Week 7/Session 7--Environmental  Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology

Today’s lesson is a nervious session. It is because I have my individual presentation this week. What I present today is For Food Security, China tries an alternative to industrial Agriculture. This article talks about the methods China used to confront food insecurity problem to ensre food security. I did some research regarding agriculture and its sustainable. And one important issue for tihs session is can diversitified agriculture feed the changing world?  


“When we are able to grow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability” I think there is very little chance of that happening with the present level of consumption. If the world continues to consume resources at the same rate as it does now, I doubt the world has enough resources to support the world’s population. Prod said that it can achieve, but need time and efforts.

We started off class with a video on the relation between man and the environment, and how the acts of man now can greatly influence the environment and hence, man in the future. The video portrayed man as parasites and it showed how the pursuit of self interest can potentially destroy the future of mankind. While I feel that describing man as ‘parasites’ may be abit extreme, I do agree that there is an element of truth in it. One clear example of this would be the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest in South America. Despite forests having large amount of resources to start with, man’s continual pursuit of self interest has resulted in the accelerated reduction of resources and even homes for biodiversity.

While this may be seen as some to be beneficial for us as it meets a portion of our current needs, I think it is necessary for us to keep in mind that while we may find it hard to search for alternatives to these resources, our future generations will have it a lot more worse because they start off with a lot less than we had when we did.

There are lots of interesting points about GM food, today also got two presenter who present  feel that GM food. I think food and biotechnology can be the answer to world hunger. However, biotechnology can help to solve world hunger but regulations and checks must be done to ensure that food is safe and that people in poor countries are not simply ‘forced’ to eat food that may fill their hunger temporarily but may bring greater harm to their health in the longer term. Currently, there is a report in America by a scientist who shows that GM food is not as safe as we are thinking. He did a research about GM food, which is to feed 200 mice with GM maize. However, after few month, 80% of these mice got cancer. It is a horrible research and doube the safety of GM food. However, some scientist did not agree with him. I personally think GM food should be labelled, consumers can make their own choice on what they want to consume. And take the responsibility of what they choice. Hence, peopel can have an idea about what they consume. This is consumers' right.

One more interesting point I find in oral presentation is a discussion about the safety about GM vegatable or GM meat. In my personal view I think consumers can accept GM vegatable instead of GM meat. As a consumer, I think there are large number of vegatables are genetic modified. Other people can accept it, I also can eat it. However, consumer cannot accept GM meat. It is because we heard that GM animals are easily sick and die. If we eat them, we will have healthy problem soon. Hence, I still think people cannot make a bias statement that GM food is totally good or bad. It still needs time to improve and complete it.

What I wish we discussed more: The long term implications of biotechnology. I do agree that biotechnology, in this case, in food, can bring many benefits to mankind in the long term. However, problems such as possible religious problems associated with food biotechnology, our still-limited knowledge on genetically engineered food and their potential long term problems still exist and will continue to emerge. How will we be able to identify them and eventually get around them such that we can reap the full benefit of food biotechnology?

Overall, I will give 7.5 for today's session.

Week 6 —— Biomedical Science

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose 
shade they know they shall never sit in. "

- Greek Proverb -

 

This is the quotation from this week's reading. What I understand about this quotation is for countries, especially for developing countries, it is necessary to have the basic public health care infrastructure and services. So that in the future, their populations can have better health care. Prof says this quotation means what they are doing now is not for their own uses, but for future uses. I think this week's topic is very important, biomedical science changes will directly influence people's healthy problems.

It is very shock when I know that market size of bio-business in Singapore is only 4-5%. Prof says this is because of the young generation, Singapore do not have a lot of elderly. But I read from newspaper that the current social problem Singapore faced is elderly problem. The reason for this problem is because of Singapore lack of bio-business market. In contrast, market size of bio-business in US is 52%. Singapore now are trying to catch up with other ountries regarding bio-business. What I wish we discussed more: I want to have a discussion about the Healthcare Industry in Singapore. It is because I feel that the Healthcare industry is something the government should prioritize ecause of the extent to which it seeps into our lives. I think it would be good if ountries are able to recognise the significance of the healthcare industry and now what can be done to improve. Hence, I also want to discuss about what trategies can be used by government to improve health care industry?

Beyond this, the key take away messages is I feel that this is an issue that eeds to be paid attention to because Healthcare is a very basic and ecessary part of our lives and something that can have such profound impact on us. Should the amount of money spent on healthcare not translate into quality or the spread of healthcare, then what is the money spent on when the
most fundamental objective is not met? We discussed that a large amount of money could be used up for reasons such as regulation, oversight and control. While this is ‘legitimate’ in the sense that the money is used for legally accepted reasons, I feel that it should not be the case that this is depriving people who very much need the money for treatment.

From the recommended readings, I get some interesting points: There is a global healthcare trend in recent years, and growing opportunities for innovative healthcare-related products, services and technology platforms. The application of modern approaches and technologies brings the potential to radically transform public health and healthcare for those who cannot now afford such care, while enabling unprecedented levels of care for those who can. We stand at the threshold of an exciting new era in healthcare. Innovators and entrepreneurs who come up with newer and better ways of providing care are likely to benefit substantially – and they stand to make a real and very substantial difference in the lives of millions.

Overall, I will give 8.5/10 for today’s session.

 

Week 5 --- ICT and World Change

The overall theme for this week’s lesson is ICT, which is Information and Communication Technology. ICT refer to the convergence of audio-visual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives (huge cost savings due to elimination of the telephone network) to merge the audio-visual, building management and telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution and management.  I think this week’s topic was one that most of us can easily relate to, with ICT weaved into our daily lives, creating our dependence on them even.

At the start of the lesson, we watched an interesting video on Project Natal. I felt that the video was very interesting in the sense that I have never expected it to be possible for a real human to be able to communicate with a virtual person so smoothly and effectively. I truly feel that that is one big step in technology that far exceeds what we have ever expected it to be, and I find it so amazing. One concern I have though, is how effectively can this be? Can we expect similar quality of communication? If yes, is it possible for us to expand the uses of such ‘virtual people’ to help us in our daily lives?

ICT as a Driver of Change
I truly believe that ICT can cause change, especially with regard to how it can play a role in alleviating poverty. This is also with reference to the reading “Making ICTs Work for the Poor: Pursuing the Millennium Development Goals Through ICTs”. We can often see these advanced technology appeared in movies. Although they are just movies, the content may not true, but the technology they imaged are reational and may come true one day. The following video is an interesting video about the future Nokia product.

What I hope we discussed more: Technology can make our life much easier than before, rich people like  to try new tings and have theh ability to afford it. But will it increase the gap between poor and rich?What can the future of these technology be? Because I feel that majority of people lack of ability to afford it.

Prof brought up the idea of how gaming has in fact influenced the way surgeries are done via the remote control method. I think this is something that I never thought about because more often than not to me, games and work they are 2 separate things. Thus, I feel that it is brilliant how people can incorporate lessons learnt from games into other aspects of technology, even to the extent of creating a system for surgeries based on the technology of games. This links me to the presentation by Toh Xin, where he talked about the Business Gaming model and how it is an interesting and engaging way of letting people learn Business through games.I brought up in class that it might be possible that sometimes people get so engrossed in playing that they forget the fact that they’re supposed to take something out of it. Considering how the youths these days tend to be pretty easily distracted, this might be a concern that we should take into consideration when games are created with the intention of letting people learn from them – because it might end up being counterproductive.

While all of us know what gmail, hotmail, dropbox, facebook etc are, I’m not sure if all of us knew that they are part of Cloud computing because I myself never did! It is only today that I realised that while I have always thought that Cloud Computing is something I have never come into contact with, it is actually one device that I make use of every day of my life. While I remain very fascinated by the idea of Cloud Computing, the extent of usage of this is so great that it makes me wonder where will the world be left at should this system fail. We have so much information stored in the Cloud and it serves as such an essential form of communication – what if?

Potential Risks & Problems
While ICT can be very useful in our everyday lives, I think the potential risks and problems it can bring about is something we have to take extra care about. Linking this back to Wesley’s presentation, there are firstly, cases of data mining. He mentioned that websites that don’t charge a single cent are the ones that data mine the most. Since most websites we visit do not charge us, does this perhaps mean that our data is stored and used by so many webpages? Does this mean that a lot of our personal private information is actually all over the Internet? Though, however, I would have to agree that quite often even we do not key completely accurate information into the net. This may hence reduce the possible harmful effects of data mining and hence the problem with ICT.

I really enjoyed today’s lesson because I feel that ICT is something that is very present in our lives and hence, very related to our everyday lives. I also feel that it has the ability to change the direction of our lives in the future – especially in the case of improving our lives and that of the poor and therefore is something very integral. And I will give 8/10 for today's session.

 

Week 4-- Changes Happened

”Change is ineveitable.“
                                           -----Tony Robbins

The one thing in life you can absolutely count on is that circumstances will continually change. This is  the overarching theme for today’s lesson: Changes. I think this is not only for today's lesson. Changes happened every day. And all topics we have already covered are all about changes. How technology make all these changes. And what we covered today is about the drivers of world change, change management and change leadership.

Drivers of World Change

The first part of session, we talk about the drivers of change. There are quite number of reasons.  Environmental, Scientific discovery & Technology innovation, Social / Demographic / Cultural / Ideological, Commercial innovation. Because of these drives/reasons, change happens. However, I think these reasons are not the main driver. The main driver is people's ambitious to make an improvement. Hence, prof points out that the one who is most successful, is the one who embrace the change. I also memebered one quote, which is " Don’t fear change, embrace it." This is very true that whether you like changes or not, it is happening. We cannot change the direction of the world, but we can adjust our sails to always reach our destination.

According what I get from class is that competiton is the major drive for changes. This can link back to last week's concept, "Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else." Doing something else is to make a change. Forget what you have already have and create new things. This can also link back to our second session, the article "Innovation in the reset world". Recall the reading, people need to selectively abandoning things from the past and create future. This means that people need to make changes so that can imporve and be competitive. One famous example is Apple and Samsung. These two company are the most powerful mobile phone companies in the world. They compete with each other and invent different types of product for customers.

Evolutionary vs Revolutionary Change
We touched on the idea of Revolutionary and Evolutionary change, where revolutionary change refers to the type of change that is one with humongous impact and where changes made are mainly irreversible ones. ‘Disruptive changes’ are usually revolutionary changes as lives will most likely have to rearranged to accommodate such changes.

And I have some questions here. Due to revolutionary change is irreversible, does it mean that it oftern happens in political change? And evolutionary changes often used in companies?

Change Management and Change leadership
The first thing we point out in class in the differences between manager and leader. Leader is the one who create/come out things. Manager is the one who move things forward. This also related to what we learned last week, which is "The R-D-A Translation Process".  Leaders develop ideas, and translate the version into something real and easy to follow. Managers applicant ideas and make it works. Hence, changes happened.
Then we recall what we learn in session two, Rising stars vs Falling stars. The idea we learned in week two is to be open minded, so that you can improve and progress. The idea we get from this week is to adapt changes, so that you can improve and progress.

"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress "
                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                         ~ Charles Kettering
Hence, embrace change is the only way to improve.

I felt that today’s lesson gave me a good idea of the many different forms of change and how in fact they fall under 2 huge umbrellas: Evolutionary and Revolutionary. And give us a clear picture of the advantages of embrace changes. If we cannot change the changes, just accept it and make better use of it. Hence, I will give 8.5/10.