J.J Thomson Essay

J also had a brother that was two years younger than him-self named, Frederick Vernon Thompson. He went to private schools in the beginning of his education career, where he showed a great interest and passion for science, and when was 14 years old when he was accepted in to Owens College. His mother and father originally wanted him to study to be an engineer and get an apprentice for a local locomotive manufacturer, but due to his father’s death in 1873 his plans changed. He moved away from Owens College, and into Trinity College in Cambridge, where he then obtained his BA in mathematics in 1880. He married one of his students, Rose Elizabeth Paget, and they had one son and one daughter. J. J Thompson died still working on the college campus on August 30th, 1940 from unspecified causes at the age of 83. He married one of his students, Rose Elizabeth Paget, and they had one son and one daughter. J. J Thomson was without a doubt religious. He was a devout Anglican Episcopalian who regularly attended services at the Angelican church, and also went to Sunday evening college chapel services. I believe, that the best statement that I found, about the religious practices of Mr. Thomson was from one of his students, Sir Owen Richardson who said â€Å"He was sincerely religious, a churchman with a dislike for Anglo-Catholicism, a regular communicant, who every day knelt in private prayer, a habit known only to Lady Thomson until near the end of his life. Further research shows that J. J Thompson never missed a day of prayer(as quoted above) and that every day before going to sleep, he would read his bible. Some of J. J’s speeches, and addresses also show that he was a devout believer in God, show in what he stated in his inaugural presidential address into the British association, â€Å"As we conquer peak after peak we see in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not see ur goal, we do not see the horizon; in the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and deepen the feeling, the truth of which is emphasized by every advance in science, that ‘Great are the Works of the Lord’. † Here we clearly see, that he doesn’t take credit for his accomplishments, he gives the credit to the Lord.

Research Paper “Eragon”

A CHARACTER SKETCH OF THE PROTAGONIST IN CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI’S ERAGON A Research Paper Presented to the High School Department Holy Angel University by Zwitsel P. SuarezCristle Yumul Alyssa Joy S. SomeraLorenz A. Zamora Pamela Joy P. Sotto Mark Louie S. Venzon Aira Joy Teopaco Ian Jasper Villena to Mrs, Anna Ruby S. Perez 1 March 2011 â€Å"Eragon† Controlling Purpose: To show the traits of the protagonist in Christopher Paolini’s â€Å"Eragon† through character analysis. 1. Introduction 1. 1. Background of the author 1. 2. Summary of the novel 1. 3. Definition of terms 1. 3. 1. Protagonist 1. 3. 2 Character analysis . 3. 3. Trait 1. 3. 4. Dragon Rider 1. 3. 5. Urgal 1. 3. 6. Varden 1. 3. 7. Ra’zac 1. 3. 8. Alagaesia 1. 3. 9. The Spine 2. Body 2. 1. Background of Eragon 2. 2. Traits of Eragon 2. 2. 1. Brave 2. 2. 2. Vigilant 2. 2. 3. Kind 2. 2. 4. Responsible 2. 2. 5. Determined 2. 2. 6. Persevere 3. Conclusion References Chapter 1 Introduction Erag on is chosen to be the focus of the study because he is the main character of the story. And the researchers will brainstorm and share some ideas how to present the character of Eragon creatively. The story talks about dragons and dragon riders who live in a magical kingdom. People live peacefully there until one day, a young dragon rider betrays his race. His name is Galbatorix. He kills all dragons and riders because he wants to be the most powerful in the kingdom. Becoming successful, he rules the kingdom of Alagaesia. But there is this Elven lady, who is a princess, taking care of the last dragon egg, which is their last and only hope. She sends it to the Spine and there, a young farm boy sees it in the middle of the forest. This young poor boy named Eragon thinks it was a precious blue stone. He tries to sell it but no one gets it. Until one ay, he sees the egg cracking. He is amazed because he sees a cute little dragon coming after him. Without knowing, Eragon’s fate with the dragon is now starting. They are destined to beat Galbatorix’s reign and be the last dragon and rider. The adventures of Eragon will show his different traits, which are being highlighted in this study. Background of the author Christopher Paolini (born November 17, 1983 in Southern California) is an American novelist. He is best known as the author of the Inheritance Cycle, which consists of the books Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and a currently untitled fourth book. He lives in Paradise Valley, Montana, where he wrote his first book. Christopher Paolini was raised in the Paradise Valley, Montana area. His family members include his parents, Kenneth Paolini and Talita Hodgkinson, and his sister, Angela Paolini. Home schooled for the duration of his education, Paolini graduated from high school at the age of 15 through a set of accredited correspondence courses from American School of Correspondence in Lansing, Illinois. Following graduation, he started his work on what would become the novel Eragon, the first of a series set in the mythical land of Alagaesia. In 2002, Eragon was published by Paolini International LLC, Paolini's parents' company. To promote the book, Paolini toured over 135 schools and libraries, discussing reading and writing, all the while dressed in â€Å"a medieval costume of red shirt, billowy black pants, lace-up boots, and a jaunty black cap. † Paolini created the cover art for the first edition of Eragon, which featured Saphira's eye. He also drew the maps on the inside covers of his books. In summer 2002, the stepson of author Carl Hiaasen found Eragon in a bookstore and loved it, and Hiaasen brought it to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. Knopf subsequently made an offer to publish Eragon and the rest of the Inheritance cycle. The second edition of Eragon was published by Knopf in August 2003. At the age of nineteen, Paolini became a New York Times bestselling author. Eragon has since been adapted into a film of the same name. Eldest, the sequel to Eragon, was released August 23, 2005. The third book in the cycle, Brisingr, was released on September 20, 2008. Although the Inheritance Cycle was planned as a trilogy, the details for Brisingr had to be expanded to include a fourth book, that has yet to be titled(http://en. ikipedia. org/wiki/Christopher_Paolini). Christopher Paolinis’s abiding love of fantasy and science fiction inspired him to begin writing his debut novel, Eragon when he graduated from high school at fifteen after being home schooled all his life. He became a New York Times best selling author at nineteen. Christopher Paolini lives in Montana, where the dramatic landscape feeds his vision s of Alagaesia(www. Alagaesia. com). Summary of the novel The 15 year old resident of Carvahall, Eragon, starts the book by finding a strange blue stone while traversing The Spine, a mountainous area outside his home. The world in which this novel takes place is known as Alagaesia, under the control of Galbatorix, a fallen Dragon Rider, now evil. These dragon riders used to be the peace keepers of the world, but when his dragon died, Galbatorix went mad and killed his fellow riders. Eragon’s blue stone hatches eventually and from it emerges a dragon. Because of the rarity of the birth (dragons are supposed to be extinct), Eragon keeps his find secret and raises his dragon away from prying eyes, until two dark Ra’zac enter the town looking for the stone. The dragon, named Saphira, leaves the town with Eragon to hide in the forest. While Eragon is away, the Ra’zac kill Eragon’s Uncle Garrow and burn his house down. In response, Eragon declares himself a new Dragon Rider in the vain of those past, the peace keepers, before Galbatorix betrayed them. Eragon takes with him on his journeys Brom, a weaver of stories from his town with knowledge on everything Eragon needs to protect himself and defeat the Ra’zac. The three finally reach the town of Teirm where Brom learns that the Ra’zac are in Helgrind, the four-peaked mountain near the city of Dras-Leona. The three travel there and are lured into a trap set by the Ra’zac, failing to find the revenge that Eragon so desparately seeks. Rescued by Murtagh, an unknown stranger, Eragon and Saphira survive, but his mentor Bram is hurt and soon dies. He reveals before his death though that he was once a Dragon Rider, betrayed by Gaslbatorix like the others, his dragon murdered. After Galbatorix’s coup, Brom became a member of Varden, and sniped the unhatched egg that Eragon eventually found, Saphira’s blue stone. Along with Murtagh, Eragon and Saphira set out to find Varden to help them. Along their journey, Eragon begins to have odd dreams of a mysterious female elf in trouble. When Eragon is captured, he finally meets her, both of them imprisoned together. Murtagh and Saphira strike the prison though and manage to resuce both Eragon and the elf. During the rescue, the three encounter Shade, a horrible creature that should not be awake. The revalation of such a horrible creature loose upon the world causes the three to assume that Galbatorix is in league with darker forces yet. On the way to the Varden, Eragon must deal with an immense influx of foes and dangers, including an army of Urgals chasing them all the way there. The Vardens’ fortress, located in the depths of the Beor Mountains, is host to groups of dwarves, elves, and Varden, who are in league, having sent Saphira’s egg to The Spine where Eragon found it. Given a short rest, the three along with the Varden and their allies must prepare for the arrival of the Urgal as the approach the mountain. They learn for sure that Galbatorix is in league with the dark forces from a stolen messenge and soon they are in a battle with the Urgal. During the battle, the Urgals are close to defeating the Varden until Eragon defeats the Shade they encountered earlier. However, the battle with the Shade leaves him horribly disfigured and in pain. When the battle ends, closing the first chapter in the Inheritance trilogy, Eragon is preparing to go study with the elves(http://www. wikisummaries. org/Eragon). Definition of terms Protagonist- A protagonist (from the Greek protagonistes, â€Å"one who plays the first part, chief actor†) is the main character (the central or primary personal figure) of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy(http://en. wikipedia. rg/wiki/Protagonist). Character Analysis- a systematic investigation of the personality of an individual with special attention to psychologic defenses and motivations, usually undertaken to improve behavior(http://medical-dictionary. thefreedictionary. com/character+analysis). Trait- A distinguishing feature, as of a person's character(http://www. thef reedictionary. com/trait). Dragon Rider- A Dragon Rider is a person, Elf or Human, bonded by thought with a Dragon. A Dragon Rider is identified by the â€Å"shining palm,† the Gedwey Ignasia. In the Ancient Language â€Å"dragon rider† is Shur'tugal(http://www. shurtugal. com/wiki/index. hp5/Dragon_Rider). Urgal- Urgals were a race of sentient creatures that inhabited Alagaesia. Forced by Durza into the service of Galbatorix, they were considered evil by most humans, but were not inherently so. Though most were uneducated, they made up with brute force, exceptional fighting and commanding skills. They were used as expendable â€Å"shock troops† of Galbatorix's army. The Urgal language was a simple, guttural language. Only a few phrases were known to outsiders, and most of them were related to war and fighting. Also, they were one of the races capable of using magic(http://inheritance. wikia. com/wiki/Urgal). Varden- The Varden were members of an alliance that opposed the rule of King Galbatorix and his Empire. They consisted mainly of men and dwarves, though there was a conjunction between the Varden and the elves, as well. The Varden also enlisted the aid of a group of magicians known as the Du Vrangr Gata (translated â€Å"The Wandering Path†). The Surdans are also known to aid the Varden in transporting supplies and shelter those who wish not to fight(http://inheritance. wikia. com/wiki/Varden). Ra’zac- The Ra'zac (or Lethrblaka when full-grown) were one of the several ancient races that followed the humans across the sea to Alagaesia. They were a race that fed on humans and likely came from the same homelands. Ra'zacs' breath have the power to paralyze humans in a dream-like state, however, it barely clouds the minds of dwarves and is ineffective against elves altogether(http://inheritance. wikia. com/wiki/Ra’zac). Alagaesia- Alagaesia is a large continent with variegated climate and terrain, home to a wide number of creatures such as humans, elves, dwarves, Urgals and dragons. Several of the races inhabiting Alagaesia, including humans, elves, and Urgals, were not native to the land, having migrated to Alagaesia in centuries past(http://inheritance. ikia. com/wiki/Alaga%C3%ABsia). The Spine- The Spine was a mountain range that ran down the west coast of Alagaesia. It had only one major pass, along the Toark River, which isolated the coast. Most people in the Empire feared the Spine and the danger it represented, especially since Galbatorix lost nearly half his army in it during his campaign against the Dra gon Riders. After this incident, hardly anyone dared to venture near to this dangerous mountain range(http://inheritance. wikia. com/wiki/The_Spine). Chapter 2 This part of the discussion highlights the different traits of Eragon. Background of Eragon Eragon is the main protagonist of the Inheritance Cycle, written by Christopher Paolini. Eragon is a male, the first in a new generation of Dragon Riders. He was trained by Brom an old story teller from his village and Oromis, and was chosen by Saphira, a blue dragon, to be her Rider. Traits of Eragon Brave Bravery is the condition or quality of being brave; courage(http://www. thefreedictionary. com/bravery). As a Spanish matador once said, â€Å"Bravery is believing in yourself, and that thing nobody can teach you. † (El Cordobes, 1936), being brave is having trust in yourself. It is the ability to confront fear, pain, risk/danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Eragon is a brave person. The deer he was hunting had led him deep into the Spine, a range of untamed mountains that extended up and down the land of Alagaesia. Strange tales and men often came from those mountains, usually boding ill. Despite that, Eragon did not fear the Spine—he was the only hunter near Carvahall who dared track game deep into its craggy recesses. Eragon’s bravery is also proven when he battled with his enemies like Shade, Urgals, and Ra’zac which aren’t easy to kill. Vigilant Vigilance the ability to maintain attention and alertness over prolonged periods of time(http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Vigilance). Being vigilant is being alert. One of Eragon’s trait is being vigilant. It is proven in the first chapter of the novel. When Eragon saw a polished blue stone and decided to pick it. But before he picked the stone, he watched for danger for several long minutes, but the only thing that moves was the mist. Cautiously, he released the tension from his bow and moved forward. Moonlight cast him in pale shadow as he stopped before the stone. He nudged it with an arrow, then jumped back. Nothing happened, so he warily picked it up. This only proves that Eragon is vigilant in his actions. He makes sure that nothing dangerous will happen to him if he picks up to blue stone he saw in the Spine. Kind Being kind is a way of living that keeps giving long after the kind thoughts, words, and actions have taken place. Kindness is a force without force, and it goes well beyond manners to the very heart of how people respect and treat one another. Kindness is the act or the state of being kind —ie. arked by goodness and charitable behavior, mild disposition, pleasantness, tenderness and concern for others. It is known as a virtue, and recognized as a value in many cultures and religions(http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Kindness). Eragon is kind. It is proven in the 5th chapter of the story, when he spent a long time with the dragon. He untied it, set it on his shoulder, and went to explore the woods. The snow-laden trees watche d over them like solemn pillars of a great cathedral. In that isolation, Eragon showed the dragon what he knew about the forest, not caring if it understood his meaning. It was the simple act of sharing that mattered. Eragon kept the dragon, he fed her, took care of her, and treated her like in a nice way even if he doesn’t know anything about the dragon. Responsible Responsibility is a duty or an obligation to satisfactorily perform or complete a task (assigned by someone, or created by one's own promise or circumstances) that one must fulfill, and which has a consequent penalty for failure(http://www. businessdictionary. com/definition/responsibility. html). Responsible—it is one of the words that best describes Eragon. As he accepted his fate onto being a dragon rider, he also accepted its responsibilities, to care for Saphira, to rescue Arya, to help the Varden, and to fight the Empire. All of these responsibilities as the dragon rider were fulfilled through his trait of being responsible. Determined â€Å"A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop. †(Robert Hughes, 1978). Determinedness is devoting full strength and concentrated attention to(http://www. thefreedictionary. com/determinedness). Being determined is being strongly motivated to succeed. It is having a strong desire for success or achievement Eragon is determined to fulfill his mission as the dragon rider that will save Alagaesia from the evilness of King Galbatorix. And because of his determinedness, he works hard to learn about sparring, his enemies, the ancient language, and how to use his magic properly through his teacher, Brom in order for him to be successful in his mission of killing his enemies. Persevere â€Å"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.. †(Dale Carnegie, 1981). Perseverance is steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc. , especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement(http://dictionary. reference. com/browse/perseverance). Perseverance falls under the larger category of courage because it often involves continuing along a path in the midst of and after having faced opposition and perhaps failure. Perseverance involves the ability to seek a goal in spite of obstacles. Eragon is a persevere dragon rider. Being persevere, he continues his journey to fulfill his mission even if there are many obstacles along his way. In the first part of the story, Eragon was attacked by the opponents which caused him to get a lot of wounds. There was also a time when Urgals under the command of the Shade, Durza captured Eragon and imprisoned him. In spite of facing these challenges/obstacles, Eragon still continues to stand and doing his best for his duties to be fulfilled. Chapter 3 Conclusion Through character analysis, the researchers have shown the traits of the main protagonist in Christopher Paolini’s â€Å"Eragon†. The traits of Eragon are proven through the use of different references. He is brave for having the courage to confront fear or danger. He is vigilant for maintaining attention and alertness over prolonged periods of time. He is kind for sharing the goodness in his heart and having concern to others. His sense of responsibility is shown through the tasks that were given to him because he fulfilled those tasks. He is determined for devoting his full strength and attention to his mission and for desiring success to it. And lastly, he possesses perseverance because he continues to go on to fulfill his tasks even if there are many obstacles along the way. Eragon is the protagonist or hero in the story. The researchers therefore conclude that he possesses good traits as the main character. References Paolini, C. (2002). Eragon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf publishing house. â€Å"Christopher Paolini† Retrieved February 10, 2011, From http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Christopher_Paolini. â€Å"About the Author† Retrieved February 10, 2011, From www. Alagaesia. com. â€Å"Eragon Summary† Retrieved February 10, 2011, From http://www. wikisummaries. org/Eragon. â€Å"Protagonist† Retrieved February 15, 2011, From http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Protagonist. â€Å"Character Analysis† Retrieved February 15, 2011, From http://medical-dictionary. hefreedictionary. com/character+analysis. â€Å"Trait† Retrieved February 15, 2011, From http://www. thefreedictionary. com/trait. â€Å"Dragon Rider† Retrieved February 15, 2011, From http://www. shurtugal. com/wiki/index. php5/Dragon_Rider. â€Å"Urgal† Retrieved February 15, 2011, From http://inh eritance. wikia. com/wiki/Urgal. â€Å"Varden† Retrieved February 15, 2011, From http://inheritance. wikia. com/wiki/Varden. â€Å"Ra’zac† Retrieved February 15, 2011, From http://inheritance. wikia. com/wiki/Ra’zac. â€Å"Alagaesia† Retrieved February 15, 2011, From http://inheritance. wikia. com/wiki/Alaga%C3%ABsia.

Internet and Traditional Books

I. Title Library vs. Internet II. Introduction Students are often unable to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate resources. If the information is not available on the internet, it does not exist for them. Librarians and faculty express concern that students do not know how to adequately evaluate the quality of information resources found on the internet. Both  web-based  and traditional  library  resources are useful when conducting research. Each have their own particular strengths and weaknesses. Conducting research is something that every student will eventually have to do. Research projects are done in English class, in foreign language class, in social studies class and in science class. The sooner students are able to master the skills required for conducting research the better off they are going to be. The two most common places to find resources for research projects are in the library and online. Many thousands of web pages exist, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet instead of a traditional library. Many of these are personal opinions, with the authors ranging from commercial sites to professional organizations. By limiting their research to the internet, students are ignoring the books, journals, databases, full-text digital resources and other scholarly materials provided by the library. In many academic libraries, use of print resources is decreasing. Use of video and other media appears to be increasing. Ignoring library resources in lieu of web resources may imperil the quality of student learning. You may find instructors who do not allow their students to use web resources in class projects for this very reason. Faculty can have an enormous influence over student choices for research resources. However, the Internet and the Web should not be disregarded as valuable research tools. With proper training and cross-referencing, both can be highly effective and efficient means by which students locate information. As computers are becoming more common in schools and homes, students and teachers are becoming more computer literate and Internet literate. The library is the traditional place to conduct research for a school research project. Libraries contain a large collection of books, periodicals and multimedia resources. They also have live people there called librarians who are available to help you find the information that you need. Libraries also give you the opportunity to read hardcopies of the reference materials that you use and they have photocopying machines available to students so that they can take home a copy of the information that they need. Libraries are established for the systematic collection, organization, preservation and dissemination of knowledge and information. It is very important for man to preserve and maintain the valuable knowledge and information contained in the books and documents because we want to preserve our knowledge and wisdom for the coming generations. By preserving the documents in a library this knowledge can be made available to others so that they can benefit from it. Establishment of libraries is not a new concept. The oldest library dates to around 2700 years ago in Sennacherib's Palace in Nineveh which shows how long ago the concept of leaving a piece of your wisdom behind started being formed into the organized collection to preserve the work. While libraries are wonderful resources for a variety of reference materials, they do have a few limitations. First of all libraries are not usually open 24 hours a day seven days a week. This means that your access to the research materials is limited to the hours of operation of the library. Secondly, the books in a library can be somewhat out-of-date, particularly in smaller libraries. Finally, libraries can be crowded and access to reference materials, computers and other pieces of equipment can be limited by the number of people who also need to use those items. Internet research  is the practice of using the  Internet, especially the World Wide Web, for  research. The internet is widely used and readily accessible to hundreds of millions of  people  in many parts of the  world. It can provide practically instant  information  on most topics, and has a profound impact on the way  ideas  are formed and  knowledge  is created. The Internet solves many of the problems associated with conducting research in a physical library. First of all students have instant access to reference materials 24 hours a day seven days a week. Students also do not have to travel to get to the reference materials that are found online. This means that they can find references for their research project any time and it also means that they can access these references from anywhere that has a computer an Internet access. Finally, the Internet provides students access to multiple databases and sources of information, many of which are not going to be found in a library. Common applications of  Internet researchinclude personal research on a particular subject (something mentioned on the news, a health problem, etc. ,  students  doing research for academic projects and papers, and  journalists  and other  writers researching stories. It should be distinguished from  scientific research  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ research following a defined and rigorous process – carried out on the Internet; from straight forward finding of specific info, like locating a name or phone number; and from research  about  the Internet. Co mpared to the Internet, print physically limits access to information. A book has to be identified, then actually obtained. On the Net, the Web can be searched, and typically hundreds or thousands of  pagescan be found with some relation to the topic, within seconds. Just like a physical library the Internet has research limitations. The first limitation is based on the student’s ability to access a computer, electricity and Internet access. The second problem is that not all information found online is good information. There are a lot of websites that have inaccurate and incomplete information. These problems can be overcome by focusing research efforts solely on websites that are run by government or other authoritative organizations or by using databases that hold peer reviewed journals. Many predict that the digital age will wipe public bookshelves clean, and permanently end the centuries-old era of libraries. As libraries' relevance comes into question, librarians face an existential crisis at a time when students need them the most. User demand is ever increasing and putting a great pressure on the librarians. Therefore, there is an imperative need for the modernization of libraries in order to keep pace with the modern times. The new challenges in the field of Library and Information Science can be met by adopting the process of digitization and networking. In the present age the Librarians have to face many problems due to the limitations of time and space. User satisfaction is the main objective of a good library. It cannot be achieved without adopting the modern tools and techniques rendered available by the modern technologies available in the field of Information and telecommunication. These developments have led to the creation of Digital and Virtual Libraries, which have great advantages over the traditional libraries. Therefore, digital libraries are becoming popular due to the advantages and facilities, which are offered by them to their users. III. â€Å"Accuracy is another area where the Internet information and library information are dissimilar. Before information reaches a library, it is filtered in three ways: (a) it is written and/or issued by an authoritative source such as the federal government or a reliable organization; (b) it is authenticated as part of an editorial or peer review process by a publisher; or (c) it is evaluated by experts, reviewers, or subject specialists/librarians as part of collection development (Brandt, 1996). In a library, the information is then selected, reviewed again, evaluated, and catalogued. The information is selected for specific purposes and specific reasons to be included in a section. Information on the Web has no evaluation criteria. Anyone can publish anything on the Web. It is important that teachers and students do not take information found on the Web at face value. Facts and figures should always be cross-referenced with other resources. † — http://www2. hawaii. edu/~nguyen/web/literature1. htm

UNIT 5 DISCUSSION BOARD Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

UNIT 5 DISCUSSION BOARD - Essay Example Other government funded interests such as education, military and infrastructure will suffer greatly as well. According to the Commerce Department, the yearly payment on this debt, the deficit, reached $725.8 billion. This represents a 17.5 percent increase from 2004 (Armstrong, 2006). These figures are well past most peoples’ comprehension. If, for example, a person were to spend a million dollars a day since the birth of Christ, they would have to continue the spending spree for 700 more years to have spent one trillion dollars. Multiply that amount by eight. That still does not equal the current national debt. Started in 1791, the national debt was, by those days’ standards, an incredible $75 million. Due to President Andrew Jackson’s prudent approach to government spending, the national debt was lowered to, again adjusted to today’s standards, a much lower level – $37 thousand (Suter, 2004). The Reagan/Bush administrations of the 1980’s ran the debt up by historic proportions. When President Clinton took office in 1993, the debt stood at $2.4 tr illion. The massive increase of debt was not used for infrastructure, education, public programs or even to finance a war. As a result of Reagan’s ‘trickle down’ economic theory, the money wound up in the pockets of the rich. In the early 1990’s, Congress adopted a ‘pay-as-you-go’ policy and federal spending cuts which resulted in budget surpluses for four consecutive years. Clinton announced that the nation could pay off the debt by the year 2013 if it stayed on the present course (Schoen, 2006). That optimistic predication has long since been forgotten. Since 2000, the debt has tripled. The ‘pay-as-you-go’ policy expired in 2002 allowing Congress to cut taxes, a politically advantageous move while also increasing spending (Schoen, 2006). The current President Bush administration cut the taxes of the rich while increasing military

Mergers and Acquisitions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Mergers and Acquisitions - Essay Example A study conducted by UNCTAD (2006) shows that 17 percent of the FDI in the world comprise South-North and South-South flows and of this the cross-border acquisitions occupy a significant proportion. This project would look into the cross border acquisitions with an insight into the reasons driving the acquisitions and influential factors impacting such acquisitions. Factors motivating cross border acquisition Various theories have been developed that explain the significance of the mergers and acquisitions. According to Efficiency theories the main motive behind such deals is to exploit the benefits arising out of synergies or economies of scale. Market power theories highlight that acquisitions lead to oligopoly benefits. Agency theories state that the acquisition and acquisition deals mitigate agency problems like removing the inefficient managerial staff. This theory also states that it may also give rise to agency problems such as imprudent managerial decisions solely guided by t he motive of empire building. Besides this the acquisition deals are also guided by the advantages arising from the ‘benefits of diversification’. Though there is no single theory on mergers and acquisitions however these theories have garnered empirical support. Studies have shown that the shareholders of the target firm benefit the most in such deals whereas the shareholders of the bidder firm do not derive any immediate benefit from the deal. The abnormal return that that the bidders can enjoy is either slightly negative or zero. The combined return of the bidder-target firm is found to be universally positive indicating that the acquisition deals lead to value creation. It has also been seen that the stock price of the target firms’ exhibit higher returns in the case of cash offers as compared to the stock offers; hostile takeovers as compared to friendly takeovers; and multiple bidder as compared to contests by single bidders (Gregoriou & Neuhauser, 2007, p. 1). The success associated with the M&A deals has eluded many corporations. Marks & Mirvis (1998) state that the failure rates of such deals is around 50 to 75 percent. Despite the uncertainties associated with the deal the acquisition and acquisition deals are on the rise. The various benefits arising out of the deal include managerial synergies, cost synergies, market synergies etc. The sources of synergies include consolidated purchases, production, administration, marketing, market power, cross-selling, acquisition of technical expertise, patent, knowhow of the target, market expansion etc. In the horizontal acquisitions that involve integration of two companies belonging to the same sector the main motive is gaining market share of the target firm. This happens in the case of matured industries where the opportunities of growth are nearly exhausted, presence of excess capacity etc. Horizontal acquisitions result in enhanced revenue, savings in cost and better growth opportunit ies (Hitchner, 2006, p.106). The acquiring firm also gets a control over the customer base of the target firm thereby raising the total revenue base of the bidder firm.

Final Conclusions Memo Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Final Conclusions Memo - Essay Example Louis which has won many games than the Boston and the difference in salary, is quite notable. Another variable is the attendance of the games. It is an expectation on everyone’s mind that the larger the attendances n the games the higher the players get paid. This is not the case, however, looking at the San Diego attendance as compared to the Boston, it was slightly higher, but the difference in the incomes is so higher. Boston earns a whopping 123.5$ San Diego earns 63.3$, while Chicago a team that earns a salary of 87.0$ with an attendance of more 3,100,092 million. This does not reflect in any way on the wins nor is the salary paid to the players. When it comes to baseball teams, it is exceptionally clear that money cannot make a team into a winning team. What actually makes a team to win is all about the player’s personality and the team chemistry not all about the salary they receive. A strong team requires a player with the same goals and the same

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Research Paper

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Research Paper Example Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 2010 will go down in history as a major health care reform bill that has been signed into law. It has a comprehensive coverage that would see 31 million Americans currently uninsured getting a medical cover. If this new proposal, the government will incur approximately $848 billion over the next 10 years, consequently, there will be a gradual increase in taxes and revenue is proposed to reduce the total cost of this cover by $131 billion within the same period (Eaton 2010). The proposed reform aims at achieving a number of strategic healthcare goals. Firstly, it aims at ensuring that every US citizen can access, quality and affordable health care. In essence, this is an important component of the entire reform agenda. In light of the increasing burden of increasing burden of disease and skyrocketing prices of health care services, the government undertook this deliberate strategy to ensure that there is universal health care insurance cover age. Today, the majority of US citizens continues to battle with out-of-pocket financing, which is prohibitively expensive (Junior 2010). Secondly, it aims at improving quality and efficiency of healthcare by establishing a vibrant health care workforce that would meet the growing demand for healthcare services. In addition, there is a growing body of evidence showing an increase in the burden of chronic diseases, this proposed health care financing in its full implementation will see the middle and elderly persons receive a comprehensive cover that focuses on affordable health care services for chronic diseases. United States (2010) states that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that the fully paid patient protection  scheme, in the end, will ensure that more than 94% of Americans will be covered within $900 billion limits set by President Obama.  

War and Peace international relations since 1914 Essay

War and Peace international relations since 1914 - Essay Example It was done so on 23rd July. The last part of July saw attack of Austria over Serbia. 28th July marked the day when Austria unleashed on Serbia. 31st July marked Germany’s attack on Russia on Eastern front. 3rd August marked attack of Germany on France. 4th August marked attack of Great Britain on Germany. Between 15th to 18th August, three major events took place. Russia took over parts of Prussia, and U.S.A reaffirmed its neutrality (Tuchman). The issues that came forth around the second and later stage of W.W.2 were pertinent to the post war settlements, say and influence and sharing of the spoils of war. Great Britain and U.S.A had soft corner for one another, Russia on other hand wanted maximum shares. It claimed those shares on account of the sacrifices and number of troops and other civilian casualties suffered by Russia. The case of Poland was another area of interest between these two. Russia wanted major say and influence in the affairs of European countries that had been unseated, while United States of America wanted to break the shackles and come out of the old custom of isolation. Great Britain on other side wanted to maintain its influence and presence through economic strengthening and importance of seas. The case of Germany and the influence maintaining was another area of conflict that came up in the later part of the Second World War (Keylor, 85). Iron Curtain was an important speech that is still remembe red as a hall mark of those days. The conflict gave rise to Cold war which lasted for over five decades after the end of Second World War. The relationship between these two groups had fragmented the continent of Europe into two distinct blocs. Both were drawn by the spirit of hatred, ill will, suspicion towards one another. Each aimed at outsmarting one another through military might and counter maneuvers. The Triple Entente was driven by historic relationship and strong ties. The central powers had come together

Financial Planning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Financial Planning - Essay Example The role of three companies, like Colonial First State Investments Limited and Professional Investment Services Pty Ltd related to provide financial planning services has been sorted out in the assigned study. The of Financial planning in Australia begun in the years 80s, as during those years there were no Financial Planners as they were not existing then. This occurred due to the fact that as there was no prerequisites for the clients within the Marketplace to enable them get efficient financial advice. It was only network of insurance that existed during that period under review. The Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) is the peak professional body for Australia's financial planners, representing approximately 12,000 individuals and businesses (The Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA). However, (Cowen, Blair, Taylor, 2006, p 4) reveals that "In the early 1980s, a leading Australian financial planning industry stalwart Gwen Fletcher visited the United States intent on pursuing discussions with the U.S. industry association, the International Association for Financial Planning (IAFP). These discussions related to the creation of either a new industry body for A ustralia or the establishment of an affiliated chapter of the IAFP. At a later meeting of dealers conducted by the Department of Corporate Affairs (the then-regulatory body issuing licenses to dealers of securities), the affiliation model was proposed but rejected. However, a new industry body consisting of an elite group of independent advisors was formed, the Association of Independent Professional Advisors (AIPA). It is important to note that this group excluded all banks and insurance companies from membership". Additionally, following the International Conference of IAFP held in Australia in the years 1982 and 1984 respectively, Australian IAFP was officially launched. (Cowen, Blair, Taylor, 2006, p 4) states that after the launching, "The IAFP in Australia was to be an open forum for individuals, dealers and fund managers alike. Following U.S. IAFP requirements, the newly formed Australian association sought and was granted a license for the CFP designation and subsequently established the Diploma of Financial Planning (DFP) course. This necessitated strong collaboration between the United States and Australian bodies with the College of Financial Planning in the United States providing much of the DFP educational materials and resources. The US IAFP oversaw and closely monitored the development of educational standards to ensure that the Australian DFP met the educational requirements for the CFP designation. This involved an ongoing process of quality assurance by the U.S. body". It is e stimated that there are about 5,500 financial planning practices in

Substance Abuse - Alcohol and Drugs Essay Example for Free

Substance Abuse Alcohol and Drugs Essay World Health Organization has played a huge role in the management of substance abuse and its prevention especially among the vulnerable groups. It has supported countries to reduce and prevent problems caused by the use of psychoactive substances in terms of regulations and policy implementation. Its main mandate is to; â€Å"recommend reduction and prevention mechanisms which can able to prevent relapse and assess substance that highly contribute to relapse hence able to advise the U.N on what regulations to pursue†. The department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse under it has been mandated to overlook issues of curbing relapse and also substance abuse in general (Laws and Ward, 2000). The World Health Organization (WHO) defines substance abuse as â€Å"the harmful or hazardous use of psychoactive substances which include illicit drugs and alcohol†. A prolonged or repeated use of such substances can lead to addiction which is usually evident with continued use of the substances despite the fact that physical and mental deterioration is being noticed. In fact, various researchers in the world have come up with different conclusions and suggestions regarding the causes, effects, solutions and recommendations on how to deal with substance abuse (Laws and Ward, 2000). Substance abuse is a global issue. Reports reveal that the illegal drug business accounts for $400 billion of world trade, and is second only to the worldwide arms market, it is larger than the global iron and steel industries.(Cherry, Dillon, and Rugh, 2002) The 2000 World Drug Report noted that there were at least 180 million drug abusers globally, including 9 million heroin addicts, 29 million amphetamine users, and 14 million cocaine users (ODCCP, 2000)(Cherry, Dillon, and Rugh, 2002). Untreated cases of substance abuse, addiction and relapse add significant effects to communities and families. â€Å"The main effects that can be immediately noticed are; property and violence crimes, criminal and court related costs, health care utilization costs, lack of child support, prison   expenses for the government, welfare and foster care costs, child abuse, unemployment and emergency room visits† (Marks, A. Donovan, 2005). Treatment options Scientific research which has been conducted in the past have shown that effective treatment from substance abuse can help people completely recover from destructive behaviors after undoing   treatment or recovery process from substance abuse. People can successfully remove themselves from a life of substance abuse through effective treatment and long-term commitments. It includes the following; Pharmacotheraphies To a greater or lesser extent, certain drugs and alcohols have been developed and manufactured to assist in solving issues of relapse. They include opioid medications such as methadone, buprenorphine, morphine, oxycodone etc. which have been used as remedies of relapse. One of the most successful ones include bogaine which, according to medics, can help reduce the temptation of going back to substance abuse and is specifically suited for narcotics and alcohol. It is believed to interrupt  Ã‚   both psychological cravings and physical dependence on stimulants, nicotine and alcohol. Other antidepressants are able to moderate substance use particularly narcotics. All these Pharmacotheraphies have helped in the reduction of addiction and relapse of substance abuse for all genders. Rehabilitation Most of the judicial systems have been able to convict substance abusers to rehabilitation programs and to cope with withdrawal symptoms. The detoxification process of addiction involves the abrupt cessation of drug use and physical tolerance of the temptation. Medics promote the use of rehabilitation strategies to minimize effects of relapse since it is a slow but sure process of withdrawal. The method involves the use of psychological dependency which attempts to teach and train the victim new methods of freely interacting with a drug-free environment and avoid relapse. Isolation of victims or patients of relapse from people who are still substance abusers is very important as it prevents them from admiring the practice. In some organizations, moderations are utilized to allow substance abusers to re-examine their habits and compare themselves before and after stopping the practice. Many other programs utilize rehabilitation initiatives to make their initiatives more effective (Pham-Kanter, 2001). Justice systems Drug involved offenders have frequently been cycled through the judicial system whereby the substance abusers have become common to probation officers and police officers. This is an evidence that relapse is common and that the judicial system is doing very little to address it. As jails, prisons, juvenile detention centers and other correctional facilities get congested, all stakeholders in the medical field are examining newer solutions to prevent relapse. One of them is the criminal justice settings where substance abusers who are most likely to be criminals are only allowed to re-enter back into the community when they have completely recovered from substance abuse and are not likely to be affected by relapse. Relapse Prevention Therapy RPT was originally designed as a maintenance program for replace victims. It entails treatment of addictive behaviors which is used as stand-alone program that in most cases is designed to teach individuals to try and maintain changes initiated in the treatment process. Every individual has an effective response system to cope with incidences of high risk situations but the problem is the guts to do so. Post-implementation survey on suitability of RPT has shown that relapse had decreased significantly as a result of the program. RPT strategies are categorized to three groups; lifestyle modification, coping skills training and cognitive therapies. All of these strategies round up to both cognitive and behavioral techniques and approaches that provide victims of relapse with ways to reframe their habits once more and change processes in learning experiences with setbacks on how they can meet challenges of recovery. Life modifications strategies include; exercise, spiritual practices, meditation among others (Pham-Kanter, 2001). Side Effects of Addiction The most common side effect of substance abuse i.e. alcohol and drug is what is termed as substance relapse. Relapse is a situation of ‘converting back’ from a condition after a short or long abstinences. In drug addiction and substance abuse, it can be defined as â€Å"the resumption of the use of drugs after leaving it for some time† that is according to World Health Organization in the year 2004 (Laws and Ward, 2000). Substance abuse relapse is a condition where one feels to have failed to recover fully from addiction to drugs or substance abuse despite the fact that they have gone under a professional recovery plan. It means that individuals are tempted to use the drugs even after they have undergone a medical response process. Relapse to substance abuse is a common problem that can have devastating effects on the victim especially physical and emotional impacts. It requires good communication and counseling between the counselor and the patient. Recovery from substance abuse especially is not a complete failure to eradication but a step further; in real sense, a positive way to strengthen the process of recovery that is difficult to address given the complexity nature of the issue. There are three ways of severity of relapse which is normally used to determine the most suitable medical or counseling response. The first level is slip where the victim briefly resumes drug use but have no signs of drug dependence or symptoms of addiction.   The second level is several level of drug abuse. This is the most severe form because the victim resumes substance abuse for several days during the treatment process. This should be used as a learning process where the patient should learn from experience and prevent further relapse. The last level is the sustained drug use evidenced by resumption of addiction. The victims of substance abuse fully relapse to addiction and eventually drops out treatment and those medics and counselors need to start from scratch (Marks, A. Donovan, 2005). The Relapse Process Any use of a substance after a period of abstinence is a measure of the relapse rates. Previous research has indicated that temporal patterning of the relapse process and that the circumstances under which the process occurs across all the genders is under is difficult to comprehend especially by unprofessional persons and the victims themselves. Hence the commonalities across all substance abusers are an indication of the relapse rates and it involves a sense of perceived control and self-efficacy (Marks, A. Donovan, 2005).       Reference Cherry, A, Dillon, M, Rugh, D (2002): Substance abuse a global view. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press Laws, D. Ward, T. (2000): Remaking relapse prevention with sex offenders: The sourcebook. Newbury Park, CA; Sage Publications Marks, A. Donovan, D. (2005): Relapse prevention; Maintenance strategies in the treatment of addictive behaviors (2nd Ed.). New York: Guilford Press Pham-Kanter, G. (2001): Substance abuse and dependence. The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine Second Edition Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group,

Impact of Weather on Dengue Disease

Impact of Weather on Dengue Disease Dengue is the most tropical infectious disease that is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. The dengue disease incidence rises as a serious public health problem with 2.1 billion people at risk. In Malaysia, the dengue disease over the last 40 years has become worst epidemic in the countrys history. This study aimed to analyses relationship between weather parameters and increase of dengue incidence among university Putra Malaysia students, to identify the direct or indirect effect of weather on dengue incidence and to determine the relationship of dengue disease located in UPM (SERDANG). The objective of this study was to assess the effect of meteorological parameters variation on the dengue virus transmission between UPM students. We obtained data on monthly weather parameters including relative humidity and median mean temperature and rainfall amount and monthly dengue cases. Analysis was conducting by employing correlation and regression, plotting. A total of 7 years of den gue occurrences since 2005 to 2011 were plotted, 2005 and 2010 were the highest years with dengue cases rates while, 2006 and 2007 were the lowest dengue incident rates. Analysis of monthly mean temperature data for UPM indicated that the months which having very warm days has higher dengue rates while, the precipitation months has more direct effect on these rates. On the other hand, humidity is the most factors have highest impact on dengue incidence between UPM students. Keywords:  Weather impact, dengue incidence, UPM students. INTRODUCTION Dengue fever (DF) and Dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) possess recurred as 1980s and rapidly come to be a main epidemiological menace worldwide; especially in South East Asia and Western Pacific Region. Dengue fever is rampant in more than 120 countries alongside approximated 2.4 billion populations at the chance and annual dengue infection of 52 million cases according to World Health Organization, (WHO, 2005). Of this, Asia Pacific Area shares the biggest burden of dengue alongside approximated above 75% of the 2.5 billion populaces at chance living in the region. As yet, the particular causes for the re-emergence of dengue are not completely comprehended. Though, the U.S. centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recognized factors such as weather factors and accelerated urbanization, poor areas, increased global excursion, and lack of competent vector manipulation arrangement as a few of the main determinants that possess gave globe rise of DE/DHF as a main area condition burd en (U.S. C.D.C.P,2007). In Malaysia Dengue considered as endemic disease with four serotypes of dengue viruses. Dengue is the most threaten disease to public health in Malaysia. Around the world 50 million cases are reported each year about the dengue disease infection (WHO, 1999). Dengue is endemic in Malaysia the first case was recognized in Penang 1902, while the first dengue hemorrhagic fever outbreak was reported in 1962, likewise in Penang (Ska, 2006). . In the year 2005 MALAYSIA experienced the worst past outbreak of dengue incidence alongside 326.5 cases each 100,000 populations. The overall dengue cases in Malaysia augmented from (39,597 person) and (84 person deaths) in 2009 to (45,037 person) and (133 person deaths) in 2010 (HM, 2010). It is notifiable that Selangor state has the highest (dengue cases) followed by (Johor and Sarawak) for 2010 (MOH, 2010). The urban and also rural areas of Malaysia are the greatest predominant habitations for the spread of the (yellow fever mosquito) species which is Aedes aegypti (Mohd et al., 2006). The mosquitoes of yellow fever can be found in the area of stagnant water and also in severe drainage (Mohd et al., 2006). The patients of dengue will suffer symptoms include vomiting, rashes on the skin, headache, nausea and muscle pain (NCID, 2005). Recent Studies have shown that temperature could have an impact on feeding characteristics, population size, maturation period and survival rate of Aedes mosquitoes and pupae, and larvae mature female mosquitoes mortality rate as a function of temperature Between 11  °C and 42 °C. (Hii, Y et al .2009). Many Studies shown that the high temperature have an impact on the population magnitude and maturation period, the survival rate of Aedes mosquitoes and the Feed characteristics. Aedes mosquitoes on temperature which ranging from 16 °C to 31 °C, experience lower mortality rates , a study in French Guiana illustrated that at favourable environment condition Aedes mosquitoes capable to live 76 days . On the other hand, heavy rain decrease survival rate of female mosquitoes and destroys larvae in short time but in long term, it creates plentiful breeding resources. Simultaneously, Aedes mosquitoes at a higher temperature 32 °C rises feeding frequency more than twofold compared to the temperature at 24 °C. Extremely Low rainfall rates will increase surroundings temperature, usage of water storage and water and air-coolers may serve as breeding habitats. Finding the relationship between weather factors mainly (temperature, rainfall, humidity) It can be useful for prioritizing prevention in public health sector decision making.. A threat prediction of dengue outbreak can be produced so local health officials can expect the number of cases and make proper strategy to control it. Example The dengue disease epidemic has become more serious problem in serdang with increasing about 14 percents for 2011 (Mstar, 2011). Selangor state recorded highest cases of dengue incidence compared to other states (MOH, 2010). For Seri Kembangan area, the dengue disease epidemic noted the 75 cases on 2009 while for year 2010, a total of 158 cases were reported (Mstar, 2011). The major source of Aedes mosquito breeding is in factories, abandoned housing projects, from the construction sites and vacant plots land (Thammapalo et al., 2001). The aim of this study an association amid dengue incidence and mean temperature, humidity and rain also more discuss how meteorological conditions impact on the rise of dengue in Universiti Putra Malaysia across the period 2005-2011 and to identify the most high risk years with dengue incidence. The result of this study will be highlighting the connection between dengue cases and weather parameters within Seri kambangan 2005 2011. Health sector planners and policy makers benefit from this kind of studies as it generates useful information which further can be used for the creation of schematic approaches for disease prevention, interceptive studies and control programmes. This study is important as it can help in delaying or reducing the incidence of disease and its related socioeconomic implications at the individual and the community level as a whole. Results achieved were used to recognize the patterns of dengue cases and the degree of dependence of dengue incidences on the weather parameters. In this study, we tried to provide additional details on relationship between dengue rates with weather parameters. Attention was focused on four years with lowest dengue incidence (2006 and 2007) also the highest two years with dengue cases (2005 and 2010) were inspected, and statistical analysis has been done to find evidence on the degree of correlation between the dengue and climate factors (precipitation, relative humidity ,temperature). METHODOLOGY 2.1 Study area Universiti Putra Malaysia is a public school which is approximately 22 km south of capital city Kuala Lumpur by road which located at latitude of 2 °59 ´57Ë  N and longitude of 101 °42 ´28Ë  E. The main campus of UPM is located at Serdang, Selangor state which cover an area of 1,200 hectares of spectacular natural landscape and the topography is between 49m to 52m above sea level (figure 1). Universiti Putra Malaysia has a population of 29,724 in first semester of 2011/ 2012 session. The staff population is 6,100 that include academic, non-academic and sporting staff while that of student is 23,624 which include post graduate and undergraduate students. Out of the total population of students, only 14,108 are residing on campus while others stay off campus. The Malaysian peninsula has a typical equatorial climate characterized by constantly high annual temperature and heavy rainfall. Temperature range is practically the same all over Malaysian peninsula throughout the year and is only governed by the height of the land above sea level; there are important differences in the amount and seasonal distribution of the rainfall in different part of the country. An average mean rainfall is about 2489mm which distributed throughout the year, with the bulk of the rain concentrated in the month of October and November, and its rains comparatively less in May to September (dry season) than October to April (wet season).Monthly average temperature are high on the month of April and May while December and January are the months with the low average temperature. Mean daily dry season (May to August) temperature range from 31 °C to 34 °C and the mean daily wet season (November to February) temperature range from 29 °C to 32 °C. 2.2 Data Source The Weather parameters data of UPM (2005- 2011) was obtained from Malaysian meteorological department (MMD). Temperature had estimated This data was distributed into monthly data per year. This parameters which include (rainfall, humidity, mean maximum temperature) has been used to understand degree of dengue fever dependence on weather parameters (Morrison et al., 1998). Dengue epidemiological data monthly basis and annually was obtained from UPM PUSAT KESIHATAN from (2005 to 2011). dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) or dengue fever (DF) were recognized as clinical dengue cases with confirmed laboratory blood tests of dengue viral infection of any serotypes Under the Infectious Diseases Act in Malaysia, it is needed for all medical practitioner must inform all confirmed or recognized dengue cases within 24 hours to the Ministry of health. (Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Act 1988). The only data which obtained from UPM PUSAT KESIHATAN were number of monthly and annual cases. 2.3 statistical analyses All the dengue cases were plotted in the graph by using Minitab 16 version. Calculating and investigating the variability of rainfall, humidity and temperature indices, creating scatter plots and charts of Dengue fever cases against meteorological conditions variables, correlation analysis.( Amarakoon et al.,2004). Here we analysed the association of rainfall and temperature, Humidity alongside dengue transmission in every single year in University Putra Malaysia. We only exclude 3 years owing to the very small dengue cases. The cases of dengue disease were examined includes geographic distribution and spatial gender distribution (Srivastava et al., 2009). The purpose of geographic distribution is to determine the distribution of dengue cases among Kuantan district. Apart from that, the gender distribution was categorized into two groups which were male and female. The statistical significant between both gender were analyzed by using t-test. 2.3.1 Spatial distribution The spatial distribution of dengue incidence within concession of Kuantan was observed. The spatial autocorrelation method measures the relationship among values of variable according to the spatial arrangement of the values (Chang, 2010). The Morans I method was selected to test whether the dengue cases within Kuantan district is spatially correlated or not (Er et al., 2010). The area units where numerical ratio or interval data were available were the area where the Morans I normally applied (Nakhapakorn Jirakajohnkool, 2006). It considers both point locations and variation of an attribute at the location and finally it can evaluate whether the pattern of dengue cases within Kuantan district were clustered, dispersed or random. The Morans I measure can be compute by (Er et al., 2010): Where N is the number of cases, is the mean variables, is the variable value at particular location I, Xj is the variable value at another location j, and Wij is a weight indexing location of I relative to j. in Morans I range, a strong negative spatial autocorrelation is in the range of -1 and a strong positive autocorrelation is in the range +1. The value 0 means it is spatially random pattern. 2.3.2 Distance Analysis The Average Nearest Neighbour (ANN) is one of the techniques for point distance analysis. It was used to analyzed the distance between each point, to determine whether the point pattern is clustered, random or regular (Clark Evans, 1994). In this study, the ANN was tested to predict whether the dengue incidence is cluster or not. The ANN analysis predicts the distance between each feature centroid and its nearest neighbour centroid. If the average distance is less than 1, the point pattern was considered clustered whereas if the average distance is greater than 1, the point was considered dispersed. The average nearest method is computed by: (1) Where is the observed average distance between each feature and their nearest neighbour. is the expected average distance for features given a random pattern. The average neighbour analysis also can produce the ZANN score, which indicates the likehood that the pattern could be a result of random chance. The ZANN score is computed by: (2) Where: (3) 2.3.3 Buffer analysis Buffering is a system operation that generates zones that consist of area within the specific distance with selected features (Chang, 2010). In this study, buffering was conducted to determine the extended neighbouring buffering method is used. The 500 meter radius of buffer were carried out from the dengue disease cases point as the mosquitoes flies at the maximum distance of 600 meter from the breeding site (Madanayake et al.,2010). A study conducted by de Freitas and de Olivera (2009) found that 50%-90% of female A. Aegypti flew up to 350 meter and 500.2 meter and their maximum displacement was 690 meter. 2.3.4 Hot Spot Prediction The Kernel density estimation interpolation was used to predict the hot spot locality (Jeefoo et al., 2011). Kernel density estimation is one of the method that applied to identify high risk areas within point patterns of disease incidence and also can defines the level of the high risk of that area (Bithell, 1990). Kernel density estimation is an interpolation that compatible for single point locality. The Kernel density estimation is the better hot spot identifier than cluster analysis. It can measures the density of point feature in each of the output raster cell .This method has been applied in previous study on spatial mapping on dengue disease to locate hot spot for dengue cases in the district of Hulu Langat (Er et al., 2010). Jeefoo et al, (2011) has used the kernel density to locate the spatio-temporal diffusion of dengue pattern and prove that the hot spot area have an influence on the spread of an infectious disease. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 3.1. annual Dengue incidence years (2005-2011). During the study time, dengue cases (Fig. 1) increased from 37 cases were reported in year 2006 to 75 cases reported in 2009, after which, annual reported dengue cases have amplified alongside greater temperature and humidity alongside record of 52 cases in year 2008 and peaked in year 2005 alongside 159 cases. The incidence next cut to 40 cases in 2007 and resurged in 2011 alongside 48 cases. In the study period the highest dengue cases were described in August of year 2010 with 44 cases. The extremely months with high dengue occurrence were between July December. Results obtained in this discover are given in tables 1 to 4, and figures 1 to 12. Tables contain results for correlation of dengue occurrences alongside meteorological conditions parameters. While, figures show relationship between weather factors and dengue cases. reveals period sequence of weekly meteorological conditions predictors and dengue cases. Singapore experienced the highest weekly mean temperature of 30.48C in year 2005 followed by 30.38C in year 2002. The highest weekly mean temperature in the discover era was recorded in week 17 of year 2005 alongside zero weekly cumulative precipitation. As the most extended dry spell of 40 dates transpired in the early two months of 2005, highest weekly cumulative precipitation was recorded as 388 mm in week 51 of year 2006. Overall, weekly mean temperature for year 2000-2003 fluctuated from 25.7 to 30.38C; as the scope was 25.530.48C for 20042007. Concurrently, weekly cumulative rain in years 20002003 fluctuated from 0 to 260 mm alongside average 42 mm and the scope was 0388 mm alongside average 44.5 mm for years 20042007. Our results of this study indicates that precipitation and temperature were positively associated with monthly dengue cases informed in University Putra Malaysia (Table 1) which mean they seems to have played an important role in increase of dengue cases . Although, humidity hazy days and foggy days were have suspicious association with dengue cases occurrence but still not powerful as other parameters. 3.2 Correlation and Regression coefficients. Both Humidity and Temperature display positive role in cases number and the humidity shows suspicious response with high significant effect (P-value Correlation results are very significant in relation to mean maximum temperature (P-value = 0.860) and dengue occurrences. It is clear that rainfall associated with dengue cases (R ² = 85.5) which mean 85.5 % rainfall associate with dengue cases. In particular mean median humidity seems to have moderate positive role in dengue transmission compared to the other variables with (P-value = 0.779) and (R ² = 60.7) Figure 1, simplify rainfall amount for year 2006, shows that the precipitation playing very strong contributor factor for increase and decrease of dengue cases, while box plot confirms table 1 results (p-value) which is represents the percentage of total rainfall vs. dengue occurrence. Even though rainfall scale has increased over the last seven decades precipitation does show statistically significant (r square = 92.0 and p- value = 0.970). As shown in Fig. 2, dengue rate has increased linearly with monthly mean temperature at January and December with 7 and 6 cases as temperature increasing; plot confirms that temperature is participating factor of transmission of dengue virus owing to the positive relationship between temperature and dengue cases . Simplify relationship between humidity and dengue cases. As Fig3 illustrated humidity play doubtful contributor of increasing dengue diseases occurrence. From 70.1 % to 71.1% only one case has been recorded, while percentage of fogy months increased cases of dengue rises instantly. At 74.1 per cent 4 cases were informed and 7 dengue cases when humidity reached 76.3%. CONCLUSION The weather factors that affected the rising of dengue disease incidence have been identified, which were the temperature and humidity and rainfall. The study showed that the most weather conditions factors which contributed to the high incidence of dengue cases within UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA area among seven years 2005-2011 were rainfall and temperature which were have very strong correlation with dengue cases. The result of the graphs plot shows that the three studied weather elements where positively associated with increase of dengue cases among students of UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA area and The data presented in this study are important because it give baseline information on the main factors contributed of transmitting dengue virus for a particular zone. It is recommended that collecting forecasting data for the three specific factors to predict potential future cases to make efficient plan to control dengue transmission in case of epidemic and expect the number of dengue occurrence. When these strategies are implemented, the diverse costs associated with dengue cases will decrease. All of these results should be considered in the future patterns prediction of dengue transmission. Early warnings of dengue epidemics based on climate information are effectively communicated to public health decision makers and Climate accounts for some variation in dengue risk, Important to account for confounding factors. For future work incorporate better understanding of disease transmission process. The lack of information about specific factors which playing main role of high dengue disease incidence will lead to improper Vector surveillance and control management in case of dengue outbreak in specific zone and may loss many of lives. Understand connection between weather and dengue transmission will develop capability of national dengue management and diagnostic and impacts assessment of dengue mosquito vectors. The spatial distribution of dengue incidence within Kuantan district for 2011 has been mapped included geographic distribution and gender distribution. The geographic distribution has shown the highest distribution of dengue cases in Kuantan. The gender distribution has revealed that male population has the higher incidence of dengue cases. The buffer analysis was conducted to see the most high risk area for dengue fever incidence. It was identified that the high risk area were 500 meter radius from the dengue cases incidence. By using the statistical analysis, the pattern of spatial distribution of dengue incidence can be determined by spatial autocorrelation and was supported by distance analysis. The hot spot locations for dengue incidence were located by using kernel density estimation. As a conclusion, the Geographic Information System (GIS) provided a very useful tool in the health mapping. Furthermore, the GIS has played an important tool for effective surveillance and prediction of the dengue outbreak in order to reduce the number of dengue cases. Acknowledgement The author thanks to University Putra Malaysia (UPM), Kuantan District Health Office Pahang, Department of Town and Country Planning ,Kuantan who provided the data and advices. Anker, M. Arima, Y. 2011. Male-female differences in the number of reported incident dengue fever cases in six Asian countries. Western Pacific Surveillance and Response Journal. 2:2. doi:10.5365/wpsar.2011.2.1.002. Barrera, R., Delgado, N. Rogi, M.G., (2000). Stratification of a city with hyperendemic dengue hemmorrhagic fever. Retrieved on 6th November, 2010 from http://www.popline.org/docs/1354/153852.html Bithell, J.K. 1990. An Application of density estimation to geographical epidemiology. Statistics in Medicine.,9,691-701 Chang, K.T. 2010. Introduction of Geographical Information System. New York: McGraw Hill. Clark, P.J., Evans, F.C. 1994. Distance to nearest neighbour as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology. 35:445-453 Curriero, F.C., Patz, J.A., Rose, J.B Subhash, L. 2001. The association between extreme precipitation and waterborne disease outbreaks in United States. American Journal of Public Health. 91(8): 1194-9 Eong, O.E. 2001. Changing pattern of dengue transmission in Singapore. Dengue Bulletin,2001, 25:40-44 Er, A.C., Rosli, M.H., Asmahani, A., Mohamad Naim, M.R. Harsuzilawati, M. 2010. Spatial mapping of dengue incidence: a case study in Hulu Langat District, Selangor. International Journal of Human and Social Sciences. 5(6):410-414 Halstead, S.B. 1995. Dengue in the health transition. The Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Science. 10:2-14 Harian Metro,2010. Kes Denggi meningkat,133 kematian tahun ini. http://www.harian-metro-online.com./kes-denggi-terus-meningkat-tahun-ini (retrieved on 23 October 2011) Jeefoo, P., Tripathi, N.K., Souris, M. 2011. Spatio-Temporal Diffusion Pattern and Hotspot Detection of Dengue in Chachoengsao Province, Thailand. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 8:51-74; doi:10.3390/ijerph8010051 Madanayake, M.P, Gunatilake, J., Haji, A., Iqbal, M.C.M. 2010. A GIS approach to generatea dengue risk map. Msc. Thesis. University of Peradeniya, SriLanka. Martinez, R. 2006. Geographic information system for dengue prevention and control. Working paper for the Scientific Working Group on Dengue Research, convened by the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, Geneva, 1-5 October 2006 Mohd, D.M.A., Shaaban, M.G., Taib, N. Leman, N. 2006. The study of dengue disease by GIS software in urban area of Petaling Jaya Selatan. International Conference in GIS and public Health. Hong Kong, June 27-29. Pp16. Morrison, A.C., Getis, A., Santiago, M., Rigau-Perez, J.G. Reiter, P. 1998. Exploratory space-time analysis of reported dengue cases during an outbreak in florida, puerto rico, 1991-1992. Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 58(3): 287-298. Mstar,2012 More dengue campaigns in schools and residential areas , SERI KEMBANGAN http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/3/5/nation/10854555sec=nation (retrieved on 5 March 2012) Nakhapakorn, K., Jirakajohnkool, S. (2006). Temporal and spatial autocorrelation statistics of dengue fever. Dengue Bull 30: 177-183. Nakhapakorn, K. Tripathi, N.K. 2005. Using GIS technology to identify risk area of dengue fever (DF) and dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF). 8th Annual International Conferences, Indonesia, August 22-26 National Centre for Infectious Diseases, 2000. Travellers Health. Virginia. Otero, M., Solari, H.G. Schweigmann, N. 2005. A stochastic population dynamics model for Aedes aegypti: formulation and application to a city with temperate climate. Bulletin of Mathematics Biology. Pejabat Tanah Jajahan Kuantan,2011. http://ptjk.pahang.gov.my/keluasan.php (accessed 18th March 2012) Skae, F.M 1992. Dengue fever in Penang. British Medical Journal. 2:1581-1582. Shekhar, KC. Huat, O.L. 1993. Epidemiology of dengue/dengue hamorrhagic fever in Malaysia-A retrospective epidemiology study 1973-1987. Part I: Dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF). Asia-pasific Journal of Public Health,6:15-25 Srivastava, A., Nagpal, B.N., Joshi, P.L., Paliwal, J.C., Dash, A.P. 2009. Identification of malaria hot spots for focused intervention in tribal state of India: a GIS based approach. International Journal of Health Geographics, 8:30 doi:10.1186/1476-072X-8-30 Thammapalo,S., Chongsuwiwatwong, V., McNeil,D. Grater, A. 2005. The climate factors influencing the occurrence of dengue haemarrhagic fever in Thailand, Southeast Asia. Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health. 36 (1):191-7 Tran, A. Deparis, X. et al., 2004. Dengue spatial and temporal patterns, French Guiana, 2001. Available from:http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no4/03-0186.htm retrieved 6th November, 2010. Wagatsuma Y., Ali, M., Emch, M. Breiman, R.F. 2003. 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Statistical techniques for cryptanalysis

Statistical techniques for cryptanalysis Introduction: Cryptography is the art of writing messages in code or cipher, to disguise, and thereby secure the content of a particular stream of text. When encrypted, a plain text message can be revealed only through the use of the key used to encode the cipher. Cryptography does not mask the existence of the message, but does disguise its content [1]. In contrary, cryptanalysis is the art of recovering the plaintext of a message without access to the key. Successful cryptanalysis may recover the plaintext or the key for a specific ciphertext [2]. There are five general types of cryptanalytic attacks:- 1. Ciphertext-only attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst has a series of cipher texts encrypted using the same encryption algorithm. Then, the cryptanalyst deduces the plain text of each of the cipher texts or identifies the key used to encrypt the cipher text 2. Known-plaintext attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst has a series of ciphertext and their corresponding plaintext values encrypted using a specific key. The cryptanalyst then tries to deduce the key by forming a relationship between the ciphertext and plaintext entries. 3. Chosen-plaintext attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst not only has access to the ciphertext and associated plaintext for several messages, but he also chooses the plaintext that gets encrypted. His job is to deduce the key used to encrypt the messages or an algorithm to decrypt any new messages encrypted with the same key. 4. Frequency analysis: It is the study of thefrequency of lettersor groups of letters in aciphertext. The method is used as an aid to breakingclassical ciphers. Frequency analysis is based on the fact that, in any given stretch of written language, certain letters and combinations of letters occur with varying frequencies. 5. Rubber-hose cryptanalysis: The cryptanalyst threatens, tortures or blackmails the person who has the key until they give it up. Among the many cryptanalytic techniques, frequency analysis or frequency counting is the most basic technique applied to break substitution cipher based algorithms, among the varied list of attack techniques. The basic use of frequency analysis is to first count the frequency of ciphertext letters and then associate guessed plaintext letters with them. More complex use of statistics can be conceived, such as considering counts of pairs of letters digrams, trigrams, and so on. This is done to provide more information to the cryptanalyst. It exploits the weakness in the substitution cipher algorithm to encrypt similar plaintext letters to similar ciphertext letters. Frequency analysis based cryptanalysis techniques were used to break ciphers based on the traditional cryptographic algorithms, but they do not work well with the modern block cipher based cryptographic algorithms. Statistical properties of English: Frequency analysis based cryptanalysis uses the fact that natural language is not random in nature and single alphabetic based substitution does not hide the statistical properties of the natural language. In the case of encryption using monoalphabetic substitution, to start deciphering the encryption it is useful to get a frequency count of all the letters. The most frequent letter may represent the most common letter in English, E followed by T, A, O and I whereas the least frequent are Q, Z and X [7]. Statistical patterns in a language can be detected by tracing the redundancy of the text in the language. It has been realized that various universal regularities characterize text from different domains and languages. The best-known is Zipfs law on the distribution of word frequencies [5], according to which the frequency of terms in a collection decreases inversely to the rank of the terms. Zipfs law has been found to apply to collections of written documents in virtually all langu ages [5]. English language characters have a very high redundancy rate when used for cryptographic substitutions. If we have a message encrypted using the substitution cipher that needs to be cracked, we can use frequency analysis. In other words, if the sender has used an encryption scheme, that replaces one letter in the English to be another letter in English, we can still recognize the original plain text as, the frequency characteristics of the original plain text will be passed on the new cipher text characters [4]. To apply frequency analysis, we will need to know the frequency of every letter in the English alphabet, or the frequency characteristics of the language used by the sender to encrypt the text. Below is a list of average frequencies for letters in the English language. So, for example, the letter E accounts for 12.7% of all letters in English, whereas Z accounts for 0.1 %. All the frequencies are tabulated and plotted below:- For example, let us consider the following sentence: We study Cryptography as part of our course. Using a simple substitution cipher, let us consider the following: a->c , b-> d, c->e..w->y, x->z, y->a, z->b So, the cipher text becomes: yg uvwfa etarvqitcrja cu rctv qh qwt eqwtug. A simple frequency analysis of the cipher text can be carried out and the results are as given below: The above data can be used by a cryptanalyst to identify the key or the plaintext by using simple substitution to the cipher text till a suitable plaintext value is not identified. Apart from the use of mono alphabetic frequency analysis, cryptanalysts also identify frequency of paired letters better known as digram frequency and that of three letter words, called as Trigram frequencies. These help the cryptanalyst to exploit the redundant features of English language to break the cipher. The most common Digrams (in order): th, he, in, en, nt, re, er, an, ti, es, on, at, se, nd, or, ar, al, te, co, de, to, ra, et, ed, it, sa, em, ro. The most common Trigrams (in order): the, and, tha, ent, ing, ion, tio, for, nde, has, nce, edt, tis, oft, sth, men Table 1: Digram and Trigram Frequencies [6] These help in identifying the most commonly used terms in English to break a cipher. The digram frequencies are used to break two letter words such as an, to, of etc and the trigram frequencies are used to break three letter words such as the, are, for etc. After breaking a significant two letter and three letter words, it is practically east to identify the key from the cracked values of plaintext by matching the corresponding values in the ciphertext. This huge weakness in English language is used to break cipher texts encrypted using simple algorithms that make use of English alphabets. In practice the use of frequency analysis consists of first counting the frequency of ciphertext letters and then assigning guessed plaintext letters to them. Many letters will occur with roughly the same frequency, so a cipher with Xs may indeed map X onto R, but could also map X onto G or M. But some letters in every language using letters will occur more frequently; if there are more Xs in the c iphertext than anything else, its a good guess for English plaintext that X is a substitution for E. But T and A are also very common in English text, so X might be either of them also [4]. Thus the cryptanalyst may need to try several combinations of mappings between ciphertext and plaintext letters. Once the common single letter frequencies have been resolved, then paired patterns and other patterns are solved. Finally, when sufficient characters have been cracked, then the rest of the text can be cracked using simple substitution. Frequency analysis is extremely effective against the simpler substitution ciphers and will break astonishingly short cipher texts with ease. Attacks on Traditional algorithms Encrypting using traditional algorithms have been defenseless against cryptanalytic attacks as they use bit by bit encryption, which can be easily broken using frequency analysis based attacks. 1. Caesar Cipher: Considering the case of one of the oldest ciphers, the Caesar Cipher, this cipher replaces one letter of the plaintext with another to produce the ciphertext, and any particular letter in the plaintext will always, turn into the same letter in the cipher for all instance of the plaintext character. For instance, all Bs will turn into Fs. Frequency analysis is based on the fact that certain letters, and combinations of letters, appear with characteristic frequency in essentially all texts in a particular language [9]. For instance, in the English language, E is very common, while X is not. Likewise, ST, NG, TH, and QU are common combinations, while XT, NZ, and QJ are very uncommon, or even impossible to occur in English. This clearly shows how the Caesar cipher can be broken with ease by just identifying the frequency of each letter in the cipher text. A message encrypted using Caesar cipher is extremely insecure as an exhaustive cryptanalysis on the keys easily breaks the code. 2. Substitution Ciphers: The Caesar cipher forms a subset of the entire set of substitution ciphers. Here, the key of the encryption process is the permutation of all the twenty six characters of the English alphabets. Rather than choosing a particular key for all encryption process, we use a different key for successive encryption processes. This technique increases the number of possible key to 26!, which is about 4 X 1026, which eliminates the exhaustive cryptanalysis attack on the keyspace [7]. To decrypt the cipher the, statistical frequency distribution of single letter occurrence in English language is analyzed. Then, the digram and trigram frequencies of standard English words are compared with the frequencies of the trigrams in the cipher to finally reconstruct the key and in turn decipher the text. This is an efficient method to break the substitution cipher as, each plaintext letter is represented by the same ciphertext letter in the message. So, all properties of plaintext are carried on to the cipher text. 3. Vigenere Cipher: In a Vigenere cipher, there is greater security as, a given plaintext letter is not always represented by the same ciphertext letter. This is achieved by using a sequence of n different substitution ciphers to encrypt a message. This technique increases the possible number of keys from 26! to (26!)n. Although this was considered to be unbreakable, the Kasiskis method of attacking a Vigenere cipher yielded successful results of decrypting the message. According to this method, the first step is to find the key length (n). Find identical segments of plain text that get encrypted to the same ciphertext, when they are b positions apart, where b=0 mod n. According to Kasiski, the next step is to find all the identical segments of length greater than 3, and record the distance between them [7]. This can then be used to predict the length of the key (n). Once this is found the key is found by an exhaustive search of the keyspace for all possible combinations to identify the key. This is done by substituting all possible values for n to generate substrings. Once the substring is formed, the plaintext message can be automatically identified by using the back substitution of the key into the cipher [7]. This can be done for all possible values for n until finally arriving at the actual key, which reveals the plaintext that was encrypted. This method can take a long time to break the key to identify the plaintext incase the key length is very long, as the keyspace value would be large for larger keys. Defeating frequency based attacks: Frequency based attacks have been used for a long time to break traditional encryption algorithms. It uses the fact that, traditional encryption algorithms do not eliminate the statistical properties of the language upon encryption. The first way to defeat frequency based attacks is to encrypt blocks of characters at a time rather than single letters [7]. This would ensure that, the same text in the plaintext is not encrypted to the same text in the ciphertext upon encryption. For e.g., if we use the Caesar cipher encryption scheme, the word ADDITIONAL will be encrypted to CFFKVKQPCN, we can see that the alphabets A, D and I are repeated more than once and at each instance, the encryption scheme used always encrypts A to C, D to F and I to K. This can clearly be used during frequency analysis to analyze the redundancy of the characters and in turn map them back to get the original plaintext character. Using a block encryption scheme, one can be satisfied that, this phenomenon does not occur as, in a block encryption scheme, the whole plaintext is broken into chunks or blocks of data, that is fed in as input to the encryption algorithm. The algorithm then, reads the input block along with the key and encrypts th e complete block of plaintext, rather than individual characters, so there is a smaller chance that two blocks will produce the same chunk of ciphertext. The second way of defeating frequency analysis is to make use of synonyms of words [7], rather than repeating the same word over and over again in a sentence. There are a lot of words in English, which have more than one synonym, thus providing with a set of words to be used as convenient in the particular context. To help in the selection of a synonym, grammar checking would have to be used to ensure that, the meaning expressed in the sentence is not altered by changing the words. Attacks against this technique could include creating a list of the best synonyms, but this would not help the attacker as different word could be used at each instance the same meaning needs to be expressed, defeating the benefit of this technique. This technique of using alternate words to represent common words to defeat cryptanalysis attacks is called Homophones [7] in cryptography. A third technique that can effectively defeat cryptanalysis is Polyalphabetic substitution, that is, the use of several alphabets to encrypt the message [3], rather than using the same substitution technique again and again. The Vigenere Cipher is a form of Polyalphabetic cipher. This ensures that, no two characters are encrypted to the same ciphertext alphabet in the same message. This ensures that, direct frequency analysis of the cipher is not possible to successfully retrieve the original message. However, other techniques need to be used to identify the key length, if this is possible, then frequency analysis attack could be used to identify the original plaintext message successfully. Finally, a possible technique that could be used to defeat frequency analysis is to encrypt a single character of plaintext with two ciphertext characters [3]. Upon encountering the same character twice, then different characters should be used to encrypt the message. This can be achieved by using a key size double that of the plaintext message and then encrypting the same plaintext with two values in the key and save them together for the same plaintext character. This would ensure that no two plaintext characters will have the same ciphertext character, defeating the frequency analysis method of breaking the cipher. Modern encryption algorithms and cryptanalysis: Modern cryptographic algorithms take a better approach in defeating frequency analysis based attacks. The cryptographic algorithms nowadays use block encryption, rather than encrypting characters bit by bit, thus eliminating the redundancy of ciphertext alphabets for similar plaintext alphabets. Block ciphers are the central tool in the design of protocols for shared-key cryptography. A block cipher is a function E: {0, 1}k ÃÆ'- {0, 1}n à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚   {0, 1}n. This notation means that E takes two inputs, one being a k-bit string and the other an n-bit string, and returns an n-bit string [2]. The first input is the key, which is used to encrypt the secret message. The second string is called the plaintext, and the output is called a ciphertext. The key-length k and the block-length n are parameters associated to a specific block cipher. They vary from block cipher to block cipher, and depend on the design of the algorithm itself. Some of the most trusted symmetric ciphers inclu de AES, Triple-DES, Blowfish, CAST and IDEA. In public-key cryptography, the most commonly used cryptosystems are RSA and the Diffie-Hellman systems, which have not been found to have any vulnerabilities till date. Preferably, the block cipher E is a public specified algorithm. In typical usage, a random key K is chosen and kept secret between a pair of users. The function EK is used by the sender to encrypt the message, for a given key, before sending it to the intended receiver, who decrypts the message using the same key [2]. Security relies on the secrecy of the key. So, at first, one might think of the cryptanalysts goal as recovering the key K given some ciphertext, intercepted during transmission. The block cipher should be designed to make this task computationally difficult. In order to achieve this, the algorithms that are used to encrypt the message must be designed with a high degree of mathematical complexity, which cannot be reversed to obtain the plaintext from a known ciphertext. The length of the key used during encryption of a message plays an important role in deciding the effectiveness of an algorithm. Key length is conventionally measured in bits, and most of the well known strong ciphers have key lengths between 128 and 256 bits. A cipher is considered strong if, after years of attempts to find a weakness in the algorithm, there is no known effective cryptanalytic attack against it. This indicates that, the most efficient way of breaking an encrypted message without knowing the key used to encrypt it is to brute force it, i.e. trying all possible keys. The effort required to break an encrypted message is determined by the number of possible keys, known as thekeyspace. Knowing the speed of the computer to break the key, it is easy to calculate how long it would take to search the keyspace to break a particular cipher [2]. For example, considering a cipher that uses 128-bit keys, each bit can either be 0 or 1, so, there are 2128 or 3ÃÆ'-1038 keys approximately. Suppose we imagine that about ten billion computers are assigned the task of breaking the code, each capable of testing ten billion keys per second, then, the task of running through the entire keyspace would take around 3ÃÆ'-1018seconds, which is about 100 billion years. But, in fact, it would be necessary to run through only half the keyspace to hit upon the correct key, which would take around 50 billion years. This is longer than the estimated age of the universe according to modern cosmology, which is about 15 billion years [2]. This shows that, it is practically infeasible to crack modern cryptographic algorithms using Brute Force attacks. So, one can imagine the effectiveness of the modern cryptographic algorithms and their resistance towards cryptanalytic attacks. Conclusions: Cryptography has progressed in recent years and modern cryptographic algorithms have proved to be successful in defending against most forms of cryptanalytic attacks. Frequency analysis based attacks have proved to exploit the weaknesses in traditional encryption algorithms into revealing the plaintext message that was encrypted using them. The natural language used to encrypt messages is not considered to be random in nature, which is exploited by frequency counting based attacks. Based upon the frequency of letters that occur in the ciphertext, one can guess the plaintext characters due to their redundancy rate and the specific combination of letters in a word. This weakness can be repelled by using stream ciphers, which do not carry the redundancy in the plaintext to the ciphertext. Modern block cipher, encrypt a chunk of plaintext into ciphertext and vice versa, eliminating the redundancy of language used in encryption. Although the algorithm plays an important part, it is the key length used in block ciphers that helps in repelling cryptanalysis. Modern ciphers use a key length starting from 128 bits, eliminating the possibility of a brute force attack to decrypt the message. The higher the key length, the more time it takes to break these ciphers. These advantages have made modern cryptographic algorithms more popular among the security community. No known weaknesses have been found in these algorithms yet, that may allow one to identify the plaintext message. Bibliography: [1] Stallings, W., Cryptography and Network Security, Chapter 1, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, 2003 [2] Schneier, B., Applied Cryptography, Chapter 1, Second Edition, John Wiley Sons, New York City, New York, USA, 1996 [3] Hart, G.W., To Decode Short Cryptograms, Communications of the ACM 37(9), 1994, pp. 102-108 [4] Lee, K.W., Teh, C.E., Tan, Y.L., Decrypting English Text Using Enhanced Frequency Analysis, National Seminar on Science, Technology and Social Sciences (STSS 2006), Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia [5] Zipf, GK., Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort, 1949, Cambridge: Addison Wesley Publications. [6] Lewand, R.E., Cryptological Mathematics, The Mathematical Association of America, 2000, Pages 345-346 [7] Stamp, M and Low, R.M., Applied Cryptanalysis, 2007, Chapter 1 and 2, John Wiley Sons, New York City, New York, USA [8] http://www.simonsingh.net, Online internet frequency analysis tools [9] http://www.textalyser.net, online text analysis and frequency analysis information