Portfolio 4

English language is widely used around the world as a universal language of communication. It is used as the language for teaching in many countries, as well as for closing business deals in the form of contracts. Hence, the competency in English language is very important for an engineering student, both in academic life and prospective career.

An engineering student’s academic life involves writing numerous reports for his project work and lab session. Therefore, the competency in English language is very important for the student to express his views and ideas in written forms. It is also essential for him to do a good presentation for his project work. A report with poor language, but good content, would still be marked down. Likewise, a poor presenter would make the whole presentation sound bad. Hence it is important for an engineering student to have good English language competency, in order for him to stand out.

Next, it is a fact that many business contracts are in English. Also, English language serves as the basis of communication for businessmen of different race and nationality. Therefore, it is essential for an Engineering student to be competent in English language. If you were unable to write a good resume or speak well in a job interview, you will most likely not get the job. The employers are looking for someone who is both academically inclined, and with good English presentation skills, so that he would be able to communicate well with clients. Hence, the competency in English language is very important for an Engineering student’s career prospect.

In conclusion, English language competency is important for an Engineering student to score well academically, as well as in impressing his potential employer. Without it, his career prospect would not be good.

Portfolio 3

During our roundtable, we brought up several reasons why skeptics oppose the use of nuclear power. They are mainly safety issues linked to past nuclear incidents. However i find their worries unnecessary as these issues have already been reviewed and taken care of, with the improvement in nuclear technology. Nuclear power is a very efficient power source; therefore, it should be adopted.

Firstly, the modern nuclear generators no longer function in the same way as those in the past. For example, the nuclear generators in Chernobyl, which caused huge explosions in April 1986, had worked on a positive void coefficient. However, the law now states that nuclear generators now have to work on a negative void coefficient, which prevents similar incident to that in Chernobyl from reoccuring. Therefore, the skeptics should not have to be afraid of the disaster reoccuring. Furthermore, many other safety mechanisms have been put in place to ensure the safe functioning of a nuclear reactor.

Next, skeptics should consider the benefits that nuclear reactors can bring. Nuclear energy is relatively cheap despite the high cost of building the generator. The tremendous amount of energy that can be produced from a small amount of nuclear fuel makes nuclear power a very efficient power source. Furthermore, nuclear power is not a source of carbon dioxide; hence, it will not add to the worsening of global warming. Also, the use of nuclear power is essential as we are not sure how much longer can our source of fossil fuel last. There has to be an alternative source of power to fossil fuel generated power.

In conclusion, i think skeptics should open up their mind to accept the numerous benefits of nuclear power. The current level of technology is capable of ensuring the safe functioning of the nuclear reactors. Nuclear power being a very efficient power source, which also helps reduce carbon dioxide production, should be adopted.

Homosexuality does obey the law of nature.

A glance through anthropological and historical records reveals immense cross-cultural variation in the acceptance and repression of homosexual relations between men and between women. So great is this variation that some societies in some eras have imposed capital punishment on men engaging in homosexual acts, while others have held sexual friendships between men to be a social ideal of the most honorable, and even heroic, men. For example, you may be surprised that Achilles was also homosexual, or at least, bisexual. As it is revealed in Aeschylus's heroic trilogy about the Trojan War: "Does it mean nothing to you, the unblemished thighs I worshipped and the showers of kisses you had from me?" or, in other translations "You had no consideration for my pure reverence of your thighs, ungrateful after all our frequent kisses". In fact, more than a time in human history, homosexuality was popular. Let me pick ancient China as an example. In the old days, many aristocratic men are keen on “娈童”, which is sort of production between homosexuality and sodomy. Even emperors has sexual affection on handsome guys.

Some same-sex birds do do it. So do beetles, sheep, fruit bats, dolphins, and orangutans. Zoologists are discovering that homosexual and bisexual activity is not unknown within the animal kingdom. Wild birds exhibit similar behavior. There are male ostriches that only court their own gender, and pairs of male flamingos that mate, build nests, and even raise foster chicks."

In conclusion, homosexuality was common in history and it has well known in the wild. It is not a sickness. It is only a respond to the deepest lust in our heart: sex. Hence, there is no meaning that we should be afraid of it or criminalised it.

How To Innovate

Due to some unexpected technical problems, the first lecturer--I dont's remember his name--didn't leave much impression on me. All I know was that he put some funny pictures on the screen in addition to the topic of his speech--how to innovate. Regarding to this interesting topic, I feel I must further develop the idea.

The key word in the definition of innovation is “new.” The common trap about newness is the assumption that new means something the universe has never seen before. This turns out to be one of the most ridiculous assumption in the history of mankind. Here’s proof: Name any great innovator, and I guarantee they borrowed and reused ideas from the past to make whatever it is they are famous for.

The Wright brothers, the inventors of powered flight in the United States, spent hours watching birds. As boring as it seems, we have bird-watching to thank for the supersonic jet planes we have today. Picasso’s development of cubism, one of the great artistic movements of the last two centuries, was heavily influenced by his exposure to African painting styles, as well as the work of an older French painter, Cezanne. And Thomas Edison did not create the concept of powered light: You’d have to talk to the thousands of people who died before Edison was born who turned wood, wax, oil, and other fuels into controllable and portable light sources.

Even in today’s high-technology world you can find easy connections between what we call “new” and ideas from the past. The World Wide Web and the Internet get their names from things thousands of years old. The first webs were made by spiders, and the first nets were used to catch fish by indigenous people around the world, thousands of years before the first computer. Google, the wonderful search tool, is often called a search engine, in reference to concepts of physical mechanics, not digital bits.

All these examples prove that the trick to innovation is to widen your perspective on what qualifies as new. As long as your idea, or your use of an existing idea, is new to the person you are creating it for, or applies an existing concept in a new way, you qualify as an innovator from their point of view, and that’s all that matters.