Philosophy of Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Philosophy of Education - Essay Example So what does this term quality really indicate? A quality education is first and foremost free from obvious flaws. In the manufacturing sector, quality control ensures that the product leaving the factory will perform as promised. A quality education is delivered by skill, competent educational practitioners. These are people that are talented and trained to ensure that the processes of teaching and learning work as promised. A quality education is an education where student expectations of learning are elevated by inspired teachers. These teachers then strive to facilitate the learning in a manner that exceeds student expectations. Aside from being free from flaws in delivery, reception and analysis of information, a quality education is an education that meets the immediate needs of the learner and then inspires the learner to look to the future with the bright understanding that they can overcome challenges and obstacles that hinder them from reaching their goals. The basis for a program that delivers a quality education is grounded in the belief that all children can learn. Coupled with that belief is the understanding that all children learn differently. ... Educational settings are often accused of not being a part of the real world. The real world is full of people with different capacities to learn grow and achieve. Creating an inclusive setting within the classroom makes the learning in that classroom more real than it would be if children with high ability were segregated from those that struggle to achieve. Inclusion of all children within the classroom has positive social and educational benefits, but it also creates a very difficult situation for the teacher. How can quality instruction be delivered if the reading levels are so very different or if the math skills don’t all match? Why should the child that is well behaved and mannerly be saddled with classmates that are rowdy and rude? How can these challenges created by inclusion be overcome? Differentiating instruction is the means by which the teacher can deliver a quality education to each child even though their interests and abilities greatly vary. Teachers need to d ifferentiate their instruction based on how they deliver information to accommodate different learning styles, student readiness to learn and student interest. Each of these types of differentiation addresses challenges created by inclusion of all students in the educational setting. Children obtain information in a multitude of ways, and studies have shown that some are more adept at using some sensory methods than others. The visual learner, the auditory learner and the kinesthetic learner are not new ideas in education. Offering a plethora of sensory rich experiences for children heightens the chance that individual learning styles will be accommodated most of the time. What children need is an opportunity to have instruction to play into their strengths

Health care marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 6

Health care marketing - Essay Example The quality of a product does not vary over the course of time. Whatever the quality of the product is, it remains what it was at the time the product was purchased. On the other hand, the quality of a service varies at different points in time e.g. an Internet service that shows high speed generally occasionally becomes slow. Since products are a one-time purchase, they have to be provided guarantee with unlike service, that is purchased just as much as and till the time it is paid for. Therefore, marketing a product requires the vendor to establish a guarantee period for it after which, no claims made by the customer would be entertained. Marketing a service requires the vendor to provide the guarantee till the time the service is delivered. Vendors have to be more careful while marketing a product because a customer who has bought the product once might never show up for a second buy if the quality was compromising whereas in the case of service, vendors can and actually do sometimes decline the quality of service temporarily because they know that they can upgrade it in case any claims are

Scientific method Essay Example for Free

Scientific method Essay Policy and practice impacts of research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council A case study of the Future of Work programme, approach and analysis Steven Wooding, Edward Nason, Lisa Klautzer, Jennifer Rubin, Stephen Hanney, Jonathan Grant Policy and practice impacts of research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council A case study of the Future of Work programme, approach and analysis Steven Wooding, Edward Nason, Lisa Klautzer, Jennifer Rubin, Stephen Hanney, Jonathan Grant Prepared for the Economic and Social Research Council. The research described in this report was prepared for the Economic and Social Research Council. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. R ® is a registered trademark.  © Copyright 2007 RAND Corporation All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from RAND. Published 2007 by the RAND Corporation 1776 Main Street, P. O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 1200 South Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202-5050 4570 Fifth Avenue, Suite 600, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2665 Westbrook Centre, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 1YG, United Kingdom RAND URL: http://www.rand. org/ RAND Europe URL: http://www. rand. org/randeurope. To order RAND documents or to obtain additional information, contact Distribution Services: Telephone: (310) 451-7002; Fax: (310) 451-6915; Email: [emailprotected] org Preface This report, prepared for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), examines the impact of the ESRC’s ‘Future of Work’ programme on policy makers, professional practitioners and other groups outside academia. It also explores the applicability of the ‘Payback Framework’, a conceptual model for research evaluation, to social science. The Future of Work programme was an initiative that aimed to bring together leading researchers in the United Kingdom in an investigation of the future prospects for paid and unpaid work. The first phase of the programme started in October 1998, followed by a second phase in January 2001. The report is presented in two volumes. This volume presents the conclusions of the research and summarises the methods and results. The second volume includes a brief literature review of the evaluation of social science and the influence of research on policy; an overview of the Future of Work programme; detailed analysis of a survey of Future of Work PIs (Principal Investigators); and four complete case study narratives of projects from the programme. The report will be of interest to the ESRC and policy makers in the wider social science and policy community who are interested in how social science informs policy and practice. It will also be of interest to those developing methods to evaluate research. The research was led by RAND Europe in collaboration with the Health Economics Research Group (HERG). RAND Europe is an independent not-for-profit think tank and research organisation that serves the public interest by providing evidence for policy making and public debate. HERG, a Specialist Research Institute of Brunel University, has as one of its main research themes, methodological and empirical studies of the impact of research. This report has been peer reviewed in accordance with RAND’s quality assurance standards (see http://www. rand. org/about/standards/) and therefore may be represented as a RAND Europe product. For more information about RAND Europe or this document, please contact Steven Wooding Senior Policy Analyst Tel: +44 1223 273897 Email: [emailprotected] org RAND Europe Westbrook Centre, Milton Road Cambridge. CB4 1YG, United Kingdom Jonathan Grant Deputy to the President Tel: +44 1223 293 893 Email: [emailprotected] org [emailprotected] org iii Contents Preface iii Overview of impact vii Executive summary ix Acknowledgments.. xiii CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2 Methodology and project structure .. 3 2. 1 The analytical framework . 3 2. 2 Initial tasks .. 5 2. 2. 1 Brief review of social science impacts literature . 5 2. 2. 2 Review of FoW documentation 5 2. 2. 3 Key informant interviews. 5 2. 2. 4 Output of initial tasks 5 2. 3 Payback survey .. 6 2. 4 Interim report 7 2. 5 Case studies. 7 2. 6 Analysis workshop 9 CHAPTER 3 Results . 11 3. 1 Key findings from the literature review and key informant interviews.. 11 3. 2 Summary of results from survey.. 13 3. 3 User interviews 26 3. 4 Case study summaries.. 27 3. 5 Case study A. 27 3. 6 Case study B. 30 3. 7 Case study C 33 3. 8 Case study D 35 3. 9 Concluding comments 37 CHAPTER 4 Discussion.. 39 4. 1 Impact of the FoW programme .. 39 4. 1. 1 The FoW programme has had significant wider impacts on policy and practice 39 v Policy and practice impacts of ESRC funded research RAND Europe 4. 2 4. 3 4. 4 4. 1. 2 What impact has the FoW programme had? 39 4. 1. 3 Why has the FoW programme had an impact? 40 4. 1. 4 What affects the impact of projects .. 41 Applying the Payback Model to wider impacts of social science .. 42 4. 2. 1 The Payback Framework can be applied to social science .. 42 4. 2. 2 Generalisation of categories.. 42 4. 2. 3 General points about assessing impacts of social science . 43 Further research.. 45 Concluding comments. 46 REFERENCES. 47 Reference list.. 49 vi Overview of impact The Future of Work (FoW) programme succeeded in bringing together an interdisciplinary group of academics, stimulating constructive discussions and providing access to policy makers to ensure the wider impact of the research. The FoW programme had significant academic and wider impacts. There was substantial output from the programme in the area of knowledge production. To date this has included 11 books and 69 book chapters; four journal special issues and over 100 peer reviewed articles, alongside over 200 conference presentations. Six of the researchers felt they had changed the direction of their research field. In terms of capacity development, involvement in the FoW programme was seen as a moderate or considerable contributor to 20 academic promotions, and the most common benefit of the programme cited by researchers were the opportunities to meet other researchers and in providing fora for discussion. In our survey of Principal Investigators (PIs) they reported 50 policy impacts, across a range of organisations including national government, political parties, employers and unions. Contributions to the policy debate included more than 60 working papers and official reports; seminars for the DTI, Low Pay Commission and Cabinet Office. More directly there were nine secondments, which placed the researchers in a policy environment, including a senior role in the DTI Women and Equality unit, where the researcher was able to influence strategy and policy decisions relating to equality. Further specific examples of policy impact were: the chairmanship of the TUC Partnership Institute by a researcher, allowing him to impact on employer/union relationships; the drafting of guidance notes on complying with employment legislation for the DTI by a research group; direct input into the Work and Families Bill (2003), which introduced new legislation on maternity and paternity leave; and citation in a House of Lords judgement on pay and conditions, specifically looking at unfair dismissal. Outside the government sectors our case studies identified a number of impacts on employers, including changes in workload policies and career structure; effects on maternity and family friendly working practices in a large consulting organisation and the negotiation of union-employer partnership deals. vii Policy and practice impacts of ESRC funded research RAND Europe Dissemination Almost half of the PIs felt the extensive networks of the Programme Director, and steering committee, had provided them with direct access to policy makers. These policy makers included those in the Work Foundation and a government agency. In addition, the FoW Media Fellow enhanced the impact of the research on more distant policy makers. He achieved this by producing research summaries set in the context of current policy and other research findings. Crucially, he worked to timescales suitable for policy makers rather than those of researchers. Evaluation methodology This evaluation used the Payback Framework as a conceptual structure and showed that the framework is useful for evaluating the wider impacts of social science. We used a number of techniques to collect data for the study: document review; key informant interviews; an on-line survey; and case studies. However, we found that some impacts are inaccessible to evaluation, because of political sensitivity or anonymity guarantees. viii Executive summary We examined how the ESRC Future of Work (FoW) programme influenced policy and professional practice. While doing so we reflected on the methods used to assess and identify impacts. Specifically, we considered whether the Payback Framework, a conceptual model for research evaluation, was appropriate for social science. Here we summarise the key findings. The FoW brought together an interdisciplinary group of academics, stimulated constructive discussion and provided access to policy makers. This may be especially significant given the view expressed by key informants that employment policy and management practices may be especially hard to reach with evidence as they are heavily contextual and apt to be influenced by fashion and ideology. Impacts The FoW programme had significant impacts on knowledge and research. This was evident in the numerous publications and conference presentations attributed to the programme. Most Principal Investigators (PIs) attributed incremental changes in their field of research to their projects, and some attributed a clear change of direction in their field of research to their projects. Most of the projects also influenced other researchers. The FoW programme had significant impacts on public policy. Although some PIs could identify specific impacts of their research, many found it difficult to identify actual policies they had influenced. PIs generally thought they had influenced policy in an incremental way and informed the policy debate. PIs also gave many presentations of FoW research to policy audiences. The FoW programme had significant impacts on career development. More than 75% of PIs thought the FoW programme had helped them to form networks with researchers, policy makers and practitioners; nearly half of PIs attributed career development for researchers to their FoW projects, including nine secondments to government. The FoW programme impacted on the policies and practice of organisations. There were many presentations given in organisations; PIs thought organisational practices were influenced by the research, but only some were easily identifiable. The policy environment determines policy impact. In one case the heightened awareness among policy makers of issues around maternity leave and women returning to work ix Policy and practice impacts of ESRC funded research RAND Europe provided fertile ground for research on how women make these decisions. In a second case the waning interest in union-employer partnerships was thought to have reduced the impact of a TUC institute chaired by a former FoW researcher. In general, the FoW research seldom caused major changes in policy but often resulted in impacts such as stimulating debate, fine-tuning policy, dispelling myths and providing confirmatory support. Dissemination The FoW programme provided access to policy makers. It effectively combined the networks of the Director and steering committee, and provided the researchers access to these networks which included key policy makers in the DTI, Low Pay Commission (LPC) and Cabinet Office. The FoW Media Fellow enhanced the impact on policy makers. This was achieved largely for two reasons. First, because his summaries of the FoW research were produced to a timescale suitable for policy makers, rather than researchers. And second because they were accessible to policy makers: setting the FoW research in the context of other research and current policy discussions. Researchers and policy makers differed in their views on how best to disseminate to policy makers. The two groups consider different channels to be important: researchers favouring academic publications, policy makers favouring the Media Fellow’s publications. The Payback Framework is a useful model for evaluating social science research. The Payback Framework provides a structure for research evaluation. It comprises a logic model of the research and dissemination process and a classification scheme for the immediate and wider impacts of research. This consists of five categories: Knowledge; Impacts on future research; Impacts on policy; Impacts on practice and Wider social and economic impacts. Both the literature review and fieldwork showed that the Framework could be effectively applied to social science research. Impacts and attribution Some impacts may be inaccessible to evaluation, for example some impacts were politically sensitive, so participants requested that they were not discussed. Also, subjects of the original research may have been influenced by their participation in that research, but their identity could not be revealed to the researchers in this evaluation. A confluence of inputs and incremental ‘knowledge creep’ make it difficult to attribute policy change to a given input. The Payback Framework provides a structure in which to explore the context within which projects are developed. However, the incremental nature of policy remains a difficulty in assessing impact at the project level. There are few mechanisms in social science to codify and synthesise research. In contrast to biomedical science, in the fields covered by the FoW programme there are fewer formal mechanisms to systematically review research; these mechanisms can offer tracers of policy influence. x RAND Europe Executive summary Timing Research on impacts may happen too early or too late. If research on impacts occurs too early, some impacts may not yet have occurred. If it occurs too late, certain impacts may have already come and gone. This possibility of transience makes it harder to investigate the impacts, as they may not be captured by a current snapshot of policies and policy debates. In order to provide a comprehensive view of the wider impacts of research this project suggests it would be important to warn researchers at the start of the project about likely evaluations; provide researchers with a mechanism to capture early impacts; and then evaluate research after further impacts have had time to develop, probably 5-10 years after completion of the research. The literature suggests that for research relating to ‘hot topics’ in policy, initial impact is likely to occur earlier and that 2 years post completion may provide the best time frame for evaluation. Implementation of evaluation There was widespread cooperation in the evaluation. The majority of PIs (including all case study PIs), 80% of nominated research users, and others nominated by PIs, agreed to participate in the research when approached. Researchers and users may prefer structured interviews to written surveys. Our experience also suggests that such interviews would provide more useful information for evaluation. Our on-line survey required significantly more of most participants’ time than predicted. xi Acknowledgments This study would have been impossible without the generous support of those involved with the Future of Work programme – we thank them for their constructive criticism and for sparing their time for interviews and to fill in our survey. We would particularly like to thank those researchers whose grants were selected as case studies. We would also like to thank Veronica Littlewood of the Economic and Social Research Council for her help and advice, including at the analysis workshop. Finally, we would like to thank Professor Martin Buxton and Stijn Hoorens who acted as the quality assurance reviewers. xiii CHAPTER 1 Introduction This report explores the wider impacts of social science research: how research affects policy, practitioner behaviour and public opinion. It does this by examining the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Future of Work (FoW) research programme. The ESRC is the UK’s largest research funder and training agency addressing economic and social concerns. As such it aims to provide high quality research on issues of importance to business, the public sector and government. The FoW programme set out to bring together leading UK researchers, across a wide range of disciplines, in order to investigate the future prospects for paid and unpaid work. The programme was shaped by a consultation exercise involving 140 policy makers, academics and practitioners, carried out by Professor Peter Nolan in 1997. The first phase of the programme started in October 1998, followed by a second phase in January 2001. The total funding of the programme amounted to ? 4 million and attracted 221 applications for the first phase, of which 19 were supported. A further eight projects were supported in the second phase. The aims of the programme are shown in Box 1. †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ To create the evidence base that would then ground theories of work To enhance public understanding of the critical developments most likely to impact on people’s working lives To deepen accounts of the future of work by systematic mapping of past and present shifts and continuities To foster interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives To use innovative methods to engage with research users To act as a focus for debate within and between the academic, practitioner and policy-making communities Box 1. Aims of the FoW programme. Peter Nolan, Montague Burton Chair of Industrial Relations at Leeds, went on to direct the programme. He encouraged interaction between the research groups, promoted dissemination of programme findings and raised the programme’s profile. The Director was assisted by a programme advisory committee of senior representatives from government, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), business and academia. The advisory group attended meetings, participated in site visits to meet researchers, and provided access to policy networks. The written dissemination activities were led by Robert Taylor, a 1. Policy and practice impacts of ESRC funded research RAND Europe former journalist at the Financial Times, who was appointed as the programme’s Media Fellow. He wrote a series of seven booklets, aimed at policy makers, that described FoW research and set it in context. The output of the programme has been substantial: its outputs so far include 11 books, 69 book chapters, over 100 refereed articles and over 400 media mentions. This study explores the wider impacts of the programme in more detail. Over the past decade there has been an increasing culture of accountability affecting government spending. This climate has led ESRC to investigate the most effective ways to evaluate social science research, and to demonstrate the wider impact of its research on society. This report builds on experience of evaluating research in the health services and biomedical settings and seeks to apply it to social science. In this work we take the Payback Framework, originally developed by the Health Economics Research Group (HERG) at Brunel University, and test its applicability to social science. The Payback Framework was initially developed to examine the payback of health services research (Buxton et al., 1994; Buxton and Hanney, 1994; Buxton and Hanney, 1996). It was further developed in an earlier ESRC analysis of non-academic impact from research (Cave and Hanney, 1996) and subsequently extended to examine basic and clinical biomedical research (Wooding et al. , 2005; Wooding et al. , 2004). This study tested whether the Framework could be applied to examine the payback of social science research. To do this we briefly reviewed the literature on social science evaluation and the common models for examining the impact of evidence on policy, and concluded that they could be aligned with the Payback Framework. We then used the Payback Framework to examine the research projects in the FoW programme. We used the Payback Framework to structure a programme-wide questionnaire and a series of four case studies. Finally, we used these three streams of evidence to summarise the wider impacts of the FoW study and to see what can be learnt from the programme. We also used the evidence to develop a refined Payback Framework and consider its applicability for evaluating the wider impacts of social science research. 2 CHAPTER 2 Methodology and project structure. This project set out to examine the wider impacts of the FoW programme and to test the applicability of the Payback Framework to social science. It used a number of data collection methods (shown schematically in Figure 1). First we conducted a brief review of the literature concerning the ways in which social science affects policy and how the impacts of social science can be assessed. To develop our understanding of the FoW programme we reviewed documents from the ESRC and interviewed key individuals. We then surveyed all the Principal Investigators (PIs) who held grants from the FoW programme  to investigate the wider impacts of their grants, and asked them to nominate a user of their research for follow up via a telephone interview. To examine the pathways to impact in more detail we carried out four case studies of FoW PIs. The data collected throughout the study were then analysed in a one-day workshop. More detail on each of these stages is provided in the sections that follow. Figure 1. Project schematic 2. 1 The analytical framework The analytical framework for the study was based on the Payback Framework. The Payback Framework consists of two elements: a logic model representation of the complete research process (for the purposes of research evaluation), and a series of categories to classify the individual paybacks from research. The logic model and categories of the Payback Framework that served as the starting point for this study are presented below in Figure 2 and Box 2 respectively. The logic model provides a framework for analysing the ‘story’ of a research idea from initial inception 3 Policy and practice impacts of ESRC funded research RAND Europe. (Stage 0) through the research process (Stage 2) into dissemination (Interface B) and on towards its impact on people and society (Stage 6). The model is meant as a research tool to facilitate cross-case analysis. It does this by providing a common structure for each case study thereby ensuring cognate information for each study is recorded in the same place. The model is not meant to imply that the research process itself is linear. If necessary, individual pieces of information can be recorded in more than one place in the Framework to ensure they are picked up in the relevant cross-case comparisons. Figure 2. The version of the Payback Framework used as a starting point for the study1 Knowledge production Journal articles; conference presentations; books; book chapters; research reports Research targeting and capacity building Better targeting of future research; development of research skills, personnel and overall research capacity; staff development and educational benefits Informing policy and product development Improved information bases for political and executive decisions; development of pharmaceutical products and therapeutic techniques Health and health sector benefits. Improved health; cost reduction in delivery of existing services; qualitative improvements in the process of delivery; improved equity in service delivery Broader economic benefits Wider economic benefits from commercial exploitation of innovations arising from RD; economic benefits from a healthy workforce and reduction in working days lost Box 2. The payback categories of the Payback Framework used as a starting point for the study (Source: Hanney et al. , 2004) The categories of the Payback Framework are considered in the Discussion section of this report where the applicability of the model to social science research is discussed. 1 Source: Hanney et al. , 2004 4 RAND Europe Methodology and project structure 2. 2 2. 2. 1 Initial tasks Brief review of social science impacts literature A brief review of the literature, presented in Volume II, examines frameworks of evaluation previously used to examine the impact of social science research as well as models of research impact. The review was intended to identify lessons from the literature that would inform the current study, but was not intended to be comprehensive. 2. 2. 2 Review of FoW documentation At the outset of the project we also reviewed the ESRC records covering the FoW programme. This informed our interview protocol for the key informant interviews and provided the basis of our overview of the FoW programme, which was used as background information throughout the study. This overview is presented in Volume II. 2. 2. 3 Key informant interviews To gain a deeper understanding of the overall context and impact of the FoW programme we carried out interviews with six key informants. Suitable key informants were identified by ESRC and by the Director of the FoW programme: o o o o o o Professor Peter Nolan (FoW Programme Director) John Hougham (Chair of Advisory Board) Professor Toby Wall (Member of panel that appointed the Programme Director and Member of Advisory Panel) Bill Callaghan (Member of Research Priorities Board and Chair of Commissioning Panel) Professor William Brown (PI on two grants, one in each phase of the programme) Robert Taylor (Programme Media Fellow). These interviews were written up and examined for themes relating to the wider impact of social science and the FoW programme. These themes were then clustered and used to inform the refinement of the Payback Framework. We also carried out a second follow-up interview with Peter Nolan late in the project to examine various issues that had been raised in the survey and case study phases of the project. 2. 2. 4 Output of initial tasks The findings of the initial tasks suggested that the logic model aspect of the Payback Framework was generally appropriate for the social sciences. However, the categories needed some generalisation; our initial revision of these categories was presented in our interim report to the ESRC and are shown in Box 3. 5 Policy and practice impacts of ESRC funded research RAND Europe Knowledge production Journal articles; conference presentations; books + chapters; research reports Research targeting and capacity building Sparking new research proposals; providing research training; supporting career advancement Informing policy and product development Raising the profile/awareness of existing research among policy/practitioners makers; dispelling/resisting myths; providing policy options; prioritising areas; designing management assessment tools; developing benchmarking protocols Employment sector benefits. Improved working conditions; higher participation in workforce; more effective regulation Societal and broader economic benefits Lower stress among workers; improved public health; improved mental health through decreased unemployment; greater productivity; improved equity Box 3: Draft Payback Categories for the Social Sciences afer initial tasks. 2. 3 Payback survey To examine the range and types of payback produced across the FoW programme we invited all the PIs to complete an online survey. The survey concentrated on the wider impacts of the projects, but also asked some questions about the initiation of the research. The survey questions were based on those used in previous payback studies and modified in light of the key informant interviews and literature review2. PIs were invited to participate in the survey using personalised emails which contained a direct hyperlink to their questionnaire. PIs who had grants in both phases of the FoW programme received two emails linking to two separate surveys. The survey was implemented using MMIC web questionnaire software. 3 Data were downloaded from MMIC and analysed using SPSS version 14 and Microsoft Excel version 2000. 4 The questionnaire was originally drafted on paper. The paper draft was reviewed by the ESRC and by both of the project’s quality assurance reviewers. After incorporating their comments it was converted into a web questionnaire and again reviewed by the ESRC. We also asked a RAND researcher from outside the project team to test the questionnaire by talking us through their thoughts as they filled it in. This helped us to identify misunderstandings and confusing questions. 2 Payback questionnaires first used in Buxton et al. , 2000 and subsequently refined for payback analysis of the NHS Research Implementation Methods Programme and the Dutch and UK Health.

factors affecting saccharomyces cerevisiae

factors affecting saccharomyces cerevisiae Chapter 1: Introduction Research Questions: What is the effect of differing temperatures on Saccharomyces cerevisiae population growth? What is the effect of differing pH levels on Saccharomyces cerevisiae population growth? What is the effect of differing glucose concentrations on Saccharomyces cerevisiae population growth? The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a single celled fungus that reproduces asexually by budding or division. It is one of the most well studied eukaryotic model organisms in both molecular and cell biology. S. cerevisiae is a very good type of yeast for biological studies owing to the rapid growth (doubling time 1.5-2 hours at 30 Â °C), the dispersed cells and the ease of replica planting. Moreover is a non-pathogenic organism, so can be handled fearlessly with only little precautions. Also large amounts of commercial bakers yeast are available with result being an easy and cheap source for biochemical studies. S. cerevisiae has round to ovoid cells between 3-8ÃŽÂ ¼m in diameter. 1.2 Respiration In biology, respiration is defined as: the process by which the energy in food molecules is made available for an organism to do biological work (Kent, 2000; p.100). It is also called Cellular respiration. This process of cellular respiration happens in every living cell as it is the only way to obtain energy in a form that will be usable for the cell, so it can carry out the functions of movement, growth and reproduction (ibid). The food in yeasts must be obtained as they cannot produce it on their own. For yeasts, a very good source of energy is sugars. All strains of S. cerevisiae can metabolize glucose (a hexose sugar), maltose and trehalose. 1.3 Types of Respiration There are two main types of respiration that take place within a cell: Anaerobic respiration (without oxygen) and Aerobic respiration (with oxygen). S. cerevisiae can metabolize sugars in both ways, but in this research the cultures of yeast were exposed to air hence to oxygen, so aerobic respiration was mainly the way that yeast cells grew and reproduced. 1.4 Enzymes Thousands of chemical reactions are carried out within a cell. These reactions most of the times occur in a very slow rate. For that reason living organisms make biological catalysts which are called enzymes and speed up these reactions. Enzymes are globular proteins which act as catalysts of chemical reactions (Allot, 2007; p.18. Also cells can control which reaction occurs in their cytoplasm by making some enzymes and not others. Enzymes achieve to increase the rate of a reaction by decreasing the activation energy (the minimum amount of energy required for a reaction to occur) (Greenwood. Et al. 2007; p.167) of the substrate or the substrates, when binding to the activation site (Greenwood. et al. 2007; p.114). Enzymes are sensitive molecules with very specific structure which enables them to carry out specific reactions. This structure including the active site can be damaged by various conditions and substrates. This damage is called denaturation and is usually permanent for an enzyme and if denaturation is occurred the enzyme can no longer carry out its function. As a result when enzymes are required to catalyze a reaction, is necessary that they have appropriate conditions. Different enzymes have different ideal conditions called optimum. The factors that affect the enzyme activity are: the temperature, the pH, the substrate concentration. The effect of temperature, pH and substrate concentration upon the enzyme activity which affects the growth of S. cerevisiae yeast cells are studied in this research. 1.5 Effect of Temperature As the temperature is increased in an enzyme-catalysed reaction, the rate of reaction is increased up to maximum in a specific temperature. This is called optimum temperature. The optimum temperature of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is 30o- 32oC. Above this temperature the rate starts to drop rapidly. This is due to the high energy that causes vibration inside the enzyme with result the bonds which maintain the structure of enzyme to break. This causes denaturation and the active site can no longer fit the substrate. 1.6 Effect of pH (hydrogen ion concentration) Most of the enzymes operate effectively in a small range of pH values. Between these pH values there is an optimum pH value in which the enzyme activity is the highest. The optimum pH of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is 5.5. Acids and alkalis cause denaturation of the structure of the enzyme by breaking mainly hydrogen and ionic bonds with result the substrate cant fit the active site. Furthermore the charges of the amino acids within the active site are affected by pH changes, so the enzyme is not able to form an enzyme-substrate complex. Above and below the optimum pH the enzymatic activity hence the rate is reduced considerably. 1.7 Effect of Substrate concentration In an enzyme-catalysed reaction the rate increases in direct proportion to the substrate concentration. The optimum glucose concentration of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is 2%. At low substrate concentrations, the rate of enzymatic activity increases sharply as the substrate increases. This occurs due to the more frequent collisions between the substrate molecules and the unoccupied active sites. On the other hand, at high substrate concentrations the biggest part of the active sites have been occupied with result when increasing the substrate concentration there is little effect on the rate of enzymatic activity. 1.8 Purpose of the research The purpose of this research that is carried out to examine the growth of S. cerevisiae yeast cells in different factors and various conditions is not so in order to discover which are the optimum conditions in each factor (as this species of S. cerevisiae is very well studied and examined professionally because of its usage in food industry) but to examine in real conditions and not theoretical ones how altering the environment of a cell affects the way its enzymes work and help the whole cell to live and divide in all of the previously ways that were mentioned in the introduction part.

Alcoholism and Angelas Ashes :: essays research papers

Alcoholism and Angela’s Ashes Alcoholism is one of the most common disorders in the world today. It is a disease, a sickness that harms the body and the mind in the most violent ways possible. The body is racked by a need to suffice its desire, and this leads addicts to do anything to get the alcohol into their systems. In Angela’s Ashes, alcoholism is a major theme, and becomes the destroyer of the families and loved ones that are involved. In Angela’s Ashes, the father Malachy is inflicted with the disease of alcoholism, and his need for the drink leads him to use his paycheck to buy alcohol instead of using it for the basic needs of his family. Countless times, Malachy’s alcoholism harms or gets in the way of his family. Not only this, but Malachy is blind to what his behavior is doing to his family. Because he does not use his money on food for his family, they are forced to beg and accept help from friends and strangers—and yet he is too proud to admit this. Repeated instances such as when he asked the RIAA person for enough money just for one pint—when the money was supposed to be for a cab to get he and his son back to the station without having to walk. Or even when his first child was born and he was too drunk for the hospital staff to interpret what he was saying he wanted to name his son. There are too many of the same repeated episodes—he gets a job, brings home money at fir st, then just stops altogether and uses it at the pub, he gets fired from his job, and his family is worse off now, they are forced to move or live off the kindness of others. It’s the same cycle over and over again. Lives are lost along the way—the innocents, the children. And still Malachy depends on the drink. He is a constant disappointment—and spirals the family deeper and deeper into poverty over the years, mainly because of his addiction. Alcoholism is a terrible disease that can happen to anyone, and the person might not even notice it until the addiction is at its worst. In Angela’s Ashes, Malachy’s alcoholism ruins his family’s chance for a happy life, and he doesn’t even seem to care, as long as he has his alcohol everything seems fine.

Recovering History, Constructing Race: the Indian, Black, and White Roo

Recovering History, Constructing Race: the Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans Recovering Aztlan : Racial Formation Through a Shared History (1) Traditionally history of the Americas and American population has been taught in a direction heading west from Europe to the California frontier. In Recovering History, Constructing Race, Martha Mencahca locates the origins of the history of the Americas in a floral pattern where migration from Asia, Europe, and Africa both voluntary and forced converge magnetically in Mexico then spreads out again to the north and northeast. By creating this patters she complicates the idea of race, history, and nationality. The term Mexican, which today refers to a specific nationality in Central America, is instead used as a shared historic and cultural identity of a people who spread from Mexico across the southwest United States. To create this shared identity Menchaca carefully constructs the Mexican race from prehistoric records to current battles for Civil Rights. What emerges is a story in which Anglo-Americans become the illegal immigrants crossing the border into Texas and mestizo Mexicans can earn an upgrade in class distinction through heroic military acts. In short what emerges is a sometimes upside down always creative reinvention of history and the creation of the Mexican "race (?)". Mexicans, as constructed by Menchaca, are a predominantly mestizo population whose mixed ancestry she traces to early Latin American civilizations. In 200 BC the largest city in the Americas, Teotihuacà ¡n, was founded. Teotihuacà ¡n would one day be the site of Mexico City, and by 650 AD there were between 120,000 and 250,000 inhabitants. (2) Groups that inhabited the region fro... ...e, history, and blood. The specific commingling that emerges, however, has common roots in its very diversity. Throughout her tale Menchaca's allegiance is clearly to her race, and while the bias comes through, the history she traces is never the less compelling. The strongest achievement of this book is that it fundamentally shifts the gaze of its reader by reifying race and celebrating its complexity. Notes 1. Aztlan is the quasimythylogical homeland of the Chichimec people who were expelled by their god and traveled south to found civilizations in Mexico. It is theoretically located in present day New Mexico. 2. Martha Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing Race: the Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001), 29. 3. Menchaca, 47. 4. Menchaca, 50. 5. Menchaca, 199.

Frog and the Nightingale Essay

The book is widely regarded as a classic in India since its first publication in 1946, and provides a broad view of Indian history, philosophy and culture, as viewed from the eyes of a liberal Indian fighting for the independence of his country. In The Discovery of India, Nehru argued that India was a historic nation with a right to sovereignty. (Calhoun, Craig, Nations Matter: Culture, History and the Cosmopolitan Dream, Routledge. In this book, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru tries to study the history of India starting from the Indus Valley Civilization, and then covers the country’s history from the arrival of the Aryans to government under the British Empire. He says that India in the past was country which lived in harmony and peace, but the entry of society evils had a very bad effect on people. The effect of these various people on Indian culture and their incorporation into Indian society is examined. This book also analyses in depth the philosophy of Indian life. This book was dedicated to the Prisoners of Ahmednagar jail. The book became the basis of the 53-episode Indian television series Bharat Ki Khoj, first broadcast in 1988. PREFACE OF THE BOOK BY JAWAHARLAL NEHRU:- This book was written by Jawaharlal Nehru in Ahmadnagar Fort prison during the five months, April to September 1944. Some of his colleagues in prison were good enough to read the manuscript and make a number of valuable suggestions. On revising the book in prison he took advantage of these suggestions and made some additions. No one, he need hardly add, is responsible for what he has written or necessarily agrees with it. But he expresses my deep gratitude to his fellow-prisoners in Ahmadnagar Fort for the innumerable talks and discussions they had, which helped him greatly to clear his own mind about various aspects of Indian history and culture. Prison is not a pleasant place to live in even for a short period, much less for long years. But it was a privilege for me to live in close contact with men of outstanding ability and culture and a wide human outlook which even the passions of the moment did not obscure. His eleven companions in Ahmadnagar Fort were an interesting cross-section of India and represented in their several ways not only politics but Indian scholarship, old and new, and various aspects of present-day India. Nearly all the principal living Indian languages, as well as the classical languages which have powerfully influenced India in the past and present, were represented and the standard was often that of high scholarship. Among the classical languages were Sanskrit and Pali, Arabic and Persian; the modern languages were Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Sindhi and Oriya. Jawaharlal Nehru had all this wealth to draw upon and the only limitation was his own capacity to profit by it. Though he was grateful to all his companions, he specially mentioned a few names;Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose vast erudition invariably delighted me but sometimes also rather overwhelmed me, Govind Ballabh Pant, Narendra Deva and M. Asaf Ali. The book remains as written in prison with no additions or changes, except for the postscript at the end. He does’nt know how other authors feel about their writings, but always he had a strange sensation when he read something that he had written some time previously. That sensation is heightened when the writing had been done in the close and abnormal atmosphere of prison and the subsequent reading has taken place outside. He could recognize it of course, but not wholly; it seems almost that he was reading some familiar piece written by another, who was near to him and yet who was different. Perhaps that is the measure of the change that had taken place in Jawaharlal Nehru So he has felt about this book also. It is his and not wholly his, as he is constituted today; it represents rather some past self of his which has already joined that long succession of other selves that existed for a while and faded away, leaving only a memory behind . Life in the Jail During his stay in the jail as a prisoner, he talked about the ruins that were there but were covered up by soil or have collapsed. He talks about a courageous, beautiful lady, named Chandbibi, who fought against akbar to protect the fort(where he was staying as prisoner). But at the end she was killed by her own army man. He asks himself that what is his ancestral gift? he discovers that, India is his ancestral gift. It is in his blood. he is the ancesteor of victories and defeats of the past kings, brave works of human from the earliest past to now. He is the heir of all these. A few of his chapters which tell about Jawaharlal Nehru’s life in prison and the various changes in India†¦ Time in Prison : The Urge to Action Time seems to change its nature in prison. The present hardly exists, for there is an absence of feeling and sensation which might separate it from the dead past. Even news of the active, living and dying world outside has a certain dream-like un-reality, an immobility and an unchangeableness as of the past. The outer objective time ceases to be, the inner and subjective sense remains, but at a lower level, except when thought pulls it out of the present and experiences a kind of reality in the past or in the future. We live, as Auguste Comte said, dead men’s lives, encased in our pasts, but this is especially so in prison where we try to find some sustenance for our starved and locked-up emotions in memory of the past or fancies of the future. There is a stillness and everlastingness about the past; it changes not and has a touch of eternity, like a painted picture or a statue in bronze or marble. Unaffected by the storms and upheavals of the present, it maintains its dignity and repose and tempts the troubled spirit and the tortured mind to seek shelter in its vaulted catacombs. There is peace there and security, and one may even sense a spiritual quality. But it is not life, unless we can find the vital links between it and the present with all its conflicts and problems. It is a kind of art for art’s sake, without the passion and the urge to action which are the very stuff of life. Without that passion and urge, there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling down on lower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence. We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility sticks to us. This passage of the mind is all the easier in prison where action is denied and we become slaves to the routine of jail-life. Yet the past is ever with us and all that we are and that we have comes from the past. We are its products and we live im-mersed in it. Not to understand it and feel it as something living within us is not to understand the present. To combine it with the present and extend it to the future, to break from it where it cannot be so united, to make of all this the pulsating and vibrat-ing material for thought and action—that is life. Any vital action springs from the depths of the being. All the long past of the individual and even of the race has prepared the background for that psychological moment of action. All the racial memories, influences of heredity and environment and training, subconscious urges, thoughts and dreams and actions from infancy and childhood onwards, in their curious and tremendous mix-up, inevitably drive to that new action, which again becomes yet another factor influencing the future. Influencing the future, partly determining it, possibly even largely determining it, and yet, surely, it is not all determinism. Whether there is any such thing as human freedom in the philosophic sense or whether there is only an automatic deter-minism, I do not know. A very great deal appears certainly to be determined by the past complex of events which bear down and often overwhelm the individual. Possibly even the inner urge that he experiences, that apparent exercise of free will, is itself conditioned. As Schopenhauer says, ‘a man can do what he will, but not will as he will. ‘ A belief in an absolute deter-minism seems to me to lead inevitably to complete inaction, to death in life. All my sense of life rebels against it, though of course that very rebellion may itself have been conditioned by previous events Life’s Philosophy:- The ideals and objectives of yesterday were still the ideals of to-day, but they had lost some of their lustre and, even as one seemed to go towards them, they lost the shining beauty which had warmed the heart and vitalized the body. Evil triumphed often enough, but what was far worse was the coarsening and distortion of what had seemed so right. Was human nature so essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through suffering and misfortune, before it could behave reasonably and raise man above that creature of lust and violence and deceit that he now was? And, meanwhile, was every effort to change it radically in the present or the near future doomed to failure? Ends and means: were they tied up inseparably, acting and reacting on each other, the wrong means distorting and some-times even destroying the end in view? But the right means might well be beyond the capacity of infirm and selfish human nature. What then was one to do? Not to act was a complete con-fession of failure and a submission to evil; to act meant often enough a compromise with some form of that evil, with all the untoward consequences that such compromises result in. Science does not tell us much, or for the matter of that any-thing about the purpose of life. It is now widening its boun-daries and it may invade the so-called invisible world before long and help us to understand this purpose of life in its widest sense, or at least give us some glimpses which illumine the pro-blem of human existence. The old controversy between science and religion takes a new form—the application of the scientific method to emotional and religious experiences. Some vague or more precise philosophy of life we all have, though most of us accept unthinkingly the general attitude which is characteristic of our generation and environment. Most of us accept also certain metaphysical conceptions as part of the faith in which we have grown up. How amazing is this spirit of man! In spite of innumerable failings, man, throughout the ages, has sacrificed his life and all he held dear for an ideal, for truth, for faith, for country and honour. That ideal may change, but that capacity for self-sacrifice continues, and, because of that, much may be forgiven to man, and it is impossible to lose hope for him. In the midst of disaster, he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the values he cherished. Plaything of nature’s mighty forces, less than a speck of dust in this vast universe, he has hurled defiance at the elemental powers, and with his mind, cradle of revolution, sought to master them. Whatever gods there be, there is something godlike in man, as there is also something of the devil in him. The future is dark, uncertain. But we can see part of the way leading to it and can tread it with firm steps, remembering that nothing that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit of man which has survived so many perils; remembering also that life, for all its ills, has joy and beauty, and that we can always wander; if we know how to, in the enchanted woods of nature. India’s Strength and Weaknesses:- The search for the sources of India’s strength and for her deterioration and decay is long and intricate. Yet the recent causes of that decay are obvious enough. She fell behind in the march of technique, and Europe, which had long been backward in many matters, took the lead in technical progress. Behind this technical progress was the spirit of science and a bubling life and spirit which displayed itself in many activities and in ad-venturous voyages of discovery. New techniques gave military strength to the countries of western Europe, and it was easy for them to spread out and dominate the East. That is the story not only of India, but of almost the whole of Asia. Why this should have happened so is more difficult to unravel, for India was not lacking in mental alertness and technical skill in earlier times. One senses a progressive deterioration during centuries. The urge to life and endeavour becomes less, the crea-tive spirit fades away and gives place to the imitative. Where triumphant and rebellious thought had tried to pierce the my-steries of nature and the universe, the wordy commentator comes with his glosses and long explanations. Magnificent art and sculpture give way to meticulous carving of intricate detail without nobility of conception or design. The vigour and rich-ness of language, powerful yet simple, are followed by highly ornate and complex literary forms. The urge to adventure and the overflowing life which led to vast schemes of distant coloni-zation and the transplantation of Indian culture in far lands: all these fade away and a narrow orthodoxy taboos even the crossing of the high seas. A rational spirit of inquiry, so evident in earlier times, which might well have led to the further growth of science, is replaced by irrationalism and a blind idolatory of the past. Indian life becomes a sluggish stream, living in the past, moving slowly through the accumulations of dead centuries. The heavy burden of the past crushes it and a kind of coma seizes it. It is not surprising that in this condition of mental stupor and physical weariness India should have deteriorated and remained rigid and immobile, while other parts of the world marched ahead. Every people and every nation has some such belief or myth of national destiny and perhaps it is partly true in each case. Being an Indian I am myself influenced by this reality or myth about India, and I feel that anything that had the power to mould hundreds of generations, without a break, must have drawn its enduring vitality from some deep well of strength, and have had the capacity to renew that vitality from age to age. No people, no races remain unchanged. Continually they are mixing with others and slowly changing; they may appear to die almost and then rise again as a new people or just a variation of the old. There may be a definite break between the old people and the new, or vital links of thought and ideals may join them. History has numerous instances of old and well-established civilizations fading away or being ended suddenly, and vigor-ous new cultures taking their place. Is it some vital energy, sonic inner source of strength that gives life to a civilization or a people, without which all effort is ineffective, like the vain attempt of an aged person to plav the part of a youth? Behind the past quarter of a century’s struggle for India’s independence and all our conflicts with British authority, lay in my mind, and that of many others, the desire to revitalize India. We felt that through action and self-imposed suffering and sacri-fice, through voluntarily facing risk and danger, through refusal to submit to what we considered evil and wrong, would we re-charge the battery of India’s spirit and waken her from her long slumber. Though we came into conflict continually with the British Government in India, our eyes were always turned towards our own people. Political advantage had value only in so far as it helped in that fundamental purpose of ours. Because of this govern-ing motive, frequently we acted as no politician, moving in the narrow sphere of politics only, would have done, and foreign and Indian critics expressed surprise at the folly and intransigence of our ways. Whether we were foolish or not, the historians of the future will judge. We aimed high and looked far. Probably we were often foolish, from the point of view of opportunist politics, but at no time did we forget that our main purpose was to raise the whole level of the Indian people, psychologically and spiritually and also, of course, politically and economically. It was the building up of that real inner strength of the people that we were after, knowing that the rest would inevitably follow. We had to wipe out some generations of shameful subservience and timid submission to an arrogant alien authority. Epilogue of the book:- Jawaharlal Nehru has covered a thousand hand-written pages with a jumble of ideas in his mind. He travelled in the past and peeped into the future and sometimes tried to balance himself on that ‘point of intersection of the timeless with time. His life has been full of happenings in the world and the war has advanced rapidly towards a triumphant conclusion,so far as military victories go. In his own country also much has happened of which he could be only a distant spectator, and waves of unhappiness have sometimes temporarily swept over me and passed on. Because of this business of thinking and trying to give some expression to his thoughts, he has drawn myself away from the piercing edge of the present and moved along the wider expanses of the past and the future. The discovery of India—what had he discovered? It was presumptuous of him to imagine that he could unveil India and find out what India is to-day and what it was in the long past. To-day India is four hundred million separate individual men and women, each differing from the other, each living in a private universe of though and feeling. If this is so in the present, how much more difficult is it to grasp that multitudinous past of innumerable successions of human beings. Yet something has bound them together and binds them still. India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads.