porfolio 5

What if reading minds happens in the real life, while It did take place in the frictions and novels already. Today, humans have developed technologies like FMRI that is capable of predicting what specific word a person is thinking about by scanning his brain picture. There is no doubt that we will get the ability of knowing what is happening in our brains every second. This would be a great progress, while this also can be a horrible invention.With the help of better understanding of brains, most of the diseases caused by the disabilities of some parts of the brains will be solved. For example, deaf people will get the chance to hear Mozart again in the future. There is a kind of patients that they can only think but can’t t express, a reading brain machine will provide them with a method to communicate. What’s more, the condition that the suspects have been asked questions for several days and nothing come out will be a part of history. Police in the future don’t need scare or cheat the suspects for the truth. Instead of that, a brain reading machine and some leading questions are enough. No lying could escape under reading brain.However, just like I said, reading brains can lead to horrible results. It is said that the only private place for people today are their brains, since all the computers, phones, letters are under controlled. If government uses brain reading as a way of preventing danger just like listening our phones and reading our letters and e-mails, people in the future will have no secrets. Everyone is naked! The reading brain technology is like atomic technology in some degrees. They both give a big amount of benefits and can cause bad results if are not used carefully. However, scientists are scientists; they are not the person who determines how to make use of a kind of technology. The only thing we can do is pray and wait. Time will test our decisions.

portfolio 4

(i thought i had posted it but until today i found my portfolio 4 was "missing", maybe there was a technical problem....)

I have a lot of problems in writing. There are language problems, content problems and grammar problems. I think the most serious problems I have are the language problems. Since English is not my mother tongue, sometimes I cannot express what I’m thinking about correctly. When writing essays, I always write in English (of course) but think in Chinese. As a result, people often cannot understand what I’m saying if they do not know Chinese well. Moreover, sometimes even my Chinese friends find it difficult to understand my essays. One common language problem is the choice of words. Usually, if I want to express something but do not know the exact word, I will check with my dictionary. However, as most words have their specific use, sometimes I will choose a word which makes the whole sentence wired unconsciously. Another big language problem is the use of phrases. There are many similar phrases which have different meanings and must be use in different ways. For example, “on the contrary” and “in contrast”. I always mix them up.In my opinion, there are a few ways for me to improve. Firstly, I need to improve my vocabulary. As I have mentioned, I often have word choice problems. To avoid such problems, I must learn more new words and master how to use them. Secondly, I need to read more academic materials. I can benefit from others by familiarizing how they convey their ideas in the right way with the right words and phrases. Last but not least, I need to use English more. The more I use it, the more I will be familiar with it and express myself naturally.

portfolio 3

This is a summery of "Secure Cyberspace", one of the grand challenges of engineering.


Cyberspace is a newly formed system in late 20th century, but it poses many great challenges that engineers have ever met. Those challenges range from protection of privacy and completeness of the information to prevention of ID theft. Nowadays, Our daily life as well as military, economy and emergency services, more and more relies on the cyberspace. Any of these aspects of modern society can be easily influenced by cyberspace disruption. Till now, some important parts of cybersecurity have been protected well. However, ID theft and other cybercrimes are still serious problems and the cases of crime are increasing. Therefore, the security system should be improved as cybercrime becomes a serious problem for the Internet.
There are several ways to prevent malicious access to information and delivery of confidential messages.

The traditional way to protect computer is to install firewalls to prevent attacks. But the firewalls are not always workable and can be destroyed. Thus, engineers need to find new solutions. One better solution is to ask use relevant technologies to alternate both software and hardware of computers. For example the fingerprint security uses biometric technologies which requires instruments of scanning the fingerprint as well as the software to support the hardware. Another way to solve the problems is to develop better programming language which can increase the capacity of resistance of software to attacks.

After detecting problems, the process of fix and recovery is also important. What's more, chasing who are criminals may reduce to possibility of crimes in future.

Finally, a full-scale understanding of cyberspace problems should be emphasized since the problems may not be caused by individuals or organizations without any reasons. People are easily affected by surrounding social or cultural environment which may lead them to commit crimes.

Therefore, raising people’s understanding of psychology and sociology may help to reduce the rate of crime on cyberspace and law or regulations also should be strengthened by governments.

grammar edit about punctuation

The misuse of punctuation is very common in writing English articles. However, people do not usually pay attention to that kind of mistake. In our text-editing exercises, there also exist punctuation mistakes. So we need to learn how to recognize them as well as how to edit them. The following are some examples of p punctuation mistakes on commas:


1. Omitted commas
　　Use commas to signal nonrestrictive or nonessential material, to prevent confusion, and to indicate relationships among ideas and sentence parts.　　

Original sentence:　　When it comes to eating people differ in their tastes.
Correction:　　When it comes to eating, people differ in their tastes.

Original sentence:　　The Huns who were Mongolian invaded Gaul in 451.
Correction:　　The Huns, who were Mongolian, invaded Gaul in 451.　　
["Who were Mongolian" adds information but does not change the core meaning of the sentence because Huns were a Mongolian people; this material is therefore nonrestrictive or nonessential.]

2.Superfluous commas 　　
Unnecessary commas make sentences difficult to read.　　

Original sentence:　　Field trips are required, in several courses, such as, botany and geology.
　　correction:　　Field trips are required in several courses, such as botany and geology.　
　
Original sentence:　　The term, "scientific illiteracy," has become almost a cliche, in educational circles.
　　Correction:　　The term "scientific illiteracy" has become almost a cliche in educational circles.


3. Comma splices 　　
Do not link two independent clauses with a comma (unless you also use a coordinating conjunction: and, or, but, for, nor, so, yet).　　Instead use a period or semicolon, or rewrite the sentence.　　

Original sentence:　　In 1952 Japan‘s gross national product was one third that of France, by the late 1970s it was larger than the GNPs of France and Britain combined.

　Correction:　　In 1952 Japan‘s gross national product was one third that of France. By the late 1970s it was larger than the GNPs of France and Britain combined.　　

Original sentence:
Diseased coronary arteries are often surgically bypassed, however half of all bypass grafts fail within ten years.

Correction:　　Diseased coronary arteries are often surgically bypassed; however, half of all bypass grafts fail within ten years.



Here is a small exercise, it is very simple but you should pay attention on the correction of puncuations as well as the capital letters:

land's End is the southwest tip of the British mainland each year over a million people visit the area just over a mile offshore is the Longships reef this danger to ships is guarded by the Longships lighthouse

Assignment 1---topic: why people resist new technology?

Generally speaking, the reason why people resist new technology is because of the unfamiliarity. The term “new” here does not necessary to be an adjective to describe that a technology is newly discovered or released, but definitely means that a technology is not well known by people who resist it. Actually, it is a human nature that people tend to resist the things that they do not familiar with. For instance, old people usually do not want to move from their old house even if the new place is much more comfortable. Further, what unfamiliarity brings is fear, people feel dread when they do not have enough knowledge about new things which they can not control. As for the technology, this phenomenon happens more frequently since all the people with a common sense know that technology is powerful. Once the new technologies utilized improperly, the problem may be very difficult to control. Take, for example, the explosion of nuclear product in Chernobyl. There were 56 people died directly in the event, also, 9,000 people suffered cancer and 336,000 should resettle (Wikipedia, para. 3&5). Last but not least, the high cost of purchasing new technology will be one of the reasons of people’s resistance. As the new technology is often more advanced than the old one, higher price will be required if people want to own it. Thus, people will always deem the balance between the conveniences of the new technology or the high cost of purchasing it. In a conclusion, why people resist new technology is because they do not know the new technology well and worry about once the technology is applied, the result will be good or not. Moreover, the financial aspect should also take into consideration.



References:
Chernobyl disaster. (n.d.) Wikipedia. Retrieved 1 September 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

The idea: engineering solutions must always be designed with economic considerations in mind

Nowadays, it seems that the money worship influences engineers thinking and behavior. It is not a positive sense of worth, especially when engineers’ job can be regarded as “driving the advance of civilization”. However, everyone must confess that the economic aspect has become more and more significant in the engineering. According to Longman Advanced American Dictionary, scientists are people who exam, test, and prove facts. Compared with scientists, our engineers have to design and process scientists’ research achievement, and make it into reality. Therefore, the cost of solving the grand challenges in the future will be an inevitable factor that engineers should take into consideration. For example, we all know that the energy is consumed greatly when transferred from power plants to users because of the resistance of wires. Instead, scientists found that the superconductor can approach zero resistance when it is frozen enough. However, no engineers of any country today use the superconductor to make wires just because the cost of cooling the material overwhelms the benefits it will bring. Someone may say that it is only a pure economic problem, so it is easy to judge. Let us see another example. One of the methods of solving today’s global air pollution problem is to replace the fossil fuel by biofuel, such as ethanol. However, the cost of refining ethanol from corn is 29% higher than the cost of getting petrol. Only American engineers are trying to use the biofuel to replace the fossil fuel because their government can bear the extra cost.
In a conclusion, no engineer will ignore the economic aspect when they design and propose the engineering solutions.