This study will gather and analyze data related to the roots of my ancestry in the Qing dynasty in China in order to produce a documentary film, which will be narrated by myself. The subject ancestor of my research is a famous general who fought in the Sino-French War who is my great grandfather from 6 generations ago. Interviews in three relevant locations in China will be conducted: Shanghai, An hui, and Taiwan and the reasons for this are as follow: Shanghai because it provides a starting point to interview my grandfather who is very knowledgeable of my ancestor, An Hui because it was his hometown, and Taiwan because he was the first governor of the Taiwan province. Other aspects such as the styles of the music will be researched because ancient Chinese style music will be used in certain areas of this film, for purposes of creating a specific tone or atmosphere for the viewers...

How have writing communities shaped the content and aspirations of female Bay Area writers? Female writers, as an original minority in the writing community, have long supported each other in order to bring great visibility and credence to their work: from monastic communities to feminist conventions, women have historically reviewed, critiqued and promoted the work of their fellows. ‘The Earliest Women’s Writing Communities: Anglo-Saxon Literary Cultures and Communities’ provides a factual foundation for the existence of writing communities; pursuing the earliest women’s writing in Anglo-Saxon Europe, dating to around the 7th century. It falls short, however, in two categories: in the extent of continuity of the tradition of women’s writing communities, and in the existence of writing communities outside of Anglo-Saxon Europe -- including the United States. My research intends to explore the existence and function of writing groups among female writers in the United States, primarily the Bay Area; with the goal of discovering how writing communities have encouraged women to create and publish their work...Interviews have already been conducted with two authors, Meg Waite Clayton and Jana McBurney Lin, the former of which was useful in documenting the support that encouraged her employment as an author of historical fiction: she says that she would ‘not have remained a writer’ without  the support of writing groups, and pursued writing as a second career after encouragement from her family and friends. Jana McBurney Lin also did not initially plan on writing -- she academically pursued advertising and communications -- however, cultural inspiration whilst dwelling in Southeast Asia lead her to pen ‘My Half of the Sky’, her debut novel. Both women are a part of WOMBA -- a group of female writers in the Bay Area, and Ms. McBurney Lin also belongs to a smaller critique group, Ms. Clayton being of former membership to several similar groups....Initial research will be conducted through a series of interviews with five female authors from the Bay Area group WOMBA; interviews will be conducted via email and by phone, and will include responses to a series of standardized questions (below), as well as follow up questions....Initial interviews will be transcribed and compiled into a document, then examined for trends within responses and further openings for questioning, including suggestions of other women to speak to. Interviews will be extended to authors suggested by the primary interview candidates, as well as authors outside of WOMBA. The same standardized questions and variable follow-ups will be used to maintain consistency in the style of responses gathered from the authors....

Chinese classical music and Western classical music are always the two poles in the music world which are independent and  affect each other with the  cultural fusion of the global. According to current archeological discoveries, Chinese music dates back 7000 years. Largely based on the pentatonic scale, Chinese music is different from western traditional music, paying more attention to the form expression as well. Traditional music in China is played on solo instruments or in small ensembles of plucked and bowed stringed instruments, flutes, and various cymbals, gongs, and drums. The most popular instruments of Chinese music including flute, Bottle gourd silk, Er-hu, ancient zither, etc. Western traditional music's history is understood as beginning with plainchant, the vocal religious practice of the Roman Catholic Church. The Western music express through instruments of  piano, violin, guitar saxophone, clarinet etc., Nowadays the Chinese classical music ,as well as western classic music ,is widely spread in the world. In this research, I'm trying to explore how to make Chinese classic blend with western traditional music according to compare the differences between  Chinese classical music and Western classical music in the expression and instrument and do authentic  investigation in high school to get the basic data about their knowledge in these two different music and their favorites to learn more from each other...

What is the series of procedures needed to analyze music recorded and stored in an audio format and yield a machine- and human-readable symbolic representation of the music, and how could these procedures be implemented in computer code (an app)? Music, much like other mediums of expression and communication needs an intelligent and utilizable way to be stored, read, and written by the technology that is present today. This will insure that it can be as accessible as possible. Music can be represented in three ways; sheet music, a visual representation, much like a PDF for a book, an audio representation, e.g. music in MP3 format, and a symbolic representation, like the MIDI format which most resembles to a machine what a piece of music is to a musician, but itself is practically not readable by the musician (Müller, Fundamentals of Music Processing). Only one of these formats is readable by a person: sheet music. Another can be heard: the audio representation. Today, there is virtually no way to convert music in an audio format to written music that a musician can access. The odd situation that exists with music here is as if authors had to handwrite their books, scan them as images, and people only had access to those scanned images to read on a computer. There isn’t yet a program for musicians akin to what “Word” or “Google Docs” is to an author. In addition to this, many composers who are unacquainted with musical symbols and conventions cannot use notation programs such as MuseScore or Finale and write down their music, note by note. Even though they absolutely can perform their works and share them with others, it is regrettably only outside the realm of technology that they can do so, which is unacceptable considering how many advancements have been made in making other forms of information easy to use and create through technology, including images, visual art, literary works, etc. It is imperative that composers should be able to simply record their pieces to be able to share it as sheet music, and will be the main concern of this project and the problem to be solved by the app. Primary literature that would be used to address this problem includes Fundamentals of Music Processing, by Meinard Müller. The book concisely describes all aspects of how to deal with music and sound in the context of computer programming. Topics range from how music can be represented as data in a computer, to mathematically analyzing sound waves, to harmony and inharmony and music theory. The book is the best resource for achieving the goals of this research project, but the project would not be limited to it alone. As the project progresses, more and more books, research papers, and academic journals from the professional community will be used...The timeline of this project will consist of two distinct phases of strictly researching the problem, and one final phase of implementing the principles being researched in an app. The first phase consists of researching methods for analyzing audio and making sense of sound waves, such as the Fourier Transform, in books such as Fundamentals of Music Processing. These mathematical concepts will be evaluated and noted, for the purposes of later converting audio to MIDI in the app. This first phase is estimated to take approximately a month to complete, from December 3rd to January 15th. Following this, a methodology will be created to convert these known frequencies from an MIDI format to a human-readable format, to sheet music. This will consist of brainstorming solutions to mainly logic operations that will later be implemented in the app. This time will also be used to research methods on how to carry out experiments and iterations of this logic in the following phase of the project. This second phase of this project will take less than a month, from about January 16th to February 5th. The last phase of this project will include writing the app that will implement what was researched in the previous two phases of the project and continuously iterating and improving its logic, using machine learning and sample recordings. This part of the project will last from about February 6th to anywhere from March 20th to March 31st. The project will eventually culminate in the creation of the app, which will be used to record a piece of music, one musical voice at a time, and convert it into sheet music. The investigative and experimental findings of this project will be published on April, and the app showcased on May.

Western music as we know it today began in the middle ages as a monophonic chant. Since then, it has developed into the classical music we listen to today, as well as the works of new and rising composers. As music evolved, so did the norms and structure of the society in the Western world. There is a reason why music today is different from that of 50 years ago, and when that reason is discovered, the dots between different time periods can be connected to create a timeline of music that runs through the history of the modern world and provides a reflection of the mood of society over time. This study will attempt to link these two aspects together, and to prove that the themes, conflicts, and morals of the populus over the centuries has been reflected in the compositions of music created during these times. In addition, the study will try to prove that the purpose of music altered over time because of these underlying changes...The study will more specifically focus on compositions for piano or similar instruments, as piano allows two voices, and therefore truly encompasses the changes and compositional techniques used during each period. This will be accomplished by breaking down the research into six periods of music: Middle Ages (500-1400), Renaissance (1400-1600)), Baroque (1600-1760), Classical (1730-1820), Romantic (1815-1910), and Contemporary (1900-2000)1. For each section, research will be done using music dictionaries, biographies of composers, as well as online articles on the popular music techniques and themes of that day. This study is significant as it will allow us to see the changes in society over the centuries in a cohesive timeline of music, and prove the effect music has on society...

How should the US combat al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to protect its own interests and safeguard the principles of democracy and pluralism? The last 15 years of American foreign policy have had one, singular focus: defeating Islamic Terrorism abroad to protect interests at home.  This obsession has plunged the country into two wars and has racked up a tab numbering in the trillions with no, real effect.  First springing up in the late 1970’s along with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, extremism has plagued the Middle East, creating wars and conflicts that have touched every country in the region.  Despite trillions of dollars in aid and having the most modern military, Iraq is a failed state; religious discrimination from a bitter, formerly oppressed majority, the Shia, disenfranchised the Sunni, worsening that country’s already existing civil strife.  In the past year, the group calling itself the Islamic State has annexed vast swathes of Iraq and Syria....Unlike the STEM-based projects which many of my colleagues are pursuing, my study cannot be quantified and there is no, one true answer to the question.  Thus, I will have to be thorough in my research and study every facet of the issue of fighting Islamic Extremism.  First, I will differentiate between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and analyze the threat they pose to the West.  Next, using historical events from the last few decades on preventing attacks in the Homeland, I will evaluate the most effective policy in fighting these groups domestically.  And finally, I will analyze the conflicts the United States has been involved in to stop the ideology of extremism and, based on the successes and more numerous mistakes, formulate a policy that provides a comprehensive plan to combat these groups abroad....

How have the ways ethnic groups defined themselves as Americans changed or stayed the same over the past 14-15 years since 9/11? To define oneself as American means to correlate oneself with the larger group of American identity. American identity resides not in concrete criterion or specific tasks on the way to full acceptance — like any other group in the world, a person must feel he or she belongs to actually belong. As Michael Jay Friedman says in an article for the US Bureau of International Information Programs, the American identity is centered around attitudes and actions versus ethnic, cultural and demographic identifications. While personal identity depends on personal criteria, national identity is much more concrete because of its larger acceptance and presence. American national identity can be defined as how the country as a whole defines themselves and how the government reflects the feelings, events and environment around them. American national identity and personal identity often clash with each other, and it is in this divergence that I will examine how the past 14 to 15 years have affected American residents’ view of themselves and their country. When I refer to identity, I do not mean a solid definition — I mean a changing concept of identification that can be apparently seen through public forums like the mass media and government action. For the purposes of this experiment, I will be focusing on personal American identity with different ethnic groups — however, the national American identity merited mention...American identity intersects in complex and multifaceted ways with ethnic and racial identities. In the the essay collection Doing Race, edited by Paul M. L. Moya and Hazel Rose Markus, Moya and Markus discuss how the American sense of individualism clashes in many senses with intrinsically community-based ethnic identities. America, as it has developed on tenets of independence and individual responsibility, has also been built on pockets of society that are self-insulated and find pride in their own separation from a central American sense of self. Today,  American society exists as a collection of smaller groups, many of which might pride themselves on their ethnic identity versus their American. Intense debate has erupted over whether or not residents should exists in such states of singularity, and in exchange many ethnically-grounded people have argued against a forced national identity. This conflict has played out amidst divisive events of the past 14 to 15 years -- the rise of terrorism, fundamental political rhetoric and the catastrophe that started it all, 9/11...After 9/11, terror and shock turned a new page in American history — one where protection, safety and surveillance led to foreign wars and divisive debates on security. As America became more vigilant, some of the fundamental elements of the American identity as a whole, our values and beliefs, were broken into pieces and examined for their worth — Should immigration be encouraged regardless of risk or limited because of risk? Does complete acceptance of diversity make us less unified or morally stronger? Does our foreign policy act in our best interests? Are we a people that accepts those of all ethnicities along with the issues they bring with them?

Stores use words like "now" and "announcing" in their advertisements to create a sense of urgency in customers. Words are incredibly important in persuading customers both to peruse and buy, and just one word can make or break a sale. Retailers spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year in marketing and product design and statistical analysis, all to make sure that their goods sell. But are they doing this effectively? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, retail is the business of selling things directly to customers for their own use. It is also one of the largest industries in the world. Two-thirds of the US GDP comes from retail consumption, and in 2014, total retail sales were more than $22 trillion. Goods are constantly changing hands, and with the influence of the internet, stores are becoming increasingly accessible. Now, with the click of a button, customers are able to indulge in instant gratification and further fuel their consumerist tendencies. Retail is a lucrative industry, and every company is constantly innovating and inventing to stay ahead of the game....My hypothesis is that crayons are targeted at children, nail polish are targeted at young women, and paint swatches are targeted at adults middle class or above. To prove this, I will see what the success rate at naming is for each demographic. If children are able to name crayons more effectively than adults, for example, then the crayon company will have succeeded in marketing to children....I plan to use paint swatches from Home Depot and crayons from Crayola...