Enlightenment Essay Example for Free

Enlightenment EssayImmanuel KantIn December 1783 Johann Friedrich Zllner published an article in Berlinische Monatsschrift that stated his opposition to civil marriage, an idea proposed in a previous issue of the journal. Zllner wrote that the foundations of morality had been shaken in the name of enlightenment and concluded his piece with the principal what is enlightenment? Zllner asserted that this question must first be answered before one begins to enlighten1. Immanuel Kants reply to Zllners question is often considered the nigh famous and most important. In his essay, Kant succinctly step forwardlined his opinion on what enlightenment is, the obstacles to enlightenment and how single(a)ists achieve enlightenment.Kant defined enlightenment as mans release from his egotism-incurred fear and the courage to use your own basis2. Kant believed that laziness and cowardice were the prime reasons why numerous men remained un-enlightened3. Kant asserted that people refused to throw off the yoke of voluntary tutelage because it was easier to profits people to think for them and run their lives4. As Kant put it a person could pay to buy a book to serve as understanding, a pastor to serve as a conscience and a physician to determine a diet. There was no real need for an individual to exert their own will or their own reason since these benevolent guardians would take over an individuals life for them5. The act of enlightenment, therefore, was the act of rejecting this easygoing form of life and asserting the primacy of your individual reason to reject the conventions of the social guardians who Kant asserted herded hostelry like docile, dumb livestock6.It is necessary to understand Kants rendering of enlightenment in stray to gain rough understanding of what Kant musical theme was an enlightened age and what was an age of enlightenment. Kant argued that obstacles to individual enlightenment went beyond self-imposed obstacles. granting immunity was the essential ingredient for enlightenment. Society, however, imposed restrictions on freedom through laws and religion that constrained free opinion through law, convention or threat. Knowledge was in addition a requirement still access to it was often very restricted and guarded in late eighteenth century atomic number 63 but attempts were cosmos do to bring knowledge to the masses. An age of enlightenment was a time when obstacles to enlightenment were being removed or eroded, Kant believed that late eighteenth century Europe was in such an age. As a society granted more than freedom, it became more enlightened. An enlightened age, therefore, was an age when obstacles had been removed and individuals and society were enlightened and free to pursue self determination and self rationalization7.Kant did not try to assert that the only path to freedom lay on the path of revolution. Revolutions, according to Kant, merely replaced old prejudices with b ar-assed prejudices8. Kant acknowledged that for a society to function properly, for a government to help its people, it was often necessary for an individual to narrowly restrict their reason in the credit line of their job or duties. Kant defined this as private reason and deemed it a necessity. Kant used an example of how disastrous it would be for an office to question the appropriateness of an order rather than obeying it9. The private use of reason was offset by an individuals public use of reason. In this form of reason the individual takes upon the cape of a scholar who has complete freedom, indeed even the calling, to impart to the public all of his carefully considered and well-intentioned thoughts10. Private reason would compel an individual to pay a tax, public reason would compel the individual to speak out against the necessity of the tax.These two forms of reason allow a society as a whole to move towards enlightenment on the thoughts of enlightened individuals who are active members of society serving as agents of change but not necessarily revolution. As a society becomes more enlightened, individuals are freer to act upon the enlightened opinions reached through their public role as a scholar. This is a gradual process and Kants defense of the necessity of private reason implies that a disobedient society itself is an obstacle to enlightenment11. The strength of Kants arguments lay in the context of when and where he wrote them. Kant lived in a monarchical society that allowed for little individual freedom or representation. Kants evolutionary nature of enlightenment worked well in a society that is essentially not free. History proved that societies that gradually allowed more and more freedom were able to maintain stability and encourage at least a small group of scholars to try to lead societys trip to enlightenment. A steadily evolution towards enlightenment will work in a society that is more restrictive or less representative of the people because the slo w rate of changes will still be perceived as changes and many will be patient with a slow but steadily progression of change.In a more representative form of government, however, revolutions are build into the government through elections. If the elected leaders do not implement the ideas of those who elected them, the people become dissatisfied and disobedient. So obstacles to enlightenment can be increased. However, such systems by nature are built to accept and expect a fairly rapid pace of change that would not be potential in a monarchy. New ideas can be implemented nearly every election so in this regard revolution, which in this regard are elections. If quick change is not implemented then the people grow frustrated and disobedient. The dynamic is more complex than in a monarchy.Freedom of thought is all that is required for individual enlightenment. Even the most repressive regimes find it impossible to block an individual from thinking. So to some degree Kant doesnt allow for enlightenment to happen in the absence of freedom. The freedom to think and act upon those thoughts is the definition of Kants public reason. But Kants definition of private reason seems incomplete. While it is necessary for an individual to restrict their opinions based on duty or situation, that act does not restrict individual enlightenment. The full scope of what Kant depict as a public scholar is the freedom to think and give voice to those thoughts, a private reason may also exist that allows an individual to think but not be able to give voice to such thoughts.This is different from sublimating their opinions to perform a duty. This is done perhaps more out of fear than a sense of duty. A soldier may not be free to question an order but in a more repressive society an enlightened individual may not be free to give voice to their opinions without penalty of death. In such a reference is an individual a coward or lazy? Certainly it takes a high degree of courage to speak out but to call those not free to die for their opinions but how are self realized enough to have those opinions cowards is not just nor fair. In a way Kant both argues against revolution but calls those unwilling to rebel in restrictive cases cowards. So he undercuts his own argument if its taken out of the context in which he wrote it where thought was tolerated as was the scholarly debate of enlightened ideas.Immanuel Kants essay What is Enlightenment? is justly considered an important work regarding the enlightenment and reason. Kant concisely argues his opinion and presented examples to illustrate his points. The arguments made are strong and logical in the context of the monarchal society Kant lived in that while restrictive, allowed for some freedom of thought and expression. Kants arguments lose some strength when applied to different societies and governments. Sources Kant, Immanuel.What is Enlightenment? September 30, 1784.Naragon, Steve. Johann Friedrich Zllner. Manchest er College. 23 June 2011. http//www.manchester.edu/kant/bio/FullBio/ZollnerJF.html.

Corporate Social Responsibility In The Banking Sector Finance Essay

Corporate well-disposed Responsibility In The Banking Sector turn out(p)(p) EssaySince ancient times verifying practices have always played a significant case in the development and progress within an economy. Banks facilitate pecuniary transactions by collecting deposits from savers and lending loans to those in need of credit. Thus, it enables those that have surplus funds to meet with those who need tho funds for expansion and coronation purposes. However, it is often the case that mismatches occur between the period at which a depositor wants to save his m unrivaledy and the period at which a borrower would be able to stipend up the center owed by him. Therefore, as an intermediary a avow has to find ways with which to manage the mismatch between short term liabilities of the bank (such as deposits) and long term as bounds (such as loans).First and foremost a bank unavoidably to be perceived as being trustworthy and and so needs to gain the nationals confidence in graze to attract financing. It is needless to say that if a p nontextual mattericular bank were to go bankrupt, apart from its sh areholders, the usual human beings would similarly suffer considerably. The collapse of a bank might result in the loss of lifetime savings of individuals and families which were held at the incident bank. This would consequently countervail peoples confidence in the monetary sector and drive new-fangled(prenominal) people to withdraw their money from their own banks which whitethorn in turn result in having early(a) sound banks facing serious difficulties to cater for high volumes of withdrawals since a bank in its own nature of doing trading holds only a circumstances of the funds acquired by depositors and invests the rest in less liquid assets with longer maturities (such as mortgage loans).It is therefore of prominent importance that for an economy to prosper and grow, and gum olibanum for the general wellbeing of the self-coloured co mmunity, there needs to be at its core a sound and efficient financial system and that the general mankind withal perceives the system to be sound and trustworthy. In trying to address this consequence policy makers have sought to achieve healthy financial systems and to agitate public confidence done with(predicate) numerous legislations and regulations. In fact, the financial market is one of the most regulated markets in any economy, particularly the banking sector so as to minimise the risks that a bank is exposed to.For decades banks were severely restricted with respect to the function offered to knobs, as well as methods all in allowed for financing and investments. This hindered the ability of banks to be private-enterprise(a) with other financial establishments that were not classified as banks and that had more than lax regulations which enabled them to offer a wider lam of run and take up more risks to finance their operations. Because the passing regulated financial environment was stifling competition between banks and non-banks, regulators loosened up their regulatory requirements so as to create a level playing field for all the financial institutions.With more lax regulations banks are able to take up more risks and offer a wider lay out of services to clients meaning also that banks have higher risks to fail or that the publics confidence will be more prone to be undermined because of riskier activities performed by banks. high risks and loss of confidence would lead to financial instability and, in around cases, to financial crises where the whole financial market is depressed. This in turn slows down the whole economy since the financial sector is the backbone of an economys financing. It is thought that one of the factors that in fact contributed to the 2008-09 financial crisis was a highly deregulated environment (Shah Gilani, 2005-2011). It is also typical that after(prenominal) financial crises regulators start reviewi ng their supervisory and regulatory standards and reregulate the industry once again. After the financial crisis of 2008-09 regulators are this instant imposing new regulations in order to control that another world financial crisis is avoided. The new amendments require banks to hold even more capital as a buffer for a given amount of risk it is exposed to than it was already take by law. This process of regulation, deregulation and reregulation is a continuous process that changes as the market itself develops and creates new services and hence is exposed to new risks.Deposit Insurance Agencies are set up for public safety against bank failures. However, in essence it is ultimately the tax-payers themselves that pay the wrong as the government intervenes to bail-out line of workatic banks. Because managers running banks are aware of the fact that if the bank fails the government will intervene, it is more likely that they act in more risky activities and do not exert appro priate out-of-pocket diligence in the running of the business. This problem is cognize as moral hazard. Thus banks are more likely to engage in hazardous behaviour since if they fail the government will intervene and will not allow the bank to go bankrupt in order to apology the public interest.Also, banks are more difficult to have their performance evaluated than other businesses because of the interlinkingity of the business itself. Thus this creates the problem of asymmetric education or, stated in other words, the problem that not everyone has the same opportunities to advance the same information. Managers and interns within the banking institution have better information on the performance of the bank than outsiders have access to. This is diminished partially through required disclosure and other regulations that deal with insider dealing in order to promote transparency in the financial markets which again will enhance public confidence. However, it is not the first t ime that we hear about insider dealings or that disclosure of misleading information was presented to the public.It is therefore clear that although regulation plays an important role in ensuring market stability, efficiency and fairness it is not enough. As whoremonger R. Boatright (19997) brilliantly describes in his book Ethics in Finance the law is not the only guide within the financial sector. What is legal is not of necessity moral. He then goes on to define the law by saying that it is simply a crude instrument and cannot be used to regulate all financial activities because of their complex nature. Excessive regulation stifles competition, hinders innovation and it is difficult to regulate certain issues that arise within the financial industry such as the issue of conflicts of interests. Therefore self-regulation is nonetheless important in this highly regulated market and the implementation of CSR within the banking industry has yet a unique and special role as much as t he role of a bank itself is unique within a community.History BAnking Practices and SocietyBanking practices in the past were mainly carried out through the acceptance of gold and deposits to then issue loans with those deposits. Bankers profits consisted mainly in hefty interests received from loans. Bank customers consisted mainly of kings and the papacy during the 1500s up to 1600s and super loans were lent to finance wars and elections.Few can be said with regards to CSR before the 1900s in the implementation of banking practices as is the case with other businesses of the time. However, one whitethorn get up the Fugger Family which was one of the greatest banking dynasties after the Medici in the late 16th century. Namely Jacob Fugger established a community for the poor, known as the Fuggerei, which was built in Augsburg in 1519 and is still in use today (Bamber, 2001). This shows evidence of the paternalistic ideology that strongly characterised the frugal sphere and busi ness tendencies till the late 1800s.One may also note the great influential power that the banking sector exerted as early as the 16th century as the Fugger family financed Maximilians grandson Charles to bribe his electors while in the 19th century the Rothschild family financed all of Napoleons enemies. The decisions undertaken by the bankers obviously had an impact on the outcome of events (Bamber, 2001) which shows that from the early stages of the industry banking practices had a strong influence on political, economic and favorable outcomes.As banking and lending practices were developed, these were not always considered as fair and just as we may know them today. Banks and other financial institutions tended to arbitrarily direct to whom financial services are given, often denying these services to people of colour or the poor. This could be freely done by banks after the process of deregulation giving them more leeway in their practices then before. This discriminatory pra ctice is known as redlining because some bank managers used to arbitrarily mark residential cranial orbits occupied by coloured or poor people in red on geographic maps during the 1930s. Areas marked in red were denied financial services and this had a serious impact on urban development since these lacked the funds necessary for investment and developments leading to further urban decay (Boatright, 1999101). It was not until 1968 that banks were forbid by law to discriminate on housing lending through the enactment of the Fair Housing Act followed by a series of other regulations thereafter (Hunt, 2005).CSR enterprisingnesss developing in the 1950s in the business industry had a ripple claim also on the banking sector were through sanctions and regulations concerning environmental issues on polluting companies banks were also forced indirectly to take action and exercise more attention in the selection of corporate clients in order to safeguard their reputation. The 1980 Superf und in the U.S. and the Directive on Civil Liability for Damage Caused by Waste adopted by the European Commission in 1989 are namely two regulations relating to environmental concern emanating from business operations (IISD, 2010).The Fleet Factors Case of 1990 was one of the first proceedings in the U.S. that directly attributed responsibility for environmental restoration caused by their corporate clients as the courts decided that lenders held the capacity to influence the borrowers waste management decisions even if it actually did not do so (IISD, 2010).The UNEP Financial Institutions Initiatives (UNEP FI) was launched in 1992 with the coaction of Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings, Natwest, Royal Bank of Canada and Westpac in an attempt to garner financial institutions to promote awareness on the pivotal role that the financial sector has in sustainable development and environment protection and to unravel further on the relationship between economic development, environmental pr otection and sustainable developments (UNEP FI, 2011). During the same yr the UNEP Statement by Financial Institutions on the Environment Sustainable development was drafted articulating further the role and responsibility taken over by financial institutions in contributing towards sustainable development in businesses and safeguarding the environment (UNEP FI, 2011).Another Green Paper set out by the European Commission in 1993 required that liability was assumed by the polluter and in case where the answerable party is not identified or unable to pay joint requital funds financed by the industry should meet such costs on their behalf. The commission addressed also the problems of causation and insurability where more responsibility was exerted upon the shoulders of financial institutions (IISD, 2010).The UNEP was a main contributor to spread awareness and foster a socially responsible attitude in the way business was conducted within financial institutions through internation al round table meetings and orbiculate surveys on the environmental practices of the financial services sector (IISD, 2010). Thus, banks started experiencing more pressure to avoid the so called sin stocks and pay attention to the social performance of corporate clients and not only to financial performance.Many other international guidelines have been developed recently and it is important not to forget to mention the contribution of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) which is a member of the World Bank Group towards sustainable development and in promoting fair, impart and competitive markets in order to fight indigence (IFC, 2010). Their common shared values found on the IFC website are depicted as followsTo fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results. To help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity, and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors.In 2003 the IFC drafte d the Equator Principles, a set of guidelines that may be voluntarily adopted by banks aimed to facilitate and aid these institutions wishing to carry out operations in a socially responsible manner. Essentially, the Equator Principles are nothing more than a financial industry benchmark for determining, assessing and managing social environmental risk in picture financing (The Equator Principles, 2006). The Principles are targeted towards the financing of corporate clients whose investment projects are environmentally and socially responsible and include also advisory services offered by financial institutions with regards to project financing.1Who Cares Wins was an initiative undertaken by the financial industry, the UN Global Compact, IFC and the Swiss Government during 2004 (UN Global Compact, IFC, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, 2009, 20103). agree to this report, the main aim of this initiative is to support the financial industrys efforts to integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into mainstream investment decision-making and ownership practices through a series of high-level meetings with investment professionals. Again, here the goal is that of promoting socially responsible project financing through SRI.The United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative (PRI) are a set of six principles set up in 2005 in collaboration with some of the worlds largest institutional investors (UNPRI, 2011). This initiative was set up in partnership with the UNEP FI and the UN Global Compact. These principles posit the idea that since environmental, social and corporate governance issues may affect the performance of investment portfolios, thus it is important that an investor takes these issues into consideration when making investment decisions and therefore contribute also to the general wellbeing of society (UNPRI, 2011).One may mention numerable banks that are truly committed towards the maxim of doing well by d oing the right thing and that actively participate with International NGOs to contribute towards the general wellbeing of communities. Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings, and UBS are amongst the most known environmentally and socially driven banks in Europe. For the purpose of this thesis I will now proceed on to scrutinising and analysing the CSR policies of the banks mentioned to then compare them with those policies of three leading Maltese banks namely APS Bank, Bank of Valletta (BOV), and HSBC Malta in a later chapter. All information related to the CSR initiatives undertaken by the foreign and Maltese banks selected was extracted from their respective websites and CSR Reports. The main aim is to evaluate the transparency adopted by the Maltese banks and thus the extent to which they inform the general public in the way they go about their commitments towards society relative to well-established and successful foreign banks.CSR Policies of Foreign BanksThis section will give an insig ht on how some foreign banks known as being committed towards sustainable development, environmental and socially responsible project financing are currently engaging in CSR policies in order to achieve their goals and manage to be profitable and attract business by undertaking such activities given the existing highly competitive environment from other financial and non-financial institutions. For the purpose of this dissertation, the three foreign banks chosen are headquartered within the European Union territory since the Maltese way of doing business is very similar to the way it is conducted in Europe even CSR-wise and therefore it will facilitate comparison between foreign and Maltese banks. Furthermore, HSBC Holdings was selected specifically since it is the get up company of HSBC Malta which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter.Deutsche BankDeutsche Bank is a leading German and European financial institution successfully expanding its business globally with a wor k force of over 100,000 employees in 74 countries and offering a vast selection of financial services worldwide (Deutsche Bank AG, 2011). Deutsche Bank mission statement can be found on its semi authorized website as followsWe compete to be the leading global provider of financial solutions, creating lasting value for our clients, our shareholders, our people and the communities in which we operate.From the mission statement itself we may denote that the bank is committing itself not only towards its shareholders, clients and employees but their mindset is also headed for the benefit of the communities and their social needs. The banking institution has also formulated a set of values which drive its business orientation. One of these values set out on the banks website is trust where the bank claims confidently its trustworthiness, reliability and honesty. Other values mentioned are performance, teamwork, innovation, and client focus. Finally, the bank also promises stakeholders t hat the corporation will be operating(a) with responsibility, keeping in mind not only current factors and issues in their decision making but also future consequences and factors that may arise due to todays decisions (Deutsche Bank AG, 2010).We may note by glancing briefly at the way the bank presents itself that it already carefully depicts itself as being socially and environmentally responsible in all aspects of its structural organisation. This however, is nothing new as all businesses especially banking institutions wish to be alleged as being ethical, trustworthy, honest and socially responsible so as to foster public confidence in their business.The bank has also received numerous awards or been ranked first for some(prenominal) social, environmental and corporate governance categories during 2010 some of which include Environmental Rankings, Art and Work Awards, and Top Companies that Care among others. In 2011 the bank has already been awarded the Charity makeup of the Year 2010 and the European Employee Volunteering Awards 2011 (Deutsche Bank AG, 2011).Deutsche bank is renowned for its CSR initiatives internationally nurturing social and environmental awareness while working to alleviate such issues in communities where it operates. According to the banks official website (Deutsche Bank AG, 2011), Deutsche Bank focuses its CSR strategy in the areas of corporate volunteering, social investments, art music and education. The Communications CSR function is responsible of the banks global CSR initiatives followed by the blessing of such initiatives by the Chairman of the Management Board (Deutsche Bank AG, 2011). Coordination of CSR operations is prepared at headquarters and then delegated to and implemented locally by the institutions regional teams (Deutsche Bank AG, 2011). This ensures effectiveness and efficiency through its initiatives and as perceived by the bank itself, it makes sure that it is acting as a responsible corporate citizen mas king quite clearly that the bank favours and adopts the Corporate Citizenship Theory explained in the first chapter of this thesis.Deutsche Bank has set up ten CSR units in total till now dispersed globally which are namely the Deutsche Bank Foundation, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, Corporate Citizenship UK, Deutsche Bank Africa Foundation, Deutsche Bank Asia Foundation, Deutsche Bank Mena Foundation, Alfred Herrhausen Society, Historical Association of Deutsche Bank, Transatlantic Outreach Program (TOP), and in conclusion Deutsche Bank Donation Fund (Deutsche Bank AG, 2010). Through these organisations the bank manages its CSR operations worldwide and creates what the bank calls social capital through sustainability, corporate volunteering, social investments, art music, and education (Deutsche Bank AG, 2011) thus, the bank is CSR oriented at all levels of its operational, and organisational structure.Figure 2.12 CSR at Deutsche BankFounded 1992Budget 2009 3.2 m.The non-pro fit Alfred Herrhausen Society is the international forum of Deutsche Bank. Its work focuses on new forms of governance as a response to the challenges of the 21st century. The Alfred Herrhausen Society seeks traces of the future in the present, and conceptualizes relevant themes for analysis and debate. It workings with international partners across a range of fields including politics, academia, and business to organize forums for discussion worldwide.www.alfred-herrhausen-society.org/enThe banks total investments for the year end 2009 amounted to 81.1 million of which 39% were invested in social investments, 29% were attributed to education and 27% were allocated to art and music (see figure 2.2 below). Deutsche banks investments were mainly targeted towards Germany, with total investments amounting to 45% at the end of 2009, followed by the Americas at 23%, and 12% of these funds were allocated to Asia Pacific and the UK. Deutsche Banks investments in Europe/Middle East and Af rica amounted to only 8% of the funds (see figure 2.3 below).Figure 2.23Figure 2.34Regional split of total CSR investmentsShare of total investments per area of activityKate Cavelle, Director of Corporate Citizenship at Deutsche Bank in the UK, stated that the four main reasons why investment banks care about CSR are social responsibility, staff motivation, client and public perception during an interview conducted by The Gateway in 2010. She also argued that at Deutsche Bank it is recognised that the bank should be highly committed towards CSR. In the UK, Deutsche Bank engages in initiatives such as promoting education so that young people may reach their full potential (The Gateway, 2010). Social Investments undertaken by the bank also include work with the homeless and unemployed persons and works closely with several other UK organisations such as the Globe field of force and Design Museum. The bank also supports young artists through the sale of art acquired by the bank while keeping employee morale high by changing its art collections through time (The Gateway, 2010). Deutsche Bank is also involved in a microfinance programme where loans are grant with lower interest rates to persons who contrastingly would not be able to be grant any credit. According to Kate this is also a good and safe investment undertaken by the bank and thus microfinance is beneficial for the business as well. The bank also encourages employees to get involved in voluntary work and helps out in finding activities that employees may engage in (The Gateway, 2010).On another note, according to an article written in the Financial Times of 23rd March, 2011, Deutsche Bank was sued for breaching its duties when the bank sold a complex interest rate product to a corporate client. The bank was fined 541,000 to compensate for the damages inflicted on the client as judge Ulrich Wiechers claimed that the bank should have been clearer when advising the client about the risks involved. App arently the bank is involved in other eight similar cases at the federal court level involving complex financial instruments known as swaps while it has 17 cases at lower courts (The Financial Times, 2011). This may indicate that although the bank is highly committed and publicly declares its commitments towards sustainable business in its operations, there is still some work to be done in implementing such goals in the day to day transactions and operations undertaken by the bank.HSBC HoldingsHSBC is one of the largest financial institutions in the world and is headquartered in London. It operates in 87 countries across the globe. According to the banks official website the bank was established in 1865 to cater for the increasing deal out between China and Europe and was named after its founder which is The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited. The bank offers a wide range of financial services to cater for different customer needs including Personal Financial Servic es, Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets, and Private Banking (HSBC Holdings plc, 2011).The banks values can be summarised into four concise points found on its official website. HSBC is open to different ideas and cultures connected with its customers, community and each other and finally dependable and doing the right thing (HSBC Holdings, 2011). The bank is thus promoting itself as embracing an comprehensive environment between employees, and has effective and efficient communication passim all levels of the organisation including communication with its stakeholders while undertaking sustainable and responsible business practices.By managing risks the bank aims at addressing business opportunities in a sustainable manner and by taking into consideration present and future impacts upon the environment and communities, in particular poorer areas (HSBC Holdings plc, 2011). The bank is also enlisted and involved in a number of external organisations among which are the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNEP FI, UN Global Compact, Global Business league on HIV/AIDS, Global Sullivan Principles, OECD Principles for Multinational Enterprises and the Equator Principles (HSBC Holdings plc, 2011).HSBC believes that through robust business and sustainable revenues it is also primarily contributing towards the economy, the environment and to the communities and hence, maximising also stakeholder needs (HSBC Holdings, 2011). This statement, in my opinion, is almost synonymous with the arguments put forward in the SVT Theory and Adam Smiths invisible hand that by maximising shareholder wealth, one is also contributing to the benefit of the other stakeholders automatically. The bank is also involved with NGOs so that it may identify how to manage better sustainable risk, while it also works with NGOs to raise financial awareness and help customers on how to manage their finances, thus simplification risks of loan defaulting and keep their home ownershi p, while of course reducing further the banks risks related to these loans (HSBC Holdings, 2011). According to the banks website, it also engages in SRI investments and responds to several surveys and indices from various organisations.HSBC considers managing the environmental and social impacts of providing finance to our customers as part of business as usual. (HSBC Holdings, 2011). Thus, HSBC describes its commitment towards CSR through the assessment of their corporate clients as being ingrained in the nature of their business, and it seems that the bank acknowledges that this is the right way of doing business. Apart from abiding by the Equator Principles, HSBC has also set up a set of risk policies for sensitive areas such as chemicals, defence, energy etc (HSBC Holdings, 2011). Through its financial services operations the bank is committed to reducing century emissions and because climate change impacts directly the banks customers and its own operations, according to the of ficial website, the bank perceives that it is of utmost importance that these issues are included in its strategies. The bank also engages with microfinance institutions (MFIs) which provide loans and other services to customers. According to the HSBC official website, in India the bank is working with 11 MFIs to provide for financial services to people in inelegant and urban areas (HSBC Holdings, 2011). The bank also provides for financial services in rural areas situated in China making it easier for farmers and people living in these areas to access such services. The bank also provides for funds in constructing better water infrastructures (HSBC Holdings, 2011).The bank feels that it is contributing towards the communities it operates in by providing services to clients, employment, meeting its regulatory obligations and other obligations to suppliers, investments in local business and through financial donations or voluntary work and in this way it also secures its success as a bank (HSBC Holdings, 2011). Following to the information found on its website the bank allocated the sum of $100 million to community investments as at the year ending 2009. The bank entered into a partnership with SOS Childrens Villages in 2006 and established Future First to aid less fortunate children around the world with their educational needs. This initiative has expanded significantly throughout the years and over 500,000 children benefit from this programme around the globe (HSBC Holdings, 2011). JA More Than Money is an initiative monitored in promoting financial awareness among the youth and is run by HSBC volunteers. Children attending this educational programme range from seven to eleven years old. The bank has also set up other programmes namely the HSBC Climate compact which is a five year programme targeted to reduce climate change and its impacts on society and the environment and HSBC Eco-Schools Climate Initiative to raise awareness in school on climate change and what action can be taken to reduce its impacts (HSBC Holdings, 2011).In the section dedicated to sustainability reporting on the official website of HSBC one may find a number of sustainability reports. The following table was extracted from the HSBC Holdings plc Sustainability Report for 2009 illustrating the implementation of the Equator Principles in the granting of loans.Table 2.15 Adoption of Equator Principles in the Granting of LoansThe bank granted only 5 loans which fall under Category A, meaning that these loans may have adverse social or environmental impacts that are diverse, irreversible or unprecedented. Although small in number, the bank still granted such loans to its clients, with a total value of 1,296 almost 7 times larger than the value granted in 2008 of 178. In 2009 the Category B and Category C amounted for the most part of loans granted by the bank.Figure 2.46 Division of Clients Compliance with HSBC Environmental Policiesmost of the clients survey with HSBCs policy totalling 75% and amounting to 82% in loan value while there are still some clients that do not comply at all with this policy even though these are very small in number and even smaller in value.The banks community investments where mainly allocated towards education, which amounted to 45% while 29% where allocated to environmental investments as illustrated in figure 2.5. The bank also encourages employees to engage in voluntary work, and it works towards reducing carbon emissions on its premisses (HSBC, 200916).Figure 2.5

Wavelet Packet Feature Extraction And Support Vector Machine Psychology Essay

Wavelet Packet Feature Extraction And Support Vector Machine Psychology EssayABSTRACT- The aim of this work is an automatic mixture of the electroencephalogram (pneumoencephalogram) signals by use statistical features lineage and support vector automobile. From a real infobase, dickens denounces of electroencephalogram signals argon use pneumoencephalogram recorded from a healthy person and from an epileptic person during epileptic seizures. Three important statistical features atomic issue 18 computed at different sub-bands discrete ripple and wavelet piece of land decomposition of EEG written texts. In this study, to submit the best wavelet for our application, five wavelet rear end functions atomic number 18 considered for processing EEG signals. After reducing the balance of the obtained data by linear discriminant depth psychology and principal component analysis, feature vectors are used to model and to train the economic support vector machine classifier. In order to show the efficiency of this approach, the statistical classification performances are evaluated, and a rate of 100% for the best classification accuracy is obtained and is compared with those obtained in early(a) studies for the same data set.Keywords- EEG Discrete Wavelet Transform, Wavelet Packet Transform, Support Vector Machine, Statistical analysis, classification.1. IntroductionIn neurology, the electroencephalogram (EEG) is a non-invasive quiz of mavin function that is mostly used for the diagnosis and classification of epilepsy. The epilepsy episodes are a result of excessive electrical discharges in a group of brain cells. Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder of the brain that affects over 50 million people worldwide and in developing countries, three fourths of people with epilepsy may not receive the treatment they need 1. In clinical decisions, the EEG is related to initiation of therapy to improve quality of epileptic patients life. However, EEG sig nals occupy a huge volume and the scoring of long-term EEG recordings by visual inspection, in order to classify epilepsy, is usually a time consuming task. Therefore, many researchers have addressed the problem of automatic detection and classification of epileptic EEG signals 2, 3. Different studies have shown that EEG signal is a non-stationary process and non-linear features are extracted from brain activity recordings in order to specific signal characteristics 2, 4, 5, 6. Then these features are used as excitant of classifiers 11. Subasi in 7 used the discrete wavelet change (DWT) coefficient of normal and epileptic EEG segments in a modular neural network called mixture of expert. For the same EEG data set, Polat and Gnes 8 used the feature reducing methods including DWT, autoregressive and discrete Fourier transform. In Subasi and Gursoy 9, the dimensionality ofthe DWT features was reduced apply principal component analysis (PCA), independent component analysis (ICA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). The expiry features were used to classify normal and epilepsy EEG signals using support vector machine. Jahankhani, Kodogiannis and Revett 10 have obtained feature vectors from EEG signals by DWT and performed the classification by multilayer perceptron (MLP) and radial basis function network. Wavelet packet transform (WPT) appears as one of most promising methods as shown by a great number of works in the literature 11 particularly for ECG signals and relatively fewer, for EEG signals. In 12, Wang, Miao and Xie used wavelet packet entropy method to extract features and K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) classifier. In this work, both(prenominal) DWT and WPT split non stationary EEG signals into oftenness sub-bands. Then a set of statistical features such as measure deviation, energy and entropy from real database EEG recordings were computed from each decomposition level to represent time-frequency distribution of wavelet coefficients. LDA and PCA are applied to these various parameters allowing a data reduction. These features were used as an input to efficient SVM classifier with two discrete outputs normal person and epileptic subject. A legal profession of the performances of these methods is presented. The remaining of this paper is organized as follows Section 2 describes the data set of EEG signals used in our work. In Section 3, preliminaries are presented for immediate reference. This is followed by the step up of our experiments and the results in section 4. Finally, some concluding remarks are effrontery in Section 5.2. DATA SELECTIONWe have used the EEG data taken from the artifact free EEG time serial database available at the Department of Epileptology, University of Bonn 23. The complete dataset consists of five sets (denoted A-B-C-D-E). Each set contains100 single-channel EEG signals of 23,6s. The normal EEG data was obtained from five healthy volunteers who were in the relaxed awake state with their eyes open (set A). These signals were obtained from extra-cranially surface EEG recordings in accordance with a standardized electrode placement. Set E contains seizure activity, selected from all recording sites exhibiting ictal activity. All EEG signals were recorded with the same 128 channel amplifier system and digitized at 173.61Hz sampling. 12 bit analog-to-digital conversion and band-pass (0.53-40 Hz) pick up settings were used. For a more flesh out description, the reader can refer to 13. In our study, we used set A and set E from the complete dataset.Raw EEG signalFeature origin Energy, Entropy and Standard deviation from DWT and WPT decom-position coefficientsDimensionality reduction by LDA and PCAClassification andPerformance measureHealthyEpilepticFigure 1 The flow graph of the proposed system3. methodsThe proposed method consists of three main parts (i) statistical feature extraction from DWT and from WPT decomposition coefficients, (ii) dimensionality reduction using PCA and LDA, and (iii) EEG classification using SVM. The flow chart of the proposed method is given in figure 1. Details of the pre-processing and classification steps are examined in the following subsections.3.1 Analysis using DWT and WPTSince the EEG is a extremely non-stationary signal, it has been recently recommended the use of time-frequency domain methods 14. Wavelet transform can be used to decompose a signal into sub-bands with low frequency (approximate coefficients) and sub-bands with high frequency (detailed coefficients) 15, 16, 17. Under discrete wavelet transform (DWT), only approximation coefficients are decomposed iteratively by two tenses and then down- warningd by 2. The first filter h. is a high-pass filter which is the mirror of the second low pass filter l.. DWT gives a left recursive binary tree structure. We processed 16 DWT coefficients. Wavelet packet transform (WPT) is an extension of DWT that gives a more informative signal analysis. By using WPT, the lower, a s well as the higher frequency bands are decomposed giving a balanced tree structure. The wavelet packet transform generates a full decomposition tree, as shown in figure 2. In this work, we performed five-level wavelet packet decomposition.The two wavelet packet orthogonal bases at a parent node (i, p) are obtained from the following recursive relationships Eq. (1) and (2),where ln and hn are low (scale) and high (wavelet) pass filter, singly i is the index of a sub seats depth and p is the number of subspaces 15. The wavelet packet coefficients corresponding to the signal x(t) can be obtained from Eq. (3),l(3,0) (3,1)(3,6) (3,7)hl h l hl hh l hl hlSIGNAL(0,0)(1,0)(1,1)(2,0)(2,1)(2,2)(2,3)Figure 2 trinity level wavelet packet decomposition of EEG signal fudge 1 gives the frequency bands for each level of WPT decomposition. Figures 3 and 4 show the one-fifth level wavelet packet decomposition of EEG segments, according to figure 2. We processed 32 WPT coefficients.Therefore, in t his study, three statistical parameters energy feature (En), the measure of Shannon entropy (Ent) and standard deviation (Std) are computed,(4)(5)(6)3.2 Principal component analysisTo make a classifier system more effective, we use principal component analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction. The purpose of its implementation is to derive a small number of uncorrelated principal components from a larger set of zero-mean variables, retaining the maximum possible amount of info from the original data. Formally, the most common derivation of PCA is in terms of standardized linear projection, which maximizes the variance in the projected space 18, 19. For a given p-dimensional data set X, the m principal axes W1,,Wm where 1 m p, are orthogonal axes onto which the retained variance is maximum in the projected space. Generally, W1,,Wm can be given by the m leading eigenvectors of the sampleTable1 Frequency band of each wavelet decomposition level.DecompositionlevelFrequency band (Hz)1 23450-86.8 86.8-173.60-43.5 43.5-86.8 86.3-130.2 130.2-173.60-21.75 21.75-43.5 43.5-54.375 54.375-86.3 86.3-108.05 108.05-130.2 130.2 130.2-151.95 151.95-173.60-10.875 10.875-21.75 21.75-32.625 32.625-43.5 43.5-54.375 54.375-65.25 65.25-76.125 76.125-87 87-97.875 97.875-108.75 108.75-119.625 119.625-130.5 130.5-141.375 141.375-152.25 152.25-163.125 163.125-173.60-5.44 5.44-10.875 10.875-16.31 16.31-21.75 21.75-27.19 27.19-32.625 32.625-38.06 38.06-43.5 43.5-48.94 48.94-54.375 54.375-59.81 59.81-65.25 65.25-70.69 70.69-76.125 76.125-81.5681.56-87 87-92.44 92.44-97.87 97.87-103.3 103.3-108.75 108.75-114.19 114.19-119.625 119.625-125.06 125.06-130.5 130.5-135.94 135.94-141.38 141.38-146.81 146.81-152.25 152.25-157.69 157.69-163.125 163.125-168.56 168.56-173.6covariance ground substance where is the sample mean and N is the number of samples, so that SWi= iWi, where i is the ith largest eigenvalue of S. The m principal components of a given reflexion vector xi are given by the reduced feature vector .3.3 Linear discriminant analysisLinear discriminant analysis (LDA) projects high-dimensional data onto a low-dimensional space where the data can achieve maximum class separability 19. The aim of LDA is to create a new variable that is a combination of the original predictors, i.e. the derived features in LDA are linear combinations of the original variables, where the coefficients are from the transformation matrix i.e. LDA utilizes a transformation matrix W, which can maximizes the ratio of the between-class scatter matrix SB to the in spite of appearance-class scatter matrix SW, to transform the original feature vectors into lower dimensional feature space by linear transformation. The linear function y= WTx maximizes the Fisher criterion J(W) 19,where xj(i) represents the jth sample of the ith of total c classes. k is the dimension of the feature space, and i is theFigure 3 Fifth level wavelet packet decomposition of healthy EEG signal (set A).Figure 4 Fifth le vel wavelet packet decomposition of epileptic EEG signal (set E).mean of the ith class. Mi is the number of samples within classes i in total number of classes.where is the mean of the entire data set.As a dimensionality reduction method, LDA has also been adopted in this work.3.4 SVM classifierIn this work, SVM 20 has been busy as a learning algorithm due to its superior classification ability. Let n examples S=xi,yii=1n, yi-1,+1, where xi represent the input vectors, yi is the class label. The decision hyperplane of SVM can be defined as (w, b) where w is a weight vector and b a bias. The optimal hyperplane can be written as,where w0 and b0 denote the optimal set of the weight vector and bias. Then, after training, test vector is classified by decision function,To find the optimum values of w and b, it is required to solve the following optimization problemsubject towhere i is the slack variable, C is the user-specified penalty parameter of the error term (C0), and the eye fun ction 21. A radial basis function (RBF) kernel defined as,was used, where is kernel parameter defined by the user.4. results and discussionBefore we give the experimental results and discuss our observations, we present three performance measures used to evaluate the proposed classification method. (i) Sensitivity, represented by the true positive ratio (TPR), is defined as(ii) Specificity, represented by the true negative ratio (TNR), is given by,(iii) and average classification accuracy is defined as,(16)where FP and FN represent false positive and false negative, respectively.All the experiments in this work were undertaken over 100 segments EEG time series of 4096 samples for each class set A and set E. There were two diagnosis classes conventionality person and epileptic patient. To estimate the reliability of the proposed model, we utilize ten-fold cross validation method. The data is split into ten parts such that each part contains about the same proportion of class sam ples as in the classification dataset. Nine parts (i.e. 90%) are used for training the classifier, and the remaining part (i.e. 10%) for testing. This procedure is repeated ten times using a different part for testing in each case. As illustrated in Fig.3 and 4, feature vectors were computed from coefficient of EEG signals. Taking energy as feature vector, figure 5 shows that the features of both normal and epileptic EEG signals are mixed. The proposed analysis using wavelets was carried out using MATLAB R2011b.In literature, there is no common suggestion to select a particular wavelet. Therefore, a very important step before classifying EEG signals is to select an appropriate wavelet for our application. Then, five wavelet functions namely Daubechies, Coiflets, Biorthogonal, Symlets and Discrete Meyer wavelets are examined and compared, in order to evaluate the performance of various types of wavelets. Figure 6 shows accuracy, esthesia and specificity from different wavelets. We s ee that the best wavelet giving good correct rate is the Db2, Db4, coif3 and Bior1.1.The choice of the mother wavelet is focused on daubechies where the length of the filter is 2N, while coifflet wavelet filter is 6N and biorthogonal wavelet (2N +2). After EEG signal Db2 wavelet decomposition and dimensionality reduction, results of correct rate classification are showed in Table 2. The classification accuracy varies from the optimum value (100%) to a lowest value (87%). The results using standard deviation are the best results obtained and using entropy is recrudesce than using energy in EEG signals classification. In this study, experimental results show that linear discriminant analysis based on wavelet packet decomposition improves classification and the optimum SVM results are obtained by using standard deviation feature computed from wavelet packet coefficient and LDA reduction method. For this proposed scheme, the accuracy of the classification is 100%. This method presents a novel contribution and has not yet been presented in the literature. Figure 7 shows the average rate of classification (accuracy, sensitivity, specificity) obtained with different methods of decomposition (DWT or WPT), two reduction methods (LDA or PCA) and three characteristic features (standard deviation, energy, entropy) using the four best wavelet (Db2, Db4, coif3 and Bior1.1). We see that the combination of LDA with standard deviation have an optimum average accuracy rate of 99.90% and combination of standard deviation with PCA reaches 99.50 %. Table 3 gives a summary of the accuracy results obtained by other studies from the same dataset (set A and set E) using extraction of features from EEG signal and their classification.5. conclusionIn this paper, EEG signals were decomposed into time-frequency representations using discrete wavelet transform, wavelet packet transform and statistical features wereFigure 5 Energy feature vector coefficient D3versus D2 (adapted from 22).Ta ble 3 Epilepsy classification accuracies evaluation obtained in literature from the same data setsAuthorsMethodAccuracy (%)7 SubasiDWT + Mixture of undecomposed94.508 Polat and GnesDWT+DFT+ Auto-regres-sive model + Decision Tree99.329 Subasi and GursoyDWT+PCA+ LDA+ICA +SVM98.75(PCA)100(LDA)99.5(ICA)12 Wang, Miao and XieWPT+ Entropy-hierarchical K-NN classification99,4414 beylBurg autoregressive + LS-SVM99.56Our methodWPT + Standard deviation+LDA + SVM100computed to represent their distribution. The most suitable mother wavelets for feature extraction and classification were found. The selection of the suitable mother wavelet and using reduction methods lead to the improvement of performance of EEG signal classification. It has been shown by experiments that for the SVM and the combination of the standard deviation with LDA have the highest correct classification rate of 100% in comparison with other techniques. The interest in expert systems for detection and classification of epil eptic EEG signal is expected to grow more and more in order to assist and strengthen the neurologist in numerous tasks, especially, to reduce the number of selection for classification performance.These promising results encourage us to continue with more depth our study and to apply it to other databases recorded with other diseases.

The Perfect Drug :: Illegal Drugs Anti-Depressants Essays

The Perfect DrugIs money the perfect drug, a repossess all pill that will take away all misery, anguish, and suffering or is it an addictive depressant, sending us on the downward spiral towards devastation? The truth of life is that money lures us in with its appealing image, creates a dependency, and gradually rends us a soulless slave to it.And I want youwell-nigh all of America today is consumed by a need to attain great wealth, reputation, and worldly possessions. Everything is about what job can be attained,who can be impressed, or what possessions we atomic number 18 about to surround ourselves with.To this end, we are enraptured by a need for as much money as possible. This can have sex by the means of anything from playing the lottery to investing to working at a job that we hate. Torturing ourselves to gain wealth and power, we willingly accept the song of the 8AM - 5PM day to feel a small amount of happiness from 6PM-10PM. The high that is gained by this small ma ke up in wealth is solely enough to preserve us coming back for more, the addiction just enough to create a dependency that is both strong and invisible. We are so captivated by the false happiness ofwealth that we fail to recognize the shallow truth of it all that we are slavesto our money. Just like addicts to heroin, we cannot live without money, and we always crave more. However, just because we have more money doesnt mean that well have more to spend. We almost immediately will take any gained wealth and put it towards an increase in living style, such that our spending money remains virtually the same as it was whenever we had less money overall. These changes in living style are usually some material possession like a car that we see ourselves as needing to have. Take the example of the suburban yuppies drivingaround in SUVs and worse, Hummers. Are such robust vehicles really necessary for tackling the rough streets of suburbia? The obvious answer here is no, but i tmustnt be overly obvious, because these types of vehicles can be seen everyday outof their intended setting. This brings up the point of their use, which is to make sure that the drivers look more powerful than anyone else around them. Whats

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The Dance Revolution of the 1970s Contact improvisation is a modern dance form where devil people move while maintaining a connection. It originated from portions of Steve Paxtons movement studies, which he began in 1972 at Oberlin College. As with every major event that happens in the world, the admittance and investigation of contact improvisation affected everyone in society one way or another. Many people associate the 1970s as the hippie era in American history. Due to this, the majority of society was open to new ideas. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution and the womens revolution was just acquire underway. Younger members of society were participating in at least one of the numerous Vietnam War Protests, which they organized. They were into free love they wanted to do away with racial discrimination and allow everyone to be treated the same and on the same level. As a result of the vast majority of society and open mindnes s, Paxtons ideas in the new movement were accepted. Those who attended performances, also referre...

Distance Learning vs. Traditional Education Essay examples -- E-Learni

Teachers expect students to abide by certain rules set frontwards at the beginning of the yres they attend. Preparation of materials and participation in class discussions are some of the requirements for classes. The rules of each class differ by subject and teacher. In the prehistorical decade another variable has been thrown into the pot, the purlieu in which classes are taught. Classroom rules may have to change to accommodate virtual classrooms. Ellen Laird has been teaching via the network for umteen years. Ellen teaches the same courses in the classroom and online and she has written about her experiences with distance learning, also known as e-Learning, or online learning. In reference to the deviance between the two types of classes she writes, The two experiences are as different as a wedding reception and a rave (Laird).With the growing popularity of distance education the school principal in many peoples minds is, Do online classes and traditional classes have th e same standards? Since both types of courses are held in different environments, there are many difficulties that arise in holding each to the same standard. Given the same classes, students seem to be guided by different standards based on the environment that they are in, Internet or classroom. The standards implemented in distance education are very different from those that are expected of students taking courses in class. The difference in standards all stem from the medium used in the classroom. The standards set for students in distance education go above and beyond what their peers in class are expected to do. Higher standards imposed by distance education require more work from students and teachers, more interaction among classmates, and less contact and... ...mobility? downslope 2012. LookSmart. Web. 3 February 2014. .Laird, Ellen. Im Your Teacher, Not Your Internet Service. January 2011. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Web. 9 April 2014. .Merisotis, James P., and R onald A. Phipps. Whats the difference? (college-level distance and classroom-based education). June 2012. Institute for Higher Education Policy. Web. 3 February 2014. .Young, Shannon J., Jerome Johnston, and Susanna E. Hapgood. Assessment and Accountability Issues in Distance Education for Adult Learners. September 2013. Improving Distance Education for Adult Learners (IDEAL). Web. 28 April 2014. .

An Analysis of the Third and Fourth Stanzas in Poes Poem The Raven :: Poe Raven Essays

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