Health inequality and disparity in the US

Health inequality and disparity in the US Today, in our world one of the biggest issues that have risen amongst health care activist in the United States is how health disparity and inequality has affected rural areas and culture. However, it is important to keep in the back of our minds that this is not a problem that only exists in the U.S., it is a worldwide concern. Health disparity is taking an in depth look at the differences in health status between different social groups, gender, race, ethnicity, education, income, disability, and sexual orientation. While on the other hand, health inequalities is taking a look at the unjust and unfair treatment one gets because of their socioeconomic status and demographic area in which they are part of. Having such a wide array of difference in health inequality and disparity is what also contributes to the United States ranking in the bottom of industrialized western nations when it comes to life expectancy rate, and infant mortality rate. Finding ways to close the gap between li fe expectancy from one race to the other may greatly contribute in making the U.S rank as one of the top nations in the western part of the world. One of my main reasons for selecting this topic was because I wanted to take an in depth look through research and studies to find out why health inequality and disparity still exists in a great and rich country like the United States. In addition to that, my second point in selecting this research topic was to find out how there can be equality amongst people living in urban and rural areas in the U.S. when it comes to the area of health care. Even though over the years they have been great improvements and minor changes; there is still more work to be done in order to make health and equality for all. Health should be a right for all, and not a privilege based on whether one lives in a rural or urban area, or whatever socioeconomic status they may have. One should get the rights to have the same privileges. One of the huge differences when looking at health disparity is life expectancy age between white, black, and African males, and black, white, and African American females. For example, the life expectancy for an average white male is 76.7 years old while on the other hand for an African American male the average age of life expectancy is 67.8 years old. Comparing the two ages there is a difference of 8.9 years between a Caucasian, and an African American male. After looking at the difference one may ask themselves these questions: they are all American why can one race live longer than the other? This is a question I have asked myself before, however taking this class through the semester helped me to understand why. Baer mentions, African Americans experience about 67,000 mor e deaths than they would have had their mortality rates been similar to whites. This translates into 2.2 million more years of life lost. One of the main reasons for this is that most Caucasian males live in an urban area with good jobs, good incomes, good health insurance, and access to good doctors, while on the other hand, an African American male living in a rural area does not have access to health insurance, does not have a good job, or does not have access to a family doctor. This may lead to a lot of stress to an individual which may cause different diseases such as chronic heart disease, hypertension-which may lead to stroke, heart attack, and renal failure. This in turn may lead to premature death of an African American male. These results are the same for women also. As stated by, premature mortality (75 years of age) is greater rural residents than among urban residents, and rural-urban mortality differences vary by age. Premature death and mortality is one of the key issues when taking a look at health and inequality in the United States. Nevertheless, another subject to closely examine is how health and diseases are not distributed fairly. Individuals who live in rural areas are more likely to get a disease than one who lives in an urban area. This also contributes to the kind of health individuals may get. For example, diseases like tuberculosis would be common in a rural area because of the life style one may live, the kind of income they may earn, and the health care they may be receive could be totally different than the one they receive in the urban area. According to, (levy and Sidel) The cause of many diseases are complex interplay of multiple factors, many of which are due to social injustice. For instance, Caucasians receive more attention and care when they visit a doctor which may lead to a wide variety of issues. However, the one that stands out the most is because the color of the indi viduals skin, he/she may be looked at differently, or not given the same care a Caucasian would have received. The subject of disparity and inequality does not only stop with adults, it also reaches down to children. Unfortunately it is a subject that affects all ages from infants to adulthood. In some cases there have been findings that when it comes to certain diseases and long term hospitalization, infants whom their parents are of different social class or race are treated differently and are cared about differently than kids that are Caucasian, or not minorities. While doing my research for this project I was amused to find out the inequality and disparity comes down to this level that even infants are cared for differently because they belong to a certain minority group. As I have stressed out in my paper and continue to do so, I really believe that everyone should have equal access to health care regardless of their differences. In one of my articles it takes and in depth look at how childrens asthma hospitalization and urban areas in Texas are different. Grineski mentions, It talks ab out how poor children are dispropriately affected as they have higher asthma prevalence rates (and more servere asthma) than non poor children. I found this to be a very interesting finding that areas where poor children and non- poor children were living would affect their health. This could be because of several reasons, for one it could be because of the demographic area or the type of housing conditions in which these infants live in. All these factors could play a big part in contributing to the findings that kids in rural areas are more probable to get Asthma. However, there are also many other factors that also contribute to health disparities. There are socioeconomic factors that include the individuals race, ethnicity, the kind of education they may have, and the kind of income they earn annually that also contribute to the individuals health. As mentioned earlier, the individuals health may allow him/her to receive a different treatment from another individual whom is of a different race. For example, John, an African American male, goes to see his doctor because he has been coughing for a week and wants to get checked out. Instead of giving John all the different tests, the doctor would just give him medicine and tell him he just has a cold or flu, yet if it is a white male they would probably give him a thorough check up to see what was really wrong with the individual, and then give that person the necessary medication they need. Also, ethnicity brings an additional dimension to health disparity. As mentioned earlier, when it comes to health care for minorities they generally have a harder time getting the kind of care they need, especially ones that live in the rural areas. Baer mentions that, Health disparity research suggests that ethnic minority groups like African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans suffer a triple burden in seeking health care: 1. They are significantly less likely to have health insurance than whites, and so accessing care is a major challenge, and while adequate acute care is hard enough to come by, preventive care is all but impossible for those who are insured The kind of education one has also contributed to the gap between health inequalities between individuals. The more education one has the longer they live, and the healthier life style they have. This is mostly due to the fact that the higher education you have the higher income one may get, and the better education one may get the more likely the individual may have a good job with great security which helps to provide financially for their families. The less education they have the less they can earn, the more stressful the job can be, and the less job security they have in order to provide for their families. Also, the more education you have the more educated you become about living a healthier life style. For example, eating healthier by getting good nutrients and a having a good diet is smart, but in order to live this kind of life style one must be able to afford it which does not allowed everyone in the United States to have this opportunity. Kaplan states, On this view, we c an understand why controlling for the SES and education reduces the health disparities between blacks and white Americans but does not eliminate them. Because black Americans are also systematically disadvantaged with respect SES and education and because SES and education are associated with health outcomes in the United States. Another determent that also brings a problem to health inequality and disparity is the environment one lives in. The environment we live in plays a big role on the kind of diseases we get and develop. Plus, the area one lives plays a big part in the kind of health care one receives. For example, one living in a rural area may not have access to a hospital, or the right doctor they may need to help them give them the right attention they need to live a healthier life style. An additional thing that plays a role on the kind of health we get from the environment could be the kind of water one has access to. The kind of water people in rural areas may use may have things in it that are not healthy for one to drink and may cause different kinds of stomach viruses or stomach problems. The kind of food individuals get in the grocery store maybe not be as healthy as the ones individuals from urban areas may get. Some food may contain more fat and carbohydrates, than the ones they have in the grocery store in urban American cities nationwide. According to McElory and Townsend, That changes in components of their model (e.g. new subsistence patterns) can cause in balances in the other components ( e.g. new subsistence strategies can lead to exposure to new risk ), and a very severe imbalance to generate stress and disease. As the above quote points out, health inequality and disparity can be a big part of the kind of environment one lives in. After selecting this topic I wanted to personally drive through the urban and rural areas of Fort Wayne and compare the differences. Hartley mentions, Traditional concerns as to access to primary and hospital continue to dominate rural health policy. As I drove through town I observed a few things. One observation was that there were barely any hospitals in the rural area. I found a couple of clinics but all the major hospitals, and big health facilities were located in the urban areas. In my opinion, this is a huge disadvantage for someone living in a rural area in Fort Wayne. Another thing I observed during my drive was that there are far more liquor stores located down south. For example, you can drive down a block and you can see three or four liquor stores by the time I was done driving through the block. In contrast, up in the urban areas there are liquor stores but not as many as the ones I came across while in the rural areas. Another thing I also noticed while I was doing my observation was that the urban areas are well taken care of. The streets are clean, buildings were properly done, and roads were done properly with no dirt on the streets. Yet in the rural areas the opposite was true. There were several buildings that were left unfinished; roads were not as clean, housing areas were not as properly done as the ones done in urban areas in Fort Wayne. These are several inequalities I observed on my own. It was a firsthand experience, and I was very shocked to find out that such things are going on i n our on back yard here in Fort Wayne. I believe that in order for us to address this problem as a nation we must first focus in our own cities and towns and then work our way up. Individuals in rural areas have been accustomed to receive unfair health care attention that people that live urban areas in the United States are used to recieving. As mentioned earlier in my paper this not only a problem in the United States but a problem that is effecting millions of other continents around the world. Joyce and Bambra state that, Despite overall improvements in health outcomes since the second world war, health inequalities between the best and worst of society are persistent in developed nations and in some in some instances are continue to widen As a community how can we address health inequality and disparity in our communities to help this stigma get away? Studies have definitely shown that they are minor improvements that have taken place over the years, but never the less, as a community we have a lot of work to be done. Hartley mentions, Recent trends in rural health research and policy suggests that effective policy interventions must be based on differences among rural regions. When arguing for progressive rhetoric for rural American, rickets noted that Urban-Rural comparisons. One of the first things I think we need to do as a community is first try to improve our rural areas. The next step I believe we should do as a country is have a universal health care program in place where everyone will be able to have insurance for every citizen in the United States. In making health insurance accessible to every one in the United States any person will be able to receive the health care they need. An additional thing we as a community need to do in order to address health inequality and disparity is to have more hospitals in the rural areas and not just in the urban areas. We need to have hospitals and clinics more accessible to them. So if they need to see the doctor they do not need to make a fifteen to twenty minute drive they can have it right in their neighborhood. I firmly believe education is the key to removing health inequality and disparity from our communities. The better we educate individuals that are of a different race, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity, the more adequate a person knows about how to live a healthy life style and eat properly. We need to get them to exercise more in order to live healthier, and also educate them about the effects of smoking cigarettes and what it causes. For example, have health fair programs that will tell them how smoking can cause lung cancer, and many other chronic diseases, and also better educate them how drugs and sharing needles can affect ones life style and cause many diseases such as HIV-which is a very serious epidemic that is killing millions of people in our world today. Also having different organizations that are pro-health that would go into the different rural communities and talk and mentor individuals on what they can do to live a good and healthier life would be a great asset in educating individuals. Another way for us to draw the gap when it comes to health and inequality is to create more jobs for individuals, so that they will be able to work and support their families. In doing this it will give them something to stress less about, which in turn will help individuals to be stress free. As mentioned earlier in my paper, stress causes a lot of health issues which can lead to different cardiovascular heart problems, effect once growth, diabetes, and hypertension which are all various disease one can get from living a healthier life style. So hopefully creating more jobs in rural communities may be able to create a less stressful life for individuals. Improving the environment are also ways in which we can address health disparity in our communities and country. For us to take the next step in which we can overcome health disparity and inequality is to clean up the rural areas. They should be cleaned up, they should also have access to clean water to drink, and tap water should be sterilized to certain standards to meet the States regulations. Also fountains and lakes should be monitored and kept clean, having clean water is important in other for mosquitoes and other parasites to not take over rural communities. Not having all these necessary steps taken people in rural areas may have easy access to malaria and other diseases which may greatly affect their community. Doing away with majority of the liquor stores in rural areas will also help to bring inequality to our neighborhoods, because having alcohol in rural areas in my opinion just helps to destroy the individuals in these areas. Drinking may also contribute too many other diseases that may cause premature death in one area. Another substance that we can do away with is creating awareness about drinks and get them off the streets. In getting both drugs and alcohol out of the rural areas we can only hope that we can try to get the rural areas to be almost equivalent to urban areas although one that will not be easy to do. In doing the following we can hope that health inequality and disparity in rural areas can be improved to met the standards that urban areas have. The U. S is such a wealthy nation that they should not be anything such as health inequality and disparity amongst different areas in the . From my research I do however believe that there is hope for the future. Changes are been made however, we just have to put our differences apart in other for us to reach the point where health is equal and available to everyone no matter how much income they make, the amount of education they have, or the color of the skin they should have access to it . Overall, I learned a lot of from this project I gained a lot of knowledge from it. I became aware of things that I was not previously not aware of in the past. I never looked at health as inequality and disparity; I rather looked at it from a different prospective but in doing this project it made me understand what it means when one mentions the United States health care system has inequality and disparity in its system. From doing this project I also gained passion for this topic and down the road I would like to volunteer, or be health activists, because as repeated earlier in my paper I believe health services should be offered to everyone.

Islam and Freud

Lubna Rehman Freud’s Dream Interpretation in the Light of Islamic Dream Ideas Questions about dreams, about why do we have them and what do they mean are questions that have been a subject of debate for centuries. On the one hand we have scientists who believe that we dream for  physiological  reasons alone and that dreams are essentially mental nonsense devoid of psychological meaning: â€Å"A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. † The idea that dreams are nothing more than â€Å"meaningless biology†. On the other hand we have a coalition of Freudians which includes Dr.Fleiss who found his dream interpretations â€Å"quite accurate† and other dream analyzers who committed to the view that we dream for  psychological  reasons and that dreams always contain important information about the self or some aspects of one's life which can be extracted by various methods of interpretation. This camp says that â€Å"an uninter preted dream is like an unopened letter. † The third camp is the one occupying the middle ground, that believes both of the extreme positions on the function and meaning of dreams to be partly right and partly wrong.Its proponents such as Alfred Adler argue that dreams may have both physiological and psychological determinants, and therefore can be either meaningful or meaningless, varying greatly in terms of psychological significance. Allan Hobson was also for a psychological meaning of dreams but he thought no need to lock it under layers of secretive subconscious meanings. The fourth and another important camp about dreams in the Muslim faith. In the Qur’an, as in the Jewish Torah and the Christian New Testament, dreams serve as a vital medium by which God communicates with humans.Dreams offer divine guidance and comfort, warn people of impending danger, and offer prophetic glimpses of the future, offer a valuable source of wisdom, understanding, and inspiration. Sa tan also plays a major role in dreams by bestowing dreams that cause grief or even purely sexual dreams (unlike Freud’s sexual ‘interpretation’) which requires the dreamer to take a bath. Trying to cover up the cultural chasm between Islamic and Western traditions, this paper is an attempt to highlight and contrast the Islamic and Freudian ideas of dream interpretation.The simple fact is that all humans dream, and thus dreaming itself is a bridging phenomenon between the two traditions. Freud thought that the function of dreams was to allow the release of repressed thoughts and impulses which cause excitation in neural activity. The only way that the wish could be subdued is by the release of the â€Å"nervous energy† that was caused by it. Also, Freud noted that â€Å"though the number of symbols is large, the number of subjects symbolized is not large. In dreams those pertaining to sexual life are the overwhelming majority†¦They represent the most primitive ideas and interests imaginable. † Therefore, the same â€Å"dream symbol† meant that they both had the same repressed wish. | Part of what made people skeptical about Freudian theories is this notion of universal dream symbolism. That is, if two people have the same visual imagery in a dream, is it the case that it has the same meaning? Some scientists dismiss the notion of  meaning  all together. | Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, two Harvard University scientists stressed that the motivating force for dreaming is not  psychological  but  physiological.Muslims on the other hand have been paying close attention to their dreams for nearly 1500 years, and their insights and observations have many significant points of contact with the theories developed by Western psychologists over the past 150 years. With the very definition of who the Islamic interpreters of dreams are, Muslims can discard the very existence of Freud’s ideas. Sunnah says tha t the interpreters of dreams are either Prophets or their followers. Or else, they have to be good, pious and knowledgeable people who know the Quran, the sunnah, Arabic language and the culture and tradition of the people.Like Islam, even though Freud did look at the content, significance, purpose, the person, his people, state, job and livelihood; Freud limited his growth when he theorized that personality is developed by the person’s childhood experiences. He was always sure about his disbelief in religion. He actually envisaged that as the masses of people become further educated, they would ‘turn away’ from the ‘fairy tales of religion. ’   Carl Jung, a contemporary of Freud took an exception.He wrote, â€Å"Freud has unfortunately overlooked the fact that man has never yet been able singlehanded to hold his own against the powers of darkness — that is, of the unconscious. Man has always stood in need of the spiritual help which each i ndividual’s own religion held out to him. † Jung agrees with Freud that dreams may look backward to past experiences, but he argues that dreams also look forward to anticipate what the dreamer's future developments may be . Jung did not mean that dreams predict the future, only that dreams can suggest what might happen, what possibilities the future might hold.Hence, Carl Jung, a totally opposite pole of Freud and a non-deliberate support to Islam, believes in the â€Å"religious man† unlike to Freud who believed in the â€Å"psychological man†. Freud’s perception of dreams seems so much influenced by secularism and so he seems to approach dreams from a materialistic point of view. To him, unlike Islam, dreams represent purely material meanings and the characteristics of dream life are a disconnected activity of separated organs or groups of cells in a sleeping mind. Freud took dreams to be like phobias and obsessions.He classified dreams into wishf ul thinking, being aggressive or sexual and considered most of the symbols that appear in dreams to be sexual which represent the male or female sexual organs. As can be seen in the book â€Å"Interpretation of Dreams†, all kind of playing, slipping, breaking branches etc were all symbols of masturbation according to him and breaking of teeth was something symbolic to castration. He observed that these symbols are â€Å"a sort of substitute for the thought process, full of meaning and emotion†. Where he interprets a lock and key to be a sexual act, the Hadith interprets it to be a symbol of wealth, power and authority.Where he thinks of a knot to be another sexual act, a knot according to Islamic dream interpretation symbolizes grief. Unfastening of the knot symbolizes a freedom from grief. So, even though one can agree with him that these symbols carry a lot of meanings but one can also disagree with him on the kind of the meaning that they carry. It is not always tru e that all the dream symbols would carry the same message of aggressiveness and sexuality. Looking at our normal life and the dreams that we get from time to time it is not true that all of them fall under these categories as Freud claims.Some dreams reveal more important messages to an individual or to society. Logically speaking, human beings are different and so they think differently, therefore, even their dreams, which may be representing another world of creation, must be of different kinds and each dream by necessity must have a different message that it carries. Therefore, Freud’s allegation that most dreams are sexual is not acceptable. Nevertheless, his division of dreams into simple and complex is acceptable. Islam’s disagreement with him lies in, among other things, the way he describes the simple dreams, which he called â€Å"wish ulfillments category†. In his words he elaborated this category by saying â€Å"these are connected with day time life. The wishes, which are fulfilled in them, are carried over from daytime and as a rule from the day before, and in waking life they have been accompanied by intense emotion†. It is also not true that all the simple dreams are carried over from daytime and it therefore follows that not all of them are wish fulfillments of a dreamer. Furthermore, his rule of such dreams coming from the day preceding the dream is also not true to all the dreams of this kind.An example to illustrate this will be of a dream analyst who was sent to Africa on a government mission. He confirmed that as much as he wished in his trip to East Africa to have a dream on Africans, he was not successful in the period of some months he spent with them. In Islam dreams are taken to be of great significance. They are not merely a matter of wild recollections of one’s activities in his alertness that may resurface to someone in his sleep; rather they are a form of connection of the soul in its spirituality with the other unseen world.This can be easily observed in our daily activities or even in something as least-considered as clothes which do have spiritual connotations. For example a woman wearing silk clothes in her dream implies her getting married, acquiring wealth or even a ceremony of some forthcoming mourning. This clearly proves how dreams, as against Freud’s theory, do have religious and not just materialistic links. In Surah Al-Ana’m, the Holy Quran says, â€Å"He is the One who takes up your souls at night, and knows what you earned during the day, then raises you from it (sleep), so as to complete the time fixed (for you to live)†.Surah Al-Zumr says, â€Å"God captures the souls at the time of death as well as those whose time has not yet arrived, in sleep. Then He keeps back those whose death has been decreed and sends back for an appointed time, the others†. Hence, in disagreement with Freud, Islam sees a complete connection with God while dreaming. Where in Islam the dream is related to the truthfulness of the dreamer, Freud’s theory proves it to be the preceding day’s affair; where Freud believed dreams to only gratify unconscious desires and longings, Islam showcases them as a glimpse into the future, a hint or sometimes even a warning.Being irreligious, and especially a non-Muslim, Freud did very little for the dream-theory propounded by different religions. Though his â€Å"Interpretation of Dreams† presents an unprejudiced and almost unerring analysis of dreams, it includes only a few types of dreams. It gives us a mixture of different kinds of fallacious dreams while totally ignores the veracious dreams because veracious dreams have almost nothing to do with one’s psyche; and were, therefore, totally unknown to psychologists like Freud.Also, since the future is more important than the past of a dreamer, he would definitely prefer Islamic Hermeneutics in order to know about his future . Where Freudian Hermeneutics is the product of the researches/studies of one individual, in the Western context, in the ‘Modern’ post-Renaissance period; Islamic Hermeneutics represents a divinely revealed system incorporating the entire structure of human existence in this world and the next, which is in itself detailed, complete and traditionally active since many centuries in various parts of the Islamic world.

Amazon’s Competitive Analysis Essay

Competitors are the firms that compete to serve the same customers in the same marketplace. Competitors can compete directly or indirectly. Competition happens on two levels: Product or service competition. Due to the shift of focus for Amazon, it has become the â€Å"Earth’s biggest anything store†. Its competitors have expanded from just online book retailers Barnes and Nobles and Borders to top audio retailers CDNOW.com and online auction house e-bay.com. Amazon has an overall lead of 40% market share against the other online retail firms. Their international business has more than doubled over the past 2 years Amazon’s primary value chain includes purchasing/sourcing, marketing, distribution and after-sales services, which includes returns and exchanges from unsatisfied customers. Their main focus is in the purchasing/sourcing and in the distribution of the products to the consumers. Their investments are therefore, geared towards warehouses in key points of high consumer demand areas and an efficient delivery and distributing system to service all its consumers. Thus, Amazon controls most of its distributing system that spans across borders. How does Amazon compete? Competes through Quality, service, and low price. How effective is each? Quality – they make sure that their product reach the customer with no damage and always serve their customer with the best product. Service – Amazon delivers the product within a week. Less lead time Low price – reasonable pricing. How powerful? Amazon is power because they were the first to start an online business. They have more customers due to this. The customers are loyal to Amazon and will do their shopping only at Amazon. Amazon is very profitable and is doing well currently. How aggressive? Amazon.com has remained on top of the online retailing business despite the entrance of giants such as Barnes and Nobles and Borders. Their success is attributed to two factors; timing and continuing to invest heavily into the inventory and distribution systems. Amazon, by being the first of its kind, has a big lead over the nearest competitors due to their experience and its reputation as the first movers. Their thrust remains on improving efficient delivery systems across borders and to build name recognition as the number one retailing firm in the Internet. They have also ventured into different retail options to keep that lead. Marketing, Innovative inventory and distribution systems, and name recall have helped Amazon build a sustainable competitive advantage. Will diversification into new markets finally turn a profit for Amazon.com before the dotcom godfather burns through the last of its savings? In five years Amazon.com has built the world’s biggest online store. However, despite generating expected $1bn ( £0.67bn) sales from the Christmas retail season alone, profit has proved elusive. Despite its profligate sales, business-to-consumer e-commerce’s pre-eminent player is not expected to enter the black until year-end, according to financial analysts’ most-optimistic forecasts. Meanwhile, a cost-intensive diversification strategy casts doubt on the prospect of the company ever turning a profit, according to a growing chorus of company-watchers. In order for any online retail company to remain prosperous and income generating, they must invest a lot of time and money into research and development of more efficient operations and distributions systems. This proved to be key for the Market Leader in online retailing, Amazon.Com. Conclusion – Many Amazon-watchers believe diversification will saddle the company with an unsustainable cost burden. â€Å"There is an incompatibility between its brand proposition of offering a dominant breadth of assortment and achieving profitability,† b. While the threat from dotcom upstarts has receded with their reduced ability to raise funds on the investment market, the challenge from bricks and mortar retailers adding online stores is getting fiercer. As well as wielding generous Internet war chests from established profitability, physical retailers will benefit from a maturation of the online market. The lunched of Amazon.com in July of 1995 was the creation of a new and bold way of doing business on the Internet. Amazon.com forced the traditional physical world brick and mortar retailer in the book industry to change the way they target the industry’s consumers and then epitomized Business-2-Consumer e-retailing. Although, Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, The bricks and clicks mantra revolves around the idea that the winning — and profitable — formula for electronic commerce success is leveraging the best of the physical and virtual worlds. In theory, it should give physical retailers venturing on to the Web an edge over pure dot-com e-commerce companies because they can efficiently extend their existing infrastructure and complement their real world stores. So far, the most successful retailers have been those that have taken an aggressive approach to the Internet like Amazon. The bricks-and-clicks model is gaining momentum as the e-commerce market matures. A growing number of retailers have finally gotten serious about doing business on-line, now that fast-moving dot-com players such as Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc. and eToys Inc. have carved out market niches. By creating an independent on-line unit that has the freedom to develop its own merchandising and marketing strategies, Amazon has the freedom and flexibility to capitalize on opportunities. Toys â€Å"R† Us Inc. stumbled when  it decided to protect its stores and offer only a limited selection of merchandise on its Web site. That gave eToys and Amazon.com a window of opportunity to win customer loyalty and rapidly grow sales, while Toys â€Å"R† Us struggled to play catch-up. The Market is moving toward a system where it is no longer going to be only Internet or only bricks and mortar,† he says. â€Å"Amazon’s mandate is not focused on where the business was, but rather where the opportunities are.† Another model is being pursued by Peachtree Network Inc., which is creating an on-line grocery network across Canada. Rather than spend heavily to build warehouses and purchase delivery trucks, Peachtree offers a service to regional grocery chains that lets them provide consumers with an on-line ordering system. The grocers, which already have the infrastructure, process the orders and handle delivery. Amazon.com has parlayed its Internet expertise to compete very successfully against traditional â€Å"bricks & mortar† book retailers such as Barnes & Noble, and Borders; Price line has leveraged its e-commerce patents and business model to challenge the incumbent travel agent industry. Thus, the pure Internet plays are very well-positioned to leverage the Internet to overwhelm their incumbent competitors who are locked into their â€Å"bricks & mortar† channels. However this is not necessarily true for all industries. If an incumbent can update its business model and supporting organizational infrastructure, it can successfully leverage the Internet just as effectively. Companies that exist to engage in commerce in the Internet’s digital marketplaces are known as digital players. For example, Amazon.com exists as a digital player that uses digital processes to transact physical products such as books, and videotapes. By using the Internet as its sole marketing and support channel, Amazon.com has been able to avoid heavy â€Å"bricks and mortar† investments that weigh upon its physical competitors such as Barnes and Noble, and Borders. Incumbent competitors are beginning to establish their own websites so that they can continue to serve their clients who are already on the Internet, and also to serve new market segments. However the pure digital players, if they do not already have brand-recognition or are not affiliated with existing brand names, often have to invest significantly  in marketing and other promotional expenditures to gain consumer awareness. Market Entrants Leverage Disruptive Innovations Since market entrants by definition do not have established business models and distribution channels  with the related cost structures, they can exploit the strategic flexibility provided by disruptive innovations to devise business models and strategies to compete successfully in the emerging marketplace. Unlike the incumbents who have to work within the constraints of their existing business models, organizational structures, and cultures, these entrants can craft their business strategies based upon the unique enabling opportunities provided by the disruptive innovations.

Cumulative Sentence Definition and Examples

In grammar, a cumulative sentence is an independent clause followed by a series of subordinate constructions (phrases or clauses) that gather details about a person, place, event, or idea. Contrast with a periodic sentence. Also called  cumulative style or right-branching. In Notes Toward a New Rhetoric, Francis and Bonniejean Christensen observe that after the main clause  (which is often stated in general or abstract terms), the forward movement of the [cumulative] sentence stops, the writer shifts down to the lower level of generalization or abstraction or to singular terms, and goes back over the same ground at this lower level. In short, they conclude that the mere form of the sentence generates ideas. Examples and Observations He dipped his hands in the bichloride solution and shook them--a quick shake, fingers down, like the fingers of a pianist above the keys.(Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith, 1925)The radiators put out lots of heat, too much, in fact, and old-fashioned sounds and smells came with it, exhalations of the matter that composes our own mortality, and reminiscent of the intimate gases we all diffuse.(Saul Bellow, More Die of Heartbreak. William Morrow, 1987)Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, enlarging the circle of light in the clearing and creating out of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine.(Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm. Harper Row, 1977)The unwieldy provision carts, draught horses, and heavily armed knights kept the advance down to nine miles a day, the huge horde moving in three parallel columns, cutting broad highways of litter and devastation through an already abandoned countryside, many of the adventurers now traveling on foot, having sold their horses for bread or having slaughtered them for meat.(John Gardner, Life and Times of Chaucer. Alfred A. Knopf, 1977)The San Bernardino Valley lies only an hour east of Los Angeles by the San Bernardino Freeway but is in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies off the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves.(Joan Didion, Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968)I am with the Eskimos on the tundra who are running after the click-footed caribou, running sleepless and dazed for days, running spread out in scraggling lines across the glacier-ground hummocks and reindeer moss, in sight of the ocean, under the long-shadowed pale sun, ru nning silent all night long.(Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Harper Row, 1974)He wept silently, after the custom of shamed and angry men, so that when the pursuit party came tumbling, pounding, scrabbling down the trail, past the fold in which he and Hillel stood concealed, he could hear the creak and rattle of their leather armor with its scales of horn; and when the Arsiyah returned, just before daybreak, at the very hour when all of creation seemed to fall silent as if fighting off tears, Zelikman could hear the rumbling of the mens bellies and the grit in their eyelids and the hollowness of failure sounding in their chests.(Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure. Del Ray, 2007) Cumulative Sentences Defined and Illustrated The typical sentence of modern English, the kind we can best spend our efforts trying to write, is what we will call the cumulative sentence. The main or base clause, which may or may not have sentence modifiers like this before or within it, advances the discussion or the narrative. The other additions, placed after it, move backward (as in this sentence), to modify the statement of the base clause or more often to explain it or add examples or details to it, so that the sentence has a flowing and ebbing movement, advancing to a new position and then pausing to consolidate it. (Francis Christensen and Bonniejean Christensen, A New Rhetoric. Harper Row, 1976) Setting a Scene With Cumulative Sentences The cumulative sentence is particularly good for setting a scene or for panning, as with a camera, a place or critical moment, a journey or a remembered life, in a way not dissimilar to the run-on. It is another kind of—potentially endless and half-wild--list. . . . And here is this writer Kent Haruf, writing a cumulative sentence, opening his novel with it, panning the smalltown western landscape of his story: Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up. (Kent Haruf, Plainsong) (Mark Tredinnick, Writing Well. Cambridge University. Press, 2008)