Stronger Faster Smarter

Stronger, Faster, Smarter By Mary Carmichael A. Account The text â€Å"Stronger, Faster, Smarter† written by Mary Carmichael states that exercise is the key to develop a healthier and smarter brain. According to the text, studies show that exercise such as aerobic doesn’t only increase the size of the muscles via the increased blood flow, the same thing happens to the brain. More blood equals more oxygen, which helps maintain the brain cells nourished better. The same kind of exercise has also coaxed the human brain to produce new nerve cells and caused older nerve cells to form interconnected webs that make the brain run faster and more efficiently. All which results in a stronger, faster and smarter brain. These statements are fully held out by research in the field of neuroscience and kinesiology described in the text and also confirmed in the field of biochemistry. With the view of a biochemist the evidence lies on the molecular level. When exercising, our muscles contract and release and within this particular motion a protein called IGF-1 finds it way to the brain through the bloodstream. This protein informs the brain of the increased activity due to the exercise, which makes the brain crank up its production of different chemicals needed to keep the body working in a new and more stressed state. One of these chemicals is called brain derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF and is indispensable when we talk about growing a bigger, stronger, faster and smarter brain. In fact a book on this subject calls it â€Å"Miracle-Gro for the brain. It fuels almost all the activities that lead to higher thought†. With this piece of information we can conclude in a scientific way that an increase of body exercise results in a higher production of chemicals and molecules in the body, where BDNF is one of them. With an increase of BDNF, blood and also oxygen we can conclude that not only does the process of exercise lead to an increased memory and improved function due to an increase of the size of the brain which occurs of the higher amount of bloodstream, it also leads to creation of new nerve cells and their branching out, connection and communication or what we in normal sayings would call an increased ability to learn. B1. Essay Who should be held responsible is the question. And the answer is pretty simple. The educators. And the reason is simple too. As pupils, high school and college students we spend a total of almost 20 years of studying, some even more. At least a quarter of a day is held in these educational institutions that are meant to transform us from an individual to a working but also thinking part of society. Being smarter is the actual goal you set yourself; it is what the society expects when we go to school. We are taught that by being present and participating in the lessons, we learn. But what we forget or don’t know is that a crucial ingredient of learning is being fit to learn. A statement scientifically proven by numerous professors and biologist. An increase of blood flow to the brain due to exercise increases the flow of oxygen, which creates a more healthier, fresh and clean environment where new brain cells can be formed and interconnect with each other to shape what we call learning. Some people will maybe say that keeping yourself fit is a personal responsibility, but what these people forget is that obese people and people who don’t exercise could actually do more good for the society if they were fit. Everyone nowadays know that people who exercise are less likely to get life-treating diseases and studies in physiology also show that an active life equals a longer life. The society benefits from this in many ways. Not only do we live longer, we use less money on medication and treatment. But there is also a missing benefit that we forget. A fitter and healthier society equals a more intelligent society. When you look at societies with a higher level of education and compare them with societies with the exact opposite you will see a dramatic difference in wealth and happiness. I am not stating that you can’t be happy if you are poor or uneducated, but my point is that a clever and educated population tend to form societies where the foundations are based on higher level of theory and education. When taking little Denmark in perspective to the most of the world you will see that we differ by giving every citizen a chance to become an educated individual. Just by having this opportunity you can live a life in wealth and happiness, which you wouldn’t be able to in many other countries. This is also called the â€Å"Jantelov†, which says that you are no better than anybody else. A garbage man has the opportunity to become a lawyer or a doctor but as a garbage man he can live in a middle-class neighborhood and hold is head high without feeling anyone judging his choice of career. He may not have a high level of education, and his work hours may be awkward but he can enjoy the rest of the day with his family and recharge to next day of work. All of this is possible because the country is built by intellectual and educated people who have learned how to build a well working society where everyone have equal rights and have a place in society. To bare out my statement of a more intelligent society equals a happier society, independent studies and surveys in the field of social science all show that Denmark is the happiest place on earth. Little Denmark is ranked above USA, the richest and most powerful country in human history and even way above those paradise-like places like Hawaii. Based on the values of â€Å"Jantelov†, and the way the Danish society system is built by well-educated statesmen you actually have evidence of not only a wealthy, but also the happiest country in the world. It is therefore a united responsibility that should be held out by educators because their role and job is to educate and teach us how to learn. An increased effort done by educators in the field of exercise will contribute as a social benefit because a more fit and healthy society benefits in not only a wealthier and happier but also a more intelligent society. Another good reason why educational institutes should be held responsible of exercise is that they are the places that young people spend most of their time. They are the places we meet with our classmates and going to school or university is a daily routine. When we wake up we know that within few hours we have to head to one of these educational institutes where the educators have the responsibility to teach us. The main purpose is to learn what the educators teach us. Day after day we go to school to learn, but why don’t we exercise every day? This could become a reality if the educators also were coaches or brain trainers, so they didn’t only have the responsibility to teach but also to train our brains to learn with the help of fun games that motivate us to move our bodies. And motivation is the key element to exercise. If we make these games as important as the lessons we would create a social security net which doesn’t let people complete the educational without completing the â€Å"obligatory games†. The ancient Greeks did this as well, and said â€Å"fitness was almost as important as learning itself†. And an old Turkish saying my mom once told me says, â€Å"a healthy mind rests in a healthy body†. But you don’t have to be a scientist, biologist or even a Greek philosopher to see and feel the change in your body and brain when you exercise. Anyone can feel that they have a lot more energy and think clearer when they have exercise on a daily basis. But in our modern culture things such as game consoles and computers have taken over exercise and increased the proportion of overweight people. And after days and months or maybe years with no exercise we lose the motivational compositor that keeps reminding our brain that exercise is a good and satisfying for not only our body but also the brain that rests in it. And this motivation is then replaced by the fun of video games and socializing on the Internet. But a way we can re-experience the lost motivation is by doing something social and fun such as playing a game of soccer, which replaces the fun in video games and living a social life in cyberspace. By doing so, as an everyday routine in the educational institutes it will become as normal as getting up from bed, eating, brushing your teeth and going to school. It will be a regular everyday task almost an instinctual habit. And this is how and why the educators should be held responsible of training us to become better learners so we can develop stronger, faster and smarter brains.

Thought and Man

According to Holbach, humans have no control whatsoever, no matter how much said humans believe they do. He explains that free will is a construct of the human mind and that all of our choices are determined by desire and necessity. Even when a mad man sticks his hand in a fire, he is acting on some sort of greater desire to impress upon his counterparts or for his own self-betterment. In his opening deposition he states that man is connected to universal nature and submitted to the necessary and immutable laws she imposes on all beings. This is interesting because many arguments that are connected to the idea of determinism and free will are linked to the existence of God or another omniscient power. This is one of the only well explained arguments against the belief of free will that doesn’t lend itself to imposing personal religion onto the reader/scholar studying the work. The examples provided by Holbach are wide and well prepared to lend significance to his argument. He starts off talking of a man tormented by a violent thirst, if said man is shown water he will automatically want to drink it, as it is an inherent need for that water to live. He will however falter and think about not drinking the water if someone were to tell him it were poisoned. Holbach covers any conflicting thoughts to this situation by saying that a mad man may very well still drink of the poisoned water. He is not acting of his own free will as the actions of fools are as necessary as those of the most prudent individual almost set to be counteractions that hold the world in balance. Holbach continues on saying that the actions of man are never free. Man acts selfishly in every action he partakes in, he does make fairly educated decisions over what he must do though as he bases all his decisions on opinions, received ideas, consequences of his temperament that point to his own happiness. As we said in class about the door holding situation, you may not want to hold a door open for someone that is following behind you about three steps. It only takes a second out of your day, but the initial thought of any person opening the door first, is what will this person do for me if I hold the door for them? Even if the person didn’t think what will I get now, there’s the inherent belief of karma and the repercussions that will befall either the opener or the person the door is being opened for. Even as we are given apparent choices in our every day lives, such as whether or not to hold open a door for someone or to drink poisoned water or not, but even these observed choices don’t mean e have freedom. We are constantly in pursuit of our own happiness and success over anyone else’s. We strive to make ourselves appear better than those around us. A hero rushing into a burning building is acting on the same choices the coward does, he takes the foolhardy choice however because his desire to be viewed as a hero outweighs, in his mind, his personal safety. Holbach continues on his discussion to say th ere is no difference between a man who jumps from a building and the man who is pushed from a building. Both men are acting on the same choices, whether to fall or not, although the second man’s ability to act on the choice not to fall is directly correlated to how hard he is pushed or thrown from the building. The first man may be leaping of his own volition and may not scramble to grab on to anything that will slow or stop his apparent demise. The second man will probably be making his own choices once he’s air born by doing just that, grabbing onto anything in his path as he falls and screaming his lungs out. The man who holds his hand in a fire as a symbol of bravery and strength of his people has his choices over whether or not to be in the fire. He however does it to make his people look stronger, striking fear or adoration into the hearts of his enemies. Once you recognize he’s doing this for the betterment of his people or of himself we can begin to realize just what Holbach is trying to say, that no matter what choices we are faced with, we will almost always, without regard for the other choice, do what’s best for us and us alone. A choice that is apparent in this present time is the out striking of suicide bombers. These people have a choice of either blowing themselves up or not. The problem is that when these people are Middle Eastern they are usually promised 72 virgins when they reach their promised land. That’s a pretty weighty option and most guys would kill for that, quite literally in the sense of this discussion. Once you give rewards to outlandish behavior you’re setting up the world for destruction. It changes the morality issue most people argue with on if something is good or evil by replacing it with hey, it may be not good, but I get all this cool stuff if I do it! The preceding argument only works with male suicide bombers however as I know a lot of girls who wouldn’t enjoy having 72 virgins in the afterlife. The men definitely get the better end of the deal. It makes one wonder what the mentality of the female bombers is, do they get something better in the afterlife too for going along with this ‘decision’? r is the act of the suicide bomber in the female’s eyes actually a choice and not something done for the betterment of herself except for the fact that it makes her apparently an equal to the men in her country. That answers my own disbelief over their choices. Most women in the Middle East are not allowed to show any skin, let alone do much for themselves while in their own homelands. If they are given an opportunity to become seen as an ind ividual in her countrymen’s eyes, of course she will take it. Even when it calls for giving one’s life for the apparent greater good. Even when trying to come up with an objection to Holbach’s view, I couldn’t come up with anything substantial to hold against it, the more I tried to fight against his discussion, the more I saw he is correct. Humans are inherently selfish and will always do what’s best for themselves over anything for the greater good. Man has no control over his decisions, he may like to think he does, but when you look back on every decision we’ve ever made in our lives we see that our choices were more often than not, done out of selfish reasons. Few people can go out into the world giving themselves selflessly and without thought. Even if we try to make the conscious effort to do something good for someone every day, that’s only one out of a million choices we make every day. I’m guilty of holding the door for someone following a few steps behind me but I get irritated when they don’t say thank you to me as they pass by, and I do think that Karma will treat me well later in my day and life for every time I do take the time to hold a door for someone, or pick up a pencil someone has dropped, or any other source of everyday happenings.

Chronic Illness and Palliative Care. Master Nursing Essay

Chronic Illness and Palliative Care. Master Nursing - Essay Example The discussion in this paper will be based on the principles of care of a patient with a chronic illness which is asthma in attempts to explore three main concepts, living with asthma and patients quality of life; the client's empowerment through self-management care and the continuity of care in a multidisciplinary team approach with a palliative care setting. According to the definition provided by the World Health Organization (1990), "Palliative care is the active total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment. Control of pain or other symptoms and psychological, social and spiritual problems in this context are of paramount importance" (pp. 804). Regarding shared values and ethics in palliative care, ethike is a Greek word from which the word ethics is derived. Ethos is a value which one has and consistently applies to one's life. Within the palliative care setting, there are three aspects of patient care that need special attention: the realms of t he palliative care patient; the realm of the palliative care nurse; and the realm of the palliative care team. ... Scott was diagnosed with asthma at age of six years. There are some factors such as dairy products; shellfish; electrical storms and dairy dust that trigger his asthma attacks. Scott is married, but his wife left him three months ago and his condition gets worse and the house does not have the same standard as before. In his effort to find alleviation of the symptoms of asthma, Scott attends his 45 to 49 year old health assessment for the first time. The Patient's Diagnosis Scott was diagnosed with asthma at age of six years. His asthma is a chronic condition. Recently, Scott is complaining of bad asthma attack which stopped him to attend his work as usual. Additionally, Scott has psoriasis and the history of having it is unknown. However, the nurse practitioner should conduct a thorough health assessment in order to gain furthers details about the diagnosis of both disease, treatment, and the way of self management that is followed by Scott in order to control over his condition. Me asuring the severity level of asthma is determined by the physician by asking the client to have a lung function test (LFT), which a breathing test that identify whether the person is having asthma and its severity. Another test that can be done easily by the patient is spirometry, which is an instrument that is considered to be the most accurate test to determine asthma (Department of Health and Aging, 2010b). Living With Asthma Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways and lung. It is characterized by wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and shortness of breath. There are some of the risk factors that contribute to trigger asthma attack such as colds and flu, air

Aromaticity Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Aromaticity - Coursework Example N2 configuration , sp3 hybridization. All atoms within the cycle are sp2 hybridized, number of pi-electrons is 10 (4n+2, n=2), so the cycle is aromatic, the whole molecule is not as it is not cyclic. S configuration , sp2 hybridization, electrons in the lone pair are pi-electrons. All atoms are sp2 hybridized, molecule is planar and conjugated, number of pi-electrons is 10 (4n+2, n=2), so it is aromatic. N5 configuration , sp3 hybridization. All atoms within the cycle are sp2 hybridized, number of pi-electrons is 10 (4n+2, n=2), so the cycle is aromatic, while the whole molecule is not as it is not planar. 10) O configuration , sp2 hybridization, electrons in the lone pair are pi-electrons. All atoms are sp2 hybridized, molecule is planar, number of pi-electrons is 8 (4n+2, n=1.5), so it is not aromatic. O possible configurations a) , b). Configuration a), Sp2 hybridized, with one pi-electron. All atoms are sp2 hybridized, molecule is planar and conjugated, number of pi-electrons is 6 (4n+2, n=1), so it is

Police Training and Equipment during Budget Crisis Research Paper

Police Training and Equipment during Budget Crisis - Research Paper Example ions is that the existing police force is barely adequate to handle the volume of crimes andï€ ¬ thereforeï€ ¬ the menace of crime keeps increasingï€ ® This is especially so in the case of countries such as US and UKï€ ¬ which confront the threats of a large number of illegal immigrantsï€ ¬ criminal gangsï€ ¬ drug syndicatesï€ ¬ weapon smugglersï€ ¬ terrorists groups etcï€ ® These criminals, with their free availability of funding and other resources, operate with the help of modern technology and sophisticated gadgets. On the other hand, due to paucity of funds, the training and provision of equipment for police forces remain sidetracked on many occasions. Compromising on the training and equipment of the police forces can impact negatively on their performance and morale especially when they have to confront highly trained, motivated and well equipped criminals. Therefore, the budgetary constraints of government should not be taken as an excuse for cuttin g down on the cost of police training and provision of equipment. In order to analyze this issue, this study will evaluate the existing literature on the topic and data available on police budget and how budgetary cuts affect police training and provision of equipment. In the current scenarioï€ ¬ fighting terrorism is a most complex and challenging concern for the law enforcement agencies in USï€ ¬ as various terrorist organizations are being funded by foreign nations that have plenty of resourcesï€ ® Besidesï€ ¬ the members of such groupsï€ ¬ who are blind believers in religious faithï€ ¬ become committed followers that are ready to sacrifice their lives for the cause they believe inï€ ® They are also highly educatedï€ ¬ technology savvy and driven by fanatics to such an extent that they are prepared to go to any extend to unleash carnage in nations they believe are against the values they cherishï€ ® Therefore, in order to combat criminals of this kind, the police needs to be appropriately trained and well equipped. Ho wever,

Pricing strategy of ipos and what are the reason behind failure in Essay

Pricing strategy of ipos and what are the reason behind failure in ipos in india - Essay Example I am aware of the policy on plagiarism and can understand its implications. I can produce a hard copy of this assignment as when demanded by the University. The Dissertation entitled Under Pricing and After Market Performance- a Study on Indian Initial Public Offering is the outcome of my sole effort with the advice and help of many. First I am grateful to the Almighty for the endless help and enthusiasm extended to me completing the work in time. I am also thankful to my Professor (Name here) for his/her valuable supervision and advice for producing a quality work. Next, I am indebted to each and every friend of mine for the help and enthusiasm they extended to me for completing the work without much difficulty. I am also grateful to University (Name of the university) for the help and learning environment extended to me for studying and preparing a dissertation on finance. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for the warm influence and love which ha been a source of inspiration for me for the successful completion of the work. The work entitled under pricing and after market performance- A study on Indian Initial Public Offering is an attempt to examine the important determinants of under pricing and analyse the behaviour of initial public offering return and after market performance in Indian context. The researcher takes a sample of 20 Indian Initial Public Offering listed on both Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE). The samples are selected on a certain conditions to ensure the authenticity of the data collected and the generalisations arrived at after the completion of the work. Many research studies have been undertaken in the field of market under pricing and long rum market performance. Many of them came out with results that under pricing are a common phenomenon in the stock market IPO and the long term performance of common stock is exactly in

Relatively low number of women in parliaments Essay

Relatively low number of women in parliaments - Essay Example India is the second most heavily populated country in the world and more over the largest democratic country in the world. However, even after 60 years of independence, Indian parliament failed to give the proper representation to the women community in India. India was ruled by only once by a women prime minister: Mrs. Indira Gandhi. The current Indian president and parliament speaker are females. Even then the representation of women in Indian parliament is negligible at present. The cases are not different even in some of the highly developed democratic countries like UK and USA. In UK, only 18% of the total parliamentary seats hold by the women. There are many social, cultural and political reasons for the underrepresentation of women in the parliament. â€Å"The arguments in favour of increasing women’s participation in politics rely on 3 principles: Firstly, on democratic justice, secondly, on resource utilisation and thirdly, on interest representation† (Aggio, 2 001, p.3). Neither the God, nor the nature never ever asked the human to treat the women community in a different manner. In fact the dominant male community using their superior muscle power suppressed the weaker female community needs. It is impossible to the current word to develop properly if we neglect the contributions of the half of our population; the women community. ... Reasons for the underrepresentation of the women in parliament The reasons for the underrepresentation of women in politics can be understood in the case of totalitarian or autocratic countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, North Korea or Cuba. However, it is difficult to believe that even in democratic countries, the representation of women in the political decision making bodies or parliament are negligible. â€Å"Democracy cannot afford to be gender blind† (Fogg, 2006, p.24). Democracy ensures equal opportunities to all in principles; however these principles often stay on papers alone. India, one of the largest democracies in world, recently tried to ensure at least 33% of women representation in Parliament. An ordinance was presented in the parliament in order to ensure at least 33% women participation in parliament; however, the stiff resistance from some of the prominent political parties and fundamentalists prevented the Indian parliament form passing such an ordi nance. From the above descriptions, it is clear that one of the major reasons for underrepresentation of women in parliament is the male domination in the society. Even though, in principles, most of us agree the ideas of giving equality to the women; however, when it comes to practice, most of the male community object it. By nature, the male community has a dominant attitude towards the female community. For men, the responsibilities of the females are limited to the boundaries within walls of the home. The above belief has changed slightly in recent times and many of the females started to work in offices and other professional organizations just like men. Many feminists’ movements contributed heavily to bring the women out of the walls of the home. Even then, male

Answer two questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Answer two questions - Essay Example Every individual has the decision to make with regard to the receiving the grace of God. For example we have a choice to receive or reject Jesus Christ. There are two doctrines that seek to expound the responsibility of God and man in the issue of salvation. According to Arminiasm, salvation is received through the efforts of both man and God. Mans response is therefore the main factor, because he has freewill. Therefore the provision of salvation is not for everyman (Picirilli 482). Man is the determining factor towards the gift of salvation. For example, God saved Adam but man still resisted his grace. According to the doctrine of Calvinism, salvation is determined by the power of God. God therefore determines who will receive salvation. Both are summed up in five points. Calvinism looks as atonement being unlimited and Arminism vice versa. The number of Christian denominations, in the United States are numerous, among them Lutheran, Evangelical, Orthodox among many others. Most Christian professes to love one another yet they cannot stand the ideals of others. Religious tolerance is an important aspect both to the believer and to the community because lack of tolerance leads to misunderstanding among the community who discriminate and ignore others who does not have the same common views and background. Majority of people do not know that religious tolerance promotes respect and understanding among different believers. In the world, all the big religions share the same basic rule, the culture as our golden rule, that promotes the concept of do onto others as you would like them do onto you. According to my views, this is a major teaching that demonstrates that these religions are not different from others much. In an example, Islamic tells us that Ishmael, who was Abraham’s son, was the patriarch of the Islamic religion. Jews also believes that Abraham’s son Isaac was their patriarch as he was a Jew like Abraham and so helped in spreading the Jewish

Business & Professional Writing Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Business & Professional Writing - Term Paper Example The bank is presently carrying out valuations of the collateral that have been offered by the company but so far clearance is not obtained. This could affect the completion of the project. However, the legal department is working closely with the valuation company to secure a loan within a month. The project stage wise completion is according to the schedule agreed in the contract. The completion of the warehouse has been carried out without major modifications that have allowed restricting the construction cost from exceeding the targeted values. The progress report of the construction project suggests satisfactory completion. There are no major issues that could lead to construction activities halt. However, major concern is regarding the external financing that is required for payment to the contractor and other options must be urgently considered to avoid any breach of

Applied Skill for Human Services Essay Example for Free

Applied Skill for Human Services Essay The field of Human Services is broadly defined, uniquely approaching the objective of meeting human needs through an interdisciplinary knowledge base, focusing on prevention as well as remediation of problems, and maintaining a commitment to improving the overall quality of life of service populations. The Human Services profession is one which promotes improved service delivery systems by addressing not only the quality of direct services, but also by seeking to improve accessibility, accountability, and coordination among professionals and agencies in service delivery. (http://www.nationalhumanservices.org/what-is-human-services). Human services professional is a generic term for people who hold professional and paraprofessional jobs in such diverse settings as group homes and halfway houses; correctional, intellectual disability, and community mental health centers; family, child, and youth service agencies, and programs concerned with alcoholism, drug abuse, family violence, and aging. Depending on the employment setting and the kinds of clients served there, job titles and duties vary a great deal. The primary purpose of the human services professional is to assist individual and communities to function as effectively as possible in the major domains of living. A strong desire to help others is an important consideration for a job as a human services worker. Individuals who show patience, understanding, and caring in their dealings with others are highly valued by employers. Other important personal traits include communication skills, a strong sense of responsibility, and the ability to manage time effectively. (http://www.nationalhumanservices.org/what-is-human-services). When you think about it we all are in the human service field in some way or another, helping someone across the street, picking up something someone dropped for them, helping for the holidays, these are all ways of helping your fellow man/woman. The bigger difference is the profession of human service goes further to do this every day not just on a random whim. When it comes to helping a family on the brink of splitting up because abuse, violence, or  any other unthinkable act against a child will you help or just turn a cold shoulder, a human service worker has made a choice to put themselves as an advocate for the child/family to intervene and provide a safe haven or way out and away from the problem. When looking at Todd and Reggie, they really are going through a lot separately let alone together as a couple. You know off the bat that this will not be a quick couple of sessions and call it a day, these guys have a lot of things going on from death to substance abuse to being homosexual, which has been not as taboo as it has been in the past few years. The need separate counseling to air out their own personal issues then once that has been dealt with then try tackling couples therapy. Categories give order to life, and every day, we group other people into categories based on social and other characteristics. This is the foundation of stereotypes, prejudice and, ultimately, discrimination. A stereotype is an exaggerated belief, image or distorted truth about a person or group — a generalization that allows for little or no individual differences or social variation. Stereotypes are based on images in mass media, or reputations passed on by parents, peers and other members of society. Stereotypes can be positive or negative. A prejudice is an opinion, prejudgment or attitude about a group or its individual members. A prejudice can be positive, but in our usage refers to a negative attitude. Many of the prejudices and discrimination are passed down to the other generations. When the media and parents perpetuate degrading stereotypes and images about certain groups of people tend to discriminate others who belong to such groups. People with authoritarian personalities tend to prejudice as well since their thinking has its base on unconscious fears. Ethnocentrism makes people to evaluate other peoples culture based on their own and they are usually suspicious of outsiders. Group closure which involves keeping clear boundaries between groups with different characteristics could be another cause. The conflict theory suggests that the people who belong to the majority, the high social class and the privileged groups try very hard to hold on such positions. Any kind of competition especially from the minority can bring violence and conflict between them. In America, for example, black patients may go to a white counselor with negative expectations and biases. A recommendation to them would be to seek grief, alcohol, and substance abuse counseling aside from what they are getting. There may also be other programs Reggie could  look into for employment help as he is not really finding anything with the STARS program. It seems as if Reggie and Todd may need time apart before they can become a couple, They really need to sit down and be honest with each other and see if this really going anywhere or are they just hanging on in hopes something changes for the better. Resources http://www.nationalhumanservices.org/what-is-human-services http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199805/where-bias-begins-the-truth-about-stereotypes

Tensile Properties of Polypropylene

Tensile Properties of Polypropylene Introduction If an engineer wanted to design a bridge to span a river, it would be absurd to consider building it out of papier-mà ¢chà © or rubber. We know this because we know something about the demands that will be put on the bridge and we know that these materials do not satisfy the requirements. After considering other materials, perhaps titanium or high tech aluminium alloys, we may discount them on the grounds of cost even if they do have suitable mechanical properties to make a good bridge. Eventually we may decide on steel; but which one? There are thousands to choose from. Which has the best properties at an affordable price? The cost effectiveness of any material is a matter not to be dealt with here but we must ask which steel has the most appropriate physical properties. In order to answer this question, we must conduct tests on different steels and compare the results when samples of the steel are tested to destruction. Polypropylene has the ability to crystallise which was a very exciting prospect as it is also an economical material so the popularity of it grew and production began all across most of Europe its use. Lots of different types of polypropylene have been under production since the early 1950s mainly because of its insulating properties. it is used in many different fields, bumpers and some of the interior in a car is developed using polypropylene its also widely used in electrical components because of its great electrical resistance at high temperatures. It has similar properties to polyethylene. Because of its use in many different fields its necessary to test the material in a variety of ways. In this test the tensile properties will be examined at different testing speeds. This test is done because The test process involves placing the test specimen in the testing machine and slowly extending it until it fractures. During this process, the elongation of the gauge section is recorded against the applied force. The data is manipulated so that it is not specific to the geometry of the test sample. Theory Polypropylene, like other plastics, typically starts with the distillation of hydrocarbon fuels into lighter groups called fractions some of which are combined with other catalysts to produce plastics (typically via polymerisation or poly-condensation) For example, the polymerisation of propylene, which is identical to ethylene except that one hydrogen substituent has been replaced by a methyl (CH3) group, yields polypropylene. This material has a higher melting point (160-170 oC), higher tensile strength, and greater rigidity than polyethylene. Figure 1- Propylene monomers polymerisation to polypropylene Depending on how they are linked or joined (chemical bonds or intermolecular forces) and on the arrangement of the different chains that forms the polymer, the resulting polymeric materials can be classified as: Thermoplastics Elastomers Thermosets Depending on the chemical composition, polymers can be inorganic such as glass, or they can be organic, such as adhesives of epoxy resin. Organic polymers can be also divided into natural polymers such as proteins and synthetic polymers as thermosets materials. Description of apparatus The apparatus used the most for the testing part of the experiment was the zwick tensile testing machine this is a highly accurate piece of equipment as it has high resolution angle measurement which allows excellent repeat accuracy. This type of machine has two crossheads; one is adjusted for the length of the specimen and the other is driven to apply tension to the test specimen he machine must be able to generate enough force to fracture the specimen. The machine must be able to apply the force quickly or slowly enough to properly mimic the actual application. Finally, the machine must be able to accurately and precisely measure the gauge length and forces applied Figure 2- Tensile testing machine (diagrammatic sketch form) Test procedure The test will be carried out using the Zwick tensile testing machine, with 3 different specimens each of them will be extended at different speeds Specimen 1: Extension speed= 100 mm/min Specimen 2: Extension speed= 50 mm/min Specimen 3: Extension speed= 12.5 mm/min Before testing the specimens, they must be measured before and after the test to see what impact the test had on the specimens After the measurement, have been taken its required to make a table to compare the load to the extension this graph will be required to estimate relevant values that will be needed to complete the calculations. For all the specimens you are required to obtain a verity of tensile properties including: Nominal yield stress Youngs modulus Fracture stress (nominal and true) Tensile ductility Results Specimen (mm) Average (mm) Av.CSA = tw ( 1 T 2.13 2.18 2.20 2.17 10.20 W 4.68 4.73 4.70 4.70 2 T 2.13 2.15 2.16 2.14 10.10 W 4.68 4.72 4.71 4.70 3 T 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.15 10.11 W 4.70 4.72 4.69 4.70 Specimen 1 calculated results when extended at speed of 100 mm/min Gauge Length (mm) 33.00 Initial cross-sectional area () 10.21 Fracture length (mm) (55-33) 22.00 Thickness at fracture (mm) 0.91 Width at fracture (mm) 2.50 Cross-sectional area at Fracture () 2.28 Load at yield (N) 270.00 Load at fracture (N) 170.00 Nominal yield stress () 26.45 Extension at high yield (mm) 1.54 Young modulus () 566.79 Nominal fracture stress () 16.65 True fracture stress () 74.56 Tensile Ductility (mm) 0.66 Specimen 2 calculated results when extended at speed of 50 mm/min Gauge Length (mm) 33.00 Initial cross-sectional area () 10.10 Fracture length (mm) (123-33) 90.00 Thickness at fracture (mm) 0.93 Width at fracture (mm) 2.61 Cross-sectional area at Fracture () 2.43 Load at yield (N) 262.50 Load at fracture (N) 172.50 Nominal yield stress () 25.99 Extension at high yield (mm) 1.54 Young modulus () 556.93 Nominal fracture stress () 17.08 True fracture stress () 70.98 Tensile Ductility 2.72 Specimen 3 calculated results when extended at speed of 12.5 mm/min Gauge Length (mm) 33.00 Initial cross-sectional area () 10.11 Fracture length (mm) (242-33) 209.00 Thickness at fracture (mm) 0.88 Width at fracture (mm) 2.01 Cross-sectional area at Fracture () 1.77 Load at yield (N) 273.75 Load at fracture (N) 267.50 Nominal yield stress () 27.08 Extension at high yield (mm) 110.26 Young modulus () 8.08 Nominal fracture stress () 26.46 True fracture stress () 151.13 Tensile Ductility 6.33 Calculations of average cross sectional area specimen 1 Average cross sectional area = Average thickness x Average width Average cross sectional area = 2.17 mm x 4.70 mm = 10.20 Calculations of specimen 1 Nominal yield = Nominal yield = = 26.45 Youngs modulus= Youngs modulus= = 566.79 Nominal fracture stress = Nominal fracture stress = = 16.65 True fracture stress = True fracture stress = = 74.56 Tensile ductility = Tensile ductility = = 0.66 mm Graphs Figure 3- Graph of load vs extension for specimen 1- Figure 4- Graph of load vs extension for specimen2- Figure 5- Graph of load vs extension for specimen 3- Discussion Unsurprisingly when you inspect between the three graphs you can see a slight pattern occur which is that the faster you extend the Polypropylene the quicker it breaks. The graph readings are used to find how much it was extended when broken so that the tensile ductility can be worked out. There have been errors in the graphs because in the laboratory the measured extension of the break was 22mm whereas the zwick tensile testing machine made a graph that showed it to be a lot less around 8mm which is surprising to have such a varied result. Retrieving most of the results from the graph required a lot of estimation because specimens one and two had scales of 20 and specimen 3 had a scale of 50 these both arent precise enough to get an accurate reading of the graph so a lot of estimation was required. As it can be seen in the results the extension at high yield point was very different for specimen 3 compared to the other specimens, this at first glance could be considered as an anomaly even though this was expected because the less stress that is put on the specimen meant that the extension of the yield would be higher but such a big gap wasnt expected. However, looking at the results of the other groups in the lab it shows that the result is acceptable. The other result that differed in specimen 3 when compared to the other specimens was the load at fracture this is because specimen 3 extended for a much longer distance then the other two so there was much more load at fracture which meant that the fracture stress was much greater too as shown in the results. Also, glass transition temperature had to be controlled so that the polypropylene wasnt too brittle, as temperature is hard to get accurate most of the readings might have differed because of it. Conclusion It can be seen in this test how speed effects the tensile properties of polypropylene, as the results and graphs show that when tension is applied quicker as its done in the first specimen it can take a lot less stress to break the polypropylene compared to the 3rd specimen which took a lot more tension because it expanded much more than the other 2 specimens as seen in figure 6. The results of the test are reliable but improvements could have been made the graph could have a much smaller scale which would have made the readings off the graph much easier to obtain. Also, there were assumptions that were made while doing this for example when working out the youngs modulus we had to assume that the line between the origin and the high yield point is linear. Figure- 6 Photos of the 3 specimens before and after the test. References Information https://www.creativemechanisms.com/blog/all-about-polypropylene-pp-plastic http://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/polymers/pp.aspx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_testing Images http://www.chemistry.wustl.edu/~edudev/Designer/session4.html

Business is Compatible With Sustainable Growth and Environmental Well Being :: Business Ethics

Several studies have been commissioned to look into ways of modern business values (such as technology) are incompatible with sustainable growth and environmental well-being. People provide a broader approach to the introductory analysis of modern business problems and principles by their method of decribing business in a general way and relating into society as a whole. Business world is changing too fast. Globalization, technology, markets, new competitors, new activities are all causing quicker changes in our corporate environments. Focusing on results means that we have to define very clearly the relation between those main points, so that the outcome can be continuously measured against the facts. Improvement of the main objective of this conference is needed to listen to assessment of where we are today in terms of modern business, sustainable development, and environmental well-being. Modern businesses have an implicit set of essential values, however the most significant property is technology. The information technology may have streamlined the business processes, but also lead to job redundancies, retrenchment and outsourcing. This means that a lot of lower and middle level jobs have been done away with causing more people to become unemployed. Not only business world have influenced negatively but also society is affected unfavorably, for example genetically modified food which damages health or mobile phones which cause to radiation. Furthermore, gaining access and information is became easy and this lead to datamining, workplace monitoring and privacy invasion which are ethical issues that arise from technology. Limits and opportunities should be presented by changes in global, social and environmental circumstances, as limitations of future growth may occur if the global and environmental perspectives for sustainable societies are ignored. Nowadays, ‘Up-to-date business properties are compatible with sustainable growth and environmental well-being’ is an impossibility statement that modernity’s shift to environmental governance for sustainability is not a harmony, just a complication. Sustainable development satisfying the needs of today, without risking the possibilities of satisfying the needs of coming generations. The concept of growth is focused and centres on national and international changes of society from a social, economic, political and ecological point of view. Social relations have changed in ways that have undetermined the modernization process associated mainly as union busting, workplace surveillance and employment law.

Reliability of the Media Essay -- Media Advertising Advertisements Ess

Reliability of the Media Growing up in America today means being exposed to numerous half truths. These are readily found on the television, newspapers, radio, and movies. The truth is hardly ever told in its complete form. Take for instance the local news broadcast, we watch it and take it for truth. We tend to give credibility to these newscasters based on the fact that they are representing major broadcast stations. These stations are supposed to be reliable and credible sources of information. In reality the facts are rarely ever told in complete form to the public. Bits and pieces of collected information is dressed up and edited to create a â€Å"news item†. Many times a station has to retract statements due to over-embellishment. The whole point in their doing this is to maintain an audience. Movie directors are masters of this technique. Movies based on historical events usually rely heavily on dramatization. It is the job of a movie director to gain and maintain the interest of the audience. As an audience we tend to take what we view as truth. Sometimes the dramatization is so extreme that the fictionalization masks the reality. The movie â€Å"Mississippi Burning† is an example of this type of media process. As an audience we are led to believe that the story is based on real life and that these actual events happened exactly the way it was portrayed, when in fact there are great differences in the movie and what really happened. Some of the events were changed, people ...

Japanese Involvement in the War :: essays research papers

Modern Asia Japanese Involvement in the War   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  War changes people’s lives; it changes the way people act, the way they think, and what they believe in. The people of Japan hold tradition and honor above everything else, this is something that did not change throughout the war. Though the world is changing right before the Japanese peoples’ eyes, they keep honor and tradition locked into their minds as well as their hearts. Frank Gibney’s statement, â€Å"There is no question that the Japanese people had participated wholeheartedly in the war effort.† is partly true as well as not. True in the sense that the Japanese did do certain things that may be counted as participating in the war, yet these acts were not done wholeheartedly.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The people of Japan believe the Emperor is a descendant of the Sun-Goddess. They believe this with all their heart and will protect this belief till their death; this is the main reason that so many men died for Japan. At one perspective you can say that the people of Japan have been brainwashed since they were young. Therefore, grew up to believe this and fought for the Emperor and Japan. If one believes this, why is it that Americans sing the national anthem before every sports event? Another question that I have is why we say the Pledge of Allegiance when we’re in elementary school. Not one of the kids that say it day-to-day is actually paying attention to the real meaning or comprehending what they are reciting, they are going along with it. This is an example that shows the Japanese did participate in the war yet not wholeheartedly. They did not know the real meaning of war, nor did they comprehend it, they just went along with it.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Japanese government used police forces in order to keep anyone from speaking out about the war; this keeps the citizens optimistic about the war and helps their nationalistic pride. Japan, who was once a rising power in the world had its citizens proud to be Japanese. This national pride only led to their downfall because they could only see the positive side of the war. Even in today’s world, you will find many Japanese people who are proud to be Japanese because of the pride that all of the citizens possess. This could possibly be traced back to the censorship that the government imposed on its people.

On North Korea’s refusal to give up its nukes

About whether or not North Korea's nuclear arms program and development capabilities are substantial to be regarded as a threat. Now that the cat's out of the bag, it seems that the communist state has no plans of letting go of its arsenal, despite numerous calls and threats of sanctions from other countries, like the United States, Japan and China. Since North Korea is a very poor country, posting resistance to the world powerhouses does not appear to be the most   prudent choice, especially since the government needs to maintain congenial relationships with its trade partners to stay afloat. However, it appears that Kim Jong Il has a more important and higher end in mind. Thus, we present this question: What factors explain North Korea's vehement and continued resistance to calls for the discontinuation of its nuclear weapons program? The North Korean nuclear weapons program was established in the 1960s under the assistance of the then-power USSR. Unfortunately, its nuke plans were doused in the wake of the Cold War, particularly following the decline of the Soviet powerr. This did not stop North Korea from pursuing its goal, developing and launching the 20-megawatt thermal reactor in 1986. Nobody really knew to what extent North Korea's nuke capabilities had reached, but intelligence analysts had estimated that the country had enough plutonium to make several warheads. How much, nobody could say — and the mystery had started to become a cause for alarm. So, when they finally declared that they, indeed, have weapons of mass destruction, the international community thought it best to intervene. Has the US lost its credibility as a key world force in this situation? For North Korea, perhaps. The fact that the US was found to have manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had made observers dubious about its claims that North Korea's nuclear capabilities were on highly destructive and potentially abusive levels. In addition, US President George W. Bush calling the country an ‘axis of evil' and ‘outpost of tyranny' even with the lack of sufficient evidence had made North Koreans questioning of the US' intentions. In fact, it has been aid that North Korea's nuclear abilities are what deter other more powerful countries from taking advantage of it. Economy: North Korea is a poor nation. Thus, it is using its leverage against trade partners in order to get better exchange deals and extract maximum values. Its weapons of mass destruction is it bargaining chip. Also, given the US' predisposition to abuse its power, North Korea is using its arsenal as security insurance. Another possible factor is that Kim Jong Il intends to make a huge mark as a political leader and be identified as the leader that secured for the country economic security and world fame. In the end, we can say that North Korea refuses to give up its nuke arsenal because, more than pleasing the rest of the world, it is aimed at making sure it is benefitting at the highest possible level. North Korea has gone too far behind the rest of the world to give up the one thing that gives it leverage now. Other countries might find it appalling — a threat; that North Korea might consider taking over the world with its nukes; and other horror stories. It could be so. However, it could also be a grand attempt at keeping the country alive. North Korea has survived years operating independently and it is not likely to back down now. When we really look deep into the issue and see it from North Korea's vantage point, it is a noble act. BIBLIOGRAPHY Norris, Roberts and Hans M. Kristensen. â€Å"North Korea's nuclear program, 2005† Retrieved on October 16, 2006 from http://thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=mj05norris. â€Å"World regrets North Korea's quitting nuke talks†. Retrieved on October 16, 2006 from http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/02/10/nkorea.talks/index.html ; ;

Pomegranate story

The internal rate of return was found to be In the range of 57-59 per cent which was much higher compared to the cost of capital (9. 5 percent) and hence highly profitable. Overall, the proposition of growing pomegranate crop was highly profitable as revealed by the financial feasibility tests. Key words : Investment pattern, cost, returns, pomegranate Introduction per cent of the total area under pomegranate in the district. Hence, Chalkier and Hurry talk was specifically selected for the study.The top villages having larger area under pomegranate cultivation were selected. The Information on area under pomegranate crop and number of pomegranate growers from the selected villages was obtained from the respective village accountants (Total). A proportionate sample of ten per cent of the population from each village was selected randomly. Thus, the total size of the sample selected for the study was 120. The average age of the ample farmers in both talk was found to be 44 years and mo re than 50% farmers depended mainly on agriculture as their primary occupation.Around 25% tot tatters in the selected talks completed their primary education were as the per cent of illiterate farmer in the selected talks ranged from 12 to 15%. So far as size of family was concerned, it was found to be 7 members in family in both talks. The average size of holding of sample farmers was 2. 30 and 2. 89 ha and the average size of the pomegranate orchards was 1. 58 and 1. 47 ha in Chalkier and Hurry talks respectively. The varieties of pomegranate grown in the study area were Ganges or Baggy type. The range of age of bearing orchards was 4 to 15 years.The expected productive life span of pomegranate orchard as estimated by the respondents was 25 years. On an average plant population per ha was 375. For analyzing the data collected during the study, tabular analysis and financial analysis were employed. The technique Material and methods of tabular analysis was employed for estimating t he investment Pomegranate cultivation is practiced throughout the district. Pattern, maintenance cost of pomegranate, pattern of labor However, the large scale litigation of pomegranate is use, yield and return structure of pomegranate etc.In order to concentrated mainly in Chalkier and Hurry talk extending know the relative profitability of investment in pomegranate on an area of 260 and 628 hectares and forming 20. 08 and 48. 42 cultivation measures of project evaluation namely. Pay Back * Part of M. Sc. (Agar. ) thesis submitted by the first author to the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharma – 580 005, India Horticulture is a fast growing sector and expects comparatively lower requirements of water and easy adaptability to adverse soil and waste land situations.The productivity of fruits and vegetables is of vital importance as it provides higher cash income than cereals per unit of land. India is one of the leading countries in pomegranate production and more than 1. 32 lake hectare area is under cultivation presently. Out of this, nearly 94,000 hectare area is covered in Maharajah's, which produces fruits of over 1 lake metric tones worth about RSI. 400 scores. In Chitchatted district of Karakas, where the study has been conducted pomegranate is being grown on commercial scale. The area under pomegranate in the district is 1297 ha (10. 9 % of total area under pomegranate in the state). Dry land horticulture is picking up fast in the district. The important horticulture crops grown in the district are pomegranate, Saputo, Beer and Papaya. Study of the economics of pomegranate production is indispensable since there is no proper farm business data on its cost of production. The accurate figures on establishment cost, operating cost and input requirement of pomegranate orchard could be of great help to the pomegranate growers of Chitchatted district in particular.Therefore, an attempt was made to study the investment pattern in pomegranate orch ard and to compute the cost and returns in pomegranate litigation in Chitchatted district. 164 Karakas J. Agric. Sic. ,24 (2) : 2011 Period (BP), Net Present Value (NAP), Benefit Cost Ratio (BCC), and Internal Rate of Return (AIR) were computed. Results and discussion The cost of establishing a pomegranate orchard up to bearing can be broadly classified into establishment cost and maintenance cost.So, the establishment cost included not only the costs incurred in the zero years that is at the time of planting but also the costs incurred in maintaining the plants till the time of bearing that is up to three years tot planting. For establishing, pomegranate orchard investment NAS to e made on land, well, pump set, pump house, plant material, digging of pits and sprayer and these costs together constituted the material costs of establishment. These costs have to be invested during the year of establishment of the orchard and are considered as the costs incurred during zero year in the study.During next three years farmers has to maintain the orchard by applying fertilizers, manures, chemicals irrigation etc. The costs incurred by the farmers on all these items for the three years are grouped together as cost of maintenance. The total costs of establishment (Table 1) were found to be 1,90,888. 1 and 1,89,644. 33 per ha of which material costs constituted 56. 87 and 58. 15 per cent and maintenance costs 43. 13 and 41. 85 per cent in Chalkier and Hurry talk respectively. Similar results were obtained by Giuliani (1990) in his study of the pattern of investment in pomegranate orchards in Bujumbura district, Karakas.The establishment cost 24,229. 53) consisted of material cost in the initial year (85. 65) and maintenance cost (49. 35%) Upton bearing three years. The material cost included the value of land, plant material, cost of digging of pits and planting, well, pump set, pump house, and sprayer. The per hectare total establishment cost worked out to be 24, 224. 5 3 and returns per orchard was 45,429. 96. The maintenance cost (Table 2) as indicated in the results included the wages of labor as well as cost of materials utilized and fixed costs in Chalkier talk. It was observed that out of Table 1 .Investment pattern in pomegranate orchards SSL. No. Particulars total maintenance cost the major component was variable cost followed by material cost and fixed cost. Under the variable cost the labor cost formed an important cost accounting nearly 50 per cent of total maintenance cost, since the crops require Geiger amount labor involvement to prefer the important activity like loosening the soil around the trunk and formation of basin, watch and ward, pruning and training and land preparation etc. Among material cost the major component fertilizers, PC and manure.Since the pomegranate crop is responsively to nutrient and as well as in the recent year the diseases like bacterial blight and anthracnose have created lot of problem hence to control th ese diseases the farmers have been trying with different chemicals thus the expenses on these items were found to be higher. So far as fixed cost is concerned the rental value of land formed the major cost component and it is observed that because of the higher productivity of the land and crops which are higher profit fronted the farmers to go for renting of land for the production of pomegranate crops.Even for the farmer who has been entering this crop on their own land where imputed the rental value taking into consideration ongoing rental rate the cost worked out to be higher. Since the opportunity cost of land was taken into consideration for calculating the rental value of land,it was found to vary over the years. In Hurry talk, the maintenance cost (Table 3) included the wages of labor as well as cost of materials utilized and the fixed costs. It was observed that variable cost formed an important component followed by material cost and fixed cost.

Cromwells contribution was greater off the battlefield than on it Essay

â€Å"Cromwell’s contribution was greater off the battlefield than on it†. How far do you agree with this view of Cromwell’s role in the First Civil War? Many historians have argued that Cromwell’s rise to prominence was through his work during the First Civil War (1642-1646). This work can be split into two sections: on the battlefield and off the battlefield. On the battlefield, his main success came during the Battle of Marston Moor and Battle of Naseby, whilst off the battlefield he was instrumental in passing the Self-Denying Ordinance which created the path to victory for Parliament. Cromwell’s early military engagements in East Anglia had been relatively successful compared to other parliamentary generals during the first two years of the First Civil War. The Eastern Association, Cromwell’s army, were successful in several minor battles, namely Gainsborough, Winceby and Grantham. This prevented the Royalists from controlling Lincolnshire. These victories had provided much-needed propaganda for parliamentary newspapers, during a year in which the Royalists were clearly the stronger side. In addition, Cromwell also stopped the proclamation of the Royalist commission of array in Hertfordshire. However, it should be noted that these triumphs were trivial, and when placed in the context of the entire war its only function was to delay the southward march of the Earl of Newcastle’s army. Nevertheless, Cromwell’s prominence was enhanced significantly since he was the only parliamentary general to have any success in 1643. His other military successes in 1643 include establishing the northern frontier of the Eastern Association at the River Nene. The victory at Crowland Abbey entrenched parliamentary control in East Anglia, indicating that Cromwell was clearly successful in preventing Royalist forces from taking over Lincolnshire. Again, this had provided the Parliament Scout with propaganda. This propaganda gave Cromwell an increased military reputation, which helped him in the political arena during the latter years of the First Civil War. The Battle of Marston Moor, July 1644, changed Cromwell’s career both as a politician and a military general. Cromwell’s unique ability to regroup of his soldiers after attacking Byron’s cavalry in order to attack George Goring from the rear was the main catalyst for the victory. Although this battle did not decide the final fate of the First Civil War, it gave parliament hope and confidence; after the battle parliamentary soldiers were euphoric. This suggests that, just as in 1643, Cromwell’s military leadership not only resulted in victories but also increased the morale and confidence of the parliamentary army in general. Following this victory Cromwell’s political and military reputation were elevated to new heights. Whilst the Battle of Marston Moor was not the turning point in the First Civil War, the Battle of Naseby (June 1645) certainly was. Yet again, Cromwell was instrumental in winning the battle for parliament. Just like at Marston Moor, Cromwell’s horse was able to attack the Royalist from the rear, breaking the initial Royalist momentum. Since royalist infantry were either or slaughtered or surrendered, the King was never able to field a full size army again, implying that at Naseby Cromwell had effectively won the war for parliament. Furthermore, by capturing the King’s baggage train, Parliament were able to publish the details of the Charles’ correspondence with the Irish Catholics and hence giving Parliament more support from the people. Evidently, one can see that Cromwell was at the heart of the victory at Naseby, which ensured that parliament won the First Civil War. It may appear that all Cromwell’s military actions all resulted in victories. This is not the case. Even in 1643, Cromwell had some failures as a soldier. Although he was successful in East Anglia, he completely failed whenever he tried to participate in wider military engagements. By the summer of that year, his military position was as dire as other parliamentary generals, and thus was in no position to provide military support. Meanwhile, Cromwell’s military failures after Marston Moor include the Battle of Newbury and Battle of Donnington Castle. However, these failures were minor and did not have as much an impact as his victories. For instance, the Battle of Marston Moor was not decisive, so the loss at Donnington Castle did not mean that parliament lost the opportunity to win the war. On the other hand, Essex’s loss at Lostwithiel was much more consequential since it negated the advantage gained at Marston Moor. One might wonder whether if Essex had not lost at Lostwithiel, parliament would have won the war much earlier due to the advantage gained at Marston Moor. Therefore, Cromwell’s military failures are cancelled out by his more important successes. These military successes turned Cromwell into a parliamentary hero. As a result, he was able to advance his political influence. In the political arena, Cromwell was able to a more integral part than before the civil war. Cromwell’s main political achievements occurred in the Self-Denying Ordinance, in which he secured a pathway to victory for parliament. The Self-Denying Ordinance forbade any MP to hold an army command. This meant the likes of Manchester and Essex were forced to relieve their military commands. Consequently, the peace party lost control of parliament’s army, leaving the war party, who wanted outright victory first, in control of the army. This meant that the parliamentary army was united in its aims, implying that Cromwell had set the framework for parliament’s future military engagements. The Self-Denying Ordinance also allowed for the creation of the New Model Army, whose excellence was witnessed at the Battle of Naseby, again indicating Cromwell’s ability in the political arena. The Self-Denying Ordinance was not Cromwell’s only political accomplishment. In January 1644, Cromwell is involved in raising monthly assessments by 50%. This helped parliamentary finances which were in short supply. Cromwell also attacked many other parliamentary generals who he felt had played insignificant and incompetent roles in battles. All of these happened because of Cromwell’s increased political status, as seen by his position in the Committee of Both Kingdoms. Therefore, it seems that Cromwell played key roles in political events during the civil war. However, it is important to remember that the Self-Denying Ordinance was not devised by Cromwell but instead by his parliamentary allies, notably Viscount Saye and Sele. Although he was involved in its passage through parliament, Cromwell was merely the most prominent beneficiary. In parliament Cromwell was supported by at least 9 connections. Without these connections it could be argued that Cromwell would not have received such political importance. Furthermore, it was Cromwell’s military success that allowed him to be influential in parliament, thus implying that his political status was dependent upon his military prowess. His military triumphs also helped him when Essex and Denzil Holles debated whether or not to impeach him. They had decided not to proceed because of Cromwell’s military importance to the parliamentary army, suggesting that his military contribution cannot be replaced. In addition, before the First Civil War, Cromwell lacked many essential political skills as seen by many of his mistakes. Cromwell’s paucity of political aptitude is also seen when he attacks Manchester in November 1644. This attack split parliament into rival two factions: peace party and war party, which would have consequences after the war. Although Cromwell did try to unite the factions together, he was responsible for the breakout in the first place, thus implying a negative contribution off the battlefield. Therefore, one finds that Cromwell’s contribution off the battlefield is not as desirable as his military contribution. His political contribution alone could not have won the war for parliament, whereas his military contribution on its own could have won the war for parliament. In conclusion, Cromwell’s role on the battlefield and in the political arena cannot be underestimated; in both areas he was useful and helpful towards parliament’s cause. However, Cromwell’s role main role was on the battlefield where he led many parliamentary armies to victories in full-scale battles as well as minor skirmishes, which eventually ensured triumph for parliament over the king. These victories allowed him to acquire an increased status not only militarily but also politically, which gave him more influences in parliamentary affairs on and off the battlefield. Nevertheless, politically he did not architect any notable event, even the Self-Denying Ordinance wasn’t devised by Cromwell. On the other hand, militarily he guided a parliamentary side from near defeat in 1643 to victory three years later. Thus, this gives the impression that Cromwell’s contribution was greater on the battlefield.

E Payment

Chapter 1. Introduction 1. 1 Electronic payment systems and their place in electronic commerce 1. 1. 1 E-commerce and electronic payment systems 1. 1. 2 Limitations of traditional payment systems in the context of online payments 1. 1. 3 The need for new payment systems designed for e-commerce 1. 2 User acceptance: understanding and issues 1. 3 Research objectives 1. 4 Research scope 1. 4. The role of electronic payments in customer e-commerce activities 1. 4. 2 Approach and methodology Chapter 2. Classification and characteristics of electronic payment systems 2. 1 Classification of payment systems 2. 1. 1 Introduction 2. 1. 2 Primary classification of payment systems 2. 1. 3 Further classification of account-based systems 2. 1. 4 Further classification of electronic cash systems 2. 1. Payment mediation services vs. payment systems 2. 2 Identifying the characteristics of payment systems 2. 3 Advantages and limitations of payment models 2. 3. 1 Advantages and limitations of the elect ronic cash model 2. 3. 2 Advantages and limitations of the acount-based model 2. 5 Conclusions Chapter 3. User survey of electronic payment systems 3. 1 User acceptance of electronic payment systems 3. 2 Survey of users’ attitudes towards characteristics of payment systems 3. 2. 1 Survey participants . 2. 2 Questionnaire design and analysis 3. 2. 3 Survey results and discussion 3. 2. 4 Implications for user acceptanc Introduction 1. 1 Electronic payment systems and their place in electronic commerce In the early 1990s the business and consumer world encountered a new way of conducting trade business, which was named electronic commerce (e-commerce). Over the years electronic commerce has evolved into a popular and acknowledged way of conducting business.While researchers are still trying to understand it and gauge its importance and turnover, e-commerce is changing and growing incredibly quickly, producing such extraordinary results from both business and customer perspective that its phenomenon cannot be overlooked by anyone who has ever thought of conducting business, whether in online or offline environments. With many organisations and people labouring in the field of e-commerce it has become very clear that ecommerce is here to stay and organisations and customers are trying to get maximum benefit from it.E-commerce has become especially important in two interrelated dimensions, namely business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. Business to-consumer e-commerce is enabling customers to have an increasing influence on products created, how products are customised, and how services are delivered. Ecommerce offers customers convenient shopping methods for products, information and services, electronic banking, and personal finance management.It is making it easier for consumers to find the desired products and services, match them more precisely to their requirements, and compare prices, (Vulkan, 2003). Several business models have been developed to support various customers’ needs, among them are online portals, content providers, transaction brokers and community creators. For business-to-business relations e-commerce facilitates the form of organisation where companies rely on suppliers and product distribution to respond more effectively to the changing market and customers demand and to achieve more efficient operation.This type of e-commerce relationships offers organisations the possibility to work in the direct contact with producers, giving more room for customization and control over business activities. This helps to reduce the costs significantly by removing ‘middlemen’ from the supply chain. Good examples of companies that employ this business model are Dell and Cisco, (Guttmann, 2003; Laudon & Traver, 2002). Consequences that e-commerce brings for business-to-business relationships are eliminating inventory, and operational and distributional costs that indirectly provid e customers with lower prices.E-commerce can help businesses to increase production flexibility by ensuring timely availability of components from suppliers, to improve quality of the products by increasing cooperation between buyers and sellers and reducing quality issues, to increase opportunities for collaborating with suppliers and distributors, and to create greater price transparency — the ability to see the actual prices on the market, (Laudon & Traver, 2002). In this way e-commerce responses to the customer demand of lower prices and greater convenience. 1. 1. 1E-commerce and electronic payment systemsThe most popular definition of e-commerce is based on the online perspective of the conducted business. E-commerce provides the capability of buying and selling products, information and services on the Internet and other online environments. As for any trading activity, the issue of safe and reliable money exchange between transacting parties is essential. In an e-comme rce environment, payments take the form of money exchange in an electronic form, and are therefore called electronic payments. Electronic payments are an integral part of e-commerce and are one of its most critical as pects.Generally defined, electronic payment is a form of a financial exchange that takes place between the buyer and seller facilitated by means of electronic communications. An e-commerce electronic payment is a financial exchange that takes place in an online environment, (Kalakota & Whinston, 1997). Electronic payment systems (EPSs) are summoned to facilitate the most important action after the customer’s decision to pay for a product or service – to deliver payments from customers to vendors in a most effective, efficient and problem-free way.The role of e-commerce electronic payment systems is pivotal for future of ecommerce, whose further growth depends on the timely development of EPSs. The development of new types of e-commerce purchasing relation ships and business models has created the need for new ways of money exchange and new EPSs. For instance, online auctions, (Ribbers & Heck, 2004), has spurred the necessity for personto- person payment systems to allow online money exchange between individuals. Certain types of information products and services require small payments and micropayments.Businesses would like to sell information content that costs very little, accumulating revenues with high turnover. E-commerce EPSs can be designed for selling specific types of products, for example for trading copyrighted online content, such as music. Another unforeseen earlier requirement is conducting e-commerce using wireless mobile devices, such as mobile phones or personal digital assistants (PDA). The need for paying with mobile devices has urged the development of payment systems for mobile electronic commerce, (Laudon & Traver, 2002).In addition, ecommerce provides the possibility to enhance current payment systems or substi tute them with online variants. The need for online payments was first addressed by using extant payment methods of the offline world for online payments. For example credit cards, originally intended as an offline credit instrument, have become the major payment instrument for ecommerce. As e-commerce and online purchasing grows, the weaknesses of credit and debit cards, and cheques are becoming more apparent. These limitations are discussed in section 1. . 2. The lack of the fit-for purpose payment mechanisms and infrastructure is one of the main restricting factors that hold back the growth and evolution of ecommerce, (Guttmann, 2003; Laudon & Traver, 2002; O'Mahony, Peirce, & Tewari, 1997). 1. 1. 2 Limitations of traditional payment systems in the context of online payments Three factors are stimulating the development of electronic payment systems: reduced operational and payments processing costs, growing online commerce and decreasing the costs of technology, (Kalakota & Whin ston, 1997).Reduction of costs is one of the major reasons for research and development of EPSs. The central impetus for ecommerce and e-business is to provide a more efficient service, primarily in terms of costs. In this light, paying online with traditional payment systems such as credit cards is rather paradoxical, given that credit cards are one of the most expensive of all available mainstream payment means for both end consumers and merchants, defeated perhaps only by paper checks, (Lietaer, 2002; Laudon & Traver, 2002). Several limitations of traditional payment systems in the context of e-commerce can be outlined.Existing payment systems, such as credit cards, are inadequate for retail customer digital business from the following viewpoints: Lack of usability. Existing payment systems for the Internet require from the end user to provide a large amount of information, or make payments using complex elaborated web site interfaces. E. g. credit card payments via a web site ar e not the easiest way to pay, as these require entering extensive amounts of personal data and contact details in a web form, (Kalakota & Whinston, 1997). Lack of security.Existing payment systems for the Internet are an easy target for stealing money and personal information. Customers have to provide credit card or payment account details and other personal information online. This data is sometimes transmitted in an un-secured way, (Kalakota & Whinston, 1997). In practice this happens even in spite of introduction of secure transactions mechanisms, such as Secured Socket Layer. Providing these details by mail or over the telephone also entails security risks, (Guttmann, 2003; Laudon & Traver, 2002). Lack of trust.Users tend not to trust existing systems with the long history of fraud, misuse or low reliability, as well as novel systems without established positive reputation. In the present situation, money loss by customers is quite possible when using existing payment systems, such as credit cards, for Internet payments. Potential customers often mention this risk as the key reason why they do not trust a payment service and therefore do not make Internet purchases, (Lietaer, 2002). Lack of applicability. Not all web sites support a particular payment method, thus limiting customers’ ability to pay.Credit cards work only with merchants who have signed-up to the services of the corresponding credit card company, and do not support direct business-to-business or interpersonal payments, (Kalakota & Whinston, 1997). Lack of eligibility. Not every potential customer with money and intention to pay can make use of certain payment methods. Not all potential buyers can obtain credit cards due to credit history limitations, low income or other reasons, (ibid). Lack of efficiency. Some payments over the Internet can be too small to be handled by existing payment systems, because of overheads included in the processing of payments and transaction.Credit cards are too expensive for effecting small payments and are unsuited for small transactions. The minimum fixed fee charged to the retailer for processing a transaction could even surpass the value of the goods sold, (Guttmann, 2003). High usage costs for customers and merchants. Existing payment systems use a rather expensive infrastructure to facilitate the payment process. Credit cards are very expensive for end users, not in the least because of the enormous and growing size of fraud, which amounts to billions dollars per year.This loss is invisibly re-financed by users by the higher costs of credit card services. In addition, credit card payments are still heavily paper-dependent. Most credit card bills are sent in a paper form to customers by post, and the bills are mostly settled by posting paper documents, like checks of giro payments, which makes the whole cycle rather expensive. As mentioned above, this means that resources employed in processing of credit cards transactions re nder them rather ineffective for small payments, because the high overhead of credit cards, (Laudon & Traver, 2002; Guttmann, 2003).In online credit card payments credit cards are not physically available for inspection by the payee, (this situation is referred as ‘card not present’). This imposes higher charges for merchants, because the chance of fraud is higher; see section 2. 1. 3 for more discussion. Credit cards have low finality of payments because users can refute or repudiate credit cards payments in certain situations. Moreover, financial regulations in certain countries, e. g. in the USA and the UK, place the risks of repudiation, fraud, or non-payment largely on the merchant and issuing banks, (Laudon & Traver, 2002; APACS, 2002).These issues make credit cards less attractive to merchants. Certain authentication schemes, e. g. Verified by Visa and SecureCode from MasterCard allow to shit fraud liability from merchant to credit cards issuing banks, and can ea se this burden for merchants, (see www. verifiedbyvisa. com and www. mastercard. com). However, end users can found themselves paying more for the cards issued by the banks to refinance bank’s losses due to fraud. There are more concerns related to the credit card use in online e-commerce that are responsible for reluctant users acceptance of credit cards and e-commerce.According to the report published by marketing research firm IDC, (Asmussen, Raschke, & Arend, 2002), almost half of European users of the Internet do not buy goods online because they either do not trust the Web merchants or fear their credit card details will not be secure. According to analysts, total credit card fraud rose to $4 billion in 2002 (i. e. $2 for every card issued). Industry estimates that the amount of online credit card fraud could be in the $5oo million range, (Laudon & Traver, 2002).Authorities believe that hackers have stolen more than one million credit card numbers from E-commerce sites. It would not be a surprise that many customers use their credit cards with reservations. A survey by Visa of 15 Banks from 12 EU countries in 2002 found that online credit card payments account for nearly half of all complaints. More than one in five of these came from people who had not even shopped on the Internet, but were billed for online transactions, (Philippsohn & Thomas, 2003). Privacy issues are also associated with the use of existing payment systems.There are cases when users’ identities (i. e. personal data such as credit card numbers, names and addresses) were stolen when hackers break into websites’ databases and obtain personal information of the customers. Fraudsters then attempt to use this information to open new credit and bank accounts using the stolen identity, (Philippsohn & Thomas, 2003). These and other issues with existing payment systems such as credit cards render them not very suitable for online payments. 1. 1. 3 The need for new payment systems designed or e-commerce Despite that electronic commerce is a growing phenomenon, its future development is, to a large extent, hampered by the lack of appropriate payment systems. Since most of business-to-consumer payments over the Internet are performed currently via credit cards, an admittedly problematic payment medium due to costs, security and trust problems, the need for new payment systems clearly emerges from the existing situation, (Lynch & Lundquist, 1996; Wayner, 1997; Laudon & Traver, 2002; Guttmann, 2003).Research and development in Internet-based payments tried to resolve this situation by conjuring numerous online EPSs, a good proportion of which has been put to use. This was possible due to the stimulating factors listed above, and in the first place due to the availability and reduced costs of the enabling technology. However, the new payment systems, purposely crafted for the Internet, also could not avoid their own share of problems. This has led to the r eluctant use of new online electronic payment systems, i. e. esulted in low user acceptance of newly introduced payment systems by customers, (see section 1. 2). User acceptance of electronic payment systems At this stage the situation with the development of online EPSs is far from ideal. A survey on electronic money developments by the Bank for International Settlement reports a rather low level of EPSs use, even in the most advanced countries, (BIS, 2000). According to the European Central Bank, the proportion of online payments among cashless payment instruments in the European Union is rather low.The report admits that although there has been a lot of discussion on the use of EPSs and their importance â€Å"it is still not a widely used medium†, (ECB, 2001). The lack of customer demand, the diversity of technological standards and the lack of support by financial institutions are mentioned among the reasons preventing the development of electronic payment systems, (ECB, 2003). Some experts estimate that about 85% of all Internet transactions are done with credit cards that were not originally designed for the Internet, (Philippsohn & Thomas, 2003).According to a survey by marketing research firm Jupiter Research, credit cards are still the dominant payment method for online purchases, accounting up to 95% of online transactions in the United States, (Jupiter Media Metrix, 2000). This demonstrates still low user acceptance of alternative electronic payment systems, designed specifically for e-commerce. 1. 2User acceptance: understanding and issues End user acceptance of such sensitive technology as money-circulating payment systems is the critical key aspect of the whole path of payment systems’ establishment.Without such acceptance no technology can successfully exist on the market, and payment systems are not an exception. According to Dillon & Morris (1996) user acceptance is â€Å"the demonstrable willingness within a user group to emplo y information technology for the tasks it is designed to support†. This definition can be enhanced with the understanding that the user perception of information technology (IT) can be influenced by objective characteristics of technology, as well as by human factors and interaction with other users and related parties.For example, the social information processing model (SIPM), (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978), suggests that attitudes towards technology are influenced by opinions, information, and behaviour of others. User acceptance is a pivotal factor determining the success or failure of any information system project, (Davis, 1993). Many studies on information technology report that user attitudes and human factors are important aspects affecting the success of an information system, (Davis, 1989, Burkhardt, 1994, Rice & Adyn, 1991). The arguments in section 1. and in the following paragraphs suggest that this is the case also with EPSs. Besides SIPM, a well-known approach to e xplaining and modelling user acceptance is the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), (Davis, 1989). TAM suggests that users formulate attitudes toward the technology that depends on whether they perceive the IT to be useful and easy to use. However, TAM does not take into account other factors that may be critical to user acceptance or rejection of such specific technology as EPSs, such as security, trust, privacy and involved risks.Extending the SIPM assumption, user acceptance of online EPSs could be affected by a number of factors and parties, creating a broader sense of the social context of EPSs in the Internet environment. User experience with an EPS can be influenced or manipulated by various aspects, such as marketing, publicity, the reputation of the bank behind the system, trust towards the company operating the system and technology behind the system, and convenience of the user interface, see also Guttmann (2003), Kalakota & Whinston (1997), Egger (2003). Figure 1. attempts to illustrate the social context in which parties and factors could possibly influence user perception and experience with electronic payment systems. These parties and factors should be taken into consideration when exploring issues of user acceptance of online EPSs. They are either required for a successful operation of a payment system (banks), its promotion (marketing organisations), or monitor and regulate its operation (government). For example, the company operating the payment service will have to address users’ concerns about security, privacy and trust.Users can be influenced in their experience by other parties than the operator itself, e. g. the bank or financial institution that facilitates the payment transactions, see Figure 1. 1. Customers can be influenced by the user interface, or by other parties involved in the payment service, such as technical partners. Since e-commerce EPSs operate in the Internet environment, the reputation and impression of the syste m can be easily communicated to other users via online communities, creating yet another social impact on the system.Therefore, social influences, e. g. opinions and behaviour of other users, like family and friends, and reputation of banks and the parties involved, should be taken into account for user acceptance of EPSs. This argument can be supported by above-mentioned SIPM, (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). Issues such as trust, usability, applicability, security, and convertibility are extremely important because they can influence subsequent decisions of people whether to use a payment system or not.There are several obstacles to user acceptance of EPSs: developers not only have to sell the service to potential users, they also have to convince the users to entrust their money to a third party institution, to rely on the payment system in their business and personal finance, and to use it frequently for convenience, reliability, specific applications, services and for a variety of o ther reasons. To achieve this high standard of user acceptance, the creators of a payment system should bear in mind user-related factors from the very beginning of the conception of the payment system.Designing for user acceptance of online electronic payment systems is thus the main issue put forward by research described in this thesis. An open challenge remains for designers and developers of novel Internet-based payment systems to meet user expectations, requirements, preferences and needs in design and operation of the systems. Resolving these issues is critical for the development and operation of new payment systems and future growth of e-commerce. 1. 2. 1User factors in payment technology The importance of user-related factors can be demonstrated in the example of the notorious problem of security of information systems.There are thousands of security mechanisms, matched with a growing number of hacks and security breaches, (Flynn, 2001, p. 61). However, the nature of secur ity issues is changing with the constant improvement of information technology. While security technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated and tamper-proof, experts in information security admit that user factors are the most important issues for security problems. The vast majority of all security issues in IT environments is caused or assisted by users inside organisations, rather than hackers and other utsiders. Security experts know many stories about people exchanging their passwords, or IT managers attaching notes with logins and passwords to their monitors, or about hackers finding these notes in the trash. To avoid this kind of mistakes, experts are talking about enforcing security policies in organisations, to be able to address user-related factors in security, (Flynn, 2001). Therefore, security practices have embraced user-related factors. This example helps to illustrate the importance of user-related factors in the design and operation of information systems.The f ollowing example illustrates a failure of a payment system due to neglecting to focus on user and market needs. The Chipknip â„ ¢ and Chipper â„ ¢ smart card payment technologies, (Nannery, 1998), were introduced in the Netherlands in early 90s. Both systems were intended to provide a way of paying small amounts in everyday transactions, which people would normally pay with cash. However, these two systems competed with each other for some time, being incompatible, so customers could not pay with the competitor’s card at certain shops, (BIS, 2001).Eventually, this created problems of interoperability and limited the user base for both systems. Another obstacle was that the card readers were installed in shops where people already had another method of payment – debit cards, which worked very effectively and efficiently and which were used by most people for all kinds of payments. In a way, Chipknip and Chipper duplicated the functions and applications of debit ca rds. On the other hand, the real need for Chipknip and Chipper for small payments at parking lots, vending, and public transport tickets machines was not met.A serious situation arose regarding the high costs of accepting Chipknip for merchants. As the result, the union of Small and Medium Enterprises in the Netherlands threatened to boycott Chipknip, (Het Financieele Dagblad, 2001). In this case, an important factor stimulating the development of EPSs was not met, namely the reduced operational and processing costs. Despite of a certain potential for uses acceptance of e-purse technology (Van Hove, 2004), this situation is changing slowly.All these issues led to a low acceptance of Chipper and Chipknip technologies. Chipper International decided to stop operations and support of Chipper in the Dutch market, (Libbenga, 2001; BIS, 2001); Chipper has fused with Chipknip, and while some issues have been addressed, the expected applications for this smart-card technology are yet to come . The example above helps to illustrate the complexity of human and marketing factors in the context of payment systems and their crucial influence on the eventual success of a payment system.Therefore, for successful design of electronic payment systems from the user perspective it is important to find out what user-related factors and systems’ aspects have the most direct impact on user acceptance and which of them can cause problems when neglected in design. 1. 3Research objectives 1. 4Research scope 1. 4. 1 The role of electronic payments in customer e-commerce activities The process of paying is an essential part of customers’ online buying activities. These activities are well described by the Consumer Mercantile Activities Model, (Kalakota & Whinston, 1997).The model comprises prepurchase interaction, purchase consummation and postpurchase interaction phases. The payment activity takes place within the purchase consummation phase, Figure 1. 2. â€Å"The purchas e consummation phase specifies the flow of information and documents associated with purchasing and negotiating with merchants for suitable terms, such as price, availability, and delivery dates; and electronic payment mechanisms that integrate payment into the purchasing process†, (Kalakota & Whinston, 1997). The buyer arrives to payment activities after identifying products of services to be purchased.The buyer and seller conduct then a mercantile transaction. In a mercantile transaction the buyer and the seller exchange information followed by the necessary payment. The payment methods they use should be mutually negotiated and agreed on (ibid). Therefore, in order to conduct a successful e-commerce mercantile transaction the buyer should at least be willing to use the payment method offered by merchants. From this viewpoint, user acceptance of e-commerce EPSs is critical for the completion of the purchase consummation phase and the whole purchasing process. It can be there fore bserved that the payment process and the user involvement in it are highly important for e-commerce activities. Scope of payment systems Business-to-consumer Payment Systems This research is focused on user acceptance of new payment systems in consumer ecommerceenvironments. The main focus of the presented work is therefore Businessto- Consumer e-commerce EPSs, which are designed with the main purpose to facilitate payments for consumer e-commerce. Taking into account the B2B systems would have made the scope too broad to handle within this research. Payment Systems designed for the WebCurrently, consumer e-commerce is done mainly via the WWW (Web) service of the Internet. The market for conducting e-commerce payments via wireless PDAs, mobile phones and other Internet services is still under development, (Bohle, 2001a), and therefore does not have a wide user basis and usage experience. Thus, in the scope are Web-oriented online e-commerce EPSs and Web e-commerce applications. Scope of payment tasks Because the scope of the defined business relations is Business-to-Consumer, the payment tasks in the focus of this thesis are related to consumer e-commerce and trade of goods and services.In these tasks there should be at least one 1) business party involved and 2) one physical person, who is conducting purchasing activities in an ecommerce environment. Scope of target activities These activities include those that are related to buying goods and services, and essentially represent consumer e-commerce. The scope of these activities is embracing a significant and, arguably, the most important part of the consumer e-commerce represented by B2C relations. Purchasing goods: tangible, require shipping, intermediated (by shipping companies). Purchasing information and software: intangible, immediate, not intermediated (by shipping companies). Purchasing services: intangible/tangible, not always immediate, can be intermediated (by service companies). The followi ng activities are therefore excluded from the scope because they are not in line with the defined scope of electronic payment systems, namely B2C consumer ecommerce. Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) money payments and exchange.C2C payments do not belong to B2C e-commerce, (Figure 1. 3), e. g. personal auctions payments, debt settlement. Specific payment applications, for instance, gambling or adult-content sites. In this context the sites place specific requirements on B2C relations and userrelated factors, e. g. on privacy. Related activities Additional activities that have to be explored are the influence of pre- and postpurchase interaction phases, according to Kalakota and Winston (1997) on the user experience with a payment system on the whole.It is very likely that correct introduction,application and follow up of payment products and services in retail e-commerce are important for user acceptance of EPSs, and therefore the pre- and post-purchase interaction phases cannot be reaso nably disregarded when investigating the payment process. The user experience within these phases could affect their decision as to whether to use the e-commerce service at all, without even arriving at the payment process itself. Amount of money The minimum amount of money within the scope was chosen to be above â‚ ¬2.This means excluding small and micropayments. The nature of payment tasks in case of micropayments is different from higher amounts. For instance, users may wish to automate this kind of payments to avoid the need to authorize a payment of â‚ ¬0. 01 every time, while with bigger amounts they are likely to have control over each transaction. Furthermore, different researches show that at this moment there is little market for services that support small and micropayments, (Bohle, 2001b). In the focus are therefore small to medium sized payments, e. g. from â‚ ¬2 to â‚ ¬1,000.The upper payment limit is set to â‚ ¬1,000 to indicate that highest amount with in the scope of this research. The suggested range of payment amounts is typical for the current status of the domain and is similar to range of payments with existing offline EPSs, like credit, debit and smart cards, (Lelieveldt, 2001; Bohle, 2001a). Larger payments can be expected to raise different user acceptance issues, because of more user attention to risks, security, efficiency and other aspects of transactions with such amounts, (Humphrey, 1995). 1. 4. 2 Approach and methodologyThis research employs practices of the multidisciplinary scientific field of Human- Computer Interaction in order to research issues of user acceptance and user-related factors in online e-commerce electronic payment systems. Specifics of HCI research The nature of Human-Computer Interaction is such that it has to employ various scientific, research and design disciplines and cross borders between them for successful research. HCI is different from other disciplines in that it studies interaction bet ween people and artificially created artefacts, and not an independent natural phenomenon, like in other disciplines.This complex nature of HCI and its research goals compel researchers to adopt both inductive and deductive approaches to science, as described in Mackay & Fayard (1997). In the deductive approach the purpose is to generate a set of hypothesis that can explain real world phenomena. The scientist proposes a theory about a phenomenon, and formulates a hypothesis to be tested in an empirical research. In order to verify the hypothesis, an experiment is conducted, and with the revision of its results the theory is re-examined and an updated hypothesis is created.This approach is employed by the experimental study of this thesis. The inductive model aims to construct the most precise description of the real world, as opposed to explanation. The scientist observes phenomena in the real world without having a preconception or theory of what they are looking for. Then the scie ntist attempts to create a model of the world that explains the phenomena. By returning to the real world the model can be validated and changed if there are contradictions between the model and the studied phenomena.The qualitative study in this thesis employ this approach for requirements elicitation and creation of the design recommendations. The research process applied in this thesis, aimed to gain validated design knowledge, can be described as an iterative circular or spiral movement. This process is best described by Figure 1. 4, adapted from the work of Rauterberg (2000). This approach asserts to combine â€Å"analytical strength of empirical validation methods (e. g. , observation, experiment, inquiry, etc. with the synthetic strength of system design†. This triangle structure conceptualizes the three most important components of HCI research: â€Å"(1) the collection of ‘design relevant knowledge’, (2) the ‘interactive system’ in differen t possible representation forms, and (3) the several possibilities to represent a ‘user’ for (empirical) validation†, (ibid). The following sections describe how using diverse research activities helped to combine these components in the research reported in this thesis. Outline of the thesis The diagram in Figure 1. illustrates a combination of the research and design activities of this thesis. These activities included acquiring design knowledge on ecommerce EPSs, applying the knowledge to a commercial payment system designed by an industrial party, and empirical validation of the design knowledge. Chapter 2 presents a survey of literature on EPSs, which was necessary for understanding EPSs. The outcome this survey is a classification and a set of characteristics of EPSs. The importance of the characteristics of EPSs had to be confirmed with potential users of EPSs.Chapter 3 describes an investigation into the importance of the characteristics of EPSs to end use rs by means of a survey of consumer attitudes towards EPSs. The user survey helped to identify what characteristics should be given more attention in the design of EPSs. However, the knowledge about the importance of the characteristics did not inform how they should be realised in design of EPSs. To acquire a deeper understanding of these issues, a qualitative research in the form of a diary study was conducted, Chapter 4.The diary study aimed to understand how EPSs are experienced and perceived by users in the context of actual use and how EPSs can be designed to meet users’ needs. As the outcome of the diary study, implications for design of Internet-based payment systems have been derived and formulated as design recommendations. To ensure that the application of the design recommendations benefits user acceptance of EPSs, an experimental study was conducted, that is described in Chapter 5. This study helped to substantiate the validity of a subset of the design recommend ations.It was hoped to find the ideal situation where it is possible to apply the hypothesised design knowledge to a real-life system, rather than testing them in the laboratory, in order to achieve high realism of the results. Due to the participation of industrial parties, this situation has become available. The experimental study involved two parts: 1) a real-life EPS was redesigned in accordance with the proposed DRs, 2) an experimental comparison of the redesigned system with the old one has indicated improvements of user attitudes in several aspects, thus demonstrating the validity of the design recommendations.Chapter 2 2. 1 Classification of payment systems 2. 1. 1 Introduction This chapter presents a framework for classification and characterising of electronic systems that facilitate paying in an e-commerce environment. This framework is an attempt to describe and to relate the wide variety of the payment systems, with more than 150 payment mechanisms invented worldwide. This chapter also presents a survey of literature on EPSs, which has been a necessary step for understanding payment systems. The outcome of this phase of the research is a classification and characterisation of electronic payment systems. . 1. 2 Primary classification of payment systems The principal classification of EPSs is based on the form of money representation and the principle of money transfer. Existing payment systems can be divided into two groups: electronic cash mechanisms (or electronic currency) and credit-debit systems, (Medvinsky & Neuman, 1993). Electronic cash resembles conventional cash, when parties exchange electronic tokens that represent value, just as banknotes and coins determine the nominal value of conventional cash money.The credit-debit approach in the context of electronic payments means that money is represented by records in bank accounts, and this information is electronically transferred between parties over computer networks. Another terminologic al approach offered by Wayner (1997), based on the type of information that is exchanged, distinguishes between ‘account-based’ and ’token-based’ systems, which, respectively, corresponds to credit-debit systems and electronic cash in the definition of Medvinsky and Neuman. A similar distinction is found in Camp et al. 1995), who distinguish between notational and token forms of money. A different view on classification of EPSs is offered in Asokan et al. (1997), where payment mechanisms are classified based on the temporal sequence of money flows between the payer and receiver of the payments. Various attempts of classification of payment systems are also reported in Kuttner and McAndrews (2001), and Schreft (2002). These references are aggregated into the classification of electronic payment systems, illustrated in Figure 2. , which was first reported in Abrazhevich (2001b). The figure illustrates the further classification of EPSs, described in the foll owing sections. It provides examples of EPSs in each subcategory; some of these systems are described further in the text. The figure illustrates if the systems are only theoretical developments, that were only tested as limited pilots, and that have never been implemented for the commercial use. Payment mediation services that aggregate various EPSs in one payment infrastructure are described in section 2. 1. 5. 2. . 3 Further classification of account-based systems In the group of account-based systems, one can distinguish between 1) generic online EPSs that use simple account-based model for serving Internet payments, 2) systems that use the debit and credit cards model, and 3) specialized payment systems that, for instance, were designed for trading content online such as music. Some researchers consider credit cards systems as a separate group of payment models, (Medvinsky and Neuman, 1993), others consider them to be a variant of the credit-debit type.This classification adopt s the latter distinction. The basic principle of account-based systems is that the exchange of money between accounts is maintained by a payment service provider. Users can authorize charges against their EPS accounts, as they would do with usual bank accounts, though the ways of authorization are different for various systems. With the debit approach, the customer maintains a positive balance of the account and money is subtracted when a debit transaction is performed.With the credit approach, charges are posted against the customer's account and the customer is billed for this amount later or subsequently pays the balance of the account to the payment service. One of the most widely used systems for electronic payments is the debit card, which as the name suggest, is a clear example of a debit system, (Evans & Schmalensee, 1999). Debit cards combine the service of Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) cards and cheques. When customers pay with a debit card, the money is automatically de ducted from their checking bank account.In contrast with the credit cards, the spent money comes from the bank account directly. Many banks issue a combined ATM/debit card that looks like a credit card and can be used in places where credit cards are accepted. In this case, when users pay with a debit card, the payment will still be processed as a debit transaction. Other payment mechanisms that use the credit-debit model are Yahoo PayDirect, Pay- Pal. com, and theoretical payment projects like NetBill (Sirbu and Tygar, 1995), and NetCheque (Medvinsky and Neuman, 1993).A special group of account-based instruments that are currently in wide use are credit card systems. A great part of trade on the Internet is done using credit cards and these payment systems should not be overlooked. The biggest advantage of this approach is that the customers, who have already received credit cards offline, can use them directly for online payments. This also results in high scalability, as no addit ional installations are necessary. Credit cards provide a large customer base for merchants who accept them, thus their applicability is quite high.There are critical security issues associated with the use of credit cards in an online environment. When using credit cards over open networks, encryption mechanisms, such as widely used Secure Socket Lauer (SSL), in principle can prevent a hacker or eavesdropper from intercepting the customer's credit card number. There are some schemes that even hide card numbers from the merchant, providing protection against intercepting the card details from merchant databases or against fraud by the merchant. Nevertheless, these incidents happen regularly (Caunter, 2001; IFCC, 2003; Wales, 2003).It is important to note, however, that without some form of customer registration with a payment service or substantial proofs of identity, credit cards can be very risky to pay with and can be easily abused. Even encrypted Internet credit card transaction s do not include the owner’s signature, and anyone with knowledge of the customer's credit card number and expiration date can create a payment order. An important aspect of credit card payments in the online world is referred to as card-not-present (CNP) transactions.CNP transactions are those where neither the card, nor its holder are present at the point of sale, e. g. in orders by mail, telephone, fax or the Internet. The buyer does not have to demonstrate the physical presence of the card, or the card and the buyer do not have to be co-located. This imposes issues with card validation, security and fraud. CNP transactions are widely used in mail order/telephone order purchasing (MOTO) which also do not require co-location of buyer and seller. To secure transactions of this type, credit card companies ask for additional information, such as name, address, etc. that can be used to verify their identity, for instance, if the ordered goods should be mailed to the billing add ress associated with the credit card. Other information often required is the additional 3-4 digits code, printed on the back side of the card and not present in the credit card number. Merchants ask the customer to read this code from the card in a card-not-present order. The merchant then asks for verification during the authorization process. The issuer (or credit card processor) validates the code and relays the decision to decline or approve the transaction to the merchant.Nevertheless, the MOTO transactions incorporate limited protection against credit card fraud. Credit card CNP transactions could sometimes employ even less identity verification information. Since no signature involved in CNP transactions, the buyers can opt out of any order, if they claim they did not agree with the purchase, (O'Mahony, Peirce, & Tewari, 1997). The charges for orders cancellation are borne by merchants in the form of the higher costs for processing of CNP transactions. In addition, merchants could be liable for the whole amount of the disputed order, (APACS, 2002).Furthermore, because online payments are administered as standard credit card charges, the costs are too high to make this method unsuitable for payments below â‚ ¬1 and hence inefficient. Credit card companies are constantly lowering the minimum amount that can be paid to enable small payments, but charges for merchants still remain high. It should be also taken into account that cards are issued by banks and organisations, which after a screening, decide whether they can issue credit cards to certain customers.Customers with a low income, an imperfect credit history, might not be eligible for a credit card. This may restrict the customer base to a certain degree and limit user and merchant acceptance of credit cards as a payment method. 2. 1. 4 Further classification of electronic cash systems Electronic cash is stored in a digital form and serves as a cash substitute for the Internet or other informatio n systems. Electronic cash represents value in some form and can be spent with merchants, who deposit money in their own accounts or can spend it in other places.It can be represented by electronic ‘bills’ and ‘coins’, certificates, packets of data, or electronic tokens in one form or another. When using electronic cash systems, customers purchase electronic digital tokens from the issuing company using a conventional payment system, e. g. credit cards, electronic checks, or even paper currency (for example, via a reverse automatic teller machine which accepts cash, or when purchasing prepaid cards). Some of the systems allow converting electronic cash back into another form of money (Medvinsky and Neuman, 1993), which is very important for convertibility of the systems.Another distinction amongst electronic cash systems is between those that use smart cards for the storage of tokens and those where tokens reside only on user’s accounts and computer networks. The former are often called electronic purses (e-purses), the latter are sometimes addressed as ‘online cash’ or ‘Web cash’. Examples of e-purse electronic cash systems are CAFE project, (Boly et al. , 1994) and Mondex (Martin, 1994). Tokens in these systems exist and travel in the computer environment,for example, on a currency server or customers’ hard disk.Mondex is a smart card payment system that was designed to enable person-to-person as well as Internet payments, (Van Hove, 1999, p. 141). The card can be used to make small payments, store personal and application-specific information, and serve as a telephone card. Web cash representatives are E-cash, E-gold, Millicent (Glassman & Manasse, 1995), PayWord and MicroMint (Rivest & Shamir, 1996), and NetCash system (Medvinsky and Neuman, 1993). It has to be noted that these systems are mostly theoretical work and have not been implemented on the market. Systems that employ smart cards e. g. Chipknip, Chipper in the Netherlands, Proton in Belgium, and Visa Cash can be also placed in the category of electronic cash and also called e-purses, however, in representing money they hardly use tokens. In this case, the numerical data stored on the card is changed when a payment takes place. Judged by the principle of the operation and use they act like electronic purses. The value is stored on a card and if the card is lost, the money is gone, in a fashion similar to cash. It has to be noted that smart cards like Chipknip are not principally designed for Internet payments and are used mainly at point-of-sale terminals.There have been nevertheless pilot tests of facilitating paying over the Internet with Belgian Proton smart card EPS, but the use of Proton on the Internet is now discontinued. An important development towards standardisation of e-purses is establishing Common Electronic Purse Specifications with the goal to define requirements needed to implement a globally i nteroperable electronic purse program, while maintaining full accountability, (see www. cepsco. org). CEPS, which were made available in March of 1999, outline overall system security and certification.Being established by the key parties in electronic purse cards, and supported by organisations from over 30 countries, CEPS paved the way for the creation of an open global electronic purse standard. For cardholders it means that they will be able to use their electronic purse cards domestically and internationally with the knowledge that the card will be accepted wherever the acceptance mark is displayed. Visa Cash is an example of CEPS implementation, (see www. visa. com). Prepaid card EPSs can be also included in the same category of electronic cash, because the principle of their work resembles the use of e-purses, such as Chipknip.Users can buy a prepaid card for a specified amount. Prepaid card systems are specifically designed for Internet payments. Users can pay with a prepaid card by entering on merchant sites the card’s unique number, which corresponds to the card’s nominal. The value of the card is decreased by the amount paid to the merchant. To better understand what issues that surround electronic payment systems, it makes certain sense to introduce a definition of payment mediation services, which use existing payment systems as mediators to provide extra services. 2. 1. 5 Payment mediation services vs. payment systemsTo further refine the focus of this research, we have to make one important distinction, which is between payment mediation services and payment systems. This distinction particularly makes sense in the context of electronic and Internet payment mechanisms. Payment mediating services have appeared as a response to the imperfection and inefficiency of current payment systems for the Internet. They extend the services of the existing systems and operate as mediators between merchant, payment systems and users. Their goal is to help merchants to accept as many payment systems users could possibly want to use when paying over the Internet.In payment mediation services the existing payment infrastructure from many payments providers is aggregated to provide broader services, or to overcome shortcomings of the available payment options. Figure 2. 2 describes the relations between merchants, EPSs and payment mediation services. The difference between payment mediation services and payment systems can be summarized in that a payment mediation service is as an intermediary between payer, business, and payment system, while there is no such middle tire for payment systems. The payment process in this case is transparent to the users of a site.A mediating service provider ‘intercepts’ payments from users, processes them, and credits the account of the owner of the site when the authorization and transactions are completed. For example, there are numerous companies among mediating services provid ers that facilitate acceptance and processing of various credit cards. A special class of payment mediation services has emerged, that provides convenience for paying bills for businesses and end users. An example of payment mediation services is providing bill payments for end users and companies, for instance, utilities or telephone bills.Over a Web front-end provided by the billing systems, customers and companies can pay bills that are normally paid offline by paper cheques or bank transfers. Some systems even provide additional services such as automated accounting merged with online payment facilities. Syndication of payment services Another angle on payment mediating systems is viewing them as a form of syndication of payment services in an online environment. The notion of syndication originates from the entertainment world, where it forms the fundamental organizing principle.With the advent of the ‘new economy’ and the use of the power of Internet distribution, syndication can be recognised as an emerging model for e-commerce. In this context syndication would mean selling the same information to many different customers, who render and integrate it with other information in various value-adding ways and then redistribute it. According to this principle, businesses involved can play three or more roles: originators who create original content; syndicators, who collect and package digital information to meet specific customers’ needs; and distributors who deliver digital content to customers, (Werbach, 2000).In the context of online payments, payment mediation services can be seen as syndicators of the original services offered by payment systems. Payment mediation services syndicate e-commerce EPSs, offering merchants the way to accept a variety of payment systems. Examples of payment mediation services A good illustration a payment mediation service is Bibit Billing Services (www. bibit. com). This Dutch company specializes in Int ernet payment and billing services. The service supported about 70 payment methods from 18 countries by 2004.When customers want to pay on a Web site of a Bibit’s client, they select one of the provided payment methods. The payment process goes as follows: 1. A customer selects products on sale in a virtual shop. 2. For payment, the customer is then redirected to Bibit Payment Service. 3. Within Bibit Payment Service, the customer can select a payment system he or she would like to pay with, provided it is supported by Bibit. The customer makes the payment with the system of his or her choice. 4. After a successful payment, Bibit notifies the merchant that the order can be shipped and transfers the money to the merchant.The processing of the transactions, which is conducted entirely by Bibit, is therefore transparent to the customers of the site and the client company. The company business model, which utilizes a number of payment systems, relies on providing extra services t o facilitate payments, and therefore it fits into the definition of a mediating system. It is interesting to note that the service allows the use of micropayments, by accumulating charges for products like news, articles, stock and research reports, online games and charging users on a subscription basis.Examples of other payment mediation services are Orbiscom (www. orbiscom. com), iBill (Ibill. com), PayTrust, (www. paytrust. com), DataCash (www. datacash. com), PayNet (www. paynet. ch). Systems that conceal real customer’s credit card numbers by providing them a unique temporary card number for each transaction have gained certain popularity among payment mediation services. The customers can then use this unique number in a normal credit card transaction, and their real credit card will be charged.This temporary card number expires after every transaction and would not be approved for the subsequent use. The data of real credit cards of customers is not exposed to parties online in online transactions. In this case the payment mediation services are using credit cards infrastructure to provide extra security and anonymity (ABN-Amro e-wallet, O-Card by Orbiscom. com). By using these measures merchants expect to accept more secured payments without changing the way shoppers pay and without changing existing payment processes or infrastructure.The research summarized in this thesis is concerned mainly with payment systems and not with mediating solutions for existing payment infrastructure. Payment mediation services on the Internet emerged because of the absence of relevant payment solutions or have problems that prevent their successful use by merchants and users. Many of EPSs are probably transitory systems, unable to completely solve problems that appear in the context of the Internet paying process, because the problems originate in the payment systems they use; see discussion on PayPal. om in section 2. 4. While syndication of EPSs by payment med iation services provides in the end a better level of service than individual EPSs they use, it also places the payment mediation systems out of the scope of this research, which is exploring ways to design better individual EPSs. 2. 2 Identifying the characteristics of payment systems As observed in the example with Chipknip and Chipper in the previous chapter, there are a lot of factors that determine the success or failure of payment systems, and not all of them are of technical nature.As mentioned already, user acceptance depends on many issues, such as consumer choice, preferences, advertisement, a state of the market, etc. The discussion of diverse aspects of electronic payment systems can be found in many works on development and research of payment systems. Attempts to classify and describe the requirements and characteristics of payment systems such as security, reliability, convertibility, efficiency, traceability, and others can be found, among others, in the works of Med vinsky & Neuman (1995), Langdon et al. (2000), Lynch & Lundquist (1996), Wayner (1997).It has to be noted however, that these studies are mainly focused on technical aspects of electronic payment systems, which is not the only facet that is important in this field. Below the characteristics of payment systems are extended to account for user-related aspects of EPSs. These characteristics can be also used for assessment of payment systems, as described further. The list of characteristics of payment systems Anonymity, privacy This characteristic reflects the desire of users to protect their privacy, identity and personal information.In some transactions, the identities of the parties could be protected by anonymity. Anonymity suggests that it is not possible to discover someone’s identity or to monitor an individual's spending patterns. Where anonymity is important, the cost of tracking a transaction should outweigh the value of the information that can be obtained by doing so . As an illustration, when a customer pays with a debit card, the purchase is registered at the vendor and bank’s databases. It is possible to find out what amount was paid and what actually was purchased. Thus debit card payments are not anonymous.On the contrary, when one pays with cash at a shop or in a marketplace, no one can say by examining the cash that money came from the payer, as there is no direct information about this payer’s personality associated with the banknotes. Thus, cash is an anonymous payment system. Currently, the right of users to choose how their personal information is disclosed is viewed as privacy. There are privacy laws in several countries that limit usage of personal information by banks, authorities and other parties, including online businesses and payment systems, like European privacy acts or similar directives, e. . European Commission Data Protection Directive. Applicability The added value of a payment mechanism is dependent upon how useful it is for buying something. Applicability (or acceptability, as it is often referred in literature, (Medvinsky & Neuman, 1995)) of a payment system is defined as the extent to which it is accepted for payments at points of sale, or at online e-commerce sites in this case. For instance, cash is accepted widely and virtually everywhere in the offline world and thus has a very high level of applicability.Debit cards and credit cards have a very high applicability, as one can pay with them in a variety of places. The applicability of a payment system may vary from country to country. For example, in Germany and in the Netherlands cheques are no longer common due to the steady growth of other payment methods. However, in the UK and the USA cheques are still quite a common method of payment and the level of their applicability is quite high. Authorization type Authorization type is referred in the literature as the form of a control over the validity of transactions, (Lynch and Lundquist, 1996; Asokan et al. 1997). The authorization type can be offline or online. Offline authorization means that users of the system can exchange money while not connected to a network, without a third party mediating for the transaction. Paper cheques are an illustration of offli