Extract 1

In Hong Kong, traffic noise is very serious because of the limitation of land. The most common method to reduce the noise is to close all the windows and use the air-conditioner for ventilation. In summer, closing all the windows and using the air-conditioner is not a problem because people need to change the air temperature of the indoor area. But in autumn and winter, people are not willing to use the air-conditioner because it is rather energy consuming. They may open the window in autumn and winter but it would make them suffer from the traffic noise. The airflow rate of the air-conditioner may also not be enough to make people comfortable. The noise from those air-conditioners also causes a nuisance to people and the traffic noise can also leak from the inflow area of the air-conditioner system especially the low frequency traffic noise.

The aim of this project is to research the possibility of mechanical ventilation by using a tower fan and to find out the optimal acoustic design or acoustic control of the tower fan ventilation system. The system will assume it is installed in a bedroom where the traffic noise outside the room is serious so that we need to install a special design louver to prevent the leakage of traffic noise from the inflow area of the window. To reach the optimal design of the louver, the intensity and frequency of the traffic noise and the tower fan should be measured and analyzed.
Tip: two topic areas are included in this example

Loyalty marketing has become a worldwide trend nowadays, the reason is simple, the cost to retain a customer is lower than gaining a new customer.
"Companies can boost profits by almost 100 percent by retaining just 5 percent more of their customers" (Sterne, 1996). Reaichheld (1996) stated that "the company lost half its customers every five years, a 13 percent annual loss of customers."

The main aim of this research project is to study university students' e-loyalty behaviour.

The objectives of this research project are to
1. Investigate university students' habits of using the Internet,
2. Find out the factors that affect university students' satisfaction of a website,
3. Identify the drivers of loyalty,
4. Develop a model of customer satisfaction and loyalty, and
5. Test and verify the proposed model.

Tip: two topic areas are included in this example

From a historical viewpoint, Hong Kong is an interesting entity as it was a creation of the clash of two empires - the British Empire and Imperial China. This gives Hong Kong the unique characteristics of having both Eastern and Western buildings. Under the rapid process of urbanization, the importance of heritage had once been neglected. In recent years, the conception of Hong Kong people changes. Conservation of historic buildings has become an important subject in Hong Kong.

Actually, a successful heritage conservation project depends not only on a realization of the joint efforts between community and public institutes, but also whether the technology for conserving historic buildings has reached international standards or not. (Information Services Department, 2001).

Being an essential in every building, regardless of historic buildings, modern building services play an important role. These services indeed have been used to assist the care and conservation of historic buildings. These services may take the form of environmental controls, fire and security measures. Very little research on this has been carried out or it has limited focus on this technological aspect of historic building conservation in Hong Kong.

Moreover, as said before, 'Change' is the continuing characteristic of a modern city. It has the same implication on building services. The rapid development of building services and technology has advanced in new office and residential buildings. Can it be applied to historical buildings in Hong Kong, in order to have better conservation effects?

The following specialist terms are used in this report:
Anti-Aliasing - Programming techniques used to avoid 'jaggies', unnatural pixel visibility which makes straight lines appear as staircases.

Azimuth - The horizontal angular distance between the vertical plane containing a point in the sky (usually the sun) and true south. In other words, the angle of sun from true south as seen in plan view.

Polygonal Mesh - A set of connected polygonally bounded planar surfaces.
Polygonal mesh can be used to represent objects with curved surfaces, in an approximate fashion in which the curved surface is broken into a number of polygonal segments.

Pain is a common accompaniment of many illness situations and can be a major impediment to an adequate quality of life. In addition, pain is the main symptom that leads people to seek health care. Despite the advances in pain control over the past decade, many patients in hospital settings continue to experience unrelieved pain (Saxey, 1986, Bonica, 1990).

Tip: two topic areas are included in this example

It is estimated that at least 125 million Americans are affected by acute or chronic pain annually (Bonica, 1990). The clinical practice has changed very little in the past decades and improvements in pain management appear to occur slowly. (Ferrell, McGuire and Donovan, 1993; American Pain Society Quality of Care Committee, 1995). More often, persistent pain may be attributed to a deficit in the provision of effective health care (Portenoy, 1993).

Effective pain management is an important nursing activity and is dependent on reliable pain assessment. Therefore, the need for improved nursing knowledge, including pain assessment, pharmacology management and attitudinal barriers to enhance the care of patients in pain are required.
Current practices, knowledge, attitudes and barriers related to effective pain management in a particular health care setting need to be clearly identified before strategies are developed to address the problems. No empirical survey about this topic has been conducted in Hong Kong and due to the cultural difference, different nursing curriculum and clinical practice may not be the same as in other countries. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the present knowledge and attitude regarding pain management among the nurses in Hong Kong hospitals in this study.


Tip: two topic areas are included in this example

The following research questions were addressed.

1. What are the present knowledge and attitudes regarding pain management in Hong Kong registered nurses?
2. Are there differences among nurses with different educational level, working experience and attendance on pain management courses that will have knowledge and attitudes on pain management?
   
3. What are the barriers to effective pain management faced by registered nurses in Hong Kong?

The aim of this study is to explore the present knowledge and attitude regarding pain management among registered nurses in Hong Kong.
The specific objectives are:
1. To find the relationship between the demographic data and responses to the questionnaire.
2. To find some barriers to effective pain management among Hong Kong registered nurses.

Tip: two topic areas are included in this example

The dissertation has concentrated on studying the effects of varying the window size on the improvement of daylight performance in residential buildings. However, this study does not attempt to investigate the influence on the internal heat gain and the glare problems in the residential building due to the increase in glazing area. The main reason for this is the time constraints. Further research could be conducted to explore the effects on these areas. In addition, the study on the obstruction angles aims to provide proof of their influences on daylight performance and should be considered in the site planning stage. The research has not attempted to give guidelines on site planning.

Tip: two topic areas are included in this example

The research report is divided into six chapters:
Chapter 2 - Literature Review: collects the facts and materials related to this research and reveals the findings of other researchers.
Chapter 3 - Test Facilities: describes the testing facilities in this research.
Chapter 4 - Methodology: explains the procedure of the four main experiments
Chapter 5 - Data Analysis and Discussion: provides the analysis of the data from simulation and comparison.
Chapter 6 - Conclusion: Conclusion and recommendations are provided.

The introduction to the background and motivations of this study are presented in this chapter. The rest of the dissertation is organized as follows.

Chapter 2 presents a review of the types of benchmarking, types of benchmarking team and Spendolini's benchmarking model to familiarize the benchmarkers with the basic concept of benchmarking. A literature review of sampling size statistics formula for finding a benchmark is also included. The information that is found by previous researchers related to this study is summarized. The necessary theories and benchmarking models used for this study and their limitations are included.

Chapter 3 provides the aims and objectives, and scope of work of the present benchmarking study.

Chapter 4 describes the methodologies used in the present benchmarking study. It covers the works and procedures in planning the study, collection of data framework development and showcase illustration.

Chapter 5 gives a detailed description of the elements in the framework of the benchmarking tool. It includes the identification of good performance indexes, the formation of a benchmarking team, the identification of performance indicators, the collection of data, the evaluation of benchmarks, and the construction of benchmarking performance scales as well as some benchmarking management styles.

Chapter 6 demonstrates how a hotel's environmental performance could be benchmarked based on the developed framework in the previous chapter by a detailed showcase illustration with existing available data of energy and water consumption in hotels in Hong Kong.

Finally, conclusions of the present study are given in Chapter 7 together with suggestions for future work.