Obama Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Obama - Essay Example In the US state of Ohio, there was great resonance between President Barack Obama’s arguments and those of the voters regarding the economic woes that America has experienced in the recent years as a result of the Bush government (â€Å"Fox News Exit†). On the national level, President Barack Obama’s campaign played a very important role opposing the supposed war on women by Romney. This gained President Barack Obama heavy support of the female voters whereas Mitt Romney gained no more than a point from the 2008 performance of John McCain. In addition to that, President Barack Obama also approved of the gay marriages in America understanding the fact that gays are growing in population in America. This gained him the support of the gay community as well and has contributed to his presidency for the second time. I personally think that President Barack Obama won the re-election fundamentally because he is black by ethnicity. The blacks in America have grown in population over the years and they see President Barack Obama as their own representative in such a prestigious institution as the government. Equality of races in America has been a growing concern since the end of slavery, but since then, the blacks’ rights have been subjugated at different levels, though not as overtly and openly as they were in the time of slavery. A vast majority of the black Americans voted for President Barack Obama because they did not want to lose their representation in the most powerful seat in America. The white Americans, on the other hand, were not quite as conscious about being represented in the government as the black Americans were because the former have always been more than sufficiently represented everywhere in America. So the white Americans primarily based their decision of voting betwee n President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on the basis of their evaluation of their individualistic strengths and weaknesses. Understandably, some white Americans did find

What it means to receive my Black Belt in Kung Fu Essay

What it means to receive my Black Belt in Kung Fu - Essay Example I perceive this accomplishment as a major achievement in my life, and am grateful to the almighty that I had followed the eight essential elements that constitutes such a feat. A positive mind serves the purpose of keeping one constantly motivated. Whatever one does in life, whether it leads to success or failure, has to be augmented with a positive attitude. This will enable one to accept the facts of life and to emerge stronger out of any situation. Kung Fu had always provided me some reason to look up to myself. I was always required to set some standards to myself and to live up to it. This made me a highly positive individual who is willing to turn any negative aspect in life to something positive. For instance, whenever I found myself lacking in energy or focus, I told myself that what any other person could achieve could be achieved by me as well. I always considered my mentor a role model and followed the regime he suggested. And I was never disappointed by this attitude in life, for I was never defeated by any amount hard work. The very fact that I had to practice martial arts on a daily basis helped me maintain my body healthy. I realized that a healthy body is the best asset one could have. It made me feel ultimately confident in taxing situations. I also realized that my physical appearance was highly enhanced by a healthy body, which resulted in a lot of respect and admiration from those who were associated with me. This did boost my self-confidence and motivated me further to follow a strict regime of exercises and Kung Fu practice. I started slow and steady, but progressed to a stricter, more systematic regime, which could have led to a very healthy body which I can be proud of. Balanced relationships matter the most in human life. I was not really convinced at first of maintaining a balanced relationship with the help of learning martial arts. But, after

Response paper to Ian Hodder’s “Ethics and Archaeology” Essay Example for Free

Response paper to Ian Hodder’s â€Å"Ethics and Archaeology† Essay Ian Hodder’s article, â€Å"Ethics and Archaeology: The Attempt at Eatalhoyuk,† basically discusses in detail the different roles that archaeologists assume during an excavation and also their ethical obligation and duty to the different communities on the site. Hodder claimed that the roles of archaeologists are not only limited to studying human culture through unearthing, recovering, documenting, analyzing, and interpreting remains, historical objects, artifacts, and landscapes. In addition, he also claimed that they do not also work solely to serve the interest of their benefactors and sponsors. Rather, Hodder stated that archaeologists have bigger roles and wider responsibilities to the different sectors of the excavation site. In short, aside from the interest of their sponsors and other organizations that fund the digs, Hodder believes that it is also the duty of archaeologists to reach to the multiple communities, interest groups, or stakeholders of any excavation site. In his paper, Hodder mainly focused his arguments on the Eatalhoyuk excavation site where is the director of the archaeological dig. According to him, the stakeholders of most sites can be narrowed to four: the politicians, the local residents, the New Age Goddess followers, and the artists. Hodder noted each of these communities has its own agenda or interest and it is part of the archaeologist’s duty to somehow satisfy them. One of the stakeholders that are common to almost all archaeological sites is the politicians or those in the seat of power. Generally, based on Hodder’s paper, all politicians support archaeological digs have their own agenda or interests. These may involve governors, mayors, or government representatives from the surrounding area of the site. Hodder claimed that although a lot of these politicians hail the archaeological site for its richness in history, culture, and identity, among others, their interests mainly lie on a single thing— widespread publicity. While the politicians’ desire to be seen on television or read on the newspapers is normal, Hodder stressed that it is the archaeologist’s role to limit the ways in which they use the site for their personal motives. He also stated that archaeologists should also verify every piece of information that a politician gives to the public about the site. For example, there are certain politicians who claim to be descendants of the site’s residents and speak about his or her origins. In this case, it is the archaeologists’ responsibility to verify these claims and ensure that they are true. Another community that has its own interests is the local residents. According to Hodder, in general, these residents, who have low incomes and limited education, mainly have practical concerns such as earning money for helping in the excavation. However, they are also concerned about the history of the sites and how they contributed to their identity. In this regard, Hodder stated in his paper that is archaeologists job to educate them about their cultural history and identity using solid evidence found on the digs. In turn, these local residents may relate their personal experiences from living in the site’s environment to tourists and researchers as these are helpful information. The New Age Goddess groups, on the other hand, mainly go to excavation sites, such as in Eatalhoyuk, to pray and to practice their beliefs which are in honor of their Goddess, which was a highly significant figure in the past. Their main concerns, according to Hodder, would mostly be regarding the history of the Goddess and the role of women in the Eatalhoyuk’s past. Thus, the archaeologists should try to address these concerns and provide evidence that would show how women lived in the communities of Eatalhoyuk thousands of years ago. By doing so, Hodder surmised that this would not only serve the Goddess’ groups interests but also avoid any misinformation regarding the site’s history. Finally, another sector that has shown significsnt interest in Eatalhoyuk is the artists group. Hodder noted that over the past years, more and more artists have arrived at Eatalhoyuk mainly to create works about the site. However, he claimed that there are also certain artists who help in the interpretation, reconstruction, and visualization of the art objects found in the site. Hodder stated that the main concern of this group is whether the objects unearthed during digs and excavations could be considered art or not. Meaning to say, most of these artists are particularly interested in identifying and describing the works of art recovered from sites. In this regard, the archaeologists involved, according to Hodder, should ensure that these works of art or aesthetic objects are verified to be genuine using past studies and other evidence found on the site. Certain artists also inquire about the role that art played in the history of Eatalhoyuk and it is the archaeologist’s duty to satisfy those questions to the best of his or her abilities. In short, what Hodder was trying to point out in his paper was that archeologists should always consider the agenda and interests of all the groups and sectors concerned during an excavation as it reaps greater rewards and is also more ethical than serving only personal interests. Personally, I agree with Hodder’s claims in his paper. His use of historical evidence and real life situations make his arguments very convincing. I also think it is unethical for archaeologists to go on digs mainly to become famous or serve their own interests only. Rather than setting one agenda, I believe it is important to work with different communities as exemplified by Hodder’s work in Eatalhoyuk as there are greater things at stake. Since archaeologist’s experiences firsthand what it’s like to be in an excavation site or dig, he or she should use his or her knowledge and skill to verify all the information and answer all the questions surrounding an archaeological site. This is not only professional obligation but also an ethical duty. Works Cited Hodder, Ian. â€Å"Ethics and Archaeology: The Attempt at Eatalhoyuk. † Near Easter Archaeology 65 No. 3 (2002): 174-181.

Downfall of Female Body Image: Media’s Influence Essays -- Social Issu

Throughout the years, the connotative definition of beauty has gone through constant change. In today’s world, young women are constantly under the impression that they have to fit the current definition in order to fit in with society and be recognized by men. Many girls feel they need to fit the mold instead of being their true unique selves. Every single individual is different in their own way, however the media has drilled it into every young girl’s mind, that they have just like a Barbie doll in order to be happy. Furthermore, these same girls are resorting to extreme methods in order to feel like they fit in such as taking unhealthy weight loss pills and developing eating disorders. Advertising has caused more harm than good in this particular situation by compelling girls to feel like they cannot be themselves. Even fashion trends have added to this downfall of women’s individualism. Teenage girls feel the need to match the current fashion trend, no matter how expensive, just so they can feel the same as everybody else. As Andrew Delbanco explains in his work, The Real American Dream, consumer culture has the power to â€Å"evacuate the self† (105). This is exactly what is happening in today’s world due to media influence. Young women are idolizing media images and trying to imitate them. This in turn is causing a negative effect on individualism. Young women should grow up wanting to be themselves as individuals. Girls should not mature with the mindset that they want to be just like the models in magazines and television commercials. Kristin Noelle Weissman discusses the effects of the mass media in her book Barbie: the icon, the image, the ideal. Weissman explains, Wood 2 â€Å"The mass media –as a primary and ... ...y. Women all over the world are affected by the media. Even the slightest flash of a tall and skinny girl in a TV commercial can have an influence on a young girl that just wanted to watch cartoons. Starting as kids, icons such as Barbie engrain is a child’s mind that beauty and being thin comes with popularity and happiness. But what happens when those goals of the media’s Wood 10 perfect image are just out of reach? This can cause negative effects on young women and has been for several years. Women everywhere are stuck on the idea that they have to look like Barbie or like the models and celebrities in magazines, sometimes resulting in detrimental methods such as eating disorders. These women eventually develop a loss of their individuality and are left unhappy and disappointed. The cookie-cutter idea is taking over society and the media is to blame.

Making a buffer

Name Date experiment performed   CRN of lab section: Grade: Days late: Instructor Initials: General Grading Items 25 Points Attendance at Pre-lab MeetingCopies of lab pages attached; labeled with name and date, complete information, readable, data recorded matches results given in report| /5| Waste was properly disposed of and lab area was cleanedEvaluation of student performance overall (student was on time, followed safety rules, performed the lab correctly and within the time allowed, etc) Total for General Grading Items Data Analysis and Interpretation Part | 75 Points| Titration Curves| /25|Question 1Question 2Question 3Total for Data Analysis and InterpretationData Table Buffer A| Buffer B| Mass of NaC2H3O2 used to prepare buffer (grams)Volume of buffer prepared (mL) 100. 0| 100. 0Molar concentration of HC2H3O2 in buffer (M) Initial pH of bufferVolume of 0. 5 M NaOH to raise pH by 2 units (mL)Volume of 0. 5 M HCl to lower pH by 2 units (mL)Volume of 0. 5 M NaOH at equivalence point (mL)Data AnalysisWrite reaction equations to explain how your acetic acid-acetate buffer reacts with an acid and reacts with a base.Buffer capacity has a rather loose definition, yet it is an important property of buffers. A commonly seen definition of buffer capacity is: â€Å"The amount of H+ or OH– that can be neutralized before the pH changes to a significant degree. † Use your data to determine the buffer capacity of Buffer A and Buffer B. (Graphically, we can identify buffer capacity by the sudden change to a very steep slope. )Say, for example, that you had prepared a Buffer C, in which you mixed 8. 203 g of sodium acetate, NaC2H3O2, with 100. 0 mL of 1. 0 M acetic acid. a. What would be the initial pH of Buffer C? b. If you add 5. 0 mL of 0. 5 M NaOH solution to 20. 0 mL each of Buffer B and Buffer C, which buffer’s pH would change less? Explain.

Do Teenagers Need a Part Time Job

Do you believe that teenagers should have a part-time job before they graduate from high school? The purpose of this essay is the explain the reasons why teenagers should have a part-time job before they graduate from high school. First of all, this would allow teenagers to be prepared for the real world. Often some teenagers will go out on their own unprepared and dependent on family or friends for money. Secondly, this could help teenagers become more responsible. Furthermore, having a part-time job would allow teenagers to have spending money. By having a part-time job this allows teenagers to be prepared for the real world. Teenagers can expand their knowledge skills and gain experience for future full-time jobs. Often teenagers may not be aware of the knowledge needed in their employment. Having the experience from part-time jobs would allow them to be more prepared. Teenagers would also learn financial skills for when they go away from home to college or university. Another thing is that by having a part-time job while still in high school that teaches teenagers responsibility by saving their earnings. Responsibility is key to being successful and by having a part-time job, teenagers improve in their accountability. Due to the fact that some students are irresponsible, they may be more efficient to become punctual and reliable. Teenagers would better understand what it is like to hold a part-time job while keeping up in school and homework. Therefore realizing what their parents do on a daily basis. For example, holding a full-time job and meeting the family responsibilities. Teenagers could also think about saving their earnings for buying the things they would like. Money is something almost every teenager wants. If teenagers had a part-time job, this would allow them to have spending money they earned by themselves. With the check they’ve received or money saved from working, they can go out to the movies, go bowling, buy clothes or just buy anything they want. Teenagers would have to spend their earnings very wisely, so they are not asking their parents for money. In conclusion, I strongly believe that it is important for teenagers to have a part time job before they graduate from high school. Although, having a part time job could take time away from yourself such as working on homework or spending time with friends, teenagers can put time aside for a night they aren’t working to go to a movie or just do something they enjoy. Part time jobs have many benefits so I don’t see why some teenagers stay at home doing nothing or spending too much time with friends, when they can be working and getting prepared for the future. Teenagers need to learn life skills early in life. So they are not living at home, with no jobs after high school if they are not going to pursue there education. This is why teenagers should have part-time jobs.

Participatory sensing services for smart phones The WritePass Journal

Participatory sensing services for smart phones   1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Motivation Participatory sensing services for smart phones   1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Motivation2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Background3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Methods4.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Metrics for evaluation5.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Outputs6.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Workplan7.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ReferencesRelated   1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Motivation In modern society, environmental pollution is usually a headache for citizens, especially those who live in the urban areas. Many researches have shown that there is a direct link between environmental pollution and health effects. In the last two decades, the overall environment quality has improved. However, there is still a concern about environmental pollution in the urban areas. Citizens, especially the elderly and children, are vulnerable to the effects of environmental pollution. Nowadays, the latest technologies in the wireless field provide an innovative approach for the citizens to access the information about environmental pollution. With over 3 billion subscriber lines active today, nearly half the world’s population uses mobile phones [1]. Given the right structure, the ubiquitous mobile devices could act as sensor nodes, capable of capturing, classifying, and transmitting environmental data, such as image, acoustic, and temperature. In the foreseeable future, other sensors may be embedded in or connect wirelessly to the mobile phones to gather information about air pollutants, like CO2, NO2 and SO2. Participatory sending can employ a variety of devices to collect data; however, some special characteristics of mobile phones enable them to be an unprecedented tool for engaging participants in sensing their local environment. The sheer ubiquity across the geographic and demographic spectrum and the broad proliferation of cellular infrastructure and mobile phone usage make it possible to collect data over large areas for little incremental cost. Participatory sensing will utilize current wireless network, which consists numerous mobile phones, to form a vast interactive participatory sensor network that enables professional users and lay public to gather, analyze and share environment information [2]. Citizens, especially the elderly, children, urban commuters, urban office workers and students, will benefit from such a revolutionary technology. 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Background In virtue of the rosy prospect and importance of participatory sensing, there are more and more research institutes engaging in this field. The concept of PES has been proposed in recent years (Karatzas, 2005; Burke et al., 2006; Goldman et al., 2009), and related projects have been in development around the world, especially in the USA and Europe [3]. PEIR, one of the most successful participatory sensing projects, is research collaboration between CENS, UCLA and Nokia. It makes use of Internet to allow citizens to use their mobile phones to interact with PEIR, and explore and share the impact between environment and the citizens. PEIR senses pollution by  using existing infrastructure  without user intervention  and emphasizes how individual transportation choices simultaneously influence both environmental impact and exposure, which makes it different from other existing carbon footprint calculators [4]. Eye on Earth project of the European Environment Agency is a two-way communication platform on the environment. It has introduced the participation of millions of ordinary people to create the first environmental portal that includes citizens’ observations on air and bathing water quality at present. Eye on Earth aims to gradually include information on many other environmental topics and grow to a global observatory for environmental change [5]. MESSAGE is to provide data collecting through three sensor platforms for the planning, management and control of the environmental impacts of transport activity at urban, regional and national level. Mobile phones are investigated to support a sensing system, in which people play an important role [6]. In addition to the projects introduced above, other participatory sensing projects have also appeared, such as Living Environments, Citysense, Common Sense, Envitori and MIMAQ [3]. A lot of evidences have shown that new intuitive ways of interactions and user friendly context aware service can be introduced by various sensors in mobile phones. Therefore, mostly specialized sensors were applied in participatory sensing. Some projects also suggest that standard sensors already embedded in the mobile phones can be used for this. Overall, there are a variety of participatory sensing projects, and they can be divided into three categories according to the participation patterns [1]: Collective Design and Investigation. A group of individuals work together to decide where, what and why to sense. Then a data collection system is collectively designed, and an investigation is conducted. The group interprets the data and acts on the results. An evident feature of this participatory pattern is that the community of participants owns the entire process. Instead of serving merely research subjects, individuals play an active role in the investigative process. Public contribution. Individuals or organizations define inquiries and then other individuals collect data in respond to such inquiries. In this case, participants actively engage in the data collection and make contributions to an effort they find meaningful. For organizers, they can gather as many data as possible at a scale unachievable by professionals acting alone. Personal Use and Reflection. Individuals log information about themselves, like images, sounds and so on. Such recorded information may reveal hidden habits and patterns in one’s life after analyzed and visualized. Participants use the results for personal discovery to reflect on, evaluate, and perhaps change patterns that were previously overlooked.    3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Methods Data collection and interpretation are the heart of participatory sensing which places the emphasis on the involvement of citizens and community groups. In spite of participation patterns, the basic process for every participatory sensing project is similar, and it can be broken down into the following eight steps: coordination, capture, transfer, storage, access, analysis, feedback and visualization [1]. Coordination explains the sensing effort to the participants and provides necessary guidance to them. Capture is the collection of data on a mobile phone, which is the core step of participatory sensing. Data can be captured by the existing sensors already embedded in the mobile phones or by those specialized sensors connecting wirelessly to the mobile phones. In the course of data collection, the credibility of data must be guaranteed. More significantly, data about geographical position and time must be captured every time. Transfer is processed automatically by mobile phones via wireless network. Mobile phone software takes the responsibility of uploading data and makes it transparent to the participants. Furthermore, mobile phone software should be tolerant of inevitable network interruptions. Storage takes place on servers which are distributed remotely in the Internet. Access is under the control of project organizers and participants according to the privacy policy. Due to the possible disclosure of private information about the participants, it is of vital importance for the participants to determine what information to share and with whom. Analysis includes various data-processing methods, the calculation of group statistics and the integration of contributed data into statistical and spatial models that can be used to determine patterns in space and time. Feedback may be required in the event of a project triggering manual or automatic events. Visualization is closely related to the analysis. It is the step to present the contributed data after analysis. In some sense, well-designed visualization increases the applicability of a participatory sensing project. The project of Participatory sensing services for smart phones can be divided into two collaborative subprojects based on the Android platform, one focusing on data gathering and the other one dealing with the data processing and visualization. We take the responsibility for presenting data in some friendly and easy-understandable way. Thus the data analysis and visualization are the center of our work. For the subproject of data processing and visualization, we have to deal with data and services. In the assumption that the contributed data are already available and their credibility has been verified, we get data via a server-based application which acts as a data storage. This server-based application will provide web service interfaces for data access. Thus WSDL language for web services will be utilized to develop an Android-based application with the aid of development environments like Eclipse. There are a wide variety of available solutions to make use of web services via Android, and the solution to use ksoap2 will be suitable for our project. The data accessed via web services can be classified into two kinds: subjective data and objective data. Subjective data: a categorization of the quality of the environment. They are feedback commented and reported by the citizens on the air quality. We intend to make use of the EEA categorization for air pollution, which is applicable on eyeonearth.eu/. Objective data: in the form of numeric values. They are automatically captured by the sensors or reported manually by the users. Images, sound, location and time are objective data. All data processed in the frame of participatory sensing project will include the following three categories of information: Georeference. Geographical position and time is extremely important for participatory sensing, and forms the cornerstone of the follow-up work. User categories. At the initial stage, our project will serve the urban commuters, office workers, students and the elderly. Other categories of users are possibly added if necessary at the later stage. We allocate every user group a unique ID, which will be used to identify the category which the users belong to. Furthermore, category ID will be used to send a request to the server which involves user category. Thematic profiling. Our project is to process information about environment and we aim to deal with air pollution, odors, noise, traffic congestion and waste. In order to present the result of the contributed data to the participants in a user-friendly and easy-understandable way, GMap API may be utilized to map the georeference and thematic profiling, which will provide an interactive feature between our project and participants. Due to the distinct flexibility, Modest Maps API is an alternative to achieve the same goal. 4.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Metrics for evaluation To encourage the handset owners to participate in our project, privacy protection policy has to be taken into account to prevent privacy disclosure. One of the basic rules is that participants cannot access other people’s private information, and such an attempt should be denied. Furthermore, the data visualization should be easily and readily comprehended or understood not only by the professional users but also by the general public. In some sense, the degree of understandability of data presentation determines the scope of applicability of participatory sensing. Another metric related to the visualization is that the users are able to customize the configuration to present what they want. With regard to air quality, if the concentration of air pollutants detected does not fall into the scope which is safe and suitable for humankind, the participants should receive a warning, so that they can take actions to avoid being harmed. Due to regional differences, different air pollution standards are applied in different areas. 5.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Outputs The output of our project is an application running on the Android platform. Interested people can download it from the Internet and install it in their Android phones to access the information about environment surrounding them. 6.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Workplan The rough time schedule of our project is listed below, including the milestones and corresponding estimated completion dates. In table 1, some stages may overlap with others. In the course of project development, the time schedule may be changed according to specific situation. Milestone Anticipated completion date Analyze the project and do literary review February 28, 2011 Define the project scope February 28, 2011 Write the research proposal March 23, 2011 Study mobile phone programming techniques May 27, 2011 Make a plan for the project May 28, 2011 Implement the project July 28, 2011 Test the project August 3, 2011 Take field trials August 5, 2011 Deliver the project August 8, 2011 Complete the dissertation August 19, 2011    7.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   References [1] J. Goldman, K. Shilton, J. Burke, D. Estrin, M. Hansen, N. Ramanathan, S. Reddy, V. Samanta, M. Srivastava, R. West, â€Å"Participatory Sensing: A citizen-powered approach to illuminating the patterns that shape our world† [2] J. Burke, D. Estrin, M. Hansen, A. Parker, N. Ramanathan, S. Reddy, M. B. Srivastava, â€Å"Participatory Sensing† [3] https://projects.inf.ed.ac.uk/msc/project?number=P165 [4] http://urban.cens.ucla.edu/projects/peir [5] eyeonearth.eu/About.aspx?culture=en-GB [6] http://bioinf.ncl.ac.uk/message/?q=node/5 Participatory sensing services for smart phones 1. Motivation Participatory sensing services for smart phones 1. Motivation2. Background3. Methods4.Metrics for evaluation5. Outputs6. WorkplanReferencesRelated 1. Motivation In modern society, environmental pollution is usually a headache for citizens, especially those who live in the urban areas. Many researches have shown that there is a direct link between environmental pollution and health effects. In the last two decades, the overall environment quality has improved. However, there is still a concern about environmental pollution in the urban areas. Citizens, especially the elderly and children, are vulnerable to the effects of environmental pollution.   Nowadays, the latest technologies in the wireless field provide an innovative approach for the citizens to access the information about environmental pollution. With over 3 billion subscriber lines active today, nearly half the world’s population uses mobile phones [1]. Given the right structure, the ubiquitous mobile devices could act as sensor nodes, capable of capturing, classifying, and transmitting environmental data, such as image, acoustic, and temperature. In the foreseeable future, other sensors may be embedded in or connect wirelessly to the mobile phones to gather information about air pollutants, like CO2, NO2 and SO2. Participatory sending can employ a variety of devices to collect data; however, some special characteristics of mobile phones enable them to be an unprecedented tool for engaging participants in sensing their local environment. The sheer ubiquity across the geographic and demographic spectrum and the broad proliferation of cellular infrastructure and mobile phone usage make it possible to collect data over large areas for little incremental cost. Participatory sensing will utilize current wireless network, which consists numerous mobile phones, to form a vast interactive participatory sensor network that enables professional users and lay public to gather, analyze and share environment information [2]. Citizens, especially the elderly, children, urban commuters, urban office workers and students, will benefit from such a revolutionary technology. 2. Background In virtue of the rosy prospect and importance of participatory sensing, there are more and more research institutes engaging in this field. The concept of PES has been proposed in recent years (Karatzas, 2005; Burke et al., 2006; Goldman et al., 2009), and related projects have been in development around the world, especially in the USA and Europe [3]. PEIR, one of the most successful participatory sensing projects, is research collaboration between CENS, UCLA and Nokia. It makes use of Internet to allow citizens to use their mobile phones to interact with PEIR, and explore and share the impact between environment and the citizens. PEIR senses pollution by  using existing infrastructure  without user intervention  and emphasizes how individual transportation choices simultaneously influence both environmental impact and exposure, which makes it different from other existing carbon footprint calculators [4]. Eye on Earth project of the European Environment Agency is a two-way communication platform on the environment. It has introduced the participation of millions of ordinary people to create the first environmental portal that includes citizens’ observations on air and bathing water quality at present. Eye on Earth aims to gradually include information on many other environmental topics and grow to a global observatory for environmental change [5]. MESSAGE is to provide data collecting through three sensor platforms for the planning, management and control of the environmental impacts of transport activity at urban, regional and national level. Mobile phones are investigated to support a sensing system, in which people play an important role [6]. In addition to the projects introduced above, other participatory sensing projects have also appeared, such as Living Environments, Citysense, Common Sense, Envitori and MIMAQ [3]. A lot of evidences have shown that new intuitive ways of interactions and user friendly context aware service can be introduced by various sensors in mobile phones. Therefore, mostly specialized sensors were applied in participatory sensing. Some projects also suggest that standard sensors already embedded in the mobile phones can be used for this. Overall, there are a variety of participatory sensing projects, and they can be divided into three categories according to the participation patterns [1]: Collective Design and Investigation. A group of individuals work together to decide where, what and why to sense. Then a data collection system is collectively designed, and an investigation is conducted. The group interprets the data and acts on the results. An evident feature of this participatory pattern is that the community of participants owns the entire process. Instead of serving merely research subjects, individuals play an active role in the investigative process. Public contribution. Individuals or organizations define inquiries and then other individuals collect data in respond to such inquiries. In this case, participants actively engage in the data collection and make contributions to an effort they find meaningful. For organizers, they can gather as many data as possible at a scale unachievable by professionals acting alone. Personal Use and Reflection. Individuals log information about themselves, like images, sounds and so on. Such recorded information may reveal hidden habits and patterns in one’s life after analyzed and visualized. Participants use the results for personal discovery to reflect on, evaluate, and perhaps change patterns that were previously overlooked. 3. Methods Data collection and interpretation are the heart of participatory sensing which places the emphasis on the involvement of citizens and community groups. In spite of participation patterns, the basic process for every participatory sensing project is similar, and it can be broken down into the following eight steps: coordination, capture, transfer, storage, access, analysis, feedback and visualization [1]. Coordination explains the sensing effort to the participants and provides necessary guidance to them. Capture is the collection of data on a mobile phone, which is the core step of participatory sensing. Data can be captured by the existing sensors already embedded in the mobile phones or by those specialized sensors connecting wirelessly to the mobile phones. In the course of data collection, the credibility of data must be guaranteed. More significantly, data about geographical position and time must be captured every time. Transfer is processed automatically by mobile phones via wireless network. Mobile phone software takes the responsibility of uploading data and makes it transparent to the participants. Furthermore, mobile phone software should be tolerant of inevitable network interruptions. Storage takes place on servers which are distributed remotely in the Internet. Access is under the control of project organizers and participants according to the privacy policy. Due to the possible disclosure of private information about the participants, it is of vital importance for the participants to determine what information to share and with whom.   Ã‚   Analysis includes various data-processing methods, the calculation of group statistics and the integration of contributed data into statistical and spatial models that can be used to determine patterns in space and time. Feedback may be required in the event of a project triggering manual or automatic events. Visualization is closely related to the analysis. It is the step to present the contributed data after analysis. In some sense, well-designed visualization increases the applicability of a participatory sensing project. The project of Participatory sensing services for smart phones can be divided into two collaborative subprojects based on the Android platform, one focusing on data gathering and the other one dealing with the data processing and visualization. We take the responsibility for presenting data in some friendly and easy-understandable way. Thus the data analysis and visualization are the center of our work. For the subproject of data processing and visualization, we have to deal with data and services. In the assumption that the contributed data are already available and their credibility has been verified, we get data via a server-based application which acts as a data storage. This server-based application will provide web service interfaces for data access. Thus WSDL language for web services will be utilized to develop an Android-based application with the aid of development environments like Eclipse. There are a wide variety of available solutions to make use of web services via Android, and the solution to use ksoap2 will be suitable for our project. The data accessed via web services can be classified into two kinds: subjective data and objective data. Subjective data: a categorization of the quality of the environment. They are feedback commented and reported by the citizens on the air quality. We intend to make use of the EEA categorization for air pollution, which is applicable on eyeonearth.eu/. Objective data: in the form of numeric values. They are automatically captured by the sensors or reported manually by the users. Images, sound, location and time are objective data. All data processed in the frame of participatory sensing project will include the following three categories of information: Georeference. Geographical position and time is extremely important for participatory sensing, and forms the cornerstone of the follow-up work. User categories. At the initial stage, our project will serve the urban commuters, office workers, students and the elderly. Other categories of users are possibly added if necessary at the later stage. We allocate every user group a unique ID, which will be used to identify the category which the users belong to. Furthermore, category ID will be used to send a request to the server which involves user category. Thematic profiling. Our project is to process information about environment and we aim to deal with air pollution, odors, noise, traffic congestion and waste. In order to present the result of the contributed data to the participants in a user-friendly and easy-understandable way, GMap API may be utilized to map the georeference and thematic profiling, which will provide an interactive feature between our project and participants. Due to the distinct flexibility, Modest Maps API is an alternative to achieve the same goal. 4.Metrics for evaluation To encourage the handset owners to participate in our project, privacy protection policy has to be taken into account to prevent privacy disclosure. One of the basic rules is that participants cannot access other people’s private information, and such an attempt should be denied. Furthermore, the data visualization should be easily and readily comprehended or understood not only by the professional users but also by the general public. In some sense, the degree of understandability of data presentation determines the scope of applicability of participatory sensing. Another metric related to the visualization is that the users are able to customize the configuration to present what they want. With regard to air quality, if the concentration of air pollutants detected does not fall into the scope which is safe and suitable for humankind, the participants should receive a warning, so that they can take actions to avoid being harmed. Due to regional differences, different air pollution standards are applied in different areas. 5. Outputs The output of our project is an application running on the Android platform. Interested people can download it from the Internet and install it in their Android phones to access the information about environment surrounding them. 6. Workplan The rough time schedule of our project is listed below, including the milestones and corresponding estimated completion dates. In table 1, some stages may overlap with others. In the course of project development, the time schedule may be changed according to specific situation. Milestone Anticipated completion date Analyze the project and do literary review February 28, 2011 Define the project scope February 28, 2011 Write the research proposal March 23, 2011 Study mobile phone programming techniques May 27, 2011 Make a plan for the project May 28, 2011 Implement the project July 28, 2011 Test the project August 3, 2011 Take field trials August 5, 2011 Deliver the project August 8, 2011 Complete the dissertation August 19, 2011 References J. Goldman, K. Shilton, J. Burke, D. Estrin, M. Hansen, N. Ramanathan, S. Reddy, V. Samanta, M. Srivastava, R. West, â€Å"Participatory Sensing: A citizen-powered approach to illuminating the patterns that shape our world† J. Burke, D. Estrin, M. Hansen, A. Parker, N. Ramanathan, S. Reddy, M. B. Srivastava, â€Å"Participatory Sensing† https://projects.inf.ed.ac.uk/msc/project?number=P165 http://urban.cens.ucla.edu/projects/peir eyeonearth.eu/About.aspx?culture=en-GB http://bioinf.ncl.ac.uk/message/?q=node/5