Wednesday 29 February 2012

Conference Abstracts - Please Post Here!


Please post the following information as a comment here:

1) your full name
2) the exact title (and, if you wish, subtitle) of your presentation
3) a brief abstract

Length of abstracts: 2 sentences to 1 page.

If you have more to share about your topic than just the 3 to 5 minutes of your talk and the short abstract, please feel free to post additional material in the "Conference Material" section! If you know already that you will make use of this option, please mention it at the end of your abstract so that people can find your additional material more easily.

Thank you!

Gudrun

47 comments:

  1. FDU Conference: “What Matters in Today’s World?”

    Group Presentation by Mei-Han Hsu & Catherine Shao


    Abstract


    Love - What Matters?

    It seems like everyone understands the meaning of love,
    But at the same time, it seems like no one really understands what it is.
    Love, the world’s simplest but also the most difficult thing to understand.

    Today, we live in a materialistic society,
    Supposed we should be happy and satisfied.
    But why everyone’s heart, is still like a big broken hole? Unfulfilled and bottomless.
    Everyone still feels lonely, and each of us still lives under this helpless life situation.

    Does this mean the world we live in, there is no one thing, an object, or a feeling, can fill it? Or it can be cured?

    Is love the answer? If yes, what is it? And where is it in?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Mei Han & Catherine,

    Thanks for posting your abstract! You found an excellent - and really important topic. I'm looking forward to hearing your presentation,

    g

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yang Fan (Kevin)
    What matters-- the way of thinking

    I have lived in Western countries for four years. I always try to evaluate my value of life and world by seeking out what I have learned and what are the differences compared to China. Finally, I find the way of thinking matters me most. In my presentation, I will illustrate the difference of how to think between Chinese and the western. Besides, I will say how it change my thought.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Kevin,

    Thank you very much for posting! Ways of thinking definitely matter in today's world! I'm curious to hear about the differences you have found between the Chinese and the Western system.

    ReplyDelete
  5. group presentation by Manminder Sandhar & Reem.

    Importance of yoga and meditation.

    In today's life,people are busy in their day to day activities. They get no time for themselves. In a race of fulfilling one's goal and finding new ways to make more and more money, people are getting stressed out and are facing mental disorders and other health problems.To recover from stress and health problems , yoga and meditation could be very effective and helpful. They also helps in refreshing our minds and makes us more lively.
    Yoga is the physical ancient Indian activity.It helps to explore our physical senses and cure from many diseases as well.On the other hand,Meditation is the way to connect to God. it helps to bring about self realization.
    In our presentation, we will discuss about various benefits of yoga and meditation and why they are important for all of us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A topic close to my heart! Wonderful! Thanks for posting and for talking about it on Friday!
      g

      Delete
  6. Group presentation by Sherry and Rocio

    "Simple things in life".

    Sherry and I we are going to talk about the simple things that matter in life, and how we dont appreciate them. How we dont take the time to reflect about those things that really matter to us. Our daily routin, our jobs, classes, and differents responsabilities distract us from the things that are important for us. Materialism and our selfish attitude does not let us enjoy the good and simple things in life such as just the fact that you are alive one more day and you can see the sun, the sky, all the nature that is around us. Moreover people should care more about in their families, values, in being kind to one another and always smile.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Excellent! Great topic! Thanks for picking it and for posting your abstract!
      g

      Delete
  7. Group presentation by Deepika Sawant and Sohal Pandya
    "HERCEPTIN a boon for Breast cancer Patients."

    Cancer is a disease that is spreading like fire in today's society and affecting many people. Cancer,especially BREAST CANCER,is affecting more people in the 21st century. We are going to emphasize on the major breakthrough in medicine pertaining to breast cancer. The medicine Herceptin has proven effective in metastatic breast cancer patients with HER2/neu receptor. The prognosis of HER-2 positive breast cancer is usually poor.These patients are resistant to hormonal therapy and therefore Herceptin has proved to be the first line of treatment. To conclude,how herceptin is beneficial to a specific type of breast cancer patients would be the topic of our presentation for the event "Defining values for the 21st Century"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Very interesting! Thank you very much for posting and for giving a talk on Friday. I'm looking forward to learning more about this topic.
      g

      Delete
  8. Group presentation by Viren, Thao, Carlos and Duy.

    "Practical Activism - Go Green and Global Peace."

    We are going to talk about environment and war.

    We will try to spread the awareness message of global warming. We will talk about activities which can avoid the earth to be destroyed. Plus we will bring the attention towards the rising war between Iran and Israel.

    This world need peace between people and environment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To be precise, moreover we will also take about the activities that speed up the destruction of the earth, and instant remedies to prevent from it @ Gudrun:)

      Delete
    2. Very important issues! Thanks for posting and for presenting on the 23rd!

      Delete
  9. Juan Magana

    Why we need education?
    I'm going to be talking about the importance of why the world must be educated, but not only educated but also special educational methods needed to survive in the 21st century globalized world.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Beat Ryf

    What Matters:
    The Bigger the Better?

    The world is big, our heart is big and the universe is bigger than big, it’s huge.
    Should we therefore always aim for the bigger?
    I say NO!
    True, for some things bigger really is better. But I will show you that this is not always the case. Let’s look at some obvious examples. A hole in your head is bad but a big hole in your head is even worse. Ok that was an easy example. Another one, cars: Are big cars always the better solution? Yes for some people I completely agree. A contractor just needs a big car to hold all his materials and tools. But a single person in a city does he/she really need a big car? No absolutely not. For him/her, a big car doesn’t make sense.
    I will try to explain that in fact “the bigger the better” is not always the best solution, especially in cases where the industry makes us believe that the bigger is the better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Excellent! I'm looking forward to your talk!

      Delete
  11. Nohelia Alcas

    What Matters : Are we missing beauty in our everyday basis?

    Everyday from the moment we wake up, brush our teeth, get breakfast, work/study, get on the skytrain, dinner with friends, etc. We run across many places, and perceive many things. At the end of our day we are tired, and just call it another day.
    An experiment by the Washington Post, placed Joshua Bell, one of the best violinist in the world, at the Washington Metro, performing of the most beautiful and complex parts of symphony in a 3.5 million dollar violin. And he was completely ignored.
    If we pass to one of the best musicians in the world and the most beautiful music, i wonder... How many other beautiful things we've lost to follow a daily routine? Why can't we perceive beauty in a common place sometimes? And how by doing it, it can improve our happiness on a daily basis?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Excellent point! Thanks for making us stop and think - and help us notice the beauty!

      Delete
  12. Rajesh Kumar Mani

    Women's education & power in India:
    Women constitute almost half of the population of the world. Education for women is the best way to improve the health, nutrition and economic status of a household that constitute a micro unit of a nation economy. In this context, it can be argued that lack of woman education can be an impediment to the country’s economic development. In India, women achieve far less education that of men. As per the Census report 2001, the literacy rate of women is 54.16 per cent and that of men is 65.38 per cent. There has been a sincere effort to improve the education attainment of women by both government and voluntary organizations. The changes in the policies and infrastructural supports on primary, secondary and higher education reflect the initiatives of the Government of India towards women education.

    Eventhough women were able to pursue all the stages of education like men do, but still women striving for something which is invisible.what is that ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I totally agree. A very important topic! Thanks for drawing our attention to it!

      Delete
  13. What matters: color--affect people's emotion

    Shunru Zhang & Ken Sun

    color is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light power versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects, materials, light sources, etc., based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra. By defining a color space, colors can be identified numerically by their coordinates. Two types of color--warm color and cold color-- will affect people's feeling of time and emotion.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, colors do affect our emotions - and well being! Thanks for telling us more about this important topic!

      Delete
  14. -Gagandeep singh
    -Gudrun Dreher
    -English

    Teacher Birds
    We have so much to learn from birds. They are stress free unlike human beings. We are in stress, in tension for tomorrow that’s why we are always busy in earning and saving for tomorrow and while saving for the future and having enough for present still we are lacking peace of mind. Birds don’t have stocks of food for tomorrow but they still use to sing songs when they leave their nests in the morning even they don’t know from where they will get their food and will they get or not? In the evening they return to their nests while singing songs, they feed their children and sleep without wasting energy and time on thinking about an uncertain future which we cannot predict. Amazingly they have peace of mind which we also wish to have but we don’t know the ‘WAY’ of achieving it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, learning from birds/animals is an excellent idea! Thanks for picking this topic!

      Delete
  15. Moninder Sanger

    What matters: What is your Identity, Who are you?

    Defining anything is simple, but can we define ourselves? Can we define who we are? A simple question but no definite answer, our race, our religion, our qualifications, our name, our age, etc. does these define ourselves? The definition we are giving to ourselves is not really ours, it is definition of our body.My topic is identifying us. What matters the most is, knowing ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great topic! I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about it.

      Delete
  16. Badr Alireza and Steven

    Water

    billions of years ago, water was the main reason of survival. people used to walk thousands of miles around the globe to find some water. the lack of water has forced the people to move from a country to another, but today water is the cheapest thing on earth. every individual is wasting huge amounts of water everyday with no concerns or doubts that this valuable resource could vanish one day.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you very much for drawing our attention to this important topic!

      Delete
  17. Willian Guilherme
    Mama Africa

    Why the world pretend to be blind when the subject is Africa?
    I feel really sorry for seeing that humankind is becoming each day more selfish and stupid, lost in its own ego. This makes my heart burn and my head spin because it is almost impossible to put this feeling into words.

    The time has come to stop thinking that the world revolves around one single person and that there is only one country, one continent, and that as long as “I am in a good situation, I do not care about anybody else”. The time has come for the whole world to value what really matters in life. Let's worry and support causes that really matters to make our world a better place for us and for future generations. We support so many things: Football and Hockey teams, strikes, and mainly ourselves. For a long time, humans have chosen to step back, wasting time with non-noble causes; the time has come when we need to complain when something horrible takes place around the world – and to stop it.

    Let's ask ourselves: What really matters? Let’s shake off our selfishness and think about the other. Let’s help all those who need our help.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Excellent! Thank you very much for posting - and for talking about this important topic!

      Delete
  18. group presentation by Reem, Manminder Sandhar and Kanwarbir
    topic is= culture shock.
    hello Gudrun, sorry our group has switched to new topic that is culture shock at this last moment. i hope u won't mind with it.
    culture shock is experiencing unfamiliar way of life whenever a person is move to or visit a foreign country. in our presentation we are gonna discuss about various aspects of culture shcok and how it effects the people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's okay - culture shock is very important as well.

      Delete
  19. soft drinks and side effects
    we all love to drink soft drinks, we dont know how much it is making to our bodies.
    avoiding soft drinks is very help ful, drinking soft drinks makes you loose calcium from the body through kidneys
    A joint study by Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital researchers in February 2001 concluded that such excess liquid calories inhibited the ability of older children to compensate at mealtime, leading to caloric imbalance and, in time, obesity.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good point! Thanks for drawing our attention to this topic!

      Delete
  20. FDU Conference: “What Matters in Today’s World?”

    Group Presentation by Luo Mengna & Liu Rengyong

    Abstract


    Etiquette plays an important role of communication in our daily life. To learn different etiquette in daily life is benefit to establish the good relationship and it can help us to learn English. As we know, different country has different etiquetteDifferent cultural background, individualism and collectivism, nationalism and value factors may result in etiquette differences on politeness between western countries and China which can be found in many aspects of daily communication.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Very important for inter-cultural communication! Thanks for posting!

      Delete
  21. Arnaldo Dos Santos

    Animal Cruelty

    Animal cruelty has become a big issue in today's society, not only in your community but around the world, everyday more animals are being treated badly and other species are being taken advantage of for the pleasure of mankind. It is affecting the biodiversity in the world because every year different kinds of animals are becoming extinct.

    I am determined not to only make an impact in my community, but also slowly move up and implement that impact into someone else's mind so that it can spread around the world until we reach a point where everyone will take this as a serious matter.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I totally agree with you! Thanks for picking this important topic!

      Delete
  22. Hello Gudrun,
    I am joining Manminder's group for tomorrow conference.

    Thanks,
    Kanwarbir

    ReplyDelete
  23. Danny

    Canada Health Servers

    some problems about canada health servers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Danny,
      Do you mean Canada's Health Services?
      gudrun

      Delete
    2. Anyway, I guess, that's what you mean - since that has been a much debated topic recently. It's also a very important one, of course! Thanks for posting!

      Delete
  24. What matters to me?

    Be competitive

    Nowadays people is afraid of failure, there is no sense of proud for what we are doing, thus, the definition of be competitive is getting lost or misunderstand; be competitive is not only matter of prove that you are better than other, is also identify your weakness and work on it so next time you are facing the same challenge, you win.

    For me, be competitive means take some hits, let them heal and try it again until I reach my goal, sometimes takes a few days, sometimes it could takes years, but at the end of the day, is a vicrory.

    That is what it matters to me

    ReplyDelete