Week 7--Biobusiness Revolution 2

      This is week 7 of the course and we have finally been halfway through the term. It has definitely been a big change from junior college to university with a two years break due to army, the transition from basically regurgitating what we had been taught in class to making our own decision with the aids of knowledge being pass on to us by the profs. It took me a few weeks to settle down and to get use to my next phase of life but i have undeniably, learn alot of precious knowledge throughout this short span of time.
   
       The video that prof Shahi had shown to us was quite interesting regarding human being parasites that destroy the world and killing anything that comes by. The idea was expressed in an appealing manner with the animation of the earth turning black due to the cause of pollution. It is amazing to see that what we are enjoying now, are at the expense of destroying the world with the way we deplete the natural resources. With the second video showing us on usage of biotechnology to feed the increasing population of the world which is also an area that prof has put great emphasis on. This is linked to the "wheat genome breakthrough" idea that i had presented during this week. The idea of decoding the wheat genome will not only allow scientist to create different varieties of wheat to allow more food supply in the future. This could also allow scientists in the medical field to tap on the idea and use it to decode other organisms genome which could let us to understand them better. In addition, with better understanding, new vaccine or cures could be created to cure different virus strains or tackling other ailments. This is one example how biotechnology can contribute to other fields just like the discovery of using algae as an alternative energy source to petroleum.

     With the world population believe to be hitting 9.4 billion by the year 2015 and people shifting from the rural area to the urban region, all these will definitely add pressure on the amount of food needed to support us. Hence, there is an urgent need for humans to come out with ideas to support this gargantuan population and to provide helps to this people who just move into the urban region. In class, we also talk about having an occupation as farmist in the future that aims to research on the amount of farming and passing the knowledge on to the farmers for them to produce better crops in the future. Something that the prof kept my mind thinking was the failure of how we deal with waste basically only digging a big hole and dump them in plus incineration of the rubbish. Large amount of land space was used to conduct this and why is the government always emphasizing on the need to fully utilise the land space we have when there is an obvious sight of inefficiency we are facing now. With materials like plastic being non-biodegradable and burning of it will only emit harmful gases into the atmosphere, we are only creating more problems we are facing now instead of solving them. In addition to that, even material or items that are biodegradable also takes millions of year before it can fully break down. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the usage of renewable item. Newater concept has actually proven to us that we can make anything possible now. It uses the concept of recycling and help of advance technology to treat the used water and turning it into drinkable ones. Therefore, maybe in the near future we might be able to witness a waste convertible machine that uses waste to generate electricity through the breaking down of the different part in them. This could in return give us a cleaner environment as everyone would try not to litter now.

           On my way home, i wondered on how are all the skyscrapers being built and are they contributing to any form of pollution be it during construction or after that. Coincidentally, i realize one of the article in the twc  book was talking about it. I find this very interesting and astonishing knowing that skyscrapers or building in the world consumes up to forty per cent of the world's energy. Admiring the high beams being shoot out in the dark sky by the marina bay sands resort and the bright new york city at night which seems to be in the day, we are actually consuming lots and lots of energy and damaging the ecosystem. Animals are believed to have been disrupted by all the lightings and thus developing weird habits which detriment to their survival. Hence, huge emphasis are being placed in the design of the buildings, such as 30 Mary St Axe(The Gherkin), London, Hearst Tower in New York, Bank Of America Tower in New york just to name some. The design for Gherkin breaks away from the traditional use of rectangular shape to maximize both the natural light and ventilation and hearst tower with its diamond shape was able to reduce on the construction material such as a decrease of 20 per cent of the steel required and 80 per cent of reycled steel were used. All these are fantastic example to show us how the world has been moving towards greener environment and how we as the people leeching on the resources of the world should play a part too through our daily lives mainly by reduce, reuse ,recycle. Basically, a simple gesture of using lesser paper would allow lesser trees to be chopped of or turning to wards recycled ones. Government is nonethless the best source to implement change or policies to promote the go-green habit. They could increase the taxation on paper and reduce that of recycled paper thus demand will be shifted towards recycling paper with companies using the economic of scale to increase production at a cheaper cost. Hence, not only do the consumer enjoy cheaper and better goods, the environment will have time to replenish what has been lost.


              Overall, i would rate the lesson 8/10 as definitely biobusiness is something for us to look forward to but i still do hope that more recent discoveries and breakthrough can be discussed in class especially recent case on the research on keeping tissues and use them in the need of emergency which is close to heart. I do look forward to the next lesson after the short break.