Mind reading

Mind reading is now not confined to folklore and science fiction; rather it is a reality approaching to us. Mind reading brings human beings benefits. For example, scientists will use this technology in the study of autism, disorders of thought and semantic dementias. Furthermore, it will be probably used by the security service to prevent potential spies and terrorists. As we all know, every technology is a sword of two sides, and the same goes for mind reading. Certainly, it also will trigger unethical problems. Firstly, this technology is likely to be spread and abused in detecting terrorists and criminals. It is true that by using it the police will probably quickly and successfully catch the targeted terrorists or criminals. However, concerned about its error rate, the police cannot totally rely on the information it provides. Moreover, during the process, mind reading will violate suspects’ privacy and trigger problems. Secondly, mind reading will probably be popular in employers. Employers may use this technology frequently to determine employees’ working attitudes, which will violate employees’ privacy greatly. Lastly, children are likely suffering a lot from this technology. Parents will try to match their children’s brain scans to those of scientists, artists or authors. Parents will use scans to find out their children’s aptitude in terms of science, art, business and so on, before developing their children’s potential. All these behaviors using mind reading will raise unethical problems. To minimize and prevent these unethical abuses, society should set up standards and rules. These standards and rules should specify who are eligible to use mind reading, to what extent mind reading is reliable and under what conditions it can be used. Furthermore, we had better strictly limit it to scientific researches and government services.

Writing in engineering classes

In engineering classes, there are seldom some writing essays for students to finish, especially for first-year students who just begin their courses. However, in MLE tutorials, I do meet some difficulties in writing for some questions. After reading the questions asking for explanations to some phenomena, I sometimes just get lost. In these cases, I just get rough ideas about answers, which means I do not know exact terminologies associated with the answers. As a result, my answers are wordy and not accurate. For example, one question was that “Explain why no hole is generated by the electron excitation involving a donor impurity atom.” The rough idea was that this electron was associated with a foreign atom and thus no hole was created. However, this rough was not suitable for answering, as it was somewhat oral. After I looked through the PPT slides, I got the answer: each electron was excited from an impurity level, and no corresponding hole was created within the valence band. The key words are donor electron and hole in the valence band.
To solve this kind of problems, I think I should focus on the following points. Firstly, I should listen to lectures carefully and try to get key words and critical points. Secondly, I had better go through the textbooks and memorize important terminologies and concepts. Last, I would pay special attention to my learning in English language and especially the aspects on how to express ideas in a concise and precise way. All in all, English plays an important role in learning, especially for us international students whose first language is not English. Studying textbooks written in English and writing in English are quite challenging for us.

Summary of MIT opens new 'window' on solar energy

Summary of MIT opens new 'window' on solar energy
MIT researchers come up with an innovative work on solar energy recently. This work makes it possible that light is gathered over a large area like a window and then concentrated on edges to produce energy. This innovative work involves a mixture of two or more dyes painted onto a plane of glass or plastic. The dyes work together to absorb the light of different light wavelengths, reemit the light and transport it to the solar cells at the edges. The process indicates that it is enough for solar cells to just cover the edges, which decreases the cost dramatically. Moreover, according to the researchers, the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell. All in all, the advantage of this work is the increases in efficiency and decreases in costs. By contrast, currently solar cells have to cover the whole roof to gather solar energy, which at the same time increases the difficulties of deploying and maintaining them. (Thomson, E.A, July 10, 2008)
Actually the similar idea about adding dyes into glass or plastic initially came up in the 1970s. However, the idea was abandoned later because little light reached the solar cells at the edges and much of it lost in the transportation. The engineers in MIT in optical techniques developed for organic light-emitting diodes and lasers. Some researchers came up with applying these advanced techniques in solar energy. The result was that they succeeded in making such suitable dyes added to glass that can collect and transport light. This revolutionary work will bring great benefits to human beings especially faced with shortage of resources and global warming. Realizing this work’s great potential, some researchers are starting a company to develop and commercialize this technology. They believe it will be widely spread within three years because the system is easy to build and run.
References: Thomson, E.A, July 10, 2008. MIT opens new ‘window’ on solar energy. From http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/solarcells-0710.html

The Use of Articles (a, an, the)

One of my pitfalls in English grammars is misusing of articles. Articles, including a, an, the, sometimes is quite confusing to me. Furthermore, such a pitfall occurs easily especially when I focus on the content of one sentence or the structure of it. Anyway, I am careless, and misusing of articles occurs often. After I studied using of articles through Internet, I found using them correctly is actually challenging.
The articles are divided into two categories. One is definite articles, including “the”. The other is indefinite articles, including “a” and “an”. Literally, when we use “the”, we refer to a specific or particular thing. When we use “a” or “an”, we refer to a general case or thing. For example, I just saw the most popular film in this year, which means I just saw that particular film. In the contrast, I would like to see a film, and here a film refers to any film.
As to the differences between “a” and “an”, “a” begins with an initial constant sound, while “an” begins with an initial vowel sound. An initial vowel sound does not refer to an initial letter of the adjacent word. For example, we use “a European country” instead of “an European country”. In addition we must distinguish count and noncount nouns, and we do not add “a” or “an” before a noncount noun even we want to refer to a general case.
As to the use of “the”, we should note its geographical use. We do not use “the” before names of most countries and territories, names of streets, names of lakes, bays, mountains. However, we should use “the” before names of rivers, seas, oceans, names of desserts, forests, gulfs, peninsulas, geographical areas and points on the globe.
I need to apply the rules listed above to avoid misusing of articles in the later academic writing.

Energy: a grand challenge for Engineering

Recently petrol’s price is increasing sharply, and this draws people’s great attention to petrol and its substitutes. However, for engineers and scientists, energy problems have been a long and great concern since the end of 20th century. For the following 21st century, engineers and scientists will need to do more to meet increasing demands with limited fossil resource. This essay will focus on the limitation of fossil resource, the technology of improving the efficiency and the bright prospect of new resources.
As we all know, the fossil resource, including petrol and coal, is limited. Firstly, it usually takes millions of years to form such resources from the bodies of dead animals and plants. Thus, it is almost impossible to have more fossil resource within the survival of human beings. Secondly, for thousands of years, our main energy comes from the fossil resource. Especially for hundreds of years after industrial revolution, the consuming speed is greater and greater. As a result, the fossil resource left is very limited.
Faced with limited fossil resource, we need to improve the efficiency of using it to get the maximum energy. For example, we can convert solid coal into powder to burn more efficiently and gain more energy. Another example is mixing petrol with alcohol, which is wide spread in some parts of China, and feedback is quite good.
Because of limited fossil resource and increasing demands, we have to develop new resources. Among new resources, sunshine and nuclear fusion are accessible and popular. We can get huge energy from these two resources, if we find proper and efficient ways to make full use of them. Certainly, it is we engineers’ duty to accomplish it. Besides great energy, these two resources are clean, which means they do not generate any toxic gas, liquid or solid.
In conclusion, as engineers, we will shoulder the duty of improving efficiency of using resources and developing new resources. To achieve this target, we should study and work hard from undergraduate studies.