MICROS Systems

MICROS Systems, Inc.; now owned by Oracle Corporation, was headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, USA. The company manufactured and sold computer hardware, software, and services for the restaurant point of sale, hotel, hospitality, specialty retail markets and other similar markets. Analyst estimates cited in 2003 put MICROS' market share at about 35% of the restaurant point-of-sale business.

MICROS Systems' software and hardware is used in the restaurant industry and primarily includes touchscreen computers for the serving staff to place orders, which are then sent to kitchen and bar printers for preparation. The back-office and enterprise software allow different types of reports, such as total sales and total menu items sold, to be produced. MICROS provides different products for different restaurant sizes and styles, including products for single-entity restaurants, major chain restaurants (with centralized reporting) and multiple-restaurant properties, including casinos, stadiums and cruise ships. MICROS products have the ability to interface to other systems such as inventory control systems and hotel systems. MICROS-Fidelio, a division/part of MICROS, offers several products for hotel systems including Property Management Systems, Central Reservations Systems, and Sales & Catering software, and is often installed at the same site as MICROS point of sale systems for interface integration.

Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is an American psychologist who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He has created an "atlas of emotions" with more than ten thousand facial expressions, and has gained a reputation as "the best human lie detector in the world".

He was ranked 59th out of the 100 most cited psychologists of the twentieth century. Ekman conducted seminal research on the specific biological correlates of specific emotions, demonstrating the universality and discreteness of emotions in a Darwinian approach.

Biography

Childhood

Paul Ekman was born to Jewish parents in 1934 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, and California. His father was a pediatrician and his mother was an attorney. His sister, Joyce Steingart, is a psychoanalytic psychologist who before her retirement practiced in New York.

Ekman originally wanted to be a psychotherapist, but when he was drafted into the army in 1958 he found that research could change army routines, making them more humane. This experience converted him from wanting to be a psychotherapist to be wanting to be a researcher if he was to try to help as many people as possible.