Practice writing topic for TOEFL 1. Ignite University.

1. People attend college or university for many different reasons (for example, new experiences, career preparation, increased knowledge.) Why do you think people attend college or university? Use specific reasons and example to support your answer. (30 min, 300 words.)

 People attend college or university to build friendships with classmate without any benefits, which helps people’s dream coming true. When we are college or university, of course we have to study hard though, we have plenty of time to share our thoughts. We can discuss our dream, future, what we learn freely. College or University has a lot of course, which means there are various kinds of idea, study, professor and student.

 For example, I am working for Univ. of Virginia as a physicist. I was invited student to attend some events which was titled as “Ignite Univ. of Virginia”. One student made presentation about how we can succeed. And student talked each other about their dream. I found the girl who wants to be cultural anthropologist and work in Japan because the relation between Japan and China is getting worse recently. I am an only Japanese there. But I was very happy to hear that. I had decided to teach Japanese to her.

My definition of young people is “Someone who believes he can do everything, but who don’t know what he can do.” In this definition everyone can be young. But talking their dream is important. If we express our dream, someone might show you the way. You have use all 20’s for pursuing your goal.

After graduation, sometimes it is difficult to talk our opinion freely. Because we have to make money for living, and work for company or institution, so that we tend to gather who has same culture. We sometimes are skeptical for colleague. 

 We might realize what we were heading was wrong or right later, but, whichever, still what we have done is invaluable. I believe we need 10 years devotion to get to dream. It is long way, but friends who we met in college or university always get our back, kept encouraging us to finish the goal. (42 min,318 words)

Types of prepositions.

For nonnative speaker, it is difficult to decide which position we should use on the writings.  Why don’t you review type of prepositions? List is from ‘’Eye on Editing 2’ written by Joyce S. Cain’

1. Prepositions of time.

month/year     in : She was born in May.

This university was established in 1993

day/date         on : We have class on Monday.

Why don’t you start field research on June 5?

Specific time    at : The class started at 9 a.m.

General time    in : We have meeting in the afternoon.

Approximate time    about : I will be at home about 5:30 p.m.

around : I will be there around 6:00 p.m.

between : I am coming at the Hall between 9 and 10 o’clock.

duration      for : I have lived here for six years.

through: I have thought of you often through the past years.

2. Prepositions of place

city/country     in : He lived in the U.S. for ten years.

street              on : He bought his house on the Wall street

address           at : He lives at University Heights.

motion              to : He went to National institute to do experiment.

toward : He walk toward me.

3. Prepositions of position

on : This book is on the desk.

in : The camera is in my bag.

at : Let’s meet at library.

beside : The dog is sitting beside its owner.

between : My office is between Smith’s and Jason’s.

4. Prepositions of reason

for : I do my job for living.

by : He was pleased by her kind words.

about : We are concerned about the news.

5. Preposition of manner

by : He can understand what she is saying by listening carefully.

at : He is good at playing the guitar.

with : They fisnished the test with ease.

6. Preposition of comparison

like : We are so close that he is like my brother.

as :  I play guitar only as amateus.

7.Preposition of possession

of : She is a good friend of mine.

These are basics proposition and examples. Let’s check these out!!

Movie Review 2 : Shutter Island

 Can you tell whether what you remember is true or not? Can you tell where what you believe is true or not. Can you tell whether you are in dream or in real?

U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio plays) was investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane. He believed that the hospital had dreadful secrets. Teddy was also investigating Andrew Laeddis (Teddy believes he killed Teddy’s wife) who vanished from this hospital without trace.

Story started with his new partner Chuck on the ship which is going to go to the hospital. They started investigating at the hospital, but there is a lot of regulation and unreasonable things, even he is U.S. Marshal, they could access all information they want. The lead psychiatrist, Dr. John Cawley, refuses to hand over records of the hospital staff; murderess’s doctor, Dr. Sheehan, had left on vacation after murderess’s disappearance. They hide something from them? After few days’s investigating at the hospital, he started to believe that the hospital is for performing questionable experiments on its patients, and sends the incurable to the lighthouse to be lobotomized. He started behaving so insanely against doctors, staff, and patients. Finally he got to the lighthouse, but there is no clue of experiment on its patients. Two Dr. was there, they told him ‘You are Andrew Leaddis’.

 The truth is the following. Teddy is Andrew Laeddis. Sadly, his wife murdered their 3 children by making them drawn when he was out. He found the incident, he killed his wife. I could not accept his real world. So, he create imaginary person “U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels” and the imaginary story of Andrew Leaddis.

Finally, Dr. Cawley presumably takes this as a sign of regression and regretfully decides to have Laeddis lobotomized. Before he is taken away, Laeddis asks Dr. Sheehan, “Which would be worse? To live as a monster, or die as a good man?”, and then calmly leaves with the orderlies. Dr. Sheehan is left uncertain whether or not Laeddis has truly relapsed, or simply prefers lobotomy to having to live with his guilt and sorrow.

I actually am not sure that I could understand this movie correctly, but let me write movie review. This movie is really exciting. Story is complex but you will be obsessed with.

http://www.shutterisland.com/#/home

Good English words I found at books, online, and my life recently 2.

1. Expectation is the root of all headaches –William Shakespeare.

I found this on Facebook post by English literature and Language.

2. You are writing primarily for please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for. If you lose the dullards back in the dust, you don’t want them anyway.

The book ’’On writing well’’ chaper5, The audience.

3. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together – African proverb.

I found this on Facebook post by English literature and Language

4. The best revenge is not to be like your enemy – Marcus Aurelius.

I found this on Facebook post by English literature and Language

5. The Changing Taste of Beer: Qualia are qualitative experiences such as tastes and smells, but how real are they? As an example, the philosopher Daniel Dennett cites the typical first reaction to the taste of beer: “What awful stuff!” But suppose you become a beer lover—has the taste of beer changed? Do you have different qualia, or do you have the same qualia but are just reacting differently?

I found in the course description for “Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines”. I am so curious. I would like to buy this DVD in the near future.

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=4278&ai=81259&cm_mmc=email-_-Mag7TopRatedActNMRHO20130212-_-courses-_-moreinfo&cm_mmca1=81259&cm_mmca2=4278

6. Anxiety, you’re not the boss of me.

I found this online article written by Richard Lucas, Special to CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/11/health/anxiety-first-person-irpt/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29

7. I just posted your passwords on Facebook – your Ex

Email advertisement from MacAfee. Haha!!

8. If you don’t like something, stop reading it. You’re under no obligation to finish. It’s not required reading. You’re not being graded.   This one is hard for me. I like commitment. When I start something I want to finish it. If I’ve invested time into reading so many pages, I might as well see it through.   But I’ve learned how quickly this can kill my momentum and enthusiasm.

Hendricks, Kevin D. (2013-01-19). 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading (Kindle Locations 303-306).Kindle Edition.

9. Confession time: I’ve had plenty of “classics” I stopped reading because I didn’t like them.

Hendricks, Kevin D. (2013-01-19). 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading (Kindle Locations 310-311). Kindle Edition.

10. If you want to read a lot of books you have to finish them. You can’t just jump to the next one every time you see something shiny. Have the discipline to finish a book before moving on to the next one.   If you’re tempted to start up a new book before you finish the old one, pay attention.

Hendricks, Kevin D. (2013-01-19). 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading (Kindle Locations 567-569). Kindle Edition.

Book Review 4 : Grouped

 This book describes the social behavior of human being on social networking service. The writer is Paul Adams who is working for Google service and Facebook. As far as I know, he has the best knowledge in this field. Throughout reading this book, I strongly realized that it is difficult for Japanese to think in this way.  

 The web is entering its third phase of development. The first phase was documents linked together. When we found the website, we couldn’t interact with other people. With the second phase we started seeing opportunity for interaction with others. Some website had reviews, and ways to leave. Now we are entering the third phase, where websites are being rebuilt around people. Social behavior is key feature.

 The first thing you have to remember is the number of people we are interacting in our life. There are clear boundaries based on the connection we have. These are 5 15 50 150 500. We interact with 5 people with the strongest ties. Next beyond this is 15, this group is known to social psychologist as the sympathy group. It’s all the people whose death would leave you distraught. Beyond this is 50 people. These are the people who you communicate with on at least semi-regular basis. Beyond this is 150 people these are the people whom you can maintain stable social relations. You know each other, and you know which of them know each other. The next group is about 500. These are our weak ties friend of friend, people we meet occasionally, or people who met recently. These are people you know but don’t feel close to.

 The next thing we have to think is how these group influence us I want to focus on 15 people, we connected with strong tie, such as family, closest friend. They are the people we trust the most. Strong tie is very important for maintain our well-being. I also want to focus on 150 people, but they sometime may become strong information source.

 This book also describes the summary of recent development of neuroscience. I believe that we are going to understand how our subconscious works recently. We are not rational.  Understanding social behavior in this new age is very important, whatever you do for living, whoever you are. This book is map for starting your experiments to understand new human relation in our world which cannot exist anymore without internet.

Japanese lecture 2 : 11 general things you learn first.

This list is mostly from “The basic Japanese grammar”.

  1. There is no words correspond to the English words, a, an, or the.
  2. Nouns do not have special plural forms; they remain the same whether they indicate one object or many. The Japanese word “戸(to) ”, for example, can mean  “a door,” “the door,” “doors,” or “the doors,”
  3. Pronouns are usually omitted if they can be understood from the context. But they can be used for emphasis, or when they are needed to make the meaning clear.

Example) 元気です。 I am fine, thank you.

私は元気です。 As for me, I am fine.

    4. Verbs do not have special form to indicate person or number. Each tense has only one form, which is used no matter what the subject is.

Example) 読む(yomu; to read) in any of situation, I read, you read, we read, they read, the man reads, and so on.

    5. Adjectives are closely related to verbs, and take endings according to their tense and mood.

    6. There are no cases for nouns or pronouns. Relations between the words of sentence are indicated by “little word” called particle or preposition, which are placed after the word they control.

Example) が(ga) usually indicates the subject of a clause.

                わ(wa) can be translated “as for” and often indicates the subject of a clause.

                を(o) follows the direct object.

                の(no) means “of” in most of the English senses of the word, and indicates possession.    

                か(ka) indicates a question.

    7.   There are the frequent ending

       ます（ません）(masu(masen))  indicate present tense. () indicates negative verb.

       ました（ませんでした）(mashita (masendeshita)) indicate present tense. () indicates negative.          

       ましょう（ませんでしょう）(mashou(masendeshou)) is usually translated by using the word probably in the sentence. () indicates negative.   

     8. The common ending て-teusually indicates a verb particle, which can be translated into English in most cases by present particle (“-ing”)

Example) 来て(kite)  coming. 歩いて(aruite) walking. して(shite) doing.

    9. Basic word order is “subject – object – verb”.

   10.   Conjunctions come at the end of the clause they govern.

   11.   Subordinate clauses must come first in the sentence.

I found good summary on this text book “Basic Japanese grammar”. If you have any question about these, feel free to ask. I will add explanations. Each case on this list, we will look into carefully later on this blog.  

Book Review 3 : 137 books in one year.

To tell the truth, the title of book didn’t make any impression on me at first. But this book was unexpectedly good.

Recently, I have some difficulty to read books. I don’t know why. I used to read a lot of books in Japanese. I was obsessed reading, reading 40 -50 books per month at most!! So, I thought I would like to do that also in English. Because I think that reading is most basic skill in life. Of course, talking face to face with people around you is much more important though. Anyway, I haven’t succeeded yet in English. My reading speed has become slow after came here in the U.S. Why?

Firstly, I thought this is because I am reading in English which is my second language, but that is not important. Only I should have to is keeping eye on my momentum and enthusiasm for reading. These are tips (Be careful, this is not only from this book),

  1. Read what you like, what you are really into.
  2. Do not be afraid to stop reading when you realized you don’t like the book.
  3. Track your reading. Count the number of book you read per month.
  4. Read what you are reading now. Resist temptation to read the next before finishing reading.
  5. Read favorite author, category, or genre at same time.
  6. Do not read too difficult or too easy. You have to know yourself.
  7. Place books and keep the book in hand everywhere you go.
  8. Always keep the next book in hand when you are out.
  9. Use audiobooks when you are walking, driving, doing something.

Reading what you don’t like, reading what you are forced to read, reading too easy or too difficult books, these can easily kill your momentum and enthusiasm. I recommend you 3, if you track your reading, like ‘January was 20, February 15, March 12’, you can know your reading pace. I recommend also 8, when you finish reading, your enthusiasm for reading the next culminate. But this enthusiasm would have gone soon. Let’s start reading the next as soon as possible.

And keep this phrase in your mind,

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. – By Confucius

We are living busy life. We have many excuses for keeping us away from reading. Try to make time to read the book we love every day.

The PhD factory

This is from article ‘Nature news’: The PhD factory

The world is producing more PhDs than ever before. Is it time to stop?

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472276a.html

The number of science PhD grew by nearly 40% between 1998 and 2008, in countries that are members of OECD. The growth shows no sign of slowing: most countries are building up their higher education systems because they see educated workers as a key to economic growth. But, is it time to stop?

Japan: The system in crisis.

Of all the countries, Japan is arguably one of the worst. In the 1990s, the governments set a policy to produce 10000 PhDs, trying to triple the number, which succeeded quickly. However, because they have limited seats for professors, academia doesn’t want them. And also, because Japanese companies want undergraduate students to train by themselves, Japanese companies neither.

China: Quantity outweighs quality?

The number of PhD holder in China grew from 10000 (1999) to 49000 (2008). But the main problem is the quality of student. Because of its rapidity, many PhD supervisors are not well qualified. And length of PhD training at three years is too short.

United States: Supply versus Demand.

The population of the people with science PhDs who get tenured academic positions in the sciences has been dropping steadily and industry has not fully absorbed the slack. The poor job market has discouraged some potential student from embarking on science PhDs. Some universities are now experimenting with PhD program that better prepare graduate student for career outside academia.

Germany: The progressive PhD.

Germany is Europe’s biggest producers of PhDs, producing around 7000 PhDs in 2005. Because they have long period experience for training PhDs, they developed progressive training system. Some PhDs seek for job in Academia in Germany. PhDs can also seek for the position in the rest of Europe, and also Europe companies are also interested in them. They are the best of the best.

I believe that Japan have to seek for Germany model. We should develop better PhD training system to satisfy demands of Asia academia and companies.

(See figures on source http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472276a.html)

Magnetic Frustration.

I am working on the magnetism. Even 3000 years of scientist’s dedication, the magnetism is central issue of physics. We have a lot of mysterious and unsolved problem. I have studied for almost 7 years from undergraduate student to postdoc. And I will have studied the magnetism throughout my carrier.

The magnetism is study of how and why spins align in the material.  The smallest unit of magnetism is spin which is caused by rotation of electron (for simplicity here). Spin is quantum, so there are only two states up or down. So, only two states exist.  Let’s consider two spin on each 2 sites.  The interaction between two spin is parallel, spins align up and up (or down and down) which that material have possibility to be a ferromagnet. (Fig.1 above) However, the interaction between two spin is anti-parallel when spins align up and down (or down and up) which that material have possibility to be anti-ferromagnet. (Fig.1 below) In these cases, it is not so difficult to find the lowest energy of system.

Let’s move on to the next. Physicist likes symmetry. (Do you agree?)  So, let’s introduce third site and spin, and put on perfect triangular lattice (which means the strength of interactions are same) with antiparallel interaction. This state is not stable. We don’t know which direction third one should align. Because 1st one you can put “up”, 2nd spin should be “down”. How about the spin on third site? Should it be “up” or “down”? That is question. We call this magnetic frustration. This problem is still fascinating.

Actually, in this case, the system compromises and forms 120 structures. These spins align with 120 degree. (Fig.3 ) This is lowest energy state, however this system is so unstable, so that dynamical or interesting phenomena in this system has been observed. Physicists have revealed a lot of things but still fascinating.

To study the magnetism, I use neutron scattering. Neutron has a spin. So there is interaction between neutron spin and spins in the material. Throughout interaction we will see dynamics of spin and structure of spin in the material.

Picture1

Wild Wing Cafe in Charlottesville

Image Last Friday, I went to Wild wing café to listen to the band playing. That band consists of basically vocal, guitar, keyboard, bass guitar, and Drums. My excitement at that place is indescribable. I realized how much I needed this loud, but lovely sound. I should play guitar in some band sometime soon.  I want to play on the stage!!  I was so excited to listen the band music!!

I have played the guitar for 12 years. And I also have played in the band. I like playing guitar and being in the band. I used to play classic (?) American Rock, such as Deep purple, Eric Clapton, Eagles, and so on.  And also I played Japanese pops the band especially for women singers. I will definitely write here about my favorite music later, especially from Japanese music scene.

The band I listened last Friday, the members are around 50 years old. I asked their currier, the drummer said he has 35 years of currier. I was happy to hear that. Because I could imagine I could play also when I am 50 years old.

And I vaguely understand what they are going, what are their ideal sound, rhythm, and groove. I think there is a specific rhythm or groove for each races. Each race has its own sense of time, rhythm, and accent.  As for me, maybe Japanese, I am absorbed in more up tempo sound, sharp sense of time. But American (White) seems to be slower than us. I am interested in Black.

I want to be in some band here. Even though the different atmosphere, there is something I can learn. I am eager to play.

So, I looked back my currier. I am amateur musician. But some of my live concert was recorded, of course by me. So, I checked my play, and analyze my strength and weakness. I just start practice again!! I hope I can play on stage soon!!