Seou Weng Ee

The day has finally arrived

2009-05-05T02:26:00.000-07:00

5 May 2009 is a day that I have been long waiting for and I just need to wait for a few more hours (time now being 5.30pm) before I can finally relieve myself from the ass-kicking pain that I have been experiencing for the past 1 year. What a bad acquaintance with someone from whom one cannot hide.

Response to task (a)

2009-04-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

One of the difficulties that I have writing in my university class is mastering the grammar. I used to treat articles as a comparatively insignificant component in writing in relation to others such as idea generation. However, it did not take me long before I realized the importance of the articles in ensuring smooth flow of a piece of writing. In addition to the mistakes I have in following the general rules in applying the articles as mentioned in my previous post, I always neglect the occasions where proper nouns always require 'the' or do not require 'the'. I tried to resolve these difficulties by memorizing the rules. Then hopefully applying them constantly in writing would help permanently instil them into my mind.

Another difficulty that I encounter is the weakness in supporting my own ideas with strong elaboration and evidence. Normally I can come up with the ideas related to my topic of interest. However, when it comes to elaborating them, I can only occasionally think of some evidences or proofs. Sometimes my elaboration might not be cohesive. I tried to resolve this difficulty by spending more time planning before I write. However, most of the time time constraint will be imposed. Therefore, spending more time planning might risk taking up my time for the actual writing. To further improve on, I realized another possible solution. It requires extensive auxiliary readings for me to be well equipped with knowledge from all fields of human endeavor. This could facilitate my elaboration as I could link ideas better. Therefore, I will try to read more auxiliary texts from newspaper, educational magazine and reference book.

Three of my common grammar mistakes

2009-04-04T08:48:00.001-07:00

I would say that my first common grammar mistake is revealed in the use of articles. Articles should be placed preceding common nouns or noun phrases. Nouns can be categorized under countable nouns and uncountable nouns. An example of uncountable noun is 'love'. When the noun 'love' is used in a generic condition, no article should be placed preceding it. For instance, in 'Love is the greatest thing in the world', 'love' is generic, therefore no article is placed in front of it. However, if uncountable nouns are used in a specific condition, the article 'the' has to be used. For example, in 'The love between you and me', 'love' refers specifically to the love between the speaker and the listener, therefore, the article 'the' is placed preceding the 'love'. While for countable nouns, they can be again separated into singular nouns and plural nouns. Whenever there is a singular noun, articles must always be used preceding it. For plural nouns, the article 'the' is used or none is used at all.

An example of mistake in using the articles is 'Recently, zero-emissions vehicle has been introduced and many governments already set regulations to control the emission of factory.' A corrected version is 'Recently, zero-emissions vehicles have been introduced and many governments already set regulations to control the emissions of factory.

My second mistake is that I am always confused in applying subject-verb agreement in sentence that contains the structure of '(A), together with (B),...' and 'Either (A) or (B)...' or 'Neither (A) nor (B)...'. For the former, verb that follows should correspond to A while for the latter, verb that follows should correspond to B.

The examples of mistake are 'John, together with his friends, go to watch movie.' and 'Either Paul or his classmates is responsible for vandalizing the tables.'. The corrected sentences are 'John, together with his friends, goes to watch movie.' and 'Either Paul or his classmates are responsible for vandalizing the tables.'.

My third mistake happens in the use of pronoun reference. I always take 'it's' as possessive adjective instead of 'its'. Actually 'it's' is just the abbreviation of 'it is'.

An example of the mistake is 'The cat licks it's own body.'. The corrected version is 'The cat licks its own body.'.

Summary of roundtable discussion

2009-04-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

In the round table discussion sessions on 3 March 2009, participants of four groups including mine presented their arguments pertaining to four prompts of Writing Assignment 2 respectively.

I participated in the discussion on the topic related to computational modeling in brain studies. Therefore, I am going to summarize the ideas brought up by the other three groups and give my general opinions.

Firstly, the first group discussed on the suitability of promoting hybrid electric vehicles as means of climate change mitigation. The 'for' side maintained that hybrid electric vehicles are more environmental friendly to be used or implemented because they would emit less hazardous emissions to the atmosphere compared to petrol-powered vehicles. They also suggest that if more and more people support the use of hybrid electrical vehicles, mass production of the vehicles would be more affordable. Giving the rising price of oil as a disadvantage of using petrol-powered vehicles, the supporting panel also argued that it is cheaper to use hybrid electric vehicles. However, the 'against' side suggested that the above-mentioned mitigation technology is just meant for developed countries. There are also limited infrastructures in developing the technology. In my opinion, it would be better if the supporting side mention the conservation of natural resources, the petroleum, as a big advantage of using hybrid electric vehicles.

The second group discussed on the adoption of green chemistry technologies in Singapore. Participants that support the adoption argued that Singapore should do so because it has the capability, capital and well maintained infrastructures needed to develop green chemistry technologies. However, the opposing panel rebutted their idea, providing that Singapore does not possess expertise in the field. Besides that, the 'against' side also maintained that since Singapore is just a small country, adoption of such technologies would just be a waste as the outcome would not make any difference to the vast environment. The 'for' side could not agree on that and say that Singapore should make a start before other countries could follow its steps. I think that the group was well prepared and they provided a thorough and informative discussion on their topic.

The last group discussed on the embryonic stem cell technology which is controversial around the world. The 'for' side suggested that the technology must be carried on to progress in the medical field because it can be applied to clone organs which are in high demand for transplant. However, although the technology benefits the reproduction of functional cells, the opposing participants said that the technology is beyond the moral limit of humans. Humans cannot alter the nature by manipulating human cells. To me moral issues could never be neglected in this case.

Summary of articles related to my group roundtable discussion issue

2009-03-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

The first article is entitled "A Computer That Can 'Read' Your Mind'" It mainly features the research carried out by a computer scientist, Tom Mitchell and a cognitive neuroscientist, Marcel Just on computational modeling which is believed to be able to improve our knowledge of how human's brain operates in processing information and thoughts. Just and Mitchell, both of Carnegie Mellon University, utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect brain activity when a research subject thinks about specific words. Data collected was recently used by them to develop a more advanced model which has the ability of predicting the brain activation patterns associated with concrete nouns. Upon comparing with the corresponding words in the fMRI database, the predictions were found rather accurate. Therefore the computational modeling can be developed to aid us to identify thoughts in near future and be applied in many fields of study such as that of autism.

The article is useful such that it provides in-depth explaination of how the computational modeling works. It is obvious in the article that the technology resulted from collaborative research between disciplines of neuroscience and computing.

Citation:
National Science Foundation. (2008, May 30). A computer that can 'read' your mind. Retrieved August 6, 2008, from http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111641&org=olpa&from=news

The second article is entitled "Ethics and mapping the brain". The article raises the doubts of the feasibility of computational modeling in brain studies in terms of legal and ethical perspectives although the technology would greatly help human being understand many brain problems. Technology of finding correlations between truth telling and lying and the metabolic activity in the brain can be applied in the field of crime investigation. However the technology is not yet widely implemented in screening for potential spies or terrorists because the false positive rates and the false negative rates are both still way too high. The ethical issues brought up in the articles are the standards of the modeling, agreement about the admissibility of evidences collected from the modeling in court, consent from modeling subject, privacy and suitability of the technology on children.

The second article is useful such that it provides the arguments underlying the request that specific bodies or authorities such as some institutions or governments themselves to be obliged to regulate the use of computational modeling in brain studies. The article brings out the point that there are always drawback associated to a newly developed technology even though the technology showers benefits on mankind.

Citation:
Marano, L. (2003, June 3). Ethics and mapping the brain. Retrieved August 6, 2008, from http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/brain_mapping_ethics.htm

Vocabulary:
(i) folklore - traditional beliefs, legends or custom of a people.
(ii) intrigue - to arouse curiosity or interest of by fascinating or compelling qualities.
(iii) allude - to refer casually or indirectly.
(iv) predisposition - tendency to a condition or quality.
(v) controversial - subject to public debate or dispute.

Summary of presentations on 30 January

2009-02-01T23:22:00.000-08:00

One thing that I definitely found interesting on 30 January is the variation in the presentation speed associated to 3 lecturers, namely slow, medium and fast(if one paid enough attention during the lecture he/she should be able to distinguish them). Nevertheless the informative contents of their presentation still broadened my knowledge of technologically and scientifically dealing with climate crisis.

The title of Professor Andrew Palmer's presentation, being 'Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage: Technology and Politics', has definitely caught my attention since reducing the composition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will lead to a breakthrough in tackling global warming. Professor began his presentation with a graph showing that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air was increasing exponentially from year 1700 to year 2000. He brought out the ideas such as the actions both individual and organisations should take towards solving the problem, the world distribution of coal and fossil fuels consumption and what is actually happening in terms of technology and politics. What thrilled me the most was none other than the options of capturing and storing carbon dioxide, be it in depleted oil or gas field or in the ocean, because they are highly probable and require great skills and scientific knowledge. Professor also explained to us the advantages and disadvantages of those two options respectively.

Next Associate Professor Benjamin K. Sovacool introduced to us the usage of Science and Technology Studies(STS) method as useful lens to evaluate new technology in his presentation of 'Using STS to Address Energy (and Technological Problem)'. The presentation started with a brief and quick introduction of what STS, being a social science system approach is. He then cited two case studies, namely Renewable Power and Electrical Vehicles for illustration purpose. He broke down the analysis of these two cases into solving economic challenges, political and regulatory obstacles, social and cultural challenges and technological challenges. He elaborated with supporting ideas exploit from what really occurred in the past. The presentation urged me to start treating technology from an additional point of view, the social science.

Last but not the least, Dr. Rajasekhar Bala delivered his presentation pertaining to the climate crisis in 'Climate Change: Assessment and Mitigation'. Rather than showing the rising trend of carbon dioxide composition as what Professor Andrew Palmer did, Dr. Rajasekhar Bala displayed the charts of change in temperature, which is mainly caused by the former, since thousand years ago and a great 'jump' was observed once agriculture was first started. He also mentioned that global warming was actually enhanced greenhouse effect which originally kept the world warm and habitable. He brought to our attention the potential consequences of enhanced global warming, the possible effects of having a warmer earth, what we can do to help the earth and the difficulties in dealing with climate change. I was interested in his in-depth and detailed listing of ideas and I did closely followed his elaboration. That gave me a great exposure to what people are practically doing now to mitigate global warming rather than the theories I had been exposed to beforehand.

An Inconvenient Truth

2009-01-31T03:35:00.001-08:00

The title of 'An Inconvenient Truth' itself addressed to us the climate crisis, being the big trouble of humanity, in the most straightforward manner. As what mentioned in the documentary film by the former US Vice President Al Gore, global warming, being not a new issue nowadays, has always been closely related to causing the collapse of ice sheet in Greenland, typhoons, coral reef depletion and hurricanes such as Hurricane Katrina, Emily, Dennis and even the first-ever hurricane that landed on Brazil, located in the South Atlantic region where the occurrence of hurricane was deemed impossible previously.

Every one of us has definitely contributed to global warming without realizing it. When we carry out our daily activities such as driving to office or university, gases emitted from the exhausts do not only cause poor ventilation but most importantly also contain the main culprits that lead to global warming. The constantly increasing usage of air-conditioner in shopping complexes, factories, schools and households passively and forcefully reduces the temperature in them but in turn simultaneously focuses and intensifies the heat eliminated to the surroundings since energy is always conserved. On top of that, rapid urban growth leads to severe deforestation. The depletion of vegetation which plays the main role in balancing the temperature of the environment has given rise to the disaster too.

Special interests groups such as environmental scientists have long worked on the solutions to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Recently, zero-emissions vehicle has been introduced and many governments already set regulations to control the emission of factory. The biggest threat among the gases, carbon dioxide has even caught the attention of Al Gore the most as he presents right at the beginning of his presentation, several charts, diagrams and collections of data of the increasing trend of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air and keeps relating them to the raise of temperature. To specifically reduce the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the most effective way is increasing the plantation of trees.

Educating people of all ages about global warming can be the possible roles of those who possess the professional knowledge regarding the matter. Al Gore has done a great job in telling people the seriousness of global warming scientifically and statistically. However, that is still insufficient.
Talks and seminars should be organized from time ti time at government departments, institutions and public places to tell the people what they are capable of doing to mitigate global warming because many human beings still hold the belief that their power is too tiny to alter anything.

Global warming is not only a phenomenon but also a trend in which we possess the choice to counteract it. Of course, if we choose not to do anything to it, it will undoubtedly be worsening and we will be experiencing the bad fruits we planted ourselves.

How An Engineer Accomplishes The Systematic Analysis of Complex Information And The Application of Systematic Approach In Designing Solutions

2009-01-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

Citing the article entitled 'The Expanding World of Engineer's' and published in The Sunday Times on 5 August 2007, I could not agree more to the viewpoints of Professor Ramakrishna, who stated that an engineer's training helps to systematically analyze complex information and apply a systematic approach in designing solutions.

To achieve the above-mentioned abilities, it is the training system that matters. The most straightforward and popular training system in the presence is undoubtedly the engineering tertiary education of which programs have been constantly improved, adjusted and perfected to match the pace of technological advancement in this century.

In university, students are often provided with the infrastructures and systems that simulate those in the real world. Thus, on top of the specially designed curriculum, emphasizing the development of analytical thinking, that requires students to take up modules related to their field of studies, they now have the platform to transform what they have learned from the textbook into practice. Students are able to familiarize themselves with the high-tech facilities such as the computer system,s electrical and electronic equipments through several sessions spent in the laboratory to complete specified tasks in certain period of time. Throughout these sessions, students will be trained to face up to, analyze and eventually solve problems they might face in their fields of working after they have graduated independently and quickly.

Fresh graduates will have the opportunity to participate in the industrial training before they are formally denoted as engineer, being experienced and able to design solutions to the engineering problems with which they come across.

However, that is not all about being a successful engineer because to me an engineer has to continuously equip or somehow upgrade himself or herself continuously with the information that is kept refreshing in the world of technology so that innovation and creative thinking are also embedded into his or her mind.