Author: admin

Volunteering for the Benefit of All Involved

Volunteering for the Benefit of All Involved

L.Zhen

Volunteering is important not only for helping those in need but also for improving the lives of volunteers themselves. That is, the ways in which volunteering helps those in need are quite obvious, but the way volunteering enhances the lives of volunteers is not as straightforward. For example, a right match between an activity and the volunteer can help the latter find new friends and even strengthen social skills. In addition, volunteer activities can enhance the volunteer’s self-confidence and encourage healthier attitudes. I plan to pursue various activities that can expose me to new perspectives and people with common interests to broaden my world view and personal networks. By volunteering, I expect to better understand my role in society and form tangible goals for my personal and professional life in the future. Eliminating social isolation, developing a solid support network, and finding satisfaction by helping others are just a few benefits of volunteering, and therefore I plan to take full advantage of it for the benefit of all involved, including myself.

 

Parents’ Care : Heaven On Earth

It’s hard to think of a world without you,

Life, care and protection—that I get from you,

Open my eyes to see your face—

Very very happy with a glistening gaze !

Every day I live, every time I smile,

Your gentle manners make me civilized,

Looking at the stars and the moon, I see you there—

You are great, my dear mother, father.

Most of the times when you scold.

Often I do feel very sad, low and cold;

Much later one day, I’ll happily realize,

Dreams of yours that guide my life.

All of your lives, you’ve given to me,

Dear dad, mom and me, make a splendid family.

 

Students: Rahul & Akash Dasgupta

On the Relationship Between Viscosity and Surface Tension

Summary
Flow rates and pulling forces were measured in several solutions to determine the correlation between surface tension and viscosity. Because these fluid properties arise from intermolecular bonding, a positive correlation was expected. To study the relationship between viscosity and surface tension, solutions with different concentrations of agar and flour were used. Differences in viscosity were determined by differences in flow rate. The flow rates were determined from the time that the solutions took to flow through a tube. The surface tension (Newtons/meter) was determined by the pulling force exerted on a needle placed on the surface of the solution, which was weighed using grains of rice put on a scale. Surprisingly, we found that the solutions with a higher viscosity than water had either less or the same surface tension as water, and we suspect this is due to the unchanged intermolecular bonding of water molecules (hydrogen bonding) causing surface tension as viscosity increased. A possible explanation is that the viscosity of a fluid is influenced more by the friction caused by the interactions between large molecules with a lot of polar atoms, causing attraction between them.

Ruihan Wei, Ji-Hong Chen, Jan D. Huizinga

Click here for PDF file: September2014(1)

AI x Agriculture

AI x Agriculture
Agriculture is one of the most historical industries. The most traditional agriculture utilizes simple tools like sledge and livestock to increase efficiency, modern agriculture uses more advanced mechanical utilities such as electric tiller and tractor. Although the advanced tools significantly increase productivity, they still lack specification and management and thus causes pollution (ie. fertilizer, pesticide, contamination from livestock, etc.) and waste of energy. However, with AI tools, specifically prediction and agriculture robots, agriculture can achieve detailed management and thus reduce pollution.
Robotics is a broad application field including AI, mechanical engineering, electric engineering, etc. Unlike the fancy robots shown in movies, agriculture robots are more like machines that are informed AI and can finish some tasks. With the help of AI, robots can outperform human in managing and harvesting and significantly reduce human labor work. Managing plants need tremendous inspections and works such as checking pests and soil, but robots not only free human from the redundant work but also are more accurate. For example, R2Weed2 can detect weeds and remove them effectively, and it can also perform soil analysis, which is almost impossible for farmers to achieve for each small region of soil. The analysis results can be further used for other AI program to propose fertilizer or pesticide plan, which optimize environmentally harmful products efficiency and growth of plants.
Other AI tools can also help with agriculture such as machine learning (ML), computer vision (CV), etc. Roughly speaking, ML is a program that is fed with data to train and make prediction about new data, CV is to teach program to see things and do inference as human such as recognizing human faces. Scientists has been trying for decades about training ML to predict crop output in some given conditions like season, soil, etc. This helps farmers to decide what to grow on their land such that the output can be maximized. CV can be used in detection such as detecting pests, crop health, weeds (R2Weed2), etc., which helps farmers to detailly manage each plant. As the output is maximized in each land, fewer lands and resources will be used and wasted.
Despite the benefits of using AI in agriculture, there are some disadvantages such as AI may be less accurate and experienced than human when detecting weeds and pests. However, as AI is growing rapidly nowadays, more accurate algorithms will be proposed and hopefully AI can fully take charge of agriculture and reduce pollution.

CHENHAO ZHANG

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR MEN AMD WOMEN

She cooked the breakfast first of all

Washed the cups and plates

Dressed the children and made sure

Stockings all were made.

Dusted chairs and made stairs,

I roamed an hour or two

Baked a jar of cake and pie,

Then worked to cook and stew.

The telephone rang constantly

The door ball did the same

The younger bell and hurt his toe,

And then the laundry came.

And when her husband came at six

He said,’’ I envy you!

It must be nice to sit at home

without* thing to do

 

Student: Balachandran. R