Sunday, December 22, 2019

My book report was on “Esperanza Rising” by Pam Muñoz...

My book report was on â€Å"Esperanza Rising† by Pam Muà ±oz Ryan. The genre of this book is Historical Fiction. The publisher is Scholastic. It has a total of 253 pages plus the author’s notes. Esperanza Rising was published in the year of 2000. Some unusual facts about this book was that it had some Spanish words in it but English after so you know what it means. This book is a Pure Belpre Award winning book. The Pure Belpre Award means excellent portrayal of Latino experience in childrens literature. I chose this book to read because the author seemed familiar and the cover of the book really caught my attention including the title. The novel starts out with the main character and protagonist, Esperanza, the spoiled six-year old little girl†¦show more content†¦The other main character would be Miguel. He’s the son of Alfonso and Hortensia, who both work for Esperanza’s family as their servants. They both grew up together on the ranch as kids. The major conflict in this story starts when a group of bandits captures her papa and kill him and his two evil greedy stepbrothers take over the land and tries to make mama marry Tio Luis. When she disagrees, they do everything in their power to make their life difficult. So as the story unfolds, she ends up marrying him. But they come up with a plan to cross the border and go to the United States so they can work and get money, and most importantly get away from the horrible life in Mexico because of the stepbrothers. They all go to California except Abuelita because she wasn’t feeling well to get a better opportunity in advance. The plot starts out with Esperanza and her papa spending time together. He tells her that the earth is alive and if you listen closely, you can hear its heartbeat. Esperanza was impatient though. But he tells her you have to stay still and be quiet. Papa tells her â€Å"wait a little while and the fruit will fall into your hand.† This was the main theme of the story because it means when you wait, something good will come. After that she hears it and gets happy. As you read the book, the saying gets repeated. The rising action of the book would be when papa got murdered by the bandits. The conflict resolution would

Saturday, December 14, 2019

AstraZeneca Financing Analysis Free Essays

Introduction AstraZeneca Plc is financed through a combination of equity and debt. It’s 2011 financial returns showed that it has total assets of $52.830 billion, compared to total liabilities of $29. We will write a custom essay sample on AstraZeneca Financing Analysis or any similar topic only for you Order Now 358 billion. Thus amounting to net assets of $23.472 billion. Her balance sheet also indicates that the bulk of her liabilities are in the form of interest bearing loans (both short and long term), accounts payable, and tax liabilities. Over 90% of its interest bearing loans is non-current loans due over a year, while it’s total equity is comprised of $3.078 billion of share premium, and $17.984 billion in retained earnings. Retained earnings therefore amount for 76% of the company’s existing total equity. 54% of its debts are in the form of short-term liabilities (payments due within 12 months), while 46% are due over a year (long term liabilities). The bulk of AstraZeneca’s long-term liabilities (54%) are in the form of interest bearing loans and borrowings. According to Brigham and Ehrhardt (2010), long term loans are essential for organizations seeking to invest in capital projects, and could appropriately gear an organization towards growth, however they have to be optimal, to avoid the risk of high interest rate repayments. Gearing (Debt to Equity ratio) is used as a measure of determining how an organization finances its operations. This could be either through the use of equity (shareholders) or debt (bank and bonds) – Brigham and Ehrhardt (2010). Debt to Equity ratio is calculated as a percentage of the company’s long-term liabilities against its equity capital (Investopedia, 2012). Based on AstraZeneca’s figures, it has a gearing of 58%, as calculated in the table below: Long Term Liabilities$13.606 billion Total Equity$23.472 billion Gearing %58% Long-term liabilities have been utilized in this calculation, as a bulk of the organisation’s short term liabilities are in the form of trade and other receivables, which are not necessarily considered financing options (Investopedia, 2012). According to Brigham and Ehrhardt (2010), an optimum gearing percentage is 50%, and companies with a higher percentage are usually regarded as â€Å"being aggressive in their long term financing†. AstraZeneca is 58% leveraged, so it can be assumed that the organization is using debt aggressively to finance its operations. Based on the charts below, it can be seen that AstraZeneca’s financing options has changed considerably over the past 7 years. The use of long-term debt as a source of financing has increased exponentially from $2.621 billion in 2003 to a high of $17 billion 2007, and most recently been on the decline to $13 billion. Total equity has also rise over the same period but not as high as long term debt. The financing options have been determined by calculating the leveraging percentage for each of the financial years from 2003 to 2011. The leveraging percentage for AstraZeneca has increased in line with the use of debt financing, and this has risen from 19.77% in 2003 to 58% in 2011. The results show that AstraZeneca is increasingly relying on debt as a form of financing, and is riskier for investors seeking to invest. However it has taken steps over the past 5 years to reduce its exposure to debt financing. This could be as a result of the financial crisis. The level of risk that could be attributable to this percentage can only be determined by assessing its leverage (and other financial ratios) against that of competitors in the industry to ascertain whether it is of an optimal standard or not. Overall, AstraZeneca seems to be increasingly financed by debt and this has risen over the past 7 years. References AstraZeneca (2012) Annual Reports, www.astrazeneca.com, accessed: 07/05/2012 Brigham, E. F., and Ehrhardt, M. C. (2010) Financial Management Theory and Practice, Cengage Learning, 1184pp Investopedia (2012) Leveraging Ratio, www.investopedia.com, accessed: 07/05/2012 How to cite AstraZeneca Financing Analysis, Essay examples

Friday, December 6, 2019

Tele Health Diagnostic System Licensure Policies

Question: Describe about the Tele Health Diagnostic System for Licensure Policies. Answer: Stake holder mapping Diagram 1: Stakeholder mapping (Source: created by author) Questionnaire to detect the problem area The following set of questions will be helpful to determine the necessity of the system, a) Why improvement in the existing Tele-health system is required? b) Challenges and risks related to the implementation of the Tele-health system? c) Effect of the implementation of Tele-health system on the normal life of people? d) How the implementation of Tele health system will be affected if the technology is not accepted by people? e) Required changes in the infrastructural level of hospitals or health facilities to adopt the new Tele-health system? Use case diagram Diagram 2: Use case diagram for Tele-health system (Source: created by author) Description of the given Use-case diagram In the given use case diagram, the three actors in the whole Tele health system is identified as patients, clinical staff (Doctors and staff) and technical staff for the system. Doctors or health instructors are involved in various processes like presenting slide shows, providing clinical documents for the patients, showing clinical images, providing instruction videos for patients (Gellis, Kenaley Have, 2014). This will help the health consumers to take the control of their own health and the health services become more interactive. Using this kind of services users can get their health status and take preventive measures for faster cure of any decease according to doctors medical advice (Polinski et al., 2016). On the other hand the technical experts and doctors both are involved in the monitoring process of functionality of Tele-health system. In the process of diagnosis, if any problem arises then it will be solved by the clinical staffs like doctors and staffs (Dorsey Topol, 2016). If any problem related to networks of the system arises then it will be solved by technical experts. Brief description about the actors Pre conditions For the registered users, they can log in into the system by providing credentials to the system. After this they can access different available informations about the services provided by the system or information related to any doctor at the health care facility (Antoniotti, Drude Rowe, 2014). New patients or users can use the functionality of Tele-health system by registering themselves to the portal of system (Dorsey Topol, 2016). After this they can provide the information related to their health issues they are facing and get medical advice from the doctors or health experts. Health information applications like Tele-health systems are mainly developed and designed to provide help to the patients on various diseases depending on symptoms. basic flows of events As provided in the use case diagram, the flow of information can be given as, Providing instruction: The doctor or the instructors who is at the remote site of the Tele-health systems, provides information related to the operation of the system (Antoniotti, Drude Rowe, 2014). By analyzing the provided information of the patients, doctors or instructors provides medical advice. Presenting slideshows: Instructors and technical experts can provide seminar or presentations to clear the doubts and problems related to the operation of the system by the users. Providing documentation: The document is provided by the instructor. This documentation can help the users of the system to solve and troubleshoot different problems (Adler-Milstein, Kvedar Bates, 2014). In addition to this, it also provides descriptive and in depth knowledge about the Tele-health system. Providing instruction videos: Instructions videos are provided to the doctors and other users of the system, so that the system can be used properly and efficiently to achieve better productivity from the system. Monitoring the functionality of the system : The functionality of the newly developed system is monitored by both technical experts and instructors or clinical staffs. The operational issues that are related to network are resolved by the technical experts (Polinski et al., 2016). On the other hand, problems related to the use of the system by patients are resolved by instructors or different clinical staffs. Alternative flows The Tele-health system consists of two alternative flows of data. These alternative methods are used in the communication process of newly implemented system. Process of solving problems and navigational communications are the component that acts as alternative flow of information (Gellis, Kenaley Have, 2014). Navigational communication system is used by the technical experts to communicate with users by using audio-visual aids. Sub flows Different sub flows like presentation is comprised in the health care system. These presentations are used to analyze and understand different documents and information provided by patients (Dorsey Topol, 2016). The large amount of data of patients are used and stored into the system for future reference. Key Scenario While using this newly implemented system, doctors checks different symptoms and diagnoses the disease of the patients (Adler-Milstein, Kvedar Bates, 2014). Next the clinical staff or doctor stores the information provided by the patients for further use. More this information can be used by other doctors if they need it at a later time. The database can be helpful for both doctors and patient when they are not in the same city but the patient needs some medical help that depends on his/her medical history (Antoniotti, Drude Rowe, 2014). This newly developed system will be helpful in this scenario to get the data about the patient in any medical emergency. Post conditions The system can be also used in different core set of physical measurements such as heart beat, blood pressure, weight of the patient (Polinski et al., 2016). After getting the information or medical help users must log out from their respective account so that the confidentiality of the personal information of the users can be maintained after using the system. Extension points The navigational communication component of the system can be used as the extension to the system. This component can be used as an extra communication channel between the patients and client (Antoniotti, Drude Rowe, 2014). Therefore it will help in more stabilized communication between the different parties using the system. It will also help in providing better client experience to the patients. Special requirements Since the Tele health system is mainly web based, therefore it is necessary to have high quality and compatible hardware/software tools (Gellis, Kenaley Have, 2014). The work stations must be fast enough to process and analyze data in real time so that the doctors or clinical staff can provide medical support to the patients. The user interface of the system must be user friendly so that a non-technical person can operate it and get medical help through it (Dorsey Topol, 2016). In addition to this, some specific security measures like use of firewalls in the network, authentication of users must be used in the system so that the users confidential data cannot be hacked or breached by intruders. Additional information about providing Documentation The clinical staff / doctor provide documentations to the system users or the patients. The documentations consist of the information about the different operations of the new Tele health system. This documentation will help the users to operate the system properly. The documentation helps the user by describing the steps in different measurements. Like how to measure blood pressure, heart beats etc. (Adler-Milstein, Kvedar Bates, 2014). This documentation helps in mitigating different risks related to the data confidentiality and availability to the patients/ doctor. As a result of improper use of the system may result into complicated health issues of the patient. Since the data is collected remotely by the system and the doctors provide medical advice to them depending on that information. Therefore incomplete and wrong information can lead to wrong treatment of the patient (Dorsey Topol, 2016). Therefore it is necessary for any system to provide documentation about the operatio ns and usability of the program. References Adler-Milstein, J., Kvedar, J., Bates, D. W. (2014). Telehealth among US hospitals: several factors, including state reimbursement and licensure policies, influence adoption.Health Affairs,33(2), 207-215. Antoniotti, N. M., Drude, K. P., Rowe, N. (2014). Private payer telehealth reimbursement in the United States.Telemedicine and e-Health,20(6), 539-543. Bursell, S. E., Zang, S., Keech, A. C., Jenkins, A. J. (2016). Evolving telehealth reimbursement in Australia.Internal Medicine Journal,46(8), 977-981. Cimperman, M., BrenÄ iÄ , M. M., Trkman, P., Stanonik, M. D. L. (2013). Older adults' perceptions of home telehealth services.Telemedicine and e-Health,19(10), 786-790. Dorsey, E. R., Topol, E. J. (2016). State of Telehealth.New England Journal of Medicine,375(2), 154-161. Edwards, L., Thomas, C., Gregory, A., Yardley, L., O'Cathain, A., Montgomery, A. A., Salisbury, C. (2014). Are people with chronic diseases interested in using telehealth? A cross-sectional postal survey.Journal of medical Internet research,16(5), e123. Gellis, Z. D., Kenaley, B. L., Have, T. T. (2014). Integrated telehealth care for chronic illness and depression in geriatric home care patients: The Integrated Telehealth Education and Activation of Mood (Ià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ TEAM) study.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society,62(5), 889-895. Myers, K., Vander Stoep, A., Zhou, C., McCarty, C. A., Katon, W. (2015). Effectiveness of a telehealth service delivery model for treating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A community-based randomized controlled trial.Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry,54(4), 263-274. Polinski, J. M., Barker, T., Gagliano, N., Sussman, A., Brennan, T. A., Shrank, W. H. (2016). Patients satisfaction with and preference for telehealth visits.Journal of general internal medicine,31(3), 269-275. Rodriguez, B. B. (2014).The impact of telehealth on social services(Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Stanislaus). Sabesan, S., Allen, D., Loh, P. K., Caldwell, P., Mozer, R., Komesaroff, P. A., ... Shaheen, N. (2013). Practical aspects of telehealth: are my patients suited to telehealth?.Internal medicine journal,43(5), 581-584. Scanland, S. (2016). Managing Dementia Residents in Long-Term Care Using Telehealth.The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry,24(3), S21. Smith, A. C., Caffery, L. J., Saunders, R., Bradford, N. K., Gray, L. C. (2014). Generating new telehealth services using a whole of community approach: experience in regional Queensland.Journal of telemedicine and telecare,20(7), 365-369. Weinstein, R. S., Lopez, A. M., Joseph, B. A., Erps, K. A., Holcomb, M., Barker, G. P., Krupinski, E. A. (2014). Telemedicine, telehealth, and mobile health applications that work: opportunities and barriers.The American journal of medicine,127(3), 183-187.