 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're here, we're live, we're on Think Tech, we're on Think Tech Talks more specifically at the two o'clock block on a given Tuesday with Professor Sung Choi, he's the Associate Dean of the College of Engineering at UH Minoa, and he is also the director, you're a director of a program there, what is that song? Director? Assistant director. You have to be more specific to that, we hold a lot of roles over here. Well, the important thing is you're Associate Dean, yeah. Yeah, so one of the things that you're talking about is this student research symposium, and it's actually led by College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, but College of Engineering is an integral part of it, and every year we have undergraduate as well as graduate students present the poster as well as all presentations, many of the research that's going on in environmental sciences, agriculture, food sciences, and straight out engineering projects. You know, these programs, you're always there, Sung, every time I go to one of these community science programs for kids, you're there. Well, I think you're going to come, so I can't agree with you. You know, for example, I mean, every time I go to the science fair, you're there, you're a regular fixture at the science fair, I guess you're one of the celebrity judges or maybe the chief judge. I was a chief judge. I think you need new ideas and new personalities to come into the picture. So I did like my five, six year gig, and I think it's time for somebody else to step in and maybe bring in some other ideas that I may have missed. Yeah. But you know, you bring up a really good point. I guess I'm at a lot of these science fairs, robot competitions, these research competitions here at the university. It's one of the few ways I can encourage and give constructive criticism to students to reach for that next step. I mean, maybe they're that close and they just need a little bit more encouragement to take that one additional step. And if I was able to provide that, great. If some of the other judges were able to provide that, even better, but we need to make sure more and more people of our community get involved so we can create our own industry environment here, that high tech environment that we're always trying to look for, as well as create that workforce that we need to sustain ourselves. You remember that old saying, if we bring people in from the mainland, it's all about sand, surf, and sand outside. And that only lasts three years, right? And we need people to stay loyal to you. Well, how are we doing? You know, I mean, I remember you and I met, she must be the early 2000s. You were giving a talk about your underwater autonomous vehicles to a science group downtown, which I thought was really good that the university would come out and talk about that. And those were the times when we were considering these questions up close. That is to establish a tech industry, to see if we could do something with Act 221 and get some investment going. And, you know, to bring the university elements together so that we had graduates who were capable of, you know, entrepreneurial activity in science. How is it doing 20 years later? So let me talk industry numbers. Back when we were in 2000, when I was one of the, actually, I was the first speaker for this thing called the tech showcase in North Hawaii. We were probably bordering around 100 graduates a year, maybe the last maybe 80 engineering graduates a year. We're now at a point where our enrollment has pretty much tripled. And back then it was about 550 people in the College of Engineering. Now have about 1500, 1500 students. Just last year, we graduated, I believe, 360 graduates that combined undergraduate and graduate. And for this year, so last semester and this upcoming semester, we're looking at 380 graduates. So if the numbers of the workforce has been absorbed by our economy as an indication, we've done pretty well. Are they all in the high tech sector? I don't believe so. I think a lot of our engineering graduates, especially civil and mechanical engineers, are going to the construction industry, as you see all the cranes and hot got go and various other parts of the state. However, you know, bringing back this thing about the student research symposium, what's good is we're trying to give those students, many of those students, undergraduates graduate, an opportunity to come out and showcase their idea. So whether their research or project is really, you know, state of the art, or if they happen to be a confirmation of some of the fundamentals that have been learned in NCI, we're trying to do that. And the engineering projects along with the CTAR project are a huge indication of this. So let me give you a couple of numbers for that. Yes, you know, engineering project wise, we don't have as many in this CTAR slash College of Engineering student research symposium. We probably have 20 posters and about five to eight presentations, the world presentation. On the flip side, CTAR, College of Tropical Art and Human Resources, we're probably looking at about 80 posters and about 30 to 40 presentations. So if anybody's interested, they should be putting April 6 and 7 on their calendar. April 6 afternoon, which is a Friday. April 7 morning, which is a Saturday. They'll have the posters as well as these world presentations. And of course, the other thing is if any of the industry tech industry people want to be judges, they should really get in touch with us. I don't have the email address. Oh, off the top, maybe I do. It looks like you can contact HTTP at www.ctahr.hawaii.edu slash jeans-day. I'll try sanity later on as well. But you know, if you were to go into Google and you did UH, Minoa, CTAR, student research symposium, don't come right up. CTAHR, the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. And you guys are in your co-sponsoring this program that you and CTAR and the College of Engineering, yeah. So what kind of projects? Can you give me some examples of the kind of projects that are going to be displayed in this program? So for engineering, we've had things like studying the water runoff that comes from the Minoa streams and to figure out the chemical contents to see how clean it is or how safe it is by the time it runs from top of Minoa Hill all the way to the bottom. And so we want to try to warn people. We also are very aware of, like, Minoa stream overflows. So we're trying to figure out what type of systems will help that water irrigation down. So we won't happen to have a flooded library again. On the CTAR side, they're doing a lot of agricultural stuff where they're looking at different types of tropical diseases that have impacts on tropical foods. They have a different type of food preserving systems. I mean, some people may have heard about it. There's a group called the June Lab and they're trying to figure out how to do fast freezing of foods, which is great for transportation of foods without changing color or losing color. So for if you want a if you want fresh ahi with that really good reddish color, you know, you don't want to freeze it regularly because the water being frozen and thawing tastes that taste and colorway. They have ways of fast freezing these things where when you thaw it out, it's just as good as the day you bought it. So all those kind of things. Interestingly, the other thing that I want to bring out is remember fashion industry or, you know, the fashion aspects are also under CTAR, which is part of my human resources aspect. And they've been coming up with different type of fashion shows and fashion intriguing points on fabrics and stuff like that. And I know they were trying to incorporate an intertwine like 3D printing because that was something that was big in New York City. Oh, it's bigger and bigger every time you look. They're trying to 3D print dresses. Yeah. So, you know, I'm sure in the near future, they're going to start 3D printing the fabric. So why not get a 3D scanner, you know, scan me up, send it to some 3D printer, which could, which is basically a Star Trek replicator. And I'll end up with this suit right down the street at maybe Kinko's or whatever. And I don't have to go in for this one week, two week tailoring suit makeup. So, you know, just as a footnote to that, I just saw a notice from the Science Cafe, which is part of the Hawaii Academy of Science. And it's very interesting that they have somebody from the College of Engineering, somebody who is an expert in dyes and using natural sources of color from nature to create color on fabrics. It sounds like the same kind of subject. And they're giving a talk about that in the next few weeks at the Science Cafe. Oh, that's good. Yeah. So, you know, that's, in a sense, isn't that obvious? If you go back in history 2000 years, all dyes are made natural products, whether it's berries or dirt or, you know, something that they find. So, all this artificial stuff doesn't really have to be, except for the fact that we're looking at the convenience and cost factors. Yeah. So, where is, you know, the student research symposium? Physically, where is it going to take place? I missed that. Where is the symposium, the student research symposium going to take place? Oh, you know, benefiting us is incredible because, as I was mentioned before, the various different types of ideas that come up is really an infusion of new ideas to our community and our industry. Where is it going to be? Maybe this thing about the fast freezing would be something that is necessary for our food industry, which is one of our main manufacturing industries in the world, to have a bigger jump on trying to have a more impact on the rest of the world. Maybe, so some of the other stuff that we've been doing in incorporation is the crossing between things like agriculture and engineering. Most of them would be things like use of drones. You might, you know, a favorite topic in trying to use thermal or different types of cameras to see if they can pick out tropical diseases on tropical plants and foods from above instead of having to do each one separately. Which would be extremely time consuming. So, this is, these are science projects rather than entrepreneurial efforts. They're not new companies. They're scientific papers and projects that students have been working on, am I right? But, you know, from research and the fact that you pick away at a rock enough times it'll eventually break or you hope that it breaks. Who knows, maybe somebody will come up with a brilliant way of doing something that will venture into a new company. And isn't that our hope all the time that if it does, then you can create that fourth sector in our economy that can sustain some of our, what people have been defining as a brain, right? Well, very important for Hawaii. We have to have something other than a monoeconomy and science is the ticket. So, if somebody wants to submit a paper or a project, that would, that submission, the presentation of that submission would take place on April 6th and 7th. Right. And where would, where would he be, or she be presenting? Oh, what would she be presenting? Where? Oh, where? It's usually in the CETAR building. So, there is a agricultural, agricultural science building, which is right across from the, the biomedical world, which is the old medical science building on UH Manawa campus. It's at the very end of East West Road. And it's on the right side. And it'll take up the second, third floors on the walls, on the hallway wall. Yeah, I've seen it. I've been there. We, we investigated some, some toxic snails with John Paul, you know, John Paul. Yeah, I remember John Paul. Yeah. And it's quite a place. CETAR is quite a place, there's a huge laboratory in there. But let's take a break now, Song. Song Choi is the associate dean of the College of Engineering at UH Manawa. He's involved as a, I guess, one of the partners organizing the student research symposium with the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources on April 6th and 7th, and that would be at CETAR. And if you want to, if you want to sign up and present a paper, present your project there, just look up the student research symposium on YouTube at, rather on, well, on Google at the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. In the meantime, we can take a short break. We come back, Song. I'd like to address a whole new issue with you, one we hadn't planned on discussing. And that is nuclear warning to place on Saturday. We're intitling this part of the show, what were you going to do in your last 38 minutes? We'll take a short break, we'll be right back. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on thinktecawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on thinktecawaii. Okay, we're back with Sung Choi. Hi, Sung. We seem to be better now. We're happy to do that. Sung Choi is the associate dean of the College of Engineering at UH Manoa. And I wanted to spend a little time with him in this show to talk about what happened on Saturday. And I guess my primary interest, although I'd discuss any aspect you like, is exactly, you know, what is the survival rate from a modern, you know, nuclear bomb? And, you know, the realities in terms of dealing with that. I mean, I think people felt that they took shelter on Saturday. They might have a chance to survive. But, you know, a hard look at it, and you really wonder, you know, in a modern nuclear weapon of, say, 250 kilotons, you're not very likely to survive, are you? I kind of doubt that we'll survive. So it's kind of interesting. This Saturday, I was actually involved in VEX Robotics State Tournament. And I was the head judge, and I had all my judges at 7am, and this thing goes off at, like, 804, 805am. And, of course, I was calm as any cucumber you can find, because I've had bomb, you know, bomb threats on airplanes, and what can we do from all this? Nothing, right? So I told them, I said, please, you know, just don't worry about it. Let's just continue with what we're doing. Of course, many of them asked me to confirm that it was not real. So I had to call one of our former adjunct generals and had to bother them on Saturday to say, can you find out for me? But obviously, you know, there are signs. All you have to do is, when you get a phone, a phone message like that, you can check your TV, you can check your radio, you can listen to the sirens. You can even listen to see if you hear planes going on. But as you were saying, the magnitude of the bomb these days, assuming they're accurate enough to hit the target that you're looking for, I don't think survival rate is that high. I was joking with a friend of mine saying that maybe we should start building underwater bunkers where we have some sort of safety here. But how can you get anywhere in the state of North Korea? 17 minutes, did they say? Yeah, it's not a lot of time. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, it affects different people in different ways. I mean, my own self with my wife, we retired to a part of our house. It's sort of against the hillside and it was going to be relatively safe, I used to suppose. But the old notion of duck and cover as we used to play in school, they used to give us nuclear warnings in school when we were in grade school in the 50s, thinking that Russia was going to bomb us any day, that's no longer appropriate, it seems like. If you're anywhere near, and those days, the Russian size of bomb would be 15 kilotons, and now we got 250 kilotons, which is 15 times as much. And if you're anywhere near the explosion, my thinking is you're toast. So there's no point in, don't deceive yourself by thinking that you're going to survive. And Oahu, my guess, I like your thoughts about this, my guess is that the blast would wipe out the city of Honolulu immediately. It would, it travels at 750 miles per second, that's pretty fast. Wiping out everything in its path, this is the blast, you know. And then if there are nuclear weapons as there are in Pearl Harbor, I don't know if this happens in the way of fission, but if there are other nuclear weapons around, I'm wondering whether a bomb that was exploded in that area would tend to explode the other nuclear weapons. So you could have a secondary blast as well, if you have other bombs, you know, in the neighborhood. Well, hopefully the ones that are at Pearl Harbor, since they are located on submarines and other aspects, I mean, we do have a clause in our Hawaii Constitution that bands and do anything on the island, right? So maybe, but I would assume if the targets are Pearl Harbor and Pacific Command, which I would assume would be the logical places to head. A good portion of the island will be effective. You know, a complete devastation where it wipes everything out, that's probably just as improbable as not having as big of an effect. So if you're lucky, you will survive. And I think that's the same case in anything that we do. But probability-wise, the chances are probably much lower. And like you said, it has grown at least 15 times in proportion. And that's a pretty huge devastation as to the type of power we're working at. And I guess almost the responsibility that's entrusted upon us to be very careful with some of the development. Yeah. And I remember when we were in college in the 60s and 70s, there were all these peace movements. I guess it was an outgrowth of the, you know, resistance to the Vietnam War, to war in general. But there were flower children, we're all calling for the end of nuclear weapons ever. And the funny thing is that we're not seeing that these days. We're not seeing the peace children, the flower children. And we're not seeing protests against nuclear weapons in general. We're not seeing organizations that are dedicated to stopping nuclear weapons. Instead, we seem to be focused on what I consider an exercise. And that is letting you know you're about to be incinerated, which is a futile exercise, really. And times have changed. And we have rhetoric going around the world threatening nuclear war. But I don't think people understand what that really means. Not only in the initial moments of it, but what it means to any given society. For example, infrastructure, water, electricity, food, I mean, all the things you need to live beyond an hour or two. So I wonder if you have any thoughts on that from an engineering point of view. I mean, well, how would our infrastructure do? How would our city do in the case of a blast? You know, I'm at Holtzahl, which is supposed to be one of the natural disaster bunkers in the city of Honolulu. And it is very well built. It is a monument to concrete and why we spend so much money on some heck. However, if we're talking a moral or devastating bomb, I don't know if these windows will hold. I don't know if all the stuff will be as helpful. Maybe the force of some of those bombs will not or can be withheld by these cement structures that we have. So there's probably going to have to be a rethinking. I believe with the development of engineering, there's always the counter aspects of the bombs that we make and all that. So I'm sure there are steps that we can take to make ourselves safer. But you know, it isn't our main goal to somehow look peacefully. These bombs are put into place because it was a power game between two major powers. And maybe it's coming back. Maybe we're back to that Cold War syndrome where we have to do the same thing. Yeah. Well, I remember in the time of Duck and Cover, they did have air-raid shelters. They had nuclear concrete air-raid shelters underground. There was a little sign. It was a yellow sign and it had three black triangles on it. And that was the sign of a nuclear air-raid shelter. And you would go down there and there'd be water and food there. And so far, somewhere along the line song, it fell into disuse. And I would say in the country now, there are very few, if any, of those shelters that are still ready in a state of preparedness. Well, I mean, if you think about it, the goal was, the ultimate goal, was to live in peace. So a lot of these things became just right. If you look around our island, we still have bunkers from World War II and so forth. And what are they used for? They're used for storage units and all that. So I think transformation is good. I think change is good. But at the same time, taking a step back, one of the things we don't do that I remember when I was a little kid was, like you said, these raid practices. You have these bomb raids and then you have practices as to where to go, what to do, how to roll, if you're catching on fire, all this stuff. I don't think 90% of the people now even know what those things are. Sure. My wife, my wife dutifully called the HPD when this thing and, you know, 911 and she got them, she got them on 911 and she said, the message says there's an incoming, you know, nuclear missile. What do we do? And the police officer on the other side said, find shelter immediately. That was helpful because the message also said that. But there was no definition and nobody knew, nobody in this city or state knew where a shelter was, what a shelter means, how to find it, how to get there. I mean, theoretically, if you have an 18 minute trip from North Korea to Honolulu, you don't have, the average time is very little. And since that message, you know, it was sort of when it was approaching us, then you would have to say, well, you probably have seconds. How are you going to get anywhere? How are you going to do anything? How are you going to take any action in seconds? There's nothing you can do. One guy I talked to said, well, when I saw that, I decided I would go back to bed because there was nothing else I could do. It was very wise of him. Well, that's kind of interesting because, you know, I think there was a newspaper article this morning with David Iyer talking about those shelters. But, you know, to make everybody else that may be listening to this feel a little bit more positive. We have one of the best military forces and they have one of the best high, you know, state-of-the-art technology. And 17 minutes is a long time in the air. And I'm sure some of our anti-aircraft missiles or planes will be able to go up and take a lot of these out before it gets in the mill. That means it's halfway up across the Pacific where there's nothing. So, you know, I think we should also be very hopeful and very thankful that we have a military service that can serve us. And as engineers and people that are interested in engineers, as tankers, as entrepreneurs, we really need to start figuring out how we can support our department of defense and our military. Yeah. And really, and we also have to become aware of the potential here, aware of the solutions, not only scientifically but politically. And we should not actually vote for anybody who would like to push the button. That would be a beginning for me. You know, in the old days, a politician get up and said, I want to push the button. He couldn't get any votes. Now, apparently, they can get votes, but they really shouldn't get votes. I want to close with one other thought for you, Son. Sure. And that is this. You know, recently, there's been news about these swarms of drones, little ones, like three inches. And they go by artificial intelligence, they fly around, and they land on you and they blow your brains out. And they know who you are. They can tell with artificial intelligence who you are. And it strikes me that, you know, the wars of the future will not be by big bombs. The wars of the future will be by much more sophisticated artificial intelligence devices, sort of like those drones that fly around in swarms, and you can't really protect very well against them. Do you have any thoughts about that? I mean, if you're going to focus on war, that would be an interesting kind of device to study. Well, I think you and I had a discussion about this on one of our cyber security talks. And that is, why draw bombs when you can send a bug, a cyber bug, and shut people down? If we shut the finance system down, our communication system down, can you imagine the type of panic that people are going through? It may even be worse than this panic about ballistic or incoming ballistic missiles, because people wouldn't know what to do. If I can't get money from the cash machine, how am I going to get my ice cream cone or my hamburger, right? And on top of that, this artificial intelligence stuff, who is to say that even the error that we saw here or the error that we saw in Japan were actually human? Maybe they have some artificial intelligence underlying input. And maybe it was a little game to see, like our hackathons, to see if somebody can go in and create a little hoax, let's say. Okay. Yeah. No, I had the same thought. And it still remains a logical possibility that the fellow who thought he pushed the wrong button, in fact, didn't. And in fact, the machine had been hacked and it looked like he pushed the wrong button, but the machine was pushing the wrong button. And that's a tremendous provocation and maybe a message to us all that these warning systems are not as reliable as we think because, yes, they can be hacked. Well, you know, anything that's digital, that's hooked up to the internet, you are prone to being hacked. Really? All, you know, people used to say your phones cannot be hacked, a Macintosh computer cannot be hacked. And we're finding out that one of the biggest bugs that resides in the computer or laptop right now are bugs that can hack Macintosh computers as well as the phones. Yeah. So you carry all your information on your phone. You know, I think it's time to take this step back and say, do I need all this information on my phone? And all of this really depends on a public awareness of the principles of engineering. And that's why the College of Engineering is so important at UH Manoa, not only to, you know, make a tech industry in the state, but also to raise awareness about engineering and about science so we all have a better understanding of the world, the new world in which we live. Thank you, Sung Choi. It's great to talk to you. Aloha. Aloha.