Social networking sites help students do better at school Research Paper

Social networking sites help students do better at school - Research Paper Example There are some students who find physical-social contribution and interaction difficult. Engaging these students through an online platform can make studying easy for them (Osborne). Dialogue and collaboration are hampered by the introduction of social networking on the learning environment. Collaboration and dialogue are critical to the one-to-many and one-to-one models. In the many-to-many model which is used in social networking, the point of attention shifts from the collaborative to cooperative learning and from the group level to an individual. While collaboration seeks that the group moves together, cooperation seeks individual affinity and flexibility in a learning environment. George Middle School, in Portland developed a program that encompassed social networking and school routine. Through the program, they discovered that grades increased by 50 percent. 20 percent of the students completed extra assignments at will. Through the program, they discovered that integrating social networking with the education system lowered absences by 33 percent. An article in The New York Times explains that, Erin Olson  a teacher uses social media to improve class participation. The students use a website where they post their feelings and thoughts about the classroom discussion. Olson appreciates the arrangement because students become more engaged in learning and participate when they others post their views than when done in class (Sang). Students and other individuals join social networks to associate and engage with others who are like minded and in need of learning similar things. Some schools impose learning management systems on their students. Many students are of habit of avoiding using the school-managed learning environments and systems because they are either difficult to use or irrelevant to the basic daily learning needs. Such a response from students shows that a loose network of composed of willing participants guarantees

Outline attempts to halt their decline Essay Example for Free

Outline attempts to halt their decline Essay Suggest why traditional seaside resorts in many MEDCs have declined in the last 30 years. Outline attempts to halt their decline. Over the past 30 years the state of many seaside resorts in the UK and other MEDCs has been in as tourist numbers in destinations drop, the income of an area begins to suffer and the multiplier effect from visitors stops, leading the whole area to suffer economic decline. Tourists are now travelling to cheaper LEDC resorts such as Northern Africa and Eastern Europe after suffering destination fatigue with traditional holiday resorts, example of a UK seaside resort in decline if Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear. According to Butler’s tourism model Whitley bay is in a state of sustained decline which is represented in its derelict hotels, arcades in a condition of disrepair and the vandalised and almost ruin-like remains of ‘The Spanish City’ a once busy amusement park in the area. As the resorts became more and more popular, more and more people came. This can lead to increased conflict between locals and tourists. It also means that the resorts are much more crowded and noisier as well as there being a lot more litter. This puts people off going if they want a quieter holiday and means they will travel to the less popular, much quieter LEDC holiday resorts. When you think of a tradition British seaside resort you picture crowded beaches, screaming children, buckets and spades, candy floss and donkey rides. People were able to escape from their working lives to experience the fresh air and relaxed atmosphere in places such as Bournemouth and Brighton. Blackpool was also a popular resort and, after the railway arrived in 1846, Blackpool became easily accessible and became even more thriving after the arrival of cars and coaches. By 1980 it was attracting over a million visitors every year. This is the same for a lot of seaside resorts. However, not many people like to go to crowded places for their holidays. Much of the decline has been blamed on the expansion of mass overseas tourism to locations popularised by tour operators through package holiday marketing, including the expansion of charter flights. They are considered to be better value for money with better facilities and guaranteed sunshine in a more exotic location. With the increase in transport e. g. planes, Eurostar, trains, bus tours and increased car ownership, people can travel further for their holidays and therefore look to the more remote, unexplored places for their holidays which have less people and therefore less litter, less people i. e. less noise pollution and sometimes less traffic. This makes their holiday more relaxing and quiet but also means they have much more room to spread out and relax and can find a place on the beach without being too crowded. More flexible working hours along with more disposable income means that people can afford to go the more remote areas and often the more expensive such as safari’s in Africa and tend to go on day trips or long weekends to seaside resorts in MEDCs. LEDCs tend to be on the news a lot more as well and with increased knowledge about the less economically developed countries people like to go on holiday there to spend time on the remote, empty beaches and to find out more about the culture there. Also, LEDCs include places such as Africa, Asia and other countries with a much better climate and hot weather nearly all year round which attracts many people each year who go to ‘top up their tans’. There are also more cruise liners around now which means that more people go on cruises to be near the sea rather that to the beach. There is also an increase in urban tourism meaning people travel to the cities rather than to the beach to explore an area’s culture and an increase in eco tourism and leisure tourism with more people travelling to theme parks than to the coast. Seaside resorts also declined due to activities and industries such as fishing, mineral extraction and shipbuilding also going into decline. And which visitors love the Victorian piers and promenades this is expensive for local authorities to upkeep and they get little commercial return because it’s free to walk down the pier! Flood defence and coastal erosion are also very expensive and mean that the government has little money to spend on the resort itself leaving it to go downhill. Package holidays, and later budget airlines, provided major competition but the real problem was the seaside resorts were mainly Victorian and after the war they had a huge surge in demand which exceeded supply. A lot of resorts got complacent and thought the visitors would always come because they had been since the 1870s. The high-earners went overseas in the 60s and the resorts responded by going downmarket and cutting prices, and the spiral of decline began. One of the towns which endured a typically tough experience was Morecambe in Lancashire. The town fought a losing battle in the 70s when package holidays really took off. Initially Morecambe lost many of its tourist attractions and the guest houses turned into houses of multiple occupation filled with benefits claimants. With less attractions and competition from the likes of Blackpool, by the 90s Morecambe could hardly be called a resort any more. Boarded-up shops, hotels and houses were evident, while petty crime and vandalism became rife and a BB ghetto for people on benefits grew up. Those problems still exist but thanks to the regeneration initiatives things are changing and people want to live there again and the future looks bright. Morecambe still has thousands of visitors every year and is marketing itself as a place for bird-watching, while many parts of the town have been remodelled through multimillion-pound schemes. While social and economic problems still persist elsewhere, there are reasons for optimism. In Skegness the daytripping, self-catering and short breaks market is still strong, while efforts are being made to extend the holiday season. And in Rhyl, a ? 3. 8m project called Drift Park, with its five themed gardens and open air theatre, has inhabitants hopeful things are on the up. These are just some of the things being put in place in order to bring tourists back to the coast. Much more money is being pumped into the coast in order to improve the areas and encourage people back. Many more theme parks are being introduced near the coast and many more hotels and places to stay. Some resorts have been able to compensate to some extent by expanding and developing other functions such as office and light industry development, expansion of higher education institutions and their growing function as retirement towns. The most successful of these have been coast resorts such as Bournemouth and Brighton which are within easy access of London. Others, such as resorts like Skegness and Scarborough are less accessible and have less potential to attract much alternative growth. These resorts depend on grant aid and their own initiatives to reverse the decline in tourism. E. g. in 1992 three smaller resorts collaborated with certain other European resorts to establish the ‘restore project’, backed by European Commission money. Experiences have been pooled and ways of regenerating coastal resorts explored. This has been followed up by the Resort Regeneration Pilot Project covering selected resorts such as the small resorts of Redcar and Saltburn on the North Yorkshire Coast and the wider region of the Costa Brava in Spain. There must be a well thought out strategic plan at local and regional level to cover the long and short term. Regeneration will require extensive refurbishment and infrastructure improvement in the resort itself and additional leisure and recreational activities currently in popular demand such as theme parks, heritage and nature trails. There is greater need to attract more short break visitors. There is some evidence of resort regeneration. Brighton for example is regarded as having ‘reinvented itself’ by upgrading accommodation and facilities, promoting itself as a centre for market day trips and as a national and international conference centre. In conjunction with the local authorities, North West Water Authority have undertaken a clean up of the coastal stretch fronting Blackpool, while, with the help of a government grant of ? 21 million, Blackpool’s local council has undertaken a major refurbishment of the Central Promenade as well as trying to market its traditional character to overseas tourists. Resorts with little else to offer beyond seaside tourism have tried to highlight their advantages for the traditional family seaside holiday while at the same time updating and widening their image by adding more modern recreational facilities and promoting the ‘green tourism’ and historical attractions of the rural and undeveloped coastal areas around. While to some extent recent trends would support the view that seaside towns are a national resource and do have a future, given the large number of alternative holiday venues abroad and a continues fall in real costs of overseas travel, the traditional seaside resort is unlikely to regain its former position as a magnet for mass domestic tourism.

Ecological Theory Typical And Atypical Child Development Social Work Essay

Ecological Theory Typical And Atypical Child Development Social Work Essay Analyse the contribution of Ecological theory to our understanding of typical and atypical child development, and discuss this model in relation to the factors and possible interventions for child abuse The importance of insight regarding the parent/child bond has always been a component of social services custom, but the significance has not always been indentified of the interaction that the environment plays on a parents ability to act in their childs best interests (Department of Health, 1999). A significant breakthrough in the knowledge of child abuse appears to have emerged through the application of an ecological model of child maltreatment, The ecological paradigm is currently the most comprehensive model we have for understanding child abuse (Gallagher 2001; 76). Such a perspective has generally been derived from theory based on Bronfenbrenners (1979) pioneering work, in which he defines to which The ecology of human development involvesthe progressive, mutual accommodation between an active, growing human being and the changing properties of the immediate settingsthis process is affected by relations between these settings and by the larger contexts in which these settings are embedded. (Sidebotham, 2001; 105). The importance of an ecological standpoint in the perception of abuse is, firstly, that it widens the boundaries of the unfavourable effects of maltreatment on children beyond just the parent-child relationship to consider the familial and social context in which such abuse occurs. Second, the ecological model is transactional; in the sense that it acknowledges the individual and the immediate and wider influences as actively interacting with each other. However, it should be noted that this ideology holds some limitations in the sense that it would not seem to account very well for child sexual abuse. Any pairing together of juxtapositions forms of behaviour as occurs with child abuse or child maltreatment, is bound to result in some loss of specificityIt would be foolish to think that ecological models are the final word on child abusethere is not single solution to abuse (Gallagher 2001; 77). Specific hazardous factors contribute to parents abusing their children. Although maltreatment does not often occur without numerable of these factors interacting in the same household simultaneously. Firstly, the risk of abuse increases in any household exposed to significant stress, regardless if this stress arises from unemployment, poverty, neighbourhood violence, a lack of social support, or an especially demanding infant (CDC, 2006). Bronfenbrenners predominant layer, or microsystem, refers to the collaborations that occur within the childs immediate environment. The childs own genetic and social characteristics affect the habits, behaviour and patience of their peers, For example, a temperamentally tiresome infant could disaffect their parents or even create friction between them that may be sufficient to damage their marital relationship (Belsky Crnic, 1995). Also, the relationship between any two individuals in the microsystem is likely to be influenced by the introduction of a child. Fathers, for example, clearly influence mother-infant interactions, happily married mothers who have close supportive relationships with their husbands tend to interact much more patiently and sensitively with their infants than mothers who experience marital tension, little support from their spouses, or feel that they are raising their children on their own (Cox et al, 1992). In regards to the emphasis on family, the notion to which a parent regards their competence and rates the performance of their parenting role is also a relevant matter. Parenting competence has been noted as problematic among abusive parents (Marsh Johnston, 1990) and linked with increased abuse possibility. Whilst acknowledging that improvement of parenting capacity is an important objective one must be cautious in concluding that improved competency in parenting directly results in a reduction in child maltreatment as observations on interactions based under experimental conditions rarely reflect in daily life (Gallagher,2001;248). Direct exposure to abuse can have a dangerous impact as abused children tend to function less adaptively than their non-abused peers in many areas (Cicchetti, Rogosch, 1993). According to Hipwell et al (2008) Children in a caring and loving environment feel more secure in their immediate surrounds in regard to the microsystem, they develop greater self-confidence, are altruistic and show higher signs of being empathetic. These children are also shown to have larger IQs throughout their schooling life, and show lower levels of anger and delinquent behaviour. As Bronfenbrenners ecological model would present, higher degrees of affection can even buffer a child against the negative implications of otherwise precarious environments (Bartley Fonagy, 2008). Several studies of children and teens growing up in poor, dangerous neighbourhoods show that the single ingredient that most clearly distinguishes the lives of those who do not become delinquent from those who do is a high level of mat ernal love (McCdord, 1982). The Mesosystem is the connections or interrelationship among such microsystems as homes, schools, and peer groups. Bronfenbrenner argues that development will be increased by supportive and strong connections between Microsystems. For example, children who have instigated attached and secure relationships with parents have a tendency to be accepted by others and to have close, supportive peers during their development (Perry, 1999). According to McAdoo (1996) a childs competence to learn in a schooling environment is dependent upon the quality of the teaching provided and also the degree to which their parents place value upon education capital and how they interact with the teacher and vice-versa. However, this can also impact negatively at this level as when deviant peer groups or friends of the child devalue scholastics, they will tend to undermine that childs school performance in spite of teacher and parents best efforts. Numerable research has revealed that exposure to abuse had a severe negative impact upon a childs academic functioning. Schwab-Stone et al (1995) concluded that as the consistency of maltreatment increased this had a direct negative correlation with academic performance. Likewise, Bowen (1999) found in a sample of over 2000 high school students that exposure to community and school violence put limitations on school attendance, behaviour and results. Warner and Weist (1999) revealed that children from low income families who are witnesses to household and neighbourhood violence demonstrated atypical symptoms of PTSD, anxiety and depression. The symptoms continue upon the latter to include atypical externalising behaviours such as anger, inability to form relationships and a decline in academic performance. Surviving on a low income in a bad neighbourhood does not make it impossible to be the caring, affectionate parent of healthy, sociable children. But it does, undeniably, make it more difficult (Utting, 1995, p. 40). Children from low-income households may display more behavioural troubles than their better-off peers. However, according to Gorman-Smith (1998) family factors, including parenting practices do not predict childrens exposure to violence. He suggests that other community factors rather than their household income will influence and operate on children and those family factors are not powerful enough to mediate or moderate their effects. Such studies have often found there to be an important correlation between communities in which citizens have described a high level of community cohesions and children safety, with an increase in child abuse being linked with a negative sense of community identity. Self-care has the most negative effects for children in low-income neighbourhoods with high crime rates (Marshall et al, 1997). Children who begin self-care at an early age are more vulnerable to older self-care children in their communities who can damage or abuse them. These children are more likely to have adjustment problems in school and are more likely to use after-school with socially deviant peers who do not value school and undergo criminal activities. Predictably, then the positive effects of organised after school programs on academic achievement are greater for children in low-income neighbourhoods (Mason Chuang, 2001). Bronfenbrenners penultimate layer, or exosystem, consists of contexts that children and their peers may not be aware although nevertheless will influence their development. For example, parents work environments are an exosystem influence. Childrens emotional relationships at home may be influenced considerably by whether or not their parents enjoy their work (Greenberger, ONeal, Nagel, 1994). In a similar fashion, childrens experiences in school may be influenced by their exosystem, by a social integration plan taken on by the school council, or by job cuts in their community that result in a decline in the schools revenue. Negative impacts on development can also result when the exosystem breaks down. For example, Sidebotham (2002) has shown that households that are affected by unemployment, poor housing and poor social networks are more likely to be involved in increased occurrences of child abuse. Whose comments are justified next to Beeman (1997) who concluded that a lack of so cial support and a high consistency of negative attitudes towards available networks all contribute towards the chances of child maltreatment. The majority of the research on the impact of mothers employment concludes towards a small positive influence on most children (Scott, 2004). Children whose mothers are in employment are more confident and show more admiration for their mothers in contrast to those mothers who do not work. The effect of the mothers work on influencing attitudes and results in school become less apparent, with many studies showing no difference (Gottfried, Bathurst, 1994). Muller (1995) in his large study on the latter topic distinguished a small but comprehensible negative difference on the effect on maths results if that childs mother was in employment. However, this difference seemed to be based on the fact that mothers who do not work as much are less engrossed with their childs work and are less likely to oversee the childs work continuously after school, rather than from a long-lasting deficit brought about by maternal employment in the early years. Thus, working mothers who find ways to provide such supervision and who remain involved with their childrens schools have kids who do as well as children whose mothers are homemakers. Research evidence intuitively shows that when a man becomes unemployed, it places a strain on his marriage; which in turn leads to an increase in marital conflict and both mother and father show more signs of depression. The effects of these conflicts eventually show the same characteristics as families who are experiencing divorce; both parents appear less coherent in their attitudes towards their children, become less loving and less effective at monitoring them. Similarly, children, in turn respond to this situation as they would during their parents divorce by exhibiting a series of atypical behaviours which can include depression, anger or becoming involved in delinquent behaviour. According to Conger et al (1992), the likelihood of abuse at all levels, shows an increase during times of households unemployment. However, according to Berger (2004) parents who are experiencing divorce but who have a supportive framework and emotional support from friends are increasingly more like ly to provide a safe and affectionate environment for children in comparison to those who are occupied in social isolation. Gorman-Smith and Tolan (1998), in their study of the effects of divorce, did not find that family structure and other familial influences had an independent involvement towards the prediction of exposure to abuse in comparison to that of other risk factors such as the breakdown of traditional social processes in the community. Low income parents are characterised by contributing towards their childs atypical development as Evans (2004) concludes that parents of such a nature are less likely to communicate with their children, spend less time engaging with them in intellectually stimulating activities and in turn are harsher and more aggressive in their discipline techniques. Not all children follow the same development pathways and there are certain factors that influence their development. For example, children below the poverty line are half as likely to recall the alphabet and have the ability to count by the time they enter the first years of schooling. This development according to Brooks-Gunn (1995) also applies, and is maintained through to adolescence as older children in poverty are twice as likely as their counterparts to repeat a year of school and are less likely to go onto higher education. In keeping with Bronfenbrenners model, parental values on the best way to deal with discipline will be largely in coherence with the larger culture in which they reside. According to Lockhart (Ecology of Development; 345), by striking a child it will usually stop the chid from repeating the behaviour. Although research evidence suggests that children who are spanked, like children who are abused at later ages are less popular with their peers and show higher levels of aggression, lower self-esteem, more emotional instability, higher rates of depression and distress, and higher levels of delinquency and later criminality (Mostow Campbell, 2004). Bronfenbrenners concluding layer is that of a macrosystem which entails a broad, overarching ideology in which the child is embedded, and whose principles dictate how a child should be treated and how discipline should be distributed. These principles differ across macrosystems (cultures) and sub-cultures and social classes and can have a direct influence on the types of experiences a child will have in all levels of their ecological system. To cite one example, Belsky (1993) discusses how the incidence of child abuse in families (a microsystem experience) is much lower in those cultures (or macrosystems) that discourage physical punishment of children and advocate nonviolent ways of resolving interpersonal conflict. Similarly Clarke (1997) revealed how at the level of the macrosystem, a Government policy that ensures parents have the option to take paid or unpaid leave from their jobs to see to family matters could provide a significant intervention towards child abuse allowing pare nts more free time to observe their childs development and resolve difficulties that may arise within their child. The debate that encircles the surrounding links between culture and child abuse is a complex notion, which has resulted in a myriad of concerns. For instance, recent statistics of child maltreatment has indicated that ethnic minority children are substantially more at risk of abuse than their Caucasian counterparts (U.S Department of Health, 2006). However Lassiter (1987) has countered, showing that these minorities may be over-represented to the relevant services. Lassiter argues that biased statistics do not take into consideration other influencing factors such as socioeconomic status and the level of schooling received. Without considering socioeconomic factors that may also influence the parent and child, research risks inadvertently concluding that factors that increase abuse potential are because of race or ethnicity, or are universal. The contextual risk variable that looks to have the biggest part in forecasting child maltreatment is having a family member who has also been a direct victim of some form of previous abuse. For example, A parent suffering from the stress of having been victimised herself or having another family member who has been victimised may be overwhelmed and more disturbed by the childs behaviour and may, therefore, have a lower threshold for viewing the childs externalizing behaviour as problematic. Primary or universal support targets the community as a whole, with generic initiatives, campaigns and community-based services that support parents and families without entry criteria. Their aim is to prevent problems such as child abuse and family breakdown (Healy Darlington, 1999). MacMillan (1994) in describing child abuse interventions found it necessary to distinguish between the differing forms of prevention, including that of primary intervention to which he describes as any manoeuvre that is provided to the general population or a sample of the general population or a sample of the general population to reduce the incidence of child maltreatment;, and secondary prevention, early detection of a condition with the aim of shortening the duration of the disorder, and tertiary prevention, prevention of recurrence of maltreatment and impairment resulting from abuse. MacMillan further explained the difficulties in prevention in regards to psychological and emotional maltreatment, which accounts for a high number of reported cases but difficulty arises when evidence needs to be collated, and if emotional abuse is accepted as a form of abuse, then the distinction between primary and secondary prevention or indeed tertiary prevention becomes less clear. Osofsky (1995) in his research on primary prevention has called for a nationwide campaign that would address to change the attitudes toward maltreatment and lower peoples tolerance of child abuse. Support for an ecological approach to child welfare is evident in the Framework for the Assessment of Children and their Families (Department of Health et al, 2000), which stresses the need to consider not only the factors relating to the child and their parents, but also the wider context in which children live when assessing their needs, acknowledging the impact of social and community factors on childrens welfare. This is also justified through the Every Child Matters document which refers to the concept of Making a positive contribution; being involved with the community and society. Involving local communities in the prevention of child abuse was acknowledged by Nelson and Baldwin (2002) who asserted that the Every Child Matters model has the potential to involve communities enthusiast ically in partnership with agencies in identifying problems and seeking solutions and that the process can help to build communities which are more informed, aware and thoughtful about child protection. Although the presence of risk factors, such as a poor environment or unsupportive relationships with primary caregivers, or being looked after outside the family, increases the likelihood of a negative outcome for the individual, studies of competence and resilience have shown that, regardless of background, children are generally resourceful. Competence has been shown to be a mediating variable that predicts positive or negative outcomes (Smith, Cowie, Blades, 2001; 569).

Toward a Scotistic Modal Metaphysics :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays

Toward a Scotistic Modal Metaphysics ABSTRACT: The problem I tackle in this essay is: Do we have in Scotus a modal logic or a counterpart theory? We need to take a rather roundabout path to handle this problem. This is because, whether it be in Lewis's original formulation or in others' applications, the crucial concept of 'counterpart' has never been clearly explicated. In section two, I shall therefore examine the recent controversy concerning Leibniz's views on modalities which centers around the counterpart relation. By fully exploiting the lessons learned from such an examination, I shall then launch a trilemma against a Leibnizian in section three. Section four shall make the claim that unlike Leibniz's case, Scotus's position is not endangered by the trilemma. One important premise will be adopted from my thesis presented elsewhere regarding the different between Scotus's haecceitas and Leibniz's individual essence. Another will be secured from a brief report on Scotus's views on similarity, which might be utterl y original to modern eyes jaundiced by contemporary set theories. 1. The Problem: Scotistic Modal Logic vs. Scotistic Counterpart Theory Thanks to the resurgence of interest in modalities in the twentieth century, the history of modal logic has been studied more extensively than ever. One of the more important lessons is that Scotus rather than Leibniz is the father of the modern conception of logical possibility. (1) Insofar as it is not merely historical curiosity but a test of our intuition about modalities that we are interested in the predecessors of modern modal logic, we face the urgent task of reconstructing the Scotistic system of modalities. In fact, Douglas C. Langston recently raised an interesting question as to which way of understanding possible worlds Scotus might endorse: the counterpart view or the canonical view? Based on Ordinatio, Book I, d. 44, q. 1, n. 11, he presents two alternative readings. Ultimately, however, he opts for the counterpart reading on the ground that it is more consistent with Scotus's remarks on how God knows contingents. An important consequence from the counterpart reading is that individuals are "world-bound" for Scotus. (2) Yet Langston's interpretation invites serious criticism. According to Simo Knuuttila, if the individuals in Scotus's model were world-bound, they would not have synchronic de re alternatives, which is not compatible with Scotus's reform in obligational principles. Knuuttila further points out that Scotus's well-known doctrine of human free will excludes the possibility of world-bound individuals.

Medieval Times

Imagine you are in Medieval Times, the food, the people, the weapons. The bus ride was long. I could not wait to see the castle, the medieval castle looked like. I was amazed when I got to the castle. You need to work on these sentences to make your writing stronger. â€Å"Show me, don’t tell me. † Use sensory words! The last sentence (your thesis) should be 1 sentence. Try combining the last two sentences of this paragraph. Medieval Times is an accurate representation of the Middle Ages. That is because of the food and beverages, weapons, and the extras.Primarily Good transition and topic sentence. , the food and beverages were accurate. You had water to drink. The chicken was good and was a little salty, so it was beneficial to have water to drink. Also, at dinner time, a food option was soup or stew. We however Switch these words and insert a comma. did not have soup or stew because it was lunch time and not dinner. On the other hand, the weapons were realistic. The knight was training his squires with certain weapons. Like the halberd is a combination of a battle-axe and a pike.Also, the bludgeon, a type of mace, was also used. Then they were using swords. Finally, the dagger was used, a small sword. Furthermore, the extras were amazing. The dancing and bowing horse from Saudi Arabia was the best part. The falcon with the bell on his foot was also a tradition of the opening ceremony. The color of the knight’s armor and the horse’s armor also told where they came from. Like the red knight, Baron Ruiz de Roig was from Castilla. Similarly, the black and white knight, Don Iofre Santa Creu was from Santiago de Compostela.That is why I think Medieval Times is an accurate representation of the Medieval era. You do not need to tell me â€Å"That is why I think†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The first sentence should be the exact same sentence from your thesis. I think this because of the extras, the weapons and last but not least, the food and beverages . I do think it is a great show to see so, I do recommend Why do you recommend it? I need more than you enjoyed it. that next year’s 7th grade class should see the medieval times show. I liked it, it was enjoyable.

‘Hoods’ a Drama Production

The performance ‘Hoods’ by Barking Gecko Theatre Co. is a play about two young children, Jessie and Kyle, who create video game style situations to pass the time as they are left in the car by their mother. This play was performed at Thornlie Senior High School’s Performing Arts Centre on Friday the 1st of April 2011. It was a great honour to have this brilliant play shown to the high school students as it showed perseverance of the young children. The play was written by Angela Betzien and directed by Leticia Ca’ceres. The actors were Sam Longley and Andrea Gibbs, Sam who played Kyle and Andrea who played Jessie. The style in which the play was performed was presentational although there are some parts of realism because situations like these actually do happen. The actors played multiple characters and morphed into each one. The morphing shows visible changes of character. They had great versatility of characters and played each one with passion for the role. The facial expressions they used seemed to add to the way they acted and made us, as an audience believe their roles much more. Other presentational aspects include the use of direct address and poetic narration throughout the performance. Jessie and Kyle’s mother leaves them and their baby brother (Troy) in the car as she went to the shops. Troy get sick and the children are fearful of their situation and go off to seek their grandmother. Their mother hadn’t actually forgotten about them but rather had been caught shoplifting for them and was taken away. The themes for ‘Hoods’ would be child neglect, poverty and domestic violence. The playwright had the intention of telling these children’s story to the audience. As children they don’t have the ability to tell people their situation and get help like adults can. The intentions would be that they wrote the play with the intention of showing powerlessness, and making the characters feel vulnerable as they are so young and in situations we don’t expect children to be in, they delivered these very effectively. There are three main parts of the play where they are powerless, when the children are in the car trying to find their mum, when the counsellor has no power to take the children out and treat them and when the mother is powerless against the father’s violent ways. Their costumes were old and shaggy due to their setting being dirty and poverty stricken. They both wore hoods which they either wore on or off their heads, depending on what character they were playing. The set contained very few objects, a box that acted as a car, the fence and some chairs. This added to the deserted feel of the play. The lighting was dark with the main lighting in the middle, where most of the action took place. There were also few props, the baby, Jessie’s ‘magic’ wand and even though it was clothing, Jessie’s jacket as it was something she never took off, like her comfort blanket. There were different sounds throughout the performance, such as, cars, sirens, explosions and dogs barking. The stage at the high school was quite spacious giving the actors a chance to use it all, which they did perfectly. I really liked the performance, it was interesting and compelling. There was action, comedy and tragedy which all added to the performance’s appeal. It did start to get slightly boring toward the end but it think that was because it was quite long, but overall very good. I think most of the audience liked it due to the attention they payed and the amount of applause at the end. I would definitely recommend ‘Hoods’ to anyone looking for a great play to watch.

Free Essays on Art & Dreams

, phrases, context, to arrive at an understanding of what is communicated verbally or in writing. If we could watch this process taking place, we would observe a constant searching and rejection of non-hits, a lining up of possibilities, and a bringing to the forefront of what we sense are highest probabilities. Our mind/brain is a flashing loom of connections, a constantly moving wonderful network of links between billions of cells. This flashing creative network that constitutes the miraculous background to our responses, our feelings, our thoughts and spontaneous fantasies and dreams, is constantly forming patterns from the multitude of experiences we have. It constantly tries to match these patterns against what is already known or learnt. It draws out from the chaos of memory and incoming experience whatever it can liken to what was met in the past. What it can~t match it tries to put into some sort of order or to give a form to. And within all this constant activity the search for personal meaning goes on - Who or what am I? How can I survive? Is there a way ....?Out of such a profoundly integral search for meaning, as artist, writer, musician, we may project the subtle forms of our inner meanings into the art form we use. We may create shapes, places, people, and feelings. Out of the flashing web of our own sentience we create life - our life - with its own conceptions of what it is to exist, what it is to love or hate, to strive or fail.Even the most modern of dream theories agree that it is out of the fathomless depths of our drive to give meaning to impressions, that we create dreams. It is out of the barely formed impressions and understanding of the dreaming impulse that we create and live. In fact many artists of every discipline - and I now u... Free Essays on Art & Dreams Free Essays on Art & Dreams We are constantly giving meaning to a torrent ofimpressions that we meet through our senses and from within us. We give form to raw experience. We scan our enormous experience of words, phrases, context, to arrive at an understanding of what is communicated verbally or in writing. If we could watch this process taking place, we would observe a constant searching and rejection of non-hits, a lining up of possibilities, and a bringing to the forefront of what we sense are highest probabilities. Our mind/brain is a flashing loom of connections, a constantly moving wonderful network of links between billions of cells. This flashing creative network that constitutes the miraculous background to our responses, our feelings, our thoughts and spontaneous fantasies and dreams, is constantly forming patterns from the multitude of experiences we have. It constantly tries to match these patterns against what is already known or learnt. It draws out from the chaos of memory and incoming experienc e whatever it can liken to what was met in the past. What it can~t match it tries to put into some sort of order or to give a form to. And within all this constant activity the search for personal meaning goes on - Who or what am I? How can I survive? Is there a way ....?Out of such a profoundly integral search for meaning, as artist, writer, musician, we may project the subtle forms of our inner meanings into the art form we use. We may create shapes, places, people, and feelings. Out of the flashing web of our own sentience we create life - our life - with its own conceptions of what it is to exist, what it is to love or hate, to strive or fail.Even the most modern of dream theories agree that it is out of the fathomless depths of our drive to give meaning to impressions, that we create dreams. It is out of the barely formed impressions and understanding of the dreaming impulse that we create and live. In fact many artists of every discipline - and I now u...

anchoring script Essays

anchoring script Essays anchoring script Essay anchoring script Essay Asa little girl, I spent countless hours playing with my Barbie dolls, even designing and sewing one-of-a-kind outfits for the doll. I guess you could say Barbie gave me my start as a designer. Santa Claus is anyone who loves another and seeks to make them happy; who gives himself by thought or word or deed in every gift that he bestows; who shares his Joys with those who are sad; whose hand is never closed against the needy; whose arm is ever outstretched to aid the week; whose sympathy is quick and genuine in time of trouble; who recognizes a comrade and brother in every man he meets upon lifes ommon road; who lives his life throughout the entire year in the Christmas spirit. Santa Claus is anyone who loves another and seeks to make them happy; who gives himself by thought or word or deed in every gift that he bestows. If entire Japanese population is brought down to your intelligence level, the world would collapse! Be friendly and intelligent. Doraemon is very friendly and intelligent, not to mention long-suffering because of Nobitas antics. In the real life, people usually think of the bad behaviors of others, so if you follow Doraemons habits, you will be focus on thers good points and have better relationship. Ive never flown a kite. I started kite boarding when I was 13. My dad was a kite boarder, and I begged him to teach me until he finally agreed. He made me wait because it can be dangerous. I think this kite thing is really special. Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldierneeds. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them. soldier loves his country, Be willing to live, fight and die for your foundation Men in uniform are often described as serious, strict, firm and dangerous , but I would describe him as the sweetest, most gentle and most loving person that every woman would wish to have My friend, my confidante, my hero, my soldier, the love of my life I only hope that we dont lose sight of one thing that it was all started by a mouse. Meerabai (Mira Bai[l]) was a Hindu mystic poet and devotee of Krishna. She was one of the most significant Sants (true or saints) of theVaishnava bhakti movement. MiraBai (1498 1547) was a Rajput princess who lived in the north Indian state of Rajasthan. She was a devout follower of Lord Krishna. Payo Ji maine Ram ratan dhan payo 3 Vastu amolik di mere sataguru Kirapa kart apanayo Ram ratan dhan payo There is a tiger in my room, said Frances. Did he bite you? said Father. No, said Frances. Did he scratch you? said Mother. Then he is a friendly tiger, said Father. He will not hurt you. Go back to sleep The parrots so funny. He imitates me I hope you love birds too Parrots remain the most popular pet birds. This is due to their fascinating colors, their intelligence, attachment to their owners and their ability to imitate the human voice, but also to their adaptability to the captive life. This is exactly what led many species to the brink of extinction, and some species are already extinct. The annual illegal traffic of parrots bypasses 100 million birds. In the case of some species, the poachers destroy up to 70 % of the nests, and the rarer a parrot, the most expensive it turns.

Al-Amanah Islamic Investment Bank Of The Philippines

Al-Amanah Islamic Investment Bank Of The Philippines Republic Act No. 6848, otherwise known as â€Å"The Charter of the Al-Amanah Islamic Investment Bank of the Philippines† outlines that the primary purpose of the Islamic bank is â€Å"to promote and accelerate the socio-economic development of the Autonomous Region by performing banking, financing and investment operations and to establish and participate in agricultural, commercial and industrial ventures based on the Islamic concept of banking.† In addition to allowing the bank to act as a universal bank capable of offering both conventional and Islamic banking products and services, the Sections No. 10 the bargaining power of multilateral and bilateral aid organizations(USTDA, WB, ADB, JBIC) is high due to their involvement with micro-finance and development banks; the large size and unorganized nature of the labor sector affords it little bargaining power; bargaining power among depositors is highly skewed towards the higher income deciles who’s deposits ac count for 88.3% of the savings in banks, with the lower deciles having nor bargaining power. (2) With regard to the bargaining power of buyers, the higher income deciles belonging to the middle and upper classes resided and/or did business in the National Capital Region (NCR) and demand services such as â€Å"à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦electronic banking, payroll services, and bill payments.†; The power portions of the population find it difficult to obtain financing from formal banks due to their situation, and thus do not have much bargaining power, but their sheer numbers offer a potentially large market. (3) With regard to the threat of new entrants, any new Islamic banks allowed by the BSP could actually benefit the Amanah Bank by providing much needed visibility for the beleaguered Philippine Islamic banking sector. (4) With regard to the threat of substitute, notable alternatives that customers may opt for are informal financial institutions, employers that provide loan programs, or complete abstinence from banking entirely. Another threat is the outflow of capital from the country. (5) With regard to rivalry among existing players, the tendency of banks to be large tends to lead them to avoid small borrowers and savers, as such the government has had to develop the banking system so as to include such institutions as thrift and rural banks which cater to the needs of small borrowers and savers who would otherwise resort to informal institutions. In order to counter the threat of oligopoly the government competes in the financial sector via the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) and the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP). (Isnaji, 2003)

An Ethically Bad Life Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

An Ethically Bad Life - Research Paper Example Therefore, the focus of whether an ethically bad life is real has more to do with what we do and the decision making process of members of society, on what they ought to engage or what they ought not to engage in. However, ethics does not offer easy answers to these questions, unlike in the case of issues that are patently obvious within the society (Vendemiati, 2004). This paper will explore whether an ethically bad life is real, and how it can be identified. In exploring the ethical nature of a bad life, arguments for whether it is real or not will be explored; support will be offered, that an ethically bad life exists. Identification of the specific issue Ethical theory is a major part of all choices, reasoning and the philosophies that are broadly conceived. The aim of ethics, according to different theorists, including Plato, Hobbes, Aristotle, and Levinas include the discernment of right from wrong choices and acts towards others. Other theorists views that ethics distinguishes what is morally bad or good, and others defines it as an explanation of the principles that guide a life, which is worth living (Singer, 2000). The issue that arises from the conception of ethical actions and whether an ethically bad life exists is the regard of whether ethics is the same as what is commonly accepted, law or religion. Therefore, before exploring whether an ethically bad life exists, it is important to separate ethics from other areas that inform ethics. First, is the fact that ethics is not all about what is commonly accepted among members of a given group, or among members of society (Vendemiati, 2004). For example, among the members of a gang within the society, violence may be gratuitously viewed as fun and acceptable. The mere fact that some action is commonly accepted among a given group does not make it ethical. In support of this distinction David Hume argued that, â€Å"is does not imply or mean ought† (Singer, 2000). Secondly, ethics is not law, bec ause in some cases, laws will incarnate ethical standards. For example, the mistreatment of domesticated animals was viewed as an ethical issue, long before it was considered an area of legal action at different countries. Further, all that falls under the scope of ethical concern may be regarded relevant under law. An example is that it is ethically regarded that people should remain nice to one another, but that principles cannot be subjected to legal practice. Thirdly, ethics is not religion, and the two can be explored differently, irrespective of the fact that religions present ethical principles that are observed. Due to the fact that ethics is different from what is commonly acceptable, law and religion, the question that comes up is whether an ethically bad life can be explained on the basis of the different considerations. Based on this regard, this paper will discuss the coverage of the ethical nature of life, and explain how an ethically bad life can be distinguished from an ethically good one (Singer, 2000). The argument develops on the fact that ethics is related to what is right and wrong, in defining the conduct of humans, demonstrating the areas that distinguish an ethically bad life, using the actions, choices and the dilemmas that present in the lives of members of society. The multiple sides of an ethically bad life As free people, humans are faced by the opportunity of making choices, some related to trivial areas like the outfit to wear on different days. Others are more serious cases, involving those that can result in life or death, therefore, distinguishing between an ethically bad and good life can be very instrumental in shaping

Development of Bio Materials for 3-Dimensional Printing Research Paper

Development of Bio Materials for 3-Dimensional Printing - Research Paper Example Prototyping Procedures In general, rapid prototyping (RP) is defined as the process of building or fabrication a physical part, layer by layer directly from its 3-dimensional computer aided design model (Choi and Samavedam, 2001). RP is also known in another term such as layer manufacturing, direct CAD manufacturing, solid freeform fabrication and rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RPM). From these several terms for RP it can be drawn that its basic principle is actually â€Å"additive manufacturing.† It is because the 3D object is being formed by building layer by layer through adding, depositing or solidifying one or more materials in a horizontal layer-wise process (Heynick and Stotz, 2006). Lam et al (2002) described the rapid prototyping (RP) as â€Å"the process of creating three dimensional (3D) objects through repetitive deposition and processing of material layers using computer-controlled equipment †¦ based on the 2D cross-sectional data obtained from slicing a computer-aided design (CAD) model,† (49). ...   The whole model is completed by printing successive 2D profiles on a fresh layer of powder. The profiles of each layer are joined using the printed binder and completed after the removal of the unbound powder and this has been used extensively for the fabrication of drug delivery devices (Wu et al, 1996). Tissue engineers soon caught up and started using 3DP to design and fabricate scaffolds (Wu et al, 1996). Developments include the use of the technology combined with salt leaching technique to fabricate polymeric scaffolds using copolymers of polylactide-coglycolide (PLGA, 85L:15G) and a suitable solvent. Cylindrical scaffolds (F O 8X7 mm) and managed to achieve interconnected porous channels of about 800 ?m and microporosities of 45–150 ?m by using salt leaching. They were able to attach large numbers of hepatocytes on the scaffolds. In a study that investigated cellular reactions to pore size and void fractions based on 3DP fabricated scaffolds, cell proliferation was observed on the scaffolds but varied between cell types and the experimental parameters. The scaffolds used in the experiment had varying pore sizes of 38–150 ?m and void fractions 75% and 90% (Zeltinger et al, 2001). RP is far different from traditional fabrication because this technology is only possible through the aid of the computer which controls all the mechanical system in fabricating 3D objects. Traditional fabrication technique could include solvent casting, gas foaming, fiber bonding/ meshes, phase separation, melt molding, emulsion freeze drying, solution casting, and freeze drying.

Explaination of poem and find out the figuratives PowerPoint Presentation

Explaination of poem and find out the figuratives - PowerPoint Presentation Example They also look for women with whom to sleep once drunk The author also says that water had no color to insinuate that when it comes to drinking, there is no discrimination. Even among sworn enemies like the occupants of Lebanon and Damascus, people tend to get along quite well in their drunken stupor. This underscores the irony behind drinking habits. The attitude and the tone of the poem are condescending and positive. The poet wonders why people cannot do certain things when they are sober. MacEwan notes that while drunk, people also do shameful things that they would not do under normal circumstances. The poet also highlights that even in the most drunken stupor; drunken people have a way of finding their way home. Some get home sweaty and sometimes with urine on themselves (brine and ammonia). Throughout the poem, the poet shifts between themes of carelessness, sexual immorality and friction because of drinking. All throughout the poem, the poem uses metaphor and symbols to allocate various meanings to the word

Bank (money supply) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Bank (money supply) - Essay Example Any government has the power and responsibility to regulate the economy of a country and not only does it regulate the economy, it has a vital role to ensure that the economic condition remains stable. It is the responsibility of the government to ensure that all the aspects of economy maintain a stable level so that the country can grow and expand. Government regulates many things in an economy including inflation, exports and imports, prices of many vital commodities, and many important economic aspects. For example Government of England has entrusted the job of determining the monetary policy, in the hands of Bank of England. Bank of England looks into many other big issues. One of the most important issues is that of ensuring monetary stability in the economy, which can be achieved through a combination of stable prices of goods and services across the economy coupled with a low inflation level and level of confidence of the investors in the currency of the country. The Bank come s out with the monetary policy in order to ensure a certain key objectives like, delivering price stability with a low inflation level coupled with an objective to support the Government's economic objectives of growth and employment. Price stability is taken care of, by the Government's usual inflation target of 2%. There is a need to contemplate the crucial and critical role played by price stability in achieving the aforesaid economic stability, and in providing just the right conditions for a sustainable and longer living growth in output and employment. Chancellor of the Exchequer announces the Government's inflation target every year in the annual Budget statement. Though The 1998 Bank of England Act enables it to set interest rates independently, however, The Bank does hold accountability to the parliament and the wider public, which can not be refrained from. The legislation provides the government the power to instruct the bank on the interest rates issues for a limited per iod of time during emergency, for the sake of national interests. (How Monetary Policy Works) A target of 2% does in no way mean that inflation will be held at this rate constantly. That would be neither possible nor in any way desirable. Interest rates would be changing all the times, causing unnecessary volatility in the economy. Even then it would neither be possible nor feasible to keep inflation at any predetermined level, say 2% in each and every month continuously. Instead, the committee aims to set interest rates so that inflation can be brought back to target within a reasonable and imaginable span of time without creating undue instability and volatility in the economy. The government is also entrusted with the job of regulating property and commodity prices. To have a look into this in detail, we may need to analyze the factors that are generally responsibly for a rise in property prices. Before buying a house property, any buyer's first job is to assess the price of the property depending on the location, as location as a non-economic factor plays the biggest role in determining property prices all over the

Situational Analysis of International or Global Marketing Environment Essay - 1

Situational Analysis of International or Global Marketing Environment - Essay Example Evergreen Natural Grocers deal with natural and inorganic products, and offers competitive prices while ensuring high quality services to customers. Evergreen Natural Markets is characterised by rapid growth, which can be confirmed by its twenty-three stores in nineteen locations in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Evergreen Natural Grocers achieved total annual revenues amounting to $175 million and net income from investment of $4.3 million during the financial ending December 2012 (Doyle, 2012). Evergreen Natural Grocers has adopted an expansive strategy for growth. The company has identified a potential market in Canada for selling its products. Five Porter’s Analysis of the Canadian Market Threat of New Entrants The supernormal profits earned by the Evergreen Natural Grocers will attract the entry of new firms. Retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Humana Inc. have began supplying natural foods and supplements in the Canadian market parallel to Evergreen Grocers. The prof its earned by Evergreen Grocers will trend towards normal and finally fall to break-even in the long-run (Hemmings, 2011). Sources of threat of new entrants include economies of scale, product differentiation, easy access to distribution channels and lenient government policy. Threat of Substitute commodities Most of the Canadians prefer consuming fresh-from-the farm products to the processed natural products. Businesses have engaged in extensive supply of substitutes for natural products supplied by Evergreen Grocers. The Canadian buyers have high propensity to substitute because of low switching costs for consumer foods. The markets, therefore, are characterised by cutthroat competition where new substitutes are brought to market every day. Substitutes are also supplied in forms of direct medications meant to heal illnesses associated with the defects of malnutrition (Fisanick, 2010). Bargaining Power of Buyers The Canadian market comprises of enlightened buyers who are sensitive to price and quality changes. The buyers have the ability to put Evergreen Groceries under pressure, which has an effect in the buyers’ sensitivity to price changes (Raff & Schmitt, 2009). The Canadians have access to all market information and can force the reduction of prices in the event of failing to reflect the true value of the commodity. Bargaining Power of Suppliers Suppliers comprise the market for inputs such as raw materials, components, expertise, labour and energy. Manual labour exhibits features of scarcity in Canada due to low population growth rates, hence, labour is expensive to afford. The Canadian believe in the principles of total quality management; their supplies in terms of raw materials and components are costly because they are prepared based on excellent quality standards. Employee solidarity through labour unions is very strong in Canada, implying the bargaining power of suppliers is effective and all regulations related to labour supply must be adh ered to all costs. Intensity of Competitive Rivalry Natural foods manufacturing units in Canada have embraced sustainable competitive advantage through intensive innovations. Most companies have gone online, and have online supply units to aid in marketing and supplying of their merchandise. The level of advertising expenses is high because of increased competition for advertisement airtime and strategic

Explaination of poem and find out the figuratives PowerPoint Presentation

Explaination of poem and find out the figuratives - PowerPoint Presentation Example They also look for women with whom to sleep once drunk The author also says that water had no color to insinuate that when it comes to drinking, there is no discrimination. Even among sworn enemies like the occupants of Lebanon and Damascus, people tend to get along quite well in their drunken stupor. This underscores the irony behind drinking habits. The attitude and the tone of the poem are condescending and positive. The poet wonders why people cannot do certain things when they are sober. MacEwan notes that while drunk, people also do shameful things that they would not do under normal circumstances. The poet also highlights that even in the most drunken stupor; drunken people have a way of finding their way home. Some get home sweaty and sometimes with urine on themselves (brine and ammonia). Throughout the poem, the poet shifts between themes of carelessness, sexual immorality and friction because of drinking. All throughout the poem, the poem uses metaphor and symbols to allocate various meanings to the word

Situational Analysis of International or Global Marketing Environment Essay - 1

Situational Analysis of International or Global Marketing Environment - Essay Example Evergreen Natural Grocers deal with natural and inorganic products, and offers competitive prices while ensuring high quality services to customers. Evergreen Natural Markets is characterised by rapid growth, which can be confirmed by its twenty-three stores in nineteen locations in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Evergreen Natural Grocers achieved total annual revenues amounting to $175 million and net income from investment of $4.3 million during the financial ending December 2012 (Doyle, 2012). Evergreen Natural Grocers has adopted an expansive strategy for growth. The company has identified a potential market in Canada for selling its products. Five Porter’s Analysis of the Canadian Market Threat of New Entrants The supernormal profits earned by the Evergreen Natural Grocers will attract the entry of new firms. Retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Humana Inc. have began supplying natural foods and supplements in the Canadian market parallel to Evergreen Grocers. The prof its earned by Evergreen Grocers will trend towards normal and finally fall to break-even in the long-run (Hemmings, 2011). Sources of threat of new entrants include economies of scale, product differentiation, easy access to distribution channels and lenient government policy. Threat of Substitute commodities Most of the Canadians prefer consuming fresh-from-the farm products to the processed natural products. Businesses have engaged in extensive supply of substitutes for natural products supplied by Evergreen Grocers. The Canadian buyers have high propensity to substitute because of low switching costs for consumer foods. The markets, therefore, are characterised by cutthroat competition where new substitutes are brought to market every day. Substitutes are also supplied in forms of direct medications meant to heal illnesses associated with the defects of malnutrition (Fisanick, 2010). Bargaining Power of Buyers The Canadian market comprises of enlightened buyers who are sensitive to price and quality changes. The buyers have the ability to put Evergreen Groceries under pressure, which has an effect in the buyers’ sensitivity to price changes (Raff & Schmitt, 2009). The Canadians have access to all market information and can force the reduction of prices in the event of failing to reflect the true value of the commodity. Bargaining Power of Suppliers Suppliers comprise the market for inputs such as raw materials, components, expertise, labour and energy. Manual labour exhibits features of scarcity in Canada due to low population growth rates, hence, labour is expensive to afford. The Canadian believe in the principles of total quality management; their supplies in terms of raw materials and components are costly because they are prepared based on excellent quality standards. Employee solidarity through labour unions is very strong in Canada, implying the bargaining power of suppliers is effective and all regulations related to labour supply must be adh ered to all costs. Intensity of Competitive Rivalry Natural foods manufacturing units in Canada have embraced sustainable competitive advantage through intensive innovations. Most companies have gone online, and have online supply units to aid in marketing and supplying of their merchandise. The level of advertising expenses is high because of increased competition for advertisement airtime and strategic

Capital Punishment Essay Example for Free

Capital Punishment Essay Death penalty is one the debatable topics throughout the world. There is a conflict between law and ethics. Public opinion does not coincide with the state opinion. There are 33 countries, which use death penalty as capital punishment. According to Amnesty International Report, in 2011, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and USA topped the list. According to statistics, in USA 33 states use death penalty as capital punishment and other 17 does not. (Amnesty International, 2011) Death penalty’s primary goal is to make people think twice before doing crime. The Death penalty helps to decrease the murder’s rate, however it could violate human right. The main argument in favor the death penalty is the effect of deterrence people from doing something illegal and unethical. The initial purpose of deterrence effect is to set up the highest price for murder, in order to decrease the rate of homicide. The former president of USA George W. Bush stated in the 2000 Presidential debate, â€Å"I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people’s lives†. However, according to Donohue Wolfres (2006) death penalties deterrence effect is not based on facts. Deterrence effect is good in theory, but in practice the effect is minor. As Ernest Van Dan Haag (1968,p 281) identified : Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else.† Incapacitation means taking away a persons freedom so that he or she cannot commit another crime. While the typical form of incapacitation is incarceration, and the most common form is relatively mild (probation), the ultimate form of incapacitation is death. Since the goal of incapacitation is to reduce crime by restricting the freedoms of criminals, we could conclude that incapacitation is achieved by capital punishment. However, according to Marquat and Sorensen the possibility of murderer to kill again is one out of one hundred. (Radelet Borg, 2000). The second argument supporting death penalty is providing justice for murder victims. For the most cruel and harsh crimes, punishment should also be strict. And death penalty is the right choice in these kinds of situations. Beccaria (1764) argues that the punishment should be as strict as the sufficient deter others. Justice is taking responsibility for your own actions. The System of Law is not perfect and it makes mistakes. As long as the death penalty is irrevocable process, northing can be changed after the execution. Discovering innocence of the executed can’t return him back. There are many examples of wrongful convictions. According to Amnesty International there Illinois: Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange, pardoned in 2003. Sent to death row on the basis of confessions extracted through the use of torture by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and other Area 2 police officers in Chicago. They were pardoned by outgoing Governor George Ryan, who also commuted the remaining 167 death sentences in Illinois to life imprisonment. I cannot support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the states taking of innocent life Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate. According to Death Penalty Information Centre, since 1973, 141 people in 26 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. (Death Centre Information, 2011). Racial Discrimination is one of the most unpleasant factors in capital punishment process. According to Tabak, sentencing death penalty depend on two factors, first is the race of defendant, and the second is the race of the victim. (1999). However, discrimination is based also in the financial status of the defendant. According to Amnesty International, in January 2003 study released by the University of Maryland concluded that race and geography are major factors in death penalty decisions. Specifically, prosecutors are more likely to seek a death sentence when the race of the victim is white and are less likely to seek a death sentence when the victim is African-American. In 2007 study of death sentences in Connecticut conducted by Yale University School of Law revealed that African-American defendants receive the death penalty at three times the rate of white defendants in cases where the victims are white. In addition, killers of white victims are treated more severely than people who kill minorities, when it comes to deciding what charges to bring. (Amnesty International, 2011). Another important part of the death penalty issue is the financial cost of the trial and executions. A 2003 legislative audit in Kansas found that the estimated cost of a death penalty case was 70% more than the cost of a comparable non-death penalty case. Death penalty case costs were counted through to execution (median cost $1.26 million). Non-death penalty case costs were counted through to the end of incarceration (median cost $740,000).(Survey by the Kansas Legislative Post Audit,2003). In Tennessee, death penalty trials cost an average of 48% more than the average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment. (Report from Tennessee Comtroller of the Treasury Office of Research, 2004). In Maryland death penalty cases cost 3 times more than non-death penalty cases, or $3 million for a single case. (Urban Institute, the Cost of the Death Penalty in Maryland, 2008) In California the current system costs $137 million per year; it would cost $11.5 million for a system without the death penalty. (California Commission for the Fair Administration of Justice, 2008). One of the main alternatives for death penalty is life-long imprisonment without possibility of parole plus restitution. Restitution means that prisoner can be put into labor work, and that’s how he can compensate for the victim’s family. Just killing the killer is not the best solution for the existing problem In conclusion, I would like to say that death penalty is one of the controversial topics. Death penalty abolition is the key of key factor of democratic society. . Actually, in the world there is a trend to abolish the death penalty. However, there is no evidence of deterrent effect of death penalty Nevertheless Death penalty is unethical and inhumane, it helps to achieve the balance in the country. 0

Novel Planar Nanodevices for Chemical Sensing Applications

Novel Planar Nanodevices for Chemical Sensing Applications In recent years, planar electronic nanodevices have attracted much attention due to their simple architecture, ease of fabrication and low cost of manufacture. Such devices address a wide variety of applications in printed and plastic electronics industry. Using this approach a new type of sensor, which is sensitive to different chemicals, has been developed and reported here. By exploiting the unique characteristics of semiconductor asymmetric nanochannels, a highly selective and sensitive planar nano-transistor based chemical sensor has been realised which can discriminate between wide range of chemical compounds in the ambient atmosphere. The active part of the sensor device was fabricated in a single nanolithography step and was tested using variety of chemicals including polar protic, polar-aprotic and nonpolar solvents. The sensing results showed that, all three solvent categories have exhibited unique chemical signature which could be identified with increased or decreased drain current depending on the analyte used. A significant rise in transistor drain current was observed when the device was exposed to polar aprotic solvents compared to polar protic and nonpolar ones. Further it has been noticed that the exposure of the device to polar protic solvents which has hydroxyl (–OH) functional groups in their molecular frame work has shown very high hysteresis in current voltage measurements. In contrast, the device has exhibited very little hysteresis when exposed to polar aprotic and non-polar solvents with later being the minimum of all. The effect of solvent’s polarity on the sensor’s drain current in terms of adsorption and desorption processes has been studied and reported here. Also the effects of water molecules in ambient air and hydroxyl groups on the device hysteresis behaviour have been investigated. As the gas sensing properties of the sensor are related to the chemisorption of gaseous species at its surface, a detailed understanding of the charge transfer in a chemisorption process is very important; hence most of the discussions in this report focus on explaining this complex phenomenon with a special emphasis on the role of surface states during sensing process. All the measurements were performed at room temperature and the responses were found to be very fast, reversible and reproducible over many cycles of vapour exposure and suggested the stability of the device to be very high. The simple, low-cost, multi-chemical sensing device described in this work could be useful for a variety of applications, such as environmental monitoring, sensing in chemical processing plants, and gas detection for counter-terrorism. Nanofabrication and Characterisation 4.1 Introduction Recent advancements in the area of micro/nanofabrication have created a unique opportunity to manufacture nanometer-sized structures with absolute precision that has wide range of applications ranging from electronic, optical, chemical and biological fields. (Springer Handbook of Nanotechnology Bhushan, Bharat (Ed.)  2nd rev. and extended ed., 2007, XLIV, 1916 p. 1593 illus. in color. With CD-ROM., Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-540-29855-7 This chapter will introduce two of such major top-down fabrication techniques namely photolithography and e-beam lithography followed by a brief description on atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopes which have been used in this project to fabricate and image the planar nanosensors reported in chapter 5. 4.2 Lithography In semiconductor processing area-patterning techniques are very important. Lithography is a process of transferring patterns from medium to the other ( ampere a. tseng, kuan chen, chii d. chen, and kung j. ma ieee transactions on electronics packaging manufacturing, electron beam lithography in nanoscale fabrication: recent developmentvol 26, no 2, april 2003 pp 141-149). These transferred patterns are then subjected to a development process that selectively removes either the exposed or unexposed resist depending on the resist nature. The positive resist removes the exposed part where as unexposed resist is developed away using negative resists as shown in the figure 4.1. The exposure systems may be any of these; ultraviolet light rays, X-rays, ion beams or electron beams. But this section focuses on the systems using ultraviolet and electron beams as their source. 4.2.1 Photolithography Photolithography is the most common patterning method, by which the shape and critical dimensions of a semiconductor device are transformed onto the surface of the wafer (got from lecture notes titled photolithography sly). This is the technique used to define the mesa structures and metallic contacts of the device described in this thesis. A photo sensitive resist is spun on to the substrate and exposed through a mask which transfers the patterns on the sample by means of UV light. Then the sample is developed to get the desired pattern as shown below. Figure 4.1. Typical photolithography process. The substrate (A) is  ¯rst coated by photoresist (B) and then exposed by UV radiation through a mask (C). The latent image is either removed (D) or  ¯xed (E) by a developer solution. Source : M. J. Madou, Fundamentals of microfabrication, 2nd ed., CRC Press (2002), p. 19. 4.2.2 Metal film deposition In order to perform electrical measurements on the device, we need to define the metal patterns, through which it can be connected to the electrical probe station.  So two contacts are formed, ohmic and schottky contacts through a process called lift off as shown in the figure 4.2. The GaAs substrate is coated with photoresist and the patterns are defined by photolithography. First the metal film is thermally evaporated and the unwanted metal laying on the resist is lifted off by dissolving the photoresist in acetone. To facilitate the ‘lift off’ of technique, photoresist edges with undercut profiles are desirable. This can be achieved by the treatment of photoresist with chlorobenzene before the UV exposure. Chlorobenzene swells inside the photoresist and makes its â€Å"skin† harder. After the exposure and the development, the profile of the photoresist edges forms an undercut [M. J. Madou, Fundamentals of microfabrication, 2nd ed., CRC Press (2002), p. 19. an d M. Hatzakis, B. J. Canavello, and J. M. Shaw, IBM J. Res. Develop. 24, 452 (1980).,], as shown in Fig. 3.3E. Source fundamentals of micro fabrication book Figure 4.2. Typical lift-of process. The substrate (A) is coated by photoresist (B) and then prebaked to partially dry the solvents (C). A dip in chlorobenzene follows to make the photoresist skin harder. (D) UV exposure through the mask. The edges of the patterns developed into the photoresist after such process show a typical undercut pro ¯le (E). The metal is evaporated onto the sample, forming a thin  ¯lm (F). The unwanted metal is then lifted o ® by dissolving the remaining photoresist in a solvent (G). Ohmic contacts (obeys Ohm’s law, linear I-V) They are essentially formed by a metal layer deposited on a highly-doped semiconductor. Because of the high-doping concentration a very thin Schottky barrier is formed, and the charge carriers, namely electrons and holes, can easily tunnel through. The substrate used in this research work consists of semiconductor heterostructures in which a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) was confined between undoped GaAs and doped AlGaAs layers. (R. Williams, Modern GaAs processing methods, Artech House (1990), Chapter 11.) The choice of metals for any given application will depend on conductivity, thermal stability, adhesion, nature of electrical contact with semiconductor (work function/barrier height), and ease of patterning. (got it grom sly lecture notes) A thin layer (~ 45-50 nm) of Au/Ge/Ni alloy which is the most common scheme for making alloyed ohmic contacts to n-type GaAs is used for this work and was evaporated onto the substrate surface at temperatures higher than 360 °C. In this alloy, the germanium diffuses into the GaAs and acts as a dopant, while nickel acts as a wetting layer and also assists the diffusion of Ge into the GaAs. Schottky contacts (rectifying, diode like I-V) Depositing a metal film on an undoped, or lightly n-doped, semiconductor whose electronic affinity is lower than the work function of the metal, will form a thick schottky barrier which is typically several hundreds of meV high, and the thermal energy gained by the electrons, about 26 meV at room temperature, is too low to permit thermionic emission over the barrier. (R. Williams, Modern GaAs processing methods, Artech House (1990), Chapter 12). When a bias is applied to the metal, the height of the energy barrier seen by the electrons injected from the metal into the semiconductor does not change, being fixed by the metal work function and the electronic affinity of the semiconductor. On the other hand, the barrier seen by the electrons injected from the semiconductor into the metal is increased/decreased by a negative/positive bias. This mechanism is responsible for the well-known rectifying effect observed in Schottky junctions [V. L. Rideout, Thin Solid Films 48, 261 (1978). [8] A. M. Cowley and S. M. Sze, J. Appl. Phys. 36, 3212 (1965).]. At negative biases, the Schottky junction essentially behaves like a capacitor: in substrates with embedded 2DEGs, it can be utilised as a gate electrode to modulate the 2DEG carrier concentration, e.g., for the fabrication of field-effect transistors. 4.2.2 Electron beam lithography (EBL) One of the modern approaches in dealing with nanoscale structures is e-beam lithography in which, electrons are accelerated by very high voltage, typically of 10s of kV and then focused onto a layer of polymer to create very fine patterns. EBL provides much higher resolution and more precise than photolithography or x-ray lithography: patterns with feature sizes well below 20 nm can be achieved in modern systems. EBL does not require the fabrication of masks as in the photolithographic process. There are two methods to expose e-beam on to the substrate surface (Rainer waser (Ed.) nanoelectronics and information technology, WILEY-VCH chapter 9, pp 234-236) 2005. Direct writing Projection printing Direct writing is the most common EBL approach and used for fabrication of the device reported here. In this approach, a beam of electrons directly impinges on the resist to form the pattern in a serial fashion. As shown in the figure 4.6, a direct writing system consists of a source of electrons, a focusing optics set, a blanker to turn on and off, a deflection system for moving the beam, and a stage for holding the substrate. Where as projection printing is used to project entire pattern simultaneously on to the wafer and can be divided into two ways; SACLPEL (scattering with angular limitation in projection electron beam lithography) and PREVAIL (projection reduction exposure with variable axis immersion lenses). However we will only concentrate on direct writing technique. Fig 4 dose test patterns of an array of self switching diodes (SSDs) fabricated using e-beam direct write. System configuration Figure 4.1. Simplified structure of a SEM column. The blue lines show the trajectory of the electrons. 4.2.4 E-beam process and proximity efect To perform electron beam lithography, PMMA (polymethyl methacrilate) resist was used which can be chemically changed under exposure to the electron beam. Final resolution of patterns in the e-beam resist and their eventual transfer into the substrate can be affected due to the imperfections in electron optics, the magnetic environment interaction, the overall thermal stability, the interaction between the beam and the substrate all play an equally important role in determining the ultimate system performance. When the electron beam strike the polymer film or any solid material, it losses energy via elastic and inelastic collisions collectively know as electron scattering. Elastic collisions change the direction of electron scattering, where as inelastic collisions lead to energy loss. As the electrons penetrate though the resist into the substrate, some of them undergo large angle scattering leading to undesired exposure that form backscattering. This causes additional exposure in the resist and is known as proximity effect. The magnitude of electron scattering depends on the density of the resist and substrate as well as the velocity of the electrons or the accelerating voltage (guozhong cao, nanostructures and nanomaterials, imperial college press, 2004, pp 280-300). (m.a. McCord and m.j.rooks, handbook of microlithoghraphy, micromachininbg and microfabrication, p.rai-choudary, Ed. Bellingham, WA:SPIE Optical engineering, 1997, ch 2, pp 139-249). The proximity effect is more severe in dense patterns, particularly when the separation between adjacent structures is less than 1ÃŽ ¼m. Since the amount of backscattered electrons depends on the substrate material, a dose calibration is necessary each time different substrates and resist thicknesses are used. Electron Scattering in Resist and Substrate The scattered electrons also expose the resist! Electrons, resist and substrates The smallest thing you can write with the ebeam depends on a large number of factors. These are the spot size used, the type of resist used, the thickness of the resist, the density of the features and the substrate material. When electrons are used to expose a pattern in resist it is not a simple process. Electrons enter the resist and hit the atoms of the resist, these will either forward scatter or back scatter. Backscattered electrons from the resist will leave the resist and, in general, do not contribute to the resist exposure, forward scattered electrons continue into the resist and contribute to the exposure. The thicker the resist the larger the forward scattering and the lower the resolution. High energy electrons (in our case 100kV) will go through the resist and deep into the substrate. Here they will again get scattered and will forward and backscatter. In this case the forward scattered electrons will be moving away from the resist and don’t contribute to the exposure, backscattered electrons from the substrate have a large contribution to the exposure. The higher the energy of the incoming electrons the deeper they will penetrate into the resist and hence the contribution to the resist exposure will be reduced. In the figure below you can see that going from 10kV to 20kV increases the penetration depth of the electrons from 1 µm to around 6 µm. At 100kV the penetration depth in Silicon is around 100 µm Figure schematic diagram of inter proximity effect and intra proximity effect The smallest feature sizes that can be achieved are when the features are isolated from one another. As you make your features closer together the backscatter from the neighbouring features will all contribute to the exposure and it will become harder to find the correct dose to correctly expose all your features. This is call proximity effects. There are 2 main effects of this; inter-proximity and intra-proximity. With inter-proximity when two features are close together the electrons from the exposure of on shape contributes to the dose of the neighbouring pattern. The larger and closer the features the worse this effect. With intra-proximity the dose in the centre of the pattern is larger than at the edges, and especially the corners. This is simply a geometric effect as there are less electrons contributing to the dose in the corners of the shape. The electrons need a path to ground. If you are using a conducting (or semi-conducting) substrate the contact with the holder is sufficient to provide a conducting path. If you are using an insulating substrate (fused glass, quartz) you will need to provide a conductive path for the electrons. This is normally done by evaporating a metal layer on top of the or underneath the resist. Aluminium or Chrome is are often good choices as they can often be easily be removed without effecting the resist, but you should check the chemical compatibility of your process with the removal procedure. Performing a Meaningful Dose Test Exposing a pattern correctly usually requires performing a preliminary test exposure referred to as a dose test.  In this test, the pattern is repeated several times on a test substrate.  Each repetition is performed at a different dose or set of doses creating a matrix of different exposure conditions.  Once the pattern is developed and pattern transfer has been performed the correct dose can be obtained through inspection in a suitable inspection tool (scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscope, optical microscope, etc).  There are several issues which can impact the usefullness of a dose test.  Here are some guidelines: Use the same type of substrate. If there are films present on the surface of the substrate us a substrate with the identical film stack. For large arrays of features, shooting the entire array as a test is not an efficient use of time.  However, reducing the size of the array to an unrealistically small extent can give incorrent results during the test due to differences in the proximity effect.    ·Ã‚  Expose your patterns so that they are easy to locate.  For example, do not expose a test pattern consisting of a 500 micron x 500 micron array of 50 nm squares in the middle of a 150 mm wafer.  You will probably never find them.  Including some locating features (large lines or a box surounding the pattern) can help tremendously.  If you are exposing an array of patterns use as small of a repeat vector as possible.  This will make locating the entire array easier and minimize the chances of getting lost when travelling in between adjacent elements of the array. Proximity Effect As an electron from the writing beam strikes the surface of a substrate it undergoes various scattering events losing energy and causing the generation of secondary electrons.  The energy range of most secondary electrons falls between 1  and  50 eV.  Secondary electrons that are close to the substrate/resist interface are actually responsible for the bulk of the actual resist exposure process.  While their range in resist is only a few nanometers they create what is known as the proximity effect.  Simply put, the proximity effect is the change in feature size of pattern features as a consequence of nonuniform exposure.   While the dose from the primary beam may be uniform across an entire pattern, the contribution of secondary electrons from the substrate may differ depending on pattern geometry.  Two adjacent features will contribute a background dose of secondary electrons to each other resulting in a higher effective dose.  This causes a broadening of the exposed features.  This is particularly apparent with dense features (e.g. gratings).  Consequently, dense arrays of features may require significantly less dose from the primary beam to print correctly.   Pattern size can also be adjusted to compensate for this effect.  For example, 100 nm lines 100 nm apart are typically drawn in CAD as 90 nm lines 110 nm apart to get them to print correctly.  This strategy stops working at the edges and corners of patterns.  This sometimes requires the  the creation of dummy patterns or devices outside of the primary pattern region to get the main features of interest to print correctly.  One common practice is to draw a box around the pattern to normalize the dose in the primary pattern region. 4.3 Imaging nanostructures Characterisation and manipulation of individual nanostructures requires not only extreme sensitivity and accuracy, but also atomic-level resolution that leads to various microscopes that will play a central role in characterisation and measurements of nanostructured materials (guozhong cao, nanostructures and nanomaterials, imperial college press, 2004, pp 280-300). Nevertheless, when we think of microscopes, we think of optical or electron microscopes that can image an object by focusing electromagnetic radiation, such as photons or electrons, on its surface and gives the image with very high magnifications.   However, the images obtained with these microscopes can only provide the information in the plane horizontal to the surface of the object and do not give any information in vertical dimensions of object’s surface height and depth. This section deals with the imaging of surface topography and surface property measurements of planar sensor using AFM and SEM techniques, which can provide us with all necessary information in both horizontal and vertical planes. (www.afmuniversity.org/pdf/Chapter_1_.pdf pp 1-16) 4.3.1 Atomic force microscopy (AFM) AFM is a very high-resolution type of microscope from the family of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) with the resolutions thousand times the better than optical diffraction limit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_force_microscope). Unlike traditional microscopes, AFM does not rely on electromagnetic radiation to create an image. AFM is a mechanical imaging instrument that measures the three dimensional topography as well as physical properties of a surface with a sharpened probe. ((www.afmuniversity.org/pdf/Chapter_1_.pdf pp 1-16) AFM Basic principles It consists of very sharp tip attached to cantilever and is positioned close enough to the surface such that it can interact with the atomic/molecular forces associated with the surface. Then a collimated laser beam focuses onto the cantilever, which scans across the surface such that the forces between the probes remain constant. An image of the surface is then produced by monitoring the precise motion of the probe that can sense the movements as tiny as 0.1 nm. Such high resolution allows to image even single atoms, which are typically 0.5 nm apart in a crystal. Normally the probe is scanned in a raster-like pattern as shown in the figure 4. ((www.afmuniversity.org/pdf/Chapter_1_.pdf pp 1-16) Source : http://www.afmuniversity.org/index.cgi?CONTENT_ID=33 AFM probe: Cantilever and Tip AFM is a force sensor with a sharp tip used to probe the surface. When the tip at the end of the cantilever interacts with the surface, the cantilever bends, and consequently beam path also changes, causing the amount of light in the two photo-detector sections to change. Thus, the electronic output of the force sensor is proportional to the force between the tip and the sample. Tips used for probing the surface is usually made of silicon that have a radius of about 10-20 nm and can be coated by silicon nitride to make them harder, or by noble metals, such as gold and platinum, to locally probe electrical quantities or to induce chemical modifications. Optical detection and Piezo electric scanner In order to detect the cantilever movements, when the AFM is operating in ambient conditions, optical detection is used. Reflected light from the focused laser beam is collected by a photodiode and the cantilever deflection and torsion are detected as a change in the photocurrents of the photodiode elements, as shown in Fig. 4. In the typical AFM configuration the tip is kept still, and the imaging is performed by moving the sample with piezoelectric scanner also referred as piezo tube as shown in the figure 4b. By controlling the bias of one inner and four outer electrodes the piezotube can be moved in three dimensions.  This photosensitive detector measures the change in optical beam position and the change in cantilever height. Feedback control Feedback control is used in AFM for maintaining a  ¬Ã‚ xed relationship, or force, between the probe and the surface. According to the mode used, the feedback loop can be controlled either by the cantilever deflection (contact mode) or by the amplitude of the cantilever oscillation (dynamic modes). The typical feedback system used in contact mode is shown in Fig. 3.11. The feedback control operates by measuring the force between the surface and probe, then controlling a piezoelectric ceramic that establishes the relative position of the probe and surface.  Feedback control is used in many applications; Figure 2-4 illustrates the use of feedback control in an oven. Section 2.3 has a more AFM modes: Tip – sample interactions Depending on separation between tip and the sample a variety of forces can be measured by AFM. At shorter distances van der Waals forces are predominant. Where as these forces become negligible if the tip-sample distance increases.  Forces like electrostatic attraction or repulsion, current induced or static magnetic interactions comes into play at these larger separations. The tip-surface forces (approx.) is given by the following equation Fa = ΔU = 12 B/Z13 – 6A/Z7  attractive Repulsive B and A  are coffecients depend upon the surfaces involved.detectable forces for an AFM 1 nN in the contact regime and 1 pN in the noncontact regime (theory 10-18 N) (r. wiesendanger, â€Å" chapter 11. future sensors.† In h.meixner, r. jones, eds vol 8: micro and nanosensor technology /trends in sensor markets. ) Based on these interactions, AFM usually has two operational modes; contact mode and dynamic mode. Depending on resonant frequency shift of tip-sample, dynamic mode is further divided into tapping mode and non-contact mode. Imaging for this work was carried out in tapping mode. Contact mode Also called as repulsive-static mode, in which, the tip rides on the sample in close with the sample surface (low k). The force produced in the feedback loop is frictional force; hence, the tip might interact with the sample surface. Non-contact mode Also called as attractive-dynamic mode, in which the tip hovers 5-15 nm away from the sample surface. The force generated in the feedback loop is typically van der Waals forces. Applied force (dependent on height z) changes the cantilever oscillation frequency. Figure: AFM Measurement in the figure PSPD represents photosensitive detector. Tapping mode Also called repulsive-dynamic mode, in which the AFM tip taps the surface as it maps the height z. This type of mode eliminates the hysteresis due to the tip sticking on the sample. Also using this method there is less likely to damage the sample. Scanning electron microscopy Scanning electron microscopy is also one of the major techniques for imaging the nanostructures. Although AFM gives high-resolution images with absolute precision, it takes much of time to scan and image the surface area of the sample. Where by SEM can provide an alternative to AFM, which is very fat at imaging the samples in both horizontal and vertical directions. These schematics show the ray traces for two probe-forming lens focusing conditions: small working distance (left) and large working distance (right). Both conditions have the same condenser lens strength and aperture size. However, as the sample is moved further from the lens, the following occurs: the working distance  S  is increased the demagnification decreases the spot size increases the divergence angle  alpha  is decreased The decrease in demagnification is obtained when the lens current is decreased, which in turn increases the focal length  f  of the lens. The resolution of the specimen is decreased with an increased working distance, because the spot size is increased. Conversely, the depth of field is increased with an increased working distance, because the divergence angle is smaller. Comparison between AFM and SEM The AFM is more often compared with the electron beam techniques such as the SEM or TEM. With an AFM, if the probe is good, a good image is measured. (www.afmuniversity.org/pdf/Chapter_1_.pdf pp 1-16) the following comparison between AFM and SEM gives a fair idea of the capabilities for applications A comparison of the some of the major factors follows: FIGURE  1-8 Both  the AFM  and SEM measure  topography. However, both types of microscopes can measure other  surface  physical  properties.  The SEM is good for measuring chemical composition and the AFM is good for measuring mechanical properties of surfaces. Summary This chapter has covered the main processing and imaging techniques used for fabrication of nanosensor reported in chapter 5.  Patterning of metal contacts and mesa structures on to the substrate using photolithography have been discussed in detail. The mechanism for the thin film deposition of Au/Ge/Ni alloy for forming ohmic and schottky contacts have been presented followed by a brief discussion of wet etching for undercut profiles. e-beam lithography which can overcome the resolution limitation in photolithography has been introduced with a description of its basic elements followed a discussion on proximity effect. So overall, this chapter provides the reader with fundamental knowledge to understand the basic fabrication and characterisation process of which serves as a tool for better understanding the fabrication of planar nanodevices discussed in next chapter (i.e chapter 5). Bibliography Introduction The evolution of semiconductor industry has brought a revolutionary change in the way we live today. Right from the invention of germanium transistor in 1947 to the latest sensation graphene transistor, the world has seen some of the spectacular breakthroughs that the human kind had ever imagined few decades ago. In the last fifteen years, more than twelve noble prizes have been awarded for the research based in the field of nanotechnology. 1.1  Sensors and sensor science Life without sensors and sensing would be like an opera without singer or a violin without strings. Such life does not exist. Sensors and sensing, on the contrary, are basic properties of life that are responsible for the closed loop real time control of what is going on inside and how it reacts to the outside situation. From bacteria to plants and animals to human beings, all living organisms use their sensing organs for orientation and communication, for monitoring the environment and for their survival. (sensors and sensing in biology and engineering, springer wien newyork, 2003, friedrich g. barth, joseph a.c. Humphrey, timothy w.secomb pp3-34 chapter1 and 2.) Digital systems however complex and intelligent they are, must receive information from the outside world. Sensors act as an interface between various physical values and electronic circuits that ‘understand’ only a language of moving electrical charges. In other words, sensors are eyes, ears, and noses of silicon chips. Some sensors are relatively simple and some are complex, which operate on fundamental basic principles. Understanding of these devices generally requires an interdisciplinary background in fields such as physics electronics, chemistry etc. Thus, sensors research has brought a unique team of chemists, biologists, physicists electronic engineers, together on one platform, thus making it a truly interdisciplinary field. 1.1.1 The term ‘Sensor’ In this ever-changing world, sensors are becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives and play an important role in this process. Since the early 1990s, semiconductor industry has seen a tremendous growth in the development of variety of sensors. The technological trends in this field have made electronic products not only smaller and sleeker, but also more interactive and powerful.  These sensors with their improving performance–cost ratio will be the key components for the future nanoelectronic devices.(http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/market-insighttop.pag?docid=140061375) The word sensor is derived from the Latin word sentire, which means, â€Å"to perceive†. A sensor i