Task 5: Ways to predict and minimize potential unethical abuses of brain mapping

        Brain mapping is one of the emerging technologies that enables human beings to reveal a person’s mind, predict mental disease, and show whether a person is lying. Hence, this new technology is very useful to medical institution and police force. However, if the brain mapping technology is used by some people who have evil intentions, they will bring out several kinds of potential unethical abuses of brain mapping which may invade human’s right.
        As a researcher of brain mapping, predicting and minimizing potential unethical abuses of brain mapping are very important to us. As the saying “Prevention is better than cure’, predicting the potential unethical abuses of brain mapping is the crucial part that enables us to minimize negative effects which caused by brain mapping. To predict the potential unethical abuses of brain mapping, discussion among famous universities professors with the certain knowledge about the brain mapping should be held. They are able to raise up several kinds of potential unethical abuses that maybe occur after this new technology is being used. Furthermore, I will conduct a survey among the public to collect their opinions about the potential unethical abuses of brain mapping.
        The prediction of potential unethical abuses of brain mapping makes us easier to minimize the abuses. First of all, to minimize the potential abuses, we will verify the purpose and reason of the user of brain mapping. One who without positive thinking and appropriate reason will not be allowed to use brain mapping. The law enforcement for the usage of brain mapping plays an important role to punish the misuser. For example, one who misuses the brain mapping will be fined or sentenced to jail.
        In conclusion, the prediction of potential unethical abuses of brain mapping is very important as it enables us to take appropriate actions to minimize the abuses and make the brain mapping benefit to all human beings.

Task 4: My Difficulties in English Writing

        Writing skill is vitally essential to express our ideas, opinions even the theory or the result of research. Some people think that writing skill is not very important to the engineering students because the engineering students always deal with scientific problem solving and experiments which are not required the writing skill. In fact, writing skill is a very important and essential tool to engineering students.
        As an engineering student, I found that a lot of assignments and reports of different modules require us to express our opinions and the result of experiment in academic writing. It can be a great challenge for me and those students who are not native English speaker. Hence, the biggest problem I am facing is my limited vocabulary in English that always discourages me from writing. For example, I have taken the EG1471 English course that required us to do a lot of essays, readings and text editing. Due to my poor vocabulary, I always spend several hours to organize and write an essay. Although I am managed to express my opinion very well in my mother tongue, I am unable to translate the meaning precisely into English. This makes my readers difficult to understand my expression.
        I have taken some actions which I think is efficient enough to improve my poor vocabulary. First, listening to English News can help me to improve my speaking skill and widen my vocabulary. Secondly, a newly-published dictionary is vitally required to understand the word meaning because there are always some changes of the usage of words. My vocabulary can also be improved through reading newspaper and articles. Moreover, asking question is crucial to clear the misunderstanding and doubt about the usage of words. It prevents us from making the grammar or usage mistakes again.
        As the saying ‘Where there is a will there is a ways’, so I believed I am able to manage the English writing skill well as I am determined to do it.

Task 3:Summary(Enhance Virtual Reality)

       Virtual reality is an illusory environment which attempts to give the brain a realistic set of sensations. True virtual reality creates an illusion of actually being there. It has been shown that people immersed in a virtual world and also respond realistically in interactions with life-sized virtual characters. It has been proved that virtual reality can be used in treating several kinds of disorders. Virtual reality also offers advantages for various sorts of research, education, and training. Virtual reality enables people to advance video conferencing with other people who located in the other parts of the world and carry out tasks together. A formidable engineering challenge is to allow dispersed people to seamlessly see, hear, and touch each other, even share real objects and equipment. The resolution of the video display and the field of view must be improved to maintain the illusion of a real scene. Reproducing sensations of sound, touch, and motion are very important to serious simulation. It is impossible to reproduce the fine-grained details precisely. There is another formidable challenge to place realistic “virtual people” in the scene to interact with the user. Identifying the level of detail for a user to accept the illusion is one of the challenges of virtual reality research. The accurate reproduction of sound and touch is more important than visually precise detail. Touch is an difficult challenge for engineers. For some uses, gloves containing sensors can record the movements of a user’s hand and provide tactile feedback, but somewhat crudely. It is still in the beginning stages to solve such problems. There is one possible approach would make use of electrorheological fluids, which alter their thickness when exposed to electric fields of different strengths. It may not be virtual reality per se, but a related concept also seems to be growing in cyberspace.

References
National Academy of Engineering (NAE). (2008). Enhance virtual reality. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2008, from http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9140.aspx

EG1471:Writing assignment 1 (Topic 1)

       People resist new technology because of inconvenience, danger, and the risk of unemployment. Four new types of technology that are commonly resisted by people are solar energy, nuclear power, biotechnology, and information technology. People resist using solar energy because the storage of solar energy is inconvenient and a storage system is unaffordable. Besides, cloudy weather, darkness and location may interrupt the storage of solar energy. Hence, the availability of solar energy is not widespread all over the world. That is why most people prefer using fossil fuel to using solar energy. People also resist nuclear power because it is dangerous though nuclear power can produce a large quantity of energy with a tiny amount of mass, the fusion reaction is hard to control and not safe enough. Residents living near the fusion reactors are afraid of radioactivity, which may cause cancer. Safety issues are also behind people’s resistance to buying and eating genetically modified food. Scientists have proved that several kinds of genetically modified foods are harmful to human health. The New England Journal of Medicine reports a strong and reliable connection between trans fat consumption and Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), concluding that “On a per calorie basis, trans fat appears to increase the risk of CHD more than any other macronutrient, conferring a substantially increased risk at low levels of consumption” (Mozaffarian, Katan, Ascherio, Stampfer, & Willett, 2006). The fear of joblessness also makes people resist technology. Knowledge-based systems, decision support systems and groupware may improve operational efficiency; however, people resist using information technology because it may make them jobless. In conclusion, people resist new technology as it may be inconvenient, harmful, or bad for people’s jobs.
References
Mozaffarian, D., Katan, M. B., Ascherio, A.,Stampfer, M. J ., & Willett, W. C. (2006, April). Trans fatty acids and Cardiovascular Disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 354(15), 1601–1613.

Portfolio task 2:W5T2 Grammar Mistakes

     One of my common grammar mistakes is the usage of tenses especially present perfect tense and simple past tense. Since there is no tense in Chinese grammar, it is quite difficult to me to understand the usage of tenses. That is why I always take a long time to figure out what tenses should be used in my essay. For example, I do not know the difference between “I have eaten an apple” and “I ate an apple last night”. The only thing I know is both of the sentences described a past action. According to SELF Elementary Worksheet1 for Verb Tenses, the definition of simple past tense is “At one particular time in the past, this happened. It began and ended in the past” while for the definition of present perfect tense, “the exact time is not important”. From the definitions of these two tenses, I learned that if a statement of a past action did not mention the exact time, I should use the present perfect tense for the statement. Otherwise, if the time of a past action is mentioned, then I should use the simple past tense instead of using present perfect tense. For example, simple past tense is commonly used in historical book because the book mentioned the time when history occurred. Finally, I managed to use the simple past tense and present perfect tense correctly now. I will do more grammar exercises on tenses to improve my grammar.

Reference: SELF Worksheet1 for Verb Tenses (ELEMENTARY LEVEL). Retrieved 9 September 2008 from http://courses.nus.edu.sg/courseware/ITSELF/.

Exercise for Verb Tenses(This exercise retrieved from SELF Worksheet1 for Verb Tenses ELEMENTARY LEVEL part1)

Fill in each blank with the correct form of the verb given in brackets.

Of all human parts, only brains have never been successfully replaced. Artificial or natural replacements can carry out the work of all the other parts of the human body. False teeth and artificial limbs have long been used. For many years now, people who have lost a lot of blood in an accident or an operation (1)have received(receive) transfusions of blood from blood banks. These blood banks are built up with the help of donors, people who (2)give(give) their blood for those who need it. Skin damaged by burns can also be replaced by healthy skin from other parts of the body in an operation called a skin craft.

The heart is the body's most vital organ. If it (3) stops (stop) working, death soon follows. But many people in our time have bad hearts and suffer from heart disease. Christiaan Barnard, a South African surgeon, gave these people new hope when he (4) performed (perform) the first human heart transplant, after at least twenty trials on dogs, in 1967. He took the heart of a donor shortly after he (5) had died (die) in a car accident and used it to replace a sick man’s heart. Since then, many successful transplants (6) have been carried out (be carried out) and there are people who (7) have lived (live) with transplanted hearts for seven years and more. Kidneys and livers have also been transplanted, though the success rate in liver transplants (8) is(be) still very low.

Answer:
(1) have received, (2) give, (3) stops, (4) performed, (5) had died, (6) have been carried out, (7) have lived, (8) is

Portfolio task 1:Engineers Can Save The World

     Nowadays, the whole world is facing the environmental problem such as water pollution and air pollution. This is a knotty and serious problem that related to the human life. That is why I think it should be the most important and grandest challenge for engineering. As we all know, environmental problem is one of the “side effect” caused by the development of technology and industry. Engineers cannot stop the development from polluting the environment, but what they can do is to reduce the rate of pollution and to develop new sources of energy especially environmentally friendly power instead of using fossil fuels.

     The burning of fossil fuels is the main culprit that caused the increasing of planet’s temperature and air pollution. Although engineers have explored technological methods of capturing the carbon dioxide produced from fuel burning and sequestering it underground to reduce air pollution, the fossil fuels will be eliminated from the Earth anytime soon. Developing the new sources of energy without causing pollution poses provocative engineering challenges. Solar power and nuclear fusion bring new hopes but also new challenges to the engineers to make them feasible not only technologically but also economically. Once they succeed, there will be bright prospects for the development of technology and industry.

     On the other hand, water is a very important element that should be sustainably provided to maintain the quality of life. That is why engineers also play important roles in controlling the quality and quantity of water. Many regions of the world are facing the seriously short supply of water, so engineers have explored the new technologies for desalinating sea water and local water purification. These new technologies are beneficial to some countries such as Singapore and Saudi Arabia.

     In conclusion, environmental problem is the most important challenge that should be solved by engineers in 21st century. Through the engineering achievements of the past, do believe that engineer is the real “magician” that can make the dreams come true.

National Academy of Engineering. (2008, February). Introduction to the grand challenges of engineering. Retrieved August 20, 2008, from http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9221.aspx