Impact Of Eastern European Immigration On United Kingdom Economics Essay

Effect Of Eastern European Immigration On United Kingdom Economics Essay Is the assessment against migration in the United Kingdom very much established or is movement utilized simply as a substitute for the monetary failings of liberal law based society? In an ongoing overview by Populus including in excess of 5,000 respondents, two out of three white Britons felt that migration was awful for UK, a view reverberated by almost 43% of Asians and 17% dark Britons. [1] Recently, features have profited by the passing of multiculturalism and how the entire approach on movement has lost its allure.â [2]â Unmistakably, the movement banter is a quarrelsome one. The financial downturn is Europes focal political and strategy distraction. In such an atmosphere, it is obvious that the estimation of financial movement has gone under investigation. Concerns are not really constrained in the UK. [3] Rising movement is likewise basic to many industrialized nations, where the normal portion of workers in the work power has expanded from 4.3% to 7.2% somewhere in the range of 1995 and 2005. [4] In the wake of the worldwide war on dread and the financial downturn, the pervasive inclination today is hostile to settler and shockingly, as indicated by certain rights gatherings, verging on racism. [5] Lest we depend permit theory and feeling to outweigh everything else on the issue, it is ideal to explore observational proof on the effect of migration on the UK. Pundits of movement strategy have battled that the nearness of workers have made more negative than positive ramifications for t he UK economy, that the remarkable ascent of settler populaces have caused descending weight on compensation, taken work off local Britons, with foreigners going for a free-head out UKs government assistance framework and the requirement for more noteworthy integration. [6] Most of these reactions depend on hypotheses; exact examinations on the effect of migration on the UK are moderately youthful and have blended discoveries. A few examinations bolster the dispute that the movement expand has decreased wages for Britonsâ [7]â but a few investigations have likewise upheld the positive commitments of workers in the UK economyâ [8]â and whatever impacts migration may have on work, are minimal.â [9]â One of the biggest migrant gatherings that have positively shaped UK society are Eastern Europeans the individuals who were caught up in the work powers because of the promotion of eight nations the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia to the European Union. [10] The land references Eastern Europe is utilized reciprocally with East Central Europe, the previous Soviet Union, the Balkans, or the Baltic district. With regards to movement and in the examination being led in this theory, Eastern Europe will allude to the alleged Accession 8 nations before referenced. The flood of Eastern European transients is because of a few elements. Strategically, EU strategy is ascribed to be the most critical driver of movement in the UK. The free progression of transient laborers from Eastern Europe was fuelled by the EU Four Freedoms systematized in a 2004 Directive. [11] While a large portion of EU part nations thought of movement limitations, UK alongside Sweden and Ireland didn't. Vagrant workers from the A8 nations have gone back and forth openly in the UK since 2004. Beside strategy drivers, financial drivers likewise affected movement designs. Supposed financial push and pull factors decide the development and withdrawal of vagrant work flexibly in the UK. Among the push factors remember expanding neediness for the nations of inception, overpopulation, and overabundance hands on work. Nations from the previous Communist coalition endured monetarily and had enormous sections of jobless specialists in their populace combined with lessening social administrations. These troubles are irritated by a steady development in populace, low degrees of instruction, and absence of training.â [12]â Pull factors are those emerging from work request in getting nations, for example, the UK. Specific segment qualities could clarify the draw in transient work from Eastern Europe. For example, UK has seen declining richness rates, a maturing populace, and a rising degree of exceptionally taught experts which is progressively careful about bothersome humble jobs. [13] Undesirable employments are described by low wages, extended periods, and absence of professional stability those that intrigue less to local Britons and more to outsiders. Occupations that fit into this class have been developing at a consistent pace. Somewhere in the range of 1979 and 1999, employments having a place with the ten most reduced paid occupations expanded by 12 percent. [14] A little level of these laborers get social advantages; 3 out of 5 of them are not qualified for maternity or paternity leave; half of them don't get raises; and in excess of 50 percent didn't get debilitated compensation. Stud ies have demonstrated how around 90 percent of the most reduced paid occupations in the UK are taken up by transient workers.â [15]â Beside the monetary push and pull which persuade relocation for most Eastern European specialists, social and political factors likewise noteworthy impact these choices. Movement is additionally fuelled by the longing to rejoin with family or fabricate informal communities. An investigation shows that the significant of informal organizations and family union can't be limited as critical elements impacting relocation decisions. [16] New transients are typically the individuals who as of now have relatives filling in as vagrants in the UK and the choice to move is generally because of introductory family relocation. A report shows that the relocation of Eastern Europeans to England is for the most part through informal exchange and family organizes. Family referrals are the most well-known courses to getting employment. [17] The significance of family arranges is frequently observed as an aid or a bane by accepting networks. To the transient networks, movement encouraged throu gh family organizes fill in as establishment of network solidarity and development. To accepting networks, such network arrangements may prompt the ghettoisation of transient networks, giving concerns that vagrants don't acclimatize enough with the standard society. [18] This, in actuality, powers doubt and othering of transient specialists, and laying the reason for security concerns. Most definitely, the regular dread is the unregulated passage of transients and refuge searchers may prompt expanding inclusion with sorted out crime.â [19]â The most powerful contention made by migration pundits so far is to stress the negative outcomes of Easter European movement on work. Saying that the flood of modest work from Central and Eastern Europe causes a descending weight on compensation has been stated as ahead of schedule as 2004 by business analysts. In 1999, an investigation led by the Department of Education and Employment thought of ends supporting this dread: it found that if more elevated levels of incompetent laborers came in, local Britons would be on the losing end and that if the inverse were valid and relocation rather pulled in profoundly gifted specialists, local Britons would get the long finish of the stick. [20] In expansion, ongoing examinations have likewise reverberated the finding that the ongoing migration levels have altogether decreased wages of British workers. [21] The burdens of movement on professional stability of British laborers have been to a great extent advertised in the mediaâ [22] â despite experimental investigations for the most part negating this case. Actually, a few financial papers have discovered that the relocation streams preceding 2000 until 2005 have indicated almost no proof of a negative effect. Explicit examinations on the effect of Eastern Europe settlers have likewise expressed that the general dread related with vagrant work doesn't have observational basis. [23] Econometric considers have additionally negated speculations that the expanding number of foreigners from the A8 nations have prompted rising joblessness among British workers. [24] What is thought about the effect of Eastern European migration is little contrasted with U.S. contemplates looking at relocation results. By the by, a significant measure of academic writing is available. This current work surveys academic material and econometric investigations identified with the effects of relocation from A8 nations on the results of local Britons in three circles (1) work, (2) culture, and (3) security. This paper utilizes the term settlers and movement to allude to individuals began from any of the A8 nations to remain briefly or for all time in the UK. With the end goal of this examination, the term workers is utilized as a class under which work vagrants, shelter searchers, and political outcasts all fall under. Exploration Questions The investigation concentrated on responding to the accompanying inquiries: What is the verifiable setting of Eastern European migration to the UK? What are the present relocation drifts in Eastern European migration? What is the effect of Eastern European migration on a) work, b) culture, and c) security? Structure of the Paper This paper is organized into four primary segments. The principal area incorporates a concise depiction of the verifiable setting of relocation in Europe. Additionally, the historical backdrop of relocation in Britain is especially inspected. The subsequent part manages the latest movement examples and relocation patterns of Eastern Europeans to the UK. It inspected the ascent and fall of movement numbers and record for potential factors that prompted these patterns. The third segment introduced a short conversation on the significant strategies that have influenced relocation patterns of Eastern Europeans toward the UK. The fourth segment made a careful survey of the discoveries of insightful investigations especially econometric examinations that have managed the issue of movement impacts. In the first place, the effect on work is analyzed whether immigra

Effect of positive feedback on achievement Essay

Impact of positive input on accomplishment - Essay Example The investigation centers upon the effect of positive input on accomplishment. This may be best upheld by the possibility of developmental appraisal procedures, which help in forming a student’s learning capacity and instructive additions gained by the kid during the procedure of study hall training. Collaboration between an instructor and an understudy is the way to progress in the powerful gains from training accumulating to the understudy. Developmental instructive procedures involve the analytic use of assessment implies where the instructor needs to survey an understudy dependent on perceptions, conversations in the homerooms, schoolwork done by the understudy, tests and investigation of crafted by an understudy. Taras (2008) takes note of that much should be done so as to comprehend the ongoing upgrades or changes realized in the zone of appraisal in instruction. Dark and William (1998) in their work â€Å"Inside the Black Box† see that the assessment framework is developmental when the inputs or data gathered by the educators are used in reshaping the instructing and learning procedure with the end goal that the real necessities are met. These might join some elective showing rehearses, alterations in the guidance or giving more events to practice to the understudies. The point of this paper is to investigate the effect of positive input on the accomplishment of a person with an attention on the regions of progress basic for the execution of developmental evaluation methods. With regards to training, appraisal assumes a significant job. This is particularly evident if there should be an occurrence of youngsters and teenagers. Certain instructors accept that acquiring includes the exchange of information from the educators to the students and comprehension can grow later. Others are resolved to frame a showing base, which includes cooperations. In such a situation developmental

Campus Snacks

Campus Snacks Hey pals, I was eating a bowl of oatmeal the other day, and I thought it would be ideal to talk about foods to keep in your room, especially if you’re going to be  living in a residence hall. I like to keep small little snacks like almonds, popcorn or peanut butter crackers in my room at all times, and this really helps for the days that I’m just on the go and I don’t have time to stop for lunch at a dining hall, because i can just stick a snack in my backpack. For meals, I would definitely recommend stocking up on your favorite cereals by either going to walmart or just stopping by Ikenberry Dining hall and using your cafe credits. I would also recommend getting warm meals for the winter like oatmeal or ramen. My favorite place to go for ramen, is a little store on Goodwin Ave, around the corner from the Illinois Street residence hall called 710 mart. The ramen is really inexpensive and they have a large variety of other snacks you can buy. I think a big obvious meal choice is also microwavable mac and cheese, and if you have a mini fridge you can store actual cheese and add it to the micro-mac to fancy it up little. Well, that’s all the advice I have for now! Thanks for reading, and keep snacking! Indyia Class of 2019 I’m an Art Foundation student in the College of Fine and Applied Arts, and after Art Foundation I plan on majoring in Art Education. With my degree and teaching certificate, I want to teach children how to use their emotions, thoughts, and surroundings to create art.

Affirmative Action in Higher Education - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1262 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2019/10/30 Category Society Essay Level High school Tags: Affirmative Action Essay Did you like this example? Affirmative action in higher education has been a very controversial topic in the American education system for several years. Many people around the world have constructed their own ideal definition of what affirmative action means to them, leading others to have a confused misconception of what the true meaning of affirmative action is. Affirmative action can be acknowledged as a form of â€Å"positive discrimination†. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Affirmative Action in Higher Education" essay for you Create order It is a policy that was created in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to favor those who tend to be discriminated against in areas of employment and education. It is primarily appointed to help women, minorities such as Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, and those that are disabled. In March of 1961, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, establishing the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. The mission of this executive order was to end discrimination in employment and education by the federal government and its contractors. It was this order that initiated our national commitment to affirmative action in both the workplace and in higher education— â€Å"our determination to take positive steps to extirpate all preference by race† (Cohen 12). Many people believe that affirmative action is a form of racism or discrimination in the school system, however it is actually a forum by which minorities have a better opportunity to obtain higher education in what can be presumed as a racist world. On the contrary, critics have insisted that affirmative action is ill-favored and objectionable. Barry Gross proclaims that it is unfair to the white males against whom it discriminates. He states that non-minority males are deprived of equal opportunity because affirmative action selects minorities or women candidates over more qualified non-minority males (Cohen 264). A various amount of critics and scholars provide impressive amounts of debatable ideas in regards to affirmative action in higher education. The efforts of affirmative action to improve the racial disparities in higher education in America does not create a practical solution but rather, it creates the same type of divided environment that was previously present in society due to racial disadvantages and it also faces the same struggle that it tries to extinguish. In this essay, I will concentrate on these problems in regard to the policy of affirmative action as well as delve deeper into how minorities of different ethnicities and sexualities are affected by the policy. Affirmative action may not be a practical solution to maintaining fair grounds for all people in the college admission process. It creates more of a divided environment in that the current forum does not reflect a level playing field for all people as promised by the program when it was first introduced. According to NPR, Americans were surveyed by the management consulting company Gallup. The findings from the survey indicate that Americans largely support the idea of affirmative action but also oppose preferential treatment for minorities in the college admissions process. 70% of Americans suggested that the ethnic and racial background of college applicants should not be considered but college applicants should be exclusively judged on their academic merit only, even if that ultimately means a smaller amount of minority individuals are admitted to college (Rozen 1). This is where the concept of affirmative action in higher education has many conflicting viewpoints. If college appl icants were to be judged solely on their academic merit, colleges all around the nation would not have a diverse group of students and it would prohibit several groups of people from obtaining the proper education that is needed in order to prosper and succeed. For this reason, college admission officers try to look at every single applicant with a holistic review so that everything about a person and their background is taken into account. With this approach, admission officers are able to look at the numerical and non-numerical aspects of an applicant so that they can admit interesting students of different demographics that have something meaningful to bring to the college’s community. In order to move forward towards a more just and equal society when in comes to acquiring a good education, it is imperative that the demographics of people that have been negatively impacted by discrimination are given the same opportunity that non minorities have already had for several decades. Chambers writes, â€Å"Even the strongest critics of affirmative action acknowledge that to advance toward a colorblind (racially just) and gender-free (sexually just) society, we will sometimes have to depart from the status quo, for example, by favoring qualified women or minority candidates over qualified men or non minority candidates when the qualified women or minority candidates have themselves directly suffered from proven past discrimination† (Chambers 202). Many men or non minority candidates tend to often dispute that affirmative action presents a form of â€Å"reverse discrimination† towards them and does not give them a level playing field to get accepted into col lege. Contradictorily, a majority of the student population at colleges in the United States are made up of at least 50% caucasian students somewhat proving that â€Å"reverse discrimination† in the college system and in affirmative action does not exist. Affirmative action is solely there just to give minorities a fair chance to go to college too. Furthermore, Jan Boxill, an American academic who was Senior Lecturer in Philosophy (ethics) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, builds upon this stance by stating, â€Å"Although these nonminority males may not actually have discriminated against women and minorities themselves, Boxill argues that they have benefited from the discrimination of others, for example, through unequal educational opportunities. Hence, women and minorities do deserve compensation for this unjust discrimination, and, moreover, affirmative action seems to be an appropriate form of compensation† (Cohen 265). Giving minorities more of an opportunity to obtain a good education allows for a more diverse group of people to have the required level of expertise to get a good job after college and pursue a successful career. In addition, even though affirmative action was created to help minorities, it is still hurting the chances of a large demographic of people from getting into college. Asians are one of the minority groups that are greatly impacted in the college admissions process. â€Å"Harvard uses the important personal rating to deflate Asian American admission chances, while it inflates the chances for blacks and Hispanics. A chart was displayed showing racial categories of students who had earned the highest academic scores. The top Asian Americans consistently received the lowest personal ratings, while the top African American applicants were awarded the highest personal ratings† (Biskupic 1). Asians are currently being discriminated against in the college admissions process because so many of them apply to colleges and tend to usually be well qualified in the numerical aspects of their applications. However, admissions officers do not believe that they are qualified in the non numeri cal aspects of their application. Asian Americans found that Harvard admissions uses racist stereotypes to describe Asian students. This method of unfair treatment led to a lawsuit being filed against the university for discriminating against Asian American applicants (Wong 1). It is assumed that if colleges were to accept even more Asian Americans over other minorities, the demographics of minorities at colleges would be mostly made up of Asians, which would conclude to a less diverse community. This is a big problem along with many others that needs to be addressed. Even though affirmative action was created to make a level playing field for all college applicants, it seems that it is slowly diverting away from its main purpose and actually hurting those that it is supposed to help.

Government And Large Financial Institutions - 1937 Words

Research suggests that government and large financial institutions should not be allowed to regulate cryptocurrency, because eventually it will change cryptocurrency to mirror our current paper currency system, and ultimately remove the freedom and anonymity associated with the use of cryptocurrency. The use of Cryptocurrency has become more prevalent across the globe. Regulation seems like the next logical step in evolution and legitimacy, but this will ultimately lead to large financial institutions and government establishing the standards and determining the value. At that stage cryptocurrency may still be categorized as a decentralized form of currency, but the behavior will be that of a centralized system overseen by the same institutions who govern our monetary systems today. Many people think of cryptocurrency as a new and innovative payment system, yet it’s much like forms of money that the world has seen in the past, before governments and central banks exerted their control. In many ways, cryptocurrency completes the cycle started when money began to take hold in the Renaissance, when value and control was not determined by any government but rather by the issuers of notes and the customers who used those notes. One of the most popular cryptocurrencies available is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is regulated differently in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Canada, and the United States, and no country has currently backed Bitcoin. Launched in 2009, and founded by SatoshiShow MoreRelatedWhy A Company Is Big Enough997 Words   |  4 Pagesbenefits of having large institutions along with the problems that come with them. It will also mention the amount of concentration in the banking industry, the size of the firms and the market share they represent. 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The Dusk Free Essays

Norman Gortsby sits on a park bench at dusk, a time when, in his estimation, individuals who have experienced defeat in their lives can sojourn unrecognized. An elderly gentleman sits nexts to Gortsby, and Gortsby judges him to be a lonely person of no consequence. After a short time, the old man leaves, and his place is taken by a younger man, better dressed than his predecessor but equally downcast. We will write a custom essay sample on The Dusk or any similar topic only for you Order Now The man tells Gortsby a sad story of having gone out to buy some soap, then not having been able to find his hotel. Gortsby responds that he had once done the same thing, only in a foreign country, to which the man rejoins that in a foreign land, one could go to the Consul for help, but here at home, there is no help to be had, unless â€Å"some decent chap† would believe his story and lend him some money. Gortsby says he will lend the man some money if he can produce the soap as proof that his story is true, but the man cannot, and walks away. Looking on the ground, Gortsby spies a new bar of soap, goes after the man, and lends him the money. When he returns to the park bench, however, the elderly gentleman who was sitting next to him originally is searching the ground for a lost bar of soap. Two elements of humor that the author uses in this story are comic irony and satire. Comic irony occurs when the reader knows something that a character does not, and in this story is evidenced when the young man drolly ends his sad tale with a veiled request for mone. The man obviously has told his story to make Gortsby feel sorry for him and lend him some money, but Gortsby does not know for sure that his story is a lie. Satire is the use of humor to expose a human frailty. Gortsby’s inability to judge his counterparts correctly is comically pointed out in his unstated chagrin when he discovers that, through his own miscalculation, he has allowed the young man to outwit him with his sad story of woe. How to cite The Dusk, Papers

Key Success Factors for Online Advertising Essay Example

Key Success Factors for Online Advertising Essay Social Advertising Catherine Tucker? February 15, 2012 Abstract In social advertising, ads are targeted based on underlying social networks and their content is tailored with information that pertains to the social relationship. This paper explores the e? ectiveness of social advertising using data from ? eld tests of di? erent ads on Facebook. We ? nd evidence that social advertising is e? ective, and that this e? cacy seems to stem mainly from the ability of targeting based on social networks to uncover similarly responsive consumers. However, social advertising is less e? ective if the advertiser explicitly states they are trying to promote social in? uence in the text of their ad. This suggests that advertisers must avoid being overt in their attempts to exploit social networks in their advertising. Catherine Tucker is Associate Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA. and Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER. Thank-you to Google for ? nancial support and to an anonymous non-pro? t for their cooperation. Thank-you to Jon Baker, Ann Kronrod, Preston Mcafee, and seminar participants at the George Mason University Roundtable on the Law and Economics of Internet Search, the University of Rochester, UCLA and Wharton for valuable comments. All errors are my own. ? 1 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn. com/abstract=1975897 1 Introduction Recent advances on the internet have allowed consumers to interact across digital social networks. This is taking place at unprecedented levels: Facebook was the most visited website in the US in 2010, accounting for 20% of all time spent on the internet, a higher proportion than Google or Yahoo! ComScore, 2011). However, it is striking that traditional marketing communications have been at the periphery of this explosion of social data despite the documented power of social in? uence on purchasing behavior. Much of the emphasis on marketing in social media, so far, has been on the achievement of ‘earned reach,’ whereby a brand builds it s subscriber base organically and also hopes that this will in? uence others organically through sharing links with their social networks (Corcoran, 2009). However, recent research by Bakshy et al. 2011) has emphasized that this kind of organic sharing is far rarer than previously supposed, and that there are very few examples of a commercial message being consistently transmitted across social networks. Further, Tucker (2011a) shows that in order to achieve virality, an advertiser may have to sacri? ce the commercial e? ectiveness of their message. This means that advertisers may need to use paid advertising to facilitate the sharing of their commercial message through social networks. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have recently introduced a new form of advertising called ‘social advertising. A social ad is an online ad that ‘incorporates user interactions that the consumer has agreed to display and be shared. The resulting ad displays these interactions along with the use r’s persona (picture and/or name) within the ad content’ (IAB, 2009). This represents a radical technological development for advertisers, because it means that potentially they can co-opt the power of an individual’s social network to target advertising and engage their audience. This paper asks whether social advertising is e? ective, and what active steps advertisers themselves should take in their ads to promote social in? ence. 2 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn. com/abstract=1975897 We explore the e? ectiveness of social ads using data from a ? eld experiment conducted on Facebook by a non-pro? t. This ? eld experiment compared the performance of social ads with conventionally targeted and untargeted ads. The social ads were targeted to the friends of ‘fans’ of the charity on Facebook. The ads featured that fan’s name and the fact that they had become a fan of this charity. We ? nd that on average these social ads were more e? ective than demographically targeted or untargeted ads. We will write a custom essay sample on Key Success Factors for Online Advertising specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Key Success Factors for Online Advertising specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Key Success Factors for Online Advertising specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Further, this technique is useful for improving both the performance of demographically targeted and untargeted campaigns. Comparing the performance of these ads that contained the name of the fan and were targeted towards the fan’s friends with those that were simply targeted to that fan’s friends suggests that their e? ectiveness stems predominantly from the ability of social targeting to uncover similarly responsive consumers. We present results that suggest that as well as being more e? ective at gathering clicks, social advertising is also more e? ective at promoting actual subscriptions to the newsfeed and is more cost-e? ctive. We then turn to investigate how advertisers should word their social advertising. Through randomized ? eld tests, we investigate the e? ectiveness of advertisers deliberately promoting social in? uence in their advertising copy through including a statement that encourages the viewer to, for example, ‘be like their friend. ’ W e ? nd that consumers reject attempts by advertisers to explicitly harness or refer to a friend’s actions in their ad copy. This result contrasts with previous empirical research that ? nds consistent bene? ts to ? rms from highlighting previous consumer actions to positively in? ence the consumers’ response (Algesheimer et al. , 2010; Tucker and Zhang, 2011). This rejection is reasonably uniform across di? erent wording, though slightly less severe for ads that make a less explicit reference to friendship. We then present additional evidence to rule out two potential explanations for our ? ndings. First, we rule out that the overt mention of social in? uence simply made people aware they were seeing an ad rather than something organic to the site. We do this by comparing an ad that states it is an ad with an ad that does not, and ? nding no di? rence. 3 Second, to investigate whether it was simply bad advertising copy, we examined how the ads perform for a group of Fa cebook users who have shown a visible propensity for social in? uence. We identify such users by whether or not they have a stated attachment to a ‘Fashion Brand’ on their Facebook pro? le. These users, in contrast to our earlier results, react more positively to the advertiser explicitly co-opting social in? uence than to a message that did not. This suggests that it was not simply that the message was badly communicated, but instead re? cts a taste (or more accurately distaste) for explicit references to social in? uence among most, though not all, consumers. This research builds on a literature that has studied the interplay between social networks and word of mouth. Zubcsek and Sarvary (2011) present a theoretical model that examines the e? ects of advertising to a social network, but assume that a ? rm cannot directly use the social network for marketing purposes. Instead, ? rms have to rely on consumers to organically pass their advertising message within the soci al networks. There has been little work on advertising in social networks. Previous studies in marketing about social network sites have questioned how such sites can use advertising to obtain members (Trusov et al. , 2009), and also how makers of applications designed to be used on social network sites can best advertise their products (Aral and Walker, 2011) through viral marketing. Hill et al. (2006) show that phone communications data can be used to predict who is more likely to adopt a service, Bagherjeiran et al. (2010) present a practical application where they use data from instant messaging logs at Yahoo! to improve online advertising targeting, and similarly Provost et al. 2009) show how to use browsing data to match groups of users who are socially similar. Tucker (2011b) explores how privacy controls mediate the e? ectiveness of advertising on Facebook. However, to our knowledge this is the ? rst academic study of the e? ectiveness of social advertising. Managerially, our results have important implications. Social advertising and the use of onl ine social networks is e? ective. However, when advertisers attempt to reinforce this social 4 in? uence in ad copy, consumers appear less likely to respond positively to the ad. This is, to our knowledge, the ? st piece of empirical support for emerging managerial theories that emphasize the need for ? rms to not appear too obviously commercial when exploiting social media (Gossieaux and Moran, 2010). 5 2 Field Experiment The ? eld experiment was run by a small non-pro? t that provides educational scholarships for girls to attend high school in East Africa. Without the intervention of this non-pro? t, and other non-pro? ts like them, girls do not attend secondary school because their families prioritize the education of sons. Though the non-pro? t’s main mission is funding these educational scholarships, the non-pro? has a secondary mission which is to inform young people in the US about the state of education for African girls. It was in aid of this secondary mission that t he non-pro? t set up a Facebook page. This page serves as a repository of interviews with girls where they describe the challenges they have faced. To launch the ? eld experiment, the non-pro? t followed the procedure described in ‘A/B Testing your Facebook Ads: Getting better results through experimentation’ (Facebook, 2010) which involved setting up multiple competing campaigns. These ad campaigns was targeted to three di? erent groups as shown in Table 1. The ? st group was a broad untargeted campaign for all Facebook users aged 18 and older in the US. The second group were people who had already expressed interest in other charities. These people were identi? ed using Facebook’s ‘broad category targeting’ of ‘Charity + Causes. ’ The third group were people who had already expressed an interest in ‘Education + Teaching. ’ Previously, the charity had tried such reasonably broad targeting with little success and was hopeful that social advertising would improve the ads’ performance (Tucker, 2011b). In all cases, the charity explicitly excluded current fans from seeing its ads. For each of these groups of Facebook users, the non-pro? t launched a socially targeted variant. These ads employed the Facebook ad option that meant that they were targeted only to users who were friends of existing fans of the charity. This also meant that when the fan had not opted-out on Facebook, the ad also displayed a ‘social endorsement’ where the name of the friend was shown at the bottom of the ad as shown in Figure 1. 6 Table 1: Di? erent Groups Targeted Condition Untargeted Baseline: Only Shown Baseline text All people in US over age of 18 who are not fans of the non-pro? t already. All people in US over age of 18 who state a? nity with charities on their Facebook pro? le who are not fans of the non-pro? t already. All people in US over age of 18 who state a? nity with education on their Facebook pro? le who are not fans of the non-pro? t already. Social Variant: Shown all 5 texts from Table 2 All people in US over age of 18 who are friends of the non-pro? t’s supporters who are not fans of the non-pro? t already. All people in US over age of 18 who state a? nity with charities on their Facebook pro? le who are friends of the non-pro? t’s supporters who are not fans of the nonpro? already. All people in US over age of 18 who state a? nity with education on their Facebook pro? le who are friends of the non-pro? t’s supporters who are not fans of the nonpro? t already. Charity Education The non-pro? t varied whether the campaign was demographically targeted and whether the campaign was socially targeted, and also explored di? erent ad-text con ditions. Table 2 describes the di? erent ad-copy for each condition. Each di? erent type of ad-copy was accompanied by the same picture of an appealing secondary-school student who had bene? ted from their program. The socially targeted ads displayed all ? ve variants of the advertising message depicted in Table 2. For each of the non-socially-targeted campaigns, we ran the baseline variant of the ad text which, as shown in Table 2, simply says ‘Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. ’ The non-pro? t could not run the other four conditions that refer to others’ actions, because federal regulations require ads to be truthful and they did not want to mislead potential supporters. The di? erent ad conditions were broadly designed to cover the kinds of normative and informational social in? ence described by Deutsch and Gerard (1955); Burnkrant and Cousineau (1975). 1 We want to be clear that we do not argue that these advertising measures 1 Other forms of social in? uence studied in the literature involve network externalities where there is a performance bene? t to multiple people adopting (Tucker, 2008). However, that does not seem to be relevant 7 Ta ble 2: Di? erent Ad-Text Conditions Condition Baseline Be like your friend Ad-Text Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Be like your friend. Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Don’t be left out. Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Your friend knows this is a good cause. Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Learn from your friend. Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Don’t be left out. Your friend knows Learn from your friend. capture all types of social in? uence or are necessarily successful at distinguishing between the di? erent types of social in? uence that are possible. The literature on social in? ence has emphasized that the underlying mechanism is nuanced and complex. Obviously, di? erent types of social in? uence relate and interact in ways that cannot be teased apart simply with di? erent wording. However, the variation in messages does allow us to study whether explicit advertising messages that attempt to use di? erent types of wording to evoke social in? uence are e? ective in general. Figure 1: Sample Ad Figure 1 displays an anonymized sample ad for a social ad in the ‘be like your friend’ condition. The blacked-out top of the ad contained the non-pro? t’s name. The grayedhere. out bottom of the ad contained a supporter’s name, who had ‘liked’ the charity and was a Facebook friend of the person who was being advertised to. It is only with developments in technology and the development of automated algorithms that such individualized display of the friend’s name when pertinent is possible. Table 3 describes the demographics of the roughly 1,500 fans at the beginning of the campaign. Though the initial fans were reasonably spread out across di? erent age cohorts, they were more female than the average population, which makes sense given the nature of the charity. At the end of the experiment, the fans were slightly more likely to be male than before. The way that Facebook reports data means that we have access to the demographics only of the fans of the charity, not of those who were advertised to. Table 3: Demographics of the non-pro? t’s fans before and after the ? eld experiment Age 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+ Total Before Male 5 5 6 3 3 22 Experiment After Experiment Female Male Female 13 8 14 14 6 14 17 6 16 13 3 13 10 4 10 67 27 67 The ‘Total’ row does not add up to 100% because fans who are below 18 years of age are omitted. 9 3 Data The data that Facebook shares with advertisers is both anonymous and aggregate. This means that we cannot trace the e? ects of social advertising on the friends of any one individual. It also means that we cannot examine heterogeneity in the degrees of in? uence across individuals, as is studied, for example, by Godes and Mayzlin (2009) in their study of o? ine ? rm-sponsored communications. However, given that the central research question of the study is whether, on average, di? erent types of social advertising are more e? ective, the aggregate nature of the data is su? cient. Table 4 reports daily summary statistics for the campaigns in our data. Over a 5-week period, there were 630 observations. There were 18 campaigns in total that consisted of a) The three baseline conditions that were demographically targeted to everyone, charity-lovers and education-supporters and used the baseline text, and b) The ? fteen social ad conditions that had all the ? ve di? erent types of text, and socially targeted separately to everyone, charity-lovers and education-supporters. Table A2 in the appendix provides a summary of these campaigns. Table 4: Summary Statistics Mean Std Dev Min Max Average Impressions 13815. 13898. 6 1 98037 Average Clicks 5. 06 5. 17 0 37 Connections 2. 70 3. 52 0 24 Unique Clicks 5. 04 5. 14 0 36 Daily Click Rate 0. 11 0. 10 0 1. 27 Impression Click Rate 0. 045 0. 047 0 0. 50 Cost Per Click (USD) 0. 98 0. 40 0. 31 3. 90 Cost Per 1000 views (USD) 0. 52 1. 37 0 24. 5 Ad-Reach 6165. 7 6185. 0 1 60981 Frequency 2. 32 0. 82 1 9. 70 18 ad variants at the daily level for 5 weeks (630 observations) There are two click-through rates reported in Table 4. The ? rst click-through rate is the proportion of people who clicked on an ad that day. The denominator here is the 10 Ad-Reach measure that captures the number of people exposed to an ad each day. The second click-through rate is per ad impression. We focus on the former in our econometric analysis, because impressions can be a function of person refreshing their page or using the back button on the browser or other actions which do not necessarily lead to increased exposure to the ad. We show robustness subsequently to using this click-through rate per impression measure. Due to the relatively small number of clicks, these click through rates are expressed as percentage points or sometimes as fractions of a percentage point. In our regression analysis we also use this scaling in order to make our coe? cients more easily readable. 2 The data also contains an alternative means of measuring advertising success. The connection rate measures the number of people who liked a Facebook page within 24 hours of seeing a sponsored ad, where the denominator is the ad’s reach that day. We compare this measure to clicks in subsequent analysis to check that the click-through rate is capturing something meaningful. We also use the cost data about how much the advertiser paid for each of these ads in a robustness check. The data reassuringly suggests that there were only ? ve occasions where someone clicked twice on the ads. Therefore, 99. 8% of the click-through rate we measure captures a single individual clicking on the ad. 2 11 Figure 2: Social advertising is e? ective 4 4. 1 Results Does Social Advertising Work? First, we present some simple evidence about whether social advertising is more e? ective than regular display advertising. Figure 2 displays the basic comparison of aggregate (that is, across the whole ? ve-week period) click-through rates between non-socially-targeted ads and ads that were socially targeted. Since these are aggregate click-through rates they di? er from the daily click-through rates reported in Table 4. These are expressed as fractions of a percentage point. It is clear that social advertising earned far larger click-through rates. The di? erence between the two bars is quite striking. To check the robustness and statistical signi? cance of this relationship, we turn to econometrics. The econometric analysis is relatively straightforward because of the randomization induced by the ? eld tests. We model the click-through rate of campaign j on day t targeted to demographic group k as: 2 ClickRatejt = ? SocialT argeting Endorsementj + ? k + ? t + j (1) SocialT argeting Endorsementj is an indicator for whether or not this campaign variance was socially targeted and displayed the endorsement. Since Facebook does not allow the testing of these di? erent features separately, this is a combined (rather than separable) indicator. ?k is a ? xed e? ect that captures whether this wa s the untargeted variant of the ad. This controls for underlying systematic di? erences in how likely people within that target and untargeted segment were to respond to this charity. We include a vector of date dummies ? t . Because the ads are randomized, ? t and ? k should primarily improve e? ciency. We estimate the speci? cation using ordinary least squares. Though we recognize that theoretically a click-through rate is bounded at one hundred since it is measured in percentage points, click-through rates in our data are never close to this upper bound or lower bound. 3 Table 5 reports our initial results. Column (1) presents results for the simple speci? cation implied by equation (1) but without the date and demographic controls. The point estimates suggest that social targeting and a friend’s endorsement increased the average daily clickthrough rate by around half. Column (2) repeats the analysis with the controls for date. It suggests that after controlling for date, the result holds. This is reassuring and suggests that any unevenness in how ads were served across days does not drive our results. It also suggests that our result is not an artifact of a failure of randomization. Column (3) adds an extra coe? cient that indicates whether that campaign was untargeted rather than being targeted to one of the customer groups identi? d as being likely ‘targets’ by the non-pro? t We also tried alternative speci? cations where we use the unbounded clicks measure (rather than a rate) as the dependent variable and show that our results are robust to such a speci? cation in Table A1, in the appendix. 3 13 Educational and Charity supporters. It suggests that indeed, as expected, an untargeted camp aign was weakly ine? ective, though the estimate is not signi? cant at conventional levels. We speculate that the apparent weakness of demographic targeting may be because target markets of charity and educational supporters is reasonably broad, and consequently may have ontained many individuals who would not support an international charity. An obvious question is what explains the success of social advertising. One explanation is that the endorsement of a friend is informative. Another explanation is that social targeting uncovers people who will be more likely to be interested in their charity as they are similar, in unobserved ways, to their friends who are already fans of the charity. Manski (1993) pointed out that this particular issue of distinguishing homophily (unobserved characteristics that make friends behave in a similar way) from the explicit in? ence of friends on each other is empirically problematic. Ideally, to address this we would simply randomize whether users saw the endorsement or not. However, Facebook’s advertiser interface does not allow that. What we can do is take advantage of the fact that sometimes ads are shown to people without the endorsement if that fan has selected a privacy setting which restricts the use of their image and name. The interface which users use to do this is displayed in Figure A1; all users do is simply select the ‘No One’ rather than the ‘Only my friends’ option. Of course, this will not represent perfect randomization. It is likely that the fans who select stricter privacy settings di? er in unobserved ways from those who do not, and that therefore their social networks may di? er as well. However, despite this potential for bias, this does represent a useful opportunity to try to disentangle the power of social targeting to enable homophily and the power of personal endorsements. Column (4) displays the results of a speci? cation for equation (1) where the dependent variable is the conversion rate for these socially targeted but not socially endorsed ads. Here for ads that were being shown to friends, the click-through rate was only calculated for occasions when the endorsement was not shown. A comparison of Column 14 (3) and Column (4) in Table 5 makes it clear the ads that were displayed to friends of fans but lacked a clear endorsement were less e? ective than those that had a clear endorsement. However, they were still measurably more e? ective than non-socially-targeted ads. It appears that, roughly, the endorsement accounted for less than half of the persuasive e? ect and the ability to use social networks to target the ad accounted for slightly more than half of such ads’ e? acy. Columns (5) and (6) of Table 5 estimate the speci? cation separately by whether the campaign was targeted or untargeted. Though the point estimate for the targeted campaigns is higher, it is notable that social advertising improved the performance of both targeted and untargeted campaigns. Given the widely reported lack of e? cacy of untargeted campaigns (Reiley and Lewis, 2009), the increase in e? ectiveness allowed by social advertising appears large for untargeted campaigns. 15 Table 5: Social Targeting and Endorsement is E? ective (4) No Endorsement Click Rate SocialTargeting Endorsement All (1) Click Rate 0. 0386 (0. 0123) (2) Click Rate 0. 0385 (0. 0108) 0. 0287 (0. 0143) -0. 000275 (0. 0122) 0. 0794 (0. 0116) 0. 0132 (0. 0166) (3) Click Rate 0. 0386 (0. 0125) Untargeted (5) Click Rate 0. 0297 (0. 00755) Targeted (6) Click Rate 0. 0376 (0. 00927) SocialTargeting Untargeted Constant 16 Date Controls No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Observations 630 630 630 630 210 420 Log-Likelihood 542. 1 610. 3 610. 3 427. 8 187. 7 452. 3 R-Squared 0. 0221 0. 212 0. 212 0. 119 0. 317 0. 228 OLS Estimates. Dependent variable is the percentage point of people who click on the ad. Dependent variable in Columns (4) for social ads is the percentage point daily click-through rate of ads that did not display the endorsement. Robust standard errors. * p 0. 10, ** p 0. 05, *** p 0. 01 4. 2 Robustness Table 6 checks the robustness of the ? nding that social targeting and endorsement are effective, to di? erent de? nitions of the dependent variable. Column (1) reports the results of using a dependent measure which is the percentage click-through per impression. Again, we ? nd that social advertising is more e? ective, though the e? ectiveness is less pronounced and less precisely estimated than before. This suggests that the appeal of social advertising is not necessarily enhanced by multiple exposure. It could also, of course, merely re? ect noise introduced into the process by someone refreshing their browser multiple times. The results so far suggest that consumer privacy concerns or the intrusiveness of such ads do not seem to outweigh the appeal of social advertising for consumers. 4 There is always the possibility of course that people clicked on the ads because they were annoyed or wanted to understand more the extent of privacy intrusion rather than because the ads were actually e? ective. To explore this, we estimate a speci? cation where the dependent measure was the proportion of clicks that became subscribers of the newsfeed. The results are reported in Column (2). We see that again social advertising appears to be more e? ective at encouraging Facebook users to take the intended action as well as simply clicking. This is evidence that people are not clicking on social ads due to annoyance at their intrusiveness but instead are clicking on them and taking the action the ads intend to encourage them to take. Untargeted ads are less likely to lead to conversions than those targeted at appropriate demographics. This makes sense these people are being targeted precisely because they are the kind of people who have signed up for such news feeds in the past. A ? nal question is whether ads that are socially targeted and display endorsements are more expensive for advertisers, thereby wiping out their relative e? ectiveness in terms of return on advertising investment. We explore this in Column (3) of Table 6. There are This may be because Facebook users ? nd it reassuring that these ads, though narrowly targeted, are not overly visually intrusive (Goldfarb and Tucker, 2011). 4 17 everal missing observations where there were no clicks that day and consequently there was no price recorded. In Column (3), we report the results of a speci? cation where our explanatory variables is the relative price per click. The results suggest that advertisers pay less for these clicks that are socially targeted. This suggests that Facebook is not charging a premium for this kind of advertising. Though Faceboo k shrouds in secrecy the precise pricing and auction mechanism underlying their advertising pricing, this result would be consistent with a mechanism whereby advertisers pay less for clicks if they have higher clickthrough rates. In other words, prices paid bene? t from an improved ‘quality-score’ (Athey and Nekipelov, 2011). The results also suggest that advertisers pay less for demographically untargeted clicks which is in line with previous studies such as Beales (2010). Table 6: Social Advertising is E? ective: Checking robustness to di? erent dependent variables SocialTargeting Endorsement (1) Click Rate (Multiple) 0. 0108 (0. 00501) 0. 00526 (0. 00582) Yes 630 1086. 5 0. 150 (2) Clicks to Connections Rate 0. 433 (0. 0997) -0. 321 (0. 0768) Yes 554 -467. 5 0. 163 (3) Cost Per Click (USD) -0. 95 (0. 0480) -0. 177 (0. 0520) Yes 559 -129. 0 0. 426 Untargeted Date Controls Observations Log-Likelihood R-Squared OLS Estimates. Dependent variable is the click-through rate (expressed as a fraction of a percentage point) for impressions in Column (1). Dependent variable in Column (2) is the clicks to conversions rate. Dependent variable in Column (3) is cost per click. Robust standard errors. * p 0. 10, ** p 0. 05, *** p 0. 01 4. 3 What Kind of Social Advertising Messages Work? We then go on to explore what kind of advertising message works in social ads. We distinguish between ads that rely simply on the Facebook algorithm to promote social in? uence by featuring the automated endorsement at the bottom of their ad, and ads that explicitly refer to this endorsement in their ad copy. 18 Table 7: Social Advertising is Less E? ective if an Advertiser is Too Explicit (3) No Endorsement Click Rate SocialTargeting Endorsement All (1) Click Rate 0. 0577 (0. 0139) (2) Click Rate 0. 0571 (0. 0113) 0. 0333 (0. 0168) -0. 0287 (0. 00886) -0. 000463 (0. 0122) -0. 0136 (0. 0115) -0. 0189? (0. 01000) -0. 0378 (0. 0115) -0. 0429 (0. 0144) -0. 101 (0. 0124) Yes 630 615. 4 0. 225 Yes 630 618. 1 0. 232 Yes 630 429. 5 0. 124 Yes 210 189. 6 0. 329 Yes 420 461. 0 0. 260 -0. 000281 (0. 0177) 0. 0161 (0. 0169) -0. 0303? (0. 0167) -0. 0284 (0. 0124) Untargeted (4) Click Rate 0. 0498 (0. 0245) Targeted (5) Click Rate 0. 0527 (0. 0130) SocialTargeting SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Explicit Untargeted SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Don’t be left out Social Targeting Endorsement ? Be like your friend SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Learn from your friend 19 SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Your friend knows SocialTargeting ? Explicit Date Controls Observations Log-Likelihood R-Squared OLS Estimates. Dependent variable is the percentage points of people who click on the ad. Dependent variable in Columns (3) adjusted for social ads so that is the percentage point daily click-through rate of ads that did not display the endorsement. Robust standard errors. * p 0. 10, ** p 0. 05, *** p 0. 01 We use the additional binary indicator variable Explicitj to indicate when the advertiser uses a message that evokes social in? uence explicitly in their ad copy, in addition to the social endorsement automated by the Facebook algorithm.

What is Irony The 3 Major Types of Irony (with Examples)

What is Irony The 3 Major Types of Irony (with Examples) What Is Irony and How Should You Use it? Last updated: 04/18/2019Many of us probably know it when we see it, but few of us can articulate what irony really is - much less identify the different types. However, it’s important for writers to understand this literary technique, as it can really add depth to your story - so long as you’re not using it in a hackneyed or incorrect way (like the much-debated Alanis Morissette song).In this article, we will define and analyze the various types of irony and how to use them in your writing. These types include dramatic, situational, and verbal irony, along with their offshoots and related terms. We’ll also give examples of each type in literature, films, and other media. Finally, we’ll debunk the concept of "rain on your wedding day†Ã‚  - which might be inconvenient but certainly isn’t ironic. The 3 different types of irony how to use them What is irony?Irony is a storytelling tool used to create a contrast between how things seem and how they really are beneath the surface. The term comes from the Latin word ironia, which means â€Å"feigned ignorance.† The three main types used in literature are dramatic, situational, and verbal, as mentioned above.People often conflate irony with sarcasm, coincidence, or bad luck. While these concepts can have ironic characteristics, they’re not interchangeable with irony.So for example, if you run to catch the bus and miss it by two seconds, that’s not ironic - unless the reason you’re late is because you were bragging about how you wouldn’t miss the bus. This creates an unexpected and comic contrast to what would otherwise just be an unfortunate situation. More on that later. The stages of dramatic ironyNow that you have a solid handle on what it is, let’s break down the three stages of dramatic irony.  We’ll use another Shakespearean example, this time from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (which has an ever-so-slightly different ending from the original play), to illustrate these stages.Stage 1. Installation: the information is presented to the audience, but withheld from the characters. Toward the end of the movie, Juliet fakes her own death to get out of marrying Paris. She sends a message detailing her plans to Romeo, but he never receives it - so the audience knows Juliet isn’t really dead, but Romeo does not.Stage 2. Exploitation: the author uses this imbalance to heighten curiosity and tension. Romeo finds out about Juliet’s â€Å"death† and buys poison in order to join her in the afterlife. The audience doesn’t yet know whether he will go through with it, however, and they're filled with anguished curiosity.Stage 3. Resolution: the characters find out the truth. In the Baz Luhrmann version, Romeo drinks the poison by Juliet’s side, but she awakens from her deep slumber just before he dies. Hence he does, eventually, find out the truth that she was never really dead - but of course, he’s already consumed the poison, which means all they have time for is one final kiss.In this case, the dramatic irony is also tragic irony; the characters in Romeo + Juliet find out the truth just moments too late to stop something horrible from happening. Heartbreaking, no? 💔How else is dramatic irony used?To induce feelings of fear or suspenseAlfred Hitchcock succinctly explains dramatic irony by describing two scenes:In the first, four people are sitting at a table, having a conversation, when a bomb explodes.In the second, we witness an anarchist enter the room, place a bomb under the table, and set it to explode at 1pm. Moments later, we watch as four people sit at th at table and begin a conversation. There is a clock on the wall that reads 12:45pm.In the first scene, we experience momentary surprise. In the second scene, an innocuous conversation becomes charged with prolonged suspense - dramatic irony.For some truly impressive suspense-building, check out this list of the 50 best suspense books of all time.To stir up sympathy for a characterIn the movie Ten Things I Hate About You, high school senior Kat is cold and reserved. After Patrick agrees to woo Kat in exchange for payment from a fellow classmate (who wants to date her sister), we see her warm to him. However, even as they fall for each other, we know that the truth about Patrick’s initial interest in Kat will inevitably come out - consequently, we feel sympathy for her as the reveal draws closer.To create comical situationsIn the season eight finale of  Friends, Joey picks up Ross’s coat and a ring tumbles out - a ring intended for Ross to propose to Rachel. When Jo ey kneels down to pick it up, Rachel assumes he is proposing†¦ and accepts.Hilarity ensues as misunderstanding and miscommunication take the day. But of course, ignorance can only remain bliss for so long. Once exploitation is underway, resolution must follow soon after. A character who remains oblivious for too long can start to seem unrealistic to readers, and tension turns to frustration; always keep this in mind when using dramatic irony in a story. Dramatic irony: when readers know something the characters don’t 😠² 2. Situational ironyWhen the truth contradicts an expected outcome, it's  situational irony - also known as â€Å"the irony of events.† Again, just to clarify, irony is not the same as "coincidence" and "bad luck." If you buy a new car and then accidentally drive it into a tree, that is both coincidence and bad luck. However, if a professional stunt driver crashes into a tree on their way home from receiving a â€Å"best driver† award, that is situationally ironic.Example of situational irony: Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsThroughout the seventh book of the Harry Potter series, readers follow Harry on his quest to find and destroy Voldemort’s six Horcruxes. At the end of the novel, we find out that there is a seventh Horcrux, so to speak  - and it's Harry himself.This unexpected twist also comes with the ironic realization that in order for Voldemort to die, Harry must sacrifice himself. So he willingly goes to meet Voldemort - and his own death. But when Voldemort uses the killing curse on Harry, it has the opposite of his desired effect. Harry lives while the Horcrux dies, bringing Voldemort that much closer to his greatest fear: mortality.In this way, Harry being a Horcrux is actually a double case of situational irony. Harry believes he must die in order to vanquish his enemy, whereas Voldemort thinks he is killing Harry, but he’s actually killing himself. Mind = blown, right?How to Write Dialogue: 10 Simple Rules (Plus 5 Mistakes to Avoid!) Read post This does rely on well-planned timing and context, however. A character needs to be properly developed, and the tone of a scene needs to be precisely conveyed, in order for dialogue to come across as ironic. Otherwise, there's a danger that the character’s statement may go over the reader’s head or be taken literally.For comic reliefOf course, sometimes writers use verbal irony simply to be funny. Whether it’s to highlight a sarcastic character (see: Chandler Bing) or to lighten tension during a dark or difficult scene, verbal irony typically does a very good job of providing comic relief.Final takeawaysHopefully you now understand the general purpose of irony: to create a contrast between appearances and underlying truths. When done properly, this can rather significantly alter a reader’s interaction with, expectations of, and insight into a novel. Indeed, irony is a hallmark of some of the most interesting and sophisticated writing in this day and age.Re member to use it with care, however, as it requires people to read between the lines. Irony can add a lot to the reading experience, but shouldn’t throw us so far off course that we can’t find our way to the truth. With that in mind, go forth and be ironic! (In your story, we mean.)What’s your favorite example of irony? Let us know in the comments!

8 Skills You’ll Need for Your Future Retail Career

8 Skills You’ll Need for Your Future Retail Career Depending on your preferred side of the optimism/pessimism street, the future is either something to worry about, or something to anticipate eagerly. What is true either way is that we don’t really know what will be coming along. However, we do know a few things: there will still be a need for highly qualified retail professionals, and there are skills we can build now to help be prepared for whatever the future retail world looks like. 1. Tech SavvyIf you have a Prime account or have developed a first-name-basis relationship with your package delivery guy or gal because you have so many things shipped right to your door, you probably already know that the retail revolution will only become more digital. If you’re working on future-proofing your retail career, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to get caught up (and keep up) with the tech trends.This doesn’t mean that brick-and-mortar stores will cease to exist in your career lifetime, or that we s hould all just apply for jobs at Amazon and be done with it. Rather, start paying attention to how people are shopping. What devices are they using? What are the conveniences of shopping via tech vs. shopping in person? How can the in-person shopping experience be made better or easier by using technology? Whether you’re a corporate employee, a customer service rep, or a retail associate, being familiar with technology (and its benefits) will make you better able to do your job, because you’ll be equipped to deal with whatever impact apps, online storefronts, or other tech advances have on the retail world.2. Social Media SmartsSocial media has become the go-to place for retail brand ambassadors. It’s a way to advocate for your store, product, service, or brand, and to directly reach customers. No matter what your role in retail, being well-versed in social media can help you reach more people to build your brand, or- at the very least- collect vast amounts of i nformation on your target customer base.3. Knowledge of Logistics and OperationsThe big push has been to deliver goods and services fast- as close to immediate as logistically possible. That trend is likely to keep continuing in the future, so the logistics end of retail is going to be a major growth area. Strong organizational skills, as well as a passion for getting things from Point A to Point B quickly, cost-effectively, and safely will create an incredibly valuable skill set to bring to your career.And if you’ve got a brilliant plan for making drone deliveries work, well, your future in the retail world is probably very bright indeed.4. A Focus on DataThe future is, unquestionably, grounded in data. We generate data about ourselves and our preferences when we shop, when we browse, when we interact with anything online. But all of that data not only has to go somewhere, it has to be analyzed and turned into ideas that can actually be turned into better customer service, o r an improved bottom line for the store.And â€Å"data† can seem like a daunting, faceless skill that might not have a direct impact on your own career, but it actually creates lots of different opportunities for people in the field. It increases the demand for Information Technology professionals in retail who can capture and present the data, as well as analysts who can turn it into goals and processes for a company, and also managers, associates, and customer service professionals who can take all of that upstream information and use it on direct sales and customer experience.You also don’t need an advanced degree in IT or engineering to bump up your data analytics skills. You can use free online analytics tools (like Google Analytics) to start building a base of knowledge about how people interact with information, what kind of information you can get about people, and how that might affect business decisions. There are also free online courses you can take to star t building your data analysis skills.5. A Knack for Customer ServiceGreat customer service skills never go out of style, and they will continue to be crucial in future retail. This goes hand-in-hand with the social media savvy we talked about before, because so much of the customer/consumer experience is rooted in digital platforms: looking for product information, needing help troubleshooting, and giving feedback.The trick for the future of customer service will be adapting those traditional customer service skills to a digital environment, one where you may never face or talk to the customer. There are also additional layers of accountability for the customer service rep in the future, as customers have more and more avenues to talk about their experience with a company. (I’m sure we’ve all cringed at some of the viral stories about customers who have been stonewalled, insulted, or worse by bad customer service, made instantly public via social media.) The future of customer service will be balancing the company’s bottom-line needs with the realities of working with customers.6. Knowledge of Behavioral FinanceFinance and financial theory are skills and knowledge that have always been essential in retail, and always will be. However, â€Å"behavioral finance† is a relatively new concept. It combines economics with psychology to help guide and understand financial decision-making. Understanding why people make the financial decisions they do (like, say, purchasing one product and not another) is, like data analytics, a skill that will become very valuable in the retail world.7. Design and Merchandising TalentConsumers have come to expect a certain level of design sophistication from retailers, and that trend is not likely to reverse any time soon. Stores and companies are also increasingly focused on behind-the-scenes design and merchandising strategies, meant to steer the customer toward purchases without him or her even realizing it. Professionals with an understanding of how design engages customers, and how to maximize that, will bring a very useful skill set to a retail career.8. FlexibilityAnd don’t forget a basic personal skill that will come in very handy in the world of future retail: adaptability. This is an important skill to have no matter which industry you’ve chosen to build your career- after all, very few companies are interested in someone who says, â€Å"this is how things are done now, and that’s just how it should be forever.† But flexibility is an especially crucial skill for retail. Look at how things have changed in the past 10 or 15 years for retail, as behemoth companies like Amazon and Walmart have shaped how and where we shop. And as technology upgrades and people’s needs change and evolve, there is no reason to think that the current status quo will hold for the future. An openness to change, to innovate, or to say â€Å"we can do this better,â₠¬  is an outlook that will help you survive and thrive as a retail professional in any environment.Retail, like all industries, will continue to evolve- and if you start working on skills now that will make you a smarter and more adaptable professional later, you’re setting yourself up for an even more successful career.

Argument - the Aeneid was a pro-Augustan work which can be seen Essay

Argument - the Aeneid was a pro-Augustan work which can be seen through the themes, arguments, and specific scenes of the Aeneid - Essay Example Associations with Augustus The associations with Augustus in the work of â€Å"The Aeneid† are first seen through the direct quotes that describe the political scene of the time and how Augustus was meant to be a powerful leader. Virgil states this by associating Augustus with the line of Caesar while showing how this automatically leads to him being an exalted leader. He states â€Å"Caesar himself, exalted in his line; / Augustus promis’d oft, and long foretold, / Sent to the realm that Saturn rul’d of old; / Born to restore a better age of gold, Africa and India shall his pow’r obey; / He shall extend his propagated sway / Beyond the solar year, without the starry way† (Virgil, 192). The direct reference in this quote shows Augustus as the promised leader, not only for Greece, but also as ordained with the time, planets and alignment of the stars. This creates a belief system from the direct reference to the leader, showing him as a natural leade r that was meant to rule over other countries and to become one of the most powerful and influential individuals of the time. Actions throughout the Aeneid The direct reference pointed out with â€Å"The Aeneid† is followed by specific actions and situations that show the same political propaganda. The first six books of the journey are written as a part of the Underworld in which all men are in. The hellish state is one which becomes symbolic of how life has been to this point in the ancient city. In book 6, there is a specific shift that leads to the belief that the situation will be overcome. The actions which follow after the journey lead to the Trojan War and the victory of the land. The beginning of this is when Aeneas is given the golden bough and is told to leave the underworld. The propaganda is based on Aeneas leading the city out of a state of hell and into a sense of life giving and an end to human suffering. The references of these actions throughout the plot lin e are known to relate directly to the celebration of the new political leadership of the time as well as the overthrow of the old government and the desire to have Augustus in power to overcome the darker ages of the city (Minson, 48). There are several moments which point to the happiness of the city and what can be after changes occur. More important, the author points to the ideals of victory which he believes are most important to the bringing in of Augustus as a leader. The main association is with the Trojan War and how this led to the rightful place of the city mentioned. Virgil refers to this with the past state and how the time was better because of the triumph and the alterations in leadership which occurred. He states â€Å"Relate what Latium was; her ancient kings! / Declare the past and state of things, When first the Trojan fleet Ausonia sought, / And how the rivals lov’d, and how they fought. / These are my theme, and how the war began / And how concluded by t he godlike man† (Virgil, 198). The recounting of the Trojan war then leads to an understanding that this was led first by politicians and was followed by those who moved according to the strategies desired by the land. The propaganda of the war then leads to one referencing the Augustan leadership while showing that this was the main reason why the victory occurred among the land. Themes of Politics The actions which

The current world order is characterized by the exploitation of its Essay

The current world order is characterized by the exploitation of its workers - Essay Example The current world order is characterized by the exploitation of its workers A sizeable number of people are of the opinion that capitalism is the best model for society. Karl Marx was one of these individuals who opposed fervently on the consequences of capitalism on society and a country. In his philosophical works, Marx detailed the adverse effects of this economic model. In his sociological theories, Marx defines capitalism as the key factor that divides society into classes (Rupert, 2003, p183). These classes are because of their relationship to the various factors of production available in the country (Hoffman n.d, p235). According to Karl Marx, capitalism thrives on profits derived from the factors of production available. Corporations exploit their laborers’ wages to derive these profits; the corporations cannot be profitable without exploitation of workers (Bacher, 2007, p37). This conclusion by the Marxists is correct in accordance to the labor theory of value. This theory claims that the value of the product is dependent on the amount of labor put into producing the product (Rupert, 2003, p187). The workers create the value of the product. The returns obtained from the sale of the product are divided into profits, wages and cost of raw materials. This division of the returns favors the cost of raw materials and the profits generated by the corporation (Reiff, 2013, p41). The workers’ wages are neglected and do not reflect the actual value of their input into the finished product.

Isolation And Observation Of Bacteria Using Pure Culture Methods Biology Essay

Isolation And Observation Of Bacteria Using Pure Culture Methods Biology Essay INTRODUCTION Bacteria are found everywhere (Campbell Reece, 2005). They have the ability to colonize almost all habitats which means they come in wide varieties of forms. Understanding bacterial structure can therefore make it possible to understand their functions and survival. For example, just by studying the capsule layer of bacteria, one can get an idea of the pathogenicity of the bacteria. But they grow among diverse and mixed populations, where it is impossible to study a single species of bacteria. Thus it is necessary that the pure culture of bacterial colonies be obtained for studying. Pure culture is defined as a mass or group of cells arising from the same parent cell. Pure culture techniques, such as streak plate, pour plate and spread plate, isolate bacterial colonies from mixtures so that colonies comprising of the identical organisms can be studied. Isolation of pure culture is vital for characterizing a single species of bacteria ­ otherwise presence of contaminants can lead t o inaccurate observations (Prescott et al., 2005) Then the isolated bacterial colonies undergo incubation at 370C for 24 hours for all the three plates, after which, a colony can be selected and isolated again to obtain pure cultures. Another step in the experiment is to perform a differential staining method known as Gram staining, which mainly differentiates the bacteria into two categories: Gram positive and Gram negative based on their cell wall structures (Campbell and Reece, 2005). The species of bacteria present in the given broth culture were Escherichia Coli, Staphylococcus Aureus and Bacillus Cereus. The appearances of these bacteria known in theory state that Escherichia Coli are Gram negative and rod-shaped; Bacillus Cereus are Gram positive and rod-shaped while Staphylococcus Aureus are Gram positive and cocci. So the experiment was carried out to see if it was possible to obtain pure cultures from mixed broth by applying streak, spread and pour plate techniques. AIMS The main objectives of this experiment were to understand the purpose, principles and techniques of Gram staining as well as the isolation of pure cultures. The experiment further aimed to compare the different isolation techniques, namely streak plate, spread plate and pour plate in terms of producing pure cultures, and also compare the morphological features of three types of bacteria. MATERIALS AND METHODS The procedure was carried out according to the instructions stated in the pages 32-36 of the Microbiology lab manual (MIC2011, Class Notes, 2011). RESULTS (combined with Morning Lab, Bench 1, Group A3) The entire experiment was carried out in three different sessions. Session 1 A broth culture, labelled as Culture 2, was provided and it was known to contain a mixture of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Bacillus cereus. Sample from the broth culture was heat-fixed and then gram stained for observation under the light microscope. Three different types of bacteria were seen and their identifiable characteristics were matched with the three kinds of bacteria known to be present in the mixture. Table 1 Observation of Culture 2 (the broth culture) and characterisation of the types of bacteria seen under the microscope Species Cellular Morphology Type of Bacteria Gram Stain Shape Arrangement Type 1 (Gram +ve) Purple Coccus Cluster Staphylococcus aureus Type 2 (Gram -ve) Pink Rod (shorter) Single/Pair Escherichia coli Type 3 (Gram +ve) Purple Rod (longer) Chain Bacillus cereus After the presence of all three types of bacteria was confirmed, loopfuls from the broth culture were taken in order to prepare pure cultures using three isolation techniques streak plate, spread plate and pour plate. Once the three isolation plates were ready, they were incubated overnight at 37 °C for the next session. Session 2 After overnight incubation at 37 °C, the colonies which formed on the streak, spread and pour plate were observed under the microscope to see the distribution and the morphology of bacterial colonies. These isolation techniques helped determine which bacteria were responsible for the colony morphology. Table 2 Distribution and observation of bacterial colonies present in streak plate, spread plate and pour plate, after one-day incubation at 37 °C Appearance of Bacterial Colonies Streak Plate Spread Plate Pour Plate Distribution Primary inoculum and initial streaks were overlapping while the final streaks were distinct and separate Overlapping and could not be differentiated Overlapping and could not be differentiated Density High Higher Highest Location Few large colonies present on the surface of the agar Overlapping colonies present on the surface of the agar Distributed on the agar surface as well as within the agar medium Other Features Various features were noted among different colonies Opaque, irregular, smooth and flat White and opaque Since distinct and well-isolated colonies were not found from the spread plate and pour plate techniques, selection of distinct and clear colonies of all three types of bacteria were made from the streak plate and observed under the microscope. Table 3 Morphology of the bacterial colonies Appearance Colony 1 Colony 2 Colony 3 Shape Circular Circular Irregular Size Small Medium Large Surface Smooth and glistening Smooth and glistening Rough and dull Elevation Flat Convex Raised Color Pale yellow Yellow White Edge Undulating Smooth Undulating Opacity Opaque Transparent Opaque Identity Staphylococcus aureus Escherichia coli Bacillus cereus Session 3 The isolated colonies were incubated overnight at 37 °C and inoculated onto new nutrient agar (NA) plates, after which pure plates of each type of bacteria were prepared and Gram stained followed by the observation of single colonies of bacteria under the microscope. Table 4 Observation of cellular and colonial morphology Type of Bacteria Colony Morphology Cellular Morphology Gram Stain Shape Arrange-ment Other Features Staphylococcus aureus Smallest in size; circular; flat; smooth surface and undulating edges; pale yellow and opaque (Gram +ve) Purple Coccus Cluster Pure culture was extracted. No contamination. Escherichia coli Medium in size; circular; convex; smooth surface and edges; yellow and transparent (Gram -ve) Pink Rod (shorter) Single/ Pair Pure culture was extracted. No contamination. Bacillus cereus Largest in size; irregular; raised; rough surface and undulating edges; white and opaque (Gram +ve) Purple Rod (longer) Chain Pure culture was extracted. No contamination. DISCUSSION (1) As seen in the table-4 of results, Bacillus cereus had the largest colony with irregular shape, raised elevation, rough and dull surface, undulating edges, opaque and white in colour. They are Gram positive and rod-shaped, which are arranged in chains. The moderate-sized colony was the Escherichia coli with a circular shape, convex elevation, smooth and glistening surface, smooth edges, transparent and yellow in colour. They are Gram negative and are seen under the microscope as short rod-shaped structures existing in pairs or single cells. The smallest of all colonies belonged to the Staphylococcus aureus, with a circular shape, smooth and glistening surface, undulating edges, opaque in pale yellow in colour. They are Gram positive cocci arranged in grape-like clusters and they do not form spores (Mahon et al., 2007). The cellular morphology of bacteria was observed by Gram staining while the colony morphology was seen using streak plate technique. The morphology of each bacterium observed in the pure cultures matched with those in the original mixture, but the colony size in pure culture was much bigger than those in mixed culture. The probable reason for this is that multiple bacterial colonies experience competition for nutrients while colonies in pure culture had sufficient food and space. No contamination was found and individual bacterial colonies were separated on an agar surface. (2) Among the three techniques used, streak plate is the most efficient way to produce well-isolated colonies, or in other words, pure colonies. In streak plate technique, the microorganisms containing many viable cells, were directly plated. However, in order for the technique to work well, there must be large populations of the organism in the original mixture (Sumbali and Mehrotra, 2009). Otherwise, the final streaks result in less or no colonies because in the streak plate method, the bacterial suspension is diluted more and more as it proceeds from the primary inoculums towards the latter streaks. Streak plate is a cost-effective and rapid-active method for separating bacteria in mixed cultures of high density and can also be repeated for achieving the desired purity. For these reasons, streak plate technique is widely used in laboratories (Pommerville, 2010). One disadvantage of streak plate is that the risk of contamination is higher since the plate is exposed to air for sever al times (Sumbali and Mehrotra, 2009). For more diluted populations, spread plate and pour plate are considered since they are easy to locate colonies among low density of evenly distributed populations (Willey et al., 2011). Serial dilutions reduce the microbial population (Willey et al., 2011). For spread plate, 0.1 ml of the bacterial suspension was taken from 10-2 dilution and spread over the agar whereas for pour plate, 1 ml of the suspension was taken from the 10-2 dilution. Although spread plate can separate a bacterial colony and it is more aseptic than streak plate, it is not feasible for isolating colonies from a mixture because the method is time-consuming and the colonies are not easily differentiated. However streak plate can be used to count microbial populations (Prescott et al., 2005). Similarly, pour plates are also used for counting microbial populations. Although it has the least risk of contamination, the process is time-consuming and the colonies are hard to dis tinguish or count since the colonies also grow inside the agar, for which this technique is not used to isolated colonies from a mixture. Pour plate is used for isolating and counting anaerobic bacteria since these microbes cannot survive in atmospheric levels of oxygen and are therefore only found within the agar and not on the surface of the agar (Hogg, 2005). (3) Gelatin is colourless, brittle and translucent medium (Willey et al., 2011). In this experiment, agar was used as the culture medium. Agar is preferred over gelatin for making solid media because of several reasons. First of all, unlike gelatine, agar contains complex polysaccharides that cannot be nutritionally digested or degraded by most microorganisms to form precipitates, since the incubation temperature of agar is about 20 °C, which is below the optimum temperature of most organisms and this enables the agar to remain solid when microorganisms are growing on it (Hogg, 2005). Secondly, agar sets firmly and strongly, providing a stable culture medium (Willey et al., 2011). Moreover, agar has a wide range of pH from 5 to 8 and also solidifies below 40 °C, for which liquid agar can be poured over the temperature sensitive nutrients without damaging them. Furthermore, the melting point of solid agar is above 100 °C and therefore can be used to culture thermophiles (Bauman, 2006). Finally, agar, being porous, can also show motility of the bacteria (Prescott et al., 2005). (4) Unlike bacterial colonies with heavy growth, the well-separated colonies do not have shortage of food or space, which prevents over-crowding and competition for resources and thus the bacterial growth rate is higher, for which they appear larger. Growth rate of bacterial cells in well-separated areas is further enhanced by the higher diffusion rate of the oxygen uptake by the cells and releasing of toxic metabolites out of the cell (Willey et al., 2011). On the other hand, bacteria in areas of high growth face competition for food and space for which their growth rate as well as survival rate is lower. This is probably the reason why Staphylococcus aureus, grew initially, but then stopped. In this experiment, once the bacteria were isolated, they were Gram stained and checked to ensure that no contamination had taken place and that each colony had single species of bacteria. (5a) An individual colony might contain more than one type of bacterium due to contamination. Common reasons for contamination are improper sterilization of inoculating loop or absence of aseptic techniques or sometimes even under sterilized environments. Contaminants are also present in the extracellular slime layer of bacteria and also in those bacteria which are joined in a network of chains. Another reason for not having the same type of bacterium in a colony, although very rare, is mutation and this results in the presence of multiple mutant strains of bacteria being present in a single colony (Pommerville, 2010). (5b) Bacteria reproduce asexually by a process called binary fission where a parent cell divides into and subsequent divisions take place. In this way, a colony can arise from multip le cells of same or different species of bacteria which are deposited together on a solid medium and this is how a colony may not always have the same parent cell. Even when bacteria exist in clusters, not necessarily are they from a single parent cell (Hogg, 2005). (6) Passing the dried smear through the Bunsen flame is known as heat fixing. By doing so, the microorganisms are killed and attached firmly to the slide due to the coagulation of the proteins; otherwise they would wash off with the stains. Heat fixing also alters the structure of the microorganisms, preserving the general morphology, so that they become permeable to stains (Sumbali and Mehrotra, 2009). (7) A whole colony would result in a thick smear, which not only appear overlapping and crowded under the microscope, but also prevent the diffusion of the dyes across the cell, for which the alcohol would not be able to effectively decolorize the cells, causing majority of the cells to be stained purple. Also different types of bacterial cells have different staining methods which may get confusing. Therefore, it would get very difficult to identify individual cells. (8) There is no association between bacterial cell shape and reaction to Gram stain. Gram staining depends on the thickness of the bacterial cell wall which is composed of peptidoglycan. Peptidoglycan consists of abundant teichoic acid, a thin layer of periplasmic space and a peptide interbridge (Prescott et al., 2005). Both Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria come in various shapes. For instance, Staphylococcus aureus (coccus-shaped) and Bacillus cereus (rod-shaped) are both Gram positive. (9) The bacterial cell wall structure determines its Gram stain reaction. Bacterial cell walls are composed of peptidoglycan which maintain rigidity and shape of the bacterial cell and also give protection from osmotic lyses (Prescott et al., 2005). However, in Gram positive bacteria, 90% of the cell wall is made up of peptidoglycan, for which the cell walls in Gram positive bacteria is thicker than in Gram negative bacteria where the peptidoglycan content is only 5 to 20%. The decolourisation depends on the peptidoglycan content in the cell wall and therefore determines whether the cell will be Gram stained or not. Upon addition of alcohol, the pores of the thick peptidoglycan layers shrink in the cell wall of Gram positive bacteria, which results in dehydration of the layer and retaining of the stain, for which they appear purple under the microscope. As for Gram negative bacteria, the alcohol wash opens the pores of the peptidoglycan layer and the stain is not retained in the pept idoglycan layer (Prescott et al., 2005). (10) The step which is very crucial in determining the outcome of Gram staining is the decolourisation with alcohol. The cell wall structure of Gram positive bacteria allows the crystal-violet iodine dye complex (CV-I complex) to be retained within the thick peptidoglycan layer when alcohol is added. On the contrary, the cell wall structure of Gram negative bacteria allows the CV-I complex to be removed from the peptidoglycan layer upon addition of alcohol. It is for the decolourization step that the Gram negative bacteria appear pink when counterstained with Safranin and Gram positive ones appear purple, otherwise CV-I complex would be present in both types of bacteria and both would be seen purple under the microscope. (11) Nonetheless every step in Gram staining is necessary to obtain the correct result. If any of the steps is eliminated, the results can change and are misleading. The table below shows the various outcomes when the steps in Gram staining are changed. Table 5 Results from altered steps in the Gram staining process: A B C D Staphylococcus aureus (Gram positive) Pink Pink Dark purple Dark purple Escherichia coli (Gram negative) Pink Pink Dark purple Colourless Bacillus cereus (Gram positive) Pink Pink Dark purple Dark purple When crystal violet wash is eliminated in step A, none of the cells will get the purple colour and thus all cells are stained pink when washed with Fuchsin. In step B, when the iodine wash is eliminated, the CV-I complex does not form and the crystal violet molecules are not large enough to be retained in the peptidoglycan. Thus they are washed off with the water and alcohol, for which even the Gram positive cells appear pink. In step C, with the elimination of alcohol wash, decolourization is not done, for which all cells, including the Gram negative one where the CV-I complex masks the pink colour, are stained purple (Willey et al., 2011). When Fuchsin wash is eliminated in step D, no change is brought on the Gram positive cells, but the Gram negative cells appear colourless, the reason being that after washing off the crystal violet with alcohol, no counterstain is added to the Gram negative cells (Willey et al., 2011). A limitation in this experiment is not performing the Gram stain when the species of bacteria were identified on the streak plate and again streaked on the nutrient agar plates. The bacterial species were of taken based on their colony morphology. However a Gram stain could have confirmed if the colonies comprised of the expected bacteria or not. CONCLUSION It was mandatory that aseptic techniques be followed when experimenting with microorganisms. Compared to spread plate and pour plate techniques, streak plate was found to be the most efficient and also the easiest way to isolate bacterial colonies. Pure cultures of three types of bacteria that were obtained included Staphylococcus aureus (rod-shaped and Gram positive), Bacillus cereus (cocci-shaped and Gram positive) and Escherichia coli (rod-shaped and Gram negative). Other than that, importance of heat fixing and Gram staining was understood. Gram staining proved to be a very good method for observing the bacterial cellular features and hence, differences between Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria were clarified. It was also understood that reaction of a bacterial cell to the Gram stain is determined by the decolourization step.