Commentaries

Where do our thoughts and emotions come from? What exactly is consciousness? How do mental disorders arise, and how do you treat them? Many people ask themselves these profound questions and probably attempt to answer them by referring to the brain, the organ that shapes who we are and our perception of the world around us. However, not many people know that the field that focuses on these “brain” questions is neuroscience. I myself only discovered neuroscience during the last year of high school, when I was deciding what my major in college would be.

Nuclear physics is a broad and nuanced field that often is not well understood by the general public. Frequently in discussing my research with friends and family, I find that using the word nuclear can be enough to either prompt a separate discussion on nuclear weapons and meltdowns or, worse, make their eyes glaze over in pure boredom. Furthermore, there is a lack of accessible literature on the topic, making nuclear physics even more nebulous to the public.

Research is defined by the unknown. From scientific breakthroughs to art interpretation, research subjects are as diverse as research methods. Whether it be spending hours on the library floor exploring archival data, or treating the laboratory as a secondary home for months on end to run experiments, typical research activities greatly vary between the disciplines. 

The issue of marijuana legalization is coming to a turning point in American society, and it is clear that we are trending toward a total policy change. It is crucial to look internationally at different systems of legalization and decriminalization to determine which system would be the most successful here in the United States. I want our society to be governed by a set of laws that is fair and rational, a set of laws that at least the majority of citizens can believe in—laws that do more good than harm.

Utilitarianism is a philosophy that values the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people (Driver 2014). Utilitarianism was created by European philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. Bentham believed that when a government is based on utilitarianism, a system of law and reason is created that values happiness as its foremost principle (Bentham 1789). To provide a mechanism for utilitarianism to be applied to governmental policy, Benthem created the utility calculus.