Research Interests in Collaborative Project

Part 1:

My choices of assignments are, in order:

Neuropsychology: Rather than just plain psychology, I am specifically interested in neuropsychology because anything related to the human brain fascinates me; it's the one interest that has been constant throughout my school years. My goal in becoming a biomedical engineer is to focus in on the neural engineering branch and I believe that learning how behavior, emotion, and cognition are related to brain function. 

Biomedical Engineering: I am majoring in Biomedical Engineering, as I want to combine my passion for medicine and the human body with my love for physics and mathematics. As I stated above, my real interest lies within the branch of neural engineering; my largest desire is to be part of the community that creates devices for neurological disorders. 

Robotics, Computing, AI: Within this topic, I would like to concentrate on: robotics related to biomedical engineering or how artificial intelligence will impact the future. I'm particularly interested in how surgery can be revolutionized by robotics and the programming behind such a machine. Also, I'm interested in experts' opinions about whether artificial intelligence is a viable option for the future of humanity.

Part 2:

I found the following articles on my three topics:

Neuropsychology: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/02/28/autistic-brain-networks-are-connected-differently/52056.html

This article discusses research that claims that autistic brains are wired differently from so-called “typical” or “healthy” brains. By comparing EEG readings from two control groups and two groups of autistic children, the research showed that children with autism have more short-range connections within different brain regions, but fewer long-range connections across the brain. Though this article was basically a summary of the research rather than a more detailed journal article, I found it extremely interesting as I have always been seeking answers to why and how autism develops ever since I first read about it in middle school.

Biomedical Engineering:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130228093829.htm

This article from today (2/28/13) literally made my jaw drop. A group of neural engineers have successfully “developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals.” What’s even more astonishing is that this device runs on less than 100 milliwatts of power. This is just amazing because this is basically the first of its kind in the brain-computer interface field. It has been successful in animal testing; therefore, it most likely enter the human testing phase. I am extremely excited about this ground-breaking product; this is exactly the kind of thing I strongly desire to work on.

Robotics, Computing, AI: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121119-biobot-hearts-robots-cells-health-science-disease/

This article discusses a bio-robot that runs on rat heart cells rather than on plain electricity. The contraction of the heart cells cause the body of the biorobot to move forward less than an inch per second. Why even create robots out of both synthetic and biological material? The engineers that work on these kinds of projects believe that their products have abilities that purely mechanical robots do not possess. Engineers have not been successfully in creating synthetic biological materials, so they have ingeniously decided to fuse biology with man-made material.

John Slaughter: Changing the Face of Engineering

John Slaughter presents two different ideas in his brief article. First, he states that no barriers should exist in becoming an engineer, in the sense that women and other minority groups should be strongly encouraged to purse that particular field. Consequently, the gap of these underrepresented groups will be filled, which will produce diversity and promote the growth of engineering. Secondly, he argues that the engineering curriculum should be drastically altered by the addition of more required liberal arts courses. This will increase each aspiring engineer’s appreciation for the humanities and will prevent him from becoming stereotypical narrow-minded engineer, since he will be exposed to many different ideas through the humanities. 

In Slaughter’s article, it is not clearly stated how those two arguments correlate with each other, but the two ideas should be followed in today’s society since they both produce the rich idea of diversity. Each person thinks in a different way, and the thinking process greatly differs from man to woman, from one culture to another. Therefore, in order to breed new and diverse thoughts that will generate a ground-breaking product, there should be engineers that represent very different backgrounds.  

The addition of more liberal arts within the engineering curriculum should also be encouraged, because creativity is more likely to flourish when a person is exposed to disparate fields other than his major.  Creativity will breed an open mind, which is a crucial trait for the future engineer, as it fosters understanding of new concepts and facilitates better problem-solving skills. When creativity is stressed, the individual is challenged to think to the maximum. One can memorize data to his heart’s desire, but without ingenuity, he cannot create anything new. As the prospective engineer learns not only math and science but also literature and history, he will gain different perspectives of the world and thus will gain more creative thought, which will clearly assist in the process of designing better and original products.

Comments on Letter from Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail essentially illustrates how strongly King was influenced by Gandhi’s ideas. This letter answered the reproaches made by eight while Alabama clergymen in 1963 in a statement titled “A Call for Unity.” One of the criticisms of the clergymen was the immense tension caused by the demonstration; they called for negotiation for negotiation rather than direct action. King argues that they “are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action.” He goes on to state that nonviolent resistance seeks to create tension that would force the community to face the issue head-on and that is necessary for growth.

I agree with King, in the sense that nothing grows without hitting hardships. Education is clearly a good example of this necessary tension for growth. Students are challenged to learn more and more difficult material as their grade in school increases, in order to grow into a more intelligent person specialized in a field of interest. 

Going along with the same thought process, nonviolent resistance is necessary to produce the tension that will pull the community toward negotiation of an issue. If no one steps up to the plate to create that tension, then nothing will be done about the issue and no growth will be present.

Comments on "Satyagraha"

I find Gandhi’s differentiation between Passive Resistance and Satyagraha to be intriguing. He states that Passive Resistance is “a weapon of the weak and does not exclude the use of physical force” while Satyagraha is “a weapon of the strongest and excludes the use of violence.” I had always assumed that a movement of passive resistance rejected any use of violence, even in regards to self-defense. After reading Gandhi’s view, I then assumed he was basically contrasting passive resistance with nonviolent resistance, since the latter term seemed to satisfy his description of Satyagraha. However, this idea also proved faulty, as one of the basic synonyms of nonviolent resistance is passive resistance, according to a Word Net Search on Princeton.edu. Therefore, Gandhi was attempting to describe something more when defining his actions, something even stronger than nonviolent resistance. It’s ironic to note that the figure of Gandhi is basically synonymous with those terms and he strongly desired to distance himself from those expressions.

Swales and the Discourse Community: Brief Description of Rhetoric

In “The Concept of a Discourse Community”, Swales writes and defends his points in a logical manner. First, he establishes a brief background with surrounding, relevant context of his discussion about discourse communities, by specifically naming several people who have attempted to define a discourse community. In doing so, Swales also characterizes the current state of the discussion by introducing the fact that people before him, like Herzberg and Porter, have conceded that a definitional problem exists for the concept of the discourse community. Swales makes use of this introduction to his rhetorical advantage, because the lack of definition seamlessly transitions into the need for clarification, which is essentially the point of his essay. By indicating a gap of understanding in a concept that appears to be fundamental, i.e. the concept of a discourse community, he appeals to his audience to read further into his essay, so that they might discover a definition of a term that is central to their field of study. 

One of the major ways in which Swales establishes his niche is by describing the purpose of defining a discourse community. He accomplishes this by contrasting a discourse community with a speech community, since these two concepts are sometimes mistaken for the same thing. He states that these two concepts need to be separated because of the need to differentiate between “socio-linguistic” and “socio-rhetorical.” For the audience that he is writing, this is an important distinction to establish. 

In the third section, Swales clearly outlines the characteristics of a discourse in a number-point fashion. This is rhetorically advantageous because it offers a clear visual structure that is easy and accessible for the reader to follow. In each numbered point, Swales states a brief statement about the characteristic, and immediately follows up with a brief, coherent explanation. After clearly describing the characteristics, he cements his argument about his definition of a discourse by giving an example of a discourse community. This is obviously an effective approach, as it gives evidence for his thesis.