Evaluate whether the plan is comprehensive based on the major parts that are typical for a business plan. Provide details of major shortcomings and/or exceptional parts.

/in /by

Business Plan

Instructions for Individual Assignment: Evaluation of a Business Plan

(A Review/Critique/Analysis of an Existing Plan)
Your task is to critically analyze a full business plan provided to you by the instructor. The business plan for your individual evaluation is posted in CourseDen. You should use the contents of your textbook to guide your assessment, and your grade will be based on how well you demonstrate your ability to apply the concepts from this course and explain your analysis. Your work on this assignment is to be individual, and each student submits his or her own report.
The analysis should be approximately two-to-three single-spaced pages in length (or four-six double-spaced pages if you prefer to double space the document). Submit your analysis as a Word document via the assignment folder in CourseDen. Essentially, you are trying to determine if the plan presents a viable business and then, to provide recommendations for ways to improve the plan. You should highlight key shortcomings or open questions with the plan as well as identify some positive aspects of the business and the plan. Papers earning the highest grades will note both positives and negatives about the business plan.
Your report should address the items below. Parts 3 and 4 are the substantive parts of the analysis of the business idea and should represent the largest component of the report.

1) The basic mechanics – grammar, spelling, typos, formatting, order of the sections, and so on.
a. You should assess the plan that you are reviewing for these basic mechanics. You do not have to identify all errors. However, you should identify the nature of the errors, perhaps showing a few examples, and explain whether/how such errors are detracting from the message of the plan.
b. Additionally, you should proofread and edit your own report to eliminate errors in the basic mechanics.

2) Evaluate whether the plan is comprehensive based on the major parts that are typical for a business plan. Provide details of major shortcomings and/or exceptional parts. [You can ignore missing resumes and details about the management team as these have been removed for the anonymity of the authors.]

3) Explain how the business idea described in the plan might be improved, strengthened, and made more relevant to the business environment. Remember that entrepreneurs can become so enamored with their ideas that they have large blind spots which can be evident as overstatements, generalizations, omissions, or quick dismissal of what would seem to outside observers to be obvious concerns – such attitudes and perspectives might be displayed in the plan you are reviewing. Specifically, address the question from the following two angles:
a. What changes would you suggest to the business idea and the plan for implementing it (i.e., not to the written document, but to the ideas it presents)? What effect would those changes have if adopted?
b. In your opinion, is this business likely to be adaptable to changes in environment and resilient when confronted by challenges in the environment? Or is its likelihood of success limited to a particular set of circumstances? We have seen recent examples of environmental challenges with the labor supply and supply chain and inflation, but there are many other types of changes such as economic shifts (from up to down or from down to up), new/disruptive technologies, regulations, and arrival or departure of competitors or substitutes. Do you have concerns about this business’s resilience and ability to adapt? What are some modifications to the business that might increase its chances of operating successfully during challenges or adapting to lasting changes?

4) Does the plan offer a compelling justification for starting the proposed new business? Why or why not? With the changes you proposed in item 3 above, do you think the plan presents an idea for a business that could reach an appropriate scale and sustain itself over time? You can use the list above as the framing structure for your paper, or if a different order better suits your analysis, that is fine.

To help you get started and decide how to proceed with your analysis, below is a list of the major sections of a business plan as well as major traits expected in a plan (e.g., organization, professionalism). Use this list as a reminder of the types of topics and characteristics that an informed reader would be expecting to see in a business plan. It is acceptable if a section is omitted or positioned differently as long as you think that the necessary information is present and well-organized. Also, additional sections could be included if they are relevant to specific circumstances of a business or industry.
 Sections
a. Executive summary
b. Product or service description
c. Industry and market analysis
d. Marketing plan
e. Operations plan
f. Management team plan
g. Company structure
h. Financial plan
i. Growth plan
 Characteristics
a. Detail that is relevant
b. Clarity of explanations
c. Professionalism
d. Appearance and organization
e. Effectiveness

What was the most rewarding part of the process of AD? Why? How did you overcome challenges during your research? Identify at least three (3) difficulties that arose during the project and explain how you solved them.

/in /by

Spanish Question

I. General Questions on the AD Process (15%)

  1. What was the most rewarding part of the process of AD? Why? Please, be specific.
  2. How did you overcome challenges during your research? Identify at least three (3) difficulties that arose during the project and explain how you solved them.
  3. How did you navigate multimodal tools (voice-over script, images, sound, music)?

II. Script: Focusing on verbal language (25%) (Modules 2 and 3)

  1. What was the hardest part of writing your script regarding language (i.e. selection of adjectives, adverbs, matching time and words, etc.) and what was the easiest? Why? Please offer specific examples.
  1. Do you feel your level of Spanish or English has improved by writing this script and doing this project? How? Please, be specific.
  2. What, if anything, has your project made you notice about language that you did not notice before?
  3. Explain in detail how movement has been expressed through words in your AD taking into account specifically what we discussed this semester in class about choosing the right lexical choice of verbs and what we discussed when commenting AD for dancing.
  4. How was the revising and editing process of the script? Be specific.

III. Voice-over: Focusing on vocal skills (20%)

  1. What prosodic features (intonation, pitch, tone of voice) did you notice are crucial in AD? Please, be specific and provide examples.
  2. How do you think your pronunciation of Spanish or English has improved because of the voice over of your AD project? Please, be specific and provide examples.
  3. Did you notice that your vocal skills would need to adapt to the rhythm or genre of the movie, play or art piece? Please, be specific and provide examples.
  4. What was the hardest part of doing the voice-over and what was the easiest? Why? Please, be specific.

IV. Creativity in AD (10%) (Modules 12 and 13)

Think of two (2) examples or instances in your final project where you were compelled to use a creative AD approach and answer the following questions:

  1. Explain those two (2) cases of creative AD. Why did you decide to do it?
  2. How did you deviate from standard guidelines of AD?
  3. Are you satisfied with the result? Why?
  4. What consequences do you extract from using creative AD in your final project
  5. After having read the article “´What should I say? ´ Tentative Criteria to Prioritize Information in the Audio Description of Film Characters” by Fresno et al. (2016), what are the types of traits that you have used to describe the main characters in your final project? And for the secondary characters?
  6. After having read the article “How Co-Speech Gestures are Rendered in Audio Description: A Case Study” by Jankowska & Zabrocka (2016), please give examples in your final project of each one of the three types of gestures that the authors identify.
  7. According to that same article (“How Co-Speech Gestures are Rendered in Audio Description: A Case Study” by Jankowska & Zabrocka, 2016), please explain and justify what type of strategy did you use in each type of the gestures identified above.
  8. After reading the article of English and Spanish AD in Élite by García-Vizcaíno (2021), identify in your final project three (3) cases of kinesics, looks, or face expressions that may have a different cultural impact in English and Spanish. Explain in detail.

Develop and design a functional E-Business application using PHP, HTML and CSS and should be supported with SQL database as a backend.

/in /by

Develop a dynamic website / E-Business application.

PROJECT GOAL
The goal of the project is to develop a dynamic website / E–Business application based on the skills gained in the course. The application should be based on a selected e–business scenario and it should support multiple user services.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES
• Develop and design a functional E–Business application using PHP, HTML and CSS and should be supported with SQL database as a backend.
• The web application should be user friendly and has a consistent design
• The application should support multiple database transactions: Insert, Update, Delete, and View.
• The application should be secured using the proper PHP coding techniques.

Create a basic machine learning modeling experiment in Azure ML Studio to predict one of the labels.

/in /by

Azure ML studio and tableau

For the first one download the below Tableau workbook file and complete the instructions within using the embedded data (no dataset upload required). Send completed Tableau workbook.

For the second assignment create a basic machine learning modeling experiment in Azure ML Studio to predict one of the labels

  • Potential features:
      • Gender: of the person who posted the Tweet
      • Country or State: of the location where the Tweet originated from
      • Weekday, Day, Hour: of the date it was tweeted
      • Klout: a score representing how “popular” or “important” the person is who posted the tweet
      • Sentiment: a score representing the tone of the tweet text
      • Reach: how many people had viewed the tweet at the time the data was collected
      • IsReshare: whether or not the tweet was a reshared of another tweet
      • RetweetCount: the number of “Retweets” other users had given the tweet
      • Likes: the number of “Likes” other users had given the tweet
      • Lang: the language that the tweet was written in
  • Candidate labels: Each of these features might represent the popularity or impact of a tweet. However, you can only use one. Your goal is to select a label that is 1) as meaningful as possible, and 2) as easy to predict with strong accuracy and fit metrics as possible. However, you’ll find that those objects can conflict with each other at times: more of one may mean less of the other. Choose carefully.
    • Reach
    • IsReshare
    • RetweetCount
    • Likes

Requirements:

  • Build an experiment in Azure ML Studio to predict one of the candidate labels listed above or some derived version of those labels.
  • Follow the pattern and techniques learned in this module to select columns, split the data into a training and testing set, and then train, score, and evaluate the model
    • You should select/include any feature that you think should logically explain or predict your label.
  • Use linear regression to train the model.
    • However, you will learn later that there are other algorithms available that are better suited to count-based data like RetweetCount, Likes, and Reach. But don’t worry about that for now.
  • Complete any relevant data preparation tasks demonstrated in the textbook chapters and in class (minimum 3 types).

Browse the article and select three of the 11 topics in this article you find most relevant to our semester-long discussion on skeleton-related ethical issues and write a summary about them.

/in /by

Social Science Question

Before coming to Week 16’s class, read and take notes on the following item.

  • Buikstra, J. E., DeWitte, S. N., Agarwal, S. C., Baker, B. J., Bartelink, E. J., Berger, E., Blevins, K. E., Bolhofner, K., Boutin, A. T., Brickley, M. B., Buzon, M. R., de la Cova, C., Goldstein, L., Gowland, R., Grauer, A. L., Gregoricka, L. A., Halcrow, S. E., Hall, S. A., Hillson, S., … Zakrzewski, S. R. (2022). Twenty-first century bioarchaeology: Taking stock and moving forward. Yearbook of Biological Anthropology 178(Suppl. 74):54–114. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24494

This is a review on decades of bioarchaeological research and future directions. There are 11 specific topics where specialists on each topic discussed its current research progress and reflected on possible shortfalls and recommendations.

Browse the article and select three of the 11 topics in this article you find most relevant to our semester-long discussion on skeleton-related ethical issues and write a summary about them. Your summary MUST be between 250 and 300 words (i.e., this summary should be twice as long as the usual length).

Estimate the standard error of the CATE for above-median water users. What is the 95% confidence interval of the conditional average treatment effect for above-median water users?

/in /by

Designing Experiment Homework 5

Article & Data
This homework is partially based on Ferraro and Price (2013) Review of Economics and Statistics, which you used for HW1-HW3, and partially based on Thornton (2008) American Economic Review, which you used for HW3-HW4.

Individual Questions

Questions on Ferraro and Price
In the Ferraro-Price data set, the variable percent_report reports the household’s percentile for water use the year before the experiment was conducted (2006). Let’s define “below median” as
any household with percent_report<50 and “above median” as any household with percent_report>=50. We have thus defined two subgroups: (1) treated and control households who were below the median; and (2) treated and control households who were at or above the median. Within each subgroup, you can estimate an average treatment effect, known as a conditional average treatment effect (CATE) because it’s an ATE conditional on some characteristic of the experimental units (in this case, pre-treatment water use).

1a. Estimate the conditional average treatment effect (CATE) for below–median water users. You can estimate this CATE by either calculating a simple difference-in-means in summer 2007 water use (like in HW1) between treated and control groups or by regressing summer 2007 water use on treat3, water_2006, and apr_may07 (like in HW2). For calculating standard errors, you can either use formula 3.6 in your textbook (like in HW1) or the output that Excel reports from the regression (like in HW2).

1b. Estimate the standard error of the estimated CATE for below–median water users.

1c. What is the 95% confidence interval of the estimated CATE for below–median water users? [Use answer from 1b and the simple formula that you used in HW1 to calculate confidence intervals; If you used regression to estimate the CATE, the program output will report the 95% CI]

1d. In HW1 and HW2, you estimated the ATE of Treatment 3. In this HW5, you estimated the ATE conditional on being a below–median water use (1a above)? Which design has greater statistical power: the one for estimating the ATE or the one for estimating the CATE? How do you know? [Hint: You do not need to do any calculations. Use your knowledge of what factors affect statistical power]

2a. Estimate the CATE for above–median water users.
2b. Estimate the standard error of the CATE for above–median water users.
2c. What is the 95% confidence interval of the conditional average treatment effect for above–median water users? [Use answer from 2b and the simple formula that you used in HW1 to calculate confidence intervals; If you used regression to estimate the CATE, the program output will report the 95% CI]
2d. Based on your estimates in 1a and 2a, which subgroup seems to respond most to the Treatment 3 message? I’m just asking you to compare the magnitudes of the two numbers. No statistical test is necessary.

Questions on Thornton (2008)
For this question, you need to use the variable HIV_04, which equals zero if the test indicated the person was HIV negative (HIV–) and equals one if the test indicated the person was HIV positive (HIV+). Within each of these subgroups, you can estimate a CATE: the average treatment effect of receiving an incentive (any) on getting the test result (got), conditional on the person being HIV– or HIV+. You can estimate these two CATEs by calculating a simple difference–in–means in getting the test result (got = 1 vs got = 0).

  • 3a. What is the CATE for HIV+ individuals (the effect of receiving any incentive on getting results for HIV+ individuals)?
  • 3b. What is the CATE for HIV– individuals (the effect of receiving any incentive on getting results for HIV– individuals)?

Read article and use these guidelines in your review: In the introduction: What is the author’s purpose, or goal, or thesis? Why is author writing this article? What does author want to say? What are the author’s key points? What are the results, the findings? What are the conclusions? What does the author say about his/her findings?

/in /by

Modern social work values

Review Paper of Journal Article: Racovita-Szilagyi & Diaconu (2016). Biblical Foundations of Modern Social Work Values and Practice Competencies. The Journal of Biblical Foundations of Faith and Learning, 1, 1-20.

Requirements: Obtain article through Google search. Read article and use these guidelines in your review: In the introduction: What is the author’s purpose, or goal, or thesis? Why is author writing this article? What does author want to say?  What are the author’s key points? What are the results, the findings?  What are the conclusions? What does the author say about his/her findings?

Present what you know regarding Cyber Security in a condensed presentation. Do you have a github account? Have you ever written a bash script, a python script? Look back at some of the biggest projects you have put together at NOVA and here at Mason and other institutions, what work did you perform on these?

/in /by

PowerPoint slides with presentation speech per slide

Content: Present what you know regarding Cyber Security in a condensed presentation. Do you have a github account? Have you ever written a bash script, a python script? Look back at some of the biggest projects you have put together at NOVA and here at Mason and other institutions, what work did you perform on these? Do you have any Cyber Security related topics you can present on that line up with a skill in a job position?

In some viruses, capsomeres function as enzymes as well as structural supports. Of what advantage is this to the virus? Briefly discuss the importance of lichens in nature. Briefly discuss the importance of algae in nature.

/in /by

Assignment no. 4

1–How does commercial sterilization differ from sterilization procedures used in a hospital or laboratory?

2–Outline the steps in the production of cheese, and compare the production of hard and soft cheeses. Which bacteria seem to be most frequently used in the production of food? Propose an explanation for this.

3–Explain the effect of dumping untreated sewage into a pond on the eutrophication of the pond. The effect of sewage that has primary treatment? The effect of sewage that has secondary treatment? Contrast your previous answers with the effect of each type of sewage on a fast–moving river.

4–The following organisms have important roles as symbionts with plants and fungi; describe the symbiotic relationship of each organism with its host: cyanobacteria, mycorrhizae, Rhizobium, and Frankia.

5–Why is the phosphorus cycle important?

6–Which of the following can affect human cells? Explain why.

  • a. penicillin
  • b. indinavir
  • c. erythromycin
  • d. polymyxin

7–A patient with streptococcal sore throat takes penicillin for 2 days of a prescribed 10–day regimen. Because he feels better, he then saves the remaining penicillin for some other time. After 3 more days, he suffers a relapse of the sore throat. Discuss the probable cause of the relapse.

8–Compare pathogenicity with virulence.

9–How are capsules and cell wall components related to pathogenicity? Give specific examples.

10–Explain whether each of the following examples is a food infection or intoxication. What is the probable etiological agent in each case?

  • a. Eighty–two people in Louisiana developed diarrhea, nausea, headache, and fever from 4 hours to 2 days after eating shrimp.
  • b. Two people in Vermont developed malaise, nausea, blurred vision, breathing difficulty, and numbness 3 to 6 hours after eating barracuda caught in Florida.

11–Differentiate the terms in each of the following pairs:

  • a. etiology and pathogenesis
  • b. infection and disease
  • c. communicable disease and non–communicable disease

12–Define symbiosis. Differentiate commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism, and give an example of each.

13–In some viruses, capsomeres function as enzymes as well as structural supports. Of what advantage is this to the virus?

14–Briefly discuss the importance of lichens in nature. Briefly discuss the importance of algae in nature.

Write a program in a class CharacterFrequency that counts the number of times a digit appears in a telephone number. Create an array of size 10 that will hold the count for each digit from 0 to 9. Read a telephone number from the keyboard as a string. Examine each character in the phone number and increment the appropriate count in the array. Display the contents of the array.

/in /by

Elements of computer programming

Assignment-5

Problem 1: In check-writing systems, it’s crucial to prevent alteration of check amounts. One common security method requires that the amount be written in numbers and spelled out in words as well. Even if someone can alter the numerical amount of the check, it’s tough to change the amount in words. Create a dictionary that maps numbers to their corresponding word equivalents. Write a script that inputs a numeric check amount that’s less than 1000 and uses the dictionary to write the word equivalent of the amount. For example, the amount 112.43 should be written as:

ONE HUNDRED TWELVE AND 43/100

Problem 2: Standard telephone keypads contain the digits zero through nine. The numbers two through nine each have three letters associated with them, as shown in the following table:

Many people find it difficult to memorize phone numbers, so they use the correspondence between digits and letters to develop seven-letter words (or phrases) that correspond to their phone numbers. For example, a person whose telephone number is 686-2377 might use the correspondence indicated in the preceding table to develop the seven letter word “NUMBERS.” Every seven-letter word or phrase corresponds to exactly one seven-digit telephone number. A budding data science entrepreneur might like to reserve the phone number 244-3282 (“BIGDATA”).

Every seven-digit phone number without 0s or 1s corresponds to many different seven-letter words, but most of these words represent unrecognizable gibberish. A veterinarian with the phone number 738-2273 would be pleased to know that the number corresponds to the letters “PETCARE.”

Write a script that, given a seven-digit number, generates every possible seven-letter word combination corresponding to that number. There are 2,187 (37) such combinations. Avoid phone numbers with the digits 0 and 1 (to which no letters correspond). See if your phone number corresponds to meaningful words.

Problem 3: Write a program in a class CharacterFrequency that counts the number of times a digit appears in a telephone number. Your program should create an array of size 10 that will hold the count for each digit from 0 to 9. Read a telephone number from the keyboard as a string. Examine each character in the phone number and increment the appropriate count in the array. Display the contents of the array.