Task 5: Predicting and Minimizing Potential Unethical Abuses of Brain Mapping

Nowadays, scientists have had a significant breakthrough in mapping the brain with computer. In another words, we are able to read one’s mind if this technology is fully developed. With this new technology, blindness is believed to be overcome and many mental disorders might be cured.

Although brain mapping seems like bringing us many benefits, we must aware of any potential unethical abuses of this new technology. As a researcher of brain mapping, I have to predict unethical abuses of this new technology. Firstly, to predict any unethical abuses, knowing the subject is extremely important. By knowing the subject, we can predict the motive and the suspect. Thus, we can avoid these abuses thoroughly. For example, if the subject is a celebrity, the motive may be to reveal this celebrity’s private life and the suspect could be paparazzi or supporters of the celebrity. Secondly, I will conduct a survey regarding this brain mapping issue through a reliable survey company and my target is the public. With the result of this survey, I can predict what unethical abuses might happen and the public’s reaction.

In order to minimize potential unethical abuses, a strict law must be enacted. The legislator should make a clear clarification regarding the subject, the motive of using this technology, and the punishment for the misuser. With the enforcement of this law, abuses of the brain mapping technology are believed to be reduced. Another way to minimize the abuses is to set a monitoring unit which monitors the usage of this technology. Companies or corporations that need to access this technology has to get permission from the monitoring unit. This monitoring unit must be well-trained so that they won’t accept bribes or violate the laws in order to minimize the potential abuses.

In conclusion, brain mapping may bring us hope but brain mapping may also bring us disaster. Serious consideration should be taken whether this technology should be used or not. Government and society should play their role and cooperate with each other when brain mapping technology is concerned.

Task 4:Difficulties Writing in Engineering Classes

Difficulty that I always encounter when I am writing in my engineering classes is language problems. Uncertainty in usage of grammar and vocabulary stops me from expressing my opinion thoroughly. Sometime these mistakes could result in distortion of meaning. Consequently, I can't state my stand clearly. Although there are rules when we are writing in English, these rules do not apply to all situation. We have meaning for preposition like on , after and for but when these words pair with a verb, forming phrasal verb, the meaning can change totally. For instance, "to ask after" means to ask for news of something or somebody while "to ask for" means request or demand. These uncertainty in usage of grammar and vocabulary has resulted in difficulty writing in my engineering classes. I realised my own weakness. Therefore, I try to resolve it by reading newspapers, books and novels. Firstly, when I learn a new word, I will look for the meaning of this word and try to memorize it. Moreover, I use new words that I've learned in my conversation so that I can familiarize with them. Secondly, I will discuss with my teacher and friends when I am confused about the usage of grammar and vocabulary. With the help of teacher and friends, I get to know my own mistake. Hence i can get improved and prevent my mistake to happen again. Another way to strengthen my language is to practise. Instead of doing practices that are given by my teacher, I also do some extra exercises such as online grammar and vocabulary exercise. From these exercises, I can have a great understanding about writing in a proper way. In order to make myself continue to improve, I try to make reading a habit. I am trying to keep this habit persistent so that I can intensified my language. Besides that, I also use English in my conversation rather than using my mother tongue. "Practice makes perfect". I will continue to do more exercises so that I can clear my doubt in grammar and vocabulary. Language problem is the difficulty that I face when I am writing in my engineering classes. I believe that by continue putting effort, I will be able to overcome this difficulty in a short time.

Task 3:Summary

Prevent Nuclear Terror

Collecting plutonium or highly enriched uranium is the main barrier to a terrorist to plan a nuclear attack. The first danger is highly enriched bomb-grade uranium produced for reactor might be diverted to terrorists. Besides, the second danger is the synthetic plutonium which is radioactive hazard in itself and a good fuel for nuclear bombs. Therefore, nuclear security is one of the most urgent policy issues in the 21st century. Besides its political and institutional aspects, it also poses acute technical issue. However, there are still many challenges of nuclear security like how to protect the materials, how to detect it especially at a distance, how to make a potential device harmless, emergency response, cleanup, and public communication after a nuclear attack and determining the attacker. The third danger is terrorists could create a more powerful homemade bomb with help from renegade professional designers. Responding to such homemade bomb involve engineering challenges ranging from monitoring to cleanup, of both people and places. Other than the challenges above, ensuring a nation using nuclear using nuclear power for energy does not extract plutonium for bomb building is also a touch challenge. In fact, a possible solution of the nuclear security’s problems is to develop a passive device which placed close to a reactor which able to show any removal of plutonium. It is better if the device could detect signs that the reactor was being used to maximize plutonium production instead of power. The second solution to prevent the transportation of fissile material is the “nuclear car wash”. It consist a complex scanning system that containers would pass by while on a conveyor belt. With the intelligence of systems and engineers, and understanding of nature’s nuclear secret through researches, these challenges can be overcame in the 21st century.

References
National Academy of Engineering (NAE). (2008). Prevent nuclear terror. (n.d.). Retrieve October 1, 2008, from http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9134.aspx

Writing Assignment 1

One reason humans resist new technology is they are not confident enough with new technology. Firstly, people lack confidence in technology because they are ignorant of technology’s benefit. Not enough exposure to new technology causes people to fear new technology and keep visualizing negative results. For example, some people resist using hybrid cars instead of normal cars. They do not know that the hybrid car’s consumption of petrol is less than that of normal cars, yet the performance of hybrid cars is better. Instead, people are comfortable with their existing way of life. Secondly, people might think that new technology will cause difficulties. For instance, people are afraid of using solar systems to generate heat because they think that when there is no sunshine, there is no heat produced. This misunderstanding could lead people to resist new technology. In another example, instead of doing online transactions, people prefer to go to a bank and complete their transactions there. Thirdly, people do not believe that machines can do certain jobs better than humans. Since people are not confident with new technology, they are afraid that the technology will create problems. For instance, people are afraid that the cheque deposit machine might lose their cheque or cannot complete their transactions due to machine errors. Another example is doing surgery by using an electronic arm. Some people insist that the surgery be done by a doctor instead of an electronic arm, even though there are many successful examples of machine-conducted operations. In conclusion, people resist new technology because they lack confidence in it. Ignorance of the benefits, worry about the inconvenience, and doubt in reliability all contribute to their lack of confidence.

Task 2:Common Grammar Mistake

One of my common grammar mistakes is subject-verb agreement in which the subject comes with words like all of, most of, and some of. I used to write sentences like “All of the boys is playing in the field.” In the sentence above, we should use “are” instead of “is”. Firstly, we must determine whether the subject is singular or plural by looking at the noun that follows the words indicating the noun’s portion. When thinking of agreement, it is the noun that we should look at (Singh and Singh, 2003, pg. 75). In the above example, boys is a plural noun, so we must use plural verb. Secondly, we consider an uncountable noun as a singular noun. Thus, we should use to singular verb when the noun is uncountable. Another example is “The rest of the time were wasted.” In this sentence, the noun is time and time is uncountable. Therefore, the correct sentence for the above example should be “The rest of the time was wasted.” Thirdly, expressions like “none of the girl” and “neither Ali nor Bahad” are special cases. When we meet with words like none or neither, we consider the subject singular, so we must use a singular verb when we need to consider the agreement. For instance, a sentence like “None of the girls are my friends.” is wrong. Since we treat “none of the girls” as a singular noun, a singular verb should be used. In conclusion, we must determine the subject by looking at the noun, whether it is a singular noun or plural noun when it comes to agreement. When we meet words like none or either, singular verb should be used.

Reference
Singh, Jagjeet & Singh, Adrian. (2003). Remedial English Grammar. Shah Alam, Fajar Bakti.

This is an exercise i took from ITSELF.

Fill in the blanks with an appropriate form of the verb given in the bracket:
Passage 2:
Why English?

The English language is used by more people in the world than any other living language today. This may seem surprising at first. After all, the population of the United Kingdom (1) __is____ (be) one of the smallest in the world. But of course the UK is not the only country whose native language (2)__is_____(be) English; the majority of people in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (3)_____are___(be) also native English-speakers. However, even if you add up the populations of these countries the total only (4)______comes__(come) to about 400 million, which (5)____is____(be) less than one-tenth of the population of the world.

Who else (6)______speaks___(speak) English? Well, if we count all the English-speakers in India, Singapore and Hong Kong, that (7)_____adds____(add) another 700 million to the total. Add all the people speaking English elsewhere and the total English-speaking population of the world (8)_____comes___(come) to an impressive one and a half billion!

This figure shows that there (9)____are____(be) more non-native speakers of English than there are native speakers. Why is this? There is one important historical reason: the influence of the British Empire -- the Empire that stretched across the globe. Although the Empire no longer (10)_____exists___(exist), the English language is firmly rooted in its former colonies -- in Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and North America.

Other important reasons for the spread of English language (11)__are_____(be) economic. English is the language of international business and commerce. It is also the native language of the United States. So, any country wanting, for example, to trade with the United States, or to take advantage of its technology, (12)___needs____ (need) to operate in English. Also, most scientific and technological developments have been made by English-speaking societies. To keep up with such developments, to talk about them in international conferences, or write and read about them in scientific journals and books, scientists, scholars and students must be able to understand English.

These are obvious reasons for the spread and interest in the English language. But there is a rather less obvious reason. English is also the language of a popular culture. All over the globe millions of young people listen to pop music and watch pop videos. The stars who perform in English (13)____are____(be) by far the most famous. The songs of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Police, Sting, Michael Jackson, and hundreds of other American and British singers (14)____are___(be) heard all over the world. English has become an international language.

English is well suited to this role. Unlike many other languages, it has a built-in flexibility that (15)__allows______(allow) constant adaptation and assimilation. In English, vocabulary from other languages (16)____is_____(be) often used, new words and combinations of words can be coined easily, nouns can be turned into verbs and vice versa.

Furthermore English does not suffer from having an academy (as (17)__does_____(do) France) which monitors the language and sets the standards of 'correctness'. What is correct in English (18)_____is____(be) often, simply, what (19)___is_____(be) accepted as appropriate and understandable by those who (20)____speak____(speak) it, whether they are native or non-native speakers.

This flexibility helps to explain why English has survived so well, why it can vary so much from speaker to speaker and why it has become a world language.

Passage taken from: GUO Jieke, YANG ying, JIN yan. 2002. College English Fast Reading (Book 2). Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press.

This exercise is adapted from:

http://courses.nus.edu.sg/courseware/ITSELF/downloadexercise/gsu2e.doc

Task 1:The Grand Challenges of Engineers

Engineer has been playing an important role in solving human's problem.The most important issue for engineers surely is the vulnerabilities faced by human.Without overcoming this problem,it is too hard for us to make a move in civilization.In line with the worldwide vision,engineer are trained to find adequate solution in solving problem and creating a better environment.

In the health aspect,engineers are trying to develop new medicine for certain diseases that are believed cannot be cured .Many studies have been conducted on disease like AIDS.In addition,aging problem is also causing a headache for engineer.Genetic study is infused in engineering courses so that engineers are able to solve aging problem in the future.

Surfing the net is part of the daily jobs for many people.Computer viruses and hackers are all around the internet.An advance technology is needed urgently in order to purge out hackers and computer viruses.On the other hand,law is not enough to prevent such casas to happen.Early detection system is a need for the present time and the time coming.Engineers should steamroll on this direction to create a safe and peace cyberworld.

As the population of human is growing,spaces in earth is afraid not enough for the population.Engineers have been doing many effort like trying to build a floating platform that enoble human to live on the sea.Since the population is growing,food supply is also a concern of engineers.The global famine is expected to happen in the future.Our land is not enough for plantation.As a result of that,engineers are developing things that can provide us energy instead of just food.

Vulnerabilities are the most important issue to engineers.Engineers are trained to solve problem.As a consequence,they have the responsibility to solve the vulnerabilities problem and they should feel duty-bound to do so for the sake of human being.