MAE 124/ESYS 103 Spring 2011

Additional Guidance for Paper 1.

A few sample sources to get you started.

• Conservation:  insulation and energy efficiency

• Photovoltaics
  

• LED lighting

• Refrigeration

More sample sources (for topics buried elsewhere in the UCSD Climate Action Plan).

• Gray water

• Public transportation

Frequently Asked Questions

1.  Can you tell me of any good resources for scientific papers regarding the topics, such as scientific journals that are highly regarded in the field?

We'll continue to talk about this in class. We've given you some starting points above. Good sources include peer reviewed scientific literature, as well as government documents. Short articles that may not be peer reviewed can also be good sources.

2.  How do we use turnitin.com?
We were using turnitin.com, but we're not going to run it through the WebCT interface. For the week 2 assignment, go to the week 2 folder and from there to the "week 2 discussion" folder. Please give your assignment file a title beginning with a 2 character section identifier based on the day and time of your section. Monday at 1 pm should be "M1", Tuesday at 3 pm "T3", and so forth. Thus if you are in the Tuesday 4 pm section, your file could be called "T4_Assignment2.doc". Please also submit the final paper to WebCT's version of turnitin.com

3.  How do I create footnotes? Are endnotes acceptable?
Footnotes and endnotes are both fine. Any consistent format is OK. The Chicago Manual of Style is one standard format, and you can find a detailed discussion of its usage for term papers at this University of Wisconsin writing center site. Students have also asked about Modern Language Association style (explained here on a Cornell University web site). That's OK, but it's really geared to literary or historical research that cites whole books, when page numbers matter quite a bit. We're encouraging a more science based citation approach, for which author and year matter, but articles are short enough that page number isn't so important.

You may also use citation methods commonly used for scientific papers, such as numbered references or in line references to author and year, with a full reference list at the end. A sample reference might be "[Smith and Jones, 2006]". In this case, you should be sure to identify specific page numbers where relevant ("[Smith and Jones, 2006, p. 291]"). This Long Island University site explains the American Medical Association style, and this University of Georgia site explains the American Physical Association Style.

4.  How should web pages be cited? What types of web pages are acceptable as sources?
If you use a web page as a source, then you should cite it, providing as much standard reference information as possible: author, title, date, location, etc. Keep in mind that web pages vary considerably in credibility. In general, the most credible information comes from peer-reviewed scholarly publications (which could include electronic journals and electronic reprints posted to web pages---if you use a journal article or other publication that happens to be posted to the web, then please cite it the same way you would cite it if you had found it in the library, with standard information such as author, title, publication year, journal name or publisher, volume number, page numbers, etc.) Researched reports (with citations) from environmental organizations are also often fairly reliable, although they may not have gone through a peer review process. Some web pages are essentially advertising brochures for a particular product, and you should probably assume that the authors are presenting a biased view of their product's features. (Much material also appears in blogs, which can be interesting and provocative, but may not have much real research or information behind them. We don't recommend blogs as primary research sources.)

5.  How do I request an extension?
Please contact your TA. Note that if we grant an extension for the April 4/5 deadline, that will not extend to the other deadline.

6.  Does the preliminary plan (due on April 4/5) need to include references?
Our instructions specify that you must include 2 references, while the final paper will need at least 4 references. We'll talk in discussion section on the 5th and 6th about how to track down good scholarly references.

7.  How should I format my paper?
Please use the following guidelines.
1. Upload Word or pdf documents only to turnitin.com. (RTF may be OK as well; plain text can be a little tricky for formatting.)
2. Include your name (First, then Last), PID, Date in upper right hand corner, single spaced.
3. Use 1 inch margins, with 12 point font for the whole document. Use 1.5 or double spacing for the main text.
4. Center your title at the top, but do not include a separate title page.
5. Clearly label sections (intro, background, etc.)
6. Include page numbers, centered at the bottom of the pages.


8.  My position statement is at the end of an opening paragraph that is more than half a page single-spaced, which means it will be on the second page, double-spaced. I know that some professors prefer smaller, and in turn, more paragraphs for papers, and would actually subtract points if paragraphs were more than a page double-spaced.
There is no formal requirement for the length of paragraphs, but it is probably a good idea to make sure that people reading your paper can find your position statement fairly quickly, before they get to the end of the first page, for example. In addition, you also will want to avoid confusing your reader(s) by having paragraphs that are extremely long.

9.  Should the background section use subtitles to identify separate subsections for economic and environmental pros and cons, or should the text flow continuously?
Make your paper easy to read. That means that you probably want to put headings on major sections, but not on every paragraph. So if you develop an extensive multi-paragraph discussion on economic issues, then you might want to add a section heading. But otherwise you probably won't need a heading for every issue.

10.  I have been searching on-line for sources for my paper topic. Using BIOSIS, I did not find much with a key word search. Google scholar seems problematic because it produces many sources that I seem to need to pay to see.
Please be sure to run Google scholar (or Web of Science or BIOSIS) from on campus or using a UCSD proxy server (or VPN), which will allow you to access journal articles using the University of California subscriptions. The UCSD library has a page explaining both. You should not have to pay money to read articles. The TA's will talk about search methods in greater detail in section.

11.  Does 750-1000 the word count include headers and references?
No, we're looking for 750 to 1000 words of your own writing. We do not want to penalize your length if you find many good references to cite and therefore end up with a long reference list.

12.  How many (credible) websites can be used as part of the 4-source minimum?
There's no firm number, but we want you to keep websites to a minimum. One major goal for this paper is to get you to explore the refereed literature, so it is important that you include some sources that demonstrate how you've tested out the UCSD library. A general expectation is that a minimum of 2 to 3 of your 4 sources should definitely be articles or books, though of course that can vary a bit depending on your topic.

Government agencies often put a lot of good information on web sites, but it is often educational or intended for public outreach. The meatiest stuff is likely to come as government documents, white papers, or technical reports, which are likely to be pdf files with pubication dates, copyright information, and so forth.

Regardless of the origins of your sources, you need to cite them properly. For websites, modern bibliographic style is quite specific about including as much information as possible, including an accession date.


13.  Where should I look for prices of shuttles similar to UCSD and average gas prices that the shuttles would use?
One starting point is to check the operating costs reported by UCSD transportation in their newsletter and in Guardian press coverage. SANDAG (San Diego Area Governments) has been doing quite a lot of transportation planning in anticipation of the light-rail extension towards UCSD, and to get numbers appropriate for Southern California, you might also look for SANDAG documents that consider costs of bus rapid transit and bus systems in general. National operating costs should be available for other regional transportation districts from throughout the US, so a google search is likely to reveal a variety of regional planning documents.

14.  I'm having trouble finding statistics on UCSD's current water usage and costs, along with detailed statistics of installation costs of a gray water system.
You'll need to look for UCSD or local government documents for water costs. UCSD has an extensive reclaimed water system (slightly different than graywater), and costs for that system are discussed in this document. For costs, you'll need to look for documents outlining installation costs, and you could try scaling up from household greywater costs.

15.  I am supporting the installation of a gray water system. In the analysis, do I need to pick one specific type of system, such as membrane bioreactor, to endorse for use at UCSD? Or can I say we could install a variety of systems, and talk about the overall benefits and costs that come with any gray water system?
You may write your paper either way, but you should think carefully about what you can realistically do within your tight word count limit. In general, we do like papers that explore specific factual details and that provide quantitative assessments.