To find the best insulating material by measuring how quickly water cools

Theory: My reason for choosing plastic and coconut as the best insulator is because company's use plastic when producing things to contain heat. An example of this is a kettle, which use's plastic to keep the heat in so that it does not escape. Plastic is also used on the handles of pot's and pans, which deal with a lot of heat when cooking. Coconut is also a good insulator because when you cut down a coconut from the palm tree there is a lot of liquid inside of it. This liquid is kept inside of with out having the liquid evaporating. When you combine the two together you get the best of both. You are also trapping air in between the two materials. There are also three ways heat can travel these as conduction, convection and radiation. Conduction: This is the process in which heat is transferred from molecule to molecule by vibrating into each other hence passing the energy. All materials allow energy to pass through them by conduction. The particles of a gas are spread out making them poor conductors of energy because they are so spread out. Convection: If a temperature difference arises within a liquid or a gas, then fluid motion will almost certainly occur. This transfers heat from one part of the fluid to another. Radiation: The process of transmitting waves or particles through space, or some medium; or such waves or particles themselves. Waves and particles have many characteristics in common; usually, however, the radiation is predominantly in one form or the other. Variables: In this investigation there are many variables. I will have to do many things to ensure this is a fair investigation. 1. I will change the water each time I complete a set of results and use the same source of water. 2. I will use the same copper mug for all experiments. 3. I will heat all water to 80C 4. I will work in the same conditions each time. 5. I will use the same amount of material each time 6. I will use a lid of tin foil each time. 7. The mug will have one layer of tin foil around it. 8. The mug will be kept away from anything that may speed up the time it takes to cool Safety precautions: To keep the experiment safe I shall * Wear goggles at all times due to the danger of hot water * Wear a thick overall, which can be removed if any hot water is spilled. * Wear gloves to protect hands from being burnt. Equipment 1 mug 1 kettle 1 thermometer 1 heat mat 1 water source 1 of each material (5 in total) 1 tin foil lid Method:In the experiment, I am going to test 5 different materials in order to discover which is the best at insulating heat. We are to test the materials by wrapping them around a mug, which I will fill with 200ml of hot water at 80c and take the temperature every minute for 10 minutes. This will enable me to see the temperature decline clearly. I will repeat this sequence 3 times for each material to make sure it is fair and take a table of averages at the end. I will be using a thermometer to record the temperature, which is accurate to O.5c. The thermometer will be placed through the tin foil lid. Preliminary Experiment: This is the first of the series in which I used only the mug with a layer of tin foil around it. I used no lid so I could see the effects of convection and then decide on whether to use a lid in the real experiments using materials. In this we tried to use 300ml of water but found it to be impractical so will use only 200ml for the final experiment. Trying to get water at any temperature higher than 80oc was a rush and mistakes can be made in a rush so we will use 80oc in the final experiment. We tried using a data logger with a heat probe and a thermometer. We discovered cooling was very quick in this way so we will use a lid in the final experiment. We found the data logger to be rather unreliable so will use the thermometer in the real experiment. Analysis. Graphs and tables on separate sheet. Conclusion: The graph shows a trend with all the materials I have tested in that they all show negative correlation. As time goes on (as temperatures are displayed on the graph for every minute), the temperature of the water decreases. The graph shows the steady decline of temperature with the continuance of time over the ten minute testing time. The poorer insulating materials have steeper declines. The better insulating materials have less steep/ flatter declines. There is a range between the temperatures of the water after the ten minute testing time of 4.5 oC between the best and worst insulating material. In the early stages of the graph, the points ( of temperatures vs. time ) are all fairly close together. With the further continuance of time, larger ranges of temperature occur on the graph as aspects such as conduction, convection and radiation play further part in the cooling process. It is these 3 factors which an insulating material must contend with to determine how good it is at insulating heat. Conduction is the most influential factor of this cooling investigation so the better insulating materials needed to be good at trapping air to insulate heat as air is a poor thermal conductor which explains why felt and coconut on plastic were better insulators than cotton for example because coconut on plastic and felt are both thick materials and made of matted fibres so were able to trap air and insulate the heat well. In theory, the wool should have been best at reducing conduction as it is very thick and matted but it has square gaps between each strand ofwool where it has been sown together allowing heat to pass through. The poor insulating materials (Nylon and cotton) are very thin so unable to trap air hence being poor thermal insulating materials. The graph reflects the influence of conduction as the materials best at reducing it cooled slowest. Convection occurs through the sides of the mug but mainly through the top of the mug. To prevent this I have used a tin foil lid. This makes it fajr for all tested materials as they all have convection reduced equally out of the top of the mug leaving the material to insulate the convection occurring through the sides. Radiation can be absorbed or reflected by opaque surfaces and dull rough surfaces absorb more heat. This is much like the properties of coconut on plastic which is why it was good at insulating radiation because its outer plastic could absorb radiation and the dull and rough inside coconut could also absorb heat. This is another reason why it performed best.

A research on the issues of the black urban experience according to steven gregory Essay

Critical Reading Assignment #3 Chapter 5: Race and the Politics of Place Gregory, Steven (1999) Chapter 5: Race and the Politics of Place, in Black Corona, Princeton, NJ:  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Princeton University Press, 109-138. The researchers conducted this study in order to challenge the depictions of the black urban experience in the media, academics, and public policy debates, which the author does frequently throughout the study. In this portion of the study, Gregory focuses on the struggles that black Lefrak City residents to disrupt the lingering stereotypes alluding to race, crime, and space in everyday politics. To conduct this research, Steven Gregory, an anthropologist, uses ethnography methods including open-ended interviews, participant observation in neighborhoods and political meetings, and archival research to collect the data used in this study. He interviews various residents and political members from this area and attends a meeting involving the Neighborhood Stabilization Committee and Community Board 4. The study takes place in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York, specifically in the Lefrak City are home to many African Americans residents as well as people from many other backg rounds. In this study, Gregory points out the struggles that Black Lefrak City residents had in disrupting the lingering stereotypes about, race, crime, and space in everyday politics. He explains how this area of Corona was viewed as a threat to the quality of life in the surrounding areas, which provides a link to urban decline and crime to black welfare dependency (Gregory 111: 1999). He focuses on struggles in the representation of identity and the meaning of place with the distribution of political power. As evidence, Gregory interviews and observes Edna Baskin, an African American woman eager to get involved and create a political organization to counteract these stereotypes and give black citizens from this area representation in the local politics. She establishes the organization called the Concerned Community Adults, where she would help inform residents of neighborhood issues. She faced many struggles in doing this, however, and was said to be â€Å"rubbing against the grain† (Gregory 118: 1999) while trying to promote her organization and get involved with the Community Board, made up of mostly white participants. Gregory talks about other problems this organizations faced, and the successes it achieved later on. This research has strengths in its overall comprehensiveness of the issues that Gregory is discussing. The topic he tries to tackle is very complex, and he does a good job at trying to try to explain the overall issues of the research. However, Gregory could organize his work in a fashion that is easier to comprehend that helps understand the overall concepts and issues he is focusing on in the research. He also only discusses in depth one example of the struggles that one area of this community faces. I believe that it would be interesting to instead compare the many different struggles that different areas of the community have and relate them to one another. It would be interesting to see the similarities and the differences between the different areas of this community.

Discrimination In Gender Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Discrimination In Gender - Essay Example Several people would disagree that females should not even be functioning as it is. Countless individuals consider that a woman's position is only inside their dwellings. Conceivably that is the principle in numerous societies. It would appear to be advantageous to contain at least a parent within the home taking care of the children more willingly that situating them inside a daycare institution. Customarily the husband is positioned to be the worker of the family unit, although, with price increasing rates, it is ever more essential to drive the wife to go out and find a job as well. Women ought to be dealt with as the same and be compensated the same as that with a man if he would be in the similar position. Gender role distinctiveness reveals the ideological disagreements underlying the prevailing gender representation within North American civilization. That representation directs us to consider that female, as well as male attitudes, are the outcome of publicly directed hormona l directives which denotes that females may want to contain children and may consequently find themselves somewhat dependent and reliant on males for back up and safeguarding. The representation declares that males are inherently insistent and viable and therefore will dictate above females. The societal hegemony of this principles guarantees that every one of us is brought up to perform gender functions which will substantiate this idea of the natural world of the sexes. Natural confirmation is evasive about the foundation of gender position.

Gender Stereotypes Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Gender Stereotypes - Essay Example Are men better at science than women? Does science sexist? Are scientists sexist? These are some of the questions, which one needs to critically analyze before coming to any conclusion. If one would have evaluated this question a couple of centuries ago then the answer would have varied to a huge extent as compared to what a person keeps an opinion of his or her today that is in the modern world. It is a fact that, just like a society or community, culture and traditions of a society have a crucial impact on an individual’s morale, motivation and performance but there has still been a dearth of evidence for this crucial concept and there have been varied opinions and views in this regard. We have to closely analyze the role of culture regarding this very important opinion. We have to analyze from the origins of science when there were not really big names in science. Though there have been some important contributions made to science from female scientists such as Marie Curie, who was known for the invention of radioactivity and radium. However, most of the contributions in science have been made by male scientists. The list includes famous scientists such as Archimedes who was known for Archimedes’s principle and Archimedes’s screw, Aristotle who was known for his noble ideas such as golden mean and Aristotelian logic and many others including Leonardo-Da-Vinci, Galileo Galilee, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein etc who have been famous for their contributions towards science.

English Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 2

English - Essay Example They were forced to stop all import and export of armament and to relinquish land resources. The economical ramifications were harsh. The war reparations were excessively high and would have been to the equivalent of $385 billion dollars in today's economy. They were only paid off last year but the final payment was supposed to have been paid in 1988. Politically, Germany was forced to relinquish its colonies and European provinces. The treaty was not accepted as it was considered as a "Diktat" of a sign of Guilt. It was eventually signed in 1919. The existing government resigned and the Weimer Republic was established. Nationalistic tendencies were alight as "those who had not supported the war had agreed to the signing of the treaty" (members of the Weimer Republic, Jews, Communists, and Socialists) Having been the most impacted by the Treaty, the Germans did not like the results because they felt it dealt too harshly with Germany and they had expected leniency thanks to Woodrow Wi lson's Fourteen Points. The treaty forced them to give up some of their most valued land resources, people, and money. Since German leaders were not allowed to participate in the treaty conference, and because they refused to sign and new leaders were put into place that would sign the treaty, Germans felt as if the treaty was imposed upon them. There were also many German's who refused to believe that the German military had actually been defeated. They saw no sign of an invasion of Germany so in turn believed that Germany had not lost the war. German's also thought it was unfair that Germany was stated as being entirely to blame for the war when the first shot was a Serbian shooting an Austrian. Outline I. Introduction : A. End of World War 1 B Geographical Situation of Germany II. Treaty of Versailles A. Principle Clauses B. Clauses involving Germany 1. Sign of Guilt 2. Giving up of territory 3. payment of reparations a) equivalent of $328 billion today b) paid of last year c) sc heduled for final payment in 1988 C. Economic ramifications 1. Payment scheme 2. English demand D. Hyperinflation - definition 1. Devaluation of the mark a) different attempts to recuperate b) valuation of mark to grain 2. Removal of the gold standard 3. Change of currency 3. Effect on the country E. Political Scheme 1. Weimar Republic 2. Growth of Nationalism 3. Political Dissent 4. Groups which were blamed for the war F. Great Depression 1. day to day life in before WWII 2. World response to the growth of the SA a) prelude to boycott of 1933 b) boycott G. Change in Germany's economy 1. Hitler's promises 2. Background 3. No choice 4. burning of the Weimar building 5. Dictator H. Conclusion Annotated Bibliography Title of Source: Treaty of Versailles - End of World War 1 Location of Source: http://www.firstworldwar.com The terms of the treaty. I am interested in how Germany was affected and the complaints they had. They were economically ruined. The war reparations were excessive an d would require the Germany population to bear the cost of the war as well as the blame. The standard of life has not been take into consideration just their ability to pay through years of labor. The expenses Germany are required to pay exceed the State and private assets. Other conditions of the treaty are discussed in terms of Germany having no possibility of every recovering economically. This is the official document of the Treaty. One can find many sources and commentaries of

Prophets Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Prophets - Essay Example This shows that he stayed between 755Bc to 715Bc making a modern day prophet Micah and Isaiah. Hosea channeled his early part of his warnings to king Jeroboam 2, one amongst the many from Jehu’s house. As the prophecy against Jeroboam’s descendants involved Hosea’s children birth, it can be finalized that he existed in the north kingdom where his children’s naming would have great impact. Compared to other prophets, Hosea linked the information he relayed with is private life. Through marrying a lady he forecasted to deceive his trust and naming his children names that directed judgment message to Israel, his prophetic word moved from his family life. The repentance cycle, restoration and redemption evident in the prophecy of Hosea and his marriage remained closely attached to our daily lives. The sequence plays in real people’s lives, reminding them that the bible is a collection of statements related to real life situation and not mere abstracts. The scriptures have their way in our daily existence touching on issues that have got impact on all our relationships and action. Built around five phases of restoration and judgment, Hosea brings out the clarity on the repetitious theme that as much as God will pronounce judgment on man’s sinful nature, he will ever reconcile his people with himself. God is Israel’s love, a people’s nation where they are mostly interested in their lifestyle than in direction of God for their living. They shine via clarity against their injustice and idolatry darkness. (Dearman, pp.334). Through the book of Hosea, the prophet of God viewed the people of Israel giving God their backs and going to other gods. The inclination towards idolatry insinuated that these people lived a life that contradicted God’s ways. Moreover, during the Lo-Ammi’s birth, who was Hosea’s third child, God promised to restore his relationship with Israel. God used the personal and

Financial Risk (Masters Level) Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Financial Risk (Masters Level) - Coursework Example It indicates the highest possible loss amount, which some portfolio will likely lose within a given time period at specified confidence level. A good example would be 95% daily VaR for $1 Million, could mean the likely hood for the same portfolio to lose over a million dollars within a worst day happens to be below 5%. In no way does this mean that such portfolio may not lose over a million dollars. The truth is that over one hundred days, the portfolio would be expected to lose over $1 million for five time approximately. In addition, this does not mean that an individual would not collectively loose significantly more along a longer horizon. Banks, mutual funds, hedge funds as well as other financial service companies or even brokers can utilize value at Risk. Most of such firms use VaR in prediction of size of outlying losses of the future, or even gains that their portfolios or those of their clients might experience (Ran & Jin, 2008: p 1). Most firms make use of VaR in the determination of needed collateral from an execution customer for some margin loan utilized in trading financial instruments, for instance. Buy-side entities like hedge funds make use of VaR in determining whether the allocation of a portfolio does exceed investment mandate or a current risk tolerance (BPL, 2015, 2). Despite the fact that VaR was not used broadly before mid-1990s, the measure’s origin date further back in time. Markowitz Harry and others developed the mathematics, which underlie VaR in portfolio theory context (Glyn, 200:p 32). However, their efforts aimed at a different destination (devising equity investors’ optimal portfolios). Specifically market risk focus as well as the co-movements effects in such risks are core to the manner in which VaR is computed (Ronald, Kees, & Rachel, 1999: P 2). The Motivation for VaR measures utilization, though, arose from the crises, which affected financial service firma through time as well as supervisory responses to such

Critical review; Quantitative studies Research Paper

Critical review; Quantitative studies - Research Paper Example The basic idea behind this EBP is, healthcare organizations or healthcare practitioners including AHPs while carrying out their tasks will pick the best possible evidences that are ‘available’, or even the best applicable information obtainable, so that they can carry out their tasks in an effective manner, and also take competent decisions. â€Å"Evidence based practice is an approach to decision making, during which medical practitioners uses the best evidences available, particularly in consultation with the patient, to decide upon the option or approach which suits that patient best.† (Armstrong and Gray, 2009, pg. 20). This utilization of EBP among the AHPs is the subject of discussion in the article, The Adoption and Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) among Allied Health Professions written by Penney Upton, Laura Scurlock-Evans, Danielle Stephens and Dominic Upton. Thus, this article will be critically reviewed here focusing on the various aspec ts of article, including its purpose, its literature review, methodology, sampling process, data collection process, study’s results finally ending with clinical implications. The authors of the article Upton, Scurlock-Evans, Stephens and Upton lay out the purpose of the study at the outset itself, which is â€Å"to assess and characterise adoption of EBP within AHP’s clinical practice.† (Upton et al. 2012). They expand on the purpose of the study by basically defining EBP, and by explaining about the target group of the study. According to the authors, EBP is an important and widely accepted practice in healthcare settings to ensure that health care professionals particularly AHP are provided information about the recent evidences and also the researches relating to their clinical practice. To study about EBP adoption among AHPs, the authors focused on AHPs working in NHS Scotland. The authors particularly focused on the newly qualified AHPs,

Teacher and School Essay Example for Free

Teacher and School Essay Discipline is what enables us to follow through our daily actions and behaviors. We know that if we go anywhere around the world we have to be disciplined. Discipline is the only way to keep us physically as well as mentally fit. The most important discipline of a person is to be honest, ethical and confident in both home and in respective premises. Discipline at school: * We have to come regular in the school. * We must come to school on time. * We should show respect to others and ourselves. * We should follow the rules and regulations of the school and should take responsibilities of our action. * We must not bring anything in school that can be harmful or not allowed. * We must obey our teachers. * We must bring our identity card regularly and must not keep any classwork incomplete. * If we do not understand any lesson we must ask the teachers to help us once again. * We should help others with their own works when asked. * We should keep our school uniform neat and clean. * We must do our homework regularly. * We must arrange the chairs and switch off the fans and lights at the end of the day of school. * In classroom we must listen to what our teachers say and stop them who disturbs in the class. * We also should help the teachers with their task whenever asked. * We must not disturb the teachers or anyone in the class. * In school we must not quarrel or fight about anything in the class or anywhere in school. If anything happens in the class or school even with a small issue, we should discuss it with the teacher. * If by mistake anyone else’s copy or other stuff comes with us and we know that it is others’ copy we must politely return it back. * If we have done any mistake then we should apologize for the mistake to the teacher. Last but not the least, we should always be polite and show dissents .to the elders, youngers and to our classmates. Disciplines at home: Home is the only place where we get to learn about the self-discipline and basic morals. In home we also have some responsibilities to fulfill. Those are: * The first duty which must be maintained at home is to respect our parents and elders. * It is our responsibility to keep our house neat and clean. * We must take care of our grandparents and everyone in our home and serve them to whatever they need. * We should try to do our works by ourselves. * We must maintain peace by cooperating with each other without quarrelling or fighting. * At home we must dust the house gear. * We also should garden the plants and trees regularly in the garden. * We must pick up the unused things and keep them in the proper place. * We should help our mother to do the household impositions. * We must wash our own cloths properly. * We must help the others with their work whenever asked. * We must clean up what we drop after eating. * If we make our room dirty and untidy, it is our concern to keep it clean. * Also we should save water, electricity, gas and other natural reserves as much as we can. To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to ones family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control ones own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to instruction, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. We know that in home we represent our school and in school we represent our home. So it is important to be disciplined everywhere. Discipline at school and at home Name: Tasnim Ferdous. Class: ViiRoll no: 24Sec: Blue|.

Assess the contribution made by the Jesuits Essay Example for Free

Assess the contribution made by the Jesuits Essay The Jesuits are not only indicative of the developments in Catholic faith and theology but they also made a significant contribution in the Counter Reformation movement. On a theological level, the Jesuits helped the Catholics to express their faith- a critical ingredient to Catholic revival. The Jesuits made the Church infinitely stronger and better equipped to face the future in 1600 than it had been half a century earlier. Spain, Italy and Portugal remained firmly Catholic while ground was recovered all over southern Germany and the Habsburg lands and eventually Poland and Rome were won back to Rome. Seeing as the Reformation was on a theological plane, the Catholic response also existed along a theological plane. The Jesuits were part of a wide movement in the Church that had existed since the fifteenth century where a high level of interest was place in meditative prayer and charitable works. When these two concepts overlapped, the notion emerged whereby spiritual satisfaction could be expressed in a methodical way of life. The Jesuits were a vehicle through which this could happen. After the Council of Trent the Catholic Church, armed with its Tridentine decrees, placed renewed emphasis on continuous prayer, self-control and improvement, and particularly charity. The Church was looking for a more practical religion where people could be actively involved, as argued by John Bossy. An organisation that was a manifestation of these developments were the Jesuits. By joining the Jesuits ones sense of spirituality was enhanced and such theological challenges that were desired would be provided. Norvegus was one such Jesuit who undertook the spiritual challenge were he did the challenging task successfully of persuading Scandinavian theology students in the 1580s to be Catholic. The Jesuits had great security in their faith, shown, for instance, by their willingness at one point to do charitable works in Hamburg only to be lynched. The Jesuits had such devout members for their methods of the four main stages of training, or weeks as they were knows, were totally unique. The Jesuit would take the individual and train them up to moral standard whereby they could be presented to the church at the end of the process as someone who was spiritually and ethically strong. The members of the Jesuits were thus indifferent to the world and its pleasures yet were equipped to work within it. The Church, to its great advantage, was thus equipped with members who were certain of their faith and in their knowledge of God. The Jesuits were important in a spiritual sense for through their spiritual exercises they emphasised the important theological issue derived from an Aristotelian idea where the mind is employed to contemplate suffering of Christ and God. Loyola takes this a stage further when he proposes that the mind can be used to motivate us into good and charitable apostolic action. From Loyolas contemplation for achieving love he outlines how you can meditate to understand, as suggested when he said, Take my freedom, my memory, my understanding and use me as you wish. The ultimate outcome is that individuals had increased understanding of God that it was possible to become totally servile. With such members, it was inevitable that the Catholic faith strengthened. The Jesuit theology was important in justifying Papal dominance. A great manifestation of the developments towards a more practical faith was the spiritual exercises. In theological terms, the spiritual exercises placed a great emphasis on Papal hierarchy. Hierarchy within the Church could now be justified by theology and this validation of this much disputed factor to Catholicism enabled the Church to produce a strong front. Such comments of Loyola as I will believe that the white object I see is black if that be the will of the hierarchal Church suggests the importance of obedience and hierarchy which the Jesuits so promoted. The Jesuits were part of the move towards Catholic revival not only through realising the importance of the Churchs abuses and poor administration but also through challenging the Lutherans. An essential role of the Jesuits to aiding the Catholic faith was the recovering of lost souls in Lutheran territory as well as persuading people out of Europe to convert to Catholicism. A fine example was set by Francis Xavier who became the best know Christian missionary of modern time. He tried to educate the people of the East, particularly in Japan and India on the values of Christianity. The conversion of non-Christians was Loyolas initial motivation in founding his Society and he realised its importance right back in the 1540s when the Jesuits were established. The Papacy also viewed the order as one where their principle function was converting individuals to Catholicism, but particularly those who were Lutheran. As shown by the title given by the Papacy, Regimi militantis ecclesiae, when the order was founded in 1542, they were viewed as an almost militant organisation who could counter the Lutherans with their total obedience to the Pope. The Jesuits would not have received the Papal Bull and this particular title if the Catholics did not realise there would be a spiritual armed struggle between the Jesuits and Luther.

What Is Systematic Literature Review Information Technology Essay

What Is Systematic Literature Review Information Technology Essay Empirical software engineering requires the scientific employment of qualitative and quantitative data to realize and improve the software product and process. To conduct empirical studies, the process steering steps to be performed and research strategy are very essential elements [11]. Apart from the traditional method such as experiments, case studies and surveys, the systematic literature review, also called systematic review, is another strategy becoming normally used in empirical software engineering in order to identify relevant empirical studies and combine results to provide reliable information for researcher. This paper aims to provide the general idea of systematic review, process to conduct the review according to the existing guideline and suggestion to improve the guideline. The paper is structured as follows: section 1 gives an introduction to systematic review, explains the reason why systematic review is needed, discusses the differences from narrative review and pros and cons of systematic review. Section 2 explains process of conducting systematic review in detail according to Kitchenham ¿Ã‚ ½s guideline [1]. Since there are still some restrictions and gaps could be improved in the guideline, section 3 described those limitations and provides suggestions for improvement. Lastly, section 4 presents some concluding remarks. 1.1 What is Systematic literature review? Systematic literature review is the methodology that researchers use to gather and evaluate available information to specific research topic. The use of a SLR is mainly proposed to provide an unbiased and systematic approach to answer a structural question which focuses to research topics. The studies or articles that used for systematic review are called primary studies, the systematic review itself is considered as the secondary studies. The review process is very formal with strict procedures and sequence. Each step of the process must be well-defined and can be reproducible by other researchers. The selection criterion of primary studies and type of acceptable information are also defined before hand and thoroughly reviews. To identify the primary studies is done by the use of searching technique. All search methodology and selection criteria are transparent for the reader by described in review protocol. Thus, this means other readers can replicate this review in systematic way. Finally, selected primary studies are analyzed and aggregated, in which forming a systematic review for answer the research questions. 1.2 Why Systematic reviews is needed? Originally, systematic review has been introduced in medical and clinical field as a way to help clinical practitioner finds the answer to their question relating to their practices. Before systematic review was implemented, researchers have difficulties in several areas that traditional review cannot satisfy their need. There is no structural way to review primary studies and to ensure that all related evidence has been evaluated. To summarize and evaluate the knowledge from primary studies is very difficult and also because each study may use different design and organization of information may be vary. The result from traditional review is difficult to evaluation if there is conflicting result. Many times, reader of the review have some doubt to the quality of researchers ¿Ã‚ ½ work since the review method is not clear and explicit. In addition, due to broad scope of traditional review, the result of the review can easily be bias as the selection choice by reviewer may not be co nsistency without well defined guideline of the selection. Thus, systematic review methodology has been introduced to address those difficulties. Systematic review process have increasingly recognized and replaced traditional reviews in many academic fields including software engineering discipline since it provides effective way to summarize and determine research result to help those researchers in their studies. The researchers can utilize systematic review to design new studies that previously difficult in the past with traditional review. With systematic review, it helps reducing reviewer bias since it uses objective and reproducible criteria for primary sources selection with strict assessment of the resources. It also help s researchers to combine result from several small studies in which can help them conclude more precise and dependable result. Moreover, it assists in identifying gap that researchers could make further investigation [1]. 1.3 Differences between Systematic and Unsystematic review There are several key differences between systematic review and unsystematic review or traditional review. This topic will discuss each difference of these two types of review. First, the search for primary studies of these two reviews is widely different, with traditional review, the scope of primary studies search usually have wide range of coverage with no strict rules how to search. In contrast, the search of primary studies in systematic review is very focused on the topics, researchers need to identify question and predefined search rules that can be reproducible by other researchers. Second, the primary sources selection process is also different. With systematic review, selection process has to be predetermined; researchers must decide which type of resources is acceptable for the review so that the selection process is explicit and transparent, and then select primary sources with these strict rules and criteria. Unlike systematic review, traditional review selection process does not have specified criteria on the selection process and dependent on researchers experiences to select the primary sources. Finally, the evaluation method of systematic review followed strict evaluation rules to evaluate each of selected primary sources while traditional review is variable based on individual researchers methods. 1.4 Advantages and disadvantages of Systematic review Though there are several advantages that researchers can utilize systematic review method in their studies, there are still some disadvantages remain comparing with traditional review. Researchers will need to aware and select review type that is appropriate with their situation. This topic will discuss both advantage and disadvantage of systematic review. Advantages  ¿Ã‚ ½ One of the major advantages of the systematic review is that it improves the precision and completeness of the result. Because systematic review process uses well-defined method to search and select for primary studies in which will result in less biased sources comparing with traditional review  ¿Ã‚ ½ The systematic review process helps researchers to identify the consistency or inconsistency of the result from its selection process. If result is consistent, it provides strong answer to researchers ¿Ã‚ ½ questions. If not, researchers can identify the gap and then study the variance. This benefit will be difficult to identify through traditional review process.  ¿Ã‚ ½ Systematic review can apply statistic technique (meta-analysis) to help combining data from more than one primary studies which will give more precise answer to researchers question than using only one primary study. With traditional review, it will be more difficult for researchers to compare and conclude the result from several primary studies to answer their focus question. Disadvantages  ¿Ã‚ ½ Because of its limited focus and predefined method, as it is the advantage of systematic review, it can be disadvantage in some cases. Since the process does not allow comprehensive coverage of the evidence to answer research topics. Thus, researchers must carefully determine their condition and select technique appropriately. In general, traditional review is more useful if researchers want to obtain more broad perspective of their research topic comparing to systematic review.  ¿Ã‚ ½ Traditional review is more useful if the researched topic is the brand new topic, since not much primary studies will be available. Traditional review will have more information coverage than systematic review.  ¿Ã‚ ½ Due to its strictness in process and methodology, systematic review process usually needs more time and effort from researchers to conduct the review. 2. Systematic review guidelines As first introduced in medical research studied, systematic review has also been brought to software engineering field by B. Kitchenham (2004). Since software engineering research method is less strict and less experimented-dependent comparing with medical studies, the revision is needed in the process of systematic review to adapt to the characteristic of software engineering studies. The guidelines emphasize the distinction to medical systematic reviews and guide the software engineering researchers how to perform a systematic review. There are several activities involves in the systematic literature review and they are specified in the guideline. In this section, I refer to the guideline suggested by Kitchenham [1] which describes a systematic review process into three main phases: Planning the review, Conducting the review and Document or Reporting or the review. Each of them consists of order of stages. The implementation each phase involves iteration, feedback and refinement in order to move to next stage and finally reach satisfactory outcomes as illustrated in figure 1. Please note that there are some more optional stages described in the guideline. But I only refer to the stages that are essential to be performed Fig. 1. Phases in Systematic Review 2.1 Planning the review In the first phase of the review, the final outcome which would be produced is a review protocol. It is considered as a plan which defines the research questions that will be addressed by the review and basic review procedures. The planning phase consists of the following stages:  ¿Ã‚ ½ Identification of the need for a review  ¿Ã‚ ½ Specifying the research question(s)  ¿Ã‚ ½ Developing a review protocol  ¿Ã‚ ½ Evaluating the review protocol 2.1.1 Identification of the need for a review Before conducting the review, the reasons behind why the systematic review could answer the research questions or could be useful for further must be given. Originally, the need for a systematic review initiates from the demand to fairly sum up all existing information about some phenomenon. Probably the reasons are to represent more general conclusions instead of just obtaining from individual studies, or may be carried out to lead up to further research activities. In particular, Kitchenham notes that the researchers should first make sure that a new systematic review is really needed before starting the review. And they should consider finding any existing systematic reviews relates to the topic of interest. It could be possible that they do not even need a new systematic review if there existed. Besides, the already published systematic review could help construct a protocol. 2.1.2 Specifying the research question(s) This is the most important stage of the systematic review process. The research questions can be seen as a goal of the review since they drive the whole process of systematic review. To be in detail, the search process is conducted with the aim to classify primary studies that discuss the research questions. Furthermore, the data extraction and analysis processes must extract and synthesize the data in such a way to answer the questions. Kitchenham notes that asking the right question is the important issue in any systematic review. She provides some guideline questions to help in construct the correct questions. She also discusses the characteristics and various types of research questions which are proper for the systematic review. For detailed structure of the questions, the PICOC (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes, and Context) criteria are used to define the review question elements. Besides, Kitchenham discusses about the different kinds of experimental designs to derive the acceptable studies. In particular, she argues whether studies based on primary studies of one particular type should be accepted for systematic reviews in software engineering. 2.1.3 Developing a review protocol A review protocol is a concrete plan which details the process and strategy to perform a particular systematic review. A pre-defined protocol is crucial to minimize the possibility of researchers ¿Ã‚ ½ bias. The protocol contains all the essentials of the review and some other planning information. The elements described in protocol are: background, research questions, planned search strategy, study selection criteria and procedures, quality assessment criteria and procedures, data extraction strategy, data synthesis strategy and project timetable. Kitchenham suggests that the review protocol should be piloted during its development to find mistakes in the data search procedures, in which it can help to improve the review methodology. 2.1.4 Evaluating the review protocol Because the review protocol is significant for the systematic review, it should be evaluated before execution. The evaluation procedures are done by asking researchers or experts to review the protocol and the agreements among all reviewers must be reached. 2.2 conducting the review This is the execution phase which follows the plan defined in the review protocol. The final outcomes of the systematic review are generated in the end of this phase. To conduct the review, the subsequent stages must be carried out:  ¿Ã‚ ½ Identification of research  ¿Ã‚ ½ Selection of primary studies  ¿Ã‚ ½ Study quality assessment  ¿Ã‚ ½ Data extraction and monitoring  ¿Ã‚ ½ Data synthesis 2.2.1 Identification of research Since the systematic review aims to find all possible of available publications relating to the research question and make conclusion in a fair manner, how to generate the search strategy and publication bias are the critical issues that Kitchenham discusses in this stage. The search strategies defined in the protocol are used to discover the relevant publications. In general, the search strategies are done iteratively by trial searches using different combinations of search terms and in consultations with relevant experts. Typically the search term can be obtained by separate the research questions into individual elements base on PICOC criteria and then create a list of synonyms and relevant words. Another good way to derive the search term is by analyzing the heading of journals. Kitchenham notes that the search strategy should be designed to detect articles that report pessimistic results in order to illustrate researchers ¿Ã‚ ½ bias. Other major concerns regarding the systemat ic review are the completeness and repeatability. Kitchenham suggests that the review process must be transparent and replicable. By providing sufficient detail when documenting the review, this enables the study to be replicable and allows the external reader to evaluate the search terms. And the search terms should be documented properly. 2.2.2 Selection of primary studies The purpose of the selection process is to assess if obtained primary studies have any actual relevance to the research questions. So that we can identify ones that provide direct information for the review. This process should proceed according to the plan defined in the protocol. Kitchenham explains that the study selection is a multistage process. Firstly, base on the research questions, the researchers should define the study criteria to point out the direct relevant studies. These inclusion and exclusion criteria should be piloted to ensure the reliability and correctness when interpreted. The exclusion criteria should be applied first in order to exclude any irrelevant studies. Kitchenham suggests keeping the record of excluded publication with the reason of exclusion just after all unrelated publications have been filtered out. Then the inclusion criteria are applied to remaining studies. Kitchenham also mentions about how to increase trustworthiness of the process in an attem pt to decrease the possibility of bias. 2.2.3 Study quality assessment After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria to select the primary studies, the quality of primary studies is also considered significantly important to be assessed. Kitchenham describes how important of the quality assessment for example, to allow researchers to evaluate differences in the study, and to weight the importance of each study when synthesize the results. She also discusses about the hierarchy of the evidence described in medical guidelines. Base on their assumption, this hierarchy can be used to control the sorts of study included in the systematic review and it is a ground for the initial quality evaluation. To explain, the top of the hierarchy is the evidence from systematic reviews and controlled experiments, which is believed in the medical area that it is more reliable than the bottom level evidence such as the evidence from expert opinions. However, this argument was later proved that it is not always true. After that, Kitchenham describes about how to defi ne and to use the quality instruments. Basically, checklists are used to assess quality in detailed. To construct the checklists, factors that could bias study results are considered. 2.2.4 Data extraction and monitoring Once the primary studies have been selected, the next step is to extract the relevant information. The extraction process should be performed as defined in review protocol which will describe the extraction forms used to collect the data from the filtered primary studies and also the procedure of data extraction. Kitchenham discusses what should be contained in the data collection form. Not only the information to facilitate the answer of review question and the criteria for quality assessment are included, but also the basic information such as name of reviewer, date of performing data extraction and publication detail must be given. Importantly, the extraction form must be piloted before implementation. Kitchenham suggests that there should be two or more researchers perform data extraction independently. And they have to set agreements either by consensus or by using additional researchers to resolve disagreements on the data. If each paper cannot be assessed by at least two resea rchers, some checking technique, such as random sample of primary studies, has to be employed to ensure that the data are extracted correctly. Monitoring data is also important to perform in this stage. Kitchenham notes that multiple publications of the same study should not be contained in the systematic review since it can lead to bias. It is sometimes needed to contact the authors to make sure if those publications refer to the same study or not and also to derive the required information if the data obtained from studies are missing or we need some unpublished data. 2.2.5 Data synthesis Data synthesis aims to gather and summarize the data extracted from selected primary studies. Same as other stages, the activities to be performed should be defined in the review protocol. Base on Kitchenham research on various options of data combination from several types of studies, sensitivity analyses is suggested to perform to find out the impacts on the synthesis results where some studies are higher quality than others. 2.3 Reporting the review The purpose of this last phase is to write the results of the review. The guidelines explain there are three main stages in this phase  ¿Ã‚ ½ Specifying dissemination mechanism  ¿Ã‚ ½ Formatting the main report  ¿Ã‚ ½ Evaluating the report The final report does not only include the answers to the intended research questions, but it also need to specify the dissemination strategy so that the researcher can expose the result efficiently. Kitchenham presents seven mechanisms to disseminate the systematic reviews results. They are: a) Academic journals and/or conferences b) Practitioner-oriented journals and/or magazines c) Press Releases to the popular and specialist press d) Short summary leaflets e) Posters f) Web pages g) Direct communication to affected bodies Basically, the results are reported in two formulas: in a technical report or in a conference or journal paper. After writing the reports, it is necessary to perform evaluation. Kitchenham discusses evaluation technique for each type of reports. One effective technique is organizing a peer review. The structure and contents of report papers can be seen in the Kitchenham ¿Ã‚ ½s guideline [1]. 3. Improvement suggestions on Systematic review guidelines This section aims to present limitations and to provide suggestion for improvement on each step of the systematic review guidelines on software engineering. The recommendations are collected base on lessons learned and experiences from various articles which utilize systematic review as literature review technique. The study reported in [7] reveals that one of the significant problems of publishing low quality systematic review is that some people conducting systematic review do not understand exactly what systematic review is and how to perform it. So, they end up with having no obvious research questions, explicit search strategy and so on. The subsequent suggestions should be always kept in mind before starting and while performing the systematic review  ¿Ã‚ ½ Thoroughly review and study the guidelines, e.g. Kitchenham ¿Ã‚ ½s guidelines.  ¿Ã‚ ½ Review several SLR examples and experiences to help you understand the process.  ¿Ã‚ ½ Make sure you understand each step of activities and be reasonable for everything you do.  ¿Ã‚ ½ Record the decisions made during conducting the systematic review as much as possible since this information will be needed for writing the final report. According to [2], they suggest to perform training on systematic reviewing in the very first step in order to make the reviewers familiar with the specific terms in the area where they will conduct systematic review. Furthermore, this helps the reviewers get better understanding about the review process and activities. 3.1 Planning the review During this phase, the main activities to be performed are specifying the purpose of conducting a systematic review, formulating research questions, developing and evaluating a review protocol. 3.1.1 Identification of the need for a review In order to identify the clear statement of the objective of the review, the researchers should use the checklist to help pointing out the reasons and ensure their needs. Regarding this issue, there are several useful checklists provided in Kitchenham ¿Ã‚ ½s guideline [1]. In addition to identify rationale of the review, Staples and Niazi [3] collected information from case studies, surveys, and reports to check if the intended research questions are possible to be answered by systematic review. This is founded very useful since they come to know what is common and uncommon in the research questions. Sometimes people thought the question is normal and feasible to be answered by other researches but in the later phases when they try searching for the related literature, they found that their question is very uncommon and then they have to discard those questions. Another crucial point is that the researchers should try to identify the existing systematic review related to their topics of interested in order to avoid conducting a duplicate review. Nevertheless, it is quite difficult to find published systematic review in the area of software engineering comparing with medicine. Since there is no powerful scientific database which collects systematic reviews of studies related to software engineering empirical studies, like the Cochrane (www.cochrane.com) which stores a large amount of systematic reviews of medical research. Although there are currently several services providing access to sources of software engineering publications, there are still many restrictions of those publications as followings [17]:  ¿Ã‚ ½ The available studies is limited and disintegrated properly since many researchers in this field are focused on their own style to generate result rather than structural review process.  ¿Ã‚ ½ It is difficult to combine the result of software engineering review because the quality of review is so variable with no agreed standard for systematic review for this field.  ¿Ã‚ ½ There is no guideline that is well-accepted, though some guideline has been proposed but it neither addresses all necessary topics nor provided sufficient detail. 3.1.2 Specifying the research question(s) As mentioned before, the research questions are specified as part of the review protocol and will be used to construct the search string for searching related primary studies. Basically they will be revised repeatedly during piloting the review protocol and should not be changed when the protocol is committed. The most important point when formulate the research questions is to make them as obvious and concrete as possible. Other than structuring the question by using the PICOC criteria which is shown in [1], it is essential to specify rationale to formulate a particular question. Tabulate the question and purpose such in table 1 could be helpful. Table 1. Research question Research question Purpose RQ1: RQ2: Brereton et al [4] recommend that during protocol construction, researchers should anticipate to refine their research question both for increasing their understanding and making the automated search more effective. There are several systematic reviews, for example the  ¿Ã‚ ½Systematic literature review of guidelines for conducting systematic literature reviews ¿Ã‚ ½ in [4], which firstly define a few research questions. Later on, after investigation some information sources, those questions are extended in more detailed questions Regarding [5], the research questions are not only the questions that needed to be answer by the review, but also the question providing some idea in the area of such a topic for better comprehension. This is also confirmed by Staples and Niazi [3] since their research questions are part of a larger research project. By performing the systematic review on these questions will help them understand better in the project background. By selecting clear and narrow research questions, it helps confining the scope of a systematic literature. [4] proposes another method that may help to scope the research question. That is a systematic pre-review mapping study. The idea is to map out sorts of studies relating the systematic review question have been conducted. The mapping process can be considered as a quick data extraction but the studies described are not very details. The further information about mapping study can be found at [12]. 3.1.3 Developing a review protocol As explained in the section 2, the protocol provides information of the plan for conduction the review, including, for example, the procedure to be performed, the search strategy for selecting primary studies, the allocation of reviewers to some specific activities and the quality assessment criteria for evaluate primary studies. Lacking of a protocol, some process such as the selection of primary studies or data analysis and synthesis may be motivated by researcher bias [14]. And because one of the key features of the systematic review is repeatable, a well-documented review protocol is needed to guarantee the reproducibility of the review. Many experiences on systematic review show that developing a review protocol is an iteration process that needs several revisions to get the complete protocol. Thus, the researchers should expect protocol changes, take a long time and allot appropriate time for it. Brereton et al [4] suggests all members in systematic review team should participate actively in constructing the review protocol, in which helps all of them get insights about the protocol and understand the process of data extraction. Additionally, piloting the review protocol is highly suggested to be performed. Not only because it supports discovering misunderstandings and mistakes in the data extraction and aggregation process, but also it may specify that the researchers need to change the method planned to deal with the research questions. As mentioned above, the search strategy must be documented in the protocol, enabling the reader of a review to evaluate how accurate and complete this is. However, due to the restriction of existing software engineering search engines that are not well-supported systematic reviews like in medicine, the software engineers should conduct resource-dependent searches. In particular, they might have to use different search string for each searchable sources which have different form interfaces and search syntaxes [4]. The followings are recommendations to improve the search strategy.  ¿Ã‚ ½ Searches should be performed to title as well as abstract [6]. However, before making a decision to accept or reject a primary study, searching on summary and content is founded very useful. Since mostly in software engineering, the abstract and titles are not much indicative [6] and not so dependable for primary studies selection [4].  ¿Ã‚ ½ Any search strategy should be made up of multiple keywords, and it is essential to use a various combinations of terms to get the very successful search [6].  ¿Ã‚ ½ Using more standardized vocabulary will promote the search results [6].  ¿Ã‚ ½ For some software engineering topics, the publications in related fields should be searched as well. i.e. information systems, psychology, economics, quality, artificial intelligence [6]  ¿Ã‚ ½ To get the most out of relevant publications, synonyms of the main search term should be used for search [6].  ¿Ã‚ ½ It is likely that adding other more general terms to synonyms of the key search term detects more relevant studies. However, this tends to increase the number of irrelevant articles as well. So, it should only be used when there are a number of systematic review resources available in detecting and rejecting irrelevant articles [6]  ¿Ã‚ ½ It is not necessary to search on all the search fields because it is not considerably benefits the response and also requires a big effort [6].  ¿Ã‚ ½ Construct search strings using Boolean  ¿Ã‚ ½Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½AND ¿Ã‚ ½Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ to link the key terms and  ¿Ã‚ ½Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½OR ¿Ã‚ ½Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ to group synonyms [4]. An example could be the following: (experiment OR  ¿Ã‚ ½empirical study ¿Ã‚ ½) AND ( ¿Ã‚ ½software cost estimation ¿Ã‚ ½ OR  ¿Ã‚ ½software effort estimation ¿Ã‚ ½)  ¿Ã‚ ½ Try searching from synonyms to the term representing the study type need to search [6].  ¿Ã‚ ½ Include search fields that typically contain the key terms of the study type such as title and abstract [6].  ¿Ã‚ ½ To get the key search terms. ,beak down the research questions into single words pertaining to the types of study that will help answer the question, technology of interested, and the response test [4].  ¿Ã‚ ½ After deriving the key search terms, using various combinations of those terms to perform trial searches [6].  ¿Ã‚ ½ Specifying the year of the paper first published in the search string can help lessen the amount of irrelevant articles [4].  ¿Ã‚ ½ Be careful when using the Basic or Advances search forms because some search engines may produce different results even though the key searched terms are the s

Salvador Dali’ Essay -- essays papers

Salvador Dali’ Domenech was born on May 11, 1904 in the small farming town of Figueres in the Catalonian region of Spain. It was here in the foothills of the Pyrenees where Dali spent his youth, that many of the ideas, inspirations, and images repeated in his paintings have their roots. As a young boy Dali attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. At the academy Dali studied many different painting styles and became quite proficient at them. Many of his earlier works include impressionist, cubist, and realist techniques. As Dali matured, these interests were transformed into his own surrealistic style. The first recognition of Dali’s talents came with his first show held in Barcelona in 1925. He became known globally when three of his paintings, including The Basket of Bread were on display at the 3rd annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928. It was also this year that Dali joined a group of painters led by Andre Breton known as the surrealists. Soon after this Dali met Gala Eluard when she was on a trip with her husband Paul Eluard. Gala became Dali’s lover, business manager, and primary inspiration. Dali soon became the leader of the Surrealist movement, until he was expelled from the group during a trial in 1934 due to political clashes during WWII. After this expulsion Dali slowly moved away from his surrealistic style and moved into his classic period. His new interests in the Catholic Church, science, and history are evident in these works. Some of his most well known works from this period are The Hallucinogenic Toreador, The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, The Sacrament of the Last Supper, and The Ecumenical Council. Many of these classical works were done on large canvases 14 feet high. In order to paint these huge canvases, Dali removed a section of his floor and set up a system of pulleys so he could raise and lower the canvases between the two floors. Dali’s wife Gala died in 1982 and he was faced with a deteriorating health in his own life shortly after. In 1984 Dali was injured in a fire in his home in Pubol, Spain. In 1986 a pacemaker was implanted into Dali, and he died from heart failure on January 23, 1989. During his life, Dali was responsible for thousands of works, which varied from oils, watercolors, drawings, graphics, sculptures, jewels, and fashion designs to ... ... a woman in a yellow boat located close to the bottom center of the painting represents this invasion. The large flies flying past this bay are symbolic of Dali’s common joke that even the notorious flies of the region could not drive away the tourists. Just above the bay, the bull appears. Dali painted the bull using the tentacle of an octopus. In the seats is a glowing bust of his wife Gala. The frown on her face is because she hates bullfights. In the back of the arena are many doors around the perimeter. Every door but one has a statue standing near it. These statues give the doors manmade and earthly qualities. The one door in center without the statues actually has an angel at each side. These angels represent a passage to heaven. This is where the bull or the toreador exits when one of the two is killed in the fight. In the bottom right corner is boy standing with a whip behind his back. This is Dali himself watching over the scene. The images in this painting are very different from the melting figures and objects from his surrealistic period. This classic period brought about much more realistic figures, while still having that twist that Dali is famous for.

Human Evolution Essay -- Biology Papers

Human Evolution Human evolution is the biological and cultural development of humans. A human is any member of the species Homo sapiens, meaning "wise man." Since at least the Upper Paleolithic era, some 40,000 years ago, every human society has devised a creation myth to explain how humans came to be. Creation myths are based on cultural beliefs that have been adopted as a legitimate explanation by a society as to where we came from. The science of paleoanthropology, which also tries to create a narrative about how humans came to be, is deeply technical. Paleoantropology is the science of the evolution of humans, and it is the base of all research in that field. Humans have undergone many different changes during the last hundred million years, and it is the paleoanthropologist's job to identify and explain these changes. In this research paper I will examine: human physical traits that define their species, human origins from pre-humans to modern humans, major discoveries and the history of human evolution, and what the future may hold as far as evolution for the human species. Homo sapiens are the only living representative of the family Hominidae. The Hominidae, or hominids are a group of upright walking primates with relatively large brains. So all humans are hominids, but not all hominids could be called human. Next all humans are primates. The mammalian order of primates includes about 180 species of prosimians (lemur like animals), monkeys, apes, and ourselves. Primates are unusual mammals for they have evolved such distinctive traits as highly developed binocular vision, mobile fingers and toes with flat nails instead of claws, a shortened snout with a reduced sense of smell, and large brains relative to body siz... ...hat the species is "going somewhere" under natural selection and then describe how most successful species are stable through their geological lifetimes. Furthermore, given the relative pace of cultural change and lack of isolation of human populations, there is little chance for a new different human species. Modern understanding of human evolution rests on known fossils, but the picture is far from complete. Only future fossil discoveries will enable scientists to fill many of the blanks in the present picture of human evolution. Employing sophisticated technological devices as well as the accumulated knowledge of the patterns of geological deposition, anthropologists are now able to pinpoint the most promising locations for fossil hunting more accurately. In the years ahead this will result in an enormous increase in the understanding of human biological history.

Arabizi Effects on the Arabic language Essay

I. Introduction: Whenever you walk at the campus of the American University of Sharjah, you will definitely find the young Arab girls wear trendy Western dresses as well as the Arab boys wear stylish Western clothes. And even students with more conservative dresses seem more Western than Eastern. No matter how young Arab people wear or look like nowadays, they even tend to be different in the language they use in typing and communicating. There is a widespread linguistic phenomenon that tremendously encroaches their lives and ultimately leads them to write in an unusual language. This language is well-known nowadays among Arabs especially the youth as â€Å"Arabizi†. Arabizi, a slang term derived from the words arabi or Arabic and englizi or English, is used to describe the melding between Arabic and English (Yaghan, 2008). It is a common contemporary trend for typing that has largely spread among young Arabs who use Arabic numerals and Latin characters to communicate, i.e. â€Å"5alas† . Given the linguistic, cultural and social significance that Arabizi has in contemporary society, indeed it is extremely interesting and also important to deeply investigate this phenomenon in order to determine  its dimensions, causes and possible consequences. Questions, controversies and concerns have been heavily raised over this issue. Questions like â€Å"Why do young people use Arabizi?†, â€Å"To what extent will it affect our language which is a critical component of our Arabic identity?† and so on have been asked by many specialists and scholars and even ordinary people. Some users may think it is helpful and easy to communicate, but also others are concerned about how Arabizi can dramatically affect our Arabic language. Linguistic scholars specifically are concerned about the severe results of the continuous use of Arabizi in our daily activities that may lead at the end to the extinction of our language. Therefore, this paper will investigate the effects of Arabizi on the Arabic language as a major component of identity focusing on students from the American University of Sharjah. II. Literature Review: Technology and Language Arabizi may be considered as a new phenomenon in contemporary society; however, its origin goes back to the mid-1990s with the introduction of technology (Warschauer, 2002). Technology that was supposed to convert the world into a global village removing all borders among people, in reality worked reversely in categorizing people as well as countries into haves and have nots (Warschauer, 2002). That is if a product is made in the United Kingdom or the United States, it is up to the consumer whether to adapt to English or decide not to use the product at all. Dr. David Wilmsen, a professor of Arabic at the American University of Beirut that has written comprehensively on linguistics, considers cell phone as the critical Western product that created Arabizi in the Arab world (Salhani, 2013). According to Dr. Wilmsen, when mobile phones were firstly introduced to the Arab world, they were very expensive and keyboards came with Latin characters. Elites who could afford it, communicated t hrough messages easily in English. However due to the increasing demand, mobile phones became inexpensive and owned by almost everyone. Those people might not know English but they wanted to use the simplicity of the English keyboard on their mobile phones and the result was Arabizi (Salhani, 2013). Although cell phones and other technological means are provided nowadays with Arabic keyboards, Arabs still  do not use it and prefer to write in Latin characters. Bruna Kesserwani, the Middle East Regional Director of the World Youth Alliance, on a personal side finds it easier to write in Arabizi in spite of using both Arabic and English in workplace and daily life. However, Kesserwani strongly believes that Arabizi might have severe cultural and linguistic consequences (Salhani, 2013). Education System and Language The impact of Arab’s over-reliance on English-based technology has affected many other critical aspects of Arab society. As Warschauer explained throughout his book, university-level courses that are taught in English are expanding nowadays to further include other linguistic courses such as Arabic. Consequently, parents are forced to register their children in English-based schools so they can afford a good job in the future and maintain a high status in society (2002). However, this desire for upward social mobility has led to â€Å"cultural-linguistic dualism† (Findlow, 2006). Therefore, Arab youth can speak, interact and even live with a linguistic mixture of Arabic and English. However, this phenomenon can lead us to recognize these dramatic concepts â€Å"language death†, â€Å"language loss†, â€Å"language decay† and even â€Å"linguistic genocide†, which convey the increasing concerns about the future of the Arabic language (Findlow, 2006). Education has a critical role to play in the discourse of how the Arabic language is rapidly disappearing from new generations’ lives and heavily displaced by English. Schools nowadays in the Middle East adopt English as the major language of teaching and as a consequence they are teaching Arabic to Arab students as a foreign language: usually one hour a day (Dhabi, 2004). According to Dr. Saiyad Ahmad, assistant professor of Eastern Studies at the American University of Sharjah, â€Å"most Arab youth don’t know their language†. He highlighted the critical responsibility of the education system in maintaining the Arabic culture and heritage. According to him, â€Å"nowadays, if someone doesn’t know English, they’re seen as uneducated †¦ people have forgotten other ways and means of thinking†. â€Å"We have effectively lost our authenticity †¦ our ideas are not our own, but are imported like other products,† he added (El Darawy, 2005). Personal Justifications for Using Arabizi To assess the role of Arabizi in contemporary society, there is an inherent need to deeply answer the question â€Å"why young people nowadays use Arabizi?† In a study conducted by Dr. Mohammad Yaghan, a group of high school students were asked about their reasons and justifications for using Arabizi in their daily lives. One of the reasons was that teenagers nowadays find Arabizi a trend in which they would like to belong to and by that way they will blend easily with similar group members. Other students believed that classical Arabic letters should be used for educational purposes but not for slang. Also, students explained how Arabizi is useful in expressing issues that cannot be expressed otherwise in classical Arabic letters. Economics is another major reason of using Arabizi, since the number of characters allowed in a message written in English is much larger than that in Arabic. Last but not least, participants expressed their preference of Arabizi over pure Arabic or English as it is a flexible system, not taught and free of errors (Yaghan, 2008). In addition, many Arabs feel that Arabic is very complicated and therefore they wanted to combine their mother tongue with English to create Arabizi which is somehow easier in communication (Salhani, 2013). In an interview conducted with college students at the American University in Cairo asking about their logic for using Arabizi as a means of communication with their friends, students emphasized two main points. Firstly, they explained how Arabic restricts them from discussing everyday topics and on the other hand how melding Arabic and English allow them to talk freely about their daily issues. Secondly, they illustrated how comfortable they feel when they use Arabizi to talk about taboos and other issues that cannot be expressed in Arabic such as sex (Yaghan, 2008). Not only young Arab people have justifications and causes for using Arabizi, but also elder people do have their own defense for using it. Those young people who use Arabizi will soon graduate and get jobs, but they will also transfer with them their own way of typing and communicating. Ali Nasser, a 24 year old employee, sees no problems in using Arabizi. He considers Arabizi as a valid means of communication in emailing other co-workers and communicating inside the organization. Furthermore, he believes that Arabic  is difficult for typing and expressing the self and other everyday topics. Personally, he does not see any indication that Arabizi weakens his Arabic, but rather people are over romanticized about this matter (Ghanem, 2011). The Internet and Arabizi The internet and online usage of language reveal how complicated the issue is. A study on young internet users in Egypt was done by Mark Warschauer, a professor at the University of California, Ph.D. in Education program and founding director of UCI’s Digital Learning Lab, to determine which language they use on the internet. The study found that Arabic was rarely used on the internet, but rather a mixture of Arabic and English was commonly used by the participants. This â€Å"Romanized Arabic† as Warschauer called it, was heavily used in informal emails and online chatting. According to Warschauer, this phenomenon gave its users a new universe in which they can freely discuss different religious and political topics, due to the absence of an explicit authoritarian censorship in a context where informality was the basis (Attwa, 2012). In another study conducted in Egypt, Singapore and Hawai’i, online language use was analyzed to examine webs of interrelationships. The study concluded that in a world where English is the dominant language, there is a major contradiction between global networks and local identities (Warschauer, 2002). This major online presence in young Arab people’s lives can have major consequences on their belief system and language which is a critical component of their identity. A study on technology and youth at the University of Melbourne showed that communication technologies strongly empower young people to create and maintain a sense of identity, power and unity (Carroll, Howard, Vetere, Peck & Murphy, 2001). Since this created identity is the outcome of complex electronic interactions, then the required language for communication is what forms the user’s identity (Markham, 2008). Therefore, when Arab youth choose to construct their Arabic language with Latin letters, they create their own linguistic identity in the way they want to represent themselves to the entire world (Markham, 2008). In a study intended to investigate the impact of the internet in the Arab world, Arabs’ perceptions and opinions about the influence of the internet  on their belief system, language and identity were deeply investigated. It showed that the majority of well-educated Arabs are concerned that their inherited social norms are harmed by the internet and other new technologies. They also indicated their annoyance about Arabizi as a threat to their language as well as their identity (Loch, Straub, & Kamel, 2003). However, all individuals as well as countries kowtow to modern technology in all its forms which shapes their beliefs, behaviors and actions (Brette, 2003). Not only technology users have opinions and thoughts about this matter, but also people who are in position to affect how the Arabic language can be used on the internet have their own points of view. According to Fayeq Oweis, manager of the Arabic localisation team at Google, â€Å"Arabic is a thriving language and can be adapted to modern technology† (Al Tamimi, 2012, para.1). Oweis believes that there are basically three dangers that threaten the Arabic language in the Arab world. The first is using foreign terminologies in spite of the existence of Arabic synonyms. The second is writing Arabic but using foreign characters, which is heavily and commonly used on the internet. The third is including different dialects in the sentence. In Oweis’s opinion, the best way to avoid these three threats is to use correct and proper Arabic not only in everyday use or formal communication, but also in the technology field (Al Tamimi, 2012). In order to put this solution into practice, Google has introduced â€Å"Google Ta3reeb† in 2009 (Al Tamimi, 2012). This program came out due to the increasing use of Arabizi on the internet, so it automatically translates Arabizi into classical Arabic. Therefore, Google is seriously contributing to the survival of the Arabic language by preserving its existence on the internet. Arabizi and Identity An extremely significant question imposes itself on the scene, whether Arabizi negatively affects our language and identity or it simply finds a common ground to unite Arabs everywhere. According to a study conducted in order to investigate what Arabs think about the effect of Arabizi on their Arab identity, users affirmed that Arabizi does not negatively affect their identity as Arabs, but rather it helps them finding a common ground in which  they can easily belong to (Abdel-Ghaffar, N., et al, 2011). However, Abdel-Ghaffar found that Arabizi does not facilitate the communication process among Arabs but rather it makes it vaguer, inconsistent and misunderstood in many cases (Abdel-Ghaffar, N., et al, 2011).This is because Arabizi users use Arabic numerals mixed with the closest English counterpart to express what they want to communicate. For example, the Ø · can be represented with â€Å"6† or â€Å"t†, which creates inconsistency in communication (Attwa, 2012). T herefore, Abdel-Ghaffar suggested that using Arabic letters is the most effective, consistent and overall the clearest means for communication in Arabic (Abdel-Ghaffar, N., et al, 2011). Many Arabs consider Arabizi as a major threat or even a war against the Arabic language and they are concerned that it will further weaken the language or even replace it in the near future. Some Arabs even believe that if young Arab people continued to use Arabizi transferring it to the next generations, the Arab world can be imagined without Arabic language in few decades. According to Miral Dibawy, a university graduate and addicted user of Arabizi, Arabizi has weakened her Arabic language and she even needs to write firstly in Arabizi and then translate it whether in Arabic or English (Ghanem, 2011). On the other hand, Dina Jamal, a university student, does not use Arabizi although all friends do because she strongly considers it as a major threat to the Arabic language (Ghanem, 2011). Also, Taiba Al-Amoudi, an Arabic teacher, argued that Arabizi was severely affecting her students’ linguistic abilities (Ghanem, 2011). In order to determine the extent to which Arabizi can really affect our language and identity, we should definitely consider Edward Said case which is to some extent similar to what the Arab youth experiences nowadays. Said represented the issue of having unsettled identity since he was raised in a bicultural family, uncertain about which language or which identity he should more belong to (Said, 1999). This description of Said’s conflicting childhood in reality reflects today’s young Arab people, since they are enrolled in English-based schools but they communicate at home mostly in Arabic. Thus, they want to combine these two different languages together to represent themselves in a way that satisfies their needs (Kramsch, 2000). III. Research Question: Based on secondary data and another primary research, survey, the focus of this paper is to deeply investigate the consequences of using Arabizi on the Arabic language. The primary research was conducted at the American university of Sharjah, in order to reveal and determine the dimensions of this matter. Thus, the following research questions needed to be investigated: RQ1: What are the students’ motives to use Arabizi? RQ2: How do students perceive Arabizi and its effects on the Arabic language? RQ3: How does students’ proficiency in Arabic relate to the use of Arabizi? RQ4: How does students’ high school system relate to the use of Arabizi? Therefore, the independent variables are high school background, proficiency in Arabic, age, gender and nationality. And the dependent variable is the use of Arabizi. IV. Methodology: 1. Participants This study was limited to investigate participants from different ages, genders, colleges and nationalities at the American University of Sharjah. The sampling technique that was used to select participants in this research project was a simple random sample. The number of participants was 150 AUS students (N= 150). The ages of participants in this study range from 17 to 26 years old and the average ranged from 20-22 years (Appendix 1). The gender ratio is 1:1, so 75 males and 75 females participated in this study. Participants were chosen from the following available colleges at the American University of Sharjah: College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), College of Architecture, Arts and Design (CAAD), College of Engineering (CEN) and SBM (School of Business and Management). The final psychographic quality that was studied in this project is nationality. Nationalities were divided into the following four categories: 1) GCC Countries, 2) Al Sham Countries, 3) North Africa and 4) Other. Th e purpose of this categorization is to achieve simplicity. Participants from Al Sham countries made up 50% of the participants (Appendix 2). 2. Procedure: This primary research project was conducted through distributing printed surveys among AUS students during one week (from June 30th to July 7th 2013). Our main objective for this project was to randomly collect unbiased, rational and representative data. The data was collected from the Chemistry Building, Nab, Library, Student Center, Guys’ dorms and women’s dorms. It took around 10 minutes for participants to complete the survey. After the data was collected, we used the recommended ‘IBM SSPS Statistics Software’ to analyze the collected data. This software was very useful for the analytical and the reporting process that is basically due to the multiple integrated modules that we could easily use to get precise and exact reports. We were able to get accurate representation as well as attain reliable outcomes for our survey findings. In addition, due to the variety of the provided options in this software, we were able to get a full representative image of the results through descriptive statistics and many other statistical representations. 3. Measure: For the measurement process, we used the Likert scale as an effective, representative and accurate method. This scale provides respondents with the following five degrees of agreement: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree and Strongly Disagree. It quantifies the responses and allows for mathematical analysis. Also, it allows participants to respond with a flexible degree of agreement instead of forcing them to take a determined position. The collected data from this scale was easily and accurately used to create charts that represent how opinions are distributed across the population. Moreover, it allows for comparisons between and among the founded results. The Likert scale was used with the following questions: â€Å"Do you feel that Arabizi helps you express yourself more clearly?†, â€Å"In my interactions with others, I often do you mix English and Arabic?†, â€Å"Some people think that communicating in Arabizi, makes its users seem smarter?† and â€Å" I believe the use of Arabizi will negatively affect my proficiency in Arabic?†. V. Results: Descriptive Statistics N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation HighSchool of participant 150 1.00 2.00 1.2267 .42008 Arabic proficiency of participant 150 1.00 5.00 2.5467 1.10876 Arabizi makes participant smarter 150 1.00 5.00 3.4133 1.08180 Arabizi negatively affects Arabic 150 1.00 5.00 2.5200 1.12160 Age of participant 150 1.00 4.00 1.6800 .66877 Paticipants College Year 150 1.00 4.00 2.6400 1.07616 Participants uses Arabizi with people who don’t speak English or Arabic 150 1.00 4.00 1.6733 .58501 Collage of participant 150 1.00 4.00 2.6200 1.00782 Gender of participants 150 1.00 2.00 1.5000 .50168 Participant mixes English and Arabic 150 1.00 5.00 2.5333 1.04699 Use of Arabizi makes clearer 150 1.00 5.00 2.4400 1.05855 Participants use Arabizi 150 1.00 4.00 2.2933 1.09634 MotherTongue of participant 150 1.00 4.00 1.4200 .97808 Nationality of participant 150 1.00 4.00 2.1600 .95594 Valid N (listwise) 150 Figure 1.1: Descriptive Statistics of 150 surveys Figure 1.2: Participants feel Arabizi express them clearer Figure 1.3: Participants Mix of English and Arabic Figure 1.4: Arabic proficiency of participants Figure 1.5: Relation between High school and use of Arabizi of participants Figure 1.6: Arabizi negatively affects Arabic VI. Discussion: The outcomes of the survey of 150 participants were not unexpected as they relate to the discoveries of past researches and findings referred in the literature review. To begin with, the table above contains the descriptive statistics of the 150 participants (Figure 1.1). For instance, the mean respond regarding the question of â€Å"Does Arabizi makes you feel smarter?, is 3.4133. Since the variable 3 is neutral and 4 is disagree, then the greater part was sort of inside that run. The same procedure is valid to each question. Regarding the research question expressed in part III, the question states; â€Å"Do you feel Arabizi helps you express yourself more clearly?† is replied through the pie outline in Figure 1.2. More than 36.7% of the members demonstrated that they use Arabizi in their daily communication since it helps in communicating their statements. The minimum picked reply, which just included 4.7% of the participants, was on the grounds that the individual they ar e conversing with can’t comprehend Basic English. This percentage indicates that teenagers and youth are adapting more to the use of Arabizi in their daily interactions more than ever before. The discoveries of this pie graph are parallel to what Ghanem (2011) discovered in her interviews with college scholars. Indeed, Bruna Kesserwani said the same thing (Salhani, 2013). Figure 1.3 and figure 1.5 illustrates the participant’s response to mixing English and Arabic in their daily interactions according to their education. The outcomes that are delineated in the figure indicated that the majority of participants come from English-based educational system. Then again, to evade misconceptions, the degree of every high school foundation was figured. For the individuals who went to an Arabic-based high school, the proportion of participants finding Arabizi express their ideas more clearly it is below 20% which approximately (=0.15). For the individuals who went to an English-based high school the degree is above 80% which (=0.85). The dispersion of both degrees is exceptionally far from each other with nearly 0.7 contrasts, which is high. The third question, â€Å"How do participants characterize their proficiency in  Arabic?† is diagramed in Figure 1.4. It indicates that the capability of a participant in Arabic dialect is identify with the practice of using Arabizi. The individuals who appraised themselves as phenomenal in Arabic had the most astounding degree of individuals who likewise said that they don’t use Arabizi; so they manage every dialect as its own particular. Moreover, participates who evaluated themselves with Average or above average in the language proficiency had an extremely thin rate of individuals who don’t use Arabizi; the larger part whose Arabic proficiency is below average uses it. This comes to accept that one’s capability in Arabic does influence his/her use of Arabizi. This comes as an inseparable unit with data addressed in figure in 1.5 with respect to the high school educational system of participants. One may go to an English-based high school, however be extremely exceptional at Arabic from his/her friends or any outside elements, which makes him/her barely Arabizi and consider it as a lifestyle habit. The fourth question addressed in figure 1.6 whether participants believed Arabizi will negatively affect their proficiency in Arabic. It showed that 50 participants and above are neutral about it, they don’t believe that the usage of Arabizi will negatively affect their proficiency level of the Arabic language. In contrast, 35 participants believe that Arabizi can form a threat to the Arabic language usage among youth and teenagers. Furthermore, around 9 participants do not believe that Arabizi is causing any threat to the language. These findings are constant with the Warschauer’s thoughts, as he believes that this phenomenon will lead to the death and loss of the Arabic language. The ultimate two questions were addressed when participants were asked about their opinions â€Å"If Arabizi threatens the existence of Arabic language?†. Therefore, most of the participant’s responses were balanced between supporting the statement and rejecting the statement. For instance a female participant clarifies her opinion saying, â€Å"No, it doesn’t because Arabic still exists as a spoken language, it’s just the form that is changing†. Another Female contradicts with that opinion saying, â€Å"I strongly disagree, because it’s a common language among all Arabs†. Females’ responses differed from males’ ones, for instance; a male participant who wrote unordinary response â€Å" no, it will help us learn new words from both  languages† while other male expressed a suggestion â€Å" simply, enrich and enlarge the areas of Arabic language usage, also encourage people to use it†. The differentiations of male and female opinions ranged between 17 to 22 years demonstrates to what extreme the language is important to the participant and to what extent it relates to his/her identity as an Arab. On the contrary, the survey shows large enough rations of unexpected responses that reflect the awareness of participants to the existence of Arabic language. The second question was â€Å"why do you use Arabizi?† Generally, most respondents said that they use it because it is trendy and much easier to use. A male participant said â€Å"it helps me use both the expressions from Arabic and English to express myself more vividly† another male explains why he uses Arabizi saying â€Å"due to the lack of practice of using Arabic letters†. On the other hand, females had other reasons why they use Arabizi â€Å"it makes texting faster, certain regional accents cannot be typed in formal Arabic language†. Our interpretation of Arabic language from the analysis of these two questions revealed the opinions of participants including males and females and where they see the Arabic language position in their lives. The responses of respondents and our interpretation ma tches Dr. Mohammad Yaghan group study when he asked students about their reasons of using Arabizi. One of the reasons that teenagers use it is that they find it a trend to which they would like to belong. VII. Conclusion: This research has multiple useful and worthy implications. It added to the reasons of using Arabizi. Also, it revealed participants’ own beliefs and thoughts about the consequences of using this way of typing. Furthermore, it showed the correlation between the school system and the use of Arabizi. This research project was carefully done to attain its goals. However, there were some inevitable shortcomings and limitations. One of these limitations was the time. Since we had limited time during the short summer course, we conducted our primary research throughout only two weeks. If we had more time, we could ask and survey more number of participants to enhance the generalizability of the results. Secondly, the designed survey for this project was somehow long which led some participants to skip or ignore open questions. Thirdly, that data we entered in IBM SPSS Statistics Software were done manually. Thus, it is subject to human error. Another limitation  is the place. We distributed surveys to only AUS students, so the answers cannot be generalized to any other places. The recommended future research of this project is to deeply investigate the influence of parents or the old generation on the use of Arabizi by the youth. Recently, this topic is one of the top controversial issues that need to be seriously investigated to determine its dimensions. VIII. References: Abdel-Ghaffar, N., et al. (2011), Arabizi or romanization: the dilemma of writing Arabic texts. Jil Jadid Conference. University of Texas, Austen. Attwa, M. (2012). Arabizi: A writing variety worth learning? An exploratory study of the views of foreign learners of Arabic on Arabizi. American University in Cairo. Arabic Language Institute 11. Retrived from http://dar.aucegypt.edu/handle/10526/3167 Al Tamimi, J. (2012, March 7) An Arabic speaker with a deep passion for his mother tongue, Gulf News. Retrieved from http://gulfnews.com/business/features/an-arabic-speaker-with-a-deep-passion-for-his-mother-tongue-1.990966 Brette, O. (2003). Thorstein Veblen’s theory of institutional change: Beyond technological determinism. European Journal History of Economic Thought, 10(3), 455-477. Carroll, J., Howard, S., Vetere, F., Peck, J., & Murphy, J. (2001). Identity, power and fragmentation in cyberspace: Technology appropriation by young people. Interaction Design Group, Department of Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, 1-10. Dahbi, M. (2004). English and Arabic after 9/11. The Modern Language Journal, 88(4), 628- 631. El Darawy, N. (2005, July 16) Death of a language, Gulf News. Retrieved from http://gulfnews.com/about-gulf-news/al-nisr-portfolio/notes/articles/death-of-a-language-1.294152 Findlow, S. (2006). Higher education and linguistic dualism in the Arab Gulf. British Journal of Sociology of Education 27(1), 19-36. Ghanem, R. (2011), Arabizi is destroying the Arabic language, Arab News. Retreievd from http://www.arabnews.com/node/374897 Kramsch, C. (2000). Language and culture (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. (pp.8-14). Loch, K, Straub, D. & Kamel, S. (2003). Diffusing the Internet in the Arab world: The role of social norms and technological culturaltion. IEEE Transactions on Engineering 5(1), 45-63. Markham, A. N. (2008). The methods, politics, and ethics of representation in online ethnography. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (3rd ed., pp. 247-283). Said, E. (1999). Out of place: A memoir. New York, NY: Knopf. (Ch. 1) Warschauer, M. (2002). Languages.com: The Internet and linguistic pluralism. In I. Snyder (Ed.), Silicon literacies: Communication, innovation and education in the electronic age London: Routledge. (pp. 62-74). Yaghan, A. M. (2008). â€Å"Arabizi†: A contemporary style of Arabic slang. Design Issues 24(2), 39-52. Retrieved from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/desi. IX. Appendix: YOUR ID_______________ Your Name ( optional) ________________ â€Å"Arabizi† is a slang term (slang: vernacular, popular informal speech) describing a system of writing Arabic using English characters. (Example: ya3ni) 1. What kind of high school did you go to? Private School Public School 2. What is your mother tongue? Arabic English French Other 3. Do you use Arabizi dialy ? Always Most of the times Sometimes Rarely 4. Do you feel that Arabizi helps you express yourself more clearly? Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree 5. How do you characterize your proficiency in Arabic?: Excellent Above Average Average Below Average Poor 6. In my interactions with others, I often do you mix English and Arabic? Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 7. Are you used to Arabizi to an extent that you use it even with people who do not necessarily speak Arabic or English? O Yes O No 8. Some people think that communicating in Arabizi, makes its users seem smarter? Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 9.I believe the use of Arabizi will negatively affect my proficiency in Arabic? Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree 10. Some people think that Arabizi threatens the existence of the Arabic language, what’s your opinion? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 11. Can you tell why do you use Arabizi? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 12. Gender: Male Female 13. Age: 17-19 20-22 23-25 26+ 14. College: CAS CAAD