Fracking A Reliable Energy Solution - 1386 Words

Over the past decade oil and gas producers have increasingly used hydraulic fracturing also known as fracking to extract oil and gas from the earth. Most people believe fracking is a new process but it has been around for over 100 years. Modern day fracking began in the 1990’s when George P Mitchell created a new technique by combining fracking with horizontal drilling. Since then, U.S. oil and gas production has skyrocketed. But the â€Å"new† perception of fracking leads people to incorrectly believe that fracking is temporary and that it somehow harms the environment. The truth is fracking is a reasonable energy solution if oversight and safeguards are used. In the last ten years fracking has improved conditions in the U.S. in three†¦show more content†¦Shale is found in many colors but those that are very dark or black contain oil and gas. Conventional drillers look for pools of oil and gas above shale rock. â€Å"The oil and natural gas migrated o ut of the shale and upwards through the sediment mass because of their low density. The oil and gas were often trapped within the pore spaces of an overlying rock unit such as sandstone. These types of oil and gas deposits are known as conventional reservoirs because the fluids can easily flow through the pores of the rock and into the extraction well†. (Geology.com King) Conventional drilling into shale has declined because those conventional supplies are disappearing and drilling companies have known this for quite some time. They also know that more oil and gas can be extracted. Geology.com’s Hobart King provides this insight. â€Å"Although drilling can extract large amounts of oil and natural gas from the reservoir rock, much of it remains trapped within the shale. This oil and gas is very difficult to remove because it is trapped within tiny pore spaces or adsorbed onto clay mineral particles that make-up the shale. In the late 1990s natural gas drilling c ompanies developed new methods for liberating oil and natural gas that is trapped within the tiny pore spaces of shale. This discovery was significant because it unlocked some of the largest natural gas deposits in the world† (King Geology.com). The site goes on to provide this outlook for fracking oil

Mcb Ltd. Internship Report - 5549 Words

MCB Bank Ltd. Stock Exchange Branch, Lahore. Advisor: Mr. Khurram shahzad (Lecturer) Muhammad ajmal khan F003-MBA-028 February 21, 2006 Dedication Acknowledgements I dedicate this internship report to my parents. Because of their prayers and encouragement I have been able to complete this report. Praise is to Allah, the most Gracious and Merciful, who blessed me with the knowledge and wisdom and enabled me to overcome this task. Heartiest gratitude to my parents without their continuous encouragement and love I could not have accomplished this task. I am very grateful to my advisor Mr. Khurram Shahzad and Mr. Fahad Hassan Incharge placement centre for their continuous help, support and time during the entire course of my†¦show more content†¦MCB now focuses on three core businesses namely Corporate, Commercial and Consumer Banking. Corporate clientele includes public sector companies as well as large local and multi national concerns. MCB is also catering to the growing middle class by providing new asset and liability products. MCB looks with confidence at year 2005 and beyond, making strides towards fulfillment of its mission, to bec ome the preferred provider of quality financial services in the country with profitability and responsibility and to be the best place to work. 1.2. The Mission â€Å"To become the preferred provider of quality financial services in the country with profitability and responsibility and to be the best place to work.† 1.3. The Business MCB is in its over 50 years of operation. It has a network of over 900 branches all over the country with business establishments in Sri Lanka and Bahrain. The branch break-up province wise is Punjab (57%), Sindh (21%), NWFP (19%) and Baluchistan (3%) respectively. 2. Principles of Performance 2.1. Customer Focus Over the years MCB has developed strong relationships with its customers by understanding their needs and treating them with respect, dignity and importance. The driving force behind its commitment and services is its focus on customers, ensuring that it not only meets, but exceeds their expectations. 2.2. Quest for Quality MCBShow MoreRelatedInternship Report on Mcb20087 Words   |  81 Pagesorganizational environment which is dramatically different from the educational environment. That two months period called â€Å"Internship Period†, if spent properly and sincerely, enables the students to be more confident, more knowledgeable, more responsible and, above all, more committed to its work in the  practical field. I have also been assigned to do internship of six weeks period in MCB Allama Iqbal Town Branch Lahore. It has enabled me to understand the practical scenario and sharpen our decision-makingRead MoreCommercial Bank Project13831 Words   |  56 PagesExecutive Summary This report is about bank, history and functions contains what I have learned in my six week internship at MCB (Ltd). It starts with its success story and brief introduction of management. This report contains detail about business practices in MCB, its current financial statement, position, working of its different departments in MCB Gojra Branch and about of how a letter of credit is used in bank. The purpose of exercise was to learn while working in practical field, especiallyRead MoreInternship Report on Ztbl20418 Words   |  82 PagesZarai Taraqiati Bank Ltd. Chapter 1 Introduction to Report CHAPTER 1 â€Å"INTRODUCTION TO REPORT† 1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY The Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited is the premier financial institution geared towards the development of agriculture sector by providing financial products and services to their customers. It is a common practice at universities during the completion of the masters and bachelors program to attain practical experience in different fields. Students are required to undergoRead MoreHrm in Aviation10615 Words   |  43 Pagesspend $1.6 million in pilot training scholarships in a joint program with Western Michigan University and the Organization of Black Airline Pilots. Delta has also targeted selected high schools around the US where it provides financial assistance, internships, job shadowing, and facilities tours. Employees provide program support by serving as mentors in the classrooms, sharing real-life experiences with the D-TCA [Delta Technical Career Academy] students. And, in another collaborative effort with OBAPRead MoreSummit Bank13780 Words   |  56 PagesSUMMIT BANK LIMITED MULTAN ROAD BRANCH [pic] An Internship report Submitted in Partial Fulfillment For The Degree of Masters of Science In Accounting Finance AMNA HAMID Session (2008-2010) Department Of Accounting FinanceKinnaird College for Women, Lahore [pic] Executive summary â€Å"The purpose of study was to know about SUMMIT BANK LIMITED and to analyze the financial statement. â€Å" In this report the Summit Bank’s history, mission, vision and services as well as management is

Research in Accounting Business Ethics

Question: Describe about the Research in Accounting for Business Ethics. Answer: Part A Introduction Not only for the Strong Build Construction Company, but also for each particular association, it is significant to gratify the right individuals for their managerial opportunity after making an appropriate classification. Consequently, the CFO and the acquaintances should need to meet the terms with the strong conciliation skills for fulfilling the requests of the persons contributed in the supervisory process. Thus, the CFO and the acquaintances ought to meet the need to act in accordance with the strong negotiation skills for fulfilling the requirements of the persons contributed in the decision-making process. In this case, the CFO must necessitate the desire to keep in mind that the unyielding posture in the employment offer will considerably challenge the employment arbitration process. Body (i) Not only for the Strong Build Construction Company, but also for every single organization, it is important to satisfy the right individuals for their executive openings after making a suitable identification. Therefore, the CFO and the associates should need to comply with the strong negotiation skills for satisfying the requirements of the individuals contributed in the executive process. In this case, the CFO must need to remember that the rigid stance in the employment offer will significantly undermine the employment negotiation process (Foss and Stea 2014). Apart from that, the CFO and the other associates should need to consult with the employees at the executive level to determine about their expectation before developing executive compensation packages for them. Considering the elements of a precise executive compensation package, there are five key features needed to be discussed below: Basic PayIn order to define the basic pay, the CFO must need to consider the payments made by the other similar sized companies in the certain construction industry to the employees falling in the executive category. Benefits The benefits section of the executive package must need to provide high emphasis to ensure the needs of the identified employees are met duly (Hermanson et al. 2012). Short-term Incentive Compensation The executive compensation package must need to be included of the short-term incentives in the form of either share in the company or cash with ensuring the measurable objectives can be attained within one year. Long-term Incentive Compensation Long-term compensation plays the major role in developing the motivational factors within the employees. Therefore, the particular type of incentive included should need to be generous and powerful to encourage the employees to commit towards the company on a long-term basis to promote the success in the respective industry (Ims, et al. 2014). Executive PerksGiven the strict regulation of the government and active responses from the media, the CFO of the company should need to be careful in deciding this certain category. Therefore, the company should need to provide creative thinking by providing multiple facilities to the company executive level of employees. (ii) According to the suggestion of the agency theory, a firm can be viewed from the perspective of the nexus of contracts between the different resource holders. Agency theory develops with the involvement of agency relationship where one or more individuals are hiring one or more persons for performing specific services (O'Reilly, et al. 2014). Here, the hiring individuals are called as the principals, and the hired or recruited persons are known as agents. The decision-making authority is delegated to these agents by the principals afterwards. For the CFO of Strong Build Construction Company, it is essential to understand what pay system will be efficient and how their effectiveness will vary by considering the various contingency factors, such the environmental culture, competition, business strategy, characteristics of the employees, etc. Therefore, the company should need to develop a conceptual framework to facilitate the specific understanding (Pepper and Gore 2014). Agency theory is one of the traditional theories focusing on the divergent set of interests and goals of the numerous stakeholders of the organization to shape up the utilisation of the employee compensation. It suggests aligning the compensation packages provided to the employees according to these identified interests and goals. (iii) Difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation: Sr. No. Extrinsic Motivation Intrinsic Motivation 1) Extrinsic motivation suggests motivating a person to engage in an activity or perform in behaviour. Intrinsic motivation suggests engaging in an activity or performing a behaviour due the process is personally rewarding. 2) In this case, the activities are done majorly due to avoid punishment or earn rewards (Pepper and Gore 2015). In this case, the activities are performed by the individuals for their sake, rather than earning some external rewards. 3) Extrinsic motivation is influenced by the external sources associated with the individuals. Intrinsic motivation is affected by the inner mind-set of the individuals. Relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation: It is worth to mention that motivation can be categorised as extrinsic and intrinsic. There is a significant association between the both of the motivating factors. When the individuals want to do something for their sake is categorised to be intrinsic, whereas the extrinsic factors suggest the activities are done by the influence of outside elements (Ferrell, Fraedrich, and Ferrell 2014). Therefore, it can be observed that both of the motivational categories supports the organization to achieve their goals and objectives according to the mission statement, while both have their positive and negative impacts on the individuals. (iv) Due to the rapid change of technologic environment and different rules and regulations as part of the political atmosphere, competitive global markets including the construction industry are facing major challenges. The dynamics of the competitive global markets have accelerated the pace of the organizational change procedures. Similarly, the organizations are exposed to some major number of risks, as it can be observed in the example of Strong Build Construction Company. Due to the necessity of the organizations to go through the significant changes over the different periods, the attitudes of the employees are required to be modified accordingly (Guidotti and Guidotti 2013). Therefore, the employee perception should need to be developed with the capability of taking risks. To ensure the certain process, companies have developed different compensation packages for the specific employees. These compensation packages are required to promote the employee engagement towards the risk tak ing aspect. (v) Employee benefits known as the non-wage compensation offered to the employees are optional in additional to its core payment from an organization. Insurance benefits, disability protection, health, and wellbeing criteria, funding of education, and some other significant factors are the factors as part of the employee benefits (Hill 2012). These certain factors associated with the employee benefits have their individual time periods for acquisition, which drive the employees of an organization to achieve those based on their performances. Therefore, not only the additional benefits but also determining the proper timeframe with these factors be equally important for the identified company for promoting the employee desire for obtaining them (Huang, Leonard and Tong 1997). Additionally, it must need to mention that the company is only able to provide its employees the increased flexibility and access to these benefits, but also can recruit and secure their retention for a long-term per iod. (vi) The perceived fairness in determining the employee compensation plays vital roles, as it is considered as the fundamental reason causing the employees to leave the organization. The concept of equity developed by the additional efforts put forwarded by the employees to the goals of the organization or even the job objectives of their certain posts (Malik 2012). These are basic reasons leading the organization to ensure the compensation developed and offered to the employees are rooted from the principles of fairness. Major research successfully indicated that the employees perception of the fairness and the equitable treatment is the fundamental attribute for the organization to drive their performance, engagement, and retention with the company. Therefore, unfair treatment is corrosive, especially in the case of the employee compensation, because of the unfairness in the treatment might have devastating impacts of the organization (Mancini, Vaassen and Dameri 2013). Destructive, procedural, and interactional are the three key types of fairness that the organization should need to consider while determining the compensation. (vii) By judging the case of Strong Build Construction Company, the executive compensation committee should need to provide benefits in determining the compensation for its employees. Although these advantages might be expensive for the company, these provide multiple intrinsic benefits to both the organization and the employees with maintaining a comprehensive benefits plan (Mattone 2013). With the help of the process, the organization can develop and retain the highly skilled and committed staffs, which is the fundamental driver for achieving the success in the identified industry. Conclusion In order to structure the executive compensation committee, not only the CFO of Strong Build Construction Company should need to provide the utmost priority, but also, the board and management should need to provide increasing awareness (Muna and Khoury 2012). It is observed that the continuous evolution in compensation has ensured the factor to become more decisive in retaining and motivating the critical talents of the senior level executives of the companies. Such evolution is observed after recovering from the impact of the recession in 2008. In order to develop the structure of the executive compensation committee, four mix components, and trends should need to consist (Occupational Outlook Handbook 2014). Annual based salary Developing and maintaining the bonus plans or annual incentives by considering the short-term performance measures Determining the long-term incentives by considering the long-term performance plans related to the implementation of the budget or returns to the shareholders Developing and offering the benefit plan Recommendation Determining employee compensation is a delicate subject, where most of the organizations become highly passionate in deciding the most appropriate compensation plan for their staffs and workers (Puckett 2013). As for the recommendation in determining the optimal employee compensation, the sensitive balance should need to be developed between the expectations of the employees and meeting the financial goals of the company. In line with the particular fact, some critical recommendations are highlighted below: The compensation plan must need to be includedin the benefit plans and incentives for the employees with having the precise guidelines for minimising confusions (Sputtek 2012). Before developing and offering the benefit plan, the company should need to have a clear understanding of the overall cost of the process. Therefore, the compensation committee should need to assess long-term expenses and direct cost adding up the total price of the benefit plan. Last but not the least; it is crucial for the organization to develop awareness about the talent or skill required for the identified job roles to provide a balance between the supply of talent to the recruiting area and the demands of those talents (The CAESAR, POLO ESAU papers 2007). Part B (i) a. The paper developed by Gold, Gronewold, and Pott (2012) is named as The ISA 700 Auditors Report and the Audit Expectation Gap Do Explanations Matter?. The major purpose of developing this research-based paper is to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the particular explanations dictated by the revised ISA 700 auditors report. The certain revision is done for minimising the gaps in the different expectations of the auditors. In order to meet with the identified purpose of the paper, the researchers have ensured the participation of the German auditors and the financial statement users within a specific experiment (Tietz 2013). The identified experiment was based on reading the summary of the auditors report and financial statements with considering the explanations mandated by the ISA 700. The overall purpose of developing such an arrangement is to measure the gaps between the directed explanations of the ISA 700 and the opinions of the auditors. The implication of the process can be further identified by developing a comparative overview of the perception of those participants with the reliability of the financial statements alongside the associated responsibilities of the management (Vidal and Casey 2014). Therefore, developing this particular knowledge regarding the comparative overview is also a personal purpose of developing the identified research paper. (i) b. Big incentive Medium incentive Small incentive Group1 The auditors must need to be both internal and external. Financial analysis is done with the involvement of junior and senior analysts. Detailed financial information related to the financial statements can be obtained Group2 The participation of both students from the high and middle schools and the investors can be maintained. Auditing report can be developed with the clear indication of the profitability position of the business enterprise. The ability of the financial information to reflect the financial strength of the organization. (i) c. The process related to the manipulation checks is based on determining the discrepancies involving the multiple reports developed by the auditors and the accounting statement prepared during the time of preparing the financial statements annually (Williamson, Campagna, and Ogden 2012). Apart from that, another significant purpose of the manipulation check is based on the supporting the formation of the financial statements with the accordance with the necessary guidelines and framework supposed to be adhered by the process. Based on the argument raised by Moser and Martin (2012), the auditors are responsible for producing authentic reports representing the financial statements associated with the business organizations. In order to ensure the achievement of such responsibility, the auditors must need to consider the essential roles played by the manipulation checks (Wilson 2012). On the other hand, it is necessary for the auditors to record and report the possible manipulations ident ified within the business organizations. In this case, the manipulation checking process must need to track different expenses associated with the operations of the organization with scrutinising the bills and vouchers generated from the transactions. Considering the overall understanding, it can be understood that manipulation checks are responsible for resisting the illegal manipulations giving rise to the operational expenses for the business (Yeo et al. 2012). By citing the statement developed by ODwyer and Unerman (2014), proper identification of the possible discrepancies within the financial statements as well as the auditors report can be ensured by maintaining the manipulation checking process. In conclusion, it is worth to mention that multiple stringent measures are included within the process for systematically evaluating the sales revenues of the business along with the tax paid by the business organization. (ii) a. Based on the investigation conducted by the studies developed by Agayei, Aye, and Owusu-Yeboah (2013) and Okafor and Otalor (2013), it is identified that both papers are developed with the primary intension of investigating the 20th century auditing process emphasising specifically to the detection of fraud (Young 2013). However, the shift of importance can be noticed within the two papers towards the detailed information maintained within the major financial statements developed by the businesses. The profession related to auditing seeks to reduce the impact of discrepancies due to the implication of different lawsuits involving the certain business industry and the operations. Considering the preliminary understanding, the researchers have observed that the numerous stakeholders associated with the business organizations are dissatisfied with the roles played by the auditors regarding successful detection of fraud (Tietz 2013). Therefore, the significant goal of developing both of the studies is developing an assessment regarding the validity and reliability of auditors roles in multiple organizations of Ghana while considering the perspectives of both the stakeholders and auditors. (ii)b. By considering the study developed by Okafor and Otalor (2013), it can be analysed that the auditing expectation gap is determined by preparing the difference between the certain amount of estimated performance encountered by the auditors and the multiple users of the financial statements. Apart from that, the particular study has also recognised the gap representing the expectation by establishing the differences between the auditing activities and performance and the level of information distributed through the auditing process (The CAESAR, POLO ESAU papers 2007). In order develop the evidence; the collection of data was necessary, which was performed effectively through the questionnaire. On the other hand, the study formed by Agayei, Aye, and Owusu-Yeboah (2013) identified that the particular gap in expectation related to the auditing process emerges mainly due to the biases of the terms and concepts involved in the overall process. Furthermore, these terms and concepts include materiality, relevance, fairness, reasonableness, reliability, and fair value. In order to accomplish the study and come up with certain findings, the sampling technique was applied sufficiently (Sputtek 2012). By looking at the overall discussion, it seems the approach developed by Okafor and Otalor (2013) is more rigorous due to the focus was provided to the quantitative research process with considering the two major hypotheses. (ii) c. As determined from the report produced by Agyei and Gyamerah (2014), the study developed by Agayei, Aye, and Owusu-Yeboah (2013) considered the selection of participants as both male and female representing 72.5% and 27.5% respectively. Amongst these participants, the researchers made sure that 60% should need to have the experience of 5 years, while 30% should possess a skill level between 5 to 10 years (Occupational Outlook handbook 2014). The rest of the participants, i.e. 10% should acquire an even higher level of experience. On the other hand, the research paper developed by Okafor and Otalor (2013) had considered the several participants with their individual involvement in the accounting departments of different universities and public institutions. Therefore, it is quite clear that the approach developed by Agayei, Aye, and Owusu-Yeboah (2013) is superior and rigorous due to the utilisation of sampling frames and different demographic criteria. (ii) d. Considering the responses obtained from the respondents of the study developed by Agayei, Aye, and Owusu-Yeboah (2013), 45% agrees with the information portrayed within the financial statements, whereas 45% disagreed, as dictated by Boateng and Agyei (2013). On the other hand, the 65% responses of the stockbroker suggest that those frauds are detected within the financial statements of the organizations or institutes. Alternatively, the responses collected by Okafor and Otalor (2013) have led the study to reveal that the auditors are always responsible for assuring the delivery of accurate and reliable auditing reports alongside publishing the major financial statements (Muna and Khoury 2012). Another significant finding of the study proposed that 67.12% respondents reflected that they did not know about the core set of expectations out of the auditors with accordance to the statute books and relevant documents. Therefore, by looking at the findings, it is natural that Okafor and Otalor (2013) have gained and maintained an adequate response rate whereas the various responses failed to lead the achievement of a precise conclusion by Agayei, Aye, and Owusu-Yeboah (2013). (ii) e. As outlined by Ayuurebobi et al. (2015), it can be determined that the study developed by Agayei, Aye, and Owusu-Yeboah (2013) has considered two major parameters, namely Agree and Disagree. Thus, the agreement and disagreement of the various variables are judged by the process. Okafor and Otalor (2013) measured the responses obtained from the participants by ensuring the collection of auditing and financial data. Therefore, it can be quietly observed that the data analysis approaches inducted by Okafor and Otalor (2013) are highly positive due to the consideration of the financial information will help to develop an accurate and relevant result. (ii)f. Based on the argument raised by Kusi et al. (2015), some of the critical flaws have been identified in the research paper developed by Agayei, Aye, and Owusu-Yeboah (2013). The most significant error of them all is the complicated responses from the users about the auditing analysis related to the financial statements. Conversely, faults are also there in the work developed by Okafor and Otalor (2013), as the proper emphasis was required to be provided to the educational qualifications of the research participants (Mattone 2013). References Ferrell, O., Friedrich, J. and Ferrell, L. (n.d.).Business ethics. Foss, N and Stea, D 2014, 'Putting a realistic theory of mind into agency theory: implications for reward design and management in principal agent relations', European Management Review, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 101-16. Guidotti, T.,andGuidotti, T. (2013).Occupational health services. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge/Taylor Francis Group. Hermanson, DR, Tompkins, JG, Veliyath, R and Ye, ZS 2012, 'The compensation committee process', Contemporary Accounting Research, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 666-709. Hill, C. (2012). Consensual qualitative research.Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Huang, Q., Leonard, J. and Tong, C. (1997).Business decision making in China. New York: International Business Press. Ims, KJ, Pedersen, LJT and Zsolnai, L 2014, 'How economic incentives may destroy social, ecological and existential values: the case of executive compensation', Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 123, no. 2, pp. 353-60. Malik, F. (2012).The right corporate governance.Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. Mancini, D., Vaassen, E. and Dameri, R. (2013). Accounting information systems for decision making. Berlin: Springer. Mattone, J. (2013). Powerful executive coaching.New York: AMACOM, American Management Association. Muna, F.,andKhoury, G. (2012).The Palestinian executive.Burlington, VT: Gower. Occupational outlook handbook. (2014). Lanham, Md.: Bernan. O'Reilly, CA, Doerr, B, Caldwell, DF and Chatman, JA 2014, 'Narcissistic CEOs and executive compensation', The Leadership Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 218-31. Pepper, A and Gore, J 2014, 'The economic psychology of incentives: An international study of top managers', Journal of World Business, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 350-61. Pepper, A and Gore, J 2015, 'Behavioral agency theory new foundations for theorizing about executive compensation', Journal of Management, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 1045-68. Puckett, R. (2013). Food service manual for health care institutions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint. Sputtek, R. (2012). Opening the black box.Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler. The CAESAR, POLO ESAU papers. (2007). [McLean, Va.?]: [Central Intelligence Agency]. Tietz, R. (2013). Executive teams in research-based spin-off companies. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler. Vidal, D. and Casey, M. (2014).Next practices.Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield Education. Williamson, T., Campagna, M. and Ogden, A. (2012).Adapting sustainable forest management to climate change.Ottawa: Canadian Council of Forest Ministers. Wilson, M. (2012).The handbook of work analysis.New York: Routledge. Yeo, S., Pan, Y., Lee, Y. and Chang, H. (2012).Computer science and its applications.Dordrecht: Springer. Young, E. (2013). Ernst Young Tax Guide 2014.Hoboken: Wiley.

Richard Nixon Essays (713 words) - Watergate Scandal, Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon Bill Bryant Per. 1 Research Quest Text Book Area Our textbooks had a lot of information on Richard Nixon he did many different things in his life. Since I am concentrating on the Watergate scandal I read the section in the book about that. The information was on pages 775- 781. It discussed what the Watergate scandal was about. The Watergate scandal took place during Nixon's second term. In January 1973, two months after Nixon had won the presidential election Watergate began to unfold. Investigations revealed that the Nixon administration had violated people's civil liberties and was guilty of abuses of power. The Watergate crisis ended with the resignation of President Nixon on August 9, 1974. Twenty Questions 1 Where was Richard Nixon born? 2 Why was Richard Nixon impeached? 3 What was the Watergate scandal? 4 What did Nixon accomplish while in office? 5 What events led to Nixon's resignation? 6 Would Nixon have been forced to resign if he didn't do it on his own? 7 How was Nixon caught for the Watergate Scandal? 8 When was Nixon elected? 9 When did Nixon resign? 10 Who had found the tapes about Watergate? 11 What were Nixon's goals as President? 12 When did Richard Nixon die? 13 How did Nixon change the Supreme Court? 14 Why did Nixon try to improve relations with China? 15 Why was the Watergate Scandal so bad? 16 Why was Nixon involved in Watergate? 17 How did the people feel about Nixon's involvement in Watergate? 18 Why was Nixon re- elected in 1972? 19 What would have happened to Nixon if he didn't resign? 20 what effects did Watergate have on public confidence in the government? Thesis Nixon's involvement in the Watergate Scandal forced him to resign. Outside Discussion For the outside discussion I talked with my dad. He told me that he felt Nixon wasn't a very good president. He said that Nixon had really messed up the United States. We talked about the Watergate scandal and how Nixon had resigned. My Dad felt that Nixon had done the right thing by resigning from office. My dad also told me about the gas crisis that had happened during Nixon's Presidency. He told me about how the government had said that we were going to run out of gas and prices went way up. Now 20 years later we still have plenty of gas to go around. My dad felt that Nixon wasn't a very honest of too great of a guy. Teacher Discussion The teacher discussion took place on Friday October 13, 2000. We discussed what part of Nixon's life I should research about. We talked about various time periods of Nixon's life such as before, during, and after his presidency. I chose to do the end of his presidency, which is when the Watergate Scandal took place. Bibliography (5 Books) Grosset and Dunlap. The memories of Richad Nixon. New York: A Filmways company Publishers 1978. Hess, Stephen and Mazo, Earl. Nixon. New York: Harper and Row 1968. Mazo, Earl. Richard Nixon. New York: Harper and Brothers: 1959 Schuster and Simon. Richard Nixon in the arena. New York: 1990 Wicker, Tom One of Us New York: Random House, 1991 (3 Magazine articles) Buchanan, Patrick ? Watergate: A political coup Driven By Media Hatred of Nixon? Human events Jul. 1997 D'Agostino, Joseph. ?Watergate and Congress: From Criminal Investigation to Impeachment Inquiry? Human Events Mar. 1998. Kehoe, John ?Richard Nixon? Biography Feb. 1998 (2 Electronic sources) ?Richard Nixon.? 12 October 2000 http://metalab.unc.edu/lia/President/Nixon.html. ?Richard Nixon.? 12 October 2000 http://www.swiftsite.com/Nixonfamily Bibliography Buchanan, Patrick ? Watergate: A political coup Driven By Media Hatred of Nixon? Human events Jul. 1997 D'Agostino, Joseph. ?Watergate and Congress: From Criminal Investigation to Impeachment Inquiry? Human Events Mar. 1998. Grosset and Dunlap. The memories of Richad Nixon. New York: A Filmways company Publishers 1978. Hess, Stephen and Earl Mazo. Nixon. New York: Harper and Row 1968. Kehoe, John ?Richard Nixon? Biography Feb. 1998 Mazo, Earl. Richard Nixon. New York: Harper and Brothers: 1959 Nixon Family. Acadian Production. 1997-2000. 12 October 2000. www.Swiftsite.com/Nixonfamily. ?Richard Nixon.? Encarta Online. 1993-2000. Microsoft corporation 12 October 2000. www.Encarta.msn.com. Schuster and Simon. Richard Nixon in the arena. New York: Simon and Schuster 1990 Wicker, Tom, One of Us New York: Random House, 1991 Biographies

How to Improve ACT Science Scores 7 Tips From a Perfect Scorer

How to Improve ACT Science Scores 7 Tips From a Perfect Scorer SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Are you struggling with ACT Sciencescores between 14-24? You're not alone - hundreds of thousands of other students are scoring in this range. But many don't know the best ways to break out of this score range and get 26+on the ACT. Here we'll discuss how to improve your ACT Sciencescore effectively and why it's so important to do so. Put these principles to work and I'm confident you'll be able to improve your score. Brief note: This article is tailored for lower-scoring students, currently scoring below a 26 on ACT Science. If you're already above this range, my perfect 36 ACT Sciencescore articlewill be better for you as it contains advanced strategies. In this article, I'm going to discuss why scoring high is a good idea, what it takes to score a 26, and then go into ACT Science tips. Stick with me - this is like constructing a building. First you need to lay a good foundation before putting up the walls and windows. Similarly, we need to first understand why you're doing what you're doing and what goal you're aiming for, before diving into tips and strategies. In this guide, I talk mainly about getting to a 26. But if your goal is to get to a 24 or lower, these tips still equally apply. Understand the Stakes At this ACT score range, improving your low ACT Sciencescore to a 26 range will dramatically boost your chances of getting into better colleges. The reason? A 26 puts you at the 83 percentile, well above the national average of all ACT test takers. This is roughly equal to a 1200 out of 1600 on the SAT. Let's take a popular school, University of Massachusetts Amherst,as an example. Its average ACT score is a 27. Its 25th percentile score is a 24, and 75th percentile is a 29. Furthermore, its acceptance rate is 63%. In other words, a bit more than half of all applicants are admitted. This is a decently competitive school - almost half the people are rejected, and the lower your score, the greater the chance you'll be rejected. In our analysis, if you apply with an ACT score of 21, your chance of admission drops to 25.4%. This means you have a 3 in 4 chance of being rejected! But if you raise your score to a 26, your chance of admission shoots up to 57.7% - over double the chances of admission, for just 5 points of improvement. And because your ACT Science score factors into your ACT composite score, raising your Science score will really help raise the average of your total score. In fact, if you raise your ACT Science score by 4 points, your Composite score will increase by a whole point. It's really worth your time to improve your ACT score. Hour for hour,it's the best thing you can do to raise your chance of getting into college. Curious what chances you have with a 26 ACT score? Check out ourexpert college admissions guide for a 26 ACT scoreto see what colleges you're competitive for. Know That You Can Do It This isn't just some fuzzy, feel-good message you find in a fortune cookie. I mean, literally, you and every other reasonably capable student can score a 26 on ACT Science. The reason most people don't is they don't try hard enough or they don't study the right way. Even if you don't consider yourself a science geek, or you got a B in Biology, you're capable of this. Because I know that more than anything else, your ACT score is a reflection ofhow hard you work and how strategically you study. Here's why: the ACT is a weird test. When you take it, don't you get the sense that many questions are nothing like what you've seen in school? It's purposely designed this way.The ACT is a national test, which means it needs to be a level playing field for ALL students around the country. It can't discriminate against students who never took AP Physics (or whose schools don't even offer AP classes). Therefore, the ACT can't test difficult concepts, because this would be unfair for students who never took AP Physics.The ACT Science sectioncan't ask you to solve cold fusionor build a rocket to get to Mars. So it HAS to test scientific concepts that every high school student will cover: how to interpret data graphs, what the scientific method is, how scientific theories disagree from each other. This leads to the big secret of ACT Science. The Big Secret: You Don't Have to Know Much Actual Science Many students who study ACT Science are intimidated by the mistaken impression that they need to know a lot of science to get by. The reality is the opposite - it's much more about reading comprehension, understanding graphs, and logic. Now, it SEEMS like you need to know a lot of science, because there will be weird scenarios you've never seen before, from dinosaur claw sizes to how clouds affect soil temperature. These may seem intimidating because you've never learned this in school. Here's an example graph: You've probably never seen a graph like this before in school. The thing is,every other high school student in America hasn't seen this graph before either! The ACT expects you to solve questions for this graph through the skills you've learned in high school - looking at two axes, understanding how a plot works, and getting data values from the graph. This is good news for you: if you can practice the basic skills tested on ACT Science, and you know what types of questions will be asked, you'll do a great job on the section. I guarantee it. Just to prove this to you, further down we're going to understand this graph and go through a few sample questions. The key to improving your ACT Science score is to: Learn the types of questions that the ACT tests, like the one above Put together the concepts you already know to solve the questions Practice on a lot of questions so you learn from your mistakes I'll go into more detail about exactly how to do this. First, let's see how many questions you need to get right a 26 in ACT Science. Disappointed with your ACT scores? Want to improve your ACT score by 4+ points? Download our free guide to the top 5 strategies you need in your prep to improve your ACT score dramatically. What It Takes to Get a 26in ACT Science If we have a target ACT score out of 36 in mind, it helps to understand how many questions you need to get right on the actual test. The ACT Science section has 40 questions on it. Depending on how many questions you get right, you'll get a Scaled score out of 36. Here's the raw score to ACT Science Score conversion table. (If you could use a refresher on how the ACT is scored and how raw scores are calculated, read this.) Scaled Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Raw 36 40 27 32 18 16 9 5-6 35 39 26 30-31 17 14-15 8 - 34 38 25 28-29 16 13 7 4 33 37 24 26-27 15 12 6 3 32 - 23 24-25 14 5 2 31 36 22 22-23 13 10 4 - 30 35 21 21 12 9 3 1 29 34 20 19-20 8 2 - 28 33 19 17-18 10 7 1 0 So if you're aiming for a 26, on this test you need to get just 30 questions correct. This is just a 75% on the test! Also, keep in mind that you'll be able to GUESS on a lot of questions. Because there are only 4 answer choices, you get a lot of questions right with a 25% chance! So here's an example. Let's say you know how to solve just 27 questions for sure. You guess on the remaining 13, and get 4 of them right by chance. This gives you a raw score of 31, or a scaled score of 26! This has serious implications for your testing strategy. In essence, you only need to answer 2/3 of all questions right. In school, this would be a D, but on the ACT, this can get you to your ACT score target! We'll go into more detail below about what this means for your testing strategy below. Whatever you're scoring now, take note of the difference you need to get to a 26. For example, if you're scoring a 22, you need to answer 8-10 more questions right to get to a 26. Once again, if your goal is a score below 26, like a 24, the same analysis applies. Just look up what your Raw Score demands above. OK - so we've covered why scoring a higher ACT Sciencescore is important, why you specifically are capable of improving your score, and the raw score you need to get to your target. Hopefully, getting to a 26 on ACT Science doesn't seem so tough at this point! Now we'll actually get into actionable ACT Science tipsthat you should use in your own studying to maximize your score improvement. ACT Science Tips to Get a 26 ACT Science Tip #1: Don't Waste TimeUnderstanding Useless Details Tell me if this sounds familiar: you're reading an ACT Science passage, and it's so overwhelming trying to understand every detail of whatever obscure thing they're telling you about. This is by far the biggest time waster for most students - and because you only have 35 minutes to get through 7 passages and 40 questions, time is a huge factor in ACT Science. Here's the truth: ACT Science passages are full of scientific details that don’t actually matter to answering the questions. This is especially true of all those complicated graphs you see. You literally don't have to understand many of the details to get every question correct. The ACT does this on purpose to confuse you and make the test harder, and to show you what real scientific research kind of looks like. But you aren’t reading a science journal – you’re answering ACT Science questions. A common mistake people make is to try too hard to understand the passage in its entirety. They want to understand every detail in every chart. Trying to understand the entire passage is a HUGE waste of time because most of the passage isn’t going to have a question asked about it. This is true in ACT Reading, and it’s even more true in ACT Science. So what should you do instead? Skim the passage and understand the passage at a very high level. Answer these two questions only: What’s the main point here? What’s the figure showing? That’s it. When I read ACT Science passages, I don’t understand the deep details of what’s happening. I get the gist and I move on to the questions. Let’s try an example from a real ACT Science passage. I’m going to show you how useless most of the passage is and how little you need to understand to answer the questions. My skimming: There is a lake. The lake sediment tells us about the climate in the past. They mention average temperature for figure 3, so that’s probably what the main point is. There’s a weird oxygen symbol 18O, but all I need to know is that SMALLER values mean COLDER. This is a map showing 3 sites. We’ll probably be looking at samples from these 3 sites. Otherwise, I don't care right now where the sites are, how big the lake is, or whether I can see my house on this map. I'm ignoring all the fine details. This shows us a cutaway section of the lake, with the 3 sites from Figure 1. The y-axis is elevation. The key shows that each colored section is a different layer. Lake clay, glacial till, bedrock. The layers change as you move across the graph. How exactly they change I’m not going to care about until I get asked about it. I have no idea what the hell â€Å"glacial till† is but I’m not going to worry about that, since I’ll bet the ACT isn’t going to ask me to define it. Here's abunch of graphs designed to be confusing. Well, they all look about the same. We’ll just look at Site 1. The y-axis shows depth, so the further down, the deeper into the earth we go. The x-axis shows the 18O thing. From left to right, this value gets larger. What Site 1 shows is as you go UP in depth, you get a LARGER 18O value. That's all I'm going to care about for now. Now look at the other 2 Sites. Site 2 looks about the same, except for a glacial till line higher up. Site 3 looks the same as Site 1 - curve goes up and to the right. And now there’s this formula. I’m not even going to bother with this crap until they ask me a question about it. Notice from my notes that I really understand the passage only at a 30,000 foot level. I’m not getting bogged down in details, and I’m not understanding every detail of every graph. Doing that would be a waste of time. Just to convince you this high level of understanding works, we’re actually going to answer all 5 questions for thispassage. Look at the Key on the right. Lake clay is gray. Where is it thinnest? Winnipeg, F. You literally didn't even have to read the passage to solve this! You could have solved it just by looking at the picture. We want to find the SMALLEST 18O value, which means it’s more on the LEFTside of the graph. From the dots we see that’s going to be at the BOTTOM LEFTof the figure. Choice C. Once again, you barely had to read the passage to solve this! It's just figuring out where the dots are. OK, so figure 2. We start from Grand Forks on the right, then move to Site 3. Lake clay, the gray piece, gets THICKER. They say this in the question, and we see it in the figure. The question asked about glacial till, the striped layer under it. It gets THINNER as you go from Grand Forks to Site 3. So thickness DECREASES, choice J. Yet once again, you barely had to know the passage to solve this! OK, we want the elevation of the TOPof GLACIAL TILL at each of 3 sites. Glacial till is the STRIPED layer. At Site 1, the top is 200. At Site 2, the top is 205ish. At site 3, it’s 180 ish. Answer choice C is the only one that fits these values. YET AGAIN you barely had to know the passage! To rephrase: it rains. Water gets to 3m deep. What is the 18O 3m deep? Look at figure 3 at a depth of 3m. In each figure, it’s around -15. Answer J. Finally, surprise surprise, you didn't have to know the passage at all to answer this question. EASY PEASY. Notice all the crap we didn’t have to care about: In the passage, we didn’t have to care about how old the lake was or how it formed. Wedidn’t have to care about what 18O means about temperature. We didn’t use Figure 1 at all. Stupid map. In figure 2, we didn’t care at all about bedrock. Also, we only needed to care about how the layers changed when we were asked about it. In figure 3, we didn’t have to care at all about how Site 2 had a glacial till layer. We sure as hell didn’t have to know what the formula meant. I hope you get the point. So much of each passage is USELESSto getting the questions right. The stupid ACT knows this, and they WANT you to get bogged down. â€Å"Oh gee, I wonder what bedrock is? How might they ask questions about this?† â€Å"Boy this formula looks real tough. What is 18O, and what is 16O? What’s groundwater and what’s standard water? Why multiply by 1,000?† You can waste so many minutes trying to make sense of the entire passage. If you have time management problems, skimming the passage can be a huge time savings for you! Again, when you read the passage focus on only two questions: What is the MAIN POINT of the passage? What is the MAIN POINT of each figure? I’ve started yelling more just because of how angry this test makes me. So let me take a deep breath. Moving on†¦ Bonus:Want more helpful tips like this? Check out our new ACT Science prep book. If you liked this lesson, you'll love our book. It includes everything you need to know to ace ACT Science, including deep analysis of the logic behind ACT Science questions, a full breakdown of the different passage and question types, and tons of expert test-taking and study tips. Download our full-length prep book now: ACT ScienceTip #2: Understand What ACT Science Actually Tests ACT Science stands out as the most structured and predictable section on the ACT. What I mean by that is ACT Science has 3 passage types, and each passage type has specific question types associated with it. This is unlike ACT English, where all 5 passages have all sorts of random question types associated with it. To do well on the ACT, you HAVE to predict the questions and passages that you're going to see on test day. Here are the passage types and question types associated with them: 3 Data Representation Passages - describes a study, heavy on graphs and charts Read-the-Graph Questions Interpreting Trends Calculating Values 3 Research Summaries Passages - describes an experiment with multiple parts Experimental Design Hypothetical Experimental Changes Interpreting Experiments 1 Conflicting Viewpoints Passage - 2 or more scientists disagree Understanding Viewpoints Comparing Viewpoints Remember what I said about ACT Science testing basic skills you've learned before in school? This is it - reading graphs, the scientific method, and comparing viewpoints. Here's a helpful writeup of the 3 types of ACT Science passages and an overview of question types. Your job is to understand these skills, figure out what you're weak in, and drill those skills until you've mastered them. Does this sound intimidating? Our PrepScholar ACT program does the hard work for you by dividing up the entire test into specific skills you need to master. For every skill in ACT Science and every other section, you'll get a focused lesson and a quiz customized to your skill level. This is how I studied for the ACT and got a perfect score, so that's how I designed our prep program to work. If you could use help breaking down the ACT like this, definitely check out our PrepScholar ACT program. ACT ScienceTip #3: Learn How to Read Graphs By far the most important single skill on ACT Science is knowing how to read graphs and charts. Nearly half of all questions on the test will relate to reading a graph and making sense of it. Often, the graph will be in a totally unfamiliar subject you've never learned about. The units will be weird, and the shape of the graph might be weird. Don't worry about this - the graph isweird for every other student in the country too. The ACT does this on purpose so that students with advanced science knowledge don't have a huge advantage on the test. For example, if the ACT showed problems from AP Physics, people would riot - it's unfairly discriminating against students whose schools don't have AP Physics. But if the ACT shows a graph about sabertooth tiger tooth sizes, this is OK - almost no one will have seen this graph before, so everyone's on more level footing. If you've been overwhelmed by graphs before, this is important to sink in - ACT Science is designed so that YOU are fully capable of understanding everything you need to answer the questions right - if you learn the right skills. So how do you actually read a graph? The three most important steps you need to understand every single graph are: Skim the intro text. Often the passage will tell you literally "Figure 2 is about X" and this is a big head start. (Like I said in Tip #1, though, don't get bogged down in details.) Read the axes. What does the x-axis represent, and what changes as you move from left to right? What does the y-axis represent, and what changes as you move from bottom to top? This tells you what is actually being shown. Understand the general shape of the graph. Where is it going up or down? If there are multiple lines shown, how do they differ? I mean GENERAL - don't memorize every detail, just get a sense of what's going on. Let's apply this with the following real ACT Science passage. OK - so it's about photosynthesis, which you may remember from AP Biology. It's how plants use sunlight to generate glucose (sugar).We also hear about wavelength, which is a property of light. We can see that Violet light has a shorter wavelength than Red light. Here's Figure 2: Let's step through the 3 steps: Skim the intro text.Here it tells us figure 2 "shows the average rate of photosynthesis at various wavelengths, as a percent of the average rate of photosynthesis at 670 nm." So we get a hunch for what the graph is showing - how fast photosynthesis happens, at different wavelengths. Read the axes.The x-axis shows wavelength, and as you move from left to right, the wavelength gets larger. The y-axis shows rate of photosynthesis, and as you move from bottom to top, the rate gets bigger (which means photosynthesis happensfaster). Understand the general shape of the graph.Generally, I see two peaks and a big valley in between. Remember, higher on the y-axis means faster photosynthesis. This means that photosynthesis happens really fast at two wavelengths, and really low in the middle (around 540 nm). Again, few people have ever seen this graph before - or if they have, they've probably forgotten it. Now you understand it just as well as anyone else. With this in mind, we can try answering a question! Let's rephrase the question. "At what wavelength is photosynthesis faster than it is at 670 nm?" Let's rephrase it even more simply. "At what wavelength is the graph higher than where it is at 670 nm?" Because we understood what the y-axis was showing, we know that HIGHER UP means FASTER PHOTOSYNTHESIS. So first, let's find out how fast photosynthesis is at 670 nm. It's right around 100. (Actually, it tells you this in the intro text: "Figure 2 shows the average rate of photosynthesis at various wavelengths as a percent of the average rate of photosynthesis at 670 nm." Naturally, the value at 670 nm should be 100%. You don't have to know this, and I didn't dwell on it since it's not critical to know.) OK, now we look at where the rate of photosynthesis is higher than 100 at the 4 points: 400, 430, 630, and 700 nm. I show these with orange dots here: It's pretty clear that the only dot higher than 100 is at 430 nm. So B is the answer. What we just went over is exactly how you can approach every single graph on the ACT Science section. Some graphs will be more complicated than this, but the principles are really all the same. You CAN understand every graph in ACT Science. If you keep practicing these skills over and over again, you WILL become much better at getting more questions right. Trust me. Want to learn more about reading graphs on ACT Science? Read our complete guide to How to Read Graphs, Tables, and Data on ACT Science. ACT Science Tip #4: Understand Your Weaknesses, and Keep Drilling Them You only have a limited amount of time to study for the ACT. You need to get the biggest score improvement possible for every hour you study. To get the biggest score improvement, you need to understand where your greatest weaknesses are. Then you need to keep drilling those weaknesses with practice until you solve your weakness. This makes sense, doesn't it? Most students actually actively avoid improving their weaknesses.As a result, they waste a ton of time studying without any actual improvement. Why is focusing on your weaknesses so hard to do? A few reasons: Diagnosing your weaknesses requires a lot of analysis and discipline.To do this right, you need to categorize every practice question you do by skill, score how many questions you get right on each skill, and figure out which skills are best to work on. This is pretty laborious and tough to do right. It's a lot more enjoyable to work on things you already do well.Would you rather eat ice cream or cabbage? In ACT prep, ice cream is working on skills you're already good at - it feels great to knock questions out of the park and get high quiz scores. Unfortunately, this is a false sense of confidence - you're ignoring all the weaknesses that are actually bringing down your score. You should be eating your cabbage by working on weaknesses, which takes a lot more mental energy and is unpleasant since you keep making mistakes. But it's the only way to get better. Even after you find your weaknesses, it's not clear how you should improve on them.Let's say you find out you have problems with interpreting experiments. How do you get better? Do you do a bunch of practice questions? Which questions do you use? How do you teach yourself the right skills? You have to overcome these problems to really drill down on your weaknesses.This is really the only way to get better. But it's the foundation to how I designed our ACT prep program at PrepScholar. Here's a step by step guide on how to find your weaknesses: Categorize every practice question you take by skill, especially for practice tests. You can find every skill listed in our Ultimate ACT Science Study Guide.Try to categorize as accurately as possible. Keep track of how many questions you got right and wrong in each skill. You can use a notebook or a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Identify the skillsyou're missing the most number of questions in. Don't just focus on the % correct - what really matters is how many more points you can get by mastering that skill. For example, there might be a really uncommon skill that shows up just once on every test. Even if you get 0% of those questions right, it's not lowering your score much. It's much better to work on the skill that appears 10 times per test that you're getting 50% of questions right on. Find the best resources to train your weakness. You need a way to 1) learn the underlying skills, 2) find practice questions to keep drilling that skill. Unfortunately, as I'll discuss below, there aren't that many great books for ACT Science available. Sound overwhelming? It is a lot of hard work, but it's the most effective way to improve. Most students don't take the time to do this, which is why they don't improve their score. However, doing this well really does take a lot of energy and discipline.In PrepScholar ACT, we do all of the above steps automatically for you so you can focus on actually learning.You'll avoid the hard organizational work of finding your weaknesses and gathering practice problems, and focus on actually learning the skills to improve your score. Bonus: If all of this is making sense to you, you'd love our ACT prep program, PrepScholar. It does all of the hard work in finding your weaknesses and giving you the exact lesson you need to get better. We designed our program around the concepts in this article, because they actually work.When you start with PrepScholar, you’ll take a diagnostic that will determine your weaknesses in over forty ACT skills. PrepScholar then creates a study program specifically customized for you. To improve each skill, you’ll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your specific area weaknesses, so your time is always spent most effectively to raise your score. We also force you to focus on understanding your mistakes and learning from them. If you make the same mistake over and over again, we'll call you out on it. There’s no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we get better score results than any other program on the market. Check it out today with a 5-day free trial: ACT Science Tip #5: Use Only High-Quality Practice Materials ACT Science is an odd section. You take weird scientific concepts and papers, distill them into a high school-friendly format, and ask very specific types of questions to test science reasoning skills. This means that test prep writers have a lot of ways to go wrong. Unlike other ACT sections like Reading or Math, ACT Science has woefully few ACT books to prep from. In fact, I can't recommend ANYpublished ACT books - all the ones I've seen so far are pretty terrible. They all suffer from one or more of these problems: The passage is inappropriate. It's either too easy, too difficult, too short, or uses unnecessary jargon. Official ACT Science passages have a very specificfeel to them. The questions asked aren't stylistically correct. They might test interpretation of graphs in the wrong way, or it doesn't have the right bait answers that ACT Science has to trick you. They don't teach you the fundamental skills underlying the questions. If it's just a book of practice questions, it's not enough. This is often a problem because ACT prep companies hire people who are too unskilled or too advanced to write ACT Science material. If you hire PhD's in science who are super smart but don't know the ACT well, you'll produce ACT Science content that will be way too difficult. So where can you get great practice materials? The very best source of practice questions is official ACT practice tests. These are official tests previously administered to real students. There are some problems with just using these tests though. They aren't organized by skill, which means it's hard to find problems to drill a specific skill like Interpreting Experiments or Comparing Viewpoints. Also, there aren't that many official tests available (up to 10 or so), and you want to save some of these tests to gauge your ACT score. Finally, practice tests don't actually have any instructional material - they're just a bunch of practice questions. If you need lessons to teach you how to actually read graphs and understand ACT science, you won't find that here. If you want to supplement with more ACT Science questions, you might consider our program PrepScholar. To make sure we produce the highest quality questions possible, we broke down the test into its individual skills and categorized every wrong answer type and question type possible. You can see some of this in our Ultimate ACT Science Prep Guide. I also hire only the best ACT content writers - these people usually have years of deep tutoring experience, went to Ivy League schools, and know the test inside and out. Even if you don't use PrepScholar, make sure you find a source of great source of ACT Science materials somewhere. ACT Science Tip #6: Track Your Time Per Passage and Question Tell me if this sounds familiar - in 35 minutes, you don't even make it through the entire section. You just try your best and answer as many questions as you can, then guess on the remaining questions at the end. ACT Science has tough time pressure.You only have 35 minutes to get through 7 passages and 40 questions. Even I, a perfect ACT scorer, find ACT Science to have pretty tough time pressure. Furthermore, unlike ACT Math, the questions and passages aren't arranged in difficulty. Therefore, you can't predict ahead of time which questions are going to be harder, and just skip the hardest questions. This means you need to hustle to get through all the passages and questions. But there's good news. Remember what we said above? To get a 26 on ACT Science, you can miss 10 questions. This means you don't have to fret about getting every question correct. In fact, there are some questions that are so hard that you will never get them right, no matter how much time you spend. Therefore, I have tworecommendations: Spend no more than 1.5 minutes reading each passage. This takes 10.5 minutes away from 35 minutes. From my tip above, you already know that you don't need to actually read the entire passage to answer the questions. Spend no more than 30 seconds trying to answer each question. This takes away another 20 minutes. If you get stuck on a question and have no idea how to solve it, MOVE ON. You do NOT want to spend 90 seconds on one question - that's time better spent getting more questions right. When done right, this gives you a few spare minutes to go back to some tough questions and try to get them right. See a question that you have constant trouble with? Feel free to skip it and come back to it later. As you practice, it might help to have a timer by your side. 90 seconds for reading a passage passes a LOT more quickly than you would expect. ACT Science Tip #7: Don't Worry About Memorizing Science Here's my final tip. A lot of students try to study for ACT Science by reviewing their old class notes from biology, chemistry, and physics. The problem is, ACT Science isn't really a test on science. It's a scientific reasoning test, based mostly on scientific data you've never seen before. Aside from a few questions about basic scientific concepts (like natural selection and electrical charges), nearly everything else can be answered without a deep foundation in the subject matter. For example, look at the photosynthesis example from Tip #3 - you technically don't even need to know what photosynthesis is, and you could answer those questions. The few scientific concepts you likely already remember - but if not, here's all the actual science you need to know for ACT Science. So put aside your textbooks and notes from high school - they're not the best way to study for ACT Science. The best way, as we've discussed throughout this tips guide, is to focus on the test: Understand what's tested on ACT Science Know how to approach ACT Science passages - don't get stuck in the details Understand your skill weaknesses, and drill them Practice time management so you can get through all the questions Summary Those are the main strategies I have for you to improve your ACT Science score. If you're scoring a 17, you can improve it to a 22. If you're scoring a 21, you can boost it to a 26. I guarantee it, if you put in the right amount of work, and study like I'm suggesting above.Notice that I didn't actually teach you any sciencecontent. I didn't point to any facts or formulas that will instantly raise your score.That's because these one-size-fits-all, guaranteed strategies don't really exist. (And anyone who tells you this is deceiving you). Every student is different.Instead, you need to understand where you're falling short, and drill those weaknesses continuously. You also need to be thoughtful about your mistakes and leave no mistake ignored.This is really important to your future. Make sure you give ACT prep the attention it deserves, before it's too late, and you get a rejection letter you didn't want.If you want to review any of the strategies, here's a list of all of them: Tip #1: Don't Waste TimeUnderstanding Useless Details Tip #2: Understand What ACT Science Actually Tests Tip #3: Learn How to Read Graphs Tip #4: Understand Your Weaknesses, and Keep Drilling Them Tip #5: Use Only High-Quality Practice Materials Tip #6: Track Your Time Per Passage and Question Tip #7: Don't Worry About Memorizing Science What's Next? We have a lot more useful guides to raise your ACT score. Read my corresponding guides for other ACT Math sections: Get a 26 in ACT English, ACT Reading, and ACT Math. What's a good ACT score for you? Read our detailed guide on figuring out your ACT target score. Want a bunch of free ACT practice tests to practice with? Here's our comprehensive list of every free ACT practice test. Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points? Check out our best-in-class online ACT prep classes. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your ACT score by 4 points or more. Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by ACT experts. If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Try it risk-free today:

Ordovician Mass Destinction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Ordovician Mass Destinction - Essay Example This time period was witness to a number of conditions and events which were responsible for giving rise to a number of bioevents during this time. Ordovician time period is characterized by â€Å"rapid replacement of the Cambrian fauna with the Paleozoic fauna† (Barnes et al ,pg 140). The biota during this period was modifying itself and adapting to the changing physical and chemical changes in the oceans. Most of the life forms of this period that adapted and existed successfully were the ones that were most severely affected by this extinction event. Almost 26% of all marine families and almost 85% of all genera went extinct. Today, there is a big scientific debate about how man’s activities is leading us towards the 6th mass extinction .Anthropogenic activities have affected the Earth and all living beings adversely such that the current rate of species extinction is much higher than the background extinction rate. Interaction between environmental and ecological factors has contributed significantly to the extinction event. One of the major culprits that contribute towards this is global change in climate while others include habitat destruction, pollution etc. But if we take the Ordovician mass Extinction into account we will see that it occurred not due to anthropogenic activities but by Nature’s own course. This vindicates the fact that even Nature plays a pivotal role in destruction and extinction. Climate change and habitat destruction occurred during the Ordovician-Silurian period which vastly affected the marine species and led to their extinction. After this most of these extinct species could not recover from the effects and hence led to permanent loss Research has tried to pinpoint the exact events that led to mass destruction of most marine life forms during this event however a few possible explanations have surfed even though the

SYSTEMS AND DATABASES - COURSEWORK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

SYSTEMS AND DATABASES - COURSEWORK - Essay Example Solution: A database solution would ensure better storage, addition, modification and deletion of resident records so that bed allocation is handled better. Bed allocation would not only help the care manager but also the placement officer to know the affordable rates for the beds for fund approval process. Databases namely Oracle or MySql server can be used for storing and retrieving the records of beds and residents. Problem definition: The nurse records are not well maintained for immediate allocation and is very difficult to know the availability of the nurses for resident allocation and assignment. Even their weekly payment hours are sometimes faulty. Solution: A database system with alerts (triggers) would be largely helpful in knowing the reorder level for nurse’s availability and their filling up with buffers so that patients are taken care and attended at all times. Solution: An information system should be well connected with the pharmacist who would ensure better and timely delivery of drugs for use by the home. Again the proposal for an interconnected system like that of ERP is most useful in such cases. It would not only manage the various elements but would also reduce their operation cycle time in terms of effort and time taken by the various actors like the care manager, nursing manager and others to accomplish a task. As the hospital demands quick and timely action to keep up with the patient’s medical demands, an ERP system would ensure effective data transfer and reduce their lead times (Ballou, 2002). Solution: The updation of records are essentially required for fetching the exact state of the patients at all times. The system must reflect that at every point of time as to the status of the patient. A database solution would ensure better management of the home and ensure a reflection of the