Colossal is a company committed to de-extinction. Its main mission is to bring back the woolly mammoth. This mission may help conserve critically endangered Asian elephants and mitigate the impacts of global warming. However, it also raises ethical concerns regarding the livelihood of wildlife that currently reside in the mammoth’s habitat.
View More De-extinction: Does the End Justify the Means?
A slurry of executive orders has led to a massive purging of public health information from the CDC and other federal websites. Thankfully, data-hoarding Redditors have come to the rescue by posting any information they had managed to salvage from these websites. As engineers, if we have the skill set we should follow suit and help with any effort to make this important data accessible to those who need it.
View More CDC Censorship: Engineers to the Rescue of Public Health Data
On June 5, the spacecraft Starliner, docked at the ISS. Starliner transported Suni Williams and Butch Willmore who were originally scheduled for an eight day mission. However, the duo did not return with Starliner as planned. Instead, they will stay on the ISS for an extra eight months, joining NASA’s Crew 9 to complete Expedition 72. Their last minute addition to the team is fortunate, but is ultimately a result of irresponsible engineering.
View More A Long Way From Home: Starliner Crew’s Extended Stay in Space
CrowdStrike released a faulty system update that caused computers to crash on a large scale all over the world. From grounding flights, to delaying medical treatment, the outage reveals the dangers of putting all your cybersecurity defenses into one company.
View More CrowdStrike’s Global Computer Crash Fiasco
VAR technology was adapted to make calls made by referees more accurate. For better or worse it has changed the way soccer is played. The 2024 Euros have been riddled with examples of how VAR is hurting soccer.
View More Is VAR Ruining Football?
Geoengineers at the University of Washington may have discovered a way to lower regional temperatures through the use of artificial marine cloud brightening (MCB). The team settled down in Alemade, California to start test runs of their project in early April. However, a lack of transparency on their part may get their research shut down.
View More Spraying the Bay: A Controversy
Starliner’s long-awaited Crew Flight Test will finally happen on May 6. Starliner is the Boeing-produced capsule that will hold the astronauts on their journey to the International Space Station. Although the launch date is set in stone, the constant malfunctions that have plagued Starliner and Boeing’s declining credibility indicate that a further delay would be the safest thing to do to ensure the crew’s safety.
View More Houston, We Have a Problem
Tragedy struck on the night of March 26 when the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore came tumbling down. The collapse occurred after a large container ship, the Dali, collided with the bridge. However, the collapse was far from the most heartbreaking news of the event; Six men who had been working on the bridge when it fell lost their lives. The six men, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, Miguel Luna, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, Carlos Hernandez, Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, and Jose Mynor Lopez, were all migrant workers from Central America. As we remember and honor their lives, their deaths highlight the lack of care in the construction industry when it comes to protecting Latino migrant workers.
View More Fighting for our Latino Migrant Workers after Baltimore’s Bridge Collapse
Last month, the Alabama Supreme Court granted personhood to in vitro embryos. This had a disastrous impact, as it allowed medical professionals to be criminally charged for damage or destruction of embryos during the IVF process. Although Alabama legislators were quick to pass laws protecting medical professionals, the precedent has left an unstable future for the rights and autonomy of IVF patients.
View More Alabama Supreme Court Puts IVF at Risk
Water scarcity is an issue that impacts people all around the world. Thankfully, engineers at the University of Texas have created a device to combat it. They created a bio-based nanofiber hydrogel filter (BNHF) that is cheap, accessible, and has the potential to bring clean water to people all over the world.
View More UT Austin Engineers Tackle Water Scarcity