Explain in detail how the article below on bioethics relates to the major themes and problems in the book Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

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BIOETHICS.

Bioethics as a field is relatively new, emerging only in the late 1960s, though many of the questions it addresses are as old as medicine itself. When Hippocrates wrote his now famous dictum Primum non nocere (First, do no harm), he was grappling with one of the core issues still facing human medicine, namely, the role and duty of the physician. With the advent of late-twentieth-century science, an academic field emerged to reflect not only on the important and age-old issues raised by the practice of medicine, but also on the ethical problems generated by rapid progress in technology and science. Forty years after the emergence of this field, bioethics now reflects the profound changes in medicine and the life sciences.

Nature and Scope of Bioethics

Against the backdrop of advances in the life sciences, the field of bioethics has a threefold mission: (1) to raise important questions about the general practice of medicine and the institutions of health care in the United States and other economically advanced nations, (2) to wrestle with the novel bioethical dilemmas constantly being generated by new biomedical technologies, and (3) to challenge the presumptions of international and population-based efforts in public health and the delivery of health care in economically underdeveloped parts of the globe. While attention to the ethical dilemmas accompanying the appearance of new technologies such as stem cell research or nanotechnology can command muchPage 214  | Top of Articleof the popular attention devoted to the field, the other missions are of equal importance.

At the core of bioethics are questions about medical professionalism, such as: What are the obligations of physicians to their patients? and What are the virtues of the "good doctor"? Bioethics explores critical issues in clinical and research medicine, including truth telling, informed consent, confidentiality, end-of-life care, conflict of interest, nonabandonment, euthanasia, substituted judgment, rationing of and access to health care, and the withdrawal and withholding of care. Only minimally affected by advances in technology and science, these core bioethical concerns remain the so-called bread-and-butter issues of the field.

The second mission of bioethics is to enable ethical reflection to keep pace with scientific and medical breakthroughs. With each new technology or medical breakthrough, the public finds itself in uncharted ethical terrain it does not know how to navigate. In the twenty-first century—what is very likely to be the "century of biology"—there will be a constant stream of moral quandaries as scientific reach exceeds ethical grasp. As a response to these monumental strides in science and technology, the scope of bioethics has expanded to include the ethical questions raised by the Human GenomeProject, stem cell research, artificial reproductive technologies, the genetic engineering of plants and animals, the synthesis of new life-forms, the possibility of successful reproductive cloning, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, nanotechnology, and xenotransplantation—to name only some of the key advances.

Bioethics has also begun to engage with the challenges posed by delivering care in underdeveloped nations. Whose moral standards should govern the conduct of research to find therapies or preventive vaccines useful against malaria, HIV, or Ebola—local standards or Western principles? And to what extent is manipulation or even coercion justified in pursuing such goals as the reduction of risks to health care in children or the advancement of national security? This population-based focus raises new sorts of ethical challenges both for health care providers who seek to improve overall health indicators in populations and for researchers who are trying to conduct research against fatal diseases that are at epidemic levels in some parts of the world.

As no realm of academic or public life remains untouched by pressing bioethical issues, the field of bioethics has broadened to include representation from scholars in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, religion, medicine, law, social science, public policy, disability studies, nursing, and literature.

History of Bioethics

Bioethics as a distinct field of academic study has existed only since the early 1960s, and its history can be traced back to a cluster of scientific and cultural developments in the United States during that decade. The catalysts for the creation of this interdisciplinary field were the extraordinary advances in American medicine during this period coupled simultaneously with radical cultural changes. Organ transplantation, kidney dialysis, respirators, and intensive care units (ICUs) made possible a level of medical care never before attainable, but these breakthroughs also raised daunting ethical dilemmas the public had never previously been forced to face, such as when to initiate admission to an ICU or when treatments such as dialysis could be withdrawn. The advent of the contraceptive pill and safe techniques for performing abortions added to the ethical quandaries of the "new medicine." At the same time, cultural changes placed a new emphasis on individual autonomy and rights, setting the stage for greater public involvement and control over medical care and treatment. Public debates about abortion, contraceptive freedom, and patient rights were gaining momentum. In response, academics began to write about these thorny issues, and scholars were beginning to view these "applied ethics" questions as the purview of philosophy and theology. "Bioethics"—or, at the time, "medical ethics"—had become a legitimate area of scholarly attention.

In its early years, the study of bioethical questions was undertaken by a handful of scholars whose academic home was traditional university departments of religion or philosophy. These scholars wrote about the problems generated by the new medicine and technologies of the time, but they were not part of a discourse community that could be called an academic field or subject area. Individual scholars, working in isolation, began to legitimize bioethical issues as questions deserving rigorous academic study. But bioethics solidified itself as a field only when it became housed in institutions dedicated to the study of these questions. Academic bioethics was born with the creation of the first "bioethics center."

Ironically, academic bioethics came into existence through the creation of an institution that was not part of the traditional academy. The first institution devoted to the study of bioethical questions was a freestanding bioethics center, purposely removed from the academy with its rigid demarcations of academic study. The institution was the Hastings Center, originally called The Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, which opened its doors in September 1970. Its founder, Daniel Callahan, along with the psychiatrist Willard Gaylin, M.D., created the center to be an interdisciplinary institute solely dedicated to the serious study of bioethical questions. Callahan, a recently graduated Ph.D. in philosophy, had been one of the isolated scholars working on an issue in applied ethics, and he had found himself mired in complex questions that took him far afield from the traditional boundaries of philosophy. His topic, abortion, required engagement with the disciplines of law, medicine, and social science, which he felt himself unprepared to navigate. With academic departments functioning as islands within a university, it seemed that truly interdisciplinary work was impossible. The Hastings Center was founded to create an intellectual space for the study of these important questions from multiple perspectives and academic areas.

The second institution that helped solidify the field of bioethics was the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, which opened at Georgetown University in 1971. The founders had similar goals to those of Hastings, though they placed their center inside the traditional academy. While housed outside of any particular academic departments, the Kennedy Institute came to look more like a traditional department, offering degree programsPage 215  | Top of Articleand establishing faculty appointments along a university model.

From these modest beginnings, the field of bioethics exploded, with dozens of universities following suit, creating institutions whose sole function was the study of bioethical issues. Its growth was fueled by the appearance both of new technologies such as the artificial heart and in vitro fertilization and new challenges such as HIV. Bioethics was now permanently on the academic map and central to public discourse.

Institutions of Bioethics

Since the early 1970s, as bioethics has gained legitimacy, there has been an increasing trend of bioethics centers becoming academic departments. Originally modeled on the structure of an independent "think tank," the bioethics centers of the early twenty-first century are often housed within either a medical school or school of arts and sciences, indistinguishable in structure from any other departments in those schools. The professionalization of bioethics has taken it from the academic margins to the center, and with this development has come all of the trappings of traditional academics, such as tenure, degree programs, professional conferences, and academic journals.

Beginning in the 1980s, medical schools began housing bioethics institutes either as departments of medical ethics or departments of medical humanities. Located within an undergraduate medical school, the duties of these departments include the ethics education of the M.D. students. Whereas the original bioethics centers had as their primary focus the production of scholarly research, departments of bioethics have pedagogical obligations and are viewed as institutions designed to serve the narrower educational mission of the school. Bio-ethics institutions that are instead housed within a school of arts and sciences have the same type of pedagogical obligations, though perhaps serving a different student population, namely, university undergraduates or graduate students. Departments of bioethics, depending on their configuration, offer traditional undergraduate or graduate courses, undergraduate majors or concentrations, graduate degrees (usually master's degrees), undergraduate medical school ethics training, and/or residency ethics training. By the early twenty-first century, there were more than sixty master of bioethics programs in the United States, attracting a diverse student population including recent undergraduates; students pursuing joint J.D., M.D., and Ph.D. degrees; and midcareer professionals from the fields of law, medicine, and public policy whose work requires specialty training in the field of bioethics.

Another result of the professionalization of bioethics was the pressure to publish in traditional scholarly venues, such as academic journals. But the formation of a new academic field of study necessitated the creation of academic journals in which to publish these novel scholarly works. Journals emerged that were designed solely for works in the field of bioethics, including the Hastings Center Report, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, the American Journal of Bioethics, and Bioethics. But the mainstreaming of bioethics into the academy also opened up space within traditional medical and scientific journals for scholarly works in bioethics. Research in bioethics is now routinely published in the likes of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, and Nature.

Perhaps the institution most effectively used within the field of bioethics is the Internet. All major bioethics institutes, centers, and departments (and some journals) have elaborate Web sites, not only offering information about the specific institution, faculty, and degree programs, but also undertaking an educational mission to raise the level of public debate about current bioethical issues. These Web sites offer substantive information for individuals seeking to become better informed about these issues. One of the most developed Web sites is the companion site to the American Journal of Bioethics (www.bioethics.net ). This Web site not only offers actual scholarly works in the field but also includes a high school bioethics project, job placement information, a "Bioethics for Beginners" section, and a collection of bioethics news stories from the popular press, updated daily, with direct links to the original news articles.

The Methods of Bioethics

The founders of the field of bioethics and its first leaders were largely theologians or philosophers. Reflecting the scholarly conventions of their home disciplines, the first works in bioethics centered on a normative analysis of bioethical issues, arguing for or against the moral permissibility of a particular technology, practice, or policy. Starting in the 1970s, these philosophers and theologians were joined by physicians and lawyers, who too made normative claims about bioethical problems. But by the mid-1990s, bioethics was attracting populations of scholars who had not previously been well represented in the field, namely, social scientists and empirically trained clinicians, both physicians and nurses. With the entry of these new groups of scholars, the "methods" of bioethics began to shift, mirroring the methodologies of the new disciplines becoming central to the field. With this change, bioethics included not only normative analysis but also the empirical study of bioethical questions, what Arthur Caplan has called "empiricized bioethics."

Empiricized bioethics takes one of two forms: either it seeks to collect empirical data needed to shed light on a bioethical problem, or it attempts to stand outside the discipline in order to study the field itself. Projects taking the first form use either qualitative or quantitative social science methodology to collect data needed to make persuasive bioethical arguments. These empirical studies might explore, for example, patient comprehension of medical information, patient and family experience with medical care, the ability of children or incompetent adults to give consent for research participation, or the frequency with which practitioners face particular ethical dilemmas.

Projects taking the second form explore the way in which the field of bioethics is evolving, the influence it has had on policy formation, the methods and strategies it employs, the field's understanding of itself, and its place in public life and contemporary academia. One very prominent contemporaryPage 216  | Top of Articlemethod employing this strategy is narrative bioethics, or what might be called "deconstructionist bioethics." Using the insights of literary criticism, these bioethicists examine the discourse of the field to reveal its biases, conventions, and assumptions, making the field more self-reflective about its motives and goals. Along the same line, the field has seen the development of feminist bioethics and disability bioethics, both of which focus on issues of inclusion and exclusion, voice, and their confluence on particular substantive issues. Altogether, the empirical methods of bioethics have been so well received in the field that by the early twenty-first century, all bioethics centers and departments had representation from the social sciences or clinical medicine, and in many cases the empiricists constituted the majority of center or department membership.

One final methodology that has had a significant presence in medical humanities departments is literary analysis, in which literary texts are used as a vehicle for the ethics education of clinicians in training. These medical humanists use first-person illness narratives or first-person testimonies from clinicians, as well as important works in fiction, to teach health care professionals about the ethical issues involved in being both patient and practitioner.

Current Issues in the Field: Bioethics
in the Early Twenty-First Century

The bioethical issues being addressed by the field are too numerous to count, but the flavor of bioethics in the early twenty-first century can be conveyed by an exploration of the bioethical implications of genetic research, health care access reform, and stem cell research, arguably the most pressing issue in the field to date.

Advances in the science of genetics, including the Human Genome Project and the ability to find genetic markers for particular diseases, have raised difficult ethical dilemmas. Two of the most pressing issues are preimplantation genetic diagnosis and the genetic testing of adults. With the technology to identify inherited diseases in the early embryo comes questions about which embryos ought to be implanted, which diseases constitute a legitimate moral reason to discard an embryo or become the criterion for embryo selection, which traits ought parents be allowed to select or test for, and who ought to have access to this technology and on what grounds. For example, while there might be widespread support for testing embryos that might carry the trait for Tay-Sachs disease or cystic fibrosis, there are troubling questions about selecting embryos on the basis of sex, nonlethal trisomes (such as Down's syndrome), or aesthetic or character traits that technology may someday be able to screen for. In adult medicine, genetic tests already exist to detect mutations leading to some forms of inherited breast cancer and to Huntington's disease. Here, questions arise about privacy of health care information, psychological impact, stigmatization, lack of informed consent, health insurance access, and familial disclosure. With the advent of commercial genetic testing centers, patients will soon have easy access to genetic tests independent of the practice of clinical medicine, without the benefit of genetic counseling services, professional psychological support, or adequate, and possibly accurate, clinical information. The Internet, for example, will likely bring universal access to any genetic test as it becomes available.

Emerging Issues for the Future

As the twenty-first century unfolds, new and expanding areas of research will require increasing attention to their related ethical aspects.

Neuroethics.

Knowledge about the human brain holds much promise and offers much needed hope to those who suffer from disorders of the brain and mind. The relative accessibility of the brain through biochemical, electrical, and magnetic stimulation, as well as surgery, makes neurological interventions tempting as knowledge of brain structure, wiring, and chemistry grows. Nevertheless, there has been little systematic analysis of the ethical implications of the revolution in the brain sciences. This revolution raises numerous ethical questions and issues:

The "essence" of personhood and identity

The relation between physiological structures and higher functioning ("mind" or "self")

The ways in which abnormalities in the brain might account for atypical or antisocial human behavior

The acceptability of using pharmaceuticals, implants, or other interventions to enhance innate traits such as memory, attention span, or musical ability

The legitimacy of intervening to alter aspects of personality, mood, or emotion; to assess the effectiveness of treatments or incarceration in modifying criminal behavior; or to detect predispositions to both desirable and undesirable behavior in persons who cannot themselves consent

New knowledge of the brain will soon have an enormous impact on the legal and penal systems. How to integrate knowledge of the brain into the practice of forensics, the prosecution of persons accused of crime, and the screening of those seeking parole are all issues likely to become pressing in the not-too-distant future. Equally controversial will be the use of new knowledge about the brain in the detection and prevention of the onset of undesirable behavior in adolescents and children and in trying to improve or enhance their capabilities and skills.

Eugenics.

While there has been much attention in bioethics to the mapping of the human genome and to the nuclear transfer techniques used to clone Dolly the sheep and other animals, the most provocative genetics-related issue facing society during the first half of the twenty-first century is likely to be to what extent ought humans design their children. Rudimentary steps toward making eugenics a reality are all around us.

The finalization of a crude map of the human genome and other animal and plant genomes means that medicine will soon have at its disposal a huge amount of information about the contribution genetics makes to a wide variety of traits, behaviors,Page 217  | Top of Articleand phenotypic properties. In addition primitive efforts to introduce genes into the cells of the human body through gene therapy will be refined to the point at which genetic surgeons should be able to introduce targeted genes with specific functions into both somatic cells (cells in a person's body) and germ-line cells such as the stem cells in the testicles that create sperm in a man's body. And the ability to analyze the genetic makeup of sperm, eggs, and embryos has already led to some infertility clinics offering genetic testing for diseases as a part of their standard care for their clients. This means that parents of tomorrow, both infertile and fertile, will increasingly look to medicine to diagnose potential problems and risks before babies and children are created. The issue will not be whether humans should design their children but to what extent and with what if any limits on how far one may go to improve, enhance, and optimize them.

When should a person die?

Another fascinating emerging ethical issue is whether humanity should seek to control the time of death. It is one thing to agree that individuals who are dying have the right to withdraw or not initiate medical treatments. It is quite a different matter to say that someone who is not terminally ill but is suffering from a terribly disabling chronic condition, a severely diminished quality of life, or the prospect of decades of life in a state of dementia or extreme frailty should have the right to medical or technological assistance in dying as is already the case in the Netherlands, the state of Oregon, and Colombia. The focus of these debates, however, has been almost exclusively the terminally ill. As the population of the world ages over the course of the twenty-first century, more and more persons may begin to ask or demand the right to control the timing of their death, whether they are

Background Information

Newcastle Airlines Limited has been an audit client of Sydney Accountants since 2015.

You are an audit partner in Sydney Accountants involved in the planning of the 2019 audit of Newcastle Airlines.

The following circumstances relevant to the current financial year have come to your attention:

➢ The impact of fuel prices and intense competition in the airline industry.

➢ Along with new entrants like the budget airlines in the markets and an increased passenger capacity, airline companies have been lowering their airfares to capture more customers.

➢ Airlines will end up accepting very low prices while operating with very high costs.

➢ Take Emirates for instance. Emirates operates with a young fleet, meaning more fuel efficiency, lower maintenance costs, and the ability to fit more into each plane (which lowers the marginal costs of each passenger). Being based in Dubai means there are low taxes, no unions to battle with, and an abundance of cheap labour from nearby countries. Emirates’ competitive advantage is also in their reputation for excellence in service which Emirates can charge high prices for.

You reviewed Newcastle’s significant accounting policies and found that revenue and depreciation costs are material income statement accounts. Extract of the accounting policies for Revenue and Depreciation costs, together with additional relevant information, are included below:

Item 1: Revenue recognition policy

Passenger, freight, and tours and travel sales are credited to revenue received in advance and subsequently transferred to revenue in the income statement, when passengers or freight are uplifted or when tours and travel air tickets and land contentare utilised.

Your review of the prior year’s financial statements indicates revenue from passengers represents 80% of total revenue. Newcastle’s latest financial information shows a 6% fall in revenue from passengers and an 11% decrease in revenue from passengers in advance.

Item 2: Aircraft maintenance costs policy

The standard cost of major airframe and engine maintenance checks is capitalised and depreciated over the shorter of the scheduled usage period to the next major inspection or the remaining life of the aircraft.

Newcastle’s latest financial figures show the aircraft and engines at cost (including major maintenance costs) to be at a similar level as last year while depreciation costs have decreased by 5%.

You have read articles in the financial press which suggest an increased incidence of fraud due to the competitive environment, and that the majority of these frauds are committed by company directors and senior managers. In your study of corporate governance you realised that Newcastle Airline may be facing similar problems.

Required:

a) Explain why the revenue from passenger accounts in the income statement is at significant risk of fraudulent financial reporting by management.

b) Describe a relevant and practical internal control to address the fraud risk described in (a) above. Explain how the internal control will minimise the risk of fraud.

c) With reference to Item 1 and Item 2 in the Background Information, explain why each of the two income statement accounts Revenue and Depreciation costs may represent a significant risk of material misstatement

The article below, “Nuns Stole $500k And Spent It On Gambling And Vacations” by Brendan Cole, appeared in Newsweek on December 9, 2018:

“Two nuns in California allegedly stole more than $500,000 from the school they had been at for years, which they spent in casinos and on vacations. Bank records show Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Lang had been embezzling funds from St. James Catholic School in Torrence for at least a decade, the Press-Telegram reported.

But officials from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles told parents and alumni of the school that auditors have not been able to trace all of the money trail.

Kreuper had retired as the school's principal earlier this year and she dealt with the school fees, which she allegedly withheld and deposited into an account only she and Chang knew about, the paper said.

While investigators found the two gave some of the stolen money back to the school, the rest was used for their "personal gain." Kreuper has admitted she took the money and expressed remorse.

Monsignor Michael Meyers, the pastor at St. James Catholic Church sent a letter to pupils’ parents stating that Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the nuns’ order, is cooperating with the parish and the Archdiocese to find out how much money was taken.

“Our community is concerned and saddened by this situation and regret any injury to our long relationship with the families of the school,” the Order said in a statement.

“The Sisters of St. Joseph both desire and intend to make complete restitution to St. James School,” the Daily Breeze reported.

Police have been informed but the Archdiocese does not intend to pursue criminal proceedings against the sisters. “At our school, we have initiated additional procedures and oversight policies for financial management and reporting responsibilities,” Meyers wrote.

Archdiocese lawyer Marge Graf said the nuns’ order agreed to pay the school full restitution and impose “severe sanctions” on Kreuper and Chang. Graf said: “We do know that they had a pattern of going on trips, we do know they had a pattern of going to casinos, and the reality is, they used the account as their personal account.”

There have been calls among some parents for the pair to be charged while others said they should be forgiven.

Jack Alexander of Redondo Beach said that the pair would often go traveling and gambling, claiming they had been given the money by a rich relative. “These nuns took a vow of poverty and said, ‘Oh no, we’ve got a rich uncle'. The rich uncle was the parents of the St. James students,” he said.”

Required:  

In order for fraud to occur, two elements must be present, opportunity and motivation. Please make reference to the text in the article above that supports/describes each element.

In addition, there are several important characteristics (different from opportunity and motivation) that appear in many fraud cases. Please describe at least two of these characteristics that are described here: Small amounts regularly over period of time (skimming)  Lack of audits or supervisory oversight  Trusted employee  Collusion (2 or more employees)  No vacation (or works during vacation)  No background checks when employee was hired  Government, non-profits, religious – highly susceptible

As the school’s test coordinator/statistician, you are tasked with creating a report that includes the following results for Ms. Gibbs:

1. Create a Pareto chart (any other chart is incorrect! include all components of a Pareto chart to receive credit) using the following grading scale:

            A = 90 - 100

            B = 80 – 89

            C = 70 – 79

            D = 60 – 69

            F = 0 – 59

2. Calculate the Mean, Median, Mode, and Mid-range for the exam scores. I am sure that Ms. Gibbs understands the concept of “mean”, but you must to explain “mode” and “mid-range” to her in this report (failure to include explanations of mode and mid-range will result in a loss credit).

3a. Are the data positively skewed, symmetric, or negatively skewed (Yes or No)? Include the use a histogram in your explanation for part 3b.

3b. Include the histogram that you used to answer question 3a. Explain skewness to Ms. Gibbs in this report (failure to do so will result in a points being deducted).

4a. Calculate the Variance and Standard Deviation of the data.

4b. As the test coordinator, interpret each student’s test score - not the class as a group in terms of Standard Deviation. Ms. Gibbs never took statistics in her teacher education program.

5. Construct a boxplot of the test data.

6a. Create a table that lists the z – score for each student’s exam.

6b. As the test coordinator, interpret each students’ test score in terms of the calculated z-score.

7. Assess the data to determine if it is approximately normally distributed (Review the section in the book that discusses how to test for normality). You must include your calculations to support your answer (a graph is not a calculation). If you don’t include your calculations, you will not be given credit. Explain what normally distributed means to Ms. Gibbs.

8. Calculate the 95% Confidence Interval for the exam data. Once you do this, explain your calculated C.I. to Ms. Gibbs.

9. Ms. Gibbs is concerned about Kathleen Drude and John Cho. Since you are the data analyzer for the school, explain their exam performance relative to each other.

This assignment must be submitted on/before the due date. Please use the attached document to submit your responses.

in each region of the world we adapt to cultural norms and nuances, but we hold true to our standards and best practices that benefit our owners, team members, and guests. This impacts our approach to every aspect of our business—from the ways we train and engage our team members to our customer marketing campaigns and service delivery. Our strategic perspective is that a brand is a promise consistently delivered. Equally important, we strive to be culturally relevant. Cultural differences largely come to life in food and beverage and leisure amenities, such as spa offerings. For example, our eforea: spa at Hilton treatment menus are designed so that each hotel offers core elements that our guests expect, but the menus also give our owners in China flexibility to add treatments specific to their local market. Hilton Guangzhou Tianhe will feature spa treatments such as a foot massage and a variety of full-body massages inspired by traditional Chinese aromatherapy oils.

As a global brand with hotels in 78 countries, we invest a great deal of time and research into understanding the needs and expectations of travelers today, and we are prepared to meet these needs as they evolve over time. Research tells us that travelers have a great deal of trust for Hilton, particularly when traveling abroad. Because traveling abroad is a new experience for many of our guests from mainland China, our brand gives them confidence that the hotel experience will meet their needs so that they can focus on exploring a new destination.

From our more than two decades of experience operating in mainland China, we see two trends that differentiate the Chinese traveler. These trends are similar to the trends we have historically experienced with other rapidly expanding customer segments. First, we must provide our guests with familiar comforts, and make it a point to have team members fluent in Mandarin on staff at our hotels outside China. The recent global launch of the Hilton Huanying program is helping us achieve this goal.

Second, we recognize that most travelers from China are booking through government-approved travel agents and tour operators, rather than booking directly with a hotel or online. This affects how we communicate with our customers when they are considering lodging options. With more than 20 years of experience serving the China market, we have developed longstanding relationships with government travel agencies and tour operators. Hilton Worldwide opened its first international sales offices in Beijing and Shanghai in 2005, so we have teams in the market who really understand the travelers and communicate regularly with government travel agencies and tour operators. With Hilton Huanying, for example, we invited many of the tour operators to participate in the global launch events in San Francisco, Beijing, and Shanghai.

Our brand also has an aggressive marketing campaign in China, offers a Chinese version of our consumer site (www.hilton.com.cn) and recently launched a Chinese version of our global press site (www.hiltonglobalmediacenter.com.cn) as a resource for Chinese media

QUESTION

How do Hiltons china operations differ from its operations elsewhere?

Objective: Examine and revise a business message. Scenario:

Lin Wang, Vice President of Franchise Partnerships at Pizza Palace recently gave John Baker one of the brochures for her franchise while at an industry conference. John was excited to meet Lin and learn more about franchise opportunities with Pizza Palace. He wrote the following email to introduce himself and describe his qualifications.

Dear Lin,

It was a pleasure to meet you at the Food Franchise Expo yesterday. It is with great excitement and enthusiasm that I write this letter to describe my genuine hopes and aspiration to be a franchisee. There are many reasons why I am interested in this opportunity, and there are many reasons why I am qualified to be a franchisee for you. I have been in the pizza industry for over 10 years in various capacities such as starting as a pizza deliverer, then I acted as cashier, and finally for the last seven years I was the shop manager for a pizza shop in the mall. In my time as a pizza shop manager, I was told by the shop owner and many, many, many employees that I was the right person to lead the shop and that sales were higher at my location than any other shop in that chain (which has 24 shops at malls in my state and the three surrounding states). In fact, sales at my pizza shop have increased every quarter that I have been the manager with the exception of just two quarters in the five years I was manager. I am very proactive in my approach to sales and think that my approach of keeping repeat customers happy is the key to success at my shop and which I seek to continue as a franchisee. I have used so many multiple marketing techniques to gain our customers’ attention. Such as, I have created a Facebook group of 2300 members and a Twitter feed with 1130 followers and I send daily specials to the 3750 people in those groups. Not to mention I send targeted coupons by mail and email that are sent to the customers with specific types of food preferences because I am very customer-centric. There is no substitute for knowing your customers. I also do many great special catering events at seasonal periods and have won prizes for “best pizza shop” many times that bring the shop good press. My pizza shop was even featured in some TV commercials for the pizza shops across our region. There are not any Pizza Palaces near here and I believe from the bottom of my heart that this is the right time to invest in this area. I know without any doubt that you will be impressed with my work ethic and my focus on the customer. Needless to say, the customer is king, and we need to treat them that way. I am capable of meeting all of the financial obligations. Thank you and hope to hear from you soon so we can get on the same page. Most of all, is I love people, and if you are caring for your customers, you will achieve your goals and reach the pinnacle of success.

Regards,

“This is really an odd situation,” said Jim Carter, general manager of Highland Publishing Company. “We get most of the jobs we bid on that require a lot of press time in the Printing Department, yet profits on those jobs are never as high as they ought to be. On the other hand, we lose most of the jobs we bid on that require a lot of time in the Binding Department. I would be inclined to think that the problem is with our overhead rates, but we’re already computing separate overhead rates for each department. So what else could be wrong?”

Highland Publishing Company is a large organization that offers a variety of printing and binding work. The Printing and Binding departments are supported by three service departments. The costs of these service departments are allocated to other departments in the order listed below. The Personnel cost is allocated based on number of employees. The Custodial Services cost is allocated based on square feet of space occupied and the Maintenance cost is allocated based on machine-hours.

Budgeted overhead costs in each department for the current year are shown below:

Because of its simplicity, the company has always used the direct method to allocate service department costs to the two operating departments.

Required:

1. Using the step-down method, allocate the service department costs to the consuming departments. Then compute predetermined overhead rates in the two operating departments. Use machine-hours as the allocation base in the Printing Department and direct labor-hours as the allocation base in the Binding Department.

2. Repeat (1) above, this time using the direct method. Again compute predetermined overhead rates in the Printing and Binding departments.

3. Assume that during the current year the company bids on a job that requires machine and labor time as follows:

a. Determine the amount of overhead cost that would be assigned to the job if the company used the overhead rates developed in (1) above. Then determine the amount of overhead cost that would be assigned to the job if the company used the overhead rates developed in (2) above.

Repeat requirement 1 above, this time using the direct method. Again compute predetermined overhead rates in the Printing and Binding departments. (Please enter allocations from a department as negative and allocations to a department as positive. The line should add across to zero. Do not round intermediate calculations. Round "Predetermined overhead rate" to 2 decimal places and rest of the answers to the nearest whole dollar amount.)

In this assignment you are going to use the menu you created in Assignment 1 to test both your Double and Integer classes. You should add functionality to the menu to allow you test the add, sub, mul, div functions for instances of both classes

You are going to have make a modification to your menu class. Currently it uses an array to hold a fixed amount of menu items. While this may be OK for most applications we want our menu to be as flexible as possible. To make this happen I want you to remove the array of menu items and replace it with a vector.

We want all of our code to be as organized as possible. You should have separate header and .cpp files for each class with your main function being in a separate file.

Because the menu is setup to take pointers to void functions you are going to have to create a layer of functionality that sits between the two. This kind of structure can be thought of as a three tier approach.

Here is a simplistic example

void doubleAdd();

int main()
{
    m.addMenu("1. Add Doubles",doubleAdd);
    m.runMenu();
}

void doubleAdd()
{ // Code to add two Double classes here. Should get input from the user.
    waitKey();
}

Main.cpp

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <conio.h>
#include <string>
#include "Menu.h"

using namespace std;

void func1();
void func2();
void func3();
void Exit();

int main()
{
        Menu m;
        m.addMenu("1. Function1", func1);
        m.addMenu("2. Function2", func2);
        m.addMenu("3. Function3", func3);
        m.addMenu("4. Exit", Exit);
        m.runMenu();
}
void func1()
{
        Menu m;
        cout << "Hello from function 1." << endl;
        m.waitKey();
}
void func2()
{
        Menu m;
        cout << "Hello from function 2." << endl;
        m.waitKey();
}
void func3()
{
        Menu m;
        cout << "Hello from function 3." << endl;
        m.waitKey();
}
void Exit()
{
        Menu m;
        cout << "Goodbye." << endl;
        m.waitKey();
        exit(0);
}

Menu.h

#include <string>
#ifndef MENU
#define MENU

const int MAXCOUNT = 20;
struct menuItem
{
        void (*func) ();
        std::string descript;
};
class Menu
{
private:
        menuItem mi[MAXCOUNT];
        int count;
        void runSelection();
public:
        Menu();
        void addMenu(std::string Description, void (*f)());
        void runMenu();
        void waitKey();
};

#endif

Menu.cpp

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <conio.h>
#include <string>
#include "Menu.h"

using namespace std;

Menu::Menu()
:count(0)
{

}
void Menu::addMenu(string Description, void (*f)(void))
{
        if (count < MAXCOUNT)
        {
                this->mi[count].func = f;
                this->mi[count].descript = Description;
                count++;
        }
}
void Menu::runMenu()
{
        for (;;)
        {
                system("CLS");
                for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
                {
                        cout << this->mi[i].descript << endl;
                }
                runSelection();
        }
}
void Menu::runSelection()
{
        int select;
        cin >> select;
        if (select <= count)
                this->mi[select - 1].func();
}
void Menu::waitKey()
{
        cout << "Press any key to continue." << endl;
        while (!_kbhit());
        fflush(stdin);
}