Mission & Strategy

Mission:


What an organization is trying to achieve in long term as formally declared in its mission statement. A mission statement is an organization’s vision translated into written form. In its leader view the direction of and purpose of the organization. It is the vital element in any attempt to motivate employees and give them a sense of priorities.

Mission statement: as a description or declaration of why the organization exists which provide a pattern within strategies are formulated.

Question addressed in mission statement:

1. What is the purpose of organization?
2. What is unique about organization?
3. What is its principal?
4. What are its values?
5. Where is it seen to be in 10years time?

Such as: “What you want is what you get”

Strategy:

Strategy refers the determination of basic long term objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of course of action.
Strategy response firms serious changes in the environment.
A strategy is an action that takes one or more of its goals. It is large scale, future oriented plan for interaction with the competitive environment to achieve objectives.
Such as-Apple strategy of new IPod launches which brings huge attention in all over the world.

Defined in other words strategy:

1. Where the business trying to get?
2. Where market should be a business compete?
3. How can the business perform better?
4. What resources are required?
5. What are internal and external factors?
6. What are the values and expectations?

One laptop

One Laptop per Child- is now with AMAZON !!!!!!

This year the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program will begin selling its XO laptop via Amazon in a reprise of its Give One Get One (G1G1) program, according to Ars Technical and several other outlets.

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization has signed a deal with Amazon to sell its low cost laptops. The online retailer will help with its next Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) programe that is due to begin in late November.

The new Inspiron Mini of Dell’s can be had for $349 and, while it lacks some cool features of the XO in terms of performance. Sure in a developing country $399 to a laptop Amazon gives a child but a donation of the $50 I save to Doctors without Borders or Action against Hunger would get children a heck of plenty of food and medicine.

However, under this scheme people can buy one of the XO laptops for themselves and donate the other to a school child in a developing nation.

It is hoped the deal with Amazon will iron out the problems OLPC encountered when it ran the G1G1 programe itself.

Novel model

The OLPC was set up to create and build a powerful laptop for school children in developing nations that sold in the millions and cost less than $100 (£56) and that Dreamed up by MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte.

The resulting XO laptop sports idiosyncratic green and white livery has wi-fi built in, can be powered by a pull cord, and comes loaded with educational software.

Many nations have expressed an interest in using the XO but relatively few started big projects that gave the machine to students and school children.

While many people expressed interest in participating the OLPC group hit problems in getting XO machines to customers. Production delays and delivery glitches led to many people canceling orders while OLPC sorted out the problems.

The new round of the G1G1 programe is due to start in late November and run until the end of 2008. It will only be open to US residents.

At the same time the OLPC group said it planned to launch the second generation of its laptop in 2010.

The XO-2 does away with a keyboard in favor of two touch screens one of which can be converted to a touch type screen.

OLPC hopes that the new version will also get closer to its long-stated ideal of producing a computer that costs less than $100.

The current versions of the XO laptop cost about $200 but the new generation is expected to be available for about $80.

Organization Arrangements

Organization Arrangements:

• Organization arrangement is a structured procedure of environmental process for developing the whole system with a defined framework. This framework is highlighting the process how organization will decide its activities. Actually, organization arrangements are a set up procedure for the visionary environment in developing the organization system.

Factors of organization arrangements:

Goals: goals means series of activities or a plan, plan for long term action oriented that describes what the organization want to achieve? Goals reflect the setting of organization’s vision and mission statement. Such as, to achieve sale of $10 in three years time goal should be quantifiable, consistent, realistic and achievable. It is the interim and ultimate time based measurements for implementing company’s objectives.

Strategies: an action that an organization takes to attain one or more its goals. It is large scale future oriented. A strategy also called framework for managerial decisions. Such as, Dell Inc, strategy is to direct selling strategy and it is profitable. So the organization can take that strategy that ore benefit able on its.

Structure: Grouping activities for attaining goals. That includes segmentation of task of diversity task.

Administrative policies and procedure: the favorable attitude of the organization will help to motivate the people like, training the people, developing their skills and promote them. The recommend task must define for each one so that it’s possible for everyone to achieve its goals. The brucratic system must be avoided. Everyone treated as equal. Japan put an example of it like; there is no retirement for the people work for life time.

Ipod Nano 4G

IPod Nano 4G:

Apple is the number one brand in MP3 players with the iPod line sitting far above its competitors on the sales charts. We haven't heard much from the Apple camp in respect to new products since it launched the iPhone 3G that is currently doing well in the marketplace.
Rumors have been circulating for a while now that Apple would soon introduce new iPod models. Engadget has a rendering of the new iPod nano that is advertising some sort of screen protector for the device.

Here is it. An anodized aluminum top and polished stainless steel back. Six eye catching colors. A larger, brighter display with the most pixels per inch of any Apple display, ever. iPod nano stirs up visual effects from the outside in.

And it’ll wow you for hours. Play up to 5 hours of video or up to 24 hours of audio on a single charge.1 all that staying power and a wafer-thin, 6.5-mm profile makes iPod nano one small big attraction.

• The 4G nano ditches the short, fat design that was not popular with the 3G nano and returns back to a tall, slim design much closer to the design of previous generation nano players. The 4G nano has a flat screen, but the player itself is rounded on the edges.
  

Renderings of a new iPod touch have surfaced as well that show it to be in a case very similar to that of the new iPhone 3G. The design change is really no surprise considering the old touch used the same chassis as the original iPhone. According toiLounge, the new iPod nano will measure 38.75mm x 90.75mm x 6.08mm. Those dimensions if accurate -would make the 4G nano slightly taller and thinner than previous nanos.
MacRumors reports that a September 9 press event from Apple has been confirmed. It is assumed the 4G iPod nano and 2G iPod touches will be introduced at this event.

APOPHIS

Apophis

Apophis belongs to a group called the "Aten asteroids", asteroids with an orbital semi-major axis less than one astronomical unit. This particular one has an orbital period about the Sun of 323 days, and its path brings it across Earth's orbit twice on each passage around the Sun.

Based upon the observed brightness, Apophis's length was estimated at 415 m (1350 ft); a more refined estimate based on spectroscopic observations at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii by Binzel, Rivkin, Bus, and Tokunaga (2005) is 350 m (1150 ft). Its mass is estimated to be 4.6×1010 kg.

Apophis was discovered on June 19, 2004, by Roy A. Tucker, David J. Tholen, and Fabrizio Bernardi of the NASA-funded University of Hawaii Asteroid Survey from Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. This group observed for two nights. The new object received the provisional designation 2004 MN4.


On December 18, the object was rediscovered from Australia by Gordon Garradd of the Siding Spring Survey, another NASA-funded NEA survey. Further observations from around the globe over the next several days allowed the Minor Planet Center to confirm the connection to the June discovery.

Naming

When first discovered, the object received the provisional designation 2004 MN4 (sometimes written 2004 MN4), and news and scientific articles about it referred to it by that name. When its orbit was sufficiently well calculated it received the permanent number 99942 (on June 24, 2005), the first numbered asteroid with Earth-impact solutions (to its orbit determination from observations).

Receiving a permanent number made it eligible for naming, and it promptly received the name "Apophis" as of July 19, 2005. Apophis is the Greek name of the Ancient Egyptian god Apep, "the Destroyer", who dwells in the eternal darkness of the Duat (underworld) and tries to destroy the Sun during its nightly passage.

Environmental Catastrophe-threat

The ultimate environmental catastrophe, the threat from other space


There are tens of millions of asteroids in the solar system, and several thousand moves in orbits that take them close to Earth. Sooner or later, one of them is going to hit it.

Several have done so in the earlier time. Earth's thick atmosphere makes it better protected than the moon: asteroids smaller than about 35 meters (115 feet) across will burn up before hitting its surface. Nevertheless, plenty of craters exist. The Earth Impact Database in Canada lists more than 170.
Fortunately, such impacts are relatively rare, at least on human timescales. Statisticians calculate that the risk to lives and property posed by meteorite strikes are roughly comparable with those posed by earthquakes.

Fortunate for humanity that technology has advanced to the point where it is possible, in principle, to avoid such a collision. In 1998 NASA agreed to try to find and catalogue, by 2008, 90% of those asteroids bigger than 1km in diameter that might pose a threat to Earth. Any deemed dangerous would have to be pushed into a safer orbit. A nuclear blast could simply split one large asteroid into several smaller ones, some of which could still be on a collision course.

Other plans have been suggested. One is to use a high-speed spaceship simply to ram the asteroid out of the way; another is to land a craft on the rock's surface and use its engines to maneuver the asteroid to safety. A subtler method is to park a spaceship nearby and use its tiny gravity to pull the asteroid gradually off course. For now, all such suggestions are theoretical, although the European Space Agency is planning a mission, named Don Quijote, to test the ramming tactic in 2011.

These schemes offer consolation, but any effort to deflect an asteroid requires plenty of advance warning, and that may not always be available. NASA has so far catalogued only the very largest, "civilization-killing" asteroids. Plenty of smaller ones remain undiscovered, and they could inflict considerable damage.

Space Vacations

Price of space vacations


The cost of flying to the international space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship has increased from $25 million earlier this year to between $30 million and $40 million for trips planned in 2008 and 2009.

A U.S. dollar currently is worth about 25½ Russian rubles, compared with 32 rubles in 2002.

Five space tourists have paid $20 million to $25 million to visit the space station via the Soyuz vehicles through trips arranged by Space Adventures. The company announced Wednesday that two more Soyuz seats have been purchased for tourists to fly in 2008 and 2009.

About a dozen prospective space tourists are in the process of reserving flights to the space station, even as the number of available seats on the three-man Soyuz vehicles is likely to diminish after space shuttles are grounded in 2010.

NASA is going to rely on the Soyuz vehicles to deliver astronauts to the space station between the end of the shuttle program in 2010 and the expected first manned flight in 2015 of the next-generation spacecraft, Orion, which NASA hopes takes astronauts back to the moon by 2020. Additionally, the three-member space station crew, consisting of U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, is expected to double in size in 2009.

Factors of Organization Development

Factors of Organization development:

Organization development channels the intelligence, experience and creativity of organization members in systematic, participative, programs in which the members themselves find solutions to their most pressing challenges-a powerful formula for change.

Factors like, Knowledge, Skills, Ability, Interest and willingness.

Knowledge: OD applies knowledge and theory. Drawing the framework with sustainable strategies applied in different discipline. Organization itself develop by the knowledgeable people. If we consider the people are the resources then it will be also burden if they are not knowledgeable or if they do not know their job. Such as, to be a doctor you need to have the education of this discipline or to be an architect you should have sound knowledge of this field.

Skills: The skills are required to work effectively. In a world skillful personnel are essentials in terms of developing as they require to perform the task most efficiently.

Such as, the skills that one like, suppose Mr. A has 2 factory and he appointed 2 manager and now he wants to open a new factory , for this he is looking for a manager. So, he decided to visit his 2 remaining factory in a certain day. In one factory he witnessed the X manager, he is very busy to work efficiently and control very the production activities well but in another factory the Y manager, he is enjoying a leisure time after his daily routine task. It is his skills that he (Y) manager perform his work very well and enjoying his time after work. Now the question may arise which one will be chosen for the next factory, the definite answer will Mr. A will choose Y because he is so skillful that he can perform his activity with less time i.e. efficiently.

Ability: the development occurs with the creative and innovative people. The expanding growth of market wants new ideas, new product, and new things.

Such as, advertising of Microsoft is the creation of innovative people who thinks extra, who thinks more.

Interest: is the aspiration to make expansion. The interest is to focus on further development or what you want more?

Such as, the journey of Microsoft was not expanding in a day, taking interest and aspiration of achieving more increasing the growth.

Willingness: an arrangement for accelerating its pace by creating charity or social organization etc.

MICROSOFT is moving

MICROSOFT is moving to protect consumer privacy and advertising and has called on the internet industry to support it.

MICROSOFT is moving to protect consumer privacy in web search and advertising and has called on the internet industry to support it.

"We think it's time for an industry-wide dialogue," Peter Cullen, Microsoft's chief privacy officer, said in an interview. "The current patchwork of protections and how companies explain them is really confusing to consumers."

Specifically, Microsoft said it would make all web search query data anonymous after eighteen months on its "Live Search" service, unless it receives user consent to store it longer.

Microsoft planned to store customer search data separately, email addresses or phone numbers and take steps to ensure no unauthorized correlation of these types of data could be made. It would also permanently remove "cookie" user identification data.

"Microsoft is going to do a more thorough scrub of customer data once it is too old," said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University who served as US privacy czar in the 1990s. "Previously, the practice was to do a partial scrub."

As part of Microsoft's push, Ask.com, the web search business of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, has agreed to join Microsoft in calling on the industry to adopt a common set of privacy practices for data collection, commercial use and consumer protection in search and online advertising.

Microsoft's initiatives follow recent moves by Google, concerned at how rapid advances in search technology may pose unprecedented threats to consumer privacy.

Google set in motion industry efforts to limit how long web search data is stored by being first to say it will in the future cleanse personal information from its databases after 18 months. Microsoft is one-upping Google by making its move retroactive.
Google has stepped up its own efforts to reach compromises with European Union and US policy-makers in recent months.

Microsoft said it was taking new steps to notify users how technologies affected them, giving users more specific controls over their privacy and setting tighter limits on how long it kept search data.

Both Google and Microsoft have faced scrutiny from US and European regulators over their plans to merge with major players in the online advertising industry.

Google is seeking approval to buy advertising services firm DoubleClick for $US3.1 billion ($3.5 billion) , a move analysts said would more than double the number of web users to whom it serves up online ads. Similarly, Microsoft plans to buy diversified ad services company aQuantive, a DoubleClick rival, for $US6 billion. A shareholder meeting to approve the deal is set for August.

The DoubleClick deal, in particular, faces congressional hearings over the potential privacy issues that could arise from the concentration of data about consumer web-surfing habits, buying behavior and advertising data.

Organization development

Organization development::

Organization itself reflects the word “people” that denotes a true meaning of ‘development of people’. Organization development is the applied behavioral science that dedicated to improving organization and the people through the use of the theory and practice of planning change.

Organization development is a process for teaching people how to solve the problems, take advantages of opportunities and learn how to do that better and better over time.

Individuals in an organization likewise face multiple challenges. Simple survival counting that, to have an adequate job is a major challenge today in light of constant layoffs and cutbacks. All through new jobs are being created at record rates. Old jobs are destroyed at an accelerating pace “Knowledge” work is replacing “Muscle” work.

So the question may arise, is their any strategy available to help the people and organization to cope up and even to amplify in these vexing times. Fortunately, the answer is yes. A variety of solution exists and Organization Development is one of them.

Organization development focuses on issues related to the Human side of organization by finding ways to maximize the effectiveness of individual’s teams and the organization human and social processes.

So organization development is the organization strategy for improvement with a long term planning where the nature of this strategy should be competitive.

Organization development is a recent invention, started in1950s when the behavioral scientists stepped in the lore an technology of group dynamics attempted to apply that knowledge to improve team functioning an inter group relations in organizations.

Today, organization development represents one of the best strategies for coping with the rampant change occurring in the market place and society.

Robot Rule wire free Future?

Robot Rule wire free Future?

Wires haveno place in Intel's vision of the future. The company showed off developments in wire-free power transmission using a Wireless Resonant Energy Link -technology that transmits power without cords. It also shared its vision of coming decades full of robots, rapidly accelerating technology, and morphing gadgets that are whatever you want them to be.

Rattner said: "The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago. There is speculation that we may be approaching an intonation point where the rate of technology advancements is accelerating at an exponential rate, and machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason, in the not-so-distant future,"

Cutting the Cord

Perhaps the most practical of the concept products Intel debuted the Tesla-esque Wireless Resonant Energy Link (WREL) could enable users to recharge their laptops or mobile handsets simply by being in proximity of a transmitter. The technology consists of a source antenna and a device antenna, According to Kurs "A special-purpose circuit takes power from a regular wall outlet and uses that to excite electric currents in the source antenna. Those currents generate electromagnetic fields and the device antenna captures some of the power contained in them and feeds it to the gadget that one is interested in powering," he explained. Intel's version of the technology consists of two parts.

On 1 side is a transmitter, comprised of a dry loop and resonator with a coil and transmits energy. On the other side is a receive resonator and pickup loop, through which the device acquires the energy, said Sample. While researchers are still looking at form factors, usage models and extending the technology's range, no plans have been made to bring the technology to market, Sample told TechNewsWorld. However, WERL could be suitable to power household appliances such as refrigerators, lamps and televisions, Kurs said.

The Futures cape

Intel researchers are also looking at the uses of programmable matter, or "catoms"- micro-robots that can be used to build shape-shifting devices. Developed by research at Carnegie Mellon University, catoms, short for "claytronics atoms," were designed to form large-scale machines and mechanisms. They can be programmed from many different devices. The company is also researching a silicon technology that will extend Moore's Law for another 10 years or more. Researchers are investigating how to move beyond planar transistors to 3-D transistors, and exploring compound semiconductors as a way to replace silicon in the transistor channel.

The chipmaker also showed off two robot prototypes. Using a robotic hand, Rattner demonstrated the company's electric field pre-touch technology. Modeled after the sensing modality of fish that enables them to "feel" objects before they touch them, the technology gives robots the sense of touch. The second robot demonstrated technology that enabled it to recognize faces as well as interpret and execute generic commands with state-of-the-art motion planning, manipulations, perception and artificial intelligence.

iPhone: Security Flaw Found

iPhone: Security Flaw Found

Security experts have found a flaw in the Apple iPhone that allows hackers to take control of the device, the New York Times reported.

The researchers test the security of devices by hacking them, found that the Wi-Fi connectivity of the iPhone allowed them to take control of it and mine the wealth of private information the phones contain.

The story quotes Lynn Fox, spokeswoman for Apple, saying, "Apple takes security very seriously and has a great track record of addressing potential vulnerabilities before they can affect users."

Welcome iPhone:

Shortly Independent Security Evaluators decided to investigate how hard it would be for a remote adversary to compromise the private information stored on the device. Within 2 weeks of part time work they had successfully discovered vulnerability, developed a tool chain for working with the phone’s architecture and created a proof-of-concept exploit capable of delivering files from the user's iPhone to a remote attacker.
We have notified Apple of the vulnerability and proposed a patch. Apple is currently looking into it.

A member of our team, Dr. Charlie Miller, will be presenting the full details creating the exploit at Black Hat on August 2nd.

How the exploit works

There are several delivery vectors that an attacker might utilize to get a victim to open such a web page. Like: An attacker controlled wireless access point: Because the iPhone learns access points by name (SSID), if a user ever gets near an attacker-controlled access point with the same name (and encryption type) as an access point previously trusted by the user, the iPhone will automatically use the malicious access point. This allows the attacker to add the exploit to any web page browsed by the user by replacing the requested page with a page containing the exploit.

Robots in INDIA : The international finals of Robocon 2008

Robots in INDIA : The international finals of Robocon 2008

In Forthcoming world the robotic role of our all possibility making curious- furious, dramatic whatever, Beginning from today, the international finals of Robocon 2008 held at the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) campus, Initiated by the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU),, the competition will see robotic Govindas recreating the traditional dahi-handi scene, and will be attended by 17 teams from 16 countries.

Robocon is a prestigious international event for engineering students, which involves participants designing robots with a given theme. The theme of this year's finals is the Dahi-handi. The competition organized in different countries for the last 8 years.
The organizers emphasize that the theme reflect the culture and tradition of the host country, at the same time not very complicated to understand for the other participating countries. India first time hosts the finals. ABU deputy secretary, Nomuru Minami, who visited Pune to oversee the arrangements, said, "The theme of making human pyramids is interesting and not too difficult for the foreign teams to understand." The competition will see participation by different countries from Japan to Egypt. The team representing each country is the national-level winner of Robocon in that country.

The purpose of conducting this mega inter-collegiate competition is to motivate students to design and develop robots themselves. Over 500 foreign academicians and delegates, along with a number of national academicians and other students, will visit the city during the competition. Those who cannot be present at the venue can catch all the action live on Doordarshan

Human Blood from Stem Cells

Human Blood from Stem Cells


ACT-Advanced Cell Technology, Inc reported that it is possible to distinguish and mature human embryonic stem cells (HESCs) into functional oxygen carrying red blood cells under conditions suitable for scale-up.

The research at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Illinois, shows for the 1st time, the oxygen-carrying capacity of HESCs-origin the blood cells that is similar to normal transfusable RBCs (red blood cells), and that the cells respond to biochemical changes in a physiologically approach.

Robert Lanza said "Limitations in the supply of blood can have potentially life-threatening consequences for patients with massive blood loss,"

M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at ACT, and senior author of the study. "Embryonic stem cells represent a new source of cells that can be circulated and expanded indefinitely, providing a potentially infinite source of red blood cells for human therapy. We can currently generate 10 to 100 billion red blood cells from a single six well plate of the stem cells. The identification of a stem cell line with "O -" blood-type would permit the production of compatible "universal donor" blood. We also have work underway to generate reprogrammed (iPS) stem cells from individuals with universal-donor blood."

Actually, the efficient and controlled discrimination of hESCs into homogeneous RBC (Red blood cells) populations has not been achieved in earlier time. Now, this paper is going to explain for the 1st time, the generation of RBCs from hESCs with oxygen-transporting capacity, and that the functional properties of these cells are similar to those of normal erythrocytes.

Multiple stem cell lines stimulated to undertake distinction in vitro to form functional RBCs (blood like-A,B,O, and both RhD+ and RhD-)

Although an alternative sources of progenitors for transfusable RBCs have been examined, including cord blood, bone marrow and peripheral blood, these sources embody donor limited sources of RBCs. Moreover, the low prevalence of (O-) type blood in the general population further intensifies the consequences of blood shortages for emergency situations and battlefield trauma care, where the need for blood typing can enforce serious delays in initiating transfusions.

Another crucial concern of hESC is whether they can be enucleated in vitro. "We show that up to 65% of the blood cells underwent multiple maturation events that resulted in the extrusion of the nucleus," stated Shi-Jiang Lu, Ph.D., Director of Differentiation at ACT and first author of the paper.

"They formed enucleated erythrocytes with a diameter of 6-8 (mu)m, which is similar to normal red blood cells. We also showed, the cells could express adult (beta)-globin and respond normally to biochemical changes."

"We believe this breakthrough could potentially facilitate numerous Americans," stated William M. Caldwell, CEO and Chairman of ACTC.

The researchers from Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) work together with the scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. The paper's other authors are Qiang Feng and Jennifer Park of ACT, Loyda Vida, Bao-Shiang Lee, and George Honig at the University of Florida, and Michael Strausbauch and Peter Wettstein at the Mayo Clinic.

http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/papbyrecent.dtl

Advanced Cell Technology Inc (ACT)

Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (ACT)



Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (ACT) is a biotechnology company applying cellular technology in the growing field of regenerative medicine.

The created blood cells were able to carry oxygen the same manner as the normal ones. Moreover, they emerge to be able to deliver it to the tissue correctly. The researchers further unveiled that 65% of these cells are able to reach full maturity and shed their nucleus.

The next objective of the company is to see how the cells function in living beings. They hope that one day that can apply this blood in human transfusions.

This new method however, as the cost of producing one unit of blood using this method raises to a few thousands dollars.