Compare and contrast two waste disposal schemes

One of the most concerned environmental issues is about how to deal with waste. There are two possible waste disposal schemes, which are zero-waste and land-filling. Both of the two schemes have advantages and disadvantages. First, zero-waste is more environmental than land-filling. Land-filling is the oldest method to deal with waste. However, it still remains the same as before, just simply filling waste into land without any treatment. This will causes pollution near that area, especially land pollution and water pollution which can affect people’s daily life greatly. In contrast, land-filling is more economy than zero waste. According to Joanna, C, one premise of zero-waste is everything we buy and use will be made from materials that can be repaired, reused and recycled. However, this cannot easily reach in many developing countries. It is relatively difficult for those countries to invest in researching such material, and the price of the domestic goods will also increase. For these two schemes, they both have advantages and disadvantages. When choosing which schemes to use, we need to match up with the country’s condition. Like my country china, as a developing country, land-filling is more suitable. Zero-waste products have relative high prices, and most consumers will prefer cheap goods than zero-waste products. And it can hardly form its own market. But for land-filling, China has vast place to fill waste, where have little effects on people’s life. Till now, land-filling is more suitable for China than zero-waste

Climate change is an ethical issue to our generation

The influence of climate change affects greatly in the scale of the whole earth. And climate change has continued happening since the Earth emerged. Scientifically, Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather. For example, ice age is a result of climate change. And the latest ice age happened in some 20 thousand years ago. It is a kind of natural phenomena. However, climate change becomes more and more remarkable in recent years, because of more and more human beings’ activities interfered, especially after the industrial revolution. At this moment, global warming is the one of the climate change issues people concerned much, which happens mostly because of too much the emission of greenhouse gases into atmosphere. In this case, climate change is not only a simply phenomenon any more, but also dues to artificial influence.
According to Broome, science can help human to deal with climate change, it belongs to scientific issues. But what most common people should do is an ethical issue. I strongly agree his opinion. Climate change is an ethical issue to our generation, because it is our responsibility to reduce bad influence of humans’ activities to climate change, and this responsibility comes from humans’ ethical concept without any juristic restriction.
Firstly, no matter what we have done about climate change so far, the influence of climate change cannot affect us very much. For example, even though we have already emitted so much greenhouse gases into atmosphere, global warming can only affect our lives after decades of years. However, most of us may not live till that time. In other word, what will happen is none of our business, but our next generation’s. But from ethical aspect, we cannot let these kinds of things happen. We should not benefit through scarifying the future of our posterity. Imagining that if we still do not limit the emission of greenhouse gases, global warming could become more and more serious. As a result, most of ice will melt, and the sea level will increase. At that time, what the movie waterworld shows us may become into reality.
Secondly, there is not a perfect juristic system to limit the effect of human being to climate change. Till 2005, more than 160 countries have already signed the Kyoto protocol, but America, which is the country that emits greenhouse gas most in the world, still not signed. Why this could happen is because that there are not any laws or treaties to force America to sign it. Another example is littering. Most countries do not have exactly law to prohibit littering. The influence of whether we litter comes from our ethical concept. Singapore as a famous country, which has exactly laws about littering. But the purpose of the laws is to maintain the positive impression of Singapore, but no deal with climate change. So it is decided by our ethical concept that whether we litter or not.
In conclusion, in our generation, climate change is still an ethical issue to most common people. We can choose whether to do some good influence to climate change or not. Although it belongs to ethical issue, we still have the responsibility to leave our prosperity a comfortable climate.

W11T1-Brain-Mapping

Human being is the most intelligent species among all known creatures, because they have an amazing brain. Human’ brain is very complex and elusive, even though, the most intelligent brain ever, Albert Einstein’ brain was just developed a little more than 12 percentages. So brain is always unsearchable. But according to a new research published in journal science, a neural technology let mind reading become possible though detecting brain activities by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, brain-mapping still has positive and negative effects.
This technology has many positive effects. First, it is helpful to some people with mental diseases. It can help scientist study mental disorders, alcoholism, aggression or pedophilia, and find efficient methods to cure those patients. Second, it can help justice department in criminal investigation. Usually, a guilty suspect will show recognition in his mind, but an innocent suspect will not. Third, scientist can create a data base of this technology, which will be helpful to study and exploit human’s brain. There are many another useful applications of this technology. On the contrary, brain mapping also has many negative effects. The most important, this technology is still in the experimental stages and not well developed, so sometimes it cannot works. And the data base of the brain-mapping is still not completed. At present, it is impossible to widespread this technology.
Brain-mapping technology has many negative effects, especially some unethical abuses; we can predict and overcome these potential effects. First, a standard of how to use this technology legally and ethically should be set. It is necessary to protect people’s privacy. And we should also determine its reliability, particular in criminal judgment. Under a well-control situation, brain-mapping can be well made use of.

W9T2-The difficulties I have in writing my engineering classes

I am studying in faculty of engineering over 3 mouths. I think I come to understand engineering. As an engineer, you need to think critically and systematically. Sometimes, engineer also needs to express their thoughts in writhing. During the 3-mouths study, I find some difficulties I have in my engineering classes.
First, I am a Chinese-speaker. English is a foreign language to me. Although I have learnt English for over 6 years, I still cannot handle it as well as those English-speakers. When I write in English, more or less, I will be affect by the way of Chinese writing. Most of my work looks like translating from a Chinese article directly. I remembered that I was suffered in PC1222 last year, because of that problem. In PC1222 exam, there were six short questions which stated physical problems, and use what I learned in PC1222 to explain it. I found that although I knew what the principles in those questions were, I still could not express and write properly. I thought when the tutor looked at my paper; he would be suffered for understanding what I want to say. As a result, I did not get a high mark in this module. This is the biggest problem during my study.
Second, I find that my vocabulary is deficient and inaccuracy. This semester, I take SSA 2211 which talks about the evolution of a global city-state about Singapore. I need to write two essays to show how much I can understand this module. The word for each essay is 1200 to 1500 words. During writing, I found that I always repeated some words again and again, I cannot find another words to replace, and sometimes when I find a word to replace, and it perhaps cannot express what I want express well. Then when reading my essay, I think most readers will feel bored.
I think the best way to solve the difficulty is to read more engineering writing, enrich my English vocabulary and think in a English-speaker way.

W7T1-One of the 14 grand challenges for engineering

My article comes from the website “NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING”. It is about the 14 grand challenges for engineering in 21st century. Among 14 challenges, I choose “make solar energy economical” as the most important challenge. The article I read and summarize is about this topic.
The first part talks about why solar energy is important. Any energy forms on the earth are solar energy in origin; however, the energy we used directly from solar energy is fractional. The advantage of solar energy is that we can attain is almost everywhere. Therefore solar energy still has great potential to develop. Another reason is that traditional energy cannot afford enough energy to the increasing energy demands. Meanwhile, fossil fuel produces much pollution which may result in the global warming.
The second and third parts state how to improve solar energy technology. The challenge for engineering is to improve the conversion of solar energy efficiently and make the manufacturing cost economical. Most of solar cell today can convert solar energy to electrical energy in 10 to 20 percentages; however, the cost to produce solar cell is 3 to 6 times higher than current price. One of the possible ways is to develop nanotechnology which can transfer solar energy to circuit. And find a particular material which can absorb light and then drive changes to move.
The last part relates to how to store solar energy. No matter how efficient and economical we can convert solar energy, we need to store during cloudy weather or nighttime. One of the possible solutions is to produce a kind of fuel cell which can store solar energy into chemical energy.
In conclusion, if we succeed settling this challenge, we can use solar energy more efficient and economical; we do not need to worry about whether we can leave any energy to our descendants any more.
Reference:
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING, <http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspx>

W5T2-My grammar mistakes

No matter how good you are at English writing, you may still make some kinds of mistakes, such as grammar mistakes or vocabulary mistakes. As English is not my native language, I always meet some grammar mistakes in my English writing. Looking at some articles I wrote before, the most mistakes in my article is about sentence structure. The reason why I often make this mistake is that English sentence structure is very different from Chinese sentence structure. Therefore, I always write English sentence in Chinese sentence structure. Firstly, I always use “there have/has” instead of “there be” sentence structure. For example, when I want to express that there is a river flowing in front of my house, instead I may write as this way, “there has a river flowing in front of my house.” Another problem is about the object clause. If the object clause is an asking sentence, the object clause should be in stating form; however, I usually use asking form. For example, if sentence should be “Can you tell me where you are from?” probably, I will write “Can you tell me where are from?” Some similar mistakes happen frequently in my English writing, if I do not pay much attention when writing. Secondly, I like use coordinating conjunctions together, because in Chinese they always come together. For example, in my writing, “although” and “but” come together, “because” and “so” come together. I am used to applying language in Chinese way. It is difficult to change this habit. But if I want to improve my English, it is necessary to think in English way.

Why people resist new technology

In the past twenty years, technology develops and updates at an amazing speed. New technologies are born every day. However, in our daily life, the majority of people still resist new technology. In my opinion, why this could happen is because that people do not want to accept new things in their mind and human nature is averse to change. First, people resist new technology in their mind. Most people consider that the old technology should be more suitable and reliable than new technology, although they may know that the facts are opposite. In people’s mind, they usually think that the familiar things are safe, while the strange things are dangerous. For example, genetic food as a new technology product is considered having potential dangers to human. People need time to become familiar with new technology. This reason makes it difficult for people to accept new technology. Second, I think one aspect of the human nature is to do things in the same way. When a person does a certain thing, a reflection or memory will be formed in the brain. The next time, when the same situation comes, the brain normally works as how it worked before. There is a widespread story in China. Long ago, a viper bit a person; the person was nearly dead. The memory which snake is dangerous formed in his brain. After he recovered, he began to fear any snakes, even the reflection of a long rope in a cup which looks like a snake. This is called “a burnt child dreads the fire”. Thus, many people are used to doing things in the familiar way, and they resist new technology. For these two reasons, we can understand why people resist new technology. The resistance is mostly psychological. If people can overcome the psychological barrier, fewer people will resist new technology.