowski 2005). Organizational structure of an organization is determined by the set goals and objectives of the organization. These same goals and objectives are centered on an increase in production of goods or services being offered in that organization. This therefore means that the two

Astor Piazzolla Histoire du Tango Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Astor Piazzolla Histoire du Tango - Essay Example As with tango music, Astor Piazzolla's life was also filled with many changes and deviations that eventually helped him discover his true style and identity in the field of music. Piazzolla was born on March 11, 1921 to an Italian family in Mar del Plata, Argentina. His family moved to New York, and it was there that he first discovered his love for music. When his father gave him a bandoneon, he began to explore his musical talents that would have to undergo many changes and evolutions before he would come to realize the true directions in his music career. While growing up in New York, Piazzolla learned to appreciate classical music as he studied piano with Bela Wilda, a disciple of Rachmaninov (Pessinis and Kurl). During that same time, he met with the tango legend, Carlos Gardel, who became a good friend to him. When the family then decided to move to Argentina in 1936, Piazzolla started to play with some orchestras. Whereas he learned to appreciate the music of Bach while studying with Bela Wilda, he began to embrace tango as a musical style when he lived in Argentina. He was particularly impressed with the Elvino Vardaro's alternative style of rendering tango pieces (Pessinis and Kurl). ... Piazzolla continued to develop his skills and talent music. In 1944, he formed his own orchestra, which brought to the public a more vibrant form of tango music, more daring and dynamic (Pessinis and Kurl). This sparked the first controversies in Piazzolla's career. The orchestra was disbanded eventually in 1949, and the musician decided to take a different path musically. He thought that it was better for him to pursue classical music instead. Even as he did that, Piazzolla also listened to a lot of jazz music. In his quest to find his own style, Piazzolla decided to stay away from tango music. In the early 1950s, Piazzolla created music pieces that very much deviated from the traditional tango music during that time. He won the first prize for the Fabien Sevitzky competition with his "Buenos Aires" symphony, which caused strong reactions from some of the listeners who thought that the music was an abomination of classical music, when he incorporated the bandoneon in the symphony. As part of the prize, he was privileged to study under the legendary educator, Nadia Boulanger, who played a huge role in Piazzolla's discovery of his own style. Because of his decision to stay away from tango and pursue classical music, Piazzolla did not reveal his past musical experience to his teacher. Eventually, Boulanger found out the true style of Piazzolla and encouraged him to follow his own direction. Boulanger was quoted as saying to Piazzolla, in reference to his rendition of his tango Triunfal, "your classical pieces are well written, but the true Piazzolla is here, never leave it behind" (Pessinis and Kurl). His teacher's encouragements became the driving force for him to compose