whole essay--Nero

‘Global Warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface and oceans since the mid-20Th century and its projected continuation (Wikipedia, 2010).’ Recently, increasing global warming news have been reported, causing the government and public concern enormously. In the meantime, whether taking more action on Global Warming has sparked much debate. Some people assert that Global Warming is a absolutely serious problem, the government should spend more money and resources on solving this problem while the others argue that Global Warming is not true, spending plenty of money on it is not worthwhile. In this essay, I will give some effects of global warming, and discuss some arguments both for and against taking more action on solving Global Worming. Furthermore, considering both of them, I will give my personal view: We should not focus on Global Warming excessively.

Some effects of Global Warming

According to Michael D. Mastrandrea, and Stephen H. Schneider ( "Global warming." World Book Online Reference Center. 2005. World Book, Inc. http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar226310.):

Global warming could cause plenty of serious influences. It could damage the lives of plants and animals that both live on land and live in the sea. Due to the global warming, some animals, plants and human beings could have to move to another area to live. Furthermore, it also could change the weather and climate, causing drought, flooding, even damaging storms. The polar ice could be melted to raise the sea level. Global Warming could affect human life as well.

1.Effects of ocean life

Global warming could cause the higher temperature of the surface water of the ocean. Higher temperature could influence the ocean ecosystem. For instance, it could cause coral bleaching.

2. Habitat changing

Due to the higher temperature, some animals and plants could not live in their original habitat. They could move to another places which suit living, but if they could not find any appropriate place to live, they might die.

3. Changes of weather

Global Warming might cause increasing terrible weather. Plants, animals and environment could be damaged by flooding, drought and hurricane in some place.

4. Changes of sea level.

Higher temperature could melt plenty of polar ice and some ice covered some mountain. The sea level will raise, some of islands and inhabited area could disappear.

5. Influence human health

Due to the increasing temperature, some tropical diseases could expand to more area. In some regions, high temperature could last for long time, floods and droughts might cause more hunger. These factors could cause increasing death rate.

Reducing Global Warming

After showing some main effects of Global Warming, we can understand that Global Warming could be a serious problem on the Earth. Therefore increasing people suggest that we should take some action to reduce Global Warming, but how to reduce it? Before giving the answer, we should consider what cause Global Warming a lot? The answer is greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. They raise the temperature of the earth through the 'greenhouse effect'. Without greenhouse effect, the Earth would not be warm enough to live. However, if the greenhouse effect is too strong, it will influence human beings and animals to live on the Earth. Therefore, if there are too many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they will cause Global Warming.The main greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide(CO2), methane(CH4), nitrous oxide(N2O) and miscellaneous other gases(CF C'S, etc.). Now back to the question: how to reduce the global warming?

In Mastrandrea etal. (2005), they give two main approaches: reducing CO2 emissions and carbon sequestration. Including preventing CO2 from entering the atmosphere and removing CO2 from atmosphere.

A vast number of people assert that CO2 is the most influential factor of causing Global Warming. They also think that human activities occurred lots of CO2. The main human activities which produced plenty of CO2 are burning the fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas (Mastrandrea etal., 2005). Furthermore, some people even think human activities caused Global Warming, so they support that government should spend lots of money and resources to reduce Global Warming immediately.

Different opinion

Some scientists and people have different opinion. They think the government should not take more action to solve this issue. Lots of scientists do not think that human activities threaten to destroy the earth’s climate. There are several arguments against global warming. First of all, human activities do not cause global warming. In Hieb(2003), he use a picture to explain that how much the Greenhouse Effect is caused by human activity.

Source: Monte Hieb, 10^th July,2003, Global Warming: A closer look at the numbers

From this picture, we can understand that Water vapor is responsible for 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, and only 0.001% is caused by human activities. This means even if we wanted to reduce it, we could do nothing. Only 0.0017% of Earth’s greenhouse effect is caused by CO2, it is not significant. Secondly, some people think that global climate computer models are very crude, they cannot predict future climate changes accurately. All predictions are not based on historical data. They are based on computer models. Lastly, reducing human greenhouse gas emissions would spend lots of money and resources, but it would not stop the climate changes, because the vast majority of greenhouse gases are natural.

Have discussed the arguments both for and against Global Warming, we can understand that Global Warming is a real problem, and have caused many negative influences exactly. However, comparing the benefits and costs, we can realise that Global Warming could be natural. Even if we spent lots of money and resources, it could change nothing. Therefore the government should take more action to solve the effects of Global Warming and how to reduce the costs which are caused by global warming rather than reducing Global Warming itself. Furthermore, there are also many other serious problem, such as environmental pollution, unemployment and so on. If the governments take more action to solve these problems, it can change a lot. The environment and our society will be better. In conclusion, we should not take more action on Global Warming.

Reference:

1. Wikipedia (2010), Global warming [online] US. Wikipedia. Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming [accessed 10 May 2010].

2. Michael D. Mastrandrea and Stephen H. Schneider ( "Global warming." World Book Online Reference Center. 2005. World Book, Inc. http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar226310.)

3.Hieb M (2003), Global Warming: A closer look at the numbers [online] Available from: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html[accessed 10 May 2010]

whole essay of Kelvin

Promotion is the leader of the 4ps

Promotion always takes away money from your wallet!

It is complicated to discuss what are the factors should a successful corporation have. Someone might say good management or strong brand name. Definitely, these are the factors that every corporation should have or aspire to develop. Indeed, marketing strategy or marketing mix had been a popular and essential study topic in the business world nowadays. As we all know, most corporations are selling product or service to their customers in order to survive and develop. Marketing mix is the crucial tool to help company to target their customer and sell the product successfully. However, what is marketing mix? Basically, marketing mix is including product, price, place of distribution and promotion. Product is the good or service offered by the company including variety of product mix such as features, design and package. Price is the amount in term of money that charged by the company for the product or service. Place of distribution is the channel and coverage such as the transportation and physical store as well as the online shop. Promotion is the personal or non-personal communication with the target customer in order to inform them with the information of the overall product. The combination of these four elements is called marketing mix. In addition, company has the option of adding, subtracting, or modifying in order to create a desire marketing strategy (Larry Steven Londre, 2009). In fact, someone always comes up with the question that is which one is the most important one in the marketing mix. In the following paragraphs, which are going to illustrate why, promotion is the leader of the marketing mix but not the other by using some real cases.

Promotion activities occur through out the product life cycle (PLC) that is a course of a product’s sales and profit over its lifetime. In fact, there are four stages, which are introduction, growth, maturity and decline. No matter in which stages, promotion plays a main or even leading role comparing with the other three elements in marketing mix. Initially, hardly can the firm generate any revenues during the introduction stage. Meanwhile, it is not necessary to modify or develop the product due to insufficient information form the market. Alternatively, raising the awareness of the product is the sovereign. If the products are welcome by the target market, it will entre growth stage. In this stage, each of the elements contributes lots to the successful of the product. Firm need to modify the product if there is a need to do that as well as keep the quality at the high level. Additionally, increase the coverage of the product is an attempt to enhance the customer based that is important to the following stages. What is the role of promotion in the second stage? The buyer from the first stage might continue to buy, however, promotion does try to “pull” more new buyers from the market by heavy advertisement and word-of-mouth. In the third stage, products entre maturity stage in which sales and profit go to the peak and the competition is fierce. Therefore, the reminders in the market are trying to compete in term of price and product. They might set an attractive price and sell the quality product to the customer. In this sense, spending on promotion should be decreased in order to keep the competitiveness in the keen market. Brand visibility, nevertheless, is the key thing that firm need to focus on. It is meaningless to have a superior product but no one see it in the store. That’s why keep the visibility is so important. By achieving this aims, of course, place of distribution such as point of sale can help to reach the objective. However, the key question is why the intermediary should put your product on the top on the shelf. Therefore, do promotion among yours’ distributer and retailer. At the end of the final stage, sales and profit drop steadily. Plan to phase out the product or introduce new version of the product are the two main roads in the decline stage. If the firms do not want to invest anymore, it better to cut promotion budget as well as the input of R&D and the distribution channel. On the other hand, to a certain extent, new version of product is starting a new PLC. Therefore, different promotion strategies should be carried out in order to raise the awareness and enhance the market share and maintain the visibility.

Promotion acts as a stimulator to impinge the irrational buying. According to Abraham Maslow (1954), there was a model that illustrated the human being’s needs in different level. Based on the model, the basic needs of us or consumer are the necessaries such as food, house and cloths. The upper level relate to the social status and self-actualization needs. From this point of view, consumer will only purchase the product beyond necessaries by two stimulations. The first one is to satisfy the higher level of needs whilst the second one is irrational buying. Promotion does little on the first one that is an internal stimulator. However, promotion acts a tool to stimulate the irrational buying that can be affected externally. Making it simply, there are two kinds of goods that are necessary and luxury. Firms selling necessary such as food and cloths use promotion strategy to “ force” consumer to buy more than what they really need. For instance, there are sales discount for the chocolate bar such as buy one get one free. Seeing that, consumer might consider the promotion price, which is cheaper than just buy one chocolate bar. However, more often than not the customer plans to buy only one chocolate bar that is the initial need. Conversely, luxury goods refer to the product and service that are not essential and the demand will be increased as higher incomes. (Financial Times Lexicon) To be more precise, matching with the Maslow’s hierarchy, luxury goods are the needs located at the upper level such as diamond or travel holiday. Considering that, firms really need intensive promotion strategy to convince the buying decision. Normally, when consumers are received some stimulation such as sales discounts or attracted by the persuasive advertisement, irrational buying might occur. For example, aimed at stimulating the travel in US during 2010 summer, there are intensive promotion strategies like 50 percent price cut or even private jet to Las Vegas and so on. Sony made a sale discount of its most powerful product, PS3, in the Christmas holiday last year to stimulate sales. All of the above cases are to tell the effect on the irrational buying of the luxury goods.

People argue that the influence of promotion is not immediacy whilst price is the most effective stimulator. First of all, it is important to clear a concept. For a successful marketing mix, each of the four elements makes contribution and is essential. It is no doubt that product is the fundamental of the marketing mix. However, the product nowadays is no more just a tangible thing that you can tough it and feel it. Recently, Facebook is the most successful business all around the world. We are now using facebook as a service but we cannot feel it or get some form it. Facebook attempts to use promotion strategy actively and passively. In fact, facebook is a free service that we don’t need to pay for it. However, we are doing the promotion for it. Facebook uses our personal information and connection to increase the customer base. Meanwhile, word-of-mouth is one of the key strategies for Facebook. The existing users will advise their friends to be the new user because of the marvelous experience on facebook. In this case, there is no real product and the customers don’t need to pay, therefore, promotion becomes the most useful tool.

Apart from the contribution, we can see the importance from the investment in promotion. As mentioned before, promotion is the personal or non-personal communication with the target customer in the market. It is impossible that no communication between the company and the market. Firms might contribute part of the total sale revenue into the promotion budget in the next year. Furthermore, some company might follow their main competitors to set the promotion budget. As we all know that, although Apple has a strong brand name and good reputation, the expenditure of the advertising is tremendous. According to the figure, more than 10% of the SG &A expense (selling, general and administrative) were used for advertising in 2008 (Apple’s Nov. 5 10-K filing on page 62). It shows that even the well-known company in the world, promotion should be an important consideration drawing the huge attention and investment form the company.

“I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half.” John Wanamaker who was the father of modern advertising said that. Actually, the effect of promotion is sometimes not immediacy or nor easy to see. However, the effect is there and the influences are sometimes immense and last for a long time. One topical case was the cowboy advertisement from Marlboro. At that moment, most youngsters thought that smoking is cool and smart but nothing more. Promotion cannot replace the function of product; price and place of distribution or vice versa in the marketing mix because all of them are unique and have their own value. By contrast, promotion does is to connect and maximize the function of each element. More important, our mind and decision are affected by promotion that exists everywhere near us. That’s why promotion is always the leader of 4ps. Beware your money will be taken away by an “invisible hand”.

References:

1.Larry Steven Londre Marketing, IMC, Advertising, Promotion, Media and More. 2009

www.londremarketing.com/documents/Nineps05122009.pdf

2.Sale promotion strategy by William King

http://ezinearticles.com/?Sales-Promotion-Strategies&id=3959138

3.Stage of the Product Life Cycle, Business Strategy, Business Performance

By Carl R. Anderson and Carl P. Zeithaml , 1984 Mar, P5-P.8

4. Principles Marketing, Third European Edition by Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong,

John Saunders and Veronica Wong

5.Introduction to Marketing by Geoff Lancaster and Paul Reynolds, 1999

6. http://lexicon.ft.com/term.asp?t=luxury-goods

7.http://www.travelagentcentral.com/community/first-ever-industrywide-promotion-stimulate-travel-21211

8. http://drypen.in/sales-promotion/sales-promotion-budget-and-techniques-used-to-allocate-funds.html

9. http://www.nancyschwartz.com/marketing_budget.html

10. http://industry.bnet.com/technology/1000574/apples-advertising-budget-revealed/

11. http://cisnet.mit.edu/pageview//4nmet/32

Renie's whole essay(draft)

Nowadays, people on the internet tend to use the Netspeak instead of proper words to communicate with each other, some people think it will cause bad influence on people and our language, while other disagree, what's your opinion?

Title: Netspeak is the product of internet

If you’re an internet computer user, you are likely familiar with this internet slang -lol, which means laughing out loud. Internet slang along with internet related terminologies are known as Netspeak. Netspeak is the special language, abbreviations, acronyms, keyboard symbols and shortened words and expressions used by people when communicating on the Internet (Macmillan Dictionary), and it makes language more diverse. With the proliferation of internet, most the netizens are young people aged from 18 to 35 who tend to be creative, efficient, and rebellious, the language they used to communicate in the cyber space features as a vivid, interesting, simple, and become a symbol of representing their personality. During past 20years, Netspeak made its way became a widespread practice outside the virtue world, and has been exerting an influence upon the application of language, and some people have negative opinion on this issue, In this essay, firstly, I will analysis its advantage and drawbacks of netspeak, then discuss the possible problems it may have on people and our language, in my view, netspeak as a new and interesting linguistic form, it can revitalise our language that used in our daily life.

Some linguists who study netspeak suggested that netspeak is another language carrier not a clumsy language. Linguist David crystal said “netspeak is non-standard, playful, highly deviant in bending the usual rules of language, tolerant of typographic and spelling errors, and full of new word” (David crystal, 2001) in his book , but he is attracted by its creative style of expression special way of communication. He also suggested that netspeak will change our impression towards language, and it provides people a creative way to talk faster. In 2003, a survey conducted by linguist Naomi Baron, she studied 23 instant message conversations of which 2185 transmissions in total, the result was surprising, people tested were using abbreviations, acronyms and emoticons, the spelling was mainly correct and not ambiguous, the study showed that netspeak change the way people communicate but not the ability of using proper language to communicate.

The main function for a language is to communicate, netspeak as a new linguistic form, although it has some spelling and grammatical mistakes, people still can understand each other for they can accept it quickly, we living a fast paced society where people tend to be efficient, netspeak is created just for such a purpose, it emerges as the times require, and enriches our language with new words and phrase, so it’s another language carrier indeed. Furthermore, netspeak can also give people the inspiration to create new means of expression, people change some words and phrases to make the language simple and convenient, and use it on internet or in daily life from their point of view which is fashionable, it can make people feel at ease and happy to communicate with each other regardless the mistakes, and to practice more which definitively won’t cause declining the ability of using language. On the contrary, using proper language in our daily life where people will pay more attention to wording and talk in a correct way will confine people’s ability to communicate.


However, as the netspeak become increasingly popular, a great number of drawbacks were concluded by studies, one of which shows that it has noticeable impact on the young people, the article reveals that young people have difficulty to distinguish netspeak writing and academic writing. Professor Sheila Contreras found that the way college students communicate with her changed for they use informal language in e-mails. Another drawback is being the abbreviation of netspeak may lead to misunderstanding and delivery incomplete information. Linguist Nacy Morgan said that if you shorten your communication into words and use emoticon to show your emotions, it will cause problems for they’re poor substitute for showing your feelings.
Linguistics professor Naomi Baron also worried that netspeak would influence the way society communicates as a whole, because the more people rely on internet communication, the more likely they tend to be less serious, ill-thought in communication of which the society will be affected.

To find the evident information regarding whether netspeak has impact on young people’s academic study, a survey conducted by Stanford Students in 2003 the result shows 20 out of 24 people regularly used the Internet for up to two hours per day. In spite of this frequent usage of netspeak, only four students said that Netspeak had a noticeable impact on their writing abilities. This survey indicates that, no matter how often the student use the netspeak, majority of student have no problems in use proper English instead of Netspeak and academic writing. As for the second drawback, I’m not totally agree with these, netspeak as an environmental language, it’s mainly used on the internet, as new words come out, it will became convention and received by people, and use abbreviation, acronyms and emoticons is a humorous and vivid way to show your feelings.Wertheimer, an expert of internet said “on the web, the only constant is change” Netspeak as the product of the internet will also change(Wertheimer),it’s in accordance with the rules of self-development and society development for it changes according to people's needs, so it’s not surprising that the communication of the whole society will be changed.

In conclusion, from historic aspect, every big event happened along with the introduction of new words, such as immigration wave, globalization, and it enriches our language and makes it more dynamic or it affects people’s communication and our language in a positive way, just as Jean Atchison said "Language, then, like everything else, gradually transforms itself over the centuries. There is nothing surprising in this. In a world where humans grow old, tadpoles change into frogs, and milk turns into cheese, it would be strange if language alone remained unaltered."(Jean Atchison). The internet gives birth to the emergence of netspeak; it’s the product of internet as well as the society, and it changes as two things develop.

Reference: Notions of Netspeak: Case Study of Online Slang among Stanford Students by Jennifer Chien and Thomas Grano, Stanford University instructor: Professor Richard Holeton, Stanford University, Spring 2003
Lisa Shaw, How Netspeak Affects English and the Way We Communicate
David crystal, the language and internet, second edition, Cambridge University Press 2001
Laccetti, the Lost Art of Writing
John Brandon, FWIW -- The origins of 'Net shorthand

Lucas 's Essay Introduction

City life or rural life，which is better?

City life and rural life are distinguished by the area where people live in. Nowadays, as we know, life style choice relates to people’s destiny for whole life. More and more choose come back to village to continue their lives, but there are still a lot of people live in cities .So which life style is better, city life or rural life? This essay will divide six parts: introduction, advantage of city life , disadvantage of city life , advantage of rural life , disadvantage of rural life and conclusion .In the body of essay , I compare and analyses the advantage and disadvantage between city life and rural life , which including education ,economic, medical and social problem. At last ,in conclusion I will give the suggestion for people and government.

Reference http://dedunu.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-the-village-life-and-city-life/

Jackie's essay Introduction

Does easier-prepared food make our life better?
Nowadays,the rhythm of a modern life is getting faster and faster,people are trying to figure out a way to save time and make a simpler life,in any fields--such as food!Instead of traditional way of cooking,People today can prepare their food much easier and simplier than has ever been before,just getting clean and ready-to-eat food,spending several minutes in the oven and everything is done,like a time-counting task.It seems to make food preraration entirely different and life as well, however,there are several disadvantages of the fast food,some of them are critical.In my essay,I will talk about the advantages , drawbacks of the fast food and show you whether it is ture that the easier-prepared food make our life better.

Lucas's Essay Plan

TOPIC City life or rural life，which is better?
Introduction:
•How define city life and rural life?
• Background information about life style • whether the city life is good? -advantage →various entertainment, good education facilities, information service, medical service
-disadvantage →traffic jam, lack of trust, Environment pollution, heavy pressure
• whether the rural life is good?
-advantage →simple life, green environment
-disadvantage→ lack of education, low income, less business opportunity
• Conclusion
Body:
1. Advantage of city life
a. City life can enjoy various entertainment
b. Live in city can get good education facilities
c. Information service in city is very comprehensive and immediate
d. City life share advanced medical service
2. Disadvantage of city life
a. Citizen suffer traffic jam everyday
b. Lack of trust between citizens
c. Serious environment pollution influence citizens
3. Advantage of rural life
a. Life is very simple in rural
b. Green environment brings healthy and happiness
4. Disadvantage of rural life
a. Lack of education leads people lose ability
b. Low income will decrease local economy
c. There has less business opportunity in rural
Conclusion:
---Summary the argument
---How we choose, city life or rural life .
---Some suggestion for government to focus on these problems

Jackie's essay plan

Does easier-prepared food make our life better? Plan
Introduction:
backgound:more and more people living in cities choose fast food frequently in their daily life,it's good for people or not?
advantages of fast food:easy to prepare,free the housewives from tough housework,save time for busy people
disadvantages:not healthy,people getting fat,especially children；make family spend less time together；also can cause some serious diseases.

Body:
advantages：1.easy to prepare,do not need wash,ready to eat;just take a few minutes to heat
2.housewives are liberated from tough preperation of meals,they can choose their life styles now.

disadvantages:1. food preparation is important family event,fast food make families spend less time together and kids feel not so warm from parents.
2.fast food is full of sugar ,salt,fat.....which make people get fatter,especially teenages
3.may cause serious diseases,like heart disease,several kinds of cancers.

conclusion:though fast food has some advantages,traditional food are better，People should pay a little more attention to health,not saving time in a inappropriate way.