Prioritization in Funding Among Competing Projects

Selen Çetin shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. Given a fixed amount of funding and a series of problems to solve that are related to our future life as human beings; such as the need to explore space, millions of cancer patients awaiting to get cured, or billions of people that cannot afford getting a proper education, suffering from poverty. Which one of them should be of top priority? […]

May 3, 2016

Selecting Humans: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Gökçe Senger shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. The term eugenics is derived from the Greek term Eugene, meaning ‘well-born.’ In 1883, it was first used by Sir Francis Galton, a British scholar and cousin of Charles Darwin1. He realized that high-quality intelligence and abilities were inherited through generations with an efficiency of 20%1. He then theorized that the human population could be improved by selecting individuals with desirable traits and encouraging […]

November 15, 2015

Risk of Radiation Exposure to Astronauts

Anuti Joshi shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. Astronauts are inevitably exposed to radiation whether they are trapped solar protons or Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR). Heavy ions produce distinct types of biological damage to cells and tissues compared to X-rays or gamma-rays. An increase in the Solar Proton Event (SPE) or GCR can cause a greater chance of DNA mutation and therefore an even higher probability of contracting cancer. […]

October 16, 2015

Body, Spirit, and the Emptiness of Space

Mohit Nalavadi shares his ethics & society case study, which he completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. Characterized by the belief that we can plan and create a better world through action, the 1960s approach to human progress may soon meet us again in 15 years. NASA, the ESA, SpaceX and others agree that the 2030s is the realistic decade in which we send humans to Mars. Inevitably, this in consequence will reinvigorate our primal instinct of exploration […]