Final Reflection

Finally we are at the end of this semester. its time to 

Essay #2

Story of stuff

 

      Earth has limited natural resources and human beings must maintain them from disappearing. Human life depends on the earth's natural resources to meet all their basic needs. Since there is no human being can survive without these resources we must keep them from disappearing.  Natural resources are divided into two types: renewable and non-renewable. Renewable resources include water, soil, air, fish and agricultural crops, also the renewable energy resources like the power of the sun, wind and water, and non-renewable resources include minerals and fuels, coal and natural gas. People are consuming more than their needs of these natural resources and wasting a lot this leads to damaging the earth and causing a lot of problems such as global warming and pollution.

The story of stuff video by Annie Leonard talks about the lifecycle of stuff and how it gets to the people. In the video she said: “stuff moves thought a system from extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal all together it’s called the material economy” (Story of Stuff 2007). She said that we are running out of resources and using too much stuff and mentioned that in the past 3 decades 1/3 of earth natural resource has been consumed. The United States alone consume 30% of the earth resources although they have only 5% of the world population.

 

Extraction:

“Extraction means taking the planet’s resources- wood, minerals, coal, fossil fuel, water, plants, animals, and soil out of the earth and starting their journey through the materials economy”( The Story of Stuff Project 2007). Annie Leonard defined extraction is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation and a fancy word for trashing the plant, by chopping down trees and blow the mountains to get the metal and use up all the water, and that’s how Earth is running out of resources.  80% of earth original forests are gone, and the amazons are losing 2000 tree a minute. “Global resource extraction grew more or less steadily over the past 25 years, from 40 billion tons in 1980 to 58 billion tons in 2005, representing an aggregated growth rate of 45% ”( The Issue | World Resources Forum 2012).

 

Production:

“The processes and methods used to transform tangible inputs (raw materials, semi-finished goods, subassemblies) and intangible inputs (ideas, information, knowledge) into goods or services” (The Story of Stuff Project 2007). In this stage, they use toxic chemicals and add them to the natural resources to make toxic products for people to buy. These toxic products cause a lot of environmental problems such as climate change and toxic pollution, and as long we use toxic in our products we well keep getting toxic everywhere and in our bodies which will damage our health and cause lot of illness.

 

Distribution:

This is very important step because it sells all the toxic products cheaply and quickly as possible by keeping the products cheap and the people buying.

 

Consumption:

This is the most important stage it is the engine drives this system, and protecting it is the top priority for the company’s and they succeeded. People don’t stop shopping and they shop more than what they need and most of these goods don’t last for a long time.

                                                     

 

 

Consumerism in UAE:

According to a study published by The National news consumerism is one of the greatest threats to national identity for the locals. Also the Etihad news published that the UAE have consumption of water 3 times the global average for the person.

 

Disposal:

This is the last step in the system. After using all of these productions where does it go? Most of these goods dumped somewhere or burned which leads to air pollution and produce toxic waste, and some of the disposal goods recovered for recycling. However recycling is not enough because the waste people produce most of them can’t be recycling.

 

To save our plant we must change our way of life and stop living by this system. We should look for the best solutions to reduce our conception and waste.  People these days are more aware of the danger. We must use clean production and clean energy for better life also for the generation coming after us.

 

 

 Word: 703

 

 

 

References:

 Gerson, J., & Richardson, A. (2008, April 4). 'Consumerism and foreigners' greatest identity threats - The National. Latest and breaking news | thenational.ae - The National. Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/consumerism-and-foreigners-greatest-identity-threats

Natural resource - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2013, May 26). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resource

Radford, T. (2005, March 30).  Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up' | Science | The Guardian .  Latest US news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | guardiannews.com | The Guardian . Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/mar/30/environment.research

Story of Stuff (2007, OFFICIAL Version) - YouTube. (2007, January 1). YouTube. Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

The Story of Stuff Project. (2007, January 1).  The Story of Stuff Project. Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.storyofstuff.org/

The Issue | World Resources Forum. (2012, January 1). World Resources Forum | Shaping the Future of Natural Resources. Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.worldresourcesforum.org/issue

 

 

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Essay #1

NANOTECHNOLGY

 

My topic for the essay deals with the study of extremely small particles, termed Nanotechnology. “Nanotechnology is the creation of functional materials, devices and systems through control of matter on the nanometer length scale (1-100 nanometers) and exploitation of novel phenomena and properties (physical, chemical, biological, mechanical and electrical) at that length scale” (Keczer, 2007). It is very tiny to be detected even by a most effective conventional microscope. Nowadays, nanotechnology implemented products are available worldwide and is used for many different applications. For example in bicycle frames, tennis racket etc. Basically nanotechnology can be defined as “the engineering of functional systems at the molecular level” (Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, 2008). Nanotechnology has an inevitable role in medicine, electronics, biomaterials and energy production as it can make many new products and devices with a wide variety of applications. It is considered that the origin of nanotechnology happened in 1959 with Richard Feynman but its 1st phase development took place in eighties and in the beginning of nineties. He played a key role in the idea of nanotechnology though the ‘term’ was never referred. The concept of nanotechnology came from his famous talk called There’s a Plenty of Room at the Bottom in which he mentioned about the idea that in the coming future the chances of arranging atoms all the way down, in different ways we want can also be considered. In 1974, Norio Taniguchi, a Tokyo Science University Professor defined the term “nanotechnology” as the process whereby materials are separated, consolidated and deformed to one atom or one molecule. According to Feynman’s theory he advised that in course of time it will be possible to manage atoms and molecules accurately. In this he used a set of accurate tools to construct and operate another which is comparatively smaller one and so on till the needed scale is reached. During this he noticed that some scaling issues are formed due to the changing magnitude of certain phenomena like gravity which would become less important most probably negligible while on the other hand surface tension and Van der Waals attraction become important etc. The birth of cluster science and the creation of Loading...Sultan Mohammed Aljaberi H00204902 CGD 1103 scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) were the two major developments in nanotechnology and Nano science during 1980. In 1986, followed by this development, fullerenes and carbon nanotubes are invented. In the beginning of 1996 NASA organized a Centre for Nanotechnology for their future requirement on electronics, computing, sensors and system miniaturization. The four generations of nanotechnology development was detailed by Mihail (Mike) Roco of the U.S National Nanotechnology Initiative. They are passive nanostructures (ex-aerosols, collides, coatings etc.) which is considered as the 1st generation products. Then comes active nanostructures (ex-targeted drugs, 3D transistors, amplifiers etc.) . The third is systems of Nano systems (ex-3D networking, robotics etc.). The fourth generation is molecular Nano systems (ex-designed molecular devices, atomic design). The 4th generation is considered as the most modern development which is about to happen in nanotechnology. Today the basic efficiency of nanotechnology is expected to develop in four generations of recent nanotechnology products as mentioned above. Nanotechnology is successfully using in many fields commercially (home, for communications, medicine, agriculture etc.) and in military (powerful weapons, tools of surveillance). It shows high efficiency in every aspect of life As far as we know, nanotechnology stays as a science in its beginning because its potential is much more than the products. It can bring a noticeable difference in medical field as it could bring us the new kind of drugs which helps in the treatment of cancer, Parkinson’s etc. The after effects of treatment like chemotherapy will vanish. However nanotechnology is a great blessing to the mankind it also has a dangerous side. Nano particles and Nano fibers can cause disease in lungs, brain and can even cause cancer when inhaled. Public awareness about the topic is clearly on the rise and is becoming more common. Loading...Sultan Mohammed Aljaberi H00204902 CGD 1103 References History of Nanotechnology. (n.d.). Nanotechnology Research Foundation. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from http://www.nanotechnologyresearchfoundation.org/nanohistory.html Introduction to Nanotechnology • Nanotechnology 101 • Nanotechnology Project. (n.d.). Nanotechnology - Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from http://www.nanotechproject.org/topics/nano101/introduction_to_nanotechnology/ Keczer, A. (2007, April 13). Center for Nanotechnology. Center for Nanotechnology. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from http://www.ipt.arc.nasa.gov/index.html Kelty, C. (2007, May 6). The Early History of Nanotechnology. Connexions - Sharing Knowledge and Building Communities. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from http://cnx.org/content/m14504/latest/ R, S. P. (2010, January 1). Ezproxy Login. Ezproxy Login. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.hct.ac.ae/science/docview/197487509/13DC191936173E888A6/8?accountid=1215 What is Nanotechnology?. (n.d.). Nanotechnology Research. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from http://crnano.org/whatis.htm APA formatting by BibMe.org

Reflection #1

   Reflection #1

  This is my first year in HCT. The first class that I attended was Academic Reading and Writing with Mr. Gregory. At the begging I didn’t like the class or to study especially after the long vacation I had, however in time I really started to love this class, I found that Mr. Gregory is a nice and helpful guy and the colleagues in this class were the best. 1103 was the best English class I had.

  At the begging we learned the processes of summarizing an essay and how to find the main ideas of every paragraph and rewrite then in our own words. We also learned about the referencing and how to use www.bibme.org.  After that we learned how to use the quotations in the text. Finding the main points in the texts was the easy part however rewriting them in my own words with new vocab and order was a little bit tricky for me but with practice I managed to get throw it.   

  There is no doubt that I well use this useful new skill I learned in the future for my studying and maybe in my job, I still need more practice to be better on it. Also I would like to have another class like 1103 in the future with the guys and Mr. Gregory

Summery 2 - Final

Houbara bustard

 

      In Atlas Mountains of Morocco men and women works to help the endangered Houbara birds from extinction they take care and feed them. Emirates Center for Wildlife Propagation located in Missour, Morocco financed by Abu Dhabi Government produced more than 60,000 birds.  The cost is undefined and there are similar facilities in the UAE and Kazakhstan. “The center in Morocco has ambition plans for the future: there are plans to expand the release effort to 15,000 birds per season” (Todorova, V. 2011) . The breeding birds should be familiar with humans to complete the fertilization. The released birds are kept in cages till them nine months old and 65% of the birds survive after a year of releasing.

 

Word: 118

References

Todorova, V. (2011, May 27). UAE-funded centre revives endangered bird population - The National. Latest and breaking news | thenational.ae - The National. Retrieved March 13, 2013, from http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/heritage/uae-funded-centre-revives-endangered-bird-population

 

 

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Summary 1 - Final

Robot Waiters arrives in Abu Dhabi

 

      In the near future in Abu Dhabi robots may work in the hotels, airports and hospitals. In three years PAL Technology spent more than US $50 million to develop the robot REEM in Spain Barcelona.  Some local companies are in discussion with PAL and it may lead to supplying 20 robots in the next year. (Adnec) tried the robot REEM in IDEX as a guide for visitors and they might use it for other events. A version of REEM is being developed in facility in Spain that carries object in hand.  In 2016 85% of robot seals will be service robots.

 

 

Word Count: 101

Bibliography Reference

References

Croucher, M. (2011, September 22). Robot waiter arrives in Abu Dhabi - The National. Latest and breaking news | thenational.ae - The National. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/robot-waiter-arrives-in-abu-dhabi