E-portofiolio 7

What difficulties do I have writing in my university classes? How do you resolve these difficulties? How will you continue to improve?

One of the difficulties in writing in my university classes is the organization of my content. Often, I have to think through on what are the contents that should to be included and not included inside the essay. It may be easy sometimes and others not so. One of the solutions that I used to overcome or to help me is to come up with a short draft whereby, I would list all the topics that I know and start to piece them into a format. This way of doing so helps me to see the picture of my essay.

Another problem I encountered in writing would be the contents itself. Sometimes through the brainstorming process, many ideas related to the main topic would surface. For example, How to improve the traffic conditions in your country. From this topic, I could branch my ideas into many different directions. In the course of doing so, I may get confused in my writing. My solution to this problem is simple provided that I had enough time; that is to read the question constantly. However under time constraint it is difficult to write the essay according to the question.

Thirdly, through writing essays and e-portfolios, I have realized some of my mistakes in my writing are. Most of the sentences that I used are simple and when I try to form more complicated sentences I would make some grammar mistakes. The only way to resolve this problem would be to read and practice writing.

Lastly, one way of improving my writing would be to read other people’s writings. I could read on topics which I have interest in. The other way would be to write. The other way is to practice basic grammar.

E-portfolio 6

Looking through my 2 essays, I have identified 3 common mistakes in my writing. My three most common mistakes are subject verb agreement, wrong word/word form, and inconsistency in my grammar such as missing articles and pronouns.

Firstly, in my essays, there were many errors regarding to Subject verb agreement (SVA). In order to make sure no mistake is make for SVA, there is a need to identify the subject and to determine if it is a plural or singular, followed by a verb form that accompany it. The difficult part for me would be to identify if the sentence has a SVA and which is the subject. For example, one of the sentences taken from my draft 2 assignment paragraph 1, “Among the alternative technologies that offer any potential for further development and sustaining the economy, bio fuel technologies stands out and should be adopted by countries.” The word “stands” should be plural because the subject is “technologies” and it is plural.

Secondly, many notations of word form (WF) and wrong word (WW) appeared in my essays. Though they may be minor mistakes, accumulating all these minor mistakes does not look good in my essays. For example, taken from writing assignment 1paragraph 4, “It can combat global warming in a global scale in an innovative way.” The wrong word is bolded. It should be replaced with the word “on” instead. Why I made this mistake was because the word “in” appeared in the later part of the sentence and therefore I decided to use “in” in the first part of the sentence.

Thirdly, there were many careless mistakes in my essays; most of them can be avoided. Some mistakes made were missing articles, pronouns and verb tense. For example, taken from assignment 1 paragraph 1, “The cause of global warming is due to increase in greenhouse gases mainly carbon dioxide in the Earth’s upper atmosphere …”. The missing article should come in at “due to the increase…”.

In conclusion, in order to reduce the percentage of making mistakes, after completion of an essay, it is advised to read through the essay at least twice to find any mistakes and to correct them.

Summary of roundtable discussion

Summary of Roundtable Discussion

Four topics were discussed during a roundtable discussion. The first topic was about bio fuel, followed by green chemistry, RFID chips and carbon capture and storage technology. Below is a summary of the main points that were covered.

The first topic discussed was about bio fuel as the future alternative to fossil fuel. The moderator started with a brief introduction of bio fuel and ‘for’ group stated reasons as to why there’s a need to look for alternative energy source. The ‘against’ group rebutted stating that the economic cost and environment cost is not worth to invest in developing bio fuel technology.

The second topic was green chemistry where the ‘for’ group explained the usefulness of the technology and listed a couple of examples which it could be used. i.e converting plastic bottles into carbon microsphere. The ‘against’ team rebutted pointing that the technology still need further research and finances, not worth for Singapore to invest especially in times of global economic crisis.

The third topic was installing RFID chips in human beings. The usefulness of the chip was presented such as able to locate people during disaster or to find the locations of wanted people and to have them captured. However, the opposing team argued that moral issues were at stake as not everyone want to themselves being to be track down at any time with a click of a button as some of them want to have their privacy to themselves. The cost of the technology was considered also and not every country has the money to adopt this technology.

The last topic was carbon capture and storage technology. The advantages were discussed by the ‘for’ team and the main benefit was to be able to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. But the opposing team argued that for that benefit to happen, the technology has to be implemented in a large scale and not just a nation only.

E-Portfolio 4

E-portfolio 4

My group topic for roundtable discussion was to identify a technology or a set of technology which certain groups(e.g companies, governments or citizen groups) have either fully resisted or opposed only partially adopted in recent years and why do we think such technologies should be adopted or not to be. Bits of discussion was done and my group decided to talk about biofuels.Some reading was done over the internet.

The first article was taken from The Straits Times, Jan 8 2009. It talks about the first flight in US to use biofuel. Although biofuels were used in the flight, conventional fuels were used at the same time. The reason being was that the first flight was meant to be a demonstration flight to prove that biofuels could be used in airplanes. It also talks about the possibility of one day planes would used biofuels to fly. But in order to that to happen, there must be a large scale production of the biofuels such as using second-generation biofuels. This website is a good example as to briefly explain why there is still not much push into replacing traditional fuel with biofuels.

The second article was from a British website ,http://biofuel.org.uk/. General information about first generation of biofuel can be found from this website. Although not much information about the advantages and disadvantages of using biofuels were mentioned, the process of making of biofuels was mentioned. Thus this website does not provide much information needed to support the use of biofuels.

The third article is relevant as it does answer some of the issues of using biofuels as an alternative energy. It tries to balance between the use of biofuel based on their pros and cons. It gives the reader an idea on what kind of questions to ask about the use of biofuels and it can be relevant to the topic question.

Summary of lecture

Summary of Lecture
The lecture comprises of 3 presentations, each focusing on different yet related topics.

The first presentation presented by Prof. Andrew C. Palmer, touch on the topic of capturing carbon emission and storing technology. The presentation started with facts, things about global warming supported with evidence and data. Later, it stated reasons as to why we have such high rate of carbon emission. The slideshow not only showed these. Prof. Palmer also talked about the concept of carbon capturing and storage. For example; store carbon dioxide into old and abandoned oilfields and reservoir, storing liquefied carbon dioxide into the ocean below depth 2750m. However, he also mentioned that all these ideas and concept have difficulties to achieve as they faced obstacles from critics or require further improvement of the technology. He ended the presentation with saying that carbon capture and storage is technically possible, only the will to do so.
The second presentation was presented by Dr Benjamin K. Sovacool. His presentation was the study of Science & Technology Studies (STS) to address energy and technological problems. He started on how to use the STS to analyze into today’s social thinking, how people from all over the world view technologies. Essentially, he summarized that STS looked at contingency, product of negotiations and compromise, decision not inevitable, social and political ordering, invisible and technology. He then moved on to 2 case studies, Renewable Power and electric vehicle.
The third presentation was conducted by Dr Rajasekhar Bala. Dr Bala talked about climate change. Reasons for difficulties in climate change were discussed such as problem is global, long term political issues. Factors that affected climate changes were also discussed and the available options that we can adopted were also discussed.
In conclusion, I have learnt more about global warming, what were the reasons that created the global warming, why does it happened and what are all the solutions we can implement so that we can prevent or reduce the effects of global warming.

An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth, My Response.

The movie was a documentary hosted by Al Gore, ex-president of the United States of America (1993-2001), to convey an urgent message to the people in America and the rest of the world. The message that he was trying and still trying to send out is that the world that we live in is facing a serious problem that has existed since the end of World War 2, which is Global Warming affecting our climate. Even though he had failed to win the President Elections in 2000 to George Bush Jr, he did not give up his goal. He went back to giving slideshows, continued to travel to other cities all around the world, learned from their scientists about their research in global warming in their countries.

Global Warming is nothing new to us. Since 1980s, there were many reports written by many scientists, reports and articles ranging from detail descriptions of what global warming is, or its effects to the world, how it would affect our future generations to come. What was interesting about the film was that Al Gore was trying to show us about the truth that has been there, yet for some reasons, the world does not see it. There is a couple of reason to it.

Firstly, in facing the new era, there has been an increase in terrorism. And terrorism has cause a great deal amount of damage to many nations in terms of their economies and social stability. Hence many nations are more concern of their national interests rather than the environment. And because of that, governments are spending more money in combating terrorism and neglecting the Earth at the same time.

Secondly, even though the United States of America signed the Kyoto Protocol with many other nations, being the biggest contributor to environment threats, it did not comply with the treaty. This gave many nations, especially those developing nations, a reason not to reduce their carbon emission as they require the cheap coal to fuel their economy. And it is this form of defiance/act that cause the truth of damaging the Earth, been shuffle away from many people’s mind or simply divert public attention away from the very fact that every minute, tonnes and tonnes of harmful pollutants are being dumped into the air and sea.

Indeed, there has been evidence to prove that the climate is changing. There were pictures, data, physical experiences. In all, the world can no longer ignore the fact anymore, hoping that it will disappear. What Al Gore wanted to do is to educate as many people as possible that not all hope is lost. People can help to prevent or to reduce the impacts caused by global warming. We have the technology to do so and we should do it. Not for the sake of doing it but to save our planet so that our future generations would not have to suffer.

In conclusion, the film has an agenda behind it. Global warming has become an important issue to be dealt with and it has to start now. The longer we delay, the bigger the consequences it will have. And there will come to a point in time whereby no actions taken, it might be too late for any response.

An abstract taken from the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”: ‘What we take for granted, might not be there for our children’ ~ Al Gore.

An engineer's training helps to systematically analyze complex information and apply a holistic approach in design solutions

When we talk about engineering, we are talking about a wide range. There are many types of engineering fields in today's world, i.e. mechanical, electrical, computering, bioengineering... And even though they are of different fields, they all have one thing in common, and that is engineers exists to solve problems.

An engineering education is no doubt different from any education provided in the world. And in Singapore, the curriculum design and pedagogical approaches train the mind to systematically analyze complex sets of information and to apply systems thinking in designing solutions. The nest few subsequent paragraphs will briefly describe how an engineer would deal with a problem at hand.

Firstly, there has to be a problem. So for example, a client requires his car to be built with his expectations, basically, wants his car to be customise. An engineer first job would be to know what the specifications his client wants are. It is the specifications that would determine how an engineer would approach and get the final product done. Once specifications have been determine, he has to consider factors that would affect the performance of the product and to see if the product were to be of what the client expect it to be.

With factors and specifications included, he can start off by coming up with a design or many designs. These designs would give him a rough start. Before the actual product can be built, a model has to be constructed. The model comes in with many benefits; i.e The model can be used to determine if it is safe or very safe to be use by operators. It also would help him to see if all factors considered were to be valid or non-valid. And the model can be put through tests to determine if when a actual product was design, would there be any defects or unforeseen problems. All these would help to prevent additional cost in productions should there be any defects or problems that would or might occur when actual products were built.

With all conditions and safety tested, the engineer can finally build a prototype and wait for approval. However, in the above descriptions, the steps involved may be simple yet the processes are very long and very tedious and in most projects, it would involve many engineers as there will be many details to be cover.