Wednesday, October 30, 2019

The Estimation on the Value of Information Systems Dissertation

The Estimation on the Value of Information Systems - Dissertation Example The available literature and researches lack appropriate analysis to bring out the real value of information system applicable in the health sector. This study is aimed at proposing an integrated general information system model that can be applicable in hospitals in the UK and demonstrates the usefulness and value of the model for strategic hospital management and patient’s safety. Introduction More Hospitals in the UK have been faced with forceful regulations and pressure to better their clinical quality, speed and procedures of services, reduce costs, expand access and improve the overall clinical journey taken by patients in different hospitals. This situation has led to hospitals to invest in information systems and information technology in an effort to overcome some of these mentioned issues. In hospital environments where information systems have been introduced, there has emerged the need to evaluate the system’s implementation as related health care providers are experiencing increased care demands and higher expectations when it comes to service delivery (Goldszal and Bryan 102). Most of the studies conducted before offer insights on the information systems value in relation to investment returns, associated savings and costs, and quantitative measurements types. Concerns have been raised however regarding the adequacy of measuring payoffs produced by hospitals that have implemented information systems and information technology in as it is believed to neglect the intangible value from the involved stakeholders. Although it has been observed that information systems and technological advances have greatly been achieved over the years, there has been minimal consensus on the impact level of these introductions on patient care. Most of the studies concentrate on analytical and quantitative aspects making it hard to quantify the possible gains in a qualitative nature (Huang 250) The empirical part of this study will be conducted in selecte d hospitals in the UK which have been identified as being on the forefront in the use of IS/IT applications to support both non-clinical and clinical functions in the UK. A total of fifteen hospitals were identified and in-depth interviews conducted with staff and doctors from different departments in an effort to come up with a broad range of different data and views (Laet, Naudts and Vandevivere 198) Literature Review The use of information systems which have been accredited to improve the healthcare quality have led to quality measurement through incorporating quality and clinical indicators as more visible aspects of quality improvement efforts in hospitals are increasing in demand. Such systems comprise of the health administration of healthcare segment systems to ensure convenience in the health administration system. The health admiration system is very influential in determining the quality outcome as well as the way resources are utilized. There are rich literature already established on the value of information systems on the health sector but still the results of such literature are unsatisfactory. One of the main set backs of the already established literature is that they do not provide a quality correlation with the accreditation requirements even in situations where hospital compliance with reporting and accreditation requirements is acceptable. Such literatures have been observed to result in inconsistent, partial and conflicting results.

Monday, October 28, 2019

Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti Essay Example for Free

Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti Essay Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti I believe this poem tells a story, a story about temptation and lust, about the desire to obtain something the narrator clearly is not meant to take or have. It has similarities to the Story in the bible about the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve have been told You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for if you eat you will surely die. When I read the poem by Christina Rosetti it makes me think about that story because of the opening lines I ate and ate my fill, Yet my mouth waters still; The narrator, like Adam and Eve, felt discontented with what they were getting. They were always going to want more, never satisfied. There are subtle hints that the narrator should not be eating the fruit, but this makes the fruit taste better and more appealing. The words that have been used are double edged for example Cherries worth getting On it own this sounds innocent and appears to be about fruit! The double meaning here, I believe, suggests that something or someone is desired. Wanting to taste but not being quite sure; this also links with virginity, untouched and this is where the lust comes in I think the words Christina Rosetti has chosen are extremely clever because you have to read the poem time and time again to get the true meaning; this keeps the reader interested for longer. Every time you look at this poem you find something else you didnt notice before. I feel that to try and pull out the striking words would not be of benefit, as they are all seemingly striking and without the rest of the poem attached they would not appear as exceptional; I believe this would not be doing justice to the poem. For example the word Pellucid to me is very striking but alone, without the rest of the sentence, it makes no sense and the feeling is not the same. The line Pellucid grapes without one seed To me has much more of an effect and shows a lot more about the narrators emotions. I think the tone of this poem is unpredictable as there are different meanings. When you first read this poem and you see that it is about fruit, one may start to feel that the narrator is babbling, as it does not make a great deal of sense. For example To-morrow night I will buy some more; and kissed her. This, in the context of fruit, seems out of place and somewhat irrelevant. It is only when you read the poem again, this time realising that it is not quite as innocent as it first seemed, that the tone changes; it becomes more exciting and profound. I would say that the mood of the poem changes when the realisation of the poems true meaning sinks in. While the poem just seems to be about fruit I found the persona offered no excitement or anticipation. This changes quite dramatically when you realise that the poem is actually quite unconventional as it is hinting at a sexual relationship between two women. For example Cheek to cheek and breast to breast Locked together in one nest At this point the voice then seems to become playfully mischievous. There are a lot of similes in this poem, for instance Like two pigeons in one nest I think Christina Rosetti wanted the reader to really visualise what was going on; also I feel that she used simile to create a feeling of anticipation, using a familiar image of closeness. Like two flakes of newly fallen snow Is very clearly talking about two people who are having a sexual relationship, but also telling us that it is the first time and in actual fact they are both virgins. Snow, when it has just fallen, is untouched and perfect in everyway thus symbolising purity. Not a bat flapped to and fro Round their nest Is an example of the use of metaphor in this poem. People do not sleep in a nest and yet these two people are being likened to animals. This I believe creates a feeling of peacefulness, nothing moving. This is representing that they have reached a climax and they are now enjoying the serenity of the moment. An illustration of the use of personification in this poem is Wind sang to them a lullaby The wind of course cannot sing but the image is used to create a peaceful atmosphere. I image it would be really calming and relaxing to have the wind singing a lullaby. Alliteration is not strongly used in this poem I could only find one example which is And sugar sweet their sap I feel this is to heighten the readers experience, making them almost taste the sugariness, thus allowing the reader to really get in touch with what is happening in the poem. This poem uses a lot of run on lines an there are only two full stops in the poem. I think this increases the anticipation as well as the feeling of expectation as you can never see how it is going to end. The metre is quite smooth and sinuous and it is used by the narrator to keep the sequence of events told in the poem flowing. The tempo and manner of the poem, as I said earlier, changes when you realise its true meaning. I feel that this happens to keep the suspense. This poem has a sporadic rhyming style because some lines rhyme and others dont but I feel that this is in keeping with the rest of the poems style as it is all rather unconventional.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Heart Of Darkness :: essays research papers fc

Throughout the story, Heart of Darkness, there is a thin line between what is seen as reality and what is illusion. The main character soon realizes that he has different interpretations of events and physical things than that of the Europeans. Charlie Marlow first realizes how many things, events and even people, in Africa, seemed misnamed by the Europeans, distorting them from what they truly are. Consequently he is wary of labeling something in case he might misname it and as a result devalue it. In the end, Kurtz, who has already reached enlightenment, will be the one to teach Marlow, though not directly, the significance of a name. Charlie Marlow is the only one to be referred to by his name because through his journey to the inner station and consequent enlightenment, he alone, with Kurtz, have realized the importance of a name and therefore deserve to have one attached to them, as they are really the only people of actual importance and meaning. As soon as Marlow reaches the c oast of Africa, he realizes a difference in the perception of certain events by him and his comrades on the boat. As Marlow’s boat pulls up to the Outer Station, he sees a man-of-war shelling the continent, which is quickly clarified, by a pilgrim, to be a front against "a camp of natives - he called them enemies! - hidden out of sight somewhere" (Conrad 78) Marlow felt a "touch of insanity" in the whole concept of shelling the natives, who had done nothing to be considered enemies or criminals and had very likely fled the area a long time ago. Yet the Europeans feel that the natives are truly a threat and must be controlled. Further along, Marlow meets a pilgrim who is called the brick-maker, yet promptly notices that there is "not a scrap of brick anywhere in the station". This is another example of how something, in this case the brick-maker, is misnamed, as he is not actually a brick-maker since he does not make any bricks at all, and therefo re really has no purpose there. A final example of how things are misnamed and distorted is pertaining to Kurtz. Firstly, "kurtz" means short, yet to Marlow, the man appears to be "seven feet long" (Conrad 135). Likewise, when the uncle and the nephew talk about Kurtz, who Marlow has heard to be a great and remarkable man, they only refer to him as "that man" and "scoundrel".

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Stakeholders in Tesco and College

a) For each of your chosen organizations describe 5 different stakeholders they have.List StakeholderTesco DescribeList StakeholderGrwp Llandrillo Menai StakeholderCustomersTheir main interests in the business are reliable quality, value for money, product availability, and customer service. They want to experience the best possible service and products which are good value for money.GovernmentTheir main interests in the business are that it operates legally, tax receipts and jobs. They want to make sure the business is offering jobs.SuppliersTheir main interests in the business long term contracts and prompt payments. They want prompt payments from the business.CommunityTheir main interests in the business are the environment, local jobs and local impact. They want to make sure that the business does not impact the environment negatively and that they are producing local jobs.EmployeesTheir main interests in the business are their salary and wages, job security, job satisfaction and motivation from the business. They want to make sure they are secure within their job, enjoying it and also getting paid the right amount.SuppliersTheir main interests in the business long term contracts and prompt payments. They want prompt payments from the business.ManagersTheir main interest in the business is their salary, share options, personal job satisfaction and their status. They want to work their way up in the business.EmployeesTheir main interests in the business are their salary and wages, job security, job satisfaction and motivation from the business. They want to make sure they are secure within their job, enjoying it and also getting paid the right amount.ShareholdersTheir main interests in the business are profit growth, share price growth and dividends. They want a good return on their investments from the business.ManagersTheir main interest in the business is their salary, share options, personal job satisfaction and their status. They want to work their way up in the business.b) You need to explain the points of view of different stakeholders seeking to influence the aims and objectives of two contrasting organisations.Tesco StakeholderThe company’s aim and or objective this stakeholder has influence on or may attempt to influence What is the point of view of the stakeholder, what would they want and why would they want it? How can they influence the company?CustomersThe customer’s aims are to get the best quality products for minimum prices. The customers want a good quality service and products that are good for money. They want this because they want a satisfying shopping experience and not feel that they have to complain. The customers can influence the company Revenue / repeat business Word of mouth recommendationSuppliersThe suppliers aim is to sell their produce to a large organisation and a long term contract. The suppliers want a long term contract with Tesco and prompt payments. They want this so Tesco cannot sw itch suppliers in short notice. The suppliers can influence the businesses pricing, product quality and the availability of the product.EmployeesAn employee’s aim to provide good customer service.The employees want to make sure they are secure within their job, enjoying it and also getting paid the right amount. They want this so they have job satisfaction. The employees can influences the businesses staff turnover and the quality of the service.ManagersThe manager’s aim within the business is to ensure all the customers are fully satisfied and that the employees are working efficiently and providing good customer service. The managers want a good salary, personal job satisfaction and to work their way up in the business. They want this so they have personal job satisfaction. The managers can influence the business by making important decisions and by having detailed information about the business.ShareholdersThe shareholders aim within a business to own as many shares and have good returns. The shareholders want a good return on their investments from the business. They want this so they aren’t left short of money. The shareholders can influence the company as they can elect directors.Grwp Llandrillo Menai StakeholderThe company’s aim and or objective this stakeholder has influence on or may attempt to influence What is the point of view of the stakeholder, what would they want and why would they want it? How can they influence the company?CommunityThe communities aim is to ensure the company is successful and this could also bring jobs to the local community. The community’s influence within the business.could be that they could make some suggestions to change the structure of the business. The community want to make sure that the business does not impact the environment negatively and that they are producing local jobs. They want this so that the business does not impact the community negatively. The community can influenc e the business indirectly by local planning and opinion leaders.GovernmentThe government’s aim is to improve the welfare of the country's population. The government wants the business to be offering jobs to the local community and to be operating legally. They want this so that the college is boosting the economy now and in the future. The government can influence the company by introducing rules and regulations, subsidies, taxation and planning permission.SuppliersThe suppliers aim is to sell their produce to a large organisation and a long term contract. The suppliers want a long term contract and prompt payments. They want this because they don’t want the business to switch suppliers with no notice. The suppliers can influence the businesses pricing, product quality and the availability of the product.EmployeesAn employee’s aim to provide good customer service.The employees want to make sure they are secure within their job, enjoying it and also getting paid the right amount. They want this so they have job satisfaction and are happy at work. The employees can influences the businesses staff turnover and the quality of the service.ManagersThe manager’s aim within the business is to ensure all the customers are fully satisfied and that the employees are working efficiently and providing good customer service. The managers want a good salary, personal job satisfaction and to work their way up in the business. They want this so they have personal job satisfaction. The managers can influence the business by making important decisions and by having detailed information about the business.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Zoe’s Tale PART I Chapter One

The flying saucer landed on our front yard and a little green man got out of it. It was the flying saucer that got my attention. Green men aren't actually unheard of where I come from. All the Colonial Defense Forces were green; it's part of the genetic engineering they do on them to help them fight better. Chlorophyll in the skin gives them the extra energy they need for truly first-class alien stomping. We didn't get many Colonial Defense Force soldiers on Huckleberry, the colony I lived on; it was an established colony and we hadn't been seriously attacked in a couple of decades. But the Colonial Union goes out of its way to let every colonist know all about the CDF, and I knew more about them than most. But the flying saucer, well. That's novel. New Goa is a farming community. Tractors and harvesters and animal-drawn wagons, and wheeled public buses when we wanted to live life on the edge and visit the provincial capital. An actual flying transport was a rare thing indeed. Having one small enough for a single passenger land on our lawn was definitely not an everyday occurrence. â€Å"Would you like Dickory and me to go out and meet him?† asked Hickory. We watched from inside the house as the green man pulled himself out of the transport. I looked over at Hickory. â€Å"Do you think he's an actual threat? I think if he wanted to attack us, he could have just dropped a rock on the house while he was flying over it.† â€Å"I am always for prudence,† Hickory said. The unsaid portion of that sentence was when you are involved. Hickory is very sweet, and paranoid. â€Å"Let's try the first line of defense instead,† I said, and walked over to the screen door. Babar the mutt was standing at it, his front paws up on the door, cursing the genetic fate that left him without opposable thumbs or the brains to pull the door instead of pushing on it. I opened the door for him; he took off like a furry heat-seeking slobber missile. To the green man's credit, he took a knee and greeted Babar like an old friend, and was generously coated in dog drool for his pains. â€Å"Good thing he's not soluble,† I said to Hickory. â€Å"Babar is not a very good watchdog,† Hickory said, as it watched the green man play with my dog. â€Å"No, he's really not,† I agreed. â€Å"But if you ever need something really moistened, he's got you covered.† â€Å"I will remember that for future reference,† Hickory said, in that noncommittal way designed for dealing with my sarcasm. â€Å"Do that,† I said, and opened the door again. â€Å"And stay in here for now, please.† â€Å"As you say, Zoe,† Hickory said. â€Å"Thanks,† I said, and walked out to the porch. By this time the green man had gotten to the porch steps, Babar bouncing behind him. â€Å"I like your dog,† he said to me. â€Å"I see that,† I said. â€Å"The dog's only so-so about you.† â€Å"How can you tell?† he asked. â€Å"You're not completely bathed in saliva,† I said. He laughed. â€Å"I'll try harder next time,† he said. â€Å"Remember to bring a towel,† I said. The green man motioned to the house. â€Å"This is Major Perry's house?† â€Å"I hope so,† I said. â€Å"All his stuff is here.† This earned me about a two-second pause. Yes, as it happens, I am a sarcastic little thing. Thanks for asking. It comes from living with my dad all these years. He considers himself quite the wit; I don't know how I feel about that one, personally, but I will say that it's made me pretty forward when it comes to comebacks and quips. Give me a soft lob, I'll be happy to spike it. I think it's endearing and charming; so does Dad. We may be in the minority with that opinion. If nothing else it's interesting to see how other people react to it. Some people think it's cute. Others not so much. I think my green friend fell into the â€Å"not so much† camp, because his response was to change the subject. â€Å"I'm sorry,† he said. â€Å"I don't think I know who you are.† â€Å"I'm Zoe,† I said. â€Å"Major Perry's daughter. Lieutenant Sagan's, too.† â€Å"Oh, right,† he said. â€Å"I'm sorry. I pictured you as younger.† â€Å"I used to be,† I said. â€Å"I should have known you were his daughter,† he said. â€Å"You look like him in the eyes.† Fight the urge, the polite part of my brain said. Fight it. Just let it go. â€Å"Thank you,† I said. â€Å"I'm adopted.† My green friend stood there for a minute, doing that thing people do when they've just stepped in it: freezing and putting a smile on their face while their brain strips its gears trying to figure how it's going to extract itself out of this faux pas. If I leaned in, I could probably hear his frontal lobes go click click click click, trying to reset. See, now, that was just mean, said the polite part of my brain. But come on. If the guy was calling Dad â€Å"Major Perry,† then he probably knew when Dad was discharged from service, which was eight years ago. CDF soldiers can't make babies; that's part of their combat-effective genetic engineering, don't you know – no accidental kids – so his earliest opportunity to spawn would have been when they put him in a new, regular body at the end of his service term. And then there's the whole â€Å"nine months gestation† thing. I might have been a little small for my age when I was fifteen, but I assure you, I didn't look seven. Honestly, I think there's a limit to how bad I should feel in a situation like that. Grown men should be able to handle a little basic math. Still, there's only so long you can leave someone on the hook. â€Å"You called Dad ‘Major Perry,'† I said. â€Å"Did you know him from the service?† â€Å"I did,† he said, and seemed happy that the conversation was moving forward again. â€Å"It's been a while, though. I wonder if I'll recognize him.† â€Å"I imagine he looks the same,† I said. â€Å"Maybe a different skin tone.† He chuckled at that. â€Å"I suppose that's true,† he said. â€Å"Being green would make it a little more difficult to blend in.† â€Å"I don't think he would ever quite blend in here,† I said, and then immediately realized all the very many ways that statement could be misinterpreted. And of course, my visitor wasted no time doing just that. â€Å"Does he not blend?† he asked, and then bent down to pat Babar. â€Å"That's not what I meant,† I said. â€Å"Most of the people here at Huckleberry are from India, back on Earth, or were born here from people who came from India. It's a different culture than the one he grew up in, that's all.† â€Å"I understand,† the green man said. â€Å"And I'm sure he gets along very well with the people here. Major Perry is like that. I'm sure that's why he has the job he has here.† My dad's job was as an ombudsman, someone who helps people cut through government bureaucracy. â€Å"I guess I'm just curious if he likes it here.† â€Å"What do you mean?† I asked. â€Å"I was just wondering how he's been enjoying his retirement from the universe, is all,† he said, and looked back up at me. In the back of my brain something went ping. I was suddenly aware that our nice and casual conversation had somehow become something less casual. Our green visitor wasn't just here for a social call. â€Å"I think he likes it fine,† I said, and kept from saying anything else. â€Å"Why?† â€Å"Just curious,† he said, petting Babar again. I fought off the urge to call my dog over. â€Å"Not everyone makes the jump from military life to civilian life perfectly.† He looked around. â€Å"This looks like a pretty sedate life. It's a pretty big switch.† â€Å"I think he likes it just fine,† I repeated, putting enough emphasis on the words that unless my green visitor was an absolute toad, he'd know to move on. â€Å"Good,† he said. â€Å"What about you? How do you like it here?† I opened my mouth to respond, and then shut it just as quickly. Because, well. There was a question. The idea of living on a human colony is more exciting than the reality. Some folks new to the concept think that people out in the colonies go from planet to planet all the time, maybe living on one planet, working on another and then having vacations on a third: the pleasure planet of Vacationaria, maybe. The reality is, sadly, far more boring. Most colonists live their whole lives on their home planet, and never get out to see the rest of the universe. It's not impossible to go from planet to planet, but there's usually a reason for it: You're a member of the crew on a trade ship, hauling fruit and wicker baskets between the stars, or you get a job with the Colonial Union itself and start a glorious career as an interstellar bureaucrat. If you're an athlete, there's the Colonial Olympiad every four years. And occasionally a famous musician or actor will do a grand tour of the colonies. But mostly, you're born on a planet, you live on a planet, you die on a planet, and your ghost hangs around and annoys your descendants on that planet. I don't suppose there's really anything bad about that – I mean, most people don't actually go more than a couple dozen kilometers from their homes most of the time in day-to-day life, do they? And people hardly see most of their own planet when they do decide to wander off. If you've never seen the sights on your own planet, I don't know how much you can really complain about not seeing a whole other planet. But it helps to be on an interesting planet. In case this ever gets back to Huckleberry: I love Huckleberry, really I do. And I love New Goa, the little town where we lived. When you're a kid, a rural, agriculturally-based colony town is a lot of fun to grow up in. It's life on a farm, with goats and chickens and fields of wheat and sorghum, harvest celebrations and winter festivals. There's not an eight- or nine-year-old kid who's been invented who doesn't find all of that unspeakably fun. But then you become a teenager and you start thinking about everything you might possibly want to do with your life, and you look at the options available to you. And then all farms, goats and chickens – and all the same people you've known all your life and will know all your life – begin to look a little less than optimal for a total life experience. It's all still the same, of course. That's the point. It's you who's changed. I know this bit of teenage angst wouldn't make me any different than any other small-town teenager who has ever existed throughout the history of the known universe. But when even the â€Å"big city† of a colony – the district capital of Missouri City – holds all the mystery and romance of watching compost, it's not unreasonable to hope for something else. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with Missouri City (there's nothing wrong with compost, either; you actually need it). Maybe it's better to say it's the sort of place you come back to, once you've gone out and had your time in the big city, or the big bad universe. One of the things I know about Mom is that she loved it on Huckleberry. But before she was here, she was a Special Forces soldier. She doesn't talk too much about all the things she's seen and done, but from personal experience I know a little bit about it. I can't imagine a whole life of it. I think she'd say that she'd seen enough of the universe. I've seen some of the universe, too, before we came to Huckleberry. But unlike Jane – unlike Mom – I don't think I'm ready to say Huckleberry's all I want out of a life. But I wasn't sure I wanted to say any of that to this green guy, who I had become suddenly rather suspicious of. Green men falling from the sky, asking after the psychological states of various family members including oneself, are enough to make a girl paranoid about what's going on. Especially when, as I suddenly realized, I didn't actually get the guy's name. He'd gotten this far into my family life without actually saying who he was. Maybe this was just something he'd innocently managed to overlook – this wasn't a formal interview, after all – but enough bells were ringing in my head that I decided that my green friend had had enough free information for one day. Green man was looking at me intently, waiting for me to respond. I gave him my best noncommittal shrug. I was fifteen years old. It's a quality age for shrugging. He backed off a bit. â€Å"I don't suppose your dad is home,† he said. â€Å"Not yet,† I said. I checked my PDA and showed it to him. â€Å"His workday finished up a few minutes ago. He and Mom are probably walking home.† â€Å"Okay. And your mom is constable here, right?† â€Å"Right,† I said. Jane Sagan, frontier law woman. Minus the frontier. It fit her. â€Å"Did you know Mom, too?† I asked. Special Forces was an entirely different thing from regular infantry. â€Å"Just by reputation,† he said, and again there was that studied casual thing. Folks, a little tip: Nothing is more transparent than you try for casual and miss. My green friend was missing it by a klick, and I got tired of feeling lightly groped for information. â€Å"I think I'll go for a walk,† I said. â€Å"Mom and Dad are probably right down the road. I'll let them know you're here.† â€Å"I'll go with you,† Green man offered. â€Å"That's all right,† I said, and motioned him onto the porch, and to our porch swing. â€Å"You've been traveling. Have a seat and relax.† â€Å"All right,† he said. â€Å"If you're comfortable having me here while you're gone.† I think that was meant as a joke. I smiled at him. â€Å"I think it'll be fine,† I said. â€Å"You'll have company.† â€Å"You're leaving me the dog,† he said. He sat. â€Å"Even better,† I said. â€Å"I'm leaving you two of my friends.† This is when I called into the house for Hickory and Dickory, and then stood away from the door and watched my visitor, so I wouldn't miss his expression when the two of them came out. He didn't quite wet his pants. Which was an accomplishment, all things considered. Obin – which is what Hickory and Dickory are – don't look exactly like a cross between a spider and a giraffe, but they're close enough to make some part of the human brain fire up the drop ballast alert. You get used to them after a bit. But the point is it takes a while. â€Å"This is Hickory,† I said, pointing to the one at the left of me, and then pointed to the one at my right. â€Å"And this is Dickory. They're Obin.† â€Å"Yes, I know,† my visitor said, with the sort of tone you'd expect from a very small animal trying to pretend that being cornered by a pair of very large predators was not that big of a deal. â€Å"Uh. So. These are your friends.† â€Å"Best friends,† I said, with what I felt was just the right amount of brainless gush. â€Å"And they love to entertain visitors. They'll be happy to keep you company while I go look for my parents. Isn't that right?† I said to Hickory and Dickory. â€Å"Yes,† they said, together. Hickory and Dickory are fairly monotone to begin with; having them be monotone in stereo offers an additional – and delightful! – creepy effect. â€Å"Please say hello to our guest,† I said. â€Å"Hello,† they said, again in stereo. â€Å"Uh,† said Green man. â€Å"Hi.† â€Å"Great, everybody's friends,† I said, and stepped off the porch. Babar left our green friend to follow me. â€Å"I'm off, then.† â€Å"You sure you don't want me to come along?† Green man said. â€Å"I don't mind.† â€Å"No, please,† I said. â€Å"I don't want you to feel like you have to get up for anything.† My eyes sort of casually flicked over at Hickory and Dickory, as if to imply it would be a shame if they had to make steaks out of him. â€Å"Great,† he said, and settled onto the swing. I think he got the hint. See, that's how you do studied casual. â€Å"Great,† I said. Babar and I headed off down the road to find my folks.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

The ethical dilemma of the Indian barial contoversy essays

The ethical dilemma of the Indian barial contoversy essays Grave desecration has been experiences in the United States for nearly two hundred tears without respect to Native Indians first amendment rights to freedom of religion. Indian spirituality is not free from ecology, they are part of the same system of the beliefs for Indians, and their spiritual beliefs are a significant part of their culture. Their beliefs operate in the present applying through space, to all people. Their views are global and everyone is perceived to live within these beliefs. Part of the spiritual/ecological process is confirmed within the role of their ancestors and traditions are held within these beliefs. American archeologists fell obligated to tell the story of pre-historic American peoples. Using scientific methods they trace through time within the study of ancient burials. They can accumulate data as to disease patterns, diet, environment, cultural, demographics and population changes. The continued uses of skeletal remains are detrimental to them, as research methods are updated and fields of interest evolve. Without hard resources, their work may come into question because they will have no original data source to state their claims of science and their research may come into question. Looking at science (archeology) as a belief system, they too are entitled to their first amendment right. Since prehistoric times, Native Americans have kept their stories alive without the written record but rather through oral tradition. Stories are handed down to generation after generation, and their ancestors buried are mistaken, by archeologists, as prehistoric peoples that have hidden secrets. Come of the natives do not see the benefit that archeology provides, because they are already aware of the cultural details that are unveiled through desecration. Since Indian values conflict with archeology, very few Indian students pursue it as a potential profession; while the archeologist view their resear...

Monday, October 21, 2019

Principles of Support for Maintaining Good Personal Hy Essay Example

Principles of Support for Maintaining Good Personal Hy Essay Example Principles of Support for Maintaining Good Personal Hy Essay Principles of Support for Maintaining Good Personal Hy Essay It is important to maintain good hygiene in order to care for your own personal appearance and eliminate body odours which might offend others/embarrass yourself. Personal hygiene refers to cleaning and grooming the body. Personal hygiene is an important way of protecting the body again diseases and infections. Good hygiene promotes self esteem and general well-being. Poor hygiene is known to be ill received by general public. Poor hygiene is known effect people’s health and can lead to health problems as well as appearance.The failure to maintain good personal hygiene can result in illness of different kinds such as the breakdown of skin, ulcers and boils. Poor oral hygiene can lead to heart disease and plaque causing build up in the arteries. Poor hand washing can lead to spread of infectious disease such as salmonella infection. Infrequent washing of hair and skin can lead to acne and low self esteem. Poor hygiene could be a sign for depression Outcome 2You can address the issue of personal hygiene in a sensitive matter by giving the service user the choice of what they want to have either wash/shower/bath and when they want to have one morning/afternoon/evening or if they would like support and how much. Explaining how it might make them feel more refreshed and better about themselves you could also give them the choice of what products they use. How to make an individual aware of the effects of poor hygiene on others Personal hygiene is a topic often brought up during the pre-teen and teen years when a youngsters body is developing.However, there are times when adults need to be reminded about personal care as well. When subtle hints about showering or using  deodorant  have no effect, a conversation is the next  step. This conversation can be uncomfortable for us and the resident but it doesnt need to be. With some preparation and a few helpful props, we can talk to someone about personal hygiene and help him implement improvements. Begin the conversation with a compliment, such as making note that the individuals hair looked very clean the previous day. Continue the conversation by stating the poor hygiene that we have noticed.Will use words like, I have noticed instead of You dont. Simply identify the problem area for the individual, whether that is showering, oral hygiene or something else. Continue the conversation by discussing the personal care steps the individual seems to be skipping. If this appears to be a shower, will ask the individual when she/he showers regularly or if she/he had time to shower that day. Evaluate the individuals response as to why the hygiene step has been skipped. If it wasnt skipped, then the next step would be to discuss how to do it correctly.Will provide a demonstration if possible or offer the correct hygiene products to fulfil the task. State our concern over the individuals hygiene. Phrase the concern carefully and use caring words. Will offer the individual the personal care item she/he may be lacking, such as deodorant or  mouth wash. Will end the conversation by affirming the person. This can be done by stating how much we care for him/her, assuring that this hygiene issue doesnt change our relationship or helping him/her devise a personal care plan. Outcome 3There are many factors that make up good personal hygiene with the main ones being washing, oral care, hair care, nail care, wound care, cleansing of personal utensils, Personal hygiene is as it says, personal. Everybody has their own habits and standards that they have been taught or that they have learnt from others. It is essentially the promotion and continuance of good health. Poor personal cleansing can have a very significant effect on the start and spread of many illnesses through contact with nutritional consumables, some that can be potentially lethal.You need to show that, you develop and maintain relationships that promote the views, preferences and independence of individuals and key p eople. By realising that adults have a right to choose the way they are treated or cared for, take their medication and to decide if they need certain precaution measures. Support and treat all service users as individuals and with respect and dignity when considering their needs and preferences. This involves asking them their opinions on every aspect of their hygiene routine.Finding a balance for those who wish to be as independent as possible, so long as that while doing so they do not put themselves or others at risk. Starting with a warm safe place and talking to the individual about what they want or need to be assisted with personal hygiene, taking care to stay within the boundaries set up in their individual  care plans. Talking about what is going to happen and making sure they understand and are comfortable with what has been said and what will be happening.Making sure they have everything they need before you start so not to interrupt the process causing distress. Ensur ing the other members of the support team know where you are and what is happening so not to be disturbed and finally shutting the door and locking if necessary. When giving personal hygiene cover personal areas that are not being washed making sure the individual is not caused any embarrassment and as a supporter not staring but being relaxed and confident in what is happening. Ensuring throughout that you are listening and asking if everything is ok or if they are feeling uncomfortable.There is a risk that you could catch infections or disease from that individual. For example, if someone had a disease then you would have to take appropriate  steps  to avoid catching it, or if they had a virus staff need to ensure they wear appropriate personal protection equipment There is also a risk to your physical health, for example, if you had to help move someone or support them in their movement in order to carry out personal hygiene, you would want to avoid injuring your back, or som e other part of your body.Others who might be involved supporting someone to maintain their personal hygiene can range from other support workers,  team leaders, key workers or managers of the residential home to professional people such as a district nurse,  dentist  or doctor. But the first stop maybe with the individual them self’s or a family member, for some it maybe an advocate Outcome 4. Injury or Illness- A serious injury can cause some people to develop poor personal hygiene. If they dont feel comfortable asking for help with bathing, this condition may continue until their injury heals.The same can occur when an illness leaves someone feeling weak. Anxiety, depression  or other mental illness may make it hard for people to keep up with bathing. Treatment of the illness is typically required to address this. /Puberty is a difficult time for many pre-teens and teenagers. Sometimes they rebel against puberty with poor personal hygiene. /Age being extremely old or extremely young can make it difficult to have proper personal hygiene. Assistance is often requiredAn individual does not want to expose certain parts of the body (could be cultural or a personal preference and could be any part of the body not just private parts work with them to ensure that their preference is adhered to. An individual has a particular personal hygiene routine (again it could be cultural or personal preference) provide resources and support. An individual gets  confused  and distressed when bathing eg has  dementia   provide a warm room temperature as cold can be distressing, keep calm, use measures that usually calm the individual eg music.

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Washington Irving, Father of the American Short Story

Washington Irving, Father of the American Short Story Washington Irving (April 3, 1783–November 28, 1859) was a writer, essayist, historian, biographer, and diplomat most famous for the short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. These works were both a part of The Sketch Book, the collection of short stories that won him international recognition. Washington Irving has been called the father of the American short story because of his early and unique contributions to the form. Fast Facts: Washington Irving Known For:  Father of the American short story, biographer, historian, diplomatAlso Known As:  Dietrich Knickerbocker, Jonathan Oldstyle, and Geoffrey CrayonBorn:  April 3, 1783 in New York CityParents: William Irving and Sarah SandersDied:  November 28, 1859 in Tarrytown, New YorkEducation: Elementary school, law schoolPublished Works:  A History of New York, The Sketch Book (including the stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), Bracebridge Hall, The Alhambra, The Life of George WashingtonFiancà ©e: Matilda HoffmannNotable Quote: There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift ones position and be bruised in a new place. Early Life and Education Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783, in New York City. His father William was a Scottish-American merchant, and his mother Sarah Sanders was the daughter of an English clergyman. At the time of his birth, the American Revolution was just ending. His parents were patriotic. His mother said upon the birth of her 11th child,[General] Washingtons work is ended and the child shall be named after him. According to Irving biographer Mary Weatherspoon Bowden, Irving maintained close ties with his family his entire life. Washington Irving read a great deal as a boy, including  Robinson Crusoe, Sinbad the Sailor, and The World Displayed. His formal education consisted of elementary school until he was 16, where he performed without distinction. Early Writing Career Irving began writing when he was 19 as a journalist using the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle.  As a reporter for his brother Peter’s newspaper The Morning Chronicle, he covered Aaron Burr’s treason trial. Irving traveled widely in Europe from 1804 to 1806 on a grand tour, paid for by his family. After returning, using the pseudonym Dietrich Knickerbocker, Irving published the 1809 comic history of Dutch life in New York, A History of New York. Some literary scholars consider this work of burlesque fiction to be his greatest book. He then studied law and he passed the bar in 1807. Engagement Washington Irving was engaged to marry Matilda Hoffmann, the daughter of a prominent local family. She died of consumption on April 26, 1809, at the age of 17. Irving never became engaged or married anyone after the tragedy. This loss indeed scarred his life. In response to an inquiry about why he had never married, Irving wrote in a letter, saying: For years I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name, but her image was continually before me, and I dreamt of her incessantly. Europe and Literary Acclaim Irving returned to Europe in 1815 and lived there for 17 years. In 1820, he published  The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, a collection of stories including his best-known works,  Rip Van Winkle  and  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. These stories are thought to be the first examples of the genre of the short story, and they are both gothic and humorous. The Sketch-Book was a milestone in American literary history because it was the first piece of American writing to garner European recognition. James Fenimore Cooper was the only other contemporary American writer to receive international acclaim. Later in his life, Irving would encourage the careers of great American authors Nathaniel Hawthorne,  Edgar Allen Poe,  and  Herman Melville. In 1832 while living in Spain, Irving published Alhambra, which described the history and stories of Moorish Spain. After a few years back in the United States, Irving returned to Spain, serving as the U.S. minister to Spain from 1842–1845 under President John Tyler. Other Writing Irving returned to the United States in 1846 and moved back to his home of Sunnyside in Tarrytown, New York.  In his later years, he wrote less fiction. His works include essays, poetry, travel writing, and biography. Over his lifetime, he published biographies of poet Oliver Goldsmith, the prophet Muhammad, and Christopher Columbus. Irvings contributions to the American idiom include coining the word â€Å"Gotham† as a nickname for New York City. Irving was also the first to use the phrase â€Å"the almighty dollar.†Ã‚   Later Years and Death With his popularity high, Irving kept up with work and correspondence into his 70s. He completed his five-volume biography of his namesake George Washington only eight months before his death. Washington Irving died of a heart attack in Tarrytown, New York on November 28, 1859. He seemed to foretell his death, as he said before going to bed: Well, I must arrange my pillows for another weary night! If this could only end! Irving was, fittingly, buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Legacy American literary scholar Fred Lewis Pattee summarized Irvings contributions as follows: He made short fiction popular; stripped the prose tale of its didactic elements and made it a literary form solely for entertainment; added richness of atmosphere and unity of tone; added definite locality and actual American scenery and people; brought a peculiar nicety of execution and patient workmanship; added humor and lightness of touch; was original; created characters who are always definite individuals; and endowed the short story with a style that is finished and beautiful. In 1940, Irving was the first author to be featured on the â€Å"Famous Americans† series stamps.   Sources â€Å"Concerning Washington Irving.†Ã‚  The Washington Irving Inn, 9 May 2019.Gallagher, Edward J.  Background: Irving the Historian.â€Å"Washington Irving.†Ã‚  Short Stories and Classic Literature.Weatherspoon Bowden, Mary. Washington Irving. Macmillan Publishing Company, Incorporated, 1981.

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Information managment Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Information managment - Coursework Example The article after providing a brief background of the Cloud Computing technology, focuses on its evolutionary path. â€Å"This paper examines cloud computing in the context of other major changes in Information Technology (IT) and explores the revolutionary transformations and challenges it brings to IT management.† (Bento and Bento 39). The authors divide the evolution into six phases starting from 1970’s, when the IT systems in organizations got centralized, particularly regarding the financial and accounting information. They further delve into these phases by discussing how advancement in hardwares, softwares and most prominently Worldwide Web, led to the development of Cloud Computing. Discussion of each phase provides good information and appears to be the strong â€Å"phases† of this article. The next part of the article provides number of definitions for Cloud Computing and high number of definitions appears to be a slight weaker part in the article. Alth ough, giving high number of definitions can gave different perspectives of Cloud Computing, the article has too much definitions and it occupies sizable part of the article, minimizing the other topics. For example, details about how one works in the Cloud has been given only in a minimal manner. In the final part of the article, the author again relates the various evolutionary phases with the business environment. Although, it gives somewhat newer perspectives, it appears to be a kind of repetition of the first part. So, the author could have researched and written more about Cloud Computing applications, instead of giving background information maximally. Critique of the Second Article- Although, this IS based technology, Cloud computing has many benefits including cutting of costs, reorienting work force in other departments, etc, there are some security issues. These security issues is only focused in the journal article, A survey on security issues in service delivery models o f Cloud Computing written by S. Subashini and V. Kavitha. The authors list out the various ways in which the information or data stored in the Cloud could be compromised and that includes issues with Data security, Network security, Data integrity, Data segregation, Web application security Vulnerability in virtualization, etc, etc. The authors start off by providing an apt introduction about Cloud Computing and its optimum application in business enterprises. They provide facts of how cloud computing will grow to $95 billion and that 12% of the worldwide software market will move to the cloud (Subashini and Kavitha 2). Then the authors move into the focus area of security issues, listing and discussing in-depth each security issue. The main strength of this article is that it does not miss any security issue that could plague the Cloud Computing environment. The authors focus on all the probable security issues, even providing real-life examples of companies at some places. However , this can also be viewed as a weakness, because there is not much real-life examples. Only the example of Amazon’s Cloud Computing environment is given at some places, and not much about other companies. Even while, discussing about the probable security issues and the corrective steps, the authors are skeptical whether a new paradigm or model of Cloud Computing will work. They state, that â€Å"A new model targeting at improving features of an existing

Saudi Arabian 10th Five-Year Development Plan from 2015-2020 Essay - 19

Saudi Arabian 10th Five-Year Development Plan from 2015-2020 - Essay Example The main objectives 10th Five-Year Development Plan of Saudi Arabia are creating new job opportunities and diversification of the economy. The country thinks that if its economy does not diversify then enough job opportunities will not be created for the people living in Saudi Arab. This will reduce the prospects of job opportunities in the country when the reserves of oil will be finished in future. The economic development plan can create a good future for the company. In this development plan labour is the key priority for the country. Through this plan the country aims to promote its stability, growth and strengthen its economy (Arab News). The institutional reforms will be enhanced and Saudi Arabia will support civil institutions. It will try to improve the productivity and efficiency level of the state agencies. With the help of this 10th Five-Year Development Plan the country will enhance the principles of transparency and accountability for protecting the integrity of Saudis. The country will take effective measures to fight against corruption. The government will encourage different private sector industries of the country. This will enable the private companies in creating various employment opportunities. The country will implement meaningful and effective economic plan which will facilitate it in progressing towards diversification. Several measures are adopted in this plan to control Umrah operators. Saudi Arabia will try to lower down its inflation rate for making the economy stable. The business of SMEs will be encouraged by the country for increasing its GDP and employment rate (G20). The empowerment of National Competition Council is an important part of this plan. By implementing this 5year plan, Saudi Arab will enhance the competition level in various industrial sectors. The use of renewable energy will be encouraged by expanding the sources of this type of energy. The country will try to lower down the high consumption level of gas and oil i n the domestic sector. A national strategy will be implemented by the country for  developing a knowledge base society.  

Friday, October 18, 2019

Arts pictures description Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Arts pictures description - Essay Example Once, Chowdhury travelled to India as an adult, he was confronted with a harsh reality, one that helped him understand why his father fled India and settled abroad. The Laundry Puja is colourful, disorganized, bright and at the same time, demonstrates a settled doom. The doom is further accentuated by the woman at the center of the photograph whose hands are clasped together as if in prayer. There are two men in the photograph. One appears to just be standing idly against a wall and the other appears to be walking, but it is not clear whether he is entering the area or leaving it. In the background there are three richly colored murals capturing India’s bright culture. Similarly the floor appears to be cement with a bright red color smeared over most of the floor. There are pots and pans on the floor as well as a pile of garments over which a clothes line hangs with garments either drying or airing. In the forefront of the photograph is an alarming image of a man’s head . As it sits upon the bright red floor, it at once gives the impression of a decapitated man, with a red fork protruding from his mouth and yellow beads adorning his facial hair. A closer look reveals that the head is made of some foreign material and is not in fact real. The surreal smirk on the man’s face and the half-closed eyes, present a macabre image all the same. As Chowdhury explains, the disorganization and the mixture of colours and images are meant to convey the confused and complex reality of India as he himself experienced and the fanciful exoticism that he imagined as a boy. Image 2 This painting appears to be abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionism was an art movement that began after the Second World War. During the war, constraints on artists expression in Germany and the Soviet Union resulted in many artists leaving for other parts of Europe and the US. In New York, these artist took advantage of their new found freedom of expression and created a for m of art that sent a clear message. Art had no boundaries and did not have to comply with rigid philosophies. Abstract expressionism therefore emerged as an expression of freedom and resistance to constraints on creative freedom. The expressionist wanted to exercise â€Å"spontaneous freedom of expression† (Chivers, 4). For the abstract expressionist the emphasis was on the filling and using the entire canvas and drawing attention to its surface. What the abstract expressionist wanted to accomplish was highlighting the surface specifications of the canvas, its â€Å"flatness†, and to convey the message that all of the canvas is important (Chivers, 4). The image above epitomizes abstract expressionism in that it does not draw attention to a narrative, but rather it draws attention to the full canvas which displays a uniform image throughout the canvas. What you see in the left side of the canvas is mirrored on the right side, although the colors may have been reversed o r changed somewhat. Regardless, the straight lines with fixed colors alternating in shades and arrangements demonstrate the spontaneous expression of abstract expressionism. Image 3 Kim Keever’s Landscape collection. The above image is a part of New York artist’s Kim Keever’s Landscape collection. Keever’s landscape collection are meant to depart from traditional landscape art. Keever accomplishes

Womens Work and Globalized Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Womens Work and Globalized - Case Study Example In this case, the women find themselves able to cope well with the challenges that come with the globalization and the women’s work in the workplaces. As a result, more and more women should seek the available employment in the technologic areas applied areas instead of leaving them only to men as it has always been there before Globalization to women in the workplace currently witnessed in various sectors of the employment sectors in the world. Today many women take very complicated courses that initially were for men. For instance, areas such as engineering, medicine, chemistry, and physics used to be for men. However, the trend today is remarkable since it is women who form the best engineers, doctors, and scientist when compared to men. Despite the social changes that are also there to influence the globalization trends among the women in the workplaces, the trend of the invention of modern technologies encounters them. The invention of computers today makes it entirely possible for the women where they can work in an organization as clerks, receptionist, secretaries, and other positions that men do ignore or refuse to take. As such technology becomes useful to women in working with to an organization in such work sectors Countries such as Japan and Italy today have most of their women playing the greatest role in globalization issues due to employment. In these countries, women begin to start embracing the use of technology as early as their childhood status. When they become fully grown up, they can effectively use the various forms of technology which, in this case, promotes the globalization trends in the world. Despite the presence of discrimination that may come due gender and also the political influences that there may be in a particular country.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

NT in Review (Biology) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

NT in Review (Biology) - Essay Example For it is evident that man has been trying to explain the world around him for almost as long as he appeared on earth. We do not know whether there exist other species with similar proclivity, but with humans this need is evident. Despite warnings of dire consequences, Adam did pluck the fruit of knowledge didn’t he? At one level questions were of metaphysical nature and on the other they involved scientific knowledge. Earliest scientific study was mainly in the areas of Physical Science, questioning the nature of matter, energy and motion. The Greek philosophers applied their minds to these questions using logic alone in a dialectical reasoning. Aristotle made an attempt at compiling all that was known then. He wrote an entire treatise catalogueing hundreds of living animals. Following this tradition Biology was confined to making detailed observations about plants and animals right uptil the 17th century. As the data grew a need was felt to work out an effective system of classification. A Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus formulated the system of binomial nomenclature (naming a living organism using two different names, one of its genus and the other of its species). For example, Homo sapiens is the biological name for the modern man. This was an important step in systematising biological kno wledge. Even in its most rudimentary stage it was recognized that living beings were distinctly different from the rest of the physical world. One group of scientists proposed that there was some kind of ‘vital force’ acting within them that accounted for this distinction while others argued that living things were reducible to physical and chemical laws. Their theory was called the ‘mechanistic’ theory. The advocates of the ‘vital force’ theory declared that certain aspects of living organisms could not be explained with science and in fact science should not even attempt to meddle with the study of

GENETICS- ADVANCED PATHOPHYSIOLOGY Research Paper

GENETICS- ADVANCED PATHOPHYSIOLOGY - Research Paper Example The paper achieves this objective by identifying and examining roles that should be played by a multi-disciplinary healthcare team to effectively deal with a family whose unborn child is diagnosed with Tay Sach’s genetic disease. This case study also includes a teaching plan formulated for the family to examine further, the moral implications regarding ease of access to individuals’ genetic information. Additionally, the paper has a reflective section giving insight into my opinion in regard to the family’s decision, as well as, my advocacy for this choice. The final section in the report evaluates the legal and moral circumstances of carrying a baby diagnosed with Tay Sach’s to term. Genetics Case Study It is evident from the Trosack family case that, they are staunch Catholics. This implies that, strong Christian beliefs and ethics guide this family’s decisions, hence their elevated believe in God rather than scientific based evidence. All the sam e, the family needs professional support and education, so as to effectively cope with the Tay Sach’s diagnosis and provide sufficient care for their unborn child. Assessment of the Trosack’s case study brings several crucial healthcare issues to light. The issues include poly pharmacy concerns, and depression possibility owing to the pregnancy and consequent diagnosis (Jenkins & Lea, 2005). These issues can only be addressed by a team with diverse skills and knowledge in different disciplines. The multi-disciplinary team will help me, as the nurse in charge, to formulate an adequate education and discharge plan for Rita Trosack and her family. Members of the Interdisciplinary Team Case Manager: This is one of principal players in management of the case, since the individual is responsible for planning, task assignment and coordination of the other members involved in the Trosack family case (Jenkins & Lea, 2005). Additionally, the case manager provides information abo ut appropriate pregnancy care, while availing resources after Mrs. Trosack’s discharge. This individual can also assist the couple in accessing suitable physicians for their unborn child. It is also the case manager’s responsibility to question the Trosack couple, in order to discover relevant information such as their medical insurance, the level of education, religious beliefs and home living conditions. Overall, the case manager will provide access to all necessary resources for continued care for the child and its mother. Social Worker: This is a vital team member because he or she would enable the family to cope with the Tay Sach’s diagnosis and later treatment (Jenkins & Lea, 2005). Further, a social worker has the capability to guide the family in gaining access to proper support groups and community resources. The worker may also provide emotional support for the family in the course of disease progression. Generally, I would expect the social worker to provide all relevant information about support groups, available community resources and comprehensive education about prenatal care. Registered Gynecologist or Nurse: A gynecologist would be highly beneficial in this case, since Mrs. Trosack is pregnant. The gynecologist’s responsibility would be to examine all changes, however trivial, in the pregnant woman thus effectively monitoring the

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

NT in Review (Biology) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

NT in Review (Biology) - Essay Example For it is evident that man has been trying to explain the world around him for almost as long as he appeared on earth. We do not know whether there exist other species with similar proclivity, but with humans this need is evident. Despite warnings of dire consequences, Adam did pluck the fruit of knowledge didn’t he? At one level questions were of metaphysical nature and on the other they involved scientific knowledge. Earliest scientific study was mainly in the areas of Physical Science, questioning the nature of matter, energy and motion. The Greek philosophers applied their minds to these questions using logic alone in a dialectical reasoning. Aristotle made an attempt at compiling all that was known then. He wrote an entire treatise catalogueing hundreds of living animals. Following this tradition Biology was confined to making detailed observations about plants and animals right uptil the 17th century. As the data grew a need was felt to work out an effective system of classification. A Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus formulated the system of binomial nomenclature (naming a living organism using two different names, one of its genus and the other of its species). For example, Homo sapiens is the biological name for the modern man. This was an important step in systematising biological kno wledge. Even in its most rudimentary stage it was recognized that living beings were distinctly different from the rest of the physical world. One group of scientists proposed that there was some kind of ‘vital force’ acting within them that accounted for this distinction while others argued that living things were reducible to physical and chemical laws. Their theory was called the ‘mechanistic’ theory. The advocates of the ‘vital force’ theory declared that certain aspects of living organisms could not be explained with science and in fact science should not even attempt to meddle with the study of

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Mangment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 3

Mangment - Essay Example Managers find it difficult to budget the money for pay increase of the employees. They also know that employees would be demotivated to know that their hard work would not be rewarded with pay increase or addition of privileges and perks. I think that the greatest challenge for a manager in performance management is to track down and record employees’ performance throughout the year or interval. Some wrong areas that managers focus on while managing performance include long gaps between performance appraisals, highlighting only the deficiencies of employees with no mention of their good points, establish performance as the only criterion for pay increase. Managers are also misled in their decisions by the power and age of an employee. I think about managing performance annually, but believe that this should be conducted much more often, like monthly. The biggest concern is to be able to justify the decisions without demotivating the employees. This is a concern for me because I am poor at collecting daily records of performance. Most important skill in performance management, for me, is accordingly to be able to keep track of employees performance because this is tedious work and seems so unrelated to the organizational tasks at

Monday, October 14, 2019

Cyber Bullying Essay Example for Free

Cyber Bullying Essay When one think’s of bullying, they think of a big kid picking on a little kid on the playground, or the type of bullying that has been portrayed by movies and books, however, bullying has grown beyond that and had changes to adapt to the technology we have today, cyberspace. Cyber bullying can vary from social media sites, texting, â€Å"sexting†, and emails. For those who are victims of cyber bullying, there is very little they feel they can do to end the cyber bullying. Cyber bullying has terrible effects on those who are victims of this type of bullying and often lead to serious actions. Bullying can be considered many different things depending on who is describing it, however, according to Google, bullying is someone who â€Å"uses superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants.† More specifically, cyber bullying is â€Å"the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature† (Google). Those who bully may be seeking power, or a winning feeling and often times enjoy the attention they get from buying someone. It is also said that who bully others are usually individuals that have had a poor upbringing, were not shown any love growing up and are jealous, or were bullied themselves. Cyber bullying has many effects that are destructive to the individual or group being bullied. Victims who are affected from cyber bullying often show signs of depression, loss of sleep, unhappiness, anxiety, and complex to ones self. In often times, they even get pushed to the point of thought of suicide or harm to others, such as violent attacks on other individuals. Most of these cyber bullying victims will not tell a parent or trusted adult about the bullying because they are ashamed about it or don’t want a parent to get involved and embarrass them to the bully. This may be a reason that cyber bullying may leads to such serious effects, because most individuals will not speak up about what they are enduring. Cyber bullying leads to thousands of suicide attempts every year. â€Å"Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about  4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC. For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it. Bully victims are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims, according to studies by Yale University† (Bullying Statistics). In addition to that statement, a study has shown that at least half of these attempted suicides are due to bullying. Often times the less popular individuals become victims and are more likely to commit suicide, or have self-harming behaviors. Overall, cyber bullying affects its victims in many different, but horrible ways that often lead to serious actions. Those who bully others, may be been victims of bullying in the past, and are looking to take control and have power over another individual. These bullies may have also lacked love and compassion in their household and are seeking attention. This, however, does not excuse the effects that the victims of this bullying has, specifically cyber bullying. The victims of cyber bullying experience threatening or intimidating messages electronically and often develop serious heath signs such as depression, anxiety, and even suicide thoughts. It is important that people are aware of the serious side affects from bullying and cyber bullying and take action if they know someone that is being cyber bullied. Work Cited What Is Bullying. StopBullying.gov. U.S. Department of Health Human Services, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Model for Predicting Fatigue Life of Nanomaterials

Model for Predicting Fatigue Life of Nanomaterials Introduction In the past, the primary function of micro-systems packaging was to provide input/output (I/O) connections to and from integrated circuits (ICs) and to provide interconnection between the components on the system board level while physically supporting the electronic device and protecting the assembly from the environment. In order to increase the functionality and the miniaturization of the current electronic devices, these IC devices have not only incorporated more transistors but have also included more active and passive components on an individual chip. This has resulted in the emerging trend of a new convergent system[1] Currently, there are three main approaches to achieving these convergent systems, namely the system-on-chip (SOC), system-in-package (SIP) and system on package (SOP). SOC seeks to integrate numerous system functions on one silicon chip. However, this approach has numerous fundamental and economical limitations which include high fabrication costs and integration limits on wireless communications, which due to inherent losses of silicon and size restriction. SIP is a 3-D packaging approach, where vertical stacking of multi-chip modules is employed. Since all of the ICs in the stack are still limited to CMOS IC processing, the fundamental integration limitation of the SOC still remains. SOP on the other hand, seeks to achieve a highly integrated microminiaturized system on the package using silicon for transistor integration and package for RF, digital and optical integration[1] IC packaging is one of the key enabling technologies for microprocessor performance. As performance increases, technical challenges increase in the areas of power delivery, heat removal, I/O density and thermo-mechanical reliability. These are the most difficult challenges for improving performance and increasing integration, along with decreasing manufacturing cost. Chip-to-package interconnections in microsystems packages serve as electrical interconnections but often fail by mechanisms such as fatigue and creep. Furthermore, driven by the need for increase the system functionality and decrease the feature size, the International Technology Roadmap for Semi-conductors (ITRS) has predicted that integrated chip (IC) packages will have interconnections with I/O pitch of 90 nm by the year 2018 [2]. Lead-based solder materials have been used for interconnections in flip chip technology and the surface mount technology for many decades. The traditional lead-based and lead-free solder bumps will not satisfy the thermal mechanical requirement of these fine pitches interconnects. These electronic packages, even under normal operating conditions, can reach a temperature as high as 150C. Due to differences in the coefficient of thermal expansion of the materials in an IC package, the packages will experience significant thermal strains due to the mismatch, which in turn will cause lead and lead-free solder interconnections to fail prematurely. Aggarwal et al [3] had modeled the stress experienced by chip to package interconnect. In his work, he developed interconnects with a height of 15 to 50 micrometre on different substrate using classic beam theory. Figure 1 shows the schematic of his model and a summary of some of his results. Although compliant intrerconect could reduces the stress experienced by the interconnect, it is still in sufficient. Chng et al. [4] performed a parametric study on the fatigue life of a solder column for a pitch of 100micrometre using a macro-micro approach. In her work, she developed models of a solder column/bump with a pad size of 50micrometre and heights of 50 micrometre to 200 micrometre. Table I shows a summary of some of her results. Table 1.1: Fatigue life estimation of solder column chip thickness (micrometre) 250 640 640 640 board CTE (ppm/K) 18 18 10 5 solder column height (micrometre) Fatigue life estimation/cycle) 50 81 N.A 171 3237 100 150 27 276 3124 150 134 31 518 4405 200 74 38 273 5772 It can be seen from Table 1.1 that the fatigue lives of all solder columns are extremely short. Apart from the 5ppm/K board where there is excellent CTE matching, the largest fatigue life of the solder column is only about 518 cycles. As expected, the fatigue life increases significantly when the board CTE decreases from 18ppm/K to 10ppm/K and as the height increases from 50micrometre to 200micrometre.This is mainly due to the large strain induced by the thermal mismatch as shown in Figure 1.2. The maximum inelastic principal strain was about 0.16 which exceeds the maximum strain that the material can support. Although the fatigue life of the chip to package interconnection can be increases by increasing the interconnects height, it will not be able to meet the high frequency electrical requirements of the future IC where they need to be operating at a high frequencies of 10-20 GHz and a signal bandwidth of 20 Gbps, By definition, nanocrystalline materials are materials that have grain size less than 100nm and these materials are not new since nanocrystalline materials have been observed in several naturally-occurring specimens including seashells, bone, and tooth enamel [5, 6]. However, the nanocrystalline materials have been attracting a lot of research interest due to its superior mechanical and electrical properties as compared to the coarse-grained counterpart. For example, the nano-crystalline copper has about 6 times the strength of bulk copper [7]. Furthermore, the improvement in the mechanical properties due to the reduction in grain size has been well-documented. Increase in strength due to the reduction in grain-size is predicted by the Hall-Petch relationship which has also been confirmed numerically by Swygenhoven et al [8] and was first demonstrated experimentally by Weertman [9]. The implantation of nanocrystalline copper as interconnect materials seems to be feasible from the processing viewpoint too. Copper has been used as interconnects materials since 1989 whereas nano-copper has also been widely processed using electroplating and other severe plastic deformation techniques in the past few years. For instance, Lu et al. [10] have reported electroplating of nano-copper with grain size less than 100 nm and electrical conductivity comparable to microcrystalline copper. Furthermore, Aggarwal et al [11] have demonstrated the feasibility of using electrolytic plating processes to deposit nanocrystalline nickel as a back-end wafer compatible process. However, there are certain challenges regarding implantation of nanocrystalline copper as interconnects materials. As discussed above, nanocrystalline copper have a high potential of being used as the next generation interconnect for electronic packaging. However, it is vital to understand their material properties, deformation mechanisms and microstructures stability. Although the increase in strength due to the Hall-Petch relationship which has also been confirmed numerically and experimentally by Weertman [9], the improvement in the fatigue properties is not well documented and no model has been established to predict/characterize these nano materials in interconnection application; conflicting results regarding the fatigue properties have also been reported. Kumar et al [12] reported that for nano-crystalline and ultra-fine crystalline Ni, although there is an increase in tensile stress range and the endurance limit, the crack growth rate also increases. However, Bansal et al. [7] reported that with decreasing grain size, the tensile stress range increases but the crack growth rate decreases substantially at the same cyclic stress intensity range. Thus, nanostructured materials can potentially provide a solution for the reliability of low pitch interconnections. However, the fatigue resistance of nanostructured interconnections needs to be further investigated. Since grain boundaries in polycrystalline material increases the total energy of the system as compare to perfect single crystal, it will resulted in a driving force to reduce the overall grain boundary area by increasing the average grain size. In the case of nanocrystalline materials which have a high volume fraction of grain boundaries, there is a huge driving force for grain to growth and this presented a presents a significant obstacle to the processing and use of nanocrystalline copper for interconnect applications. Millet et al [13] have shown, though a series of systematic molecular dynamics simulations, grain growth in bulk nanocrystalline copper during annealing at constant temperature of 800K can be impeded with dopants segregated in the grain boundaries regions. However, it has been observed that stress can trigger grain growth in nanocrystalline materials [14] and there is no literature available on impeding stress assisted grain growth. There is an impending need to investigate the impediment to grain growth caused by the dopant during fatigue/stress assisted grain growth Dissertation Objectives The goal of present project is to develop a model for the fatigue resistance of nano-materials that have been shown to have superior fatigue resistance. Accordingly, the following research objectives are proposed. Develops a model for predicting fatigue life of nanostructured chip-to-package copper interconnections Develops a fundamental understanding on the fatigue behavior of nanocrystalline copper for interconnect application Addresses the issue on the stability of nanocrystalline materials undergoing cyclic loading Overview of the Thesis The thesis is organized so that past research on nanocrystalline materials forms the basis of the understanding and new knowledge discovered in this research. Chapter 2 reviews much of the pertinent literature regarding nanocrystalline materials, including synthesis, deformation mechanisms, and grain growth. Chapter 3 describes a detailed overview of the technical aspects of the molecular dynamics simulation method including inter-atomic potentials, time integration algorithms, the NVT NPT, and NEPT ensembles, as well as periodic boundary conditions and neighbor lists. Include in this chapter is the algorithms for creating nanocrystalline materials used in this dissertations.. Chapter 4 describes the simulation procedure designed to investigate and develop the long crack growth analysis. The results of the long crack growth analysis will be presented at the end of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 presents the result and discussion on mechanical behavior of single and nanocrystalline copper subjected to monotonic and cyclic loading whereas Chapter 6 presents the result and discussion on the impediment to grain growth caused by the dopant during fatigue/stress assisted grain growth. Finally, conclusions and recommendations for future work are presented in Chapter 5. Chapter 2 This chapter offers an expanded summary of the literature published with regards to the fabrication methods, characterization, and properties of nanocrystalline materials in addition to a description of existing interconnect technology. 2.1 Off-Chip Interconnect Technologies Chip-to-package interconnections in microsystems packages serve as electrical interconnections but they will often failed by mechanisms such as fatigue and creep. Furthermore, driven by the need for increase the system functionality and decrease the feature size, the International Technology Roadmap for Semi-conductors (ITRS) has predicted that interconnections of integrated chip (IC) packages will have a I/O pitch of 90 nm by the year 2018 [2]. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) roadmap is a roadmap that semiconductor industry closely follows closely and its projects the need for several technology generations. The package must be capable of meeting these projections in order for it to be successful. This section reviews some of the current interconnect technology. Wire bonding [15] as shown in Figure 2.1, is generally considered as one of the most simple, cost-effective and flexible interconnect technology. The devices on the silicon die are (gold or aluminum) wire bonded to electrically connect from the chip to the wire bond pads on the periphery. However, the disadvantages of wire bonding are the slow rate, large pitch and long interconnect length and hence this will not be suitable for high I/O application. Instead of wires in the wire bonding, tape automated bonding (TAB) is an interconnect technology using a prefabricated perforated polyimide film, with copper leads between chip and substrate. The advantage of this technology is the high throughput and the high lead count. However, it is limited by the high initial costs for tooling. An alternative to peripheral interconnect technology is the area-array solution, as shown in Figure 2.3, that access the unused area by using the area under the chip. In area-array packaging, the chip has an array of solder bumps that are joined to a substrate. Under-fill is then fills the gap between the chip and substrate to enhance mechanical adhesion. This technology gives the highest packaging density methods and best electrical characteristics of all the avaiable interconnection technology. However, not only is its initial cost is high, it requires a very demanding technology to establish and operate. With the need for higher I/O density, compliant interconnects have been developed to satisfy the mechanical requirements of high performance micron sized interconnects. The basic idea is to reduce shear stress experienced by the interconnects through increasing their height or decreasing of its shear modulus (i.e. increases in their compliant) and hence the name compliant interconnects. Some of recent research in compliant interconnects include Tesseras Wide Area Vertical Expansion, Form Factors Wire on Wafer and Georgia Institute of Technologys Helix interconnects [17-19] as shown in Figure 2.4. Although compliant interconnects can solve the problem of mechanical reliability issue, they are done at the expense of the electrical performance. Since there is a need to reduce the packages parasitic through a decrease line delays, there is a need to minimize the electrical connection length in order to increase the system working frequency. Hence, compliant interconnect may not meet the high electrical frequency requirements of future devices. Figure 2.4: (a) Wide Area Vertical Expansion, (b) Wire on Wafer and (c) G-Helix [17-19] Lead and lead-free solders typically fail mechanical when scaled down to less than to a pitch of 100 mm. Compliant interconnections, on the other hand, do not meet the high frequency electrical requirements. The Microsystems Packaging Research Center at Georgia institute of Technology had demonstrated the feasibility of using re-workable nanostructure interconnections. Aggarwal et al [20] had show that nanostructured nickel interconnections, through a Flip Chip test vehicle, was able to improve the mechanical reliability while maintaining the shortest electrical connection length. However, the main disadvantages of this method was the significant signal loss at high frequency signal of nanocrystalline nickel [21]. As discussed above, nanostructure interconnects technology is the most promising interconnect technology to best meet the stringent mechanical and electrical requirement of next generation devices. However, there is a need of an alternate materials and a sensible choice of materials in this case would be nanocrystalline copper for its high strength material with superior electrical conductivity. Hence, it would be beneficial to use nanocrystalline-copper as material for the nanostructure interconnects. Due to the tendency for the grain to grow, there is a need to stabilize the grain growth in nanocrystalline copper before using it could be considered as a potential candidate for nanostructure interconnect. 2.2 Nanocrystalline material Nanocrystalline materials are polycrystalline materials with an average grain size of less than 100 nm [22]. Over the past decade , new nanocrystalline or nanostructured materials with key microstructural length scales on the order of a few tens of nanometers has been gaining a lot of interest in the material science research society. This is mainly due to its unique and superior properties, as compared to their microcrystalline counterparts which includes increased strength [22] and wear resistance [23]. These unique properties are due to the large volume fraction of atoms at or near the grain boundaries. As a result, these materials have unique properties that are representative of both the grain boundary surface characteristics and the bulk. Recent advances in synthesis and processing methodology for producing nanocrystalline materials such as inert gas condensation [24], mechanical milling [25, 26], electro-deposition [27], and severe plastic deformation [28] have made it possible to produce sufficient nanocrystalline materials for small scale application. 2.2.1 Synthesis Inert gas condensation, the first method used to synthesis bulk nanocrystalline [29], consists of evaporating a metal inside a high-vacuum chamber and then backfilling the chamber with inert gas [30]. These evaporated metal atoms would then collide with the gas atoms, causing them to lose kinetic energy and condenses into powder of small nano-crystals. These powders are then compacted under high pressure and vacuum into nearly fully dense nanocrystalline solids. The grain size distribution obtained from this method is usually very narrow. However, the major draws back of this method are its high porosity levels and imperfection bonding. Grain coarsening also occurs due to the high temperature during the compaction stage [31]. Mechanical milling consists of heavy cyclic deformation in powders until the final composition of the powders corresponds to a certain percentages of the respective initial constituents [25, 26]. A wide grain size distribution is obtained by this method. This technique is a popular method to prepare nanocrystalline materials because of its applicability to any material and simplicity. However, their main drawback includes contamination and grain coarsening during the consolidation stage. Electro-deposition consists of using electrical current to reduce cations of a desired material from a electrolyte solution and coating a conductive object on the substrate. Electro-deposition has many advantages over processing techniques and this includes its applicability to a wide variety of materials, low initial capital investment requirements and porosity-free finished products without a need for consolidation processing [27]. Furthermore, Shen et al. [32] and Lu et al.[33] had recently show that the right electro-deposition condition can produce a highly twinned structure which leads to enhanced ductility. The main drawback of this method is it is the difficulty to achieve high purity. Severe plastic deformation, such as high-pressure torsion, equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE), continuous confined shear straining and accumulative roll-bonding, uses extreme plastic straining to produce nanocrystalline materials by mechanisms such as grain fragmentation, dynamic recovery, and geometric re-crystallization [34]. It is the only technology that transformed conventional macro-grained metals directly into nanocrystalline materials without the need of potentially hazardous nano-sized powders. This is achieved by introducing very high shear deformations into the material under superimposed hydrostatic pressure. Two of the most commonly used methods are high-pressure torsion and ECAE [35]. In the study of the effect of ECAE on the microstructure of nanocrystalline copper, Dalla Torre et al [36] observed that the grains become more equi-axial and randomly orientation as the number of passes increases, as shown in Figure 2.5 Figure 2.5: Microstructure of ECAE copper subjected to (a) 1 passes (b) 2 passes (c) 4 passes (d) 8 passes (e) 12 passes and (f) 16 passes [36] 2.2.2 Mechanical Behavior of nanocrystalline materials Due to the small grain size and high volume fraction of grain boundaries, nanocrystalline materials exhibit significantly different properties and behavior as compared to their microcrystalline counterpart. The structure and mechanical behavior of nanocrystalline materials has been the subject of a lot of researchers interests both experimentally [37-43] and theoretically [44-50]. This section reviews the principal mechanical properties and behavior of nanocrystalline materials. 2.2.2.1 Strength and ductility Recent studies of nanocrystalline metals have shown that there is a five to ten fold increases in the strength and hardness as compared to their microcrystalline state [7, 36, 37, 51, 52]. This increase in the strength is due to the presence of grain boundaries impeding the nucleation and movement of dislocations. Since decreasing grain boundary size increases the number of barrier and the amount of applied stress necessary to move a dislocation across a grain boundary, this resulted in a much higher yield strength. The inverse relationship between grain size and strength is characterized by the Hall-Petch relationship [53, 54] as shown in equation (2.1). Eq (2.1) In equation (2.1), s is the mechanical strength, k is a material constant and d is the average grain size. Hence, nanocrystalline materials are expected to exhibit higher strength as compared to their microcrystalline counterpart. Figure 2.6 and Figure 2.7 show the summary of hardness and yield strength from tensile test that are reported in the literature. Indeed, hardness and yield strength of copper with a grain size of 10nm (3GPa) can be one order higher than their microcrystalline counterpart. To the larger specimens. Derivation from Hall-Petch relationship begins as the grain size approaches 30nm where the stresses needed to activate the dislocation multiplication via Frank-Read sources within the grains are too high and the plastic deformation is instead accommodated by grain boundaries sliding and migration.[12]. Furthermore, as the grain size reduces, the volume fraction of the grain boundaries and the triple points increases. Material properties will be more representative of the grain boundary activity [64] and this will resulting the strength to be inversely proportional to grain size instead of square roots of the grain size as predicted by Hall Petch relation [65]. Further reduction in the grain size will result in grain boundaries processes controlling the plastic deformation and reverse Hall-Petch effect, where the materials soften, will take place. Although sample defects had been account for the earlier experimental observation of reverse Hall-Petch effect[24], Swygenhoven et al [66] and Schiotz et al [47], using molecular simulation, was able to showed that nanocrystalline copper had the highest strength (about 2.3GPa ) at a grain size of 8nm and 10-15nm respectively. Conrad et al [67] pointed out that below this critical grain size, the mechanisms shifted to grain boundary-mediated from dislocation-mediated plasticity and this causes the material to become dependent on strain rate, temperature, Taylor orientation factor and presence of the type of dislocation. The yield stress of nanocrystalline copper was highly sensitive to strain rate even though it is a fcc materials. The strain rate sensitivity, m, in equation 2.2 a engineering parameter which measured the dependency of the strain rate and Figure 2.8 shows a summary of m as a function of grain size for copper specimen in the literature [51, 68-70]. Due to high localized dislocation activities at the grain boundaries which results in enhanced strain rate sensitivities in nanocrystalline materials, m increases drastically when the grain size is below 0.1 mm as shown in Figure 2.8. (2.2) Room temperature strain rate sensitivity was found to dependent on dislocation activities and grain boundaries diffusion [52, 71, 72]. Due to the negligible lattice diffusion at room temperature, the rate limiting process for microcrystalline copper was the gliding dislocation to cutting through forest dislocation, resulting in low strain rate sensitivities. However, due to the increasing presence of obstacles such as grain boundaries for nanocrystalline materials, the rate limiting process for smaller grain size was the interaction of dislocation and the grain boundaries, which is strain rate and temperature dependence. By considering the length scale of the dislocation and grain boundaries interaction, Cheng et al [52] proposed the following model for strain rate sensitivities . (2.3) z is the distance swept by the dislocation during activation, r is the dislocation density and a, a and b are the proportional factors. With this model, they will be able to predict higher strain rate sensitivities for nanocrystalline material produced by severe plastic deformation as compared to other technique. Since the twin boundaries in nanocrystalline or ultra fine grain copper served as a barriers for dislocation motion and nucleation which led to highly localized dislocations near the twin boundaries, the strain rate sensitivity of copper with high density of coherent twin boundaries was found to be higher than those without any twin boundaries [33]. Lastly, the increase enhanced strain rate sensitivity in nanocrystalline copper had been credited for it increases in strength and ductility. For example, Valiev et al [60] credited the enhanced strain rate sensitivity of 0.16 for the high ductility. In addition to a strong dependency on the strain rate, strength in nanocrystalline materials was also highly dependent on the temperature. Wang et al [73] observed that the yield strength for ultra fine grain copper with a grain size of 300nm increases from approximately 370MPa to 500MPa when the temperature reduces from room temperature to 77k. The authors attributed this increase in yield strength due to the absence of additional thermal deformation processes at 77k. This is consistent with Huang et al [74] observation where the temperature dependence of nanocrystalline copper with an increase in hardness of nanocrystalline copper with lowering the temperature is noted Ductility is another important characteristic of nanocrystalline materials. In microcrystalline materials, a reduction in grain size will increase the ductility due to the presence of grain boundaries acting as effective barriers to the propagation of micro-cracks[75]. However, nanocrystalline copper showed a lower strain to failure than that of their microcrystalline counterparts and this lacks in ductility was attributed to the presence of processing defects [76]. Recent advanced in processing of nanocrystalline materials offer materials with fairly good ductility in additional to ultra-high strength. Lu et al [10] reported that nanocrystalline copper with minimal flaw produced via electro-deposition had an elongation to fracture of 30%. Furthermore, Youssef et al [77] observed a 15.5% elongation to failure for defect free nanocrystalline copper produced via mechanical milling. Hence, it was possible for nanocrystalline copper to be both strong and ductile if the processing artifacts are minimized. The failure are usually consists of dimples several time larger than their grain size was normally found on the failure morphology of nanocrystalline materials and Kumar et al [78] presented the following model for initiation and hence the eventual failure of nanocrystalline materials. Furthermore, the presence of shear region was found to be due to shear localization since the ratio of strain hardening rate to prevailing stress was usually small [79, 80]. Figure 2.9: Schematic illustration of fracture in nanocrystalline material postulated by Kumar et al [78] 2.2.2.2 Creeps Nanocrystalline materials are expected to creep during room temperature. This is because Due to the higher fraction of grain boundaries and triple junctions, self diffusivity of nanocrystalline material had been shown to increase by an order of three as compared to microcrystalline copper [81]. Since creep behavior was dependent on grain size and diffusivity, with creep rate increases with an increase in diffusivity or a decrease in grain size, the creep temperature for nanocrystalline copper was known to be a small fraction of melting temperature (about 0.22 of its melting points). Furthermore, since creep had always been cited as one of the reason for grain size softening in nanocrystalline materials, creeps were other important mechanical properties of nanocrystalline materials that had been gaining a lot of researchers attention. Due to the high volume fraction of grain boundaries and enhanced diffusivity rate Model for Predicting Fatigue Life of Nanomaterials Model for Predicting Fatigue Life of Nanomaterials Introduction In the past, the primary function of micro-systems packaging was to provide input/output (I/O) connections to and from integrated circuits (ICs) and to provide interconnection between the components on the system board level while physically supporting the electronic device and protecting the assembly from the environment. In order to increase the functionality and the miniaturization of the current electronic devices, these IC devices have not only incorporated more transistors but have also included more active and passive components on an individual chip. This has resulted in the emerging trend of a new convergent system[1] Currently, there are three main approaches to achieving these convergent systems, namely the system-on-chip (SOC), system-in-package (SIP) and system on package (SOP). SOC seeks to integrate numerous system functions on one silicon chip. However, this approach has numerous fundamental and economical limitations which include high fabrication costs and integration limits on wireless communications, which due to inherent losses of silicon and size restriction. SIP is a 3-D packaging approach, where vertical stacking of multi-chip modules is employed. Since all of the ICs in the stack are still limited to CMOS IC processing, the fundamental integration limitation of the SOC still remains. SOP on the other hand, seeks to achieve a highly integrated microminiaturized system on the package using silicon for transistor integration and package for RF, digital and optical integration[1] IC packaging is one of the key enabling technologies for microprocessor performance. As performance increases, technical challenges increase in the areas of power delivery, heat removal, I/O density and thermo-mechanical reliability. These are the most difficult challenges for improving performance and increasing integration, along with decreasing manufacturing cost. Chip-to-package interconnections in microsystems packages serve as electrical interconnections but often fail by mechanisms such as fatigue and creep. Furthermore, driven by the need for increase the system functionality and decrease the feature size, the International Technology Roadmap for Semi-conductors (ITRS) has predicted that integrated chip (IC) packages will have interconnections with I/O pitch of 90 nm by the year 2018 [2]. Lead-based solder materials have been used for interconnections in flip chip technology and the surface mount technology for many decades. The traditional lead-based and lead-free solder bumps will not satisfy the thermal mechanical requirement of these fine pitches interconnects. These electronic packages, even under normal operating conditions, can reach a temperature as high as 150C. Due to differences in the coefficient of thermal expansion of the materials in an IC package, the packages will experience significant thermal strains due to the mismatch, which in turn will cause lead and lead-free solder interconnections to fail prematurely. Aggarwal et al [3] had modeled the stress experienced by chip to package interconnect. In his work, he developed interconnects with a height of 15 to 50 micrometre on different substrate using classic beam theory. Figure 1 shows the schematic of his model and a summary of some of his results. Although compliant intrerconect could reduces the stress experienced by the interconnect, it is still in sufficient. Chng et al. [4] performed a parametric study on the fatigue life of a solder column for a pitch of 100micrometre using a macro-micro approach. In her work, she developed models of a solder column/bump with a pad size of 50micrometre and heights of 50 micrometre to 200 micrometre. Table I shows a summary of some of her results. Table 1.1: Fatigue life estimation of solder column chip thickness (micrometre) 250 640 640 640 board CTE (ppm/K) 18 18 10 5 solder column height (micrometre) Fatigue life estimation/cycle) 50 81 N.A 171 3237 100 150 27 276 3124 150 134 31 518 4405 200 74 38 273 5772 It can be seen from Table 1.1 that the fatigue lives of all solder columns are extremely short. Apart from the 5ppm/K board where there is excellent CTE matching, the largest fatigue life of the solder column is only about 518 cycles. As expected, the fatigue life increases significantly when the board CTE decreases from 18ppm/K to 10ppm/K and as the height increases from 50micrometre to 200micrometre.This is mainly due to the large strain induced by the thermal mismatch as shown in Figure 1.2. The maximum inelastic principal strain was about 0.16 which exceeds the maximum strain that the material can support. Although the fatigue life of the chip to package interconnection can be increases by increasing the interconnects height, it will not be able to meet the high frequency electrical requirements of the future IC where they need to be operating at a high frequencies of 10-20 GHz and a signal bandwidth of 20 Gbps, By definition, nanocrystalline materials are materials that have grain size less than 100nm and these materials are not new since nanocrystalline materials have been observed in several naturally-occurring specimens including seashells, bone, and tooth enamel [5, 6]. However, the nanocrystalline materials have been attracting a lot of research interest due to its superior mechanical and electrical properties as compared to the coarse-grained counterpart. For example, the nano-crystalline copper has about 6 times the strength of bulk copper [7]. Furthermore, the improvement in the mechanical properties due to the reduction in grain size has been well-documented. Increase in strength due to the reduction in grain-size is predicted by the Hall-Petch relationship which has also been confirmed numerically by Swygenhoven et al [8] and was first demonstrated experimentally by Weertman [9]. The implantation of nanocrystalline copper as interconnect materials seems to be feasible from the processing viewpoint too. Copper has been used as interconnects materials since 1989 whereas nano-copper has also been widely processed using electroplating and other severe plastic deformation techniques in the past few years. For instance, Lu et al. [10] have reported electroplating of nano-copper with grain size less than 100 nm and electrical conductivity comparable to microcrystalline copper. Furthermore, Aggarwal et al [11] have demonstrated the feasibility of using electrolytic plating processes to deposit nanocrystalline nickel as a back-end wafer compatible process. However, there are certain challenges regarding implantation of nanocrystalline copper as interconnects materials. As discussed above, nanocrystalline copper have a high potential of being used as the next generation interconnect for electronic packaging. However, it is vital to understand their material properties, deformation mechanisms and microstructures stability. Although the increase in strength due to the Hall-Petch relationship which has also been confirmed numerically and experimentally by Weertman [9], the improvement in the fatigue properties is not well documented and no model has been established to predict/characterize these nano materials in interconnection application; conflicting results regarding the fatigue properties have also been reported. Kumar et al [12] reported that for nano-crystalline and ultra-fine crystalline Ni, although there is an increase in tensile stress range and the endurance limit, the crack growth rate also increases. However, Bansal et al. [7] reported that with decreasing grain size, the tensile stress range increases but the crack growth rate decreases substantially at the same cyclic stress intensity range. Thus, nanostructured materials can potentially provide a solution for the reliability of low pitch interconnections. However, the fatigue resistance of nanostructured interconnections needs to be further investigated. Since grain boundaries in polycrystalline material increases the total energy of the system as compare to perfect single crystal, it will resulted in a driving force to reduce the overall grain boundary area by increasing the average grain size. In the case of nanocrystalline materials which have a high volume fraction of grain boundaries, there is a huge driving force for grain to growth and this presented a presents a significant obstacle to the processing and use of nanocrystalline copper for interconnect applications. Millet et al [13] have shown, though a series of systematic molecular dynamics simulations, grain growth in bulk nanocrystalline copper during annealing at constant temperature of 800K can be impeded with dopants segregated in the grain boundaries regions. However, it has been observed that stress can trigger grain growth in nanocrystalline materials [14] and there is no literature available on impeding stress assisted grain growth. There is an impending need to investigate the impediment to grain growth caused by the dopant during fatigue/stress assisted grain growth Dissertation Objectives The goal of present project is to develop a model for the fatigue resistance of nano-materials that have been shown to have superior fatigue resistance. Accordingly, the following research objectives are proposed. Develops a model for predicting fatigue life of nanostructured chip-to-package copper interconnections Develops a fundamental understanding on the fatigue behavior of nanocrystalline copper for interconnect application Addresses the issue on the stability of nanocrystalline materials undergoing cyclic loading Overview of the Thesis The thesis is organized so that past research on nanocrystalline materials forms the basis of the understanding and new knowledge discovered in this research. Chapter 2 reviews much of the pertinent literature regarding nanocrystalline materials, including synthesis, deformation mechanisms, and grain growth. Chapter 3 describes a detailed overview of the technical aspects of the molecular dynamics simulation method including inter-atomic potentials, time integration algorithms, the NVT NPT, and NEPT ensembles, as well as periodic boundary conditions and neighbor lists. Include in this chapter is the algorithms for creating nanocrystalline materials used in this dissertations.. Chapter 4 describes the simulation procedure designed to investigate and develop the long crack growth analysis. The results of the long crack growth analysis will be presented at the end of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 presents the result and discussion on mechanical behavior of single and nanocrystalline copper subjected to monotonic and cyclic loading whereas Chapter 6 presents the result and discussion on the impediment to grain growth caused by the dopant during fatigue/stress assisted grain growth. Finally, conclusions and recommendations for future work are presented in Chapter 5. Chapter 2 This chapter offers an expanded summary of the literature published with regards to the fabrication methods, characterization, and properties of nanocrystalline materials in addition to a description of existing interconnect technology. 2.1 Off-Chip Interconnect Technologies Chip-to-package interconnections in microsystems packages serve as electrical interconnections but they will often failed by mechanisms such as fatigue and creep. Furthermore, driven by the need for increase the system functionality and decrease the feature size, the International Technology Roadmap for Semi-conductors (ITRS) has predicted that interconnections of integrated chip (IC) packages will have a I/O pitch of 90 nm by the year 2018 [2]. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) roadmap is a roadmap that semiconductor industry closely follows closely and its projects the need for several technology generations. The package must be capable of meeting these projections in order for it to be successful. This section reviews some of the current interconnect technology. Wire bonding [15] as shown in Figure 2.1, is generally considered as one of the most simple, cost-effective and flexible interconnect technology. The devices on the silicon die are (gold or aluminum) wire bonded to electrically connect from the chip to the wire bond pads on the periphery. However, the disadvantages of wire bonding are the slow rate, large pitch and long interconnect length and hence this will not be suitable for high I/O application. Instead of wires in the wire bonding, tape automated bonding (TAB) is an interconnect technology using a prefabricated perforated polyimide film, with copper leads between chip and substrate. The advantage of this technology is the high throughput and the high lead count. However, it is limited by the high initial costs for tooling. An alternative to peripheral interconnect technology is the area-array solution, as shown in Figure 2.3, that access the unused area by using the area under the chip. In area-array packaging, the chip has an array of solder bumps that are joined to a substrate. Under-fill is then fills the gap between the chip and substrate to enhance mechanical adhesion. This technology gives the highest packaging density methods and best electrical characteristics of all the avaiable interconnection technology. However, not only is its initial cost is high, it requires a very demanding technology to establish and operate. With the need for higher I/O density, compliant interconnects have been developed to satisfy the mechanical requirements of high performance micron sized interconnects. The basic idea is to reduce shear stress experienced by the interconnects through increasing their height or decreasing of its shear modulus (i.e. increases in their compliant) and hence the name compliant interconnects. Some of recent research in compliant interconnects include Tesseras Wide Area Vertical Expansion, Form Factors Wire on Wafer and Georgia Institute of Technologys Helix interconnects [17-19] as shown in Figure 2.4. Although compliant interconnects can solve the problem of mechanical reliability issue, they are done at the expense of the electrical performance. Since there is a need to reduce the packages parasitic through a decrease line delays, there is a need to minimize the electrical connection length in order to increase the system working frequency. Hence, compliant interconnect may not meet the high electrical frequency requirements of future devices. Figure 2.4: (a) Wide Area Vertical Expansion, (b) Wire on Wafer and (c) G-Helix [17-19] Lead and lead-free solders typically fail mechanical when scaled down to less than to a pitch of 100 mm. Compliant interconnections, on the other hand, do not meet the high frequency electrical requirements. The Microsystems Packaging Research Center at Georgia institute of Technology had demonstrated the feasibility of using re-workable nanostructure interconnections. Aggarwal et al [20] had show that nanostructured nickel interconnections, through a Flip Chip test vehicle, was able to improve the mechanical reliability while maintaining the shortest electrical connection length. However, the main disadvantages of this method was the significant signal loss at high frequency signal of nanocrystalline nickel [21]. As discussed above, nanostructure interconnects technology is the most promising interconnect technology to best meet the stringent mechanical and electrical requirement of next generation devices. However, there is a need of an alternate materials and a sensible choice of materials in this case would be nanocrystalline copper for its high strength material with superior electrical conductivity. Hence, it would be beneficial to use nanocrystalline-copper as material for the nanostructure interconnects. Due to the tendency for the grain to grow, there is a need to stabilize the grain growth in nanocrystalline copper before using it could be considered as a potential candidate for nanostructure interconnect. 2.2 Nanocrystalline material Nanocrystalline materials are polycrystalline materials with an average grain size of less than 100 nm [22]. Over the past decade , new nanocrystalline or nanostructured materials with key microstructural length scales on the order of a few tens of nanometers has been gaining a lot of interest in the material science research society. This is mainly due to its unique and superior properties, as compared to their microcrystalline counterparts which includes increased strength [22] and wear resistance [23]. These unique properties are due to the large volume fraction of atoms at or near the grain boundaries. As a result, these materials have unique properties that are representative of both the grain boundary surface characteristics and the bulk. Recent advances in synthesis and processing methodology for producing nanocrystalline materials such as inert gas condensation [24], mechanical milling [25, 26], electro-deposition [27], and severe plastic deformation [28] have made it possible to produce sufficient nanocrystalline materials for small scale application. 2.2.1 Synthesis Inert gas condensation, the first method used to synthesis bulk nanocrystalline [29], consists of evaporating a metal inside a high-vacuum chamber and then backfilling the chamber with inert gas [30]. These evaporated metal atoms would then collide with the gas atoms, causing them to lose kinetic energy and condenses into powder of small nano-crystals. These powders are then compacted under high pressure and vacuum into nearly fully dense nanocrystalline solids. The grain size distribution obtained from this method is usually very narrow. However, the major draws back of this method are its high porosity levels and imperfection bonding. Grain coarsening also occurs due to the high temperature during the compaction stage [31]. Mechanical milling consists of heavy cyclic deformation in powders until the final composition of the powders corresponds to a certain percentages of the respective initial constituents [25, 26]. A wide grain size distribution is obtained by this method. This technique is a popular method to prepare nanocrystalline materials because of its applicability to any material and simplicity. However, their main drawback includes contamination and grain coarsening during the consolidation stage. Electro-deposition consists of using electrical current to reduce cations of a desired material from a electrolyte solution and coating a conductive object on the substrate. Electro-deposition has many advantages over processing techniques and this includes its applicability to a wide variety of materials, low initial capital investment requirements and porosity-free finished products without a need for consolidation processing [27]. Furthermore, Shen et al. [32] and Lu et al.[33] had recently show that the right electro-deposition condition can produce a highly twinned structure which leads to enhanced ductility. The main drawback of this method is it is the difficulty to achieve high purity. Severe plastic deformation, such as high-pressure torsion, equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE), continuous confined shear straining and accumulative roll-bonding, uses extreme plastic straining to produce nanocrystalline materials by mechanisms such as grain fragmentation, dynamic recovery, and geometric re-crystallization [34]. It is the only technology that transformed conventional macro-grained metals directly into nanocrystalline materials without the need of potentially hazardous nano-sized powders. This is achieved by introducing very high shear deformations into the material under superimposed hydrostatic pressure. Two of the most commonly used methods are high-pressure torsion and ECAE [35]. In the study of the effect of ECAE on the microstructure of nanocrystalline copper, Dalla Torre et al [36] observed that the grains become more equi-axial and randomly orientation as the number of passes increases, as shown in Figure 2.5 Figure 2.5: Microstructure of ECAE copper subjected to (a) 1 passes (b) 2 passes (c) 4 passes (d) 8 passes (e) 12 passes and (f) 16 passes [36] 2.2.2 Mechanical Behavior of nanocrystalline materials Due to the small grain size and high volume fraction of grain boundaries, nanocrystalline materials exhibit significantly different properties and behavior as compared to their microcrystalline counterpart. The structure and mechanical behavior of nanocrystalline materials has been the subject of a lot of researchers interests both experimentally [37-43] and theoretically [44-50]. This section reviews the principal mechanical properties and behavior of nanocrystalline materials. 2.2.2.1 Strength and ductility Recent studies of nanocrystalline metals have shown that there is a five to ten fold increases in the strength and hardness as compared to their microcrystalline state [7, 36, 37, 51, 52]. This increase in the strength is due to the presence of grain boundaries impeding the nucleation and movement of dislocations. Since decreasing grain boundary size increases the number of barrier and the amount of applied stress necessary to move a dislocation across a grain boundary, this resulted in a much higher yield strength. The inverse relationship between grain size and strength is characterized by the Hall-Petch relationship [53, 54] as shown in equation (2.1). Eq (2.1) In equation (2.1), s is the mechanical strength, k is a material constant and d is the average grain size. Hence, nanocrystalline materials are expected to exhibit higher strength as compared to their microcrystalline counterpart. Figure 2.6 and Figure 2.7 show the summary of hardness and yield strength from tensile test that are reported in the literature. Indeed, hardness and yield strength of copper with a grain size of 10nm (3GPa) can be one order higher than their microcrystalline counterpart. To the larger specimens. Derivation from Hall-Petch relationship begins as the grain size approaches 30nm where the stresses needed to activate the dislocation multiplication via Frank-Read sources within the grains are too high and the plastic deformation is instead accommodated by grain boundaries sliding and migration.[12]. Furthermore, as the grain size reduces, the volume fraction of the grain boundaries and the triple points increases. Material properties will be more representative of the grain boundary activity [64] and this will resulting the strength to be inversely proportional to grain size instead of square roots of the grain size as predicted by Hall Petch relation [65]. Further reduction in the grain size will result in grain boundaries processes controlling the plastic deformation and reverse Hall-Petch effect, where the materials soften, will take place. Although sample defects had been account for the earlier experimental observation of reverse Hall-Petch effect[24], Swygenhoven et al [66] and Schiotz et al [47], using molecular simulation, was able to showed that nanocrystalline copper had the highest strength (about 2.3GPa ) at a grain size of 8nm and 10-15nm respectively. Conrad et al [67] pointed out that below this critical grain size, the mechanisms shifted to grain boundary-mediated from dislocation-mediated plasticity and this causes the material to become dependent on strain rate, temperature, Taylor orientation factor and presence of the type of dislocation. The yield stress of nanocrystalline copper was highly sensitive to strain rate even though it is a fcc materials. The strain rate sensitivity, m, in equation 2.2 a engineering parameter which measured the dependency of the strain rate and Figure 2.8 shows a summary of m as a function of grain size for copper specimen in the literature [51, 68-70]. Due to high localized dislocation activities at the grain boundaries which results in enhanced strain rate sensitivities in nanocrystalline materials, m increases drastically when the grain size is below 0.1 mm as shown in Figure 2.8. (2.2) Room temperature strain rate sensitivity was found to dependent on dislocation activities and grain boundaries diffusion [52, 71, 72]. Due to the negligible lattice diffusion at room temperature, the rate limiting process for microcrystalline copper was the gliding dislocation to cutting through forest dislocation, resulting in low strain rate sensitivities. However, due to the increasing presence of obstacles such as grain boundaries for nanocrystalline materials, the rate limiting process for smaller grain size was the interaction of dislocation and the grain boundaries, which is strain rate and temperature dependence. By considering the length scale of the dislocation and grain boundaries interaction, Cheng et al [52] proposed the following model for strain rate sensitivities . (2.3) z is the distance swept by the dislocation during activation, r is the dislocation density and a, a and b are the proportional factors. With this model, they will be able to predict higher strain rate sensitivities for nanocrystalline material produced by severe plastic deformation as compared to other technique. Since the twin boundaries in nanocrystalline or ultra fine grain copper served as a barriers for dislocation motion and nucleation which led to highly localized dislocations near the twin boundaries, the strain rate sensitivity of copper with high density of coherent twin boundaries was found to be higher than those without any twin boundaries [33]. Lastly, the increase enhanced strain rate sensitivity in nanocrystalline copper had been credited for it increases in strength and ductility. For example, Valiev et al [60] credited the enhanced strain rate sensitivity of 0.16 for the high ductility. In addition to a strong dependency on the strain rate, strength in nanocrystalline materials was also highly dependent on the temperature. Wang et al [73] observed that the yield strength for ultra fine grain copper with a grain size of 300nm increases from approximately 370MPa to 500MPa when the temperature reduces from room temperature to 77k. The authors attributed this increase in yield strength due to the absence of additional thermal deformation processes at 77k. This is consistent with Huang et al [74] observation where the temperature dependence of nanocrystalline copper with an increase in hardness of nanocrystalline copper with lowering the temperature is noted Ductility is another important characteristic of nanocrystalline materials. In microcrystalline materials, a reduction in grain size will increase the ductility due to the presence of grain boundaries acting as effective barriers to the propagation of micro-cracks[75]. However, nanocrystalline copper showed a lower strain to failure than that of their microcrystalline counterparts and this lacks in ductility was attributed to the presence of processing defects [76]. Recent advanced in processing of nanocrystalline materials offer materials with fairly good ductility in additional to ultra-high strength. Lu et al [10] reported that nanocrystalline copper with minimal flaw produced via electro-deposition had an elongation to fracture of 30%. Furthermore, Youssef et al [77] observed a 15.5% elongation to failure for defect free nanocrystalline copper produced via mechanical milling. Hence, it was possible for nanocrystalline copper to be both strong and ductile if the processing artifacts are minimized. The failure are usually consists of dimples several time larger than their grain size was normally found on the failure morphology of nanocrystalline materials and Kumar et al [78] presented the following model for initiation and hence the eventual failure of nanocrystalline materials. Furthermore, the presence of shear region was found to be due to shear localization since the ratio of strain hardening rate to prevailing stress was usually small [79, 80]. Figure 2.9: Schematic illustration of fracture in nanocrystalline material postulated by Kumar et al [78] 2.2.2.2 Creeps Nanocrystalline materials are expected to creep during room temperature. This is because Due to the higher fraction of grain boundaries and triple junctions, self diffusivity of nanocrystalline material had been shown to increase by an order of three as compared to microcrystalline copper [81]. Since creep behavior was dependent on grain size and diffusivity, with creep rate increases with an increase in diffusivity or a decrease in grain size, the creep temperature for nanocrystalline copper was known to be a small fraction of melting temperature (about 0.22 of its melting points). Furthermore, since creep had always been cited as one of the reason for grain size softening in nanocrystalline materials, creeps were other important mechanical properties of nanocrystalline materials that had been gaining a lot of researchers attention. Due to the high volume fraction of grain boundaries and enhanced diffusivity rate