astrobiology

The Ethics of Reproducibility in Computational Research

Sumeet Kulkarni shares his ethics & society case study, which he completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. I was motivated to choose this topic for study since my own BMSIS YSP project involved the computational modelling of bubbles growing in lava. The vesicles they leave behind when the lava solidifies into rock are important proxies in determining the atmospheric pressures at that epoch. This method has already been put into use in field studies of vesicle size distributions in […]

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Afshin Khan & SustainSpace Win Overall Prize at ESA Contest

BMSIS scientist Dr. Afshin Khan, along with her team member Mark Ciotola, was selected as the overall winner for the 2017 Space Exploration Masters competition. The contest was initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA) as well as other government and private space organizations. The team’s project was titled “Plant germination during spaceflight to test for adaptability of crops in long term space missions.” Dr. Khan and colleagues plan to continue developing their idea for improving plant yield through space […]

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Virtual Outreach with New Horizon Elementary School

BMSIS Young Scientist Shaelyn Silverman led an outreach event at New Horizon Elementary School in Irvine, California. On September 29th, 2017 I had the privilege of leading a virtual outreach event for a 3rd grade class of New Horizon Elementary School, located in Irvine, CA. Through FaceTime I gave the students a tour of the Exobiology branch at NASA Ames and showed them the exciting microbial mats in the Microbial Ecology & Biogeochemistry Research Laboratory where I work. We discussed […]

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Young Scientists Shine at ASGSR Meeting

We are proud of our recent Young Scientist Program members who competed in the poster competition at the 33rd annual meeting of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR). Shiyin Lim was awarded 2nd place for the undergraduate poster competition, while BMSIS YSP Meg Cheng-Campbell got 2nd place for the graduate poster competition. Congratulations to Shiyin and Meg! [Learn more about the meeting]

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Outreach: Wikipedia ‘Hackathon’

Omer Markovitch, BMSIS scientist, recently organized a Wikipedia hackathon event and shares his reflections below: “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia” is a major source of knowledge. As it is often used by both specialists and non-specialists as an initial source of information, we recently held an informal Wikipedia meeting talking about its place in the scientific community and how we can contribute. Members of the Otto’s research group from the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry at the University of Groningen, The Nethelands, […]

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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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