The difficulties I have in writing

My command of English has always been poor. After much thought, I realized that the fault lies in insufficient reading. To be frank, I did not favor reading storybooks when i was young. Up till now, reading has yet to be my hobby. Therefore, i have poor view of a good writing.

When I write, I usually have some kind of a mental block which discourages the flow of ideas. However, ever since i learned the skills of pre-writing in EG1471, my writing has improved by quite a bit. The lessons on idea generation and writing outline techniques are very useful for me to promote idea flow, organize my writing and also to keep track of my direction. I have been applying these techniques not only in EG1471, but also in my other academic writings such as lab reports.

Apart from having poor writing techniques, another problem i have is grammar. During my study in Polytechnic, i picked up German language and learnt it for 2 years. Now, people might wonder: What is the link between my grammar problem and German language? The problem is that German language is totally opposite of English in terms of sentence structure. For German language, the verb tends to be at the end of a sentence. This confuses me when i am writing. I tend to have wrong sentence structure, word and verb form. To tackle this problem, i need to read more English materials to correct my grammar mistakes.

Although EG1471 had equipped me the necessary skills and techniques to produce good academic writings, my command of English cannot improve without sufficient practice. Reading is also important for me to improve my grammar. Newspapers and academic articles are good materials for me to read. Nonetheless, I am thankful that i have to take EG1471 module as it made me realise my strengths and weaknesses in writing. Without it, i would still have poor essay orgaisation and grammar.

My 3 common grammar mistakes

As I was reading through my WA1 and WA2, I noticed that I had quite a few vocabulary and grammatical errors. After thorough thought, the reason for me to have quite a few vocabulary errors was because I was too ambitious with my writing; trying to use new words without confirming with thesaurus first. As for grammar, my common grammatical errors lie in verb tense, punctuations and transitions.

Verb tense is my major weakness in grammar. When writing an essay, I frequently will have “tenses dilemma”. This is because I am not sure about the correct verb tense to use. For example, “In contrast to this argument, there had been many veterinary and toxicology studies, dating from the mid 1990s, which stated that…” The mistake in the above phrase is the word “had”. While doing the essay, I thought that it should be in simple past tense because of the phrase “dating from the mid 1990s”. However, the word “had” supposed to be “has” because the studies are still being carried out in present. The lesson that I learned in order to prevent me from having the “tenses dilemma” is to use the “verb tense timeline” that we went through in class. It is useful in determining the correct tense to use whether it is simple tense, past perfect tense, future tense or etc.

I find that punctuations are complication. From the tutorials, we learned that a comma is added to prevent “run-ons” and semicolon is use similar to “and” to combine sentences. Yet, I get confused with their usage sometimes. For example, “the US, Department of energy (DOE), increased its carbon capture…” and “According to Gore (2006), CO2 being a greenhouse gas rises up all the way...” From the 1^st example, there should not be any commas in between “US” and “Department”. This is because “Department of energy (DOE)” is the subject and belongs with “the US”. It would not make sense if they were separated and it would contradict the subject of the sentence. So the correction is “the US Department of energy (DOE), increased its carbon capture…” As for the 2^nd example, the correction would be “According to Gore (2006), CO2, being a greenhouse gas, rises up all the way...” The reason for having commas is because the phrase “being a greenhouse gas” is additional information for “CO2”. In future, in order to minimise punctuation mistakes, I have to read my sentence repetitively.

Lastly, my writing lacks of transition signals. Without transition signals, I feel that my paragraph is missing something that relates it to the previous paragraph. This is unfavourable as the usage of transition ensures good flow of ideas in writings. By not having it, the content of the paragraph seem hanging and incomplete. So, I will make it a point to refer to Appendix C of our textbook whenever I write. 

Roundtable Discussion Summary

The main discussion topic for group 1 was biofuel being a replacement for fossil fuel. The for side argued that biofuel is a cheaper, cleaner and a more advance alternative source of power. Some key points mentioned was that biofuel is environmentally friendly as it uses food crops. Countries that adopt this technology could also generate jobs and revenue through the ever growing biofuel technology. However, biofuel also have its cons; it is not 100% environmentally friendly as it may cause water pollution.Furthermore, a large area of land and fertilizers is needed for the cultivation of the biofuel crops. Therefore, biofuel technology is not very applicable to small countries such as Singapore. Based on the discussion, I feel that biofuel technology is mainly resource dependent making it less attractive; meaning it requires lots of land resources, manpower and time to cultivate the biofuels.

The second group discussed about green chemistry which involves "green" recycling of materials such as plastics.By adopting green chemistry, wastes such as gas emissions and pollutants from power plants could be bio degenerated into a more useful material such as strong carbon microsphere. On the other hand, the against side disagreed to the advantages of green chemistry due to cost and effectiveness. They argue that this technology is expensive and difficult to sustain especially during economic crisis times. I agree with the against side as economic influence is a major contribution to decide on a particular technology. In this case, green chemistry is too expensive to start with.

Th last group discussed about low-pressure carbon filter process technology. Basically it is a form of carbon capture and storage. The for side suggests to implement this technology so as to reduce the carbon dioxide emission from power plants and other carbon dioxide emitting industries. They also illustrated the schematic diagram of the technology and explain how it could extract useful carbon dioxide and recycle them for use in enhancing oil and methane recovery. However, the against side argued the the sustainability of this technology. This technology involves a great deal of restructuring and advance infrastructure. One of point of argument was the complexity of the pipelines network; it could cause leakage and disasters if not well maintained and sustained. Both the for and against sides have good points of arguments however, the against side's points were not concrete enough. They fail to explain and give examples of how the technology is a failure. On the contrary, the for side did a better job in providing facts and example of the advantages of this technology.

Summary on Pillows.J, 2007, “PRIVACY ISSUES (RFID)” and Grisso.M, 2009, “Is Placing Microchips in Humans the New Slavery?”

Little that we know Radio Frequency Identification Tags (RFID) has been widely use around the world. Further development of this technology such as RFID implants and RFID embedded passports has given rise to controversies regarding privacy and security.

Jasion Pillows explained it well in his article “PRIVACY ISSUES (RFID)”. In his article, he briefly explained the RFID technology and its history. One interesting fact that he pointed out was that the RFID technology was developed from the British’s Identity friend or foe (IFF) system used in WW2 to detect friendly forces. A brief explanation of the RFID technology highlighted its benefits and uses. He explained the types of RFID transmitter and transponder devices and the pros and cons of each type. He then explained his main idea regarding RFID privacy issues. His overview on “Human Chipping” tells us about the uses of RFID for healthcare (plant RFID in patients for quick data reference) and public places (chip VIPs for recognition and transaction). He also explained the controversies that link to the uses such as vulnerability to data alteration and virus infection on RFID chip. He ended off by stating his stand, a neutral, “I am not an advocate for either side; I am simply discussing the issues” (Pillows, 2007).

Another article is by Michael Grisso titled “Is Placing Microchips in Humans the New Slavery?” In this article Grisso explained the motives of planting microchips in humans. One of it is the ploy to get terrorist prospects implanted with microchips so they can be tracked. Like the 1st article, he also explained the risk of having this technology (ability to retrieve invaluable data and information). However, he also briefly explained the consequences if a criminal is planted, he cannot escape from the eyes of the satellites while having the microchip. A quote from Grisso (2009) “In the end we will all be puppets in the bigger picture” suggest that he is against the idea of this technology as privacy can be intruded by authorities.

After reading the two articles, my knowledge about microchip implantation in humans broadened. Both articles are useful in my preparation for the roundtable discussion as both articles highlighted the pros and cons of the technology. They also gave quite similar points of arguments, intrusion of privacy. However, I would say that the 1st article is more elaborate about the uses and the consequences. It also gave more examples to relate to the technology.

Five words/ phrases:
backscatter data – deflection of data

daunting – discouraging through fear

malicious code – designed to take an action that, if the end user knew about, s/he would not permit to happen

prospects – an apparent probability of advancement, success, profit, etc.

mandatory – authoritatively ordered; obligatory; compulsory

References:
Pillows.J, 2007, “PRIVACY ISSUES (RFID)”
http://citebm.business.uiuc.edu/TWC%20Class/Project_reports_Spring2007/Privacy%20Issues/pillows2/pillows2.pdf

Grisso.M, 2009, “Is Placing Microchips in Humans the New Slavery?”
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/802923/is_placing_microchips_in_humans_the.html?cat=15

Summary and My Take-away

My understanding of a global issue, climate change, has been broadened by 3 distinguished speakers on 30^th January 2009. After watching the video “The Inconvenient Truth”, I understood how the world is suffering from climate change and global warming. However, after listening from the perspectives of the speakers, my thoughts deepen about certain measures and implementations that we can take to counter climate change.

The first speaker, Professor Andrew Palmer, from the Centre of Offshore Research and Engineering spoke about the technology and politics of carbon dioxide capture and storage. He started off by explaining the effects of a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, about its nature and effects on earth such as absorbing infrared radiation from the sun and traps the heat in the earth’s atmosphere. He then touched on the response to climate change. One example would be switching to alternative energy sources (renewable resources, bio fuel, solar, nuclear). He also talked about measures that the UK government could take to mitigate global warming such as to tax petrol heavily. He then touched on the processes of carbon capture technology and its pros and cons. He added the political views of the technology and explained why it has not been widely implemented yet.

The second speaker was Associate Professor Benjamin K. Sovacool from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He talked about using Science & Technology System (STS) to address energy and technological problems. He started off by highlighting the traditional analysis of technology. He then elaborated more on the 4 kinds of determinisms; structural, autonomous, consequential and normative determinism. He suggested that a technological problem will never be a simple technological problem alone. He went on explaining about the factors contributed to technological problems such as political and regulatory obstacles, cultural and behavioural challenges, technical challenges, economic challenges, political challenges and social/cultural challenges. He ended off with a conclusion of how STS methods provide a useful lens to evaluate new technologies.

The third and final speaker was Dr Rajasekhar Bala. The main key point of his speech was the difficulties in dealing with global climate change. He talked about earth’s natural greenhouse effect and the consequences of enhanced greenhouse effects (global warming). He showed evidence of global warming and a simplified model on how to determine average temperature and greenhouse gases content on earth’s atmosphere. He also explained the possible effects of a warmer earth and suggested mitigation measures to counter global warming. He ended with the explanation about the difficulties in dealing with climate change and showed a slide of what we can do to reduce carbon dioxide emission.

In my point of view, all the speakers came to one conclusion which is, politics hinders technological advancement that can mitigate climate change. One good example would be the suggestion of changing to alternative energy such as nuclear power. Not only has it caused to a rise in political problems, it also deemed as unethical eventhough it is for a good cause. Another example would be carbon capture and storage technology. Some governments oppose the idea due to political and economical reasons although it is technically feasible. Therefore, I conclude that climate change will always be global problem unless everyone around the world comes to their consensus to mitigate it.

Global Warming: Are you willing to change?

The video, Inconvenient Truth, has great impact on me. Initially, I was aware that Global Warming is a major International crisis. However, I was not aware that it could lead to such a catastrophe to the extent of extinction of living things, including mankind. It stimulates my thinking on how I can be a better citizen of earth hoping to tackle the effects of global warming.

Without a doubt, I agree with the former United States Vice President, Albert Gore that global warming is a major problem in today’s world. The reason for mankind to enter this “period of consequences” is mainly due to technological advancements. In my point of view, it leads to major deforestation to cater for expansion of civilisations, more production of greenhouse gases due to rapid urbanisation and it also lead to overcrowding of population thus increasing the “stress” on earth. This “stress” weakens earth’s capability to sustain its citizens. Knowing all of these facts would not rectify the problem of global warming but it helps us identifying the root of the cause, greenhouse gases.

Having to know the root, Singapore government has implemented some policies to help reduce the problem. Singapore declared its commitments to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which is responsible for addressing climate change at global level. We also adopted the Kyoto Protocol in 20^th November 2007. We have implemented appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures such as encouraging development of clean technology, an international joint research and development to minimize impact of climate change and promoting public awareness. Other implementations include the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), the use of cleaner energy including renewable resources, to develop cost effective carbon mitigation technologies and to promote usage of hybrid cars. All these measures strive to reduce emission of greenhouse gases as a strategy to tackle the effects of global warming.

In my point of view, the most important measures to counter climate change or global warming would be education. I think it is important to educate people about the cause and effects of global warming. Through understanding the big picture, only then people would feel the need to change. Education can be a form of public awareness, word of mouth or even good habits. Such education should encourage people to save energy, recycle products and to use public transports. However, the government or an environmental interest group can only do so much. In Michael Jackson’s song, “Man in the mirror”, it says “I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror, I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways, And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer, If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place, Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change”. The song translates that to change the world, you need to change oneself. So, are you willing to change?

The Expanding World of Engineers

The world is changing and so do men and women of this global era. People are evolving every minute of every day, constantly facing new problems and challenges. This concept also applies to engineers. Engineers have evolved from being makers of cars, windmills and dams to being a designer for efficient transport, security and information management systems.

For today's world, engineers are labelled as problem solvers, not only in manufacturing sectors but also in the service sector. Based on Prof. Ramakrishna's article, "The Expanding World of Engineers" where he states that "the traditional scope of engineers has been broadened considerably to encompass the service sector, where engineers now contribute significantly to its overall growth." This "change", challenges engineers to travel to new heights of thinking and problem solving which can be achieve through an engineers' education system itself. In Singapore context, engineering students are exposed to a robust tertiary education which trains the mind to systematically analyse complex sets of information and to apply systems thinking in designing solutions. In lame man term, engineering students are not only taught how to design and build, but they are also taught how to rectify problems, improve and market.

In an engineering tertiary education, engineering students have to undergo various trainings in their respective engineering fields such as mechanical, electrical or chemical. These trainings help to equip them with the necessary skills for the engineering industry. Apart from a designed training curriculum for the students, they are also expose to real-time problems to train their problem solving skills and also aim to upgrade their level of thinking. Some universities encourage students to diversify their learning by having them to take electives from other fields of education which provides an all rounded education system. This is a great strategy to prepare the students for the working world.

In short, the level of engineers the world produce is dependent on the engineers' education itself. "The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." a quote from Albert Einstein.