A Summary of The Scarlet Letter - 771 Words

Hester Prynne was born in England. She met her husband, Roger Chillingworth in Amsterdam, Netherland and got married with him, although she didn’t love him. Chillingworth sent her to Boston to wait for his arrival, but she ended up by having a child with Authur Dimmesdale, who was a minister of the town. So she was sent to the prison as she had committed adultery. One day, she was emerged from the prison with the letter â€Å"A† on her breast, which is a sign of punishment for her adultery commitment. She and her three-month old daughter, Pearl were led to the scaffold of pillory. At there, she was asked to tell who Pearl’s father is, but she refused to tell. Although Dimmesdale, Pearl’s real father tried to convince her to tell everyone the truth, she still refused. On the scaffold, she noticed her real husband, Roger Chillingworth. She was shocked. When Hester returned to the prison, Chillingworth pretended to be a physician so that he was able to enter the prison. He told her that he forgave her and asked her who Pearl’s father is, but she refused to tell him. So he told her that he will find out who the man is, but she had to keep the secret that he was her husband. Later, Hester was released from the prison. She lived in the cottage in the woods out of the city with her daughter, Pearl. She made a living by her needlework but she never being treated well from the society because of her reputation and the letter â€Å"A† on her breast. Pearl grew up wild, and wrathful child. SheShow MoreRelatedSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 1633 Words   |  7 PagesMahanoor Khan AP English, Block 5 Mrs. Schuet 26 September 2014 1. Title and Author: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn 2. Summary: A women named Hester, one of the protagonists in the novel, has committed adultery, and has a child. The townspeople believe that her punishment should be to wear the letter A on her clothing so she and the town can remember her sin. Her daughter name is Pearl. Hester will not reveal with whom she had the affair with. The reverend named Dimmesdale is the fatherRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 1337 Words   |  6 PagesHokstad ENG 3UC 17 May 2016 Nature of Good and Evil in The Scarlet Letter There is a nature of good and evil in every person. Whether a person tries to push away the evil and be as good as they can be or let the evil consume their well- being. The nature of good and evil can be seen on a day to day basis in the way people act towards others, the crimes they have committed or the lies they do or do not tell. In the book, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there is a recurring theme of theRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 1436 Words   |  6 PagesThe Scarlet Letter Journal 1 I empathize most with Reverend Dimmesdale. He had to live with the secret of his sin for many years. He also was a reverend and had to preach about sins every Sunday and so was reminded constantly of what he did. In fact he felt so guilty about receiving no punishment while Hester was cursed with the letter that he â€Å"inflicted a hideous torture on himself† by carving the letter A into his own chest (Hawthorne 176). He has also had to endure much from Roger ChillingsworthRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 935 Words   |  4 PagesThe Scarlet Letter is about a woman, Hester Prynne, who has had an affair with a man who she would not name. During the affair Hester became pregnant, so the affair became known to the town. She had the child but would still not reveal who the father was she was then forced to wear a red A representing adulterer on her chest for the rest of her life. The movie Easy A is about Olive Pendergast is an average high school student who is not one of the super-popular girls, but not a loser eitherRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 1329 Words   |  6 PagesMelanie Showers Mrs. Voshell Honors English 10 8 January 2016 Morality in The Scarlet Letter In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne describes many defining instances of different characters’ morality. Some of the characters’ opinions are very different, but the people of the town have a general morality that leads Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale to deal with their sins differently in public, than in private. First, Hester’s morality, is not very defined at the beginning. She seems as though sheRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 1266 Words   |  6 Pages The Power of Guilt At some point in life, everyone makes an unintelligent decision. Oftentimes, these decisions leave people feeling guilty and with nobody to blame but themselves. In the Puritan society presented in The Scarlet Letter, sin is not taken lightly. Sinners are publicly presented on the town scaffold and have to endure embarrassing gossip. Dimmesdale, a church minister, commits adultery with Hester Prynne, and she has a child. Dimmesdale does not confess his sin for several yearsRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 1136 Words   |  5 PagesNicholas Halford Greene American Lit 7th 18 Mar 2015 Final Draft The Puritan society, seen in The Scarlet Letter, traps many women in the confines of patriarchal gender role with its rituals and beliefs. These common beliefs caused many of the women in the community to feel oppressed and silenced. Amongst these silenced women, only a few chose to stand against these unfair and unjust beliefs. This minute group includes Hester Prynne, the adulteress whose scandalous life is at the center of theRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 2535 Words   |  11 Pageswritten down to tell those later what is right and wrong; evil and good in the world. Sin is very relevant in The Scarlet Letter, it is shown throughout the novel.The novel started and ended with a sin. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, the main characters in The Scarlet Letter, is the cause of this debacle. Hester and Arthur’s inability to control their emotions gave Hester the scarlet letter, and only Hester can redeem herself out of it. Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester’s lover a nd also one of the churchRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter- 1641 Words   |  7 PagesStephanie Nicolino Mrs. Sarich English 11H 10 October 2014 The Scarlet Letter- Chapters 9-12 (Passage Analyzer) Chapters 9 and 10 investigate the relationship in the middle of Chillingworth and Dimmesdale. On one level, Chillingworth speaks to science and Dimmesdale speaks to deep sense of being. Like Chillingworth s disfigured shoulders, Dimmesdale s disease is an outward sign of an internal condition, and not medication or religion suffices to cure it. What hampers his recuperation is hisRead MoreSummary Of The Scarlet Letter 1485 Words   |  6 Pages The Scarlet Letter Reading Journal Chapters 2-3 Hester Prynne is first introduced by an angry crowd of people calling for her death. It seems as Hester has done something terribly wrong, something unforgivable. It gave me mixed thoughts, because I had no idea what she had done that made these people so furious, she could be innocent for all I, or any of the characters, know. Hester’s babe was compared/contrasted to the Scarlet Letter on herself, showing that her babe, not the Letter, was the

Literature Review Methane Free Essays

Methane Recovery from Landfills Utilization as a Potential Energy Source and Impact on Reduction of Green House Gasses According to The Conference Board of Canada, current Canadian municipal solid waste (MSW) generation levels are approximately 30 million tonnes per year, with a rate of 894 kg per capita, 67 percent of which is landfilled. (Jones L. et al. We will write a custom essay sample on Literature Review Methane or any similar topic only for you Order Now 2002) Sanitary landfills burry MSW under soil, sanctioning a complex series of reactions to occur, where anaerobic microorganisms decompose a portion of the organic fraction of the waste producing methane and carbon dioxide. Methane generation and emission from landfills are topics of major interest due to methane’s role in the greenhouse effect, migration of hazard potential, health and safety issues and energy applications. The objective of this literature review is to provide a concise relationship between MSW and landfill gasses (LFG), details of potential methods used for capturing methane as appose to emitting the gas as well as the benefits of doing. Rendering to information written by D. R. Reinhart and T. G. Townsend (1998), MSW contains approximately 50 – 70 % of biodegradable material, such as food, paper, wood, and garden trimmings. Once MSW is deposited into a landfill, it undergoes a number of biological, physical and chemical changes. These changes are greatly dependent on site conditions, waste characteristics, temperature, quantity of oxygen, moisture content and other factors. (Nozhevinikova et al. 1993) The most important reactions occurring within the landfill are those involving the microbes which begin to consume the carbon in the organic material, in turn causing the decomposition and eventually leading to the evaluate of LFG. In sanitary landfills, the process of burying waste and regularly covering deposits with a low permeability material creates an internal anaerobic environment that favors methane producing bacteria since the presence of oxygen is lacking. Pathways leading to the production of methane and carbon dioxide from anaerobic digestion of organic fraction of solid waste are briefly described bellow: 1) Decomposition of organic matter- In this preliminary process, compounds of higher molecular mass (Lipids, proteins, nucleic acids etc. are transformed into intermediate mass compounds making them much more suitable for the microorganisms as a source of energy and cell carbon 2) Conversion of decomposed matter to Organic Acid- In this phase, the existing microorganisms convert the intermediate molecular mass compounds into lower molecular mass compounds such as compel organic acids. 3) Conversion of Acetic Acid to Methane Gas- During this stage, the microorganisms transform the acetic acid into methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) gasses. Cassia de Brito Galvao, T. and Pos, W. H. 2002) As the solid waste decomposes in landfills, the gas which is emitted is composed of approximately 50 percent CH4 and 50 percent CO2, both of which are green house gasses (GHG) (Bingemer, H G. , ; Crutzen, P. J. 1987) With Landfilling being the primary source of disposal of MSW around the world, (Encyclopedia Britanica 2012) methane emissions from landfill represent the largest source of GHG emissions from the waste sector, contributing around 700 Mt CO2-e. United Nations Environmental Programme 2012) As recorded by Environment Canada (2010), similar trends exist nationally with emissions from Canadian landfills accounting for 20% of the total national methane emissions. Information gathered in a thesis prepared by Palananthakumar, B. (1991) outlines the proportion of methane produced world wide from landfills, and can be seen illustrated graphically below in Figure 1. 0. Figure 1. 0: % of Methane Production Contributions Worldwide from Landfill Existing research leads to the confident statement that methane is a potent greenhouse gas. As summarized in a 2009 article from the Municipal Solid Waste, the Journal for Municipal Solid Waste Professionals, In its Fourth Assessment Report (2007), The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that, on a 100-year time frame, each molecule of methane has a global warming potential 25 times higher than that associated with a molecule of carbon dioxide. (Duffy, D. P. et al 2009) Table 1. 0 summarizes the enumerated global warming potential for the primary greenhouse gasses discussed. Table 1. : Global Warming Potential (GWP) for a Given Time Horizon Greenhouse Gas| GWP20-yr (kg CO2-e| GWP (IPCC 2007) 100-yr (kg CO2-e)| GWP 500-yr (kg CO2-e)| Carbon Dioxide (CO2)| 1| 1| 1| Methane (CH4)| 72| 25| 7. 6| (Forster, P. et al 2007) In the last decade, attention to methane emissions from landfills has grown significantly with increased and ongoing awareness of global warming. The efforts of individual landfills as well as the nations as a whole are closely monitored f or the control of methane emissions. A trend has been observed that the magnitude of methane emission has been slightly decreasing, which is potentially due to the development of LFG to energy projects. Contrary to the negative perception associated with all greenhouse gasses, capturing this LFG can lead to beneficial outcomes. Generally, recovered methane either flares or is used as source of energy. The use of the gas as a source of energy is economical and environmentally friendly method to reduce LFG emissions. There are three primary approaches for the utilization of LFG. They include; 1) Direct use of gas locally 2) Generation of electricity and distribution through power grid 3) Processing and injection into a gas pipeline. (Palananthakumar, B. 1991) The captured LFG has the potential to provide a continuous source of energy and improve local air quality. In addition, using LFG can significantly reduce GHG emission, making the option of exploiting this alternative energy source a very viable option to MSW management. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has utilized this MSW management option and continues to encourage it. They have created a program that aims to help reduce methane emissions from landfills by assisting and encouraging the recovery and use of LFG as an energy resource. Since the programs inception, Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) has assisted 520 LFG energy projects in the United States reduce landfill CH4 emissions and avoid CO2 emissions by a combined 44 million metric tons of carbon equivalent. The reduction of methane emission through this program has slightly influenced the overall emission of LFG in USA. The success of LMOP can be reckoned by observing statistics from 2010 where reductions from all operational LFG energy projects were equivalent to Annual GHG emissions from 18. 5 million passenger vehicles. (United States Environmental Protection Agency 2012) A variety of technologies exist to generate electricity from collected methane including, internal combustion engines, gas turbines, and microturbines. Although there is a diversity of technologies, approximately eighty five percent of existing LFG electricity generation projects use internal combustion engines or turbines. United States Environmental Protection Agency 2012) â€Å"How much energy can Municipal solid waste produce? † is a common question among existing research. According to â€Å"An Overview of Landfill Gas Energy in the United States† published by U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Landfill Methane Outreach Program, one million tons of landfilled MSW can produce an electricity generation capaci ty of approximately 0. 8 MW. To further quantify this value, allowing the magnitude of the electricity generation to be understood, Focus on Energy (2003) outlines that 0. 8MW would be drawn to power approximately 8 000 100w light bulbs. It can be concluded that LFG recovery wreaks benefits environmentally, socially and economically. LFG recovery, particularly methane, also makes an impact on the larger issue termed green house effect, as it is amongst the most cost effective and feasible measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The recovered LFG can be directly or indirectly utilized to produce energy, which is a perpetually small, however; a very important component of an integrated approach to the solid waste management given that the use of landfills continues to remain the predominant method of municipal solid waste disposal in most countries. Global Methane 2012) References Bingemer, H G. , ; Crutzen, P. J. (1987). The Production of Methane from Solid Wastes. † Journal of Geophysical Research, 90(D2), 2181–2187. Cassia de Brito Galvao, T. and Pos, W. H. (2002) â€Å"Landfill Biogas Management: Case of Chilean Sanitary Landfills. † Recovering Energy from Waste, 183-194. Conference Board o f Canada. (2011). â€Å"Municipal Waste Generation. † How Canada Performs, ; http://www. conferenceboard. ca/hcp/details/environment/municipal- waste-generation. aspx#_ftnref3; (Sept. 28th, 2012) Duffy, D.. P et al (2009). â€Å"Moving Up†¦ to the Top of the Landfill. Municipal Solid Waste Management. 19(2), 36-39. Encyclopedia Britanica (2012). â€Å"Solid Waste Management. † ;http://www. britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/553362/solid-wastemanagement /72390/Sanitary-landfill; (Sept. 29th, 2012) Environment Canada (2010). â€Å"Municipal Solid Waste and Greenhouse Gases. † ;http://www. ec. gc. ca/gdd-mw/default. asp? lang=En;n=6F92E701-1; (Sept 29th, 2012) Focus On Energy (2003). â€Å"Electricity Basics for Renewable Energy Systems†, Focus on Energy, Wisconsin. Forster, P. et al (2007) â€Å"Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing. Climate Change 2007:The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United King dom and New York, NY, USA. Global Methane (2012). â€Å"Basic Concepts of Integrated Solid Waste Management. † International Best Practices Guide for LFGE Projects, Global Methane Initiative, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC. Jones, L. et al. (2002). â€Å"Environmental Indicators 5th Edition. † Critical Issues Bulletin, The Fraser Institute: Vancouver, BC Landfill Methane Outreach Program (2012). â€Å"An Overview of Landfill Gas Energy in the United States† U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC. Nozhevinikova, A. N. , et al. (1993). â€Å"Microbiological Process in Landfills. † Water Science Technology, 27(2), 243-252. Reinhart, D. R. , and Townsend, T. G. (1998). Landfill Bioreactor Design ; Operation, CRC Press LLC: Boca Raton, FL, USA. Palananthakumar, B. (1991). â€Å"Modeling of Methane Generation, Oxidation and Emission in Landfills. † M. Eng. Thesis, Asian Institute of Technology School of Environment, Resources and Development, Bangkok, Thailand. United States Environmental Protection Agency (2012). â€Å"Landfill Gas Energy:A Guide to Developing and Implementing Greenhouse Gas Reduction Programs. Local Government Climate and Energy Strategy Guides, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC. United States Environmental Protection Agency (2011). â€Å"Landfill Methane Outreach Program. † Environmental Protection Agency, ;http://www. epa. gov/lmop/ faq/ lmop. html; (Sept 29th, 2012) United Nations Environmental Programme (2012) â€Å" Waste and Climate Change: Global Trends and Strategy Framework. † United Nations Environmental Programme Division of Technology, Industry and Economics International Environmental Technology Centre, Osaka, Japan. How to cite Literature Review Methane, Essays

Main Ratings Bureaux for Standard and Poors - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about theMain Ratings Bureauxfor Standard and Poors. Answer: The paper examines the main ratings bureaux including Moodys, Standard and Poors, Fitch and A.M. Best for insurance alongside additional quite small rating agencies. The Big Three credit ratings agencies include Standard Poors (SP), Fitch Group and Moodys. The Moodys and SP are United States based whereas the Fitch has two headquarters in London and New York City. It is under the control of Dearst. These agencies held a shared global market share of about ninety-five percent with SP and Moodys having approximately forty percent individually while Fitch has about fifteen percent. The three agencies have special status arising from cementation by law initially solely in the US. However, this cementation by law was later adopted in Europe. From the middle of the 1990s till early 2003, they were solely Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs) in the US. Such a designation meant the three agencies were utilized by the United States government in various regulatory areas. Additional four NRSROs and Fitch in the year 1990s (Duan Van Laere, 2012). These agencies have remained under extensive scrutiny following the 2007-2009 global financial crisis arising from their preferable pre-crisis ratings of the bankrupt financial institution including Lehman Brothers, alongside risk mortgage-linked securities which accounted for the collapse of the United States housing market. They became key enablers of the meltdown of the financial in the wake of the financial crisis (Elkhoury, 2009). The mortgage-associated securities at the core of the crisis were unable to be marketed and subsequently sold in the absence of approval of their seal. The investors had rely on these agents. Besides the Big Three agencies, there are A.M. Best and Weiss Ratings. Each rating agency has it individual rating standards, scale and vary in the firms they rate but with the substantial overlap. All of the mentioned rating agencies utilize the public info, like SEC filings, besides the main accounting reports, encompassing the cash flow, balance sheet as well as income statement. The balance is useful in rating as it indicates how much assets surpass liabilities. All of these ratings agencies with an exception of Weiss acquire extra information from the executive management alongside owners via interviews as well as questionnaires. The A.M. Best focuses mainly in credit ratings for the insurance firms and it has the widest coverage of the insurance firms, whereas the other remaining rating agencies further cover several kinds of firms as well as debt securities (Flynn Ghent, 2017). The other feature that distinguish Weiss from the remaining rating agencies is that they undertake paid ratings by the end-users, while the remaining rating agencies receive their respective payment from the firms that they rate. This establishes the potential conflict of interests since the companies shall generally pursue those rating agencies which shall provide them with the best ratings. Subsequently, the rating agencies might be increasingly inclined to provide higher ratings than would be acceptable by the financial status of the firms. Such a conflict of interest remains what partially triggered the credit crisis of the 2007-2009 since certain rating agencies like Moodys alongside Standard and Poors, were providing investment-grade ratings to financial securities anchored on the debt like mortgage-backed securities as well as collateralized debt obligations, thus, remained anchored on subprime mortgages (Rona-Tas, 2017). Apart from such conflict, nevertheless, information from management via interviews as well as questionnaires can generate substantially greater insight into the financial viability of the firms as well as its future. The accuracy of diverse IFS ratings from diverse CRAs can as well as be measured via the analysis of the statistics of the default alongside impairment rates for individual rating classification or category: The A.M. Best created in the year 1900, rates the most of insurers. It further has a not rated designation for such companies which are not covered. The IFS ratings from the diverse firms might vary in their designation of the quality of the credit. For example, an A-from A.M. Best remains the most comparable to the BBB from the Fitch, the Moodys as well as the Standard Poors. The Weiss ratings mostly rely on the public financial statement; firm executives are never interviewed nor are not publicly available documents utilized, unless they remain willingly provided by the firm (White, 2010).). Every rating scale utilizes uppercase letters for the main categories of the financial stability. Here A is the best or the foremost financially stable. Minor distinctions within individual major category is designated with the lower case letters, or the plusses as well as minuses. It is also noted that rating designations might designate diverse levels of the financial stability among diverse agencies. For example, A+ designates the penultimate top rating from the AM Best from its fifteen categories, while that same designation remains the fifth highest ratings out of the twenty categories for the Fitch as well as the nineteen categories for the SP (Eijffinger, 2012). The primary information for the ratings arise from quarterly as well as annual financial statements that insurers have to file with their state regulator, complemented with the publicly reachable documents like SEC filings, business plans as well as the AM Best questionnaires. The info is further collected from the interviews with the executive of the insurance firms. The financial strength ratings range from A++, superior, to F, in liquidation (De Haan Amtenbrink, 2011). Not all the insurance firms shall provide rating info to the rating firms, whereby, A.M. Best and SP will depend on the public info, but the shall designate the rating which is anchored on the public info solely. The A.M. Best suffixes (pd) to the rating, that it will call Public Data Rating, whereas SP shall suffix pi to its rated designation, that it will tag A Qualified Solvency Rating. In conclusion, the paper has focused on the rating agencies including their rating scales and standard to enhance the understanding of these agencies (Bolton, Freixas Shapiro, 2012). References Bolton, P., Freixas, X., Shapiro, J. (2012). The credit ratings game. The Journal of Finance, 67(1), 85-111. De Haan, J., Amtenbrink, F. (2011). Credit rating agencies. Duan, J. C., Van Laere, E. (2012). A public good approach to credit ratingsFrom concept to reality. Journal of Banking Finance, 36(12), 3239-3247. Eijffinger, S. C. (2012). Rating agencies: role and influence of their sovereign credit risk assessment in the Eurozone. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 50(6), 912-921. Elkhoury, M. (2009). Credit rating agencies and their potential impact on developing countries. UNCTD Compendium on Debt Sustainability, 165-180. Flynn, S., Ghent, A. (2017). Competition and credit ratings after the fall. Management Science. Rona-Tas, A. (2017). The Off-Label Use of Consumer Credit Ratings. Historical Social Research, 42(1), 52-76. White, L. J. (2010). Markets: The credit rating agencies. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(2), 211-226.