Science, according to John Ziman, past physicist, humanist, and author of Real Science, What it is, and What It Means (2000), states that “science is under attack.” In his book, he declares that: “People are losing confidence in its powers. Pseudo-scientific beliefs thrive. Anti-science speakers win public debates. Industrial firms misuse technology. Legislators curb experiments. Governments slash research funding. Even fellow scholars are becoming skeptical of its claims.” If science is under attack, has it always been? Or is this a relatively new problem? To answer this, specific periods in our recent history can be chosen and compared to determine…

(August 2003) What is the Human Genome Project? Genome sequencing technology has led to many recent scientific breakthroughs. These breakthroughs have captured the interest of the public and are being reported with excitement by both the media and scientific journals. The completion of the human genome project (HGP) is an example of newsworthy science that has the potential to have major effects on our society today. The HGP was an initiative started in the early 1990’s that has involved the efforts of hundreds of scientists to generate high-quality reference sequence for the 3 billion base pairs of nucleotide sequence that…

Bananas are just a fruit, how are they considered a global issue? Although bananas may only look like a fruit, they represent a wide variety of environmental, economic, social, and political problems. The banana trade symbolizes economic imperialism, injustices in the global trade market, and the globalization of the agricultural economy [1]. Bananas are also number four on the list of staple crops in the world and one of the biggest profit makers in supermarkets, making them critical for economic and global food security [2]. As one of the first tropical fruits to be exported, bananas were a cheap way…

For some a voyage through the Canadian Arctic may be one of the most exciting and thrilling adventures one could dream of: indeed, hundreds of kilometres of virgin land and cold vastness have challenged thousands of explorers in the past. Many of these arctic adventurers shared a common goal: to seek a navigable passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Thanks to Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, and his crew, a 400 year search for a shorter sea route between Europe and the Orient was finally crowned with success at the beginning of the 20th century. Amundsen was the first…