"Ethically Impossible"

Author:
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2011
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9781508807438

In response to a request by President Barak Obama on November 24, 2010, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues oversaw a thorough fact-finding investigation into the specifics of the U.S. Public Health Service-led studies in Guatemala involving the intentional exposure and infection of vulnerable populations. Following a nine-month intensive investigation, the Commission has concluded that the Guatemala experiments involved gross violations of ethics as judged against both the standards of today and the researchers' own understanding of applicable contemporaneous practices. It is the Commission's firm belief that many of the actions undertaken in Guatemala were especially egregious moral wrongs because many of the individuals involved held positions of public institutional responsibility. The best thing we can do as a country when faced with a dark chapter is to bring it to light. The Commission has worked hard to provide an unvarnished ethical analysis to both honor the victims and make sure events such as these never happen again.

Engines of Discovery

Engines of Discovery
Author: Andrew Sessler
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2014
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9814417203

The first edition of Engines of Discovery celebrated in words, images and anecdotes the accelerators and their constructors that culminated in the discovery of the Higgs boson. But even before the Higgs was discovered, before the champagne corks popped and while the television producers brushed up their quantum mechanics, a new wave of enthusiasm for accelerators to be applied for more practical purposes was gaining momentum. Almost all fields of human endeavour will be enhanced by this trend: energy conservation, medical diagnostics and treatment, national security, as well as industrial processing. Accelerators have been used most spectacularly to reveal the structure of the complex molecules that determine our metabolism and life. For every accelerator chasing the Higgs, there are now ten thousand serving other purposes. It is high time to move from abstract mathematics and philosophy to the practical needs of humankind. It is the aim of this revised and expanded edition to describe this revolution in a manner which will attract the young, not only to apply their curiosity to the building blocks of matter but to help them contribute to the improvement of the quality of life itself on this planet. As always, the authors have tried to avoid lengthy mathematical description. In describing a field which reaches out to almost all of today's cutting edge technology, some detailed explanation cannot be avoided but this has been confined to sidebars. References guide experts to move on to the journal Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technology and other publications for more information. But first we would urge every young physicist, teacher, journalist and politician to read this book. Contents: Electrostatic Accelerators; Cyclotrons; Linear Accelerators; Betatrons; Synchrotrons; Colliders; Neutrino Super Beams, Neutrino Factories and Muon Colliders; Detectors; High-Energy and Nuclear Physics; Synchrotron Radiation Sources; Isotope Production and Cancer Therapy Accelerators; Spallation Neutron Sources; Accelerators in Industry and Elsewhere; National Security; Energy and the Environment; A Final Word OCo Mainly to the Young. Readership: Scientists, research physicists, engineers and administrators at accelerator laboratories; general readers; undergraduates and graduates in physics, electrical engineering and the history of science."