Hey everyone! I am sitting on the plane to Minneapolis right now and I started thinking about everything we did on the trip. From climbing the Great Wall of China in Beijing to touring Cyberport in Hong Kong, I had an amazing time doing it all. I wanted to write this blog to tell everyone what we did on our last day and kind of summarize everything I learned while on the trip, so here goes.
We drove to Shenzhen and toured a manufacturing plant of mp3 and mp4 players. This plant actually supplied Wal-Mart! We learned that a majority of the workers in this plant had to support their dads, moms, and even some grandparents, while making very little money. I felt really bad for these workers because they worked 6 days a week and 10-12 hours shifts in a semi-tropical environment with no air conditioning. I reminded myself that these workers had it a lot better than others, who work in even worse conditions. Many of us from the delegation decided to buy mp3 and mp4 players from this plant.
We then traveled to another hotel for lunch, which was probably the most interesting assortment of food I have ever encountered. It was brought to us and placed on a revolving plate so that everyone could reach it. We started out with some pretty common food like tofu and pork and even some jellyfish. Then I tried something I wish I had never tasted. It looked like noodles at first with little prickly things all over them. I took a small bite, thinking it was just buttered noodles that tasted kind of funny. I proceeded to eat a larger chunk before finding out it was cow stomach…while I was chewing. It took every ounce of fight I had not to throw up on that table right then. That was an interesting piece of culture that I got to experience.
Changing topics…I was truly amazed with all the technological advance China has made in the science and medical field. The cell phones in the U.S. are unbelievably outdated compared to those in China. In the future, I believe China is going to continue to advance their technology and create more opportunities for innovation. And as a nation, they will need to start thinking of ways to bring this technology to the more rural areas of China.
As a delegation, we were not able to see the more common areas of China where poverty exists. I was told if stark differences in the ways of life for people in the city compared to those in the rural countryside. I heard you can still see subsistence farmers using oxen to plow their fields and returning to their tiny hutches after their work is done. This is one major problem that I see in China.
This growing nation offers enormous opportunities for business and trade, and everyone should become more involved with this amazing country. I don’t think people realize how large an impact China has on the world today.
In closing, I thought this trip was a huge eye opener for me. I had an amazing time and learned a great deal of information I want to share with everyone when I return. Thank you to everyone who has been following the students! Feel free to email me anytime. I thought that my email address was on the website beforehand but I found out it wasn’t. I apologize for that. Here it is: ScubaSquad2112@aol.com.
Archived Journal Entries
November 17,
2005
Hong Kong is simply amazing. Imagine a place where the mountains meet the ocean and then place New York City (times 4) right in the middle of it. There you have it. I have never before 
seen skyscrapers built right into mountains. The technology here is awesome.
Today we toured Cyberport, which is basically a small city. This small city is completely government-owned and consists of flats (the British term for apartments), a hotel, shopping center, sewage treatment plant and 4 commercial buildings. This technologic community provides a platform for companies to test and run applications to develop next generation technology. It helps to facilitate the growth of Internet business.
Technology usually comes into play after settlers have moved in and built a city. Cyberport is the exact opposite. Technology – such as a large pipe to the Internet for faster connections – is built first, and then companies and people are brought in.
Cyberport leases out space in this small city for companies to use. It provides a reasonable cost environment for these companies and businesses to develop their technology. Cyberport has a special operation center that monitors the Internet to avoid things like SPAM or junk mail. I 
found that particularly interesting. Personnel must have a thumbprint and an iris scan in order to enter the room. It reminded me of something out of the movie Mission Impossible.
Cyberport earns revenue from its tenants by advertising, leasing out areas such as conference rooms, and through partnerships with other companies. The idea for this city 
was first conceived in 1999 based on a “dot com” model. The idea was about digital content and how it should develop. The city was just completed last year.
While we were there, we got to see many different things. They first brought us into a circular room where they played a seven-minute movie revealing 360 degrees around us. It made you feel like you were moving. We proceeded into an editing room where they showed us how to capture motion on computers using a special suit (how video games are 
made), and how to take 3D photographs. We traveled from there into a sound/audio room and then to a blue room. It was amazing to see the types of technology there and how far it has really advanced.
We are all traveling to Shenzhen tomorrow early in the morning. This is another city in China where there is a lot of industry. I’ll talk to you later!
Steve
November 16,
2005
Today was probably the busiest and most eventful day I have had so far on the trip. It started in the morning with a briefing on intellectual property. A few students then decided to take your 
advice and play hooky to go shopping for a while. Thanks!
From there, we had a luncheon at one of the many hotels in Shanghai. Five of the students, including myself, actually got stuck in an elevator on the 36th floor of the hotel. We eventually got saved by hotel security and their engineers. We continued on to two tours, one at Eli Lilly’s R&D facility and the other at Microport Medical.
Microport Medical is a Chinese company that produces stents, which are devices used by doctors to insert mainly into a patient’s artery but sometimes a vein, to widen it. A stent is used 
when a person’s artery or vein becomes too thin and reduces circulation. This company actually produces the device to sell to the hospitals. Microport has around 450 employees and also had China’s first extruder. An extruder is another device that is used to create plastic tubes. Plastic is put into the machine and tubes come out. You can kind of think of it as a pasta maker for tubes. I believe these plastic tubes are used mainly to enclose the guide wires.
All of this technology was very interesting to me because it helps me tie many lose ends together. In a surgical procedure involving stents, many different activities are involved. The 
contrast that I mentioned last night is used by many doctors to decide whether or not a patient needs a stent. The technological devices used during the procedure are supplied by various companies. One example of this would be Microport actually supplying the stent used in the procedure. Pulling these two subjects together was very interesting to me.
Last summer I was lucky enough to watch an angioplasty at a local hospital. I witnessed first-hand all of these factors of production coming together during the surgery. It was amazing to see the actual X-ray images (the contrast helped show these) of the patient. One could see the stent entering the circulatory system and then ballooning up. It was a great experience to actually learn how the surgery was made available by the supply and innovation of many companies.
We are just traveling to the airport now to get on another plane to Hong Kong. Keep answering those questions of the day because they do affect us. I’ll talk to everyone soon.
Steve
November 15,
2005
Has anyone ever had a project for school that they put off working on until the day before it was due and still had no idea what to do? I experienced this tonight when I had to write another journal entry. I learned a ton of new and fascinating information today, but none of it really correlated with my science topic.
This morning I traveled with the governor and his entourage to the ninth annual CEO forum. This is where business leaders from all over the world come to listen to key speakers and interact with each other. We even had a police escort through the city. After the forum, we flew to Shanghai and attended a dinner. This is where I talked with Terry Bunge, the president and general manager of ACIST Medical Systems, Inc.
Terry talked about a fascinating technology called ACIST (Automatic Contrast Injection System Technology), which injects a substance called “contrast” automatically into patients during surgery, instead of having the physicians do it manually. Contrast contains iodine and helps doctors view X rays better by defining the organs and circulatory components of the body. This technology is widely used in cardiology.
Dr. Robert Wilson, head of the intervention cardiology department, is the person who helped developed this technology and founded the company in 1991. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it in 1998. An agreement was signed in 1999 with an Italian group named Bracco to help distribute the product. In 2001, this Italian group purchased ACIST. Bracco Group was 75 years old and a leader in imaging technology at the time. This technology has since taken off and grown rapidly. It has defined ways to help interventional physicians. The company hopes to move this product into neurological processes and other areas.
I found this type of technology extremely interesting. I was in awe of how fast a company like this can grow. If you guys have any questions on this subject, please feel free to email me. I will be talking to you all tomorrow from Hong Kong. Zai Jian!
November 14,
2005
Imagine hearing from a doctor that one of your siblings needs open heart surgery to survive but he or she can’t perform it because your family doesn’t have enough money. This type of 
situation occurs in China all the time. Contrary to what one might believe, China is still a very poor country. Many families do not have enough money to pay for medical expenses. Learning how the healthcare industry works in China will help explain exactly what I mean by this.
Insurance basically does not exist in China. Families have to pay for most or all of their own medical expenses. The government in China only accounted for 17.2 percent of total health care spending in 2003. This number is ridiculously low compared to the 42-45 percent that the U.S. government funds. Funding for hospitals has to be found somewhere else. A majority of this comes from the pharmacy. People should know that drugs from the pharmacy are usually pretty expensive. This statistic helps illustrate why healthcare in China is such a complicated matter. I thought it would be fun to see for myself what a hospital in China was really like.
The medical delegation took a tour of Fu Wai Hospital today. I didn’t know what to expect on the tour because Elizabeth Bickel, the President of Children’s Heart Link, told me the hospital had sections that were very old and ready to fall apart, and sections that were brand new. She 
was exactly right. It’s difficult to find words to describe the feeling you got while in the hospital. At times I felt like I was almost in a museum of the 1950s, yet rooms had present-day technology in them. Other areas of the hospital were brand new. Because people from all over China come to Fu Wai Hospital, one would think it would be a brand new, technologically advanced hospital. While this hospital is somewhat technologically advanced, parts of the structure need help.
We met with a few of the crew of Fu Wai Hospital, including the president, Dr. Hu Shengshou, the assistant president, Mr. Zhang Zheng, and many others. Fu Wai hospital is the largest cardiac facility in all of china. They perform more surgeries than even the Mayo Clinic. We were lucky enough to be able to witness a valve replacement surgery via live broadcast.
Moving back to the healthcare industry of China, the majority
of hospitals in China are public. There are many problems within the Chinese
economy that are helping push away government funding, such as counterfeiting.
One of the doctors at Fu Wai even told us that he has had to 
turn patients
away from surgery because their families don’t have enough money to pay for
it.
In closing, I think the health care system in China definitely is going to need some help. People are dying helplessly every day just because they don’t have enough money. The doctor that informed us on the surgery also told us charitable funds exist for some patients, but it is very rare. I think we need to realize how serious of a problem this whole topic really is. I’ll talk to you all tomorrow.
November 13,
2005
Hey everyone,
We finally made it to China. The trip over here
was quite interesting and we had an amazing first day. In the past
two days I have seen a lot of things that remind me of science and
I want to talk to everyone about a few of the things I picked out
during our extensive trip over here, and on our first day.
On the actual flight over to China, I noticed
many science-related things. The first flight we had was from Minneapolis,
MN to Tokyo-Narita, Japan. The seats in economy class were closely
jammed together, while the seats in first class were the brand new
pod seats. These pod seats reclined expansively, had a ton of 
space
and also provided a little privacy. The seats were scientifically
designed to help people sleep. The second flight was to Beijing.
This flight was about 4 hours long and the aircraft was packed with
cool science-related items, such as TV monitors in the headrests
of every seat, which were wired to a remote control. Passengers
had choices of movies, music, and even radio stations. I found this
invention of science to be very entertaining. The airplane also
had a tracking device with it. During the flight, a screen would
pop up that showed the location of the plane on a map (in relation
to the destination), the outside temperature (in degrees Celsius),
and the speed of the plane, among other things. This was one bit
of science that I was very excited to learn about. Moving away from
science in our present world, I found many interesting details about
science in the history of China.
On the morning of our first day, the entire delegation
traveled one hour to the Great Wall of China. Jennifer and I hiked
our way to the top of the portion of the wall we toured, while David
wimped out and turned back early. I was sweating and out of breath
much of the time. I had to take many breaks on the way up. While
on these breaks, I noticed some pretty interesting things about
the design of the great wall. They had drainage areas dug out in
them so that water wouldn’t pool on the already treacherous
stairs. 
These
drainage areas led to small drains on the sides of the great wall.
The stairs on the wall also tilted downward to prevent water from
pooling. I thought that was pretty advanced considering they started
building the wall in the 7th Century BC.
Later that afternoon, I noticed that the Chinese
used the same technology in constructing the Forbidden City –
and the similarities did not stop there. The Chinese also used a
paste made from plants to help them glue bricks and other building
materials together. Certain plants were also used to create colors
for decorating the city, which my travel guide told me never faded.
As you can see, I saw many interesting science-related things,
both ancient and modern, in my first two days in China. I will talk
to you tomorrow!
Steve
November 10,
2005
Hi everyone. I finally got the acupuncture procedure
performed on my knee last night, and I want to tell you about the
experience.
I traveled to Cich Chiropractic, not really knowing
what to expect. I was a little nervous about the procedure. I
am not very fond of needles, so this probably wasn't the best
form of traditional Chinese medicine for me 
to
experience. But it was too late to turn back.
Nick Buettner, the project manager for this website,
met me at the chiropractor's office to take pictures and document
my experience. Dr. Cich started by giving us a quick overview
of where acupuncture originated more than 5,000 years ago, and
how it was evolved. The Chinese actually discovered acupuncture
while torturing prisoners with needles. They found that, over
time, certain problems would clear up with the specific placement
of needles.
Dr. Cich described the many points on the body where needles
are placed, around 600 in total. He also told us how he got involved
with acupuncture. When he was in chiropractic school, one of his
teachers
asked if anyone had any nasal problems. At the time he had a runny
nose, so he decided to try the acupuncture. It cleared up his
symptoms immediately and he hasn't had them since.
Now, I honestly thought that acupuncture was
a joke and wouldn't really work, but I was going to find out if
I was right soon enough. We walked across the hall and into another
room. I told Dr. Cich about my knee pain, which resulted from
our last football game against Wayzata, and he decided to perform
a common procedure for knee pain. He showed us the needles, which
are very thin, almost like a wire. Each needle was encased in
a plastic tube with red plastic around the top. Dr. Cich explained
to us that, if the needle were not inside the plastic tube, it
wouldn't penetrate the skin because it is so flimsy. The tube
helped to keep the needle straight.
He inserted five of these tiny needles around
my knee. The first one hurt a little bit, the result of hitting
a "hot spot," but I couldn't even feel the rest. He
explained that the needles work to either stimulate or relax muscles
in the body. He left the needles in for five minutes, then came
back to twist them around. He did this to heat them up so they
would perform better. After another five minutes, he removed the
needles and the procedure was over. I was surprised at how simple
and useful the procedure really was. My knee actually felt a little
relieved after I was done.
Dr.
Cich explained that there is a difference between the western
and eastern philosophies of acupuncture. As I wrote in my first
blog, eastern acupuncture is used to encourage the healthy flow
of Qi (pronounced "chi"). In western cultures, acupuncture
is used more to either stimulate or relax certain muscles or organs.
After we finished talking with Dr. Cich, Nick and I said
our thanks and left. My knee was actually feeling better. I guess you could
say that I was proven wrong about acupuncture. If any of you are interested
in the procedure, I encourage you to see for yourself what it is really like.
It is a fascinating traditional medicinal technique that has been used for
many years. I would like to thank Dr. Cich for allowing me to experience it
for myself. If you have any questions about acupuncture, feel free to contact
me about them.
I’ll talk to everyone soon from China. Thanks.
November 4,
2005
Hi again. I want to start by apologizing for being late with this blog. School and football have kept me very busy, and I just couldn’t find enough time to finish this up. By the way, our football team (Maple Grove Crimson) is playing for the section championship tomorrow against Wayzata. It should be a great game.
Moving on to a more informational topic, I’d like to discuss economic espionage, which Louis Freeh, a former director of the FBI once called “the greatest threat to our national security since the Cold War.” And at one of our pre-mission meetings at Best Buy headquarters, an FBI agent gave an extremely interesting presentation on economic espionage.
What is economic espionage? The language of the federal Economic Espionage Act of 1996 is quite specific:
-
In GENERAL, economic espionage is: whoever, intending or knowing that the
offense will benefit any foreign government, foreign instrumentality,
or foreign agent, knowingly —
- steals, or without authorization appropriates, takes, carries away, or conceals, or by fraud, artifice, or deception obtains a trade secret;
- without authorization copies, duplicates, sketches, draws, photographs, downloads, uploads, alters, destroys, photocopies, replicates, transmits, delivers, sends, mails, communicates, or conveys a trade secret;
- receives, buys, or possesses a trade secret, knowing to same to have been stolen or appropriated, obtained, or converted without authorization;
- attempts to commit any offense described in any of paragraphs (1) through (3); or
- conspires with one or more other persons to commit any offense described in any or paragraphs (1) through (3), and one or more such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, shall, except as provided in subsection (b), be fined not more that $500,000 or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both
- Organizations- Any organization that commits any
offense described in subsection (a), shall be fined not more than $10,000,000.
But enough with the definitions. Economic espionage is actually a very serious problem. Many businesses have advanced technology that they don’t want other people to know about. Foreign governments, competing businesses, and sometimes rogue employees will actually attempt to steal the secrets for their own use. Last year, economic espionage and the theft of trade secrets cost U.S. businesses more than $250 billion. More than 56 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies admit to having been victimized. People can perform economic espionage in the simplest ways. Business people have had their laptops, personal information and business information stolen right out of their hotel rooms in foreign countries. Hotel rooms in foreign countries have also had phone taps and video cameras.
That’s pretty scary stuff.
One preventive measure was taken in 1996 when congress passed the Economic Espionage Act. This act makes economic espionage a federal offense with harsh prison sentences and fines up to $10 million. While this act doesn’t stop everyone from committing this crime, it helps.
But businesses and individuals need to take measures to protect themselves from economic espionage. Keep your valuable information on a short leash. I know I will when I am in China.
All of the information I’ve used in this blog comes from the Economic Espionage Homepage website.
I will talk to you all again very soon. If you have any questions or comments about science and technology topics, feel free to email me about them. I would love to research any ideas that you may have. Talk to you soon!
Economic Espionage Homepage. 2002. Lexicon
Communications Corp. 3 Nov. 2005 http://www.economicespionage.com
October 24, 2005
Hey everyone! I thought I would start off by talking
a little about traditional Chinese medicine. I didn't have a ton of time
to learn everything there is to know about it, but I found out some pretty
cool facts.
Acupuncture is one of the fundamental methods of healthcare throughout
Asia, dating back as far as the Stone Age. Western science has
never figured out exactly how acupuncture works, and many doctors
remain skeptical about the practice. Because acupuncture is based
on Asian theories about the complementary and counter-balancing
forces of "yin" and "yang", a Chinese diagnosis
may seem strange to a western doctor.
The Chinese don't have a problem understanding how acupuncture works
because their culture understands how "vital energy" or "Qi" (pronounced "chi")
works. To them, Qi is the vital energy of any living organism and
source of all change and movement in the universe. If Qi is blocked,
it can result in many things including an inability to keep warm and
a lack of resistance to diseases.
Acupuncture begins with an examination of the patient. The doctor
forms a diagnosis and determines the cause of the patient's symptoms.
Needles are then placed in specific points to bring the body
back into balance.
I am curious to learn exactly what acupuncture feels like,
so I'm hoping to have some done to me in the near future. I will
keep everyone informed on how it goes if I find a place that
performs it.
"Tuina" is also one of China's traditional medicinal
remedies. Tuina is a massage-like method that is used to treat
many conditions, including chronic-stress related disorders of
the digestive, respiratory and reproductive systems. This ancient
treatment can be dated back to 1700 BC. It consists of questions
about the health problem and a therapeutic massage that can include
a large amount of pressure.
There are a few more traditional Chinese medicinal topics including
herbs and nutrition that I may tackle down the road. As for now, I
am excited to search for an acupuncturist so I can experience it myself.
I will update you later. Keep in touch with any questions or comments
you have about these topics. See ya!
Steve
Qi: The Journal of Traditional Eastern Health and Fitness. Insight
Publishing. 14 October 2005. (http://www.qi-journal.com)
