Discussion 3 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Discussion 3 - Assignment Example I think one does not have to be a nutritionist to differentiate between starving and dieting. My uncle and I are very close, more like friends. He has done doctorate in comparative religions. Once, I fell ill. He came to see me. He said, â€Å"I am a doctor, doctors can cure illness in patients, so I can cure your illness.† I took it as a joke because it was meant to be one. It was a poor argument as it was not deductively valid. While it was true that he is a doctor, and that doctors can cure illness in patients, the conclusion that he could cure my illness was false as he was a doctor of comparative religions, not a medical doctor. My mother often says that every person has equal mind and intelligence and thus can score the highest in academics, but I find disagree with her saying that different people have different IQ levels. When I say so, she becomes emotional and says, â€Å"None of my children has a lower IQ level than any other. I know my children. They are all very brainy. Period.† I find this argument very poor as my brother is very weak in studies whereas my academic performance is much better than his. By saying that all her children are very brainy, my mother tries to make emotional appeal. Once I was on a weight-loss plan. I was following a particular diet pattern, which was based on balanced meals. I was taking both vegetables and meat with certain limits on both. My brother told me to leave consuming meat altogether and instead drink more of fresh juices. I disagreed because fresh juices contain a lot of natural sugars and drinking too much of them is not recommendable in a weight-loss plan, but my brother said, â€Å"Go ask anybody. He would recommend you to drink fresh juices to lose weight.† I know there is a lot of misconception about the effects of fresh juice consumption on weight. I find this argument poor as it is an example of ad populum. Drinking a lot of water is recommended

Introductin to Managment and Welfare Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Introductin to Managment and Welfare - Essay Example The project encompasses three departments: activities manager, funding manager and volunteering manager. My role in the project incorporates activities manager whereby I will facilitate recreational and therapeutic activities for the elderly. The role of the funding manager is to adopt grant models of funding the project, as well as managing and allocating finances to the project’s activities. The volunteers’ manager, on the other hand, will be responsible for recruiting, coaching, organizing, encouraging, and supporting volunteers. Project Objectives The elementary objective of this project is to mitigate feelings of social isolation among the elderly residents. Pursuing the comfort of the elderly is not farfetched as it reinforces their productivity within the society. The provision of comprehensive leisure activities suited for the elderly is geared towards enabling them to remain active throughout the later stages of their life. This is vital in curtailing seniorsâ €™ predisposition to isolation by actively engaging them into leisure activities. Similarly, the project is geared towards integrating the elderly into the community via group interactions and social functions. Ultimately, the project is directed at promoting healthy living and reinforcing social networks among the elderly (Kunstler & Daly 2010, p.341). Roles and Responsibilities of Activities Manager One of the core mandates of activities manager is to encourage the elderly residents to suggest enjoyable leisure activities, which are then implemented. The involvement of the elderly into choice of activities is essential; active involvement aids in maintaining an elevated mood state within the group. As activities manger, I will have to coordinate with agents such as social administrators in order to plan and implement programs geared towards enhancing the lifestyle of the elderly. In addition, I will also need to develop innovative activity programs and events for my clients as well keep abreast with the recent trends in recreational facilities. Recruitment of the Participants Recruiting the seniors into the envisaged physical and social spaces will not be an easy endeavor. To start with, we will approach the local community leaders to gather firm support for the project. Seeking support and endorsement by the local community groups and leaders enhances solid commitment from the community in terms of ongoing support principle, action, and finances. In the recruitment process, we will seek the indulgence of the local community through the use of events and a study so as spot the target audience. Since this project is a daycare facility for the elderly, the project targets older residents who have not yet been incorporated into the residential housing for the elderly, and who bear the blunt of increased levels of social isolation and depressed community involvement. The operation of the project is similar in many respects to other resident care facilities f or the elderly. We are seeking to attract retirees, a maximum of 50, and have devised several ways in which to interact with them. The project is in its resident recruitment phase, which incorporates sourcing information from the social administrators within the community and inviting retirees to apply. We will also hold an â€Å"open afternoon†

Holistic View Of The Bilingual Person English Language Essay

Holistic View Of The Bilingual Person English Language Essay The term bilingual in the psycholinguistic literature does not only apply to people who speak two languages equally well because they were exposed constantly to two different languages maybe due to their parents two different native languages. However Bilingualism refers to the regular use of two (or more) languages, and bilinguals are those people who need and use two (or more) languages in their everyday lives. (Grosjean, 1992, pp. 51). This represents a holistic view of the bilingual person as a competent and complete communicator, on the other hand though a bilingual person is surely not the result of the sum of two monolinguals. As early as 1968, Macnamara, Krauthammer and Bolgar wrote: Within certain limits à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦, all bilinguals manage to keep their languages distinct and can switch from one to the other. It follows that to some extent bilinguals experience their languages as psychologically distinct systems, and that they have some device to control which one is used at any particular time. However, fluent bilinguals are capable of switching between their two languages, when for example a third person who can speak only one of the two languages is pulled in a conversation or when the topic of the discussion strongly asks for the use of both languages at the same time. To clarify this point, consider this situation described by Judith Kroll You are sitting at a cafà © or at the airport when you overhear a conversation in English that suddenly switches to another language and then back to English. If you are a monolingual speaker of English, you may notice the mixture of languages without realizing that you have listened to an impressive cognitive accomplishment by the speaker. This exceptional achievement is instead a rather common feature of bilinguals language use in which words of two languages mix together in a coherent and meaningful conversation .. In this sense, a bilingual changes the linguistic form, without alterating the substantial meaning byusing a word which may address the sense of a discourse in a better or stronger way like choosing between synonyms with the same language (Sridhar Sridhar, 1980). Yet when the same bilinguals speak to a monolingual they rarely use or switch to an alternative language in order to prevent the monoli ngual speaker from not understanding. These different circumstances and a variety of other situation where this capability arises leads to question of how the information to be processed or expressed is bound to the activation or articulation of a corresponding word or phrase in the appropriate language. On one hand, for a person repeatedly coping with language switches within the conversation, these apparently strange words come unexpectedly and may perhaps be more difficult to process than their within-language counterparts. On the other hand for a bilingual who has to choose in which language to speak, the process of finding the right word in the right context, which French and Jacquet (2004) refer to as lexical access may result extremely complex , as in addition to the activation of words in one language other than the target, other parole (words) in the other language might be active as well.,. Thus, the simultaneous activation of the two lexico-semantic represenations of a bilingual might address different answers paralleled with the specific processing modality, word recognition or production, driven by the context. In word recognition, language membership is passively conveyed to a person by the orthographical or phonological characteristics of the word (). However, in word production, the speaker actively and intentionally decides which language to use. Therefore, the speaker can exert some control on lexical forms and choose the target which best fits the communicative context among a set of activated representations. We do not claim that the mechanisms and neural dynamics recruited for lexical access are necessarily different in recognition and production, but rather that the processes involved in each may be at least partially different. The aim of this project will be first to trace the effects of a language switch on models of both language production and language comprehension and second to identify the neural correlates of language switching and the impact a switch may have on the cognitive processes which rule lexical access in order to produce or recognize a word. Bilingualism and language comprehension Language comprehension has been investigated in bilingual populations mainly through tasks in which bilinguals are substantially asked to respond to written words in one or both of their languages. In such visual word identification tasks, the language switch is driven by the upcoming stimuli in input, while the output is executed by button press driven by a binary decision. A large number of studies have addressed bilinguals performance in comprehension tasks through both within-language and cross-language tasks such as lexical decision (e.g., Dijkstra, Van Jaarsveld Ten Brinke, 1998; Dijkstra, Grainger, Van Heuven, 1999; von Studnitz Green, 2002), language decision, and categorisation tasks (e.g., Dufour Kroll, 1995; Grainger Frenck-Mestre, 1998). Initial studies revealed, for example, that when bilinguals were asked to read language-mixed passages, their performance suffered compared to reading single-language passages (Macnamara Kushnir, 1971). In lexical decision, responses to words where a switch in language occurs were slower than those to a trial nested in a sequence of words from same language s (Thomas Allport, 1995; Von Studnitz Green, 1997). Ability to recognize words in one language seems to be influenced by the language memebership of the word immediately preceding (the basic language priming effect) (Grainger Beauvillain, 1988; Grainger ORegan, 1992) even in lists of unrelated words. Fluent bilinguals seem to comfortably manage whichever language they are requested to use, however in all of the contexts mentioned just above a language switch during comprehension hurts their performance. This evidence suggests that even when bilinguals read (e.g., Dijkstra, 2005) or hear (e.g., Marian Spivey, 2003) one langua ge alone, both languages are still active. Thus, a crucial point here is to establish if and to what extent the other language is still there when bilinguals use one language alone. One way of testing this hypotheisis is to isolate ambiguous features of the bilinguals two languages , meaning to use words that partially overlap or are totally shared in both languages. When two languages share the same alphabet, we may find words called cognates that look or sound the same and mean the same thing as well. For example, In French and Italian, the words balla and balle are almost spelled identically and have the same meaning and. If bilinguals are really capable of shutting down one language and dress as monolinguals, then performance on these special words (cognates) should not differ from that on distinctive and unambiguous words. If the other language results not to be in standby but always on, then bilinguals should perform differently from monolinguals which in a lexical decision ta sk will need to match the target with only one possible candidate instead of two A cognate benefit on performance has been demonstrated across a variety of tasks (De Groot and Poot, 1997; Van Hell De Groot, 1998a; Van Hell and Dijkstra, 2002;), providing substantial evidence that cognates are represented or processed differently from non-cognate translation equivalent words in the second language. Cognates and non-cognates also show different priming effects: in one of the earliest explorations of the effects of cognates, De Groot and Nas (1991) found cross-language repetition priming for both cognates and non-cognates, but associative priming only for cognates. Given such evidence they reached three conclusions: (1) the representations of both cognate and non-cognate translations at the lexical level of representation are connected; (2) cognate translations share a representation at the conceptual level while (3) non-cognate translation equivalents are represented in separate conc ept nodes. De Groot and colleagues model of cognate representation has continued to develop, but it remains firmly based on the principle that cognates representations in the two languages are shared, or overlapping, more than those of non-cognates. In terms of distributed representations, Van Hell and De Groot (1998) describe the notion of overlap as the patterns of activation for a cognate word and its translation being similar to one another, whereas the patterns of activation for a non-cognate word and its translation may have very little in common. The more features are shared between words, the smaller the lexical distance between their corresponding patterns of activation. In addition, the cognate effect was found not to be restricted only to conditions where stimuli are presented in written form. Costa, Caramazza, and Sebastià ¡n-Gallà ©s (2000), for example, found that bilinguals named pictures with cognate names more quickly than pictures with non-cognate names, while monolinguals showed no difference on the same set of pictures. This confirms that the cognate benefit is not solely due to orthographic overlap in the presented stimuli. Many studies have took advantage of these special properties of cognate words in order to determine how this linguistic ambiguity impacts on bilinguals ability to understand these words in only one of their two languages. Evidence stemming from all these studies strongly supports the idea that the language not in use may be in a sort of sleeping mode and anyway exerts an influence on the bilinguals lexico-semantic system even when a task tunes it to the other language. When cross-language form and meaning converge, bilingual performance is typically facilitated; when cross-language form and meaning conflict, bilingual performance is often hindered, in that it is slower and more likely to be error prone (Dijkstra, 2005). These cross-language effects will likely occur especially in the case of a second less dominant language given that most of time both languages will never be equally strong. Furthermore in conditions where a change in language occurs, the cross-linguistic influence of one language on the other will directly affect the processing of words in either one of the two languages. However it is a point of some controversy in the literature whether the costs associated with switching between languages might be somehow modulated by language specific or ambiguous cues. The Bilingual Interactive Activation model (BIA) and language switching Dijkstra and van Heuven (1998) have proposed a model for word recognition in bilinguals (BIA, the Bilingual Interactive Activation model) in which they try to account for the interaction between active word candidates in both languages. Novel to the BIA model is the use of language nodes. When the BIA model encounters a string of letters, the specific visual features of each at a particular letter position excite letters in the system with corresponding features while different letters are inhibited . Activation in turn from letters is driven to words in both languages where each letter figures in the determined position, while all other words are inhibited. At the word level, language membership will not affect inhibition as all words inhibit each other. Activation thriving from word nodes in the same language is carried on to the corresponding language nodes which store activation from words with a specific language tag, and in turn spread, through a feedback mechanism, inhibition to all word nodes in the other language. Furthermore, these language nodes can be pre-activated reflecting a particular task and this device allows the asymmetric inhibition of words in the two languages; word forms in L1, for instance, can be more inhibited than word forms in L2. The effects of language switching can be explained in this framework through a mechanism which allows lexical activation to flow from one trial over to the next. The BIA hypothesizes that activation of a specific language node paralleled with the presentation of a word in that particular language will not completely decay and fall beneath threshold, therefore when the next item comes up in the other language the corresponding word unit will be partially inhibited. According to this model any cost relative to switching will fall close to zero if the input carries orthographic features unique to a language. Only one or a few word units in that particular language will be active and any advantage or disadvant age held by similar cross-linguistic representations (i.e. as in the case of cognates) of the previous trial will fade out. This model shows that language switching may be a function of the task situation, the nature of stimulus material, as well as the expertise of the bilingual. Figure 1. The Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model for bilingual word recognition. Arrowheads indicate excitatory connections; black filled circles indicate inhibitory connections. (Dijkstra van Heuven, 1998) 4.4 The effects of context information and the BIA+ Model Language is a single word, however in its everyday use it implies the use of a set of multiple words to express meaning. It is possible therefore that evidence for cross-language activity stems from the decontextualized nature of word recognition tasks commonly employed to investigate the bilinguals two languages. In the context of a conversation or while we read a passage in one language rather than the other cues which shift the balance of activity in favour of the intended language should be conveyed to a mechanism which could virtually switch off the other language. This indeed does not seem to be the case as recent evidence from a number of studies suggest that contextual cues per se are not able to turn completely down the activity of the language not in use. On one hand we would have intuitively predicted that the frame provided by a stringent linguistic context should reduce the number of viable language interpretations. On the other hand, these findings justify the ease of language switching and the relatively low cost it entails in terms of processing resources (e.g., Moreno, Federmeier, Kutas, 2002). However, a point of some controversy remains and namely the relationship between the word identification system and the linguistic context (as a sentence) or the non-linguistic context information determined in an experimental framework by the task demands (i.e. the participants expectations determined by the instructions). One option is that after the initial stages of lexical processing, information of both types (linguistic and context) may exert an influence on the activation level of forms in the target and non-target language. For instance, context information could inhibit lexical candidates or lemmas in the irrelevant language (BIA model by Dijkstra et al., 1998; IC model by Green, 1986, 1998) or just modulate of the activation level of lexical candidates in each language (Grosjean, 1997). A second option is that non-linguistic context information does not directly influence the activity in the identification system itself, but affects decision criteria only.. The BIA+ model postulates the existence of two distinct systems: a word identification system and a task/decision system. Linguistic information conveyed by a sequence of words in in a sentence context may modulate the word identification system, while non-linguistic context information (e.g., participants expectations and strategies) affects parameter settings in the task/decision system.. However, the model clearly states that the task/decision system and sources of non-linguistic information do not affect the lexical activation levels within the word identification system itself. Therefore while performing in a task (such as lexical decision) an early preconscious, automatic level of processing thriving from activity within the word identification system may be followed by an attention-sensitive level in which lexical forms are selected through a task/decision system with reference to different contextual factors and bound to a specific response relevant to the task at hand (cf. Altenberg and C airns, 1983, p. 187; Dupoux and Mehler, 1992; Balota, Paul and Spieler, 1999). The task schema, which is set up during the practice set or retrieved from memory, designates the algorithm which selects the cognitive processing steps necessary to perform the specific task (Green, 1986, 1998; Norman and Shallice, 1986). The decision mechanism is incorporated in the task schema and monitors continuously the activation level of candidates in the identification system by weighting the different levels of activation of targets with respect to each other within the identification system in order to arrive at an output in terms of response. The decision relies upon a lexical selection mechanism, which triggers depending on the breaking of an activation threshold for a lexical candidate. In other words, the identification and task/decision systems, though interconnected, may be partially independent. The two systems use their own criteria for action triggering (i.e., lexical selection and res ponse selection/execution). The identification system is assumed to recognize a word and is able to select a single lexical candidate with a good degree of certainty) when the system reaches a fair stability. The task/decision system triggers a response when its own criteria are met, some of which ruled by lexical activation, while others driven by a tendency towards optimization in terms of how activated and selected representations in the identification system are linked to possible responses. For instance, in lexical decision the input letter string conveys activity to orthographic, semantic and phonological codes, all of which could allow a discrimination of word and non-word input. However, when participants are asked to make a language decision in the sense to press one button if a presented item belongs to one language (e.g., English) and another button if it belongs to another language (e.g., Dutch) only those codes which facilitate the retrieval of language membership infor mation (language tags) are able to address a correct response. Thus, different schemas underlie different tasks, although one task may obey to different schemas. The schema might capture and use information from different sources in parallel, but presently available evidence suggests that orthographic representations play a major role (Pexman and Lupker, 2001). A number of recent experiments have addressed the predictions stemming from the BIA+ model by asking whether the parallel activity of the two languages can be reduced or eliminated when language ambiguous words that produce cross-language effects out of context, are placed in sentence context (e.g., Elston-Gà ¼ttler, Gunter, Kotz, 2005; Schwartz Kroll, 2006;Van Hell,1998). Schwartz, Kroll, and Diaz (2007) showed that when bilinguals are asked to name a cognate like radio in isolation, they are faster relative to controls if there is both orthographical and phonological overlap across the two languages. However, when they read highly constrained sentences the processing advantage for cognates disappeared while in sentences with a lower closure probability, an advantage for cognates remained, suggesting that knowing the language in which you are reading does not switch off the unintended language. This last assumption leads to the question of whether the decision criteria in a language switching task is affected when cognates are involved considering that the activation threshold for lexical candidates will be broken not as quickly. According to the BIA+ model, the similarity of the input word to the internal lexical representations establishes their activation level. Therefore the larger the overlap between the input string and a representation in the mental lexicon, the more the internal representation is activated. In the case of two languages with alphabetical writing systems, the number of activated orthographic candidates is determined by factors such as the neighbourhood density and frequency of the target word and its within- and between-language neighbours and not by the words language membership. However, If the two input codes specific to each language are different (e.g., letter sets), the activated set of neighbours may become much smaller. Figure 2. The BIA+ model for bilingual word recognition. Arrows indicate activation flows between representational pools. Inhibitory connections within pools are omitted. Language nodes could instead be attached to lemma representations between word form and meaning representations. Non-linguistic context only affects the task schema level. (Dijkstra Van Heuven The architecture of the bilingual word recognition sysytem, Bilingualism:Language and Cognition, 5, 2002 )

The History of Computers :: Computers Technology Essays

The History of Computers Computers have been around for quite some time and were developed over many years with contributions from philosophers, inventors, engineers, mathematicians, physicists, technicians, visionaries, and scholars. The first computers were calculating machines and over time evolved into the digital computers as we know them today. It has taken over 180 years for the computer to develop from an idea in Charles Babbage head into an actual computer developed today by many different companies. Therefore, it was a long and tedious path in order to make the computer into what we now use today. Before computers, people had to do calculations using such tools as a Chinese abacus or a slide rule to work out problems by hand. One day in 1821, Charles Babbage decided that he didn feel like working out tedious mathematics problems anymore and wanted to compute numbers using what he called a machine with steam(Palfreman and Swade 16). For the next ten or so years Babbage worked on designing the Difference Engine, however it was never built as it would have weighed several tons and taken entirely too many parts to put together. A few years later, Babbage came up with the Analytical Engine, which he designed to do arithmetic operations. This machine was programmable and the information was stored on punch cards (Palfreman and Swade 20). Charles Babbage never did get to build one of his machines, however, his son Henry Babbage built a machine, which was based on his father ideas. The next step in the development of computers was commercial machines. In the early 1820, Thomas de Colmar came up with the first successful commercial calculator, called the arithmometer, and it was able to perform the four basic arithmetic functions (Palfreman and Swade 22). The next progression of computers came in 1896, when the U.S. Census Bureau could not keep up with the reading and organizing of their surveys. Herman Hollerith invented the electric tabulating system, which could read the data in coded punched cards (Palfreman and Swade 24). During, the 1930, there were two main sub-divisions in the computer world, the calculator industry and the office machine industry.

Advantages Of Performance Appraisal Essay

It helps the supervisors to chalk out the promotion programs for efficient employees. In this regards, inefficient workers can be dismissed or demoted in case. It helps in chalking out compensation packages for employees. Merit rating is possible through performance appraisal. PA tries to give worth to a performance. Compensation packages which include bonus, high salary rates, extra benefits, allowances and pre-requisites are dependent on performance appraisal. The criteria should be merit rather than seniority. The systematic procedure of PA helps the supervisors to frame training policies and programs. It helps to analyze strengths and weaknesses of employees so that new jobs can be designed for efficient employees. It also helps in framing future development programs. It helps the supervisors to understand the validity and importance of the selection procedure. The supervisors come to know the validity and thereby the strengths and weaknesses of selection procedure. Future changes in selection methods can be made in this regard. For an organization, effective communication between employees and employers is very important. It serves as a motivation tool. Through evaluating performance of employees, a person’s efficiency can be determined if the targets are achieved. This very well motivates a person for better job and helps him to improve his performance in the future. Disadvantages of Performance Appraisal If not done right, they can create a negative experience. Performance appraisals are very time consuming and can be overwhelming to managers with many employees. They are based on human assessment and are subject to rater errors and biases. Can be a waste of time if not done appropriately. They can create a very stressful environment for everyone involved. What Are the Benefits of Performance Appraisals to the Organization? The performance appraisal is an essential part of the human resources department’s contribution to an organization. An effective appraisal may not only eliminate behavior and work-quality problems, it can motivate an employee to contribute more. Often, a company will ask its employees to perform â€Å"360-degree feedback† that assesses peers and subordinates as well as supervisors and management. Regardless, the opportunity to receive — and give — constructive criticism shouldn’t be ignored. Improving Communication All too often, employees and managers don’t get along and can’t understand why. Problems that stem from a lack of communication can sometimes be resolved with a performance appraisal. If the appraisal is used as an opportunity to describe the criteria on which performance is judged — using meaningful and relevant examples — then the employee will walk away from the meeting with a better understanding of how to best perform his job. For example, â€Å"John, when I say you need to be more customer-focused, what I really want is to see you greet the customers with a smile when they enter the store, and ask how you can help.† Providing a Career Path The performance appraisal is the perfect opportunity to address long-term goals that may not be on the everyday to-do list. Not only does this provide the employee with an opportunity to be of greater use to an organization, the employee feels pleased and valued. Lighting the way toward a successful career path inspires loyalty and stability and can improve the bottom line, especially when the employee’s first concern is the health of the business, and subsequently, her career. Encouraging Good Work and Improvement Celebrating a job well-done is the easy part of the performance appraisal. Noting areas of improvement is not so easy. Nevertheless, no one is perfect, and the performance appraisal is an ideal time to diplomatically highlight areas that need improvement. Even the most valuable employee could benefit from additional training, while those who are on the cusp of dismissal need the heads-up. Be specific by providing examples and clearly explain what needs to occur to turn things around. Showing an employee that you care enough about them by taking the time to work with them may make even the most hardened employee feel better. Improving Decision-Making Ability When a company has detailed information on employee performance, business decisions become easier. Filling open positions with existing staff strengthens the organization and promotes loyalty. Knowing which employees display what strengths improves the speed with which projects can be assigned. Appraisals also provide a framework when making decisions about compensation — and layoffs. If the organization becomes the unfortunate party to a lawsuit, the performance appraisal can refute or support claims. As a result, the effective use of performance appraisals helps an organization operate efficiently and with focus. 180 degree 180 Degree – a method of measuring performance appraisal of an employee. As we have already discussed about â€Å"performance appraisal ‘in the previous blog, it’s quite clear that it’s a method of measuring and giving feedback of any employee performance. 180 Degree is one of the method by which feedback of an employee can be judged and measured. Here two people are involved in the feedback process; one is the employee himself and his immediate boss. The employee share his work experiences including good and bad with the hr people, and the boss gives the feedback of the skills and attitude the employee carry. And then the data collected is matched with the competency norms of the organization and a feedback is prepared about that particular employee. And with this feedback the management takes s further actions for better performance of that employee. This performance appraisal form is used in all big and small scale industries and organization. What is 270 degree appraisal method? Answer: 270 Degree is kind of performance appraisal system.. in 270 degree feedback/ review from self, Boss , and pEErs.

D.T. Resistant Materials – Evaluation

I feel that my product has fulfilled all of the essential criteria although some of the desired criteria aren't fulfilled. This includes: * Incorporated Lights * A Combination of Materials * Be used for placing an object on top The reason behind these specifications not being fulfilled was mainly due to limitations or the way it would have to be incorporated into the design I chose. If I decided to incorporate lights, the price would have rose as well as me having to make the boxes more bulky making them a lot more difficult to move and customise. A combination of materials wasn't used because of complications and problems which I will explain later and to be used for placing an object on top, the product would become less customisable, however an add on could be designed for my product in the future which would allow this, but as current because of time scale and general problems (which I will explain) this is an unavailable feature. What it does and how good it is at doing it My product is designed to allow users to store objects such as books and paperwork in. Teenagers, my target audience, would be able to customise the product by adding different tops as well as a different combination of boxes of which came in two sizes. The system I designed allowed the boxes to be placed on top of each other as well as beside each other. After testing, I found that the average sized box fitted perfectly, mainly due to my research which I carried out earlier. Papers unfortunately didn't fit without aid such as a folder or possibly something which allowed the paper to stand on end. Having said this, the product was perfectly able to stand the weight and the customisable feature with everything lining up with little add on features which gave room for error as well as being extra features to the set. After asking other 15/16 year olds, comments were very positive particularly with the engraved design on the side which matched with the add on spacers as well as the fact the boxes could be stacked or put on the side. They also liked the idea of the customisable top which could be turned into a different wide range of add-ons which could have been added to in the future if desired. There were few negative comments which were probably due mainly to pure politeness! Having said this, the ones I received were well constructed such as the fact that paper couldn't be placed flat without it sticking out the side as well as the fact that the choice of finish allowed the pine to show which was of a colour too bright to some people's preference. Modifications and/due to Problems One major problem I came up against was the fact that I was unable to cast a peg. This was due to limitations of knowledge on casting as well as the time limit I was restricted against. Our first trial was shown on my developing ideas section where only one half of the peg seemed to come out correctly. This, unfortunately, made me skip the variety of materials desired criteria. Another problem was accuracy. I was only making one of many of these products and because of this I opted to create the top plate by hand. Having done this I soon realised that it was very difficult and time consuming to get it correctly placed. Due to this fact I modified the size of the dowel from 8mm to 6mm which meant that the 8mm hole will now have 6mm slotted into it with the top plate. Because of time restrictions, it wasn't possible to create other add-ons such as the CD rack I planned earlier on. Instead I opted in a different material which would make the product more appealing (aesthetically pleasing). Accuracy was also another problem which I faced when joining the boxes together. I originally planned to join the boxes directly against each other. Because of 8mm holes being in the top and the bottom, 8mm dowel had to be used and the fact is that there was no room for error which became a problem. I solved this by creating a spacer which contained 6mm dowel which would slot into both the bottom and top box. This was a viable solution. Design problems also caused the boxes to be connected sideways only one possible direction as the boxes would not slot into each other on one side. This problem was one which I didn't fix as the boxes could still tessellate one way which made this problem very minor.