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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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BMSIS Young Scientist Fernando Favoretti Vital do Prado led an outreach event at the University of São Paulo. Fernando’s engagement was part of his Communications requirements for the BMSIS Young Scientist Program. Read Fernando’s impressions below: Last week I gave a talk at the University of São Paulo for the Information Systems Week. The Information Systems Week is characterized by technical-scientific-cultural events carried out in different formats and by the exchange of experiences between students of all levels inside and […]
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Further Tales from Spaceship Earth, the second volume in our ongoing short story collection, has been published and is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats. Edited by Jim Cleaves and Palmer Fliss, this volume includes science-informed fiction by affiliates and friends of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. The collection reflects an intersection of each author’s knowledge of science and vision of the future, which grapple with critical issues of our transformation into a technological and […]
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