In university studies, I am required to write many lab reports, term papers, assignments, and the most important one, the final year thesis. These kind of academic writings are much different from my high school essay writing which usually requires no or less references to support or elaborate my ideal in the essay.When I first encountered the problem of writing a formal academic report, I was at a loss to squeeze all the information that i found in my report, and finally I could only put all the information randomly into it without considering the overall structure of my report.
This made my report extremely disgusting and not reader-friendly, reader could not even clearly identify the main ideal in my report and also they were confused because there was too many random information.Thus, I could not get a good grade in my first report although i had put in a lot of effort in writing the report and searching for the information. What i have learned from this experience is that, a good academic essay is not only about the fantastic ideal and information, but also the structure of the entire essay so that reader are able to read and understand your ideal easily.
An academic essay can not serve its purpose if reader could not get any information from it. Therefore, the first difficulty that I have writing in my university class is to write a proper structured and readable essay with sufficient supporting information. Other than this, avoid having grammar mistakes in my essay is the second difficulty that I need to overcome.
In order to write a good essay, I realized that writing outline and drafting are two essential skills to master. I used to start writing my essay without going through these two key processes, as a result, I have poor paragraph connection and a lot of grammar errors in my essay.I would say that, read more and write more are two ways that I will try to improve my writing skill.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Grammer Mistakes
Three grammar mistakes that i commonly made in my writing are Word Form, Article and Punctuation.
There are some examples taken from my Writing Assignment 1 as shown below:
1. Word Form
The aberrant changes of the earth climate in recent years have been resulted in an increasing number of severe nature (natural) disaster....
comment: since the word "disaster" is a noun, i should use "natural" (adj)rather than "nature" (noun).
The daily activities of humans involve the use of vast amount(amounts) of energy...
comment: in this sentence, the word "amount" is countable and because of the word "vast" in front, it should be plural but not singular, i.e amounts.
.....it might be more than enough to meets (meet) human demands.
comment: the verb "to" should be followed by a base form hence i shouldn't have used the word "meets".
2. Articles
Renewable energy has the potential to meet all human needs and it is abundantly available in the( delete "the") nature.
comment: Do not use article when an uncountable noun is nonspecific, i.e. "nature" is an uncountable and nonspecific noun in my essay.
Although current technology cannot fully achieve such figure from a single renewable energy source, (a) synergy of different renewable energy sources might be more than enough to meet human demands.
comment: the word "synergy" is a singular and countable noun, so it needs an article in front of it.
...it is conceivable that renewable technology will be more efficient and (the)time to recover the cost can be further reduced to 2-3 years.
comment: there is a specific reference after the the word "time" so it needs an article in front of it, and because "time" is uncountable noun in this case so the article should be "the".
3. Punctuation
Renewable energy (,) on the other hand (,) is more flexible.
With the advancement of technology(,) it is conceivable that...
After reviewing my common made mistakes, I found that those grammar mistakes are made due to my carelessness especially for the punctuation and the word form.
I can identify most of them by myself if i have carefully reviewed my essay.I will not allow these mistakes appear again in my next writing as making carelessness mistakes are actually unforgivable, and i should pay more attention in order not to repeat such mistakes.
There are some examples taken from my Writing Assignment 1 as shown below:
1. Word Form
The aberrant changes of the earth climate in recent years have been resulted in an increasing number of severe nature (natural) disaster....
comment: since the word "disaster" is a noun, i should use "natural" (adj)rather than "nature" (noun).
The daily activities of humans involve the use of vast amount(amounts) of energy...
comment: in this sentence, the word "amount" is countable and because of the word "vast" in front, it should be plural but not singular, i.e amounts.
.....it might be more than enough to meets (meet) human demands.
comment: the verb "to" should be followed by a base form hence i shouldn't have used the word "meets".
2. Articles
Renewable energy has the potential to meet all human needs and it is abundantly available in the( delete "the") nature.
comment: Do not use article when an uncountable noun is nonspecific, i.e. "nature" is an uncountable and nonspecific noun in my essay.
Although current technology cannot fully achieve such figure from a single renewable energy source, (a) synergy of different renewable energy sources might be more than enough to meet human demands.
comment: the word "synergy" is a singular and countable noun, so it needs an article in front of it.
...it is conceivable that renewable technology will be more efficient and (the)time to recover the cost can be further reduced to 2-3 years.
comment: there is a specific reference after the the word "time" so it needs an article in front of it, and because "time" is uncountable noun in this case so the article should be "the".
3. Punctuation
Renewable energy (,) on the other hand (,) is more flexible.
With the advancement of technology(,) it is conceivable that...
After reviewing my common made mistakes, I found that those grammar mistakes are made due to my carelessness especially for the punctuation and the word form.
I can identify most of them by myself if i have carefully reviewed my essay.I will not allow these mistakes appear again in my next writing as making carelessness mistakes are actually unforgivable, and i should pay more attention in order not to repeat such mistakes.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Summary of Round Table Discussions
There were four groups debated on four interesting topics during the roundtable discussion. Our group presented on the topic of brain scan and computational modelling, which will not be summarized here.
The first group debated on the topic of hybrid electrical vehicles (HEV), whether the use of HEV can help to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. The supporting parties argued that HEV is environmental friendly as it produces less hazardous emissions compared to petrol-powered vehicles. In term of its cost and practicality, the HEV has the potential of having cheaper price than the petrol-powered vehicles in a long term view because of the rising oil prices. Thus, HEV is affordable to the masses. The supporting parties also mentioned that HEV has a higher efficiency and higher aesthetic value than petrol-powered vehicles. However, the opponents rebutted these advantages mentioned. They doubted on the availability of today’s technology to provide infrastructure for such vehicles especially for developing countries. The opponents also doubted on the efficiency of the battery and charging system of the HEV, as they are not efficient as the petrol-powered vehicles and required charging station to recharge the battery.
The third group brought out the issue of the green chemistry in this contemporary era. The supporting parties believed that Singapore has the industrial capacity and technology capability to adopt green chemistry technologies and it should also initiate the green chemistry industry in this region. However, the opponents argued that Singapore is a small country and it will be a great challenge for her to be a pioneer of the green chemistry technology. Beside, Singapore is facing population shortage and economic crisis now, she will even need technical supports from overseas in order to success in green chemistry.
The last group of the roundtable discussion presented the topic of stem cell technology. The supporting sides suggested that the stem cell research must be continued and it in order to benefit mankind. For example, human organs could be cloned and used in transplants. However, the opponents argued that there are many ethical issues raised up from the stem cell research as it related to the wastage of embryos which is immoral.
The first group debated on the topic of hybrid electrical vehicles (HEV), whether the use of HEV can help to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. The supporting parties argued that HEV is environmental friendly as it produces less hazardous emissions compared to petrol-powered vehicles. In term of its cost and practicality, the HEV has the potential of having cheaper price than the petrol-powered vehicles in a long term view because of the rising oil prices. Thus, HEV is affordable to the masses. The supporting parties also mentioned that HEV has a higher efficiency and higher aesthetic value than petrol-powered vehicles. However, the opponents rebutted these advantages mentioned. They doubted on the availability of today’s technology to provide infrastructure for such vehicles especially for developing countries. The opponents also doubted on the efficiency of the battery and charging system of the HEV, as they are not efficient as the petrol-powered vehicles and required charging station to recharge the battery.
The third group brought out the issue of the green chemistry in this contemporary era. The supporting parties believed that Singapore has the industrial capacity and technology capability to adopt green chemistry technologies and it should also initiate the green chemistry industry in this region. However, the opponents argued that Singapore is a small country and it will be a great challenge for her to be a pioneer of the green chemistry technology. Beside, Singapore is facing population shortage and economic crisis now, she will even need technical supports from overseas in order to success in green chemistry.
The last group of the roundtable discussion presented the topic of stem cell technology. The supporting sides suggested that the stem cell research must be continued and it in order to benefit mankind. For example, human organs could be cloned and used in transplants. However, the opponents argued that there are many ethical issues raised up from the stem cell research as it related to the wastage of embryos which is immoral.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Summary of Two Articles
Articles : A Computer That Can 'Read' Your Mind & Ethics And Mapping The Brain
In the first article, "A Computer That Can 'Read' Your Mind" retrived from internet, a research conducted by a computer scientist,Tom Mitchell ans a cognitive nueroscientist,Marchel Just has shown that we can improve our understanding of how the brain processes information and thoughts by computational modeling. Brain activity can be detected and located when a person thinks about specific word using the technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Furthermore,this technology can be used to develop a more sophisticated computational model that can predict the brain activation patterns associated with concrete nouns, or things that we experience though our senses.
This computational model provides insight into the nature of human thougth. For example this study can tell us how the brain can relate concrete noun to how we preceive and manipulate it. This research could lead to the use of brain scans to identify thoughts and could have applications in the study of mental disease. For instance, autism, disorders of thought such as paranoid schizophrenia, and semantic dementias such as Pick's disease.
In the second article, "Ethics And Mapping The Brain" by Marano,L., some of the ethical issues related to the brian mapping studies and technology have been brouhgt out. Significant correlations between lying and truth telling and the metabolic activity in the region was found using fMRI. This brain imaging technology has positive effects on society ( eg. it is useflu in criminal investigation), but the problem is that who and why they will be tested with this technology?
Can the results of this technology be used as evidentce in court? If there is a brain picture data bases, who would run it and how to ensure privacy? How the brain imaging results will be used? Should it be tested in children? There are a series of ecthic issues arise from the research on this technology, thus standards and regulations should be set up to prevent misuse of it.
With the brain imaging technology, human's thought or behaviour might be easily predicted or detected, this somehow has positive effects on our society. For example it can be used in screening for potential spies,terrorist, or other security risks and in medical aspact, it has application to the study of mental diseases and the technology, however, it may be misused and result in the invasion of privacy and ecthic problems. For instance, this tecnology may be used as a tool to discriminate an employee based on his/her skills(eg. a hypothetical airline pilot is fired by the airline because the brain imaging result shows her familiarity wit assault rifles).
Other than this, parents may try to match their children's brain scan to those famous scientists, musicians and authors to determine what kind of training and exposure their children will receive. this might end up narrow down and exposure a child wll get and result in over expectation of the child scheivement in the field. difeerent individual have different traits and personality, and they could make unique contribution to the field that is not anticipated. in extreme cases, depence of such technology as guidance to determine a child's education and training might stunt the growth of various field.
Vocaburary:
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): is a type of specialized MRI scan. It measures the haemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals.
Schizophrenia: is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality
Semantic dementia: is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of semantic memory in both the verbal and non-verbal domains.
Brain mapping: is a set of neuroscience techniques predicated on the mapping of (biological) quantities or properties onto spatial representations of the (human or non-human) brain resulting in maps.
Mental disorder: is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as part of normal development or culture.
Sources:
National Science Foundation. (2008, May 30). A computer that can 'read' your mind. Retrieved March 1, 2009, from http:/www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111641&org=olpa&from=news
Marano, L. (2003, June 3). Ethics and mapping the brain(An abridged version of the original in The Washington Times). Retrieved March 1, 2009, from the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics Web site: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/brain_mapping_ethics.htm
In the first article, "A Computer That Can 'Read' Your Mind" retrived from internet, a research conducted by a computer scientist,Tom Mitchell ans a cognitive nueroscientist,Marchel Just has shown that we can improve our understanding of how the brain processes information and thoughts by computational modeling. Brain activity can be detected and located when a person thinks about specific word using the technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Furthermore,this technology can be used to develop a more sophisticated computational model that can predict the brain activation patterns associated with concrete nouns, or things that we experience though our senses.
This computational model provides insight into the nature of human thougth. For example this study can tell us how the brain can relate concrete noun to how we preceive and manipulate it. This research could lead to the use of brain scans to identify thoughts and could have applications in the study of mental disease. For instance, autism, disorders of thought such as paranoid schizophrenia, and semantic dementias such as Pick's disease.
In the second article, "Ethics And Mapping The Brain" by Marano,L., some of the ethical issues related to the brian mapping studies and technology have been brouhgt out. Significant correlations between lying and truth telling and the metabolic activity in the region was found using fMRI. This brain imaging technology has positive effects on society ( eg. it is useflu in criminal investigation), but the problem is that who and why they will be tested with this technology?
Can the results of this technology be used as evidentce in court? If there is a brain picture data bases, who would run it and how to ensure privacy? How the brain imaging results will be used? Should it be tested in children? There are a series of ecthic issues arise from the research on this technology, thus standards and regulations should be set up to prevent misuse of it.
With the brain imaging technology, human's thought or behaviour might be easily predicted or detected, this somehow has positive effects on our society. For example it can be used in screening for potential spies,terrorist, or other security risks and in medical aspact, it has application to the study of mental diseases and the technology, however, it may be misused and result in the invasion of privacy and ecthic problems. For instance, this tecnology may be used as a tool to discriminate an employee based on his/her skills(eg. a hypothetical airline pilot is fired by the airline because the brain imaging result shows her familiarity wit assault rifles).
Other than this, parents may try to match their children's brain scan to those famous scientists, musicians and authors to determine what kind of training and exposure their children will receive. this might end up narrow down and exposure a child wll get and result in over expectation of the child scheivement in the field. difeerent individual have different traits and personality, and they could make unique contribution to the field that is not anticipated. in extreme cases, depence of such technology as guidance to determine a child's education and training might stunt the growth of various field.
Vocaburary:
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): is a type of specialized MRI scan. It measures the haemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals.
Schizophrenia: is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality
Semantic dementia: is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of semantic memory in both the verbal and non-verbal domains.
Brain mapping: is a set of neuroscience techniques predicated on the mapping of (biological) quantities or properties onto spatial representations of the (human or non-human) brain resulting in maps.
Mental disorder: is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as part of normal development or culture.
Sources:
National Science Foundation. (2008, May 30). A computer that can 'read' your mind. Retrieved March 1, 2009, from http:/www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111641&org=olpa&from=news
Marano, L. (2003, June 3). Ethics and mapping the brain(An abridged version of the original in The Washington Times). Retrieved March 1, 2009, from the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics Web site: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/brain_mapping_ethics.htm
Saturday, January 31, 2009
An Inconvenient Truth
Al gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” brings out the truth about global warming to the masses. It showed convincingly that the very place all humans being called home are in imminent danger of being destroyed. The things we do everyday have a profound impact on earth, and most of us are, unfortunately, blissfully ignorant about it. Every little things we do everyday have an impact on the earth, the very fact that the human population is huge, would act to compound the effect.
Global warming brings with it the issue of morality. The release of carbon that result in the effect of global wide warming that we experience today is from countries that have been industrialized decades ago, and hence we able to enjoy the fruits that come with modernization, namely material wealth. With wealth, often result in excess. People in developed nation can afford to consume more than their counterpart in third world country. While people are dying every day from malnourishment in country such as Haiti, restaurant in Singapore throw any food that is left over. Mind you, the food thrown away is estimated to be about 30% [2]. Imagine, if this food can somehow be evenly distributed, not only can we reduce carbon emission, lives can also be saved. The inequality unfortunately do not end with just food, people in developed nation often have more material possession than they really need (e.g. cloth and electronic gadgets). Productions of these good require energy and hence result in carbon emission.
With global warming, it is the moral responsibility of everyone especially those in the developed nation to consume less. The era of spending on excess amount of goods and services need to come to an end as it is the responsibility of everyone living in planet earth to make sure that the next generations have a place to call home. Environmental and special group should work towards the goal of fostering sense of responsibility in the public. As mentioned early, human consumption of goods and services have a compounding effect due to the sheer number of human population, on the other hand if everyone was to work together in combating global warming, the effect would be significant as well.
For a better tomorrow for all, we should try our best to consume less.
1. From Defra report: "Environmental Impacts of Food Production and Consumption", December 2006, page 93 http://www.defra.gov.uk/science/project_data/DocumentLibrary/EV02007/EV02007_4601_FRP.pdf
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1460183,00.html
Global warming brings with it the issue of morality. The release of carbon that result in the effect of global wide warming that we experience today is from countries that have been industrialized decades ago, and hence we able to enjoy the fruits that come with modernization, namely material wealth. With wealth, often result in excess. People in developed nation can afford to consume more than their counterpart in third world country. While people are dying every day from malnourishment in country such as Haiti, restaurant in Singapore throw any food that is left over. Mind you, the food thrown away is estimated to be about 30% [2]. Imagine, if this food can somehow be evenly distributed, not only can we reduce carbon emission, lives can also be saved. The inequality unfortunately do not end with just food, people in developed nation often have more material possession than they really need (e.g. cloth and electronic gadgets). Productions of these good require energy and hence result in carbon emission.
With global warming, it is the moral responsibility of everyone especially those in the developed nation to consume less. The era of spending on excess amount of goods and services need to come to an end as it is the responsibility of everyone living in planet earth to make sure that the next generations have a place to call home. Environmental and special group should work towards the goal of fostering sense of responsibility in the public. As mentioned early, human consumption of goods and services have a compounding effect due to the sheer number of human population, on the other hand if everyone was to work together in combating global warming, the effect would be significant as well.
For a better tomorrow for all, we should try our best to consume less.
1. From Defra report: "Environmental Impacts of Food Production and Consumption", December 2006, page 93 http://www.defra.gov.uk/science/project_data/DocumentLibrary/EV02007/EV02007_4601_FRP.pdf
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1460183,00.html
Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Expanding World of Engineers
According to US department of Labor, bureau of Labor statistics, an engineer is engaged in solving commercial problem with the use of scientific principle under certain technical constraints. As mentioned in the article, globalization created a need to process more information and use the information to make decision at a faster pace. This is exactly what engineers are trained to do. The engineering discipline focuses on solving complex problems. Problems that often highly intertwined where satisfying the requirement of one often come at the expense of the other. Given the complexity of the problems that are faced by companies or institute, the challenge is then not only to make a decision fast based on the given information, but also to make the best decision. The human mind has a limited capacity in handling complex information, hence decision made intuitively without the use of “tools”, is often not the best. That is why engineering skills is often favored in different sectors. The use of engineering skills and mathematical tools can often help by putting things into perspective and the formulation of a solution or help in decision making. Apart from that, real world problems also come with constraints which limit the number of solutions one can deploy. Take for example the issue of drinking water in Singapore. As an island nation with limited land-used, Singapore has been facing the problem of drinking water shortage for many years; the existing reservoirs are not enough for supplying drinking water to the people, in addition, the 100-year water supply contract with its neighbor country will expire in a few years time, hence Singapore is going to have its greater crisis in recent year. Fortunately, engineers have come up with a brilliant solution, the Marina Barrage Project together with the Newater and Desalination of sea water to solve this drinking water crisis. By tackling the problem from a multi-faceted approach, engineers has come up with a solution for the problem that has been haunting Singapore since its founding.
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