Portfolio 5 – Handling Potential Unethical Abuses

The essence of a study or even a research is to discover something new or reconfirm other study or researches. However, it does not mean everything is over when something has been discovered or reconfirmed. What are not less important are presenting the results, and predicts the effects of these results. There is no perfect research. No matter how good it is, there will be a weakness hole to dig. So, it is very important for researchers to minimize bad effects their research may incur.

Basically, the simplest way to handle potential abuses, most commonly unethical abuses, is to conduct a survey or drawing some people’s opinion which are from different backgrounds. We cannot just rely on experts’ view, since many readers are with zero knowledge about our research. Usually this will need a broad and general question, such as “What would you do if you can detect your potential through brain image?” if the research is about brain-scanning to predict human’s potential.

Experts may come with a help also, since they can predict general response to research. For example, experts predict that many parents will compare their child’s brain scans to famous person, and might give up to train or let the child to improve in a particular area. With this, we can do a more specific approach, for example interviewing parents from different background of financial, education, or position.

Both these methods should be able to give better prediction, and will help in handling potential abuses. For example, if a reasonable amount of people say, “I will stop doing anything other than the potential I found through imaging,” we can add some suggestions. For instance, we can emphasize that success is more about hard work. While possessing potential is a good ground to start, but to finish, we need hard work more than potential. More serious way is to cooperate with authority to prevent anyone from forcing someone else to follow only what the brain scans tell, for example parents who forbid their children to play sports merely because the children’s brain scans do not match with those of famous sports stars.

Portfolio 4 - Writing Problems in Engineering Classes

Engineering has truly changed its face in many areas. One of which is in communication. Engineers are not just spending their whole day doing projects like what many people still perceive. They are also required to communicate effectively in order to present their working. This is one of the reasons why many engineering courses demand the future engineers to possess sufficient language skill. The courses in NUS are no exception.

My programming lesson (CS1101C), for example, requires the students to give title, purpose of the program, as well as the comments in different parts of the programs we develop. It is actually very helpful to do these things to improve the readability of the programs. So, programs are not only containing codes, symbols, or variables, but also words to describe the programs.

Of course the words we put in programs are not in the form of essay, nor paragraph. Usually, only about one or two sentences are needed. However, it is still not an easy thing. The problem is not about accuracy, but efficiency. Our main purpose are not just making the program work correctly, but also make it looks more compact without leaving the core idea behind.

It is important to know technical term in order to help us make the comments look simpler. For example, rather than saying, “add the value of x by 1”, it is nicer to say, “increment x by 1”. The way to overcome this problem is clearly by learning more terms. As the complexity of programs increases, more terms will be needed to describe different types of programs. Since most of the programs are aimed for engineering problem solving, so it is the right opportunity to improve my language skills in terms of engineering problems as well.

Portfolio 3 - Potential Solution of Nuclear Fusion

Energy crisis is one of the most serious problems the world is facing now. Soaring price of oil is not surprising anymore, since its amount have decreased significantly. Many experts predict that natural oil will be gone in the next few decades. So, alternative sources of energy, such as nuclear, are indeed sought after by people.

The principle of nuclear energy is to use the binding energy, which is responsible for maintaining the composition of protons and neutrons, in the nucleus of atoms. The idea of fusion is to combine together light atoms such as hydrogen, and energy will be released during the process. However, using nuclear energy is not an easy thing, especially the fusion reaction. It needs about one hundred million degrees of temperature, which looks impossible for scientists to provide.

However, continuous researches yield a potential solution. This potential solution, tested at an experimental reactor in San Diego, US, could make the next generation of fusion reactors more efficient, saving hundreds of millions of euros a year. (Nuclear Fusion Plasma Problem Tackled). According to Todd Evans, a plasma physicist at General Atomics, a company based in San Diego, California, US, the solution is to apply small currents in the coil around the main reactor to divert the hot particles’ movement so that these particles may not damage the main reactor by hitting it continuously.

Still, the theory behind some experiments may not precisely match the result in reality. Evans notice this problem also occurs in this experiment. His prediction is that the reactors and the diverters will still be damaged heavily, and should be replaced every two or three years.

Nonetheless, this is a great step in making the usage of fusion energy become more efficient. It may induce other solutions to come up, and hence solving the problems of energy crisis.

Kleiner, K. (2006). Nuclear Fusion Plasma Problem Tackled. Retrieved September 29, 2008, from NewScientistTech.
Website : http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn9202-nuclear-fusion-plasma-problem-tackled.html

Portfolio 2 - Common Mistake in Relative Pronouns

My common mistake when using English, whether in speaking or writing, is the usage of relative pronouns, especially whose, which, and that. The mistakes usually occur when i am making subordinate sentences. Because subordinate sentences are used frequently in our daily life, so i think it is a good idea to fix the usage of relative pronouns, at least these three words.

First of all, whose can be used for expressing possession of something. The possessor can refer to people, animal, or things. However, i used "whose" only to refer people's possession. For this case of using "whose", it is not that i used it wrongly, but i emphasize that i have a misconception of using "whose".

Second, is the usage of "which". This error actually has a connection with the third point, "that". I did not differentiate the usage of "which" and "that". "Which" should be used in nonrestrictive clauses, while "that" should be used in restrictive clauses. For example, in nonrestrictive clause such as "Asia, which is the largest continent in the world, is divided into five regions", using which instead of that is the right way. For restrictive clause, such as "the man that use a red cap is my father", using that instead of which is the correct way.

These are mistakes that i often make. Correcting the usage of these mistakes will likely to help me communicate better in English.


Exercise

There is a popular teacher called Ms. Tate. The teacher, (which, that) many students were inspired by, taught English literature. However, she has retired 10 years ago. The teacher (which, that) I was talking about now lives in Canada. Ms. Tate, (whose, who) husband is a novel writer, is still replying to the letters (which, that) her past students are writing. It shows how much she still cares for her students.

Ms. Tate's publications, (which, that) have inspired many, are all on my bookshelves. The books (that, which) she wrote is used as textbooks of many English literature courses. Despite its quality, the book (which, that) everybody is talking about does not cost much, and is affordable for many students. Particularly, there is a book (which, that) she wrote was a best-seller. The book, (whose, which) cover is red, was written many years ago. However, the best-seller book, (which, that) was written by her, is still talked about.

Retrieved September 8, 2008, from http://www.cityu.edu.hk/elc/quiz/relativ2.htm

Portfolio 1 - Multi-disciplinary Fields of Engineering Profession

After reading the two articles, i think the most important idea is that engineering discipline still has good prospect in the future. Engineering has become one of the most important field for thousands of years. Nevertheless, it is not showing any signs of declining for the foreseeable future. Even though so many people from engineering area have been dispatched to help building civilization, the needs for engineers in today’s community still remain high. There are many reasons that are backing this fact, one of which is because of globalisation.

So, why does globalisation make an impact for demand on engineers? Is it because globalisation help to produce more engineering job market? True, but not completely. According to Prof. Seeram Ramakrishna, NUS’ Dean of Engineering, as economy diversifies, career choices will widen as well. Thus, engineers nowadays are often seen in other areas of jobs.

He also quoted that engineers, through their systematically trained mind, and also the flexibility of engineering education, benefit from the widening career choices, thus making them recruited by corporations in banking, finance, and commerce (2007, p.25). In some circumstances, they even have an upper hand to get the jobs in those areas compared to their counterparts from other fields, including business graduates. It is not that other areas lack of manpower from their own, but because engineers have a comparative advantage that they are hired in many different businesses.

So, engineer is still a good profession to be attained. Engineers are recognized as important parts of community, even outside engineering context. Their ability to solve problems systematically supported by their flexibility in learning new ideas, are some things needed in the globalisation era. Because of that, the prospects are there for future engineers. What they need to do is not worrying for the job prospect, but to expose their potential to reach the extent.

Ramakrishna, S. (2007, August 5). The expanding world of engineers. The Sunday Times, p. 25.