The Horror that is Animal Testing - 970 Words

When you go to your local pharmacy and pick up medicine, do you know what animals have gone through to get it on the shelves? It is something we’ll never have to imagine going through, so why should animals? Animal testing is not necessary. Animals simply don’t have a choice if they want to be experimentd on. What makes me angry, is there are alternative methods to testing, so animals don’t need to suffer. Animals have to endure terrible pain, fear, and loneliness, which is cruel and mean on our part. The pros and cons to testing don’t even out. Cleary, animal testing needs to be put to a halting stop. Animals and humans are very much alike. Infact, this is one of the reasons we test on them, because our bodies are very similar. Animals and humans share emotions, including sadness, happiness, and fear. As much alike as we are, there are things that set us apart. One being that they are treated much more poorly than humans. Just because they don’t have rights, doesn’t mean it is acceptable to test on them . â€Å"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?† Jeremy Bentham states, perhaps with an opinion that animals can feel the same emotions as humans. I agree with this statement, knowing that animals also have a heart.The simple fact they cannot talk should not determine their fate. Imagine the roles reversed. You are the animals, and they are human.You don’t have a say in what you can and can’t do. In addition, you areShow MoreRelatedHorrors of Animal Testing Essay657 Words   |  3 PagesAnimal testing for human safety is inhumane and must be banned. Beloved house pets such as rodents, rabbits and even dogs are being tested on all over the world. These powerless and voiceless animals are intentionally given dreadful diseases to find cures while scientists could be finding alternative ways of testing instead of using our furry friends. Furthermore, the tests are not precise because there have been products found to cause cancer in animals but also cures human ailments. Why are humansRead More Horrors of Animal Research, Testing, and Experimentation Essay1648 Words   |  7 PagesThe Horrors of Animal Testing    The torture and murder of millions of animals annually has been occurring for centuries now. Every year we ignore it, and every year the numbers grow. The act of vivisection or the practice of experimenting on animals began because of religious prohibitions against dissection of human corpses. After religious leaders lifted these prohibitions, it was too late. Vivisection had become a major part of medical and educational research. As well as major part of productRead MoreAnimals Is Inhumane, And Animal Testing853 Words   |  4 PagesFollowing along, testing on animals is inhumane, and animal testing, an unbearable act, is universally unwanted by all. Not just animal lovers peering in through the outside disapprove or have a disliking for the tests, but also those from within (and not just the animals) have a distaste for the tests too. Animal testing may hope to advance humans (and lifestyles), whilst preventing or delaying deaths and unnecessarily assuring a cosmetic’s sa fety, but (ironically) at the expense or reverse ofRead MoreAnimal Experimentation Essay812 Words   |  4 Pagesyears now people have been using animal experimentation to create new ways to help save the human race. There are people who believe that it does help, and that it is necessary to continue, while others oppose and want to fight for the elimination of animal experimentation. Scientists fight for the cures needed to help man kind, but struggle to do so as people fight against their work in progress. But as Jennifer A. Hurley stated, â€Å"History has already shown that animal experimentation is not essentialRead MoreShould We Still Be Using Animals As Our Test Subjects?942 Words   |  4 PagesShould we still be using animals as our test subjects in 2014? Some people say animal testing is good because it helps us find cures to serious illnesses, but in fact the chances of a cure which works on humans has a very slim success to failure ratio. The best DNA match for human s are humans themselves. I strongly believe that we should not be testing on animals and should be using alternative testing methods such as in vitro (test tube) or in silico (computer modelling). One of the main reasonsRead MoreAnimal Testing Is Morally Wrong? Essay1373 Words   |  6 PagesHumans are animals, and as such it is morally wrong to use them to test pharmaceuticals intended for use by humans. Those who support animal experimentation believe it is a necessary evil, in part due to the false information put out by the media. The so-called benefits of animal testing have not helped humans for years, yet in many countries the law still requires researchers use animals to test their medications. In fact, although alternatives have been found, few steps have been taken to put anRead MoreAnimal Testing Is Morally Wrong? Essay1305 Words   |  6 PagesSeeing as humans are animals it is morally wrong to use animals to test human products. Due to the false information put out by the media, those who support animal believe what the media states about it being a necessary evil. The so-called benefits from animal testing have not helped humans for years, but is now legally re quired in many countries. Although alternatives have been found, few steps have been taken to put an end to animal experimentation. The way activists present their argument isRead MorePersuasive Essay On Animal Testing1521 Words   |  7 Pagesmillion animals are killed each year in the name of animal testing. Now as some might say that sacrifice is needed for the common good, it is safe to say that animal testing may be taking it over the top to get such test results for the common good. Animal testing has been a common practice for many years to get results and side effects for food, drugs, pesticides, beauty products, and just about everything one uses in an average day. But now, in the modern world where ethics and animals rightsRead MoreAnimal Testing Is An Act Of Animal Cruelty952 Words   |  4 Pagesmillions of animals are stuck inside cold, locked cages in laboratories across the country. They dwindle in pain, throb with loneliness, and yearn to roam free and use their ow n minds. Instead, all they do is lie and wait in despair for the next terrifying and agonizing operation that is to be performed on them. They shudder and wince in fear whenever someone walks past their cage. After surviving lives of pain, isolation, and horror, near to all of them will be killed. Although animal testing bringsRead MoreVivisection Essay example1710 Words   |  7 PagesEvery year in the USA about 70 million animals are experimented on (Monamy 34). Almost all these animals are euthanized after they are no longer needed. But I’m not going to focus on the moral aspect of this subject because that would be a never ending argument of opinions. After doing research I found that there are more important reasons why this practice should be modified. Our government’s dependence on vivisection should be toned down or totally replaced because it is misleading, its faulty

Interplanetary Internet from NASA’s experiment Free Essays

ABSTRACT Internet has already revolutionized the way we live and work, but it is still in its infancy in some areas to provide ubiquitous connectivity in future. To solve the problem of Ubiquitous connectivity in communication – challenged areas Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) provides an opportunistic networking architecture. Opportunistic networks represent a class of networks where end-to-end continuous connectivity between source and destination is intermittent [1]. We will write a custom essay sample on Interplanetary Internet from NASA’s experiment or any similar topic only for you Order Now There are variety of challenged areas like areas as high latitudes, war prone areas or disastrous scenario where environmental considerations create impossibility for conventional mobile telephony and satellite coverage is inadequate or economically infeasible or because of infrastructure deployment constraints, or power source availability, or because of government policy decisions do not allow access. Moreover, DTN seeks to address the technical issues in heterogeneous networks to use every possible feasible access method to provide internetworking among existing types of wireless or wired networks like Internet, Mobile and WLAN [7]. Integrating DTN capabilities with the existing TCP/IP based Internet it aims to deliver Internet-like communications even for long variable delay, asynchronous as well as interrupted heterogeneous environment where existing transport protocol and congestion control mechanism have limitations [1]. Basic DTN architecture by IETF RFC involves use of ‘Bundle protocol’ which allows communication over multiple hops by means of ‘custody transfers’ andmessages in DTN are routed in store-and-forward manner on each node[2]. Research and development going on over last ten years has set out some challenges that need more focus before DTN becomes a day to day reality. In this Interim report I am focusing on Denial of Service (DoS) attacks due to open channel and multi-hop DTN transmission characteristics which can limit its full utilisation. First I will review the state-of-art in context of DTN security and attacks at present then I will analyse possible DoS attacks in DTN and their countermeasures. I will present a comprehensive resilience mechanism to address the identified attacks, focusing on a critical metrics of performance. I will propose a simulation model and demonstrate the effectiveness of the newly proposed techniques through simulation using ONE simulator. CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1.1 Background and Context The emergence of the idea of Delay tolerant networking started in late 1990 as ‘Interplanetary Internet’ from NASA’s experiment of deep space, high delay, store-and- forward networks [5]. That early work focused on protocols suitable for very long propagation delays of deep- space- interplanetary communications. Other early work includes military specific Disruption-Tolerant Networking due to scenarios of long delayed links, broken or intermittent links. Extending initial work purpose in 2002-03 researchers looked at other applicable scenarios, like terrestrial wireless networks, wireless sensor networks and other local area networks, where communication opportunities were not much certain. DTN has shown its suitability and strength to applications having long or unknown delays due to frequent disconnections and for interconnecting various heterogeneous networks, which commonly is not a conventional IP-based network. The development of wireless communication technologies made the Internet ubiquitously. Within the vision of ‘any time anywhere’ networking, efficient internetworking among existing types of wireless networks is inevitable. Integrating DTN networks as another access method into the existing network infrastructure allows the Internet to reach people who are hundreds of kilometres, or more away from existing infrastructure. Although Internet has already revolutionized the way we live and work, but it is still in its infancy in some areas. Challenges faced by current Internet Today’s Internet is based on end-to-end network connectivity based TCP/IP protocol model. It makes certain fundamental assumptions like continuous source destination connectivity, end – to- end low delay paths, low transmission error rate and bidirectional symmetrical data rate which applies a number of constraints to its reachability[1][5]. So the overall vision [6] of Future Internet should be to provide ubiquitous and pervasive networking for the users and applications in well-connected regions with keeping in mind communication challenged areas. The current Internet must develop to be more able of dealing with new evolving forms of content and their consumption but there are many challenges in the wide range of application requirements related to network heterogeneity as well as by the growing number of non-TCP/IP networks and mobile devices. 1.2 Motivation to DTN: 1.2.1 Challenged networks/environments for Internet Some regions are called ?communications challenged’ because they have little or negligible infrastructure that is required to support modern wireless and wired Internet communications. These Challenged environments are very heterogeneous and have characteristics [1] [5] such as End-to-end path may not exist creating Intermittent connectivity Node reachability and density may be Predictable (Planetary dynamics, scheduled vehicles, message ferries) Unpredictable (Sparse sensor networks, data mules, vehicular) Semi-predictable (animals, vehicles, etc.) Large, unpredictable, variable delays for transmission (deep space- moon: 3s, Mars: 2min, Pluto: 5h) Asymmetric/ asynchronous data rate which may be very low (acoustic underwater modems: 1 bit/s–few Kbit/s) High bit error rate (wireless, underwater, satellite) Using different transport protocols in different parts of the network making interactive communication impossible/ inefficient or unreliable Environment having very large round trip times (deep space, military or remote area communication) Many of the challenges have been tried to address using Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs) which try to solve high delay low bit rate links performance but it still demands end-to-end connection. 1.2.2 Challenges due to Mobility Mobility may create potential disconnection in end-to-end connectivity which produces challenges for current TCP/IP based Internet in form of: Communication link availability (not ubiquitous due to movement Limited Transmission range Communication link specially interactive communication link may be costly due to frequent movement of nodes Link may be unavailable due lack of battery power or storage Although Ad-hoc and Peer-to-Peer networks may solve the problem to some extend but there are limitations due to not enough mobile nodes available or willing nodes or nodes with incompatible devices. 1.3 DTN concept: Solution to Challenged environments and mobility DTN aims to provide solution for challenged environment where no end- to-end connection is available or it is disrupted. Delay Tolerant Network is a network over underlying heterogeneous networks having opportunistic encounter driven ‘store, carry and forward’ approach to provide connectivity on hop-by-hop basis. Most discussedcurrent approach to DTN is centred on an overlay protocol called the bundle protocol (BP).[11] 2.4 DTN Denial of service attack (DoS): Motivations DTN transmission is open channel and multi-hop which makes attacks in such situations an easier task. Traditional mechanisms to mitigate these attacks are not well sufficient to challenge environments where nodes are not connected for long periods of time and direct end-to-end communication is not possible and resources are scarce. Most of the solution available so far in literature address security in general and does not give attention to Denial of Service aspects in DTN. DoS is the most common attack in Internet communication and in DTN environments due to longer delays DoS attempts will be more effective. So there is need for more research explicitly considering DoS at all times. 1.5 Objectives of Project Study of delay tolerant network (DTN) architecture, its concepts and Bundle layer and how they differ from current networks, giving more emphases on security and attacks. First I will review the state-of-art in context of DTN security and attacks at present then I will analyse possible. Identify the common DoS attacks and their countermeasures, focussing on a scenario of communication in delay tolerant networks comprising mobile nodes. To design develop and test some resilience mechanism mechanism to address the identified attacks (nodes with address spoofing, false authentication and packet flooding), focusing on a critical metrics of performance using Simulator Simulation result will show how performance of a DTN network suffers when no Resilience scheme is used. 1.6 Overview of Dissertation: First I will review the state-of-art literature review in context of DTN architecture, security and analyse possible DoS attacks in DTN and their countermeasures. Then (in Ch-3) I will present an attack model and resilience mechanism for DoS attack. In next sections will follow ONE simulator overview and future work in direction of achieving objectives of project with Gantt chart and finally conclusion and references. CHAPTER 2: State-of-The-Art and Literature Review 2.1 Introduction DTN aims to provide usable Internet-way communications for long variable delays, asynchronous as well as interrupted heterogeneous environment where existing transport protocol and congestion control mechanism have limitations [1]. 2.2 Delay Tolerant Network history and Overview Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) have become a hot research topic among researchers and academicians since it was proposed by Kevin Fall in 2003 SIGCOMM seminar paper [1]. Vinton Cerf who is recognized as â€Å"one of the fathers of Internet† contributed in designing and defining its reference Architecture [2] in DTNRG for IETFdraft of RFC-4838. Basic DTN architecture by Internet Research Task Force’s Delay-Tolerant Networking Research Group (IRTF DTNRG) involves use of ‘Bundle protocol’ which allows communication over multiple hops by means of ‘custody transfers’ andmessages in DTN are routed in store-and-forward manner on each node[RFC-5050]. 2.3 Delay Tolerant Networking Definition and Contexts of DTNs in Literature A delay- or disruption-tolerant network has been defined in several ways in literature. In [1], the DTN is defined as challenged networks, which may not follow the assumptions of the Internet. In [2]RFC-4838 describes it as occasionally and opportunistically -connected networks that may comprise more than one different set of protocols. It includes a hop-by-hop transfer of message for reliable delivery. A DTN as stated in [5] was defined as a network of regional networks, where it serves as a store-and-forward overlay on top of (and providing interoperability between) regional networks (Internet, the MANETs, sensor network or any other network). 2.4 Constraints in Delay Tolerant Networks Node Constraints includes (a) Limited Memory (b) Limited and unreliable Power and Energy (c) limited transfer time for messages. Network Constraints are (a) Unreliable Communication (b) Collisions and latency Physical Limitations are (a) Unattended after deployment (b) Remotely managed Link constraints (a) long and varying delays (b) changeable mobility pattern of devices In Opportunistic networks such as Sensor/Actuator networks that use scheduled intermittent connectivity (to conserve power), because they have extremely limited node power, storage memory, and CPU processing capability. In Vehicular networks which use opportunistic (unpredictable) contact for message delivery. In Satellite networks having medium delays or periodic connectivity In Terrestrial wireless networks that connect mobile devices, including PDAs etc. In Underwater acoustic (sensor) networks having frequent interruptions with moderate delays. Outer (deep)-space networks (InterPlaNetary (IPN) Internet project). Military Ad-hoc Networks such as a military battlefield where systems operate in highly hostile environments having mobility, bad environmental factors, or regulations causing disconnections like intentional jamming. In Rural villages or developing regions low cost and remotely located networks that non-interactively and occasionally communicate with the Internet. For example remotely located schools, kiosks and computer centres are linked on occasional basis using satellite and data mules or local transport infrastructures. In sparsely connected ad hoc networks where some wireless devices or networks may fall outside the required communication range of each other. 2.5 Major DTN Applications and Examples Example of Projects involving DTN: [6,7] Diesel net. Haggle, Interplanetary Internet, BBN’s SPINDLE project, FirstMileSolutions SeNDT – Sensor Network with Delay Tolerance, Saratoga and HTTP-DTN, SNC Project, N4C Project, ZebraNet, FidoNet, SUMOWIN, Shared Wireless Infostation Model (SWIM) at Cornell, The Mindstream Project at the University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Time Equals Knowledge (TeK),World Wide Web Offline Explorer (WWWOFFLE), Bytewala DTN, Chianti, IBR-DTN etc. 2.6 Routing in DTN ** Traditional routing protocols operate under the assumptions of continuous connectivity, low delay and very low packet loss rate but in case of DTN opportunistic and disconnected links new routing protocols and system architectures are required to be developed. There are various types of DTNs based on their characteristics, but allows great flexibility for routing protocols in these networks based on their specific requirements. There are several DTN routing schemes proposed in the literature. Four major ones could be Epidemic routing: Epidemic routing simply makes multiple copies of packets to flood the network in a hope that any one of them will be delivered to the destination. This protocol performs best in terms of packet delivery and latency when network bandwidth and storage are unlimited. But it is not the case in practice. PROPHET: estimates delivery predictability to destinations using the history of encounters. MaxProp: computes a rank for each packet in terms of delivery probability and sorts packets in the transfer buffer accordingly. Upon transfer opportunity, packets are replicated in the order of their ranks Spray-and-Wait: follows a flooding scheme, but limits the total number of copies per packet. 2.6 Threats in DTN To understand the topic I will first examine the terminology, then the definitions of threats and DoS followed by discussion why DoS is potential problem in DTN. Security and attack literature reviews are given in next chapter. Threat: [20] Any circumstance or event (such as the existence of an attacker and vulnerabilities) with the potential to adversely impact a system through a security. Attack: Attempt to gain unauthorized access to a service, resource, or information, or the attempt to compromise integrity, availability, or confidentiality. It is irrelevant to success, which may or may not. Non DTN node threats: The first set of threats considered were those coming from network elements which are not directly part of the DTN. As an overlay network, bundles typically traverse multiple underlying networks. Any vulnerability in the bundle protocol can be exploited at any of those network elements [13]. Denial of Service (DoS): Classically, the definition of denial-of-service (DOS) involves three components: authorized users, a shared service, and a maximum waiting time [20][13]. In DoS Authorized users are said to deny service to other authorized users when they prevent access to or use of a shared service for longer than some maximum waiting time. More generally to denial-of-service in DTN: The result of any action that prevents any part of a DTN from functioning correctly or in a timely manner so that intended user cannot use it. It is directly a breach to availability [20]. 2.7 Denial of Service Attacks: [3]In addition to the basic resource consumption threats mentioned above there is also a range of denial of service (DoS) attacks which must be considered in the DTN context. DoS attacks can be mounted at any layer, from physical to application. In a DTN environment, the generally longer latencies involved will probably act to make DoS attempts more effective. As with all networks, security mechanisms will themselves create new DoS opportunities. Therefore whatever services and mechanisms are defined for DTN security should explicitly consider DoS. For example, mechanisms which involve certificate status checking (via some protocol to a key) based on received messages create new DoS opportunities since such lookups consume resources on both the receiving node and the key server. Common DoS attacks: Attacks that are common to DTNs are Dropping of packets, Flooding the network with unnecessary spurious packets, Spoofing a different node’s address to intercept all the packets destined to that node, orrupting routing states and Counterfeiting network acknowledgments Resource consumption (Battery exhaustion, creating routing loops) 2.8 Resource consumption Due to the resource-scarcity that characterizes DTNs, unauthorized access and use of DTN resources is a serious concern. Specifically, the following can consume DTN resources and be considered threats against a DTN infrastructure [13]: 1. Access by unauthorized entities, 2. Unauthorized applications controlling the DTN infrastructure, 3. Authorized applications sending bundles at a rate or class of service for which they lack permission. 4. Unauthorised bundle content modification -tempering 5. Compromised network elements, be they DTN nodes or not. In addition to these threats, DTN nodes can act to assist or amplifysuch resource consuming behaviour as follows: Forwarding bundles that were not sent by authorized DTN nodes. Generating reports not originally requested (e.g. if a bundle has been modified) Not detecting unplanned replays or other misbehaviours. DoS prevention: As described above, denial-of-service is a breach of the security characteristic of availability. Along with availability, confidentiality and integrity are the primary concerns of security. DoS cannot be prevented because most attacks leverage the use of routing and other network activity but there are countermeasures to mitigate it like: Spread spectrum techniques (using network coding) Proper authentication using either Public-key cryptography (computationally expensive) or Fast symmetric-key cryptography must be used sparingly Currently work has been done using Identity based cryptography (IBC) or Hierarchical based cryptography (HIBC). DTN Security Requirements: [5] According to DTNRG The emphasis of DTN security is on protecting the DTN infrastructure from unauthorized access and use Prevent access by unauthorized applications, Prevent unauthorized applications from asserting control over the DTN infrastructure, Prevent authorized applications from sending bundles at a rate or class of service for which they lack permission, Promptly detect and discard bundles that were not sent by authorized users, (early detection within infrastructure rather than at destination), Promptly detect and discard bundles whose headers have been modified Promptly detect and disable compromised entities Secondary emphasis is on providing optional end-to-end security services to bundle applications. CHAPTER 3: My proposed approach to DOS in DTN 3.1 Introduction In this section I summarise my analysis of previous work done in the areas of security and attacks in DTN, especially Denial of Service in DTN. Also I identify conditions that are can materialise an attack materialise. Then I show that based on these conditions the attack effectively happening in a representative model, with a set number of nodes and chosen network topology, routing schemes and security scheme. I also demonstrate that security and privacy are crucial in DTN and using cryptographic techniques we can secure DTN. I assert that because of constrained nature of DTN, participants have limited access to Trusted Authority. In view of these constraints, I propose a model based on a symmetric and asymmetric key cryptography to mitigate DOS attacks in DTN. My model is based on prior creation and distribution of keys to participants at setup stage, where each trusted participant knows keys of others. 3.1 Scenario My scenario is based on IETF DNRG architecture on Delay tolerant network. There are multiple operating groups in this DTN. Each group has its own trusted and well known registering agency/organisation which can work as an affiliation agency or service provider. These could be any mobile service provider or any company which will register its employees and knows them prior or any university/school/hospitals which can register members by verifying their identity and credentials. This means that members of this group are now trusted and known and are not malicious. With this set up we have limited authenticated participant nodes and we can avoid any malicious activity by unknown/ untrusted nodes. Such network is a special DTN and can also be useful for example in a conflict zone where participation by anonymous nodes is not desired. I consider a scenario in which these mutually trusted DTN mobile nodes exchange messages within its group (using PDA/Bluetooth devices/mobile phones) with one another after authentication phase is successful. Fig1: Used Scnario 3.2 Background/Review of Security and DOS in DTN In Literature Here I will discuss solutions and reviews based on literature survey on DTN security and DOS attacks. There is a particular lack of research papers addressing DOS attacks in DTN. Most work is based on assuming that routing or security mechanism of DTN will prevent DOS to some extent. Nevertheless these schemes can never underlie the necessity of authentication protocols. Farrell and Cahill [11] review the current state of DTN security work inspired by Internet. They identify and analyse threats for DTN and the security requirements in bundle protocol. Then they discuss open issues in bundle security and implementation issues in DTN security as follows. (1.) First set of threats are from outside network due to being overlay nature of DTN. (2.) modification of messages or bundles in transit for malicious purposes. (3.) Unauthorized use of scarce DTN resources like replay attacks and (4.) denial of service which can be mounted on any network layer, and (5.) confidentiality and integrity threats like changing the destination in bundle. The author propose for DOS that firstly using random values instead of counters for identifying messages will make it hard to guess valid message content. Secondly, accepting only fresh authenticated messages and dropping all others will be advantageous in mitigating attacks. Thirdly, authors point that networks and security protocols themselves can create new DOS if not carefully designed. I am building on the second concept in my proposal i.e. exchange message after successful authentication. Moreover, Farrell and Cahill [11] propose that security architecture is needed in which security services can be provided both on hop-by-hop and end-to-end basis, and additionally between two intermediary nodes in the middle of a route. They also mention that several open issues remain in DTN security like the implementation cost and level of complexity should not rise too high, since typically complicated solutions are not secure in practice. Another big open issue is key management [11][12] briefly addresses security services on an end-to-end basis (e.g. confidentiality and DoS), but does not go into specifics nor considers the case of initial communication between two nodes without any prior security context. [13]The Delay Tolerant Networking Research Group (IRTF-DTNRG) has produced an Internet draft for bundle security protocol specification [12] and an additional draft [13] explaining the security overview and design choices made in the specification. The draft which is near completion describes security headers that can be added to bundles to provide different security services. Security Blocks in Bundle security Specification: According to RFC draft [13] there are four types of security block that can be included in a bundle. These are the (1.)Bundle Authentication Block (BAB), (2.) Payload Integrity Block (PIB), (3.) Payload Confidentiality Block (PCB) and (4.) Extension Security Block (ESB). The BAB is used to assure the authenticity and integrity of the bundle along a single hop from forwarder to intermediate receiver. The PIB is used to assure the authenticity and integrity of the payload from the PIB security-source, which creates the PIB, to the PIB security-destination, which verifies the PIB authenticator. The PCB indicates that the payload has been encrypted, in whole or in part, at the PCB security-source in order to protect the bundle content while in transit to the PCB security-destination. PIB and PCB protect the payload. The ESB provides security for non-payload blocks in a bundle. ESB therefore is not applied to PIB or PCBs, and of course is not appropriate for either the payload block or primary block. Extension Blocks Bundle Payload Primary Blocks (Time Stamp, Life Span, Flags, Source EID, Destination EID, Report to EID, Custodian EID) Security Blocks (optional) BAB, PIB, PCB, ESB Each security block contains source and destination information and a cipher-suite defines the algorithms that should be used to process the received security headers. The security-sender and the cipher-suite information together determine the choice of keys. Different combinations of these four security headers can be used simultaneously. The need to authenticate bundles using Security blocks is very useful to protect against denial-of service (DOS) attacks against a bundle agent’s resources, but need more insight knowledge how to implement it. In [14], [15] (Seth and Kate) authors discuss the challenges of providing secure communication (i.e., confidentiality) in DTN and suggest employing Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) to let a source derive the destination public key from some associated identity string, e.g., an e-mail address. In [14] Seth et al. discuss in detail about rural area DTN and shows that traditional mechanisms including a combination of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and certificates issued by trusted third party are not suitable for DTN. They develop a security mechanism for DTN using Hierarchical Identity-Based Cryptography (HIBC) for creating secure channels, providing mutual authentication, and key revocation. [15] Kate et al. uses identity based cryptography (IBC) for source authentication and anonymous communication as well as message confidentiality are provided using IBC. Its main idea is to make an entity’s public key directly derivable from its publicly known identity information such as e-mail address. Eliminating the need for public-key certificates and their management makes IBC much more appealing for securing DTNs, where the need to transmit and check certificates has been identified as a significant limitation. I note that the existing techniques to secure DTNs are aimed to provide data confidentiality and authentication only. In [16] Burgess et al. suggested that some Delay tolerant networks coupled with replication-based routing protocols are intrinsically fault tolerant even without authentication mechanisms. They compare four different routing algorithms (MaxProp and its three variants) against four different attack models: dropping of packets, flooding of packets, routing table falsification and counterfeiting delivery acknowledgments. They distinguish between two types of attack; weak and strong attacks on the basis of prior knowledge of DTN scenario. One of the major themes in the paper is the two-fold benefit of epidemic-style packet dissemination in DTN routing which improves packet delivery rates and greater attack tolerance. However, this paper does not provide any attack specific simulation. In [22] authors poses the question of the necessity of authentication or the level of authentication required especially since authentication imposes overhead. Without authentication, the number of nodes willing to join the network may actually increase due to the easier deployment, resulting in better overall performance. They identify conditions for an attack and present an attack based on a combination of targeted flooding and acknowledgement counterfeiting. They suggested that generally, attacks become increasingly effective when the minimum hop count required increases. Coclusion: Identity-based cryptography requires a global trusted third party to guarantee for new nodes entering the network (by generating the necessary private keys). But IBC is no better than traditional PKI in terms of authentication and only a little better than traditional PKI in terms of encryption since network connectivity is not necessarily needed at the time of reception and decryption. In [17] authors propose a scheme that gives confidentiality and authentication to messages leveraging social contact information and past present affiliation of peers. Author evaluates the proposed scheme by analysing real-world social network data of Facebook, simulating communication scenarios, and through an informal security analysis. In [18] authors focus on DOS and describe few possible DOS attacks for DTN and propose a token based mechanism against those attacks. Authors suggest attack depends on routing protocol. Therefore, it is obvious that the routing protocol that maintains routing table like in-node states can be subject to severe DOS attacks. Spray-and-wait protocol is a stateless protocol in that nodes do not maintain any routing states; instead a tiny state is kept in each packet header. Their first approach is very trivial but second approach based on Token utilising collision count with every peer node provides countermeasures against spoofing and packet dropping in a limited scenario. There are many drawbacks in this approach for example an honest node always meets the same malicious node spoofing the same address and that honest node never meets with the actual address holder or any other adversary spoofing that address. In this case the honest node does not suspect this peer to be an adversary a nd always follows basic Spray and will transfer message to malicious node. In [19] A. Wood very broadly discusses about DOS attack taxonomy to identify the attacker, his capabilities, and the target of the attack, vulnerabilities used, and the end result. Although, author surveys vulnerabilities and give possible defences in Wireless sensor network some of which issues are useful in gaining insight of DOS attacks in DTN. According to author denial-of-service is the result of any action that prevents any part of a network from functioning correctly or in a timely manner. It is directly a breach to availability. In [2s0] authors also use Identity based cryptography to investigate how security in DTNs can be bootstrapped and present an improved scheme for authentication of fragments. We show that DTN with replicative routing protocols are not necessarily robust under known denial of service attacks if there are no authentication mechanism in place. Under many networking settings and mobility patterns, carefully designed attacks based on well-known techniques can cause considerable performance degradation. They investigate the attack effectiveness under various settings and identify properties of the networking environment that attribute to the vulnerability of the network. They observed that routing protocols which globally floods routing metadata to guide routing decisions are more susceptible to attacks as the routing metadata can be easily spoofed. They also observed that the minimum hop count required for packet delivery plays an important role. 3.3 Attack Model My objective is to determine how performance of a DTN network suffers when no authentication scheme is used. This also depends on other variables set aside in assumptions about the security model and what attacks I want to consider. By recognise that these little variations can cause DTN to perform badly even in the presence of few attackers, for example in case of extremely low mobility of nodes and one node positions itself at a crucial location along the routing path. If that node misbehaves, by dropping or flooding bundles, DTN will perform miserably at least along that routing path. I have chosen a hop by hop authentication model where main aim of adversary nodes is to create DOS by preventing the successful delivery of packets to their intended destinations. The adversary nodes can join together to launch a coordinated attack or a standalone adversary node can perform an opportunistic attack. 3.4 Authentication Without authentication no estimation can be formed about the identities of nodes and therefore the intentions of peers can be determined. In traditional TCP/IP, data frames are transmitted to all other nodes on a network. Each receiving node checks the destination address of each frame, and simply ignores any frame not addressed to its own MAC. Because it is a local broadcast domain, MAC address spoofing is fairly easy. Attackers can spoof address of any node and can become any node at any time including the destination node of the bundle. 3.5 Routing Model While routing is important consideration and routing data exchange between nodes is an important factor, the need for peer to peer and end to end authentication cannot be precluded. In my model I am ignoring any attacks based on routing data exchange and also at application layer such as spoofing requests that floods legitimate nodes to flood each other with unneeded traffic. 3.6 Mobility Model An attacker’s mobility can be variable. It can attack all nodes that come within its transmission range or it can choose to remain in the vicinity of one node in the network for extended periods. Tailgating is also possible. [6] Burgess et al call the latter approach a parasite attack – the most effective use of the attacker’s resources. 3.7 Attack types In the above situation DOS attacks are possible by misbehaving nodes. I am considering the following two: Packet Dropping: An adversary node does not replicate, forward or store a packet that is received from its peer. These nodes act like black holes in the network and impair packet propagation in the network, although routing choices such as Spray provide some resilience to such attacks, because additional copies of packets might exist at other locations. Address Spoofing: An adversary fakes the some other node’s address when it encounters another node in the network. An unsuspecting node sends packets to this malicious node and removes packets from its queue. The unsuspecting node might also delete the packet after delivery. If the malicious node receives packets with a high replication count, the successful delivery of such packets becomes highly unlikely. Spoofing created more problems in the network than dropping with respect to packet delivery. An attacker can also perform both types of attacks simultaneously. 3.8 Assumptions In this section I describe assumptions for my proposed resilience mechanism to prevent DOS attacks in DTN. I’m considering two schemes; one based on pre shared symmetric keys and other based on public key cryptography. There is a Trusted Authority is assumed not to be compromised and nodes can only be registered by proving their credentials. Registration Authority can be any service providing company or any local company or government organisation. Also malicious nodes cannot be registered and registered nodes are not malicious. Each node has a unique ID and I assume that all group nodes have enough power and storage capability to perform cryptographic operations. For pre pre-shared keys scheme, each node at registration phase is given a group key, which it uses for authenticating other nodes. For public key cryptography based scheme, each node is given a public- private key pair at registration phase. Also, each node maintains a table of every other node in the group and their public keys. This table is provided at registration phase. 3.9 Proposed Resilience Mechanism My proposed schemes are based on creating a mutually trusting network of nodes. Spoofing nodes cannot utilise this network because they cannot pass authentication checks. a) Scheme based on pre-shared group key: The communicating nodes thwart potential DOS attacks of packet flooding by malicious sender and packet dropping by malicious receiver. Nodes authenticate each other before sending packets. The intention is to find if a peer is spoofing someone’s address. This is done as follows. Two nodes N1 and N2 are part of the group, which shares the group key G that they received at registration phase and wants to authenticate each other. Node N1 generates a random token RN1 and encrypts is with the group key G and sends the encrypted message G[RN1] to N2 Node N2 decrypts G[RN1] with G and sends result G’[G[RN1]] to N2 Node N1 checks whether RN1 is equal to G’[G[RN1]], if mismatch, N1 terminates further communication, otherwise proceed to next steps Node N2 generates a random token RN2 and encrypts is with the group key G and sends the encrypted message G[RN2] to N1 Node N1 decrypts G[RN2] with G and sends result G’[G[RN2]] to N2 Node N2 checks whether RN2 is equal to G’[G[RN2]], if mismatch, N2 terminates further communication, otherwise proceed to next steps N1 and N2 exchanges message. The drawback of this scheme is if pre-shared group key is compromised a malicious node can spoof any other node and coordinated attacks can be very disastrous. b) Scheme based on public key cryptography: In this scheme each trusted node maintains a table of other nodes and their public keys. This list is originally provided by Trusted Authority and refreshed when subject node comes in contact with Trusted Authority opportunistically or at scheduled times. The communicating nodes authenticate each other based on each other’s public keys before sending packets. This is done as follows. Two nodes N1 and N2 are part of the group, with each having their public private key pair [NiPub, NiPvt] received at registration phase. N1 generates a random Token RN1 N1 creates encrypted Token N2pub[RN1] Using shared N2’s public key and sends to N2 N2 decrypts N2pub[RN1] using its private key and responds with N2pvt[N2pub[RN1]] N1 checks whether N2pvt[N2pub[RN1]] is equal to RN1. If mismatch, N1 terminates further communication, otherwise proceed to next steps N2 generates a random Token RN2 N2 creates encrypted Token N1pub[RN2] Using shared N1’s public key and sends to N1 N1 decrypts N1pub[RN2] using its private key and responds with N1pvt[N1pub[RN2]] N2 checks whether N1pvt[N1pub[RN2]] is equal to RN2. If mismatch, N2 terminates further communication, otherwise proceed to next steps N1 and N2 exchanges message. In both of these schemes one node needs to know if the bundle originates from a trusted community in order to prevent flooding attack by a malicious node and the bundle is sent to a trustworthy node in order to prevent packed dropping If a malicious node spoofs some other node’s address, it cannot decrypt the encrypted random token it received from its peer. Analysis of Proposed Mechanism: I have chosen the above mutual authentication schemes as a mechanism to prevent DOS attacks on DTN because this is a reliable way to identify malicious nodes and prevent packet flooding by rejecting packets from untrusted nodes and also prevent the risk of packet dropping by not sending packets to untrusted nodes. If a malicious node tries to send junk packets to legitimate nodes, the packets can be discarded at first contact with a legitimate node because a malicious node cannot authenticate itself to the network without pre-shared group key or public-private keys issued by Trusted Authority. There is a need to address current distribution of security information among nodes. This will involve key management and revocation issues. But this is part of more general DTN configuration management solution. 3.10 Simulation model and parameters Result Matrices: The simulation results will show that packet delivery rate decreases significantly in the presence of malicious nodes, i.e., packet droppers and/or address spoofers. The results will also show that delivery rate is increased with our countermeasures. In addition to that, I will also measure the overheads caused by the countermeasures in terms of number of copies of a single packet. One Simulator (used for simulation) The Opportunistic Networking Environment (ONE) simulator has been specially designed for evaluating DTN routing and application protocols. It is written in JAVA. It provides Generation of node movement using different movement models e.g. 1. Random Movement 2. Map based Random Movement 3. Human behaviour Based Movement Routing messages between nodes with various DTN routing algorithms and sender and receiver types. Visualizing both mobility and message passing in real time in its graphical user interface. I have run some scenarios and already Implement protocols in ONE like 1.) MaxProp 2.)Direct Delivery, 3.) Epidemic, 4.) First Contact, 5.) PROPHET 6.) Spray and Wait I have tried to read and understand Code of different classes, I have configured ONE using Eclipse Work done Fig: Screen shot of scenario One simulator test runs Five test runs were done on One Simulator using default epidemic routing with varying number of nodes from 60 to 180 in steps of 30. Some of the results are captured in the table below Nodes60 90 120 150 180 sim_time165 374 541 780 1096 delivered288 292 313 300 299 delivery_prob0.3876 0.3914 0.4196 0.4032 0.4024 hopcount_avg20.7396 15.2705 17.7636 15.12 12.9398 Future work I have chosen mutual authentication as a means to prevent DOS attacks because current implementation of DTN does not yet completely address the problem of address spoofing and packet dropping. Without the aid of some form of authentication either at node level or bundle level, it is difficult to discern malicious nodes. The bundle security protocol draft introduces four new security blocks in Bundle architecture (BAB, PIB) and their purposes. These blocks can be used to implement existing cryptographic techniques to provide some robust resilience against DOS and other common attacks in DTN. However this will involve development of reliable cipher suites and cryptosystems and this is an area of continued research. My further work will be mainly focused in the area of Bundle security specification. CHAPTER 4: Conclusion 4.1 Project Work Plan 5: References [1]K. Fall, â€Å"A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Internets,† SIGCOMM, August 2003. [2]Vinton Cerf, Scott Burleigh, Adrian Hooke, Leigh Torgerson, Robert Durst, Keith Scott, Kevin Fall, and Howard Weis, Delay-tolerant network architecture. DTNRG Internet Draft, March 2003 and IETF RFC 4838, informational, April 2007. [3]K. Scott and S. Burleigh, â€Å"Bundle Protocol Specification,† IETF RFC5050, experimental, November 2007. [4]K. Fall and S. Farrell, â€Å"DTN: an architectural retrospective,† Journal of Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 26 no. 5, pp. 828- 836, June 2008. [5]William D. Ivancic (NASA Glenn Research Center), â€Å"Security Analysis of DTN Architecture and Bundle Protocol Specification for Space-Based Networks†, IEEEAC paper1057, Version 4, Updated 2009:10:27 [6]DTN The State of the Art (http://wiki.n4c.eu/wiki/images/0/03/Proposal_description.pdf) [7] Challenged Internet Access Network Technology Infrastructure (CHIANTI March 2008) [7]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking [8]L. Wood, W. Eddy, P. Holiday: â€Å"A Bundle of Problems,† IEEE Aerospace conference, Big Sky, Montana, March 2009. [9]K. Scott and S. Burleigh, â€Å"Bundle Protocol Specification,† IETF RFC5050, experimental, November 2007. [10] F. Warthman. Delay tolerant networks tutorial..tnrg.org/docs/tutorials/warthman-1.1.pdf, 2003. [11] Stephen Farrell and Vinny Cahill. Security considerations in space and delay tolerant networks. In Proc. 2nd IEEE International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT’06), July 2006. [12] Stephen Farrell, Susan Symington, and Howard Weiss. Delay-Tolerant networking security overview.IRTF, DTN research group, October 2006. Draft version -03; expires in Expires: January 4, 2008. [13] S. Symington, S. Farrell, H. Weiss. Bundle Security Protocol Specification. http://www.dtnrg.org/draft-irtf-dtnrg-bundlesecurity-19.txt, Expires: September 12, 2011. [14] A Seth, U. Hengartner, and S. Keshav. Practical security for disconnected nodes. In First Workshop on Secure Network Protocols (NPSec), Revised 2006 version of the NPSec paper http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/a3seth/practical security v2.pdf. [15] A. Kate, G. Zaverucha, and U. Hengartner. Anonymity and security in delay tolerant networks. In Secure Comm 2007. [16] J. Burgess, G. D. Bissias, M. Corner, and B. N. Levine. Surviving attacks on disruption-tolerant networks without authentication. In MobiHoc ’07, pages 61–70, New York, NY, USA, 2007. ACM. [17] K. El Defrawy, J. Solis, G. Tsudik. Leveraging Social Contacts for Message Confidentiality in Delay-Tolerant Networks 33rd Annual IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference, Seattle, Washington, July 20-24, 2009 [18] Technical Report on ‘Denials in DTN’ by www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/14821/denialindtns.pdf?†¦ [19] Wood A. D. and Stankovic J. A. â€Å"A taxonomy for denial-of service attacks in wireless sensor networks†, in Handbook of Sensor Networks: Compact Wireless and Wired Sensing Systems, edited by Mohammad Ilyas and Imad Mahgoub, CRC Press LLC, 2005. [20] N. Asokan, K. Kostianinen, P. Ginzboorg, J. Ott, and C. Luo, â€Å"Towards securing disruption-tolerant networking,† Nokia Research Center, Tech. Rep. NRC-TR-2007-007. [21] Virgil D. Gligor. On denial-of-service in computer networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Data Engineering, pages 608.617. IEEE, 1986.) [22] Fai Cheong Choo, Mun Choon Chan and Ee-Chien Chang â€Å"Robustness of DTN against Routing Attacks,† COMSNET, Bangalore, Jan 4-9, 2010. [23] Ari Keranen, Jog Ott, and Teemu Karkkainen. The ONE Simulator for DTN Protocol Evaluation. In SIMUTools ’09: Proceedings of the 2nd Inter-national Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ICST. [24] One simulator tool website. http://www.netlab.tkk.fi/tutkimus/dtn/theone/. How to cite Interplanetary Internet from NASA’s experiment, Essay examples

Asymmetries in Consumer Credit Markets

Question: Discuss about the Asymmetries in Consumer Credit Markets. Answer: Introduction Financial management is the process of managing money in effective and efficient manner (Brigham and Ehrhardt 2013). It can be seen that there are different kinds of financial organization. One of the popular financial institutions is the payday lenders. Payday lenders are the companies that lend customers small amount of loan with a higher rate of interest. The borrowers will repay the loan after getting their salaries or wages (Dobbie and Skiba 2013). In Australia, Cash Converters is such payday lender. It has been seen that Cash Converters has exploited and trapped many customers with high interest debt cycle. This report attempts to analyze and evaluate the various aspects of Cash Converters scandal. The main operation of Cash Converters is to lend money on online basis; in addition, the company also has its web shop (cashconverters.com.au 2017). In the annual report of Cash Converters, this process of cash lending of this company has been presented in a responsible and ethical manner. It has been shown in the financial report the operations of Cash Converters is well complied with all the laws and regulations. Apart from this, the business operations have also followed the regulations of consumer protection act of the country (Ali, McRae and Ramsay 2015). As per the financial report of the organization, Cash Converters is committed to provide responsible lending to meet the ever-growing demand of the people. Many uncertainties can be seen regarding the legislation of short-term lending. Cash Converters has well responded to this legislative uncertainty and has introduced new business model in order to get access to the credit. A broker was appointed forcefully in Borrowers of Qu eensland in order to pay huge substantial brokerage fee (Banks et al. 2015). The amount of the required brokerage fee was under the laws of consumer credit and this was used in order to calculate the real rate of interest. In example, it can be shown that as per the proposed business model, a loan of $ 1200 would charge brokerage fees of $ 420. However, 160% was the real rate of interest. The various financial factors documented and portrayed in the financial statement of Cash Converters were different from the reality. In reality, many customers were charged with higher interest rate and huge credit fees (BANKS, DE SILVA and RUSSELL 2015). Different kinds of justice ethical theories state that the decision makers of the organizations should focus on the fair treatment with the people involved in the business. From the various business operations of Cash Converters, it can be understood that the business operations of Cash Converters were not ethical at all. Cash Converters uses to take advantage of the large customer base of the organization that does not have the repay capacity of the loan amount. According to the deontological class of ethical theories, the process of decision-making needs to be done properly (Broad 2014). In case of Cash Converters, the organization did not take into consideration the responsible lending practice under the threat of legal penalty. In addition, Cash Converters did not comply with all the rules and legislations. Cash Converters deceives a large number of people to take loans in a high interest rate and high fees that is against the ethics of business. The above discussion sheds light on the unethical business practices of Cash Converters. These unethical business operations of Cash Converters have major financial impact including in the share prices. As a result, a fall from $ 119448669 in the year 2015 to $ 113036461 in the year 2016 in personal book loan can be seen. Loan advances increased on online basis and the total amount of loan increased by 34 percent of the value. There are some key indicators for in Australia for cash advances; they are the average amount of loan, total amount of advances in principals and total number of customers who want to take loans. Various financial matters of Cash Converters have enough flexibility and the company has sufficient provision for cash flow. The provision for cash flow for the year 2016 was $ 55 million. Cash Converters hold material cash on its balance sheet on 31 December 2015. It can be seen that Cash Converters has introduced a deferred establishment fee that was not in the inter est cap rate of 49 percent. This deferred establishment fee has a major impact on the cash advance loan of seven month and ten month. The rate of annual interest rates in case of one month and seven months cash advance loan are 633 percent and 145 percent respectively. It can be seen that there were a loss of $ 21.5 million in the year of 2015 as compared with the profit of 2014 that was 24.2 million. This is a major drop in the profit (cashconverters.com 2017). Due to this massive loss in the year of 2015, Cash Converters was not able to declare dividend for the shareholders in that year. At the same time, an impairment charge of $ 7.6 million was discovered as major economic and legislative factors. In the year of 2015, the value of personal loan dropped to $ 104.5 million. The company incurred a legal fee of $ 3 million in order to settle the class action against them. Due to this class settlement, Cash Converters required to pay an amount of $ 20 million into a specific fund from its existing resources. This total amount is deductable for the purpose of tax and expenses in the current financial year. However, the bottom line of Cash Converters did not hit with this $ 23 million. A jump in the prices can be seen in the price of the shares after the class action against Cash Converters was over. All the imposed charges on Cash Converters was booked against the profit of the year of 2016. This will have a large impact on the cash flow of th e organization. In the year of 2016, the shares of Cash Converters were trading at 7.6 percent higher price. There are some major social responsibilities of the financial institutions. It is the utmost responsibility of the financial organizations to promote sustainable business practices. Sustainable development in the context of finance can be established by using the capital of the organizations in such a way that they can contribute to the well-being of the people (Brammer, Jackson and Matten 2012). The efficient management of risk is another way of sustainable development for the financial organizations. Some of the best practices of sustainable development in financial organizations are to make the people aware about sustainability, to make the people aware about the importance of resources of the nature and many others. Sustainable and social responsibilities help the financial organizations to set up financial goals for the long-term development of the organization along with the society. There are many principles by which an organization can involve in the process of social develop ment. The adoption of proper corporate social responsibility strategies can helps to increase the reputation of the financial organization in the society (Bravo, Matute and Pina 2012). Implementation of effective corporate governance and the implementation of the use of sustainable energy along with the process of clean production are being taken into consideration as good business opportunities. There are many ways by which sustainability can be implemented in the financial organizations. Some of these processes are the process of effective decision-making, the process of effective risk management strategy, the establishment of clean technologies and others. Most of the financial institutions all over the world have taken the initiatives of environmental conservatism for the betterment of the environment along with the people of the community. It is desired that the mission and vision of the financial organizations are based on environmental sustainability (Hilson 2012). Secured money lending can be seen as a part of financial services. In order to embed corporate social responsibility in the business operations, many financial organizations all over the world are adopting the strategy of establishment of the management and governance system. It is desired that the financial organizations like Cash Converters needs need to include corporate social responsibility in their various business operations like risk management system, screening of investments and many others. One of the major way out to establish sustainability for the financial organizations are the inclusion of the stakeholders of the company in the sustainability campaigns. With the help the stakeholders of the business, the financial organizations can overcome the robust challenge of sustainability. In this era, sustainability brings business opportunities for the financial organizations (Cheng, Ioannou and Serafeim 2014). Conclusion The aim of the report was to analyze and evaluate various aspects of the business model of Cash Converters. From the above discussion, it can be seen that the various business operations of Cash Converters are not ethical. Different kinds of ethical business theories state that the customers should not be deprived due to business. However, it can be seen that business operations of Cash Converters have exploited and deprived the customers. The result of this has affected the financial condition along with the share prices of Cash Converters in a negative way. Lastly, it is suggested that the financial organizations should implement the strategy of sustainably in their business processes. References About Us. (2017).cashconverters.com.au. Retrieved 12 April 2017, from https://www.cashconverters.com.au/about-us Ali, P., McRae, C.H. and Ramsay, I., 2015. Payday lending regulation and borrower vulnerability in the United Kingdom and Australia. BANKS, M., DE SILVA, A.S.H.T.O.N. and RUSSELL, R., 2015. TRENDS IN THE AUSTRALIAN SMALL LOAN MARKET. Banks, M., Marston, G., Russell, R. and Karger, H., 2015. In a perfect world it would be great if they didn't exist: How Australians experience payday loans.International Journal of Social Welfare,24(1), pp.37-47. Brammer, S., Jackson, G. and Matten, D., 2012. Corporate social responsibility and institutional theory: New perspectives on private governance.Socio-economic review,10(1), pp.3-28. Bravo, R., Matute, J. and Pina, J.M., 2012. Corporate social responsibility as a vehicle to reveal the corporate identity: A study focused on the websites of Spanish financial entities.Journal of Business Ethics,107(2), pp.129-146. Brigham, E.F. and Ehrhardt, M.C., 2013.Financial management: Theory practice. Cengage Learning. Broad, C.D., 2014.Five types of ethical theory(Vol. 2). Routledge. Cash Converters. (2017).Cashconverters.com. Retrieved 12 April 2017, from https://www.cashconverters.com/ Cheng, B., Ioannou, I. and Serafeim, G., 2014. Corporate social responsibility and access to finance.Strategic Management Journal,35(1), pp.1-23. Dobbie, W. and Skiba, P.M., 2013. Information asymmetries in consumer credit markets: Evidence from payday lending.American Economic Journal: Applied Economics,5(4), pp.256-282. Hilson, G., 2012. Corporate Social Responsibility in the extractive industries: Experiences from developing countries.Resources Policy,37(2), pp.131-137.

The Resiliency of African-American Families free essay sample

This paper examines the ability of African-American families to exhibit resiliency can be understood through a consideration of their historical circumstances This paper examines African-American history and the values that this community has, despite their history of slavery, discrimination and poverty. It examines the communitys strong commitment to education, a strong work orientation, and sense of responsibility. This paper also includes a study of African-American resiliency that was developed by the author in order to find out what adversities African-Americans faced in the pursuit of their education. The results of this study were then analyzed, and compared to the findings of prior research done on the subject. The survey included questions about age; experiences of racism, or discrimination; family structure during childhood and who helped raise them; and motivating factor for staying in school. From the paper: As slaves, black children were informally adopted and raised by other people in their immediate community rather than nuclear family arrangements. We will write a custom essay sample on The Resiliency of African-American Families or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page These extended family arrangements are still a prominent feature of contemporary African-American families and may be considered a major survival tool. The most important service provided by black kinship networks is support to single mothers, especially teen mothers. Hills research has revealed that kin provide a wide range of support to young single mothers, often enabling them to complete their education or to obtain a job. Finally, the religious beliefs and behavior are strengths that exist among African-American families. In his research, Hill found that 82 percent of black adults said that religion was very important in their lives.

Geography for Kids

Geography for Kids ThoughtCo includes a large collection of resources that are appropriate for children. This article provides easy access to the best of our resources for kids who are aspiring geographers, have a geography quiz coming up at school, or are part of a bee. Geography 101 As a starting point, Geography 101 provides a bunch of information about geography with links to articles all over ThoughtCo. Among others, youll find information on these topics: The definition of geography.The history of geography.The different branches and divisions of geography.Information on studying geography and working as a geographer. Preparing for the Geography Bee The National Geography Bee is for kids in the fourth through eighth grade. Kids can learn about the Bee and how to prepare. If your school is one of the 1,000 that participate in the Geography Bee, the information and links in this article can help your students prepare. All About Geography This article teaches kids some of the important basics of geography and answers questions such as these: What is geography?How does geography differ from geology?What do geographers do?How does one become a geographer? Basic Earth Facts This page for kids includes a listing of fun facts about the planet earth such as these: The size of the earth.The number of countries on our planet.The highest and lowest points on the surface of the earth.The age of the earth.And, more... Geography Quiz Think youre a geography expert? While this quiz might be a challenge to most kids, the true geographic fanatic will appreciate the challenge. Both kids and adults will test the depth of their geographic knowledge with these fifteen questions. U.S. State Capitals This is a great resource for kids who need to memorize the United States state capitals for their geography class. From Juneau (Alaska) to Augusta (Maine), youll find every capital along with population, education, and income information for each city.   Capitals of Every Country This listing is a great reference for kids studying the countries in geography class. Did you know that Yerevan is the capital of Armenia or that Paramaribo is the capital of Suriname? This article can help you brush up on your knowledge of important world cities. All About Physical Geography Physical geography is the branch of the science with which most people are familiar. It includes the study of  climates, flora, and fauna, the atmosphere, landscape features, erosion, and more. This article gives an overview of the physical geography and provides numerous links to further information. All About Cultural Geography Geography isnt all about mountains, bodies of water, and other physical features of the earth. With this article, youll learn about the human side of geography. Youll learn how languages, economics, governmental structures, and even the arts are connected to the physical features of our world. We hope these resources help you and your kids learn geography. Enjoy!

How To Solve Marketing Problems By Thinking Like A Startup

How To Solve Marketing Problems By Thinking Like A Startup You could probably name off a bajillion marketing problems in five minutes if I let you. The thing is,  you can solve a lot of those problems by thinking a little more like a startup and a lot less like a corporate company. Trust me on this. Its been a year and a half now since I became employee #5 at a then-one-year-old startup called . Before that, I was one of 2,000+ employees in a corporate company. Talk about a change of pace. What I used to do in seven  months in a corporate marketing team, I was now doing in three days. Literally. How To Solve Big #Marketing Problems By Thinking Like A StartupLooking back has been super eye-opening. And that curiosity got me  thinking: How is it possible that a startup with way less resources can create effective content more efficiently than a corporate company with seemingly endless resources? Answering  that question led me to analyze some of the biggest marketing problems  behind  prioritizing work, managing projects, and hitting deadlines. So here are the biggest truths corporate marketing teams could learn from a marketer in a startup to: Empower every member of your marketing team to become a rock star. Create content better and faster than ever before. Foster  a disruptive culture that publishes consistently and free of office bureaucracy. Its going to get deep here. Lessons learned from a year and a half of  #startup marketing.Problem #1: You  Need A Documented  Marketing  Strategy  Before You Start The thing that sucks right now:  Without publishing any content in the first place, that documented strategy of yours is just a big huge guess. Thats a lot of effort  you put into an internal document that doesnt  directly reach your audience. And that means theres absolutely no payout from it right now. :/ The  startup solution:  Start with clearly defined goal and a minimum viable plan. Give your team  a purpose and let them loose. Heres something for you to chew on: Some people  have a vested interest in selling you on all the reasons why you need a documented  strategy. Thats because that is the service they sell you through content marketing. Marketing plans are a nice  way to make you  feel like youve accomplished something without actually showing your audience the  value. Theres no way to literally know  if the strategy in your  plan will be successful or not. The truth is that you need to publish, analyze your success, and learn from your mistakes and successes to improve. In Poke The Box, Seth Godin advocates this idea  by writing: If you don’t ship, you actually haven’t started anything at all. At some point, your work has to intersect with the market. At some point, you need feedback as to whether or not it worked. Otherwise, it’s merely a hobby. In reality, you can start now by simply defining your  goal- the purpose- of what youd like to accomplish with content marketing. Then you can simply brainstorm the ways you could accomplish that goal, prioritize your project list, understand how youll measure success, and start creating content. Our co-founder, Garrett, constantly reminds all of us at that: The simplest approach is often the best place to start. So this isnt about creating content without strategy. Its that your strategy can be as simple as  focusing on inbound traffic to start because you cant convert readers who dont exist. You can use  survey data or blog comments to understand your audience without writing formal personas. You can prioritize your projects using an Evernote note and a few bullet points instead of investing in a professionally-designed strategic document that essentially carves your project  roadmap into stone without wiggle room to analyze what works and what doesnt. You can  improve your strategy as you analyze the results from the content you publish. Use the lean startup process to solve your #marketing problems.From there, look at your contents success or failure, learn from the data, and iterate. This concept is an applied theory from Eric Ries, who wrote  The Lean Startup. In that book, Eric mentions that startups can move faster with a simple, iterative process that helps your customers participate in building your product or service. It looks a bit like this: When you apply that concept to managing your marketing, it looks a bit like this: Focus on publishing content and iterating on what you know really works. The best time to start is now. Recommended Reading:  How To Track Your Marketing Objectives To Focus On Success Problem #2: Prevent Fires Instead Of Putting Them Out The thing that sucks right now: You feel like you need to take on every project you get asked to help out with. Its tough to say no to one-off projects when youre seen as a service center instead of a strategic part of your companys growth. In other words, you cant  complete strategic projects because emergencies  consume your work week. The startup solution: Rock an agile scrum and sprint process that prevents your team from being pulled off of your strategic projects because of someone elses lack of planning. Startups are known for being disruptive. One of the ways they make sure theyll ship on time is by following  agile processes that keep them 100% focused on projects that will  make a measurable difference. This process is often sprint planning combined with daily scrum meetings. And you can apply this same approach to your marketing: A scrum master, most likely you, assigns the team the complete list of projects theyll take on in a certain period of time. Thats usually the next two weeks. The team works together to agree on what projects will get done, when theyll be done, and how much  effort it will take. Once the team commits to the projects and deadlines, they will ship on time no matter what. When other hot projects come up, only the scrum master has the ability to stop or change projects in mid-sprint. That means that no one- not even your CEO- can steal time or take your team off the current sprint. That means your team stays focused while you plan the new requests into upcoming sprints.  That helps  everyone focus on  the right projects and gives you time to strategically determine which new projects to take on before you jump into  executing. Theres a saying Ive  seen around that goes something like this: Your lack of planning doesnt mean an emergency for me. Plan your work. Work your plan. Avoid the fire drills. Problem #3: But That Would Never Work Around Here And Projects Get Thrashed The Day Before Launch Heres a two-in-one for ya: The thing that sucks right now: You just read through the solution to problem #2 and you thought to yourself, Yeah, right! If I told our CEO that I wasnt going to complete her project first thing, shed be pissed. So the real problem is that you havent  gotten approval to manage your team your way without exceptions. The startup solution: Thrash your projects before you create them. Then get your sign-off- in writing if you have to- that youll ship  your way and on your deadline. Seth Godin has worked with huge corporate companies and came across this problem  a lot in his early professional life. His solution? Define the day youll ship. Youll publish on this day no matter what happens. Write down every single idea that could possibly funnel into your project. Get anyone involved who wants to be. Seth says, This is their big chance. Thrash and dream. Seth says, People focus on emergencies, not urgencies, and getting yourself (and them) to  stop working on tomorrows deadline and pitch in now isnt easy. Help your team decide what theyll create in the time frame available. Enter all of your ideas into a database. Then let everyone thrash your project before you even begin. Seth says, Make sure everyone understands that this is  the very last chance they have to make the project better. Create a blueprint of all the remaining ideas that will funnel into your project. Show the blueprint to the big wigs and ask, If I deliver what you approved, on budget and on time, will you ship it?' Dont move forward until you get your yes. Once you get your yes, build your project your way and ship on time. This process, as Seth outlines in Linch Pin, works well for both laying out how you want to manage your team (with sprints and the agile scrum process) and for managing single projects. Get approval- even if you have to get  something signed- then build. In their book, Sprint, Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz  explain that getting approval to create projects  that are on point from the start and end with a thrash-free process begin with  approval from a Decider. In this context, the Decider is someone who has  the potential to call shenanigans at the end of a project. So Jake and Co. went so far as to get written confirmation that their project would ship on time: In one sprint, the CEO send the design director an email that read, I hereby grant you all decision-making authority for this project. Absurd? Yes. Effective? Absolutely. This official power transfer added tremendous clarity While the process that Seth follows and the special design sprints that Jake and his team run are dramatically different, they have one thing in common: Get  approval, then work. Ship on time, every time. Problem #4.  Your Team Isnt Focused On The  Projects That Produce Repeatable, Measurable  Results The thing that sucks right now: You have so many things you could do, you have no idea how to prioritize them. To top it off, you have goals- like selling more- but you have no idea what specific projects are producing the best results and which ones you should stop doing. The startup solution: Concentrate  100% of  your resources on your 10x growth projects  and nothing else. I had the opportunity to listen to a  chief financial officer  speak about setting goals.  This guy talked about knowing your number, essentially saying: Everyone on your team should know  your goals and how they contribute to them. The only department  excluded from this is marketing. I remember getting super amped about becoming a data-driven marketer, and then being super disappointed by his last sentence. I even argued with the guy about it after he spoke! Its time to prove that #marketing is a revenue generator instead of a necessary cost center.The truth is, marketing can and should be very data driven. And every project should be measured against a clearly defined goal or you shouldnt do it. The first step is assessing what your gut is telling you is working, and understanding whats just a bunch of busywork. Create a list of all the projects you do on a regular basis, then ask yourself two simple questions: Is this on my to-do list simply because Ive always done it? What would happen if I stopped doing this project? From here, determine which projects are generating the biggest results toward your goals and replicate their success. Set up and track your goals for every project you take on with a tool like Google Analytics. Then simply stop doing the projects that are dead ends. Recommended Reading:  How To Boost Your Efficiency With A Content Strategy That Will Quadruple Your Results Problem #5: Your Content Approval Process  Needs An Approval Process The thing that sucks right now: The content you publish on a regular basis takes forever to finalize because you have too many people involved in your process. The startup solution: Give total publishing authority to your editor. Take everyone  involved in an approval process out of your workflow. Ive been loving a post from Jay Acunzo  ever since he published last year. Jay used to work at Google where he saw a pod structure applied to the sales team, and he  wrote about applying that same idea to a content marketing team. Heres a very memorable quote: team be huge, team be slow, team is gonna totally blow. So Jay advocates removing any unnecessary people from your process and focusing on three  key roles: Strategist: You, the person who has the vision, knows what to measure and how to do it, and plans the sprints your team will take on. Producer: The creative folks who actually make your content a reality. They turn strategy into assets. Marketer: The person who shares your content with the world. While you might have a few producers (lets say a writer, designer, or videographer), youll notice that Google doesnt focus on an approval person. The strategist- or editor- takes on that role by analyzing what works and what doesnt. Approval processes slow you down, make you miss your deadlines, and create a negative culture that feels like, They dont trust me. Use the steps from problem #3 to give yourself 100% control over what you create. Publish now, apologize later. Ask for forgiveness instead of approval.Empower your team to lead, make mistakes, fail fast, learn often, and repeat. Shooting for perfection is imperfect. Recommended Reading:  How To Rock A Content Development Process That Will Save You Tons Of Time Problem #6: Foster A Disruptive, Creative Culture The thing that sucks right now: Your company expects creatives to maintain status quo, work in a drab office, and show up from 8–5. Since youre a creative reading about marketing problems, you probably dont want to be doing whatever you should be doing right now. so does being  physically present in an office from  8–5 really make you more productive? The startup solution: Value diverse experiences and working styles. Look for team members who have more ambition than you. Dont track vacation time. Dont  demand that your team be omnipresent from  8–5 in the office. Jason Fried  gave one of the most popular TED Talks of all time: You know what Jason  found? Being present in an office does not necessarily equate to being productive. Go figure. Instead, look to build a team of people who have never fit in anywhere else. Find the misfits who just may work well together. Theyll be the ones who challenge the status quo to  create something you never thought was possible. So your designer wants to work from a coffee shop once in a while. Great. Your marketer needs to work from home because day care fell through. Fine. 4 p.m. on Friday rolls around and the team wants to share a beer together. Excellent. Thats actually been proven to increase creativity, by the way. Quit thinking theres a difference between work life and personal life. Its just one. And you choose to do what you do every day. Theres no difference between work and personal life. Its just one.Foster an environment that your team will love to come back to every morning. Respect their opinions and let them complete their work  the way that works best for them. After all, does it matter how things get done as long as you reach your goals together? What Are Your Marketing Problems? These were some of the marketing problems Ive experienced in the past and the ways Ive overcome them since joining . Id love to hear more about the challenges youre facing and your plans to resolve them. Let me know in the comments!

A race descrimination in the labor market Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

A race descrimination in the labor market - Essay Example Seeking to understand the particular employment challenges African-Americans face in the labor market, these scholars undertook an experiment which sought to discern whether or not potential employment candidates fared differently based upon race. The following is a brief overview of their study. Discrimination in the workforce affects people from all walks of life but as Bertrand & Mullainathan have shown, African-Americans face unique hurdles to their active employment in the United States today. Accordingly, job applicants with stereotypically sounding African-American names received â€Å"far fewer callbacks for each resume they send out† (Bertrand & Mullainathan 1,011). Seeking to understand the employment challenges facing African-Americans in the US labor market, these scholars do in fact find evidence to support their research claim. Aiming to explore differential treatment based upon race, these scholars interpret their findings to show that yes, racism, either real or latent, is prevalent in American society and can influence hiring decisions. Are the authors unbiased? No, but it is difficult to have researchers who are 100% unbiased and these scholars admit their initial assumptions prior to undertaking the research study. Bertrand & Mullainathan mention fr om the outset that â€Å"every measure of economic success reveals significant racial inequality in the U.S. labor market; compared to Whites, African-Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed and earn nearly 25% less when they are employed† (991). Thus, these scholars admit their preconceived notions and ideas and undertake a research study in order to understand whether such finding are warranted. What could the authors have done better? While their study is interesting and certainly relevant, it is not completely scientific. Accordingly, it is based upon

Administration Law Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Administration Law - Case Study Example In civil proceedings the question of what is a sufficient interest is a question of fact and degree taking into account all the circumstances of the case: R. v Inland Revenue Commissioners Ex p National Federation of Self Employed and Small Businesses Ltd [1982].Where a claimant is not directly affected by the action once the court is satisfied that (s)he is not simply a "meddlesome busybody"1 then it tries to balance the claimant's interest against the public importance of the issues and the remedy sought. The term 'interest' includes any connection between the claimant and the matter to which the claim relates. In R v Secretary of State for the Environment Ex p Rose Theatre Trust Ltd [1990] it was held that a desire to protect an historic site was not sufficient; only an unsuccessful applicant could appeal against a planning decision. Conversely the courts found a sufficient interest when a public spirited citizen sought judicial review of a serious public issue: R. v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Ex p Lord Rees-Mogg [1994].The Law Commission disapproved of the decision in the Rose Theatre case recommending that public interest applications be treated as having sufficient interest. ... We are therefore confident that BSS will be able to establish sufficient interest both within the context of vindicating the rule of law and that there is no other responsible challenger of the Home Secretary's decision. Having said this under CPR 54.17 the court has discretion to hear any person, which would allow the BSS to submit evidence on the issue, if not to actually commence the action for judicial review. (b) Generally judicial review is concerned with the lawfulness of the decision making process of public bodies to ensure that powers have not been abused or exceeded. BSS would have to establish that in reaching a decision the Home Secretary had erred in law in this manner. In Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] (the GCHQ case) Lord Diplock enumerated the categories under which judicial review might be sought: a) Illegality b) Irrationality c) Procedural impropriety or d) Further development on a case by case basis - particularly with regard to the principle of proportionality which will be important under Human Rights and EU administrative law. BSS could attempt to establish that the Home Secretary has acted illegally as he has misunderstood his powers under the law. For example we are told that BB has had two prison sentences each of which exceeded 9 months, and that by paragraph 9 of the Entry to the UK Rules, BB therefore would not normally be allowed admittance to the UK. The purpose of the rule seems to be to unequivocally exclude from this country persons who have been convicted anywhere of a criminal offences exceeding 9 months in duration. This would imply that the Home Secretary does not have discretion in the matter. However, we note that the Home

Race and Racial Group Essay Example for Free

Race and Racial Group Essay Search the Internet for groups and organizations promoting racial equality to help you complete this assignment. You may also refer to the Internet Resource Directory in Ch. 13 of Racial and Ethnic Groups. Using the information from the text and your web search: Identify one racial group from the list below:  · Hispanic American/Latino Write a 500- to 750-word paper from one of the perspectives below:  · A historian writing about the racial group in a book chapter  · A news reporter writing a newspaper article or blog entry about the racial group  · An individual member of the racial group, writing a personal letter to a friend who is not a member of that racial group Answer the following questions:  · What have been the experiences of this racial group throughout U. S. history?  · What have been the political, social, and cultural issues and concerns throughout American history?  · What legislation meant to constrain race within prejudicial boundaries was enacted? How did the various groups you researched fight this legislation? What legislation meant to alleviate prejudicial boundaries has been enacted? How did the various groups you researched promote this legislation? Assignment: Historical Report on Race Purpose of Assignment Students explore a variety of resources on racial equality and write a paper from a historical perspective relating to the experiences of a particular racial group in the United States. By understanding the history of experiences of various groups, students will be better prepared to connect historical experience to racial diversity today. Resource Required Internet Resource Directory in Ch. 13 of Racial and Ethnic Groups.

An Inspector Calls :: essays research papers

The finale of An Inspector Calls brought cheers but most of all it brought about confusion. It was obvious this play wasn’t going to lay out a neat plot for the audience; it was going to be a play that stays in your mind for the next few days. The intriguing part of this play was, for once, everyone didn’t just wake up, bleary-eyed to give the cast a meaningless clap. When I looked around, I saw people I would have pegged for being gone before the lights had dimmed, actually paying attention, and even more surprising, struggling after the play to comprehend the meaning. Inspector Goole’s role was clearly to make this family aware of the impact of seemingly trivial things they did in life. Sheila’s immediate reaction when she was at the store was to complain to the manager, but she realized how silly it was once Goole had pointed it out. Gerald and Eric saw messing around with â€Å"women of the town,† as they were kindly put, as merely a fun distraction, but Goole showed them how that led to pregnancy and how that can destroy a woman’s life. The husband and wife were so used to dismissing people in life that they didn’t think dismissing Eva Smith from a job and help, would matter anymore than anyone else they had brushed off. This was a family who simply acted with no conscience, and Goole was there to give them a conscience. Goole is right, â€Å"we are all responsible,† and this play served to teach their family, and the audience, a lesson. Every action we take in our lives is because of a choice we make, and we have to make sure those choices aren’t ones we are going to regret in years to come. Whether we are making fun of the autistic boy down the street, or making racist jokes, it is ultimately ourselves that we have to look in the mirror each day at and realize what we have done in our lifetime. The end of the play was ambiguous and it left the audience craving a clear and understandable ending. Were there more girls than just Eva Smith? Was Inspector Goole real? What really was real? Some people thought Goole was a spirit that had come to foretell the future, others thought there were multiple girls in the pictures, while a few thought it was the same girl just in a different pose.

A Critical Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s Disabled Essay

Wilfred Owen, a Soldier Poet who spent time in several military hospitals after being diagnosed with neurasthenia, wrote the poem â€Å"Disabled† while at Craiglockhart Hospital, after meeting Seigfried â€Å"Mad Jack† Sassoon. A look at Owen’s work shows that all of his famed war poems came after the meeting with Sassoon in August 1917 (Childs 49). In a statement on the effect the Sassoon meeting had on Owen’s poetry, Professor Peter Childs explains it was after the late-summer meeting that Owen began to use themes dealing with â€Å"breaking bodies and minds, in poems that see soldiers as wretches, ghosts, and sleepers† (49). Disabled,† which Childs lists because of its theme of â€Å"physical loss,† is interpreted by most critics as a poem that invites the reader to pity the above-knee, double-amputee veteran for the loss of his legs, which Owen depicts as the loss of his life. An analysis of this sort relies heavily on a stereotypical reading of disability, in which â€Å"people with disabilities are more dependent, childlike, passive, sensitive, and miserable† than their nondisabled counterparts, and â€Å"are depicted as pained by their fate† (Linton, 1998, p. 5). See more: how to write a good critical analysis essay Such a reading disregards not only the subject’s social impairment, which is directly addressed by Owen, but it also fails to consider the constructed identity of the subject, as defined by the language of the poem. A large reason for the imposition of pity comes from the pen of Owen, himself, who wrote that the chief concern in his poetry is â€Å"War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity† (Kendall, 2003, p. 30). Owen’s pity approach to poetry succeeded in protesting the war because it capitalized on human losses. Adrian Caesar makes it very clear that the experience of war was Owen’s reason for joining. Even after being hospitalized for neurasthenia, Owen chose to return to France because he knew his poetry had improved due to his experience in the trenches (Caesar, 1987, p. 79). Whatever the case, Owen had neurasthenia, or shell shock, a mental disability. â€Å"Disabled,† which is about a veteran with a physical disability, should be viewed as an observation, and when the poem is closely examined, it can be seen to present a myth of disability rather than a realistic depiction. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a renowned literary critic in the field of Disability Studies, states that literary representation of disability has consistently marginalized characters with disabilities, which in turn facilitates the marginalization of actual people with disabilities. More often than not, writes Garland-Thomson, disability is utilized for its â€Å"rhetorical or symbolic potential† (1997, p. 15). When the reader considers Owen’s quote about pity, taken along with his intent to protest the war, the disabled subject of his poem becomes little more than a poster-child for pacifism. Moreover, Owen’s treatment of the subject exemplifies Garland-Thomson’s conclusion that â€Å"When one person has a visible disability . . . it almost always dominates and skews the normate’s process of sorting out perceptions and forming a reaction† (p. 12). The normate, or the nondisabled person, brings to the text a whole set of cultural assumptions, on which Owen depends, to leave the reader believing war is futile and not worth the cost in human lives and injuries. My purpose is not to argue to the contrary; I am not examining the value of war, but the devaluation of the disabled figure in Owen’s poem. Disabled† consists of seven stanzas, which Daniel Pigg breaks down into five vignettes, representing the soldier’s life. The first vignette, or first stanza, according to Pigg, â€Å"sets the stage for understanding this alienated figure that [the poet] observes† (1997, p. 92). Already the reader finds that the speaker occupies a privileged position, because he has no first-hand experience of what it is like to be an amputee and is merely an observer. The speaker sees a â€Å"legless† man, â€Å"waiting for dark,† dressed in a â€Å"ghastly suit of gray† (Lines 1-3). This pathetic image proffered to the reader creates a relationship based on pity, meaning that the reader places a high value on his functioning body while devaluing the losses of the subject. â€Å"Waiting for dark† could be interpreted as waiting for death, and the â€Å"ghastly suit of gray† may as well be the vestige of a ghost. The subject, who is seated near a window, hears male children at play in the park, â€Å"saddening† him until sleep â€Å"mothered† the voices from him (Lines 4, 6). The reader is to assume, as Owen has assumed, that the subject is saddened by memories of times past, when he, too, would play in the park with the other boys. So is the reader to assume that â€Å"play and pleasure after day† (Line 5) are no longer available to the subject? The end of the first stanza invites the reader to accept the subject as being dependent and child-like, as sleep â€Å"mothered† him from the voices. Owen has effectively molded his subject into a convincing Other, a man near death and halfway into the grave. The second vignette, or the second stanza, delves into the subject’s past, when he was nondisabled. As a contrast to the first stanza, where the language and imagery is bleak and foreboding, the second stanza begins with colorful images of the town, before the subject acquired his injury. However, the jubilee is short-lived as the reader is soon thrust back into the subject’s present reality, after he â€Å"threw away his knees† (Line 10). In this line the reader becomes aware that the subject feels a certain amount of guilt and self-acknowledgment in the role he has played in the loss of his legs. But before exploring the subject’s motives for joining the war, the reader is treated again to Owen’s dreary outlook on the veteran’s life. This time, the discussion is centered on women and how the subject will no longer be able to enjoy their presence or company, for girls now â€Å"touch him like some queer disease† (Line 13). Pigg’s analysis of the word â€Å"queer† is worth noting because he uses it as an example of the subject’s social displacement. It is in the second stanza that the reader is first encouraged to consider not just the physical impairment, but the social impairment of the subject. Pigg shows that early usage of the word â€Å"queer† to denote homosexuality began officially in a 1922 document written by the government. Based on this finding, Pigg assumes that the word could have been known and used by popular culture as early as 1917, when Owen’s poem was penned (1997, p. 91). Pigg claims that Owen’s use of the term illustrates a â€Å"loss of potential heterosexual contact,† while at the same time expressing that â€Å"society has made him what he has become . . . the use of the concept in the poem makes one more aware of oppression in a society that has brought the soldier to this state† (p. 1). Even though Pigg analyzes the social construction of the subject’s identity, he limits his discussion to society’s role in pressuring the soldier to join the war and not with the systematic oppression of disability, the result of the subject joining the war. However, this subject is best represented by Owen’s final two stanzas. In the next section of the poem, Owen reiterates the format of the previous stanza by giving the reader a glimpse of the subject’s â€Å"normal† life, before becoming an amputee, when his youth and vitality were admired by an artist. Very quickly the reader is transported back to the veteran’s present situation. This juxtaposition of normal/abnormal within the stanzas â€Å"forces an ‘us and them’ division† between the reader and the subject (Linton, 1998, p. 23). The remembrances of the subject offer an illustration of a typical life with which the reader can relate, which is then placed next to lines of the poem that offer a picture of what Owen would hope the reader to define as a horrible existence worse than death. The subject, which is an actual person, becomes Owen’s mascot for the anti-war effort. The next three stanzas of the poem discuss the subject’s reasons for entering the war. Again, Pigg offers an interesting interpretation of this section of the poem. According to Pigg, the subject joins the war in an effort to create an identity for himself, an identity which is ultimately based on a lie about his age. In lines 21-29, the subject reminisces about the time he decided to join the war and tries to pinpoint which intoxication lead him to such a decision: a victorious football game, a brandy and soda, or the â€Å"giddy jilts†? In each case there is an overabundance of ego involved; the subject seeks to capitalize on his ephemeral successes and perpetuate them as long as possible. In joining the war, he sees a way to do this, because society identifies those who go to war as heroes and those who do not as less than men. The subject decides it is a girl named Meg he tried to impress, then says â€Å"Aye . . . to please the giddy jilts† (Line 27). A â€Å"jilt† is a capricious woman, a woman who is unpredictable and impulsive. Owen’s point here is to allow the reader omniscient knowledge of the subject and his belief that the girls will love you for going to war, but if you return with a substantial injury, they become uninterested. This suggests that the girls are more interested in the idea of the soldier, the perfect body, as opposed to the reality of the soldier. Lines 30-36 further explain the subject’s reasons for enlistment, stating that they were not because of an interest in foreign affairs, but for the superficial benefits of joining the military. Owen then inserts a small, three-line stanza as a transition from the subject’s memories to his current status. Again, the reader is jarred by the juxtaposition of the normal and the abnormal. Instead of receiving a hero’s welcome, the subject is patronized by his own memories of what he had imagined his return to England would be like: â€Å"Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal† (Line 37). The irony re-enlists the help of pity, as the reader is encouraged to feel sorry for the subject’s decision and subsequent loss. Owen’s purpose is to show that those who return from the war injured are pitied for their loss, rather than being honored for their sacrifice. The final stanza of the poem completes the circle that brings the reader back to the subject’s self-dissolution. He has accepted society’s estimation of his worth, or lack thereof, and has resigned himself to â€Å"spend a few sick years in institutes/ and do what things the rules consider wise† (Lines 40-41). The passive young veteran has acquiesced his life without a fight, but will continue to follow the orders of a society that deems him as invalid. He has officially become disabled, in every sense of the word. The subject has assumed his role as an object of pity and is ready to take whatever pity â€Å"they may dole,† â€Å"they† being the nondisabled (Line 42). Before the poem ends, though, Owen returns the reader yet again to the â€Å"giddy jilts† and their capricious desires, as their eyes avoid the subject’s changed body to look at the men who are still â€Å"whole,† suggesting it was not just the soldier they were interested in, but the idealized standard of beauty (Line 44). Here, the reader is expected to remember the subject’s reasons for joining the military. The subject’s concern with maintaining a nadir of masculinity and sexual attraction is ironically juxtaposed with his total loss of sexuality, which Owen implies is a total loss of identity, except as a spectacle and object of pity. The poem ends with the speaker’s frantic plea, â€Å"How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come/ And put him into bed? Why don’t they come? † (Lines 45-46). The speaker epitomizes the nondisabled person’s fear over lack of control of their own bodies and fates. The speaker realizes that he could just as easily be in he position of the subject, and with this knowledge the speaker agonizes over his own projected fears: the cold, desolate, and lonely life of the subject. We will never know the subject’s reality, for Owen has locked him into an eternal battle with despair. Owen uses â€Å"compassionate imagination† to establish a link between the soldier and the civilian in an effort to express the abominable losses that come as a result of war (Norgate, 1987, p. 21). Unfortunately, in so doing Owen magnifies the inferior role disability occupies in society, rather than calling it into question. That which has been given up and that which has been taken away subsumes the identity of the subject. Owen’s one-dimensional representation of disability ignores the will to survive and make the most of the opportunities offered by life, in whatever form it may take. Thompson writes, â€Å"As physical abilities change, so do individual needs, and the perception of those needs† (14). In â€Å"Disabled,† Owen does not allow for change and does not offer the hope of a fulfilling life. Instead, he delivers a scathing portrait of physical and social disablement in early 20th-century England.