Week 7: the biobusiness revolution 2: agriculture and the environment: past, present, future

HI. IT'S WEEK 7. OMG

firstly i would like to apologize for the lack of participation in class today. The past week has been tough and i didnt manage to get alot of rest. so alot of enerygy was spent trying to keep myself awake in class. =x

but despite that,  i would still say that the class was still quite interesting (thankfully) and the presentations were all well presented.

So as usual, the class started out with a video which illustrated humans to be a disease that our Mother Earth contracted.

truthfully, i do agree with the video that humans are harming the Earth at an exponential rate. even though there are groups which are trying to save the Earth. Despite that, people still do not understand the importance of being environmental friendly or going green. Even Obama views economic values more then going green. the better conditions we live in, the worse our Earth would become.  =(

Another interesting topic which we talk about in class would be with regards to spider silk and spider textile. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk

I heard about something like this before, but i never knew it came from spiders. It is really fascinating to know that the strength of such silks can be comparable to high-grade steel. It is quite hard to image a spider can be able to produce such powerful and strong silk, looking at the size of the spider.

In class, Prof mentioned about the conversation he had with his friend. “if you have all the resources in the world, what would u invest it in?”

The first thing that came to my mind was environment. If we were to neglect the environment or harm the environment further, nothing can save our Earth anymore. But when the prof mention about his friend’s answer, which was to educate women, I could not help but agree too. A woman is the center of the family. They are the ones that hold the family together and they are the ones that educate their kids.

We then went on to talk about the different kinds of biotechnology, namely blue, red, green, white biotech. I found this relatively interesting as how the different biotechs are classified by colors.

Red biotech -> medical purpose

White biotech -> industrial application

Blue biotech -> aquatic uses

Green biotech -> agriculture and environmental uses

http://www.umbi.umd.edu/about/what-is-biotechnology.php

Moving on to the presentations for the day, personally I like sheryl’s presentation on lab grown meat and Terrance’s GMO presentation.

With regards to lab grown meat, there were different views with regards to whether we can accept lab-grown meat or not. On a personal note,  I can accept lab-grown meat. As mentioned by Huiying with regards to the experiment, it is hard to differentiate between lab grown meat and normal meat (without them knowing which is the lab grown and which is the normal). Thus this shows that it is actually a psychology barrier for people to accept lab grown meat. So one solution to this would be advertisement. If got marketing is done to market lab grown meat, emphasizing on the benefits of lab grown meat as compared to normal meat, I believe that people will be able to accept lab grown meat in the future.

Another interesting presentation for the day is leonard’s presentation on vertical farming. Like what he mentioned, Singapore is also starting to apply this technique. I feel that such technology would be extremely beneficial to a small country like Singapore as we have a growing population but not a growing landscape.  (p.s singapore’s population is now 5.18mil)

Overall I find the class quite interesting (though im not a big fan of agriculture). I feel that it would be even more enriching if there were more variety in the presentation topics. I would rate the class 7/10 and I look forward to recess week! YAY!

Till next time!

Week 6:The BioBusiness Revolution 1: Healthcare and the Biomedical Sciences: Past, Present, Future

The class started with a very interesting video on how the future of the health care industry might be.



Is this really possible? As mentioned by prof, everything is possible. With someone having this vision would only mean that someone is trying to make that vision work. If the health care sector really was to become what it is in the video, it would definitely create a lot of convenience for the health care sector and also the stakeholder of the health care sectors (eg. patients, doctors). despite that, i feel that it would still take some time for this technology to be implemented. I do hope that we can see this in the near future and not just in the health sector. This bring us to a question.

Cost.

A question that was raised in class with regards to cost was whether implementing this technology will be more cost effective or cost ineffective.

The implementation of such technology would definitely cost a bomb. However, i feel that over time, the cost of the infrastructure can be spread across the years. In the long term, the cost of the infrastructure can be covered by the fees of the patients, without increasing on the price of the consultation/cost of drugs.


With regards to health care, as mentioned by prof, preventing the people from falling sick would be a better method rather than nursing them back to health after they fall sick. And here comes the introduction to nutraceutical. (nutraceutical = nutrients + pharmaceutical). As compared to pharmaceutical measures, i feel that nutraceutical would be more effective simply because it cleverly makes use of the nutrients that can be found in the food that we consume.

Today's class was exceptionally interesting because there were alot of insights with regards to health care and biobusiness (thanks to prof being a doctor. =))

Moving on to the presentations of the day. We started out with Evangeline who asked a very debatable question.
One of her discussion question with regards to the article was whether developing countries will be able to get the pharmaceutical industry to give up their patent rights for cancer drugs (and the accompanying profits)?

My answer to this question is that i dont think the pharmaceutical industry would give up their patent rights, (unless they are still able to earn from that, maybe with the government making compensation to them), else, there will not be any incentive for innovation. Put it this way, if the developing countries win, the big pharmas would not want to produce new innovations (due to the lack of incentives), and if the pharmaceutical industry wins, it would mean that the developing countries would be deprived of the drugs which may in turn increase in the death tolls which could have been prevented. Thus the best way would to create a winwin situation that can satisfy both the developing countries and the pharmaceutical industy.


Another interesting topic was on pace makers, presented by TeWei (YAY!MY GROUP MATE!)
anyways, i find this presentation very informative, as previously i did not even know about what a pace maker is. But from his presentation i learnt that this device is really important to those people with heart problems. And as for tewei's discussion, on whether mankind would misuse this technology. i doubt so. there might be people who have got nothing to do and jus wanna inplant the pacemaker in their body for prevention's sakes. but that should just be the minority.

I would rate the class a 9/10 as i feel that the topic for the day is very interesting, and prof has provided insightful opinions on the biobusiness, and the presentations were very informative and taught me alot.
=)

ciaos!

Week 5: ICT and World Change(Mass Media, the Internet, Wireless, Interactive Telecommunications) Past, Present and Future

It's time for TWC again!

So the class for week 5 is with regards to ICT and World Change((Mass Media, the Internet, Wireless, Interactive telecommunications) Past, Present and Future.

The first thing that came into my mind was, "OMG. WHAT IS ICT!?"
anyways, googled it and it actually stands for information and communication technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications_technology)

There's quite a number of interesting points that we covered in class today, like Project Natal (which is actually Kinect of XBOX360), what is knowledge, cloud computing and the evolution of internet.

Project Natal allows us to see how it is no longer a barrier for us to interact with game consoles. and now, with Kinect and Wii, we are able to have more interactions with the games, like playing a sport or dance.
We went on to the evolution of internet, which was from web 1.0 to web 2.0 to web 3.0. Frankly speaking i didnt even know that we are now using web 3.0! Back when i was a poly student, web 2.0 was THE big thing.

So, what's the main difference between the 3 versions?


Web 1.0 - information are more on a read-only basis and there wasn't communication or information flow from consumer of the information and the producer of the information.

Web 2.0 - this is when the user comes in. (Blogger makes use of web 2.0 too!) This is also the start of the read-write-update era. even non-technical users can interact and contribute to the internet through blogs and social media.

Web 3.0 - a web of data that can be processed directly and indirectly by machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web)

There are many advantages of Cloud Computing and many examples of cloud computing. Most of my favourite applications resides in the cloud like dropbox or google docs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

next we went on to the presentation. and one presentation which i like particularly was Ivan's presentation. His presentation was about the media (eg. news articles and tv programs) and how some reports are staged in order to bring across a message (usually biased). One of Ivan's question for discussion was,
"when you watch news on televsion today, how sceptical or receptive are you to it?"

My take on this question is simple. Read the article, digest and only take in the logical points.
in the case of straits times (which is commonly known for being pro-government), i would read the articles with a pinch of salt. then i would go online and read temasek review and the online citizen. (which is more of a anti-goverment stand). from that i would filter through the information i have received. YAY!

 
I would rate the class 8/10 as the class was very interesting and informative. Just a suggestion, maybe we could get people to comment about where the presenters for the individual oral presentation like where we can improve on.






reference:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Difference-Between-Web-1.0,-Web-2.0,-and-Web-3.0---With-Examples&id=3683790

Outline

pardon me for the late post. 

Outline for Individual Report

Title of Paper: Technology & Gaming: Evolution of Gaming Consoles

Introduction:

-          Definition of term

o   Technology

•       Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or preform a specific function 

o   Gaming

•       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_graphics
• 
  

o   Evolution

•       change that has occurred over time

-          Background

Body:

-          History Perspective

o   How were games like in the past

•     2D
•     Vector
• 
  

o   What kind of games

o   The first gaming console

-          Current Situation

o   How are the games like now

§  Retina display

§  Takes on motion of user

§  High defi

o   What kind of games

o   Consoles now: Kinect, Wii,Etc

-          Future Considerations

o   How games might be like in the future

§  4D

§  Creates the gaming environment

§  Live game

§  Versus gaming online, in the same ‘playing field’

o   What kind of games

§  Sports

§  MMORPG

o   Consoles

o   Impact on Social and Economy

§  People might be hooked onto the game and neglect reality (social impact)

o   Positive and negative implications

Conclusion:

still need alot of elaboration for this!

Week 4: Drivers of Change/ Change Management and Change Leadership

Today's lesson was an interesting yet nerve-wrecking one. Cus i was due for my individual oral presentation. and....
*heaves a sigh of relief*

INDIVIDUAL ORAL PRESENTATION'S OVER! *WAVES HANDS FRANTICALLY*

I would say that i was really nervous for presentation as it has been really long since the last time I did an individual presentation. Despite that, it felt really great and i'm quite happy with my own performance!
Just to refresh your memory, my presentation is pertaining to change management and change leadership and my article is "The Burning Platform: How companies are managing change in a recession".

This article widen my understanding on what are the different approaches companies take to bring about change and which course of actions has the highest impact and highest difficulty.
As what i have written for issues for discussion, it was mentioned that winning over the hearts and minds of the employees was the most important factor for successfully implementing change initiatives, even though the % for  "winning over the hearts and minds of employees" and "keeping to time and budget" was the same, at 33% each. However, as what the article mentioned (and what more then half of the class agreed upon), i too feel that  winning over the hearts and minds of the employees is the most challenging and important factor  to push for change. If the employees do not agree to the change initiative, nothing can move them, and even if they move, they would be reluctant to do so. And eventually, the change initiative would fail.

so here's the link to my article:

http://www.celerantconsulting.com/Downloads/ResearchReviews/Celerant%20-%20EIU_Burning%20platform.pdf

okay, so back to my reflections on today's class.
The main topic for today was the "drivers of world change" and "change management and change leadership"

One interesting discussion was on how to proactively managing change. I particularly like Prof's analogy of a relationship to describe this model which made it really simple to understand (and humorous too!)

moving on to the presentations for the day. I am really impressed the presentations on tuesdays, Kenneth's presentation in particular. His presentation was on "No Nukes, No Problems" and i like how he make use of different analogies to give us a better understanding of the topic. Yaozong's presentation was on "Why Apple beats Microsoft in change management" and i would say that his presentation was really easy to follow as he optimise his usage of visual aids, making his presentation interesting and effective.

I would rate the class 10/10 as i found the class to be very interesting and i really learnt a lot from the class. be in from the presentation or from prof. Even the video on "Who moved my cheese" was enriching. =)

i look forward to the next class as we go in depth into the different topics and that's all folks!

Week 3: Technology and Industrial Development: Moving Towards Sustainable Development / Technology and Innovation Management

Hi there. It's time for some blogging again!
Anyways, Tuesday was a public holiday and thus our class was shifted to 3rd Sept (Sat). So here I am, to talk about today's class.


Here goes!
The class started with 2 presentations which were shifted from the previous class, one of which particularly interest me, was the presentation by Yun Ting on Surrogacy.

My personal take on this topic is that surrogacy is one of the last resort a couple would have to take in order to have a baby of their own. it is still morally wrong to have the baby conceived this way. However, if the parents are really not able to conceive their own baby and would not want adopting kids. i guess they would have to go for surrogacy.

Next we went on to the discussion on Technology and Industrial Development: Moving Toward Sustainable Development.

One of our class mate did a very interesting presentation on Masdar City, which is a project in Abu Dhabi.
here's some information on Masdar city that can be found on wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masdar_City

i feel that it is a good sign that the government has plans on creating a green city as opposed to US, where Obama has decided to focus more on the businesses instead of green movement. This is a really bad sign, if the most powerful man has made this kind of decision, it would be detrimental to the rest of the world as well.


The last part of the class focused on technology and innovation, which prof talked about the concept of R-D-A which stands for Research Development and Application.

I would rate the class 7.5/10 as the class presentations were quite interesting and informative.

p.s. im quite nervous for my presentation tml!