Thursday, January 10, 2008

Types Of Nuclear Weapons

There are two basic types of nuclear weapons. The first are weapons, which produce their explosive energy through nuclear fission reactions alone. These are known colloquially as atomic bombs, A-bombs, or fission bombs. In fission weapons, a mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is assembled into a supercritical mass—the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method), or by compressing a sub-critical sphere of material using chemical explosives to many times its original density (the "implosion" method). The latter approach is considered more sophisticated than the former, and only the latter approach can be used if plutonium is the fissile material.
A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range between the equivalent of less than a ton of TNT upwards to around 500,000 tons (500 kilotons) of TNT.
The second basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large amount of its energy through
nuclear fusion reactions, and can be over a thousand times more powerful than fission bombs as fusion reactions release much more energy per unit of mass than fission reactions. These are known as hydrogen bombs, H-bombs, thermonuclear bombs, or fusion bombs. Only six countries—United States, Russia, United Kingdom, People's Republic of China, France, and India—have detonated hydrogen bombs.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Association To Advance Collegiate Schools Of Business

AACSB International, The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), has granted specialized accreditation to more than 500 degree-granting business schools in 30 countries. It was founded in 1916. It is generally regarded as one of the world's most prestigious accreditors of business school programs, alongside EQUIS and the Association of MBAs. AACSB was known as the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business until 1997.

AACSB International The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business is the world’s first and largest accrediting organization for undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in business schools around the world, having granted international accreditation to more than 500 business schools in 30 countries. The Tampa, Florida (USA)-based organization is a non-profit association of educational institutions, corporations, and other organizations involved with business education.

Organization

AACSB was organized by a consortium of 16 business schools including Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Tulane University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Nebraska, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Yale University. In addition to accrediting schools around the world in both business and accounting, the association also is the professional development organization for the business education community, conducting a wide array of conference and seminar programs at various locations around the world. For many students seeking a quality business education and some companies seeking high-caliber business talent, one of the most important criteria to consider is international accreditation. By choosing an AACSB-accredited school, students can be more certain they have access to high quality faculty, continually updated curricula, and real-world relevance that prepares student for the job market. Prospective employers believe that graduates of AACSB-accredited schools are better prepared to perform.

Benefit To business students

With more than 500 schools accredited by AACSB around the world, there are many diverse approaches to business education. Accreditation assures prospective students that each school has a clearly defined mission, a faculty that is engaged in research and/or professional development, and clearly defined learning objectives and processes in place to measure whether or not students are achieving those objectives. Furthermore, all accredited schools must annually review their own operations to ensure that they are in line with their mission and long-term strategic plan. From a student's perspective, mission-based accreditation emphasizes the importance of conducting thorough research when going through the school selection process. While accreditation is an assurance that the school can deliver a quality education, it is incumbent upon the student to see if the mission of the school matches his/her goals and objectives.

Friday, January 4, 2008

Measures Of National Income And Output

Measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate the value of goods and services produced in an economy. They use a system of national accounts or national accounting first developed during the 1940s. Some of the more common measures are Gross National Product (GNP), Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross National Income (GNI), Net National Product (NNP), and Net National Income (NNI).

Also, a variety of alternative accounting measures have been proposed. Formerly, in the Soviet Union and its allies COMECON, an alternative measure called Net Material Product (NMI) was reported. Currently, some measures have been proposed to improve the accounting of changes in environmental assets; in this context the United States Congressional Budget Office concludes, "a gradual process of modifying measures of national economic performance is consistent with the history and development of the national accounts.

There are various ways of calculating these numbers. The expenditure approach determines aggregate demand, or Gross National Expenditure, by summing consumption, investment, government expenditure and net exports. The income approach and the closely related output approach sum wages, rents, interest, profits, non-income charges, and net foreign factor income earned. The three methods must yield the same result because total expenditures on goods and services (GNE) must by definition equal the value of goods and services produced (GNP) which must equal total income paid to the factors that produced the goods and services (GNI).

In fact, minor differences are obtained from the various methods due to changes in inventory levels. This is because goods in inventory have been produced (and therefore included in GDP), but not yet sold (and therefore not yet included in GNE). Similar timing issues can also cause a slight discrepancy between the value of goods produced (GDP) and the payments to the factors that produced the goods, particularly if inputs are purchased on credit.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Obstruction Of Justice

The crime of obstruction of justice includes crimes committed by judges, prosecutors, and attorneys’ general and elected officials in general. It is misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance in the conduct of the office. Most commonly a non-governmental official mainly because of prosecutorial discretion prosecutes it as a crime for false swearing. Prosecutors and attorneys general however commit obstruction of justice when they fail to prosecute judges and other government officials for malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance in office. Some of the Notable Examples of Obstruction of Justice are:
  • Martha Stewart was convicted of obstruction of justice, as well as other charges, for falsifying her trading records after teach her friend Sam Waksal, the CEO of Imclone, the company whose stock she sold, was being investigated for insider trading. It appears that Ms. Stewart's own trading activities did not meet the strict definition of insider trading, and the falsification of documents was intended merely to create an explanation for what was a suspicious trade. However, her actions made it more difficult to prove that Waksal had also sold his stock in anticipation of negative news of the lack of FDA approval for Imclone's product.
  • Former Vice-Presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice for his role in the investigation of a leak to reporters that named a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame. President George W. Bush commuted his prison sentence in July of 2007, just before Libby was about to serve a two and a half year prison sentence.
  • President Richard Nixon was being investigated for obstruction of justice for his alleged role in the cover-up of the break-in at the Watergate hotel during his 1972 re-election campaign. Although it is widely believed that Nixon had no foreknowledge of his re-election committee's "dirty tricks" campaign against Democratic presidential candidates that led to the break-in, it appears he was aware of it after the fact and planned to pay money to keep the participants quiet.
  • Conrad Black was convicted of obstruction of justice in July, 2007 for removing 13 boxes containing financial records from his office in Toronto after it had been sealed by a court order, returning the boxes a few days later. Black claimed he had taken the boxes because they contained personal items.