Leadership in the Team

Capability to manage a team effectively is one of the main qualities which any employee seeking success needs to possess. However, the position of a leader requires many outstanding skills, and it may be very challenging at times. According to Sun Tzu, Chinese General who lived in the 5th century B.C., â€Å"when one has all 5 virtues together: intelligence, trustworthiness, humanness, courage, sternness, each appropriate to its function, then one can be a leader†. The combination of these qualities can very rarely be seen in people’s characters, therefore not everybody can be a good leader. Leadership means the ability to influence other people and guide them to the success. During many centuries it has been believed that the key to success in a team lies in the skills of the manager. No company can remain on top unless it has an outstanding manager who guides it into the right direction. The task of leading 3 members of the team in a philanthropic organization with 1 million dollars capital is very challenging, and it requires the leader to have deep understanding of the tasks which are set before the team. In order to manage the team efficiently, first of all I need to get a full idea of the characters of employees in the team. It’s very important to understand the group members from the very beginning, and become a part of their group. All the members of the team have similar working skills because they all have worked in the consulting field for a long time. Since A.T. Kearney consulting company has very high requirements for its employees, there is no need for me as a leader to worry about the employees’ knowledge and capability to perform. They are all very knowledgeable in the consulting field. They all have lots of experience in consulting companies and government. Besides, all the employees have very good communication skills, outstanding problem-solving skills, creativity and capability to learn new things fast which are all required in consulting. However, the task of the leader is to manage the team in such a way that all the skills which the members of the team possess turn out applied at their maximum. This task is very complicated because â€Å"building the winning team requires more than just hiring a bunch of talented people. It means hiring people who will work well together. It means developing a shared vision and commitment. It means physically bringing people together in formal group meetings for open discussion of broad-based issues. It means encouraging positive, informal interactions between group members. It means instilling a â€Å"winning† attitude throughout the organization. It means watching for and quickly trying to reverse team-building problems such as jealousy, cynicism, and defensive behavior.† /www.businesstown.com/ My task of building a winning team is not easy to achieve because I need to show to members of the team first my capability of being a leader. The team needs to know that they are managed by a strong leader who is able to guide them to the success. The members of the team need to perceive me as a leader, even though some of them may be even more experienced than me in the field of consulting. However, through showing my undoubtedly good leadership skills, brilliance, good knowledge of consulting, deep insight, setting correct and realistic goals for the members, choosing right forms of motivation for them, I can become a leader against whom they will not rebel but will want to cooperate with. The most important issue in managing the team is choosing the right form of motivation for them. Since all people are different, all the employees in the team need different forms of motivation. For some employees, only money works, and they don’t get motivated by any other benefits. For others, there is nothing more important than social recognition of their efforts. Other employees will care about the possibilities of future promotion in case of their successful performance. Therefore, in order to manage the team effectively, the first task to do is to define where the needs of employees fall in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. After some communication with the members of the team it was easy to discover that out of three employees two are very ambitious. They have a very high need of esteem. They need to be praised for the work they do, get recognition from senior-level management, be aware about the possibilities of their future promotion, and fulfill tasks which require lots of responsibility, like consulting the largest and the most important clients of the company. These employees are very experienced in the consulting field, they have already made large contributions into the company’s success, and therefore they can be motivated only through getting more and more complicated tasks to fulfill. The third member of the team is not as success-oriented, and he is not as experienced. He is rather knowledgeable in consulting but he doesn’t seek promotion because he is quite happy with his present work. Therefore, he can be motivated by money awards and praise for his work because his needs fall into the category of belonginess and love. The next step of successful management of the team is defining relationships between employees, and making a sociogram which identifies the types of interactions within the social network. Without the knowledge of interactions between the employees, there is no way to manage the team effectively. In order to manage the members of the team, it’s useful at times to apply the approach of influencing some members of the team through other members. It’s necessary to identify the member of the team who has the strongest influence on other members because teams are usually aligned to such employees. The last step of managing the team is choosing the leadership style. In order to manage the team effectively, the leader can apply the following styles when managing the team: supporting, directive, coercive, â€Å"transformational leadership† styles. Each of them has special recommendations for usage in different situations. For example, supporting and â€Å"transformation leadership† styles are very efficient in situations when a new leader comes into the organization, and seeks to establish warm relations with all the members of the team. Directive and coercive styles can work only in the teams which welcome this style and are ready to fulfill all the management’s assignments. However, nowadays such employees are quite rare, therefore, in my work, it’s necessary to combine the styles. I should be supportive in many situations but I should also be directive in certain issues when I know that I’m providing the most efficient policy. It’s very difficult to make the team function effectively, but this task can be achieved through the right choices of employees’ motivation and leadership style. The field of consulting requires a leader with good communication skills, able to provide success-oriented policy, capable of solving all the possible problems which may arise in the team. Due to my strong leadership skills, good analytical skills, capability to achieve all of the goals I set for myself, I can guarantee success to the team I’m managing.                                 

First Dental Visit

I will never forget the first time I went to the dentist. People around the world believe that going to the dentist is a torture. ?It will be the worst experience of your life? they said to me. Photos of someone opening your mouth and putting something inside my mouth gave me jumps of anxiety. All that tools around the dental office, the shiny knives, the immaculate white room and the image of the doctor’s perfect teeth, all that made my heart rate increased and I felt like I was on a roller coaster. Because my first time in a dental office was not as everyone- and including myself expected to be.It was a winter day and my mother and I got up at 5:00 a. m. to arrive early at the Dental office. When I arrived to the office a wave of emotions and the unpleasant smell of medicine leaped over me, and there were already people formed and waited for the doctor. The waiting room was white and on each wall there were plastered dramatic photos of a healthy and dirty mouth, of healthy t eeth and teeth with decays, or ? Before/After? photos. While my mother sat in an empty chair, I felt the increment in my blood pressure as I waited to hear from the receptionist each patient’s name.Clusters of magazines were lying on the brown shiny table, each one screaming out images of the human mouth. I looked at every corner of the room. About one hour after I arrived, a man of robust complexion, piercing eyes, a forged smile, and with a white robe entered and greeted us. The first thing I saw was his robe, and as a lightning pierces a cloud, my first thought was ? He is the dentist.? After the doctor entered his office, I turned around to see the faces of each parent with their nervous child who were trying to avoid an eye contact.The door leading to the dental office made a noise that was extremely horrendous to my ears. I could not take my eyes off the photos that showed grotesque yellow teeth. It must be my imagination, but I was already feeling the cool metal collid ing with my teeth and the pain caused by it. One by one, the receptionist called each patient’s name and when a child entered the office occasionally it is heard a yell from inside the office where the child had disappeared. The parents’ faces were of impatience.I saw how all the children were staring at their parents with fear in their eyes. About two hours after of my inner petrifaction a sudden tapping of heeled shoes awoken me, a woman in white uniform came from the corridor with something like a book. I looked up to see better the person that was calling my name. A sudden shock of emotion was present in the air, my pulse raced, and my hands sweat. I was walking down a corridor full of more frightening photos. A breath escaped from my lips and straight away I swallow the lump that has accumulated in my throat.When I visualized a white door, I stopped and I could see a paper with the name of the dentist. As I entered I could see everything that was kept in there. A big blue chair protruded among all the other things inside the room covered with cold hard metal machines gleaming like saying ‘Welcome'. I saw a plastic cup in one of the handles of the chair and next to it there was something like knives of different sizes. At the left side of that big chair there was the person that would cause pain in my teeth. As I sat in the chair, an instant rush of adrenaline traveled through my body.With a small mirror the doctor began to check my teeth. Then there was an assault of stomach-turning as the doctor took an instrument from the table. The sterile smell of the office caused me a stomach-ache. My blood pumped into my head. Meanwhile some cold metal was traveling into my mouth, I realized that I was unable to move but not because the machines were working but because I was in shock when I noticed the sudden tickling inside my stomach. My eyes shined with emotions. The first dental consult was not that hard as people described it.

Victorias Secret

Store location is an important decision for retailers because location is â€Å"typically one of the most influential considerations in a customer’s store-choice decision† (Retailing, 167). Most consumers choose which store to visit based on close proximity to home or work, comfort level, and other surrounding retailers so shopping stays relaxing and a lot of driving isn’t needed. Victoria’s Secret in the Beverly Center is in a shopping mall. Reasoning behind the store being placed in the mall across from the elevators in the center is because malls have high amounts of traffic.Another reason why a mall location has its advantages, because malls provide the chance to combine shopping with entertainment, a great place to walk around catch up with friends while getting your shopping done, bringing in large numbers of people a day. Victoria’s Secret in the Beverly Center is a leader in lingerie, with Fredrick’s of Hollywood as their largest comp etitor is far from this location. Therefore shoppers at the Beverly Center who are looking for affordable lingerie will venture in to Victoria’s Secret. Victoria’s Secret is a multi-channel retailer, from stores, to online, to catalogs.This an advantage to the company because if a customer cannot find an item, or color they are looking for in the store, they have two other methods of how to purchase that item, still making Victoria’s Secret a profit and keeping the loyalty of the consumer. Victoria’s Secret is a leader in the retail industry not only because of the products they put out but because they understand the â€Å"3 most important things of a retail chain, location, location, location†(Retailing, 167). Work Citied Levy, Michael, and Barton A. Weitz. Retailing Management. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2009. Print.

Indigenous Religions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Indigenous Religions - Essay Example The Apache dwelled in a desert environment and led a nomadic life. This environment and way of living is difficult and consumes most of the individual’s time in the search for food and water and moving (Hunt). The tribe could not picture an afterlife in an environment similar to their current one; hence they may have chosen to ignore the thought that there could be an afterlife altogether. Living in such an environment, it is easier for a victim to have the view that their survival solely depends on their hard work rather than by the grace of some god or supernatural being. The tough situations that this tribe went through may have driven their lack of acknowledgment of the existence of both a god and an afterlife.Olorun is a higher being, with more powers who assigns tasks or duties to other beings, the Orishas to accomplish. Olorun is thus like the leader whose role is to manage, direct and oversee the progress of any desired work.The messenger tool along a calabash, a chick en and his helper, Oduduwa. All came to the world by descending on a rope. However, Obatala got drunk when they stopped over at a party, and Oduduwa had to carry on with the task at hand. Oduduwa created the earth by sprinkling soil from the calabash over the water. He then released the chicken which ran spreading the earth over until the whole place was filled with land. When Obatala recovered from this drunk state, he was assigned the task of creating the people who would live on the land. That was how the world and the people therein came to be.

The Ethics of Job Discrimination Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Ethics of Job Discrimination - Essay Example US Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit applied US Supreme Court's opinion (Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Inc. and McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green) that "The plaintiff must first establish a prima facie case of discrimination. Once the plaintiff has met the minimal burden of establishing a prima facie case, the burden then shifts to the defendant to produce a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the adverse employment action. The burden then shifts back to the plaintiff to show that the proffered reason was pretextual and that the defendant discriminated against the plaintiff" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4180/is_20010620/ai_n10066999 So, in the above case, initially, it is the burden of the employees to show that they had been discriminated by Texaco and later, the burden of proof lies with the employer to demonstrate justifiable nondiscriminatory reasons supported by statistics that the decision was not influenced by discrimination (Zimmermann v. Associates First Capital Corporation). In 1973, the case of McDowell Douglas Corporation v. Green the Supreme Court established the burden of proof (Title VII) as a model by opening: Plaintiff carries the initial burden establishing that he/she belongs to a protected group, is qualified for the job, and was rejected while post remained vacant, and the burden shifts to the employer to justify himself.

Nursing Case Study Assessment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Nursing Assessment - Case Study Example This shows that she is staining to breathe. The other priority problem that the nurse should note in the diagnostic statement is that Jane is experiencing dehydration. Dehydration is shown by dryness of the lips and the fact that her skin has lost its turgor and has become (Shen, Johnston and Hays, 2011). The other priority problem that should be noted by the nurse is that the patient is experiencing pain. During the examination it is observed that Jane is having problems forming sentences and she is not able to take Ventolin. Q2. During the diagnosis, it has been identified that Jane’s oxygen saturation is alarming which suggests that the oxygen saturation are 90 percent of Room air. To deal with this problem, the nurse will use the four components of the nursing interventions. The intervention will be performed by the nurse who will be in contact with the patient for most of the time during her stay in the hospital. The other nursing component that will be included in the in tervention is performance of respiratory evaluations of the respiratory rate and effort that Jane is using when breathing (Shen, Johnston and Hays, 2011). Assessment of the respiratory rate is critical given that Jane has already shown signs of having problems in breathing and asthma is usually characterized by respiratory problems. The other nursing intervention to be implemented to rectify the problem is to carry out frequent assessment of the patient at least once daily. Frequent monitoring will allow the nurse note the progress of the patient and in case any emergency care is required, a physician can be called in immediately. The fourth nursing intervention that will used to rectify the problem is to administer pain relief to the patient. This is because the patient has shown signs of being in pain (Shen, Johnston and Hays, 2011). Q3. During the assessment of Jane, it becomes evident that she is experiencing chronic pain as she coughs. According to Gagnon (2011), pain is a subj ective symptom and when measuring pain, the medical practitioner aims at identifying pain location, its intensity, temporal patterns, relieving factors and interference. It is hard to measure pain that Jane is experiencing given that she is an infant and has difficulties in communication. However, the best assessment tool should be relying on behavioral assessment of the child. The nurse should therefore observe facial expression as the child coughs and how she makes facial expression after medication has been administered. Therefore the best tool for the case should be the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale which uses to evaluate the level of pain based on the face. Q4. The recommended dosage of paracetamol is 15mg of paracetamol per kilogram. This is calculated by dividing 210 by 14 which gives 15mg per kg. Therefore the dosage recommended by the RMO is correct. Q5. Given the age of Jane and her present condition that gives her difficulties when swallowing, the nurse can utilize d ifferent strategies to administer paracetamol to her. The nurse can administer the paracetamol through a syringe placed at the corner of the mouth after which the nurse pushes the syringe slowly to release the medicine into the throat of the child (Ganzewinkel et.al., 2012). The other strategy that the nurse can use is by giving the paracetamol using a teat bottle where Jane will suck the medicine. The nurse may also administer the pa

Growing up Thesis Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Growing up - Thesis Example In this context passing could represent the journey from city to city, it could also represent to passing form one lover to another or one musical genre to another starting which gospel choir to punk to blues to jazz to rock. Passing could also indicate passage of time and in that effect growing up. The story begins with the Youth as a young person who is in a state of spiritual confusion not knowing what to do. As expected he wants to become a better person someone he is proud of. Despite being brought up by a conservative single mother he turns to Zen Buddhism. However this goes only for a short while before he succumbs to her mothers’ persuasion to find God. During this time instead of having a spiritual awakening his musical affinity is awakened by the gospel choir. He later joins the choir mainly because of his attraction to a girl in the choir. During his life in the choir he meets with Franklin Jones who was the choir master who introduces the youth to drugs. He develops a liking for the guitar and soon afterward deserts the choir to form a punk rock band with fellow ex-choir members. With the passage of time he abandons his band mates and starts saving money to travel to Europe where he anticipated becoming a musician which his mother and the community disapprove . In the film the youth says, â€Å"Slaves have options, cowards only have consequences.† This depicts his state of discomfort with his reality and how he had resolve to go to Europe.. After a long argument with his mother the youth goes to promiscuous Amsterdam where for the first time in his life he discovers freedom. He suddenly has easy access to all the social evils such as sex and drugs he lamented â€Å"All vices in full view â€Å"when he say hashis on the menu of a coffee shop with topless women serving coffee. The Youth also first experiences acceptance in the form of a girl named Marianna who willingly gives her the keys to her

CDHPs Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

CDHPs - Assignment Example It is in the same year that health reimbursement arrangements (HRA) begun. Then Health Savings Account (HSA) closely followed HRAs after the approval of the 2003 Modernization Act. This Act allowed individuals with a considerable amount of deductible health contrive to contribute towards HSAs. The main reason for coming up with CDHPs was to empower employees to make informed decisions about health care (â€Å"FAQ - What are Consumer Directed Health Plans (CDHPs),† n.d.). Since 2001, CDHPs have assumed an upward trend as consumers have appreciated it as a financial friendly and cost- restraint system. Studies show that in 2013 only, nearly 23% of employers having workers ranging from 15 to 400 and employers with over 500 workers proposed the use of either HSA or HRA health scheme. Studies affirm that CDHPs do not downgrade preventive services and encourages younger healthier populations since most subscribers are young families. Today not only individuals but also business companies have embraced CDHPs as a way of handling their health related issues. There has been a rise for contributions in both HSA and HRAs 2013 having an approximated amount of $ 23.8 billion Collins, 2007). This was a significant rise from $18 billion in 2012. The number of account holders rose from 11.7 million in 2012 to 11.8 million in 2013. Although there are speculations about the ineffectiveness of CDHPs, it stands undisputed that this type of strategy has an amazing ability to make member to take actively part in their health care management. CDHPs readily offer necessary support to members in terms of materials and skills. Feeling that the individual may not be able to understand or manage his or her finances when enrolled in CDHPs is inappropriate. (Greene, Peters, Mertz, & Hibbard, 2008)A research conducted reveal that CDHP members are aware of their roles and make good use of the available information

Indiana State University School of Music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Indiana State University School of Music - Essay Example The concert also aims at promoting and showing off the talents in the faculty of artists by offering them a chance to compare their undertakings to the skills and techniques used by the performers. This can, not only give them courage in presenting to the audience, but also give them chances for them to find opportunities outside their institution. This is because, there were no limitations of inviting the audience, and hence, the local industry in the theatre metrics and media could find their way in to select for the best actor. This means that, the concert can be an opening opportunity to express the capabilities as they build experiences due to the interactions with the experts in the industry. The title of the concert shows that Sharilyn Spicknail will feature the rest of the colleagues with a violin. Martha Krasnican featured the concert with the piano together with Kurt Fowler who plays cello. The featured group seemed to rock the jazz styles as the rhythm system can justify. Playing the instruments with their styles seemed to be the common goal of the artistic student as there are always some conflicts in rhyming to most of the learners, which is the biggest challenge. Nevertheless, the concert is deemed to correct the anomalies in the 2012-2013 season. In the events program, one can note that there are four pieces to be presented in the concert. The first two pieces do not have any spate sections, hence they are performed continuously. After the two performances, an intercession break is given and then the last two are acted in each after the other. According to the program, each piece has three sections or movements, which the audience can be easily, count its end although occasionally the composer without any silence always connects the movements. The titles of the movements indicate the characters or the speed to be used by the composer on each movement in a piece. These movement’s titles can be of any language although most of them are Italian since it was the first international language of the music industry. Having three movements each, a piece was named with the author name at the end and the years of its composition in order to draw the attentions of the audience of when each piece existed and the surrounding techniques involved. This also helps the audience to identify various genres or its evolution from year to the other.

Greek Parthenon Architect Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Greek Parthenon Architect - Essay Example How the work is significant for the period in which it was created. It should be remembered that Greek religious society has anciently been controlled by gods. This magnificent construction was dedication to the Greek goddess Athena, and was completed in 438 BC. In those days, there was ancient believe that gods were to be offered sacred place. Again, it is prudent to consider that the development of the artifact was significant in emancipation of the Doric order. In this case, the Doric order is the magnificent facet of the building which in this case had flat pavements and with a base and vertical shafts. The nature of this building was used either for political or religious reasons (Mikalson, 44). In itself it was a symbol and facet of power. How the work perhaps challenges the conventions associated with the period. It is scholarly good to note that the Parthenon was a politically backed religious presentation. In this case, the Greek society held a powerful convention which had close similarities to this period. In light with this, attention is garnered towards realization of the Greek political nature alongside other effects. One of the prominent conventions of the time is Chronology. This classical Antiquity (c. 1200 – c. 800 BC), was geometric styles and proto-geometric designs applied in Architecture. This convention was substantial in the beginning of the Orientalizing influence which was initial stage of the end of dark ages. Based on this presumption, it is good to relate the Parthenon as an elucidator to the much common culture of modern artistic period. What are the main concerns of the artist/creator or architect? As analyzed in the above description, it is coherent to note that the architecture was more interested with elegance. The desire to retain the Doric order was substantive in improving the quality of the design. Firstly, it is imperative to consider that architecture was interested in attempting to establish the rules of harmony. The engineering concept focused in methods to change stones into cube in order to provide full support architrave load at the last column. This method was called the broader corner triglyph. However, it is prudent to understand this method was not satisfying in any event, engineers required to strengthen the corners more as this would withstand pressure. Therefore, in design, the architect was obliged to relate the two further corners together to form cohesion. What are some of the challenges the artist/creator or architect faced? It should be understood that engineering works attracted a significant challenge in relation to the aspect of suspension and comprehension. Firstly, in consideration that the building was done purely by stone block is a significance fact that attracted attention on the security of the building. Primarily, strengthening of the corners was a close consideration based on the fact that corners were to be classically oriented to provide solution about the chall enges of weather and time. To solve this architectural hiccup, the corners were terminated using Triglyph (Curlee, 21). Another significant challenge considered by architecture was the elevation. This was the subdivision of columns, entablature and crepidorma structures. Harmonizing these three considerations without technical aspects; for instance, cement always proved a technical hurdle for designers. In particular, the

Situation Awareness Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Situation Awareness - Case Study Example Situation awareness is even more critical, yet more difficult for military pilots because apart from the normal hazards of flight and navigation, they must also be aware of friendly and enemy aircraft; as a result, they are required to be conversant with and aware of a greater number of elements in their surrounding environment. As Endsley (1999) points out, pilots are not only required to know how to operate the aircraft and the proper procedures and rules for flight, they must also have an accurate and up-to-date picture of the surrounding environment. The research article by Banbury et al (2007) deals with situation awareness specifically from the perspective of how training can be a tool to reduce the incidence of mishaps caused by problems with situation awareness. The objective of this study was to examine whether the safety and efficiency of flight operations could be improved through training in situation awareness using a high fidelity simulator environment. ... On the basis of the literature review, the second stage examined incident and accident reports to determine the extent to which situation awareness was contributing to mishaps. During the third phase, the SA skills were decomposed into their underlying competencies, such as knowledge, skills and attitudes which were set aside as potential candidates for training. During the fourth and final stage of the project, a specialized training solution was developed around these concepts, the objective being to examine the effectiveness of the ESSAI program. The relevant factors in the SA questionnaire have been set out clearly, and they also identify the existing lacunae in the research, i.e, existing measures of situation awareness focus on measuring it in terms of "product" (participant awareness) rather than "process", or the processes involved in situation awareness that produce a representation in memory. This identified the need for an effective diagnostic measure, and the study carried out an exhaustive search using laboratory and field based sources. The study also shows effective testing for bias, because a pilot questionnaire was administered. The article therefore builds upon the research findings from other people and carried it further. The ESSAI program was evaluated using simulator training sessions and the Simulation Awareness Rating technique, a subjective assessment measure that is used to assess operator knowledge in three areas: demands being made on attentional resources, the supply of those resources and an understanding of the situation. The choice of the rating tool was also a good one - the Factors Affecting Situation Awareness scale, containing five sub-scales, was used to measure how susceptible the

The Weimar Republic Essay Example for Free

The Weimar Republic Essay The Weimar Republic was created in 1919 after Wilhelm II abdicated. The new government consisted of the ones who signed the Treaty of Versailles, and so nationalistic Germans thought this to be traitorous. The severe consequences given by the treaty had many Germans looking for a scapegoat to blame and the government fitted perfectly. Straight from the beginning, Weimar faced obstacles from both left and right wings. The Spartacist group on the left, lead by Liebknicht was looking to imitate a more Russian Communistic political system. They then tried to take control of Berlin, with the support of the USDP, however the military troops suppressed the revolt. Next revolt was from the right wing, and this was the Kapp Putsch, where they seized government buildings. Then Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, with an attempt to seize the Bavarian government, which lead to another revolt being crushed, but clearly indicating that there were oppositions from both sides. The Treaty of Versailles had put Germany into financial implications, and it was starting to show that the numbers they had to repay was not a realistic one. In 1923 when a hyperinflation had developed, the currency was becoming more and more worthless: the Treaty, which was signed by the government, caused great despair, so they blamed the government for it. Then when Stresseman was appointed chancellor, he tried to get the ‘Allies’ to be more merciful and showed them how impossible the task they were given from the treaty actually was. Then the Dawes plan kicked in, which tried to keep the levels of reparations at a balanced budget, in order to prevent another situation of hyperinflation. It did help to stabilize the economy and settle inflation and it was shown in the general economic improvements, such as car sales and mass productions. More cultural improvements would follow: music, literature and theatre. Berlin even overtook Paris’ place of being the most à ¢â‚¬Ëœartistic city’ After the Great Depression occurred, the economy once again plummeted, which caused unemployment level to skyrocket. Hitler who had established himself as a leading politician at the time, preached employment and greatness, had almost ten times as many seats in the 1930 election than they did three years earlier. The German population was looking for more extreme solutions, and hundreds of demonstrations occurred against the government. This was what Hitler wanted. He had such a wide appeal and was attractive to the workers, by promising employment. A couple of years later, though, their number of votes would decline: the country was splitting into two, but both wanted to change the current government. Hindenburg passed away and Hitler appointed himself the Fuhre and the Weimar Republic was over with. To conclude, The Weimar Republic had been growing for many years, and the current circumstances did not make it any easier. It had overcome many difficulties earlier and the first signs of the republic being doomed came in the late 20’s and early 30’s when the country was starting to separate into two. To say that it was doomed from the moment it was created is irrational because it was not evident in the earlier years and only became visible later on.

Yield Management In The Hotel Industry Tourism Essay

Yield Management In The Hotel Industry Tourism Essay Yield management was practice over the last fifteen to twenty years. According to Kimes, the yield management principle was first developed in the airline industry. Yield management systems primarily used in service industries like hotels, restaurants, airlines, train. Generally, companies used yield management systems to maximize their revenue or yield. Smith, Leimkhuler, Darrow Samules (1992) defined yield management as a sophisticated form of managing supply and demand by acting at the same time on price and on available capacity. It is the best way to propose the best service on the best customer with the best price and at the best moment. According to Kimes (2002), yield management is methods that can help a firm sell the right inventory to the right customer at the right time for the right price. So, yield management can be defined as an approach to sell the same product at the same time to the customers by charging different prices. Yield management in hotel industry was evolved over the last ten years and many authors (Evangelista, 1999; Novelli, Schmitz Spencer, 2006) confirm that there is a notable tendency to use new technologies in hotel industry. Yield management in hotel industry is concerned about the number of rooms that should be sold and at what price should be charge to customers. The objective of using yield management in hotel industry is to maximizing revenue per every available room. Jaucey, Mitchell Slamet (1995) stated that yield management is an integrated, continuous and systematic approach to maximizing room revenue through the manipulation of room rates in response to forecasted patterns of demand. They suggest that yield management requires a close analysis of historical information to predict customers demand. Yield management is suitable to use in hotel industry because it fulfill some characteristics of these system. According to Kimes (1989), yield management can be used when the following conditions are met. There are fixed capacity; segmentation into different market segment is possible; the inventory of the product is perishable; the products can be sold in advance; fluctuating demand; low marginal sales costs and high marginal production costs. Once the hotel was built, it is difficult and expensive to increase the capacity. Therefore, the hotel manager must use the existing capacity in the best way in order to maximize room revenue. So, yield management systems can help hotel manager address this problem by predict the customers demand. To make the yield management systems work, the company must be able to segment their market into different types of customers. Hotel manager should have different marketing plans for every market segment. So, every customers need can be fulfill. Customers can be categorized and grouping together with those have similar characteristics, it is called market segment. There are three components of market segmentation. First, the characteristics of each customer group are defining and grouping. Second, implementing a demand model to customers and specify their attitudes about a reference transaction. The third component is their willingness to pay. Of course, hotel rooms are perishable inventory item. When a room is not sold for one night, there is no income for this room at that night. Hotel manager cannot put the room into inventory and use it at other time. Airlines and rental car industry also face the same problem. Some hotels sell most of their rooms in advance, but in some situation, reservations are made well in advance of the day desired. When the rooms are sold in advance, hotel manager faced with uncertainty. Some questions are appearing like charge a low rate price to the group of customers or wait the customer who willing to pay higher price appear? Are the customers who willing to pay higher price will reserved for the same rooms? So, these questions can be address by using yield management systems. Hotel industry is the industry which faces fluctuating demand patterns. Customers demand are varies in a year. Yield management system helps manager predict the demand fluctuation and manager can plan some strategies to maximize their revenue. For example, higher price can charge to customers during the peak demand like school holidays or public holidays; otherwise, manager can decrease the price during the slow time. Hotel industry also met the characteristic of low marginal sales costs. When a room was sold, it does not incur much more cost to sell another room. This is because the hotel and staff already at place. On the other hand, hotel industry faces high production costs. When all rooms were sold, and a customer wants a room, additional rooms are cannot simply built because the capacity was fixed. Yield management systems may result in many advantages to the company and give that company a competitive edge. Many studies have shown the positive effect on the performance of the company by using yield management systems. Esse (2003) shows that yield management allows a company to offer customers high contribution, which develops a much better performance. Apart from this, yield management systems also may results in some problem to companies. It could result in alienated customers. There are highly competitive in hotel industry, customers may not want to pay different price for the same room. So, they might feel unfair and go to the competitors who charge lower price. According to Kimes (2002), the customer perceives a product price as fair for the price of a good to increase if the costs increase in order to maintain profit. They however dont feel that increasing the price in order to increase the profit is a fair practice. To address the problem of alienated customers, Kimes (2002) suggest three solutions to it. First, the company giving the customer a higher reference price and then providing them with discounts. Second solution, adding additional services to the product and then increase the price. The third solution is selling the product as part of a package. The final solution is attaching restrictions to the discounts as to make the discounts be perceived as being fair. Employee morale problems may occur when the company use yield management. Yield management systems are more about guesswork of how many rooms to sell and what price to charge, but it also requires judgment from hotel employees. If the systems are not structure well to allow some latitude into the price setting, the people who will use it may be grow to resent the system. Besides that, yield management systems also can cause problem on incentive and reward systems. Yield management systems can cause problem for group sales department. Reward or incentive of salespeople in these department are depends on the amount of sales they make. When sales increase, their reward or incentives also increase. But a yield management system might indicate that the low rate price for a group sale is not beneficial. So, the incentive and reward systems must be changed. If not, the salespeople might think that the implementation of yield management is work against them. To ensure the yield management systems effective, an extensive training of all employees are needed. Every employee must understand the purpose of implementing the yield management, how it works, and what the effect of the system on their jobs. So, it needs a careful planning and training from top management. Finally, commitments from top management are very important. Without this, yield management systems will fail. So, the hotel manager must strongly commit to it, have the necessary data and have a strong information system. Hotel manager must fully understand the implications of implementing yield management systems on managerial aspect and able to make adjustment. http://www.turpade.org/docs/articulos/2008_OCT_Yield_Management.pdf http://www.timsmet.com/literature%20review.pdf http://www.cheaphosting4you.com/casadana.net/pgdh/CORNELL/Center%20for%20Hospitality%20Research%20-%20Reports/Basics%20of%20Yield%20Management.pdf http://www.yield4education.com/literature-review

Environmental Impact of Green Companies Essay -- earth-friendly, Fair

There are many companies out there that claim to be â€Å"green†. But are they really and how much impact does it have on the environment? Labels such as â€Å"organic†, â€Å"biodegradable†, â€Å"earth-friendly†, vegan and â€Å"Fair Trade† are everywhere in today’s market. These labels are marketing tools used to influence consumers. Greenwashing is defined as â€Å"The dissemination of misleading information by an organization to conceal its abuse of the environment in order to present a positive public image † and â€Å"superficial or insincere display of concern for the environment that is shown by an organization † by thefreedictionary.com. â€Å"Going Green† may not be what it seems. It is not necessarily good for the environment. The Green movement is not about the environment as much as about consumerism and political agendas. While green products may be a better choice, they are still not enough to save the environment. When green is applied to food, it suggests foods that have been grown with minimal or no pesticides, organic fertilizers, no growth hormones, and humane conditions. However, this belief does not always accord with the reality. The example that I will discuss is eggs . I have chosen this example both because eggs are part of our everyday diet and because they get much attention in the media. Many people chose free range, organic brown eggs , believing them to be vastly superior. Brown eggs are usually more expensive than white eggs. The only real difference between a brown egg and a white egg is that brown eggs are laid by dark hens with red earlobes. However, many consumers believe that brown eggs have been laid by hens who have been fed food grown with minimal pesticides and fertilizers or that white eggs have been bleac... ...Kenner. Perf. Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. 2008. Hardner, Jared and Richard Rice. "Rethining GREEN CONSUMERISM." Scientific America 286.5 (2002). Peattie, Ken and Andrew Crane. "Green marketing: legend, myth, farce, or prophesy?" Qualitative Market Research: An International Joural 8.4 (2005): 357-370. Pedersen, Esben Rahbek and Peter Neergaard. "Caveat Emptor- Let the Buyer Beware! Environmental Labelling and the Limitations of 'Green' Consumerism." Business Strategy and the Environment 15 (2006): 15-19. Terra Choice Group Inc. "The Seven Sins of Greenwashing." 2009. unknown. E.7 Can green consumerism stop the ecological crisis? 2 Dec 2009 . Women's Voices for the Earth. "Issue Reports." September 2008. Women and Environment. 4 December 2009

The Mantle of the Prophet Essay -- Islamic History, Mothhahedeh

Roy Mottahedeh is a professor of Islamic history at Harvard University. He has written widely in the history of Islam and religion. The Mantle of the Prophet is one of the books that Mottahedeh wrote. In this book, Mottahedeh covers different aspects that include Islamic faith, Iranian city of Qom, traditions derived from the history of Iran, political change in Iran and secular Islamic learning among other issues. Ali Hashemi and Parviz studied together in the same elementary school courtyard. However, each of them took different turns. This paper is a review of The Mantle of the Prophet by Roy Mottahedeh. It will discuss the similarities and differences of the ideologies of Hashemi and Parviz and their oppositions to the Shah. It will also discuss their social backgrounds and cultural influences on their outlook of the world. The book begins with a detailed description of Qom, an Iranian city where Ali Hashemi, the main point of reference, in the book was born. Mottahedeh also describes the Shi’ite faction of the Islamic faith that entails learning and tradition, in Iran. Mottahedeh managed to introduce readers to political climate, history and tradition from the middle of the twentieth century. Mottahedeh recounts the life of Ali Hashemi from his childhood through his education into adulthood. Ali Hashemi is the contemporary mullah of Qom. The book portrays Ali Hashemi as an alias of a mullah in the University of Tehran. This presents Ali Hashemi as a scholar just like Parviz. However, Hashemi is still engrossed in Islamic religion unlike Parviz. Mottahedeh used Hashemi to bring a clear picture of culture and history in Iran, in different times. Mottahedeh used Hashemi to create a scenario that depicts trends and issues that i... ...ries and the 1979 revolution. The author presents Iran through the leadership of mullahs and shah tradition. The book has rich information covering the history of Iran. Mottahedeh managed to develop an impressive book that satisfies the curiosity of a reader wanting to understand the history, culture and political atmosphere of Iran through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century. Roy Parviz Mottahedeh and Ali Hashemi represent two views of Islamic learning and Iranian history and culture. While Ali Hashemi represents a religious view of Islamic learning and history of Iran, Parviz represents a secular view of Islamic learning and ambiguity of culture in Iran. The two views help to bring out the ways in which Islamic religion and culture influenced political atmosphere, in Iran especially at a time when politics in Iran was shaped by religion.

A Graduation Certificate Can Get You in the Door :: Work Skills Competency Essays

Good Work Ensures Employment Success With increased attention to skill standards and worker certification, people tend to consider their qualifications solely in relationship to the occupational skills they have acquired. This publication addresses the myth that skill competencies alone ensure employment and discusses the value of continuous learning, emotional intelligence, networking, flexibility, and commitment to business objectives as other keys to workplace success. A Graduation Certificate Can Get You in the Door Although it is true that academic degrees, skill certifications, and other documentation of accomplishments provide access to employment, they are significant only at the time of the job offer and its acceptance. Skills that a person has today may be obsolete tomorrow; knowledge that has current significance to society may be insignificant in the future. Technology is the most obvious example. Routine functions such as inventory control, customer profiling, machine calibration, and document publishing are now assumed by technology. Workers who previously performed these functions have had to learn new skills such as how to operate the machines that have taken over these tasks and how to use technology to streamline their work efforts. Continuous learning is the key to the transition role that ensures a worker of ongoing employment. Workers must be continually striving to keep their skills up to date, technologically current, and relevant to their employing organizations. As more of the routine tasks of the job are performed by machines, as cyclical patterns influence the numbers of workers that employers need in a given month, and as global competition drives companies to be more cost effective, workers must develop skills that will enable them to work across departments of their companies. They must be continually assessing ways in which they can prepare for work their employers and society will need them to perform in the future. Participation in cross-training programs is another strategy for enhancing job security and success. Worker cross-training is becoming a common practice in business and industry, adopted as a means of coping with reduced staffing and increased worker mobility. In the recreational vehicle industry where it is difficult to recruit people who have relevant skills, for example, the cross-training of dealers makes it easier for owners to appoint these employees to management positions when resignations occur (Packard 1999). Cross-trained workers can reap significant benefits from such company-provided training programs as well as from involvement in community-based service organizations. "Sometimes outside activities and volunteer work can help you become more 'layoff-proof' by providing opportunities to develop expertise that you can bring back to the company" (Lieber 1996, p.

Tiberius and gaius gracchus

Tuberous and Gauss Gracious When Tuberous and Gallus Gracious became an authority, Rome was no longer a Republic, being controlled by the nobles throughout the empire. A reformation was desperately needed. But who would lead it? Tuberous Gracious would, a man of noble blood. Also, being the Great Nephew of the remarkable general, Gossip Africans, and the son of a noble Censor, he would have an influence and great effect upon the people of Rome and the world.Throughout the lives of Tuberous and Gauss Gracious, the Karachi brothers brought In many ideas that changed Rome and future enervation. At the time, Rome had been corrupt; enough that It would even affect the military itself. Rome was at constant war and the people of Italy were being drafted into the armies of the Roman Empire. To have war, one must have men. The drafting of men was quite common at the time considering that a large mass of men was needed to convey the actions of Rome. If one was to serve in the army, one must ha ve owned land.When the men had left to war, which would watch over their land or run their farms? The Nobles took this Law to their advantage by acquiring the land of the oldie's enlisted in the armies of Rome. When soldiers returned home, they had nothing. A man of great influence was needed, one with a background of great authority and noble blood; to lead the reformation of a corrupt and unbalanced Roman Society. But to lead the revolution, one must take authority while not being seen as a king; which the Romans absolutely despised. Land being acquired by noble men was making many homeless and shifted the Roman economy.A boundary was clearly made between the upper class and the lower classes; the power was no longer in the hands of the people but in the hands of the nobles. As the country continued its downfall â€Å"thoughtful Romans began to realize the need to attempt some alleviation of the economic Those in high positions saw the corruption throughout the empire that would eventually drive Rome into the ground. The Illegal actions throughout the empire did not go unseen; though few realized the situation, which Included the leader of the Revolution, Tuberous Semipro's Gracious.The goal of the revolution was to reform the land laws of Rome, creating a once again stable society and economy. Tuberous Gracious â€Å"a noble tribune in an influential position† (Plutarch) had a task of reorganizing and stabilizing the Roman economy. Everything was continuing to be affected because of the loss of land experienced by the Roman peoples; and something needed to be done. A bill by Tuberous Gracious would be the first step Into the reformation. It was called the Leg Grain, a bill that put a limit on the acres that one could own.Which helped soldiers gain their land back and to provide homes for returning war veterans. This bill was absolutely necessary and if shut down; Rome would continue to downfall. Many said if only because it affected Romeos Military strength†(Richardson). The armies were having shortages of men; because almost none owned land due to the noble theft of property. To have an army, men must be a well-supplied resource. If an army Is conquer. Therefore, by creating stable economy, Rome would not only strengthen its military, but alleviate its struggling economy.After taking veto after veto by the tribune, Marcus Octavo's, the senate was sidestepped and defeated by a popular vote. His reformations were carried out and funded by the government of Rome; his influences upon many were broad. According to Plutarch, Octavo's himself was a possessor of a large amount of public land and was thus liable to the provisions of the Leg Grain† (Richardson). Many of the senators were bound to this law and were affected by it, and hatred for Tuberous was brewing in the hearts of many.His reformations would have to be passed on to his younger sibling after the physical outrage of the Senate and the death of Tuberous Compr omise Gracious himself. His reformations were broadly welcomed by those of the middle and lower classes but hated by those of noble families, land was distributed and Rome was slowly turning to a stable economic situation. In the Event of the death of the political leader, Tuberous Gracious, of the reformation, Gauss Gracious took over the cause of the once living Tuberous Gracious.Having a partial failure, Tuberous Gracious' currently unsuccessful operation due to the political biases against him and his reformation, â€Å"failure is in itself no sign of lack of spirit and ability' (Riddle). The idea of equality and reformation was in the air, and the reformation had been far from over. Gauss Gracious; being the younger brother of Tuberous Gracious had been a strong supporter of him and had a good political aground making him the best fit to take charge in the reformation. Continuing in the reformation â€Å"Gauss then turned to further economic reform. He re-enacted his brother' s Agrarian Bill (Seculars, 32). He had the bill of his brother enforced throughout Italy and â€Å"much of the land available had no doubt been distributed by this time, Gauss supplemented this bill with a plan to establish some colonies in Italy, some were to come from the lower and middle classes in order to provide some capital for the promotion of industries in the colonies† (Seculars 33). † Gauss had a Lana to raise the status by establishing a system that would uplift the Republic and create an idea of fairness and equality in Rome. Using the Bill of his brother Tuberous, Gauss was able to bring ideas into Rome that would change it for the better.Taking position of Tribune in the Senate (like Tuberous before him) Gauss was considerably more successful than his brother Tuberous by gaining the support of the equestrian class and many high political leaders. Gauss had brought forward the ideas of citizenship for all Italians, economic competition, continuation of lan d reformations, an age limit for those to be drafted in the army, topping Judicial bribery, expanding Francine to the Latinist, and slowly began to give power back to the people. But many of these ideas were vulnerable from the attack of senators, which opposed the Karachi. During Gauss' second tribune the senate at last moved to the attack but at first by an indirect method (Seculars, 35). Another Tribune sent by the Senate had the assignment of winning over the supporters of Gauss through attractive proposals. â€Å"Gauss' position simply was to be undermined by others and his ideas shut down† (Seculars, 35). Gauss went through the same trials and fire that his brother had to endure. Through the deaths of other consuls and threats of Gauss' life his ideas still remained and were recognized by the people of decrease in popularity and support. The Karachi was in true sense martyrs: they had witnessed to their belief in the need for reform and they had suffered for their faith † (Seculars, 37). † The two men; Tuberous and Gauss Gracious had brought in ideas that had not only shaped the Republic, but took the dominant power out of the hands of the Senate and put it back in the hands of the people. At least this was a realization of what Rome truly was and why reformations were necessary and essential to the Roman Empire. Though problems were still within the armies and economy, the Karachi created a realization and example for the people of Rome to follow.The reality of the Karachi reformations were that they were short lived, for many of these laws and reformations only lasted for a short period of time and not throughout all of the Roman Empire. â€Å"The Karachi received some direct results, though many of the economic difficulties remained, they at least helped to relieve, those main problems in Rome† (Seculars, 38). The corrupt Roman Empire, suffering by economic and social decay, had alleviation by two Tribunes of the time, who was Tuberous and Gauss Gracious. Their reformations and ideas helped the people of Rome realize the corruption of Rome.The ideas and events of the time had been the sign of a great awakening. Though their relief of the economic and social conditions was short-lived, the dominant power no longer rested in the hands of the Senate as it once did, but now, in the hands of the people. Works cited Richardson, Keith. Daggers in the Forum: The Revolutionary Lives and Violent Deaths of the Gracious Brothers. London: Classes and Company Limited, 1976. Seculars, H. H. From the Karachi to Nero: A history of Room 133 B. C. To A. D. 68. London and New York: Methuen and Co.Ltd, 1959. Riddle, John. Tuberous Gracious: Destroyer or Reformer of the Republic. Massachusetts: D. C. Health and Company,1970. â€Å"When Tuberous and Gauss Gracious sought to establish the liberty of the common people and expose the crimes of the oligarchs, the guilty nobles took fright and opposed their proceedings by every me ans at their disposal† – Cicero. The Karachi brothers were clearly well intentioned men who had the interests of Rome at heart, instead of their own, which was a common attitude amongst the other senators.The reforms of the Karachi were long over-due and their programs were genuine attempts to deal with Romeos problems. During the Graphics existence, Rome was facing a number of social, selfishness of the oligarchy and so adopted methods which threatened the balance between the senate, the magistrates and the people which had existed for a very long time – in this way they can be regarded as revolutionary. It is likely that they interpreted the problems far too simply, and they failed to see Thurman society had changed.The Senate also failed to see these changes and reacted to the Graphics actions in the only way they could – violence. The senate felt threatened by the Graphics methods, and as a result violence was used for the first time in Roman politics. In order to understand why the Karachi attempted to solve these problems, one must examine the circumstances of Rome at the time, as well as the background of the two brothers. After the Second Punic War, the Senate became the supreme power and as a result, many changes occurred throughout Rome.Most notably, the ruling Oligarchy (specifically the nobles) abused their power, caring more for their own eternal interests and Gloria than the welfare of the republic. As a result major problems occurred throughout Rome. Serious economic social problems occurred, both rural and urban, causing grave distress among many Roman citizens. There was a military crisis, with lack of eligible recruits for the legions, aggravated by the Spanish and Sicilian wars. There was tension in the oligarchy between leading factions (Claudia / Compression and the Copies) as they struggled for political superiority.And amongst all these problems was the failure of the ruling nobility within the senate to deal w ith these problems. In order to determine the significance of both Karachi, one must examine both Tuberous' and Gauss' actions and the effects they had at the time. In 133, Tuberous Gracious attempted to solve Romeos problems, specifically the land crisis. He introduced the Leg Agrarian, a bill for land reform, which proposed that a commission of three people should allocate small holdings of land owned by the state (eager publics) to landless citizens.The bill was met with great controversy, however, it wasn't the content of the bill that provoked the reaction, rather the means with which it was proposed. As Stockton notes â€Å"It ceased to be a struggle about the rights and wrongs of a particular land bill and became a fundamental question about the true nature of Roman politics†. Tuberous met great opposition to the bill itself because the ruling Nobles were those benefiting the most from the current situation. Therefore, Tuberous used his tribune in an unprecedented mann er, and in proposing his bill, bypassed the senate going directly to the continuum plebes.Whilst technically legal, this action threatened the senate's guitarists and dignities, and their superiority with regards to legislation and matters concerning the state. Tuberous also went further in his provocation of the senate by deposing Octavo's after the senate attempted to use Octavo's to veto Tuberous' land bill. Again, Tuberous was perfectly within legal constraints, claiming that since the Job of a tribune was to represent the people, he had done nothing illegal, and was Justified in deposing Octavo's because Tuberous believes he failed to do so.Previously, Tribunes such as which Tuberous proposed his bill (as well as Gauss' services), it became possible to use tribunes as instruments of change, undermining the traditional powers of the senate s well as providing potential for ambitious men to promote their own political careers. As Seculars notes, â€Å"the original function of th e tribunes had been to protect the people against patrician domination, but this need had long passed and they had become useful agents for the nobility, often using their veto to check the popular assemblies†.Whilst Tuberous was eventually killed by the senate before he could pass his three other revolutionary reforms, Tuberous was an incredibly powerful tribune, and as Cicero notes â€Å"was not a mere plaything of oligarchic government†. As stated y Cicero, â€Å"Tuberous Gracious shattered the stability of the state†. It is also important to note that Tuberous Gracious laid the groundwork for his brother Gauss to achieve considerable success. In the year 123, Gauss Gracious became tribune, and took over his brother's quest to solve the problems that plagued Rome at the time.However, Gauss learned from his brother's mistakes in releasing that in order to overcome the senate's opposition, he would have to gain far more support than his brother Tuberous did, app ealing to the classes of the equities, allies and plebs. Gauss was also a superb orator, which is articulacy pertinent in the example of his speech to the senate, where as Plutarch notes, â€Å"he roused the people's emotions with sentiments and he possessed a powerful voice and spoke with overwhelming conviction†.Gauss Gracious covered a broader area than his brother did, dealing with the subject of the Italian and Latin allies. Gauss attempted to further the Agrarian settlements initiated by Tuberous, to relieve the suffering of the urban unemployed and poor, to reduce the power of the ruling nobility and to resolve the increasing discontent of the Latin and Italian allies y offering them Roman citizenship. All the above-mentioned laws in one way or another, weakened or undermined the power of the senate.The harshest law in this respect was the Leg Cilia, which highlighted the Senate's corruption and incompetence. According to Plutarch the law â€Å"more than any other red uced the power of the senate† and formed the basis for the struggle over law courts which was to continue in future years. Gauss also introduced the Equestrian class as a third political force, which would further balance the government and weaken the power f the senate, and within ten years of the Graphics death they would ally themselves with either the senate or the people for their own political gain.Gauss also dealt with the increasing discontent of the Italian and Latin Allies by offering them Roman citizenship. This proposal was vetoed by Lives Drugs (a tribune who was used by the senate to outbid Gauss for the support of the people) and opposed by a large section of society; the Nobles feared that this would jeopardize their control of the assemblies, whilst the equities wanted to avoid giving any advantages to their Italian commercial rivals.Although this law ended up unsuccessful in the short term, the long term effects of this resulted in the Allies becoming more aw are of their rights which would then lead to a war in which the outcome had Latin and Italian Allies receiving Roman citizenship. Measures, the passing of the USC (senates consult ultimatum) which was the first time violence was officially used as a political weapon. This became the start of violence in Roman politics, being used more frequently by the senate when they had no other means to resort to, and would drastically change the nature of Roman politics for the years to come.After Tuberous' and Gauss' deaths, the consequences of their actions were still in effect, most notable in the example of Marcus and Usual. The lowering of property qualifications in Gauss' reforms led to the rise of a professional army creating a nexus between the land, army and the commander. Soldiers no longer became dependent on the state for land grants, but on their commander. This led to commanders such as Marcus and Usual commanding powerful armies with political weight.Marcus however can be conside red a better example as Marcus used the precedent set by the Karachi to initiate his own reforms, particularly once again awakening the hold of senatorial aristocracy on Roman politics. By examining the Karachi and their accomplishments, it becomes apparent that the Graphics most significant contribution to Rome was recognizing the flaws in the Republic, particularly the senate and its reliance on the notions of Moms Moratorium.The Karachi set out to expose these weaknesses, as well as attempting to solve many of Romeos largest problems, as a result of the senate's inactivity, selfishness and negligence. This resulted in the Senate's hostile reaction to the Karachi, which therefore allowed the Karachi to make revolutionary changes to the face of Roman elitist, as a direct and indirect result of their actions, including the notion of a tribune as an instrument of initiative and reform, and more importantly, the introduction of violence in Roman politics.

George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 Essay

Imagine this, a perfect world of complete harmony and justice. There is no wrong, and there is no right. There is only utopia. It might be the perfect place where people want to live, or the place that people dream about. It might even be the picture of the future. However, this Utopian world is revealed to have flaws. It lacks many of the qualities of life that exist today. Thus the Utopian world isn’t so Utopian anymore. And the more that is revealed about the world, the more horrible it becomes. Soon, it becomes a nightmare, a world of illusions, of lies. That is the dystopic world that authors such as Bradbury and George Orwell pictures in their books, a world that exists under the image of utopia, and yet to the reader seems like a foreign, inhumane residence dominated by an all-powerful government. George Orwell’s 1984, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 depicts two different dystopic worlds. The settings of both books are different and the characters are unique; however, both of these books are also very similar. 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 are similar dystopic literatures by a common theme of censorship in which the government withholds or censors information, by a similar thread of a totalitarian government running the dystopic world, and by a common knowledge of the truth that the protagonist and the antagonist both hold. Censorship is a remarkable simple concept: the ability of the government to withhold or change information that passes into the public. All governments have some form of censorship, and some governments have less censorship than others. Yet censorship can also become a difficult concept to grasp, for censorship allows the government to influence how people think. The less censorship there is, the more people begin to think, which according to standards today, is a good thing. However, totalitarian governments such as the ones in Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 do not want people to think. They want people to just do, and thus it becomes a perfect seemingly Utopian world that the reader interprets as a piece of dystopic literature. In Fahrenheit 451, Beatty explains, † Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it† (pp.59). Beatty is declaring that there are many minorities as well as distinct groups of people. A perfect world must satisfy all of them, so if a book comes up that someone doesn’t like, burn it. However, burning is a permanent  process. A burned book cannot be recovered. Thus, as more books are burned, more history, information is being erased. People’s minds begin to dull from lack of reading and in the end; people accept the fact that the government controls them and their actions. Similarly, a quote from 1984 explains, â€Å"The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or†¦rectify†¦It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (38, 39). In this quote, Winston works in the Ministry of Truth to change the information that reaches the public. This is also censorship in order to keep the proles, the majority of the population, ignorant. By changing the information, there is no proof that people have against the validity of the government, and therefore people are sedated. In a similar way to Fahrenheit 451, the people come to gradually accepting the censored documents that reach them. They could take one fact one day, and the completely opposite fact another. Thus when the two books of dystopic literature are compared, the similar motif of censorship can be seen to play a huge part in the way the world runs. The government utilizes censorship while the common people accept it. When the reader sees this, it imparts a sense of horror in the seemingly Utopian world, and thus makes the two pieces of literature dystopic. Another aspect that connects the two pieces of literature together is the idea of a totalitarian government ruling the people. In both works, the government creates the sense of a utopian world. The idea is that the government rules every aspect of the people’s lives, and that is the only way for a utopia to exist. This way of thinking is also twisted in a sense, because totalitarian governments do not care for the well being of its people. The people who rule only want power. That is why the reader realizes that the piece of literature is dystopic. In Fahrenheit 451, the totalitarian government controls the police, mechanical hounds, and the firemen. The firemen act under the wishes of the government to burn people’s books. An explanation of the firemen is revealed in Beatty’s quote, † †¦there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of out peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges, and executors.  That’s you, Montag, and that’s me† (58, 59). Beatty is explaining the reason that governments created firemen to burn books. The government can censor information that the public receives with the creation of the firemen, and it is the job to the people and the firemen to do their duties without question. That illustrates the totalitarian government in the society of Fahrenheit 451. In 1984, the totalitarian government is led by a figure, Big Brother. The Inner Party and the Outer Party are also part of the totalitarian government, only consisting of 15% of the population of Oceania. These people in the Inner and Outer Parties, with the exception to Winston, are devoted to Big Brother. Big Brother is the figure that holds the party and utopian society together, and the propaganda and demonstrations center around the totalitarian form of government. What is really scary about the totalitarian society is that when someone goes against protocol, like Winston did, he/she was not executed immediately. Instead, they are made to love the totalitarian society and show devotion towards it. Then they are killed. This is illustrated in the quote, † He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother†¦the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment†¦ The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain†¦ He loved Big Brother† (297). Winston was tortured at the Ministry of Love in order to love Big Brother. The government never killed him, and finally at the end, Winston loved Big Brother and was finally in bliss. This shows the horrors of the government. The government has total control over the people, and no one can escape from committing a crime against the government. The government will always and forever be. That is one of the reasons why the piece of literature is considered dystopic. It is also a reason why 1984 is a powerful book and serves as a warning to the readers. In conclusion, a similar aspect of both dystopic literatures is the totalitarian form of government in both. That type of government holds the Utopian society together, and it is precisely that aspect that horrifies the reader and makes both pieces of literature dystopic. A final point that both Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 have in common is that the protagonist as well as the antagonist who know the truth about the type of society they live in. Unlike the common people, the protagonist realizes that the world they live in is not perfect. The majority of people are content with their society, but Winston, in 1984, and Montag, in Fahrenheit 451, realizes that there could be so much more in the world that they live in. Montag discovers the truth and knowledge that the burned books contain. Montag shows curiosity for books by saying, † There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing† (51). Montag shows interest at books because he saw a woman voluntarily burn herself alongside her books. Thus he reasoned that books must contain substance. It also illustrates that Montag is a flaw to the perfect Utopian society. Even his wife shows little care for books or the fact that a woman was burned with her books. However, Montag starts to glimpse the imperfect society he lives in. Winston is also unhappy with how the government is and especially because of how there is little or no privacy. He is driven with the dreams and hopes of a better place, a better government in which to live in. He demonstrates this by writing in a diary, which was against the rules of the government. He also rebels in a sense by writing in the diary, † DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER† (20). Another connection that is shared by Montag and Winston is that both their wives illustrated the perfect form of beings in the society. Winston even stated that he hated his wife because she really didn’t have a mind of her own. This showed that there were only few people in the Utopian society that realized the society and government for what it was, and that the society was terrible. The antagonists also know the truth of the world they live in. In Fahrenheit 451, the antagonist is Beatty, who has read many books himself. He is very knowledgeable and uses literature to confuse Montag. In the end, the reader gets a sense of Beatty wanting Montag to kill him in order to be free of the acts he is committing and the government he is in. Beatty provokes and pushes Montag to kill him by saying, † Go ahead now, you second-hand litterateur, pull the trigger† (119). Although it doesn’t state clearly in the book that Beatty wanted Montag to kill him, it is one way of viewing this matter. In a similar way, O’Brien is the antagonist of 1984. During the part when he interrogated Winston, the reader learns that O’Brien is really  with Big Brother, and he has accepted the fate and results of the current government a long time ago. He even admits that he wants power and control. O’Brien proves both these facts by stating, â€Å"They got me a long time ago† (239), and, â€Å"The party seek power entirely for its own sake†¦It is exactly the opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined† (263, 267) O’Brien admits to siding with the current totalitarian government, but also admitting that the current society is flawed and grants power to a select few, at the cost of the other 85% of the population. Thus, the two pieces of literature also share the fact that the protagonists and antagonists know the whole, or part, truth. It is these connections that bring together these two books written about dystopic literature. And to conclude, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 are both pieces of dystopic literature. Both have many aspects in common. Although the two books are unrelated to each other in the sense of characters and the setting, both illustrate a dystopic world and give similar reasons and ideas about such a world. Both books illustrate how censorship can be used to control the people under the influence of the government. The books also reveal the necessity for a totalitarian government in order for the world to be a utopia and yet to the reader, dystopic. Finally, both pieces of literature show that there are flaws to this type of world to the protagonist as well as the antagonist in it. However, the way that the authors illustrate the outcome of the protagonist and antagonist is different. In George Orwell’s cruel dystopic world, the protagonist loses all hope and loves Big Brother at the end. In Bradbury’s dystopic world, Montag retains the hope that with his knowledge of books, humans can one day dispel the cruelty and censorship of the totalitarian government. While Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 can be read and just taken as a fantasy, a book that illustrates what could have happened, but did not. However, the authors of these books did not intend them to be simply read and discarded. What the author wants to impart to the reader is a warning. The warning is that in the future, the world that humans live in might one day mirror the world created by Bradbury or Orwell. If there is one thing for certain, it is a threat that the current world will reflect a world in Fahrenheit 451 or  1984. After all, humankind is evolving with swiftness, and anything can happen. There are many televisions in the world. Only one more step to make them all interact with each other and transmit/receive images, and the telescreens in 1984 exist. Sound, which is a predominant part of the utopian world, is taking up people’s time and thoughts in the real world. With all of the MP3’s and all of the other music tools that people constantly listen to, life indeed is starting to mirror the worlds of Orwell and Bradbury. Finally, people go at a quicker and faster pace now. Eventually, there will be a point where people have to stop and think about what is truly happening around them and to think about nature. If this does not happen, then indeed the world will be thrust into an unending cycle of chaos, and some may call it utopia when that happens. When a government arises to take power without the question or consent of the people, then is it utopia, or chaos and slavery? Bibliography Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1953. Orwell George. 1984. New American Library, NY, 1949.

“The Road” By Aaron Bellam Essay

History has had little conscience when it comes to human suffering and struggle. The world has brought us murder, torture, and terror in the packages of war, politics, and everyday human relationships. Religious battles keep racism, greed, and suffering real. The positive is not always apparent when one looks at human existence. Aside from the physical struggle humans had to endure and overcome, emotions also challenge us in hard times. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a story set after an apocalypse, takes the characters beyond physical challenges like cold and hunger. In their dystopia, the characters must also face their emotional struggles. As they journey across the dark, barren land, the boy and his father experience the feelings of desperation, fear and hope. The first emotion that urges the pair on in their journey is desperation. The father and son are desperate for many things; food, warmth, and not to be caught and raped by others. As well; the two are desperate to find and share with other good guys. The man and his emaciated bay have such a strong desperation to find food and food is so scarce that the pair finds â€Å"the bones of a small animal dismembered and placed in a pile, possibly a cat†. (McCarthy.2006.Pg26) This find is proof that other survivors have turned to alternate forms of food to try and give themselves energy for the trek. Warmth is another huge luxury that the father and his boy wish they had. After a find of supplies in an abandoned house, they ‘sat wrapped in the quilt naked while the man held the boy’s feet to his stomach to warm them. (McCarthy. 2006.Pg31). The man is obviously willing to do anything; he is determined to keep his son warm and comfortable, even if it takes away from his own comfort. Hiding from people looking to catch others to eat is a further element of despair the two are forced to cope with. Cannibals roam this dystopia. After finding people in a cellar, some with limbs chopped off, the son is left horrified. The man and the son are desperate to find other ‘good guys’ like them so that they aren’t alone. Moreover, there are many other emotions the trekkers are desperate for; however these four are some of the most pressing. Ironically, this ugly emotion helps to keep the two going. The second, and most important emotion that drives the father and his son forward, is Fear. The apocalypse has given the man and his son reason to be fearful of many  things: Strangers, Starvation, and being alone. The father is so afraid of strangers that every time they come across another person he becomes very hostile. When they came upon a traveler, they followed him, perhaps because â€Å"The traveler was not one for looking back. They followed him for a while and then they overtook him.† (McCarthy.2006.Pg161) The man has changed drastically since his wife le ft him, and he has become very protective of his son. Starvation is another fear that drives them forward; food is very scarce and when they find food they do what they can to keep people from taking it from them. When the pair sees an old man called Ely walking down the street the father says I see and â€Å"the boy turned and looked at him. I know what the question is the man said. The answer is no. What question? Can we keep him? We can’t.† (McCarthy.2006.Pg.164). After the death of his father the boy is discovered by a family that had been following them. Even though the man had taught him to be very cautious around other people, the boy was very lonely and feared having to travel by himself ,so after making sure that they were â€Å"good guys†; he asked them â€Å"are you carrying the fire? Am I what? Carrying the fire. You’re kind of weirded out, aren’t you? No. Just a little. Yeah. That’s ok. So are you? What, carrying the fire? Yes. Yeah we are.† (McCarthy.2006.Pg283/284), he decides to travel with the family. And while fear is one of the most important emotions the pair faces in the book it is also one of the most important that people have faced since we first developed emotions. And even though fear plays a big part in their movement forward there is still another that is just as important. The Third and final emotion that is expressed in the novel is hope. The boy’s character is a sign of hope to the father throughout the book. In the father’s view the boy is almost described as holy, â€Å"if he is not the word of god, god never spoke†, which gives the sense that the boy is precious to the man and that the boy is the father’s hope like a god is a religious person’s hope. The boy also gives a sense of hope to the reader. This is from his sense of goodness and innocence, the way he gave food to the old m an at the side of the road, which in this world the reader gets a sense that goodness and innocence is unheard of. This gives this bleak, horrific, world a feeling of humanity, a feeling that gives the destroyed world a future â€Å"Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.† In the road there is a repeated reference to ‘carrying the flame’ which is a symbol  of hope. It is a symbol that mankind will always live on throughout any circumstances. When the man dies he tells the boy the he is now carrying the flame which shows the man’s hope of a better future or merely a just a future for the boy. The food is a sign presented by Cormac McCarthy of hope, when the food is low the scene is shown grimly and when the food is plentiful. When they find the bunker full of food, page 146, the text is full of short sentences ‘Canned hams.’, ‘Corned beef’ which show the father’s joy and almost disbelief of how hopeful the future will be with this plenty. Other than the boy the father has hope in very few things. But one thing which is shown throughout The Road is the father’s sense of morals. The father always reassures the boy and himself that they are the good guys, because they aren’t turning to cannibalism, which gives them the hope to keep them going because they are, to the father, keeping goodness in the world alive, ‘carrying the flame’. In the father’s dream, page 2, the father and the son are holding a light, ‘Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls.’ Which could be interpreted as a reference to the ‘carrying the flame’. The mother is a character presenting hope that has been lost. The mother commits suicide as this is what she sees as the brightest option. The mother says â€Å"as for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.† (McCarthy.2006.Pg58/59), this shows how the mother has lost all hope of a future and nothingness is better than life on borrowed time. The last paragraph in the road is full of hope for the boy and the earth’s future. Cormac McCarthy presents the theme of hope in many different ways. He shows the lost hope of people in end of the world situations, the mother and the cannibals. The hope for the future, carrying the flame and the last paragraph. The hope for goodness and generosity in the world, the father’s view of the boy and carrying the flame. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a story set in a post-apocalyptic earth, showed the journey off a Man and his son: as they faced physical challenges, such as, Cold and Hunger, they also faced emotional challenges through Desperation, Fear, and Hope. This is a story that shows the perseverance of a man and his son, as they fight to survive.

User Authentication Through Mouse Dynamics

16 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 User Authentication Through Mouse Dynamics Chao Shen, Student Member, IEEE, Zhongmin Cai, Member, IEEE, Xiaohong Guan, Fellow, IEEE, Youtian Du, Member, IEEE, and Roy A. Maxion, Fellow, IEEE Abstract—Behavior-based user authentication with pointing devices, such as mice or touchpads, has been gaining attention. As an emerging behavioral biometric, mouse dynamics aims to address the authentication problem by verifying computer users on the basis of their mouse operating styles.This paper presents a simple and ef? cient user authentication approach based on a ? xed mouse-operation task. For each sample of the mouse-operation task, both traditional holistic features and newly de? ned procedural features are extracted for accurate and ? ne-grained characterization of a user’s unique mouse behavior. Distance-measurement and eigenspace-transformation techniques are applied to obtain featur e components for ef? ciently representing the original mouse feature space.Then a one-class learning algorithm is employed in the distance-based feature eigenspace for the authentication task. The approach is evaluated on a dataset of 5550 mouse-operation samples from 37 subjects. Extensive experimental results are included to demonstrate the ef? cacy of the proposed approach, which achieves a false-acceptance rate of 8. 74%, and a false-rejection rate of 7. 69% with a corresponding authentication time of 11. 8 seconds. Two additional experiments are provided to compare the current approach with other approaches in the literature.Our dataset is publicly available to facilitate future research. Index Terms—Biometric, mouse dynamics, authentication, eigenspace transformation, one-class learning. I. INTRODUCTION T HE quest for a reliable and convenient security mechanism to authenticate a computer user has existed since the inadequacy of conventional password mechanism was reali zed, ? rst by the security community, and then gradually by the Manuscript received March 28, 2012; revised July 16, 2012; accepted September 06, 2012. Date of publication October 09, 2012; date of current version December 26, 2012.This work was supported in part by the NSFC (61175039, 61103240, 60921003, 60905018), in part by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (60825202), in part by 863 High Tech Development Plan (2007AA01Z464), in part by the Research Fund for Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20090201120032), and in part by Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (2012jdhz08). The work of R. A. Maxion was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant CNS-0716677. Any opinions, ? dings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors, and do not necessarily re? ect the views of the National Science Foundation. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Dr. Sviatoslav Voloshynovskiy. C. Shen, Z. Cai, X. Guan, and Y. Du are with the MOE Key Laboratory for Intelligent Networks and Network Security, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710049, China (e-mail: [email  protected] xjtu. edu. cn; [email  protected] xjtu. edn. cn; [email  protected] xjtu. edu. cn; [email  protected] jtu. edu. cn). R. A. Maxion is with the Dependable Systems Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA (e-mail: [email  protected] cmu. edu). Color versions of one or more of the ? gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore. ieee. org. Digital Object Identi? er 10. 1109/TIFS. 2012. 2223677 public [31]. As data are moved from traditional localized computing environments to the new Cloud Computing paradigm (e. g. , Box. net and Dropbox), the need for better authentication has become more pressing.Recently, several large-scale password leakages exposed users to an unprecedented risk of disclosure and abuse of their information [47], [48]. These incidents seriously shook public con? dence in the security of the current information infrastructure; the inadequacy of password-based authentication mechanisms is becoming a major concern for the entire information society. Of various potential solutions to this problem, a particularly promising technique is mouse dynamics. Mouse dynamics measures and assesses a user’s mouse-behavior characteristics for use as a biometric.Compared with other biometrics such as face, ? ngerprint and voice [20], mouse dynamics is less intrusive, and requires no specialized hardware to capture biometric information. Hence it is suitable for the current Internet environment. When a user tries to log into a computer system, mouse dynamics only requires her to provide the login name and to perform a certain sequence of mouse operations. Extracted behavioral features, based on mouse movements and clicks, are compared to a legitimate user’s pro? le. A match authenticates the user; otherwise her access is denied.Furthermore, a user’s mouse-behavior characteristics can be continually analyzed during her subsequent usage of a computer system for identity monitoring or intrusion detection. Yampolskiy et al. provide a review of the ? eld [45]. Mouse dynamics has attracted more and more research interest over the last decade [2]–[4], [8], [14]–[17], [19], [21], [22], [33], [34], [39]–[41], [45], [46]. Although previous research has shown promising results, mouse dynamics is still a newly emerging technique, and has not reached an acceptable level of performance (e. . , European standard for commercial biometric technology, which requires 0. 001% false-acceptance rate and 1% false-rejection rate [10]). Most existing approaches for mouse-dynamics-based user authentication result in a low authentication accuracy or an unreasonably long authenticatio n time. Either of these may limit applicability in real-world systems, because few users are willing to use an unreliable authentication mechanism, or to wait for several minutes to log into a system.Moreover, previous studies have favored using data from real-world environments over experimentally controlled environments, but this realism may cause unintended side-effects by introducing confounding factors (e. g. , effects due to different mouse devices) that may affect experimental results. Such confounds can make it dif? cult to attribute experimental outcomes solely to user behavior, and not to other factors along the long path of mouse behavior, from hand to computing environment [21], [41]. 1556-6013/$31. 00  © 2012 IEEE SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 17It should be also noted that most mouse-dynamics research used data from both the impostors and the legitimate user to train the classi? cation or detection model. However, in the scenario of mouse-d ynamics-based user authentication, usually only the data from the legitimate user are readily available, since the user would choose her speci? c sequence of mouse operations and would not share it with others. In addition, no datasets are published in previous research, which makes it dif? cult for third-party veri? cation of previous work and precludes objective comparisons between different approaches.A. Overview of Approach Faced with the above challenges, our study aims to develop a mouse-dynamics-based user authentication approach, which can perform user authentication in a short period of time while maintaining high accuracy. By using a controlled experimental environment, we have isolated inherent behavioral characteristics as the primary factors for mouse-behavior analysis. The overview of the proposed approach is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of three major modules: (1) mouse-behavior capture, (2) feature construction, and (3) training/classi? cation. The ? st module serves to create a mouse-operation task, and to capture and interpret mouse-behavior data. The second module is used to extract holistic and procedural features to characterize mouse behavior, and to map the raw features into distance-based features by using various distance metrics. The third module, in the training phase, applies kernel PCA on the distance-based feature vectors to compute the predominant feature components, and then builds the user’s pro? le using a one-class classi? er. In the classi? cation phase, it determines the user’s identity using the trained classi? r in the distance-based feature eigenspace. B. Purpose and Contributions of This Paper This paper is a signi? cant extension of an earlier and much shorter version [40]. The main purpose and major contributions of this paper are summarized as follows: †¢ We address the problem of unintended side-effects of inconsistent experimental conditions and environmental variables by restricting usersâ€℠¢ mouse operations to a tightly-controlled environment. This isolates inherent behavioral characteristics as the principal factors in mouse behavior analysis, and substantially reduces the effects of external confounding factors. Instead of the descriptive statistics of mouse behaviors usually adopted in existing work, we propose newly-de? ned procedural features, such as movement speed curves, to characterize a user’s unique mouse-behavior characteristics in an accurate and ? ne-grained manner. These features could lead to a performance boost both in authentication accuracy and authentication time. †¢ We apply distance metrics and kernel PCA to obtain a distance-based eigenspace for ef? ciently representing the original mouse feature space.These techniques partially handle behavioral variability, and make our proposed approach stable and robust to variability in behavior data. †¢ We employ one-class learning methods to perform the user authentication task, so that the detection model is Fig. 1. Overview of approach. built solely on the data from the legitimate user. One-class methods are more suitable for mouse-dynamics-based user authentication in real-world applications. †¢ We present a repeatable and objective evaluation procedure to investigate the effectiveness of our proposed approach through a series of experiments.As far as we know, no earlier work made informed comparisons between different features and results, due to the lack of a standard test protocol. Here we provide comparative experiments to further examine the validity of the proposed approach. †¢ A public mouse-behavior dataset is established (see Section III for availability), not only for this study but also to foster future research. This dataset contains high-quality mouse-behavior data from 37 subjects. To our knowledge, this study is the ? rst to publish a shared mouse-behavior dataset in this ? eld. This study develops a mouse-dynamics-based user authenticat ion approach that performs user authentication in a short time while maintaining high accuracy. It has several desirable properties: 1. it is easy to comprehend and implement; 2. it requires no specialized hardware or equipment to capture the biometric data; 3. it requires only about 12 seconds of mouse-behavior data to provide good, steady performance. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section II describes related work. Section III presents a data-collection process. Section IV describes the feature-construction process.Section V discusses the classi? cation techniques for mouse dynamics. Section VI presents the evaluation methodology. Section VII presents and analyzes experimental results. Section VIII offers a discussion and possible extensions of the current work. Finally, Section IX concludes. 18 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 II. BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK In this section, we provide background on mouse- dynamics research, and various applications for mouse dynamics (e. g. , authentication versus intrusion detection).Then we focus on applying mouse dynamics to user authentication. A. Background of Mouse Dynamics Mouse dynamics, a behavioral biometric for analyzing behavior data from pointing devices (e. g. , mouse or touchpad), provides user authentication in an accessible and convenient manner [2]–[4], [8], [14]–[17], [19], [21], [22], [33], [34], [39]–[41], [45], [46]. Since Everitt and McOwan [14] ? rst investigated in 2003 whether users could be distinguished by the use of a signature written by mouse, several different techniques and uses for mouse dynamics have been proposed.Most researchers focus on the use of mouse dynamics for intrusion detection (sometimes called identity monitoring or reauthentication), which analyzes mouse-behavior characteristics throughout the course of interaction. Pusara and Brodley [33] proposed a reauthentication scheme using m ouse dynamics for user veri? cation. This study presented positive ? ndings, but cautioned that their results were only preliminary. Gamboa and Fred [15], [16] were some of the earliest researchers to study identity monitoring based on mouse movements.Later on, Ahmed and Traore [3] proposed an approach combining keystroke dynamics with mouse dynamics for intrusion detection. Then they considered mouse dynamics as a standalone biometric for intrusion detection [2]. Recently, Zheng et al. [46] proposed angle-based metrics of mouse movements for reauthentication systems, and explored the effects of environmental factors (e. g. , different machines). Yet only recently have researchers come to the use of mouse dynamics for user authentication (sometimes called static authentication), which analyzes mouse-behavior characteristics at particular moments.In 2007, Gamboa et al. [17] extended their approaches in identity monitoring [15], [16] into web-based authentication. Later on, Kaminsky e t al. [22] presented an authentication scheme using mouse dynamics for identifying online game players. Then, Bours and Fullu [8] proposed an authentication approach by requiring users to make use of the mouse for tracing a maze-like path. Most recently, a full survey of the existing work in mouse dynamics pointed out that mouse-dynamics research should focus on reducing authentication time and taking the effect of environmental variables into account [21]. B.User Authentication Based on Mouse Dynamics The primary focus of previous research has been on the use of mouse dynamics for intrusion detection or identity monitoring. It is dif? cult to transfer previous work directly from intrusion detection to authentication, however, because a rather long authentication period is typically required to collect suf? cient mouse-behavior data to enable reasonably accurate veri? cation. To our knowledge, few papers have targeted the use of mouse dynamics for user authentication, which will be the central concern of this paper. Hashia et al. [19] and Bours et al. 8] presented some preliminary results on mouse dynamics for user authentication. They both asked participants to perform ? xed sequences of mouse operations, and they analyzed behavioral characteristics of mouse movements to authenticate a user during the login stage. Distance-based classi? ers were established to compare the veri? cation data with the enrollment data. Hashia et al. collected data from 15 participants using the same computer, while Bours et al. collected data from 28 subjects using different computers; they achieved equal-error rates of 15% and 28% respectively.Gamboa et al. [17] presented a web-based user authentication system based on mouse dynamics. The system displayed an on-screen virtual keyboard, and required users to use the mouse to enter a paired username and pin-number. The extracted feature space was reduced to a best subspace through a greedy search process. A statistical model based on the Weibull distribution was built on training data from both legitimate and impostor users. Based on data collected from 50 subjects, the researchers reported an equal-error rate of 6. 2%, without explicitly reporting authentication time.The test data were also used for feature selection, which may lead to an overly optimistic estimate of authentication performance [18]. Recently, Revett et al. [34] proposed a user authentication system requiring users to use the mouse to operate a graphical, combination-lock-like GUI interface. A small-scale evaluation involving 6 subjects yielded an average false-acceptance rate and false-rejection rate of around 3. 5% and 4% respectively, using a distance-based classi? er. However, experimental details such as experimental apparatus and testing procedures were not explicitly reported. Aksari et al. 4] presented an authentication framework for verifying users based on a ? xed sequence of mouse movements. Features were extracted from nine move ments among seven squares displayed consecutively on the screen. They built a classi? er based on scaled Euclidean distance using data from both legitimate users and impostors. The researchers reported an equal-error rate of 5. 9% over 10 users’ data collected from the same computer, but authentication time was not reported. It should be noted that the above two studies were performed on a small number of users—only 6 users in [34], and 10 users in [4]—which may be insuf? ient to evaluate de? nitively the performance of these approaches. The results of the above studies have been mixed, possibly due to the realism of the experiments, possibly due to a lack of real differences among users, or possibly due to experimental errors or faulty data. A careful reading of the literature suggests that (1) most approaches have resulted in low performance, or have used a small number of users, but since these studies do not tend to be replicated, it is hard to pin the discr epancies on any one thing; (2) no research group provided a shared dataset.In our study, we control the experimental environment to increase the likelihood that our results will be free from experimental confounding factors, and we attempt to develop a simple and ef? cient user authentication approach based on mouse dynamics. We also make our data available publicly. III. MOUSE DATA ACQUISITION In this study, we collect mouse-behavior data in a controlled environment, so as to isolate behavioral characteristics as the principal factors in mouse behavior analysis. We offer here SHEN et al. USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 19 considerable detail regarding the conduct of data collection, because these particulars can best reveal potential biases and threats to experimental validity [27]. Our data set is available 1. A. Controlled Environment In this study, we set up a desktop computer and developed a Windows application as a uniform hardware and software platform for the coll ection of mouse-behavior data. The desktop was an HP workstation with a Core 2 Duo 3. 0 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM.It was equipped with a 17 HP LCD monitor (set at 1280 1024 resolution) and a USB optical mouse, and ran the Windows XP operating system. Most importantly, all system parameters relating to the mouse, such as speed and sensitivity con? gurations, were ? xed. The Windows application, written in C#, prompted a user to conduct a mouse-operation task. During data collection, the application displayed the task in a full-screen window on the monitor, and recorded (1) the corresponding mouse operations (e. g. , mouse-single-click), (2) the positions at which the operations occurred, and (3) the timestamps of the operations.The Windows-event clock was used to timestamp mouse operations [28]; it has a resolution of 15. 625 milliseconds, corresponding to 64 updates per second. When collecting data, each subject was invited to perform a mouse-operations task on the same desktop computer free of other subjects; data collection was performed one by one on the same data-collection platform. These conditions make hardware and software factors consistent throughout the process of data collection over all subjects, thus removing unintended side-effects of unrelated hardware and software factors. B.Mouse-Operation Task Design To reduce behavioral variations due to different mouse-operation sequences, all subjects were required to perform the same sequence of mouse operations. We designed a mouse-operation task, consisting of a ? xed sequence of mouse operations, and made these operations representative of a typical and diverse combination of mouse operations. The operations were selected according to (1) two elementary operations of mouse clicks: single click and double click; and (2) two basic properties of mouse movements: movement direction and movement distance [2], [39].As shown in Fig. 2, movement directions are numbered from 1 to 8, and each of them is sel ected to represent one of eight 45-degree ranges over 360 degrees. In addition, three distance intervals are considered to represent short-, middle- and long-distance mouse movements. Table I shows the directions and distances of the mouse movements used in this study. During data collection, every two adjacent movements were separated by either a single click or a double click. As a whole, the designed task consists of 16 mouse movements, 8 single clicks, and 8 double clicks.It should be noted that our task may not be unique. However, the task was carefully chosen to induce users to perform a wide variety of mouse movements and clicks that were both typical and diverse in an individual’s repertoire of daily mouse behaviors. 1The mouse-behavior dataset is available from: http://nskeylab. xjtu. edu. cn/ projects/mousedynamics/behavior-data-set/. Fig. 2. Mouse movement directions: sector 1 covers all operations performed degrees and degrees. with angles between TABLE I MOUSE MO VEMENTS IN THE DESIGNED MOUSE-OPERATION TASK C.Subjects We recruited 37 subjects, many from within our lab, but some from the university at large. Our sample of subjects consisted of 30 males and 7 females. All of them were right-handed users, and had been using a mouse for a minimum of two years. D. Data-Collection Process All subjects were required to participate in two rounds of data collection per day, and waited at least 24 hours between collections (ensuring that some day-to-day variation existed within the data). In each round, each subject was invited, one by one, to perform the same mouse-operation task 10 times.A mouse-operation sample was obtained when a subject performed the task one time, in which she ? rst clicked a start button on the screen, then moved the mouse to click subsequent buttons prompted by the data-collection application. Additionally, subjects were instructed to use only the external mouse device, and they were advised that no keyboard would be needed. S ubjects were told that if they needed a break or needed to stretch their hands, they were to do so after they had accomplished a full round. This was intended to prevent arti? cially anomalous mouse operations in the middle of a task.Subjects were admonished to focus on the task, as if they were logging into their own accounts, and to avoid distractions, such as talking with the experimenter, while the task was in progress. Any error in the operating process (e. g. , single-clicking a button when requiring double-clicking it) caused the current task to be reset, requiring the subject to redo it. 20 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 TABLE II MOUSE DYNAMICS FEATURES Subjects took between 15 days and 60 days to complete data collection.Each subject accomplished 150 error-free repetitions of the same mouse-operation task. The task took between 6. 2 seconds and 21. 3 seconds, with an average of 11. 8 seconds over all subjects. The ? nal dataset contained 5550 samples from 37 subjects. IV. FEATURE CONSTRUCTION In this section, we ? rst extract a set of mouse-dynamics features, and then we use distance-measurement methods to obtain feature-distance vectors for reducing behavioral variability. Next, we utilize an eigenspace transformation to extract principal feature components as classi? er input. A.Feature Extraction The data collected in Section III are sequences of mouse operations, including left-single-clicks, left-double-clicks, and mouse-movements. Mouse features were extracted from these operations, and were typically organized into a vector to represent the sequence of mouse operations in one execution of the mouse-operation task. Table II summarizes the derived features in this study. We characterized mouse behavior based on two basic types of mouse operations—mouse click and mouse movement. Each mouse operation was then analyzed individually, and translated into several mouse features.Our study divi ded these features into two categories: †¢ Holistic features: features that characterize the overall properties of mouse behaviors during interactions, such as single-click and double-click statistics; †¢ Procedural features: features that depict the detailed dynamic processes of mouse behaviors, such as the movement speed and acceleration curves. Most traditional features are holistic features, which suf? ce to obtain a statistical description of mouse behavior, such as the mean value of click times. They are easy to compute and comprehend, but they only characterize general attributes of mouse behavior.In our study, the procedural features characterize in-depth procedural details of mouse behavior. This information more accurately re? ects the ef? ciency, agility and motion habits of individual mouse users, and thus may lead to a performance boost for authentication. Experimental results in Section VII demonstrate the effectiveness of these newly-de? ned features. B. Dis tance Measurement The raw mouse features cannot be used directly by a classi? er, because of high dimensionality and behavioral variability. Therefore, distance-measurement methods were applied to obtain feature-distance vectors and to mitigate the effects of these issues.In the calculation of distance measurement, we ? rst used the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) distance [6] to compute the distance vector of procedural features. The reasons for this choice are that (1) procedural features (e. g. , movement speed curve) of two data samples are not likely to consist of the exactly same number of points, whether these samples are generated by the same or by different subjects; (2) DTW distance can be applied directly to measure the distance between the procedural features of two samples without deforming either or both of the two sequences in order to get an equal number of points.Next, we applied Manhattan distance to calculate the distance vector of holistic features. The reasons for th is choice are that (1) this distance is independent between dimensions, and can preserve physical interpretation of the features since its computation is the absolute value of cumulative difference; (2) previous research in related ? elds (e. g. , keystroke dynamics) reported that the use of Manhattan distance for statistical features could lead to a better performance [23]. ) Reference Feature Vector Generation: We established the reference feature vector for each subject from her training feature vectors. Let , be the training set of feature vectors for one subject, where is a -dimensional mouse feature vector extracted from the th training sample, and is the number of training samples. Consider how the reference feature vector is generated for each subject: Step 1: we computed the pairwise distance vector of procedural features and holistic features between all pairs of training feature vectors and .We used DTW distance to calculate the distance vector of procedural features for measuring the similarity between the procedural components of the two feature vectors, and we applied Manhattan distance to calculate the distance vector of holistic features . (1) where , and represents the procedural components of represents the holistic components. SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 21 Step 2: we concatenated the distance vectors of holistic features and procedural features together to obtain a distance vector for the training feature vectors and by (2) Step 3: we normalized vector: to get a scale-invariant feature nd sample covariance . Then we can obtain the mean of such a training set by (5) (6) (3) is the mean of all where pairwise distance vectors from the training set, and is the corresponding standard deviation. Step 4: for each training feature vector, we calculated the arithmetic mean distance between this vector and the remaining training vectors, and found the reference feature vector with minimum mean distance. (4) 2) Feature-Dis tance Vector Calculation: Given the reference feature vector for each subject, we then computed the feature-distance vector between a new mouse feature vector and the reference vector.Let be the reference feature vector for one subject; then for any new feature vector (either from the legitimate user or an impostor), we can compute the corresponding distance vector by (1), (2) and (3). In this paper, we used all mouse features in Table II to generate the feature-distance vector. There are 10 click-related features, 16 distance-related features, 16 time-related features, 16 speed-related features, and 16 acceleration-related features, which were taken together and then transformed to a 74-dimensional feature-distance vector that represents each mouse-operation sample. C.Eigenspace Computation: Training and Projection It is usually undesirable to use all components in the feature vector as input for the classi? er, because much of data will not provide a signi? cant degree of uniquene ss or consistency. We therefore applied an eigenspace-transformation technique to extract the principal components as classi? er input. 1) Kernel PCA Training: Kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) [37] is one approach to generalizing linear PCA to nonlinear cases using kernel methods. In this study, the purpose of KPCA is to obtain the principal components of the original feature-distance vectors.The calculation process is illustrated as follows: For each subject, the training set represents a set of feature-distance vectors drawn from her own data. Let be the th feature-distance vector in the training set, and be the number of such vectors. We ? rst mapped the measured vectors into the hyperdimensional feature space by the nonlinear mapping Here we centered the mapped point with the corresponding mean as . The principal components were then computed by solving the eigenvalue problem: (7) where and . Then, by de? ning a kernel matrix (8) we computed an eigenvalue problem for t he coef? ients is now solely dependent on the kernel function , that (9) For details, readers can refer to B. Scholkopf et al. [37]. Generally speaking, the ? rst few eigenvectors correspond to large eigenvalues and most information in the training samples. Therefore, for the sake of providing the principal components to represent mouse behavior in a low-dimensional eigenspace, and for memory ef? ciency, we ignored small eigenvalues and their corresponding eigenvectors, using a threshold value (10) is the accumulated variance of the ? st largest eigenwhere values with respect to all eigenvalues. In this study, was chosen as 0. 95 for all subjects, with a range from 0 to 1. Note that we used the same for different subjects, so may be different from one subject to another. Speci? cally, in our experiments, we observed that the number of principal components for different subjects varied from 12 to 20, and for an average level, 17 principal components are identi? ed under the threshold of 0. 95. 2) Kernel PCA Projection: For the selected subject, taking the largest eigenvalues and he associated eigenvectors, the transform matrix can be constructed to project an original feature-distance vector into a point in the -dimensional eigenspace: (11) As a result, each subject’s mouse behavior can be mapped into a manifold trajectory in such a parametric eigenspace. It is wellknown that is usually much smaller than the dimensionality of the original feature space. That is to say, eigenspace analysis can dramatically reduce the dimensionality of input samples. In this way, we used the extracted principal components of the feature-distance vectors as input for subsequent classi? ers. 22IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 V. CLASSIFIER IMPLEMENTATION This section explains the classi? er that we used, and introduces two other widely-used classi? ers. Each classi? er analyzes mouse-behavior data, and discriminates between a legitimate user and impostors. A. One-Class Classi? er Overview User authentication is still a challenging task from the pattern-classi? cation perspective. It is a two-class (legitimate user versus impostors) problem. In the scenario of mouse-dynamicsbased user authentication, a login user is required to provide the user name and to perform a speci? mouse-operation task which would be secret, like a password. Each user would choose her own mouse-operations task, and would not share that task with others. Thus, when building a model for a legitimate user, the only behavioral samples of her speci? c task are her own; other users’ (considered as impostors in our scenario) samples of this task are not readily available. In this scenario, therefore, an appropriate solution is to build a model based only on the legitimate user’s data samples, and use that model to detect impostors. This type of problem is known as one-class classi? ation [43] or novelty/anomaly detection [25], [26]. We thus focused our attention on this type of problem, especially because in a real-world situation we would not have impostor renditions of a legitimate user’s mouse operations anyway. B. Our Classi? er—One-Class Support Vector Machine Traditional one-class classi? cation methods are often unsatisfying, frequently missing some true positives and producing too many false positives. In this study, we used a one-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) classi? er, introduced by Scholkopf et al. [36], [38]. One-class SVMs have been successfully applied to a number of real-life classi? ation problems, e. g. , face authentication, signature veri? cation and keystroke authentication [1], [23]. In our context, given training samples belonging to one subject, , each sample has features (corresponding to the principal components of the feature-distance vector for that subject). The aim is to ? nd a hyperplane that separates the data points by the largest margin. To separ ate the data points from the origin, one needs to solve the following dual quadratic programming problem [36], [38]: the origin, and is the kernel function. We allow for nonlinear decision boundaries. Then the decision function 13) will be positive for the examples from the training set, where is the offset of the decision function. In essence, we viewed the user authentication problem as a one-class classi? cation problem. In the training phase, the learning task was to build a classi? er based on the legitimate subject’s feature samples. In the testing phase, the test feature sample was projected into the same high-dimensional space, and the output of the decision function was recorded. We used a radial basis function (RBF) in our evaluation, after comparative studies of linear, polynomial, and sigmoid kernels based on classi? ation accuracy. The SVM parameter and kernel parameter (using LibSVM [11]) were set to 0. 06 and 0. 004 respectively. The decision function would gen erate â€Å" † if the authorized user’s test set is input; otherwise it is a false rejection case. On the contrary, â€Å" † should be obtained if the impostors’ test set is the input; otherwise a false acceptance case occurs. C. Other Classi? ers—Nearest Neighbor and Neural Network In addition, we compared our classi? er with two other widely-used classi? ers, KNN and neural network [12]. For KNN, in the training phase, the nearest neighbor classi? r estimated the covariance matrix of the training feature samples, and saved each feature sample. In the testing phase, the nearest neighbor classi? er calculated Mahalanobis distance from the new feature sample to each of the samples in the training data. The average distance, from the new sample to the nearest feature samples from the training data, was used as the anomaly score. After multiple tests with ranging from 1 to 5, we obtained the best results with , detailed in Section VII. For the neural network, in the training phase a network was built with input nodes, one output node, and hidden nodes.The network weights were randomly initialized between 0 and 1. The classi? er was trained to produce a 1. 0 on the output node for every training feature sample. We trained for 1000 epochs using a learning rate of 0. 001. In the testing phase, the test sample was run through the network, and the output of the network was recorded. Denote to be the output of the network; intuitively, if is close to 1. 0, the test sample is similar to the training samples, and with close to 0. 0, it is dissimilar. VI. EVALUATION METHODOLOGY This section explains the evaluation methodology for mouse behavior analysis.First, we summarize the dataset collected in Section III. Next, we set up the training and testing procedure for our one-class classi? ers. Then, we show how classi? er performance was calculated. Finally, we introduce a statistical testing method to further analyze experimental results. (12) where is the vector of nonnegative Lagrangian multipliers to be determined, is a parameter that controls the trade-off between maximizing the number of data points contained by the hyperplane and the distance of the hyperplane from SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 23A. Dataset As discussed in Section III, samples of mouse-behavior data were collected when subjects performed the designed mouseoperation task in a tightly-controlled environment. All 37 subjects produced a total of 5550 mouse-operation samples. We then calculated feature-distance vectors, and extracted principal components from each vector as input for the classi? ers. B. Training and Testing Procedure Consider a scenario as mentioned in Section V-A. We started by designating one of our 37 subjects as the legitimate user, and the rest as impostors. We trained the classi? er and ested its ability to recognize the legitimate user and impostors as follows: Step 1: We trained the classi? er to b uild a pro? le of the legitimate user on a randomly-selected half of the samples (75 out of 150 samples) from that user. Step 2: We tested the ability of the classi? er to recognize the legitimate user by calculating anomaly scores for the remaining samples generated by the user. We designated the scores assigned to each sample as genuine scores. Step 3: We tested the ability of the classi? er to recognize impostors by calculating anomaly scores for all the samples generated by the impostors.We designated the scores assigned to each sample as impostor scores. This process was then repeated, designating each of the other subjects as the legitimate user in turn. In the training phase, 10-fold cross validation [24] was employed to choose parameters of the classi? ers. Since we used a random sampling method to divide the data into training and testing sets, and we wanted to account for the effect of this randomness, we repeated the above procedure 50 times, each time with independently selected samples drawn from the entire dataset. C. Calculating Classi? r Performance To convert these sets of classi? cation scores of the legitimate user and impostors into aggregate measures of classi? er performance, we computed the false-acceptance rate (FAR) and false-rejection rate (FRR), and used them to generate an ROC curve [42]. In our evaluation, for each user, the FAR is calculated as the ratio between the number of false acceptances and the number of test samples of impostors; the FRR is calculated as the ratio between the number of false rejections and the number of test samples of legitimate users.Then we computed the average FAR and FRR over all subjects. Whether or not a mouse-operation sample generates an alarm depends on the threshold for the anomaly scores. An anomaly score over the threshold indicates an impostor, while a score under the threshold indicates a legitimate user. In many cases, to make a user authentication scheme deployable in practice, minimizing the possibility of rejecting a true user (lower FRR) is sometimes more important than lowering the probability of accepting an impostor [46]. Thus we adjusted the threshold according to the FRR for the training data.Since calculation of the FRR requires only the legitimate user’s data, no impostor data was used for determining the threshold. Speci? cally, the threshold is set to be a variable ranging from , and will be chosen with a relatively low FRR using 10-fold cross validation on the training data. After multiple tests, we observe that setting the threshold to a value of 0. 1 yields a low FRR on average2. Thus, we show results with a threshold value of 0. 1 throughout this study. D. Statistical Analysis of the Results To evaluate the performance of our approach, we developed a statistical test using the half total error rate (HTER) and con? ence-interval (CI) evaluation [5]. The HTER test aims to statistically evaluate the performance for user authentication, which is de ? ned by combining false-acceptance rate (FAR) and falserejection rate (FRR): (14) Con? dence intervals are computed around the HTER as , and and are computed by [5]: (15) % % % (16) where NG is the total number of genuine scores, and NI is the total number of impostor scores. VII. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS Extensive experiments were carried out to verify the effectiveness of our approach. First, we performed the authentication task using our approach, and compared it with two widely-used classi? rs. Second, we examined our primary results concerning the effect of eigenspace transformation methods on classi? er performance. Third, we explored the effect of sample length on classi? er performance, to investigate the trade-off between security and usability. Two additional experiments are provided to compare our method with other approaches in the literature. A. Experiment 1: User Authentication In this section, we conducted a user authentication experiment, and compared our c lassi? er with two widely-used ones as mentioned in Section V-C. The data used in this experiment consisted of 5550 samples from 37 subjects.Fig. 3 and Table III show the ROC curves and average FARs and FRRs of the authentication experiment for each of three classi? ers, with standard deviations in parentheses. Table III also includes the average authentication time, which is the sum of the average time needed to collect the data and the average time needed to make the authentication decision (note that since the latter of these two times is always less than 0. 003 seconds in our classi? ers, we ignore it in this study). Our ? rst observation is that the best performance has a FAR of 8. 74% and a FRR of 7. 96%, obtained by our approach (one-class SVM).This result is promising and competitive, and the behavioral samples are captured over a much shorter period of time 2Note that for different classi? ers, there are different threshold intervals. For instance, the threshold interval fo r neural network detector is [0, 1], and for one. For uniform presentation, we mapped all of intervals class SVM, it is . to 24 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 TABLE IV HTER PERFORMANCE AND CONFIDENCE INTERVAL AT CONFIDENCE LEVELS DIFFERENT Fig. 3. ROC curves for the three different classi? rs used in this study: oneclass SVM, neural network, and nearest neighbor. TABLE III FARs AND FRRs OF USER AUTHENTICATION EXPERIMENT (WITH STANDARD DEVIATIONS IN PARENTHESES) information about mouse behavior, which could enhance performance. Finally, we conducted a statistical test, using the HTER and CI evaluation as mentioned in Section VI-D, to statistically evaluate the performance of our approach. Table IV summarizes the results of this statistical evaluation at different con? dence levels. The result shows that the proposed approach provides the lowest HTER in comparison with the other two classi? ers used in our study; the 95% con? ence interval lies at % %. B. Experiment 2: Effect of Eigenspace Transformation This experiment examined the effect of eigenspace-transformation methods on classi? er performance. The data used were the same as in Experiment 1. We applied a one-class SVM classi? er in three evaluations, with the inputs respectively set to be the original feature-distance vectors (without any transformations), the projection of feature-distance vectors by PCA, and the projection of feature-distance vectors by KPCA. Fig. 4 and Table V show the ROC curves and average FARs and FRRs for each of three feature spaces, with standard deviations in parentheses.As shown in Fig. 4 and Table V, the authentication accuracy for the feature space transformed by KPCA is the best, followed by the accuracies for feature spaces by PCA and the original one. Speci? cally, direct classi? cation in the original feature space (without transformations) produces a FAR of 15. 45% and FRR of 15. 98%. This result is not encouraging c ompared to results previously reported in the literature. However, as mentioned in Experiment 1, the samples may be subject to more behavioral variability compared with previous work, because previous work analyzed mouse behaviors over a longer period of observation.Moreover, we observe that the authentication results of % % by PCA, and % % by KPCA are much better than for direct classi? cation. This result is a demonstration of the effectiveness of the eigenspace transformation in dealing with variable behavior data. Furthermore, we ? nd that the performance of KPCA is slightly superior to that of PCA. This may be due to the nonlinear variability (or noise) existing in mouse behaviors, and KPCA can reduce this variability (or noise) by using kernel transformations [29].It is also of note that the standard deviations of FAR and FRR based on the feature space transformed by KPCA and PCA are smaller than those of the original feature space (without transformations), indicating that th e eigenspace-transformation technique enhances the stability and robustness of our approach. compared with previous work. It should be noted that our result does not yet meet the European standard for commercial biometric technology, which requires near-perfect accuracy of 0. 001% FAR and 1% FRR [10]. But it does demonstrate that mouse dynamics could provide valuable information in user authentication tasks.Moreover, with a series of incremental improvements and investigations (e. g. , outlier handling), it seems possible that mouse dynamics could be used as, at least, an auxiliary authentication technique, such as an enhancement for conventional password mechanisms. Our second observation is that our approach has substantially better performance than all other classi? ers considered in our study. This may be due to the fact that SVMs can convert the problem of classi? cation into quadratic optimization in the case of relative insuf? ciency of prior knowledge, and still maintain hig h accuracy and stability.In addition, the standard deviations of the FAR and FRR for our approach are much smaller than those for other classi? ers, indicating that our approach may be more robust to variable behavior data and different parameter selection procedures. Our third observation is that the average authentication time in our study is 11. 8 seconds, which is impressive and achieves an acceptable level of performance for a practical application. Some previous approaches may lead to low availability due to a relatively-long authentication time. However, an authentication time of 11. seconds in our study shows that we can perform mouse-dynamics analysis quickly enough to make it applicable to authentication for most login processes. We conjecture that the signi? cant decrease of authentication time is due to procedural features providing more detailed and ? ne-grained SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 25 TABLE VI FARs AND FRRs OF DIFFERENT SAMPLE LENGTH S Fig. 4. ROC curves for three different feature spaces: the original feature space, the projected feature space by PCA, and the projected feature space by KPCA.TABLE V FARs AND FARs FOR THREE DIFFERENT FEATURE SPACES (WITH STANDARD DEVIATIONS IN PARENTHESES) the needs of the European Standard for commercial biometric technology [10]. We ? nd that after observing 800 mouse operations, our approach can obtain a FAR of 0. 87% and a FRR of 0. 69%, which is very close to the European standard, but with a corresponding authentication time of about 10 minutes. This long authentication time may limit applicability in real systems. Thus, a trade-off must be made between security and user acceptability, and more nvestigations and improvements should be performed to secure a place for mouse dynamics in more pragmatic settings. D. Comparison User authentication through mouse dynamics has attracted growing interest in the research community. However, there is no shared dataset or baseline algor ithm for measuring and determining what factors affect performance. The unavailability of an accredited common dataset (such as the FERET database in face recognition [32]) and standard evaluation methodology has been a limitation in the development of mouse dynamics.Most researchers trained their models on different feature sets and datasets, but none of them made informed comparisons among different mouse feature sets and different results. Thus two additional experiments are offered here to compare our approach with those in the literature. 1) Comparison 1: Comparison With Traditional Features: As stated above, we constructed the feature space based on mouse clicks and mouse movements, consisting of holistic features and procedural features. To further examine the effectiveness of the features constructed in this study, we provide a comparative experiment. We chose the features used by Gamboa et al. 17], Aksari and Artuner [4], Hashia et al. [19], Bours and Fullu [8], and Ahmed a nd Traore [2], because they were among the most frequently cited, and they represented a relatively diverse set of mouse-dynamics features. We then used a one-class SVM classi? er to conduct the authentication experiment again on our same dataset with both the feature set de? ned in our study, and the feature sets used in other studies. Hence, the authentication accuracies of different feature sets can be compared. Fig. 5 and Table VII show the ROC curves and average FARs and FRRs for each of six feature sets, with standard deviations in parentheses.We can see that the average error rates for the feature set from our approach are much lower than those of the feature sets from the literature. We conjecture that this may be due to the procedural features providing ? ne-grained information about mouse behavior, but they may also be due, in part, to: (1) partial adoption of features de? ned in previous approaches C. Experiment 3: Effect of Sample Length This experiment explored the effe ct of sample length on classi? er performance, to investigate the trade-off between security (authentication accuracy) and usability (authentication time).In this study, the sample length corresponds to the number of mouse operations needed to form one data sample. Each original sample consists of 32 mouse operations. To explore the effect of sample length on the performance of our approach, we derived new datasets with different sample lengths by applying bootstrap sampling techniques [13] to the original dataset, to make derived datasets containing the same numbers of samples as the original dataset. The new data samples were generated in the form of multiple consecutive mouse samples from the original dataset. In this way, we considered classi? r performance as a function of the sample length using all bootstrap samples derived from the original dataset. We conducted the authentication experiment again (using one-class SVM) on six derived datasets, with and 800 operations. Table VI shows the FARs and FRRs at varying sample lengths, using a one-class SVM classi? er. The table also includes the authentication time in seconds. The FAR and FRR obtained using a sample length of 32 mouse operations are 8. 74% and 7. 96% respectively, with an authentication time of 11. 8 seconds. As the number of operations increases, the FAR and FRR drop to 6. 7% and 6. 68% for the a data sample comprised of 80 mouse operations, corresponding to an authentication time of 29. 88 seconds. Therefore, we may conclude that classi? er performance almost certainly gets better as the sample length increases. Note that 60 seconds may be an upper bound for authentication time, but the corresponding FAR of 4. 69% and FRR of 4. 46% are still not low enough to meet 26 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 8, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013 Fig. 5. ROC curves for six different feature sets: the feature set in our study, and the features sets in other studies.RESULTS OF TABLE VII CO MPARISON WITH SOME TRADITIONAL FEATURES (WITH STANDARD DEVIATIONS IN PARENTHESES) Note that this approach [2] is initially applied to intrusion detection, and we extracted parts of features closely related to mouse operations in our dataset. The reason for this decision is that we want to examine whether the features employed in intrusion detection can be used in user authentication. because of different data-collection environments; (2) using different types of thresholds on the anomaly scores; (3) using less enrollment data than was used in previous experiments.The improved performance based on using our features also indicates that our features may allow more accurate and detailed characterization of a user’s unique mouse behavior than was possible with previously used features. Another thing to note from Table VII is that the standard deviations of error rates for features in our study are smaller than those for traditional features, suggesting that our features might be more stable and robust to variability in behavior data. One may also wonder how much of the authentication accuracy of our approach is due to the use of procedural features or holistic features.We tested our method using procedural features and holistic features separately, and the set of procedural features was the choice that proved to perform better. Specifically, we observe that the authentication accuracy of % % by using the set of procedural features is much better than for the set of holistic features, which have a FAR of 19. 58% and a FRR of 17. 96%. In combination with the result when using all features, it appears that procedural features may be more stable and discriminative than holistic features, which suggests that the procedural features contribute more to the authentication accuracy.The results here only provide preliminary comparative results and should not be used to conclude that a certain set of mouse features is always better than others. Each feature set has it s own unique advantages and disadvantages under different conditions and applications, so further evaluations and comparisons on more realistic and challenging datasets are needed. 2) Comparison 2: Comparison With Previous Work: Most previous approaches have either resulted in poor performance (in terms of authentication accuracy or time), or have used data of limited size.In this section, we show a qualitative comparison of our experimental results and settings against results of previous work (listed in Table VIII). Revett et al. [34] and Aksari and Artuner [4] considered mouse dynamics as a standalone biometric, and obtained an authentication accuracy of ERR around 4% and 5. 9% respectively, with a relatively-short authentication time or small number of mouse operations. But their results were based on a small pool of users (6 users in [34] and 10 users in [4]), which may be insuf? ient to obtain a good, steady result. Our study relies on an improved user authentication methodolo gy and far more users, leading us to achieve a good and robust authentication performance. Ahmed and Traore [2] achieved a high authentication accuracy, but as we mentioned before, it might be dif? cult to use such a method for user authentication since the authentication time or the number of mouse operations needed to verify a user’s identity is too high to be practical for real systems. Additionally, Hashia et al. 19] and Bours and Fulla [8] could perform user authentication in a relatively-short time, but they reported unacceptably high error rates (EER of 15% in [19], and EER of 26. 8% in [8]). In our approach we can make an authentication decision with a reasonably short authentication time while maintaining high accuracy. We employ a one-class classi? er, which is more appropriate for mouse-dynamics-based user authentication. As mentioned in Experiment 3, we can make an authentication decision in less than 60 seconds, with corresponding error rates are FAR of 4. 9% and FRR of 4. 46%. Although this result could be improved, we believe that, at our current performance level, mouse dynamics suf? ce to be a practical auxiliary authentication mechanism. In summary, Comparison 1 shows that our proposed features outperform some traditional features used in previous studies, and may be more stable and robust to variable behavior data. Comparison 2 indicates that our approach is competitive with existing approaches in authentication time while maintaining high accuracy.More detailed statistical studies on larger and more realistic datasets are desirable for further evaluations. VIII. DISCUSSION AND EXTENSION FOR FUTURE WORK Based on the ? ndings from this study, we take away some messages, each of which may suggest a trajectory for future work. Additionally, our work highlights the need for shared data and resources. A. Success Factors of Our Approach The presented approach achieved a short authentication time and relatively-high accuracy for mouse-dynami cs-based user SHEN et al. : USER AUTHENTICATION THROUGH MOUSE DYNAMICS 27 TABLE VIII COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS WORKAuthentication time was not explicitly reported in [4], [8], [17]; instead, they required the user to accomplish a number of mouse operations for each authentication (15 clicks and 15 movements for [17]; 10 clicks and 9 movements for [4]; 18 short movements without pauses for [8]). Authentication time was not explicitly stated in [2]; however, it can be assumed by data-collection progress. For example, it is stated in [2] that an average of 12 hours 55 minutes of data were captured from each subject, representing an average of 45 sessions. We therefore assume that average session length is 12. 5 60/45 17. 22 minutes 1033 seconds. authentication. However, it is quite hard to point out one or two things that may have made our results better than those of previous work, because (1) past work favored realism over experimental control, (2) evaluation methodologies were incons istent among previous work, and (3) there have been no public datasets on which to perform comparative evaluations. Experimental control, however, is likely to be responsible for much of our success. Most previous work does not reveal any particulars in controlling experiments, while our work is tightly controlled.We made every effort to control experimental confounding factors to prevent them from having unintended in? uence on the subject’s recorded mouse behavior. For example, the same desktop computer was used for data collection for all subjects, and all system parameters relating to the mouse were ? xed. In addition, every subject was provided with the same instructions. These settings suggest strongly that the differences in subjects were due to individually detectable mouse-behavior differences among subjects, and not to environmental variables or experimental conditions.We strongly advocate the control of potential confounding factors in future experiments. The reaso n is that controlled experiments are necessary to reveal causal connections among experimental factors and classi? er performance, while realistic but uncontrolled experiments may introduce confounding factors that could in? uence experimental outcomes, which would make it hard to tell whether the results of those evaluations actually re? ect detectable differences in mouse behavior among test subjects, or differences among computing environments.We had more subjects (37), more repetitions of the operation task (150), and more comprehensive mouse operations (2 types of mouse clicks, 8 movement directions, and 3 movement distance ranges) than most studies did. Larger subject pools, however, sometimes make things harder; when there are more subjects there is a higher possibility that two subjects will have similar mouse behaviors, resulting in more classi? cation errors. We proposed the use of procedural features, such as the movement speed curve and acceleration curve, to provide mor e ? egrained information about mouse behavior than some traditional features. This may allow one to accurately describe a user’s unique mouse behavior, thus leading to a performance improvement for mouse-dynamics-based user authentication. We adopted methods for distance measurement and eigenspace transformation for obtaining principal feature components to ef? ciently represent the original mouse feature space. These methods not only overcome within-class variability of mouse behavior, but also preserve between-class differences of mouse behavior. The improved authentication accuracies demonstrate the ef? acy of these methods. Finally, we used a one-class learning algorithm to perform the authentication task, which is more appropriate for mousedynamics-based user authentication in real applications. In general, until there is a comparative study that stabilizes these factors, it will be hard to be de? nitive about the precise elements that made this work successful. B. Oppor tunities for Improvement While previous studies showed promising results in mouse dynamics, none of them have been able to meet the requirement of the European standard for commercial biometric technology.In this work, we determined that mouse dynamics may achieve a pragmatically useful level of accuracy, but with an impractically long authentic