During the whole semester, I have been blessed with lots of opportunities to practice university writing. Every writing task has been a struggle in arduous efforts yet with unsatisfactory results. I am still struggling and I am going to struggle with wiring for the rest of my college life or even my life.
One obvious excuse is that I have learned English as foreign language whose target is to pass English exams through education in China. However, it is absolutely not fair nor objective to attribute my troubles to this factor. I have been in an English-learning atmosphere for nearly one year and there is enough space on this campus for me to improve English. Putting aside the problem of language itself, I am still trapped by the process of formal writing, even in my mother tongue. More serious reason goes to my stubborn attitude.
Writing in university class further requires formality, logic, clarity and order, at which I am weakest at. Sometimes, I would rather believe I am born to think in a random way. Though I love the feeling of expressing myself in inspiration and freedom, in the form of language, this emanative habit also gives me huge problems faced with all the writing requirements at a university level. Step by step, I have been forcing myself to conform to “academic writing”, painstakingly hoping someday I am able to accustom to being responsible for my writing, that is to say, not to write for my own pleasure or will, but to write to serve a certain purpose or take on a particular task in a responsible, strict, logical, formal, acceptable, sensible, reader-friendly, clear and conventional “university” manner. To achieve this ambition requires a total change of mindset. I have realized my writing now has some assigned roles supposed to perform, figuratively speaking, roles of presenters or reporters whose findings, discoveries, research results are waiting to be approved or acknowledged, and I must bear these roles in heart all the time. Otherwise, I will easily forget the identity of writing as assignment, and thus easily digress from the designated range within which my topics are supposed to be confined.
One pattern I have often followed in the semester turns out unwise yet persistent: the more time I spend on research, the more unsure where my point lies in I feel. Threatened by approaching deadline, I start writing somewhere I am a bit confident in. The sad truth is such intuition always leads nowhere, and I have to start from scratch again. It seems the research on various sources limits and directs my writing, instead of making use of the information to support my point of view. The whole process of writing inevitably becomes passive, helpless, miserable and struggling. My current ability to handle a large amount of information is rather insufficient for university research. This ability can hardly be developed fast in any technique. Only through accumulated experience day by day, it can grow to need the meets of university writing. I should collect my determination and patience.
Patience, with frustration in the air, is knocking down the doors, because determination won't take no for an answer.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
grammar mistake series
My deep-rooted grammar mistake series are listed as following.
Corrections are made in ( ).
1. Modal
Eg1. Dr Jane has found that the development of new pathways should (might/may could) be the key.
Eg 2. It should (would) also be true for other people who have strong habit(habits) towards (the) existing practice.
A projection or prediction should use low possibility: may/might/ could
Possibility: Low moderate high
may/might/ could < should < must
Stronger certainty or human intention: will / would
Wether sth is a good idea, advisability: should (an advisable did not occur in the past: should have done) , ought to
Necessity : must , have to
Ability: can, could, could have done( a past situation in which the ability for something to happen existed, but the reverse happened)
2. Subject - verb agreement
Eg1. Aphasia – communication problems caused by damage to the brain--- were (was) very common.
The verb must agree with the head word of a noun phrase, rather than the part that acts as explanation
3. Articles: important to refer to the context
Eg 1. It should (would) also be true for other people who have strong habit(habits) towards (the) existing practice.
A singular countable noun should never appear without any articles !!!
Specific reference: the
1. The noun is recognizable through shared knowledge.
2. Used after a general reference is made.
3. When the noun has been modified by an adjective phrase or clause: the suitability of using NEWater; in the vicinity of Washington DC
Nonspecific and generic reference: not identified as sth know, unique or familiar
1. a/an + singular countable noun: a large amount of, a thorough analysis of,
Eg. Cost an estimated $1.4bn
2. zero article+ plural countable noun: renewable power sources.
3. zero article + uncountable noun : drinking water; without doubt; throughout education
Eg2. the Endangered Species Act; the US; supply to the public; the HDB
Eg3. The highest mountain, the third factory, the main/chief/sole reason
Eg4. The particularly interesting aspect of
the is always used with superlatives, ordinals and sole references
but comparative better use “a”: a more skyrocketing level; a higher requirement
4. Preposition phrases:
Eg1. Work in isolation
Eg2. It may not be considered as(delete) (a) new practice
=> No need prep in this case: consider sth sth/ adj.
Eg3. Bulid sth (from) scratch
Eg4. Add…to…; link… to…; akin (similar) to ; prefer…to..
Eg5 above approach
Eg6. At the entry point of
. one step IN that direction
. put into use
.spend… on…
5. Pronoun: important to understand the context
Eg1. The government want its(their) citizens to support it(them).
Eg.2 Spurred on by concerns that species and ecosystems may not survive such shifts, conservationists began to talk seriously about relocating species to help it adapt
Some collective nouns need plural pronouns. important to understand the context
Eg3. … almost without they( them) realizing it
=> them should be used after preposition
6. Misuse/use of that, those
Eg1. That(This) is worrying because…
Eg2. mentioned for the first time : Those(delete) people who….
That/those is used only to refer to the distant object. Generally in writing, this/ these is used to show STRONG coherence instead of that/ those to refer to what mentioned previously.
However, in the structure of comparison ... than that/those… should be used.
Eg3. For instance, pages which( that) sell books or music…
Only “That” to definite noun clause.
7. Verb tense
Eg1. In July, scientists have( delete) first proposed that… was likely to become…
simple past tense to indicate that an action took place at a specific time in the past, especially with the signal word: first.
Eg2. Such difficulties are faced by up to a quarter of people who (have) suffered a stroke.
Present Perfect to express an action or state that began in the past and continues to the present; occurred more than once in the past(specific times are not given). Signal words : until recently, several times, for 4 years now, just
Eg3. Nobody has( had) dreamt that cloning was possible in the 1990s.
Eg4. By the time …. the waters had reached…
=> Past perfect: an event that that was COMPLETED by a definite past time or before ANOTHER action was COMPLETED in the past. ( if stress the duration of an activity, perfect progressive) TWO actions involved <= consider CONTEXT
8. Verb forms:
Eg1. Perserve(d) soft tissues; promote the emerging technology
Attention ! be careful. Understand the meaning
Eg2. The user has to follow the same rules and going ( go) through the same analysis, thus take ( taking) the same amount of time.
Identify parallel structure: keep the verbs in the same form
Thus + doing indicates subsequent results.
9. word forms:
Economic downturn --- an economical car
10. Transitions: so/hence ---but, however- moreover -- thus, therefore
Understand the CONTEXT!!!
Corrections are made in ( ).
1. Modal
Eg1. Dr Jane has found that the development of new pathways should (might/may could) be the key.
Eg 2. It should (would) also be true for other people who have strong habit(habits) towards (the) existing practice.
A projection or prediction should use low possibility: may/might/ could
Possibility: Low moderate high
may/might/ could < should < must
Stronger certainty or human intention: will / would
Wether sth is a good idea, advisability: should (an advisable did not occur in the past: should have done) , ought to
Necessity : must , have to
Ability: can, could, could have done( a past situation in which the ability for something to happen existed, but the reverse happened)
2. Subject - verb agreement
Eg1. Aphasia – communication problems caused by damage to the brain--- were (was) very common.
The verb must agree with the head word of a noun phrase, rather than the part that acts as explanation
3. Articles: important to refer to the context
Eg 1. It should (would) also be true for other people who have strong habit(habits) towards (the) existing practice.
A singular countable noun should never appear without any articles !!!
Specific reference: the
1. The noun is recognizable through shared knowledge.
2. Used after a general reference is made.
3. When the noun has been modified by an adjective phrase or clause: the suitability of using NEWater; in the vicinity of Washington DC
Nonspecific and generic reference: not identified as sth know, unique or familiar
1. a/an + singular countable noun: a large amount of, a thorough analysis of,
Eg. Cost an estimated $1.4bn
2. zero article+ plural countable noun: renewable power sources.
3. zero article + uncountable noun : drinking water; without doubt; throughout education
Eg2. the Endangered Species Act; the US; supply to the public; the HDB
Eg3. The highest mountain, the third factory, the main/chief/sole reason
Eg4. The particularly interesting aspect of
the is always used with superlatives, ordinals and sole references
but comparative better use “a”: a more skyrocketing level; a higher requirement
4. Preposition phrases:
Eg1. Work in isolation
Eg2. It may not be considered as(delete) (a) new practice
=> No need prep in this case: consider sth sth/ adj.
Eg3. Bulid sth (from) scratch
Eg4. Add…to…; link… to…; akin (similar) to ; prefer…to..
Eg5 above approach
Eg6. At the entry point of
. one step IN that direction
. put into use
.spend… on…
5. Pronoun: important to understand the context
Eg1. The government want its(their) citizens to support it(them).
Eg.2 Spurred on by concerns that species and ecosystems may not survive such shifts, conservationists began to talk seriously about relocating species to help it adapt
Some collective nouns need plural pronouns. important to understand the context
Eg3. … almost without they( them) realizing it
=> them should be used after preposition
6. Misuse/use of that, those
Eg1. That(This) is worrying because…
Eg2. mentioned for the first time : Those(delete) people who….
That/those is used only to refer to the distant object. Generally in writing, this/ these is used to show STRONG coherence instead of that/ those to refer to what mentioned previously.
However, in the structure of comparison ... than that/those… should be used.
Eg3. For instance, pages which( that) sell books or music…
Only “That” to definite noun clause.
7. Verb tense
Eg1. In July, scientists have( delete) first proposed that… was likely to become…
simple past tense to indicate that an action took place at a specific time in the past, especially with the signal word: first.
Eg2. Such difficulties are faced by up to a quarter of people who (have) suffered a stroke.
Present Perfect to express an action or state that began in the past and continues to the present; occurred more than once in the past(specific times are not given). Signal words : until recently, several times, for 4 years now, just
Eg3. Nobody has( had) dreamt that cloning was possible in the 1990s.
Eg4. By the time …. the waters had reached…
=> Past perfect: an event that that was COMPLETED by a definite past time or before ANOTHER action was COMPLETED in the past. ( if stress the duration of an activity, perfect progressive) TWO actions involved <= consider CONTEXT
8. Verb forms:
Eg1. Perserve(d) soft tissues; promote the emerging technology
Attention ! be careful. Understand the meaning
Eg2. The user has to follow the same rules and going ( go) through the same analysis, thus take ( taking) the same amount of time.
Identify parallel structure: keep the verbs in the same form
Thus + doing indicates subsequent results.
9. word forms:
Economic downturn --- an economical car
10. Transitions: so/hence ---but, however- moreover -- thus, therefore
Understand the CONTEXT!!!
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Roundtable discussion
Four groups covered four hot topics in modern technology during roundtable discussions.
The first group discussed hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), in terms of its advantages, costs and feasibility. Apparently, the supporting side illustrated the benefits HEV brings and its promising future: less greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, expected cheaper energy cost compared to the continuously rising oil price, hopeful large-scale manufacturing to guarantee affordable vehicles. Unsurprisingly, these arguments were rebutted by opponents with the current financial pressure and inconvenience caused by HEV. They argued that apart from HEV’s price which remains challenging to majority (not to mention the wide disparity between rich and poor), unavailable transportation infrastructure including “charging stations” in most of places at present would cause even greater cost to HEV travelling, let alone inconvenience of extra time consumption to reach those sporadic charging points. Furthermore, they pointed out the technology to produce safe HEV is centered in developed countries, which limits the wide adoption of HEV in global scale.
I don’t think the evidence offered by the opposite is persuasive enough, because they view the use of HEV as a still process. Their main emphasis is on the “present” situations HEV is faced with, including the unavailability of affordable price, infrastructure and widespread technology. In fact, every process of popularization is dynamic and time-demanding. In retrospect, those historic inventions, which were once doubted and rejected due to “present inconvenience” at that time, have turn out successful in facilitating the growth of society in all directions, and even revolutionizing the way people work and live. Without taking the initiative in HEV, in the context of global climate change, none could tell whether a decisive revolution of transportation would take place in the future and change the way human interact with the nature. However, to simplify the opposite argument, they implied that society should give up the attempt at making HEV widespread purely due to current restrictions. This is fallacious reasoning.
The summary of second group’s discussion is skipped here as it is my own group.
The third group debated over the promotion of green chemistry in Singapore. One side for green chemistry listed possible and advantageous conditions for Singapore to develop this field, including sufficient financial funding, research institute and manpower. To the contrary, the other side asserted Singapore lacks talent pools for this field. He added Singapore as a small dot on the map doesn’t have to take the risk of leading the world in technological innovation and Singapore had better borrow mature and successful experience from other countries. He indicated it would be more practical to invest in other familiar technology and existing practices.
It is perceivable that the opposite side just debated for the debate without justified reasoning. He seemed to be forced to take one side, and unfortunately, this side is against investment in green chemistry, which is undeniably one of the largest fields of technological development. This stand he had to take goes against common sense. Thus whatever he argued appeared artificial, unnatural and consequently not quite reasonable. Actually, I sympathize with his difficulty much since I am not sure about the specific role of green chemistry. I feel that this general term includes every technological improvement wherever chemistry is made use of. If so, obviously and automatically, this should be encouraged and hardly any counterargument would stand up.
The fourth group targeted at stem cell research. The affirmative side claimed resulting gains in medical progress outweigh the loss in other aspects. The other side stressed a lack of moral standard if only profitable gains are valued. Furthermore, when a life starts sharing the right to survive and grow remains a controversial issue, which hinders the usage of embryos from being ethical.
I recommend that the opposite side should develop their argument further with concrete data and facts, rather than arguing in a general way with the sentences like “Man cannot play God”. The latter is less suitable for “university-level” debate.
Overall, all the roundtable discussions are interesting and worth of consideration. Still, more logical reasoning would lead to more persuasive arguments.
The first group discussed hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), in terms of its advantages, costs and feasibility. Apparently, the supporting side illustrated the benefits HEV brings and its promising future: less greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, expected cheaper energy cost compared to the continuously rising oil price, hopeful large-scale manufacturing to guarantee affordable vehicles. Unsurprisingly, these arguments were rebutted by opponents with the current financial pressure and inconvenience caused by HEV. They argued that apart from HEV’s price which remains challenging to majority (not to mention the wide disparity between rich and poor), unavailable transportation infrastructure including “charging stations” in most of places at present would cause even greater cost to HEV travelling, let alone inconvenience of extra time consumption to reach those sporadic charging points. Furthermore, they pointed out the technology to produce safe HEV is centered in developed countries, which limits the wide adoption of HEV in global scale.
I don’t think the evidence offered by the opposite is persuasive enough, because they view the use of HEV as a still process. Their main emphasis is on the “present” situations HEV is faced with, including the unavailability of affordable price, infrastructure and widespread technology. In fact, every process of popularization is dynamic and time-demanding. In retrospect, those historic inventions, which were once doubted and rejected due to “present inconvenience” at that time, have turn out successful in facilitating the growth of society in all directions, and even revolutionizing the way people work and live. Without taking the initiative in HEV, in the context of global climate change, none could tell whether a decisive revolution of transportation would take place in the future and change the way human interact with the nature. However, to simplify the opposite argument, they implied that society should give up the attempt at making HEV widespread purely due to current restrictions. This is fallacious reasoning.
The summary of second group’s discussion is skipped here as it is my own group.
The third group debated over the promotion of green chemistry in Singapore. One side for green chemistry listed possible and advantageous conditions for Singapore to develop this field, including sufficient financial funding, research institute and manpower. To the contrary, the other side asserted Singapore lacks talent pools for this field. He added Singapore as a small dot on the map doesn’t have to take the risk of leading the world in technological innovation and Singapore had better borrow mature and successful experience from other countries. He indicated it would be more practical to invest in other familiar technology and existing practices.
It is perceivable that the opposite side just debated for the debate without justified reasoning. He seemed to be forced to take one side, and unfortunately, this side is against investment in green chemistry, which is undeniably one of the largest fields of technological development. This stand he had to take goes against common sense. Thus whatever he argued appeared artificial, unnatural and consequently not quite reasonable. Actually, I sympathize with his difficulty much since I am not sure about the specific role of green chemistry. I feel that this general term includes every technological improvement wherever chemistry is made use of. If so, obviously and automatically, this should be encouraged and hardly any counterargument would stand up.
The fourth group targeted at stem cell research. The affirmative side claimed resulting gains in medical progress outweigh the loss in other aspects. The other side stressed a lack of moral standard if only profitable gains are valued. Furthermore, when a life starts sharing the right to survive and grow remains a controversial issue, which hinders the usage of embryos from being ethical.
I recommend that the opposite side should develop their argument further with concrete data and facts, rather than arguing in a general way with the sentences like “Man cannot play God”. The latter is less suitable for “university-level” debate.
Overall, all the roundtable discussions are interesting and worth of consideration. Still, more logical reasoning would lead to more persuasive arguments.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tow Article related to the issue in WA2 Q3
Our targeted issue is whether institutions or government should regulate the use of one inter-disciplinary technology, computational modeling in brain studies. Regarding this, two articles from IVLE work bin provide some helpful information.
Summary:
The first article titled “A computer that can ‘Read’ Your Mind” introduced an important breakthrough in understanding the brain and developing new computational tools.
Two researchers, a computer scientist, and a cognitive neuroscientist developed a computational model that enabled a computer to correctly determine what word a research subject was thinking about by analyzing brain scan data. Combining the brain scan information with the analysis of the text corpus, the computer then predicted the brain activity pattern of any concrete noun. This computational model provides insight into the nature of human thought. The work could eventually lead to the use of brain scans to identify thoughts and could have applications in the study of various mental diseases such as paranoid, schizophrenia, and semantic dementias. The article indicates the research in the field of computational neuroscience is promising and meaningful, which “opens up all sorts of new possibilities for looking into the fine structure of how patterns of brain activity relate to human thought process.”
The other article named “Ethics and mapping the brain” discusses legal and ethical questions such research as above raises and expresses concerns over its likely consequences.
Beginning with another article “Bioethics and the Brain”, a hypothetical scenario is given. It describes a pilot is fired by the airline due to her potential to develop schizophrenia based on her brain images. Then there is an example of such technologies in their basic form: fMRI, which shows significant correlations between lying and truth telling and the metabolic activity in the brain. However, institutions like the CIA and the FBI have not adopted this due to its immature development.
After the introduction above, ethical issues associated with brain imaging technology come up sequentially: setting bioethical standards for who should be tested, setting technological standards for what is ready to be used in the marketplace, agreement about the admissibility of this evidence in court, consent of a presumed testee, access to brain imaging data, and most controversially, a brain testing juggernaut for children.
At last, the writer emphasizes the importance of those ethical questions, which are to be answered by society, for the more and more reliable predictions from brain image may provoke reductionism, leaving influence of learning and environment ignored.
APA citation:
Marano, L. ( 2003, June 3). Ethics and mapping the brain ( An abridged version of the original in The Washington Times). Retrieved August 6, 2008, from the Centre for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics Web site:
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/brain_mapping_ethics.htm
National Science Foundation. ( 2008, May 30). A computer that can ‘read’ your mind [ Press release 08-091].Retrieved August 6,2008, from
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111641&org=olpa&form=news
Evaluation:
The first article provides comprehensive introduction to computational modeling in brain studies, explaining explicitly the knowledge of this system and how it helps to understand brain activities related to human thought process. Obvious benefits of this technology can be drawn from the content and these could be used to argue why institutions or government should adopt the application of computational neuroscience.
The second article focuses on bioethical aspect of this technology. It could be argued that institutions or government should regulate the use of it, in order to address the problems mentioned in the article and minimize negative consequence. Several standards suggested in the article, should be set to achieve the proper application of the brain imaging.
5 relevant definitions:
1.Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or FMRI, is a technique for measuring brain activity. It works by detecting the changes in blood oxygenation and flow that occur in response to neural activity – when a brain area is more active it consumes more oxygen and to meet this increased demand blood flow increases to the active area. FMRI can be used to produce activation maps showing which parts of the brain are involved in a particular mental process.
(By FMRIB Centre,Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford. http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/education/fmri/introduction-to-fmri/introduction)
2.Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology.
3.computational model is a mathematical model in computational science that requires extensive computational resources to study the behavior of a complex system by computer simulation. The system under study is often a complex nonlinear system for which simple, intuitive analytical solutions are not readily available. Rather than deriving a mathematical analytical solution to the problem, experimentation with the model is done by changing the parameters of the system in the computer, and study the differences in the outcome of the experiments. Theories of operation of the model can be derived/deduced from these computational experiments.
4.Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function/pharmacology of the brain. It is a relatively new discipline within medicine and neuroscience/psychology.
5.Neuroscience is a field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. The Society for Neuroscience was founded in 1969,[1] but the study of the brain started a long time ago. Such studies span the structure, function, evolutionary history, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, informatics, computational neuroscience and pathology of the nervous system
Summary:
The first article titled “A computer that can ‘Read’ Your Mind” introduced an important breakthrough in understanding the brain and developing new computational tools.
Two researchers, a computer scientist, and a cognitive neuroscientist developed a computational model that enabled a computer to correctly determine what word a research subject was thinking about by analyzing brain scan data. Combining the brain scan information with the analysis of the text corpus, the computer then predicted the brain activity pattern of any concrete noun. This computational model provides insight into the nature of human thought. The work could eventually lead to the use of brain scans to identify thoughts and could have applications in the study of various mental diseases such as paranoid, schizophrenia, and semantic dementias. The article indicates the research in the field of computational neuroscience is promising and meaningful, which “opens up all sorts of new possibilities for looking into the fine structure of how patterns of brain activity relate to human thought process.”
The other article named “Ethics and mapping the brain” discusses legal and ethical questions such research as above raises and expresses concerns over its likely consequences.
Beginning with another article “Bioethics and the Brain”, a hypothetical scenario is given. It describes a pilot is fired by the airline due to her potential to develop schizophrenia based on her brain images. Then there is an example of such technologies in their basic form: fMRI, which shows significant correlations between lying and truth telling and the metabolic activity in the brain. However, institutions like the CIA and the FBI have not adopted this due to its immature development.
After the introduction above, ethical issues associated with brain imaging technology come up sequentially: setting bioethical standards for who should be tested, setting technological standards for what is ready to be used in the marketplace, agreement about the admissibility of this evidence in court, consent of a presumed testee, access to brain imaging data, and most controversially, a brain testing juggernaut for children.
At last, the writer emphasizes the importance of those ethical questions, which are to be answered by society, for the more and more reliable predictions from brain image may provoke reductionism, leaving influence of learning and environment ignored.
APA citation:
Marano, L. ( 2003, June 3). Ethics and mapping the brain ( An abridged version of the original in The Washington Times). Retrieved August 6, 2008, from the Centre for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics Web site:
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/brain_mapping_ethics.htm
National Science Foundation. ( 2008, May 30). A computer that can ‘read’ your mind [ Press release 08-091].Retrieved August 6,2008, from
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111641&org=olpa&form=news
Evaluation:
The first article provides comprehensive introduction to computational modeling in brain studies, explaining explicitly the knowledge of this system and how it helps to understand brain activities related to human thought process. Obvious benefits of this technology can be drawn from the content and these could be used to argue why institutions or government should adopt the application of computational neuroscience.
The second article focuses on bioethical aspect of this technology. It could be argued that institutions or government should regulate the use of it, in order to address the problems mentioned in the article and minimize negative consequence. Several standards suggested in the article, should be set to achieve the proper application of the brain imaging.
5 relevant definitions:
1.Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or FMRI, is a technique for measuring brain activity. It works by detecting the changes in blood oxygenation and flow that occur in response to neural activity – when a brain area is more active it consumes more oxygen and to meet this increased demand blood flow increases to the active area. FMRI can be used to produce activation maps showing which parts of the brain are involved in a particular mental process.
(By FMRIB Centre,Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford. http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/education/fmri/introduction-to-fmri/introduction)
2.Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology.
3.computational model is a mathematical model in computational science that requires extensive computational resources to study the behavior of a complex system by computer simulation. The system under study is often a complex nonlinear system for which simple, intuitive analytical solutions are not readily available. Rather than deriving a mathematical analytical solution to the problem, experimentation with the model is done by changing the parameters of the system in the computer, and study the differences in the outcome of the experiments. Theories of operation of the model can be derived/deduced from these computational experiments.
4.Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function/pharmacology of the brain. It is a relatively new discipline within medicine and neuroscience/psychology.
5.Neuroscience is a field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. The Society for Neuroscience was founded in 1969,[1] but the study of the brain started a long time ago. Such studies span the structure, function, evolutionary history, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, informatics, computational neuroscience and pathology of the nervous system
Friday, February 6, 2009
Lectures on Global Warming
Last Friday, three experts gave their lectures respectively on multiple aspects of global warming, providing us a good opportunity to gain some insights on this famous issue.
Professor Andrew Palmer mounted the rostrum first with his topic “Carbon dioxide capture and storage: technology and politics". His opening remarks involved other urgent problems like population expansion, food shortage and regional conflicts. Yet another challenging problem is coming, which already gives dangerous consequential implication globally, according to scientific research. That is climate change. Focusing on this problem, Professor Palmer discussed several respects: technological application, political resistance and public concerns, personal response. With the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, feasible application of existing technology can come into play, in order to mitigate the situation. Besides adopting alternative energy, including nuclear, solar, wind and biomass energy, an impressive example given is the capture and storage of carbon dioxide. This could be achieved by storing liquid carbon dioxide in depleted oil or sealing it with membrane under the ocean. However, the possibility of carbon dioxide leakage may lead to catastrophic effect on marine ecologic system. Furthermore, political barriers overtake technical difficulties. Generally, high-cost methods to reduce greenhouse emissions may affect company profits, industrial interest, even economic growth, thereby influencing people’ daily life, which is great concern of leaders and the public. Professor Palmer commented technological application like carbon dioxide capture and storage is feasible only there is political will. Thus at present, individual efforts to improve energy efficiency seem crucial. Although it is still controversial whether we should make largest investment in reducing greenhouse, necessity of international collaboration on this issue is always valued.
Dr Sovacool introduced Science and Technology Studies (STS) to address energy problems. He started with traditional analysis of technology which is subjected to four different stands of determinism, namely structural determinism, autonomous determinism, consequential determinism and normative determinism. He gave the first case study on renewable power industry. As he pointed out, the spread of renewable power is faced with market failures and barriers, political and regulatory obstacles, cultural and behavior challenges due to psychological resistance, public misunderstanding and other environmental concerns. The second case study presented is electric vehicles which require electricity from batteries and charging station. This limitation keeps people from widely accepting this way of transportation, though electric vehicles are much more environmental-friendly. At last, Dr Sovacool concluded that STS provides a useful lens to evaluate new technologies.
Associate Professor Bala Rajasekhar focused on assessment and mitigation of climate change. Firstly, he presented evidences from the changes in glaciers that support global warming. The enhanced greenhouse effect leads to global warming, followed by dramatic temperature changes and potential natural disasters like droughts, floods and accelerated species extinction. To mitigate this situation, the public should improve energy efficiency and adopt renewable energy; governments may impose tax on greenhouse emissions and subsidize technological projects on research and application. Inevitably, to address global warming may influence current economy and familiar lifestyle. A/P Bala encouraged governments to cooperate internationally.
During the lectures, professional insights on global warming were provided by Prof. Palmer, Dr. Sovacool and A/P Bala. Interestingly, not one of their topics left out a remarkable complication: political resistance, which has a close relationship with the pursuit of short-term benefits. However, who is able to enjoy any benefit without our survival environment on earth? The message conveyed from lectures calls upon us to act, warily and caringly, locally and gloablly.
Professor Andrew Palmer mounted the rostrum first with his topic “Carbon dioxide capture and storage: technology and politics". His opening remarks involved other urgent problems like population expansion, food shortage and regional conflicts. Yet another challenging problem is coming, which already gives dangerous consequential implication globally, according to scientific research. That is climate change. Focusing on this problem, Professor Palmer discussed several respects: technological application, political resistance and public concerns, personal response. With the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, feasible application of existing technology can come into play, in order to mitigate the situation. Besides adopting alternative energy, including nuclear, solar, wind and biomass energy, an impressive example given is the capture and storage of carbon dioxide. This could be achieved by storing liquid carbon dioxide in depleted oil or sealing it with membrane under the ocean. However, the possibility of carbon dioxide leakage may lead to catastrophic effect on marine ecologic system. Furthermore, political barriers overtake technical difficulties. Generally, high-cost methods to reduce greenhouse emissions may affect company profits, industrial interest, even economic growth, thereby influencing people’ daily life, which is great concern of leaders and the public. Professor Palmer commented technological application like carbon dioxide capture and storage is feasible only there is political will. Thus at present, individual efforts to improve energy efficiency seem crucial. Although it is still controversial whether we should make largest investment in reducing greenhouse, necessity of international collaboration on this issue is always valued.
Dr Sovacool introduced Science and Technology Studies (STS) to address energy problems. He started with traditional analysis of technology which is subjected to four different stands of determinism, namely structural determinism, autonomous determinism, consequential determinism and normative determinism. He gave the first case study on renewable power industry. As he pointed out, the spread of renewable power is faced with market failures and barriers, political and regulatory obstacles, cultural and behavior challenges due to psychological resistance, public misunderstanding and other environmental concerns. The second case study presented is electric vehicles which require electricity from batteries and charging station. This limitation keeps people from widely accepting this way of transportation, though electric vehicles are much more environmental-friendly. At last, Dr Sovacool concluded that STS provides a useful lens to evaluate new technologies.
Associate Professor Bala Rajasekhar focused on assessment and mitigation of climate change. Firstly, he presented evidences from the changes in glaciers that support global warming. The enhanced greenhouse effect leads to global warming, followed by dramatic temperature changes and potential natural disasters like droughts, floods and accelerated species extinction. To mitigate this situation, the public should improve energy efficiency and adopt renewable energy; governments may impose tax on greenhouse emissions and subsidize technological projects on research and application. Inevitably, to address global warming may influence current economy and familiar lifestyle. A/P Bala encouraged governments to cooperate internationally.
During the lectures, professional insights on global warming were provided by Prof. Palmer, Dr. Sovacool and A/P Bala. Interestingly, not one of their topics left out a remarkable complication: political resistance, which has a close relationship with the pursuit of short-term benefits. However, who is able to enjoy any benefit without our survival environment on earth? The message conveyed from lectures calls upon us to act, warily and caringly, locally and gloablly.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
An Inconvenient truth: Responsible? Reluctant to change? Take action !
In the film, Gore's persuasive argument exposes “an inconvenient truth”. That is we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenges facing our global civilization.
Again, we are discussing one of the most controversial problems: global warming. Compared to other problems like terrorism, disease or financial crisis, whose effects show up in front of our eyes and influence our daily life directly, global warming seems somewhat remote, invisible or mild. Despite the temperature going up to some degree, Our routines keep undisturbed as usual, with air-conditioning on, with fancy neon lamps on, with private cars running, with budget-flight ticket, with all the electronic blessings from modern technology. Resources are reachable and affordable, even to meet those luxurious high-class needs. Human beings are unprecedentedly good at consumption, for a more comfortable and convenient so-called modern lifestyle. Taking a step further to society, factories’ mass production, dynamic business, soaring economy (in developing countries like China), or generally steady prosperity in advanced countries ( let alone financial fluctuation in these days), ambitious political will for Great Power, all the phenomena above comfort us with the thought of a convenient world, a promising future for human civilization. Unfortunately, what is convenient may not be the truth. While we each are enjoying our facilitated life at the expense of sped-up consumption, we each are contributing to depriving posterity of a secure earth. We each are responsible.
Scientific researches on global warming has been carried out worldwide for decades of years, based on integrity, accuracy, elaboration and objectiveness of scientists’ attitude. It is those factual statistics data or charts according to long-term observation that we should take a serious look at, rather than conceived assumptions or debates by some eloquent speakers who never received scientific training nor bothered to read “academic” information, not to mention understanding the actual situation. Gore assured none of the reports from scientific studies disagree with alarming trend of global warming.
So why do people still doubt or hesitate? Undeniably, it takes pain to address global warming, either by slowing down energy consumption, or by wide application of renewable energy. Certain government members are afraid to lose their country’s competitive power or their own power from supports of industry, due to limiting energy consumption. Certain industrial companies are afraid to reduce their profits if production cost goes up with energy price. Crucially, people who are accustomed to dependence on new technology, but still keep old habits or attitude (sadly including majority of us) are reluctant to make a big change of the living way that they are familiar and comfortable with. It demands clear thinking and strong determination to overcome our inertia and take our initiative. Difficult? Never forget nowadays we are ready for most of technological preparations. Without action, we never know what obstacle lies in the way of recovery, but what we definitely know is the danger in the way of human civilization.
Again, we are discussing one of the most controversial problems: global warming. Compared to other problems like terrorism, disease or financial crisis, whose effects show up in front of our eyes and influence our daily life directly, global warming seems somewhat remote, invisible or mild. Despite the temperature going up to some degree, Our routines keep undisturbed as usual, with air-conditioning on, with fancy neon lamps on, with private cars running, with budget-flight ticket, with all the electronic blessings from modern technology. Resources are reachable and affordable, even to meet those luxurious high-class needs. Human beings are unprecedentedly good at consumption, for a more comfortable and convenient so-called modern lifestyle. Taking a step further to society, factories’ mass production, dynamic business, soaring economy (in developing countries like China), or generally steady prosperity in advanced countries ( let alone financial fluctuation in these days), ambitious political will for Great Power, all the phenomena above comfort us with the thought of a convenient world, a promising future for human civilization. Unfortunately, what is convenient may not be the truth. While we each are enjoying our facilitated life at the expense of sped-up consumption, we each are contributing to depriving posterity of a secure earth. We each are responsible.
Scientific researches on global warming has been carried out worldwide for decades of years, based on integrity, accuracy, elaboration and objectiveness of scientists’ attitude. It is those factual statistics data or charts according to long-term observation that we should take a serious look at, rather than conceived assumptions or debates by some eloquent speakers who never received scientific training nor bothered to read “academic” information, not to mention understanding the actual situation. Gore assured none of the reports from scientific studies disagree with alarming trend of global warming.
So why do people still doubt or hesitate? Undeniably, it takes pain to address global warming, either by slowing down energy consumption, or by wide application of renewable energy. Certain government members are afraid to lose their country’s competitive power or their own power from supports of industry, due to limiting energy consumption. Certain industrial companies are afraid to reduce their profits if production cost goes up with energy price. Crucially, people who are accustomed to dependence on new technology, but still keep old habits or attitude (sadly including majority of us) are reluctant to make a big change of the living way that they are familiar and comfortable with. It demands clear thinking and strong determination to overcome our inertia and take our initiative. Difficult? Never forget nowadays we are ready for most of technological preparations. Without action, we never know what obstacle lies in the way of recovery, but what we definitely know is the danger in the way of human civilization.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
How an Engineer expands the world
In the article “The Expanding World of Engineers”, Prof.Ramakrishna stated that “an engineer’s training helps to systematically analyze complex information and apply a holistic approach in designing solutions.”In this sense, while the rapid growth of globalization and technological application is expanding the workplace of engineers, in the meantime, engineers are expanding the territory of human being by systematic and innovative solutions to diversified issues in almost every field, from manufacture to service industry, from system design and management to resolution of new challenges including potential energy crisis.
An engineering education placed the emphasis on problem-solving strategies, which advantages engineers on pragmatic, effective and creative thinking. Engineers with this positive attitude, tend to be more flexible in solution design and decision making, as they base their ideas not only on empirical knowledge accumulated through industrial history, but also on the fresh information base changing at high speed constantly. After seizing the first-hand facts, engineers dare to dream big, beyond any existing convention. What they focus on is how to break restrictive limitations and maximize real benefits, rather than avoid stepping into sensitive area or compromise on an assortment of rules which are traditional concern and thus constraints. All engineers concern about is an optimized solution that provides most promising effects. Under this firm direction, engineers undertake projects by a systematic approach, efficiently and determinedly, according to thorough analysis of current situation. This process is exactly what engineering’s training brings into play. Within every field of society, only in a systematic manner, can a comprehensive study and complex agendas be carried out. More importantly, for engineers who take up jobs in manufacturing and associated sectors, in-depth professional knowledge enables them to meet rigorous technical demands and play a key functional role in leadership of enterprise.
make-up example:
"Dreaming big has paid off for four from NUS at the fourth SMU Lee Kuan Yew Gloabl Business Plan competition.This team impressed with their cartilage-repair biotech business plan and walked away with the first prize."
---- The Business Times,July 14,2008
They are engineering students who dream big
An engineering education placed the emphasis on problem-solving strategies, which advantages engineers on pragmatic, effective and creative thinking. Engineers with this positive attitude, tend to be more flexible in solution design and decision making, as they base their ideas not only on empirical knowledge accumulated through industrial history, but also on the fresh information base changing at high speed constantly. After seizing the first-hand facts, engineers dare to dream big, beyond any existing convention. What they focus on is how to break restrictive limitations and maximize real benefits, rather than avoid stepping into sensitive area or compromise on an assortment of rules which are traditional concern and thus constraints. All engineers concern about is an optimized solution that provides most promising effects. Under this firm direction, engineers undertake projects by a systematic approach, efficiently and determinedly, according to thorough analysis of current situation. This process is exactly what engineering’s training brings into play. Within every field of society, only in a systematic manner, can a comprehensive study and complex agendas be carried out. More importantly, for engineers who take up jobs in manufacturing and associated sectors, in-depth professional knowledge enables them to meet rigorous technical demands and play a key functional role in leadership of enterprise.
make-up example:
"Dreaming big has paid off for four from NUS at the fourth SMU Lee Kuan Yew Gloabl Business Plan competition.This team impressed with their cartilage-repair biotech business plan and walked away with the first prize."
---- The Business Times,July 14,2008
They are engineering students who dream big
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