Space Colonization

Space exploration is definitely one of science’s most spectacular fields. If the 2013 movie Gravity (minus the part where George Clooney dies and Sandra Bullock almost gets stranded in space) wasn’t enough to allow the world to see the unbelievable beauty and serenity of outer space, I don’t know what could. Currently, great minds such as Stephen Hawking have stated that space colonization will become an essential and vital part of life in the future. This statement implies that the future of the human race as we know it does not lie on the planet Earth, rather on another planet or in a man-made space station.

Research into space colonization strikes me as important for a number of reasons. For one thing, the hefty cost of space travel has led big-name agencies such as NASA to rethink their ways. For example, NASA is now attempting to create reusable rockets, which will cut the costs of space travel by 95%. This situation does not only reap economical benefits, but also environmental benefits, as using reusable rockets means less debris on Earth and in space.

Speaking of the environment, space colonization may turn out to be vital in the near future if global warming continues. Right now, human beings appear to be the main cause of global climate change, and are certainly the main cause of pollution on the planet. Our materialism, over-consumption, and overall lack of regard for the planet’s well-being says a lot about our plans for future life on Earth, or lack thereof. If we continue to destroy the only known planet with a breathable atmosphere for humans, we may lose all life as we know it. Space colonization would then become the only solution. However, scientists have admitted that that kind of technology is far from being ready, and is in the mere speculation period. It is therefore of vital importance that we maintain life on this planet, and the only way to do this is to become more environmentally friendly. If every person did one environmentally friendly thing a day, such as take public transit, limit shower time to five minutes, or recycle, we could see a great improvement in global climate change. It will take a huge group effort, but I believe it is possible.

Night-vision Contact Lenses

Let’s face it, science has produced some extremely cool things. Technology is advancing at an increasingly rapid pace, and there is quite literally no stopping scientists now when it comes to innovation; the sky’s the limit.
Recently, university researchers have began working on a new super-interesting project: night-vision contact lenses. They haven’t managed to obtain a working model yet, but they have begun manipulating the material, graphene, that will eventually form the base of the contact lens that will be capable of seeing infrared images clearly, thereby potentially allowing a person to see in the dark. This kind of invention would be revolutionary, as it would benefit many different professionals who are forced to work at night in dark conditions, such as search and rescue teams, soldiers, and emergency-response teams. They have no choice but to work outside in the dark, so having the ability to see properly would greatly facilitate their job. Night-vision contact lenses, or even night-vision cell phones, would be an amazing invention. The ultimate goal would be to eventually create Terminator-like robot vision for all human beings.
Research like this, however incredible it may seem, still leaves me a bit disappointed in our very materialistic world. Yes, we could indeed benefit from this astonishing technology, but is there not more important things for scientists to be devoting their time to? There are some research fields that desperately need intelligent, innovative, and hard-working thinkers and doers in order to save lives. For example, over half a million people die from cancer every year in the United States alone, mainly because research has not quite come up with a cure to this awful disease. Cancer research is in need of scientists and researchers to help save millions of lives every year, which strikes me as a bit more important than figuring out a way for humans to see in the dark. Yet another life-saving place for scientists to devote time and energy to is ending world hunger, either by coming up with genetically modified crops to grow in all climates or by physically going to third world countries and engineering ways to provide clean water to towns and cities. When you think of it this way, night-vision contact lenses are not quite so important.

Education

Recently, my classmates and I did something that a lot of people around the world were also doing: we applied to universities. Applying to any school is a stressful process, as we are obligated to make decisions about what we would like to spend our lives doing, and that is not always evident. We have spent the last couple of years worrying about our academic standing, and striving to get good grades, and now we have to wonder if that was enough. Suddenly, our sole goal in life is to get into university.

Students worldwide feel this kind of stress during application season every year, especially those applying in competitive programs. Competitive programs are the ones hardest to get into, because people deem them ‘important’ and hope to someday do that particular job for a living. This information is known to registrars, and allows them to increase the prerequisites and raise the minimum grade required to be accepted into the program. But who decides what programs are ‘competitive’? In a sense, no one job is more important than another. It takes all kinds of people to make the world function.

Shannon Rupp, a writer for The Tyree, reasons that perhaps the so-called ‘important fields’ will soon no longer be important. In her article, “Be employable, study philosophy” (http://www.salon.com/2013/07/01/be_employable_study_philosophy_partner/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow), she uses journalism as an example. Journalism is a competitive program in colleges and universities alike, because journalism is seen as an important and desirable profession. However, with handheld technologies like smart phones and tablets on the rise, journalists are no longer as sought after. With these technologies, almost anyone can document important things, where ever they go. In the past couple years, many important news companies have drastically cut the number of jobs for journalists needed for their companies. This means that there are many fewer jobs available for journalism students fresh out of school. Rupp argues that it is much more useful to study something less common, therefore in a higher demand, such as philosophy.

Rupp’s opinion applies to the field of science in many ways. For one thing, when one decides they want a career in science, they naturally study some form of science, like biology, chemistry, engineering, medicine, or mathematics. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that other sorts of professionals are needed in the scientific field, such as philosophers and ethicists. This being said, studying philosophy or a philosophy-related field at the present time could potentially guarantee you a job in an entirely different and unexpected field.

In short, students should be more informed about what kinds of jobs are in demand, and what kinds of fields they could work in for any given program of study. Not only would this kind of information benefit the student, but it would also benefit society, as we would not have a surplus of professionals in one field and a lack of professionals in another. School, especially post-secondary school, is extremely expensive, and some students from the United States and other parts of Canada spend a good portion of their working lives paying back their student loans. Their hard-earned money should not be spent in vain in a program that will lead to a field that will not be able to employ them.

Vaccinations

           

           Medicine is a very experimental field of science. Some diseases and ailments have cures that a doctor knows for a fact will help, and other diseases, such as cancer, are so unknown and unpredictable that only experimental treatments that do not work for everyone exist to treat them. These things are widely accepted as normal by society, however certain cases are considered much more controversial.

            Vaccinations are a prime example of medical controversy nowadays. On the one hand, most vaccinations have the potential to prevent a disease from manifesting. On the other hand, vaccinations, in some rare cases, have been known to trigger disabling diseases themselves, such as autism. So it would appear that parents are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to deciding whether or not they should vaccinate their children; either they do and they risk their child getting a life-changing disease, or they don’t and they risk their child getting a life-changing disease. It is a very difficult decision for parents to make, and their decision should be respected in a ‘to each their own’ type of fashion.

            I personally believe in vaccinations. Knock on wood, I have never contracted a disease for which I have been vaccinated, leading me to believe that they really do work in the majority of people. I understand that they are still a risky business, but odds are they will do more preventing of diseases than causing of diseases. Also, vaccinations rely on a collective group being vaccinated; it’s pointless for one person to be vaccinated if the disease will be spreading through a group of people anyways. The most effective way of preventing disease by today’s standards would be if everyone got vaccinated, unless there is a specific medical reason why they cannot receive a vaccination.

            At the same time, no one should be forced to receive a vaccination or to have their children vaccinated if they don’t want to. Everyone should be free to do as they please. People who are against vaccinations should however take the time to properly research on the subject. Celebrities like Kristin Cavallari and Jenny McCarthy can believe what they want about not vaccinating their children, but hopefully they did their research and asked a trusted physician for advice before making these decisions that could impact their children’s lives forever.

Superstitions

           

           In the past, when technology and the modern conveniences we have today were merely thoughts and dreams in peoples’ minds, a lot of scientific phenomena was lacking proper scientific explanation. Since technology was lacking, people turned to superstition, and sometimes ‘magic’, as an explanation.

            Superstition has an importance in today’s world also, as it is a way to explain the unexplainable. When no pattern is discernible, people tend to, whether consciously or unconsciously, resort to superstition as a means of explanation. This could prove to be problematic, as superstition has no scientific background, and does not adequately reflect probability as some people may believe. For example, just because a batter in baseball performs a certain ‘good luck ritual’ every time he steps up to the plate, does not mean that he will hit a homerun, or that he will even hit the ball at all. The batter does this simply to make himself feel better, to reassure himself. Batting in baseball is such an unpredictable thing, that superstition is a way of comforting a batter.

            This principle applies to superstition as a whole. When we are faced with a difficult or near-impossible feat, superstitions, however improbable they may be, can turn out to be extremely comforting. Just like when people in ancient times used superstition and magic to explain away things they could not empirically prove, superstition can also be used to gain confidence in a situation.

            Our world is one of chaos; sometimes there are simply no observable patterns, only disorder. However, the human organism as a whole prefers order, when everything can be summed up and organized into unique categories; when patterns exist. This is why superstitions are so appealing to some people; superstitions allow people to create patterns where none exist.

            There are two types of people for every situation: there can be believers, and there can be skeptics. Your tendency to believe or be skeptical of something stems from dopamine levels. A higher dopamine level makes you more of a believer, and willing to seek out patterns in areas where they simply do not exist, whereas a low dopamine level would result in skepticism, and the recognition that a pattern does not exist in a particular situation.

            In the end, superstition and science do not seem to correlate, but they actually do. The amount of superstition you exercise is based on the dopamine levels in your brain, which are observable by doctors and scientists of medicine. Similarly, superstitions are used to organize and order life, which is one of the fundamental needs of human beings. Superstitions do have a basis of science to them, even if the explanations they provide cannot be scientifically justified.

Antibiotics

            Everyone knows that there are ways around the laws and regulations set in place by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA is supposed to regulate what food, drugs, and substances are safe for human consumption, and also to foresee any possible complications or downsides that a new drug may pose.

            Antibiotics are one of the most widely-used drugs to treat a variety of ailments. While they are effective at treating a number of illnesses in humans and animals alike, they have been too widely and frequently distributed. This wide distribution is permitted since antibiotics are FDA approved, therefore there are no limitations to their supply and sale.

            There are many reasons why the quick sale of antibiotics should be diminished, in both animals and humans. Take livestock, for example. I completely understand administering antibiotics to sick animals that are in need of medication. However, this is not the only reason antibiotics are given to domestic creatures. Some farms are administering antibiotics in order to increase and speed growth, as well as to decrease the amount of food needed by the animal in order for it to be healthy. This unnecessary consumption of antibiotics is strictly to save and make more money. The problem with this increased administration of antibiotics for non-medical purposes is that animal cells are growing increasingly immune to antibiotics. This immunity could prove detrimental to livestock as we know it, because some common day ailments can only be treated using antibiotics, meaning that if animals become immune to antibiotics, they could potentially die from these ailments. Another problem is that this immunity could potentially be passed on to humans, either by eating meat from an immune animal, or simply through contact with an immune animal. If humans ever became immune to antibiotics, the entire healthcare system would have to be revolutionized and new medications would have to be invented in order to fight diseases.

            In the end, the usage of antibiotics in livestock needs to be more regulated. The FDA needs to take control of the illegal sale of these drugs, as well as pass new laws regarding when it is acceptable to administer antibiotics and when it is not. If something is not done to prevent antibiotic immunity, the healthcare system as we know it will change for the worse, and we may experience a dark age of disease.

It Takes All Kinds

           It is safe to say that all human beings are unique. Not everyone is going to look the same, not everything will be well-liked by all, and no one is going to be loved by everyone. This is just a universal fact of life, and it is not a theory that will necessarily be denied by anyone.

            This being said, I believe that it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round. Some may believe that scientific geniuses are what keep us alive, and that without them, we wouldn’t be able to function as we do today. In a sense, there is some truth to this statement. If science-minded people had never existed, we would be missing many aspects of life and inventions that exist today. For example, electricity would not exist, so we would live in a constant state of darkness half the time. Travel would be near impossible, because motors and engines would not exist, and also because engineers would not have designed bridges and roads for accessibility. Life expectancy would be much lower, because medicine would not be as advanced as it is now. Life would certainly be much more difficult, and definitely a whole lot different than it is now. Examples like these may be reasons that people believe scientists are more fundamentally important than historians, lawyers, psychologists, teachers, philosophers, or other social science types of professionals.

            However, without other types of people, much of the world’s progress would not have happened. For example, without philosophers, many ideas that scientists have put into action would never have been thought up. Without teachers, knowledge in general could not be passed down, and eventually all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, would cease to exist. Without lawyers, there would be no laws to govern scientific studies and experiments, meaning that all hell could break loose and we would have evil geniuses testing on poor, unsuspecting humans or trying to take over the world.

           It takes many different kinds of minds just to do science in general, therefore it would be very difficult to say which professionals are most important and which could be discarded or forgotten. In short, I believe that each type of profession is absolutely essential in order for the world to function. Just like Professor Andrew Briggs of Oxford University says, it is extremely beneficial for him to have a philosopher in his physics laboratory. The philosopher provides a different outlook, and poses questions that a scientific-minded person might have overlooked, and vice-versa. The relationship is mutually beneficial for all. All kinds of people are needed in order to make the world turn.

Dieting

          Trends go in and out of style. What is popular and important one month can be completely forgotten the next. Diets and weight loss programs are no different. Ever since the Atkins Diet was introduced, there have been a number of diets that supposedly will make you lose weight and feel healthier in no time. The reality is that most of these diets are pseudoscience, meaning that they have no scientific background and are created solely for monetary gain. Since the media is constantly portraying what ‘perfect’ body image should be, weight loss programs and diets are in high demand, and there is a lot of money to be made in this industry. People are so hell-bent on losing weight fast and easily, without working out too strenuously or eating too many veggies, that they will literally believe anything that diet companies sell them.

            Take Robert Atkins, for example. He is the founder of the Atkins diet, which was supposedly an amazing diet plan that produced phenomenal results. The truth of the matter is that Atkins had many health issues himself, including heart problems such as heart attacks and heart failure. It’s safe to say that, despite his ‘healthy’ diet, Atkins was not a healthy man, and his diet was not really improving his health, rather it was degrading his health. Nevertheless, Atkins continued to sell his diet to unsuspecting people until the very end.

            People need to work out their priorities and realize that diets may make them lose weight, but can bring so many negative side effects to their bodies and minds that it just isn’t worth it anymore. High-protein diets have been all the rage as of late, and they have been somewhat effective in the weight loss department. However, there are also strong links declaring that high-protein diets, much like the Atkins diet, can cause cancer and heart attacks, particularly if the person consumes mainly animal proteins. The facts are undeniable, and the evidence against diets is scientific while the evidence for the majority of diets is pseudoscientific.

            With this being said, eating high-protein diets when you’re young can cause the above-mentioned side effects, however eating them when you’re over 65 years old is beneficial to your health. Nowadays, everything has the potential to be bad for you. People simply need to assess what is good for them and make responsible choices about their diet and exercise plans if they want to lose weight. Make a reasonable goal, expend more energy than you ingest, and eat healthy. Losing weight is not about eating less, it’s about eating what’s healthy for you and getting a good balanced diet, as well as having a healthy exercise plan to accompany this diet. 

Same-sex Parenthood

            

           Marriage and family life are not usually classified as pure and applied or health science. They usually fall under a more social science-type category. However, when trying to prove certain claims about these concepts, science, or pseudoscience for that matter, can be used.

            A good example of this is Mark Regnerus. This man has tried to prove that children raised by same-sex couples have more disadvantages than children raised by a straight couple, more specifically, children raised by their biological parents. Despite having his claims continuously slammed and denied by every journal he writes for and every university he speaks at, Regnerus leaves making the same claims, and boasting the same conclusions.

            Regnerus’ story, in spite of the fact that it is a social science case, concerns the scientific field for two reasons. The first is that it is complete pseudoscience. Regnerus has repeated countless times that children of same-sex parents are disadvantaged simply because their parents are gay, but he does not provide scientific evidence to support this claim. He did perform studies on a large group of samples, however of these samples, only two cases were truly of a same-sex couple raising a child. The fact that his claims are based on couples that are not truly same-sex make his declarations irrelevant altogether. Since he has not and cannot scientifically prove that children of these families are deprived and furthermore cannot prove what specifically these difficulties are, his arguments cannot hold water. Basically all that he has proven is that children from broken, unstable, divorced, or poor families are underprivileged, which is a fact that the world already knew.

            The second reason that Regnerus’ tale concerns science is that he does not properly follow the scientific method. The scientific method states that one must first ask a question, then formulate a hypothesis and further predictions. After this, one must design and perform an experiment in an attempt to test the hypothesis. Finally, the data obtained in the experiment is analyzed, and conclusions can be drawn if the hypothesis proved to be correct. If not, or if the data obtained was inconclusive, one must redesign the experiment and perform it again until the correct answer to the question is found. In this case, Regnerus’ question was whether or not gay marriage disadvantages children, and he hypothesized that it did and predicted he’d be able to see drawbacks compared to children raised by their biological parents. He did perform experiments, however they did not accurately test his hypothesis nor did they answer his question properly, therefore providing him with inconclusive data. This fact was pointed out to him by countless journals and universities when they voiced their disagreement with his claims. If Regnerus was following the scientific method correctly, he would have redesigned his experiment and performed it again in order to arrive at a more appropriate, or at least a better conclusion. He did not do this and just continued to restate the same opinion based on the same facts from the same experiments. His actions further prove how his claims about gay marriage are complete bull.

            In short, pseudoscience is out there, and people make false claims all the time. Regnerus is attempting to use pseudoscience to voice his own derogatory opinions about gay marriage, and that is simply not what science should be about. Science should be about helping others, not removing children from perfectly good homes with perfectly good parents simply because some people are prejudiced and uncomfortable with parents’ sexualities.   

Evolution

          A lot can be learned through biology. One big area that biologists focus on is evolution, because it is so controversial. Some people, namely creationists, believe that God created the Earth in seven days, while scientists believe that the world evolved from a single cell. Even amongst these two distinct categories, there are many different subcategories which add to the argument of evolution.

            Regardless of your take on evolution, there is undeniably some strong evidence promoting that all life evolved via one particular cell. This means that all organisms have one common evolutionary ancestor, and that any differences between a current modern-day organism and that single cell are results of evolution. Where scientific theories vary is on how certain organelles inside of individual cells evolved over time.

            Mitochondria and chloroplasts are a couple of organelles with sketchy backgrounds. The exact manufacture of these organelles is unknown. All that is known for certain is that these organelles did not exist in the first cells, and that they were later produced in order to provide energy and perform photosynthesis.

            Some scientists are uncertain as to exactly how these organelles were produced originally, but it is clear that without them, eukaryotic-celled organisms (like plants and animals) could never have existed. I personally believe in the endosymbiont hypothesis. The endosymbiont hypothesis states that a large prokaryotic cell (like bacteria) swallowed up a small prokaryotic cell. The large prokaryotic cell later evolved to become a eukaryotic cell, and the small prokaryotic cell later evolved to become a mitochondrion or a chloroplast. This theory supports both how mitochondria and chloroplasts were created and also how they aided in the evolution of eukaryotic cells.

            It may seem unimportant to find out the origin and function of these organelles. I mean, they’re hear now, so why worry about how they got here, right? The truth is, the world could learn a lot from what is going on at the cellular level in organisms. For one thing, the world is looking for more efficient and renewable energy sources. The mitochondria is the organelle responsible for energy production for the cell. Perhaps by studying these organelles and their functions, one could potentially find the perfect energy source that is also ecologically-friendly. Also, chloroplasts are the only cells able to perform photosynthesis, therefore they are the only cells able to produce oxygen in a living organism. NASA is currently studying how to use plants to create a breathable environment for human beings on other planets, planets without plants and with atmospheres that do not contain oxygen gas. These inventions would be legendary and revolutionary, and the ideas and inspiration would have stemmed simply by studying organelles found in cells of our own bodies or in the bodies of vegetables on our dinner plates. All scientists have to do is look and assess what is already in front of us.