Plenary Session 1
Importance of Water - Dirty and Clean" by Prof Ng Wun Jen
I leant that we cannot take water for granted. Only Singapore and a few other country have the privilege Of having very clean, pure and clear water flowing out from the tap. People have always feared to have drown in rivers, lake, and seas, but how about the past, not only people are afraid to drown in there but also fear to have Cholera, Dysentery, Typhoid fever, Brainerd Diarrhoea etc. 1/7th of the world's population has no access to clean, drinking water, 2/7 has no sanitation, 3.4 million people die from bacteria in the water every year, and 2/7 of the world's population is at risk of getting these diseases. We are very lucky to be living in Singapore as the whole country is a water catchment. We also have technology to clean water, such as NEWater. With advanced technology, water can be cleaned and purified easily.
Plenary Session 2
"Revolution of Microelectronics Technology" by Prof Yeo Kiat Seng
In order to compete in the new economy, there must be a massive change, The focal point now is Asia, meaning Singapore would be striving. This is why SIngapore is so successful in ports and shipment. The result? Supply chains will move there, and a prosperous country is formed. In the early times the first computer ever built was the Z-1, where it was so huge that it needed a whole room for itself. Then, the transistor computer was made by Texas Instruments. After that integrated circuits were made by the same company. Like Steve Jobs always say, his products revolutionize the world. And they do, at first, the first telephone that was invented by Motorola, and it was big fat and bulky, and very expensive. Now there is the iPhone 4, where that now, around 30% of the Singaporeans use it. Same as Electronics, where the Enthoscope can be replaced by a “Camera Pill”, and a 1800’s Car can be replaced by a Hydrogen Car. Electronics int he future can replaced a doctor’s job, or others. Electronics will revolutionize the world sooner.
Plenary Session 3
"Innovative breakthroughs in Nano-Science and Nano-Technology" by Prof Ma Jan
Nano-technology is about technology that experiments stuff that is 0-d, 1-d, or 2-d. The stuff that they tinker is about 100nM small. The reason why they are doing this is because the smaller the size of an object, the larger the surface area, and the more energy it can absorb. A nice analogy is Play-Doh. A big lump of Play-Doh is big, but dies it have a large surface area? No. Energy? Low. Make it to many small tiny pieces. Energy? High. More. Basically what I feel about this talk is basically talking about "the smaller the better", "the smaller the better", "the smaller the better". With nano-technology, really, anything is possible. Anything can be applied to this topic. It can make better planes, better colouring, invisibility possible, and anything else you can think of. zIn the future, nano-technology may be the substitute of anything you may find.
Plenary Session 4
"IT for Animation" by Prof Seah Hock Soon
Animation is tiring and labourious. It takes month to even complete minutes of work of animation. There are many different types of ways of animating, like stop-motion, 2D animation, 3D animation, and etc. Apparently, comparing between 2D animation and 3D animation, 3D animation is surprisingly cheap than 2D animtion. This is because 3D animation takes much lesser human labour to do as the animaiton is done by computers. Thus, 3D animation is cheaper to make. 2D animation needs people to think of the storyboard, people to roughly sketch the storyboard out, then people to draw the animation frame by frame, then people who colour it. Hence as you can see, 2D animation is really, really, hard work. Animation also uses maths. Calculus, geometry, laws of the physics, and whatnot. For example, light is calculated by I = KaIa, diffuse lighting is calculated by Id = Kd Ip cos Θ, and specular lighting is calculated by IS = Ks Ip cosn α.
Plenary Session 5
"Disappearing Glaciers, rising sea levels, and why gravity is even more important than you think" by Prof Emma Hill
The Plenary Session start off by saying that she is a geodesist, which is a scientist in the branch of mathematics dealing with the shape and area of the earth or large portions of it. She explained that the “Sea-level rise will not be the same everywhere”, and the gravity is not just 9.8m/s everywhere. The glaciers from the North or South Poles are melting, they will depress the crust of the Earth underneath it. This results in the seabed near the glacier to sink down, making a deep trench. The seabed further away from the glacier will rise up. Also, the water will be attracted to the glacier. So, the water near the melting glacier is higher than the sea level further away from it. Also, the water will flow towards it. When the glacier has melted, the depression from the glacier stops and teh seabed near it will “pop” up. The sea level away from the glacier will sink down again. The sea level will do the opposite. The sea level near the melted glacier will go down and the sea level further away form it will go up. Moreover, the water will float away from the glacier. Hence, the water level at the North and South poles will drop, and the water level near the equator will rise. This means, that Singapore, on the equator, compared to other countries outside of the tropic of Cancer and tropic of Capricorn will experience a 10-20% more of sea level rise.