How to predict and minimize potential unethical abuses of research?

New scientific discoveries and research can make people understand many things that are unknown before and provide people better and more comfortable life. However, at the same time, they bring us some negative impacts. For example, the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can help detect and locate brain activity when people thinking and predict the brain activation patterns and thus contributes a lot in the field of treating mental diseases, but also may raise a series of ethical problems, such as abuses and testing of children. Therefore, researchers should predict and minimize potential unethical abuses of their works.

Firstly, access is a significant issue. Researchers should well keep all the data related to the research, ranging from the data and experiment results to the final work. As under some circumstances, a few unethical researchers and organizations may embezzle the unfinished works to obtain profits or reputation from them. However, they may misuse the information and cause some problems. For example, the manufacturing of nuclear weapons and other threatening weapons should be the top secret. All the things related to the manufacturing process and the material needed must be taken very good care of, in case of misuse by terrorists. Thus, the access to the database should be secured.

Moreover, in order to prevent the potential unethical abuses happening, researchers have to predict the potential abuses caused by the research in advance and think of ways to overcome them. Therefore, before the research done, researchers should minimize the possible troubles and then prevent wicked people making use of it.

Also, rules and regulations must to be made in dealing with the unethical problems.

In conclusion, the development of science and technology raises some ethical issues. To prevent and minimize the unethical abuses of the research works, researchers have to be responsible for the accuracy and security of their works and be aware of the potential unethical issues.

Difficulties in English writing for engineering classes

Like other academic writings, English writing for engineering classes requires students’ good writing skills, but also needs articles written in a formal style of writing. However, in addition, English writing for engineering classes in some way differ from other writing styles and it has got the unique characteristic difficulties. After entering the university, I start realize that it is really hard to write well for engineering classes.

First of all, English writing for engineering classes demands much more logic and analysis. It is usually to explain some scientific phenomena and even design process to manufacture a material given some properties in a rational way, rather than to simply express one’s idea and introduce a concept. For example, for course MLE1101, some questions ask students to design such a material which is flexible, light and has high strength. To answer such questions, we must get known of properties of each material, integrate all the information we have, and finally express the analysis process step by step. Therefore, students should pay more attention to the logic and rational organizations in English writing for engineering courses.

Furthermore, many engineering students are annoyed at those disgusting lab reports. I heard from my seniors that till a sophomore and above, we may need to write a lab report for up to 35 pages- long. To write such a long report, we must make it very well-organized and elaborate ourselves clearly. The target readers of the lab reports are the lab instructors who have read plenty of lab reports, possibly for the same experiment. The lab reports, which they are very impressed on, should be both written in a skillful and academic manner, but also creative and innovative. It means that students can use the current knowledge to deduce other possible phenomena and dare to make assumption.

All in all, engineering is not just about repeated theories and formulas. It is a branch of learning, which enables students analysis problems more logically and improve their senses of innovation. English writing for engineering classes is more about description and explanation. It is a special part of academic writing, which requires clear logic and creative ideas.

Summary for Provide access to clean water

Today, the demand of water use worries many people in many areas in the world. More deaths are caused by lack of clean water than war. Without clean water, diseases are spread consequently in some countries, for example, nearly 5000 children die from diarrhea-related diseases throughout the world each day. Globally, water is far more enough, but only 3percent of the planet’s water is fresh which is also in the form of snow or ice. Therefore, only a small amount of water is ready for human use which is unfortunately distributed unequally in geography. On the other hand, pollution in some developing countries affects clean water supply.

To solve the problem, engineers have historically been the main force to come up with methods. One way is to divert the flow of water from the plenty area to the arid area such as in China, India, etc. However, it is not a long-term, widespread solution which will not be able to meet agriculture need and lead some political issues. Another way is to extracting the salt from seawater. This is not a fresh idea and has already been used in many regions like Saudi Arabia and Israel, but the cost of building desalination plants is very high which are not suitable for many poor countries. Some new technologies such as nano-osmosis and nanotubes will reduce the cost but it requires engineers to continue to work on it for general and extensive use. There are some other ways to get more clean water such as: technologies which are being used to improve recycling of wastewater and sewage treatment; some new ways to reduce water use especially in agricultural irrigation; small decentralized distillation units.

In a word, engineers are demanded to work on new efficient ways to get clean water.

Portfolio 2

One of my most common grammar mistakes is about how to distinguish different past tenses, including simple past, present prefect simple and past perfect simple. For example, in a sentence “I ___ (arrive) for about one hour”, what is its tense and what is the accurate form of the verb arrive we should fill in.
Generally, there are three sub-tenses under past tense, which are simple past, present perfect simple and past perfect simple. All of them are used in the condition that the action happened in the past. However, they have significant differences.
Simple past is used for describing acts that have already been concluded and whose exact time of occurrence is known. Furthermore, simple past is used for retelling successive events. That is why it is commonly used in storytelling. Simple past is formed for regular verbs by adding –ed to the root of the word. Example: He did not have breakfast this morning.
Present perfect simple is used for describing a past action’s effect on the present. It is used for events that have just been secluded as well as for events that have not yet occurred. Present perfect simple is formed by combining have/has with the main verb’s past participle form. Example: He has not arrived, but he’ll get here in ten minutes.
Past perfect simple is used for describing secluded events that have occurred before something else followed. Past perfect simple is formed by combining the simple past form of to have with the simple past form of the main verb. Example: After he had visited his relatives, he went back home.
Exercise:
1. She was reading a book when her mother _____ (come) home.
2. My tutorial _____ (finish) yet.
3. He said that he ____ (go) to Australia many times.

Challenge of Sustainable Development

Thanks to engineering and engineers, today, we are provided a more comfortable and entertaining world with better sanitation, transportation and high quality of life. It is such a pleasure for us to enjoy the convenience and comfort of life, but at the same time, we are continuously consuming the finite resources on the earth and doing harm to the environment.

Nature gives us extremely great quantity of materials and energy to use in building our country and improving our life, but not infinite. Wood, water, petroleum, mineral and many other materials are the resources that cannot be regenerated. It means that once they are used up, we will no longer have the access to them. Nowadays, more and more reports show that human beings are facing the challenge of energy shortage. Therefore, we must immediately look forwards and develop new sources of energy, such as renewable energy and nuclear energy which can meet the demand of sustainable development. However, these renewable energy and nuclear energy are more expensive than the traditional energy because they are more difficult to obtain and most people cannot afford them. Thus, to meet the challenge of sustainable development in the futures of engineering, engineers are required to manufacture some energy that is not only sustainable but also accessible by most people.

Moreover, global warming, land degradation and more and more natural disasters caution people to pay more attention to take care of our environment as the world industrialized. In the past one hundred since the 1st industrial revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, people blindly wanted to fast the industrialization progress, and ignore the harm of the pernicious gases emitted and waste released to the environment and our health, so now we should make full use of the “clean” energy and minimize the pollution as long as engineering develops.

All in all, when we see the grand accomplishments of engineering, we should realize the challenge of sustainable development in the future of engineering. Only to meet all those challenges can we make our world a more healthy, safe and sustainable place to live in.