The Basic Structure of a Thesis - Proofeds Writing Tips Blog

The Basic Structure of a Thesis The Basic Structure of a Thesis How a thesis should look can vary between colleges, so its always best to check the guidelines youve been given. However, the basic structure of a thesis should incorporate all the sections described below. Cover Page Abstract Acknowledgements Table of Contents Introduction Literature Review Methodology Results, Analysis and Discussion Conclusion Bibliography Appendices Cover Page This will include the title of your thesis, your name and the name of your college. It may also feature your course title and the name of your supervisor. Check with your supervisor if you need to add any extra details. Abstract This is a summary of your thesis and shouldnt be more than 500 words. Acknowledgements This is your chance to thank your professors, friends, family and anyone else who may have helped along the way. Table of Contents This helps your reader navigate your document. If youre using Microsoft Word, you can even add a dynamic table of contents, as well as automatic lists of figures and charts. In addition to looking professional, these can be updated at the touch of a button after making revisions to save time and effort later on. Introduction The introduction should briefly outline your topic and the main areas you will cover in your work without going into too much depth. The key is to give your reader the information they need to understand the rest of your thesis. Literature Review A literature review examines past research in your subject area. Try to explain how the studies you mention have influenced your ideas and how they are relevant to your work. Methodology The methodology section of a thesis should provide a detailed description of how you intend to collect and analyze your data. Results, Analysis and Discussion The results, analysis and discussion sections of a thesis are where you present, analyze and evaluate the data you have gathered. How you do this will depend on your subject area and your schools requirements, since sometimes the results are presented separately from the discussion, while sometimes a combined Results and Discussion section is preferred. Conclusion This should summarize your entire argument and explain its overall significance. You may also want to present recommendations for applications or further research, depending on the subject area. You should not introduce any new information here. Bibliography/Reference List This is where you list every source you have used in your thesis. If in any doubt about how to do this, use a reference generator to check you have included all the necessary information. Whether you need a reference list (all sources referenced) or a bibliography (all sources consulted during research) will depend on the citation system youre using, so remember to check your style guide. Appendices This is where you should put any extra material that cannot be included in the main body of your thesis. This can include interviews, questionnaires or transcripts. Professional Proofreading If youre still not sure about the structure of your thesis, why not send yours to the professionals at Proofed? As well as correcting spelling and grammar errors, we can give you feedback on the structure and flow of your prose, allowing you to make any changes necessary before submitting your work.

Assignment 2 Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 6

2 - Assignment Example Therefore, I will have to respond to the review publicly and make it professional (Couzin and Grappone 14). In my response, I will thank the client for the feedback and explain why the cafe allows children events. I will then explain to other clients or readers of the review page that they will not face the same issue because the cafe has worked out a solution to the issue. This will be to ensure that child minders, parents and all the other responsible parties keep all children under the control at all times. Therefore, it is not expected that presence of the children in Broadways Cafe will cause any problem to adults. Clients, who do not want to visit when children are there, can avoid such moments. I will also try to point out indirectly that the client who provided the review was wrong by including a statement which creates a doubt whether the origin of the problem is the Broadways Cafe or the client’s personal viewpoint. I will explain that the cafe is inclusive because it allows families with children to visit, but ensures that children are under control to avoid any inconvenience to other clients. The client’s viewpoint is unethical. Children cannot be eliminated from visiting the cafe just because of their age. They also have a right to enjoy the public place with their parents, as long as their behaviour, while they are within the cafe, is put under check. However, the customer has a right to air his view too, and to address the issue, it will be upon the cafe’s personnel to ensure that children do not cause any inconvenience to other clients. An open line of communication for Broadways Cafe can be encouraged, while still maintaining an open forum on the cafe’s Web site by making a corporate community on the Web site, which allows feedback to clients. To ensure that communication is open, the Web site will have to be user friendly and interactive so that clients can

The Big Thirst Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Big Thirst - Essay Example First, he claims that water is â€Å"unquestionably the most important substance in our lives... It is part of the â€Å"mystery of life and the routine of life† (2). This statement is true. The human body is composed of 50-60% of water, thus making water a mysterious substance that makes people survive for days even without food. Second, Fishman also enumerates the uses of water. According to him, people use water incessantly in their daily routine and important activities: to baptize children, digest food, quench thirst, feed animals, bathe, clean the dog, wash hands and dishes, cook, plant rice, fruits and vegetables, etc. These uses of water are commonly known. What is uncommon is the fact that water is also used to make bottled drinks, put up a concrete building, launch a spaceship, run electricity, make flat-screen TVs, set up MRI machines and Twitter accounts, produce iPhones and cars, etc. Meanwhile, five liters of water is also needed to produce two bottles of coke. As Fishman identifies these other important uses of water, his claims become more and more interesting and appealing to readers. Water has amazingly upheld the lives of people. It generally helps farmers sustain their farms and supply the need of people for food and beverages. Water in many parts of the world is accessible to farmers. However, in some countries like Australia, water seems to be scarce, thus there is great effort on the part of farmers to grow plants and harvest foods. Unfortunately, tons of water are required in some lands in order to turn a dry land into a fertile one. Often, people think that the secret of a farmer’s success is his ability to plant or his hi-tech farming tools and equipment but as Fishman points out, it is actually water that makes the harvest possible because without it or with very minimal water supply, the crops will not continue to grow. This thought resounds Fishman’s

Parkinson's Disease Discussion Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Parkinson's Disease Discussion - Research Paper Example Management of motor response changes, for example, nighttime deterioration, dyskinesias, early morning deterioration, and psychiatric problems can only be successful if there are strategies for treatment. Although tremendous efforts and developments have been made in comprehending the pathophysiology that lie beneath this condition, the cause is not yet known, and there is no treatment that is curative. This paper will look at the video â€Å"My Father, My Brother, and Me†, and attempt to discuss issues that surround Parkinson’s disease. Firstly, there is a personal drive to understand Parkinson’s disease. The disease has affected the actor’s family members. During his undertakings, he meets with various remarkable people who are doing research about the disease. The researcher’s meeting with frozen heroin addicts results in a monumental step forward. An individual who had suffered from this disease got a reformed living by going through the surgery of the brain. Moreover, he encountered a geneticist who assisted in identifying some of the mutations responsible for Parkinson disease. It has also been noted by specialists that at least six genes can cause Parkinson’s disease. Secondly, there is a belief that the debate involving genetics and environment is adequate because there has not been an answer to it. A development of the connection between genetics and environment has led to the improvement of Parkinson’s disease research hugely in the last few years. Thirdly, it is fascinating to know that even with the progression in the embryonic cell therapies; the research was stopped in 2006 by the former United States president, George Bush. He did this by vetoing the bill that was supposed to increase funding for stem cell research. He was largely responding to pressure from various religious groups. Fourthly, there is an illustration of the different treatment, medication of interest,

Giorgio Vasari on Lorenzo Ghiberti

Giorgio Vasari on Lorenzo Ghiberti This text contains a mixture of bibliographical and historical information regarding Ghiberti’s life and the circumstances in which he received the commission for the doors for the Baptistery of San Giovanni, next to the Duomo in Florence. It contains factual information regarding the background and training of the artist; the participants and judges of the competition to win the contract; descriptive information about the location of the door, its manufacture and some of the practical difficulties experienced by Ghiberti whilst working on it. The text therefore gives information that is helpful to the historian in understanding some of the facts surrounding the production of art in fifteenth century Florence and the circumstances of production of one particular artistic creation. However, to regard this as a purely objective historical account would be a mistake. Rubin (1995, 2) comments that ‘the components of Vasari’s history had generic precedents and parallel s in biography, technical treatises, and didactic literature, both classical and contemporary’. Vasari was able to fuse the elements of these different genres in order to situate Ghiberti (and the other artists in The Lives) within a developing tradition of artistic enterprise and to create a history of art that included aesthetic judgement. Vasari’s teleological view of the development of art goes beyond mere biographical and historical description and this aspect of his work is particularly important because it gives the modern reader information about how artists of the later Renaissance period viewed artistic products from an earlier time and also how a theoretical stance towards the nature of art was being developed. Having grown up as the son of an artisan, Vasari had received part of his education in his home town of Arezzo and then spent a part of his adolescence with the Medici family, who were at that time the most prominent family in Florence. It was among their children that he furthered his education and was undoubtedly exposed to the humanist curriculum that would have been a part of their education at that time. Although Vasari would not have had a university education, he was nonetheless familiar with the basics of humanist thought. Vasari’s own life, therefore, exemplified the way in which art had become a vital part of aristocratic life and education and how it gave practitioners of the arts an entry into the highest parts of society. Whilst earlier generations of painters and sculptors had been regarded merely as craftsmen and had worked relatively anonymously, by Vasari’s time individual artists were able to capitalise on their reputations to gain high financial remun eration as well as fame. The text reveals that Ghiberti’s father had these two goals in mind when he urged Ghiberti to come back to Florence to enter the competition, which would be ‘an occasion to make himself known and demonstrate his genius’ and also that, if his son gained recognition as a sculptor, ‘neither †¦ would ever again need to labour at making ear-rings’. The ambitious artist was, therefore, able to advance his career and wealth through winning great commissions. Welch (1997, 125) observes that ‘by the mid-fourteenth century a number of Italian artists, particularly in Tuscany, seem to have been aware of the need to promote themselves and their memory, either by writing themselves or by encouraging others to write about them‘. It is within this tradition that Vasari wrote his The Lives. In classical times, writers such as Plutarch and Pliny had written biographical works about famous men’s lives and the Renaissance preoccupation with the revival of antiquity provided a stimulus for this genre of biography that is focussed on the rhetorical practice of praising worthy and famous men, including artists (Pliny’s Natural History provided the model for writing about artists of Graeco-Roman antiquity (Welch, 1997, 125)). Ghiberti himself had written Commentaries, a work that included a section on antiquity, another on his own autobiography, and a third on the theory of optical illusion. This is the work to which Vasari ref ers in the text. Vasari alludes to Ghiberti’s use of Pliny as a model and he thus demonstrates that they are all, in their different ways, participating in an ancient tradition of writing about art and that they are all seeking a form of immortality through writing as well as through making art. Yet Vasari is somewhat disparaging in his comments on Ghiberti as a writer and his criticism may derive from the context in which he was practicing his own art. The courtly values of ease, modesty and gracefulness as exemplified in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier had come to dominate the world of the Renaissance courts in which Vasari worked and may have been the cause of his disdain for the Ghiberti’s ‘vulgar tone’ and his condemnation of Ghiberti’s brief treatment of the ancient painters in favour of a lengthy and detailed ‘discourse about himself’. Cole (1995, 176) argues that Vasari was influenced by Castiglione in that he ‘urged the artist to disguise his labour and study and stress his facilita (ease) and prestezza (quickness of execution)’. It may have been that Vasari perceived that Ghiberti had not lived up to this artistic ideal in his writing. Another earlier writer on art, Leon Battista Alberti, had ’al ways stressed the joining of diligenza (diligence) with prestezza’ (Cole, 1995, 176). The influence of such aesthetic values are revealed in many of the judgements that Vasari makes; in the text, his comments on the relative merits of the submissions for the competition include technical terms that are still used today, such as ‘composition’ and ‘design’, but he also uses terms such as ‘grace’ and ’diligence’ which have a rather more specific relationship to their Renaissance context. The text does not only reveal the courtly values that were a part of Vasari’s aesthetic. Florence had a long tradition of civic and republican values and Vasari’s account shows the ways in which the guilds and the Commune, together with ordinary citizens, all had a part to play in Ghiberti’s enterprise. Whilst the guild of Merchants had set up the competition, the location of the door in the Baptistery nonetheless has a civic and religious function that would have made it a very public work of art. Ghiberti’s practice of appealing to popular taste is revealed in Vasari’s’ description of him ‘ever inviting the citizens, and sometimes any passing stranger who had some knowledge of the art, to see his work, in order to hear what they thought, and those opinions enabled him to execute a model very well wrought and without one defect’. Peter Burke (2000, 76) comments on the value of Vasari as a source for the evidence of a popular res ponse to art in Florence and the ways in which ‘ordinary people, craftsmen and shopkeepers, were not only familiar with the names of the leading artists of their city, past and present, but they were not afraid to offer opinions often critical opinions about the value of particular works.’ Vasari’s work thus shows evidence of civic as well as courtly values and demonstrates the phenomenon of the artist who had particularly frequent opportunities for mobility, both geographically and socially, in the Renaissance period. Vasari’s book was divided into three parts that corresponded to three ‘ages’ of Renaissance art, roughly equivalent to the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This corresponded to Vasari’s view of the art history of the Renaissance as a progression towards increasing perfection. In the text, this teleological view is revealed in Vasari’s description of Ghiberti’s relationship with his father. Vasari attributes the initial prompting to compete to Ghiberti’s father, who wrote to Ghiberti ‘urging him to return to Florence in order to give a proof of his powers’, Ghiberti is also described as having ‘from his earliest years learnt the art of the goldsmith from his father’, yet ‘he became much better therein than his father’. Vasari thus uses his description of Ghiberti’s career to make the point that each generation has a debt to the past and can gain skill and knowledge from the pas t, and yet each generation exceeds the previous one and participates in the forward progression of artistic development. The Renaissance was a period in which the use of the past was a particular feature and the revival of antiquity was not restricted to the increased knowledge of ancient texts. In describing Ghiberti’s career, Vasari also reveals the vogue for casting medals in the ancient style and for portraiture that was based on the coins and medals of the Roman era, when he comments that ‘he also delighted in counterfeiting the dies of ancient medals, and he portrayed many of his friends from the life in his time’. The more recent past was also an important source for the Renaissance artist, as described by Vasari. In the text, Vasari makes it clear that Ghiberti owes a debt to both Giotto and Pisano: ‘the arrangement of the scenes was similar to that which Andrea Pisano had formerly made in the first door, which Giotto designed for him.’ Again, though, Ghiberti is held to have exceeded their artistry and progressed beyond the ’old manner of Giotto’s time’ to ’the manner of the moderns’. Vasari thus reveals that there was, during the Renaissance period, a self-consciousness about artistic production and the theory of art. There was a definite perception of ’modernity’ with respect to what was then current and a tendency to reject the type of style that was though to be in the ‘old manner’. Much that is found in Vasari is still useful to our study of Renaissance art. He provides many useful factual details, such as the names and cities of the competitors for the Baptistery door commission, and the information that many foreigners were present and participating in the artistic life of Florence. He also provides evidence of the factors that affected aesthetic judgement during the period. He provides a great deal of evidence of contemporary practices and attitudes and his allusions to specific writers and works from antiquity provide us with evidence of how the study of the classical period influenced the thought and practices of Renaissance artists. His work enables us to see how the artists of the later Renaissance period were assimilating and judging the work of their immediate predecessors from the period of Cimabue and Giotto onwards. In this text, we also have an example of the way in which Vasari gives us evidence of how artists trained, when he states that Ghiberti worked on small reliefs ‘knowing very well that [they] are the drawing-exercises of sculptors’. His description of the competition also gives us evidence of the competitive spirit in which art was created, when he states that ‘with all zeal and diligence they exerted all their strength and knowledge in order to surpass one another’. Vasari also shows the ways in which different individuals felt empowered to judge art either through formal means by being appointed by the guild as judges or through the informal means of ordinary citizens giving their opinions directly to Ghiberti. In all of these ways, Vasari gives us not only information not only about artists and the circumstances of the production of art, but also, crucially, about its audience who they were and what they thought about it. Vasari’s emphasis on Florence (and Tuscany) as the major site of the genius of the Renaissance also still influences the modern study of art history, as does the ways in which he has framed artistic development as a progression from cruder and more naà ¯ve forms to the greater subtlety and ‘perfection’ of the later Renaissance. In some ways, it may be that this has been a negative influence: perhaps other parts of Italy and further afield in Europe have suffered a neglect and lack of interest as a result of this (arguably) over-emphasis on Florence. It may also be that the sense of progression has given a higher value to later works of art than those of earlier periods and that this has also caused too much emphasis on what is not known as the High Renaissance period and a neglect of other periods. Nonetheless, it cannot be in doubt that Vasari has made an important contribution to art history on his work The Lives and it is this contribution that has led him to be termed, by some, the first art historian. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Castiglione, Baldasar, The Book of the Courtier, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Artists, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Secondary Sources Boase, T.S.R., Georgio Vasari: the Man and the Book, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Burke, Peter, ‘Learned Culture and Popular Culture in renaissance Italy’, in Whitlock, Keith, ed., The Renaissance in Europe: A Reader, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2000. Cole, Alison, Virtue and Magnificence: Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts, New York: Harry N Abrams, 1995. Rubin, Patricia Lee, Giorgio Vasari: Art and History, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. Rud, Einar, Vasari’s Life and Lives: the First Art Historian, London: Thames and Hudson, 1963. Welch, Evelyn, Art in Renaissance Italy: 1350-1500, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Essay example --

Costa Rica is a small, democratic country, located in Central America. Nicaragua is to the north of Costa Rica and Panama to the south and it is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east. The country is very small, only about 32,000 square miles and is slightly smaller than the state of West Virginia (CIA, para. 2 2013). This beautiful country only covers about 0.03% of the earth’s surface, yet contains about 5% of the biodiversity in the world (Visit Costa Rica, para. 2). The climate is tropical and subtropical and has four volcanoes, two of which are still active (CIA, 2013, para. 2). The population of Costa Rica is 4,805,000 (WHO, 2009). The population growth is roughly 1.27% annually (CIA, 2013, para 3). About 64% of the country’s population lives in urban areas (CIA, 2013, para. 3). Although Central America is considered poor by many, Costa Rica’s poverty rate is lower than its neighboring countries – it is about 20% percent (CIA, 2013, para. 3). In 2012, the gross domestic profit (GDP) was $59.79 billion, or $12,800 per capita (CIA, 2013, para 3). A considerable amount of the country’s income comes from agricultural exports and tourism (CIA, 2013, para. 5). Agriculture makes up about 6.2% of the GPD and industry makes up about 2.5% of the (CIA, 2013, para. 5). Costa Rica was first settled in 1522 (Michigan State University (MSU), n.d., para. 1). It was settled as a colony by the Spanish in 1563 (CIA, 2013, para. 1). In 1821 along with the other provinces in Central America, it proclaimed its independence from Spain (MSU, n.d., para. 3). Then in 1838 Costa Rica proclaimed itself sovereign (CIA, 2013, para. 1). In 1899 Costa Rica began its democracy by having the first true e... ...Many poor countries suffer much worse public health problems and disasters than the people of Costa Rica, but they are very fortunate to have the health system that they have in place. In 2011, Costa Rica’s health expenditure on health care was 10.9% of the GDP (CIA, 2013, para. 3). This is one of the highest in the world. The Ministry of Health is able to focus on influencing public policies, create policies to protect the health of the people and provide guidance. They are always investigating new trends in medicine and finding the best way to help the Costa Rican public. It seems that the focus of the Ministry of Health and the CCSS is more about the care and the health of the people, even though the health expenditure is so high compared to most other countries. They do have this money to spend partly because of the lack of any military forces to finance.

Microsoft Office suite

Over the past decade, Microsoft has produced its best selling software devices for computer products such as Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite. In 2007, the Microsoft Corporation generated $51.12 billion and its product market share estimated as 90% in 2003 for Microsoft Office and 2006 for Microsoft Windows. In the mid-1980’s, Microsoft dominated the home computer operating system and has been accused of being monopolistic, although considered a developer centric-business culture.   The company’s website is one of the most visited on the World Wide Web having received more than 2.4 million page views. In the founding years between 1975-1985, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems were founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico then later moved to Bellevue, Washington of January 1, 1979, and then Bill Gates succeeded as CEO in 1980. DOS (Disk Operating System) had brought the company real success. In 1981, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft for providing a version of the CPM operating system that would become IBM Personal Computer. In the 1990’s, Microsoft rose and launched Windows 3.0. the new operating system introducing new features. Windows generated more revenue popularity, and became the favored PC. Then Microsoft went onto release Windows NT. 3.1 and Windows 95. Furthermore, it expanded its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. Then afterwards, MSN network became a major online service competing against AOL and went along with NBC to create a new 24/7 cable news station MSNBC. In 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP that changed the face of the old fashioned Windows. Then the Windows XP Home Edition and Windows Vista. â€Å"Since the 1980’s, Microsoft has been the focus of much controversy in the computer industry. Most criticism has been for its business tactics, often described with the motto â€Å"embrace, extend and extinguish† Microsoft initially embraces a competition standard or product, then extends it to produce their own incompatible version of the software or standard, which in time extinguishes competition that does not or cannot use Microsoft’s new version† (Rodger, 1998).