Sample abstracts

(written by native speakers of English)

IEEE Communications Magazine, February 2003

Optical packet switching promises to bring the flexibility and efficiency of the Internet to transparent optical networking with bit rates extending beyond that currently available with electronic router technologies. New optical signal processing techniques have been demonstrated that enable routing at bit rates from 10 Gb /s to beyond 40 Gb /s. In this article we review these signal processing techniques and how all-optical wavelength converter technology can be used to implement, packet switching functions. Specific approaches that utilize ultra-fast all-optical nonlinear fiber wavelength converters and monolithically integrated optical wavelength converters are discussed and research results presented.

Language Culture & Curriculum. Volume, 14 No 2, 2001. Special Issue: French Education in Canada

In this paper, we examine the language practices in three immigrant families of South Asian ancestry who reside in Canada and have chosen French Immersion education for their children. Basing our discussion on interview data, we present a profile of the inter- and infra-generational language interactions that distinguish each family. Also, we describe their reasons for maintaining their family language and their interest in French Immersion. The findings reveal that parents adopt language maintenance strategies that vary from one family to another and they attribute value to French and English as official languages of the country and important languages internationally. Drawing on sociocultural theories of language learning, we argue that these parents support, language maintenance and opt for French Immersion education as part of a family project aimed at developing child multilingualism. Multilingualism is viewed as a means of securing advantages for their offspring nationally and internationally.

Conference workshop abstract

Bridging the Gap: Academic and Industrial Research in Dialog Technologies

In the past decade, we have seen a rapid increase of dialog systems in various industrial applications, including telephone-based services, in-car interaction systems, internet-based customer support, talking characters in computer games, and mobile devices. Industry-driven standards, such as VoiceXML, are also becoming popular. While there has been an increased amount of effort in dialog technology research in the academic world, progress from such academic research has not benefited the real world applications to a satisfactory extent. The purpose of this one day workshop is to provide a forum to bring industrial and academic researchers together to share their experiences and visions in the dialog technology development, and to identify topics that are of interest to both camps.

How to write the research abstract?

The purpose of an abstract is to serve as a link between the title of a scientific article (research study) which may be only a few words long and the full article which may be 8-10 pages long. The abstract is a useful summary of the article (your research project) that provides justification for the research. The abstract allows the reader to conclude whether the full article (your research) is worth reading.

Contents

The abstract should outline the objectives of the research study and its rationale. The materials and methods of the study should be stated with the statistical methods used. The results of the research should be concisely stated. A brief interpretation with the supporting statistics should be provided and a conclusion briefly stated.

I. Conduct research project

Formulate the research question:

1. Is it important?

2. State it as a testable hypothesis.

3. Search literature to see if your question has already been answered.

4. Revise if necessary.

II. Writing an abstract of your research process:

• Study Objective.

• Design.

• Setting.

• Population.

• Materials, Methods and Interventions.

• Results.

• Conclusions.

III. How to evaluate a good abstract.

• Originality.

• Scientific Merit.

• Clinical relevance or significance.

• Suitability for audience/meeting.

SAMPLE ABSTRACT

Assignment 3

Read a sample abstract and match figures in it with the following building elements of an abstract

Methods Conclusion Introduction Results