Respect for the Unseen

Hadeel Saad shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. Ethics, when defined by science, is discovering and designing a code of values to guide choices and actions for those in the scientific community. The codes created then serve as an outline for what is morally acceptable in experiments. However, many of these codes were created long ago, and our understanding in nearly every field has altered, yet our ethical codes have […]

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Outreach: Building Spaceships in Red Hook

BMSIS Young Scientist Liz Miller led an outreach event at the Red Hook Public Library in Red Hook, New York. Beginning with a scale model of the solar system, the children built spaceships with the idea of trying to reach different planets. The activity culminated with a competition to see how far they could “fly” their spaceships. This combination of arts, engineering, and science helped teach about the solar system and space travel. Liz’s engagement was part of her communications […]

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Count Down To The Future

A new article and podcast by Scientia features five of our young scientists working at the NASA Ames Research Center. Meg Cheng Campbell, Ryan T. Scott, Samantha Torres, Matthew Murray, and Eric Moyer have all worked in the space biosciences division with their research advisors to understand the effects of long-term spaceflight on humans. Congratulations to this outstanding team of scientists! [Read the Scientia article] [Listen to the SciPod podcast]

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The Ethics of Human Biological Enhancements

Alex Adranly shares his ethics & society case study, which he completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. As human technology has grown, we have used it to control our environment. Now we are entering the stage where we can use technology to enhance human biology. Humans may be able to avoid hazardous diseases altogether and be equipped with enhanced physical and mental traits suitable for the ultimate human prototype. Unfortunately, like every powerful technology, this ability to enhance human […]

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Ethical Challenges in Developing Artificial Intelligence

Fernando Favoretti shares his ethics & society case study, which he completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. When we hear the words ’Artificial Intelligence’, the idea of intelligent cyborgs, the sky-net, and future terminators comes to mind. With rapid advancement in technology nowadays mostly thanks to the ability to create cheap hardware attached to equally cheap parallel computing systems, artificial intelligence is now capable of developing advancements that were previously only considered to be the fruit of science fiction […]

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TED Talk by Armando Azua-Bustos

How can Earth teach us about extraterrestrial life? In his TED Talk, The most Martian place on Earth, Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos takes us on a tour of the Atacama Desert, his childhood home now turned into his astrobiological laboratory. Searching for signs of life on Mars, or other planets, requires careful understanding of how organisms can survive in dry and extreme environments, and Dr. Azua-Bustos’ research helps to reveal the conditions that we might find life both there and elsewhere. […]

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Ethical Considerations of Altering Mars and Other Planetary Bodies

Tara Vega shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. While studying the various factors that go into allowing permanent human settlement on Mars, I repeatedly came across many possibilities of contamination. Carrying plants, microbes, water etc., within spacecraft landings to Mars all harbor the possibility of contaminating the red planet. I use not the term contamination as negativity, but more as the result of no better way to explain such an […]

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The Ethics of Space Exploration

Liz Miller shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. Space exploration is an exciting and constantly progressing field. Fulfilling natural human curiosity about worlds other than our own, exploration of our solar system and beyond is generally met with support by people from all walks of life. While the bulk of our effort is put into allowing both objects and humans to survive safely on other planets and moons, there is […]

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Space Mining: Ethical Issues and Some Possible Solutions

Stephanie Meursing shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. Earth, the planet we have known for so long. The planet which fuels our every need. But with population increasing, with a prediction to be around 10 billion people by 2050, can the Earth sustain our needs? Many individuals think not. This fear has caused a boom of companies that can lead humankind into a new revolution. Companies such as Shackleton Energy […]

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One for All, All for One: A Report on the Ethics of Model Organisms

Brian Smith shares his ethics & society case study, which he completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. The use of animals in scientific research has long been a subject of controversy, dating back to at least 1822, when the British Parliament enacted new laws “relating to the Cruelty to Animals” (Nowlan). Movements like these set the precedent for animals’ treatment in research, with two critical pillars on which even modern model organism work stands: A person shall not perform […]

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