Interim report Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Interim report - Research Proposal Example Branding is one of those practices that enable businesses to attract and retain customers, who always make comparisons between brands to arrive at the best one that effectively meets their goals and objectives. Having a good business brand is essential in differentiating the goods and services produced by a business to those produced by other businesses1. Additionally, successful business brands and the branding process is essential towards driving customer loyalty. It is important for businesses to understand that the branding process is not meant for multinationals along; instead, it has to be made by all businesses that designs and produces goods and services for people. Brands, as used in business activities can be described from two important approaches, first, a brand can be looked at as a special mark, symbol or image the distinguishes businesses and products of one company to another2. Secondly, branding can be looked at in terms of the thoughts and perspectives that people often have on the business and the products it offers. The process of building successful brands plays an important role in the customers’ decision-making process over products and services they want to buy. In most cases, customers will often go for popular business brands; they often tend to think that these brands have been made under the highest standards. This paper examines the process of creating effective business brands as well as how they help to improve business functions. Brand strategy in business functioning refers to the systematic plan that defines the vision of the business and articulates how the business carries its functions in achieves set goals and objectives3. The strategy illustrates how the business creates its demand and attractiveness for clients that have to make a choice among many products being offered by other business rivals in the environment. It is important to

An Exposition and Evaluation of Descartes' Arguments for the Claim Essay

An Exposition and Evaluation of Descartes' Arguments for the Claim that the Mind is not Identical to the Body - Essay Example According to Descartes: â€Å"It is true that I may have (or to anticipate, that I certainly have) a body that is very closely joined to me. But nevertheless, on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.† (54) From the argument above, Descartes is trying to say that he has a â€Å"clear and distinct† idea of himself and at the same time, he has a â€Å"clear and distinct† idea of body. He therefore concludes that his having a clear and distinct idea of himself serves as enough proof that the mind exists, and that his having a clear and distinct idea of body directly implies that his body exists separately from the mind, and is therefore different from it. It is also interesting to no te that his clear and distinct idea of himself is â€Å"simply a thinking, non-extended thing† and how he perceives the body is â€Å"simply an extended, non-thinking thing.† This therefore brings us to the idea that Descartes’ argument of separation of the mind from the body, or of the body from the mind, is simply based on the matter of extension and capacity to think. Descartes therefore, in making the distinction between mind and body, does not consider the other qualities of the mind except its capacity to think and its not being extended, and he also therefore does not take into consideration the other qualities of the body except its lack of capacity to think and its being extended. Therefore, by simply emphasizing the non-extendedness and thinking capacity of the mind, and by equally emphasizing the extendedness and thinking incapacity of the body, Descartes now sees the distinction between the body and the mind. There might, however, be some objections regarding this. First, Descartes may have failed to take into account that by emphasizing the distinction between the mind and the body, it does not follow that one can say that the mind is not identical to the body. The fact that one can be perceived distinctly from the other cannot therefore guarantee that one is not identical to the other. Of course, Descartes may be correct at this, but still there is a possibility that he may be perceiving only the different qualities of just â€Å"One Thing.† It therefore could be possible that this â€Å"One Thing† may simply have the attributes of thinking and non-extension at times, and those of non-thinking and extension at other times. Descartes then may have made a mistake by equating such distinct qualities as qualities of two distinct objects (body and mind), when in fact they can simply be distinct qualities of one object. Second, Descartes’ clear and distinct perception of the mind and the body cannot guarantee t hat mind and body are different from each other because it is possible that Descartes’ perception may be subjective or impaired. Descartes was only human and, human as he was, he may not have been that accurate in perceiving such a â€Å"clear and distinct† mind and a â€Å"clear and distinct† body. How sure is Descartes in the whole of the Meditations that what he is actually perceiving is the mind or the body, and how sure is he that the mind remains thinking and non-

Why Environmental & Ecological Engineering is important Essay

Why Environmental & Ecological Engineering is important - Essay Example In addition to developing avenues toward safe exploitation of natural resources, the branch of engineering is also important because of its role in disaster prevention and management. Through ensuring preservation of ecosystems, the engineering fosters natural mechanisms for controlling factors towards disasters. It also develops strategies for appropriate management of disasters for minimal impacts (Prevention 1, 2). Environmental and ecological engineering is also important in ensuring people’s health. Evaluation and development of environmental constructs are particular instrumental in controlling diseases that can be communicated through natural media such as air and water. An understanding of the media and factors towards diseases’ transmittal therefore facilitates development of strategies for preventing diseases such as those associated with Bioarosol (Jordan, Donald, Tiina and Jane 4631). Environmental and Ecological Engineering is therefore important because it develops strategies for preserving ecosystems, prevention and management of disasters, and promoting people’s well being through prevention of communicable diseases. Jordan, Peccia, Donald, Milton, Tiina, Reponen, and Jane, Hill. A rolefor environmental engineering and science in preventing bioaerosol-related disease. Environmental Science and Technology 42.13 (2008): 4631-4637. Print. Minnesota. â€Å"Environmental and ecological engineering.† University of Minnesota. November 9, 2012. Web. December 3, 2012. . Prevention. â€Å"The role of environmental management and eco-engineering in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.† August, 2008. Web. December 3, 2012.

Opportunities and Limitations of the Trade Market Essay

Opportunities and Limitations of the Trade Market - Essay Example It is an integrated process through of creating value for customers and build strong customer relationships to capture value from customers in return (IMA, 2010). International marketing refers to marketing outside the immediate country of origin or registration of a given organization. It so happens that there is currently a lot of competition for tourists from almost all countries in the world. To help improve their chances of capturing tourists, countries are only too willing to give their profiles to help them achieve this end (Pricken, 2008, p 24) This paper sets out to discuss the application and analysis of the profile of France with specific regard to the tourism industry. It looks at France as a potential market for tourists bound for the UK and proposes appropriate strategies to boost this particular market segment for the benefit of UK tourism. France is one of richer Western European nations. It is made up of a population of 64.1 million persons according to the 2008 national census. The main language spoken in the country is French which is an international language spoken by over 1 billion people globally who are mainly found in Francophone countries which are former colonies of France. Other important languages are English, Spanish, and German. It is important to note that all these languages share a history of conflicts with French for supremacy in Europe. So some of them, especially English, may not have been very welcome in certain sections of France in the past. However, with the emergence of America as a superpower, speaking English has become fashionable and prestigious among the younger generations in France (visitbritain.com, 2010). French is a highly developed language classified as romantic and low context. It is highly expressive with nasalized and lilting sounds.

Expansionary Economic Policy Essay Example for Free

Expansionary Economic Policy Essay In economic terms, a recession is defined as a general slowdown in economic activity. In an effort to move the economy out of a recession, the government would implement expansionary economic policies. One action the government would take would include conducting expansionary fiscal policy. The other action taken would be conducting expansionary monetary policy. Both of these actions would have an effect on such things as money supply, interest rates, spending, aggregate demand, GDP, and employment. Expansionary fiscal policy consists of change in government expenditures, or taxes, in order in influence the level of economic activity, inflation, and economic growth (Amacher Pate, 2012). Expansionary fiscal policy is when taxes are cut and government spending is increased. Lower taxes will increase disposable income. The increase in disposable income will lead to higher levels of consumer spending. In theory the more money that consumers spend, the higher the chance for economic growth. Tax cuts will also lead to an increase in aggregate demand. Aggregate demand is the total demand for goods and services is the economy. As stated earlier, a tax cut will increase people’s disposable income therefore increasing the amount of money available for consumption. The increase in consumption would increase the demand for goods and services. This in turn increases GDP (gross domestic product). GDP is the value of the total output that the economy produces in a given time period (Amacher Pate, 2012). The higher the demand that there is for goods and services, the need for employees to produces these goods and services are needed. This increases employment. Lower tax cuts will also increase people’s incentive to work. With lower taxes comes more money to spend from their paychecks. There are arguments, from economists and politicians, regarding the effect tax cuts in fiscal policy will have on the economy. Some economists argue that the effect of future tax cuts will lead consumers to change their saving (David, 2008). Some economists feel that people will save the value of the tax cut that they receive today in order to pay those future taxes (David, 2008). Some politicians feel that tax cuts will have no effect because changes in private saving will offset changes in government saving. Tax cuts allow the government to increase spending on special programs and health care. The increased revenue allows a government to borrow less money or lower government debt. This will result in lower interest rates which are beneficial to everyone involved. What is important to look at though is what the increased spending by the government is going towards. Those against increased government spending say that the government spends foolishly. In order to stimulate the economy, the increased government spending needs to go towards those things that are beneficial to its citizens. An example of this would be if the unemployment rate is high and the government spends on hiring workers to fix the roads, this would help to decrease the high unemployment rate. According to a global poll taken in 2009, an average of three in five citizens (60%) supports the increased spending by the government to help stimulate the economy (Global Poll Shows Support for Increased Government Spending and Regulation, 2009). Strongest support is for investments such as renewable energy, green technology, and giving financial support for troubled industries and companies. Expansionary monetary policy is when a central bank, for example the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed), uses its tools to stimulate the economy. Often times this means lowering the Fed funds rate in order to increase the money supply. What this does is it increases liquidity which gives the banks more money to lend. The result of this would be lower interest rates. The Fed’s use three tools when conducting monetary policy; open market operations, the discount rate, and reserve requirements (How the Fed Guides Monetary Policy, 2011). The most common tool used is the open market operations tool. This is used to buy or sell government bonds on the open market. It is used to manipulate the short term interest rate and the supply of base money in an economy. The discount rate is the interest rate a Reserve Bank charges eligible financial institutions to borrow funds on a short term basis (How the Fed Guides Monetary Policy, 2011). A higher discount rate can indicate a more restrictive policy, while a lower rate can be used to signal a more expansive policy (How the Fed Guides Monetary Policy, 2011). All financial institutions, whether or not they are members of the Federal Reserve System, must set aside a percentage of their deposits as reserves to be held either as cash or as reserve account balances. The Federal Reserve sets these requirements for all commercial banks, savings banks, savings and loans, credit unions, and U. S. branches and agencies of foreign banks (How the Fed Guides Monetary Policy, 2011). This tool is the least common used of the three. There are two kinds of assets that banks can count toward meeting the required reserve. The first is valued cash such as currency and coins. The second, and largest, consists of funds the bank has on deposit with its direct Reserve Bank (Amacher Pate, 2012). A change in the reserve ratio is rarely made and when a change is made it usually is in small amounts. A reduction in the ratio usually has a double impact on the money supply. First, it converts some required reserves into excess reserves. Second, it increases the size of the deposit multiplier (Amacher Pate, 2012). An increase in the reserve ratio works in the opposite way. The interest rate the Fed charges a bank is the discount rate (Amacher Pate, 2012). The higher the rate, the less likely banks are to borrow. The discount rate acts more as a function than a tool in monetary policy. An increase in the discount rate indicates to banks that the Fed wants cool down the economy by reducing bank lending. An increase indicates the Fed’s desire to stimulate the economy. The Fed most likely would increase the discount rate when conducting monetary policy because by doing so, it would keep banks from using this source before turning to other less expensive alternatives. Whether or not the Fed wants to buy or sell government securities depends on this; whether or not they want the funds rate to rise or fall. If the fed wants the funds rate to fall, it will buy government securities from a bank. What happens is that the Fed then pays for securities by increasing the bank’s reserves (frbsf. org, 2011). The banks will then have more reserves than it wants. Then the Fed can lend these unwanted reserves to another bank. If the Fed wants the funds rate to rise, then the opposite will happen. It will sell the government securities. The fed receives payment in reserves from the banks, which will lower the supply of reserves in the banking system (frbsf. org, 2011). To tighten money and credit in the economy, the Federal Open market Committee (FOMC), directs the New York trading desk to sell government securities, collecting payments from banks by reducing their reserve accounts. With less money in these reserve accounts, banks will have less money to lend, interest rates will increase and consumer spending will decrease. This will have a negative effect on the economy. Some may argue that there can be too much expansionary monetary policy. If the Fed stimulates the economy too much, that could trigger inflation. Inflation is when prices rise above the 2 inflation target that the Fed has set. What happens is that consumers will start buying immediately in order to avoid higher prices in the future. This raises the demand which will cause businesses to have to hire more workers to produce the product. The additional income will allow consumers to spend more which in turn will stimulate more demand. This will cause businesses to start raising prices because they know that they will not be able to produce enough. They will also raise prices because they know that their costs will rise as well. This is what will cause an increase in inflation. During a recession, the government will implement expansionary economic policies. One type of policy conducted is fiscal policy. This policy consists of changes in taxes and government spending in order to stimulate the economy. The other is monetary policy, which is when a central bank, such as the Fed, uses tools to stimulate the economy. Both of these policies have been and will be used in the future to stabilize the economy.

Labour Laws in India

Labour Laws in India INTRODUCTION Labor law is also known as the Employment Law. The Indian Constitution provides basis of laws to regulate the employment in India. These laws are collectively known as the Labor Laws or the Industrial Laws. In other words it is the â€Å"body of laws, administrative rulings, and precedents which address the legal rights of, and restrictions on, working people and their organizations†. These set of laws provide the basis for any sort of interaction or mediation between the employers and the trade unions. It defines the legal boundary of the rights of both the employers and the employees at the workplace. The labor laws widely cover the following: a. Industrial Relations b. Health and Safety at Work Place c. The standards which the employers should adhere to which includes but is not limited to holidays, leaves, dismissals, minimum wage and the like. This study is primarily based on the Industrial Relation aspect of the Labor Laws. If we look into the history of labor laws we see that the need to formulate labor laws arose because of the employees demanding better working conditions and the simultaneous demands by the employers to restrict the powers of the employees in the organization. The employers feared that the trade unions may transcend the industrial disputes and gain unsolicited political powers. The ILO or the International Labor Organization was the first official body to deal with these problems. It was established as an agency of the League of Nations following the Treaty of Versailles, which was an indication of the end of the World War I. Now we focus on the Industrial Relation aspect of the Labor Laws. Industrial Relations, as the name suggests primarily deals with the employees and the management which result directly or indirectly from the employer-employee relationship. It particularly deals with the relationship between the organization and a group of workers generally known as the Trade Unions. It pertains to the study of free collective bargaining, trade unionism, and the labor-management relationships. As per the Industrial Disputes Act of 1947 Industrial Relations can be defined as the relation between employer and employees, employees and employees and employees and trade unions. Labor relations can be realized at any level of the work place like the shop floor, regional level or at the national level. Few characteristics of Industrial Relations: a. It is non-existent if the parties involved i.e. trade union and the employer are absent. b. It may include both conflict and co-operations. c. It may cover important environmental issues like a country’s technology prowess, socio-political environment, economic environment etc. d. It incorporates the laws made by the government to govern the employer-employee relationship, awards of courts, and the interference patterns of the judiciary on the labor-management relations regulations. In reality the concepts involved in Industrial Relations come from a wide variety of fields ranging from disciplines like humanities, social sciences, behavioral sciences, laws etc. Industrial Relations in India: In the pre-1991 era the conflicts and disputes in the organization were addressed through excessive labor legislations. The laws were protective in nature and covered all the aspects of the workplace like layoffs, wage issues, incentives etc. In due course of time it was realized that these laws were protective in nature and that they led to organizational inefficiency. With the advent of globalization the protective nature of these laws proved inadequate for the Indian industry to remain competitive as it was very rigid and did not allow the Indian manufacturers to compete in the global market. Post liberalization the laws favored the industrialists and they began schemes like employee reduction and the voluntary retirement schemes. Thus we can distinctively notice that globalization brought some symbolic changes in the Industrial Relations in India. They may be summed up briefly as follows: a. Decentralization the collective bargaining in almost all the sectors. b. During an expansionary phase of the economy there is a shortage of able managers and skilled labor. c. The number of unions has increased significantly but their influence has diminished. d. In the banking sector, for example, some unions are putting up a united front. e. Internal Unions are being pushed by employers which essentially imply that no external affiliation is being sought for. f. Training and skill development are seen as an important part of work place. Aim of Industrial Relations: The major aim of Industrial Relations is to safeguard the interest of the labors and the employees as a whole by a sense of mutual agreement and understanding between the two parties. It helps to reduce conflicts and strife between the parties for a harmonious existence of the Indian industry. It also ensures that a high level of productivity is ensured. They also help to reduce the strikes, lock-outs and other forms of blockades by facilitating mutual understanding and consent. The Industrial Relations policies also ensure that an environment of Industrial Democracy is maintained for the benefit of the industry and the country as a whole. More government control in order to regulate the sectors which are at loss so that public interest at large can be safeguarded. Socializations or rationalization of industries by making the state a major employer in itself. Ill Effects of Poor Industrial Relations: Poor industrial relations policies hinder the normal functioning of the industry thereby affecting the entire economy as a whole. It may be noted that the direct loss to a particular plant may not be huge due a conflict but the cumulative loss to the economy is enormous. If we do not have a robust policy in place then there would be rigidity to change in this dynamic situation. As a matter of fact every employee works not only to earn but also to satisfy his egoistic and social needs. Poor industrial relations policies take a heavy toll on human behavior in terms of tension. Thus proper policies need to be in place to maintain cordiality and avoid social tension. Contract Labor in India: An employee is called a contract laborer when he is hired through a contractor. They can be termed as indirect employees who are essentially hired, supervised and paid by a contractor. The contractor is paid in turn by the establishment who needs these contract laborers. However, contract laborers must not be employed when the work is perennial and will continue on a daily basis, when the work is enough to employ full time workers. The Contract Labor (Regulation and Abolition) Act came into being in 1970 and the Contract Labor Central Rules came into effect in the year 1971. The main objectives of these laws were to regulate the employment of Contract Laborers and to provide for its abolition under certain circumstances. The law lays certain rules and regulations with regard to hiring of contract labor, their wages, working conditions etc. As per the guidelines the law is applicable to any industry which engages more than 20 workers on a contract basis. The steps involved in hiring the contract labor are: Enquiry Offers Comparative Statement Negotiation Award the Contract The Act also has provisions that define certain amenities that need to be provided to the contract laborers. These may be the establishment of canteens, rest room arrangements, sufficient drinking water facilities, and first aid. It is to be noted that these amenities are made obligatory by the Act. If the contractor fails to pay the wages to the workers the Principal Employer is liable to make the payment. The system of contract labor has allowed firms tremendous flexibility to choose what is in their best interests. If it were not present companies would have to go for technological restructuring which in turn would mean less number of permanent employees. The Trade Unions however opposed this act as this meant reduction in permanent employment. Also, as the contract laborers belong to the weaker sections of the society they may be deprived of the benefits. The amount of time consumed in coordinating with the contractors and the sub-contractors would also be much more as compared to the regular employment.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) INTRODUCTION 1.1. Optical Character Recognition: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the mechanical or electronic interpretation, reading of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner or tablet) into machine-editable text. OCR is a playing field of research in pattern identification, artificial intelligence and machine vision. An OCR system enables you to take a book or a magazine article, feed it directly into an electronic computer file, and then edit the file using a word processor. All OCR systems include an optical scanner for reading text, and suave software for analyzing images. Most OCR systems use a mishmash of hardware (specialized circuit boards) and software to recognize characters, although some economical systems do it entirely through software. Advanced roman OCR systems can read text in large variety of fonts, but they still have difficulty with handwritten text. 1.2. History Of Optical Character Recognition: To comprehend the phenomena described in the above section, we have to look at the history of OCR [3, 4, 6], its improvement, recognition methods, computer technologies, and the differences between humans and machines [1, 2, 5, 7, 8]. It is always intriguing to be able to find ways of enabling a computer to ape human functions, like the ability to read, to write, to see things, and so on. OCR research and development can be traced back to the early 1950s, when scientists tried to confine the images of characters and texts, first by mechanical and optical means of rotating disks and photomultiplier, flying spot scanner with a cathode ray tube lens, followed by photocells and arrays of them. At first, the scanning operation was dawdling and one line of characters could be digitized at a time by moving the scanner or the paper medium. Subsequently, the contraptions of drum and flatbed scanners arrived, which extended scanning to the full page. Then, advances in digital-integrated circui ts brought photo arrays with higher solidity, faster transports for documents and higher speed in scanning and digital conversions. These vital improvements greatly accelerated the speed of character recognition and abridged the cost, and opened up the possibilities of processing a great range of forms and documents. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, new OCR applications sprang up in retail businesses, banks, hospitals, post offices; insurance, railroad, and aircraft companies; newspaper publishers, and many other industries [3, 4].In parallel with these advances in hardware development, rigorous research on character recognition was taking place in the research laboratories of both academic and industrial sectors [6, 7]. Although both recognition techniques and computers were not that powerful in the in the early hours (1960s), OCR machines tended to make masses of errors when the print quality was poor, caused either by wide disparity in type fonts and roughness of the surface of the paper or by the cotton ribbons of the typewriters [5]. To make OCR work proficiently and economically, there was a big ram from OCR manufacturers and suppliers toward the standardization of print fonts, paper, and ink qualities for OCR applications. New fonts such as OCRA and OCRB were designed in the 1970s by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), respectively. These special fonts were quickly approved by the International Standards Organization (ISO) to facilitate the recognition process [3, 4, 6, 7]. As an upshot, very high identification rates became achievable at high speed and at reasonable costs. Such accomplishments also brought better printing traits of data and paper for practical applications. Actually, they completely revolutionize the data input industry [6] and eliminated the jobs of thousands of keypunch operators who were doing the really mundane work of keying data into the computer. 1.3. Common Steps Of OCR Processing: The method of converting documents into electronic forms, which is usually referred to as digitization is undertaken in different steps. The process of scanning a document and representing the scanned image for further processing is called the pre-processing or imaging stage. The process of manipulating the scanned image of a document to produce a searchable text is called the OCR processing stage. 1.3.1. The Imaging Stage: The imaging procedure involves scanning the document and storing it as an image. The most popular image format used for this purpose is called Tagged-Image File Format (TIFF). The resolution (number of dots per inch dpi) determines the accurateness rate of the OCR process. 1.3.2. The OCR Process: The major steps of the OCR processing stage are shown below. 1.3.3. Distinguishing Between Text And Images Segmentation: In this step, the process of recognizing the text and image blocks of the scanned image is undertaken. The boundaries of each image are analyzed in order to identify the text. 1.3.4. Character Recognition Feature Extraction: This step involves recognizing a character using a process known as feature extraction. OCR tools stockpiles rules about the characters of a given script using a method known as the learning course. A character is then identified by analyzing its shape and comparing its features adjacent to a set of rules stored on the OCR engine that distinguishes each character. 1.3.5. Recognition Of Character: Following the character identification process, character detection process is performed by comparing the string of characters against an existing dictionary of words. Additional processes such as spell-checking are performed under this step. 1.3.6. Output Formatting: The finishing step involves storing the output in one of the industry standard formats such as RTF, PDF, WORD and plain UNICODE text. 1.4. Pattern Recognition: Pattern recognition (also known as classification or pattern classification) is a field within the vicinity of artificial intelligence and can be defined as the act of taking in raw data and taking an action based on the category of the data. It uses methods from statistics, machine learning and other vicinities. Typical applications of pattern recognition are: Automatic speech identification. Classification of text into numerous categories (e.g. spam/non-spam email messages). The automatic identification of handwritten postal codes on postal envelopes. The automatic identification of images of human faces etc. The preceding three examples form the subtopicimage analysis of pattern recognition that pact with digital images as input to pattern recognition systems. Some trendy techniques for pattern recognition include: Neural Networks(NN) Hidden Markov Models(HMM) Bayesian networks (BN) The application domains of pattern identification include: Computer Vision Machine Vision Medical Image Analysis Optical Character Recognition Credit Scoring. 1.5. Applications Of The Pattern Recognition: Pattern recognition has many useful applications. Some of them are outlined below. Utilizes as a telecommunication aid for deaf, in airline reservation, in postal department for postal address reading (both handwritten and printed postal codes/addresses) and for medical diagnosis. For use in customer billing as in telephone exchange billing system, order data logging, and automatic finger print identification, as an automatic inspection system. In automated cartography, metallurgical industries, computer assisted forensic linguist system, electronic mail, information units and libraries and for facsimile. For direct processing of documents as a multipurpose document reader for large scale data processing, as a micro-film reader data input system, for high speed data entry, for changing text/graphics into a computer readable form, as electronic page reader to handle large volume of mail. 1.6. Scope Of This Work: The Project is designed to classify and identify a scanned image containing Arabic characters using two pace approaches. In the first pace the Arabic text image is preprocessed. And in the second pace it features are extracted. During the itinerary of work it is assumed that there is no noise in the image and the image is flawlessly scanned with no deviation from its original angle no skewing. 1.7. Objectives And Applications Of This Work: Arabic Optical Character Recognition can open a novel way of realizing the dream of the natural mode of communication amid man and machine in this part of the world. It will inflate and multiply already available knowledge to new horizons. Centurys aged rare script in Arabic, Urdu and Persian will become available to common man. The ultimate goal of character recognition is to conjure up the human reading capabilities. Character recognition systems can contribute immensely to the advancement of the automation process and can improve the interaction among man and machine in many applications, including office automation, check verification and a large variety of banking, business and data entry applications, library archives, documents identifications, e-books producing, invoice and shipping receipt processing, subscription collections, questionnaires processing, exam papers processing and many other applications[9], beside online address and signboard reading. 1.8. Thesis Organization: The remaining part of this thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter 2 describes review of literature. Chapter 3 describes Arabic script, its peculiarities and problems. Chapter 4 is regarding the development of Arabic Character identification and chapter 5 is about conclusions and future directions respectively. Chapter 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1. Optical Character Recognition: Since the beginning of writing as a form of communication, paper prevailed as the medium for writing. Electronic media is replacing paper with time. Because it preserves space and is fast to access, electronic media are constantly gaining esteem. The convenience of paper, its pervasive used for communication and archiving, and the quantity of information already on paper, press for quick and accurate methods to automatically read that information and adapt it into electronic form [Albadr95]. The latent application areas of automatic reading machines are numerous. One of the earliest, and most thriving, applications is sorting checks in banks, as the volume of checks that circulates daily has proven to be too huge for manual entry. Other applications are detailed in the next section [Govindan90, Mantas86]. The machine imitation of human reading (i.e. optical character recognition) has been the subject of widespread research for more than five decades. Character identification is pattern recognition application with a crucial aim of simulating the human reading capabilities of both machine printed and handwritten cursive text. The currently available systems may interpret faster than humans, but cannot reliably read such a wide diversity of text nor consider context. One can say that a great quantity of further effort is required to, at least, narrow the gap between humans reading and machines reading capabilities. The practical significance of OCR applications, as well as the interesting nature of the OCR problem, has lead to great research interest and assessable advances in this field. Now, commercial OCR systems for Latin characters are commonly accessible on personal computers achieving recognition rates above 99% [McClelland91, Welch93]. Further, systems on the market can now inte rpret a variety of writing styles (e.g., hand-written, printed Omni-font), and character sets including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic, and Arabic. Since the 50s, researchers have carried out far-reaching work and published many papers on character recognition. Nearly all of the published work on OCR has been on Latin, Japanese or Chinese characters. This has started since the median 40s for Latin, the middle of the 1960s for Chinese and Japanese. The following are positive surveys and reviews on Latin character recognition. Reference may be made to [Mori92] for historical appraisal of OCR research and development. The survey of [Govindan90] includes surveys of other languages; [Mantas86] has an overview of character identification methodologies, [Impedovo91] on commercial OCR systems, [Tian91] on machine-printed OCR, [Tappert90, Wakahara92] for on-line handwriting identification. [Suen80] has a survey on automatic identification of hand printed characters (viz. numerals, alphanumeric, FORTRAN, and Katakana), while [Nouboud90] produced a review of the recognition of hand-printed (non-cursive) characters and conducted beta tests on a business system. [Bozinovic89, Simon92] surveyed off-line cursive word recognition, Jain et al [Jain2000] reviewed statistical pattern recognition methods, and [Plamondon2000] comprehensive survey of online and offline handwriting identification. Two bibliographies of the fields of OCR and document scrutiny appeared in [Jenkins93, Kasturi92]. [Stallings76, Mori84], produced surveys on identification of Chinese machine- and hand-printed characters, respectively, and Liu et al [Liu2004] addressed the state of the art of online identification of Chinese characters. 2.2. General Review Of Arabic Character Recognition: Although almost one billion people world-wide, in several diverse languages, use Arabic characters for writing (Arabic, Persian, and Urdu are the most noted examples), Arabic character identification has not been researched as thoroughly as Latin, Japanese, or Chinese. The first published work on Arabic character acknowledgment may be traced back to 1975 by Nazif [Nazif75] in his masters thesis. In his thesis a system for the identification of printed Arabic characters was developed based on extracting strokes that he called radicals (20 radicals are used) and their positions. He used correlation between the templates of the deep-seated and the character image. A segmentation phase was included to segment the cursive text. Years later Badi and Shimura [Badi78, Badi80] and Noah [Nouh80] toiled on printed Arabic characters and Amin [Amin80] on hand-written Arabic characters. Surveys on AOTR may be referred in [Amin85a, Amin98, Shoukry89, Jambi91, Albadr95, Nabawi2000, Ahmed94]. On-line systems are restricted to recognizing hand-written text. Some systems recognize remote characters [Ali89, Amin80, Amin85b, Amin87, ElSheikh89, ElSheikh90b, ElWakil87, ElWakil89, Saadallah85] and hand-written mathematical formulas [ElSheikh90c, Amin91b], while others recognize cursive words [Badi78, Badi80, Badi82, Amin82a, Amin82b, Shaheen90, AlEmami90]. Since the segmentation problem in Arabic is non-trivial the concluding systems deal with a much harder problem. While several off-line systems use video cameras to digitize pages of text (e.g., [Abbas86, Goraine92, Amin86, HajHassan85, HajHassan90, Nouh80, Nouh87, Nouh89, Sarfraz2003, Sarfraz2004]), the inclination now is to use scanners with resolutions ranging from 200 to 400 dots per- inch (e.g., [AbdelAzim89c, AbdelAzim90a, AlYousefi88, Amin91a, Bouhlila89, ElDabi90, ElSheikh88a, Ramsis88, Sarfraz2003a, Sarfraz2003b, Zidouri2002, Zidouri2005]). Scanners set up less noise to an image, are less pricey, and more convenient to use for character recognition, especially when coupled with automatic document feeders, automatic Binarization, and image enhancement. Among the off-line systems that identify hand-written isolated characters are [Abuhaiba90, AlYousefi90, AlTikriti85, ElDesouky92, Hyder88]. [Abbas86, AbdelAzim89b, Goneid92] identify hand-written Arabic (Hindi) numerals, and [Badi80, Badi82, Goraine92, Jambi92, Zahour91] distinguish hand-written words. The majority of off-line systems distinguish typewritten cursive words [AbdelAzim89c, AbdelAzim90a, Bouhlila89, ElDabi90, Amin86, ElKhaly90, ElSheikh88b, Goraine89, Khella92, Margner92, Nazif75, Nouh87, Ramsis88, Tolba89, Tolba90, ElRamly89c, HajHassan90, HajHassan91], while [ElShiekh88a, Mahdi89, Mahmoud94, Nouh80, Nouh89, NurulUla88, Fayek92, Sarfraz2005d, Zidouri2005] identify only typewritten isolated characters. The systems of [Abdelazim90b, AlBadr92, ElGowely90, Kurdy92, Fakir93] are intended to recognize typeset words. One of the systems [Abdelazim89a] recognizes bilingual (Arabic/Latin) typewritten words. Examples of systems for detection of other languages that use Arabic scri pt are [Parhami81, Yalabik88, Hyder88], which are designed for the identification of Persian, Ottoman (Old Turkish), and Urdu, respectively. 2.3. Applications Of Optical Character Recognition: Optical character recognition technology has many practical applications that are independent of the treated language. The following are some of these applications: Financial Business Applications: For cataloging bank checks since the number of checks per day has been far too large for manual arrangement. Commercial Data Processing: For inflowing data into commercial data processing files, for example inflowing the names and addresses of mail order customers into a database. In addition, it can be worn as a work sheet reader for payroll accounting. In Postal Department: For postal address reading, cataloging and as a reader for handwritten and printed postal codes. In Newspaper Industry: Premium typescript may be read by recognition equipment into a computer typesetting system to keep away from typing errors that would be introduced by keypunching the text on computer peripheral equipment. Use By Blind: It is used as a reading abet using photo sensor and tactile simulators, and as a sensory aid with sound output. Additionally, it can be worn for reading text sheets and reproduction of Braille originals. In Facsimile Transmission: This procedure involves transmission of pictorial data over communications channels. In practice, the pictorial data is mainly text. Instead of transmitting characters in their pictorial representation, a character identification system could be used to recognize each character then transmit its text code. Finally, it is worth to say that the major potential application for automatic character identification is as a general data entry for the automation of the work of an ordinary office typist. 2.4. Development Of New OCR Techniques: As OCR research and development advanced, demands on handwriting identification also increased because a lot of data (such as addresses written on envelopes; sums written on checks; names, addresses, identity numbers, and dollar values written on invoices and forms) were written by hand and they had to be pierced into the computer for processing. But early OCR techniques were based generally on template matching, simple line and geometric features, stroke detection, and the extraction of their derivatives. Such techniques were not classy enough for practical identification of data handwritten on forms or documents. To cope with this, the Standards Committees in the United States, Canada, Japan, and some countries in Europe designed some handprint models in the 1970s and 1980s for people to write them in boxes [7]. Hence, characters written in such specified shapes did not diverge too much in styles, and they could be recognized more easily by OCR machines, especially when the data were pierced by controlled groups of people, for example, employees of the same company were asked to write their data like the advocated models. Sometimes writers were asked to follow certain bonus instructions to enhance the quality of their samples, for example, write big, close the loops, use simple shapes, do not link characters, and so on. With such constraints, OCR detection of handprints was able to flourish for a number of years. 2.5. Recent Trends And Movements: As the years of exhaustive research and development went by, and with the birth of several new conferences and workshops such as IWFHR (International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition), 1 ICDAR (International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition), 2 and others [13], identification techniques advanced rapidly. Moreover, computers became much more authoritative than before. People could write the way they normally did, and characters need not have to be written like specified models, and the subject of unimpeded handwriting recognition gained considerable momentum and grew swiftly. As of now, many new algorithms and techniques in pre-processing, feature extraction, and powerful classification methods have been urbanized [8, 9]. Chapter 3 ARABIC A CURSIVE SCRIPT 3.1. Arabic: Arabic is a semantic language used as principal language in most countries. Arabic is vocalized by 234 million people [9] and essential in the culture of many more. While spoken Arabic varies across region, written Arabic, sometimes called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), is a uniform version used for official communication across the Arab world [9]. The characters of Arabic script and similar character are used by a much higher entitlement of the worlds population to write language such as Arabic, Farsi, Persian and Urdu. Thus the ability to automate the understanding of written Arabic would have wide spread benefits. Arabic is normally written in the calligraphic Nastaliq script, whereas Naskh is more commonly used. Usually, bare transliterations of Arabic into Roman letters exclude many phonemic elements that have no counterpart in English or other languages commonly written in the Roman alphabet. National Language Authority of Pakistan has developed numeral systems with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but these can only be appropriately read by someone already familiar with Urdu, Persian, or Arabic for letters such as ? ? ? ? or ? and Hindi for letters. Most of Arabic characters when pooled form a degree of about 45 to the horizontal line because of which Arabic script reading is faster than roman script but on the other hand it makes it harder for the greenhorn readers and the machines to identify the word or segment one character from the rest. Unlike the English script there is no capital or small characters in Urdu, but the last character of a word can be measured as a capital character as in many cases it presents the full form of the character and the characters at early and middle positions are considered as small. Every character has an impartial shape besides different joining forms, but some of the alphabet like the characters making the word Urdu (? ? ? ?) or of the similar category are not joinable or cannot be connected. Arabic alphabet utilizes consonant letters, vowels, diacritic marks, numerals, punctuations and a few superscripts signs. The graphical representation of each alphabet has surplus one form depending on its position and context in the word. In general each letter has four forms that is beginning, middle, final and standalone as shown in table 3.1. 3.2. Arabic Letters: The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Each has between two and four shapes and the choice of which shape to use depends on the situation of the letter within its word or sub word. The shape correspond to the four positions: beginning of a (sub) word, middle of a (sub) word. End of a (sub) word and in isolation. Table 3.1 shows each shape for each letter. Letters without initial shapes are purely their isolated shapes, and their medial shapes are their final shapes. Some letters have descanters or ascenders which are position that extend below the primary line on which the letters sit or above the stature of most letters. Theres no upper or lower case, but only one case. Arabic script is written from right to left, and Letters within a word are usually joined even in machine print. Letter shapes and whether or not to connect depend on the letter and its neighbors. Letters are connected at the same virtual height. The baseline is the line at the height at which letters are allied, and it is akin to the line on which some an English word sits. Letters are wholly above it except for decanters and some markings. Theres no association between separate words. So word boundaries are always represented by a breathing space. Six letters, however, can be allied only on one side. When they occur in the middle of a word, the word is divided into manifold sub-words separated by space. A ligature is a word shaped by combining two or more letters in an accepted manner. Arabic has numerous standard ligatures, which are exception to the above rules for joining letters. Most common is laam- alif, the combination of laam and alif and other include yaa-meem. 3.3. Problems Of Arabic Script: Despite a huge character set Arabic has a small set of characters which are easily discernible from one another. The remaining character fluctuates from these character using dots or symbols above or below these shapes [19]. The table 3.2 shows group of similar characters and their derived forms. As shown above table 3.2, only 21 different groups exits out of 32 character set. It will complicate the identification phase of Arabic characters. Further study of other forms ( initial, middle and final ) of these character divulges that ein( ) is analogous to hamza(?), wow (?) might be perplexing with (?) , ze (?) resembles noon () and mem(?) can be baffled with middle form of ein () and with stand alone goal-he (?). A key distinction between Latin scripts and Arabic script is the fact that many letters only differ by a dot(s) but the primary stroke is exactly the same. [19] 3.4. Others Problems In Arabic OCR: All Muslims (almost  ¼ of the people on the earth) can read Arabic because it is the language of Al-Quran, the holy book of Muslims. Even though, Arabic script identification has not received enough welfare by the researchers. Little research progress has been accomplished comparing to the one done on the Latin and Chinese. The elucidations available in the market are still far from being perfect [11, 14]. There are few raison dà ªtres led to this result. Require of financial support and platform accessible from any government (official language of countries). lack of ample support in terms of journals, books etc. and lack of interaction between researchers in this playing field; lack of broad-spectrum support utilities like Arabic text databases, dictionaries, programming tools, and supporting staff; belatedly start of Arabic text identification (first publication in 1975 compared with the 1940s in the case of Latin character recognition); The research carried out on Arabic language is typically scattered and outside from the Arab world. There are no specialized conferences or symposium demeanor so far. Algorithms developed for other language scripts are not pertinent on Arabic. 3.5. Characteristics Of Arabic Characters: The calligraphic nature of the Arabic set is eminent from other languages in several ways. For example, Arabic text is written from right to left. No upper or lower cases subsist in Arabic, but sometimes the last character of a word is considered as upper case because its always remains in its full form. Arabic has 28 fundamental characters, of which 16 have from one to three dots. Those dots discriminate between the otherwise similar characters. Additionally, three characters can have a meander like stroke. The dots are called secondaries and they are located above the character primary part as in ALEF (?), or below like BAA (?), or in the middle like JEEM (?). Written Arabic text is cursive mutually in machine-printed and hand-written text. Within a word, some characters unite to the preceding and/or following characters, and some do not connect. The connectivity of characters consequences in a word having one or more connected components. We will refer to each connected piece of a word as a sub-word. The shape of an Arabic character depends on its location in the word; a character might have up to four different shapes depending on it being isolated, connected from the right (beginning form), connected from the left (ending form), or connected from both sides (middle form). A distinguishing feature of Arabic writing is the presence of a base-line. The baseline is a level line that runs through the connected portions of text (i.e. where the characters connection segments are located). The baseline has the highest number of text pixels. (See figure 3.2.) Characters in a word may overlie vertically (even without touching). Arabic characters do not have permanent size (height and width). The character size varies according to its pose in the word, Characters in a word can have diacritics. These diacritics are written as strokes, placed either on top of, or below, the characters. Poles apart diacritic on a character may change the meaning of a word. Readers of Arabic are accustomed to reading un-diacritical text by deducing the meaning from context. Numerous characters can combine vertically to form a ligature, especially in typeset and handwritten text. Arabic words may perhaps consist of one or more sub-words. Each sub-word may have one or more characters, because some Arabic characters are not joinable to others from the left side. As an example, the word Ketab ( ) consists of two sub-words: Keta ( ) which consists of three characters and BAA( ?) which is a single character. There are merely three characters that represent vowels, ? , ? or ? . However, there are other shorter vowels represented by diacritics in the form of over scores or underscores but practice of over score and underscore in Arabic is less Dots may materialize as two separated dots, touched dots, hat or as a stroke. Another style of Arabic handwriting is the arty or decorative calligraphy which is usually full of overlapping making the identification process even more difficult by human being rather than by computers. 3.6. Summary: Arabic script includes its cursive nature of writings, right to left style of writing and change of form and shape when a character is placed at different locations of a word, loops, half closed characters and dots on above or below a character. National Language Authority defined 32 characters set but it has 21 working characters beside numeral and diacritics. Chapter 4 ARABIC CHARACTER RECOGNITION 4.1. Phases Of Arabic Character Recognition: In an offline character identification system, the user scans a particular script, runs the OCR and gets the documents saved in a file format of his choice. The alteration of the text from the scanning phase to the final document involves a number of phases that are transparent to the user. The proposed system can be implemented in the following steps: Image Acquisition; Digitization; Preprocessing; Feature extraction; Recognition. Figure 4.1 shows the componen