SST-NTU Flagship Programme Project 9-4

Day 1

Plenary Sessions
My important key points and elaboration from each session

Importance of Water - Dirty and Clean By Prof Ng Wun Jun, Executive Director, (NEWRI)
Water should not be taken for granted.

According to stats and graphs, water that others drink without good sanitation may include bacteria like typhoid, chorea and dysentery. Many people are killed by these mircobes living in the water, however, mircobes may kill yet help us.
NEWater, is the breakthrough of Singapore which took 10 years of preparation to complete. Singapore have also turn itself into a water catchment, a record that is set.
Nature makes sure that everything is not wasted and in a cycle, some examples are the water cycle and carbon cycle. However, due to Man activities, which include agriculture and industrization, pollution is created. Pollution are waste product that cannot be recycled by Nature anymore, these waste product may the reason of many animals getting ill and sick.

Revolution of Micro electronics Technology By Prof Yeo Kiat Send, School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Head of Division of Circuits & System.
Micro electronics is the next age.

Looking at the advancement of technology breakthrough, almost everything is revolving around micro chips. Micro chips, being the brain of every technical product. will affect our future.
The economic structure now and future is based on electronic foundation. This is so as almost every prospect of our life is filled with technology and its becoming so that we may be cyborgs in a few generation’s time. Some advances now that replaces previous product are Camera Pills which have the same function as Endoscope only more convenient. While another example is Modern Cars that replaces Horse Trishaw, only faster and more electronic.
Electronic is the base of Commercial, Entertainment, Transport and Communication, the four pillars that we will find hard living without it in our life. These can be innovated through BRAINWAVE.
Bio
Radio
Auto
Info
Nano
Hydro
Audio
Video
Energy
These nine are the gateway to the next generation of technology advances.

Innovative breakthroughs in Nano-Science and Nano-Technology By Prof Ma Jan, Chair, School of Materials Science & Engineering,
Nano Technology is the new study of life.

Now that we have advanced a lot on the outside, Scientist has got interested in the details that opens to a new world. Nano Technology is now used worldwide,
Cleaning of Water
Changing the colour of the lenses
Transparency of an object
Prevention of Germs.
These above are a few examples. Surface Area Analyzer, Optical Microscope, X-ray are a few measurements on observing objects on Nano scale.

IT for Animation By Prof Seah Hock Soon, School of Computer Engineering, Division of Computing Systems
Animation for Entertainment and Recreational purposes have got into the IT world.

From drawing by hand, Animation have developed into a new stage where IT is a part of them. From methods like Stop-animation, 2D and 3D gives pictures life. About 24 scene per seconds, Animation proves to be a tiring job to do. This job drains a lot of mental energy and there are no shortcuts for it. Interest and determination for it is a must have for the people drawing each picture by hand.
Laboriously Intensive, learning laws of Physics, Maths, the way how things move, requires a lot of effort placed into it. Examples are fire animation from Harry Potter or water movement in Percy And The Lightning Thief. Shades, Light projection and colour choices are the basics for Animation.
Thats where IT fits into Animation. By making it 3D, grossing money is reduced and labour is decreased by 40%.

Disappearing glaciers, rising sea levels, and why gravity is even more important than you think. By Asst Prof Emma Hill, School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences.
Sea level rise will not be the same everywhere.

Geodesist upgrades from using ground based technology for measuring movements of plate to space-based techniques to measure each detail specifically.
We talked about Self-attraction and Loading and specifically melting of glaciers. As glaciers melt, sea level rises at the tropic stage. This is not good news for Singapore which is very low based. Singapore is in risk of drowning from the water due to Global Warming. The gravitational pull and force of attraction would be a huge factor of sea level rising. As people are risking their lifes to measure how fast the ice are melting, predicting the sea level rising.

Deepest Impression

I would say that the deepest impression would be the Innovative breakthroughs in Nano-Science and Nano-Technology By Prof Ma Jan, Chair, School of Materials Science & Engineering, His teachings are very interesting and the slides fits my pace of learning. I am very interested in the breakthrough Nano Technology can do at a smaller scale. Making of bulletproof objects looks laborious, I wonder if the weight of the armor will affect the person’s performance. Making camouflage clothes and invisible cloaks are very interesting for me. However, one question remains, Why are we working so hard in preparation for war? To me, these is just going to destroy Mankind itself.


Day 3

We had a small presentation competition of who would present on the stage in the afternoon today. Apparently, we were not selected. I was in charge of speaking about the introduction and conclusion. Prof Ali was deciding on the team that would present. I realised that I had stage fright, I was assuming that we would be the third team to present and the syptoms started at the start of the second group until I received information that we were the last team to present. Apparently cold fingers and toes were the syptoms that accompanied me throughout the presentations. But frankly speaking, I was having high hopes of us presenting on stage, but turns out otherwise. Well, I bet I would have collapsed under the watch of 1000 eyes.

Well, overall, I like the presentations by the other groups. Because they were presented by other schoolmates if the same level, I could understand them better. Some of them were hillarious. I just love the humor of SST people, the ability to answer quickly under pessure and giving unpredictable answers is the thing I love about them. I espcially liked the last group's presentation just because the speaker was able to work under pressure and Bernard's bravery, he was frank and truthful. Quite blunt actually, but still, he tried making the slides interesting.

And I learnt something, is to never trust a student helper words. Apparently, one of the student helper claims that carbon-fibre polymer cannot be broken, yet, Wei Hong and I were able to do that.

Today we are leaving too. I would like to say thanks to everyone that have helped me one way the other for this project. Although I have got to know more people. I was able to go informal to people I do not know much of. Like Dionne Choo, this would be the first project we are working on, also, the first day we've talked. The others were quite okay. Ray Chow being in my class, talking to him wasn't much of a problem. In all, this project was a "breakthrough" of my vision, I hope to see more of this in the future.