The Importance of Academic Journals Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Importance of Academic Journals - Essay Example One of the objects of analysis for the purpose of this assignment is the article â€Å"The Influence of Culture and Market Orientation of Service Brands: Insights from Irish Banking and Retail Firms† published in the Journal of Services Marketing. The essence of this journal is to analyze the fundamental relationship between a service firms culture and its brand as well as the development and implementation of brand values. The journal is written by two professors who have a reputation for an experience both in academia and in consultancy to firms in the service industry. Due to this, they use their experiences in the lecture halls, research work and in managing or consultancy to real business to examine two important things in business: the service sector and branding. The service sector is not given so much prominence in research. Most research work is done for companies that produce tangible products. Thus, these two professors produce a research on a topic that is fairly r are and they do this to give people in specialized niches like banking to get an insight into things and trends in the modern society. Healey identifies branding from three separate angles. First of all, they argue that a brand is the name of a product or service. The second facade is that a brand is the legal trademark of a given product or service. Thirdly, a brand is a belief or view that is connected to a given product or service. Davis identifies that brand encompasses the perception or the kind of emotion that a given product or service invokes in a person when it is mentioned. Thus, Barclays can be seen as a brand on its own. Barclays comes with a unique business identity that has a legal existence that is separate from its owners. Additionally, Barclays incites some kind of mindset or emotions in people who hear about it.

Volatile Organic Compounds in School Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Volatile Organic Compounds in School - Essay Example VOCs, as the name suggests are carbon compounds that lend themselves to becoming gases or vapors with relative ease. As such they are emitted in the surrounding environment. VOCs contain not just carbon, but a host of other common elements present in such compounds, including the following: sulfur, oxygen, hydrogen, bromine, nitrogen, fluorine (US National Library of Medicine). The relative ease with which they are released into the atmosphere is attributed to the low boiling points of VOCs, pegged at below 100 degrees Celsius, lending them to be easily released into the atmosphere as gases. Many of the VOCs in the environment are said to be manufactured by man, as chemicals that are in use in manufacturing. Paints, refrigerants, pharmaceutical chemicals, adhesives, products derived from petroleum, and several other products require VOCs for their manufacture. Most often they are located in urban areas, making up the constituents of agents for dry cleaning, thinners for paint, solven ts, and different kinds of fuels (US Geological Survey) The literature further notes that in urban places, VOCs are of greater concentration, and within that urban setting, VOC concentrations are almost always of greater magnitude in enclosed indoor environments as compared to outside environments, where VOCs tend to disperse into the greater atmosphere (United States Environmental Protection Agency). Meanwhile, the adverse health effects of short-run and long-run exposure to VOCs are well documented in the literature. They include asthma symptoms being aggravated, dizziness, skin, nose, eyes and throat irritation, vomiting, cancer, impairment of the nervous system, and damage to internal organs, notably the liver and the kidney. Differing VOC types also have other specific adverse effects on human health. Benzene, a common VOC, is of special focus among health experts, for their prevalence, and for their known highly carcinogenic properties (Minnesota Department of Health; US Natio nal Library of Medicine). II. Volatile Organic Compounds - Prevalence VOCs are more prevalent than is sometimes acknowledged, owing to their presence in a wide variety of manufactured products, and the wide use of such manufactured products in urban environments. This puts an increased risk of toxic harm to human beings living in urban areas. The list in the Introduction is non-exhaustive, and to it can be added a large number of products that people may or may not already associate with VOCs: furnishings for buildings, materials for buildings, printers and copiers present in the office, copy paper not containing carbon, correction fluid, adhesives, glues, markers, solutions used in photography, pesticides, materials used for cleaning, strippers of paint, lacquers and other paints (United States Environmental Protection Agency). In the home, meanwhile, it is hard to avoid VOCs as well, largely because they are incorporated into many of the products that are vital to the maintenance of households. As already mentioned above, materials that are used to make houses contain VOCs, which later escape into the air, both indoors and into the greater outside environment. Cosmetic products of all kinds, materials used by hobbyists of all kinds, waxes, paints, and the varnishings commonly applied to home furniture all contain volatile organic compounds. Of course all sorts of fuels vital to maintaining homes all contain volat