How Check-Cashing Services Impact Low-Income Americans Research Paper

How Check-Cashing Services Impact Low-Income Americans - Research Paper Example â€Å"[W]hen a San Francisco-based bank began to offer commercial check-cashing services in the Los Angeles area, it was criticized as ‘ripping off’ the poor† (pp. 142). B. How Did They Begin? These check-cashing services often started out as small, mom-and-pop operations that sold antiques, jewelry, televisions, and other odds-and-ends items and knick-knacks. Pretty soon, check-cashing services included everything from getting a check cashed (without having to have a bank account)—to other financial services, including getting cashier’s checks and money orders. A. Who Started the Service? These services were started by people who had a little bit to invest in their business. Usually, these service providers started out small, and, as their wealth grew, they could either expand their pawnshops or check-cashing services—which didn’t require a checking account at the bank, which was a novelty for poor people who traditionally didn’ t have financial services available to them due to their socioeconomically-disadvantaged status. II. How Did Check-Cashing Services Become Popular? Check-cashing services became popular when people realized that they needed some kind of banking services in order to cash their checks for pennies on the dollar. What they didn’t realize was that these currency exchanges were often charging exorbitant fees for providing said services. III. What Groups Were Targeted A. How Were These Groups Selected? These groups were most likely selected due to their low socioeconomic status. People who are living in poverty rarely have less cash flow, and less capital to be able to put towards financial services—such as, say, having a checking and/or savings account at the bank. Thus, this can drive people into even more poverty because they are not saving money. Since they are not saving money, unfortunately, this is causing them much distress—having to usually live paycheck to pa ycheck. Many of these people are struggling economically. With many people out of work and the national unemployment rate at 9%, several people do not have jobs and are just living on their earnings from part-time jobs and unemployment checks, not to mention welfare checks from the government. A large percentage of the American population is now living on welfare. These currency exchanges (or ‘check-cashing’ services) just prey upon the fact that the poor don’t have access to good financial services because banks usually don’t cash checks for people who don’t have accounts with their banks. B. What Do Critics Say About Targeting These Groups? Critics would generally agree that targeting this low-income, socioeconomically-disadvantaged groups would be morally and ethically wrong—speaking from the standpoint of a consumer.

Answer 1 of 2 given questions with given sources Essay

Answer 1 of 2 given questions with given sources - Essay Example While some perceive him as a leader who abused powers and ignored the ideals of the French Revolution, others consider him as a successful leader who delivered the ideals of the French Revolution to his subjects. In this paper, I will comprehensively discuss the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, his domestic and foreign policies, with an aim of illustrating whether he destroyed or preserved ideals of the French Revolution. Napoleon was a great strategist, a genius, a man with great self-control and very keen to protect his reputation. He had no friends and loved nobody simply because he believed that a man must be firm and have a resolute heart in order to protect the freedoms of citizens and fight the enemies of political, economic and social progress1. In the Napoleon’s diary, he evidently believed that his success and reputation depended on his ability to win wars, and this made him fight strongly for the freedom of French nationalist. â€Å"My power proceeds from my reputation, and my reputation from the victories I have won†¦conquest has made me what I’m; only conquest can maintain me."2 Being a genius and a strategist enabled him maintain an army that could hardly be overpowered. He had a team of secret police that was headed by Joseph Fouchà ©, spies in every corner of his territory to counteract unfriendly governments and watch the actions of friendly powers3. The police f orce that was supported by millions of taxpayers’ money was predominant in helping Napoleon seize freedom from his political adversaries. What’s more, in many battles, he fought alongside his militias hence giving them inspiration and the army became very loyal to him. Apparently, it makes sense to consider Napoleon as a leader who preserved the ideals of the French Revolution. Upon completion of the revolution, Napoleon had fulfilled the ideals that the

Business Plan for Record Label

Business Plan for Record Label Business Planning Introduction to unit eight coursework In this unit, I have the opportunity to structure a business plan for a business proposal, which I will have the opportunity to create. For this segment of the assignment, I will clarify the main activities of the business, in addition to its aims and objectives. The assignment will also be focusing on the marketing and financial planning of my chosen business, notwithstanding, the operations and financial planning of the proposed business proposal. At the end of it all, I will be evaluating my business and its viability. However, to start a business I will need a business plan. A business plan is essentially a plan of a business that is to be set up; this is usually a written piece of statement about the business (think of it as a blueprint). This is a useful document to have because; firstly, it outlines the business itself and outlines what the business is essentially about, and secondly, it allows the owner/manager of the business to work towards the success of the business by spotting and avoiding failures. In general, a business plan will have the following statements; what the business is all about (i.e. the nature of the business), the aims and objectives of the business (What they hope to achieve and expect in the future) and how the individual plans and will o about creating the business. This can be illustrated in a majority of ways however; a financial planning of the first six months or perhaps even a year would be ideal or information about how the investments are to be raised for the business. A business plan is a very indispensable piece of document to have if someone is considering starting their own business, this is because a business plan outlines/predicts what the business will be like after setting up that gives a clear understanding of how the aims and objective are to be obtained as well as defining them. Furthermore, a business plan will also help to plot any pitfall along the way, i.e. a detailed cash flow of a businesss first six months will be able to suggest if the business will have a higher cost when compared with the profit they make, even before the business has started, and this can prevent major loss of profitability. Not only does a business plan outlines and spots major flaws in the business, but many businesses and entrepreneurs use it as a source of motivation; a backdrop to compare their current performance against. Further adding more, a business plan would be beneficial to establish or to re-evaluate the businesss competitive position within the market place by conducting a thorough analysis of the competition. This would involve finding out the strengths and weaknesses of the competition and how the business can be taken advantage of. In conclusion, as mentioned above, a business plan is important for a business because it helps to clarify the vision of the business and decide whether to forge ahead with the idea. Without a business plan, it would be very difficult to convince external investors to invest the business. Not only that, a business plan will also help the business determine their target market that they want to aim their product at, which is always useful to know. The Business Proposal For my chosen business proposal, I have decided to create a music label, and have named it P.K. Media. Generally, the term â€Å"Record label† is something that is associated with the music industry. A Record label is a brand and a trademark, which is associated with the procedure of marketing and distributing musical recordings and music videos of their signed artists. A record label is also the company that manages the artists/bands and coordinates, manufactures, promotes and distributes their productions i.e. music/videos. Record labels are also responsible for the enforcement of copyright protection on the media that they distribute such as CDs and DVDs, so that their content (such as music), cannot be copied and sold as pirated versions of their work to the customers by other individuals. The business I intend to propose will primarily focus on the production and the promotion of the music of its artists/bands in the local area, the Midlands. The reason for this is that there is a much lower cost of setting up a music label for the local area as there are less promotional activities which the label would have to finance and carry out, thus reducing the start up cost of the business compared to if it was a nationwide business. The main services/products that P.K. Media will provide to its consumers and music acts are as follow: * Music sold using online services such as iTunes and the business website. Some music will be available for free download as a promotional activity. * Provide live performances by its artists and bands as a secondary service. o Commissions from artist will be charged on this, depending the amount of tickets sold by the act. * Offer promotional services for unsigned artist and band acts and charge commission depending on their popularity, music sold, the amount of record deal they receive etc. o Free promotional services will also be available for unsigned artists on the businesss website for uploading their work to display to the internet audiences. o Manufacturing CDs and DVDs will also be available for artists wishing to use for promotional use, however it is highly likely that there will be a fixed cost for this service. * Record deals will be available for artists; majority of the aforementioned services will available with this, as the business will undertake the sole responsibility for the promotion, distribution, production and the sales of the artist/bands music signed to P.K. Media. * Recording facilities and personnel will be available to customers who wish to record their own music that will be mixed by a professional studio engineer. Customers will be charged on an hourly basis or perhaps special offers upon depending upon how much music they wish to record. Live performance are a good way of raising additional profit other than selling CDs because with live performances, My business can charge commission from the local pubs/bars to supply the live performances with beverages, as a result the pubs and bars will also get some promotion of their products and services which will benefit their businesses as well. Furthermore, the business will also be able to make profit through selling tickets for the live performances. The location of this business will be varied and may not be based in a single location, the reason being that if my business is organising the performances, then it will have to be located at the performances to manage the bands and other aspects of the performance i.e. selling the tickets. However, P.K. Media will need facilities to record the band/artists music and venues for live performances, for this it will be a necessity to have access to a recording studio and to be able to rent a venue in the local area. Having acce ss to a studio can be done in a number of ways such as renting a recording studio in the local area or purchasing the equipment and setting up the recording studio at home or other location, such as a youth centre or other rented location like flats or houses. The cost of the musical equipment such as; mixing boards, computers, mics, instruments, audio processing hardware and sound proofing the location can add up to a significant amount and as a new business the cost of starting up should be kept at a minimum. Ultimately, a more convenient option would be to rent a recording studio, which is pre-provided with all the equipment needed (as described above). Another issue which may arise would be that if my business had to purchase the musical equipment I would have to purchase the low-end equipment as the high-end (studio quality) equipment can cost thousands and upwards and as a small independent music label there would be limitations for the finance. In addition, the low-end equipm ent could also reduce the quality of the recording, and as a record label that will not be beneficial for the artists because consumers would not want to purchase bad quality products especially if the product is aimed at entertainment purposes. Imagine listening to ones favourite song with hissing noisiest, crackle and static noises, it would not be pleasant to listen to which is why quality of the audio is a substantial element of a record label. Reason for choice of business? The idea of a record label interested me because; with a record label, there is no need to purchase stock; it is a service-based business, which means that a record label does not have to manufacture or purchase anything other than to sign the artist and record CDs. A record label is basically, the intermediate service between audiences/customers and the artist. In essence, while the artist makes the product, the record label simply delivers it to the customers, almost like an intermediary. Another thing which seemed interesting is that the possibility of a sole ownership of the business. Since a record label is a service-based business, it is not necessary to have partners (as with any other businesses). It can be set-up with a moderately low cost, which mean that there is no need to invite external investors to invest in the business and hold a percentage of shares in the business, leaving room for more creative control over the business. Personal interest is another factor that may have influenced my choice to pick a record label for a business proposal. Unqualified amateur musician myself, I find that music is the greatest past time for all ages which is why I liked the idea of providing people with good quality of music to listen to which is easily accessible and is at moderately low price. Overall, I believe that a record label should be a viable business proposal for this assignment because like many businesses it requires marketing strategies, target consumers and a product. A further consideration is that almost everyone listens to music (to some extent) whether it is purchased from store or downloaded from the web and it is because of this that music is considered as one of the major immersed art form, which hints of a profitable market sector. What are Aims and Objectives? It is imperative for a business to have a basic requirement and have clear aims and objectives in order to prosper and move forward in their field. Aims and objectives are frequently used together to set/represent a certain achievement which is why they can often be mistaken to having similar meaning, however, they have a significant different to each other. Aims, to summarise, are essentially a brief statement, which majority of the time are short sentences; for instance, ‘maximise profit or ‘increase customer growth. Aims are most commonly use to identify the overall target of a business, states their intentions, and what they hope to achieve in the future of the business. On a different note, objectives are more complex and ‘to the point than aims. Objectives, unlike aims, are more detailed and can be longer depending on the objective itself. For example, if a company wanted to increase their market, they could set themselves and objective of ‘increase employee productivity by 20%, within in the next six months. As you can see, an objective is more complex, and more detailed. Furthermore, the detail in objectives tends to be numerical details such as specific dates, time frame, percentages etc. This is because objectives are a follow-up of aims. An objective is set merely set to accomplish or to achieve an aim. To illustrate, if a businesss aim is to ‘maximise profit, then they may decide to set themselves the objective of ‘increase sales from 15.7% to 20%, within six months period. By increasing the sales of the business from 15.7% to 20%, a business can ensure that they are retaining their customers and increasing their profi t within six months. However, some businesses may decide to have a sub-objective to this which could be something like ‘increase employee productivity by 2% in 30 days, to ensure that the business is getting the most out of their employees. This also proves the fact that individuals who either own the business or are in charge of the business are the ones who normally make aims. They may decide that their business should be making more profit so they pass it down to the managers who would look at it and perhaps add more detail to it, and as aims are passed down from person to person they become more detailed and complex, thus being objectives. There are a numerous reason as to why a business should set itself aims and objective;, the most obvious one would be that aims and objectives sets a goal for the business and gives some a target to work for, for many businesses this is a good source of motivation. Aims and objectives can also help a business realise their progress because aims and objective provide a backdrop for achievement in which a business can compare their current or previous progress with their aims or objective and calculate what is required to be done in order to meet those targets they have set for themselves. A controversial use of aims and objectives is to use them as a publicity device, in unit one, I had to investigate Tesco as a business and what I found was that Tesco had use their objectives as a publicity device by having economical objectives such as ‘reduce carbon footprints to gain good publicity from the media and their customers. Nevertheless, businesses have to be careful how they use or establish their aims and objectives because if they set objectives for their employees which are not applicable or achievable for the business then the business could face some pitfalls. The employees may feel under-pressure/ stressful and could de-motivate them which would evidently lead to a low productivity rate and could in some circumstances affect the businesss income. S.M.A.R.T Targets SMART targets or sometimes called SMART Objectives, are considered to be a sub-division of objectives, SMART targets are a method to ensure that the objectives which are set by a company are actually achievable by the business and the employees; it is a method of measuring the credibility of an objective which has been set. SMART is an acronym that stands for: Specific objectives, which are set, need to be specific and state exactly what the business wants to achieve. The reason an objective needs to be specific is because the manager/supervisor and the employee need to know what is expected of them and perhaps the time frame if that is applicable. Measurable most often, when objectives are set they need to be able to measure how much an individuals or a business have progressed towards those targets. Measuring a target is often very crucial towards the success of achieving that target because by measuring a target, businesses can estimate how much work is underway and how much additional effort needs to be exerted in order to achieve certain objectives. Achievable when objectives are set, one of the major issues, which a business must realise is that the target is achievable for the business. The business needs to think about; whether they have the required skills, recourses, investments, tools, human recourses etc. If the objectives are unrealistic or not achievable by the business then (as mentioned above) it can affect the productivity of employee and de-motivate them, and low productivity would surely affect the businesses activities and profits. Realistic or relevant objectives should also be relevant to the businesses aims. For example, if a business wants to increase market share, it would be irrelevant for them to set the target eliminate competitors products from the market; it would be very unrealistic. An objective needs to be relevant, they need to be something, which the business can take an action upon or have access to. Timely normally, when objectives are set, they have a timescale such as ‘increase the growth and the market share of the business by 2010. Setting timescale within an objective is beneficial as it gives a business a deadline as t when the objective needs to be achieved by, so the business can move onto their other objectives, which needs to be completed towards their aims. Aims for my business Just like any other modern businesses, my business needs to have aims and objectives, which it should be able to accomplish. Setting aims and objectives will help determine investors as well as myself the main goals of my business, and along the way, it could also help my business spot the potential target market hic hi should aim my business at in order to achieve some of businesss targets. ‘Minimise costs and increase potential profit. One of the major aims of my business would be to minimise the costs of the business, which goes into the production of the products (i.e. music albums and singles) and therefore must be kept at a minimum range. The reason behind this is that, if I were to start the business as a sole trader, there would be a limited amount of investments, which I could have access to and since my business is a record label there arent any need of purchasing any kind of stock or manufacturing materials in the sense of hard labour. As a newly set up business, it would be most advantageous to reduce the cost of the business to reduce the chances of getting into a cash flow problem such as over-budgeting or not having enough sales of the product where the costs would out-weigh the profit. It is because of this issue that leads to many businesses failing within the first year because they run into cash flow problem such as these; however, a good cash f low analysis should be able to determine any issue such as these that may arise. As well as reducing costs, my business also needs to be considering maximising its profits because without profit there will be no business to operate. Maximising profit is a necessity for any business, because it is what influences/motivates their day-to-day operations and their employees, without profit a business would not have the funding to employ employees or rent premises or other necessities. Furthermore, another crucial reason for a good profit for a business is that if a business is backed-up by inventors then the business (Owner) needs to prove to the investors that the business is worthwhile investing in because if the business starts to show a decline in profits then the investors are going to be the first ones who will back-out from the investments because they will not to make a loss themselves. As a summary, if there is no profit, there is no business. In my businesss quest to maximise profit; there could be a number of challenges/issues that could affect my business achieving the aim of ‘Minimise costs and increase potential profit, and the following explains; One of the most significant issues that my record label business would have to deal with is the recession, which was caused by the financial crisis during the year 2007 and the year 2009. The financial crisis was the reduction in the availability of loans (credit) and to some extent; tightening of the condition required to obtain a loan from the banks, this evolved into the interest rates being incredibly high. The definite caused behind the credit crisis is highly doubtable, however, one reason might be that UK bought many mortgage debts from the U.S. (this might have been directly or indirectly) therefore when U.S. mortgage default rose, preponderance of the UK banks lost money. Because interest rates rose dramatically, many individuals in the population had to pay more for their loans and mortgages, which meant that individuals and many businesses had less disposable cash to spare and consequently, many businesses found themselves being either bankrupt or making employees redundan t to prevent bankruptcy. The reason why I believe that the recession may affect my business is because many individuals are un-employed, which means that they may be on some sort of limited income (either through council or jobseekers allowance). Ultimately, this would mean that many individuals would have less disposable income to spend on CDs and DVDs for personal entertainment and if my business is not selling many products, it will be in a high risk of having very high costs that could out-number the total sales of the business. This could put my business in a potential risk of being bankrupt, as you can see from fig.1, it is estimated that the recession will only get worse. In contrast, the recession may not be disastrously bad for my business. The reason behind this would be that because of the recession more people would be un-employed and have a whole lot of spare time on their hands as less people would be working nine to five shifts, this would mean that individuals would be looking for activities to pass their time. This could mean that people will be more reliant upon entrainment such as the cinemas, movies, theatre, music etc. This could potentially excel my business because more individuals would be interested and looking to escape from reality through the financial crisis, similarly to people who went through the Great Depression in the United States during 1929, which saw the rise of movie sales. To conclude, the recession is something that is known as an external factor, which no business has a control over. The recession could have a big impact on my business; however this factor could prove to be advantageous for my business as mentioned earlier, there are a lot more people with more spare time on their hands, and as a result they will be looking for something to entertain themselves and if marketing is done correctly for the business, it will prove to be beneficial. As one can see above, regardless of the recession and the credit crisis that started in 2007, the sales of digital music increased dramatically through the years and the digital music industry is more profitable than ever in the US with industry profit of 2.9 Billion dollars, a 15% from 2004 which was only 0.4 billion profit being made. One of the major issues that my business will have to confront other than the recent financial crisis is the piracy of music through the internet. In essence, music piracy the violation of copyright infringement (copyright), this means the unauthorised use of materials that is covered by the copyright law. For electronic and audio-visual media, this is normally referred to as piracy. Piracy is a factor that could have the biggest impact at my businesss aim to ‘Minimise costs and increase potential profit. As one can see in the article opposite, the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) has predicted that music piracy has risen by thirty-six percent, which has cost the UK music industry twenty-six million pounds, which is a tremendous amount of load-sum. Music piracy is a factor which could directly affect my business because if my business released a single which was popular (Music hit) then the probability is that a lot of customers will be reluctant to purchase the single or the album in order to save money and they would perhaps download the product through an illegal download website or through the use of torrents (which is a peer-to-peer download service provided free from the internet). This is the most likely event to occur because as mentioned previously, the recession has left a lot of people un-employed which means that they may have a very low inco me and have limited amount of disposable cash to spend on entertainment. Because a lot of my businesss target consumers will be getting my product (music) through the internet without pay for it, this could result in my business have a major decline in profit because although the products my business offer may be very popular amongst the target consumers but because they are not paying for the goods my business will have no way in which they can financially benefit from. Many of the bi names in the record label business like ‘Universal Music or the ‘Sony BMG group do tend to copyright the CDs and DVDs that they manufacture and distribute, however, recent technological development has given an regular computer user to copy content from these copyrighted disks (using free software from the internet) from a single click of a button, and if that individual uploads the content of the disk to the internet then the content of that disk will be exposed to thousands if not millio ns of users on the internet which is why the modern music industry is suffering from million of pounds and dollars of damage from piracy and it is very unfortunate for my business as there is no method to battle the rising issue of music piracy because if my businesss products were copyrighted, many consumers or users will be able to find a way to copy content. In addition, copyrighting thousands of disks would prove to be a very costly task and evidently, this will prevent my business in achieving my aim to ‘Minimise costs and increase potential profit. However, not all is tenebrous, my business could still prevail if it turned to a more digitals means to provide the products to the customers, such means could be; having free web player on the businesss website to play the hit singles; free selected music downloads of popular songs; and most importantly selling products through the internet. Most of these solutions would eliminate the cost of producing CDs because a lot of teenagers nowadays are using things like their mobile phones, mp3 players and devices such as the iPod for playback of their music. If the popular products of my business (songs) are being provided free from the companys own website, then the business will have more exposure from the public, which, in the end, could work out to be beneficial. As the businesss website generates more viewers, the chances are internet companies like Google; YouTube; Amazon etc. who will want to advertise their services on my businesss website, which the business could generate some i ncome from as well as gaining public interest and recognition as business. Music piracy most definitely will affect my business and the corporate aim to ‘Minimise costs and maximise potential profit. Internet nowadays is available to almost every house, office and schools/college in the country that millions of people have access too, and the internet is too big to have control over. Nevertheless, good marketing and internet advertisement may fill in the lacunae of profit that may be lost due to music piracy. ‘Increase/attain good public relations with the local community and customers. In my opinion, good public relations with customers should be an imperative aim for abounding businesses. After all, businesses depend on their customers satisfaction and support by which if they did not have good relationship with customers then it will be highly likely that the business will not be able to retain their customers. This issue could lead to a decline in their profit margins or worse gain an incredible amount of bad publicity or a bad reputation as a whole. A record label is not a publicly noticeable business because a record labels product is what gains notoriety as publicity rather than a business as coherent whole. This is because customers are mainly attracted to the stars and the music they make rather than the service that provides them the service. This can be beneficial or a drawback, consider which way one looks at it. From my personal perspective, it is a benefit because it means that my business will not be in the public eye and will not attract major interest if my business were have an issue, this could be a number of things like mistakes (which a lot of businesses make) or redundancy of a major band or artist etc. So in order to gain good public relations with the local community and customers will be a very laborious task to conduct. Nevertheless, with dubious tasks, there are always strategies, and my main strategy to in achieve this aim to ‘Increase/attain good public relations with the local community and customers, will be to organise youth activities and perhaps cultural events, the next page will explain this. As one can see in 4 (Next page), an extract from BBC news website, the level of youth crime has increased dramatically over the past decade in the United Kingdom. Teenage knife crime has increased so much that law enforcements had to enforce harsh laws upon teenage delinquents in order to keep crime at a minimum. The articles below states that boys from the age of eleven to eighteen are likely the ones to be carrying knifes, and are the most likely culprits in the rise of such crimes. The article also states that most of these young offenders have been; excluded, dropped out of school or have already had been given time to serve under law custody. So ultimately, these are the age groups which are been targeted by the law to tackle such crimes. How does this issue help my business to achieve good customer relationship one may wonder? Well to start with, teens that have been expelled, excluded, dropped out etc. from school have nothing to do other than wonder around with friends on the streets and cause trouble to the society and the individuals in the local community. This leads me to believe that, organising local youth music activities and providing creative services such as recording facilities and musical guidance for youths free of charge may be a very beneficial factor not only for my business but also to the local community. Having to organise such events for young people will be very beneficial to a majority of people youths, local community and my business. This is because firstly, by providing youths will free services and activities will encourage them to stay off the streets and be passionate and involved in something creative for their time, and secondly, by having lees teens on the streets in the local community will prevent crime and hopefully reduce the crime rate locally, so older generation who may be intimidated by teens will feel much more safer. Personally, I believe that teens only resort to crime as a recreational activity as well as to gain attention to themselves; this is only an opinion of course. However, by giving teens, facilities to be in and express themselves artistically through music may help to make a productive use of their time; also, it could be a place where teens can get attention that they desire from other like friends, other social groups or even the community. Knife sentencing not effective A selection of knives found by police The study found young people were living in constant fear of attack Longer jail terms are not an effective way of persuading teenagers to stop carrying knives, research suggests. Pentonville Prison governor Nicola Marfleet interviewed 14 to 17-year-olds who had either been excluded from school or were serving time in custody. She found most believed tough sentences were only meant to scare them, and they were more likely to be tagged. The Home Office said the government was using a combination of deterrence and education to tackle the problem. Rival gangs The study found that some boys were carrying knives from the age of 11. Ms Marfleet concluded that knife-crime prevention work must be targeted at this age group in order to be effective. She interviewed about 24 boys in focus groups at pupil referral units in Hackney and Haringey, north London, and four boys one-to-one at Feltham Young Offender Institution in west London Possession of a knife carries a maximum jail term of four years, but most of the teenagers did not believe they would receive such a harsh punishment. Two of those interviewed said that regardless of the possible penalty, they would not stop carrying a knife because they needed one for protection. Almost all of the teenagers said they could not rely on par Business Plan for Record Label Business Plan for Record Label Business Planning Introduction to unit eight coursework In this unit, I have the opportunity to structure a business plan for a business proposal, which I will have the opportunity to create. For this segment of the assignment, I will clarify the main activities of the business, in addition to its aims and objectives. The assignment will also be focusing on the marketing and financial planning of my chosen business, notwithstanding, the operations and financial planning of the proposed business proposal. At the end of it all, I will be evaluating my business and its viability. However, to start a business I will need a business plan. A business plan is essentially a plan of a business that is to be set up; this is usually a written piece of statement about the business (think of it as a blueprint). This is a useful document to have because; firstly, it outlines the business itself and outlines what the business is essentially about, and secondly, it allows the owner/manager of the business to work towards the success of the business by spotting and avoiding failures. In general, a business plan will have the following statements; what the business is all about (i.e. the nature of the business), the aims and objectives of the business (What they hope to achieve and expect in the future) and how the individual plans and will o about creating the business. This can be illustrated in a majority of ways however; a financial planning of the first six months or perhaps even a year would be ideal or information about how the investments are to be raised for the business. A business plan is a very indispensable piece of document to have if someone is considering starting their own business, this is because a business plan outlines/predicts what the business will be like after setting up that gives a clear understanding of how the aims and objective are to be obtained as well as defining them. Furthermore, a business plan will also help to plot any pitfall along the way, i.e. a detailed cash flow of a businesss first six months will be able to suggest if the business will have a higher cost when compared with the profit they make, even before the business has started, and this can prevent major loss of profitability. Not only does a business plan outlines and spots major flaws in the business, but many businesses and entrepreneurs use it as a source of motivation; a backdrop to compare their current performance against. Further adding more, a business plan would be beneficial to establish or to re-evaluate the businesss competitive position within the market place by conducting a thorough analysis of the competition. This would involve finding out the strengths and weaknesses of the competition and how the business can be taken advantage of. In conclusion, as mentioned above, a business plan is important for a business because it helps to clarify the vision of the business and decide whether to forge ahead with the idea. Without a business plan, it would be very difficult to convince external investors to invest the business. Not only that, a business plan will also help the business determine their target market that they want to aim their product at, which is always useful to know. The Business Proposal For my chosen business proposal, I have decided to create a music label, and have named it P.K. Media. Generally, the term â€Å"Record label† is something that is associated with the music industry. A Record label is a brand and a trademark, which is associated with the procedure of marketing and distributing musical recordings and music videos of their signed artists. A record label is also the company that manages the artists/bands and coordinates, manufactures, promotes and distributes their productions i.e. music/videos. Record labels are also responsible for the enforcement of copyright protection on the media that they distribute such as CDs and DVDs, so that their content (such as music), cannot be copied and sold as pirated versions of their work to the customers by other individuals. The business I intend to propose will primarily focus on the production and the promotion of the music of its artists/bands in the local area, the Midlands. The reason for this is that there is a much lower cost of setting up a music label for the local area as there are less promotional activities which the label would have to finance and carry out, thus reducing the start up cost of the business compared to if it was a nationwide business. The main services/products that P.K. Media will provide to its consumers and music acts are as follow: * Music sold using online services such as iTunes and the business website. Some music will be available for free download as a promotional activity. * Provide live performances by its artists and bands as a secondary service. o Commissions from artist will be charged on this, depending the amount of tickets sold by the act. * Offer promotional services for unsigned artist and band acts and charge commission depending on their popularity, music sold, the amount of record deal they receive etc. o Free promotional services will also be available for unsigned artists on the businesss website for uploading their work to display to the internet audiences. o Manufacturing CDs and DVDs will also be available for artists wishing to use for promotional use, however it is highly likely that there will be a fixed cost for this service. * Record deals will be available for artists; majority of the aforementioned services will available with this, as the business will undertake the sole responsibility for the promotion, distribution, production and the sales of the artist/bands music signed to P.K. Media. * Recording facilities and personnel will be available to customers who wish to record their own music that will be mixed by a professional studio engineer. Customers will be charged on an hourly basis or perhaps special offers upon depending upon how much music they wish to record. Live performance are a good way of raising additional profit other than selling CDs because with live performances, My business can charge commission from the local pubs/bars to supply the live performances with beverages, as a result the pubs and bars will also get some promotion of their products and services which will benefit their businesses as well. Furthermore, the business will also be able to make profit through selling tickets for the live performances. The location of this business will be varied and may not be based in a single location, the reason being that if my business is organising the performances, then it will have to be located at the performances to manage the bands and other aspects of the performance i.e. selling the tickets. However, P.K. Media will need facilities to record the band/artists music and venues for live performances, for this it will be a necessity to have access to a recording studio and to be able to rent a venue in the local area. Having acce ss to a studio can be done in a number of ways such as renting a recording studio in the local area or purchasing the equipment and setting up the recording studio at home or other location, such as a youth centre or other rented location like flats or houses. The cost of the musical equipment such as; mixing boards, computers, mics, instruments, audio processing hardware and sound proofing the location can add up to a significant amount and as a new business the cost of starting up should be kept at a minimum. Ultimately, a more convenient option would be to rent a recording studio, which is pre-provided with all the equipment needed (as described above). Another issue which may arise would be that if my business had to purchase the musical equipment I would have to purchase the low-end equipment as the high-end (studio quality) equipment can cost thousands and upwards and as a small independent music label there would be limitations for the finance. In addition, the low-end equipm ent could also reduce the quality of the recording, and as a record label that will not be beneficial for the artists because consumers would not want to purchase bad quality products especially if the product is aimed at entertainment purposes. Imagine listening to ones favourite song with hissing noisiest, crackle and static noises, it would not be pleasant to listen to which is why quality of the audio is a substantial element of a record label. Reason for choice of business? The idea of a record label interested me because; with a record label, there is no need to purchase stock; it is a service-based business, which means that a record label does not have to manufacture or purchase anything other than to sign the artist and record CDs. A record label is basically, the intermediate service between audiences/customers and the artist. In essence, while the artist makes the product, the record label simply delivers it to the customers, almost like an intermediary. Another thing which seemed interesting is that the possibility of a sole ownership of the business. Since a record label is a service-based business, it is not necessary to have partners (as with any other businesses). It can be set-up with a moderately low cost, which mean that there is no need to invite external investors to invest in the business and hold a percentage of shares in the business, leaving room for more creative control over the business. Personal interest is another factor that may have influenced my choice to pick a record label for a business proposal. Unqualified amateur musician myself, I find that music is the greatest past time for all ages which is why I liked the idea of providing people with good quality of music to listen to which is easily accessible and is at moderately low price. Overall, I believe that a record label should be a viable business proposal for this assignment because like many businesses it requires marketing strategies, target consumers and a product. A further consideration is that almost everyone listens to music (to some extent) whether it is purchased from store or downloaded from the web and it is because of this that music is considered as one of the major immersed art form, which hints of a profitable market sector. What are Aims and Objectives? It is imperative for a business to have a basic requirement and have clear aims and objectives in order to prosper and move forward in their field. Aims and objectives are frequently used together to set/represent a certain achievement which is why they can often be mistaken to having similar meaning, however, they have a significant different to each other. Aims, to summarise, are essentially a brief statement, which majority of the time are short sentences; for instance, ‘maximise profit or ‘increase customer growth. Aims are most commonly use to identify the overall target of a business, states their intentions, and what they hope to achieve in the future of the business. On a different note, objectives are more complex and ‘to the point than aims. Objectives, unlike aims, are more detailed and can be longer depending on the objective itself. For example, if a company wanted to increase their market, they could set themselves and objective of ‘increase employee productivity by 20%, within in the next six months. As you can see, an objective is more complex, and more detailed. Furthermore, the detail in objectives tends to be numerical details such as specific dates, time frame, percentages etc. This is because objectives are a follow-up of aims. An objective is set merely set to accomplish or to achieve an aim. To illustrate, if a businesss aim is to ‘maximise profit, then they may decide to set themselves the objective of ‘increase sales from 15.7% to 20%, within six months period. By increasing the sales of the business from 15.7% to 20%, a business can ensure that they are retaining their customers and increasing their profi t within six months. However, some businesses may decide to have a sub-objective to this which could be something like ‘increase employee productivity by 2% in 30 days, to ensure that the business is getting the most out of their employees. This also proves the fact that individuals who either own the business or are in charge of the business are the ones who normally make aims. They may decide that their business should be making more profit so they pass it down to the managers who would look at it and perhaps add more detail to it, and as aims are passed down from person to person they become more detailed and complex, thus being objectives. There are a numerous reason as to why a business should set itself aims and objective;, the most obvious one would be that aims and objectives sets a goal for the business and gives some a target to work for, for many businesses this is a good source of motivation. Aims and objectives can also help a business realise their progress because aims and objective provide a backdrop for achievement in which a business can compare their current or previous progress with their aims or objective and calculate what is required to be done in order to meet those targets they have set for themselves. A controversial use of aims and objectives is to use them as a publicity device, in unit one, I had to investigate Tesco as a business and what I found was that Tesco had use their objectives as a publicity device by having economical objectives such as ‘reduce carbon footprints to gain good publicity from the media and their customers. Nevertheless, businesses have to be careful how they use or establish their aims and objectives because if they set objectives for their employees which are not applicable or achievable for the business then the business could face some pitfalls. The employees may feel under-pressure/ stressful and could de-motivate them which would evidently lead to a low productivity rate and could in some circumstances affect the businesss income. S.M.A.R.T Targets SMART targets or sometimes called SMART Objectives, are considered to be a sub-division of objectives, SMART targets are a method to ensure that the objectives which are set by a company are actually achievable by the business and the employees; it is a method of measuring the credibility of an objective which has been set. SMART is an acronym that stands for: Specific objectives, which are set, need to be specific and state exactly what the business wants to achieve. The reason an objective needs to be specific is because the manager/supervisor and the employee need to know what is expected of them and perhaps the time frame if that is applicable. Measurable most often, when objectives are set they need to be able to measure how much an individuals or a business have progressed towards those targets. Measuring a target is often very crucial towards the success of achieving that target because by measuring a target, businesses can estimate how much work is underway and how much additional effort needs to be exerted in order to achieve certain objectives. Achievable when objectives are set, one of the major issues, which a business must realise is that the target is achievable for the business. The business needs to think about; whether they have the required skills, recourses, investments, tools, human recourses etc. If the objectives are unrealistic or not achievable by the business then (as mentioned above) it can affect the productivity of employee and de-motivate them, and low productivity would surely affect the businesses activities and profits. Realistic or relevant objectives should also be relevant to the businesses aims. For example, if a business wants to increase market share, it would be irrelevant for them to set the target eliminate competitors products from the market; it would be very unrealistic. An objective needs to be relevant, they need to be something, which the business can take an action upon or have access to. Timely normally, when objectives are set, they have a timescale such as ‘increase the growth and the market share of the business by 2010. Setting timescale within an objective is beneficial as it gives a business a deadline as t when the objective needs to be achieved by, so the business can move onto their other objectives, which needs to be completed towards their aims. Aims for my business Just like any other modern businesses, my business needs to have aims and objectives, which it should be able to accomplish. Setting aims and objectives will help determine investors as well as myself the main goals of my business, and along the way, it could also help my business spot the potential target market hic hi should aim my business at in order to achieve some of businesss targets. ‘Minimise costs and increase potential profit. One of the major aims of my business would be to minimise the costs of the business, which goes into the production of the products (i.e. music albums and singles) and therefore must be kept at a minimum range. The reason behind this is that, if I were to start the business as a sole trader, there would be a limited amount of investments, which I could have access to and since my business is a record label there arent any need of purchasing any kind of stock or manufacturing materials in the sense of hard labour. As a newly set up business, it would be most advantageous to reduce the cost of the business to reduce the chances of getting into a cash flow problem such as over-budgeting or not having enough sales of the product where the costs would out-weigh the profit. It is because of this issue that leads to many businesses failing within the first year because they run into cash flow problem such as these; however, a good cash f low analysis should be able to determine any issue such as these that may arise. As well as reducing costs, my business also needs to be considering maximising its profits because without profit there will be no business to operate. Maximising profit is a necessity for any business, because it is what influences/motivates their day-to-day operations and their employees, without profit a business would not have the funding to employ employees or rent premises or other necessities. Furthermore, another crucial reason for a good profit for a business is that if a business is backed-up by inventors then the business (Owner) needs to prove to the investors that the business is worthwhile investing in because if the business starts to show a decline in profits then the investors are going to be the first ones who will back-out from the investments because they will not to make a loss themselves. As a summary, if there is no profit, there is no business. In my businesss quest to maximise profit; there could be a number of challenges/issues that could affect my business achieving the aim of ‘Minimise costs and increase potential profit, and the following explains; One of the most significant issues that my record label business would have to deal with is the recession, which was caused by the financial crisis during the year 2007 and the year 2009. The financial crisis was the reduction in the availability of loans (credit) and to some extent; tightening of the condition required to obtain a loan from the banks, this evolved into the interest rates being incredibly high. The definite caused behind the credit crisis is highly doubtable, however, one reason might be that UK bought many mortgage debts from the U.S. (this might have been directly or indirectly) therefore when U.S. mortgage default rose, preponderance of the UK banks lost money. Because interest rates rose dramatically, many individuals in the population had to pay more for their loans and mortgages, which meant that individuals and many businesses had less disposable cash to spare and consequently, many businesses found themselves being either bankrupt or making employees redundan t to prevent bankruptcy. The reason why I believe that the recession may affect my business is because many individuals are un-employed, which means that they may be on some sort of limited income (either through council or jobseekers allowance). Ultimately, this would mean that many individuals would have less disposable income to spend on CDs and DVDs for personal entertainment and if my business is not selling many products, it will be in a high risk of having very high costs that could out-number the total sales of the business. This could put my business in a potential risk of being bankrupt, as you can see from fig.1, it is estimated that the recession will only get worse. In contrast, the recession may not be disastrously bad for my business. The reason behind this would be that because of the recession more people would be un-employed and have a whole lot of spare time on their hands as less people would be working nine to five shifts, this would mean that individuals would be looking for activities to pass their time. This could mean that people will be more reliant upon entrainment such as the cinemas, movies, theatre, music etc. This could potentially excel my business because more individuals would be interested and looking to escape from reality through the financial crisis, similarly to people who went through the Great Depression in the United States during 1929, which saw the rise of movie sales. To conclude, the recession is something that is known as an external factor, which no business has a control over. The recession could have a big impact on my business; however this factor could prove to be advantageous for my business as mentioned earlier, there are a lot more people with more spare time on their hands, and as a result they will be looking for something to entertain themselves and if marketing is done correctly for the business, it will prove to be beneficial. As one can see above, regardless of the recession and the credit crisis that started in 2007, the sales of digital music increased dramatically through the years and the digital music industry is more profitable than ever in the US with industry profit of 2.9 Billion dollars, a 15% from 2004 which was only 0.4 billion profit being made. One of the major issues that my business will have to confront other than the recent financial crisis is the piracy of music through the internet. In essence, music piracy the violation of copyright infringement (copyright), this means the unauthorised use of materials that is covered by the copyright law. For electronic and audio-visual media, this is normally referred to as piracy. Piracy is a factor that could have the biggest impact at my businesss aim to ‘Minimise costs and increase potential profit. As one can see in the article opposite, the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) has predicted that music piracy has risen by thirty-six percent, which has cost the UK music industry twenty-six million pounds, which is a tremendous amount of load-sum. Music piracy is a factor which could directly affect my business because if my business released a single which was popular (Music hit) then the probability is that a lot of customers will be reluctant to purchase the single or the album in order to save money and they would perhaps download the product through an illegal download website or through the use of torrents (which is a peer-to-peer download service provided free from the internet). This is the most likely event to occur because as mentioned previously, the recession has left a lot of people un-employed which means that they may have a very low inco me and have limited amount of disposable cash to spend on entertainment. Because a lot of my businesss target consumers will be getting my product (music) through the internet without pay for it, this could result in my business have a major decline in profit because although the products my business offer may be very popular amongst the target consumers but because they are not paying for the goods my business will have no way in which they can financially benefit from. Many of the bi names in the record label business like ‘Universal Music or the ‘Sony BMG group do tend to copyright the CDs and DVDs that they manufacture and distribute, however, recent technological development has given an regular computer user to copy content from these copyrighted disks (using free software from the internet) from a single click of a button, and if that individual uploads the content of the disk to the internet then the content of that disk will be exposed to thousands if not millio ns of users on the internet which is why the modern music industry is suffering from million of pounds and dollars of damage from piracy and it is very unfortunate for my business as there is no method to battle the rising issue of music piracy because if my businesss products were copyrighted, many consumers or users will be able to find a way to copy content. In addition, copyrighting thousands of disks would prove to be a very costly task and evidently, this will prevent my business in achieving my aim to ‘Minimise costs and increase potential profit. However, not all is tenebrous, my business could still prevail if it turned to a more digitals means to provide the products to the customers, such means could be; having free web player on the businesss website to play the hit singles; free selected music downloads of popular songs; and most importantly selling products through the internet. Most of these solutions would eliminate the cost of producing CDs because a lot of teenagers nowadays are using things like their mobile phones, mp3 players and devices such as the iPod for playback of their music. If the popular products of my business (songs) are being provided free from the companys own website, then the business will have more exposure from the public, which, in the end, could work out to be beneficial. As the businesss website generates more viewers, the chances are internet companies like Google; YouTube; Amazon etc. who will want to advertise their services on my businesss website, which the business could generate some i ncome from as well as gaining public interest and recognition as business. Music piracy most definitely will affect my business and the corporate aim to ‘Minimise costs and maximise potential profit. Internet nowadays is available to almost every house, office and schools/college in the country that millions of people have access too, and the internet is too big to have control over. Nevertheless, good marketing and internet advertisement may fill in the lacunae of profit that may be lost due to music piracy. ‘Increase/attain good public relations with the local community and customers. In my opinion, good public relations with customers should be an imperative aim for abounding businesses. After all, businesses depend on their customers satisfaction and support by which if they did not have good relationship with customers then it will be highly likely that the business will not be able to retain their customers. This issue could lead to a decline in their profit margins or worse gain an incredible amount of bad publicity or a bad reputation as a whole. A record label is not a publicly noticeable business because a record labels product is what gains notoriety as publicity rather than a business as coherent whole. This is because customers are mainly attracted to the stars and the music they make rather than the service that provides them the service. This can be beneficial or a drawback, consider which way one looks at it. From my personal perspective, it is a benefit because it means that my business will not be in the public eye and will not attract major interest if my business were have an issue, this could be a number of things like mistakes (which a lot of businesses make) or redundancy of a major band or artist etc. So in order to gain good public relations with the local community and customers will be a very laborious task to conduct. Nevertheless, with dubious tasks, there are always strategies, and my main strategy to in achieve this aim to ‘Increase/attain good public relations with the local community and customers, will be to organise youth activities and perhaps cultural events, the next page will explain this. As one can see in 4 (Next page), an extract from BBC news website, the level of youth crime has increased dramatically over the past decade in the United Kingdom. Teenage knife crime has increased so much that law enforcements had to enforce harsh laws upon teenage delinquents in order to keep crime at a minimum. The articles below states that boys from the age of eleven to eighteen are likely the ones to be carrying knifes, and are the most likely culprits in the rise of such crimes. The article also states that most of these young offenders have been; excluded, dropped out of school or have already had been given time to serve under law custody. So ultimately, these are the age groups which are been targeted by the law to tackle such crimes. How does this issue help my business to achieve good customer relationship one may wonder? Well to start with, teens that have been expelled, excluded, dropped out etc. from school have nothing to do other than wonder around with friends on the streets and cause trouble to the society and the individuals in the local community. This leads me to believe that, organising local youth music activities and providing creative services such as recording facilities and musical guidance for youths free of charge may be a very beneficial factor not only for my business but also to the local community. Having to organise such events for young people will be very beneficial to a majority of people youths, local community and my business. This is because firstly, by providing youths will free services and activities will encourage them to stay off the streets and be passionate and involved in something creative for their time, and secondly, by having lees teens on the streets in the local community will prevent crime and hopefully reduce the crime rate locally, so older generation who may be intimidated by teens will feel much more safer. Personally, I believe that teens only resort to crime as a recreational activity as well as to gain attention to themselves; this is only an opinion of course. However, by giving teens, facilities to be in and express themselves artistically through music may help to make a productive use of their time; also, it could be a place where teens can get attention that they desire from other like friends, other social groups or even the community. Knife sentencing not effective A selection of knives found by police The study found young people were living in constant fear of attack Longer jail terms are not an effective way of persuading teenagers to stop carrying knives, research suggests. Pentonville Prison governor Nicola Marfleet interviewed 14 to 17-year-olds who had either been excluded from school or were serving time in custody. She found most believed tough sentences were only meant to scare them, and they were more likely to be tagged. The Home Office said the government was using a combination of deterrence and education to tackle the problem. Rival gangs The study found that some boys were carrying knives from the age of 11. Ms Marfleet concluded that knife-crime prevention work must be targeted at this age group in order to be effective. She interviewed about 24 boys in focus groups at pupil referral units in Hackney and Haringey, north London, and four boys one-to-one at Feltham Young Offender Institution in west London Possession of a knife carries a maximum jail term of four years, but most of the teenagers did not believe they would receive such a harsh punishment. Two of those interviewed said that regardless of the possible penalty, they would not stop carrying a knife because they needed one for protection. Almost all of the teenagers said they could not rely on par

Relationship Between Ambient Airborne Fungal Levels and Meteorological

Total Spore Trap Sampling Method The spore trap method is used due to the ability to immediately identify a large spectrum of the majority of fungal spores within the air. This method is able to identify species that are unable to culture well or those that are no longer viable, but present. Alternatively within the industry there is not a consensus on the method. Downfalls include the difficulty of identifying some mold spores and there is no differentiation between non-viable and viable spores. For example, the lab analysis of Penicillium and Aspergillus is reported together due to the inability to differentiate between the two, therefore are categorized as Penicillium/Aspergillus types (Clean Air Labs, 2007). This would be an issue if trying to model either through use of the spore trap method. The spore trap method also lacks to ability to determine mold spore viability, which could be useful in determining which mold spores are able to grow when placed in the right environment (Emlab, 2011). Overall the method is questionable for industry when used alone as a method to classify and determine indoor mold problems. For the purposes of creating models based on meteorological data, those issues seem to be irrelevant if the appropriate fungus is selected for comparison. Sampling Technique Total Spore Trap sampling occurs through use of air pump with cassette. The air is pulled through the cassette and trapped on a slide, which is analyzed by a laboratory. The lab with read a count the total number of fungal spores in a small area and multiplied to determine a total spore count. This process is very quick and cost effective, but can only be used as a guide, with all reported numbers representing an estimation of the total sp... ...ions of Cladosporium spp. and Alternaria spp. spores in Zagreb (Croatia) and effects of some meteorologicial factors. Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine , 303-307. Recio, M., Trigo, M. d., Docampo, S., Melgar, M., Garcia-Sanchez, J., Bootello, L., et al. (2011). Analysis of the predicting variables for daily and weekly fluctuations of two airborne fungal spores: Alternaria and Cladosporium. International Journal of Bioeteorology . Smith, G. (1990). Sampling and identifying allergenic pollens and molds. San Antonio: Blewstone Press. Trout, C., & Levetin, E. (2001). Correlation of spring spore concentrations and meteorological conditions in Tulsa, Oklahoma. International Journal of Biometeorology , 64-74. Whittaker, C. (n.d.). A rationale for collecting viable and non-viable samples for airborne fungi. Retrieved from Environmental Solutions Group.

The Situation of Filipino Children and Young People

Almost half of the population in the Philippines are children. With a fast population growth a year, the government has a difficult task in providing children with enough resources to ensure their rights. For many adults and children, a 15-year-old who bears a child willingly or unwillingly ceases to be a girl-child but a young mother. An 11-year-old who takes on the task of tilling the ?elds ceases to be a boy but a labouring farmhand. A 16-year-old who spends most of his time at a wage-factory ceases to be a young adolescent but a breadwinner. A 9-year-old girl made to peddle her body on the streets becomes a commodity. An 8-year-old boy on the street stealing someone’s money for food is a criminal. Boys and girls loitering in the streets sniffing rugby are considered dregs of society. Seldom are their situations seen in the context of poverty and lack of parental guidance and societal responsibility. As dictated by social practice, a child may be considered an adult when he or she becomes part of social production and reproduction, or when the child performs responsibilities such as making a living or having his or her own family. While children are not distinguished simply by chronological age, physical and psychological development identifies an age range that sets a general definition of who are children, that is, (also as de?ned by law) individuals below 18 years old. On the other hand, different socio-cultural contexts characterize children and their childhoods. Children have become more vulnerable as they give in to their families’ insecurities, society’s inadequacies and social exclusion as the marginalisation of the poor heightens. Despite the circumstances they find themselves in, children, youth, and young people are still developing individuals who have particular needs and rights. They have both vulnerabilities and competencies. They are not simply â€Å"adults-to-be† who need to be moulded or â€Å"just children† who are to be taken for granted. Children are social actors and can be active participants in social change. The Philippines is making significant progress in the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Still, poverty coupled with political violence pose serious challenges to children. The total number of poor Filipino families is estimated at 4. 7 million. The fast-growing population and the failure of household incomes to rise as fast as commodity prices have resulted in more poor Filipino families. Poor refers to those whose incomes fall below the threshold determined by the government, or those who cannot afford to provide in a sustained manner for their minimum basic needs for food, health, education, housing and other social amenities in life. In the Philippines, children who are victims of violence are categorized as children needing special protection (CNSP). CNSP includes child labour; children-victims of sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation; abandoned and neglected or children without primary caregivers; children of indigenous cultural groups; child-victims of disasters; children in situations of armed conflict; street children; and, children in conflict with the law. Violence against Filipino children are committed through physical and psychological abuse/deprivation that manifest in the worst forms of child labour, child prostitution, begging in the streets, abandonment, trafficking and /or recruitment as soldiers or couriers in areas of armed conflict. Most instances or forms of violence against Filipino children are attributed to poverty. The increasing reported cases of violence against children are the social manifestations of a long history of poverty, characterized by a chronic or cyclical condition of deprivation of basic services that include basic education, health and nutrition services, livelihood or employment opportunities, durable housing and clothing. Poverty has affected several generations of a lot of Filipino families that has resulted in inadequate parental capabilities, strained family relationship and corrupted values. Children are products of their environments. Their situation mirrors the realities of their families, community and society. While the Filipino family puts much premium on the welfare of its children, families are increasingly breaking down in the midst of the struggle for survival. In the process, children are inadvertently sacrificed. The paragraphs on the next pages are studies of the situation of Filipino children and young people. Poverty and Luck of Education If you have an education, you won’t go hungry and you live with comforts of a house. You are living a good life. There is Michelle 16 year olds. She lives in Payatas. Life is hard in a garbage town. At such young age children collect and sell garbage. Despite the danger they are forced to work. Many have had accidents and died. When typhoon Ketsana came, her house was destroyed. Her mom lost her job. With no house and no money for food, Michelle and her siblings could not go to school anymore. Twelve-year-old Marian is one of the millions of Filipino children whose education has taken a backseat due to poverty. The fifth of eight children, she fled her home when she was 10 because she said her jobless parents hurt her. Marian is supposed to be in the sixth grade this year, but she’s currently enrolled as a Grade 1 pupil, learning basic language lessons and math skills in a public elementary school in Cainta, Rizal. A certain â€Å"Ate Rowena† took her in and convinced her to go back to school. Marian has to face challenges in school. â€Å"Other children tease me because I’m still in Grade 1†¦but I don’t mind them because this is my chance to continue and finish my studies†, she said. Despite the challenges, Marian is lucky compare to thousands of other Filipino children. Education is a right, however today; 121 million people cannot go to school because of poverty. The poor would choose to feed the body instead of feeding the mind. They would choose to work in jobs before working for a better future in school. Poverty has deprived them from their right to education. Billions of children are experiencing the nightmare of poverty. What does the future hold for them, and for the whole world? Poverty, hungers prevent Filipino kids from getting basic education. Despite the annual increase in the budget for basic education, fewer children are enrolling in schools. Poverty is one of the main causes of the country’s poor education record and has affected participation in education in more ways than one. Lack of personal interest came in second at 22 percent, while the high cost of education came in a close third at 19. 9 percent. Other reasons include, among others, housekeeping, illness or disability, failure to cope with school work, and distance from school. The lack of interest among school children indicates a weakness on the part of the school system to make education interesting for the students. This may be due to poor teaching quality, inadequate facilities and supplies and poor infrastructure. Poverty, social exclusion, school distance and poor health care, are factors that weigh heavily on children and dampen their interest to pursue schooling. The challenge, therefore, is how to make the school interesting and encouraging rather than intimidating; how to make it inclusive, non-discriminatory and poor-sensitive rather than exclusive and elite-oriented; and how to make it accommodating rather than restricting. Finally, the education content, process and experience should be made more meaningful to the children’s life experiences by ensuring appropriate, culture-sensitive and values-based interventions. The Education department said hunger and malnutrition are also barriers to participation in education. DepEd started implementing the Food for School Program under the Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Plan. It was done with the Health, Social Welfare departments, the National Food Authority and local government units. As a motivation to go to school, it sends the wrong message to poor children: go to school to get one kilo of rice instead of the value of learning; it is also an added burden for children as poor parents encourage their children to attend classes to be able to avail of the daily ration†. Street Children There is an estimated 1. 5 million street children in the Philippines. They survive each day by begging, selling or by taking drugs. Would you care to give them a fut ure? The country has a high number of street children. Street children are susceptible to malnutrition, vehicular accidents, injuries illnesses, drug or substance abuse, sexual exploitation, gambling and harassment by police or other extortionists. They also tend to join gangs as a form of protection. A lot of children are also involved in drug trading in their communities by serving as runners, lookouts, barkers or by doing repacking and cleaning up of paraphernalia. Drug pushers prefer to hire children, because they are obedient and not easily detected. Cebu City is a booming centre of trade and tourism in the Visayan region of the Philippines. In Cebu City alone, it was estimated that about 1,300 children were engaged in such activities. Respondents in the said study entitled â€Å"Children’s Involvement in the Production, Sales and Trafficking of Drugs in Cebu City† reported that their environment was conducive for their involvement in drug trading particularly since their barangay officials were also involved in said illegal activities. The need for money was the major reason that drove them to work in drug trading. Most of the children-respondents were drug users themselves and about one-third of them had parents also involved in drug trading. Some children got physically or verbally abused both by the drug leader and law. Street children are generally thin, untidy, undernourished, and hardly equipped to survive the hazards of everyday living and working on the streets. Some of the hazards they face include sickness, physical injuries from motor accidents, street fights, harassment from extortionists and police, sexual exploitation by pedophiles and pimps, exposure to substance abuse and sexually transmitted diseases. The most common substances street children used are inhalants, such as solvents, rugby and cough syrups, followed by marijuana and shabu. Marijuana and shabu in particular are shared with friends whenever one of the groups has enough money to buy them. Some street children take drugs as often as once a day. Malnourishment More than half million Pinoy kids suffer from severe malnutrition. The next generation of Filipinos will probably be shorter and lighter if the incidence of malnutrition in the country remains unchecked. According to the latest study by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute, three in every 10 Filipino children aged 5 and below are stunted or too short for their age while two in every 10 children also in the same age range are underweight. Four million Filipino children are malnourished and the number is expected to grow. FNRI revealed that the prevalence of malnutrition is highest in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, the Zamboanga Peninsula, Southern Tagalog, Southern Mindanao, and Eastern Visayas regions, where up to one-third of children under the age of 10 are either underweight or short for their age. But malnutrition is not just prevalent in rural regions, FNRI said. In Metro Manila, 4 out of every 100 children are underweight and two out of every 100 preschoolers are overweight. Increasing food prices would only worsen the malnutrition in the country. UNICEF demonstrates that the underlying causes of malnutrition are multifaceted, including economic, social, and political factors. Poverty is recognized as both a cause and consequence of malnutrition. Child Trafficking Human trafficking is a serious problem in the Philippines. Aside from being a source country for human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, it is also a transit and destination country. Between 60 000 and 100 000 children are trafficked annually, most of them girls. Children are recruited by agents from poor families in rural areas, who send their daughters to the city to earn money. The Philippines has a serious trafficking problem of children illegally recruited into the tourist industry for sexual exploitation. Destinations within the country are Metro Manila, Angeles City, Olongapo City, towns in Bulacan, Batangas, Cebu City, Davao and Cagayan de Oro City and other sex tourist resorts such as Puerto Galera, which is notorious, Pagsanjan, Laguna, San Fernando Pampanga, and many beach resorts throughout the country. The promise of recruiters offers the parents and children attractive jobs in the country or abroad, and instead they are persuade and forced and controlled into the sex industry for tourists. Child Abuse Over 200,000 Filipino children have experienced abuse. The DSWD classifies child abuse cases as abandoned, neglected, sexually abused, sexually exploited, physically abused/maltreated, victims of child labor, victims of illegal recruitment, victims of child trafficking, victims of armed conflict, and others (emotionally abused, etc. ). The regions with the most number of child abuse cases served are NCR, Central Visayas, Central Luzon, Cagayan Valley, and Zamboanga Peninsula. The reduction in the number of cases served came mainly from Zamboanga Peninsula. More than half of the child abuse victims are aged 10 to below 18 years old. Revolting is the fact that about one out of four victims is aged below five years old. By category, more than one-half of abused children served by the DSWD have either been abandoned or neglected, comprising the most common cases. Why are they abandoned and/or neglected? Are these innocent children victims of unwanted pregnancies, or of abject poverty? After abandoned/neglected children, sexually abused children are the second most common cases. And despite the Anti-Rape Law of 1997 (Republic Act (RA) No. 353), the most common sexual abuse is rape, followed by incest and acts of lasciviousness. Rape victims are predominantly female. One wonders whether the prohibition under RA 9346 in 2006 of the death penalty originally possible for convicted rape offenders under certain conditions has contributed to this social problem. And quite worrisome is the relatively large number of incest cases, calling attention to the breakdown of the family as a social institution. Does the CWC have a program to address this sensitive social issue? Some victims of child labor are only 5 to below 10 years old. While child labour—de?ned by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) as the â€Å"employment of children below 15 years of age and the employment of those below 18 years in hazardous or deleterious work†Ã¢â‚¬â€œ is declared illegal, the government di?erentiate it from child work, which is considered an â€Å"acceptable vocation for children. † In reality though, the distinction is not clear. Even the exemption provided for when parents give consent for their child’s engaging in labour validates the reality that a family’s economic status decides whether or not a child is forced to work. Victims of paedophilia have been reported in Eastern Visayas, NCR, and MIMAROPA. Most of the sexually-exploited children are either victim of prostitution or of cyber pornography. The child prostitution cases went up slightly. Cyber pornography victims are served in NCR, Central Visayas, Zamboanga Peninsula, and Ilocos Region. And while the absolute number of cyber pornography cases may be small, there could possibly be many more, as is probably the case with child prostitution, who have not sought help from the DSWD. This should serve as a stern warning about the danger of allowing children unguided access to the Internet. Situation of Education in the Philippines In spite of a constitutional mandate, the budget allocation on education is far lower than required in the Philippines. The impact of economic crisis and the pressures of increasing population are forcing parents to send their wards to overcrowded and ill-equipped public schools. And the school itself is not unusual in a country whose population of 92 million is exploding so fast, and whose education budget is so small, that it cannot find space to teach its children. More children are also coming into the public schools as the economy tightens and families cannot afford the haven of private schools, with their smaller classes. Many children, lesser classrooms – This school year opened with a nationwide enrolment of millions of students from elementary through high school, almost exactly a million more than in the previous year. Although the government began a classroom-building program, the schools are still classrooms short, according to Juan Miguel Luz, a former under secretary of education who works with the National Institute of Policy Study, which advocates better education policies. To squeeze in all the students, many classrooms have been divided into two by partitions. Stairwells and corridors have been converted into miniature classrooms. In the capital, Manila, Education Department figures show an average of one toilet for every 143 high school students and one for every 114 elementary school students. At Munoz-Palma High School, some lavatories have been converted into claustrophobic faculty lounges, while the lounges have been put to use as classrooms. â€Å"I have 106 students in my class and 90 seats,† said Rico Encinares, 34, a chemistry teacher. Everybody has seats if some of them are absent. But if they all come, there are not enough seats. They have to share seats. † –Teacher- Missing on quality education – Only about 10% of his students – the truly motivated ones – get a quality education, he said. Individual attention is almost impossible. â€Å"I don’t know the names of all my students, even at the end of the school year,† he said. â€Å"You only remember the ones who are very noisy or very good. But the silent ones who just sit there listening, you can’t recall their names. -Teacher- Children in conflict The political violence continues to affect children in the country. Local authorities have been involved in death-squad operations targeting children. There are also reports of children being used by government linked paramilitaries and armed opposition. Children, sometimes as young as 11 years old, have been recruited by armed rebel movements, such as the New People’s Army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the Abu Sayyaf Group, to serve as combatants, spies, guards, cooks or medics. According to 2005 estimates, up to 13 per cent of the armed group MILF’s 10,000 members were children. According to existing studies, usually males between the ages of 11 and 17 who have low educational attainment, mostly reaching only the elementary level. They are usually middle or in-between children in very large low-income families. Various studies have established that many of these children are either on the streets or of the streets when they were apprehended. While a signi?cant number still live with parents or a relative, they are usually out on the streets to eke out a living or are involved in peer groups or gangs, which are usually associated with vices and illegal activities. Justice The age of criminal responsibility is 9 years. Despite legislative and procedural safeguards put in place in 2006 with the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, children in detention are imprisoned together with adults in poor detention conditions, increasing the risk of physical or sexual abuse. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is alarmed over the increasing reports of cases of child abuse and neglect and the notable deficiencies in domestic legislation as regards penalizing all forms of abuse, neglect and mistreatment, including sexual abuse. This includes alleged cases of sexual abuse of children in the framework of religious institutions. There are also a number of reported cases of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of children, particularly of children in detention. Many children below the age of 18 are placed with adults in detention. References: * http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/start/countries/philippines * http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/111257/news/specialreports/poverty-hunger-prevent-filipino-kids-from-getting-basic-education * http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20080705-146662/4M-malnourished-Filipino-children *   http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/232299/more-filipino-children-stunted-due-to-malnutrition#ixzz2YSsYkc6e   * http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/topstories/topstories/view/20100204-251263/Over-200000-Filipino-children-are-victims-of-abuse-says-group * http://www.nscb.gov.ph/headlines/StatsSpeak/2011/101011_rav.asp * http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/publications/violence.pdf * http://southasia.oneworld.net/archive/globalheadlines/school-education-faces-worst-ever-crisis-in-philippines

Filter, Power Divider

Outline 1.? Introduction 2.? Literature Review – Transmission Lines (Microstrip Line/ CPW/ SIW) – Resonator, Filter, Power Divider 3. SIW Resonator Designs – Comparison of Transmission Line Performance – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Resonators 4.? SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Filter and Power Divider 5. Conclusion and Recommendations 1 Outline 1.? Introduction 2.? Literature Review – Transmission Lines (Microstrip Line/ CPW/ SIW) – Resonator, Filter, Power Divider 3. SIW Resonator Designs Comparison of Transmission Line Performance – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Resonators 4.? SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Filter and Power Divider 5. Conclusion and Recommendations 2 1. Introduction †¢? Background O As consequence of the rapid development in wireless communication market, various devices need to integrate wirel ess standards.Demand on wireless devices to support these multi-standard operations with [2]  § Low insertion loss  § sharp selectivity  § Proper compact size  § Low cost O Band-pass filters  § primarily used in wireless transmitters and receivers  § imit the bandwidth of the output signal to the minimum necessary to convey data at the desired speed and in the desired form  § also used in bio-photonic, medical analytical, chemical, pharmaceutical area etc O Power dividers  § passive microwave components used for power division  § Divide input signal into two signals of lesser power. The coupler may be a three port component with or without loss  § usually of the equal-division type, which is 3dB, but unequal power division ratio is also possible [4] 3 1. Introduction †¢? Motivation O Why 60GHz  § First published by Indian physicist J. C. Bose 1895  § In 1947, US physicist J.H. Van Vleck observed that the oxygen molecule absorbs electromagnetic more energ y at 60-GHz than at other frequencies [6]  § Mainly driven by military and space applications 1960s to 1980s [7]  § From mid-1990s, interest in fixed broadband wireless access for last mile connectivity advanced 60-GHz radio technology [8] O Why SIW filter and power divider  § Conventional technologies: either not able to present required performance or too expensive  § SIW: as an attractive technology for low cost, high Q-factor, relatively high power, and high density integration of microwave and millimeter-wave components and sub-systems [10]-[12]. SIW filters have a low in-band insertion loss and a wide stopband performance.  § SIW power dividers not only achieve the small size but also realize transmitting a defined amount of the electromagnetic to another two ports.4 1. Introduction †¢? Objective O Study literature review of structures, applications and analyzing methods of SIW O Investigate the basic structure of different transmission lines by designing reson ators O Extend the synthesis method to design of SIW filter and power divider †¢? †¢? Design and discuss SIW Filter at 60GHz with bandwidth 3 GHz Design and discuss SIW Power divider at 60GHz with 3 GHz Outline 1.? Introduction 2.? Literature Review – Transmission Lines (Microstrip Line/ CPW/ SIW) – Resonator, Filter, Power Divider 3. SIW Resonator Designs – Comparison of Transmission Line Performance – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Resonators 4.? SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Filter and Power Divider 5. Conclusion and Recommendations 6 2. Literature Review †¢? Transmission Line O A device designed to carry electric energy from one to another, is used to transfer the output radio frequency energy of a transmitter to a receiver [15]. ? Microstrip Line OOne of the most popular types of the electrical TLs O convey microwave-frequency signals O support a good quasi-TEM wave O In practi cal applications, the dielectric substrate is electrically very thin, which is much smaller than the wavelength 7 2. Literature Review †¢? Coplanar Waveguide (CPW) O Characteristic dimensions of a CPW are the central strip width W and the width of the slots s. GCPW is formed when a ground plane is provided on the opposite side of the dielectric. O CPW is easy to be integrated in the IC design. O Conventional Technologies: †¢? ? CPW GCPW †¢? Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) Mircostrip/CPW/GCPW: small size but not efficient enough in high frequency applications, wavelength at high frequencies are small Retangular waveguide: high Q-factors and power capability but voluminous and difficult for highdensity integration and difficult manufacturing process O SIW is a transition between microstrip and dielectric-filled waveguide.Dielectric filled waveguide is converted to SIW by the help of vias for the side walls of the waveguide [2] †¢? high Q-factor, low insertion loss, and high power capability 8 . Literature Review †¢? Resonator O A device exhibits behavior of oscillating at some frequencies, called its resonant frequencies, with greater amplitude than at others. †¢? †¢? It is used to either generate waves of specific frequencies or select specific frequencies from a signal [4].Resonant frequencies O Quality- or Q-factor is defined as a dimensionless parameter, in terms of the ratio of the energy stored in the resonator to the energy supplied by a generator per cycle, describing how under-damped a resonator is [4]. †¢? The unloaded Q-factor (Qu) [21] 2. Literature Review †¢? Filter O Band-pass filter is a device that passes frequencies within a certain range and attenuates frequencies outside that range [4]. O SIW is constructed with linear arrays of metalized via-holes rooted in the same substrate used for the planar circuit [13]. SIWs, combines the merits of all these structures, microstrip line or coplanar wavegu ide, and rectangular waveguide, are built onto the same substrate. The transition is formed with a comparable straightforward matching geometry between both structures. †¢? Power Divider OPower divider, a passive device used in the field of radio technology, couples a defined amount of the electromagnetic power in a transmission line to another port [27]. O SIW power divider, with optimum frequency selectivity, small size, low cost and high stopband attenuation, have been used for mobile and satellite communications systems. T-junction Y-junction 10 Outline 1.? Introduction 2.? Literature Review – Transmission Lines (Microstrip Line/ CPW/ SIW) – Resonator, Filter, Power Divider 3. SIW Resonator Designs – Comparison of Transmission Line Performance – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Resonators 4.?SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Filter and Power Divider 5. Conclusion and Recommendations 11 3. SIW R esonator Designs †¢? Comparison of Transmission Line Performance Microstrip Line CPW SIW 12 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Comparison of Transmission Line Performance Characteristic Bandwidth Q factor Loss Power capacity Physical size Ease of fabrication Integration with other component Cost Waveguide Narrow High Low1 High Large, heavy Hard Hard4 High Microstrip Wide Low High Low Small Easy2 Easy5 Low CPW Wide Low High Low Small Fair3 Easy6 Low SIW Narrow High Low High Small Fair Easy LowAnnotation [4]: †¢? Dielectric of waveguide is air; Skin effect of waveguide is small †¢? Microstrip can use printed circuit board technology †¢? Ground of CPW locates at the top, the discontinuity will affect the result. However, compared to SIW, wire holes are not needed. †¢? Special couplings at the joints are required for waveguide to assure proper operation †¢? Microstrip is susceptible to cross-talk and unintentional radiation †¢? CPW presents greater isol ation than microstrip 13 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW Resonators – Substrate dielectric constant (? r) is fixed at 11. Silicon – Copper conductivity of 5. 800Ãâ€"107 siemens/m O Design Strategy of Single-row Via SIW Resonator For a resonant frequency of 60 GHz for the TE101 dominant mode by simply indexing m =1, n = 0, l = 1 [18] The calculation result is L = W = 1. 025mm. 14 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW Resonators O Result and Discussion of Single-row Via SIW Resonator Ideal material: Lossless substrate and perfect conductor The loss tangent of AGC and the bulk conductivity of Silicon are both set to be zero. Moreover, perfect conductor layers are placed at most top and bottom of the structure.Similarly, the material of metallic vias is defined as perfect conductor as well. By using as as illustrated earlier, the result is calculated In this ideal case, and involved. Based on the formula, are not radiation Q-factor is 492. 23 15 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW Resonators O Result and Discussion of Single-row Via SIW Resonator Non-ideal material: Only with conductor loss For substrate, dielectric loss tangent of AGC and bulk conductivity of Silicon are set to be zero. The copper layers with bulk conductivity of 5. *107 siemens/m are placed at most top and bottom of the structure. Moreover, the material of via is changed to copper as well. By using calculated as as illustrated earlier, the result is In this case, is not involved. Based on the formulas, we can get 16 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW Resonators O Result and Discussion of Single-row Via SIW Resonator Non-ideal material: Lossy substrate and non-perfect conductor set the loss tangent of AGC is fixed at 0. 003 and bulk conductivity of Silicon is 0. 02, which means all the loss of substrate is considered in this experiment.Meanwhile, the copper is defined as the material of layers, which are placed at most top and bott om of the structure and via defenses through the substrate. In this experiment, all losses, including radiation loss, non-ideal metal loss and substrate loss are considered here. By using , we have 17 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW Resonators – Substrate dielectric constant (? r) is fixed at 11. 9 Silicon – Copper conductivity of 5. 800Ãâ€"107 siemens/m O Design Strategy of Double-row Via SIW Resonator For a resonant frequency of 60 GHz for the TE101 dominant mode by simply indexing m =1, n = 0, l = 1 [18]The calculation result is L = W = 1. 025mm. 18 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW Resonators O Result and Discussion of Double-row Via SIW Resonator Ideal material: Lossless substrate and perfect conductor The loss tangent of AGC and the bulk conductivity of Silicon are both set to be zero. Moreover, perfect conductor layers are placed at most top and bottom of the structure. Similarly, the material of metallic vias is defined as perfect conductor as well. By using calculated as as illustrated earlier, the result is In this ideal case, and involved. Based on the formula, are not radiation Q-factor equals to 641. 6 19 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW Resonators O Result and Discussion of Double-row Via SIW Resonator Non-ideal material: Only with conductor loss For substrate, dielectric loss tangent of AGC and bulk conductivity of Silicon are set to be zero. The copper layers with bulk conductivity of 5. 8*107 siemens/m are placed at most top and bottom of the structure. Moreover, the material of via is changed to copper as well. By using calculated as as illustrated earlier, the result is In this case, is not involved. Based on the formulas, we can get 20 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW Resonators OResult and Discussion of Double-row Via SIW Resonator Non-ideal material: Lossy substrate and non-perfect conductor set the loss tangent of AGC is fixed at 0. 003 and bulk conductivity of Si licon is 0. 02, which means all the loss of substrate is considered in this experiment. Meanwhile, the copper is defined as the material of layers, which are placed at most top and bottom of the structure and via defenses through the substrate. In this experiment, all losses, including radiation loss, non-ideal metal loss and substrate loss are considered here. By using , we have 21 3. SIW Resonator Designs †¢? Design of SIW ResonatorsO Comparison of Single-/Double-row Via Resonator Double-row via structure obviously decreases the loss compared to single-row via. The main difference of Q-factors is the radiation Q-factor, which means the radiation loss is the most affection of the SIW. Conductor and dielectric Q-factor are only slightly changed with the error around 3. 5% from the single- to double-row SIW. Hence, the conductor loss and dielectric loss basically are not significant issue for the losses of the SIW comparing with the radiation loss because of the leakage through the gaps since the presence of gaps in the side walls.These results also match that higher Q-factor indicates a lower rate of energy loss relative to the stored energy, which demonstrates the validity of the experiments and the results. 22 Outline 1.? Introduction 2.? Literature Review – Transmission Lines (Microstrip Line/ CPW/ SIW) – Resonator, Filter, Power Divider 3. SIW Resonator Designs – Comparison of Transmission Line Performance – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Resonators 4.? SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Filter and Power Divider 5. Conclusion and Recommendations 23 4. SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs †¢?Design of SIW Filters O Design strategy of SIW filter The proposed filter is constructed based on the SIW resonator at 60 GHz. The filter is designed and simulated using HFSS software. †¢? †¢? †¢? To achieve a -3 dB bandwidth of 3 GHz. To achieve a good passband wi th small insertion loss 15 dB Here in filter structure, length doubles the size which is 2. 250mm and width w remains the same 1. 025mm. 24 4. SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs †¢? Design of SIW Filters O Result and Discussion of SIW filter When increasing the distance between the middle of the vias, the two resonant poles are separated to each other more. 25 4.SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs †¢? Design of SIW Filters O Result and Discussion of SIW filter †¢? †¢? †¢? †¢? Center frequency = 62. 9 GHz. Bandwidth = 3. 4 GHz (60. 8 ~ 64. 2 GHz). Insertion loss = 0. 89 dB within the passband. Return loss = 17. 8 dB within the passband. †¢? Achieve a wide and deep upper-stopband with an insertion loss >15. 0dB. 26 4. SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs †¢? Design of SIW Power Dividers O Design strategy of SIW power dividers The proposed filter is constructed based on the SIW resonator at 60 GHz. The filter is designed and simulated using HFSS software. †¢? †¢? †¢? To achieve a -3 dB bandwidth of 3 GHz.To achieve a good passband with small insertion loss around 3 dB To achieve a wide and deep upper-stopband with an insertion loss >15 dB The proposed Y-junction power divider is a SIW equivalent of a bifurcated waveguide junction fed by a symmetrical step junction. The distance between two discontinues can be optimized to achieve low insertion loss [28]. 27 4. SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs †¢? Design of SIW Power Dividers O Result and Discussion of SIW power dividers †¢? †¢? †¢? †¢? Center frequency = 62. 5 GHz. Bandwidth = 3. 7 GHz (60. 5 ~ 64. 2 GHz). Insertion loss = 3. 87 dB within the passband. Return loss = 10. 5 dB within the passband. †¢? Achieve a wide and deep upper-stopband with an insertion loss >15. 0dB. 28 Outline 1.? Introduction 2.? Literature Review – Transmission Lines (Microstrip Line/ CPW/ SIW) – Resonator, Filter, Power Divide r 3. SIW Resonator Designs – Comparison of Transmission Line Performance – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Resonators 4.? SIW Filter and Power Divider Designs – Design, Result and Discussion of SIW Filter and Power Divider 5. Conclusion and Recommendations 29 4. Conclusion and Future Works †¢? Conclusion O SIW single- and double-row resonators have been designed and compared.The results matched that higher Q-factor indicates a lower rate of energy loss relative to the stored energy, which demonstrates the validity of the experiments and the results. O W band SIW filter has been designed, evaluated and optimized by HFSS software. The centre frequency of the proposed filter is designed at 62. 9 GHz with a 3 dB bandwidth of 3. 4 GHz (60. 8~64. 2 GHz). O W band SIW power divider has been realized based on the structure of the filter. The power divider is at centre frequency 62. 5 GHz with a 3 dB bandwidth of 3. 7 GHz from 60. 5 to 64. 2 GHz. 30 4. Conclusi on and Future Works †¢?Recommendation for Future Works O The numerical analysis may be done for the proposed structures. O The structures can be fabricated and measured to demonstrate the practical realization of the structures. O The insertion loss the filter may be improved based on further modification. O It is possible to widen the bandwidth of the filter. O Other matching networks may be considered to realize better performance of the filter. O Small and efficient filters may be designed based on the modification of the proposed structure. O Balun may be designed based on the proposed SIW power divider. 31 Thank You! 32