E-Portfolio Task 6

World’s total energy is mainly contributed by fossil fuels, which are non-renewable sources, producing greenhouse gases during generation of electricity. Hence, solar energy, which is known for an environmentally friendly and a free source, has the potential to grow. However, there are challenges to be overcome in order to capture, convert and store sunlight for use.  There are some technologies such as using dishes to concentrate sun ray’s to heat fluids that can drive engine and produce power and direct production of electric current from captured sunlight with solar photovoltaic cells. Besides that, approach like using new materials which is arranged in novel way and the aid of nanotechnology increase the efficiency of solar power. In order to make solar energy more economical, approaches like using new material to cuts fabrication cost. Since current solar cell requires a material to absorbed the sunlight so that there will be flow of electric charge, enhancing the material purity is needed because it will reduce impurities. Due to its high cost, nanorods can be used to absorb the sunlight and enable the charges to be flowed. Electric charges also can be collected by using a combination of dye molecules to absorb sunlight. On the other hand, solar energy is not widely used is because the sunlight is not constant which depends on time, locations and weather conditions. Thus, it is a necessity to capture and store the sunlight. These can be done by pumping water for energy storage. In addition, it is possible to store the sunlight in the chemical bonds of molecules and then duplicate to produce fuel.  Basically, solar energy is not so efficiency yet very costly. Thus, scientists still have to acquire method that can improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of manufacturing as well.

 

The original passage “Make Solar Energy economical” is from http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspx

E-portfolio Task 5

Back to the historical age, the concept of mind readers lies in the heart of nation, especially for those ambitious emperors like Genghis Khan who intends to rule the world. This is because mind readers could be very useful as it enables one to know how the others’ mind. That is the reasons why there are many people hope to have ability like telepathy.  Hence, brain mapping is surely a breakthrough in this field.

            A new discovery can be viewed as a flip coin. One side will be the advantages while the other sides will be the disadvantages. The advantage of brain mapping is that we can predict one’s next action through the pattern produced by the brain activity. So we can reduce possible crimes. If one brain shows images about crime such as robbery, murder, most probably the person will commit such crime, so they will be blacklisted and their actions will be observed. However, this will lead to ethical issue which people will question who are the one that need to undergo the brain mapping test. Is it reasonable to apply this to the relatives or families of the criminals? We also cannot neglect other possible criminals who have not being tested by brain mapping.

            Brain mapping can be applied in other fields too. For instance, employers may require the workers to do the brain mapping test so that can check who never pay attention during working time. Moreover, parents may want map their children brain with famous musician, artist or sportsman in order to know whether their children have potential in the field (Ethics and mapping the brain, 2003). Some people may also require their potential spouse to do this test to check whether his or her lover is reliable life partner. Brain mapping could be abused if it never takes into consideration seriously. Perhaps one day the citizens may require the leaders of the country to go through the test so that they will know they have made the correct choice to vote for them.

            It seems to be the brain determines our future. If the brain never shows any good images or positive result, this person will most likely cannot get a job, yet this is not the worst. He will be abandoned from his family if he shows violent characteristic. In addition, he also cannot find a girl friend or build up own family. However, this sounds impractical. One’s character cannot be measured solely by their brains. Both nature and nurture will affect one’s behavior and mind. The best way to minimize the impact from brain mapping is through education. Thus, to minimize of this potential unethical issue, there must have lawsuit associated with this technology. The leaders of the country will have to come out conclusion about this application.

 

Reference:

Lou Marano, (June 3, 2003). Ethics and Mapping the Brain Washington Times

 

E-portfolio Task 4

            Malay has been designated as the most important medium in communication in Malaysia, hence I learned almost all the subjects in this language. This is why I face difficulties when writing in my engineering classes because the work has to be written in English. Let’s take the tutorial for MLE 1101 as example. There are a lot of scientific terms that need to be remembered. The problem is that some of the terms are the same as Malay. For instance, atom is the same spelling for both English and Malay. However, there are many words that sound alike but their spellings are different. We have carbon in English, but “karbon” in Malay. It could be quite confusing whenever I try to understand the concepts or principles. Thus, it will take up a lot of time when solve the problems.

In order to solve this problem, I have listed down all the common errors. By comparing the English term with Malay equivalent terms, I find out there are common pattern for the difference between English and Malay. For example, the “s” and “k” in Malay words would be replaced by “c” in English. This is why I got process and “proses”. Despite of that, the “c” is either being omitted or replaced by “k”. Nickel and “nikel” would be a good pair of example. Figure out of all these has helped me a lot when writing work for my MLE.

Besides that, tenses can be quite troublesome. This is because the lab report should be written in past tense. Nevertheless, we do not have tenses in Malay as the verbs do not indicate when the actions occur. Since there are so many types of past tense, write a good report seem to be mission impossible to me. The only way to improve this grammar mistakes is to read more scientific articles so that I will not do the same mistakes again. To build up a strong basic, I would like to do more exercises to get myself more familiar with the English terms and tenses because i believe that practise makes perfect.

E-portfolio task 3

The accessibility of water for drinking and other uses has arisen to a crucial issue.  Insufficient of water supply has caused hardship in human life such as poor health. This is due to the distribution of water is uneven; weather condition, political and economic barriers are also contribute to this problem. Moreover, most of the water is not suitable for most purpose as water is salty, or appears in the form of snow or ice, or even underground aquifers. The worst is some of the water supply in developing countries is being polluted. Since the usage of water in different aspects is increasing, engineers have to seek a method to encounter the needs as current technology unable to provide adequate clean water supply. Diverting the flow of water to regions that faces scarcity is one of the methods used to overcome this issue. However, it is unable to meet agricultural needs and the distribution of water could be uneven and thus become political issue. Desalination able provide clean supply water, but it is impractical as this method is costly and requires lots of energy which only suitable for seaside cities in plentiful countries.  Even though improvement in new technologies have a better approach to the water problem, yet it is still cannot be solved and other approaches will be needed. For example, there are improvements done on recycling of wastewater and sewage treatment.  The concept of reducing water use also has to be bear in human mind. “Dripping irrigation” is an advance for agricultural irrigation in order to minimize the water demand for agriculture. Another better approach would be small decentralized distillation units which applies economical distribution of water to rural and low-income areas. Indeed, technological solutions to the water problem should be address to inequitable distribution of water resources.

The original passage "Provide ccess to clean water" is from http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/

E-portfolio task 2

One of my common mistakes is tense. According to Wikipedia, grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs. [1] Generally, we can categorise the tenses into three main groups which are past, present and future. Each of this has simple forms, progressive forms, perfect forms, and perfect progressive forms. 

Simple present tense is used to express the action or situation that exists only now or being repeated in a period of time. For example, “I work at a law firm.” While the simple past tense is used to express the action or situation that already ended. For example, “I worked at a law firm last before.” To describe action or situation that will be happen in the future, simple future tense will be used. For example, “I will work at a law firm next month.” 

Present progressive tense is used to show the action that is happening now. This tense is formed by using am or is or are with the verb form ending with -ing. For example, “I am working at a law firm now.” But we use past progressive tense to describe the action that is happening in the middle of the other action. This tense is formed by using was or were with the verb form ending with -ing. For example, “I was studying in NUS before I work at this law firm.” To show an action will be in the progress in the future, future progressive tense will be used. This tense is formed by using will be or shall be with the verb form ending with -ing. For example, “I will be working at the law firm next month.” 

How to describe an action that already happened in the past but it is related to present? Present perfect tense is the correct one to be used. For example, “I have worked at this law firm since 2005.” Past perfect tense describes how long an action had taken place before another action. For example, “I had worked as a promoter before I work at a law firm.” While the future perfect tense shows an action will be in progress in the future before another action had taken place. For example, “By the time waiting for result, I will have worked at a law firm.” Briefly, all these above are the correct ways to use the different tenses.

References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense
[2] http://stcloudstate.edu/grammar/tenses.html#simple

[3] http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/english_tenses.htm
[4] http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/sequence.htm

Exercises (http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/exercises/test.htm)

The sentences below contain common verb form mistakes. Find the errors and correct them.

EXAMPLES:
went
A) She would always go on vacation last summer.

1. When I was a kid, I dreamt that I would always be a doctor when I grew up.
2. I would live in Paris with my family when I was a child.
3. I used to going to the park with my pet every day when I lived in Los Angeles.
4. When he asked for help with his project, I told him I was going to help him.
5. She would constantly be tall when she was in elementary school.

Answers:

1. When I was a kid, I dreamt that I would always be a doctor when I grew up.

used to
2. I would live in Paris with my family when I was a child.

go
3. I used to going to the park with my pet every day when I lived in Los Angeles.

would
4. When he asked for help with his project, I told him I was going to help him.

used to
5. She would constantly be tall when she was in elementary school.

E-portfolio task 1

In my opinion, the greatest invention by human thus far is the operation of various machines by using electricity. Invention of these machineries has definitely made our life easier in one way or another. Worldwide, there is a wide range of energy resources available to generate electricity. Since the sources of fossil fuels are finite, I think researches being carried out to allow nuclear energy and solar energy to replace the role played by fossil fuels is of utmost importance to the profession.

Nuclear fuel is made from naturally occurring radioactive element such as uranium. Although nuclear energy is a form of non-renewable energy, nuclear fuels could last up to centuries, even when the demand for it increases. During normal operation, nuclear power plants do not emit dangerous fumes such as carbon dioxide, smoke or other gases which contribute to global warming. However, the “spent” fuel stays dangerously radioactive after fusion occurs. Nuclear reactors also have waste disposal problems. These reactors produce nuclear waste products which emit dangerous radiation. As nuclear radiations harm the cells of the body which can lead to severe illnesses in human beings, the reactors cannot be disposed off like ordinary garbage. [1]Therefore, the main challenge faced by the engineers now is to find a way to operate nuclear power plants in such a way that nuclear fusion does not release contaminants into the environment and nuclear waste problems are managed properly so as not to harm the ecosystem.

Solar electricity is created by converting solar energy from the sunlight. Even though solar energy is the most abundant energy source on the planet, solar electricity is only used for space heating and hot water production. This is because the amount of sunlight that arrives on the earth's surface is not constant depending on the location, time and the weather conditions. [2]Another problem is that there is no sunlight during the nights or during rainy days. Perhaps it sounds impractical to capture and store the sunlight, but the advantages that come with the usage of solar energy cannot be denied. Unlike the process of burning fossil fuels which is a major contributor to the green house effect and human health problems, solar energy is non-polluting. Besides that, solar energy is a form of renewable energy hence we need not have to worry whether this source of energy will run dry one day. Thus, it is worth for the engineers to seek for solutions to collect large amount of solar energy and maximising its usage.

If fossil fuels can no longer support the generation of electricity, then there will be an emergence of energy crisis. From this, we can conclude that it is essential for engineers to do researches and developments on solar and nuclear energy due to the fact that fossil fuels are not a long-lasting source of energy.


References
[1] http://library.thinkquest.org/3471/nuclear_energy.html
[2] http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/renewable/solar.html