RECAP- How to Write a Research Proposal?

1. RECAP- How to Write a Research Proposal? SEM 555 Dr. Salma Chad

2. I. Why Research Proposal? To be certain of your direction in research

3. II. What is a Research Proposal? 1 1 1 Simply, your research proposal should reflect: • what you are going to research • why you are going to research this particular area • what is the significance of researching this area • how you are going to conduct the research 3

4. III. Research Proposal Outline (15-20 pages) • Title page • 1.0 Project Background/Introduction *Objectives • 2.0 Literature Review • 3.0 Methodology • 4.0 Expected Outcomes • References • Work Schedule/Attachments

5. Title Page Title A Proposal by …….. Name Matric number Department of Biological Sciences Faculty of Science and Technology Universiti Malaysia Terengganu 2010

6. 1.0 Project Background/ Introduction • Statement of the problem or gap in the current research in your field of study. - Introductory paragraphs - Statement of the Problem - Significance of the Study

7. Introductory paragraphs The primary goal: to catch the attention of the readers and to get them "turned on" about the subject. When writing the introduction, put yourself in your reader's position - would you continue reading? Focal point of a research proposal:

8. Statement of the Problem It is just one sentence (with several paragraphs of elaboration). You are looking for something wrong.     ....or something that needs close attention     ....or existing methods that no longer seem to be working.

9. Significance of the Study It points out how your study relates to the larger issues The significance of the study answers the questions:     - Why is your study important?     - To whom is it important?     - What benefit(s) will occur if your study is done?

10. 1.1 Objectives • A few typical statements are:The goal of this study is to...     ... overcome the difficulty with ...     ... discover what ...      ... understand the causes or effects of ...     ... refine our current understanding of ...     ... provide a new interpretation of ...     ... understand what makes ___ successful or unsuccessful

11. 2.0 Literature Review • Context in which the problem arises; historical and current researches in the field • Important - shows what previous researchers have discovered (and have not discovered). • *One of the key elements that proposal readers look at, when deciding whether or not to approve a proposal. • Never say that your area is so new that no research exists. !!!

13. Contoh: • Characterization and purification of polysaccharide from aquatic plants

14. Trace mineral profiles of the bivalve species Chamelea gallina and Donax trunculus

15. Antioxidant activities of aqueous extracts of selected plants

16. Antioxidant activities of aqueous extracts of selected plants present in the plants. For use in foods, plant extracts made with water are nutritionally more relevant and would have obvious advantages in relation to certification and safety (Møller, Madsen, Aaltonen, & Skibsted, 1999). The use of a crude extract as an additive needs to be considered so that the sensory properties of the food product are not adversely affected. Vitamins A, C and E and carotenoids are antioxidants derived from the diet. Another group of compounds, flavonoids, also possess antioxidant properties and may account for part of the benefits associated with the consumption of fruits and vegetables. Flavonoids belong to a large family of compounds with a common diphenylpropane structure (C6C3C6) with different degrees of hydroxylation, oxidation and substitution. These compounds, also called polyphenols, commonly occur as glycosides in plants (Pietta, 2000). As antioxidants, flavonoids have been reported to be able to interfere with the activities of enzymes involved in reactive oxygen species generation, quenching free radicals, chelating transition metals and rendering them redox inactive in the Fenton reaction (Heim, Tagliaferro, & Bobilya, 2002). Antioxidant compounds present in plant extracts are therefore multi-functional and their activity and mechanism would largely depend on the composition and conditions of the test system. Many authors had stressed the need to perform more than one type of antioxidant activity measurement to take into account the various mechanisms of antioxidant action (Frankel & Meyer, 2000; Prior & Cao, 1999). Currently, the study and availability of information on the antioxidant properties of many tropical plants are sporadic and lacking. The multitude and vastly differing methods used by various workers do not facilitate comparisons between various plants. In this study, the free radical scavenging activities of the plant extracts were followed via their reaction with the stable DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) free radical and their ferric ions reducing abilities were determined using the ferric ion reducing antioxidant potential (FRAP) assay. In this study, antioxidant activity is given as a quantity relative to that of Trolox. The usage of the Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) parameter as well as the two popular assaying methods used in this investigation will offer the benefit of allowing comparisons to be made with other food and plant materials examined by other authors. The objectives of this investigation are to determine the total polyphenol contents and characterise the free radical scavenging, ferric ion reducing and cupric ion chelating capabilities of some tropical plants consumed in the Southeast Asian region. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to identify the total variation in the antioxidant activities of the plants by the methods used. Results from this preliminary study will provide a better understanding of the antioxidant properties of these plants and allow the identification of plants with high antioxidant activity for further investigation and development into value-added foods and neutraceuticals.

17. Toxicity and bioaccumulation of copper and lead in five marine microalgae

18. BRACKISH-WATER MOLLUSKS OF SURAT THANI PROVINCE, SOUTHERN THAILAND

19. Butterflies and diurnal moths along road verges: Does road type affect diversity and abundance?

20. fragmentation of semi-natural grasslands (Rassi et al.,2001). Butterflies, in particular, have suffered from the decline of meadow area resulting from the rationalisation of farming methods (Pitka¨nen et al., 2001; Saarinen, 2002). This development has increased the importance of road verges and other linear elements in the landscape, such as field verges, power line cuttings and railroad embankments, in the conservation of biodiversity.The Finnish road network, totalling approximately 384,000 km in 2003, consists of public roads (20%), urban streets (7%) and private roads (73%) (Heinio¨ and Oras, 2003). Although private roads predominate, the public roads, which carry 66% of all road traffic in Finland, have the widest verges under the regular management organised by the Finnish Road Administration.In the absence of precise data we have estimated the area of mown verges along the public roads as 85,000 ha (Jantunen et al., 2004). Including the private roads, urban streets and other inherent structures such as intersections, lay-bys and road-cuttings, the area of managed roadside habitats in Finland comes to approximately 140,000 ha, which is sevenfold in comparison to the remaining area of semi-natural grasslands (Vainio et al., 2001).For butterflies, road verges provide large quantities of open habitats, but their quality is reduced by many physical and chemical features, such as extreme microclimatic conditions (Kontiokari, 1992), traffic-induced dust and pollutants (Koeleman et al., 1999; Askling et al., 2001), de-icing salts in the soil (Liem et al.,1985) and road kills (Mckenna et al., 2001; Ries et al.,2001). The structure and nutrient composition of the soil, together with mowing once or twice a year, however, are features that meadows and road verges have in common. In Finland, the roadside vegetation is mown between mid-June and September, the cut material is rarely removed and bushes and other woody plants are also cut at regular intervals of 3–5 years (Finnish Road administration, 2000). Although mowing is considered to increase plant diversity (Parr and Way, 1988; Persson, 1995), no thorough investigations of the road verge flora have been conducted in Finland. A diverse flora creates the foundation for a rich fauna of butterflies in the form of nectar resources for adults and food plants for larvae. These relationships have been well researched in agricultural environments, but few studies on butterfly communities along roads have as yet been made (Munguira and Thomas, 1992; Gerell, 1997; Bak et al., 1998). We studied communities of butterflies and day-active moths along the verges of public roads differing in respect to the management regime, the size of the road and the width of the verge. Based on the importance of habitat patch area in butterfly metapopulations (e.g., Hill et al., 1996; Thomas and Hanski, 1997; Wahlberg et al., 2002), the main hypothesis was that the wider the road and its verge, the higher the species richness and abundance of the verge fauna. The most important environmental factors related to high species richness and population densities of Lepidoptera, meadow species in particular, were also determined.

21. 3.0 Methodology • Methodology you will use to address the problem / key research questions • Instrumentation • Procedure and time frame • Analysis plan • Validity and reliability • Discuss with your supervisor

22. Methodology State clearly how you plan to conduct your research: • What methodology are you using? Why? • What information needs to be gathered? • Will this data be applicable to the research questions? • Who or what will you use as the data source? • How will you collect data or construct experiments? • What controls are in place? • How will the data be analyzed? • Do you need ethics approval?

23. 4.0 Expected Outcomes • Predicted results • Expected contribution to knowledge References (*Panduan PITA) • how to cite in text - how to list them Work Schedule • Time-frame and (special) resources

24. References Ramachandra, T.V., Ahalya, N. & Kanamadi, R.D. 2006. Biosorption: techniques and mechanisms. ………. • Kuyucak, N. & Volesky, B. 1989. Biosorption of heavy metals. Biorecovery 1:189-204. Kumar, S.M. 2008. Biosorption. http://www.cheresources.com/biosorption.shtml [27 February 2010].

25. Final research schedule Work Schedule *** Insert other compulsory items – written proposal submission and preparation, proposal presentation and preparation, final presentation and preparation etc.

26. Mind your English • Proofread your proposal Thank you