I graduated

WoW!

Done? Am I really done?? No more exams? No more assignments? No more Homeworks? Quizzes? Essays? Projects?? No more?? No more classes?? Is it believeable? I mean, more than 17 years all studying books and books?? And today it's over? Does it mean I'm getting a relief? Freedom?? Wo0o0o0o0oW..................

Guys: I GRADUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATED FINALLY :D

Officially from a Student to Industrial Engineer (what a feeling ^_^ )

Hold, I wanna scream one more time:

I GRADUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATEEED

Thanks!

Essay

Two weeks back, I was helping my younger sister (PiXiE) on her essay that worth 20% from the final grade and since she was busy with her final exam and that she's graduating this summer, she told me to work on most of her essay. She's studying English Specialization (or it's called English Sepcialist??) and as you all know that I'm doing Industrial Engineering, so writing an essay for English Specialist student is not like doing that for an Engineering student. Surprisingly, I managed to do the essay the way she told me, and she was caring less and wanted to submit anything because she was busy preparing for her finals. The point is, she got the highest mark and best essay and I honestly, I was surprised myself, are they joking?? The english I used was simple and the whole eassy-structure is obviously not of an English Specialist student, but duh! :D Lucky her, she have a brother like me (e7m :p)

Here's the essay. Enjoy ;)


Dictionaries were used since many centuries and are still being used till now which implies the importance of dictionaries as a rich source for educational purposes. Noticeably throughout the years, dictionaries have been developed and improved and many new types of dictionaries have evolved since then like the bilingual dictionaries and trilingual dictionaries beside the monolingual dictionaries. This research aims to study one of these types, which is the bilingual dictionary and to indicate the comprehensiveness of its contents. Two bilingual dictionaries, "Al-Mawrid Al-Akbar" dictionary and "Al-Muhit Oxford Study Dictionary" will be compared to a monolingual dictionary "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary" through extensive study of the entry of the word "cyber-" and the words derived from it. The study will try to look at the elements of the entry that include the phonological, semantic, morphological, syntactic and etymological information, and the contextual usage.

There is an obvious difference between the monolingual dictionary and the bilingual dictionary in the coverage of words. The head-words coverage by the monolingual dictionary extends far more than the other two bilingual dictionaries and this can be shown by looking at the extra words that the monolingual dictionary provides like the words cybercafé, cybernaut, cybersex and cybersquatting. However, by going through each bilingual dictionary, we find that "Al-Mawrid Al-Akbar" dictionary covers the words cybernation, cybernetic(s), cybernetician and cyberneticist, whereas "Al-Muhit Oxford Study Dictionary" only covers the three words cybernetics, cyberpunk and cyberspace. Moreover, "Al-Mawrid Al-Akbar" dictionary treats each of the words above as a head-word and not as words that should go under the head-word cybernated. It then lists the words cybern (ation), cybern (etics), cybern (etician) and cybern (eticist), which are nothing but morphological information of the same word 'cybernated'. Nevertheless, this may be due to the fact that word meaning can be more extensive when it is shown as a head-word and more elaborated information could be given.

The phonological information is an essential part that each dictionary should provide. Here, the monolingual dictionary illustrates two types of pronunciations which are the British and the American pronunciation. "Al-Mawrid Al-Akbar" dictionary demonstrates clear British pronunciation, whereas "Al-Muhit Oxford Study Dictionary" does not provide any phonological description except for the word 'cybernetics' by breaking it into three syllables using alphabetical letters not phonetic symbols.

The semantic of a dictionary is primarily the imperative aim and is a measure of power of any dictionary that gives a proper and concise meaning for each of its words. Each of the dictionaries used provides the semantic information for its words, but the bilingual dictionaries present unclear definitions and could not achieve a user friendly meaning. For example, the word 'cybernation' is defined like this:

"السبرنه: الضبط الاوتوماتي لعملية ما في حقل الصناعة مثلاً من طريق إستخدام الكومبيوترات"

The word "السبرنه" does not reflect any Arabic terminology that any reader can thoroughly understand. It may have been derived by direct phonological transfer of the word 'cybernation' and arabized to the word "السبرنه". Moreover, weak Arabic grammar is used like in "من طريق"; it should be grammatically structured as "عن طريق". Besides, "الاوتوماتي" and "الكومبيوترات" are not originally Arabic words and any good dictionary should provide clear meanings using well formulated standard Arabic. Another point, none of the words is provided with examples to illustrate its contextual meaning with clearer picture and that is why there is a lot of vagueness. Last but not least, the word 'cyberspace' has two senses in the bilingual dictionary, "Al-Muhit Oxford Study Dictionary", whereas it has just one sense in the monolingual dictionary. Subsequently, the senses of the word 'cyberspace' in the bilingual dictionary count for an extra credit towards the clarity of its meaning and make it more informative.

Syntactic information is needed by any user of the language in order to produce understandable utterances or any piece of writing and here each type of the dictionaries used provides this information, either the word is noun, verb or adjective. The monolingual dictionary even provides more information of either the word is countable or uncountable.

It is important for language user to know whether a word is formal, informal or slang in order to be able to use it appropriately, but the bilingual dictionaries used in this research do not provide any information about the usage and neither provides any etymological information. This can be explained by knowing that the words used in this study do not have definite origin or previous usage that can lead through to its etymological information.

In conclusion, by studying the two types of dictionaries, it has been found that the monolingual dictionary is more comprehensive than the bilingual dictionary in terms of the phonological and semantic information. However, the bilingual dictionary can also be useful for beginners and for those who are not frequent users of English and do not want to go into details about the language, especially it is easier to capture the meaning when it is provided in one's mother tongue.

Intellectual Property [ Revision ]

I'm having exams coming up and currently studying for a course called "Product Design and Development". The book we are using is 'Engineering Design 3rd edition by George E. Dieter' and I'm reading on chapter 15, Protecting Intellectual Property and Design Aspects of Product Liability:

*Protecting Intellectual Property (IP):

Within the context of product design and development, the term Intellectual Property refers to the legally protectable ideas, concepts, names, designs, and processes associated with a new product. Intellectual Property can be one of the most valuable assets of firms. Unlike physical property, IP cannot be secured with lock and key to prevent its unwanted transfer. Therefore, legal mechanism have been developed to provide an incentive and reward to those who create new useful inventions, while at the same time encouraging the dissemination of information for the long-run benefit of society.

The protection of intellectual property by legal means has become a topic of general interest and international diplomatic negotiation. There are two conflicting motivations for this; first, creations of the mind are becoming more valuable in the information age and second, modern information technology makes it easy to transfer and copy such information. The intellectual property is protected by patents, copy rights, trademarks, and trade secrets. These entities fall within the area of property law, and as such they can be sold or leased just like other forms of property.

The functional features of a design can be protected with utility patents. A utility patent protects not only the specific embodiments of the idea shown in the patent application but functional equivalents as well. A well-written patent is the best protection for valuable idea. If an idea is worth patenting, it is worth hiring an experienced patent attorney to do the job well.

A different type of patent, the design patent, covers the ornamental aspects of a product such as its shape, configuration, or surface decoration. Design patents are easier to obtain than utility patents, and they are easier to enforce in court. If a competitive design has essentially the same overall appearance, then it is in violation of your patent. A design patent can have only one claim, which is a serious disadvantage, because it means that every unique aspect of a product's design requires a separate patent. This can be expensive.

A copyright has only limited usefulness in protecting product designs. This form of intellectual property is primarily intended to protect writing; however, it has become the dominant method of protecting software.

Trademarks are used to protect the names or symbols (logo) of products. A related form of protection is known as trade dress. This consists of distinctive features of a product like its color, texture, size, or configuration. Trademark and trade dress are intended to protect the public about the source of a product, i.e., to protect against cheap "knock-offs." Trademark protection is achieved by actual use of the trademark in the marketplace such that it achieves market recognition. Obviously, it is easier to defend against a competing trademark if it is registered. A registered trademark is issued for 20 years and can be renewed every 20 years as long as the product remains in the marketplace.

An innovation becomes a trade secret when a company prefers to forgo legal protection for the intellectual property. The reason for doing this is often a feeling that patents are difficult or costly to defend in the particular area of technology, or an unwillingness to let the public know what the company is doing. If the company takes active steps to protect the trade secret, then the courts will protect it as a form of intellectual property. Process innovations are more often protected by trade secrets than product innovations. Companies sometimes require nondisclosure agreements of their employees and may attempt to legally prevent an employee who leaves their employ with sensitive trade knowledge from working for a competitor in order to protect a trade secret.

* Design Aspect of Product Liability

Court decisions on product liability coupled with consumer safety legislation have placed greater responsibility on the designer for product safety. The following aspects of the design process should be emphasized to minimize potential problems from product liability:

1. Take every precaution that there is strict adherence to industry and government standards. Conformance to standards does not relieve or protect the manufacturer from liability, but it certainly lessens the possibility of product defects.
2. All products should be thoroughly tested before being released for sale. An attempt should be made to identify the possible ways a product can become unsafe, and tests should be devised to evaluate those aspects of design. When failure modes are discovered, the design should be modified to remove the potential cause of failure.
3. The finest quality-control techniques available will not absolve the manufacturer of a product liability if, in fact, the product being marketed is defective. However, the strong emphasis on product liability has placed renewed emphasis on quality engineering as a way to limit the incidence of product liability.
4. Make a careful study of the system relations between your product and upstream and downstream components. You are required to know how malfunctions should warn users of any hazards of foreseeable misuses based on these system relationships.
5. Documentation of the design, testing, and quality activities can be very important. If there is a product recall, it is necessary to be able to pinpoint products by serial or lot number. If there is a product liability suit, the existence of good, complete records will help establish and atmosphere of competent behavior. Documentation is the single most important factor in winning or losing a product liability lawsuit.
6. The design of warning labels and user instruction manuals should be an integral part of the design process. The appropriate symbols, color, and size and the precise wording of the label must be developed after joint meetings of the engineering, legal, marketing and manufacturing staffs. Use international warning symbols.
7. Create a means of incorporating legal developments in product liability into the design decision process. It is particularly important to get legal advice from the product liability angle on new innovation and unfamiliar designs.
8. There should be a formal design review before product is released for production.

G6PD Deficient

We have a G6PD Deficient Carrier here!!

I knew it!!